2.6 Million people named Desi

The term Desi is a common way of referring to the emigrants from the Indian Sub continent living in US and UK either temporarily or permanently for many generations. Primarily not an offensive term and is more used by the Desis only, the word has starting representing a culture of its own. The culture that it has established represents many aspects of a daily desi life and the life styles followed by a typical Indian immigrant. The love of spicy food at any time of the day is a classic characteristic of a Desi. Been in UK for almost an year and being in US for the last 1.5 years, I have noticed many interesting characteristics that a Desi typically exhibit, some of which are to be proud of; also equal share of shames and few embarrassing or unethical behaviors too. Here I have tried to list few of them but mostly the adverse characters seen in a Traditional Desi. As most conventional characters are similar to an Indian resident, I have pointed out only the adverse ones. Please not that all the points are my own view and is not meant to hurt anyone.

1. As already said, Love of spicy food that is "Cooked". "Cooked" food generally means food that is either fried on a Tava or deep fried in oil. Steam boiled food is not considered to be cooked except for rice.
2. A perfect Desi considers any food that has bread including Subs, sandwiches and burgers as a snack. Only "Cooked" food is considered as meals.
3. "A penny saved is a penny earned" - Benjamin Franklin
   "A penny saved is Rs.0.45 earned" - Desi
   For a desi, everything needs to be converted to Rupees. A burger for 2.3 dollars is too costly compared to 10 rupees Pani Puri in India.
4. "Please" is reserved for important occasions only and are hard to be used on normal conversations.
5. As a general rule, never talk to others unless you are questioned.
   American: "How are you today?"
   Desi: Fine. (Do I know him? Why is he talking to me?)
   
   Desi 1: "Hello" *smiles*
   Desi 2: Returns a stare. (Now what does he/she want from me?)
   
   
6. If it does not affect you, it is never a problem.
7. Bashes Indian Police for not following rules. Swears at American Police for following strict rules.
8. Can take a right turn by standing in the front of the left most lanes.
9. Complains about the low quality of the pirated movies online and the high cost of Pirated DVDs.
10. Never heard about the concept of 'buying' MP3 songs.
11. Calculates the resale price of the car before owning it.
12. Rules are meant to be bent and Contracts are made to be broken. Whether it is the internet or the mobile phone, the service must last only till the offer exists.
13. Anything that is not bought in sale is considered as over-priced.
14. Feels happy about fall in India's economy which would mean increase in US Dollar value against Indian Rupee.
15. 15-day return policy are created for renting high end gadgets for the weekend tours.
16. Girl friends are important for healthy social life. Night clubs and lap dances are modern culture. But the bride should be from a homely family brought up in a traditional society.

This makes my day!

These are few that could make my day bright and overshadow the irksome and irritating chores that happen around me everyday. It is a response to the tag dropped by Ramesh in his blog which I can never spell correctly. Ramesh, good points on yours by the way. Though there might be more generic small events that can make my day, I couldn't include them because either I am refused of it or not in the vicinity in recent times.

1. Sleeping as long as I want and waking up naturally without the nuisance of beeping alarms, speaking roomies, ringing cellphones, buzzing instant messengers or the direct sunrays.
2. Mom made dosa with two chutneys for breakfast. (Something I couldn't get for a year now)
3. 15 minutes hot shower with no thoughts of the busy and troublesome day in office ahead.
4. More than 5 persons online in the messenger for me to wish "Good morning" and get a reply back too.
5. Getting drenched in the rain.
6. "Someone said that my post on XXXXXXXX is good!!!!"
7. Finding out and laughing at the hours of pain, anger and confusion caused by a single quote or comma on my 300 lines code.
8. A game of Foosball and smashing the opponents with direct *zap* shots from the Goalkeeper.
9. The urge to cook that comes once in a blue moon and the output matching the recipe I tried and it IS yummy!
10. 1-hr lunch break with discussion on time travel, butterfly effect, 10th dimensions and Satman's surrealistic theories with not even a single word in Hindi which would make me just "nod". [No hard feelings on my "Hindi-speaking" fellow colleagues. I know your day happens by the other way around]
11. Find an unsuspecting victim online and tease him/her till they start swearing me. *Narayana* *Narayana*
12. Come home and see dinner hot and ready to be served.
13. A kiss from a sweet innocent kid.
14. Help a stranger even with right directions and getting an honest appreciation with thanks.
15. Watch an episode of Friends with Joey's "How you doing?", Phoebe's "Smelly cat", Geeky Ross, Sarcastic Chandler or goofy Rachel or even the all-perfect Monica and laugh out loud or sometimes smile with tears ready to drench the eyes.
16. A phone call from my friends with no special news except "Was wondering what you are doing?"
17. Pizza night!!!!! (Limited these days)
18. Play deathmatch in Quake 3 Arena against human players in a LAN environment. Love to create havoc with Rocket Launcher and make headshots with the rail gun.
19. Sit alone on a scenic place and listen to the breeze moving against the leaves with closed eyes.
20. Someone says "You have reduced weight".

