Made in Italy

I got a call from Srikar yesterday that his new Linea was in. Though I’ve seen enough pictures and ads of it, I couldn’t wait to see the real thing. A jam session was the perfect excuse to feel the new leather in the car and of course I was desperate for a jam session too.. Finally today, the black thing rolled into my street, maybe one of the first few in Hyderabad, and my first sighting. I wanted to peep at it from the 4^th floor itself, but I held myself till I got to the bottom. The first look was from the rear as he drove it into a tiny lane opposite my apartment. When I saw the rear lamps, I knew I was blown away. The amp that I was carrying nearly slipped from my hands. I just couldn’t take in the size of it. The real thing is always the real thing. No substitutes can take its place. All I could see was the huge logo and stylish tail lamps. He opened the boot and I was blown away once again. Clearly one of the largest boots among the cars around, we fit in all our equipment, four guitars, 2 amps and a few covers, and it still had like place for a whole person to sleep in. Maybe one can host a party in that boot. Once the guitars were in, it was time to check out the rest of the car. I moved to the front of the car, and for a brief moment I thought I lost my vision. My brain shut off for a nano second and restarted. All I could register was, “Drive me, or else I’ll slit your throat”. It was just like Srikar mentioned. It reminded me of the famous Mafia stories from Italy. The superb grill reminded me a lot of Maserati and the nose was jutting out beautifully finishing that slow taper from rear to front. Finally it was time to step in.

 

Once I got in, I was in another world. I didn’t know when he started the engine, or whether the engine was on all the time, I just couldn’t feel it. While he backed, I still couldn’t make out whether the engine was on. Finally when he revved it up a bit, I could hear a faint sound, the sound that comes when my Zen is just on and not running, and vibration? What’s vibration, there’s no such word in the Linea Dictionary, not at low nor higher speeds. Yeah I read a lot that it’s slower and underpowered compared to other cars, but in a city where the average speed meanders around 15 Kmph, even an F1 car can lose to a cyclist. The ride for our new Jamming Place was simply awesome. I just didn’t feel like we traveled 20 odd kilometers though Srikar drove extremely cautiously and it took a good 45 min to get there. Meantime he made a few calls with his car’s voice-detection feature that connects to the phone and makes the calls. And the music was a good experience too. There were so many customizable stuff that I couldn’t count. I wonder what car gets so many features for such pricing. The jam session was a disaster with the power department cutting us out exactly at a time when we were getting into the groove. We left almost as silently as we left, not before a splash at McD’s. The car was parked next to a ‘Beamer’ as we call it, and I felt the Italy vs. Germany game was won by the Linea. The traffic was as crazy as ever, and I observed a new thing today. The pillon riders of almost 90% of the bikes turned around atleast once for a look at the car. Finally when we reached home and I reluctantly got out, a few guys stepped over and started asking questions about the car. “Excuse me, what’s the mileage of this car?” “What is the cost?” “What is this?” “What is that?”. I was too busy unloading the guitars while Srikar had to go through that grueling ‘interview’. And he left. Happily tucked away inside the Linea… I could last see it’s rear ‘eyes’ saying, “I’ll come tomorrow too”. A mafia don with a soft heart, Made in Italy.

Rags to Riches !!

Well, yeah. Everyone catches the fever. The Oscar fever. I came across a recent poll where more people said these awards are not the ultimate, yet the whole excitement that leads up to the award function is way too much, and everybody is excited. Now that doesn’t exactly depend on whether a so-called ‘Indian’ film is nominated or not. The excitement has always been there, at least in a select group. Today I saw Slumdog sweep away most of the awards just like it has been doing over the last few months. While the film talks about a rags-to-riches story, the making of the film itself is another such story. The confessions were clear. There was not much money put into it. They had to shoot with smaller cameras maybe because of lack of space, or lack of money or whatever. The hope was there and it paid off.

 

Ofcourse we have once again, like we always do, divided ourselves over this ‘issue’. Rather, we made it an issue and divided ourselves over it. There’s one group who claims the movie to be Indian and another which claims the movie to be using a ‘wrong’ word to describe the slums. Now as usual, I have to disagree with both of them, and the reasons are obvious. Yeah, the story is Indian, about India, written by an Indian, and yet shot by a British, with a complete British crew except a few who were again Indian, and Rahman famously sitting amongst them including Anil Kapoor and the kids and few more. It’s more like a mix of both. It’s more of a debatable type rather than something affirmative. So lets rather leave it at that. And the second issue is rather silly. So its better I leave it out before starting on it.

