The Peril of being in a IT Services Company:

Just now I am realizing the peril of being in a IT services company. 3 months ago I quit my previous company, which is a product based one. Though the product I was working is innovative, it wasn't competitive with the giants in the field. But my job was really cool, with an opportunity to see the product from the design phase to the release phase. I think many would not have the opportunity to see the complete life cycle of a complex telecom product from a close proximity. Due to various reasons I had to quit. That was actually one of the toughest decision that I took in my life.

I had a number of offers at that time and I chose a small, start up company to join. I know that I am taking risk there, but I thought it would be quite interesting to see a startup company from inside. I knew from my other friends that in a service based company an employees interest would never be in the radar of the manager who is assigning the task. The only aim there is complete "whatever" task/module given by the client. But I still wanted to try it as the work environment would be pretty relaxed.

At the time of joining I was dreaming to work in something like, Linux Kernel, device driver, some complex application, etc. I did some interesting stuff too after joining, which I could be proud of. But I was dump struck when I was given the latest module. It was a module that a test engineer would do happily. The task was not a simple one, but it did not have the excitement that I, as a developer need to motivate me to work. When the task was being explained to me, I felt like banging my head on the computer. Only then I realised the peril of working in a service based company. I have risen my voice some times in my previous company when I was asked to do something that is not development like leading a testing team and other things, which had landed me in trouble. But here I held myself back . After all my manager is the holding the whip and I had no choice except to dance.

Also, I guess in India 75-80% of the software engineers are working in the services industry, which in turn depends on the american software industry. What will happen to these company's if the american economy falls? The next day these company's will not have any project, which in turn will affect the 80% of the software engineers. It is such a sad feeling when so much talent is actually work trying to improve the technology for US. Yes, it improves the indian economy, but it has created a strong dependency with the american economy.

I could simply quit this difficult existence, what the hell is stopping me to live the life the way I want to live? Fear of being jobless, surviving, answering questions??? It is a pity after a 3 years of being in the field has done nothing to those fear. As of now, I have nothing but a prayer for the american economy to be good for us to survive. What a terrible existence :(

A Refereshing Book on 'C':

I never thought that any of the authors of book on C would have a bit of sense of Humor and a book I was reading now changed that. I thought that geeks usually have shed their humor when they were banging their heads on the computers during their university days intead of partying and going out with their girl friends. This theory of mine has been true in almost all the geeks that I respect. But I got a pleasent surprise yesterday, that too accidently.

I forgot to pay my internet bill for the last month and i remembered that only when I could not logon. When I was trying to figure out what to do, a book got my attention( this book was in the last of the heap and got in to top when I shifted to a new residence at T.Nagar). The name of the book was "Expert C Programming, Deep C Secrets, by Peter Van Der Linden", which was presented to me by a pal last year. I was really sceptical whether I would go beyond few pages like many of the technical books I bought. But this one was refreshing and funny from the page one. The author is a C Guru, who has written C compiler, and the book is full of funny ancedotes.

Some of the best I liked,
* A $20 Million order was held to a bug which was traced to something like this, x == 2(this ought to be x = 2).
* Bugs section in tunefs of SVr4 Unix.
* How Steve Bourne converted the C in Algol equivalent with the preprocessors, and the response he gave, that he thought that nobody other than him would see the code.

The book was very interesting with lot of niche details about C coding, which was quite exciting to know. I was forced to stop reading as I had to hit the bed early as I do not want to
miss my run tomorrow. Hopefully i will complete this book soon.



Recommedation: This book is surely for those who wants to know the nuances of C and master it.

The Pain of a Loss:

One of the saddest day in my life. I've lost a very close person to me,Kalyanasundaram this
afternoon in an accident. Kalayanasundaram joined my fathers company some 15 years ago. My father by his very nature always treat the members of his company as his family members, but I think he treated Kalyanam a bit above that, he really trusted him. He had been my friend from my younger days.Flashes of our adventure in the cycle, the childish pranks I played on him, the badam geer he would get me after my school, all goes in my mind.

