Wasted Moments

He runs frantically up the dark, steep wooden staircase. As he reaches the top, he sees a glimpse of his grandmother on the terrace through the crack of the wooden door. With her hands on her hips and a stern expression, she watches as the servant climbs onto a caged structure built against the wall, and retrieves a worn tricycle that was deemed a 'noisy toy'. As he flings the door open, and leaps onto the terrace, he is horrified to see his beloved toy being brought down. He watches aghast as the servant guiltily places the trike on its side and reaches for the axe. Breathing coarsely, he searches for words of pleas, but manages to only grumble incoherently. As the woman turns around to scold him, he limply returns inside...
He suddenly awakes from the reverie. His father is talking slowly with his grandmother.. They are at her house.
As he gazes at his grandmother, now 70, he is struck by the fact that she no longer has a stern face. He does not remember when the transition took place. Her memory has failed her now. Every month he visits her at her house. Every time, she gleefully stretches her arm for a hug as if she has not seen him in ages. And every time, he gropes for an emotion that should be there. But he feels nothing. He feels guilty that he is devoid of any feeling for her. He has nothing to give to her. How can that be?
The room is so stifling. He does not know whether it is because of the guilt or the angst that time kills everyone. Life is limited. Later in life, he will have to face vapid expressions on his grandchildren, if he gets to live that long.
He steps out to the small balcony. Through the kitchen window of the house facing him, he sees a small unkempt girl playing with a dirty doll as her mom is busy preparing for supper. He has a sudden desire to spend some time with the kid. But he knows that it is absurd. With a heavy heart, he reaches for a cigarette.
Suddenly, he hears a distinct snort. It seems to coming from somewhere below. And it felt so close. As he peers down to see what it was, he feels a gush of hot breath on his neck. He jumps back as he sees the head of giraffe eyeing him critically. Stunned by this unexpected visit, he watches as the giraffe speaks to him "Pardon me, but where can I find some vegetation?" Without waiting for a reply, it turns around, and puts its head through the window into the kitchen where the child was playing. It tugs at the woman's green sari. Not quite stunned, the woman hits the animal with her spatula, who retreats hastily. She then tells the giraffe "This dinner is for my family. If you want some vegetables, go to the next alley- people sell vegetables there." The giraffe thanks her and leaves.
The child spots the boy in the verandah, and comes to the window. She now looks glowing, and she seems to be wearing a spotless white dress. "You must be new around here", she says, "We get a lot of giraffes. Would you like to play with my doll?". As she says it, she climbs on the window ledge, spreads her wings, and flies over to his side. Then she offers her doll to him.
When he takes the doll and looks at it, he sees that the doll is himself. In a choking panic, he sees that he now cannot move his body at all.
The child takes the new animated doll from the immobile boy, and tucks it in her frock pocket while he watches in vain, his life stolen. As she prepares to fly back, he notices that her backside is all black and dusty. He realizes that he will have to wait for his father to come get him, which might be a pretty long time. He does not even want to think of how in the world could he be restored, if at all. And as she turns her head to wave at him, he notices that her eyes are sad.

On Being Digitally Impartial

Ambidexterity- this has got to be a gift, right? You get to use more of your body. If one limb gets hurt, you can always use the other. Or you can just switch whenever you're bored. You won't have to worry about backswings in tennis (or it doesnt work that way?), and you will learn to 'lay up' from both sides of the basketball ring. And better, you can be doing two things at once.
Spiders and frogs use their left limbs and right limbs equally. I wonder why, in our case, one hand tends to dominate over the other. Is it because we have evolved into a complex organism? If so, what does being complex got to do with being lefty/righty? After all, we are almost perfectly symmetrical, at least from the outside.
Whatever the reason is, lefties tend to get picked at. The dexter hand is always preferred over the sinister. In some societies, sinisters are considered to have sided with the devil. Which reminds me, there used to be this games teacher in Kanti Iswari School. He used to say that you were supposed to do all good things with your right hand (write, eat, play), and the left hand was reserved for doing you know what. As a result the left-handed kids were thought to be abnormal.
My mindset took a turn after I observed a few of my lefty mates. Whether they kicked a football with a left foot or sketched with a left hand, they looked really cool. Maybe because they stood out from the crowd.
And in college, there was this ambidextrous professor; he would start writing from the top-left of the whiteboard with his left hand. When he's somewhere in the middle, he would change hands and continue until he reached the right end of the board. The handwriting was the same throughout. I always wondered which hand he used to sign documents. Or whether he could sign with either.
I have been practicing writing with my left hand. The writing does not look good yet, but it is still legible, and I am building up speed. I look for the time when I will be able to write with equal nimbleness with either of my hands.
Also, there are so many bimanual tasks that require similar use of both of our limbs- like swimming, typing, walking, running, or holding a basketball. When we type on our keyboards, both sets of fingers are equally employed- although important keys like 'Enter' and 'Delete/Backspace' are all on the right.

So yeah, I might never be an Ambidude lacking any lateral dominance. However, I at least try to divide the tasks between my arms (holding books, lifting a chair, opening a door, raising a hand in class, waving at somebody, eating from a plate, patting someone in the back, using the mouse). And I at times use left hands to jot down notes helps me to get through boring and slow classes. It has become an alternative to doodling!

