Bye Bye Monsoons...

zigzagged lightning patters over the dark sky visible from a 6th floor balcony of my Mangalore apartments... no better sight to have a laptop right ahead and start writing. The thunders have died down and so has the rains. The only spectacle remains is the blazes flashing around every 2 second or so. This is the retreating monsoons of southern India.
First thing they are not the threatening streaks of lightning which would rip apart anything downunder. They are simply sprawling across the 2 dimensional sky and are absolutely beautiful!! They are the left overs of the thunderous storm that just passed by and i am just enjoying the farewell, watching the absolute white streaks saying "sayonara". This is how wonderful the mangalore weather and this is why I would never cease to love the place.
It had all started last Thursday afternoon. The heat had over powered us. So was the fate of the studies i m still bound to. With my balcony facing westwards, I could see almost clear horizon at the distance with tiny flashes of saline water reaching my naked eye. It was pretty sight as it meant the monsoons clouds will no more block the beautiful sunsets. But alas, the winds starts gathering some speed and so does the the black clouds over the northeast sky. The baneful clouds with the silver linings were approaching slowly and dreadfully.
In no time, the clouds had taken over the Mangalore sky with little hope of any clear sky and clear horizons. The day was the last day of the navratri festivals or to say the dusshera. What better occassion to celebrate the festival with cool winds buzzing through.
This is the time of the year mangalore streets witnesses the rally. The rally of the dancing tigers, ruthless rakshashaas, swirling fire balls and pompous lights. All this while, the folks and devouts carry there idols for visarjans. The processions are beautiful and extravagant (pretty much for the city which sleeps at 10).
Only thing which is marred in the whole affair is the street traffic which ofcourse was the last in the planning list for the city cooperation babus. This is what reminds me the date that day was ofcourse 9th Oct. Greater details on the significance of this day later though.
Well the time is - to put off laptop and go to sleep for i need to ofcourse go work every morning. Good bye Monsoons... hope to see you soon!! :)

TV shows come to YouTube... but alas

since when has internet also become bound by nation boundaries?
When do we see same programs in India?

Bubble Gum...

read the conversation the author has put forth between him and IIM investment banker in US...

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/10/05/stories/2008100550010100.htm

excerpt "
Flashback to year 2003:

Me: Why do the banks sell these home loans to you guys?

Rohit: Because we allow them to keep a significant portion of the interest rate charged on the home loans and we pay them upfront cash, which they can use to issue more home loans. Otherwise home loans go on for 20-30 years and it would take a long time for the bank to recover its money.

Me: And, why does Lehman buy these loans?

Rohit: Because we get a fat commission when we convert the loans into CDOs and sell it to investors.

Me: Who are these investors?

Rohit: They include everyone from pension funds in Japan to Life Insurance companies in Finland.

"

Ingenuity of the markets -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzJmTCYmo9g

Secret Passageway...

before it fades away...

mickey world was a famous games cum hangout parlor in Navi Mumbai. The place we reached out to escape. The place the fun meant that the only competition is the virtual demon controlling those games. It was (and may be still is) over the Gupta sandwich waalah (vashi sector 17). The place is not great 50x50x50 meters area, but suitable for a 20-30 teens or a preteens to keep their heads busy in.

I had been to this place (not many times but yeah have had fun) and had my earnest fun (sounds ironical.. well yeah fun sometimes for me is this way). So I am here after 5 years of gap and 2+3 years of college and job. I await the chaos and thrill .. the exulted expressions and few proud guardians watching over. I guess, the time must be evening 4pm when i reach the place. The regular watchman and the hustle, both are absent. May be the time is 4 and day of the week is 4(Wednesday). I ignore, the expectation still doesn't fade away until i reach the place and open the door!!!

The place has turned into a ghost room. Neither are those machines blinking neither are there any joyous faces. There is no one. There is no one stamping there foot (either in joy or anger). There is no one queuing up for the those tokens to play again. Strangely, the machines and the counter still present. I couldn't be mistaken to have come to wrong place at wrong time. This definitely is the place and there is definitely something wrong. What's wrong? The place simply was shutdown with low turnout and revenue and consequently niggling between the brothers. (yeah i found this out when i did find the watchman downstairs).

Now, the time was to redo the place. Redo the stroll and redo the experience. It all has to be in mind but with the memories and experiences as sharp then, nothing dies down so easily. So I walk in again only to find the the superheroes dashing machines on my right and cop acting upon the bank robber on my left. Further walk down, it was the place for popcorn and soda. Yeah of course, the steering wheels with which I vroomed virtual cities. Oh come on, how come kids don't enjoy this anymore??

