Ever so often, I wonder why I frequent movies as much as I do. Then I realise that it has so much to do with the fact that during those two to three hours I am a nobody.........:) just like the hundred odd other people in the movie hall. Wouldn't it be great to be a nobody! no cares, no worries, no responsibilities, and you can actually sit and enjoy what people enact out as if its their life thats going on. And all you have to do is watch ........ all ofcourse for a mere three hours. But it always leaves me wishing that the illusion would stretch on.......to life.
So much for all escapist fundas.......
Had been to the hospital with Maa.The terrace door had slammed on her finger when she had taken Bruno out and even after fourteen days the swelling hadn't gone down....so we feared a fracture. But thankfully it turned out otherwise. I was there with her for about two hours in Ramkrishna Mission hospital. My cousin brother had done his post graduate studies here ...so we sort of knew the inside picture....what went on behind the scenes. Bappadada had quoted some hilarious anecdotes about a doctor's life. Sitting there, Maa and me could recall and laugh over most of them. The doctor on duty in the emergency ward would usually delineate his duties among the younger interns. So it would be them dispensing prescriptions and medicines, looking after the incoming patients. They would probably be round about the same age as me. They still have a long way to go as far as studies are concerned. Then they have to establish themselves, build a reputation and only after ..enjoy the fruits of reputation , a good practise and a steady income.
Compared to them, software engineers have life a lot easy. (no wonder I can sit here ....without a job ...on the confidence of some software boom that if I don't get my visa I can still get a job...somewhere :) ). When the decision of taking up biology comes up in class eleven ... had I really thought so far ahead!
I know what influenced me, I hated Biology because I just could not remember everything nor get myself interested in the dissections and innumerable scientific names or in learning pages of notes. Mostly students get an apathy towards cutting frogs and hence the decision is taken for them rather than by them.........but many others I know wanted to "keep both options open " at the end of twelvth and so opted for bio. Well good for them.... and at the end of it, I hope everybody landed up in the stream they wanted.
Ofcourse I had always heard life as an engineer is no studies, almost complete masti ("study well in eleventh and twelvth and you will never have to study later")..... it didn't turn out exactly like that but yes .... you can get by on a lot of pre-known concepts and by studying last nights .....so its more of "there is an exam tomorrow therefore study" than anything else. Based on where I stand today, I can endorse and re-endorse the fact. Today engineers can get easy recruitment, demand high pay packets...live their life in air conditioned offices...and generally complain about Bahrees' from the comfort of their offices when (and if --the referred article is still a controversy and a good topic of discussion :) ) the latter bring a slur on the name of out-sourcing or IT in India. But they don't save lives. They do save customers some time and bugs ..... but software engineers are not and will never be irreplaceable. They would never be god to anyone bcoz of having saved a life just in time or bcoz they brought a new baby into the world and made some woman a mother or bcoz they touched lives. They would always be god to their customers :)...bcoz only they know to put right the code which in the first place was created by them.
I had not started this blog with the thought of writing out a for and against arguement for software engineers, I being one myself can hardly sit and aim a kick at myself. :) But I think we left the human touch far behind when we started running behind money....I don't think that statement discriminates between doctors or engineers - it applies to both.
And between all this and an internet connection which truly gave up on us and hanged itself for three days, leaving us stranded (believe me .....that is literally how it feels :) ).....I totally forgot Sthiti's birthday. I am/will be a dumb-wit in the matter of remembering birthdays. Vishal sent a really nice mail which I needed very much... his motto was to just look at the mirror and say "U r great"...:) I could not help but smile.
If only I had this someone magically conjured up to manage my life along with theirs ...:) I guess I would escape again.
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Monday, June 27, 2005
A morning in Lake market.
I could hardly believe that an entire week has flown off since leaving Hyderabad. Have I been busy ?.. not really... except when I was busy working myself up over visa issues and creating havoc for Maa and Tukan too. But I better not go into that.....there were so many unpublished blogs created and destroyed :) some, where I would hammer myself into the wall and others, where the insecurities would speak for themselves.
My mom and I watched Parineeta on Friday.....I love watching movies with her because she has her own set of likes and dislikes and I love argueing it out with her at the end of the movie. It was only towards the fag end of the movie that I realised I had read the story before (yup you can call it lack of recognition due to commercialised rehaul :) ) it was one of my favs written by sarat chandra chatterjee....but that said, the ending was made too dramatic ... too loud and garish for the rest of the movie. But what was beautiful was the relationship shared by lalita (vidya balan) and shekhar (saif ali khan)....the small jealousies of possesiveness, the companionship and togtherness, the play of feelings and of unspoken words was amazing to watch. Ofcourse Saif ali plays his role with `elan... and so does Vidya balan. Saturday morning.. found us in Inox at forum. I would never ever compare it to Imax. It lacks that something which I cannot put in words...even though both are these commercial multiplexes with huge screens. Kolkata crowd is a very familiar crowd of teenage couples and groups mainly, and marwari kids. Thats what is maybe the underlying difference .....I had seen Imax fill with families. The movie was Batman begins. Reviews : I love all superhero movies because of the message they leave behind. This one talked of facing your fears and had some amazing twists and turns in the story.... what was really great was it delved into how or what drove batman to become batman. Given that, I missed the theme music of spiderman or anything worthy of taking its place.
