The camp

It was early evening when I left home. Being on the road gives me a rare sense of freedom. I met others and went to set up a camp.

I knew this girl since long. I met her in facebook. I never talked with her.

We started to set up camp on 27th December, and I started to wonder when the camp will on 28th December. I was a little eager to meet her. The jeeps were coming down, I started to walk up hill to them and while the jeeps were crossing me, I was trying to see her, but could not find her.

In these Adventure cum Nature Study camps we are allotted a partner and a group of trainees who we are to train. I hoped to get allotted with her. But it never happened. I tried to interact with her and she responded nicely. I never saw such a cool nerved girl in my life. And when she was assigned with a pretty tough job and felt in-confident, and everyone asked her to call the job off, I simply said “Just think it through, you are old enough to make this decision”. And I knew she would do just that (and she did take the tough job).

The camp-fire night, we planned to get out at night and I wanted her to come and she wanted to come with us (a few guys who loves having adventures). No doubt that adventure night was quite dangerous, the way and the way back. She had the amazing and uncommon nerve to come with us and have fun. Later she explained that she wanted to experience it as it might be her only chance and she liked it.

I helped her with some stuff in camp but never got the chance to talk before we left the camp. The way back in the jeep was the best place to talk with her. We kept talking about the our common interest movies, fiction, science stuff. We kept talking until the jeep came to stop. I promised her we would continue to talk that night, but we didn’t get the chance. Her perspective of life amazed me.

We had a 10 hour train journey on our way back. I looked for a chance to talk with her and she was interested in talking about stuff like neurology, mind, consciousness etc. So we started talking again. One time, I was standing at the door of the train compartment and I was looking at the curved train. I also wanted her to see the curved. I kinda guessed she never saw such a nice thing. Before the curve ended she was able to see the curved train after her cousin. Not long after that she wanted to go and stand at the train door. We went to another train door and stood there for several minutes before getting back to our seats. It was fun! Standing together, sometimes talking, sometimes watching the moving landscape. The best part was the ‘aam-sutta’ (preserved mango). We shared a piece of aam-sutta while standing at the door.

I was worried that I would have to leave the train at Bardhaman due to some communication reasons at the terminal station but in the end we all went to the the terminal station. Bought me a few more hours with her. She talked and I talked, sometimes on totally different topics and we both enjoyed each other talking. We kept talking.

When we were parting, she handed me another piece of aam-sutta, wanted me to eat it, but I couldn’t keep it, someone else wanted it. We parted with a complexly interlocked hand-shake and a smile. I didn’t say ‘Good-Bye!’

Me, my father and a new friend were busy finding a taxi to get us to the rail-station. Then everything cooled down and unable to find a taxi we started to walk. That’s when I felt this gaping hole inside me through which wind was passing through. I silently walked down the street with others who were equally tired as me and my tears were washed away by the yellow sodium lights. I realized I was going to miss her real hard.

The System

There is a system that is operating society so that it runs properly and without damage. This is the system that is responsible for what we are. This is the system that is responsible for making us prepared to make contributions to the human race, to our planet, to life. But, somehow I don’t feel the system is properly doing what it is supposed to do.

I am afraid if I give in to the system I will become part of this faulty system and I can never fix it from within it. I can see how giving in to the system will make life easier for me. I can have peace, I can have solace. Then why it’s so difficult for me to getting along with the system. Why do I have to fight it all the time? I didn’t choose to be like this. I didn’t want to be like this. I was born and brought up inside this very system, then why I am the radical? I cannot just give up to the fact I am just another human being, operating under the system. I cannot accept the operation of the system. I keep fighting it without realizing it. As if my principles are keeping me from getting along the system. I started to question myself about my audacity in this manner. I started to question why I am like this, why I cannot hack this already charred and mal-operating system like everybody else and make their my life easy like them. Why do I have to pretend that the system is still fine and working perfectly well. I have been pretending that it is all my life.

Just to be clear why this particular blog post came up suddenly I must say I never asked myself these questions. I never wanted to know their answers. Quite recently it occured to me that I am fighting. Just fighting against this system without any progress or whatsoever. Now is this time I give in to the system, or shall I nourish my belief that the system is wrong and keep fighting the system to establish my belief? I have to make a choice. This choice will eventually define me who I am. This choice as imporant as ‘whether to keep on living or to commit suicide’.

