Joy and sorrow of Inside out

After a harrowing day in office debugging some crappy functionality of a braking product of my company, it was time to head to watch inside out. I had seen the trailer of the movie only once and it was impressive.

So I and my colleague walk to an multiplex behind our office, the only positive thing about the place where I work. The movie portrays a story of girl in Minnesota until a change happens.

And boy, some people hate change and some simply love the challenges a change puts in front of them. This movie depicts how our mind reacts to the change. The five characters,  joy, sadness, anger, disgust and fear complement each other in our real life.

As you can see in the trailer men can rarely listen to two things at a time. The brain of a man switches off when he sees himself imagining about football match. They have telescopic vision which got developed as main job of ancestral men was only hunting for which you need to concentrate on a single object for a longer amount of time. And the mother, quickly saw that the her child is not in mood and tried to ask her about het first day at school. A mother is much more aware about her surroundings. In short she can see behind her back. How did this quality get ingrained in her? When ancestral men went for hunting, the women folk had to be very careful about the surroundings and had to keep an eye on everything in surrounding. That's why when we were young, before making some move behind her back, we used to get caught.

Coming back to movie, we can't have happiness everywhere. Life is made of sadness too and they co-exist with each other. I feel this was the strongest message of the movie showed in fun way of glass balls rolling in our brain. We have to sacrifice something to achieve and try to keep looking forward to something positive ahead in our life.

What I loved about the movie is how they showed the brain, our memories, how they are stored, dumped in a deep valley. We all have good and sad memories. They will remain with us through out our life. How we react to situation depends upon how we have encountered a situation similar to one before it or else we act hesitantly.

The movie is definitely a must watch with something new to introspect about yourself
and enjoy with your friends and family.

Distractions

I have been lately reading a novel after a hiatus of eight months, ‘The narrow road to deep north’. It has some beautiful Japanese poetry embedded into it. One month is over since it arrived at my place. I should have completed reading it. But wait, I had distractions in form of internet buzzing everyday on phone.

Data consumption through phone is phenomenally high for me with superfast 3G and an awesome Wi-Fi that never dies unlike the internet which I had at home and was provided by a government service provider. It was crappy and I used to pray for a decent connection every day. I survived on it for more than four years. And here, the internet connectivity is superb. The service provider here alerts you when there will be down time. I hadn’t experienced this kind of internet service. The drawback is your phone is constantly connected and you end up reading whole lot of now stuff beaming on ‘Reddit’, Travel blogs, NY times or twitter. Today, I was reading one article on NY times that actually lambasted the managerial skills of Marrisa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo. For some two years, Marissa was praised for leading Yahoo but this article actually painted a completely different picture. You are under complete scrutiny if you are leading a giant which is falling apart. Also I rarely visit Yahoo, so do many people. That says it all. The article was longish and chronicled her two years. The article link is here

I read many things beaming even through twitter timeline. Sometimes it gives you good insight but it comes at a time when you are neglecting your current task of completing a beautiful novel. There were days when I used to get hooked to book and used to be get disturbed only by your mom yelling at top of voice for idling.

You need to remain focussed with the task assigned to you. The other day I found that YouTube streams in my office. And I started streaming some Hans Zimmer music for one hour. Though I will complete the work, no one around me uses YouTube in office. I need to stop it.

I hope to complete the novel as early as possible but Saturdays and Sundays have turned dysfunctional for me. And weekdays, even after you come back home even before six, things start to look bleak. I just touched some 170 pages and it’s a long way to go for Dorrigo Evans to get out of Burma and me to do something that is fulfilling my mind.

A quarter life completed

Just realized that I hadn’t written for the past one year anything on my blog or posted any note on Facebook. Also yesterday, I completed 25 years of life on earth. Nothing extraordinary has happened with me up till now.

Life away from home has been interesting. You realize how many days you have wasted doing nothing.

Lately I have been reading a lot of stuff on web, books. Be it science, astronomy, travel blogs or some novels brought online. Lately, space exploration has caught my interest. Mind you, it’s not after watching Interstellar. What amazed me is for achieving so much in space, human kind has done which was thought to be impossible some 50 years back. Look at International space station, which can be seen with naked eye orbiting our earth. Also I want to witness a Soyuz launch from Baikonur cosmodrome. Also to become an astronaut or cosmonaut, you have to rub your ass very hard against the ground.

Life turns too much turns at each corner of the road. You never know what will happen next. Sometimes it depends on luck but always remember that luck is matter of preparation meeting opportunity.

I guess I should move to tumblr and write every week random thoughts like I didn't know what is Telugu translation of ‘Yes’. Never heard my colleagues or people say it. All I heard is ‘no’ in telugu. Looks like there is too much negativity around us. I should write more observations around me.

I know I just scribbled some random shit, but I need to write more.

