Here comes the bride...

The first wedding I remember attending was my Uncle’s while I was just 8-9 years old. And that event left me with a lot of questions the most confusing of which was
"Why was the bride crying after saying good-bye to her relatives? After all their house was just a short walking distance from each other."

Though I got a rough idea after all these years, it was only today afternoon that I really got to know the exact feelings.

As usual I came to my room today after bunking the afternoon class and saw the movie The Father of the Bride on Star Movies. It was one of the famous movies that Ive kept in my watch-later list.
I had always thought it was hard for the daughters to move out from their parents after marriage, but the hardship from the part of the parent hardly gained my attention.
To be frank, after watching the movie I was terribly frightened to have a daughter – but I absolutely want to have one. But letting go... I can’t even think of it, even now.
I know I’m a bit young to be thinking about my daughter’s marriage (have got a long list to get through before that… getting out of college, finding a job, meeting someone, getting someone, getting married, having kids and then their marriage... a really long list.) but I know one day I would be there in George Banks’ (Steve Martin) shoes.
I don’t know what to say, its terrible isn’t it?
So terrible that I find myself saying OMG every time I think about it, which is weird because I happened to be an atheist.
How can anyone accept the sad truth that someone whom you have loved so much (and in reverse too) is one fine day no longer yours.
This movie says it all.
I really hate that part of life where you have to let go of those whom you love the most.

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My Work - The Lonely Lady

Finally, it’s over…

I’ve kept this picture half completed for a very long time... I’ve started drawing this during the study leave of the previous university exam I had. But I never got neither the time nor the mindset to complete it until now...

The background is a bit... what do u call... untidy... I have to admit that I was a bit hasty to complete that I never give it enough dedication…

Im adding this section in response to the request from Dewdrop( see comment section) to add what i had in mind while drawing this picture.

What i had in mind while drawing this picture was almost the same as she had thought.Ill start from the beginning.

It was while watching the Evanescence Album "My Immortal" that i got the idea of drawing this picture... see the cloth covering over her right palm ( same that that in the album). Well as Dewdrop had said, the time is a somewhat like 18-19 century.. i consider that period as the best time ever.. in terms of art or what ever it is. Well i had indented to draw her reading a letter from her husband who had gone away for a war or something. But i accidentally drew her fingers in a closed position, so i had to crumble the letter.

I also thought of drawing a rose by her side.. near the leaf. I remember drawing the outline too.. But the picture was completed in several stages due to lack of time, so it somehow got left out. In fact it was right now, that i found out it wasnt there.

And for the background, i thought of drawing a part of a building wall at first, but it was due to some well... technical aspect ( distance from the tank..) i had to decide otherwise.

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Honest Scrap Award

Ive just been awarded the Honest Scrap Award by Tina. And Im really greatful to her for giving me my very first award.

It was today morning that i saw the scrap from her and im still in cloud 9. It really lightened up my day.. which was supposed to be a very dull day, coz i had my exams today..

I need to fulfill some requirements before i can pass this along to another fellow blogger.To quote from Tina’s blog, here are the requirements:

“This award is bestowed upon a fellow blogger whose blog’s content or design is, in the giver’s opinion, brilliant.”

“When accepting this auspicious award, you must write a post bragging about it, including the name of the misguided soul who thinks you deserve such acclaim, and link back to the said person so everyone knows she/he is real. Choose a minimum of seven (7) blogs that you find brilliant in content or design. Or improvise by including bloggers who have no idea who you are because you don’t have seven friends. Show the seven random victims’ names and links and leave a harassing comment informing them that they were prized with Honest Weblog. Well, there’s no prize, but they can keep the nifty icon. List at least ten (10) honest things about yourself. Then pass it on!”

So here goes the 10 honest things about me:

1. I dont like dogs... or.. the right thing would be im afraid fo them. It started right from when i was about 4-5 years old when I visited my grandparents in Perinad. My grand mother was doing something outside the house and ran to her. What i didnt see was the neighbour's dog near her and it started running after me. I remember running in circles with this dog.. whose name happened to be Danger btw.. chasing me. May be it was just playing, but it really scared the sh*t out of me. Since that incident when ever i see a dog, my heart beat climbs to staggering heights. I think ive even heart my own heart beat once.. that was not the only time i was chased by dogs - once i was chased by my Aunt's dog till i climbed a wall to get away from. "It just wants to play with you" was all i got as a reward for all my athletic work. Like Chandler in F.R.I.E.N.D.S, i consider them jumpy and unpredictable.

