Clean slate.

I stared at it for a long time. It was clean and there was a piece of chalk right next it. Combined, they were tempting me to write something on the slate.

It had been quite some time since I used a slate and piece of chalk. So I wanted to use them. However I did not know what to write or draw on the slate. Unfortunately at that moment my mind was as clean and empty as the slate itself.

I took the slate in my hands. Felt the cold black metal. Put it down. Took the chalk. The idea of spoiling the black metal was met with some resistance. The metal would no more be black if I wrote on it. I was not sure whether I could write anything on the slate that would be as beautiful as the blank slate itself. If it was not, effectively I had spoilt the beauty.

Should I take the risk or should I not?

I could wipe the drawing with a wet cloth to make it black again. However that would leave a mark on my mind that I had tried but failed to create something beautiful and I would have to live with that failure for the rest of my life.

On the other hand, if I did not draw anything on the board, I would always be tempted to do so and I would have to undergo all this introspection every time I looked at the slate.

Just a tiny innocent slate causing a big turmoil in my mind.

It was driving me nuts. The clean slate was laughing at me. I could not bear it anymore. I had to take a decision.

I drank poison.

Pawan Kalyan : To Change or Not To Change

Pawan Kalyan : To Change or Not To Change

God once told me when I was dreaming about him: “Why should you worry about my dice playing capabilities. Why can’t you just accept things as they are and move on?”

Of course I am sure He was referring to the Einstein remark there but I am sure He wouldn’t mind it if I applied it to the movies of Pawan Kalyan. God created Pawan Kalyan and gave him a distinct personality. However when it came to choosing Pawan’s audience and fans, God assumed they should be like the rest of the mob. No different.

The result is pretty apparent for everyone who has been following Pawan Kalyan since his Tholi Prema. Pawan Kalyan’s era is divided into two parts now. Post Tholi Prema and Pre Tholi Prema. The Pre Tholi Prema version of Pawan Kalyan was not someone you could write home about. However the paradigm shift in his image and the quality of his movies started with Tholi Prema and was perfected by the crew of Khushi.

So that was what God might have said during Genesis. “Roses, Roses and More Roses” for Pawan Kalyan. However what is life without a little sinusoidal reversal of fortune?

He roared, “Let there be a Johnny”. And there was a disaster. The rose marathon had ended. It had given way to the thorn. At least that was how most PK fans felt.

Subscribing to a radically different school of thought (but not necessarily a superior school of thought), I found Johnny to be the best movie in PK’s career in terms of technical finesse, direction and treatment. The story had no takers in Andhra Pradesh but that doesn’t mean it was a bad film. Sometimes you have a perfect script and a perfect movie but the audience denounces it completely. Then you get into the dangerous art of introspection and come up with reasons why the movie did not work.

Almost all these introspections generally contradict the analyses in the pre-release reports. The pre-release report says that Scene-119 was great because it was handled different. The introspection report says that Scene-119 was the main reason why the movie flopped. The scene was handled messily.

Johnny suffered a fate it should not have. It went into the annals of history as a movie that didn’t and couldn’t. I would rather list it as a masterful movie that misguided Pawan Kalyan.

The reaction to Johnny made everyone sit up and notice Pawan Kalyan. Everyone was commenting how Johnny should have been made. In fact Jeevi of Idlebrain.com opined that the movie should serve as the textbook of “How Not to Direct a Movie”. The assumption was that the audience wanted a “normal” movie. Experiments were OK as long as they fitted broadly into the framework evolved over the years also known as The Formula of Telugu Movies.

Johnny challenged The Formula. It went against the tide. And it drowned. The unsinkable Titanic had finally given in. Pawan Kalyan registered a flop, one of colossal proportions and he himself was responsible for it. It was a great movie with perfect treatment and excellent performances. The only drawback was that the audience did not understand what the movie was all about. They wanted to see Pawan Kalyan and were disappointed because the script rose above the star in this case. The love story was tender not loud. The chemistry between the lead pair was remarkable but not flashy. It was a subtle expression of celluloid magic not the pretentious cacophony of cliché-ridden Formula.

