The Cheese Potato

Does it sound familiar? Ahh!, don't confuse it with your regular cheese tomato and some of you must be thinking of it as a kind of potato.For your kind information it is not any other kind of potato.

This lip-smacking dish originally prepared in Spain is a superb blend of Brazilian potatoes and Italian Cheese . You would be surprised to know that sailors and soldiers of the Spanish Armada survived on this extremely delicious food. A great care is taken to prepare this delicacy and the contents that are added to it are measured with calibrated vessels. The potatoes are beautifully carved and the cheese cut into perfect cubes. Some say it is the food only fit for the kings and some say it is cooked even in heaven.You would forget all your worries of the day when the hot cheese melts in your mouth. You would feel yourself afloat in the air when you sip the soup and say Waah! That is some paradise!


Now read this carefully. Every word I have written about the Cheese Potato is a cent per cent lie. The true story goes here. This extremely special dish is prepared in the mess of Visveswarayya Bhawan, Pantnagar as a part of Sunday special diet. It is a blend of hard rubber cheese and potato water or potato swamp (In hindi we call it aloo paani). This potato water or aloo paani used to be the royal dum aloo, well that is an another story.

The taste, I must tell you even after adding cheese, potatoes, turmeric, chillies and other spices, this dish miraculously tastes no better than tap water. I, Sir Jagadish Vema coined the name Cheese Potato, as I have wept whenever I stuffed this dish into my mouth. I would be leaving this hostel in a few months and I must say I would be gladly missing this dish forever in my life.

Dilemma

I am not in a dilemma or stuck in any real life situation. I am in a dilemma about what to write in my blog. As a writer, I have a wide range of options. I can write reality, fiction, philosophy etc. If I write reality, it is very much like tight rope walking. I need to maintain a fine balance on what I write. So many funny things happens in our day to day life that we laugh our heads off but finally the joke happens to be on someone around you. When you have friends from different sets of people, it is not easy to please everyone. Some may enjoy what I write, some may feel offended. It is the words that I use that decide who is going to enjoy and who is going to be offended. A fact can be viewed differently by different people, but it is the words of a writer that make a reader to think in a particular direction. The very people who had enjoyed what I have written may feel offended if I state the same fact differently. It is all about vilifying or glorifying someone at the end. 
Writing fiction is bit easier than writing reality. You just have to write the real emotions you have ever felt, in a fictional scenario, but again to get that scene on paper, you need to feel it really. For me it is easy to write action, adventure as I try out different and crazy things and I could feel the thrill, fear and sometimes current flowing through my nerves every time I go out for an adventure. But I can't write action and adventure all the time, I myself get bored. I tried out romance too, but it did not work out. I felt like posting something on Valentine's day. A story had developed in my mind, I could visualise the scene, my protagonists were two birds, the symbollic lovebirds, but when it came to romance my thoughts became hazy. I felt I was not doing justice to their romance. I could not get the feeling from my heart, the words looked stale, then I realised, to write something about love, you need to be a romantic atleast if not in love. Then I decided to save the story for my lady love. I may get the right words when I may actually fall in love. But right now it is not my cup of coffee(I dislike tea). Now my mind says why don't you try some philosophy. I feel I am too young to write any philosophy, I still have to look at various aspects of life. I had developed some philosophy of my own and used to think myself as one of the great philosophers, but as I grew up I came to know I was wrong about many things and realised life is not that simple as it seems. One thing I learned is that I have to keep my philosophy to myself and that philosophy is not applicable to all as everyone grows up differently and in diferent conditions and everyone learns life his own way. So I am a bit of a dilettante as far as philosophy is concerned. Now I have decided to let my mood direct me on what I write and express so that I can discover various aspects of my personality when I look back into my writings. 

Origin of life on Earth

There are so many stories and theories explaining the origins of life. It would be absurd to assert that in this entire universe only our planet Earth sustains life. Life force could have been originated anywhere in this universe. The God or the supreme power we earthlings venerate is supposed to be the initial life force. I am not giving theories about the origin of God but I would like to tell you how humans came to Earth.

