F!ng3R pR!n+s

I saw her. I looked at her.
She saw me; those eyes, I saw them looking at me. Did she recognize me?
Why I tried to hide myself from her?
What crime have I committed?  Or is it just that I am running away?   Running away from myself; running away from her; running away from everyone.
Why have I come here?   I shouldn't have.
 

I should have stayed right back there, in the dorm, where the world of warcraft is still a game.
Where guys and girls sweat themselves in gym, where ideas converge where people are scared and where love disguises into a monstrous committed alley, a blind alley.

What did I just say? Am I making any sense?

I am not good here, I don’t belong here. I belong where my machines are, where my code is.
Two years; I have lived by a code and I can’t throw it all in a momentary lapse. I need to get away from here.
 

I am feeling low already, blood palpating, rushing through all my veins, the pain of heart is the worst kind of drugs. Morphine, cocaine, hashish oh boy! I have tried everything. But this drug of heart makes me numb. I breathe heavy.

"Nani" I enter inside the house calling my Granny. It’ roughly been 5 hours since I am here; In my hometown, and I already feel like getting away from this place.
"I need to leave"
 

"But, you have just arrived here." she replies. I feel a hint of wincing and sadness in her voice.
"Yes. I just need to get that thing ...my leaves, there is this urgent work" I stutter, stammer and look at her. I have always been good at lying, super good I must say. But there is always one person in this world with whom you can’t be dishonest. For me, it’s her.

 
I look at her face turning pale blue, sadness visible. One thing she has realized over the years though is to accept my words freely and never bother forcing me, she knows I won’t listen.

 I pack my bags and go to washroom; turning on the tap I listen to water whooshing.

 
I look into the mirror, I see a different image; a portrait of a different guy, He is clean shaven; he has almost zero facial hair. His face muscles glow like a spear fish, cheekbones perfectly in place. 
His hair, neatly ruffled.
I walk back a little and spot his perfect biceps, his broad shoulders, he is smiling, he really is, even though I am not.
I see his eyes, clean as lake water, deep, the number of girls drowned only in them.
I splash water on my face, and I see him get wet, his hair curls, shining.
I touch my hair, I am losing, I have lost them, I am getting bald from the side.
Closing my eyes and opening them again, makes the mirror in front of me stutter, thunder; as if some butterfly effect taking place, I hear noises, screeching echoes, my ears bursting with the sound.

 
I close my eyes again and I see that handsome guy from mirror walking in his father’s bedroom and I see him wearing a sherwani. in the background there are people laughing, and he walks in the bedroom and he sees those eyes; those exact eyes; those light blue eyes look at him there is no mercy in them, she is on top of one guy, "Rahul" he screams, "I am sorry , it’s just…"

Next, it’s not clearly visible, between the dwindling light I spot that guy lay broken; angered and crashing a mirror.
 

I do the same; feeling the blood on my fingers.
 

When the mirror is broken I look down upon the pieces, and I see the guy in them, he looks familiar, he looks old in some broken pieces, he looks young in some.
He looks exactly like me, albeit two years ago.

This was yesterday, or today, I don’t know, I don’t remember. All I remember now, all I can see now is  Its 1 am, and my Nani always says , when its 1 am, just go to sleep, nothing good happens after 1 am, but oh so sweet Nani, how do I make you understand, everything good happens after 1 am in the world I live in. It’s in every hacker’s genes to stay awake and alive after 1 am. Like how M@dR1 would put it “The first rule of being a hacker is, you don’t sleep”

I would try and sleep, not sleep, try to sleep, but today, it’s not possible. Today it’s the first major tasked linked to next subsequent ones.

“We will call it butterfly effect” thundered M@dR1 once, “A small set of events, would lead to another small set of events… And these events when combined together, will give birth to a chain; a chain of destruction; mass destruction. We will bring the change with the help of this chain”

We have been assigned projects. Projects are nothing but people and their projections.

Koyal Chawla. That’s the name; IT security analyst working in NCL (National chemical Laboratory), Interesting.

I never asked M@dR1 what he wanted from her, but then nobody asked, and those whom I heard asking, disappeared mysteriously.

I Google that name and I find her everywhere. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin. Hacking her was easy.

Her email id was all over the world and password, well, it was an easy one to guess. Sometimes, you don’t need any tools or any codes, algorithms, you just need some social engineering skills and you have it.

Gmail has given us a best way to hack people by introducing “Forgot my password” link.

Her security question “what is my dog’s name?” 

A quick stalking of her Instagram account and her dog’s name was shouting to me, calling to me “Cookie, cookie, cookie” 

Once in her Gmail account, rests of the things were easy, people connect their accounts everywhere and to everything.

But there is a limitation when it comes to virtual world hacks; it only gives you the information people want you to pursue. We needed more; we needed her retina scan and her finger prints.

