CHAURAASTA

We had to go to a temple, well.. yes, that's right. You see my wife does believe in God. So stop giving me those looks.

Now in India, you don't have those wonderful maps and directions that one can get on the internet in US. So making a memory map of the place from what our friends told us, we started sometime in the afternoon (Now this is an old incident but something reminded me of it today and hence).

I like driving and I like it so much that I don't mind "not clarifying" the directions even if I feel I am lost (which reminds me of a wild goose chase incident at 3 a.m. in Connecticut and NY). And it was not as if I had an appointment with someone. So we drove and drove and drove thinking we would hit the temple road somewhere. Now I am a patient of patience but not my wife. She was getting restless and she had expressed that in no uncertain terms. Hell I thought I would need to ask UN to intervene, but knowing the effectiveness, rather the lack of it, I decided to postpone all the SOS calls. We had already travelled 20 miles on the highway and when all that was in front of us was a long, long, very long stretch of road, my wife gave me a long, long, very long stare. So menacing was it that I did a Matrix style car U turn and stopped at the first sight of intelligent life sign. On inquiring, we came to know that we had come many miles away in the perpendicular direction. I tried not to look at my wife. The fear of her, well that's the closest I have come to believing in God and it was a very selfish motive I agree but.....

So finally, we hit the right road after many miles and many minutes of driving. But we still had to take many turns and this time I wanted to confirm the exact turn. So I stopped the car and asked a vendor on the roadside and he asked me to turn left at the next CHAURAASTA(crossroads, chau for 4 and raasta for road). I looked at my wife now hoping to get the pat. Do I sound like the pup? Anyway, we drove again. We went and went and went and the crossroads were nowhere to be seen. This time I was getting restless because I, being a science student, firmly believe in Newton's third law. Anyway, we looked at each other for a moment and I turned the car. Whoever said a picture is worth a thousand words!!! Here silence was saying things Nostredamus could not have predicted and Shakespeare could not have described.
On turning back, again we asked a nice soul for the directions. He told us to look for a CHAURAASTA and take a right turn there. Atleast that was very comforting. Left on the crossroads from one direction equals right on the crossroads from the opposite direction.

Again we kept on going looking for that mirage CHAURAASTA that eluded us the first time. Till we reached the same first vendor. Now, I have no words to describe you my innermost thoughts and feelings. Have you seen those gigantic pistons in the movie "titanic" and heard the sounds they make?

Anyway this time we asked yet another person and he asked us to look for the CHAURAASTA again and left turn it was again. Exasperated, and cursing myself over how could I miss a CHAURAASTA, I continued what I love doing, the drive. Except this one time, I was trying to keep the pressure right on my soul instead of the breaks. Well, again we missed it and again we returned back. Then it struck me. This time while inquiring, I asked the man, "are there three roads that converge at that CHAURAASTA or four?" Now it might sound like a stupid question but it was not. The guy replied "three". I felt like strangling all the previous noble souls. It was a T junction I was supposed to look for, not crossroads.

You see, here in Hyderabad, people speak a variant of Hindi and Urdu mix. And any junction which has more 3 or more roads converging is called a CHAURAASTA, which in North India, and for North Indians, strictly means "crossroads".

Bastards

Main Entry: rape
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Form(s): raped; rap·ing
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin rapere1
a archaic : to seize and take away by force b : DESPOIL
2 : to commit rape on

Can anybody possibly define what rape means to a woman? Is it mere violation of a person? Is it just a physical suffering that a rape victim has to go through? It is a whole lot more than just those things. Since I am a man, I can perhaps never understand the trauma behind it, the mental scars that fail to heal even with time, the constant fear one has to live with. To live with a feeling that you have been violated despite all your resistance, that in itself is a very scary thought.

Well Delhi is not just the capital of India, it is the RAPE capital of India. You only have to google for "Rape" and "Delhi" to get a feel of the numbers I am talking about.

Here is a news item you can read....
Woman gangraped in moving carJuly 20, 2005 13:58 ISTA 22-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped on Wednesday in a movingcar in southwest Delhi.The victim was abducted from Mayapuri area and allegedly raped by fourmen in the vehicle. No arrests have been made, police sources said.A few months back, a Delhi University student was abducted from DhaulaKuan area and gang-raped in a moving car.Three of four accused in that case are yet to be apprehended.