Few indicators I am turning Evil

I am getting a feeling these days that I am turning more towards evil and sometimes I feel happy rather than worried about it. Here are few indicators I noticed on myself. Try to point it out if you know more. I promise that you will not be hurt by any cruel means.

1. I have developed a liking towards movies with serial killers or Psychotic villians. My favorite characters include the villains or anit-heros in the movies like "Phone Booth", "Seven", "Saw I", "Identity", "No country for Old men" and the recent Thumbprint killer "Mr.Brooks".
   I also have a special liking to Gotham City's crazy villain "The Joker".
2. I also liked the movies even when the hero dies at the end. "The Departed", "Pattiyal"(Tamil), "The Matrix Revolutions", "I am Legend" etc . Though one movie I hated because of this same fact was "Scarface".
   
3. I enjoyed watching Mr.Ribbon getting tortured (verbally) by Mr.Biscuit. See post for details.
4. Long-tailed Vinay is no more. He could probably been the last of his/her/it's species. I killed it by smashing it hard with the spam newsletters we get everyday and also took a photo before the final swing.
   My flatmates remarked whether I photograph my victims before killing them.
5. On reading one of my short stories "The Second Chance", a reader commented if I am a Psychotic in nature.
   
6. Important reason I like Quake 3 Arena better than Unreal tournament is the higher level of gore you can see when you kill the opponents in Q3A.
7. I am also a fan of violent-immoral-antisocial Grand Theft Auto game series even though I agree it should be rated as 15+)
8. I have little regret in writing this post about exposing my affection towards evil.

In this Weird World! - Wallet

Its so ironic that we keep
IDs, credit and debit cards,
money and all that we seek;
in a wallet over a spot,
close to where the bark
should have bit you hard?

If Morpheus was a DBA support guy,

If Morpheus was a DBA support guy,

Morpheus: I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.
DBpheus: I can only unlock the account. You're the one that has to login with it.

Morpheus: You have to let it all go, Neo. Fear, doubt, and disbelief. Free your mind
DBpheus: You have to let it all go, Neo. Not null, Foreign key and all constraints. Delete the row.

Morpheus: If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain
DBpheus: If view is what you can select, filter, group and join , then 'view' is simply queries interpreted by your table.


Morpheus: What are you waiting for? You're faster than this. Don't think you are, know you are.
DBpheus: What are you waiting for? You're faster than this. Don't full scan the table, index scan the table.

Morpheus: Stop trying to hit me and hit me!
DBpheus: Stop trying to update me and update me.


Neo: If you're killed in the matrix, you die here?
Morpheus: The body cannot live without the mind
Neo: If you have killed(drop) the table, you die here (view)?
DBpheus: The query cannot return without the source.

Neo: Why do my eyes hurt?
Morpheus: You've never used them before.
Neo: Why are my queries slow?
Morpheus: You've never analyzed them before.

Morpheus: You've been living in a dream world, Neo
DBpheus: You've been accessing the materialized view, Neo

Morpheus: Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.
DBpheus: Unforunately, no one can be told what the oracle hint is. You have to use it for yourself.

