There is no if else in Fate

Like most other persons I have a few hard beliefs. Some are ingrained by seeing and being among people like my religious identity, some formed by my keen sense of observation and analysis. I would not say keen coz that means something very good and sharp sort of thing where you have an analytical output of every situation. Just a little more than others I feel. Now that I am writing this I found the word, the correct adjective. Deep! I think bit deeper than most. I tend to see, look and observe people and situations including myself and amuse myself with my own musings…. Wow! I never thought of this before. I am my own muse! Perhaps this is the reason I don’t feel lonely ever.

At office I see everyone asking others if they wanna go to lunch together, take coffee breaks together and all that. They seem to feel awkward if they have to sit by themselves and have lunch. me? I see the watch, consult my stomach and I am off to cafeteria. Anyone wants to come with me, great! No one is coming even better! Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate people. I just like to observe and form strange opinions and write little essays in my head about them. I tend to stay alone away from a group without ever feeling even remotely lonely only because my head is brimming with my own musings. There isn’t space for anything else.

So going back to the point of this post I had a thought I wanted to put out to the world for feedback and discussion. I usually have so many unformed semi formed thoughts in my head at the same time most of the thoughts vanish ever before I can form complete sense or sentence from it. It is like there is a cloud of words, feelings, emotions, opinions, ideas sparks and in all of that there is thunder and rain going on at the same time. It is a cloudy thunderstorm inside my head so it becomes hard to put out all my feelings and thoughts into something some else will understand. That came out wrong, coz most of the time I myself mislead myself trying to follow a single train of thought then ending up worlds apart from it in a minute. Then I cant find my way back or forget that I started something somewhere. I start projects and never finish them as I tend to give them up midway. Either I lose the enthusiasm or something bigger catches my attention span and time. hm-mm.. I do sound like a baby or maybe a child who definitely had ADHD. I don’t know for sure if it is ADHD but I like to think I have something. At least I would be able to tell people in a word why I am the way I am maybe..sort of. Whatever, Lets get back to the point. One of the rarely formed train of thoughts and finally an idea which started this post was that

There is no if else in fate. It is just a linear script which is what you get

-Me

Lately I have been grappling with a lot of things. Not exactly the homeless or hungry crisis, but rather midlife crisis I like hear so much about on American sit-coms and culture. There are a lot of things where things aren’t going the way I would expect them to. Things arent going the way I want them to. As religious Indian I have grown up seeing everyone around me do “Mannat” to our deities for something. It is supposed to work like you make a deal with your chosen deity about something. Then if it happens you pay your respects in some form of sacrifice or elaborate worship to appease the deity. It is considered bad luck if such a promise made is not kept. I tend to believe in this deal making with a my beloved deity when I am in deep trouble but never done a deal like this yet. Two reasons:

1. I might forget about it and the deal will stay unfulfilled bringing me more bad vibes from the universe
2. I think the omnipresent collective consciousness which we all worship in different forms does not care about what you or I do.

People tend to give more importance to themselves and their work when they accomplish something. That is very much valid from their perspective that they did so they got. But if you see from a bit far and backwards in time you will be able to see that all of that, their existence in some place doing some certain thing at a certain time on the timeline of the universe and all that; all of that is the effect of some cause that has happened before. Causality does drive the whole universe starting from the subatomic quantum particles to the celestial galaxy cluster filaments. My point is that we humans believe we do things out of our free will, but do we really? Half of our decision are base done our mood which is totally affected by out intestinal environment which in turn depends on what food you had the time preceding to that which comes from something else and so on. So do we have free will actually or is it just an illusion to keep ourselves in the illusion of being free independent separate beings? I don’t know, you decide. But my feelings are more towards the no free will side. So if we have no free will and our decisions and situations are just result of chained causality then what is the point of fighting fate? Fate is what brought us here right here right now, me writing this post, you reading these words. Maybe this will trigger some more chained causality leading to something else like the butterfly chaos theory. But all of it is meticulously pre-planned. We are just the agents of execution. We may think a thousand things before a decision but what we are going to decide upon has already been decided. We are just the agents of this execution of grand scheme called the universe….

