'Coz I am happy!

I have always been obsessed with the sky. I remember my childhood, during powercuts - Maa would ask me to sit down on "uthoon" - under the open skies and i would pretend to study. I was more keen on looking up literally than looking down. Looking up was full of mysteries - unanswered questions that seemingly would never end like the universe and looking down would mean - looking at things that would always hold me down to a limited space - a limited set of thoughts. How true is that about life?

Today i was talking to my Mashi. My young cousin sister Gudiya is going through her days of finding the right career path. She is filled with a bunch of premonitions and apprehensions. She relies on a lot of conceived beliefs from his brother and then there are thoughts that concur it. I would advice her to be courageous. Never have a feeling that she can't do something coz she is not meant to do something. There's nothing like that in this world. It's a ecosystem problem, more subjective to your first degree of contact - people in your innermost circle of friends/family. I think if i can instill that confidence in her that she can do something - just by proper planning - there will be no turning back. So i told Mashi that she shouldn't give up JEE. The pure sciences and BSc is a good thing to do - but engineering is always this inverted funnel - it's tough to get in - but very easy to get out. They fear the engineering market shrinking in the future. If you ask me - it never can and never will.

So i came up with this classic case using which i tried to defend my case. Today in Indian Railways - we have still a lot of paper handwritten work that's being done. However, my mom tells me that it's becoming mandatory for people to know computers and basic working with it - going forward. What does that show? It shows evolution - even though all that Railways needs to do is follow a well discovered path - which has been tried and tested already by others in the world. But evolution none the less. It gets to show now - that those things which took 2 days to complete, will take barely 2 hours. The internet has transformed the way we live our lives. I think it's the most precious discovery post the stone age era. But there's a hazard - and obvious hazard and mind you - the unions wouldn't like it. If you start doing work faster - you will loose out on employment. Everything will start taking care of things of it's own and there would be reduced human intervention. Hence those who can't adapt - in this case - acquire the necessary skills - will perish. Those who will adapt are the ones who will survive and by the way - they will survive in the most coveted way - imagine the first person in a village who learned to send e-mails.

So i told her - to not for see things 4 years in advance and be the future predictor, instead learn the skill to adapt. Studying engineering/history/geography or spirituality - will all yield you what you want - if you know how you want it and if you know how to 'adapt'. Talking of adaptation - I am sick of what I am adapting to - a life without music - mundane thoughts and Pharell. Till the next time i comeback - i am going to stay happy, listen to a lot of music, sing my lungs out and eat hell lot of momos!

The Hong Kong tour diary!

I recently had a chance to go visit Hong Kong for the Openstack Summit 2013. Well to be honest, i recognize the name Hong Kong from a very long time. We always heard of HK as a city that produces quite a few gadgets infact, in Silliguri, West Bengal - we even have a market called "Hong Kong Market". They sale all sorts of electronics/gadgets/watches/shoes etc over there for cheaper prices of supposedly famous brands. So when i heard about the summit, i went to youtube and played some videos about HK. To be honest, i had this perception that i would come back from HK with a lot of gadgets and possibly a few watches - coz i like fancy watches. Still, i wasn't too excited about it and the feeling sort of aggravated coz my flight tickets were booked on the night of Diwali. I mean i know Diwali is not as BIG in BLR for me than compared to at home but over the years i have made friends and frenzy to come to terms with it and i would always want to be in some part of India during that time.

I was convincing myself over ONLY a 6 day trip. With a heavy heart, i reached the Bangalore Intl Aiport on 3rd Novemeber 00:00 hours. It's a pain to keep reciepts of all the travels you make esp for a guy who's as messy as me but i kept reminding myself to not loose anything. My flight was booked in Cathay Pacific. I had heard good reviews of it and thought as much till i reached the airport and found out that it's actually operated by Dragon Air. I met one of my colleagues at the airport. He was travelling to Beijing. Beijing is in Mainland China and HK falls under the chinese administration. Regrets about leaving on Diwali night clubbed with a cramped leg space plus the timing of the flight - all made into a clear counting hours back to return.

I had heard about the HK airport being beautiful, so i woke up just before landing. It was a 5:30 hours flight from BLR. The airport was indeed beautiful. The aircraft actually gives you a feeling that you are landing on water with mountains surrounding a scenic view. At the immigration, they asked me fewer questions than they asked me before leaving India and O yes - no where in the HK airport they stamp your passport. I didn't quite  understand why. Anyway, i had another colleague coming from hyderabad whom i had never seen in India but finding Indians in HK airport shouldn't have been a hard problem - only if i knew it would be.  I got the US dollars converted into Hong Kong dollars and headed for the hotel. I had booked Holiday Inn. We took a cab from the airport and hence began the journey through the mountains and sea shores to our hotel which was at Tim Tsha Tsui in the Kowloon district.

