Category Archive: Adventure

En route Houston

Posted by Ankit On December 22nd, 2009

It's the fourth day of the trip and I have decided to take a day's break at my friend's (N V Pavan) place in Houston Texas. We go back to the IIT days where he was the volley captain, sport secretary, and subsequently President of India gold medalist and all my academic achievements during college were due to the fact that he did not consider them worth fighting for. And for all his brilliance, he has been a disgustingly humble fellow! I have covered about 1600 miles till now and my phone has a nifty little feature which tracks and records the trip in real time,

Tracker

So how has it been? Tiring as expected. And mesmerizing as expected. Anyone who has done any sort of road trip in America knows how magnificent the American landscape is. Its sheer size and almost profligate geography is humbling and because of the fact that the country extends into such a wide spectrum of climate and space, its landscape has a stunning variety that would be hard to find in a smaller country. In east California, the morose, unforgiving desert extends to the point where it is clipped by the sky and every now and then a confused, spatially anachronistic hill rises and seems to question its own existence. In New Mexico, the scale of this insanity is extended so there are places where a straight road starts from a mountain and ends into another 20 miles away - like a cursing, reluctant interpreter between two persons who not only do not speak a common language but don't even like each other very much. At such places, you get the feeling that the American landscape has molded itself to be a better representative of the simple, direct, and strictly utilitarian nature of the American West. Her geography offers no frills in the same way that her work ethics are efficient and honest.

But as soon as I started to gloat over this ingenious connection, the geography gave way to a stunner of a road. Between Las Cruces New Mexico and Roswell lies a winding ribbon that was more beautiful and exciting than any other that I have driven on. Beautiful green mountains with proud upright pine trees, and svelte silky lakes with hints of snow on their banks. The sky, a sprightly shade of blue with flourishes of snowy clouds for good measure. And in this perfection of nature's effort, man has carved his own little squiggly lines - his tarmacic creations like perfect curves of graphite on a flowery, scented paper.

The I-10 in Texas passes through a surprisingly beautiful landscape. I was expecting more like hundreds of miles of unending, depressing desert but was pleasantlyÂ surprised to find vast arenas of green table-top mesas. And as far as the eye could see, they were studded with windmills in a periodic formation of almost devilish contraption. Imagine driving on this fast beautiful road with these giants towering on all sides, their visage that of a grumpy old man, and their rotating mechanical hair standing up in a fit of rage. The road for a long part consists of two lanes in either directions - one lane is white in color and one black - and how stunning this little visual trick is!

Ending it with a Bang!

Posted by Ankit On December 19th, 2009

Although I haven't felt quite the same sort of feeling of exhilaration and release after crossing the doctorate milestone that a lot of other people might get, it's a distinct milestone nevertheless - one that punctuates a significant chunk of life, and eviscerates from it a tangible, heavy piece of warm, throbbing time. If only life could be compartmentalized into such convenient boxes of 4 years, it would quietly, happily, and anticlimactically end by the time the lid on the 18th such box is opened! Unfortunately though, future doesn't promise such beautiful little milestones, neatly tucked on to the side of the highway, so any that we do get needs to be celebrated for what it is. So I have decided on my small way of marking the occasion, like a quiet little break on the banks of a river - except that it's not going to be quiet, or little and there is no river. There would be a car and significant amount of driving during the next 12 days. Here is a link of the trip that is in the plans,

Trip Map

Hopefully a lot of experiences are in store!

A walk down memory lane

Posted by Ankit On August 18th, 2009

Kapili hostel

Has it really been 5 years? It's hard to believe that 5 years have elapsed since I took the last meal in Kapili's mess hall. The taste of rajma, rice, and fried potato chips is still fresh on this tongue. These ears are still abuzz with the insistent din of 100 unwashed, uncouth, uncivilized IITians eating their lunch together under the high ceilings of the Kapili mess hall. I visited my old hostel. I stood in front of my final year room. It was locked. I looked closely and noticed a slight dent on the bottom left side of the steel lock. Oh yes, it has been guarding the room for the last 6 years all right. That dent was the result of a particularly frustrated afternoon. I stood looking at it for more time than a mere lock deserves. I was thinking about how bloody familiar that lock seemed. I knew exactly how easily the key would slip into the notch and how smoothly it would rotate clockwise. I knew precisely what sound it would make while opening and I could accurately visualize how it would bounce off after opening. Deep down inside, it hasn't really been 5 years. Not if such trivialities are so fresh in my mind. How I wished I had the key so that I could open the room and walk barefoot over its dusty floor or jump over the unmade bed and slide open one half of the huge window and from between the iron bars, look out far into the distance at the green mountains. How I wished I could thrown open the balcony door and let the bittersweet wind blowing down from the mighty Brahmaputra create slight flutters and ripples and crackles on the used newspaper sheets covering my small wooden shelf on the opposite wall and how I wished I could make patterns on the dusty screen of my barely used computer.