Friends of a vagabond

One of my best friends is getting married today. Actually by the time I am writing this post, she must have got married already. Things are not going to be the same anymore. How much we say we can still be the same, it isn’t the same. Life changes and it is changing fast now. Back then in the good old days, we go to college, attend the class, chat in the cafe, pass comments on others, laugh at each other and just forget the day. We forget that day because the next day was going to be the same. Nothing happened to change our lives in those days. Exam results were forgotten within a week, own love rejects were used as topic for chitchats. Bunking classes were part of life. Life ahead was just as clear as the sky. We just did not know what was beyond that and did not care much about it either. Once in a while, we would look up at the sky watching the clouds making shapes that would make us think what it is doing up there? It would make us wonder, what it would be like flying in the sky. But right then, with the sound of the friend calling you, you turn back to see the present. And the present remained the same every day. If we have a fight, we knew it won’t matter the next day. We did not believe it would harm our future. We lived as if everyday is the last day, only day and the same day as every other day in our life.

Things are not the same anymore. We live in our world where change is nothing but everlasting. We meet new people; make new friends; reorder our priorities in life. A best friend in college becomes a person from the past. Life reduced to "Good morning" mails to all friends added to the mailing list. That’s how we keep in touch with others. And occasionally one would call the other and ask "Where are you?" rather than "How are you?” We really have lost contact with one another. And living in the Indian software industry world, even friends are found as short term projects. We move from place to place trying to make a living leaving the dear ones behind. We meet new people and friendship gets confused with fellowship. We make friends faster but they are short lived as we have to move on to new places. So we find more persons there and the earlier friends are past who you would ask "Where are you?" very soon.

I move around different places doing what we call work, while my friends cant recall my face as I have not seen them for years; friends who forgot me because they thought I forgot them; friends who were so close to me but found disputes and had our fights which are not going to be forgotten unlike those college days. Living the life of a vagabond, I have always thought if there is a way I could make my life better. But is it just my imagination that my life could be better. Anyways, you should know that whenever I see my mobile to search the contacts and happen to move across the phone number of my friends whom I might ask "Where are you?" or "How are you?" and just for a second, the good old days come back to my mind and it makes me smile.

What's the point of all these talks? Trying to appear as if I am very much moved by the changes around me. Yeah. I am disturbed. But what the hell? It is all part of life. Just Live with it.

PS: This post wont make sense even to me tomorrow

Save me from this world!

Hundreds of movies. Thousands of slogans. Millions of reasons. But its very disheartening to see that caste system still prevails. There are still people who are stubborn to the caste systems. There are still organisations based on caste. And there are still political parties winning elections by using the caste system to their advantage. Pathetic I would say. Why is this age old system still torturing us in this boundary less connected internet world? Why does people still stick to these shameful caste systems and act biased? So many questions popup in my mind that I am afraid would take me very long time to find answers for them.

