When everything doesn't go right.

Today morning was not the best of all mornings. We had managed to get the bathroom door locked from inside and we had to use the other rest-room, which does not have a bath. I just dwiddled away some time in the office and then came back....... and after walking in the scorching sun , the only thing I could think of was I have to get a nap. After coming home and cooking for my turn, Niyanta and Nigel, the two under-grad freshmen who have joined this year came over. We all went over to my department where we had our grad tea. The feasting was on ice-creams and cakes. Soon after was the meeting for WICS, or women in Computer Science. I had three slices of pizza with coke. Then in the night we had a reception in the Arizona state museum for International Friends. The spread was awesome, with cookies, brownies, salads , dips, ........ but I was already too full to even think of another round.

Just sometime in the afternoon, I was telling myself how good life seemed. This seemed to be exactly what I had wanted to do always. The exchange of ideas, the freedom of expression, the teacher's love for what he was teaching ....and this automatically followed from his work in the area, the open debates and discussions and finding faults and criticising what we knew as facts, questioning the grounds, assumptions, validity , weaknesses..... it was a whole new experience, and something which I couldn't enjoy more.
:) It turned out in the afternoon that I got less for a slipshod assignment I had turned in. That was ofcourse enough to turn my smile to a frown. It doesn't matter but anyways.

The other thing I noticed was my english is totally going to the dogs. I am always out of proper expressions these days, searching for an appropriate word to phrase my thoughts in. When I re-read my last post , I realised how badly my english is decaying.
Thoughts for the day ....hmmm...... look at the flip side of the coin. :) and you'll find a reason to smile.

Something in the air....

Something is definitely in the air, life has been great for sometime. What this has done is given me some time to look around myself and appreciate the little things ....which would usually be clouded by worries on next paper submission, programming assignment , which data structure to use....and Tucson would be this hot scorching desert , nothing even close to California.....
But then when you actually see from that third eye, there is a clock tower which chimes every quarter of an hour. The ground in front of old main stretched green and provides ideal pastures for playing frisbee.....
On Sunday last, even though I had not finished the reading report for Monday , and I had a presentation lined up on Oracle's support for XML data, I went out with LuAnn to a pop concert. It was arranged on a grassy knoll sloping down to a stage. Only the stage had a half pod like covering...we were out in the open , under the stars and a full-moon night.
There were all these people, old couples, families with little children, everyone had spread out tehir folding chairs and spread out a picnic and were waiting for the concert to start and the full moon to rise.
The best piece of orchestra, that I loved.... was by Brahms. Why ! If you ever listen to Brahms and close your eyes, you'll see flitting images. I saw dancing ballerinas, one among whom was very beautiful. And she seemed to be flaoting across the stage on her tiptoes, in the spotlight, wearing the ballerina's white dress. And she seemed to be playing and teasing her lover...arguing , breaking up and finally having to leave him.....
well that was my imagination at play. But music does conjure pictures.......

My first champagne ...

I remember the first time my mother asked me "how is the college?", I had replied that "my department has an amazing view". My department building is the tallest in campus with ten floors. It commands a view in the northern side stretching right over the UofA campus , across to the Catalinas. The Catalinas rise up and stare back at you , solemn and grave. But the play of sun and shade is amazing. The clouds are usually low enough to either touch the peaks or cast their shadow on them. So the mountains are always alternate dark and light. And you can make out when its raining there .... becoz it will be a haze of dark misty clouds covering that part of the mountain. The picture below is a more distant view than from the ninth floor of Gould-Simpson building which houses my department.

What follows is a view of the Old Main, the oldest building on campus. The college was started with this one building, founded by two gamblers .....:)

Yesterday I had my first sip of champagne. I remember Vishal had told me as if he could predict it, that I would start drinking and had given me a list of advice in this regard. I knew I wouldn't.....there are very few things in which I trust myself completely but this was one of those exceptions. Champagne is different :) or maybe I am saying so to excuse myself ;). And I had heard so much about it that given the chance, I did not feel like letting it go. So, I has a sip...one sip. How does it feel .....like something hot stuck in your throat...just at the point where you swallow.
The occassion happened to be the birthday of my room-mate Savitha. And we made it to be a surorise pot-luck. Pot-luck is where each one cooks something and brings and it ultimately is a picnic of sorts. Our menu comprised of pakodas/bhajjis, tortilla chips, coke, sprite, chole, jeera rice, pudina rice, pao-bhaji, cake and custard with fruits. The last was prepared by Shalini and me and unexpectedly turned out to be quite a hit :). Later we (Subha, Shalini and myself) watched "Scent of a woman" in Subha's house. Al Pacino was marvellous....you simply get floored by his acting and frustrations and power in the movie. Chris O Donnell was very sweet. But my favorite part of the movie was the tango that Al Pacino dances with a beautiful girl. He plays a blind man.....but the way he leads the girl across the floor ...twirling her and stepping to the beats....well, why don't I just let you all watch the movie! :)

Can you imagine.....