The God or the initial life force had fully evolved and had reproduced what we call the demi-Gods. The God and his tribe of demi-Gods had advanced and reached the pinnacle in all technologies possible. Now what, everything was just perfect and harmonious. Believe me if everything becomes perfect, life becomes monotonous and boring, imperfections add spice to life.

But in God's world nothing could be disturb the harmony of perfection, so the demi-gods convened an assembly and it was decided to create life with lesser intelligence and watch it develop and struggle with imperfections(It is supposed to be a movie for gods) and control their destinies(This served the gaming purpose).

So God and his team of engineers and explorers started searching for a platform to launch their project. Now it is quite obvious that this platform is Earth. God's engineers started working on various aspects of the environment that surrounds us.

Some designed immovable life(plants) and some movable life(animals) and some designed forces of nature as humans know and some designed emotions that would develop in the Earth's environment(Human emotions like love hate, anger etc were inbuilt into this system).Now, we can view Earth as an Operating System for God.

The initial life on Earth was designed for testing and the test results were encouraging to continue designing life with higher intelligence. So the platform (the Earth) had to be reset for new entities to be introduced. As result, the meteors came crashing down on Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs and other test life forms.

Testing continued with increased intelligence levels and after several resets(the ice ages),came the humans. Humans were prototypes of demi-Gods themselves with intelligence levels at par with their own. With the advent of Humans, stage was set for the first play station of demi-Gods. The goal of the game was to reach the pedestal of God struggling with all the forces of nature and other living beings.

Humans started with zero knowledge levels and needed utility tools for sustenance and development. The God's engineers who designed forces of nature sent humans the updates on harnessing these forces(very much like the updates we get for the softwares and patches for operating systems). Humans revered these engineers and started worshipping them. This is the beginning of religion and very well explains the practice of polytheism in early civilizations.

Demi-gods controlled the destinies of their pawns (the humans) and soon they were vigorously competing with each other. These competitions became unhealthy and the demi-gods got split in two groups- the angels and demons. The demons were responsible for creating and spreading viruses (tyrants and savages) and angels countered them with anti-viruses(superhumans and powerful weapons).

Humans, being an active part of this struggle between angels and demons, were approached for help by the both sides for added advantage. Humans took sides carefully in exchange for the technology of demi-gods. Humans became masters of extremely powerful technology unnoticed by both the groups. Humans who started out as pawns had actually become players now. But Earth itself had become a mess and the great God left humans and demi-gods to their fate, yes fate started affecting the demi-gods too.

By the time demi-gods realised this it was too late and a great war started which resulted in complete annihilation of demi-gods and near-complete annihilation of humans(Humans were smart enough to hide and protect their kind). Though humans had won the war but had considerably lost their life span and got reset frequently (life-death cycle). As result, the data storehouse of the technology they acquired vanished as humans rebuilt their civilization slowly from the ruins of the war.

Everything started anew for humans with no strings attached and with no one controlling their destinies. Since humans were the only intelligent legacy of God, He helped them out time and again you can guess how (You can attribute all turning points in Known history to Him). But this time He gave technology to them one at a time so that humans could learn all the pros and cons of the technology and advance sensibly and responsibly. It has been nearly 9,500 years since the great war and humans had regained just 35% of the lost technology.

This is an overview of the novel I am working on.