Sunday morning.. I made my way with Maa to Lake market. It is one of the many markets here in Kolkata where you still have to bargain your way through ...... and where the packed and parcelled vegetables and grains are yet to make their entry. Ofcourse it does mean wading through littered vegetables and fish markets... but it also brings a human touch... leaving it to you to decide whether you prefer air conditioned supermarkets over them ...... It was in this market, that I would find myself in, nearly every Sunday morning during my school days, clutching Maa or Baba's hand as I gingerly picked my way through the narrowly spaced vendors and their displayed goods. Their offers of chocolates would usually never meet with a no :)... there was this groceries shop where we would get all our groceries from. There were three people there whom I had grown to know. And the bill would usually run for miles... that too in a way of writing which had more curves than I have ever seen anyone write.....there was also this potato vendor who would count the money out in english .... "ram twenty thirty forty"... and to a new just inducted to maths small kid like me - he captured all the entertainment and charm of the english world for some seconds. I was probably going there after what ... some 6 or 7 years. And it turned out exactly as I had expected...there were two of the three old people at the grocery shop, they greeted me with smiles as if I had never left frequenting them...... "arre...kato baro hoye geche" (how you have grown)..."shedin ii dada ke jigesh korchilam meye aar cheler bishoy" (was asking your dad the other day about you and your brother). There is something about being recognised after all the years ... something about feeling that there is still the same bond - of a little girl coming with her parents to do the sunday marketing...and something that brings back childhood memories in a flood.........The potato vendor was also still there and even though as my mother later told me that we wouldn't have bought from him for some years now ... he called at our retreating backs "aloo chai naki" (do you need potatoes? ) Homecoming :) yes ..... rather market-coming. The openness and blatant lack of trying to hide their surprise or curiosity.... their gossips and chats ... and small questions about your life which ceases to make it just a shop-keeper and any other buyer bond ....the nuances of their human touch....I wouldn't trade all this anyday..... :) ..... At the exit to the market ...(not that it is a proper exit...there are two ways you can either use to enter or leave the market) a mango seller was intent on selling mangoes to Maa, insisting they would be very sweet ....since he had forced her to buy them.... and they were. One ended up as mango shake today morning and the other I have left to savour and eat...... I also finished reading Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh and have now moved on to White Mughals (Shalu's gift) and Hitch-hiker's Guide to the galaxy. Amitav Ghosh has established himself as my favorite writers .... his sensibilities, style, characters and their relationships (...I do keep going around in circles about relationships :)) weave you into the story ... I would recommend Hungry Tide as a good read. Looking forward to another lazy week ...gorging myself on mom's hand cooked food.....and fighting with tukan and playing with bruno. I also have Namesake and some more books lined up....and a visa interview in the horizon...:)
and I just realised this blog has also run to pages ..........
My mom and I watched Parineeta on Friday.....I love watching movies with her because she has her own set of likes and dislikes and I love argueing it out with her at the end of the movie. It was only towards the fag end of the movie that I realised I had read the story before (yup you can call it lack of recognition due to commercialised rehaul :) ) it was one of my favs written by sarat chandra chatterjee....but that said, the ending was made too dramatic ... too loud and garish for the rest of the movie. But what was beautiful was the relationship shared by lalita (vidya balan) and shekhar (saif ali khan)....the small jealousies of possesiveness, the companionship and togtherness, the play of feelings and of unspoken words was amazing to watch. Ofcourse Saif ali plays his role with `elan... and so does Vidya balan. Saturday morning.. found us in Inox at forum. I would never ever compare it to Imax. It lacks that something which I cannot put in words...even though both are these commercial multiplexes with huge screens. Kolkata crowd is a very familiar crowd of teenage couples and groups mainly, and marwari kids. Thats what is maybe the underlying difference .....I had seen Imax fill with families. The movie was Batman begins. Reviews : I love all superhero movies because of the message they leave behind. This one talked of facing your fears and had some amazing twists and turns in the story.... what was really great was it delved into how or what drove batman to become batman. Given that, I missed the theme music of spiderman or anything worthy of taking its place.
Sunday morning.. I made my way with Maa to Lake market. It is one of the many markets here in Kolkata where you still have to bargain your way through ...... and where the packed and parcelled vegetables and grains are yet to make their entry. Ofcourse it does mean wading through littered vegetables and fish markets... but it also brings a human touch... leaving it to you to decide whether you prefer air conditioned supermarkets over them ...... It was in this market, that I would find myself in, nearly every Sunday morning during my school days, clutching Maa or Baba's hand as I gingerly picked my way through the narrowly spaced vendors and their displayed goods. Their offers of chocolates would usually never meet with a no :)... there was this groceries shop where we would get all our groceries from. There were three people there whom I had grown to know. And the bill would usually run for miles... that too in a way of writing which had more curves than I have ever seen anyone write.....there was also this potato vendor who would count the money out in english .... "ram twenty thirty forty"... and to a new just inducted to maths small kid like me - he captured all the entertainment and charm of the english world for some seconds. I was probably going there after what ... some 6 or 7 years. And it turned out exactly as I had expected...there were two of the three old people at the grocery shop, they greeted me with smiles as if I had never left frequenting them...... "arre...kato baro hoye geche" (how you have grown)..."shedin ii dada ke jigesh korchilam meye aar cheler bishoy" (was asking your dad the other day about you and your brother). There is something about being recognised after all the years ... something about feeling that there is still the same bond - of a little girl coming with her parents to do the sunday marketing...and something that brings back childhood memories in a flood.........The potato vendor was also still there and even though as my mother later told me that we wouldn't have bought from him for some years now ... he called at our retreating backs "aloo chai naki" (do you need potatoes? ) Homecoming :) yes ..... rather market-coming. The openness and blatant lack of trying to hide their surprise or curiosity.... their gossips and chats ... and small questions about your life which ceases to make it just a shop-keeper and any other buyer bond ....the nuances of their human touch....I wouldn't trade all this anyday..... :) ..... At the exit to the market ...(not that it is a proper exit...there are two ways you can either use to enter or leave the market) a mango seller was intent on selling mangoes to Maa, insisting they would be very sweet ....since he had forced her to buy them.... and they were. One ended up as mango shake today morning and the other I have left to savour and eat...... I also finished reading Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh and have now moved on to White Mughals (Shalu's gift) and Hitch-hiker's Guide to the galaxy. Amitav Ghosh has established himself as my favorite writers .... his sensibilities, style, characters and their relationships (...I do keep going around in circles about relationships :)) weave you into the story ... I would recommend Hungry Tide as a good read. Looking forward to another lazy week ...gorging myself on mom's hand cooked food.....and fighting with tukan and playing with bruno. I also have Namesake and some more books lined up....and a visa interview in the horizon...:)
and I just realised this blog has also run to pages ..........