Imagine steep mountains, a dark brown in color ....(a brown not like the one you get in camel water colors, a shade darker and a bit redder......) imagine green interspersed cactii or saguaro (pronounced "suaro") dotting the mountains, each saguaro a tall green post with an arm or two jutting out . From a distance they look like sentinels standing at guard .... Imagine two mountains racing each other down to a valley and then try and see the green plan land stretching out to the distant horizon where they are encircled by a range of blue mountains. A blue sky covering the scene and some white and grey clouds ...a briliiantly yellow sun rapidly disappeariing behind the clouds and then emerging again from below only to quickly drop behind the next layer of clouds in a magnificient display of orange, red and mauve.
Well , I didn't have to imagine all that bcoz I saw the sunset at a place called Gates Pass and I have tried to recollect it exactly as it happened. We were sitting on the mountain sides, perched on some white rocks and commanding a view over the valley. The best thing was just sitting with your face cupped in your hands and pondering in silence about nothing and everything ....as for just those moments you felt alone and not quite alone but part of a bigger universe. I know what I was wishing for ...to have all of you reading this sharing it there with me. But if wishes were reality then pigs would definitely fly .......:)
Now imagine a road which curves back from some height , and you have parked your car at the heighest place as far as you could have driven (beyond is a private house and you would feel jealous of the view they command but nevertheless.....). You stand there, your arms folded and look back over the road you came on ..... the road winds away into the darkness of the night but there at the place the road disappears lies the entire city of Tucson...(pronounced "two-saan" probably bcoz its too sunny :) ) .....glittering and shimmering in golden city lights. It forms an auditorium ...one of those roman colloseums, surrounding you and drawing you into it.
That was Campbell point.....
We also spent the weekend with LuAnn, in the botanical gardens ...feasting on a picnic of chicken salad and chips in a creamy cheese sauce, and home-made cakes. The botanical gardens had all variety of cactii also called "aguvae" I think. And the butterflies had just started flying in .... the pictures they formed seemed to be right out of an Enid Blyton story book.

Did I tell you about the story of my name ... well the story starts in Trichy when I put my entire name as my first name in the passport ...so it read Firstname Surname (obscured since people scared me about privacy) in the first name with no last name. I followed the same thing for applying for i20 , visa etc. When I landed here , it seemed my name had been entered into the system as FirstName surname NoLastName. Well they corrected that but they needed to have a last name and so put my entire name in the last name......which means my name is essentially now Blank FirstName Surname...that is no first name. I cannot think of any other permutation combinations that they could do with my name now ...and I am practically ok with anything as long as they have my firstname and my lastname in it somewhere. So there goes...is an identity crisis valid for me or what !!! :)

Rantings and ramblings of a.....maniac

I love to crib...its one of the things I am most comfortable doing as you would have seen through the remainder of my blog. And today , in retrospect gives me a whole lot of things to crib about.
I remember how whenever we had a bad day, or a submission went badly, or late, or we had managed to do and submit it in time,..... the reason ranged from depressed moods to hunger to me just urging them on , Monika, Sapna, Komathi(sometimes) and myself would head to the ice-cream shop in our shopping centre or s.c for short. Its amazing how spending a little money makes you feel good or better or temporarily satiated :).....

Anyways getting back to where I was, my day went badly because
1. I was having trouble understanding the head and tail of Dijkstr'a paper on the structure of a multi-programming system.
2. I had zilch or nil class participation today ...since it was the same paper that was discussed. The only thing I learnt was "take things easy " .
3. My interview for a job, the second round went horribly. It was very nice of them to try to match me with the kind of job I would like....namely data mining , but as soon as it came to answering questions part it back-fired .......I could recall nothing of any A.I algos I would have studied or not studied while passing Bachelor's .
Sigh! There is nothing worse than making yourself out to be a fool.....I mean proving that you ARE a fool to someone.

And just to get over these two incidents, Shalini has decided to accompany me to Gallagher theatre ...its the on campus movie theatre and we have an offer of one ticket free with another (student discounts books- are available all over campus which have all these great deals like free pizzas and movies).
Plus LuAnn has planned a weekend for us in downtown, for a festival celebrating the founding of Tucson. So there is a lot to look forward for the weekend. I am also planning on a new laptop ...not getting it free ...I have to buy it for now. And my brother is really after me to get an Apple, becoz the Ipod is free with it. Only thing will be getting used to the Tiger O/S. But I am still leaning towards Dell, since it will be out of my loan money it should be on the cheaper side with the best configurations :)..............

So long for now, who would have thought I would be having not-getting-a-job blues after having worked for a year .......

