Deepanjan Nag's Magnum Opus

Saturday & Sunday were reserved to put my shell-shocked room in order. Instead, I ended up exhausting the whole of these 2 days in downloading music (jazz, classical, country, new-age and even some pop) off the Net- mostly legal! The offspring was definitely worth the effort, although I couldn't help feeling a tad guilty of neglecting the upkeep of my room. I also went off the conventional menu by switching to veg-burgers for lunch. They are inexpensive and filling.

Mantu, Anand & Mani left for Ranchi this morning.

My blog entry 'The Celestial Trip' has been showcased in the Featured Blog Entries on Sulekha Blogs .

Now that Santosh is away, I have the entire room to myself. And now it increasingly resembles the bachelor's typically thunderstruck living place. The floor is dingier than the streets. The bed sheet is covered in layers of stratified dust. My luggage from the previous trip still lies in an alcove. My pillow cover needs a thorough wash. The wardrobe is hopeless. The drawer is in complete disarray, important papers lying recklessly strewn across. A watch lies unwatched on the floor. My books lie scattered all across. My clothes are unwashed; those that are remain crumpled and unironed. Some clothes are dangling from the washing lines, forgotten and almost forsaken. The shelves are flooding. The buckets are empty. The CD's lie carelessly. I feel unusually sullen. I don't have the will to set things straight, but procrastination won't make things any better. There'll be a flurry of activity this weekend.

I arrive at the bus stop and wait. The sweeper sweeps the road with random and ferocious strokes of the broom and lets off a cloud of dust so high into the air, there's no hope of their settling down for the next hour or so. Indeed, he works like a mini storm in action. Our bus arrives and gobbles us. I sometimes lose my window seat nowadays to the fledgling headcount. Today is one of those unlucky days. I take the last seat. Notorious for being bumpy, it's the next best thing after the window seat. A tall fellow with oversized legs has unofficially captured that part of the seat that lies just behind the aisle citing legroom as his excuse for the exclusive privilege. I've seen him cry foul whenever a person unwittingly 'took' his seat. The nagging would continue until our tall fellow was granted his place. The bus vrooms its way thru the labyrinth. Bangalorean roads are dotted with temples with alarming regularity. Gods, like cats and street dwellers, are fiercely

My over half-a-dozen pairs-of-socks, used to lazing around and stinking real bad, got a prolonged bubble bath in soapy water. I soaked them at around 7 am and hoped to wash them when I came back from office. When I was finally back, the tap, as usual, was dry. So they remained in the bucket, water blissfully permeating through their fabric. I've a hunch stinking socks are a natural mosquito repellent.

How long…just how long can my patience be tried waiting for my brilliance to be acknowledged by the world? I wake up each morning hoping long overdue recognition to finally come my way, but it always disappoints. Today was one of those days when my patience gave way to despondence and I didn't feel like getting up in the morning. And when I finally got bored of lying on my back and staring at the blank roof, I got up and went through the well practiced morning chores. Continuing with where I had left off, I downloaded some more music. Our taps had run dry before the sun had peaked and washing the clothes was thus delayed by a few hours. Apart from the garments, I guess my room too needs a thorough wash. It's getting dirtier by the minute and the thought of even beginning to clean up the mess looks intimidating. I hope the auspicious moment comes on the 28th of this month. I'll have to muster enough courage for that. My landlord went back on a promise he had made a few month

Manilal and his friends were absconding on account of some examination. Mantu, though, was away on a different pretext. So their house, which is usually a curious beehive of activity, was unusually sedate. So I made the most of the rare opportunity by downloading loads of music, mostly Celtic. Bought 5 HP CD's in the evening. I had thought of reading a few pages of An Area of Darkness , but lethargy got the better of me. I felt so guilty spending an entire days doing nothing fruitful. I went to sleep feeling heavy.

Ajay leaves Bangalore tonight for a short vacation. I'll miss the bus rides with him after office. Oh yes, lunch too just got boring! Santosh left last night for his native place and the convocation. We'll meet in our institute. It'll be great fun meeting old friends! I only wish all of our batchmates could congregate there. It's a pity life wrestles us apart.

David Nevue's compositions are very impressive.

After two days of delays due to poor weather and a power failure, the 197-foot tall Atlas 5 unmanned rocket, built by Lockheed Martin, lifted off at 2 p.m. EST from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Thursday. The rocket is headed for Pluto. Credit: NASA/KSC

Virtual NYC Tour

My blog entry 'The Unwanted Harmonium' has been showcased in the Featured Blog Entries on Sulekha Blogs .

A mix of stupidity and over enthusiasm is the birthright of all schoolgirls. They do incredulous things that go down in family folklore as youthful extravaganza. The situation is much worse if two girls hit upon a bright idea all at once. A tragic tale ensues. I live to tell the tale of how I was tortured during those miserable years. When you have a blank mind that can't be put to use into anything productive, strange things happen. Sangita was didi's best pal. The two were inseparable since KG and couldn't imagine staying apart during school hours. Such things happen when someone needs the espousal of the other to endorse one's imbecility. That explains their finding comfort in each other's company. So far so good. They must have been 6th graders when they hit upon the brilliant idea of foraying their non-existent talents into singing. It hit upon us like a bolt from the blue. Mom liked the idea. Dad like the idea. Since I was more clairvoyant, I was terrified of

This is where I stay in Bangalore

I'm now a Featured Blogger on Sulekha .

