I met Dr.SP Balasubramaniam!

Yes, I really did. I was talking to my parents yesterday outside the departure terminal at Madras airport, when a familiar figure walked right in, wearing a maroon shirt. I was not entirely sure it was he, but I got a good look at his face when he turned to acknowledge the greeting of the security guard - evidently a fan too. Now, I was impatient to get in and see if I could overcome my natural timidity and speak to the great man.

I checked in, cleared the security check and waited anxiously in the departure lounge. Yes, I was actually worried that I would miss him. On hindsight, I realise that I needn't have been, since he would have had to cross where I was standing. But you know, hindsight is always a bad teacher - it gives you the comb after you've lost your hair ;-)

He walked past me, and after checking that his flight's boarding call had not been made, chose a quiet corner to read the magazine that he was carrying. I was debating with myself about the wisdom of disturbing his privacy when I saw a lady accompany her daughter and getting his autograph; out went all my "against" arguments! I walked up to him, greeted him with "Good morning, Mr.Balu Sir", and gushed forth my appreciation of his songs, and how I was a huge fan of his. I mentioned that I'd recently listened to the song "Mouname paarvayaal" from Anbe Sivam (I must thank her for this), and that I'd liked it immensely. He seemed pleased (he was smiling throughout my brief interaction with him), and mentioned, with a touch of regret I thought, that the song wasn't included in the movie, but that it was good. I couldn't but agree.

Then I told him that I was too thrilled to just meet him, and that it was my privilege to talk to him for as long as I did. He actually said, "I'm blessed"! When I tried to tell him that it was us, his fans, who were blessed to be enjoying his incomparable voice for such a long time, he stopped me short and said, "We're not larger than life. This kind of a thing [fame] happens to great musicians all the time. Your wishes mean a lot to me." I was touched.

By this time, a group of people had gathered near the area waiting for their turn, and I excused myself. As I was leaving, I wished him the very best. The great man he is, he asked me my name and thanked me again. I couldn't have asked for anything more to add to my treasure-chest of special memories.

It rained quite unexpectedly, but I enjoyed it

You know, it rained today, here at Pune. The October heat had been punishing in its intensity so far, and the respite given by the rain gods was quite welcome. Just as it began pouring, I went downstairs to unlock my bike and leave it out in the rain, so it could get washed. I got drenched in the process of course, but then, being with you for two years has not been a period devoid of learning.

I have learnt to appreciate the beauty of rains in this city - the intensity, the aftermath, everything. I have only heard you describe your love of the rain - how, contrary to a lot of others' feelings for it, you actually enjoy watching the downpour; how, instead of making you feel depressed by its gloominess, it actually enlivened you - so much so that once you went out with your niece and danced in the rain, but I can visualise your happy laughter. I am not similarly talented in the department of dancing, having, as I do, two left feet, but if I could, I would have because I actually celebrated the rain today - the first time in a long, long time.

For you, I hope that, wherever you are, you are blessed with a man who understands and cherishes you, and a warm home. Of course, having your home located in a beautiful area, with someone indulging you everyday with your morning cup of "chai", newspapers, furniture with upholstery matching the house's decor - these would be nice too. I hope you're really, really happy, and get everything you wish for, because you deserve nothing less than that.

Occasional, torrential rains shouldn't hurt either.

The silent penance continues

I suppose it's okay to make this post as long as I don't disclose names and identify individuals. With that, let me go on.

He is simply unable to get on with his life. Sure, he goes to work and doesn't skip his daily and week-end routine, but I can see that his heart is simply not in it, except when he plays badminton with me. Otherwise, his face has that look which is all too readable to anyone who cares to notice. To wit, he has become a zombie.

I've stopped trying to tell him that she has now gone beyond his reach - you can't inform a man who already knows; you don't need to tell a fish which is out of water that it's going to die - it knows instinctively, but it can't stop thrashing all the same.

I can see him suffering silently. Sometimes, he sets off on his new bike and vanishes for an hour, but when he comes back, it's evident that he has gone on his "pilgrimage" - a visit to the places they used to frequent, and also her last places of residence. I've never seen him cry, and but for the tear stains, I wouldn't have known he was even capable of crying.

Sometimes, I point out to him that his "pilgrimage" does not seem to be helping him at all; that it only seems to deepen his pain. But he doesn't seem to listen, or maybe he feels that his pain is atonement for the grave mistake he'd committed. To him, she was the one, and the memory of how he'd let her go after her heart-breaking entreaties was painful to him beyond words.

