A nation awakens, The youth arise

        Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
        Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."

    The journey is more fulfilling than the destination, they say. The build up to an event more exhilarating than the event itself. The mind conjures up many a picture of the destination before the universe unravels the physical reality of the event. A cricket match is played in the minds of not a Tendulkar or a Dravid the night before. It is played in the dreams of scores of children who have subjected themselves to the scorching summers of Chennai or the famous Bangalore weather, which today resides only in the cherished memories of old timers. A hackathon too. The holy grail of hackers. Best known for the fancy hotels, free lunches, free beer, free t-shirts, free goodies.

    But, today promised to be different. It wasn't only the gum chewing, MacBook flaunting, Adidas shoe wearing,  JQuery mantra uttering, the oblivious-look wearing geek who was invited. A few "others" too were. The data nerds. The design wizards. No longer an event for the geek hiding behind the green and black Vim editor, the ones behind the colourful posters too were invited. To say the event was precluded by a sense of excitement would be an understatement. There was anxiety. There was doubt. There were questions. It was confusion. Perhaps, mayhem too.And hope.

    It was tough to miss the last emotion. After scouring the venue for a common theme, after scavenging through various tweets, pictures and posters, for a common theme and just when I was about to resign to my inability of find one, I did. If, there is a word to characterize the entire exercise, it is HOPE.


                A nation has just risen from its slumber. Will we finally meet our tryst with destiny?

    It is 10.30. After marvelling at the beauty and splendour of IISc like Hanuman who casts his envious glances at the regal luxury of Lanka the chatter of a few kids brought me back to the hackathon. The registration form read 80 teams from Bangalore. Hacker city after all. Hardly, a few teams had braved to come this soon though. Cut to 11 am and suddenly there is a buzz around the venue. The cast as promised was diverse. The symbols of a hackathon were all there. The MacBook was out. Ruby,Rails,Java, Cobal, Gopal.The air was ripe.

        Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
        Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."

    Even amongst the hackathon veterans, when the booming voice of Sam Pitroda went on air, a new sense of patriotism and enthusiasm was evident. And when Montek said, "An endeavour to not bring the plan to people, but people into the plan", even the voter ID card less Bangalorean suddenly felt a part of the government. "Dilli,abhi dhoor nahi hai". If I were to accord myself the luxury of opinion, it was already mission accomplished. India 1 Detractors 0.And to talk of it, this is only the beginning of a story. A story which we hope is as romantic as the story of India itself.To a question on how the progress of India was not as fast as China, Montek quipped, "China has been progressing at a faster rate than us from the last 25 years. It is only in the last decade that India has started performing to a higher degree".

        Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
        Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."

    As the afternoon wore down and the participants settled to what do they best, a stroll past them revealed a lot about the teams. While, each participant had a story to tell, it was the passion for contributing meaningful to the country which united them. And as any Tom, Dick and Harry would guess, the Bangalore demographics made sure that majority of the participants planned an app. The tech city sure did live up to its name with the highest participation. Arun Manohar, an engineering graduate from Bangalore and freelancing software projects for a day job was furiously abusing his MaCBook Pro when I interrupted him. Hailing from a middle class background and having faced a lot of problems himself, he was building a mobile application to help find the nearest officials to communicate to when faced with urban problems like drainage, water supply etc. A veteran hackathon visitor, Arun was a bit miffed at the quality of the data. But give a hacker a challenge and it brings out the beast out of him. As they call it, he was using his "bleeding edge" brains to cleanse the data. In a bigger canvas, a nation was getting cleansed. There was a Phillip, a reverse engineer working with geological data. There was Naveen. There was Akshay. Different apps. Different stories. A common theme. And then Shwetha and Abhinav. Kiran and Pooja. Hackathons were no longer a men's bastion. While, it would be foolish to be blind towards all the problems that women in India face, It was encouraging to find young girls tapping code. Yes, the ratio is still skewed towards men. But, the story of India is only just beginning to take shape.

        Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
        Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."

        Perhaps, this is the only place where India cannot afford to wait for its time to come. Things have to be done now. Today is the time. Now is the time.

    And then, a design team who call themselves Team "Hack-choo"! One team member calls himself geek at heart. Studies design in a day school. His accompanier, a long-haired guy with all the marks of an artist. A girl, who didn't seem to bother about her make up but beautiful nevertheless. A small grievance they had. Not many participant interactions till the evening,they said. Small lessons to be learnt for us as we embark on the journey.

        I did not wait for the results. It did not matter. There was only winner yesterday. And the winner was India. Yes, the story of India is best summarized by Gandalf.

