A bright week.

Feels weird when my fingers tremble like they’re trembling right now. Its usually the case after I’ve had my fragile heart, my rather bulky body and my heavy head do some moving around. Like when I’ve had a long walk or when I’ve climbed a steep hill or I’ve just returned from play. The last one though hasn’t happened for over 8 years. I used to play a lot when I was in school, but then I got fat and never bothered to play because I thought I had asthama. A lie I told myself to keep away from any kind of exercises. I feel stupid now. Trembling fingers? I feel bad that I did not exert myself like this before. I can’t curse myself though; at least not for the last 2 to 3 odd years. Where would I have found the time? I was living amongst, who I thought – at that time, to be the most friendliest friends I’ve ever had. Its only now that I realize that I was living in a masquerade of liars. A world full of liars. I shouldn’t be bragging, I know. Everyone lives in the very same world that I live in. The only difference being their eyes. Some of them are quick and their presence of mind helps them all the time. Some of them are crafty and cunning. They manage to free themselves from the aftermath of being fooled rather easily. They are quick to leave their past behind and move on. But hey, here’s where I am different. I seem to delve in the hole I’ve dug around myself. Guess what? I’m happy within it. I’m giving more time to myself and my family and plus, I’m taking good care of the way I look, the fats I need to lose and the calories that I need to work out and get rid off! Well, thats the bright thing this week.

Alright, now I know that I feel my fingers trembling, but I can still type at the rate of 60 words per minute and I’m proud of my trembling fingers. I’m very proud of myself because I am doing all the things I thought I could never do. For example, jog 20 minutes? Hell! I thought I couldn’t jog for 2 and here I am today after touching the 20 minute mark. I’m so totally proud of myself. The thing is, I thought I’d be the only person getting so tired so soon. I walked into the gym and started helping myself one day and thats when I saw the other runners. They were lesser bulkier than I was. Some were skinny and the others were nearly invisible, but what I saw astounded me – they got tired faster than I did and I thought to myself, maybe I need to push myself that tad bit harder each day. I began with around 25 minutes of brisk walking of around 7  on the threadmill. This way, I lost around 230 calories there. I then moved to the ellyptical machine where I danced for like 8 minutes and I lost 80 calories. Moving on, I cycled for around 4 kms or 10 minutes and burned around 100 calories. Then, I hit the rafting machine for like 4 minutes burning around 50 calories (this was the most difficult part). The last set was full of exercises and it usually comprised of sits up, pushups and the turn wheel. This felt good. By the time I was done with all this it was like 55 minutes of hard workout and I’d be sweating profusely. I’ve managed to keep the tempo up and like I said, I’m proud to say that the brisk walk is gone. I jog 20 minutes and brisk walk for around 10. The other exercises have also increased in heat and figures and I’m losing twice as many calories per day! This combined with the diet, I’m hoping to be fit, hale and hearty in a few months. The most coolest part is, I don’t get too tired; at least now as much as I thought I would. I love the gym.

The CCNA classes have proceeded to new heights. We’ve left obvious sections behind like subnetting and ip adressing and currently we’re playing with routers. Routing is a concept I knew very little about but I’m happy to say that as of now, I can give a whole presentation with calculation, numbers & binaries in context to routing. Its been fun so far playing with the CLI and typing in the commands. Especially since we’re playing with live routers and not simulators, like most institutions do – they’d give you a software that’d act like a Cisco router. Well, here’s where Mohans place is cool and I think I like the course module, the lab and the professor. I’m hoping to get over with CCNA in around 2 months more. Yes, along with the exams and all. After this, I think I need to speak with one of the counselors there. Guess I could continue and complete my CCNP as well? From the looks of it, CCNA just covers the basic of routing. I don’t think it’d even give you an idea about switching. Well, thats what I think. Maybe it does, but thats yet to come.

Work had been good. I’ve got enough to do and I find enough of time for myself for thoughts and reads! I catch up with music and I get a lot of alone time. I’m covering the nights so its extremely peaceful. Except of course when I visit the restroom. I somehow feel there’s a ghost in our restroom on level 2. I’m not sure why, but whenever I walk out of the room after having taken a leak, the flush would flush itself again, for no apparent reason. Yes, its that smart thing which would flush as soon as you move away from it. The sensor picks up the fact that you’re no more leaking and it’d leak instead. Now, here’s my theory – So, I’ve pee’d and I step away, it flushes. Agreed up to here. Then, I walk up to the mirror to kinda set my hair right (I don’t know why I do this at 3 AM in the morning!) and lo! the thing would flush off again. It’d gush out more water than it did before. I mean, why? Why would it do that? Now this does not happen each and every time. If it did, I’d call it a technical snag with the smart thing. This happens once in a while, like every 3 days or something. So, I guess it has to be co-incidence. Me and ghost taking a leak at the same time, huh?! Anyway, I hope its a friendly ghost. Everything apart from this is good and its all going smooth.  I must visit the temple this weekend.

