That's the view from my backyard at my home in the suburb of madipakkam.Our area is a low lying area and it just takes 2 days of rain to make my place an island . Normally ,for the water to dry out it would take 4-5 months ,which would mean lots of insects at night...and the added trouble is that the gutter water mixes with the lying slush of water and makes one heck of a black cocktail that stinks terribly. Sometimes I wonder why we came to this house after spending the better part of my life in Adayar.
Now the corporation had taken some movement of relaying the rod in my street and have just dug the roads,and kept mounds of stones on it,thereby making it extremely tough to park my vehicle or take out my vehicle.Now the slush factor would definetely ensure that this road laying 'project' would take a couple of months to be restarted again...until then I certainly wont be able to take my car out.
That's life....marooned on an island ....
4/15/2005
Madipakkam in peak summer
4/13/2005
e n l i g h t e n e d
Neither have I turned a Pakistani supporter,(even though I greatly admire Inzy as a captain), nor am I a GREEN card holder.It's just the halo of enlightenment(READ GREEN ) that is imaginably surrounding me and promises to never let go of me.
This post is all about how much of a learning experience Life was to me over the past year or so .
Interacting with many people ,I feel is my biggest asset and I have learnt quite a lot over a period of a year.Interaction with people gives you a little insight inside their world and helps one see a perspective from a different angle.
I feel glad looking back a year back ,on how I managed to get enlightened ...slowly ....but steadily
A year back,I was waiting for a interview interview call from some of the MBA institutes and after I got selected in the written test of symbiosis ,I was understandably on cloud number 9 ,but was a little dejected that I couldnt make it for the Interview at IMT Ghaziabad ,as it clashed with my symbi interview.That experience of meeting the various people who came for the interview took my out of my mundane rural setting in madipakkam to another world where the competition was thread bare.I realised the importance of having contacts and meeting up with various people of the student community,travelling all alone in a 20 odd hour train journey,spending my birthday in a dingy room , living all alone in pune for a couple of days.That was the first time in my life I was missing our "madras bashai" and I did the unthinkable ...Go for a dhanush movie paying 90 bucks at one of the mulyiplexes in Pune , just before boarding my onward journey train.
Two months after that , was probably one of my most enjoyable trekking experiences along with my friend's to the himalayas,where i learnt the importantance of having the right attitude...as when u climb the mountain's in the heat , it requires one to be in a positive frame of mind before attempting a huge task. Given on a normal day , in the chennai heat , I honestly would not prefer walking from velachery to madipakkam (2 km's),but on the himalayas we climbed mountain's and walked roughly around 10-15 kms each day.That trekking experience taught me to take challenges ,in the right spirit and attitude to scale higher altitudes(pun intended).
Soon after that was my operation ,on my tummy ,where as the doctor put it then "my intestine was in a terrible entagled mess" . Those days where I lived on just drops of water,and terribly painful injection's every now and then ,with bout's of breathlessness taught me the importance of the smaller things in life like "the very drop of water" which I had to plead with the doctor for drinking. It taught me the importance of patience , when all those painful injections were given through my vein's . ,more than that it made me to accept pain and endure it .
Finally when I got through Infy,it was like manna from heaven ...as I had seemingly worked reasonable hard for it.It was a different sense of victory ..as I was a total flop when it came to taking entrance examinations in my 12th standard. I was happy I had worked on those nerves ...and had qualified in the top few who qualified that day.
If that was the zenith ...the nadir was yet to come.The reality of living in bangalore dawned on me ,as soon as I reached there.Living with roomates who pay as much as 4000 bucks for 200 sq feet of living space.The training too was something I would never forget,as It taught me not be over-confident and take things lightly.I was made to work severely and slogged so many COBOL filled nights to finally clear the training.I must thank Infy for that , as the training there really moulded me into a tougher person.who could take on greater challenges at work.
Other than that there were quite a few personal setback's in bangalore that really made me know the world better,to recognize sinner's amongst saints.
Finally ..when I was away at work in bangalore,I realised the importance of my college friend's who were far away in chennai and the importance of being in touch with them regularly.
So to aptly summarize , life has been one heck of a roller coaster ,resembling a sine wave over the past one year.So life is indeed a great experience to live it facing all challenges.
