I closed the gate after getting out of my Mom’s home’s compound. The turn-wheel turned and the latch fell into place with a clack. It was almost 9PM and I was sure Mom would have been waiting for me to come home to dinner. I stepped into the street lane of the main road connecting the village center and surrounding places. It was dark. Fortunately, still today, night is related to darkness in my village. However, since I was quite close to an intersection which connected the lane that lead to my house, to the main road, there was one street lamp and a few shops that were still lit. Junctions sleep late. Around 11PM, it was guaranteed total and utter darkness except for the light coming from the mobile phone screens of late night drunkards.
The shops alongside the road, adjacent to the house’s compound belonged to my Grandfather. Once he passed away, the ownership was transferred to my Grandmother, who, immediately transferred them to her two male children (my uncles). These shops consisted of tailors, phone booths, groceries, textiles, photography studios and foreign goods, most of them having been there for almost 15 years now. I took a few steps and crossed the first mobile phone accessories shop, when I reached in front of the Matrix. The tailor shop was named so far before the movie came out. They had shifted shops thrice within a 500m vicinity. The owner Ismail, known to everyone as Bava, was quite a popular character in our village. Apart from his lean, really lean figure, what made him a fan favorite was his quick witted conversations. A laugh was guaranteed whenever you spoke with him.
Along with him inside the shop, I could also see Shihab. I will refer to him from now on as Shihabka, where “ka” means brother in my mother tongue. Almost all the times, that is how you address your elders. He is the poster child of social activeness. Along with a real pleasant humor sense, he has an incredible charisma and a dedicated will to help anyone in need. I have never been able to figure out what his motivation is for being so helpful. Suffice to say he was the one who helped me find my accommodation when I moved to Bangalore.
The front of the shop had a glass wall. While locking down, they had a shutter in front of it which they would pull down and lock it to the latch on the ground. I waved at them. I could not resist going in. Who wouldn’t like a hearty laugh in between this busy life? We exchanged greetings and chatted for a while. Bava was busy since he had a lot of orders come in the previous days and the customers kept on calling asking whether their dress was ready. Shihabka and I were discussing about when we were both returning to Bangalore, as both of us worked there, in the middle of which he suddenly asked,
“Have you read Aadu Jeevidham?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I have not read any Malayalam stories”
“Then you should read it. Come with me. I’ll get you the book from my home”
He seemed pretty decisive about it and I thought it would be a nice experience too. I hopped onto his motorbike and headed for his home, which was on the fields, at the bottom of a small hill. It was almost 9:30PM. His Mom made Sulaimani (black tea) for both of us. Over tea, he explained about how elegant and creative the writing was. About how it would draw you into the author’s world and make you feel like you are living it. It was a short conversation and we left his place by 9:40. He dropped me off at my home and we parted exchanging Salams.
I must say I am glad that this happened in my life.
About the book
——————–
Last month, I finished reading a Malayalam Novel for the first time in my life. At some point in my childhood, due to the inspiration from my Brother and Sister, I started reading comic books, short stories, kids’ novels as well as classics. However, each and every one of them were in English. The only times that I had read anything in Malayalam were the stories and poems from my school text books. Since all of them were read with a sense of tension about the teacher asking questions on it the next day, I don’t remember any joy that I had derived while I was at it.
“Aadu Jeevidham”, translated directly to “Goat Life” in English, is the story about a typical Keralite Muslim man and his journey to the Gulf in search of livelihood. I must say, the most wonderful thing about the book is the language itself. I do not deserve to talk about it from a literature perspective as neither have I read other Malayalam novels nor have I learned the language too deep. I entirely mean that the language is wonderful from the perspective of the language being in ones own mother tongue. There are certain quirks and colloquial constructs that you have in your mother tongue which expresses the meaning of a word or a context much better than any other means of communication. Hence, although I have read quite a few English novels and stories in my life, this one novel got through to me the most.
To further elaborate on that, I was able to understand the emotions and feelings of the characters much better. I was able to picture the scenes much better and most importantly, it was like a conversation between a human and I. As if someone was telling me the story rather than me reading it from the book. Of course, this could be the case with every other book written in ones mother tongue since there is nothing that I have described here which is peculiar to this novel. I will just have to read more and see whether in terms of the language constructs he had used, this novel stands out from the rest of the others.
The novel talks about the dreams that a person would have and how reality dawns upon him to crush not only the dreams, but his entire life as well. Najeeb, the main character in the novel, is a jobless husband, with his wife expecting their first kid in 6 or so months. One of his friends tells him about an opportunity in the gulf, upon which, after discussing with his wife, he decides to take it up no matter what happens. After somehow begging and borrowing enough money for the commission and airplane tickets, he spends one last night with his wife before he leaves for Mumbai to catch the plane.
The conversation during that night is bitter sweet. They talk about how he would go there and earn a lot. How he would come back in a year and bring gifts for his newborn and his wife. Purchasing a Fridge and a TV, laying foundation for their new home and all other ‘luxuries’ that they could think of.
He leaves the next day for Mumbai and stays a day or two with his friends there. However, before he left for Mumbai, his neighbor’s son had gotten a Visa to the gulf as well. Hence, both of them were traveling together. The other person was a brash young kid, full of life and full of expectations.
The actual story begins when they reach the gulf airport and don’t find anyone waiting to pick them up. After waiting for a long time, they see a torn apart mini lorry revving up the road that leads to the airport. It stops midway and an Arab jumps out from it, wearing a white Kandhuura covering him from top to bottom and with a turban on his head. He walks here and there for a while looking frustrated and finally spots our two young gentlemen standing over there. He comes over, takes their passport, looks at it and then looks at their faces. After what looks like a face analysis, he gestures them to get in the truck. Happy that someone finally paid them some attention they jump in. The Arab takes them on a long ride. A very long ride, into the heart of the desert, where they reach during midnight. Najeeb gets down at some unknown place and sharpens his hearing. He hears the slight braying of a goat.
I do not want to give away what happens then and how the story develops. The author’s depiction of the desert is off the charts and extremely gripping. Maybe someday I’ll gather enough literary skills to do a rewrite of this wonderful piece of work into English.
A million thanks to Shihabka for making me read the book.
It would be appropriate to start by saying that this is my baby step, the first step in trying to contribute back to the Mozilla community for all the effort that they have put in in order to connect people around the world and make amazing products. To be quite frank, I used to have an impression (as is my impression about all things amazing) that all this talk about “community” and “contribution” were only meant for the elite and masters of technology out there, two of whom I know being Sajjad and Nigel, two hardcore techies.
Now I know am wrong.
This realization came about due to two reasons, which I will come to later.
I started using Firefox almost 7 years back, when I first got my computer, about which I have written here. Chrome was not there then. As mentioned in that post, I was quite new to computers and my understanding of browsers was that they were what people referred to as the “Internet”. So I went on using “Internet”, unaware of the fact that I was using Firefox for about a year. Thinking about it now, I am not quite sure when I started understanding about browsers for what they were, but since then, till the December of 2012, I continued using the same.
I was employed by this time and the pressure of having to learn and understand technology was on me. In my journey of understanding more about computers, I used to do the online courses at Udacity and Coursera now and then. However, one day during the course, the video classes started to crash with a message, “An error occurred”. A reload used to solve that, but this kept on happening until one day, I just could not watch any of the videos.
I got irritated. Showed it to my colleague who tried opening up the same video link in his Chrome browser. It worked. I switched.
For the past 10 months I’ve been using Chromium, until recently, after I shifted my career to becoming an Engineer, when I found out my RAM was being eaten up by Chromium. I tweeted out saying this and without further delay switched to using Firefox. I would have been happy using it and simply going forward, if not for Firefox’s response. It was not too much of a big deal, but I was touched. At that instant, I felt I was a part of something bigger.
This was one of the reasons why I had the realization that I mentioned earlier. I came back home and started looking for opportunities so as to how I could get involved even further. I landed up on their contributions page. I filled up my email id, chose my area of interest as “Documentation and writing” since I was more confident in my writing skills than my coding skills at the moment, and submitted the form.
This is when the second reason for the realization hit me. My friend Haseeb. He was passionate about the Urdu language as well as about community development. Both these combined led him to take part actively in translating Mozilla to Urdu. His contributions were not at all gone unnoticed when he received an invitation to be a part of the Mozilla Summit in the U.S. a couple of months back. So have an open mind to contribute, with whatever you know and whatever you are passionate about. Hence, here I am, having reached the point where I had submitted my volunteer form.
All this was done in that adrenaline rush, which I knew had happened to me more than once before. However, nothing of the sort would continue as all would end up in a couple of automated emails that I would receive asking me to act. The same happened here as well. Though things would have continued like that, even before I had the adrenaline rush die down, I received one more email. This time from a certain human being who goes by the name of Janet Swisher.
Even though she told me that technical documentation was where they were best setup to bring in new writing contributions, she did not discourage me on what I had pointed out saying I was better off as a story teller or a biographer than a technical writer when it came to writing. With the promise of passing on my remarks to their creative team and reading my blog posts to provide her feedback, she ended the mail.
That part where it conveyed it was not just about them and what they wanted, but also it being a part of what I was and what I could do, was quite heart warming. I replied and we exchanged a couple of emails where she pointed me to a couple of links as well as read a few blog posts that I had already written, complementing me on them. It was her suggestion to take the first step by writing a personal blog on what Mozilla means to me.
At this point, more than just thinking in terms of Firefox, I was inclined to think of a bunch of nice people trying to strengthen human relationships across the globe around technology. Hence, I was inspired to write about how touched I was with their effort to actually take the time to reach out to a complete stranger and offering to help him out. And here I have written about it. May this be the first step in a journey of a thousand miles.
“Yep. Hop in”, replied my brother as I got into his car.
This conversation happened a year ago. A year ago when a certain ambitious lad landed in the Silicon Valley of India. A lad who would skulk away from a conversation happening in English, a lad who had only seen two places outside of his state in his life. A lad who had not been on a flight since he started remembering things, a lad who knew only his brother’s home and the home bound bus boarding stop in Bangalore. A lad who was afraid of smartphones, who was allergic to social networking, who did not have a bank account and did not even know how to use an ATM.
Well, things definitely have changed. Yep, they really have.
Although October 8th, 2012 was my “Official” joining date at HasGeek, since my brother was coordinating volunteers for Droidcon India 2012, both of us decided to drop by CIS office in the afternoon on 7th itself to have a talk. Someone passed by us when we reached there on the bike and I was asked to go and meet him. Apparently, this was the jovial and cool Mr. Kracekumar whom I know so well today.
My first time at CIS. I had heard a lot about the place and I had pictured it to be a glass building with a huge lawn, fancy tables and chairs, with a lot of atmosphere. Suffice to say I was surprised when my brother walked me into a home.
We went up the stairs. And there they were! Among many others, two of my bosses. My mind’s fuse was blown.
“Oh my God, what are so many people doing here? And do they all speak in English? I can’t talk to all of them! I should have just come here tomorrow and met with Kiran and Zainab alone. Then at least I would be shown my desk to sit and work at so that I would not have to talk to too many people just yet. Hey, isn’t that Anu whom I met for last year’s Droidcon? And where is Sajjad? God, what should I do now? Since I don’t know the rest of them, maybe I should not care. I will just say Hi Kiran sir and Zainab ma’am. But is that what I should be calling them? Or should I just use their names? Gosh, Zainab looks different than the last time I met her and is this the office that I was dreaming about for so long? This is just a house, isn’t it? Maybe I have gotten something wrong here”
And thus went the thoughts. I don’t know if anyone there including Ashwan, Anu, Krace, Zainab, Kiran or my brother noticed how uncomfortable I was. I let the introductions be made and just shook hands saying “Hi”. I was asked to sit down while they discussed about the volunteer training and coordination.
