Mind Blogging. Mind Boggling.

If Satya Nadella can fondle a Kookaburra cricket ball at work during his conference calls, I need a sporty accessory too -I got this friendly looking 1 kg dumb bell as a companion at work and home.



Further, I will have to take it in to work. Now Himalayas (Deoriatal) beckons in two weeks, and lugging this boy around for the next two weeks in my Samsonite backpack will be good practice for my back.

On Saturdays, it will help my upper body get some action during the Carter road runs- leg muscles do so much work while arms are flailing along uselessly during all those 5Ks. Shoulders, tricpes and biceps were crying for some action- and I have given them this gift. With the cellphone strapped to my arm and this red fella at my hand, I will be the coolest cat running Carter road.

They should just give a 1 kg dumb bell today to all "knowledge workers" to keep at their table. Part of induction kid. All the upper body exercise we get is our fingers- going pat-pat-patter on the keyboard. This one's way better than a stress ball.

Think your cubicle is a cage? Well, get CAGEY at work, then.

Troubled bridge over waters
Come Friday afternoon, and we clamber aboard the Innova and brace ourself for the rocky Jamshedpur-Ranchi ride, the travails of the travel described in a dedicated post here. Today's post expounds on a particularly remarkable leg of the journey- the Crossing of the Subarnarekha sandbar.

There are two routes we can take- one via a village called Chokha and the other via the village Chandul. Now the Chokha route is shorter and more of a road, while the Chandul alternative can be better described as a rout than a route. However, journeying via the Chokha involves crossing a dubious bridge across the river Subarnarekha.

I first saw it in May- it's made of sand, and nothing more, and around 5 metres across and 200 meters in length. Imagine the symetrical and confident looking cables of the Bandra Worli sea link- well, this one's the other end of the spectrum of India's motorable bridges. Before the monsoons, we used to calmly cross, leaving Innova tracks on the mud behind us. This sand, I am told, is not even specialized bridge sand- it is just alluvial deposits picked up from the bottom of the river- ingenious "jugaad", at your service.

Warnings signs, and the fall
In June, there was a warning sign- One Friday, we saw as we approached the bridge that a truck had slid off and been submerged in the water. We neared a crane which was lifting the truck out of the waters, with the truck suspended ~20 feet in the air. Now we are always in a bit of a rush, on this journey, because we have to make the Indigo flight. As a line of cars waited for the operation to complete, we passed them by, coolly driving right underneath the suspended truck, much to the surprise of the crane operator and all the waiting cars.

As the warning sign foretold, this bridge was washed away during monsoons. And people in J-town said it quite matter of factly, to us- "Sirs, we cannot take the Chokha route, you see the bridge has been washed away". And thus, we broke our backs on the Chandul route, with the vertebral column being squashed into a jelly.

Bridge is back, and my back is bridged
I am pleased to report that today, I was back on those sands. Now that the monsoons have abated, kind municipality souls dug up the river banks put the sandbar back together- in service till the next spell of rains. Yes sir yes, in all its former glory, behold the Subarnarekha sandbar bridge, shot from the rear window of the Innova after yet another successful crossing:

Makarasan vs. Road- it's a tie
Now we've started this practice, this team of ours at Jamshedpur, of doing group yoga in the evenings. I'm a regular on Mondays and Tuesdays - they say front-load your work, and whether I'm doing that with work or not, I sure do it with fitness pursuits. Wednesdays and Thursdays I slack off, and Friday I'm on the 120 km car ride from Jameshedpur to Ranchi- the Raunchy ride.

I call it that because it is a hell of a rough ride. While the first and last quarter hours are a 6-lane breeze- kudos to Gadkari and co - the mid section is quite an ordeal - it's a bumpy 2 lane ride.

After the yoga, especially this position called Makarasan, my lower back feels stiff as an oak. However, all the good work is undone by the Raunchy ride, after which the stiff oak is reduced to jelly. I can actually feel the springs in my back doing their cushioning work (and groaning while at it!) when i bounce up and down on the seat. There is a need for a vertical-restrainer seat belt on cars traversing certain roads in India- so that the car springs are able to do their job. At the end of the ride, the back turning to jelly feeling is absolutely real, I tell you. Just as real as the oaky feeling is, after some rounds of Makarasan. By the way, if you take to this road in the night, I suggest to blast on car speakers, as an appropriate theme song and also as a way to ease the pain, AC-DC's Shook me all night long   . (That song, such explicit lyrics always makes me smile)



Note: Above ain't me, it's a spiritually-connected gentleman by the name of Jack Cuneo.

