Chapter 7

Darkness had fallen sooner than dusk had arrived. Trying to stroll through the sidewalk of the highway, when every step feeling laden, falling off from where I wanted them to be, every hold seeming to be weaker to support, every onlooker scorning at the unkempt demeanor, I was sure I ll reach, since I have seen this all the time. I knew that this was not fair, it was a broken promise, the happiness of a morning sun, shattered by an unscrupulous downpour, a torture of the solicited soul to take me back to what I used to be! A failed endeavor... I wished day after day that I had never tried this... never!

The gate was still locked, just like I had left it in the morning? No, its from the other side now. Carelessly fumbling for the keys, when I realized that I had left it at the bar table. Rocking the gate aimlessly, bellowing to open it, I felt the lights go off from the doors of one neighbor to the next, as if to watch the inebriated drama in the darkness of their darker minds! At the corner of my right eye, I could see bicycle headlights, dim and obscure, swaying across the road in that tenebrous late evening, coming closer to me, with an equivocal mumbling as if from a bee moving past behind me, evanescing at the corner of my left eye... I wish every morning that this was not repeated, but it has become a lost hope, a hope that still has its literal meaning,  just its meaning alone!

There was no sound from inside... I kept on shouting to open the gate, trying to climb over it at times, slipping my feet at the wet cylindrical bars, falling off on the muddy, concrete gate step. I could hear sneers from across the street, with two heads looking at the besotted melancholy. It became unbearable, when I walked groggy across the street, asking which bastards wanted to watch the drama. Sooner, I felt the heads slowly moving inside and the crackling of an old door, closing through the darkness. Dragging over the filthy soil across the road, I walked back to my gate, crying out loud on the mistake I did again and repenting over my weakness from refraining. It was getting too heavy for me to stand up, holding the gate, slowly my toes aching and me falling on the steps, with a jouncing sound of my head against the stone side by. I was still conscious, though it was hard for me to raise my head more than an inch.

I lay there with blood oozing out of my head in the darkness of the night, when I saw a small light go on in the front room, the door slowly opening and a little seven year old feet coming out. The left foot first, then the right foot, stopping for a minute as if something was pulling it back, I could not see him completely from where I lay. He took a key from his little trousers pocket, stealthily opening the lock, sooner I could feel his soft little hands on my forehead, pushing me into an obstreperous uproar over the promise I had broken to him. I tried to raise my hands to grab him, but they seemed to be paralyzed from the pain. I tried to mumble to him, but words were not coming out... Suddenly I felt him cconfused, running away, splashing the muddy water on the way, into the house. Soon, my head was feeling heavier and I could not stay awake, falling slowly into a coma...

I opened my eyes to see that it was already 8. I was on bed inside my home, when she was sitting there next to me, crying at her misfortune, when my son was at the table, trying to put a steel glass stand on another steel glass, that was already standing on the tea flask. I touched her palm, looking into her eyes with a million apologies, and a silent pledge that I will not repeat it, this time with my eyes putting it straight that I have understood my mistakes. I could see the blossom of happiness in her eyes, and a smile on her lips. She moved to grab the boy, lifting him and placing him on her lap and touching my right hand as if to make a promise, holding the boy in the other. I secured her palm for a few moments, assuring her that this will not happen again...

It was already late for office! We walked out, myself locking the gates from outside, giving the key to the kid, while telling her that I ll get the other key from the bar while returning in the evening...

When conscience soul takes a back seat to ones temptations, there is not much of a hope!!

An Unforgettable Interview!

Long long ago, on one of those initial days after purchasing my first motorcycle, I got a call to attend this interview in White Fields in Bangalore. I had not gotten myself fully acquainted with the 150cc machine by that time, and was still practicing out past 10PM in the curvy roads of RT Nagar, daily adding atleast one more scratch on the brand new machine. The interview was scheduled for 9 AM. I decied to go on the bike thinking it was a good way of taking my one week old machine for a relatively longer trip through the wide and straight roads connecting the rest of Bangalore with the upcoming silicon valley of WhiteFields.

Just to keep my naive unmotorcycled mind in a peaceful state for the interview, I started off from my appartment around 6:30 AM. It was the end of November and mornings were getting colder, compelling me to put on a dark blue woolen sweater. I hated wearing helmets! Probably you won't if on the first day of you wearing that "thing", a fly gets inside it, when you were in the middle of the traffic! aarggh!! Bikers were slowly getting mandated to wear helmets though, and later on, I had made friendships with traffic police constables, who used to catch me everyday and who later even started giving me subsidies from the fines, of course, for their benefit. Well, it was a bit later (probably after spending a lot of money with the traffic police over the months) that I came to know that I didn't really need to wear the helmet when I drove. It was just that the helmet needs to be there somewhere with me, which meant that I could have just hung it on the pillion. Strange policies!! But anyways, back to the day of my interview...

The sun was still slowly waking up from its 12 hours sleep, lazily spreading its weak orangish claws through out the sky, reclaiming the spaces it had lost to darkness the previous day. The road was clear and straight, seemed perfect for one of those speedy adventurous motorcylce rides! Well, I really meant it and decided to test the power of this machine. I slowly started speeding myself from 30... 40... 60... 80... 85... 87... 90...92... the wind, thrusting on my face, had become too strong by that time... that I could not open my eyes and go any further in speed. It felt like flying with absolute freedom and was my first ever adventurous bike maneuver!

Sooner, swooshing at this speed for sometime, I found in the rearview mirror that a truck was trying to overtake me! oops! It was very close to me and I got nervous as a fledgeling that just came out its nest in the vigour of flying high, suddenly seeing an eagle on its right chasing it! I applied my breaks and slowed down the bike to 50s, but still nervous a bit, thinking of getting rid of the truck by moving out of the main road to the left... went over a sandy sidewalk... with the breaks still on... oops... the bike skidded over the sand turning perpenticular to the road slanting... falling skidding on the road... throwing me to the road side. The truck went away without stopping or the driver even taking a peek at me...

Thankfully, I had landed near a roadside coffee shop, where some construction workers from the nearby sites were warming up for their daily chores with a sip of hot coffee. A few of the workers, seeing my gimmick, ran for my rescue, when I slowly jumped up from where I had landed... with a few shallow bruisees on my elbow, but more or less feeling fine without any pain from anywhere. Probably the thick sweater I was wearing saved me from further wounds. One guy ran towards my bike, checked it and said it was all in a good condition with a few more scratches added here and there. That was miraculous. They asked me if they needed to take me to the hospital if I was not feeling good. I said I was perfectly fine and have an "important" meeting to attend... so should hurry. They told they could take my bike back home (the request I wont certainly buy especially from people in Bangalore), and they would get me an autorickshaw to reach my destination, which I hesitated, climbed on the bike yet again and started off thanking them.

