insensitive

Tsunami strikes south east asia. More than 30,000 dead!!

I read this and it doesn't affect me at all. I mean not at all. I read the whole article just as any other article. I attend some shows whoes earnings was supposed to be sent for relief fund. I dont get moved by most of the pictures that I see. Once discussing tsunami with my labmate, I suddenly realised that I don't feel anything for the people who suffer from this. The idea of me being so insensitive scares me sometimes.

"Mein marne se pahele ek baar apane potey ke saath khelna chahata hun "

I was watching the movie "waqt": some random hindi flick about father-son relationship. I tried hard but couldn't stop tears. I dont remember at what point but something hit me and I started crying. While I was crying, somewhere in my thoughts I was feeling happy that I am afterall not so insensitive. I do get moved somethings. It was quite relieving.

I realised news dont affect me but stories do.

Two of my favorites

After seeing many photoblogs, I am also getting enthu to upload some pics. Here are two of my favorite photographs taken during my sis wedding last summer.

The below one was taken on the afternoon of the weeding(wedding muhurat was at 2 am!!). My sis had just been painted with mahendi.

The first one is during the hasthbandhan. This is the time when the groom for the first time takes the hand of the bride in his own hands which is symbolic of "will be there for you always".

Arranged marriage

I have had many non-indian friends ask me of how arranged marriages work. After I joined the lab two labmates have got married arrangedly.(I dont know if this is a proper word!!) And after every such event the non-indian labmates are shocked as they dont understand how can it possibly work. Actually my labmates are awaiting my visit to India this december:).

Here I would like to put forth some facts which would explain the high success rates of arranged marriages. OK, my arranged marriage doesn't include child marriages or something like that. My definition of arranged marriage is subject's parents (or some omnipresent matrimonial aunty) find a girl and then the subject meets the girl two-three times and then based on the consents of the individuals the marriage can go ahead.

Now for the reasoning part. The human brain is very good at identifying personalities. The brain very quickly makes judgement regarding wheather the new aquaintance is going to be helpful or harmful to us. And more or less we reach the same conclusion after staying with the person for a long time. We see much more in a first impression than we realise.(Read the book "How to move mount Fuji?" to know more about the significance of first impression.) That cute smile, firm handshake, graceful walk, hair falling over shoulders, confident talk, husky voice, deep eyes - all this hits us together and the effect is much more than their combined sum. Our body says a lot about our inner self than we can imagine and surprise, surprise our brain can read all this. The marginal information that we gain is much less as we spend more time with them. So, the amount of information that you receive in those first n seconds more or less decides your relationship with the concerned person.

Now you guys will ask then why the two three meetings why not the first look itself. I knew this would come. The answer is "People excel at reading facial expressions quickly, but only when a countenance is genuine." . I guess in the first meeting people may be different from their trueself (voluntarily or involuntarily!!!). To bring out that inner personality we require a few more meetings.

Incase people have questions regarding all this can happen in love marriages also and this is no arguement for arranged marriage against love marriage, please read I never said I will do that. I only went ahead to say why arranged marriages work as well as they do.

Do you know poker?

Poker is a very entertaining card game. To explain in simple terms you have 2 of your own cards and 5 community cards and you have to come up with the best hand of 5 cards with these 7 cards to win. The fun part is the community cards are not made public all at once. But first 3 cards (called flop), then 1 (turn) and then the last one. (river) After every round there is betting and the next card is delt only after all the players who are in the hand match some particular bet. The order of the hands from low to high is high card, pair, two pair, trips, straight, flush, fullhouse(and trip and a pair), four of a kind, straight flush, Royal flush(highest straight flush). Now the chances of you actually seeing a straight flush while playing a game is very very low. And as you can guess its pretty exciting when someone actually gets it.

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I was at atlantic city last semester to participate in a poker tournament at a casino called Tropicana. Fortunately or unfortunately me and one of my friends (Allen) lended up in the same table. So, we made a deal if one guy bets then the other one backs out. This would make sure that atleast we dont lose money to each other and possibly will stay longer in the tournament. In one round the dealer deals me two kings (Now this is the second most strongest hand to start with!!) so I call the minimum bet. As the bet goes around the table, I got a big shock as my friend went all in with his money. I was completely taken aback!! Now as the betting circle continued and I got my chance and now it was my friends turn to get a shock. Now this put me in a very difficult position as you can imagine. I had one of the best hands so I started thinking. My friend was really confused and he tried to remind me of our deal in all the subtle ways like coughing and making eye contact. :) But at the end, I thought to go all in so that even if I lose my friend will have a big stack to play with and that way there is more chance of one of us winning. The rest of the table backed out. So the dealer asked us to flip our cards. My friend flips his "Two queens" and there were few murmurs at the table. And then there was a loud gasp when I flipped my two kings. And I could hear my friend going nuts. As I doubled up my money my friend was left with the minimum money to play a hand. I mean he had the money to just bet the minimum to stay in so he had to put all his money in no matter what hand he has.