The disaster of Johnny caused another twist to Pawan Kalyan’s career. He realized that he had to stop trying for the perfect movie. All he had to do was to come up with a movie which would be liked by his fans. He had this obligation. He had to satisfy them. Though he had never conveyed to anybody that he would follow The Fomula, he had to finally succumb to the pressure of his fans. In my opinion this was the greatest damage done by Johnny. The financials are of course important. However instead of persisting with the new wave of cinema and making a bold statement to the world that he would not change, Pawan Kalyan chose to shun it all and try treading the beaten-to-death path.

Of course, nobody could change overnight. Pawan Kalyan also had some inertia and his next release, Gudumba Shankar, was at best described as a half-baked product which tried to do justice to both his heart and his mind. It was a clear case of confused loyalties. It was neither here nor there. Though financially it fared much better than Johnny, it still was a flop.

The public opinion was subtle but clear. No one shall rise above the Fomula. He should respect it. Gudumba Shankar was the last nail on the coffin of the creative genius in Pawan Kalyan. He went back to his Tholi Prema director to give him a face-lift. He stopped his quest for meaningful and creative cinema.

God has finally succeeded in changing him according to his fans.

Balu – ABCDEFG, a movie which is not half as good as Gudumba Shankar, tasted success at the box office. Finally the ordeal was over for Pawan Kalyan. He can now churn out meaningless Formula pictures and get hits under his belly. But there are some people in this world who love him for what he is capable of; who like offbeat movies like Johnny. And these people are going to be disappointed because their only hope had given in to the pressure of the box office. It is sad that Pawan Kalyan left it all after just a couple of duds.

Balu may be a sound hit. Balu may bring back smiles on faces of the distributors. However for serious movie fans, Balu is a routine movie and Pawan Kalyan has become a routine star just like his big brother.

Sometimes I want to scream, “If I want to see a mass thriller, I will go to a Chiranjeevi or Nagarjuna movie. I don’t want Pawan Kalyan donning those roles.”

God tells me as-a-matter-of-factly, “I don’t play dice my boy! I really don’t”. I want to believe Him. He really knows what He is doing.

Elements of Fear

William Parker slammed the brakes. It was intentional. He was certainly not in a mood to kill a five-year-old girl on a state highway at eleven in the night. She was about fifty yards away when Parker noticed her on the road. The car came to a grinding halt and the girl just stared into the headlights without moving an inch from the road.

He put the distress lights on and got out of the car. “Hey, Kid... What are you doing here?” She didn’t utter a word. She simply stared into the headlights. Parker looked around. There wasn’t any car nearby. She could not have come there walking. The highway was deserted. Sunday night it was. Christmas was two days away. Most of the people had already reached their destination. The traffic was very less. Parker was doing eighty on that fifty-five miles per hour zone. He was absolutely sure that there would be no cop on that road at this hour. Little did he speculate about a wandering kid on the speed lane of the highway.

“Are you OK?” he asked her suspiciously. She didn’t reply. She was a cute little girl... just about the same age as Martha Parker, his daughter, who would be eagerly waiting for him and the presents he was carrying. Parker did not know what to do. There was not a single living soul on that road. The nearest town was around twenty miles away. “How did you come here, Kid?” He approached her slowly making sure he didn’t scare the little girl.

She looked at him. Parker could find terror in her eyes. He at once knew something bad had happened. He knelt before her and stroked her head. “Where are your parents?” he asked her.

She started sobbing. “Momma… there” she pointed towards the bushes on the roadside. Parker was dumbfounded. He took her in his arms and slowly went to the other side of the road. It was pitch black and he could not see anything. He listened carefully to the sounds of the night trying to catch any human voice.

The night was just calm. It looked like a black hole. He came back to his car, started it and drove to the other side of the road. Then he focussed the headlights on to the bushes.

