Short story - Sky is not the limit

He was frantic. ‘How do I get it shipped ? It is going to be a tall order.’

Outside, there were still cars on the road. Most of them going back home. ‘I have to forget going back home tonight’.

Just as he thought of home, Sita came on the phone. ‘Ram, its already 9’O clock. How long?’ , ‘Sita, don’t wait for me, have your dinner and sleep, I am going to be late. Not sure when’ Ram answered without waiting for her to complete.

‘How late?’

‘Not sure could be past midnight or early morning’

‘Then don’t drive in the middle of the night, stay there and come by morning’.

‘OK’ Ram was already on the messages in his inbox. Sita knows that and she ended her call with a ‘OK bye’.

Ram was in deep shit.

He committed for delivering a piece of software with his small team in Bangalore.

The sponsor of that in the US was travelling to France to demonstrate that software in front of a customer the next day.

Everything was ready and people were at ease till evening. When Ram asked his team lead to demo it to him, he found some fundamental mismatch in the understanding. He had all along talking about it to his sponsor as ‘X’ and it is ‘Y’ as per what his team had done.

Now he had no choice but to get ‘X’. It was not impossible, but there is a lot of housekeeping changes after the main change is done.

He was looking at the messages from his sponsor who was sitting in the airport in Houston.

Let me focus on this. He was now deep into the code. His team mates barring Shyam had left. He just needed Shyam who had done the main piece. Shyam was trying to do a part of it in his cube.

Time went on. Outside the traffic was almost dead. It was a cold Bangalore winter. Christmas was not far off. Ram had planned to do a trip to NewZealand with Sita.

‘Why am I going through all this?’ The saintly corner of Ram was asking this question constantly.

‘What if I dropped this all now and simply walked off?’

These thoughts are not new to Ram. It occurs whenever he finds himself in situations that were forced on him. And it has been that way many a time.

Ram reasoned out that these are just some of the tricks his brain conjures up in defence of his situations. You look at a diametrically opposite possibility than the one you are undergoing. Sometimes it helps you to show the futility of what you are up to and help you drop things that landed on you somehow.

He was finding it hard to focus on the problem at hand. Somewhere the code was going into a spin. The recursion was not ending properly.

Coding should never be done under pressure. It is not anything different from the way you write novels or do a painting. It has to be constructed patiently line by line. Until everything small stacks up in its innumerable ways to show its grandeur.

His sponsor was on chat by now. He was a good man. He was feeling sorry for the pressure and making Ram staying up late. However, he had no choice either. The company they belonged had built a solid line of defence five levels up to keep the pressure distributed.

The sponsor was excited to be meeting the customer on the other hand. ‘All our efforts would be paid this year if we land up with this contract’. He said.

Ram acknowledged sleepily. He was thinking to himself. ‘These words no longer excite me’.

After several iterations of proving murphy’s law, several compilations, stupid coding mistakes and some changes Ram started to see the output he wanted to see.

It was 3:32AM.

He went up to Shyam and asked him to join for a stroll outside. ‘Some tea shops would be open at least. Lets have a lemon tea’.

The city lights had sufficiently polluted the night sky. It was not possible to see any stars. The Moon was visible. ‘What a life, can’t even watch the sky’ Ram told Shyam.

Shyam was feeling better with the chill breeze crossing his face. He said ‘ Yes, I suddenly went back to my engineering college campus, walking around with friends in the night’.

Shyam continued. ‘We used to go out after spending a long time in the computer lab to a shop outside the campus. Hot omelettes and coffee in the middle of the night. And a nice walk talking all sort of crazy things’.

Ram said ‘yes, I did not stay in the hostel. I used to stay with my Grand parents in a village not far from the college. It used to be so quiet after 6 PM and you can get a full view of the night sky , sometimes even the milky way galaxy in its splendour’

‘You seem to be quite interested in the skies, is it?’.

‘Yes, always, ever since we came here. Though it has been a long time and we have figured out how to live here, my mind has not left the time since our ancestors left earth. I have read a lot of the first trip to Mars and the way they established colonies here later’

Shyam said ‘Yeah, its a long time since then. It is so great that we do not miss any of the earth out here and we could create the exact same things with technology'

‘Yes, the space is different, the time is different, but we are ...’ Ram did not complete.

The lemon tea was ordered and the shopkeeper handed them two glasses.

Ram’s phone buzzed. There was a message from his sponsor. ‘Terror alert in Houston airport. All flights cancelled. Will touch base once I reach home’.

Ram sighed and had a good go at the lemon tea while staring at the Martian sky.

Short story - Degauss

'You know where most of our time get wasted?' Ram asked his wife Sita.

She was not immediately answering. She was trying to catch up with him as they were walking around the lake.