4/09/2005
That's where the journey started ...at guindy station
Let me take u through this small ,but eventful journey of mine.I got up ,fully charged for the D DAY...and took the train from Guindy station.This is where my journey started ... at 6 20 am ,when I came there surveying the fresh morning breeze and calm weather before MR SUN bowls us Chennai-ites out
There comes my limousine ...............
Yo!!!
Saw how big my LIMO was ....It's a 8 CAR RAKE...bigger than Bush's official consort :-)
The Limo was right on time to pick me up ...probably one last time to drop me in my college. This was at 6 40 in the morning.
The railway track ....welcoming me for the great journey ahead...
The railway track ....welcoming me for the great journey ahead..., originally uploaded by kartik kannan.
This track figuratively is like life,where it appears to converge naturally but ,actually is an optical illusion ,and the tracks tend to never converge and tend to go on straight as ever.
Why I compare that with life,is because We think at some point we will meet our friend's ...but as time goes in this great fast paced track of life,life never seems to converge to the point where we meet and keep in touch with friend's but keeps moving steadfast in a straight monotonous line ,in the humdrum of daily life.
I feel really glad to have taken a day off to revisit life...that I had lived for 4 years ...in a not so distant past.
Breath of fresh air ...ahem a little polluted though
travelling footboard in trains is generally never advisable ,but there comes a point where the chennai humidity can sap you..so I decided to move over to the corner and get some fresh air ...as it rapidly dried my sweat and freshened me. The one advantage of standing footboard on the left side of the train(when going from tambaram-beach) is that ,suprisingly no stations come on the left,thereby ...there's no trouble of having to get down at every station to accomadate some more passenger's
AVADI.........station......
Of all memories ,what stands apart is definetely the images of AVADI station..the place where all my friend's would gather in the evening for a chat ,before we board the trains.I've spent night outs at Avadi station roaming about ..with my friend's living in AVADI(ARMED VEHICLES AMMUNITION DEPOT OF INDIA ) in my second year .Every time I traveleld on the bangalore chennai route my eyes would be transfixed on the Avadi station, fondly giving me memories that would last a lifetime. We arrived at Avadi station at around 8 30 in the morning after a 40 minute ride from Central station.In the train were Achut,joshy,sid and Sabari...though lots of other people were also there in other compartments.
Thinking of the 40 minute ride...I was for a minute lost in thought's of the good-ol times when we used to gather together in the second bogie...and keep on yacking till Avadi came ...
YAADEIN HAI...YE YAADEIN........
breakfast time @ ayyar bhavan
AYYAR BHAVAN on Avadi road,parralel to the tracks of the Avadu\i railway station hold's a special mention,as that is the place generally where we people used to go for Lunch or Breakfast.I just wanted to relive those moment's once again...
Prasanna and I had a biased opinion about the other hotel in Avadi called BRINDAVAN ,because AYYAR bhavan used to give us the value add of "somph"(mouth freshner;s and quick service,whilst BRINDAVAN had waiter's who were very Bovine in nature,and it was quite a dull place. so our loyalties still stay with Ayyar Bhavan
Entry to college
This is the point where the road meander's into the college road,while another road goes off into veerapuram another small village ... where I remember to have gone for NSS activities
That's the formal graduation entrance
The graduation was held in our other auditorium called Lord BALAJI auditorium and seemed to be fully decked up.It was an absolutely amazing time catching up on friend's . One could hear the cries' "Machan...Maama" reverberating from all over the place.It for once seemed that I was still in my college days.I was happy to see many people having bunked a day off for meeting on this occaission.A few coudlnt make it ....and I guess after seeing the photo's they'd be ruing for the rest of their lives as to why they missed it !!!!
JAAGO .......MOHAN PYAARE ........
That's Prasanna dozing off ,who was feeling bored by the address given by the Chairman and the Chief guest.He was purpotedly tired after a tiring -train journey from Bangalore the previous night..and arrived just in time , whenthe function started only to catch up on lost sleep.
Moment of truth.........
That's me receiving my Bachelor's of Engineering Degree certificate from the Chief guest. I guess this will remain etched in memory for long.