Sunday, June 19, 2005
To all the good times...and the rocking times... and the times to come...
At home and comfortable ….a very bad internet connection, an interfering brother constantly monitoring my internet access (now watching Karthikeyan chalking his first points), Bruno asking for constant attention (right now asleep) and I am all set at home….
And to think that it took only two hours for a transition from a hyderabadi life to a kolkata one….
Yesterday I would have sat and typed out some three pages of my last days in hyd… thanks to our great internet connection ….. one click and all of it vanished …spoof !! My genius brother promised me (in return for watching game videos) that he would retrieve it …(here my brother quips in: ….it seems me, the computer engineer had closed the window thus removing all such chances …)
There is something about blogging, knowing no-one will read all your gibberish and something quite different when you know someone will tune in …….:) to spell it out , I am conscious today ….. conscious about use of words and sentences ….like the way you are in front of people….you make a suitable rehearsal of what to say and what not to say and whom to say it to and whom not to say … and quite spoil the genuineness in you that way… well I am going to make a conscious effort not to stay conscious :)..
The first person I noticed on coming down the elevator of netaji subhas airport was Maa, then Baba…and behind them … standing quite a few inches taller than when I had seen him last, with a dark tan and an equally underweight weight and build was Tukan……
After some umpteen (actually three) trips to the luggage conveyor belt, I managed to get all my things in place. We reached our car, only to find the birds had probably found a very good resting place .. (if you get what I mean :) )…..
Three hours before that, I had been at the Begumpet airport, standing outside the gates with a boarding pass, some four hand luggages and with Vishnu, Shobs, Laks, Shalu and Anshuman. Rounds of "all the bests" and "take cares" … and I didn’t want to turn back and go in. But ofcourse there comes a single moment of separation .. the moment when you cross the line to the so called other side …and lives which were so long linked separate to go their own ways.
I can just see Vishnu with an OA page open in front of her, Shobs, Shalu and Laks busy typing away at work…Anshuman would probably not have reached office.. Saurabh would be nearly sleeping before the monitor (if in office) considering that he would have returned from bangalore today, Nanda would have reached office the earliest and must be working or watching the football replay J…. Deepu is supposed to be back today but he might have extended his leave. So see people… I know what all of you are doing J….(J does stand for joke doesn't it....I always meant to ask but forgot) ....and I ofcourse am typing on a Microsoft page (I should learn from my mistakes…) and will Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V a little later……
Nearly twelve to fourteen hours before that, Shalu, Laks, Shobs,Vishnu and me had been nearly rolling with laughter on the floor… it was 3 in the night and shobs had this brilliant idea of recording voices…. All our creative inspirations , from singing to mock ads came tumbling out … we sang “pehla nasha” beautifully synchronized, and “aae kaash ke hum” equally awfully out of tune…. Vishnu solo –“Kaal nahi tha woh kya hai ..” in tamil…. And then there were “Tata Indica ….dishoom dishoom”, and “Green plywood-swaami savitri ” which became “Maruti Indica” and “greenwood”…. All this punctuated by our brilliantly engineered comments which … from literally sleep drunk mouths, sounded quite different from what they were supposed to mean…. J
The previous day, I had had lunch with Shobs, Vishnu and Radha at Indulge. After which, Vishnu coerced me into going back to office. So I landed up on the south wing, fourth floor…waiting for Vishnu to go in and get my slam book. Vishnu came back with reports of Saurabh and Anshuman’s sprained knees …and that I had to come inside...as they could not move from their seats.....
And I landed up signing in the visitor’s book, with a visitor card no. 47…at my ex-cubicle. :) And I am really glad I did….
I ended up getting a welcome with “sahi” …one of my patent hindi adjectives, from nanda, bhargav, anshu and saurabh ….. and we spent quite some time just catching up… I was the one doing the catching up… on the new product that the topcoder team had already come up with … they had a name too… “Saans” (SAurabh + ANShuman)…. I made it clear that I would not join unless it also included a letter from my name (but they might possible consider that more a blessing than threat ;) )…. I suggested one too- “Spans”…Bhargav followed with “Spank”…need I say more! They are on the lookout for dedicated developers by the way.. all the managerial positions having already been taken up by them ….;)
Sitting here.. all that seems pretty far away now……
But then, all this might never have happened…
Vishnu might have got placed in some other company, we all might never have landed up in Hyd together, the top coder team might never have been formed, IMAX might not have become a regular haunt, Sthiti and Sapna may not have been able to frequent us from Bangalore or we from Hyd, phone calls to Pune(Tulika coming over) or Delhi (to Sheeba) may never have happened… we may never have had weekends to spend together …and the world may not have knit us so closely together as it did……
Two years from now, we will probably be scattered all over the globe…..with different priorities…different careers … but yes definitely friends…becoz we have shared a lot together…and bcoz each of our idiosyncrasies are now a part of us and our friendships….. right now, each of us are in the quasi- static state (I like the sound of the word quasi a lot :D ) confused about what to do, about our lives and careers … whether we will be happy doing this or that …what will happen ….and what will not happen …..
But in the end… you are richer by the experience …. and my blog is richer by the chronicle of all these memories :)…..
So wherever we land up, whatever we do..… ….(my brother’s comment : end it with “I will be right here “writing” for you” …) …. And I think I’ll end on just that note :)……
p.s : my last post was titled “To all my friends”… and it began like “There are times when you know you are blessed..and these times are spelt as F.R.I.E.N.D.S…”. yes i know ... senti senti... but i promise this is the last such post ...:) J J J J
And to think that it took only two hours for a transition from a hyderabadi life to a kolkata one….
Yesterday I would have sat and typed out some three pages of my last days in hyd… thanks to our great internet connection ….. one click and all of it vanished …spoof !! My genius brother promised me (in return for watching game videos) that he would retrieve it …(here my brother quips in: ….it seems me, the computer engineer had closed the window thus removing all such chances …)
There is something about blogging, knowing no-one will read all your gibberish and something quite different when you know someone will tune in …….:) to spell it out , I am conscious today ….. conscious about use of words and sentences ….like the way you are in front of people….you make a suitable rehearsal of what to say and what not to say and whom to say it to and whom not to say … and quite spoil the genuineness in you that way… well I am going to make a conscious effort not to stay conscious :)..
