Short story

The flying bird saw a beautiful princess.It went to her. Narad qaid ho gaye ek sunahare pinjare me.

First story

Ajay stepped into the garden once again. It always gave him a sense of peace when he came to the garden. The beauty of the flowers, their fragrance quitened not just his mind, but his soul too. He always made it a point not to touch any flower.
"A flower is a flower and I am I . We are two diff entities. Why should I spoil it by plucking it? " He had explained to Vijay yesterday only.
But today, it was something diff. Maybe it was a result of not having a flower in his shirt like all others did. "Comeon man, all the flowers are meant to make ur shirt more beautiful. They also want the same " Vijay had countered yesterday. Maybe that had enflamed some inner desire.
He went to his favourite part of the garden and gazed at that particular dahlia. What he saw in that dahlia , he could never figure out. Maybe its simplicity when compared to the roses. Maybe its non-assuming nature when compared to the sunflower. He could never explain it. All he knew was that just gazing at that dahlia had a special effect. It not just quitened him like other flowers but somehow, it seemed to make him Happy.
He had even asked the gardener abt it a few times. The reply was always the same:"You are you. Dahlia is dahlia. You dont have to pin it to your shirt. If I want it, it will be done".
Lost in these thoughts, he reached very close to the dahlia. He just could not stop himself from holding it in his hands. He cupped his hands delicately , very delicately around it. "Touch it already", came the voice from behind. He turned arnd and saw Vijay. "Touch it already. That will give you real happiness."
He touched. He put it on his shirt.How good it looked there? But then something happened.The flower which was happy till a moment back seemed very desolate now. When Ajay saw himself in the neighbouring pond, he saw Vijay.
And then, he CRIED. Tears rolled down his eyes. Tears not from eyes, they seemed to well up from his soul. He cried and he cried:"Oh gardener, what have I done"
Suddenly, heard a sound"Wake up my child. Reserve these tears. " The voice of the gardener was comforting. The tears stopped.
With start, he woke up and saw that the dahlia was still there. Vijay was lurking in the shadows but seemed afraid. And in one side, there was the gardener , smiling as always.

Aao kuch pyar ke fool khilaye hum

Ashant man bikhare bandhan
suna sa lage hai man ka chitwan

Sawan me kyun hai patjhad ka bhay
Kyun nahi phool khil sakte aaj nirbhay

Mausam ko badlana hi hai
Parivatrna aana hi hai

Kal ke sard se aaj kyun sawan ko daraye hum
Aao kuch pyar ke fool khilaye hum

Nikale jaata hai samay

Nikale jaata hai samay
jeevan vyartha na ho
iska nirantar hai bhay

jeene ki kala koi seekha jaye
nafrat ki jagah pyar koi dikha jaye


shabdon me na ho jindagi
panno me nahi
logon ke dilo me ho qaid

samay hai beeta jaye
par phir bhi hum kyun hai itraye
aaj tak to kuch bhi nahi samajh paye

prabhu, bhakti do ya gyan do
dukh do ya khushi do
par naiya paar laga do

mana hai kaam ye mera hai
main to aapka hoon
is bhav ko hi sthir kar loon
iski hi koshish ahi

bhaav ke sthir hote hi
har jhan(moment) ek jeevan ke barabar ho jaye
phir jeevan na lage vyartha

Bahate hue samandar sa lagta hai sansaar

Bahate hue samandar sa lagta hai sansaar
kitna ataah hai iska vishtaar
Kinare pe khade hum,
bas kar rahe hai intezaar
us lahar ka
jo aake bhiga de hume
aur dilaye ehsaas ki
ye sansaar bhi humse karta hai pyaar

Lahre aati to hai
par pyar se pair nahi chumti
duniya ke thapede
pahle hume banati hai pashan
phir hota hai ek gharshan

Jab hota hai dil me josh
seene me aag
tab har pathar kahta hai
ki
aane do lahron ko
hum besabra hai inse takrane ko

Kuch apna astitva bacha lete hain
Kuch ko leel jaaata hai samundar

Yahi hai jeevan ka sangharsh
Ladte hue in thapedo se
bacha ke rakhna apna astitva

Aur kuch patharo pe hoti hai Prabhu ki kripa
gharshan se wo ban jaate hain aur sundar

Main kaun sa pashan hoon,
main kya janoo
Kaho, aaj main kiski baat manoo
Samandar to kahta hai ki aa, bheeg jaa
Dil ki aag kahti hai ki nahi, aur sthir ho jaa
Bagal ka pathar pyar se kahe, ki bas thoda sa badl jaa
Tum hi batao,
ki
ye nadaan se pathar kya kare

Buddhi jiski hai, wahi marga darshan kare
Jadta humari samapt kare
Aur hume pathar se manav banaye
Itni taakat de ki hum samandar ko bhi leel paye

Journey..part1

4 days - 16000 Km

Writing this blog after reaching Korea. Waiting for system to be fully functional. So, killing time by writing this blog.