Hum bhi engineer ban gaye !!!
All smiles after graduation ...and why not ? we've endured a mentally tough journey of spending 4 long year's writing exams,cramming crap,coming to coolege for attendance's sake and what not sacrifices....
L-R(from the yellow robes)
Achut perumbala-benchmate and fellow Infoscion,Joshy-Another benchmate turned Infoscion,Srivathsan-PADIP'S-CTS,SID -A triplicanist...and a mottamadi league cricket champion...@TCS. Arry-(the one in blue)..a.k.a M.S.ARVIND...the guy who farts stories ,faster than he thinks -employed at RAMCO mumbai. and finally Electrical engineer turned software engineer Vinush ,who works at Cognizant.
Katchu ban gaya Gentleman ........
It took some time to soak in the value of the certificate that I had in hand.I am thankful to the college , that gave me a BE degree and a place to stand on my own legs ...and land up in a job with India's most respected company.Emotion's somehow tend to flow when the robe's are put on...more so exemplified after watchingrani mukherjee achieve the same last night at Satyam theatre with Kishore,Arry and joshy.
Mother of all Goof up's
That's SID(Sudhir.B.k,EEE,2004) and Vinu (Vinushankar,eee,2004) who unfortunately coudln't receive their degrees on stage.Infact there were about 10 students who didnt get their degrees on stage ,simply because of the callous attitude shown by the college in misplacing their degree certs in a different bag. So sudhir and Vinu, though dejected ...decided to honour themselves the degree to each other ...with we as witnesses :-) after the function....All of us were angry with the college's irresponsible behaviour ,but at the same time couldnt help laughing at SID and VINU ,who took it sportively ...
In our all famous AVADI BUS
The AVADI bus has to find a mention on this blog.There were certain bused\s that were designated to go from college only upto Avadi to cater to the needs of the students who had not taken the city route service.Our College had a majority of people who lived closeby in areas of Avadi ,ambattur and either sides of Avadi..in the places that were connected by the broad guage local train.So when the college left those designated 4-5 buses....at the stroke of the bell, there would be guys rushing to sit in the bus so that they catch the 4 10 train avadi station.This was followed by a mad rush of booking seats for oneself,and bulk booking's for other's.(more so popularly known in Tamil as "tuniya podu" ).Getting a seat to sit inside the Avadi bus those days was like getting an AIR DECCAN ticket today.... :-)
The Gates of "Hell "
Those are our new set of building's that have come into place after revamping the original entrance.Now the college looks like a fortress with it's high wall's .It was no different when we there,but all said and done..that's the case with most student's who curse the college for any damn flimsy reason and then ...after they leave the place some memories linger
Cooling ourselves on a hot day
It was a really warm day...just like any other chennai day ...but we braved all that and decided we will get go to the other part of our campus where our classrooms were .....and decided to have a trip down memory lane ..
At the "meeting point"
Standing from left to right are
Nanda,steve,prasad,dinesh,prasanna kumar and your's truly......
This was our meeting point ,where endless debates would go on before nd after the test's and exams. One may ask why this place so specifically ..as the meeting point....coz the TOILETS were close by ...and so were the examination detail's noticeboard.
The good ol quizzing days
Well , 0ne of my classmates asked me to go on to the "mini stage " and start talking some crap as I did while I was studying in college.Whenever we had a free period I used to handle the class conducting mock debates and quizzes..and yes some times I did handle classes by giving seminar's ...often ..as that was a good excercise from falling asleep ....and I amde sure that no one one slept in my class ..as I made all my seminar's very interactive..making some funny antics to atract the class's attention. Well These experiences are definetely some of my unforgettable moments of college
Final sigh !!!!!
Well there came to end a journey that I was waiting with unabated breath. The college seems to have artistically evolved after we've left.
4/07/2005
It's that time of our lives when we pose in black robes and atleast for once look academic and scholarly,resembling more of a fancy dress competition (I hear it will be yellowish pink robes) .
