Dictionary of the 'Common Man' - Part 1: Politics

'The Common Man' - is none other than you and me. Who esle has depicted him as 'us' in the best possible way, along with the day to day issues faced,other than R.K.Laxman. The underlying humor in the 1.5 inch by 2 inch cartoon at the left hand side corner of the Times of India newspaper beats the great indian laughter show, hands down. Irrespective of being an indian national settled in india or abroad we still have our individual perspectives of 'life', which is certainly not as gamorous as shown on the Discovery or National Geographic. Serious talk apart - we all know that rome was not created in a single day and neither is it still considered to be a perfect city! It is important to hence touch the humor in serious discussions; a possible solution to hair loss!!

When is it that you tend to pull your hair the most? Let me give you the apt instance; a common feature in every other indian city. After years of lamblast faced by opposition leaders, the reigning party undertakes a positive step: relaying of the main roads and filling all potholes.! Ah!!.. kudos to those who have finally understood the stress and strain imposed on the vertibrae while riding a car or bike, that is if you havn't already fractured it. Just when the road looks brand new and you are all set to take your vehicle out (washed and shining), a second set of trucks appear (god send) and unload concrete pipes big enough for the 'hunchback of notredame' to stand. Either sides of the road are dug up to incorporate the pipes - "we are improving drainage facilities!!" Don't be surprised if the public works department chose to do the same exactly during the monsoon season. Delaying of work thereby increasing the cost and hence asking for more money from the centre or the state. If that wasn't enough; the telecom industry brings down their machinery to dig right in the middle of the road (lest they have to deal with the underlying infrastructure) - and believe me there is competition (Reliance vs TATA vs Vodafone vs Airtel). Why have a road in the first place if it is meant to be dug up every 6 months and can be used functionally only for 2 months in a year???
There is the dark side of an intent of goodwill - which is intentional !!.

'Politics' - on hearing the very word, the first reaction is to crib. Not Surprising. Ever since independence people's dictionary have grown to associate the word to a sufficient others to provide a more wholesome meaning! Some of them being - scandals, elections, rally, riots, power etc...Notice the 'positive ring' to it???. Its not that we are blind when politicians claim the development of a dam, providing 24X7 electricity, water supply, resurfaced roads under their reign; all for another five year stint.

The same is very much applicable to even the the developed countries we look up to like Great Britian or the USA. At this point of time i must admit that i am totally fed up of the Hillary v/s Obama campaign trails which is the only topic of discussion; amidst an economic recession. On the other hand there is also the reigning Bush Govt. which is being criticized by channels and public all over the world for the amount of $'s spent on war. A particular sequence in the recently released movie 'Jodha-Akbar' where Akbar's counsellors were criticizing him of the gold wasted towards waging wars, reminded me of the present day world. People still havn't learnt their lessons on 'Power'!!

midnight speculations....

I am sure all of you have a zillion things to ponder over and do on a sunday....I do too, except for the moment!!! The general thought process is initated by opening the diary and listing..."...i need to clean the house...need to pick up a few items from the store...need to print a few pages of my report....wash clothes etc etc..." Half the day would have passed in listing and then you find yourself sitting in an arm chair switching channels. Why does that happen? Because you have just 'planned' your 'sunday'....
Just when you have completed a list of jobs which are going to take more than a few hours of a sunday which can otherwise be spent by engaging in lethargic activities; the brain nerves force the eyes to scan the list one more item to prioritize...Round 2 of analysis begins! "...i could do this first since its nearer....department is too far off...i have run out of quarters for the washing machine and dryer....will have to spend a lot of 'Joules' in cleaning the house..." The activity that takes the least energy lands on top of the list. Inevitably, that is watching your favorite TV show (you have made sure that the time has passed peacefully in introspection until the show time) and the list stays on the table where you had have left it a week back. 'planning' is applicable to everyother day of the week except 'SUNDAY'...More the number of hours at your disposal, more confused you end up being...

