The Belapur Local and me

A lot can be said about that Belapur local, which came into my life all of a sudden and brought me to a different plane altogether. Not that this local acted as a philosopher or a counsellor of sorts. Just that it was a gentle breeze, which brings a fresh perspective to life. It shows that life is indeed very simple, not to be fretted and frittered upon. Sometimes, the gentle breeze is all it takes to show the implicit simplicity that gets murky due to the negative externalities.

To be frank, this local train didn’t come into my life all of a sudden. I had been seeing this train pass by every day, every morning for the past one year. But that was not the train that I had ever aimed at taking to my destination. I used to take the next Panvel train, which came about 20 mins later. It came, and brought with it the morning rush of all kinds of commuters – college students, office-goers, business people and several others. This was my daily train to take to my destination. I had the second class season pass, and used to travel with the mass aboard the local. I never felt uncomfortable for a moment all of the first year that I took this train religiously. This is the most impressive trait of us humans – adjustability. Amazingly, we come to accommodate and adjust even the most undesirable things in life, once we make up our mind that there is no alternative to it. And so did I. Not that I didn’t have alternatives though. For one, I could have travelled first class, with the so-called “Class” segment of commuters. I could have travelled in the next or the earlier local to save myself some trouble. Or even, I could have broken my journey into two, to have a comfortable travel. But no, I wasn’t the one to do all those antics. This was a challenge posed to the Mumbaikar in me, and I had to face it. So I decided that I will travel in the Panvel local, second class, bearing the troubles, bearing the crowd and accommodating and adjusting with the difficulties.

How often it happens that we don’t realize what is it that we are missing until that thing comes forth to us. And once it comes forth, we can’t imagine a life without it. Something like this happened per chance one day, when I reached much before time for my usual Panvel local. The Belapur local was scheduled to come. I wasn’t really keen on waiting for another 20 mins to get into a train which would take me to the same destination as this Belapur local. So, I decided to take this Belapur Local that day. And boy, did it make my day. I realized what it means to be travelling comfortably. 20 mins is not a heaven’s ask for me, and I could quite easily manage. No extra efforts here. Additionally, I didn’t have to bear the extra burden of “mass” and the “externalities”. No rational person would choose Panvel as the option over Belapur, given all other things remain same. And neither would I, but sense would take over heart over a period of time.

It is at such times that the heart and mind play with each other. But mind finally rules over and I switch to Belapur. Each day the new train shows what simplicity is. Life with her was peaceful, nothing short of heavenly bliss. Additionally, Belapur also made me realize several of my mistakes over the past one year of travelling. I had been bearing the weight unnecessarily. I considered myself able of carrying it, and hence carried, without blaming anyone in particular, but blaming the system in general for the situation. But I came to realize that I was the guiltiest person in that environment. I needn’t carry any load, that’s not what I’m here to do. It does affect my performance somewhere without my realizing how. It also taught me some lessons in self-respect, and the most important lesson of the significance of saying NO when and where required.

It was not that I didn’t know previously that the Belapur local would be much more convenient. But somehow the Panvel local and I had a cordial relationship and I didn’t want to break it. This made it difficult for me to say that NO. But somewhere Belapur made me see and realize, from a neutral third person’s point of view, that I, per se, made no difference in the life of that Panvel Local. It came and went daily at its anointed hour. Yesterday where I stood, somebody else took that place today. And someone else would be there tomorrow. This simple clarity which was missing in my life was brought about to me by the grace of the Belapur local.

For all that I have to say about Belapur, it still is very modest and down-to-earth. I have never seen anyone as spirited, as determined, as enthusiastic, as hard-working as her in the 26 years of my life. Such are her intelligent and smart ways of functioning that I am totally impressed. In her praise, I can go on and on, but doing that wouldn’t really be acceptable to her. She is very wary of all these and has high ambitions and benchmarks for herself. She has, to my knowledge, never missed her 8:53 AM timing ever for the last 2 years I’ve seen her. This is no mean achievement, and she just casually brushes it apart. Being one of the top 10 best running trains is also not an achievement that she considers very great enough. She has this no-nonsense and straight talk attitude. She believes in making her actions speak for her.

