meThinks

"For all its faults we love this city." - The city of Djinns The thought of spending a couple weeks in Delhi in mid-April is something most people would dread and yet, I was brimming with excitement and anticipation. To me, it presented an opportunity to break away from the monotonic work culture of Bangalore and to reminisce about the old days with my college wing-mate in the city I  once used to call my second home. Now, while sitting in my return flight to Bangalore,  I am penning down my memoir of this trip to Delhi.  Heat, Warmth and Hotheads Summer heat was the first thing I sensed after stepping out of my flight in Delhi. This experience completely wiped out whatever tranquil effect was lingering on from the mesmerising aerial view of the city from my flight- ’ The floating island of lights in the sea of darkness' . I estimated the temperature in Delhi at the moment - validated it using the Accuweather app and registered the fact that Delhi nights wer...

I have been reading aggressively for past one month with an aim of completing 50 books in an year. I have been reading a book per week and have completed 5 books till now.  I think it is a good time to log what I have learnt from these books. The First Five The Visuo-spatial Working Memory - Academic   The Mosaic Principle - Non-Fiction A Young Doctor's Note Book - Memoir A Sense of An Ending - Fiction Five Dysfunctions of a Team - Non-Fiction  The Visuo-spatial Working Memory - 3/5 There is a possibility that working memory might be partitioned in visual and verbal. Understanding operating memory can help us in developing products that can reduce cognitive load of the user. Perception is highly flexible.    The Mosaic Principle - 2.5/5 Generalists do have a significant part to play in the society driven madly towards specialisation. A T-shaped Model of working depth in one sector and transferrable skills from other sector could be a...

Biting winds pierce by Ripping my soul into shreds Cold night that muffles me Whispers only of winter ahead. I dare not hope for a fireplace Nor heat of a rug do I aim I seek that flickering candle-light To help me have some warmth in dream Battered body, tattered soul Demand only one reply With goals lost and dreams crushed Why, o man, you still not die? The above poem is merely a rephrasing of Robert Frost's poem A Question with my words and absorption of the core idea. The poem throws light on the immense pain and suffering that accompanies almost everyone's life; then, enquires meaning and worth of such an existence. Here is Robert Frost's original poem which is more lyrical and succinct. A voice said, look me in the stars, And tell me truly, man of earth, If all the body-and-soul scars Were not too much to pay for birth.

You look at your smartphone screen and try to calculate how much time will the cab driver take to finally reach your location. You acknowledge that,  given the traffic in your city,  the time you see on your screen may be quite off. You try to estimate whether you can squeeze in the final mail you want to drop before you call it a day. DROP, as if emails are bombs. They probably are. You click on the red compose button and, before the box opens, try to steal another peak. If ever every microsecond mattered, it is now. You start typing and notice how slow you are. You should have taken that touch-typing workshop  in the college. Every 30 secs, you try to steal a peek at the dimly lit smartphone screen. You think you can pull it off. You have a mild sense of achievement and a smile sprinkled over your face. You are just there.  You look back at the smartphone screen. The backlight is now turned off. You struggle to open the screen lock with one h...

"People's dream don't ever end".   - Marshall D. Teach in OP I am going to use this post as a confession. A confession of the most heinous crime in the eyes of those who understand the act of living. I, hereby, confess my inability to dream. No, I am not talking about Insomnia. Well, that's another problem for some other day. What I am talking about is something which is intrinsic to someone who is truly alive : Aspirations. Somehow, somewhere in the process of existing I have lost the essence of living. I have lost all desires and yet I am not content.  Well, I know it might appear as if I am just scribbling words , pouring down nonsensical strings. Therefore, I feel elaborate on everything that that I have mentioned above. I think, I shall let you know what I experienced today in the most comprehensive manner with only limitations being my vocabulary and your imaginations. And this is the only way I help you understand what I feel tonight.  ...

"I desire things that will destroy me in the end" -- Sylvia Plath While looking out of my balcony, I can always spot a single star in the sky. Probably with the pollution level in Bangalore , the dim ones are hard to spot. If it was southern sky, I could bet it was Sirius. But I don't know what direction it is in and I am too lazy to make any efforts to find out. Moreover the name of the star does not matter. However, it has a similar symbolic significance for me as green light had Fitzgerald's Gatsby. A dream well conceived , clearly visualised and yet beyond grasp. A dream thoroughly cherished and yet unattained. This brings me to another haunting question. How do people start dreaming whatever they start dreaming about? Frankly, it's Gatsby who comes to rescue. Gatsby's dream incidentally was a outcome of exposure to the girl( I wish I remembered her but I don't even care about finding right now) .   We can't dream of things we cannot envisage. I...

" Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming?"   Sylvia Plath Ontology of the Question If questions could be ranked for perseverance of haunting, the one above definitely steals the top spot. Logic suggests that jaw-dropping beauties have been asked this question more times than they have been asked for dates. If you are wondering why logic and not data, come on guys do you really think I know enough (read it any)  jaw dropping beauties to ensure sufficient statistical randomness? If you are wondering how logic suggests it you must be really non- imaginative. I could lay down the entire calculations for you but let us just have an overview and move past it. Most parents ask this every year till 25 (If it continues beyond this point, either you didn't leave your parents in time or your parents did not leave you alone with time), believing they are no exceptions they already had enough of this question. Plus, mos...

I f experiencing the unpleasant can trigger gleeful memories of past, then that spell in past must have been extraordinarily cheerful.   When I last wrote a blog, I was still in college. Writing a blog was one of the leisure I could pursue given the luxury of time. But more importantly, writing a blog was testimony of my naive belief that an idea should always be expressed and mere expression of a thought can spark a change in itself. Such were those days. Today I am writing to pay reverence to a time when to me world still appeared to be salvable (I am not certain of it being a word, but it suited my purpose the most).    "I am pissing steam" It all started with today's fucking cold weather in Bangalore. Yes, to my surprise, it does get chilly here. Though, it is not really worrisome, but it did get me thinking about the steam pissing cold ( as Tanuj would put it) we used to have in the campus. Those were the times when I used to leave a laptop under m...

