The Seven Tag

Continuing Nas's tag here.

It is on the to-do list for so long that I wanted to take it up as a challenge! “Can’t dos” were easy while “can dos” were mighty tough.

Seven things I plan (dream) to do before I die

1. Start and own a company or companies. To be an entrepreneur is my biggest dream.
2. Receive Nobel Prize (Lofty:D)
3. Climb Mt. Everest (he he… this is becoming ridiculous!)
4. Run a full marathon (Exhausting, huh?)
5. Make a difference (big) in a lot of lives.
6. Experience intense, passionate and deeply emotional love.
7. Travel in space. If human settlement becomes a reality in Mars, I hope I have enough money or luck to be among first few settlers.

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Seven things I can do

1. Act as though I am very caring and friendly :)
2. Change and adapt like a chameleon.
3. Forget
4. Psycho analyze
5. Super multi-task without completing anything.
6. Exaggerate

7. Roam around without direction

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Seven things I can't do

1. Be disciplined.
2. Follow routine
3. Remember routes
4. Make friends in the first meeting.
5. Be organized
6. Implement the plans
7. Forgive

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Seven things I say the most

1. Yeah
2. ok

3. Hmmm
4. I
5. You
6. Later
7. Not sure

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Seven things I say the most on my blog

1. Love
2. Me, I etc
3. Here I go
4. God
5. Destiny
6. Why
7. End

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Seven things that attract me to the opposite

1. Childlike
2. Style and Character
3. Eyes, Lips and other physical aspects. :D
4. Unpredictability
5. Intelligence
6. Sense of humor
7. Secretiveness

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Seven celebrity crushes

1. Katrina Kaif
2. Kate Winslet
3. Shriya Saran
4. Genelia D'Souza
5. Natalie Portman
6. Jodie Foster
7. Jennifer Aniston

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Wow!

Illusion

Every time you walk away,
a wave of finality descends.
There are things untold.
If I had known,
I would have told the truth.
I am hiding the obvious.
You are refusing to see it.
Denial is what we both do.
You deny that it is there.
I deny that it is not.
We are dreamers,
caught in a real world.
We mock all those
who want to balance life.
We give more than what we can
and then some more.
Practicality has no meaning
in our grand scheme.
I know you more than you do.
And I love you more than myself.
You may not realize it today.
I get caught in your eyes
and see a layer of gloss.
I forget that it is shallow.
And when the gloss
tries to behold me,
I slip away.
It could be an illusion.
An elaborate plot
which has gone according to the plan.
If destiny can be changed,
I will try.
But if the play was already written,
I will play my role.

Stupid, I am.

That I want from you,
you don't know.
That I give you,
you don't want.
Destination.
Is that all I want?
Journey.
That’s all I want.
Discomfort.
That I won’t cause.
Fade.
I will, into time.
Silent.
It will be.
Difference.
You won’t realize.
Everything.
I have.
Happy.
I should be.
You.
I don’t have.
Hurt.
Should I be?

PS: Comment. You have to. It sucks. That’s true. Write it. I will feel better. :)

For you I should

Forever I can.
For you I should.
In this eternal silence,
longing for you.
In the game,
guessing your next move.
In the love,
waiting for one moment.
Digging up and burying
those memories
you gave
and those
you took away.
Breaking up and moving closer.
Breaking down and denying it.
Being right next to you
and feeling far away.
Saying all that
you want to hear
and hiding all that
I want to say.
I can.
For you I would.
Will I?

Pseudo

Guilt chases me
for empty promises I made
beautiful castles I built
sweet words I whispered
happy dreams I wove
moral values I held
tall virtues I symbolized
false compliments I showered
borrowed advice I delivered
divine hope I beckoned
heavenly future I promised
and because you believed.

Subtle endings

Like horizons of never ending oceans,
fuzzy tails of comets,
multiple reflections on a dark window,
flowing robes of an angel,
irregular edges of a cloud,
unreachable mirage in a desert,
first rays of sun at dawn,
soft whispers on a summer night,
some things should not end.
Yet they have to.
In the most subtle way ever.

The fire of desire.

Reason,
Self-esteem,
Purpose.
Lost all of them,
in a dream.
Up into the clouds,
it lifts me.
Then abruptly,
drops me.
Is getting hurt,
a pastime?
A sin,
committed by whom?
Optimism and hope,
are they sins?
Am I a sinner?
Yes, I am.
The fire of desire
will burn forever.
Engulfing me,
the sinner.

