aj's diaries

The curious case of Abraham Joshua Sumanam

2009-03-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

What I used to hate the most about my room in YMCA was Abru's dirty pile of clothes . On his bed , on a rope tied from one end of the room to another , his clothes were sprawled all over . He had more stinking clothes in the room than what I would ever own in an entire lifetime .Even in the bathroom he had buckets full of clothes, kept for days on end .untouched, generating an odor so abominable that one day the housekeeping woman went mad and bellowed that he deserves be to walloped with a stick.

Abraham Joshua Sumanam was one of my roommates in YMCA .He was two years my junior and doing his electrical engineering .Despite the fact that he could talk quite well in English and I was never comfortable with malayalam, we never really got along well . Within days of my arrival in YMCA, he had pissed me off by installing counter-strike on my computer . Abru had a treble quality to his voice which made his voice resonate and echo in our offensive smelling room . A giant, well over six feet three inches tall, Abru was a ferocious basketball player . Any person playing against him who valued his life would keep a safe distance from him because Abru could mortally hurt anyone. He was a regular basketball player , which meant he always had fresh ammunition to add to his pile of garbage, that was our room .

My other roommate Savio was a definite antithesis to Abru . I have been a terrible slob all my life but Abru made me look like a prince of tidiness . The only conversations I used to have with Abru during my six months in YMCA were about all the decaying clothes in the room.The other inmates of the hostel suggested that I and Savio take all his clothes which by that time was being refered to as ' weapons of mass destruction ' and burn them one by one to teach him a lesson .
Joe who had come for combined studies one night did the unthinkable . He took a nap on Abru's bed on top of all that litter . He developed an itch . He was lucky not to have contracted ringworm or worse. Stupid joe.

I and Savio left YMCA soon to join Joe and others in Souparnika. It was not because of Abru but that is what people conjectured. In the following year YMCA was shut down. That too was not because of Abru. He happened to be one of the last people to leave YMCA .

His dad who is super rich helped many passed-out students in my branch get employment.

The Project Outing

2008-12-10T08:48:00.000-08:00

When we were flipped upside down for the first time ,I heard Nikhil curse loudly.For a moment, I was surprised to hear him curse . In our acquaintance over the last six months or so, this was the first time ever that I heard him swear. We were seated on a ride called 'Flip Out' in Adventure Island, a theme park in Rohini and being twirled upside down forty feet above the ground. I was hanging on to the harness because my life depended on how tight it was wrapped across my chest. As the ride got over , relief was etched across all our faces. There were six of us from my office who had taken this ride together but once it was done no one wanted to give it another shot. The fact that we had taken lunch just before taking this ride and nobody was forced to do projectile vomiting in mid-air was nothing short of a miracle.

It was a pity that this was the only decent adrenalin pumping ride in the theme park . The theme park was the venue of a long overdue project outing . Barring the flip out ride all the other rides were meant exclusively for the enjoyment of little kids. I find my daily ride in the cycle rickshaw to the bus stop more thrilling than most of the joyrides in Adventure Island.

I couldn't help but compare this theme park with Veegaland in cochin. More than twenty of us had gone there in our final year of college and had a phenomenal time. The rides were grand and there were some really funny incidents. Like Sid crying for Mama when he was being whirled 360 degrees in the twin flip monster ride and all of us making fun of Saif losing his hair in the middle of the free fall .

While here in rohini we had some senior guys leaving early because they were missing office dearly. One lasting image I have from this trip is of my immediate manager after he had finished his turn on a stupid aeroplane ride. He was heaving a sigh of relief, wiping some sweat from his brow as though suggesting 'that ride was something' when 8-9 year old kids were finding the same ride mighty boring.

The Jaundice experience

2008-08-26T05:16:00.000-07:00

Recollecting the horrors of the week, when I was diagnosed with jaundice ,quite frankly still gives me the shivers. It took the doctor five days and a blood test report to conclude that jaundice was the reason why I was vomiting whatever I was eating and why my piss was the color of gold.
Apparently some god-damned liver enzyme counts had skyrocketed leaving me all weak,crazy and yellow.

I had a persistent headache for close to two weeks . Headaches have never bothered me much hitherto , but in those two weeks I almost lost touch with sanity. To make matters worse I was also ravaged with grumbling stomach aches .

My stomach had become a fortress guarded by a force which was refusing the entry of almost everything I was eating ,past the alimentary canal.I had zero appetite and when I was forced to eat something by my parents, in a matter of minutes most of what I had eaten was puked away.The food which would make it past the stomach would then lay there undigested and cause me stinging pain all throughout.

The very frequent runs I had to make to the bathroom to vomit in this condition didn't make life any easier. I was experiencing pangs of nausea arising from the pit of my stomach which were so freaking painful and seemingly well capable of snapping some blood vessel in my body and possibly choke me to death.

I was glad I was hospitalized after some experimental ayurvedic treatment in the first week. In fact, it was my idea to seek allopathy because the ayurvedic arishtams (medicine) forced down my throat were increasing the frequency of my run to the bathroom to vomit. The disgusting arishtams tasted far worse than what sewage would taste like .

My sense of taste was severely debauched by the taste of these arishtams and puke . I remember brushing my teeth repeatedly in spite of how weak I felt , to get rid of this bad taste in my mouth. But their effect was so strong that I used to end up with a minty flavor to the arishtam-puke distasteful combo .

I took me six weeks to convalesce and the latter four weeks were quite relaxing . My hospital stay had ridden me of all aches and with just weakness to deal with. I read books and watched lots of TV. I also feasted on two rasgullas a day as prescribed by the doctor because it is supposed to be good for the liver.

Good job Bindra

2008-08-15T08:14:00.000-07:00

Hello readers
For the last four weeks I've been down with Jaundice. When I was diagnosed after a blood test ,my eyeballs were fiendishly yellow , my stomach was on the verge of imploding and I had almost completely lost my mind. So, I was hospitalized .It took me four days in the hospital to regain my appetite and some degree of composure.