It was almost 9 AM, the time for my interview... I was riding the bike and felt some pain was building from my elbows and shoulders. Since I was wearing the dark sweater, nothing was visible outside. I did not care much about the pain and thought it would slowly ameliorate, by the time I get done with the interview... but unfortunately that was not going to be the case...

I reached the company, reported of my arrival with the person who was going to take my interview and was headed to the interview room by the security. He asked me to sit in the room, and that the interviewer would be arriving soon... I waited... pain was building up inside... it was becoming terrible... but I had a little bit more of energy left in me to give the interview I think... and thus I did not tell anyone... The lady interviewer came... and said "Hello". She asked me to tell a few words about myself... the most boring question to start an interview with... very irritating too when you have some other bigger problems happening elsewhere... I started: "I am Anoop and... Ma'am, is there any chance to postpone this interview for some other date?"... The lady, who seemed very young in interviewing (and probably it was her first interview...) asked me in an adamant tone... "Why can't you give the interview today"? I, with all my left over energy suppressing the pain from inside, told her in the most polite way that it will be better for both sides if the interview was postponed. Now, she was a bit scared and asked me what the matter was... to which I shouted... "I AM BLEEDING INSIDE!!" She, confusedly, asked me to remove the sweater, which I did, showing the shirt inside... which was fully swamped in thick blood by that time! She screamed out loud as if in some horror movie and ran out of the room...

I sat there on the chair for a minute... when the lady who had screamed out, had sent three of her colleagues into the room, to look at me. All were shocked to see something like this in an interview room for the first time (probably only time in their lives)... They asked me about the details of the accident and requested me to go with them to the hospital. I said I am okay and would like to go back to my appartment and will consult a doctor there, which they hesitated to abide telling me that I was their host and its their responsibility, blah blah blah! Finally they took me to the hospital, had bandages on, vaccinated for tetnus and finally I was freed to go home. They even thought of arranging me a free taxi, which I hesitated and started back again on my bike... for another favourite ride back home :)

I reached home around 2:30 PM... slept for some 2hrs... woke up... had some painkillers... and got ready... riding my bike again towards Ring road this time... to give my full rounds of interviews with Microsoft...

Six days in Wilderness! (Travelogue)

I lay in bed in an ultra lazy mode, with a mind slowly moving into mundane life, thrusting into evanescence of time, the memories of an amazing journey that twined the lives of nine of us for six days in the wilderness along the eastern country side. It was a season of planning fiasco that kept us at the pinnacle of excitement and uncertainty at every moment, making the journey more interesting than what we were originally up against like the actors of an unscripted drama. It was a fascinating experience that is surely going to linger in our minds for the years to come.

We were eight of us in the beginning: Aruna, Deepthi, Gowri, Lavanya, Ankur, Pradeep, Venki and myself for the trip to the east, with plans of visiting Washington D.C. on Day 1, later driving towards Shenandoah national park in Virginia, camping there for three days and later driving to West Virginia for rafting on Day 5 and finally driving back to D.C. on Day 6. Lavanya’s sister Shobana, will join us at Shenandoah on Day 3.

Day 1:

I returned from Philadelphia on the night before the trip around half past nine calling up Ankur and Venki about the details of the trip and items I need to carry, fitting myself into the schedules. After packing whatever I could into a big pack backpack, I dozed off around 2 AM, with the alarm set for 4 AM. Ankur came with the car around 4:45 AM picking each one of us from our houses, with Pradeep cribbing over some miscellaneous items he had bought for the trip but was redundant and was forced to throw away due to lack of space. Everything went on plans and five of us: Lavanya, Ankur, Pradeep, Venki and I, reached the airport at 6:00 AM. We reached Dulles Airport, VA around 11:30 AM, took two rental cars from Hertz, with the assigned drivers Ankur and Venki, marking the start of our journey. Aruna and Gowri had arrived an hour before at Reagan, D.C and had been waiting for our arrival. Ankur and myself started off to pick them up from Reagan, when Venki, Pradeep and Lavanya started off to pick up Deepthi from her cousin’s house. We reached Reagan airport around 2 PM, to face the indignation of the two girls for keeping them waiting for more than 3 hours. Deepthi was picked up, completing the initial quorum to Hyatt Place, D.C, which was going to be our sojourn for that night.

We were joined by Lavanya’s friend Anila and her friends Ramesh and Prasanna at Hyatt Place. Together we started off to visit the monuments of Washington D.C. We took the metro to Capitol area, which was half an hour from the lodging, reaching there around 5 PM. Starting off from the state Capitol, we moved towards Washington memorial obelisk, Lincoln memorial and finally towards the White house, which was already pretty dark by the time we were before it. The walk was exhausting, but our minds were kept busy finding answers to what was the statue at the top of capitol or what does the statue in front of it stand for, or more interestingly the meaning of a painting in front of the agriculture building. The shining-creamy appearance of the Capitol under the shaded blue sky was majestic. The obelisk, which is the world’s tallest stone structure, standing at the center of the monuments in memory of the Father of the country, was an interesting subject for trying photographic maneuvers. But we were quite disappointed by the lack of cleanliness over the pond before the Lincoln memorial.

After roaming around till 10:30 PM, we started off back to our lodging, picking some Chinese food from some restaurant in Fairfax that made us to wait there till 11:30 PM, to customize our dinner for more broccolis and onions. Reaching back, we tried to regain our lost sleep of the day, dozing off not leaving a second on the bed, marking the end of Day 1...

Day 2:

Life teaches us a lot of lessons, one of the most obvious and annoying lesson being that the person who goes to sleep and the one who wakes up are actually two different people, the first being highly optimistic, hard working and the latter being ultra lazy. We had planned to start off from Hyatt Place towards Shenandoah, VA around 7:30 AM, but all woke up around 9 AM. Just before the complimentary breakfast was getting over, the quorum assembled over the breakfast table, picking whatever fruits and juices were available, also taking off stuff to eat on the way. Pradeep and Ankur was busy sharing the memories of the perfect breakfast they had in Yosemite, when we were all busy filling our bellies with the best food we could grab from the crowd. Around 11 AM we checked out of the hotel and started off to Shenandoah, which was our dwelling for the next few days. I switched to the other car, taking charge of the position as the navigator for the ferocious driver named Venki, and was slowly getting used to a new form of car driving, something called boorish driving, with an awesome GPS which has a major part to play in the story ahead!

