Saturday, 29 September 2012

Mere ghar aai ek nanhi pari


Some dates in our lives are so special that we remember them for our lifetime. September 10, 2009 is very significant for me. My neighbor girl RIA was born on this date and this year she has turned 3! It seems she has grown up in just three days. It feels as if it was yesterday only that she was born and not even an hour has passed that she has turned three! Indeed time travels very fast.

I can clearly visualize the moment I met her for the very first time! It was October 2010 and we had shifted to our new home. Our next door neighbor was an elderly couple- the natives of Kashmir and grandparents of Ria. She stays here for most part of the day as both her parents are working. It was eight in the night and she had rung our door-bell by mistake. We opened the gate only to find a one year old child standing in front of us!  Of course she couldn’t say anything! Her father then introduced her to us and since then she has created a special place in the core of our hearts.

It has been two years to October 2010 and we have collected a pile of immortal memories spent with her.



As and when I think of Ria, my mind gets relieved of all the tensions. She brings a broad smile on my face. Playing with her is so much fun that I, in fact, cannot describe it in words. Listening to her nursery rhymes fills me with joy. She has made me recall all the poems which I used to recite as a kid. Getting into conversation with her relaxes my grey cells and is so enticing that I never feel like stopping it. Until a year she could not talk. And now! Now she has grown into a chatter box! She keeps on speaking. She talks of new rhymes which she learns daily in her play school. She talks of her mom-dad, tells me about the cartoons which she watches, describes colors, counts objects, and the list is endless. Watching ‘Chota-Bheem’ with her is a great fun. Dancing with her is phenomenal and she looks extremely cute in her tiny frocks and shorts. Fancy bands on her small ponytail make her look more beautiful than any Miss Universe or Miss World on this earth.

Spending time with her is worth than planning a stupendous week-end somewhere else. Enjoying with her gives me more pleasure than partying with anyone else. Her love is unconditional and her behavior natural. May she live long! May all her dreams come true!

I had decided to write this article on September 10, 2012. But I could not. I am definitely going to blame time for this; it was not with me!

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

If that could happen...

Life is a long play and we all are its actors. Our scripts have already been written and our roles pre-defined. We cannot mould the acts as per our wish and all the instances of life cannot go as we want. The irony is: destiny is what we make! This really confuses me. At times I also bang my head in understanding why can’t every situation of our lives execute in exactly the manner we want it to be?

If everything took place the way we desired, then that would simply be an imaginative world. However I do not mind living in imagination!

 

In fact whenever something makes me sad or a situation gets out of my control I dream of the fictitious world where I would have been the boss; where I would have decided what should have happened. I get lost into my parallel universe where everyone is honest, caring, emotional, and helpful. My fictitious world lets me meet my dream friend; it lets me meet Priyanka, Shivani and Mittali daily, share my thoughts with them, crack some non-sense jokes and once again relive the college period. It gives me a chance to change the behavior of people around me for good and then analyze living with them. My imagination knows no bounds. I often visualize myself hanging in the cloud of electrons, swimming in the vast nothingness of space, living inside a black hole, burning in a supernova, and travelling back and forth in time. I close my eyes and find myself in the executable file of linux kernel, in the boot loader partition of NAND flash, at a particular mount point in the UBI file system, in the /drivers/net/Ethernet/ti directory, and sometimes acting like a TFTP server. At times I imagine myself bound in a socket and analyzing each and every network packet passing through me: ARP, ICMP, data, etc. I also imagine what happens after death, how I will be like when I will be 100 and what will I say to God when I’ll meet Him. I dream of the day when I would be astronaut and will travel in space. I turn over to the impossible moment when I would meet Einstein and Newton. I roll over my eyes and figure myself in my past life, meeting dinosaurs, Alexander, Chandra Gupta Maurya, Chanakya, Jesus, Harrapan civilization, and all that we read in history. I jump back in time and imagine meeting Ram-Sita, mostly in western attire! Not only this, I take a leap of 5000 years and imagine what would it be like? Will the magnetic poles of earth have changed positions by then? Will New York be a desert and Sahara an ocean? I even dream of the doomsday- will that be of the type shown in movie “2012” or will it be something totally bizarre?

 

Imagining things gives me immense happiness; though simply for a moment. Some may call it escapism. However I do not mind escaping to a third level. This is because I take care of the fact that this is not reality. I remember whatever I am composing is not going to happen in reality; it is just a figment of imagination. I do not let the process of imagination take control over my conscience, my work, and my daily necessary tasks. However in my busy life, where everything is super fast, imagining out of the world things makes me delighted. The mere thought that I am a meson colliding in the LHC or I am standing beside a graviton enthralls me. Perhaps this is what I really want. But alas! This is not possible. This reminds me I am dreaming! So here I come out of my dreams and end this article!

