Lost Memories.

Yes i have lost all of them, right from my first days in USA, birthdays, trips, random snaps, to my parents trip to USA,...i have nothing ...i am very very lost and seem to have misplaced so many precious moments of my life. How did this happen? well i think i was trying to backup my old Desktop and probably put all photos in a "safe" place in it so i could just transfer them onto my laptop. What does survive is everything after February of last year...phew....

So what has happened is that i cannot find the folders. No matter what i look for .jpeg, .bmp or look for folders by the name of photos or pic(s) or backup or memories i cannot place those folders. I have looked even in the recycle bin. But i have come up with zilch.

It's so bizarre, i am one of those people who has infinite faith in the computers and therefore didn't decide to backup precious things before until that fateful moment when i decided to switch from the PC to the laptop. Now i am distraught. All i have are those photos which i had put on yahoo photos and as we know yahoo compresses photos to bee-size so though i can view them, i cannot download them or do anything useful with them.

I did have some photos on my flash drive but i cannot find the drive itself, so till i get that i am sitting here memory-less. Well not really but i am pretty sad and uncomfortable about the whole situation. I love to go back and look at photos of things we would have done earlier...it's the only way to relive those moments. So all you shutter bugs out there, please make sure that you back up your photos and that you use a proper web service to safe keep them. I have learnt my lesson.

The Sun, the moon and the Stars...

One of my favorite memories from childhood is going to bed and my grandfather reading me bed time stories...there was story of the king and the queen whose children are taken away and how they get them back, then a story about a washer man, lots of tales from China and Russia...and of course when he didn't want to tell me a story and was trying to dodge the bullet...there would be the story of the boy who cried wolf...not one of my favorites :)

But my GrandFather or Baba as we used to call him...did a lot of funny and interesting things with us, he gave us puzzles to solve, math problems to do, i owe my high grades in Math to him, take us for walks and tell us jokes, taught us how to sit in the sun on a cold winter afternoon and eat sugarcane by ripping off the skin with our teeth...eat roasted sweet potato and peanuts...

When we had jaundice, he made sure we didn't eat boring food, so he would improvise with the little that was allowed, and would make us drink that awful papaya juice, he would climb on a ladder, propped against the papaya tree and get the juice out of the fruit! pretty incredible but back then i didn't think so, i would make faces and howl for i disliked this juice so much...now i feel silly having created such a scene even after i knew how much effort he had put into this.

My Baba is the perfect example of the grand parent who spoils his grand children rotten, dreams big for them and loves them so much...

He's one of the biggest reason why I want to go for a vacation to India, I miss sitting with him in the sun and discussing politics or talking on the phone with his clients and helping him decipher some of the game show questions so we could win some prizes...

Grand Parents are a luxury and I am glad I have all these wonderful memories to cherish...

I spoke with a friend recently after 9 years!!! we spoke briefly and then chatted and i was super-duper nostalgic, remembered the silly jokes we have shared, the giggling sessions we have had, the crushes, the icons, the gossips, the coffees, the shopping, the late nights, the teasing, the families, the clowns, the friends, the class-bunking, the movies....
old friends are like the sunshine after days of rains, or the first rain after a long summer. it's yahoo messenger at 2 am in the night and sipping coffee to stay awake knowing perfectly well that the next day you have to go to work but the fingers dont stop typing and the mind a playground of old memories...

Capital Punishment

In the past few months, there have been a few instances of sentencing criminals (in the eyes of the said law) to death. And I have been trying to evaluate my thoughts on the subject. Earlier i thought I was against it, for i didn't think that humans had the right to decide if another human had committed a crime and that his life was therefore theirs for playing with. But that was not the only reason for my aversion to this rule, i have often wondered how people could change after a crime, agreed that at the time the crime is committed, it personifies what the person's made of..but if after 5-6 years or more he is punished, is it ever investigated if the person is still the same, if his opinion on the damage he has caused has changed, it's not as though "once a thief, always a thief" or "once a rapist always a rapist".