The co-passenger blues

When you are damn sure that you are going to spend 12 hours in train, the first thing that anyone wants is good co-passengers. After all, for how much time you can remain immersed in a book, do train spotting and see scenery when it is pitch dark and police wants you to close windows to avoid getting robbed. Scanning the reservation chart list at the station is one of the few things you can do if you arrive with a healthy lead before departure. The eyes drool over finding co-passengers having age F-18 to F-24 and cursing yourselves when you find aged aunties in your bay of six. I am not a taxonomist but here is assorted list:

1. The Oldies:

Only God can save you in such a situation when the oldies pull down the middle berth at 20:00 hours sharp leaving you nowhere to sit. They eat around 19:00 hours and go off to sleep early. I have seen oldie who had his daily quota of whisky before dozing off. It was his medicine that emitted a foul smell in the whole AC bay. Also they snore a lot that the whole coach vibrates and you can say good bye to your sleep until you fall asleep to the rhythmic snoring!

2. The Middle aged people:

This group of people I feel is the best for the company when traveling for one night journey. They understand the need of youngsters and at least try to pull the middle berth by 22:00 hours. They off course have endured more ups and downs in life than us and chatting with them is pleasant experience. They have too much knowledge and give useful advice to us. I have seen a SBI assistant general manager explain me homoeopathy with a new twist to a cement industry manager giving me good insights about why men and women behave differently in nature. This group of people accounts to best conversation I have ever had with the some unknown people.

3. The aunties:

They are sometimes caring, nagging or jealous with you. The first thing they ask is for lower berth which you have booked for window seat. They ask all about your personal life, where do you stay, where do you eat and all sort of stuff as if they are writing my biography. Some of them are kind enough to share food with you.

4. The young couple:

The young couple is sometimes occupied with a small child with whom they have to play a day and night game. The small child is centre of all their attention that they hardly interact with the co-pax. Sometimes when they do they get time after a child falls asleep, they open a plethora of information about themselves and have met a Ph.D. who had done his doctorate in oncology to a scientific writer in pharma industry. I have also seen a young couple who boarded with me at a particular station just pull the curtains of the side lower berth and drink their “homemade magic potion” while emitting a strong stench again in compartment.

5. A large joint family:

It looks to me that the head family has bribed the loco pilot of the train to halt for extra time so that they whole joint family can board the compartment with all assortment of luggage and place it wherever they find place below the seat. After the dust settles, they start munching which has been bought from outside. Looks to me that they have even bought a tomato ketchup sauce bottle to keep them company for everything they have bought from outside. Finally the munching stops when it is time to sleep and they sign it off by eating pills for easy digestion. Just imagine the horror the other people might face at night in closed AC compartment.

Advice: Use train toilet before they wake up!

6. Youngsters:

This is the best group you can have for company. At the start they can be slow to start a healthy conversation but slowly you can have a good time with them that the time passes quickly. You can talk with them about ‘chaos theory’ to the popular sitcoms in the town to sports. I have been a group that was awake till 3 a.m. at night which was one of the best journeys I ever had in my life.

7. F18-F24:

Nothing much to say as they don’t talk with anyone. I leave it to your imagination!

The lost battle against Cancer

Around eight to nine years back, I came across a story about a man who had won tour de France after finding one morning that he was spitting out blood in the wash basin. That story was the small part of autobiography of Lance Armstrong translated into a vernacular language in a daily newspaper.

A chain of events forced me to read his autobiography some six months back and in the way the autobiography was written in the book, “It’s not about the bike: My journey back to life” convinced my heart that he did not dope.

Cancer is a disease which requires a brave heart to defeat it to the core. If you always stay with the fear of remission, the cancer will deal another blow to you. I had read two good books in which cancer afflicted people had taught us how to lead life and what they see when death bed is closing on them. This made me realize that life is not cheap and we should always try to justify the every molecule of air we breathe. The pain which a cancer patient goes through for seeing a small ray of hope among all tubes clinging through his body can’t be described. The nurses who infuse the poisonous chemo in your body know that it will burn your skin but they have no choice as the cancer stuck patient sees a glimpse of hope even in that poison fed into your body. You wish good luck for the poison to work on you. Such becomes life on the bed of cancer patient.

Coming back to Lance Armstrong who recently admitted to doping said that it was a perfect story made me aghast. The can of worms spilled out only in 2009 but took three whole years for the realization to take place. A well-orchestrated musical show suddenly sounded noise to the ear.

It is always said that the thief is always one step ahead of the police. That applies to sport also. Scientists try to build drugs that can’t be detected in the blood test while another group tries to decipher it. It’s a cat and mouse game which will never end.

The desire to win always makes us do things that we never dreamt of in our life. If we want the result by hook or crook, we go at great lengths to achieve it. The same thing happened with the Lance. A vicious circle developed around him and he had to be part of circle to continue the fairy tale having a happy ending.

Who was the biggest loser in this entire scenario?