The joy of passing engineering is definetely there ,but somewhere deep within the sorrow of missing all the college gang is also there. I remember ,almost a year back ,on the 5th of may 2004 ,when our last exam was scheduled,the day began with a slam book spree and ended with tears of parting away.Emotional scenes were witnessed wit everyone for once forgetting all bad vibes and hugging each other...as we knew a great journey was just nearing it's expected end. I had finished my exam 20 minutes before the closing time,even after going in nearly 20 minutes late(so that would reflect how bad my exam was),as I couldnt concentrate on writing ...when one knows that the final farewell is just minutes away. The best way to have a last hurrah was in going for a holiday together. and having fun ..and we did have one helluva time trekking in the cool environs of kullu manali and skiing on the rohtang pass,tat too just after the damn exams got over . It was sad that the number of people who came got limited to 6 ,with a flurry of last minute cancellations, after an initial promising number of 16.
But somewhere down the line , it was'nt as bad as it seemed as we guys still kept meeting or bumping into each other when we wrote tests in chennai,hyderabad or for that matter bangalore. Then slowly each of us..got employed ....and there went ...the meeting's and gossip which now was limited to a GOOD MORNING and FORWARDS through email,but the bond of friendship between our gang still exists atleast from my side,as I remain in touch with almost everyone i knew from college. We decided to meet again when we decided to take a break from the humdrum of the computing world into the serenading beauty of Munnar on a weekend.
Tommorow will see a mixture of emotions...the joy of meeting everybody in the morning...and the pain of parting again.We will be transported back to our HELLISH little world for a short time when we meet everyone in the college. It is a kind of an inflexion point from where ,one may never get to see some people(as it is some are not turning up tommorow) in your life,and when I think of that possibility , my eyes just stare mutely ......in to the skies waiting for the sky to respond ..but I knowthat wont happen.
Suprisingly , the very fact that I am going to college to catch up on old friends and get my BE degree makes me feel rejuvenated to the extent that I feel like a schoolboy waiting for the diwali night to burst open that first pack of cracker's....It's been a really long time since I have had such a feeling surging through my veins. so I am waiting with unabated breath to start off that long 40 km journey,once again from Guindy railway station to Avadi ...stepping back into time one last time with my college friend's .....when the hooter on the guindy station blows off ...
YUHI CHALA CHAL RAHI,YUHI CHALA CHAL
4/06/2005
Dhoni's swaggering ways at the crease ,his maverick strokeplay .,his simplicity ,innocence and that rustic boldness seems to only add 1 more testimony to the theory of a "method to madness"when it comes to slogging , only second to sehwag , seems to be a treat to watch .lets hope Dhoni get's going at his Home town in Jamshedpur and also hope Ganguly gets past his BINARYPHOBIA ....
4/01/2005
Those were the days....
The 40 minute engineer
We have our convocation ceremony on the 8th of april ,and that would mean a lot to most of us ,as that would probably be the last time ,our gang meets up together before each one of parts his/her ways into the journey called life. I have decided to go by the local trainâ??s to college this time,as I want to get that feel of college life,shuttling in local trains amidst the huge deluge of crowd that keeps pouring in and out and the endless chatter we get engrossed in unmindful of the noise created by the hawkers ,the train â?¦.. I am waiting to relive the train journey to college one final time â?¦
Trainâ??s and travel â?¦both to me have been synonymous with enjoyment for many reasons. I vividly remember the days when ,during univ exams , I used to go in train from guindy to park,shift over and board the suburban 7 15 train from central station to Avadi (the train usually went upto tiruvellore or pattabiram).Generally My frioiends targeted the 2nd or third bogie from the engine as it would be the 2nd last bogie when the train chugged into Avadi , thereby making it that much easier to get down from the train and cross the tracks and make a quick dash to the mercurial college bus(only from avadi-college 7 kmâ??s) ,which could start anytime between 8 10 and 8 30 . As soon we guys get into the train â?¦each of us used to immideately take out books or some Xeroxed material which would have suffered several marks of inks â?¦.in the name of underlining.Each of those heavily ink dosed bookâ??s would be our manifestation of the fact that we had also ..studied.
