The Cindrella story

Once in some far away land, there lived a witty n pretty girl. Her wit was under wraps, her social skills unpractised; solely because there was no one whom she could talk to, who could appreciate the depth of her understanding. Nor was there an eye that could discern the beauty behind her simplicity.

Once, the Prince of the region held a ball. Miraculously, she rediscovered her mom's wedding gown and donned it to the ball. Thanks to the pretty dress, and with the added aura of anonymity, she was perceived as a novelty. For 3 consecutive nights, she danced with the Prince. She poured out all the feelings and aspirations of her soul, having found an ear at last, while the bedazzled Prince hardly registered a word of what she said. Each night their conversation was cut short, yet the naive girl fell for the Prince. Dont know about the impact she made on to the Prince's heart, but her shoe surely left itself behind with the Prince, when she returned. The Prince now sent out soldiers in search of her, with the shoe. When they eventually reached her, she demurely identified herself, and all was seemingly well again. Or was it?

Did the soldiers even knew how the girl looked like? More importantly, did the soldiers go about looking out only for beautiful girls and ignored seemingly plain-looking girls of substance? The Prince could have might as well married any other girl with the same shoe size..because the Prince, in all his haughtiness, hadnt bothered to get to know the real girl.  

Krishna Lunch

One fine day.. i realized that i spend 20 mins chopping veggies, and that's just a start. I spend over an hour cooking. Miss my Dallas roomies, with whom i had to cook only once in 4 days.
Its awesome being a student in one of the largest public universities. You are sure to find scores of people with similar dietary choices, which in my case is vegetarianism. ISKCON organizes vegan lunch, Krishna Lunch, at the university.

I was brought up being told that God is omni-present and omni-potent. One of the childhood stories told to me was "Narasimha avatar1", which reiterates that God is everywhere, even in each pillar of a house. I was also told of Vastu purush, the home-deity who stays in each home, listens to everything that you say at home, and says Tathastu (so be it). This was a way, elders ensured, generation over generation, that people maintained cheer at home, and said only good things. If over-zealous kiddo me and my bro were extra loud with the aaratis, my mom used to chide us saying, God can hear even your thoughts, so He can hear you even if you speak softly :)

With this said, I was perplexed with the atmosphere at ISKCON temples. For me, prayers are something you do in peaceful environs, and not surrounded by loudspeakers and dancing people. (Yes, Ganeshotsav in Pune is not my cuppa tea.) Visiting Dallas Hindu Temple made me feel good about places of worship abroad, and I was finally ready for the Krishna lunch after >1 year at the University.

The food is awesome. The hare krishnas are cheerful and helpful. The music is played softly (Thank God!) on a harmonium, sometimes accompanied by a Bharatnatyam performance. The food is vegan, which still perplexes me, since Krishna was raised among cow-herds and his childhood stints include milky, buttery adventures. But what is laudable that the Krishna Lunch is popular among people from principally non-vegetarian cultures too. Great service to mother Earth..may their tribe increase.

1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narasimha

The other side..and the greener grass

Master's is more about smarter than harder work. For my latest assignment, I am supposed to run 5 benchmarks. For each benchmarks I have to vary parameters of my Embedded Computing resource. I get 54 such combinations. I have to run these 54*5 simulations on a simulator. Hello!! am I working harder here?

Isnt this the same software that gave me positive results last year? Yeah right (the need for a sarcasm smiley/ sarcasm font accentuated).. its also the same software that kept me awake several nights to give me those same positive results. This time, it wasnt me who suffered the intense physical and emotional torture of staying up nights, alone at the university. I attribute my blissful zz's to that wonderful creation of mankind.. Linux and scripting languages.

Gone are the days when I complained why couldnt they have a GUI-based Linux. In fact the die-hard Windows fan in me cribbed why they have Linux in the first place! Its cooler just running a script..whilst you while away time on productive stuff like hanging out with friends (Antithesis, I call it :) ) Its even cooler to just install whichever softwares you need on the GRID, and "ssh" in from anywhere in the world, work from any PC in the universe.
Down the memory lane..when I was tied to Windows without grids..and spent half of productive lab time waiting for resources/ installing things on whichever PC that was not taken by other students. Scary memories of the project group whose PC with required stuff was not available on the day of their final project demo!

Sometimes in life, we are not ready to face the change. Even worse, we are downright scared of the change. We need to widen our perception just a tiny bit to notice that the other side is greener..and not crib about that leap out of our comfort zones. We simply need to trust our capabilities, take the leap and safely land on the OTHER SIDE :)