 

But this isn’t the time to talk issues. The entire nation is celebrating the fact that A R Rahman won not one but two Oscars and that can be safely said ‘It’s a win for India and for Indian music’. Another Audio related category was taken by an Indian too, which is again a matter of pride. It’s actually come a bit too late to start off with but, this is another thing there’s no point in talking about. And, there’s no point in talking about the ceremony too coz most of the world would have seen it head to toe and there’s no need to re-view it once again!! Nothing will change anything. For once Rahman’s music has taken the global scene by storm, something that could have happened a long time ago as some of his earliest pieces are still nostalgic masterpieces. Better late than never. So I sign off bowing with my hat off (assume it was there), for Indian Music.

Blessing in Disguise

A Photoshop junkie I was, some time ago and then suddenly, just like it came, it disappeared from my life. And just like it disappeared without a trace, it came back like it never was gone. Thanks to this so called Tech-something fest in the college, I got a good chance to get back to one of my most interesting hobbies. But it came with an added weight. No time and no ideas. I literally had to do everything by myself. Though I haven’t done much, the other more important things going on right now would mean that there would be hardly any time for all this designing and stuff. It’s all up to me to ‘create’ time, like it’s possible!?!

 

It’s a welcome change though. All those tools and brushes (my fav, everybody’s fav!) and fonts, etc, kind of made me nostalgic for a few moments. I felt happy to be back, like coming home after travelling in alien worlds. It’s only a matter of clicking about 5-6 times to come out with an exquisite design for t-shirts or posters or whatever. But those 5-6 clicks are what drill the brain to the core. The colours, the opacity, the positions, the sizes, the fonts, everything matters. It’s the difference between an over-filled messy poster to a contemporary looking minimalist artwork. I always loved this software, and will continue to do so forever !! This college fest gave me a reason to get back to what I like the most, a blessing in disguise !!

City of the Dam (ed)

Ah. I should be surprised I am able to actually post today, but it's good that I am. Today was one of my longest days this year with me waking up at 5:30am, and getting ready for a long ride. With Srikar's family, I took off to the famously dry Nagarjuna Sagar Dam(n). Just as we were about to start from my place we came across an accident site where a badly damaged Fabia was sitting and 2-3 ambulances were screaming away. What a start! (I later found out that the car rammed into 2 vehicles, Injured 2 people and killed a traffic cop, call it Road Rage? Its Road Outrage!!)

More than 150KM away it didn't look like a piece of cake to me. But for Srikar, it was, with icing and cherries. We travelled at crazy speeds considering the Zen we were going in, and the roads that we experienced. The roads were smooth, but not flat. At a point when we were doing over 130, we hit a sudden mini hill and the car nearly took off. It stuck to the ground thanks to the lack of lift. A few of those take-offs reminded me of Rally racing. We reached the place pretty quickly but had to wait for the 'elders' to come as they were travelling in an apparently slower car.

Once we got closer, the blood was gushing, unlike the clam water. We could see the dam from far far away. There's only one word for the whole thing, Huge. We were literally standing miles away from the dam, but it felt so close and so huge. I felt it a little disorienting to take in all that size. People are only ants in front of it. The many gates and the huge reservoir behind, I was struck because it was the first time. We had a 'small' boating trip that consumed 2 hours but gave me a chance for some good photographs. The lunch was very good and I kind of ate beyond my normal capacity. The facilities were pretty good, and the Launch Station as it is called was well maintained and neat. Good job by the tourism department I guess. But the disappointment of the day was the dam(n) itself. The water level was way too low, and it wasn't very exciting to see the gates dry and waterless, once we got through the initial rush of excitement. Otherwise, the whole trip was great fun, though I feel extremely guilty that I missed the Chairman's Trophy Football matches in the college. I came to know that the games were more humourous than anything else, and the whole thing was like eating a candy. Our team won with almost no effort. While I was enjoying 150 KM away, my team were enjoying too, steamrolling over the opponents.

We travelled more than 300KM by the end of the day, and I knew my capacity of taking in any more was over. I was exhausted totally, and when home came nearer, I got eager. But my worries were far from over. A Sunday meant the next day is all about work. And that work is about this 'heavy' Rain Erosion Test for which I have to travel 30KM from home. Sigh...

Hope my photographs came out fine. I was a bit bad with the exposure settings today, and screwed up many good shots. But they can be retouched anytime ofcourse. And with this, my day ends in peace and calm.