The wreck was clearly visible. It was a 1989 Buick. The front portion was totally damaged. The rear portion was relatively less mangled. He shivered. It was not because of the bitter cold.

Parker had never before been in an accident site. Blood and gore scared him always. He slowly approached the wreck. “Anybody there?” He shouted. No answer. He moved a little closer and looked into the car.

Ten seconds later he vomited. His head was spinning. The girl was staring into the car. He was sick. But his presence of mind suggested that the girl should be taken away from that site. He grabbed her and ran to his car. He entered the driver’s seat and tried to think logically. Five minutes later, he regained his composure. His cell phone did not catch a signal. The nearest facility that would allow him to make a 911 call was twenty miles away. He turned to the girl and asked her, “We will go to the town and get someone here. OK?” She just stared at him and said nothing.

He strapped her to the child seat in the back row of his Sedan and started the car. “What is your name?” he asked her. “Mary” her voice was barely audible. He nodded and stepped on the gas. He wanted to inform the police as soon as possible. Soon the odometer started oscillating near the 100 mark. “I hope you aren’t hurt, are you?” He asked her. She didn’t reply. There was a curve approaching. He had to reduce his speed. He stepped on the brakes.

It took him two seconds to understand that the action had not done what it was supposed to do. The car still cruised at one hundred miles per hour. The curve was coming near. Frantically he slammed the brakes once again. The brake pedal went in loosely. Sweat appeared on the forehead of William Parker. “Help” he shouted unsure of who could help at that time.

The curve was indeed a sharp curve and William Parker could not control his car at hundred miles per hour. The car jumped off the road into the bushes and smashed into a tree.

A minute later, the little girl got out from the backseat and started walking towards the road. There was a car coming at a distance. She went to the middle of the road and stared into the headlights of the approaching car.

Dollar Dreams

I don’t believe in writing three thousand words to establish the identity of my story’s protagonist. His name is Vikram. He is all of twenty five and is an employee of that year’s Best Managed Company in India. He lives a shady two bedroom apartment off Hosur Road in a choked but delightful city called Bangalore.

And that his apartment houses six more gentlemen working for the same concern, should not be a matter of concern to anybody because that is the only way one can deal with the skyrocketing rents of Bangalore.

Vertical Marathon it really is.

Lest I forget, I am Vikram. I hate living with six more people however gentlemanly they may be, in a two bedroom closet however close to the office it may be. Do I have a choice here? Do you expect me to pay eight thousand rupees on an apartment when my take home pay is twelve thousand rupees? (On paper the gross stands at twenty five by the way. I have stopped looking around for the missing bucks. It is pointless. One of my friends had even filed an FIR to trace the missing potatoes. So far no news.)

Living this way and eating off an Andhra mess whose kitchen is really in a mess, I am able to save about five thousand rupees a month with only one visit to NASA pub in a month. Can’t get any simpler than this, can it? My friends who are fortunate idiots and on whom INS bestowed a lovely H-1B or L-1B are living the Great Dollar Dream. They get to share a 1 BHK and cook everyday so that they get to save a dollar more than what their neighbor – The Ubiquitous Desi Consultant – can save.

Sometimes I get confused. So what exactly is the difference between them and me? Our living conditions are the same. In fact I am slightly better off because I get to eat absolutely mouth-watering Gongura pickle in the Andhra Mess while they have to be content with their Dal Roti routine.

The power of Dollar – my inner mind tells me as-a-matter-of-factly.

Yes indeed! The power of Dollar.

The day I get into the radar of INS for all right reasons, I will leave everything behind and hop onto a Kuwaiti airlines flight to get into America. My friends told me that it was the cheapest airlines available. The world will never be the same again for me. I will also be saving dollars. Then I will look back over my shoulder and become all senti over India. I will start missing India just like my friends in the US are missing it. Man, I just can’t wait to miss India…

Miss India? Of course the spelling is different. If you are confused with Ms. India you are the one to be blamed. Nobody misses Ms Indias these days. They are ugly. The last Ms India who had some signs of real beauty was Ms Sen. Since then it has been a downslide as far as quality is concerned.