Classes... :) dawn of a new era

Yesterday the 22nd of August, I attended my first classes in the UofA. It was fun ....each of them in their own way.
Why ! Well I somehow never imagined that networks class would turn out to be studying papers over a span of forty years to see how the internet developed, of the then and now.....how the ideas were before their time, how some of those ideas are now taken for granted, like for example the basic concept of a distributed system for the internet. Next I had my Advanced Database course, and that turned out to be on designing databases for XML. The course may involve a project or final exam. The final exam option is to ease out the workload ...... but the project sounds interesting.
Today was Operating Systems, and though this too will cover the beginnings and progresses of the modern day os, today the professor concentrated on giving us a picture of "what is the so-called world of research", its currency of publications, from where the funding comes from ....which are the research labs in the country.
Well none of it is a piece of cake, even with a three day weekend I find myself wishing for an eighth day in the week just so I can complete reading all the papers and doing all the assignments.
But yes, it does give a new dimension to things, new examples to visualise what is going on around you and what was going around in the past.......

Apart from that, job search still on. :) Its difficult alright, to search for a job after having had the comforts of an office and a personal system .......and easy incoming hard cash. :) But for once, or for today, I am not complaining.

Warm welcomes

I am just back from a stint at the zoo. Oops, I guess I am starting off nearly at the middle of the chapter. Well here goes then ...... There is an organization called International friends here in Tucson, who arrange to have a student matched with an american family, so that there can be an exchange of culture of sorts. Yeah! I know, I never usually go into all this.....come to study , so why get into anything else but this was highly recommended by my senior here, Pooja. So I was a little excited when I was contacted by LuAnn a few days ago. She happens to be a judge here in Tucson.
She planned an outing for me today, August 21st, Sunday.
When today finally arrived I was looking forward to the evening with all smiles. This would be my first proper outing in Tucson and for somebody like me who scarce stays indoors or works 24 hours a day......it was going to be a welcome break. Shalini would have been left alone at home ,so she also joined in.
And it was precisely at 5:15 that LuAnn herself came knocking at our door. After a brief round of introductions, she handed over a complete goodie bag to me, there was a packet of wild rice with spices and instructions on cooking, some masala naans, a packet of sweets, a water-bottle and some Tucson postcards .....which she told me I could write home with. There was such a wonderful and almost carelessly included sense of warmth in her gesture and in each carefully chosen gift..... which astounded me.
Her other international friend, Sudhir from bangalore, was already waiting in the car with her boyfriend Dennis. They drove us to a restaurant called Chopped, where I ordered a chicken sandwich which was delicious. LuAnn, Sudhir,and Shalini opted for salads. The sandwich was delicious, and I got lemonade too with ice. LuAnn kept us alive with jokes throughout and asking us about what surprised us the most about the states and our first entry here. I replied it was the diversity in their topography ...India has the same thing but on a very small scale....and that people here were so friendly. They said New York would be different, Tucson being a small town people were very friendly.
We were met at the restaurant by two of LuAnn's friends, Sue a school teacher who had the summer off and had joined a research expedition to Africa on the trail of wild elephants. And Veronice or as LuAnn called her, V, who was a judge too and also an athlete. She was talking about having biked to Mount Lemon on the top of the Catalinas and then run down the slope.
The greatest thing about it all , was the amazing range of professions on that table......... and the backgrounds alone, of all the people sitting there, could have told stories till breakfast the next day.
We left Sue and V to go to the zoo. It was a 5-10 mins drive. On the way LuAnn pointed out the park, where people were roller-skating, doing squat exercises or simply running. The mountains bordered the lush green park surrounded by tall palm trees, and it was beautiful.
The zoo had an ice-cream safari on, and on going inside I had an ice-cream sandwich. It was ice-cream in between two slices of chocolate cake. I had been complaining just two days back of how I had not had a ice-cream since I had come and here I was.........
The zoo was not San Diego, .......there were kids all around , some having their faces painted , others with popsicle sticks, and with the word "popsicle" I felt as if I had stepped right into a story book chapter of the Five find-outers. But the zoo was not like Alipur zoo in Calcutta, where your nose warns you of what animal is next to come in sight. It covered a very small space and within it, it had tried to recreate the jungle atmosphere. Walking under overgrown bamboo trees hovering over our heads and thick bushes beside the walkway......our first encounter was with the rhino. Then the pelicans on one leg, zebras and antelopes....and there in a pond, the first thing which made me stick to the railing for a few seconds , were two little ducklings........a shade of brown and black , not much larger than the palm of my hand , who were wading from one end of the pool to the other in glee and showing off their newly developed swimming skills I guess. Their mother kept a watchful eye from the shore .....but they in their own companionship and the coolness of the water seemed to be having the time of their lives.
In Hyderbad it had been Charminar which had first made me stop and love the city. In Tucson, two little ducklings are responsible.
Later from the lion's cage to the rhea to the camdary (I have forgotten its name) to amazingly colored macaws and parakeets, and elephants, and tortoises that looked as if they were rocks, and a snoozing polar bear which looked totally like bruno while sleeping ...trying to snap its nose and running as if living his dream, and sprinklers which suddenly shot out of the ground and started watering the plants like in Jurassic park, and with melting ice-creams in our hands ,...........and a mountain which hovered in the distance but seemed closer , much closer .....
well that was how today turned out for me.
I was amazed by the warmth of it, the warmth of the hug LuAnn gave me with a wish for the "all the best" for classes, the drink Dennis toasted to the start of our classes...... this was the first time I shared a conversation on a dinner table about elephants and research on their dna , and mount lemmon and climbing and jogging it for your workups, and books and jhumpa lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies, and Life of Pais..........three indians and four americans across sandwiches and salads ina restaurant called "Chopped".

