.

Poem.

It has been long since i wrote.

It has been long since i wrote something.

It has been long since i wrote something readable.

It has been long since i wrote something readable and comprehensible.

It has been long since i wrote something readable and comprehensible which tickled .

It has been long since i wrote something readable and comprehensible which tickled or offended

It has been long since i wrote something readable and comprehensible which tickled or offended anyone.

No offense to comprehensible poems.

Cooking : Superpower Unlocked

I have started cooking!
Unlike my impression of it, its quite easy to prepare edible stuff with little practice.
You just have to follow the process and be cautious (You are actually playing with fire here). You will feel powerful changing raw vegetables, flours, spices into something that is edible delicious and unlike takeaways healthy using fire and water.
Like an alchemist, but more than that because food is more important than gold.

While I have been doing household chores for long, I have always been dependent on others for preparing my food all my life, not now.

The only problem is it is time consuming. It takes about an hour to prepare roti and vegetables. But for being healthy you have to do what it takes.

The Year That Was

2014 has been a good year for me.
Better than 2013. Though nothing went as planned.
But it was not all chaos either.
There were some conscious decisions. Some difficult decisions which might be watershed for me.

I will remember this year because many of my mental myths were broken.
I now believe in abundance, trust in the process and know money is not real wealth.
I am wiser than before but I am still foolish.

“Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them.”

I realized this part of holstee’s manifesto to a large extent in 2014.

I broke my only resolution that I can remember “Not using Windows or Java”
Well using Windows was kind of forced.
As for Java, it is ugly, I hate it but you have to do what you have to do.

However I did not create many of my conceived products.
2015 is dedicated to that.
In fact that is how I spent the night of 31st Dec 14 and the day of 1st Jan 15 : Crafting something that I have always wanted to.
A good beginning but momentum has to be maintained.

Some of the greatest influence in 2014 were
Daniel Kahneman, Eric Ries, Steve Blank, Rujuta Diwekar, James Clear, Paul Graham, DeMacro.
Their work has made me rethink and do things in better way.
A big thank you for sharing your knowledge.

Some great events from 2014 would be
Pizzahackers Showcase, Ojass’14 digireg and aftermath, CampusHash events, Shifting to Bangalore.

Some of the craziest things that I did were
Cleared a traffic jam on a highway, Interviewed people posing as a journalist, Left the group for exploring waterfalls alone.

Some of new things this year were
Climbing up the Shimla point, Getting an Android phone, Lodging an FIR, becoming health conscious, Whatsapp usage, Going to a pub, Trying espresso, watching plays, taking lots of photographs and making GIFs, Death of people I knew.

Some low points of this year would be
Not asking for the phone number or name, Ojass Tshirt and the mess, Final year project submission, Listening to Ravinder Singh, Watching gulab gang (However Queen overcame that), Shifting, Empty pockets and life on loan, Deciding where to stay sitting in 60 ft road.

Some memorable moments from this year would be
The debut workshop and banarsi thugs, “Why I am not getting high”, Seeing off people at Tatanagar Railway Station, When the makefile worked, Finding TOLET board.

Technologies that I used this year
PHP, Python, JS, C, HTML5, CSS3, git, Redis, Django, Flask, Java and Node.

2015 is here, but I am not taking resolutions or wishing for things.

Events happen due to process.
Process happens due to habits.
Wishes don’t change habits.
Will does.

I read this few days back

Sin is not how long you are an average or  a beginner. Sin is when you know what you have to do for becoming master and do not do it.

*Hope that I wont sin anymore this year!

I will end this post with lines taken from my new manifesto from this song in the beautiful voice of GLaDoS:

We do what we must
Because we can
For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead.
….
Still Alive
….
Look at me still talking
When there is science to do
When I look out there
It makes me glad I am not you
I have experiments to run
There’s research to be done
On the people who are
Still alive!
And believe me I am
Still alive!

*This is not a wish.It is hope. How’s that different?
Hope is when you have confidence and maybe control. Wish is when you don’t have either.

 

Still Alive

This was a triumph
I am making a note here:
Huge Success
It’s hard to overstate
My satisfaction
Aperture Science
We do what we must
Because we can.

For the good of all of us
Except the ones who are dead.
But there is no sense crying
Over every mistake
You just keep on trying
Till you run out of cake
And the science gets done
And you make a neat gum
For the people who are
Still Alive.

I am not even angry
I am being so sincere right now
Even though you broke my heart
And killed me
And tore me to pieces
And threw every piece into a fire
As they burned it hurt because I was so happy for you!
Now these points of data
Make a beautiful line
And we are out of beta
We are releasing on time
So I am glad.
I got burned
Think of the things we learned
For the people who are
Still alive!

