Looking Back

I have nothing I can call mine
Wish there were a thing or two.
They took away what I cared for
Now the bleak wind blows past my face.

The torch of my existence,
One day passes on to Another.
'Tis Fuelled not by desire,
But by promises I have to keep.

The summer's gone
Winter's come.
I have no warm clothes
And no cozy bed.

Whose nimble fingers once
Played the harp of the past,
Now pull the strings of the future:
His ways are strange.

I believed in freedom
And set it free:
Happiness was a bird;
I couldn't keep it captive.

Will this pain last longer
Or the life?
I am not rich enough
To buy my past.

Companions

I come alone.
I leave solitary.
What transpires in between
Is a foul-play called life.

I've no friends,
Only companions.
I'm a loner at heart,
I don't need them.

They use me,
But I don't care
For I'm a loser,
I'm used to being used.

I've realized,
People can be unreasonable.
But they sure must have
Reasons to betray.

I'd have loved friends
But I never met them.
Probably they're lost,
Probably they're not.

I'm an underachiever
But I am true.
It's a cardinal sin,
To be true when you're a failure.

They don't understand me,
And I don't love to explain.
Life's tough on the road
If you're the only one following rules.

Yuktahaar- Appetite's Best Friend

I never knew what delicious food was until I started eating in Yuktahaar, and then it was too late to know. Well, I do not exactly believe in the crap I wrote in the previous line but I find it funny, so I put it there and let it remain there in the final draft of this piece of writing.

Now that I've mentioned that I eat in Yuktahaar, you must have speculated that it is one place where food is served. People from IIIT would know what I am talking about, but for those not familiar with the campus, I'd state that it is one of the four messes in our college. The food is really cheap ( at least in terms of the amount they charge us per meal ) and you have to sit on the floor and eat, not to mention that people who eat there are supposed to wash the dishes themselves. How's that for economy? In fact, one of my companions who eats in Yuktahaar – Mayank Juneja – once suggested, “Dude, since we wash the dishes daily, why don't we seriously consider working here, at least we won't be paying for our meals.” My reply was, “Seriously chum. We could use the money too.”

Now that I've disclosed the royal treatment of the people who eat there, I better not conceal the fact that people love the place so much that there's always a mile long queue for chapatis. I never used to eat rice before, but rice and I are two inseparable lovers now. And Murphy's law applies here as well: the more the haste you're in, the longer the queue is and the slower it moves. The love for the place doesn't simply end there : there's another half a mile queue at the sinks to wash the dishes. It is an ultimate test of one's patience. Once my patience was really being put to a tough test and I blurted out, “ I can stand for an hour in a queue to get a blasted chapati but I cannot stand in this queue for 5 minutes to wash the goddamned dishes.” However the benevolent mother nature made me wait for another 10 minutes and I passed the test. I've grown a lot more patient since Yuktahaar became a part of my life. After that incident even the petty insolent kid who stuck a pencil in my eye failed to get on my nerves.

Once someone asked me if the cooks in Yuktahaar were good. My reply was, “ Are you kidding? They sure know how to prepare something fit for human consumption by means of heat.” Ask anyone who eats there and he will testify the truth of my statement. I must tell you that it is not only good food that is served there, for it is one such place where you learn while you eat. Don't ask me what it means: I leave the interpretation as an exercise left to the reader.

There are quite a few quotes that adorn the walls of the temple of diet. I'll list a few of them with my remarks. Don't hate me, I'm not being judgmental- I'm merely putting myself in the shoes of a common man - who ate there once - and stating his observations subjectively.

Quote 1: “Enjoy health not taste.”
Remarks: “ You've ensured the second conjecture. But what about the first?”

Quote 2: “Wasting food is a sin, not allowed here.”
Remarks: “What's that steel bucket with all the waste food doing there. Did you not put that there? Irony! ”

Quote 3: “Please take a maximum of 3 chapatis if queue is present.”
Remarks: “ Can anyone not see the queue? Or is it that I'm hallucinating all these people standing one behind the other?”