The worst part is he died not realising many of his dreams. He wanted to go abroad to do earn
some big money, he wanted to visit lot of countries and he wanted a businees of his own. These
are somethings he shared with me with the little time that I spent with him. He always flashes
a great smile and does a salute in his own way whenever I go the office. He always advices about the need to maintain a healthy body and the need to exercise. He was very influential in my recent invlovement with jogging. Last time when I visited him, I was telling him about the marathon that I going to attend this december.

I could not believe my ears when my father told me that Kalyanam is no more and our manager is at the hospital with multiple fractures. Kalyanam had always been a very careful driver. He is the who thought me how to drive a two wheeler against my fathers words not do that. But even he could not do much when the tire of the car that is coming in front of him burst and the car rams him killing him instantly.I wish this day had never come.

What could I ever do about this tragedy? I knew thousands of people die each day around the world, thousands of people affected by the death and I could do nothing about it. But the pain of the loss can be understood only by those associated. It is a scar that will never vanish. His thoughts will always be a hauting memory as he lived with my father, his office, our house. Last two times when I took the car out to drive to my uncles house in the next village, he was accombniying me as an escort there. Life will never be the same for those who know Kalyanam. Incidents like these reminds me how short the life is. Sometimes life really sucks

A Radical Climate Change:

Would you belive If I say it is raining in chennai in July? Even I could not believe that the climate is cool here. For the past 3 weeks it was raining atleast twice a week, infact it has somewhat irritating when it rains in the morning during my jogging.

Some of the photos I took this morning.

Though it is somewhat irritating when it is raining in the morning while starting to the office, it is really pleasant feeling. I wonder why this radical change now, Global warming's effect????

One Day At Bangalore

Bangalore - the Silicon Valley of India, fastest growing city in India, where 2nd largest number of millioners dwell in the country, has always been somewhat unlucky for me. When I was searching for a job, I was desparate to get a job there, and it eluded me for about 6 months there. I'm not sure why I could not get in to a job in a simple company there, but I got in to a pretty tough company in chennai. Ok, that was two years before and I got a chance to go to Bangalore again for a small work. I was bit afraid about my unlucky charm in the city as this was a very important work. But surprisingly I really had a very interesting experience this time.


My train was scheduled at 1.20 PM and I had a pretty long run that morning. I mean real long, around 15 K. I went for a run at the ECR with the chennai runners from the the toll gate to the Mahaballipuram. I was dead tierd when I went for the train and to travel in the afternoon was the worst possible time to travel in this part of the country. Luckily I was bit prepared with some books. So I was able to kill some time with it. One of the interesting thing to happen in the train was my fellow travellers. A young foreign couple were sitting next to me. I struck a conversation with them. They are Camilla and George, and they are from England. They are touring south east asia for 6 months with their school sponsoring the trip. They had just finished their trip of Sri Lanka and they are on their way to Bangalore. I was just amazed to hear the account of their trip. I really wish that I had the chance to visit the places I wanted to visit, with someone sponsor(and with a girlfriend :)). It was good talking to them, and I was surprised when they told that they do not have any contacts in Bangalore or any where in India and they simply land some where, book the hotel, roam around and leave. I liked the adhoc way they are roaming. Whenthe train reahced Bangalore, I wished them luck and gave a bit of an advice not to stay late in the evenings in Bangalore, as it is not safe. I also took a picture of them.



A friend of my Brother In Law, Mr Chanrda was travelling with me and we got a good dinner at a hotel next to station. That was very surprising as one of the main reasons I was afraid Bangalore was the food. But that hotel really good. We got a very good hotel to stay. Chandra told me that we need to be there at the place of work by 9.00 in the morning. So, I kept my alarm for 7.00 and I was very happy to do that after a week as I was getting up around 4.30 to 5.00 daily. Saturday was the worst as I got up by 3.20 for the long run. The sleep was instant.

Next day the work was smooth and it got finished by 2.30 in the afternoon. I got some sleep and went out for some shopping around majestic. There was a huge bridge build upon over the bus stand. Only then I understood the charm of Bangalore. Within10 Minutes I would have heard Kannada, English, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi. It was really amazing to find people with
so many culture and language in a city. It felt good to be in the city when you are pretty relaxed and able to observe other people in the city. The night I had my dinner in the same hotel and this was also pretty good. All in all this is my best experience in Bangalore for the first time.