It’s time I must make this choice…

Tragedy

WARNING: May contain spoilers…

While I was getting out of puberty, they said ‘tragedy’ is a word meant to refer literary works that end up sad. And my language teachers also said that tragedy leaves a deeper mark in your mind than comedy does, which is the opposite of tragedy, happy endings. Somehow I used to not like tragedy. Leaving a deeper mark didn’t appeal me much. I thought my life was tragic enough. And my notion of having a tragic life was supported by the lack of getting a partner in Love multiple times. And thus I kept growing old.

When I got my copy of Eragon, Book One of Inheritance Cycle in 2004, I devoured it. I bought it from Kolkata Book Fair, as my Father suggested I get Eragon instead of Lord Of The Rings trilogy. And then I kept waiting for the next book, then the next and then the final, Eldesgt, Brisingr, Inheritance. Somewhere in the middle I read Lord of the Rings trilogy. I almost forgot about the Inheritance Cycle (Initially a trilogy) when the last book came out few days ago and I finished it few hours ago.

After reading it through, I had this sense of gap. This elf woman Arya, with whom Eragon was in Love but never joined. They came close but their love never matured, even after everything they went through together; wars, battles, meetings, confrontations. And in the end, Eragon had to leave alone to take up the mantle of the dargon-riders and raise the race of dragons. And Arya had to stay in her kingdom. I read the parts where Eragon and Arya had to consult over their parting and where they parted, over and over again. It just didn’t feel right. Since 2004, I watched Eragon grow feelings for Arya. And I really hoped something good would happen, but now, it’s just over!  Nor did it feel good as Nasuada and Murtagh had to part, because Murtagh had to live alone for the deeds he had done.

It’s swelling when I think that Eragon and Arya will never unite, even Murtagh and Nasuada just might. Even in Lord Of The Rings, Aragorn and Arwen had their Love after the great war of Middle Earth. But in Alagasia everyone had to part after the great war against King Galbatorix.

Maybe this is why I would put Paolini over Tolkien, Inheritance Cylce over Lord Of the Rings trilogy. It just left a deeper mark in my mind if not life.

At some points

Nothing is ever wasted unless you believe you wasted it. That’s what I say. But I didn’t do all the cool stuff I did because I knew it will not be wasted and I would need it at some point of my life. I did what I did because I loved to do what I did.

I used to make visualization presets for songs, the stuff that change and move with a song. I used to make them when I had my board exams. I used to write computer programs before examinations because that would make me relieved and relaxed before the examinations. I didn’t study at all. I used to tinker with software while I was supposed to study. And for all these ignorant behaviour my academics was hit, big time! And worse I couldn’t get to study what I always wanted to.

But seeing that I am really good at stuff while others struggle is a treat I could really enjoy, when I started in this engineering course. For me getting the hang of engineering was easy because I always was doing some sort of engineering always. And during my sophomore years I realized that everything I did was never wasted, I can help people with stuff they do. I can help myself making what I want to make. And I never stopped doing stuff I wanted to do, like working on hardware design, web design, programming. And now at the end of my engineering course, I need to believe that whatever I did was not a waste.

Reality check 1.o

It’s rather strange that I have this sudden urge to get to web development and design. Just by looking at the possibilities, I think it’s a good avenue to start my career. I have will have a degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering by mid 2012. This degree would virtually go to waste if I go to web development and design. But my current academic state won’t let me get to hardcore engineering.

I am more of an applications guy, than a design guy. I design over a certain level of abstraction. I am more of a designer than an engineer. I use my engineering skills to design stuff. All the skills I have acquired in all these years would let me make, electronics installations and stuff, desktop applications, web applications. The skills would let me visualize data, visualize music, scriptify tasks etc. My abilities make me perfect for specific industries. I am ready to get to photography, graphic design too. But I am too weak in academics. Academia demands stuff like say, Mathematics, Systems theory etc. I am not good at these. Not at all good at these!

This is the most confusing part. I am not good in core academics and I have skills to go to the industry. My family wants me to stay in the academia. I am also a little afraid of leaving the academia. And I found only one place where my skills can be used in an academic way, MIT Media Labs. But getting a chance to do masters there seems impossible for me. And that’s why I am stuck and posting about this.

Taking a leap (of faith) is a good idea in movie. But I am pretty scared in real. Jumping off to an industry and not liking it, and then returning to roots demands resources, which I don’t have. And the pressure is killing me. I cool off by programming. I got a project at hand, and I can enjoy programming all day now. It’s a project for the web. These days web attracts me. It’s my ticket to temporary happiness these days.

A sound engineer said that “Multi-talented people face these problem, but no one can stop the talent”.

Under uneven pressure

It’s getting worse, this confusion about life. It is simple. It’s around a question, “What to do with my life?”. And it’s like layers, mounting up. While writing this post, I decided to break up the problem, and make a symbiotic cycle of solving a problem while blogging.

