To all dear women,

According to my grade seventh geography text book, languages change every two kilometers on this earth. In that case, there are, I don’t know how many languages in this world. (Though, yes, I shall be glad to know how many are there.)  People might be well versed in 8-10 of them. There may be some with numbers greater than 10 too. I do not doubt. However, out of 8-10, one or two might be their mother tongues. And then they might have been taught the rest of them. With this a thought arises in my mind. Is there any single universal language in this world?  Well I would say yes. No. No. It is neither French nor Spanish and not even English. It is a language which, I do not know about men, but at least women are fluent in. They are, in fact, born with an uncanny ability to converse fluently in it and drive the hell out of anyone! And that is- SARCASM! Kudos to all those who guessed it right!   

Here, girls! Please do not get me wrong! Ignore this if you find you don’t resemble these supernaturally extra-ordinary qualities. There is a special species of women in this world whose characteristics I describe here.

It appears to me as if they, simply, cannot put any sentence straight. They are great gymnasts and love to ‘circum-ambulate’ around gossips. They love to add all sorts of spices to the hearsays and talk about. They are interested in each and everyone’s family matters on this earth; ‘your problem is ours’! Charity does not begin at home for them. Freaking! They have got the strongest ears in this world and will catch and amplify even faint audible signals passing through a 5m thick wall- scenario where even x-rays fail. Can you figure that out? They are extremely disciplined and will barge on wrong places at ‘rightly’ wrong times. They are great observant and will never fail to notice what you wore today, where did you go out with whom on some un-important day, or who visited you at what time and at what place! God! You fail and they will be there to ‘morally’ support you, to ‘console’ you. You are unemployed, you are unmarried, then more than the parents, they will be worried about you; they will be there on their toes to give you mental ‘peace’. Ramdev babaji, I tell you, your job is at stake. These aunties are here to lend a ‘soul soothing helping hand’ to each and everyone on this earth.

If they were to fill ‘languages well-versed in’ column of a resume, then as per me, sarcasm would best-fit in. Correct me if I am wrong.

I think it’s high time our government decides to bring a law against these gossip obsessed nerds. It should specify the size of the nose which is allowed to peak into a neighbor’s place. Sarcasm has to be made a punishable offence for these douche ladies. Why can’t they call a spade, a spade? Or better, stay away!

This article of mine is dedicated to the womenfolk. Well, I am quite sure, that even after reading it, you will not change even by a fraction of the lowest percentage possible. But ladies, let’s confront! You know you are ‘gifted’ with this quality and have been getting ‘complimented’ for your ‘candid’ and ‘flabbergasting’ behavior since eons. But you haven’t and, I am sure, won’t ever pay any attention to all whatever they talk of. Correct? But for the sake of mankind can you just not call a spade, a spade? Please! If this happens, then world will be a happy place to live in again. Sue me if I am wrong.

Better than books?

People find me treacherously boring

Totally reserved and extremely uninteresting

I inquire and begin with my questioning

They argue and summarize their reasoning-

‘I am a person superlatively book-loving!’

This gives me a disappointment- utterly sheer

Though I find it really very queer

Problems with my books! Oh dear,

Accept this truth without any fear

Books are our best peer!

Here I showcase my reason

For being a bibliophile in every season

I put forward my explanation

Books free me of all my tension

And give me great satisfaction!

They do not argue, they do not ask-

Any return favor for any done task

The do not ditch, they wear no mask

They easily forgive, and break no hearts

They have no ego and do not expect rewards!

They exhibit great characteristics,

which make them so magnetic

Unlike humans, they aren’t sarcastic

Neither selfish nor shrewd diplomatic

Directly put, simply forward- they are so charismatic!

Little do I enjoy partying, seldom do I watch movies

I am not crazy for shopping nor am I like ‘typical’ ladies

I enjoy reading novels, getting puzzled solving puzzles

Find pleasure in newspapers, electronics and kernels

And my mind knows no bounds while reading astrals!

Whenever I am depressed, or whenever I am low

Whenever I am alone and I need one or two

When TV does not help, and also fails my piano

I always find my books- lying beside my pillow

Potter, Poirot and Whittaker- all in a row!

Books make us what we really desire

They direct us closer to what we aspire

Time will pass and things will expire

People will leave in our needs so dire

But my friend! Books will be there whenever we require!

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!

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!

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.