That was in the past, sure i still think that courts need to re-evaluate a defendant's morals when deciding on a punishment, but i know what my problem with capital punishment has been. I think that the people in the society in which the crime was committed should be the judge of the criminal and how he/she should be punished. For instance I do not like the way the Husein family (Uday, Quasy, Saddam) has been dealt with. The crimes that all these three committed were against Iraqi people and not against US, what then gives US troops to kill the two sons and say we have brought justice to the people of Iraq, no they have not, nothing makes them law enforcers or the savior of the people of Iraq, it's the people who should decide how the three people should have been punished, surely they met with an easier death if everything we know about them is true, if they did the things they are said to have them, aren't the people mad that they didn't get the chance to be a part of the punishing process? I would feel betrayed by the process if i had been a victim of their cruelty.

Now that is my problem with capital punishment, every rapist, murderer (with the wrong intentions for a murder) should positively be executed but given that the law is enforced by the people who were the victims, not some third party which just decides to take action for it forwards their means and ambitions.

So i do condemn the hanging of Saddam Hussein for it was not given the treatment it was meant to be given, it was not fair and certainly not handled properly!

Difficult me!
You know how sometime you meet with someone on a daily basis and despite how nice they may be, you cannot seem to surpass a mental block about them, about some irascible habit of that person or just some peculiar trait....so you are saying "no it has never happened to me"...
i don't blame you, i am convinced i am a difficult person to be with, so all you people who have been friends with...kudos to you! i am not an easy going person, i tend to get very opinionated about people and then that feeling prevails for sometime till i get over my prejudices and decide it is time to shed the baggage. Or am i like this? i have lived with room-mates in the past and got along well with everyone...for the most time...

i do have a serious character flaw..i am convinced of that...but what i wonder is, am i not as an individual allowed to like a certain people with whom i gel and not the few who get on my nerves...it's human isn't it? i have been told repeatedly by a lot people that i tend to take my feelings for a person a bit too far...and personally...well i would, wouldn't i? it's about me right? and my zone of comfort? if someone breaches that, i am bound to get hackled...is that not true?

if i were a bird with a pen
and no one knew me, i would write a million line
but this name i have and this space, is a fine...

www.indiancricket.despair.com

what is wrong with these people? cant put a bat to a ball? cant throw a ball? the whole team sucks and i have always been an avid fan of indian cricket, in the past whenever they have under performed (that's the term i use) i would still defend them (not that they needed defending). but i have reached a point where i am ready to give up on them and ask them to take a long break from the game. Be it an un-imaginative Sharad Pawar or a lack luster Ian Chappel or the injuries that plague the team or the omni present question of a fifth bowler or a strong pace attack...these are problems that team should take responsibility for and stop treating it as an excuse. I have defended them in the past 3 months, and they needed defending or so i thought, now i've reached the end of my end of the rope.

So i'll wait till the end of the test matches and if they do a good job, then i'll contiue to believe that something can happen the world cup...

Ice ice baby

it's white outside...the trees are covered in snow, the grass is white with a hint of green here and there...there is snow on the stairs, the car is covered in a white layer(this will give me lots of trouble tomorrow morning!!)...
so this was the first snow of the season in Dallas, and was it beautiful! it was just the most amazing thing to watch the snow flurry, to take a walk in the coldest wind and weather...to wear sweater and jacket and socks and muffler and remember to go out wearing shoes and not slippers, else the socks will get wet! it was one of the most exhilarating experiences for me, one that i crave for each winter...
pots of coffee and hot chocolate and soup and lying curled up watching movies or reading a book...to just peep outside every few minutes to check to see if another flurry has started and then take a random walk in the snow again and feel the wind on your face and the snow on my shoes...it's the most beautiful sight and feeling!

i want the snow to come back once more...for i've not had my full yet!