A Timed Tragedy

So here I am, with my weekly load of clothes to wash at the Infosys Bangalore Laundry. This service, of course, is the pinnacle of comfort for Bachelors like me who can’t wash a cloth to save the world! But, the realisation of the same is that, just like me, there are thousands of other people who feel similarly comforted by knowing that there’s a Laundry available. This, of course, means that time and machines are at a premium here and there’s a virtual fight being fought to get to a washing machine.

So here I am and I am waiting for a machine to empty out so that I can put my clothes in and let the magic begin. The machine for which I am waiting is going to take about 17 minutes to finish the current wash cycle and then only will the owner of those clothes come and save me from dirty laundry. But what is this? There is another machine in the vicinity and that’s going to take 16 minutes to finish the cycle! What’s even more amazing is that no one has noticed this and there is no queue for that machine. Immediately, the calculations in my mind bring me to the conclusion that 1 minute save is 1 minute invested and I quickly rush to claim this gold mine before anyone else does. Now I sit here primly, waiting for this machine to finish in 16 minutes and lead me to salvation.

They say that the Grass is always greener on the other side. They don’t tell you that on the other side they use paint to make the grass look greener. They say a bird in hand in worth two in the bush. They don’t tell you that the one in hand is tastier than the two in the bush. They tell you that the machine will finish the wash in 16 minutes, while it takes 25 minutes to do the task!

As you may have guessed, as the minutes passed by, I realised that the ‘new’ machine I had invested my time in is taking longer to complete the cycle than the one I left. The time now is 9 minutes on my machine and 4 on the other. It seems, almost, that the machine I will soon be using has ‘more seconds per second’, that is, it is spending more than a second to do a second’s task. Impossible isn’t it?? After all, they’re both the same machines and run on the same power! Then how can two machines be in any way different when they simply are not?!

I guess there really is no explanation for this. I guess my machine was indeed taking more ‘seconds per second’ than any other in the Landry. The final truth is that I spent more time doing laundry that day than I usually do. That indeed, was a very strange tragedy of time!

Pure Brilliance…

Rarely do we come across something so special that it feels like telling the world about it… Dinner proved such an epiphany for me… I saw on the TV, in between the incredulous serials which line up on the Indian Television nowadays, a set of Ads for the Bajaj Discover DTSI bike which felt like just the right thing!

Now I’m not a big fan of the bike, being a Pulsar guy myself, but the adverts had a sense which I connected to. Both ads I saw were about discovering destinations in India which usually we are unaware of. While the first one claimed that nearby Ladakh, in Kashmir, there stands a place where the bike doesn’t need fuel to drive, on account of the presence of a Magnetic Hill near the road, the second claimed that you don’t really need to go out of country to be out of country, since there are places where the cultures and traditions of the people are so different that any Indian would feel out-of-place, all within 100 kilometers of very well known and often visited places, exactly the mileage of a Bajaj Discover with 1 Litre of petrol. These ads showed not just the brilliance of the creator but also the Vision with which Bajaj is leading us to discover India, our beloved. I stared in amazement as the ads touched a deep cord in my mind about going to the farthest ends of India to discover ourselves. Sitting in Shillong, I am preparing to goto Mysore while having come from Chandigarh, not a very common route every Indian takes and thus not something everyone can connect to… Yet I am sure that these ads will excite every Indian about the many things we still don’t know about our India.

My only regret is that I could not find a suitable video of the advertisements on the Net so as to link to them… As soon as they appear, I’ll have them linked here so that people who don’t usually see their India can marvel at it’s wonders…

Logging out,

Nitin Khanna–

Your Move

I have left Chandigarh. The City where I was born and lived for 8 years. I was born in Chandigarh and at the age of 1, I moved out of it, on a Vanwaas of 13 years, moving from one end of the country to another, visiting, living in and growing up with every corner of the Indian Nation. After these 13 years I was back to where I had started, in Chandigarh. I settles there to complete my education, from Class 10th till the end of my Engineering degree. I spent the last 7 years in Chandigarh, growing up with it, although Chandigarh refused to grow with me, opting instead to be the Old Man watching the Young flourish in it’s care, willing to satisfy my curiosity yet keeping me well protected within it’s wings.

If Open Skies were the limit, Humans would have gone everywhere

I lived the past 7 years without much remorse, without much pain and even less regret. I did things every foolish teenager does, speeding through life, gambling away good fortune yet keeping a distance from responsibility. I angered many, enchanted a few and made a lot of friends, out of which only a select few will stay on with me in my life, guiding my path with small, unnoticeable inputs. But most importantly, I lived the past 7 years without a plan, with a care for tomorrow and without ever really thinking which moves will I need to make to ensure one end or another to my reckless ideas which came and went with the Monsoons. I did not plan and I did not foresee. I just moved with the flow. When it came to choosing my stream in Class 11th, I went where convention took me, into the Sciences, that too without Medical. Further, when time came to select My Engineering stream and College, I stuck to Chandigarh although I had gotten Patiala first. I took Electronics because I thought Computer Science to be too easy and not enough of a Challenge. Besides that, when recently someone asked me why I had joined Electronics and what my favorite subject was, I had no answer.

There isnt a road we havent travelled. The Question is, where do you want to go?

Now, I am at a point in my Life where the next few months have been charted out by Infosys. Yet, Life has many twists and turns. I can never forget Chandigarh, who’s sights and smells are embedded in my mind, imprinted on my soul and have affected my thinking like nothing else has ever before. Still, I move on, in search of the next adventure. I have not, for myself, planned out the next 7 years of my life, although I have a brief outline in my mind. There is a Tomorrow, blurred and fuzzy, but very Real and perhaps, very interesting. All I say to my Life is that in moving out of Chandigarh, I took a big step, a giant leap of Faith, moving away from my comforts to a new beginning, which will spawn a new end as Destiny will command. All I say to my Life is that I have chosen carefully, what to do in my turn, my only message to it now is,

Life,

it’s,

Your Move.