I held in my hand a 200 page document containing every details of Koyal Chawla, where she lives, where her parents live, what are her office timings, what are her walk timings, what’s her favorite food, hell even who is her favorite Game of Thrones character.

But all this information counts to nothing, you can basically hack people for fun, their data, their routine, even their vehicle, but you cannot exploit the things which are hidden deep inside, you cannot exploit their darkest secrets their deepest vulnerabilities , you cannot recreate their physical appearance.

I possessed data which will help in getting what we wanted though, and I knew just a guy who would help us in getting what we wanted.

S@M Speaks..

I look at her, swirling her coffee with a spoon.

I watch her as she takes a sip of it and how it leaves a little of froth on her upper lip.

And just at that moment our eyes meet as she watches a sly grin forming on my face.

She raises her eye brow questioningly, and the next thing I know, I am wiping off the froth from her upper lip 

with my thumb, the touch of her luscious lip giving me goose bumps. 

Two months; people say that’s all it takes for you to fall in love with someone. It took me just 2 meetings in 2 days to know I was in love with her. Truly, madly, deeply.

Today, its 2 months since we met, and every day, every hour I have spent thinking about her.

I spot her exquisite smile no sooner I am done wiping the froth off.  “Sorry” she says and grins cutely.

I see a dimple forming on her right cheek, and I swear to god, I want to be miniature and jump and drown in that dimple; stay there forever. 

Today, we are on our second date, and I am not speaking anything, just watching her, observing her, letting things unfold the way they want to be, lest I am afraid, I will speak the truth, truth which will have consequences, consequences which will lead to departure, departure of her , I cannot withstand.

I remember our first meeting, in a gym. I joined only for her. John had enrolled me, had got my schedule fixed. The first time I saw her, she was doing abs, not that she needed any exercise, her stomach was flat like a plateau. How I knew her? Well, just because John knew her.

The first time she saw me, I was staring at her, trying to fixate my hands on whatever dumb bells I could find. Not to mention I got my hand on 3 pound pink dumb bells and became a laughing stock when trainer asked me what the hell I was doing? That was how we first met.

She smirked; smirking wasn’t really her forte, her angelic face was made to smile all the time, like all the time.

Over the period of 1 week, we became closer, I enrolled for her yoga batch, she was an assistant trainer.

And since the main trainer was out for few weeks, she was taking classes, the twist and turns I did for her, I don’t want to remember.

She was a goddess when it came to maintaining her body, that was such a turn on- a girl taking proper care of her body and maintaining her fitness, I was never into it, but one session she gave a tremendous talks on benefits of it all, after that she raised an eyebrow at me, needless to say she had me at her raised eyebrow.

But the “data” which I had of her favorite songs, her favorite books was pretty much helpful, as it got our conversations going.

She was a fitness freak, I was a sloth, but within 1 month I was at least presentably fit. I got my courage 2 weeks back and asked her out for coffee, an offer which she couldn’t refuse, since then, we are pretty much in-separable. Its only our second date but the phone calls, text messages are in plenty. I haven’t told her that 

 I love her, I cannot tell her that, I cannot admit my feelings, it’s a lie, it’s a trap, that’s what it is, it’s a mission, it’s a project, that’s what it is, my mind keeps telling me, John is pressurizing me to get the data he needs , a finger print will be too easy to get, retina scan, can be done, using the customized camera which he has given me, but somehow , I don’t want to do it, somehow I want to delay everything, somehow I want to be with her, somehow.

The thought of coming clean with her has appeared in my mind often, but I am afraid she is going to get hurt, afraid, she is going to walk away from me, afraid of sabotaging the whole project of John, which apparently is his ambitious and biggest project yet, he is upto something, they are upto something, trying to build up someone’s finger print and retina, someone who works at NCL, there is obviously something fishy, definitely.

But today is not the day to think of all this, who knows what I might do tomorrow, today it’s all about her. 

 “Why are you so quite today?” she asks me. “What are you thinking?” she further questions and I have absolutely nothing to say.

“I am thinking how beautiful you are” I lie, or maybe that’s the truth. She blushes and that dimple is out again, seriously, if I could I could just swim in it for like forever;

It’s getting late, it’s getting dark; our small talks are getting longer. That’s what love does to you, you start a small conversation and you end up creating a thesis of your own, a thesis which only two of you understand, an essay written only for two people in love. The inner jokes, become apparent and frequent, and suddenly you realize, somewhere in that conversation, you would want to spend your rest of the life.  

After tonight’s gym session, she has called me over to her place. This is the opportunity, I need to confide in her, I need to tell her the truth. John can curse me how much ever he wants, I will run away from him, I will take her with me, two of us will get away from this place and build our house together on some Himalayan hill station, she will paint, I will write, she will cook , I will buy the groceries. Fairytales, do exist, we will make it come true, I will tell her everything.

Few hours gone, and I am sitting in her balcony, feeling the cool breeze.

