mere funde

I feel in love long back. And we got into the relationship exactly 2 years back. She has been with me through the thick and the thin, and has never given up on me. No tantrums, and has never asked anything in return. She remains my true love.

Happy Birthday Darling! Here’s to many more to come.

Do you see beauty in a recursive loop?? Do the curves of a V-twin engine of a Harley Davidson remind you of finely carved Greek statues?? Do you hear music in the sound of a V-10 F1 engine (you will be missed)? If your answer to all of these is a yes, then you are a technologist at your heart, whether or not you have a tech degree.

Ever since I joined Evalueserve, I had always wondered why they called it the state-of-the-art instead of state-of-the-technology, or why they called it prior art instead of existing technology. Finally stumbled on the answer yesterday while reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Turns out that the word technology is derived from the Greek word techne, meaning art, skill or craft. One of the wisest races to have ever existed, the Greeks, in all their wisdom, never saw any difference between art and technology and never had different words for them. No wonder their buildings are considered works of art in the modern world.

So next time you find yourself comparing Bach to Knuth or Michelangelo to the engineers of Ferrari, don’t be surprised.

I would always prefer a bike to a car. I mean I would always prefer an Enfield to any other Indian car or a Harley V-Rod to any other car. Given below is the reason.

You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene not just watching it, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it anytime, the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

For those who know me, this is from some book you can easily guess. Others, go Google it!! The book was given to me by Nawani. Thanks. It is just great.

So what is a perfect weekend like?? Lemme see.

Saturday - Meet a close friend. Chat, listent to good music, have good food, drink a bit and enjoy. We did aal except the drink bit. We did drink but what we had was the question. A good Goan port wine. This is the good bit. It was followed by the experience of Kaju Feny. Goyal advisory : Don’t have it.

Slept for most part of the day. Discovered that our cook could also make good puris and had a brilliant lunch. Aloo ki subji and puri!! Heavenly!! Next organised stuff on my 120GB HDD (which is a no mean feat!!). My HDD has bad sectors now and needs to be repaired (it is in warranty period) and so I had ot empty it and burn DVDs for the rest of the stuff. Also ripped the Abida Parveen CDs I had bought last week. Awesome music. Specially Tere Liye Nachaya, Ali Maula, and Dum Mast Qalandar (which is always a good experience.)

Sunday - Got the 3rd free servicing done on the bike. It is now 6 months old and I have done 4600 kms on it, which is quite a feat considering my office is only 1 km from my place. Got a haircut. I look presentable now. Also read a lot of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - R. Pirsig. Awesome book. OHT sometimes but enjoyable and profound none the less.

So here it is. A near perfect weekend. Would have been complete with a nice movie. I wish I had company.

This weekend was about as good as it gets. I mean one of the better ones in this place. Sanghi had come over on Friday evening. Dinner outside and then that crappy movie called Zinda. It is supposed to be another brilliant one from our very own Tarantino (the amount of blood and gore being the comparison), Sanjay Gupta but failed to make any impression on me other than the scene with the actress tied up Agle subah we woke up to head to NII where we had planned on spending the weekend with TK and Bharathi. Ride for Bansal and Sanghi must have been good in that Innova but was awesome for me. I did some 20 kms in 26 mins. Not that the speed was anything to boast about but the feeling of driving for such a distance in Delhi was good. I had always heard that it is difficult to ride a 2 wheeler in Delhi but I did not face much problems.

We got there by lunch and headed off immediately to the New Shanthi Sagar Restaurant, which brought back all those memories from Bangalore. Topped it off with great kulfi-falooda at Evergreen. And now we were sleepy. So we headed back to NII and next two hours were devoted to some talk and lots of sleeping. Woke up in the evening to take a first look at the top of NII. This place took my breath away and is high on the list of places where booze must feel so different. Headed to JNU campus for a walk then and that place called PSR Rock. Brilliant place!! Watching an aircraft fly by was never better.

It was time to bid Sanghi goodbye. We headed to the New Delhi Railway Station. Again drove and this time it was even better through those brilliantly peaceful areas of Lutyens Delhi. Very nice. Paked our bikes at Nirulas at CP and took the Metro (I fall more in love with it every time I ride it) to the Station. Reached the station, bid Sanghi goodbye and then headed back to CP (now Rajiv Chowk btw) to Nirulas Chinese Room. Had Won-Ton soup there and Veg Chopsuey (Yum!!). I am now a die hard fan of the food there and swear to go there at every possible opportunity.

After that back to NII and then mostly chatting with Tk and that eccentric friend of his (whose name I don’t remember thanks to this great memory of mine). We stayed up till 2 I think talking about everything from Physics to bikes and how the chappie who wanted to “do” Physics ended up “doing” Immunology at NII.

Woke up next morning and returned to Gurgaon as I had to catch up with some work and that is the glorious weekend came to an end. Btw, as an icing on the cake Schumi won the Imola GP There is something about San Marino that gets the Ferrari horses prancing. Is it the tifosi gathering or the circuit being their own or just the number of red flags all over, I do not know but they sure help I guess