-Anup

Shagufta.

Shags, its been forever now. Its been ages since I wrote about you and missed you like crazy when you weren’t around. You remember the days when we’d wait for each other and chat for hours? I missed you a lot today. I missed you very very much. Ever get that feeling where you realize that you’ve been running around looking for people and friends all your life whereas the best person you could ever own was right next to you. Well, I’ve been ignorant and I keep on learning lessons. I’m adding you into the never ending list of lessons I’ve learnt from life after love.

I was talking to the guys in #Pune (IRc) as usual. We had Dorab, Priya and Mouse as usual and then we had careless_rose and a few people came in and went out. I was enjoying IRc just like another day of bliss and ignorance and out of nowhere came this girl, Kangna or Gehna. She was an oldie in the room and she started pulling out nicks that made me nostalgic. All those carefree good times I’ve had on IRC and under NIIT in chinchwad… chatting away on dads hard earned money. I felt stupid but happy at the same time. I remembered Abdul, smiled at friendzforever.tk; thought about how we worked on the website together. It was like an exalt out of nowhere. Me and Kangna spoke for a long time, discussing old things and how they were and I couldn’t miss you any longer Shags!

I feel better now though after having spoken to you. Well, I knew it was your exams and that you’d probably be busy with books and must have gotten busy with them, but hey, why couldn’t you reply to 2 lines of an email that I sent you, ha? Alright, here’s the deal, over the years, you’ve become a very close part of my life. Sometimes, I take you for granted. I expect you to be there. I expect you to come back to me. Yes, nearly each and every time. You’re Shags re… anyway, do I need to explain what you are? You’re a crazy impossible-to-remake kinda mix of a lot of different people for me and I’d need you till the time I live. You musn’t be going away like this. People seemed so at-ease after leaving me to rot, but you? Well, uhm, I’d expect you to be there.

This post dedicated to you Shags! I missed you a lot today (I know, its the nth time that I’ve said this, but I feel ok repeating myself) and don’t try, I’d do the keeping-in-touch part myself. I’m sorry I haven’t been good at being a friend, a brother or anyone else for that matter and I’m sorry that I’ve hardly been there. My eyes were shut; I’m sorry. Thats it, all I wanted to say is, Shagufta, you’re an important person. Don’t keep going away like this. Be around. Love you loads.

-Anup

Proud to be mallu.

People’s ignorance makes me furious. Stupidity is ok with me; infact, its cute most often than not. What annoys me is that they speak without having a clue. Imbecilic fools – I find them everywhere I turn. Anyway, what would I call myself? I still seem to waste myself chatting in IRc rooms and then the things that people dump in there troubles me. I can’t ask for more from them, can I? I’ve always been in wrong company but IRc somehow, always seemed to be a place that made me happy and thats the reason I still go there.

So, the conversation I had with one of my fellow chatters was about mallu’s. It ran something like this:

