As The Crow Flies

As I mentioned some time back, I started reading this book by Archer over the holidays. At the time I wondered if I would be able to finish the book before the holidays end. As luck would have it, the next day (and the only such day during the entire week) I was freed of my duties of supervising the workmen who held household captive for the rest of the vacation. It was a bright, sunny day - ideal to laze about. So I took a chair out in the sun, and sat down to read. And by late afternoon, I was through! I manage to surprise even myself at such times - I finished the 700 page novel in three days! (though that does not compare with my 'personal best' - I finished 'Godfather' overnight :-) )

As BTR and Leziblogger advised, and as expected from my past experience with Archer, it was an interesting read. Although the story was typical of Archer - a determined struggle by the protagonist(s) from rags to riches, strewn with a lot of drama - it manages to capture your imagination very successfully. You cannot but hate the villains of the piece for their evil doings, and sympathize with the protagnists. But there were a little too many coincidences in the way the characters cross each others' paths. And I could not find how did the story justified the title (or vice-versa, if you please).

There is nothing you would miss if you haven't read this one, especially if you have come across Jeffery Archer before. But if you have time to spare, you might as well enjoy it!

Lost in Transition ?

After a lot of deliberation, I finally decided to bite the bullet and switch to the new version of blogger. I am not a strong proponent of change, especially when the things are working fine as they are. But it seems likely to me that all the blogspot users will have to make a transition sooner or later, and this seemed a good time for me, since I have some leisure time at the moment. The major advantages I saw were the flexibility to label individual posts, and the drag-and-drop feature for editing template. The latter is a big boon to me as I am not very conversant with HTML. A not-so-major-one was, not to have to see that "publishing in progress" wheel everytime I tried to make a post. The minor ones were the ability to have private blogs, and the freedom from issues that keep rising when commenting to blogs that have already migrated.

The migration itself did not take much time or effort. The only frustrating thing that happened was the amount of time I was asked to wait while the blog was being migrated, only to be informed that it is going to take more time, and I shall be informed on my mail. So far, so good. I opened up the dashboard, and found the "new, improved" look (as advertised). It felt good, and I busied myself with labeling of my older posts.

Few minutes later, I noticed that the dashboard displayed a message "4 comments need to be moderated" on one of my blogs. (This sort of status is not displayed with the old blogger, and neither are the nummber of comments on each post). This puzzled me a lot, as as far as I remember, I have never allowed comment moderation for my blog. So, I spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out where were the comments that required moderation. When everything else failed, I enabled comment moderation on my blog, and posted comments to myself. Now, this is of no use, as the new version of blogger seems to be intelligent enough not to ask the blog author for moderation or word verification of comments (I am thankful for this one at least!). So, to try out, I had to log out from the blogger, and post a comment as anonymous. Since this logged me off my gmail, and I have opted to receive notification on gmail id, I had to log back in to see the notification. After spending a number of log-out-log-in cycles, I managed to find the comments that were required to be moderated - two of them were spam, and the other two, over a year old!

I disposed of these to-be-moderated comments as appropriate, and reverted the comment settings. In the midst of this, I noticed that some of the previous posts were no longer showing the authors' ids against the comments, but only "anonymous". I checked out a number of posts; and some of them showed the authors' ids, while some did not! However, as I delved into the problem, it seemed likely that the comment authors who are now shown as anonymous are the ones who have already switched to new (or beta) blogger. (Cuckoo, BTR, PM are the adventurers who fall in this category, I believe, while Adi, Thinker are the champions of the "old is gold"). Blogger FAQ yielded no help, and Blogger Help Group only confirmed that other people out there have faced the same problem. No solution seemed apparent, and therefore I am afraid a large percentage of the few readers on my blog have been condemned to anonymity forever (as it is not possible to go back to the old version now). Resigning myself to fate, I browsed through the help group to discover which problems I was lucky to avoid, and which ones I might still face. The one that looks most troublesome at this time is that people on new version of blogger are not able to comment on the blogs that are on the older version. Now all I can do is hope that this will get fixed soon.

I attempted to customize the template using the new mechanism, without making significant changes at this point; and I must agree with the creators that it is indeed quicker and easy to use. The only problem I am having here is the look of the footer - the site-meter I recently added is now displayed as a part of the footer rather than a separate element. I also like the facility of editing the posts, and customizing other settings from the blog page itself. I was disappointed to find that if I click on a post link, it no longer shows me the archives or the older posts on the right hand side. I hope that these problems will be sorted out soon, or at least I will become accustomed to the inconveniences that are minor [or remember, It's not a bug - it's a feature :-)]. In the meanwhile I will hope not to encounter any major issues

The Best Laid Plans (gone awry)

At my work place, we have a compulsory vacation in the Christmas week (which is deducted from our leaves, in case anyone gets a bit too jealous). So, I had thought good and long, of what I can do in this precious time.

