Story tree

...contd from S M I T H A

He thought it would be an ordinary journey. Standing behind the pillar he watched the train snort arrogantly into the station. With each snort he was reminded of his grandfather's words "You will fail in the city and return penniless"; with every heavenward whistle, he heard his cousin, "Don't worry. Come here and I will get you a job at the construction site." Now he had a 34-hour journey to prove one of them wrong, and he expected the excitement at the end of the journey. He looked at his ticket once again: compartment S9 berth 23.

He would preserve this ticket. When he would succeed, he would frame and hang it for all to see, as a reminder of the fact that greatness had humble origins, of the day when he set out to seize his destiny. His lips quivered with emotion as he carefully counted the money in his wallet, yet again. Four crisp hundreds and two crumpled fifties. At seventeen, it seemed like a fortune to him. He would carefully plan his expenses. He felt as energetic as the strong breeze that hit his face. He stumbled backward, as the wallet slipped from his hands.

Turag watched it fall, with the fingers of both his hands curled—one gripping the steel bar and the other gripping nothing but air. The wallet settled, the second time it touched the greased stones. It was diminishing in size and moving away from him like an open-mouthed balloon propelled by the gushing air. He knew, well enough, the events that would follow if he pulls the stop-chain. In fact it was a stop-chain that brought a wind of change in his life. Getting off from the thought-train that the stop-chain had evoked, he rushed towards it, with uncurled fingers.

"Don't do that." said a voice from behind him. The command in the voice, more than his curiosity, made him stop and turn around. The first thing he noticed was her eyes which also held the finality her voice seemed to convey. He was still staring deep into the depths of her beautiful eyes when he realized that he had been stopped. He closed his eyes for a second, shook his head to clear out the image -as if wiping the slate clean- and reopened them.
"I drop my wallet.", he said.

"I saw" Radha replied. Turag stared at her confused.
Before he could turn, ignoring Radha to pull the bar, Radha said "Please bhaisaab, my daughter is very ill. This train will reach Aurangabad in 2 hours. If you pull that chain, I might get really very late". Turang thought of anu, his niece, how worried they were when she fell ill last month.
Turang stood there feeling totally devastated and lost for life. He was being kind but at what cost he wondered.
Radha thrusted few crisp notes into his hands after thanking him profusely before alighting the train.


And I pass the baton to Risha, Soumya and Kapil.

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Sue me for 1 crore pls!!! Won't that be cool

Just imagine, someone sues me for A crore for something I published on my blog and I sue him for 2 crores for my mental stress & time waste and (of-course!!!) I win What the hell will I do with all that money!!! Holiday in Italy & Spain for a month, Honda Accord .... Dont even get me going :)(starry eyes!!!) that needs to be a different blog.

OK cut the crap, herez the story, I Stumbled upon Gaurav Sabnis's blog this morning and it turned out to be a very very interesting read. Not only because he was threatened to be sued for a huge 1.25 crore but also the happening thereafter. I have heard this name before but I am hearing this story for the first time so not sure where. I kept blog hopping from there on and seems like I joined in the heated-bandwagon a little late but still worth it I would say.

Talk about Freedom of speech. Talk about right to Information. Talk about your right to put up anything on your blog. And talk about some scared chicks who send out legal notices to bloggers for their views.

Its NOT about belonging to IIM or IIPM. Threatening someone for their views, questions the very foundation of democracy & your basic rights as a citizen of this country. Defamation, yes you surely can but first you need to prove it. Also, getting to Gaurav via his employer, according to me is a really cheap game.

If someone questions your credibility, prove/clarify it or just "SHUT UP". The students of IIPM surely maybe feeling the pinch becoz of the horrendous fees they pay or ofcourse there is the loyalty factor but their reaction to burn laptops in no way aligns with any management principles I have heard/learnt so far, working in the industry for the past 8 years, and of reading books, magz & articles published. This aligns more with hooliganism practises.

I think Gaurav showed some amazing character by resigning from IBM to stand by what he believes. I am not sure I will do that but nevertheless thatz my role model. Kuddos Gaurav!!!