•02:23:58• (Anup) I’m am mallu re…
•02:24:12• (@X-Chatter) what Anup u r really a mallu??
•02:24:21• (Anup) X-Chatter: haan…
•02:24:23• (Anup) Kyu?
•02:24:32• (@X-Chatter) hmmm to fir tumse door rehna padega
•02:24:40• (Anup) X-Chatter: kyu? err…
•02:24:55• (@X-Chatter) mallus are the most selfish ppl i have ever met
•02:25:01• (Anup) *gulp*
•02:25:21• (@X-Chatter) i dont know u so i wont comment on u but…
•02:25:48• (@X-Chatter) i have had a terrible experience with mallus i have met
•02:25:58• (Anup) X-Chatter: you probably did not meet the right kind of mallus.
•02:26:00• (Anup) And selfish?
•02:26:02• (@X-Chatter) still u will be a mallu…..
•02:26:10• (@X-Chatter) ya may ne u r right Anup
•02:26:10• (Anup) Thats too harsh a comment to a very huge population.
•02:26:16• (Anup) Generalizing is never good anyway 🙂
•02:26:33• (@X-Chatter) i have had such experiences… so my mind is set that way..
•02:26:44• (@X-Chatter) lets see if u change my thinking or i m proved to be correct
•02:26:51• (Anup) lol… its perfectly ok.
•02:26:59• (Anup) Are nahi yaar… why do I need to change your mindset?
•02:27:17• (@Y-Chatter) I hate mallus for making really bad quality pr0n
•02:27:33• (@X-Chatter) y coz i said that i hate mallus??
•02:27:50• (Anup) X-Chatter: yeah, maybe… cause people who hate mallu’s they hate them so bad that they keep off.
•02:28:01• (Anup) But I’m ok with me being a mallu. I love the language and I’m a mallu to the core.
•02:28:03• (@Y-Chatter) shakeela & those women with thunder thighs…… arghhhhhhhhh
•02:28:06• (@X-Chatter) no Anup i m not that bad…
•02:28:27• (@X-Chatter) thats what i said mallus are typical mallus.. kuch bhi kar le
•02:28:24• (@Y-Chatter) talking about mallus… here’s a joke
•02:28:31• (@Y-Chatter) why do mallus not kiss while making out??
•02:28:59• (@Y-Chatter) they are busy holding their lungis between their teeth
•02:30:26• (@X-Chatter) but i hate them for their selfish mentality…
•02:31:02• (@X-Chatter) coz all the mallus i have met are the same
•02:31:11• (@X-Chatter) in my office 80% are mallus..
•02:31:35• (@X-Chatter) they will just make their ppl up .. and other ppl inspite of sloggin are left like that
•02:31:57• (@Y-Chatter) the usual mentality… I have noticed it too
•02:31:59• (Anup) X-Chatter… its PERSON specific… not language specific.
•02:32:00• (+Dorabjee) yea dats correct n i agree wit X-Chatter.. dey carry deir public evrywher.
•02:32:00• (@X-Chatter) u know my TL is a mallu…
•02:32:05• (@X-Chatter) n hes sick
•02:32:42• (@X-Chatter) they have to speak in their language even in office…
•02:32:49• (Anup) X-Chatter: so that makes them selfish?
•02:32:51• (@X-Chatter) jaise koi bahot secret bol rahe ho
•02:32:59• (@X-Chatter) yes it does…
•02:33:57• (Anup) lol.. seriously, but I still love the language and the people.
•02:34:04• (Anup) But then, its always been the problem of people…
•02:34:08• (Anup) They can’t take the success of others.
•02:34:16• (Anup) Mallu’s adapt and they live anywhere and everywhere.
•02:34:20• (Anup) We just flourish.
•02:34:58• (@X-Chatter) ya u flourish pushing someone behind….
•02:35:06• (@X-Chatter) some person who deserved to be there
•02:35:08• (Anup) X-Chatter: well, everything is fair in love and war girly.
•02:35:16• (Anup) And life these days, is a war.
•02:35:20• (Anup) A war to success.
•02:35:33• (@X-Chatter) i dont agreee
•02:35:40• (Anup) Yup, you’re only human.
•02:35:44• (Anup) And I’m not asking you to agree either.
•02:35:45• (@X-Chatter) if u have that capability.. .to apne dam pe aao na aage…
•02:35:55• (@X-Chatter) chaat chaat ke kyu aate ho
•02:35:57• (Anup) Selfishness is a person to person trait.
•02:36:02• (@X-Chatter) majority of them are this way
•02:36:47• (@X-Chatter) coz jitne bhi mallu mere palle pade hai sab aise hi hai…
•02:37:16• (@X-Chatter) and u know Anup mallus are the biggest flirtsss
•02:38:36• (@X-Chatter) forget it… u be happy being a mallu
•02:38:45• (Anup) I’m totally happy 🙂
•02:38:48• (@X-Chatter) and i m happy with my views…
•02:38:54• (Anup) Are X-Chatter ji… I’m not asking you to change your views.

I’m sorry for getting this in here, but then I’d like to ask; how do you generalize like this? You met a couple of bad people and that gives you the license to talk eblish crap about an entire community. I’d like to condemn a lot of sections of my society if that were the case. Its simple things like these which make you stand out in a crowd. Its about how your heart, mind and most importantly your brain communicate with each other. What you speak should be a potent combination of all three, I feel. But then, these days, people take pride in being mean, rude and insensitive. The better they get at this the better they feel about themselves. And then, they’d call themselves “straightforward” stupid word, but I guess it does the trick.

