2K5 ROCKZ

by Ram V. Nampoothiri

“I LOVE MY FRIENDS THEY ARE MY STRENGTH. I WILL ALWAYS STAND BY THEM, IRRESPECTIVE OF THEIR DEEDS, AND EVEN IF I GET SCREWED UP, I DON’T CARE COZ IT’S THE NAIL THAT STANDS UP WHICH GETS THE HAMMERING"

The 'About Me' ramblings in Orkut profiles usually don't hold much value as one's character sketches, but the above is entirely true about him.

Short. Well-built. Fast-receding hairline. White shirt with pink-flowers, or blue with a huge Metallica print on the back and a zipper over the chest. Designer jeans with carefully made out tears all over. You can easily spot him from a mile away amongst the medico crowd, that is if he comes to college. But his appearance is the least important thing about him. He has his own unique take on anything under the sun – from medicine to politics to sports. And that made us hit it off together. I found that I could converse, debate, argue and laugh with him on anything hours on end without either of us feeling a wee bit bored. He has this rare gift of putting people at ease.

His exploits on the cricket field are widely known. Colour-blind he may be, but he pumped up Anwar into hitting a few sixes and even smashed a four himself (God knows how?!) on our road to winning the cup. What isn't known to many is his brilliant chess game. I looked like an idiot betting against this district player over a game with one of my pals. I lost the bet, of course, and he won a bottle of sprite and a lot of my admiration.

Another day, he greeted me with this question:

“Dude, heard about the quiz?”

“Ya.”

“How about we team up?”

“Sure.”

And off we went, without even a microscopic amount of preparation between us, sailing through the preliminaries on top and finishing third in the final. We were the third-best team in the college, but the fun we had was the best part.

A party freak, he is also a pretty good dancer, as we found out from Caterpillars at Genesis 2006. His remarkable organizing skills came to the fore during our three college tours so far. Without losing his temper even once, and without a single heated exchange with anyone, he made sure that we enjoyed three flawless tours to the max, all the while having a whale of a time himself. Not your typical burned-out impresario. Oh yeah, and he occasionally scoots off on unplanned stress-buster trips with his close pals.

In case you're wondering what's so special about being a popular, high-spirited college guy, there's one thing that truly sets him apart from the rest – he stands up unselfishly for people – his friends, his classmates. All of us know his super-fast attendance-taking and zipping through the registers, but only a few know about the mess he landed in as our rep, after we mass-bunked an average exam. The only time that he has gotten angry was when one of our classmates got beaten up in a row. In the events and the brawl that followed, he cut his radial artery and underwent an emergency vascular surgery and hospitalization for a couple of weeks. All for a pal. And some say a high made him do all that. I can assure you that he was extremely sober that night when he went to seek retribution for our mate. ViKu Sir later described him in the incident as “Look, these are actions which make a difference to the society we live in. Change for the better or worse I cannot say, but change certainly he has brought about, and you should all be proud of him.”

There are two kinds of brilliant people in this world – the ones whose heads rule over their hearts and those whose hearts rule over their heads. The former become highly successful and famous in life. The latter touch more lives than others and spread happiness and contentment, and become a part of our very souls.

“As we complete four years of acquaintance and friendship, I realize that you belong to the second group, mate. And I'm proud to have you as a pal. You're totally AWESOME, and then some.”

Moving on to the other end of the spectrum…..

She is short, cute and plump. And quiet. So silent, you wouldn’t realize her existence even though she has been around you for the past four years. She has a perfect attendance during the theory classes but the register doesn’t reflect it, and this is probably because the guy taking the attendance fails to hear her answer her name from the front row, where she sits in all these classes. Now you know how quiet she is. To make the contrast more obvious with the guy mentioned in the first part of this article, she dresses in the most simple, down to earth manner that one can possibly imagine, with absolutely no trace of jewellery, not even an earring, on her body.

However the most characteristic feature that sets her apart from everyone else is the pace of her speech and gait which, I’m afraid is really, really S-L-O-W. Except when she’s inside the exam hall answering viva questions where, (as the marks might reflect!!!) I think she answers them all a little too quickly.

An extremely God-fearing person, she is also very homely and gets very, very homesick if she doesn’t visit “Mama” at least once in a couple of weeks. That she hails from the same city as the hero of this article, leaves me wondering how different people, hailing from the same region, who studied in schools very near to each other, can turn out to be.

You don’t expect to see her on class tours, neither do you expect to see her dancing during DJ night. You will never see her involved in any sort of sport nor in your wildest dreams do u expect her to have her own Orkut profile. But you need people like this in the unit, always. To give you completed records to copy from, to teach you something on the morning of the practicals and to answer all the questions put forward by professors during classes to the unit. Why is it that everybody who notices her, talks to her or studies with her, likes her so much? Is it because of her willingness to help you, her simplicity or her down-to-earth modesty? None. People adore her when they see her universal love for all, and idolize her, when they realize the happiness she gets by helping others.

I’ve now described a couple of our classmates to you. These two superb and extra-ordinarily brilliant pals of mine couldn’t be more different from each other, whatever parameters you may measure them with. Except for one - A Heart of Pure Gold.

Myhandle.com lets users set up a one-stop e-mail address for various e-mail accounts.

After registering a handle, users need to sync it up with their accounts and invite people to join their network.

This forwarding service sends all mail to one place, so it does not matter how many times someone changes their e-mail address.

On this site you can find out what is a fair taxi fare from A to B in many major cities around the world.

There are currently 18 cities listed and there is a form at the bottom of the homepage for you to make your expansion suggestions.

You pick a city using the drop down menu then put your start and end points in the search boxes provided.

