There are times when a small gesture is all that you need. It might not be clearly defined or anything, but you know it once it happens. And you know what’s the most loveliest thing about it? It happens! And you feel good thinking about it.

Different people have different ways of enjoying a journey. Some enjoy the entire trip looking all around them and some enjoy just the sitting in the vehicle.

I come under the second part. And I sleep through almost a good part of the journey. Its really nice to sleep. Trust me. With the wind blowing on your face and the rocking of the vehicle that makes you feel like you’re rocking in a cradle…. Ahhh… Your eyes just close automatically. 🙂

Anyway, on the evening of 17th, Friday, I boarded the bus to my home and I slept, obviously. My partner Jinu was with me and he sat by my side.

After a while I got serious. Sleeping on a bus isn’t fun, you know? Its an art. And I was pretty good at it. So when I got serious, I had no clue what was happening around me. I had this vague notion of my head banging against something. I’d wake up a bit and sit straight again. Then AGAIN I go back to banging. But the thing I was banging on seemed extremely comfortable and it eased my sleep.

I woke up after a while and saw that he was already awake. His left hand was tightly gripped on the handle of the front seat. He looked at me and gave me a weird smile. That was enough for me to understand the situation. 🙂

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It was a small and not all that important gesture. But as I said in the beginning, things like these are those which makes you feel good. 🙂

Calvin said that. And aren’t we all the same? I don’t know about you folks but I relate to that title very much. There’s a 3-page, 6-panel each story before Calvin says that, but to know that, you have to read it. 🙂

Even though we don’t shout it out aloud, we always prefer instant gratification and fun over studies or hard work. (Of course I’ve seen a few squishgmpers who study all the time, but that is Susie, Calvin’s arch-nemesis!)

Even if it is writing one’s blog when his project isn’t complete yet or even if it is playing Street Fighter IV (awesome game) when you have an exam on the day after, everything amounts to what the little guy says.

Where the heck are we going to get discipline from? To sit on something and do it? Is it that tough to attain it?

Yeah well, no point in getting philosophical I guess.

And its hard work writing this blog!

Before going to the analogy, let me first state what both these terms are.

On a piece of land, what do the miners do? They dig up the whole place, excavate and completely exploit the land. They make their fortune out of what all they gathered and finally leave the land a trash, moving on with their lives.

Farmers, on the other hand, what do they do? They take care of their land as a great gift. Nourishing and cultivating on the same piece of land taking care to never let the land lose its fertility. They live their life completely working on that land and even if not making a fortune, making enough to live and taking pride in their work.

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The above two terms apply to the computer industry nowadays too.

There are a group of people out there who make their own startup, do all the tricks and works to get a name for their company. And once this is accomplished, what do they do? They somehow get one of the hotshots out there to acquire them for a large amount of money. And they move on.

Again, on the other hand, there are another group of people who make their own startup and keep it running no matter what. People who don’t yield to the hotshots. People who actually run their company working day and night just for the love of maintaining what they have.

I’ll leave the analogy to you.

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Shalin Jain, the CEO of the Tenmiles Corporation, is one among the two. He bought land and made their own office building for their company out there. Working as a man who is the best at what he does, he follows where his life is leading him doing what he loves the most. Ladies and gentlemen, Shalin Jain is a farmer.

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This post comes from having a nice evening tea talk which I had with my brother. I love him and may God bless him. 🙂

Nothing special. It pumps water from our well to our water tank. It used to work really well and did not usually give us trouble. Until that day…

11th of May, night.

My sister’s wedding was the coming day. Suddenly all our pipes went dry. No water in our tank. The motor pump was put on but alas, water did not rise up and reach the tank.

The plumber was called immediately.

He diagnosed the pump as a doctor would a patient and found that the hose that carried water from the pump to the tank had broken at the joint.

FIRST JOINT!

He fixed it right away, lowered the pump back in, put on the  switch and viola! Water rose up the hose! He went.

Not half an hour had passed when the sound of a lot of water splashing was heard. I ran out to our well and what did I see? Water was falling into the well from the pump!! What? How the heck could that happen?? A quick look gave me the answer. The fixed joint was safe there. But the other joint, the joint of the hose (which carries water from the well to the pump through the foot valve) and the pump had come off and the water staying in the hose was flowing back out into the well.

SECOND JOINT!

The plumber was called immediately.

Pump pulled out. Joint fixed. Lowered back in. Switch put on. Water rose up. Five minutes later the water rose no more.

“Now what?”, asked all of us.

Looking into the well, (a lot of heads sticking into the circumference of the well mouth), we were again blessed with the answer. THERE WAS NO MORE WATER IN THE WELL!

Oh great. Fantastic. Absolutely wonderful.

Quick thoughts came from everyone to somehow get water to our tank. Someone even suggested drawing water from the neighboring well and pouring it into our tank. Thanks to some concerned members of our family that it was his last suggestion. Finally a hose was extended from the tank of our neighboring house to ours for a while and we got almost one full tank of water. Thank God! I used the toilet peacefully.

12th of May, morning.

Wedding day. Our neighbors put on the motor pump to pump water into our tank. And much too obviously, not a drop was reaching our tank! And why, you may ask. Now our neighbor’s pump was turning off due to over heating!

The plumber was called immediately.

Diagnosis – done. Problem – overheating. Solution – replace the motor! And guess which motor was going to replace it? Yup. Correct. Good guess.

