SPONTANEOUS BRAIN DAMAGE

What exactly happens when you watch a bad movie ?

This is an age old question which has been answered in several different ways, in order to convey one common reaction. The various things that can possibly occur precisely after watching a bad movie are:

1. Immediate realization of loss of money
2. Generation of strong feelings of regret by the lower left part of the brain
3. Immediate response by the facial muscles by unknowingly sporting an uncanny & sarcastic smile, often showing off your teeth a bit more than usual
4. Sudden outburst of irrelevant humor from your very own mouth, probably about the movie you just saw
5. Uncontrollable wish to gnaw at your own hand in a bout of desperation (its almost always the same hand that was used for buying the tickets)
6. Sudden feeling of emptiness while walking down the flight of stairs out of the cinema hall's premises
7. Occasional use of foul language, which you normally wouldn't use
8. And my favorite, Spontaneous Brain Damage


What does spontaneous brain damage actually mean ?

There were times in the history of human civilization, when there have been a few occasions which resulted into this very rare but actual phenomenon. Similarly there have been more than a few occasions in my life as well where I was blessed by this rare event, always front row, center seat. It is not humanly possibly to monitor this intricate process, as it occurs so fast that it fries up some neurons due to the heat that it generates.

There are quite a few places where this phenomenon can occur:

1. Cinema Halls
2. A class about to graduate from my college
3. Over crowded local trains with a potential to go extra slow
4. Cars stuck in pot holes
5. Open house at school
6. An extra long wedding ceremony, where the food is already waiting at the buffet & you cant eat just yet
7. Computer Lab where you have to teach an IT sophomore how to shut down a PC

The beauty of this phenomenon is that it can be readily observed, yet cant be monitored on a constant basis. It can only last from 3 seconds to 10 seconds. Yet it shows tremendous symptoms in that amount of time.

The symptoms are:

1. Sudden loss of breath
2. Tightening of the jaw muscles
3. Occasional grinding of teeth
4. Neuron genocide (mostly suicidal)
5. Losing focus
6. Dilation of pupils
7. Sudden itch on the chest, just below the heart (might indicate heart failure, who knows? )
8. Look of massive irritation, usually with funny eyebrow movement
9. Short steps than usual, walking seems to be a formality
10. Celestial happenings like, sudden unexpected rainfall


If in case you observe any of the afore mentioned symptoms, my friends, you might have just observed the rarest event in the history of human civilization.

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Song for the moment: System of a Down - Chop Suey

UPSIDE DOWN OR DOWNSIDE UP

When you have tumbled upside down or downside up for a long enough time, you lose the sense of space. Everything feels the same, your brain adjusts to the new found reality & makes the body acquainted with it. This is what I call “The Tumbling Effect”. Maybe thats why human beings of all other animals are more adaptable to
change.

Our body sheds several million cells everyday, but does our brain shed precious brain cells too? Does it make new ones at the same rate as they are shed ? I suppose my brain has shed my cells of accountability & has forgotten completely to rejuvenate them. Being in the same state of mind for so long has put me in the tumbling effect. Its one of the most disastrous things that can happen to an individual. To end up in a dead lock even though you have a clear path defined ahead of you.

In a moment of madness I want to believe in the uncertainty principle which allows me to say that life cannot be accurately understood. I take pleasure in hypothesizing that everyone around me is as clueless or even more than I am, about life. Although
humorously put forward by Douglas Adams in his book, The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, that the answer to life, the universe & everything is “42”. Deducing with my logic, I can say there is a specific amount of reality in that answer. Apart from the humor, the answer to life, the universe & everything cannot be found out even if
we have the best technology of our times. Its not exactly discouraging but it means that we should try harder. After all in the book, it took that super super computer 7 Million odd years to find it. So the answer being 42 indirectly implies, go home, mind your own business & work on your dreams. But thats just me.

Another fantastic approach can be found in the Occam's Razor. This is rather interesting. According to William of Ockham, who was an English Logician in the 14th Century, said that, 'Any explanation should be based on minimal number of assumptions'. This theory is widely used in economics & even stock markets. Also can be easily applied in finding the answer to life. If we consider the most important events in our lives, which is another difficult task to classify, we can actually deduce a pattern to how far our life can swing in the future if everything remains in order. So assuming that we have led a healthy & contented life ever since we were born, we can rule out the element of shock from our lives. But this can be very discouraging, because it can cripple our ability to dream big.

So even after applying some of the most important theories of our times, although accurately or probably inaccurately, I am still waiting for my brain to make the choice of which theory to follow. It's still as clueless as before & still shedding more cells of accountability. So in my opinion I think I should get back to sleep &
dream BIG ;).