Youth of the Nation

There was a time I was vexed with the word youth. It had all the wrong meanings, courtesy, our movies. Fighting, habits, addictions, instability, power, greed, aggression, all associated with youth. I was particularly irritated with guys using the word 'youth' to start up some new excuse to beat up others, or destroy properties, or start riots and protests. What I didn't realise was that this word 'youth' doesn't talk about all the youth. In other words, the youth who call themselves 'the youth' aren't all the youth of the nation (talking about India). That word cannot include everyone from this energetic age-group. I was forgetting a tiny fact that I was part of this age-group too, so why wasn't I like that? Why am I not like that?

Answer? Simple. We are in a frustrating age of development. We are confused about what we should keep with us, and what to discard. Imagine moving to a new house, and you spend hours or even days deciding what to throw away. Now the 'youth' are stuck in a situation like this. We want to globalize. We want to live with the rest of the world and yet we are taught to live like how people used to live over a hundred years ago. The brainwash is from 2 sides. From the rest of the world and from the ancient times. This confusion is leading to particularly dangerous situations that are mostly tragic or outrageous to say the least. Today we have women trying mightily hard to establish an identity of their own without those 'forced-upon' last names, something that is a globally accepted thing. Somehow back here, we have people who don't have that tolerance. We have people who believe in the traditional way of seeing them 24X7 in 'serivce'. That's not a clash of good vs. bad. It's just a old vs. new war. But this war is like a real war. There's fighting, hitting, pushing, dragging, etc. Is it necessary for us?

I thought young people are plain young people. But clearly I was wrong. Young people are people learning things from other, possibly older people. Now what we learn is completely left to our choice. We can choose to earn or beg or party or fight. Ultimately it comes down to what's in the mind. I see the whole group split into a 2 sided coin. The broad minded(BM) and narrow minded(NM) people. Each can't tolerate the other. While the BM try every new thing, and take in all they can, the NM can't stand change. The whole world is undergoing change. Change is the trend, Change is in Vouge. And we have these NM people unable to bear these 'changes'. Like an animal's natural instinct, they have 2 choices. To fight or to flee. Their choice was to fight, and they fight. They fight today, and they will try to fight tomorrow too. Every damn new thing is taboo. Either it's against culture or religion or tradition. 3 things that we have assumed by ourselves. 3 things that have no credible base or proof. 3 things that grew up through stories and epics. 3 things that no one can say, "I own this, what I say is final". 3 things that cannot and 'should not' be enforced upon anyone. Today's divided youth is in war because of these 3 things. There are a few who do not want to give too much importance to them because they are obviously interfering with the 30-hours-fitted-into-24 life. And there are a few who live only for these things. But stupid as it may sound, there are a few who know nothing of the importance of tradition and culture, but simply tags themselves with it because they are getting paid to do things they never would have imagined of. Thats a small community that's trying to enforce these things upon the rest of world. Isn't that against the very constitution? And they are young people who represent the 'youth of the nation'. Ofcourse all those publicity tricks can only be taught to them by their big daddies, who hide behind the scenes and smirk. Are those Pub-going women trying to force all the other women to socialise and drink (as if there's something wrong with it if men can do it)? Are those 'I-like-public-display-of-affection' people forcing others to publicly display affection? No they are not, and they are a small group themselves who are not concerned much about how the rest of the world is reacting to it. They are young people too. How is it that within the same country, we have varieties of young people clashing against each other? One dives straight into terrorism, one becomes a CEO, one becomes a hooligan, and one attempts to live by his own little principles. They have all been taught the same basics, but something in between changed. Maybe an event or a person. But that point in their life was the point of their life.

We have powerful youth who can destroy properties and beat up people, and we have even more powerful youth who can fight back with simple gestures like 'pink chaddis'. It's no time to flee. This war is no more that old vs. new misunderstanding. It's been converted into a bad vs. good extermination for either the sake of money or publicity or whatever hellish idea. Whatever we saw till today taught us, and if we are still not interested to learn from them, then nothing can stop the world from falling apart, and there will no more pride in associating with the word 'Youth'.

