Rain....

There are many good things of having an active imagination. The most important of them is that space and time cannot contain you. You can mentally float away anywhere and during any time. I don't know if this is my genes or a result of gorging books, maybe a combination of both, but I like to dream of different places and imagine how life would be if I stayed there.

When it rains, Bengalis, irrespective of their current geological location, start craving khichuri and ilish machh. As a Seattlelite, I should by now be placidly indifferent to the rains but as we had a really hot and dry spell for the last couple of weeks waking up to dark cloudy skies and heavy rain (not that irritating Seattle drizzle) actually made me feel very good this morning. The good thing was that I was to work from home today so I had enough time to space my work out and to cook khichuri during lunch. The ilish I had to do after logging off from work though, as it is quite a delicate dish and that I had to clean the fish.

Rainy season in Bengal is beautiful. Dark gray clouds cover the sky and they look especially awe inspiring over the rivers. Accompanied by thunderstorms heavy rain lashes down, coconut trees bow down and stand up, the wind howls through bamboo bushes. Farmers anticipate a good crop and fishermen bring us our favorite silver colored ilish, the heavenly fish.

Monsoon in Calcutta reminds me of a bunch of things, some of them may not be nice, like waterlogged streets, pot holes, mosquitos bearing malaria... but looking back I don't think of them as bad things. Well the malaria part is not funny, but with mosquitos, Calcuttans have a love-hate relationship. We also haves jokes about them :) Anyway, we used to get khichuri and ilish and also a very famous kind of mango during this season. That is the monsoon I personally know of. Those waterlogged streets are much closer to me than the rain over rice fields.

However, as I love my roots and I always feel a connection to Bengal through books, poems, songs and of course food, I want to keep on cooking the traditional food as much as I can. Today I made ilish with mustard paste and coconut milk. It turned out very well.... now I am dreaming of the torrential rains while listening to rainy days Rabindrasangeet :)

Public speaking

I would start by ranting against the ill feeling towards extroverts. Look up things about introverts and extroverts online and you'll see how everyone tries to say introverts make better leaders, better speakers...etc. I would NEVER say introverts make better speakers. I have seen them speak, they sweat, they forget words, they become silent and their body language is horrible. I am not saying extroverts are always good at public speaking, they need to learn and prepare, but as they "enjoy" being with people and they "enjoy" the attention, they feel much more comfortable in a large group. If introverts always made good speakers, there would be no need of the tons and tons of articles to "help" them overcome the shyness.

I love public speaking. I think I radiate a glow when I speak to a group. I did not know this happens because I am an extrovert, but I realized that I love the attention of a whole group of people. When I walk to a stage, or behind a podium and look in front of me, I have a warm fuzzy feeling inside. I feel like I have so much to say and so much to impact. It can be the "I" thing in me, which I admit might not be a good thing, but it is there and it motivates me. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't prepare my speeches, I do. I write them quite a few days before my presentation, read them over and over again, get other people to proofread, make notes and check the time. But I never go up to the stage with my notes. NEVER! It spoils the impression. I have slides if needed, but never any notes. I trust my memory and I know the guidelines, that's all I ever need.

I have recently joined ToastMasters' club at work and I just completed my fourth speech today. I was told that the topics I chose show my passion and it also is very much apparent that I love to speak. I love this audience as well. I see them listening with serious attention, they smile, have constant eye-contact, laugh when I say something funny and in general the whole atmosphere is very positive. It is easy to speak in these situations, people are willing to listen to you. Things were not this pleasant all the time. There have been incidents where I was not encouraged to speak, well to ask questions to be specific, but of course those people couldn't stop me! (bwahahahaha - evil laugh)

Once was a seminar we went to from school. The thing was going on very smoothly until a religious debate sort of thing got in. One lady was saying that the minority is treated in a horrific way in India, to which I had to get up and protest. My points were that most of the minority still doesn't consider India to be their homeland and I went back in history of 1906 when the Muslim League was created till the Partition. I also brought up that under an able leader like Netaji, religious issues never cropped up. It comes up only when political leaders fan those flames to separate us instead of unite. Then I ended with an open question - why do we need to have a seminar on this topic after fifty five years of India's independence? Nobody could answer. People applauded, some got real mad at me, one lady started crying... it was a mess. But I loved that thing. That mess and the failure to answer was worth more that all the applause because it told me that I hit the nail on the head.