Scattered reflections....

I was debating over the title of this blog-entry yesterday night.....whether to name it as "Randomn reflections" or what it stands as now. But I decided on "scattered" bcoz it immediately brings to mind scattered sunlight, scattered glass.....and holds much more warmth than "randomn".
I was writing my diary , musing and brooding and pondering over happenings, going back in time , forward in time, in a sense I was jobless. :) Till classes start from Monday I am, so bear with me. And it is truly said that an idle mind is the devil's workshop. So it was that I had so many millions of thoughts floating and roosting in my head that I thought I might as well put down the ramblings of a jobless, lots-of-time-at-hand, lonely and half-crazy mind.
Before I came to USA, it was one of the "THE" things to do. Somehow whether it was your company sending you or whether it was through higher studies, this was one way of coming to a different life. It was only a few days before coming that some true pictures actually started to unfold. Examples ??? ...... mugging, security, carrying ten-twenty dollar bills on your self.........
But even then that is only half the picture. There is always a difference in each of the situations life puts you into. When I was in college in Trichy, I was away from home (this will recur as a common factor again) .....we shared rooms, we were dependent on our parents for money, most of us were out of our homes for the first time and far away from it, and all of us .......the batch of 2000-2004, were trying to learn to survive. We had ragging, we cried back in our rooms to go back home, the stronger among us did not cry either in rooms or on the phone.....we attended classes after walking what seemed like two kms in the hot sun, half slept or totally slept in classes.........and we weathered it through, through to our final years and our graduation. And we emerged with Bachelor of technology degrees from NIT Trichy (bringing to nought the proud claim that the chemical people had had before of being the only btechs in REC). What developed were some of the best friendships that college brings....of having lived, shared and fought it out together through assignments and ragging and professors and pennilessness and treats and cycling and walking around campus...."chumma" (rec slang meaning "just like that").

The important word in the last parah........"weathered".

The next phase of my life pushed me into Oracle, quite before I could comprehend where I was and what I was doing with my life. The only thing I knew from the first day was, I know I am going back home soon. But that wa smy earning life, and when you earn believe me ....there is a confidence which overtakes you from nowhere. Money power ...you could call it that or you could call it as standing on your own feet, which is one of the most amazing things .... (I realise it only now and ofcourse, when my mother had told me I was too blind to think about it........I was getting money, enough of it, and all I knew was how to spend). When you earn, there comes automatically with it a sense of "I can afford it" and hence magnanimity. And things are happy, becoz you get to do what you wish and live how you wish.

The important words in the last parah........"independence" and "earning".

Finally, I land up here in USA. Back to student life, but not quite the same. Note you are not earning anymore, (you will probably soon in the future) and there is a loan at the back of your mind to be settled. So every dollar that you take out and buy eggs or rice or chilli powder.........something is calculating a multiply by 50 and you are stifling a groan of "Oh my god, so much for this!." Maybe once you start a part-time job and start earning on your own , the money power (now in dollars) will come back and you will be magnanimous again. But as for the part of fighting it out together, surviving, or for growng comradeship........forget it! Remember you are alone here and you have grown to depend on yourself for yourself. And your horizon has narrowed down a lot , you are here to survive so why care..........

The important unsaid words in the last parah : selfish, serve yourself.

Life ! probably teaches you a lot. Just living from day to day is a lesson. There was a time when I had seen nri's on Tv and pitied then and felt sympathy for them somewhat for having to celebrate festivals in an alien land, for having to shop and pay $5 for 1 kg rice. They immediately brought to mind, a wealthy dollar-making class but huddled and small. Yesterday when I was shopping in India stores where you get all the indian spices, rice, bournvita even......I realised I belong to the class of people I once felt sorry for.
At the end of it, it doesn't make much sense writing all this down, except that it is a phase of my life and when I look back, I want to remember that I once felt like this. For now, its just go on living ...and while at it and while going through it, keep the ray of light at the end of the tunnel in sight ....... and probably that will make life a lot easier for now...........till the devil has time to move out of your mind. :)

Opinions .... count ??

I have been attending orientation upon orientation ...today was GATO = graduate assistant teaching orientation. It is meant for all the TAs or teaching assistants, that is the graduate students who will be teaching american under-grad students. The entire program was based on a set of do's and dont's in class. We cannot discriminate, we have to give space, how should you capture the student's interest ...how to introduce new ways of making the class involved.
In some ways, I think it applies to American community as well and not only to the students. Space is something very important to them , so is not speaking out about your political reservations. But the point was, so many of us from different countries were sitting there and learning how we should treat American students, how they could come in chewing gum, or wearing night suits or keep their legs on the tables and we were not allowed to question. As to why this is amazing to me, is because we come from quite a different culture , where we do believe in independence, but we do also believe in respect. However informal everything is, and however much freedom is given to the students, it does seem to me that this is on the border line or over it.

