Home....

Its too hot.. its too cold... its unsafe... But still I cannot stop but love Delhi. Its been my home for 18 years, and every moment I spend away from home, my heart aches for it...

I haven't been home for the past 5 years and won't be for the next 5 years. It all seems so unfair to me. I am not a sentimental fool, still the thought of leaving home and seeing my family for 20 days in a year for the next 5-6 years tears my heart apart, so much so that I want to rethink my career choices. I have always not thought much of people who sacrifice their career for family, but now that I am in a similar situation, I know how wrong I was.

Anatole France once said and I quote " All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another." Its so strange, I applied to grad school knowing fully well, I have to stay away from home for another gruelling 5 years. I know grad school is going to be an experience of a life time still I do not want to leave.

Its your home, where you learnt everything, where you became you. What are you supposed to do, just move on... I miss bapa's constant reminder to eat fruits , exercise regularly, mummy's constant reminder to study hard, show less anger, drink milk, have medicines, talk politely, pray every evening, non ending fights with brother, back answering him till he has no retort left, fighting over the last leg piece of tandoori chicken... I miss home. I don't want to be away.
The though of cuddling up to mummy when sleeping, going to Mother Dairy with bapa, fighting with Rinkun for remote even when nothing is on TV just gives me unparalleled happiness.

After all, everything we do is to achieve a happy life.

Happy Holi... Wait a minute... What's holi?

I cannot believe that I am in office during holi. Never in the past 22 years of my existence have I never played holi unless and until I have been sick or something. I played holi even when I had my board exams just the next day... No yummy food, no colors, no water balloons, no scrubbing yourself red and still looking multicolored for days. I like holi a lot. I want to play holi. Its been 5 years since I spent either holi or diwali with my family, and now that I am with my cousins, everyone is off to office. Why?? Why is Holi a working day here in Bangalore? No matter how hard I try to convince myself I cannot come to a logical reason. Sad... Anyways I am here in office, in a crappy mood, writing my mid semester report. Still , Happy Holi to everyone.... :)

Reviving an old forgotten hobby

When we are swamped with reports, assignments, classes, tests, all we need is a day when we have nothing to do except sleep, eat, read (novels) , watch your favourite shows, listen to music, dance, etc. etc, and maybe just lie around doing nothing. But when we get that, the nothing to do part, all we want is some work to do... Wierd, but that's the way things are.. I have been so tensed and swamped with a million exams to give, a billion sops to write, a trillion revisions of the sop and then study again , and then sop and then study, and so on and so forth but now there seems to be a big hollow, with nothing to do.

I am not complaining but there is a huge lull, and I know this is the lull before the storm, the storm of stuff to do at graduate school. PhD is no joke. I have seen my friends so swamped with work, that they forget to sleep, the time they are done with today's work, its already tomorrow. So, this long long time which I have before I start cribbing and complaining about humongous loads of work again, I want to utilize it, reading novels, and catch up with all the reading I neglected during engineering. I feel bad thinking about it now. I used to read a lot, a LOT but the desire to do good in engineering, combined with the fierce competition at every level made me drop this habit of mine for quite a while now.

I have recently started reading novels again. I recently finished the famous "A Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger. It was good and refreshing to read a different kind of book. The story is about a rebellious boy who thinks absolutely everything is a waste, and is thoroughly confused about his own opinions as well as ambition and intention. This book made me laugh, made me sad, and reminded how much fun is it to get lost in a story. The main protagonist in the book has been thrown out of many schools, mainly because of his disinterest in studies. He had been through a lot in his life, and now instead of trying to get an education he wants to live as an outcast. I liked the ending of this book a lot. How a li'l sister not exactly convince, but through her actions makes her brother to stay at home and not run off to some ranch to herd cattle and basically throw away his life. All of us have gone through this mutinous stage: some extreme, some not too extreme. I liked the way this book was written, it was like someone would have written in his diary, not decorated with flowery vocabulary and stuff but crude and original, as the one sees the world.

So, coming back to my resolution to atleast read 100 books before going to grad school, I am deciding on my next book. I have four books lying in my room: A farewell to arms by Ernest hemigway, A brief history of time by Stephen hawking, Kim by Rudyard Kipling and Maximum city: Bombay lost and found by Suketu Mehta, I am having a hard time deciding which one to pick. But I am most likely to go with Suketu Mehta. I am curious to know about the city which I love and admire from someone else's point of view.

