Tears

"But love is blind, and lovers cannot see
The pretty follies that themselves commit."
(William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice")

Finally.. my financial independence surpassed all my apprehensions towards expensive price tags. The color was what struck me.. It was amazing, strikingly different from all those I had! I am not sure whether it was an impulse..I had to buy!

My quick fingers already pushed the thing into my 'trial' lot,.. and a warning shot.. from inside. I unsafely ignored. I knew it was going to be my costliest buy.. I give a damn to what 'BRANDNAME' the label contained. But, it was going to empty my wallet. It did!

I looked into the mirror. Sigh! Good things already stopped fitting me :( It was very obvious. I was 'torturing' it beyond its elastic limits. And I was going to do that everyday. It only yielded. You should understand, the pleasure of wearing it was never sadistic.

And then it went, .. into the washing lot. It cried! Only, the tears were blue.

My Jeans cried Blue.

It lay alone for a long while, hanging on a rope outside, under hot scorching summer sun, and it cried until all its tears dried and there were no more tears left to come. I left it there, hoping that someday it would understand.

It looked alien and strangely unfamiliar. It looked pale, weak and detached. I was in love and it was still beautiful to me. And so,.. it had to endure the pain again and yet again. It just yielded and acquiesced to the 'enormous' deformative and distortive forces. It never actually understood, - that the pleasure of wearing it was never sadistic.

It cried out all its beauty. It BLED BLUE ... until... it became devoid of all its beauty! :(

Now what?

“Well, the tragedy is over. The failure is complete. I turn my head and go away. I took my share in this fight for the impossible.”
(Albert Camus)



Found this after googling: (wash after 30 days?!*&%$# Kill me!)

"Levi's recently introduced a line of jeans that promise control over the break-in and fading process over a very short period of time. They're called Imprint jeans and Levi's is offering the fabric as an option on their Slim Straight 514's in the US (additional cuts available overseas). Basically you wear them for as long as possible before the first wash (about 30 days) and during that time, the jeans "imprint" to your body. When you wash them in hot water they fade at an increased pace.

Once you get them looking how you want, you only wash them in cold water to prolong the look. Check out the pic above of the progression over 120 days. Priced at around $75, we think Levi's has a winner on their hands."

IMP NOTE: Read tags
(no matter how independent you are...) Price tags contain other information too. And most important information is often at the back.

One night @ IIT ..... an Eight point someone story

That night- I will remember for my entire life! It wouldn't have been different frm a typical night if God hadn't decided to make that one wish come true.... Hmm.. among all those that I asked Him.. that had to be the one to be granted.!

Last semsester@IIT, few days from submission day of final thesis..

No, I didn't ask God for results, even though that was what I should have asked for! Sigh! How much I regret!... All those colourful graphs illustrating that the algo I devised is 200%-500% better than all the existing algos devised by all those nerds frm all over the world..! That was exactly what I should have asked for! That was not.

Frustration which used to sit in my head took control of my central and peripheral nervous systems. Same was the story wid the lady who stayed in the room opposite to mine.. This madam who was frm structural engineering, also happened to be the maintenance secy for the most ancient and historic monument in IIT -- our hostel which is more than 60yrs old. She was doing a project on designing some earthquake resistant structures. (Infact her neighbor's project is far more interesting.. involves collection of samples (leachate) from landfills and analyzing them. But it doesn't fall under the scope of our story. Lets discuss this later) Same situation, same story for all... no results.

@3.AM I returned from the lab to the hostel (topmost floor).. as usual.. to find something unusual. Light was still on in this lady's room and she was struggling hard to keep her eyes open, cursing everything on earth she can spell, trying to arrive at some design which can stand earthquakes. I tried to figure out what she was doing. She seemed to have put some roller skates under the building's legs (oh sorry.. pillars) so that the building only dances to the rythm of the quake and does not fall. She was simulating earthquakes on her PC and her structure was dancing always at some awkward angle. She was fighting to get those angles right. I found it amusing rather. I suppressed a laugh. He he.. she had to be our maintenance secy! She flared her nostrils in defence and argued about how the structure entirely moves with the earthquake due to the roller skates rather than bending unevenly and breaking. She later lectured abt the precision required in the design and how efficient, the design would then be! It was 3.30AM. We had no energy left in us. We were both struggling to keep our eyes open, to manage to get some performance curves (or angles.. whatever) and we were both in deep frustration. So peace had to prevail. We pitied each other and patted each other's backs.