Why am I thinking about this all? Coz I have nothing else to do. I have to stay here till the end of time to get out. In case I haven’t told you earlier, I crashed my Pulsar 180 DTS-i into a truck yesterday on Hosur Rd. I still don’t believe that I am alive. It must be the helmet. Thank Helmet. Thy clan shall multiply.

In fact I don’t remember an iota of what must have happened yesterday. It is all blank. I don’t see much of Value-Add in trying to remember that incident. It is apparent you know! That you crash a bike into a truck -> You end up in the ICU or the electric crematorium. Fortunately in my case it is the ICU. Now that I have been given a fresh lease of life by Dollar… I am sorry God, I must put it to good use. I must wait for the H-1B which probably I will get by October this year. I hate this. Why does it get over on the very first day itself? I am planning to stage a revolution… an October Revolution.

Autobiography of Who???

It was quite a quiet normal day. And by this I mean there weren’t any thunderstorms and there certainly was no big bright heavenly star hanging from the sky when I was born in 1976 in a small town in India called Nellore. It just happened that night! And it could have happened any other night.

When I was four years old I could accurately reproduce the Telugu alphabets and this was not by any measure an ordinary achievement. I was supposed to be an Einstein of modern times. People used to remark, “Venu could reproduce the whole Telugu alphabets and you know, he is only four years old. He will definitely become a scientist one day.”

That shall remain as the only notable achievement in my life. Of course I didn’t become a scientist and Einstein was just opposite to me in every aspect. Speaking of alphabets.. I am reminded of a funny situation. I was four years old and was in pre-school. The teacher wanted me to write “a aa i ee”. I started with a bang.

“a” was easy. “aa” was cake walk. “i” was a little difficult and “ee” was surprisingly difficult. “u”.. “u”?? How the hell did one write “u”?

I was sweating in the class and it was in the middle of December. The teacher suddenly looked as if she were an incarnation of Goddess Durga – Kaali Ma. I was trembling.. I couldn’t write “u”.. Oh God! What should I do now?

I did what I wanted to do right at that instant. And I am quite sure I have never been able to do anything so courageously after that incident till this very second.

I ran.

I ran out from the class leaving the bewildered teacher and the envious classmates behind. I just ran out. I reached the school gate which was slightly ajar and the whole world outside was very inviting. I stepped outside and fled like a Olympic runner.. scared of everything under the sun. Oh Almighty.. What a great sin I had done!! I couldn’t recollect how the hell I was supposed to write “u”.

A kilometer it was and I covered it in ten minutes. I was four at that time you know! and it was certainly an enlightening experience. I came here.. gasping and sweating. My mother was taken aback. Exactly five minutes later my elder brother rushed in. My teacher of course couldn’t think of anything else afterwards.. Understandable! When you’ve got a four year old brat running on the road for a kilometer, you have every reason to get alarmed. She made a hue and cry over the issue and my brother who was studying in the same school was duly dispatched to inquire whether I had reached home safely.

What did you do?

Nothing.

Why did you run home?

Because I didn’t feel like staying in the school.

Spank Spank..

Waaaa!! Sorry! I’d never again do that. Nope! I know the roads are dangerous. I won’t repeat it.

Spank Spank!..

Waaaa!!

I overdid it. I knew I knew.. I knew that even before I typed the first alphabet of this story. Sometimes I just lose control over what I write and produce three hundred pages of useless stuff which I later use as my toilet paper. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaak! Well truth is sometimes bitter. Now don’t let your imagination run wild.

So that was how I started my education.

Well, my academic performance has been on the decline since that moment. I managed 87% in class 7, 79% in class 10 and failed in Intermediate second year mathematics. I scored a great 41 out of 150. A record no one has broken till now in my college.

