All's well that ends well

It was the State level Software Development Competition at the famous BITM (Birla Institute of Technology Museum) that had the most notable schools of West Bengal participating. The schools that have secured the top two positions in the District Level have qualified for this event, which to eleventh standards like me and my classmates, coming from a school which was then not very well known, was a big achievement.

It was well past two o'clock in the afternoon and we were all tensed. There was hardly any time left for us to complete the assignment at hand. Rahoul was swearing under his breath and Koushik with his chronic Halitosis was also breathing very heavily behind me. I felt sick. The program was far from perfect and I could not type on because of my nervousness that was compounded by the foul-breath from behind me. I have always believed that creative work could only be done in an environment where there was no physical discomfort. But that day I had serious troubles and no backup to fall back upon. My mind raced back to the days when we were in the district level competition…

***

There were about 15 schools from Kolkata (Calcutta back then) who had been in the competition in the District Level. We came out second for the educational software named “Solar System”, created with the language GWBASIC 3.22 in a MS DOS 6.0 OS. It was, I admit, a wonderful piece of code that took almost 2 months to set up in school. That particular year 1996/97, allowed the participant schools to bring in their own PCs. As many as 3 schools got disqualified for unethical practices of bringing the code along with them on their PCs. The competition called the participants to be present in a large hall 3 hours a day and write a code impromptu that will have some bearing on the users in the form of information, within a time frame of three days. The topic was to be of our own choice. Nine hours in all… and everyone knew that the toppers would have to do more than coding within that time frame to present such beautiful streaming graphics and animation. So it was an open challenge for us to have secured a place among the toppers.

I have certain reservations for a lazy person… I seem to understand them better than most of us. I knew from my long association with Koushik that he was lazy by nature. “There is a saying that I believe wholeheartedly in”, he would say… “If you cannot do a piece of work yourself then get it done by a lazy person… He will not only do the work in a shortest possible time but also do it the best”. Intelligent and lazy, that was how Koushik was and made up for his laziness with his intelligence; he would always figure out some way to do a work and minimize the actual workload without being non-co-operative. So, while everyone tried smuggling in the source-code, a few succeeded and a few unfortunate got caught and disqualified, He did not bother to take the trouble of smuggling it in. He suggested to the group what was not only a better plan but the most cunning of all schemes in which I ever had a part to play.

We knew that we would be using the machines from our school itself. So, according to the plan, one fine morning about two weeks prior to the competition I sat on the machine scheduled to be into the competition, a 486 DX with a monochrome VGA monitor that could only produce the shades of gray other than black or white, and copied the code, that was developed on a Pentium S color PC, onto its hard-drive. I then invoked the Undelete application and set up the undelete directory. Finally, when that was done, I simply deleted the code from the machine and shut it down. This was of course, not noticed by anyone other than the three of us. I admit we were fools to have taken such a great risk. If we were caught in the act of cheating in a competition so important, we knew, the school would take severe actions to make amends. But I guess wisdom of such eventuality was sincerely absent …

The day the competition started, I was nervous but confident that we have taken the best precaution among the others and we were overjoyed when the machine was cleared without a hitch. It was then just a matter of time before we invoked the undelete command to retrieve the whole of the source code at our leisure. Strangely, it was only then that we realized that most of the participants were sitting idle and chatting away their precious quota of time allotted for the competition.

At the end of the third hour on the first day the judges came by to review the day’s work… By that time we had successfully undeleted the whole of the source code and had taken it apart into three segments. We showed the judges the menu and the small things that were there in the first segment…

On the third day like all other participants we submitted the code and waited with hopes mounting that we would see though the competition.
The Solar System application was a good one with vivid graphics and loads of animation. It even had a quiz session at the end. It got evaluated on a PC with color monitor and therefore the effects were just superb. But there were others too with animations much better than us and with presentations much colorful than us. There were in all 11 schools that finished the competition and among them we had to seriously lucky.

When the names of the runners up were declared it was a relief that we had seen through the initial phase of the competition. What awaited us, we were not sure but it felt good to have come out victorious when the battle itself was so unethical. La Marts took away the first prize. La Mart boys made a virtual physics laboratory complete with a robot guide and unparallel animation. I wonder how they could have fooled the judges into believing that it could be done within nine hours.

We, of course, had no problems explaining how we had made it possible to have done what we had done. We had designed an Editor that could enable someone to draw pictures very easily and save them on the disk. When required the Program could also load the picture in no time. In reality we took the whole of the three days to have developed the editor itself. We did that to avoid any suspicion and presented the onlookers with a picture of a team working with sheer dedication. The judges were so impressed they made the editor and the loader available as standard tools for the successive years to come.