Then it all began.. We started with cursing... everthing on earth we know. Then we were trying to figure out what to do. There was nothing that could be done. It was 4 AM and we decided to sleep. I went to my room and was hoping to wake up early.. to put in some worthless effort.. and wish for some miracles to happen. Miracles don't happen... atleast in our lives. If we were so unlucky.. so be it! I wished I had vanished frm the earth before I had to face the day.. I wished maybe some earthquake destroys the whole of IIT and I get saved frm the day... The thought was soothing. My burning eyes fought the resistance and won. It was 4.12AM

(@4.40AM roughly) Someone was banging the door. I hated that. 'Its Radhika and Neelima' .. those girls were yelling. 'Open the door! Immediately!'.
(I hate you guys) 'Pl let me sleep.. I hardly slept!'
'Come on! open the door! Now!'
'What is it? I want to sleep!'
(some internal discussion happened outside and they yelled together) 'Its XXXX's bday and we should go down and wish her.. Common fast! FAST! Just open the door!'
'(Kill me! I give a damn!) Hey pl.. I need to sleep. Will join u guys in few min'
Those girls were angry outside. 'OPEN THE DOOOR NOWWWWWW!!!'
I had to wake up and unlatch the door. Those girls pulled me out and took me down. N started..

'There was an earthquake now! Didnt you even know? We all got up frm bed. It was so severe. Mud was falling from the walls, the bed moved, everything fell off my desk. I was shocked. Didn't you even know'

'WHATT??? My sleep was then gone!'

I looked around. The entire hostel was there. Even the lady who was designing the earthquake resistant structures was there.. completely lost! .. She found everything vibrating, things falling off her cupboard.. and it took 15 minutes for her to realize it was an earthquake!. This madam who was simulating earthquakes for the last few months, apparently felt the first earthquake in her life!

N my situation... I was under heavy doses of frustration and sleeplessness. The earth and my hostel were all shaking under me and I had no clue! N that was exactly what I asked for about an hour ago! Oh my God! Did the earthquake occur in AP too? Are my parents and sister fine? I called them and checked.

Later, Radhi and neelima started describing.. the earthquake, how mud fell off frm the walls of the building and how they felt it might collapse and decided to run outside the building.. found that I was still sleeping and decided to take me along at that time! (Cant appreciate them enough) They decided not to tell me about the quake coz they thought I would panic (Did they think that it would give me a heart attack? Most likely. They don't know how earthquake resistant my sleep is :p) and decided to tell that it was a frens' bday and take me down!! I love u guys!

Most unbelievable thing was.. I wished for an earthquake at @4AM and it came true in less than an hr! I cant tell you what my reactions were. Just imagine and have a laugh!

(we later had tea and examined how earthquake non-resistant our hostel was!)

Rectifier Needed ......

ECG
An electrical engg in me cannot fail to see an alternating voltage wave in that pattern.

COMMON MAN's REACTIONS TO NEWSPAPER HEADLINES
A burst of anguish.... a surge of fury..... a sudden awakening ... the rebouncing of sleeping ideologies... some retrospection.... some new resolutions..... a new born excitement... a little sense of unity.... some useless conclusions drawn based on minimal knowledge n understanding.... some free advise..... a little action (mostly limited to a few fwds n mail chains n some protests n posts like this in blogs)...
&
the common man's common state - 'inaction'.... passivity .... blame-game ..... & no change

The very alternating pattern....

Haven't you ever wondered if the human heart 'powers' the human emotions as well?
If so, why did it have to be an AC source?
Why wasn't it designed to produce DC?
Who can 'RECTIFY' this?
Won't it work wonders that way?

Waking-up hassles

Someone somewhere said ........
Half of our life is 'wasted' (:x) in sleeping. The other half is what we have....

