The Borsalino test

Humans can't stop doing it to each other. They must validate every relationship they have. Not once, not twice, but over and over again - over the time that a relationship lasts.

The last time you sat with your mates did you notice that one of your pals is slightly off-colour? (s)he is not laughing with the same gusto. You notice it for over an hour and you wanna know why! You ask, but the topic is brushed off. The splinter starts to grow. Am I not good enough for him/her to share the info with me? You need validation. Your pal's problem may not matter after that - it's between you 2 now.

Let's not even go that far. How about a new acquaintance that you meet? You find the person exciting to talk to. You see this person making good conversation with your other frenz. But will (s)he make it to the inner circle? And in comes the test! Its almost involuntary. You observe this person in different settings, with your frenz around, with just you alone, with other people, with strtangers - judging all the time.

In matters of lurv, it's gets even better, or worse if you prefer! You gotta watch every step, every syllable you utter, every excuse you make for not calling through the day(and god help you if you said you were too busy to call), even every call you don't make! There's a question lurking around every corner. And the stupidity of it all is that each one of us wants to pass all the tests. So we strive, we fall in love and we hope to rise. We fall to pitifull depths in an effort to please the other. We lose friends and even family at times. But we console ourselves it is all worth it. Most loves go through this phase. The next time you are going through one, pause and think about it. Passing the test is probably not worth the effort... or even the result - if it can only give you a claustrophobic existence.

However an intelligent conversation that unknowingly becomes a means of validation of another's intelligence and potential can be a positive form of such behaviour.

Yes, we all go through them and all of us subject others to them - all the time! Life is a series of Borsalino tests!

PS: The title was picked up from the novel Shantaram. Read it, if you haven't yet!

Latin anyone???

I have been fascinated by Latin - on and off, as I encounter interesting phrases used in movies, mags, books, etc. Some popular ones are...

Carpe Diem - Seize the day -- Definitely one of my favorites.

Mea Culpa - by my fault

Locus standi - the right to be heard in court

Magan cum laude - with great honour, usually with academic distinction

Quo vadis - where are you going?

Reductio ad absurdum - reduction to the absurd. Used as "proving the truth of a proposition by falsifying all the alternatives".

Veni, vidi, vici - I came, I saw, I conquered!

And then there are some rather interesting ones...

In vino veritas - in wine there is truth

Oh yeah baby, there's no denying that!

Memento mori - remember that you have to die!

Multus amicus, nullus amicus - A friend to all is a friend to none

Ye all who think life's a popularity contest, think again!

So I tried to translate some common phrases to latin, resulting in this...

Know yourself - Teneo vestri

You are not alone - vos es non unus

Life is beautiful - vita est decorus

Live like a king - ago amo a rex rgis

The truth is out there - verum est sicco illic

Made for each other - no pro invicem

Stop wasting your time - subsisto populatio vestri vicis

Get a life - adepto a vita

hello, why are you still reading? :P

Web 2.0

Internet today, is different from the original Net. I am not even comparing it to ARPAnet, the network of defense systems that spawned the internet. That was merely a network of computers. That’s going a bit too far back. Just compare it to what the internet was a decade ago. The net that we see today, despite still being a network of computers, is much more than just that!

The early net was all about ease of communication. Email was the hottest thing then. Then came the era of double-clicks! Portals spawned everywhere. All they did was assimilate a summary of information on specific topics and provide you with a zillion different links to click your way to death. And by the time you were on your 10th click-through, you lost track of what you were looking for in the first place. You would start looking for information on nuclear disasters and end up on a breast-augmentation website.

And now we have Web 2.0. Yes, in hindsight, the tehnocrati of our wired world have labeled the original net as Web 1.0. Web 2.0 is all about collaborative computing using the web itself as a platform enabling everything else as web services. The shining stars of Web 2.0 are Google, Skype, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Orkut, Flickr… you get the drift, right?