That was one victory I never enjoyed much except for the fact that the application was very well written to have passed such tough (sic) competition… Partially, because I knew where we stood had there been a fair competition… we would probably had not done bad after all but, the quality of the work would not have been close to 10% of what we had been able to present to the judges through deceit. A small detail seemed to have been overlooked by the judges when they had evaluated our work was the fact that, the machine on which we had developed the application had a monochrome monitor, yet the colors used for the animation and graphics were just perfect!!!

***

But that was in the district level… and presently, my mind focused back on the program that lay listed on the screen in front of me. Rahoul’s nudge in my ribs had brought me back to the reality that we are now at the state level competitions and that: we have lots of fine tuning to do before we submit the code for the adjudication at 4 o’clock. Back in the district level we had the savior in Peter Norton (who had once accidentally deleted one of his important documents only to realize that it was not possible to get it back. He then wrote the Undelete.exe, which happened to have been bundled with the MS DOS OS, after its importance got acknowledged), but now we were in the open and had no cover… for the state level competitions required that a topic be given on the spot on the first day; so, no more prewritten code. The time limit however was 25 hours i.e., 5 days of 5 hours each.

I looked over to the left, where the La Marts boys were working, and I could easily make out the stress they were in. They were huddled together and almost having arguments every now and then. It was then I wished we had a fair fight in the first round. The topics for the state level were varied. Every topic like Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Chemistry and Geography were covered: Probability, Projectile Motion, Photosynthesis, Periodic Table and Atomic Structure and Water Cycle respectively. I looked around to see the other participants and there was a general state of buzzing all around. I could make out the outline of a leaf on a screen some distance away… Photosynthesis, yes that is what they were attempting… One of the members of that team in question noticed that I was taking some interest in their work and they promptly switched their monitor off to face me. I hurriedly looked away and almost laughed out loud. They were probably unaware that we were attempting the Projectile Motion but the competition had brought the meanest of mentalities out, as does the war.

It was some school from Nadia and I was not interested. Meanwhile, Koushik had replaced me on the keyboards and was frantically searching the code for the defects. We managed to demonstrate the projectile motion with the examples of shells being fired from tanks or bombs being dropped from the planes and that sort of things, all done in animation. The editor was there and we had created some wonderful pictures of planes and tanks. There was another trump card up the sleeve for us, we had been able to develop an interactive screen where the user could give the speed and the angle of the projectile being fired and the program would trace out the path of the projectile and show it to the user through animation. The usual calculations like the height achieved and the distance traveled would also be shown along the graph that was traced. It was the salient feature of the program other than the graphical design and the animations.

However, there were a few problems. The tank seemed to fire from its body and any amount of tweaking, on that section of the code to correct its fire from the muzzle, was futile. The things seemed to worsen when we tried to correct it and the shell started off either from thin air or from the ground before the tank. The only positive thing about that code in that present state was: the shell started from the body of the tank and grazed the muzzle. The observer had to be absolutely focused to realize that the tank was firing from the body and not from the muzzle. The plane dropping the bomb was relatively trouble free, except if someone looked very attentively it would have been discovered that the motion was a quarter circular one and not parabolic at all. The trump card that we had up our sleeve also had some share of that erratic behavior and the projectile seemed to have itself detached from the origin (0,0) and start from somewhere beyond (20,20) as the angle increased beyond 60 degrees. The greater the angle the greater was the movement. The reason was not clear; and in spite of having gone over these sections of code a hundred times, we could not identify the reason of the strange behavior.

While time passed by, much too quickly to our comfort, we failed to correct the problem. It dawned upon us that we might as well have to make up for the flaws during the evaluation presentation. I suggested that we might avoid a little embarrassment if we limited the projectile angle to be less than 60 degrees. Accordingly, the screen was altered and a message was displayed indicating to the user to avoid giving angles greater than 60 degrees as inputs. We also validated the input so that if a user entered angle greater than 60 degrees the program would not accept the value.

Just when it was about time we gave up and with one final run of the whole code we submitted our work for the adjudication. At the appointed hour the participants were told to stop and as usual like the last minute revision during an examination the buzzing went on to humming and then to chaos.

We watched and from the sighs of my companions I could make out exactly what they might be thinking. After all we were in the same league. We all felt very skeptical. La Mart boys were not looking very confident either and they had a serious altercation with the authorities, which looked like they demanded a 5 minute slack, but was eventually denied. Finally, when the collection was over we gathered in an adjoining hall and waited for our turns to be summoned to the judges… where we were to display the application and give a short presentation. I was lost in my thoughts from the previous level where we went in, confident of our code’s performance; now, it was free for all. The participants from other districts were bubbling with confidence and I particularly noticed the Nadia School team, who had their monitors shut, looking extremely confident with their work. Now if anything could save us from a disaster, it had to be the presentation itself.

