The clay of our lives

I seem to have an intrinsic fetish for clay products. These are the some of the pictures I took of clayware at Dastakar..

An apostrophe

A convinent wrapper in the dustbin of memory..
Forgotten sighs and a dusty story..
Faded letters..jaded words...
Bitter thorns ..crossed rusty swords..
glitter of nightlights ...
smogs of smokey highlights...
Flashes of mirrors and smoke..
All around the dead fires that stoke...
Hands reaching through the thick fog..
Hands searching for the branch rogue..
Its a long way back..
Its a lone one way track...
Come alone ..go alone..
rest all flesh and bone..
elusive ... games..
petals and stems..
Fall today..fall tomorrow..
the autumn of the days ..and days of sorrow..
This ..this and this ..
empty games of hubris..
A convinient wrapper..an apostrophe..
Lights out and a break..

My ideal life

One of these days a freind asked me (in context of marriage), if I felt 'alone' coming home to an empty house with no one to welcome me. I thought over this and seriously said 'no'. That set me thinking as how different my 'ideal' life would be from others. I decided to frame it out in this post.
In my ideal life, I should be working in a R&D  company with a single studio flat in a preferably European town. I would get up in the morning, brew my own mega-cup of tea and sit over a newspaper for few mins with a large crust of my favorite bread. I would finish it and read my favorite book in the loo. I would then go to my office, work with a bunch of creative and happy people, give great outputs. I would have my lunch in an open air cafe. Finish with awesome coffee and head back.Finish my work and go back home, change into running gear, go for a run , come back, take bath and fix myself a great salad/soup. I would then read a book, finish any office work and generally kill time on the net. If freinds are over, we would have a nice beer and dinner..otherwise I would go to bed.If weekends are free I should have sufficient moolah to trek/visit places and pursue photography. Sometimes I should be able to find time for sketching and painting. Once in a year I should go out for a really long trek with my camera. I would frame good enough prints of my pics and hang it around my apartment. My freind circle would be small but nice. No stupid social obligations or family functions. I should earn enough to pay my bills and save a little for my retirement and insurance. I would preferably have a cheap car and an expensive cycle.

the coming home part really doesnt figure...

Tall order?

a talk to remember

Yesterday, I had met a long lost school mate . Thanks of course to Facebook.He was in mumbai , and was presently working with a reputed company. School freinds have changed over time a lot and the boy I knew was long gone..now a father of two and having gone through the rough and tumble of life ..he had grown a bit taciturn. 

We were good freinds and had parted ways when I joined the Navy(in 12th) and he went on to pursue his studies.

I remembered him as a passionate young guy(we both were,I guess). Intelligent and highly idealistic and rational. He was one of those guys who had the conviction and the right amount of hardwork to see through it. Sincere and humble, he was a quick wit. And through junior college..there were quite a few romantic interludes. I used to envy him as he was quite popular with the girls...When I had told him so , he had once laughed it off. I could see it very clearly that he didnt make quite a big deal about his finesse or intelligence. 

But one day he did confess to me about having those special feelings for one particular girl in college. I really could not believe that out of all the hot chicks that hovered around him, he chose this shy and timid girl with no real academic acheivements or otherwise. Well , each to his own.

He did walk up to the girland conveyed her his feelings..to which the girl reciprocated.  It seemed that she had fallen for him right away in the first semester. When I had left college they were both very much in love and knowing my freind, I could guess that he had all of it figured out..! He had told me about his future plans of finding a good career and settling down with the girl...! Being the uncurable romantic that I was ..and knowing full well that I was going to join an organisation that would encourage a very different kind of 'candle light dinner'...I left them with very high hopes. I was genuinely happy for him ..for both of them.We lost touch after I joined the Academy and since internet was at its infancy and there was no Facebook... We really couldnt keep in touch. 

Finally after all those days when we met up in mumbai, After a drink or two we took to reminsicing about our 'old days'. At school,at college..till I asked him as to if it had all worked out with the girl, now that he is the father to their children. Now, I was so convinced that he had married his lover that it didnt occur to me that someone else was his wife. Well..he fell silent and told me that the 'girl' he had made his love in college wasnt his wife. ..I dint prod him further but I guess my silence was pregnant..

He started to talk as to how the 'girl' in college he was going out with had some different plans. It seems that she was not quite interested in him as much as his career and when he failed his first IAS attempt, the lady hooked up with a minister's son on the sly( the minister's son was a SC/ST minister's ward who had been studying with us and had around three years in our class..having failed in his finals). When caught , the lady ..well moved on. Leaving this guy at a very crucial juncture in life. He somehow managed to clear his PG..had his 'phase' of excessive drinking ..finally did his MBA from XLRI and did land himself a good job. Now he has a family ..with a wife from a typical arranged marriage..