It me. It’s my shitty confidence. I am confident enough when it comes to acquiring skills, undertaking personal projects etc. But when it comes to other people, or backing up myself as a professional I am stumbling and fumbling.

Firstly, I am a procrastinator, and when procrastination is combined with an absent mind, it is a virus, killing it’s victim slowly. Immediately I cannot fix it. Procrastination is something deep inside me and I am absent mind because most of the time I think about this confusion itself.

Secondly, seldom my parents kick-start a cycle of fear by saying things to me, actually to propell me through my career (to be precise academics), which from their part is quite natural. Everyone wants to be sure about their children. It’s something that is un-fixable. But they could use a little subtler method to propell me as these kicks are actually throwing me more into confusion. Now I can also ignore their advise, but that’s not ethical and I don’t have enough confidence to do so.

Thirdly, I believe in satisfaction. I need to do something in my life, with which I can live with through my life. Now I have a quite wide array of interests, which actually contributes a lot into the confusion. The wide array also giving me trouble choosing one. But the worst part about this problem is having the provisions to change is expensive (in terms of confidence and finance).

Fourthly, I hate this academic system, and my hatred is rendered in poor academic performances. It’s this much unfortunate I am, being an engineering student, I am given to multiply matrix in classroom.

There is irony too. It’s my intellectual culture which doesn’t allow me to land in a tasteless job of writing lines code, or writing up ‘Help’ for software. But this intellectual culture is not allowing me to gather myself up and find out what’s best for me. And this confidence of mine is totally ‘out of place’ with my intellectual culture. Always having safe avenue in life is good for taking risks, but life = risk. Sometimes I feel like I am not taking enough risk to get up from this shitty situation.You gotta jump!

Those are just a few superficial reasons I can gather up. Now when I look to myself, I see that I have skills. I can acquire skills pretty fast (relating to design and engineering stuff). I do regular research on industry trends, I practice stuff. I explore new creative avenues. I can think of a technical solution of almost any problem or break up the problem into sizable bits instantly. I can sense technology. I can sense design elements. I am industry ready as far as a fresh college graduate can be. Still I am confused and scared as hell, like that Greenday lyric, “When you can’t really function, you are so full of fear”. There is a Guy I know who wrote something like “Having impossible beliefs which gets the boy through the day”. I liked that part. It’s all coming down to having faith.

Morning post on current life

I planned to write this post when I was having tea in the morning after I woke up, first thing in the morning (‘my morning’, which is actually pre-noon). But this addiction to facebook, just didn’t let me do that. I had tea, with facebook, checked up all the notifications, checked email and when I had no more tea in my cup, I fired up Google Talk so what people can reach me and I started to type in WordPress.

Let’s talk about some of these new instincts I am noticing inside me.

First, I have this sense of photography. I did think about these things before, but never like this. It’s quite instinctive. Like whenever I am watching a photograph, I think about the compositional elements that went into this, the subtle post-processing effect. And it all comes instinctively. It’s the same with videography too. These days whenever I see a video shot, I think about the elements of composition that went into it. The movement of camera, the effect of that movement on the overall presentation, the depth of fields etc. I notice all these in a manner I never did before. I don’t enjoy movies and photographs as simply as I did few months back.

Then there is this design sense. I can’t help notice the design flaws that is there in a certain product. Say, Euroclean Bravo, this new vacuum cleaner from Eureka Forbes. It has problems. It’s designed for right handed people only. The blower thing is not convenient. Holds little mount of dust so you need clean it up freqeuntly. You cannot put it down of the floor it would topple easily that way. The neck strap was way too weak. Definitely not a robust domestic product. Yet, they manage to sell this thing. It all comes into my mind when I see this little neat vacuum cleaner. I have this instinct for electronic stuff too. Like how the power supply is designed, whether it can take a sqaure wave inverter easily of not. How much harmonic protection there are etc etc.

Then there is another instinct about screenplay. I can sense which scene is next, and which dialogue a movie may blurp out. I enjoy those when my senses are wrong, but I getting less wronge these days. Does that mean I can start making films?

Apart from instincts…

I took this new website project, where I am kinda the back-end/front-end developer along with being full fledged designer. It seems like a pretty big project and I am scared. It’s like I bit more than I can chew.

And I got a (awesome) friend, whose company I just love.

P.S. I am actually posting it 12 hours delayed, due to powers cut. It’s killing me!