The place is deserted but the items and brink surrounding them still in place. The partition always use to halt my way but could only manage to wiggle my whim by 1 mm, next moment i had my friend calling on to buy more coupons before he runs out of time 6....5..4.3!!!

But this time i was alone and i could see through the partition and the back door. I chose to take step forward rather than sway right. I creaked in and kept moving in. The passage is lit but dim lit. This is inviting to those who take on invitation for anything but the weddings and engagements. Walking in, there is no thought but to keep walking and of course keep that fist geared up in case someone tries to act smart. Well in dark corners anything could take place and anything could go wrong, why take chances (at least my fist will be safe). The passage leads to another door which swayed open just like that (no it wasn't the wonderland, nor was i Alice to keep toggling to get the key and open the door.)

The room next was again lightly lit but awesomely bright. The place is justly embellished between the like a chandelier gushing out to all corners and candles filling in bare necessities. The place has cubicles but of the size of rooms. I rolled my eyes to disbelief of the architecture. The columns were no where!! Just that one large space with nothing holding it. If only they had managed to keep the boundaries out of sight, the room would have been such that trees and birds could live in harmony. The decor was of course amazing with the fine cubes partitioning the place into many rooms. Those partitions were wood and carved with "i don't know wat!!". Know what, it still felt amazing and beautiful. Colors and carvings were not following a definite pattern but they were symbolizing anything or may be something. The symbols were of sunflowers, crayons, footballs, fishing nets, sunset. None of these were actually there to be interpreted as mentioned. I guess i assumed them this way.

Now, now what ... I had to enter one of those rooms and check out "whats going on???". Another thing.. footsteps never seemed to have no sounds. I wonder, was it just by chance or were there sensors nullifying any sound. It accompanied, those computer beeps and peeps. I wasn't thinking about this when i entered the the room. I was wondering who is this playing games here!!

As soon as i enter the room i find things which i haven't seen ever before. Not unless you have seen the 42" sized PC monitor with its keyboard (cordlessly attached)and huh?? third component missing (CPU). Amazingly, the ubiquitous wirejams were huh MISSING! not even to the power plug. The eyes went past that and the guy(whom i did notice before but can take a back seat now) was playing the intense graphics game. He lets me play that and i realize no way this could be played on my PC. So what is this guy running here...

Well the guy briefs me (well this happens only after he himself gets over initial shock of "who is this?") .. briefs me about the the high end stuff he has procured for in-house testing for the processor giants. They give away a complete assembly to test those quadras and tetras here. I actually didn't ask further, except for the controls to the game...

When i was leaving from the place, I met up with few more who carry out there secret operations in secret community and have fun with those thunderous counter strikes!!!... yeah so while i was leaving the place i realize that i have never felt this good since the time we (I and Tanbir) bumped our bicycles into heavy stream near Nazira(Assam).

Those were the days when the we looked out for the secret passages everywhere. The places hidden to our horizons, places beyond our imaginations, places closest to us. So where are those places, or where are the new kids going to look out for new dreams and new friends and new ghosts. Where will these guys find their caspers?

Future Shock personified

Go through following links and see if it scares u ...

Future Shock -
http://speedbird.wordpress.com/2008/09/11/thoughts-for-an-eleventh-september-alvin-toffler-hirohito-sarah-palin/

Women from no where -
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12066224#top

The sane world...

As i was watching Forrest Gump and was asked by roommates whats this about .. i tried to sum this up ..

"how only an insane (with his jenny) could survive through sanity of the world around" ...

How he made it past - the shackles of polio, schools of sane, college of brights, Vietnam war (by and for the sane world), Hurricane Carmen and Shrimping venture...

How he could only be in trust with few -
Mrs. Gump (because she did let the stupid do as stupid does),
Jenny (because she didn't believe there is anyone who could be trusted.. not even herself),
Bubba (because he had no dream but to dream about shrimp),
Lt. Dan (because he could not understand if the Forrest was curse or the blessing to him)

What Forrest never understood -
"Who I'm gonna be? ... Aren't I going to be me?"

How Forrest sums it up -
"Now, because I had been a football
star, and a war hero, and a national
celebrity, and a shrimpin' boat
captain, and a college graduate, the
of fathers of Greenbow, Alabama,
decided to get together and offered me a fine job"

Re:Hey! whos this?

nope it doesn't exactly work as that... this feature is only available for users in US and for some odd reason it was enabled for me and now it is not.. but still i m able to access to that for i had sent link to one of the albums to my friend on that day... so click on that link and all those features are there for ME :)

Hey! whos this?

