Almost lost

Nowadays my schedule involves a visit to Mylapore atleast once a week. Mylapore which is the cultural heart of the city also has to its credit another status.

It has the most dense human traffic, second only to T nagar. or should i call it debit instead of credit? PS: recent researches show that laughing at poor jokes improves longevity ;)

Anyway, certain narrow streets of Mylapore are a driver's nightmare with pedastrians leaving no space for vehicles, small or tiny. The situation on the roads in the evenings is synonymous to pandemonium.

So here i was with my weekly contribution to the confusion, wading through the sea of people, occupied with umpteen 'things to do' running in the head.

I stopped at Adyar Ananda bavan for a snack and asked for the standard dahi poori as a matter of habit. i had just settled at the table, putting the numerous bags that i was carrying on the table that I suddenly remembered that in fact, I didnt feel like dahi poori.

I wanted something spicy. I took few quick steps to the counter, leaving all my things on the table, and corrected my order before the bavan chap started making the chaat.

I was back at the table in a matter of few seconds. I finished the pav bhaji, paid and started to collect my things to leave when i realised that my mobile phone was not with me. I was almost sure that someone had taken it during my short absence at the table or had someone picked my pocket?

I looked everywhere near the table and gave a tough time for the waiters there. Most of them were quite sweet and finished searching the whole stretch of the floor. My phone was nowhere to be seen. The weather was infact very cool and it was drizzling, but i was sweating.

So many times in the past, I had come close to losing the mobile, but had never really lost it. I would search for some time and would ultimately find it. But this time, I thought, I had finally lost it.

Who would want to steal a basic nokia? how much can the stealer sell it for? two grands may be. I was glad that I did not invest too much on the phone.

Losing it was not weighing too much on me, it was the fact that it got stolen that troubled me. After the thorough search, exhausted and disappointed, I sat down to ease my nerves. I knew that it was not a huge loss, that it was just a mobile phone for which i had spent hardly 4000 rupees, but most of us have this tendency of treating any loss that is slightly valuable to be life threatening, its pretty normal.

I slowly calmed down, and I tried calling the number continuosly and it went on ringing. I was puzzled. If it was stolen, the first thing the person who stole it would do is to switch it off. Then to my great relief, my roommate answered the phone. I had dropped it at home before i started to go out. whew!!!

This taught me few lessons: one is that, i am never going to invest too much on something that i can so easily lose, and of course I will keep a back up of all contacts. two- no loss is actually life-threatening. we can lose anything that is valuable to us and still live through it. the only thing that we cannot live after losing is, of course our life!

By the way, today I almost lost my walet(just one day after the mylapre mayhem). yeah, i left it at home. But didnt someone say 'losing is part of a good life'? to put my original thoughts to that, 'almost losing' is more a part of life than actual losing. (applause, applause)
;)

too many reviews, too bad

Eventually, I read the book, 'The Alchemist'.
Few posts ago, since i got interested in the book, i was contemplating whether to buy the book or use the money for something else- that is, to buy a chicken biryani instead.

A kind soul who read that particular blog was exasperated to see me bring down one of his favourite books to chicken biryani levels and offered to lend me his copy. Thanks pal, people like you make the world go round ;)

Getting back to Alchemist, its a very sweet story of a shepherd boy who literally follows his dreams. He has a repetitive dream of a treasure and decides to follow it and ultimately gets his treasure. Full stop.

What got me interested in the book was the countless reviews that I had read on book sites like amazon and shelfari. If I had not read all those reviews, I would have really enjoyed the book. All the reviews, except a few handful, glorified the book so much and elated it in such a way that it increased my expectations sky high.

While reading the book, with every turning page, i was waiting for the contents to reach my expectations. But as I neared the end of the book, still waiting for the tryst, I realised how influenced i had been by what other people thought and told. That very fact prevented me from enjoying a book that is actually pretty cute by itself.

Certain things in life are best enjoyed when you just look at them with your own eye, critical or not. you should just do justice to your tastes and just forget what your friends and people around you think about it. Ultimately, each one of us are built differently and have different tastes. Some stuff i like, you may hate and vice versa. The same thing affects two people in two completely varied way. Well, we are just made liked that, different people, different opinions. ahem, im not advertising HSBC here.

A last word on the book. I felt its strength is simplicity. though it is a translated book, the language does not sit away from the context. it has got some passages that are thought provoking. On the whole, its a book thats put together beautifully, and the beauty lies in its simplicity. dont expect it to blow away your mind and pick the pieces up again to build a brand new you. Just enjoy it.

honey, I shrunk the media!

