Just Duck-Swimming

I want to get satisfied by not getting satisfied or I should say- I don't want to get satisfied by getting satisfied. The statement has a never ending recursion in it, folks having some programming knowledge will easily get the point I am trying to make.

I want to swim like a duck paddling hard with all the sincerity yet making others feel as if its idle. I don't want to flutter my wings ferociously without taking even a decent flight. I love it when my juices start disappearing as the situation demands more, I like the smell of my own blood, I love the hard thump of my heart beat more than any other vibration creating sensation through my ears to the brain, every time my heart misses a beat I feel rejuvenated.

I love developing a sense of sight when someone puts an opaque wall on my eyes. The mere electro-magnetic-biological sensors of my body mean so very little compared to my conscience governing the obvious and not-so-obvious. I don't run every other race coz I need this feeling of failure of not doing anything to feed my ignition system, which has developed so much greed of thrust to get started. It keeps fooling me by not telling me that the next single step it takes will require even larger displacement and bigger thrust than the previous one. It doesn't take long for me to figure out its game, but isn't it what I want and how I want it.

Tackling multiple balls at the same time often changes the contours of my face and gives me a somewhat awkward look, but hardly anyone knows that this is the look I strive to achieve and love to wear. The torn establishments provide more stability to the framework which shoulders the responsibility of keeping my mental shakiness in control. The well-cut corners and perfectly polished planes irritate me while circularly angular views, scarcely lit dark space, rough edged verticals and uneven horizontal bases are what make me feel comfortable.

A Late Night Show

I don't know whether it was a late-night show or late night-show, but the series of events that evening inspired me, a die hard laid back guy, to write a blog on this.


So here I was, at home, a bit early from office. Puja was sleeping when i hit the door bell, which i could figure out from night suit she was wearing. It was almost 5:30 PM and for a Techie working in a cutting edge Network Analytics startup, it was pretty early to be at home.

'Come on in' she said and opened the door very gladly. I don't know why but she always liked if i leave from office early. She is being fond of my presence, i thought and hugged her. She again went for sleep and I joined her after getting fresh.

'No work in office today or what? So early?' she asked to make me feel as if it was an anomalous event. It certainly was so as i made a habit of reaching home no early than 8PM.

'Ohh...My baby missed me, my shona missed me!' I cajoled her like my little princess.
'I am feeling hungry shonu' i said and instantaneously started biting her from wherever i got it.
Soon we found ourselves frying some real hot pakoras. Though she is more inclined towards Pizzas, I made her realize that frequent pizza-eating will deprive her of the sensation she gets from it. So pakoras were happening. I preferred the red chilly sauce while puja had the tomato one. Its 7 PM now and we felt like we are done, now what to do. Though the feeling was more intense in her, even i felt so when she said 'I am getting bored, what to do'.

I calculated all the possibilities of things and events that might surface again after this self discovery of her for getting bored. One was that she will say 'Lets go to 18', sec-18 is the shopping heaven in noida. I don't know why its called heaven while I always felt the other way round.

Second was if she says 'I am feeling like going for a long drive'. Which will again end up to some or the other shopping arena.

Third was even scarier than the earlier two. 'Lets go for a movie!' i was expecting this as it was for last 2-3 weeks that we wanted to go for movies but could not. Scary part was not the idea of movie but the timing. 'Which one you wanna see, Jane tu.. or Singh is king' i tried to confuse her yet again. 'Jane tu... has only one show in GIP at 7:30 which we cant manage now' GIP is The Great India Place mall in noida. I knew she wanted to see Jane Tu coz her friends in her college even said that she is quite similar to the female protagonist of the movie Ganelia D'souza.

'And Singh is King is not that great' i said and thought she would drop the idea of movie yet again, but to my dismay and hard luck she said 'Lets watch the Singh is King' and started singing the new national anthem of the youth 'Singh is King...singh is king'. She was even feeling the words as being rajput's we carry singh as our surname. 'Ok fine but it will be quite late by the time we will come back' she never cared for being late whenever with me and almost forgets that we all tend to go back to our homes in the night if not in the evening. 'I can go for a night out with you every single night' almost mocked me with her winking of left eye.