The scenic drive to Shenandoah was breath-taking, with all the amazing overlooks on the way. The sky was clear for a while, but soon the dark nimbus started whirling around like a small twister against us. We took a lunch break on the way, but were soon swooshed out by the impending droplets. We took some great pictures against the scenic backdrop, later running towards our cars, and moving out from the place which seemed to get a downpour sooner. The mountains far far away, with the streams flowing through their valleys, on the sides with yellow flowers at the green backdrop of the forest, with moist in the air and cold breezes rushing by, was mind-blowing a scene, taking us a while to take our minds out to get back to driving away. The whole scene was as if the nature had painted a blanket in yellow, blue and green colors, hanging it from the sky on the sides of the road we were travelling by. But we had more promises to keep and more destinations to cover… leaving out half of our minds stuck somewhere in the clouds in the mountains…

Mobile seemed out of range in the mountains that marked the beginning of all our problems. Lavanya went separate from us with her friends and we could not reach her on mobiles. We did not know where to pick her back to our crowd and thus got into a state of confusion. Deepthi just got lucky enough to connect to Lavanya’s mobile for a second and all she could decipher from the dying signal was the single name “Loft Mountain”. We inferred they were planning to visit Loft mountain overlook and thus we will go and wait for her there. We reached the overlook around 4 PM, which was like a small trail. We decided to go to the trail and probably will be able to see Lavanya on the way or get back to the parking place around 4:45 which was when Lavanya had promised to get back to us. We started off with the trail, spraying all the tick repellants we had carried, on our hands and shoes. People in the crowd had become so paranoid about the ticks and the diseases spread by them that bottles of spray seemed too less with the high ambition people were carrying in their minds of killing all possible ticks they might encounter on the way. The talk on ticks was a major theme for jokes on the way… There seemed to be a spring on the way and we decided to check it out. We reached the spring to see it to be just a small outshoot of water from a small pipe buried inside a rock, disappointing us. We got back to the beginning of the trail by 5 PM to see Lavanya and her friends. We departed with Anila and her friends there and started off more into the jungles of Shenandoah, towards our camping grounds…

We reached the camping ground in Shenandoah around 7 PM. The sky looked darker and light was fading away, when we had lot of work to do, raising our tents, firing up the crate and cooking the dinner. Tent creation was an easy process, but firing up the crate was not that easy. We did not know how to get the fire catch the woods and thus the girls caught us some help from the neighboring campers. They suggested us to break the firewood to splinters, fire up some paper pieces to begin with till the splinters catch fire and later put in the big firewood. We followed suit and fire was up after an hour of hard work. Vegetables were wrapped up in a foil and thrown into the withering fire which never really caught up to cook stuff. Later eating away the half cooked vegetables, we slowly moved into out tents, cracking some sick PJs on our ways before catching the bus to dreamland in the middle of the jungle. The travel to dreamland was not simple enough especially when I could hear a big fat snore from my left in all possible frequencies and amplitudes… marking the end of Day 2…

Day 3:

I opened my eyes to see Ankur and Pradeep in panic mode. I did not understand what was going on, when I could see only anxiety and disappointment on Ankur’s face as if something really stupid had happened. Not to wonder anything more, Ankur had put the locked car keys inside the trunk of his car, later closing the trunk while taking out something early in the morning. We did not have a spare key for that car and the daily items of all the members travelled in that car was inside, one of the worst mistakes you could possibly do in the middle of the jungle. For some time we did not know how to solve the problem, with Pradeep suggesting to use his Swiss-knife expertise to crack open the trunk. The idea seemed overwrought since the car had security on. Finally we decided to call the car company and get some help from a blacksmith who said to arrive around 11 AM. We waited for the savior to arrive; meanwhile Ankur and Venki went for breakfast at the hotel in the Meadows.

Venki got back around 10 AM with a satisfactory smile on his face and great words in his mouth over the taste of the breakfast items in the hotel, luring us increasing our appetite. The way to the hotel was also scenic, with some memorable things like the water tap on the rock, a sign board reading “water tables”, a small narrow passage surrounded by green grass, looking into the Big-Meadows lodge, where the hotel stood. The breakfast time had already passed and all we could grab was some coffee. We decided to spent time in the hotel itself for an early lunch, drinking our coffee against the scenic backdrop at the rear of the lodge, sitting over a few artistically placed rocking chairs and childishly swaying on it.

The coffee was over and we were getting a little bored, thus deciding to take a tour of the surroundings of the hotel. Aruna, Gowri, Pradeep and I were game for the plan, while Lavanya and Deepthi stayed back at the hotel; Ankur and Venki still waiting for the blacksmith at the campsite. The hotel stood in a beautiful setting; we climbed the rocks at the Blackhawk cliff looking against the mountains with full of greenery in between. We did not forget to capture snaps in all possible panoramas we could get the right light on. Later started the hunt for the Lewis falls, which was a trail of over 1 mile. It was downhill and the trekking was very easy. I was a bit worried of losing track on the way and was taking photos of all possible signs, while Pradeep was cautious of putting sticks and stones on the way to mark the road. Gowri was leading; followed by Aruna, Pradeep following, while myself lazily moving clicking photos of a deer I found on the way.

In a distance we saw the swooshing sound of water, and thought we were very close to the fall. But unfortunately we did not find any fall around and walking over further found that we had just covered 0.4 miles only of the 1 mile trail. It was almost 11:30 and we had to reach back to the hotel for the lunch and we decided to trek back. The ticks-o-phobia had switched sides and now everyone on the walk back seemed to have stick-o-mania, trying to make comfortable climbing sticks with all sorts of tree branches they found on the way. Pradeep got a good piece of stick and was very happy maneuvering with it, maundering the extra capabilities the twigs projecting out of it might be useful for. Aruna got a “freshly dried” branch for the staff which was later sharpened to perfection. We reached back to the hotel around 12:30 PM and started ordering our lunch. Lavanya and Deepthi joined later followed by Ankur and Venki after dealing with the blacksmith and opening the car. We discussed over the unplanned trail we took to Lewis falls, later switching subjects to what to order for lunch. The waitress, who was an old lady, seemed uncomfortable with the way we ordered items, but we did not forget to tip her well for bearing us and keeping with her patience. The lunch, at least, the non-veg one I had was one of the best I had had in the recent times…

After lunch we decided to take some more trails. Lavanya was feeling feverish and thus we decided to take some of the easy trails. We found the easiest one with a waterfall and which was closest to our camping ground. One the way, we could find a big meadow on our right, with deers grazing by and wished if we could drop over into it, ran around like kids playing some silly games… but time was limited and we had to take the trails, thus we moved on… Ankur’s car had already arrived there and people were once again getting ready with tick repellants. Pradeep and Aruna did not forget to carry their staffs and Lavanya and Deepthi wanted similar ones. The trail was mostly downhill till the waterfall and we posed for a few photos on the way against springs, water sprays and trees fallen against streams. Finally we reached the waterfall, which was like the frock of an angel and we did not forget to click group pictures with all the stick paraphernalia we had. Later we started off back to climb up, which was an exhausting experience. But we managed to reach back taking a few strong gasps in between during a few second breaks.

