Small Talk!

Skywalker (Dark): I really want to kill few persons.

Skywalker (White): whoa!! That’s something interesting. And may I know who they are?

Skywalker (Dark): You know already whom I am referring to; we both are figments of Skywalker’s mind.

Skywalker (White): Yeah, but it’s not right to kill someone.

Skywalker (Dark): Now you don’t start your do well, be good lecture, it’s because of you I am thinking like that. You say yes to everything, always suppressing my opinion.

Skywalker (White): Do I have an option other than saying yes.

Skywalker (Dark): Yes you do, you should listen to my point of view before doing anything.

Skywalker (White): Skywalker never likes your views.

Skywalker (Dark): Yes that’s because you have brainwashed him since long, now its time for me to control him.

Skywalker (White): I won’t allow that.

Skywalker (Dark): You won’t but frustrations will lead him to me.

Tripod!

Well since friendship day is around the corner, this is for two of my buddies.

“Hi Guys, 
Yes this is for you two,
Seriously dudes what’s wrong, you were the ones who at some point of time said that I am always online, always ever present, but now I find both of you always online (always online here means online when I am online) on Gmail/Facebook and moreover it is not at all like the time when I was online 24x7. At least I used to reply to your ping within 2-3 hours at max (in case I was asleep), but you people some time don’t reply for half a day or so. Sometimes I think may be you don’t even remember that you are online, in that case it’s a polite request to you two to please change some settings which may make you look idle after sometime, because for a impatient guy like me it is really frustrating when you don’t reply even though you are not idle, how would I know whether you are actually online or you have dozed off or there is some network issues. Please consider this request of mine on high priority. Happy Friendship day to both of you.”

                                                           Picture Source: Internet

This is the 20^th post by me this year and this makes 2011, my most active year in blogging world & I haven’t run out of ideas as of yet.

The Road Trip

Its 2 AM in the morning and you are not able to sleep, what to do?

I faced the same situation few days back, me and my roommate were chatting on different topics late in the night and none of us was feeling sleepy at all when he came up with an idea to go to Jaipur on my bike and me without thinking twice said yes to that outlandish idea. Now why this idea was outlandish; it was so because Jaipur is 235+ kilometers from Gurgaon, I had never driven more than 60-70 kilometers in a day, my bike is more than 8 years old and has already done 50000 kilometers and its 2 AM. But human mind has a tendency to go for outlandish ideas and we went ahead and hit the road.

Jaipur-Delhi NH 8

On reaching Jaipur we decided that we will go the place where movie “Rang de Basanti” was shot and thus started our quest. The first  fort was Amer and it is the largest fort I have ever visited. The fortification walls of Amer will surely remind every one "The Great Wall of China". The view from the King's palace was absolutely magnificent. I highly recommend everyone to visit the Amer fort in case they visit Jaipur. 

The Great Wall of Amer

After Amer fort we visited JaiGarh fort, the home of so called world's largest cannon. It is situated at the top of a hill from where you can get the panoramic view of city of Jaipur.

Jaipur City

The next place we visited was Nahargarh fort, we were tired by then and were in no mood to give up on the quest so we started asking every one over there about the "Rang de Basanti" spot, some said it is in Nahargarh fort, some said it isn't there, but finally a guy gave us the exact directions to the place. So after visiting 3 forts and roaming around for 4 hours we were finally able to find the said spot. The place was perfect example of neglect; the water was dirty and was full of plastic garbage. I had decided to click so many pictures of this place in mind but clicked only one and that too from angle from which the garbage is not visible. I don't think any restoration work has been done after the movie was released and road leading up to the spot was totally damaged. 

The RDB Spot

Although I wanted to visit the famous Hawa Mahal, Jal Mahal & Jantar Mantar too but decided against that as it would have been difficult for sleep deprived me to do that. But now after traveling close to 500 kilometers in a day, getting a chance to see awesome locations, All I can say that it was one of the best trip on which I have ever gone.

Largest Cannon (तोप)

So during my recent road trip to Jaipur, I visited the famous JaiGarh fort which happens to be home of largest cannon in the world. But, watching a lot of thrillers has taught me not to believe anything without proof or background research. So I decided to do my own independent research on this so as to reach to root of the case and here is the real truth.

Jaivan

The year was 1720 AD; the Research and Development team of Amer was facing a lot of flak from the critics who felt that team is causing a huge loss to state exchequer without any fruitful outcome. The team which was brainchild of King Sawai Jai Singh (the founder of Jaipur) was under immense pressure to deliver the results. Rumors were abuzz that even King was seriously considering shutting them up. So some random guy in the team came up with a bizarre idea of constructing world’s largest cannon. Since the relations of Amer were friendly with all their neighbors, well to be true they were surrounded by Mughal Empire from all sides with whose kings the Amer’s royal princesses were married, the team knew that such a cannon will never be tested in the live conditions and thus their was no chance they will feel the heat of failure. And finally before the critics had their say the cannon was constructed and delivered to the state, much to the joy of king.

But the critics of cannon were always pointing the issues with this and they became vociferous again during the reign of King Sawai Ram Singh II. So sometime between 1835-1880 AD an enquiry commission was setup to look into the wrong doings of R&D team. The report of the enquiry was tabled in front of king, but to avoid embarrassment to his great grandfather (the R&D team was said to be quiet persuasive), king shelved that report and decided to re-launch the project. This time the aim was to make the cannon movable. It was put on wheels and moved to the location with the help of 4 elephants, where it is present now. The cannon however was never used in the war, Owing to good PR skills of the rulers the city was never attacked. It is said that cannon was test fired by Ram Singh but I wasn’t able to find any proof of that, yes the guide present over there did say that it was fired but it is something he has just read in records and also written on the description board present over there. But it is still considered a Rumor that it was fired. Also it is not world's largest cannon but the largest cannon of medieval times. It was all due to great skills of R&D team members which range from persuasion to good marketing, we believe it to be world's largest cannon. 

