SANDS OF TIME...

a time
slipping out of hands
an age
whisking away
moments of happiness
trapped in sands
and dreams
still rolling in hay
for the broken dreams
i sing this lullaby today
breathless and torn inside
this gloomy day

i could feel myself growing older
i could possibly be failing
if i had something else to gain
it was you
who made me feel the rain
breathless and torn now
i could feel myself turning into dust...
two strangers turning into dust...

greived and compucted
my contrite conscience
keeps banging inside
in defiance
i could feel the touch turning into dust..
two strangers turning into dust

balmy evenings
starry nights
still hold me stupified
heavens pity my plight
i could feel myself under your faith
but now i'm fading
fading into dust
i could feel my eyes turning into dust..
two strangers turning into dust

still falling
breathless and torn again
to watch it all
go up in flames
still falling
walking this road again
taking each day as it arrives
midnight diamonds stud my heaven
the warm winds that embrace me
just as surely kissed your face
i could feel that face turning into dust..
two strangers who turned into dust...

TRAINing TRAVAILS!!!

Statuary warning:This may seem like an arduously long post to read...srry abt that...u may skip it if u arent that intersted in getting an insight into the corporate world!!



Now that the summer vacations are poised at the tip of the knife,i thought i'd mull over on how i'v spent all these 2 months ,and the most significant thing i seemed to have done was the fully-faltoo training ...a gruelling 9 to 6 shift with not less than 5 hrs of chatting everyday!!!(pheww!!)...i wish i'd worked on something tangible ,but sadly inspite of sincerely pleading the guys to gimme sumthin ,i was constantly sidelined.... pretty lame experience i'd say ...though i still managed to learn first hand what goes on in the famed software companies here in India ,the work culture ,and a peek-a -boo into what exactly goes on in the senior manager's office(read on to know more)...

The very first day that i stepped into that company after having found a chartered bus which would ferry me to work everyday ,and flirtin a bit with the 4 girls goin to their college who accompanied me on that day-sadly the last working day of their college b4 goin off for summer vacations -i was handed a big HR MANUAL stating the rules and regulation that i was supposed to flout ,the work ethics which were never meant to be followed by an IITian , the rules concerning leaves and probation -which had nthin to do with the nature of my work(given the fact that i had already made up my mind to attend just 3 days of office in a week!!) , and the history of the company whose resources i was abt to slander for the coming one month !!!

It was followed by an HR personnel givin me a short lecture on how the company came into being and the aims and aspirations the company desires to acheive -an asinine repetition of the HR manual - and was followed by apocryphal praise for the IIT system and IITians in particular (oh! heck, i was feeling like a goat who was about to be slaughtered!!)...All this in a period of 3 hours and i'd not hesitate to admit that i was feeling a little giddy by now!!!
i was shorlty taken to the floor where the software developers sat in front of their computer screens doin some crazy stuff i couldnt understand -though i later came to know that it was called .NET!!!

The first day passed without nthin substantial -i was made to sit at a corner and told precariously that this is what every1 does on the first day at work !!! Obviously i did nthin much apart frm observing .The days which followed were too agonozing -and most people even know about my agony-as i was handed a 64 MB RAM comp with windows XP loaded ,and with the capability of bringing the most advanced supercomputer in the world to shame with its antics .I noted the exact time it took to boot-20 mins ,time taken to create a new folder -15 mins,time taken to open internet explorer - 30 mins (that is ,if one was lucky enough to get the IE window before the comp restarted!! )..


The first week passed very swiftly ,what with most of the time being spent on booting and opening a bloody IE window!!They gave me a newer comp later on,but that first week itslef was enough for me to observe a lotta things...

this is what the hierarchy looks like in a software company,or rather i'll personalize it with my own experiece(starting from the top) -

1.The CEO :Is supposed to be that highly qualified guy holding zillions of degrees from all over the world ,and is supposed to meet clients,handle the paper work and everything that involves none of the degrees' expertise that he's gained all these years ...only the work teaches you here in the tricks of the trade..