        Frodo: "You're late Gandalf."
        Gandalf: "A wizard is never late, Frodo Bagggins. Nor is He early. He arrives precisely when he means to."


PS: I forgot to ask the name of THAT  girl. my twitter handle: @accusedengineer

hASH DEFINE AGHORI

  It could be a garage in one of the down market lanes of Seattle. Or it could be a cramped cubicle in Bangalore. Or it could be in the dark confines of a bedroom in Bangkok. Deep dark when the dogs have finished barking, when the roads can be used to play cricket, there is a peculiar unrelenting sound which fails to pause till the Sun starts its foreplay with the earth.

            To the muggle, this tapping noise is a distraction. In His world, you are the noise. The tapping beats underline the perfect beat for the myriad ideas that are playing choir in his mind. The fourteenth cup of caffeine for the day. (It is 2 am and yeah, He would call it day, but not call it a day.) With the scantest regard for his failing health, he has been outcast from the society even before the first hairs of his moustache popped out. He is called a programmer. Some call him, software engineer. Some others, geek. A few, nerd. But, nothing comes closer than a hacker. Or maybe not, He is an aghori.

            Aghoris are human flesh eating, corpse worshipping, ganja smoking worshippers of Lord Bhairava. Known for their ferocious and esoteric worship practices, the Aghoris are feared, worshipped and more importantly socially banished by the Indians. Playing at the edge of Indian moral values, the Aghori through severe penances has developed the art of detaching himself with the world. Unkempt, unable to remember the last when he took bath, ash smeared, dreadlocks in some deep thought. Boy, isn’t our hacker similar to this aghori?

            Or perhaps, there is an aghori in each one of us. Afraid to unravel the aghori within us.But, the hacker is perhaps the first among us to reveal his aghori self. Most of us are convinced the hacker is a wizard working on his witch craft through the night. Some of us do not believe in magic. They say, hacking is a myth. Within the community, I have heard hackers say, “Today I broke upon the Blah Blah company’s network!”, “Ah, that is nothing! Ever tried breaking crapcountry.gov.in?”. Some say, it is fraud. Some believe in it. Some try to imitate them. But, there are only a few of them. And these do not work in the Infosyss, Flipkarts or the Yahoos! Or maybe, they do! Like the aghoris unite over a puff of ganja or marajauna, the hackers over cups of caffeine. Pure caffeine. Try telling them, the word health! The world was never for them, anyway! And like most popular fascinating science, for mere mortals like us it only imagination and speculation that allows us to wander the territories that these hacker aghoris roam in every day.

            The next time, you see someone type hASH DEFINE AGHORI,…

B grade

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As a child, when I was asked to write an essay on “Myself”, I could fill up sheets, or atleast lines about myself with ease. However, yesterday when I was trying to fill my bio in a popular so called social networking site, I could not manage a word. And I thought, maybe a couple of lines were not enough to describle someone as dynamic, as charming, as smart, as witty as me!

Or did I? A little more introspection, a couple of cups of coffee later, another long ride without the phone disturbing me I realized, perhaps my life was drowned in the large ocean of medioricity that the most apt bio would be “Just another guy!”. Back when I was a kid, my world was too small to realize it. My world was amma, appa and me. My cousins were yet to be born. I was my parent's world too. That was when I thought I was maybe, different and even better than others. Learning to write “A” would have made my parents so proud of me.

A couple of years later, when I learnt to read faster than others, I wondered if I was perhaps a little different, or even better than others! Those were the days, when in a film I only saw the hero and the villian. Romance made no sense to me. Comedy only understood in parts. And immediately, I could put myself into the hero's shoes.I could see myself coming out victorious in every battle that I fought. Only the villians changed. When I saw cricket, I imagined myself as Sachin pounding bowlers all over the park.When I saw Cartoons, I was Mowgli. I was the hero.

As time passes by, you realize not everyone is a hero in life. Some of the characters just make up a movie. The hero's brother, the villian's sidekick who goes to fight with the hero only to land up in a fruit stall with a broken nose, the friendly shop owner in the film, the doctor, the onlooker on the street. It is only now I realize, I am one of these characters. And am sure, there are many others who too play similar roles. Infact, most people in this world play these characters. We live for those two minutes in a three hour film when we get our friends to the theatre to excitedly show them our role which never altered the script of the movie. Far later, when the lights are off and we can listen to our voice carefully, there is a slow voice telling, You cannot rest my boy! Yes, your role does not alter the movie and that is why you should not rest. There is always someone else to play yours! The hero can rest.