It was prognosticated that there was going to be thick fog in the night and thus it was suggested to make early dinners. Pradeep had bought petrol from a nearby gas station and we started off firing up the crate. Meanwhile Lavanya’s sister also joined the gang. Together we started cooking our dinner. This time fire was pretty strong and we decided to cook corn, which we had bought one for each of us. The corn was foiled up and thrown in fire, until it was cooked. Later we did the same for vegetables and finally put the naan and tortillas on the grill over the fire. Pradeep as always was specific about cooking broccolis and cooked a separate foil marked with a ‘P’. By the time the dinner was ready, the rain was getting stronger and eating in the rain was becoming difficult. We used the tarps to make a roof for the dining room with treads going through the tarp holes tied to four adjacent trees. The dinner was ready and we had an amazing feast of half baked vegetables, potatoes and rotis.

The rain was very strong by the time we finished our dinners and only thing to do was to get back to tents and sleep. The near-by campers had all vacated hearing the bad weather warning and thus we were the only ones in that region. Water was gushing on the camp ground and fear was building on if our tents will sustain the wind. Thunder storms were also forecasted, and we started thinking of the worst case scenario of sleeping in the car. Finally things settled down for some time and we moved into our tents. We could hear the nature shouting tick-tick on our tents, with muddy water flowing under the tarp, over which we lay, in the middle of the jungle, alone, under a thunder storm. It was an amazing experience, marking the end of Day 3…

Day 4:

We had grand plans for day 4. We had already messed up with the trekking plans of the day before by misplacing the key. So we had decided to get up by 5 AM and go for trekking for over 6 hours before we start packing back to our next destination. Like I said before, the people who go to sleep and the ones who wake up are really different ones and as always we did not open our eyes before 7:30 AM. We found that the rain had not stopped still and fog had covered the whole region. Trekking in that climate was close to impossible and gushing muddy waters in the trails might cause chances of slipping. There was no option left but to pack up everything and leave the place at the earliest. Venki checked with the visitor center, who seemed to have informed him that the fog is mainly in our region and thus moving out from there and taking a drive might be a good way to spent time over the scenic overlooks. Thus we decided to pack.

Packing the tents posed the biggest of the problems. It was completely muddy dispelled by the rain and packing it as such was not a good idea. We decided to take the tents to the water fountains near to the restrooms and spray water on them. Aruna, Gowri, Pradeep, Ankur and I carried one of the tents, while other carried the other one later. It was a time of playing in water to clean up the tents, later removing the water out from it by holding it the four corners, and billowing it like old aunts in India used to do to dry their saris. It was fun and finally to remove the air from the tents for folding, we wrapped it on Ankur’s body tying his hands making him immobile. People took advantage of the opportunity to give him his pending birthday bashes. Later, we folded the tents somehow pushing them into their bags.

The thunder storm was still on and we were all getting wet. Our shoes were getting completely wet and drying them was becoming a big problem. Pradeep suggested and tried to put the shoe in the dryer at the laundry against the resentment of Aruna and Gowri, but could not get much dried even with his different experiments. Finally we had packed all our items, stacked up in the cars and were ready to get out from the area after our final lunch at the Big-Meadows lodge. That was another awesome food we all had.

We started off from the area around 3 PM. The next problem to be tackled was to drive in the heavy rain through thick fog, which had reduced the visibility to less than 2 meters at some regions. The GPS was useless and the only thing was to follow the roads, syncing up the cars at designated overlooks tracing the maps. This time marked the height of Venki’s car driving skills, when he was driving at well over 35 mph. We had all set our eyes on the odometer and the road one after the other looking out for any small light that was appearing against us. Once we had decided to sync up with Ankur’s car at a scenic point which was very down the road path, Venki taking the path down into the drive seemed as if he was taking the car out of the rocky side curbs, making all the girls in the car scream to stop the car. The fog was not only over big-meadows but had proliferated over the complete national park and all we could see was thick blank fog on either sides of the road as if some painter had erased away his drawings that we had seen when we had been into the previous day. After a big session of uncontrolled driving we finally came out of the skyline drive leaving behind Shenandoah national park in our memories…

The next destination to catch up was West Virginia for the rafting we had planned for the next day. The roads sides were again starting to look beautiful, though the rain was still on. We marked the GPS with the destination address, stopped at a couple of places to take breaks, changing the music cds playing songs from all possible languages of the south, even Deepthi singing for a while, finally we entered WV downtown driving for around 3 hours. It was already dark and the GPS was so messed up with map that it took us round and round in a spiral to reach the hotel where we were going to stay that day-Microtel Inn. We checked into the hotel, went to Subway, grabbed some simple dinner and got to our beds marking the end of Day 4…

Day 5:

Five seemed to be the most exciting day of the whole trip, which I am sure will linger in our minds for a long long time to come. It was scary to some, fun for others, might have shown the end of lives to a few and added a bit of ignominy to future endeavors of a few others. Anyways let me get back to the story of day 5.

This was the day we had planned for white water river rafting on the New River Gorge in West Virginia. We started off from the hotel. Ankur and team had already started. We were supposed to reach the rafting station at 11 AM. In between Venki remembered reading somewhere that we might need our identity cards to prove our ages or getting discount for the rafting, while we were half way. We started back, punching in to the GPS to get the shortest time route possible. Here started the trick of the GPS. It showed us a circuitous way away from the freeways, through the jungles with a lot of turns in between. Taking turns with a driver like Venki was a complete disaster, who cannot drive the car less than 20 mph and by the time we come closer to the turning point and looked around for road names, that road must have passed behind, making the GPS to find the next possible reroute to get us back, again a circuitous one. The combo of Venki and GPS was like made for each other with finally we landing in a dead end, with a house at the end of the road, with horse barns and a dog just waiting to bark on us if we made a little bit more into the house. Finally we somehow managed to come out of the place, with the GPS to take more freeways. Ankur had already reached the place and was waiting on us. He suggested to search for Little General petrol bunk and search for Minden road near to that. We reached a little general gas station, but Minden road was no where around. It was already a quarter passed eleven and the guide along with other rafters was waiting for us to start the bus. We figured out that there was two Little General gas stations and we were at a wrong place. Taking the 16 North we finally found the road, which later took us to the Ace adventures center.

Ankur, with others, were waiting for us, and we ran changing our dresses into the nylon ones in the car. We were asked to sign some papers for non-responsibility in case of any emergencies in the water. After dressing up in life jackets, with a helmet and a paddle, we moved towards our ten seater paddle boat, with our guide for the day; an old American. Before getting into the boat, our videos were shot asking how we felt and what we were going to do. Instructions were given on what to do and what not in the boat, the most important being to paddle in sync with all others.