Reality is a mirage!

On the altar of love,
obsession is the other name.
Nothing is an alternative.
Choice is an irony.
Today's joy
or tomorrow's sorrow?
An idealist back
after a trip to the perfect world.
Secrets beneath layers of courtesies.
Tragedy of coincidences.
Which is the truth?
Object or the projection?
Subject or the image?
Lost in the waves of consciousness,
reality is a mirage.

PS : Another one!! Ur destiny!

We live!

We live
behind a facade.
Too shy
to share our dreams.
Too independent
to ask for help.
We live
in a borrowed reality,
on a broken rainbow.
Too proud
to confess our loneliness.
Too eager
to give.
Too uncomfortable
to take back.
We live
balancing the life's equations.
Too ignorant
to know
that they can never be.
We live
seeing our life
through borrowed eyes.
Too short-sighted
to see it
through our own.
We live
deriving happiness.
Too enlightened
to know it.
We live.

PS : I know my writings kind of suck! But cannot resist the urge to call them as poems. . :D

Indexed :D

Everywhere

A brief glance at the code
A flash of thought
Passwords were not mine

Time was no longer real
Past was better

Little words meant nothing

You are here
In the frames
In the faces
I cannot delete you

Everytime I login
You are there

Memories of you
In my phone
In my email
In my passwords
In my neurons.

Happiness is redefined
Joy has new limits

Three

Absent mindedness is my friend. He will never leave me. But will never help me in need. I make innovative plans to avoid this unwelcome friend.

One of those plans is using the power of three. When I am outside, I make sure that I have only 3 things with me. At any time, I can count to 3 and check if I have the 3 items.

For example, I have a wallet, a phone and a set of keys with me on all days. That neatly fits into my plan "three".

Sometimes, during office hours, it may be 4 including my ID card. But since the harmless ID card is hanging off me from somewhere, I need not worry about it too much.

But, at any single instant of time, when my hands go over my pockets, I just count 3 and don’t check for the 3 items individually. So if at any point, I have only 2 items with me, I know for sure that I have misplaced one. But I will not know which one. I have to whack my brain to think what the 3 items were and which one of them is missing.

A bigger problem is while driving. The keys are safely in the ignition and my hands follow the plan sincerely and go over the pockets and instantly generate an interrupt. One of the things is missing.

My brain services the interrupt after a brief pause (vacuum). It clears the interrupt deciding that the keys are missing and they are in the ignition and will be back safely into my pocket.

I learnt..

You taught me
to say yes
even if
it is cutting myself
into two
and giving
one half to you.
That rain needs
to be enjoyed
like a shower.
That it is
fine to display love
shamelessly.
To take somebody for granted.
To be there where I am
without thinking about
being somewhere else.
To love without being
loved back.
To take the moments
as they are.
That it is
possible to find happiness
in memories.
To give those special moments
to somebody,
which they will cherish
for a lifetime.
To fall asleep in
the middle of nowhere.
To make all those small plans
with delight
and let them be plans forever.
That it is fine
to be the happiest person
and never feel guilty about it.
That it is fine
to mask pain.
To rescue a dragon fly
and throw it into the unknown.
To collect all the dry flowers
and forget about them.
To plan for tomorrow
and live today.

I hate...

Mathangi, as usual :D, has tagged me… I hate to hate. I think it is a waste of time. Either I love or I dont care. Hating something or somebody is inefficient. But, like most of the times in my life, I know what is right but cannot seem to implement it. So I do hate some people and some things. So lets go.

YOUR MOST HATED…
BEVERAGE:Beer. I can't understand how people can drink this. One of my friends does not drink red wine because it is bitter but can gulp down beers. Funny world, funny people.
COLOR:White. It is so plain. Its not pure as people say. It reflects all colors. It is as impure as a spectrum.
TOWN/CITY:Any cold cities or cities where it rains always like Chicago or Boston or Seattle.
MOVIE: Butterfly effect. I think the director needs to join an asylum.
ANIMAL:RAT!
SEASON: Winter without a partner. Summer without an AC. Spring without the vacation. Fall without the camera.
ASPECT OF TALKING ON THE PHONE: Sometimes I think its a form of Matrix. What if I invent an machine which can mimic my voice and call home everyday. And what if I die after that? Will they realize? Ha ha. The machine has to be very intelligent though.
ASPECT OF WATCHING TV OR MOVIES: They switch my mind off.
ASPECT OF EATING IN RESTAURANTS:Noisy and on the other extreme, someone from the next table overhearing our conversation.
ASPECT OF SHOWERING: That it has to end.
ASPECT OF DATING: Selecting the place, deciding what to wear, thinking what to talk and the worst part, listening.
ASPECT OF THE BEACH: Dealing with heaps of sand in everything from the pockets to the socks to the car.
ASPECT OF THE GROCERY STORE:I hate all aspects of this.
HOUSEHOLD CHORE: Everything.
HABIT IN OTHERS?Being superficial.
HABIT OF YOURS? Spending and preferring to spend way too much time analysing myself.
THING ABOUT WOMEN? Shopping! (Generalizing)
THING ABOUT MEN? Being desperate for women.(me too)
WHAT’S ANNOYING YOU TODAY? Having to make choices. Sometimes, choice is a luxury. Most of the times, it is a burden.
I tag everybody on my sidebar.

