Disaster Management

Precisely now , I sit on my studying table with a certain malicious curiosity to know what catastrophes I am to face in the inevitable dilemma that I will be compelled to endure at 2 pm tomorrow. Verily, that was a very verbose first sentence.

It hasn't been the most cinderella of stories( this may be grammatically wrong) in the previous exams but this one , I tell you , is a different story all together. I mean ,I feel like I am standing on the edge of a cliff , from which I'm expected to jump at 2 pm tomorrow. With a cup of tea in my hand to share my grief, I ogle at the shaft of notes kept on the side of my study table. The books , however, are kept , quite strategically, at an arm's length, but the fact that I'm able to give them a glimpse after every key I hit on the laptop , is somewhat guilt inducing.

So , the word of the day is disaster.

I was reading this article yesterday , about an activity in which people would write a full fledged essay about a single word. Words as random as "random" itself. I thought may be I could put in a few words about " Disaster" , its management although has never been my cup of tea ( with no offense to the cup of tea that I hold in my hand).

Disaster , I suppose , happens every now and then . Be it the sole hundred rupee note feeling lonely in your wallet ( a day after you receive your pocket money) , or the rude look you got when you exclaimed an enthusiastic "Hi"  to a girl who you barely knew. It's all a bit disastrous isn't it ? Especially the latter scenario. ;)

With butterflies in my head , and mice in my stomach , I think about the other disasters that have happened in the past few years. It's only in retrospection , that I am able to laugh at them and I seriously hope that I'm able to laugh about this particular day , when I get to read this post a few years hence. May be then I'll be telling myself : Automata was really interesting , but I never really got it , did I?

So, it could be that random party that I might be attending in the future when one of dad's colleagues came up to me and asked what I did . That's cliche . I would tell him with that pretentious pride on my face : "I'm a software engineer, sir" . Almost suddenly a hidden conscience will be resurrected inside me that would remind me : Mr. Software Engineer , remember automata ? rendering my face expressionless. Then I could only think : That automata exam , what a disaster ! 

Imagining Infinity - Part I

Neither am I a geek , nor have I ever intended to read an alphabet more than what is required of me to clear an examination, but somehow a few things in the world have always struck a chord with my thinking , for the illusion they create in my mind is more than what I could ever expect myself to handle.  Infinity , for me, has been one such 'intangible' notion. Please take note of the adjective "intangible" , I would like to use it in this post with such exploitation that the word itself hoped that it rather meant something else. 


The first time I was taught infinity I was in fourth grade , where it was introduced more as a stereotypical answer to "anything divided by zero ". I used to wonder sometimes what it meant, I could see my teacher stammering when she was asked to elaborate about its relevance(not by me), her face foretold that she was herself elusive , or should I say illusive of its understanding. The best she could do was to draw its symbol on the black board and assume that we were satisfied. Back then I couldn't care less.

Something I did not know myself was that it had left in me that seed of curiosity , a sub conscious one , because of which it was more inevitable that I went ahead and asked random people what it meant. I pretended to be satisfied with whatever answer I received, but deep down I knew I wasn't . I continued to ask people whatever they knew of it. Sadly, all of them seemed to know just this one thing very consistently about it: anything divided by zero is infinity. I thought to myself : Has anybody ever volunteered to break that sentence and comprehend it like a phenomenon. I mean what does anything divided by zero mean anyway?  I'm sure people would like to use their baggage of knowledge, a department where I seem to lack quite immensely, and tell me " Simple hai , limit laga de , lim a->0 (b/a) " and when I would ask them what they meant ,literally, when they said limit tends to zero, they'd hug silence like they'd hug their soul mate. 