I was surprised by real estate i could see from the taxi window. They have built bridges on the ocean (i know most of them have) but the infrastructure gave you a feeling that land is not easy to come by in HK and hence they made use of every inch of land they have there. They have ressidential complexes that go beyond 40 stories easily. As we stepped into the city, the traffic took over. It felt like India for a while but then i realized that the traffic actually moves in the city and people follow lane disciplines. Around 40kms from the airport and we reached the hotel. The hotel itself was a 18 storyed one. Now given that i come from India - i am not used to sky scrappers. We reached around 12:30 HK time, and i was still feeling very sleepy and hungry at the same time. I looked up the menu in my room and they had Indian dishes listed in the menu - but skipping through them i ordered for a veg fried rice. I had tasted chinese food in Canada and i knew i wasn't a big fan of the authentic chinese food (mind you, i love the tibetian /chinese food we get here in India - the so called "Indian Chinese" food). The fried rice was indeed - a bit exotic but it was good to satisfy my need for a brunch. In the evening we took a stroll out on the roads around the hotel and i saw only watch stores. Watches that definitely were out of range for me. Rado, Rolex, Omega and what not. We took a walk towards the hardbor. It was beautiful.

We came back to the hotel early - with no signs of "having fun" in HK but we decided that we would hop around the city on the next day. My colleague told me about this huge building called the ICC tower - which offered a 260 degree view of the city.  It has 118 floors and is the third tallest building (wrt number of floors) in the world. We kept speculating - coz we saw another one which looked very similar to that...In my next post i shall try to portray my experiences in HK in the next few days before i came back. For now it's a wrap!

Life takes you where you want.

I am 28. I have learnt a bit about life. I am still to know how the nature behaves to my actions but i know a bit about life. There are times i feel the necessity to find out the truth  but most of the times i am happy being lost. I know it's not about wanting, it's more about giving. Less about giving up and more about carrying your spirit  within a earthly body to reach a place you'd call as the fortress of eventuality. It gets confusing at times between what you want and what you end up doing. There are momentary illusions that blind folds one into believing in things that don't exist or doesn't give you happiness, but that's what makes this life interesting. It's a fight within ourselves...after all, we manufacture every emotion, we create one and then we become desperate to kill the same one too.

Think about the last time , when your heart made a choice...O well, you made that choice, but then you didn't care about the consequences in the rush. Then comes a moment, you want to get out and free your spirit...Eventually it's you who did it and only you call the shots to not do it any more.

If you are caught in a moment, lost faith or maybe you feel dejected for being summoned by the spirals...you just need to ask yourself - the choice, like in the matrix - the blue pill or...you know what i mean, it's always a choice. If you keep making the choice to not change...Well that's your choice too, but if you want - i bet Life takes you where you want!


 Try to win back your days
You let them all escape your heart
Now that you've come so far
Why did you have to fall so hard
Look at what you've done
What have you become ...

-- Slip to the void (Alter Bridge)

Long Way From Home

2 album with over 20 compositions, yet it didn't satsify me on a personal ground on what i was set to achieve with Dark Project. We were sparse entities living in our own little worlds, in the creeks of places like the hostel rooms or the rented apartments. It had to take a mammoth effort to put the pieces back in place to start making music just the way you hear it on the record. Everybody's sacrifice to come to the city of Bangalore has been a tale i have held close to my heart. When individuals have families, career aspirations and most importantly a necessity to find one's own survival - music in India takes a back seat.

The good news is that i am not with such individuals who play music for instant fame. I am not with a set of individuals who value gimmicks more than art. I am with individuals who win everything they put a step on. 2 years of playing music in Bangalore, together as a band and a will to write an album that would replicate the exact sound of madness that we held inside. Hence came a decision to put the ink to paper and write a record that would correct all the things we missed out in the past and express our feelings as individuals much on a personal level. 

Long Way From Home is not Dark Project's 3rd album, i always regard it as the first and an onset of a journey that forgets about how much we had to fight to put the bricks together but rather sketches a painting of our souls while we try to connect to our admirers in a fresh n new way. The album has  taken almost a year to compose and record. Precisely with 8 tracks - each bleeding into the other, is composed, mixed, played, written, produced by Dark Project.

The songs deal with a variety of subjects including faith, love, bravery, sacrifice and what not. I have heard it on repeat as we went on to achieve near perfection with our limited boundaries. We didn't want this to become just another record but something we have put our best in. Duality is the first single off the album and will be released as a video in the month of September, followed by the album launch and possibly gigs to promote it.

