Angrezi

One thing that I always hate about vacations is they end very quickly. Well, I still have a day..almost a day. My tomorrow's plan is to visit fields in the morning and eat chat in bazaar one last time on this vacation. After that I will catch a train in late evening from my hometown to MughalSarai. From there I will board Sanghmitra express which will take me to Bangalore. I am again looking forward to those forty plus hours in the train. Ah...I am going too much into future, let me come back to present or rather go back slightly in the past.Today I visited DildarNagar branch of Allahabad Bank . Purpose was to get form 16 for my mom from the bank so that she could file return. The bank has levied income tax on the interest that my mom earned from her FD.
The bank in DildarNagar is still like a durbar. At the entrance you will find couple of constables with gun. Half of the time either they will be eating tobacco or rubbing it to throw it at the right place - their mouth. The main channel gate will be almost closed, just open enough to let one person squeeze somehow through it. Don't misunderstand, the bank is very much open. It's a very Indian thing that almost always even in the greatest of the buildings in India you would find the main grand door closed and a side much smaller door open. I don't know the reason but I have seen it in Benares, Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore and so by mathematical induction I am generalizing it for India. Anyway, inside the bank you will find a branch manager who is treated like an emperor. Very few are permitted to speak to him and even fewer muster the courage to really speak to him and whoever would speak will also looked as someone special and influential. Most of the clerks would not be at their desks. One more interesting thing has happened in recent past - the branch is now fully computerized and so it's virtually paralyzed. No one efficiently operates the machines and so if by any chance the network plug is pulled out then all poor customers are doomed for the day. If in one stroke the website is not loaded then its declared that the link is down and it will come back after couple of hours. If you need print outs then you are put in a queue and normally asked to come at the end of the day to collect the prints....ah so much fun in so little space.
So I spoke to the manager for form 16 and he told me that the CA will come at 12:30. At 12:30 I spoke to him again and he got agitated. Then I took out the "brahmastra". I started in English. Within a minute he asked who am I, what is my qualification, have I paid donation to get my degree, how much I earn, why I did not get job in Infosys etc. After getting satisfied, he told me to speak to the CA. The CA told me that he will call back at 1:30. As expected he did not call and so I called him at 1:30 and used "brahmastra" once more - and it again worked. But he gave me some lame reason why he cannot issue the form to me and asked me to speak to his manager. This time I went for the kill at once and spoke to his manager in English from the very beginning and finally I was issued a form 16 at 4 PM.  Along with me some other folks also got the form 16, needless to say that they had been running for this golden form for months. All of them thanked me and I was humbled with their politeness. The manager invested another 15 minutes from his work time and asked me to teach him about the basics of computer and then shyly asked me if I did my schooling from DildarNagar.

I got the sign of the manager on the form and said 'yaar, ye Angrezi bade kaam ki cheez hai'.

We

DildarNagar is now connected with the rest of world in true sense...by internet, by phone, by cable tv, by rail road and by motor road..ah, I am little unsure about the last mode. Well, since I am connected to rest of world so without much effort I have been following the Delhi Rape case related demonstrations and and the retaliation by government servants.
My personal view of the entire episode is - its very sad and shameful that even in this age we have not been able to protect women from animals. I am not going to pass my judgement on what should be the punishment for the animals who commit such heinous crimes; not because I don't have an opinion but because I know my opinion is not based on sound data. But I am against capital punishment - that is just not right. I am also afraid that like many dowry related laws, the law for rape would also be misused. The difference would be unlike the dowry related punishments the punishment for rape would surely cost a life. And trust me it would be misused by many including the families of folks who are demonstrating against it.  We, the Indians are all heroes for show off and impotent & coward when we see someone from our own families indulging into unlawful act.

I am equally sad for the way we have come out to protest about the rape case. To be more precise I am more sick with the people than the government on this point. Marching towards Rashtrapati Bhavan as a crowd is open invitation to ask police to maintain the same 'law and order' for which we were protesting. How can we demand something if we ourselves are going against it. It's like those strikes where a bus is put to fire to protest against not having enough buses. And we say that we are educated, cultured and good citizens and so police should protect us. Really? Are we nuts?

Violence and force are good tools. But they have their purpose. They never achieve anything more than retaliation, distrust, hatred and malign. So they should be used only when you are going for a kill, to nail and uproot. Is this what the crowd wanted to achieve?

First day of vacation

After about five years I took train to go my home town. As expected I liked every single minute of those forty plus hours that I spent in the train. I did some chit chatting but for the better part of the journey I was just staring outside the window and reading a book. The book I was reading is awesome..Shantaram. I will write something about it once I will finish reading it...maybe even before that. For now let me jump on my first day at village.