My heart was beating fast. “Is this an interview? They told me not to bring my resume, so what are they going to ask me? And I have to speak in English!? Maybe my brother will talk to them and I can just get by with a couple of yes’s and no’s”
“Haris, would you like to come and sit over here?”. My heart burst. Well, not literally. It was none other than Mr. Kiran Jonnalagadda himself. There was a big chair on the other side of the table, which, I had made up my mind about, was for one of the bosses to sit on. It was this chair that was given to me. I felt totally out of place, uncomfortable and what not.
By this time Praseetha also reached the office. She was much more composed and I just could not understand what was wrong with me.
“So Haris”, said Zainab, pulling a chair and sitting next to me. “What are your expectations in working here?”
“Gulp”, I pulled myself together.
“I, ummm, I don’t exactly know how things are done here. But I can help you with whatever I can. Logistics, management, your blog and you can mentor me to learn how to write code”.
I had no clue what “logistics” meant back then. The only thing I could say with confidence was that I could help them with their blog. I was wondering what kind of stories they would have me write.
“Do you know Inkscape?”, interrupted Kiran.
“Not really, no”, said I.
I remember him having a “Then you can’t help me much right now” look on his face. However, Zainab picked up the conversation.
“Well, here is how things are. Kiran needs a lot of documentation to be done. With the events and the code. However, we will need to sit and discuss about it. So we will get to that. But for now, since JSFoo and Droidcon are close by, there are a lot of tasks that needs to be done. I’ll brief you about it over email, alright?”
“Alright”, said I.
Once we were done there and about to leave, I felt incomplete about one thing. “Gosh, I did not ask about the office timings!”
“Zainab”, I called out. I guess I had made up my mind about ma’am and sir by then. She turned around. “Umm, so by what time should I reach office?”
She let out a hearty laugh.
“There is nothing like office timings. Frankly, I don’t think any of us are going to be here tomorrow. And I don’t mind wherever you work from as long as you get things done.”
I was baffled. Thoughts rushed in. “No office timing? What am I supposed to do? Where is my seat? No cubicle? So how do I talk with all of you?”
She was gone by then. My brother and I went back to his home.
Thus it started.
It has been a nice ride all along.
I should say that Bangalore is an awesome place in terms of finding and meeting people. It is a networking person’s dream come true. The fact that educated people from various parts of the country have accumulated in a certain place gives a platform for people with niche interests to easily find and meetup with each other. In my case, it was writing.
I went to my first ever writing workshop which was hosted by Gaurav and Nisha, both former Tehelka writers. It was brought to my attention by Ashwan, someone whom I have been terribly missing. I’ve already written about my team here, and he is one of them. It is nice to think of those days where he would sit with google maps on the wide screen monitor and would walk me through the entire world, sharing stories and histories related to many a place.
I have had my fair share of experience planning and organizing events while being at HasGeek. One of the things that I have realized is that the amount of ground work and grunt work that goes into producing the kind of events that HasGeek does, no matter how excellent and smooth it looks to participants attending, is tremendous. To keep up the spirit for that kind of work during each and every event is just amazing. I guess my colleagues are made of sterner stuff. All of them.
Kiran had always been this person with a strong and silent personality. Quite frankly, someone whom I was afraid of to talk to and be heard from. During the very rare occasions when he would say “Good job”, the feeling of happiness was so strong that I would text my brother at the very instant saying, “Kiran said I did a good job!”.
I still remember the first time my throat going dry when Kiran talked to me about how it was completely wrong dealing with people in a fire and forget manner. I am not sure if I was able to understand and implement that lesson during my time at HasGeek, but I guess I have done a not too bad job at it. I hope so.
In contrast, Zainab was this lady with a cheerful and open character that you could, without thinking twice, share whatever you had on your mind with. I am not sure how I would have made it through the first couple of months if she had not patiently sat and listened to what all I had in my mind. Sometimes even taking the time to go out for a chai to talk things over. Impressive how she could find time for all that despite being overburdened with work.
I am not sure career wise how much the work I was doing has helped me. All the people whom I have talked to has told me that at some point in my life, I will look back and realize how much valuable the things are that I have done. I guess I haven’t reached so far down the road yet in order to look back and feel like that. At least, not yet.
However, life wise, it has been just amazing. How much I have learnt and experienced! Starting from eating food stuff, fruits and vegetables that I had never eaten in my life before to travelling around India all the way from South to the North. I mean, trekking and working on the Himalayas? How often do you get to do that? Apart from Triund, Mcleod, Dharamsala, Delhi, Mumbai, Hampi, Pune (my first flight), Goa (my first scooter ride) and of course, exploring Bangalore.
All through these journeys as well as through my entire one year, I have to say that Kiran is the most selfless man I have ever seen. Making sure we know what he knows all along the way. For all the whining that I have done saying that I have never had a good mentor in my life, I would be lying if I said I did not find Kiran to be a really good one.
I hope to document these travels at some point. I have already written about my volunteer management experience during The Fifth Elephant over here.
This post would not be complete without mentioning the rest of the people in our team.
Jamna, who joined us around January. She and I were the ones who actually worked as a team most of the time since both of us were involved in handling the workshops at HasGeek. A lady who transformed from her shy self to one who does public speaking, organizes and manages geeks as well as takes up initiative to bring order to the whatever chaos she finds around her, within a span of less than a year. Both if us have learnt a lot form each other and I must say I’m truly inspired by her sheer amount of sincerity and dedication.
Supreeth, the quick witted, well traveled young man who always had a joke or story up his sleeve. I haven’t found anyone as skillful as him when it came to getting through to a person. He would be able to find some anecdote or experience that the other person would be interested in and then, he starts weaving his web. One who is well read as well, he has always been there to correct my English whenever I have made a dumb mistake or been there to help whenever I have been at a loss for words.
Nimisha, the illustrator who joined us from the North East. A very cheerful character who just love pets, of all kinds. Rabbits, cats, dogs and I wouldn’t be surprised if I found a baby dinosaur in her home! A really good company whenever you feel like talking to, always ready for some fun, a die hard coffee addict, you can behold her drawing skills if you visit the HasGeek event websites and Flickr photo streams since Fifth Elephant 2013.
I have to mention Mitesh and Devi as well. However, they have been involved in the tech side of things mostly. Working remotely or from the Microsoft Accelerator. That reminds me, towards the last few months, we had three offices! One at CIS, one at the bakery, which we shared with the amazing team of TripThirsty comprising of Sundar, Kingsley, Sandeep and Anenth, and the wonderful (and extremely mouth watering) cup cake factory of BiteMe run by Kingsley and his wife Divya, and last but not the least, one office at the Microsoft Accelerator
If I were to write down the names of people whom I have come to know and love over the past year, that is going to be pretty long list. I will refrain from doing that and just say that I will keep in touch with all of you because I want to.
I have moved on now. With valuable lessons learned and interesting observations. I work at Eventifier now along with three awesome guys namely Jazeel, Nazim and Saud. I was a geek herder. Now I call myself the Python tamer. Things are looking bright.
My 9th month working at HasGeek. Being away from actually writing something non-trivial has taken its toll. However, the time I had in managing a part of one of the biggest HasGeek conferences, the Fifth Elephant, deserves a blog post.
The main reason why I am writing this post is because of the wonderful time I had in working together with the volunteers who came forward to help us and make the event a memorable one. My involvement in organizing the event was pretty much zero. I kind of felt bad not being able to understand and take over anything from Zainab while she was managing the speakers, sponsorship, ticket sales, marketing and a million other things including inventory for the event. Even though I was neither experienced nor comfortable, I did help her with talking to the workshop instructors to get their installation instructions ready as well as with managing the volunteers.
It all started when I received the following mail from Iliyas on June 19th.
Greetings !
Fifth Elephant is coming soon 😉
As you know I’m an active participant and volunteer in many FOSS conferences in India. I would like to contribute my best to this event as well.
Please do guide me for the point of contact / organizer.
Thanks.
For some reason, I knew that this responsibility was going to be on my shoulders and I am only too glad now that it was.
Once I received that mail, I talked to Zainab about it and she told me to round up the usual suspects. Well, no, not the group manipulated by Kevin Spacey. But a bunch of wonderful people who are always there to help out us at a HasGeek event. They’ve been supporting us even way before I joined the team.
Without delay, I wrote to all of them and narrowed down their availability based on their commitments and other responsibilities. Among the usual suspects who came this time were:
Anand. The force behind PyCon India for this and the past year. A passionate programmer and a hardcore Python expert. Sit through one of his Python trainings and you will come out mind blown with the realization of how much more there is to learn.
Haseeb. The young lad hailing from Gulbarga. Passionate about open source & free software, he is an active contributor to Mozilla’s Urdu translation. His contributions have not gone unnoticed and as such, has been invited to the US for this year’s Mozilla summit.
Anenth. The cool and simple fellow with a thing for Android. One among the founders of ideophone, he is someone whom I hope to get to know better in the coming days. Especially since we share the same office space now.
Sidharth. Genius. Well nothing more is to be said about him. Still, it would be worthwhile to mention about his extraordinary skill of remaining calm in any given occasion and facing it with a cool head. Lately, it seems that he has been having visions of the dark side. May God protect him.
Vamsee. This name always brings back a lot of good memories. Especially from the good old days back when I volunteered for Droidcon 2011. Those were one among the best couple of days in my life in more than a few ways. Anyway, this Rails dude is one among the coolest and most reliable people whom I have ever met. I was only too glad to see him at the event.
Sandeep. One of the founders of ideophone along with Anenth, he has been there supporting HasGeek since a long time. A mallu brother, if I may say so, he is one another person whom I am looking forward to get to know better in the coming days.
Jitendra. An artistic interface Engineer. A gamer by heart, he feels that HasGeek is one of the best reasons why you should consider staying at Bangalore. Passionate about trying out new stuff and as such, always a learner.
Well, that covers the usual suspects. Now for the ones who came forward willingly to help in spite of it being their first time as well as them being busy with myriad of things ranging from interviews, to night duties to daily office hours to commitments at their homes. In no particular order:
Iliyas. As I had already mentioned in the beginning of this post, he was the one who set the universe in motion. He had been volunteering for events and organizing meetups for the sake of communities since he was 16. He believes that is the best way in which he can contribute back to open source. One of the most wanted figures during the conference, he picked up the ContactPoint app in no time from Mitesh and helped to get it up and running all over the venue. In fact, almost all the first time volunteers came to know about the event through him. Without doubt, if it was not for him, we would have had a hard time getting volunteers.
Anusha. The beautiful young lady who was only too nervous to volunteer. Sister of one among the usual suspects, Ashwin. This time, he wanted to attend the talks as a participant and hence, could not volunteer. However, he made sure that his spot was not left vacant and he convinced her to come forth to volunteer. Even though extremely doubtful of herself at the beginning, it was amazing how she came out of her comfort zone to handle her tasks flawlessly. Hope she had a wonderful time at the event as well.
Abhijith. One of the most reliable and pleasant personalities that I have ever met. He was dedicated to make the event run smoothly as much as us and was someone who took the tension off my head with his presence in an auditorium. He had his interviews in between the event and I pray that he got through. A mathematician at heart, I hope I can get his help to learn a lot over the coming days.
