Wednesday, December 31, 2008

The Year End Review

Well due to 'circumstances and situations'( a carefully thought lazy excuse ;-))  i have not been able to update my blog for the past several weeks , but I'm just in time for the year end review.

Now strangely enough, whenever main stream media does this they always seem to highlight the negative events more than the good one's and often conclude by saying it was a 'bad' year or if i remember correctly, when i read the year end review of India Today for the year 2001,  It carried a picture of the twin towers burning and the headline read 'lets hope we never see a year like this again'.  Now i understand that the 9/11 attacks were really disastrous but to label an entire year 'bad', irrespective of how many negative things happened  i think is totally WRONG. For every such event there are a hundred stories of hope, courage and chivalry that exist. It is like saying the glass is half empty.

I cant understand why the press look only at this side of the coin, I'm not blaming any particular magazine or TV Channel as such, i just took the above as an example,  rather i think that a year ,being a pretty long period of time, cannot be analysed in the one line question was it good or bad?

Now on a more personal front this was the first year which i fully spent being a college goer and  in which i went from junior to senior. The transition journey in the first half of the year was a real roller coaster ride with so many ups and downs i can't even begin to recollect, being on both sides of the ragging fiasco, an unforgettable fresher's night, the passing away of my dog Chintu, the spectacular 360 thereafter and bidding farewell to our senior batch. It was a humdinger of a ride.

More surprises en sewed in the second half with new found liberty and the the acquisition of a second hand Honda Activa. I finally purchased the scooter after long drawn and laborious process of finding, rejecting, searching negotiating and finally clinching the deal!! The biggest surprise though was the arrival of the juniors. With the new AIEEE admission rules we were expecting around 1 junior from TN but were surprised to see around 7 of them. To say that these were the quirkiest batch of guys and gals i had ever seen would be an understatement. Then came the ever postponed exams and frequent trips back and forth, from and two Bhopal. Finally the sem ended and i was able to spend Christmas with my mom and bro.

Oh my Gosh!! How could i forget this , In September this year i started my blog www.soulfulscribe.blogspot.com . I thank all my readers because of whom my blog has recorded 128 unique hits so far( Yippee!! ). Looking forward to writing more and once again thanking all you guys and gals for your support.

Last but definitely not the least I made a lot of new friends this year and had a lot of good times with all the guys both in the Bhopal and Chennai chapters looking forward to more such crazy times in the upcoming year.

It all sems that there's been 1 second injury time this year. For more details see>.  :-) 

Well here's wishing one and all a 
HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!!!!




 


 

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Chinpawaaa


Our Chintu

                                   Born in Bangalore on around May 6th 2002, We( ie my bro, my mom and i)  first saw Chintu as a cute little pup struggling in the mud in a place called Cuppon park in Bangalore. It was due to my brother's persistence that we managed to bring Chintu home despite all odds. I still remember the train journey from Bangalore , we had stuffed the her(Chintu) into a carrier bag and carried her on the train as a part of our luggage so as to avoid suspicion. We fed it milk through a small hole in the bag. Astonishingly she didn't make a single sound through out the entire journey... When we finally reached chennai and let it out inside the house , my grandpa was pleasantly surprised. I was not exactly a dog lover at the time but what followed between me and Chintu in the following years can best be described as a "beautiful friendship".

                                     I can still fondly recall the first time i saw it bark. It was near the back entrance to my house where i saw it barking when a sudden sound originated from near the gate.Chintu grew up fast and she grew u to be a strong dog at that, she was well built and could run like a fox. Her coat was a dusky brown with shades of white (see photos). she had a unique proud, majestic look to her. Chintu was also quite intelligent and ever alert. She never let anyone from the streets come even near the gates, but apart from all this the one thing which i felt set Chintu apart, was her loyalty and sense of devotion to all of us, she could always sense when one of us was ill and would come sleep beside the sick one during the time of need so as to provide comfort, they say in Tamil 'naai oru vaai illa jeevan' that a dog is a living being without a mouth, but i feel that Chintu spoke more through her actions than any human could ever speak using words. Chintu was always there in our times of joy and sadness. I still fondly remember the games me and my bro used to play with Chintu and i also recollect the time where she bit me and i had to get shots. Chintu was always effervescent and full of energy. No one could catch  her once she started running, through out the past 6 years we developed a bond with Chintu. A bond of affection, compassion of love. When I went off to bhopal, Chintu stopped eatin for a few days and only resumed eating after she heard my voice over the cell phone. Every time i returned from bhopal, Chintu was always there to give me a grand welcome and i enjoyed every minute of my stay in chennai with her. On April 8th,2008 at about early morning, Chintu passed away after living a life that touched many hearts... Chintu u will always be remembered as a dog that truly cared.

 

my mom with chintu




Saturday, October 25, 2008

Happy Diwali


Wishing all my reader(s) a happy and safe diwali...

Monday, October 6, 2008

What's in a name?


