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Sunday, November 21, 2010

Music and Me

When I was a kid I grew up listening to my dad playing the Tabla. It is an Indian drum played with your fingers. I remember him playing the Tabla for hours at a stretch. And he would sing in his deep melodious voice and I would listen. That I could not learn the Tabla or Indian classical music is one of the things I rue the most to this day. But I did develop an discerning ear for music. I love to sing now and then and I do it well enough for someone not trained in music. Music has not deserted me at any point of time in my life. I find a sort of solace in music that I have not found in anything, anywhere or anyone else. My introduction to music started with Indian classical and Kishore Da, Mohammad Rafi, Lata Ji, Asha Ji, Hemanta Mukhopadhyay, Manna De etc. And except for a brief adolescent phase I have never found new Bollywood music very attractive. With the progression of years I started to inculcate a taste in Rock music and other alternative sounds. It might have been the hormones and the society that sparked my interest but once I got into it there was no turning back. I found myself in good rock music. I started mild with 80's U2 graduated into GnR, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin then came college, I had briefly heard Pink Floyd previously but soon it became a life line. Psychedelic was around me day and night. In the background I started listening to metal, punk, trance, lounge, alternative, progressive, grunge, indie, industrial and so on. Towards the end of college I started listening to death metal but I will accept the fact that except for a few bands I am not a big death metal fan. I would rather have old school metal music any day. In the fall of 2009 I came to the United States. In a year or so I feel like I have matured more than in the entire 22 years of my life that I spent in small town Durgapur, India. And I have gone back to listening to Indian classical music, not that I do not listen to good rock music anymore. Music has kept me running through out this time. Every day for some time I still close my eyes crank up the volume and go back to my "safe place". Somewhere where there is only me and music and my ethereal love and nothing can harm me and I listen to my favorite songs. The thoughts that they trigger in my head I cannot explain because they are as complex as they are fleeting. Music makes me happy, it makes me sad, it excites me, it calms me down, it soothes my soul. I wish I can always have this refuge to fall back upon whenever I need it.

Friendly Neighborhood Indian

I am fervently Bengali and wholeheartedly Indian. I grew up in Durgapur, in the industrial heartlands of West Bengal. In school I guess I had as many non-Bengali friends as Bengalis. My scores in Bengali were always on the lower side (Just for the record my lowest score in ICSE was in Bengali) and people have made fun of it. I am apparently not Bengali enough because of my ways and how I talk, dress, interact with people and my chaste Hindi. My Hindi apparently being pretty good for people from my part of the country. It does not have a Bengali accent according to some people who have mistaken me for someone from Bihar or UP. But I am not "thet" enough to be identified as someone from the Northern States or Bihar. I have always reveled in this. The uniqueness of India and that you can be from one place and be so different from someone else in your own country and yet the same, yet very Indian. I have also been a butt of a few "bloody NRI" jokes some of which might not have been jokes actually.

But now my friends here tell me that I do not have an "Indian accent". I have heard enough "slurpee" jokes to know what that sounds like, though I have only heard very few people in India talk like that. And I do not know whether to like it or not. I am proud of my Indianness, does it mean now I am a little less Indian now? I swear by the tricolor in my room I am not. I guess I will have to compensate otherwise to make myself more Indian. I wonder what I can do? But until I discover my true being in this incredible quagmire of identities I remain what my friend Arun Krishnamoorthy calls "your friendly neighborhood Indian".



[P.S. an NRI for the uninitiated is a Non Resident Indian or in more clearer terms according to "someone" a bloody backstabber who deserts his own country for greener pastures and a few thousand extra dollars.
"thet" Hindi is another word for chaste Hindi but the connotation is a little more complex and less serious but the complexity is lost in translation.
And Arun I had been writing this for a while but thanks for the ending.]