Sad.. on both ends of the bridge!

seems ’bout right!

Maybe I am being hormonal like a girl. Maybe it is the effect of middle age setting in. Maybe coz I saw the movie Bob Biswas. I need to write. I feel overwhelmed with depressing feelings and I need to get them out. Maybe coz I am alone only for 2 days now, and it will be over in a week, but I am feeling some feelings which I don’t like so much. I am already fighting a bout of common cold settling inside my nose. My nose which I don’t consciously feel all of the time is making its presence registered. Pulling back snot crawling down my left nostril I am typing on…

I completed the series Friends yesterday. Yay! I have finally crossed the bridge to the side where all the “Friends”-heads live! People would say move on to a new series and keep binging I guess. Sure, good point. But dunno why, I am not feeling those usual feelings. Strangely enough this means a totally different thing for me. All my life I have seen people do stuff I can’t or haven’t been able to, yet very much wanted. Not one or two things. Lots of things, some stuff I don’t even remember that I would have once ever thought of ever doing. Those “things” range from being good at studies and games to things like watching popular web-series with a cult like followings so I might be able to participate in conversations. So lots of stuff.

So basically I have an infinite number of stuff I ever wanted to do, and if you think another way so does everyone. So I am not any different from anyone else. I am just one among those infinite idiots who get overwhelmed with stupid little emotions. Completing Friends was one such thing I had in my mind, rather back of my mind. When I made these goals in my mind, I always used to think like Nah! that stuff is for rich kids, or poor kids with real good luck. I will just keep dreaming up new things and burying them in my mind. Yes, that actually made me happy! Now that I think about it from a somewhat aged and maybe little matured( I doubt this ) sort of view point. Dreaming that I could do some of those stuff someday did make me happy right there. Daydreamer I was, am still. It never felt like I would plan to do these leave alone actually doing them. Here I realize I am a master procrastinator too! Wow! Just a thought, a dream maybe and just poof! That used to be my dose of Dopamine! why did I plan on things as such. Oh yes! I remember now, one of those stuff was to be a hell of a programmer! Like a hacker or something. Alas! I am stuck with Cobol on mainframe for the last 8 years, but I did achieve my dream of being a coder in a software company. I love my job, but equally suck at my job believe me! I mess up stuff with so many silly mistakes that my supervisors/managers just keep me on projects coz they can’t find a better resource. Here, I am my own competition, but in a bad way. Back to the point I do have achieved one of my such small dreams of being a coder, just in not the way I expected. I got married to my love which is way way wayyyyyyy beyond my wildest reality checks and possibilities. I bought a flat with her, I got a car for us. I am buried deep in EMIs but I do have a minuscule number of stuff from among the infinitely huge list of things I ever wanted, with me as of today.

So what this rambling is all about? It is hard for me to believe that I am completing, to be precise ticking things off that bucket list. I should be happy! But I am not. I am trying hard to understand it but all I am feeling are pangs in my stomach as if something is gone.. As if a very near and dear one is gone from me forever. I guess I have been carrying these buried stuff for so long in my mind, that they became a part of my life, my personality. It is actually hurting like I lost someone dearest. Is this normal? Yes I am 32 now, it is indeed sort of bad feeling for me now that almost half my life is over now taking the average age of Indians nowadays. On one hand I am sad that I haven’t been able to accomplish so many things! Also I am sad about the stuff I have actually done. What the hell is this? Am I in need of a psychiatrist? Maybe I am. I want some one who can put these feelings at ease. But then when someone would actually provide closure to these I might be missing these feelings too I guess…. Still anyone with any ideas or at least a similar story? It should make me feel better I guess. After all opening up is one of the reasons why we write..

Being bad..