In a college, the A graders are the cynosure of teacher's eyes, subjects of envious glances from peers and well respected. There is also a another group which sits in the last row usually bunking classes and make their presence felt in the only way that they know when they are present. While the intended target of their paper rockets might be the lecturer, they actually hit the girl's hearts with undiluted precision. Most of them are also good in all matters outside classroom. But there is the overwhelming majority like me who lay trapped somewhere in middle. Not the best in studying. There is always this cousin who is better than you in Math, the friend whose English speech is notches above your writing skill, the neighbour who codes stuff for which you took ages and the batchmate who makes you look a fool on the football ground.

But, as I write this, I seem to have found a new found identity for myself. I am the B grader, and a perennial one at it. That guy with spectacles, who makes his way into the class five minutes before it starts, understands a little, goes to play only to concede a stupid goal, that guy whose code you can bet never is the most efficient. That guy, who is omnipresent in every class., I am the B grade boy. After all, for every Sachin Tendulkar, that are nine Sanjay Bangars toiling away in a nondescript ground somewhere in Rajkot.

Where am I?

In the infinite horizon of time and space, where do I exist? Do I exist? Does space really end? Where does the earth exist? Questions or bizzare ideas like this seem to have captured many a coffee drinking mans attention when they could have blissfully been talking about the best girl nearby. Closer home, for another set of 40 insane folks have probably become more insane trying to make an idiot box(err, sorry, not the television. My laptop is not intelligent any more!) understand the ultimate question of mankind, “Where am I?”

There are some projects which help you learn, some which are fun, some others which are plainly impossible and some others outrightly boring. But helping a laptop blabber,”I am near Data center. You are facing a god dammed wall. Please get lost” was a challenge which breached even these sacrosanct limits. Frustration, angst, anger it sure produced, but also bucket loads of fun. In an otherwise lifeless college where you can find groups of students huddled together talking about some loop which has run a time extra, another few who share a hi-five every time they are able to ping to their neighbors computer and the rarest of rare who while away their time in the most useless of ways, just like what am doing! But in IIITB, projects make strange bedfellows, or rather floor fellow! And you find yourself rubbing shoulders with the scholars from CEEMS lab et al! Of course, they ended up building an “ intelligent” system as the course titled suggested, “Principles of Intelligent systems”. Err, well, I of course ended up barely completing it. Intelligence of course, I shall add a dimension to perception to console myself.!

But seriously, what can a project do? Its 2 am in the night and you find the owls sweeping the first floor for the slightest bit of clue that they can swoop about the first floor! And in such times, you cannot help but feel an asshole. The only comfort that one finds is in watching others code work, or rather not work! How does one feel when you teach a system a thousand times, BOSS, we are sitting near reception and like a spoilt brat, says “You are near the toilet!”. How many times, I felt like slapping the laptop? For many a seconds, I have even pondered over breaking my five year old relationship with her.

And if this was not enough, you have a professor who can troll you behind imagination. Just image yourself standing in a facultys room and the laptop says, “I am at the toilet!”. And the man laughs and says, “Yes, that is probably catching the wrong signals.!”. All this while, he is obviously silently noting it to find a grade which is the lowest amongst all. And while you are depressed that your solution is not working, he tells everyone.”Good! Good!”. You start wondering, if they changed the definition of good somewhere in the last year! And for all the crappiest code that we write, Mr. Prof asks a student to get into the lift and ask,”Where am I?”. If you thought this was it, here comes his next move? Peeps right into the camera, gets his image into it and asks, “where am I?”.Pretty sure, the “trollolololo” music is playing in some corner of his head. Move three, Turn your laptop upside down, take a picture and as you would know have guessed, “Where am I?” And if you think, your prof. Was the only one to troll you. There is not a bigger troll than the laptop which you carry everyday, the one whom you love everyday! Did it forget the day when I affectionately named her “Highbury”! Wonder if it really cared for all the love!

And the laptop sure did benifit from the whole experience. Imagine taking a one and half kilo ass with you everytime and ask it a simple question,”My dear boy, where are you? ” And it says, very proudly, in a heavy American accent, “UnKnown Region”. DAI! And if this was not enough, someone asked me, did you do a GUI? DAI, From when did blind people started seeing a GUI! And then another fellow remarking about the project,”This project had componenets of networking, image processing and speech processing!”. Calling the location was apparently speech processing. DAI!

Yet, all is well, that well, ENDS!

