Why we need to be Woosters...

So, it's time for a new post on Medium!

https://medium.com/what-i-learned-today/fa5476089d62

The day I met my CEO

I recently got the amazing opportunity to listen to my CEO in person. Wrote a post on Medium to capture the things I learnt that day.

Enjoy :)

https://medium.com/what-i-learned-today/758ec10793fe

Why I want to build a website

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about starting my own website. I would really like to start with a fork off my blog, which thanks to my viewers, is starting to pick up some steam, but I really want the website to be more than just collection of my thoughts and opinions. It needs to be interactive, engaging and informative. I want to build a site that people want to use for the sheer joy of it!

I don't know when exactly this idea started, but it  would probably be around the time I signed up for Udacity's web design course. It was handled by a Reddit co-founder and it was a truly amazing class! I urge all of you to check it out and slog at it for a few weeks. (link)

Websites are this generation's primary form of art. There really isn't a better way to connect, collaborate and make something beautiful than putting it on the world wide web. That's probably why everybody ought to know how to build a website. It is easy to build a good website, but incredibly hard to build a great one. As my own blogging experiences have taught me, it is too easy to build a fort just for yourself and self-righteously languish in a forgotten part of the Web. That is easy, but deeply unsatisfying.

Forget the monetary side of things, even from a professional fulfilment POV, having a sucky website bites, hard. So designing a great website is not just about the content, but the way you package and present it. It involves a lot of trade offs and lots of experimentations. It's a great challenge!

I don't consider web design to be a primary career option at any time, but I think it is a great place to spend some time tinkering around.  What do you think?

PS: This is a video about a group of guys who started a pet project website. Really nice watch.

Medium - new bottle, new wine.

Why do we blog? What moves us to record so many tiny, insignificant moments of our lives in digital ink and tuck away in a corner of the internet? Even when blogging is way past its prime and people don't really care what we do and don't do? 

I blog because it ... just feels natural. Who among us does not want an outlet with the world? Who among us often does not feel the crushing silence closing in and yell out against it in an act of frenetic obviation?
My blog is just that, my holler against the silence. As long as it rings strong and loud, I can go about my things in peace. 

BTW, I recently started publishing some of my old blog posts on Medium. It is an incredible site for reading great stuff. I am excited to be a part of it and hopefully, I will start publishing fresh posts on it.
Do check it out here when you have the time

But this one will always stay my little backyard on the net. :)

The Tree

A man sat under a tree to take shelter from the searing sun. It was the middle of summer and the afternoon hour; nothing alive could bear the might of the sun at that moment. The man, who was crossing a dense jungle, decided to take shelter under this ancient, beaten tree with a canopy so vast that it appeared to block the entire sky. Under that sylvan sky he partook his lunch, a simple affair of rice and curd – he was a poor traveller in search of work. After the meager meal, his eyes began to sink beneath a rising tide of drowsiness; he slowly nodded off to a deep sleep. After what seemed like an instant, he opened his eyes to find the sun low in the western horizon. He panicked. He had intended to rest just long enough for the afternoon sun to lose its edge but now the night was approaching and he still had many miles to cover through the jungle. Traveling in the dark was inadvisable for these woods were notorious for man-eating tigers, ambushing jackals, and poisonous cobras. 

The dying rays of the sun would last for a while more. He figured if he sprinted, with conviction, he just might make it to a safer place beyond the densest parts. There was a single road through the forest and he would not get lost As the man was bundling his things and preparing for a headlong spint, a deep, resounding voice spoke to him, 

“Human! Don’t run into the forest now. You will never make it through before the darkness descends and the demons emerge. Stay here. This tree is blessed. It is the only safe spot in this entire jungle. No man-eating tiger or four-headed cobra can reach you while you are under its protection.”

The man was stunned. The voice appeared to be from everywhere and nowhere in particular. He suspiciously eyed the tree and approached it with ample caution. He was a wizened traveler. He filled his lungs with air and shouted at the trunk, 

“Who are you? How do I trust you? What if this tree is not an agent of God but rather an instrument of the devil? What if the wickedness that resides in this tree emerges at night and devours me?”

A few moments passed. Slowly the ground beneath his feet began to shake as the voice returned with a mirthful laugh. The booming laughter seemed to send tremors to every nook and cranny of the tree, disturbing the birds that resided in its vast branches. As gradually as the laugh began, it ended as abruptly, 

“You just spent many hours resting peacefully under this tree. Any devil residing in this tree could have easily consumed you then. That you are still alive proves that this tree is not a tool of the Shaitan.”

This struck the man as a reasonable argument. He had indeed lost himself to an uncharacteristic slumber but had emerged from it thoroughly refreshed. But he was still not conviced. He replied, in a louder voice, 

“Even a toddler knows that demons cannot emerge when the sun is shining. Only the night bequeaths the fell!”

The sounds of his proclamation echoed through the woods until they were drowned by the twittering of birds rushing back to their aerie homes. The voice sprung to life grander than before, 

“The foolishness of man never fails to suprise. Demons don’t hide from the sun. They shelter from it. You too avoided the sun under this canopy, do you perish if you step outside for a moment? I pity your ignorance, but I want to help you. Go back to sleep. No animal or demon will touch you. Look at the birds flocking back to its arms. They are smarter than you for they know the magic of this tree and the evil that surrounds it. Stay here, stay alive.”

The man was perplexed. His rational mind suggested he should run towards the safety of the forest periphery. But what if despite his efforts he is unable to reach the periphery before nightfall? What will he do then? Where will he find shelter from the foul creatures of the night? Wouldn’t it be better to trust this mysterious voice and stay here?

As the man was wrestling with the two choices, both unpleasant, he heard a sharp screech above him. When he looked up he saw a hawk, her wings abraze with the dying sun behind them swooping down towards him. As she fell she ushed darkness towards him like a heavy curtain that has been unleased from its hinges. Her feathery edges shone red from the last rays of the sun and her razor talons rippled into his eyes. The man screamed and fell to the ground, his hands clutching his empty, bleeding eyes. Copious tears he shed for his missing eyes, until finally, in a voice filled with scorn, he called out, 

“Whatever happened to the magical tree? You said it will protect me, but even before the night the tree let me fall into eternal darkness. Answer me!”