Go ahead and leave me
I think I prefer to stay inside
Maybe you’ll find someone else
To help you. May black mesa..
That was a joke.Haha. Fat chance

Anyway this cake is great
It’s so delicious and moist

Look at me still talking
When there is science to do
When I look out there
It makes me glad I am not you
I have experiments to run
There’s research to be done
On the people who are
Still alive!
And believe me I am
Still alive!

I am doing science and i am
Still alive!
I feel fantastic and i am
Still alive!

While you are dying
I’ll be
Still alive!
And when you are dead
I will be
Still alive!
Still Alive.. Still alive..

From the game Portal.

Listen to this one.

Fueled He Drives

It is madness.
Too many cars. Too many people. Too much movement.
Everyone racing against time. Wanting to reach somewhere.
Everyone wants to, but they never reach there.
Never.

I wonder. And keep wondering. Cars race past me, leaving a whiff of smoke.

Just ponder for a while how complicated things are.
The fuel has been dug out from somewhere. It has been cleaned elsewhere.
A lot of work.
It has been carried from there. It has been carried here.
A lot of paperwork.
Someone went there in a car using some fuel taken from somewhere else, to fill the tank.
A small amount of manual work.
Then someone build this road. Installed the yellowish lights. Painted the dividers. Planted the trees. Installed the road signs. Not to forget manufacturing of car.

All for helping this man to reach somewhere.
Somewhere, even he is not sure of where to go.
Only if he had so much clarity, of where to go, he would have been there. Instead of being in this jam. Honking unnecessarily.
Guided by recommendations,advice and advertisements, in search of happiness. Contentment maybe.
Because they have told he can find it there.

They.Huh.
They are playing a game. That is it.
Creating illusions for him. Sellers.
Just think for a while, whole world is on a sale. Can you buy it? Even if you will, will you stop moving.
Okay, do not take it personally. If he buys everything, will he stop moving?
Maybe for a while, but not for long.
But the catch is, he can not. He has to earn to buy. And then buy. Earn. Buy. And not to forget he has to move.
And time, it is certainly not an illusion for him. Its another reality.Harsher one.

Time is the most valuable thing, he has been taught.
Another lie.
If he wonders for truth, tell him living is more valuable.

But, he drives.

 

Celebrating Thanksgiving

I have never celebrated thanksgiving, I dont even know if anyone does in India, but I like the concept.
Thanking people.
Something that I seldom do.

Wait I know it is about eating turkey with family but, I will pass on that. I am a vegetarian.

I thank my family for being with me unconditionally. A beyond words Thank You!

I thank my friends, one or the other for being there whenever I am in trouble, for picking up the phone and for not picking it up, for talking about nothing, for talking about many things and even not talking at times, for advices which are used and for advices which are neglected, for making fun of me and for being made fun of.A big Thank You !

I thank my colleagues/partial-friends at workplace for believing in the crazy ideas that I put forward and also for ‘duh-ing’ it out. I am really thankful to the people there who believe that we can change the world. We will.

I thank Bangalore, the city for ‘accommodating’ me and it never feels like that.I have met some passionate people here. I thank all of you whose paths have crossed with mine. I thank you for sharing your experiences and enriching my journey.

I thank all the awesome developers out there. Your products have a great impact on my life. While I might never be able to meet you in person, a very big Thank You!

I thank all the people who have written documentation of the various technologies and their experiences out there. Without you I don’t even know what I would be doing now. A big Thank You!

I thank all the doers out there: musicians, painters, photographer, authors, bloggers, poets, playwrights, actors, movie/tv series directors and their crew for creating awesomeness which touches, rejuvenates as well as inspires me on a daily basis. A big Thank You!

I thank all the people who or whose works are creating an impact on humanity : scientists, social scientists, researchers,entrepreneurs, designers and engineers. It is to you and your deed I look up to everyday to strengthen myself. A big thank you!

I thank all the teachers whose teaching and personality still serves a guiding beacon at times. I thank the teachers at Udacity and Coursera for putting up their brilliant work out there and allowing me to soak form them. A big Thank You!

I thank all the open source projects contributors for creating a community that allows me to make progress in leaps and bound, which otherwise would have been made in tiny steps. A big Thank You!

I thank all people who share their life experiences on communities like quora lift and so. You all deserve more than props and upvotes. A big Thank You!

I thank fever for making me take a off day so I could write posts on my so neglected blog. I will thank you more if you would leave me now.

