I see faith in your eyes
Never you hear the discouraging lies
I hear faith in your cries
Broken is the promise, betrayal
The healing hand held back by the deepened nail

Follow the God that failed.......

lyrics from METALLICA's landmark Black album .The song was inspired by the death of James Hetfield's (the lead singer) mother from cancer; she was a member of the Church of Christ,Scientist and therefore refused treatment.It speaks of his anguish in seeing his mother die without seeking medical help of any kind and it brings out very poignantly the eternal battle between religion and science.Though I do not approve of this particular branch of Christianity,I am a believer.....of Hindu philosophies.'belief' is more of a word which I use out of force of habit,my 'belief' is more of a logical conclusion and my religious beliefs do not conflict with my scientific knowledge.I know I should really do a detailed post about all of this...but my mind is totally numbed by a whole day of Perl programming and SQL querying.The reason I have been thinking about this is that in the space of 2 days I have had two people tell me that they would rather agree to disagree with me than have me speak on length about religion/spirituality.It so happens that most of my closest friends are atheists or agnostic.There is Sam,Deb,my roommate(though he wouldn't admit it),Ankita and of course K. Nikhil if you are reading this....I have never asked you dude...what beliefs do you have?and yes let me make it clear that I am perfectly at ease with what people believe and what they do not.I am not out to convert people to my school of thought.But it sometimes makes me think,why is 'belief' as in religion always equated with 'illogical' thinking and 'stupidity'?

Right now I am thinking about a lot of things at the same time...like how Metallica lyrics so damn always nail the point that they are trying to make,how my life is so freaking turbulent right now, how this sem god has kept me occupied to the hilt,how Bangalore is such a strange place that I can feel neither disgust nor love for it....

P.S:I am a big-big sucker for music lyrics ok?this is the only form of poetry I enjoy.peace.

The post he did for someone else.

Asterix-modernism-Darjeeling-Tsangu lake-morning three roses tea-77E-60's earrings-Sophie's choice?-Steinbeck-Makkalakoota-1st year fest-agony-depression-zany haircuts-the wasted 3.5 years of engineering-emails-post-modernism-suduko-regret-Kannada kali-Zidane-margaritas-milk-Karl Marx's beard-French-ESI bus stop-Queen's-42/8-Chord road walks-Yahoo messenger-Hari Sarvottama-To kill a mockingbird-can I be anonymous?-rose garden road(Nanda road)-accidents-cappuccino-stalker bitches/fatsos-black-Alphonso mangoes-old Hindi songs-Grey's anatomy-Goa-Southpark-agnosticism-Vedanta-giving up on 1st kriya-by the window-'don't send me forwards'-somewhere between two layouts-Midnight's children. and whatever happens...........that sums up about everything.

Visual DNA

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There is this incredible radio station on Yahoo Launchcast...a new one called Guitar Gods and words are not enough to describe its brilliance... Metallica,Sabbath,Satriani,Aerosmith,Deep Purple,Van Halen one after the other ...mesmeric.The sad thing about Yahoo Radio is that it does not run in Firefox..only IE.I read The Catcher in The Rye in the hols and was not too impressed.it is a nice book,the New-York lingo of the '50s is really appealing and I really liked Holden's idea of 'phoniness'...and how inadvertently he himself morphs into one...but was not ground-breaking in any way I thought.Guess I have a weakness for longer works of literature...small works don't leave much of an impression on me for some reason...


missing hostel and the ensuing hullabaloo and really miss laughing my guts out...haven't done that for quite a looooong time.feel like racking my head on a really hard quiz or a crossword.college is going to end in about 3 months...and it is ending in a very chaotic and hateful way....like a downward spiral ....anti-nostalgic with a bitter after-taste...and strangely I feel like a spectator in my own life...and don't feel sad about this...watching it unfold almost like a book.

My blog is not heading in any well defined direction...ends up being a rant post after post,so from now I vow to stick by coherence and humor....cross my heart etc

Jaded

The world has changed.My world....and can no longer claim the immunity of an innocuous whippersnapper.........and feel depressed.'bcoz of the chicken pox---the bland diet to be followed---the inseparable boredom--the lack of meaningful conversations----and not being good enough for anything...for quizzing ,for love, for acads....life should only be uphill from here...surely

In other news.....