She gets me a coffee “hey stud, you seem off today.. never been to any girl’s appartment before?” she mocks me.

“Nervous?” she winks.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t call you for any action..” she mocks me further and we both are blushing. She has no idea what is in my mind.

I take the coffee mug from her hand and keep both the mugs down, holding her face, I make her sit down not taking my eyes off her for a second.

“Do you really think, I was nervous because of you and I being alone and to what physical potential this moment possess?”

“I don’t know, a girl calling you over at her place in the night, most boys would have thought the same” she says rolling her eyes.

“But I just called you for a company; I needed to spend time with you before I get my transfer to Delhi”

She was leaving, in two days, and I had to act soon.

“Honestly, been there done that. But with you, it seems all so different, you are the kind of person I want to spend nights watching stars twinkle” I pointed towards the sky and that exact moment a brightest star twinkled. She smiled. 

“That is not why I am nervous” 

“Then tell me, what’s wrong”  She held my hand and at that moment I should have been stronger, but it made me weak, it made me stutter, If I could only hold this hand a little longer.. If only.

Before there was her, before there was me,

Before there was sky, and the stars that seemed to be,

Before we kiss, before we make out, before we have a steamy hot sex.

Before we crumble, before we topple, before we have a night full of fight..

Before, I tell you the truth, before you feel betrayed,

O’ hear me out, hear me out for once,

There is always a moment before everything, and that moment is in the “before”

An uncertainty factor, prior to a certain outcome..

Before the betrayal, there we had a moment of truth and truce.

I could have told her, I should have told her , but I didn’t, I took the customized phone and took her selfie instead, focusing solely on her eyes.

Retina scan matched!!

The coffee which she made for me remained cold, I should have lifted that cup and drank from it; I used my finger print lifting tape instead.

 Finger print matched!!

And now I am walking in this thunderous rain. I don’t want to be a part of it, I never wanted to be a part of anything other than hers, but the moment has passed, before I could act… John in me has acted.

Alles Gute ! :)

Roses are red, violets are blue.

I made a promise to write something for you

And I don’t know what to do…

You expected something like this right?  But You don’t know me, I may be Ted Mosby, but there is hidden Barney stinson in me.    Gosh!  Everything that I write is rhyming. 

Anyway . Challenge *wait for it* Accepted. And challenge *wait for it* Fulfilled (Or so I hope).

You realize that this is probably my most conscience blog post writing ever. 

I had never written anything for a writer previously. So shall I go ahead and say how privileged I feel writing something for a writer or will that be too cheesy..:P

Feeling nervous, precipitating, checking out grammar again and again and still have that feeling, somehow; I will make mistake and screw up this post, yet, here I am doing what I like to do even though I suck at it. 

You are leaving Quick heal, today is your last day and I don’t know what to say. Words; sadly, words are all that I have; jumbled up to form sentences, jumbled up to form paragraph, further jumbled up to form a lame blog post. 

Okay, too much of wandering around in this post already, getting to the point, yes, I found things that I will miss about you *yay* , it wasn’t that difficult to be honest. 

It’s been roughly around a year that we know each other. I remember a bubbly cheerful pretty face sitting across the table in our first wifi meeting, speaking so fluently, speaking so confidently. I knew than and I know now, you are the most hardworking and talented individual I have met, you had your concepts clear , you had done your back ground check, I felt so naive when my wifi security related questions were promptly answered. 

So, the days passed and I got hold of your book, after reading it over the weekend, 

I remember coming to your desk and speaking my heart out about how much I liked your book, the whole concept and idea of it, and the boldness to write a different book in the Indian literature filled with campus novels. You know how difficult it was for a shy pot like me to approach your desk and speak my mind out, Its one of the most courageous thing I have done in my life I must say :D  

During that conversation something struck my mind and it has been a major point why I respect you so much. You honestly told me that not even 50 copies of books have been sold; something which saddened me, but I respect your humbleness and humility. It takes great courage to be a writer, it takes even greater courage to accept the market these days. Even though it’s a brilliant book, honestly, the publishers failed to promote it. 

I am not saying it just to hype this blog post out, I am saying it right from my heart, you are by far the most honest, humble girl I have come across, above incident is just a small example, overall I have noticed so much of this trait while interacting with you, it’s one of your core trait that makes you special and reliable in the eyes of your friends. 

So, before listing out the things I will miss about you, let me clear out one obvious thing just for the sake of it.

No tears were shed while writing this post, absolutely not; that’s your department anyway.

10 things I will miss about you

1) Beat the 9.30 heat

Oh how much I loved beating you finally.  After 3 months of persistence and diligence and sheer hard work and focus, one fine day , I finally managed to reach office before you, and my god!, what a feeling that was.  Lol. Seriously, I have said it before and I will say it again, you are such a work aholic, reaching office at 9.30 and leaving office after 7, continuously focused on work, facing monitor most of the time with that serious face of yours. It will all be missed and surely felt. For me , well, you gave me one reason to reach office early one fine day, so thanks :P

2) Cheerful presence

The happy go lucky, smiley face passing by my desk, always greeting me and vikram and interrupting our talks with suspicious eyes whenever we were upto some pranks or gossips, it will be missed idiot. It was nice having you spread smiles around and do what we call “timepass”, which we all do often in office anyway.