Desire Drives Life

We might have heard this many times from the so-called self-proclaimed spiritual gurus that man should be free of desires. He should free his senses from all desires and blah,blah,blah.
But I say Dear "Spiritual Guru" Why don't you cease to exist? You are useless on Earth rather a burden sucking up all the Earth's resources. Some religionists may point out that its written in sacred scriptures. I ask can you guarantee that who wrote that scripture was no hypocrite or just a mediocre and did he not have a "Desire" to make his point to the people.
It is desire that drives a man's life. Desire to excel, succeed, conquer drives a person to greatness. Do I need to assert this when history itself is the witness. Let alone greatness, every man has a desire to achieve something or get something be it as basic as food. If you desire something, won't you go get it or atleast try for it. History has not known a man who had desired for something and not even tried for it once if he could. Every human has desires till the last breath of his life. Let us suppose a man who says he is free of desires(desire to breath, drink,eat are excluded, let us be a bit easy on him), then I ask why is he living on this earth, even to serve a purpose in life one needs a desire. Without a desire you are nothing but a zombie.
Even God has a desire "Well being of his subjects" .

The Wise Old Man

A retired man moves near a junior high school. He spends the first few weeks of retirement in peace and quiet. However, when a new school year begins, three young boys beat on every trash can they encounter every day on their way home from school.

Finally, the man decides to take action and walks out to meet the boys. He says, "You kids are a lot of fun. I'll give you each a dollar if you'll promise to come around every day and do your thing." The kids continue to do a bang-up job on the trashcans.

After a few days, the man tells the kids, "This recession's really putting a big dent in my income. From now on, I'll only be able to pay you 50 cents to beat on the cans." The noisemakers are displeased, but they accept his offer.

A few days later, the retiree approaches them again. "Look," he says, "I haven't received my Social Security check yet, so I'm not going to be able to pay more than 25 cents. Will that be OK?"

"A freakin' quarter?" the drum leader exclaims. "If you think we're going to waste our time beating these cans around for a quarter, you're nuts. We quit."

The Stranger

Its quite usual to come across strangers in life, sometimes we befriend them, or ignore them and sometimes we fight them. I would like to tell you the story of this stranger.

The other day we were playing cricket in the hostel and the ball was hit high and it got stuck on the ledge just below the roof. I volunteered to get the ball on the condition that all my stunts would be captured on camera. I climbed into the balcony on the second floor and stood on the edge giving poses for camera and then I reached for the ledge balancing myself on the edge. But our dear ball was stuck in no‐man's land and I could not get my hands on it. I decided to swing myself so that I could get near the ball. My legs were hanging in the air and my hands gripped the ledge but the ball was still out of reach.

Someone shouted from below some words of encouragement to get going. Then came another voice "Do you want him dead, idiot? He may not care for his life but if he falls we will be held responsible".

Then I looked below, one wrong move, that’s it, I am dead. I had come too far from the balcony and could not find a foothold. Then a funny thought came to my mind that if I fall, these guys might face a police case and I feared more for them than for myself. I was hanging and still could not find a foothold and could feel beads of sweat on my forehead on a cold winter day. It was fear, it had crept up my spine and I was holding to my dear life. I was no longer in control. I calmed down and tried to pull myself back to the balcony. Some of my friends reached the balcony and held out their hands to grab me and they pulled me to safety. My heart started beating faster now when I visualized the scene of my fall. I would have fallen on the badminton pole and would have got impaled to death.

I retired to my room and gulped down half a bottle of water and sat on my bed visualizing the scene. It was giving me both the thrill and the shivers. I decided to take a walk and clear my head of all that just happened.

A stranger came up to me and said "You are bold but extremely crazy". I gave him a curt smile and said "Thank You". He asked "Don't you care for your life doing such dangerous things just for nothing?". I joked "Had I fallen, my friends would have earned some money by uploading the video on YouTube "Amazing Videos". It did not go down well with him and he asked me to respect and care life and then moved away. I retorted back "I know what to do with my life". He had moved few steps away but stopped and turned around.

To my astonishment, he disintegrated into millions of bee like creatures. The swarm of bees moved towards me and I ran for my life. They kept closing in on me and then I fell to the ground and pulled my jacket over my head to protect myself. Those creatures covered me like a blanket stinging through my clothes. I tried to move my hand but could not move a limb as if I was paralyzed. I tried to shout for help but my voice could not make it to my throat. I felt my life was being sucked out of me and could small the scent of death.