Thanks to Nandamuri Taraka Ramarao.. There was this thing called “instant re-examination” and I could pull it off gracefully. Otherwise I would have had to forego my EAMCET rank! (I bow to you NTR! For this and this one only)

So the adventurous Venu entered Sri Venkateswara University in 1993. My very first day in the college deserves a few keystrokes here.

‘What is your name?’

‘Venu.’

‘Where from?’

‘Nellore. Heard of it?’

SLAP!

‘Amma!’

‘Say Sir at the end of each sentence.. and don’t kochchen me!’

‘yeah.. yes sir!’

‘So what is your name again?’

‘Sir, Venu sir’

‘Sir Venu? Are you a knight?’

‘No sir.. My name is Venu, sir’

‘That’s better. I don’t like this name.’

‘Sir?’

‘Choose something else.’

‘Sir?’

SLAP!

‘Urgh...’

‘Choose another name.’

‘Nirmal, sir’

‘Good! go around the campus shouting that you are Nirmal’

‘Sir.. please’

SLAP! BANG.. DABB...

‘Yes sir’

And suddenly God appeared from thin air in the form of our college principal. The guy in front of me vanished. ‘What are you doing here?’ asked God.

‘Aw.. err..??’

‘Get into your classroom NOW!’

So, Nirmal had become quite famous in his college in no time. He was that atypical tall guy with an undeniably freaky set of spectacles and who always ‘thought’ about something or the other... who knew what a time-cone was.. and who could get 87% in Microprocessors and Microcomputers in which the university first student could get only 62%.

I spent most of the time in our computer center trying to master the seemingly simple task of hacking UNIX passwords. At that time ‘everyone used to crack UNIX passwords’. No one told me how to do it. They simply laughed at me when I asked them. ‘Oh look at this item! He doesn’t know how to crack passwords.. Ha Ha Ha...”

I was ashamed. I felt like committing suicide. Why should I live when I couldn’t do such a simple thing as cracking UNIX passwords? Everyone else seemed to have done it. BUT HOW?

I couldn’t sleep. I woke up at two in the morning, and peddled furiously towards our computer center. I wanted to do it at any cost.

Of course it was UNIX and I couldn’t have succeeded in my attempts to crack the passwords if Mr. Somebody were not there in the canteen sipping coffee at two in the morning. ‘You know! The problem with you is.. You tend to take the legal way even for hacking passwords... There are a couple of thousands of crooked ways. THINK!”

I thought then. I sat in front of our library on the grass and then ‘thought’.

It was three in the morning. There was a cool breeze.. a breeze that would make the sailors forget their homes.. a breeze that traveled all the way from the seven hills... a breeze that told me how to crack Unix passwords.

I ran to the computer center completely forgetting about my bicycle which was parked in front of the library. I opened up my login shell and wrote a simple script that acted as an “alternate front end”. It looked, felt and smelt like the original HP-UNIX logon screen.. But it was just a program running on my logon. The unsuspecting user would come at eight in the morning… enter her login and password and my program would promptly mail them to me and log her off! Poor gal... She just couldn’t realize what was going on.

I cracked UNIX passwords...

I did it. I knew what Nitya’s password was and that was enough for me. My self esteem had gone up a lot. Nirmal was arrogant, skeptical, too thin and too hi-fi... I was the most talked about guy in our class. A kind of ‘Quizzing dude’...

Unfortunately none of these accomplishments seemed to impress Nitya the only girl who had managed to gain a strong foothold in my otherwise secluded world of infinite dreams. I wanted to talk to her but I didn’t. I wanted to walk with her but I couldn’t.

Life had been pretty boring for a while after my success with the UNIX system.

No new challenges and all old faces! God! Gimme something new!

He gave me something new... High Blood Pressure... The doctor who tested me shook his head in the most complex trajectory one could ever shake his head in.

‘200/100 and you are still so calm!’ Of course I didn’t stay calm after hearing to those literally astonishing BP levels.