The Psychological Landmark

Twenty years of life has gone by. Ah… twenty is nothing. For an 80 year old, 20 is nothing. But for a 20 year old, 20 is everything, and the only thing. This post should have come many months ago, but my 20 something brain wanted to know more. After stepping out of those so called teens, a fourth dimension has been added to everything I see and observe. It’s common knowledge that when one enters the teen life, a whole new universe is discovered. There’s suddenly a need for attention and yet independence. A monster is born within, a monster that wants an answer and reason to everything. A monster that wants to challenge and protest every trickle of doubt and questioning. A monster that is impatient. A monster that jumps tracks and signals without a care in the world. A monster that wants to stand up against every command and demand. A monster that wants to have all the say. A monster that wants everyone else to listen. A monster that thinks its view is the only right thing in the world. A monster that wants to serve no one but wants to be served. An adventurous monster.

 

Now, all that has changed. It was the psychological landmark that changed everything. Going past those numbers that contain the word ‘teen’, things suddenly seem to be having another side, and another story. Seriousness and patience dominate every decision made and that’s something that’s a sharp contrast to the before 19 life. Now that I have crossed that psychological landmark, I can actually experience that change. It feels good to be more patient, more stable, and more cautious. The weirdest thing in all this is, it’s not something we learn. It’s automatic. It just comes. The point at which change makes its way varies from person to person, but it does happen. Events in life seem occur in such a way that, certain lessons are learnt and the brain starts to change. It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle that seems to be getting clearer as we manage to relate and place all the pieces…

 

Jigsaw puzzle aside, my current project seems to be a bigger and more intricate puzzle that’s getting vaguer day by day. So instead of talking crap, its better I do move away from this dreamy, hypothetical psychological landmark and start applying it in the real world to see if it works.

First look into the Future

Today, finally, we had the first peep into what we could be doing over the coming month or so, or maybe even after that for a few. After a 2 week toiling, we got the ‘temporary’ entry passes at the Research Centre and were given a brief idea of what our project deals with. There was too much to take in. The amount of effort that we are supposed to put in is way too much after having a very mild 4 year study experience. We are suddenly required to recap huge chunks of structures, CFD, and materials all in a few days. Moreover before even starting the project and getting an abstract, we already have homework. A huge title to deal with in the first place, we were given a few drawings containing a few details about our project and we were asked to calculate stuff like bending moment, shear loads, centrifugal loads (rotating arm), lift-drag forces and coefficients on paper, and a first static deflection and flow analysis run on software. The real tricky part is, all this has to be completed by Monday. If it were all given to us before, it would have been easy, but then things aren’t made to be so easy. We are supposed to research on the materials and try out different lengths to obtain a specified RPM so that a balance between the weight and strength is found. For us, who assumed Engineering life is all about fun and vacation, all this feels like the same 100000 Pa of pressure on the head, like my previous post.

 

That was one side of the story. The bad part. Now comes the better part about what we got to see in there. The test facility we are doing the project in, had some interesting vibration testing machines, along with a few centrifuges to create Gs up to 80 !!!! When one of them was looking like it was going slow, the G value was 35 !! It didn’t look practical in any sense… Moreover we also paid a visit to the area where another group of friends was doing their project. That place was another museum for us. The missile warheads were strewn around like how the guitars are, in my room. A mighty missile of real scale was lying horizontally in that huge test facility, maybe ready to undergo a big systems test. Everything was huge, and though it’s been 2 weeks of experience, we are still unable to adjust to the titanic size of everything. It might take us another month, by when our project should be completed.

That brings me back to my first real, serious homework in 6 years !! I gotta run for work. I might not fall asleep tonight because of those hauntingly beautiful images of the missiles and their systems… sadly my project does not deal with them. Boo Hoo! I am jealous.

100000 Pa of Pressure

I don’t know why the term used is pressure head, but as of now, the pressure on my head is extreme. Just after completing the weirdest set of internal examinations, our great mentors drop us down another bottomless pit. The same afternoon (3^rd Feb), we were in for shock after shock. First thing the so-called Final Project’s so-called Seminar was supposed to be held on 4^th. My group took a whole week just to get clearance from the security at DRDO and before even discussing the details about any project, we were asked to submit an abstract along with a presentation of our ‘progress’. We took a whole half hour to recover and against our will, went and begged our lecturer to extend the date by a few days. After some letter writing and being on the receiving end of some ‘lessons’ we managed to get the date extended. Just when we were about to heave a sigh of relief, another blow took all the breath out of us. He gave us some kind of a weird option to save ourselves from losing marks.

 

An option that seems something like when you’re hanging off a cliff and a single rope is holding you, you are given a Knife to save yourself !!