My room was second last on the left

I walked down to the transit complex. That was where the academic stuff happened. It's deserted, now that everything has moved out to the new and bigger academic complex. I have clear memories of walking into that same complex for the first time 9 years ago. There used to be 2 big halls, H1 and H2, as soon as you entered. At least they appeared big then. With the furniture removed and the human bustle quieted, they seem to have been cut to size. I walked down the corridor on the right which leads to what was then the library. You don't have to know that there used to be a library in place of the empty space. The humid smell of bound books that still permeates the air there is enough of a hint. When time has razed down structures, ambitions, and characters, it has failed to obliterate the memory of knowledge. I walked down to the erstwhile bastion of the CIV2K class, a sequence of rooms which constituted the concrete testing lab, environment engg. lab, faculty rooms, and the computer center, and I stood there looking at the lonely corridors. In front of my eyes were swimming the scenes of my friends, staff members, faculty, and other students frenetically going about their businesses - the sounds of doors opening, pleasantries being exchanged, curses being hurled, the sounds of heavy machinery and printers and faxes and keyboards, the vision of people getting in and out of rooms and the sorry and hilarious sight of me and my batch-mates getting ready for another unbearable lab session. And I blinked; it all disappeared, melted away into the silence which fills every single fiber of the transit complex's ghostly existence today. The building has quietly transited into the inevitable arms of nostalgia.

The deserted Civil dept. at T.C.

I walked to Rubul's tea stall which lies just outside the campus. The place is bustling with activity now and it took me a considerable amount of time finding the shop which sold the best tea that ever touched these lips. The place has been considerably upgraded but the secret formula, it appears, is safe. I met a lot of people who used to work in different capacities when I was there. The cleaning staff (Naveen, Ganesh, and Amjad), the photocopy guy who had a thing for all the girls, the canteen staff (lambu and others), the mess workers; everyone recognized me, and very lovingly and graciously arranged for me to have the mess lunch under the high ceilings of Kapili while I talked to some of them about the changes in the intervening 5 years and what they felt about them.Â I didn't even have to get the food myself, and for once, rajma, rice, and fried potato chips didn't taste as bad as they used to.

I visited the faculty members and was surprised by how differently I was treated. Where there used to be contempt, there was respect. They even went as far as saying that our batch wasn't really a troublemaker. I took offense at such an offhand remark because I know how hard we worked at being complete jerks and how much we sacrificed. We earned our bad reputation honestly and squarely and I personally cannot see it being diluted, much less forgotten. The talk went well and the enthusiasm with which it was received, the lack of knowledge which exists about the topic and the practical/social utility which the research holds has givenÂ me some new ideas.

I came back to the guest house tired and exhausted, packed up my stuff, and arrived at the reception to return the keys. I had made some long distance calls, and had a few meals during my stay so I inquiredÂ how much I would have to pay. "It's all taken care of sir," he said, "The bill will be sent to the department." I couldn't help smiling. Maybe 5 years have indeed passed. The world seems to have turned upside down.

Dear SF

Posted by Ankit On July 28th, 2009

One fine evening, 2 years ago, I sat listening to a guy playing guitar in a cozy little cafe somewhere in the Golden Gate park. I was drinking a rather large serving of coffee which was paid for by my company for the evening-a girl whom I had made a vague acquaintance with on the internet, our lives crisscrossing at the single intersection of a more than passing appreciation for Audrey Hepburn. She had come with her then boyfriend and under the dim lights of the cafe with a distinct aroma of freshly brewed coffee, we sat there talking about things that I unfortunately do not have anyone to talk with. I dropped them off at their place and finally made my way to the godforsaken precincts of that depressing collective that generally goes by the name of bay area. 2 years have slipped and I have since returned the favor by buying her a hot chocolate in Orange County but I look back at that 1 evening as an experience which changed something fundamental. The appreciation for that elusive variety in life in terms of people who have a different set of experiences than mine, the realization that experiences either come at the cost of stupidity or courage which are often the same things, and the understanding that there is so much to learn and do in life and so much that is fine and beautiful. And every small step towards that misty, sketchy goal-post reveals so much about oneself that it is a loss if one doesn't try.

