Office-Office

Thats my work space in Chennai,


where apart from some serious brainstorming I sometimes end up doing things like this;



and dream of epic journeys and carefree road trips.



I need to go home soon, and above all the Bengali New Year or Poila Boisakh as we call it is just round the corner. Will be missing it again :(

Sometimes I am convinced that I am in love with the City of Joy.

Saturday blues

Its Monday again and the weekend is technically over. A couple of hours and I would be expected to mark my presence at office with all its everyday rigours. But what a weekend it was - something that I had been missing for quite a long time now. Now that the weeked is gone, I thought that the best way to preserve it would be to write about it,.

At the railway station where we parted not with watery eyes but definitely with a heavy heart and a sense of hope that we will be able to meet up soon, again. The months prior to this haven't been too good. With unexpected reactions from people whom I really thought of as a very good friend, I was forced to put a lot of thinking behind the probable cause(s) of such behaviour. But the deeper I got into, the more perplexing it became; and a time came when I thought it best to just let it go.

Enough of wondering about. So am rewinding back to the evening of 10th.

10 th April, Friday

Its about 7:30 pm and with bags packed we wait impatiently to get out of office as soon as we can. Plans have already been made to be at the Marina beach within an hours time. And so we did, although with the usual mix of delay and confusion. Dinner followed at one of the roof-top restaurants - my first. It was actually a pretty wonderful place where one could watch the planes flying past and disappear into the distant starred horizon along with a nicely served North-Indian meal. As expected, time flew by, and we had to head home.

11th April, Saturday

morning

Its Jan's b'day. For those who haven't met Jan yet it would suffice to know that she is the most talkative person I have ever come across so far, she never really gives you an opportunity to talk. With an overwhelming energy she can yap till the end of the day. However the best part is she talks a lot of sense too. With the day growing brighter, one by one friends poured in - from Mumbai and Bangalore. Ahh, what a pleasure it is to have so many vibrant individuals at the same time and place.

Well thats the b'day cake below. Wondering why two candles, well there is a story behind that too, but that would be a gross diversion.


Amidst the happy b'day tune she made her wish, blew the candles and cut the cake.



Thats our MSE gang - mostly back benchers and acknowledged procrastinators (and thats the house I live in btw).



11th April, Saturday

afternoon

Another frantic round of planning and we ended up at VGP (heres the link to the resort). Thankfully, the weather was kind. With a not so sunny day and a relatively cool breeze, we set out for VGP, a resort about 40 kms from Chennai city. The picture below was shot in front of one of the several wonderfully crafted structures along the entire resort. Pretty amazing work !



Time for lunch:

-thats Kar getting us our lunch - a Godzilla dosa (thats what menu card read) -


The Beach

For those who would rather believe that am bluffing wen I say that the weather was really great on a summer day, the picture says it all (I assure you that its not doctored).



And here are some more pictures of us at the resort :

- at the beach -



- an excited BD before the crash -


- go Divya go !! -


The entire day spent at the resort was extremely exhausting yet equally enjoyable. And then were was the scheduled travel plans of people heading home. So without wasting much time we came back, had a nice dinner and it was time again for some of us to get back to the schedules of everyday lives.

Well, the weekend didn't end there. Sunday was equally exciting. But more of it some other time.

Nice one

Source

re-start

Isn't that inconspicuous button just beside the power switch a life saver? The economists and so called think-tanks would certainly wish they had one by their side.

The mess that the entire world economy is facing is surely worth devoting some time. The question that puzzles me though is this - how on earth did we manage to create it in the first place? Its rather a miraculous u-turn. From the economic boom that filled the common man's perception with better returns and a certain upward trajectory to a situation where the major economies have almost come to a halt is worth analyzing. Current unemployment in the US and Europe has never been higher since the post world-war era where major economies were virtually obliterated.

Can we also say that the tide is shifting towards the Asian behemoths - especially the dragon and the elephant. Do we see a change of power at the centre of world order in the years to come? Possibly. But international relations and politics are so construed, its almost impossible to predict at this point in time. However, with China vying for a separate currency instead of the dollars hegemony should speak clearly of its intentions. India too has increasingly been involved in global talks and its say in global order and politics now carry more weight than ever.

Does this then bring to an end the dominance of capitalistic thought at the helm of economic ideologies? The European countries with their strongly designed social protection net has been able to stave off the ill effects that the recession has brought forth as compared to the free market economies of US. Though reeling under extreme pressure, the presence of a co-coordinating body at the centre in the form of EU has also just managed to save the day for the Europeans.

Whatever be the outcome, the level of uncertainty is surely at its peak.

Steal this pic

Source

An excerpt

The greater part of my leisure is spent watching movies, and the diverse array on offer are a testament to the creativity of the most fertile hearts and minds. Of late there is one particular line that caught my attention, and I couldn't help thinking over it again and again.

In the movie Chunking Express, by the acclaimed Chinese director Wong Kar Wai, the protagonist He Qiwu (aka cop 223) breaks up with his girlfriend May on 1st April and decides to wait for a month with the anticipation of mending their relationship. So everyday he goes to the store and buys a tin of pineapple with May 1 as the expiry date, which is his birthday. He believes that by the end of that period he will either be successful in getting back together with his girlfriend or the relationship would expire forever. It is at this moment that he poses this profound question

"If memories could be canned, would they also have expiry dates?"

and comes up with an equally optimistic answer.

"If so, I hope they last for centuries."

Although the thought lies on the boundary of absurdity, yet the idea of having our memories canned with a certain expiration date is moving and worth pondering over. The broader question can therefore be deconstructed as - do memories have a finite life-span? If so, do they just die out, fade or burn away; and if not, are they stacked up in a far corner of our mind and never reused (like an ancient book gathering dust in a library), or do they lie dormant only to spring back into life providing an equal measure of pain or pleasure as that of the event stored?

Presumably we have an internal method of selection and then an equally complex system of hierarchical ordering of memories (akin to putting up an expiry date which is further in the future rather than in the proximate and then its sequencing). So in a sense, the ability to recollect past memories might lie at the core of character formation. As is observed in real life, a person with a positive attitude is more likely to recollect an intensely fond memory than a pessimist. It is also true that what we are at present is a result of the cumulative building up of layers of memories - some loathsome and hideous, others cheerful and amusing.

Or is it that the causality runs both ways?

• character leads to selective retention of memories, or/and
• memories retained lead to character building.