Ninaivugal...Thoughts

Every year, I wonder what Thanksgiving is all about.  I take a look at Wikipedia, understand what it's all about and then the following year, take a look at the same article again.  This year, I did the same.  But, at the start of every year, when the list of holidays is released by the HR department, you will find it hard to miss that you're getting four days off in the last week of November.  The Friday that follows the Thanksgiving Thursday is referred to as the Black Friday , which is a massive day for shopping.  This is the day when the retailers give you a big discount by bumping up the prices beforehand.  OK, some of the items are actually dirt cheap, but most of them are such that they can be purchased at any time of the year.   The US is filled with deals and promotions almost all year round.  Thanksgiving weekend is just another excuse to shell out money for products that you actually did not know you required.  Before the Thanks...

Engineering degree is at a premium in India.  At the same time, every other guy is an engineer.  I don't know whether it's the job market or the social status, everybody wants to be an engineer.  Put everything aside.  First become an engineer and then you can worry about the other stuff later. There is nothing like brimming with pride when you go home and tell your folks, "I hit a century in the local cricket match." "Okay, okay, all that's fine.  What about your exams in the coming week? Are you prepared for that?" It may be wrong to say that this is applicable only for engineers; I think it is true that this holds for medicine as well. It is a matter of pride to say, "illa ree nammaga doctor alla engineeringay odhbekuantha iddhane (My son wants to study doctor or engineering only)." I used to secretly wonder What is meant by studying for doctor? Isn't it medicine? So, as I pursued my passion for engineering, and completed fou...

The last couple of weeks have been particularly bad for technology related stalwarts.  If the death of Steve Jobs hadn't even sunk in, it was even more painful to read up that Dennis Ritchie, the father of C programming and co-developer of Unix was no more.  Dennis Ritchie may not be as famous as Steve Jobs is to the layman, but there is no denying that without C, one cannot fathom the existence of these super powered smart phones and almost every other embedded device today. It was in my Engineering that I was first exposed to C.  Already, the message was spreading quick and fast. If you miss even a single semi-colon, you are in trouble.  It is so difficult to debug.  And, maybe for the fun of  it, somebody added a comma as well.  Given a choice, my fellow batch mates would have added every punctuation mark to exaggerate the whole thing.  There were also suggestions that it was mandatory to add two slashes after a semi-colon as a part of the p...

I was getting up, and slowly my email inbox was getting filled with the usual suspects.  These people never fail to email me on my birthday.  I had a few calls as well.  Again, these people never fail to call me on my birthday.   So, how's the feeling? Pretty much the usual, I replied back. So, turning 30, haan? Everyone had to ask this, unfailingly and unflinchingly. Yeah, I let out a couple of the usual, monotonous jokes.  It means, they don't deserve to be called jokes in the first place. In the midst of all the jokes , I also tried to act all grown up (am sure I failed miserably at this). I have to say that Afridi and I have a lot of things in common apart from a few obvious differences.  Firstly, he is supposed to be a totally hot cricketer, according to the girls.  OK, even the guys know it.  I leave it to my friends to judge whether this is a similarity or a difference.  They know it.  I know it, too. Secondly, Afri...

I remember the date very well.  It was the night of 18th September, 2011.  It feels just like last night.  My day and subsequently, the night, was jeopardized thanks to the common cold.  Even though it is supposed to be common, I have no idea why it creates so much havoc.  It is very easy to draw parallels between a nose that has caught cold and an Indian road during traffic jam.  You almost feel for the nose, as it tries all possible tricks to allow itself some fresh air and keep the breathing smooth and easy.  On the contrary, it is anything but smooth.  On top of it, the blocked nose brings with it a running mucus that can suffocate your happiness.  In my experience, there is no way to escape the effects of the common cold without some medication.  But, when you compare it to the traffic jams on Bangalore roads, you have no reason to doubt why it is so common. So, one of those nights it was, and I just took an effervescent cold rel...

The topic of Maamis never ceases to amaze me, and as they don several hats, and develop their knowledge base in almost everything with commanding ease, no wonder they have so much to talk about.   Maamis have become the know all and end all of all things, which we thought could be accomplished only by someone like Lord Vishnu.  Their expertise ranges from the confines of the kitchen to the interiors of US, inside pages of Kumudam to the web pages on the internet, a close coterie of friends and neighbors to sending (and responding to) friend requests on Facebook, keeping a tab of soap operas on TV to finding Youtube videos with ease, listening to Vishnu Sahasranaman as easily on the cd player to Googling the meaning of the verses and even creating tutorials on cooking and uploading them on to Youtube.  In fact, as recently as last month, when my wife had to wear a madisaar (nine yard) saree for the Varalakshmi Puja, she was directed to a tutorial Youtube video on how to...

People say it is tedious, but the maamis have always lived with a single minded focus of bringing people together.  They have derived a deep sense of pleasure by doing this favor to the society.  As soon as they know that there is a boy in the household, they just have to look into their massive database to get a girl into the threshold.  Google pales in comparison to the way the maamis organize and process data.  But, how do the maamis know what kind of girls are compatible to the guys and vice versa? Today, I was having an interesting conversation with a friend of mine.  By the way, I am not one of those guys compelling people to get into a wedlock.  Rather, I am the last guy to do something like that, save of course, for the leg pulling.  My friends are so thick skinned that the leg pulling will hardly purchase even the remotest kind of blush. What's up man! What's happening to your love life? Oh, nothing much! Just not interested now. ...

