persons,wish to meet before 2013

 

The Thanks Giving day and Black Friday are over. Its not like I knew these western holidays earlier, until I got some mail representing exciting offers from Amazon and eBay on eve of these holidays.The new year is approaching rapidly along with the silent euphoria arousing inside, of, would be at home within the coming couple of weeks. The accomplishments are, of getting familiar of the latest OS provided by two different software giants, Apple and Microsoft (Mountain Lion / Windows 8). The new year celebrations are impending fast, however the apocalyptic day, 21/12/12 is imminent. The sky may fall and it may crumbles in the end of the year. Despite these uncertainties, and inspired, only by the title of the movie, “Jab Tak Hai Jaan”, I still urge to meet these persons before 2013.

Manmohan Singh 

Why ? Because he is the man behind currently the most successful woman in Indian politics.

 What To say ? Is it true that, first in his lifetime Rajnikant failed,and it was an unsuccessful attempt to make you speak ?

Barack Obama

Why? Because his foreign policy killed both, Obama physically and Romney, socially.

What to say ? You are the first person of The USA, your wife is the first lady, Which of your children should we consider the first Baby of the USA?

Tim Cook

Why? Because he made the greatest thing happen to iPhone since iPhone: the Apple Maps.

What to say ? You may have insanely great things in technology but, If you don’t have Windows 8, well, you don’t have Windows 8.

Sharukh Khan

Why? Because, he is been upgraded to King of romance after the era of Yash Raj ended.

What to say? Its time to change your choreographer for your next movie. Try something new, Oppan Gangnam Style!

 Kristen Stewart

Why? Because in current year, she is the highest paid actress in Hollywood .

What to say ? Vampires may be cold blooded but, its true that some of them have no facial expression at all.

Had Programming been the Medical way!

Dear Facebook,
Its since the day fell for your charms, the day since I get addicted not because of your look and feel, but some pretty faces out there, I could find the same question being asked by you, each time, I visit my home page; “What’s on your mind?”
Well! Its true that you have changed the significance of ‘f’. But honestly, its always been hard to share with you, the persons, thoughts and ideas, ideally on my mind. And, I bet, if I try anything like this, there could be a lot of bombs exploding, in between friends, in the office or may be from some strangers!
#1. Had Programming been the Medical way!
“One could not count the vigorous effort that you put in you logic, Or the numerous errors, that reside behind your code.”
The air becomes saturated, its hard to breathe, your body is raging with fumes, you feel trapped. You could feel the surrounding has deafening sound of silence. You haven’t eaten for hours, and still, you feel your stomach flooded. You don’t find anyone who can comfort you. You don’t find any music melodious, or a friend peculiar.
Please do not be misguided these feeling with what those intellectuals call it , the crazy stupid: Love. The mouse next to you starts randomly cutting out for a second or two before working again for a while, like it’s just dying.You feel, the monitor, in front of you, behaving like a black and white TV, playing an inaudible Sastriya Sangit.
Yes! you are definitely in between agony, trying hard to get your logic work as it should be. Meanwhile, someone reviews your logic and comments : Holy Crap! leaving you bamboozled.
I wish, the programming had been the medical way where I could proudly say:-

“See! If you want this logic to be implemented I would charge, a hundred grand for that, otherwise I won’t give a shit to it! All the if-else statements, the for/while loops, would be charged separately, based on the logic it consists. Twenty grand for each the test case I would write and thirty, for testing those cases. Because, I am knackered, the way, you come to me at the end of the day,when I’d about to leave, and ask ‘Let’s start working on this enhancement.’ I am shattered  with your requirements, that changes often, than the weather, the design, that is manipulated at your wish.”

Thanks,
Yours Availer.

Are We Satisfied...

