The white veins of IT

0545 hrs, Hosur Road. I was getting to my office on a Friday morning, dazed and sleepy. In the half light of dawn, by the gate of every IT company, BPO, software development center, Call centre (oops.. contact center, no offense meant) there stood a battalion, oiled and ready for another day. White cars, vans, buses, cabs of every make and model stood glinting in the light of the street lamps and headlights of the early risers. Hundreds, thousands of these, row after row of silent, monstrous hulks, ready to leap at the blow of a whistle, ready to battle the heat, dust, pollution and chaos of my city, nay to create the heat, dust, pollution and chaos of my city. Yet, without them, my city would lose its edge, its 'competitiveness', its identity, its industry. IT, with its 6 digit salaries, its coffee machines, its board rooms, its white Tata Indicas, its VoIP phones and its IBM Thinkpads is what opens our gates to riches, to progress, to Glory, Hallelujah! And the transport departments of all these companies make up the white veins (or arteries?) of IT, spreading and branching to the most remote extremities of this pulsating, expanding, growing insomnia that is my city. My lovely Bangalore, won't you ever rest?

The introspector has spoken

Loser

Time: Friday evening 08.15 PM.
Season: Summer.

And I am sitting in office, my cubicle, my space. With nothing very important to get done. And nothing much else I'd rather be doing now. Go find me a worse loser and you shall be suitably rewarded.

Tomorrow my office is working to make up for an unscheduled off due to some localized violence. But I can have it off! To compensate for extra hours i have put in before.

I participated in a photography competition. sent in some lousy photographs i had taken. none of them were remarkable and i have no chances of winning a thing. sent them just for the heck of it. first time.

The scream of the paper shredder is driving me nuts. Stop using it will you?

Hell, I don't even want to write anymore.


The introspector has spoken

I don't usually play with images on the computer but I was extremely jobless at 12.30 AM yesterday. So I tried something. Here are the results, both before and after. I liked them.




A little bit of cropping and a little bit of tuning. Personally I am not so much for nature images or scenery, I prefer images like the ones found here, almost my favorite site on the entire internet.
But this was pretty tempting, so I had to post it.

The introspector has spoken

The grey line

Is this lack of direction a curse of my generation? Is it the arrogance borne out of luxury, or even affordability? In my grand parents' times, they could not afford to not study, or subsequently, not work. Thought about such a choice was un affordable. Today, I can choose to sit idle for my lifetime and still have enough wealth left over to last my progeny (born out of a moment i choose not to be idle!). Sometimes, I feel vaguely guilty for not having the purpose in life, and even mildly envious of them that had a purpose. Like something precious has been stolen away from me, to which I am constantly drawn, looking, searching, frantic and desperate - purpose; like the Gollum is drawn to the power of the ring after he lost it. And I didn't know I had it until I realized I didn't have it anymore. Of course, naive logicians here may wonder, how then do I know I 'lost' it. I really can't answer them. I just will not care to. I just know. I feel the grief, almost as if I was present to watch it being torn away from my soul, like in a dramatic Indian film where the child is forcefully separated from parent. I just might like to know here who is the parent and who the child. Does purpose guide us, or do we construct our purpose? For one thing, without purpose, I see no joy in existance. If we are master of our purpose, there is some hope that I will one day stumble upon my purpose. If it is purpose that guides us from the day we are born (or atleast become independent entities) to the day we die, then well, I have lost the game before I even knew the rules. So, is there an asylum somewhere for introspective gentlemen searching for purpose? I want the address.

There is a constant turbulence, a heaving and churning of the mind, as it lashes itself against the shores, the boundaries where the I ends and the rest of the world begins. And wave upon wave that the mind brings forth throws new flotsam on the shores. Memories, half buried in the sands. Like fragments of broken green glass, like the fading memory of a well spent afternoon; or like a ravaged slipper, separated from its pair, a materialistic anchor to the little life consumed by the waves, half in accusation, half in mockery, at the rest of the world for having pushed a soul to this watery end. And the flotsam on the waters' edge just keep growing. Oh these sands were once clean, pristine white. Not now, regrets, shame, an occasional smile or tear, and yet curiously nothing of substance, of value, of wealth. My past looks as boring as my present and my future. Just a timeless grey line that stretches from horizon to horizon against a background of never ending white.

The introspector has spoken