The CEO of this company was a tall guy with a slightly bulging belly ,but surprisingly young-in his early 30s- and charismatic and had a typical british accent which he had procured after spending his childhood in London. It was a treat to watch him pass orders at his subordinates, all of them more than double his age !! It seems this guy spends half his time in the UK division and half in the indian one.. My encounter with him occured at a very late stage of my training ,and the very first thing he said was-" Oh! great ,people from IIT are finally stepping into our company ..he's our wonder boy,put him into my personal software division -its more fun there!! "..and everyday after that he'd cheerfully ask me -"Hey wonder boy -hows it goin huh!!! " ,and since i wasnt doin any work virtually all i could give was a decent smile and a thought insise my head -"Dude,i'll wear a blue undie over my pants tomorrow -with 'W' printed on it ...then u call me wonder boy!!!"

2. The Senior Manager : He was guy from IIT (the only one in that company frm the 'prestigious' insti )-a man in his late 40s -and since i had the privilege of spending a considerable amount of time in his cabin on two occasions -i know that his work was limited to forwarding emails (the ones with silly jokes and idiotic photos) to the employees , drinking coffe more than 5 times a day ,passing orders to the HR manager ,listenining to the orders from the CEO ,making phone calls ,and stuff like that which i guess deserves no more than a few thousnd rupees a month .heck ! what a waste of a degree from IIT!! The last time when i met him he promised to put me in a good project-and for the next half an hour he kept on browsing all the floors of the building ...I ambled along ,albeit with no success!!

3. The CTO: The chief technical officer ,my foot- He should be called the chief Tymepass officer!!! Thats coz most of the times i saw him in his cabin -he was playin solitaire ,wasting his 70,000 ka laptop!! Doesnt he know that there are better games in the market than solitaire!!! ;) ,and then with a routine which includes drinkin milk 2 times a day ,he sure seemed like a lunatic stuck in the wrong place .
On a more serious note ,his only duty was of an advisory nature -to get the innovators out of the most serious loopholes ever encountered in programming history and to tell them what to do,to start with!!

The first time i talked to him , he was like -" what have u learned at IIT??" ,with me half conteplating to say -"nothing at all". the second tym i talked to him was when he gave me something to do,for a change ,but to my utter displeasure -he told me to make a prog to read the file and directory structure faster than windows (phew -with those big geeks at his disposal ,when bill gates and steve balmer couldnt do it,howd some1 lyk me do it ??) ,and obviosuly it did little to assuage my woes!!

The last tym i talked to him ,he was fuming with anger...bt i wasnt complaining,i had a nice tym orkutting and chatting!!

4. The HR manager : A weird lady ,but newayz amiable and with talked with a friendly disposition ,i guess had all the qualities which are prerequisites for being an HR manager ...though wasnt very smart and good-looking !!
Didnt have much of an acquaintanceship with her ..though she acted as my complaint box ,one which had no outlet and so my complaints lay almost in a state of decay until they were looked after!!

5. The project manager /Lead Innovator: was a tall,bloated guy and looked cockeyed most of the times!! Was very busy ,and most of the times on the run -he was supposed to be the guiding light fr all the innovators ,and had to virtually spoon feed them for every small things

6. The innovators /Trainees : Was a bunch of unusal people ,though very friendly .Most of them ,or rather all of them held a postgraduate degree in MCA or M.Sc. and none of them had graduated with a B.Tech-that made me the only B.Tech guy ..the team consisted mostly of guys ,and there were about 6-7 girls too-although they were fulltoo brickheads!! Apart from the ardous task of programming all day long ,even the innovators didnt hold back frm chatting once in a while with their GTalk windows minimized ,and even among themselves they chatted throughout the office hours!! Every1 of them had orkut accounts ,and although it was blocked ,i had found a proxy and so,the orkut bug had surfaced what with me on the prowl!! All of them seemed rather dissatisfied with ther pay figures and half of them were giving interviews to other prospective employers already .the most senior employee in the company was employed for just over 6 months,and that is proof enough of the growing discontempt among the software company employees ... Though the sight when a new female employee was inducted into the team was remniscent of the IITs -people tryin to catch a glimpse of that mew girl ,and envying the one who gets to be the first to ask her for a coffee,or the one who sits near her table!!!

