Breakup

The current news is so disturbing. Looks like no continent has been spared from the financial gloom either. Europe continues battling over the EU, exit and bailouts of Greece leading to abysmal numbers for the Euro, the US is all gloomy forecasting another recession due to the expiry of the Bush tax cuts, impending trillion (how many zeros again?) deficit and a not-so-great job growth rate and India battles its own demons everyday. Politics restricts itself to mostly the entertainment section nowadays with Silsilas in the Rajya Sabha, discussion on Rekha’s sarees in regular news and a sad celebration of the government’s reign in power. I remember governments tumbling within months and I continue to ponder how this alliance continues to hold its own. What really saddens me is that this is the best India has to offer currently.

What is worse is the horrific inflation rates. Growing up, dinner table conversations using to lovingly recollect how ‘annas’ were still worth a lot, a rupee could buy you a week’s groceries or more or how a scooter costed 100 bucks and was a reason for envy. That was wonderment in the 1990′s and the early 2000′s where a hundred rupee bill was considered so precious and hidden in the deepest pockets of school bags and a rupee coin was worth half a bus-ticket. With the increase in petrol prices to 80 rupees a litre today, I realized I can no longer gauge how expensive or cheap a commodity is. Something like the weather, I can feel celcius but farenheit still needs some basic math in my head to translate into something I can comprehend. Years ago, when onions costed 55 Rupees a kg temporarily and were paraded around instead of jewellery, people thought the worst had come. Today a trip to the vegetable store burns a sizeable hole in the pocket, not to mention groceries. Amidst all this, the state of the poor is just so saddening. My mol told me about my maid who doesn’t get to eat everyday since the cost of one meal for her family is now Rs.100.You never know where hundreds go, a eight hundred rupee outfit now is considered ‘cheap’, coconuts cost 30 bucks and a murugan idli dinner for three runs into the hundreds. I feel I’ve lost my yardstick to measure cost. I don’t know if a hundred rupees worth something is now normal or still pricy. How much money do you need to carry around to not run out of cash midway? Is a saree that runs into lakhs something only the uber-rich and crazy people buy or is it now a price people have to pay for it being a part of the wedding trousseau?

Lastly, with the rupee falling to a dollar as well (the bad news doesn’t stop, does it?) I calculated that the cost of living is actually lower here. I live on a student budget too. I can estimate the cost of items easier with dollar since conversion to rupees gives scary numbers (and 0′s I cannot keep track of). I think we’ve come to the phase where we can recount our childhood and amaze the next generation with the low numbers. Does that make me old? or the governance bad? I’m inclined to go with the latter.
Rupee – I breakup with you. It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.

Girl-Talk: Exes

I recently read a fabulous blog which concludes in this absolutely true statement.

A man is the sum of his ex-girlfriends.

 

I so agree. She then talks about (yes, it has to be a girl’s blog right?) how you actually do good karma when you “train” a man well.  I firmly believe a relationship changes both parties involved. While thousands of wife jokes do the rounds with marriage being described as end of happy times, I think the happy times end for the girl as well. You are suddenly thrust into this scenario where you have most of the responsibility ( oh yea now male chauvinists can flare up) and a late-twenty to early-thirty year old to take care of. Bah. Wait, I’m digressing from the topic. 

Exes are always a touchy topic. I call them the ‘X-files’. I never know what is the best way to deal with it or if one should open those files at all. I know of a friend’s older sibling who got married recently and being the extreme shy and docile girl she is, never inquired about her suitor’s past. It is funny how one can just block out the past years of your existence and start fresh. I always want to know because I firmly believe in that one line about you being a sum of your exes. I agree it is uncomfortable- almost like excavating all the past memories,the past happiness, joys everything. But I’d rather be with a man who has an X-file much rather than not. Because the most important thing a relationship teaches you is compromise and I am not ready to teach someone that.

I’ve learnt a lot about relationships from my past. I have transitioned slowly from a doormat to someone who knows what she can now live with. When I look back at my college self, I wonder how naive I could be.

So girls, I think it is a good thing to have a past. Because, in reality most of us don’t end up with our first crushes/loves. If your guy has a past too, stop fretting about it and learn from it. It is loads better than being with someone who has none!