Ali. The cool one whose presence was felt almost everywhere during the event. He reminded me of myself when I volunteered the first time as he had just completed his 3rd year exams. Enthusiastic about technology, he made the most out the event by handling registrations to mic to camera as well as by paying heed to the talks that he found to be of interest to him.
Vinay. It was admirable how he found the time to come forward and help us despite running his own firm. More than once in between the conference, he had to run outside to meet clients, seal deals and hurry back in ensuring that his duties were taken care of. I wish him all the success with his venture and may his willingness to help amidst his busy life be rewarded in plenty.
Ralph. A jolly, energetic and enthusiastic person who impressed us all with the amount of dedication he showed towards his duties. What was special about him was the fact that he learned from each context he was in and shared his learnings with us without any shyness. He possessed one of those rare qualities which was more than just doing his best at what he was doing, to improvise and act based on his observations. Hope his family was not too hard on him for taking a three-day volunteering sprint. He he.
Niraj. The pleasant young chap who walks around with a smile on his face all the time. Someone who became an expert camera man within a day, he spreads joy to the ones around him with his quick witted jokes as well as his sudden burst of words. He certainly has learned from his uncle Vijay and is one nice guy to be with.
Basavaraj & Rajshekar. I would say these two were godsend. When I had a couple of volunteer withdrawals towards the event, I was sort of feeling a bit tensed until these two came forward to help. Friends of Charitra, who had to unfortunately go back to his hometown due to the sudden announcement of his project demo. I could not get enough time to know both of these young lads well enough. But I will make sure that I do. Raj had his interview for a job on the second day of the event. Here is wishing him all the best and hope he gets through.
Sagar. Although his plan was to volunteer just for helping out Edouard during his MongoDB workshop, he decided to stay back and help us out as much as he can. This young man was present everywhere amusing us with his charming personality as well as insights. A lad with lot of potential, I hope that he chases his dreams. Let’s see what stirs up after he watches ‘office space’ which I recommended for him.
Zubair. My roommate. One of the best friends I have ever had. An open source lover at heart and a passionate learner of every day things. He observes, takes input from all that is around him, improvises, concludes and executes the best possible course of action. Even though a bit reluctant to come over, he was only too glad that he came over in the end.
There were others as well who came forward but just could not make it due to their commitments and responsibilities. Charitra, as I mentioned earlier. Rinku, who offered to help even though she had bought a ticket. Pradeep, who had a lot of last minute work popping up. Vinayak, who was there for the first day and then couldn’t make it due to work. Asif, who fell sick. Here is wishing him a speedy recovery.
That sums up all who came forward to help. I haven’t got the photos from the event yet, but I will post them here as soon as they are up.
I am not sure whether I was a good task master. Whether I gave them the chance to feel what I felt back in Droidcon 2011. I hope I did. And I really hope that they had an amazing time and finds it in their heart to take initiative and volunteer for a lot of events.
Of course, this post won’t be complete without mentioning the amazing HasGeek team of Kiran, Zainab, Krace, Supreeth, Radha, Nimisha, Kingsly, Gaurav, Jamna, Praseetha, Mitesh and Devi, who gave more than 100% for the success of the event. But they deserve a post for just themselves.
Here is to the future! May the bonds that were made last long and strong.
So we were done with Meta Refresh, an awesome conference it was and I enjoyed myself being there. Usually, we take a day or two off and rest ourselves after such a conference. However, this time it was different. Benjamin Lupton had flew down from Australia along with his wife Helen, to speak at Meta Refresh, and they wanted to explore India.
“Hampi!”, Kiran had already decided.
On Saturday night, while we were packing up all the stuff from the conference venue, I was asked about my willingness to go on the trip. Even though I was reluctant at first, being extremely tired, when he said he would take care of organizing the trip, I’m only too glad right now that I said yes.
It was decided. Sunday morning was hectic with having to wash all my clothes early in the morning and waiting for all of them to dry so that I would have something to wear. Unfortunately, I missed the Bangalore Front End developers meetup on Sunday due to this very reason. What an excuse, huh?
Anyway, on 24th night, Kiran and Zainab were going to come to the Bus station directly, picking up Nimisha on their way. This left me, Krace the King, Praseetha, Ben and Helen at CIS (HasGeek office). The KSRTC bus, Rajahamsa was at 11pm. Although a bit overwhelmed by the endless list in the Hotel menu, Ben and Helen did a good job at ordering food from Nandhini. We had a quick dinner and left CIS by 10pm.
The absolutely useless user interface of the KSRTC bus station direction boards made us walk around a bit before we could figure out where our bus was. It was not the luxury type coach. An ordinary semi sleeper bus, but that was the only direct bus available to Hampi from Bangalore. We got in.
“We have half a pack of cigarettes, a full tank of gas, it is dark and we are wearing sunglasses”, said Jake. Elwood did not think twice, “Hit it.” And we were on our way!
Hampi
Day 1
We landed at Hampi at 7 in the morning. Most of us hadn’t slept well on the bus, but we were fine. All of us had done our fair share of having read the Wikipedia article on Hampi and guess what the first thing that we saw is?
The first thing we saw in Wikipedia itself! Centuries looked down upon us – The Virupaksha temple entrance. Ben was such a kid, jumping and shouting, all excited to see the huge temple entrance. I think he was more excited to see monkeys all around the place. He was clicking pictures like anything, at the same time trying hard to keep up with all of us.
It was quite a walk to be doing the first thing in the morning, taking into account the disturbed sleep of previous night. Kiran had been to Hampi before and I believe that is why he did not have his GPS in his hands. When we reached the ferry, I honestly admit that I was actually scared about the spectral wolf.
We hopped in, crossed the river, walked again and finally reached the “promised hotel” at about 8.15am. Even though we were tired, the walk was nice with one side full of tourist attraction shops having all sorts of stuff from dresses to souvenirs to theaters! And the other side a wide open paddy field.
The accommodation place was awesome. It reminded me exactly of the Gaulish village in Asterix. They had several huts close to each other, made out of bricks, hay and stone. A footpath laid out in stone connected the reception area, the eating hut and the other huts. The place was full of trees, grass and faced a wide open paddy field, which had long paddy standing high up in its full vigor, pleasing the eye with its pleasant green. This was to the west, which would be lit gold by the setting sun, and I did see the fields of gold.
Me and Krace were sharing a hut. Oh boy, did it feel good to lie down and stretch me legs! I sent a message to Kiran asking what was the plan and that it felt so good to simply lie down and rest. That is when I realized that the network coverage there sucks. BSNL was awesome as me and Praseetha had full reception, but I don’t think any of the others could use their phones. Man, am I in favor of BSNL or what? He he…
The accommodation was perfectly prepared to receive us. Bath towels, soap, blankets, mosquito nets and hot water! Simply awesome. At about 9, I was ready, having attended nature’s call and having finished my bath. While I waited, swinging gently on the hammock, for Krace, everyone else had already suited up and were at the eating hut ordering breakfast.
By 10:00, we had our breakfast. 6 slices of cheese toast, one huge cheese omelette, butter and a nice milk tea. Yummy! It tasted really good although it was a bit too much for me. So Zainab and Krace helped me with one of the toasts. On the table opposite to us, Helen or Ben had made a nice mistake ordering cappuccino. Through all the days I have been with them since Meta Refresh, I have never seen them waste food; they would eat whatever they ordered. Hence I am guessing how good the cappuccino was when both of them together couldn’t even finish half of it!
Everyone had their fill and we took a stroll down the paddy fields. Zainab stayed behind to attend to a few work related calls and mails. We chit chatted and simply walked along the narrow paths in between the fields. I know! It is not much of a “wild exploration” or anything, but we did find a huge hawk’s nest, or so I think. We kept walking South west until we reached a small clearing just beside the river.
We spend quite a while trying to make the stones bounce on the water and I think Praseetha was the one who did it the best. 6 bounces! The girls started losing interest and walked further away when me and Krace decided to test our arms’ strength. We threw the stones far and tried to hit the huge rock on the other side of the river. I could only cross half of the river. However he had a really good cricket arm and his throws went across.
We got back to our rooms by 11, as it was time to go for the “Kiran thing”, which basically meant going to visit the monuments. By this time, Helen felt the need to buy a pair of loose pants as the climate, unlike what I thought, was really hot. Yes, really really hot. She bought, and we will see her tastes shortly. Oh man, she is going to kill me for this!
By 12.30pm, we had crossed the ferry back again and reached the temple gate. I don’t think any of us had a clear notion of where to go or what to do. So we did the obvious thing of going inside the temple.
We were the last ones to enter the temple at that time because they were closing it down for lunch I guess. Camera charge was 50 bucks due to which I decided not to have any clicks. There was this cool elephant inside who would give “special blessings” to foreigners and “normal blessings” to others. I think this was the first time I touched an elephant as well. Just as we were about to get out, this guy in a yellow T-shirt ran upto us and started talking, which, I am glad he did.
The official tourist authority of Hampi was conduction cycling trips among the ancient monuments where you’ll be accompanied by a guide to fill you in on half a century of details all along. We signed up for it instantly. 350 bucks per head. The cycle tour would start the next day morning at 9.30 and we were asked to be there by at least 9.15. We had a few among us who were not too comfortable cycling, but we ready to take it up as a challenge.
We got out and slowly started climbing up the hill, wondering about the architectures, trying to be philosophical and thoughtful.
Ah, there you can see Helen’s pants. I bet even MC Hammer wouldn’t come close. He he… We walked around the place till 1pm, seeing the various structures. Here Kiran explained an interesting fact that all the temples were made facing eastwards. It seems the custom was that the idol should get lit up by the rising sun. By this time, all of us had a rumbling tummy and we decided to go and eat.
We walked all the way down the hill, went beside the ferry, under the hope of getting some tasty food at a restaurant called the “Mango Tree hotel”. Our efforts were proved to be in vain when we were greeted by a board that said “Mango Tree hotel is closed forever!”
Darn! Now what do we do? The only thing that we could do. Cross the ferry over to the other side and get food from there. So be it!
At about 2, we saw this place that had written outside it “Real coffee”. “Ha! This must be good after the cappuccino we had today morning”, said Ben and we all got in. It was a pretty comfy place. It was an open air hall with beds on the floor on either side. The hall had a huge screen in the middle of one end, where they play movies during the night I guess.
We lay down on the beds and stretched ourselves. It felt good to be under shade once again after walking for so long under the scorching sun. Kiran recommended “Shakshuka” for me, which is an Israeli food. It was pretty awesome. Take a look.
Sort of egg masala, french fries, cucumber, some kind of a chutney and some kind of a roti. Tasted pretty good and filled my tummy well. We sat chatting about education in Australia, how his studies were, the cost of education and stuff like that.
We returned back to our place of stay. I flipped out my little notepad and made notes of what all we were doing so that I could build up this blog post without much of a trouble. Ben had noticed me doing this for quite a while and introduced me to an app called “Moves” on his iPhone that would track your travel and give you details of what all you were doing at what all times. Made a mental note to try it out.
All of us retired back to our huts and had a good sleep. I woke at about 5.30, finished my prayers and went out, wanting to see the sunset over the fields. This accommodation place had one open hut on a lower level facing the paddy field straight. The lowered part was slanted so that we could lean on it and they had beds on the floor. I went and sat over there for a while, enjoying the serene scenery, feeling peaceful and humane.
After sitting there for a while, I decided to take a stroll towards the river once again. Just when I was starting, I was accompanied by Kiran and Zainab. We went over to the same clearing we had been in the morning where Zainab practiced throwing a few skipping stones.