Quote 4: “ The remedy of a disease is the kitchen, not the hospital.”
Remarks: “Kiss my a**.”

I love Yuktahaar- I eat there all the time. Everyone loves Raymond. Everyone loves Yuktahaar. Noticed the analogy? People have their terms of endearment to refer to Yuktahaar, some call it Muktahaar and some call it Kuttahaar. In fact there's a community dedicated to Yuktahaar on Orkut . Please join it and show that you are as much in love with it as everyone else it.

Everyone should eat in Yuktahaar at least once, after all happiness is not everything.

Remembering Murphy- Murphy's Law

I never had a slice of bread,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side.

Everything is either said for a reason or for no reason at all. It is noteworthy how certain sentences say just what they're supposed to and never fail to astound us with their truth. Every person, unless he's dumb says something. Even the dumb who have been deprived of their power of speech say things by their actions. The responsibility of understanding what has been said is ours entirely and it is only us - who understand - who can actually propagate what we heard so that others can hear what we say.

One such man who said something worth pondering over was Edward A. Murphy, Jr., an engineer by profession. I respect him not only because he was an engineer but because of that something he said. His statement is called Murphy's law today and it exhibits the firmness of the grasp of this man on the ways of the world. He had understood what every living person had to live with and though many people might have realized the same, I salute him for he was the first one who said so.

Murphy law states,
“Anything that can possibly go wrong, does.”

Isn't it true? People might brand me a pessimist for repeating the statement but name calling never helps, so I suggest such people to save that energy and use it for nobler pursuits. Once seen in the right light, Murphy’s Law actually starts making sense: Shit happens in this world. Subtract the number of times you've succeeded from the number of times you've tried and if you're human you are bound to get a non-zero result. That my friend is the quantitative measure of Murphy's law holding. Upon dividing this result by the number of trials, you get a better estimate. And if the quotient of the previous division has no fractional part, you my friend are one specimen of either of the two species- God or the author's true alter ego (if the latter is the case, get in touch with me. Let's hang out together sometime.)

Now some people might have qualms about the involvement of science in this law. Well, doubts in the verity of a statement are good signs, both for the person who has doubts and for the person who stated the law. Since Murphy's been dead for quite sometime, I take on the prerogative to answer for him, to the best of my ability. ( If you think I am bullshitting you, I might have done that. Do not hate Murphy for what I say because these thoughts are mine in their entirety and they do not reflect what Murphy had in mind when he said what he said.) Ask yourself what science is. I've found texts to support that science is the quest to know. In this sense history is science, right? Isn’t history a little something when it comes to gaining knowledge? In all these years history has been an important tool to the achievement of this objective- knowing. Time and again we have turned the pages of the past to satisfy our quest to know. And history has shown us that things have gone wrong when they could've gone wrong. So, there is science in the law. It might not have a hundred percent chance of holding, but no law has that luxury. Ask someone who knows, is V=IR always? Ohm's law doesn't hold always : even the textbooks show that the characteristic straight line is a curve in the practical sense, but you call that a law.

There have been many stated versions of the this law and I will list a few of them, in my style of writing. Forgive me if you find the language blasphemous, for it is just intended to bring in some humor. I've made additions at my discretion in places to bring about the same effect.

1.If anything can go wrong, it will, at the most inopportune time. It will all be your fault and everyone will know it.
2.If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong.
An extreme version would be,
If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the FIRST one to go wrong.
3.If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
4.Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. The hidden flaw doesn't remain hidden for long. And then people find out it was your fault.
5.Mother nature is a bitch.
6.The legibility of a copy is inversely proportional to its importance.
7.You cannot successfully determine beforehand which side of the bread to butter. ( Try and relate this to the four lines that mark the beginning of this composition.) Now, read the next point.
8.The chance of the buttered side of the bread falling face down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

The following statements could be classified as Murphy's Laws of Selective Gravitation:
9.A falling object will always land where it can do the most damage.
10. An unbreakable object will always fall on the only surface hard enough to crack or break it.
11. A paint drip will always find the hole in the newspaper and land on the carpet underneath (and will not be discovered until it has dried).
12. A dropped power tool will always land on the concrete instead of the soft ground (if outdoors) or the carpet (if indoors) - unless it is running, in which case it will fall on something it can damage (like your foot).
13. If a dish is dropped while removing it from the cupboard, it will hit the sink, breaking the dish and chipping or denting the sink in the process.
14. A valuable dropped item will always fall into an inaccessible place (a diamond ring down the drain, for example.)
15. The greater the value of the rug, the greater the probability that the pet dog will throw up on it.