Revision and other strangers

At 1.20AM I just had a thought of reviving this blog. I thought I would let this blog die out. But after a few months, this urge to write hit me. And I am quite happy with the fact that my thinking is quite right again. It’s not getting convolved with other saddening memories that I have in my brain archives, trying to burn them at the first opportunity. I am quite sure I am all right now because, few days ago, I crumpled a piece of paper which used be a tack of memory of her handwriting, and  threw it into the bin.

I am worried to the core these days. Worried about the career that I am going to choose. In fact I cannot even choose a single one, because I like so many stuff. I love stuff! I love photography, I love graphic design and I also don’t want to leave academia. I love academia. And my academic training is not merely close to the stuff I love. I love trotting here and there too (and wonder if this can be my earning somehow). This also has a silver lining. If I cannot get into one thing, I can do the other thing. That’s quite relieving.

Organization is one thing that I lost after she broke my heart, and I cannot get organized these days. It was sort of my second nature at some point of time. Being organized is somewhat essential these days. It promotes a very specific type of efficiency. It doesn’t directly promote creativity, but being absent minded like the creative people of the olden days, is not really a good idea in 2011. As this stage, creating something can be a quite complex process, as our brain needs to handle other basic tasks at parallel (according to the lifestyle these days). Organization increases efficiency. Thus I am trying to become organized. Organization needs nerves, I have plenty of that, enough for organization.

And I believe organization will help me find more projects for me to keep me busy in the coming days.

I was thinking of changing this all-PC lifestyle and reading some books. I noticed when I am not directly working on a project, I usually waste time in front of the PC looking at the facebook homepage all the time. I picked up this book called WATER by Julian Caldecott. It’s about the water crisis and how-to-prevent-it. After reading a few pages, it struck me suddenly, that I don’t read fiction these days and I cannot think of story books too. It’s like my brain is full of logic and stuff that matters to the world (not to me).

I like to program. It’s something that I can relate to poetry. Programming is actually to thoughts on paper is a certain form. If you look at someone else program, you get lost in his/her thought, and it’s easy to lose control of your thoughts. Happens to me all the time, that’s why I hate to check other people’s program. Better I do that program myself.

That’s all about revising my ‘recent’ life. I will be writing on this blog, starting from today. I had to fill up some form, which didn’t happen because I was writing this post. Don’t blame me, please, it’s my sudden urge to get back in line again. Getting back in line is not a binary process, it’s somewhat continuous, and takes time. In my case, it was made hell-lot-easy by my friends. I could list them, but in fear of omitting someone accidentally I refrain myself from making the list. Thank you all!

It’s hard to change…

This blog is just dying. It has reflected too much sorrow, it’s like when a reader comes up and start reading, he/she will easily get frustrated when she gets on and see nothing else than melancholy of heartbreak for a mile or so.

Me? I am trying to rediscover what I love, what I like, what my real passions are, stuff like that. I need to explore a lot more, but I am not having much time to do so.

She said, “You can never forget your first Love”, well I can, and I will. I will forget my first and move on looking forward to love someone again. If she ever comes back before I find someone else, she will also be my second love, not my first. I don’t want to have a patch up job on my heart. Everything will be new. So should be the blog. Though it’s a long blog, and have a lot of myself here. It’s hard for me to leave thist blog, but I think it is necessary. It got boring.

To Iron Man guy, Tony Stark, has no nostalgia, I think I should not have some too. Let’s move on.

First step, decide a better name.

Second step, decide what to write on. A blog is not a diary, it’s nothing that personal, it’s more of a publishing platform. When the blog is something like a diary, it’s different, I can use facebook notes for that purpose too.

Third step, start writing…

Maybe this is the last post of this blog. I will update the post as soon as I get the new blog up and running.

ReBirth

It’s a drum synthesizing and sequencing software. A pretty classic one among music people. I liked that sequencer when I first fired it up. It was RB-338. It’s no more. Today while writing on that fact I am actually having a intellectual re-birth, I just remembered about the software. Few months ago, I was eager to change the way I think just to be comfortable with her. It was darn pointless I guess, looking back. Dying in the process of changing I had get a birth again. I thanked her for making do that.

My latest interest is in wireless mesh networking. I have been working on other stuff, like signals and systems study etc.

Wireless mesh networking has some nice quirks, like self healing algorithms, relaying algorithms. I am interested in self co-ordination. When each node is same, they make one coordinator and assign addresses to themselves. In a mesh suddenly put together it is very essential to make a leader (coordinator).

Signals and systems study is not a good thing to write about here, but it’s quite interesting.

In brief, I found some fine pastime.

When I started writing this blog post, India won the match. Party time!