Intelligence. Humungous leaps in everything. Equally big leaps towards the end.

This is something I have always wondered about. Why did humans have to have this all-conquering knowledge? Every other living thing on this planet have an intelligence that seems much lower than an average human's. (Let's not talk about those ultra-smart monkeys we see on NatGeo). Every form of life lives and dies, worrying only about surviving. Finding food to survive, finding protection to survive.

What quirk of evolution created this monstrous intelligence in us? The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that this was a ploy in evolution's game. Evolution does not always get things right the first time. There is always some anomaly that would need to be corrected. The mistake does not manifest immediately. The bug takes ages to surface. That is why evolution needs a restart once in a while; to set right the wrong.

Until now, these restarts appear to have been triggered only by natural causes - the Ice Age, the asteroid collision that ended the dinosaur age and many others that have gone unnoticed. So this time nature thinks up of an interesting way. Man gets super-intelligence. Human intelligence is evolution's way of ensuring that the cycle of life restarts from scratch yet again.

Its disguised as something that would help man better his life. It does provide him all the comfort that he can dream of. But on the sidelines, unnoticed, the darker side creeps along. Some people do notice the darkness, but the majority don't and the majority always wins. Everything that the intelligence was used to create added comfort to man's already pampered life. But on every one of them, piggy-backed, arrives a new step towards the end. There come the pollution, the weapons, the man-induced natural disasters. Marching steadily, camouflaged beyond recognition. When they do get spotted, it is already too late.

Someday, the cursed intelligence would have ushered in enough to push the restart button. And the world will be reset once again and the clock rewound yet again for a new cycle to begin. There may not be any human-like life in the new cycle. But again, there could be one.


What if humans had not evolved from the cave-man? What if our intelligence was limited like in other animals? Limited to surviving skills. Limited to knowing what can be eaten and what shouldn't be, learning to run when attacked. The world would have been a better place, wouldn't it? Well, wouldn't evolution then have found some other method to perform the routine maintenance shutdown? It would have! In any case, that would have been better than the slow poison that human intelligence is.

May those souls rest in peace....

There are people in other parts of the world, to whom tsunamis and earthquakes are known things. But not so in India and a few other 'safe' countries shored in the Indian Ocean. This Sunday (26 December, 2004) an earthquake in the depths of the Indian Ocean trigerred a series of tragic deaths in various parts of Asia. It was a pebble in the pool effect, but of an unimaginable magnitude. Like a giant boulder, miles across in girth, dropped into the ocean.

The earthquake was measured on the richter scale at 8.9, in the epicenter. That is big considering that it is the hugest earthquake in recent years. The quake churned the ocean to create a wave of destruction. What news channels initially streamed as a 'mild' tremor, transformed into a gory tale with the coming of the tsunamis.

Current estimates put the toll at a lot more than 20000 world-wide. Fishermen, out to eke their living, never returned. Children, out for a game on the beach, were washed off the face of the earth. People living near the sea, were left homeless, foodless and in many cases lifeless.

Nature showed her brutal side across SriLanka, India (especially the Andaman & Nicobar Islands), Thailand, Indonesia and other countries in the Indian Ocean.

Let those left behind, have the strength to move on.

Visit http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/ to know more about how you can help those that survived.

Imagine, the engine binging on an endless stockpile of coal,
He munches and then crunches to retch out a spew of smoke.

Huffing and puffing he runs up the bluff to the end of the road,
Willing to killing himself and the wailing people aboard.

Interesting way to start a day! First I had two crazy horn-huggers. These two kept honking all over the road, irrespective of whether there were people ahead of them or not. Then, traffic jams all around my building. Tried 4 different routes and all of them were blocked. People standing still, mostly in the wrong lanes. Where did these blokes leave their common-sense? When will they learn to be patient for an extra minute or two and stay on their side of the road? Imagine looking at a scene where there are cars standing nose-to-nose with a bus. Damn, I wish I had a bull-horn that I could use to put some sense into these block-heads or atleast leave them with a buzz in their ears.

Now that the venom has been extracted, let me get back to work!

Just a couple of stamps (the ink type), a scrawled signature and some writing. That's ECNR. It took me four hours in a queue, 5 minutes to collect the passport later and more than 2 hours of riding in traffic, to get the ECNR clearance.

Inspite of warnings from friend Debu, I left home only at 7 am. I couldn't have left earlier as it was freezing cold even then. Well, got to the Passport office, 45 minutes later, only to face a snaking queue of people. Better than 75 people already ahead of me. The office opens at 9:30 am, a good 1 hour 45 minutes from then. Got in line and cursed my not carrying some reading material.

Ahead of me a family was discussing some "family" matters. Didn't exactly hear what they spoke, but the tone and the few words I caught, showed a small tussle going on. That was fun. Like watching a movie where you don't understand the accent but get the general drift. Interesting way to spend the morning. A little while later, my attention caught a hawk (?) shredding apart his morning meal (a mouse I think). Watched the hawk until the mouse lost all its skin. The scene was turning too bloody for me. Just then a mother-monkey walked up to the wall, by the side of which our queue stretched. Did I mention that the gates weren't yet open? Anyway mother-monkey solemnly watched her oddly-shaped cousins standing there waiting for the gates to open. Mother-monkey's look read complete lack of interest. After some relative watching mother-monkey decided to get back to work and left us.

I noticed that some birds were hopping around on the trees around. They were right over our heads and we looked easy target for their droppings. That made me uneasy. I couldn't wait in the queue with bird poop on me. I just kept praying that the birds were all done with their morning chores. Fortunately, lady luck was with me!

