As I took the auto-rickshaw to return back to my room after another hectic day at Office, I saw this 12 year old kid sitting right in front of me. He was GAWKING at things in a WEIRD way, was laughing incessantly without any sane reason, BLURTING out GIBBERISH stuff at random intervals...In a way, he looked a bit LUNATIC to me...The rest of the people (in the auto-rickshaw) staring continually at him and suppressing their laughter over his STUPID and silly behavior just bore testimony to MY "SANE" observation (as I guess the child was not that YOUNG to laugh at almost anything, without any sane reason befitting a 12 year old)...In other words, almost agree one inside the auto-rickshaw (including me) had tacitly assumed that the child was inane, dyslexic and abnormal...except HER...
As the people inside tried to suppress their LAUGHTER and eschew making eye-contacts with HER (to avoid any kind of embarrassment), SHE held the BOY close to HER chest..SHE kissed the boy on his cheeks and caressed him - as if trying to protect him....SHE had that strong CONVICTION in her EYES that seemed to defy even those things that had been handed down to HER by MOTHER NATURE which was - HER CHILD'S MENTAL WEAKNESS...Still, she WAS BEHAVING as if HER CHILD was absolutely normal...and was DAMN CONFIDENT that HER CHILD was as good as any of those SMILING (NORMAL) faces in the auto....
In all this chaos, I could hear just one voice inside me:
"MOTHER...Thanks for BELIEVING in me !!!"
( :
Monday, October 29, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
AS YOU LIKE IT !
Few people, representing a social group for fighting global warming, had come a visiting to my company. In keeping with the simple philosophy that a SANE GUY would never leave any POSSIBLE chance of interacting with a gorgeous GIRL, I headed straight to a cute girl from that group to inquire about the group and it's modus operandi...She told me about Global Warming and all that stuff..She said that she was from Korea and had come to India for campaigning...
"BAN THE BULB" was the petition that she wanted me to sign (free of cost), as she said : "Use of BULBS cause great harm to climate...Especially in a POOR country like INDIA..."
Before she could finish I interrupted: "Hold it...INDIA is a DEVELOPING Country rather than a POOR country..We are a TRILLION DOLLAR economy...We are the SECOND fastest growing economy in the world! "
She continued: "Yup..agreed...So will you sign this cause ?"
I obliged and signed it...
Then, she said: "If you like you can become a life time member of this social group..All that you need to do is fill this form !"
Me : "Great..What's the fee ?"
She : "Just 200 Rs.."
Me : WOW...Per ANNUM ..Right ?"
She: "No..per MONTH..!" (WITH SPARKLE IN HER EYES..)
I (in hesitation) said: "Sorry..I can't join.."
She: "Why?"
PAT CAME MY RETORT: "Because India is a POOR COUNTRY !"
I guess if one champions such GLOBAL ISSUES, then one must have a GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE about the WORLD (and things)..I guess, the simplest way to nurture the latter (Global Perspective) is to read daily NEWSPAPER..especially "THE WORLD" section...!!!
( :
"BAN THE BULB" was the petition that she wanted me to sign (free of cost), as she said : "Use of BULBS cause great harm to climate...Especially in a POOR country like INDIA..."
Before she could finish I interrupted: "Hold it...INDIA is a DEVELOPING Country rather than a POOR country..We are a TRILLION DOLLAR economy...We are the SECOND fastest growing economy in the world! "
She continued: "Yup..agreed...So will you sign this cause ?"
I obliged and signed it...
Then, she said: "If you like you can become a life time member of this social group..All that you need to do is fill this form !"
Me : "Great..What's the fee ?"
She : "Just 200 Rs.."
Me : WOW...Per ANNUM ..Right ?"
She: "No..per MONTH..!" (WITH SPARKLE IN HER EYES..)
I (in hesitation) said: "Sorry..I can't join.."
She: "Why?"
PAT CAME MY RETORT: "Because India is a POOR COUNTRY !"
I guess if one champions such GLOBAL ISSUES, then one must have a GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE about the WORLD (and things)..I guess, the simplest way to nurture the latter (Global Perspective) is to read daily NEWSPAPER..especially "THE WORLD" section...!!!
( :
Friday, October 19, 2007
RASH"ME" ? (Pseudo-Reality..Dedicated to Scott Adams..as I try to parody HIS witty writing style...CAVEAT: No offence intended to anyone please!)
I didn't find many smart (more than just looks-wise) girls in my company except one - Rashmi !
On first look, I found her quite stylish and swanky - looking at they way she would wear designer belt and accessories (ala typical 'cool' Delhi-ite girl). I liked the alacrity with which she gave me her MOBILE number when I asked for it the VERY first time. (Girls generally take time to give guys their mobile numbers). Both of us were, eventually, posted on different geographical locations (after our training ended) , that meant - we started communicating via emails/scraps/sms's coz our lil' friendship seed had just been sown...