The following statements form the equivalences in shopping:
16. No matter how long or how hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.
17. The other line always moves faster.

The statements pertaining to love:
18. All the good ones are taken.
19. If the person isn't taken, there's a reason.
20. Brains x Beauty x Availability = Constant.
This constant is always zero.
21. "This won't hurt, I promise." is not true.

The statements for a computer:
22. Program complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer who must maintain it.
23. Bugs will appear in one part of a working program when another 'unrelated' part is modified.
24. Line number 108 : m=n;
Line number 109 : assert ( m==n);
Output : Execution Aborted. Assertion failed in line 109.
25. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.
26. If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it crashes.
27. The speed with which components become obsolete is directly proportional to the price of the component.
28. Software bugs are impossible to detect by anybody except the end user. And the end user can do nothing about it than wait for the next version of the software. The next version of the software will have bigger bugs.
29. The maintenance engineer will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
30. Any manufacturer making his warranties dependent upon the device being earthed will only supply power cabling with two wires.
31. If a circuit requires n components, then there will be only n - 1 components in locally-held stocks.
32. Each computer code has five bugs, and this number does not depend on how many bugs have been already found (it is conservative).
33. Whenever you're in a hurry, the server is down.

There are more statements- thousands of them, all stating the obvious. All of them support the law. For instance, Steven Right once said,“If Murphy's law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic.” Since nothing of that sort has happened so far, you might be tempted to think Murphy's law doesn't hold. Well the good thing about Murphy's law is, even when it doesn't hold, it holds, “If Murphy's Law can go wrong it will.”

I'd like the readers to write down similar statements in the comments section. It'll be an amusing exercise.

A leaf from the book of the Past

Memory is one of the most wonderful things available to any entity. The finite state machines are inferior to the push down automaton only because they lack memory. Computer Memory is either fast and expensive or cheap and slow but in either case the data in the memory follows Newton’s law of inertia, except in the case of a hardware failure of course. Computer memory is simple to understand. Human memory on the contrary is a thing beyond human comprehension. Sometimes we remember something- sometimes we do not. It is there in the memory- somewhere there but where exactly, we are not aware. Probably the search algorithm the brain uses is not exhaustive, for if it is, human memory can be shown to be very unreliable. And let’s not talk about the hardware failure issues in the case of human memory. One thing quite noteworthy about human memory is that it can house vast amounts of data - though most of what it chooses to store by its own accord is irrelevant. And when the human brain sits idle, it does not merely sit idle; it invokes its search programs with random search keys and the results are random thoughts and reflections of the past. Without further digression from my motive, I relate one incident from my past experiences which the search in my idle brain just brought to my notice.