My blog entry 'Of Pens & Pencils' has been showcased in the Featured Blog Entries on Sulekha Blogs .

My handwriting has always been a disgrace. I guess it can partly be attributed to the way in which I hold the pen. While I find nothing anomalous about the grip, anyone watching me write can't help comment on the oddity. I tried many corrective strategies, but to no avail. Like most others, I began my voyage into literacy by using the pencil. Not a problem. Sharpening, though, was resented. I simply hated the task of routinely having to sharpen them, though it was a perfect alibi to get a few moments of respite from academic books. Anyway, it was customary to sharpen the pencils the night before school, just after packing my schoolbag and inspecting the pencilbox. The sharpener was an indispensable little contraption for every school goer my age. The exercise of writing would make the lead blunt all too soon and a replacement would soon have to be found. When all backups were exhausted, I would batch them all and sharpen them. But where do you thing I would dispose the refuse? My p

An Area of Darkness by V.S.Naipaul. I hope to complete the book before convocation.

Thanks to Jahnvee for the suggestion. It'll take me more than a year to complete this enormous book.

I'll be leaving for my convocation on the 2nd of Feb. Will visit home after that and finally return to Bangalore on the 12th. It's gonna be very hectic. There's a mini-bookfair at our company premises and I may be in the mood to buy. Top of the list: A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth Ulysses by James Joyce Glimpses of World History by Jawaharlal Nehru

Dad would have loved this article .

Orion Nebula...my favorite!

I loved water before schooling taught me about oxygen two-timing hydrogen. Bathing was an exercise I particularly reveled in. Needless to say, the foreplay preceding it was a customary ritual I seldom skipped. The stripteasing began at home in full glare of all the occupants. First to be removed was the shirt. Not very entertaining for anyone. Gradually all the remaining garments would come off until it was time for the shorts to be dropped. This was the moment of great reckoning, the climax of my useless art. Since I was very skinny, unbuttoning by shorts would make gravity greedily pull them down my bamboo-thin legs. I carefully removed one foot from the 'hole'...and kicked the shorts high into the air with the other. The joy of catching them as they descended was immeasurable! Since the 'kick' wasn't exactly masterly, there was no predicting which way my shorts would go or where they would land. This uncertainty added to the fun. The descent has a rather illustri

I'll try to write something interesting this weekend. The new year seems to have ushered in a creative drought for me. BTW, I'm publishing this post via a very nifty tool for Mozilla Firefox called Performancing .

How a horrible mismatch. Even a colorblind guy would pity me!

Worked on netBeans. Liked it.

I've seldom bothered to go through my previous posts. When I do, I discover to my horror the innumerable grammatical errors that have crept in without my knowledge. It's an embarrassment..really!

My blog entry 'Potty Pressure' has been showcased in the Editor's Pick of the Week on Sulekha Blogs .

Downloaded Java SDK to my machine. My first program was giving me some problems...but I managed to solve it. I love working at the command prompt. Owing to a severe time crunch, I'll not be able to make substantial posts to my blog in the immediate future. But I hope to compensate in the months ahead. If only that overglorified bania package called SAP didn't make me feel like a clerk.

So near...and yet so far. I'm crushed.

Another post gets showcased in the Featured Blog Entries on Sulekha Blogs .

How often do you feel pressured to seek refuge atop a potty? If you were me when I was a school going kid, it would happen at least once everyday between 6pm and 9pm. Let me explain. I was never an outstanding student, though I was sometimes ordered by the teacher to stand outside the class. When I was at home, I would confine my rendezvous with school books within the 6-9pm bracket. That doesn't mean to say that I would utilize the full 3hrs in intellectual pursuits. It simply meant that no matter how intense the pressure to study or complete a homework, I wouldn't ever allow my studying period to spill outside this region of time. Spending those 3hrs had become a daily ordeal…and over the years I had perfected the art of studying as negligibly as possible and still managing to expend those dreadful hours of drudgery. When I was in junior school, accompanying Dad was the easy solution as it always happened during my study time. The outing would conveniently eat into my study t

Time is continuous. Then why do we chop it into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades and centuries? I guess it's partly because we need excuses to start afresh after getting hopelessly entangled in problems of our own making. The dawning of a new year is perhaps the best alibi we have ever invented towards this end. My last few hours of the old year were spectacularly unspectacular…which isn't exactly surprising given only the low-profile existence I can afford. Some clothes begged to be bathed in soap-water before the new year was heralded. I obliged. This lousy exercise wasn't exactly able to ebb my enthusiasm and I set about sending en-masse SMSes to my acquaintances. The messages trickled out…and the replies trickled in. I got chatting with Badri and we concurred on how I was gradually skewing towards technology while he was towards management. Our interests were parting ways and there was a tinge of sadness in the discovery. He fondly recalled h