The greatest gift ..

almost 2 months, and I'd complete a very-Long one year in the corporate world. To summarize in 2 words "IT-Sucks" .. i was so well-off wasting my time in IIIT, Photographing insects, Reading awkward stuff, and doing nothing..

Now i have to go to office, plan my offs, Calculate days left for next months salary, sleep in the cab..etc..etc...

Life it seem has come "full-circles"..After an year, obscurely I see standing my self amidst a familiar mist of cloudiness and confusion...abruptly i remind myself of Carl Gustav Jung and what he wrote in "Memories, Dreams and Reflections"

"..when no answer comes from within to the problems and complexities of life, they ultimately mean mean very little.."

Perhaps Jung could turn a blind eye to whatever he wants to.. or may be i am too ignorant to comprehend one single sentence..

I came to Kou's Blog, and ended up typing all this gibberish..any ways.. thanks Kou :)

the title of this post is same as the latest image i posted on my flickr.. A small girl of about 5 or 7 spent 7-8 hour long mountainous journey on her father's lap.. he sure must be tired..but felt as if can endure many more such hours...

anur@@G onFlickr

& i did my part by finding suitable lines for the picture too..

"The greatest gift I ever had..

..Came from God; I call him Dad!"

The Worri-Some ME!

I sit here in the office late in the night I ponder, what makes us unhappy? As we grow we carry an illusion of what we ought to be. A perfect picture we dream of, we fantasize about. Things seldom fall in to pieces and all of a sudden we are in situations we never dreamt of before. Life’s not a bed of roses for sure. Some people argue that the very uncertainties of life make it worth living. They argue it’s not the happening itself but rather how we deal with it that’s important. How true! May be these are only the people who overcome all this.

As in one of his books Worry by Edward M. Md Hallowell, says plants and animals don't do it. Worry is a human "skill." And it comes in different forms. Some kinds indicate diagnosable conditions, such as depression, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Others, such as shyness, are built in from birth, and some seem plain old existential--stemming from broken trust or loss of faith. But worry is uniquely human. "To create worry," Dr. Hallowell writes, "humans elongate fear with anticipation and memory, expand it in imagination and fuel it with emotion. The uniquely human mental process called worrying depends upon having a brain that can reason, remember, reflect, feel, and imagine. Only humans have a brain big enough to do this simultaneously and do it well."

Is having such a brain that costly affair that people fall in to depression, suffer heart-strokes and when it becomes un-controllable commit suicide. The author further says we worry because we have this sense of “loss-of-control” as if we don’t have the power to control our surroundings.

Controlling our surrounding, now how easy is that. For some people surroundings offer conducive environment to thrive and for others it’s overwhelming. In overcoming unsympathetic situations lies the strength of character. That’s so hard to develop and so easy to be preached about.

I remember Al Pacino, in “Scent of a Woman” when he said this …Now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew. But I never took it. You know why? It was too damn hard…

So how important are life choices are. The decisions you make that will ultimately make the difference where you end up. Not all of us make the right decision at the right time. And not all of us learn from the wrong ones either. There are ways to defend our own wrong doings, our self-defense mechanism works indeed flawlessly to give us that feel-good factor.

I sit here and think about my own state of affairs. Wonder about how my friends are doing at this juncture. Friends from school, from college, acquaintances, and relatives so on and so forth. Why is success so relative? Aren’t the parameters of being successful different for all of us? We can’t be compared on a universal scale !

Recession is looming large. People are still confident “By the third quarter of 09’ things will be better”.. “Worse is over” they say things to make you feel better. GDP growth rate for this quarter is down to 5.1% , A 4 % plunge from its peak. That necessarily means we lost 8 million jobs so far. And what if things don’t improve?

Yea! It will make us all worried!

smitten by blogging bug!

Second post in a day! After staying away from the blogging arena for Hundreds of days I seem to appreciate the bygone me who could think, type and make sense ocassionally to a handfull of friends who'd come here on this page often!

