Infosys, Mysore

            I was done with my final year graduation exams and  I had got through  the campus placement too, so I hadn't much to worry about in life atleast for the time being. I was expecting  the Infosys joining date to be around 8 months later and a long holiday welcomed me.My mind was bogged with all the things  I could do or learn and was pretty excited about it.A few holidays passed and never did it surprise me that I was occupied all the time.Books, movies,tv shows, incubating some story in my head (though never came up with any full fledged one...happens often with me though :) ), guitar classes ( thats when I realised watering a tree is never as relishing as the fruit), evam ( ended up getting their call on the same day as that of Infy),I was shuffling my time among them.
             On one fateful day(though sounding dramatic, it does justification to the way I felt), on one of the days in August, I got the call letter from infy with the DOJ as July 18th,2011.I felt like I was gonna  miss my life.I was cherishing my holiday life, busy round the clock, when the call letter was welcoming me to a mechanical life.Infact, there were times when I felt I mustn't be accepting the call letter.My likes shadowed my logic.Though, eventually, sense did prevail and whether or not I liked it, I had to go.
         All the packing started and if I am right, I was heading forward to my first time independent life (more importantly, a life of fulltoo freedom) and on July 16th, Mysore Express rattled me to Mysore, my abode for the next five and a half months.My bro received me at the station. A long queue and a few registration processes at Infy,gate no 2 and Ramanathan Venkataramani (which is me) treads the path of an Infoscian.(sounds awe(y) but trust me,IT field is not any assorted chocolate box to keep you hooked for long :P ).My room number 78/345 (block number 78 and room number 345), kya bindaas room tha.Never felt like I was staying in a hostel, it was a hotel with ulterior room service.I tell you all the hotel sorry hostel staff are karmayogis there,keep working all the time.Well, the first week in campus was only induction and sight seeing (This is a 350 acre campus-cricket ground,tennis,TT,gym,swimming pool,shuttle, snooker,multiplex,7 food courts..this place rocks).Our classes were allocated and our generic stream thus begun.I loved the place,I was seated in the classroom.360 degrees entertainment.That means on every side I had friends I could laugh my heart out with. In fact, I even stayed back in the class a lot of days just for their company.Time never had its time then.There were classes, exams but fun and academics were on two different tracks and running in parallel too !!Then after a few days in generic, began the one week of PSD(Professional Skills Development).This one week was even better.No assignments, no reclining in your push back waiting for break..That was fun tym.It was supposed to hone your interpersonal skills and who wouldn't cherish  talking,entertaining and also being entertained.
          TT,bowling,multiplex movies,Tonif Dhaba,gossip in classroom and in rooms,b'day celebrations at 12am, pizza treats in friend's room,weekend outings, cosy rooms to put my mind on paper, ice cream at 12 am,a few interesting characters around :),  I had a gala time there.I even philosophized in my mind that life is a prepaid mobile and so one should never be upset for anything (heard it somewhere).  Around a month later, the results of our RDBMS exams had come, the last day in generic.None of my friends had cleared it.Walking with one of my friends that evening, I got a message that our classrooms for 'intermediate' had been allocated.Out of nervous anxiety, I went to the GEC to check my classroom to only be relieved that  all the people I wanted were in the same class..Yippee!!
                 The first day of intermediate, I still smile recollecting the moment when we were swapping our places so that we friends could be together.There was only one thing missing in intermediate and that was something new to learn :P. So even the exams were tension free.Silly forwards during sessions,gossips during break time, all were fun.The intermediate was nearing its end and it seemed really short.There were trainees who were being sent to other cities to continue their training and so the last day of intermediate, I was being given a hearty send off by classmates as if I wasn't going to return to Mysore :D  Though I was happy at that time that I could go home for Diwali, I only realised it later it was only a bane since I was to be put among strangers in a tougher stream and my life was going to be a total contrast to what I had lived so far there.
                  Stream began and no more did CGPA or TPI mattered.All that mattered was 50 in each module and hoping that the aggregate would somehow reach 65. I missed my friends and each day, I despised going to class.I wasn't myself anymore.I wasn't talking much to my classmates or having  fun anymore.I fell sick during the third module exam and that was just icing on the cake.My CGPA plummeted from 4.9 to 4.3.Stream was the worst time, I had in Mysore (which might not have been the case if I hadn't cleared the RDBMS exam or atleast had my friends been there...life does become easier when you know there could always be someone scoring lesser than you :P:D (just kidding)  )   
                   Well, nearly five months gone since I returned to Chennai from Mysore and still I miss 'the City of palaces' badly and this was something I never expected even in my weirdest imagination to happen, when I had got the offer letter.Life in its contrasting hues brings in many everlasting memories. Bogging in the heavy downpour of life, u never expect the glaring sun to create a colorful rainbow.It is only the unanticipated labyrinths of life, that makes it so precious.There were moments that I wish
I could live some day again but who knows,in the maze of life, tomorrow could well end up being that day :)









