Saturday, March 12, 2005

Sweet Child of mine

It was his second year in Surathkal and he was still one of those well oiled nerds trying to get to the top of the class… lol!!! It was his fourth semester to be precise… We had a certain lab called AEC Lab. It was one of those things that never ever give an output. Besides considering his attendance in that lab he didn’t even harbour any hopes of getting an output… yet deep inside he somehow felt he knew the theory enough to squeeze his way through…
It was the middle of May and the exams were on… He had stayed up the whole night trying to cram the unnecessary details…
“Abbe… maa**** woh capacitor ka value kya tha be???”
“Oye mereko nahi pata yaar… mereko bhi is experiment ka output nahi aaya…”
“Abbe is experiment aayega to mera vaat lag jayega yaar”
“Jo bhi hoyege dekha jayega… sutta keliye aayege kya???”
“Abhe bho**** main to aaj mar jaoonga yaar”
He somehow managed to go through all the experiments… He was confident that even if he did not get an output he would smash the viva and write enough theory to clear the paper … But there was still that particular experiment… hell what is the probability of getting that experiment yaar… one in thirteen… worth a chance ditching it… howzaat???
It seemed the most logical thing to do… ditch that experiment… so ditch he did!!!
7 am and he was haunting the surroundings of the AEC Lab. Somehow he was strangely confident that he would get thought the lab without any major scars…
The system is strange… they keep the question papers hidden in the answer sheets and we were to randomly pick up any of those answer booklets… smarty that he was he decided to have the first pick…
" Design an RC Coupled amplifier… gain of… bandwidth of… components… …. … "
He couldn’t believe it… It was that friggin question that he hadn’t studied for at all.. he could see his entire family ( dads great grand dad included) abusing him … he felt like abusing them back loudly but I believe sensibility returns when its most unlikely… lol!!!!
He tried his hand at copying… he raced as fast as he could towards the one girl who couldn’t have possibly ditched it…
“You are the best woman ive ever set my eyes upon… please please tell me atleast the values of the components and il manage to write up an infinite deal of garbage”
“Shhh…. What a freak… 10pF , 22uF ,……….. give me your sheet I’ll write the formulae in pencil… use it somewhere”
“Oh …. You are a sweetheart… Thanks a million man… that ba***** is coming back … me scooting… Cadburys after exam…”
Now he had the answer.. no one could fail him… he felt a strange sense of whatever… He was on my way… lol!!!! He confidently went to his place … wrote an infinite deal of nothing inserting those formulae in conspicuous locations and making the presence of those magical numbers felt…
He submitted the paper and hurriedly rushed towards the attendant for the apparatus…. “10 picofarad” , he proudly said… and looked around … we nodded at him as if to say.. “way to go”.. atleast that’s what he thought…
Soon he was at his table trying to set up the circuit… an hour passed and then another… hope to despair is quite a long journey man … he was feeling really stupid… nothing that he tried seemed to be having an impact. He was at his wits end when he could hear , “Roll number 999… come for viva…”, he got up and walked slowly towards the external examiner…
“what is the bandwith that you have designed this for???”
“sir, 200 Mhz sir…”
“200 Mhz ?”
“Yes sir but i think it will work only for about 150 Mhz”
“150 Mhz??!!!???”
“ Sir the coupling capacitor…”
“No … answer to the point… what is this circuit's operating range??”
“ Sir in the formula I have substituted… 200 …”
“Ok son… that’s all ok… are you getting the output???”
“No sir”
“It isn’t really surprising… look at the circuit… do you see anything missing”
He felt like beating up the bald man … If he knew th answer, would he be mumbling…
“ Cant see the mistake sir…”
“ This is what is wrong with the younger generation I say… they refuse to tackle the problem… everything they need has to be given to them on a platter… “
“yes sir “
“what yes sir”
“sorry sir… “
More blah…
“yes sir”
“what??”
“no sir… sorry sir..”
Then the old man asked him the question that probably saved his subject..
“How much did you score in the theory last semester?”
“sir 82 sir…”
“ah… so u sill don’t see the mistake eh…”
He pretended to stare at the sheet and mumbled all the formulae including E=mc2 hoping to impress the professor… of course he made sure that the bald man dint hear anything he mumbled…

