I call myself a Software Engineer

pain of typing my fingers bear,

my bums are stick indefinitely to chair,

my work has gifted me glasses' pair,

I call myself a Software Engineer

PHP Errors on server haunts me day & night,

warnings from manager feels like shoot at sight,

Google is my dearest peer,

I call myself a Software Engineer

Flowchart & actual code never match,

To make it work, I add a patch,

compilation without error brings me to tear,

I call myself a Software Engineer

Now-a-days chores include daily scrum,

 I live on coffee and bread-crumb,

product manager is tiger & I am deer,

This is how they hunt Software Engineer

Laptop is my shield & softwares are swords,

hackathons feel like battle of lords,

headphone is a body part important than ear,

They say I am a Software Engineer

Dream is to get into Facebook or Twitter,

attracts me its glam & glitter,

they give us all money & gears,

finally that's the ambition of Software Engineer

My life has become such a mess,

stuck forever in Pursuit of Happyness,

give me one more chance, O God, I swear,

I will prefer to be a Poet than Software Engineer

He and She Part 1

She: Where are you?

He: I am here only. Tell me what is the issue.

She: Get me those spring onions from Fridge.

He: Hold on, I just gave you onion a minute ago. Why don't you tell me to bring 2 onions then?

She: Because I don't want onion, I wan't spring onion.

He: You mean spring attached to their ass??

She:(very angry look)

He: Ok, Ok, I am going to get your spring onions. (whispers) Damn these spring onions. I had to search 10 shops to get these.

She: What are you murmuring?

He: Nothing. Here goes spring onions.(Hands over)

She:Thank You.

He:By the way, from last 20 minutes, I am bringing you some vegetables, some spices. What is it that you are preparing?

She:It's Sweet Corn Soup!!

He:What??? I thought you were going to make some curry.

She: Of course, I will be. But after soup is done.

He: I thought soup is appetizer. I knew it will increase my hunger but not this way.

She:Have some patience.

He: Ok, tell me one thing. Why do we eat?

She:What do you mean?

He: To survive.

She: We don't eat to survive. We breath to survive.

He: Now don't go into too much technicality. Ok, let me rephrase my argument. We eat food to feed our stomuch.

She: Yup.
He:Then why to waste time by preparing it in exquisite ways. Logically speaking we need to dump food in our belly.
She: I disagree. Food is for feeding stomuch and good food is for feeding your tongue.
He: When I meant dumping food in stomach, I never meant raw food, ofcourse cooked food, edible food.
She:Then why did God give us tongue and taste for? If you are in favour of dumping food, edible food, then you are as good as animals.
He:(feverishly) What is the use of constantly working for hours and hours to get some unknown combination of spices so that when someone will eat that food, they will momentarily remember its taste and then will forget.
She:Nobody forgets the taste of good food, people always remember good taste and crave for it. Thats how Restaurant/Hotel business works, for your kind information.
He:What is taste? It is nothing but some brain reaction to particular event. So when you taste anything, you are just making some neurons run from here to there. If that is the case, we as in humans, should invent some taste-creating pills. We can put them in raw food and live happily.
She:I really hope that day should never come. Scientific approach does not work in every case. Tell me there are so many cooking shows you see now-a-days on television. So, all the people who create it, watch it are fool?
He:I am not saying that they are fool. But they are wasting their time. Why do you have to decorate your plate if you yourself are going to ruin all decoration in a minute?
She: Won't you like to eat properly served food?
He: Hmm, what about the mere fact that food cooked in some five star hotels don't taste as good as the normal food prepared by your mother??
She: That is true, but then why again do we plan to go to these hotels someday.
He: That's what I am talking about. Then just give you false impressions.
(She inspects the soup in the pot by lifting the lid and pours it into the soup bowl)
He: So my argument is, Don't procrastinate Cooking as some art, its rather the Compulsive dependency of humans.
She: Now take this bowl and taste the soup. Tell me whether all ingredients are fine or not.
(Takes one sip from the soup bowl)
He: Ohh my God, that is one of the awesomest soup I ever have tasted. Your hands have magic. How can you put all these things in soup?? Its too delicious.
She:(Lovingly) Thanks Honey. Tell me which soup you want tomorrow?
He: I want that Creamy Mushroom Soup you prepared once, the melted cream on the surface of it. Just the thought of it is bringing hunger goosebumps on me.
She: So, you are among those fools who crave for the tests and also are very attentive to the food decoration.
He: You calling me fool?
She: No, you called yourself fool some time ago.
He: Ohh...leave these intricacies. Let me drink some soup.
(After both of them finish)
She: Now I am going to cook, Cottage Cheese steaks and Alfredo Macaroni.
He: What was that second thing? Are you cooking some man? Are you Cannibal or what??
She: Just shut up and bring me from fridge some butter, 3 garlic flacks, 4 chillies, 2 potatoes.....
(Her voice fades as he tries to remember them all)
He:(opening the door of fridge) Screw my testbuds!!!

