A Joker

A funny creature, as you may discard it as, have you ever thought about its importance? A joker, whom you can debase to the lowest possible value in a deck of cards or as you may please, enthrone it and make it a king as well... or how about an ace? Yeah, the same joker assumes different forms at different instances in time, without complaining, without asking for anything in return, yet without having any value of its own. Sometimes it may amuse you with the notion of immense power you feel in its presence and sometimes you may curse yourself as being ill-fated because of its absence. The fact is, be it a play of cards or be it your own life, every now and then you need jokers.. whom you can treat as you may please without ever expecting any sigh of protest from them. Those are the creatures who are important to you whenever you need and whenever you don't need. Have you ever discarded a joker card as a left over? That is the least possible value a person can have in your life, a left over. Jokers come very handy as left overs. That way no one else can claim them, and you also get to not claim them at the same time, disclaiming them just as an orphan entity. You just choose to discard it while prohibiting others from accepting it. Have you ever thought about what the joker might be thinking? It must be very lonely there.. doing all these good to the humanity, claiming no dignity, no loyalty, no love, no affection, no compassion and no existence at all. Sometimes, I feel a joker is the most spiritual entity in this world. Somehow, it has been able to attain liberty and indifference towards life. However you treat it, it never revolts, never deceives, rather in return it benefits you whenever you need. and I mean, only when you need. It does not give you unnecessary advices, neither does it interfere in your normal life. Although there are very few, as few as you can count them on fingers, I am very fond of such persons, the real jokers. Someday, I wish to be a joker... once and for all.

The pursuit of happ'y'ness

By any standards, I dare say I still see myself in the category of those who keep wondering "what exactly happened?". Somehow the speed of evolution seems to have crossed the limits set by my mind based on my immature beliefs which sometimes allow me to think that "Sab moha maaya hain" and nothing is going to change the way it is changing. Everybody has his/her own task cut out and everybody is doing it with utmost honesty. Be it evil or be it good, they do it and nobody can ever stop them, otherwise someone would have won by now, either evil or good. The best we can do is to take the side of good and do whatever possible and encourage others to join on our side. Its all a mind game. Nothing happens in the outside world. All that happens is inside our minds. The cycle of change is not a real cycle, it is a virtual one. It will stop only with the end of the world. You set something right and something else goes wrong. Rather, it changes, that is why the current processes do not work for that change and that is called "wrong"? Then we change the processes to make it "right", and by then something else gets outdated. If we could stop the time whenever we are happy, we would be happy forever. But, till now there is no technology which has been able to stop time. It keeps on running, and hence the things change. So, the ultimate solution would be to somehow stop time, which is not an easy task. Because the time has got the highest stamina than that of any living cell on this earth. It has been ticking since ages and will keep on doing that for ages. Is that also a mind game? What if we could stop the ticking of time in our mind? What if we stop the ticking of time in our mind at the moment we are happy? Will we stay happy forever after that? But, what is happiness and when is someone supposed to stop time? Are you not happy at present? Why can't you make yourself happy at your own will? Sure you can. If you can stop ticking of time in your mind (which is the hardest task I have ever encountered) why can't you be happy at will? All my such thoughts result in the final solution to all the problems i.e. mind control. By nature, we crave for something we don't have. If we can control our minds then everything will fall in place and we would be happy forever. At least that is what I think.