There was some long overdue work to be done at home - woodwork etc. So, the first thing that was planned for this vacation was this work, as during work days, it is difficult to have the workers parading in and out of the home. Apart from this, I thought I would have a reasonable amount of time to indulge in my favorite hobbies - reading, painting, and of course, catch up on my blogging.

As expected, though not to this extent, the workers are coming or not coming, as per their own convenience; lording over as if they were the masters of the place. Hordes of dust and rubble have settled all over the place. And to top it all, the maid is absconding for the last 4 days. Perhaps she has decided to take a vacation as well - an unplanned one though. So, here I am, instead of sitting back and relaxing, spending my long-awaited vacation in cleaning up the mess, quite unsuccessfully at that. Anyone who has had some masonry or electrical work done at home, after moving in, can sympathize with me (although the task I have undertaken is rather small by that account).

A little net surfing is all I have managed to do so far. But that is also not without its hiccups. This morning I type a nice long comment at cuckoo's blog, and just as I was about to publish it, the electrician working in another room chose the very moment to disrupt the electrical connection of the whole flat. Poof! went my hard work!

An accomplishment of these holidays was making Gajar-Ka-Halwa. This was the first time I tried my hand at it, and I am proud to say it ended pretty well :-) Though what I have to show for 1.5 kgs of carrots, 2 litres of milk and almost 5 hours of burning the midnight oil (no, it was LPG, actually) is hardly 6 servings of the sweet.

I have started reading 'As the Crow Flies' by Jeffery Archer, which I borrowed from a colleague just before the vacation started. It is interesting, but I am hardly through with one-fifth of it. I am doubtful whether I can finish it by the end of the week, at this rate. And I still have Dan Brown's 'Digital Fortress' to read which I borrowed from another colleague.

The only painting that seems likely to get done is the one that will be done by the painters on some of the walls of the house. I think they start Day After Tomorrow. And I think I'll have just enough time to clean up after them before my vacation ends.

Thought for today ....

Kacche dhaagon se bandhe hue, woh din jaane kidhar gaye
Rishton ki Dori TooT gayee, Ashqon ke moti bikhar gaye

Just a thought

Zindagi ke sehra mein, tashna-lab har ruuh hai
Har kisi ko justajoo hai apne aab-e-hayaat ki !


In the desert that this world is, every soul is thirsty
Everyone seeks their own special nectar !

Risky Proposition

Every few days, we read about unfortunate accidents on the DND flyway due to carelessness of people - people driving too fast, or in the wrong lane. And everytime, it makes me wonder, why do they have to happen, and so very frequently ?

On Sunday, we were coming from Delhi to Noida, and had three scary experiences (too many for one ride, is it not ?)

On the entrance to the expressway from the Delhi side, the road forks off, the left side coming towards Noida, and the straight one goes off further into Delhi. We were taking a turn towards the expressway, and a DTC bus was going straight. Just as both the vehicles reached the dividing point, a big car (Sonata, I think) came up from behind, first turned slightly left towards us, and then zoomed forward to overtake the bus. It was highly unlikely that the driver could have seen the divider; he missed the divider, and hence the bus and our car just by sheer luck.

On the DND flyway, we went slow (at 60, compared to the most of the cars, which were going at 80 or 100), and at a point we were trailing behind an auto. Another car was driving at a reasonable speed to our right. All of a sudden, another big car (this one was a chevvy) suddenly appeared from behind, and overtook all the three from between the two cars. We were not even aware that this chevvy was coming from behind, and trying to overtake. It was only by a fraction of a second that it avoided hitting us at the corner.

After crossing the toll plaza, we saw a WagonR coming from Noida on the wrong side. Thankfully we were far away from this one.

On Monday morning, the headline of the newspaper reported of a freak accident - a car driven by a minor on the wrong side of the road had hit three cars before bursting into flames (the youngster escaped, thankfully).

There are so many questions, to which no one seems to have answer -
o Why do people indulge in such unsafe behavior, creating a risk for themselves and for others?
o Why do the owner of "big" cars behave as if they bought the road along with their cars ?
o Why do youngsters (mis)interpret the freedom of having a car to drive, as freedom to do anything they want ?
o Why do we not lear from our mistakes and from that of others ?

Down the memory lane - VI

The Physics Lab Mishap

Many of you who have studied physics in school in higher classes might remember performing the frequency measurement experiments. One of these was the one where we used to measure the frequency of a tuning fork. The tuning fork was striken against a rubber pad, due to which its prongs started vibrating. The fork was then placed on the resonance box, which was essentially a hollow wooden box, to calculate the resonant frequency.

In one lab class, our class was required to carry out this experiment. The teacher left the class for a few minutes, and with him vanished all the sincerity of the students (who tried to have fun while those precious few minutes lasted). One guy, G, came up to me and put his tuning fork over my head, and teased me – “See, the fork is resonating – your head is empty”. I got furious with him, and ran after him with my equipment. The teacher chose this particular moment to return to the class, and was greeted with this scene (must have looked hilarious to him – me, all of 5 feet, tuning fork in hand, chasing G who stood almost 6 feet tall). He asked me (poor, poor me – completely unaware that he was back) in all seriousness – “Didn’t you get a rubber pad, that you are trying to strike your tuning fork against G ?”