San Francisco, you did that to me 2 years ago and you did it again this time around. While riding around your labyrinthian roads and psychedelic alleys on my noble steed, while breathing in the salty, cold breeze coming from the Frisco bay, while walking on the congested roads of Haighton Ashbery lined with decrepit smoke shops and bubbling cafes, in the sad eyed fixations of the homeless and the hippy, in the cocksure smoke rings of the eternal dude, in the controlled chaos that you are, you managed to impress upon me, yet again, the virtues of limited pandemonium and the creative possibilities it leads to. And I paid homage to the shining jewel in your crown. Once in a car, once on the motorcycle, and finally while running. Yes I ran across the Golden Gate as part of the half marathon on a misty Sunday morning. While midway across the bridge, I noticed how the two gigantic red cables on either side of the bridge deck rose up and vanished into the fog, holding us all in the phantasm of an embrace, the mighty mighty red bridge suspended in the air with a knot of nothingness. I rode up the marine headlands and looked down upon 'the city'. The great green bay and a vast sea of pastel colored houses as far as the eyes could see, the intricate architectural details on their facades, the gossamery web of emotions of their patrons, all hidden behind a veil of stately calm.

It was only with a heavy heart that I left you and started my journey down South, a feeling that only got exacerbated when I had lunch in the bay area, a symbol of efficient unimaginativity and shortest route boredom. People say that SD is the finest city in America. I'll beg to differ.

Plan for the extended weekend

Posted by Ankit On July 23rd, 2009

I'll be picking up my motorcycle tomorrow and driving up to Ventura on I-5 N. The place is 185 miles from SD and is home to Ameet who has gracefully agreed to allow me to park for the night. He has also, in an act of unexplainable kindness and bravado, agreed to put up with my niggling company over dinner. I'll start next morning and begin on my journey on the famed and beautiful CA-1 highway which hugs the shoreline of the mighty Pacific from Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz through a distance of more than 250 miles. From there I'll head north to meet a friend of mine (Nikhil) who lives somewhere in the bay area but has, till now, avoided giving me his exact address despite my many inquiries. Which basically means that I'll have to indulge in rampant arse kickery upon reaching there. Friday evening would probably be dedicated to golden gate and the beautiful SFO. So would be Friday night and Saturday morning, noon, and evening. Another brave friend of ours, Diwaker Gupta, has shown an unprecedented lack of foresight and invited a whole bunch of us uncivilized halfwits to his very proper home for dinner on Saturday night. He has also promised a whole lot of carbs for the big day. Sunday morning will witness SFO going 'gasp' as a dilapidated bouquet of disintegrating desi dudes will attempt to run up and down its slopes in the hope of completing 13 miles of half marathon agony. The group will include Aneesh, Bakri, Vikram, that bastard Nikhil who hasn't given me his address yet, Diwaker, and yours truly. And even in our awkward dresses and viscous physiques and lethargic dispositions, we'll be gunning for the finishing line with as much vim and alacrity as anyone else. After that... it's a 500 miles journey South.

Colors!

Posted by Ankit On June 26th, 2009

I came across this new iPhone app called Colors (yes, it's American) which is sort of a slightly better alternative to microsoft paint. Except that you have a lilliputian screen to work with as opposed to the 15 inches that you get on a laptop/desktop. Anyone who has worked on Paint knows that it is not exactly 'the killer painting software'. You cannot exactly use it to paint the Monalisa. But that's just you and me, because we suck so much. More talented people have gotten off their asses and done precise that. But that's paint. There is a mouse to work with and the huge screen means that your eyes won't look like the Sun with its corona going bat shit crazy once you are done with your job. But this is Colors. And it's on my phone. Nevertheless, hardly ever to be deterred by a lack of talent, I paid 5 bucks and downloaded the full version. And I have a headache now. Not that I have a masterpiece to show for all these hours. Here is what I painted before things became too complicated:

As you can see it's very incomplete. The droplet looks bearable from a distance. But then almost everything looks bearable from a distance. I have noticed that almost every one looks like my roommate from a far enough distance so distance is not something that I should hide behind. If you can zoom in you would see that a lot of lines have been put just because I could not think of anything else to do. And they do not blend in with the surroundings. Part of the reason is the difficult pixellated control of the small screen but a major reason is my gaping inexperience in making colors blend. As I said I stopped at this point because things became too complicated for me. I have never painted anything in color before this so I have some very basic confusions. But hopefully a pig headed refusal to face one's own incompetence will help in clarifying a lot of those doubts. For now, it's a lot of fun and an interesting challenge.

Close Shave

Posted by Ankit On May 15th, 2009

Khatri Bhaiyya asked me if I could drop him at the airport today for his flight to SFO and I said yes. I took the car from K2 and after dropping him off at the airport at about 6:10, started back towards home. SD airport is south of the place I live, about 15 miles away and I-5 connects the two places. At the point at which I entered I-5 North, it is a 4 lane freeway with average speeds generally in the high 70s (mph). I started speeding up and merging in the traffic, changing lanes so that by the time I was in the left most lane I was doing about 80 mph. This was also probably the first time that I had my earphones on and was listening to songs from my phone while driving. As I prepared to settle in for the next 10-12 miles of coasting at the present speed, BANG, and it wasn't difficult to tell that things had taken a turn for the worse.