दिक्षितांचा बंब

भर रात्रीचे आठ वाजलेले. आमच्या इथे दोन दिवसांपासुन वीजपुरवठा नव्हता. चोहिकडे दाट अंधार. इतका अंधार की काजव्यांनाही समोरचे काही दिसत नव्हते. घरासमोरच्या गटारातील बेडकं जेवण आटोपुन शाळेतील प्रार्थना म्हणावी तशी एका सुरात राग शुद्ध सारंग गात होती. घरातली सगळी मंडळी बाहेर वाय्रावर(घरासमोरच्या कट्ट्यावर) बसलेली. आमचे शेजारी, दिक्षितही त्यांच्या घराच्या दारात सिगारेट तोंडात धरुन प्राणायाम करत बसले होते. शेजारी त्यांची सहा वर्षाची नुकतीच पहिलीत जावू लागलेली मुलगी न दिसणाय्रा अंधारात स्वतःशीच लपंडाव खेळत होती. माळरानात घर, चोरांची भीती म्हणून आणि बायकोचा राग कोणावरतरी काढता यावा म्हणून दिक्षितांनी शारु आणि सल्लु नावाची दोन भली मोट्ठी कुत्री पाळलेली. दिक्षित रोज सकाळी उठल्या उठल्या त्यांना एकतरी लाथ घालतच. लाइट गेल्याने टि.व्हि. बघायचे सोडुन दिक्षितांच्या दोन्ही कुत्र्यांनी खुशाल ताणुन दिलेली. तितक्यात काळाचा आघात झाला. अंधारात दिक्षितांना कसलीतरी धुसफुस ऐकू आली. दिक्षितांना त्यांच्या पाणी तापवण्याच्या बंबाशेजारी दोन काळ्या आकृत्या दिसल्या. तेवढ्यात दिक्षित ओरडले, शारु सल्लु, छु छु.... त्या आवाजाने शारु दचकुन जागा झाला. मोठ्या रागाने शारुने दिक्षितांकडे बघितले आणि "काय म्हातारं चळलंय" अशा आविर्भावात त्याने एक मोट्टी जांभई दिली आणि परत मान खाली टाकली. दिक्षितांनी पटकन बंबाकडे धाव घेतली. पण तेवढ्यात चोरट्यांनी बंब घेऊन पळ काढला. दिक्षितांनी "चोर चोर" अशी आरोळी ठोकली. तोपर्यंत चोर अंधारात दिसेनासे झाले. संपुर्ण गाव तिथे गोळा झाला, पण व्यर्थ, चोरांनी आपला कार्यभाग आधीच उरकला होता. दिक्षितांच्या भार्या काहीतरी निमित्त काढुन माहेरी गेलेल्या. आता त्या परत आल्यावर त्यांना काय सांगावं या चिंतेने दिक्षितांना ग्रासले. दिक्षितांच्या सासय्रांनी मुलीसाठी तिच्या लग्नात भेट म्हणून दिलेला बंब चोरट्यांनी चक्क दिक्षितांच्या डोळ्यासमोर लंपास केला. दिक्षितांचा चेहरा जणु शाळेत वॉटरबॅग हरवून आलेल्या लहान मुलासारखा झाला... कसली कसली दु:खं असतात माणसाला नाही?

The flight of a capacitor...

Last year of graduation, full of excitement and fun. The funniest thing is the group project. Being electrical engineers, we had chosen to conceptualise a smart home where every electrical appliance would behave as if it is a concious energy conserving human being. We had designed the circuits to build energy conserving attitude in all the electrical appliances in the home. While I won't drill down into the technical details of the endeavour, I wish to tell the story of one of the circuit components - the capacitor.

Cooling fan is almost inevitable in every house in an equatorial country like India. With it comes the fan speed regulation. We had a temperature sensor which was to be incorporated in a voltage control circuit which would eventually control the speed of the fan. This way it would keep the fan speed regulated as per the temperature and would avoid unnecessary usage of the fan(and conserve the energy). One of the electronic components to be used in the circuit was the capacitor(polarized). As most of you might know, the polarized capacitor has two legs, which serve as two opposite polarity plugs to connect the capacitor in the circuit. The rule of thumb is the positive of polarized capacitor should go to the input(positive of the source) and the negative should go to either ground or output(negative of the source). The capacitor has a certain voltage rating and it would never let the excess voltage(than its rating) to be built across the network in its presence. Ours was a small 12V capacitor and was a little corrupt in the sense that it used to build only 11.5V instead of 12V keeping 0.5V for itself. Days are bad, even capacitors are not honest. While wondering about why the capacitor might turn traitor, once I misadvertently plugged it with the opposite polarity. That means, negative to the input and positive to the ground. Without noticing this blunder, we completed the rest of the circuit and were very happy to have it ready for testing. Till then, that capacitor was thinking of taking a revenge on me. Afterall it was a great insult to it, I plugged its input to output and output to input. Okay, so the circuit was ready and we were enthusiastic to test it immediately(at 10:00PM). I was standing just next to the test board, cuz I had to take several voltage and current readings on the ammeter. My pal Kiran was my accomplice at the moment. Confirming that everything was in place, I gave a green to Kiran and he switched the circuit on and Bingo....the capacitor sensed that this is the time to inflict the most damage. With a missile's determination, it left the test board and blasted directly and exactly at the center of my right cheek. What a serious blow on my untainted reputation!! Since then I was always wary of this violent creature. For the next three weeks I was teased by my cronies for so many reasons and in so many different ways. I was so ashamed to explain the incident and people were wondering - who kissed on my right cheek so violently(my reputation was tainted in that sense too).