‘What?’ she asked

‘I was asking about where we waste most of our time in life?’, Ram is used to repeating things to people around.

Ram knows that every one is lost in their world of thoughts these days. You need to convey something that brings them back from their sleep. So obviously the first thing when they wake up is a ‘What?’.

Sita was not answering immediately. It is one of those ‘too generic’ type of questions that Ram asks.

Ram continued ‘ You know what.. it is the time we spend meeting useless people, talking useless things and thinking useless stuff. In fact all these are inter-related’.

Sita interjected and said ‘How do you say something is useless?’

Ram said ‘Not that you can find it before striking a conversation. While you are going through it, you get that feeling that this does not relate to me at all. It is just noise in my otherwise noisy mind. Then you know you are meeting this useless person and having a useless conversation’.

Sita was at heart more empathetic to people than Ram. She normally views Ram’s statements from this prism. So she did not acknowledge this line of thought.

She said ‘You cannot always see things from a utilitarian or commerce point of view. You need to be mindful that we are humans and not computers or machines. It is fine if you find a useless person. Just move on. Do not be going deep into it and frame everything around you as useless’.

Ram did not leave it. He retorted back ‘Sita, whats wrong with a utilitarian point of view? Isn’t the sweatshirt you are wearing, the phone you hold not come from people who have spent their time usefully? I am just trying to maximise the time we spend usefully doing something. That does not mean I am up against every situation that renders me helpless. Its obvious that life always throws strange things at you and you cannot be productive about all of those. It is a way of gauging something like a meter and trying to have a way of moving out of it’.

There was a bit of silence. It usually happens after a conversation reaches its crescendo. Normally the topic changes at this point.

Ram suddenly shouted in a excited tone. “What if I had a magic wand that can make people’s heads align to me like the iron filings getting aligned to a magnet. You see in the MIB movie where he shows a baton to sort of degauss the folks to forget what they saw about the aliens floating in their midst”.

Sita was smiling. She knew Ram won’t leave it from this point.

True to her belief, Ram built a magic wand.

He was walking on a day when Sita did not accompany him around the lakeside. He was immersed in his thoughts as usual.

He heard a voice behind “Hi Ram, Good morning, long time since we met”. It was Shyam.

Ram had met him during one of the morning walks when they kind of bumped into each other. Initially Ram felt they had lot of common topics like politics, Gods and so on. Soon it dawned on Ram that it comes in the way of his thought stream as he walks and started avoiding Shyam.

Now there is no way. Shyam continued “Time is sucked by Facebook. You do not know when you enter it and when you exit. I love these walks which give me more satisfaction than sitting and posting messages and liking some strange photos shown by your relative’.

Ram did not have much choice. He was not the avid FB user. Still he had to do more than just smile and nod his head.

He said ‘Yeah, these guys when they meet, they rarely talk. But they keep doing these likes for even something stupid. Such is the emptiness in our lives and FB is a perfect sucker of that life’s vacuum’.

The talk went on. Ram suddenly became aware that the conversation is no more connecting with him. Shyam was still ranting something.

Ram stealthily took out the baton. It was a metal rod like thing. Shining, but not so big.

He had tried it in the lab and measured the field with a magnetometer.

He was swift. He waved it along the side of Shyam.

Shyam collapsed.

 
Another funny ending for this story (based on inputs from my friend)

The talk went on. Ram suddenly became aware that the conversation is no more connecting with him. Shyam was still ranting something. 

Ram stealthily took out the baton. It was a metal rod like thing. Shining, but not so big.  He had tried it in the lab and measured the field with a magnetometer.

He was swift. He waved it along the side of Shyam.

Shyam felt something by his side and turned back to look at Ram. He had by now moved a little ahead. He saw this steel like shining baton that Ram was carrying.

‘Hey whats that? Something to scare the dogs away?”,  he was now a bit curious.

Ram still not very clear from his earlier act, tried to get himself back into the conversational mode. He just tried to mumble ‘Oh that's nothing…my son had brought it from somewhere and he had left it in this jacket I guess..I was trying to know from where this came….and by the way, how right your observations are about Facebook. I am absolutely aligned to your thoughts on it’.

‘Wow, this is going places’ Shyam thought to himself, feeling the golden colour shining baton inside his jacket. 'It is getting people aligned to me more than ever’.

Why I cannot let go this life without achieving something?

Many a time I have been questioned as to why I quit my job at HP after spending a substantial amount of time, close to 12 years. Like everything else you get attached to in life, this was not easy. But still I let go.

Though I would not say that I had a very clear cut answer when I did that except that I wanted to make good use of the remaining time of my life doing something I like and earning my living out of that, I can tell with confidence several years after I made that decision and spending all my time in the last 6 months working on the product I wanted to give life to.

