Count your friends before you hatch.

"How many friends do you have?" If someone had asked this question at various stages in my life, I would have given varied answers. Around 150 -- when I was in middle school, about 50 -- when I was in junior high, about 20 -- when I finished school. I am not talking about the status the facebook gives to the contacts in the network. I am talking about those, who stood through thick and thin, mostly thin, over the years. Now you honestly tell me how many of those you know will you tag as "friends." The count has more or less remained constant to this day. In the first 15 years of my life, I had met 90% of people who would be my life long friends no matter what. Even if I get to meet any of them after a decade, I bet we would still talk in the way we used to do. On the other hand, I have been a lot more uncomfortable with certain people with whom I had to share my daily existence in the near past.


I always tell that it is so easy to make friends while one is a kid. There are almost no requirements to become friends with someone; same pencil box - Friends!, same school bag - Friends, near by - Friends. In fact, the reasons to become enemies with someone is as silly and as irrelevant as it is to become friends with one. The favo dialogue I grew up with: "missss, he is pinching me." We became friends and enemies LIKE THAT.When I was in school -- kinder garden and middle -- my classmates were either my friends or enemies. There was no middle line. I knew everyone, likewise, everyone knew me. We were innocent, laughed at the most innocuous of the jokes, played harder than ever, collectively afraid of our teacher, and stuck together -- no matter what. We never asked anything from each other. It didn't matter who was someone's father, how much lunch money he/she had, whether he/she looked good, or if the person had enough potential to succeed.

It amazes me how little we do nowadays to keep in touch with our friends. Yes, I am talking about this time -- the era of SMSes, googles, facebooks, twitters and what not. It is now appropriate to wish someone's birthday or anniversary via a scrap or on a wall; and its not just for those who are abroad or in a different city. I feel that we are sometimes forced to choose friends who happen to be near us just to keep us sane and safe from the grip of loneliness and depression. And this makes us to act in a way we are not used to or not supposed to. (A hyberbolic treatment of the same point in one of my earlier posts.) I wonder why has it become so difficult right now to make and keep friends. Nowadays I feel that relationships are formed on the basis of convenience. And it ends as soon as the location or any other scenery changes. Nobody seems to stick with anyone "till death do them part." A hundred friends on facebook or orkut, but no one to talk to when in need. Gone are the days when friends come to someone's home just for an aimless banter going for hours.

I ramble because I get a feeling that I will be away from my friends -- for a long time. If there has been one constant in my 27 years of existence, apart from the usual suspect a.k.a family, it is my friends. I can bet, you take every possession I have, my bank balance, my inheritance, anything -- and I can earn almost all of them back, and then some more. But if you take my friends, I am not sure if I would be able to find at least one who is of the same caliber. No offense, but you've got to meet them and you'll know that its an understatement.

I dedicate this post to all of my estranged friends with whom I now have little or no contact.

அழிவி னவைநீக்கி ஆறுய்த்து அழிவின்கண்
அல்லல் உழப்பதாம் நட்பு.

(Friendship from ruin saves, in way of virtue keeps;
In troubled time, it weeps with him who weeps.)

How to not get a driver's license.

I am now a proud owner of a car..................................................................................license. I still don't have the "authority" from "higher powers" (exactly one generation ahead) to just buy the darn car. But this story is is not about my desire to buy a car. This story is about how I got my driver's license.

To do something in the gargantuan amount of time I have had since my separation from my old job, I decided to take a tiny-teeny amount of time to get a car driver's license which was way over due. It all started with getting my learner's on April 1st. Theoritically, from then on its fifteen days of driving classes and the driving test after 30 days to get the license. Well, it never goes according to paper for me does it? Thanks to a few trips and laziness, I finished all of my 15 classes on May 22nd, scattered between almost 50 days after started. I was eager for my test on 23rd, only to be turned away from driving school to come the next Monday. 29th was a really long hard day -- my friends would vouch for that  -- so I skipped 30th and went on 31st instead, only to be turned down by my driving school because they didn't had a Tuesday slot with the RTO.

Kicking myself for not knowing that fact, and after a wait of one week, I hit the RTO on June 6th morning. After waiting for 2 hours, I was told that my form wasn't paid as yet and I needed to bring the original driver's license to surrender. I am pretty darn amused as to why they would assume I would know this. I was told to come on Wednesday, 8th. On 8th morning, I found out that my form was unknowingly withheld by the school, so I had to come on 9th. On 9th, I packed all my arsenal, skipped my breakfast --god knows when was the last time that happened -- and started for the RTO. I knew it was gonna be a long hard day, so I took my ipod with me. I was so right!