Cancer. Millions of patients who looked upon him as that ray of hope might be feeling uneasy with the thought of seeing an icon fall from top to the bottom of disgrace.

 It’s the conscience that makes us believe that people are clean but the world proves it otherwise. Such deceptive and funny the world has become that even the conscience takes a bow in front of them.

Mapping the city

I have been to Pune ‘n’ times during the last 15-17 years but I never knew how to reach from Pune railway station to my relatives place scattered all over the Pune city. I used to trust the rickshaw driver and he used to correctly drop me at the place where I wanted to be and I used to get charged according to the meter. Even if we had gone to Pune by our car, my relatives place was so near to the NH4 that I never needed to enter city. Once in my relatives place, they used to take me all over the city. In the comforts of an AC car and chit-chatting with them, I may have toured the whole city but never knew which route they took because I never bothered to remember and note down important landmarks in Pune. I never travelled in ‘Pune Municipal transport’ buses. When these buses used to take a circular round on a traffic island, I used to comment that PMT buses have a very long and dangerous tail. In short, I never mapped Pune in my brain.

And seven months back, a new city, Hyderabad awaited to welcome me. From somewhere, the virtue of alertness came in me. When you want to get dropped at some place in Hyderabad whose name you can’t even pronounce, saying that name to the bus conductor wrongly and getting stared from your co-passengers became a routine thing to me. The transport system was tough to deal at the start but it was the cheapest way to roam the city. Unlike Mumbai, the rickshaws in Hyderabad don’t go by meter even if they have meter installed in them.

I used to remember important landmarks in the whole city, be it an historical building, KFC restaurant or a small tea shop and used to carefully listen what other people are saying to the conductor and where they used to get down. In this way all the stop names became clear and I was able to say them clearly like a native. Once I boarded a bus to go to ‘Punjagutta’, but the conductor said that the bus will go to NIMS and not ‘Punjagutta’. I blatantly said yes to him and took out my age old smartphone, searched what NIMS meant (It’s actually Nizam’s institute of medical sciences), tracked down how far are both of them and got down at the proper stop which was walking distance from where I wanted to actually go. Such quick decisions really helped me. I also tracked down a bungalow in a posh locality in Hyderabad which had a Rolls-Royce and it was my landmark when the bus passed from the front of the bungalow. Plus once I sat beside the conductor when the crowd in the bus was thin, and the good guy explained me all the bus routes in Hyderabad. After that, traveling in Hyderabad was a cake walk for me. If you meet good people in your life, it can make things really simpler.

Last month I covered all the major roads in Hyderabad in the public transport system. I can say that I mapped Hyderabad in less than 6 months flat. The situation is so good that I can direct a new comer in Hyderabad. A sense of achievement and satisfaction of taming a city is immense and one should experience it at least in our own country or a completely a foreign land.   

:D

Canteen blues

The conversation in a canteen of a 10 billion dollar IT company during lunch time between two fat women goes on like this:

1^st fat women: (Seeing the ultra-thin tiffin box of the other woman) Are you on diet?

2^nd fat woman: No. Are you on fast?

1^st fat woman: No.

A tasteless lunch to the tongue complemented by sarcastic words heard to the ear. 

South India:

A place where people eat rice with their hands.

But in a 10 billion dollar IT Company, where mannerism creeps in, two hands are substituted with two spoons. In spite of being written in the hall that please take one spoon, South Indians take two spoons to eat rice. After being constantly mocked for their eating habits, they have progressed a bit further to eating rice with two spoons. What has this caused in our canteen?

Shortage of spoons in lunch hour. People don’t even let the spoons reach the serving table. Spoons have now become a priced commodity.

The office canteen is a place where people went out their anger among their friends which they can’t do it in office cubicle. Back bitching is so common that one person does all the back bitching among the group while the other people listen to that person as if he is giving them enlightenment in life.

The less said about rotis, the more it is better. The extent to which you get rotis made one random guy comment that at least prisoners in jail might be getting a good deal.

One fine day, an employee discovers a hair in the dal. He shouts at the top of voice and the whole canteen stops eating. The catering head guy tries to apologize and tries to make a modest face in front of employee. The same employee had got screwed by a client last night and now the roles have only got reversed.

The big advantage that a catering staff have with them while preparing food for some 10000 odd people is that you don’t require efforts even to chop vegetables like onion and tomatoes. The small tomatoes are just put in the curry water. What if the small tomato has a worm? Wouldn’t it give a distinctive taste to our tongue?

Biryani festivals in the office canteen cause a mad scramble at the serving table. Everyone tries to go early resulting in long line that stretches the whole hall. Friday is the day when everyone tries to imbibe everything is good feeling by eating chicken biryani resulting again in longer queues compared to all other four days.

When you see an empty place in the crowded office canteen hall, it means that is directly below the AC vents. Who wants to eat food stone cold!

The story ends with a sweet. A high calorie sweet satisfies your tongue at the end of a tasteless lunch.