From the last 72 hours I have been eating and sleeping non-stop...12 hours of sleep almost everyday followed by eating...and having those amazing hot-showers for long periods of time(tired of the bucket-and-mug routine in the hostel) ah! time stands still in the steam and the serenity of the hot shower...have been planning to do a lot of stuff but end up doing nothing....TV is surprisingly boring with both Zee Cafe and Star World having become pretty much lifeless...I pick up the TV listings everyday to scout of interesting stuff but end up finding some obscure movie or the Nth re-run of Friends....I am sick of it.....except Roadies-4 on MTv which I think is a pretty cool show....gets to show that its not only ability but also politics which is the key to success on these reality shows....have been reading Crime&Punishment and I must say that its seeming to be a major force as far as my reading experiences are concerned.......I would reserve my opinions about it as I have not read it whole but I would recommend it to one and all...

The thing I like about Jam is that its not really a town in which I grew up(as my folks moved here after I joined engineering and was away from home) and it allows me to take an outsider's perspective when it comes to weighing its pros and cons over Ranchi...Its a fabulous city...neat..well planned and so so peaceful......tree-lined broad avenues and the house that we have here is just absolutely amazing!My room overlooks the garden at the back of my house and for all the complaining that my mom does about my lack of interest in the natural world...its just great waking up and looking at the lush green grass and the trees and the birds!!whereas Ranchi is the city of memories...of childhood..of the innumerable special things...there can't be any comparison really.Ranchi wins hands down...notwithstanding the beauty of Jam.

**have been fiddling with the digi-cam at home and though I am not much of a foodie....couldn't resist taking this: PIC OF THE PICKLES

Hols!

Exams almost over save for a stupid Constitution of India paper and I can already smell the food at home and the silent,tree-lined avenues of Jam enticing me into taking a long, solitary, peaceful walk to places I am yet to explore...maybe an early morning walk upto The River's Meet and down the Marine drive.....I look forward to catching up on reading,TV(Austrailan Open here I come!) and probably tennis and swimming....lazing around in the afternoon sun in the garden...and meeting up with old friends........after a month long ordeal ....I hope to make the most if the 19 day respite that I have been given... happy hols to all!

2007

2007...already!! the last six months of college life stares at me and I feel so old!I will graduate in six months...the thought gives me a strange kind of chill down the back....I just got outta school and now I am almost...expected to be responsible and behave as an adult .... 2007 was always somewhere out in the distance...somewhere in grown-up time...the millennium just seems a short while ago...its not as if time flew by or something...but its just that as a kid 10 years back seems all hazy and you hardly remember anything ....but now 10 years back or 7 years back is so clear in the memory....4 years in Bangalore...its not a long time...its an era! and I have an eerie feeling I have not done anything worthwhile all these years...allow me to go out there and get a life..........

meanwhile why is it that Aerosmith have this uncanny ability to mirror just what you are thinking?...... leaving you a sample(lyrics) of one my favorite Aerosmith tracks,Hole in my soul:


I'm down a one way street
With a one night stand
With a one track mind
Out in no mans land
(the punishment sometimes don't seem to fit the crime)

Yeah there's a hole in my soul
But one thing Ive learned
For every love letter written
There is another one burned
(so tell me how its gonna be this time)

Is it over
Is it over
Is it over
cause I'm blowing out the flame

Take a walk outside your mind
Tell me how it feels to be
The one who turns the knife inside of me
Take a look and you will find there is nothing there girl
Yeah I swear, I'm telling you girl yeah cause
There is a hole in my soul that's been killing me forever
Its a place where a garden never grows
There's a hole in my soul, yeah I should have known better
cause your loves like a thorn without a rose

I'm as dry as a seven year drought
I got dust for tears
Yeah I'm all tapped out
(sometimes I feel broken and cant get fixed)

I know there's been all kinds of shoes underneath your bed
Now I sleep with my boots on but you are still in my head
(and something tells me this time I'm down to my last licks)
cause if its over
Then its over
And its driving me insane

Is it over
Yeah its over
And I'm blowing out the flame

Take a walk outside your mind
Tell me how it feels to be
The one who turns the knife inside of me
Take a look and you will find
There is nothing there girl, yeah, I swear
I'm telling you girl yeah cause there is a hole in my soul
That's been killing me forever
Its a place where a garden never grows there is a hole in my soul,
Yeah I should have known better
cause your loves like a thorn
Without a rose

December blues.

