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 :-)

Unchart(er)ed waters - a new hope?

I had written a strong letter to Standard Chartered Bank expressing, in no uncertain terms, what I felt about the way I was treated. I ended the missive with the words, "Don't expect a single paisa from me" or words to that effect. I am not privy to what effect those words had on whoever read that letter, but they seemed to have terminated all kinds of communication with me. Of course, the inevitable monthly statements informing me that my name has been added to the "industry-wide defaulters list" keeps coming to my mailbox. Should I say thanks or what?

I have no further reason to complain. Not yet, at any rate.

Childhood (thanks for the inspiration Ammani)

Rajan stood watching them play - he, the one who could not run about like them all. He, who didn't have to pay attention to what his teacher has saying in class because he didn't need to; he, who could have told you what the largest twin primes less than thousand were even when abruptly woken up. Such was his fate. He resigned himself to watching them. The unexpected happened.

One of the boys looked at Raman, and decided it would be to his own advantage if he were to persuade the others to let Raman join the game. He knew cricket was not a game that kids afflicted with polio could really play, but he thought he would try as well as not since he definitely needed Raman’s help in preparing for the rapidly-approaching exams. At any rate, he had nothing to lose.

He spoke to the captain of the other team. Since they were both good friends, they asked Raman if he was interested in joining them. His eyes lit up as he nodded. They told him he could only be the umpire. He agreed gleefully. After all, being part of their group, even as a non-player was much, much better than not being included at all.