Rahoul was a confident speaker and we decided that he would be doing the presentation, Koushik would operate on the keyboard (just the job for him) and I would try and create a distraction when required, especially when the tank and the plane came to the display. It was also decided that I would take over if anything falls apart during the presentation. With our hearts pounding at the prospect of bluffing the judges, we waited.

Our turn came second as we had submitted the work second to another team. With genuine uncertainty we walked into the familiar room where the judges sat near a computer. We exchanged glances and a general reassurance through it and began our presentation. Koushik was very nervous and he almost hurried off through the tank sequence where, to our dismay, the color of the tank appeared florescent green!! To add fuel to the fire the judges were very interested to know why such a strange color had been used. We had to go back to the tank sequence and I sprung into action… very carefully shielding the point from where the shell came off the tank, I put my finger on the screen, to let the judges see only the muzzle portion of the tank. Once the shell had passed grazing the muzzle, I relaxed and explained that we had been using a monochrome monitor to develop the application. Luckily for us, the presentation of our previous application had left some amount of sympathy amongst the judges; they immediately waived it aside as a problem. One of the judges even commented that it was like a camouflage!! Imagine a florescent tank in a real battlefield; it would be a treat for the enemy to sight and destroy it. It is, I admit, the worst suggestion that I have personally come across… worse than the ones I had talked about in my previous article…

The plane proved to be another hurdle. To our dismay, it was of a bright blue color… nothing much was said about that anomaly for the overall effect, with the animation taking the brunt of attention away, was satisfying. Finally, came the “Ace up the sleeve” and the very first question that a certain judge, Prof. Curie (or Koory from the St Xavier College Calcutta), who was a lecturer of physics, asked was why the projectile could not be fired above the 60 degree angle. The answer to this fell in my responsibility and I could not think of anything better than to say “Sir, it is actually a limitation of the GWBASIC language. It cannot process angles greater than 60 degrees… moreover Sir, if someone had indeed fired at an angle more than 60 degrees it would be the same as that fired with angles less than 30 degrees… ”. By the time I had finished that wild explanation, I could see Koushik look towards his shoes with a sudden interest and Rahoul struggling to suppress a giggle. There was a pause.

The idea to have the judges taken for a ride, suddenly, seemed too foolish. I was certain; that the bluff would disqualify us…. Then with a sudden change of atmosphere the whole of the room seemed to have acknowledged and endorsed what I had explained and we were told to carry on with our presentation. I could not believe my ears! I would have jumped up in joy and would have hugged Rahoul and Koushik (in spite of his overpowering Halitosis) had it not been for the situation we were in. The rest of the presentation was just like a piece of cake and we emerged with a ray of hope to secure at the least a consolation prize.

The final hour of the declaration of the winner came close and it was almost 7:30 in the winter evening of January when the prize announcement started. We were never expected to reach the State Levels so there was hardly any support for us from school; but our computer teacher from school had come for the announcement ceremony. Not that he was expecting too much, but was hoping against hope. We were miserable because of his presence and for the certainty of the realization that we would come back empty handed.

Like all the other prize distribution and announcements the consolation prizes were announced one by one, starting from the least important and progressing towards the more important ones. At every announcement we strained to hear our names but every time we were disappointed. It was concluded after a round of quick self assessment that we cannot expect to be among the top three and when all the prizes had been given off in the consolation prize category… we resigned to our fate and started conniving of an explanation, that could act as an excuse as to why we performed so poorly.

La Marts had bagged the third place. I felt almost jealous although for no particular reason when I saw the rivals from Calcutta mount the stage and accept the prizes with smiles, which extended up to their ears. I watched them come back with their winnings and take the seat in a row ahead of us and felt a twang of guilt to have felt jealous. We eyed their prizes were looking at each other with smiles of resignation when the Nadia team took the stage and claimed the second prize. I felt like a miserable person and all my cheating from the previous level seemed to haunt me… I did not notice the jump of our computer sir. I also did not hear the shriek from Rahoul when the announcement for the first place was made. I was too deep in my misery to have understood the reason of rejoice of Rahoul and Koushik when the realization dawned:
We have WON!

I still remember that I had joined my team and walked up to the stage while the whole of the hall clapped and cheered. I turned to look at the La Mart boys with a smile of the victorious as if to convey the point home that we can as well beat them fairly… even they were clapping! I forgave them instantly (although readers may ask why I actually though about forgiveness when nothing wrong was done…the answer is …I don’t know too. But forgiving them seemed most logical and so I did).

