कल बैठे बैठे यूं ही पापा से बातचीत करते हुए ये बात छिड़ गयी।
कहने लगे, "हमारे परिवार का रहन सहन कितना ज्यादा simple है? परिवार ३ जगह फैला हुआ है, पर एक भी जगह एक टीवी तक नहीं है, बड़ी कार की बात तो दूर, कोई स्कूटर/मोटरसाईकिल भी नहीं है। वाहन के नाम पर सिर्फ एक साइकिल है रोहतक में, जो भाई साहब को करीब ४५ साल पहले दहेज़ में मिली थी। घर में कोई कूलर/एसी नहीं है (पंखे से काम चल ही जाता है), कोई किसी तरह का कोई आभूषण नहीं पहनता - ना कोई अंगूठी, ना कंगन, ना गले की चेन, यहाँ तक कि कोई घडी भी नहीं बांधता। किसी भी प्रकार का "junk food" खाने कि आदत नहीं है किसी को, कम से कम मसालों से बना भोजन।
कारण ये नहीं कि ये सब खरीदने के लिए पैसा नहीं है, या हैसियत नहीं है, पर बस यूं ही, किसी को शायद लगा ही नहीं कि इन सब के बिना ज़िन्दगी अधूरी है।"

वो बोल रहे थे, और मैं सिर्फ़ सुन रहा था। बीच बीच में "हूँ...हाँ... हम्म" से अपनी उपस्थिति दर्ज कर रहा था।
बात पते की थी। मैंने कभी सोचा नहीं था कि मैं जिस माहौल में पला बढा हूँ, मेरे पास ये सब संसाधन शरू से ही नहीं हैं। पर सोचने कि बात ये है कि मुझे कभी इन सब का अभाव भी महसूस नहीं हुआ, और ना ही अब इन सबकी ज़रुरत महसूस होती है। शायद मैंने इन सबके बिना ही जीना सीख लिया है, और मैं खुद से खुश हूँ। अब तो आदत हो गयी है, या यूं कहें कि खुद को समझा लिया है।
वैसे वो साइकिल (४५ साल पुरानी - "Eastern Star" कंपनी की) अब भी दुरुस्त दौड़ती है और घर के लगभग सभी रसोई के बर्तनों की उम्र मुझसे ज्यादा है।

सोच रहा हूँ कि क्यों / कैसे हर वस्तु इतनी लम्बी चल जाती है हमारे घर में (शायद दुसरे घरों में भी चलती हो, कभी पूछा नहीं)? शायद हमें अपनी चीज़ों को सहेज कर रखने कि आदत है।
घर में कोई भगवान् में यकीन नहीं करता, पर फिर भी कहूँगा कि ईश्वर कि कृपा से सब अच्छा चल रहा है।

महात्मा गाँधी न कहते थे, "सादा जीवन और उच्च विचार ही स्वस्थ जीवन की कुंजी हैं।"
बाकी का तो पता नहीं पर जाने-अनजाने गाँधीजी की ये बात तो हम follow करते ही हैं और गर्व है मुझे अपने इस रहन सहन पर।

After a long gap, I thought of surfing through the blogs/net for the updates my friends have put. Not that I was very busy all these days, but just didn't feel like browising the internet (though the security audits in my company were also a reason). I had started getting a feeling of emptiness and then some introspection led me to Google and hence the blogs. Feeling better now! :)

Things have lot changed since I last visited my "Blogroll".

Stock markets have revived (and how?) post elections and UPA's thumping win.

2-month long strike of Bollywood's film producers against the multiplex owners ended. Movies ringing again.

IPL got over. Cricketers made heavy bucks in SA, but our filmstars associated with different teams ended up in disappointment.

T20 worldcup - debacle for Indian team.

I am too happy for Saina Nehwal. Wish her all the best! Most of the people erratically pronounce her "Sania".

iRace (Infosys Role and Career Enhancement) got implemented. Lemme tell you, employees were really nervous about this, though it had absolutely no impact on their salaries and compensations.

Nandan quit Infy and joined as the head of the Unique Identification Authority of India (who says govt jobs are not challenging). Got a forward this morning only which says that Nandan after attending his first session in Parliament, sent an SMS to our chief mentor NRN: "You won’t believe it but these guys work just like us. I am on a NATIONAL BENCH for the next three months!". Details on another blog here.