This Belapur local, as (un)popular perception goes, is a hard nut to crack. But, I have a different opinion. She indeed is as hard as a coconut on the outside, but she also has an equally sweet potion inside to offer to those who reach her there. I do hope to reach here someday. Waiting for that day ...

Order in Chaos

Entropy is the rule of the nature. It explains the overall increase in disorder in a system. As is stated by the second law of thermodynamics, the overall entropy of the system must only increase. Entropy tends to be maximized i.e., the disorder tends to increase in the system over time. A parallel can be drawn from here to the various illnesses that strike us. These illnesses are in a way, ‘disorder’ brought into our ‘system’ (body). The body, however, has its own mechanism to deal with the un-sought disorder, and it restores ‘order’ within the system. Or so to say, the equilibrium state is reached when the body resumes its normal state of operations. In a sense, it can be understood that there is a continuous interaction of any system with its external environment. This leads to the entropy of the system being affected, i.e., disorder being generated. Finally, through the internal processes, the system fights back to equilibrium.

So, we can say that the equilibrium state or the steady state is the mean µ and the disorder (entropy) affecting this µ can be termed as variations in the system’s steady state. In other words, σ. The whole system can be explained by these two parameters. The system tends to be at µ, whereas externalities tend to take it to µ+nσ. When n becomes very large, the system breaks down and µ becomes meaningless. As an example, take the human body again. When the disorder is of a very high magnitude, the body is not able to recover from this illness and breaks down. This phenomenon is called Death. Death takes the system to the final equilibrium state, where µ converges to σ. However, this is not a desirable state of existence for any system. The ideal state of existence is when n=0, i.e., σ is eliminated.

How can σ be eliminated? Rather, can σ be eliminated? To answer this question, we ought to know what exactly causes σ. Statistically speaking, σ is the variation term from the mean. The variations are due to inability of the system to maintain the mean level. Let us zoom in a little further to the particle level. System is composed of particles. These particles move about in a random manner when in a free-state, as long as no external force is applied. In fact Brownian Motion is one of the most simplest continuous-time stochastic processes. We can then say that this random motion produces a condition of chaos. In other words, chaos can be considered to be the “disorder” or the entropy in the system. Thus, we come to the root cause of all the entropy – random motion of the particles. Therefore, “order” can be brought about in the system, by attacking the root cause – the particles.

What would have to be done to reduce this disorder? As the word itself states, to bring “order”, we need to induce discipline in the motion. The proposition here now is to polarize the particles in one direction. As a result of unidirectional polarity, there will be uniform motion of the particles. There will be no collisions and no chaos, no disorder. The entropy of the system would effectively be contained. Extrapolating this situation to a larger scale, we can say that since the randomness is contained, the quantum of variances will come down significantly. As variance comes down, σ will automatically tend towards zero. The System will tend to remain in a state of µ, also known as steady state.

A corollary to the above is that the system becomes predictable at different instances of time as there is effectively no variance factor anymore.

So, we can come to a conclusion that the key to attaining the Equilibrium State of Living is the disciplining and aligning of the systemic particles. It can also be inferred that the disorder in a system can be reduced or eliminated by enforcing discipline by polarization. Thus, the systemic disorders could be handled with more certainty. Speaking on a much broader perspective, the ultimate Disorder of the Human Body System could also be possibly reduced by polarizing the particles in the body. Similarly, this concept of “Order by Polarizing” can be applied to any system (body) which can undergo any kind of unrecoverable changes.

All of the above is just a hypothesis. There are many laws governing the physics of system and thermodynamics of the particles, which this hypothesis might not have considered. A very naive caveat here is the application of external polarizer to discipline the system. That itself might act as a pro-entropy measure. What this thesis therefore comes to say is we apply external effect – which leads to an increase in entropy – to reduce the internal disorder. This seems like a contradiction in itself. However, since Contradictions should not exist, we need to check our premises upon which this basis is made. The external effect is kind of a conditioner which would stimulate our entropy-reduction process. Though, initially the amount of entropy would seem to increase, however, upon the completion of the “Ordering”, the overall entropy should have come down. Secondly, we do not know with certainty as to what is the magnitude of the polarizer needed to bring about order from the chaos. It might as well prove to be costlier than the supposedly accruing benefit of steady state.