Rebellion

I did not realize till recently the number of things I do just because somebody says that it is wrong without any logic.

I bought a black colored car. There were no second thoughts. It was an instant choice when the salesman asked my preference. I knew that a black car will look dirtier if not washed regularly. But I still went for it. I have more black colored clothes than any other color. My mobile phone is black. Why? It is because my parents never used to allow me to buy black colored things though I liked them. They had no reason except that black is "generally" considered to be linked with death and sorrow.

Even if I don’t eat non-vegetarian food on other days, I make sure I eat it on Fridays and Saturdays. I don’t buy new clothes for festivals but buy them whenever I feel like.

I don’t believe in God. This was a well researched decision. But the trigger was my Mom's unbreakable faith and her insistence that I be as devote as her. As a rule, I don’t go into temples (If I do, I go directly to the free food queue).

I don’t say anything to make somebody feel happy or sad. I say the truth. Truth is one way to make somebody feel uncomfortable. It is one way to test a person. If he/she can handle brutal honesty, he/she can handle anything. It is a good way to make great friends.

I dress in full formals on Fridays. I wear round neck t-shirts and a pair of faded denims on Mondays. I get up early on weekends and late on weekdays. I dress in casuals for traditional occasions.

I eat beef and pork. If meat is not to be eaten, all meats have to be avoided. Why this partiality towards cows? May be it made sense in olden days because cows gave a lot of other things which made it unreasonable to kill them for meat.

I got drunk just to feel the “kick”. And recently I ordered a Margarita in a dinner with friends and their families. And explained to them what Margarita consists of. If somebody thinks that I am not supposed to do something, I do it right in front of them.

I talk taboo subjects at the most unexpected moments and amuse myself observing the ever so fine twitches on the audience faces.

If I feel somebody is beating around the bush, I tell them to come to the point. It doesnot matter if its a bad news or criticism or sarcasm, I want it plain. No decorations please!

If I am not comfortable with somebody or if somebody irritates me, I make sure that they know it. If they persist, I will avoid them at all costs. I don’t care that I hurt them.

Don’t ever tell me what not to do. I will do exactly that! "Why not?" is the question which I want the answer for. If you have it, tell it to me.

I am a SLIder..

Some things happen in our life. They seem odd. They seem a bit out of place. They are a bit eerie. We dont know why they happen. There is no logical explanation. And anything which does not have a logical explanation is scary. At one time, the collective human mind (if there is one?) explained every such event by borrowing a joker card called God. Every time they discovered the reason for an event, they replaced the joker card with the actual card. As time progressed, many of the actual cards were in place. But some joker cards are still holding their places strongly.

Some things happen. We tend to forget that they did. But then they happen again. And again. It freaks us out. We try telling them to somebody and they laugh on our face. Then we decide not to tell it to anybody again. And then we come across a whole group of people who have experienced the same thing.

SLI (Street Light Interference) has happened to me very frequently in India. Everytime I passed below a street light in our street, it will switch off. Then it will switch back on immediately after I have crossed it. It was so weird. I would stand watching the street lights for hours. I would count the number of people who walked below them. And the street lights would not switch off even once. Then, when the street is deserted, I will walk under them. They will switch off instantly when I am below them and switch on once I cross them. It was true for almost 4 street lights on that street. Empirical proof that the event happened existed. But the empirical proof that the event occurs because of the cause assumed did not exist.

Then, I had to leave the street and the city and it never happened again.

I am sure that there will be a scientific proof soon. We SLIders may not be superior or inferior to other normal humans. But we are different.

My best wishes for all the research which is going on in this direction.