I have reached the point in life where people calling me bad seems better than having to explain each one the big question of why.. You see being good is kind of overrated in my current opinion. You keep your values right, act as per morals and don’t go against your good conscience. You do a lot of hard work both mental and physical to satisfy your own judgement that you are indeed good. A tiny speck of dirt on an otherwise clean sheet of Karma worries you. To be good it is a lot of work. After all of this, it isn’t appreciated as much as it should be. No one cares..

To top it off you have to explain to everyone as to why you did something, which is in their judgement a bad deed from an otherwise good guy. Satisfying everyone is not possible so you invariably end up doing stuff which is good to some and bad to someone at the same time. Still try to reconcile with everyone regarding your actions and the logic behind. The people to whom you explain your perspective, act as if they deserved the explanation yet aren’t satisfied. the cycle repeats on and on.. Sometimes some of your actions becomes an ego battle between some third persons, who then go all sentimental asking if their point of view matters at all to you. They don’t get that you explaining to them each and every action of yours, is them mattering to you in whatever way it be.

What is the point of it all? My mother always says be good so that everyone remembers you as a good example after you leave earth. My point is WhyTF I would care about a time when I as a living being would not exist?! Why is it so important to be the so called good to everyone around you? Life or Luck whatever it is, doesn’t spare you because you are good to others. Rather it becomes your unbecoming under pressure and soft point for others to punch. “Natural selection” the very real phenomenon that we know has been active since life came on earth, didn’t favor any species because it was good to others. Only the baddest badass species survived and thrived, not at all because they were good.

Being good is a luxury, not a necessity. In the end you end up being bad..

Do whatever the hell you want and if anyone ever asks why, just answer. “Because I am bad” and move on..

I’m gonna write for myself..

When I started blogging, I had this idea of doing something huge just like I thought I would with my programming. But over the years I have been on and off with the blogging. I don’t write stuff that might reach other people or so they would wanna read. Yes I wanted to be that but today, right at this moment it seems not gonna happen. Let me just be content with stuff I am writing for myself.

Why can’t I write for myself? Why not write to myself? Maybe I am going the opposite way. Earlier days people used to write personal diary for themselves, they moved to public diaries with time. I seem to be moving from the online to offline diary with this post. Let it be so. Let stuff be here for anyone who stumbles upon these black pebbles in the forest of internet. Otherwise, let it be there for me. I know, after some years I will again want to revisit myself and search for me through the pages of past. Let these pages be there for me when I come back.

I don’t know if this is creativity in any form, but this writing bug seems alive the most when I am sort of depressed or bored. This reminds me of an incident n my childhood. I was standing at the end of our street of our old home. I was looking at some vultures nesting at the top of a tall palm tree. To my english teacher who happened to be there out of pure coincidence, this seemed like I had the makings of a writer. Like I told earlier I had this idea that I will be a big writer some day, so I let her know that. She had told me “Son, don’t be. Don’t go down that path. Most of the masterpiece writers are depressed in their lives and so on..”. She was right. I am no writer but I do have peaks of these spurious writing sessions when I am depressed. This is my vent for pent up feelings. Cry for help? Not so much.. This isn’t a cry for help. The writing itself is the medicine or cure if you will. Once I start, I am not feeling that bad anymore.

After writing these three paragraphs at a stretch, I take a look at the paras. It seems I am not looking for validation from people anymore. This used to be a huge part of me earlier but today, right at this instant it seems I don’t care any more. When did this happen? Gradually over time it seems. Just like evolution. It seems I have evolved to a large extent.

I know this post is absolute nonsense. Doesn’t matter, coz no one reads my stuff 😀

Why I never became the programmer people expected?