Disclaimer: My opinions only. Also, mostly meant for girls.

PS: Reason for posts on consecutive days is a bad cold and cough.

College crackdowns

This led me to reminisce about my days back in college. Our campus was a new one and hence was more like an open slate for us to write upon. We were the second batch and far more explosive than our seniors in terms of raking up controversies, fights and DISCO’s. But this was a phase that I witnessed from 2005-2009 in BPGC as well. All these crackdowns on students in IIT-M becomes national headlines (or atleast regional) whereas we fought our own battles in relative obscurity. Being an established campus has its merits and demerits. Availability of resources is one huge plus but the long list of student traditions sometimes becomes an uphill task to change.
I spent quite sometime in IITM campus as well and the only things that struck me was the freedom they had to roam hostels, their huge labs and their swimming pool (sigh!). Our playground was still swaying between a cricket field and a football field. The badminton court floors were still mosaic (which almost broke my ankle in the second semester) and our shopping complex was mostly barren. Internet was almost non-existent and everything was still sparkly clean or being constructed. Then, we had an incident with a dog and a transformer and boom, our basic electrical supply was non-existent too. We struggled for water and electricity and our demand for decent internet supply was still on-going when I left. Last I recall, we had some sort of shifts to give internet to hostels. Ha!
Now, now I dont need updates on how everything is set, running to perfection and amply supplied to everyone on campus. Our miseries had bonded us like nothing else could. The fun we had standing in lines for the water tanker or the hollering when lights went out in hostels is more memorable than any of the normal days we had. Our mess food was bad, but there was collective joy in criticizing it. No streetlamps paved way for “lovers-lane” or “the boulevard of broken dreams”. When professors decided similar crackdowns on the couples of campus, it was more of sympathy we shared (and of course reams of gossip) for those poor folks caught in the act. DC++ changed the face of student-life. Activity outside rooms was minimal and far more fun. ( I had the best time on DC mainchats!). I made quite a large group of friends too who otherwise would have remained unknown owing to CS and AOE and dota and other things that I was miserable at. Academics was never discussed and no discrimination was ever made based on cgpa. In short, we did not have freedom or the world class amenities, but we were a group of people who lived together in that picturesque, expensive campus and had more fun than many other established ones.
You might ask me what the purpose of this post was.I strongly believe that student interaction or quality of life cannot be hampered by crackdowns or restrictions. If anything, it’ll being them closer as a unified group. Of course the IIT campus is much larger with a much higher enrollment, but I know people are smart enough to find ways to do whatever they want. Ask anyone from BPGC who stayed on campus from 2004-2009. I bet you wont hear a single complaint now!

Disclaimer: This post has no references to a direct comparison of campuses be it Pilani campus or IIT-M. I just am making a point using examples from my experiences.
Also, the smartness of people involved is not being compared at all. I am aware everyone is almost equal in the IQ department. I’m sure everyone’s college life is fun and unique in their own way.

Ps: Damn,I miss campus like crazy now.

