Let's go 3-D!

We had earlier seen 3D movies, quite a few of them, but then, Avatar seems to have revolutionised the technology. The astounding visuals that we saw on the big screen, are now all set to enter your living room. Sony, Panasonic, Sharp, LG and a few more companies have joined the race to bring it to you first. Having reached a point where Plasma and LCD TVs have proved to be yesterday's technology, everybody seem to have lined up for the next big thing.

To start with, we are going to have 3D TVs that we will have to watch like what we do at cinemas while watching 3D movies, that is with glasses on, the experience being unmatched, but the drawback being the inconvenience that you will have in terms of comfort and cost due to these glasses.

To explain you in brief how 3D technology works, it shows you two different images to each of your eyes, the shutter glass indeed working as a shutter to make you see what they want you to see in what order, one after another, and then your brain does the rest to show you the 3D effect. But these glasses are gonna cost you quite a thing for what they do and imagine somebody who wear power glasses, how inconvenient it would be for him to use these. Also, these are quite fragile for what they cost you. Nevertheless, that's the first thing that you are gonna get in terms of 3D viewing.

But don't worry about it, while you would be busy taking evasive actions from a kick or a punch of your favorite sports or movie stars, these manufacturers would be figuring out how to take that shutter glass out of your eyes and still make you view 3D images on your TV.They would be workng on another technolgy by which the glass of your TV would work as the medium by which you would be able to view the 3D image. There is a drawback in this TV though, here you have a sweet spot where 3D effect is maximum, any other place you sit, you will have a distorted image.

The third drawback being, the amount of 3D content in television will be quite limited to start with. This is a temporary thing though, they will have to solve it based on demand.

For the time being, we would let the makers worry about these complications, we will enjoy what comes our way.

On the wrong side of "Right"!

“Kya hua ek baat par, barson ka yaarana gaya.
Is bahane doston ka pyar toh pehchana gaya.”

“Hey! where are you these days dude? Long time no see? What are you up to?” I managed to ask Harry as I stopped at the corner of a nearby park, trying to gasp for breath.

Resuming jogging after a long time had already started to take its toll on me. Having spotted Harry sitting at the bench from the other side of the park, I had navigated my way through the now swelling crowd of morning joggers.

“Are all these people really health conscious or has jogging become just another fashion?” I fired my fourth question in a row without expecting any answer in particular, as my eyes were busy scanning the irresistible sweat-dipped figures that were flaunted all across the park.

Harry looked at me and smiled, and as my eyes met his, I immediately sensed trouble in paradise. There was something amiss. I had never seen him sitting alone engrossed in such deep thoughts. Even his smile, which otherwise came spontaneously, was tainted. Knowing Harry, I was sure; the matter had to be all but serious.

“Hey, is everything all right? What’s the matter man?" I sat next to him forcing my mind out of the attractive views all around.

It usually takes our man a while to open up, so I was ready for a silent pause.

“I had a fight with Radha.” He anticipated one obvious question coming up and tackled it right there, “Radha is my executive MBA class mate and we are good friends. Couple of day back we had an argument and we are no more in talking terms.”

“Don’t tell me you are sad because of that. Not for the first time have you had an argument with a friend. I am sure you know how to handle it. You are not a kid anymore buddy.” I said.

“I wish I knew how to handle this one. The other day she was late for the class and was casually mentioning how she had over-slept the night before. To which I had remarked in a lighter vain that this is quite expected as she had spent a long time talking over phone till late night on the pervious night.”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

“Having said that, I had even forgotton completely. But next time when I tried talking to her, she refused to reciprocate, saying I had hurt her by mentioning about her talking over phone. That she was speaking to her ailing mother, who stays alone, and in any case I had no rights to comment on her private life.” Harry continued, “I immediately apologized and explained her that it was supposed to be a joke and I never meant to hurt her. I didn’t know who she was talking to; neither did I want to. I had just tried calling her for an assignment where I needed to discuss a point with her and that’s how I came to know that her phone was busy.”

“So what does she say?”

“Nothing. She doesn’t pick my phone, doesn’t even reply to my sms. I have tried saying sorry several times, but still no response. I wanted to communicate to her that even I was upset with her when she mentioned that I had no rights. Where does the question of right arise man? Even if I had any rights, would I have made fun of her for speaking to whosoever she does, leave alone her mother? And how on earth would I know who she was talking to? How does it matter anyways? All I had said was she had a reason to feel sleepy.”

“You have said sorry to her, right? “ I asked as if I was a relationship expert.

“Many times man. I have tried to make myself clear. Also, I have tried to let her know I didn’t feel it was right on her part too to have mentioned about my rights. It sounded as if I was deliberately invading into somebody’s privacy, which was not the case at all. I really feel irritated as I am not sure if I have made my point get across, due to the lack of communication.”