I try not to judge him. After all, who can say what's the right thing - right and wrong are extremely subjective even otherwise, and more so in these cases. Especially when a man who has never cried since he passed out of school sobs in front of you, you don't want to be caught judging because his remorse is genuine, even if in vain.

My First Web Community Service ;-)

Today, I made my first ever technical post on the web - something that's not a reply to someone's question. I know it's no big deal, that there are people who have contributed so very much, but hey, I've got to make a beginning, ain't I? As a matter of fact, it's yet to be "approved" by a moderator and published, but I'm confident it will be. If you see a How-to article for connecting to Google Talk from Ubuntu (Dapper Drake) in the Ubuntu Forums, then you know it's me ;-)

The post should be available at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1871266&highlight=gtalk+http+proxy#post1871266

North Indians and other people with attitudes

A friend of mine, a staunch hater or anything N.Indian, recently pointed me to this post. As I read it, and I couldn't but help agree with most of the observations. Now, let me clarify: I'm not a hater of "Northies", as they are commonly known, but I do have certain reservations about the way they portray themselves. I also readily acknowledge that these observations are highly eneralised, and not all N.Indians are guilty of them. In fact, I have a few N.Indians with whom I get along without any problems, or with as many problems as I have with other Indians.

That said, their attitude towards S.Indians is ire-raising, to say the least. What tops the list is their expectation, no, that's too weak a word, demand that every S.Indian be able to speak Hindi. You know, as if it's a mandate. Hindi may be a national language, but a lot of the S.Indian languages are official languages too. And if English was good enough to be the language in which the constitution was drafted, then I suppose it should be good enough for anybody else in this country.

Equally irritating is their ignorant assumption that all S.Indians are Madrasis, and S.Indian food = idli sambar. It's possible to simply ignore it as the joke of ignoramuses, but what gets my goat is their mocking tone. Even if we assume all S.Indians live on idli and sambar (which they do not), what's it about chappathi and dhaal that makes it inherently superior? Dietary habits have probably evolved as a result of geographical conditions, physical energy needs, tastes, etc., so I find nothing funny about Rajasthanis eating bajra or Andhra people favouring pickles.

What's pitiful about all this is even some of my colleagues indulge in this stupidity. Of course, I should have known better than to assume that education bestows uncommon sense when reality screams otherwise. For, it's the educated people who think it's a sign of cleverness if they travel without tickets - the uneducated simply are unaware; it's the educated who know that bribery is wrong and still justify it by claiming "everybody does it" - the uneducated simply don't think enough to make such justifications; it's the educated who show a scanty disregard for corporate parking spaces - the uneducated are generally not rich enough to own vehicles; it's the educated who travel far and wide and litter all those places with their plastics - the uneducated are mostly content in their home towns.

People, let's try and understand this much - we've been given an education not because it's a means to earn more money, but because it gives us an opportunity to widen our horizons. We're all one species, albeit with inevitable individual differences. Instead of allowing these differences to divide us, it behooves us to learn to tolerate them at least, and respect them if we can. And as thinking beings, let's learn to talk civilly about our differences, not berate one another.

Top 10 Sci-Fi Cliches

Here's a list of some of the most cliched concepts in Sci-fi movies - you know, those so-called "concepts" that make you sigh and wonder what on earth happened to good science fiction:
Part 1 and Part 2

Makes you go, "Hey, I've thought of that myself" - especially when you think of "Red Heat" and how Arnie's (and his girl friend's of course) eyeballs go all screwy when they get out of the all-encompassing enclosure.

Yahoo Mail Beta

For such a wonderful Web application, Yahoo Mail Beta could have done just that little bit more and made Opera users too realize what all those rave reviews are about. Instead, they have chosen to leave them in the lurch, and force them to use other browsers if they want to experience the polish of their beta.

Make no mistake - Yahoo Mail Beta really stretches the limits of what a web application can do. I hate to say this, but it even makes Gmail's interface look positively crude. They've almost made it look like one particular Microsoft application that we all know of. Maybe it's not so incidental then that they have shut out users of Opera - one of the rebel browsers that have overwhelmed IE in features and security.

A tube-station

One of the photographs that I'm very proud of has a blurred subject! Well, I hope the reason is obvious - even as the rest of the station is clearly captured, the train is a moving blur.

Cats!

