I was speaking to my friend Manju the other day, and she was asking about my new life in a new city. She asked me to blog about my thoughts on Ernakulam. Being one of the few people I have found more fanatical than me about my hometown, Trivandrum, her demand was that I do some match fixing and say that Trivandrum is way better :) . Well I’ll try my best to be neutral, so here it goes.. My thoughts on Ernakulam compared with the other cities I have stayed in for some length.

What I like most about the city is that it is really close to the sea. That scores a big plus in my books. There are plenty of places were you can stroll along the sea-shore or enjoy the sea breeze or just sit there – I can watch the sea for endless eternity. These are things I really missed in Bangalore and Plochingen. This doesn’t score a point above Trivandrum though – plenty of places there too to do the same things.

Plus there are plenty of shopping areas around here. That’s not high on my list of priorities, but it does help. It presents itself as a very bubbly city, which is great for me. It may not be a Bangalore in this respect, but definitely good enough. Both Trivandrum and Plochingen are laid back cities, which also works, but at this point of my life.. hmm.. I prefer ‘bubbly’ over ‘laid-back’ :).

What I really don’t like is the traffic here. Horrible. I survived Bangalore and I thought that was worst I would see. Ernakulam beats all that – with 1/5th of the vehicles of Bangalore – now that’s an achievement! And the driving culture here is even worse. I don’t think I’ve seen it this bad in any other place I’ve been to. I am now even more scared crossing roads – nobody ever stops here!

Another bad thing is that I find a lot of people here imitating cosmopolitanism (if there’s a word like that); despite the city not really being what you would describe as cosmopolitan. It all ends up looking very artificial. I don’t know – KFC-s, Baristas and multiplexes seem like a mismatch here. Maybe that’s just a feeling that’ll go away.

Overall I think the city will grow on me, just like the other new places did. It’s just as good as the other places I’ve stayed in. What makes a city unforgettable are the number of friends you have there and I had a few in all those special places I’ve stayed in before. I guess I’ve already started that process here. So maybe, it’s just a matter of time, before I fall in love with this place too!.

Edward Luce’s In Spite of the Gods – The Strange Rise of Modern India, is a brutally neutral perspective about India from an outsider’s point of view. It is not another fanboy account of India and its spirituality, neither does it make a punching bag out of my country. But despite my inner self telling me that most of what he said was true, the patriot (fanboy if you may) in me wanted to refuse to believe some of the stuff in the book. I was half way through the book as my train pulled into Trivandrum Central…

It had rained non-stop for 4 hours; that was ample time for the entire area around the railway station to get flooded, again. There wasn’t a way out with water everywhere. My dad had come to pick me, but there was no way that he could drive up to the station, unless our Maruthi could instantly transform itself into a hovercraft. So he parked up 1 km away on higher ground and waited. I was getting restless so I decided to wade through the water and walk to the place. So laptop on one hand and a heavy bag of clothes in the other, I started the painful journey. I soon realized that it was such a stupid thing to do, but by then I had already passed the point of no-return. One broken slab somewhere, and I would have atleast fractured a leg. Thankfully nothing happened and I found our car after half an hour of swimming in the city center.

Driving back, I now had no doubt about what Mr. Luce had said about our government. It really is a mystery how our country runs. The ‘water’ problem of Thampanoor (the railway station and surrounding areas) is legendary. I’ve been hearing about this since I learnt to put 2 and 2 together. With all this technology around and Trivandrum even trying to be twinned up with Barcelona (ha!) its just amazing that our administration is not able to solve this pre-historic problem. I have read about many a project trying to fix this problem, spending millions of rupees, but to what end? 15 minutes of rain (no, I am not exaggerating) and Thampanoor becomes a lake.

I’ve always been of the opinion that its not right to keep blaming the system for every flaw and doing nothing ourselves as citizens. But there are somethings that the system has to work out by itself. This is just a prime example. It’s so sad, so much public money went to the drain (pun intended) for no use. Maybe its true, as Luce implies and as one of my colleagues quipped, if the problem is solved, how will the government ‘servants’ fill their pockets? No more flooding = no more projects = no more money to steal.

For the love of my city, someone with power please do something. I feel powerless, except to shout. :(

Not my original idea.. but this is cool …

… and I can show off only while it lasts ;)

Try it yourself; if you lack the trust :p

Your first company, the one that handed you your first paycheck, is always special. And for me Bosch was special; not just for that but for a lot of other reasons too.

For starters it gave me my first glimpse into the real world of software engineering. It taught me a lot of things; that I didn’t know existed before; it taught me professionalism; and above all it gave me a lot of new friends. But all good things has to come to an end one day and last friday was that for me.

And it was not just Bosch I had to say bye to – also to the city that was my home for 4 years. I had reservations about Bangalore when I first came in; but looking back at it; hmm.. it was an awesome place. The fun we had.. the many friends I gained.. I’m eternally indebted to this city for all that. It was a great experience to say the least. There were many unforgettable incidents; many great memories; some bad ones; but I think I would remember the good ones longer than the others. And that’s what matters.

So adieu Bangalore; as I go on to explore the challenges of Gurgaon and then Kochi. And adieu Bosch, and to the challenges of mobMe.

Last time I went home, I was browsing through a treasure chest of old photo albums. Among them I noticed a few pictures of my dad and his friends when they visited Agra and the Taj Mahal; some 30 years ago. They all looked so special; capturing the excitement of each moment perfectly.

My thoughts went to the thousands of photographs I had taken over the years with my camera. Did those photographs have those qualities? Off course, some of them do, but they are lost within the numerous ordinary ones I had taken. Cameras have come a long way since my dad’s bachelor days, the technology has improved beyond recognition – but have they lost that magic touch? During the age of the film camera; you always thought twice before clicking. You always waited for the right moment, adjusted the frame to the right position, because each click made a dent in your pocket. Digital cameras? Who cares; click, click, click. Maybe one of them will be your perfect shot. You will think, I’ll delete the others later. Usually ‘later’ comes quite late, and invariably your patience runs out while trying to weed out all those unwanted pictures and those real gems get caught in a pile of junk. Years later you will find yourself in the same situation as I am – a few hundred good pictures in a total of ten thousand; faced with that daunting task called as ‘filtering’.

So what do we do? I have a solution. Take prints of your best photos. As soon as you are about to transfer those pics from your camera earmark the best ones and take those prints. It brings back economics into photography. And now you are forced to think twice; just like the good old days. You’ll be left with a few albums of those nice clicks; that you can enjoy over and over again. I know the environmentalist in me is screaming inside; but hey; it is only a few sheets of paper; I’ll make it up some other way. Or you tell me another solution; this is the only one I have :)