Mission Implausible !!!

Well, have you ever had a compelling urge to kill a movie actor/director for making a bad movie? No? You will - Watch this movie - Mission Implausible!!!

It was as if they were screening this movie exclusively for us five, for nobody at the entrance checked our movie tickets which we had purchased after so many efforts, and it was as if we had booked the complete theater to make it more memorable :). Nobody was there except we stupid five. I made the full use of this opportunity and whistled loudly to my fullest satisfaction as if I was watching the movie in Satara.

The movie is not better than bad ;) but a normal person cannot sustain such a harrassment for third time(if you are asinine enough to have watched the earlier parts of this trilogy). Tommy is simply unmatchable while proving the laws of gravitation false. Newton would have commited suicide had he watched this movie. Sometimes I felt Tommy must be a locksmith in his last seven lives because he could open annny damn lock with just a phone wire!!! One sequence where he hits a plane, which is around a mile away, by his shotgun the next moment he sees the villain's helicopter which is just less than half a mile away from him and tries to RUN upto there to shoot him - what is the use of that shotgun Dude! You could have shot him from there itself! I don't understand why Hollywood is so fascinated by The Elevator and AC conduits. Every movie of this genre has got to have a shot in Elevator and that too - the Hero removes the AC cover on the ceiling and escapes? All this for a freaking bottle about which nobody(even director) knows what to do with it? That bottle is called Rabit Foot - now please don't think - it's just something similar to "Laal Gulab" in Hindi Cinema. Whoever has it in his hands, villain runs after him.
The direction is beyond abnormal reasoning capabilities. Have you ever seen an informer in the party dropping wine over somebody's coat? How many times? Uncountable? Add one to it - this is Mission Implausible. I have seen a car stopping on a manhole on the road and the passengers escaping through it for innumerable times - remember Tiranga? That was around 10 years back when RajKumar had made us go haywire by his unmatchable wit. This is not enough - the movie is replete with so many hackneyed sequences that you will remember almost all Hindi movies by The Great Mithunda, Rajnikanth and Akshay Kumar(as I know by information and not by experience :P).

It was really a mission impossible for us five to stick in there for around 2 freaking hours.
No more Missions Please!!!!

Today is one of those days when I am not confused.

This world is so full of diversity that I just wonder, why GOD is not role model for anybody in this world for his creativity and genii. Carl thinks in his own way while Mike also has his own existence. Everybody is same and everybody is different. In each and everything there is some kind of magic. I listen to songs and I can't count how many notes are filled within just one micro second. So much diversity? How clearly has He demarcated the boundaries of everybody's and everything's capabilities and how blurred are they that we cannot see them. Everything that He does is an art. I am really a great fan of GOD. Sometimes I just wonder what He is up to. Why is he doing all this? Or is it so that he is just playing a game? But then why with us? I really need to see him. I have to.

Know what is cooking in my brain?