I started the day at eight in the morning. Had a full glass of milk and then spent the next hour or so talking to my mother and others. For lunch I ate my favorite alu-gobhi sabji with rice. As you would expect from a foodie like me, I over ate :). In the afternoon I took a long stroll of about 2.5 hours. I must have walked about 10 kms.My hometown has not changed much in the last twenty years. There has been some superficial modernization but by far it is all same - half concrete and half mud roads, electricity for ten hours a day, and lazy and laid back life style and a lot shouting all over. The good thing that has not changed is when you step out of the village towards the fields then within 10 minutes you will find the peace. The kind peace you get at the banks of Ganga in Benares. The only sound that you hear there is of - the birds chirping, the water thrusting on the earth, the trees singing a song. The wheat and mustard crop in the fields made me nostalgic - reminding me of 1993 when I last spent about a month at village after my father expired. It is strange that I have not spent much time in my hometown after I grew up but still there is this calmness that brings me back home more than anything. On my past visits I have spent long hours in the fields. Not seeing anyone for hours and hours brings the calmness, courage and energy to think abstractly. Once settled I can force my mind to think about one thing and only one thing. At the end of it I feel inert and I just want to be in that state for sometime, for a longer time, forever.

It was dark at 5:45 itself and so I had to quickly return back home.

Being what I am

Never thought that I would return to it. But its happening.
The last three weeks have been crazy for me. It all started with attending a wedding, followed by official visits of some company executives to BLR and then another visit by a relative. Result...I am mentally exhausted and I need a break. Break from the office and from everything else. Thankfully I have planned a train journey to my home town and I am going all alone. But unlike in the past I am going to be wired to the rest of world during the vacation. I am also going to read two novels in the week long vacation.
Over  to the point about which I thought during my weekend long walk today. How hard it is to look and sound the way you are. Why I have to pretend that I am liking something while in reality I am suffering. Why I have to prove it to others time and again that I am one of them or the way they look to me. To be fair to others there is equal chance that they also pretend the way I do. Anyway the question is why I have to pretend and what can I do to do away with it.
If I just start being what I am then what would happen. May be I will have lesser people who would care to talk to me, may be my better part would not like it, may be in difficult times I would not get any companion or may be I would be forever discarded by one and all. Now assuming that I really become what I want to be, would all this or some part of it happen all of sudden. No, it will happen gradually and that gradual process of hearing all non sense from sensible people has killed me in the past. The last thing that I want is repetition of my past. What can I do to expedite the process of getting ignored and considered not good enough for good people. Any clue?

Something new

I am buying a car, a new car :), and am all excited about it. The excitement is more about the opportunity that I will get for visiting new places around Bangalore. With bike the world around me was a lot restricted; you can not think of driving 300 kms on the weekend and then go back to the office on Monday and pretend throughout day that you are working...it's hard, very hard. I hope making quick trips will be a lot easier with car and days to come will be a lot of fun.
I am planning to prepare the list of places that I would like to visit in the first month after arrival of the car. I am also aiming to do 1000 KM in first month and then 10000 KM in the next six months. To achieve this I might want to speak to Pravasi folks ;)

The trip

So, finally I made a trip to US. Because I had to make it.

But before going there I took some expert opinion about the challenges I am going to face. Like what? Like immigration folks are going to ask thousand questions before letting you enter inside US, the journey is going to be very tiresome, Air France sucks in flight service etc.

And indeed I faced some challenges but they were a bit different from what I had heard from experts. The biggest challenge was to remain a vegetarian. And I survived :)

A few key observations that I made about USA

1-People are either super healthy or fat and obese (I have more appropriate word for them but Zahid suggested me against that)
2-People are very sensitive about respecting each other
3-Food wastage is part of culture
4-The city (Seattle) was very well planned. You do not have to ask for directions if you can read English.
5-People own the city. City does not own people.
6-If you walk and talk everyone you see on street for 5 minutes then you can meet people from 15 different countries

and many more.

I visited many places in and around Seattle. Like Snowqualmie falls, Seattle port ans some more places that I do not want to write here. Ah!!! you know man.

All credit to Vidya. Who is he? He is a localite from US and we are connected through web. Yeah man, web is a nice thing :).
And to G2. What's that? JDK 7, the latest version. More about it, here http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~jeetu
Finally my heart felt thanks to Vinayak ( he is my super boss) for the home made tea that he offered me when he invited us for a dinner. I was literally dying for an Indian home made tea all these days.

That's all for now. See you :)

I do!!!

You don't run the things here....
Have you ever heard these lines. I wish not. I also have not heard it directly but sensed it indirectly many times. I am not going to write about when and where I have felt this.
But I want to tell you, every time I sensed this feeling; I said it clear and loud to myself that "I will"...
Now, a part of that "I will" is realized...how is not a part of this blog!!!

Its important to dream and dream big. But the dreams should have a solid foundation. Like why I will be able to do it, how I will be able to do it etc. . There should be solid planning and finally you should see yourself moving in the right direction. Now, an important part of realizing dreams is giving it its own time. Do not expect to change the fortune in a fraction of second.
Now lets talk about few bad and good examples.I see many fools running with stupid ideas and good tongue in office, restaurant and other places. Most of the times I let them realize that they are the wisest person I have ever met; other times I ignore them. Why??? Because I think that they dream through their tongue...And I am sure they will just talk about others success stories throughout their life.I hate these a**h****.
Good examples are plenty...and I will leave it up to you to find them out :)