There was no answer. The man struggled to his feet. In his newly blind disorientation, he swiveled from side to side like a drunkard and screamed agan, 

“ANSWER ME! If humans are so ignorant, how could this magical tree let this happen to me? Answer me!”

A few moments later, just as the man was preparing himself for another gut-wrenching scream, the voiced replied calmly, 

“This is indeed a magical tree, ancient and wise. It could have protected you from the malice of tigers and the mischiefs of jackals, but even magic cannot contend with the hawks of destiny.” 

The man screamed in agony and fell to his knees. Blood flowed down his face and arms as the sun finally went to sleep. 

Rita

PROLOGUE

 

 
“Listen to me carefully kid coz I’m givin’ away wisdom here”, my grandfather would wheeze at me late at night, his drunken breath whisking the last bits of sleep away from my 7-year old eyes. “People call life many things. Many, many things. Fruity smart men call it an adventure, some call it a fantasy, hell, and some call it a journey. Give the turds a shovel! Get them to shovel coal up from the mines with fire in their lungs and urine down their legs and they will know life for what it is. It is a dungeon. The longest, deepest dungeon filled to the brim with shit and fire and darkness.  You go through it, initially trying to avoid the filth and the stench. You try to focus on a tiny shaft of light at the very end. You tell yourself, let me get to that light! All will be well when I get to that light. You put everything you got into moving towards that light. You let the shit squelch under your bare feet and the fire burn your hair down, but you move, keep on moving towards the bleak hole in the rock that’s let in a tiny bit of paradise. And you get there kid. You reach the light! You are fist-pumping thrilled. Here I come, my redemption, my legacy, you say. And just as you stretch your hand toward that magical light, with tiny particles of dust floating in it like delicate angels dancing just for you, the ground gives way. You fall, kid. You scream till your lungs give out, but you keep falling. You hit against the sharp rocks along the walls of your infinite abyss and you bleed. Blood pours out from your elbows and knees till you feel no pain, just boredom.  You just want the fall to end so that you can die. You no longer feel scared with the fall. You start cheering... cheering for your upcoming death, death, that sweet release from this dark dungeon.
And then you land. You land, kid, not squash against the bottom like a tomato under a cart-wheel. You land as gently as your mother put you to bed when you were a baby. You land gently on a new dungeon, even deeper, even darker. You are now anew. All the blood is gone and all the pain is gone. What's left in their place is a weariness that you cannot explain. You are brand new, but feel infinitely old. You see a light in the distance. Brighter and closer than the previous one which fooled you. You are in a dungeon, millions of miles beneath the ground, what else could you do? You start moving towards the light.”
“Grandpa, please stop! I am scared! And I am tired, I fell down while playing at school and my knee hurts. Let me go back to sleep”, I protest meekly, horror shimmering on my eyes in the form of inchoate tears.
“Shut your bung-hole before you wake up your father. I don’t care for a lecture from his highness, not tonight. I will let you sleep kid. Just remember, life is a dungeon. An infinitely wild dungeon. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you meet someone, whose dungeon is the same as yours and together you can move towards that wretched light.”


PS: This is an attempt to publish a novella as a series of posts. I am not sure if I will have the discipline to see it through, I hope I do! But, let's not get ahead of ourselves :)

How to start writing?

People express themselves in various ways. Some sing themselves hoarse, some dance their hearts out, some cook and decorate their food with painstaking detail, some collect rocks that look funny, and some write. 
Writing is something each and every student has to do at some point of time in school. Anything made compulsory quickly becomes an object of hatred among kids and hence, a lot of people consider writing to be a chore, something they need to do from time to time to get the job done. Writing for joy or for emotions sounds alien and strange to them. 
However, there are tons of people who write simply because they love it. I am one such person. 

I write only when I am truly inspired to express myself in a certain way. Writing this blog is probably the most important thing I have done in my 22 years; it is a living, breathing scrapbook of my emotions and thoughts over the last 5 years and I am proud of it. 

One question a few people have asked me is how do I write? How to get into the mindset of writing and what are the tools required to write effectively? These are common questions and I am sure there is no right answer to them, rather there are several good answers. But I would like to share a few thoughts on my approach to writing. If you have different thoughts or views, please do share them in the comments - I would love to know them. :) 

Reading
A lot of people consider reading to be the first step in writing. They assume that being well-read is a necessary requirement for writing. I beg to disagree. Reading is *important* and *vital* for writing but definitely not *compulsory*. Reading and writing are two different strands but they intersect at several places. 
Reading helps writing in two key ways:

1. It builds your vocabulary, arsenal of idioms, phrases etc. These lend to the richness and vitality of your writing. Good writing and great writing are sometimes differentiated only their difference in choice of adjectives and adverbs! Reading good authors will help you enrich your own tool set for writing, but this is a sub-conscious process which occurs over a long time. You definitely should not read just to write! That will deprive you of the joy of reading and writing! 
2. Reading gives you content for writing. Let's be fair to ourselves, we don't have a lot of things happening in our lives. Most of us are students or employees and a major chunk of our day goes off in getting through to the next day in one piece. We don't get opportunities to travel or observe as much as we would like. Reading can provide with the much-needed fodder for writing your own content. Reading good newspapers, blogs and books will enrich your mind and give you a chance to build on those. You may do so through 'reply' articles or letters or even 'fan-fiction'! 

Write what you know! 
A lot of people love reading murder-mysteries and whodunits from a very early age. I am also a part of that list. I love reading tense, terse action-thrillers (think Bourne) and historical mysteries (think Angels and Demons), but if I try to write such a book, I highly doubt if I will want to read it myself! The reason is, I don't *know* how a murderer feels when he plunges his knife into his victim! I have not had the opportunity to talk to convicts or detectives to know their mindsets. I don't know how a helicopter flies or how it will explode when struck by a missile! If I try to write a book about a murderer who attempts to flee from the cops on a helicopter, it will be a childish rendering of what I would have read from numerous other whodunits. There will be nothing uniquely *me* in that book. So, I generally aver, don't write what you don't know. 
In its own way, my life has been full of challenges and excitements, so I try to write about things I can relate with - my past, my hopes, my concerns at the state of our nation etc. 
I don't publish any post unless I am sure there is at-least a tiny part of me in it :)

The Word Processor
Please don't write on MS Word. Please, just don't! It is one of the most depressing experiences in my opinion. Every time I open MS Word to start writing a post, I am reminded of the hundreds of school and college assignments I was forced to write and it totally spoils my mood! Word also has too many options for font, color, scaling, background blah blah. For writing all you need is a screen and a keyboard. Go for a minimalistic word processor like Q10. Trust me, you will be amazed at how much you can write in one sitting with a no-nonsense word processor! 