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Who's Gonna Save My Soul Now

I was watching the Future Shorts series on Youtube. I even downloaded a bunch of the shorts. I loved the Black Hole thing and this one too. The animation is awesome and the dialogues incredible.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Beat That Google

On a Wednesday 2/10/2010, Google announced its plans on implementing a revolutionary new high speed fiber network with speeds up to 1 GB per second. Simultaneously Google also issued RFIs to small sized cities in the United States of America that were interested in participating in Google's Beta run of this amazing new network. Which resulted in all sorts of campaigning by the cities. The city of Topeka, KA officially renamed itself Google for a day to catch Google's eye, a feat that was lampooned by Google this April Fools when they renamed Google to Topeka for a day. Google's "revolutionary" new network has had enough publicity without even being operational.

Now comprehend this a single sperm has at least around 37.5 MB, by some estimates, of information coded into the DNA in it. A normal ejaculation results in the release of around 6 million sperms. A simple computation brings total amount of data involved in this to an enormous 1587.5 TB. A normal ejaculation lasts about 3 seconds. Therefore an enormous amount of data is transferred at around 529.2 TBps. Also consider the physical volume that this data occupies and compare it to our conventional means of data storage i.e. HDDs, SSDs, Flash Drives, SD cards and how much data they can store. We still have a long long way to go Google.

Try to think, or rather not to, of this the next time.

More information about the Google project is up on the official Google blog post.

[P.S. Portions of this post were adapted from other sources by yours truly. He is also, in good conscience, not aware of the actual copyright holders so please do not blame him for copyright violations.]

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

The First Amphibian

To the ladies. We men cannot understand women, so please do not make it any harder. Be simple and crude in your conversations with your man and there cannot be anything more he wishes for, except for (you know what). There are things that men hate about you. They wish they could tell you but they cannot. Either because they love you too much or because they are afraid of what you might end up doing. I will help my brethren out, I will tell you one of the things that men hate most about women, so the next time one of my friends goes ballistic he can just say "Bijeet". We hate emotions or whatever you call it when we say something and you construe together something completely different in your lovely heads and then react entirely opposite to how we expected you to react. When the first amphibian crawled out of the slosh of its pond and unto an unknown and evidently hostile world, it did not do so to evolve. It was because it was tired of listening to its girlfriend, wife or whoever it was bickering down there underwater; about something that he had in all probability done very innocuously.

He must have gone, "I am tired of this", "Now I am going upstairs, I will grow a pair of lungs and other specialized organs for it or whatever else it takes, but I cannot take your emotions anymore." Men are simple; for men there is "A, B, C, D...."; for women there is "A, B, C, F, Pink, Blue, Clouds, Mountains, Unicorns, Trains, Dreams, Princes....". A man will answer a simple question simply a woman will answer you with a question. Too many emotions I say, way too many.

(P.S. This is not my own creation, I was watching a stand-up show, dunno who the comic was but I liked some of the things he said, pieced them together and added some touches of my own. Do not know if he copied from somewhere. So I am sorry if this infringes any copyrights. Bring on the misogynist accusations.)


Saturday, September 11, 2010

Long Hydrocarbon Chains of Grief

I was sitting on the porch behind Chelsea's. It's a good place here in Baton Rouge; to sit down with some friends; have a nice chat; listen to the live band wafting in from the other side of the glass door; through which you can see a collective little crowd of people. And it occurred to me that all our griefs must be hydrocarbon chains; if they had physical existence. And the length of the hydrocarbon chains should be directly proportional to how sad you were. The more the extent of your grief the more complicated the structure of your grieving hydrocarbon. Now there are two reasons behind this apparently fantastical idea striking my head.
Firstly Alcohol
, which I had had enough of by that time of the evening; that is if 1 o' clock in the morning qualifies as evening in your book like it does in mine. And we all know what extraordinary results a few glasses of that can bring about. But the second and the more logical reason is Alcohol.
Ah well! if you are lost right now do not fret, you will see my point soon enough. If all of it seems too hard to imagine, go get yourself a peg or two of your favorite ale and tag along with me. My primary question to myself was, why does one feel better when one has had a few pegs? Why does one forget one's griefs, one's pasts and all that is so wrong after a pint? Why no one has ever tried to drown their sorrows in copious amounts of water? The answer my friends must be the fact that our worries and griefs must be long chains of complex hydrocarbons; which are almost always non polar. And water being a polar solvent can according to the laws of nature only dissolve polar molecules in it. Alcohol on the other hand is a much more versatile solvent because it has both polar and non polar groups. It thus dissolves and carries away all our organic sorrows. And you loose them when you visit "the john".
Now just because you know this do not go ahead and order a gallon of your favorite industrial solvent, that stuff will kill you. Alcohol on the other hand will not, albeit under moderation given you like me know your limits.