I agree that the importance given to caste system has been reduced in all these years. But it is still acting as a barrier for improvement and a basis for corruption and chaotic life. I have seen and am seeing lot of situations that proves this. Whats more disheartening is that some of the situations I have seen are more closer to me that I didnt expect. I was really disappointed when I found a major school in our hometown still has caste as a factor for recruiting the staff and even the Principal. How can you expect a school which recruits staff based on caste to provide quality and unbiased education. All the slogans like "Ondrae kulam. Oruvanae Dhevan" will stop in the boards itself. It cannot reach the students for it may not be in the teachers' mind. In my 18 years of schooling, caste had been the least topic that I had ever discussed with my class mates and friends. I was very proud of it. But when I realised that the same school that taught equality is biased to caste made me feel bad and makes me angry that I am not able to do anything for that.
The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know why it is so. But to analyse that I need to understand what is this caste system and was it necessary any time in the past.
Recalling the lessons I had learnt in History subject, I know that people were divided into four classes according tot he job they did in the olden days. the Brahmins , the priestly and learned people, the Kshatriyas , the warriors and the rulers, the Vyabaris , the mercantile classes and the Shudras , landless laborers. Though I found the paritality given based upon caste systems a wrong one to follow, I understand that the division is based only upon the jobs that the people took. Then the caste system slowly changed and it grew more divisions and more importance was given to it. After many changes, it went on to multiply to more than 20 castes with more subcastes within them. Now there are hundreds of castes in south India alone. What I dont understand is the origin of these castes which I dont find it to be based upon the type of work. I have heard lots of stories about the battles that have happened between castes.
One such fight is between the nadar and thevar communities in virudhunagar. One have to go through the streets in Virudhunagar, a town in Madurai district. You will be fascinated by the puzzle like roads that connect the streets. The houses will be closed packed though without common walls. There will be very narrow gaps which we can neither classify as roads nor as ditches. Also the doors of the houses will be made of strong wood. The most craziest thing is that there will be log oven in the top of the houses. It would be funny to think of cooking food at the top of house and take it inside to eat it. If you think "These people are crazy", you are wrong. They houses were constructed with great plans. In the older days, virudhunagar was occupied mainly by two castes, nadar and thevar community and riots between them would happen very frequently and people would be running with sickles in their hand sacking each other. And here is the crazy fact. The reason for having the narrow roads between houses is to confuse the other community be running within the narrow roads which is like a maze. If you start from a side you would mostly end back at the same position after getting confused in the path. The need for strong door is to prevent unwanted persons from breaking the house. And guess whats the use of the stove on the house tops. It was used to heat oil and pour it over the persons when they passes through the narrow roads. And there is no valid reason for these riots. I can talk on forever about the caste disputes that happened like these in the recent past. There are so much examples that will make one wonder if we are still barbarians in nature.
Another area where I have seen caste system taking its toll is love. The cine world has used this as the greatest tool for making block buster love stories. So many movies are made both with happy and tragic endings that seems that they are made for money rather than changing the society. And everyone can see the effect in real life too. After all, one out of ten persons you know would tell how caste ruined their love life. The world has grown to a level to accept different caste people living together but not love each other yet. We are still a way behind in demolishing the evil caste system. I am sad to say that if I tell my parents that I am in love with some girl, the first thought will not be how much caring or beautiful she would be but what would be her caste. Its a shameful truth. Their life has grown in that way. They are living in a world interlinked with caste in every turn they make.
It was our parents who taught us to make friends based on character and not on caste. It was our parents who taught us to treat everyone equally. It was our parents who taught us to live together with the world making us forget what caste means. But now it is the same persons who wants us to choose our partner based on caste. All our life we were told not to believe in caste, but in the later stage, caste becomes the main factor in deciding our partner. I have a hard time accepting that.
But things are not the same everywhere. People are going forward without the caste system and I believe in one or two generations we can make the caste system seen only in history books. But what I am worried is, why cant I be part of that world right now. And how much I can do in changing the world is something I am not able to answer. I feel caught behind bars in this caste centric world. Some one save me.

Choice!

Life is not about making the right choice.

Its about making the choice right for you.

Leading the way

Every attempt I make
to lead the way
is beaten by the right leg in
the very next step.
But still I never give up.
-- Left leg

Gadgets - Life made easier?????

Sometimes I wonder whether the latest hi-fi gadgets make us work more than making us work less. Isnt the computer industry supposed to reduce manual labour. But guess what, computer industry is the highest job provider here. May be there would have been more jobs if there werent computers. But still I think they had add more work on humans. Consider how I passed last weekend.
I have bought the new iPod and was trying to organize the songs for it. If I had been using the sony walkman cassette player, I would just have to buy a cassette and play it as and when i want to. But now there are lot of features in ipod that requires a lot of ground work before I can use it.

1. I had to download and install iTunes from the net first and have to choose the music folder so that my songs will be organised in appropriate folders automatically.


2. Then I had to download all the songs from the net to make justice to the large 30GB space I have in my ipod. I surely cant have just 10 songs of 50MB in such a huge space. It would be a great insult. So there I went on search of MP3 songs in the net. But guess what?


3. My internet connection was not working properly. So I had to troubleshoot it for few hours to make sure it works properly.


4. Then I realised that the download speed would be faster if I use star download manager. So I downloaded it from the net and installed it.


5. After downloading some 200 songs, I realised that the song titles, album and arist names were not correct in the downloaded songs. So I had to correct them in iTunes.


6. But my knowledge on music was very much limited that I had to rely on internet again to find the correct artists for each album. This task was the tedious one which took more than 4 hours to find about each and every song I have.


7. Phew! Atlast, I had all my songs with correct titles. But there is something more in iPod. You can view the artwork for the album you are listening to. I dont want to miss this good feature of iPod. So I went into the internet again to get the images for each album and add it to every song(I have a total of 809 songs) I have. This took another 3 hours.