Clogged arteries of the economy
As observed in separate discussions with AM and AJ, these are the biggest cities in Jharkhand we are talking about. And add to that- it's the biggest mining belt of the country, and that too by a mile. As evidence, we see trailers upon trailers bouncing along slowly, laden with coal and rolled steel and what not. And so many of these trailers are parked helplessly in a damaged state by the road- undone by its vagaries. This is not a good situation because the coal and the steel these lines of trailers carry are the life giving force of the Indian economy. One's gotto fix the roads here. Just saw an article yesterday that bad roads are costing the Indian economy $21 Bn per year - a staggering 1.3% of GDP! Two sources of damage- the slow movement speed and all the damage to the vehiles. This bad road situation in this heavy freight corridor is akin to an ERP engineer at Infosys Bangalore unable to even chat with the onshore client in the US because Infosys uses a dial up connection - in 2016.

Lifting the gloom
However, seeing the wagons upon wagons of freight trains and all the trailers on the Raunchy road gives one the feelers for the pulsing heart of the Indian economy- the coal that powers and the steel that holds it up. And the road is getting better and better- it took 5 hours earlier, it takes 2.5 hours now. While there may have been Naxal issues earlier, and we can stop and have great masala tea and onion pakodas at Hotel Panchavati on the way.

Mumbai roads are unique. It is not uncommon to find six different surfaces along the breadth of a typical two-lane road in the city. In decreasing order of traveler comfort;

1) Concrete
2) Tar
3) Cobblestone
4) Metal manhole cover
5) Dry earth/Slush
6) Water

I hope you noted the word "breadth", above. Along the length is no feat. I will be on the lookout for photographic evidence in my travels through the city. I would be so overjoyed if I find a cross section neatly and equally divided among all the above- a two lane road; one third of a lane dedicated to each of the above surfaces.  To all my readers, whichever corner of the city you are in, please keep an eye. It could be right outside your living room window, this mythical road!
  
All right, dry earth and water is commonplace - you find them everywhere- not the USP. In Mumbai, though, the core road itself is a patchwork of three legitimate surfaces- 1, 2 and 3.  And thanks to the copious amounts of water the city's underground drains have to no doubt handle during the monsoons, 4 makes up a not-insignificant portion of the road space. Many a time, the manhole cover is missing and all that's left is a gaping hole. In the monsoons, the drain beneath would be overflowing and one can see water forming a virtual cover. The list should therefore be tweaked to read:

4) Metal Manhole cover, switching occasionally with 6) Water, or 7) Air.
7) Air

The perfect place to observe this abundant diversity is the Andheri Kurla Road betweeen Saki Naka and the highway. Truly a sight to behold and an experience to be felt, that stretch of road is. What with the Metro construction happening, there are other exotic materials added to the mix. Track ballast. Those sharp intermeshing rocks on which the rail tracks lie.

So road surface is also called race surface, right. Lingua franca for F1 enthusiasts. Surface is skin. Racial skin.
Talking of racial skin- Mumbai has abundant diversity. Brown (slush/earth) White (concrete) Black (tar).

(Note: 2nd August, 2011: This tale has a happy ending! From Ashwinwins.blogspot to AshwinFTW.blogspot)!


So, to set the ball rolling, What would you call an adhesive-laden piece of yellow paper on which you can write secrets and pass along, especially in office?

Coming to think of it, say one starts writing something; not typing, mind you, I mean putting ball-point -pen to paper kind of affair. Then the first sentence would always set the ball rolling, right? You know, the tip of the pen, rolling and tumbling along on the paper? So there, it took me a whole paragraph, but the ball is coasting along now at a merry pace. So, let's roll.

Returning to the vexing question posed above, there's a clue waiting for you at the end of the next para. Yes, this is a cheap, old trick to increase the likelihood of your reading the next bunch of sentences, but you have been conned, my friend, so read on. (I say old because, as regular readers of my blog might remember, I have pulled this same one a few posts ago)

So I want to share with you the fact that I have spent hours on trying to come up with a sensible name for my blog. I mean the hyperlink. If you hit Alt D right now, you will certainly agree with me when I say it has been an effort in vain. In vanity, you might even say. "AshwinWins? Loser!", you might say. However, as I said, it's not that I haven't tried. In fact, right now while I am meant to be studying for my CFA exam which is 5 days away and for which I have taken a whole week off and for which 6 months are recommended while I had 2.5 weeks when I began...ok I stop. That pollutes the air of genteel levity which I am trying hard to create here, and I will not stand for that.

So, my work on the blog name can be categorised into two buckets:

1. Generic word play (for which I didn't need to be Ashwin).
2. Specific word play (capitalizing on the singular fact that I am Ashwin).

Under 1,

Oh wait. Here's the clue you have been waiting for anxiously: It's made by this company called 3M.

