The art of story telling

Blogging regularly is not going to be an easy task after all! Though it is a 'not so hectic' office schedule these days, am struggling to post just 2 or 3 times a week. Am wondering what will be the case when office starts going hectic(as it will be most of the time!) again. Hope I wont have to shut this blog down and start another one(when the work loosens up a bit) all over again with renewed enthusiasm and vigor...I mean, however hectic the schedule, a couple of hours off work every week wont prevent the world from going round...or will it?

Read 'Kane and Abel' last week and thought I should write on it. It being one of the best works of one of the best story tellers the world has ever seen, chances are very high that you would have already read it. So I don't intend to give a summary or review here, but just wanted to write about the art of story telling.

I am not a voracious reader...but I feel people like me are the ones who can really say a good story teller from a not so good one. There are numerous books which I have stopped reading after the first couple of pages itself as it got terribly boring...So, a great story writer is one who is able to glue a non-book-worm onto his works. Books like Kane and Abel, Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Alchemist and some more belong to this class(again, its a personal choice!)...I used to feel uncomfortable to even keep the book down to go for food, bath or sleep; they were so soo addictive. Being an early riser, sitting deep into the night has always been an uncomfortable affair for me but while reading these books, I would sit way past midnight, sometimes even missing an entire night's sleep in a frenzy to know what would happen next, how the story would unfold, how the protagonist or whoever associated would go about solving a seemingly unsolvable issue...aah the most important talent of a story teller...making the reader desperate to know what would happen in the next few pages and then keep this momentum throughout. Very few people seem to have this talent and I envy these guys!! A simple language and a clear plot also are very important to keep the story interesting. Very complicated plots and tough language takes the fun off the story. The flow is also very important...there should be a continuity throughout. A sense of humor also helps a lot in keeping the reader alive and active during the course of the story. I think the number of prominent characters should also be kept to the minimum...too many people doing too many things could make things difficult to remember making the story less interesting. After so many fundas I remember a story. A scholar( a great guy who knew by-heart almost all the knowledge know to mankind at that time) was crossing a river in a boat and during the course was boasting about his vast knowledge and teasing the guy rowing the boat as he was uneducated. All of the sudden the boat hits some solid rock and starts sinking. The scholar knew the theory of swimming...the hand and leg movements and breath control and all that...but never had any practical knowledge of the same...and as expected, his theoretical knowledge couldn't help him one bit and he had to be rescued by the boat-guy. Similar is my situation. Am giving a long lecture on how to write great stories and when I try to write one, am struggling like hell!!!

I just wish the authors of textbooks at college and school had this talent of writing...which would make us glued onto the book once we start with it...but sadly only a very, very small percentage of textbook authors seem to have that talent; the content might be great but the writing style generally is boring and monotonic...Had every text book author been blessed with this talent, I guess the world would have seen more scientists,innovators,engineers,businessmen and doctors!!

I was just going through what I have written today again. Man... its a boring read. Looking through the little window at the swaying trees miles away and wondering if I would even be able to write a single article which would be an awesome read...but am optimistic, they say 'practice makes perfect :)'

And yes, this post is special...coz now I ahve started using Ubuntu after years of long wait and this is the first post to come out of my Ubuntu OS...