We headed back and at about 7.40, all of us decided that we should go and watch “Django unchained” from one of the nearby wanna be theaters. Since Kiran, Praseetha and Krace were working on something, the rest of us decided to go ahead and wait for the others.
Just as we got out of Shanti hotel, we witnessed a huge commotion outside. There were two excavators, lots and lots of policemen and dozens of local inhabitants. We did not stop for long in between that. We hurried ahead and reached close to the ferry, where Django unchained was supposed to be playing. It was pitch dark, all the lights were off and we could not even see if there was a building there or not. We slowly felt our way up and asked one of the inhabitants about the movie. That is when we found out what the whole ruckus was about. It seems that the Government had suddenly decided to wipe out all the illegal shops and vendors at the area. So in short, there was no movie being played.
By 8. 30, we got back to our place and sat for dinner. We hadn’t booked the return tickets then. So after we placed our orders for dinner, I made use of my Nexus 4 to book tickets on the KSRTC website. There were 10 seats left out of which we had to book 8. However, the maximum number one could book at a time was 6. So I had to book 6 first and then 2 after. As soon as we finished booking 6, dinner was served and we decided to do it after eating.
Zainab jokingly asked what we were going to do if we did not get the two tickets. I told her to be optimistic and assuring everything was going to be fine, started digging into our dinner, which consisted of butter naan and aloo gopi for me and Krace and bunch of other stuff for the rest of them.
We had a good meal and I flipped out my Nexus 4 to do the rest of the 2 ticket booking. I went over to the KSRTC site, logged in, chose all the fields and guess what? That lady was right! Darn her pessimism. It said the service was not available any more. Oh great!
We tried a few more times, but with the same result. Cursing her, we went onto to check our other options. Thank God I at least had the common sense to book the tickets for 4 of the ladies and two of the men. Otherwise things might have gotten a bit nasty.
Anyway, me and Krace found tickets on an AC bus which started from the neighboring town. Booked and all of us retired for a good night’s sleep, having decided that we would at least have to leave that place by 8.30 in the morning if we were to go on that cycling trip.
Day 2
I woke up at around 6.30 in the morning, finished my bath and prayers. Went out to be greeted by the peaceful morning. To my surprise, the lights in all the huts where the rest of my team stayed at was off! This called for extreme measures. I knew how I would react if someone would come and disturb my sleep on a comfy morning of a vacation. I took a deep breath, mustered up a lot of courage and went over to Kiran’s hut first.
“Knock, knock”. Nothing. “Knock, knock, Kiran”, I knocked and called again. Heard him mumbling something from inside. That was my cue.
Went over to the hut where Praseetha and Nimisha was staying. “Knock, knock, Praseetha”. No response. Knocked a few times again, hoping that they would’ve got the message and hopped over to Ben’s hut. “Knock, knock, Ben”. Heard the tap running and Ben saying something (or was it Helen?) Anyway, I had done the damage.
At about 8:15, we were done with breakfast. We checked out of the hotel and were “homeless” to leave our bags at someplace. Ben was a bit concerned when Kiran told us to drop our bags at the reception. “That’s how we always do it”, reassured Kiran. All of us left our bags there and went out light, all ready and enthusiastic about cycling.
However, Ben was not quite used to having a scorching sun as in Hampi back in Australia. You could see his skin turning red from last day’s burns and he absolutely was not looking forward to becoming a tomato at the end of the day. Helen, even though had a white skin, was not entirely of Australian origin and thus, did not get affected by the unforgiving sun.
So Ben wanted to buy a full sleeve shirt to protect himself. Alas, all the shops that had pretty clothes in them were cleared the day before itself by the Government! What a day to be at Hampi.
We caught the ferry and crossed the Tungabadra river.
Just as we got down and were going up the stairs, a sudden idea struck me. Why not exchange shirts? That way I can wear a cool JavaScript T and Ben could have a full sleeve shirt. Message communicated, understood and executed. Let’s proceed soldier.
So we went inside the temple, looking for our guide, Chandra. He was waiting for us and we reached there sharp at 9.15 AM. There were a few more people who had signed up for the trip and we had to wait a while for them.
All of us arrived at the spot and the guide took us to our Bicycle depot. We chose the ones we wanted, me picking green as that was my favorite color. They adjusted the height of our seats for us as per our convenience. At about 9.45, all of us had a bike and we were ready to roll!
“Autobots, transform and roll out”, said Hotrod.
We started our journey and just a little distance ahead, Praseetha had a bit of trouble with the bicycle. A few of us hung back trying to fix it. The guide noticed us missing out and rushed back on his moped. He told her to ditch the cycle and get on his bike. Lucky girl! She got a free ride for the entire tour!
We cycled up a hill at the beginning, tiring myself out as soon as we reached the top. First on the agenda was the Ganesha temple, having a huge monolithic stone carving of Ganesha, the Elephant god, who was the God of eternal knowledge. This was a huge idol for the Royalties to worship. For the common people, there was a small one further down.
An interesting fact was mentioned here. Half of the trunk had been cut off from the front of the idol. The story goes that the Islamic rulers cut it off in hope of finding hidden treasure inside it. Alas, there was nothing. The more interesting part was that almost all the idols that had a living image associated with it were damaged. However, the Shiva Lingam, which did not have an image of a living being associated with it, was not touched upon by the Islamic rulers. It seems that they were not against God or religion, but just against the idea of worshiping images. An interesting fact.
We left there and had our next stop was at the Krishna temple and the huge market place opposite to it. It was 10.30 then.
On the entrance, it was engraved the 8 incarnations of Lord Vishnu. It seems there are actually 9, the last one which is a White horse, that is yet to come.
We entered the temple within. It had an outer room where the beautiful dancers would dance, entertaining the people. There were a lot of Kamasutra carvings as well on the gate. The inner room was where the idol was kept. Just when me and Ben were getting out of the inner room, we found a door, pitch black inside, just to the side. Curiosity struck us!
He turned the flashlight of his iPhone on and we went in. We figured that it was just a passage/corridor around the inner sanctum. It went around the inner room and ended at the other end. We went in and after reaching exactly behind the inner room, we heard some buzzing sound. Uh oh… Not a good place for that sort of a noise. Was there a hooting sound a well? Or was it chirping. Involuntarily, his flashlight shone all around. We could not find anything around us. Slowly, he lifted his light up.
Aughghghg!! Bats! Truck load of them. Ewwwwwwwwwwww…. Now I know how the criminals in Batman feel on seeing him. Man, were me and Ben freaked out! We screamed and ran out of the corridor with our dear lives! Ho ho… That was plenty fun.
We had enough of the place and we started from there. The next stop, at about 11:00, was at the Yoga Lakshmi Narasimha temple, the God of destroying Evil!
Zainab proposed that we use the above photo as Krace’s matrimonial photo. See the resemblance? With the awesome mane and what not!
This temple was at a nice and peaceful spot. Sort of reminded me of the creeks Bill Watterson used to draw in the Calvin & Hobbes comics.
There was another Shiva Lingam temple that was still active today. It had not been tampered following the philosophy that we stated earlier in terms of destroying only images.
Here Ben and I had an interesting exchange of ideas regarding people’s faith. One of the things that he mentioned was the reason why he turned agnostic from being an atheist. During earlier days, people used to believe that the Earth was at the center of the universe and everything else revolved around it. However, it was discovered that things were not so. When Nicolaus Copernicus found out that the sun was the center, those who believed in the former thought had a really hard time.
So according to Ben, you should always be ready to accept something new if it is proven, which, won’t be possible if you are adamant about sticking with an extremist point of view. There might be a God, there might not be, neither is proven and hence, he is ready to believe either if he is convinced. Thus, an agnostic.
Anyway, at about 11.10, there were refreshments available at the road side and everyone was on full swing fueling up. I must say that that must’ve been the only day in our lives that we spent so much money on just drinking water. We did not care if the same bottle was charged 10, 20, 30 or 40! We needed water and we were going to get it at any cost. We must’ve bought at least 15+ bottles of water. If it were not for that, I would have dehydrated and fried on the trek for sure. It was darn hot.
We were told to freshen up well as the next stop was almost 2 kilometers away. All of us got enough rest and we were again on our way. The uphill rides were extremely tiring and most of them ended up in me getting down and pushing my bike up. Anyway, by 11.30, we reached the Underground Shiva temple.
It wasn’t actually underground, but at a lower level than the natural terrain level. There was an amazing garden there, where we rested when the guide told us about the place. We sat there for a while and went down to see the temple.
It opened up into a room and from there we could see more doors that lead us further in. However, the second door revealed a room filled with water. Filled as in it must be 1 1/2 foot deep. No one wanted to wet their shoe/slippers. As for those who did not have an issue with that, they were scared of skin diseases that this water might impart and some others were afraid of all the nasty creatures that might be lurking in the water.
Curiosity, adrenaline and what not pumped in. Took my sandals off and I stepped in. Just as the room was flooded with water, I was flooded with questions. “Is it cold?”, “How deep is it?”, “Any water snakes?”, etc. The list went on. I “braved” my way through a lit, 10 x 10 feet room (Yeah, not a big deal at all!) and reached the next door. Questions kept pouring in. The next room was an enclosure and it had no light except from the little that came in through the one that I was standing at. Yep, it was spooky and I decided to not “brave” it any further.
I think Ben has a picture of me standing in that room. Have to get a couple of pics from him including this one. We came out and went around the temple, where we found that the walls had crumbled on one of the sides, making way into this spooky room directly through the side. Me and Ben looked at each other. We jumped over, placed our feet carefully on the stones lying in the water and making our way to the inner most sanctum. To reach the last door, even from the side, you had to hold the walls, place your feet on a 1/4 foot thick beam (a part of the foundation) and move like Spiderman climbing a wall. Ben was not too enthusiastic about the idea.
I got over, used Ben’s iPhone to shine light into the inner sanctum. Yes, you would expect the Wise One to show up and dub you with the ancient power of elementals and all. But none of that happened. There was a Shiva Lingam there and that was it. I came back out. Just as we were about to jump over the wall back outside, we saw a corridor that lead behind the inner sanctum, just as the one that we had seen at the Krishna temple earlier.
“Bats?”, both of us looked at each other. “Let’s see”.
We got in and obviously looked above to see if they were hanging on the ceiling. Nope. All clear. We went around and just like last time, reached the other side of the inner sanctum.
“Hey”, said Ben. “Wasn’t that a bat?”
“What? Where?”
“I think one just flew into the room right there. Didn’t you see it?”
“Shine the light, let me see”, and I leaned over to take a look into the dark room to the right.
Just as I was pulling my head back, this huge thing flew right at us from within!
“Whooooo! Augh! Ha ha ha ha”, we freaked out, again. This time it was much more fun because we were standing at a point where no one in the building could see us. There were these three guys who were “braving” their way through the watered floor. Our screams happened just as these people were in the middle of the room! Of course, they carried over from us with their set of screeches and laughter.
Well, causing a little havoc, me and Ben ran and jumped out of the building. As if nothing had happened, we looked here and there and went forward around the building.
Here I saw something. The next picture is dedicated to all among you who have played Oblivion, the Elder scrolls.
We went around and saw this standalone structure which was supposed to be a dance platform. Me and Ben had the same idea at the same time. However, we were in queue when a certain lady went forward and started doing Taichi/Yoga/dance of some sort, which was actually pretty cool to watch. You should see how she bent and balanced all over. One guy was videoing this.
She had her time there and it was time for us. Behold, Ben the pundit and Haris the saadhu!