                

FIRST LOVE

A time would come when you are down,
your heart and mind is fatigued
lying in death bed and whimpering in pain
your fondest memories of life

Those fondest memories are your treasured secrets
you yearned for in life
Alas they would remain secrets
buried deep within you

A limousine and a villa were not your treasured secrets
nor was a peek into the world's exotic places
For all these seemed frivolous
just for her hand in yours

You treasured her and moved past in life
Earned everything one possibly could
Yet you are insatiate
For she was all you sought

She is now in another world
You don't know where it is
Yet, all that is left of you
craves to meet her again

You hope for a life after death
Just to see her laugh and be happy
You want to cry out aloud
just for a moment of life with her

A time had come
but for fear and discretion
when you could have lived your life
when you could have lived with her

ILLUSION

When I hit the sack

and close my eyes

My dream becomes a reality

and my life begins here

I walk hand in hand with the you know who

You know who because you feel it that way

I am swinging around in my mike-o-world

I can feel the crowd thumping

because I am the one giving them all

A million books and a trillion movies,

My counting fails but my want doesn't

My writings sing while my guitar gently weeps

You know how because you feel it that way

The bell screeches beside me

I open my eyes and the clock is ticking

I scurry around for my livelihood

The word ILLUSION glares at me

until I fall asleep again

THE LOSER

Heaps of words

Deafening noise

I got them all

when I took the centre stage.

Not until I saw you among the audience

that I acknowledged them as

accolades and applauses.

I knew you wouldn't come back

wouldn't even turn before leaving me.

Yet I kept waiting everyday

with the bleakest of hope

That atleast for a moment in those years of bliss

you would have read my eyes.

I am a changed man

Dreams, aspirations smother my heart.

Prosperity, fame and no matter what heights I attain,

your memories would keep lurking in a corner of my heart,
thumping harder everyday, that without you

I am a loser

The picture

After a hard day's work under the hot sun as a scientist in the Nalgonda forests, I came home and smothered myself with ice cold water, not even bothering to remove my spectacles. Drained of all the energy, I immediately fell flat on the air couch near by. Fatigue and hunger didn't help my sleep. I lay there like a quadraplegic staring hard at a picture hung just behind and over the television, directly in front of me.

The picture was a ghastly representation of trees somewhere in the Amazon, if I may assume.It had a few lines written in Czech on the top right and a few bloody stripes on the other ends.The dark blue waters that bifurcated the forest looked treacherous in the moon-light.The dark clouds and the reddish background made it sinister-looking.The picture indeed gives a harrowing experience and reveals its avengeful nature.My legs moved convulsively and I fell prostrate on the ground, accidentally pressing the T.V remote on the ground with my thigh. The T.V channels kept flipping owing to my rampant efforts to restore the resting position.I finally steadied myself and so was the channel on T.V. The news bulletin flashed "Wreckage in the Amazon forests due to human greed for scientific progress" .I looked at the bulletin and the picture with bated breath when a sudden burst of transformer outside shut down the power. I was now sitting in a dark room with the glossy Amazon picture being the only visible thing. I edged closer to the picture and tried to feel it with my almost numb fingers.I slid my fingers across various places in the picture and also on the walls around it to reassure myself that I was indeed getting a creepy wet sensation on my fingers.It felt as though the waters from the Amazon picture was flooding my house.I could hear the thunder and the lightning struck as though epitomizing Nature's fury. Doors and windows made a deafening squeaky noise, the bestial wind gushed through my insides and a spiny creature crawled around my neck sending chills down my spine. I scurried backwards like a toddler until my feet found the air couch.I leapt into the air couch, pressed my face as hard as I could against the couch and covered my ears tightly with my hands that I became virtually non existent.Images of me exploiting the forests for scietific progress kept jabbing through my mind.

