Forgetting eklavya (a story)

Pratistha woke up and looked at her watch. After a moment she looked at the watch again to notice the date. It was eklavya's birthday. She sighed. Eklavya was her past, a past which she had left behind. That's what she told herself. She shrugged off her lethargy, had a bath and put on her clothes.

While she was walking to her office , a guy whistled. This was exactly the kind of thing that would drive eklavya crazy, driven him into a tirade of expletives and a morning of bad mood. She also smiled to herself about her clothes, eklavya would have never let her wear this. Although he put on a "woodstock"-ish spirit, eklavya was very conservative.

She had tried to keep eklavya in her life, but he was stubborn and overly possessive. And he was a grim reminder of the choices she had made, which included him. Those choices which had changed her, the choices which had driven her to a spiral of self loathing. It was very difficult to see him without recalling the tears that she had shed at nights when sleep eluded her and crushed dreams filled her conscious state.It was impossible to see in him a reflection of what she had almost become.

A whiff of smoke hit her.It nauseated her with the memories of eklavya smoking in her room and going on and on about something. She hated cigarettes- another reminder of him and his screwed up view of the world and love. She had told him once "the closest you have ever come to loving something is a cigarette". He had smiled and told her , he feared that was true.

The day was boring and she wasnt able to concentrate, she felt irritated and angry. She went home and ate her dinner in silence. She opened her laptop and started listening to songs. A ghazal started playing - "aaj jaane ki zid na karo". It brought back another memory of eklavya.

It was late and she wanted to go home, but eklavya had insisted she stay. Having work to do she had wanted to leave, when eklavya quietly went and put this song on his room-mate's computer. She smiled and whispered to herself - "Happy birthday , eklavya". Then she shed a tear.

Photo by zara

Oh darling , yeh hai India

This picture was taken by me in one of the industrial hubs of hyderabad. We are a nation of contradictions. Where multinational campuses exist, there also maybe buffaloes. We just learn to live with it. Also notice how the buffaloes are in a queue and not blocking the entire road. Cool rite?

Apparent Google wave invite dupe scheme

So after i recieved my google wave invite i just happened to search the tag #googlewave on twitter to see what other people were saying about google wave. Surprisingly a major number of tweets went something like this :
"Just requested my Google Wave Invite! Get yours at http://www.google.com-wave.info - #googlewave #googlewaveinvite" Have a look at the image

Now this looked surprisingly fishy so i went to the site http://www.google.com-wave.info/ and found that apparently you give your twitter username and your gmail id to these people and then tweet the above mentioned tweet and you get your invite.
I dont know about you guys but this looks like a huge scam to me.
If this is indeed a scam and you were scammed a googlewave account is not a fashion statement. Most people dont have a clue of how they will be using google wave even after getting an invite. Wait till google comes up with a wider audience with more of your friends/family on it and then get on the wave.
Till then stop coming up on my #googlewave search please.

to you, from me

photo by :Kr.b

it seems a lifetime ago since you were with me. a lot has changed since then. you. me. the world around us. with some letters you painted the memories of yesteryears in such a way that i dont quite recognise them any more. I was in denial for a long time, i was a car wreck. i still am. I have morphed into a stranger. People dont change, their intrepretations of yesterday and themselves change. the happiest days of my life are now my most tragic days. i know you would say, that siddharth you were always this way.Perhaps thats true. perhaps like i dont know you,you dont know me. You were the only girl i said i love you to. it may not have meant anything to you but now, today at this moment it means everything to me.

So i wrote this for you.only for you. i love you and at this moment i dont deserve to say this to you but its true. You were my scarlett, my dominique ,my dagny taggart and my jenny.and you always will be. I hope that you are able to love again soon and able to forget the dreadful chapter in your life story that i was. i wouldnt wish it on anyone.

I knew you would want me to get over you and get on with my life. I am trying. Thanks to my friends today i have hope in my life. i am able to dream again. but i still think of you whenever i listen to coming back to life, whenever i am happy or whenever i am sad. Whenever i feel lonely, whenever i talk to dipen. whenever i watch a lot like love( i know, i know you hated the movie :-))

Maybe some day you'll be able to smile when you think of me and i will be able to stop crying when i think of you. For my sake i hope both of these days arrive soon.