'Ok lets get ready quickly and hit the road' I started making calculations for the earliest we can come back after watching a possibly long bollywood movie. I have to get up early for the office as it was Wednesday and that was the justification of the fact that the thought of coming back late from the movie made me feel scared.


We soon hit the Noida Expressway, I was driving at 120 km/hr with one hand on steering and the other around her shoulders. It was dark by now but the expressway was beautifully lit. You drive on this stretch of expressway and you will call it candle lit drive, it looks so beautiful. Suddenly she upped the volume of the music system and we both started singing

'Khuda Jaane Ke Mein Fida Hoon
Khuda Jaane Mein Mitt Gaya
Khuda Jaane Yeh Kyun Hua Hai
Ke Ban Gaye Ho Tum Mere Khuda'

Certainly our song of these days. We like treating each other in very special ways and these kinda songs hit us at the right spots.

We were soon at the 3rd floor of CSM, it was gonna be our first movie in this mall. 'Tickets on the first floor sir' the ticket checkers said as we were trying to locate the ticket counter. 'What the hell, why is the ticket counter not on the same floor' i said in such a volume so that only i and she can hear that. Anyways we got the tickets for 8:30 PM show of Singh is King. I paid by card, which i always prefer as it doesn't bite my wallet immediately.

So back to the 3rd floor, '6th floor sir' the lady at the ticket checking door said pointing upwards as we did not know that 6th floor is above the 3rd floor. A little pissed off, but i could now understand why there is a common ticket counter on 1st floor. They had theaters on 3 different floors.

I was a bit worried as i never wanted to miss any of those freebie movie trailers. We entered the hall and 'what the f***, almost empty house' It was still the first week for the blockbuster i thought, though people rarely come for late night show on a week day. The attendants guided us to the direction of out seats. I rather preferred not looking at him and instead go by the illuminated seat numbers. 'Wooohha, first time in my life, last row corner seats' i said with a smile which was showing a feeling of neither any satisfaction nor achievement, don't know may be of embarrassing surprise.

I looked at her, we hardly look like a married couple. People always find us closer to being lovers having a live-in relationship. Okey, so I, as in every movie outing, grabbed a bucket of pop corn and coke. I always felt better with pop corn even if the movie was terribly bollywoodish. Movie was good and we enjoyed it in the cozy corner of the big theater. After almost two & half hours we were done with the movie and before i could think of hitting the roads back to our home, she asked 'What will you like to have for eating now'. And started giving out the over used options like McDonald's, KFC (minus chicken coz it was the month of sawan and mom told us not to eat non-veg), food court or Ruby Tuesday (though it was Wednesday). I picked up the easiest of them McDonald's, lets go to McD's'. We reached and placed order, 'Take away' i said to the guy at the counter. And as i was expecting she said 'Lets have it here only and then leave for home, why take away'. I was miffed a bit and showed my disagreement for next 15 mins while eating my share of the burger. We almost always ended up in having one bite each by turn, we thought thats what binds us and always loved it. Best part of sharing burgers is cleaning the mess of cream and sauce from her face, which i thought she created deliberately every single time. Otherwise how could somebody who grew up eating pizzas and burgers end up with such mess on face.

After that one more night at McDonald's, we were talking to winds at a speed of 120 at 12:30 in night. I thought i could never say no my shona for at least these small wishes, she is the most jovial part of my life. And being a serious types (as most people perceive me as) i always loved the way she brings so much of joy and exuberance in my life. Certainly a case of balanced approach towards our love and marriage. I always say, love instead of marriage is what makes your life beautiful and if both overlap then thats called perfect times. And touch wood we are having that kind of time in our lives these days. May god bless you, my love, my baby, the erstwhile missing dimension of life, yeh its you my shona!! I love you a lot and will keep doing it till very eternity.

Those were d Days!!