Certainly not the way I eat! I remember that, in school, fellow students made it a point to ask this question to put a timid and meek lad in trouble.   Do you live to eat or eat to live? It was after considerable deliberation that the right answer was arrived at.  Right answer in this case was the one that did not invite the giggles and that condescending look of You can't even come up with the right answer.  Anyway, now, nobody would ask that question, and the answer would be way different.  The passage of time has corrected several of my answers now, which I had presumed to be right back then. Food has always been a priority.  One does not have to go through any kind of difficulty to get awesome vegetarian food in Bangalore.  By default, all the good restaurants are pure vegetarian only. In fact, till I was in Engineering, I had never entered a restaurant that had non-vegetarian food. Anyway, all this is for another day.  As I got exposed to t...

Last week, I got introduced to a Tamil couple, who are soon to be blessed with their second child.  As the conversation carried itself to its obvious destination, it had to settle on the various names thought about for the child.  Choosing a name is very important.  Tell me about it.  About that, I will reveal later in the post. So, what's the criteria? I asked as though I was a subject expert of all and sundry. They revealed the various conditions, and I admired the way they had structured their thoughts to get the right name. The name should bear some kind of a significance to one of the five elements of nature.  It should not be more than five or six characters long.  It should not have more than two syllables.  The name should not be too modern.  It was uncharacteristic that they didn't want a modern name.  In an effort to be unique and what not, nowadays parents come up with unpronounceable(and "unspellable") names and maybe t...

Hailing from the Southern part of the Indian peninsula, with the land being surrounded by water in the west, south and the east, it should come as a no-brainer that India should have had swimming as the national sport.  We should have been accumulating gold medals in loads of quantities, but then, cricket is the national sport and that's the only sport where we win accolades in multitudes.  Two world cup wins in 35 years of world cup history is no mean achievement! Hailing from a high school with English as a primary language (just like any school these days in India), my teachers made sure that my interests in sports were limited to not more than a hobby.  That would explain the reason why my friends are upset that I did not improve my cricket beyond my school days.  Maybe, that's the reason why I have never been able to understand that pale expression on their faces when I hold the bat.  So, I have limited myself to outstanding commitment in fielding and not...

India - World Champions 2011 When Dhoni smashed that full length ball from Kulasekara for a massive six over the long on boundary, it heralded the emergence of a new, confident and fearless India.  Winning the multi-nation ICC tournaments is one thing, but winning the World Cup is a different feeling altogether.  A nation deprived of global stardom for nearly thirty years couldn't hold its emotions together.  This Indian team finally went the full distance, and could wipe out the scars of the 2003 World Cup final against Australia.  I can also say that the nightmare of 2007 was truly forgotten, but that would mean grave injustice, since the 2007 tournament never felt like a World Cup. Sachin Tendulkar - The final hurrah In the context of all that's happened to us in the past, and all that was happening in the present, the World Champion tag is something to be proud of.  The closest we came to a World Cup victory was in the 2003 World Cup, and Australia m...

I have always prided myself on having the Indianness instilled in me and it's kind of embedded in every layer.  There are no two ways about it.  There are moments when the pride is taken to a different zeal and level, and the confirmation is absolutely unquestionable.  There is one binding factor in India that transcends across religion, caste, economic classes, status, power and the different fracas of life, and that has to be cricket.  I say fracas, because with the advent of time, little things get magnified and we have found several reasons to cross swords with each other, and the result is there for all to see - government vs opposition, bureaucrats vs general public, corporates vs lobbyists, politicians vs reporters, and last but not the least, tonnes of internal family squabbles. But, come Wednesday, everything in life is going to take a backseat.  India is going to witness the least economically productive day, and not for a reason. North, South, West ...

I have been meaning to write this post for quite some time now, but due to my laziness, it was just sitting in my drafts folder in an unfinished format. If there is one character in modern history that deserves the ultimate recognition for igniting young minds, it has to be Uncle Pai, the man who was bestowed with tremendous vision to have nurtured the greatest comic books in India - Tinkle and Amar Chitra Katha (ACK).  Mythology and folk tales were impinged in our minds with highly simplistic narration and fabulous pictures. The books were absolutely Indian in style and substance.  We all loved it. I was in my third or fourth grade, and it was the time of my life, when "I doesn't know" and "I don't know" were used interchangeably and without a trace of guilt.  All that I knew was that it just couldn't be "I know don't".   It was not an outstanding realization but nevertheless, a very important one.  We had moved our house to a new loca...

It was a Saturday morning and many many years ago.  I remember the day vividly, though I got the date from Wikipedia.  In the larger context of things, the date is insignificant.  Obviously, with the passage of time, it just goes to show how timeless it is.  Fifteen years ago is a long time, but to me and the billions of Indians around the world, the events that unfolded the rest of the day has left an indelible mark in memory.  People who follow sports are obsessed with statistics.  Cricket is all about statistics and there is so much to assimilate - bowling and batting figures, partnerships, maidens, wickets and a whole gamut of fascinating figures.  People have made a career out of cricket statistics; ask the cricinfo guys about it. I was supposed to have my ninth grade exams in a couple of weeks.  There was an India Pakistan game on Saturday, 9th March 1996.  As I told you earlier, the date was insignificant, and as I tell you now, the ...

The Proposal - Part I It was a cold night, and she had lowered the glass on the passenger side of the brand new Honda City.  The chill wind was blowing across her face, bringing a new bout of freshness and in the process, bringing the stray strands of hair to the forefront.  She did not make an effort to pull back her hair, but instead sought to adjust the power windows by closing it completely, except for a very narrow beam of space, narrow enough to allow a sheet of paper to be sliced through it.  That was sufficient enough to chill the interiors of the car. The atmosphere was very quiet.  There was no ensuing conversation between us.  "Sahana, that's almost the nth time that you are adjusting the windows.  You preoccupied with something?" "Obviously, dad, and you know it, too! I also know that you are preoccupied with the exact same thing.  Otherwise, it is very uncharacteristic of you to keep quiet on a long journey." "OK, let me ask you f...