I've been holding back on some very spicy news about me, for 3 weeks now. Due to combined circumstances at home and work, I am only now making it public. After 6 memorable years with the Company, I have resigned from my job, last date is slated to be 09-Dec-2005. I don't have another job waiting for me. What I'm going to do next, only time will tell.

If you're surprised to know this, and I think those who know me will be surprised, I can only say that this was not a sudden or rash or emotional decision; much thought and deliberation has gone into this, and when we get a chance to meet, I will be able to give you the bigger picture.

I was chatting with my boss GP about my career plans and "what next" type of topics, and somewhere in the middle he mentioned potholes .... that reminded me of something I always wanted to write about. I dedicate this writeup to GP.

Cheers
Mayur Poddar

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How often we read about air pollution! This monoxide, that sulphide. But not often do we see the depth of the problem that is called "air pollution".

In Bangalore, there are over 70000 auto-rickshaws. In the recent past, the government mandated the use of LPG in these rickshaws. Today I see most of them spewing smoke like they were no less than dragons. Wonder why my LPG stove at home doesn't do that!

Anyway, I'm not going to get into whats more polluting - rickshaws or buses. What I do want to talk about is the one aspect that I have always seen as under-represented and sometimes even ignored. And that is the non-vehicular suspended particulate matter in air. Largely speaking, that is the dust and loose soil that gets lifted into the air from the roads, by passing vehicles or by wind. And there is plenty of it.

Our roads have numerous pot-holes and cuttings and construction material and debris. A pot-hole means that the lower layers of the road are exposed, besides the upper layers that have eroded. A road cutting means that the road was first dug up and then unevenly filled with the same dug up matter, and rarely ever tarred again. And construction material is just all over the place. All of this erosion and digging leaves behind a huge quantity of loose soil on the roads. Gradually, vehicles passing on the road will grind this soil into finer and finer particules, until one day the particles are light enough to become suspended in air over a prolonged period of time. To give a more realistic view, recall a time when a large vehicle raised a momentary dust storm as it zipped past you, and you scrambled to avoid it, covering your eyes and nose and mouth, and your clothes. Who wants a layer of dust on them?

The most visible impact of this kind of pollution is on human health. Immediate effects could range from itchy eyes to sneezing to coughing. Lasting effects are far more serious. Imagine a layer of fine dust inside your lungs. Asthma, allergy, and other general breathing related ailments are guaranteed. For life. And yet, nobody seems to be noticing this. Or somebody is noticing, but is ignorant enough to not consider this as a health hazard. Nothing about air pollution is more ignored than fine dust. And what is the root cause of this? Road cutting and digging and potholes!

Daily life may not be so stressful or rigorous, and yet we may not have enough time to do all that we want to. Sometimes, 24 hours is just not enough. Thats the way it's been these past two weeks.

Anju masi (for the hindi illiterates, masi = mother's sister) was here, and a cool masi she is. Anshu (her eldest daughter), who studies in SMVIT, had gone home for vacations, and she brought her mom back with her. So the house was all lively and chirpy for some time. Now masi has gone back to Jamshedpur and we're back to life as usual.

The commute to/from office has become the most stressful part of my life. It's an absolute waste of the precious little time that I have. 1 hour in the morning, and 2 hours in the evening. And now, when the bus is standing in a traffic jam, mosquitoes fill up! How much worse could it get? I can't wait to get rid of the bus ride. I'm already on my way to freedom. Unfortunately, I'm not going to be able to write about that here. Just last weekend, there was this article in the newspaper about how IT companies are kicking out and suing their employees for having written anything about their work or the Company on blog websites. Geez, the last thing I want is to get kicked out!

And if anyone is not well, my recommendation as a good medicine - watch the movie 'ramji londonwale' - it's the most hilarious one I've seen in quite some time. I was rolling all over in my seat (however small it was, and if I'm rolling, everyone around me knows!). It's a blast. Especially if you're familiar with the bihari people. I also saw this movie 'salaam namaste'. I like the movie, although mom found it rather disgusting.

Talking of movies, it's becoming rather difficult for me to sit through any movie without getting extremely emotional at least once. I figure it's two different scenarios that take me to those states. One of them is when the scene will make me remember something very nice, a sweet memory, of somebody, of some place, a memory that will fill my heart with joy. Many of such memories of mine are unfortunately associated to the most painful ones too. And somehow the good memories will bring alive the bad ones. This is the most difficult situation for me to understand. There was a time when I would control myself and subdue my emotions like these, to the extent that I would deny to myself ever having had such an experience. Now, I just let myself be. Then there's the second kind, the scenes that will remind me of the painful memories. And those will instantly induce sadness. The end result is no different from the first kind. So if my cheeks taste salty in a movie, there's no surprise.

I had been actively working at getting over these very painful memories for more than a year, and was feeling so good about my efforts, and was positive that I had made very good progress. Now, it really bothers me that I've not made as much progress as I had thought. Actually, I can say that the efforts that I had been making have been worthwhile, but have addressed only the some aspects of the memories, not all. There's not much I can do to get rid of painful memories. But I could do something about the good memories that were bringing alive the painful ones. So I chose to work at that. While I do think that destroying good (joyfull) memories doesn't make sense at all, this was the one way I could see to help myself.

While I believe that it's probably impossible to wipe away your memories, I do believe that if enough effort is made to over-write them with something newer and different, the older ones will "fade away". This seems to work for worldly (or external) aspects - like a memory of a long drive - you can go on more long drives and the newer experiences will over-write the older ones, and that helps. But now, after the movies and much deliberation about how I react sometimes, I see that this method totally fails for the "emotional memories" - the feelings of happiness and pain that are truly mine - not those that exist because of somebody or some place - those just cannot be over-written, or not so easily.

So this is all the deliberation I've been doing the last 2 weeks.

My daily horoscope from Yahoo:

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Cancer

Usually, you and your conscience are pretty well acquainted, but there might be something deeply buried in your psyche that you've been trying to work around for a little too long. Drag it out into the light, and you'll feel so much better.

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An adaptation from a dialogue in the movie 'salaam namaste':

Love is like a switch that will turn on, on it's own;
And when you try to switch it off, it just won't turn off.

Cheers
Mayur Poddar