The first person I noticed on coming down the elevator of netaji subhas airport was Maa, then Baba…and behind them … standing quite a few inches taller than when I had seen him last, with a dark tan and an equally underweight weight and build was Tukan……
After some umpteen (actually three) trips to the luggage conveyor belt, I managed to get all my things in place. We reached our car, only to find the birds had probably found a very good resting place .. (if you get what I mean :) )…..
Three hours before that, I had been at the Begumpet airport, standing outside the gates with a boarding pass, some four hand luggages and with Vishnu, Shobs, Laks, Shalu and Anshuman. Rounds of "all the bests" and "take cares" … and I didn’t want to turn back and go in. But ofcourse there comes a single moment of separation .. the moment when you cross the line to the so called other side …and lives which were so long linked separate to go their own ways.
I can just see Vishnu with an OA page open in front of her, Shobs, Shalu and Laks busy typing away at work…Anshuman would probably not have reached office.. Saurabh would be nearly sleeping before the monitor (if in office) considering that he would have returned from bangalore today, Nanda would have reached office the earliest and must be working or watching the football replay J…. Deepu is supposed to be back today but he might have extended his leave. So see people… I know what all of you are doing J….(J does stand for joke doesn't it....I always meant to ask but forgot) ....and I ofcourse am typing on a Microsoft page (I should learn from my mistakes…) and will Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V a little later……
Nearly twelve to fourteen hours before that, Shalu, Laks, Shobs,Vishnu and me had been nearly rolling with laughter on the floor… it was 3 in the night and shobs had this brilliant idea of recording voices…. All our creative inspirations , from singing to mock ads came tumbling out … we sang “pehla nasha” beautifully synchronized, and “aae kaash ke hum” equally awfully out of tune…. Vishnu solo –“Kaal nahi tha woh kya hai ..” in tamil…. And then there were “Tata Indica ….dishoom dishoom”, and “Green plywood-swaami savitri ” which became “Maruti Indica” and “greenwood”…. All this punctuated by our brilliantly engineered comments which … from literally sleep drunk mouths, sounded quite different from what they were supposed to mean…. J
The previous day, I had had lunch with Shobs, Vishnu and Radha at Indulge. After which, Vishnu coerced me into going back to office. So I landed up on the south wing, fourth floor…waiting for Vishnu to go in and get my slam book. Vishnu came back with reports of Saurabh and Anshuman’s sprained knees …and that I had to come inside...as they could not move from their seats.....
And I landed up signing in the visitor’s book, with a visitor card no. 47…at my ex-cubicle. :) And I am really glad I did….
I ended up getting a welcome with “sahi” …one of my patent hindi adjectives, from nanda, bhargav, anshu and saurabh ….. and we spent quite some time just catching up… I was the one doing the catching up… on the new product that the topcoder team had already come up with … they had a name too… “Saans” (SAurabh + ANShuman)…. I made it clear that I would not join unless it also included a letter from my name (but they might possible consider that more a blessing than threat ;) )…. I suggested one too- “Spans”…Bhargav followed with “Spank”…need I say more! They are on the lookout for dedicated developers by the way.. all the managerial positions having already been taken up by them ….;)
Sitting here.. all that seems pretty far away now……
But then, all this might never have happened…
Vishnu might have got placed in some other company, we all might never have landed up in Hyd together, the top coder team might never have been formed, IMAX might not have become a regular haunt, Sthiti and Sapna may not have been able to frequent us from Bangalore or we from Hyd, phone calls to Pune(Tulika coming over) or Delhi (to Sheeba) may never have happened… we may never have had weekends to spend together …and the world may not have knit us so closely together as it did……
Two years from now, we will probably be scattered all over the globe…..with different priorities…different careers … but yes definitely friends…becoz we have shared a lot together…and bcoz each of our idiosyncrasies are now a part of us and our friendships….. right now, each of us are in the quasi- static state (I like the sound of the word quasi a lot :D ) confused about what to do, about our lives and careers … whether we will be happy doing this or that …what will happen ….and what will not happen …..
But in the end… you are richer by the experience …. and my blog is richer by the chronicle of all these memories :)…..
So wherever we land up, whatever we do..… ….(my brother’s comment : end it with “I will be right here “writing” for you” …) …. And I think I’ll end on just that note :)……
p.s : my last post was titled “To all my friends”… and it began like “There are times when you know you are blessed..and these times are spelt as F.R.I.E.N.D.S…”. yes i know ... senti senti... but i promise this is the last such post ...:) J J J J
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Last day ...in my first company
Well ...as the last days always go ... first you have this countdown and then ...a sudden feeling that time is running off faster than you can live it.... the same time that seemed to be stagnating some days back. And then you realise ..ok its time to leave and you wonder if you will be missed at all....whether you really managed to make any difference while here...then there are those couple of lasts...
the last time entry into the cyber gateway building
the last time swiping of the access card at the entry door ...( tomorrow I will be denied entry through these same gates and I have to stand outside a guest awaiting permission and a paper-slip for entry)... it is strange - the wonderful feeling of belonging and the exactly opposite feeling of being estranged from what was once yours ...
the last lunch at the sixth floor cafeteria ... (this will be quite a paragraph), our cafeteria has these sloping side walls, made of glass. And each floor of slanting walls commands quite a view...views of shilparamam, or rather dull views of the nest building. The best thing, if ever you get a chance, is to watch the rain fall and the drops slither down the surface ... they create an amazing pattern by their trails and their shadows on your face. Well...Vishnu was there and after quite a normal round at the buffet table we tried out something we have been meaning to do for days.