Milee's red cap, and Bajaj's faked death

Seriously, if the Indian housewives are the targets of these Indian soaps, their IQs are painfully apparent, aren't they?

I am not willing to say the same to the Nepali audience, coz the appeal might come from other things... like curiosity for the Indian culture, etc. But then it is still irritating when the 'conventional' parties suddenly deflate as everybody leaves in a hurry to not miss yettanutha pointless episode of whether and how Bajaj really cheated death, or just to witness another eyebrow dance by Phamous Komolika. Before they leave, though, some of them even speculate on how Bajaj could not have died. Somewhere, I overheard someone saying how come these serials never end. The show will go on till 'Kkusum' or 'Kabhi Saas bhi' crew get defunded. And why should it end? It's creating jobs for so many, and the storyline is extensively tweakable- just like my vocab.

In any case, I ABHOR these soaps. They are pathetic! In this new serial Milee, the main character is always seen to be donning a red cap, backwards- so reminiscent of the 80s pop culture. And she's a maidservant to this another HUGE and STINKING RICH family. I guess this show is aiming to appeal to the household 'helpers' as well. The plot beats around the taboo affair between Milee the maid, and the son of the family (From what I gathered). Achievement, drama, wealth, attire, jewelry, orchestra- they seem to overdo everything. Awfully soppy!

Too-sadistic-to-be-true troublemakers, overly goody-goody traditional Satisavitris, pious grandparents, shirt-collar-over-coat-collar males, other jewelry-laden female members, unamusing clowns, and wannabe-cute impish kids. Can they come out with any other soup recipe? Not that I would be interested in any case.

True, these serial-stars are earning a lot. But they're still leading pathetic lives, which revolve around those absurd sets, and sponsor-infested award ceremonies. What good are they? They only parade around with commerial products and parrot on shallow scripts. That Bajaj guy still can't put one decent expression in his face. But I guess it was a good turn after his earlier ephemeral fame from those 'Jaan Tere Naam' days. Also, did you ever come across that Lalitadevi character? I guess her appeal was to be too obnoxious so that people are hooked onto cursing at her. I will probably 'disembowel her with a wooden spoon' (as George Carlin would say) if we ever meet in person. No wonder they say TV incites violence.

Our MIS Class

It's a crazy class. We're expected to read and memorize a chapter of Bill Gates' "The Road Ahead" before every class. Our teacher, Shakti Rana, takes a viva before each class, and grills us with obscure questions like 'Gates uses a nice phrase to explain the communications revolution that is about to take place. what was it?'. or, 'How old was Gates when he wrote his first program?', 'What is the full form of ASCII?'. It's a very enervating and nerve-racking experience.

Once he asked us all to draw as many menus items and the corresponding drop-down command items in Word, Excel, and Powerpoint as we can remember . It was a pretty hard exercise!

However, the classes are interesting, I must admit. He gives all funny anecdotes and tells absurd stories.

One time he even told the joke of a poor boy who was forced by the teacher to count 5+5, with both of his hands in his pocket (The boy naively replies '11').

I was tempted to say that if he had to answer in the binary system, he would have said:
11111 010 11111

Demanagementalizationificationality

Wish I could scoop out this MBA crap out of my brain. Truly, ignorance is bliss, knowledge is amiss. Learning is a pain, earning is a gain. Classes are a pain in the brain.

I haven't learned much on the second year, and I don't think I will. I feel like I am spending time on leisure acts like doodling and killing bugs (hence my quirky blogs).

Ok, we spent about 20 minutes of TQM class today arguing on defining a problem:
SIR: "A problem is the gap between actual state and ideal state"
Someone: what if actual state is higher than ideal state- that would still mean there is a gap. Is THAT also a problem?I could not convince the guy that the ideal state is unattainable. Then the sir put it beautifully: In that case, you have a problem, because you think you're past the ideal state.

Our Financial Institutions teacher: If I ask you whether A is true or B, it can be A or it can be B. But. Then only one answer is right. (Hmm... that does lie 'on the realm of bleeding obvious', to borrow the phrase from John Cleese).

Our MIS teacher:
Explaining the logic AND, OR gates: If a boy enters a door, a boy will come out from the other side. That's like a '1' in the binary. But then if a girl enters a door, and a boy does not come out from the other side, that's like a '0'.
"Information is reduction on uncertainty. Hence, I might come to class, and start whistling (whistles)... and keep on whistling (whistles more). You might venture out, have tea, chat, and come back to class. I might still be whistling (more whistling). Then you might say- I did communicate something, but it was not information."
"After he dropped out of Harvard within a year, why did Bill Gates first go to Alburquerque, New Mexico?"
Our Entrepreneurship teacher: If suddenly a health report comes out and says 'if we do not eat mexican food at least once every month, and then we will have a heed-yak', we will see many mexican restaurants coming up in Kathmandu.

Many a times our discussions revolve around such topics. Yes, people, this is KUSOM.

To keep the records straight though, I am not bright either! But then, that's obvious.