Its 3 am here in College Station, and i am not able to sleep and neither have i been able to figure out the answer to the billion dollar question: "what should i be doing". Staring at the taskbar of my laptop; i have one browser window open on the federal transit administration...one cad drawing of my site plan, gmail...and last but not the least my blog! I just realized that neither or them are related to the other. Ocassionally i have been skipping to my gmail to check if there are owls like me online...none of my friend in the US are, and neither are the ones in India (guess why?....its a sunday there as well). Who is to blame? Who invented the calendar??? Why is there one sunday every week and why should 'sunday' be a holiday???....The irony of it all; the radio channel i am listening to "city 101.6 FM-dubai" is playing the song...."pal...yaad aayenge ye pal"...
I think i need a cup of BRU Coffee!

Childhood Memoirs...cartoons n comics

Till date i love to read comics and watch the odd cartoons! Now that doesnt necessarily indicate i am still a kid, does it? The effort that goes into creating a comic strip is in itself intriguing, and voracious readers like you and me feast on them (obviously you are one, otherwise you wouldnt be reading my blog!); oblivious of the art and time taken to create it. Some people may associate it to timepass!

As a kid, while all others of my age grew up watching walt disney (mickey mouse & gang), i was given the golden opportunity to watch arabic cartoons! In those days in muscat, cable tv was not a common phenomenon and my parents obviously didn't feel the need to watch Asianet or any other malayalam channels which capture the viewers through the never ending episodes and people end up shedding buckets of tears. Hence, by switching on the the idiotbox all you hear is a buzzing sound and lots of dots (like a stippling exercise) which indicates that you are in the wrong channel;the other option being Oman TV which has nothing but arabic and the NEWS in English in the evening! Two of my favorite cartoons yet were - Captain Majid and Voltron. Football was a passion and the only sport i knew to play in middle school. Second obsession was with robots! I still recollect the characters and will appear goofy in comparison to today's age of computronics,flash and animation. Arabic was certainly not my strong point though i still had to learn it for 2 years; but to greet a person only the following words were deemed necessary..."As-salaam alaykum"......and "Wa alaykum as-salaam" in reply.So while all other words of the language were as legible as 'swahili', the action kept me engrossed! After a few years of tormenting ourselves with the local language (the idea was certainly not to show appreciation or affection), we finally got cable television.

As i had mentioned earlier, robots cartoons were second in the list of favorites; so you can imagine me jumping with joy while watching 'Transformers'! Automobiles were my non-living pets - the 1:100 scaled models. I always used to have a miniature model of a ferrari or jaguar in my shirt or trouser pocket on going outdoors - heard of the term 'walk the car'? yeah...always go for the expensive ones; to own a true scaled one i would probably have to pull off 'the italian job'! I could never have imagined that the cartoon originally created in 1983 would actually be made into a Movie in 2007....would have thought of spielberg to come up with such a wierd idea...but it wasnt to be, from the depths of darkness into heights of fame rose a "mr. michael bay".

Comic Books were certainly an inspiration to laugh at odd moments just because at times you tend to associate what you see with what you have read. Its absolutely normal to do it even when among adults since you havent yet crossed the age of 12. Children in india grew up reading Tinkle, while i took a liking to Tintin. Asterix and Obelix came a close second. Hence there used to be quite a fight to get a hand on those comics in the class library (something you can relate to in the indian parliament). Later on, as i moved into high school the fights continued for 'The Hardy Boys' - crime scene investigators! I was an adventurous kid...Limited to books! what sort of an adventure can you look for in the desert?? - 'the case of the missing sand viper'...perhaps?

All through college though i never had the opportunity to read comics, but the caricature by R.K.Laxman on the frontpage of the Times of India paper always caught my eye; irrespective of the catchy but at times daft headlines! I am not going to be a cartoonist though i did try my hand at it once, not in this life....its better to stick to what you know best - reading!

TP vs TE

Dont get any wierd ideas! The context here is my favorite topic: Transportation Planning. Ever got into this conversation between a transportation engineer and a transportation planner. It is amusing, at the same time amazing to hear the exchange of jargon. But the plain truth is that the engineers always have the upper hand because they produce numbers! So who can question numerology to a bunch of literature and a large map which looks like the advertisement of 'asian paints', that the planners come up with? Here is an excerpt, indicative of the linguistic skills that each possess.
A discussion over a cup of coffee; one can feel the energy through the caffeine!