Imagine a cricket match going on in a gali (street), and all kind of players are making their statements either by displaying their cricketing talents or just by the verbal shots. If you ever played cricket in gali you would be having a very familiar picture in your mind by now. Remember what used to the ambience there, everyone shouting at each and every decision of umpire, who most of the times used to be biased this way or the other. I was a regular in these sessions of gali cricket and was considered to a good sincere player. I still feel that I was good in sports and there used to be just one guy in our group who had this hobby of getting better of me in each and every sport. I don’t know how this tag of ‘sincere’ caught with me and who actually committed that sin.

Anyway, so this was one of those sessions of gali cricket and as I remember the match turned took an important stride with both the teams trying every trick to win the match. And there came the moment when everyone was as vocal as never before, an appeal for run out. Can you imagine what would have been the scene, everyone shouting at each other as if they outshout the opponent they would win the match, forget about the mere run out. It was not like there was no elder person involved, we used to have at least two of our so called uncles. They really had a big role in these games simply because we all used to listen to them and obey them, and the reason for obeying them was more of an acknowledgement of the fact that they used to allow us play even though our parents did not feel very happy about this gali cricket.

Ok so back to that moment of appeal for run out. No one was ready to listen to the umpire as he belonged to the batting side. Finally one of the uncles made a proposal that let an unbiased person judge this run out. And to everybody’s surprise he pointed at me to do the tough job. I did not have the hawk eyes but I judged that run out in the favor of the opponent team. Ohh boy, you would not believe it but I got the all evil glances of my team mates for that not so noble deed of mine. And from that day onwards I used to perform this additional task of unbiased umpiring apart from playing the game. I used to enjoy this additional role and feel that being unbiased and true in sports came very naturally to me. And as you can expect, being unbiased spread to different aspects of my life. People including my classmates started considering me as a very sincere and no nonsense guy, a guy who had this very formidable and predictable pattern of behavior, who seldom deviated from the well defined path.

Even today I feel amazed by the fact that all my teachers used to look at me with some kind of respect for what I was. And it was not an imposed impression, rather each and every person had either interacted with me or had watched me go places from nowhere. Definitely golden days of my life which happen only once, and the rest of life goes trying to recreate the same.

My Perspective on Our Perspective

Ever wondered what has been one of the most complicated concepts in our lives. I think we all, no matter whether uneducated or intellectual, ask one question to ourselves every now and then. The format and the tone of the question might vary in different instances of occurrence. The question basically is why I am supposed to live the very next day. What for should I gather my energy in this long night, do I explicitly choose to live each new day as it comes? Some of the instances when these questions arise might come as the results of negative vibes while the others as the results of positive-thinking and future-planning. Nevertheless, many of us do not even bother answering these questions. I always feel that living this life is very tough (though the other choice is even tougher) and most of the time we keep adding some more of the tough elements in this.

Attitude towards life, towards ourselves, towards people we interact on daily basis or occasionally and actually responding to other’s attitude build our very perspective in life. We keep talking about the concept behind the half filled glass. It is our own perspective which distinguishes people who see the glass as half filled from the people who find it half empty. On top of that, it is nothing else but our own perspective which distinguishes certain people who say “calling the glass half filled or half empty depends on whether the glass is getting filled or getting emptied”. Though there can be many more variants of the way people see the glass, the idea is that if you can imagine the world as a single entity and yourself as another then it is your perspective which draws the separating line.

Now look at the following picture and try to make something out of it. Take your time to do so and you will come closer to know more about your true perspective which is mostly not the one you show in some debate, argument or in any conversation for that matter (please note that exception are always there, if you disagree with the last line then u might be one exception in this aspect). So here is the picture



Now you must have got some idea about the specialty of the picture. Ever wondered if a shadow can be more distinguishable than the real object! This picture is a good example here I guess. Now to understand that the small white objects are the camels and the big black objects are their shadows. This picture underlies a very important concept that the whole world and everything in this world is relative. Shadows which seems more like the camels here is because of the relative positioning of the cameraperson and the angle of the sun-rays.

