Today was labour day for me. Middle of the week holidays are sometimes dangerous. Suddenly a lot of "TODO" items come alive from nowhere. Okay, weekends too have similar traits, but the mind is more than prepared to handle.
Morning 8'o clock, 2 hours, was all the "extra sleep" I had the luxury. Then it was time for my son to go to school. My wife does all the hard work but since I was on leave, I had to accompany them to the school. Not that I mind. I love seeing the tiny-toddlers holding their guardian's hands tugging along and going to the school. My son's school is 450 meters from our house, a casual walk is all it takes. I feel pity for those kids who have to get ready and wait for their school buses (or school vans, those pathetically overloaded, utterly unsafe, rash driven vehicles) at 10 minutes to 7 in the morning. Things have not improved since my days. In fact they have become worse.
My son's school building reminds me of my own. Red bricked outer walls, the school name displayed with huge letters painted in blue and airy classrooms (yes, it is a non-AC school). The playground is much larger and it has these new fancy pools and skating areas. Thankfully there is no horse riding yet. I recently had a chance to pass-by my school. It has expanded. It must have taken the buildings on one side. Now it has a huge gate with a huge banner, a huge new building alongside the older building and possibly a larger playground. During the nursery admissions this year, I heard that it is now considered one of the best schools in this district of the capital city. I have some memories buried deep inside that place. Sometimes, when they break open my flood-gates of emotions, in the ensuing deluge, the image of the building sometimes finds it way floating along. The present building looks an unfamiliar burial ground.
After the see-off, my wife went for her usual work-out session. I returned home to start the "installing of the overhead tank overflow system project". Climbed up the stairs of our roof only to find that the lid of our tank was blown over in the recent storm. Fixed and that and installed the new wireless level sensors. These are cool. You drop the sensor wires in the tank and the level of the tank is transmitted wirelessly down to the ground. The receiver in the room below picks up these signals and displays the water level on the display panel.
My wife joined me on the roof by the time I was giving the final touches to the installation. It was very windy today, so the effect of the summer heat was somewhat compensated. Once back at the house, I had to take my mother to the dispensary. Her medicines had been indented and she received the SMS on Saturday. It is never a pleasure to drive in the pathetic peak hour traffic in Delhi. More so if you are staying in an area where another flyover is being constructed in parallel to an existing operational one because our so called city planners could not estimate that we would require a bigger one in the first place!
After I returned home, I decided to clean the air-conditioner in our room. It has picked up a lot of dust in the filter and the guys who serviced the AC this time did not do a good job. This is a painful job. To use a toothbrush to clean the filters!!
It was almost getting time for my son to return. So I made a quick dash to buy few "cornettoes" for him. I had to take the car again, but thankfully I could drive this one inside the lanes and avoid the wretched outer ring road. My son was very happy to see me at the school gate. He agreed to carry the umbrella and his school bag by himself.
It was after this that I had nothing else to do. I tried to invent work by checking my office emails on my mobile. There was nothing interesting there. Then I took lunch and had a siesta. In the evening, took my son for cycling so that he starts to get accustomed to our ways of driving early in his days.
To cap off the day, we decided to order the "Maharaja Thali" from Karnataka Food Center for dinner. These mobile food ordering and delivery apps surely help. Oh! and it was the most delicious present to gift oneself after a days hard work.
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
Return to my blog
This is a 1978 recording, 40 years old and as old as me.
This man's muisc never fails to give me goosebumps, even after 26 years.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Helpless
Sometimes you feel so helpless:
दोस्त बनकर उसको चाहा ये कभी सोचा ना था,
दोस्ती ही दोस्ती में वो ख़ुदा हो जाएगा। - 'रुस्तम सहगल वफ़ा'
दोस्त बनकर उसको चाहा ये कभी सोचा ना था,
दोस्ती ही दोस्ती में वो ख़ुदा हो जाएगा। - 'रुस्तम सहगल वफ़ा'
Indian Train Simulator
Awesome game! I have played MSTS earlier it was a great game. But this one is super on mobile devices. Totally customised for Indian environment it has so many versions of gameplay options to chose from. I used to think that I am part of a very small minority who like to drive trains. Apparently I was wrong. The gameplay is not much, just drive the train from source to destination and maintain the correct speed. Enjoy the scenes as you travel around. The announcements at the stations are very authentic giving a real feel of the Indian Railways.