Well I found the answer to that question the hard way. I requested a Bona fide Certificate from my college recently and they gave it with the name printed as 'T Anand Arora' instead of 'T Anand Arasu'. I just cant understand why these people cant even write a name properly. But even this could be forgiven since 'Arasu' is basically a pure Tamil word and I suppose the moment these people see a 'A' and 'R' together they think its 'Arora'.
But what I definitely can’t forgive or explain is the way those admin idiots printed my name on my marksheet. 'T ANAD'!!! it appears that they had so much of a problem with the word 'Arasu’ that they decided to  totally leave it out and on top of that they left out the 'N' in anand. Now whether its north India or south India, 'Anand' is probably one of the most common names around, how they managed to bungle that up, only God knows.
It also appears that my name is not the only one undergoing mutation at the hands of MANIT's staff. Here are a few of my fellow mutants

shrinivs instead of shrinivas
Prabhakir instead of Prabhakaran
Mayaa instead of Mayank!!!
......

I've applied for a correction in the name ,I can only hope that they get it right  this time.

----- Rant over------
                

Sunday, October 5, 2008

A Gamet Of Goof Ups

Well the great sages of yester year all said that “It is easy to laugh at others but It takes great courage to laugh at one self “ , but then again there’s a saying that you shouldn’t wash your dirty linen in public. Well I’m going to trust the sages on this one.

                       If you ask my friends about me they’ll tell you n number of stories of my ‘eccentricities’ or ‘Aras Comedies’ as it’s come to be labeled. Here’s a two of my favourite ones,

The Sangam Debacle

My Cousin booked two tickets online for Kamal Hasan’s Dasavatharam at Sangam cinemas, a day later he told me that he wouldn’t be able to come. So I called up my friend vinod shankar and asked him if he would come see the movie with me, he agreed and asked “What’s the date and timing of the show da?’. I told him that it was matinee show on the following Wednesday. The ‘D’ day arrived and vinod arrived at the bus stop near my house from where we were to start the long journey (about  15 kms) to sangam. He asked to see the ticket. I then realized I had forgotten it, luckily I lived closeby and so I went home and got it. When I got back to the bus stop , vinod asked to see the ticket, I showed him and on the cover of the ticket it was written, TIME : 2:00 Pm ‘Tuesday’ . We stopped in our tracks, I thought it might have been a printing mistake and desperately pulled out the ticket from the cover and it confirmed my worst fears. The profanity which hung on the precipice of Vinod’s mouth blasted out in full flow “otha @#^$*%!<---censored--*&^%”. We had missed the show by one full day and he began the long walk home in the sweltering summer sun cursing me with every breath.

Shower To Shower

I had just come into the hostel and my classmate Prabhakaran gave me his room key to give to his roommate Balaji. I placed it in my pocket and went to his room ,  When I reached his room, balaji had just left to take a bath. Thinking he had left I locked the room and went off to my own room. About half an hour later I left the hostel to attend to some work I had in college. About 2 hours later I was shocked to receive the following message.

               “ Psycho!!! I have never seen such a psycho like u in my entire Life.”

And then it struck me that I still had his room key in my pocket. OMG!! When I went to back to the hostel I saw what was left of the lock. Balaji had cut through the lock using a Swiss army knife while draped in nothing more than a bathing towel. Boy that must’ve been awkward. ;-)

We’ll my buddies could probably tell you a few more, but hey don’t think I’m absent minded or clumsy or doing any of this on purpose, I can remember stuff but just tend to forget a few minor details which end up snowballing due to sheer circumstance and dumb luck (hey a guy cant do much about those things!!).

Well I’m pretty sure that this post will have a continuation someday as more goof ups pile up,   so it would be apt to say
 
                                                                         ----- to be continued...


Wednesday, August 13, 2008

In The Mind's Eye

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This is an interesting story i found, as told by the physicist Carl Sagan in one of his lectures. So i thought i'd put it here for others to read as well...
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A psychoanalyst named Robert Lindner, had been called by the Los Alamos National Laboratory to treat a brilliant young nuclear physicist whose delusional system was beginning to interfere with his secret government research. The physicist (given the pseudonym Kirk Allen) had, it turned out, another life besides making nuclear weapons: in the far future, he confided, he piloted (or will pilot - the tenses get a little addled) interstellar spacecraft. He enjoyed rousing, swashbuckling adventures on planets of other stars. He was `lord' of many worlds. Perhaps
they called him Captain Kirk. Not only could he `remember' this other life; he could also enter into it whenever he chose. By thinking in the right way, by wishing, he could transport himself across the light years and the centuries.

"In some way I could not comprehend, by merely desiring it tobe so, I
had crossed the immensities of space, broken out of time, and merged
with - literally became - that distant and future self ... Don't ask me to
explain. I can't, although God knows I've tried."

Lindner found him intelligent, sensitive, pleasant, polite and perfectly able to deal with everyday human affairs. But, in reflecting on the excitement of his life among the stars, Allen had found himself a little bored with his life on Earth, even if it did involve building weapons of mass
destruction.When admonished by his laboratory supervisors for distraction and dreaminess, he apologized; he would try, he assured them, to spend more time on this planet. That's when they contacted Lindner.