I picked up my monthly copy of RD today a few days ago, and started reading it straight away. Found a nice, warm story about how a cat came to live with the author, and shortly thereafter, her parents. Her father was suffering from cancer, and was weakening day by day, but the cat gave him such joy that his last days were not filled only with pain, but also with happiness and laughter. Upon his passing away, the author's mother is still living with the cat and finds it an immensely effective way to cope with her husband's absence in her life, because she now has someone to care for and even talk to on a daily basis!

Animals are not dumb (as in stupid), they just don't talk the way we do. They do, however, talk in the universal language - that of the heart.

Music, Automated?

It looks like the day is not far when computers will, gasp, create music!

For now, they can only "generate" sounds that resemble music created by the greatest of Western composers. How long till they start encroaching on the hitherto unchallenged territories of homo sapiens, i.e., art and music?

How long till AI? And how long till "The Matrix"? Would one of us be reborn as Neo then?

A weekend of thrills

I went for a medium distance ride on a fine Saturday a couple of months ago, to a temple on the Bombay-Pune highway (not the expressway), about 50 km overall, on my all-new Bullet :-D New bikes require a run-in period when you have to closely follow the prescribed speed limits, and this is particularly true of the Bullet family, which boasts the best and most powerful bikes in India - a situation that's not likely to change soon. The ride was pleasant, made even better by the fantastic weather, though my prescribed top-speed was only 50kph.

The next day, I went for a trek organised by a group of trekking enthusiasts at office to Dhak Bhairi, which is - no points for guessing - another fort built by Shivaji in the hills. We had breakfast at around 9:45, and started the climb by around 10:15 in the morning. The group was pretty excited, with some of them never having done any treks earlier. Ten and a half hours later, we reached the base village, exhausted by the climb, the physical danger - we climbed a sheer rock ascent using ropes and our hands and feet, a height of nearly 80 ft (I think), then climbed back down the same stretch - thirst, and anger at the poor estimation of the time involved by the trek leaders. The descent down the hill seemed never-ending, thanks to our guides, in their all-knowing wisdom, having chosen a longer route coming down (longer by about 50%). At one point, I was ready to give up, as were so many others. However, it was a move or get-left-behind situation, the alternative to reaching the base village being a night on the hills, with absolutely no food, no water and only the moon for any lights. We all chose life, water and food and in that order :-) Our decision was helped in no small measure by a timely reminder by some wise guys that leopards were not uncommon in those areas. And that helped in hastening our faltering steps!

Without doubt, it was the toughest trek I'd ever done. It was also the closest to mortal peril that I've ever put myself, not to mention the Survivor-like situation we were in during the latter stages. But now that I've overcome the fear, I'd do it again, not because I wouldn't be afraid the next time, but because I now know I have it in me to come through successfully, with little or no danger to life and limbs.

A weekend of physical thrills! However, no gains without pains. My hands, shoulders, thighs and legs ached every time I got up after a period of sitting. I walked for a couple of days with a bit of difficulty, but it was a kind of delicious pain, if you know what I mean. Getting up from bed the next day was a struggle, and walking a few steps, even more, but I doubt if I'd ever exchange it for anything else! In a sense, I'm paying for pain in these "adventure" trips.

Stunned by a stranger

As he was coming out of the mall, he saw her. He did a double-take to confirm that his eyes had not deceived him. Before he could take a good second look, she had turned away and was now walking down the steps. Then, as is the wont of many women in that city, she took out a long piece of cloth from her bag and proceeded to cover her face from the nose down - a process, he sadly noted, that did not go well with his desire to make visual confirmation. Even as he was staring at her dumbly, she turned, looked at him, probably noted something terribly wrong with his open stare, and turned away quickly. He realised that he was doing something that was not only stupid, but could potentially earn him a slap from a total stranger. He collected his senses and began to walk rapidly towards her. As he neared her, however, a strange fear gripped him: what would he say to her? After all, he had done her a terrible injustice in the past. He thought to himself, "Maybe he could simply say, 'S?' and the rest of the conversation would follow spontaneously." Damn it, her gait appeared familiar, and so did her profile! Yet, he was so nervous that he simply walked past her instead of stopping to confirm his doubt.