A walk back in Time:

A Road less Traveled, I experienced the meaning of the phrase last Sunday. I was told by my friend Venkat , that Chandra was planning for a one day heritage trip. When I spoke to Chandra he told that it was historic cavemen site. At that time I wasn’t thrilled to go to such a place, but I agreed to go.

We started some what late by 7.30 from Sathyamurthy Sir's(Retd.Director ASI) residence. The place we have planned is near thiruvallur. The road was so bad that we traveled about 2 1/2 hours to travel a distance of about 50 KM. Chandra had brought breakfast and lunch for us, we finished the breakfast in the middle of our journey.

Our group had Mr. Thirumurthy apart from Dr Sathymurthuy from ASI to guide us. Mr. Thirumurthy who was familiar with the place was leading the way. The place we were going is called Gudiyam and we had to stop to van 5 KM before the actual site because of the road and we had to trek from there.

Initially we underestimated the distance to walk, and took only water as we thought we might return for lunch to van. We all started a brisk walk to the site with Dr Sathyamuthy and Thirumurthy leading the walk. The two were explaining to all of about the site. The place was an industry to build the Stone Age tools like hand axe, scrapper, blades (actual words from the tools picked from our guides). They picked up the tools and handed each one of us a sample. They explained how a rock is cut from its base to make a tool. After a long explanation of this nature, all of started seeing the rocks with different eye. Each rock looked to have a shape for us, and we really went back in time and see the rocks from the eye of our ancestors. While walking we saw a huge black rock what is called as Conglomerate. Conglomerate is hardened lava which had lot stone tools embedded in it.

The walk from the start to the first cave was about 5 KM. The cave was huge, around 100 meters wide and 50 Meters taller. According to Sathyamurthy Sir, the cave would have been formed after the ice age, when the ice melted and water receded from this place. He pointed out a grayish area at the top of the cave, which is the mark up to which water would have been there. While going towards this place, we took a native woman working there to help us locate the caves. She told there is pond about cave. When we went to the top the cave, the view absolutely stunning. Only then we realized we were in middle of a dense forest, and the view we saw will be imprinted in our minds forever.

At the top of the cave Sathyamurthy Sir pointed out a fossil. It was an impression of a snail or something similar to it allover it when the rock was in a semisolid state (Check the photo's section to see this interesting peace). We found another rock with the similar imprint. We realized the steepness of the path we came only while going getting down. We went to next cave guided by the native woman. This cave has a small Amman temple in it. This one was much bigger than the previous one and there was lot of big honeycombs at the edges of the cave and also in the neighboring mountains(just like the one's in Big Temple).I had an interesting discussion about the books (PS, Sherlock Holmes) with Mr. Natarajan while walking to the 2nd cave.

By this time, every body has become really tired and only then we realized that we have not brought anything to eat except water. So we have decided to return to the van cutting short the visits to the other caves. It was said there are around 9 such caves available in that area. The walk back was the one that I will never forget in my life. We split in to 2 groups with Madan, Chandra, Thirumurthy and Parasuram going ahead of us, while myself, Sathymurthy sir, Natarajan, Gomathy and Sundaram walked behind. Sathymurthy Sir was talking about his archeological experiences in recent years. It was fascinating to hear his experiences. He also explained me about the general evolution theory so as to easily correlate it with what we saw at the cave. I really walked back in time during this time. It was amazing how a 65 year old man could walk 10 KM talking non stop enthusiastically.

We had a hearty meal which was just curd rice, but it really felt delicious at that time. It took about 4 hours to come back to the van. The people at the place was very happy to see us, they gave us water (good they away from Chennai). I went over the moon when I saw the phone they are using in that area is actually a done by my company (Midas Comm.). For some time I rambled to Mr. Sundaram about the product and its use in rural places like this.

We then visited the Archeology museum at Poondi. The museum was a small one, but filled with interesting articles. The time period of the some of stone tools at the museum was dated around 5 lac years. It was mind bobbling even to think about it. The most interesting piece available at the museum was a fossil of a snail of the size of Maruthi van tire. That fossil was dated some 80 lac years. We could not take photos of the piece as it is restricted.