Crap, my slippers and water bottle are there. Ah never mind!
We were done there and continued with our journey further into the Vijayanagara kingdom. By 12pm, we reached the King’s and Queen’s palace. Where it was 10 bucks for Indians to get in, it was 250 bucks for foreigners! Man, the discrimination. Little did they realize that nothing was going to stop us from getting in. We bought the tickets and went in.
That’s a panorama shot by the way. Enlarge and take a look around.
From left to right in Panorama:
We first went into the Queen’s treasure trove, which was now a museum of old paintings and figures. It had pictures that compared the state of the buildings around Hampi before the Archaeological survey of India did renovation works on them, with the state of the buildings now.
Then you can see the watchtower, which were guarded by eunuch. Now, that was pronounced “unix” by everyone and I was a bit confused about the pronunciation as well as the meaning until Kiran cleared it both for me. So many there said that eunuch meant transexuals. However, it was not so.
Eunuchs referred to those bunch of males who had their reproductive organ cut off! Oh man, it was disturbing to hear that. Anyway, the King was a smart man having these people on the watch towers so that they could be sure no one messes with the Queen. It also seems to be a fact that in ancient China, only eunuchs were allowed to be a part of the administrative tasks within the Palace. Weird!
You can see the tip of the elephant stables at a distance. Don’t worry. We’ll be getting there soon.
Then you see the summer palace, which is supposed to be air conditioned. The water circulating through the pipes in the palace keeps the place cool all the time. Interesting piece of architecture it was. It was not enclosed, but had a lot of pillars on a plain foundation and it was not that large either. Surprisingly, no one got up on it and I did not see any reason why not to. Just to get a reassurance, I asked Zainab and she nodded her head saying, “Go ahead!”.
When everyone was busy talking admiring the beauty, I managed to sneak upon it. I lifted myself up onto the raised platform which was the foundation, stood up and took a few steps forward – spider sense tingling like mad!
And then I saw it. There was this dark lady standing on the left hand side of the building cladded in a yellow Saree, her eyes fixed on me, the cane in her hand waving, pointing at me! I jumped down and ran back, discreetly mingling with the crowd.
Ben saw this and found it very amusing that I got told off. It would have been fine, had he kept it to himself. But no, of all the people around, he just had to tell it to Zainab, who, found it super extremely amusing and just couldn’t stop laughing out loud, broadcasting the news like a freaking TV channel. Now it was my turn to turn red, the only difference being that it was not due to sun burns. Ooooh, that lady sometimes….!
Leaving behind a trail of shame, we crossed a gate in the wall and got over to where the elephant stables were.
So that was where the elephants were kept. Take a closer look at the stone walls below. It was interesting to see how they were constructed. As in, the stones were not uniformly cut. They were in random shapes, but fit together with such elegance.
We went around the place, decided to return to the bicycle parking place. On the way, we had a brief look at the concert hall. We found a large number of Hanuman statues all over the place. He must have been pretty popular during those times.
Starting from there, we reached the Royal quarters by 1.15pm. Man, was it super hot!
The place was supposed to be the heart of activities in the kingdom. Conference halls, meetings rooms, bath rooms, aqua duct water facilities, a raised platform for the royalties to sit and watch the entertainments and processions, etc. However, there was only a little to see and a lot to explain.
Ho ho! You guys must seriously checkout the Tali plates of that time. Imagine going for a buffet with one of these babies in your hand. Lol!
Then there was this awesome looking water reservoir which was only discovered quite recently when a few curious explorers dug up the place there the aqua duct led to.
Which was fine. But guess what we saw next? Guess what the next picture might be. No, you. Guess.
Reservoir? Nope. Conference room? Nope. It is a freaking swimming pool for the king! Yes, just for the king and no one else. You can see KracetheKing coming out of his beloved swimming pool as well. Man, was that luxurious!
The raised platform that we talked about earlier was the final destination. Everyone started walking on the good old path through the floor in order to reach there, while I decided to take the scenic route. Walk over the aqua duct!
So, I’m the troublemaker and the hooligan. Lol! I kept proving myself over and over to Ben and I guess this was the last straw. I somehow convinced him to walk with me over the duct. We followed the duct, which was pretty narrow and we had to balance ourselves quite well in order not to fall off. It was quite high as well. We started walking towards the raised platform from the Kingly swimming pool. The aqua duct led us to a T junction, from where if we took a right, we would end up on the ground, and if we took a left, would get us further close to the path that lead to the raised platform.
We took a left and had barely taken a few steps when we heard a shout. Uh oh, spider sense! Turning around, we saw this guard swishing a cane, and charging towards us, cursing and shouting in a language that we were ignorant of. The duct was some 8 to 10 feet above the ground and I was sort of reluctant to make that jump. As I stood thinking what to do, Ben had already made the jump and was waving sorry to the guardsman. While I, being the brave soul that I was, followed my path back to the T junction and took the right turn from there, which led me to a lower level of the duct, from where I comfortably jumped down and caught up with Ben. He gave me a nasty look as well as a hearty laugh.
We climbed up the 75 stairs of the platform and were all high and mighty. Ben surveyed the vicinity with the eye of a jungle cat. Well, a well dressed jungle cat.
That was the final stop of the tour. At 2:00pm, we started our journey back, having brief stops on the way for resting as well as having a drink of water. Around 2.45, we made it back to the cycle shop, where we closed the deal and thanked our guide for the wonderful time.
By this time, as you can guess, all of us were hungry beyond words! We got in the second restaurant that we saw (WE SHOULD”VE GOT IN THE FIRST ONE THAT WE SAW!). This second one was called the moonlight restaurant. Well, its a restaurant (or so it says) and we were hungry. So why not?
We made ourselves comfortable and got the menu. They provided a book which was for us to write down the order. We decided and wrote down our orders by 3pm, and rested our tired feet, everyone getting into a few chit chats.
3.15 – Chit chat
3.30 – Chit chat
3.45 – Ben walks out having a headache from someone smoking on the neighboring table
4.00 – Kiran’s order cancelled and Zainab’s served
4.05 – All of us are pissed off.
4.10 – Ben understands the gist of the restaurant’s name. We get served only at moonlight.
4.15 – Kiran and Zainab leaves
4.25 – Nimisha’s, Ben’s and Helen’s food arrives.
4.40 – My food arrives. By this time, we are too tired and irritated to even crack jokes.
4.45 – Krace’s food arrives.
4.55 – We were done and were only too happy to get out of the place. (Don’t ask about the food quality)
So Nimisha was both mentally and physically tired to go back and get her bags. Hence, it was decided she would hangout over there somewhere while we went back and got the bags and stuff.
By the time me, Krace, Ben, Helen and Praseetha got back, Zainab and Kiran were having a good eat from the Shanti restaurant where we left our bags at. Even though Ben had eaten, it was just two vegetarian cutlets and he was still hungry. We grabbed our bags and by the time we reached the ferry, it was around 5.30 and our bus back to Bangalore was at 8:00pm.
Hurrying back, for some peculiar reason, both Kiran and Zainab got into the panoramating mood. Man! It was panorama all round. Up on stones, on the boat, on the toes, on the steps. So, as Zainab and Kiran stood panoramating with ground support from Krace, the rest of us decided to go back up and rest a while before we caught the bus.
As soon as we were about to reach the hotel next to the moonlight one, me and Ben remembered the lookout point at the top of the hill. Something that we could not miss.
“I’m inspector Lookout”, said the policeman from Scotland Yard. “Lookout of the Yard”.
However, Ben was super hungry. So we got into this restaurant, made clear our urgency to the staff and ordered a Shakshuka plus a few drinks. It came in 10 minutes and we had a quick drink as well as an eat. It was almost 6.10 by the time Ben had gobbled up the Shakshuka.
Both of us walked out of the hotel and looked up at the huge mountain on top of which was the lookout point. 8.oopm – bus home. 6.00 already. Tired, longing for a rest, too little time, a freaking long way to go and that too uphill…
“Let’s do it”
And just like that, we were on our way. No idea on how to get there, we tried asking a few of the local inhabitants, who unfortunately had no clue whatsoever. The journey had begun and backing out now was not an option.
“Do we go straight down the market and turn right? Or do we go up from here itself?”, I was ambiguous.
“Up we go!”, said Ben.
Just to give you guys a sense of where we were and where the mountain was. here is the same picture as earlier. Me and Ben were standing here, deciding which way to go and do you see that rocky mountain far ahead to the right? Yes, that is where we were planning to go and come back within roughly a hour.
Yes, we were bloody darn optimistic. But when you have a friend with you who shares the same spirit, only the goal matters. Well, suffice to say,
Jack and Jill Went up the hill To get a glimpse of Hampi
Sorry that I can’t complete the rhyme as we really did not fall down (But we were pretty close!)
We ran uphill, on the road which was parallel to where the mountain was. Water bottles in our hands and bags on our backs. We took a left as soon as we saw one. There was a gate in front of us that said, “Private way”. We gave each other a quick look. “To heck with that…”, we went forward. As soon as we entered the gate, the mountain seemed to have taken a step close to us, and that raised my spirits.
Drank a sip of water and changed gears. 6.15 now. We kind of reached a quite high area and there was a building over there that had a staircase from outside that lead us onto the roof. We climbed up and saw a panorama view. But that wasn’t enough! The mountain was standing behind us and we needed to scale it one way or the other. We got down the stairs and I had over exerted myself. I took a puff of the inhaler and we again moved up, to be greeted by Grott the Hoddle! Ahem… Sorry. An old man.
Well, this old man was an old man who was not too enthusiastic about two enthusiastic youngsters battling their tiredness and braving their way up over to the top of the mountain just to get a glimpse of Hampi. The old man had 3 words for us. “Gate close 6.30”.
We begged! “Can we like go up there and run back?”, ‘Or maybe on that little hill over there?”. “Surely on that raised platform on top of that building?”. The old man had just one thing to say, “Gate close 6.30”. Then he called a small boy who might be at least 9 years of age and told him something in Hindi pointing at us. And then the little boy explains to us what was going on!
“Gate close 6.30”
So we got the idea and decided to head back upon the roof of the other building that we had got on earlier. We went up there and as we were kind of relaxing, we suddenly saw this human figure on one of the mountains which was on the other side of the road which was parallel to the mountain. The one that we ran up on first.
“Let’s go!”
We ran down the slope, reached the place where we took a left and again went a little up on the opposite way, only to find that the gate that lead to the gate that lead to that mountain on which we saw the human figure, was closed. This was the gate to the Ganesha temple that I wrote about earlier.
“Now what?”, it was almost 6.35 and the day was coming to an end. But we had to do something. We looked around and something caught our eye. The stray rocks, or boulders if you may, that were lying there piled up and supported by one another.
“Let’s go up that”, said Ben.
I was reluctant and was not too keen on climbing huge boulders and jumping among them when the sun had already gone down. You never know which rock is waiting out there for a few more pounds on one of its sides so that it could roll down and cause havoc. However, Ben was already on his way, and I followed.
We started climbing up a few rocks and figured that there was no way were going to get onto the one on the edge, the one that we wanted to get on to. And we came back down. We started going back when suddenly Ben saw something that assured him that there was a way to that rock. Back we went and started climbing the rocks again.
So I was scared, but he was quite a trooper. He was adamant about creating a few unforgettable memories during his time in India while I was afraid of becoming a memory myself. Anyway, he blazed the trail and I followed. Jumping between huge boulders, sliding a few down, bending and walking underneath a few, and voila! There was our promised rock right in front of us!
