Why the f*** is it 42?

Walking down the memory lane....


'The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything' by Douglas Adams.

Excerpts:

First-

"...I am at a rough estimate, thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number." [said Marvin]
"Er, five" said the mattress.
"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"


Next-

"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"
"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."


Last-

"Six by nine. Forty-two."
"That's it. That's all there is."


p.s: For novices, the number was calculated to base 13!

How many roads must a man walk down?

42

bookcrossing

bookcrossing
n. the practice of leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise.


http://www.bookcrossing.com

why?
good karma!

November Rain

Caution: The below text involves some preaching and please avoid it if you can. Much of it involves exaggeration of facts and sways on the borders of fiction. It was written under no influence of alcohol. For the record, I turned into a teetotaller lately. I totally drink tea now.

(Here it goes..)

It rained again!

If you are a young adult and indian, the one animal you definitely know a lot about is CAT. And if you are not, get out of here. If you are faint hearted, it will definitely terrorize you. It will make you feel things which you probably never will when faced with any other kind of exam. It is a real test of character where all the basic human traits of fear, greed, love (albeit self-love), courage, moral conviction, intution are tested and tasted. And people usually tend to deny the obvious effects inflicted upon them by the exam. Firstly, the evil force of the exam makes you feel cold-blooded. Nothing effects you anymore. You stop feeling things. Its bound to happen when you stare at the truth that only <0.5% of you and your fellow victims can get through into the sacred gates. And the losers stand at a staggering number of close to 1/5th of a million! Neverthless, thousands of innocent young men and women march into the gallows on some sunday every november. All of them have something in common. The ambition to make it big(ger). No, not in their own eyes but in the eyes of their friends/parents/society whatever. I hardly know a person who gave CAT because he felt the genuine need for management education (what do they really teach?). Its normal to believe that MBA will lead to a happy ever-after life when you look at the high pay packets offered to the grads. And its also perfectly normal to not know what to do in life right after college or even after some years into it. Life is a big level playing field and everybody has enough pie to eat from and to contribute. Frankly, does money even matter after a level? It may to many people and many of them would probably be thinking that i have lost it. But, i think it will help one immensely if one questions and tries to find out one's real purpose beyond money.


And by all means, there is such a terrible gap between demand and supply of quality higher education in India. Will the real indian government ever stand up?

And the man who gets into the hallowed portals is not granted sainthood either. He is turned into a monster as one is bound to be when trained by one. The life as they say, changes forever. You can touch but you can't feel.


P.S: A Boy who read all this asks his Mother, "Will it rain again next year?"


Disclaimer: I have gone through the hammer thrice now. And ironically, everytime i have been through it, i have come out a better person! I believe it is all that counts in the end.

Good Afternoon!

I often wonder what's the best part of the mother nature that i really enjoy. Is it the early morning sun? the dew on the grass after the hard rounds of jogging? Or, is it the sunset and the sight of birds going back to their nests? Can it be the sound of ocean waves? Ahh...the very image brings such peace!

I often venture into the wild to catch glimpses of fresh but rare creatures. Is it the best part of nature? Or, the sight of hundred thousand people cheering when sachin hits a four?..well, i consider it an equally bright piece of nature. What is nature after all if not for the people who bring some method to appreciate its madness? Of all the sights i have seen in my life, i think the sweat on the face of a man toiling hard in a workshop ranks amongst the top!

While at college, i often ate dosas at 4 in the early morning. The to and fro walks to the small eatery amongst the green landscapes of the university will be imprinted in my mind forever. The whole world looked such a sane place back then! How often do you feel things even when you can't see them?

While i was at it, during this sequence of morbid thoughts, i was lazing away on my bed after i read a book called 'Eragon', a story about a boy and a dragon! It was quite in the afternoon and life stood still. Then, i realised that this very moment is the best gift that mother nature has ever endowed me with. NO, it's not the afternoon am talking about. It's the moment called 'now'. If the mind can be as still as during a quite afternoon, free of clutter and the usual noise, every moment can bring you peace!

Life is beautiful. I can do nothing but accept!

Happy Diwali!

Distant Dream

Bathed in the moonlight
I walk in to the town
I feel a chill in the air
And there's not a soul around

The sky is crimson red
And all the lights are out
Sadness shrouds the night
And I hear the silence shout

Far in the distance I can see
A lonely light calling out to me
I walk inside
And see her standing behind
The counter smiling back at me.

- Lyrics of the song 'prelude' of the album 'distant dream'

Amazing lyrics, Amazing tunes and its all indian!