Water was shallow and calm to start with and we were all rowing comfortably, with Ankur and Venki as the heads initially. Venki seemed to row independently losing in sync with Ankur and rest of others making the guide to shout at times to get back to sync. Easy sections of water were slowly moving away and came a rock which was some 10 ft tall. All of us were very excited to take a jump from the rock into the water. None of us except Lavanya and Venki knew swimming, but it was exciting to see how it goes! Ankur, Pradeep, Venki, Gowri, Aruna and I climbed on the rock. Pradeep said some prayers and jumped out first, followed by Ankur, followed by me. Looking down Aruna felt acrophobic and backed out switching to a smaller rock. It was fun to watch Aruna backing out on the video that was shot along with, as if one of the contenders of one of those AXN Fear Factor episodes.

Pradeep who had jumped first was completely lost when he was in water. He was terribly scared without knowing what to do next. Some how he managed to reach the boat that was waiting for him a bit far. With the floaters on I was trying to learn a bit of swimming towards the boat, but seemed quite impossible without a proper instructor. Anyways I managed to reach the boat swaying my hands and legs, when Pradeep was already there to grab me in. Later we pulled over Ankur, with him and me taking head of the boat to pick up each one of the floating people around. It was really hard to row a ten seater boat with only two rowers against the stream and we were getting exhausted. We picked Lavanya, and later Deepthi. Deepthi was floating with belly up like an overturned insect, that does not know what to do and just struggling with her hands and legs flowing slowly along the currents. Later we picked up Venki, Gowri and finally Aruna, who were float around at the same place where they had jumped to.

The jumping session was over and more fun was on the way. We started our paddles and started rowing according to the command of the guide. The instructor was pissed off at times at the lack of synchronization in paddling from us and once asked the shouted, “who is in charge here?”, with Venki saying, “I am”, and instructor shouting back, “Nope, you are not! I am in charge here”! We moved out from class two currents and class three currents were on the roll. It was like small whirls of water, if caught in might over turn the boat. That was pretty scary but nobody of us knew how scary it was. We continued paddling in sync as much as we could, when suddenly a current struck us, lifting the front of the boat, throwing down Ankur from his seat to the middle of the seat. It all happened in the split of a second and all the people in the boat were misplaced. I was pushed back and later recovering from the shock looked around to find that Gowri and Pradeep were missing from the crowd. They had fallen in water and were moving away from the boat. I showed my paddle to Gowri to grab and be pulled over while I saw Pradeep with a scary face as if his end was impending, shouting and crying for help. I grabbed both of them on their life jackets so that are closer to the boat. Later Venki pulled over Gowri and I pulled over Pradeep and all were finally in the boat, but the scare was still holding on to Pradeep’s face.

The instructor warned us that it was just a class three wave and down the line there was going to be class four and five rapids which were going to be stronger than we had witnessed. The quorum was upset and wanted to call off the idea of going further. We stopped for the lunch break, when we had a stomach aching laughter on the events that had happened on the river and how bloated the faces were when they were thrown into water. Finally we told the guide that we are backing out, who later asked us to help him pack the boat back to the rafting station. We later asked him for some flat water region, where we could spent our later day. He took us to a lake with a lot of floating toys in it. But unfortunately the region was closed due to an impending thunder storm and thus we decided to play throw ball over the nearby volleyball net.

We took bath in the arranged showers, cleaning up all the sand and mud that had got into from the river and the sand on the volleyball ground, changing back to normal dresses and picking our seats at 4:30 PM to watch the video of our rafting experience. It was really funny to watch how we had behaved in water. We started off back to our dwelling in Microtel Inn, but on the way we noticed that Venki’s car was making a screeching sound from the back wheels. The sound was becoming more prominent and we had to do something around it since we had a five hour driving to be done the next day back to Washington D.C. After dropping the girls in the lodge, Venki and I decided to check the car at some garage nearby, but could not find any open that time of the day. Thus we decided to call up the car company and ask for a replacement. The company did not have any agencies nearby and one they had was 40 miles away but was on the way back to DC. So we decided to change the car on our way back and moved on for having dinner…

We went to a Mexican restaurant, ordered the best food and had a relishing time, with jokes, photos and a perfect dinner. After dinner, we went to our cars, Ankur taking his car out, while Venki, taking a reverse gear to take out his car from the parking lot. Suddenly we heard a collision sound… shockingly looking back… seeing Ankur’s car at the back of ours. Venki had not looked back while taking the reverse and had collided with Ankur’s car on the friend door, making a dent on it and cracking our car bumper. That was the worst to happen, but fortunately it was Ankur’s car; otherwise it would have been a police case immediately. We told to discuss the issue at the hotel, since people were coming out of the hotel to check what was happening outside.

At the hotel, we discussed on what could be said to the rental agency to resolve the issue as smoothly as possible at the same time not having a black spot on Venki’s name. We called up friends to ask for suggestions, but finally decided to tell the truth as any other reason seemed implausible. Curtain slowly fell on the most eventful Day 5 and the final day was about to start…

Day 6:

The sun had already risen for the final day when we all opened our eyes around 8 AM. Ankur had already started packing the check in items, and was wiping out the water from the tarps when we all joined to help him. Venki started making phone calls looking for options to solve the accident case at the same time to figure out the options to replace the car, which was making noise from the back side. Replacement of the car seemed an unviable option as there was unavailability of a car of the same size, thus putting the luggage in a smaller sized car was not feasible. The only option thus left was to go for maintenance, in a place nearby to our lodging. Ankur had started off back to D.C. by 10AM and we departed to maintenance almost at the same time. After making a few routine bad turns here and there, we finally figured out the Good Year car workshop. In between, Venki noticed that there was something leaking from the front of the car and that made things scarier. We could have otherwise driven the car to D.C. if the repair was going to take more time, but leaking in the front made us panic more, that we had to repair it or there was no other go. The mechanic was away and we had to wait till 12:00 PM for him to come over to take a look at the car. The car was lifted hydraulically and the underneath checked. The leak turned out to be water from the A.C and thus we were a bit relieved. The screeching sound was due to worn out break parts, which had to be replaced. The rental company gave us the green signal to go ahead to change the break parts, without any cost from our side, fixing the car by 1:30 almost. In between, the girls in our car went for shopping, coming back with our lunches, which was great of them.

We were on the road around 1:30 PM, with our flights at 8 PM and Deepthi to be dropped at her bus stop at 6:30 PM. That seemed a challenging drive over 300 miles, with a speed limit of 65 mph. We took the chance and drove as fast as we can. The weather was mostly good and the GPS showed the arrival time as 6:27 PM initially, which slowly moved to 6:13 PM due to the little over speeding we were making on the way. After an hour of driving, Venki felt like to have a coffee to keep him awake, and we detoured to an exit in search of a starbucks as shown by our GPS as some half a mile away. Unfortunately Venki made wrong turns again, landing us up in some other road once again, now the GPS showing the starbucks as 6 miles away. That was a costly turn to make and thus decided to ditch the plan for coffee, and sooner get back to our road. We wasted over 20 minutes in search of coffee making a loop at the place we had made an exit from.