Media - a magical word. The plural of medium - the agent or instrument that communicates/conveys. While the television and newspapers and similar agents still act as the mass media, there arises a highly volatile, still powerful ‘personal media’.

Getting your writing published in any of the media was considered rare earlier. I still remember my first ever write up that was published in the daily newspaper, I had kept the cutting for a long time before I eventually lost it. The whole school was proud of it for the few days that the item appeared. And today, I write a blog and it is on the Internet!, for the whole world to see! (the whole world doesn’t want to read this rubbish, of course), but technically, it is there to be seen, whether anyone wants it or not. Something so unreachable is now available to anyone who has the interest and time. The very fact is amazing.

You cannot talk about personal media without mentioning the I-pods. These Apple’s kids are amazing and have brought lot of attention to personalising music. The other day, I saw a gadget that can play your ipod music on your car stereo, it can be used on static radios also. All you have to do is attach the transistor to the gadget which is already attached to the I pod and set it to a frequency that is empty(not used by other transmitting stations). Anyone in the radius of 50-100 feet can tune into his/her radio on the frequency that you are playing the music and listen to your music. and the people who use it, are not transmitting just music :)

Coming back to my blog, though I can call it ‘media’, it is definitely not mass media, it’s a highly personal media, I project only what I think is interesting and the things I think are important gets mentioned. Similarly I find millions of other people in this same media, they share the internet space and are part of the media.

Their views gets published, turns up at internet searches(google,msn) – this way, other people get to read it, some people who read it, think over it, sometimes act over it, and that is great. Sometimes, its not so great also. Anything that can be used, can be abused also. Internet probably is the most abused medium among all the media. The positive and the negative of this medium is the same, that it is ‘Available’. Available for use, available for abuse.

But for now, lets look at the bright side of it! Think what great things we can do with this gold mine. Viola! The media is personal

Books to buy (Compulsory this semester)

I was discussing with my friend, the best places in Chennai to buy pirated books and suddenly remembered the college days.

During my 2 years course, there was always a list of books that the college wanted us to buy compulsorily. Each one of us either had to place orders through the college, or buy a copy and that copy should be shown to the coordinator. He/She is said to note this and add it up to our internal marks!!! Anything that the students were supposed to do in the curriculam, was directly or indirectly and sometimes proportionately linked to the internal marks.

The college authorities took all this trouble to make sure that no single soul has been individually deprived of the knowledge and literature that the book provides. (its a pun... please!)

But in fact, these 'compulsory' books are the ones that are never, ever actually taught or used in the actual curriculam. To prove this to you, I will just give you the names of few compulsory books that we had to buy for the second semester; 'Power of positive thinking'. 'Case studies in Accounting'. Case studies! in accounting!! can you believe it?? Not even once during the classes were these books mentioned. Anyway, you get what i meant, right?

We being sensible hostelites (ahem), never really saw the reason to have more than one copy per 5 of us, or maybe 7 of us. Of course, there were few students who would buy each and every prescribed book and read it cover to cover. I dont mean them, I am talking about normal people, like me ;)

One of us would buy a pirated copy of the book and take it to the coordinator to show him/her and then hand it over to the next in waiting and that person would do the same and this will continue till all of us were convinced that our internal marks are safe. The bright part of this was, when I vacated the hostel, I did not have to carry away too many books. All my books fitted in to one compact cardboard box.

To Believe

Whats the most difficult thing you have ever done in life?? Few answers i got from my friends: To think, to forgive etc., 'To believe' tops my list. To believe and have faith in things that do not have statistical backing and reasonable explanations.

Imagine a situation where a majority of the populace believes and has faith in a particular something, but when you try to make sense out of it, you never find any.. The mind always looks for sense, atleast mine does. When I am told something, or read something and am required to believe in it, I try to explain things to my brain using science, using the evidence available. its simple- how difficult is it to believe something when it can be proved?

Unfortunately in some cases, the issues that are widely believed in, are never explained by science. For example, intuition. I never believed in it, in the sense that it has to be believed. I was happy to rename it as coincidence. The only reason i believed in coincidence was because I could explain it. its not complicated. but intuition? well..

Of late, i have been reading many books that has strong thoughts and as a result, it set the brain thinking. While I was at it, my unbendable brain, which never accepted anything that was not explained by science started thinking about few issues that science could not explain. Intuition and Faith.