Song for the moment: Avril Lavigne - Complicated

Disconnected

It was a long dark stormy night, well not exactly, but would have been great if it was. Anyway, it was an evening like any other evening in my life. Lonely, in my room, me staring at my PC & she staring back at me occasionally. I type the words "google.com” in my browser's address bar & bam, it says “Page cannot be displayed”. I get a little frustrated, this has never happened before at that hour of the evening. I hit the refresh button intently to see if the browser changes its mind & gives me my google page. But it has different plans. After fiddling around with the refreshing thingy, it gives me that error message again. I quickly check my internet
connection, all the cables are connected, all the necessary lights are lit & even blinking to show that there is a some sign of life. But the page still refuses to open. I get disgruntled. I groan in a low voice & let it rest in my head for a while. Then I pick up the phone & dial for my ISP's office. The half-wit receptionist inquires about the problem. I call there almost twice a week & she still needs reassurance & needs to ask my address, I provide with the redundant details & she “assures” that she will send someone to have a look at my internet connection.

Now let me be very clear about the assuring part. I have been an esteemed customer of my ISP for about 3 years, probably one of those right-from-the-start customers. Even the guys who work on the line fixing & connecting cables know me on a first name basis & I am being assured by a lady at the front desk that it will be alright.
Being online for more than 8 hours a day, makes you a part of the machine. Me & my PC share this unique bond, we have this symbiotic association amongst ourselves through which, it gives me internet & I give her her oxygen, power supply. It works perfectly well & we have adjusted our lifestyles according to the frequent power outages & internet connection outages. But today was different. I desperately wanted the internet, to work on something really important & in the backdrop of the frustration I completely forgot what I was about to do after getting online. So I decided to wait for the linesman to show up & check my internet connection. But the wait gets longer than I excepted & I shut her down, I actually shut down my love, my machine, my PC. She doesn't complain.

When I hear the silent hum of the cabinet's fan ward off, I realize how utterly useless can a PC be without an internet connection ! I visualize the circuits, the cable, the signals flowing through the cable to & fro from my ISP to my PC, enlightening it with the power of the internet. I look back at the nights spent on my machine reading amazing stuff on some site & the extra long chat with my special friends that went hours into the night. I remember reading the product reviews for my new cell phone & dreaming to buy the next version that was soon to come out in a matter of months. Well, its always disappointing, the model which you like is either not affordable or isn't launched yet. Well, its still free to dream about them & I remember every moment of those dreams.

I slump in my chair & hope that the linesman shows up. But deep down I know they don't give shit, atleast not not as much as I do, so he will take his time. It's only a matter of seconds after the 'linesman' thought that my brain sends a sudden impulse to my right hand & makes it pick up the book lying on my PC table. It subconsciously tells me that its time to “read”. I flip the pages to my last bookmark & get up from my chair. I goto my bed & tug in comfortably against the huge soft pillow. I begin to read. I soon get detached from the worldly disruptions like, hunger, thirst, breathing, internet & I get involved in the book. I glance at my cell phone which still sits next to my PC & I start reading again. I am in a new world. In a world ruled by dendrites & neurons who work tirelessly to make me comprehend what I am reading. My brain forgets pleasures like free speech & socializing & keeps me confined within my new found freedom. It thinks, it generates opinions, it stores important information from what I am reading, it 'disconnects' me from the world.

Its been almost 4 hours & the door bell rings. Its the linesman. He asks me to check if my internet connection is now working. Apparently he had been working on the line when I was engrossed in reading. I turn my baby on & run my browser. I punch in my ISP's homepage & voila, it shows up. I thank him & he leaves. I get back to my machine. The book I was reading lies on the bed, with the bookmark peeping out of a corner, it looks at me intently & expects me to pick it up. I don't, & it slumps, just the way I did when my internet connection didn't work. It silently weeps, but I'm too busy to notice. I found another world just waiting to be clicked.

I type the words “google.com” in my browsers address bar, I place my hand on the mouse & click “GO”.

P for Passion

When we were small kids, we were asked a particular question quite often, just to test our capacity to imagine & to think out of the box. The question was: “What do want to become when you grow up ?” It wasn't a big deal back then & most of the kids would answer it promptly saying: Pilot, Doctor, Astronaut & what not.

I personally remember saying that I wanted to be an astronaut to almost all the people who had asked the question to me. I had this natural flair for astronomy. I used to read about it at long stretches without getting bored. It was fun, very.

But when the same question's revised version is thrown at an adult's or a would-be adult's face, it is tackled in a different way. This time there is another P attached to it, P for Practicality. Practicality generally comes from our aptitude, educational background & various other key factors. It directly points at the feasibility of a career path that we have chosen to walk on. So this time, we think over it & then generate a response to the question.

I have personally noticed this difference in me & also seen it in many others. Also seen that some people know what to do with their lives(or it just appears that they know what to do with their lives) & some people have absolutely no clue. I consider myself to be the one in the no clue department. Having no clue about your career plans is sometimes helpful but mostly disastrous. Helpful because you have so many avenues to explore before you hit your favorite one. Disastrous in a sense that it takes a huge amount time to decide & mostly ends in frustration & disgust about not being able to make simple practical choices.