Lets approach this blog in a non-linear way. What is the first exp I am reminded of? It has to be the story titled "Ek ticket Mahavikat" (A ticket which turned out to be a BIG problem).

So, here I am, waiting in B1/003, in PrayagRaj Express. Journey is from Delhi to Allahabd. Saurabh is in next compartment. But I am all alone here, or so I thought. Wiating for that guy in black coat to come. Thinking of all possible ways to explain to him as to why he should allow me to travel on an e-ticket when I dont have the corresponding I-card, my PAN card. The guy approacheth, I sayeth some two-three lines, then my role in the drama of next half hour is complete. Because then my case is taken over by two other people. No, they were not the lawyers of the prosecution and defendant. But just two people trying to help me.
I was trying to explain to the TT that I have misplaced my PAN card, but he should allow me on the company card instead. I get un-expected support from all the passengers in the cabin. I really felt happy and grateful for that support. One person(lets call him Mr.A), in fact, started to really take my case with the TT. For me, he seemed an angel then. He took a tough stance with the TT. Asserting that any card should be fine, as it is only an ID-proof that is required.
In between this discussion, another Mr.B came, occupant of seat no.14, if I remember correctly. He immediatley took a contradictory stand. HE fully agreed with the TT that the ID proof is indeed the ticket. For a brief moment, I really was upset with this guy, why did he have to interfere when he was not helping. I later realised that First impressions may be very mis-leadng. The TT , and these two guys were discussing these things amongst themselves. The TT got a bit worked up, and said will come back later.
After he left temporarily, I got to know the Mr.A better. The first lines of his introduction made me feel at ease immediately. He was a journalist from Aaj Tak. Now thats a case of being "Sabse Tej, sabse aage " even in helping others. His name was Anil Kumar Singh, same as my brother, for whose operation I was in New Delhi. Anil, Aaj tak one,assured me that it was his duty now to take me to Allahabad. I immediately felt relaxed and assured that come what may, TT or no TT, I will reach Allahabad, w/o paying anything. Come on, who will not feel it, you have a journalist on your side man. I thought that the drama was over. Boy, was I wrong.

Next time , when the TT came, which was just two minutes after the above. The TT did looked a bit worked up. This time, Mr.Anil said a few lines, Mr. B also said a few lines and the TT left again. This time Mr.B tried to pacify the TT, saying :"Though this kid is wrong, but for my behalf, allow him to travel". He showed him some sort of I-card and then again repeated the request. The TT did not commit anything and then left. Then, Mr. B said something to Mr.A"By trying to help this guy (meaning me), you have spoilt his case". Anil immediately retorted, "I am a journalist and now it is my responsibilty to take this kid to Allahabad". Mr. B's reply was more shocking : "I am also a journalist and it is my responsibilty to take him to Allahabad". So, here I was, with two people, both hell-bent (why is heaven-bent not a word) on taking me to Allahabad. Both having totally different approaches, but united on the goal.
By this time, Saurabh had come. I explained to him briefly what was happening. He gave the age-old advice: "Get the TT in a corner and give him 100 bucks". I said :"Yaar, mujhe kuch kahne ko mile, tab na" The TT then suddenly appeared . I approached him. This time , there was only Mr.B, no Mr.A. The TT was a bit worked up: "Dont try to argue with me when you are wrong. " Mr.B immediately pacified him :"Sir, I have already shown you my card. Please consider it my perosnal request and allow him to travel". Some more pacifying lines followed. The TT left with the following words:"I can not mark you as present. Just go and sleep, before I change my mind".What else is requied, just a place to sleep, a place to relax the already travel-weary body. Saurabh had already left by that time. Went to his place, explained what had happened and got my back. On the return, met Mr.B in the way.
He then told me his details. He was a TV journalist, working in Zee TV, was earlier with B4U. The summary of the conversation :"You should use a hard stand only when you are right..... Where a smile and politeness can do the trick, dont use a sword... I have never used my I-card but somehow today have used it for you".
After he finished his ciggarete, we said good-bye. I went to my upper-birth . Firs reaction after lying down: "Thanks bade bhaiya for not letting any thing happen to me. " These two people, for a moment, just appeared His instrument, for ensuring that nothing happens to me. At moments like these, how can one not feel grateful?

P.S.: In these entire conversations, I was called a kid so many times that I now feel that I have a few more years before I make that marriage plunge.