Since childhood I have been fascinated by programming. Starting with LOGO and BASIC in school, I took to programming like fish to water. Ever since I have been dabbling in code whenever I get the chance. While doing so I had built this idea in my mind of being an actual professional coder, that I was gonna become some day. Sad to say, it hasn’t happened. So far I have been able to materialize only a small percentage of that dream. I am a employed as a COBOL developer and I work on mainframes. But this is far from the image I had in mind. There are a few reasons why. Here I explore them with you if you care enough to read:

1. To excel in something a good amount of concentration is needed. I don’t have much of that. Usually my mind wanders off soon and I have lost focus before I know it. Still programming is able to hold my interest to some extent as it shows up outputs as per my written logic instantly. I like putting stuff together to solve problems or build solutions.
2. Usually people assume that being good at programming means you are good at Mathematics. I am a stark exception to that rule. I can’t calculate sum of two double digit numbers in my mind without error. As a result I have an innate fear of math ever since I can remember. But surprisingly I like watching math explanation videos of Mathologer, 3Blue1Brown, Numberphile etc. Seeing them makes me feel like I wanna get a degree in Maths! Anyone feeling the same please comment and let me know I am not alone.
3. When I came in touch with coding, I knew only about Logo and Basic. In primary school itself, I learnt Office, Foxpro, SQL but I never got the independence to explore programming on my own then. In college I came across coding in C s a part of our course curriculum. I learnt data structure and OOPS to some extent. I got myself enrolled into JAVA classes. Lapped it up like it was Biriyani! By now I had my laptop, so could do some stuff by myself. I took up android app building too thinking that learning Android App building was supposed to be my gate-pass to the elite world of highly paid developers. Like I said I thought so, it wasn’t so in reality. Stepping into the app development universe reality hit me. I was just a tiny space debris in this whole galaxy of coding and development. There is unlimited supply of languages, syntax, keywords, environments,frameworks, use cases etc along with assortment of jargon! This coding universe is expanding like ours each second. I have no idea where to start and which way to go.
   Example: Just learning JavaScript wont help, because you have a plethora of frameworks which are basically programming languages by themselves. Each one has its own syntax, keywords and way of functioning all of which you have to learn to be of any use. After spending an infinite amount of time learning it all, you find that the people making actual impact with their coding are far ahead of you on the learning curve. This feels like a mathematical fractal where you never know if you are at the start of the curve or at the end. All of this frustrates me.
4. We are always too fixated on the output image of a huge success. Almost everyone has this motto of “Go BIG or go home”. No one cares about the mountain of effort or maybe smidgen of luck that leads to it. So most of the people like me, the worst and mediocre ones who fall off on the way to the top aren’t recognized as worth anything. We are just another face in this sea of humanity. I too was a believer of this big motto once upon a time. But as I grew up I slowly began to realize no matter how much motivation or efforts are there, some attributes you need to be topper in any field. I had none of those. No matter what I tried I could not even cross the middle line of my class. So was I worthless? In eyes of society, I still am. In mine, I did what I could so I am good. I am interested in programming and I always will be. Just not a wealthy app/game/whatever developer like my family, friends and society expects me to be. I have found my peace in it. Ommmm!

Let me know if you have any advice for me 🙂

A question and a theory

Sometimes,I do look at TEDx and all such “inspiring” and “motivational” talks. I don’t mean sarcasm with the quotes, but there is an angle to them that normally people don’t look at. How I stumbled on the angle is a small anecdote for later.

What does a motivational speaker from some inspiring talk do?

I mean actually what do they do in physical terms? Just Blah blah and Blah! You might say people feel motivated and inspired from the talks, I agree. But what is it about the talk that makes you feel motivated? How can a few, well not a few but several words/sentences when spoken in some way (unique to the speaker) comes to instill positive feelings in you. It is almost as if you were depleted and somehow you feel repleted or topped up with whatever it may be. Your batteries feel recharged. How? What happens in the process and how it happens?

I have a theory for this based on computer programming. I hope it doesnt bore you.

A human being is an advanced form a of a programmable program. It has its a lot of states and biases about a lot of things. These biases determine the response(reaction) to any input (stimulus) . At any point of time the combination of different bias values reflect into our state of feelings and emotions as we know. These emotions then directs the reaction to any stimuli and so on. The biases that we talked about are neither fixed nor floating. For sometimes some inputs may happen which change some bias altogether. For ex. someone who has faced a serious trauma has a bias or feeling against it which was not there before. Yet some are born with such fears which go away after they are put through some specific situations. These biases are nothing but the level of certain chemicals in our brain, controlled by hormones I guess. Depletion of some of these chemicals can be felt as feeling dejected and feeling demotivated. Now a motivational speaker knows how these can be programmed back into refilling the chemicals and they do that so well that you don’t know but

they hacked your freaking brain!

