Whats was up with me

I havent written in the last 3 years! Phew! Well I am not sure if I will keep pace with it or not - but a lot as happned since - I changed 3 jobs, changed professions, got another masters, moved to a new country, got married, devolped new interests . Most of which I could not have visioned when I wrote my last blog. So I am not sure if I am the same person and if I should continue this.
Also, the world has changed - there are more fourms to express oneself and social networking etc .. may be a blog is not my thing anyway. But if I will I will be writing more serious and directed stuff (if that has any use comming from me), than just life :)

For the New Years ....

The best New years Message I have got ....

Like birds let us leave behind what
We do not need to carry….
Grudges
Sadness
Pain
Fear
and regrets
Fly light
Life is Beautiful!

Happy New Year!
Manohar and Indumati Sapre

Things that tell you time flies are your life suck ....

1. Ever three months you get a message to change your Microsoft (TM by biloo*) outlook password and all other official passwords, and you remember the last time this happened you promised your self that you would rather quit this job than to through the agony of changing the passwords the next time around. Mommy its Deja-vu again. And the thoughts of been in a place where computers were to assist you than used to control your thoughts and would have time to sail the oceans and swim with dolphins come back to you.

2. You pay your next terms gym fee and find that you haven’t been there much and still only exchanging smiles with the lady who you followed to her gym and enrolled.

3. You are given a new assignment after months and it seems the like the same one. And its even harder to do now cause people know what misstated you made and expect you make the same ones.

4. Another cricket series India is about to loose and you realize that the last time India lost the series(which in most cases is previous series they played) you decided not to spend your "valuable" time for the nest series watching all the days play.

5. Another Olympic, World Cup - cricket, Hockey, football or Asian games comes and you realize you have grown too old to be part of any of these, any more. One of these events is every year so the feeling is even worse.

6. You are writing a new blog after 4 months and realize ..
a. how lazy you have been and/or
b. lament on the fact that you haven’t done/thought anything exciting which you would like to publicize to the world to tell them how great you are !

Friends if you have these thoughts add more such events to the list And, don’t event talk about valentine days ...

* biloo = Bill Gates .. more on that and Orange Ka Kutta comming UP !

La question complexe.

The complex question to life, the universe and everything - which I have always been asked by those who have the courage to ask me, (or anyone for that matter is) without feeling foolish about it is ..

Why is it all so complex?

Since, there are so many who dont want to look foolish, I shall provide the answer, and free of cost!

Like all sages and saints of the past, I shall only show you the path which leads to enlightenment. It is for the follower to find the source of light.*

* Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any heart burns, body burns and exploding brains which may be caused in your sojourn, as it will be all be part of your discovery (should you not discover that).

The winner is .. Tom Hanks for Terminal (we could hear that in the Oscars this year ). But seriously,

La réponse à tout et à l'univers est ...

complexity in life = A + i * B; where,

A is the real part of life
B is the imaginary part of life

So,
1. Find the real and the imaginary in your life.

For example, the thought of looking/sounding foolish is imaginary. Even if you do sound foolish, it would be the imagination of the observer who would himself not be in the real plane.

2. Give waitage to each part according to the benifts it brings to your life, in making it pseudo complex.

You have three choices from here:

1. Eliminate part 'A' from your life and keep only 'B'. A gentleman called John Lennon, professed this in a very poetic way.

2. Eliminate part 'B' and keep only 'A'. This went well with many people who thought of seeing as believing and attributed the rest to God and made religion. But, unfortunately Mr. B took over lot of things in Mr. A's domain and it was dificult to tell one from another. (Mr. Rushide has something to say on it ... Magic Realism)

3. This is for a very small unfortunate %age of the population (the ones who truly suffer). They know the principle of optimization and try to find a ballance between A and B. Even more unfortunately, they know that optimization dosent work in many cases, so they spend a lot of time trying to optimize the theroy itself. The only hope they have is that all their theories are by nature self correcting. (You can tell these guys by the degrees they hold, like B.Tech, M.Tech, M.Sc, MBA and so on.)

Intelligent Questions!

Situation: I am at home. I am in my shorts and have a towel on my shoulder and near the bathroom. Where could I possibly going? I have visitors at home - my roommate and a lady friend of his.

Intelligent question (roomy): Are you going for a bath?
Answer: Yes I am. If you guys had plans for the same you can join me.

Shock!

I miss Bhaji Rao, he was one year junior to me at IIT. He was a late nine pointer (that’s like getting a perfect 10 in gymnastics). Remarkably his intelligence was not confined to academics only, as V2 and myself often found after been haunted by intelligent questions by him. I wish I wrote blogs at that time, one of our many books would have been "1001 intelligent questions".