I enjoyed thoroughly with them ,all being very supportive and helpful ,quite unlike the people at IIT ,and those gossips at the luch table still gets me in splits when I think of em !! The girls were cool too -though i still wonder how in the world they had never heard of IITs .Then there were those guys whi had taken it to be their birth right to tease the female employees ,and i became one of em!!

7.The caretakers: Life without them in a corporate is simply unimaginable ...From simple chores like cleaning cups and saucers to mundane issues lyk providing 'bournvita' to the CTO two times a day ,and even important issues lyk upkeep of hygiene at the workplace nd bringing in lunch ordered by the employees -the caretakers form an inseperable part of the office workforce...
This particular guy at the SMX global office fr was assidous and perky one with antics which made me cast serious aspersions on his sexuality...and if u've ever seen Karan johar laughing u'll know what i'm hinting here ...Though in ne case he was afffable ,and easy to talk to,and most importantly did what he was supposed to-care !!

Out and out ,I'd say twas a very good experience ,although accompanied by a lotta boredom ,and non-productivity!! But i dare say i'd rather not wanna get stuck in such a workplace in a position lower than the CEO!!! hehe...i guess its askin too much and however paranoid it mite sound ,but now that i've been there ,done that i'd make sure I dont land up at such a place ever-and no offecnce meant,by such a place i mean one where the employees dnt know what they are doin before they consult a zillion web pages via google,and ones which hate the company and still have no other alternative in hindsight!!!

A Criminals Guide To Courtesy

The readers of this blog and my dear friends will be glad to know that - given the recent spate of car blast attempts and other terrorist activities going on around the world in celebration of the "umpteenth year of the jehad revolution" and even as the Al Qaida struggles to formulate its own 123 agreement with the US to acquire the latest nuclear technology for a "rapid and succesful attempt at wipe out of human civilization"- i just wrote a complete book titled "Every Criminal's Guide to Courtesy",with the subtitle -"Tips for Terrorists and Deportment for Desperados" .The book will be made of specimen conversations to suit every situation. The criminal who buys ,or intends to buy,a volume of it ,never needs to fear the awkward pauses which so frequently occur when one is caught in the act of burglary or murder,or homicide,or even when one is one the verge of dying after a succesful attempt at suicide bombing the nearby grocery shop!!

I append a sample.We will suppose for an instance,that the terrorist wants to abstract a nuclear warhead from under president Bush's nose while he's sleeping comfortably in his appt at the White House and after a much life-threatening and excruciatingly tough ,yet succesflu attempt at evading the security with their sniffer monkeys in tow,he has entered the presidents bedroom and the following conversation takes place..

Terrorist(coughs)

Bush(startled ,or seems to be):Aye ,i say whats the matter ??? (starts snoring again!!)

[Terrorist(coughs again).Bush sits up]

Terrorist:(insiniuatingly):A thousand apologies ,my dear sir,to break in on that sleep,which as they rightly say gives u the energy to a lead a country full of buffoons like ye.But ,business is business ,and in these days of hustle and jehadi competition ,it behoves a man to be first in the race. Thus ,knowing the fact that allah-hu-akhtar-rahim-ul-rehman-e-rahim(a proffesional rival of mine) has his eyes set on ur nuclear warhead, I hastened to call on you before he could do so

Bush:Help!! Condoleeza help!!! Terror attack!! Save thy souls!! Bah!bah! Black sheep...

Terrorist:Please sir,may i request your honouerable tongue to save its honour and ,my rancour,and get back to sitting patiently in that mouth of yours,sir. I hate to talk shop,but i follow it my duty to tell u that my revolver is loaded.Shall we allow it to remain so??Precisely.To proceed then ,the fame of your nuclear warhead,my dear sir, has rung through the Islamic world. Every terrorist in the proffesion is after it.And when i tell you that i have had to bring myself up here through the bedroom window of a perfect stranger,sleepin in polka dots undies even when he possesses Tuxedos worth millions and pyjamas worth a collectors' dream, I need scarcely add further evidence of my eagerness to possess the treasure I have mentioned. You can spare a little of it. A remote control?? A cross-section of it perhaps??