The second incident was tougher. That was challenging a so-called eminent speaker at his own house on a very sensitive political issue. It can be called a conspiracy theory in India. That is about Netaji and the person I had this fight with is Netaji's descendant. They didn't ask me for my opinion, and I anyway was a second year student in college at that time, but I pushed my way forward and asked them why exactly they are coming to this specific conclusion when all the evidence proves the opposite. They did not have any answer, they were tongue tied. The best part was the audience cheering. I didn't expect that to happen so I was a little shocked, but when an elderly gentleman encouraged me by saying "carry on young lady" I realized that not many people would have the courage to say these things. What I just said was not very common. Later I thought that the whole incident of speaking up for Netaji, a hero I admire standing at his own house is probably a thing I would remember fondly all my life. Netaji sacrificed his entire life for us, maybe I could just do this much for him?

Indian Railways

A constant but very pleasant white noise along with a rocking motion, random people passing by the common corridor most of them being "one of the general mass", vendors, each with their special call selling tea, coffee, unhealthy but very tasty snacks, a strange smell of the bed-roll and me sitting on the top berth and watching everything from there... that is what I remember when I think of "trains" a synonym for the Indian Railways.

Covering thousands of kilometers across the country, railways is probably the only thing that can "mobilize the mass" in its truest sense. How else would the common Indian travel across the country? How else would I ever see villages, rivers, acres and acres of farmlands? Where would I meet the actual India? The India that is far away from the glitter of IT jobs, the one that is never portrayed in Bollywood movies, the one nation you can see if you travel without reservation in a second class compartment. Those people who spread old newspapers and sit on the floor, they bring food from home, they travel with a lot of luggage but they won't mind saving a spot for you if you step out for a moment, they will look after your belongings too and like the old woman on the train to Shimla, a local person from the village would ask over and over again how you are liking the place.

I love the Indian Railways.

Source: Wikipedia

Long back, when the British were laying a foundation of their Empire in India, the railways was one of the reasons people from different parts of the wide country met. As they started learning English (another good thing of the British rule that I have to admit) they could communicate with their fellow countrymen who spoke different languages. They found out that the common problem is the British all over the country. They came out of their own tiny worlds and got a broader perspective of where they belonged in the nation. Now the Indian Railways is the world's ninth largest employer.

Over the years things changed, but I still believe if you want to see India, you have to undertake a long train journey. A person once mentioned that he traveled from Delhi to Bangalore and how he realized the diversity of India. As they went south, he said the tea vendors were slowly replaced by coffee vendors, common people from the villages were not wearing churidars, but wearing dhotis. The terrain changed, the climate changed... that was amazing.

There were two long journeys that I took,  to Delhi and to Kalka (higher up north from Delhi) from Calcutta. The ones to Kalka involved two straight days of journey and it was in summer when the carriages heat up real bad. And no, we were not traveling in AC compartments. Those were for the "rich people", we were supposed to "learn to endure" the heat. It was hot, yes extremely hot but my memories of that journey is very pleasant. Those journeys were the times to play indoor games with other kids, they may be from our own party or maybe not, could be just random kids from the next coupe. We would share food with other families, especially the other kids. For those few days people sharing the coupe or even people from nearby coupes became like family. I remember an older lady could not start eating her dinner because I was still awaiting mine. She said, "how can we start eating when that kid hasn't got her food yet." For the more introvert types, those long journeys were the time to read. I remember my brother climbing up to the top berth and reading a book all day. For the thoughtful ones, they could just sit next to a window and look out. I think that is the best part of traveling by train. Villages, small temples, rivers (yes I remember the junction of Ganga and Yamuna seen from the train), level crossings all zoom by. You can see farmers working, villagers going to rural markets, little kids waving at passengers from a passing train....

And I need to mention the stations. There are big junctions which are crazy crowded and then there are tiny village stations, homely and rural. Sometimes you would get down to quickly get a cup of tea, sometimes you'd fill your bottle with water, or get something to eat. Those are experiences which can't really be explained but need to be felt :)

The thing I don't like in the trains are the bathrooms. I have heard that originally there were no bathrooms at all. Then one man wrote a letter (in hilarious English) which made the authorities to consider his proposal. Anyway, the ones we have now are ones which sometimes make me wonder at times if the no bathroom model would have been more hygienic. Anyway, I am not going to discuss those gross things here.