3) Compliments about my shirts

Oh ya, this particular thing will be badly missed. Every guy loves compliments; whoever says no to it is a big egoistic piece of shit. Needless to say I loved them all. But I got to mention here, most of the compliments which my shirts got were never my choices. You should learn to like faded, black and dull colors too, flashy colors are not always good. :P

4) Our pantry talks

               You spotted me when I was high, you spotted me when I was bored. Our lengthy evening   conversations in pantry at times were really “gossipy”. But it was worth it, we used to talk a lot, mostly it was me who did most of talking, once in a blue moon weird talks of mine those were. Anyway, the times when I acted rude and the times when I unknowingly didn’t respect the conversation was bad from my part. I am really sorry about that, and I am glad you spoke your mind out and made me understand all that, it brought a little conscience to me, in my otherwise disturbed life. Sorry and Thank you J I am going to miss such honest gossiping .

5) Club LPK

Okay, now that the topic of “Sorry” has arrived I genuinely want to say sorry for guiding (yes, literally) you to LPK when you visited Goa. I was not updated about the recent happenings. Next time do visit Nyex beach club, sinq and cubana :D   I will also miss routing people to you for a “second advice” when the discussion is about Party Life in Goa. 

6) Gujju fish lover

I have to say this, you being  Gujarati and still commenting on my fish dishes on Facebook were like a shock to me initially. Since then we have gone on to discuss many Fish curry dishes and my cooking skills :P   But yes, it’s wonderful. Every Indian should like fishes. IMO there are only two kinds of foodies who exist in this world, those who like sea food; those who are sad. 

7) Hack talks

Okay, today is the day I finally admit it, something which you kept bugging me after reading my post on hackers. Well, that DDOS attack on new year’s eve, yes of course I was involved in it. who do you think managed all the bots from India, the humongous traffic on the servers ;)  Admitting it here in open is wrong, but then again, I have not mentioned any date here, nor I have mentioned my hacker handle, neither I am saying all this is true. Every thing written here could be fiction, or could be true. You never know. God, I am going to miss irritating you with all the sarcastic double sentences. However, now that we are on this topic, I am glad I found sum1 interested in security so much and willing to attend all the sessions, someone with whom I could share the links and discuss hacks, someone who read my hacker blog post and actually mapped out things related to it. follow thehackernews.com , you will find me there . Like I always say, I may not be a god of virtual space, but I am always - omnipresent *inverted smile*

8) Maal talks 

Oh ya!!  Our “Maal” talks. And no, I am not talking about “that” maal,  nor “this” maal. Maals can be of different types, different sizes, different tastes, different packaging. Maals make you high , they also make you low. Maals can give you hang over can also take you hangover. We should write a thesis on “maal” someday,  In German that too :P 

9) Wifi

This point need no explanation. You know wifi ki gunj will be heard in QH long after you are gone.  Dur dur tak sunayi dengi and all those cliched bolly wood dialogues I am trying to fill in. but seriously, do you even want me to write anything here? This point is just as a filler, self explanatory. 

The list may become lengthier, but as you know, I am lazy and forgetful and at the turn of year, my memory is flushing out, (you can suggest me some though)

Your absence will be felt Nikita, and all I can do is wish you all the best and hope you get that MBA degree with flying colors (flashy colors :P)  and fulfill your parents dream to get yourself in the business, and may you and them flourish together.

I wish we could have interacted more, me being busy, weird and totally absent minded in my own task didn’t help things, and our idea to conduct a paper and attend hacking sessions remained unfulfilled, but there’s always tomorrow and another conference around the corner, we shall see to it soon J

You were a wonderful colleague, a good friend , you are; and also a very nice person...be the same...cheers!!

And yeah, do remember me- as a weird multi functional robotic Goan who suck at anything yet goes ahead and does everything… 

All the best again,

Do keep in touch..

Adios!! :)

The Ice Cream Theory...

The ice cream theory.

There have been many proposed theories; in the market, in the world;  theory of everything, theory of Schrodinger cat, Bohr's theory, Niels Theory, etc,
But never has there been ao much talk about a theory called an Ice cream Theory.

Given a capitulation and a thought process to ponder upon, my mind traversed back to the time when this theory actually existed, it still does, its just that people doesn't want to think about it or talk about it. In this male dominant society ( yeah, ofcourse i am male too and i am not feminist) this theory has somewhat lost its purpose, its suggestion and proofs/concepts. Today, however in this blog post, i am going to revise and revitalize it.