“Why are you bothered? In my opinion, you have done whatever you could. Leave it right there.” I advised, “Since how long have you people known each other?”

“Must have been a couple of months. Since the day I’ve joined these classes.”

“Which means, you can’t claim to have known her all that well. You see, there are different types of people. Knowing you, I can understand why you feel so disturbed. You are a simple guy and want to keep things simple. You don’t like tension in the air whenever you come face to face with her next time. That’s why you wanted to iron things out.” I was now sounding like a astrologer to whom people come with trouble and he talks them through all their problems as if he is the designer of this whole universe.

“I know you Harry; you don’t have an ego as such, when it comes to handling people. But from whatever I hear, I can’t say the same about Radha.”

“But what does this silence mean? Am I missing something here?”

“You don’t really have to bother about that.” I replied.

“I can’t comment about Radha, since I don’t know her, but I know a couple of my friends who are real egoists. They believe, if they ignore while somebody keeps trying communicating with them, they gain a upper hand. They call it The art of maintaining a dignified silence. Whereas in reality, it is pure escapism. These kinds of people, generally attach high importance to themselves. They are unbelievably self-centered and they can see only one point of view, either their own, or of somebody else’s if it is similar to their own.”

I continued, “They would normally imagine things that they would like to believe and then go on to assume that their friends or people they know can’t have a different opinion. They would never accept that they can go wrong at times.”

“It is highly difficult to explain them, as they love their pre-conceived notion too much to part with it in order to accept reality. It’s always better to leave them with their own idea.”

Harry was attentive. “But I still have a doubt if Radha belongs to this category. Of course, I have noticed a couple of these traits in her but then we all have a bit of that.”

“We sure do.” I said. “But in different degrees. Trouble starts only when there is a mis-match in the proportion. Take yourself for that matter. You always take yourself too lightly, which is wrong. These people in our discussion take themselves too seriously which is again wrong.” I myself was surprised at my new found ability of preaching. Easy it was boy; why else would you find so many of them all over the place?

“So you just forget it, dude. It’s not wise to waste time over people who don’t deserve our whole hearted attention or care. You have better things to do. Anyways, its gonna make absolutely no difference to either of you if you don’t interact with each other. Why bother then?”

Harry said thoughtfully, “I understand what you mean. But its hard for me to associate negative thoughts with Radha. I mean, I cared for her man! I still do. Amidst all these war of words, I still get worried if she is all right, if she is taking care of herself, if she's had her food and things like that. She's crazy man! She feels she can take on the entire world on her own, but in reality she is well capable of landing herself in trouble every single moment. That keeps worrying me and I have never really needed anybody's permission to care for my friends all my life. The more I miss her crazy ways of doing things, the more it disturbs me and the tougher my words get, the whole idea being to make her react in good, bad, ugly whatever manner. I just want her to open up. I even told her she has lost the respect that she had in my eyes by acting snooty. But I am not sure if what all I said are true.”

“But then one thing for sure, if your opinion holds good for her, then she doesn’t deserve all this concern, in which case I would move on happily. It would take me not more than a second to forget everything, but how do I make sure?” The confusion seemed to be still there.

“Look Harry! You don’t have a choice. And because you don't have a choice of your own, you have to believe in what I say. See man! The logic is simple. You know you have done your bit. Even then if the desired result doesn’t follow, you take the next option. Which is what we just discussed.” I explained.

Harry thought for a moment, took a deep breath and said, “You are absolutely right buddy. Right here, right now I’m out of all this for ever. Thanks a lot for listening to me.” He started walking back slowly, but I could see his now assured steps towards a new dawn. I was convinced that he would forget about it completely as soon as he realized that no body under the sun deserves so much of his attention other than his own people.

The morning was getting warmer. It was time to leave. The park was quite empty now. As I got up, I heard a voice, “Hi”. I turned back to see a pretty face. “Can you please help me……….”

“Sure.” I almost screamed even before I could hear what she wanted me to do.

Rendezvous with the street monsters....... Part-I

It was a warm June night, a bit cloudy, a little clumsy and a tad quieter than normal. I was on my way back from a late night movie show. Giving me company were my ever dependable three room mates, Ravi, Prashant and Vijay, the “Awesome Threesome”. With these guys around, you absolutely needed no trouble; they themselves were quite a handful.

Weekend late night shows were a strictly routine exercise for us those days, that had to be followed as religiously as Sage Narada chanted Lord Narayana’s name, or may be we would have backed ourselves to have given him a good run for his money, if it came down to competition.

