A friend of mine tells me that it will not rain after Ganesh Chaturthi. Rain has been the recurrent theme since last few months. Considering that it was rainy season, it's kind of obvious, and only I can think about cracking such meaningless jokes. We think about so many things when go out. Well, I must say, when I say we, I mean people who do not step into their car the moment they step out of their house and the repeatation the other way round. So people who are exposed in varying extents to the vagaries of nature, has so much to worry when they go out in their day to day life. Rainy season add one more item to it. People think, will it rain? do I need to carry an umbrella? People look out into the sky and try to predict the next hour or so, if it will rain.

There is something majestic and a certain sense of inevitability in the way the clouds build up. First it rumbles and then waits for few minutes. Some people don't get the signal, some get it. Anyway, clouds cannot care less who thinks what. Then it starts to drizzle. And then it starts to "rain", in the actual sense of the term. Big drops pounding on the earth making it wet in matter of seconds. When it changes from drizzle to rain, it almost seems to be apologetic, seems to saying, "Sorry, but I have a job to complete". People, who can help it, scramble for cover while clouds pour with a detachment only could be seen in the municipal worker watering the municipal parks. He cannot care less. He has to water the grass, he will water it and move ahead. After whatever time the cloud has been alloted it either stops or moves ahead. People again find their life back to normal, a tad less wet, and come out from their hidings.

A classmate of mine, names better left unsaid, had written "rainy season" as the favourite season. I had wondered at that time, that is it, within boundaries of sanity, possible for rainy season to be someone's favourite? It is far from being my favourite, but I am not sure that it will not come dangerously close to become one after a few more summers. Anyway who cares which is my favourite season. I am here to write inane articles and I will do just that. And look out of my window to the wet street, fresh trees (they like it after the rain, don't they?) and the floating clouds, and love life all over again.

Training is almost over. I sorely missed the last trainer. The new one, although is knowledgeable, has questionable human traits. Anyway, don't want to go into that. I was, as usual, almost bored to death. My friend, I discovered, had the capability to be as mischievous as me. That helped matters. We found out the way to shut down computers remotely. In case you are wondering how to do that it's Start > Run > shutdown -m '\\computer name' -t 'time in seconds' -r and hit enter. So, a command like shutdown -m \\pc18 -t 000 -r will bring the server immediately down without any warning whatsoever. We tried it a couple of times leaving the trainees baffled. Internet access was allowed for a couple of hours for the purpose of practicals. I did my duty of not missing any opportunity to corrupt others, by promptly suggesting my friend to visit uncyclopedia.org. He visited almost immediately and for the next couple of hours we spent laughing our asses off.
Training was boring, but it was fun at times. Thankfully it's over.

A small corrigendum. In my travelogue posted on 26 May 2008, I had said that SPIC Pharma has a school in Tuticorin. Few days ago I have come to know that the school I was referring to is of Southern Petrochemical Industries Corporation Ltd. The error is regretted.

While going to Cuddalore, when I spotted SPIC Pharma (and was fairly excited to see) for reasons better left unsaid, I asked Shanu, who was driving the car, in a very casual tone if he had heard about SPIC. Shanu in a similar tone replied that yes he knows about one SPIC Petroleum. I scoffed at him, telling that it can't be and SPIC is definitely into medicines. I knew almost nothing about SPIC but somehow I wanted to think that this SPIC was the same one who has a colony (SPIC Nagar) and a school in Tuticorin. Anyway, facts were put straight by someone whose knowledge in this is indisputable. Hence this post.

I forgot to mention in my travelogue, that the place I mentioned, Bhuvanagiri, is the birthplace of Adi Shankaracharya. I came to know that after returning to Bangalore.