TP: So, this is the site we are dealing with, located adjoining this minor arterial.According to the thoroughfare plan, we should be upgrading it to a major arterial and providing bike lanes.
TE: Is that a recommendation? Have you conducted a 24 hr count? Whats the estimated AADT? Do we have a breakup of the modal mix?
(at this point of time the planner feels he has an upper hand since he knows what these terminologies mean!!)

TP: eh...well, we have conducted a traffic count at the major interchange and the estimated volume is 4523 AADT.
(one would think, with a number like that, you would have to be fairly accurate)
TE: I would like to have a look at the excel sheet and calculations. I feel the volumes are much higher. Also please do arrange to send me the projected year volumes and the memo which provided information on the retail development, with the TIA.

TP: Sure thing. I have reasons to believe that the Impact Analysis would need to be conducted again, ITE manual does not seem to provide with a reliable number for cross analysis.
TE: Are you kidding me? That reference book is the only reliable source of data. All Transportation engineers abide by that. It is as good as the Bible, Quran or the Gita.
(The planner being an indian was quick to identify the 'gita' with the 'bhagwad gita')

TP: Allright. But what about the model? Future land use considerations have not been taken into account. Obviously the trip generation matrix is wrong.
TE: My dear friend. Emme2 is the best of the lot.
(if one had not taken a course in transportation modelling, that would have hit you like a rock...what 2? which 2....)

TP: Just how in this ever wideworld do you reason with the gibberish? We are supposed to take it on facevalue? The output of any model is going to be based on the input. How do i vouch for the input characters?
(this is the time when you feel victorious...the heart is jumping with joy....you are just about to score one point over your opposition after a long battle.
Not for long...he has the final word)

TE: Elementary!!....Its called "ENGINEERING JUDGEMENT".

Research.....or re-search !

Whomsoever 'invented' the education system and criterion for graduation never would have really given a second thought on how stressful writing a research or term paper can be. With the advent of Google pages and other search engines there is no limit to the amount of 'crap' that turns up on hitting the search button. Reading books is an alternative, but who is going to take the pain to go to the library and search the catalogue, rummage among the racks and lined shelves with a spacing which is just about adequate for a person with 32" waistline to get through. On top of it all, chances are that book will be located in the adjoining rack! It can get tiresome and irritating, and not to mention dusty if the books have been lying there since the establishment of the library. At this point of time,I am glad that senses prevailed and that i disliked history!

So coming back to writing, given the obvious choice of internet surfing; you are most likely going to find hundreds of papers of which 10% would be relevant and many others you would have to cook up; especially if professors want two pages of bibliography, irrespective of whether you have read them or not. Research, in a nutshell can be defined as; the art of an ongoing process of searching (for the same item or a different species); or a complete waste of time for people who have no idea of what to look for! Kudos to those eminent scientists who have published endless books and papers; what we today term as 'sources' in our documents. At the least we can skip all that process of building the base. The reliability of data hence, is accepted on face value; the question is, whom can we question? It has been passed on from forefathers to fathers. No point in digging up graves.

Ah...You can see, I am just bored of reading! I think i had better not build a mentality of the 'argumentative indian'; instead just accept darwin's theory and complete my research paper in order to graduate. At this point of time, i neither see the start line nor the horizon...

The Beginning

Finally, after spending two days thinking of various means to do 'nothing' (the excuse being SPRING BREAK); i have decided to put pen to paper....how dramatic!! Well, nothing beats the feeling of holding a pen and its motion on paper with finite texture; but at the end of it all i might not be able to read what i have written...! Instead of wasting paper, i might as well follow a more 'sustainable' practice... the use of the 'delete' button on my DELL-icate laptop.

Come to think of it, my handwriting sure has worsened over the past five years! Ofcourse, it was at its best only during the five year trauma, an approach to get a degree in a creative field called 'Architecture'! But those five years have been the best to date ...

Hmm....so what have i achieved to date? Having reached 27...i have lived through nearly a third of my life; if i was to take the conclusions of a scientific research - the magical figure of 75!