Sitting at the window inside a town bus, I looked at my watch. Ten past two at night, rather early morning. “End of a long day!” I told myself. The consolation part though, was that it was a Saturday which meant we would get a good quarter night sleep and a full day to enjoy before we faced our usual Monday blues. Ravi and Prashant were peacefully asleep on the rear seat, somehow hanging on to the railings of their front seat by the skin of their nails, in a manner that would have forced Newton to be ashamed of his Law of Gravity. I turned towards Vijay, who managed to give me a half-nod-cum-smile acknowledging in the most unconvincing possible way that he was in control unlike the other two. I could see him fighting his desire to close his eyes though.

Everybody, including the bus conductor, was jolted back to reality by the jerk of the bus stopping at our destination. It took the poor sleepy man some time to figure out where we were, but once he realized, he tried to announce the stop name as loudly and convincingly as humanely possible at that hour of the night. As we got down, the bus was off in a jiffy.

We looked around; there was not a single soul on the road. We had to walk another mile and a half to reach our residence. Half the distance was a decently lighted main road, the other half being a scary dark narrow street alongside the bank of a canal. We were a bit concerned about the later one because of the sheer number of stray dogs that the street contained. It was a challenge to cross it even in daylight, leave alone night. But the sole reason why we had taken the risk was because of the fact that Ravi was absolutely fearless when it came to dogs and he had given us the confidence that he could effortlessly escort us through the street. This, we had reluctantly believed not only because it was hard to resist the temptation to watch the movie, but also Vijay had certified to have seen him exercising his special skill in fighting and scaring the hell out of ten street dogs single handedly on the other day.

But little did we know that his unnecessary heroics had severely challenged the self respect of the unquestionable kings of our street, and that we were about to pay the price for it in the next few minutes.

As we left the main road and started entering our street, my fearful eyes scanned every visible corner of it in a way Sherlok Holmes would have been proud of. When I was reasonably satisfied that danger is minimal, I signaled Ravi to start moving, whom I followed along with Prashant and Vijay.

I first spotted a rather thin and awfully ill fed dog on my left sleeping within the first ten yards of our starting point of the street. It appeared to be quite disinterested in us, as if it was below it’s dignity to react to half dead people in fear. It didn’t bark, which meant no message was conveyed to the dog community about our arrival in their territory. A first good sign that everything was alright. First hurdle crossed, we were more relieved than anything else. At that moment I seriously doubted the intelligence of the man who dismissed barking dogs saying that they seldom bite. Any day I would prefer this non-barking dog!

We kept moving forward, quietly and anxiously. Suddenly I felt a little nudge on my shoulder from behind. Prashant was pointing to the right towards the canal. With a little effort, I could see another dog standing, but even this one’s body language suggested no aggression. It appeared to be in quite a relaxed and cheerful mood, calmly enjoying the gentle breeze of the late hour on an empty road. This too, we felt was nothing to worry about. For the next few yards we saw or heard nothing except the sound of our footsteps. Vijay felt, it was a nice coincidence that the dogs were away on a day we went for the movie. But I never believed in coincidence. Deep down I had this feeling that something was about to happen, and I was hoping I was wrong.

My hope didn’t last too long, as we saw a group of monster dogs standing at a distance of about fifteen yards right on the middle of the street. Even though they were not barking or showing any sign of approaching towards us, the symptoms were quite ominous. The keenness in their eyes, the stiffness of their standing ears, the deep breath, were all pointing towards clear and present danger. It was now quite obvious that they were aware of our entry into the street beforehand, the only question being how, but that was no time to search for any answer.

It was time to act, and to act fast. I took a final quick look at them and regretted it immediately, as what I saw boosted my confidence by no means. There were about twenty of them standing in a phased manner, nine, eight and three. The first nine were the strongest, looked the most agile and the most muscled ones. The next eight were relatively older but more assured in their mannerism which communicated strongly that they would bite to kill. The last three were visibly the leadership group of the community, who seemed to be working with a definite plan trying to boost the morale of the rest of the group, which, in reality we needed more badly than their soldiers.

We looked around, and almost immediately started admiring the intelligence of our enemy. Moving forward was out of question. To our left was a high wall which was impossible to cross. To our right was the dirtiest canal of the city, falling into which would kill us faster than the bite of the dogs. We could now realize why we had been allowed to move that far without obstruction. The monsters had very cleverly selected their site of final assault.

The only choice we could think of was to run back and get the hell out of there, where we would have to cross only two pocket sized dogs to get back to the main road. Then we could try and fetch some help. This idea too vanished into thin air as fast as it had occurred, as we turned back to see another group of tall and strong dogs standing right behind us sealing the exit point completely.

It didn’t take us too long to figure out that we had straight walked into a trap set for us, and there was no way out.

(To be continued.....................)

Meet the manager!

It had to be one of the biggest career-achievement for David. He had some how managed to convince Chandru, his manager, to have a chat with his team.