A cage , three ‘firangi’ parrots, one of them green, another yellow and the last one white, hardly 3 inches long from head to tail.The cage is tied up from the roof of a Dhaba. The weird thing is the name, ’Tourist’, given to the Dhaba. Earlier, I knew only one common name given to all Dhabas, ‘Baba the Dhaba’.  People come and go , watch those prisoners, praise their beauty, enjoy, their chirping, their movements inside a tiny home. One of them, the yellow one, is silent, as of, has given up all the hopes. It keeps on resting/sleeping inside it’s artificial nest made up of soil ,inside the cage,itself. The green one keeps on chirping, as of thinking,’To Fly or not to Fly’ . The third, the white one keeps  moving from one wall of the steel cage to another,screeching, hitting the steel wires with its beak, trying to bypass part of its body, more than the beak, outside the tiny home, so called a cage. Holding the steel wire tightly with its talons ,always seems to get off the prison. Two small boxes, one filled with grains , another with water resides at the bottom of the cage. The green one often takes some grains in its beak and jumps back to it’s place. The roadside dirt has most affected the white one, its feathers has been turning into dull pale. They eat ,sleep,awake and again feed themselves, again sleep. 

I visit that Dhaba seldom for lunch. Watch them closely performing the same activities in order. I could feel them, looking at me, intently with a mixture of amusement, confusion and suspicion. Feel like being asked a question by them : “Are you the one who is going set us free ? If not , why are you staring me like this, stop giving us , a murderous look. Are you satisfied taking our freedom ?  Despite all your intelligence, you, human could never be satisfied.”

Sometimes, I feel like, going to the Dhaba owner and ask them about the price for those birds. Also take any local native person, who will help me to bargain their price, in their conventional language. But what if they could not adopt the outside environment, die with hunger and thirst.Neither way, I feel satisfied with their whereabouts.

A Coffee With …

“You know, the Manager wants to see me… I don’t know why the heck he is interesting in meeting me . He just said , wants to talk about some project related thing.”
“Oh , That’s a positive sign, maybe he wants to involve you in some good work. Might be some change of project.”
“Let’s see, what happens !”
A tall, dark man with well maintained physique, passed my cubical saying that he wanted to meet me in next five minutes , in the meeting room situated at the corner side of the working area.
Within five minutes we were inside the room sitting face to face. The only difference had been a cup of coffee, that was missing in my hands. While he was enjoying a cold coffee (surely taken from CCD), I was sitting idle along with a spiritless look.
“So, We have something really important to discuss. As we have a lot of people finding opportunities to move to the location of the client ,so called ‘on-site’ , we are left with  a lot of places to filled after they leave. Such an opportunity awaits you. You have been in this project for marginal time, and I think you are quite familiar with both the front end and back end technologies and terminologies…” 
“Actually front end,in back end, I just, worked on only few enhancements.”, I interrupted him in the middle, with a half grinning, half grimacing, look of distaste.
“Okay, I think you must have a proper understanding of current project. There are some people, in the support section of this project, who are moving apart, and I am here to suggest you to avail this opportunity.” 
“But… I am not interested in the kind of work done in support field.”
“What do you mean you are not interested ?”
“I mean…Err… I don’t feel the kind of work, good enough, they do in support.”
“You never have been in support , how can you say like that ?”
“Yes, I have been in buffer for some days in support team prior to coming into this one. I have seen them working. And  I also, don’t like the timing in which they work,generally, there was two shifts there. One was morning from 7 am to 5 pm and another from 12pm to 9pm. I am not comfortable with either of the shifts.”
“That’s not a valid point, how can you say about there work not  good enough. They also do the same work as we do in development.The only difference is, You get tickets there, and you have to solve them within a time period.”
“Yes , when you get tickets you solve them and  the rest of the time, I have seen people wandering around the food courts for tea or gossip. I don’t find it as a challenging work. And also you have to work during weekend, providing support services sitting at home.”
“That’s a misconception that support work in not as much challenging as development. I want to tell you about one of my colleagues, who is, at Manager post, in Apple. Can you believe he was in support work, for a long period of four years. You can be there just for a short duration of 18 to 24 months.”
“That’s not a short duration. I don’t see any work pressure there,  you get tickets, you solve them , other times , you sit idle. And you can’t learn things without feeling any pressure. We have less opportunities of learning new things…...”
Meanwhile the conversation was interrupted by a phone call at his mobile. Finishing his call for 2-3 minutes, he came to the point again.
“Yeah! ,Sorry for the interruption, Where were we! , OK ..Think about it more like this, you get idle time, you can utilize them in learning new technologies. You can learn whatever you want, whether its Java, .NET or web based html. I don’t see any valid reason , why don’t you want to work in support ?”
“Err…. the reason is still same, I am not interested at all, I don’t see that work neither inspiring nor motivating.”
Thinking for few seconds he said, “Well, I just want you to wait here for sometimes, till the TL of the support team visits you. Let me check whether she is available or not. Talk to her, and if she is able to convince you then we are all set, otherwise don’t say directly ‘No’ to her.”
All I wanted was, to yell at his back , Is it like so. First you killed our technology interests and now you want us to do work as per your likings. Forget about the Customer Delight, you boast about, are you keeping the delight of your own employees.
In a duration of five minutes a lady walks in, with glasses perched on the tip of her nose, and the same drama was repeated for one more time.