So what’s different? Well compare the above names to their peers from the bygone era – Google vs Altavista, Skype vs ???, Wikipedia vs Britannica, del.icio.us vs IE Favorites, Orkut vs ???, Flickr vs Ofoto. You see, some of them don’t even have comparables. Google’s adsense has blasted every other search engine out of the solar system. Skype turned the telecom industry on its head. Who goes to Britannica anymore? Where do you look for friends now – on Orkut or on Yahoo People Search? And sharing photographs was never so much fun as it is with Flickr. Every single one of them works on network effects! Their value is in the number of users. And its not surprising that all of them incidentally provide the highest levels of service too. Well, for more and more people to subscribe to a service, it has to be superlative. It has to be good enough to be recommended to friends and family!

Well, makes one wonder, what next??? Google, today, probably has more “relevant” data on you than you know about yourself. We store all our information online. We blog about ourselves and blogroll others. We tag others’ photographs and pages and leave comments everywhere. We have links leading back to us from every page that we visit. And everywhere there is a history about us – I think that’s a serious abuse of the word “history”. With all this info in the public domain, is it surprising that identity thefts are on the rise? Is the day too far when we may have intelligent machines gathering data on individuals and analyzing it in the name of customizing? And let us acknowledge that all of us want the convenience of single sign-on. How convenient would that be, as opposed to memorizing a gazillion user ids and pwds. Well, be glad that you don’t have a single sign-on coz that will put you at maximum risk. One theft of your ID and pwd and your life will not be the same again… just like that!

That time of the year...

Tension builds up with every passing moment. Peer pressure reaches unimaginable levels. Not even in your wildest dreams did you imagine that you will be doing the wierdest things just to keep up with your friends. Exaggeration has no limits. And by the way it's not exaggeration, it's called creative writing.

The hunt has begun to form the best possible prep group! Of course all the nerds have already been taken. Boy, this must be the only time of the year when the hottest bimbo is seen hanging out with the nerdiest guy ;).

This is the time when you will scour all the depths of your experience to create bullet points. Even a book that you won for standing third in an intra-class competition in 8th std is an achievement. Ok... that's stupid! But I know some places where even that is acceptable :).

While you may have been wetting your pants at the prospect of making a presentation to the client executives, you will now be braggin about your client management skills and your astuteness at sniffing out potential business opportunities.

An obvious silly change in design that helped you reduce the delivery time for your code suddenly becomes a quality improvement initiative. And of course who can ignore your incredible time mgmt skills which enable you to deliver ahead of time... always! Anyone ever heard of Underpromise, then Overdeliver??? Yup, I just spelt out the secret of all onsite project coordinators :))).

Well folks its the start of placement season, and it's resume time... it's that time of the year again!

Stop existing... Start living!

What happens when you stay away from work for too long?
· You will get used to the empty hours and internet will become your refuge. Orkut helps, no doubt!
· Checking mails will become a fulltime activity and you will refresh your mailbox at least 500 times a day.
· You think, “Finally, the world seems to have realized that making me work is a serious waste of my talent!”.
Think about how many hours of not-working-me it took them to realize that – morons!
· Nothing. Really nothing! If work needs to be done, and you are not there to do it, it will find someone else!
Work will get done. You are NOT indispensable.

And that’s when it will HIT you, when you have been dispensed… when you are not required anymore… when people just pass you by… when you merely exist due to the involuntary act of breathing… when you don’t LIVE anymore!

Mora saiyyan moh se bole na...

Sawan beeto jaye beharwa
mann mera ghabaraye

Aiso gaye pardes piya tum
chain hume nahi aaye

Mora saiyyan moh se bole na
mai lakh jatan kar haaree
Mora saiyyan moh se bole na...

Pyaar tumhe kitna karte hai
tum yeh samajh nahi paaoge

Jab hum na honge to beharwa
bolo kya tab aaoge

Mora saiyyan moh se bole na...

A different Diwali...

I am obviously feeling nostalgic right now. Been talking to folks back in India, wishing them a bright and cheerful Diwali! Yes, I am longing to see beautifully lit homes, elegantly dressed damsels and the whole festive atmosphere. I miss the sweets and the crackers. But it's not so bad. Technology allows me to chat with every1 at no cost. I can still participate in every1's festivities, albeit long-distance.