More or less we all agree that perspective makes or breaks our destiny. Nevertheless, it should not be shocking to know that it is us who make our own perspective. This implies we all make our own destiny. I am not trying to prove anything logically here, but the idea is to reiterate what great thought leaders said decades and centuries ago that “Manushya apne bhagya ka vidhata swayam hota hai” (Man makes his own destiny).

But I do agree to the fact that there are lots of factors which affect your perspective of life apart from your own thought process. One’s perspective is built over the time while one lives his life interacting with different types of people, performing different kinds of tasks and observing different outcomes of the former two. There are basically two ways to interact with this world. First is by Reacting to the things happening around us. The second is by Responding to the happenings in the world around us. There are other ways too apart from these two, like not reacting to things around you or being too indulged in your own world to see these happenings. I will skip these types of philosophy to life and will concentrate on the former two: Reacting and Responding.

There is a very important distinction between these two and it is this very distinction which makes the distinguishable perspectives of ours. Some people are more inclined to react to the happenings around them, while the others like to respond to these happenings. When you respond to a situation, it most of the times becomes a multi step process. In order to respond to a situation you need to understand the situation first of all. Then you need to don someone else’s shoes to see how much of your understanding is specific and how much is generic. Being in someone else’s shoes either validates or invalidates your understanding of the situation, which in turn broadens your understanding and shapes up your perspective.

The other thing is that when we react to a situation we feel forced (either internally or externally) to react, and a forced action hardly underlines the stability and equilibrium of a system. That way by reacting to situations in one’s life, one builds up a not so stable framework of understanding and perspective in one’s life. While on the other hand, responding to a situation carries more depth in the sense that the situation is understood first and then it is put to validating process of one’s perspective before taking on the situation in response.

Even though there are still some ends which need to be tied up in this blog, but to conclude “It requires conscious efforts towards building one’s perspective and consistently refining it”

Desires

It sometimes amazes me how we people live each day to see the next day and then again jump to the next day in the sequence. Everyone has something to do everyday to get to the next day. And this is how everyone almost every one of us lives his live. Some people may argue that they see life in a bigger picture than the mere days. I agree, but my point here is that even then how sure are we about what basically motivates us to live this life.

Desires are aplenty and they occur in different ways at different stages leading to different outcomes. If I go and ask this question to ten people I might get ten different answers. But with the same essence may be. I want to become a software engineer, a doctor, a politician, a film-star, a sports-star, a religious leader and so on. These I-want-to-be's seem to be the motivation behind people living their lives. This underlines the desire to live a better life, depending on one's perspective on what one defines as living better life. Most of the desires are vertical in the sense that a good student wants to become a techie, a techie wants to become a product manager and a product manager wants to start his own company. Though the last example might be annotated with all the branching factors leading to various choices at various stages, it more or less signifies the vertical nature of desires.

Moving from this very vertical nature of some desires, there are people who experience a horizontal shift in desire, or let's rather call it desire for a horizontal shift. A techie gets fed up with his daily encounter with unaligned bytes and decides to leave his (not so) high paying job in order to move to an NGO to teach basic mathematics to under privileged children. A full time neurosurgeon quits playing with the nervous system of ailing people and takes up the role of a motivator by conducting workshops and interacting with the people outside his erstwhile surgery room. In these incidents people are not moving vertically but there is a horizontal shift in their career and the desires of life.

People can exercise many permutations of these horizontal and vertical shifts to keep them motivated enough to lead the complete life in a better way. I do not know if I can fit the desires (which has kind of replaced the motivation in this write up) of a person in a three dimensional paradigm, but to most of us the 2D approach will suffice. Generally speaking, people in most of the cases do judge themselves against their peers, neighbors and their own family members. And this kind of attitude leads them towards the vertical shift in desire. On the other hand, some people have their role models to look up to and try to imitate or follow their journey depending on their understanding of the term ‘role model’. This can lead to both vertical and horizontal shift in desires.