So, under 1, the prime sensible contenders are MindBlogging. And Blogic. Self explanatory and lame, both of these. Also, this one's a deal-breaker- they are already taken. At this point, I put on one of the more vivid of my thinking hats. A spectacular red straw sombrero, say. So there's Pogsblot.blogspot.com. Pogsblot being an anagram of blogspot. I envision this hobbit-sized, wise, green-colored, wrinkled character with big ears like a hare called Pog, who's Blot (or Blog) this is. The description was such because I was thinking Pog could be like Jedi Master Yoda. I mean to say, Like Jedi Master Yoda he could be. However,what business does Yoda have to talk about Tablet computers and the market caps of Apple and Microsoft and Google? Pog, door that is, out you may go. So, now that we have hit upon "blot", let's further explore the potential there. Topblot.blogspot.com. Alliterative, but not enough. Splotblot.blogspot. An ink drop falling splot on paper and creating a blot, which stunningly spreads and takes the shape of letters, forming a cogent argument on, say, why Dravid should be back in the ODI squad (3 posts ago). But wait, I thought we were out of kindergarten? Spilling ink on paper and using words like Spotblot which sounds like baby-talk?

2) As you saw, that line of thinking was unsatisfactory and unsavory. Left a bad taste in the mouth. So, we come to the second category. The first major stream under this line of thinking would be ARK for Ashwin Ravikumar. Let's drift for a while down this stream on Ark. So, Blogger's Ark. A home for the best posts of all kinds- news, satire, sports, art, books, fashion. Only room for one of each kind, though. Naa, there's too much sports in here. A funny blog-
Hoha's 's Ark. Sounds like Noah's ark. No, the posts- many aren't funny, numerous aren't humorous. Or Gleaming Ark, Incisive Ark, but those are all Arcs. We are going around in circles here! So let's turn away from this (Arc reminds me of ARCH. The coolest term I have learned as yet in my CFA studies- Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity. Hah. Say that 10 times when you are angry, it helps. ARCH the concept is also interesting. When the error term in a time series regression is..umm..er..correlated with the error term of of the past time period. I cheated: I opened the book. I really should get back to studying! It's interesting, though. Look it up on wiki, like right now. No? This is better? Reaally? Awww...Thanks!) Then there's the standalone Ashwinner- which sounds like Ashwin R. No good. And of course, there's always the old faithful, which has already been in the public eye, tried and tested, pucca material. It has taken the stage at various online forums- Rediff, Yahoo, Google. It has its critics, though. Yes, I am talking about the old faithful, Ashwinwins. Ok, but is there absolutely nothing else? How about Ashwin_Ravikumar_1986.blogspot? Prudent and simple? No? Ashwin.rk3...nice and easy?

Finally, there's a deadly combination of 1) and 2). It's RorschAshblot.blogspot.com. Inspired by the Rorschach ink blot test. You only see what your eyes want to see. You're frozen. Mad, no? Na...no good.

So at the end of it all, I told myself: to hell with it. Stop wasting precious time. Just stick with Ashwinwins. And get on with the Fluid Mechanics assignment. The Placement Preparation. The B-Tech Project. The Quarterly Earnings Report. The CFA studies....

If you can think of any name nice and witty, please do contact me at, you guessed it right, ashwinwins@gmail.com. Or dial ASHWINWINS on your phone. That's 27494-69467: my google phone account. 10 characters, and I created the id some 7 years ago. What farsightedness. Despite being my optic being myopic.

Finally, ashwinwins may draw flak but I draw inspiration from the wonderful lyrics of a fab Johhny Cash number "A Boy named Sue", (from an equally wonderful movie, "Walk the Line").

And he said "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

So Ashwinwins it is!

Answer to the vexing question: Psst it.

P.S. I was kidding about the google phone number. I ain't got no google phone account. However, ladies and laddies, I am dead serious about requesting for suggestions on the name. Send in your entries, and the not only will the winner's creation be preserved for prosperity on the servers of google (see previous post for more), but he/she will also be treated by me at Sammy Sosa, which is a fantastic bar in Andheri. Near Infinity mall. Haven't seen a place in the whole nation which serves more varieties of beer than Sammy Sosa (I call it Samosa for short). Sorry laddies, but reg. winning, the conditions are slightly relaxed for pretty ladies. If you are a pretty lady, you really need not send in a name. On the subject, just put in the date and time for when you want to be treated at Samosa. Don't bother about the body of the male, i mean mail, in question. Just the subject: "DD/MM ; HH:MM". That's all, nothing more. I'll be there, pronto. I mean yeah, only if you win. Of course. Don't worry though girlie, you have a great chance, I'm tellin' ya. Just the subject, don't bother with more, hit send, and hope for the best. Yeah, we're all good, ladies?

Note: Technically the ball slides on paper and does not really roll, but poetic license, yeah?