Monday, July 5, 2010

If Only Airplanes Had Windows I Could Open

I pulled the straps on my backpack to tighten them and I ran. Humans can accelerate faster from a stop than a horse. I think I had heard that on Discovery or someplace now I knew it for a fact. A few meters of running and a frantic leap later I was in, barely. The constant chug-chug of a train is soothing to a certain degree. I had just completed the quintessential Indian way of catching a train. The Agniveena Express was always packed to the rafters with "daily-passengers" making their commute from the moffusils to Kolkata. It made no sense trying to push trough into a compartment jam packed with people. There is no escaping the fact that India is a country of over a billion people whenever one steps out of home in India. I did what I usually did and took out the extras page from that day's newspaper, which I always unerringly bought on my way into the railway station. I spread it out on the floor right next to the door, with my legs out on the foot board I sat down on it. Plugged into my music and stared out at the trees and green fields. As the wind hit me on the face, the sights sounds and smells of my motherland flooded my senses.
The stewardess was startled when I woke up with a "whoop"; I told her I had been dreaming. She smiled and asked me to fix my seat belt, the captain was making an announcement about the time of descent and rough weather around Houston. I looked out; the Lone Star state lay thousands of feet below me. The only sounds I could hear were Audioslave on my earphones and the constant drone of the twin jet engines on the Airbus A319 in the background, which reminded me that I need to get myself a pair of QC headphones. The only smells; were of scores of different eau-de-colognes on the flight and the sterilized smell of the cabin air. The only air hitting me on my face was the steady stream from the air conditioning outlet. A strange emptiness set into me. I realized how long it has been and how much longer it was going to be. I scrolled through my music and found that I wanted to listen to "Who Put the Weight of The World", I cranked up the volume and I wished.....

Monday, June 28, 2010

Our Best Laid Plans

We are human and I guess it is human to plan. God, or whoever it might be, has given us this amazing power to imagine our future, the way we want it to be, maybe live it a little in our minds even if that future might never arrive. And so we plan knowing very well that the probability of arriving at that virtual point in the future is pretty scarce.

According to my plan I would take a 1 hr 25 min Am Eagle flight to Dallas Fort Worth
(DFW) at 1:45 PM CST and then a 3 hr 40 min American Airlines flight to San Fransisco (SFO) at 3:50 PM CST from DFW. I would arrive at SFO around 5:30 PM PST, Mani di would pick me up from the airport on her way back from work and I would be at her place in San Jose by 7:00. I never thought I would lose my bottle of Davidoff on the flight and that wasn't the only aberration from my plan on this flight.

6. She told me that due to a huge storm in the vicinity of Baton Rouge the
ir flight had had to return. There was too much turbulence for the flight to be safe. Her flight would only be able to leave after 7:00 because the runway was busy till then. She was visiting her brother in Baton Rouge.