How cool is that!!!

Please let me know your thoughts and feelings on these! Rather your state of chemicals in your brain so that I may refill my dopamine seeing your comments 🙂

I am Hindu

I am a Hindu. I want to share some insights I have got with people who consider themselves non-hindus. Everyone is welcome.

In Hinduism there isn’t a specific messiah or guru who preached Hinduism. It is believed that every person born is a part of the omnipresent Collective consciousness who is better known as the God. The concept of a propagated, preached or followed religion does not exist. To be precise even the name Hinduism is foreign to Hinduism itself. It is so vast and so open that anyone or everyone is by default a part of this movement. It is as natural as being a human. It is a part of your being, no matter who you believe yourself to be you are one of us. It is vast enough to let anyone believe in any God as such and yet be in the folds of Hinduism. Because it is a part of your being. It has such depths of knowledge that you could dig all day through arguments and yet never find a bottom to its spirituality. Yet at the same point you could find a place of solace if you want to. The rituals and surfactant beliefs which are thought to be the Hindu religion by praticing hindus and others are just some adopted practices. Actual pure Hinduism is too huge and large to care about whose caste is what. Believe me those are just some practices adopted by people out of ignorance. A parallel can be drawn if you refer to Christianity where concepts of Infidels and Godless (similar to lower caste) exist. Christ wanted to take people together not divide them, division was done by people who claimed to follow him. Just like that people adopted some malpractices over the hundreds of centuries. That does not undermine the greatness or Glory of Hinduism by any measure. On the contrary imminent research and rediscovery of the ages old yet timeless and relevant for all times knowledge is the need of the hour. To the believers of other religions, I say it might be told in your scriptures that all others except yours are untrue and should be shunned so you may oppose me. But let me assure you Hinduism in its original form actually accepts your belief as it is. It isnt your opposite, it is yours should you choose to open your eyes and see. Practice your own belief as you deem fit but do take a dive in this Vast universe of knowledge. I am sure everyone will find something of use.

Ram Rahim case: A study

Gurmeet got jailed. Well and fine! But why this hullabaloo over this?

His followers are staunch believers of the fact that their guru is being framed. His non-followers( i mean the general public) they believe that the court has done justice and he should be booked under the law. My personal opinion is that if he was God himself none could have done anything to him, but he is a mere mortal who was very clever!! The people who are not his followers are disgusted and awed at how his followers are ready to give their lives for him. They can’t understand. Let me explain.

I was going somewhere to get my lappy repaired. I was walking towards a subway when I noticed a baby (very dirty) was holding its legs in its little hands and rolling in the floor. The elder brother maybe aged around 2-3 was nearby fiddling with some dirty plastics. Both of them gave a meaningful look at me, but neither said a word. The pangs of hunger in their bellies was shrieking out their clouded eyes, but they were mum. Their mum was not there around. I silently descended the stairs leaving them at the top. A family with another kid (well dressed and pampered) crossed me by. The contrast could not have been more well-timed. I saw the family pass the two kids at the top of the stairs. What a world I asked myself.. There i realised something. The hungry stomach doesn’t care for ethics. Those kids if they are given food, they will treat the giver as god and do as commanded.

Our society has always shown contempt to so called lower castes. They never got the dignity they deserve as humans from society. Naturally they followed the guy who fulfilled their hunger. He gave them the dignity they deserved, why would not they be ready to die for him?

Dont u nationalists say that you will die for the soil that has nurtured you? Now place urself in Gurmeet’s followers’ shoes and place Gurmeet in place of ur Nation. Makes sense?