*This is basically a nostalgic kind of post....so it will be of interest to a few.Feel free to skip*

Another December and another boring end to the year,from the past 3 years December has been spent slogging hard for odd sem final exams which usually are held in the last week of December and 1st week of January in our god-damned university..this timing is beyond my comprehension,when I go back home, I just stare at my bedroom ceiling lying in bed all day 'coz all my friends are back in college having had their hols in Dec. 3 Decembers spent doing last minute lab experiments,then doing the lab exams and then finally theory exams....the whole 3 months of the sem squeezed into a matter of hours and last-minute-mugging orgies...........

But it was not always like this.Back in school December was the month of chilling out.We use to have our annual day in the end of December(like every other school I know) and the whole month would be spent doing various kinds of drills and exercises in the brilliant winter sun for a grand show on that day.That meant no classes for an entire month,trips to the school stadium and cardboard cricket in the corridors and inside classes..on reaching home,there never used to be too much stress on studying as all tests and exams were far away,so many evenings were spent reading all kinds of books from Glimpses of world history to numerous Enid Blyton's,even Nat-Geo mags!The best part of the month used to be the last week when the school used to close for about 10 days after the annual day.Mornings would be lazily spent watching TV and then around 11, all of us friends would gather for a round of tennis...I tell you.... nothing beats tennis in the winter or tennis under lights in summers or tennis......basically.This would be followed by reading just the most unimaginable stuff (now that i come to think of it) like hardy boys or illustrative books on Egyptian mythology......at various points of my life I wanted to be an engine driver,an Egyptologist,an astronomer,a writer,a mathematician,a drummer!!(more on that someday).In the evenings..cricket in the black field and mindless meaningless gupshup walking around the colony or sitting on the ledges around the tennis court .In the nights...I don't actually remember what I used to do...except just before sleeping I would be laying down inside my mosquito net...again reading under my table lamp.Oh and later when I was in 9th or 10th grade...most of the afternoons would be spent listening to Guns N' Roses and Def Leppard...everyday...the same songs and the same albums over and over again.I must have heard that GN'R Live Era cassette at least a 1000 times if not more.....an yeah how can I forget watching those Australian tours of various visiting teams on ESPN...even test matches...especially the Boxing Day test....It used to start around 5 in the morning and carry on till about noon.........
Looking back these winter holidays and December in schools are the things I miss most about my childhood.Summers would be spent at grandparent s's houses and Durga Puja hols was fun too but there used to be more stuff to do during those times...and less of simple lazing away those beautiful winter mornings and in general goofing around.......Ah! I shall stop here.Enough you navel-gazing depressive nostalgic ,mathematical function!thy shall not bore!(*grimaces at the misguided attempt to liven things up*)

A very very happy New year to one and all.May all your wishes and dreams come true!!!.

P.S:gave my Computer Networks paper today...so this has to be done:I bury you-you stupid acronyms you ATM,TCP/IP,UDP...you freakish IEEE standards with all your crazy numbering and most importantly you Data link layer protocols...I hate you!! Tannenbaum R.I.P muhahahahaha :-)

Dystopian themes.....

I somehow have a great liking for Dystopian themes......I like it better than any mystery/detective stuff as this whole chaos in the future thing is strangely spine-chilling.The dark 'what-can-be' side of the future gives the author a canvass which he can enliven with any shade of gray and gives us a perspective of what can be wrong with the present world...My favorites being V for vendetta
,Ayn Rand's Anthem and Issac Asimov's The Foundation series though the last one cannot be called strictly dystopian.I am not a great fan of Ayn Rand's Objectivism shit but I like Anthem for its non-pretentious, threadbare story-line.I read The Foundation Series when i was a kid and was spell-bound by the wondrous theme of a galactic empire and its collapse...I also remember reading a story back in school in my CBSE English textbook about a time-travel back into the past for a strange kind of Dinosaur Safari and how these bunch of hunters end up trampling a innocuous butterfly which causes a Domino's effect through time causing a very drastic change in the present...... and oh.. I so want to read George Orwell's 1984 but somehow have never managed to lay my hands on it.


P.S :Its 2 in the night and i have no idea why I am doing this...I have got exams 5 days from now and really should be getting back to my books...the rest of the day being spent in watching Southpark on you-tube and Will &Grace on DVD.....god bless all of us toiling away under the tyranny of VTU exams.Best of luck to everyone.

Actually speaking I am much more freer now....the conscience is liberated and I can be as aloof/critical/sarcastic as I want to be.Happy Birthday sis!.....a nice return gift of a day I received

Somebody give me a shovel...I have got memories to bury......