A must try game if you love games that do not require you to demonstrate reflexes of your fingers! It is available on both Andriod and iOS App Store. The Android one is the primary development environment. The iOS gets its updates following the Android release.
A must try game if you love games that do not require you to demonstrate reflexes of your fingers! It is available on both Andriod and iOS App Store. The Android one is the primary development environment. The iOS gets its updates following the Android release.
Thursday, October 6, 2016
Star Trek - The Naked Time - Season 1 Episode 5
Watched this episode on Netflix just now. This entire original series of Star Trek brings back old memories of childhood when these were used to be aired on Doordarshan on Sundays. I remember going up to our neighbours place (we did not have television in our house until 1991), to watch these. It was so exciting for me and my sister.
Thinking of those times, would it have ever occurred to me that one day I would be watching these sitting in the house, but now on a MacBook and a thick broadband connection. I didn't even know about computers then and to acquire one was certainly out of question. Owning a landline phone connection from MTNL used to be a very big deal in those times. I remember we got our landline phone in 1997. Some couple of years ago, we got that phone disconnected since that was becoming pretty redundant and most of the time unusable. We don't care about linemen these days.
Apart from the financial angle of owning such devices, technology has become affordable too. Technology has really come in and played a very big role in our lives. Nowadays not being able to contact your near ones after trying for 10 minutes is a big cause of concern. Why is he/she not answering my call? Why no response to my Whatsapp pings? Earlier the expectation of people reaching home would be on approximate time based on daily routine. Nowadays it is a text message, "Stuck in traffic near Chattarpur", or better still just share your location along with the traffic layer on, as a whatsapp message. Also I remember that my father would make sure to go to the bank and withdraw money, so that we had sufficient cash for the shopping to do during Durga puja. No cash meant deferring the shopping until next time. And look at it now. I just sit on my bed and touch a few areas of my phone with my fingertips and order a sari for my mother or a cycle for my son!
So much is the power of ones fingertips that we in India even decide our governments by pressing a button. Our generation is very fortunate to have witnessed these revolutions first hand. So we have the experience of the "old way" and also the "new way" now. It would really be good if I get a change to observe the next revolution in technology. God know from where it will come.
Thinking of those times, would it have ever occurred to me that one day I would be watching these sitting in the house, but now on a MacBook and a thick broadband connection. I didn't even know about computers then and to acquire one was certainly out of question. Owning a landline phone connection from MTNL used to be a very big deal in those times. I remember we got our landline phone in 1997. Some couple of years ago, we got that phone disconnected since that was becoming pretty redundant and most of the time unusable. We don't care about linemen these days.
Apart from the financial angle of owning such devices, technology has become affordable too. Technology has really come in and played a very big role in our lives. Nowadays not being able to contact your near ones after trying for 10 minutes is a big cause of concern. Why is he/she not answering my call? Why no response to my Whatsapp pings? Earlier the expectation of people reaching home would be on approximate time based on daily routine. Nowadays it is a text message, "Stuck in traffic near Chattarpur", or better still just share your location along with the traffic layer on, as a whatsapp message. Also I remember that my father would make sure to go to the bank and withdraw money, so that we had sufficient cash for the shopping to do during Durga puja. No cash meant deferring the shopping until next time. And look at it now. I just sit on my bed and touch a few areas of my phone with my fingertips and order a sari for my mother or a cycle for my son!
So much is the power of ones fingertips that we in India even decide our governments by pressing a button. Our generation is very fortunate to have witnessed these revolutions first hand. So we have the experience of the "old way" and also the "new way" now. It would really be good if I get a change to observe the next revolution in technology. God know from where it will come.
Monday, February 15, 2016
Ye Zindagii
As I look at the books on my shelf, I start to have a strange feeling. I never met either Nida Fazli or Jagjit Singh personally, but their works have been very close to my heart from a tender age. I have so many unaccountable memories, images and made-up situations associated with each of their work, be it dohes, ghazals, nazms, geets, books and what not. Even the TV interviews, live shows, and radio programmes! It is a huge collection that I carry in my tiny overworked brain, but boy! is it etched into my memory or what?