He walked up to his bike, started it, and turned it once more in the direction he'd seen her walking. There, there she went! He quickly went past her again, and stopped a hundred feet in front so as to not appear to be a stalker, having made up his mind to talk to her, come what may. But just as she came beside the bike and he prepared himself to accost her, a truck went past, drowning out his voice. Damn! He started the bike again, noticed her talking to an autorickshaw driver, hoped that she would ride in it (so he would be able to follow discreetly), saw her resume her walking, and moved towards her. This time, he stopped directly in front of her, lifted the visor of his helmet up, and asked tentatively, "S?" "Sorry?", came the reply. "Are you S?" he asked again, in what later seemed to him a very stupid manner. "No," she said, her hand going toward the cloth that half-covered her face. He mumbled an apology, was now sure it was not her (the voice was a dead give-away, he could recognize it anywhere), and sped off on the bike. Maybe she thought he was a road-side Romeo looking for a blind date; no matter, he had made sure he didn't miss an opportunity to talk to S.

His thoughts then turned to S. How was she? Was she happy? Did she think of him at times as he did of her many times in a day? As was usual in recent times, he felt a lump in his throat, a tightening of the muscles near the temples, and the beginning of a throbbing sensation that he knew would eventually result in a headache. And subsequent feelings of guilt and shame.

The Silent Penance

Try as he might, he couldn't push the past out of his mind. The hours that had been spent with her, the places they had visited, the memories they had shared - these were not idle recollections that could be wished away. Yet, it was these that haunted him now: the corner of the city which they passed by frequently, the restaurant where he watched her eat baked food with such obvious relish, the roads in the parts of the city he had never visited before she pointed them out to him, there were too many of them for him to even attempt to forget. Not that he particularly wished to forget them either, for one did not forget things that have given one tremendous joy in the past, not even when they now give one great pain.

And then there were the evenings when they had fought - he trying to explain why it was important to go ahead with the consensus of both families and she trying to tell him that her time was running out quickly and inexorably. Sometimes, he was so stubborn and she used to break down. He used to hold her in his arms, helpless, unable to console her for he was the very cause of her pain.

Yet, he chose to gamble her away lightly when she said her folks were seriously asking her to meet with a guy who could be a prospective husband. He never did understand the gravity of the situation, believing, in the confines of his idealistic, impractical mind, that things would work out favourably for them. Not until much later did he realise that she had been dead serious, and that she had gone through tremendous pain because of his refusal to go ahead with it, refusal to believe that they could rebuild bridges with the people who mattered; that those people would come around eventually no matter how troubled they might be at first. But by then, things were irretrievably beyond his reach.

It was about two weeks past the date of her marriage. He was heart-broken and unable to forgive himself for losing the most precious person in his life; unable to forgive them either who threw every possible obstacle in his way and then some. He realised too late that there were certain things in life for which one must not wait for any approval; that it was his life after all to live; that no matter how much he tried to please his people, when there was a clash of interests, they would always stick to their guns and expect him to give in; that for all their claims about selflessness, they were selfish people who wanted to impose on him their ideas of his happiness, even when such ideas tore him apart violently.

She had only been in his life for two years, yet his grief was deep, the pain of her loss permanent. He could not explain even to himself why he missed her. Maybe it was because she had been able to bring out the warmth and liveliness in him; because her enthusiasm had been infectious and it had made him enthusiastic himself; because when he was with her, he had felt he was in the presence of a being that loved him for what he was; because she had demanded nothing of him at all, not even his time, being content instead whenever they had had the time to meet each other; because her eyes had lit up every time they had met; because she had accepted him in spite of his faults, his inexcusable and torturous vacillations; because things had seemed just right when he was with her.

He had never entered her previous places of residence (except on one occasion when she needed him to) but he rode past them. He had never consciously tried to remember the routes around the city that she had taught him, but he traversed them effortlessly. Maybe it was a kind of wordless pilgrimage, a penance he forced himself to perform, a pain he pushed himself to endure.

A Letter of Apology

Dear SP,

I owe you an apology: I had taken a decision which involved you without giving you, or myself for that matter, the consideration that was due. Would I that I could change my decision as easily as I had changed my mind! Now, however, things have reached a point where they are irreversible, and I know your word of honour is as unshakable as the strength of my decisions were fickle.

Apologies are merely words, sometimes backed my sincere emotions, that rarely have the power to undo things that were done in a moment of anger, thoughtlessness, grief. Then why do I write this? It is with the hope that you'll read these lines sometime in the future when the scars that I have caused you have either disappeared completely, or have at least ceased to give you any more pain.