Google SideWiki - What do you think ??

I am not a google fanboy, (well i work in microsoft, so that makes sense) but cant help saying that they come out with interesting products. The latest in line is the Google SideWiki . It comes with the google toolbar and is basically a sidebar which allows you to post comments about the site. The comments that you make are connected to your google account and so there are no anonymous comments. Plus the comments that you make are also sorted according to relevance so that the topmost comments make sense. It works with IE and Firefox currently and also allows you to share your sidewiki exploits via Facebook and twitter.Pretty cool right ?

However this has managed to irk some people. The content is owned by google and not by the website. So you cant modify what will appear to be a part of your site and google will effectively change the appearance of your site. It also can eat away at the monetization models of some sites. Plus the potential of having derogatory/inflammatory comments on sensitive topics is also something people are concerned about. Leading the charge is Jeff Jarvis the author of What will Google do ?

I think its a pretty interesting development. It takes a step further to socialize the web ,however i think the concerns of people like Jeff jarvis need to be answered. Well what do you think ?? Do you think Google's moving away from its "Do no evil" motto ? Or are you excited by this latest goolgle exploit ?? Let me know for sure.

Your ideas are your new resume

A lot of people at my office ask me what's twitter ? And what's the big deal. Most of the times i have given them the usual microblogging definition, but most of them were not convinced. And also i wanted to convey why i am so interested in tweeting and the whole social media thing. Then suddenly it struck me its a way for me to share and come across ideas. That is why i am so excited about this. I love thinking aloud something on twitter and then have a great discussion with my tweeps. I come across new things, terms and perspectives.

Which brings be to the point i am writing this blog, Your ideas : How you polish them , present them and whom you discuss them with is your new resume. It may not be mainstream right now, but i have seen instances of this happening. A good presence on the web in terms of blogs, forum discussions etc allow potential employers to get a peek into your thought process and depth of knowledge. Which ideas you tweet or blog about and how you conduct yourself on the websphere while may not be always enough to land you a job but it will definitely get people interested and imagine the width of the audience - potentially the entire web.

That is why i was quite impressed by brazencareerist.com .Not only they focus on the traditional way of marketing yourself, they also encourage you to share ideas through your blogs and friendfeed. And its available to everyone. People can read your ideas and then comment about it. Finally a site i guess which combines your professional and social networking perfectly. The interface is also not as drab as linked-in (no disrespect intended) . And it will definitely appeal much more to today's 20-somethings.

Anyways, so back to my point, your ideas are your new and improved resume. Get them out, refine them and let them do the talking for you. So that's whats so amazing about twitter , getting your idea out in precisely 140 characters to potentially the entire world and thats why i tweet, my friend .

Why do i need a college degree ?

After 4 years of college and nearly one and half years of working, i havent yet found out how what i learnt in college was useful to me in my professional life. Everything i learnt in my college i easily could have learnt from the right book or from the millions of how to tutorials available on the internet. Most of my friends work on technologies that weren't on our college curriculum ,which was probably last updated in 2001. I guess this is the case with most colleges. Take any field, what is is that a college degree gives you which you couldnt have learned on your own. Its more probable now than say 15-20 years ago, what with the amount of knowledge that i available to us. All you need is a laptop and a broadband connection.


Critics to this idea may point out to my total disregard for teachers. My counterpoint to this is that i believe hands on training is much better than pure pedantism. Also with the web we have easy access to people with the same ideas and interests. Facebook groups and tweeps could replace your traditional classmates.

Then specially in India comes the question of jobs. Why will a company hire someone without a college degree. What i suggest is nothing new, introduce an internship program and give your intern/apprentice sufficient time. He will be as useful to you as any college graduate you hire after six months and also you will have a chance to correct a mistake if you hired the wrong person.

I still understand the reason for degrees in something like medicine, you cant directly intern at an hospital after a self reading of Grey's anatomy but does the same hold true for a computer programmer or even in the field of management.

Do you think i am wrong or you agree with my ideas. Do let me know.