It all started nicely; I waited for 2 hours to have my form to be paid, and another hour for the test to start; in the scheme of things with regard to Chennai RTO, it ain't that bad. Trust me! After being driven to a verge of a nervous breakdown by my driving school teacher and RTO inspector, I learned that I had passed the driving test and am finally going to get the hallowed license after the photo shoot.

At this point, I have to mention my bike license. If I give my current license as a proof of identity for verification, I would be surely put behind bars for identity theft. From my name to my date of birth to my address, every darn thing on that was wrong. I somehow managed to look thin in that photo (college times) so my face doesn't even remotely resemble to what that's on the card. I never paid any attention to all these details and I was never asked about it by the traffic constables either. But I did run into lot of trouble, especially with banks whenever I had to produce my drivers' license. So I decided to get everything straightened out in my new license. And thats when the trouble started.

After the photo shoot, my details were entered into the RTO database. The details were same as in my old license, so I asked them to change to correct ones. I was told to go to the inspector and get a correction. So I went in search of person A, who happened to have taken the day off. So I asked person B instead, but B insisted to get from another inspector C. C had gone for a lunch, and after C came after an hr, C told to get the signature from A. When I told A was on leave, C told to get the signature from D. D took a look at my details and offered to help, only if I can provide the original and copy of my passport. I looked into my arsenal -- apparently I was short of nuke.

I thought myself -- expect the unexpected -- and then scooted to get my passport. I was 2 PM already and I gave a miss to my lunch too. I dun even think I had done that before :D Not wanting to break that record, I had a tea and couple of biscuits to keep my tummy warm. Tea was 5 bucks, biscuits were 2, and the tea shop owner begged for a correct change, and I looked into my purse. I had exact 7 rupees in change; the owner blessed me! I went to my home, found that the power was gone, so I decided to take the copy near RTO. I came to RTO around 2:30 only realized that the place was under power cut from 2-3. So I went to an another zip code and finally managed to find a copying place. The copier guy didnt have a change for my 100, and he didnt want my worn out 10, and all of my change was spent in the tea stall. You can't write a script for this! So I went to get some change for 100. The first store I went it, I tried to break the 100, but the storekeeper didnt have change either.

Something peculiar happened; instead of going to the next shop, I asked whether card will be accepted, and started to shop for things ONLY to realize 5 mins later that I still won't get change. Then leaving all the items over there, I went to another store, got a Sprite and a Naturo and managed to get the change. I then hurried to RTO, only to find that person D had gone out. After waiting for another hour, I showed the documents to D, who then referred me to E for correction. E said that he can only correct learner's license and not a regular, asked me to go to A. After seeing my plight, B did the correction. The correct data was then entered into the system at 4:15, and at 4:30, all was done. Phew!!! Throughout this episode from 2-4PM, a person from my driving school was behind me during my travails. And when I tried to give him "something" -- not because he asked for but because I was grateful to him -- he vehemently opposed to take anything. He skipped his lunch too. That guy somehow managed to put a smile on my face even after such a torturous episode such as this.

So what did I learn? Well, shit happens. So always, ALWAYS, expect the unexpected. God may not be with you all the time, but you can be assured that Mr. Murphy will be. So always be prepared to soothe your mind. It seems I managed to do one thing right yesterday; I packed my ipod. One of my favo songs was on an infinite loop the whole morning.

Me, myself and my brain

After a not so brutal separation from my five year love, I am on a sabbatical now. I had thought about a million things to do in my free time; all the things I so wanted to do for many many years. Now I have all the time in the world yet I seem to run out of time every day. Each of the things I want to do requires a lot of hard work, commitment and perseverance, and it would be an understatement to say that I could be working a lot harder right now than I would have if I had been working. But, the end results of my work would be helpful to me for as long as I wish to live.

Now even with all these advantages of embarking upon on an effort, with even the minimalistic success, or to an extent, failure, yielding great returns, my brain is deciding to, well, lie dormant. And when I say "dormant", I mean eat, day dream-- both awake and asleep, TV, and other things that causes minimal stress on the brain functions. Oh the selfish selfish brain! It puts itself before me. If we both were married, we would be so divorced by now. Since we are not, and I cannot live without my brain (awwww!), I have got to accept it the way it is,albeit grudgingly.

You see, over the period of year of conditioning, brain -- specifically a part of brain that's responsible of pleasure centers -- identifies what's our inherent state of pleasure is, and given an opportunity to be in this state, it will take it. And not just that, it influences -- or at least tries to -- the other parts of the brain to accept its decision by using its not so secret weapon "dopamine." And this state of pleasure is not fixed; we subconsciously define a new one at each stage of our life. For a kid, it could be play outside, for an hardworking person, it could be to just sit back, relax, beer and a game of TV. And for those who have experienced sex, the best pleasure giving activity IMO, the brain constantly looks for chances to make its "bearer" get laid. Enough said.