Sunday, 12 August 2012

Two months at work


Today I have successfully completed two months of my first job. As a pre-requisite of becoming a full fledged embedded systems’ engineer i am slowly learning to deal with the monstrous Linux operating system, and steadily beginning to write some pages of kernel code. With the first two salaries in my bank account and my brand new debit card in my hand I feel proud; proud that I am worth something. But the next moment I recall that I am still a probationary engineer and there are still four screwing months to go ahead before I come out of the training state and get absorbed in the company. Nevertheless, I try to enjoy what I have gained in these two busy months.

All the knowledge of microcontrollers and microprocessors which I had gained during my B.Tech degree course is helping me a lot. However Linux was something I had never worked upon before and, until two months ago, was totally alien to me. But now I feel extremely excited about it. I now know a few of its commands and some of the concepts behind it. Kernel and boot loader, what I knew before, were something which really existed in any functional system but I had no idea of how they were framed and what was the concept behind them. But now! Now I am reading more than 2000LOCs of code of boot loader daily and learning about the actual role of kernel in initialization of peripherals. I have given a presentation on interrupt handling and kernel synchronization and its repercussions are I cannot take my mind out of ‘interrupts and interrupt handler’!

My work environment is extremely good and i am fortunate enough to get the best mentor as my boss! He is always on his toes to clarify my doubts and helps me understand some concepts. He is extremely disciplined and sincere towards his work and answers all my silly questions with patience and attention.  In addition to this, my colleagues are also very supportive and co-operative. My family is helping me a lot.  And the most important point is I am enjoying what I am doing!

However in-spite of all the positive fillings, there is some lacunae in my life. It is the loneliness and void created because of absence of my college friends. Like me, they are also busy in their new jobs and courses. However, we try to be in communication with each other through messages and phone calls. We frame plans to meet every weekend but something or the other happens and, needless to say, our plan hardly gets executed. Every alternate day or so I watch the video which I had created with some of the pictures of our beautiful college days. I then get lost in my nostalgic college memories- the outings, the fun, the classes, the bunks, the lunch, the labs, and everything. I miss the minors, the majors, the library, the canteen, the basketball court, the administrative department, and our Sunila madam too. I keep on looping in and endless loop of eternal memories with no handler function designed to help me come out back in the user space. Only my friends can fill lacunae of mine completely and I wish this happens soon.

Saturday, 16 June 2012

Sweet memories of college life

Ask me two abstract things which, according to me, can never be swapped with any precious stone or any huge amount of money in this world. And I will say- childhood and college life. They are the most enjoyable, lovable, memorable, and fanciful phases of our life with lots of nostalgic and immortal memories. And yes! College period has been the best phase of my life.
I am a B. Tech graduate and have spent complete four years with my lovely friends. They were strangers to me four years ago but now…Now I think I know them better than anyone else does.

I remember how we met each other for the first time on the ‘Orientation ceremony’ day. We all looked a bit nervous and excited simultaneously. We all were new faces to each other. But being classmates we came forward and shook hands. (I guess 60C2 handshakes took place !:-P ) Thus the foundation of a new friendship was laid. And wait! As and when I recollect memories of our first day, I am always reminded of room no. 212. It was always abuzz with infinite meetings, fest interviews, presentations, exams, etc. You think of a venue for any event and one spontaneous answer would be room no. 212! I think more famous than the college canteen was 212.   

Next, minor exams were one of the several funny things which happened during our B. Tech degree course. :-P Our college authorities had officially granted us some 5 days to pick our books from store, blow away the thick layer of dust on it, and then decide which book for which subject! These were the days when library would always be packed with students. These were the days when our mobile phones would ring all evening and night and the messages would say “yr syllabus message kar de.!! Kaun si buk h and kitne chapters h??? mera lesson plan nai mil raha!“, “yr kuch samajh hi ni aa raha… minor papers me ye jyada pucha h to aisa kar ye topics karle…”, “yr kal jaldi aa jaio and samjha dio.:-P”. I remember Khayati would keep on taking answer sheets during exam and we would be left open-mouthed!!! We would think ‘ bhai aisa kya likh rahi h??’. Priyanka would make her answer sheet the dirtiest possible and Vishu would be busy extending her answer to the maximum limit (yes!!  2marks answer on 2pages!)And when we would come out of the exam hall Vishu would say ‘yr paper chuooth gaya mera!!’:-P  Once the exams were over, we used to celebrate as if we had topped the university!  And the results were always totally surprising!

