Empty seats !

Wildlife has always lured me for ages(I am not too old). A visit to California made my day,I returned back with a Canon SLR camera .I must admint that I was quite satisfied with my semi automatic Yashica camera which accompanied me under water , on the hills , it braved the deserts along with me until many of my close friends started teasing me/it , I still feel nostalgic about it .It costed me only 800 Indian rupees (Its American cousin is a wooping 28000).

With the camera in my hand I was fully loaded to enter the jungles. Shimsa, M.M Hills (a Veerapan stronghold, hmm for the ill informed Veeerapan was a dreaded sandalwood smuggler ). Karnataka Toursim Development Corporation conducts various tours around the year. This one was a two day trip starting Saturday morning .

Spending Friday in office was kind of difficult. I was dreaming about the serene landscapes of the western Ghats, the deer running amock , the
peacocks were calling me loud & clear !!

Just about the same week Bangalore was painted with posters of Sharukh & company who were landing in the city for a show. Bizarre stories were
there all over the press. A woman was willing to fish 45000 rupees to meet Sharukh back stage. A boy came down all over from Hyderabad to catch a glimse of is favourite star.

Spending 50000 rupees to see some painted faces sounds crazy for me but I feel others would have wondered as to how I could spend a thousand to see deer running around. Hmm lets leave this for the intelligent to decide .

It was five in the evening & I was all set to leave. A phone call spoilt my day. " The trip is cancelled !!" was the blunt message. " Why ? " I shot back. " Only two seats have been booked, we cannot ply an empty luxury bus."

A few painted faces had won the hearts of many. The animals & birds had lost in a big way. May be they need to hire a marketing guru Or may be
they need to dab some lakme stuff on their face. Who knows !!
For me its a long wait till the seats fill up !!

What a wasted life !

Gaurav (I've not changed the name), clumsy, shabbily dressed lad many years senior to me.His dressing sense was/is weird .

He was(he'z alive but I'm still using 'was', patience) a child prodigy , have heard some real weird stories about him. He was working on a mathematical problem one night, slept without breaking it , woke up at two pm again & cracked it. He later recounted that Goddess Saraswati came in his dreams & helped him have a bite at the problem. I'm sure you'll agree that dreaming about Saraswati is cool but girls do top the chart , any boy's around who say NO ?

His adventures continued , he solved XII standard mathematics problems when he was in class IV, hmm thats too much. He was sure to get into the IIT's & he didn't disappoint his fans . He scored an incredible all India rank(It was somewhere in the eighty's). Got into IIT-Kanpur & enrolled in the Computer Science branch.

I at this junction lost contact with him but my Dad didn't allow me to forget him. "Look at youself, you $#@%! & see Gaurav , you'r a useless creature on earth :( ".Heard he consumed too much liquor there & started loosing his enigma.
After completing his Engineering he joined a Software Company in Ghaziabad(a town near Delhi). He worked there for some time & since it was not Maths he left it & came back home.

Then suddenly we heard that he was writing the India Administrative Service exam, he didn't disappoint his fans again & got through in the first attempt . This time though he landed up with a rank that could pull him only to the Custom's department. He had again chosen Mathematics as one of his subjects. My Dad was no less happy & his craving grew for sons who could become an I.A.S officer.

Close sources later revealed that he wrote the exam again & scored a similar rank much to his/family/good/bad wishers disappointment. He was aiming for the bulls eye, but then he accepted his fate & now I hear he's an officer with the customs department. The average salary is not more than twenty thousand per month but who the hell wants that. The prime attraction is the 'power' that come along, the servants , the pristine white ambassador car with a red light on top of it , the black money , the ... , so little for a guy who deserved much more.

A wasted life which is now poised to be soaked in the corrupt bureaucracy , the babus .. . Mathematics his passion is seen no where(may be a little comes in handy when we count currency).Another mathematician goes awry, never to be heard of again . Not sure if it was his decision Or his parents Or .. but the scientific community did loose a gem.

I'm no Chomsky to propose some grammar & my talent shies away when I look up to him but my heart still feels that he would have been much better if he was to join some research lab or anything that would have given him a bed to develop his mathematical skills so rare to be found. May be he'll sue me for defaming him, but I'm sure I'll muster courage & speak out" What a wasted life !!".

Grey Hairs !

Grey Hairs !!

The plural of hair is hair , thats what we have been taught in school . But what if one's black hair start to turn grey at a tender age ? One is forced to express his discontent by using the word ' hairs' . It might not provide solace to many but a few would surely like to say "if my/our hair do not stop turning grey I/we would insult hair by calling them with different derogatory names !!"

Many surveys (&even without them) have revealed stunning facts. Many children(both sexes) in the cities have grey ' hairs ' even before reaching an age of fifteenOn the contrary children in the rural areas enjoy black hair for a much longer life span.

The greying of hair has been attributed to eating habits , air & water pollution ,genetics to name a few. One has no control over genetics except to fight his/her parents . Grrrrrrrrrrr!! ,eating habits can be monitored & similarly air & water pollution,but then I'm feeling that none of us appreciate this & the reader has started grumbling " Its my life & stop playing a mother !" :( :(

The better ways :

1. Color your 'hairs' , avoid black since if you have to use a dye why not use pink & green Or blue.

This would give a jazzy look & would hide grey 'hairs'

2. Try an 'Andrae Aggase', to be precise keeping no hair is both economical &a viable solution . We save on oil , shampoo and many similar cosmetics. Never the less a thousand heads turn to see a bald head moving.

I have boasted of lush black hair but a recent discovery shattered my myth. Grey 'hairs' have grown like unwanted weeds on my head & they seem to grow with each day. Another example that happiness is short lived.

The greying of hair for software engineers can be compared with the rings of a tree by which one can predict its age. Each grey hair has a story . A 'build fail 'Or 'No salary hike' Or ' Girlfriend who ran away' Or 'age' Or ...................

No matter what the reason be the 'grey hairs' have invaded our heads . Lets fight the menace together by calling them ' grey hairsssssssssssssssssss !!'

An Autobiography !

An Autobiography
Or
The Story Of My Experiments With Truth
M.K Gandhi


'How can one steal this, its too much!",well I apologize for using this as a title for my article(and no apology to those who are scratching their head to discover as to what crap is going on.
I'm sure no body would sue me for plagiarism.

Reading & writing is my hobby& to keep up to others expectations I try reading what ever comes across. This way one can surely boast to be an intellectual , any buyers ?
"The Story Of My Experiments With Truth" is a unique autobiography in itself. It takes a lot of guts to admit ones shortcomings.

Every book/story has a lesson to derive from & it took me no time(how intelligent) to find out that the moral to learn was : truthfulness !!

And here I was/am ready to stand for values & nothing less but truth.I was bubbling with enthusiasm & wanted to portray at the slightest of provocation as to how strongly I would imbibe by the 'learnings' .

My friend called up the same day(the day I finished the book), he wanted me to come down to his house for a gathering.I had no better excuse than this :'I am expecting a relative today'.

The episode filled me with compunction, I had spoken a lie , the truth being that I wanted to spend time in my own sweet way . Nothing too bad happened but it did teach me that how onerous it is to be truthful always .

After each episode I convince myself that all my lies were 'small'(lies can be classified into small, big, bigger, huge,gigantic,monstrous,..) & that I had not harmed anyone.

Not sure if my 'lies' have surpassed my 'truths' but every lie does make me feel as if Gandhi standing and saying "Common buddy ! their is a long - long way to go before you write something like "The Story Of My Experiments With Truth !".

Aseem Rawat.

Friends !!

Hi Guys,
I extend a warm welcome to all of you out there .


Aseem.