We scrambled up and got on it! Ho HO hoooo. We had done it! We were kings! It was almost 7 and we decided to click a few quick pics.
Ben has a pic with me and him. I’ll put it up as soon as I get it. We savored the moment, admiring and respecting our own bravery for a few seconds. The last thing we wanted to happen was to get stuck on some god forsaken rock on the Deccan plateau and miss our bus back home (or work, rather). So without goofing off for too much time, we got down, rivaled Tom Cruise’s mountain climbing abilities and got down on the road shouting “success!”.
Phew! Was that tiring. We exchanged our super sweaty shirts and joined up with the team at the same restaurant itself. Had a couple of drinks and went over to the bus stand. The bus was only going to start 20 minutes late and we had a nice little chat standing over there. Kiran entertained us with his water bottle balancing stunts for a while.
By 8.30, we were all on the bus. We reached Hospet at about 9.30 or so where me and Krace got down and boarded another bus.
So that’s it. Those were two marvelous days of my life. A trip that I am never going to forget!
Epilogue
We’re just getting started man! So I’m sorry. No epilogue for now. It just feels good to have been with all of them and I eagerly look forward to meeting Ben and Helen again real soon.
Oh, and do checkout Helen’s “The adventure of Kyroku!” right here:
“I find your abundance of conservatism to be disturbing”, said he, which is all that I needed to start my train of thoughts.
One of the ways of defining conservatism is as, “The tendency to resist new experiences’.
I guess conservatism is more or less the exact opposite of being a liberal. I understand this classification is based on beliefs rather than on personal tastes. On second thought, to draw such a fine line of classification is wrong because, if you think about it, it depends on both to an extent. Let’s move on and see.
One way of defining conservatism, as far as I can see, is as the fear to come out of your comfort zone. This brings us to the question of when does one’s comfort zone get fully established? Is there even such a thing as fully established comfort zone?
It is not like you define your comfort zone at a certain age. It keeps on growing. You definitely will be comfortable doing something now which you were not comfortable doing, say, five years back. So this “new thing” is within your comfort zone now, when once, it wasn’t.
This means that sticking to one’s comfort zone makes him do things and take decisions based on his life’s experiences he has gathered so far, which, I hope you will agree, is not a bad thing.
In this perspective, not being conservative, is to be lenient in growing your comfort zone. Let things into your CZ without too much of resistance and experimenting. However, that depends on the methods in your CZ, that you use to grow your CZ. Let’s sit back and see what all methods we use to grow it.
The first and foremost, I would say, would be “need”. When you absolutely need something, you would try any means to achieve it, thereby bringing all that you tried under your CZ. I believe this is the sudden and fastest way of growing it. Of course, I’m not talking about the same need again and again, but new needs.
The second one would be “curiosity”. This, as far as I can think of, won’t be sudden. You are not driven by the “need” for getting something done here. You are simply trying to quench your personal thirst. In this process, I think the basic nature of humans would be to shield themselves from as much harm and hurt as possible. Which means you are going to take it nice and slow while experimenting, unless, to get hurt or be harmed is already in your CZ.
The third one would be being an “extrovert”. Of course, this would very well classify as being crazy as well, but what I mean here is the “why not?” attitude.
In a broad and general manner of classifying the methods we depend upon in order to extend our CZ, I believe the above three covers pretty much everything. However, you might have noticed that the above three things, more or less, is beyond a person’s control. All these three things depend upon the fundamental, inborn differences that human beings have, where they were born and how they were brought up, their surroundings and circumstances in life. These will be different for almost everyone on God’s green Earth and hence, everyone’s CZ and the pace of its growth will be different.
Now, coming back to the definition of conservatism, even though one of the definitions that I gave for it is the fear of coming out of one’s comfort zone, that is not the only obstacle to not being a conservative. I did not mean ‘obstacle’ in a negative sense there.
Being conservative will definitely have something to do with one’s belief as well – Religion and parents’, teachers’, families’ and friends’ teachings. When this sinks in a person, he takes for granted the meaning of certain things. I mean, that is what belief is about, isn’t it? “Believe your mom when she tells you chocolates are bad for your teeth”. You respect and love her so much that you take her word for it. Is that something to be blamed for? I don’t think so. All you have t make sure is that you be really careful in selecting the people whom you are going to respect and love the most. Most of us already have these priorities set.
So, if a person is a disbeliever, it is that much easier for him to become a liberal. But does this mean that that is THE path to be followed? You have your beliefs and I have mine. Let’s respect each other for that. Peace. Coffee?
Coming to the point of the entire article, did he take all these things into consideration when he said he was disturbed by my conservatism? Is being conservative a wrong thing? His circumstances might have been different where he was born and bought up from mine. So I say everyone won’t be like you. Take it easy and give me chances. I’m sure I’ll expand my CZ, even though it might be a bit slow.
Now that I sit back and take a good long look at that title, I must say, “The title says it all”. Moreover yes, “irascible” was a new word for me as well. When Aayan gave all of us our sheets of paper with a word written on it, I got that word. I know, being a writer, I should have acted like I knew what it meant and should have simply started writing about it. However, thank God I wasn’t too full of myself or I would’ve ended up writing something totally irrelevant to that word.
I put a helpless expression on my face and looked around stating, not asking, “I don’t even know what this word means”. To my surprise, everyone was as humble as me (ahem!) and Lalana was the first among them to google and find the word’s meaning for me.
“Easily made angry”, it said.
Great! I had to write a short story in 100 words about a sensuously irascible guy. What could be more awesome than that? Anyway, all of us did our parts and somehow stuck them together to make up a wonderfully senseless story about this dude called Raj/Mohan, who is completely burnt out doing assignment after assignment and exams after exams. He is so irritated that he choke slams his friend onto to the wall of their room when his friend asked him for a book.
In that state of anger and strife, he calls up Meena and asks her whether she would like to come over for a swim. She agrees, of course and they have the most sensual dip in the pool where he goes under and comes up in between her legs and what not.
He video tapes her without her noticing it and to his surprise, she suddenly disappears from the front of the camera and comes up behind him.
They both sit together and the emotions build up inside them. They don’t want to be safe and be conventional, they wanted to be decadent, and they did; succumbing to the animal instincts.
Finally they sit together reasoning about what they had done and how it was a natural thing to happen.
Well, that’s it! Irascible, Water, Moist, Decadent and Evoke were the words that our team got and that is the story we made up. However, I haven’t been able to do justice to my friends’ writings as the way they had written the short piece of 100 words was mind blowing.
“Write, write, write!”, he told himself first thing in the morning. It had been almost a month now since he had written anything, but there was never a day where he hadn’t thought about writing. At times when he sat in his hostel room in front of the computer, thoughts come flowing towards him, “Hey, the silence of this room is so brilliant that I simply have to write about it”. By the time he logs into his wordpress account, the silence is no more, and so is his motivation.
Being depressed and wounded at not being able to do the one thing that he claims to love doing, he takes a stroll along the streets. He keeps his eyes open for he knows that motivation was out there somewhere in something.
He sees the beggars on the streets and thinks. “Oh my, what a lucky life I have. I seriously should write about the blessings that I have”. However, for some reason that has been eluding him, his thoughts go no further than that one sentence.
He sees a group of girls standing on the road side, all dressed up and beautified, ready to be picked up by someone. He thinks, “What miserable circumstances have brought these poor creatures to this! Or maybe they do enjoy what they do? I should go talk to one of them.” A certain shiver up his spine and sudden drying up of his tongue pulls his mind back from the idea. He is at a loss for words again.
He stops taking the bus to his office. Instead he walks half an hour each day hoping to find motivation waiting for him somewhere out there. He sees the traffic police, practicing some sort of dance moves with both his hands. He sees the man on the bike, ear on his ring, tattoo on his face and arms, sports shoe, torn jeans, a few necklaces, a few rings, shiny teeth, jeans jacket, a cigarette in his mouth, having an expression of his freedom to run down anybody on the street being denied of him.
He sees the people selling fruits and vegetables on the grocery carts. He sees their children running and playing around them. He wonders how happiness is relative and broods on what it was like when he was their age. He sees couples walking hand in hand and thinks whether it was luck or dismay that he witnessed. He sees the different cars being driven by different people roaring past him in an endless manner.
He fails to find what he looks for in all this and it hurts him more than ever to not know what it is that is holding him back. Why having so much exposure could not find him anything to write about. This was not the case when he was at college where he could find interesting things to think about and write almost every day. What has changed? Oh, what has changed!
He reaches his office and sits down to work. He wants to write. He is burning inside. Alas, all that he finds himself writing are mails. Just mails. He tries to find joy in them but try as he might, he could not. He tells to himself, “Write.” Nothing happens. He again orders, “I said write!”. Still nothing. “Write, damn you!”.
He composes himself. He knows time waits for no one. He realized he can’t wait for motivation. He logs into his wordpress account. He finishes writing a piece. A gentle smile comes over his face. He realizes that all is not lost. He has time. He will try. He has to succeed.
One of the greatest joys in life is that of meeting people with common interests (Not on facebook, thank you!). This is the exact reason why I signed up for the writing workshop by Gaurav and Nisha. First of all, thanks to Ashwan, a man of many talents, my colleague at HasGeek, for bringing the workshop to my attention.
As much I love working and being a part of HasGeek, I was constantly wondering whether the city had something else to offer me. The last two days have been wonderful and the city assured me that there were wonderful things that it had to offer. I just had to get out, open my eyes, and look.
A few writers, 9 to be specific, including yours truly (if you can call me a writer) got together at a certain open, airy and yet shady place to share their passion for writing as well as to help each other out. Gaurav and Nisha, the ones who organized and brought together all of us.
Gaurav was this calm person with a gentle voice and a wonderful smile who sat there, listening carefully to whatever was being said and discussed, to offer advice out of his long years of experience. It was evident that he had the big picture in his mind and it would be years before I could get even somewhere close.
Nisha, on the other hand, had this very outspoken attitude which got through to all of us. A very friendly person who had almost the same amount of experience as Gaurav, she was pouring out suggestions of various books to read that none of us had even heard of before. The critiques they both gave for our works were very thought out and clean that we could identify where we were doing it wrong.
In no particular order, here comes the rest of the crew.
Azeem, a good looking, well built fellow who was an avid lover of fiction. All through the two days, he kept fictionalizing whatever was thrown to him and he did a marvelous job at that too. It is always heart warming to see motivated people who yearn to achieve something and as such, I hope he soon finds his graphic designer and gets his comic book published asap.
Deepak, the plump man with a wonderful humor sense whose writings were more directed towards the little hilarious things that happen in one’s life. We almost never tend to pay attention to those little things that brings a grin on our face. He captures those moments wonderfully with his writing, at the end, leaving all of us laughing, and making us think of those little incidents in our own lives.
Ranju, the cute lady hailing from Chennai. Words flow from her fingers so smoothly and yet so meaningfully and hilariously that you feel alive listening to her read out her writing. It is admirable to see how wonderfully she establishes her thoughts through a few quick sentences. I’m never going to forget how she merged the blog writer’s and drunk guy’s story into one!
Sam (I wonder where Frodo is. Also, her real name evades me at the moment). Maybe I am wrong describing her as nervous, but her face lights up with emotion, be it laughter or tension, when she expresses her thoughts. A writer seeking to find that perfect rhythm which would entirely convey her ideas to the world, she was a lively character through both the days.