Monsoons (Rains, to be precise) finally arrived in Pune making it all green after a long wait.

And many more that I can't recollect right now...

And I am ready to move back to Bengaluru. I am a better swimmer and a better cook now (can feed myself atleast).

During the surf process, got this thread on Microsoft answers: "Hard Drive weight increasing?" and I am pleasantly amazed to see how people are trying to make the customer understand that there is no way we can have an equation to convert "memory" into "weight". Ha ha ha ...

And all the while I have been writing this, I was thinking of a caption for this post. Could not get any! Now I need to invest 5 independent minutes into this task.

Na, still no help with the title of the post. But "Ah! what an enjoyment it is to read the views/reviews/re-reviews on the net." I'll try to be more regular.

I had stopped writing in this space because of some unpleasant reasons. Now, those unpleasant reasons are far more pushed back by the recent incidents in Mumbai.


Let me admit, I had never ever surfed the newspapers so comprehensively that I have done in the past 3 days. Seldom do I watch TV. But this weekend was a change. I got my back hurt while diving into the swimming pool, but do I really feel the pain in my back? Nah! I am not even thinking about it.


Things have been written, articles printed, discussions held, rage published. Everyone who gets his hands on any kind of communication media is expressing his anger, rage through his own means. Staying in the sister city to Mumbai (Pune), I can sense what is going on and what people are going through.


Events, persons that were outshone by this horrendous attack:


1) Cricket: India leading 5-0 in the series. Surely would have been the headlines with interviews of shining cricketers. England team has returned to its homeland. Hope to see them back in (now tentative) test series.


2) Economic Meltdown: All media was flooded, stocks dived, people lost their bank balances, lost their jobs and what not. But lives definitely are much more important than money.


3) VP Singh: The man who dethroned Rajiv Gandhi from the PM’s seat is no more. The news surely deserved to hit the headlines, but remained almost unsaid (tacit, I guess).


4) Raj Thackrey: Where are this guy and his “brave” sena by the way? Why did he not come up to save hundreds of Marathi Manoos killed at the railway stations? Why did he not stop the NSG commandos (most of them from UP and Bihar) from entering the city? Won't he want them to learn Marathi before saving our lives?


Now picture this: Few of our NSG commandos were killed by terrorists’ bullets hitting in their heads and chests, though they had the helmets and bullet-proof jackets ON. Can't you smell the corruption here?


Things are not going be so “rosy” from now on. Not for the politicians, not for our security forces, and not even for us – the citizens. Shouldn’t we be the world leaders in fighting against terrorism? Is there any other nation holding more experience than us in this field? We should be helping others to overcome this evil, but we ourselves are not equipped enough to fight against it. Why are we not learning from our past? We can't afford to be pigeons shutting our eyes looking at cats.


Indian Army says, “Forgiving terrorists is left to GOD. But fixing their appointment with GOD is our responsibility”. Amen!

As if the consistently crashing stock markets are not enough to irritate you and send a chill down your spine.

I usually don’t sleep while commuting in the bus. But yesterday was a one-of-its’s-kind day.

I boarded 6 PM bus from Infosys. At 6:45, we were hardly 1 km moved from the original position (Am talking about displacement (the vector), not distance). I usually sit on the first seat because you get space to spread your legs in front of you :P I looked back and found everyone “dead sleep”. So I too tried to sleep. Luckily, I succeeded somehow.

Why “Luckily”?
Because, that bus was so wrecked, the seats were not in good shape (no head rest) and the engine was roaring like anything. Traffic all round. I tilted myself against the glass window and slept. What I last remember before sleeping – we were at the entering foot of the "Wakad Bridge" (flyover). Slept for about half an hour when sudden brakes by the bus driver left me awake. When I woke up – we were still on the same flyover.

Now when I was awake, I put on the FM to my ears. Wow! All the radio stations (including our very own Vividh Bharti) were airing Himesh Reshamiya Songs. Did I have a choice, what frequency to tune?

At around 7:45, struggling through the rush, we caught an almost clear road. But… there are days when, whatever you do, however you do, you can’t escape the "so-called-luck" following you. We stopped at every Red Light on the way with a halt time of more than 60 seconds at each of them, all the way to AFMC.