But amidst all this, we forget the most important part of this whole career-decision-dilemma, that part is PASSION. Many people have an inclination to do something in a particular field right from their early childhood. May it be building castles or designing things like planes & cars or maybe just drawing & painting, practical kind of hobbies. These hobbies are very critical when considering the overall development of a child's personality. 1 in every 10 of these children pursue their careers on the grounds of their long adopted hobbies. These people are more than willing to do anything to achieve their goals in their field of desire rather than fooling around the Herd Mentality. They don't care about social norms & they even don't care what others might say. They are driven by ambition & will power. As philosophical as it may sound, its quite true. These people are entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors or lastly, authoritative people in their field of study.

Now the other kind, my kind :). These are 9 out of 10 in the population who don't have a strategy for life. Who spend most of their life thinking about 'What is the meaning of life?'. They spend time in thinking about where they are going & what they are doing, & spend an awful amount of time in making decisions. Although most of them land at the places they desired, most of them land at places they never even dreamed of. Some of them find new avenues to their lives while some of them realize their mistake by being in a particular field / career & regret it. There is no catch here, its all part of the survival program, some know how to, some don't. This doesn't mean that they are no good. One of the basic features of Human Resource Management is identifying these kind of people & channelize them to do better work in their careers of interest ultimately for the benefit of the employer. Some of these not-sure-about-my-life people often excel in future when they spend considerable amount of time in knowing what they have to do. Time has no existence & meaning in some cases. People take their time to grow on a personal level & to finally reach their goal to do what they are passionate about.

Passion is found & not generated. Being clueless doesn't mean being dumb. The moment I realized this at the stroke of half past two at night, I decided to plot a career path. I didn't know yet if thats where I wanted to aim, but I wanted to shoot anyway. So I take a chair & contemplate on my career route. I think about myself 5 years from now, I dream of myself 10 years from now. Then suddenly it becomes less painful to visualize.


And I think, “Am I realizing my passion ???”

Top Reasons Why India Rocks

As we all know by now, that India is projected as a 'rocking' nation by the very own civilians of a beautifully huge nation, named ?? Well this wont come as a surprise to you, but the answer there is India, also there wasnt even any need to ask the question in the first place.

So getting down to business...

I have been contemplating about a few things that occured to me during my stay on planet Earth, which most importantly includes the country called India. What I have been doing all these years is try to understand what makes a country a better place to live in, not really my area of expertise, but I deduct that a nation becomes "great" by the people it keeps. Believe me, "keeps" is the right word. After reading this blog entry, any sane Indian will unanimously agree with the rest of the nation that I am not fit to be here.

So the most important observations of all time follows:

India Rocks Because....

......it cannot provide basic infrastructure facilities like "ELECTRICITY". When I say 'cannot provide' I literally mean that & nothing else is left to anyone's feeble imanigation. Its not like they dont want to provide, its like they cant, u know, sometimes u cant, its the same.

......7 out of every 10 Indians feel that its perfectly natural to spit on the street or any other place of public usage which will not be cleaned inspite of their salival attempts. Instead of having prohibitionary laws against spitting , 70% of the nation believes its their birth right to spit at any place of strateginc importance. For instance, Local trains, any clean sidewalk with no divine illustrations, corners of buildings & the last but not the least "do not spit here" signboards.

......3 out of every 10 Indians believes, I mean, honestly believes that it is OK to Shit & Piss on rail tracks, road sides, gutters & ofcourse outside my College building. It is a splendid view believe me.

.....basic (school level) education in this place is a joke (not counting CBSE & ICSE boards & I am aiming at the Maharashtra State Board alone as I dont give shit about anyother board ). I am glad that those numbnuts came up with this idea to think about providing Math as an optional subject at high school level, BRAVO. What else do u want screw ?? The mugg culture thrives in places like these & no wonder through which window does the creativity & originality go out !! Really dont want to unfurl the situation at graduation level...its so sad that it becomes sarcastically funny to see your brain cells dry up in your cranial cavity.

.......roads. Do u really expect ??

.......we cannot forget something so beautiful as reservations at PG level. A lot has been said & heard so I wont provide my totally-pissed-off opinion.

......amazingly political reasons for which the country cant keep track of the people below poverty line & has to insanely live on the hope of NGO's. (Correct me if I am wrong, I Mean it)(Besides I dont hav any right to say anything about the government or the politics in India as I choose not to Vote & put a person in Power becoz of that one vote of mine who I think believes in all the above things mentioned & chooses to forget about them.

......the people who are extremely patriotic & believe that religion is everything. Would like to hold each of them in my bare grip & blow some sunshine up their religious asses. Its amazing how people in India can kill so many on religious motives.

......people who want to say that I am wrong at noticing these "minor" faults & not seeing the big picture. BIG PICTURE MY ASS.

......use of petroleum products is done so irresponsibly & can be easily blamed on the condition of roads, traffic congestions & above all those mindless hawkers. Please care to join me on a ride to the suburbs of mumbai to enjoy the amazing expanse of the hawker breed. I know they need to feed their families too, like I give a damn when you block my street !!!!

** All the statistical data mentioned above is based on pure observation, if you arent convinced then please refer rail tracks from 0700 Hrs to 1000 hrs for details. ALso dont forget the "do not spit here" signboards.

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Song for the moment: Divine Comedy - Gin Soaked Boy

Organizational Structure