Last few months of transition

How do I start telling where was I in last few months? I was taking care of other parts life. I shifted to new apartment, bought new car, bought all furniture for the home. I also attended BMM convention in Philadelphia. These days my younger brother is visiting me, so I am spending a lot of time with him these days. Last few months went into lot of transition. We don't realize how we get used to everything, our apartment, car, furniture. I struggled to live at different place, drive a different car. Loosing my car was a big change. It was my first car and I was very emotional about her. She had been forgiving and protective. I remember driving experiences at the start of 2007. I was just not used to driving in USA and also on interstates. I drove that car to Lincoln a lot of times. Somehow my memories about friends, my university, initial days at my company were all intermixed with the car.

Still when a green Toyota Camryn passes by, I cannot help myself and think that it is my car. I am now getting used to new car, let's see what memories it creates....


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A few good men

Finally Netflix started offering good movies for instant watch (no offense :)).  You can watch multiple movies in a day. In fact thats what I have been doing past few weeks. Spring is already here and we are waiting for summer. Its time to revitalize ourself with whatever we enjoy - spring rain, green trees, beautiful flowers blooming around or movies ;) 

I just finished watching a movie 'A few good men'. This is one of the very few movies where you hold your breath. You know probably its going to end it well but you still are unsure. I would say good plot, good story line, very good acting. Tom cruise was really good but Jack Nicholson was superb. If the villain is played by the right actor, it becomes hell lot easier for the hero to play the role. He just have to be 'right'.  I had not really read any reviews but then found that there were very good quotes in the movie. 

Do the quotes in the movie really make an impact that you can actually relate to it? Oh yeah. I found one very good quote. Not the famous one 'You want truth, you cannot handle the truth' ;) I liked this quote 'We live by honor, code and loyalty.' Its a very simple quote but common man does not identify with it. Why should they? Its not their duty. Come on, its difficult to follow values, because we look at next person and see him/her not playing a fair game. Why should we trouble ourself with question like fair/unfair?

But seriously, what really happened to small values that made us human being. Just being born as a man, does it really make you a man or a woman for that matter? Where is the meaning of friendship, care, respect for elders,  empathy for suffering? We have lost all that. 

Thank god I grew up reading stories of King Shivaji, probably one the greatest king of all time. He founded an empire and organized a great government. He gave people freedom to practice the religion they want, implemented a great system where citizens payed taxes but when mansoon was bad, they were given food from government. Does this sound like a good governor will do?

We as kids learned about that great man and that offered our life a foundation. I have some of close friends who grew up in same environment reading the same stories. Now even though we live thousands miles apart, we still can relate to each other, because of our core common values. Everyone of us believes in small good things like love, care, respect, honor, code, devotion, hard work. Just a small incidence, I saw my friend in October 2008 at Diwali time. She was buying presents for her family. I asked her what is she buying for herself or her husband. She had money but she had not really thought about herself. She had just thought about happiness of the family. Thats something 'putting somebody else's happiness before us'!!

Yeah, these kinds people still exist. Thats how this world balances itself ... 

Work addiction

Have we noticed  'can' is a very disturbing word? It challenges you to do the impossible and as a constructive person one like to achieve impossible. So what really triggered this question? I was asked whether I can push some code to some level in one week? 'Can'? Oh yes. 5-6 cups of coffee, almost no food (not getting any fatter ;)) and non-complaining macbook helps you achieve the impossible. I could continue working till 2:00 AM. What had really gotten into me? 

I am just trying to understand my own progress in last few years. The girl who used to sleep at 10:00 PM no matter what, what has happened to her? I just want to thank god. I love what I do. I love the people I work with. They inspire me to do more and more. Just a few years ago, I could not understand how somebody can email at midnight. Now I do!! It all comes from the extreme dedication, passion towards your work. The dedication to document you work, write the best piece of code, test it well. Make sure that somebody with least bit of background can understand all of it.

Many a times you feel like an artist, first drawing an initial sketch and then to fill colors in the picture. There have been times I worked continuously for 10 hours in office, came home and started working in 20 minutes for another 4 hours. When I completed the work at 1:30 in the night, started listening song 'Zara zara' from Hindi movie 'Rehna hain tere dil main'. I was so fresh and alive, in fact I could not sleep before 3:00 :)

Software business is very volatile. Just the mere fact that technology, software, hardware changes so much, you just have to keep up. Once you get hold of these things, you want to experiment, set ways. Experimenting, researching is a very frustrating experience but at the same time most rewarding too. Software also means a lot of learning, reading. One cannot survive here without constantly reading about one thing or other. It is almost impossible to be the best in everything but of course that makes you humble and appreciative of people around carrying different skills and knowledge.

It is nice to find something that we like to this extent, enjoy it thoroughly. Dedication in something constructive activity helps so much in reducing stress because you feel lucky every moment! 

Nonetheless, it is also important to strike a balance between a passion and life. Sometimes that line becomes blurry but just the red line under the word 'addiction' helps you bring back ....