The Ice cream Theory, it was proposed in the early 21st century by a scientist named Abhishchandra Mukherji,  A horny Bengali chap who was jealous of his fellow horny Maharasthrian.

According to this theory "Any individual - male/female who has not tasted ice cream ever will continue chasing it till the time his/her tongue is satisfied"
Its a simple statement of intent. But Mr. Mukherjee used a lot of hypothesis. for example
An ice cream can be hypothetically considered a female (Any female)

Using various theorems and equations, putting all his efforts on blackboard and watching  lot of porn  (quite a lot actually) he finally found an answer to the conundrum which was eating his brain out.
The assumptions were all valid and the correlations were verified intently. The coefficients and constants used were well defined.

He somehow managed to relate his friend, a bald guy with sultry look on his face to the coefficient zero raised to the power x.  where in he called his friend a zero and the power x was the filth on his mind. like how zero kept chasing the infinity loop, this friend of his kept chasing girls out there.

Recently, I got a chance to meet up with Mr. Mukherjee and he opened up like never before.
On asking about the name "Ice cream theory" he laughed, he had a funny laugh, the kind of laugh which reminds you of Baghira from the movie Jungle book.

"Well, those days when any ice cream guy used to visit our locality, kids ran towards him and so ran this friend of mine, while everyone else got their ice cream, this guy kept licking his lips and almost everytime he fell short of something, he didnt realise what was that something, it could be the way he looked at ice cream guy, those lusty eyes of his, those weird jokes of his or those disrespectful sarcastic comments of his, and persuing tactics of his"

I looked at Mr. Mukherjee and he was lost in his memoirs, looking at ceiling and trying to recollect something. I did not disturb his thought process , after thinking for a while he blurted out again.
"And then the same thing continued when he was in college and when he was working in a corporate firm as an employee" said mukherjee.

"The lecherous comments on girls, the supposedly cool "dp's" of him, saying to fellow guys that 'she has a huge rack' that one has huge assets' , it all disgusted his colleagues and still they put up with him. rumors spread though. the look, the way of talking, the sarcastic cheap comments, the weird way of pursuing all girls, every girl, it all converged to the point where every girl started hating him, when its concerned with ladies, the word travels faster"

I nodded as Mukherjee continued.

"He was like a kid, chasing the girls like ice creams, licking out at every ice cream he came across, running after every ice cream guy there was, chasing every butterfly in his town , yet somehow he thought himself as "cool" and "handsome" , somehow he felt confident to chase every damn girl in his office, yet he remained single" Mukherjee coughed a little after saying that. he is an old guy, he must be given a genius of the century award for his innovative proposition, yet he remains here, rotten in his bed.

I offered him some water and thanked him for running down his memory tunnel for me. He smiled at me as we bid adios.

Reflecting on this theory i could only pay homage to this great man, for going out of box and proving something so realistic that can be used by normal humans in practicality.

Rather than putting an animal into the box and making an equation out of it, or playing with alphabets and symbols.  But as it always happens, great men remain undiscovered and their potential and importance only realized when they pass away.

Its true in a way, if you respect a girl and an ice cream and understand its true flavor and genuinely like one flavor, god will bend heavens to get that ice cream for you or unite that girl with you.
But if you keep licking everyone's ice cream or be like a wolf after grapes, you end up being an ice cream less guy, and god!! that sucks, especially in this heat ;)

Valar Morghulis ... Valar Dohaeris

"Are you going?" You had asked.
"Where?" , my response, to which you had replied..
"Under the chair to cut the hair..."
Lameness, from the very first day I met you, till now, you are full of lameness and sadness. "syed"
But today as you bid your final adios to Quick Heal, I ask you "you going?" and I wish the answer would be so lame. But you are really going, for greener pastures, and I sit here feeling the exact same thing- like how i felt when Luis Suarez Left Liverpool for Barcelona.

Today is your last day and NO , this post is not to tell you how good you are because you are not. Nobody is. the world is not a perfect place, people are full of imperfections, but somehow over the last 2 years we gelled so well, our friendship connected to the whole different level.  * Okay okay. no more philosophical shit. not today*

Now that you are leaving, I am having a stark realization about the things I will miss about you. and whoa! the list is endless.
So, this blog post is about me, like they always are. I am selfish you see...:P

Ok, before you go all emotional and sentimental I want to clarify few things.

A) No,  I did not shed any tears, but you ought to cry today.
B) Ofcourse you are still in Pune, and we will meet often for Live screening of Liverpool -Manutd game and Euros.
C) Skype is life saver these days. But 9 x 5 , that's roughly 45 hours of our life we are in office and it sucks to the core that you are not going to be there for larger chunk of it. Hence, the whole emotional missing drama.
D) Now that I have finally written a blog post and done my part, you gotta give me a quilled caricature of Tyler Durden.

13 things I will miss about you 

1) Pao calls.

Who will call me pao now?

and most importantly, whom will I call pao now?