You remarked more than once that I didn't have the guts to stand up for what I wanted. You also said that my "slow approach" would cost me something very valuable. You were right on both counts. I should have given them a chance to see how happy things would have been, and how easily they would have been able to cope with changes. I should have had more faith in myself and you. Now, when things have gone out of my hands, I realise the value of things that are no longer mine.

Sometimes, just sometimes, apologies can reopen doors, and people are given another chance to redeem themselves. I will remain hopeful that such a chance comes my way.

Love.

Anatomy of a scam

At times, I take things too seriously - as happened recently when I tried to sell my laptop. Within hours of my putting it for sale on ebay, somebody by the name Niraj Jain had purchased it, and I was thrilled. So far so good. What you wouldn't have expected me to do, however, is the little bit of sleuthing that I did last night, stretching into the wee hours of the morning.

I unearthed what would have been a perfect crime but for a tad bit of oversight - the e-mail ID from Western Union was not quite from Western Union (www.westernunion.com), but from Westernunion-paymentonlines.com. But for the disturbing nugget of doubt about this e-mail ID, I'd have taken their bait hook, line and sinker. On hindsight, it turned out to be a good thing that I had purchased some talk time on Skype - it helped me call up Western Union's customer care, and when I asked them to run this e-mail ID through their systems, they came up with zilch.

Yet another dead give-away was the telephone numbers. The buyer had given me a telephone number for contact, and so had "Western Union" in their e-mail, along with the name of a person in their "customer service department" - Russel Simmons. The remarkable thing was these numbers were more or less identical except for one or two digits. When I tried dialling the buyer's number through Skype, sure enough, the call couldn't go through. One of my UK friends was on-line, and I sought his help. He tried and reported that it was a private line - that is, the line itself was owned by the called party or something like that - and that it would cost a great deal of money to simply make a call to it.

There's more. Another e-mail, this one purporting to be from Swift Courier International, which informed me that though they have a demand draft for Rs.52,000 in place, it would be on hold until I gave them the airway bill number for the shipment of the laptop. "This would ensure that while your money is on its way, the buyer's laptop is on its way too, thus preventing any fraud". How ingenious, and totally credible! That part of the fraud came unravelled too when I called up the customer care department of the *original* Swift Courier International (yes, it does exist and is head-quartered in the UK - the same country where the buyer claimed he was currently staying), and they couldn't recognize the "reference number" that was given in the e-mail.

The icing on the cake (or the final nail in the coffin, whichever way you choose to look at it) was the domain name (westernunion-paymentonlines.com) itself - it was a "personal address" on MSN, whatever that means (see attached screenshot). The domain name for the Swift Courier's e-mail was msn.com too, and when I checked the headers of both e-mails, sure enough, Hotmail servers were involved!!

I shudder to think of the loss I'd have had to suffer had I not seen through things when I did. The whole scheme was incredibly well-organised and I doubt if someone less alert (and less knowledgeable about domain names, etc.) would have even seen doubted this till it was too late.

Just to make things clear, eBay is a wonderful place to buy and sell items, especially when you can't afford advertisements in your local newspaper. Unfortunately for us, the Niraj Jains of this world are far too cunning and prepared, and unless you stumble on to something like I did, the chances are you're likely to get swindled big time.

Moral of the story: eBay advises buyers and sellers to avoid on-line payment systems like Western Union, and I am beginning to see why. When scam artists (yes, they have made it a fine art) go to such great lengths to make the whole thing look so credible - even including a shipping address in Nigeria - it does make sense to use eBay's own payment mechanism, and / or on-line bank transfers.

And never, *ever*, ship out anything unless you've got the money safely in your hands. Unless, of course, you have so much of the stuff that you don't mind losing some. In that case, my phone number is .... and you can call me any time of the day or night to relieve your monetary burden :-)

P.S. Yet another moral of the story: If you're in India, want to talk often to your friends who are staying abroad, and don't want to go out of your home looking for a VoIP phone booth - and you wouldn't want to, I guarantee you, at 1:30 a.m. - get yourself some talk time on Skype. Take my word for it, it comes in handy.

Individual rights and the moral police

I was reading this article recently and was going through the reactions of the readers. I didn't exactly do a count, but it did strike me that people are about evenly divided between condemning the fine and accepting it.