Taste buds

What is/are your favorite cuisine(s)?
And what do you like the most? (As in Sushi, Fajitas, Burritos, Mashed Potatoes, Rice, Daal, Curry...)

Of man, his convictions and his actions

To correct a wrong, sometimes one needs to do a wrong.

There is this ex-colleague of mine, a gem of a person, who is exceptionally brilliant. 3 years back we had joined the same company, on 1st April 2002, and none of us knows till this day who made a fool of who, the company made a fool of us or did we make a fool of the company? The thing is, there wasnt much work coming. Oh, no, the company was not closing down. It's a very big company, which I will let you figure out. It's responsible for your telephone bills generation, AT&T, Sprint etc... in US, BT in England... and many more. But the work was monotonous and not very frequent. So for almost 2 years, I was on an extended picnic. I used to say, "I am highest paid call centre guy in India," because I was getting handsome salary for just talking to the clients, AT & T wireless, and coordinating with my team. Ofcourse it impacted me negatively in the sense, my technical skills were completely rusted. So I decided to move on. For 6 months I worked at another mid-size company where I realized I was wrong all along. I had thought no other company could be quite as bad as my previous company but this company proved me wrong. And so I changed yet again. Now I am not a frequent job changer. I don't believe in it. But I had to. And now I am in my dream job. Now this company is another big company which has a datawarehousing product and I am in the product development R & D center. Technically very satisfying.

So this friend of mine, my junior, is still with the same old company and now he has decided to move too. I forwarded his resume here and he had an interview today. As I said, he is simply a brilliant chap. But the problem is that he a bit like Mycroft Holmes, the elder brother of Sherlock, who had better reasoning abilities but was never curious enough to verify them. So this guy actually hates when someone asks him to code in the interviews. And I must say he is right. If one wants a candidate to code in an interview, one should provide a computer as well to the candidate. Now he has written a file system himself, and how difficult that is would depend on how much is one comfortable with the computers. Let me just say that he is amongst the rare 2% of the software programmers who know a thing or two about file systems internals.

But he is a man of principles too. And that is really his undoing. He had actually rejected a promotion. Now how many guys do that? So today when my manager came back after taking his interview and told me he is kind of "OK", I actually wanted to scream, "he is better than either of us just that he has a problem with the kind of questions you have asked him."

But I also feel that he would love his job here and for that he needs to bend his rules just a little bit. Ofcourse, my respect for this wonderful man grows everytime I meet him. I hope he makes it. :)

Discovery blues

I don't believe in God and yet when something tells me, someone is keeping a watch on me, someone I don't know, I feel it is true. Will come back to it in a while.

Very few people visit my site. GG, Dcver, Icy, Piu Piu, Vikings now. But there is someone who has been visiting my site for quite sometime now and has never left a comment. Now no big deal really, except that my office headquarters are in California and all the system admins sit in California. And this guy, he or a she, checks on my site from California. Now I know I am not a great writer, not even a good one. And modesty is not a virtue as Sherlock Holmes famously said.

So well, all I want to know my dear friend from California, if you are indeed from my company please let me know so that I dont publish stuff on my office life and my thoughts on me colleagues. ;)

Please, please, please, please do that. I am scared. :'( . Very scared. ;)

Here is your IP and other details.
California, Sunnyvale, United States lj2157.inktomisearch.com (68.142.249.167)

Anoop.

Edit ::: Khoda paahad, nikli chuhiya... thats the Hindi proverb for "Much ado about nothing"
Apparently this is a bot and has nailed my site... now I know why the stats of my sites have gone up so much more. I can talk all the rubbish on my colleagues now, YOOOOO HOOOOO.... ;)

Rowling on a roll.

Harry Potter has sold over 100,000 copies in India.
Its priced at Rs 650. Thats about US $14.

Rs 65, 000, 000. US $ 1400, 000.

India continues to be the amazing country it was in my last post. People do things not because they know what they are doing and more importantly they like it but because "its a hot thing".

I havent read nor watched a single Harry Potter movie/book, so I won't be judgemental. It could be brilliant, it could be very good, it good be good, it could be average, it could be just tolerable, it could be crap, it could be anything really.
But I personally know people who like a thing only because its "hot and happening".

And, unfortunately, there is no dearth of such people in India.

Diversity, thy name is India.

"Your lunch is not very different from what we eat!!"