A part of me wanted to give up as it could not bear the pain anymore but something in my head shouted " I am not going to die like this, not without a fight or purpose". I decided to fight to the last and with all my remaining strength I shouted and gave a thrust to my limbs. Then I woke up from my bed and then realized it was all a nightmare. I was sweating heavily and my shirt and hair were wet with sweat. I calmed down and said to myself either I would live a purposeful life or die a purposeful death.

The stranger, should I call him Death or Devil made me realize how precious this life is and I have been given a chance to make it purposeful.

How my friends escaped from a mental institution

Devender Negi and Ashutosh Shukla are my friends but due to some inexplicable circumstances ended up in a mental institution which has an annual contest that picks two of the best patients and gives them two questions.
If they answer correctly, they are released.
Devender is called into the doctor's office first. The doctor says, "Devender, what would happen if I poked out one of your eyes?" Devender says, "I'd be half blind."
"That's correct. What would happen if I poked out both your eyes?""I'd be completely blind." The doctor tells him that he is free to go.
On Devender's way out he tells Ashutosh the questions and answers.
The doctor asks Ashutosh, "What would happen if I cut off one of your ears?" Ashutosh says, "I'd be half blind."
The doctor, slightly puzzled, continues, "What would happen if I cut off both your ears?""I'd be completely blind."
"Ashutosh, how can you explain that you'd be blind?" asks the doctor.
"Well," replies Ashutosh, "my hat would fall over my eyes."

Embarrassment and Enlightenment

You learn life the hard way. We live in a society and it becomes important to understand the people around us and behave accordingly. Here goes my story......

I was traveling by bus one fine day comfortably seated, thinking of the words my friend said to me the other day. The other day I refused a beggar to give any money and I was bit harsh on him. My good friend who was with me gave him some money and called me cold-hearted insensitive jerk. I argued with him for a long time that begging should not be encouraged. But his words did hit me hard and I was still thinking if I was really cold-hearted.

Then an old man(must be above 70) got into the bus and stood beside me as there were no seats vacant. Here was a chance to satisfy my heart that I was actually a good guy and could do good things. I got up from my seat and offered him my seat politely. He looked(actually a horrible stare) at me toe to head and ignored my offer. I persisted and told him he can have my seat.

Next moment I was hit by a tempest. He burst out at me, "Are you having fun with me or playing tricks? I may be a old man but I don't need your sympathy. Bloody young brats don't know how to respect their elders! What the hell do you think of yourself? Do you think I am helpless?". As long as I looked into his eyes I did not feel angry but as I glanced around, other people mostly young guys who were seated around were smirking and passing comments like "jerk trying to be a hero". That got to my nerves and I shouted back at the old man "What's wrong if I offered you a seat? I felt sorry for your knees old man. You needn't shout at me like that".

But the old man was devil personified, he again shot his volley of words and I too returned the favour. That created enough commotion and the conductor asked me to get off the bus. I refused as I felt I had done nothing wrong. Next moment I was shoved off the bus.

All the people in the bus were having fun at my cost and now the people at the bus stop were staring at me as if I was some criminal. I was angry, ashamed and embarrassed at what happened. I couldn't wait for another bus at that stop.

So I decided to walk to the next bus stop to save myself from any more embarrassment. I was mad at that old man for my situation and badly wanted to thrash his head. My head was filled with all negative thoughts and I had an urge to thrash or break something. Then something hit me hard in the back. That was it, I was looking to thrash someone and God has given me a chance. I turned around to kick whoever it was. Then I saw a young kid who had fallen of his cycle, I controlled my foot but wanted to scold him badly but then I realized how he fell. His trousers got stuck in the chain and were torn and his limbs were bruised. It wasn't wholly his mistake and such mishaps do happen. I had been in that situation before but I learnt not to panic whenever my trousers got stuck in the chain. I lifted him up and and gave him a tip on controlling the cycle. He said sorry for the crash and thanked me and rode away. I felt nice and my heart unburdened .
Then I realized the old man too must have been in some bad mood and that explained his rude behaviour. I felt sorry and regretted for hitting back at the old man.