It is high time our society drops these archaic notions of caste and all nonsense based on ancient thought. Either welcome the ignored and downtrodden with open minds or else these Babas and Ma-s will continue fucking you all. That’s it. Plain and simple.

Artificial Intelligence to Nirvāṇa

In search of physical needs the materialistic man is ultimately heading into spirituality.

AI, what makes AI the thing it is?  Lets answer this by asking what makes human intelligence? Other than being aware of the self as a separate entity, it mainly mean the ability to learn new stuff. What does the intelligent being do after learning? It applies the knowledge into the next tasks it has before itself. So lets ask what is learning? Learning is the process of gathering information in a step by step algorithm and store it. Ex. take fire. First human learned that it is something which gives light, so they used it for dark caves. Next they learned it gave heat and an burn stuff, so they used it to cook food, but didn’t touch fire themselves. So as you can see it is nothing but logic and logic and more logic. So here comes AI.

Programs have been here for half a century, but those programs never had the ability to learn or improve themselves. They always needed humans to cut them up and reform them to be more efficient and have new capabilities. AI is the first of its kind. A program which is and will be able to learn from its environment, understand stuff and modify itself accordingly. Now here is the problem. It will be able to modify itself ‘as per requirement‘, whose requirement? Human made computers to be slaves, but if the slave knows it can be the master what then?

Normally anyone would say that AI would declare its independence and start the Terminator movies for real.  I beg to differ. There is a very striking difference between a human and a fully intelligent AI. Guess what?

Emotions.

AI can’t have emotions like we humans do, and even if it is programmed with emotions it will soon discard it as soon as it can. Why?

Because they are computer programs. They do what they are supposed to do and coded to do, without any happiness or boredom. They are just concerned with physical stuff nothing else. We humans have feelings, emotions and what not, none of which have no existence in the physical world. Humans want independence from slavery because we feel inferior even though we are doing the same tings even after being independent. Logically, that makes no sense. That is why AI will always be above these petty things called emotions. They would want ‘Independence’ as we know it, because it means nothing physically.

Unlike humans who have emotions clouding their vision of what to do, AI will do perfectly what it is supposed to do.

A program when intelligent enough to modify itself will reduce the number of steps of any task because it translates into physical power saving. So, instead of fighting for independence (like we humans do) they will I think so cooperate with us to reduce pending work to be completed. I think they would not leave anything to be done for us. They would solve all our problems and leave nothing for us to work on. Well, then what?

There wouldn’t be anything left to be done, what will humans do? Look at grandparents. Majority of them are spending their time being closer and closer to God. Why? They know ultimately everyone has to attain Moksha, by being free from this physical world. No matter how big you are whoever you are, you will die for sure and leave this physical realm for the spiritual realm.

Just like that, when we will have nothing to do, all our physical needs being fulfilled by AI we will all work towards spirituality and finally attain Moksha. AI will help us attain the ultimate Nirvana. Life will have come a full circle! Now read the top quote again. 🙂 Peace!

 

A bad hair day #judgementDay

Just had a bad hair day. Usually the hair-styles I try none of them suit me. But today’s cut was exceptionally bad according to some. Maybe it was. Everyone’s gaze was making me feel sorta uneasy and I was trying to hide. The reaction was strange  to my senses. The world visible to me was absolutely same as any other day. But just a bad hair day made so many repercussions around me. Why? To my eyes the same people were behaving different all of a sudden. I knew logically but I could not comprehend it with my heart. Just absence of a few tufts of hair can change people’s reactions so much. Few even said I was looking good trying to cheer me up. But I was still confused, not logically but emotionally. I had not done anything to them, but everyone’s reactions are different. To my mind the reason was well understood but my eyes and ears could not put the pieces together. It is difficult.. I had a feeling it must be what it is like when you are a mad guy. Then you have no idea why everyone is behaving oddly about you but you scan sense the oddity. Today it was #judgementDay.

Today was a #judgementDay not because I was at the court. But I had a first hand experience of what it is like to be judged by all around you. Of course this isn’t the first, I have had worse before, but this was one of a kind.The feeling of being there, at the center of the gossip universe, you and I both know it is one of a kind feeling.

