Windows 7

Been using Windows 7 for a couple of weeks now, and I must say this is MS' best effort yet. Very smooth and fast. Boot up and shut down times are down to less than a minute even with AV and sundry programs and all or almost all software that I am wont to use run perfectly on it, even some of Win XP vintage. Haven't used the libraries much yet but the search functionality is well implemented and it gives you more features than previous iterations. The Aeropeek and similar addons to the GUI are thoughtful and work really well. I find myself using them all the time since I have multiple windows open quite frequently. The floating gadgets are also a much better option than Vista's sidebar. But the one thing that I always marvel at is the speed of the system. Having gotten used to yawn inducing boot-up times from the XP days, I love the fact that I switch on my desktop as soon as I reach home and it's up and running by the time I take my boots off. In contrast my laptop running Vista takes almost 4 minutes to bootup. Of course it's an aging machine so there's no comparison but still it pleases me!

Compatibility issues are also handled more efficiently now and you have to option to go online to search for drivers/solutions. UAC is less obtrusive, thankfully! All in all, it's a nice bit of software and works quite well.

I've read that Win7 is what Vista was meant to be. Many features that you find in Win7 were originally planned for Vista but time constraints and an ever-increasing gap since WinXP came out caused its premature release. Maybe that's true and if so, it speaks volumes for MS' unconcern for its customers, saddling their customers with a half-baked product and forcing them to upgrade further within a couple of years. But I never really found Vista hamstrung in any way. People have complained to me day in and day out about how it's not smooth, that there are compatibility issues and it's not stable and what not. Mostly I hear that it's just not good enough. Of course when I have asked for what specific problems these people have faced with Vista I get non-committal grunts, and half explanations about how they've heard bad things about Vista. The one problem I did find was Vista's incompatibility with SQL server and many commercial apps (not too sure which, but those were the only concrete answers I got, from IT people in various sectors). But for the average homeuser, I don't know what the brouhaha is all about. It was a fine piece of software and worked well. Of course, Win7 works better but Vista was an improvement over XP too. So it is with every new version of any software. Vista was just a victim of bad publicity more than anything else in my view.

Not that I am a fan of MS in any sense of the word. I have read what they/ve donein the past with Netscape and what they tried to do with other SW manufacturers with XPs launch (I remember they weren't allowing any non MS service icon on the desktop) and how they've coerced PC makers to exclude various software programs from their OEM set. But with all the calumny poured upon them and rightly so, they still had come out with a good piece of programming with Vista and they still got pasted!

Justice indeed

18 months is all he got. For molesting a poor defenceless girl, for getting her expelled from school for complaining, for making her life so miserable that she committed suicide, for falsely accusing and imprisoning her brother and humiliating him, for threatening her father and friend and anyone who dared stand up to support her. For all these crimes he got 18 months in prison; which I'm sure he'll pass in relative luxury as befits one who has 'contacts' at the highest level in the police and politics.

If ever there was a case in recent memory that exposed the rotting mould of corruption eating away at our country's very foundations, it was this. Time after time it was shown how every politician and every policeman supported this man in his heinous crime and shielded him from any and all repercussions while commending him for his 'services'. No matter who was in power, this man was safe. It was bastardy of the vilest sort. This man could subvert the whole system and direct it at one helpless girl who had dared to stand up against him. And in the end he got away with it, with barely a rap on the knuckles.

As a teenager, when I felt I knew pretty much everything there was to know in the world, I thought I had grown quite cynical and jaded with the world. I wrote poems about it, talked about it with friends over drinks and generally behaved in the most blasé fashion possible. I had, of course no idea what an education in cynicism and callousness the world had prepared for me! Now, ten years removed from college and five years since I left the hostel, I find myself realising what cynicism truly means. How it feels to look at everything with mistrust and to question each and every action. To doubt every person you come in contact with, even people I am here to cure and heal, what to talk about colleagues! I used to think that it was the vagaries of life that had made me sad and had smothered the happy soul inside me. now I realise that I am not so much sad as devoid of happiness. The unadulterated joys of youth I now experience through a thick sheen of tiredness and bitterness. I look further, I look deeper; not for the hidden comforts in tragedies, but for the phantoms of sorrow in pleasures. And find them I do, for I am a skilled searcher. I see a pristine pond in front of me and I muddy the waters, I see the rainbow in the sky and I put on my sunglasses, I see arms spread wide in welcome and dream up hidden daggers in the sleeves……

Blank Diaries..