I was contacted by my international friend. International friends is a group which pairs up students with American families so that there can be an intermixing of cultures. I found out my international friend is LuAnn Harley, a judge in Tucson. She already has some other international friends in the campus itself and she is arranging a get-together for all of us on Sunday which is very sweet of her.

Today was also the first time I was able to show my parents the house and me typing away at the computer using the webcam. And when I spoke to Maa later, I learnt how surprised and happy they all had been on being able to cross oceans and continents in a matter of seconds and see me like that....... And I was grateful to the same technology which has always seemed mechanical and robotic to me, for once.
I have been waiting for my brother to logon for ages and he has finally come online, so its back to harnessing the advances of technology for me again :) .......bye goodnight all for today.

UofA....Providence...God and ..friends

The University of Arizona, as I was introduced to on the morning of 8th of August, was a sprawling campus of red brick buildings. It ironically or what seemed extremely funny to us to learn, was started by two gamblers. The building they started off with is the oldest one on campus called Old Main. There is a fountain behind it which is beautiful to watch and which quite transports you, away from America to London.
Now, Tucson is a city surrounded by mountains on all sides. There are the Tucson mountains on the west, Reno on the east, Santa Rita on the south and the magnificient Catalina ranges on the north. My shared bedroom commands a view of the Catalinas, but the department of Computer Science, 9th floor has a much much better view of the mountain ranges bordering the city and the campus.....and they are breathtakingly beautiful. There are some seats in front of the large glass windows in the department, and you could sit there and spend hours looking at the peaks hiding in the clouds.
Initially when I had come, nothing had been impressive. I remember having said to myself, "They are just mountains, they were there in Jamshedpur also, for all I care. And in no way do they seem mine to me."
They still don't seem mine to me, but there is a familiarity which has grown over the last week and now I know they are trying to accept me, as I am trying to accept them . I am slowly learning their contours.....how there is a steep peak at the leftmost end and then a trough..... and how the clouds being vertical over them, means that it is raining there.....

Today we were cooking at home, and every little thing kept reminding me of Vishnu. How she would stand and monitor the pressure cooker and not let me just tilt the cap and take the steam out......today the cooker was taking a long time to let the steam out and I did just that, all the time remembering Vishnu and her admonitions of being a little patient. I try to find all of them among people here ...and I suddenly realise when I end up disappointed how the gathering here is not the same as at Hyderabad.......and I reprimand myself for having expected it to be. I feel Shobana will say a "haan kya" in her exact drawl, and Shalini will smile and start laughing the way she does.... ... and yes it doesn't happen. I know I have to stop moulding the present in the ways of the past. I remember cribbing about Hyderabad when I was there, wanting to be home and now I am cribbing about Tucson and wanting to be in Hyderabad but I guess living in the present is the best thing to do anyday.

It seems Oracle Hyderabad has a new building minus a tt board...I can't say much about that. I will always , always remember Oracle as Cyber Gateway.
And yes life does not seem so very negative and depressing as my writings might sound like.... I have been lucky in more ways than one and that could not have been without providence , god , fate ...........or whatever you call "belief". And ofcourse I always have the option of boarding the flight and flying back. So "ssssomebody stop me" a.k.a "Mask". :)

Fears and first impressions...in USA...final part.