I am not saying my thinking system is totally freaked out, I am just saying that now, instead of living just by the facts and by the rules, I have started taking the minute and minor risks that science or statistics cannot explain. yes, iam surprised by the results, yes i will continue to be surprised till i believe more.

yesterday, at 7 pm, i took the guindy kathipara route to the mount road instead of my regular 8 kilometer muddy and narrow short cut and reached home in just about half an hour and its only 6.5 kilometers. It was a regular weekday and usually the Kathipara route means 1.5 hours on the road in incredibly heavy traffic, not to mention that 7 pm is just the height of peak traffic. anyday my muddy road takes me home in forty minutes, so all these days i used that except yesterday. Yesterday, i just had this totally confident gut feeling that its better to take the kathipara route, i never doubted it. all the same, i was surprised to find the traffic considerably less.

See, I know i am not making too much sense here, and thats exactly the point. sometimes, you just believe and act. Yes, of course its difficult! now you know why i said believing is the most difficult thing?

Giving it some time

I was trying to use an application on my computer system. Though this was everyday stuff at work, the computer today was not very co-operative. it just kept on hanging every few seconds. And this was just the beginning of the day! just 10 AM in the morning. I had a helluva lot of work to be done and the phone was ringing incessantly- calls from all the ppl to whom i owed the work.

I was getting very impatient and had ended the program couple of times with Cntrl+Alt+Del. Now, I couldnt do that any longer because I had typed a long and complicated mail and I did not want to end program lest the mail gets lost without saving.

I had had an incredibly long day the day before, infact the past many weeks had been unusually hectic. Yesterday, I had worked for 14 soild hours and that too in a feverish pace, spending just ten minutes on lunch. I didnt wanna do that again today! I had got up in the morning looking for my jeans, thinking today is the casual friday but realised its just tuesday! and to top it all, my computer wont behave and its just the start of another long day!

I was at the end of my wits. What I really wanted to do was turn the table and break the **** computer and tear the papers that were waiting to be reviewd and rip the phone lines which hadnt stopped ringing. But, instead I closed my eyes. My eyes were burning due to lack of sleep. Tonight, I thought(as I used to think everyday), I will have a long, long, peaceful sleep. For a few minutes, my mind went blank and I stopped thinking - it was easy, tired that I was, I could easily switch off.

I opened my eyes few minutes later, to see that nothing has changed. The system was still hung and not working, the phone was still ringing, the papers were still there and one of the project managers had left a CD on my table to install an application(more work for me) I wanted to scream, but I realised that I was less angry than I was before.

I got up and got out of the crazy zone, I just decided to give it some time. after all, all those people saying 'time heals' cannot be total empty heads! My system manager used to tell us to give the system some time while in hang ups. I really hoped the time theory worked on my over worked brain and my stupid over worked electronic box.

I hadnt read the papers, I started with metro plus and soon I was completely engrossed in the news. I didnt bother to answer any more calls. After about twenty full minutes, I folded the papers and got up, completely distracted and feeling better, I returned to my desk and saw that my PC had got back its senses and was out of its trance and that my mail was not lost.

I hit the send button and started on the day's work, afresh, anew. I knew I would feel doubly frustrated and just worser than ever by the end of the day, but that did not matter. This was 'the now' and I was feeling better. Giving it some time helps, a lot! so far proved by experience on human nervous system and a few select electonic machines!

The Alchemist fever

Of late, i have been on a reading fever. I feel like reading all the time - this includes magazines, newspapers, fiction, non fiction, comics, etc., etc.,

When I had finished whatever printed matter I could lay my hands on, I started looking in the internet. Initially I read stuff related to work, then started looking for more interesting things to read. Though I had loads of work, I started copying pages of interest and read them in the seconds-long breaks I had!

Now, I wanted more interesting and substantial stuff to read, I started looking for e-books. Since I didnt know any great websites, i ended up reading some really throw away stuff. The free stuff online is really really trash-worth. Or maybe google doesnt list the good ones!

I never believed in buying books, because as far as I am concerned, books once read are completely exhausted. I never found a need to re-read any book, no matter how nice and interesting it was. While online and several websites wise, I grew an interest in the book 'The Alchemist'. I read a lot of nice reviews and I felt so eager that I actually decided to drive up to T-nagar and buy mysef a copy. I know a friend who has the book, but she is away on vacation, and I just couldnt wait!

So before I left, I thought I would read the amazon reviews. and i saw that more than 1 out 10 have given real bad reviews. No one has given a mediocre review, they either love it, or they hate it. No one says, its an OK read. Its either 'amazing' or 'trash'.

Spirits dampened, I am wondering now which category I will fall in - the love one or the hate one.. and have decided that I will buy myself a chicken biryani for the money that I kept aside for 'The Alchemist' and wait till my friend gets back to the city!