Very typical love story of a typical college romace. But what struck me was a sentence he said towards the end of our conversation. He said "Piyush, I think the betrayal of trust has a very high price...you just lose faith in trusting".

I was two pegs down but the import of those words hit me like a slap. Coming from my freind whom I knew as the sincerest guy in college , I knew those words were not empty. I just looked at him as he poured out..

'Someimes I feel that what life would have been had she not done what she did. Maybe I would have got betrayed later but I would have stayed in the happy delusion of trust atleast those years. By breaking my trust so early, I feel she converted me into a cynic in the worst form. I just dont trust anyone anymore. And I hope ..hope feverantly that I am proven wrong atleast once..but no..everytime I am proven right. And that makes me sick. Because faith and trust are comforting, cynicism and lack of trust isnt. But how do you keep the faith when you know that the truth is something else.'

Having heard him, I could now gather that whatever be her motive, the 'girl' had changed a sincere lover into a cynic whoc couldnt trust his shadow. I really dont know if it was her fault at all. Maybe she did have her reasons but the tanglibe effect..that I could see it on my freind. The ever idealist , positive and cheerful guy had changed into a hardnosed man of the world. I guess its 'thank you lady'.I really dont know why I am writing this. I am sure there are a thousand stories like this floating around..Maybe because such a story was far way..till yesterday. Maybe today, its a story that has come close home. Frankly, I am yet to form an opinion on the 'betrayal' part..or the 'fault' part. But those words he had said 'you lose faith in trusting'..ring in my ears..really?

Bullshit Theory

In any group of people there are those who are productive and contribute and then there are those who are full of bull shit. The selection of people varies as a society progresses from a 'bullshit' driven society to a 'productivity' driven one. A bullshit driven society will have following characteristics:

  1. an almost religious liking for hearing only 'good news'
  2. Knee -jerk and dumbass reactions to perfectly sane happenings
  3. Too much of circular logic to justify anything as long as it suits the offender
  4. A psuedo piety and sense of culture which stands guards against any innovative idea
  5. A craze for 'nice' people
  6. A pathological fear of facing the truth
  7. Selection of candidature based on what is said rather than what is done.

A productive society will on the other hand have :

 1. an almost single minded devotion to improving the quality of life
 2. A desire to hear the reality and take corrective actions.
3. A fundamental belief in the truth of 'crime=punishment' and vice versa.
4. Selection of candidature based on meritocracy.

I have made a simple graph of the same . It looks fairly simple as to where we stand :)

Cynical believer

Now that I have been told by my boss that I m too cynical and sarcastic for my own good..I have taken that feedback and tried thinking it through. I made a list of things I m cynical about and the things I believe in :

Cynical
1. God: or more like the concept of religion
2. Essential 'goodness' of human beings
3. the 'Indian way' of doing things(do it because we have done it this way since2000 bc)
4. following societal rules
5. Marriage
6. greatness /chauvinistic view of organisation/culture/nation
7.trust
8.Women
9.titles/surnames/designations
10.casualty-if you do this>this will be your reward

Non-cynical
1. Love/romance
2.beauty
3.Honesty
4.crime and punishment
5.Learning
6.Freindship
7.Fun
8. thinking clearly ,rationaly
9. Respect
10.Women

So there it is. the lists are almost equal . Which means that I am cynical by 50% and non-cynical by 50% ,which also means that since there is no 'control' or datum I am pretty much balanced on cynicism.
As far as sarcasm is concerned I have to do a bit of further research :)

When the time comes :)

When the sun will go down ..you will go home..
When the dust has settled you will go home..
When the sweat has dried you will go home...
When all has been what has been..you will go home..

When the sun has gone down.. I will still be walking
When the dust has settled I would still be wading thruh the path..
When the sweat is dried..I would still be sweating
When all has been what has been..I would still be walking..

A breif moment of pass..
A brush of time...
A touch of fun..
A bit of tryin..

When the sun will go down ...you are sure of your home...
When the dust has settled ..you have your water ready..
When the sweat has dried...you have a cushion..
When all has been what has been..it all will be a past for you..

I would still be walking...
For I have no home to come to..
No cozy corner that I want..
No, I didnt think of it ..

I am as ready as can be, for the roads
I am as ready as can be for the dust
I am more than ready for the fragile trust..
I am all that I have been..and I am ready for bust !!