While I received the Silver Medal and the Certificate of recognition many scattered thoughts raced through my mind… The uncertainty and the cold sweat when I pulled off the finest bluff of my small and eventful life, the long and tedious hours of typing and debugging, the tension and the anxiety of being caught in the act of wrongdoing all came back… but strangely they did not touch me and I felt a wave of relief and achievement flood my senses. I remembered the saying “All’s well that ends well”…

Eye of the Tiger - 3

( Continued from Eye of the Tiger - 2 post)
But I might say, when results came out, I was happy that I never believed in God. Coz God with his or her sick sense of humor made Deep stuck at an aggregate of 78%???? So when Deep and I were discussing the above posed question.. What Next? No answers came to us. Deep was told very politely by the company officials, in buttery language that, he should write a resignation letter now and if in future, any thing can be done for Deep, they would surely do it. I do not know how Deep would have reacted. But if I were him, I would have really cursed them for first ruining my future for some god forsaken rules, which cannot even account for a 2% deficit, and expressing the desire to help in future ( if there was one that is).
I was really worried of how to handle Deep when he came out of Infinite premises, after handling over his dog-tag and with a month salary deposited in his account. I was equally worried to see that Deep was so calm and even asked me out for dinner on his account. Come Babe!! Be my date today. He almost said with an air of certainty. I looked at his eyes straight thinking that he must have lost his mind. But his eyes were calm and there was no sign whatsoever in his eyes which showed any sense of anxiety, trauma etc. They were eyes of a person determined to prove what they think is right. I really find myself overwhelmed and now it was time for me to cry. We bade each other good bye next day, and Deep returned to his native village in Bihar. Before going, he told me the exact word that I wrote in the beginning. I never knew from where he got the mental courage and strength. But then, human mind is something of an enigma even to the most enlightened ones.
I never met him after that day. I kept on sending mails frequently on the mail id that he had given to me but never got a reply. Meanwhile, two years went thru. I left Pune and manage a transfer from my company to settle down in my place in Kolkata. Day before yesterday while having food at Mocambo in Park Street, I suddenly felt a gentle poke on my shoulders. It was Deep!! Smiling at me with the same calmness that I saw in his face when he boarded the Patna bound train. After initial revelry he introduced me to a petit good looking lady seating beside him, as his wife. It was the same girlfriend who used to call up on his cell on and off. I introduced him to mine. I never picked up the Pune episode during the whole one hour that I was with him. I came to know that Deep is leaving for US next week on business. When the short reunion was over, before going he winked and smiled at me, and then passed me off his visiting card. It read, Deep Prakash, consultant – UNIX, RHCP (God knows what that means) and the name of the company really took my breath away. It was Infinite!!! To my questioning looks he only smiled and said, I got my chances, I wasted some, but cashed on others. Although failure is never a pillar of success but it can surely used as a learning experience to know what are the ways, that are not to be followed to be successful. With my visiting card, and the promise of keeping in touch from now on, he left with his wife, leaving me totally dazed. (THE END)

Book review - TIME AND A CYCLONE by S.N.SUDHARSAN

Time and a Cyclone is an English novel written by S.N.Sudharsan. Sudharsan is freelance writer, carnatic singer & works as software engineer at Infosys, Chennai. The novel hit the stands cross all the leading bookstores in Chennai and Bangalore in Aug, 2004. The novel is also available at India's largest online shopping portal Fabmall.com Time and a Cyclone has received a omination for the prestigious literary award "The Man Booker Prize-2005" The novel is in the fray for the award which will be announced this October. Time and a Cyclone has generated more heat after the December 26th Tsunami, because of the uncanny coincidence and exact visual description it bears to a real tsunami which strikes a fictional place called Adiokentha in the novel. The front cover shows, the disturbing scene of the ravaged town of Dhanushkodi, with its attractive and shallow lagoon of Bay of Bengal. The town was devastated by the severe cyclone of 1964. Dhanushkodi is the inspiration for the fictional place Adiokentha in which the novel is set.
Simple language has been used and the characters are well described which makes it easier for the readers to visualize them. Reading this book was a pleasurable experience. The book describes the quest of two people Ram & Sri. Will they be successful in their mission? What is their mission? You’ll have to read the book to find out :-)

To give you a feel of the book, here’s an excerpt from the book

"...For a minute even the wind stopped blowing. I experienced a dead silence; nobody shouted for help. The waves weren't to be heard, nor was the wind. It was the silence of the cemetery, absolute silence and for the first time in my life I heard the sound of Death..."
Happy reading J :-)

Legally available free science fiction novels.