I was eventually discharged . The doctor prescribed four more weeks of complete bed rest and a truckload full of medicine. So, at home , pretty much bedridden , on a bright Monday morning ,I switched on the TV to checkout how India is faring in the deciding third test match between India and Sri Lanka. I saw a breaking news scrolling on a news channel ,saying that an Indian shooter named Abhinav Bindra had qualified to the finals of some 10 meter event.When I switched to DD sports I saw a table which showed the results of the qualifying round and Bindra's name was fourth on it.

I sat up with excitement. This was a great opportunity for Bindra to make history. I also had my doubts because, as we all know very well ,our athletes have a history of screwing up when it matters the most.Two names which come to my mind are Milkha Singh and P.T Usha. Bindra was fourth on the list and the points from the qualifying round were to be carried on to the final event , so to entertain any likelihood of a medal, he had to outperform his qualifying efforts .

I didn't have an inkling of an idea about the rules of Shooting, so thanks to the DD sports commentators ( I find the lot very irksome on most accounts) I understood that there is a board with concentric circles on which the shooter is supposed to aim . If the shot hits the board inside the smallest circle then the shooter would get a score between 10.0 and 11.0 depending on how close to the center the shot lands. In the final event all the shooters who had qualified were allowed ten shots each .

The final event began and after the first four shots Bindra had crept up to the third position. After a couple of more shots he was second and after the eighth shot he was on top of the list. All his shots were marked above 10.2 which showed remarkable consistency. He was followed by a Finnish shooter called Hakkinen at second position and by a Chinese shooter at third . Bindra's ninth shot was a meager 10. 0 , a major setback by the high standards he had set, right through the final round . Hakkinen, whose ninth shot was marginally better than Bindra's drew level . At this juncture they both had equal sum of points.

There was one shot left, and because of my skepticism as regards Indian athletes I had my reservations on Bindra not doing something silly. He proved me wrong and shot a fantastic 10.8 which was his best shot in the entire final round. At the same time Hakkinen messed up his last shot with a paltry 9.7. Not only did he lose the gold medal , he also squandered the silver as the Chinese shooter had shot his last shot well and ended up overtaking the Finn.

It was quite phenomenal to behold Bindra's uncompromising resolve and absolute focus in the final round.He reserved his best for the last and didn't ever look slightly nervous. Had he settled for a silver or a bronze, he would have still been heralded as an icon by our berserk media . The government which had almost no contribution in his success would have still offered him Crores of rupees as bounty and all kinds of medallions for being the saving grace for India at the Olympics . Instead he tarnished India's 28 year amazing feat of zero gold medals in the Olympics.

Afterward as he stood on top of the podium ,there wasn't any animated show of emotion from him ,just a sly smile as he was handed over a bouquet of flowers first and then an accolade which no individual Indian athlete has ever accomplished before ;an Olympic gold medal. And by the way the Indian cricket team lost the test match the very same day and it almost went unnoticed by the media and most cricket fanatics like me.

The beggar with the drum

2008-04-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

Hello readers. I am going to give an account of a wacky happening which in my reckoning is one of the most bizarre incidents that I have ever witnessed with my own dear eyes. A passing thought about it ,still brings a smile to my face and even to this day if it is shared with some of my family members ,who were co-witnesses , it is usually followed by shrieks of laughter .

It was a languid afternoon in may 1998, in Kerala, and I along with my mother, granny,aunt Bhadra ,my sister and three little cousins Vaishak, Vishnu and Jishnu were watching a humdrum mallu movie in the living room of our abode ,Bhadralayam. I and my cousins were biding our time, waiting for it to be evening so that the elders would let us venture out ,to play cricket. Suddenly the spell of indolence was broken by loud sounds of chenda ( a cylindrical wooden drum like instrument played in southern India) emanating from the front lawn of our habitation. As the sound reverberated through Bhadralayam, its inmates were drawn outside to the source of the unpleasant banging.

What we saw was quite a queer sight. A dark-skinned ,beanpolish,eccentric -looking and bearded beggar who was dressed in black from head to toe was beating away on a chenda and creating quite a racket . His rather tall frame and the fact that his countenance was uniformly dark made him look frightening. Such was his appearance, that in my opinion he could have made a lucrative career with the Ramsays as a permanent bhoot in their horror shows. There he was , drumming away with raw energy on a day which was so hot that it kept an outdoor crazy, thirteen year old (your's truly) and his three insolent little cousins- indoors watching a forgettable movie.

Little Vishnu ,however felt the drum-beats to his liking. What was loud and incoherent banging to the rest of us , was soulful and rhythmic music to the little lad. He didn't waste much time before beginning an insane version of pandi dance(it 's a weird dance form seen in south Indian movies , if you have not seen it yet then switch to sun-tv sometime to have a good laugh;nobody does it better than Chiranjeevi ) . This paved the way for Vaishakh and Jishnu to drop their inhibitions and join the little fellow . The troika even started humming a tune , which gelled quite well with the drum beating.

As the mendicant ,who was quite immersed in beating his percussion instrument , recollected his wits , I could guarantee that he was shell shocked to see the three kids dancing away to glory.In other houses he would have intimidated the younger ones, sending shivers down their spines and making them hide under the farthest tables and closets out of sheer trepidation. Here, these juveniles were requesting a once more. He collected the 50 paisa coin , his bounty offered by an elder so that he could go away and the kids would stop embarrassing the household .

After this freak incident ,I don't know if the beggar was traumatized because his main weapon- exuding fear didn't work at all here or super-happy because of the appreciation received for his music. But he was never seen again in the neighborhood.