The Font
I know I just said, a screen and a keyboard are all you need for writing, and I stick by it. However, I am a fool for fonts! :| I love the typographical features of various fonts and they help me focus my thoughts better. If I am writing for office or work, I prefer a more serious *getting-it-done* font such as Calibri. It is crisp and literally has no frills attached. But for my blog, I prefer Helvetica or Trebuchet. I feel the elegant notes of these fonts give the blog post the personal warmth I want my readers to feel when they read my articles.

The Music
Simple advice - turn it OFF! People love listening to music when they read or write. I detest both. Reading and writing are for me - uni-functional tasks. You must give them your full attention, otherwise you are just wasting your time. Music has a great power to transport you to different states of mind in no time. While that is a magical thing when you are stressed out or bored, that may not be good when you writing. Imagine that you sit down to write a polemic about the garbage problem in Bangalore and you plug in your headphones to listen to classic country music (think James Taylor). If you are anything like me, your anger would instantly fly away and get replaced with a sense of wonder at the power of such simple lyrics. If you still strive to write your angry article, you will end up neither enjoying the song nor relishing the righteous anger etched into your words. 
There are innumerable places where music helps, I feel writing is not one such place. 

Whom are you writing for? 
Target audience is an important thing to consider when you are writing a blog or a book. Whom are you hoping will read and savor your words? Your peers? Young children? Women? Or, are you planning to write just for yourself? 
Any answer is fine! As long as you know your target audience, it will help to focus your work. If you are writing for your peers, you will automatically gravitate your article towards references or implications of their affinity. If you are writing for children, you will obviously refrain from certain avenues and topics. Like me, if you write largely for yourself, then it is an open world for you! You can write anything you want and there is a sweet sense of freedom in that. 

When to write?
Time tables help me get through my day. I assiduously compartmentalize my time into several chunks of productive work. Being a geek, I use tons of apps and websites to help me increase my productivity. But the one thing I can never organize is my writing time. If I sit down at my desk with the intention of writing, I usually cannot. Or worse, I will write such absolute drivel that I will get depressed for the next hour. Like most forms of expression, writing is inspired work. You may never know when it will hit you and you certainly can't predict it. For example, once after getting drenched to my bones in the rain, I came back home and after having a bath, sat down and wrote 3 chapters of a novella, no questions asked. The words just kept coming out! 
However, if you are just starting to write, it is always good to practice writing regularly. Don't expect your articles to always be at the best of your potential but regular effort will attune your mind to the patience and rigors of writing. 

Popularize
If you plan on writing a blog, even if it is a personal blog like mine, you will eventually want more people to read and share your thoughts. Obviously, like any form of expression, writing also demands attention and nourishment from informed audience. Popularizing your blog, however, can be an uphill journey. In this age of twitter and facebook, a lot of people don't have the discipline to read a full article. So it will take time and a *lot* of persistence before you assemble your band of dedicated readers. My blog, despite being 5 years old, is still an infant in terms of reach but I have managed to put in place a group of people who always read my posts and give me invaluable feedback. It makes me feel appreciated and inspires me to write better! So, don't shy away from popularizing your works. 
There are several techniques for promoting blogs - Search Engine Optimizations, Social Networking, Blog Directories like blogadda etc. Just Google it!

Editing
A very important part of writing is editing. You must keep reading and re-reading your own work to ensure that it is absolutely of top-notch quality. You don't want embarrassing grammatical mistakes or silly play of words to spoil the flow of thought in the article. Sometimes, reading your post after a day or two will give you a different perspective and aid the editing process. Never shy from butchering your work till it is *just* perfect! 

Respect your limitations
Just like anything else in life, you won't become a Gabriel Garcia Marquez after writing for a year or two. It will take time, effort, discipline and limitless patience before you reach a level that you will be proud of. But don't write for the sake of becoming better at it, instead write because you enjoy it. That will make the journey towards perfection a breezy ride. Respect your limitations but constantly strive to overcome them!

Happy writing!  :)

The Village by the Airavan - Part 1

As the boat slowly waded its way through the sluggish waters of the Airavan River, the first rays of the sun brushed against Motli's eyes covered by a wet jute rag. He stirred awake and sat up. The boat's owner, Juddi Kaka, was gently running his oar through the muddy waters, hymning a silent tune to himself. The Airavan, the widest of rivers, was all around them. The image of Juddi, oar in hand, paddling towards the rising sun emerging as if from a quick dip made for a spectacular sight. On other days Motli would have broken into a wide smile at such a beautiful image.

He was on his way to Ganeshapur – home — after completing his second year at college in the distant town of Ahmadnagar. The son of the village-school’s only teacher, Motli had exhibited an early interest in academics that most elders at Ganeshapur found amusing. 'Arre, whatever will you do with a degree? Anyway you have to come back and pick up cow-shit in the mornings!', his uncle Manesh would bellow after a hearty lunch cooked by his elder sister, Motli’s mother. Motli’s mother too believed that his attentions ought to be on the family’s ancestral lands. She had never forgiven her husband for choosing his books over her lands and leasing it to strangers for upkeep — an act of betrayal against their divine endowments. Motli had never understood her emotional, almost religious, connection with the fields. As a child, he would accompany her at the crack of dawn to inspect the budding paddies, sprinkle them with holy waters, and pray for a healthy Monsoon. If the rain gods were kind and the harvest was bountiful, they would offer two stout goats for sacrifice at the temple of Kaala, Ganeshapur’s guardian deity. If the rains were too healthy, the Airavan river would arise from its habitual slumber and flood everything — fields, homes, school yard, cowsheds, and Kaala. When the waters receded, as a child, Motli would try cheering up his mother by performing back-flips in the kitchen or presenting her with the smooth pebbles the Airavan left behind. As he grew older, he instinctually understood that this — the prayers, the rains, the harvests, the floods, the reconstructions — was the only life she knew and the only thing that will cheer her up is the next crop.