I was traveling from Delhi to Allahabad in the winter of 2006. The train I was on traveling on -Prayagraj Express- was and is still the best train that ever marched that route. I was alone and I had a lower berth reserved against my name. That most of the women from Delhi are firebrands is not a big secret. And I was an informed youth. So I was (I’ve always been) mentally prepared to let any lady have her way and leave me unscathed. So when the woman with her young sister in law asked me to move to berth number eight (an uncomfortable side upper) I flinched immediately and displaying an unwavering determination towards service to females I complied, but only after both of them agreed to keep an eye each on my attaché that I had already chained under one of the lower berths in that compartment.
Well, berth number 8 has a special place in a train’s A/C coach. It is the berth directly above the one allotted to the TTE (traveling ticket examiner). And Indian TTEs are pretty decent when it comes to handing over their seats to members of the opposite sex. Evidently our TTE- a grey haired, obese, jolly faced guy in his fifties- was no exception to the rule for I saw three members of the afore mentioned community adorning seat number seven. It was not even ten in the night and I was reading some work of Mario Puzo, so sleep wasn’t exactly the first thing on my mind. Some other day I would have shared the lower seat with its occupant to sit for some time and let my ears get used to the rattle-rumble of the moving wagon before diving into the book, but that day was different. Seat number seven would have proved an electric chair for a young man like me and I didn’t want to perish. So I was determined to reach for my berth and resume the book reading exercise. However it was not meant to be so. As I was climbing up the bunk bed ladder I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned and found a pair of eyes staring into mine. The eyes belonged to one of the occupants of the side lower.
“Do you mind exchanging berths with me?” these words flew off the oral cavity that was a couple of inches below the eyes. I took a deep breath and examined the object under consideration from top to bottom. The next moment I was embarrassed to find out that the object’s companions had noticed me doing the scrutiny and I came to senses instantly. “..Only for an hour. I have to read my Namaz. It is the month of Eid you see”, she continued. Damn she was fuming! What was I to do? It was another form of nature’s call, for attending to the call was indispensable in this case as well. How could a guy with a heart ever turn down such a request? I remembered the words of Don Vito Corleone, “I’ll give him an offer he cannot resist” and noted the apparent similarity. You must understand that questions such as the one she had asked have only a rhetorical value, for the answer is implied from the context. I knew I had to go, so why not make some small talk out of the transaction. I said, “Well FYI I have already been traveling to and from different berths like a common man in a government office. As fed up of this business as I am, I would’ve refused to someone else; nevertheless I will make an exception for you. I will move if you promise to keep your word and let me have my berth as soon as you’re done.” She replied with “Thanks. I really appreciate your cooperation.” Playing hard to get, I made no further attempt to carry further the conversation (I had to appear like some sober guy who minded his own business) and asked, “So where do I go?” “Seat number ten, right there” she pointed and her white fingers with decorated finger nails caught my attention. I turned again to make eye contact with her friends and they nodded gently to assure me that they were not regular interlopers and that my seat would definitely be restored. I gave them a business-like smile and jumped up seat no. ten- a middle berth in the adjacent array of berths.

Unfortunately the people who were destined to be my neighbors in my newest acquired berth were all trying to sleep and had shut off the lights. So involuntarily I had to lie on the bunk and face the aisle, to catch as much light from the aisle as possible to read. From my position I could keep an eye on my seat and the one beneath it and they could see me. The girl who occupied my berth was kneeling and praying. That was quite a sight. I’ve always believed that beauty is meant to be admired and sometimes I get so engrossed in the activity that I lose track of my coordinates. It was one of those times and I let the book escape my grasp and following the laws of gravity in a moving frame, it struck the floor. It broke my sleep and I heard her companions giggling. Apparently they had become aware of my state of mind. If they thought they could embarrass me, I was past that stage already. One of them reached down to pick the volume and momentarily my heart skipped another beat. She picked it up and turned it around to read the gist. I waited patiently, and wondered if I were to produce some password to reclaim my ownership. She looked into my eyes and commented -most probably on the contents of the novel- “Interesting”. Sometimes it is hard to decipher what girls mean when they use four-syllable words in place of sentences. And I bet it was one of those times. I knew for sure that the two of them did not have confirmed tickets -that was why they were on seat number seven in the first place. And I also knew that they knew that I had a berth against my name; add to this my knowledge of Delhi gals being firebrands and put yourself in my shoes (though you would’ve loved to be in my berth right then). I started to doubt her intentions but as careless as I was, I was always good at following algorithms and one algorithm that my mom taught me for traveling safe was to beware of strangers and strange women. I did not want to lose my berth, for I had seen men lose their homes due to similar causes. I responded with a curt, “Can I have it back.” (Today I totally regret that line. It could just have been a casual session of harmless flirting.)