The Baen free library is an online repository of Free Science fiction ebooks made available by the authors themselves through the well known print science fiction publisher baen books. These books enable booklovers to sample the writings of authors in the hope that this will create demand for the authors other books. The Librarian is Himself a Science fiction author Mr Eric Flint and he himself has a very interesting take on copyright in general. See the link below for details.

http://www.baen.com/library/

Eye of the Tiger - 2

(Continued from Eye of the Tiger -1 post)
I was suddenly woken up with a start. A sobbing noise was coming from Deep’s side. I came down from my bed and going towards Deep’s bed I found him on his back staring at the ceiling and sobbing. Seeing me beside him his sobbing became almost an inconsolable weep. I was aghast. At 2 AM in the morning, a full grown man crying like a baby. I sat beside his side. What’s the matter? Please don’t hide and tell me? I will try my best to see thru any problem you have. No, ID!! No one can help me. And still he was crying. After fifteen minutes of cross-examining him, I came to know that the root cause of Deep’s distress lies within the premises of Infinite Technologies or IT. I came to know that IT has a stringent way to test the incoming trainees thru exit tests for all the training courses. Actually they try to select the wheat from the chaff using their certified testing techniques. As per Deep, any one is always counted as good as his last success. You might be good in one subject and not so good or bad in other. But the goodness in one area here loses all its meaning once you fail to acquire even the passing grades in another. Being a management grad myself I was terribly shocked. Coz I have always personally felt that every entity has got its core competencies and the success of that entity can only be gauged as per those competencies. What will happen to me, ID? If I do not get an A in my next round of tests I will be shown the door straight away with a month salary in advance, he said. To console him I encouraged him by saying things like C’mon.. this is not such a big deal. You will surely get an A next time. He just kept looking me blankly in-spite of my ramblings. Then he laid down another fact which actually made me feel the pre-morning nip in my bones. ID.. Do you know Grade A means here an aggregate of minimum 80 %. I have 3 papers left and even if I manage 80s in two of them, the paper on UNIX is a very difficult one. I have already failed once in that paper. So is it possible for me to get an A Grade there as well? I became silent in front of his questioning looks. How much time is left for you tests? I asked. Ten days. That night none of us slept anymore.
Till next morning I have swore to me that I will be doing whatever I can to make Deep overcome the bad time. I made him swear that he will give it the best. We stopped going outside. I even called up my office to say that I will be unavailable for any client meets for next 2 weeks. We started having lunch and dinner "dabbas" at home although both of us hated them. Whenever he was studying I made a point to make tea / coffee, bring the extra ration of smokes, encouraging him every time by telling him he is not alone etc. His phone calls became shorter until he started using me as the receptionist for himself. Every time some called up my job was to be as inventive as possible. On the D-Day before going to office we both visited the nearby Kali temple, where a confirmed atheist like me also prayed for him. May be I was a bit selfish too, as I knew that if Deep loses his job, he will go away, leaving me to count the costly rent all by myself. May be I was also afraid of staying alone as well after such a good time with him. ( To ended in the next part..)

www.viewsunplugged.com

This is one of the few internet sites for online readers. To quote from the site, it’s "a magazine site combining creative writings & personal musings".
The site features book reviews, short stories, musings, announcements of upcoming cultural events, etc. There is also an archive that has a vast collection of articles written by the members. Here you can also find beautiful poems penned by 11 yr olds ! It's a site to get to know about the lesser known authors of the world. The site also shows the "work in progress" of its members.
It’s a great site for a bibliophile :-)
Happy reading.

Proposal making:

"There are plenty of ways to get your proposal across..." says some popular book that deals with human psychology and talk about things that sound so simple. Wake up! making a good proposal is a real tough deal and get it from an expert who has proved it over and over again.
I remember I was always trying to give proposals from a very early age... ranging from "You should study harder to succeed in life" to my younger kin to "I love you and you could also do the same" to some wide eyed lass who would be totally taken back by the suggestion of even sharing the information as to what time it is, with me. I have been successful.
Yes I have been successful if you would consider the various reactions that have been generated as a result of my suggesting power. The very first success came when I was in the third grade when I successfully proposed someone to steal the notes diary from a classmate whom I could not stand. Things were moving as planned except that I had no contingency plan in the event that the victim complained to the teacher. Oh I shudder at the mistakes...
My faith in luck and my not-failing confidence over the fact that suggesting might be a piece of cake just for me even after repeated disasters made my intensions more resolute. Failures are after all the pillars of success and I was sure that success was in sight every time I tried to propose a plan to anyone. The sight however proves to be a mirage and every time it seemed that I got into some loop.
I have had once successfully proposed some "eye opener" sessions to my classmates that left them with scars on their foreheads resulting from the constant rubbing with a piece of cloth between the eyes on the forehead, an act supposed to bring enlightenment on them who practice it. I have had since then left with a fear of the power of proposals and its after effects. I still remember how hard it was for me to justify my discourse (about the divine third eye) and proposal to the angry and skeptic teachers and the parents of my classmates... leave alone the extreme conditions when I faced my own parents. If only others had little imagination I would have not had been punished so brutally then.
Nevertheless unable to douse the urge to suggest someone onto something I finally took upon the sport of proposing potential girls to be a date!! That was something I should not have thought about in the first place... for the results were dismal. On the very first romantic meet with a girl I was to propose for a date; I ended up being very open minded about the choices she had: I said "If you like me it is okay with me; but suppose if you don't then also there will be no problems whatsoever. I am a very open minded individual who respects the individuality of others". Guess what? She preferred the freedom. I did not envy her decision. In a later instance when I had proposed a girl on the very first meeting she took me to be a liar! Gone are those days when people would believe in love at first sight. I am not altogether bad as a person though. It’s only a matter of luck that people don't last long enough to judge me on an unbiased plane. When people first meet me, they find me prickly, irascible, and slightly unhinged. But if they hang around long enough and get past my rough exterior, they find qualities that are marginally less negative. (Past those it gets worse than before, but by that time it's too late.) She obviously was not in a mood to know better to have called me a liar.
Other future endeavors proved equally dis-heartening. I tried creating the magic in a Bus, by a Lakeside but to no avail. I did not give up easily. It took about a dozen of refusals to wake me to the reality that Proposal making is an all-important art that needs to be mastered. No matter how much people like me and take to me as a good friend, proposal making remains hard as it was and the fact remains that I have no knack for it. I have now taken a stance to make it point that intelligent people are often misquoted or misunderstood and if I was not successful in proposal making I was too intelligent for the audience. That gives me a satisfaction though I know it is as true as the earth is flat.
So please don't neglect the art of proposal making and try to be positive when you actually do it. The art actually is to be at home and pretend that the audience is dumb!! Success will follow wherever you might choose to go.
Amen.