“Can I see your circuit??”
“Yes of course sir…”
He casually walks towards the breadboard… examines the mess of wires….
“Son you should be a little more judicious with these wires u know… you have used such long wires for these small connections… Its no wonder that you have overlooked something… well the circuit seems right although the one you’ve drawn is a little different…”
Our man was surprised… I mean how could he rig up a circuit correctly when he had no clue about it at all considering that the circuit that he copied was wrong…. He simply nodded nevertheless…
Well it was well past three hours now and he asked him to submit his paper.. He told him that he couldn’t take any readings…
The old man said, “Well I don’t know… lets see … its not that difficult an experiment..”
“yes sir… something is wrong…”
And he walked out of the hall… It was the first time he thought hed fail in a paper… Not a nice feeling… When he got outside all of us sympathized with him at having gotten such a difficult question…
“They’ll clear you man… uve got the circuit right…”
“But goddam it ive drawn it wrong in the sheet..”
“They’ll pass you man… don’t worry”
Nothing could console him…
Someone once had told him that beer is mans best friend when hes all down… so Mr.Beer beckoned him…
He went all alone to this place in Mangalore about 20 kilometres away… got himself drunk silly and somehow managed to get back to the hostel.I being his roommate was really surprised because I had never seen him drink in the two years I knew him… He just walked in with his typical ceaseless smile , grabbed my guitar and started screaming “sweet child of mine…”
We all welcomed another intelligent man who had been ruined by education into our community of “light drinkers” ….

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Kaam Tamam

I was sitting in my cubicle and pondering over a problem when I get a call from one of my friends ...
“ Oye… ******* kya kar rahe ho”
“ generally just… “
“just wondering if we can scoot to mysore tomorrow… getting bored… “
“how about tonight???”
There was just a moment of silence before what I had said dawned on us…

“Il be at your place in an hours time”
“Sure”
He hung up… I quickly found excuses and raced towards home… I Just had time enough to have a quick shower when I could hear his car screeching to a halt before my house…

A few cds, a couple of spare clothes… a few chocolates… n we were off on our way…
We decided to drag along another friend , lets call him Tamam.

We called him up on our way to his house and told him our plans… we had decided to drag him along at any cost… He seemed shaken up by the entire plan and tried to come up with excuses for each of which we had our own ridiculous counter – excuses…

“Oye.. were goin mysore… get dressed….”
“what dya mean”
“oye we know ur hardly wearing anything at this hour of the night… and watching some mallu pondy “
“Abbe… that’s ok.. what mysore…”
“just get dressed … we wil be there in 10 minutes”
“WTF????”
“yeah….”


In ten minutes we were outside his huge house…. Our man comes out to receive us in his pajamas and sweater.. man all that was missing was a monkey cap… It would’ve made a perfect goorkha picture… he tried sheepishly to give excses…
“Abbe kal mereko meeting hain yaar… nahin aa paoonga”
“what time is the meeting”
“sharp 8 o clock maccha…”
“don’t worry… you will be in office by 8am”
“WTF??? What ..”
“chill… go wear atleast ur undies… we gotta leave now..”
“Abbe maa***** I have work tomorrow”
“ba*** to your work… were leaving now… if you don’t step out now… were gonna start screaming ur lover babes name… she stays in the opposite building right???”
We could see the jimmy wince in discomfort…
He tried a few more excuses before he came up with the ultimate mother of all…
“Speak to my daddy… me good boy… wont go without daddys aashirvaard!!!!”
We confidently walked into his house… I was almost sure I would be able to work my magic with his parents… but one step into the house… n it spelt doom…
Uncle was in a murderous mood… one look and we knew what to expect… We could see Tamam jumping around in delight while we were wriggling uncomfortably…
“Tamam wont be going out tonight.. he has fever… when I last checked it was 98.1 degrees… besides he had running nose last week… “
“Ok uncle… yeah I guess he must stay home… it might get worse…”
“Why don’t you guys go upstairs and talk for a while… “
“yes uncle”
We put our heads down and walked into Tamams room… as expected he was watchin one of those movies and… we gave him ideas like eloping with us… considering his tendencies im sure he would’ve been considerably excited n all… but he kept his thoughts to himself and told us to wait in his room while he went for his customary leaks… ive known this freak of nature for over a decade now but ive never been able to explain his bladder problems… he had a reasonably tight one before he developed pimple problems and his mommy got a laser surgery done on his nose… God alone knows what the doctor did but although his pimples weren’t to be seen for a almost a week his bladder (im not talking gall bladder) seemed to have lost considerable strength. By the time he reappeared we stowed away his company swipe card in a pile of books and shouted goodbye…
When we got to the car we were still wondering how that freak could possibly prefer “nice” movies to a long night drive..
The journey was a pleasant one … we were almost halfway into Kengeri when we got a call from a rather shaken up Tamam …
“Hey did u guys see my swipe card anywhere..”
“Hell yeah… its with us … dammit!!!!”
“grrrrr… brrrrrr… mrrrrrr…”
“what happened???”
“I don’t believe you guys are my friends…”
“We don’t believe you ditched us…”
“You actually have my…”
“Yeah.. well be back tomorrow morning… Just look around… u might just find it somewhere there..”
and I could no longer hear the soothing background music from his dads transistor…