But then I reach out to the folks here with me. We are only as lonely as we force ourselves to be. So, we go to catch a first day screening of DON at a nearby desi theater. Damn, even SRK is tolerable this far from home! So what if he always overacts? We visit a Ganesh temple marked by a glowing neon sign between a grocery store and a dentist's clinic in a shopping complex! Well, the lord doesn't seem to mind the location... so why should we :). Came back and decided to have home-cooked desi meal. And expert cooks that we are, we served ourselves a lavish meal of plain rice and dal with some delicious mango pickle... and topped it up with a choc ice-cream! Have to say it was one of the better meals I have had since coming here.

I guess we could have easily sulked individually - each one of us calling home, friends and feeling increasingly more helpless after each conversation. But cultural needs are powerful drivers that bring us together in such times. I am glad I spent this Diwali making new friends...

Don't be a punk!!!

If I were to follow my heart, here’s what I’d really like to do and to be:

· Become a photographer.
· Play at least one sport at pro level – ideally squash!
· Bike around the country – both in US and back home in India.
· Run a shack in Goa.
· Live in a commune with all my best buddies and their families – back to the 70s!
· Start a tech business, naturally coz IT is all I have done in my professional life.
· Make a difference to the society – apun ka bhi putla khada hona mangta hai!

I could go on with that list. Or I could talk about a man who is really following his heart and actually putting his money where his mouth is.

If you have followed the story of eBay, chances are you have read about Jeff Skoll. After raking in millions from the success of eBay, he moved to Philanthropy and founded the Skoll Foundation. If that wasn’t engaging enough, the man went on to found another company, this time in Hollywood – Participant Productions. This production house has come out with some of the best and most hard-hitting films of 2005 and 2006. The list encompasses Syriana, North Country, An inconvenient Truth, Good Night and Good Luck, Murderball and the upcoming Fast Food Nation. That is an impressive list by any standards. I chanced upon all these details as I was digging around after reading an article on Fast Company.

So, if you are a man, follow your heart. Or you are just another punk!!!

Falling in LOVE… again!

This is a back-dated post, which I could not publish earlier... originally written on Sept 20th.

A grey morning. Got out of the bed at 7. It was painful; the morning was perfect to stay curled up under the blankets. But she was calling… :)

Washed up hastily and immediately took her out to breakfast. Same old dosa, but the chai felt great – courtesy of the showers outside. The rain was practically pulling at me… prodding me, cajoling me, and begging me to take her out. And I succumbed to nature’s charm. She obviously wasn’t in the mood. I mean who would be on a chilly grey morning like that! But I persisted. Patted her, charmed her, pleaded with her and managed to warm her up to the idea of going out in that weather.

The initial resistance always adds to the game ;). But once she got in the groove, there was no stopping her. Her response to my slightest touch, her drawl as I tried to push her further, and the conversation between the 2 of us – it was just like old times. There wasn’t much traffic that early, largely due to the rains. But those who saw us couldn’t resist a second glance. Getting drenched felt different that morning. Whisper valley felt much more serene than it usually is. Even the buffaloes made way for us that day.

Together, we rode the highways, we climbed the hills, wound up and down jubilee hills and hit the home stretch after necklace road. That morning, yet again, as always, I fell in love with her – my baby, my first love, my RX135!

New place

I am posting after a really long gap. And I am posting from a new location, my new home - atleast for the immediate future. Feels a little wierd. Feels new! Feels like I don't belong here.

I am in an alien place - yes, I am a "legal alien" in the US of A. Been trying to adjust to the new life for the past one week. And I must say, doin a pretty decent job of it so far. Hope, Anger (or maybe Anguish), Frustration, Tension, Peaceful, Longing - feeling everything at once. Culture shock? Not really, I had a fair idea of what to expect, having been here before.

But something is different this time. I could feel folks back home were more emotional this time. It's a big sacrifice on their part.

I didn't wanna restart on this note. But that's the way it is right now...