Away,Far Far Away

She looks pretty.There are lots of men around who swear by her.Radiating elegance, in pink and green,in beautiful camelCase few men would want to leave her. But somehow, her graceful indentation does not look my cup of tea! Rather ,coffee should I say?Or even more precisely,Java?

How often I want to run away from technology! As i key in my words in my lab on a laptop, I would prefer putting pen to a paper under a street light away from the glare of familiar faces. In a few months, even the sanity of the college would be lost. Do i want to get into the big,bad world of corporate? Perhaps,Not! I would love a badder world. An internship in one of Mumbai's famed gallis under any of the dreaded Dons is something I dream of. Something out of the world.

The underworld has always fascinated me. And more so now. Rather than rehearsing one of those scripted lines wearing a tie, I would love to wear a handkerchief on my half opened chest. While, we try so hard to be cool,the underworld oozes sexiness. Salim langda, Viru Kallia, Papu Thingna, Halkat Venkat, err, ok, the last one is yet to make an entry into Mumbai. Nevertheless, I would so love to talk to them. God, please can I intern there?

Talk of all the pay packages in the best colleges of the country. 40K per month? 50K? 60K? Underworld shall surely pay you more! Atleast I assume so. While smuggling so many gold biscuits, boss, can't I siphon one home? Enough for a year, i suppose, especially with the gold prices soaring. Talk about the hafta culture. For how long do we get exploited from the shopkeepers? Time to settle some score. God,please can I intern there?

With all the placement season around, it is tiring to hear people in the canteen talking about the other guy's company being better than theirs. And talking about profiles! To me, it all sounds the same. Boss proposes, fresher disposes! How would it matter if you are writing 4 lines in Java or in some other language? I actually feel, the Java vs C debate has become bigger than the Hindi vs Tamil debate. Pretty sure, even a freshers profile in the underworld demands you to murder a couple of people, call a dozen people and threaten them with the choicest of expletives in Mumbaiya hindi.Java and C are so passe. I wonder if they have different postings like on-site,off-site for different projects. Writing a couple of research papers would probably not even earn me a place in Wikipedia. Leave alone Wikipedia, not even on TV9 or Aaj Tak. One murder, or maybe a couple of them and pretty sure I would have more photos than Rahul Gandhi in this country.

10 years later, where do you find yourself? If you really ask me, the mirror. (PJ?, All right!) Team leader? Somehow just does not sound cool. Imagine being a gang leader instead. Chased by rival gangs every night, your blood being the aim is sure to give more thrills than fearing a french beard boss who is behind your head! And yet after many nights with coffee and code, I doubt if you would ever be wanted by your company or in some cases like mine, in home too! Here, there is a chance when even the Government of Inda might declare, “Most wanted”! Yes, Most wanted! Depending on your hardwork, as i hear, you could even be wanted by international organizations like Interpol, Federal police too! International fame in a company? Bah!God,please can I intern there?

I wonder what are the requirements for a job there? Resume, I have! A strong willed personality, Hopefully yeah! Mumbai-Hindi? Not really, but I can hopefully learn it on the job!Prior work experience? Yeah, more than 15 years of killing people with poor jokes! Projects undertaken? Hmm..Killed a mosquito a long time ago!

Hmm, if only you could write a recommendation letter for me!

Typically, what we do is...

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When i was three, I wanted to be my dad.When I was five, I wanted to be a conductor. When I was seven, I wanted to be Shri Ram. When I was nine, I wanted to be Shiva. Sometimes Rajnikanth,sometimes Tendulkar. So many times in life, I have practised cricketing strokes with a stick in hand imagining the blue sea cheering for me at the Eden gardens. Often, I found myself at the Azad maidan being a politican. But somewhere, firmly deep inside, I was always told I would be an engineer. I never revolted. I was never passionate about being one either. Once in a while, I have wondered what I would be doing if not an engineer? Arts? Commerce? But I would still be studying.

But, did I really become the engineer that I wanted to become? Unlike most other professions, I never knew what being an engineer was. During my bachelors, I thought more about life,love and being forever alone. And forever alone, I am, still!:) Yet, there was always a feeling somewhere deep down that I would be an engineer some day. It was almost like it was written in the stars. At the cusp of formal academics(hopefully not,yet it seems the inevitable.), I really wonder if I can ever call myself an engineer.The more i watch the inhabitants from the corporate jungle, the more they repel me.

I wonder when do normal become 'corporatorized'! Infact, every company seems to be an equation of the form:

Input: intelligent, sane people.

Output: homogenized, obnoxious corporates!

