Just liked it:)

Found this on someone arbit's profile and liked it for its apt description. Whoever you are I empathize:)

Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable.It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life .... You give them a piece of you.

They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like maybe we should just be friends or how very perceptive turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination; not just in the mind, it's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain.

I hate love

Memory lanes, Monkey Thieves & Back to Bangy

Been sometime since I was last here, lot of stuff happened in the past 3 months, but at the end of the semester I could hardly recall if I was actually involved in any of the stuff I did, actually seems like I have been watching a silent movie for the last 3- months. What's the story ? , have to borrow a nice device from my friend(forgive me , if its violation of IPR) to keep it short.

Another start- normal days - summer prep - Mock GD's - Mock Interviews - me dumb as a Dodo -Resume - Suits and Photographs - FootPrints has some "Breaking News"( Chronolgy doesn't makesense in this world any more) - The Indore Marathon (85th over 12km)- the prep room -long waits -anxious looks -TimePass (FIFA-CS and some books too)- why marketing? - vampires -angels - J&J - more timepass (HSBC, Sony, Cummins & Essar) - a smile, a wave - It's the Tom and Jerry Show again.

(MIS mein CP - Group mein Quality checks(26 font size!) - the classes start again - Utsaha mein pumps- Aamir ki shakti - Mid-sems Raam ke naam )

MIS 's CP - Group 's Quality checks(26 font size!) - the classes start again - Utsaha pumps- Aamir 's Shakti - Mid-sems, Raam ke naam - Was 'that' my blunder - as always 'God Only Knows'+2 - dark and despair - did Ahvan do some repair?- fun and games with the quizzes that ended with some nips- Football mundial with Kratos -curse the guy who blasted my shin - in between there were some online quizzes with Bothra , who now owns Bothra and Sons:) - FIFA fever takes over - there was our Mime at SBM - Over-acting , over -dramatizing, talented section aren't we now:) - cant forget the hordes of quizzes and assignments, but I did want to forget them - Open Books ('The Reason' why I might flunk some... , if others allow me to;)) - term ends -seems so soon - never said goodbye , here's some from Miley Cyrus

"....The one thing you wish I'd forget
Is saying goodbye, saying goodbye
Ooh, goodbye"

Now that was the last term , had a stop over in Mumbai on the way back and had to go past the campus , had lunch with batchmates good ole' Laxmi (though renovated) , brought back memories in a flood ,seems like if you hang around HN for some time and you sure will bump into a batchmate:).

Was watching a NatGeo episode on Monkey Thieves today - It was about the Maccaw groups in Jaipur and their group behaviour (yeah, I can find OB in anything!! ) - Let out a laugh when the narrator said- " ... and the solitary male sometimes hangs around the edges of the territory trying to find a friend from the group who could help him get in and find approval of the alpha-male ..... " my Mom actually was alarmed enough with the sudden burst to ask me "what happened?:)"

Am back in bangy , after what seems an eternity , have been to the usual suspects places already , and back in my room , it feels so comfy that it makes me want to be damn lazy once again:), surely as I was talking with the ToFN guy, a life with masti and to do just as you wish would be one as an IT manager in Bangy. Will hop around the city teh next few days and keeping my fingers crossed for another Nandi Hills Ride, will probably make a couple of posts before the year ends, ciao.

The City

[Found my entry to a creative writing contest at college probably around 6-7 years ago, lot of grammatical mistakes and unnecessary words , but putting it here without any edits to remind me what I could do in 2 hours ]
[As far as I can remember we were shown a picture of man looking down from the rooftops and 4 lines of a poem]

This is Life,Look at the steaming crowds below they look like ants (the ever industrious) from up above here, like they always do.
Life hasn't been affected much here, even when the whole world has seen the greatest war mankind has ever witnessed, my city where I lived through my childhood has remained the same.
No... No......No... its not same. Somethings different, the skyscrapers, they are a bit taller than I used to look at them while trying to wave at the pilot in the aircraft passing by.I would always wave at any aircraft, so that I may catch the pilot's attention, hoping that he would find me cute enough to give me a free ride. That was a child's innocence & I think I was very innocent as a child.

Ya.. I was fascinated by the zooming aircrafts & the blips that are the now extinct airships.
Looking back , I had to get into the sky & fly high because my papa used to always say
"The life of a farmer isn't for you young man, the sky's where you will work.Freedom will all be yours when you fly high in the sky".
My childhood till I went to the city was a very happy one.I still remember helping Pap in our field, and Pap taking my muddy hands into his & cleaning them with water and scolding himself for allowing me to work whenever he saw a scratch or a bruise. I love those days. I loved that life. I loved the countryside. Every countryside is beautiful.
Every countryside is beautiful, yes.. , until it is allowed to exist.
I studied in this city to achieve my dreams. It was in this city I met Jane , it was here that I could start flying .And it was here that I joined the Air-Force. The most important events of my life have taken place, the city is so much part of me. I wouldn't have been what I am if I hadn't come to this city or I wouldn't have been me, if the city didn't exist. How would I feel if the city was wiped out in the war? I would not be able to live with all my family , my friends, property , everything that belonged to my life wiped out. If I can't , then how can they?