Till then waiting for results and reading novels :)

JOB

Placement season is here... and its chaos all around. I never considered myself to be a person who would run around looking for jobs that I have really no interest in doing. But its weird how things turn out, how perspectives change, but its natural I guess. Everyone needs a job. I never thought I would even consider doing something I know I will not like. But as the situation arises, I am. And this makes me feel gloomy and sad. I am a geek. I love electronics, I love how electrons and holes constitute current flow in a MOS. I love how a chip so small can have millions of transistors. I love transistor level simulation. I love how Faraday's law gave us Induction motors, and other machines. I love how the world now is dependent on 0's and 1's. I love how you can hold a signal and prevent it from going any further when you don't want it to. I love electronics and electrical engineering. At the verge of completing my engineering I do not wish to do anything but electronics. And the sad part about all of this is ,everything I wish to do is idealistic. But that is what I want to do. I do not want to compromise. I know I am being a stubborn, but that's who I am. I see no point in earning 7 figures if I don't like my job. In a period of 6 months I have got a faint hint of what it is to not like your work. I don't like to sit idle. The past 6 months of sitting idle has been enough. I love my internship now. If it were not for the scarcity of transportation to my home I don't think I would leave my office until dinner. I have got a taste of both, and though a bit short on other fancy services, I love my work now. I actually get to sit and think, rather than running a code, and compiling results. My mom tells me she thinks I will do good in any career path I choose. But, then again she is my mother she is supposed to say this. I am not sure I would even want to do good at some place I do not like to work. I have seen may people give up on their dreams and I am not saying that it is wrong but it shouldn't be the case. People should be allowed to dream and accomplish them and not looked down upon if their dream is not a "safe" choice. I don't like this rat race at all. I mean most of the people don't but they ( including me) become a part of this race either knowingly or unknowingly. The world is full of injustice and one doesn't realize it unless it happens to you. I am just putting random thoughts into this post which I know will not make any sense at all when it is complete. But frankly I don't care. I just wanted to write something. Anything. ...

Doctor, Marine Biologist, IAS, CEO, ENGINEER !!!!

The Great Apping Season

Here we are.. GRE long over , it is time for the horrendous process of apping to begin.. actually it already has begun torturing me day and night. The only solace I have is also not certain. If (and I must say it is a big if) I get into a good university with sufficient funding I can probably justify all the sleepless nights writing a SOP (Statement of purpose, for those who don't know). I have always considered myself capable of reading simple instructions about filling the forms. But no, this is not the case for filling out all the online appliactions. Its scary I don't know why but it is. The whole graduate studies thing is over hyped, and rightly so, because it is a big deal for many and for me too.

Coming back to the process of Apping, its not just the SOP , you have to write a diversity essay, an accomplishment essay, an essay justifying why the university would give u a few thousand dollars of funding fro their pool... but am I complaining? Well yes, I did complain for a long long time but I think I have settled. Almost settled that is. I can't stop cribbing, its one of my characteristic, without it I wouln't feel like I have worked at all. Ya, the process of apping, I have become used to it. The last minute scramble to do everything ranging from sending packets, sending ETS scores , organizing letters or recommendation to actually uploading the SOP which single handedly has the potential to make or break your chance of studying at an International university is dreadful.

Everyday I come back from office, switch on the laptop, stare at my statement of purpose and think of ways making it better which include evrything from looking at different SOPs, to bugging friends (which I doubt someday will stop them from being my friends), to bugging any person who I know can help me making my sop better , to improving it myself and then discarding all the changes. Its confusing and frustrating and something you cannot do without. So, the point in writing this post is nothing, its just one of the ways for me to complain on a much larger level...

P.S. Its not that bad as I have made it sound, I tend to dramatize things a bit sometimes :)

The man with the straw baskets....

Walking down the road I saw a man, barefooted , selling straw baskets, hoping that somebody would buy them so that his family doesn't have to sleep hungry today. Wearing mangled clothes , he had a disheveled appearance, but the twinkle in his eyes at the prospect of a new customer was unmistakable, it belied all the sufferings he had gone through though short lived for the person. He was moving up and down the road looking for customers, on a Sunday afternoon. Were the baskets made by him? Looked like it. SO, instead of selling it to some handicrafts shop for a meager amount while the latter charge an unnaturally high price he decided to foray into the market himself. But now he is thinking did he do a mammoth mistake , should he would have sold the baskets and in a way confirmed a source of income for himself no matter how meager. Finally he set his eyes on a person coming down the road. Looking at the vendor the person had a pity in her eyes, which the vendor was quick to notice. He called out to her " Madam, baskets!!!!", "Please", but don't know how this person became so stoic, she walked on without even acknowledging the existence of the vendor....

Someday....

I don't know when I heard of this song , but its like one of the best songs I have ever heard so, for not any particular reason , here it is.....

Some day, when I'm awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you...
And the way you look tonight.

Yes you're lovely, with your smile so warm
And your cheeks so soft,
There is nothing for me but to love you,
And the way you look tonight.

With each word your tenderness grows,
Tearing my fear apart...
And that laugh that wrinkles your nose,
It touches my foolish heart.

Lovely ... Never, ever change.
Keep that breathless charm.
Won't you please arrange it ?
'Cause I love you ... Just the way you look tonight.

Mm, Mm, Mm, Mm,
Just the way you look to-night.

I just love this song and Frank Sinatra