A good Indian wife

Yesterday night I finished reading a novel by Anne Cherian "A good Indian wife". I bought this book two weeks ago while surfing half price book store. I had not really heard the name of the novel or of author but the cover looked really interesting. The cover page definitely ignites a lot of interest in amateur people like me!

A novel should be something that you take in your hand and do not want to put it down before you are done with it. This novel is a great read, the mere proof is I finished reading it at 2:15 AM. Isn't that one of the best ways of starting a weekend? ;) The story in the novel revolves around Leila and Neel. Neel is accomplished doctor in San Francisco who goes to India to see his grand father and marries to Leila against his will just to honor grand father's wish. He has a settled life back in SF with a girl friends, mixed friend circle so he thinks about divorcing Leila even when marriage ceremony is happening. The story is about how struggle that Leila goes through. She pulls him through and justifies to him and herself that grand father's wish had a good reason behind it. You have to read the novel to know more details :)

Any marriage system that you take, there is always some flaw because marriage happens between two imperfect people. In Indian marriages girls are still looked upon a "show case item", not as a companion, friend, which kinda sucks. It just occurred to me how Indian girls are always taught to stick with the husband, forgive him whatever he did and how to continue with life by sacrificing ourself every day. Even in modern India, girls carry that thinking. I look around in the society and see how girls continue when husbands are being jerks at a times (telling wives that she has gotten fat while showing off their bellies :(.) or telling shamelessly that how somebody else's wife looked so good. I thought men knew women better than that!!

Sometimes even well educated men disallow women to work and force her to continue her house held responsibilities. I have seen girls, who were rankers in their class being at home and taking care of kids. Suddenly those girls loose all their freedom just because they are now 'Married'. How do these men do not understand that they are marrying a human being, not hiring a slave? We are not talking about mid west countries where women are not allowed to go to school, learn driving, go alone to the shopping. In a progressive society like modern India, I see bad things happening. I understand the main cause of this is lack of education, but how many light years are we going to take to treat women as human beings.

In a free country like USA too, I observe that girls are treated like secretaries even when they are colleagues. I am not feminist but my blood boils when I see above occurrences. My upbringing of 'no contradictions' kicks in and I continue to smile even though deep down I know that this is not right. 

Its a coincident that tomorrow is International women's day and I still feel a little hopeless. I know this is a little disturbing post, sorry cannot help folks. Sometimes you can not continue the show without showing what are you exactly feeling!!! 

Milestones

Last tuesday, I went with my friends for a dinner treat. My friend had completed her first year on her job. It kinda surprised me how excited she was to reach to this point. My surprise was because she has had previous jobs and she must have completed first years with them too. The thing that was different was that this was a full time job. In last one year I saw her going through various milestones. She got married to her fiancee. After a few months had a Indian wedding too. She has been a lot happy in last one year by beginning new stages of life. She got me thinking what milestone offers us. 

The word milestone itself is very meaningful word.  It offers sense of adventure, courage to take on little steps to reach there and finally amazing feeling of achievement.  All of us set big,  small milestones for us. Its a great feeling when you achieve one. For some people, its not enough because they have already started their journey towards next. However big and small milestone that we reach, its important to celebrate each and every one of them. There is nothing as satisfying as achieving something worthwhile and then have someone to celebrate with.  As someone rightly said, 'The greatest things in life are not things!'

There are few people in India who do 'parikrama' that means walking on river bank from its source to destination (where it meets Sea/Ocean). This usually mean thousands of kilometers distance. These people do not carry any money or food with them. If villager offer them the food, thats their dinner. If they do not get any food, then they survive on sweet river water. Those people definitely understand the meaning of milestone because they sustain rain, cold, sultry heat, no food at a times, not proper place to sleep. We all can hope that life teaches us to be humble to understand the value of constructive and creative milestone whoever it belongs to!

Introduction to Indian classical music

I learned Indian classical music when I was in school. I did not get much chance to pursue that for long though I never really gave up listening to music. My home environment always provided those kinda opportunities as mom and dad kept adding great cassettes to our collection deliberately. We had HMV cassette by Veena Sahastrabuddhe. The title of the cassette was 'A tribute to Pt. Omkarnath Thakur'. Oh my god, its ecstasy!! One should not miss a chance to listen to that recording. This sounds foolish now, but I had serious thought of going to Pune after 10th standard and learning music from her. I had heard that she teaches at SNDT, Pune. I guess god spared her :D

Today, out of blue sky, I was googling her and found a great amount of information about her on this page. If somebody would like to know basics about Indian classical music, just visit this page. I know you will be glad that you did. She not only does a perfect job of explaining all arcane things about music but also her presentation is a great journey to know the teacher behind an artist. This introduction is sufficient who wants to start listening now. A new listener can like and appreciate it when he/she knows the basics. Just borrow CD's from friends and explore the wonderful unfathomable world of music.