Sai and I had this beautiful way to solve problems that were to do with our daughter. As long as the sun was still down, Shradha was her daughter. And once the sun was up, she was mine and mine alone. To teach, to love and raise.

Sai got most of her pleasure from these two facts. Shradha was a soft sleeper, once she slept off, she never woke up until the sun was up and burning. And two, She really loved watching me raise the kids, he silence was the one thing that was there with me ever since I was twenty. She was silent, but her heart was always beating to protect and care for me. That I know, because there is always a stutter, when she tell me, you have to take care of yourself when I am not around. And I would think in my head, what would I ever do without you Sai da.

Shradha was not a hot tempered torementor. Instead, she was a soft spoken angel, never indulged in any fights, or got into arguments with others. Very much like her mother. Very much like the woman who raised her and cared for her and gave her milk and seeks no appreciation for the fact that she made the word mother a verb in our daughters life. She mothered her, and I really enjoyed every bit of the woman she grew out to be. In more ways that ever.

Shradha came upstairs and then, watched me feed the pigeons. I acted as thought I did not see her, winking and smiling to myself, I just sat down and picked up more rice in my head to feed the beady eyed devils. Ever since my stay in Ahmadabad, pigeons were one species I knew I had to keep calm, or it would only be a matter of time before we saw a pigeon’s nest in our freezer. She was still there. Behind my back, probaby with a frown that had to be turned upside down, eyes looking into my soul and burning it up with her disappointment. I was still smiling, and wanted to watch her reaction..

You know Sai da. The process of raising a kid is very much a process of us growing up in ourselves. Decisions have to be made, growth has to be attained. My MBA came into use only here. Most of our businesses run because of the validity of our ideas, but the MBA was never out to much use but for our beloved daughter.

She was right behind me,

“Tell me Shradha, what’s troubling you dear?” I said, in a concerned tone, but nevertheless, knowing fully well that she could take care of herself.

“Papa.. You promised to take me out bowling today, you completely forgot” she was sad, her voice made it evident. But then, a promise was a promise, and I made that promise. She never lies, especially to me. She does lie to you though, sometimes because she wants things done quicker, and some times because she loves you so much that she does not want you to face any form of harm. I am her guardian angel now, you have always been too caring a mother and not sp much a friend to her. Remember how you tell me “She’s your daughter Bujju, not  your friend, stop treating her like one”. Sai da.. For ages I’ve been treating everyone as my equal. Remember the time I brought Arul home tpo teach english at 2 in the morning? That was a fun class, was it not?

She wanted me to take her bowling, but traffic was so much more than anything we actually fathomed. 2028 was more a year of patience and tolerance than the years of a 80 kmph ride from dad’s office to her dad’s place in 40 minutes. It would be impossible to reach her favorite bowling destination. Sai, how did she inherit so much from you and nothing from me but her spirit? She loves everything you love, just with the spirit only I carry. The darned straight optimist came to me asking for something and it was only fair that I give it to her. She knew things would happen if she came to me. Her mom, was more of a practical realist. Her dad was the man to reach when things had to be done. And her she was, proving every moment that she was my daughter, as much as she was yours.. I guess that’s one pleasure we always enjoyed at twilight hour when she was getting ready for school and also coming back.. The twilight hour..

Neither day, nor night.

Well, she was here and I had to do something about it. How could I say no to my beloved angel ( who did not inherit her mother’s title, baby doll).

I asked her to wait, “Shradha, hold on a moment, I’ll be right back”

She was still holding her bowling ball in her hand. On my command, it went down on the floor and made a gigantic thud. Meanwhile, I walked downstairs, picking up coconut shells and pepsi bottles. When I returned, there were kids from the street littered all over the space on the terrace. Everyone was there, Sonu, Mothi, he best buddy Aisha and Anwar too was here, Curious came up running, that fellow, I don’t know how he was here now, he was supposed be on guard duty for my woman. I guess you were home. And it was only a matter of time before you came upstairs and chased the kids away. Why did you always have to avoid playtime when the sun was sky high at 2? Always sighting health reasons.

Shradha was the one to start, Anwar stacked up all the bottles and shradha started it on with a roll. The whole terrace rumbled. And there was nothing anyone could do about the earth quaking over their heads. Anyone but you could only stand around and watch in irritation, you on the other hand, could pull my ears down to home and still resisted. I still don’t understand why you love me. I never will understand why you do. But there’s one thing that I know to be as true as my beating heart. If something were to happen to me, my life would be yours to live and my heavy responsibilities would fall on your shoulders.. And you’d do it all, because you love me.