Iraq - Iran, erstwhile West Germany - East Germany, Ethiopia - Eritrea, South Korea - North Korea, India - Pakistan. I guess you see a trend here. Two countries who are vehemently opposed to the very fact that the other exists, two countries in an continued conflict of interest and at a or close to a state of war at all times. But take the common man out of a pair of these countries and put him outside the boundaries of his nation, preferably in the United States of 'merica (pun intended) and they can peacefully co-exist. I met this bubbly Pakistani girl, she would be around 13 - 14 years old, on my flight from DFW to SFO. She chatted with me for the next three and half hours about grad school, India, music, food and what not. I also have a good Pakistani friend I call Javed bhai here at LSU, a very down-to-earth person. Not the crazy indoctrinated firebrand who wants to "bleed India through a thousand cuts" (people who don't know what I am talking about should google it). I enjoyed talking to her. I relaxed on the flight listened to music and thought to myself barring any delays I should land by 9:00 PST. That would mean a delay of around 2 1/2 hours not bad considering if I had not missed the plane I would have been delayed by God knows how long.
One. With my best laid plans I left home for San Jose, California on the 4th of June. Hector picked me up from home, it had been raining all day, East Baton Rouge Parish was under a thunderstorm and flash flood warning from the National Weather Service. We decided to chill at Hector's place before we went to the airport because we thought I had enough time. With an hour left for my flight we left Hector's place. It was five minutes to my flight when we reached the airport.

The flight from Baton Rouge to Dallas is a very short one the plane starts its descent just about half an hour after it finishes its ascent. It was still cloudy when we took off but cleared out as we flew west from Baton Rouge. I spent my time talking to this nice Gujrati gentleman who lives in Dallas and works for some telecom company. I had to change terminals at DFW and catch the 7:30 PM American Airlines flight to SFO. I managed to grab a 6" Grilled Chicken Sub with ham and sweet onion sauce before my flight. Getting on the flight was uneventful. The stewardess went through the usual "What to do if we crash" procedure, as if there is anything to do if we crash other than maybe, die. On the seat next to me was Sabah, a Pakistani teenager who was going to San Fransisco to meet her cousin. 8

After I got into Hector's car he realized that it was low on gas. I was already running late so we decided to take a chance with whatever was left in the tank. With almost zero vis
ibility we started and as we drove it got worse. It seemed like the Gods were inclement upon me missing my flight. Due to flash flooding some of the roads were closed and we could not get on the I-110 from Perkins. When we eventually did get on the I-110 we were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of traffic. To make matters worse Hector could not step on the gas for fear of running out of it. Somehow I made to the airport about 3 minutes before the scheduled departure of my flight.

She had been on the 1:45 PM CST flight out of Baton Rouge. If I had been on time for the flight and not missed it she would have been sitting beside me on the flight. And like her I would have had to wait till 7:00 PM for my flight out of Baton Rouge. God knows when I would have reached San Jose if I had to wait that long. Her name was Yu Jin, she was going to Salt Lake city and was actually from South Korea. She said she had to take the earliest flight out of Baton Rouge because she had a connecting flight from DFW to SLC. She seemed really tensed. I felt a sorry for her as I boarded my 3:30 flight to DFW, I could not help it. For me missing the flight was turning out to be good.

This entry does not follow a chronological or any logical order;
for that matter; at all because I decided not to plan what I wanted to write and I wrote whatever I remembered from my trip whenever and however it came to my mind.

When I reached the boarding gate I was literally panting for breath. The guy at the booth told me that my flight had just left. I told him of what I had been through at the security check and asked him if he could put me on the next flight to Dallas which was at 3:30 PM. I had the forethought of asking him if he could check to see if there were any vacant seats on the DFW - SFO flight. He said there were so I asked him to put me on priority for one of those seats. I called Mani Di to tell her I would be late, called Hector to tell him that I had missed my flight which he did not believe to begin with, puggled into my iPod and started listening to Audioslave. After 25 minutes or so I saw the gates open and a stream of people entered the terminal. A nice Asian looking girl came in and sat in front of me. In my head I guessed she was from the far east, she looked Korean, my hunch was later proved correct.