Unlike his mother, Motli’s father, Ramesh Mohan Pant,  encouraged his academic interests. He was the kind of man his students could take for a ride. One look at his bald, bespectacled face and every new kid’s eyes would gleam with mischief. As a little boy Motli had been ashamed of his father’s soft-spoken nature and delicate mannerisms. His numerous uncles and cousins were uniformly brawny and loud. Yet as he grew older, he found his opinions about his father changing drastically. For his 12th birthday, Motli’s mother presented him an axe and a wooden toy of a bullock-cart. His father gave him a worn copy of Robert Stevenson’s Treasure Island. His mother scoffed at the gift, ‘Are you trying to make our boy like you? Nose always buried in some book. Hummara Motli will grow up to be a strong boy like Manesh!’. Motli had learned the english alphabet from his father, who had studied the language under Father Frederic Smith, a Catholic missionary who had spent many years in Ganeshapur evangelizing his God’s word to disinterested farmers. Much to the silent delight of his father and the overt dismay of his mother, Motli fell in the love with the book! He read it cover to cover four times and was found for weeks afterwards, at any time of the day, with the book in hand. One day he surreptitiously approached his father and gently asked, ‘May I have another book? One with animals?’. His father chuckled and said, ‘There’s a library in Ghazinpat. You can take my membership card and bicycle and borrow a new book each month. Don’t tell your mother!’.

Many years and many books later, Motli topped his school in the tenth-grade examinations and decided to enroll for junior college at Ghazinpat, the nearest town. One lazy afternoon, as the entire family was idling in their shaded courtyard after a heavy lunch of plantains and rice, Motli broached the topic. ‘Hear this atrocity, oh Kaala! My son, my only son — the one who should set alight my dead body — wants to leave me to become a town-wallah. How much I sacrificed for him, but having read a few books, suddenly he is too good for his mother!’. Manesh pitched in, ‘What use is the junior college? Here we were, hoping our boy Motli will fetch us a beautiful daughter-in-law with a fat dowry. Look at your cousin Badru. Just a year older than you but already has one boy, with another on the way. Now THAT is a boy his parents can be proud of.’ Motli turned to his father who was staring intently at the tulsi plants dancing in the heat. He met Motli’s beseeching gaze and said, ‘I have some money saved up. We leave for Ghazinpat in a week’.

That had been four years ago. After junior college, Motli moved to Ahmadnagar for college. His mother threatened to disown him and refused to talk to him for months. Manesh and co., shrugged — resigned at last to his ways. Ahmadnagar was over 500 miles away and since Ganeshapur could only be reached by boat through the Airavan, Motli had an easy excuse to avoid coming home – even for the holidays. Instead he would spend the breaks working at the college library, a job that gave him plenty of time to read and just enough money to afford his hostel room and meals. A week ago Motli had received a letter from home. He had casually dropped it in his bag and didn’t get to it till later in the night. Letters from home were not rare. His mother, once her rage had subsided, would write him often. All her letters were the same — a mixture of questions about his diet and pleas for him to return. Motli could almost imagine her sitting in the verandah, dictating her misery to Manesh’s fourth son, Pappu who would dutifully scrawl across the paper in his childish handwriting. Oddly this latest letter was not written by Pappu – it was in his father’s hand. Motli tore open the envelope and hurriedly started reading…

Motli beta,

I trust you are well. From our post-man, whose son also studies in your college, I learned that your final examinations are over and you have a two-month break now. Why don’t you pay us a visit? Your mother is missing you very much. We haven’t seen you since last Diwali. Education is important, and understandably, occupies much of your time, but family is important too.

Manesh has been blessed with another son. Your mother is ecstatic for her brother but demands a grandson of her own. She blames me for turning you away from the family way. I try to make her understand that while family can wait, education cannot. Anyway, I wish you could come home for a few days and cheer up your mother. Please send a telegram to Ghazinpat post-office if you will come.

May Lord Ganesha shower your endeavors with his bountiful wisdom.

Ramesh Mohan Pant.

After reading the letter, Motli was beset with conflicting emotions. On the one hand, he was ashamed at being apprehended by his father for not visiting home during the holidays. On the other hand, he felt a tingling suspicion. Why send a telegram to Ghazipat when he could just write home? Guilt won and soon he set about sending a telegram that he could come home for a few weeks and would start the next day.

To reach Ganeshapur from Ahmadnagar, Motli had to take two trains and then a boat. The first train journey was uneventful. In Maninpet, a transit railway station on the second, he ran into an old school friend, Parindar, who was a deputy clerk at the station. Upon seeing Motli, Parindar embraced him furiously and said, ‘Motli, you dog! All your studying has paid off, eh? Madhumati – what a girl! You lucky, lucky dog.’ Motli stared at his friend in confusion and replied, ‘What are you talking about? What Madhumati?’. ‘Don’t you know? Your family has arranged for your marriage with Madhumati, Sundar Babu’s only daughter. Not only are you getting the pretty girl but also all of Sundar’s lands once he’s gone. Wah rey, what a match!’ Motli froze on his feet. His mother knew that Motli would come home only if his father requested. This explained the curious insistence on a telegram. The frigidity of his father’s betrayal washed over him; he shivered. Behind him the train blared its impatience to depart. He considered ditching it and returning to Ahmadnagar. How could he marry now? He still had one more year of college and then he wanted to become a lecturer in a city, maybe even Bombay! How could he abandon his dreams and settle down in a village? But Motli knew he couldn’t disrespect his father by not showing up after messaging otherwise. Besides, the betrayal made him seethe for a look of anguish in Ramesh Pant’s eyes. He ran back to the train just as it started moving.