The windscreen was shattered and there seemed to be glass all around but that was hardly the major concern. What was really concerning was the fact that my complete field of vision was blocked, I couldn't see what lay in front of me and when you are going that fast on a crowded freeway, it's not something that you can brush off easily. The repercussions are almost immediately palpable. The hood, it seemed to me, had broken off the latch which holds it fastened, and driven by the fast winds, had lifted up and smashed into the windscreen. As I said, I was in the left most lane and there is narrow shoulder beside it upon which drivers can stop in case of an emergency. There is a concrete wall about 2 feet high that runs parallel to the shoulder and serves to separate the oncoming traffic on I-5 South. I remember noticing, just before the hood came crashing, that the freeway was turning right not very far in the distance, which meant that I would have crashed into the wall, if I had kept driving straight. It is often amusing to remember your first thoughts and preferences when such things happen. As soon as I heard the bang, my first reaction was to take off my earphones and actually press a series of buttons on my phone to pause the freaking song. Don't know why I did it-was probably saving the battery. But very soon sense prevailed and I realized that doing 80, blindfolded, with traffic all around and an oncoming turn is indeed serious. I pressed the danger lights on, took my foot off the accelerator but didn't want to break hard for the fear of getting rear-ended. In the absence of any frontal visual inputs, my only frame of reference was the wall that was visible on the left. Funnily enough, I didn't want to crash into it not just because it would have hurt, but also because I seriously didn't want the car to get any more scratches. What followed was a delicate maneuver where guided by how fast that wall was moving towards me, I managed to traverse the turn as best as I could and slowly brake to a halt on the shoulder.

I jumped out of the car to see the damage. The hood was badly dented, the windscreen shattered, even part of the roof caved in from the impact. For a while I stood there, unable to make sense of things while cars whizzed past me at breakneck speeds. I noticed that the shoulder was too narrow for the car and the right tires were actually uncomfortably close to the traffic. I probably shouldn't have done that, but I decided that I needed to take the car to a safer place-on the wider right shoulder. The hood won't attach but I, perhaps foolishly, took the risk. I distinctly remember my heart racing crazily, time running painfully slowly. The hood came back on the windscreen again and luck gets all the credit for my being safe after 4 lanes of probabilistic driving.

It's a dangerous situation for anyone to be in. Not just because of the possibility of the worst happening to you but also because if you do manage to survive with not even a single scratch, there is a temptation to see more into it than chance and a bit of skill. I guess it's human to seek reason in survival and the strings of a higher power when the odds seem to be so loaded against it. I would still thank probabilities. But more importantly I would thank the car company which made such a shitty system that even the air-bag didn't inflate (it's a known problem for which Huyndai has recalled the cars). I would be dead meat if it did.

K2, I'm sorry that the car is wrecked. I could only save the scratches on the left. Roli, if you read this, no one who can be unnecessarily worried needs to know.

Swimming induced swimming

Posted by Ankit On April 20th, 2009

Khatri bhai, Rasia, and I swam in the ocean today and covered a distance of .8 miles between La Jolla cove and La Jolla shores. The former two have done it before but it was the first time for me. And IÂ don't now swimming. Needless to say, it was a very educational and thrilling experience. Not a very wise decision, but very enjoyable nonetheless (as so many unwise decisions are).

There have been a few experiences which have taught me things about myself that I would never have learnt in the daily course of existence. And I am sure that this should be true for anyone. These specific instances bring out unsuspected qualities, sometimes unforeseen shortcomings by virtue of the fact that they demand a little more than normal and put the individual under more stress than he generally faces. Today was one such experience. I'm quietly proud of my performance. Not because I did something extraordinary (in fact it's quite a mundane achievement) but because I didn't think I had it in me to swim the distance. Having never done a standard lap and equipped withÂ only a very basic swimming competence, I was quite afraid to take the plunge. The wet suit was said to provide some floatation and the flippers, some efficiency. But as soon as I entered deep waters, I realized why people drown in the first place. Panic is the cause but what set panic in my case was the fear that I didn't have the stamina to sustain the effort that I was spending just to stay afloat. I saw that the coast was just 20 meters away but wasn't even sure if I could make that. I called Khatri bhai for help and he asked me to relax and paddle slowly and I would not drown. Seemed to work. Once it became clear that this small effort would keep me afloat, .8 miles seemed to be separated only by the will to do it. Several times along the course I took in salty water and realized that panic sets in easily if water gets in your lungs, but by then I had enough confidence. After swimming for an hour and a half we finally made it to the end. Khatri bhai and rasia could have done it much faster but my thanks and apologies for bearing with me :). The last thing that I realized was that to do a .8 miles swim you only need to have will power for .4 miles. The rest is just a compulsion.