I know you were around. Your fragrance reaches me even before you do, and sticks on to me like gunpowder to a canon. Every morning, How could I forget the ways and means you use to dispurse your fragrance on me?

The bowling charade was over sooner than you would have expected, for “ Aap to hai na..” Once you’re there.. Everything is done in time. My lovely time keeper. Like the atomic clock that forces time into our lives, Sai did, just for me. Shradha went running away from me towards you.. “Mummy, Good evening” with a a warm smile.. “Daddy took me bowling”

“Uptairs?”with your eye brows raised.“Dad had the sedan here, so I guess he could not take more than3 of us to the bowling game” Shradha said with a sad face, you could not bear to see her  way. But controlling your smile, you said, “So?”“Anwar was , Motu and Sonu too, the others wanted to watch, dad I believe wanted everyone to be  to watch his daughter play, so we stayed back at home”

It was funny how both  this uptight city house became home to both you and her. For me, it is home because you are there. You girls carry my home in and out  you come back and head out.

Shradha’s  surely inspired confidence and good laughter in even the most tormented minds. Unable to control your , “Did you two havelunch?”“Not without you mummy.. She said.. Not showing the slightest bit of failure to understand that her mother actually cared for her..and her father.

“She was the best thing that happened to me”. I said to Shradha. The little one was straining her neck too much looking up all the time.. I just grabbed her by her tender hands and pulled her up to my shoulder and placed her there around my neck. And from then on, the evening would start. The Mother cooks and serves the food, the Father sits and takes care of everyone seated at the table, and the Child eats only the ice cream..

Life as it should be,

Love you Sai da.

Yours truly,

Karthik.

Ps. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. THe only sin you ever commited was to have not met me earlier on. Thats all. Please don’t talk like that.

pps. this letter, I wrote to her when she started feeling like she was causing more problems in my life that she was fixing, I could not let her feel that way, And, shared with her one of our dreams.. And then, she was in smiles and tears..

Sai,

forever yours,

Your Bujju.

We had reached home by 12 in the noon, and when we did dad went home upstairs and locked himself up in his room. By then I had cried my ife out, and I was having serious problems with my nose, I had a mild asthmatic attack. I had severe cold and I remember sitting in my dad’s office and telling him something to do with science and mathematics, out of which one was to do with the sum of numbers cubed. the formula for that. I never really remember that even today, I think that is a totally stupid use of the beautiful science of algebra. Stupid memory tricks.. Totally useless. You forget them as soon as the examinations are over.

Well, that’s not the important thing here, I had fever, and heavy asthma, and dad took me to our trusty neighbourhood doctor, Dr. Bharath, in the evening. An old man who never really had a chance to sit down when his patients were sitting, he was that short, and thats the one thing I liked about his, he was a polite short man, and as far as I know, I think I was the old person with whom he could sit and talk. Cause back that, I was short too! He then used all this gadgets on me like batman, and then pulled out his white prescription pad, and gave me a list of tablets that I had to eat. One of them, in particular was “allegra”, supposedly, for the asthma, and its quite expensive too. I recieved the sheet from him and dainlty left the room that night. And accidently I had misplaed the prescription some where in my room.

Later that night, dad got me readied up to go get the medicine. Since I had lost the prescription, I gave him all sorts of excuses to not go, and then dad asked me to get on the bike, and when I did that, he asked me,

“Karthik, prescription sheeta eduthtiya?”- Karthik, have you taken the prescription sheep with you.

I just blinked a lot, I think, Dad was furious, he yelled at me at the top of his voice, and then, he knew there was nothing much I could do about it now that I have misplaced it. He then stared at me, then I told him,

“Appa, enakku nalla theiyumpa, enna tabletnu, vaanga poi vaangitu varalaam”
-Dad I know what tablets we have to purchase, lets go get them

“what is it?”
“It was called allegracin”
“what?? Dont fool around karthik, if you dont know tell me you dont know”
“but really papa, its allegracin, or gin, I dont know what their hand writings mean!! the doctors!!”

Dad was furious, we then went to the pharmacy, and I told the man at the counter,

“Allegra..cin.. irrukka anna?”
“allegrava thambi?? irruku”

That was when I finally got out of my feel of discomfort. I felt relieved and comforted that the moment I went back home, I sat down, had my dinner quietly, went to my room shut myself up and slept for the next 12 hours straight”

Never again in my life had I seen my father that furious with me.. He really cares for my health, and I guess I have always been a careless boy messing things up and hurting the people I love when I do things.

Im sorry da,
That I am writing this when I am down with conjunctivitis.. It does not pain at all. really trust me. You must be too busy, I dont wannt disturb you to entertain myself..