My first encounter with Nida was with Sajda, and the "Har taraf har jagah" number in it. That ghazal is the most "catchy number" of the double album and a trademark composition of JS. Then, I did not understand half of the stuff, but you know how it happens with JS and his music and his composition, it compels you to ponder on the lyric that he is singing. Ah! and Sajda has two compositions of Nida in it, the only poet to have so. "Dhoop mein niklo" still remains one of my favourite ghazal.
Then I heard Hope, and that too featured two ghazals of Nida. JS seemed to have a unique way to get it right always with Nida's philosophical works. Insight could not have come at a better time. I remember walking up to the store within days of the album release! The lyric booklet in it was a new thing and I loved it. It was on a simple white paper with black ink and the difficult words explained. Dohes were wonderful and JS did absolute justice to each of the compositions. Public at large of course remember "Mooh ki baat" number as it featured also as the title track of "Neem ka ped" that was aired on Doordarshan at that time.
As time went by, I purchased most of the books by Nida. I got to know a lot more about his childhood, why he has "ghar" and "bacche" as his favourite topics. His struggle during the partition and his struggle in Mumbai so that he could say, "Humne bhi is shahar mein rahkar thoda naam kamaaya hai".
There are many recordings of live shows that show the mutual affection between the two artists. Some of them are available now on popular video streaming sites and some are still are guarded as prized possessions of the respective owners. But the stuffs are definitely gem from an appreciator's perspective.
When I started this blog, Nida features almost instantly. Second post!.
It is no coincidence that Nida was "beckoned" by JS on the latter's birthday, this year. What is more strange is the JS passed away 2 days before Nida's birthday 5 years ago!
May both souls rest in peace. I can only offer my thanks for their work and the mark they have made on my life.
My first encounter with Nida was with Sajda, and the "Har taraf har jagah" number in it. That ghazal is the most "catchy number" of the double album and a trademark composition of JS. Then, I did not understand half of the stuff, but you know how it happens with JS and his music and his composition, it compels you to ponder on the lyric that he is singing. Ah! and Sajda has two compositions of Nida in it, the only poet to have so. "Dhoop mein niklo" still remains one of my favourite ghazal.
Then I heard Hope, and that too featured two ghazals of Nida. JS seemed to have a unique way to get it right always with Nida's philosophical works. Insight could not have come at a better time. I remember walking up to the store within days of the album release! The lyric booklet in it was a new thing and I loved it. It was on a simple white paper with black ink and the difficult words explained. Dohes were wonderful and JS did absolute justice to each of the compositions. Public at large of course remember "Mooh ki baat" number as it featured also as the title track of "Neem ka ped" that was aired on Doordarshan at that time.
As time went by, I purchased most of the books by Nida. I got to know a lot more about his childhood, why he has "ghar" and "bacche" as his favourite topics. His struggle during the partition and his struggle in Mumbai so that he could say, "Humne bhi is shahar mein rahkar thoda naam kamaaya hai".
There are many recordings of live shows that show the mutual affection between the two artists. Some of them are available now on popular video streaming sites and some are still are guarded as prized possessions of the respective owners. But the stuffs are definitely gem from an appreciator's perspective.
When I started this blog, Nida features almost instantly. Second post!.
It is no coincidence that Nida was "beckoned" by JS on the latter's birthday, this year. What is more strange is the JS passed away 2 days before Nida's birthday 5 years ago!
May both souls rest in peace. I can only offer my thanks for their work and the mark they have made on my life.
Saturday, October 24, 2015
The lazy blogger
It is after long long time that I pick up my pen to write. (Okay, not the pen and all that but you get the idea). There had been a lot of things happening, which I can pass of to claim that I was busy but the fact is that I have been lazy on this blog. So this post is going to be a rough sketch of what I have been doing and the experiences experienced during this time. This is going to be a long one.
It all started after I had just published my last blog somewhere in December last year. I was merrily about to post the next edition of the Indian Classical Music explanation, when at work I was called upon to look for a fresh project to work on. The catch of course being that I needed to travel for about "3 to 4 months". As I am experienced "Khiladi" I immediately placed my "deal". My kid being just 6 months old, I could not leave them back here. So I was allowed to take them along, of course the expenses borne by me. This was acceptable, as I was more interested having them with me than the costs associated.