I joined the Air-Force, and have enjoyed every bit of it. I still remember the first day I flew solo in the Harvard right into the clouds.I still remember the feeling, - I felt alone by , by myself, without anything similar around me whose sight could pacify me. The territory seemed unknown, unexplored , & unchartered & I was all alone & by myself. And then there as this euphoric sensation of being in control, of being free to explore this unknown space, at that moment I heard Pa's woods "Freedom will all be yours when you fly high in the sky". It was those few seconds, which I believe were my happiest moments, moments that a person can relive every moment of his life & feel satisfied from what life had given him. It was those few seconds, which I believe were my happiest moments, moments that a person can relive every moment of his life & feel satisfied from what life had given him. I t was then , that I realised that I was born to life & it was then that I decided to fly throughout my life come what may, I passed the course with distinction & was inducted into the A-1 Jet Fighters Squadron.
"I had accomplished my dream & I would fly til the end of my life". Those were my thoughts when Gen. Eisenhower pinned the Golden Eagle on my chest.
Till date I have not been able to take off for 5 years.
When I became a Flight Lieutanant, Hitler was going about his own plans. America wasn't at war, & I wasn't worried when our squad was ordered to work on the Bombers until we could cal ourselves experts.
Then, came Dec of 1942, the Japs bombed Pearl Harbour killing 2200 of our men.They couldn't get away with it. Americans wouldn't like anybody to kill one of them & here they had killed 2200 men of ours. The Defense forces were mobilised, we entered the war with vengeance, those killed were men in uniform.
The air in our base was literally hot with anger, they had dragged us into the war when it wasn't necessary and they would be made to pay for their mistakes.

It was after this that the Oppenheimer Project gained priority within the Government. Nobody should be allowed to mess with us, that was the sentence on everyone's lips.
The whole world was watching America, everyone knew that with us putting in our bit, the fascist forces would be surely defeated. It was just a matter of time.
I went about my job with eagerness & commanded the squadron to the Pacific Ocean bases.
The next two years were spent in sorties, I yearned for dog-fights, but there were very few & when they happened, the opponents weren't good.
In the beginning of 1945, a major problem arose, with the Japs turning "Kamikaze" or the "suicide fighters" as they were called in the base.
It was then, that I realised that I was fighting people and not the big aircrafts that my mind had seen in all these years.
They were people who were giving up their lives for the honour of their country. They were giving us a fight when the chips were down, even though they knew that the war was over for them. The Japs respected Honour above anything else, even life.

That period was the most dangerous in our aviation history. What better missiles could we create than those flying deaths which had a human being, keeping his tryst with death, guiding them to hit our planes,. Those were trying times, but I came out alive, even though I lost half of my squadron.
I realised that we had to put an end to this mad flying deaths. But, when the end came, I little expected its consequences.

It was a week before August 1945 that I was relieved of my war duties, and assigned on special duty to the Air Chief Marshal himself. I was dreaming of seeing Jane & the kids then. The war in Europe had ended by then, Germany was defeated, but here the Japs still believed in 'Kamikaze'- their honourable death. I was sent to Base-21. and my briefing started. I was told that the 1st day on this mission was not to ask any questions, or think about the what's & how's even out of curiosity.
Out of the confidence of military discipline, I promised only to break it later. I was given the exact details of my route & the instructions about the things that had to be done when I reached the targeted destination. My plane was the B-2 bomber, which had a big capacity to load conventional weapons. I assumed that I would be part of a big-hunt.
It was only on the morning of 8th August at 2:00 pm, when I asked out of curiosity that I came to know that I was the only Bomber with a couple of Jets involved in the mission. Even then it didn't strike me that it was unusual.
I was a military disciplined officier, & I had learnt not to ask questions when ordered to carry out a mission, however crazy it might be. With the Bomber under my control, I would be the slowest in our group, if we were unfortunate to encounter the 'flying deaths'. That was then that I thought that luck would run out for me today.

I carried out the maneovers to the dot, and was onto the last part, when I had to drop the package, I was surprised that the other jets hadn't fired their weapons yet, maybe they wanted to vanish a secret base into oblivion. I pressed the button, as I took the steep rise I was instructed to take before releasing the package. As I drew level, the cloud cover broke away & I had a glimpse of a city that locked like my own.
Unknown to me, I had dropped the first Atom Bomb.
The Bomb which became immortal.
A poet wrote afterwards
"I am the bomb that dropped on Hiroshima, Nagasaki.
I am Christmas but there won't be any New Year.
I am The Great Mushroom Cloud that sitting Bull had a vision of.
I am everybody's face who dreaded what they already knew".