I buried my nose into the book again and waited for the time. In the meanwhile the TTE came and allotted the two gals on his seat a berth. He asked them to share it for no more travelers were absent. Their seat was nine berths away from my current position, and this ruled out the possibility of further small talk. I silently observed their transition. Sometime later, the pious soul completed her prayers and descended from my berth. I saw her walking towards the toilet. Open doors tempt a saint (don’t get any ideas. Read on). With the first opportunity I jumped from my temporary position to my semi-temporary position, i.e. back to seat number eight. I engaged myself in endeavoring to stop all thoughts.

She came back in a jiffy. She was surprised and probably pissed off at my nonchalance in regaining my position without formally notifying her. I wasn't a state attorney after all, I had no knowledge of laws of transfer of property and stuff. She looked at me with the eyes of a wounded tigress. I avoided eye contact. She suddenly realized her companions were not where she had last seen them. She looked here and there but they were not anywhere in sight. So from her stack of questions, she popped one: “Where are my friends?” I had expected this. With a devilish smile I popped mine, “Are you sure I'm supposed to know?” She was caught off-guard and struck speechless. She kept staring at me; her eyes no longer had the fire of a tigress' but the timidity of a pet cat's. My heart melted and I surrendered the national secret without the least hesitation, “berth number nineteen.” She smiled and I reciprocated the gesture with a sheepish grin.

I turned my attention to the work of literature in my lap. Five minutes later I saw her climbing onto her berth. Fortunately she placed her head away from the aisle so I could finally concentrate. Another five minutes later I felt someone tap my shoulder. It was her. Another question was fired at me, “Did you use the pillow?” “I do not remember”, were the words that escaped my mouth. She stared into my eyes again, searching for an answer. Being a non smoker, I was not used to a lot of smoke around; I could not think. It was like my thinking faculties had taken sleeping pills and quit. Finally I gathered all my remaining strength and announced, “What should we do? Choose any one.”, I said handing her my pillow. She looked at both of them. The ball was in her court (no pun intended). Finally she took one ( I believed randomly) and left with a curt, “Carry on.” I had no words.

I read till late and slept. I woke up at about eight and went to the basin to brush my teeth and wash my face. When I was back, she was in my berth again, doing her prayers. Her friends were sitting on the TTE's seat and they smiled at me. How the frog was I supposed to react? I chose to smile and sat on the lower in the front. One of them said, “ We've put you to a lot of trouble” and smiled again. I had to say, “Yes I am aware of that. I am paying the price of trying to act like a gentleman”, I smiled back. The other one added, “so you're only acting like a gentleman? You're pretending?” I said, “I'll let you be a judge of that.” They started giggling. Even the religious lady on the side upper started chuckling. “So you too are pretending to pray?”, I blurted. This made them laugh even harder and one of them nearly choked. Meanwhile the TTE emerged and he joined me on the opposite side lower. He asked me, “Do you have any exam? You were reading.” I said, “Not really uncle, but my fellow travelers are examining my character, so I suppose...” He didn't seem to understand but those who were supposed to did. That brought forth another roll of laughter. Soon the other people in that compartment had risen so naturally there was a scarcity of space. It is a simple law of physics, the combined size of the contents of a container is to be no more than the size of the container itself. I chose to move to the next compartment and capture my perpetrator's berth.

Fortunately the people in that compartment had also risen and we removed the middle berth on which she had slept. I didn't notice that her “chunni / dupatta” was still on her berth. So when we removed the berth it came to rest on the lower berth and unluckily and inadvertently I sat on it. Sometime later I felt a shiver down my rear. I stood up with a start. She was pulling her “dupatta” from underneath me. I was embarrassed and avoided any eye contact. They did not disturb me thereafter. I had the option of returning to my seat but somehow I could not muster the courage to face them after the latest encounter. From my position, I could not hear much of what they were talking about but certainly I heard “where's that guy” and “you'll find a few of such guys everywhere” and this further motivated me to stick to a place where I did not need to interact with them. Soon the journey ended and I had gained nothing but lesser free space on my brain's hard disk.