For my Appacha..

I've always thought my grandfather and I had a special relationship. I've been told I was with him in the car park at the hospital when Sana was born which is one of my earliest imagined vague memories. Vague, or imagined, as the case may be, it really doesn't matter. I loved him anyway. I‘m forgetting my own life at a really rapid rate, but I can remember many scenes from my childhood with him. I’ll never forget the ‘Silence Game’ that he played with us so seriously for so long which we never ever suspected wasn’t a bona fide game! He would sit on his chair in the verandah, the one on the left side and Sana and I would sit on the other two. I remember also (in the days before 2000) him riding the scooter out for errands and how we used to run to open the gate and come back on the scooter with him.  

I remember how wonderful he was after he lost his eyesight: how he never complained or whined about it, but took it with his trademark brand of humour and wit and had an unbroken and unshaken faith. I remember how he would sit and read the headlines as far as his limited eyesight would permit him, how he watched the news for hours together everyday and how both of them always consequently knew everything that was going on in the world. I remember him never failing to watch Munshi on Asianet at 6pm(or was it 7pm). I can remember watching parts of Malayalam movies with him where he still understood more of what was going on, without looking, than I did. I remember how he used to sit, with hands interlocked, head tilted down and eyes screwed up, concentrating on the dialogues and the way he used to laugh at a joke, the sudden bark of laughter. 

I remember how he used to put on the pump every day and listen for the water to fall from the overflow pipe and how he started delegating it to us: a special task. I remember how he used to tell us stories: about how he joined the army, how he bought the house, how he met Ammachi! His favourite saying was “Be content with what you have”. I remember how his dialogues could be really funny and surprising. I remember how he took stupid stands sometimes just to irritate Mama or Reji appa and went on arguing with them, sometimes with hilarious results, with everyone getting quite agitated! And then there was his ‘Tapatha thithips’ , samosas and buns...there's such a flood of memories!

Life won’t be quite the same without him in it.

And I'll try to continue to remember.

I love Economics classes! We've discussed Picasso's work, the Dark Knight, classical music concerts, conspiracies behind the depreciating rupee and  a hundred other things that seem very unrelated to our course on the face of it!

Anyway, so in one class, Sir made us do an exercise to see how many of us would donate to a common pool of money if we could use it anyway, whether we donated it or not. He was trying to demonstrate the need for paying taxes and the selfishness of free-riding individual consumers.

This throws up so many interesting questions! One such is whether, when a attendance is required for a particular function, an entire body of people can be trusted to attend or whether coercion and pressure to attend (if it leads to greater good) is justified. We have three hour sessions everyday! 

The right of it

I love this! It's exactly what I'd love to tell some people sometimes.
But then of course that would mean that they'd just quote it right back to me.
So does that mean no one should ever quote it to anyone else?
Confusing thing.
Maybe an outsider should quote it to everyone!
But then the outsider might be wrong in believing his statement is not wrong.
Grrr...Philosophy!

Anyway, I'll try to find a moral of the story: keep Snoopy's last statement in mind during arguments or discussions(especially theological ones!).

Unless you're right.
;)

White fluorescent strips shine down

Everywhere,one sees lines and light

And all the time, voices raised

Blending in the cacophony

Of a place which pays one to stay

And where one stays just to pay

One’s rent and food and bills.

I huddle in my green stole

All so cold..
Think I've caught the chills.

ToyLands

I think toy shops can be the most magical places ever. Call me a kid if you want to, but just looking at the racks and racks of toys does something to my brain! It's worse if there are samples left around.. Today, I even got a kid who was holding one half of a ball tossing game to show me how it was played. He looked rather nonplussed! While my friend was looking around for something for her brother,I began trying out the scooter and the Xbox too. If the manager would let me, I'm sure I'd spend hours in there! I think the whole fascination is just with the connection to the part of my own brain which has been shut down/overwritten by other parts: the 'play circuit', if you will! As a kid, playing was quite an end in itself: I didn't feel like I should be doing something else while I spent time in my backyard digging for hours. As adults, we have to think about work and manage time. Now all I can do is watch kids play, and play with them when I feel I can fit it into my schedule!

++i or i++?

The stereotype of computer programmers in media is often that of 'nerds' who can't see beyond their own noses. After a couple of weeks' exposure to their job, I think the stereotype falls, as a lot of stereotypes do tend to fall, beside the wayside.

One thing programmers always want their code to be is 'clean'. In other words, it should be efficient, short and uncomplicated, and should do the job you want it to do, and nothing else! High quality programming is as creative a job as art. Anyone can copy a painting or picture: it requires knowledge of technique. Technique is easy to master, procedures are easy to master, too; the harder part is in being the person who says:"Wait a minute, let's try that!" or"But can't we do it this way?". Copying code from a book is easy; thinking up new ways of writing it based on your knowledge(and not just technical knowledge, but knowledge of the world, such as it is!), requires a special kind of mind! I think the top quality computer programmers, artists, musicians, designers and engineers all do pretty much the same thing!

Also, just today, I was looking at a bit of code that left me completely mystified. The author of the book it was in seemed engagingly excited about it and it clearly was something special, but its meaning left me completely in the dark. Frankly, I felt a bit like a kid wanting to get into a cool club. I do hope the mysteries of code unravel themselves more and more over the next six months!

PS. I just feel so pleased with myself. My previous post had a white background for some reason and I went into the HTML part of the editor and removed the colour. Let the initiation begin!

Will you, won't you?

High on money
But low on care
High on profits
(Let's up the fare!)

Hopping to London
And Paris for chores
Not knowing who handles
Our own dirty clothes

Did you see her shoes
Now, darling, that's nice
Jimmy Choo does bring
That certain spice

Prada and Chanel
We rack up the bills
Not knowing who labour
At that moment kills

Or the servants who drive us
Who feed us our meals
Who deal with our children
Their tantrums, their squeals

It's in front of our eyes
But we heed it we don't
Misery is caused
By people who WON'T