Monthly Archive for February, 2009

An overtly self-indulgent 100th post

Published on February 21, 2009 in General and Just Rambling. 9 Comments

Well. I didn’t even realise that I was at 99 posts before I was casually checking my WordPress Dashboard. So folks, this is officially my 100th post as a blogger.

*****Warning – Cliches ahead*****
It seems just like yesterday that I started blogging.

Looking back, I never thought I would write this much. Honestly, I discovered my writing skills only in the year 2000. Not that I have literary skills, but I hope I can make people laugh (or at least raise some eyebrows! Come on people! Give me a sign of life. Don’t desert me on this) through my writing.

I’m feeling really nostalgic about my blog, which is now something really close to my heart. So this post is just about that – nostalgia and retrospection. It will also serve as a compendium of my best posts till now, for those who came in late.

Genesis

I stumbled upon the phenomenon called blogging quite by accident. I created an account in Blogger.com in September 2004, which was my first blog. I believe the first name I gave it was “Deepak’s Pensieve”. The description or “tagline” was a rather lengthy and stupid one which I really don’t remember. All I remember were the last lines which went something like “I’m gonna take you on a rollercoaster”. Yeah right! As if a childish blog which would evoke only one reaction from readers – “Ewww!” – would earn you a free ticket to Six Flags. Likewise, many of my initial posts were borderlining on stupidity, because I honestly had no idea what blogging really was.

I was in training at Infosys, Pune during that time. My friend Harini (We call each other PCP – for “PC Partner”, because we had to share a PC during training.) had a better and more mature blog, and that’s where I learnt what to write in a blog and what not! Anyway, I got an idea, but I didn’t develop that there, because I didn’t have a PC at home, and I didn’t want to spend time blogging when I was at work. So my blog remained dormant till early next year. Well.. Not really, because I used to write something stupid every 2 months or so.

The Rise

My blog really gained momentum when I was on bench for a month after I put down my papers in Infosys in 2005.  I had to come to office, but I really had nothing to do. So I started blogging again. I realised that my writing skills were improving with each post; that was a motivation to go ahead. Somewhere along the line, I changed the name to “The Pensieve”. I also experimented with modifying the looks of my blog a lot, and my experiments later led to a more successful, but really shortlived technical blog called Blogger Hacked.

Once I was back in Bangalore, I bought a computer, so I could blog from the comfort of home, because I still didn’t want to blog from office. It has been a dream run since then. I never could believe that I could write this much. A huge increase in my readership came after I wrote this rather wacky Ghost Story.

As time passed, I thought I needed more control over the look of my blog. The answer for that was WordPress. I had earned enough money through Google Adsense too (from my other blog) So I decided to buy a personal domain, and migrate my blog to WordPress. So Pensieve 2.0 was born. I messed up the supposedly grand opening of my blog on New Year by changing the name and getting confused, but readers stood by the original name “The Pensieve”, so I made it “Pensieve 2.0″. After the initial hiccup, everything went fine. The credit for the tagline goes to KP, who has been my rival in studies and friend in everything else since 1996. Also I deleted some really old posts which are so stupid that I feel like pulling my tongue. Wait a minute! My tongue is already long as it is! I talk too much and I can touch my nose with my tongue. (Gross, you may think, but I bet that not many of you can do that.) So statement taken back; I don’t want to stretch it further by pulling it.

100 and still young

I have mostly stuck to humor and dreaming in my posts, with occassional ramblings of seriousness, but the general verdict has been that I’m not capable of profound thoughts. I have a lot of “lurkers” among my friends – those who haven’t commented even once, because they are intimidated by the literary genius of my posts, but have pleasantly surprised me when they talk about it to me in person. I urge you to comment. It might be a bit overwhelming because it’s me, but don’t worry… I’ll go easy on you. Besides, there’s no fun for me in it without knowing your reactions.

My blogging frequency has decreased a bit, and so has the humor in it, I suspect. That is simply because I barely get time to wander through the dreamlands that create my stories. But I already have a very tight bond with my blog, and I will not let go.

Thank you, my dear readers. You ROCK!!

I will now list some of my post which I think were my best. Please read them if you haven’t.

Fiction

  1. Achluophobia – Two stories among a trilogy of Ghost stories. The one which made me a teensy bit famous.
  2. Banaras – A story of 4 students and their misadventures. Adapted from real life incidents of my uncle when he was studying in BHU.
  3. Executed – The one which I consider my best till date. Satire about the mosquitoes of Cochin.
  4. Aldous Who? – A slightly modified version of the story which confirmed that my winning Creative Writing in Debutante 2000 was not a mistake. I won this in some other Culfest, I guess.

Life etc.

  1. I live… – I consider this as my first humorous post.
  2. The Weirdest Nightmare – This singular dream shattered all my myths about my own weirdness. Can’t put it inside fiction, because I really dreamed even the tiniest detail of what’s written in this.
  3. American Goofups and Woes Reloaded – “Wherever you are, I am there”, trouble keeps telling me this.
  4. Delusions of Grandeur – Something serious.

Memoirs

  1. The best days of my life – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 – A four part series, about my first year in NIT Calicut.
  2. Chronicles of two pranksters – My and my brother’s childhood, told from a third person perspective.
  3. One evening in Pune – Funny account of first day in Pune with Naru.
  4. Risible antics of the First – One thing I’m good at – making fun of myself.

A tag to end it

  1. Weird things about weirdness – Random weird facts about me.

V Day or I Day?