What to blog! Scream that life is delusive and its difficult is it to keep pace with this everchanging world. Blubber after waking up mid way from a dream only to discover this is not the world you ought to be in and you were way better-off in your dreams.

And then become a part of a perpetual warfare with your own ideal self and the real you.

And guesss what helps? Knowing what you are and what you really want!

I work for a great company which voluntarily assists her employees. They'd assign you mundane tasks that transforms you to a Bot with 512K of memory and no Intelligence. Then to make yourself feel better they'd email you a Counsellor's website they had affiliated with. And when you are to messed up you'd click seemingly inhostile link in your inboX

I too went to there website and did a few Self-Assessment tests!

My decision making style Impulsive, Intuitive, Agonising, Procrastinating, Compliant and was predominantly Rational with a word of caution.

-There are many decisions which are relatively minor where it is more important (and more fun!) to decide quickly. Not all situations merit serious weighing of pros and cons.

Another test was compute my stress level . As expected I was moderately stress prone, owing to the following intrinsic qualities of mine.

· Driven by ambition

· Self-demanding

· Rushed and hurried

· Aggressive

· Competitive – even in non-competitive situations *this was kinda funny!*

· Impatient· Frequently hostile

This time the word of caution was fierce "far more likely to have a heart attack or develop heart disease "

The third test was on Self Confidence where I did reasonably well and that was not an area of concern.

Now what purpose these tests solve is still debatable. They 'd be of any help whatsoever if a cognizant attempt is made to mutate your ills which is rebelliously tough. Why ? Cause we get so Hard-Wired committing same mistakes for years and how easy is it to resist change?

Yea! And for the pic, saw this "Jeevan hi sangharsh hai " on a tempo driving in front of me. :)

predictably Ir-rational!

Well that's the title of this book I am currently reading. Some MIT professor, Economist by profession trying to mix Behavioural Psychology with economics. It started on an interesting note but half way through the author makes too many explicit observations which are based on common sense and thus it transforms to a dull reading. Any ways the title is interesting and that's why they advise us never to judge a book by its cover.

I saw this advertisement on a website offering 25% off on all books buy getting there membership for 500 bucks, and whats more you can order books worth 500 for free. It was so tempting and I ended up buying 6 books and spending around 1500.

I still believe that it was a rational decision. but isn't it that over spending gives us an absurd sense of achievement. We spend and feel happy about it.

We may buy books we'd never read, buy clothes to be worn only twice, or fell prey to lucrative SALE advertisements, where we ultimately end up spending more and buying stuff from which we don't deduce any value.

As the author says we do all this cause human beings are intrinsically afraid to loose. so very true and whats more this "irrational behaviour of ours is neither random or senseless. They are systematic and since we repeat them again and again Predictable!"

And its Unbelievable the amount of rationalization I have put behind buying my camera. S0 much that I don't have a camera yet, for almost 8 months since I thought of buying it in the first place.

I have pondered about it all from falling Rupee with respect to USD, buying it from grey or with warranty, from Delhi, Bangalore Singapore or US.

Its like more options you have and then you tend to decompose there respective benefits and drawbacks. You are ultimately left with huge number of IFF's and BUTT's to be mapped that grow exponentially beyond your cognitive ability to comprehend.

Only rational that seems to be plausible enough is the answer to this simple question

DO I REALLY NEED IT OR NOT? y\n

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish!

This weekend I saw Steve Jobs address that he gave to stanford Graduates.... facinating it was.. some lines i found intresting !

....you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.....

....It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle......

...No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.....

...Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

flick-erred!

distant watertank, originally uploaded by http://www.flickr.com/people/p_h_o_t_o_s/.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/p_h_o_t_o_s/
I got a new address! this time on flickr!
After selling off my camera it has been a long wait. Things don't seem to fall in to places to buy a new one in spite of the fact that canon has released two new DSLR's EOS 50D and EOS 5D mark II. My eyes are still set on the old favourite EOS 40D largely due to the cost advantage it has.
Life's has changed so ridiculously. Sitting in office all day and looking at the moronic interface of a dumb looking mainframe!
There was a time when I had my cam ready and I could be in the hostel balcony any time looking for composition. From labourers busy making the new boys hostel, our friendly cat or the distant overhead water tank of the college. All of them caught my attention more then this black screen with green colored text.
Its all perhaps because our intrinsic nature to resist change! who likes to wake up @ 6 in the morning after all.
If change is so inevitable I pray for the things to change once more...

sarcasm at work!

..after spending 20 odd non-productive working hours in the office, I refuse to let die the old me. The stage was set as the so called "Campus to Corporate" instructor started a presentation. An old story of a rabbit and a tortoise. As soon as I read the title of the slide, I remarked "Oh! I got this on email", loud enough to be audible. "So you know this? Very Good. Now sit in front and click next to move through the slides". Was the response.

I did as ordered. These days there is a lot of talk about business ethics and integrity. Every one is forced to believe that being good has its virtues even though they are not evident at the first go. So there we were. "moral of the story" the slide said !. The instructor asked us the same. People say something or other. There are some who say too much. anyways.. some one knocked the door and the instructor had to leave.

.

There was this colleague of mine sitting right opposite to me and he shook his head leftwards twice, I made an attempt to pretend as if I was too lame to catch the signal. He wished himself to be heard "Next Slide... Next Slide" He shouted. Incidentally this gentleman was the one who wants himself to be noticed in front of every one. From innocuous looking HR ladies with barely a couple of years of work experience to the Vice President who was extremely quick witted and had an IIM-A guy moving with him to click next to his slides. He had great ambitions for sure and certainly I had no plans to be in his way either. I was just trying of myself to be what I am...

.

So with a wicked smile and subtle voice I said "Business Ethics! .You forgot didn't you ? ". He was not of the kinds who seem to give up easily when his "talking" was at stake. "But we never had our session on that" was his retaliation. " In that case this is your first lesson I guess.", there was it. I said it all the same tone and expression to bring this interesting conversation to a grinding halt. And I guess that was enough to soften him up.

The idea was never to overpower him. The consequences of having a similar conversation with someone senior must have been catastrophic. Now as I look back, I realize that all this happened in a quick succession. I barely took time to respond.

.

We were bare strangers before this point of contact and this incident made something to happen. We met after the session had a chit-chat. I always noticed him speak in the three days session so far and he did noticed me, may be for the first time :)

.

Sarcasm may have never killed anybody. It certainly made people sulk thoughl,and for the like minded "sarcasts" they became friends the moment they discovered the "mutual sense of sarcasm" they posses!

late by 60 minutes

..this Monday morning, was the first day at my csc office and traffic did it to me. Exactly late by 60 minutes I was welcomed by a bouquet of pink flowers, with two female HR's saying "Welcome to CSC" in tandem. There were few pink roses in that bunch I least bothered to count as I hurried on to AG-31. Well that's the room I hurried on to and went to the extreme end of the as it was almost occupied by then. There may not be many people who travelled 50 Kms to reach there, I just thought in my defence.

I was prepared for the first day. That was in terms of selecting the shortest path with minimum traffic. Anoop was my friend whom I relied on this time, a frequent visitor to Noida he told me the shortest possible route in the longest possible time. After wasting six A4 size sheets for the map and almost 140 minutes on this route discussion, guided by the Google maps tool I tried to authenticate his road-map to the real one.

Half way through, I was lost. "Why men don't listen and women cant read maps" a book by Mr. Pease immediately came to my mind. Oh ! boy I always believed in this book until this precise moment of time. Or was my brain too feminine ? Falling back to the main road was like diving in to a sea of sharks. I counted on my instincts. "Move on..." I instructed my mind. After a while the ill-drawn lines in the map started making sense. Oh-yea!! that's the pillar i see as drawn in the map. Landmarks are so very important and I am glad that inspite of my reluctance to hear him, Anoop did recite this map to me thrice. I stopped by an auto rickshaw driver and almost pleaded to guide me through.In retrospect I think he may have been an angel that god just sent from heaven that morning to tell me to turn right and then go straight until i meet a dead end. These types of instructions are easy to remember and more simple to execute. Keep yelling "right turn" until you turn and then "Dead end" unless you see one. Some how I managed to get to the office. Entire day returning back was on my mind. This not what I was supposed to do at my first day. They asked us to fill some 20-25 sheets of paper with some redundant information five or six times. Records are important for sure.