At last we went to the completely full Poondi reservoir, coming back to future. We started there around 5.45 and reached Chennai through another route through Thiruvallur, Ponnamalle High Road. We reached Sathymurthy Sir's residence by 7.15.

All in all, it was an amazing and unforgettable trip for me.

Golden Heart:

Many a times we would have seen celebrities doing their bit to the society, and doing a bit to themselves to their image. But very few times we have seen a celebrity is showing the humane face without much thought about his fame or image. I saw a news about once such celebrity today. Roger Fedrer, the man who plays the tennis in an almost inhuman way and who is thought as the man who is taking tennis to the next level was in cuddalore as an ambassdor for Unicef for the Tsunami fund collection. He met with the Tsunami orphans and spend some time with them. What actually caught my attention was the news that during a news conference he refused to answer questions regarding his career, stating that he is here for a noble cause. You may not be able to see, but feel from the news paper article, when someone is being sarcastically prasied and someone is really being celebrated by the media.

Roger was in the latter categroy, being celebrated by the media for his humane side. The way he expressed his feeling after meeting with the children was moving. Almost all the children would have heard his name for the first time, but the rapport he created with the children drew the praise from the media, and especially a 3 year old child which never left his lap till he left the orphanage.

I was inspired by this particular news. Hope this info inspires the many celebrities around the world to do their bit to the world and to the people who are in greater need and in distress than India. If at all everybody do a bit for the well being of their fellow human being the world will become a better place to live.

Prayer at the Heart:

For a week I was praying daily for the safe return of Anant, the abducted son of the Adobe India CEO. I was following the news closely for the new updates of the high profile case. I was just sharing the anxiousness of the parents of a 3 year old child. That's the least I could day, with a prayer that he would return safely to his parents. The police acted so fast and efficient in this case. They did not divulge any details of the case as they usually do in most of the cases to alert the criminals. They were very cautious that they did not even that they are top of this case and of their optimism. My heart really skipped a beat when one of the news channel reported that the hope was fading for the safe return of Anant. On Friday, after 4 days of abduction Anant was rescued and reunited with his parents. I was so happy to see his joyful face waving happily on the crowd. I could really understand and feel how his parents would have felt holding him after the fateful 5 days. After his return arrests were made of the main suspect in the case, but still the mystery of how the police rescued Anant is still not divulged by the police. During the press conference the police put a plea to the media to not to ask any more details than they give to the media.

When the hangover of happiness has gone, when the mind is clear, some questions lingered in the mind.
1. What is the thing the Police do not want the people and the media to know?
2. What is the method the police used to nab the criminals?
3. Now for the most important question of all, would the police have acted with in the same efficiency and speed if Anant had not been the son of a high profile person, had he been a commoner, had he been the son of some ordinary office going person? (You nay ask why in the heck would some one abduct a commoner? Just for an argument!!!!)

This case really proved the efficiency of the Indian police to the fore. Just wondering would they have acted in the same manner, if the media attention was not so intense, the Chief Minister was not bothering them. Just that feeling that the police are acting to their full force only when they are forced to act, with full media spot light. It may be unfair from my part to judge the police with a few incidents like this, but the truth in this matter cannot be ignored.

I really wish there will be a day where the police becomes a separate establishment from the politicians, they act only from their own conscience and treat all the cases and people the same, injustice to honest people like Manjunath* being treated as a crime againt this nation not as another ordinary murder. I really wish to see that happening within my lifetime, for now I could only whisper a prayer at the heart.

*(Manjunath - An IIM grad and IOC employee murdered for cracking the adultration at the petrol bunks in UP. The murderers, as usual have not been brought to justice with the politicians behind them, but there was a lot of social change happeing inspired by this honest man).