Remember those old albums sittings with your friends answering them who is this and who is that?? and answers use to be ... well thats my mom and yeah thats my cousin sister .. :)

So gone are the old days of rolls and prints and so are the ways to communicate. So here is the application from google Picasa Web Album. I am sure you must have used it ...

Ask it to process all your photos and there you have it, it has recognized all the faces in all the photos for you. So now your only work remains is to take that face and name it! And what next, well it is mostly able to sort all the similar faces but on the places it is confused - it simply asks you to name it. Well out of some 700 faces i saw they 699 were actually faces of people except for one which it could not recognize well. So its 1:699 buggy :)

So there you have it, all the people in all the photos right at your finger tips. And of course the Google tries to associate each name with ur contacts available with google and we have these faces identified with friends, family and colleagues in Orkut or Gtalk or Gmail ... man just like that!!

Beware of those faces you may wonder who are they??? ... well those are petty by standers or hawker or a beggar roaming at remote corners of your photo.

Another thing, i am not sure if it can recognize animal faces yet. But yeah try that out.. may be it might just :)

In my case i m almost done with my current set of photos and have named each and every person i could find. So with that, whenever i go to a my album i have list of people recognized alongside the album ....

Another thing ... this is addictive. The UI and interface is so snazzy that you may just keep naming all of them without realizing how lost at time you are ...

So what are you waiting for ... go to "http://picasaweb.google.com/home"

Life's a game of tetris

... isn't it?

i was just wondering at the folks who are able to oversimplify their life. How are they able to do it? How will you manage the work, the play, the responsibilities and the love at one time. I guess they simply don't do these many tasks, they do just one - live life and keep fixing the pieces at right places.

With every new challenge thrown in, it's adjusted and fitted in like its part of life itself. Now the smarter the person is, smarter he/she to be able to fix it in. And whoosh! yet another layer of trouble (if u prefer call this a trouble) disappears right under your skin.

Needless to say, similarly how the game of tetris is played- if u don't know the rules. Every Pentomino is turned and fitted in the absolutely right place. Better you are able to judge the correct position for the coming pentomino, better you are able to foresee the event and swifter you are ... easier is the game managed.

As in the game you have limits on number of times you can rotate (and the degree you may rotate each time) before you run out of time. Also there are always set category of shapes (only thing is that the count is big here), so may be preplanning on how exactly am i to handle the shape would be good. Similarly the complexity plane is of little higher order - the game is 3-d now. Time on y axis and the x-z plane is where we fit the shapes.

So if the shapes (Pentominos) coming your way are just too complicated ... you may say Life is unfair ... :)

Here's you can play the game (the stripped down the most original tetris) - http://www.tetrisgames4all.com/game.php?spel=Tetris&game=20

ps. By smarter i never meant the person who is the whizkid. By smarter i guess i mean the person who simply thinks straight.

Jinhe Naaz Hai

Rabbi Shergill and his new song "jinhe naaz hai hind par" brought up at a talk show on NDTV इंडिया Salaam Zindagi ... now if u have listened to this song carefully (which ofcourse i hadn't, and then wondering y exactly they are playin this on news channel?) .. there are 4 names Bilquis Rasul , Satyendra Dubey, Manjunath and Navleen Kumar.If you ask me, i have heard about Mr.Dubey because he was one of the engineers part of Golden quadrilateral and was killed ... but rest? nope i haven't heard and i wasn't even sure why was Satyendra Dubey killed... so for my ignorance of all the names mentioned above and the song (making a launch on Independence Day week)... i get a complete shock when NDTV had a show on the song (oh man what is this doing here???) oh k so its not another Independence Day song !! :(:( ...

So lets start with it ..

Bilqis Yakoob Rasool - http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0127-12.htm
Gujarat riots victim - among many who couldn't get the justice ...

Satyendra Dubey - http://www.satyamevajayate.info/Satyendra_Dubey.htm
The whistle blower blown away ...

Manjunath Shanmughan- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanmughan_Manjunath
IOC manager shot dead because he tried to stop selling of adulterated petrol ...

Navleen Kumar - http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1916/19160370.htm
Trying to save the land of Adivasis... Martyred

All 4 who have gone into silence because they chose to stand against injustice and corruption. Many online petitions are doing there rounds but thats all i guess they are able to manage. Hope to keep this on my blog to spread the word further (if any one's listening!!!!)