After what it seemed like ages, I realized that I had fallen asleep.I woke up with renewed energy and tried to decipher what had been going on with me.Fortunately, the power was restored and I stared at the same picture, noticing that it was all quaint and pleasant. I observed that the ceiling had been leaking due to the rains outside giving that creepy watery feeling on the picture. I steadied myself with a coffee and a cigar.My mind had indeed been smoking up hallucinations due to over exhaustion.My cell phone buzzed and it read "Project Anaconda in Amazon !!!" and I grinned broadly as I prepared for my next project.

THE JUDGEMENT DAY

We are on a sail

winds ripping us apart

craving for life,I move ahead

ahead I foray into further perils

head steady but mind wobbling

breast no left with bones

for it is soaked with fear and anguish

desperation for life like never before

perspiration smothering with every stroke

watching other boats use my enticing waters

I said "it's mine "

relinquishing my possesion is never my attitude

for I owe a lot of gratitude

I knew I have reached my end

The quest for an orange (a dosage must for engineering aspirants)

It was midnight and there was mild drizzling.Sky was covered with clouds as if concealing its untold mysteries.Leaves were covered with dew drops of early morning.Such was the ambience while I was walking down the Down Town street in Chennai.Out of the blue, I found a 500 Re note on the road.Irresistibly , I went to pick it up while I heard an unusual moaning.When I went closer and examined,it was Mario, the entertainer in video games.It was so tiny that a leaf was sheltering it.The amazing thing was it could speak in perfect English and as well understand mine.

It was a real tragedy how the downfall of this powerful guy,the guy who could even take over dragons happened.To make Mario the same old powerful guy ,there was a mission which I believed only I could accomplish.The mission consisted of three stages.At the end of it all,I was supposed to receive an orange with a seed of an apple inside it,pulled out from a dragon's mouth.So this is how began the clash between the titans with Mario safe in my pocket.
The first stage began.I had to face the ghost, Chandramukhi.I was pretty clear that I had to either scare her away or please her because you know,its not manly to fight against a women.A crooked idea struck me of impressing her with my EG (Engineering Graphics) skills.So I drew her front and top views(Orthographic Projection).My intention was to make her look as pretty as possible thereby impressing her to let me onto the next stage.But, to my surprise my drawing skills scared the devil out of her and she ran for her life.

The next stage was a duel between me and a creature.The duel was based on engineering concepts.The creature first shot a P N diode shaped arrow at me.I reverse biased it and the diode was spoilt.Then a complex circuit was sent at me.Unable to analyse it , for I couldn't find a node or a mesh, I resorted to using superposition theorem.But once again couldn't decide on which sources to be removed.So,I just bent my head and my sharp brain cut across all complex networks.Then, by applying Laplace Transformation , I thought of transforming the creature into a frog and throwing it into the river near by.But before I could do that,the creature had differentiated itself and thereby letting only its torso to be transformed.It was then time for integrating the remaining parts with limit tending to infinity but because of a discontinuity in its physical form even integration failed to destroy it.Finally, I sent a sine wave superimposed with a triangular and square wave from a Creature Resonating Operator ( CRO ) and the creature assumed a weight which its own hind limbs couldn't withstand and so it was buried under the ground.

In the last stage, I had to face the dragon, a dragon that consumes fossil and exhales fire and looked at least a thousand centuries old ( no wonder the inflation rate of fuels has gone up to 8.5 %).I t was just a matter of common sense to overcome this dragon.I forcibly made the dragon to listen to the engineering concepts, I read out from a book.All of a sudden , I head a thumping sound.The dragon had fallen on the floor and dozed off.It was only the syllabus book I was reading from!!

After all this bloodshed, I pulled out the orange from the dragon's mouth and out of greediness I refused to give it to Mario.

A week later ,Mario committed suicide by hanging from the torsional pendulum.Everyone looked at it open mouthed except for me, since I had the entire orange pulp in my mouth.