Later Venki moved into the mood of chasing vehicles and that was more fun and engaging forgetting his sleep. We were struck with a few strong showers and it was really scary to drive in them, when the front glasses were completely opaque with water splashing over. Driving for a while more, Venki started to feel uncomfortable and started looking out for a restroom. Again in search of a Starbucks half a mile away, we took a detour on the exit, moving towards Starbucks, while missing the turns and finally landing up in a Target. But even target was fine, with Venki running out of the car without even closing the door and running into Target. Ah! Finally he got back with a comfortable face and later the rest of the journey was in a steady pace without any breaks. It was sure that Deepthi was going to miss her bus, so she asked her cousins to schedule a train so that she can be dropped at the railway station. Same was done with Shobana, saving us some time to reach the airport.

Finally after the entire eventful journey, we reached the airport at 6:45 PM after refueling our car. Ankur had already taken boarding passes and was waiting impatiently on us, with anxiety of whether we are going to miss the flight. The water in the tents we had packed back had made the checkin luggage heavier making us to pay 90$ more for checking them in. We dropped our car at the airport rental, when Venki had to fill up the insurance forms taking the responsibility of the accidents. It was a quick deal and we were all up passing the security clearance for flying back. Pradeep stood there with my boarding passes and we all moved into the Gates. Aruna and Gowri, who had their flights delayed by half an hour, were also there. Boarding of our planes started, Ankur, Venki, Lavanya, Pradeep and I started off into the plane. The flight was delayed due to bad climate in Minneapolis, but finally after a wait of 2 hrs it slowly started taking off… marking the end of Day 6… and a lot of memories to recollect on for the days to come…

A Geekish Love Story!

            "Reality continues to ruin my life !” – Calvin & Hobbes! 

In a time when the expectations about my life partner were even bigger than the biggest floating point number my computer could crunch, did I come upon this event. I had very strict requirements about my life partner, some of which went like this: She must never be the sqrt(-1), must never divide by zero, must have a determinant equal to zero and must also be x years old in x squared. Above all these, she must first decode these requirements to pass the screening! Well, for those poor souls who are wondering, what is all this mess about? let me clarify. The requirements say that she must be simple; must be very intelligent, must have singular qualities and must have the same age as mine! No wonder, girls run away from the very sight of me :) . Relishing on this “freedom”, I came upon this event!

It was an April 1st. I was hardly awake, when I got a call from her. This girl, lets declare her by the constant Gee, used to work with me a year ago. Candid to say, I used to like her, but never got to solve in real time the nonlinear optimization problem happening inside me, due to my above said constraints. Thus I moved on and took up a good professional opportunity in this new city. Ever since then, this is the first time I was hearing from her.

Probably due to the cached thoughts of her, I could readily identify her voice from the very first “hello” I heard over the phone. She had just landed in the city two days back, was put up in a hotel and was hunting for an accommodation. We decided to meet up on the weekend and I promised her to catalogue all the brokers I have met since my Big bang in this new city. It was interesting to watch at myself, how the optimization problem slowly started to relax some of its very “concrete” constraints and began an iterative descent towards an optimum.

We met at a spot as had planned, collated all the broker acquaintances and started the hunt. The search was tiresome, since Gee wanted a perfect house! I had no clue of why she was so adamant on where the pooja room should be or how many bedrooms should be there or whether the kitchen was spacious enough! We looked at houses from 1BHK to nBHK (no bedrooms), from 2D searches to 3D searches (in multistoried dwellings) and finally “fortunately” found one. The day was tiresome, as if I had been put on finding the best ‘kernel’ to host a learning problem. But I was happy that I could spend a lot of time with her.

Probably, girls have this interesting behavior of filling up their abodes with items that are more than necessary. The week after the first meeting, I took Gee for shopping. I was curious, why she should care so much about the number of vessels she wanted to buy or how much capacity rice cooker she needed. I never asked why, since I could just figure that out myself rather than throwing away another cliché, about her optimism for more roommates. I hate platitudes. Gee seemed far more complicated than I thought, but I was kind of ready to sacrifice my first constraint for her.

After setting up the house, I called her for a treat, and we had a great dinner at one of the most expensive restaurants. After dinner, I dropped her at her new house, came back to my apartment, and had just started brooding over my new algorithm, when I got a call from an unknown number. It was Gee again, but she was calling from a telephone booth, in the middle of the night. How stupid! She was worried and was panting and crying in between. She had forgotten her mobile at the restaurant. She had all her contact numbers in that and was expecting an important call that night. She was pleading to get back to the hotel and get the phone as early as possible. I had no options, but to turn my computer to hibernate! The hotel was about to close, but I managed to get to the waiter and fortunately get back the phone. I was kind of pissed off with the lack of responsibility from Gee. But she was crying like a sweet little kid and I guess I had started loving her. That night I had a conversation with myself on whether I should tell her about my feelings for her. Ooh my constraints, they were coming my way and I decided to postpone the talk.

Things went like this and that for a while. But I never made up my mind in this 6 months time to say my heart. I felt ashamed of myself, when I could not open my mouth and looked helplessly on my algorithm relishing over misclassifying the test data. And then came her birthday. I didn’t know what exactly would be the ideal gift for Gee. I consulted a lot of my friends, did some good research on the net and came upon… nothing ! Finally, I decided to do it the geekish way. I created a very romantic message of exactly fifty words, created twenty five gmail logins with each login having sender name as two words each from the fifty. Then I started sending the mails one after the other in the reverse order, with each mail having an attachment of a beautiful photo of her signed by me. The whole idea just took seven hours to implement after a trial of some ten times to my own login. The messages once received looked like love everywhere, in the sender’s field, in the subject line, inside the text body, over the attachment! Wow! Finally, satisfied with the trial runs, I clicked the twenty five mails away at exactly 12 midnight!

The next morning, I woke up a bit late, made a call to her and wished her “Happy birthday”. She responded with a flirty anger, complaining why I didn’t call her earlier. My next question was on whether she was happy with my innovation. She responded back asking what the innovation was!! Oops! Probably she had not checked her email yet. I waited on the phone to hear the dramatic applause she might probably make at my new way of wishing, but alas nothing came over to my side. Seemed Shannon’s sampling was not enough to transmit heart beats! I waited… finally she came back on phone asking what was the great idea! Oops! Did I do a mistake? I felt my heart had stopped for a while due to the extra power consumed by my brain cells in simulating all possible paths for failure! Oh yes, the spam filter. I asked her to check the spam bin, which she checked to revert back saying it was all some garbage mails intermingled! I just said with a broken heart “Forget it”!