Coming back to what I wanted to say, I feel awesome being a mallu. I’ve been a Maharashtrian all my life, I’d say. I’ve lived in Pune, Maharashtra for 24 years, thus the values I have is a mix of both Mallu and Marathi cultures. I love both the languages and I feel very happy when I speak in either one of them. I feel more comfortable speaking English or Hindi though and thats ok. These are the most used languages in India and I had to be better at these since I use them both in my everyday life. Some goods things I’ve got to say about myself. No self flattery, but, I’m not selfish. I’d do whatever I can to see my loved ones smile. I’ve never done anything inappropriate to be promoted at work, figuratively; I’ve done nothing wrong for professional success. And I’m an overall nice guy. Minus the looks of course. Good looks, you know? So, I’m proud of being a mallu and no, you don’t need to deal with it, so yeah, buzz off.

-Anup

A continuation to yesterday’s blargh.

I’m going to continue from where I left yesterday. Guess that was obvious from the title, but then who reads the title these days? Do people have time? Well, yeah, thats the plan – its 5:07 AM and I should have slept a few hours ago, but I’m still here. It could be insomnia or else it could be because I slept up to 3 PM today. I’m sure its the latter.

Thought I’d type in about today before I dozed off, which I might any time now cause I’m sleepy. I hope I don’t doze off on the keybee here. Its tired of me hitting on its keys everyday. I’m sure it wouldn’t want to bear the weight of my head with my brain in it. The day wasn’t eventful as I’d make it sound. It was neat (to the word) and it passed off rather quickly; considering that I spent the last 6 hours in front of my computer writing, reading, listening to Maroon 5 and watching the Matrix trilogy all over again – the movie rocks so much. I wish I were like Neo and I wish Trinity was next to me! Damn. That’d be awesome. Carrie Anne Moss is amazing. She’s gorgeous as we all might have noticed and along with that she has brains and fights well. To top it off, she’s someone who can be in love. Weird, I thought women these days weren’t quite sure of what that was. Alright, I really don’t want to start off sounding like a generalizing sexist bastard, so, chuck that! Anyway, my point – I love the Matrix. Maroon 5 seems to have taken over my playlist these days and I’m totally in love with their music and their lyrics. I watched Cloverfield yesterday and it made me sad. I thought I’d get to watch Lizzy Caplan act in a monster movie and that’d be cool. Unfortunately, the monster sucked. Lizzy was good and thats the only reason I watched the whole movie.

The day today: So I woke up at 3 PM after trying real hard. Radhy aunty had called me a few times; guess she wanted me to come home for lunch, but I was lazy and didn’t feel like eating anyway. Called Nikhil and he said we’d go bowling. Now that was a nice plan and I hit the showers. Called Aunty and she sent the maid home (at the wrong time!) I was about to leave, you know? Then the maid, she’s a weird charecter… she wants to show me all those nooks and corners of my house that she’s cleaned. She’d take an hour to wash a few clothes and then she’d talk to me in Tamil a language I understand but can’t respond in. She doesn’t understand any other language and thats where I say language plays an important part. We have a roadblock, you know? Me and maid; she doesn’t know English. Thats the sad part. So, yeah… she spent an hour running around my house trying to get things in order and now I’d say its spick and span at home and I like it here. I set out to Nikhil’s place after she was gone.

Met Nikhil and decided to have something to eat before we set out. A long drive after we reached “Foodays” I got myself an Onion Dosa and I wasn’t particularly pleased with the way it tasted, but I gulped it down anyway. Had some tea and headed home. Zoher was ready by then and all of us set out to throw some huge, hard balls and hit some sticks. We went to Leela Palace; yeah thats where the bowling alley is. We got to glance at some amazing cars. I think we saw a few Audi’s a few BMW’s a couple of WalksWagon’s and so on. It was nice – their parking lot. Nikhil scares me with the way he drives. I keep hitting the brakes sitting next to him and it does not tire me. We reached Leela palace and went over to the counter to buy some time. He tells us that we need to wait for 2 hours and it was 8 by then. Too late we said. We then watched a few chicks throw some balls and then headed over to Forum to check if there were any good movies that we could watch. I thought we’d get to watch “A missed call” thats when Nikhil cribbed about how he’s scared of gory ghosty movies. Yeah, that was funny. We did not get tickets for it, or for Shaurya anyway and we did not want to watch One Two Three. Went over to a rather nice restaurant, waited for 20 minutes, got in, had some amazing food and got out. I bit into an amazing Rs 10 worth pan and it was awesome. Here the day ended. I took a Rs 100 rickshaw home and have been in front of thix box ever since. I feel happy! Cross my heart and hope to die. Time to kill myself temporarily. Night.