How can I forget the fun we made during the classes? English classes by Manpreet Kaur ma’am were extremely boring. We would wait eagerly for a second when she would take a gap from speaking and take some breath!!! I also remember Vibha madam’s highly highly funny classes. She used to look like ‘We can’t express’! And Aakash sir’s classes?? He considered himself a professor from Stanford University and I swear I did not get even a word of what he taught in the two semesters:-P I rather began hating DSP and SNS. I guess only a few countable people liked him in the college.:-P  Next, girls do you remember Kalpana madam’s classes? I think she had completed the complete Computer Networking course in two months only! And her classroom presentations!! They were a nightmare:-P Hey Priyanka! Do you recollect horrible memories of Ganaotra sir’s classes? He would study during the time which was meant for teaching! :-P And his curly hair:-D :-D! They have more curls than actual Maggie noodle. :-P
This wasn’t all. We would take lots of photographs during classes, have our lunch, read newspapers, do chat on face book, etc etc. Anything except studying would make us happy:-P Seriously anything! Our classroom ‘masti’ had no expiry dateJ.

The fest time period used to be fantastic. There used to be chaos everywhere in the campus and every single person could be found busy in either organizing events or managing them. And Pallavi, Aparna, Pulak, and other people would be nowhere to be seen in the class room for at least 15-20 days! We would participate in so many events- wasting money in their fees and not even winning! And the sudoku competitions! They used to be fixed:-P. However, whatever be the scenario we knew how to enjoy and keep goingJ.

Next, the placement time was full of tension. It was a period of depression, nervousness, anger, hopelessness, cries, and tears. But with every passing interview we became insensitive to all of them:-P. We had adopted the attitude ‘puchlo yr jo puchna h… nai lena to mat lo…I do not care’. But all is well that ends well. We all got placed in good companies by the end of yearJ.

And then finally it was the farewell time! I admit here that everyone looked ‘surprisingly’ beautiful on both the farewell parties. We danced on the floor (DJ cum stage:-P) with full zeal and enthusiasm enjoyed the great food. Our ‘masti’ had no expiry dateJ. But all good things do come to an end. We had to leave our institution. And the journey ended.

Today we are fully fledged engineersJ.  We have progressed and new chapters of life are getting revealed day by day. And we are left with nothing but sweet memories of college. The photo sessions that we underwent have given us plenty of beautiful and scintillating memories, memories which we will cherish for our life time. Our photos are a symbol of the great bonding that we shared with each other. They will not let us forget each other. In fact how can I forget the college phase of my life? It gave me three lovely friends-Priyanka, Shivani, and Mittali- friends with whom I can share everything, whom with I can argue and fight, with whom I can crack some non-sense jokes, and whom I can disturb even late in the night. Will I ever be able to forget the bubbly Swati Gupta? She was a full source of laughter and enjoymentJ for all of us. I hated some people in the beginning. But by the end of B. Tech degree course, I started liking them. And there are some whom I continue to hate:-P. Any guesses? :-B    In spite of all the differences, we are still one class. And we all love each other. Don’t we girls?

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Exams are over.!!!

So, I am back! After complete three months. A lot has happened in these three months. But still, you see I don’t have an subject to write upon. I don’t have any idea of what I am going to write in this post. All I know is I am in a cheerful mood today. No no…I am not yet placed through campus placements. Nor have I won a jackpot. Rather today I broke my spectacles..:-P You see, I cannot read anything without my “specs”. And now my head is aching like anything. !!! The only reason which makes me happy today is “my exams are over“.:-D:-P
Yes, my exams are over. And it is not as if my “do nothing holidays” have begun; nor do I have some extended plans for a stupendous weekend.  But still I am very glad. I don’t know what it is; nor do I know why it is so, but finishing of exams always makes me very happy. The feeling that at least now I can relax and now I will not have to bog my mind in the stupid syllabus of R.R.Gulati of Consumer Electronics or deal with the esoteric and jargonic language of Rajkaml of Embedded Systems (which I guess, only Rajkamal can understand.!!! :-P ) gives me a leviathan freedom. it gives me freedom to sit with my piano and go on playing it endlessly for hours and hours. Once exams are over, I get equipped with plenty of time to go to park and walk. It gives me a day to forget about file-submission; a day to stop being apprehensive about my research paper and a day to take my mind out of Reddy sir’s embedded systems’ projects!  It gives me a day to play with my 2 year old neighbor girl. It gives me an opportunity to sit with my sister, crack some non-sense jokes and laugh on them endlessly. :-P
But above all, it gives my mom a chance to catch hold of me and make me cook. (**** chalo mitu, gobi-aloo banana seekho, chalo roti banao:-P****). I have to admit, I don’t like cooking at all. But who wins when it is a one-to-one match between you and your mom??? I guess you don’t have any alternative in this regard. Mommies always win. :-P:-P