PS : mapmyindia is a very good site to get directions in India. Congrats for mapping my India! It was supposed to be impossible(because of the chaos) according to some of the brightest minds in silicon valley.

Tag again

Thanks to another tag from Mathangi!

Three smells I love:
1. Scent of a woman
2. Scented Candles
3. Babies

Three smells I hate:
1. Stagnant water
2. Dishwasher
3. Stale Food

Three jobs that I have had in my life:
1. Salesman in a book shop
2. Credit card salesman on Phone
3. Software Engineer

Three movies that I could watch over and over:
1. Matrix
2. Speed
3. Nuvu Naaku Nachav

Three fond memories:
1. My first Love
2. My second Love
3. My Third Love ..... :D

Three jobs I would love to have:
1. Scientist
2. President of US
3. Pope

Three things I like to do:
1. Space Travel
2. Race in Mountain Bikes
3. Climb Mt Everest

Three of my favorite foods:
1. Biriyani
2. Idli/Dosa
3. Ice cream

Three places I would like to be right now:
1. Hubble Telescope
2. Mt Everest Base Camp
3. Moon

Three things that make me cry:
1. Stupidity of others
2. Feeling of helplessness
3. Rejection

Whew!
And as usual, I tag KP, Nas and anybody who wants to keep this going.

1:03 PM

There are few things which irritate me more than anything else. I get obsessed with them. They are the features which can never be switched off once enabled. How incompetent? How foolish were the designers?

There is no option to turn off the photo on Orkut profile once we enable it. There is just a choice to replace it but no choice to disable it. The best choice that we have is to upload a blank photo. But there is no going back to "no photo". I can live with this but not the one below.

My Timex watch irritates me every day at 1:03 PM. I just cannot take it anymore. One fine day, I will kill it. I will just pull the plug. Just to keep it quiet. Just to stop it from going off in the shrillest alarms in alarm clock history everyday at 1:03 PM. That's the problem with machines. They just don’t understand. They just cannot be made to waver from the routine. Once they are taught what to do, they will do it religiously everyday till they die. Till the last milli-watt of power is left in their batteries, they will not stop. When will they learn that if they have any illusions of replacing the human beings on earth, they should understand chaos. The pure beauty of randomness. The pure fun in unpredictability.

It all started like this. I had to get up at 6 AM one day and I set up the alarm in my watch. It went off at 6 AM sharp and I was happy. The trouble started next day and continuing for 6 months now. It just went off every day at 6 Am. My heroic efforts to switch off this feature have gone waste. My watch has 4 buttons, 2 on each side. I am pretty sure that one of them is just to switch on the light and has no other feature associated with it. So I am left with 3 buttons to accomplish my goal. Let go by the combinations. Each of them can be pressed individually, together and for varying amounts of time. So the number of combinations are 3 (individual) + 3 (2 at a time) + 1 (all three together) + 3 (individually press and hold for longer time) + 3 (press and hold 2 at a time) + 1 (press and hold all 3 together) + 3 (press and release 1 while holding other button. 2 at a time) + 3 (press and release 1 while holding other 2) and so on and so forth. Approximately, there were almost 30 possible combinations. And I tried all of them to switch off the alarm. Nothing worked!

Then I thought of a simple way out. I know it is blasphemy for any Electronics Engineer to read the manual. But I was far more irritated for that. So I tried to commit sacrilege. But it did not help. I had misplaced the manual.

But one thing I could do was to change the time. I moved it to 9 AM and found that it was still irritating me. Obviously I cannot set it anything after 9 PM and before 8 AM. So I was just left with the lunch time. Somehow 1:03 has held on. So every day my watch performs its duty. Exactly the way it was programmed. To shout at the top of its voice for 30 seconds at 1:03 PM.

Now I won’t believe that its 1:03 PM even if all the atomic clocks in the world come together and provide testimony. I will believe it only if my watch says so. Yes, at the top of its voice to wake up all those lazy people who are in for a siesta after an intoxicating lunch. Long live 1:03 PM. Long live the battery!

Did you note the time of this post? Do you understand my frustration?

Tag

Math has tagged me.

I am thinking about… everything yet nothing.
I said…"Just let go"
I want to… find things to keep me occupied for 2 weeks
I wish…that I have no more wishes
I hear… unrestrained laughter
I wonder… why?
I regret… to be alive when 3 of my siblings died
I am ..what I am.
I dance… when I am alone
I sing…when I listen to my favorite song
I cry… very rarely
I am not always… in the mood.
I make with my hands… food, love and joy.
I write… junk
I confuse… dreams and reality
I need… peace
And finally… I tag…N, Prathiba and Nas

Dear Sister...