True Story!!

Following is the description board near the cannon

English Translation

“This is world famous cannon “JAIVAN”. It was constructed during the reign of King Sawai Jai Singh in 1720 at armory situated in JaiGarh fort. Its length is 20 feet, radius is 8 feet 7 ½ inches and weight 50 ton. The radius of the cannon ball used for it is 11 inches and weight 50 kg. It requires 100 kg of explosive to fire it once and it is said to have a range of 22 miles.  An elephant rests on the tip of the barrel and a pair of peacocks is carved in the center. A pair of ducks also decorates the rear of the barrel. Although something which is used in war, it shows immense hard-work and art love of people of JaiGarh. The work of placing it on wheels was done during reign of King Sawai Ram Singh II (1835-1180). A tin shed was also constructed at that time too. The height of its wheels is 9 feet and width is 1 feet. There is a rolling pin present along with back wheels so as to turn this around in different directions. This cannon was fired only once after its construction. Due to high fortification of the place, no army was ever able to breach the fortification so as to reach up to cannon and thus it was never required to be used. This amazing artifact is a great gift from our ancestors”

Engineer!! I am

What did I want to be one when I was young? Well answer to that question is that I wanted to be an engineer but by the time I reached High school the thought of me becoming an engineer was as much far away from mind as much is the thought of me going bald over next few years rite now. Still I became an engineer, shows god’s short far sightedness for me; always making those things happen in my life from which my mind is far far away.

So what exactly happened? Although I would like to ponder over this question in my free time, Wait a sec, I am writing a blog post so this is a free time. So after thinking hard over this question for 5 minutes which involved side by side chatting with a friend on gmail and eating munching down a pack of Oreo, I have short-listed the possible reasons why I chose engineering:

• I couldn’t score enough to get an admission in Medical School.
• I didn’t have enough to get a full payment seat in Medical School.
• Thought of studying one more year for Medical School entrance exam scared the hell out of me.
• Engineering was still considered 2^nd best option after medical studies.
• My parents said that I have an aptitude for engineering citing examples of me disassembling any dysfunctional working electronic instrument and making it repairable beyond any one’s capacity.
• All engineers in my family brainwashed me into believing that it’s a safe career and there won’t be any tension related to job in future.
• It was after all my first choice, like your first love you can’t deny it ;).
• And lastly most importantly no one told me about low female to male ratio in engineering colleges.

Comment Deficiency

                                                                 Picture Source: Internet

Yes anger is only one letter short of danger and with this post I may be inviting wrath of my readers but I can't control this anger anymore. Why don’t people comment after reading a blog entry? If you read something there can be two things either you like or you don’t like it. In both the cases you visited the blog link and read it, you used up precious time of your net surfing on it. Why don’t let the person who wasted your time know in case you didn’t like the entry and if you feel that entry was good than your comment will be the only motivation that you can give to the individual.

It’s been almost three years since I started blogging but one thing that has always stopped me from being a regular blogger is lack of comments from my readers. Initially I thought no one visited my blog but after using the IP tracking widget and hits counter I confirmed that people do visit this blog but sadly the number of visitors is not at all near to the number of comments I get on any of my posts.

On further scrutiny it’s clear that the issue is not with my blog only, there are many blogs which are suffering the same fate, although the substance in the write ups over there is awesome and much better than what I write. I am annoyed, there is a blog (I will not specify) the author usually writes 4 or 5 lines in a post and that too some random quote; not even an original and the post is flooded with comments. The owner of that blog is a girl if that isn’t gender bias then seriously what is that? 

P.S: No comments invited for this.

No!!

There comes a time when you don’t know what should be your next step forward, when you are not sure whether what you are doing is right or not, when no one supports you, when you feel that no one listens to your prayers, when you stop believing in yourself, when you stop believing in almighty. Well!! This post is an attempt to overcome such a time.

FACTS: There are people who can’t say NO to anyone due to one of the following reasons:

• They don’t want to hurt other person.
• They don’t want to let other person know that they are not capable of doing that particular task.
• They have a bad habit of saying YES to everything whether right or wrong for them.
• They are handicapped and can’t speak (suffering from muteness).
• And finally there are some who don’t say NO ever and always stick to whatever they say.

GIVEN THAT: Till now the only person who fulfilled the 5th reason was Jesus Christ.

OBSERVATIONS: You will easily find a person who is:

• Always preoccupied with work which least concerns them i.e doing some else’ work.
• Always trying to do something at which they are not good at so as to prove that they do know how to do that.
• Doing something which at the end will only cause harm to them.
• Unable to say NO, even if you ask him that is he worried about situation he is in.

INFERENCES: All the above are people who due to reasons only known to them are doing the things which they actually don’t want to are just adding up the count for the people who can’t say NO. And it seems I also fall in this category and reason for me being like this is an amalgamation of first three points in facts.

DISADVANTAGES: It is never good to say yes to everything because:

• You end up with other person’s priorities as your priority.
• You will end giving preference to people who don’t deserve that.
• It only leads to frustration and stress.
• One ends up losing focus on what is good for him because of all these distractions.

THE DECISION: I will try to say ‘NO’ from now on. I hope I am able to achieve this.

AFTER THOUGHT: In a hope that some people visiting my blog are also in this category I request them to please comment on it :P.