Thursday, July 28, 2005

Trapped in a rose

Trapped

By Nevermind

Caught her wicked smile,
Burning my eyes,
Followed her silken feet,
Through shallow empty streets,
She said i had a choice ,
To live, to rejoice,

A flame that never burns,
A stream that never flows,
A thread that never weaves,
A thought that never leaves,
A breeze that never blows,
I feel trapped in a rose.

She offered me some wine,
I offered to decline,
Puzzled as a maze,
In a morbid crystal haze,
And she said, What is right and wrong,
When your worries all are gone.

Chained to the ground,
And buried all around,
In silent smoking shells,
With memories of hell,
And no matter how it grows,
I am trapped in a rose.

She spread her violet wings,
Enclosing me within,
And as I struggled to breathe,
And as we went deeper beneath,
I caught a final glimpse,
Of the silent starry night.

Closed in a book,
A lovers tired dream,
A poets hapless song,
Why am i so wrong,
The devil only knows,
Why I'm trapped in a rose.

A flame that never burns,
A stream that never flows,
A thread that never weaves,
A thought that never leaves,
A breeze that never blows,
I am trapped in a rose.
I am trapped in a rose.
I wish I could poetize. Great going dude!

Guess Who's Back!

Benjamin Disraeli once said, "Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.". I'm yet to get in the league of extraordinary travellers, but surely I've started to forget things :). In the last month I've been to Shivasamudram, Mysore, Yercaud, Jaipur, Bikaner, Dharamshala, McLeodganj, Bhaksunag, Gurgaon .. phew! Now, I hate having my life disrupted by routine, but here I am back to Bangalore and office. A substantial amount of water has flown under the bridge; the release I slogged so much for, is finally out -- smooth and easy. Now it's easy going in office. The weather in Bangalore is pleasent, but for a little deceptive chill in the nights. The cold I caught in Himachal has stuck, but now I can recognize my own voice. Ah.. the sun is finally out, birds are chirping, autos bustling, junta yapping -- everything is fine in the world!

Next week, I'm going to Calcutta (okay, Kolkata) for my US visa interview. I'll leave on Wednesday, 3rd, have my appointment on 4th, take leave on Friday and come back on Sunday. Three of my close friends are studying (atleast they tell me so) in IIMC and I'm hoping to have great time catching up with them. I shall be carrying Jha's camera with me to capture the joys of Kolkata. If any of you bong babes reading this, wanna pose for me, meet me on the Howrah bridge on 4th August sharp at 5 in the evening ;-).

Monday, July 11, 2005

From airport!

Unlike most people, I don't really hate airports. Once I spent 8 hours at Delhi airport, waiting for my flight (I read the ticket wrong) and wasn't really bugged there. I say, what is there to hate anyway? You get to see good looking people, you can eat upto your heart's content and you can read. The very fact that there are so limited choices for things to do, makes life amazingly simple. Wouldn't it be simple if there were limited choices in life too; no need to make difficult decisions & living with them. Escapism at the best!

I am again at the airport. From the limited choices (sit dumbly before mute television, read "21 dog years", watch the chick-parade & surf on the internet), well, now it's obvious what I chose. The SpiceJet flight, which will fly me to Delhi, is scheduled to leave at 11:45. My affection for airports and squealing stomach due to hunger, got me early to the airport.

Anyway, this is to inform the regulars that the whereabouts of Mr.Rakesh Sharma were made available to me, thanks to an anonymous comment on this post. Mr.Sharma is right now working with Automated Workflow in the capacity of COO.

Adios amigos, hasta manana!

I'm off to Jaipur for next two weeks. I should be back to Bangalore (and regular blogging) on 26th July. For most of this while, I shall be at Jaipur, with parents. I'll leave Jaipur on 21st to join Prateek & Geet for our summer outing to Himachal Pradesh. Hoping to meet Dalai Lama :).

Be good readers and keep contributing to the hit counts. God bless.

Saturday, July 09, 2005

Dilettante - An amateur who engages in an activity without serious intentions and who pretends to have knowledge

I started reading 21 Dog Years : Doing Time @ Amazon.com last night. It's too early to say how good the book is, but the first chapter is really something I can relate very well to. Some excerpts:

I am a dilettante. I do many things, but none particularly well. It is the art of not applying yourself, the only craft I have studied my entire life. Like so many of my generation, I cherish the delusion that I have superpowers buried deep inside me.
...
In some ways it was the curse of talent; there was a whole list of things in which I showed great promise. But there is a hell of a gap between "talented" and "successful", and to bridge it you need something called "will". My teachers begged me to dedicate myself -- just a little -- and said I would really blossom. I dug in my heels and refused. I feigned scorn and indignation but really I was just too scared to apply myself. I was afraid I would discover my limitations. Better not to know. Better to be free and easy and cultivate an air of smug accomplishment. Nurture my talent. Read another book. Play some more Nintendo.
The answer is perhaps very close to what Pankaj wanted to say here. It goes:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.There'’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won'’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It'’s not just in some of us; it'’s in everyone. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we'’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
I am a dilettante. I want to bask in the sunny delusions of things I can do, rather than sweating it out and actually doing those things. It's easy to confuse it with laziness, but really it's lack of will. I'm not applying myself. I'm always complaining about the job and how is it not very satisfying, but did I ever try to apply myself to the menial tasks? The insatiable thirst of intellectually fulfilling work is holding me back from appreciating that even the most dull tasks are to be done by someone.

Sorry, just thinking aloud.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Bizarre Questionnaire

What do we do when we have to sit in office all day & have nothing to do (being efficient has a few side-effects too) -- we take a random quiz! I saw this craziness at fun-da-mental's blog. I'm tagging Vivek, Seema, Himanshu & Prachi. Com'on fellas, take the quiz!