One of my paternal uncles, had run away from home, became an ascetic, and eventually becoming a monk. He became the president of Kaanch Mandir, an ashram on the banks of River Ganga (for some strange reason it's referred to as Hoogly) in Calcutta. I was doing my graduation in Asansol, when with a friend we went there on a short trip, without informing at home. One morning we visited Dakshineshwar Temple on the other side of Ganga and my friend offered pujas. When we returned to ashram we were led to uncle's room. He was very old by that time and his health was failing. He was sitting on the bed and my friend and I sat on the floor. We were offered prasad, which was also breakfast for us. While eating we said that we had been to the Kali Temple. He asked if we had gone to see the place where Ramkrishna lived, and few other places which tourists and devotees can see. I replied in negative. He then in a very calm voice said, "It's foolish to set out seeing a place without knowing the importance of the place or knowing what should be seen."

One would have thought that I learnt my lessons after being reprimanded. But looks like I haven't yet. Had I have any inkling about the historical importance about that place I would have screamed, cried, done anything to make the car stop there. I am not interested in the religious aspect of it. I would have loved to stop there, and look around. Don't ask me why.

Its still raining outside. Sounds of water hitting all kind of surfaces trickling in through closed doors and windows. I don't feel like going to bed. I want to give company to all those water droplets who have no one to see or hear when they fall... Rain falls... Due to the gravitational force of the earth. Their's is a tragic story. The moment they leave the cloud, they are doomed. In seconds they hit the road, roof, metal, leaves, heads... So I just want to stay awake for some more time while they are doing that. I am just trying to be pseudo-romantic (let me know if you find a more appropriate term) while I can afford to do so. Tomorrow when I am tired after a day's boredom, I will just hit the bed and go to sleep. Make hay while the sun shines, they say... So listen to what you like while you can... :-)

Its pouring outside. It quarter past 12 in the night. I know I have to get up early tomorrow, very early infact if I have any intention of completing all the work that I have planned to complete, but here I am tippity tapping on the keyboard and listening to O Re Piya by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan. This fellow reminds of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. There are reasons also. Rahat happens to be Nusrat's cousin, and there is a striking similarity in the former's voice. Apparently Rahat trained under Nusrat since his childhood. Good for him. I came to know about Nusrat's existence when Bandit Queen came. The movie, notwithstanding Seema Biswas's naked scene, didn't interest me much. What stuck me were the songs. I never heard anything like that before. Apparently many didn't. I didn't understand anything about music, as I still don't now. Still I knew that the voice and the songs were touching a chord within. I then found out that Nusrat's voice managed to irritate dad. So I liked it even more. I became an instant fan of him. I got his cassettes, got his songs recorded. Then one day I heard that he has passed away. It was a shock. When a celebrity dies I will be the last person to feel bad about it. In this case I did feel bad. It seemed like a loss. You will not find people with such voices everywhere. Rahat is not as good as him, but he is good in his own way.

I never liked rain. In Rajrappa (its the same as saying, "in my childhood") rain was synonymous with gloom. I always had hated the overcast skies, the absence of sunlight in the day... I also had this possible migraine problem wherein such a day will almost always cause an headache, no figure of speech intended. All that changed after I came to Bangalore. I don't know why and how. It was not like I stepped out of the bus, and next day it came as a flash that "Wow, I love rain." No, it was not like that. But it was a pleasant surprise for myself when since quite a few months I have realised that I am actually enjoying the rain, I really love the cloudy, overcast days. May be it has to do something with Bangalore's absolutely beautiful weather. May be had I been in Kerala, and saw it raining for say 4 days incessently, I would still have clinged on to my old beliefs. But Bangalore is a different story. It rains, and it stops. And suddenly there is this nip in the air. I love that. It is not like those single minded persons, who doesn't leave a task untill it's completed. Rather its like me. It cannot do a job at one go. So it rains, and it stops, takes a break, let's some air in, moves along and bit, and rains again...