After the initial shock subsided, Motli began recollecting about Madhumati. He had been away too long, he had no idea how she looked now. Their paths had crossed just one summer many years ago. During the Ramnavami celebrations in the village, the children had reenacted the scenes from the Sundara Kand where Hanuman, the monkey god, visits Sita, the wife of Lord Rama, while was imprisoned by Raavan, the King of Demons. Madhumati was Sita. Motli was Hanuman. In a crucial scene where Hanuman offers to carry Sita across the oceans and into the arms of her lord, Madhumati went off-script and remarked, ‘As if you can lift me with those puny arms!’. The gangs of villagers who had lined up around the square broke into guffaws and whistles. Motli, red-faced, poignantly attempted to salvage the play — silently vowing to break her arm the next chance he got. But after the play, as usual, he sat down with a book and forgot about Sita’s wisecracks and plunged into a story about a merchant in a watery city called Venice.

Wow, she would have grown up by now. Even as a child, she had been tall and broad shouldered. A sudden worry swept over him, what if she were taller than him? He immediately shrugged away the question, admonishing himself for the concern’s hidden implications. Of course, he will not marry her! The minute he reaches home he will announce his intention to break this proposal and leave. For the remainder of the journey, Motli concocted and rehearsed the solemn lecture he would deliver his father about the importance of truth in relationships.

Ganeshapur’s sloped, red clay roofs were visible in the distance as Juddi Kaka dropped Motli off at the bank of the Airavan. Instead of hiring Kalua to take him home on his bullock-cart, Motli decided to walk. His mood was foul but he always enjoyed walking through the fields on a brisk morning. As he ambled his way through the paddy farms, he ran into his little cousin, Smriti. She seemed to be in a great hurry and jumped in shock when she saw him. ‘Arre Dada! What are you doing walking? I thought you will be in Kalua’s cart.’ When Motli expressed his love for an early morning walk, she replied, ‘Walk all you want later on. Now you have to go somewhere!’. ‘Now? Smriti-behen, I am very tired after the long journey; can’t this wait till I’ve had a bath and a meal?’. ‘NO!’, Smriti screeched. ‘She is waiting by the Kali temple and wants to see you before you go home’, she added in a conspiratorial tone. Motli asked, though he knew the answer, ‘Who is waiting?’. ‘Madhumati-didi. She told me to fetch you. In return, I will get twenty raw mangoes from their tree this summer’, she grinned.  

Motli reeled in discomfort. Asking to see her betrothed even before her father had formally met him was a scandal of astronomical proportions in Ganeshapur. Even talking about one’s betrothed before marriage was sufficient to be branded a libertine. Did she even consider Motli’s plight? His uncles would brand him a desperate loser. His mother would lament him for dragging the family name through mud. Also, why would she go to the Kali temple? That dilapidated structure had been abandoned decades ago and was even considered haunted by some. How could a woman of a decent household even think of going there? How would he explain to Smriti that he could not possibly accede to this indelicate request?

Even as his mind was whizzing with such thoughts, a smirk escaped him. This was the Madhumati he remembered — putting him under the spotlight when he would rather shrink into a book. He could not let her expose him a fool again! He would go! He gave a strict telling-off to Smriti to not tell anyone about this business, deposited his bags by a nearby tree and stormed off towards the Kali temple. He would deal with Madhumati first and then his parents.

On the question of frailty

Growing old is hard. All of a sudden, you go from being a brat who cannot be trusted to wipe his own nose, into this entity who can't just take care of his life but is also expected to 'do his bit' for the family. Yes, it is hard. 

But, undoubtedly, one of the hardest things about growing up is realizing the fact that your parents are not that breed of super-humans who never grow old or weak. That moment when you realize that your parents are just as human as the rest and are indeed being ravaged by the cruelties of nature and old-age is one of the most painful moments of growing up. It is a rite of passage that is as devastating as it is permanent.

Luckily for me, I only have to worry about one parent's incipient frailty and old age. Having lost my father when I was 11, my idea of my father as a youthful, strong, vibrant man is preserved from the vagaries of nature. In an odd way, I am grateful for that now. My mother, whose body has never been strong enough to cope with the immense vitality of her being, is starting to exhibit the tell-tale signs of old-age. Her hearing is not the same as before, she struggles with lifting groceries and her razor-sharp memory which could once recollect where I had strewn every bit of my stationary, is now starting to fray at the edges. Yes, my mother is growing old. It is hard to accept that, but I have to.

It looks like the heavens have been split open over Bangalore today. It has been raining non-stop for over 5 hours now. Unlike the cyclonic rains that occasionally hit Chennai i.e. the kind of rain that bursts much like popping a water-filled balloon; today's rain is different. It is steady, calm, confident and strong. I find such weather to stir within me, memories which I had long given up as forgotten. My mind seems to become fecund for epiphanies and extraordinary connections. Unsurprisingly, today's weather brought back an odd little memory. A memory whose significance has been bolstered by my current concerns of parental old-age.

We had just moved to Kolkata. My dad had just died and no one in the family really understood why my mother decided to take her son and aged mother-in-law to a city that was thousands of kms away and completely off the radar of our lives. But move we did. On my very second day in Kolkata, my mother got me admitted into my new school. After an eventful first day (about which I hope to blog about sometime in the future), I got out of school at 3 pm to find my mother waiting by the gate with an umbrella. It was the month of June and Kolkata was bearing the brunt of the monsoons. No Chennaite can ever appreciate the force of nature that is the monsoon without having lived at least once in its path. I was spell-bound by the rain! It was incessant but disturbingly quiet. It almost felt like the Rain God felt bad about inconveniencing people for clogging their sewers and turning their roads into swimming pools, so He decided to do it silently! But I digress.

So I saw my mother as she stood hunched below an umbrella waiting for me. I ran up to her. Apparently she had arranged a private bus service to ferry me from school to home and we were to go home on it. It was a huge, green bus, filled to the brim with kids and being the first day of school, quite a few parents as well. Apart from the driver, the bus had a 'Conductor' who was the de facto disciplinarian of the bus. Kids tend to go crazy within school buses and end up doing the most atrocious stunts, so you need a strongman to hold them to their seats to ensure everybody gets home safe and soon. He was small, bespectacled man with oily hair. He was called Samantha Sen. It's strange indeed how I remember him so vividly when even some of my close friends have now turned into unrecognisable shreds of memory.