We climbed the staircase that runs the length of the whole building to the terrace. ( no ...that is not the thing we have been meaning to do for days... :) ). The terrace doors had been locked and all my unlocking skills also could not manage to open the wire which had been tied to the door handles. We gave up on trying to get in and took some photos of the view around...... me with my hand over Cyber Towers, Vishnu with TCS building in the background ...and I was down to my last but one snap. We were dishearetened that we missed the top view of cyber gateway (yes.... this had been our aim all along). Then guess what !! :) Vishnu just jumps over the side wall and lands on the terrace....I followed suit.
Now cyber gateway is a building which has two wings so to say, and beams joining them at the very top. Both the wings slope outward with their glass walls at a 120 degrees angle to the ground and then end flat. Thats what I call my spaceship :).
Once on the terrace, we quickly moved to the beams, and after comprehensive and judgemental viewing, from all possible angles, I took the last but one snap of the top view of Cyber Gateway. Childish pleasures ... I agree ... but sometimes the world revolves on them. And I would not have my last day.... in my first company ending on any other note. We also took one of the view of Hyderabad and hopefully our speck of a house. And with that my old camera sort of grinded to a halt ......
Sometimes small moments touch you in such a way that they just touch you ..... (sorry for the bad description but I usually do that when I run out of definitions) like the day I had parked my cycle and run under a mango tree in the IIT kharagpur campus, collecting mangoes falling by the dozen ....their stalks probably weakened by the fierce rain ...I was collecting them in my dupatta which was equally drenched as much or more than me ... with two small girls of the security guard probably, who were competing with me, and sometimes seeing my despair at not being able to match up to their running skills, throwing some my way ..............and another girl, some years older to me, who had dragged me off my cycle in the first place...whom I had met just some days back and didn't even know the name off. It doesn't matter probably that the mangoes turned out a bit ripe and a little sour, nor that we could hardly see the road in front of us while cyclingback because of the heavy rain and had to keep stopping our cycles. It was just that the moment stood out ... like todays' climbing over the wall :).
Cheers to all such moments and those many more to come ... which keep you a child and also help you to grow.
Very childish ...yes. Senti yes... but then I am richer at the same time by much more. So why cry !!!
Yesterday Rajesh and I treated the team at Mainland China. It has some of the most awesome chinese food in Hyderabad. The non-vegetarians had a great variety to try out from ...considering that we tried lamb, chicken, prawn and duck ...all in one day :). But more about that later some day.....in a post probably labelled "my team in IDC".
the last time entry into the cyber gateway building
the last time swiping of the access card at the entry door ...( tomorrow I will be denied entry through these same gates and I have to stand outside a guest awaiting permission and a paper-slip for entry)... it is strange - the wonderful feeling of belonging and the exactly opposite feeling of being estranged from what was once yours ...
the last lunch at the sixth floor cafeteria ... (this will be quite a paragraph), our cafeteria has these sloping side walls, made of glass. And each floor of slanting walls commands quite a view...views of shilparamam, or rather dull views of the nest building. The best thing, if ever you get a chance, is to watch the rain fall and the drops slither down the surface ... they create an amazing pattern by their trails and their shadows on your face. Well...Vishnu was there and after quite a normal round at the buffet table we tried out something we have been meaning to do for days.
We climbed the staircase that runs the length of the whole building to the terrace. ( no ...that is not the thing we have been meaning to do for days... :) ). The terrace doors had been locked and all my unlocking skills also could not manage to open the wire which had been tied to the door handles. We gave up on trying to get in and took some photos of the view around...... me with my hand over Cyber Towers, Vishnu with TCS building in the background ...and I was down to my last but one snap. We were dishearetened that we missed the top view of cyber gateway (yes.... this had been our aim all along). Then guess what !! :) Vishnu just jumps over the side wall and lands on the terrace....I followed suit.
Now cyber gateway is a building which has two wings so to say, and beams joining them at the very top. Both the wings slope outward with their glass walls at a 120 degrees angle to the ground and then end flat. Thats what I call my spaceship :).
Once on the terrace, we quickly moved to the beams, and after comprehensive and judgemental viewing, from all possible angles, I took the last but one snap of the top view of Cyber Gateway. Childish pleasures ... I agree ... but sometimes the world revolves on them. And I would not have my last day.... in my first company ending on any other note. We also took one of the view of Hyderabad and hopefully our speck of a house. And with that my old camera sort of grinded to a halt ......
Sometimes small moments touch you in such a way that they just touch you ..... (sorry for the bad description but I usually do that when I run out of definitions) like the day I had parked my cycle and run under a mango tree in the IIT kharagpur campus, collecting mangoes falling by the dozen ....their stalks probably weakened by the fierce rain ...I was collecting them in my dupatta which was equally drenched as much or more than me ... with two small girls of the security guard probably, who were competing with me, and sometimes seeing my despair at not being able to match up to their running skills, throwing some my way ..............and another girl, some years older to me, who had dragged me off my cycle in the first place...whom I had met just some days back and didn't even know the name off. It doesn't matter probably that the mangoes turned out a bit ripe and a little sour, nor that we could hardly see the road in front of us while cyclingback because of the heavy rain and had to keep stopping our cycles. It was just that the moment stood out ... like todays' climbing over the wall :).
Cheers to all such moments and those many more to come ... which keep you a child and also help you to grow.
Very childish ...yes. Senti yes... but then I am richer at the same time by much more. So why cry !!!
Yesterday Rajesh and I treated the team at Mainland China. It has some of the most awesome chinese food in Hyderabad. The non-vegetarians had a great variety to try out from ...considering that we tried lamb, chicken, prawn and duck ...all in one day :). But more about that later some day.....in a post probably labelled "my team in IDC".
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Dear Diary....
Usually my diary would begin with "Dear Diary".... and I remember that I had managed to attach to each page something which belonged to that day. The result was that my diary was bulging at the spine with chits of paper stapled (the chits which had been passing around during class hours that day) , or little ribbons (our hastily made friendship bands) peeping out with their tassels, some bus tickets (all the kolkata buses from prince anwar shah mini to 234s which were part of my to and fro bus routes)......
I knew a blog would/could never take the place of those childhood fantasies.