Shreds of privacy

Hot on the facebook acquisition of Instagram a brand new question arose all over. How much do you trust facebook? Or for that matter anyone. Skepticism today is through the roof given the access everyone has to everything of everyone. Too many every-s? Precisely my point. I have earlier ranted in detail about how facebook is not exactly the safest place to share personal data. I quit for a year and revived my facebook account. I shall write in detail of why I did what I did. It was not just going back on my words but I was forced to return to publicize an event. I decided to stay anyway. That is a part of another post I shall soon write.
Today, almost every service has an option to login using facebook. People use it anyway (me too for arbit sites) since it is easier than creating a user name and password that is unique. People like me live on the computer and the internet more specifically. Instagram was a smaller community (too bad I signed up for it just last Friday). The users were far smaller than facebook. With facebook taking over, loads of people reportedly deleted their content on instagram. They are suspicious of facebook motives. Of being bombarded with headphone ads because they took a picture of fancy headphones or of some beach vacation deal because of their last picture. Facebook is not alone. Google recently changed its policies and added terms that could track your usage. Now the most frequented sites of mine are google-based. Email, search, reader, youtube everything. Sometimes it might feel like they are reading your mind but when I keep seeing new vacation deals flashing on my screen because I bought flight tickets just yesterday, it makes me mad. Its like the internet version of the telemarketer who you cannot disconnect.
Facebook is turning into the glam version of orkut. People stay on it to track other people. Everyone does it. My new favorite is to frequent gag sites and laugh at those silly comics and memes. (Reddit still rules btw). Privacy is all but non-existent. We can check-in wherever we go, tweet our surroundings and let the world know what we are upto. It seems like a strange obsession. Even I am not immune to it. I wonder why I do it sometimes. Maybe because we get so lured by the happenings in others lives we are compelled to say something about ourselves in order to remain alive in the grand scheme of things? Facebook has turned into this giant which has pages for every company, every brand, every group and practically everything around us. Its almost if our online lives are the main things now and the real stuff we do are just time-fillers.
I fear one day virtual reality would be more dominating than the real world. If on one side technology is so fascinating, with the ability to talk to family and friends, to watch movies anytime anywhere, search for anything anytime, discuss something across timezones and continents,it gets creepy when someone is also watching you do everything. The only solution then remains to switch off your computer and step out and be there for just the people surrounding you. No updates, no tweets, no whatsapps, no photo sharing. Maybe I’ll go read a book and then out of habit read the other versions on fanfiction.net. There, I just told you all my plan.
Clearly, there is no escape.
For further reading:
1. Wall Street Journal on Selling you on Facebook
2. Computer Business Review on how cool is Instagram acquisition?

PS: I watched 3. Yes, the movie with the Kolaveri song. Not bad for a debutante director. Performances are nice. Story is extremely crappy n predictable. Dhanush is slowly turning into the mental-illness educator for the tamil audience. Shruti Hassan cries all through. Kolaveri picturization is horrendous. Good thing everyone forgot about the movie!

I’m all excited..woof !

I know bloggers, I havent blogged too much in the past. I have been one busy person the last few years. A ton of change happened around me and I was too busy trying to explain to my folks that it was normal and teaching them life lessons. Boy! they are slowww learners. So I moved into my own two-storey home in the center of this bustling city called Chennai. I grew up in beautiful colonies filled with so many brown-tailed pretty girls and a lot of my friends who like me, moved to different places. Let me give a quick recap before I can start harping about my current excitement.

I dont like chennai all that much. I was born here but mostly grew up in front of the air conditioner. Hence I liked that roti-eating, mountainous cold place called…doon. I had an excellent staff who looked after my every need, enormous space to run and dig, ( I dont know why no one gives me any credit for that excellent garden I helped them make ) and some fans. I really liked the cold weather where I had my bed next to the heater and my staff would put on socks and jackets for my walks. Ah, whatte life. Chennai so far, has been pretty drab in comparison.

Its hot. Really really hot. I make mom and dad turn on the AC for me from 10 am and turn it off only when it rains. It rains pretty hard too. Dad explains that the sea is nearby and we get something called a cyclone which came as recent as last week and I dont like them at all either. Thankfully, dad’s blanket is good enough to cut off the sound and mom got some fabulous curtains so I don’t see any lightning. But coming back to Chennai, its dirty. Extremely dirty. I have to cross tons of human shit and other kinds of shit, not to mention carve my space in this rowdy city full of gangs that hide under rickshaws and parked vans. I hate them. I like a couple of guys living in the next lane but they are always angry and irritated and really big. My parents call them German Shepherds. Big annoying fellas. Don’t go near one if you spot one. There are a couple of cats that live next door. I dont mind them at all, but they are always meowing in my presence and mistake my calls for threats. Sigh, if only they understood.

I am very loved in my apartment. I maintain a small garden in the patio and lounge there when its not too hot.I found some really tasty food too. I really like McRenett’s milk bread, nilgiris’ paneer and Grand Sweets’ mixture. I can tell when Mom or Dad shop there. Its for me only mostly. Every week. I miss my Chotu and Chimmy though. Chimmy was a visitor since I was a kid but Chotu has gone off somewhere lately. I miss her a lot. I keep hearing a voice that sounds like her every sunday on one black machine that my dad or mom turns on, but I don’t know where she went. She misses me too, I know. We never spent a moment away from each other until two years ago. She left with Dad and these two big boxes and I thought she’ll be back in sometime but she never showed up for a year! Her last trip was fantastic. I showed her around and she met my friends. She left crying so hard, I couldnt even go and see her off at the door. Ah, sad times.