Come this is niggardly my dear sir. To you it is luxury.But to me,it is a bare necessity. I'll tell you why.

I have my living to earn . How would you suppose I can keep my wife in the style to which she has been accustomed-wearing silken burkas made outta the hides of the rich n famous people of the white man's lands and dyed in black,and not just that ,wearing lingerie that would envy even the most dare -to-bare -with-arms-wide-open-actresses of hollywood- if every1 was as unreasonable as you?? How do you suppose I can let my son study in the most splendid terrorist school in the mountains,studded with fleash-eating fundamentalists as their proffesors,and ,who other than Osama as its principal....

Bush(interrupting and fairly startled): What ,OSAMA!!! What the....

Terrorist:Oh,come sir,now dont let me bring out my heavy rocket launcher -i'll not be able to bear its weight for long so it wont take too long for me to fire a flaming shot.So ,where were we..Ah!! yes,and how do you suppose i can buy the best AK-47s for my elder son outta the state artilery.
Now some people keep their nuclear warheads under the ----No??In the chest of drawers?? Inside your bum which seems to me a bit swelling right now?? Constipation,eh??

Bush(farting):Oops!!

Terrorist:(with an expression of disgust):Ahh!!U mannerless farting punk..How did you come to be the president,I could've been a better candidate! I can outdo you in farting any day!!
Now,my very dear sir,joking apart,where is it?? Did i mention the revolver was loaded?
Thank you,Thank you. Under that weird thing you call your bead.Ah!A thousand thanks to you sir. May i trouble you to give an autograph of yours on it,sir! My wife will be deighted to have it.Ah!! There..A million thanks,sir. Goodnite,a very goodnite to you
[exits through the window]

This is but one specimen. I shall spare no efforts in makin the rest of the book of equal merit .If after next publishing season,there remains one Terrorist/criminal who isnt a perfect gentleman,then it will be because he is too impecinous or too stingy to spend 1 dollars and 60 cents on the work authored by yours,AUPSY aka Ayushman Jain

Go!! GOA

Here i am once again after a long tym...n my absence would be obvious to those who know that i was outta town...and pampering myself in the picturusque surroundings of goa,had no intensions whatsoever to take to the internet even though i had the facility to do so at my disposition... Not that i'm addicted to the net and i needed a rehab ....just for a change i thought i can delve into the real world which seemed more like heaven for the 10 days that i was in goa...
And since i've nothin else to write about ,i thought why nt throw some light on the only place i'd rather wanna go to in india-and that's goa!!(I'm not the new agent of goa tourism...so i'm nt promotin that place...i dnt even give a shit if u start hating that place after reading my awful travel guide...i'm just wasting tym-urz and mine too!!!! U can take that as a statuary warning before goin ahead!!)

The sea and the sand



Now this is the most obvious and enticing part of any tourist's iternarary(hope i got the spelling right!!) at a place like goa... and somethin that gives us that fresh air frm the sea before it is breathed and thrown out by the 1 billion ppl in India,and then polluted by more than half the no. of vehicles with more gases than u ever smelled in ur chemistry lab,and then recycled into a poisonous mass by our industries!! Ahh...the feeling with that cool sea breeze slapping at my face incessantly is simply out of the world and can anyday releive all the fatigue,and stress that life has burdened me with...

And its not just the wind which makes me feel cockeyed, its also the sensation when u walk on sand with ur bare feet ,and let the sea wash away that very sand as it comes and goes...that sinking feeling is so darn undescribable...
To top it all,there are alwaz those hot firang babes around and there's no harm(sayin it with the risk of sounding cliched) in steelin a glimpse or two of their svelte bodies glistening under the sun!!