I can definitely say that this proportion does not hold in my case :)... Well ... whatever the proportion is, ... all the time I 'have', I owe it to my alarm clock. My day has to begin wid the world's most annoying noise, which I hate to hear and yet make sure I hear it the next morning. I still don't wake up ... Do I? My hand invariably hits that thing right on the top of its head and I am blessed wid 5 more minutes of peaceful sleep. It almost became involuntary to me that I grope for the snooze button at the start of the sound. Not once, I press snooze button almost as many times as I press all the buttons on my keyboard for the rest of the day in office.

In my childhood, my father used to take up this impossible task of waking me up in the morning. Daddy Bravo! He surely has a way wid me ... n he mastered his techniques well .. Had u ever seen any old mythological movie, it won't be hard to imagine how our typical mornings would look like..... You can easily see a warfield (its no less BTW) and my father there .. like Arjuna (or any typical archer, ..you name him) fighting to win over my laziness. He releases his powerful Vaayavyastra (puts fan off).... well.. ok.. this is infact an inverse of vayavyastra. This never worked any way. He then uses his Suryastra (with a built-in aagneyastra).... he pulls off the curtains to let hot sunlight fall over my face. By this time, my sleep would entirely be gone.. But my resistance never so easily loses. I continue to lie in bed still pretending to be sleepy. He then employs his Varunastra... the most powerful one... He doesn't even have to :o .. the name itself works.. As my father approaches me, with a half frozen bottle of water from our fridge, I sit right up in my bed. He then pulls me into some silly conversation and that is the end. This little routine left many sweet memories in my mind.. I miss my dad so much. And this is one other reason why I hate my alarm.. it reminds me of his absence.

It has always been a futile attempt to synchronize my biological clock wid my alarm clock (I only wish for vice versa). I grew tired of it. I was famous in my entire circle for my 'odd' timings. 'Odd' is it? In the previous year, this oddity was at its peak. I almost had an entirely nocturnal lifestyle for the whole year. Got up when the sun sat right over my head, had lunch for breakfast, dinner for lunch and always skipped dinner ;).. Sat in lab all night and went back to hostel only to wish my frens 'good morning'. The unfriendly extremes of weather, and the hectic and demanding schedules of IIT life made it the most convenient schedule. Once, it so happened that, I decided not to miss my breakfast ... so I had my breakfast and then went to sleep. It became very difficult for me to sleep at night. Not even counting numbers helped ..100s, 1000s.... the count went on but it was impossible for me to sleep. Some very unfortunate days (fortunately there were only a few), when deadlines just got over, I would have the evenings free. Such days, I used to hold movie sessions (one more thing I was famous for). They started after dinner time and went on... till 3, 4, 5 and even 6. Then I see sunlight... haa its time to sleep ;).

I always prefer working in late hours (and last minutes) when the whole world (sry... only the world which is on my side of the globe) is sleeping. Early to bed, early to rise makes u healthy, wealthy and wise... probably this explains why I am so unwise not to realize this. My father always said ... early hours of the day (brahmamuhurtham) are so auspicious.. n whatever u do at the time is successful. He is absolutely true... the most crucial achievements of my life happened at that that time ... (many aha moments, many deadlines met, my major project .. all finished ;) at those hours. Thankfully, whosoever brought in the concept of 'brahmamuhurtham', didn't say that we have to 'start' things at that hour. I would have been the greatest loser then! Now .. that I manage it somehow ... I am not (How clever I am!).

Listen ... all u.. who still complain abt my timings - Now my routine is changed. I have 'learnt' how to get some sleep (You only need to get a manager to report to the next morning n sleep will come). N how to wake up came automatically to me.

If deadlines come, I am afraid, my routine will come back too.. :o Why don't u realize that I was only born on the wrong side of the globe!!? My timings are perfectly alright :p Its all relative u see!

Inertia

Lucky u are ....
... if u can continue ... to Rest... when every damn thing in this world strives to push u into something.... tries to extract effort and hardwork out of u, makes u bend when you want to stretch and yawn.... You suddenly become soo huge that the greatest pressures get smaller and smaller as they build up and Fail to produce any motion in you .....The actions are at their extremes and yet the reactions are nil...

You just defy all Newton's laws and only continue to be as lazy as ever ... and perfectly enjoy being so....
but sincerely wish u could move wid these forces ;).... What a life!