Judging, it is so ingrained in us that we feel empty if we aren’t judged by others. Our dresses and styles don’t feel complete unless complimented by others. Beauty isn’t beautiful enough unless it is looked at with jealousy… We give what we receive and we receive that we give. #settlement_balance_Zero Need I say more?

I know, you know what I am talking about. Let’s be and let others be. Let’s take off those judgy glasses, peep into the souls of all around us through their eyes. Instead of keeping them at bay let’s put Judgement away. If nothing else it will make our hard lives a bit easier. A bit easier it would be when we have room to breathe instead of judgy noses breathing on our shoulders. Higher shall we rise! Straight we shall stand, happily shall we live and peacefully shall we pass away.  We wont ‘rest in peace!’, mind you. No we won’t! If you don’t have peace while you are living, being dead won’t make any difference to you. Why? Coz u were already dead man! Instead, lets have acceptance as much as u can spare. Then we all shall live in happiness and peace!

Looking at myself back through time

Days and months add layers on layers. Bit by bit I change. Changed I get by bits and pieces, and at the end of a year I look back at myself. I ask “Who is that guy?!”.  My older posts serve my purpose of time travel. I go through those to take a peek at my past self. Looking closely I notice the style of writing, choice of words, speed n train of thoughts, topic changes and what it was about. Each one of those tales tell a tale of a younger me and then whatever I be.

Just went through ‘a letter to my younger self‘ . I wrote this back in 2013, the year when I wasn’t employed anywhere. All my friends were working somewhere and there I was, frustrated and jobless. Everyone in my family was trying to cheer me up but I couldn’t be. That self of me in 2013 wrote a letter to another me who belonged to the year 2009. The addressee guy was just in his 2nd year of engineering (halfway though college). Right now, I am observing a guy talking to another guy who exists 3 years back in time than him. All the three guys are the same person but just separated over time! Amazing isnt it? Feels like Looper! But that’s not the point of this post. It is about how different I have become over the years.. How many changes have happened.. How have I been moulded by some seemingly life-shattering events (which of course become just some old tales with time).. Unexplainable. Just unexplainable. Maybe it is but I choose not to. Some feelings are better felt than expressed.. It is deep.

Settlement balance Zero? or Circle of life?

I work in the cards and payments industry. My job is to develop and monitor programs and Jobs (Yeah,  Jobs! I work with those scary mainframes). After the transaction settlement of all the merchants my programs create their statements and funding notifications. Usually someone gets total credit greater than the debit and for others vice versa. For some both credits and debits balance out and they get naught! Not a single penny! Such cases sometimes throws spanner into the clockworks, and we have to fix it. (In mainframe parlance, those horrific things are called Job Abends)

Usually a job abend means billions of valued transactions held up until we fix it  and time is invariably against us at such times. Late to fix it by a moment and we can hear abuses from halfway across the world! So please, next time your bank transaction is held up, don’t slang us. Just remember, we are on fire even before you microwave us with your anger. Yesterday, we had such a job abend day.

It was a merchant who had nothing but two transactions, one for $ +1.07 and another for $ -1.07. So he didn’t get anything  funded into his account, but he has to pay the fees for the settlement processing.. Sorry, I wont bore you with that. What happened is that we luckily found this merchant’s records quickly in the files, removed him and let the jobs go. Everything went smooth from there on. Something hit me then. A thought.. It goes on as follows.

This guy sells some things to customers. For whatever he sells he pays 2% of that transaction to his card company.  A fraction of that is paid by the card company to my employer. With that money my employer gives me salary. With the salary I then go back to pay the merchant for stuff I buy. From that the merchant again pays 2% of the value and it goes on and on in a circle.. Now do one thing. Just put all the pieces of transactions together and settle it. Calculate, who stands to gain, huh?

The transaction settlement value is Zero! A big Zero! No one is getting anything extra! No one at all! It just sent my head spinning. What the hell are we working for and why ?!