City of Joy

With the pre-planned shutdown in my office, I had planned to visit my in Laws at Kolkata to witness the famous Durga Pooja. Being bengali yet out of Kolkata for most of her life, my wife has attended Durga Puja just once till now, so she was as excited as I was. Unlike all other places of India where Navratri is celebrated with Dandiya and all Puja rituals, the Bengali Durga Puja starts becoming grand and magnificent with the sixth day of Navratri thats Shashthi.

We reached Kolkata in the morning at 10. Phailin was about to start and the Kolkata welcomed us with dark clouds and soothing wind. My father in law and his friend welcomed us at airport, and as we were marching towards the parking space, my father in law told me proudly that your sasurbadi is the City of Joy. With clouds hanging on our heads and drops of water surprising us every now and then, my mother in law was little bit worried whether we could see the Durga Puja celebrations or not. As we started for the tour, rain started pouring moderately. The group of 8 of us was enthusiastic and optimist about the darshan. I was nervous for my DSLR which I have pre-purchased just for this occasion. It was like preparing blade of your sword for the Peace Summit. Anyways, our first destination was Shree Bhoomi Pandal. The pandal was huge and the stage is awesomely decorated. The murti of Durga Ma was so beautiful, the face was so elegant, the sharp eyelines, the overworked ornaments, the weaponeries (ayudh) were so brilliantly created. That scene was really breathtaking. The artist have tried their best to portray cruel and cunning yet defeating Asura and the akral-vikral lion. Whenever I have seen Durga Puja photos online or on TV, I have never noticed the other degnetories who shared the stage with Durga Ma. On the left side of Durga Ma was Laxmi Ma, followed by Ganapati.(Yes! Aapla Ganapati Bappa) On the right side was Saraswati Ma accompanied by Lord Kartikey. After the first pandal and numerous clicks, we went to Salt Lake Area and visited few more pandals. The efforts were taking not only on Durga Ma statues but also innovative ideas were implemented by different Groups to make their pandal unique, whether it be completely made of Bamboos or complete hut structure or huge fortress replicas.

Not only this but each pandal was decorated with huge zumbers each of them must have costed a huge sum but increased the deocrum of the pandals manyfolds.

What DurgaPuja is to bengali is what Diwali is for the rest of us. All the city is overwhelmed with such a joy, enthusiasm. All the roads are filled with lighting and each passing lane have Durga Puja pandal. The adjective Royal is a perfect match for Bengali culture. The way beauties were walking around all corners of streets, guys wearing ethnic kurtas even in the crowded and muddy atmosphere gives you sense that they are all into fashion and takes good care of their looks. My wife's stubborn stand that she will wear Saree even if there will be tiring journey and she will have to sacrifice the comfort of normal clothes gave conclusive stamp on my opinion. Everywhere I could see enthusiastic, happy faces roaming, bengali women wearing that typical big bindi proudly doing their chitter-chatter. I have fairly seen the Ganapati festival in major maharashtra cities like Pune...err I mean only pune. The one difference what I found between marathi and bengali culture, I would like to explain in more details. In the Ganapati Mandap, we could see all the crowd folding their hands and praying to their favourite god, while in Durga Puja mandap, I could see the crowds either watching the beauty of the stage and of the Durga Ma or capturing it in camera. Marathi people are very bhavik while bengali are very rajas. History has the evidences of my claim. In maharashtra we had so many saints who praised gods with their abhang, kavya. Similarly Bengal has the history of so many art lovers like Tagore. Its just the way we praise our almighty, we seek it through our prayers and they do it by praising the almighty for the beauty she had created in the world. Anyways, before I stop making sense I should stop this analysis.

During the two day Puja tour, I found one more important vein of the city, the traffic police. As seen in the movie Kahani, the traffic police with completely white uniform were standing at each square, 2-3 police per square. I was amazed to see the abundance of traffic police and I thought that this must be extra police force added just for Durga Puja but that was not the case, here traffic police handle traffic much efficiently than Signals. I found the same count of them on streets later after Durga Puja.

This city has such a heritaged history like Mumbai. Kolkata was the place from where East India Company started their insertion into India. There are so many beautiful and ancient buildings from British Era still standing firmly on their grounds, just like mumbai. One of the best thing I found in Kolkata was the journey in Tram. It is the only place in India where Tram runs and not just for the sake of show but Tram network was spread all across the main city. Mumbai also had a tram but in the midst of modernization, it got lost. The tram journey was such a joyful ride. Imagine bicycles, the hand-riksha(again a speciality of Kolkata), cars, motorcycles rides beside you and you watch them from the tram who modestly goes her the way. This is the good thing about Kolkata, people here have maintained the essence of old times, whether it is College street(analogous to ABC in Pune) or Park Street. Wondering though Kolkata gave me the feeling that how beautiful were the old times, just like shown in the movie Midnight in Paris. Sitting on the wooden bench on footpath and eating singada & amrati (samosa and Emarati), I realized that I am so lost in all MacD, KFC culture. After we eat total 4 plates of Samosa and lots of Emarati, our bill was just Rs.38. And I pay minimum Rs.80 for that kind of food in bangalore. The cost of living in kolkata is really low.