Good Programmers Copy

“Ek Bagal mein Chand hoga , Ek Bagal mein Rotiyan….” the melody was buzzing deep inside my ears through the ear buds. It was half past one, the afternoon timing, when you try hard to keep yourself awake.And, once you put ear buds on , you can the feel the world off ! Some people still manage to find the whole day refreshing, and I am certainly not one of them.

In the mean time I could sense somebody was calling my name. Putting the dream of, both ‘Chand’ and ‘Rotiyan’ aside, I managed to  I snuck around the neighboring co-worker. I could see him working on some hot issues , he faced during our daily job: ‘coding’- what we call it as.

“I got a problem for you. Here is piece of code that I had, exactly  copied from the code snippet, you had written earlier. But I am getting some kind of issues with this piece of code. Can you check and tell me , what the issue is ?” 

I managed to give him  a ghost of nod. Sniffing around of his piece of code, I could found nothing of my interest.

“Okay, leave it I will find it by myself, he mumbled.

“Yes sure . Also let me know what is the problem”.

Meanwhile, the phone rang, displaying an unknown number at screen.

“Hallo!”

All I could hear was a distant person’s voice chattering across the other side of the phone.

“Please, speak in English on Hindi.”

“I am already speaking in English, Sir.”

I figured out,the accent of English, was totally different to what we Indians speak. And for we, all English accent, other than Indian are hard to grasp.

“Hi ! I am calling from Kindle customer services UK . You had raised a request for replacement of your Kindle device, as you had mentioned that some of the keys on your device are malfunctioning.”

“Yes that’s true.”

“Okay. So for security reasons I request you to add the payment details on your account in amazon.com. You should have a valid credit/debit card for filling up those details.”

”Can you please call me tomorrow or may be day after tomorrow as I don’t have the credit card details right now.”

Getting a positive response from the other side of the phone , I hung it up.

“Hey ! I think you have forgotten all the coding logic , you had implemented some days ago.” the neighboring person said sarcastically.

“Who remembers the logic implemented codes, that was written two months ago.” I replied, giving a wounded look to him.

“You ,even can’t explain the solution of the problem which I had mentioned you, sometime earlier. You must have copied and pasted all the code snippets from somewhere else.”  he argued.

“Definitely I had copied and pasted a lot of code snippets, but that was a successful copy and paste. And you did the same thing, but yours is unsuccessful.” I  defended.

“ Its not all about copying and pasting, there are some concepts behind coding.” he said, more irritably this time.

“That concept part may called Programming , but The ‘Coding’ seems to be nothing more than a successful copy and paste or a lucky hit and trial.”

It let me reminded the the famous statement of the cofounder of Apple,  Steve jobs:

“Good Programmers copy, but great programmers steal ideas. Every novice can be a coder but it takes years to become a programmer, and some people can not make it, till the end.”

Later on, he asked me , whether should he include the update of  work done by me, for the day, as ‘copied and pasted codes’.

“Of course! You can, but append the word “Successfully”  as a prefix.”