But hey, dad tells me she is coming. And mom too. I have to show mom the things I discovered under the sofa which the stupid maids never clean. I have missed her and her fruit bowl so much for the past half-year. Chotu is coming! That makes me doubly excited. I can’t wait to race with her to the terrace or show her how my efficiency at chasing crows has astronomically increased. I wish I could go visit her but everyone tells me the journey is terrible. My family will of course not put me through anything worse than a yearly injection. But its nice with mom and dad. Chotu and Chimmy know some of my secret tricks but mom and dad dont. Hence I keep myself entertained.

So folks, Happy New Year. What a start I’m gonna have. First Chotu and then Chimmy. Mom and Dad at home. There is nothing else I could ask for.

Loads of Love,

Whisky

Girl Talk: Sorrows and Joys

Sometimes, things just seem so perfect. Like when the only vegetable you have left is brussles sprouts and wonder what one can make of it and your favourite cookbook author posts a recipe using the very same vegetable. Aha, I like it. Anyway rantings apart, I recently read something about keeping your sorrows close and your joys closer and realized this was my biggest lesson of 2011(and of another blogger who I love). I feel this is a talisman that one needs to remember to survive. (This brief is for people who read just the first paragraph – so you can skip reading the rest )

The world is at its competitive best now. We are just fighting to gain that extra ounce of information or as Devdutta Pattanaik puts it – Sanatan. Because we didnt drink the elixir of contenment, we are always searching for something. Like that extra mile we want to go because someone has already been there, or that toy we want because our friend has it. Children provide the most blatant display of competitiveness and as adults we learn to mask it under the pretext of politeness, concern and nowadays just the word friendship. It is easier now than ever to look up a person and get all possible information without being in contact for 20 years or even being in contact now. It is easy to make friends, to upkeep friendships ( a hi on gtalk is so much easier compared to writing a letter, given the large-assed sloths we have been converted to).It is easier to access information about any and everything. All this media access has given us an all-encompassing ego where we pick our best photographs for the world to see, create online personalities, fake hobbies and do everything for an unknown reason. And most importantly has blurred the true meaning of friendship. We bare our hearts to these very people, since they are the support that we never get from a family but with statistics that show you are friends with the population of entire towns, you tend to wonder who is true and who isnt. Are people truly happy to hear you out? Are they smirking with inexplicable glee when you are feeling depressed. Do they secretly want you to fail so that they feel better themselves?

For women, talking is a cathartic process. I feel better when I’ve told someone what exactly is bothering me be it academically or personally. Its feels good to just share it with someone, giving it more reality and helps me cope with it when I acknowledge in e-ink or ink that the situation is real. But I wonder sometimes how much of it percolates as genuine concern and how much is just a part of everyone doing a silent jig at someone’s misfortune. I learnt multiple lessons all through, paid huge prices for my honesty but didnt seem to care because I always had a clear mind of having spoken the truth and being myself with everyone around. The same reason I kept close to a small set of people I was convinced are the true ones . But I realize time has come to change. This attitude is more harmful to me than anyone else and I’ve reformed now, to the ways of the world. I made a clear distinction of the ones who are rare and true and the countless others who are just names with a green bullet next to them.

Do not mistake me for being depressed or sad. I am infact the happiest I’ve been. (Ah, some happiness levels obviously sliding down). But this was an important lesson for me. In that sense, a very very important year as well.