Have a great time at http://www.distantdream.com/music/

And this is why!

A question used to regularly poke my head when i used to study history as a kid at school. The textbooks always taught about foreginers invading India and indians mostly submissing with the exceptions of a few special men like shivaji. The thing that bothered me was the perceived weakness. Weren't india kings not as ambitious as their counterparts in other nations? What was lacking in the indian school of thought? This was a question that stayed with me. Strange but true.

Fortunately, i read this paragraph by rabindranath tagore, today.
Quoting him,

"According to the true Indian view, our consciousness of the world, merely as the sum total of things that exist, and as governed by laws, is imperfect. But it is perfect when our consciousness realizes all things as spiritually one with it, and therefore capable of giving us joy. For us the highest purpose of this world is not merely
living in it, knowing it and making use of it, but realizing our ownselves in it through expansion of sympathy; not alienating ourselves from it and dominating it, but comprehending and uniting it with ourselves in pefect union."

May be indian kings knew what tagore meant even before he said this!

This is not relevant here but he also said this, 'all men have poetry in their hearts and it is necessary for them, as much as possible, to express their feelings'.

Tagore, you rock dude!

Conversation!

Don't you love to dip the biscuit in your cup of tea and then have it ?? I love doing it, and couldnt resist doing so at the cafeteria today morning, finally ended up drawing "not-so-nice" stares at my direction !!

What's the big deal anyway ... I love soggy biscuits, so sue me !! thus, to spice up the morning, I did another "blasphemous" act ... pour the tea in the saucer and then sip it making a slurping noise ... I loved the way the faces wrinkled across the table !!

I laughed aloud and so did the others ... the talk was complete!


Author: Anonymous

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Saturday at office!

I hate working on Saturdays. But, this particular saturday seems a lot friendly.I logged in to work at 1.00 PM and had lunch until 2!! Then logged into my PC, checked e-mail and headed back to lounge. I read all kinds of crap in the newspapers. I even read an article in a magazine about the best way to cook some chicken dish. You will surely come to the conclusion that i am really jobless if i let the secret out that am a vegeterian. So, i won't!

After the newspapers was the turn of the coffee machine and the chocolate bites. I suddenly realise that i do enjoy anything that's free of cost. My unusually large appetitie comes to the fore and takes charge. After consuming the fruits of globalization for about thirty minutes i turn back to my desk. I look around and see that people are typing hard into their keyboards. Most of them i believe must be writing to their sweethearts or their distant uncles who might have lost their hats on their way to a winter trek. Or worse, they might be working. But, i do really hope that the rest of my team is working.

Did i tell you that i have a deliverable later in the day?
So much for a job outsourced!

And do try this for fun. Open "google.com". Type in "failure" and click on "I am feeling lucky". No, the results didn't surprise me.

Aristotle is happy

Aristotle's four sources of happiness:

hedone (sensuous pleasure)
propraitari (acquiring assets)
ethikos (moral virtue)
dialogike (logical investigation)

Time just flys by!

Minutes turn into missiles
Hours turn into seconds
Days turn into pieces of paper
Years turn into yesterdays
Decades turn into a folder of old mails
Life turns into a junkyard

Pure

A fresh rose
First rain
Blue sky
Tea
Night!

Silence
Sunrise on the mountains
Math
A child's bliss
Empty highways!

Time
This Moment
Lake
Long drive
Song!


Try did many others

None came close
To

Her smile :)

Somehow

Everything else
disappears!

Mathematics of life

a*childhood+b*school+c*college+d*university+e*MNC+f*career+g*marriage
+h*children == death-bed

memories of a >>> memories of b,c,d,e,f,g,h => a life unspent!
memories of b >>> memories of a,c,d,e,f,g,h => mama's boy!
memories of c >>> memories of a,b,d,e,f,g,h => a geek!
memories of d >>> memories of a,b,c,e,f,g,h => an iitian or a cassanova!
memories of e >>> memories of a,b,c,d,f,g,h => a fool!
memories of f >>> memories of a,b,c,d,e,g,h => an entreprenuer (social or anti-social)!
memories of g >>> memories of a,b,c,d,e,f,h => truly in love or truly in hate!
memories of h >>> memories of a,b,c,d,e,f,g => blessed!

What memories will you have on the death bed?

What Next?

........Clueless!