The Day the Earth danced at Shakira’s tone

“So you use your own Unix login credentials for data base connectivity.”
“Yes I do.”
“Can you show me the details of your daily hourly effort you put in work ?”
“Yes sure !”
“Whom are you reporting to?”
“Earlier I was reporting to Mr. …. but now its Mr. …..”
It was an audit going on just behind me. The person was shooting questions like a bullet to my team mate and She was taking those questions as an input, processing them and came up with a well verse answer as an output. The big boss was standing beside them watching the conversation.  As it was afternoon period , I was sleeping from inside , trying hard to keep my eyes open. Suddenly I could feel my chair oscillating like someone had played “Hips don’t lie” song and  my chair was well aware of that.Thinking of someone might be shaking my chair intensely,I turned around making a face to see who was it. Aware of the situation the audit person was rushing towards the exit.Probably he knew the fact that if he would be late, God would be taking his audit from next time ! Somebody announced “ it’s an earthquake.” People started vacating the place. No damage was done at that place.I could find many people not aware of the slight tremors. I asked my Boss for a permission -
“Boss ! Could I take one iMac with me ,as, if the tremor  returns with magnitude, there would be nothing left for coding !”
“Yes! Sure, you can , if the security allows you to do so.” he replied sarcastically.
Within five minutes people were outside the building gathered around for the discussion that continued another half an hour.
“If it would be of high magnitude , you won’t even get time to move from your place.Within a fraction of seconds you would be somewhere beneath the  debris.”
“Where is Mr. ….?”
“He said he won’t come out of building. He’s afraid,what if a P1 ticket comes in between !”
Back to work after half an hour I went straight to one of my team mate – “Please  give me your helmet. I want to secure my future for the day. I even don’t have any LIC policy till yet !”

A Technical Viva

“Hey! How is the External(interviewer) ?” I asked one of my classmate, who just got out of the interview room.
“He’s really a ‘Khadus’(bastard) ! He thinks himself nothing less than Bill Gates.” Got a disappointing reply from him.
It’s the semester viva, 3rd semester. The subject is “Principle Of Programming Languages”.We are having group viva, consisting of at least 5 people  in group. The first group, joining the External is the unluckiest one because they do not get any feedback . Whenever a group,comes out of the interviewer’s room , narrates the questions being asked , the mood and personality of External.
“What is the Intel's latest processor ?” came a voice in chaos.
One of my group member looked at me for an answer. I shrugged , murmured Pentium, the only processor I had heard about. He made a disgusting look and went in search for “Raju Scientist”, a guy who had the first assembled desktop in our batch.
Its Quart Core, the latest processor.”
“Is scanner an input device or output device ?” heard another question in chaos.
“It must be an input device , because when I told him that it is an output device ,he gave me a pity look.” came an answer from the mob.
Next was our group’s turn, the second last group. Only thing good was, we could proudly say that we were  nicely dressed ,in formal wear just to impress the External.
“Oh ! You people are really looking nice in formal wear. Let me check , whether your brains are as nice as your dresses ! All the previous group people really disappointed me and now I  expect some smart answers from this group. So should I proceed ? ” A mid-fifties ,half bald person with a large spectacle up on the nose , greeted us as we entered.
“Yes Sir !” we replied in unison.
“OK, Good ! Now , as the subject name is “Principle of programming languages” so tell me ,What do you people understand by programming language ?” He put a glance at the person sitting at the edge of our row.
“It’s a language used by programmers, and programmers generally use it.” He added the answer followed by  a pin drop silence.
“Programming language is a…” another person tried hard to recall but could not remember the rest part of definition.
The interviewer stared at rest of us ,as of asking any thing extra we want to add. All eyes went down as a response to his expectations.
“OK” he sighed. “Tell me in which languages we generally do programming ?”
“Sir , Its English ! We do all our coding in English Language”,came a  quick reply.
“Are you sure ? The programming language is English ?”
“Yes Sir ! We don’t have a Hindi keyboard yet.”
“Have you heard of Dennis Ritchie ?” He asked looking at me.
Who the heck on earth was he? I though,  nodded a negative response despite his anticipation.
“You must be knowing Daniel Craig !” he asked sarcastically.
The named seemed familiar ,so I nodded a positive response this time with much confidence.
Pissed off my response he took a disgusting look at each of us.
“Oh good ! I am overwhelmed to meet students like you.” He stopped and thought for a while, “You must be having computers with you , at least tell the configuration of your computers.”
“Actually Sir , it’s a monitor , a CPU , a keyboard , a mouse and a UPS configured together.” came a girl’s voice as a response.
“Great to see the future of Information Technology. Now , you may leave , please!”
We came out without dignity but  winning a battle against ignorance.
“Hey How is the External ?” One of the person from last group asked me.
“He is really a jerk,a bastard,**** !”