Santosh and his dislocated shoulder

2007-10-08T06:41:00.000-07:00

Last month , one Sunday evening in Greater Noida while I was inside a cyber cafe with ash and kabir, I heard from Kabir that Santosh Hegde has dislocated his shoulder somehow. Santosh was in my room when this happened. The other inhabitant of my room Bosco had a plaster cast on his left foot, so we conjectured that Hegde got hurt while trying to help Bosco roam around .

When I returned to my training campus I heard from Bosco that Santosh had fallen from the bed and landed on his right shoulder .His shoulder joints are very sensitive and he has had similar experiences of shoulder dislocation in the past.But on all previous occasions, he had managed to put the bone back in its place himself. He wasn't very lucky this time around and he had to be taken to the hospital. In my room that morning, Santosh who weighs a meager 63 kilos and has threadlike biceps ,had heroically succeeded in doing 15 push ups .That must have been way too much load for his fragile shoulder joints .

So, Dias who was also in my room when the dislocation occurred,took him to the nearby Sharda hospital.After dinner I and Varun M decided to pay Santosh a visit in the hospital. Our training campus is in a god forsaken place with large and empty farmlands surrounding it. There is an abandoned road which leads to the hospital and which is ironically incredibly well lit up with dozens of street lights .The laborers who work there in the neighborhood , the cattle and the canines use the road to answer all calls of nature.

We brave hearts traipsed the deserted two kilometers from the campus to the hospital with a nagging fear of possible raids from highwaymen. The whole journey we were contemplating defense strategies against possible attacks .On the threshold of the hospital we had to jump over a barb - wired fence which might have torn the three-fourths Varun was wearing.

We met Santosh and his slender chest was wrapped tightly in a blanket like brown colored bandage. My batchmate Ganesh was there alongwith Dias and they were exchanging civilities with a mallu male nurse. We expected Santosh to be crying in agony but his disposition was jovial .After being admitted, he was given two bottles of glucose drips and he felt like he is high on five bottles of beer.Dias decided to stay with the patient for the night and after a while I,Varun and Ganesh bid adieu to the two of them and headed back to the campus amidst fears of raiders, barb wires and hostile canines.

Santosh was discharged the next afternoon with a shoulder immobilizer .The immobilizer is a pad which is wrapped around his torso with two bands ,one to to be tied around the wrist and the other around the area between the elbow and the shoulder.he had to wear it for three weeks i.e till the end of the training period.

My dad's little cameo

2007-08-02T00:46:00.000-07:00

One evening,I was exercising my fingers over the buttons of the remote and surfing through some channels on my TV , one of my least favorite channels made me stop in my tracks.Kiran TV(a malayalam channel)was airing a movie called 'Kashmeeram'.My father has played a five second cameo in it.
Let me take you down memory lane to the winter of 1993 when playing in the grounds of BVB was the main purpose of my life. One evening dad came back home with an unusual spring in his step. He told us that he had just had the honor of beholding and participating in the shooting of a malayalam movie .Parts of the movie were shot in the neighboring premises of the state bank of Travancore. The main protagonist of the movie is the mustachioed, fretful and young icon of the malayalam film industry- Suresh Gopi.
Five years later in the summer of 1998 ,I was in kerala with the whole of my family except my dad who couldn't come. On a Sunday evening all of us which included cousins Deepu and preetha were sitting in front of the television.Asianet (the most popular channel in kerala) was about to air 'kashmeeram'. I exclaimed with mirthful anticipation that ''Wow! the movie was shot near my house in Delhi" . Hearing this ,Preetha deedi acknowledged "Of course! There is a scene in which chandran maaman(my dad) appears twice".
After about ninety minutes of the commencement of the movie,there is a scene in which, there is a crowded street and a police inspector (an actor named Redheesh) is commandeering a troop of other policemen, filed up behind him and they seem to be on a mission to find the hideout of a bunch of terrorists. Then because of a bomb explosion, there is absolute pandemonium and people are scampering for cover in all directions.Redheesh scurries off to the source of the explosion and amidst the maddening crowd , we were able to spot my dad sauntering at a leisurely pace, for a brief moment. We burst out in celebrations with shouts of"There he is" and fingers pointed towards the television screen.Dad manifested once again for a brief moment and all of us continued our revelry.
Now, back to the recent past and my dad was quite excited and very grateful to Kiran TV . After another vigil which tested my patience like never before , we were able to see the scene in which Redheesh is embarking upon the foregoing mission. The bomb explodes and there is pandemonium. Redheesh takes two steps towards the source of the explosion and cut...Next what we saw was Redheesh showing slides of the most wanted terrorists to other policemen.
My father was quite befuddled with what had just happened . In the movie filled with scenes of abundant mediocrity, they chose to cut a thirty second sequence which might well be the first and last silver screen appearance from a member of my family.Then Dad commanded me to stop the mental torture by changing the god-damned channel. I acquiesced gleefully.

Thanks! Sachin

2007-07-05T04:27:00.000-07:00

Aricent finally e-mailed my appointment letter on the 30th of June .I was eagerly anticipating the arrival of this e-mail since may. That day,my future co-employee Rachit informed me that he got his appointment letter.When I logged on to my impish(awesome_aj...) yahoo id, I found to my extreme displeasure that my date of joining is on the 10th of September and that I'd have to head south once again ,to chennai.
Since the day I was selected ,the possibility of getting to work in Delhi and living in my own house, had been a source of elation for me. So, I didn't take this bit of information very well. I started conjecturing that I may not find my kind of people in chennai. Which could lead me into isolation , make me a recluse- removed from the stir of society. I would never want to live either as such a misanthropist or a puppet-compromising and making adjustments to fit in a group .
There was a cricket match on that day ,India vs South Africa . Makhaya Ntini and Andre Nel were dishing out a barrage of short pitched deliveries to the hapless Indian openers. They were bowling as though they had a mortal feud unavenged with the batsmen. Then,out of the blue ,Tendulkar counter-attacked.He pulled Ntini four or five times for boundaries and hooked Nel, over the square leg fence for a massive six. He drove on the rise with aplomb ,took the attack to the spinner(i forgot his name) and never allowed the bowlers to settle into any rhythm.He batted like the Sachin of old ,watching whom, an awe-struck Bradman remarked (to his wife)"Honey, Watch this young lad, I think this is how I used to play!".Sachin got out at 93. India went on to win.
This masterpiece of an innings had a therapeutic effect on me. My prospects brightened and I stopped sulking.I started thinking that Chennai could not be all that bad, after all the city is a metropolis. Besides, I won't get a lot of time for much social endeavors because there's bound to be a lot of work in my office. Sachin cheered me up in ninety minutes.Had he not played the way he did it would have taken me a lot more time to have seen things in the right perspective.