On they way back that night I picked up a wrong lane, and somewhat similar thing I did when going back to the office second day. And the second day coming back a wrong turn cost me 40 minutes. I have learnt a lesson though. If going to office I turned right from a crossing. I have to turn left while coming back !!!

Convocation hues!

So done with my decorous world at IIIT I resume my mundane life now. What is prescribed in these times is patience. Waiting for my joining letter and blessed with a 512 kbps line life's seems irksome, but that's how it is.

It was raining last evening,With my friend I was outside the HDFC bank, and suddenly I backed-off the last moment to withdraw the last supply of money saved for the rainy days like these.

Suddenly Kou calls "Convocation is on 12th, I am booking my tickets you wish to come, I'd book yours too." How can I decide something in the middle of a financial crisis.

"I don't know, perhaps I cant.You book your tickets I would tell you later. Okay tell me how do I get all my money from my bank at Allahabad here as soon as possible ?" I told him my present state, Kou advised me something which I knew of, any how I thanked him for resurrecting my belief.

"Oh boy, its raining hard outside, I'd get it some other day" I uttered, reversed the car and moved on.

Later Tiwari calls " Convocation is on 12th " .
"That's not a news, I know" I said. Then Tiwari's brought economics in to conversation.

"Rs 750 you pay if you get the degree in person, and Rs 1500 if you are an absentee".

"Who said" was my response, How the heck Tiwari remains so well informed without a dedicated Internet connection, I was bemused. Soon I figured out it was the college website which I always considered obsolete that had all these statistics lined up.

"So you coming, I am booking ticket with bengali" Tiwari seemed to be exited at the thought of wearing that red robe and posing for a picture with his hard earned degree, for me it has always been too flimsy. To be honest as to Kou's question I didn't knew the answer to Tiwaris question. "I'd speak with Kou, he is also planning to go there" I told Tiwari.

I phoned Kou told him to book my tickets. Then I called Lalli, he has always been oblivious to anything happening around.

"So you coming" I asked. Lalli asked if I was going, I was affirmative and Lalli too without wasting a second said "Okhay, then lets meet there on 12th"

So everything was set. The deal seem to be done after a series of local and STD calls.

Suddenly phone rang again. This time it was Tiwari.

"I am not going, My plan changed".

"What happened [:x] , It was you, who's idea it was after all to go there" I kind of half-yelled at him.
"Rs 750 plus the travelling expenses and all could well over go Rs 15oo, Whats the point?" Economically speaking Tiwaris retort was logical, perhaps he should have done something in economics rather than computers.

I kind of fell for Tiwaris logic, I was undecided about this convocation from the first time this question was asked to me. It was like an earthquake for those pillars of logic upon which my decision to go to the convocation was based.

I was left wanting for more plausible logic's to go for the convocation. I have always been undecided about 99% of happenings in my life. I read an entire book titled "Deciding" in optimism to get to the crux of my own nature. One learning I never forget from that book was, " In simple issues like how to reach to a place use logic, and in affairs like career and love go by your intuition." So logic was something I was desperately looking for to convince my whims.

I phoned Kou told him about "Tiwari-eco-nomics".

"Why do you wish to go" was a straight question to explore what reasoning goes behind Kou's head for going to the convocation!

"Well, Once a lifetime you do Masters and get the chance to be honoured, there are Nobel laureates present there during the convocation. We may never get a chance to see those many of them together in our entire life, We will click picture's and It would be fun I think" I hate Kou for piling up so many reasons for the things he does.