I don't know if I would have enough time to afford to have a train journey sometime when I visit India, but the one that will remain in my memory consists of watching the sun rise from the train window, feeling a nice breeze, having coffee in minuscule cups, eating food from a strange square shaped plate with in built bowls, chatting with co-passengers and finding the real India!

Note: I am reading in the news that a makeover is coming up for the railways, which includes cleaner bathrooms, hygienic kitchens, cleaner sheets and blankets and better quality food. I do hope they work on it fast because I so want to see the lifeline of our country prosper.

Fictional heroes

I have talked about Aravinda de Silva before, who is my hero from time immemorial, but this article is going to be for some men who are totally fictional. Even with their virtual status they still mean a lot to me and I hope, to humankind as well.

1. Sherlock Holmes

'...when you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'

I was thinking that when I meet someone, what appeals to me the most. The first thing I like is a person's honesty and the next, invariably is intellect. Sherlock Holmes has everything that appeals to my mind. A strong capacity of observation and clear reasoning. I said once that a software tester needs to be like a detective. That is why I appreciate Holmes even more nowadays.

I was reading his quotations and almost all of those I can apply with software testing. You can't assume, you shouldn't guess, you can't make exceptions. Science has no place for exceptions. It is not logical, they do break the rule and not prove it. And then is his take on data. He always said don't guess the reasons for anyone's action and then get everything to retrofit. You should not come to any conclusion before you have data.

The sharp grey hawk eyes, that tall and thin figure in great coat and deer stalker cap and the famous pipe...I can visualize him in his study, at Paddington, around London...the man who stirred up our reasoning capacities and who made us use our grey cells a little more.

2. Arjunbarma

My beloved romantic hero of all times. I don't have a picture of him to share, but I have a vivid picture of him in my brain. A tall and strong young man of twenty one, who left his home in search of a kingdom where he would not be forcibly converted to another religion. The melodious story teller Saradindu Bandopadhyay walks us down a part of Arjun's life. After he saves the king's bride to be from drowning and she falls in love with him, how the king who was once his patron tells him to leave the kingdom. Arjun and his friend were at the border of the country when they saw enemy soldiers trying to make their way in stealthily. In spite of the king's order, Arjun still went back to alert the king about this enemy intrusion and finally saved the country. The king changed his mind and decided to unite the lovers.

Arjun brings back memories of my teenage, the time when girls start to become fans of movie stars and sportsmen. I did have my fair share of those people as well, but Arjun's virtual presence made him my most loved hero. He is always perfect because he is in my mind and he never changes, he would never grow old. Even when I will be an old woman in grey hair, Arjun will still be able to bring back the romance I first cherished in my teenage days.

3. Atticus Finch

I have to mention here is that this character made a greater impression on me because of Gregory Peck. There have been very few incidents where a character in the movie matched the my imagination and in this case I think Gregory Peck is the only person who could fit into this role.

“The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” 

When I think of Atticus Finch, the first thing that comes to my mind is strength of character. All the characteristics people like in a "man" were brilliantly present in him. A loving father and an unusually modern one who let his kids call him by first name he had the perfect balance of how much to control his kids and where to let go. Then came the lawsuit. I don't intend to narrate the whole story here, but my idea is to convey why he is one of my favorite characters. He was a brave man. It is one thing to fight a war, but another thing, and maybe a more difficult one is to fight against stagnant societal rules from within the society one is living. He stood up for justice, he did the right thing. No he didn't win, but he still did what was right.

Atticus Finch is not just an iconic literary hero, but he is and should be an inspiration. If you do the right thing people will still go against you, call you names and even threaten will all sorts of consequences. But some people still do the right thing. He was one of them.

As you can see, all these three men are way different from one another. They span not only over space but time as well. I admire them for different reasons and they bring out different facets in myself.