Each of us would be so curious to know how much the other person has studied, not as a means of wishing well for him , but just to be sadistically happy that the other person hasnâ??t prepared well and he too is sailing in the same boat as the person whio enquires. Then we would have fixed targets in our mindâ??s to complete â?? xâ?? amount of portions within say the next station â?¦.and so on . Invariably ,what I could never cover in 4 months of college ,all that would be easily encapsulated in that 40 minute long train journey ,compressing more information (or data) harder than what fraunhoffer institute did to MP3 or winzip did to files. The session would start with each guy giving his inputs on some important questionsâ?¦and where exactly one had to read to get the answer.If one attended this session and remembered the basic skeleton of the contents of the book ,I would guarantee that he would get past the corridor of uncertainty (pass , I mean) . For us we made sure that the bulk of the learning is made from the time the hooter blows off central till the train stops at a relatively unknown station called patravakkam ,after which we would have a small recap session â?¦.until the train slowly chugges itâ??s way into avadi station which is 2-3 stations away from ptravakkam.
On reflections ,I must say whatever I learnt in engineering was a gross function of the 40 minute journey amidst the din of the overcrowded train. My decription of college life in the trains would be incomplete without the 2 most important tools that assuaged my engineering life.
TOOL NUMBER 1 : The exam question paper leaked versionâ??s
Generally midway through my 40 minute train journey ,some guy would casually remark that â??this koschin , vaery impartant â?? and I bewildered would ask him , why so â?¦to which , the guy would pull out of his pocket a highly crumpled piece of paper ,which had some illegible handwriting, written in extreme hasteâ?¦which on opening the folds ,and after a little fight with the eyesâ?¦.one could see that those were the prospective questions that were leaked out to that guy from some distant uncle who has a friendâ?¦.working near madras university â?¦.and so these questions assumed importrance. The problem was not in the dearth of such questions ,but in the sheer abundance of them,as at each station there would be many such â??leaked paperâ??sâ?? , so to say around 4-5 â??versionsâ?? . During 1st year these question papers had an accuracy rate of 70% ,but over the years itâ??s dwindled and I have learnt that , the best way to use this â??leaked versionsâ?? were to spot out the common questions in all those versions â?¦.and make a note of them ,only to make sure I never waste my time going through them especially when there is an hour to go for the dreaded exams. There were guys ,who religiously read only thoseâ?? question papersâ??s â?? and soon found out that they had a relatively long marksheet â?¦. To such an effect that they even lost count of the no of subjects and how many times they failed in them.
TOOL NO 2 :
ENGINEERING MADE EASY �����..(value for money ).
Thanks a million to Charulathaa publications and Swathi publications for their interest in publishing one of the greatest books to be published on earthâ?¦.yes MADE EASY was our passport to saying â??we wont failâ?? .All our worst fears of an arrear would vanish when we spotted a â??Made easy series â?? book ,which gained prominence solely in those 40 minutes. This book was a great boon to all of us , what those hefty foreign author books couldnâ??t drill I oor minds across a wide span of a semester,â??MADE EASY â?? drilled it in just a few minutes and that too with what results â?¦â?¦ If I have had a blemishless record in my computer science subjectsâ??s the credit goes to MADE EASY SERIES ( why wasnâ??t a â??made easyâ?? there for discrete mathsâ?¦.? I wonder ) . but there was a flipside to it â?¦â?¦.
One of the â??made easy â?? series book for HTML was purportedly written by my college mate (Laxmi narayanan alias aswin kumar ). I was impressed when he told me that , he writes books . I was also shocked that ,these books are actually written by college students and not by professors â?¦â?¦ and on the day of the HTML exam , I saw this guy at 10 15 am ,cramming his head with theory â?¦..for a 10 O clock exams â?¦.and he sights me rushing towards my classroom,stops me in my tracks and asks me â??machan HTML solli thaa da,oru ezhavum puriyamatengaradhu â?? (MEANING ..DUDE TEACH ME HTML ,I CANT MAKE HEAD NOR TAILS OF THIS SUBJECT )â?¦.and that sentence had me wondering â?¦â?¦â?¦.the strange non linearities of lifeâ?¦.the guy who wrote the book ,is now struggling to understand what he wrote â?¦â?¦â?¦â?¦ha ha ha ha haâ?¦
Watch this space for more ,as part of the curtain raisers before my convocation
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