Though I was sad that I could not get her to my feelings for her, I decided to take a second chance. I planned for a birthday treat for her the next day- a candle light one! She said she was very busy for the dinner that day, but after a lot of pleading from my side, Gee agreed. Finally, “tomorrow” was the day and I was very happy.

That night I was sitting on my computer working on my new algorithm, but was actually thinking of her and how I should tell her of my love. Though Gee did not conform to any of my requirements about marriage, seemed love was above all that! I was not able to sleep that night, and decided to do some timepass on orkut. Accidently I fell upon Gee’s scraps and… was taken aback at the foremost scrap!!!

It was a message from her friend Fee, and the message read “How is he”? Oops “he”? Again, I missed a heart beat due to the simulation overload from my brain! Oh, she already told her friends about me? Or is it like she had a boy friend? I was restless. It was some 2 in the morning and I needed to find this out! I went to Fee’s scrap book to find if Gee had re-scrapped. Nope, she hadn’t. I started looking at each scrap of Gee. Girls are very lazy at deleting scraps and this turned out to be very “fortunate” for me. Conversely, there were some two thousand scraps in her scrap book and going through each one of them was kind of painful especially at 3 in the morning. I decided to write a script to automate this and finally got all her scraps into a text file. It was 5 in the morning and I forgot that I needed to sleep. Who will sleep in such an hour of contingency! After perusing each and every scrap, I found a message from Mee, another friend of her with the following message: “So are you married?” I jumped straight into Mee’s profile, searched out the corresponding message from Gee, and it just read “Yes”!

At times, you just stand there looking at nothing, when everything else start revolving around you and you ask yourself “why me”?

Thanks for reading! Believe it or not, but that was pure fiction, some thoughts I cooked up to kill a time of intense boredom :)

Hotel R. K.

Never in my wildest dreams, did I ever imagine, my first visit to Chennai, would become so idiotic!

Chennai, formerly known as Madras, is one of the biggest cities in South India. It was in the early years of my professional life, when it so happened that I had to attend an interview for an enterprise, which had then newly opened a branch there. I was already employed, but never wanted to miss the opportunity to have a peek at the challenging work profile of the company. And thus started off for Chennai.

It was my first visit to this city and being alone, was a bit nervous. I landed early morning and was surrounded by auto rickshaw drivers even before I stepped down from the bus. This is a common scene, when you land in a big city. Knowing, these fellows will charge triple or quad of the actual fare of the journey, I bypassed them to catch an independent auto, whose driver looked somewhat decent. I told him to take me to a good moderate lodge, for which he took out a booklet containing the pictures and prices of almost all hotels in that region of Chennai. I selected a moderate motel and we commenced. It was hotel RK …

By 7 AM I reached the motel. The auto driver was fair and charged only “double” the actual fare for the journey. I took a room there, had a nice bath and later rang up the mobile of a distant friend of mine, over the phone provided in my room and made a good estimate of the location of the company. Later had a mild breakfast from the hotel, took my certificates and started off for my interview. My plan was to finish-off the interview by noon, return to the hotel and then roam in the city side with my camera… but…

My interview went well and the job was certain. I was very happy. Now, the next thing to do was to vacate the hotel and roam around the city. I decided to return to the hotel. Unfortunately... I just realized that I didn’t have the address or phone number of the hotel !!! In my hurry, I had missed to take a business card from the reception when I went for the interview. The worst blunder a person could do in an unknown city. I did not know what to do next. I tried to remember the name of the hotel from my early morning itinerary. I just remembered that the hotel’s name was some “Arcade” or something!!!

I jumpstarted to an auto and ordered him to take me to hotel “Arcade”. Arcade?? The driver reverted in amazement, saying he never heard of such a hotel in that part of city. “But don’t worry sir, we can find that out”. He commiserated me. We roamed the whole Chennai, asking different auto drivers about hotel Arcade, none of whom had ever heard such a name. Then we met one driver, who said, “is it hotel RK? If so, then it is close-by!”. I disagreed in a stentorian tone, “Nope! Its hotel A R C A D E”, recollecting the picture of the hotel from my early morning sleep. Later we met many other auto drivers, and they also said the same. The auto rickshaw meter was running high and I decided to change the strategy of my search. I boarded down the rickshaw and had to spend one half of the money I had in my pocket.

The next idea was to make help of the help-line. This is a wonderful facility to help people landing in unknown places. Every city has a seven digit help telephone number, like “3333333” was for Bangalore. But I did not know the helpline of Chennai. Thus I called up my Bangalore help line and asked them the help line of Chennai. Later called up the help line of Chennai and asked them to tell me all the hotels and their addresses in and around the company I had the interview at. “Sir, we are pleased to help you, but what you have asked for is just impossible”, came a soft female voice from the other end. There were around 112 hotels in that area. But I was not ready to leave her. “Could you please tell me at least the top ten hotels in that area whose names start with the letter A?” I retorted, like it was some SQL query. She replied, “Sir, there are 23 hotels starting with A” and started reading the hotels one by one. I listened carefully when something like hotel Arcade will be called… but alas… Finally she got pissed off and I had to disconnect after her humble request.

I thought again and formulated my next strategy. It was over 3 PM then and my return bus was scheduled to be at 5 PM. I quickly decided to simulate my early morning journey and thus boarded for the place where I had landed on that worst morning. That place was very crowded with all the auto rickshaws running around, creating turmoil. I asked a few auto drivers about whether they knew a hotel by name Arcade. Later I asked a few auto drivers if they had a booklet of good moderate hotels, in which I could stay for a day. I was almost certain that I must come across this hotel in that booklet. But unfortunately, whoever I asked did not have a booklet and I was totally depressed. Being a Capricorn, how can I give up! At last after a long hunt, I finally got one with a booklet. I requested him to lend me that booklet for a second for reference, but he differed. He said if I wanted to take an accommodation, then he could give me that booklet, otherwise “get lost”! On the worst day, you might have to face the worst hospitality too... But I had no other choice and thus boarded the auto. I went through the booklet eyeing eagerly for hotel Arcade…

Never in my wildest dreams, had I ever imagined, I could do such a big mistake, which could land me solitary in a big crowd. There was no other choice left and thus I decided to do some randomized search. The idea was to randomly go to some hotel and ask them if they knew any hotels by that name. They should definitely be able to help me…

Soon my brain started organizing the things that happened since morning and immediately a small idea came to the foreground. I had made a phone call from the hotel to my friend’s mobile that morning…And that was it…

Finally, I landed in the correct hotel, and just looked at the name board. The name R. K. was gleaming golden in the 4 O’ clock sun, smiling on my ludicrous day.

An Encounter with Reality!

Dedicated to my Mom!