Not everyone will understand the significance of having at least one "paon" colleague , but Goans certainly understand it. 

I will miss being called pao.

2) GOT references.

Thank you for forcing me, literally begging me to watch this series. and thank you for keeping me intrigued throughout with striking information from the Book. 

I will miss our Valerian talks.

Valar Morghulis.   You know nothing Chloe.

3) Tyler Durden.

First rule of Being Tyler, don't talk about him, 

Second rule of being Tyler, you don't talk about him.

Only you know the Tyler in me. Tyler in me is not diplomatic as you say. he ain't. Thank you for recognizing the Tyler Durden in me and accepting him, Tyler is going to miss you. *inverted smile*

4) Goan Snacks

Thank you for stuffing me with so much of cashews, dodols , bebincas , coconut cookies every time i missed my home. I remember you used to keep even a smallest bite saved for me. How will my craving for Goan snacks in office be fulfilled? :(

5) Football 

Discussing football with you was so much fun, and teasing you when man utd lost, even better. ofcourse that was very often .. :P   Shahh , Manchester United is going to lose hell lot of games from now on and I will miss the sadistic pleasure I get in teasing you.

6)  your tantrums

Your tantrums about calling me sad/gay (sometimes both) and what not.

asking me "have u seen "this" /"that" ?  when "this and that" were some serials / movies which 90 percent people haven't even heard of, and then when I say no, calling me sad, it was so unfair you know, but still, i'm going to miss it, it was fun,

About me coming late to office (which is very rare :P) and about me being insomniac.  

who is going to tease me now ?  

7) Movies.. (ENGLISH movies)

Discussing movies other than bollywood, I should put it as this. Seriously. Who is going to ask me about all the superhero movies now? and how will I get evil grin when i lie that i saw "cute kaminey" instead of Superman vs Batman.  Speaking english, walking english , talking english and discussing english, you are taking away a hell lot of English out of me, I hope you know that  ;).

8) Gifts , gifts and more gifts.

The amount of gifts we  have shared, i think not even my all ex girlfriends combined have given me so many things. :D   Out of every thing, Mella remains my favourite, my quilled mellisandre. Night is dark n full of terrors. And jurgen klopp.  

Yes yes, I will water the fortune plant daily. I wont forget, promise :D 

9) HIMYM references.

Saluting when the word "major" comes up. Or you calling me Ted and me explaining you Barney's graphs about everything. It was fun, nobody else got how I met your mother jokes better than you do.

"Major missing" 

10) Linux commands.

Thank god you were there to save my ass everytime my lizard brain kept forgetting Linux commands. Our grand hacking plan is still ON , very much. But i will have to google every Linux command now. When you were around, everything was so simple, even the toughest of linux related query was just a phone call away, from taking the remote of my machine and turning off my Kali's firewall, to installing vine, everything will be sorely missed.  My beloved Kali is going to miss you. 

11) Telling you stories. 

Oh yes, you were always an ear to me blurting out about all my women-escapades, ex's , crushes, and all the time i failed/passed , all the time i screwed up, won over. Reading my emails and giving me advice about all that was wrong/right in it. i will miss sharing all my stories with you, (mostly girl(s) related.:P)  but still, other stories as well, about global warming etc :D

12) Hearing stories

Damn, this is the worst thing. getting to know so many theories, (ice cream theory, rings the bell? ;) )  hearing out all the gossips and happening in office. who is after whom and who proposed her, all this girly talks , shaah, i am going to miss this the most tbh :P   you were like my inside agent in QH.  Plus, also, which girl gave me compliment and what was the compliment, detailed information provider you were. I am never going to know all these stories now, I feel like an outsider without a trusted insider already :(

13) 13 theory.

Oh ya!! like I always say , everything in my life finally boils down to 13. this number 13 is everywhere, even this list i am unknowingly ending on 13th point. you were the only one who believed in my 13 theory, its hard to explain it to anyone else you know, people call me mad :P

See, the list is not even half done, but i am ending it on 13. (just to prove my point maybe)  and having said all this i genuinely want to wish you all the best in future and you will be missed badly. stay intelligent, smart, like you always are and lame and sad like you always are.  

You understood me like nobody else, the time i was sad in Feb and prior, the time I was happy, the time I am Tyler, the time I am Cornelius, the time i am Jaqan haguar to the time i am Daisy , you just knew who i was and what i am. you were there for me in the happy times and sad. We started as Goan colleagues in this company and friendship connected to the level of brotherly-sisterly affection, where you understood me, accepted me and saw me for who i am, confided in me and told me i am not as weird as i come across.

Okay, i know you would want to kill me for making this dramatic post even more dramatic and only thing you want is the poem on your weird theory, and i am getting to it. you will get it soon., :)

This post though , is just to let you know that within the numbered days we had so much joy and laughter and memories, and for that I will always be grateful.. :-)

We all gonna miss you a lot!