Our "fledgling" friendship started growing quite exponentially..She started sharing her poems with me (she was quite creative as she was not from UP)...She told me the meaning of her name - "Rashmi" stands for "Ray of Light"...She told me that she had this ability of pepping-up her friends everytime they felt let-down..She said that she possesed the ability of bringing smile on people's faces by her good sense of humour (girls generally have bad sense of humour)..She showed me (via Yahoo chat) the WHACKY pair of PINK SHOES that she had bought on Christmas (so ZANY)..In return she was quite impressed by my WITTY and INTELLIGENT style of thinking (Ripostes)...
Eg : She once asked me (via email) -
"So when will you GET OUT ?" (she meant to say - when will you leave the office, that day ?),
I replied: "Get out of what:
1) WORLD - God knows.
2) MY COMPANY - TIME knows.
3) PROJECT - My Manager knows.
4) OFFICE - I know. "
(No doubt..she was impressed by this riposte....)
Few months later, I was transferred back to the same location where she was posted. I was ELATED with prospect of meeting her personally in the office. But you know what - our FRIENDSHIP EQUATION followed the REVERSE of whatever happened in the beginning....that means, it just deteriorated with time...
Here's a possible explanation:
She had befriended almost all the UP girls in the office...Mind you - I always had this BIASED thinking that UP girls fear UP Boys, that guys from UP (myself being one) can never befriend a girl from UP as the latter is a narrow minded and non-creative specie....This caused the distance between us grow large day by day, as I would STOP making EYE CONTACT with HER whenever I would see HER with "THEM". Couldn't help it coz that's HUMAN EGO at work..The other funny thing that I started doing was that I started IGNORING HER (by not making eye contacts with her) BUT 'WRITING EMAILS/SCRAPS' to her (as if everything was normal between us)...Don't you think that it's SO WEIRD - A guy doesn't make eye contact with a girl or talks to her face to face, but prefers talking via email/scraps...(A possible reason might be the fact that she was always surrounded with detested UP Girls)...One of company mates chided me for this irrational and erratic demeanour, he said - "Dude, a girl would not come to you and say 'Let's go for tea'...It's you who has to take the initiative...Stop this emailing/scrapping shit and start talking to her face to face..."....(POINT TAKEN BUDDY)
Somehow, the craving to be her friend still remained as I stalked her closely on Orkut and came to know that she was very creative (via her blog), intelligent, had good sense of humour (via the TESTIMONIALS from her friends), that she was a FIGHTER (via the TESTIMONIALS from her friends...I always wanted to ask her about the toughest moment in her life and how she fought back)...As I (frequently) saw her enjoying (at office) WITHIN her CLIQUEY little friends' circle (including girls and boys from UP) comprising of BOYS from the lesser known colleges whose sum total of intelligence shall be equal to mine, I couldn't help feeling jealous...But then one of my friends counter-attacked this by saying: "Dude...It's not your problem..Girls, generally, FEAR INTELLIGENCE beyond a certain point. Unfortunately, YOURS lies on the 'REPEL ZONE' !!!"
I've LEARNT many LESSONS:
1) TECHNOLOGY (email/scrap/sms) should SUPPLEMENT your PERSONAL interactions with a girl. PREFER face-to-face interactions over TECHNOLOGY when flirting with a girl...
2) No matter how smart/intelligent you may be, a girl will always find 2-3 boys (as her friends) whose sum total of intelligence shall equal yours (provided your intelligence is high). This ways, she doesn't feel uncomfortable with them as she believes in 'GESTALT THEORY' - "The WHOLE being greater than the SUM of its PARTS !"..She thinks (of very inteligent guys) - "This GUY is SO intelligent, he's so WEIRD"...Coz after all, girls generally have very dumb sense of humour, effectively - that means, if a joke has the least power to even make you smile - it can WREAK havoc on a girl's face (laughter is a better word, I guess)...Following the GIGO PRINCIPLE (Garbage In Garbage Out) : boys with lower IQs shall crack enough stupid jokes to befriend (and impress) girls....This argument implied that I had to chose between two options which were antithesis of each other: Either ACT INTELLIGENTLY or GET INTO HER CLIQUEY GROUP...To follow Darwin's theory of Evolution, I had to opt for the former option (I couldn't opt for being an ape like those 'silly' guys) ! ( :
3) If you start with a BIASED OPINION, it eventually turns out to be correct ! I had this thinking about girls from UP - that they don't befriend guys from UP...And it turned out to be CORRECT (atleast for me)..So be OPEN MINDED....