Four Mountain Bound Loonies

2007-06-13T03:40:00.000-07:00

Last week ,your humble narrator went up north to the glorious hill station - manali with buddies Dias, Joe and Sudu. The day we reached there, we dallied and rambled about the hadimba temple,clubhouse and other tourist hot spots. The next day we made an expedition to Rohtang pass which is high on top of the mountains. As our mode of transport we tactlessly decided to rent a couple of bullets inspired by some adventure seeking ,reckless western tourists .
We rode up and around some very steep and spectacular mountains. We also beheld sights of such pristine beauty, my friends ,that it took our breaths away. Such as the enormous spread of vegetation , valleys which appeared thousands of miles below , the River Beas originating on top of some nondescript ,snow capped mountains and some gorgeous glaciers.There was a setback however, which broke the spell of enchantment cast by nature upon us.We were stopped on our tracks by the border security personnel because none of us was wearing a helmet.After a great deal of pleading and cajoling they took mercy on us and let us go.
We eventually made it to the pass where we witnessed thousands of tourists, mostly Indians, having the time of their lives, doing all kinds of stuff like skiing,taking a ride on very swift motor sledges and also riding the not so swift ,pride of the Himalayas-the yak .As soon as your awe-struck narrator stepped on to the snow, some snow crept inside his rented boots and his feet went numb with cold. Later on, I did the stupid mistake of making a little snow ball to throw at the others, with my bare hands only to find my hands emulating my feet.Things started to get worse for your almost comatose narrator. I developed a headache and while the others were rollicking and frolicking in the snow, I was resting on a big enough rock trying to catch my breath. Joe complained of headaches too.
After half an hour,we decided to return . I sat behind Sudu and after staring the bike sudu realized that the acceleration cable had come off the handle. Dias and joe scampered in all directions to find a mechanic .They couldn't find any.Some onlookers advised to take the bike sixteen kilometers downhill ,in neutral, to a place called marhi where there was a slight probability of us finding a mechanic. It wasn't all downhill, there were the occasional ascents where the whole business of pushing the heavy duty royal enfield was excruciating.
While sudu gallantly handled the screwed up bike. Dias , I and Joe went triples, all this my dear readers, on a narrow highway four thousand meters above sea level. After some agonizing pushing and shoving we made it to marhi . There was no mechanic there. A gentleman recommended to tie the acceleration cable around the forefinger of the rider and pull at it, to start the bike. This very belligerent idea worked. The proactive Sudu did the honors.
From here on, I sat behind dias. After having ridden another fifteen kilometers we chose to take a break, you know,to rest our stressed up buttocks and take some photographs ,in some heavenly surroundings.After this short hiatus, the royal enfield being bridled by dias refused to start up. Sudu promised help and went on his way still pulling at the cable of his bike with his forefinger.We had to travel another twenty kilometers to reach manali.His bullet had mood swings later and both the bikes had to be maneuvered ,post dusk, with no street lights ,downhill, in neutral.
We made it alive to manali at around eight in the evening and I reckon both sudu and dias should get medals for their fortitude .

One evening in cherai

2007-03-30T06:29:00.000-07:00

Hello readers. Yesterday our internals got over so we went to drown our sorrows and ourselves in the cherai beach.When we started off from our homes, we faced the usual hiccups such as many people - not enough bikes, but all of us reached there before the sun began to set. However, the picturesque sunset was very soon forgotten as we jumped straight into the magnificent sea . We had a fabulous time trying to stand our ground against the encraoching waves which quite comfortably managed to overhaul us everytime .Also,we had brought along a football with us and we tried playing catch with it. Now, my earlier notion was that since we were standing in the water it would be quite easy to catch the ball because we can dive anywhere without getting hurt. Instead catching turned out to be extremely difficult cause the water really affects your mobility.So you can take a catch when the ball is coming straight at you but when it is not, then you might as well forget about the catching and try to grab the ball before anyone else grabs it.
Then we tried football on the shore,which was amazing fun . We were flying and diving in all directions trying to do all kinds of tackles and moves.Afterwards , in what turned out to be the grand event of the day we tried kabbadi. Kabbadi may come across as a game played by the rustics in the hinterlands of our country. But i got to say that,as far as fun is concerned it is the best game which could ever be played in the beach(one exception, beach vollyball with bikini clad women, but i sincerely doubt if i would ever get to play ). Kabbadi demands great strength,speed,agility and resilience . I'm no good at any of these and in the end I was quite ineffective.But despite my minimalistic contributions our team beat the opposition which had three Kabbadi powerhouses in Manek,Dias and Nishad.
Before the game began, some people had gone in a spur of the moment decision to drink local toddy.These fellows joined us midway through the game and were inebriated and out of their senses. They were heaping abuses out loud. Saif's behaviour aroused a lot of curiosity.When sober , Saif behaves like the sad protagonist of a morose parallel cinema but when he has some alcohol running through his blood stream, he is quite entertaining to hang out with. For a change you can hear him talking in a frequency audible to humans.
As we planned to return after all the madness, Afsal PA realized that the key of his bike is with sandy who had left some time earlier.So while Nishad & Rejah went to fetch the keys from sandy's house myself,Sudu,Sid,Ansaz ,Manek and PA were left stranded at the beach.Over the next couple of hours, Sid and the shenanigan PA engaged in a ludicrous joke competition where each tried to outdo the other in buffoonry. Most of it wasn't funny but we were in a very merry mood .So we started laughing like fanatics.I have to admit that this session with the serene sea, the moonlight , all those beacons emitted by the ships far away at the horizon and sid's humour was the most enjoyable part of our little sojourn in Cherai.One of the most unforgettable nights of my life.