The meeting was underway after a lot of persuasion on David’s part to get Chandru across the table. One thing David had noticed here was that, if you want somebody to do a job here, catch him when he is least prepared. Following suit, he had managed to catch hold of Chandru on his way back from the rest room.

“Are all the resources available?” Chandru never considered employees as people or human beings. They were resources for him.

Within a few minutes, all the nine team members along with Chandru had managed to squeeze themselves into one of the tiniest conference rooms on the floor after a couple of unsuccessful attempt with some of the more spacious rooms which were already occupied.

“Spread around a little bit.” He urged the team, occupying half of the tiny room himself; he had hardly left any space for the rest of the ‘resources’ to move around.

"I kind of find myself alone if you stand like this.” He looked very pleased at his own joke. He had read somewhere long back; a meeting should be started with an unconventional light statement. That creates a good effect.

He straight away started with an apology.

“Team! My sincere apology to all of you for not being able to talk to you earlier. Not that I didn’t want to, but you know how difficult my job is. I have to manage so many processes at a time.” Chandru never failed to mention at the slightest opportunity, how great a job he was doing, managing such a large number of (highly unmanageable) resources.

“I will kick start this meeting today and going forward, we will hold this on a regular basis.” None of the team members were amused, they had heard this before. This statement simply meant, with this gathering, I am done with my job of meeting you, thank me. We should not see each other again unless I run out of any idea to avoid you guys.

He spent the next thirty minutes delivering a well rehearsed lecture about the company hierarchy, the rewards and recognition policy and the variable pay criteria, struggling through the occasional questions by mouthing irrelevant answers. At times, he even pretended to encourage the team to ask questions, knowing pretty well, none of them would be too keen on doing so. This, he had cleverly made sure in a previous discussion with David.

Once his speech was over he thanked the team and asked the resources to leave along with whom he was about to escape.

“Chandru! One moment please.” Stunned by David’s voice, he turned back to see him along with three of his senior team mates waiting for him. “Shit”. This was the last thing he wanted.

The day I saw her........

It was yet another indifferent day at office, a near tiring one. I was still settling down at my new work place. The changeover from an audit and advisory services kind of profile to a full time corporate one had not been an easy one. The person, who I was replacing, would be there for a couple of weeks more, and within that short time-frame, I was expected to acquire the whole skill set from him, which he had accumulated over a couple of years or so.

But of course I was nervous. More so because I would not let anybody point a finger at me commenting on my skills. Deep down, I knew I would be in control in due course. Nevertheless I was under pressure. The nervousness coupled with my anxiety to make a solid first impression was only adding to the feeling of my insecurity.

The afternoon was gloomy, perhaps it was drizzling. I left my desk and slowly started walking towards the window. As I looked at the sky, I could see the last valiant effort of the sun to break through the dark patch of cloud cover before it succumbed. Slowly though, the triumphant clouds were starting to look ominous.

The drizzle was getting stronger. And it was making me calmer with a soft soothing effect on my turbulent mind. I was lost somewhere in the darkness of the clouds, losing my sense of insecurity, inadequacy. I was beginning to get back the feeling of freshness of the morning.

Suddenly I turned back, surprised to hear a soft voice, the voice of a lady. Hearing a lady’s voice at my workplace was as rare as the May rain. She was standing at a distance far enough to be clearly audible, but I could tell that she had got an awesome voice. It was commanding enough without being arrogant, soft enough without being unsure. The sound of the raindrops on the window pane was providing the perfect harmony to her honey dipped voice. I tried moving closer, carefully, avoiding her attention. She was deeply engrossed in speaking to a colleague. When I was close enough, I looked at her face. It was calm, emotionless and firm. Her eyes were razor sharp. She certainly means business, I thought. I saw a striking simplicity within her, which to me was her most prominent feature that I picked from the first meeting. She finished her discussion and left in a few minutes, but the room was filled with the intoxicating fragrance of her perfume for the rest of the day.

I was now back at my desk, trying to force my mind back to the task I had left unfinished. Soon I found it futile, and decided to close for the day. As I made my way out of my office building, I saw the relentless rain hitting the drive way with its full vigor. I was stranded there with quite a few people, and I was hoping to see her again. No way could she have left, I thought. I kept looking around until the rain stopped, every now and then clarifying my colleagues that I was looking for that “Other colleague”. But I never saw her again that day.

Years passed by. Now we were friends. Well, at least I believed so. Trust me, it was a great feeling. She was always formal in her interactions, without sounding mechanical. She always gave me a feeling of holding back a lot to herself, but that was natural. Our interactions were almost always at a formal level, arising more out of our respective professions. I was smart enough to realize that and this very fact had kind of drawn an invisible line in my mind every time I spoke to her.

I liked her, but there was nothing unusual about it, a lot of people liked her. Barring those few cheap comments, that was so omnipresent, she always invoked positive reaction.