Bangalore reminds me of Rajrappa and Ranchi. Although Bangalore's altitude is high, it doesn't get as cold as those places, but it's good. Summers in Rajrappa are in extremes, temperatures hovering around 45, and when we saw it touching 50, it was not a good experience. Bangalore is moderate. I will always love Rajrappa, but I have come to like Bangalore. The other day I was returning from Office, and there is this road called outer ring road. We were waiting in the signal, and I saw this huge cloud, dark, in a very scary manner, and on one side it was glittering, full of light. It was a play of light and shadow. It was a beautiful sight. I caught the driver also looking at it. I don't know how long I will stay here, but now that there is something I like about this city, I hope the stay will be even more enjoyable.

On Saturday we came to know that the trainer is going to change. It doesn't matter "that" much, but I must say, the present one was way ahead in his league. I am yet to see someone who inspite of having so much command on the subject can put it across in such a lucid and deceptively simple way.

Anyway, Sunday was the only day this week to take rest. And rest I took. Left the bed at around 3:30 PM. Went to Forum Mall. It has been advised that all crowded public places, especially the malls are to be avoided in the weekends in the wake of the recent serial bomb blasts. But if malls are like source of glitter and light, Bangaloreans are like the moths. They simply can't resist the lure of malls.

Went to Landmark. Thats my favourite place. Well, the most favourite place is Bose. I can listen to their Wave Radio all day long. But I can't go there and spend say an hour listening to it. Its a place which you can go once in a day, especially when you have no intentions of buying anything. So Landmark is the next best option. Live hours after hours (if you please) in absolute anonymity, browsing through some of the best books in print. In the first floor I almost fainted. Someone had bathed in perfume, and to say that the stink was overpowering would be a gross understatement. Attempts to find the source didn't meet with any success. So I somehow walked further and got myself busy again, browsing VCDs.

A friend of mine informed that Seinfield is a good TV series. Or "was" so to say. So I downloaded the first 2 seasons, and was watching them for most part of my waking hours this weekend. Its situational comedy, I read it somewhere, but not sure what it means. But I liked it. Seinfield, the character himself is good. He is actually a stand-up comedian, and is far better than the recent ones. Speaking of TV shows, I really like them. There are websites which let you download season-loads of them. I have seen the exploits of Hercule Poirot that way. Not to mention almost the complete series of Sherlock Holmes. Then there was this British sitcom called Mind Your Language. I almost loved it. Someone introduced me to Thats 70s Show. It kept me amused for hours together. Friends, I didn't download. I got DVDs for the whole set of 10 seasons. It worthy to be collected. And presently Seinfield. These are things which makes you smile and laugh. And thats the reason I like them. Oh, in the Indian side of it, relived the childhood moments watching Byomkesh Bakshi and the Flop Show. On the lighter side of 90s 2 serials used to come on Doordarshan (DD1 didn't exist then). One was The Old Fox and the other one was Derrick. Both were German characters and were hugely popular. I am still trying to locate them, the serials, on the Internet.

The training, for most part, has been boring. Had it not been for the generous portions of breaks we get I am very certain that Saimeet and I would have ended up closing our eyes and snoring loudly. We infact did it a few times, closing the eyes I mean. Few apparent idiosyncracies of our trainer always had us in splits. Of course there were reasons for him to do that but we found it funny. Like every time he logs into a new user account (and you do that a lot of times when you're teaching Windows Server 2003) every single time, before doing "anything" else he will change the start menu to Classic. Again whenever he created any new partition or volume (and again he created quite a lot of them) he would, every single time, religiously remove the words "New Volume" while creating them. Anyway, training is going on, and will go on for another 2 weeks. Hopefully my desktop which has in an un-operable state since last few weeks, may be more than a month, will come up by this weekend, if my friend manages to fix the SMPS, and it works.

In the class everybody except for us are freshers. Of course they are new to the practical IT field, and are unexperienced, still some of the answers that came out of the group greatly amused us. For example the trainer asked, "What is the difference between Windows 2000 and Windows XP". An answer came, "Support for USB drives". In another instance trainer asked, "How many types of hard driver are there"? An answer came, "Internal and External Drives". In yet another instance the trainer asked, "How many types of partitions are there?" We couldn't see who said it but a very serious and earnest voice said, "Magical".