The mystery of the scratched VCD.

2007-02-08T04:21:00.000-08:00

Last December there was a family(my mother's kindred) reunion of sorts here in Cochin.The occasion was cousin Preetha's engagement .The marriage is scheduled in May.However my mum who lives in Delhi couldn't participate in the rhapsody. I had a fabulous time with all my cousins and friends who were present but my mum was wistfully morose because she missed out on all the merriment.
Aunt Shaila who is the mother of my betrothed cousin is my mum's eldest sister. Mum has great regard and admiration for Aunt .Aunt loves her kid sister. They communicate every other day with each other on the phone and after the engagement their conversation mostly lingered over the party.
The engagement video was out within one week of the event and four VCD copies were sent to relatives all around the globe( one copy was sent to cousin Deepu who is in Dallas).Aunt had asked my mother if she wanted a copy but mum said no thinking that it'll be a lot of work for her sister. Then one day I guess one month after the engagement, while the two sisters were talking on the phone, aunt started talking about the engagement and the video as usual and my mum got the feeling that perhaps aunt wants mum to see the video.So mum asked if one more vcd could be burnt and sent all the way to Delhi.
My aunt however wasn't all enraptured with my mother's request because mommy dear had initially said no. Aunt disapproved of it to me and I decided to take the responsibility of getting the cd written and then posting it through speed-post.I did so and mum received the cd after three days. But she couldn't play it on the computer or on the dvd/vcd player and this made her awfully frustrated.There were some scratches on the CD.I blamed the speed-post people. I even called them incompetent. I didn't venture to tell her that before posting the VCD ,I and dias played a little catch game with the parceled vcd and I had dropped it onto the floor once.
She was finally able to watch the VCD contents in spite of the scratches and was very pleased with it. She observed that I looked a lot thinner than usual and therefore I got reprimanded for not taking good enough care of my health.

Project at NPOL

2007-02-02T21:21:00.000-08:00

In most engineering colleges, the students in their final semesters are suppsed to do a project. We (CUSATITES)choose to call it the ' Major ' project because it is worth 300 marks. I am doing mine in NPOL(Naval Physical Oceanographic Laboratory) along with Varun M, Srijith and Dias.Npol is a laboratory of our DRDO(Defence Research Development Organization).They specialize in building SONARs. No readers, our project has nothing to do with SONARs and submarines .We just need to dabble with their database.Nevertheless,it is a live project which they promise will be implemented if completed successfully and help us in fetching certificates from the ministry of defence.
Srijith's father is an employee of NPOL which helped us to get to do the project there. It is quite amusing to see Srijith smiling from ear to ear when he meets any employee , right from the hindi speaking guards to the countless acquaintances of his father. The security regulations there are very stringent. No mobile phones are allowed inside. They don't seem to have any problems with CDs and Flash drives(actually it is disallowed but they don't check our bags).
We have two project guides:-Mr. Ananda manoharan and Mr.Gopakumar.The former is an eminent scientist of the IT division and a very cordial person with a lot of energy running through his veins. But unfortunately he must be the most inarticulate person I've ever met.It takes great levels of concentration and imagination to discern what he is trying to say. But despite his apparent weaknesses he takes great pains in making things clear to us .
The other guide is mr.Gopakumar who unlike his senior, has no problems in talking coherently. But he has great expectations from us. In that regard the patron is loads better than the protege. However, both are warmhearted people and greatly pleasing to work under.
My expeditions to NPOL will be incomplete if i don't mention the qualtiy of the food provided to us in the canteen. Half baked chapatti and tasteless Dal(or at other times chana or peas curry) .
Simply awful.

Roadies: Could Reality Television get any better?

2007-01-30T06:26:00.000-08:00

Last saturday MTV showed the grand finale of roadies . Anthony won the competition. In this episode ,all the eliminated roadies came back and hurled abuses at the finalists(Bani and Anthony). Wild accusations were made at Bani. She was slandered and called promiscous . Anthony got swayed by sentiments and started crying. Despite winning the coveted competition all he said was that he felt horrible at some of the reproach Bani had to face.
I started watching the show because I found the auditions very intriguing. The thirteen selected are mentally tough and confident young men and women.What was interesting was to see their behaviour patterns as the journey got along.Like Rishabh admitted that he purposefully created friction between the roadies from Chandigarh and Delhi. Poonam focussed all her energy to get Bani out of the show , lost her sanity and became an irksome prick . Raj plotted and connived his way into the final three.
Anthony well and truly deserved to win. Unlike the other blabbermouthed roadies he was very carefull with his words. He was excellent at all kinds of tasks and skillfull with the bike. He wasn't into double crossing and dirty politics which the others revelled in.
But this edition will always be remembered for the runner up.Bani survived eleven vote outs despite antagonizing almost everybody.What i liked about her was her devil may care attitude , her unwavering convictions , her emphatic narration, her unconventional dressing style and her black t-shirts. Yes ,she threw a lot of tantrums and her language was not very ladylike. But had she been like the other girls, placating and noble then she wouldn't have been so captivating.
I heard somewhere that MTV may recruit her as a VJ. I hope to see more of her on Television