Function contents:

1. Train them.
2. Train them.
3. Train them.

So what really happens to corporate people? And, I am afraid my views may dramatically change in a couple of months. And i want to capture my image of a corporate inhabitant before my model gets damaged by the impending conversion.

Let me first describe how these species look in common life

Name: Homo-corporatiens

Found in: the deep deserts of electronic city, WhiteField in big numbers.

Distinct characteristics:

Irrespective of the sex, they are characterized by a distinct identity card proclaiming their name, company and a photo of them taken when their hair was much darker and better looking. Not sure why they hang around with it even when they are out of the campus, but they do! Mostly tucked around the neck, but some cards can be found hanging around the belt too. The junior members will usually flash their local Android phone at the slightest pretext and the senior folk use their blackberry to either send mails,telling they will be late to the meeting or flirting with the prettiest juniors! Otherwise, the men folk usually wear a formal shirt with the neck button also buckled in decently and a shoe. These things, supposedly help their productivity. It's more easier spotting the women folk though. If you find a woman in a kurti or a formal shirt, mokkai pottufying with a guy on phone or atleast covering her ears with an earphone, as if the common folk would otherwise ask her the time, then be sure, this is one of the corporate ladeezz!!Of course, the highest probability of finding them in areas which traditionally do not belong to them are in the Volvo buses!

Languages known:

A highly esoteric and grammer less form of English which has evolved over the years in the far away lands of America is widely spoken across all sects of the corporate hierarchy. The accent might sound stylish, but unfortunately, it stops at that. Typically, words like “typically, what we do at our organization is....”, “platform as a service, mindlessness as a service, service as a service(OK, they dont know what does service really mean!)”, “we, at the industry deal with problems which involve scales or a few millions blah blah!!” are used once in every two sentences. And yeah, they usually can't speak without Microsoft ppts! Some of the richer buggers use Apple and all! But, you know can afford to sleep in a presentation if you see the logo of the company and he starts talking about “What we primarily do in our company is!”. Ok, every company spokesperson (or technical lead, as they call themselves) tells we are no. 1 in blah blah, no.2 in blah blah. All i know is it's all blurred. Everybody in the corporate world is no. 1 only!!

ooooo and how do i forget the women folk!! Especially, the HR people. For them, employees are never people. Some are folks. Some are blandly called resources. RESOURCES? WTF! OK, but seriously, why do these women have to wear some stupid looking formal shirt to look formal? And yeah, please stop talking about “grooming” skills again. Broom will come in hand, ok?

Probably, in a couple of months, even I will be one among them. Probably, one of my juniors might curse them. Or maybe, not. So is life!

It's not all that bad!

If to compliment is divine, to crib is  human! And crib, we can! Or is it only we, Indians who do it? The other day, I happened to share my dinner with a very pretty Swedish lady (I really love talking about her!:P) and she said, all they ate back home was potatoes and meat!! Only boiled potatoes and meat?? Terrible, I say.

In fact, so many of our dinner conversations seems to  start and end with cribbing. But that apart, there are so many kinds of people when it comes to food. The first breed, is of the Shashanka ilk! He believes that canteen food is evil,pure evil. Tell me,  have you ever seen him eating  in the canteen for 3 consecutive days? Pretty sure,you can't. Thats a different story that he can be officially credited for creating the “White Revolution” in our college. I genuinely think he has a credit account with Cafe Corner where he seems to reside when in the hostel!

The second is the asshole type! They really dont have an opinion of their own. When they sit with a dal eating fellow, they will outrage against the poor quality of dal without eating it ofcourse and rave about how dal is prepared in their village. Yeah, village! Oh, I forgot, there is a certain variant of this population for whom the views are shaped so that they mirror that of their favourite gals! Well, anyway, once an asshole, always one.

Then there is the so called “rational” fellow. In chaste English, he begins, “Dude, why do you think we need 2 sabjis!I mean why can't we just have one sabji and get fruits or so. You see it's more healthier.”. Please, don't ask me where he ate yesterday evening. Of course, am going to tell you. Hogs at Subway and talks about health in the canteen. Ok, now I need some protection since this guy stays only a couple of doors away.Anyways, boss you should have gone to the food committee meetings, no?:P

The fifth type! Their views have are private only to  their friends. Occasionally, they might like what others post on FB. But their mouths open only to eat and not to talk! Yet, they always want Vamsi to take on others. And papa, Vamsi. Anybody uses an app to find out who is his enemy and his name pops out first.

And the last is probably, the worst. It's me. He knows no taste, no likes. All he needs is curd. And since, I have no regrets with the current food, I can continue to afford writing!