Summer time reflections

From my third speech at ToastMasters

Coming from a tropical land, I didn’t really have any reason to celebrate summer. It reminds me of heat, sweat and power cuts and other than the occasional thunderstorms, it is a dreaded season in my memory. Also, I am not a person who can sit quietly or peacefully for a long time. Must be because of my over active brain, I always need to DO something. So my summers were never idyllic as such. In fact they were the only time when I could get a lot of things done. I was busy!

I see a summer holiday is a big thing here, no school for months, outdoor activities and all. We were not so lucky. After our finals were done in late March we had no school for around two months, including summer vacation, but we had loads of homework to do and regular study sessions. Sometimes we’d travel with families but they were never adventurous and very little exciting. However, I found things to amuse myself. My main attraction was my laboratory at home. It was a broken wooden bench on our open terrace where I had my beakers (empty jam bottles) full of muddy water which I filtered. I mixed water color and saw the sun rays gleaming through them with the airs of a professional chemist. I also measured rainfall in a glass jar. You might think that my teachers and elders should be really proud of my scientific attempts, but sadly that wasn’t really the case. Anything outside of school books were considered a waste of time, so even though I learned science, this was technically my play time.

After a few years, my experiments changed in form. I started getting interested in physics, especially the night sky and optics. As my knowledge of science increased, my experiments started succeeding as well. I bought a science encyclopedia with gift money and delved into the projects section of it. Funny enough, the book was printed in the US, so even though the materials they suggested I use are easily available here, getting them in India was next to impossible. Would you believe I couldn’t get a box of tissue papers, aluminum foil or play dough back home? But I found my work around. Many of my experiments failed but like everything else in life, the ones which succeed after so much effort put into them are the ones that stay etched in our memories. The optics light overlapping experiments never came out well, my water wheel splashed water everywhere and the paper wheel got soggy but my pin-hole camera was perfect, I could separate sodium and chlorine by electrolysis table salt. The smell of chlorine is not nice, but it really made me happy that day as I copper coated a paper clip. My most successful experiment was a sun dial. I worked round the unavailability of cardboard but I got stuck at the need of a compass. How would I know the exact north without a compass? I had to align my sun dial on the north-south line to mark the shadow cast every hour. Mind it, this was a time before Internet was widely available, so all I could do was brainstorm. Then like the ancient sailors, I turned to the night sky to guide me. I went up to the terrace at night with a bit of chalk and a ruler and found the big dipper shining brightly. Well, if there’s the dipper, I joined the first two stars in the scoop and traced down. Oh no! There is a huge hospital blocking most of the north sky. Well, ok I still know where Polaris is. I put a mark on the ground and drew a straight line pointing north-south. Next morning before the sun rose, I went to align my sun dial and mark the hours on it. And then the best thing in science happened – if you follow the right steps, you are bound to get the right results!

So you can see even with the discomfort of heat and humidity, summers were really quite nice. In my university days in the south, summers gave me the time to spend time with my friends and I really started cherishing this sunny season after moving to Seattle. I don’t have summer breaks any more, but I still get to do simple things that are very new in my life, like camping in Mt. Rainier or tending to my little kitchen and herb garden. This season has given me the chance to find myself. It’s not really a horrible season after all.

My guy friends

With Fathers' Day coming up tomorrow and the ongoing World Cup, guys seem to be getting some importance after all. So I decided to dedicate this article for my guy friends from the world over - everyone from the mischievous classmates from South Point to the fun co-workers in my professional life. They have been great, they have opened a whole new world which has enriched my life a lot.

Long before I got married and started living day in and day out with a guy, I was appalled at guys' manners. How they can comfortably wear one pair of jeans for a month, not wash their cooking utensils, drive nonchalantly seventeen miles over the speed limit and do many a weird thing that girls can't even think of. My jaw-drop moment was when a friend, on seeing his gym pants torn from the ankle to the knee immediately stapled three pins in there! Another one once told me that he used rubber bands to hold the sleeve of a torn shirt (which he tore during a school fight). Though I still have my "really??!!" moments after five years of marriage, I think my friends did help me in knowing guys well.