Eye of the Tiger - 1

Most of the times in life we tend to ask this question. What next? After a moment of pondering we go out for an unknown way. The choice is more by compulsion than by motivation. And people who do that and come up with an ace are known as winners. While others who wallow in their past are losers and that too big time ones. So we should focus our attentions towards the future and still should go on even if it seems dark in the first evaluation. It might be that there is light at the end of the very dark tunnel called life. Whenever they are at a life-twisting, idea-shattering bend of life, each human being behaves very differently and like finger prints, or retina-scans, the reactions themselves always become a hallmark of that human being. A very interesting incident regarding this kind of a person who actually almost lost every thing and then came up the winner just crosses my mind. Please put up with me and my writings so that I can elaborate the point made above thru the narration of this incident.
It was the spring of 2003 and the streets of Pune wore a very glazy look. It is almost like all of a sudden you have come to a city which had shed its smoky and black clothes and have wore a very sober and attractive prom dress. In all love was in the air. I used to take my dinner at a small but good restaurant near the Rajneesh Ashram near Koregaon Park. It is here I met Deep. Deep Prakash who was just then taken as software engineer trainee at the most coveted Indian software company, Infinite Technologies. Deep was a diminutive figure, about 5 and half feet tall, fair and was from Bihar. We actually were sitting in the same table and forgetfully he took some curry from my curry dish using his spoon. He apologized profusely, and later on while we talked I came to know that he is staying along with his distant relatives and was looking for a PG accommodation. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and in the bargain got a roomie for my costly flat at Koregaon.
Things went on smoothly, with us really enjoying our time with watching movies, surfing malls, smoking together. He was also a compulsive smoker like me and hence we really mixed up well. I was a bit elder to him and hence helped him out with his professional and personal problems. A month or so passed away quite blissfully. The company I was working with used to send me on client meets and most of the time within the week I used to be away. But we made it up on my return by splashing out as much as we could by spending on a freewheeling gala time. One Saturday I came back from a tour to find that Deep was not there. Calling up on his cell, I found that it was switched off. I was a bit surprised to find that, as Deep will never switch off his newly bought mobile set, as a bevy of people starting from his parents to his girl friend might just give a call at any time of the day. Feeling nothing I got refreshed and went on for my afternoon siesta after lunch.
When I woke up to find that the shadows were lengthening, I noted that Deep was not still back at all. I was a bit crestfallen as we were to watch a movie that day at E-Square. Anyways, I got myself engrossed in a Ken Follet for the time being. It was around 9 PM when Deep finally came back with his office folder in his hand. A very serious gloom on his face, his shoulders hunched, something was seriously wrong. What’s wrong and since when did you start switching off your cell? I asked half in jest. My sentences just seem to hang in the air without any reply from him. Please go and have your dinner, as I have already taken mine. His sudden mood swing made me a bit iffy. But then, it must be some scuffle with his parents or girlfriend. I went away and had a dinner all alone. We did not have any usual after dinner chit chat and I went to bed with a disturbed mind. (To be Continued...)

'Touchy Feely!?##??%?'