Time for a retrospect: Spent the first six years in Kerala (people term as God's own country...sometimes i have reasons to believe GOD might not want to live there), three years in a school in trivandrum but hey what the heck, my grandmother was the principal there at one point of time!! hehehe....I have got my RIGHTS! ;)
Just when i was getting used to the dialect, I got transferred to the Middle East (a haven for keralites), and spent another nine years immersed in books and football, in Indian School Muscat...got renamed to TINTIN,...was called a math and engineering drawing freak when on the verge of entering 12th boards.
My thought process was very much streamlined then...1st std, 2nd std, 3rd std... to 12th standard. Once you are in the 12th, parents starts pressurizing you to frame 'GOALS'!!The only goal i knew of then was when i used to kick the ball into the net and scream 'goaaaaaaaallllllll....'

But there was always the creative side of me from birth - sketching automobiles, people, buildings....Having limited knowledge of the different fields out there, other than the zillion times people mentioned 'medicine' and 'engineering'...i was to make a choice! I chose ARCHITECTURE...a field that very few have a clue of and a word that computer hardware maniacs would associate to as 'computer architecture'. I am talking of buildings here....i wanted to design, sketch and relate to the people's thought process including myself...Having made up my mind before hand i had no idea of what laid in store over the next few years...

There i was in the jungle, one among the thousands of applicants in line for registration to the common entrance exam conducted in CEPT, Ahmedabad (a premier institute for architecture and planning in india); no clue of what to expect. Did i mention, why i chose Gujarat of all places in India? Well, to date i have no clue...
Having missed out a place in CEPT by one spot, the obvious next choice was M.S. University in Baroda. Only in my second year did i realize that it stood for MAHARAJA SAYAJIRAO and that the university was once the part of the palace that stood across the road. Allright!!...i was elated - i am studying in one of the historical ruins of India. Mind you, restoration works were going on! But the five year period from then on was a blast...a reincarnation of a warriEr. Helped me to inhibit my fears, become to be known as the silent fighter and a biking freak. Also developed a bonding with the gujju's (real and fraud), some of whom are my best friends.
Ah..finally the end was nearing.Graduation in 2003 was well awaited for; with tight security...not for us! but for the beloved C.M of Gujjuland (Mr. Modi). Little did i know he will be a core part of the decision making process in the projects that i will be working on in my first job.

All done, there i was, in kerala relaxing in the summer looking forward to take a two month break having undergone a series of operations in structure, materials and design. But the vacation was short-lived; pressure now to join the workforce. Hello??? Anyone out there looking to hire an architect? The pay scales of an architect a few years back were so low, that you are most likely to come under the 'low income category' of the masses. Five years of architecture,and i was no longer interested in getting back to the drafting board. I needed to draw a different line from the same vertex. Tried to get through various examinations for pursuing a masters in industrial/product design but in vain. Somehow the interviewers felt the ideal candidates are the ones with engineering backgrounds.....the math freaks!!! Is it a wonder that nowadays you find products of tata, godrej, philips etc lacking in design!.

In the meantime, there was an opening in CEPT; where i had stood in line once!! The post was for a research assistant in planning. I had some idea of planning; since my seniors had also worked in the same position. Hence i decided to give it a try...what the heck,it was different from architecture anyway!! The twist in life started just then. From the days of drawings and creative design to planning, policy and reports; from design sheets to power-point presentations; conceptual sketches to preliminary reports. Shades of grey were just starting to set into the brain cells. 'Torrid' would be the appropriate word attributed to the three year duration; a learning process to think beyond the box and most of all develop PATIENCE ! Had i hung on for one more year, i would have become a PATIENT. But the stint at CEPT helped in gaining an admission and funding into a two year master's program in Texas, in Urban and Transportation Planning.

So here i am, after 27 years, on the verge of completing my two years master's degree in Texas A&M (aggieland)....still chalking out my next stage of life. But today i am spending some 'worthwhile' time into blogging! An activity that i had been 'planning' to start since years - Sunday, the 9th of March 2008.
Shucks...there isnt even a historical event to associate this day to except for the fact being it could be my last spring break ! God forbid an inspiration to pursue a PhD or MBA after a few years....You never know. Unpredictability is a part of my life, dependability probably a curse.