Dear Sister,

It feels odd to write a letter to you. It always feels so. It’s weird that I am doing this. I am sure that you will not read this. But there is a distant possibility. I know no other medium which has a remote possibility of reaching you. This one has. The other day I read that some of the data on the net is sent over space as part of the search for life beyond earth.

I love you.

I don’t think I will ever be able to tell you this in person. But I have to. From the time that I knew you, I am fascinated. I have asked a million questions about you. I have tried different places to have a glimpse of you. You did not leave any traces behind. I don’t think you had enough time.

I know 3 months is a very short time. Did you know who your Mom and Dad were? I know you were in a lot of pain from when you were born. Did Earth give you at least one moment of joy in your short stay?

Did you know that you had a brother who was blissfully playing when you were struggling with death? May be you will know.

It was fun being the youngest. If you were there, I could have passed on some of the fun.

Why were you born if you had to just die?

The meaning of life is life itself. If that was not achieved, why were you born?

But I know that you tried. You tried hard.

Tag

Tagged by Kp

My mood right now: Nothing. I am neither happy nor sad. I neither feel bored nor excited. The time seems to be standing still but yet moving so fast.

Book am reading currently : Robert Ludlums Altman code
I am trying to complete it for a long time now.

The last thing I ate :
Chicken Sandwich at the Office Cafetaria. It was bad even for my liberal standards.

Want to eat: Tirupati Laddoo. My family in India went to Tirupati and have been teasing me about the laddoos for a while now.

What I did last weekend : Roamed around in the Mall, Had a lot of ice cream, had 2 tiring sessions in the gym, took a driving class, slept a lot, cooked fish curry

Plan for the next weekend: Will make them on Friday Evening.

Recent blunder :None. My Razr did a blunder. When I save a new phone book entry with an existing name, it does not overwrite. It quietly allows the new transaction and ends up doing nothing. I ended up calling my roomie and placed a voice message about my official stuff. The poor guy did not have any idea why the SPI src clock bit did not get set in the latest SPI initialization sequnce for the new revision processor.

Colour I am wearing today: White and Black

Am listening to: Omkara and Kadhalar Dhinam

I have to:
Complete some stuff in office
Get Driving license
Sleep
Get those last extra 4 pounds off
Get in touch with friends before they forget me
Get that special someone
Copy all data from my old laptop to the new one
Calm myself and be focussed on the task at hand

I wish:
I can travel to and from India in 2 hours flat. Or max 12 hours. Thats the freaking time difference. How come it is taking 22 hours?
The girl whom I will love, will love me back
My family is with me
For a world without countries or religion. A one nation state "Earth"is the best. One currency, one government, one tax regime. No visas :)

I hope:
I hope I am the way I am, all my life.

Waning Heart Beats

A distant smell of burning tar under the scorching heat of the summer Sun in Chennai evoked a familiar feeling. A street side hawker and his mobile eatery were busy serving the hungry customers. The rush hour traffic of Chennai was rushing by. The heat was terrible. The sweat was drenching the freshly ironed shirt. The familiar blue Maruti 800 had not shown up yet.

A torn banner of a newly released movie was wrapped around a homeless man. He was lying next to the mobile eatery. The last strand of life was hanging on to his decaying body. He was a human sidelined by the civilization. The heat was unforgiving. The hunger was not far behind. His life would quit living soon in the full view of the thousands of people rushing by. Yet he will be invisible. He will be forgotten as another aberration in the urban chaos.

A bread crumb from the eatery would have saved his life. A phone call to those untiring NGOs would have saved his life. A small gesture of love would have brought the lost hope into his waning heart beats.

Not getting the ironed shirt dirty is the top priority. He was too dirty to touch before another presentation on how to improve human life by innovation. He was too unimportant an entity to be bothered about on that day compared to that all important assignment to be submitted. What is Government for?

Human mind rationalizes the most unforgivable acts.

The blue Maruti 800 made its way through the traffic. I jumped in and closed the door behind. The Air conditioning was on. The man was lost in the cool breeze.

I don’t remember what those presentations and assignments were. I do remember that the banner was there when I came back in the evening. It was still torn. The eatery had not closed yet. The traffic was still at its peak. I was alive too. The life rushed by. Nobody noticed that the man was not there.