Shankar bhaiyya was coming to pick me up at the San Fransisco Airport. My flight came in ahead
of time so I sat outside the terminal and watched people coming in to pick someone up or to drop someone off. I saw them hug in mirth of seeing a beloved someone after a long time or in the grief of having to let go of someone for a long time. There are all kinds of people who go through the gates of an airport, they have various demeanors some look TENsed, some relieved some happy. I listened to Dream Theater and enjoyed the dry; just a tad warm California air.

It was still raining outside. I was already late. I had five minutes to get through security and reach the boarding gate. But before that I had to pass through the bane and the savior of every flier; airport security. Three well built in blue TSA uniforms stared at me; as if the metal detector and x-ray machines were not enough and they had to perform an x-ray with their eyes. I put my bag, my shoes, my camera, belt and whatever; went through the metal detector. Then was handed my camera back and was asked to pass it through the x-ray again. Next I was asked if I had fluids in my bag, which I did. So I took them out and passed them through the x ray. All of this was eating up my time. And her eyes fell on the bottle of cologne. It was practically full and just over the 3.4 fl. oz. TSA limit. She decided she would keep it. She wanted me to go downstairs check the bag in with the cologne and then go through; but I was in a hurry to catch my flight and it did not make any sense checking in that tiny bag which; according to the new air travel restrictions on domestic flights; would cost me $30 and I would risk missing my flight in the delay. I decided to let go of the bottle and went through. I eventually did miss my flight.

I expected things to go according to plan that day. Clearly they did not. So also in life we plan and hope that things will go according to our plans, most times they do not. But like that day; the fact that they did not go according to plan shall not dictate whether they went wrong for better or for worse. You might just be pleasantly surprised when you watch your best laid plans shattered to a billion bits and you see a different future you staring at you from each one of them shattered pieces. 11.


[P.S. When I wrote this I wanted to make it random just like life. Thus the paragraphs are in no particular chronological order. But there are subtle markers in each paragraph telling you where in the sequence the paragraph fits in except for one. I wanted the you to figure the order out in their head. So you will have to read it all then piece it all together.]

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Nightmare

A vast expanse of nothingness
Stares at me when I close my eyes
Light is lost in an abyss somewhere
And scary creatures crawl
My limbs tremble
A river of red loses itself in black
Banshees wail, a howling wolf
A crack of thunder but still no light
The rustling of fallen leaves
Makes a baby cry
When someone calls my name
An epidemic of fear sweeps through
I clench my fist, my hair is awry
I know not what to do
I wish it were just a nightmare
And then I hear you call

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Sat-sri-kal

-"Paa'ji Satsrikal. Yeh meri ghari tut gi hai. Te innu theek kar doge?"
-"Haan haan, thodda wait karan tussi, main abhi kardiyasi"
After 5 mins.
My watch's band is fixed, the battery is changed and it is set to the proper time.
-"Kitna bana mera"
-"Waise to pin ka $ 5 aur Battery ka $ 8 lagta hai, par aap jitna dena hai do"
-"Paa'ji aap yeh credit card lo mera aur jitna theek lage kaat lo."
Now get this; all this is happening inside the Cortana Mall here in Baton Rouge. A little bit of India right here bang in the heart of the Southern United States. I can't express how happy I was.
Case in point; motels deep in the USA are nowadays referred to as "Patel Motels", that is because our "Gujju bhais" have taken over the responsibility of running motels and inns by the interstates. And they are thriving.
We recently went on a trip to the Smokey mountains. On the way we stopped at a local grocery that was run by another Gujrati brother. We were just looking to use the loo, because our bladders were practically overflowing. But he offered us free hot coffee since it was raining outside. In Chattanooga "the scenic city", we stayed at the Knights Inn, Ringgold Road which was owned by another Indian family. We had messed up on our schedule and had to postpone the booking, which was done in a jiffy without any extra charge.
Am I glad there are so many Indians in the USA. I am glad, I am happy and I am proud.
And Paa'ji just took $5.63 off my credit card, which I guess would cover the cost price. Thank You Paa'ji.