Having "done that deal" I set out to cross the first hurdle of getting a passport issued for my 6 month old. I booked for a tatkal slot and was expecting the first hiccup at the passport centre at R K Puram. To our utter shock and disblieve, we were out of the office within 30 minutes! The passport got issued within 3 working days and delivered to our address on the 5th day!! Now we are not used to such ways of working. This was clearly unacceptable. Well, then what was left was applying for work permits and visiting the Swedish embassy at New Delhi gives a first glance of the "crowd and rush" that you expect when you visit that country. When I went to collect the permits on a February afternoon, I had only one another guy in front of me in the queue! Just near to the Swedish embassy is the embassy of the dreamland of many Indians, and you could see the size of the population of entire Karol Bagh flocking the area.
Next, my wife and I were worried about travelling such a long distance with the kid. We tried our best to get a bassinet seat booked on Austrian Airlines, but it never went through. After boarding the flight we were located in the middle row and with our son in our laps. It was being very tough. The air hostess tried to persuade the middle aged lady next to us to shift to a different seat so that we could have some more space, but she rebutted back saying something about being not comfortable. But the air hostess did not give up, she finally managed to persuade an old lady who needed more leg room to shift to our seat, whereas we moved to the bulk head seat with the bassinet free of charge!! We will always remain indebted to that kind and dutiful air-hostess.
Landing at Copenhagen airport was not new for me nor was the 3 hours train journey to our final destination at Karlskrona. But really after 15 hours of flight the last 3 hours on train just "kills you". Karlskrona is what you would expect of a small Scandinavian city. My wife and I will have lots of pleasant memories of our stay, especially watching our son grow up step-by-step in his development. Of course we were a little sad about not being able to share this with our parents, but nowadays with voice and video chats over the internet the effect of the separation is reduced.
My work was splendid too. I met a lot of people and colleagues and made very good friends. I was apprehensive at first, because the product I am working is a very famous one in the telecom billing area around the world. So naturally they were sort of "very good guys"of that domain out there. However I've seen and felt that it is more easy to work with people who have sorted out the complex equation of keeping their ego out of their work. I found more such people here and naturally got along nicely.
So after 5 months of stay and experiencing a fine Swedish summer we were back to India. Towards the end we were a little desperate to come back as we missed celebrating our son's first birthday with our folks back here. I have now this firm belief, that wherever in the world you may be, the pleasure of being with ones own is more precious than anything else in the world. There was a long standing visit of my wife pending to visit her parent's place that was executed in the last two months. I had to travel twice, back and forth Delhi and Durgapur in almost 3 weeks time.
It was a pleasure this time to file the income tax totally paperless. Even not that stupidity of enclosing a printed copy of ITR V and dispatching it to CPC Bangalore and then again sending it when you would not get a receipt even after 2 months. Also this time I got back my IT refund in 2-3 working days of filing the return. Bang comes a SMS that your bank account is credited with the refund! Impressed!
I have also embraced the digital route for reading. Powered by Kindle, this technology saves a lot of space and book shelf juggling and keeping track of which book is given to which person and its current status of return. It is an amazing way to read/borrow/buy books and much smarter in today's way of life.
Also on return, I found that though our water bill is now zero for the last two times (and that helped us save 400 bucks), we still have not got the free Wifi at our homes that we were promised. Neither the so called pathbreaking law called "Janlokpal" which was so important to have that we had to vote again for Delhi in 49 days time. It seems now it is not that important to have.
A new way Sherlock Holmes could detect your political alignment is the way how "Swach" you keep yourselves. And if you do yoga. Also people have become a bit jumpy about consuming the meat of a particular animal.
Some confusion has also risen in the literary world, suddenly, that they can no longer bear the present central government's atrocities and thus they no longer deem it fit to hold the award that they have been conferred. Some have declared that they are returning the award, some have gone to news channel studios to dump their trophies. No mention of the award money being returned though. Also I find it strange that only recipients of only one award are having the self realisation, no other "sukh anwars" are sharing the same feeling.
Anyways, that is what I had to say in this post. I skipped plenty, but will post in the coming ones. Promise!
It all started after I had just published my last blog somewhere in December last year. I was merrily about to post the next edition of the Indian Classical Music explanation, when at work I was called upon to look for a fresh project to work on. The catch of course being that I needed to travel for about "3 to 4 months". As I am experienced "Khiladi" I immediately placed my "deal". My kid being just 6 months old, I could not leave them back here. So I was allowed to take them along, of course the expenses borne by me. This was acceptable, as I was more interested having them with me than the costs associated.