Not everything is in one's hand, rather i think there's nothing in our hands than to just give it the best shot we could. After putting the unmixed record on play - i can rest assure tell the world that i am really proud of what we have made. Sauvik, Ugyal, Korak and last but not the least Daryl have done a tremendous job with the album and only makes me want to write music for another 100 years, if mortality permits that rule.

Sweat, anger, effort and a never say die attitude is what brings this album together in one piece. I guess i would want to dedicate this album to my mom and to each of our families who have been enormous in supporting us through our lives. There cannot be a 'Dark Project' lighting it up without them!!


We meet ourselves,
We meet ourselves into someone we don't know.
We try to chase, we try to chase that someone we don't know.
Will you cry for someone to write the story of your own?
Will you jump, will you break to reach where you belong?

~Salvation!

This world is driven by implicit choices.

This is my first post of the year. Yeah i have been doing too many things, mostly in my mind. I am never out of time and neither i believe in time leaving ones' side ever. This post is about the time travel i did for an hour or so, listening to one of my favorite artists' of all time - Darren Hayes' album - This delicate things we've made. 

Anyway, let's get straight up to what i wish to convey here. In my retrospection, i found that life is driven by implicit choices. We would get to what i mean by that in a bit. I am sure all of us have had this feeling of getting stuck at a certain juncture in our lives - where we see roads that we never want to walk or we see outcomes that we never want to accept. There are these moments, you wish to break free and get out of but all your efforts give you only a temporal relief and you end up finding yourself in that same old place again. So i thought, why don't i put in my life's perspective and search the answer to such miseries. The outcome of this, really surprised me. It surprised me because it's very simple to understand yet it is very difficult to believe in. 

No matter where we are and what we have done so far in our lives, everything was driven by choices that nature chose for us. When i say nature, i mean the conscience that resides within each of us. Some people popularly call it "decisions made by the heart". Never anyone could be happy or could kill a misery by applying explicit ideas of cure. If you scan through your life, it must be full of those butterfly effect moments that changed the next course of history. It could be from loving someone to making sure you don't have that feeling anymore. From choosing to build a castle over happiness or finding happiness in doing so. You really never know where the end lies or when would one come out of it. This is something that is governed by nature. 

Our human brain has a limited capacity but it has infinite capabilities. It's about dimensions of oneself that can only be limited to certain number of choices but one may possibly do endless things in that one dimension. Our human brain has always worked through substitutions. The substitutions are these implicit choices i am trying to talk about here. Your dearest friend may find a reason in you to quit some of his/her habits. Someone may choose to do the drugs to substitute you from their brains. Someone might want to get into someone else and never care for you. But believe me, whenever there's been something new that came into your life, it always took away something. It could be sorrow that got taken away by happiness or the other way around. This is a little disturbing, if you are a firm believer that there's something called this one thing that is made for you and you are made for it. I personally feel, nothing like that exists in this universe. The universe is actually within you and you define the rules. But the dicey part is, that these rules that you define has a far greater reaction within yourself if they are made explicitly and not naturally. These leave with trails of remorse and a life long sense of a lament. 

So if you really wish things to change for you, then wait for that right moment, when you give a chance to your heart to make a choice on it's own. These choices, could be driven by situations, conditions but the acceptance can only come when you believe in it.

What do i want from life.

Today a strange question was asked to me, What do i want in my life? And to my surprise, i was paused for about 1 minute before i could answer it. My answers were, a family - maybe coz i have always craved for one. Maybe coz i know that family gives us strength. Then i just couldn't answer anything beyond it. So i decided that i will go back home, shut myself out in my room and write this down on my blog.  Today i want to think about me, myself and what i would look forward to have in my life.


I think i have lived this life mostly for others so far. Be it for getting love, be it for playing music, be it for feeling obligated to care for someone. But really is it eventually the thing that i would want to take down to my grave? I think i have spent most part of my life, choosing sadness over happiness. I have always looked at what i don't have instead of looking at what god gave me. It's a mindset, i need to change for my good because now my survival is under threat. I just cannot feel bad, i just cannot feel dejected, unhappy and insecure.