The post by Sushanta Da was real great. And it actually made me look with yearning for a vacation in such a wonderful place. Sushanta Da , I really envy you about the opportunity that you have got and respect you in the same breath in the way you have been able to touch the right chords. Here I am publishing the Chetan Bhagat Essay sent by Kajal, so that more associates can take a dig (pun intended) at it. By the way, do you people noticed the last line..." Hence Proved".. this really goes on to show " Once a techy always a techy...":-)

Can engineers be 'Touchy feely'? Apparently they can...
says author Chetan Bhagat

I remember the incident - I was in a restaurant, and one girl in our group was especially charming. So I, like any other male, tried to put on a wooing act. You know the routine, a nanosecond extra eye contact, a few more nods to whatever she says, and attempts to throw in those one-liners which you know you wouldn't if she weren't there.
And it seemed to be working. She leaned forward when she spoke to me, and every now and again, we'd have a small conversation of our own, separate from our group. She laughed at my approach with the fork and knife, and I teased her about her hair band, which had little teddy bears. Yes, we were flirting. A while later, she asked me the question - what did I study? I
said engineering, without any particular meaning attached to it. And then like a cold metal rail, she went stiff. My jokes weren't funny any more. Her eyes wandered to everyone else. What was it?
Why? Why? Why?
Two days later, I still couldn't get over my great start that had dissipated listlessly upon mentioning my education. Engineer? What was wrong with that? My mom had wanted me to become one since I was five! I had to call her. 'So what happened to you that day, hot and cold, missie?' And then she said, trying to be nice, 'Well, it's just that I am skeptical about engineers as friends. I don't know, they can be, you know, very logical and everything... not very touchy feely'.

Not touchy-feely. Now what the heck did that mean? Well, she obviously did not mean it literally, since girls don't really suggest that sort of stuff, certainly not in the first meeting across the table. I guessed it was something to do with feelings, sort of having an emotional side. The
stereotype being, the nerdy guy who sees relationships like laws of physics, to whom love is just a bunch of chemicals going crazy in your brain, and getting to know a person means obtaining their bio-data.

It's time to set the record straight. It's true that a lot of what engineers study (and they end up studying quite a lot), has to do with formulaes, laws and numbers. No matter how hard we try, some of the vocabulary we read all day gets into our language. So when my mother said, 'Are you getting married next year or not?' I was liable to say, 'Well, at this moment in time, the probability is relatively low,' and felt it was completely normal to say it. And when my sister went sari shopping and couldn't explain the shade she wanted, I told the shopkeeper the percentages of pink, orange and red in the sari. Yet, ladies, I don't think we're bad at relationships, love and getting to know people. We too, can be touchy-feely, as that is part of our education as well. The reason for this is that most engineering students live in the ultimate educator - boy's hostels. Now, let me explain how this plays into this 'touchy-feely' thing. Relationships. Imagine eating, sleeping, brushing your teeth, bathing (ok rarely this one) and partying with the same people all the time. So, when you are kicking that bathroom door down for the tenth time, or when you stand in line for 'gulab-jamuns' in the mess, and when you
are done with the vodka bottle and sharing all your secrets, you know it is good practice. Yes, hostels maketh the man.

So, next time you are in a flirtatious situation with the techno types, go on, flirt a bit more. Of course, I am biased towards my kind, but if you find the conversation turning too geeky, just ask them, 'So, what were your hostel days like?' and chances are, you'll see a heart behind the
calculator. Coming back to my missie, I thought of what would make me win her over. Flowers... too cheesy. Music... don't know her taste (nor trust mine). Teddy bears... don't even go there. Desperate for some good lines, I just turned it right back at her. 'Yes, I know what you are saying about engineers. The thing is, unless people with depth like you start hanging out
with us, we won't get any better. Can you meet me some time for some touchy/feely... oops, I mean coffee/tea?' She giggled. When they giggle, you have won. Hence proved.

Book review: Talking it Over - Julian Barnes

After a long long time did I finally come across a really satisfying book. Plus this was my first Julian Barnes and "Talking it Over" has definitely put him in my fave authors' list.

The blurb at the back of the book says:

"Introducing Stuart, Gillian, and Oliver. Each takes their turn to speak straight out to camera - and give their side of a contemporary love triangle. What begins as a comedy of misunderstanding slowly darkens and deepens into a compelling exploration of the quagmires of the heart."

The three main characters each have a go at telling how things evolved - their side of the story, their justifications, why they did what they did et cetera. The author brilliantly changes the narration from one to the other - the style of speech, the choice of words, the quirks they have, to flesh out the characters. The reader remains no mere observer, it is as if each of the players wants to win the reader over to his side. And you do tend to start feeling a bit biased towards one or the other.

But more than the story or even the technique of narration is the author's use of words. He chooses words which are just right. He plays with the words, luxuriating in surprising the reader with a turn of phrase or coinage.

The humour is very British which alone would have made the book worth a read. But this is not just a book of humour for there are great insights into the human heart: " .... as you go on living with someone, you slowly lose the power to make them happy, while your capacity to hurt them remains undiminished "

A very satisfying read indeed.