We (all) wanna do some(meaningful?)thing

Me-: when there are only two variable solution is not guaranteed to be simple equation looks simple probability theory gains more ground

Sid-: he he .. that is true.. the solution is given only when there is 1 variable..but 2 variables are better than 5 :)

Me-: in wat sense

Sid-: for example.. you can represent an equation with 2 variables on a 2 dimensional graph...less complexity

Me-: almost wat i said, equation looks simple
probability theory gains more ground

Sid-: yeah.. more predictable hmm..one variable is boring isn't it? :-)

Me-: hehehehe ....ikla chalo re

Sid-: he he, saini wanted to shift yesterday because he has office on Saturday

Me-: most interesting maybe if not best ....to have a n equation with n variables... which are inherently controlled by a set of m variables ....and these m variables share a protocol among them

Sid-: + all the variables should be in 1st degree polynomials...

Me-: yup....can have the restriction on that

Sid-: I miss Math :(

Me-: the most interesting thing i feel is ....not to solve a less complex equation.... rather minimizing the possible gap between the exact behavior and the predicted one from a large n complex equation.....

Sid-: what you say is very interesting because !! thats what I think testing should be...they should work on a system as if it is a system of equations..
:) instead of just dreaming all day

Me-: absolutely hehehe

Sid-: cooool.. i like this..

Me-: there is so much going on....

Sid-: on this? in testing?

Me-: the i feel it important to be out there in the the sun to feel the heat....n thats wat these guys do.... they go to the best school feel the heat .....get themselves burnt enuf to keep the juices bubbling up...n then get dropped out n work
this is just about the exposure the extent of research already put n going on

Sid-: hmmm.. it is strange how when you are studying you want to work

Me-: no i mean every where ....in research

Sid-: and when you are working you want to study

Me-: not work in an orgnisation...m saying work on their ideas

Sid-: yeaaaah.. :) two very different things..that dude.. jeff who made the touch screen GUI...he dropped out of cornel..

Me-: study provoke the thought process.....then u feel the urge to get these ideas a conceptual shape......to feel like extending the theory into practical App

Sid-: and sat in NYU for 4 years working on his idea

Me-: NY university?

Sid-: yeah...

Me-: hmmm.....so when r u going to get laid

Sid-: http://fastcompany.com/video/general/perceptivepixel.html you have to see this..
laid ??( i dunno.. maybe i am trying to find excitement/orgasm in my work!

Me-: i mean the same way..when u going to get laid with ur ideas

Sid-: damn you are right.. am a virgin in both fields :( that day.. Saini and I decided to start his student thingie from 2nd week of feb..when my laptop comes

Me-: student thingie ..geekology, ohh...thats awesome man

De Uncoatable Quotes

** I can't afford a GF and ur asking me 1000 bucks for Russell Peters comedy show.
** I am going nowhere and i know the path
** Pad lee aaj quraan magar mein ayaton ko bhool gaya
** Cricket world cup uthane ke liye gud 11 chahiye 1 billion log nahi
** You think pennies you get pennies, You think dollars u get dollars

Market works like this:
1) Its amazing that even a Monopolist can't increase the price of goods/services on his own. Its determined solely by market demand.

2) When a market makes profit, new players enter which increases the market supply decreasing the price and optimum output quantity produced, making the losses (reducing the profits) for all the players. These losses force small players to exit market. This inverses the story as supply reduces, prices and optimum output quantity increase, profits are made for those who did not exit the market.

No Longer Fooled by Randomness

Did u ever wonder how life often called as non-inspirational story of mundane activities created/committed by the not so promising people, crawls inch by inch, day by day and most visibly event by event?

So many times i have observed that life really doesn't care about how you are shaping up be it your thought process, your ambitions in life, expectations from a person or relationship or from life itself, life seems not to care about all these, until and unless you care about life, your own life and how either you are shaping it up or it is getting shaped up driven by certain random or empirical events or for that matter even by the absence of (happening) events.

Life till recent was going the same clichéd way for me, not sure what’s happening, not sure how I want it to happen, not sure of my expectations out of my (non)efforts and not to forget about my hobby of pondering too much on a multiple choice scenarios. I have always maintained that I prefer to go ahead with a bad decision rather than being in state of ever-entangling confusion for never-ending time frame.

To B Continued...