Did lotta observing this tym ....children playin in the sand,as usual, ppl lettin themselves loose and goin beyond the red danger flags just to let themselves be enveloped by the high tides, the sunset ,the vastness of the sea which stretches on to infinity ,and beyond...the birds enjoyin the breeze and floating the same point for a few mins before lettin the wind take em back,and then repeating it until my eyes got tired!!!
Well , i had my moments of fantasy too ,and hoped that suddenly the black pearl would rise out from the depths of the sea and Capt. Jack Sparrow would greet us wid his-'Alas!U will always remember this as the day when u almost caught Capt. Sparrow!!!"

Though once gain ,like alwayz....i wished that the next tym when i sit next to the sea -i have somebody by my side apart frm the loneliness and the sea gulls...

The rainfall



With the onset of monsoons,the rains lashed incessantly against the windows of the hotel room day and night...it was no less than a spectacle fr us delhiites and we revelled in it heartily...to see those palm trees swaying to and fro with wet greenery all around and that too ,through the window glass well-dressed with water droplets was no less than straight outta a dream,and why wouldnt it be...given the fact that we dont usually get to see such a thing ...
The rain always has the potential to bring old memories ringing back , and that makes it all the more enjoying....i kept on listening to that sweet music of the raindrops striking against the wet ground with the expression of pure rapture on my face ,and hoped i would freeze with time,coz this is what i call-nirvana...

The palm trees



Hmmm....palm trees are to goa what pines are to the mountains,and to see them with their natural splendour in a perfect setting with hills in the background and the sea nearby is endemic to goa!! How the trees fan out their big leaves to catch the strong breeze is another marvel to be appreciated, sumthin which makes em luk akin to a wind mill!!!
Though theres a downsidie to it..u cant afford to stand beneath one -not just coz it wont give u much shade,but also becoz of the fact that they are heavily loaded with their cannons-the coconuts and a stubborn one might reward u with one straight on ur head!!!

The roads and the drive

One surprising fact that one seems to encouter in goa is that inspite of the heavy rains and the tourist rush,the roads seem as new as if built of an everlasting material.. no pits ,no water-logging...after what we see happening in mumbai -without even half the rainfall that goa receives-its actually quite amazing!! And what with the hills surrounding you and the sea running parallel ,driving in goa is absolutely fantabulous...whats more ,i drove about 60 kms(and that too mostly above 70 kms/hr) everyday without encountering a single traffic signal or a scratch on my car!!!Kewl i'd say...

The mini-cruise


Obviosly, this doesnt come within even an inch of the splendour and ecstacy that a full-fledged cruise offers...nonetheless,the 1 hour ride aboard this state govt run evening cruise is full of unadulterated and adulterated fun!!
Traditional dances ,drinks, the view of the capital city on one end of the river mandovi and the hills on the other end and to top it all ,a dj in the end....its worth a try!!(hey i'm not promoting goa,k!!)

Inox

Mostly unheard of in the north,this is the biggest multiplex in goa n mumbai...with tickets starting frm 150 bucks ,one can easily imagine what to expect...The lobby and waiting area is enormous and really cool with its awsome speaker system blaring out the latest hits,and its complete with a baskin robbins store and a lounge too!!!
And before the muvi starts is the real surprise- u are requested to stand as the tune of the national anthem starts playin and even before u take a second to be dashed amazed and luk at each other's faces,u find urself singin it wid full nationalistic fervour and pride!!
Though the multiplex is cool...but if ur'e watchin a drab movie like Jhoom... ur'e bound to come out complaining ,and so did I ,to my despair...but i soon gt sobered down by the rain which graciously welcomed me as i stepped outta the complex!!!

Well,there's a lot more to goa than just the aforementioned ,but i'd not like to go into all that ,coz obviously u cant expect me to describe the temples,churches and the places with breathtaking views here...i'll leave that for u...hehe

Did spend a lotta tym in the swimming pool doin ...obviosuly swimming....and being able to while away tym in a pool and not on the net was a big releif !!! Did miss out the company of freinds...had there bin some wid me,i'd have gone all out to explore the discs in town and rented a bike to soak in d pleasure... but unfortunately i was stuck wid parents ,and could hardly think abt goin to a nightclub without an eyebrow or two being raised...but ,my dear,such is life....
Hope u've found this post awfully boring -but the pleasure is all mine!!!!!