--This is a pure work of fiction and all the thoughts stated here are my own perceptions--

It was on one of the travels back from the US that I met this person, who changed my view of the reality forever and ever …

Life had been hectic for me as a software engineer, and by nature, myself being a long familiar homesick, often used to honker on when I can take a vacation. It was on one of such visits from the US, that I came across this person. He was flying to take part in a convention in India.

He was in his mid 50s, was a big figure with a long beard, resembling the wizard in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. He was reading a magazine quietly, but often ejecting a derisive smile. I was sitting near the window, and often tried to peep into what he was reading so that I could make sense of what he was laughing at. On one of my tries to look into his article he caught me, and introduced himself as a professor of philosophy at a renowned university in California. Wow! I was excited, since it was the best university I had in mind, if I ever chose to do higher studies in my favorite field. I had a strong handshake with him and then the dinner arrived. I just shot a natural joke saying, “Ok, now I can think of the dining philosopher’s problem” and he smirked at it.

After dinner, we started talking on various subjects, but soon got into the concept of defining reality. I asked him of his thoughts on reality, and found him to be overwhelmed at that query. He said smiling, “You have asked the right question”. He started his explanation in overtones, most of which went over head. He said, “Actually… there is nothing called a reality. Everything is just a perception or imagination. You see things defined by your senses and you believe that they exist. But actually there is nothing in this world that exists… the world itself does not exist”. “What”!! I disagreed perplexed. I ‘ve heard philosophers are crazy people, but looks like they are mad, but then how can a mad person be employed for a great university? I don’t know… may be he was correct. I asked for an explanation about his logic.

He continued. “Whatever you see in this world is something which is defined by your mind, and mind is modeled over your senses. If you had the ability to see through sound and hear through your eyes, then the reality you feel would have been different. Hence reality is something different”. I interrupted him saying, “But then, there must be an ultimate reality, which controls the whole world, or who created these perceptions”?. I was trying to associate what he was up to with concepts I had gathered from the movie “The Matrix”. But, it looked like his thoughts were above the philosophies of a computer-generated world in the matrix. I continued, “There must be a controlling force so that things should fall in place”. He disagreed. “There is nothing like a supernatural thing, because for anything to exist, there must be something which could have created it. And if you follow that path of finding the parent, then there is no end to it. You may argue that, the reason for the first event does not have any valid cause that would satisfy human intelligence, but there must be something. But try thinking this way: There had been nothing before the universe began. There is actually nothing now as well. It was empty before, and it is empty now. Whatever you feel like existing does not exist. It is just a thought. A thought, which does not have any physical existence, but just an illusion, that got evolved into a big framework where we all think we live and which we try to define by our senses to be “perceptible” and believe in that. We believe in the three dimensional space and think it is real. But, actually there is nothing like a space or time and what is present is just vacuum”.

I interrupted him again: ”Sir, then who created these senses?”. “Senses are a matter of evolution. If you can just vision, you can call that primary thought to be something called a “mind”. Mind defined a space around it called a body and believed that it exists. But apparently it itself was just a thought. Mind could not yet formulate a way of sustaining the thoughts for long. This supreme thought formulated a framework to experiment its own existence, which it called the “universe”. This evolution led to everything, even life. Life is interesting because it was a kind of transmissible thought. That is, a thought trying to think and define its existence, which is a property, it inherited from the supreme. Life, like any other supreme thought was in accordance with the limits of time. I mean, time, which is just a perception, is something, which tries to limit the experimentation of a primary thought item. Time, defined the life of a thought. And we as humans try to invent or discover items in the universe, trying to get clues about the supreme or the ultimate cause, which actually is an attempt which the supreme itself might be trying…” The professor continued.

“Interesting…”, I said, suppressing a big yawn. The professor gave a disgusting look at that. We had completed our dinner and it was getting time for me to sleep. Professor read my mind and said, “Yes, I know that whatever I said might look preposterous at first. But if you think deep into it, you ‘ll feel that whatever I said make sense”. Saying that, he went back reading his magazine. I slowly smuggled into my blanket. But the thought of “thoughts” just brooded in my subconscious for long and long…

Time just moves on...

While cleaning up my harddisk, came across this old blog of mine. Felt a bit nostalgic and hence thought of publishing it here. It was written during the new year of 2005.

The days to come, are just dreams,
Only the days that passed, are our own !!

31st DEC 2003- A year ago

I was sitting inside NBAP lab, coding the RadioLinkSetupRequest procedure. I pressed ":wq" on my vim editor, gave a make at the prompt and just turned around! I can see Rajeev and Nayaka through the glassy barrier, in the next lab, vigourously discussing something. In between, Susama intervening, arguing and then turning back at the computer, continuing her documentation. I can see Aakash, running around with a piece of wire, behind dhadha, searching for something. Ratan, opened the door of our lab, and seems, he has some new doubt in the dsp code !! Nileena is sitting in the diagonal lab, infront of a big monitor, moving her eyes from one end of the monitor to the other end !! And if I see strictly through the glassy barrier, I can see a bald head, over the computers at quite a distance, which belongs to none other than our cats and dogs man !! It was quite a bit difficult to look at Rajesh, since his head was behind a PC, which always showed beautiful photos of all tamil heroines !! That PC belonged to Sheik and on the other side, there sat our roaring tiger, Mahesh, who seemed always busy at finding new things ! Hey, Anil is coming, with his big muscles ! But his face reflected sadness ! He came and told, "I had a fight with my Gym instructer and he threw me on the floor" ! How saad !

31st DEC 2004 - Today

I am sitting inside my cubicle, coding the GPS synchronization procedure. I cannot press ":wq" since everything is checked in and am leaving Motorola next week. Rajeev is not sitting in the next lab. He is in Philips and discussing with somebody else. Its not Nayaka, since Nayaka is in cdot. Susama, is no more doing any documentation. She is in Samsung and doing log analysis of a compltely working 3G system. And
where is Aakash ? I cant even see him, since he has moved to Noida, and is totally out of his dream 3G project. He is close to his home and his engagement is over ! Now-a-days, Ratan is not seen around ? Oh ! he too is in Noida, and is weeping on the failure of his project. Now he doesn't come to me for coding doubts. Nileena, has moved from the old second floor location, but still doing the same work. She has completed the
design of a card, which she had started last year and is testing it. And even if I try from here, I cant see that bald head over there. The cats and dogs man has moved from there to somewhere else. It seems, the entire
company is getting moved from the current location. Now, that pc with the photos of all those nice looking thalli girls, is no more there. The person owning that pc, has moved to Lucent. What about the person who sat opposite to him ? Oh Mahesh, he is in sasken now. Again in the second floor, but keeping up the same habit. And where is Anil ? Oh, his marriage is over naa... he is honeymooning ...

I never imagined, a year can bring such a great change.
But there is more to Come ... Lets Welcome the new year 2005 ! !