This arjuna waits

failed today also
words chase me all day
sometimes i chase them too
but when required,
why do they fail me so

i tried to tell you my sorrow
but that seemed meaningless
I tried to ask for something
but everything seemed worthless
know will fail
but will again try tomorrow

Bowed my head
framed the thoughts
but as soon as i look up
and saw in ur eyes
the thought itself seems to be a burden

That bewithcing smile
makes those two seconds worthwhile
when u feel what u cant say
and just end
with a simple smile

Failed I did today
but that smile does stay
just hoping that there will be a day
when
finally I will become silent
and
You will say


For you Krishna,
this arjuna waits

The Love is also all yours.

Flows the wind everyday
reminding that the creation is yours
meet people we everyday
indicating that the whole lila is yours
all these are just a step
a way
of realising that
I am yours

There is nothing else that matters
Nothing else that has any grain of truth
You and me is all that there is
Know that this is a lie
But till I am yours and You mine
This is what I will live by

The owner of smile of smiles
The one with the sweetest countenance
The tribhanga who is the most stylist ever
The one, after whose company
everyone else seems just a hollowness
or a mere shadowy reflection
and a reminder that
You are all that there is

Actions change their meaning
All that happens around holds no relevance
Cosmic dance, nitya and lila,
Maya, and Prabhu icha
is what the saints have called thee and ur creation
For me, I am bereft of such big words
All I know is that when I am with you
When I just feel that You are in my life
Nothing seems worth agitating the mind over
Its just you and Your grace that matters.

Even these words are not mine
How can I talk of your glory
When I have not seen them like Arjuna
Bestow you will me with divine eyes one day
Till then, ask you of inculcating love within me
for You
coz in the end
The Love is also all yours.

Inside the Post Office

So our routers just behave like post offices , just sending packets from one post office to another , till it reaches the destination.
To do this forwarding, the routers take the help of the routing table. Based on the entry in routing table, the router decides where to send the packet.In the end , router is just a machine. And any machine cant have information by itself? So , who or what makes the routing table in the machine called the router?
The answer to this two fold:
1. A person mananging the router, normally referred to as the administrator
2. Automatic applications, called Routing Protocols
Route entries made using approach 1 are called static routes. Route entries made using approach 2 are called dynamic routes.
Static routes are well static. Once they are made, they will not be removed unless the administrator removes them . Dynamic routes are learned automatically by the interaction of routing protocols. They are added dynamically at run time and they may be removed dynamicaly too. Dynamic routes are required because, in general, the entire network topology is not known before-hand.
We have said that dynamic routes are added by Routing Protocol. Routing Protocol is an application which runs on the routers and whose responsibility is to exchange network topology information(in other words, routes :-) ) with corresponding routign protocols running on other routes. In other words, it is just an intelligent piece of software which has the capability of discovering the network topology information, sending it to other routers as well as the capability to process such information recived from other routers.
To take the analogy with the post office setup further, static routes are well known routes, which dont change. Dynamic routes are routes which depend on the road/traffic condition :) Routing protocols are like dedicated professionals in the post office whose responsibility is to find out about the neighboring roads/routes and send to the corresponding professional in another post office. These professional's job is to ensure that any change in road conditions in their vicinity is conveyed to other post offices asap, so that no letters are lost.

With this, we close a very very high-level overview of how packets are sent from source to destination. At the end of this, you should be able the foll questions:
1. What is the role of IP Address ?
2. What is a packet ?
3. What is a routing table ?
4. What does a routing protocol do ?

The next series will be a bit more tech, carrying on from where this series has left. The aim will be to introduce the elements of any typical network topology. At the end of the next series, you will be able to answer questions like:
1. What is a subnet?
2. What is MAC address?
3. What packet enters a router and what leaves, whats the diff in the two packets?
4. When does a packet not reach a destination ?
and some more

The Post Offices of the Networks

So, we now know that data is sent in packets and that the destination and source address is written in the headers.

In a normal worldly scenario, what happens to the letter which you had dropped in the mail box? It goes to your area post-office, there based on the destination address it is sent to either the City post office or if the destination address is within the area of the same post-office, it is delivered. In real world, we have a hierarchy of post-offices. City Post offices cover lot of area post offfices. Country post offices are used for sending international mails etc. Same structure is used for receiving the letter too. First it is delivered to the city post office, from where it is delivered to the area post office and finally those soothing words reach you.
Computer networks are similar. Just replace post-offices by what are called routers. And the basic operation is pretty much similar. The packet which you sent first reaches a router which is in-charge of your local area ( called Local Area Network or LAN ) . The router will decide where it should send the packet based on the destination address. Your LAN router will send it to either another router in the same hierarchy or to a router which is one level up in hierarchy. The interconection of these routers is what is referred to as the network topology, and these may vary based on the requirements.