2. I luuuuuuv pencil sketching.. though i do painting once a while its pencil drawing that im really interested in. But after getting into college am not getting enough time to draw.. even if i start on a work, i may not complete it.. one is still with me waiting for the final touches..

3. Saurav Ganguly was my favourite cricketer, and still is. I wont say he is the best ever player like most Dada fans, but he is one among the best and no one can deny it. I became his fan after watching him getting clean bowled on the very first ball of the innings.. that was a looong time ago when i was under the spell of Jayasurya. May be it was his looks that attracted me, or his incomparable batting style, but i was his fan ever since.

4. Regarding moves, i like thrillers and those with bitter endings.. the climax of Priyadarshan's Vandanam is one of my favourites. In real life, i dont think everything has a " happily ever after" ending.

5. Though i love to be with my friends or someone around me, i absolutely cherish the moments i spend alone. I well.. sort of speak to myself during those times.. no i dont have any loose nuts

6. Oprah Winfrey Show is one of my favourite talk shows.. i love that woman.

7. I like almost all kinds of music... from melodious to ROCK, Linkin Park and Evanescence being my favourites. I dont understand why most people just enjoy one form and critisize the other without even caring to alteast hear one.

8. My passion for doing things changes every time.. if its.. well studying Java this now, it would be web desing or networking (read hacking) after a while. It a bit disturbing sometimes..

9. I hate lying and liars.. I never do it, coz how can you look at the person concerned if he finds out what you have said or done. I really hate it.

10. Im a die hard Harry Potter fan.. and most importantly im not ashamed to say that to others.. i get a lot of teasing from my friends for this.. But i really dont care.

Now here are 7 of my friends who i believe deserve this award.

Life is BEAUTIFUL...
SPARK
Valiant Expressions
Moments today... Memories tomorrow!!!
Ruminations..
iPosts
Evincere...overcome

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I'll never let go..

" A day would come wen u wud walk thru the large gate, on the lonely white path with dry leaves dancing in air, trees swaying in the breeze, away from the place where once love was made..smiles shared.. hearts broken.. tears spilled. Passing out, u wud feel the essence of unknown emotions.. then wen u step into ur lonely classroom with time to spare, only memories wud be there with u, u wud realize dat HEAVEN was HERE, just years before.
ENJOY COLLEGE LIFE! "

I get a lot of such campus messages daily. Passing out of college has always been a hard thing when u think about it. And the worst part is that horrible moment is getting close - only one more year in this wonderful college.

Almost everyone considers their college life as the best days of their life and im no different. But something tells me that its not entirely true. Its about my school life that im talking about – SNPS. It was the place I spend the best 12 years of my life. I cannot tell through words the connection I had with that place.. how homely I felt within those walls. Sadly that is something I don’t feel with my college right now. Of course im more free and have a lot of friends in my college than in my school. But its about the psychological attachment I had with the place.. the structure.. the soul of my school. I know each and every nook and corner of my school and when im inside, I feel just like being at home.. There never was any strangeness.

I used the “was” deliberately… lately it felt different.

Yes.. I went back to my school some time ago.. and felt different - heart breakingly different. For the first time in my life, I felt like a stranger in my own school. Before, I was a part of it, a part of a great institution.. now its not the same, every thing seems different. Strange eyes staring at me.
May be its because of the new students there, or the absence of some of my favourite teachers, or because of the changes it had underwent during my absence, or still may be because i was no longer a student there.
It no longer the place I would have gladly called home.
Now I don’t want to go back there. Not because I don’t like it.. but because I don’t want to experience the strange feeling about my school ever again.

It really hurts to think that im breaking away from the best years of my life. I don’t think I will ever come at least close to such a great place. Of course I love my college, but I just don’t feel the same. May be its because of the 12 to 3 year difference..
or may be I don’t want to feel the same way.