"And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. "                  -by Sylvia Plath What would you do if you suddenly realize that your life, as you have known it, is about to be over? That your memories will slowly perish. This existence will fade into darkness. And your disappearance might leave a momentary void in hearts of those who have known and loved you only to be eventually filled with new appearances? And your absence will be forgotten and all that is left of you will be memories that will plague them who would care to ponder upon your existence?    Would then the rights and wrongs of this world matter to you? Will you be bothered to look for greater good when you can never be there to realize the outcomes of such deeds? What does a dying soul yearn more: welfare or destruction? Does he pray for blooming or perdition? Are we inherently ge...

All humans are not equal. They are not supposed to be equal regardless of what proclamation of equality might say. Each of us is different beyond that apparent similarity in shape we possess. And difference lies deep within and has been made subtle over generations. “I searched for it fervently and my look-out was exhaustive. After a few minutes, I was vanquished and I declared May Day. She came scuttling, scoured through the pillows, mystically conjured the keys that remained imperceptible to me out of puff, placed it on my hands rather forcefully, but only after rendering the look.” So what do we learn from all this? Girls always produce a look after doing a favour, Yeah, true but apart from that. Well, it must be slightly appalling that what had been an arduous yet futile conquest for me was a matter of seconds for her. So, what to infer? Do I have some sort of biological imparity that impedes my searching ability such poor eyesight? Or is there some indiscernible differ...

Disclaimer: Information presented in this blog is partly true and partly a product of my imagination. If in anyway it hurts your political sentiments learn to live with it. Who told you the world is fair??   “No, no, no… once someone has sat on a hunger strike for a cause, the genuineness of that cause has been established intrinsically. - AAP Philosophy ” AAP does signify a change in Indian politics. AAP symbolises a shift in our elections from vote-buying to agenda-selling. It brought elections to our FB posts and Tweets. AAP made politics, which happened to be a fashion disaster, a personality statement. Youths, who are often blatantly ignorant of the party’s agendas, find it hip to be associated with AAP; improves street-cred. As if being affiliated to AAP renders them some sort of political righteousness and help them to be perceived as a member of an intellectual segment. It has become analogous to “Eh Man! I am apolitical” of pre-AAP days. I am not denyin...

“We, being a secular party, believe that religious minorities deserve reservation. – Samajwaadi Party” If you are unable to notice the apparent irony in the aforementioned statement, it is by no fault of yours for we have been raised, essentially, in a society where notions of secularism are derived from political acuity and intellectual hypocrisy. The term secular has been frequently in a skewed sense by the government in order to justify controversial policies, political parties to procure votes, by intellectuals to exhibit religious tolerance and sensitivity and the revered media to denounce the so-called ‘non-secular parties’. Various political parties and multitudes of wiseguys, for long, have been meddling with the idea of secularism is such a way that it is being misconstrued by the majority of commoners. For decades, policies have been amended, minorities have been appeased and vote banks have been secured in the name of secularism. Finally, I would like to pose the p...

Where dandelions rustled in gentle wind, Where azure of sky meet earth's green, Where streams are all pristine blue, In the heaven of heart , I am dreaming of you. Where chirping of birds are ode to thee, Where view of the world is close to your beauty Where everything bears a fragrance of you In that land of love, I am dreaming of you. Where the sun glitters as you smile, Where it drizzles down with your cries, Where all you feel is manifested upon, In that land of your heart, I am dreaming on.

"The world has enough to stay new everyday" W hen I woke up on Wednesday, January the First, miraculously I was almost the same person who slept last night (or rather on the same morning). I had similar thoughts, convictions, prejudices and apprehensions. But, apart from multitude of these attributes that sum up to be my consciousness, there were things which were still hovering in my mind that elicited a sense of continuity towards 2014 from 2013. To shun this staleness and finally have a taste of brisk New Year morning (which I am eventually enjoying today), I dedicated my day 1 to purge away with everything that were clogging my senses from experiencing the liveliness of a nascent year. But this blog is not about what I did on day 1, nor about what I did on those 365 day that flew by; this blog is about etchings of the bygone year that will be palanquined reverentially in this New Year and never be forgone.  Arsenal still tops the EPL chart (the Dane finally save...

"The reader should realize himself that it could not have happened otherwise and that to give him any other name was quite out of the question." – Nikolai Gogol, "The Overcoat My copying of the epigraph is to revere the literary precision that Jhumpa Lahiri has maintained throughout “The Namesake”. “The Namesake” is a story of dreams, despairs, diversions and disillusionment. It is the story of a generation which tries to cling to their traditions in their newly found abode and of a generation which is trying to free themselves from the same traditions being imposed upon them. It is the story of the angst of the Bengali immigrants in a foreign land and the conundrum of ABCD (American Born Conflicted Deshi’s) on being exposed to two contrasting cultures of East and West.  “But she has gathered that Americans, in spite of their public declarations of affection, in spite of their miniskirts and bikinis, in spite of their...

“It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the 'pursuit' part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?” - The Pursuit of Happyness Since antiquity, human beings have realized that all our actions are directed towards attaining a singular state of mind i.e. happiness. Health, wealth and everything else are sought by us merely because we believe they would take us closer to this elusive target of HAPPINESS. But the farther we proceed in our quest of materialistic acquisition, the greater is the realization our discontent. And thus we are forced to ask whether we can truly be happy? Is attaining a perennial state of happiness an insurmountable task? Is our pursuit for happiness a...