The typical reaction to an "intelligent" question is best answered by another "intelligent" question and the fun is two fold when the subject dismisses your question as moronic. But, such occurrences of wit are rare and most of the time I used the shock and awe campaign.

Situation: I am going down the stairs.
Intelligent Question: Neeche jaa raha hai kya?
Intelligent Answers: Doesn’t this way go upstairs?

Bhaji Rao, was stud in life, music, academics and a fitness freak. He also was very fast in adapting to our intelligent answers in good humor, to the point that some questions like the one below seemed to be preplanned.

Situation: Scooter tier puncher - had asked for his cycle the previous night. On, seeing me riding it and the next day and passing him by on his cycle ...

Intelligent question: Puncher theek kara liya kya ? (with a mischievous smile)

Towards the mid of our association in IIT, Bhaji took the precaution of informing beforehand that he was going to ask an intelligent question before any question(as a matter of self defense). And towards the end of our intellectual association, the true stud could outsmart us by making it difficult for us to realize if it was indeed a "preplanned" or a "genuine" intelligent questions.

We had attributed Bhaji Rao's new found intelligence to our conditioning - at least we should have something to cheer our confused self’s with. I miss those intelligence question now, not because they are not asked but seem a bit irritate able and ignored.

Small Wonder

Today’s realization: People having nothing really substantial to do, make small things as big issues. This is not the "Eureka" types of observations, as I can safely say we all would have felt it sometime or the other. I am just trying to make a mutually exclusive statement. Again, my observations about what is small or big is subject to my fancy. It is important to back your beliefs in this regard as I have to trust myself on this or else I would be prioritizing issues on the skewed notion of others. A mistake which we eventually make some point or the other.

The trivial matters in life which can be solved with the easiest of ease become big issues. In fact, they even have a quality control on it to make it look important. Speaking of quality control - a wonderful concept that evolved if people in the first place didn’t make small issues a big thing. True, small things make the ocean - but why complicate small things when they can be kept simple and the main issue in had is the big problem?

In most case like in work, we all want to feel important about what we do and end up attaching undue relevance to small tasks. The easier and the peaceful thing is to accept the triviality of the whole issue instead of making the sky fall on all concerned.

Knowing me - knowing you

For you kind friends who have visited my blog’s so far and tried to read my previous post “Animal Instinct”, I would not blame you for any sort of opinion you would have formed about me. The point is those who know me, love me (or so I think). So, needless to say it’s been hard finding love - at least lasting or consistent ;-). I have attributed this occurrence to my ever “evolving” nature. Freud and his ways of rationalizing have been of much utility and practicality to me in the short run.

I had some very critical reviews about the previous post with V2 and Pankaya. It was somewhat critically acclaimed by V2, may be it has got to do with he knowing me.

For the record, a lady recently told me she doesn’t think “Pankaya” is a cute name much to my disappointment, as I have always thought that I had a way of been and doing things which are exclaimed to be cute with the fairer sex. It may come across a case of not knowing oneself. The un-cutely nomenclatured guy form Cambridge, was very critical of my trivial observations. Though, as with most of our conversations none of us laid down our guard until we digressed into some implicit mutual admiration to settle the matter. I always think of Pankya following the footsteps of Prof. Hawkins et-al.

Speaking of him and his absorbing theory of black holes which he recently and humbly dropped after three decades, left me wondering in humor about our acceptance of any theory or belief especially if it is proposed by someone “acceptable” to us and catches our fancy. But as with all theories of science, they are self correcting with time. There are things we may know and things we may not (at least in the near future). I feel it’s important to concentrate on things which we can know and my interest in knowing the fate of the human society and further of the Homo-sapiens is very much called for because

1. It’s possible that we can form a theory of human behavior through sociobiology as we may very soon possess the needs to do so. I am not sure about the same for the theory of black holes.
2. We are a society heading towards - well nowhere (I somehow don’t agree with and trust G.W. Bush’s idea on this issue). We are responsible for all this cause it is our disjoint thinking, that has lead us to this state and to say that its too difficult to think about the above mentioned scientifically is giving up on what ever we believe in (Sorry, but its about humans evolution than the American values, Mr. Bush). If it’s possible is another issue, but not trying is defeatist. Since man has taken upon playing “God”, we should not let the task be unfulfilled.
3. In trying to understand more about this I would be able to understand the world around me better, to use it for short term advantage. :)

Knowing is important but knowing what to know based on what can be known and of immediate importance is imperative.