My tribulations with linux

2007-01-26T06:05:00.000-08:00

Well.... A couple of weeks back, because of the impending(s-7) computer Networks /OS lab exams (to be done in UNIX platform) I decided to install linux on my system. Varun R.(the dancing sensation) was kind enough to give me the suse 10 version which I installed with joe's able assistance. (last year ,while trying to uninstall linux i managed to swipe my hard disk clean of all data.).We were successfull and for a couple of days Windows and Linux co-existed in perfect harmony . It was heartening to see such a user friendly package of linux.
Last sunday Sudu,Dias,Joe and myself were in my place with the intention of practising some programs.If you have linux and windows together in the same disk, the linux GRUB boots linux if you don't choose windows in 10 odd seconds.(This priority could be changed , but I don't know how to do it) When we(me and the people I live with) want to start windows, we forget to choose windows in the stipulated time and when linux starts booting ,we press the restart button.(i myself have done this dozens of times).That day I forgot to opt for windows.After restarting , i didn't see the bootloader with all the OS options.Instead what I saw was a forlorn and morbid looking GRUB command prompt . I sought counsel from the expert(Dias). The monkeyman(Dias) suggested that I should reinstall the linux package and everyting will be back to normal. So we had to go to Varun's house again.
I couldn't get the suse version but i got my hands on Fedora core 3.While installing (i got joe to help me again) I was supposed to choose whether to
1. repartition my existting linux system or
2. use the free space or
3.repartition the whole hard disk
(for storing the linux package).
We tried options 1 and 2 , but there was some internal error. Then Dias decided to intervene and the behemoth chose option 3 . He then deleted some directories(/drive/hda... something) ( I was thinking what the f*** is he doing. But I opted to remain silent,cause I didn't know that he was just fooling around )Thus Fedora Core 3 linux was successfully installed and I took a sigh of relief and also exchanged hi5s with everone else . I opened the mnt file to see if my windows drives were successfully mounted or not. What I saw was an empty file and I also found that 67 out of my 80 gb was free space(13 gb for the current linux package). The beast from irinjalakuda , the pride of bahrain had purged my hard disk clean. All those movies , the rock music collections and all those e-books I had painstakingly downloaded all gone ,vanished in thin air.

P.S : I've used a lot of half -comprehended techinical terms so in case there is a mistake ,please oblige. I apologise to dias for calling him all those names , I attribute 75% of my computer knowledge to him. I haven't yet succussfully installed windows and the requisite drivers.

The defamation campaign

2006-11-28T09:06:00.000-08:00

Since my last entry I've sat in another university exam, written a testimonial for varun jain(I bet he didn't like it) ,co-conspired in a campaign to defame Ansaz and have started reading this novel called 'Brave New world'. The novel has kept me very engrossed today and I'll definitely review it after I've finished reading it. Ansaz's defamation campaign was a brilliantly hatched plot which didn't quite succeed in its endeavors.
Ansaz(he lives in the same house as me) is one hell of an orkut addict. He actually sends and receives scraps to/from some scores of female acquaintances he has made in orkut.So it is often irksome for anybody who is using the system (mostly for orkut) to be often interrupted by Ansaz .
Now joe, manek , afsal pa, ansaz etc. usually study together downstairs. So yesterday afternoon after a strenuous session of studying ANN, I went to inquire how things are going downstairs. I found joe sitting on saif's computer already logged on to Ansaz's profile. He was openly fiddling around with Ansaz's profile. He was manipulating Ansaz's profile in order to present Ansaz as the biggest fagot on earth. I soon realized that joe wasn't alone in this conspiracy. Manek, Rejah, PA,matrix and even the normally taciturn saif were all involved. Saif and ansaz have been room-mates and best buddies for the last three years and to see Saif egging everybody on was quite a surprise. Mails were sent to various communities including aces and inspire so that many could view the debauched profile, testimonials consisting of torrents of obscenities were accepted, testimonials were sent to people so that Ansaz's pride is hurt. Even I chipped in with some suggestions which were flatly rejected by the think-tank. All this was being done when the victim was in the adjacent room possibly dreaming about one of his orkut sweethearts.
In the evening I was studying with Rejah when he received a call from PA saying that Ansaz has come to know about the truth and was in a towering temper.Sujit had spoiled everything by letting Ansaz know. Eventually he made the right corrections and now his profile is back to normal, all the abusive testimonials were deleted.Thanks to his lucky stars not much damage was done. But a handful of people must've visited his profile and it'll be interesting to see how ansaz offers an explanation.I don't think he knows who the perpetrators of this crime are.
So the moral of the story,when you are sharing a computer with other people ,never ever forget to logout from your orkut account.