Its funny, and actually amazing for I do not know of any other country where the food habits are so varied. India, I was taught, is a land of unity in diversity. The first thing or perhaps one of the first things that an Indian would ask another fellow Indian in the very first meeting is, "So where are you from?"

What is really interesting is that a person can be easily pinned to a state based on his language/dialect/lunch box, perhaps even looks. A name will almost always give away the state of a person.

"Ah Neil Armstrong. He must be from ....errrr.... Alabama? Arkansas? I dunno...."

Meet an Indian now.

"Mr. Krishnan. You must be from Tamil Nadu."
"Dr. Reddy. You must be from Andhra Pradesh."
"Patel Bhai, which town are you from in Gujarat?"
"Oye Singh Saab, where in Punjab?"

Yesterday while taking lunch, my project manager saw the contents of the lunch box and she said "Your lunch is not very different from what we eat!!"

Well indeed she was surprised. Because in India, you can tell the state of a man from the food he eats.


This is an amazing country. It really is.

Aye Blair.

A news quote.

Affirming Britain's determination to crack down extremists, Prime Minister Tony Blair on Wednesday said anti-terror laws would be tightened.
He said steps would be taken to fast-track deportation of radical Imams to prevent them from spreading the "evil and extreme ideology" based on a "perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of Islam."

Finally Blair has done or rather said, first right thing on dealing with Terrorism.

I love her

It had drizzled the whole day and as the night got darker, it had become extremely cold. As I closed the main gate I heard a voice from under the stairs. Alert, I went near the stairs and I noticed her. She was crying. Hungry perhaps I thought. I gave her some bread which she ate very quietly, actually furiously. Next day when I went out to fetch the newspaper, she was there, outside my door, sitting on the newspaper, shivering. She had a beautiful face and lovely eyes. And through her eyes she looked at me almost as if asking, please take care of me. But she was a social outcast. Worse my landlords immediately became aware of her presence. I wanted to help her and I knew I had to do it very secretly. Passing her the food, make sure she is healthy and fit, its been 3 days now. And ever since I found that pup outside my house on Saturday night, the bond between us has only strengthened. Its a stray pup. So what? I love her.

She has become more confident in my presence, perhaps her mother has died, and I took her for a walk yesterday evening. She enjoyed it. I have to make her realise that its her territory and that she need not be afraid of anyone. I have no experience with animals(dogs in particular) because either my mother never wanted it or now my wife does not like them. But now my wife has also started liking her.

And as I move ahead, I will need all the help in the world. Any tips?

Not a bad job.

I am an average guy, neither very intelligent nor extraordinarily dumb. I was never so ambitious as to pull others down or walk over others to get "there" nor was I disinterested in my career.

As I said, a normal next door guy. And so now after 7 years since I have started working, yesterday when I sat in my CTO's cabin discussing features to be imparted in the next release of the product, I got a sense of pride, perhaps some sense of achievement too. I know its perhaps not so big as I am making it out to be but yet the moments, the 7 years since I started my career, passed like a movie in my mind and I said to myself, "Anoop not a bad job."

I have the details you seek.

Here are a few candid facts about me.

1.) I am rich, stinking rich actually. I have a swiss bank account and I have more than 29 million Euros. I keep my swiss account details in a simple text file.
2.) I have a very large collection of porn and membership of many adult sites. All the membership details are in a simple text file.
3.) I have multiple affairs with many famous and non-famous, even infamous celebrities. All the juicy details, private hidden videos, are stored across various web servers and all the details of those servers are in a simple text file.
4.) I know the secret of the Holy Grail as also I know the remains of the famous apple that started it all between Adam and Eve. All this also is in a simple text file.
5.) I have access to the latest technology from NASA and CIA and all the access keys are stored in a simple text file.
6.) I am a very close pal of Osama Bin Laden and I know where he is hiding. The frequency with which he changes his whereabouts, the frequency at which I talk to him over the radioshack, and all other such important details are in a simple text file.
7.) I have a definite proof of Alien life and trust me the alien females are more gorgeous than the most beautiful woman on earth. I have their contact details in a simple text file.
8.) I have the details on Lady Diana and details of what she thought of Prince Charles or for that matter her "chemistry" with Kennedy Jr. All those are also in a simple text file.
9.) I have much much much more. All that is listed in detail in a simple text file.

All those simple text files are stored in my gmail account.

Well there was a hacking attempt on my email (Gmail) account and I wonder what was it that the cracker was seeking? :-?

Just ask me any of the above mentioned things and I will gladly provide you with the information.