A Lasting Peace:
(A conversation between Me and Myself)

The sane mind failed to understand and asked me, how gruesome violence against the innocent civilians would the end the violence Israel’s people are facing? I believed that I have found Israel’s intentions of peaceful Middle East. I told the sane mind that Israel wants to run over the adjacent countries and kill every inhabitants, the men (innocent or Hezbollah), women, children. That’s it; the people of Israel will have everlasting peace from the terrorist who fires rocket in to their country. That was a good plan from the part of Israel.

The sane mind accepted the argument as a good one, but countered it with other questions. Isn’t the killing of the innocent people an act of terrorism and why the leaders of the world were unable to do anything to loss of the innocent lives and the act of terror against the people who wanted nothing of this sort?

I explained to the sane mind that in the modern world of today America is the only country and the American life is the only innocent life in the world. As long as Israel has the support of the America, they can kill the innocent (from my point of view, of course) and establish their way of peace in the region. Also, the act of terror and self defense in the modern world are also defined by Uncle Sam, and they are calling the current act by Israel as an act of self defense and you got to accept it.

The sane mind was crying when it heard about the ride that happened yesterday which has killed about 54 citizens, most of them are old women and children. On seeing the sane mind, even I was afraid that I would break down. But the typical male ego prevented me from breaking down and put up a brave face. He asked me amid the tears, isn’t the purpose of the UN to stop these killings? Isn’t these instances like this and Iraq occupation without the UN interference defeating the very purpose of the UN existence?

I was silent for a few minutes thinking, as I was bowled by this question. The sane mind continued to speak as I was silent. I fail to understand how any body would be so stupid in today’s media world to massacre and call this as an act of self defense. They are only alienating themselves from the rest of the world, as they failed to understand the purpose of the America in this regards. Tomorrow, when the accusations starts pointing towards Israel for the devastation it has caused, US will distance itself from the act and Israel will be only one taking the blame, where as the US will be root cause. If at all the US had called for a truce at the beginning of the conflict so many innocents lives would have been saved and millions of worth infrastructure would have been saved. The hatred towards the Jews and the Jewish state are growing at hearts the peace loving people around the world. Anybody cannot escape from the history of violence they have caused or created, Israel and US, the real architects of the violence at the Middle East will be paying the price for their history of violence.

I was stunned when the sane mind completed its views about the international politics. I have failed completely to understand the chain of thoughts of sane mind, but he has created a thought process in me to think about the Middle East crisis. I was ashamed that I did not feel the same about the innocent lives lost as the sane mind, but after all I am a ordinary human being and he is a sane mind?

I heard the sane mind murmur; will the humans ever stop killing each other to live peacefully? Will we ever……

Fear At The Heart:

A great philosopher put a question to his disciples "What do you think is the most dangerous thing in the world?"

The answers came from all of them as "Money", "Lust", "Power", "Ego".

Finally the philosopher gave the answer as "Faith". His disciples were confused and asked him to explain.

The philosopher asked "What caused the 2nd world war?"

His disciples replied "Hitler". Philosopher said "That's true, Hitler took the world to the bloodiest war the world of today, but have you given a thought why the men who fought with him obeyed his brutal orders. It is the faith they had in him that he will lead them and the country they love to greater glory. If you analyze all the major battles in the history of the world, the Basic factor knowingly or unknowingly would be faith of the people involved in the incident. The most apt example would be the crusades the European courtiers waged against the Middle East. The faith the Europeans had in the Christ go so mad that they went on fighting for over 2000 years leaving no way for a peace in that place."

The philosopher continued "When someone believes in something and have an unshakable faith, the underlying fact is he is vulnerable. When the person's faith is threatened he will show afraid to face the truth, he will either shut himself down or will react violently. Here I will tell you the story of a great scientist, who was shut down by the powerful men of the society because he threatens the belief system they had. This story of Galileo. As you may aware, Galileo contributed immensely to scientific community with his research on basic laws of the Physics (2 of the 3 laws). He supported a hypothesis proposed by another scientist Copernicus. His theory is that Sun is the centre of the universe and all the particles of the universe revolve around the sun. The church of the olden days (or still may be) believed that the earth is the centre of the universe as that is the god has chosen to place the human beings. As Galileo was well respected, the church feared that his support for Copernicus theory is creating a imbalance in among the followers of the faith. They forced Galileo to apologies for his words, and banned all his writings. The church feared that if one of their ideas was exposed as flawed, the faith of the followers would be shaken and even their own faith may be questioned. This is one small example how the faith when threaten will react. Each person has his own beliefs and faith, and each will react in his own way if that is threatened." The philosopher finished his explanation.