Allen had written 12,000 pages on his experiences in the future, and dozens of technical treatises on the geography, politics, architecture, astronomy, geology, life forms, genealogy and ecology of the planets of other stars. A flavour of the material is given by these
monograph titles: `The Unique Brain Development of the Chrystopeds of Srom Norba X, `FireWorship and Sacrifice on Srom Sodrat IF, `The History of the Intergalactic Scientific Institute', and `The Application of Unified Field Theory and the Mechanics of the Stardrive to Space Travel'. (That last is the one I'd like to see; after all, Allen was said to have been a first-rate physicist.) Fascinated, Lindner pored over the material. Allen was not in the least shy about presenting his writings to Lindner or discussing them in detail. Unflappable and intellectually formidable, he seemed not to be yielding an inch to Lindner's psychiatric ministrations. When everything else failed, the psychiatrist attempted something different:

"I tried . . . to avoid giving in any way the impression that I was entering the lists with him to prove that he was psychotic, that this was to be a tug of war over the question of his sanity. Instead, because it was obvious that both his temperament and training were scientific, I set myself to capitalize on the one quality he had demonstrated throughout his life ... the quality that urged him toward a scientific career: his curiosity . . . This meant ... that at least for the time being I `accepted' the validity of his experiences ... In a sudden flash of inspiration it came to
me that in order to separate Kirk from his madness it was necessary for me to enter his fantasy and, from that position, to pry him loose from the psychosis. I tried to avoid giving in any way the impression that I was entering the lists with him to prove that he was psychotic, that this was to be a tug of war over the question of his sanity. Instead, because it was obvious that both his temperament and training were scientific, I set myself to capitalize on the one quality he had demonstrated throughout his life ... the quality that urged him toward a scientific career: his curiosity. . . This meant ... that at least for the time being I `accepted' the validity of his experiences ... In a sudden flash of inspiration it came tome that in order to separate Kirk from his madness it was necessary for meto enter his fantasy and, from that position, to pry him loose from the psychosis."


Lindner highlighted certain apparent contradictions in the documents and asked Allen to resolve them. This required the physicist to re-enter the future to find the answers. Dutifully, Allen would arrive at the next session with a clarifying document written in his neat hand. Lindner found himself eagerly awaiting each interview, so he could be once more captivated by the
vision of abundant life and intelligence in the galaxy. Between them, they were able to resolve many problems of consistency.
Then a strange thing happened:
"The materials of Kirk's psychosis and the Achilles heel of my personality met and meshed like the gears of a clock."
The psychoanalyst became a co-conspirator in his patient's delusion. He began to reject psychological explanations of Allen's story. How sure are we that it couldn't really be true? He found himself defending the notion that another life, that of a spacefarer in the far future, could be entered into by a simple effort of the will.

"At a startlingly rapid rate ... larger and larger areas of my mind were being taken over by the fantasy ... With Kirk's puzzled assistance I was taking part in cosmic adventures, sharing the exhilaration of thesweeping extravaganza he had plotted."


But eventually, an even stranger thing happened: concerned for the well being of his therapist, and mustering admirable reserves of integrity and courage, Kirk Allen confessed: he had made the whole thing up. It had roots in his lonely childhood and his unsuccessful relationships with women. He had shaded, and then forgotten, the boundary between reality and imagination. Filling in plausible details and weaving a rich tapestry about other worlds was challenging and exhilarating. He was sorry he had led Lindner down this primrose path.

`Why,' the psychiatrist asked, `why did you pretend?Why did you keep on telling me ... ?T
'Because I felt I had to,' the physicist replied. `Because I felt you wanted me to.' `Kirk and I reversed roles,' Lindner explained,
"And, in one of those startling denouements that make my work the unpredictable, wonderful and rewarding pursuit it is, the folly we shared collapsed ... I employed the rationalization of clinical altruism for personal ends and thus fell into a trap that awaits all unwary therapists of the mind ... Until Kirk Allen came into my life, I had never doubted my own stability. The aberrations of mind, so I had always thought, wherefore others ... I am ashamed by this smugness. But now, as I listen from my chair behind the couch, I know better. I know that my chair and the couch are separated only by a thin line. I know that it is, after all, but a happier combination of accidents that determines, finally, who shall lie on the couch, and who shall sit behind it."

Monday, August 11, 2008

1st Post

"A journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step"

Well as is customary here's a short intro of me, myself and I in my first post

Born on August 9, 1989, lived most of my life in Chennai, Tamil Nadu,
Educated in Padma Seshadri Bala Bhavan School, K.K.Nagar
Currently studying in National Institute Of Technology, Bhopal-MP
Doing my B.tech in Electronics here

Now I’m not gonna post my C.V. so i suppose this would be enough for now

I would like to start off by thanking the people who are responsible for me starting this profile
my friends S.G.Shrinivas and Manoj (MJ - refer his blog for expansion)

A few simple rules
1. No spam
2. No obscene comments

Any feedback is welcome.
U can contact me at arasu20034@gmail.com

Happy browsing... :-)
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