So the motor pump from our well was lifted and dragged all the way back to our neighbor’s and it was set there. Switched on. Worked fine. Everyone happy. The plumber let go off a sigh of relief and went back home to straighten his back. We all had a nice laugh and the wedding day went by uneventfully.

13th of May, evening.

The ‘our motor in our own house’ policy was put forth by dad.

The plumber was called immediately.

Five of us lugged the darn thing back to our house and the plumber set it up successfully. Switched on. Worked fine. (Water had risen in the well by this time). Everyone happy. We teased the plumber telling him that we’d write a story of him and our motor (Although none of us thought I’d actually have to write it).

5 days later….

19th of May, early morning.

Motor pump was switched on by mom as she does everyday morning. About at 7.30, when dad tried the tap in the bathroom upstairs, it hissed.

“Ahoy there! Turn on the motor pump!”, shouted dad.

“But it IS already on!”, replied mom.

“Mayday! Turn it off. Something is wrong!”, said dad and he went to take a look at the well.

I woke up at 8.30. Went to the toilet. Answered nature’s calls gracefully, brushed and finally had to wet my hair to comb it. Just while thinking of it, the water from the pump slowly drained away and started hissing. I got out, hair all messed up and asked around why nobody had put on the motor pump yet. I soon found out the answer.

The foot valve had dropped off into the well from the edge of the hose!

THIRD JOINT!

The plumber was called immediately.

But this time, unfortunately for us, the plumber did not respond immediately. Suffice to say we had a nice day of drawing water from the well for all our daily needs.

Evening.

Dad grew tired of waiting and went and bought a new foot valve. He was about to fix it on his own when the plumber showed up. Dad made sure that the plumber felt sorry that he couldn’t make it any earlier. He fixed the new foot valve onto the hose. Pump lowered. Switched on. Working fine.

There was a pipe in the car porch that needed fixing too. The motor was switched off for a while for this. He fixed the pipe, got paid and was happily on his way.

The motor was put on again and we were eagerly waiting to feel the joy of seeing water flow from our pipes. And dad went upstairs to bath. He turned the tap and waited for a while. Not even a hissing sound was coming. It was enough for him to know that nothing was reaching the tank. But it wasn’t enough for the rest of us and we told him to wait. Five minutes later we heard a cry.

“STOP THE MOTOR!!!!!!!!!” It was dad. He had climbed onto the terrace and had taken a peek into the tank which revealed that nothing really was reaching it.

The plumber was called immediately.

One look did not reveal the problem this time. The whole thing was lifted up can you even guess what the problem was?

The foot valve actually consists of two halves. One half with the nozzle part to be fixed onto the hose and the other half with the actual valve. The second one is actually screwed onto the first through nine lines of threading.

THIS SECOND HALF OF THE NEWLY FIXED FOOT VALVE HAD SCREWED OFF AND FELL INTO THE WELL! HOW THE HELL IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE???

FOURTH JOINT!

And it took both my brother’s and the plumber’s strength to unscrew the old foot valve. How could a foot valve so tightly screwed together be unscrewed from within the well? We praised our motor.

It was fixed. The motor was put on and we have a full tank of water now.

I wait with lots of hope for tomorrow. 🙂

PS: I suggested we buy a new motor pump. Dad said, “Suppose your hand got wounded and you couldn’t use it, will you just kill yourself or try to heal your hand?” 🙂

First of all, the guys of my class!

Aj – The treasurer.

Arjun – Master blaster.

Bose – The CS compiler. 😀

Chellappan, Ponnappan – Mr. Smile and Mr. CS respectively.

Usbu –  A brother to me.

GKV – A singer and thinker.

Gori – Just like me. 🙂

Haresh – The pure, perfect, crystal clear veg.

Jansheed – The hot boy. 😛

Jayan – My neighbour and the cool one.

Kannan – Raw power.

Kunjunj – The experimenter.

Reppayi – Microprocessor (A very big one though :P)

Panju – Sports? Look no further.

Rahul – The biggest programmer among us. 🙂

Rambo Jinu – JH spice chairman, CEO, secretary, peon, sweeper and what all bloody titles there are left. 😀

Rithwik – Mr. Personality.

Sabareesh – Life is cool.

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Mansoor and Shahjahan. My MIC hostel roommates when I was repeating for entrance.

Arjun Vishnu and Deepu. My neighbours.

Shibin, Najeeb and Riyas. My hostelmates.

Shabeeb. My roommate.

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Hashim. My childhood friend my classmate and now my senior. He’s the best. God bless him. 🙂 🙂

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Also with the blessings of Manu Mohan (who worked really hard but just couldn’t make it),  Revathy (who actually called me up on April 12th!!), Don, Afaf, Pretty, Namitha, Poornima and Varun (miss him). My classmates.

Also with the blessings of Ishaq (my neighbour and MIC hostelmate) and Anees (the guy with attitude 😛 . My college mate)

My sister’s wedding will be an everlasting one in my memory. To have done my part in it gives me a sense of responsibility and confidence. But what was lacking was given to me by everyone above. Especially those who took the trouble to come and bless the occasion.

It is sad that certain people whom I expected the most did not turn up. Also not even one of the girls in my class showed up. Not even those who were close to my home.

Well, but words can’t express the happiness I felt on seeing the gang that made to the legendary city EMC (Edappal Metropolitan City) and they made my day. 🙂

PS: I won’t be forgetting the way all of them ate in a hurry. 😀 😀

The dudes!!!

The wedding is over and I wait for the next time we can all be together for a celebration. 🙂