Who should be loved ,how and how much

“They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam, and jelly jelly.”
Small things happen in everyone’s life , may be or may not be on a daily basis. But knowingly or unknowingly ,these small things are generally neglected . The Author of the book ,  “The God Of Small Things” has stressed on those small things in life , that can affect people’s behavior and to much extent their day to day life.
 Our country is obsessed with the concept of  “Love laws”. The love laws are a set of wrong protocols , defined by Indian society ,thousands of years ago , but still ingrained in people’s mind.   The question being asked in this Law , “Who should be loved , how and how much” is yet to be answered. The law is being broken by each and every character of the story in the form, like being married to a person of different caste and religion , being fallen in love with an untouchable person , the distribution of love among a baby girl and a baby boy.
The author has described all sort of emotions of, betrayal , forbidden love and family love. The consequences of forbidden love that causes someone’s life , betrayal caused by marrying to a person of different caste and religion , a molested child who suffers a state of dumbness not able to express his feelings, a widow living in her parent’s home , a non-identical twins aged at seven got separated and reunited at age of 31, an elderly woman who never married because she broke the “Love Law” by falling in love with a priest , an optimist uncle who still loves his wife even if she dumped her for another man.
Even in the 21st century , we are still bound to the “Love Laws”. We still fall in love breaking those laws, hurting near and dear ones. And the consequences are not favorable always as suggested by author herself.
“When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”

A Christmas Present

“Wake up, you loafer ! Don’t waste my time. I have lots of places to visit. Get up  otherwise you will miss this Christmas present.”
A portly,white bearded man wearing a redcoat with white collar and a red trouser ,was beside my bed , having some gift packs along with a red envelope in his hands.
“Stop yawning and listen to me carefully. I got a Christmas present for you.”
“Christmas present for me ! I never got any earlier.” I responded rubbing my eyes.
“Yes ! You come across all the good things only once in your life. Although the bad things happen repeatedly.”
I had an eye on the largest gift box in his hands but contrary to my expectations he handed me the red envelope.
“It’s a message from God. He was complaining that ,it’s been a long time since you remembered him.” he answered before I could ask what was it ?
I recalled, the last time I prayed was just before the final assessment in training. Later, I tried visiting some popular temples for ‘Puja’, ‘Archna’ and ‘Aarti’ but each time I ended up with empty wallet for the sake of pundits there.
I opened the envelope , there was a letter and a message written on it.
 
Dear human,

“Once there was a beautiful place in universe called Earth, that I had provided to you for living. You started living happily in that heavenly environment. But as you increased in numbers you developed a common characteristics among yourself : “hatred”. And this very envy among yourself is helping me out in a way.Here, I got a shortage of tormented space  so called ‘HELL’. So I was thinking of shifting this HELL called thing there, on Earth ,as it seems there would be no any difference in both in the coming future.”
“But there is still time left. Stop being a Villain through out your lifetime ! Stop daydreaming and sitting idle all the day! Stop being possessive in nature! Do not wait to listen what others say about yourself . The inside story is in “What you think of yourself.” There is always only one obstacle in your progressive life and that is YOU. Change yourself if you can, otherwise the Earth would be renamed as ‘HELL !’”

Yours,
GOD