The evolution and de-evolution of my biking era.

I had a tricycle when I was around 3 years of age and learned how to bicycle (on an old bicycle, which used to belong to a cousin of mine) when I was around 7 or 8 years old. When I was around 10 or 11, about to go to high school, my parents bought me my first own bicycle. It was a Hero Ranger. Hero is the name of the company that made bicycles and 'Ranger' was the model name. 'Ranger' was a very popular model back then and at that time was one of those very first 'mountain terrain' bikes that were made in India. These cycles were supposed to be rough and tough. They had somewhat heavy frames. The wheel radius was small but the tire was larger. These were quite different from the 'normal' bicycles which had a thinner wheel, lighter frames and used to ride faster. My sister had one of these 'normal' bicycles. The advantage of the normal cycles was that they used to cover a larger distance with a single round of pedalling as compared to the rangers, which required more effort and pedalling. I remember dad telling me that, I should buy a 'normal' cycle because it is better. But, I didnt agree with him at that time. I seemed to think that 'Rangers' were much more 'trendy' and new and hip. The normal bicycles were very boring in looks and I'd be teased horrible by my friends and the others at school !!
I rode the ranger till I was 16 years of age, I think. After this, my sister, who is elder to me by 3.5 years wanted a scooter. Dad decided to buy it, because, for one, he himself had a bajaj chetak, when we were young and he loves to ride two wheelers !!
Obviously, when the two wheeler was bought, I too wanted to have my share of riding it !! I had got my license of 'motor cycle without gear' made and took the 'scooty' out whenever I got the chance. The scooty was gearless, didnt go much higher than 40 km/hr and had a feel good factor !! My sister got married when I was 20 years of age. After this, I took the sole 'control' of the scooty and became the owner of it !! Of course, with ownership, come responsibilities and I used to give the scooty for servicing and used to clean it quite regularly. I used the scooty till the end of my engineering college days. Dad promised me a motorcycle, if I got a first class grade for my graduation. I did get a first class grade, and so got the bike on 13th October 2005 (which happened to be Dasara, a festival day in India) !! It was a Hero Honda Super Splendor. A truly reliable, efficient and a smooth but rugged machine it was !! It was the beginning of a long relationship with motorbikes !! When I rode this motorbike, I was the king of the road !! The feeling of riding a motorbike is very near to what is called 'blissful'. On this bike, I went on long rides, to matheran, to karjat, to lonavla etc. When, I joined a company, I went for my interview on this bike and when I got the job, I continued travelling by bike, even though, my company has a bus !! It was for the love of biking !!
Then 5 years back I was in a minor accident, in which my beautiful bike was damaged a bit. I got it repaired, but in the end, thought that I should probably sell the bike, while I get a good deal. I sold off the bike and decided to buy a new one. I bought a Honda Unicorn which has a larger engine capacity and hence more power than the super splendor. I bought it on 7 May 2008, which was an auspicious day called 'Akshay tritiya' as per the maharashtrian calender. The Unicorn is fun too, of course !! I roamed around on this bike at night, when I was a bachelor !! And, I took my wife on bike rides on this as well, when I got married !!
I took this bike on long rides too !!
I came to Holland, on 6 September 2013. It is a well known fact that in Holland, almost everybody has a bicycle. Holland has special bicycle roads and routes everywhere, apart from the car roads. So, I decided to go 'Dutch' and buy a bicycle. I enquired at a nearby shop, where they sell second hand bicycles. In Holland, you get very good second bicycles, because, unless the first owner has done any extraordinarily crazy stunts on the bicycles, they remain intact. Also, bicycles are well made, secondly, roads for cycling are good, so less wear and tear of the tyres and thirdly, the air is dust free here, which also contributes (I think it matters when the air is dust free, but still I'm not sure how, or I dont know how to explain it.). So, anyway, the man showed me a second hand bicycle for 50 Euros. I decided to buy it. After a day, I had a flat, so I got the inner tube of the tyre replaced (which the very ethical man, at the shop replaced for free !!). So, now I ride a bicycle, do all my chores on it and travel to office on it.

So from a tricycle, to a bicycle, to a ranger, to a scooty, to a motorbike, to a better motorbike and back to a bicycle !!! Different phases of life but the same enjoyment of biking!!
I'm calling it the evolution and de-evolution of my biking era !!!    

  

Mavshi Aaji - Ekdum bindaas !!

I was not much attached with mavshi - aaji (Grand Aunt). Yet I found it hard to believe that she was no more, even though, ironically it wasnt quite shocking to me that she'd died !! This is because she had so many health problems for such a long time, we used to actually wonder how she stayed alive for so many years !!