Mind says Money
Heart says Peace
Society says Power
Soul says Excitement
Saints say Nirvana
Family says Prestige
Friends say Fun
Job says no Fun
Boss says Coffee
Waiter says Bill
I say shut the fuck up!


p.s: Finally, this helped with lots of clues "http://www.springwise.com/ideas/"

You're Beautiful!

My life is brilliant.
My love is pure.
I saw an angel.
Of that I'm sure.
She smiled at me on the subway.
She was with another man.
But I won't lose no sleep on that,
'Cause I've got a plan.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.

Yeah, she caught my eye,
As we walked on by.
She could see from my face that I was,
Flying high,
Fucking high,
And I don't think that I'll see her again,
But we shared a moment that will last till the end.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
I saw your face in a crowded place,
And I don't know what to do,
'Cause I'll never be with you.

You're beautiful. You're beautiful.
You're beautiful, it's true.
There must be an angel with a smile on her face,
When she thought up that I should be with you.
But it's time to face the truth,
I will never be with you.

-Lyrics from the song "You're beautiful" by James Blunt

People, blogs and life!

Warning: This blog has been written in haste and much of it is not really pleasant. Much of what i write is not pleasant. So, if you are here to pass good time, get out!


"Be careful of your thoughts; they may become words at any moment." ~Ira Gassen

As the title suggests, blogs lie in between people and life. They can and do act as the connectors between people and life. Blogs are a great blessing in disguise for a lot many people because without the concept of "blogging" many of them wouldnt have taken to writing at all. And when you write, you connect to yourself. Its like talking to oneself. One can often observe professional sportsmen talking to themselves in between of a heated patch of the game. Talking to one self does help and writing is a great way to talk to oneself. And while writing a public blog, one would be wise to realise that people might actually form opinions about you based on what you write. Their can be friendships at stake. You never know! This is what a very senior fellow at my office said to me today when i was talking to him about how superficial our official analysis sometimes is. "When you swim against the tide, you either float and reap the benifits or you just drown and die!" I dont remember the context of which he said these words about but they stuck to me. Writing is actually swimming against the tide. And the tide here is the emotional net of your friends/well wishers. You might end up writing something which may hurt them and because of the distances involved in real life, it would be really tough to make up!
Especially if you don't have a lot of time at hand. Anyway, i leave the reader to keep guessing as to what i wanted to write here. I know i have not left any clues and there were not many to begin with.

And yeah, the saying at the begining. I just read it when i was about to write this blog and somehow i felt that it was an apt begining! I end this with an other saying of my own, "You are what you eat, read and think". Of the three, i guess the third is the strongest.


p.s: CCP is a phrase now famous in KPO's. It stands for "cut, copy and paste". It actually is true to life too. You cut lots of impressions/opinions/attitudes from the systems around you, copy it onto your mind and then paste it onto a canvas called your own life. So, KPO's in a way are replicating life itself. And when you do something like that, its hard to beat you!

Hinduism or Democracy: Choose only one!

Hinduism and democracy can't co-exist together. One of them has to go. The caste based politics will kill the meritocracy and with it the dreams of the thousands of meritorious people from so-called forward castes (wats so forward abt these castes? there are poor people in all castes. The talk about rural/urban divide has some substance but it would be foolish to assume that its what the politicians want to address) Its not just the logistics of the implementation of reservations which frighten any sane person but the scale of disillusionment and loss of hope among youth. Almost everyone who can has taken to the streets and one hopes that something comes out this struggle full of innocence. Innocence of the fact that thousands of such struggles against the rakshas called "government" never resulted in any positive outcomes. Instead, the polticians always gather a reason to escape free of dirt. The mass is as they say, illogical. The 60% of voting population is definetly OBC or other reservation-benifited caste. Otherwise, the politicians wouldnt have dared take such an unprogressive step.

India is going to the dogs. It was supposed to be a statement of/by people who don't have a life and enjoy cursing the government and the country for their incompetence. But, the dogs are real now and they are barking louder than ever. The sound is almost unbearable. And there won't be any life anymore for many from the forward castes.

How do i get my visa for US?

I support Reservations!

I fully support the reservations idea. All the seats in parliament need to be reserved for people with honest hearts and a clean conscious. The current lot needs to be brutally murdered.

All other kinds of reservations like that in higer education are sick. Am waiting for the day when a reserved category heart surgeon plucks out the heart of a minister who endorsed the reservations in higher education. Since, the entire parliament supports reservations, i would ask this. All of them should go to doctors/engineers/consultants/technicians/ of reserved category when they need them. The rest will soon emigrate anyway.