Three names I go by:
Jaat (with variations like Jaatboy, Jaatman, Jaat-puttar etcetra, etcetra), Chotu, Varun.

Three screen names I would like to have:
When I was a child, Vikram fascinated me. Ranjeet is good. I also liked Virendra in Chandrakanta times.

Three physical things I like about myself:
Ummmm .. now we are being naughty! I like index finger of my left hand; it has the most good-looking nail. I like my eyes; they look black but if someone gets like real close, they are actually dark brown. I like the veins running at the back of my palm; sometimes they just get pumped up and really bulge out. It keeps me in the delusion that I have almost fit body.

Three physical things I don't like about myself:
I abso-***king-lutely hate my hair! I want to keep them real short, but then they stand up and every single one of them takes it's own way. I hate the fact that my arms look thin in front my my torso. I don't really hate it, but my head is little bit bigger than others'. No worries, but my helmet looks very funny.

Three parts of your heritage:
Hmmm .. I like chapatti (and not pizza), I part my hair at left (no monkey business with hair at all) & I prefer hand-water-combo (and not toilet paper).

Three things that scare me:
Underachievement, misunderstandings and trucks & buses.

Three of my everyday essentials:
Coffee, Blog-surfing & Takeshi's Castle.

Three things I badly want to do before I die:
Smash an acoustic guitar on the floor, Sky-dive & bungee-jump over Niagara.

Three careers I'm considering:
Big shot I-Banker, CEO of my company & restaurant reviewer.

Three places I want to go:
Egypt, Australia & South Africa.

Two truths and a lie (in no particular order):
I wear an artificial tooth all the time.
A barber cut my left ear while giving a hair-cut, when I was a small kid.
I've one shirt button stuck up my nose, bachpan ki galtiyan.

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Planet of the Eves

This is now old news that the male entity is not necessary at all for the reproduction process even among diploid species. About one year back, a team of Japanese scientists led by Tomohiro Kono, a biologist at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, created baby mice without the introduction of sperm. They combined the genetic contents of two mouse eggs, —one of which had been genetically altered —to produce a live mouse that reached adulthood and reproduced. (link) Combine this discovery with DNA altering and humans will have a technique in their hand to control how to breed, whom to give birth to & when to breed. Various insect species exhibit this kind of structure. This phenomenon is known as Eusociality. The most familiar examples are insects such as ants, bees, and wasps, with reproductive queens and sterile workers. Eusociality is also known among mammals: the naked mole rat is a clear case. It is very crucial to note that almost all of such species are known to be matriarchal in nature.

Let's examine the case of ants first. In every ant colony, eggs are laid by one or sometimes more queens. Queens are different in structure, they are the largest ones among all ants, especially their abdomens and thorax which are bigger than most ants. Their tasks are to lay eggs and produce more offspring. Most of the eggs that are laid by the queens grow up to become wingless, sterile females called workers. Periodically swarms of new queens and males called alates are produced, usually winged, which leave to mate. The males die shortly thereafter, while the surviving queens either found new colonies or occasionally return to their old one. The male-females ratios are found to be as skewed as 1:3 in such systems.

Even in mammalian species like Lions, males are significant only for the purpose of mating. In a typical setting, 3-5 females acquire a piece of land along with a male. All of them share the burden of hunting & contributing for the pack. At the time of mating, usually another male approaches the pack & forced by the instinctive possessivenessss both the males fight for the lionesses & the area. Whoever loses leaves. This ensures that only the best genes are carried forward to the next generation. After breeding the males are least responsible towards the cubs & often end up killing them. Hence, it's mainly females who bear the burden of carrying forward the genes.

Now, with the invention of our Japanese geniuses, the Human race has the chance to move to eusocial societies. With no important need of males in sight, it might happen that they will be produced in a limited number, just to suffice for menial jobs (as workers) or as soldiers. Females are anyway more than comfortable handing nearly all jobs in today's world. If males aren't required for reproduction, who might ever need them?! Now I know, this is a very far-stretched imagination, but I feel females will rule this planet one day, with males scuttling for their lives. Not very different from the movie -- Planet of the Apes. They'll probably call it -- Planet of the Eves (That time the traffic will certainly be all time worst ;-) ).


(The sine wave. It's believed that everything follows this pattern.)

Quite interestingly, this theory finds some support in theosophy. There is one widely known idea in theosophy called cyclic law - it simply states that there is a periodical return or cycling back of something from some place once more. Cyclic law prevails everywhere. It prevails in every kingdom of nature, in the animal, mineral and human world; in history, in the sky, on the earth. Is says that about everything in this universe keeps oscillating just like a sine wave. The human race started with primitive communist system - everyone was considered equal, irrespective of sex. But atleast for last 3000 years, females are considered the weaker sex & are oppresseded by the males in the society. We live in the times where the present generations are awaking towards the notion of equal rights for males & females. These three points can be located in the graph give above -- x-axis is the time line, +ve y-axis is pro-males era & -ve y-axis is female dominated time. We started with zero bias and went into +ve y side. Right now we are approaching the x-axis from the +ve y side. This new discovery about reproduction might very well push the entire humanity into an era of female dominance.

Just imagine Planet of the Apes with apes replaced by beautiful lasses. If nothing else this theory can make one hell of an interesting movie! After exhausting all sorts of extinct, existent & noexistentnt species, probably Hollywood can make a movie over this. With some budding sci-fi writers (like Vivek), this idea should atleast get me some royalty money.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Super-heroes



We went to Le Meridien, Bombay for their midnight buffet in our final year of college. The occasion was acceptance of Aloo's application for the PhD program at University of Maryland. We posed as the super-heroes, Aloo later photoshopped Pope into this.