My noise

And the world swivels,
Uneasily moves beneath your feet.
The Pupils stare at the heavens a moment,
the moment fleets away, as swiftly as it had come...

The chair still reverbs,
Coughs to remind it still has life,
Another spark and the hair on the neck stands on end.
The breath is held awaiting ...

Veins pump under the restrain,
limbs flinch, verifying their existance.
The arm wrestles with leather,
the mind with pain...

Drift into blankness,
would have been easier if there were a thought.
Beg for a dream, even a nightmare would do,
Eerie silence are just too much...

The ear twitches,
hears what moves in the black coil...
All is at peace with the world again,
for there is the white light they all spoke of.

Btw, I speak of the electrocution chair

'How can you fall sick so often?', she asks me. Personally, I believe I fall ill as frequently as a normal person does - about 3 or 4 times a year. But, even these impressive numbers fail to have any effect on her. What do I do? She claims I have a weak immune system. I may have a weak heart, but I refuse to believe my immune system is lacking.

So, yes I am sick again. Common cold, if you must give a name to the runny nose and a throbbing head. Very common indeed. For some strange reason, they've gotten vaccination techniques for typhoid, malaria, and God know what else, but they just can't seem to get better of this 'common cold'.

I mean, those brainy people have got to have caught a cold one time or the other. Either they have a fortress of an immune system, and the don't consider it necessary to help the general public out. Or, it doesn't kill so who cares?

Whichever way, I believe this cold has popped up frequently in history to attract attention. Something's got to be done, don't you think?

The warrior chants his rhyme
Death-toll free fall
His sword obeys
Through dusk, through dawn.

The closure of death draws near.
Silent black closes in,
Unfaltering. The mourning heart
Feel despairing winds.

Love forlorn, all is but lost
to see what lies ahead,
and shrink with fear
cling to all you believe dear

Live to die,
who can change fate?
Let purity be left aside,
when hell burns with hate

Sweet addendum of life.
(Why didn't anyone tell us about it?)

A week back I got this invite from a friend. To another social networking site, what else. This time it was BigAdda.com - The Reliance answer to Orkut and Facebook (Ya, right...). Considering it is an Indian site, I thought I'd give give it a look (way to go, patriotism). I had seen numerous ads on TV about this 'ultra-cool, fun hangout', and I did have time to burn, so what the hell?

Well, the site disappointed me, to say the least. First, it took ages to load (Looks like a certain Ambani forgot about the miserable net speeds closer to home). And when it did, for a moment I thought I had stumbled upon a college-fest website. It looked way too happy for its own good.

The interface was a let down. Maybe the designers were huge fans of Hi5. It is slow, cubersome, and it is impossible to find ways to tweak your profile. Half of the page is taken up by BigAdda ads. (Why they advertise themselves on their own site, I have no idea). The profile questions are the same, monotonous and boring. It is impossible to complete your profile with those ads flashing all over the page.

Addas and forums to encourage the growth of useless banter online. Music and videos to further slow down the critical process of loading one's profile. Add to that a few pain-in-the-ass avatars, and you have BigFlop.com. The whole webite is just a bit too cheery, looks like a misplaced fruit bowl (If only they had opted for a no-frills, clean interface *sigh*).

The blogging feature seemed to be a pick-up at the end of it, but it turned out to be a huge mirage. I can't have a URL other than hari3894881.bigadda.com. (Yes, I didn't find any way to change that. Do let me know if you do) God, it is painful for even me to type out, let alone readers.

How many more social networking sites do we need? Does BigAdda really believe they can replace Orkut, Facebook and Myspace? You've gotta be kidding me. In my eyes, all that there is to be connected in this world, has already been connected. No new flash-in-the-pan website can compete with the existing giants unless there is something really out of the box.

Google will probably blend Blogger with Orkut now, associating profiles with blogs. Then that little edge BigAdda has over Orkut will fade away like it never even existed.

Till that happens, I am very content with my prescene on Orkut and Facebook. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, 'Chuck this, there is a plethora of other areas to invest your time'.

The world is a rewarding place. Once I have said that, you may find it hard to believe I am an Indian engineering student. But I stand by my words. You are rewarded for thinking differently, no doubt about it. You only have to dare to. Not every one will succeed every time he tries does things differently. If you do manage to pull it off, it would be a real big pull-off I assure you.

Of course I am not an expert to go around commenting on such stuff. (But hey, I'm just the tip of the iceberg of this endless blogosphere ;). Bwahahaha ).

One of the world's greatest pull-offs is hosting my blog right now. Yes, I talk of Google. Those who may have read 'The Google story' may have found it captivating in itself. But, what this giant of a company has achieved in the non-fictional world is simply jaw-dropping. I mean, its one thing to start a company, and entirely another to find it welcomed into the English dictionary as a verb! (That's right, for those who don't know yet, 'to Google' is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as 'to find information on the internet'). How is that for influencing the world?

It is not as if the Google spindle has ceased to twirl. It is like this black hole, engulfing and conquering sector after sector of human life and very much making its presence felt outside of them. It would a brave man who would stand up and name a sphere of life which he believes Google can never affect.

We Indians love our freedom, we love simplicity and we love anything that comes for free. So much so that it is a wonder that Linux and Google aren't Indian creations.

Simplicity is what Google has always boasted of. They neither advertise their products, nor do they go around shouting from rooftops about it. They release their latest ventures in as low-profile a manner as one can imagine, and pretend to be least bothered about it. And for some strange reason, word spreads like wild fire, and there are hundreds of thousands of users in the blink of an eye.

The latest video-chat option in Gmail was brought to the public through a single, simple blog post. No fancy gimmicks, no banners, no slogans. And soon enough, it is threatening the likes of Yahoo and Windows live's video chat facilities. Suddenly, you notice, Gmail has a complete set of eye-dropping features. Video chat, personalized themes, nearly endless space for your mails... and I haven't even started on how beautifully it blends in the rest of Google's applications. Who can ignore Gmail now?

GoogleDocs is becoming popular as we speak. It hasn't had the mindblowing, out-of-the-world gain of popularity that we have come to associate with Google. Soon, when internet speeds around the world (even in India) increase, who wouldn't want to save the space of a bulky Office suite on his desktop?

Its a simple, yet brilliant motto - Let the products do the talking.

Coming back to India, it is probably the country that has best embraced Google. Google, no doubt has recognized it (they are hard to ignore numbers). Let me put together some statistics.
Google.com search has over 17 million visitors a month.( Yes, a month!!)
Orkut.com has nearly 10 million visitors in the same period.
Blogger.com and YouTube.com each boast of well over 6 million a peice. All of these from India alone.

These 4 sites occupy 4 places in the 15 most popular websites in India. No doubt, Google is the 'Top web property' in India.
(Just so you know I am not kidding around :
http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2341
http://www.watblog.com/2007/04/05/blogging-india-watconsult-research)

There is no stopping the men that fuel the brain of this giant corporation.

Oh, and for anyone who wishes to see what GoogleIndia is up to : http://googleindia.blogspot.com/