My first Job and Steve Jobs

The first 21 point some years of my life has pretty much been the same, have been a student throughout. A major happening in my life was that after almost 22 years of non-stop paying(fees) and working(I mean, studying), now it is getting paid and working…a great welcome change. Now I get to buy as many Frootys, Pizzas, Ice creams as I want. Strangely I seem to drink a less number of Frootys, eat less number of Pizzas and Ice Creams than before, teaching me a very important lesson, a lesson we had read but not ‘understood’(like most other engineering subjects!) in Principles of Management(if my memory has it right, it was something called Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), that man’s desires changes soon after he achieves what he had dreamt. Achievement, big or small, creates an ethereal sense of joy that dies out soon after we see bigger and better things to achieve. In short, man doesn’t know how to enjoy; he only knows how to long. And Akshay being a human, doesn’t enjoy Frooty, Pizza and Ice Cream anymore, he longs for a Kawasaki Ninja (pleech green, 250cc). Some cite the reason behind all human achievements is this dynamic nature of desires. It is this that sets us radically apart from animals. Were we creatures who could be permanently satisfied when our dreams realized, we would continue to be animals…I mean the first desire that comes to any creature is to get good food, good water, a good girl-friend and once these desires are achieved, animals stop working. My cat (Pakru), sleeps, plays and enjoys life to the fullest almost all the time. I think he just works for an hour or two, his hunting time, every day and the rest 22 to 23 hours is pure enjoyment. I work for something like 14 hours a day and the rest of the time sit longing when my salary would increase so that I can buy a pleech green Ninja-250. Well, I guess this(the urge to achieve more) is the reason why my fellow humans have invented Aeroplanes, Rockets, I-Phones, Ninjas and what not while Kukru, Kari and Chakki(Pakru’s fellow beings) have nothing much to say about their inventions. Why do we keep on inventing and achieving? So that we can enjoy more, we can relax more and we can lead a worry less life. Well, I thought Pakru was doing the same now… sometimes I seriously get a doubt as to whether animals have been through all that we are doing and decided that more we complicate things, the more complicated things become…not more simple as most of us think… and then decided that the best way of life is to just get the satisfy your basic needs and then enjoy the rest of the time. Keep it Simple.

Just like any other day, I walked into my office on October 7^th, 2011, double clicked Internet Explorer entered gmail ctrl-enter, ctrl –t, yahoo ctrl-enter, ctrl t, news.google.com enter(I guess this sequence of steps is common for at least 80% of IT guyz like me) and waited for the pages to load. And when I read the headline ‘World bids goodbye to i-Con Steve Jobs’, I felt my heart stopped beating for a few seconds all together. It is not often that you have tears in your eyes when someone whom you have not even met or known in person dies, but this was one such rare occasion when I had tears in my eyes while reading the news about the death of Steve Jobs. I have always been a hard core Steve Jobs fan…not an apple fan, a Steve Jobs fan. I have always felt his passion, zeal and commitment towards his company and products that he spearheaded were marvellous. I have read contradicting views about his management styles and the way he would treat his employees…the negative reviews often out numbering the positive ones. But then, there can’t be a 100% ideal man…then he would be God. Everyone has his or her own positives and negatives.

I have noted that after his death there are a huge number of articles giving him a larger than life image and this has caused a lot of people to riot that he wasn’t such a great person after all and that he had just managed to pack up a few existing technologies (say for example mp3, phone, touch-screen) into an aesthetically pleasing package and market it well. But my take on this is that if things are so simple…if putting mp3, touch, phone and apps are that simple then why didn’t any other company do it after all? These technologies have been around for quite long, but no other company has managed to create a product that created the ‘wave’ or ‘revolution’ that Apple products created. Not that they didn’t want to, just that they couldn’t. Apple without Steve in the 90s was similar to other companies. And the sales and profit just dropped to the extent of making Apple almost bankrupt. But once Steve was back, things changed phenomenally. Mac, I-pod, i-phone, i-pad…and we know the rest of the story, from a bankrupt company to a contender for the title of most valuable company in the world-worth 400 billion dollars in just over a decade!! He did have his negatives, as all of us humans have, but the fact that he was a Great person remains undisputed.

The reason why I decided to write on both my first job and Steve Jobs together is an important one…I have always wanted to write about both and also the title rhymed well.

A BLOG! AT LAST!!

After many, many years of the strong want to create a sensible blog, after numerous procrastinations citing silly and not so silly reasons; a proper attempt towards sensible blogging at last. But now, what do I write about? Just random thoughts off my mind? Or should it be a blog dedicated to my interests-cars, books and gadgets? Have a tough time now… but now that the start is given, hope the flow would automatically develop…It has always been the case with my life, getting that initial start has always been troublesome, but after that, the momentum then picks up fairly easily… coming back to the question of what this blog would contain, I guess it would be just random thoughts-thoughts about the insects, animals, people, behaviour, the earth, the moon, the stars…and occasionally, about cars, books and gadgets…and thus the name of the blog :D

But then, I have always wanted to be story writer…am not really sure if blogs are the right place for penning down developing stories, I guess I would save the stories onto my hard disk now and perhaps publish it once it is done….if ever I start writing one…

It is 10:15 pm October 30, 2011 now…hope by 10:15pm October 30,2012 there would be at least 50 entries…would have liked to hit a century in one year, but that would be a very tough target to reach…50 seems fine…it would mean something like an article or two every week, which is kinda doable.