Samantha Sen seemed kind enough. He had realized that neither my mom nor I could speak a word of Hindi or Bengali and his English was limited to bus terminology. He gestured to us to occupy a pair of seats at the end of the bus.

The bus soon took off and it wound its way across the new city. Being just a day into the city, we had no idea where we were and were hoping for the conductor to inform us when our stop came. An hour into the journey, my mother realized that something was wrong, so she carefully made her way to the front of the bus and enquired about our home stop. Samantha jumped up in fury! Turned out our stop had been passed more than 20 mins back. He directed the driver to stop the bus and asked us to get down there and take a normal bus back. My mother was taken aback. I imagine that Samantha saw the look of incomprehension and fatigue on my mother's face and the pouring rain outside, and something gave way inside him. He asked the driver to take a U-turn at the next junction.

It was now the driver's turn to get angry. He loudly refused to turn back and passed remarks which sounded racist and hurtful even to my unknowing ears. A loud verbal disagreement ensued and fortunately Samantha won. The bus turned back and soon we were dropped off closer to our stop. As we got down, Samantha came close to my mother and asked her to walk straight down the road till we reached our home neighbourhood. I can still see the apologies his bespectacled eyes shed which his words could not share.

That long walk back home is one of my most melancholic of memories. Huddled under one umbrella, hopping and skirting over puddles and pot-holes on an empty road, I had never shared a more alone time with my mother. And suddenly, I realized the immense frailty of my mother whom up until that point I considered an avatar of Wonder Woman. Once the dam of superstardom that I had constructed around my mother started on its first crack, the whole structure came down. Immediately the gravity of my father's death sunk. You see, when he had passed away, I knew I was expected to grieve but grieve I could not. Even as his cold body was in front of me, I could hardly find meaning within me to lament. But noticing that evening of frailty in my mother, I began to understand the extraordinary, unpredictable sequence of events that had lead to my mother and I sharing that old umbrella down that clogged road. It was a walk of discovery.

From that point onwards, my childish sensibility changed my life into an arena, one where it was my mother and I versus the rest. I began to consider my life as an exercise in forging the safety of my family against the rains and storms of life. It seemed to be the noblest of efforts and the most logical as well for a long time.

Eventually I grew up and it became 'my' life again, up to such an extent that I needed 5 hours of rain to bring back this memory which had such a bearing on me at that moment.

I don't know what to make of this memory. It is not the happiest of recollections. It is overloaded with the sense of human frailty and death but at the same time, there is a certain poignancy to it which I cannot stop admiring. I discovered the emotional fatigue in my parent many years before my peers and foolishly I attempted to wage a war on it. I like to think that I won, for a while at least.

Rooting your phone from an Ubuntu Desktop

I have always loved tinkering around with my phone & tablet. It is one of the best things about owning an Android device. For a long time, I used ready-made tool kits available for Windows such as NexusRootToolKit for my rooting and flashing custom ROMs on my phone. While these tools are convenient, you don't get to know how exactly the process works. What are these words people say? 'Root', 'Boot loader', 'Recovery' and so on. As the adage goes, 'Give a man a fish ... ' 

So yesterday I decided to root and flash my phone (which was running stock android) from first principles. Since I have now switched completely to Ubuntu, I did not have the luxury of a ready-made tool for getting my job done. So I some digging around on the net and found an absolutely superb guide for rooting my phone. Not only is the process as simple as using a tool-kit on Windows, but also teaches us what are the steps in the process and why you need to do them. Being a universal method, this should work fine on Linux, Windows and Mac OS.

Sharing the link here.

While the link is specific to my phone - Galaxy Nexus, the steps should work with any other Android device as well. (of course, you will need recovery files specific to your device)

In fact, I recommend following the author of the guide, Max on YouTube. He posts regular videos explaining the various Android concepts. Even if you are not a hardcore developer, it does not hurt to know a little bit more about your phone. :)  

PS: for those interested, after rooting my Phone, I installed the latest stable release AOKP custom ROM and for better battery I installed Franco's custom kernel on top of that. 

PPS: The whole process took me ~15 mins. 

Why I bought 'The Great Gatsby' and why I ought to have bought it just now.

Browsing through the endless racks of books, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, with my friend Jincy at Blossoms in Bangalore, I came upon a tiny, Penguin Books edition of F.Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. I have always wanted to read that book. In fact, I had already purchased a copy on Flipkart a few years back but found the first few pages so depressingly boring that I gave up! I do that sometimes! Catch-22, Ullyses and Wolf Hall - all books of staggering repute that I simple could *not* get! 

But I immediately took to this tiny edition of The Great Gatsby! It had that fresh, crisp feel to it that only a newly minted book can possess. Plus, the upcoming release of Di Caprio's film adaptation of the book was an added incentive.For I have this idiosyncrasy where I don't watch a film unless I have read its book beforehand. Lastly the low price tag of Rs.200/- sealed the deal and that night, I started afresh on The Great Gatsby. 

And it changed my life. 

Not really. That was an exaggeration, but it certainly spoke to me in ways that I did not expect it to! 

At its heart The Great Gatsby is a story of thwarted love between an ambitious man and an aristocratic girl. Sound like a 1980s Bollywood film? That was what I first thought. But over time, I began to realize that nothing in this book is really what it seems. Face-value is a mist in this work and when that clears away, you start to scratch the surface of the real book. It is amazing how a small work of ~200 pages manages to touch on so many questions and better yet, raise even more of them. 

Any book worth its salt, will mean different things to different people. A book is a conversation between the writer and the reader, spanning across hundreds of years and thousands of miles and like any conversation, it has its private moments, where unuttered thoughts are planted and unexpressed opinions are shared. 

The Great Gatsby though is a little different. It does not attempt to talk to a single individual - the reader. Instead it tries to talk to an entire generation of individuals who are on the threshold of watching their collective dream of a happy, healthy & prosperous life, crumble into the dust due to excessive, unrelenting pursuit of materialism.

The book portrays many motifs to signify how fast & easy money can erode social and moral frameworks and also how, even those raised with sound values can fall prey to them. 