I think the whole classed rolled in laughter; I do not remember their reaction – I was so embarrassed that I wished I could just vanish beneath the ground. But now, it is one of those memories that do not fail to bring a smile on my face.

Down the memory lane - V

It's not a bug

Let me start off by a small clarification for the people who are not so conversant with the software programming terminology - a 'Bug' refers to an error in software code.

There is a certain expert in our field, whose mails/articles are widely followed in our company. In the signature of his e-mails, he used to include this quote (indicating the philosophy usually adopted by software companies) - "It's not a bug, it's a feature".

When I had just joined the company, and was relatively very young in my team, I used to play pranks on my TL (team-lead). One of my favorite ones was to take any insect, dead or alive, found in our seating area, to the TL and tell him - "Sir, see, I found a Bug!!" One day the TL happened to see a mouse running around (no-one still believes it can happen in a high-tech software office!), and called out to me - "You are so adept at catching bugs; go, catch this one". I promptly corrected him, in all seriousness, and a self-righteous manner - "It's not a bug, it's a Creature !"

The Cup and the Jug

For few days now, I have been reading a compilation of Jug Suraiya's articles, published under the title "Delhi Belly". Over the years, I have read a large number of his "middle" columns in the TOI, and read it more or less, regularly, even now. I had also happened to read a collection of his articles earlier (it was called "Juggling Act"). I usually like the humor and satire, and puns in his articles, and fairly liked "Juggling Act" as well. I admire his capability to laugh at himself - he frequently pokes fun at middle column writers, and himself in particular. This had prompted me to buy "Delhi Belly", when I saw it on the shelves of a bookstore I visited recently.
Delhi Belly is a collection of his older articles - written in late 80's and early 90's. Sorry to state that I was quite disappointed with it - really had to work hard to finish it. But there were certain things that quite struck me. The articles in this collection were written in a very verbose style - unnaturally long sentences, which are quite difficult to comprehend and heavily ornate words which did not make much sense (at least to me). An entire sectione is devoted to commentory on the political scene of the country at the time, where the names of the people are transformed (perhaps to escape charges of slander ?) - eg, Ajib Grandee, Weepy Singlet (mentioned as prime moderators) [no, I am not offering any prizes to guess the actual names of these personalities, but you can guess away if you want to :-)]. Then there are a couple of sections devoted to his stay and experiences in Lajpat Nagar and Vasant Kunj. The political section was a drudge for me, but I found interest in reading about his early days. Well, what I noticed was that his writing has become much more refined now (I find his current articles much more readable), and that now he narrates his experiences of his trips abroad :-) He does seem to have risen to social ladder. I think he was a mere Cup earlier, and now he has evolved into the Jug. (hehehe ... this sentence is just to demonstrate my miserable attempt at his kind of humor). :-D

Ghalib - open to interpretation

In the discussion on my previous post I mentioned about the series of interpretations going on for one of Ghalib's 'sher' (couplet). It might make an interesting read for those interested in poetry, how different people interpret a couple of lines. We will, of course, never know what Ghalib's original intention was; but, I hope our attempts do no make him turn in his grave :-)

This is where it started from :

Ya Rab, na woh samjhe hain, na samjhenge meri baat
de aaur dil unko jo na de mujhko zubaan aaur

KP had included this in his signature, along with this translation:

God, she has never understood me, and I know she will never understand. Please give hear a little more heart, she, who does not even give me an opportunity to speak a little more)

This is how AB saw it:

Neither beauty (implies beautiful folks here) cares for the world, nor aashiq (lovers) care for the world. We (beauty and aashiq) are the people who struggle in dust, and just do not care for the world.

AK had a different opinion:

AFAIK (as far as I know), Ghalib wrote this one for shayar (poet) like Zauq who always ridiculed him ...

AB offered yet another interpretation :

For interpreting Ghalib and shayari in general, one needs to know common/local slangs, etc. This is possibly true of all kinds of poetry.

(1) Zuban dena is typically used for giving committment.

(2) There is a way of scolding someone by saying "go ahead, repeat the same mistake". For example, you give 500/- to an electrician to get some material for home. The guy never returns and your wife retorts - aur de do paise bina kaam kavaye!

Interpretation with (1) and (2):

God! neither she understand me nor she understands what I say,
// And now shayar is kind of scolding himself by saying
go ahead, repeat the same mistake of falling in love with her who won't give committment of any sort!

This was what I ventured:

O lord, she does not, and never will, understand whatever I have to say. Please make her have a change of heart (so that she appreciates what I say), if you cannot make me change the things I speak (and feel).


Any more ideas, anyone ??