Bouyed by the hand win I went all in in the next hand also. One other guy called me and this one went to the last card when I managed a straight to his trips and won the money. But the fun was not over yet. As the whole table was busy looking at our cards everybody forgot that my friend is in the bet by default. My friend gets up and throws his cards on the table and says "Shit man!! I have a straight flush!!!!". The whole table was amazed and it was worth a big laugh as the best possible hand helped my friend win so little money. (You can only win the amount that was matched to your bet in this case it being the minimum possible bet) The fun part in this whole thing was the contrasting feeling of my friend on getting a straight flush to any other person. He was simply frustated and cursing on why he didnt get it in the last hand. Oh boy, I love poker!!

The sky

The colors of sky have always attracted me. I have been so happy just looking at it many times. I had always tried to capture the magic of sky in camera picture but never managed it. One crazy morning, my eyes just opened and I saw the sky. I couldnt stop myself, ran out and immediately took pictures. But like every other time I didnt find the colors good enough. During my trip to NY, I saw this view of sky from kakkad's apartment and asked Gogo to take picture with his camera(costlier and better!!). And amazing, for the first time I felt the picture reflected the true colors.

Do I know him?

Has it ever happened to you that you bump into somebody whos face doesnt ring any bell in your brain but the other guy knows everything about you. And you get embarrassed that you dont know him at all. In such situations either our brain starts fabricating illusions of having met the person sometime (his face suddenly starts looking familiar) or you just put an end to the all your pains by pretending that you remembered the person and start having a conversation.

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I was once walking in IIT in my second year when I see the group of freshies walking towards H-4. From their talk I figure out that they are from hyderabad so I just ask "hey!! sab hyd se ho kya?"

They all turn back with consenting expressions on their faces. And just then one of them goes "Saurav..Saurav Panda..AIR 184 ...electrical department...Ramaiah evening batch..Ratna college."..Even I dont remember how I felt then but I was completely taken by surprise as the guy blurting out all these stats about me was a complete stranger to me..I was amused and I thought might be he knows this by some newspaper or Ratna advertisement..so I ask "abey mein itana famous hun kya?" and then the reply just killed me.."Abey mein Kapil re..saath mein bus mein aatye the..You are from Uppal na..no. 113 bus be..ratna mein tere baju baitha ta tha kabhi kabi...Ramanthpur mein utarta tha" You guys can guess my embarassment as I still had no idea about who the hell was this guy...But I just made up an expression of "oh haaaaaaaan.." and exchanged some pleasantaries and quickly tried to get away from the scene.

ps: Oye Kapil if you are reading, I am sorry but I still dont remember ever meeting you in hyderabad. But it doesn't matter anymore..

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I recently had a trip to NY with Ramya, her room mate (Shalu) and Sameer (Gogo). We met up Kakkad at NY and went around NY. Soon we found out that Soumitri(Mimi) was also in town and decided to meet her. We were pretty excited for our small reunion with old friends. And thats when I realised Shalu (Who by then had been through so many discussions about IIT) must be bored of this now. So I planned a prank so that she has her share of fun.(Sorry Mimi that it had to be at your expense!..) We tell Shalu everything about Mimi and ask her to pretend as Mimi's senior at IITB. This is what happened later...

After Ramya introduces Shalu to Mimi..

Shalu: Hey!! You rrrr..Soumitri right..I didnt know she is the Mimi you guys were calling up till now..
Mimi gives a surprised smile..

Shalu(now getting comfortable with her acting): You dont recognise me kya? You were in geology dept right..room 214..

Mimi: Oh my gawwwwwwd!! I am so sorry I dont recognise you ...You even know my first name..and pronounce it exactly as it should be (I dont know how everybody else pronounces it!!)

Then they have discussion of where they had met..And Shalu gave a full demonstration of her acting skills as she made Mimi come of with names of all the functions as she didnt know of the IITian lingo..

After about 5 mins Mimi was visibly embarrassed about the whole situation and says what we all were waiting for:).."Actually now I remember you vaguely now..freshies party ..hmm..yeah yeah..I remember you." And thats when I decided that it was enough and stepped into to explain Mimi the whole situation and she was even more embarrassed.

ps: Getting back to blogging and it feels good.

Ignorance is Bliss

I was in boston visiting my friend Mukul (aka magar). Giving me a guided tour of Boston, he took me to the MIT science museum. If you happen to go there definitely see the hologram section. It is amazing.

Being engineers, Me and Mukul were carefully disecting all the exhibits and having the "wow" affect when we discovered the principle by which the exhibit works. But one small incident made us both miss the times when we had no idea of how these things worked and simply enjoyed the exhibits.

We were making our calculations infront of a exhibit getting pissed of on not being able to crack the funda when a small kid comes to the exhibit, looks at the result, jumps in joy, laughs and leaves feeling very happy. We both stared at each other both of us had expression of bemusement on our faces. These are the times when you feel Ignorance is bliss.