Love you,
karthik

Hope you all like her!!

love,

karthikeyan balakumar

Each spring, I walked through the gardens,
Watching little birds chirp happy tunes,
While children play kings and queens,
With the cold winter passed away,
The warmth just embraces my heart,
Guiding me through the wonders of Nature.

While glancing through the endless expanses,
My eyes set up a lonely flower that spring day,
A delicate, special and yet, lonely flower,
And the flower had a story to tell me,

“I do not know what made me blossom,
Neither do I have any knowledge of purpose,
All I do is please my silent admirers,
Give them my beauty, scent and splendor,
While I lose none myself,
I spread happiness around me,
But a day will come when you will forget,
Forget me, Forget that I happened,
And move on with your selfish lives,
Like you always have been”

Was it the flower?
Neigh, A deep loving thought,
I shall not forget you,
Enshrined in my heart,
You shall forever be..

Love,
Karthikeyan Balakumar.

The very taught of it brought forth a million questions in my mind. Usually, there is a ticket printing machine that gives you details about when the journey started, from where, and where to. But today, the conductor was handing over tickets that were pre printed. ie, not from the machine that looks like a brick.

Let me get to the details straight,
Hope all of you have seen an Indian bus ticket, It is generally colored, has number from 1 to about 50 written in its periphery. and has a code printed on top of it in big block letters.
Now, the most important thing is, the conductor pinches off some paper adjacent one of those numbers when he gives away the ticket to you. Each of those numbers corresponds to a particular stage in the city, and for ever two stages the price of a ticket goes up by one Rupee, also to be noted is the fact that the minimum price of a ticket is 3.

So when you are intercepted by a checking inspector, all that they do is check the stage from which you have travelled, and compute how much you have to pay, generally thats not the case, people who get caught are those who don’t procure tickets. However, the science behind it was totally interesting to me, I did want to know how to get through the setup, and I think I found the way.

The way:
Find out what stage you are going to, and then, buy the cheapest ticket, then, just make another tear (in addition to the conductor’s) one stage away from your destination. If the ticket collectors catch you, then you can always show them and act innocent.

yours truly,
karthikeyan balakumar.

ps. you know, thats why north Indian conductors have that punching machine in their hands ..
pps.Come on the tickets are very economical, please don’t travel without one.
ppps.Guys, coming to think of it, maybe we should create a travel card, just like how there is a phone card, and tool booth card, just swipe it on a magnetic detector on the bus and travel.. would be nice.. don’t you think??

So, lets deal with unit 1,

What in God’s name is a transistor??

A transistor is a semiconductor device with three connections, capable of amplification in addition to rectification.

So what exactly is amplification??

Take something small, and make it big..

thats amplification.. in terms of the transistor we are talking about current, we are planing to use this device to AMPLIFY current so that we can use it for various purposes, like say, increasing volume

to note:  by amplification, we also mean reduction of current flow or voltage, not just the increase, basically the modulation..

So, a transistor is this:

A transistor is an electronic component used in a circuit to control a large amount of current or voltage with a small amount of voltage or current.

and it uses some small current or voltage to the get the job done.. How exactly does it get the job done??

Lets look into that..

Thats from hyper physics, you should visit their site if you need the text version.

That what you see up there is the figure that represents a normal transistor, aka, bipolar junction transistor. As stated it has 3 regions,

1. Collector, this is where the transitor starts, I like to think of it like out body, like the role of the mouth in the respiratory system.. It handles a lot of air, more than that of the nose (if needed only )

2. Base, you can think of this as the nose, the one that lets a little bit of air flow in (not always)

3. Emitter: The emitter is the fag end of the respiratory system, that enters the lungs. here is where you see maximum air flowing in. its kinda interesting to think of it this way, don’t you think??

I’m hungry now, let me go eat and come back.. I’ll finish this today Not much time to complete, or the prof is gonna trash me up so badly..

Pornography, aka, porn is what we would shun away from as a sin in many regions of the world, but lets face it, all of us have had some exposure to pornography and we all have had our time being addicted to it. Faster internet, Ipods, Touch screen mobile phones and what not, everywhere you find access to the internet, you find porn and that does strike a blow to our conception of what the true purpose of these devices are. Maybe a study would help, lets go to wolfrum alpha and seach, internet bandwidth usage against say, computer sales.

Let me get the graph for you..

seems wofrum alpha would not compute that for us. so I decided to google a little and here is what I found.

Pornography Time Statistics
Every second – $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography.
Every second – 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography.
Every second – 372 internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines.
Every 39 minutes: a new pornographic video is being created in the United States.

thats interesting.. Look at the numbers and they do mean something to us.