Stupid random thoughts

Predicting the time to failure of a complex system is basically the aim of reliability analysis. I mean If at the end of the day I cant tell when a system would fail its stupid of me to study that system.
Frankly I think the probability approach is not suitable because it takes data with a bias. MTBF must fit a probability curve. We twist and turn trying to fit a curve with substantial data falling out. Its not a nice way for PROGNOSIS. If I cant tell you weather the toss will be a heads or tails , What use is of the word '50%' probability.
My hypothesis of diagnosing a fault is this:

Suppose we line up the times between failures on a strainght line . With breaks consisting of up times and solid lines consisting of failure times , can we find a pattern? Can we find some scaling? Can we find repetative patterns of small failures inbetween big failures? Can we find a fractal dimension of the pattern of failures? and Can we extrapolate this? I mean if I find that the MTBF line of say a pump is say of .76 dimension, can I make a guess about how it is going to be in next ten years?

My central question is this...Is there a pattern or scaling in failure times? It could be possible that the pattern squezes as we near the death of the system but central idea is this..IS there a pattern? Is there a rythm to way things go down?

I dont kno..but I strongly feel that there is . there is a song of systems going duff..Its a song with not-random beats. Its a song we havent analysed. We hear just random beats and try and fit a curve ..but fitting a curve doest take into account the sequence :

For example say the time to failures is : 1,3,4,2,3,2,3,3,3
Now by probabilty analysis the points are just points,they are taken and fitted around a weibull distribution and parameters are taken out. Where do we take into account weather it was 1>3>4>2..? or 1>4>3>2?

What matters is cumulative time and time to failure..We never study the pattern. do we?

a little bit..

There will be always a little left..
There will always be a litlle right...
In the world of balance..
things will be little tight..
A little patch of sunshine ..
A fistfull of moondust..
Some patch of clear blue skies..
And a little bit of mismatch..
a little left..
a little right..
there will always be a skew..
a little more broth..a little less brew...
a little here ..and a little there..
somewhat this , somewhat that..
thats what it always is..
a little of this and a little of that ;)

Deep inside..

Deep inside ....isnt a nice place. Deep inside is a scary place. A place of ghosts , apparitions and blood. Deep inside is a place no one wants to go. Light rarely enters and darkness rarely leaves. Its pulsating, dark and moist. It has a smell ..a mesmerisingly damp smell. Deep inside is a small beat...beating to its own rythm..sometimes erratic, sometimes sad and very rarely happy. Deep inside is a soft place, exposed to the elements it would wither and die ..but in the moist arena of memories it grows its own fungus. Its own poison ..its own nectar. It has its own movie and its own projector. Sometimes old vintage movies are shown ..rarely new movies come. Few people stay deep inside. Some are wanted some just refuse to go away. Deep inside loves darkness..it hates light. Light chases away shadows ..and deep inside IS a shadow. Deep inside is a dirty place..its a bad place..its a vulnerable place. Its not a place one visits of a picnic..its a dungeon that most people are dragged to. There they are forced to watch the movie they hate the most...smell the smell they hate most..live the part of life they hate most. Its a place no one wants to go but ends up invariably. Deep inside is a parasite that cant be killed, a parasite that cant be cured..its an animal which lives so deep that to kill it would be to kill the being. 

The CCNA thingy

This may be a bit out of the line for a blogspot entry but what the heck. I thought I would put down a bit of the summary of a course on networking. It was a 14 day course and kind of interesting because it opened my eyes a lil.

We generally use internet so often that we tend to take it for granted but there is another world lurking below the software jargon. The world of switches and routers that kind of is boring but in some ways is terribly easy to know.

The course concentrated on use and configuration of Routers(of course CISCO ones). What we learnt is this:

1. Routers are "intelligent" switches operating on an OS called IOS.
2. Routers connect one network to another.
3.You can use routers to monitor traffic between networks and also do a bit of jiggery-pookery to configure them.
4. Basically you can tell them 'connect this network to that'..poor guys will do that.But even more in teresting is that you can tell them..'dont allow this ,dont allow that etc'
5. The basic identity of the end device that is your computer is the IP address and the MAC adress..its like the id of an individual.
6. Switches are low level routers used for LAN and guess wat you can programme them too to do your bidding.

7. TELNET is an awesome way to get inside the Switch /Router from any computer.

8. Servers can be any computer..basically all servers do is to store tables. Depending upon your choice, tell the server to use the relevant table to route traffic. Sab tables ka khel hai.

9. A programme called Packet Tracer is the software you use to configure switches/router on a GUI. A CLI is the alternative way to do it. Using it you can give your switch any property thats allowed.

10. Tea is a must in a 4 hr class