Why?

Perhaps your kidneys have gone bad.

How?

Perhaps you need to be examined thoroughly in Madras Apollo.

The college seemed to be on a different dimension from that evening. I was kinda detached. I spoke to none. The high blood pressure thing had killed the enthusiastic Nirmal. Even Nitya could see something was happening to me.

Why are you so dull nowadays?

I am dying believe me.

Come on!

Then a family friend visited us from Delhi.

What?

Yes!

You have high BP at the age of 19?

Yes!

Who told you so?

Mr.Arun Ganapathy MBBS.

Screw him. Let us go to some other doctor. Let us get a second opinion.

And so we went to another doctor. I was least interested in the proceedings because I was sure nothing could save me from death. I was dying. I had to die. It was my destiny. And last checked, destiny was invincible.

The doctor looked at me with a strange expression on his face.

You have high BP?

Yes.

What medication did you take for that?

Inderal.

What??

You heard me. Inderal.

FOR HOW MANY DAYS?

Three weeks.

Did it reduce your BP levels?

Not exactly.. But my pulse rate has come down to 52 per minute.

Mr Venu…

.

Yes doctor.

Your BP is 120/72.

What??

I checked it thrice on three different days and at three different times of the day. Your BP is just normal.

But...

Get another opinion if you want.

So we went to another doctor. He commented that the first doctor should better check his head for mental anomalies. When I came out from the hospital, the world seemed to be quite alright. It had shunned its mysterious dimension and returned to normalcy.

I stopped taking medication. My pulse rate improved and I started looking healthy. I got back my wit and humor. Nirmal was back to his senses. He was the guy with those great spectacles. He was the guy who could repeat the System-Internation definition of “second” without referring to the book...

All was well. Then I lost my spectacles. The world seemed quite fuzzy without them but I grew accustomed to that. I didn’t miss my glasses. They were simply gone and were not replaced. I am still without glasses and I still cannot see very well.. But I am happy because I look like Nirmal when I wear spects and I look like Venu when I don’t.

No interesting episodes had happened in my life after the BP fiasco till NFCL campus-interviewed me when I was in my final year of Electrical Engineering.

What is a transformer?

Something that transforms energy.

What is the difference between star and delta connections?

Star is open. Delta is closed.

What is Thevenin’s theorem?

Err?

OK.. tell me Ohm’s law

E=CR

What is E?

Electromotive Force.

You are selected.

Thank you.

And then I started my wonderful career as an electrical maintenance engineer in NFCL Kakinada. I had worked there for six months before realization dawned upon me one dusky evening.

SOFTWARE!!!! What am I doing here in this metal crap? I should be writing code for real-time embedded systems! Where is the appointments page?

I walked into Software-Solutions Ltd. one fine day. It was a great experience. Quite exhilarating you can say.. I solved a couple of puzzles and told the interviewer what Virtual Reality was all about. Dr. Ivan Sutherland would have had a heart attack if he were in the interview panel. But as a matter of fact he was NOT there in the interview panel and the guy who was doing the interview knew zilch about Virtual Reality. So he offered me a job gladly because you know! very few people knew what Virtual Reality was at that time.

It took me quite sometime to figure out that I wouldn’t be writing code for real-time embedded systems. I was placed in Powerbuilder and I spent two and a half years in that field trying to wake up from the horrid dream.

It of course was not a dream. It was real. And dreams cannot be real. Then I had a real dream.. a really nice dream.. in which the business manager approached me and asked me whether I could take up a Unix project.

I said yes!

of course I would.

Won’t you miss your Powerbuilder?

Nope I won’t.

How comfortable are you in UNIX?

I could crack UNIX passwords when I was in school.

Great! You are fit for this project.

Thank you.

And the dream is still going on friends.. Here I am working in a UNIX project and suddenly life has become so interesting.... that I am pretty sure this is all a dream.

Nirmal, as you all might have guessed, is a pessimist.