The park street market is a feast for ladies. They can get lost in the gigantic yet congested new market. The biggest advantage to this city is it is Ganga. The tremendous shores of Ganga, when I watched from Belur math, I slightly understood the greatness of the river.

The metro rail in Kolkata is also one of the awesome thing, I feel. Its the only metro infrastructure in India which is totally underground. I also came to know that there is a planning for bring underground metro from below the Ganga. Metro is like the veins/arteries of Kolkata. Look, the city offers you so many varied commute options, from metro, local train, local buses to hand-driven rikshaws, yellow taxies.

With all boons, there are some bad things about Kolkata. The public infrastructure is totally collapsed. With overwhelming population flooding at its gates from Bangladesh, this is what happens. The commute is very difficult. Its not that they dont have proper city-buses but the facilities provided are very less as compared to the ones who are supposed to make use of it. Auto, taxi drivers take advantage of our helplessness and loot your money. Many times you feel frustrated after looking at the dumps of garbage all over the places. At one corner in one of the market area, I saw water pipe open and there was such a waste of water. Being the son of Vidarbh Soil, I felt so angry as no one was caring to put it off. The fish markets and vegetable markets make the areas very shaggy.  Nonetheless, this is the situation of all over-crowded cities in India.

Dakshineshwar temple, Belur math, Victoria Memorial...the list is never-ending for tourism. Coming to the city of joy definately gave me so many good memories. It is land who have given us national heroes like Vivekanand, SubhashChandra Bose, Ravindranath Tagore, Jagdish Chandra Bose and many more. On the day of departure, my mother in law gave me the Roshagulla, as I gulped it, its sweetness reminded me of all the good things, good lovely and sweet people and their hospitality. When my plane took off from the runaway I watched the city of joy disappearing in the clouds busy in her day to day chores. She had served well one more guest.

Breaking Head

Sometimes we waste our time and energy on the most useless things in life, like reading Twilight series and moreover that watching the movies on it. I started the novels long ago, first one was good, but I literally had headache while reading the second part. I somehow halfway reached the third part but then I quit. I never wanted to read the last part of the so called "SAGA". I forgot all about it, I was happy with my life. But then one day I accidentally came across the Breaking Dawn part 1 and 2. I took the bad decision to watch it, I am human after all, I tend to do mistakes. The story grows bullshit as it progresses. The shy glances of Edward-Bella on their honeymoon were quite similar to Suraj Badjatya's Vivah's scenes. First part is very slow, wolf politics, jacob's mental status and all painful scenes of Bella makes us nauseated. I almost lost all attraction for Kristen Stewart in the first part.(PS: In second part, she got it back). In this dualogy, edward our hero is no more hero. He is there because first three parts have him. Other cullens has as usual put excessive face-powder on their faces and gave grim looks as always. The end scene of the movie is so predictable and copied completely from the Avatar. The second part's editing and screenplay are so bad that after waking up from the deathbed, Bella moves directly to Edwards and without giving glace towards the rest of family they leave the house, how selfish!! The jacob who was saying love you to Bella suddenly finds his "Imprint" on her daughter. This twist was extremely difficult to digest but I guess Stephenie Meyer was inspired by Woody Allen's personal life.The villian in the story always has larger than life portray, but the Voltouri brothers were so lame that I pity the talent of the casting team. Lot of other vampires are brought into the story who populates the scenes. I hereby declare Twilight as one of the worst love stories of all time.
Peace out. 

Salar Jung

I was on my way back to home for a long leave and had to go via Hydrabad. I reached the city early morning and my next bus was in the night, so I had a humongous day in front of me to spend. There were many options like Ramoji Film City, Nehru Zoological park, Golconda fort and Salar Jung Museum. 90% of the readers would have chosen any location among first three, because going for the museum has least of the fun factor. I chose otherwise, even I was surprised with the choice. All museums I have seen ever have been the part of some one day tour trips of cities or some compulsory college educational tours. I remember, we used to drag our own bodies out of such buildings just like the zombies in horror hollywood movies. But SalarJung museum is the exception. One of my favorite writers Pu. La. Deshpande once wrote that SalarJung is different than any other museum he have ever seen and since then I had a curiosity to see it. I had been in Hyderabad for some 7 months but never had a chance to go there. Today standing on the porch of Hyderabad Central Bus Stand, I had the chance and I took it.