Mavshi Aaji was my maternal grandmother's sister. Grandmother has three other siblings....Two brothers and one sister. My grandmother and mother were very close with mavshi aaji.
Mavshi aaji was a very eccentric lady. It was fun to listen to her talk at times. She used to have a lot of comments about a lot of things. She also had a lot of 'abusive terms' in her 'vocabulary' and didnt quite bother to keep them bottled up inside her in front of us kids !!! You can imagine the glee, a kid experiences, when an abusive word is used by an elder in front of him !! However her way of talking didnt quite amuse all people. Sometimes, harsh words can have a long lasting and damaging effect, which did happen in her case. She lost out favour with her own sons, daughter-in-laws and her grandchildren. On top of that, in her recent days, she'd stubbornly chosen to stay alone in her old apartment, even though she had major health problems.
My sister and I were her favourite. She'd always tell grandmom that she'd love to have us as her grandkids !! This was also because her own grandchildren didnt quite give her much attention nor did they seemed to care about her....whatever be the case.
When I got married, she told my wife, "You are indeed a very lucky girl !!"

She was an excellent cook and had taught my mom a lot of recipes. When mavshi aaji was young, she was very good looking and used to act in college dramas. She was adept to the art of embroidery and weaving !! One more thing that I remember about her is her home made pickles !! Boy !! How I used to love them and look forward to these, when she gave a jar full to mom, when we visited her during the summer holidays !!

Going back to her past, she married a man who was also very eccentric !! He used to write letters and post them addressed to the 'Prime minister of India'. I dont think he used to work at all, and I am not sure how they made ends meet. He died a long time back because, I never did see him in my lifetime.
Mavshi Aaji, took care of her children (who by that time must be old enough of course !!)

She had a lot of fluctuations in health. She had a paralysis attack some 10 years ago, had diabetes for a long time. Her sugar levels had once risen to 400 and she was hospitalized. She was back to normal within a week's time !! Obviously, her health genes were tough, because she'd lived an active life inspite of all these recurring health problems. She died at a ripe old age of 85, alone in her own house, she'd so stubbornly decided to stay in independently.

If there was a way blogs could be read in heaven...I'd like to convey one thing to her which I did not tell her while she was alive....Its just that...I loved to hear you talk, straight out and openly, right from the heart, not holding a word back....ekdum bindaas !!

Ignorance is bliss? Yes at times.

What is this? What happens when you do this? What are the advantages? How economical is this compared to that? How best can this be done? Why is this here? Where can I find this? Where do I get to learn this? What did he mean when he said that?
So many questions. And from there on starts an a quest, a thirst to learn something new, finally the satisfaction of having gained the knowledge and then a new question and another quest and so on...The topic of this post is People with a 'chikitsak buddhi' or in english an 'inquisitive mind'
People with an inquisitive mind are rarely satisfied with their degree of awareness. They are always yearning to be the encylopedia....of trivia or essentials. They seem to poke their heads into all kinds of things that go around in the world...in everyday life or once in a lifetime. They challenge your opinions and question your beliefs and if they differ and dont get their answers....they haggle and pull faces and wear an air of extreme superiority. Even the tiniest of doubt and they'll dissect the whole matter and study the elements and put it back again to make it ...what they would call 'perfect' !!

Its not like this...its not as good as you think it is....you dont know exactly....statements like this are always heard from people of inquisitive minds. There is no doubt that most of them are very intelligent...if they werent they wouldnt be able to raise questions about everything would they?

As long as they are happy with their knowledge seeking spree in life its ok. But sometimes, habits can misguide your way of life. These very inquisitive minds start going deep into stuff which some others would say 'Forget it, it must be there for a reason'. These 'others' dont give a damn about that 'reason'.

Going deep into stuff is not bad....but it makes you think too much...You develop a habit of doing it everytime and then you are not satisfied when you dont get answers....because once in a while you dont !!!
Thinking too much about everything just puts more stress on your brain and believe me, the brain needs to be given a rest every now and then for it to think clearly.
And lets be frank with ourselves...do we need to know everything? Dont you have different experts for different fields? Dont they say ignorance is bliss sometimes?

A dutchman with an indian tongue !!

This is one amusing real story. The project manager (lets say he is Mr. X) on the project which I am working on currently, was given another project to handle from the same client. Our client is based in Netherlands and at the start of every such project, they invite all the lead engineers and designers on the job to their office to their office in netherlands for a kick off meeting. The main part of the work of this particular project was offloaded to a regional office. The leads from this regional office knew the project manager’s name, but had not actually met him and were going to travel to the Netherlands with him. They team was going to meet the team for the first time on the international airport of Mumbai. , The members of this team were told that ‘The project workshare co-ordinator’ would be travelling with them.
Here I must say that Mr. X would be the ‘Overall workshare co-ordinator’ for all the projects of this client in due course of time (although he was the project manager for the time being) and the new job would eventually be handled by a newly appointed project manager in the regional office.
These ‘functional designation definitions’ gave rise to one of the most amusing incidents which I have heard !!
The first time they all met Mr. X was at the international airport, starting from where the whole team was going to travel together. Mr. X introduced himself to all others and exchanged niceties.
I will introduce my readers to Mr. X…..This gentleman is parsi and he has the typical fair and polished looks of the people in the parsi community. Although not very tall, he is quite well built. He wears spectacles and speaks English with a good accent. Also his name is quite uncommon (It could be common in Parsis, of course !!). This speaks nothing of his professional capabilities, but I can tell you that he is a good project manager…a good co-ordinator….but for this post….describing his looks is more important as you read on……
Coming back to our story, the people of the team were all together checking in their luggage, passing immigration and security checks. They were all talking to each other but kept a sort of ‘shy’ distance from X. Members of the team kept chatting to each other in Hindi but when X asked them something, they answered in English. This kept on happening. X initially felt that because these people had met him for the first time, they were being very formal with him and speaking to him in nothing but English. However after some time, he started feeling that something was not quite right. He asked some of the people straight away…..’Tumlog itna formal kyun ho yaar? Mee tumchach manus aahe’ (Why are you being so formal ? I am one of you only.). It was then that people’s faces turned towards him in surprise !!!
The reason for this surprise was that they had mistaken him as one of the men from the client’s side and were under the impression that he is dutch !! His fair looks, unusual name and good English had led them to that belief……and then people were initially bewildered when he uttered a sentence in Hindi and later absolutely flabbergasted when he spoke marathi !!
When people realized this, they laughed their heads off!! They told us this incident and we laughed !! And to this day we laugh heartily and take our hats off ……to the dutchman with an Indian tongue !!