MBA - Mediocre But Arrogant!!!

I have the oportunity to get hold of the extract from Abhijit Bhaduri’s maiden attempt “Mediocre But Arrogant” from www.ndtv.com. After going thru tons of reviews on the net about this book I think it is my moral duty to bring this book under the bibliophile radar. So here I present an excerpt from the book and hope to add this book to the repository as soon as possible.
And yes, one more thing I will like to add. MBA stands for “Mediocre But Arrogant”. You can get a taste of the real man behind all this at http://mediocrebutarrogant.blogspot.com/

Happy reading guys..

It was a cold November morning in 1981. Delhi University was just coming to life as U-Specials were doing their rounds dumping sleepy students in front of the College gates. Most of them, like me, got off the bus and headed straight for the canteen, except of course for the Scephanians. They didn't have a plebian canteen, they called theirs a Cafe.I am not a morning person. I find it tough to get my engines started in the morning. When the alarm rang, I would break out in cold sweat thinking I had become blind overnight until would I realize that I had not yet opened my eyes! It was the same every morning — stress, relief and then disgust- Stress at having to get out of bed, relief that I was not blind and disgust at the thought of going to college. I was not what one may call a motivated student. Rather, a lawyer representing me would say that I WAS indeed motivated to go to college but not the classroom.My favourite hangout was the SRCC canteen. I would sit there every morning, filling a pristine sheet of paper with doodles and random lines of verse, drink cups of tea and smoke. Sometimes guys would join me for an adda session. Adda is not mere gossip, it is far more dignified than that. It's a debate on the larger issues of life, about which no one can do a thing, like world hunger and poverty or SatyaJlt Ray's influence on World Cinema vis-a-vis Mrinal Sen's ... Or the one that always evoked sharply divided opinions ~ Are women settling for less when they abandon their professional careers to raise children? Any issue to which an answer could be found was taboo. So mercifully, one's plans for the future were never discussed. Not that having a discussion would have helped since most of us were unclear about anything beyond that evening's dinner plan.Sometimes I just liked the solitude of being alone, listening to songs on Vividh Bharati and savouring the taste of coffee, watching the people as they flitted "in and out ... letting the mind wander … That morning was no different.

I put my feet up on the table and ordered a cup of coffee and lit a cigarette. Life was unhurried and predictable. Why would one not want it to continue? My eyes fell on the calendar on the opposite wall. It was 16 November.Aw heck! It was my birthday. But no one seemed to have remembered it. Not even at home where they were all sleeping or oblivious or all of the above. I began to feel very sorry for myself. The words of the Hank Locklin song, And I sang happy birthday to me echoed in my ears as my fingers scribbled the lyrics on the paper napkin in front of me. The morning took on a distinctly blue hue. And as I had always maintained, the radio did all it could to deepen the gloom. Talat Mehmood wailed Jayen to jayen kahan. Suddenly life seemed so meaningless. When they stopped to announce the news, which was another round of undiluted morbidity in the world, I thought that fifteen more minutes of this melodrama and I would become completely suicidal. I stood up, and decided to go to class for a change."Happy birthday Abbey!"Before I knew what hit me, Priya had thrown her arms around me and planted a kiss on my cheek. I was stricken. What WAS this stupid girl doing? Did she even care about my image in college? If anyone saw me being kissed by Priya (of all people), it would be curtains for me. But it was my birthday and she was the only lunatic who cared to remember. I couldn't possibly be rude to her today'.I grinned foolishly and hesitatingly took the gift she held out. Tearing the wrapping paper in my Impatience, I mumbled, "Thanks Peeps, real cool of you ... thanks..." Inside the box were a carton of Benson & Hedges cigarettes and a bottle of Brut aftershave.Priya was gushing, "This combination of tobacco and Brut is so sexy. I love It. Come on, let's go to Moets for Fried Noodles. 1 want to spend time with you and be a part of this very special day in your life."

Biblio-Caveat # 1

Dear Bibliophiles
I really appreciate Sugato's and all your concerns about hosting copyrighted materials on this forum. I have removed the Tintin link as of now. But then we need to see whether sites like the Tintin url fall under copy right infringement or not. As far as my knowledge goes copy right for a certain work is only infringed if the copy of the same is maintained/stored/saved in our hard discs. I would urge associates to recall the incident regarding the online illegal version of the latest title from Harry Porter stable were stored by some associates in their hard disc after they received it in their subsequent mails. But if the matter exists online and is easily accessible to the public domain, I guess no one can blame us (in TCS) for breaking any security policy.
Regards
Indranil
A Bibliophile

Review of the online blog

This blog is more secure than the forum. As the posting and comments are done only by invitation, the blog is not visible in public domain as well. So keeping discretion among online TCS Bibliophile members will be easy.