And it Rained !!!

The long awaited rains finally made their arrival, shall i say, with lots of bangs and booms... The parched earth got its deserved share of the eternal nectar.. The sweet perfume of the earth getting watered has already intoxicated many. The status messages of people on gtalk n facebook have begun reflecting the arrival of rains. The monsoon has made its presence felt with its first appearance. Some are getting drenched in this rain, some are clicking photos of the first rain, to compare later with the greenery that will follow the rains. Some others are contemplating playing cricket or, even better, football in this rain as is always played and enjoyed the most. Still some others are enjoying the rains passively sitting in the confines & comforts of their rooms, by their windows, by their doors. But enjoying everybody is..

After a long, dry and extremely hot spell of almost 4 months, it rained. It rained. It rained on the heat parched land, giving respite to mother earth. It rained on the dry branches of the trees, comforting them and assuring them of greener days ahead. It rained on the people standing out and waiting, and made a soothing touch on their heads through the shoulders and the feet. It rained on the sores and heat boils of people and gave a natural medication, which has no other substitute. It rained on the clothes hanging on the clothesline, but no one's complaining. It rained on the tender wings of the birds, and they are enjoying the beautiful drops as they are sitting on the roof tops of buildings. It rained on everybody today, bringing about a wave of renewed vigour, passion, energy, enjoyment, fun and hope. Hope to us for a cooler and greener climate for the days to come. Hope to the nature for all the good the rains would give. Hope to the living beings for the sheer pleasure that the rains and only the rains would bring about. We all hoped.. And It rained..

Realizations...

The time has finally come for me to dawn upon myself certain things. Life is not as simple and easy as I want to believe it is. From being a pessimist, I've tried to move to the other end of the spectrum - I tried optimism. And it worked nice for me. At least so far, and I don't see reasons why it won't or shouldn't continue. It is indeed very good to be optimistic about life and things in life. However, there are certain issues in which we must learn to draw the line between optimism and over-optimism. Does optimism lead to an attitudinal change? Does it affect the behaviour? Does it affect the psyche of the person practising it? Can optimism really be overdone? If yes, how and what is the effect on the person? How do you know when is it overdone? What would you do to get back to the "right" level? Is there an equilibrium level of optimism? I 've reached the point in life where I need to find the answers to the above questions, which are some of the huge barrage of questions that have crossed my mind lately.

I wasn't the Me that i am today, a few years ago. I was very much a reserved, shy and an introvert person by nature. Somewhere in the final year of engineering, I decided to shed this skin and get a new one. This change was attitudinal. Earlier when the blame of everything wrong, I would take on myself, it made everyone around me uncomfortable, including me. That was history now though. I was happier, talking more to people in general, and to the fairer sex, more in particular. I felt confident. I felt superior to my previous self. And then some months down the line, I started my professional career. It did nothing but give a boost to my high spirits, my confidence, my attitude, my optimism. Never felt better. It would be about 4 years before I would write this.

The new skin was fitting nice and fine, and I was having a good time. Somewhere down the line, as I interacted more and saw people talking, I noticed one thing that makes u tick and get noticed. Good Humour. Humour can be the ice breaker and helps forge new relations. Now, I am not particularly a humourous person by nature. The Funny Bone is not all that active. Not sure, if that can be made any funnier than it already is, but I had ideas. A good percent of humour, as I observed, came from healthy satire & sarcasm. That sorts which doesn't hurt or harm anyone, but is nevertheless enjoyed by the company. And so I imbibed this art too. The great art of Healthy Satire & Sarcasm. And it seemed to work indeed !!