Published on February 14, 2009 in I miss India, Just Rambling and Life etc.. 4 Comments

Feb 14th.

No chocolate for guessing what is so significant about this date.

But I bet you would have guessed it wrong about the significance of today w.r.t. me (with respect to. Anyone remember calculus?)

Instead of getting a date, I got a phone call… from my parents. And they wished me Happy Birthday! A birthday that even I came to know of, only after the call. Before you get all confused, today is my birthday according to Indian Calendar. And because I don’t have an Indian Calendar here in US, I didn’t know earlier. Oh, I just love being Indian. You can have two birthdays per year!

Anyway, it came as a pleasant surprise, because I had absolutely no plans for today. Now I can celebrate, and not look like an ass slacking on Valentine’s day.

Also, I called my brother, and I talked to him like I talk to my mom – for 45 minutes. The only difference was that we talked about some subjects, which I never dare talk to my mom. It spanned topics like my theory about his craze for Telugu movies (His secret Telugu Girlfriend! Not so secret any more!), about our parents’ trip to Mettupalayam today, how to survive in the cutthroat world of office, my plans for Valentine’s day, his plans, and of course, Ram Sene.

  1. My brother didn’t know that my parents were going to Mettupalayam today. When he asked me why, I said in my usual fashion, that they were going to Black Thunder themepark to rediscover their childhood. He replied back with an impromptu punchline, “Paada Parambil keri Golf kalikkalle Mone Dineshaa” (Don’t play Golf in barren land. To understand what he meant, read this post, section 6.1)
  2. I told him how to proactively cut the throat of those who are planning to cut your throat. You can even mention that during your appraisal, as an example of how proactive you are.
  3. My plans for V-Day – Eat, study, sleep.
  4. His plans for V-Day – Eat, work, sleep when the manager is not around.
  5. My brother told me about Ram Sene’s threat that they will forcibly marry off any couple they see on roads. He was talking about how the mob was a bunch of sexually frustrated losers who wanted an excuse to grope girls. I couldn’t help but crack this joke that there may be gays in Ram Sene, so boys are not safe either. (I am sorry if this is insensitive, but this is how I will show my protest, because I can’t do anything about it from US)

So, because today is my birthday, I’m gonna celebrate it by ordering a pizza and the delicious Chocolate Breadsticks from Pizza Hut.

PS: I generally don’t talk about my Indian birthday outside, because it is strictly for family. But today was too much of a coincidence!

PPS: On an entirely different note, an important event occured yesterday, which will never occur again. At 6:31pm, the UNIX timestamp struck the value of 1234567890. But the trouble-seeker that I am, I accidentally slept across the iconic moment, and incurred the wrath of all UNIX enthusiasts.

Anger Management

Published on February 7, 2009 in Life etc. and Weird things. 5 Comments

How often do you keep your cool when some stranger hits in your head with a rolled booklet? Have you ever had such experience at all? I did! A couple of days back! And I totally kept my cool!

This happened at the career fair. After standing in long queues, I got tired and came back to the lobby to have a seat. Ahh. The plush comfort of the couch! What can be more satisfying than having a coke in a couch? Apparently, checking my email was ! So I took my iPod touch out and started reading email.

Suddenly someone hit me on my head. I was startled for a moment. I quickly looked up to see which of my pestering friends it was, but to my further surprise, it was a total stranger. She froze for a moment. I had a temptation to shout “Someone call 911. I’m being attacked!” in typical Deepak-style. But I thought there were way too many people there, and someone might panic.

Anyway, after the moment of shock sunk in, the lady started apologizing to me. Apparently, the top view of my head looked like that of someone she knew. I was looking down as I was reading email, so my face apparently was not that visible. The only thing I felt about the whole “mishap” was amusement. Now, that was interesting. Because, had this happened 5 years back, I would have been real angry… even if it was a stranger.

There used to be a time when I used to get angry very easily. I used to scare away a great deal of people, who thought that I was not worthy of their friendship because I was rude. But only I knew that I was not rude. It was just… I would get angry very fast.  But as if to counter that shortcoming, I never ever held a grudge against anyone. I would forget that in a matter of hours.

I have become better and better at curbing my anger, since my undergraduate days, and although I haven’t rooted it out yet, I can be happy that the last time I got angry at anyone was several months ago. There have been three key people who have helped me get better at controlling my rage.

Deepu Chandran, who has been a great friend of mine, even after I did this to him. He has advised me a great deal on the need to remain calm, and how to do it.

My father, who I consider an epitome of calmness. I have never seen him get angry in his life. (Although he acts like he is angry sometimes, for example, when he doesn’t get food on time, he is a really bad actor.)

Thirdly, my mother, who is a good example that you can control your anger if you try hard. Recalling my childhood days, I remember that she used to be really short tempered. But nowadays, I would say she can give my dad a run for his money. She once said that one important thing in keeping your anger at bay was to not attach yourself to anything materialistic.

I have understood through the course of time how important is it to prevent yourself from getting angry. Anger, as I know it, doesn’t help in anything productive. It only lengthens the distance between two people. It doesn’t ease your tension. It doesn’t free your mind. It is an unnecessary and potentially dangerous vestige of human nature. I strive to be free of anger all the time.

Looking at this incident, I’m sure I have improved a lot. I was initially apprehensive about whether I was just not showing my anger because it was a stranger or because it was a girl. But I asked myself, if I was angry inside, about the incident, and the answer was “Not at all!”