Silence prevailed as each realized what he said. The silence proved that each one accepted whatever he said. The philosopher continued "Friends, If you believe and began and have faith in me, in future when you find that I'm not what I seems to be how you will react?".

No body responded to the question as everyone understood where this is leading to. "So you understand what I am arriving at?" he asked.

"If at all everybody had just given a little thought about what they believe keeping aside their anger, a lot of bloody wars could have been averted" He finished his speech with that. The disciples went their ways deep in thought.

(Inspired by the Movie Kingdom of Heaven and Galileo)

Violence at the heart:

The amount of violence that is happening around us each day has been nagging me for a long time. Looking upon the history, the violence inside men has not reduced a little from the yesteryear, only it got sophisticated. A shocking news I saw at yahoo has really broken my heart and prompted me to write this.

4 US soldiers have been charged with the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl and their family.

The above mentioned incident is a small sample of what is going in a war torn place like Iraq. I just want to understand what triggers this kind of violence in men against their fellow humans. What good is a wealth, literature or any thing that you gather in a war torn place like Iraq or Sri Lanka? Is it possible to enjoy a sunrise or a cup of coffee in a place like that? Some times I have an unbearable aching at my heart when I read this kind of news to share their sorrow. It feels so unfair and unjust to see both how people suffer at one end of the world and seeing some undeserved people enjoying their life.

I am really no one judge others that they are undeserved people for the comforts they get, but I strongly believe that those people who are suffering don't deserve to be treated like this. In fact nobody born in this world don't deserve to suffer. In almost all the countries the capital punishment or death penalty is strongly opposed. There are men to fight for those who have done the ultimate taboo and awaiting a death penalty, but to die with no one to defend and seeing their family members go down before their very eyes is the cruelest torture anyone could inflict upon a human.

As far as I have seen I could categorize the violence in to two.
1. The violence that comes out of hatred.
2. Violence that comes out of pure arrogance.

Any form of violence is really unjustifiable, but then anybody is left with no chance other than to turn in to violence when left to live as living dead when their family or country is attacked.

Now the question arises in the mind, why men are so cruel? The world is big enough for all of us to live, at least without killing each other. But still what makes a man so violent to rape a child and kill a whole family including a 3 year old. My heart bleeds when I think of the agonizing moments she would have gone through that time. WonÂ’t their conscience prick them for what they have done? Would they have done the something in their home country, if they had an opportunity? I believe those men would have done the same thing if they had the opportunity. Only the fear law in their place would have prevented them from doing so, or else they would have behaved in the same manner. Here they took advantage of the lawlessness in the country.

What are the wars to some countries? Countries has become so mean, that they look the war as just a matter of business opportunity. They explore the all the possible opportunities to make money out of war through weapons, Infrastructure, hardware etc. The men making such decisions will respond to these incidents that these are just common in a war. These are those men I have mentioned who donÂ’t deserve to live in this world at all.

As I have said in the beginning, this incident is just a sample of the innumerable number of violent happenings around the world. There are people who just donÂ’t care about these happenings and some are trying their heart out to make the people understand the impact of violence in the world.
Will there be ever an end to this violence? Even a die hard optimist would not be optimistic about answering this question.

Just imagine if at this instant that if the all the violence in men suddenly vanishes and the world is full of peace and love. Just imagine how it would be if a man from Iraq or Iran able to travel to US without any hatred, a peaceful Sri Lanka, a bomb less Jammu Kashmir that would be crowded with tourists, a peaceful Jerusalem and Israel without any gunshots and the list is endless. I hope any of the above mentioned happens before my life time.

As I was trying to immerse myself in these thoughts, the words said by a philosopher come to my mind. “How many philosophers may come to this world and change any number of people, men will ultimately succeed in destroying this world with their violence and hatred”. However pessimistic those words may appear, only they seem to be true.