aditya kumar's weblog

I, and with me this blog, have been experiencing a blogging slowdown of sorts. Lots of things going on, so many things to write about (including justified anger directed to my employer and an impending Java exam) but all that will have to wait because I have been invariably spending a good part of the day in BMTC volvos coming and going to office.

You should read this piece at tehelka, a perspective on the now infamous Nira Radia tapes. Another article on the same website, some comprehensive research and we have the life and times of Nira Radia, the lady herself, here. I doubt if I have ever heard of any other woman who has (had?) “so much fire in her belly”, as the author put it. If I had known the lady, I would have given her only one advice — slow down, baby.

Oh well, I am experiencing that first hand right now.

Enough stuff to ponder upon, so read up those links and you would be left thinking, just like me.

Fellow blogger Dilip D’Souza’s third book is coming out in a few weeks from now. It is called, “Roadrunner: An Indian Quest in America”. Dilip blogs about it, here.

The book is a result of his road trips in America. Some of his writing from those trips made way to his blog and I have read most of them, over the years. I always felt that he sees America the same way as U2’s Bono does — You know, not the kind of America that bombs Iraq but the kind of America that says, “Hey, that moon is a beautiful thing — lets go there, take a walk on it”.

Because America is amusing and at times, even misunderstood. Because America is much more than Bush, Obama, CNN and Hollywood. It is in those posts that Dilip’s insight unveils a face of America that needs to be discovered more. Suddenly, America is fascinating.

And it is exactly the reason I am looking forward to this book.

Update: The old theme is back :)

Don’t be surprised.

This blog has just gone through a successful upgrade. Apparently, the old theme is no longer supported and so what you see is the default WordPress theme. Depending on my patience level, I might just have to get a new one or make the old one work.

Till the time I get things in order, please bear.

Meanwhile, I hope this new year brings hope and peace to the world you and I live in. Have a good year.

More later.

Meanwhile a bunch of interesting links that I’d like you to visit:

Caferati and livejournal have come up with a new contest. Its flash fiction. And the topic is “journal”. The end date is 7-September. Some of the prizes include serious cash, a chance to get a Livejournal paid account and a chance to see your story in print. I tell you, check this one out. Here.

Shradha visits Golkonda fort and blogs about it here. Picture blogging, this.

Fellow blogger Sneha has this acrylic work. One of the best that I have seen in recent times.

Meanwhile, traveling in the USA, Dilip comes across what they claim to be, “The most honest place in the world”. Turns out, it might as well be. Read it here.

Taking an (enforced) break from the world wide web and blogging (and email, youtube…). As the blogposts (to be read) pile up my inbox there was one email (blog posting alert that is) that caught my attention. Subject: Gas Consumption: California vs. China, India. This post from Sepiamutiny.com throws an interesting and probably alarming statistic — That California consumes more Gasoline per year than China or India.

But, at least with transportation fuel, you’d be wrong. California alone uses more gasoline than any country in the world (except the US as a whole, of course). That means California’s 20 billion gallon gasoline and diesel habit is greater than China’s! (Or Russia’s. Or India’s. Or Brazil’s. Or Germany’s.)

This excerpt is from another blog that the sepiamutiny post links to. Read the whole thing here.

Read it.

Alright, for the few who have been following up with this blog, perhaps you did notice a little change, eh? Well, nothing much has changed. The WordPress version is now updated to 2.3. My loyalty to “The Journalist” WordPress Theme remains and I shall be ever thankful to Lucian Marin for creating it. The change in look, however, is a result of “upgrading” the theme to its latest version. It still remains true to its simplicity, I must say.

More later.

So what was it? The biggest break I have ever had since I started blogging?

My work has kept me off all the things I like to do whenever I have some time to spare. It reminds me of my “fresher” days when, on weekdays, I used to come home for 8-10 hours. I used to be busy. Now, apart from being busy, I am under stress. As it has dawned upon me, I have realized that there is a difference between being busy and being in stress.

A couple of times, these last few days, I did log-in to the dashboard of my blog. I reached out to write. I stared at the “Write Post” screen and it stared back at me. I had that time to jot in a few lines but somehow I lost the courage to overcome that small block that I had stumbled upon. I wanted to write, write something but I failed. You know, its one of those things that I have always told to people who want to start blogging– you can’t force yourself to write. Until it comes from within, you don’t want to write. Even if you try to, you can do it once, maybe twice but not forever. Then there is this problem of “who-reads-my-blog-anyway” mindset. It’s one of the most difficult things to deal with. Together, these reasons are collectively responsible for most of the blogs biting the dust.

Since it is seldom that I do personal rants here, it becomes all the more difficult for me to come over phases like these. I am more comfortable talking about socio-economic cycles prevailing in the society and that requires that I keep a tab on matters related. I fail here again, (lack of) time being the culprit.

My problem is that I take my reading, writing and traveling too seriously. It has been a part of me always and I think of these activities as my extension. It discomforts me and I feel guilty when I am not able to do justice to these.

I talk about it all the time, I know, but these days software writing has become such a mess that I wonder, at times, if I’d like to do it all my life. The few people I know, who are qualified enough to give an opinion on it, laugh at me. They find it funny that I still consider the possibility of being in software all my life. So I have a feeling that somewhere down the line, I’d find myself at crossroads. But I hope that I’d be able to take a cue from the experience of these guys who are so sure about shifting off from software now and who, by then, must’ve dealt with the same kind of situation(s) I’ll be dealing with, during my time.

So what I have been up to then? These days, I am converting my sleep hours to currency notes, subject to the discretion of my manager, of course. I am selling my sleep,thats what I have been up to. I know a lot of people are probably doing it too and they don’t have a problem with that. They say, in a way, I am living the American dream.

But I want to read. I want to write. I want to take a week off and go to the sea. I want to sleep.