4) Human Beings have this ability of forming CLIQUEY groups (aka friend circle)...It's very tough to enter into that group as it follows LAW OF INERTIA (I tried very hard to INTRUDE into her group..but failed)
5) JEALOUSY and FRUSTRATION give birth to CREATIVITY ! (Eg - this article)
6) Go SLOW with a relationship (especially with a girl)..Don't just haste, don't be "RASH"...
Last but never the least : I (still) MISS HER friendship !!!
PROBABLY, THE ANSWER IS : "RASH"-THAT'S-"ME" ! (Yes, I'm RESPONSIBLE for messing up with her)
The MOOT point remains : Why can't we free our selves of this stupid thing called EGO? Which causes us (like ME) to do such WEIRD things !!!
Interestingly, the word Rashmi ends with "I"....
( :
On first look, I found her quite stylish and swanky - looking at they way she would wear designer belt and accessories (ala typical 'cool' Delhi-ite girl). I liked the alacrity with which she gave me her MOBILE number when I asked for it the VERY first time. (Girls generally take time to give guys their mobile numbers). Both of us were, eventually, posted on different geographical locations (after our training ended) , that meant - we started communicating via emails/scraps/sms's coz our lil' friendship seed had just been sown...
Our "fledgling" friendship started growing quite exponentially..She started sharing her poems with me (she was quite creative as she was not from UP)...She told me the meaning of her name - "Rashmi" stands for "Ray of Light"...She told me that she had this ability of pepping-up her friends everytime they felt let-down..She said that she possesed the ability of bringing smile on people's faces by her good sense of humour (girls generally have bad sense of humour)..She showed me (via Yahoo chat) the WHACKY pair of PINK SHOES that she had bought on Christmas (so ZANY)..In return she was quite impressed by my WITTY and INTELLIGENT style of thinking (Ripostes)...
Eg : She once asked me (via email) -
"So when will you GET OUT ?" (she meant to say - when will you leave the office, that day ?),
I replied: "Get out of what:
1) WORLD - God knows.
2) MY COMPANY - TIME knows.
3) PROJECT - My Manager knows.
4) OFFICE - I know. "
(No doubt..she was impressed by this riposte....)
Few months later, I was transferred back to the same location where she was posted. I was ELATED with prospect of meeting her personally in the office. But you know what - our FRIENDSHIP EQUATION followed the REVERSE of whatever happened in the beginning....that means, it just deteriorated with time...
Here's a possible explanation:
She had befriended almost all the UP girls in the office...Mind you - I always had this BIASED thinking that UP girls fear UP Boys, that guys from UP (myself being one) can never befriend a girl from UP as the latter is a narrow minded and non-creative specie....This caused the distance between us grow large day by day, as I would STOP making EYE CONTACT with HER whenever I would see HER with "THEM". Couldn't help it coz that's HUMAN EGO at work..The other funny thing that I started doing was that I started IGNORING HER (by not making eye contacts with her) BUT 'WRITING EMAILS/SCRAPS' to her (as if everything was normal between us)...Don't you think that it's SO WEIRD - A guy doesn't make eye contact with a girl or talks to her face to face, but prefers talking via email/scraps...(A possible reason might be the fact that she was always surrounded with detested UP Girls)...One of company mates chided me for this irrational and erratic demeanour, he said - "Dude, a girl would not come to you and say 'Let's go for tea'...It's you who has to take the initiative...Stop this emailing/scrapping shit and start talking to her face to face..."....(POINT TAKEN BUDDY)
Somehow, the craving to be her friend still remained as I stalked her closely on Orkut and came to know that she was very creative (via her blog), intelligent, had good sense of humour (via the TESTIMONIALS from her friends), that she was a FIGHTER (via the TESTIMONIALS from her friends...I always wanted to ask her about the toughest moment in her life and how she fought back)...As I (frequently) saw her enjoying (at office) WITHIN her CLIQUEY little friends' circle (including girls and boys from UP) comprising of BOYS from the lesser known colleges whose sum total of intelligence shall be equal to mine, I couldn't help feeling jealous...But then one of my friends counter-attacked this by saying: "Dude...It's not your problem..Girls, generally, FEAR INTELLIGENCE beyond a certain point. Unfortunately, YOURS lies on the 'REPEL ZONE' !!!"
I've LEARNT many LESSONS:
1) TECHNOLOGY (email/scrap/sms) should SUPPLEMENT your PERSONAL interactions with a girl. PREFER face-to-face interactions over TECHNOLOGY when flirting with a girl...