Almost a superhero

2006-11-24T06:42:00.000-08:00

24th November 2006
It's been a while..... . Since the last time I wrote an entry lots of significant things have happened which deserved to be logged down. Like the class trip to kodai, sim cats- city rank 1 in one , mediocre performance in the others, asthmatic cough, visit to the doctors etc etc etc...I've been guilty of cardinal sins like procrastination, laziness and aimlessness in the past few months. I'll write more entries more regularly , i swear.
Today we (my classmates) sat for the 'advanced architecture and parallel processing' examination. I woke up at five in the morning and thought I should revise(ha ha..'revise' i read the subject in parts yesterday) . Five minutes and two paragraphs later i found myself sitting on a bike with glider like wings(i think...) flying in the air. I wasn't thinking about the ensuing exam or about the aerodynamics involved in making this possible. I was nonchalantly riding the bike like i've ridden this wonder- bike a zillion times. Suddenly the wings snapped and the bike disappeared and i was in mid- air feeling gravity. My estimate is that i must've been like 100 meters above the level of the ground and while in mid-air my thought process was something like this"oh.. i'm gonna die.... maybe i 'll survive the crash .... but i'll be a cripple for the rest of my lifetime or at least for the next three months ". But then my falling rate started slowing down.I ended up landing on my feet quite comfortably unscathed from any harm . The place where i landed was quite similar to the mosque in the round-about near BVB. I started marveling at myself. How did i defy gravity? Do I've superpowers?
.... then i woke up. The time was six thirty .. and i had slept off with my head resting on the table. what a disappointment! damn...I was almost superman.
The exam went fine,not exceptionally well. For me an exceptionally good exam is one where i can say confidently that 'yes I'll pass for sure'. Today's was an 'i should pass ' kinda exam .Joe leftthe exam hall in one hour . I was very surprised to see him leave so early .
In the afternoon Dias asked me whether we could go and see the latest Bond flick. I said ok. I really wanted to see casino roylale. Not because I'm a big James Bond fan . Hell.. i watch Bond movies to watch the Bond girls. But Bond girls weren't the reason either. Chris Cornell has sung the soundtrack for this one and i adore the song . You could not guess my elation when they were showing the opening credits with the song playing in the background. I asked sandy sitting on my right that how does he find the song. He said 'The animation shown is fantastic. But the song is nothing special'
The plot of this movie is different from the usual bond flicks . The gadgets are missing . Some action sequences are breathtaking. But the plot lacks sharpness. Eva Green is a beautiful piece of work. Craig is a good choice for the role of Bond . The man has style. They have not shown bond as an infallible superhero. By the way the theater cut the love scenes . damn ....

pep and cricket

2006-09-25T06:03:00.000-07:00

I woke up in great spirits as i have been doing since my successfull job interview. I was supposed to have a written test at eleven in the morning . It was conducted by a company called pep(or campus connect) which conducts written tests for seventy odd companies . The aptitude test went fine though i could have done better in the english section. The technical part was a nightmare. Out of forty questions , I was able to do six by myself. I copied nine answers from the guy sitting in front of me. The invigilation was done by our own placement cell and sitting on my left were harini and ashitha (who under other circumstances are champions of morality and ethics) who were copying unabashedly. So integrity and moral rectitude were not important issues for me.
After the fascinating time I had taking these tests , I had a gargantuan meal. I ate two banana leaves full of rice and curries like a refugee . Then i slept on my recently bought mattress. Afterwards Sudu woke me up and suggested that perhaps we should go and play cricket. well.... i may have had a great time playing cricket for thousands of hours in bvb but my recent endeavors have been very painfull. Not because I've played badly but because the body aches for days(as i'm typing this my i'm finding it difficult to raise my right arm) . But i couldn't say no . So off we went , seven of us to the cusat ground where all that red soil was awaiting to be messed with. cricket is one area in which i'm very competent and i get upset if others show disinterest or they go through the motions. Thankfully everyone played with a lot of interest. I got to know a lot about the cricketing talents of my friends. Like sudu bats technically correct and can also blast the bowling into smithereens. While bowling ,he is astonishingly sharp with a slingy kinda action(like that of akhtar and malinga). He was able to uproot my middle stump out of the ground(no pun intended). To my embarrassment the ball was a low full toss. Palli is quick and gets a lotta bounce off the pitch and Chaitanya can bat well under crunch situations. As for me-I was able to bowl accurately , was hit for two fours and i got some wickets too. While batting I made seven runs in two innings . Nothing to write home about butI was able to drive and play some wristy shots . I would have been happier if I could have hit the ball out of the park .

java, ulysses and anil kumar.

2006-08-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

25th august
This entry is after a gap of four days. Things are finally making sense in the java classes. I was not getting the hang of file handling so I sat one day with rejah and went through file handling from a book. I also learnt rmi and abstract window toolkit. I wish I had more time to probably try some programs in a computer .College classes resumed after what seemed ages .
We have a new teacher fow ADA who is a fascinating character. He started the class by picking his nose . Out of nervousness i guess. But that's a very grotesque thing to do in public.However he has a teaching style which could evoke the interest of some students who have perhaps forgotten how to pay attention in class. Also he seems to have comprehensive knowledge and experience on the subject.
I read Ulysses in this interval .Great book but reading hundred pages is taking me five to six hours. I need a dictionary nearby. Joyce has written many phrases using archaic irish and british words.

Ways of cusat

2006-08-22T01:40:00.000-07:00

21st august
kochi
I was in triponithura for the weekend and this morning headed back to the cusat campus. I had breakfast in abhirami- a tamil restaurant . The chutney they serve is just smashing. When I reached home I found to my immense pleasure that we have no classes for the day yet again. I just love the way our university goes about its business.
I had to collect a certificate signed by the principal for the cat application form. The principal had resigned from his post last friday so knowing the ways of cusat I was very apprehensive about ever getting it . But thanks to my lucky stars I got it "signed and sealed '. I heard rumours that the principal is back in business.I'm not bothered. I don't even know what his name is.
In the afternoon I went to the cobbler to get my sandals stitched. Well i'm going to delhi next week so I thoght why waste money on new sandals till then. The cobbler carefully diagnosed it and very emphatically announced that he can't help me as its condition is beyond any remedy. Then java classes where we learnt more about networking using java .Some client side and server side programs which I didn't quite understand .
Afterwards I went with rejah to the very famous IT house and got to watch the English premier league highlights. I'm glad chelsea has begun with a comprehensive win. Drogba's header was terrific .Shevchenko is gelling very well with his teammates. I hope with their big stars they don't turn out to be disoriented as real madrid has turned out to be.I bet Jose Mourinho won't let that happen.