Bachelors, are you qualified?

Me and Wifey were sitting in a garden talking about our careers...how we thought they should be, where they are and what will we do next? The topic switched over to the qualifications that we had (Bachelor's and Master's degree)
Wifey is a Masters in German language and I am a Bachelor's in Instrumentation Engineering. I asked her....Did you find that while pursuing a masters in German....that all your subjects were related only to the German language? Or were there any other subjects during your 2 years of masters when you felt that perhaps, you were only 'beating around the bush'?

Silly question, eh? Well, you might say that....because when you say 'Masters in German' it obviously does not mean that they are going to teach you algebra. Or teach you the french language?

Then I asked her whether it the same with the bachelors degree? (Her bachelors degree is in sanskrit). Did they teach you only sanskrit for all the 3 years of 'Bachelors degree in Sanskrit'?

If your memory can take you back to maybe your first year of Bachelors degree, you will start appreciating my question. In Instrumentation engineering for instance, first year was a revision of science. Applied physics, applied chemistry, maths.Other subjects were engineering drawing, engineering mechanics etc. Second year and Third year were all electronics,computers and Electrical....electronic devices and circuits, microprocessors, computer networks, Electrical technology etc.

By the time I was in the final year of our Engineering, I had almost forgotten that I was supposed to be specializing in a field called 'instrumentation'. There were subjects related to instrumentation in the last year, of course, but then these were again covering different areas of instrumentation....which in itself is a vast field !!

It seems almost obvious now, that I knew almost nothing of instrumentation when I joined a company as graduate engineer trainees.

The point I am trying to make is....when we say starting of education for a bachelor's degree......doesnt it mean that one is qualified enough to only learn what is related to your subject of specialization? After all, you have been through school, junior college where you do the common subjects anyway. Do you have to do post graduation to totally be in that subject? Is Bachelor's degree just a degree, where you get a stamp of being qualified in a field when you are actually only just familiar with it?

Unfocus and Focus.

So why is it that I havent written for sometime now? I asked myself and told my friend over email chat that I probably should write something, just to keep my thoughts posted and for the sake of my readers' (a very few of those actually) entertainment.
We had a 'big email chain' discussion over this. He told me that I probably have gotten into some sort of 'writer's block' where I fail to express myself.
Maybe, I am simply too tired of writing, as I write hundreds of official emails a day, being a team leader and co-ordinator on my job now.
Maybe its just that I am physically tired at 10 o'clock at night when I usually update my blog. But I dismissed all these cases. There cannot be a writer's block for loss of expression, as I am watching a lot of Frasier these days and the sophisticated talk of the Crane brothers only makes you want to throw heavy words and sentences and what better way to do it than to write a post? !! And then of the official mails which I write, even if I write real good explanatory emails, most of them are wasted anyway, because our client takes great pride in ignoring my emails !! And physical tiredness is non existent for me...I am proud to say that I am never really tired. You could wake me up at 3 am in the morning and take me for a jog and I could still manage it (as long as I want to do it !!)

Then came a different angle....were my posts only a way to pour out all my feelings onto 'The black and white'? Since the time I got married, the frequency of my posts became lesser and lesser. Was it because I am in love...so much so that I cannot see beyond being with my wife for as much time as possible, without chasing other things? Is it possible as R suggested that with a life so content, why do I need to write at all?
Does it mean that I am so satisfied with my life right now, that I cannot raise any questions, any topics? Am I so blinded by love, that all I can see is my girl (wife) and not observe and analyze the sometimes frustrating, sometimes amusing, sometimes surprising incidents that take place. Am I so focussed in love that I cannot focus on other topics?

I tried to tell my wife this....but she thinks I am just throwing a line to her !!
R thinks I shouldnt tell her while playing computer games, but the truth is I see her eye to eye while throwing these 'lines'. Anyway, I hope I write more after this post. Unfocus on love a bit and focus a bit on writing for sometime will be the key...and it wont be easy !!