That day I learnt my lesson on anger control. I still need to learn some anger management skills but I am sure this game of life will teach everything as I take my step forward.

A Freaks' Story

Hi everyone, I am back .....yeah still alive after some encounters with freaks.

Now that I will be entering corporate world, I decided to learn socialising with people and went about to try to make friends. I came across a girl, great looking girl actually and tried to befriend her. So I started a conversation with her and we talked about many things about personal likes and dislikes and then we came across the topic what we would relish most. I told her that I had crabs when I was 7 and I think I relished them most than anything else. You should have seen her face then, really horrific face she made. That was the end of the discussion. She blew me off saying I sucked. Well, it took some time to recover and to know exactly what hit me. A part of my mind was hell bent on labelling all girls as freaks. I simply shaked it off and moved on. Now I met this another girl (I made sure she was a non vegetarian before I talked to her) and as the topic hovered around food I just told her the same as I did to the earlier girl. But this time reaction was like "WHAT! YOU haven't had crabs for last 14 years!! HOW THE HELL ARE YOU SURVIVING??" This expression really freaked me out. Now I wonder if I am myself a freak or people I meet are freaks.

Your Actions Define you

Actions not just dreams bring changes in the world. You may be a great thinker or philosopher but as long as you don't put your thoughts into action you can't even move a leaf. World sees you through your actions. You will be known for your actions rather than what you think. You may be a noble human on the inside but when it comes to do the right thing you may falter, reasons may be many. At the same time a Devil may act as an angel. But people around you don't have the patience to know what you really are and opinions are formed based on your actions. Your relations survive on this perception. Many of us crib that others don't understand us but its up to you to make yourselves known to others. If you really want to win friends you need to open up, show your true colors and do the right actions. This is how you become a better person by trying to be better in the eyes of the world. Just start acting good rather than thinking good, you might come out as a better person.

I AM 'COOL' B'COZ I AM A COMPUTER ENGINEER FROM PANTNAGAR

I am cool bcoz my department is the 'coolest' department you could ever imagine with minimal activities. I don't know about others but as far as I am concerned I have not learnt anything from the department and I would dare not introduce myself as a computer engineer to the industry. Thanks to the ultracool environment of our department I had to venture outside for a breath of fresh air and some life. Nothingness in life sometimes inspires you to get something for yourself rather than despairing you. Same happened with me. I had enough time to learn lot more things and how to enjoy life if not computer engineering. I am sure I can survive anywhere if not in the field of computer engineering. Spending my time trying to become a computer engineer from pantnagar, I have tried my hand in nearly everything and I did taste some success. Now I have some alternate options may be these are the only options in the industry for me as an IT specialist or a Human Resource analyst or a full fledged manager. I don't think I need an MBA to be a manager after leaving pantnagar. I had ample time to experiment with life and may be in future too I will try my hand in various professions. So I get out of here as a 'COOL' Computer engineer from a 'COOL' department. Please note there is difference between both the 'COOL's.