SNPS was like my second home and I really want it to remain the same forever.

I dont want to let go of it and I’ll never let go.

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To be on the other side..

We all tend to think that we are the most normal person around.. according to us we are neither too bad or too good.
There is a small joke based on this

"Have you ever noticed that the ones who are driving slower than you is an idiot and those who are faster are maniacs?"

We dont expect bad or unnatural to happen to us.. those are for the other unfortunate people around us.
That was what I always thought when I heard about other people's online accounts getting hacked. More than once had I seen my friends change their google or orkut accounts after getting hacked.

It could never happen to me. Im always cautions and will never do stupid things.

That was my thought. But it all changed last week.
After college I went out with one of my friends to buy something.. a book or something. I usually use my mobile to check my email.So that day while waiting for the bus back, I saw an email from a site called SocialSpark asking me to approve a comment I got for my blog post. I had registered to a great lot of blog directories and promtion sites and thought it was one of those..actually.. i think i never gave it a second thought.
So I went to the link the had send which asked me to sign in. I should have stopped right there, but i dont really know how i got that stupid and gave my email address and password. It only struck me when i had clicked on the sign in button, but that was it - the page just refreshed and I felt like a lightning bolt had just struck me.
While on the bus, I tried to access my accound through my mobile which I was able to do for some time because of the cache saved on my phone or something. And I tried to change the password, hoping that the the hackers had not employed an automated password reset mechanism. If they hadnt employed one, it would definitly buy me time. But infact they had and i couldnt access my account after a while. It was one of the most terrible moments of my life. My Google account gone.. along with it all my contacts and other accounts including orkut, blogger, paypal, ebay etc.
The fact that i was in the bus and had no means of getting a computer at that moment was like more nails to the coffin. I tried to contact my brother and asked him to do something, but he too could not be free for a while. I had lost all hope and as a last resort called my mother back home and asked her to try logging into my account giving her my old useless password. But she too couldnt and by that time we had reached the stop. As soon as I got down from the bus, I ran to the nearby cafe.
I went to the Google Accounts Help and from there I used the reset your password option to reset my password. The activation link would be sent to my alternate email address. To be frank, it was at that moment that I really understood the importance of the alternate email.
They sent the link to my yahoo mail address and i got my good old google account back.
But somethings still bothers me. Why isnt Google using an image verification option for changing our password? I am sure that after getting my password, it was changed by automatic means and if they had used an image verification, the bots wouldnt be able to reset it. And another thing is that, it was such an easy method to get your accound back, but then why are so many people getting a new account after getting hacked?
Another important thing is that by losing our google account we lose a lot more than just a few contacts or detail, since Google own a lot of other sites that we use like Orkut, Blogger, Picasa, Youtube etc we lose them all. This shows how much we are dependent on a single company called Google.

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The Invisible Labyrinth

Everything and everyone around me tells me that we live in the best of times..There was an article in this month's Readers's Digest about it giving reasons for it like reduced work hours, technological developments, and even a more peaceful society (...?).

But I always fantasied about being born long ago.. probably in the middle ages,I think that was the time we had more freedom.. as an individual.

Stories about ambitious men following their passion or dream had always caught my admiration. It is true that we have had large scale technological development after that period, but at the same time we have created an invisible labyrinth around ourself, doing just what we are supposed to do..

No more following your dreams, just following the crowd.

Most of us walk within these allowed paths right from childhood till our ends..
From as long as I can remember, I have been doing the same thing... waking up in the morning and going to school and coming back in the evening..almost all days of the year. I thought it would change after I get into college..but No..College was no different.
What about after college?

The only thing I can see is the same old invisible labyrinth that is restricting me from being who I really want to be. After college I would probably be placed in some company.. again doing the same thing I all these years.. going out in the morning and coming back at night. The same labyrinth but with a different pattern.

How can anyone enjoy life inside such a cocoon? We celebrate after freedom every year, but forgets the numerous ways by which we are encapsulated.
Unfortunately, I along with all around me are forced to followed path prescribed by the well oiled machinery.

May be this is what they refer to as developed civilization.. but i would call it prison service!

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