Lonely & Dejected

Lonely & Dejected

I fear being forgotten... long before i am gone.
By people who knew me... and made me feel like a pawn.

I walk past people... people i knew.
I give then a smile...I greet them too.

All I get... is an ineffectual reaction.
As if I am... on some friendship infraction.

So the next I see them...I try and ignore them.
Hoping it isn't... another friend i need to condemn.

It hurts to realize... That they don't care.
And some of em... are so rude that that they stare.

Am I over friendly... Or has the world turned cold.
Why is it so... that friendships too fold????

The dying flame

Sunday night was BBQ night... and after the dinner, we threw out the bigger pieces of coal, n waited for the smaller pieces to burn out. With nothing else to do, I picked up my phone n clicked a picture of the dying flame, n although a bit fuzzy, it did look pretty neat with a violet flame. Excited with the shade that appeared in my phone-camera, I rushed in n grabbed our point n shoot camera, but unfortunately it didn't come out the same way. I remember when I first bought my phone, I'd photograph anything n everything around me. Is this flame of photography in me dying??? I have often tried photographing the moon, n loads of other stuff that never come out as cool as they actually look. Though sometimes the camera captures stuff that the eye cannot... like in the case of a sunset at a beach, the picture of a canyon.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, I say it could be worth a million words too if the photographer has the skills... I leave u with the pictures of the dying flame.

The phone-camera pic :-

The point-n-shoot camera pic :-



But the flash told a different story altogether :-


All pictures are untouched except for being cropped using picasa.

Day 2 at 40 km/hr

Today, again I managed to keep my speeds under check. I practice self-control only on my way back from college as I have the time to do so then. I maintained a constant speed of 40 km/hr (unlike yesterday's 50) and didn't exceed it till at one turn (barely 2 kms from my place) I banked so hard (still at 40) that I scraped my foot-pegs... Adrenaline pumping combined with a faster music track from my earplugs, put me in a strange trance n I was off ripping the road agin, just like in the good ol' days. What is it about speed that gets me going??? Why don't others have the same needs???

Life at 40 km/hr

Today I decided that it is finally time that I altered my riding style and slowed down, hence reducing my need for braking. I am telling you, riding at 40 km/hr sure is strenuous. I limited myself to a max. speed of 50 km/hr and only once accidentally exceeded this speed limit I set, because of a downward slope. I rode on the left-most side of the road and kept behind other two-wheelers, and apart from exactly four places, I did not rev up my engine more than what people normally do. There were no skids today, and I am proud of that. I did feel a little sleepy at first, but the music kept me awake. Then towards the end, my muscles started cramping. Apart from one place where I jumped a divider, I rode like I imagined a 40 yr old would. Today I did not ride, I commuted.

The light-bulb theory

What do you need to light a bulb??? The answer, electricity provided via two wires, the live wire (also referred to as phase) and the neutral wire. The live wire is the one with a switch and the neutral is usually connected to the bulb at all times, to help it glow when ever the live wire is connected to it.

A pretty bright idea ain't it???

Who Am I???

I am an engineering student and am not scoring so well in my examinations, so I decided it would be wise to start preparing for MBA as a backup plan ;). So in order to bell the CAT (or at least to try and do so) I joined these classes where in the first class, we were asked to write about a 100 words about ourself. This really got me wondering... Who am I??? All I had to do was write a 100 words, but it took me a little over 45 minutes to write something that didn't even describe me. How does one describe oneself??? Most of the people in the class started with their names (which is good for an introduction), followed by where they were born and brought up, their educational background, what they were up to these days, some mentioned their hobbies, while some even went to the extent of describing their parents profession. Are these the things that describe a person? If yes, then I ain't satisfied... If no, then what does really define a person??? Someone once said that a name defines a person, just like a person defines a name. I believe, that the actions of a person are a better way of judging that person. But how does one put actions in words??? Something just isn't right. You can't just go around bragging about your good deeds to define yourself... And most people don't narrate the inappropriate things they do. I guess you should just leave it up to the other person to judge you... Don't you??? It just isn't fair to you to be asked to write something about yourself without sounding the least bit pretentious.

Somebody stop me!!!