Kashmir's Burning

not long ago had the thought come to my mind - has Kashmir stopped burning, is it all over, can i go to the proclaimed 'Heaven on Earth' without having to give myself a chance at life - well for few years of booming infrastructure and Incredible !ndia stuff.. i must say many actually thought that.. But of course the Kashmiris and the discontent goes hand in hand . The discontent in every kid living there, discontent in shopkeeper living there, discontent in every pundit living there, discontent in every mullah living there, discontent in every statesmen living there...

While India is emerging (shining some say), the J&K is burning. Its burning because India has never been able to call it hers. Its burning because India took it for granted that Kashmir is hers. India could only take pride of crowning J&K over her map but never priced its jewels inside. She forgot, its not the just the jewel with covalent bonded atoms inside but a civilization which has been covalently bonded for about 500 years. Diamonds are everlasting but not the civilizations if not cared well.

So, we have raged youth, frustrated men and humiliated women all constituting one single discontent community. Raged to cause of rebel, frustrated to the cause of development and humiliated because of India.

Let me quote few from accounts of Arundhati Roy in following article -
http://www.countercurrents.org/roy230808.htm

"For the past 60 days or so, since about the end of June, the people of Kashmir have been free."
...free from both, fear of autocratic side of Indian nation state and false hope of any resolution by procrastinating the issue in hand any further

"After 18 years of administering a military occupation, the Indian government's worst nightmare has come true."
...well they tried hard to make me believe the fire is fused, but alas the the truth is its only got resurgent

"It (Amarnath land transfer) triggered an apprehension that it was the beginning of an elaborate plan to build Israeli-style settlements, and change the demography of the valley."
...in this already 'muslim' fearing world you are helping them believe this place is also not theirs

"Raised in a playground of army camps, checkpoints, and bunkers, with screams from torture chambers for a soundtrack, the young generation has suddenly discovered the power of mass protest"
...if the early morning walk would mean frisking at hands of military, well here are the militants you were looking for

"he was referring to the insanity that permits the world's largest democracy to administer the world's largest military occupation and continue to call itself a democracy"
... half a million troops, that too after enormous pull out in recent times. Well if this is the only place to train our troops then declare it as citizen free zone.

"What kind of freedom do we have now? The freedom to be raped by Indian soldiers?" Her reply silenced me."
...burning libidos?? yeah right!!

"one of these fears of what the future holds can justify the continued military occupation of a nation and a people. No more than the old colonial argument about how the natives were not ready for freedom justified the colonial project"
... high time!! we change our colonial mindset. अंग्रेज़ चले गए, अंग्रेज़ियत छोड़ गए

"Of course there are many ways for the Indian state to continue to hold on to Kashmir... could extinguish this non-violent uprising and re-invite armed militancy. It could increase the number of troops from half a million to a whole million"
... if i could express the sadness without actually mocking it with sad smiley

"India needs azadi from Kashmir just as much as - if not more than - Kashmir needs azadi from India"
... give them what they want, give the people what they want... please move over the ego clash. I know how hard it would be to see India without its crown but for god sake Stop Killing!!!

... to surmise (def. says Infer from incomplete evidence)

Kashmir needs it own voice, its own leader and its own people to come up. Nor India nor Pakistan can help the matters. High time that we leave them in peace and live in peace ourselves.

My Pilgrimage..

how else do you describe the journey back home and back? i have found the word. Now, i am not very sure what would it mean ... journey you take up for needed ablutions or the journey taken up to keep the faith alive or to keep one self alive or just to sink into the collective faith everyone's observing. Coming to the point, where does one believe - lies there faith ... is it the Balaji (not the telefilms), Shirdi, Vaishno Devi or Mecca ?? Lets give one thought to what is faith now... Loyalty or allegiance to cause or thing... so does that mean your cause or thing always should lie divine to you.. well may be or may be not...

Lets come to my case - my complete faith as i have come to understand lies in Me, myself and my parents... or should i rejig this ... Parents, myself and at last me. So where does that put me? am I special case to treat them like this? No, i guess not. Everyone does, so why am i pushing so hard? well to start i might not have any other faith to believe in. So, could that be because i m not able to think of one?

I am not sure. I might be a pure antagonist. If you ask me to put my faith on any of the current world prudish Gods or Men, i wouldn't find any or may i wouldn't find one. I see imperfections and the most able perfections in all. I hate or rather don't believe in casting one idol for myself. So where does, lie my faith? One may say that the faith is all or faith is none. There is no middle ground. So where should i put my bet?

Well don't know, but for the time being its all on them.