SHANTARAM…

I just completed reading the book, “SHANTARAM” written by Gregory David Roberts.
It was awesome, mind blowing and according to me, a literary masterpiece.
Here is a prologue to the book. I hope you enjoy it as I did.

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortures. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.

In my case, it’s a long story, and a crowded one. I was a revolutionary who lost his ideals in heroin, a philosopher who lost his integrity in crime, and a poet who lost his soul in a maximum security prison. When I escaped from that prison, over the front wall, between two gun towers, I became my country’s most wanted man. Luck ran with me and flew with me across the world to India, where I joined the Bombay mafia. I worked as a gunrunner, a smuggler and counterfeiter. I was chained on three continents, beaten, stabbed, and starved. I went to war. I ran into the enemy guns. And I survived, while other men around me died. They were better men than I am, most of them: better man whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else’s hate, or love, or indifference. And I buried them, too many of those men, and grieved their stories and their lives into my own.

But my story doesn’t begin with them, or with the mafia: it goes back to that first day in Bombay. Fate put me in the game there. Luck dealt the cards that led me to Karla Saaranen. And I started to play it out, that hand, from the first moment I looked into her green eyes. So it begins, this story, like everything else- with a woman, and a city, and a little bit of luck.”

I’ M FREE…

I’ m free…I’ m on BENCH.

Since the last 6 months, I have not been getting much work in the project. Today, I m relieved from the pain and burden of having a project code against my name.
Yesterday, on hearing this, one of my friends asked,
“I don’t understand. You didn’t have to work earlier and you don’t have to work now. What the difference does it make?”
I hope this blog can explain the difference.

My association with the project was much like an affair with a young, gorgeous lady.
(I call it ‘young’ because it was a single resource project and ‘gorgeous’ because I got to work on niche technologies).It gave me high visibility (due to client appreciations and good appraisals) in the circle (my project in particular and unit as a whole) and also envious on-lookers (due to my late-to-office-early-to-go routine). The only and the biggest problem with the project was that I didn’t have “enough” work.

The case was like -You can sleep with this young, gorgeous lady but you can’t make love to her. Now, this is an insult to the manhood of any person. You just cannot expect any MAN to do that. Of course, ‘Making love to her’ is the single-most important thing in the world for a man in that position. I am sure, ‘just sleeping with her’ does not even feature in his ‘Top 10^n, n-> Infinity, actions I would like to do in my life-time’ list.
Similarly, for a Software engineer, it is an insult to be in a project where there is not enough work. I would like to have all the good appraisals, appreciations and envy from my project mates, but for my work/quality of work rather than for the lack of it.
A release from the project gives me two immediate benefits:
Reduces frustration
Makes me available for service to other projects. (It is very much possible that I don’t just have to sleep with the lady this time)

So, this is for the other gorgeous ladies (projects)…

I’ m free…I’ m on BENCH.
Only Term and Condition: You know what ;-)

What is more painful in love?

• Her coldness towards you, or her indifference.
• The ‘Fear’ in her eyes on your presence, or the look of ‘Sympathy’ towards you.
• An outright rejection of your proposal, or her aloofness after saying “We can be friends”
• Not receiving any calls from her, or not being able to call her up
• Her absence when you needed her or your absence when she needed you.
• Staying away from her at a distant location, or trying to stay away from her intentionally.
• Not having any news about her, or hearing only the bad news and rumors.
• Loving someone you cannot forget, or loving someone you cannot forgive.

MOMENTS...

A Software engineer's life is too planned for comfort. It is difficult for him to do anything without adequate planning and he takes a lot of pride in that. His work, meetings, deadlines, the parties, even the coffee and toilet breaks are all planned. The unfortunate part of this very precise planning is that the focus of attention is more on the time on the watch rather than enjoying the moment.

It either took a momentary collective craziness or a lot of frustration on our part to decide on a long drive to Konark and that too late in the evening while we were sipping some hot coffee in Cafe Coffee Day. The decision may also have been triggered by the deafening mindless noise in the cafe but none of us could deny the fact that it had more to do with the internal turmoil that our monotonous life is facing each day, each moment. Leave aside the work on the weekdays, even the way of spending the weekends has become monotonous. It is usually spent watching movies or hanging out on one of the few cafes in the city or getting our mind & soul drunk in some dim lit bar.

Being a domestic guy, I was a bit hesitant for the trip at first but the urge to do something different was too strong to resist.It finally took a long drive, a crescent moon on the sky and a mildly violent sea to relax our senses and create a moment that could actually be treasured. We spent some time on the sea-shore and most of that time, we were silent. There was no time to discuss our projects, girlfriends (or the lack of it) or personal problems. The sight of the moaning sea, trying to sweep away our feet, was just too beautiful to be missed. All the complaints and problems of our life seemed so trivial and small. I had finally found a MOMENT that I could hold on to and that too after so long.

It's an irony that it takes long intervals of time in our long life for an unforgettable moment to happen. Recollect the first day in your college, the moment when you first saw your childhood crush, the first time your beloved touched you, the day when your best friend said how much he valued you as a friend, the date and time when you got your first job, the day when your father bragged about your success to his friends. The moments that force us to believe on the concept of the TIME MACHINE that would enable us to go back to our past and relive those moments again. The moments that are poor in time period units but very rich in life.

There is one thing in common in all those moments... they came unplanned.They cannot be planned. Like Doll was saying the other day,
"All our unforgettable moments come unplanned and when we are least expecting it."
"The moments may come too far in between but they are worth waiting for."