Yes, I do dread the moment I pressed the button that vanished a city & killed millions of its inhabitants. I have been torn into pieces by the guilt, which doesn't diminish after all these years, & which can't be appeased even with my death. But, I didn't what I was doing, if I knew I would have declined & this would never have happened or would it still. They would have made some others to do it. But , now the guilt is mine & I have lived with it for 5 years & I can live with it through my life. I am going to Hiroshima, to ask for forgiveness, that is the only thing I can do to reduce the burden of my guilt. I have to live.
Yes, I have to do ....... What was that?

Janitor: Sir, the door is to be locked for the night. Are you alright, you seemed to be in a trance?
I: Okay, I hadn't realised it was night.
Janitor: It's 10. Goodnight. Hope you had a good day.
How could the poor man know that I had climbed the stairs never to go down again. I had come to watch the city and end my life. The city that had given me so much and today it had given me, my life back.

24 !!

I turned 24 last week.
Looking back on the last 24 years and at how i would like the next few years to be, i have drawn up this list to be worked on and hopefully done by the time i am 25.
1.) Get out from this frakking job and find something to do in which you are really interested.
2.) Learn swimming and driving , these two still remain your Achilles heels.
3.) Get rid of the fear , the fear of the unknown.
4.) Go out and explore new things , maybe start playing tennis, just go out and try something new every month.
5.)Spend some more time writing up stuff , whatever might be going thru your mind.
6.) Complete a full marathon.
7.) Find something you are really passionate about and pursue it.
8.) Get structured , your current way of living is much too haphazard.
9.) Keep taking a good and careful look at your finances.
10.) Build up your confidence to a higher level.

Message to vathsav@24: All the Best!!

Message to vathsav@25 : If this guy doesn't keep up his end of the deal, throw him off the roof.

Meeting !

Finally after a long series of setting up and postponing meetings just like the normal court proceedings albeit for very real and pressing reasons, and after about 9 weeks had lapsed, at last it was time to meet. In a way it was going to be a new experience, I had never met anyone before whom I knew only from the Internet. Just remembered all those funny incidents when a few of my friends were called up to meet their choo-sweet chat friends and the unsuspecting victim after somehow lying and escaping from the questions of his friends would end up waiting at the appointed place for what seemed like eons, and on his return back would be welcomed with that all-knowing smiles on his friends' faces:),it's cruel to have friends like those;), hmmm..... was it really that long ago??

Back to the meeting, yeah, I had no apprehensions, the person I was meeting was genuine. I ended up reaching the appointed place a few minutes late due to the omnipresent Bangalore traffic.
Gave a call.
Yeah, I will be there in two minutes
And then we finally met.
We just started talking about random stuff and then she mentioned that i am one person she is really scared off, honestly , I still can't figure out why?:).

We just talked about her job, difficulties with getting some good work done and yeah the funny part:).
It went something like this.

Some of the IT Guys are so ignorant/arrogant that they think they know everything and they are like 'what don't we know about taking care of the environment that we need a session to understand '. And I ask them just one question... then ... .

"Sometimes people think that being educated implies they know everything"

Yeah, these IT people are.....

"(hmm..)I think you don't know this..., but I am an IT Guy too!!!"
(No animals or people were hurt during this conversation.)

We talked about politics and other stuff, exchanged some more info about ourselves, took pics and finished some paneer , juice and dosas along the way. Oh yeah!, I offered a quick crash course in Kannada to survive the demons of the street (read autowallahs) and what a superb learner , the pronunciations were perfect!!!.

As I had discussed with Chintu sometime back, the way we go about leading our lives or in fact the way we have lived our lives till now , we have been more often than not surrounded by people who look at things the same way and share the same view-points.This may aid us in achieving what ever we have set out for but in the long term makes us myopic.
With regards to this context , this was a very refreshing experience.

QTS : Hmm.. why do i go deep when I blog??? Telephone came down to history and meeting came down to different view-points... maybe its time Rushdie took me as his understudy:).There I go again ,clear proof that I can't hold a single line of thought for long I guess;).

Coming back to the meeting.

At the end of the day in Doogie Howser style.

Dear Diary,

Today I met a person for the first time, but we already knew each other and got to know more about each other.Today I met a person pure at heart with passion and belief in her work. Makes me wonder when will I find something .... that something which is my elusive passion. I met a good friend today, and that made my day.......
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ (cursor blinking on the screen)

[Roll Credits]
[Music]
Tha na na na tha na na , thik thik th...........

What a Game!!!

I unfortunately missed out the Barnsley - Liverpool event by about 5 mins. Ghurram tried to get me to the action with an SMS but i missed it:( .Hopefully he can add to this post when he is free.
Anyways Barnsley love me a lot so they set up a bigger show when i was watching.