When the flight finally touched down in USA....there was no special feeling, no great excitement, but yes a fear that I might be denied entry in customs based on anything. But it didn't turn out that way at all. When the immigration officer scanned my fingerprints, the only thing he said was "they are a bit dry".... which meant they were not getting scanned properly. Going on to collect my luggage, the next fear was they would have been lost in transit, they would have been shipped to some other plane ......worse, they would have split right down the middle.
Even when after the last baggage had landed and there was no sight of mine I realised I probably must go to lost baggage. But an attendant pointed out that luggages from SQ12 had been coming on another conveyor belt on the right as well. There, carefully picked from the belt and kept aside with a number of others, were my two suitcases. Thanks to Samsonite and I can say they are worth every penny (paise :)) you pay for them, except for some scratches......they hardly seemed to have made such a long journey right across oceans.
From there, just a submit of the customs form where they did not even see what declarations I had made or not made.....to the baggage checkin where they checked in my bags for Tucson and directed me to the domestic terminal.
Fears again...it was only 3:30 p.m local time.... what would I do till 8:30 in the night. I first found my way out and to my surprise found myself standing on an underground highway or broad road (it seemed like an Indian highway to me). There was a flyover on top....the flyovers were works of art ...twining and interwining and again untwisting .... they were amazing.
LA .... skyscrapers in the distance...clean roads and all Mercs, air conditioned volvo buses zooming by. My first impression of USA .....was not bad. The domestic airport was a bus journey away.... its supposed to be so huge you need buses to travel internally. Terminal number 7, I checked in , got my ticket. Then went in for security check. There, they had put some SSSS (quad s) category on my ticket which meant extra searching. I was rattled by the discrimination...I found another Indian lady behind me subjected to the same thing.
After that, I made my way to gate eighty something and there were open windows on one side from where the entire terminal was visible. There were boarding gates ....80 - 85 or more and in front of each were lounge areas. I sat before mine , roamed around a bit to see the shops .... pizzas, mc donalds, coffee, ..... and promptly fell asleep on my hand baggage. I was even dreaming .......but I kept waking up and checking to see if there were suspicious people around. I thought the time would never come for boarding, there would be announcements and the lounge would empty out and then fill again with passengers for the next flight.
Finally 8:30 and I boarded the UA6558 which was to take me to Tucson. It was one of the cosiest flights I ever saw...a very small one and you had to bend so as not to hit the ceiling. But the plane was full of old people who stay in Tucson and my companion was one such lady who was back from California, having attended her grand-daughter's wedding. Even in the lounge there had been an old couple who had been returning to their home in Tucson. The old man kept forgetting where they were heading, and the old lady would keep reminding him. The compassion and companionship between them was amazing to watch and feel. They would hold hands and pat each other's palm from time to time.....and this relationship here is something which I find most touching here.

The weather was bad, andthe plane had to take a detour...the pilot kept pointing out the thunder storm, we could see the lightning in the sky. And something more that could be seen was more planes in the sky. This was the first time I saw another plane flying while being airborne .......it seemed like traffic in the air.
Then the plane touched down with a loud bump and jerk and we were taxiing slowly into the terminal. I moved to the gates where my room-mate to be Savitha, met me....I was wondering if they would have reached. We both got my luggage which followed on each other's heels. We loaded the baggage in an indian guy's car who had come with her and drove off towards what was to be my room and my home or house :).
The roads were deserted but wide and every lane had a sign on the right saying "This lane mist turn right". We crossed hotels ...large taj like ones only near the airport. After he drove into the garage of the apartments I would be staying at, we tugged and heaved my 64 kgs of luggage up a flight of steps into our house on the first floor of University Gardens apartments, #206. I met my room-mate Shalini, fed myself on some left-over rice and dal......and got upset becoz I could not contact my parents at home or office...
It was 10:30 p.m local time, 11.00 a.m at home. I tucked myself up in bed and went into a dreamless sleep. Except that the night was punctuated by the roar of the winds outside and shutters fluttering in the wind, and I kept waking up all night. But the next day would be a new day...and my first day in Tucson.

p.s: Happy Independence Day to home. Its 3:00 in the morning there at your place and you all are still sleeping so I guess I turn out to be the most patriotic of all. :)

USA....and me. Part1- In Singapore and Tokyo

It started out with getting an admit, then it was the visa.......then massive loads of packing and finally, a journey day. I still did not believe or could not make myself believe, I was leaving for USA. Its such a big thing in India to be actually off to the states....immediately you join the ranks of (as considered by people in India) some lucky few. Well, while saying goodbye to Hyderabad and Kolkata ..it sure didn't seem like I was one of the lucky few.
So it was with some salty tears and nervous steps that I began this journey.
The flight was Singapore airlines. Once in your seat, you were in a totally different world. There was a screen in front of you and a remote attached to the seat handle. There was a blanket and a pillow.... (and I remembered how Maa had been worried I would be cold because I had forgotten to pack a shawl). The magazines in front carried all the in-flight movies to be shown, ranging from Madagascar to Lilo and Stitch to ......Plus music channels with one hindi and also a channel which continuously monitored the flight progress and mapped the route.
Whoa.....where was I :)...
The flight attendants were very pretty and helpful, with an ever-friendly smile on their faces. I slept but towards the fag end of the flight...It landed in Singapore at 6:30 their time...around 4:30 our time. Once I stepped into the Changi terminal........that was it! I lost my senses and a smile lit my face as I looked around. Firstly there were these walk elevators....once you used them and came to the centre of the terminal, you were literally surrounded by all foreign shops.... from prada to gucci.... scents perfumes, electronic goods, food, diamonds, singapore kimonos, mobiles, pdas ...you name it ...they had it and you could have it too provided you had money. The terminal was amazing.......even after USA I still think, that place has no equals. On top of that, once I saw terminals with free internet and hardly any crowds milling around it...imagine my glee at mailing home from an airport....not to say blogging too.
The next flight was at 9:45 a.m singapore time. This was the headache one, over the Pacific and into LA. The last one had almost completely avoided flying over the Indian ocean. This one would not have been able to avoid the Pacific even if it tried. But the plane itself was disappointing...it seemed crowded and clustered with very little foot space or corridor space.... and even the ceiling seemed lower than the last one.
I was puzzling over how an 18 hour journey plane can be such when a 5 hour journey one was luxury. In the flight itself, I kept dozing off......my head falling in front...and the two people beside me must have thought I was drugged. I was nearly missing lunch but woke up just in time to order a turkey. If you are wondering how it tastes, I did not enjoy it much ...and the plate went back quite as much filled as it had come. But they do make it colorful....you have small cheese packets from australia, salads with red berries....ice-cream which I had to skip for my throat.
I had thought the flight was a direct one , it turned out that there was a stop in Tokyo. I was smiling to myself to think that for a non-globetrotter I would be covering three countries in a matter of 48 hours...wow!! I forgot the name of the Tokyo airport ...but it was clean ....people were extra helpful.... more than people in Singapore (I had gone around in circles looking for a help counter there.)
It was a half an hour wait for a transit pass and we boarded our plane again. The plane had been cleaned , a new pillow and blanket placed. The movie range and music had increased.....I had a japanese girl for a co-passenger and another japanese s/w professional beside her. I relaxed in my seat and promptly fell asleep.
There was hardly much to be seen from the plane....but the pilot pointed out Mt.Fujitsu. It was like a towering volcano mountain in a bed of clouds and it was amazing to see it dominate the small circular window-holes for quite sometime.
Next stop ...... LA. But I have to crash in today so I sign off here. By the way I will keep my time of posting as Indian time for today ...maybe change it when I actually get to the part about USA.