The problem is – How to extricate from this? I am not able to find a personal solution for this problem. Should I change my route? Should I change my timings? Should I get a PMPML bus pass, and stop traveling by Infy buses. I will have a flexibility of route and timings in that case.

I just can’t imagine my plight when the most awaited “Commonwealth Youth Games” is round the corner. The traffic is going to go worse.

The only nice thing that I did yesterday was: Got my eyes registered for donation. Got to do more exercises now :P

Two bugs: [1] Traffic [2] Festival

I can’t believe I am saying this and I never thought that I’ll be saying this so early:

Whoa! Unbelievable! For the past two weeks, I am spending 2 hrs or more in Pune traffic from office to my home. And it never took me this long even on the worst days of traffic in Bangalore (I agree that I didn't live so far from Electronic City, but still).
Distance b/w Hinjewadi and AFMC ~ 25 km.
Time taken (at least) = 2 hrs.
By simple algebra, Average speed of my commute ~ 3.5 m/s
That is slower than a normal man's walking speed.

I ran out of Bangalore cribbing about the same thing, but the traffic seems to be following me. I actually felt a little comfort in my initial days in Pune but the situation worsened gradually and now I won’t hesitate in handing over the “Poorest traffic” trophy to Pune.

The jams seem to be a result of “Ganesh festival” going on and the situation is hoped to be improving from this Monday. Festival is OK, but people just don't have traffic sense.

We in India, have a many more seasons except the regular summer, winter etc. We have a season of weddings that goes from October to April in North India. Then we have a season of festivals. Two festivals, I have seen, seem to be very state specific. “Durga Pooja” in West Bengal and “Ganesh Chaturthi” in Maharashtra! These states seem to have a copyright on these two festivals. People collect funds to celebrate. The disciples of these Gods collect the funds from their respective societies in order to have huge celebrations on these festivals. On the contrary, I have seen people consuming alcohol on the money raised for these events (the very evening after Durga Pooja). Yesterday also, I saw some groups of people taking Ganesha idols for Visarjan, but the people were dancing drunk and they were smoking while carrying Ganesha. What is all this? Do people raise funds to celebrate or to feed upon it?

I don’t believe in God(s) but I am not even against those who have faith in them. But I appeal (to those who believe) to at least show some respect to the almighty, the one you fear the most. I had been much happier to see people collecting funds for “Bihar flood victims” and investing it there only. But “raising money for celebrating a festival and then spending it on uncompromising things” is just unacceptable. This is something “We Indians really need to learn”.

The world is mesmerized by these two guys. They have created history this time in Beijing – one on track and one in water.

Google is the most extensively used search engine. In July this year, we got a new search engine "cuil" (http://www.cuil.com/) – A rival search engine by three former google employees.

People already must have compared the search engines. Geeks pounce upon anything new that comes in the tech world and review it in and out. But I would like to quote a particular feature of CUIL: As and when you go on typing the search keys, a drop down (attached to the search bar) with 10 results keeps getting refreshed dynamically based on the current search key. The feature is actually Cool (cuil, for that matter).

Google being a gang of geniuses adopted this feature in no time and even took it to the next level. Google drop-down refreshes with more relevant results. Most sought after results at the top!

Justifying the post title -
I started searching for “Microsoft”. As I typed ‘Mic’ and got “Michael Phelps” as the topmost result.
You search for “USA” and get a Jamaican, “Usain Bolt” topping the results.

See what Olympics have done to the world:


But Cuil displays no such thing. The results there are not so relevant. CUIL already has a lot of issues, but being a new kid, things can be condoned for a while. Competing with Google really takes a heart. All the best CUIL!

One more update from Google: Picasa Web Albums have undergone a redesign. The new look! Change always appears good, let’s see how it comes along over time.

Please get the information from any of the following links and get going to do your bit:
[1] http://biharflood.wordpress.com/
[2] http://biharfloodrelief2008.blogspot.com/
[3] http://removing.blogspot.com/2008/08/bihar-floods-how-to-help.html
[4] List of Medicines required: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pXkYURrkCSy7Cd6zB4VmMQg

Thanks in advance for your consideration!