Lalana, PrintOooooo! I don’t know why I put it like that, but I just did. Hey, it is “sosaysharis” after all. Just kidding. Well, frankly, I really enjoyed listening to her talk. She had this highly animated style of saying things that you could never feel ambiguous about the feeling that she was trying to convey with her words. A lady with a really nice smile, in her writings, I felt envious of finding the one thing that I always sought. The attention to detail and the vivid descriptions which capture the imagery of a scene so beautifully. Someday, I hope to write like that.
Last but not the least, Leanne Pais! WhooHoo! “The girl who kept turning back to assure me that she knew how to drive and her brakes were working”. Man she is going to kill me for this! Oh yeah, the only girl in the world who has had the privilege of having me on her bike. He he… I could have said that she was the first girl with whom I rode on a bike but hey, I’ve just been to a writing workshop and I should write things differently. All in all, her suicidal story (or “The story about one guy committing suicide”, as she would have me put it. Lol!) and the ghost who was enjoying his own funeral really made us all stand on our toes. I hope she finishes her work and gets them published soon.
It was a fun two days. Even though I had attended the workshop with writing just fantasy stories in mind, the way they structured the course and the feedback that they gave ended up in me writing up a small, non-fiction story from my life itself.
The idea was to pick one of those embarrassing moments of your life that had a lot of potential to be written but, you were too embarrassed to write about it. I roughly drafted one such incident that I had when I was a kid and wrote it down in about 250 words, as per their request.
They made us elaborate what we had written to double the size. That was interesting because you had to elaborate the already laid out content. Trying to do that (and in my case it was pushing the limits), I realized it was possible to breathe life into your story in more than one way. Setting the scene, including those tiny bits of information that you think has no relevance at first, etc, came out.
The critiquing of this piece was done seriously. No one held back and the thoughts we shared on each others’ pieces were really helpful for the next re-write that we did. Both Gaurav and Nisha were extremely serious in pointing out the subtle tweaks that could have made the stories better.
After this round was over, we were asked to re-write the story once more. The difference that sprouted in everyone’s writing was unbelievable! I never thought I could put more description into what I had already written, but, following the advice that all of them gave me, I really did make the scene more descriptive. I will post my piece shortly so that you can see what I mean.
It was an awesome experience and extremely fun. Thanks again to Gaurav and Nisha for putting this together. I look forward to more such gatherings in the future.
After six long years, I have finally let go of Ubuntu. For three years I had stuck with 10.04, which was stable and had a really good performance. 12.04 came along and ruined it all. Bad system performance, bugs every which where and crashing almost all the time. It was an LTS release and I had decided to stick with it whatever happened. I tried my best to get along well. However, I simply could not let my old laptop take anymore punishment. I had to help him out and I did.
Debian was the answer of course. Old and mature, stable and more than everything, apt! The real question was which desktop manager to use. Gnome was out of the question. Since the time they changed the old Gnome into Gnome classic, I had hated it. Since I had heard about XFCE from quite a few people, I decided to go with it.
I just have one thing to say – No wonder why people don’t use Linux distros. There was one serious hacker in my office while I was attempting it. I went to him for advice on installing a certain package and his first question was, “Why would you do this to yourself?”. That really ticked me off into getting this thing working. Finally, I’m happy to say that I have done it.
Of course, it took me almost five days to get the thing up and running. Googling, tweaking, persistence and what not. The first issue that I faced was of course, networking. However, it was the same old story and you can read about it here.
I’ll write about the different tweaks that I did and other issues that I faced in my coming posts. Otherwise this one will go on and on.
Life has changed for me and suddenly I have this feeling that I’m at the driver seat. Till now I was just a passenger and the paths were already laid out. I just had to go with the flow and I was sure to reach where I was heading. However, today it is not like that anymore. There is no “system” that I can just blindly follow. I have to think, figure out what I am doing and what I should be doing.
It feels good.
One of the things that I have missed is writing. The frequency at which I blog has come down considerably. I used to think that I wold naturally find time for it. I understand it is not so. Keeping things in perspective and finding time for what you want to do is becoming a more and more challenging task with each passing day. Time is flowing by and unless I act quick, things might reach a point where the currents would be too strong to swim back.
I find myself in the company of a man who has a vision. The yearning to bring about a change in the way things are. A strong and silent man who does not even show any signs of the slightest of frustrations on his face. I find myself in the company of a man who follows his dream of bringing together a community. I’m still ignorant of how all it came to be. But what I am sure of is that he is not alone.
I see a woman who loves her husband dearly. A woman who sacrifices her time and her career just to see her husband succeed. From many have I heard how lovely it was to behold such a relationship among all the hurried life in the city. She is always in search of what her place in such a surrounding is. Her thoughts go far beyond the pleasant smile that she wears all the time on her face. Her thoughts go here.
A motherly figure to all of us, I see a woman who strives to teach her two little children the ways of life. A kind hearted and empathetic person whom you could turn to whenever you feel life is too much to take. She will bring you back to reality, advising you for the best.
Three brothers. One who has traveled around the world much. Biology is at his heart, knowledge he has of almost everything, enthusiastic he is about tech and more than everything, cool he is! Whatever problem pops up somewhere, let it be tech, life, logistics, inventory, people, everyone’s first option would be to turn to him and the wonderful thing is, he always has an answer, and that too, a really sensible one.
One who loves mother Earth. His love for her reflects in his ways with the ones around him. A cute brother, always watching out for you, ready to help you at any moment. People like him increases your trust in humanity. You start to understand what it is like to be there for someone when you are with him. Relations, what ties the whole world together, he holds each and everyone he has, close to his heart.
One who loves to be one among us. His tech thoughts as well as jovial nature deep behind all the well kept. cool looking hair, beard and mustache, he is always ready for a laugh whatever mind boggling thing was up. Always ready to lend a hand, he hates bugs. Both in software and in real life. He exterminates both of them quite skilfully.
Last but not the least, imagineer. The silent, creative girl who works magic out of her fingers. Designs and art are her mastery and she conjures them up from thin air. Extremely quick in picking things up, a guaranteed wonderful designer who is soon to be famous. She is blooming to one beautiful flower from the cute bud that she was.
Kiran, Zainab, Radha, Ashwan, Sajjad, Krace and Praseetha, respectfully. HasGeek. Oh, and yours truly too.
It was amazing to see the dedication and sincerity with which everyone performed their roles last month over the two huge events. Perseverance, I saw in all of them. Mentally taxed, physically tired, ill, none of them were ready to quit and take a rest. There were things that needed to be done and they knew they were the ones who had to do it. There were no backseats. Working late into 3am, they sat and slept when everything was finally set. I realized that there was more to life than just watching out for yourself.
Sacrifice. That is how you work as a team. One for all and all for one. You are there for him and he is there for you. That is how it works. Of course you can call in sick and go lie down. But that was not a decision any of them were ready to make. They stuck together and pulled through. Many had lost track of time and many were taken ill. They got over it, and they did it.
However, all this comes with a price. All of these has a side effect. A beautiful one at that too. The bonds that were made. Small jokes in between rush hours, little chats over dinner and tea, they found themselves amongst a group of people who had something in common. They all wanted to make this happen. And they did.
I never expected to be a part of something this diverse. I still wonder where I am going to fit in. Hey, but what’s the rush? Life has just started for me and I want to make this happen as much as all of them.
Me and my friend were coming back after having purchased a lot of stuff for the party next day. Both of us were not in the best of moods as it had been a long day. The market place was so crowded, dusty and congested that the words “personal space” did not have any meaning there. As if all this was not enough, the hot noon sun did not help the cause at all.
With all the goodies in hand, just when we reached the place where we had parked our vehicle, my friend remembered that he had forgot something. He asked me to stay with all the stuff over there so that he could hurry over to the market once again and get it. I agreed and he went back.
The Animal was God to the people there. They worshiped it and would spend a few seconds in prayer if they were to see it standing somewhere. Some would even touch it and take its blessings. Some would even go to the extent of running upto it when it pees. They take a little in their hands and drink. A little bit more they would take and rub on their heads.
When my friend left me waiting for him, The Animal was lying down in front of me. I saw people hurrying here and there, busy with their jobs and errands, people who were carrying things from one place to another, people who were running to make both ends meet and others who were simply out shopping. All these people, without fail, were paying their respects to The Animal. I kept staring in awe.
After waiting for 10 minutes, The Animal, which was lying there in front of me, slowly got up and to my amazement, it was really huge. It remained calm and it was a nice experience to see the huge Animal so close. I closely looked at all its features. Even when I was at it, people were coming, paying their respect in the middle of all their hurry, and leaving.
I kept on looking at it. Finishing its head, body and tail, I finally reached its legs. I was always fascinated by hoofs. How it stood out from the rest of their body. I had a sort of belief inside my conscience that they were even made of metal! So in all that amazement, I looked at its hooves. The legs in the front and the left one at the back was fine. However, what met my eyes when I looked at its rear left leg made me twitch.
It was sort of disintegrated. Powdered and loosely held together, you could say. It had swarms of flies all over it and covering it entirely. They were buzzing around its hoof too, trying to find a place to sit on it. The Animal stood on its 3 legs and the one with the rotten hoof just touched the ground.
It stood there for 5 minutes and then, I noticed that it was trying to move. It slightly made a forward gesture, strengthening its front legs. However, when it came to the point where it had to exert pressure on the damaged leg, it could not. The flies were still swarming on it and The Animal now and then moved its leg a little to shoo them away. Still all of them came back on it instantly.
For about ten minutes, it tried hard to move forward, but failing in its attempt each time when the point came where it had to use its damaged leg. All this time, people were coming and going, paying respect to it. Only a few of them taking time to notice its leg and not even one coming forth to help their God. After ten minutes of staggering, The Animal once again lay down at the same place, again to be worshiped and respected by many, but not to be helped by any. My friend returned and we were on our way.
I actually started writing this post a week ago. However, I got caught up in my work and had to postpone it till now. So it has been two weeks since I’ve been here and the next three paragraphs were written a week ago.
————————–
This might be the most treacherous thing to do – sitting and blogging on a hacknight day! But hey, everyone works on what interests them and I work on what interests me. So I guess I’m good.
Now, coming to my first week at Bangalore, I’m living. I mean, life at hasgeek has been so much fun that I actually feel that I’m with a family away from family. After sitting at home crawled up in my bed for almost three months, my life sure has taken one heck of a turn at this point. I have walked almost 13 kilometers within three days since I got here! Not only that, but being at CIS (the Center for Internet and Society) itself is absolutely wonderful. The lovely house with a lawn at the back and a really calm atmosphere…
However, for all the loveliness at work, the commute in Bangalore is killing me. I mean, at home, when I figure out I have to travel 7kms to get to someplace, I think, “Okay, just a 10 minute trip. I can make it anytime I want to and get there”. Ah! Little did I realize that such was not the case in Bangalore. It takes me a minimum of half an hour (if everything is well) and a maximum of one hour and thirty minutes to get to my office.
————————–
Coming back to the present. The above is the basic story of my commute. Well, that is going to be a problem only till I get a cycle/motorcycle or until I move to a place near to my office. So I guess that is fine.
What comes after traffic, my office, if you could call it that, is a really nice place. For one thing, it is not an office building or anything. It is a rented house. Hence you have the lounge, the office room, the kitchen, toilets, bed rooms and most pleasant of all, a lawn! At times when sitting at the office gets too monotonous, we get the bats and the net, and play badminton. It is sort of an open building. “Open” as in anyone can come in anytime, get the wi fi and work from there. Pretty cool. We are on the top floor and on the ground floor, it is CIS.