 

We were forced to give our mini-project presentation on 4^th in order to avoid losing of marks, and with that, our date for the final project would be extended. It looked like death either way, so we chose to take a risk by cutting off the rope and hoping that the fall would be broken by something soft. We chose to give the mini-project presentation with hardly 5-6 hours of preparation time in our hands. Within minutes, Chakradhar and I decided it was time for some serious hard-work. We rushed to my home as soon as we could and started off on the presentation. My weird hatred towards Microsoft’s Powerpoint and extreme liking towards Flash bugged him a lot, but he had to yield. Thankfully, we quickly found all our back up files and images and rushed forward to finish in time. We had about 5 hours in hand. We used all of them with an extra hour (6 hours total) and managed to get to the end of it. I couldn’t actually believe that we managed to finish it in time. It’s really true that when one is determined to do something or make something happen, it does happen. But that was only half of the ‘save-our-selves’ plan. We hadn’t prepared about what we would talk and because of the high amount of time spent in designing the presentation, we had to forego the speaking rehearsal. We decided to take a direct shot at it once and for all. I was extremely nervous about this because the closest I came to speaking in front of an audience was almost exactly an year ago, in Goa. Chaky had no such experience whatsoever. We both knew our flaws and the only strategy was to avoid them.

 

The day came and we watched a few presentations that weren’t so impressive. When our turn came, I was shaking from head to toe. I was to give the introduction to the project and he would continue from there. I stepped forward and noticed that only 3 people were listening. One was Raj and the others were lecturers. I gathered up all I could and started speaking. I started off awkwardly, not knowing where to breathe in and out. Sometimes words got cut coming out because I was trying to gulp or breathe. I missed many points that I planned for and in no time, it was Chaky’s turn to speak. He stepped forward and nearly saved the day for us. He gave a nice throw to his voice and spoke confidently, all this being a first-timer. Sometimes he screwed up ending up confusing the lecturers and himself, but overall, our presentation was much too better compared to the others given that we had only 5-6 hours to do the whole thing. The response from the 3 people looked positive, and so I was satisfied, though the amount of marks we could get for that is still a mystery. Moreover we were later told that this presentation was only to see how people were talking. The real presentation is yet to come. Another Blow ??

 

Yeah, considering the fact that we now have about 5 days remaining before we can present the first draft of the final project and here I am typing away like I have the time of my life without even having the basic requirement of an abstract for the presentation, the pressure on us can go only one way, up, and directed downwards, on our heads.

Memories from the Bench

It was Day 2 of our incredible run in the Soccer Tournament. We were to play the MGIT team which grew in strength compared to 2 years ago when we played them for fun. We lost 7-1 to them back then, yet I expected a better result this time as we had a well-knit team. The venue now shifted outside the local pool and we were in JNTU to play the last set of matches. The day started off early for us because of the distance of the venue from home. The match kicked off and it was more than satisfying to watch from the bench (again). We dominated the first half completely. The ball was in their court for about 90% of the time and we finally got the break-though with Chaky the star scoring after a long long break. We were ecstatic when the goal was scored and jumped around crazily. We continued to dominate the game and though a few good chances were thrown away, I felt satisfied by the way the team played. The defense still made mistakes resulting in a few scary moments but we pulled it off with a clean sheet.

 

The semi-final spot was ours and we were to play a tough team from Nizams. By then our team achieved some kinda over-night star status and had a big bunch of students and administration for support. Sadly we couldn’t live upto the promise of making it to the final after a really really hard struggle to keep a clean sheet against Nizams. The entire focus was on defense as the opponents were attacking with mighty force. We were outdone in all speed, power and strength. As an inexperienced team we had lower stamina and physically were much smaller than them which was a huge disadvantage for us. I personally know a few members from their team as we met during some of our ‘fun’ matches. Those guys could single-handedly outrun even 4-5 players at once. When I saw them in the team I knew we were in for some serious thrashing. We fought hard to keep the ball out of the goal, and actually did well. Though it paid off, we couldn’t score a goal. It was down to the penalties to decide the result. A penalties decider simply spells doom for an inexperienced side like ours and we gave up the fight there. We made a silent exit from the tournament after moving up so well. I was pleased to see the dedication from the players, and I wish I could have contributed to side.

 

But the amazing thing is we wouldn’t have even dared to dream of a semi-final spot a year ago. It was the strengthened team largely due to the first-years (mostly from Aero) that took us this far and I am sure will go much further in the coming years, though I might not be able to witness all that. It was what we were dreaming of from the first year, to play in a major tournament and go at least this far. We did it at last fortunately just before leaving, and it’s more than what I could have asked for. Long Live, my team!!