A few minutes later, the gates opened to let us folks in. To form another queue inside the compound. God, this was crazy. Well, we had more entertainment waiting for us. This time, a lady and her husband were in the queue. The lady found a spot to sit. But it was a little behind her position in the queue. She left the hubby in the queue and sat down at the spot. The people standing and sitting in the queue around that position mistook this. They thought she was gate-crashing and began to make a hue and cry. The lady tried to explain to those crazy people that she was ahead in the queue and that her husband was keeping her place in the line. Crazy people are crazy because they are tired of the waiting. Her explanation goes unheard and the crazy people just keep bickering. Somehow the lady keeps her cool and continues undettered. I really admired that.

After that show was over, I switched to watching this very cute little kid. The kid must have been only a few months into walking. The kid danced, ran, fell and ran a lot. It was quite amusing to watch its antics. Every now and then, the kid would try to run off to the outside and the dad had to run after it. Children know how to bring some fun to the most tiring place.

Finally, the officials streamed in and we were let into the building for some more waiting. We had chairs to sit on this time. Cool. Slowly our procession of people moved to the head of the line and were attended to. The whole lousiness here was that there were no instructions or check lists to be found anywhere. People were sent away to get this and that after they reached the counter and tried to put in their application. This was frustrating both for the staff as well as the applicants. To me, it looked completely ridiculous. Some people had to return to the counter five or six times, to get everything in place. One simple check list along with the application form would have saved all the misery.

Lo! It was my turn. While in the queue, I had run out to the nearest copier to get copies of everything i needed and didn't need. In duplicate. Turned out that I didn't need most of the copies. Well, success never tasted bitter. Phew! End of ordeal.

P.S: I went in the evening to pick up the passport with the stamp. My name was called out just as I enetered. I was in and out in a matter of five minutes. Thank god for such big mercies.

There is a small stretch of road that leads to the Commerce@Mantri building (that's where my org works out of). This length of tarmac is relatively smoother and very less trafficked than the other roads I traverse in my daily commute. This is where I get my daily dose of high revving speed runs.

I slow down into first gear as I turn onto this piece of road. If there is traffic on the road, I ditch my rush and proceed at the same sedate pace. If not it's a go. Revving hard, I move the bike into the higher reaches of the rev band. My revvo quit a long time, so no absolute figures. Just take it that the bike makes a hell of a noise (much lesser than the cans, though) and turns into a edgy, nervy 16+ horse chariot. It is all over in a few seconds. I shift through only till the fourth (or sometimes the third) gear. But it is one hell of a great feeling and leaves me ready for the day.

It helps to spit the venom from the rush-hour traffic, the incorrigible signal breakers and the plainly stupid fellow road users! For those few moments, I don't have a bloke trying to cut across. For those few meters, I don't have potholes to avoid. Well technically, there is one very small hole, but not directly in my path.

That's my 3 second adrenaline rush!!

P.S: I wear always my helmet, almost always my jacket and shoes, and sometimes gloves.

Me and my bike below >>>>>

I haven't played a proper volley-ball match after school. Without surprise, I jumped at the chance to play for Oracle in the Genie Inter-corporate tournament. Wow, a tournament after almost 6 years. Our team included - Vipul (our kaptan), Shailendra, Arvind, Madhu, Nagraj, Binish, Jaiganesh , Navaneeth, Sekar and I. The team configuration was to be 6 players plus 3 reserves. Vipul, generously, chose to be the non-playing captain.

The teams were divided into 3 groups and Oracle was in Group C, a group that was almost on par with us. Some of the teams like the ones from Accenture BPO, Tata Teleservices, Sasken and Bosch were outright professional outfits. They were in other groups and we would get to meet one of them only in the next round.

Our first match was against Ittiam. A pretty good team, except that they lacked the co-ordination that we could garner and more importantly the cool that we exuded. We sweeped both the sets, but not without a fight. The scores were 25-16 and 25-23. Special credit needs to go to Nagraj. Not so long out of college and with all the skills of a college team player, he helped us through the match. And to Sekar, who was our all-round player and always well in control. The second set was close but Ittiam never found the cool that we had. By the end of the match, our team had bonded well and we were sufficiently co-ordinated.

The next match was almost 3 hours later. The gang finished lunch and decided to stretch our legs, at the risk of losing our legs. Yeah, that's right, cos the best place we found to relax was the divider on the internal road with an occasional vehicle trying to run over us. Shailendra even made up the headlines for the next day's papers - "Oracle plays so well that they lose their legs".

Our opponents, Axa, made it just in time. Axa seemed better than Ittima, but we were stoned by our new-found rhythm and that made a difference. The lunch and the long wait had dulled our senses a bit. It took us a while to get into the game, but soon we were cruising along. And another clean sweep. Two sets to nil; 25-x and 25-x . The match saw many long rallies and as Vipul later pointed out we won 10-out-of-10 on every long rally.

Day two was to be the exact opposite of the previous day. We didn't know this then, nor after the first match. The first match of the day was our last league match and against LogicaCMG. Statistically, we didn't have to win that match to advance to the next round. Knowing that made us let our guard down, a bit and we couldn't ever get back on track. LogicaCMG won against us in three sets. The score-board read: 25-16, 17-25 , 9-15. We did put up a good fight towards the end. Well, we were through to the semi-finals anyway.

The semi-final match was against Hughes - a controlled team that emerged the surprising leader of Group B. We were determined to win the match and our spirits were up. But to our own surprise we never got into the game. Hughes won by straight sets. x-25, 16-25.

Our reach-the-final dream was shattered. But we made it to the semis with almost nil practice. That put is in the top four out of the 12 represented teams. That was quite an achievement. It had been two days of unbirdled fun. Though we weren't satisfied, we went home pleased with ourselves and with rock-hard stiff bodies :-). As they say, there is always a next time, a next tournament. The hunger lingers!

Three cheers to the Oracool team.