Take care, adios!!

And have a wonderful Life ahead scripting Linux.

All the very best :)

H@ppY N3w Y3@R

New year; this is one time of the year all the narcissist, pessimist, optimists, misogynists along with every other misfits of the society join together and do/act what they call as a “celebration”, it differs from people to people; parties to parties, but most of the time, it revolves around drinks, booze and sometimes, if you are lucky, a midnight kiss. 

So cliched and regular;

It’s a morning after the great 31^st, people somehow assume that you have a hangover, and yet, you are expected to turn up in your office, wearing your best formal attire in a meeting and deliver a presentation.

My manager looks at me with somewhat disjointed look, it’s hard to figure out his looks sometimes, he is wearing blue jeans, so this must be Friday.

I sit there in the conference full of mangers and bosses, all suited up, their bald head shining, their face beaming with confidence, a fake confidence; a mask which they have learned to put on their faces so well, parker pen in their pockets, iphone 5, 5s, 6 ,6s, buzzing, with the same irritating ringtone, yes, they are all busy and they are all waiting for me to deliver this presentation about the new vulnerabilities discovered in our product.

“Get those glares off will you?” my manager whispers to me in his irritable voice. I have worn a crumpled white shirt, and faded dark blue jeans, yeah, I am the Steve jobs type; except I didn’t invent an iphone and neither I own one. I don’t want to use the shitty product made by children in China. Plus, it’s the easiest to crack, I have always preferred blackberry over any other phone, their sophisticated software keeps me and all my hacks/emails safe.

“you wouldn’t want to see me without them” I shoot back without looking at his face, yet another face beaming with confidence, a fake one at that.

“Allright, as long as you sell them with the security discoveries we have made..” he scoffs with a resigned voice and I flash my teeth at him. I haven’t brushed; I smell my own bad breath.

“Gentlemen, anything to eat?” asks the senior manager.

After gulping three cups of strong coffee, you don’t feel any hunger, neither, you feel less sleepy. Coffee was meant to provide you a kick, I suppose, to charge your motor neurons and get you “charged up” for the outside world in a better way. Or maybe that was just a marketing trick they used.

After gulping three cups of strong coffee, I still don’t feel any difference, my eyes still bloodshot red, the pupils dilating, eyelids constantly in a state of coming down like a shutter waiting to close down, and I am the owner of it, pulling it up against the force and inertia and gravity, what the hell is gravity, you don’t know gravity when you are an insomniac.

New year; people get excited for no reason, I just want to tell them.. “hold on, relax, nothing has changed, you have the same shitty job, the same shitty spouse ,same shitty car and same shitty routine, nothing changes, what is there to get excited about? Only the calendar has changed”

It’s the same world we live in, filled with corruption and mis use of power, of religious politics and dowries and farmers committing suicide. This is not a fresh start for all those vices, if it is, then yes, it’s a new year for me, but its not, it’s the same old year for me, New year; just like the old one.

I explain my part of the slides, and its well appreciated by everyone involved, some silly questions asked, non technical mostly, which I answer with ease. And then they discuss how our product has so many security loopholes? “ya right” I smirk inside my mind, If at all I go public or even private with the number of security defects I discover every time I use this product, this company will come to a stall.

But, that’s not my job and not something which I want to do, I want to stay an introvert, as long as I am leaking a few at times, it keeps me safe, gives me a low profile. It’s important for any hacker to stay low, not over do anything, or they portray you the genius of the world, give you more and more work and that’s not what we aspire for. We at FTW have been asked not to escalate our selves.

New year, finally the topic is back again in the conference, the sweets have arrived and all the seniors are eating those with a smile on their faces, again, a fake smile, fake beaming smile, fakers, all are fakers , nothing is real in corporate world, we are all meant to wipe our clients asses, US clients, UK clients. What has this country come to? Where is this country heading?

It’s been a while since I have slept. Must have been around 3-4 days or maybe more, I don’t even remember. That’s the thing about insomnia, it’s not a disease, it’s an illusion, a tangent of a circle of a tangent, attached ninety degree to its base and revolving anti clockwise with a centrifugal force applied. Or is it centripetal ? it’s a perpetual dilemma inside an already camouflaged dilemma.

Last night, I heard people outside wooing, cheering, wishing, dancing, kissing and doing everything other than what I was into.

I stood in my balcony with a coffee mug in my hand, watching the city lights glow further away and I laughed hysterically; slowly and then all at once. I laughed at their idiosyncrasy; their delusion, their fake hopes and their fake promises, their fake resolutions, fakers, everyone around, faker.

The city lights kept glowing and my monitor screen kept blinking as the Gh0stRat made entry into every machine that was ON, every laptop that was connected to all those mobile internet providers.