The real question, it seems to me, is not whether kissing in public is to be allowed or not; the more pertinent question is, who decides what's decent in a public place? I would think that the decision about decency would be made by individuals, and not anyone claiming to be enforcers of the law. If you're in a public place with your partner, and there are no "impressionable" (in your judgment) young ones (or old ones, for that matter) around, then go right ahead and do your thing, as long as it is love that drives you to do so. Don't do it out of a feeling of defiance, to prove that you don't care what others think; to show your parents and others who controls your life.

The reason I even have to add the clause about impressionable young (or old) people around is that in India, kissing, holding hands, etc. are simply not acceptable to many people. I suppose there was a time when the same situation existed many decades ago in England and other countries in Europe. And I'm equally sure that the first couple to have kissed in public would have raised a lot of eyebrows. But now, the people over there have gotten to a point where such things are common, and may cause embarrassment only if there is an old person around. Especially one who is staring!

We're still a young country in the post-British era, and we're experimenting with societal changes now. Yes, it's going to be painful for some of us to accept certain things, and everyone is welcome to express his / her opinion for and against the topic, but in the absence of a consensus, penalising such public displays of affection seems not only crude and totalitarian, but also irrational.

Bangalore, the IT capital of India?

Note: I have since learned that the riots following Dr. Rajkumar's death were incited by politicians with the help of their cronies, and the actor's fans didn't, in reality, have anything to do with it. I apologise for the allegation.

I have regretted most of the time spent outside my office here in Bangalore. The roads are bad (this is worth repeating), the traffic is worse, and there is no public transportation system worth its name (the proposed Metro is going to be operational by 2008 at the earliest, though I feel that's being overly optimistic), and the city goes to sleep at 9 p.m.!!

The day before yesterday, the popular Kannada actor, "Dr." Rajkumar, passed away due to a cardiac failure that's not uncommon for someone of his age. Going by the way the people of this city reacted to it, you'd think that the Chief Minister of the State or the Prime Minister of the country was assassinated. There was violence on the streets (several vehicles were burnt), shopowners all over the city drew their shutters down at 4:30 p.m. fearing the rampaging mob, and bus services within the city ground to a halt. Why, every mode of transport coming into and going out of Bangalore (except the airways) stopped functioning. It was not until this morning that normalcy of life resumed.

My friend, who kindly provided me shelter for that night (since there was no way I could have reached my hotel amidst the riots) knew enough about the people to realize that the bus ticket that he had purchased for travelling back to his hometown would not be worth the paper it was printed on, and took the earliest flight out of the city yesterday, paying such a huge sum that I felt aghast! All because the pusillanimous Chief Minister and the city's finest couldn't come down hard on the rioters and tell them that their favourite star may have died but that's no reason for life in the city to come to a standstill!

IT capital of India? Puh-lease!

Bangalore - the city of traffic jams

I have been in Bangalore for the last three weeks on an official visit, and I can't help hoping this trip gets over quick! Not that Pune's roads are a motorist's dream - far from it. But the traffic jams in this city are much worse than Pune. I suspect, however, that it'd only be a matter of time before Pune catches up with this undesirable trend.

I had once been to Bangkok when my parents had been there and was told that sometimes, it took a couple of hours for the traffic snarls to clear up. Gosh! Thank God these cities are nowhere near that level, but it does get irritating to think that a two kilometre journey on an automobile from my place of stay to the office can take as much as fifteen minutes!

The Evil Empire Strikes Back

It's all over - the fight for a principle has lost out against the need for peace of mind; I've sold out to the devil who must now be grinning happily.

The guys at Stan Chart started calling me again, and this time, due to other circumstances, I was in no state to fight back. And I gave in to the temptation to buy my peace, exorbitant though the price may be (39k, to be precise). I couldn't, however, resist the temptation to make the collection agent feel guilty - I thanked him profusely, making sure that my dripping sarcasm wasn't missed.

Heck, now that I'm writing about it, I still feel the pangs of losing so much money :-(

Felt good

After a long, long time, I spoke to a friend who has come down to India for a visit from the US. She’s lugging her little boy along with her too. The only sad part is we probably won’t be able to meet when she’s here. That’ll have to wait for a future date I guess…

Memory Malfunction

Of late, I've been struggling to remember details of conversations that I've had with friends - what they have been up to, names of some of their friends, what new job have they moved into, and such. Seems pretty commonplace, until you happen to know that I have been saying this for more than three summers now.

What's wrong with the old bean, you start wondering, when things start getting worse and friends accuse you of being careless and even casual about the attention you pay to them.

If you do know, drop me a line :-)