Wave after wave of Chelsea attacks were blunted, everyone knew it would take just one opportunity, one mistake, one goal for everything to fall in place for Chelsea.
They might have surprised liverpool with a late goal but back to back matches with 2 of the fab four of EPL, come on it's too much to ask of a championship side.
The format gives opportunity for upsets but 2 great ones ?? Even Terry would have dismissed the probability especially after the show they put up against Olympia cos.

Everyone Enjoyed the game

And the experts too gave them very bleak chances of being Giant-Killers again.
Game Preview

The match stats clearly show that Chelsea had the upper hand and could have taken the game away very easily with 15 against 3 shots on target.It was clear to me that the super-team would just drop the ball once into the net and that would be it.
And then the clock struck 66 ... Goal -- Odejayi. Team -- Barnsley. I jumped out of my chair(as a matter of fact i wasn't sitting on one :) ),clapping hard and laughing out loud at this unbelievable piece of sports legend being created.

I hadn't heard of Barnsley until they beat Liverpool and i couldn't help smiling at the fact that Odejayi choose to cause Chelsea heart-burn after not scoring for hold your breath ... 28 games.Guess they have an appetite for big games and big teams.
But the real test was ahead , they had sweaked past Liverpool by scoring at the death, but here they had 24+ minutes to defend a legendary win against a world-class team.

And so the attacks began, left , right and centre , shots, lobs , runs.And yet Steele adjudged the best player of the previous round drew on his confidence and stood tall , maybe the Chelsea players might have just noticed that the Goal was diminishing into a single point of certainity as time ticked by.

They did all they could , their runs and shots at the Goal from outide the box were always stopped just a few yards into the box.If ever you wondered how could 300 men fight against a million , well this was your answer.The defenders just threw their bodies around , mud and sweat mixed .After the Goal some of the Chelsea players tried to play it the physical way, but seems like every Barnsley player knew that Chelsea had to get through each one of them if they needed to score.

And that's why i loved this game, players throwing themselves around not caring if they lived for another day, no , this day was what they had lived for , this was the match they were born to play. Wondering how i am writing about people whom i didn't know till yesterday, i think i just connect to them in their unfettered efforts to get their win which they so richly deserved. How many times have you watched sports contests when the chips are down or the inevitable is about to happen and you see players' shoulders dropping , thinking about the next game when they can get back at them.And that's why this was so different.I felt them play out their hearts-out , just like we played out our first hockey tournament finals against Delhi, we were not expected to win and we won it !! and that too without allowing them to enter the scoring area, they had won the semifinal 4-0 against a team which had beaten us while we had scrapped through 1-0 and man-o-man how we played, their strikers were blunted out , every tackle found its place and while defending we were running 2x tiring out their strikers:) , it was probably the best match we ever played , one i will never forget and so will i never forget the night Barnsley defeated Chelsea.

Thanks Guys!!!

It was just like any other day,morning ko utna, get ready and shoot off to work,but yeah it was to a different place for the training and all my family members wished me. The previous day's travel to the far-away location resulted in me getting cursed for turning up late by an hour for the training, maybe i wasn't really apologetic cause it was the smooth flowing traffic that held me up.Anyways , to avoid further misadventures , i left an hour earlier to reach the destination JIT. The day turned out to be fun, what with all the exercises to show that we were just kidding ourselves in believing that we were experts at work, have to say the 3-minute test takes the cake for making complete fools out of us, i can' help but laugh out load on the ingenuity of the test:), hmmm that was it ,now finish up and run home for the people waiting there, that's what i thought and it would have been that way, except that Manju choose that week to turn up in Bangalore.

We had decided to meet together in M.G.Road and go home, but the guy had other thoughts, he called up Prasanna & forced him to take the remaining day off so that he could meet 'someone special', and so i ended up meeting with three guys instead of one, we had cake, and i got smeared with it too, cracking jokes & laughing at ourselves, poking fun at each other....., it was maybe just an hour, but what with the evaluation mood i am constantly in after the very very interesting things at work, this experience put things under a new light.

In the rat-race life that we live and the effort that we put in to be one-up, we get so embroiled in it that sometimes we forget that its just a way to feel secure, confident and best of all just a necessity to enjoy the life the way you want to and it is experiences like these which makes you remember the 'ends' for which all the effort goes into.

Meeting up with you guys , threw me back in time when i remember celebrating SP's b'day on the last day of the term, going out to the city for a movie and munching on the tempting chocolates, he in turn getting me some sweets when it was my day.

Guess its these moments that make-up our lives worth cherishing, really fortunate to have you guys and plzzzz.... you never have to worry about giving gifts to me, the page with the ink of the imported pen is enough;), and YES , Thank You Guys for making it a day worth remembering.