My First Seminar

It has been quite a long time since I gave a public speech or a paper presentation or any other stage performance. My friends would be surprised if I said I danced for an Assamese folk dance on stage when I was 12 as I am normally perceived as an introvert and a shy guy. The 'Seminar' is a part of course curriculum which is compulsory for all the students. So groups of 4 were made and my group consisted of myself and my friends Arun Bhakuni,Anmol Prakash Gautam and Ashish Joshi. I was in the group because these guys believed I would coolly handle my part in the seminar thanks to my 'chatterbox' image. I talk too much that guys have to shout at me to shut up which I normally don't do. Our seminar was scheduled on 12 September 2008 and we planned to prepare for it the day before. Even though I had downloaded the material long before and handed it to my partners we guys simply browsed the pages and no proper plan was made on how we gonna present it and we put it off to the day before the seminar. As luck would have it, there was no power supply on the 11 September right from the morning to 9:30 in the evening. I prayed hard for resumption of power supply. By 7'Oclock I was frustrated at the turn of events and was really cribbing at my hard luck. Then someone said you should have prepared earlier and I could not control my anger and shouted at him. By 7.30 we decided to go to ccf after dinner to get our slides prepared. Members from other group were talking about a mass bunk but it was a strict 'No No!' as we did not want to earn the ire of our seminar incharge Dr. H.L.Mandoria. There was already a mass bunk a week before. After lot of persuasion I got the guys to get to ccf by 9.30. As soon as we reached ccf we got a call that power supply had resumed in the hostel and everyone was on their way back to the hostel.I and Arun stayed back to look for some more material and get some pictures downloaded for the seminar. We were back at the hostel by 10.30 only to find Anmol and Ashish playing counterstrike much to our disappointment. However by 10:45 we got to work on the presentation. It was decided that Ashish would take up the introduction, Arun and Anmol would handle the technicalities of the topic and I would wind up with applications and commercial viability. Once the objectives were set we went back to our rooms to prepare the slides seperately which would be clubbing the next morning. I started reading the material about the markets and applications and I realised my presentation would be over in 2 min. I went down to find out how others were faring and the story here was the same. Then we decided to fill in everything we had leaving no space for queries. Somehow by 3 in the morning I managed to make 14 meaningful slides. I woke around 8 in the morning and enquired how others were faring. Anmol and Arun said they had put together 28 slides and Ashish had 5 slides ready with him. He assured us he would manage to speak around 7 or 8 min. I went back to my room after breakfast and dozed off till 11:30 am. By 11.45 we clubbed the slides and started rehearsing. Ashish had prepared his part quite well but Arun was shaky and his voice was I must say wobbling.He was looking tense and watching him made my nerves go weak. My confidence level was below ground 0 and refrained from rehearsing. I drank lot off water to cool down but to no effect. We reached the Seminar room by 2.15 pm and waited for another 15 min for everyone to assemble. Then started our hour long wait to get the projector working.Most of the students dozed off. Even butterflies in my stomach had settled down. I was no longer interested in carrying on with the seminar but my friends insisted on finishing it off the same day.So our seminar started at 3:35. Ashish started off well only to be interrupted by another technical snag. I think it disturbed his rhythm but somehow he presented his part well. Then came Arun with his technical specifications and he too gave the presentation better than what we expected of him. Well I think he was better than any of us.Anmol started off well with his continuation of technical specifications and passed the baton to me.Butterflies again...I was on the stage and people at the back were making me laugh. I grinned looking at them and knew the damage had been done. I started off with my part and as I looked around I found a funny audience. Guys at the back were waving their hands, poking their fingers and doing all sort of things to distract me but i was quite used to it. Gals at the back were either sleeping or reading some novel or preparing for CAT showing no interest in whats going on. Then I decided to liven up the audience with some mirch masala which started off with Mr. Saurabh Jalal(i) who was waving his hands to some rock music I think. Then I brought a dead man alive and some live examples. I was speaking quite fast and gasping for breath. I felt I finished of my slides in 4-5 min. I felt really relaxed after the seminar as if relieved of some great burden. Some complimented us, some complained it was too lenghty. Then only I came to know I had spoken for about 12 min. I myself couldn't believe it. But the feeling was nice as I stood there for 12 min. without shaking or any butterflies doing the rounds and I felt my voice was quite clear too.

Life's a game u never wanna lose. Well what's a win then?
You are on this Earth to seek immortality......10000 yrs of immortality atleast.
Fame and glory that is unparalleled in history can be accounted as a win in life and thats what I strive for. Well, I don't mean rest are losers.........I would say their desires are too human. My Desire is too conquer the time.

My First Blog

Hey everyone,
You know why I am Blogging...................oh wait let me tell you who am I.
I am Jagadish Vema, a lousy computer engineer in making from Pantnagar.
I am in my final year and have lots of free time......so blogging for timepass.