-Anup

More Nostalgia.

Have you ever had those times? Times where you can’t stop yourself from thinking about the days that you just lived. Nostalgia that you just can’t avoid. However hard you try and however much you tell yourself about how strong you are and about how you must live through this; sometimes, don’t you have times where you end up crying for what you’ve lost? Don’t those really nasty environmental variables make you sad and angry at the same time? Also, does it ever happen that the nightmares you’ve tried to avoid seem to rain down upon you like Gods wrath? A funny feeling that you may experience during times like these might be the weirdish tingle in your stomach about the direction in which your life’s moving. You might feel helpless; unsure about the turns you need to take, unsure about the decisions you need to make. Most often than not, during times like these the number of dilemma’s in your head would seem to double. Well, I’d like to announce that this is a fairly common experience and the easiest way to deal with it is to let it take over you – just like fear, you know? The more you try to fend it off the more it’d trouble you. Let it come, doggy-fuck you and leave. Trust me, once its done with what it wants to do with you, it’ll go. There are others too… I’m sure. Others who’d need to experience sadness. The emotion thats closest to man. We all know why. The reason’s pretty simple – Man is the only animal that has a hole in his heart. An abstract rather invisible and invincible hole which makes him shallow. This hole makes him to want more, crave for more than he deserves. It makes him desire. Its the reason we’re human beings.

So, whats your point fatso? What I was trying to convey here was that things get better if you absorb what life has to give you rather than take it forcibly. No, I’m not a believer in Karma, cause that theory doesn’t seem to have a base. What you do comes back to you? Uhm, no; not always and I’m sure about this. What you sow, so shall you reap? Yeah, stupid, its grain and its science, water and life. You will reap what you sow, no biggie. Running back to where I started… Nostalgia. This is precisely what makes us stronger and I say look it in its eyes. If what you fear seems to come to your thoughts over and over again, stay, and don’t move. Don’t struggle. Think about the life you’ve lived. Think about all what you’ve felt – big things or small, just think about all of them. It could be something as small as someone tell you that he/she loves you very much. Else, it could be someones smile, a hug, a conversation or plainly put the warmth of people who made your life good. Not to forget, the painful memories – Lies, betrayal, love and reasons for why things happened; things that made you sad.

Well, I’ve been extremely nostalgic over the last two days. I must associate this to the fact that I’ve been alone throughout the week since I’m covering the nights at work. I don’t get to meet Ratheesh, Avi or any of the other guys I used to talk to. This, thus, gave me a lot of time to think to myself and sometimes think out loud. Well, the thinking out loud part has put me into embarassing situations once in a while. Like, I’d be walking down the corridor, talking to myself as usual or sometimes I’d be talking to god and there’d be people passing by looking at me; searching for a bluetooth device or a wire that’d be transmitting my voice! Funny. I’d realize later that I got stared at by numerous people. Guess its ok. Who cares? I love talking to myself and I will continue to do what I like. The simplest lesson I’ve learnt is that the easiest way to lose a bout of depression is talking to yourself, telling yourself that the past is behind me and that I need to move on. Talking to myself helps me to understand, analyze and accept. Acceptance is the most important part of all of this. Like I said before, the more you’d wait for a change or for something to happen, the lesser are the chances of anything good to happen. Let there be hope, but don’t sit and wait for things to happen just cause you have hope. Moving ahead and living your life to the fullest is important, they say. I don’t know why they’d say – Live your life to the fullest. Can anyone ever live a different life? We’re all going to live our lives the way we’re supposed to.

Apart from the fact that I’m getting more and more efficient at ranting random bullshit, I’ve got my classes – CCNA going on in full swing and I must say, I love these classes. The concept really drives into my head and I seem to enjoy the class. I make good notes (I never made notes in college) and I read after I come back home. All of these things scare me. Have I become my old self? No use worrying. Gymming and dieting feels absolutely awesome. I’ve lost my headaches and trust me when I say, I’ve lost 3.5 kgs in 12 days. So, I’m sure that I’m going to lose all of the extra fat on my body and I’m going to be fit. Today is Sunday and it so happened that I slept throughout the day on Saturday, thus I couldn’t sleep the night and now I’m sleepy. I really don’t want to ruin my Sunday, so I’d probably hit the sack right now and try to wake up before the 11:30 AM mallu movie. Must end now.

-Anup