What is the most important component of a bike??? The engine??? Wrong!!! Its the brakes. I realized this fact, this Monday morning, when I was riding to college with a pillion behind me. I had recently gotten my bike serviced, and had gotten new brake pads for both the front and rear wheels. When you put in new brake pads (brake-shoe lining) , they don't quite stop the bike that quick n need a little while to settle in. What's more was that the rear brake shoes weren't properly put back together. The drum brakes work by a set of brake shoes (shown in image) pressing outwards against the insides of a drum, using friction to slow it down. Due to improper alignment, only one of the brake shoes of my rear brakes came in contact with the drum, giving me very little braking, despite applying a lot of pressure. Then when the second brake pad came in contact with the drum, so much braking was applied, that the rear wheel locked (stopped spinning/started skidding). So as I was riding the other day, on applying the brakes, I did not find myself slowing down adequately, and out of sheer desperation, applied the brakes as hard as I could and fishtailed to an obscene angle on each side before coming within two inches of the vehicle in front of me. I normally don't fishtail (rear-end of the vehicle swerving from side to side like a fish's tail) that much even if my rear wheel is locked, but that is when I am riding solo. With a pillion behind you, getting the rear wheel to lock isn't that easy, since the weight on the rear wheel increases (hence increasing the friction) and then even if you do lock your wheel, handling is greatly compromised because of the pillion. For those of you wondering why make a big deal of the rear brakes??? In a bike having both front n rear drum brakes, where it's weight factor easily puts it in a situation where it would have done well with both disc brakes, you need all the braking you can get and quite a lot of it is provided by the rear brakes.
PS : I used the word "brake" only 18... make that 19 times in this post.

Locked out of blogger...

Yesterday, all evening long I was trying to log into blogger, but i was greeted by a message which looked like :-

But I am absolutely positive that there is no virus on my computer. Then what caused google to think that my "query looked similar to automated requests generated by a computer virus or a spyware application"???
I was downloading a couple of things while browsing at the same time n the blogger page was taking ages to load. All I did was click on the refresh button one too many times. I would like to thank google for their concern, but would also like to request google to upgrade their malware detection system.

The culling of a Nation!!!

Could somebody please explain to me what is going on in my country???
Yesterday after attending college, when I reached the college gate, I was informed that I was not allowed to leave for home. Apparently there was violence in the city (Pune) and we were being detained for our own safety. This time the violence wasn't a battle of the religions (thankfully)... but rather shockingly a regional one. MNS, the excretory product evacuated from Shiv Sena, had motivated the unemployed youth of the state to thrash any n every person in Maharashtra, not belonging to the state, for apparently taking away the jobs meant for Maharashtran folks. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. A couple of days later, an MNS leader is hatched down, and a suspect in this case is murdered the next day. Raj Thakeray, the founder of MNS is arrested a day later, and that is what sparked today's violence. The college authorities took the decision of locking us all in till they thought it was safe to let us go. Sitting in the cafeteria, sipping coffee, inhaling second-hand smoke, there we were, cussing at the ignorant youth of the nation. From what I see, the situation can get a lot worse than this. What if the people from UP & Bihar, who were the main targets of the rioting youth, decided it was time to get rid of all the Maharashtrans from their stated too? A guy could disappear in any of these two states and no one would even come to know (or bother to look either). I do not have much faith in Gujarat either, and West Bengal too. Half of the country would go up in flames. These political parties are doing exactly what the British Raj tried to do to us (Divide n rule), and we are still suffering because of what happened 61 year ago (Indo-Pak partition). Politicians have gerrymandered most states, on the basis of religion n region, vitiating the fabric of secularism. Whatever happened to the Preamble of India (Sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic Republic)??? Go ask these politicians if they even know what the preamble means. There was this show on MTV a couple of years back, where on independence day, they asked the leaders of the nation some basic questions, like from top to bottom, what are the colours of the national flag? And half of the MPs got it wrong. Except for a couple of them, no one knew the national song. These are the ignorant people who are leading the country. With the exception of Rajiv Gandhi (age 40 at the time of his election), there hasn't been a young Prime Minister this country has seen. And it probably was the sympathy of his mother's assassination that helped in the election of such a young leader. The time has come that the youth steps up and takes control of the nation. And by youth I do not mean extremists like Raj Thakeray, but rather the educated youth, the kind that the recent Lead India series is working on. I believe that it is the media that can bring about a revolution in the country. For the drastic changes required to change this country can only be initiated by them.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

On thursday, 31st of Jan '08, at about 3 in the afternoon, i got this call from a classmate of mine, sounding as though he would burst out crying any moment. He kept saying something about this friend of mine trying to commit suicide. This friend of mine, Abysmal (Make that Abby) is one of those happy go lucky kinda guys, who's always had a smile on his face. Why would Abby wanna kill himself??? i asked myself. Well anyway, I did call up a few ppl who lived close to his place, n soon there were ppl looking over for him all over the city. Turned out Abby was serious about the suicide thing... and had wrote a suicide note in his ex-girlfriend's scrapbook (in orkut). This is the actual suicide note, and reading it only shows how inconsiderate Abby had been.I mean what kind of a #$%^&*(*&%^&*%$%^&*!@$#% tries to kill himself over a girlfriend he had broken up with him over 6 months ago... And seriously... even if he does love her so much... He should have done it without disturbing her... Without all the dramatic shit. In case you are wondering what he tried to do to himself... All he told me was that he had an injection inside him (I did not ask him what he tried to inject himself with... And I never will either) and it was then that the name Shirdi came to his mind n so Abby set off to Shirdi... On a devotional trip... Only to return to his parents. Hallelujah!!!