Temple of the dog

2006-08-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

16th august
kochi

Today was download mayhem day.Saif had downloaded a software called ares which I would rate as the best to download rock videos. Cause you get so many good quality ones. He had already downloaded some interesting stuff.
Like november rain live(Axl rocks on the keyboards), Slash playing Hendrix(I think All along the watchtower, not sure), guitar lessons from Adrian Smith(dunno what prompted him to do this) and an animated wrestling match between Slash and Axl showing the latter chopping Slash's brains with a chainsaw(Viewer's discretion advised). So i decided to join the bandwagon. I downloaded "Show Me how to live" by audioslave,"Black" by pearl jam, "Paranoid Android " by Radiohead and "Fell on black days","Spooman","Jesus Christ pose" and "Black hole sun"(Btw Weird Al came up with "Asshole Son" ) by Soundgarden . I consider "Jesus Christ pose" as the best rock song if you consider only the vocals. Cornell's vocal range and power is just incredible in this song.
My major accomplishment of the day was the download of "Hunger Strike " by Temple of the dog. This band was created by Chris cornell as a tribute to a former bandmate of his who had died in a freak accident. The band has cornell singing along with some soundgarden members, some other members who would go on to form the band pearl jam and a novice providing back up vocals to cornell called Eddie Vedder. In the Song"Hunger Strike" Vedder and Cornell sing a duet of sorts. The song is wonderfull. Cornell's vocal abilities , Vedder's awesome voice , the great guitar synchronization and the lyrics make this a fantastic song by a fantastic ensemble .

Rain please go to spain

2006-08-15T06:01:00.000-07:00

I got up early in the morning and decided to do some excercise . So i went with the intention of jogging in the university ground. While on the way it started raining.The ground was wet so I had to abandon the enterprise. . The rain god has always hated my guts. We didn't have classes in college to my utmost delight and I came home and slept for a long time . Then Java classes at six where I learnt command line arguments and vectors. Then I went with rejah to the house of some friends of his and met a very interesting character who is the cook in that house and has a community in orkut named after him because of his proficiency in cooking.
He made us popcorn with salt and chilly powder . He has ambitions to start a popcorn selling business in cusat.
Then rejah asked me if i'm interested in going to watch Kabhi alvida....... and I agreed. The movie was nothing great but it didn't bore me as i thought it would.
The performances of rani mukherjee and amitabh bachchan were commendable . Amitji in his role as as sixty year old philanderer was very entertaining. The sets and costumes were fantastic. SRK overacted more than ever. The other performances were mediocre. I gotta give credit to johar for taking adultery as the theme and finally deviating from his normal hackneyed stories. After the movie i came back on a bike and then it rained to make me wet all over agian .

Of cats and crazy men

2006-08-14T02:16:00.000-07:00

I'm making this a habbit. Three entries in three days. Well today is dias' birthday . He has been a very good companion over the last three years . More like a brother than a friend. Dias has been very helpful to me. If ever i'm in trouble with my computer he bails me out with a lot of patience(I can be very irritating with my ignorance)
Yesterday in an effort to prepare for CAT I took a test in geometry. I told myself " Dude , there are fifty questions and you can have fifty minutes with negative marking and all, try and score thirty" . There was nobody in my house as everybody had gone to watch arts so it was very quiet and the ambience was great for concentration. I ended up scoring thirteen out of fifty which is abyssmal. I actually forgot a lot of formulas. So a lesson learnt "work hard".
Last evening myself , joe and savio -the two people I'm most comfortable with here in cochin ,went to Salaam ikka's shop for drinking tea. So ,what's the big deal? The deal was that we weren't exactly dressed for the occasion. I was wearing an exceedingly warm raincoat cum jacket , savio a shirt which is best suited to be worn in a beach and joe ,ironed shirt and trousers. Then after coming back me and joe had a very good chat . We discussed about our best and worst moments in cusat, the idiocies we've commited ourselves into and the girls in our lives among other issues.

Sociophobia

2006-08-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

Hey it's me again. There is B-tech arts function going on. Yesterday I was wondering whether to go or not. My indecision was because of this social phobia i've developed of late(To be honest it has always been there). I did decide to go in the end only to find none of my classmates there. I found a junior to talk to and then found Varkey. He told me that he is playing lead guitar for a band and they mostly play covers of bands like metallica, pantera and a death metal band called "The testament" . Then to my delight I met anna who was my companion for the rest of the evening .The events were mighty boring. I couldn't stand it any longer and at ten thirty walked back home.
While walking back I did a little introspection on my diffident nature.I was thinking that out of most people who are reserved very few are actully indifferent to other people. Most demure people actually are low on confidence as far as social demeanours are concerned.Thus some decide to act aloof . While some others behave like sidekicks to the more confident people.
Other events , well Rose and Rejah got placed in Accenture. Rose is very articulate when she talks so must've breezed through the GD and the PI . On the other hand Rejah is one of the most confident people i've met and it is comes as no surprise that he's placed too. Both will be missed when i join TCS.

Orkut and Ulysses

2006-08-12T04:05:00.000-07:00

well.. this whole enterprise of blogging struck me when I saw monty's and mush's blogs yesterday. So what i'm going to do is write whatever indiscreet or sensible activities and sentiments i manage within the course of a day. Savio says diary writing helps him retrospect. I could do with some retrospection.
Yesterday started with orkut for fifteen minutes . Nothing fascinating happening there.I think i'm getting bored of it. I'm always expecting loads of scraps . Two or three scraps disappoint me. I think I draw my sense of importance through the number of scraps i receive. That is childish and very foolish of me.
I spent majority of the day reading "Ulysses" . When I started reading the book I found it very difficult to comprehend and thus horribly overrated as a modern classic. But now having read a hundred odd pages i'm beginning to understand why it is rated so highly . The book consists of whole chapters written in the form of the thought patterns of the characters. Our thoughts are not well-structured or sequential. They are random and haphazard. While thinking we can switch from one thought to something completely connectionless. The myriad of emotions the characters go through within their heads makes the book interesting to read. Also Joyce's adroitness with the language , his vivid descriptions and the metaphors he uses are praiseworthy.
That's all for today.