Baptism

Ben & Ashley, approx 3 months old each, were baptised on 9/10/2005, Sunday, at the St Gregorious Orthodox Church, Akurdi.
No they arent twins, just that they were born to 2 of my cousins , just 14 days apart.

Baptism is a ritual performed by the christian community. Its first of the seven holy sacraments of the christian faith.

Baptism means

1) Cleansing of the original sin with prayers and holy water
(thatz what Adam and Eve gave the christian community, the first sin, when they had the forbidden fruit.They probably didnt realize the repercursions, Its a 100000's on the ritcher scale, we are still working on the effects)
2) The Actual conversion to christianity.
(Yeah, even if you are born of christian parents you need to be christened as a christian, cant take it for granted. We have had our share of debates about this
when long long ago was a active youth of the church .... but very little change has come around)
3) Appointment of a GodFather or a GodMother
(Its their responsibility to grow them in the christian faith, things like ....they dont listen to me, they are a handful and dear god they freak me out..kinds of justification donot work. Infact people take pride in mentioning their Godson or daughter, IF he/she has some good demonstrable skills like scoring marks or obedience, just in case you donot belong to that cadre then others take pleasure in mentioning "oh he is just like his god father ...very stubborn" )
4) Christened with a Name which is either ur grandfather's or grandmother's
(and that doesnt change even after marriage :) but your family should be kind enough not to name you shoshamma and ponnamma -typical names of granny's in kerala and find you some cuter derivatives else that will be the only time you & ur family will hear that name and it remains closed in the church records unless you want to be looked upon with scorn by the kid for defamation)
5) They are crowned as the children of Christ.
(They actually get a beautiful crown, and the only time when a girl child is taken to the altar. The crown is taken away not so very kindly if you just started playing with it bcoz the colors caught ur fancy.)

And we believe they are blessed.

Both brother & sister were happily napping with occasional checking on their respective mothers while the priest and the whole congregation were saying the prayers aloud admist all the bells and jingles that accompany the prayers. Their GodParents were repeating prayers holding their little tiny hands promising to grow the kids in christian faith.
"Sleeping like a log" runs in the family. so I guess they caught right on and probably thatz the excuse they are gonna be using.... we never heard a thing.

The usually tearsome Ben, to everyone's surprise was pretty cool, infact he also seemed to be smiling admist all the commotion just before the baptism ritual.
Was surprised at the bath the priest was giving him instead of his mom & granny and with so many ppl watching ....would have been thinking ..."dont these ppl have anything better to do than smiling at me when I am taking my bath"

Ashley was sleeping even when she was picked from her mom and placed in the baptism tub. She was looking very cute sitting in the baptism tub with her eyes closed. only when they started pouring the water did little ashley wake up and start crying.

Watching the reactions of the 2 tiny ones was really great. Infact people forgot to click snaps bcoz they were mesmerized by the sight.

After the crowning ceremony, when the priest wanted the crowns back, Ben was a little hesitant to give it back. he kept tossing his head from right to left confusing the priest about which side to remove it from.
Ashley didnt make a fuss and my guess is she was already sleeping and sucking her fingers after the nice warm bath.

Love you both and may you have a blessed life.

Mails & Style

While I hear a lot about formal mail communication, the do's and dont's and how's and why's, is there a style of informal or casual or friendly mails. Guess you should hear the person when you read the mail.
I still have the letter writing book dad bought some 20-25 yrs back when he had to write official letters. I guess he used to write a lot of them bcoz his mails to me would look like this

Dear daughter Sunita,

I hope this letter meets you in good health. We received a call from your office regarding your tax deduction. I have made the following investments for the same
1) LIC - 10000
2) NIC - 30000
Do call home on saturday. Your Mummy is waiting for your call.

Your's Lovingly
Daddy

I have read and re-read this mail n times, everytime it makes me smile.I can imagine him dictating the letter to my sister and she typing obediently. Always to the point and with instructions to call home.The best being Dear daughter Sunita and Your's lovingly Daddy.

Herez an excerpt from a series of mails from one of my friends. Lets call him A. A is a levelheaded guy with a great sense of humour from Junagadh. He did carry a lot of Junagadh accent initially but ever since he married B and with mean friends like me around (who used to nag him for all he says in the typical junagadh style) and probably being in England has taken its toll on his ascent. But when A writes mails, I can actually feel, he talking to me in his style.