New year beckons

Its that time of the year already. Busy or not, every passing year does make jaws drop. Another year! Already? 2012 is already here; the year Mayans told would be the last; the year that seemed so far away into the future. We are already well into the second decade of the 00′s and boy Ive started to realize how time has flown. I see birthdates of 1996 on facebook and people are getting hitched. People I know, I played with are suddenly married. Of course the next year will see many more but the new year isnt as comfortable as it once was. That awesome feeling of just updating the correct dates everyday in school or the party that would ring it in, the prize distribution ceremonies or the next summer vacation does not count much thesedays. But hey, whats a new year without a fresh start. Stale as my research might be there was a lot of things I learnt this year tangentially related to my work. How to oraganize, plan, think, report in a neat, impressive manner and importantly inculcate self-discipline in all spheres of life. Sounds like too much gyaan no? It is. It was a year not too spectacular in any way save the fact that this marks the first year i never set foot on Indian soil. Sad, but true. But I’m starting 2012 with a bang! India trip and whisky. hmmmmm…can i hear sniffles already?
Have fun folks and a very very happening 2012. ( In a good way of course)

End of an era

Today was a special day. A day so special I celebrated it in the ultimate way possible – by doing nothing but reading mindless posts on reddit. Ask me why. It marks an end of my graduate life as a student. No no Im not graduating yet, but now have turned into a full time researcher. To cut the story short, I’m done with classes !!!

It feels weird to think classes are done. From our earliest memories, a major chunk of our life has been in a classroom. Kindergarten, oh wait pre-school, school that lasts a good twelve fantastic years save for the last four, college and for me graduate school. It’s been twenty one years of classroom style education. It has it’s pros and cons but that remains an integral part of our lives so far. From the bench scribblers to the back bench rowdys or the front bench nerds, a class defined people and tagged them for life. To think that I won’t be sitting in a class , waiting for it to end by scanning my watch and wondering if a second was actually this slow, to mugging for exams and pulling all nighters over old papers and cheat sheets feels a little bad. But hey, I couldn’t actually wait for them to get over this time because frankly, I cannot be twenty four and still do homework!!!

That brings me to another milestone. The yet-another-birthday-ruined-by-exam-saga has finally ended.
Exams, ruining my birthdays since 1990. Adios.

End of an era

Today was a special day. A day so special I celebrated it in the ultimate way possible – by doing nothing but reading mindless posts on reddit. Ask me why. It marks an end of my graduate life as a student. No no Im not graduating yet, but now have turned into a full time researcher. To cut the story short, I’m done with classes !!!

It feels weird to think classes are done. From our earliest memories, a major chunk of our life has been in a classroom. Kindergarten, oh wait pre-school, school that lasts a good twelve fantastic years save for the last four, college and for me graduate school. It’s been twenty one years of classroom style education. It has it’s pros and cons but that remains an integral part of our lives so far. From the bench scribbling to the back bench rowdys or the front bench nerds, a class defined people and tagged them for life. To think that I won’t be sitting in a class , waiting for it to end by scanning my watch and wondering if a second was actually this slow, to mugging for exams and pulling all nighters over old papers and cheat sheets feels a little bad. But hey, I couldn’t actually wait for them to get over this time because frankly, I cannot be twenty four and still do homework!!!

That brings me to another milestone. The yet-another-birthday-ruined-by-exam-saga has finally ended.
Exams, ruining my birthdays since 1990. Adios.

Reason to Celebrate

Don’t we all just need one? Be it a lunar occurrence every 365 days or the happy harvest of a successful crop, we all just need an excuse. A reason to indulge in what we have been planning for,waiting for. In school, end-of-exams meant a visit to the ice cream shop (Creamy inn anyone?) or a family meal in the restaurant of choice or a book if it was the finals. In college the reasons begin to blur to the point one often does not remember why we all were in a shack with so much booze around. Jokes apart, end of exams (of course), birthdays (more bashing and smearing than eating as far as my memory goes), successful water supply for a month, “Hey! no power cuts this week”, “Duuude! a whole new consignment of Appy just came to the shop!” form the less conventional ones but are definitely worth celebrating.
Only once I grew up and learnt economics and understood marketing did the fizz run out. But now, I look no further than everyday happy things. My code worked! (wait a minute, thats not everyday and not small but still..), puppy licks, perfect dal or rasam, free icecream, good data, clouds, rains, snowfalls, the new hand-paddles, the awesome lap timing – all these are reasons to celebrate. They make you feel so much more alive and cherish the days without feeling that times just whizzed past leaving nothing but faint memories.
All this philosophy apart, Thanksgiving is a proper reason to celebrate. For the day after that ofcourse! (and the 5 day weekend!)