From Singapore.....

This sure has to be a short post and it is sort of amazing to me that I can stand here and write ... guess where!
Right from the free internet at singapore airport. Its probably everything I had heard and more. For a change it is I who feels like a foreigner. Thats all I have time for now....ciao and off to LA.

Remembrances.

To all the writers who don't think of themselves as one......(and I could just rattle off names till I ran out of fingers to count) maybe you should try it before you dismiss it so dismissively. Ever since I have come across blogging and bloggers, I have found this amazing power of self-expression in nearly everyone's writing....and to think that there are so few writers in the world.
Well, below is an extract of a mail I got....which was amusing and entertaining and kept me laughing all through and I did warn the writer of the outcome of it being put up on my blog. With that I wash my hands off it and leave it with a bit of a background.....
The convocation ...yes the same one which I missed was held on july 23rd, and almost everyone from hyderabad, made it there. I had wanted to know how I would be getting my degree certificate, sinceI would be absent at the ceremony. This, sort of, comes in the dusk of it ......

Tring Tring.. Tring Tring..
Chid: May I speak to Ms. XYZ please?
Me: Speaking
Chid: No you are not speaking..
Me: I'm busy shopping these days
Chid: Yeah I know, but I thought you would have enough time to mail atleast
Me: No I dont
Chid: ok.. just wanted to tell u that you should be receiving the degree certificates within this week.
Me: ok. I will take care of that
Chid: And btw if you remember, I had asked you to msg me when u had the mobile with you
Me: I told you I dont have time and morover, I dont speak to Indian guys anymore
Chid: Hmm.. this was the girl who once said she would "keep in touch". ok then.. take care.. do feel free to drop a word or two when u r free :) bye
(And just incase you were thinking about it ...... the content is purely a conversation imagined by Chid and is not represented by facts (as all the serial title lines claim nowadays)).

Well......:) all I can say is...... just that.... I am glad for such moments which make me smile and remind me of my friends spread all around the globe (I guess I sure can say that now :) ).

Of decisions

I like writing for the simple fact that I can ramble on without beginning or end.....start somewhere and end somewhere completely different. And the greatest pleasure it gives me is the thought that someday I most probably will revisit and laugh at these memories or essays or blog-bits or whatever you can call them.

Now, that I am at home the most common question people usually ask me is "what do you do all day ?". Well I definitely don't sit in front of the computer hours at end, nor do I catch all the movies and saas bahu serials on tv. Books ..yes, they were always my first love and continue to be...though I do admit (and Monika, Sapna and Koms will probably corroborate this) that I should expand the genre to cover sci-fi, comedy and horror rather than only sentimental and romantic novels. Yesterday after a long time, Maa was reading out tagore's peoms to me. I had one childhood favorite...its about a little boy who is actually dreaming about this troupe of his, his mother riding beside him in a palki (palanquin). He defends and saves his mother's life from a group of dacoits who suddenly attack them. The cry of "haare re re re re" that the dacoits raise was one of my most favorite parts of the poem .....in its suddenness and its intensity. But ofcourse there are many poems and stories and songs more befitting my age which I should have but never did read. Maa read out one such, its called "shesher kobita". Its about a boy called Amit who liked to stand out for the fun of standing out.....he would adorn the opposite of what was the fashion trend and praise with full arguements that, which probably did not deserve it. His inclination towards girls was of the kind ...curious but not interested. He meets this girl on a mountain trip...and they fall in love. But in the end the girl leaves him to marry someone else....and she sends him a poem in the last letter she sends him ........which is how the story gets its name. The poem is famous.......for the fact that the simple lines strike true.....I don't remember the words exactly but the girl says
that amit has worshipped her as a goddess, in all her goodness
but now she goes to give herself to somebody who will accept her
for what she is ....as a human being with her own faults and values......