Mail1

Sunitaben,

naya mail id kaun bhejega ??

aur good news kya B ke liye hi tha ??
you didn't tell me anything...by the way ..are you my friend or B's !!!!
yeah meri biwi..uska toh koi accha friend nahi hai..toh meri hi friend churane pe lagi hai....


My reply to Mail1:

arre i write to you................ B will complain .... and then u will also complain ki B is complaining karke........
If I write to her ...... then also u complain
so if i write to her the complains are less u see so that works best :p

Mail2

ha toh..important news muje bolane ka..aur time pass baatein B ko bolane ka..

by the way we didn't know that you have joined XYZ..le yeah to dono main se kisiko pata nahi hai...aab bataao

meri life toh aur bakwas ho gayi hai...aaj kaal croydon ja raha hun..(project transition)
cambridge se london kings cross...
london kings cross se victoria
victoria se croydon....yeah total 3 trains..takes around 2.5 hrs including some sprinting to catch the trains...
aur NCS ka toh pata nahi kya hone wala hai..mera project manager MUNIM jaisa hai...claim ke waqt bahut pange karata hai...aaj hi argument ho gaya...(jaise mein to croydon meri sasural jaata hun....saala 4 pound ke liye bhi rota hai..kya mere jaisa aadami 4 pound ka lunch bhi nahi kar sakata)...
mera uske saath aisa sab chalta hi raheta hai...aur baad mein bolata hai...A tum garam ho jate ho.... :)

And all I have to say to 'A & the likes' is I enjoy reading your mails bcoz they make me smile :).
And Reshma no prizes for guessing who AB are :).

HCIA RNPAG PC!YK!

No, its not the font nor your locale but just a cryptic title :).
Cryptography is an interesting subject. I remember my initial encounter with them in competitive exams.
if cat is dbu then what is dog
Though 90% of the time you are thinking "I give a damn what it is" you take your time to figure out whatz done in the first sample, whether its substituting the next alphabet or the previous or does a -> z or is it a series.
Though I used to enjoy deciphering these while at home over tea ..... I remember appearing for entrance exams & job interviews and cursing them while sweating profusely to decipher these kinds. Before the joy of decoding one could settle in you have a more complex one staring at you in the face and the time clock ticking by.

I think why people loved “Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown is because it was full of these code-decoding Techniques. How many actually know about the life of Jesus & Mary of Magdelene and the Holy Grail and how many actually care if Jesus was married or not. More than the controversy it drew in about the life of Jesus and the Catholic Church people merely enjoyed Robert Langdon & Sophie Neveu decode the clues and the explanation of the logic behind the clues.

So herez an another interesting encryption methodology I came across, God alone knows how I landed browsing through this.

In anycase this is Shannon’s Principle of Confusion & Difusion,

In a classical transposition cipher the plaintext is written on a piece of paper in horizontal rows of c characters each. The number of columns c is part of the secret key. After the whole text has been written down in this fashion, the ciphertext is read out vertically column after column. In simpler versions this is done in increasing column order, but in a generalized method the columns could be chosen in any order (known of course by the authorized receiver) thereby extending the number of possible keys.

Example:
MESSAGE FROM MARY STUART KILL THE QUEEN

M  E  S  S  A  G  E  F  R
O  M M  A R  Y  S  T  U
A  R  T  K  I  L  L  T  H
E  Q  U  E  E  N

MOAEE MRQSM TUSAK EARIE GYLNE SLFTT RUH


Isnt that smart :). I loved it. So the blog & now encrypt the Title ;) (The secret key is 5)

A Day's work

So Finally I have changed the look and feel of my year old blog. Have been thinking about it for a long time but never had the time and patience. Quite a job should say. Still got couple of things to do and figuring them out is going to be fun like why do my previous post section have stuff other than my title.Hmmm... if any of you know why, let me know. I also wanted to upload a pic of mine into the about me section. still working on it. And couple of more things I wanted to add, lets c.

Anyway, I learnt how to upload a pic finally :).