2) No matter how smart/intelligent you may be, a girl will always find 2-3 boys (as her friends) whose sum total of intelligence shall equal yours (provided your intelligence is high). This ways, she doesn't feel uncomfortable with them as she believes in 'GESTALT THEORY' - "The WHOLE being greater than the SUM of its PARTS !"..She thinks (of very inteligent guys) - "This GUY is SO intelligent, he's so WEIRD"...Coz after all, girls generally have very dumb sense of humour, effectively - that means, if a joke has the least power to even make you smile - it can WREAK havoc on a girl's face (laughter is a better word, I guess)...Following the GIGO PRINCIPLE (Garbage In Garbage Out) : boys with lower IQs shall crack enough stupid jokes to befriend (and impress) girls....This argument implied that I had to chose between two options which were antithesis of each other: Either ACT INTELLIGENTLY or GET INTO HER CLIQUEY GROUP...To follow Darwin's theory of Evolution, I had to opt for the former option (I couldn't opt for being an ape like those 'silly' guys) ! ( :
3) If you start with a BIASED OPINION, it eventually turns out to be correct ! I had this thinking about girls from UP - that they don't befriend guys from UP...And it turned out to be CORRECT (atleast for me)..So be OPEN MINDED....
4) Human Beings have this ability of forming CLIQUEY groups (aka friend circle)...It's very tough to enter into that group as it follows LAW OF INERTIA (I tried very hard to INTRUDE into her group..but failed)
5) JEALOUSY and FRUSTRATION give birth to CREATIVITY ! (Eg - this article)
6) Go SLOW with a relationship (especially with a girl)..Don't just haste, don't be "RASH"...
Last but never the least : I (still) MISS HER friendship !!!
PROBABLY, THE ANSWER IS : "RASH"-THAT'S-"ME" ! (Yes, I'm RESPONSIBLE for messing up with her)
The MOOT point remains : Why can't we free our selves of this stupid thing called EGO? Which causes us (like ME) to do such WEIRD things !!!
Interestingly, the word Rashmi ends with "I"....
( :
ENGINEERING V/S MANAGEMENT
Well, you don't find many NITians craving to be a technocrat in the long run ....almost 90% of them opt for MBA later in their lives (unlike IITians)...For us, NIT simply stands for "Never Interested in Technology" ...Here, I give an example which just exemplifies this EMPIRICAL fact...
In our final semester, myself and my 3 project mates were simply running out of ideas to get some software/code that could be procured and manipulated easily such that at the end of the semester we could claim it as OUR CREATION (majority does like that)...Finally, we chose "8085 MICROPROCESSOR SIMULATOR"..We wanted to do it using 'C' but were never sure about our TECHNICAL ability to do the whole coding in C....When the time came to submit the PAPER (3 months before the final project submission) giving a short INTRO to our project - my project mates had to TRUST me coz they had full belief on my skills in written English...I didn't disappoint them as I kept this line in the PAPER, AS WELL (I always had this HUNCH that we won't be able to do the whole project in 'C') :
"....OFCOURSE, the number of functionalities added in our project shall simply be GOVERNED by our technical/programming EXPERTISE in 'C'...."
In Layman's language, it was our latent and devious way to tell the professor - "We'll do what we CAN do...BUT please don't EXPECT much...coz we are not sure..."
Eventally, the aforesaid LINE came out to be right, as we were not able to do the whole coding in 'C'..Finally, we changed gears and switched to 'Java' and were able to complete the project well on time...
PREMONITION POWER ?? (As per some studies, good managers trust their intuitions !!!)
( :
In our final semester, myself and my 3 project mates were simply running out of ideas to get some software/code that could be procured and manipulated easily such that at the end of the semester we could claim it as OUR CREATION (majority does like that)...Finally, we chose "8085 MICROPROCESSOR SIMULATOR"..We wanted to do it using 'C' but were never sure about our TECHNICAL ability to do the whole coding in C....When the time came to submit the PAPER (3 months before the final project submission) giving a short INTRO to our project - my project mates had to TRUST me coz they had full belief on my skills in written English...I didn't disappoint them as I kept this line in the PAPER, AS WELL (I always had this HUNCH that we won't be able to do the whole project in 'C') :
"....OFCOURSE, the number of functionalities added in our project shall simply be GOVERNED by our technical/programming EXPERTISE in 'C'...."
In Layman's language, it was our latent and devious way to tell the professor - "We'll do what we CAN do...BUT please don't EXPECT much...coz we are not sure..."
Eventally, the aforesaid LINE came out to be right, as we were not able to do the whole coding in 'C'..Finally, we changed gears and switched to 'Java' and were able to complete the project well on time...
PREMONITION POWER ?? (As per some studies, good managers trust their intuitions !!!)
( :
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