The Great Gatsby is as much a commentary on today's social hierarchy as it is of the 1920s New York. 1920s was a time of extravagance in New York. The end of WW1 and the ensuing economic surge bumped up an entire generation of people up the economic ladder. Bootlegging of liquor and related criminal activities provided ample options to young men to earn the quick buck. As a result, New York was teeming with people with fat wallets and slim morals. This class of people are symbolized by the 'West Egg' village, a geographic protrusion along Long Island.

The residents of West Egg stand in sharp contrast to the aristocracy of the 'old wealth' who inhabit the identically shaped 'East Egg'.  However, the similarity of the two classes in terms of money does not hide their gaping differences in avarice and sleaziness. 

A particular feature of the book that I found deeply disturbing is its usage of symbols to convey deep thoughts. Such as the ashen heaps outside New York - large lands that had gone barren due to interminable discharges from surrounding industries. It was a chilling reminder that growth and wealth can spoil our moral ecosystem just as much as it can devastate a physical landscape. 

Thee green light, that shone from the end of East Egg's dock, faintly visible across the waters from Gatsby's home in West Egg, is a fundamental symbol of 'The Dream'. The one thing, each and every one of us wants to achieve. Each person may have his/her own version of The Dream, but we all possess one. Gatsby's dream was to be re-united with the love of his life - Daisy who lived in East Egg. He resents the proximity of the light to his Love as much as he longs to be near it; for nearing the light meant nearing Daisy. But when he is finally reunited with Daisy, that light, the very same green column across the waters ceased to be a marvel. It was just a tiny green speck across a dark bed. Do all our dreams lose significance once we achieve them? Or in the pursuit of our dreams, do we attach inordinate importance to them, which they eventually cannot live up to? 

And who can forget the haunting passages involving the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg? A fading advertisement in which only the large, bespectacled eyes of its former star remain - the eyes seem to keep a vigil over the ashen heaps. To me, the eyes seemed to represent God. The all-seeing eyes that are silently watching the devastation we wreak upon ourselves in the name of growth. Even the though the book does not signify the true meaning of the Eyes, they are a potent part of the narrative. 

The Great Gatsby is a masterpiece of a book by any measure. In that sense, I have totally understood the veneration that it commands from legions of historians and literature enthusiasts. But the book had a very personal message to tell me too - the urban young of 21st century India. It seemed to tell me, 'Don't get too easy'. And it made sense! 
My life is ... a little too simple. At 22, I earn a lot more money than my parents did and for work that is hard, but not hard enough to make me feel like I have earned it! I seem to be on a highway towards a financially-secure future and that, unsurprisingly, gives me this sense of freedom, this conviction that I am in-charge of my life and that I can wade through these calm waters  using my moral compass and my intellectual abilities. 

The truth is that anything can happen. The same dream of a secure future could turn toxic and destroy our very identity. The same vision of a happy future could turn into a limbo where we don't recognize ourselves and cannot recollect how we used to be. 

Money is dangerous. Power is dangerous. Fire is dangerous. When we show so much caution with the last, why not with the first two? 
The Great Gatsby. A book I am glad I read at this point in my life. 

 

Friday, its Friday.

Spending Friday nights at home is always a bummer, but when it is raining with a vengeance outside and your apartment's power is having more mood swings than a cat pumped on Vytautas, you are bound to try and make things a little better. At least for the sake of sanity.

Most of us end up spending our free times at night, curled up in bed, earphones plugged in and watching some random movie on our laptops. I won't lie, I spend most of my free time with my laptop. But every once in a while, you start to get sick of VLC (gosh!) and you start looking elsewhere.

Whenever I want to do something different, I make a list of the most random things that come to my mind and today when I did that, this is what I came up with:
- Crazy
- Milk
- Spies

So I went to the kitchen, made myself a hot cup of tea and while the milk was boiling, downloaded the entire playlist of House MD and located my old, worn-out copy of 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold'.

As of the end of this post, you may expect me to be tucked in warm with Massive Attack booming in my ears and having a rendezvous with Le Carre under a flash light. Good night!

Losing the compass.

Life is a journey. It has a definite start and an end, but how we connect the dots is totally up to us. We may end up spending all our days saving for the rainy day and hit the end before it ever starts raining. Or, we may live with throwing a fig at caution and never see the end coming. Its not the fact that we connect the dots, but it is how we connect them that matters. 

As kids, life seemed infinite. There never seemed to be a lack of time or space to do whatever we wanted to do! The only things that seemed powerful enough to bind us were our own fears and tastes. And of course, a parent. 

Then we grew up and things started getting muddled up.

Life becomes an endless charade of academics, extra-curriculars, crushes, 'CV-building' activities, 'compulsory' volunteering, economic downturns, unemployment numbers etc. etc. etc. 
 We stop doing things for the sheer JOY of doing them and instead look at things for what they can give us tomorrow. We stop moulding our lives based on our likes and dislikes and instead start using an illusionary future moment as our moral compass. 

We become so obsessed with that particular moment of the future - that moment when we earn our billionth dollar or that moment when we sign the lease on that French Château - that we forget to look at where we are. We stop looking at what we have and cherishing them. 

This is all good till that future reference point stays crystal clear in our minds. But if a crack starts to appear on that image, that all-important compass, the grounds give way beneath us. We are left stranded in a place that we do not want to be and we don't understand how we got there. We start getting nervous and desperate and try to cling to the last vestiges of that image, that former goal, but it still slips away from our fingers just as the mist in the incipient morning sunshine. We lose our bearings. Things start looking scary, very very scary. 

When things look scary, when everything is dark around you, the only thing you can sense and feel is yourself. So it is important to look within. Introspection is a hard game to learn. But it is a game that teaches as much from failure as it does from victory. Try to figure out where you are and what got you there and why you are not happy. Try something outrageous, something you would never have tried in a million years before you fell into the darkness - Tap-dancing or Malay cooking or watering the plants outside on a hot, summer day. Make a fool of yourself and revel in the warmth of that fact. 
Appreciate the fact that there are still things to learn, skills to master, things to make better and failures to be born. When things are dark, all it takes is the striking of a match to bring back the light. You might have to strike at it multiple times, but you will get it eventually. Meanwhile enjoy your time in the darkness, it may not be the place you envisioned yourself to be in, but that does not make it any less of an experience to be cherished. And when the match does light, stop focussing on a point in the horizon. The horizon can wait, the next step can't.  