Anything else that you guys can think of?

Crackingly yours,
Anoop.

Brownie points

Perception is not reality. Don't we all know that? And yet we get trapped in the viciousness of it. This morning a funny incident occured. A colleague of mine walked in at around 11 a.m.

Now to reach her cubicle one needs to walk past the room of the "Boss", the seniormost guy who looks after India operations. Now she is carrying her stuff and all and she does not want the "Boss" to know the fact that she came very late. So what does she do? She comes near my cubicle, puts all her stuff in her cubicle reaching across from over my side and then walks past the cabin of "Boss".

Why are Indians so scared of their bosses? I have no idea. I love my office and I like my colleagues because bottomline is they all are technically good. But I hate it when someone tries to score a few brownie points. Take this, two of my colleagues come back from the respective vacations and get a whole set of chocolates/sweets for the manager's daughter, which she politely refuses. My respect for her has increased after the two incidents.

Poor Man's Sherlock Holmes

The more I read Hercule Poirot, the more I am convinced that he is a poor man's Sherlock Holmes. I have read all the adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (there are other stories from other writers too, hence.), many times over and ditto with Poirot. I know Agatha Christie has mentioned herself that she can not possibly emulate Sherlock Holmes. So why so much of a similarity? Why have Captain Hastings like Dr Watson? Why the invalidation? Why have Inspector Japp like Inspector Lestrade?

Was it a tribute to Sherlock Holmes? Or was it an attempt to better what Sherlock Holmes did?

Alas, one will never know!!!!!!

Mustard musings

It all started here. http://sapodilla.blogspot.com/2005/06/atichoooo.html

(Read the comments too.)

So well, yesterday I was feeling miserable. Left office before lunch, went home, slept like a log. In the night I took the mustard oil treatment (read the comments of GG's above mentioned post.) and VOILA, today I feel so much better.

Someone afraid of the mustard oil treatment? Eh? ;)

Child is the father of man.

"Mummy," my daughter slides across the bed to my wife while watching some song and dance routine from some Indian movie and whispers in her ear though there is no one else in the house, "I have a question".

"Yes?"

"Will I have to dance around like this after marriage too?"

High time Indian producers and directors thought about the stupidity of it all.

Second incident. This happened sometime early last year. I had gone to pick up my daughter from her school and had hid behind a bush. I could see her and her few classmates peeping through the window waiting for the final bell to go off.

In the afternoon after lunch, I asked her, so why were you looking out of the window? Were you looking for me?

"Yes, you were behind the bush, isnt it."

"Nope," I lied.

"Then how did you know I was looking out of the window?" pat came the question.

I was zapped. One of my proud daddy moments.

Dishum Dishum....

Dishum..... Dishum... Dishum....

Those who are not familiar with Hindi movies, for that matter any Indian movie, this is the sound of a punch.

"You think I am not important eh? Lemme show ya...."

DISHUM......

And off went my head giving me my worst headache in recent memory.

"Tchhh Tchhh.... thats all you can do? You can be easily cured by a saridon.... lemme show ya wat I can do....."

DISHUM.........

My wrist started hurting so much I couldn't type.

"Now tat is juz a showoff. Tat is nuthin. It can be cured by a spray.... lemme show ya wat I can do......"

DISHUM........

And my stomach hurt so bad, I could not sit, I could not sit even to drive back home.

"Well tat ain't impressive mister. I can hurt more."

DISHUM........

"Me head came back with a venegance."

"I can cause more pain. Watch now"

DISHUM.......

"My wrist started hurting so much I had to wrap an ace bandage around my wrist.

"And you thought I was being as intense as I can be? Take this."

DISHUM DISHUM DISHUM......

I could not eat anything for 2 days surviving on liquid diet.

The war of the world was definitely not started by this human. And I was the worst sufferer. Finally when I felt a little better last evening, I watched a movie.

This morning when I got up....

DISHUM...... DISHUM...... DISHUM.......DISHUM...... DISHUM...... DISHUM.......DISHUM...... DISHUM...... DISHUM.......DISHUM...... DISHUM...... DISHUM.......DISHUM...... DISHUM...... DISHUM.......

I have caught cold.

I have my advice of mustard oil with me. I know the recipes of honey, lime, ginger etc.... Anything else guys?

P.S.:- Wonder if I will watch Steven Speilberg's "War of the worlds" at all :-?