I wrote once ages ago, when I used to write a diary, a proper paper one, that there is no more empty feeling than sitting in front of a blank piece of paper. I don't lay claim to be the originator of this quote, I'm sure someone said it before me. But the meaning I meant to convey then still rings true even though the UHVPN diary has been replaced by this laptop and my trusty Reynolds 045 by this touch type keyboard.

You feel so desolate when the white page stares back at you unstained, as if rebuking and mocking you for not having a word to write. When I had begun writing that old diary way back in '93, it was a Herculean task. I'd start every entry with, "I don't know what to write". Then later I got into the habit and filled in pages after pages. Of course, most of what I penned down was what I recollected of my school days. Small incidents, fights, games, the fun we had, everything I could remember. I felt a great sadness at leaving school. On the one hand was the excitement of going to college and not having to wear uniforms and being able to bunk classes, but on the other hand there were the pangs of sorrow at separating from so many of my close friends. Having been in the same school from kindergarten to matriculation, I had put down roots, as it were, there. I had had the same teachers, the same friends, the same everything for over 10 years, and 10 of the formative years of my life. So I knew I was going to miss it all. So I wanted to remember all of it, and I set about penning down what I fancifully called my 'memoirs' every day. At the time I had thought it was just an excuse for me to have something to write everyday. Looking back at it though, I am so thankful I did! So many little instances and events, things I'd never have remembered if I hadn't put them down bring so much joy to me as I read through them again.

Of course as time passed and I grew both older and into the habit of writing a diary, my entries grew more personal and introspective. Rather than just mentioning what had happened, I would talk about what I felt and why I thought I felt it. Then when I was going through a very rough patch in '97, my writing was cathartic to me. All the self doubts that plagued me came out of my pen to taint the pages in front of me and I felt somewhat cleansed. My diary, as an extension of my own self, became the friend and counsellor I desperately needed at that time in my life.

Once I was out of the hostel though, things took a different shape and circumstances got way out of my hand. I tried to regain in the habit during MS, but couldn't. A few entries here and there were the most I could manage. Now it's been ages since I wrote my diary and I wonder if I have a lost a big part of me with it.

Had planned to write my third and final instalment on 'The Argumentative Indian", but reading has taken a back-seat to driving to work, as it were. I had thought of a lot to say about Sen's views on the Indian N-bomb, but I've forgotten most of it and will have to go through that chapter again.

Read a few blogs the other day. Neha politely informed me that the way to get people reading my blog was to read and follow other's posts. Saw that Jyoti had a blog and went through it. She hasn't been quite active on it lately, though I'm one to say! Went through Lisa Ray's entries too and read about her struggle with Multiple Myeloma. How her marrow transplant felt like and how she fought to maintain a positive outlook towards life. In one of her latest entries from Rishikesh, she talks about how she longs to live and enjoy life longer! Now that's a sentence I get to hear from so many people, but it's so poignant when I hear it from a person about to die, who's sure to die. I saw it in my brother-in-law as he was diagnosed with a particularly malignant tumour and tried to combat it briefly, before it took his life this March. Even though my wife and I never told him just how bad the situation was (and it was bad, with brain metastasis and multiple lesions in the lung), and for a brief period when he was responding to the chemotherapy and radiotherapy he believed us, he knew his end was near. It was pitiful to see him wishing for a few more years of life so he could better provide for his wife and son who he was leaving destitute, or almost so. I knew that he had scant months to live. That every day was a miracle, the way the tumour was pressing on the vital centres of the brain. It was sad to see him begging for life and knowing that there was nothing that could be done for him. We weren't very close so it wasn't a specific response but a more general one but I could see how very unfortunate it was.

I wonder how it would be to die young. When I look at the future, I think of all I have planned for it, a house, another car, a den for myself which would be my personal retreat, growing older and retiring, and finally enjoying the life I have worked hard to achieve. What if I were to die tomorrow? Or if I got to know that I had an incurable disease and would die soon? How would I react? A part of me, the tired, jaded part of me says I would take the news resignedly. What have I to live for anyway? I'm not doing anything so momentous that my dying would take away something from a great deal of people. Then I start wondering what that last moment would be like. Lying on my death bed, waiting for the last breath to leave my body, wondering how my consciousness would fade… would my hearing go first or my vision? Would I be blind and deaf, or would I hallucinate about events long past? Would I feel the pain of leaving behind my loved ones or would my brain be too out of order to do that? What would my last thought be and how would it fade? Slowly merging into oblivion or suddenly ceasing in mid-flow?