Web Browsing, Orkutting and My Boredom

I am online after more than two weeks of absence. Currently I have the thanksgiving break and finding myself bored to death. I have nothing to do and hence I was reading some random blogs and came across the personal homepage of an Indian graduate student from Caltech. The homepage highlights his academic work, travel-log, training details of a marathon he ran etc. I was happy to see him involved in many activities. Then I visited his friend's homepages listed by him and found very similar things. One interesting thing to note here is that most of these students are engineering doctoral students and maintain a very detailed webpage. I am also an engineering doctoral student and keep a personal webpage with lots of information and pictures of me. I manage my time effectively and that leaves me with plenty of time to kill. I engage myself in watching TV/movie and browsing web for news, current affairs, blogs etc. So mainly I don't do any physical activity except playing cricket (which I can't do in winter due to sever cold climate).

With the introduction about this fellow and myself, he got me thinking that why don't I see similar people around me and do I want to see them around me? These individuals are in a better campus then I am and I find most people around me less inclined to studying (acceptable). Here, most my friends spend time checking their five different emails seven times a day, talking/chatting with friends, orkutting/friendstering/hifi-ing, or celebrating every Amar, Akbar or Anthony’s birthday. There are guys with their phone ringing every few minutes and them talking while walking, driving, eating and even while in the potty. One thing that bothers me a lot is their total disregard to the presence of other individuals around who are bothered by their phone-talk and especially in alien languages. I will never get this fixation to 'stay-in-touch-with-everyone-i-know'.

I don't like doing any of the activities that my friends do. There are a few who indulge in exercising, even I liked it but found it very time consuming and stopped after just a month. I like watching TV for certain intelligent or comic shows and surfing web to keep myself updated but would cut down on these activities if friends who would like to indulge in something different like walking in trails, bicycling, playing chess/carrom, a road-trip in the Midwest or get-away trip to Death Valley. Hopefully some friends read this and help me overcome my monotony.

Diwali Night and War of Fire-crackers

I miss Diwali more than any other Indian festival in America. I miss those seven days of fun with fire-crackers. The Diwali period comprises of a joyful series of 7 festivals commencing on 'Ramaa Ekadashi' - Aso vad 11., followed by ‘Vagha Baras’- vad 12, 'Dhan Teras' - vad 13, 'Kali Chaudash' - vad 14 and 'Diwali' - vad 15 or 'Amaas' - the last day of the Indian calendar year. The Diwali festivities continue the next day - New Year's Day known as 'Nutan Varsh' - Kartik sud 1, 'Bhai Beej' - Kartik sud 2. There are two more days 'Labh Pancham' - Kartik sud 5 and ‘Dev Diwali’ – sud 15.

Everyday is special but none more than Diwali night culminating in the New Year morning. We had a tradition of fighting with fire-crackers that night. It sounds scary but wait till you hear what we use for this. I don’t know how to call this but the piece that is the central part of a rocket; call it the fire-engine is our weapon. When guided by a stick, this fire-engine mainly follows a linear or slightly curved path and heads towards sky. But if it is detached from the stick and ignited, it goes in a path that no one can predict. Yeah, so our goal is to gather as many of as them, sometimes 200-300 or more. There are couple of fire-crackers that could be bought and dismantle rendering this weapon. Anyways, extra fun is that we never used to buy this in advance, always at the very last minute. So we scavenge every shop in town to look for rockets etc., more the better. Then after mid night, when traffic is slow or almost none, war of the year begins.

Now, every one knows that there is high risk of getting your clothes or body burnt here. So most guys wear clothes they don’t care about. As far as the physical injuries go, it’s your own risk. We then ignite these crackers and literally throw at each other and God knows where it would go. Sometimes it even comes back to you after hitting the ground. I have seen my friends getting slightly burnt but never was the situation when it went out of hand. Anyways, this continues for about an hour or so. Then we get some loud bombs and ignite them on the patio of Amul till he wakes up. Amul is a street neighbor who never liked us and hence we always pay homage to him every Diwali night in this way.

Then we just sit around and chat till about 4 o’clock. At the same hour, our sisters/moms normally wake up and start making Rangoli in our front-yard (well on the asphalt street as in walled city, you don’t have front or back yards). This day even the Rangoli is special as for all the other days of Diwali, Rangoli could be small but on this day it is so big that Rangoli made by your house and made by the house opposing your house would meet in the center of the road. Yeah, that big. We go to take shower by then. I generally get ready by 5 am and so does my friend Jignesh. As long as I remember, he was always the first one to greet me ‘Happy New Year’ all my life there. One by one all my friends come out of their houses and greet each other. About 7 am, and we are done with each other, so we head to temples. By the way, I forgot to mention a very important thing that I always used to do on that morning. After I take shower, I read a couple of books from my studies as my parents used to say that if you do something good today, it would continue to happen all year. By this time you must have guessed that I liked studying.

After visiting a few temples, most of my friends go to work. You are wondering, work on New Year’s Day? Not for work actually but each office/factory has to do Pooja and all the employees are required. I was a student, so never had to so do. By 10 am we all are back in our street and change clothes and play cricket. Remember that philosophy that if you do anything good, it happen all year around. Who wouldn’t want to play cricket all year? If you add a complete night out and then a couple of hours of cricket, you could guess that we be tired as hell. So by noon we go to sleep and wake up fresh in the evening. We continue greeting New Year to everyone meeting us for the first time in next ten fifteen days with phrases like ‘Navu Saal Mubarak’, ‘Nutan Varshabhinandan’ or simply ‘Happy New Year’. This is just one night out of those seven wonderful days.