It is not about the product. There is nothing about it. Not that I do not like it nor it is not fantastic in my view. It is great and I have never done something like this. It is going to be different and I am sure people will appreciate the value that it brings. There is a even better reason which has cemented in me over years now as to why I want to do all of this.

I desperately want to give some purpose to this existence.

There was a time when I used to constantly question this. Why are we here? What is our purpose? I have spent a lot of time pondering over this, debating with friends, reading a lot of philosophy (which by the way is available in plenty if you are in India). I have even appeared more spiritual or philosophical to many of my friends because of all these. I have even thought that being like this is the end result of some one raising such questions (why are we here? what is our purpose?).

But over time I realized that the question is wrong. You cannot ask this question and find a meaningful answer. You will never find. Instead I realized I should be desperate to make this life purposeful and meaningful for me. This is the only way you can laugh at life rather than life laughing at you when you die.

Make every bit of it meaningful. Never do something that makes no sense to you. Try your best. Try hard at it. Go for it. If you have not thought about this, do this now. There is no better time. Do not settle for anything less. Go for the ultimate you can accomplish. It could be that you had a passion for running. Then go all out on that. Even if you think you are burdened by your finances, burdened by relations or others. Never compromise on what you wanted to do. You may look like you are winning when you compromise and settle for something interim. But in the end you will be a loser. Life would have won over you. You will be one of those speck that visited this planet briefly.

If you feel this is all extreme, then you better change your outlook my friend. You have to be extreme when it comes to living. You cannot be docile and think that you would have solved this problem called life. Be aware, fully live, Do something that will truly excite you, Keep doing and going beyond what you can see today. When you leave this planet, leave it with a sense of achievement.

My Car

I bought this Hyundai Accent GLS in 2001 December. Roughly 13 years now. That is a reasonably long time to keep a car. Yesterday when I took it out in the morning to go to a nearby lakeside for my usual morning walk and parked it outside my house, my wife about to get in screamed.

“What ?” I asked lowering the windows.

“Petrol is leaking SO much" , she hollered.

I just got out thinking that it should be another one of my wife’s proverbial high decibel alarms she gives out when she finds a dead rat, a live cobra, monkeys around the house and so on. Wait, did I say rat? I will get back to this point soon. But the smell of petrol can’t be ignored. It was all around and flowing under the car and coming out from the back on the tar road.

Oops..

I immediately got in and started the car, reversed it and took it back into my parking area inside my compound. I was hearing my wife screaming yet again, this time saying the leak is so much, it is kind of pouring down. I was for a moment thinking “Am I doing the right thing here?”

I had no clue. It is petrol down below the bonnet. What if some spark or something happens? I felt jittery for a moment. But nothing was happening so far. So must be alright I thought.

My father came out of his room. He was visibly worried smelling petrol. I opened the bonnet, peered in. Nothing I could make out. I thought we should collect the petrol in a vessel.

I turned back and asked my wife to get a vessel. She brought some plastic bins after a while. I put them under the car below the bonnet lying low on the ground, wherever I could find the dripping.

Now the petrol smell was all over.

I found that when I turned off the car, the leaking had stopped. “Thank God”.

Reached out to the 24x7 on road assistance, customer service, nearby service centres, hotline help and finally my recent local garage person who services it. He said he will send a mechanic.

The day passed with calm. Towards evening the mechanic came. He saw the tubes and showed the main tube carrying petrol going into the engine had a hole mostly bitten by a rat. He took some photos and sent it over WhatsApp. He said he has to get the part and will fix it the next day. I asked him how dangerous it was to rid a car leaking petrol. He told, if it catches fire by any spark, the roof of my portico would blow up. I was mentally going back to the jitter I felt when I parked the car.

I turned back and told my wife “You know what, if a rat can take my life so easily and cause a 180 degree change in yours as well, just think how vulnerable we are”.

I recollect as I type this Douglas Adams - The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" where the mice would try to find the answer to the ultimate question using earth as a computer or some such thing. There is nothing that you can hold onto in front of death. Everything is washed away, your morals, your beliefs, your hangovers of any sort.

I was thinking what can be done to stop rats from roaming freely inside my compound. Got those rat killer biscuits and placed them in four corners of the house.

When I woke up in the morning, I went around to see if any of them got eaten up by the rat. One was missing. The one near the car.

When I walked back from the lakeside area after my morning walk, found a dead rat almost half a kilometre away.

I showed my wife. She exclaimed “This must be that thing”.

Somehow, in my head with that thing going off, my thirteen year old car also had finally given way telling me to look for a new one.

This car is not a piece of metal. It is a significant chunk of my life on the road in many places at different times loaded with memories. But so what? Look forward to my new Car :-)