Before visa, I was sort of in the middle of the ocean with a no next shore to land on. Getting the visa brought back a lot of confidence and relief ...that yes, finally something might be, possibly coming true. I have written about this before ......about the confusion that confounds us all with what is best for us, the best next step. And I have to admit, the uncertainty which was preying and gnawing at me ....has completely disappeared. But it hasn't got replaced with enthusiasm. When Ayan asked me if I am excited about it, I did not for a moment know what to say . It just does seem like going back again to Hyderabad......or Trichy for that matter. Maybe I still cannot comprehend an eighteen hour flight over the pacific. So, when Maa speaks about it as a long journey and about not returning for quite sometime.......I can hardly comprehend or share. And it is then that I ask myself whether it is really worth it ....this going for myself, for my interest........... and the host of worries and distances that did not seem to matter for so long now come crowding back.......as if stretching a rubber band of time, distance and memories.
When I look back at the last month of eating and sleeping .......(and gaining kilos :)) the permanent thing that I have is company , whether of Bruno curling up beside me during the afternoon naps and keeping his eyes tightly shut so that no amount of cuddling and petting could disturb him, whether of my brother screaming at me for the remote or me scolding and re-scolding him , whether of Maa coming back from college and sipping her tea......(Baba is transferred to bakreswar) ........................
well there were lots of times when I felt as if I did not have an itinerary for the day like maa's college or Tukan's school.....but even then, staying at home and working at a nearby office or staying overseas and studying was a conscious decision I took......and I am still wondering at what cost !!!
But till then , latest harry potters await , and I am thankful to Tukan I got a second day hand at that and it took me two more days than him to complete...... :), and I missed my convocation and wearing yellow robes, and we dined out at hyatt as my treat ..... and time to go back, life is waiting. :) come to think of it ..... this is life too ......
:) :)

Full circle.

I read a post in the telegraph by this guy called Samit Basu. He writes a regular column called Look in the Telegraph. His comment was on Parineeta and went somewhat like this :
"If you have savoured watching parineeta as much as me then you probably would not have missed the last scene which resembled a cement ad.With Saif trying his hardest to break down a wall and none of his friends or family lifting a finger to help him and not even pointing out that there is a gate some three steps ahead - quite heart-rendering."
By the time I got to the heart rendering part I was laughing aloud. :)
Its refreshing to read people who have their own opinions and say on different matters....because its only then that you can think and rethink about the ideas that you had formed.
I have always found my brother to be more of a quiz enthusiast than me anyday...(he will gobble up any news piece and quiz me about it later and find immense pleasure that I will be staring blankly back at him).... and till sometime back I had also known him to be a america sycophant. It is only now that I realise that he is equally critical of the policies and american politics as the rest of us.... (or the ones who are concerned with discussing everything under the sun are). I however had had a complete overhaul of my opinions .... it seemed a great place to tour ....(one of THE reasons to study there). Their economy was thriving. People were so much in praise of it, I was told I would never want to return. Its cleaner there.....then the money factor ofcourse :) .......and life was much easier with everything or most of the things being readymade or automatically done for you. (I wonder when America got the head start !)
If any of you ever come across jhumpa lahiri's Namesake, it paints a very different picture.... a very different picture which makes you want to start re-thinking..... do you really want to head to this place at all! Its a picture of lonely Indians, to whom relatives are the static noises over telephones and webcams. Good news and bad news are but just that... there cannot be celebrations because you cannot share...cannot share physical proximity with the people to celebrate with. A place where you start celebrating and enjoying traditions like guy fawkes day and halloween ...irrespective of the fact that they are not/ were not what we grew up with. The book so far as I have read it... deals with the children brought up there who now find home-coming alien. Sort of the ABCD(american born confused desi) category. But then I recently read that nris are coming back to India. Now that is probably the best of both worlds. Earn and save in dollars and spend in rupees :)...............
Money factor .... now why that is important is hard to say. It is money which makes the world go round.(to a certain extent looks too ....we were hotly debating on this with my mother saying looks don't buy anything and tukan and me opposing her). Probably because with a certain amount of money comes a certain lifestyle, a certain level of comfort ...and once you get used to that ... bye bye to all those budgeted spendings. But then money buys you comfort not happiness. At a certain point money ceases to matter ....its then where the satisfaction level comes in....not with work alone but with life. And that depends on how comfortable you are with yourself .... bcoz only then can you make others feel comfortable around you. Well, by the amount of fundas I can write I am sure to follow on the tail of The monk who sold his ferrari :).............
So at the end of it ...its just a full complete circle ....... starts with you and ends with you ...... but it has a whole world of people in between the two 'u's..... and its yours to choose how delicately you handle it....... be happy ... nothing else matters and this is what matters most ...:)

Running away

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.

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 ..........

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

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".