The weirdest thing is, this state of pleasure or blissfulness necessarily need not be just laziness or indolence. In fact, provided the brain is conditioned, one's state of pleasure could be right at the peak of a physical or a mental activity. This is what makes a scientist go after a not-so trivial pursuit of an arduous experiment, a marathon runner to push every inch of his/her muscle to the limit, and everyone of us to go very near to a cardiac arrest every time we have sex.

My state of pleasure (excluding all sexual components 'coz my private life is off limits!!) is to get to an "aha" moment, a moment of discovery, after breaking my brains and my relationships over a long period in pursuit of a solution to a very complex problem. These situations haven't had happened a lot of times before, but I vividly remember each of those episodes as it happened over the last 10 years. So this state of laziness of mine or an inertia to not get my brain or body thinking, is like the lull before storm or the crouch before the pounce. My brain, will always get make me to get into difficult situations to get as close as possible to be in reaching distance of the "aha" moments. Needless to say, it pisses me off every time it does that; but I love it exactly for this; for keeping me alive.

I am going to spend my life being a color

Those who know me, define me in two very different ways with regard to the way I approach life. One set call me an intransigent, hard-balled, calculated, cold-hearted, practical son-of-a-B@#!* about the way I go about doing my things. The other set call me an impractical, day-dreaming, wide-eyed idealist who carries on with his life with no regard about tomorrow. Truth to be told, I feel that I have got a bit of both in me. And no, it is not because I am a Gemini! (enough of that!). And I believe it is applicable to each one of us.

I believe every action that we do -- or for that matter, think -- has a mixture of idealism and pragmatism. It is this "mixture" that makes us do the things that we perceive to be crazy or mundane. What would you define someone who willingly chooses to try for the "million dollar question", knowing very well that the wrong answer would eat away more than 90% of his winnings? Or what would you say to a person who wishes to take a peek into "door #3"? What would you call Virender Sehwag who chose to reach his first triple hundred with a six? At the other end of the spectrum, we have those who stay at home because there is a chance that there is a chance to catch swine flu by chance. Again, enuff said!

Actions -- I believe -- are driven by three factors. First, is the motivation to reach one's goal.  Second, the level of self-realization a.k.a the ability to properly and consciously understand one's potential and situation one is in. Third, a (decent) dose of unadulterated & original "crazy." Think about these three components as red, green, blue colors. You can form any color (actually you can form 65536 ways, but why go into that) with either the PRESENCE or ABSENCE of red, green and blue. Notice my stress on both "presence" and "absence." Extending this analogy, a person's specific action may be characterized by which he or she mixes each of the three aforementioned characteristics.

I tend to disagree that a person's character is fixed. I believe that a person's character, and in turn, his actions are dependent on the magnitude, gravity and timing of his situation that eventually governs the way in which he mixes his "red, blue and green." I would say Sehwag had 100% motivation, 100% self-realization and 100% craziness for choosing to hit a six to reach this triple hundred. But my topic is not just about hitting sixes, it is more than that.

You know that if red, blue, and green are 100% present, the outcome is white color. Going with the tradition of having white for good and black for bad, the presence of all three characteristics would result in absolute "whiteness." If an 100% "white" action succeeds, the outcome is eternal glory; a place in history. However, I would like to point out that the type of outcome may or may not be good in character. Examples are the works of Hitler or our very own Lord Voldemort. On the other extreme, we have people who show 0% of everything in their actions. No one cares about these people. They become so insignificant that they become a bane for others' existence.

But most of us use some percentage of each of these three characteristics in our actions. Let us take a simple situation which most of us can relate to. "Should I stay with my current company or look for a job outside?" Now lets add depths to this situation. "What if there I don't like the new job? What if the new job requires to travel? What if I get a promotion in my current company?" Catch hold of 100 people, and all those 100 people will give different answers. Just like one generalizes a light yellow and a dark yellow as yellow, we tend group our answers into three categories: "take the new job, don't take the new job, or indecisive." Trust me, if you deeply analyze the specifics of decision making process, you would actually find that each decision would consist of parts of "take new job","don't take new job", and "indecisive."

So coming back to first paragraph on discussion about yours truly, what governs my action? I feel that in each of my actions, I have 100% motivation. But it is the degree of "self-realization" and "craziness" that makes me to free-climb a hill, but also to be afraid to look down from terrace. But if any of these parts is 0, I will not do it.

An action with zero motivation is a waste of time.
An action with zero self-realization will never see the the intended goal.
An action with zero craziness is boring.

So what are you made up of?