After a short wait, the fare estimate and a map of the journey will appear.

I have discovered this site from Google that helps put our minds at rest about personal information.

Google Alerts lets you input anything you want to know about if it appears on the web, including your own name, credit card number, bank details.

All you do is input the data you want to watch out for and confirm the alert e-mail when you receive it.

So every time Google's mammoth indexing system finds mention of it, an alert is sent to your e-mail inbox.

The best personalized homepages on the world wide web according to an article in Tech2 are

1. iGoogle: Something which needs no introduction as the introduction is given by Google homepage itself which is the most watched page in the entire net.
2. Pageflakes: A great personalize with lots of widget applications and faster than you can believe. But supporting only a few google applications.
3. Netvibes: Fast, simple and with more user friendly options, it’s a one of its kind personalized web page creator.

16^th July 2009

I was startled by the sound of alarm which struck over us like some shit falling from sky. But we were desperate to get ready as the first bus would leave for Jog falls at 6.30am and if we are to get that, we can leave for Agumbe by 12.30 and we would reach our nightstand at about 10pm after calculating all the kilometres and hours described in Mathrubhumi Yatra. But everything is not going to happen as written in texts as we were to see today.

And we got frustrated seeing Ajith curling up again in the bed and pushed him into the bathroom to get ready. The first stay costed us a meagre 300 Rs, and we were pretty happy about our savings.

Taking hold of the only seats available and those near the driver we started our long journey through the forests again to the largest or highest (?) waterfall in Asia- The Jog falls. The beautiful winding roads were gradually ascending to make us witness nothing for the fog that swept before us. But the driver was flying at hypersonic speeds.

Meanwhile many a school children mounted the bus, and to our surprise the driver as well as the few travellers were giving them biscuits and sweets and all the way talking to them. Wonder whether this could happen anywhere in our part of the ‘world’. The conductor hurled us to get out of the bus as we have reached a turn in the road.Seems this is an actual tourist destination as the place had a lot of hotels and shops inside with not many people. It looked as though the rain has deterred many people from visiting this beautiful place except for some hardcore travellers like us. The rain started to pour flushing all dirt from top of the buildings and trees. It looked as if the X factor has sensed our arrival and is making its presence felt as though following us. From there after having our morning breakfast of omelette and bread we could get a small glimpse of the magnificent falls. We decided to hike an omni van as the different falls are kilometres away through road.

He took us to the largest of the falls- the Raja and we watched musingly the sheet of water that from a height of nearly one kilometres fell into the air (since just a small amount of water had fallen to the lake below) which got splashed over us with the winds. The occasional mists added to the beauty. Thousands of steps were seen leading down to the bottom of the falls which we thought we would never complete. So we just decided to feel the heights by looking from the top of the falls into the rocky bottom which stood almost a kilometre away. It was fiery and simply fantabulous. The other falls like Rani and the many whose name I can’t remember any more are the figurines of beauty. We also had a walk along the 4 km long hanging bridge (according to us) and returned to observation point where you could cover the whole place and the Mahathma Gandhi dam too. But on the return the van jerked and stopped, and nothing else we could do except to push the omni as fast as possible. With the power supplied by all the idlis and omelettes in Manu’s stomach we at last made to the point where a bus was about to leave to Sagar were we had to reach if we are to leave to Agumbe.

The bus journey to Sagar also unravelled the naked beauty of the Canaras and by the time we had a nap, we reached Sagar one of the comparatively well to do places we have seen so far.

We entered the hotel and had our exquisite lunch which filled our tummy and hearts not to forget the pedas and jamuns and malais. Walking through the rain at last we could get a bus to Agumbe (a real private ‘bus’). And the bus started. It seemed that we would cover the 145km long journey within an hour as the bus was actually flying on the improperly tarred roads. The roller coaster ride didn’t last too long as a lorry coming at a slower speed grabbed off a bit of the mirror of our bus. And before we could understand anything, the driver, conductor and whoever responsible had got another lorry and started to chase the first one. We were left in the middle of that forest with nowhere to go, and no money to pay. When they arrived about an hour later, to our amusement the fellow travellers were appreciating them for their efforts. The conductor replied with pride showing off the 500 rupees note he got. And now the bus started moving at hypersonic speeds through those country forest mountain roads splashing water into banks and people, not stopping anywhere.

Yes it was during this time that we could get the direct sunlight for 5 minutes, a pleasant omen. But once we reached Agumbe we doubted. It took just 3 hours to cover the whole distance.

We crossed one police checkpost and then the second. We could not even see between ourselves due to the thick fog which made us shiver like hell and thrive for a shelter. There was a police van with guns pointed outside and two policemen checking and questioning us. We asked for a lodge and the cost made us faint Rs.400. And the much more amusing thing is that there is no current and phone in this land for the past 5 days. At last after heated discussions and exchanges we decided to hike an auto at whatever price to reach Shringeri 27 kms away.

Late to mention that Agumbe is the Chirrapunji of the south which gets the second highest rainfall in the country. True, the rain started. It started pouring like hell wetting us all even inside the auto rikshaw. We had to open our umbrellas inside. It was like a horror movie moving through the thick forest areas at night with no light or men in a downpour you cannot imagine would ever happen. We now accredit Agumbe as the first in the list mentioned above. Wondering what these X factors are doing we as the driver, why the police? Why no current?......No reply

“Would you please say whats the problem here???”

“Oh nothing, just a few naxal attacks”

Horrified we could speak no more. But we had never heard of anything like that here before. The X factor started working wonders. Perhaps tomorrow one could see some Shimoga news in Kerala newspapers too unless the hotel rent was too low or there was current there.