Having "done that deal" I set out to cross the first hurdle of getting a passport issued for my 6 month old. I booked for a tatkal slot and was expecting the first hiccup at the passport centre at R K Puram. To our utter shock and disblieve, we were out of the office within 30 minutes! The passport got issued within 3 working days and delivered to our address on the 5th day!! Now we are not used to such ways of working. This was clearly unacceptable. Well, then what was left was applying for work permits and visiting the Swedish embassy at New Delhi gives a first glance of the "crowd and rush" that you expect when you visit that country. When I went to collect the permits on a February afternoon, I had only one another guy in front of me in the queue! Just near to the Swedish embassy is the embassy of the dreamland of many Indians, and you could see the size of the population of entire Karol Bagh flocking the area.
Next, my wife and I were worried about travelling such a long distance with the kid. We tried our best to get a bassinet seat booked on Austrian Airlines, but it never went through. After boarding the flight we were located in the middle row and with our son in our laps. It was being very tough. The air hostess tried to persuade the middle aged lady next to us to shift to a different seat so that we could have some more space, but she rebutted back saying something about being not comfortable. But the air hostess did not give up, she finally managed to persuade an old lady who needed more leg room to shift to our seat, whereas we moved to the bulk head seat with the bassinet free of charge!! We will always remain indebted to that kind and dutiful air-hostess.
Landing at Copenhagen airport was not new for me nor was the 3 hours train journey to our final destination at Karlskrona. But really after 15 hours of flight the last 3 hours on train just "kills you". Karlskrona is what you would expect of a small Scandinavian city. My wife and I will have lots of pleasant memories of our stay, especially watching our son grow up step-by-step in his development. Of course we were a little sad about not being able to share this with our parents, but nowadays with voice and video chats over the internet the effect of the separation is reduced.
My work was splendid too. I met a lot of people and colleagues and made very good friends. I was apprehensive at first, because the product I am working is a very famous one in the telecom billing area around the world. So naturally they were sort of "very good guys"of that domain out there. However I've seen and felt that it is more easy to work with people who have sorted out the complex equation of keeping their ego out of their work. I found more such people here and naturally got along nicely.
So after 5 months of stay and experiencing a fine Swedish summer we were back to India. Towards the end we were a little desperate to come back as we missed celebrating our son's first birthday with our folks back here. I have now this firm belief, that wherever in the world you may be, the pleasure of being with ones own is more precious than anything else in the world. There was a long standing visit of my wife pending to visit her parent's place that was executed in the last two months. I had to travel twice, back and forth Delhi and Durgapur in almost 3 weeks time.
It was a pleasure this time to file the income tax totally paperless. Even not that stupidity of enclosing a printed copy of ITR V and dispatching it to CPC Bangalore and then again sending it when you would not get a receipt even after 2 months. Also this time I got back my IT refund in 2-3 working days of filing the return. Bang comes a SMS that your bank account is credited with the refund! Impressed!
I have also embraced the digital route for reading. Powered by Kindle, this technology saves a lot of space and book shelf juggling and keeping track of which book is given to which person and its current status of return. It is an amazing way to read/borrow/buy books and much smarter in today's way of life.
Also on return, I found that though our water bill is now zero for the last two times (and that helped us save 400 bucks), we still have not got the free Wifi at our homes that we were promised. Neither the so called pathbreaking law called "Janlokpal" which was so important to have that we had to vote again for Delhi in 49 days time. It seems now it is not that important to have.
A new way Sherlock Holmes could detect your political alignment is the way how "Swach" you keep yourselves. And if you do yoga. Also people have become a bit jumpy about consuming the meat of a particular animal.
Some confusion has also risen in the literary world, suddenly, that they can no longer bear the present central government's atrocities and thus they no longer deem it fit to hold the award that they have been conferred. Some have declared that they are returning the award, some have gone to news channel studios to dump their trophies. No mention of the award money being returned though. Also I find it strange that only recipients of only one award are having the self realisation, no other "sukh anwars" are sharing the same feeling.
Anyways, that is what I had to say in this post. I skipped plenty, but will post in the coming ones. Promise!
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The moment of goodbye
Have you ever felt the heaviness, not just in your heart but inside your mind, when you realise that a person you are meeting at the instant...
