and then I crashed my bike.

Exactly two weeks back, I took a spill coming down Pagemill road and that is all I know of it because I do not remember any of it. A passerby called 911 and I was admitted first to ER and then to the Neuro ICU of Stanford Hospital .

I remember being in physical pain but for some reason, I was in extremely good spirits. May be it was the morphine. May be it was the fact that all I needed to was sleep. I was in some sort of daze the whole time.

After I came back home, for the first week, I was unusually happy. May be it was the Vicodin. May be because all I needed to do was rest.  The second week, I had to start working and I hadn't expected that getting back to work would be so tough. Two days back, I couldn't  write a few lines of code without the head hurting. It was a massive effort to write one piece of code.

I never thought of brain as an organ that needs to be taken care of. Now I do not bombard it with too many inputs. I enjoy silence. I do not listen to music while working or driving. I do not drink.  I am not going to the movies. Not yet anyways.

Telangana: 29th state in the Republic of India

And I woke up this morning to the announcement of bifurcation of the state I was born in.  Some are elated, some are dejected and many are indifferent.  I could be indifferent but I have been having a terrible few days,  so I am taking vent on something that I cannot control instead of working on the things that I could possibly control.  The escapist in me cannot be put on a leash for a long time.

"Why Telangana?",  I asked Google. It brought me to this site: http://www.telangana.com/why_telangana.htm . It is written by Dr. Jayashanker. One who apparently started the movement  way back in the 1950's and wikipedia says he didn't marry for Telangana. The negativity in each of the answers in that link baffles me.  This is my opinion of his answers for the questions in the page I have linked to.

1. Please define justice. And also if by 50 years back, you mean you as a 6th grader refusing to sing a bloody song, then 15 years back I raised my voice against a plethora of things.

2. It is good that you have identified the problems that plague the region. But instead of fighting directly to solve the problem, you instead said, "Hey, lets get a new state. It takes a lot of money and actually cause some delays in addressing the problem, because you know we need to build this entirely new infrastructure for the new state. But still let's get a new state."

3. I am confused now. What's your point? Yes you have had people from Telangana but they did nothing. Then there was this guy who is from Telangana but not really, because you know he is a 'settler'. And then all these people from Rayalaseema who just had to cater to the rich people from Andhra.

4.  Yes sir, if that skinny kid can have candy so can you.

5. Are you kidding me ?  I was born in Hyderabad and *all* my ancestors, as far as I can trace back to, are from Telangana and I can assure you that those bloody xxx (you can fill in Nalgonda, Mahabubnagar, Malkaseema) are the most cunning, greedy a**holes and their customs are so bloody different from mine.

6. Now I am sure, nobody asked you that question but you asked it yourself so that you can have at least one answer which seems logical.

7. Because this time, we are not separating ourselves from the Madras Presidency where communication was becoming a huge pain in the a** and another language was being forced upon people.

8. Yes sir, we can just continue with our bad habits.

9.  "Telangana people subjected to ridicule wrt language" You need some sense of humor and may be a different set of friends.

10. Now I am getting bored. Refer to 6.

11.  Please show proof for the efforts you made to address the problems with in the framework and why and how you will be able to solve the problems with the formation of a new state.

12. Rulers? Who is appointing them?

13. 'These classes of people won't make any progress in the united AP'. Random assertions.

14. You need a wife.  I am sorry. My logic has failed me after reading your reasoning.

PS: I know you are supposed to not ridicule the dead but if this guy started the movement, I do hate him at the moment. 

The immigrant experience

I finished reading "The immigrant"  by Manju Kapur yesterday. Set in the 1970's its the story of a couple brought together by an arranged marriage. It is not a well written book by any standards. It has the stereotypical dysfunctions of a marriage but what makes it interesting to me is that it has aspects of being just an immigrant, not a married one, woven into the story.

Given the quality of writing, I was surprised to  come across the best summary of being an immigrant in this last paragraph of the book : "Perhaps that was the ultimate immigrant experience. Not that any one thing was steady enough to attach yourself to for the rest of your life, but that you found different ways to belong, ways not necessarily lasting, but ones that made your journey less lonely for a while. When something failed it was a signal to move on. For an immigrant there is no going back."

May be its not just the immigrant who feels that way. May it just resonates with me and I happen to be an immigrant.

Fight on

When people fight over things, there is almost always a negative judgement passed towards it.

When people fight over things, it must mean that they actually care about it. So people out there fighting over a toy,  a relationship, a person, I say I won't judge you unless I think what you are fighting for isn't worth fighting over.

Would that mean if I don't fight over something, I do not care for it? I just think I care for things which go above and beyond it.

They ask me, "How do you do it?"

I get that quite often being eternally single. I say its easy and not so easy at the same time. Coffee for the days, some endorphins for the evenings, alcohol for the nights, a few interesting people around and being a bit crazy helps.

Hey girl

" Write every day. Not every other day. Not tomorrow. Not after the party. But before. The more you write, the more comes out of you. If you don't give inspiration an opportunity, it will never arrive."
say Ethan Hawke. Not Ryan Gosling but a better version.

From being hung over to being extremely drunk

I guess that's what happens when I force myself to be too disciplined for over two months.

Started with MIT Sloan school of management's conference on the Digital Economy and ended with me passing out in a car. Actually started with me being hungover and ended with me passing out in my friend's car.

Grand Hyatt - blue bottle's cappuccino - rally pad - connor - rafael - Afterlife - ritual roasters - wild side west - Lexington - Elbo room- the bar beside the cat club - 6NDR309's backseat - the forgotten purse - the knock on the window - the opening of the door - a few long seconds and that my friend is the end of the night.

Well the missing parts are the car that I left in the city and the parking ticket that I found on the dashboard the next day.