People; normal people, feel that the congestion they are experiencing in their network, the slow internet is down to the fact that there is too much “traffic”; I laughed at the very same thought of theirs. Traffic, that’s what normal people call it, traffic; it’s not something which you experience in the internet, it’s never traffic, traffic is such a physical word, it applies to things, cars, trains, air traffic. Fine; you have it, but internet traffic? Bullshit.

It was a well planned, well timed DDOS attack initiated by us, and the enormity of it was so much this time, the targets were 99 percent achieved, the success rate made me beam with confidence and smile with confidence, not the fake smile which we see everywhere, it was a real smile on my face, and I was so lost into tracking the nodes of it, flushing the .dat file from every machine using the script that I almost lost track of time and then, just like that it was morning, the day after, first day of new year, the night these people polluted our environment, the air that we breath, we polluted their computers, tit for tat;

As the clock struck 12, they shouted happy New year; fireworks, a lots of those went in the air, bursting polluting the air, already 90 percent polluted air in this megacity, noise pollution wasn’t even considered. People do this to themselves; pollute everything and everyone they belong to, the environment, and then they complain, get weird formulas, odd number of cars on the roads , even number of cars on the road, cars with odd number plates, cars with even number plates. There is so no such thing as odd and even, the entire world comprises of binary. Zero and one. You initiate ‘one’ somewhere then you can’t undo it, unless everything shuts down. And then initiated again, applying zero.

That’s exactly where M@dR1 is spot on, he is spot on about a lot of things, about how we should erase everything and start over, how, when evil grows, there must be a shut down and a restart. We buy his philosophies, every one of us believed into him and his ideas, his vision. 

A not so while ago, even I were amongst these celebrity kids, hanging around everyone and everywhere, being a faker, roaming on the streets celebrating new year. Firing crackers, shouting at the top of my voice, drinking, vomiting and then drinking again, an act of socializing what they used to call, now I see it as an act of faking.

But eventually, every one changes, and everyone has to change, everything has to change.

I clearly remember the day it all changed for me, the day I changed, the faker in me died and I became a part of this revolution.

It was 13^th of December 2013, a Friday.

I lay there listening to the humming sound of tap slowly transforms into whooshing sound of water followed by hissing and dripping, I felt the hard hitting noise of water falling on the tiles; tethering.

It wasn’t my turn that day. It was Rogers. I watched him sleep with his shorts slid on his fat ass showing his bum-cleavage.

A cockroach was strolling joyously on the half eaten pizza lying on the small table, its antennae vying for signals in all direction probably blessing the original owner of that pizza.

In a half asleep state I lay there, half dead, half hung over, like a lifeless body; lazy.

The Liverpool and Manchester flags waved their own sweet glory at the side of the a 29 inches television set with Liverpool flag fluttering ferociously owing to its victory the previous night.

Three beer bottles were fallen lifelessly on the smudged floor, smudged with butter chicken gravy. Next to it ,a newspaper spread on the floor containing other left-over food items, cashew beans and a half full beer bottle, the owner of it, Viresh, lay further ahead, with wide open mouth snoring ever so loudly.

I watched it all; I didn’t know how long I was watching it with smeary eyes until the bell rang.

 Once, twice and then continuously for few more times, my eyes were wide open now.

Again, nobody got up. “bastard, get that” I shouted, but nobody responded. Viresh hushed in his sleep, stopped snoring for a while and got back to his sleep again, needless to say his snore frequency returned again.

I heard the footsteps recede as the tranquil calmness inside and outside the flat returned.

I woke up cursing both my flat mates, blanket, unwashed for many days, wrapped around my shoulders. I looked into the mirror. I looked like a drug addict. Or maybe I had become one. Our flat looked like a typical bachelors flat. With things thrown around everywhere, it was like mini chaos in our foreign style open hall combined kitchen flat. The bedroom was occupied by Rohan and shayana, I didn’t want to disturb their only night in Pune in our furnished yet pathetic flat. The only people I could curse and I had a right to curse were both sleeping shamelessly.

I put on the sleepers, in left mine, in right viresh’s and walked towards the door with groggy eyes.

The door made creaky noise as I opened it slowly, a delirious wave of cold wind struck my face sending chills down my spine. There was no one as expected, I turned around and checked the letter box in which I found one letter.

While walking back towards my bed with a letter in my hand, I kicked Rogers bum with my leg like a football half expecting him to swear at me which he did as he went to sleep again, his bum-cleavage even more visible.

I clearly remember this all, what if I had not woken up and got that letter; letter with no name, only an Indian flag printed on it. what if?

I doubt M@dR1 would have tried approaching me again would he?

I remember it all.

Fast forward to present day and this meeting is still ON, half the things I can’t hear, half the things I don’t want to hear. A vote of thanks, followed by more sweets and coffee, I drink another cup of coffee and my eyes have finally stopped revolting , given up sort of, and just when I am planning on going home and catching a much needed sleep, my blackberry buzzes, there is a text from M@dR1.

“It’s #0n3ym00n tim3”.