I was accompanied by a close friend on this voyage. We reached the place at 10.30 A.M. The building reflected the prosperity of the Nizam empire. The entry fee was just Rs.10 with free locker. It was the Bazinga moment for both of us, as we were the residents of Bangalore where in Rs.10 no body will even slap you(pun intended/ I know lots of people who would do it for me.) Anyways, when we entered the building with the map in our hands, I never expected that I would be exposed to such a beautiful era of art and antiques. The building had just 2 floors with three blocks, central, eastern and western. On the ground floor, a section is dedicated to introduce SalarJung III, he was the one who preserved the collection of all antiques from his previous generations and created the museum. His real name was Mir Yusuf Ali Khan. Salar Jung is the post of prime minister of Nizam which was given to his ancestors by the then Nizam.

There were number of gallaries from Indian Bronze and printed textiles to sculptures, from mirror art to glass gallary. Each object in the gallary represented the skills of the workers at that time. The fine sculpting on the glasses showed the perfection and carefulness which each artist poured into those objects. Most of the hot blood people of our generation are attracted mainly to the Arms and Armour Gallary. When we went inside, our jaws dropped to see variety of swords, daggers, battle axes, spears, bows. The Jade gallary contains cups, culteries, daggers and arm rests made of fine and exquisite jades. The kashmir gallary contained all shamiyanas and kashmiri cloths/stuffs which reflect the typical kashmir work-designs. The Bidry gallary contains the utensils made by Bidars from different places.(Based on the shapes of the utensils, I believe most of them must have been used to serve liquor). One of the exquisite gallaries that I encountered there was of Persian/Arabic Scripts gallary where many original documents and religious scripts were preserved, written in arabic languages. There is some charisma with urdu words, I may say. They are so heavy and stuffed. I mugged many urdu words to flaunt later in some home-made shayaris. Unfortunately I forgot it now. There were other gallaries like toys, floras and fiona, mainly targeted for the children.

The east wing of the building contains the antiques from China, Japan etc. The chinese art work is extremely magnificent and deeply carved white marbled art works make your jaw drop naturally. The Japanese dragon paintings and dummies are quite appealing. Though the translations on few of the chinese paintings are extremely hilarious, one being 'चांदनी रात में नाचती भजन मंडली ' for the dancing chinese monks made us laugh our asses off. After looking through all of the eastern gallery, I started realizing the prosperity which Salar Jung possesed. The mediocre thoughts like "How did Salarjung managed to keep these many things as collection, where we can not find good place to live in bangalore" came to our minds. That moment I understood one thing, Royalty is what comes automatically, we can't pretend it. Anyways, after conquering eastern wing, we were pretty exhausted and needed some break. There was small canteen, we had some snickers and we started off again
The western gallary is marvellous and just awesome. There are 5 consecutive gallaries, the first one was European paintings. The painting were damn good. Earlier, I always used to think, watching in the movies, how can people keep on staring at the paintings for so long, but now I tell you, some paintings capture your attention so deeply that your eyesight get magnetically fixed on the colors, on the shapes, on the imagination which painter wanted viewer to experience. The painting of psyche, I found extremely artistic. There is a common notion that European paintings take help of nudity to make art more profound, but in those paintings it was art which defined nudity, not vice-versa(Anyways, that's my personal opinion). Yup, and there was one more painting gallary in Indian section which was titled Modern Paintings. The abstract paintings there made no sense to me. I believe, I still dont understand art quite well, because some of the paintings I found quite annoyingly senseless to be put on show. Ok, lets get back to European gallaries. Next was the Porcelain gallary which had some fancy stuffs like mirrors and mazes created using porcelain arts. Later was the glass gallary and I tell you that was just awesome. The glass wares with different shades of colored glasses were looking so exotic that even drinking water in it may tantalize you. The Venice, Istanbul, Belgium glasses were breathtakingly amazing.

Finally I will tell you something like A must do and  A must don't in museum. The veiled Rebecca is the best masterpiece in the whole building. Don't miss it. The sculptor G.B.Benzoni created it on the white marbel. The veil and wrinkles on it shows the miraculously divine talent of the artist. When you are wandering in the central block, you will find quite a fudge about some alarm and people will be gathering into the open hall with Alarm clock to see the magic. But there ain't any. We had been sitting there for 15 mins earlier to check what is all that about. In simple words, its extremely lame mechanical alarm rings. P.S.: This whole event could sound quite appealing to children, as we saw many of them gasp in utter bewilderment. When we had finished every gallary, we saw the watch and it was 4.30. The realization hit us like a bombshell, we had been in the museum for 6 straight hours. There must have been something really wrong with us. But we were fully content.

I would recommend everyone to once visit SalarJung once in your lifetime to know how rich was our culture. Mankind needs art because it reflects the cultural evolution which is the soul of Civilization.