I thank all people who read my blog entries, enjoyed them or have been disgruntled. Thank you for giving your time!

And I thank my laptop for being with me everyday for the last four years.

A big thank you for reading this!

Have an awesome day ahead!

Stuck in life ?

Around me and you
Everyone seems stuck somewhere
Some in lectures
Others in traffic
Some in meetings
Others in cubicle
Some in queues
Others in rain
Doodling, honking, daydreaming, fretting, waiting, drenching
Whiling.
Dying, deteriorating
Stuck in life, forgetting
Life’s still stuck in them.

N.B. : “You don’t have to do what you don’t want to do.“

Life’s Fragile

Death is a truth of life. A truth, which we condition ourselves to ignore and live in a cave where death is hidden and forgotten in some dark dusty corner.Hearing about someone’s death makes us sad not only for the loss but also because that dark dusty corner of the cave is lightened up if only for a second.

The fragility of life is underlined by the untimely death of people around us. While things are too random around us, we should take decisions that avoid death and its relatives.

I did not know him, he was a friend of friend.

RIP.

Dear Agent of Chaos

About a week back at a hotel I was staying in, I noticed a grasshopper which was walked over. It made me ponder over death for a while. This random shit was generated out of that.

Death does not make any sense. But not everything has to have sense. It is all chaos and we try to find order in it. Become happy when we find a pattern or two. Or find some pattern followers. Or become one of them. But chaos rules any-day.
Have you noticed the path smoke takes?
Fluid. Against the gravity, with a mind of its own. A trail that is untraceable by all but smoke from the same source. It follows a pattern but hidden in that is chaos. Particles collide against each other every second when each of them tries to move. You still do not believe in chaos hypothesis of mine?
Out of Petabytes of data on the internet you chose to come here somehow to read this. Just imagine what might you be doing now if you were not reading this line.
Viewing cat images? Watching some video on youtube? Shopping for festivals? Deleting your history? Picking your nose?Push-ups? Anything and everything. It is next to incomprehension.

Every second you have got unlimited choices to make. You do make one of them : something happens and then you again respond to it and again something happens. Each decision you make takes you down a tree where each level offers you roughly as many options as the previous one, except in one case. And each of those decision creates innumerable changes in what you will experience down the time. Not picking up the phone will be very different than picking it up. Even picking it up the second time will be different than picking it up when the first time because time passed, t=0s is t=5s now.

Time went out the window. So  U N R E A L.

You can not climb up the tree. Only traverse down and make choices.
And even when you are not making a choice, you are making a choice.
You are an agent of chaos. With each decision you are creating more randomness in the universe and place around you.  Each move casting a spell of chaos!

The only one case when your options are not same as the previous one is Death.
Chaos for you ends because you end. But in that termination too you create enough chaos for others. 
Life is like a buggy Depth First Search code which throws null pointer exception at run time when it encounters death. No, its Depth-only-search where the search logic is random at each node and it is terminated at death.
…
Still, life is too random. That’s why intelligent people try to make sense of it by connecting the dots backward while they are alive.
Because sense doesn’t make any sense for you when you are dead.

Another Agent of Chaos.
——————–

The Dead Grasshopper

Trampled Grasshopper
Lying still.
Its intestine visibly out
Against its will.
Squashed by some boot
In a hastened drill.
So quick and muted
No one noticed its shrill.

———————————

Photographie : Again Again

Some of my clicks. No software was used to enhance any of the image. For camera details  click on the pictures.

Other photos are here
Photographie : Again

Photographie

Morgued Gaze

How much I have wanted to appear
Cooler
Better
Smarter
Beautifuler
Though that version did not exist
Like one of the words above.

And
I fooled them
With
Those ornaments
Those well timed pauses
Those smart-phone gazes
Those hand gestures and big words
Those combed and neatly parted hair
Gelled with precision.

But
Not you
You looked at it
And then
You looked through it
Directly into my eyes
Passage to the soul they say
Brief contact of bareness
Direct touch
As if naked souls
Then
Averted
I closed the only pass
Eyelids.
Timings are important
When visiting
Even when its someones soul.

That brief exchange
And I lusted for more.
It was new thing to do
Adventurous than appearing anything
Even beautifuler.

Then it became a ritual
A purifying one
Looking into each others soul
Gaze strongly as possible
It sanitized everything
Evaporating the cosmetic
And be what we were
Until today.

Your eyes gazed coldly
Like the temperature of the morgue
You were lying in.
Today they looked emptyly
Even if nothing like that exists
I was not scared
I have never been of you
Except the first day
When I closed my eyelids
Today I close yours.