However, only so long as that adjective qualifying Satire & Sarcasm was in place. Satire is a dangerous edge to trudge upon. You 've to be careful enough to notice the line differentiating healthy and 'un'healthy satire, which I'll learn the hard way. There were signs. As it grew unhealthy, and as it hurt some close friends. I would not notice them though until after very long. I couldn't put in place, as to what actually hurt, in what I'd just remarked. I always considered my 'remarks' to be plain and simple. Mainly so because I was in a group of people who were far more bitter in their satire, and all of which was taken in stride by all of us. We were kind of used to it and nobody minded. Little did I realize that different people have different capacities for satire. My language didn't change much. Not any sooner. A close friend said more than once about my tone, which was not on the admirable side. I didn't bother much then. As, had i nipped it in the bud then and there, I wouldn't have been writing this piece here.

My associations with people never was for a very long time. Most of them were professional by nature. Of friends, I have only few friends, and all are quite close to me. There's no problems getting along with them with this language. With family, I was always careful not to use this 'satire' of mine. So I could see no reason why I should change myself. My renewed self. This self, which has helping me get on with people well. Or was I ? I should have asked this question to myself quite some time ago now. I should have done a self-introspection long back. However, I didn't do any and got going with the same 'self'. I couldn't see any real potential problem.

Not one till I joined my post grad course. I made some new friends here, quite quickly considering my previous track record. Now, nobody goes full throttle into humour and satire from day 1, neither did I. Some humour here, some pjs there, some wise ones, some one-liners.. and I was on my way. Way to? Well.. Realizations ! As I got closer to some, I increased the dosage of sarcasm, unbeknownst to me as always. Not everyone tolerates as you do. This would dawn upon me very late in this episode. And why tolerate, nobody is getting paid for it. I still personally saw nothing harmful in whatever I said. Though, now I feel, I should've empathised and tried to understand. I never did that. And the whole first year passed by.

Not without a few altercations though. Most of them came towards the end of the first year. And I felt it was just the pressure, the rigour taking its toll. It indeed wasn't. On occasions I was told, politely enough, to cut down on my satire. I listened, gave a thought, thought would do something, but never quite did much on it. It pained at times to know that you are the cause of discomfort and pain to someone close to you. I still had to figure out the remedy. But remedy is to a problem. So what exactly is my problem? How do I understand that? Is my satire my problem? Is the sarcasm getting worse by the day? How do I bring about the equilibrium - I like this word, makes it sound like physics, which ironically, I don't like very much !

It would be in the first 10 15 days into our second year, that I would really give it a thought. Hardly 10 days and I already had lost my mood on several occasions. This had to do with my inherent 'quality' of getting upset on matters of zilch importance. This is a different, but pertinent issue on which I would be writing soon. My friends here thought they were the reason. Little would they know about my qualities ! Again, with such a mood, I tend to talk really bad. And I very well understand it and avoid speaking.

One fine day (rather.. a not so fine day), I had again crossed my limits on sarcasm, and was again reminded. It happened twice or thrice and coupled with my qualities, there were very few days when I was talking at all. It all started feeling very bad to me. I decided now was the time. To make the amends. Long awaited corrections. Everything goes for a correction - including the stock markets, which incidentally have bounced back out of the correction season last 2 3 days and up 111 points. Not digressing any further, I said to myself, take a break. Restore back to the equilibrium. And how? Well, for one to start with, I'd talk. No cutting down on talking. Next, Less of humour, and the jokes, satire wouldn't be personal. Now thats what hurts isn't that?

The next and the most difficult of the 'corrections' to make to restore the 'equilibrium' is an attitudinal change (I'm going philosophical it seems). A change, significant enough, to make me bother not (or less) about the trivial things in life. Be happy over small things. Worry not over nothings. This is not just another decision made. But a D E C I S I O N made. I have all the intentions to work towards this aim.

Well, thats just some problems laid to rest. Now that the can of worms has been opened, lot more would surface. So.. I m not bothered. Bring 'em on. Life's too good to worry about.. well .. about anything. Lets see how long can I carry this avatar successfully. Will be back on updates soon on this. Till then, don't worry .. Be Happy !! Always :-)

The Week that was (or rather wasn't !!)

