Resurrection

Dear Readers,

This is an attempt to resurrect my Hindi Blog from strong clutches of oblivion!

Love,
Kathak

Irony

Note: I had thought of writing these really *short* stories many moons ago, but thought they would fall back flat on my face. However, inspired by the success of Ammani's Quick Tales, here I go!

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She was 17
He - 51

She was a social butterfly, her parents adored her, her friends loved her, her teachers thought she was their best student.
He had an ugly divorce, kids who thought he wasn't worth their time, friends who thought he was too rich for them, employees who thought he was a very heartless employer.

He made passionate love to her.
She told everyone "the sex was good".

A quote

I had come across this in the days I used to read "motivational" and "inspirational" stuff like the Chicken Soup for the Soul books. At one time I used to even subscribe to their stories that they sent directly to your mailbox. The nice folks that they were didn't pester me with Spam once I signed off the mailing list. (Those who know me well enough know how much I HATE Spam.) I've probably long outgrown them, but a quote from I think one of the soup for the teenagers soup series of books keeps haunting my brain,

Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.

Google Baba directed me to the source of the quote, that many people (the book included) pen as "Source Unknown"

Lifecycle of Bloggers!

A highly hilarious read!!
[Via Kiruba]

And so true!!!
Guys, you just have to read this!!!!!! It's worth every blogging minute :)

Btw, Mathi Boy, does this ring a bell somewhere *evil evil grin*

You cry about comments that certain people make to provoke you. You bitch about these things as well. Then you take into consideration that comments were made by pimply 14 year olds who post jpegs of their warcraft characters online and realize that these lOZeRs aren’t worth your time. This gives you an sense of superiority. Haha! you say to yourself. I have a posse and a blog and you don’t. So fuck off, you lame twat. Hazzah!

And, "My love", this one's for you ;)

#8. You have a pseudo flirty im/blogging/flickr flirting relationship with another blogger whom you have never met.

ROTFL!!!!!
Awesome stuff, I tell you people.
Sorry Danny, couldn't find anything for us :(

Acknowledgements

I was glancing through my dad's BE project report (Random Trivia: Dad had won the gold medal for his BE project. Yeah... his university (U o Roorkee, now IIT Roorkee) used to give gold medals to the "best project" kind of a thing.) So, after multiple cursory glances through it over the years I decided to read it for once, now that my report is all printed and all. And as against a very "prim and proper, mind your P's and Q's" sort of an acknowledgement from our report, his has stuff like "without whose able and consistent guidance this work would have ended in a mess of complexity and perplexity"!!!! (Emphasis mine)

So, what should have my acknowledgements page actually read? Here goes.... !

We would like to foremost thank Mr. SP and Mr. KPM of M/s IEI for being voluntarily coerced into sponsoring our project. Although Mr. SP had personal interest in sponsoring this project, as his daughter would not have otherwise been able to complete the degree course in E&TC Engg., and all the money he spent as college fees and overheads in the last four years would have gone down the drain. We further thank Mr. SP for personally giving the print command for 7 copies of the report, giving us colourful pens and letting us use his office and the company conference room to make ourselves comfortable with paper and paper all around.

We like to thank Mr. KPM for not protesting against taking up the project and personally guiding us through out the project. It was surprising that he made no protest against us using the company server as our little toy box and downloading everything from Firefox 1.0 to Yahoo Messenger onto it along with the IDE, but the IDE of course was secondary. We also thank him for letting us play with the paper in his shredder, eating all the stocked kurkure, coded appams (I still can't pronounce this, so "coded" it is), the murukku, the good day biscuits and other assorted snacks. We also thank him for using his cabin as our base camp and the visitor's lounge as our bedroom for afternoon naps. We also thank him for entertaining us with pictures of his scuba diving and flying trips and for the chocolates we polished off after lunch every day. We further thank him for accepting empty chocolate wrappers and accepting the fact that chocolate isn't good for him and so we should finish it.

We would like to thank Mr. RM of IEI for putting up with us for an entire year and even laughing at our non-jokes. We further thank him for "accepting" our calls after office time on his cell phone and hot hitting "reject". The number of times he printed and reprinted our diagrams is highly humbling for us. And then taking care that all the components we need are available as well as personally taking the PCB films for development.

We also thank Mr. D of IEI for not letting us touch the solder iron lest we damage the verrrryyyy expensive PCBs or ourselves in the process. We however appreciate his restraint when we used the solder metal to make funky designs out of solder metal and jewellery out of resistors and capacitors and crabs out of ICs that we blew because of subjecting them to extreme current.

We would like to thank Prof. CVK for accepting the fact that we would not report to him till the end of the year and the other staff and lab assistants for putting up with silly questions that are not becoming of the 3rd and 6th rankers of the college.

We next like to thank all the other people who were directly or indirectly a part of this endeavour of ours. Notable among those,

We thank Mr. Mathivanan-only-chats-while-at-powerway-Subramaniyan for sodding off all his colleagues who wanted him to help them with the work and giving company to Kathak throughout December-January while the PCBs were routed at night India time. We also thank him for keeping company throughout February and a good part of March while the software was being developed which was anyway scrapped by hitting "delete" on fine frustrating afternoon. However his contribution in talking about important matters ...errr... generally klj* specific and a hell lot entertaining is highly appreciated.