Anyway coming back to what i want from life. I think i got goals in my life during my +2. With very little practical knowledge about life. I set my sights on becoming a musician. More like Savage Garden back in those days and slowly my tastes bled into becoming a rock musician. I guess somehow in the past 3-4 years, i have lost that interest because i tasted waters that sort of made me realize that it's a wild goose chase. But today i want to fall back and ask myself that same question again - is it really a wild goose chase at the end of the day? What is possible in life? To love someone so much that you'd think that life will not move on without her and then eventually look back and discover that it was just a phase and you can quit anything in life? Is it about believing that the job i have, that pays me handsomely today would sustain me for the next 40 years? To imagine that i would fall in love again and never ever let go of that person? Everything is possible in life. If disasters are easier to believe in then i am sure that fate has an equal share of happiness associated with it. I think it's only a practice, that we human beings need to do - Be fearless and Choose the things we want.  I want to go back and tell myself that maybe i don't want my music career as passionately as i used. Maybe i have given up on the sight to see. Maybe i need to resurrect my thoughts once again and do what i like.  As i write this, i guess there are no two thoughts on what i want to become in life. I don't want to be an IT professional, neither i want to become an MBA grad. I want to be loved by a million and i want to love that one special person, who'd love me differently than those millions out there. I want to sing to a crowd and make them reciprocate my feelings. I want to travel around the world - take the long drive around the grand canyon and say that i have lived life Kingsize!

I think i have to revive what i am loosing with every single minute passing by me. I have to think about things that i really beckon from life. Not something that can give me a momentary phase of happiness. I have to release myself from shackles that hold me close to a situation and makes me change my emotions towards them. I think those human beings who change because of situations are spineless. I don't want to be one of them!

I think i have found my answer to what i want in life eventually now...

How loyal are you to your company!

My job allows me to work from home, however, this time i chose not to. I was returning from home, around 3000 miles away from Bangalore. While sitting on the train to Kolkata, i meet a person who after a few lines of introductory conversation asks me, "How loyal are you to your company"? I was a little stunned to have heard that question all of a sudden out of the blue, we were talking rally races before that. It's not very often that i am caught off guard but this was one such occasion. I told him that "I am loyal to my work more than my company". He got a little irked by the answer. He seemed a little biased about the IT Industry in India where the average lifespan of a particular Job is not more than 3 years. He asked me, "Why do you switch companies every 2-3 years?" My answer, "We do that because IT is a very dynamic industry and you cannot be stuck with one technology forever, unless it's cutting age. If your company doesn't give you a room to move around, you'd rather not want to rot at the same place and become a less skilled employee in the market". He was not satisfied with this answer. He went to tell me about his profession. He is a doctor, who would see 100s of patients on a single day by loosing sleep. He asks me, "How many hours do you sleep in the night?". I felt a little irked again. I chose to close the topic and did not feel like continuing the conversation.

Today about 1 and half months after that incident, i sat down to think on why i feel the urge to move around various companies. Is it something to do with my Salary? The answer surprisingly is a NO.
Let's take an example of an organization that has about 100 employees. The "degrees of separation" between the CEO and an employee on an average will at max be 2. An average employee closely impacts the revenue of the organization and the margin for error per employee is very less. This means that an employee is more accountable towards his company's end goal. Employees are highly skilled, there is nothing like a "Bell's curve" in picture and most of them are happy. Motivation factor? Mostly to do with accountability. Now let's name this Company as A (well i got to a late naming this time). Let's take another Company called B, with the same portfolio as A. B on the other has a very profit minded CEO/Owner. He wants to grow (Sorry for using all masculine gender) his company. For that matter, he decides to make an IPO. Considering that this company has performed exceedingly well in the past, buyers have a lot of faith and the IPO gets sold out in minutes. Now we have more investors on this company than that one guy who owned it. Every investor looks for profit. The CEO has to instill confidence on the company's shareholders. He decides that volume is more important than quality. Even though you can think about having no bell curve during appraisals but now the company looks at the Supply Chain Model. Here the resources (supply) are the People who will do this volume work. Slowly but steadily, company B figures out work items that can be executed with less skilled people. Hence rather than hiring from the IITs, it now falls back to the other Engineering colleges for recruitment. A imbalance is struck in terms of accountability because the person who is doing a less skilled work might still screw that up and not impact the companies overall revenue. First quarter results of expansion - Excellent. The CEO and the Shareholders are really happy. Now they go on to set a record margin for the next quarter. More hiring takes place and all of a sudden this company's employee skill structure becomes like a view you'd see with  Windows De-fragmentation. As the company expands, the "Degrees of separation" between that same employee grows to a phenomenal number. All of a sudden an average employee, concentrate only on his area of work and forgets about what the overall organization goal is. Now, his accountability reduces from delivering revenue to delivering for his module. Slowly, he dissects himself from feeling a part of the company to being only responsible for his job. Now I know why i felt that I am Loyal to my work more than my company. 

The idea of making someone feel "Special" not just within the organization but as a citizen is reducing day by day. IT is trying to put it's footprint into everything that we do in life. Calling it a giant bubble might be too early but isn't it true that the impatience level and the dissatisfaction we suffer for our job is ever increasing? The resources are becoming more volatile also courtesy of the imbalance the Salary Structures create post a Job Switch. We might be happy today about it but then who is the person who is responsible for this? I leave that to you, to find out!