8. When I thought that its all over, I found that all my songs have not taken more than 4 GB of space. With my iPod's hunger not satisfied, I decided to add some movies into it. And there we go again. Where can I find movies? iPod needs the movies to be in special format(.mp4).


9. So download the video convertor software and convert the movies which I have in .avi formats. Believe me. This is a very tedious task and I still havent got any proper software that can convert the video with proper audio-video syncronisation. They are always out of sync that sometimes I hear female voice when the hero is speaking to the heroine. Imagine what if the hero says to his wife "I am pregnant". That too in a lady's voice. The romantic movie would become a comedy movie.


10. I decided to download trailers from Apple instead and downloaded most of Apple advertisements from www.apple.com. It came up to 100MB only and I didnt want to work more on this.


11. Then there was this "Photos" section in iPod. Thats the section that I can fill easily. I have a total of 2333 photos so I can fill up atleast 1GB of space in my iPod.


12. So after a long time of collecting all music, movies and photos to fill my ipod, I copied them all to my hifi iPod which took about half an hour to copy into it.


13. So atlast, after 2 days of hard work and most of the internet bandwidth squeezed for the music, my iPod was all ready to rock my ears.

Was all these stuff worth it. Yes! It was worth every bit. The music turned out to be wonderful when heard in iPod. And the photos were very crisp and clear which I couldnt see in my laptop. My 2 days of hardwork didnt go in vain.

Moral of the story: hi-fi gadgets make you work more than before. But its all worthy when thinking of what more you get from it after your hard work.

PS: Now I need to download more movies and convert them into mp4 format. There is still more than 20GB of free space left in my iPod.

Happy Republic Day

Today is 57th Republic Day of India. So its been 56 years since India became a republic nation. I had been having doubts on what is the difference between celebrating Independence day and Republic day. In school days, we had to go to school even though it is a holiday. It would be fun though. No classes will be taken and everyone would be having the flag pinned to their shirts. Though our school dont provide them, it would be the work of some patriotic students that they either buy in the near by shops or would have troubled their parents to the maximum to buy them the best flag. As for me, I dont like the idea of pinning your flag to your shirt. I was( and still I am) really patriotic that even pinning the flag would hurt me as we are making a hole on the flag. I didnt like the idea that I will always keep it in inside my pocket. Sometimes, we would get the ID card cover for keeping the Flag safe.
Coming back to the day, I didnt know the difference other than the name. No one had ever given me a proper definition for republic day. I had wondered if there is any republic day for US. I still dont know the answer. Looks like it doesnt. A search in google ends up only on republic day of India and Turkey. So for 23 years of my life, I didnt know the real meaning of Republic day. I think I learnt something in my history & Civics subject about it. But as it was for acamedic purposes and I tend to forget most of the lessons once the exams are over, I forgot that too.
Enough of this bragging. I found out the right person to ask and found out the real meaning of Republic day and why India has different days for celebrating Independence and Republic day.

And the person is none other than our wikipedia. Here is what wikipedia has to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_Day#January_26th_in_India

The Constitution of India came into force, and India declared itself as a "Republic" on January 26, 1950, a date thereafter celebrated annually as Republic Day in India. The Constitution had been prepared by the Constituent Assembly which was set up upon India gaining its independence from the British in 1947. This, in fact, was a deliberate act: the 26th of January was initially India's "Independence Day", one of Mahatma Gandhi's many symbolic acts during India's Freedom Struggle against the British colonial rule, and the adoption of the Constitution on this date was felt able to strengthen its initial meaning, one calling for Indians of all ages to declare their freedom from the British Raj. It is one of three annual national holidays in India, the other two being the nation's Independence Day on August 15 (since 1947) and the birthday of Mohandas K Gandhi or Mahatma Gandhi on October 2. And so, after the disposal of the Empire of India; King George VI was the last and only "King" of the modern India

So even though India got independence from British on August 15ht 1947, we still were ruled by British till january 26th 1950. Or am I wrong again? It was governed by King George VI. So pracitally it was still with British. I am bad at politics. So I am really not sure what happened in those two and a half years. Anyway, now its clear our constitution was made only on January 26th 1950 and we are celebrating as Republic Day!

Happy Republic Day!