“It’s big business. The pornography industry has larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, Apple and Netflix combined. 2006 Worldwide Pornography Revenues ballooned to $97.06 billion. 2006 & 2005 U.S. Pornography Industry Revenue Statistics, 2006 Top Adult Search Requests, 2006 Search Engine Request Trends are some of the other statistics revealed here.”

Thats about all the quoting I’ll be needing.
fyi. the link is here :http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html

now, let me get back to what I was trying to tell you, the devices that we are using are a direct result of the porn that we wish to consume, lets just be honest, we have used our high end phones to do stuff that we are not proud of at least once. One in eight websites is a registered pornographic website, and the sale of pornographic material is shockingly high in so many countries and it has been banned quoting cultural and traditional reasons, even today, porn is illegal in India.

Last week, while I was walking to my place, I had an idea, I thought, why not have an exclusive condoms shop in Chennai. I thought if something like that existed, people would go there not only to buy condoms, but also to know that there are people who are open to the idea of sex as something that is not a sin, and that is something we badly need. Sexual awareness, we need to learn about ourselves very badly and controlling our urges is going to get us no where, Why should our sexualities be controlled?? Its a proven fact that sex improves our health when practiced safely (without the spread of STDs). Once again, the question would be, if we were sexually active, would porn have a place in our lives??

Even when I was a kid, I knew that when something was really big, there was something fishy going on with it. Just like Christianity, porn too has an impact on people. and the impact is quite powerful, if there was no porn, there would be a lot of people who would.. almost die. A addiction has been developed in the minds of youngsters over the ages, it is interesting to know that the word porn was coined only 48 years ago. (check wolfrum, i just read it there) and all of a sudden it has become one of the biggest phenomenon on planet earth, and if something is such a great thing, It can certainly be used to create a better future, just like how EVOKE changed the ideas I had about online gaming in my mind.

It can be used for good. How?? Thats the burning question..

After having about 20 minutes to think about this,Firstly, I feel that the governments should actually approve of porn and make them legal. Tax them and make a revenue out of that and use this money to do something good for society. Secondly, we could use the information that we obtain from such porn websites to determine what sort of needs are there in the hearts of the young, they are the back bone of the future, so we better understand what they want.
Assuming the search terms used are “rape”, “bdsm” and so on, one can easily conclude that a sadistic sex crave lingers in our hearts, and this can be taken into consideration and suitable re-modifications to the sex ed classes can be implemented, and when boys and girls know about the inner most secrets of the opposite sex, intimacy is just a short road ahead.

Maybe Devices are created for the sole purpose of exploiting people and using their addiction for porn to earn money, maybe the porn mongols are sucking the life out of millions of people every single day and wasting many many man hours on it, but all that one can say with absolute certainity, is this… if there exists a weapon, its probably double edged, and if you can use it, use it to our advantage..

yours truly.
karthikeyan balakumar

and many many soldiers with shields and swords,

Guardians, Spearmen, Swordsmen, and Archers,

The spirits of men piled upon my conscience

To wage war at my word, to shed blood for me,

Their master, with ragins spirits and clashing metal.

The sound of war drums fill the air that we breathe,

The Elephant trumpets, bring down entire mountains,

With my faithful horse, Celeritus, to ride on,

and my sharp broad sword weilded to strike , human and beast alike,

all that my heart needed now was the enemy at sight,

The army prepares to leave, and from the fort a mile away,

A pair of beautiful dark eyes spy on us low lives,

from Her high seat in the empire’s strong hold,

looking for Her knight in shiny armor, and when they found him,

She skips a beat, only to feel his heart beat,

“may victory be yours, love”

-karthikeyan balakumar.

I was looking for a faster way and an easier logic to get the job done, and thats when I picked up three chalks and started imagining how our brains work on such questions, Just imagine for a moment, what is the logic our brain uses to analyze and identify increasing or decreasing orders. I was playing around with those chalks for some time and I figured out it was possible for me to recreate the same process that happens in out brains.

It might not be “traditional” for an Indian boy to be in love with a girl before marriage, People, especially my mother, believes that its possible for people to love each other only after there is a societal pressure involved. Lets take for example the concept of Indian marriages. Im sure you would have heard of the famed Dowri system. ITs a system that has been in practice in India for ages, and bride grooms use their father in law’s hard earned money to show off amidst their kith and kin, ( read two states, there is a good example there).

IM running temperature.. Ot able to write anymore.. I think Ill listen to some music..

Ill continue with this sometime later..

its 2.40..

good night everyone..

nope.. cant..

love,

karthikeyan balakumar.