Whenever I start cooking I remember the days spent in the chemistry lab doing hazardous experiments, although I have not used fractional distillation for preparing soups or none of the ingradients have resulted into poisonous gase like Chlorine resulting from HCL+KMnO4. I wish none of the chefs in the world are as dumb as myself. So, to better understand what cooking means and to satiate my enormous gustatory and feeding needs I embarked on an expedition to find some tasty recipes which I could try on my own. Eventually I landed on manogat.com where I could find some good recipes which were tasted by and tested on so many other manogatis. So I was quite sure of not failing this time. First thing I tried was "boiling water" and I was successful in the first attempt for the first time. Who says failure is the first step towards success? In this case, I skipped that step and leaped forward to making an omelette. To my utter surprise I was successful again but with a tinge of distaste, because the omelette was not EATABLE. Then I understood that the main aim of cooking is to cook things which can be EATEN(after cooking them). And now by the rule "what goes in, comes out", my brain cells produced a fantastic idea of cooking rice. This time I was nervous and overcautious because there was nothing for me to do except for putting rice in water and the mixture(?) in the oven. I was afraid of exploding the oven so I set the cooking time to 1 min and increased it by 1 min every time it stopped. Finally after 20 excruciating mins I was satisfied with the performance of the oven and decided to check if the rice is cooked. And here it is, freshly cooked, delicious, white, heated, hungry, ready to be eaten, steamy and yummy rice prepared by me. My roommates were happier than me at my success and we decided to celebrate with a party. The menu for the party was boiled eggs. Gosh! this was amazing, if you boil the eggs for more than enough, they get burnt(do not produce chickens ;-) ). From then on, I never looked back and kept on trying new things on my roommates with sporadic failures. And now I am an accomplished chef who won't keep you hungry if you visit my palace(? place). Really, I appreciate the hard times that my roommates had to go through, but "as you sow so shall you reap !".

One More Time. lloose lloose lloose - loose contttrol!

It was a bright sunny day when ten software geeks marched on an adventurous trip to quiet their surging urge for something daunting. The fun started at sharp(?) 6:55 in the morning when we started for a famous temple in Delaware.

After passing through a lot of tribulations because of a wrong map, finally we reached the temple at around 9:30. It was snugly situated in a not so crowded area. Most importantly it was surmounted by a real dome and golden pinnacle surrounded with several cupolas. To be precise, it was a pantheon where all the bigwigs from Hindu mythology had come together. Right in the centre was Devi Maha Lakshmi surrounded by Shree Shivji, Shree Ganesh, Shree Ram, Shree Satyanarayan and Shree Krishna. Vedic chanting was going on and while deities were accepting flowers and coconuts from the worshippers :), I sat down for a while, eyes closed, searching for myself and simultaneously trying to chant Atharvashirsha. Somehow, I could not concentrate and complete it - tried hard but recollected only the first half and then it got mixed with Ramraksha and Maruti Stotra. I begged pardon to the gods for the mistakes in my chanting, applied kumkum tilak on my forehead and returned. It was a rare rendezvous with so many Gods together in USA after so many days. Felt good and blessed. Afterall, we needed those blessings for our complete day while doing daring adventures.

We left the temple at around 10:15 and reached the Six Flags at around 12:00.
The rides were VhanTaaas, going through the convoluted routes with utmost celerity while all the people engaged in boisterous affair full of screams of mirth and fear. The most unforgettable moment of my life came when I went on a ride called Bungee Jumping. While bystanders doubted my unmitigated pluck, tied to a rope I was taken up above high in the sky around 100 meters from the ground. I could see the whole park from there. The instructor counted 3,2,1 and I pulled the cord which would take me to Alice' wonderland. I came down with a frenetic pace upto 50 meters height and then swung on the other side. The fall was quite thrilling making me understand the importance of being alive. I remembered Neo breaking the rules of Matrix and swung in a flying gesture for several oscillations screaming raucously with a squeaky childlike voice.

The fun followed by some modelling. I posed at my best and ended with a stupid mugshot. There is no photo as of now which I might be able to publish for my search for a sweetheart. The most photographed person in the group was Gaurav who was always lost in his dreamworld smiling like a poet at something in the zero. The day ended with a dangerous drive back home by an adroit but sleeping driver(of course it was not me:) ).

Felt like being with friends after so many days - thanks to all for that, for it was my first meeting with most of them. One more memorable day I am waiting for is when I will fly a plane.