Amazingly I had built up all these resistances (inherent tendency)...to ever writing a blog.......
firstly, it is so mechanical like everything associated with the computer (this coming from a software engineer)...
secondly it doesn't have the charm of the hand-written words in my chinese-fountain-pen violet ink..
thirdly it may and does cease to be a private emotion repository, unlike the lock and key you can have on your diary.
But all in all, its new, its exciting and no .. i am not marketing it :)...........its almost like a captain's log book, so if its "All Ahoy!!" that I hear...lets start because I am dying to write about me .....
Hyderabad is where I am currently located at but only for exactly three more days....I leave for calcutta (and no, I am not resisting using kolkata) on saturday..... I guess forever.
Senti ? Yes very ... and if you were to ask right now , I would probably make you sit and listen to the why and wherefore. And since I have all this space and time and my own blog......I think I am going to do just that.
I reached Hyderabad on 25th May, utterly resistant (this R word keeps dominating somehow) ...bcoz my company had preponed the joining date. I had only had a week at home after college, and worst I had to have my college friends scattered all over the country ........I probably was(am) stupid but I had these three postulates in my mind, I don't like the company (bcoz they preponed the joining), you cannot make friends in a professional place and I will stay here only as long as required.
I don't think it was a freak of nature.... but I do believe god was having fun putting in surprises in my life ....so that none of the above postulates held true......except probably the last one.
I joined Oracle on 27th May, and later in July got a beautiful apartment in Kavuri hills and shifted in with Vishnupriya (henceforth will call her vishnu). My room had a beautiful view of hi-tech city and all the cyber pearl, cyber-towers, vanenburg it park kanbay software company buildings.....and it was a dream to go to sleep in, with the windows open on a night of the twinkling never-sleeping lights of hi-tech city.
My team in Oracle was HRMS-PQP, PQP = public sector payroll. (don't ask me about the q...none of us could figure out how it appeared). My project lead was Chandra and my manager was later assigned as Ram Razdan (in UK). My idc team (India Dev Center) then was Chandra, Ghattu, Rajesh, Dwarkesh, Vibhor, Tulasi, Ramesh, Vinayak and Sadag. By august end it also included, Deependra, Saurabh, Nanda, Anirban, Anshuman and Krishna (by January). But by Feb end, Vinayak and Dwarkesh had left the team. Chandra, Vibhor, myself and Rajesh (in that order) would be leaving my june end. So from 9... to 16...to 10...... was how the count went.
The first time I saw the Cyber Gateway building I hated it. It was so ...mechanical, so lifeless. It looked like a spaceship or a giant cockroach with sprouted legs. (Later this feature was what made it stand out for everybody and I can recall quite a few friends who were bowled over by this L&T brainstorm.) Needless to say, I hated the city with more vigour (if that is correct english) and I was more decided on holding out......(as if it ever tried to empower me).
The first thing I liked about the city was...... Charminar. Yes, people do tell me that charminar is something you visit so that you don't have to tell people at home that you were in Hyderabad and did not see charminar...but for me it ceased to be just four pillars in the middle of a road.
I went there with my dad during the first week of my stay. It was dusk..... fading into night and charminar was slowly being illuminated by green lights. Standing there was the first time, I actually smiled at Hyderabad ... smiled at the thought that I was actually standing on the same ground where nawabs would have trodden centuries ago... and to say the least :) I felt royal . That is how hyderabad tricks you...it manages to take you into its fold so unassumingly and so suddenly that you fall in love with it. And it is strange to think about it now ... that I standing there could have felt at one with royalties of the past ... what with all the autos, pedlars, rickshaws, pedestrians streaming all around me......but it felt like only me and charminar and a great city in between...:)
They say morning shows the day... then I should have known that life in hyderabad would be one great party. Ayan was my tour-guide for the better part of the first three months before he left for his phd in University of Maryland. The amount of book discussions, feasting on the best foods (chinese from "I forgot the name" place in paradise).. trooping through salarjung museum and watching Troy in Sangeet...made me realise I had tried everything in three months.
I was wrong.
There were seven BTech rectians ( we are the first proud batch of btechs from nit trichy though we have not got our degree certficates yet) who joined Oracle together on 27th may. Chidambaram, Divakar, Bushan, Kulasekharan and me (cse), Vishnu (ece) and Giridhar (eee). Weekends found us at Olive Gardens (to celebrate a birthday and loot the birthday boy/girl) or at Golconda and the tombs (sight-seeing) or at imax ... watching movies. We grew close fast ..through rickety auto drives, melting moment ice-creams constant bickerings between chidu and me, perennial boys vs girls fights, and golconda stories and sound and light shows. Then there came office pressure, the guys got a house much closer to office ...whether for this or otherwise the getting togethers decreased. We got occupied in our own lives........Then came Jan, Giri left. Came May and Kula left, came June, Diva and I are leaving.
Soon after Ayan left, Shobana and Shalini were transferred from Pune Kanbay to Hyderabad. Suparna got posted in CSC here. Resmi and Lakshmi joined Infosys in Hyderabad for training. And life again became college... work the week out and party the weekend out. We became gold customers at imax, lumbini park and ntr gardens...we had been there, done that, exhausted smoothies in Ohris', tried out chocolate delights :) ........
and then suparna left for philips in bangalore, resmi got a great project (finacle) in bangalore. Hyderabad started becoming empty.
My office was...... working in pl/sql, understand the fte module for new enhancements, design docs , word documents.... it was something you got over with and got home and never carried along home. It just happened that Saurabh, Anshuman, Nanda, Deepu and me started going for lunch together to the sixth floor cafeteria.
I don't know what it was that broke the ice.... probably everyone of us started racking our brains on solving puzzles posed by Anshuman. And before we knew it , there were heated discussions, movie reviews and career forums ...all on a very small lunch table which could barely seat the five of us. Then came Saurabh's birthday 19th december, and he being the guy who would be the target of most of our jokes and teasers... we all demanded a treat from him. That was how on his birthday we landed up at his house with a cake and a big card ... ended up feasting on dhokla, more cakes and pastries, home-made didi-cooked gajar kaa halwa and chops ..... from there we went to imax to catch the movie "The Incredibles". It was an animation picture but we enjoyed it to the core....
