Out of north India, first time in two years, and first time in 28 yr life to stay away for long. Away from everyone so near and dear, who do I miss the most? Exercise your brain horses till we come to this again, first lets talk about a new journey - journey from IIT D to Intel Bangalore.
Time for a brief time-travel, set to five years before now. I happened to join a new software firm, my third in less than three years since graduation. New people, new place (always in NCR though) and a new domain with new programming languages to work on. One thing that wasn't new was my habit of fooling my boss in believing how good I was. With in a month or so, I'm travelling to Bangalore to explain (read defend) an old, omnipresent but least understood and/or appreciated internal project to highly qualified, geographically separated senior colleagues. Well that was a fleeting visit marred by high pitch technical discussion leaving little time for get-to-know-you-Bangalore. Another visit the very next year, this time for a smaller project, but to deal with technically-challenged and highly obnoxious marketing species. Once again the Indian silicon valley and I remain complete strangers despite warm handshakes. Then comes the third year. An enjoyable, enviable may be, reputation at work earns me a new project. I get to pull all the strings, finalize every single data structure and best of it - code every single word. Once again I happen to come to Bangalore office, to benefit from vast knowledge and experience of a very senior colleague and friend, one of the best, talented programmer, designer and thinker I've come across. A longer stay could well be an opportunity to explore the city, but my daily addiction to coding takes such a new dimension that we (me and my respected 'technological' friend) end up having late-night heated discussions, enlightening ( for me) debates almost every night. Despite being sick for a week, I end up coding from the 'comfort' of my hotel bed.
Talking of my hotel, at a walking distance from the BLR office at old airport road, I used to pass by a big, blue building obscuring others in the neighborhood - not just in size but in stature as well. It had a five letter name, imprinted in big, blue letters - Intel. I would look up to those letters and ask myself, what does it take to have them imprinted on your T-shirt or on your laptop bag or your notebook. What does it mean to get inside this building, getting associated with one of the biggest names in modern world. Well, it was then. Then, when I had not even thought about going to IIT, and its now, now that I'm writing a blog from a Bangalore guest house wearing a T-shirt which has another beautiful phrase imprinted on front and back, in eight black letters- IIT Delhi. And I'm soon to find out how it feels to get into that big-blue building, just a day away from now.
Oh yes, in all this Intel-IIT diversion, I drifted away from our first point, may be the second - Bangalore. So, lets fly from new look gorgeous I-D terminal of Palam airport New Delhi on a "low cost" airline with a not-so low cost fare, leaving behind a breezy, beautiful pre-monsoon evening and a beautiful, loving companion. Not supposed to feel good, right? Add to this my chronic issues with constant whirring and purring closed air-conditioned closets flying thousand feet in the air in cloudy weather. Soothing country music comes handy anyways and I manage to touch the ground in one piece, unharmed. Shift to another whirring and purring, even smaller air-conditioned closet this time on the ground, but with smell of burning fuel on a humid and polluted over-an-hour journey. This is embarrassing I know, but the select few who have had the 'privilege' of travelling with me, can already guess what happens next. I end up forcing the driver to stop the car and ..well, I don't have a more civilized word for a 28 and half yr old adult, so here it is.. and I end up throwing up by the roadside. After a five minutes break and a manageable stomach condition, I get into the same closet trading off the fuel-smelled air-conditioning to polluted yet breezy humid Banglorian air. I've had enough for the day (and the night), so when the helper boy at guest house starts pressing the AC remote buttons I childishly shout at him to shut it off.
Cometh a new morning, cometh a pleasant day and cometh another surprise. My permanent workplace in Bangalore is different than the one my offer letter suggests me to report on day one. What a pleasant surprise it is, I'll get to get into the same hallowed big-blue building I so yearned for, every day for a long time to come. In no mood to roam around and face the polluted air of old-airport road, I hurriedly finalize a place to stay. A 8K+ room (if at all it can be called a room) on 4th floor with no lift at disposal, and is half the size of my IITD cubicle, but on a walking distance from the sacred building - walking distance by my standards.
Now that I'm finished with the stale narration of my transition from NCR to Bangaluru, time to revisit the first question. Last few days I've spent worrying about many things - where to settle down, which operator and which plan to opt for to have economic long distance calls, whether to go for a bike or a car, so on and so forth. Another big question was what to do with lots and lots of books that I've collected and managed to stay together with over my numerous shifts within NCR in last 10 years or so. Extra baggage charges, weighty books, a single carry bag along with my guitar and laptop, and indispensable goods-of-daily-use, practically disallow me to have the books along. I call up my most trusted buddy to hostel and load his car with may be a quintal of books and bid good bye to unload it to his 1st floor apartment all by himself - thats what friends are for, right?! Small justness mean a lot to me though and as a token of my love I decide to carry at least one book all along and all the way. So much to choose from, Physics, mathematics, religion, poetry, communism, fiction of Rushdie-Forsyth-Archer-Arundhati-Grisham-Sheldon and of-course computer science and VLSI. I pick half finished novel for the journey (a one time read only) and only a single 'real' book, a token, an old-time olf friend. A true winner! Sorry Forsyths and Grishams, but I choose - Kernighan and Ritchie : The C Programming Language!
Trivia for a true C programmer:
Q- Which is your most favorite tounge twister?
A - C sells, the C-shells, by the C-shore. :)
By the way, did you get your answer or not? Don't worry if you've not. All in good time dear, all in good time.