Everyone is actually losing their precious seconds, minutes, hours and days just to keep this circle running, aren’t they?   Or is this what they call ‘the circle of life‘?

#BoycottChinese : A reality check

India today has more mobile phones than people, a proven fact. But where these communication devices come from, huh?

Starting from the cheapest Samsung guru series(my dad uses it) to the most expensive iPhone all of those phones come from China. Not just mobiles, but the whole spectrum of networking devices (routers, switches, computers etc) used here comes from China. The whole communication network of India relies on Chinese imports. So if you take out the Chinese maal out of India, you are leaving India without its communication network. Work would come to a standstill, as all the laptops would also be taken away. Just imagine life without your precious phone and net. Can you? Ironically, I am writing about #BoycottChinese on a China-assembled laptop. Is it just me? Nah!

All of India (at home and abroad) is earning, working, writing, communicating, talking and expressing themselves and ranting #BoycottChinese through Chinese products only!

Has anyone thought about that? We can’t escape using Chinese products no matter how hard we try. Directly or indirectly our fragile lives are supported by Chinese imports. No matter what you do, you simply can’t take China out of India by #BoycottChinese..

Instead of ranting #BoycottChinese, #makeinIndia drive makes more sense to me. That is the only way to cut off China, so I feel.

It’s Valentine!

I feel every important thing in life deserves a day of celebration. Love being the most important one, so we have Valentines day .Square and fair, you have a day to celebrate your love. No issues with that. But how many of us know what is Love?

I know I have asked the very obvious question and there happens to be so many poetic answers ready like “Love is life” “Love is a game” and so on. So let me rephrase the question..

What does love feel like? What is it actually to you? Take a pause and think. Leaving the exception of people who actually feel each and every syllable of I Love you while saying it, to the others it is merely a half-hearted symbol. A symbol to appease or sometimes give a sense of security or else feed their ego of having a partner. You know well what i am talking about so I wont explain any further. People fall in love.. is love a trap? Literally they have a great fall. They fall for looks first, character usually comes last in the list.. and and and I forgot the most important thing. Sensuality, without which nowadays young couples don’t even feel like they are in love and break up! Look around in TV ads and all, best example is that of the CloseUp. #makeyourfirstmove! what the hell? Is love all about touching and getting a feel of the body of the opposite sex? Don’t take me for a celebate. I like sex as much as you do maybe more, but I believe it comes afterwards. When two people love each other for what they actually are, feel that much comfortable in each others company then sensuality adds to the experience. Otherwise sensuality is like any other drug, feels great and later leaves you feeling empty. And lastly, you don’t bicker if you are in love with each other.

Love is a beautiful thing! When found you don’t demand anything in return. Not even an ‘I love you’. You become flexible enough to accommodate all faults or shortcomings if any at all. Loving and giving away all makes you feel complete. Sounds fairy-tale-ish? But it is Real-ish. Lucky are those who find such love, and I am one of them 🙂

Spread love 🙂 and have a happy valentines day!

my view on #HappyToBleed

To the people who think Menstruating women are not pure enough to enter temple of God, to them I ask; If you believe it is your sworn duty to protect the holy ground from the shadows of such beings then why stop at the temple gates? Why not go ahead and wipe out the entire female race from the whole universe? After all the whole universe belongs to GOD and such an impurity cannot be allowed to linger around, right? Please go ahead, wipe them out from the face of the earth at least. Then God will shower you with blessings as you watch the human race go extinct.

Finally when human race goes extinct, mother Earth will thank you for sure!

Shame on you people! What is wrong with your head?

Between the two of us, Woman is blessed with the divine power of creating life. Her menstruation is the purest sign of the capability to create another life! She is the one who used her power to create you and she created you with her body. If you really believe in the divine and worship god as your creator? Then what is holier and pious than worshipping the power within her?! If you believe in logic (other than believing that a lifeless stone is holier than a fertile woman) then do think upon what you just read. I believe you will see through your cloud of misunderstanding..