The Idea of Home.

It has been many years since my family lived at our home in Ashok Nagar. After moving back to Chennai from Trichy, we took residence at a home on Nelson Manickam Road as that was closer to my Mom's office in Nungambakkam. But upon the arrival of my pregnant sister, the extreme Chennai heat, the pesky mosquitoes and the non-stop traffic on NM road forced us to temporarily abandon fort at NM road and move back to our older house in Ashok Nagar. The tree-laden Municipality grounds behind our apartment provided a great sense of relief and calm as compared to the urban jungle that is NM road. Also, living out of your suitcase in a sparsely furnished apartment can be a joy in its own right :)

Last Sunday, I needed to wake up very early to pick up my Aunt from Egmore Railway Station. After religiously setting 5 different alarms on every gadget I owned, I endured a night of tremulous sleep fearing my mother's wrath if I overslept. A new grandmother tends to take out all her frustrations on her grown-up, dimwit of a boy!
Luckily at the dot of half past five, I jumped out of bed. Oddly, none of my gadgets were the reason! Instead it was the Church a little distance behind my house that had come alive for its Sunday Mass activities.

For as long as I can remember, the Church has been a perennial presence in our lives at Ashok Nagar. Every day from six in the morning till eight at night, the Church will gong its bells once an hour to enlighten all with the time and a select verse from the Bible. As a kid, I used to find these hourly interjections both irritating and fascinating depending, of course, on whether I was at my video games or not. Sundays would elevate the sound levels to a different plane altogether. Starting from around 5 in the morning till well past three in the afternoon, thousands of people would flock to the Church to hear sermons, sing songs and attend communal luncheons ; all of which would be broadcast through the booming mike system. My mother was never a fan though as Sundays were her sleep days and pronouncements of love and action by God do not exactly cajole one to an afternoon siesta! For the first few months, I was fascinated by the Mass! I would sit for hours on my bedroom window and stare at the people arriving in their best clothes. I could recognize most of the songs that were sung and would even sing along to a few. The communal luncheons would bring the smells of strange and unknown dishes to my nostrils. The Church would be a bee-hive of activity till the evening, when gradually the crowds would dwindle to an ant-line.

Coming from an orthodox Tamil Brahmin family, I was not familiar with the concept of Mass or its significance. But I still liked the idea of meeting friends and relatives on every Sunday instead of sleeping unnaturally at home! I also liked the way the Church was more than just a religious institution, it was a social and cultural node.

Very soon, my fascination with watching the Sunday Mass and the Church stopped and I moved on to newer interests, as any middle school kid would do. But the sounds and smells would always exist. Somehow, they merged into my notion of 'Home' along with the tastes of my Mom's cooking and the dusty smells of my book racks. In ways I could not understand, I felt safe, comfortable and happy every time I heard that hourly gong without actively looking forward to it or benefiting from it. Likewise, the Sunday Mass and its associated assaults of stimuli became an intrinsic part of our lives, no longer a disturbance. Without meeting any particular Christian, I had become acquainted with the group of them. They and their actions became a part of my idea of 'Home' at a very early age.

Secularism can a very tough ideal to live by. Even educated, well-travelled folks often engage in passive non-secular actions; if not through discrimination then through preferences or prejudice.
Schools teach us to subconsciously pay lip-service to the ideal of secular thought but how many of us end up imbibing it as a way of life just from schooling?  A home that prides secular thought and equality has a better chance of breeding a secular individual. However, secularism is not merely an individual value such as honesty or integrity. Secularism is easier to cultivate and practice en masse. As a community, we need to cultivate the notions of equality and fairness to all.

How do we achieve that? It is simple. Let our children run and play together.

As children, we are not predisposed to any form of xenophobia. Children are profoundly wiser than adults in that respect. It is only the elders who often implant their own ill convictions onto their children, creating artificial boundaries in their minds. If only we let each child play and learn from all children in the community, she will grow up to recognize no boundaries except the boundaries of right and wrong.

When the child's budding notions of 'home' includes the rights of all to share and co-exist, the civilizational idea of 'India' would have triumphed.

On the other hand, a sense of home that raises barriers between 'us' and 'them' fails the same idea of India.  That is why the gerrymandering of communities and electoral lines is such a dangerous practice as it attempts to cultivate the idea of a home for a particular class or community. When 'my' idea of a home does not recognize 'your' idea of a home, you are different from me. That is a fault line, no social studies texts or lip-service to equality can bridge.

A nephew is born!

I am now the uber proud Uncle to a beautiful baby boy. He was born yesterday to my elder sister and in a matter of seconds, usurped my position as the favorite kid of the family. But I could not have lost it to a better man!

It is probably in high school or in the early days of college that life stops being a journey of discovering wondrous new things and instead becomes an exercise in inuring ourselves against the new and the alien. We stop rejoicing at change and start setting our tastes in stone. We stop embracing foreign emotions and seek comfort in known tears and laughs. Around the time our physique stops to grow, we instruct our minds to follow suit.

Life cannot go on like that. Such stultified existence can only lead to decadence and ruin. To offset the set order of things and to turn our lives upside down, life periodically bequeaths upon us some great moments and unimaginable experiences. The birth of a child, in the family, is one such and probably the most beautiful of them all.

My life, my family's life and most importantly my sister's will never be the same again. For we have amidst us, a wailing boy with shocking black hair and an already long list of likes and dislikes. Taking care of him and ensuring his comfort will take precedence over everything else now. Spoiled brats such as me, used to getting things my way, will now be snubbed in passing, but far from apprehending it, I look forward to it. This is good change and I know I must embrace it.

I think it is time for me to grow up as well. Having a nephew is a huge responsibility and I really must strive to be the kind of Uncle he will be proud of. I must start learning plenty of cool things like juggling and legos to impress him in his formative years. I must strive to make myself indispensable in his schemes of merriment! Impressing him will require me to change and grow in ways I deemed impossible before. But it a good change and I must embrace it!

The mother and child are well and the city of Chennai is hot, just the way I like it. Yet another great memory has been made in my most beloved town.