That was the beginning ...
Next came Deepu and Nanda, both with birthdays coinciding with India becoming a republic. We didn't meet up that day but the weekend found us in Angeethi's with its out of the world dhaba ambience. Chicken, and more chicken and prawns , and I remember being stuck on lassi or halwa for dessert until I finally decided on lassi. And it was the thickest I had had in a long time.
Anshuman's birthday ....8th March....I joined the rest of the team after they had watched Aviator (I had already seen it and would not have been able to sit thru another 3 hours of it). By my suggestion and sadly anshuman's fate, we ended up having a lavish dinner at ITC kakatiya sheraton. It left us a lot heavier(by kgs) and anshuman's purse a lot lighter (by INR) at the end. But yes the unforgettable memories in Hyderabad got pages added to it.
And oh yes, by then we were already the top coder team.
I'll talk about my birthday in a later post... the itinery for the treat being runway9 and dhola re dhani. Shalu, Lakshmi and Vishnu were also there ... and go-karting was heaven in speed :)...............
Have not introduced someone important yet .....Vishnu was my room-mate. I had just known her in college as the pretty girl with beautiful green eyes who tops her dept. She was the one with always a lot of work in office and I would marvel at the way she would handle both ...the pressure at work and our fun at outings. We together frequented a lot of non-frequented places....we discovered Odyssey. She introduced me to Round-the-corner which again became a favourite, and Explorers......Among chat sessions in the night , watching movies together, having fun eating non-veg (sundays to wednesdays were the days she would eat non-veg) and cooking....she was the one who taught me cooking .....(and by her words I cook great sambar) and also the reason why I only know to cook south indian dishes (being an east indian), ganging up on injustices and fights with other room-mate ....I discovered a cool room-mate and a great friend. (this parah is not because she is going to read this up later but also because it deserved a place here...... :) vishnu, i had to put this note in). ...
and all this and more comes to an end. Looking back I can see why I fell in love with the place... friends, fun and more fun ......getting to know people and learning from them...new friendships and relations... great work culture (though I would have enjoyed working on things more challenging)......waiting for the last day of the month to see bank balances get creditted with your salary.... becoming independent....saving and spending and saving ..long winding road drives ... up and down banjara hills ....stormy nights with doors and windows nearly blown off their hinges... unbearble temperatures and sleepless nights without coolers......a city of royal blood ......
......and it becomes hard to say goodbye!!
I knew a blog would/could never take the place of those childhood fantasies.
Amazingly I had built up all these resistances (inherent tendency)...to ever writing a blog.......
firstly, it is so mechanical like everything associated with the computer (this coming from a software engineer)...
secondly it doesn't have the charm of the hand-written words in my chinese-fountain-pen violet ink..
thirdly it may and does cease to be a private emotion repository, unlike the lock and key you can have on your diary.
But all in all, its new, its exciting and no .. i am not marketing it :)...........its almost like a captain's log book, so if its "All Ahoy!!" that I hear...lets start because I am dying to write about me .....
Hyderabad is where I am currently located at but only for exactly three more days....I leave for calcutta (and no, I am not resisting using kolkata) on saturday..... I guess forever.
Senti ? Yes very ... and if you were to ask right now , I would probably make you sit and listen to the why and wherefore. And since I have all this space and time and my own blog......I think I am going to do just that.
I reached Hyderabad on 25th May, utterly resistant (this R word keeps dominating somehow) ...bcoz my company had preponed the joining date. I had only had a week at home after college, and worst I had to have my college friends scattered all over the country ........I probably was(am) stupid but I had these three postulates in my mind, I don't like the company (bcoz they preponed the joining), you cannot make friends in a professional place and I will stay here only as long as required.
I don't think it was a freak of nature.... but I do believe god was having fun putting in surprises in my life ....so that none of the above postulates held true......except probably the last one.
I joined Oracle on 27th May, and later in July got a beautiful apartment in Kavuri hills and shifted in with Vishnupriya (henceforth will call her vishnu). My room had a beautiful view of hi-tech city and all the cyber pearl, cyber-towers, vanenburg it park kanbay software company buildings.....and it was a dream to go to sleep in, with the windows open on a night of the twinkling never-sleeping lights of hi-tech city.
My team in Oracle was HRMS-PQP, PQP = public sector payroll. (don't ask me about the q...none of us could figure out how it appeared). My project lead was Chandra and my manager was later assigned as Ram Razdan (in UK). My idc team (India Dev Center) then was Chandra, Ghattu, Rajesh, Dwarkesh, Vibhor, Tulasi, Ramesh, Vinayak and Sadag. By august end it also included, Deependra, Saurabh, Nanda, Anirban, Anshuman and Krishna (by January). But by Feb end, Vinayak and Dwarkesh had left the team. Chandra, Vibhor, myself and Rajesh (in that order) would be leaving my june end. So from 9... to 16...to 10...... was how the count went.
The first time I saw the Cyber Gateway building I hated it. It was so ...mechanical, so lifeless. It looked like a spaceship or a giant cockroach with sprouted legs. (Later this feature was what made it stand out for everybody and I can recall quite a few friends who were bowled over by this L&T brainstorm.) Needless to say, I hated the city with more vigour (if that is correct english) and I was more decided on holding out......(as if it ever tried to empower me).
The first thing I liked about the city was...... Charminar. Yes, people do tell me that charminar is something you visit so that you don't have to tell people at home that you were in Hyderabad and did not see charminar...but for me it ceased to be just four pillars in the middle of a road.