"..and why do you wish to go?" Kou applied the same trick to figure out why I had my plans to go. "So that I can withdraw the money and need not to wait for 3 weeks " could be the dumbest answer he would have heard for a while.

Now what I said was impulsive I mean it was real for sure and even I didn't knew that was the precise reason I was going for the convocation.

Kou was driven by logic, Tiwari by economics, Lalli by me and Me by non-sense as far as "deciding" on convocation was concerned !!!

and about the pic of the post, well this ghazal fits in perhaps "चाहे मेरे इन हाथों की तलाशी ले लो ..मेरे इन हाथों मैं लकीरों के सिवा कुछ भी नहीं...

feelings of listlessness and discontent

After a series of sleepless nights, i woke up at 6 today. I have been sleeping 0100 hrs to 1900 hrs for the past few days and isn't it an weird time to sleep, but that's what I am all about being absurd. I went to the balcony and looked around. Fresh with a downpour every thing looked so wonderful. I wondered what I have been doing here for quiet some time now. I left all my books back at my home apart from DeBonos "Lateral Thinking". That's a nice book but is not suitable for the kind of mood i am in.

Life's so stupid and I want to be in it miserably. Doing nothing is so painful I desperately want to join the company and start working. I have started hating this emptiness now.. i want it to be filled with something constructive. There is this interview call pending that a consultant promised. She forwarded my resume and the company people didn't called so far that's making me anxious, but those things are beyond my control. All I can do is make myself a cup of tea and type on this keyboard.

I am not that kinds who sleeps-off on his problems. My problems make me worried doing something about them is an altogether different story. And these days i have learnt to Blog-Off my problems. I can read them again and remind me of they being still there.

The first is the thesis defence. I have to defend what I have did in the last 6 months of mine. But looking around I see people not worried about it and that makes me less worried too, peer-motivation you see. There were certain modifications to the code that were pending but they dont seem to be exciting enough. More importantly I don't see any rewards.

I have to yet to order my cam EOS 40D, buy external hard drive, get the thesis report hard binded, get my tickets done. That's too much of an asking.

Some of my friends have also left the college. I have tried to make new friends. The problem with people is they are unique, no one can take any ones place. They are simply not replaceable, at least for me its like that. I made so many good friends here. I am talking about the kind of friends you can count on. I am happy for that fact.

This old man was seen carrying his burdens with a stick doing the balancing act for him. This also my first attempt to use photoshop for such tricks I would have liked to make that bag on his head colored to highlight its importance. But it was not as colorful as his jacket :)

choices?

"If I could start my life all over again I would make the exact same choices that I made . I think I would make them because of the person that I am and the things that I have learnt my making those choices. I am proud of who I am !!!"

I was listening to this Bob Seager song, and a show girl made this statement in the end. It immediately caught my attention. "Stupid girl,she is in such a situation that would equally attract contempt and pity" I expressed discontent in half articulated voice. If I could turn back the hands of time, If I can go back, would I erase my wrong-doings, stupid acts of mine which caused me trouble, let me down or hurt people around. Well the proposition seems to be exciting.. to be honest I do fancy at times that if I could go back say n number of years I would have not committed certain acts of mine.. or would have done this or that..

But isn't it absurd, the things we do in life are like our experiences.They shape our character. The present me is a culmination of the teachings that life offered me because of my actions, so if the very me try to erase those experiences and try to fill them with better ones the lessons that life would have taught me would be of lesser importance..Or in other words, the events and the happenings in the life are not that important as what we become out of those. Our reaction to those happenings is of more importance then the event itself. Someone elsewhere said, if you loose don't loose the lesson..

So the next time you are in a situation where you are at unease just remind yourself what lesson you learnt and avoid learning the same lesson twice :)

...perhaps that show girl was right..I would have made the same exact choices as well...

don't know how relevant is that picture to the post, i saw a young boy selling some prints about the benaras city. There was not enough light to get a sharp picture, neither did he had time to pose.