The time I decided to join the company was awesome as in they had two of their biggest events lined up within 4 weeks! Days got suddenly busy and before I knew it, I was talking to serious geeks, handling participant registrations, working on logistics and working on what all were coming up. All the work was made enjoyable by the ones whom I was working with. 8 of us HasGeek is going strong.
JSFoo and it’s Hacknight is over and it was plenty fun. Here is to the future!
Being at the town, I started walking from a certain point, under the blazing hot noon sun, visiting each and every slipper shop on the way, trying to get hold of a certain brand which I had been using till now. I walked and I walked and to my surprise and dismay, reached back at exactly the point that I had started, without any luck whatsoever. Tired and wounded, not to mention disappointed, I went and had a drink. I sat and rested my overworked feet for a while. I got up again and started walking towards the bus stand in order to catch a home bound bus.
Just when I had taken 4 or 5 steps, there was this shop to my left. Out of inertia of having asked at each and every shop that had slippers in them, I simply stood outside and with an air of sarcasm , asked the owner whether he had the brand that I was looking for. I got what I was looking for from there.
The lesson that I learned from this happening is that always start the things that you want to do just before you are actually going to start doing it. In the philosophical sense, this thought has many implications. However, having experienced this first hand in real life, I’m bound to start applying this thought to the various aspects of life.
Anyway, that was just the icing of the cake and the above three paragraphs were not in my mind at all until I thought about how to begin this post that I wanted to write.
Reaching back home, I turned on my laptop and checked my mails. I happened to stumble upon this thread. I simply went through the replies and happened to click this link, with no particular reason. That was Diaspora page of Jishnu. Since I was tired from the day’s happenings and wanted to rest, I was simply browsing and as such, scrolled down along his posts. There I stumbled upon the following video, which is the primary reason for this blog post.
Usually I had this idea of talks by technical people getting boring and monotonous. This was exactly the opposite. Moreover, this was not a talk but rather a sort of Q&A session. I was not planning to sit through it completely, but the more I listened, the more I got interested to listen to the rest and hence, I finished it in one shot.
Mind you, I’m not saying that Linus is the epitome of perfection or anything of the sort. He maybe, he maybe not. I just wanted to think and improvise on some of the things that he mentioned during that session and that is exactly what I am going to do.
The fist and foremost being the title of the blog post. Is execution more important than vision? Vision as in, a dream of how something should be.
Well, according to Linus, he personally was in favor of getting things done rather than thinking and dreaming constantly of a bright future and end up doing bits and pieces. He takes the analogy of a man walking, looking at the stars. He has vision. However, unfortunately, he fails to see the potholes that are in the way that he walks because he is not looking down. Hence, he stumbles upon them and falls down. Linus does not completely criticize visionaries too as it is possible that the path that guy is walking upon might not have potholes and as such, he will achieve his vision.
This is a very interesting point because everyone can have ideas. People can have tons of awesome ideas. They can dream of things that should happen and keep on dreaming. As much as I admit that you should dream until your dreams come true, sometimes (most of the times), people simply end up only dreaming. That does not help.
What makes you different, or better, worthy of being alive, is when you get things done. Linus even quoted Edison where he said, “Success is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration”. That is more or less true. Passion, inspiration, dreams, ambitions, etc all are just thoughts in the wind until you work hard for it, and achieve it.
With this thought in mind, I thought about how I have been over the past year and it was quite interesting to see the difference.
Started my blog – “Yet another guy who has access to Internet registers yet another blog on wordpress”
Wrote posts – “Yet another blogger who has to put in his blog, everything that happens to him”
Wrote posts consistently – “Hmm… Yet another consistent blogger”
Wrote stories – “Most definitely not a personal diary”
Technical posts – “Not just philosophy and stories. Useful posts”
Crossed 100 posts in a year – “Wow, I did not expect this guy to keep at this for so long. Still…”
Published a book – “Awesome. This guy is actually getting things done”
I sure as hell would like to meet that omnipresent dude who commented on my stages of blogging. However, the point that I was trying to make was that even though I hadn’t realized it till now, I was following my passion and getting things done. I needed this push as I have in my drafts, 4 incomplete posts that I started writing and half way through, started thinking about how it should be and the impact that it should bring about to a reader. That thought is good, but it should not be as strong so as to pose a hindrance to what you are doing. Otherwise it ends up as the case mentioned earlier. I have these amazing vision and thoughts but I’m not actually doing anything for it. Now that I have that idea in my head, I’ll be finishing those posts soon.
Hence, as much as it is important to have a vision, it is as important to get things done as well.
Another interesting thing that he mentioned is being open about your feelings regarding something. He quoted his own example for this statement which was that one guy who worked on a certain kernel feature, got suicidal when Linus told him that the kernel did not want that feature. This would not have happened if people clearly knew about how Linus wanted the project to be.
I was not a big fan of extremism. However, taking into consideration the above scenario, there are times where being an extremist pays off. I mean, him being like that in regard to his project does not mean that he is like that with his family. The point being that there are occasions where you should stand like the Pole star and there are occasion where you should be diplomatic. I mean, Linus could have called that guy for a cup of coffee and started the, “Listen, I knew you’ve worked really hard” thing, but seriously, that attitude would have left the entire kernel project in once heck of a mess.
To the question of whether all the students should be made aware of the open source movement, his answer was thought provoking. The point is that everyone need not be made to learn programming or anything of th sort. However, the ones who have the spark in them should be given the chance and the proper encouragement for learning and improvising on it. He mentioned the cheap Raspberry pi board available where out of 100 boards, 99 of them might be lying in the dust. Still, the important thing is that one board gave an interested person the opportunity to learn and that is what matters.
This is true in real life also. When you try to do something for the people, instead of worrying and spending time on getting everyone involved and interested, you should be more set and concentrate on helping out those who are genuinely interested. We tend to forget that in our path of achieving a “noble cause”. Once you get through to those who are interested and when they start to do wonders, the influence will become bigger and will spread.
Well, that’s about it I guess. That session was something that I desperately needed and I’m glad I did not stumble upon it any later.
Each time being at that college among those students, you really feel rejuvenated.
On September 29th, MatriCS, the association (an awesome one at that!) under the Computer Science department at MES College of Engineering had it’s inauguration as well as was the host for the SMC annual meet. These two days are those that I don’t want to forget in a hurry. Hence, I thought I’d just write down about how it went so that next year when we meet, we might be able to have a nice laugh at what all happened this year.
I was not actually expecting a formal event and as such when I suddenly came to realize that the event was at the auditorium, it felt a bit weird. However, the moment I met Riyas, the third year CS student there who was extremely enthusiastic about getting things done, I knew things were going to get better. He had this friendly way of welcoming people and getting them to fit in without any trouble. I hope he keeps that spirit up because the society needs people like him. There was Hiran ettan (met him for the first time) and some other lady and Riyas took all the three of us into the hall.
I could sense the tension of the organizers to get things started in time, realizing at the last moment that certain people who were supposed to talk at the event, were not going to show up (Boy, I really hate when people do that). I had myself been in similar situations before and it was heart warming to see everything, more or less, going smooth. Shamsir, the current chairman of the association was getting everything together with an air of command. A jovial, innocent fellow who is as much enthusiastic as Riyas in getting things done.
My wishes and prayers to both of them.
I’m not going to go about describing each and everything that happened. You can find the itinerary of the event over here.
It was an awesome auditorium and there was a small session regarding OCRs, which were helpful for the blind people to use computers. I marveled at how the organizers thought of incorporating such a talk into the event. To know that the time had come where Computer Engineers had a real part to play in the society, gave us a feeling of responsibility.
29th of September was a special day because it had been exactly a year since Jinesh had passed away. The SMC members did an excellent job at collecting all the articles and blog posts written by Jinesh and compiling them into one single book under the name of “Logbook of an observer”. A hard copy of the book was handed over to his Father at the ceremony and people who knew him personally as well as through the net talked about him. Another person named “Shyam” was also mentioned who had this sincere love for our mother tongue. Knowing that people like them existed and how much they had influenced the world around them in the short time they were here, was really inspiring.
One of the other mention worthy (really mention worthy) things about the event was to get to see people in real life! And that is awesome. I mean, a few days ago, a guy called Ani Peter asked for help regarding translation on the SMC mailing list. I decided to help him out and with my inexperienced typing, helped out a tiny bit.
I was looking forward to meeting him at the event. With this thought in mind, I was sitting there in the second row of the auditorium pretty much alone. The speeches were going on and when it got monotonous, I happened to get a glimpse at the laptop of the lady who was sitting beside me. She was the one who was with Hiran ettan earlier. Her laptop booted and displayed the login screen. Just above the login screen was written “Ani Peter”.
Augh!
The point being, it is nice (and necessary!) to meet people in real life. Hrishikesh (a really jovial and friendly guy), the artistic Ark Arjun, Hiran ettan, Manoj, Rajeesh ettan (An ultra cool guy with an awesome attitude), the sisterly Ani Peter, Adhil (whom I had briefly met for Chakkakuutaan), Manu (the renowned MES geek) were the ones among the newly-seen-in-real-life people.
It was heart warming to see Praveen ettan, Ershad, Nakul, Musfir, Sadiq, Anish, Kiran (well, I’ve been seeing this guy everyday for a month now, but still I was glad to see him at MES). Also the guys from MES itself. I’ not that good with names, so forgive me if I have accidentally left someone out. Yahul, Rahul, Navin, Sohail and the other young hacksters there who all added to the bright and wonderful atmosphere there.
The afternoon sessions of the first day were informal ones and I felt right at home. Anish talked about the Free Software philosophy and Hrishi came forward with introducing Diaspora and the free movie initiatives. Well, one of the troubles that the speakers always face is the problem of making the session interactive. When they ask something and the audience sit as if they had no clue what was going on, it usually becomes a bit depressing. However, little did they realize Musfir was one among the crowd!
He just would not sit taking everything that the speakers said for granted. He shot out with his questions and the whole session was completely interactive. It was nice to discuss and talk about philosophies. The Open movie initiative was really interesting and we all sat and saw the movie tears of steel.
However, there was something that bothered me with the whole ordeal. I was quite worried about the message that was reaching the students. I mean, the people who were giving the talks were really good programmers and developers. They gave talks on the matters that affected what they were working on. I felt that the technical part of the message was not getting through to the students. The feeling that the free software community was growing as a political party based on ideals and philosophies without the hacker spirit actually being there was somehow becoming more and more evident. I’m sure there might be an alternative explanation to this, but I’ve been seeing this trend (with me too!) growing up.
As if to counter my thought, the second day witnessed two wonderful workshops. One was on Shell scripting by Rajeesh ettan, which was extremely informative as he explained in detail many aspects of how the shell worked and its configurations along with the basic, practical funda of how to use the shell to script something. It has ticked me off into learning it and I’m sure be giving it a shot now.
This was followed by Ershad’s workshop on git, which was superb as usual. The sessions were wound up at about 1.30 with trophies being awarded to the SMC people who helped out with the events and sessions. We all had a few informal chats and I bid my farewell to everyone then.
I missed the hacknight on the first day which, as I was able to gather from the people who attended it, was extremely fun. I also missed the afternoon session on the second day which was on Remote Desktop and Networks. Hoping to read the details of both from some place else.
All through the event, I really missed Sajith sir. I’m sure all the students there missed him too. Here is praying and hoping that he will have his troubles settled and his wishes granted.
A heart warming experience. Something that students of MES can be proud of. I hope that they keep the spirit and enthusiasm flowing in the future as well.
A 'psycho' path. 