We carried on.. the journey was amazing… good music… good conversation and mild traffic… so we generally proceeded towards Mysore at a reasonable speed. We were running out of ideas when we get another call from out Tamam!!!
“B****** ur coming back rt now n returning the card to me… WTF is wrong with you guys… “
The tone was not one of anger … it was a confused tone.. totally confused… almost begging for us to return his card…
We couldn’t help laughing out aloud.In fact we had to stop the vehicle so that we could laugh without danger… and all the while our dear Tamam is letting loose a tirade of abuses…
We could literally hear the relief he felt when we told him that his card was in his house only …
After we hung up… we carried on.. One stop at CafĂ© Coffee Day … and within a couple of hours we were in Mysore…
One amazing trip… in every sense of the word!!!!!

Saturday, March 05, 2005

White Flag -Dido

I know you think that I shouldn't still love you,
I'll tell you that.
But if I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it
where's the sense in that?

I promise I'm not trying to make your life harder
Or return to where we were

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

I know I left too much mess and
destruction to come back again
And I caused but nothing but trouble
I understand if you can't talk to me again
And if you live by the rules of "it's over"
then I'm sure that that makes sense

And when we meet
Which I'm sure we will
All that was then
Will be there still
I'll let it pass
And hold my tongue
And you will think
That I've moved on....

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

Well I will go down with this ship
And I won't put my hands up and surrender
There will be no white flag above my door
I'm in love and always will be

What a beautiful song!!! what a lovely message... yeah I dont give up!!!! Yeah i get knocked... but im up again .. No ur never gonna see me down...

Dream on!!!! It wont change a thing!!!!!

Everything is so bloody cosy in feigned reality … Its not even half as harsh… everything u want to own is up for grabs. Everything that happens is a choice we’ve made… and something we look forward to...

Reality is a bitch!!! Consider this… The woman of your dreams politely tells you that you aren't the one for her… but that you're a wonderful person… you are not just depressed... you're hurt where it hurts the most.. the lil son of an ego takes a bashing!!!

More alcohol???? Deep inside you know that this is not gonna change reality… it still will remain that you are a loser… You have just lost the girl who was the source of your inspiration… After all she was the one who carved the niche you tried to fit in… Now that you weren't even close… you feel like theres nothing left on this world which will be a motivation… nothing else to look forward to…

“will there ever be someone in my life who will match this babe… will there ever be someone who will be able to command respect and love like this sweet dame…”

That’s when I decided its time that reality neednt control me… I live my life the way I want to… I may not be the one for her… yet she could be the one for me… this belief makes me believe that im happy with her … I spend all my time with her… I assume that she loves me as much … This is what I feel… that I can live in a world of dreams… of lions and princesses … shunning reality… hoping that the dreams wont come crashing down… If nothing im happy … Shes what i want to live for... shes mine in my dreams... I dream on!!!

Ironic - Thank you Alanis

An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day
It's a black fly in your Chardonnay
It's a death row pardon two minutes too late
Isn't it ironic ... don't you think

It's like rain on your wedding day
It's a free ride when you've already paid
It's the good advice that you just didn't take
Who would've thought ... it figures

Mr. Play It Safe was afraid to fly
He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye
He waited his whole damn life to take that flight
And as the plane crashed down he thought
'Well isn't this nice...'
And isn't it ironic ... don't you think

Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

It's a traffic jam when you're already late
It's a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic... don't you think
A little too ironic... and yeah I really do think...

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
Life has a funny, funny way of helping you out
Helping you out


So true dont u think... everytime u think everythings going so perfectly... i wonder whats in store for me... and im never failed.... something has to go wrong... and thinking of the entire episode at a later stage... the happiness seems so strange... so fake... isnt it so goddam ironic... :)