Not many people have siblings these days, so they might not get the chance to grow up with a brother. Those classmates were the boys I first interacted with in a regular basis. I saw what sports fanatics they were and how they tirelessly played cricket and football even if they got a ten minute break between classes. They did not spend time gossiping like the girls, they were busy. The college friends were into rock bands too besides sports. They would play the guitar, they introduced me to "the summer of '69" explaining that it has the best guitar played ever by any human. It was clearly apparent that they were budding engineers as well. During my birthday, I remember three friends crowded in front of the TV, trying to find out how to display recently captured pictures of the party on the TV, which cables to connect to which port. This comes effortlessly to boys, technical or not. I remember them as my team mates in the quiz club, my partner as the class monitor, my companions on the tram rides to and from school, my IT guy when I needed software, music or games, my competitor during NFS car races and in general people who would bug me, drive me nuts, call me at 11:30 in the evening to ask me if the grades are out but the ones I still enjoyed spending time with.

University introduced me to guy friends the world over. They differed in looks but not in behavior. I accompanied them to some "adventures" where I probably wouldn't have gone alone or with girls. They explained that scrambling over prickly bushes was fun, climbing walls to see what's inside a deserted home was "cool" and scaring people on narrow hiking trails, pushing them in swimming pools were all totally ok stuff to do to friends. Those are the friends who taught me to ride a bike, they were the ones I played badminton with on Saturdays. They were crazy but when it came to accompany us back to the dorm after evening or give a ride they were the ones who stepped up. There was a whole new responsibility that showed up in them during those times. They knew how to take care.

Co-workers can't really be friends, but when you spend more than eight hours everyday with some people, you are bound to get close. As it is common in our field to have very few girls we really have no other option but to be with a bunch of guys in our teams. Here, they are mostly not in the same age group as me, but that did never stop them from being my buddies. Talks of cars, beer, football, the latest smartphone crowd the team lunches. Activities like skate boarding competitions, gun ranges and dirt biking get talked about, Wikipedia articles on guns are read and discussed. If Sounders lose, there might be an ambiance of mourning around, weird jokes and out-of-the-world crazy things like Uni-baby (reference: http://axecop.com/characters/) are discussed with deep interest. That's a world very different from the one I grew up in, that's the world my guy friends have shown me.

These guys have made me laugh, come out of my comfort zone, look at things from a different perspective and have made me feel special. Guy friends are the ones who make us understand our future husbands in a better way and I wish more girls had the chance to grow up with fun boys like I did.

Creative engineer - the non-oxymoron

What comes to your mind when you think of the word "creative"? I invariably think of colors. Splashes and strokes of colors on a canvas. Colors like the ones in "holi", too much of them. You might think of authors or musicians, artists or even chefs.

Now what comes to your mins when you think of the word "engineer"? I visualize two things - either a factory like the Boeing one in Everett - conveyor belts, people wearing hard hats and overalls, or I see code. Plain simple programs running on command prompt. Black and white and dull.

Where is the connection between these two words? Creative and engineer? Is that an oxymoron? People would think so. I mean why not? The left brained analytical nerds don't come close to the right brained colorful people. How can they be related?

Here's how.... what do you exactly mean by being creative? Wikipedia says creativity is the way in which something valuable is created, ok? Now think of the valuable things mankind has produced. While I agree that art and literature has been extremely valuable to humans, but think of the more practical things you know like the house you live in, the street where you drive your car, yes the car itself, your smartphone, computer, the Internet... who created them? Engineers! The boring blueprints, pencil marks on butter paper, T-square, etchings on a screwhead... no they are not as pretty as an oil painting, but they are the base. Scientists show the way on which engineers build a highway, they scale it up, make it possible to bear load and also to maintain it for generations. Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose told us what radio waves are, but it took an engineer to create a smartphone out of it. An artist will cherish the view of a waterfall, a poet may write a lyrical poetry describing it and an engineer will conceive a way to harness that power and set up a hydroelectric power plant to supply electricity to an entire city.

A blank canvas and a blank notebook has been talked over a lot for expressing thoughts and inspiring creativity. Blank programming IDEs can do that and much more too. One day you take a fresh clean Eclipse IDE without a single line of code on it and you create a software program that automatically sends requests to servers and gathers the responses. Like a robot, it reads the responses and lets you know if your product is ok or not without you having to do anything. That's a very small scale engineering, but none the less it can empower humans to sit on the same seat as the Creator if there is one :)