So we came to the end of the first week of the second year. Quite a week it was. Had hell of a Lot of things to do. Caught up with some movies, some novels, some night walks, some amount of gymming (ya.. this is something u kinda call new resolution, more driven by the purpose to cut some flab), an inauguration session by His Holiness The Dalai Lama the XIV, the T20 World Cup, and a party (oops.. i forgot.. we don't have parties.. we have "get-togethers") to end the week.. Er. did i miss something.. oh yes.. the lectures.. yes. we did have some lectures here and there occasionally, I had 4 in the entire week.. that is 4 whole lectures in 7 days.. man.. i m really tired now..
Well what a week it has been. And it was really a great end to the week. The Grand Celebration of the arrival of PGP2. The DJ started blasting away sometime about 8 or 9 PM. There were hardly some 10 odd guys.. no no.. not partying.. but playing basket in the court..c'mon .. its a basketball court with a newly laid turf.. But then who the hell parties at 9 PM. Is that some time.. Its well into afternoon for some folks.. and frankly, when have parties begun before 12. Or so i thought and felt.
I 'd been to the city for some "fresh air". One more movie(thats the third this week..or the fourth.. i lost count..), one good dinner (missed the khichdi & ice cream though at the mess). Came back by 11PM (thats the deadline, u see). I remember there's a party going on somewhere. Can hear the music. So its started then, I asked somebody. Go check it out dude, was the reply. Lo! There were just about 5 guys.. u guessed rite.. playing basket.. the others apparently got tired. And then there was some noise. wats that ?? Oh yess.. India's playing England tonite.. Bull ****, its a do or die match.. DJ is still playing some shit songs..but who cares.. India must win.. Go India Go !!!
Had a heavy dinner, and so I go for a walk upto the gates with a friend. We have a nice walk and a good talk as we walk. I come back at 1215. Party Scene. DJ doesn't show any signs of improving his choice of songs. Basketball court is empty. Evidently, T20 is keeping everyone glued to the TVs, and away from the DJ.
Maybe Culcom didn't estimate the amount of passion a India England T20 match, do-or-die for India can generate in a country like India, at a place like this, among the batch like ours. So for some reason they chose to take the T20 head-on. Like Sunny Deol's Gadar took on Aamir Khan's Lagaan.. Like SRK's OSO took on Sawariya (eeks..no comparison here). So, one of them had to take a hit, and our Rs. 6k ka DJ had to be the unfortunate one. Well thats hardly any amount for us, for the culcom has a good budget, and in ne case, the batch can always contribute a couple of thousand for ne such damned activities, no worries there.
But Hope I had. India will win the match, and the party will gain some colour. People will "celebrate". Apparently, Indian T20 team had some other plans. They chose to lose in a splendid fashion by a good 3 runs, dampening the spirits (the mood i mean). Time is 115AM. Still a good time to start partying (can't get over this word..).
Wer's the public? The party's yet to begin. DJ is still upto no good, though better than 9PM and 11 PM, and 1215AM. Public has dispersed to their dens. I m back in mine too, and slept too. Next morning, some signs of the "partying" are visible, but just that.. only some.. hardly any rather.. Don't know whether the party ever got started at all. The freshers, for one, would have got some impression about the culture here. Well no matter for them, they still have a couple of years here to get a better picture.
As for the others, as always, it doesn't bother & matter. India lost, is what matters. India, the reigning T20 champs, knocked out before super 8. What nonsense, its a mourning today !
As for me, life goes on. I m on my schedule, done with my jog, and my breakfast, and now with my post. Have a long day ahead (have to start a novel, watch a movie, work out, sleep between lunch and dinner, and ahem.. ya .. no lectures today). So that would be it for now, got to be working now. Take care !!

Hello World.

This is the most common phrase in any software programmer's world. This is the entry point into the software community. I being one, use the same to make my entry into the blogging world. Never been a great writer as such, though have been following a few blogs of late, and getting attracted to it.

To begin with, I am not sure why I am here, or rather, what am i going to write in this space. There are days when you make things happen. Then there are days when they happen to u. And then there are those dull days when time stands still and nothing seems to happen. I think I'd just write about my daily life and the interesting things that I came across during the day.

Limiting my first post to just these many words. Be back soon !!
Suresh