So, lets get to some nitty-gritties now,some tech details. If it gets too geeky somewhere, apologies for that are tendered now itself :)
When a packet reaches a router, we have said that it decides where to send it based on the destination address. Just exactly how does it do that? The answer lies in what is called a routing table. Each router has a routing table. These routing table contains the information which is required to know where to send the packet. Each router is basically a machine with several network interfaces. A typical routing table entry looks like:
Destination Address Mask Gateway METRIC INTERFACE
Based on the Destination address, router decides what thru what interface should the packet be sent out. The information of which interface to send it out is equivalent to the information where to deliver the packet. Coz, once you decide the interface, you put the packet on-wire on that interface .If normal conditions prevail, then there will be something at the other end of the wire. So, whether you say that I have to send the packet to router B or that I have to send it out via interface IF1 ( which is connected to router B), you mean the same thing. In networking terminology, router B is called the nexthop and IF1 is called the outgoing interface.
So thats that about routing tables. Now, you will say: Hold your horses. Before you carry on, who will explain what do the other fields mean. Now, dont blame me for making it geeky. These are the meaning of the entries:
Destination Address and MASK together determine what is called the Destination Prefix. They define what is called a subnet. Destination Prefix and subnets are just a simple concept of aggregating toghether computers which are in the same network hierarchy. For eg, the state name can be considered as a network prefix. The letters destined for any city in the state have the same state name, thereby enabling post offices to send the packet to the correct state.
GATEWAY is simply the IP address of router B. METRIC is a admin-configurable value assigned to the link (wire) connecting our router to router B.
The above was the basics of the routing table. But any information will not appear by itself. SO, the next logical question is: Who Put it there ?

Networking .. What is it all about

Its amazing how similar computer networks are to human networks. In the end, both are just a set of entities wanting to talk to each other. Humans have etiquettes, computers have protocols. Humans use pre-defined languages to communicate, computers use pre-defined packet formats.Humans use postal addresses (well, at least we used to) for communication, comps use ip or mac addresses. So you see, in the end, its just about that basic need, communication.
This series of articles will try to approach the field of computer networking as just an extension of the concepts inherent in human networking. As we proceed, it is inevitable that the explanations will become more and more technical. The effort from my side will always be to map it to very simple terms.
To begin with, lets define a computer from a network perspective. You will pause here and say that Come'on , I know what a computer is. To which I will say, "define from network perspective". That you have a machine which has loads and loads of applications has nothing to do with the network. The only hardware that matters for the network is what is called a Network Interface. I am purposely not calling it a Network Interface Card, for reasons which will become clearer later.
So, what is a network interface? Very simply defined, network interface is a hardware which allows one to be plugged-in, get connected to the network. The LAN wire that we put in our comps is a network interface. Your bluetooth connection is thru netowrk interface. Infra Red Port is a network interface. Any entity in your comp which allows you to communicate with another comp is a network interface.
How does that map to real world. Any address identifier that you have which makes your location unique and communication possible is an example. Your house address, office address, cubicle number are all address identifiers. As we have diff such identifiers in real life, similarly we may have multiple such identifiers in the world of computer networks.

For communication to happen in real world, what is the condition to be imposed on these identifiers? The necessary condition is that within the geographical range in which the communication is to be established, the mails to be exchanged, the identifier should be unique. Non-uniqueness of the identifier is permissible provided it happens in two diff communication domains. For eg, zip codes of two cities, one in India and one in US may be same. But they will not cause any problem. The Zip code inside India has to be unique.
Similar condition exists fro comp networks.The network identifier should be unique. What is that unique identifier? For majority of applications, what is called the IP Address is that unique entity. Just like when you send a letter, you write the destination address and source address, similarly, for every packet (chunk of the letter) sent on network, where the packet should reach is indicated by the dest IP Address and source indicated by Source IP Address.
Now, you will ask me , hold on what is a packet ? When we send a letter from point A to point B, we follow the following seqeunce:
1. We write the letter
2. Put it in an envelope
3. Write the source and destination address
4. Put it in a mail box
(For those of you are unaware of the above, try writing a letter to someone. Believe me , worth the time and effort. Slowing things down in today's fast world is a a good exp. More on that in some other post.)
In case of computer networks, its not much dissimilar .Replace letter by the data which you need to send.The seq of steps are as follows.
1. Break data so that it can fit into envelopes
2. Put each chunk of data into an envelope
3. Write the source and destination address
4. Send it to your post office (router/switch)
The content that we send finally looks something like this:

where denote single or multiple notifications which are either used for a) sending the packet eo destination b) maintaining/verifyifg the integrity of the packet
and
is just data :)