Infinity was more than what it was thought to be. It was deceptive when it looked simple and exaggerated when it looked complex. It was a word created by man , and it was powerful enough to engulf the man himself. When man invented computer , he knew the computer could do only what it was told to do, it was a human slave . Infinity, on the contrary , had the power to enslave humans, its very creators. Mathematicians would literally bow down in front of a mathematical problem , if its solution tended to infinity. It had begun to be termed quite infamously :The Mathematical Devil , the Satan of Uncertainty. It was perhaps then that it was ascertained that contrary to general perception, it wasn't just an uncountable commodity , in fact it wasn't even a commodity. It was a notion , an intangible one . It could be thought but not touched, it could be felt but not calculated. It was an emotion , the depth of which was unfathomable.

Life at 3 a.m.

Before I go ahead with this outburst , I should confess to have been compelled by the pristine voices in my head that dare me to get them out. But again I write more because I want to throw it all out and get to back to the Class Diagram , which , under the circumstances, seems like a mistress in the waiting to the more imaginative of my senses. Somehow , I've always felt that 3 a.m. is the perfect time to vindicate.

So here I am , almost wobbled by two days of intense sleeping , and at the edge of an influential, if not critical practical exam. It's hard to get what made me get up in the middle of the night , for I had almost pushed myself at the receiving end of this mishap , not that I am saved from it now that I have actually woken up to do some work but nevertheless, the fact I'm able to give up a few words seems more or less to be the silver lining in the dense cloud of nothingness.

There is definitely something satanic about this night , yes , for sure it is.  It has never looked more silent to me than it looks now. In fact it spooks me a bit , and right now , I am almost half-willing to wake up dad and tell him that " I think there's something under my bed " . Well, as an event, it's nothing new . Ever since I was allotted an independent bed to sleep , I've made my apprehension felt at the slightest of noises in my room , be it a rat on a conquest or a mosquito on its way to a bloodbath, jumping out of the bed and calling dad at the least audible of unanticipated frequencies has been, for me, the standard protocol . Now, how I survived my hostel room for two years is again a mystery every soul in my house has had a hand at in figuring out, but obviously to no conclusions.

Through out my existence , I've always let ghosts have the better of my imagination. Not to mention here , that I have always, though cautiously, intended to befriend one or two. I'll blame the ever iconic horror show "aahat" for such frivolous tendencies. I remember having always watched it with a pillow in my hands. At the slightest intuition of horror , I would cover my face with the pillow , relishing the freaky sounds like a blind man would relish a strip show. I followed it for almost 6 years , after which the episodes starting repeating , and my interest thereon stooped.

The post would be incomplete unless I give my " baba adham ke zamaane ka radio" a worthwhile mention. I cannot but express how attached I am to this coveted radio box. Of all things that I have so far inherited or plan to inherit in the future from my parents, the radio would be the most prized of possessions. In the most distressing of circumstances the crooning of the radio would keep me moderately upbeat , proving to be more an emotional support system than an abstracting distraction. In fact now that I have had this sudden epiphany realizing how precious it is to me , I think it'll be sacrilege to not have given it an independent post on my blog, so I'd rather not reveal anything further. 

I started the post saying " Life at 3 am " , now that I end it at 3: 34 am , I'm quite inclined to say " Sometimes , life starts at 3 am".

Ab se Seedhi Baat , No bakwaas !

So, a couple of minutes back I was told ,quite bluntly, by a valuable critic ( this is the most serene description anybody could ever give him) that the " quality" of my last few posts should have embarrassed me to the extent that I should bury my head in the sand and never take it out, to the extent that I lock myself up ( and down) in a bathroom without taps and keep crying till eternity , to the extent that I should run around in "pink chaddies" telling random people that the "pink chaddies" signify that I'm in the "pink of mental health", to the extent that I forbade my entire progeny to blog on blogspot, to the extent that I told every other girl I met that I was a pervert , to the extent that I wrapped my fingers with cellophane tape should they ever treble to type,  to the extent that I just stopped caring what he said .

Unquestionably , I should accept the last two posts were a bit , okay not-a-bit but completely non-sensical , and the third last one ( Greek Weddings ) was an unintentionally ( okay , you may cut the "un") ostensible effort to pretend knowledgeable, knowing fully well that I wasn't. The next time I'll try to put in more " come-on sense ".