I went there with my dad during the first week of my stay. It was dusk..... fading into night and charminar was slowly being illuminated by green lights. Standing there was the first time, I actually smiled at Hyderabad ... smiled at the thought that I was actually standing on the same ground where nawabs would have trodden centuries ago... and to say the least :) I felt royal . That is how hyderabad tricks you...it manages to take you into its fold so unassumingly and so suddenly that you fall in love with it. And it is strange to think about it now ... that I standing there could have felt at one with royalties of the past ... what with all the autos, pedlars, rickshaws, pedestrians streaming all around me......but it felt like only me and charminar and a great city in between...:)
They say morning shows the day... then I should have known that life in hyderabad would be one great party. Ayan was my tour-guide for the better part of the first three months before he left for his phd in University of Maryland. The amount of book discussions, feasting on the best foods (chinese from "I forgot the name" place in paradise).. trooping through salarjung museum and watching Troy in Sangeet...made me realise I had tried everything in three months.
I was wrong.
There were seven BTech rectians ( we are the first proud batch of btechs from nit trichy though we have not got our degree certficates yet) who joined Oracle together on 27th may. Chidambaram, Divakar, Bushan, Kulasekharan and me (cse), Vishnu (ece) and Giridhar (eee). Weekends found us at Olive Gardens (to celebrate a birthday and loot the birthday boy/girl) or at Golconda and the tombs (sight-seeing) or at imax ... watching movies. We grew close fast ..through rickety auto drives, melting moment ice-creams constant bickerings between chidu and me, perennial boys vs girls fights, and golconda stories and sound and light shows. Then there came office pressure, the guys got a house much closer to office ...whether for this or otherwise the getting togethers decreased. We got occupied in our own lives........Then came Jan, Giri left. Came May and Kula left, came June, Diva and I are leaving.
Soon after Ayan left, Shobana and Shalini were transferred from Pune Kanbay to Hyderabad. Suparna got posted in CSC here. Resmi and Lakshmi joined Infosys in Hyderabad for training. And life again became college... work the week out and party the weekend out. We became gold customers at imax, lumbini park and ntr gardens...we had been there, done that, exhausted smoothies in Ohris', tried out chocolate delights :) ........
and then suparna left for philips in bangalore, resmi got a great project (finacle) in bangalore. Hyderabad started becoming empty.
My office was...... working in pl/sql, understand the fte module for new enhancements, design docs , word documents.... it was something you got over with and got home and never carried along home. It just happened that Saurabh, Anshuman, Nanda, Deepu and me started going for lunch together to the sixth floor cafeteria.
I don't know what it was that broke the ice.... probably everyone of us started racking our brains on solving puzzles posed by Anshuman. And before we knew it , there were heated discussions, movie reviews and career forums ...all on a very small lunch table which could barely seat the five of us. Then came Saurabh's birthday 19th december, and he being the guy who would be the target of most of our jokes and teasers... we all demanded a treat from him. That was how on his birthday we landed up at his house with a cake and a big card ... ended up feasting on dhokla, more cakes and pastries, home-made didi-cooked gajar kaa halwa and chops ..... from there we went to imax to catch the movie "The Incredibles". It was an animation picture but we enjoyed it to the core....
That was the beginning ...
Next came Deepu and Nanda, both with birthdays coinciding with India becoming a republic. We didn't meet up that day but the weekend found us in Angeethi's with its out of the world dhaba ambience. Chicken, and more chicken and prawns , and I remember being stuck on lassi or halwa for dessert until I finally decided on lassi. And it was the thickest I had had in a long time.
Anshuman's birthday ....8th March....I joined the rest of the team after they had watched Aviator (I had already seen it and would not have been able to sit thru another 3 hours of it). By my suggestion and sadly anshuman's fate, we ended up having a lavish dinner at ITC kakatiya sheraton. It left us a lot heavier(by kgs) and anshuman's purse a lot lighter (by INR) at the end. But yes the unforgettable memories in Hyderabad got pages added to it.
And oh yes, by then we were already the top coder team.
I'll talk about my birthday in a later post... the itinery for the treat being runway9 and dhola re dhani. Shalu, Lakshmi and Vishnu were also there ... and go-karting was heaven in speed :)...............
Have not introduced someone important yet .....Vishnu was my room-mate. I had just known her in college as the pretty girl with beautiful green eyes who tops her dept. She was the one with always a lot of work in office and I would marvel at the way she would handle both ...the pressure at work and our fun at outings. We together frequented a lot of non-frequented places....we discovered Odyssey. She introduced me to Round-the-corner which again became a favourite, and Explorers......Among chat sessions in the night , watching movies together, having fun eating non-veg (sundays to wednesdays were the days she would eat non-veg) and cooking....she was the one who taught me cooking .....(and by her words I cook great sambar) and also the reason why I only know to cook south indian dishes (being an east indian), ganging up on injustices and fights with other room-mate ....I discovered a cool room-mate and a great friend. (this parah is not because she is going to read this up later but also because it deserved a place here...... :) vishnu, i had to put this note in). ...
and all this and more comes to an end. Looking back I can see why I fell in love with the place... friends, fun and more fun ......getting to know people and learning from them...new friendships and relations... great work culture (though I would have enjoyed working on things more challenging)......waiting for the last day of the month to see bank balances get creditted with your salary.... becoming independent....saving and spending and saving ..long winding road drives ... up and down banjara hills ....stormy nights with doors and windows nearly blown off their hinges... unbearble temperatures and sleepless nights without coolers......a city of royal blood ......
......and it becomes hard to say goodbye!!
Monday, June 13, 2005
In the beginning.....
I had to start today and most importantly here .... :) god knows why the compulsion.
Life to me has always been an unthought out path, (sort of like the microsoft desktop wall-papers of forests and paths lost in between ) just following an instinct or I want to do that too feeling ... but it has been loads and loads of fun. Ofcourse with its own dollops of depressions, frustrations and black-outs. This blog is yet another of those "lets try it out" things, I have been meaning to put my hands to for quite sometime. So, lets see where its gonna lead ....:)
Bon voyage .......!!
Life to me has always been an unthought out path, (sort of like the microsoft desktop wall-papers of forests and paths lost in between ) just following an instinct or I want to do that too feeling ... but it has been loads and loads of fun. Ofcourse with its own dollops of depressions, frustrations and black-outs. This blog is yet another of those "lets try it out" things, I have been meaning to put my hands to for quite sometime. So, lets see where its gonna lead ....:)
Bon voyage .......!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)