We would also appreciate Mr. Kiten for making time to be a part of conference chats with Kathak, AgentR, Danny and Mr. M from the above paragraph and not understanding what "khopcha" we were talking about and the "Beta Mathi" funda or about Maha Danny Devi's maha kripa and refusing to bow down before her. Which saddened us a lot but it was highly entertaining at his expense of course :))

We further like to thank Charlie, who conspired with Kathak and Danny against Agent R and Agent Smith.

Thank You all, without your constant support this project would have been a royal screw up operation with nothing to ever remember in life. Had it not been for you guys, probably 10 years down the line we'd look back and say "Err... project. Yeah we developed a fucking sexy project. No, we don't have any memories"

Thank You!

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P.S: People, while writing the last part of this acknowledgement (Which on the onset was just two sentences in my mind) I think the "No, we don't have memories" is already void... these memories are going to last a life time. And I guess, Agent R shares my sentiments on this one!

P.P.S: "klj" was coined on June 13th, 2005 sometime in the afternoon during a chat with Charlie and it means "nothing" i.e "klj" and "nothing" are synonyms!

The virus hits EKUK

Fellow bloggers, the virus that has been spreading around the blogosphere has finally hit Ek Kathak aur Uski Kathayen via Trivial Matters.

Here Goes -

1. Volume of books/music owned?

I never really counted the books. Can see around 30 as I type this. Then there were those days of collecting the famous five/hardy boys/five find outers then the Nancy Drew's which by themselves would have been a collection of over 100. The the books you read when you outgrow this stuff. Surprisingly the only books I never really "collected" were mills and boons... wonder why... Anyway, I estimate 500+ as the number of books owned.

A quick glance through my PC, says I have over 11GB of music on the PC itself. Plus an assortment of music I've bought but never managed to rip and copy to he PC. A lot of that 11GB has been stolen and collected from the 100 rupee "mp3 cds"... a lot of which is trashy and not worth listening to, while about 1GB (classic pieces) have been collected before the demise of Napster and AudioGalaxy.

2. Last book/CD I bought?

The last I bought were two books (for myself) when I was buying a few books for my sister as her birthday present. To Engineer is Human, by Henry Petroski and An Equal Music, by Vikram Seth.

The last music I picked up was the soundtrack of the movie Swades. I'm a total AR Rehman fan and don't mind blindly picking up stuff he composes!

3. Books/Songs that mean a lot to me.

Books -->

The Mystery of the Spiteful Letters by Enid Blyton.
This was the first "book" I read after the tons of Tinkle and Chacha Choudhary I had spent the first 8-9 years of my life on. This book got me introduced to novels, stories and of course the most endearing character that could ever be contrived - Frederick Trotteville a.k.a Fatty!

May it Please Your Honour by Nathuram Vinayak Godse.
This is the statement that he read out in the court justifying his act of killing Gandhi. This book was my first insight into a totally different facet of MK Gandhi, and a good part of it made much more sense than what my history books always taught me. But then history is always written by those who win the war.

Ayn Rand - Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.
It was in these books that I found words to thoughts that were hazy and inarticulate. I was reading Atlas Shrugged and almost died nodding my head in agreement - and the very famous "I swear - by my life and my love of it - that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine"

Collected Fiction - Ruskin Bond
If there was anyone who makes a simple story so alluring, it has to be Ruskin Bond! I first read him in the 8th standard in a chapter in my English textbook. The next I got my hand on a Ruskin Bond piece was sometime in my 11th/12th standard. He doesn't need elaborate people, sets, timelines - nothing. Just "Rakesh" and his "Granddad" and a "Cherry Tree", and the most enthralling story you can come across!

Music -->

Strangers in the Night - Frank Sinatra
Groovy kind of love - Wayne Fontana
Always - Bon Jovi
Nothing's going to top us now - Starship
I'll be there for you - The Rembrants
Jamaican farewell - Harry Belafonte
Amond hindi music, there's "Dil Se" (the title track), "Chupke Se" from Sathiya, The title track of "Swades". From the older days there "honton se cho lo tum", "huzoor is kadar bhi na itrake chaliye" from the movie Masoom, "yeh kaun chirakaar hai".

The list of songs I've put in here is pretty ad hoc, and could grow the minute I hear some track and go like - "hey, that one too!"

4. Additional Points

This isn't part of the original meme, but I'd like to add. Anyone who really wants a good laugh at Arundhati Roy's expense should read the "Algebra of Infinite Justice". It's the crappiest collection of her political essays! I also have never been able to understand how people enjoy reading PG Wodehouse. I guess that's a mystery that I'll never decipher!!!!

And do hear Tarzan and Jane by the Toy Box.... its real rofl material!

Nominations

I pass this onto Mathi, Danny, Charlie , Pearl and anyone else reading this who would like to take it up. If you guys don't want to do both the books and music, do at least one of them!

F I V E

More days of those theory exams. After which, I'll not write another BE E&TC paper for as long as I live. Five more days, Two more papers. I can't wait for this to get over!!!!!

Coming to think of it, I don't why I'm doing this post. Some sort of a posting addiction? Like a "I have to hit the publish button" compulsion :D