Here are some links that talk about the changes in the shipping plans and features for Longhorn.

Jeremy Mazner’s blog entry about WinFs

Jeremy Mazner’s blog entry about Longhorn

CNET interview with Bill Gates

Official announcement by Microsoft

I am joining Microsoft, India Development Centre on the 23rd of August, 2004. I will be joining as a Program Manager for the Windows team. I am yet to find out the details of the exact group I will be joining. Judging by the interviewers and the work happening at hyderabad, there is a good chance that I will be joining the WinFS or SFU team.

If you want to discus about Longhorn, we must talk :)

A lot of people write about Bangalore in their blogs and now I seem to be yearning to do the same.

While on one end I am very excited about my new role, on the other end I am quite sentimental about leaving Bangalore. This has been the only place [of all the places I have been to in the country] where I could go out alone, be on my own and return home at 10.30 in the night feeling safe. Back home [cochin], being on the roads after dark [6 pm] attract suspicious stares and dirty looks as though you were committing a grave crime of the first order.

The pleasant weather [that I can compare to having centralized AC in the city] has pampered me too much. The roads and the trees also seem to be talking to me these days J. The cosmopolitan crowd, the baristas, the privacy, the groups, the friends, the pubs, the views, and ulsoor lake – where will I get all this?

Oh well…I will miss Bangalore!

This is based on some of the things I observed over the last ~15 years. Some of it may sound exaggerated and offensive, it is meant to be neither.

South paranoia

In Trivandrum, people were very concerned about what the kid would grow to be from the time the child was born. The choice was usually between a doctor and an engineer [sometimes lawyers crept in]. When the child in primary school would have exams, mother, aunt and grandparents would take an off from work to teach the child. Neighbours were requested to keep their TV and music players volumes low.

If the child didn’t get an admit in one of the colleges in Kerala, the immediate look out would be Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Next option would be to move to Dubai, Saudi, Kuwait or Muscat. I haven’t figured out the malayalees mania about going to Gulf. Every second lady I met had her husband in the gulf. The husband would come once in  2 or 3 years stay for a while and push off for work. He would be a big saar in his home town and a driver in the gulf if required, that didn’t matter.

In the hindu families, for every daughter, the parents would build a house to gift her as dowry along with gigantic amounts of gold and her husband would come over and stay there with the lady and in-laws sometimes. People didn’t believe in partying or indulging in huge celebrations, they would rather hoard up all money and savings and buy land and grow coconut trees and invest in gold.

Mallus [as malayalees are usually referred to outside Kerala] usually have great affinity for other mallus. They manage to find mallu friend(s), mallu restaurants, mallu shops and mallu barbers wherever they go. They usually hang out in groups and resort to speaking in malayalam wherever they go, whatever the crowd be. And mallus are omnipresent. The joke about Neil Armstrong finding a mallu chaiwaala when he landed on moon is a very valid one!

Mals [well, short for mallus] also displayed great affinity for medicines, they carried a bunch with them and sometimes took some in advance with the fear that they may get a head ache or something. A sneeze and they would have visited the ayurveda ashram next door, a doctor for antibiotics and a homeopathist for treatment. They lived on boiled water only and the moment they stepped out of Kerala they complained of food poisoning and required a fortnight to recover.

North paranoia

If you are a doctor or an engineer, boy you are a big man. And you got to flaunt it every which way possible. To the North Indians, back then South India meant Madhraas and Kanyakumari. Period. No concept of Kerala, Trivandrum, Kottayam [then the most literate part of the country].

If you are giving a wedding reception it ought to be bigger and grander than your neighbour’s aunts nephew’s. So what if you cant afford it. Families make plans for children based on their sex. If it’s a female child then she should be taught cooking, stitching, cleaning etc along with her education. She should be married before 22. If it’s a male child then, he should be prepared to continue his dad’s business just the way his dad took over his grand dad’s. So the idea would be to somehow take a degree [i.e. complete your graduation, BCom, BA whatever; not important] and help out the father businessman. If you flunk, (who cares), so did your dad and uncle... family business awaits you.

Play music in your houses in the volume that suits your mood and environment. If the neighbours protest, tell them it’s your house and you are free to do what you want. Pull a fight to prove you are a bigger man. Priority goes to the clothes and jewellery that you wear than to the books you need to read. In fact education is secondary to many things.

And don’t visit a doctor until you are in deep waters. After all there is very little that the doctor knows and you don’t. So try out all your intuitions and medicines [suggested by the chemist] and when things don’t work out, visit the doc.

Hmmm….

While, you can’t generalize TVM with the entire South India you can relate it to Kerala. And though things have changed over the years, some of this is present to this day J

I am a North Indian who has been staying in the South. My dad came to Trivandrum, Kerala with some of his friends to see if it was a good place for starting marble business. He was very young then [He would have been around my age now!!!], I admire his guts to venture into an unknown city at the extreme end of the country to be an entrepreneur and to be the first in the family to do that. This was sometime in 1984 [Yikes, why did it have to be that year], Trivandrum was very different then than from what you see it today.

While they loved the greenery and the sea, they saw almost no men in the streets with pants. It amused them to see people in “lungis” because back home, men wore lungis in their houses only. Almost nobody understood English or hindi in TVM then, so gestures were the only communication medium. Food was a big problem, 2 days with Kerala rice and sambhar [after 2.5 days of train food], they yearned for some chappathis. After looking at several places, they found a place that would serve chappathis. They ordered more than 40 chappathis and the waiters and owners were way too shocked. Dad and uncles still laugh over that incident. While the chappathis were no where good, that place became a regular joint. People at the restaurant didn’t express shock and awe later when asked to bring 50 chappathis. Back then, there were no marble godowns/offices, most people got marble/granite from cochin for construction.

Five of them [Dad and 4 of his friends] started their business as partners and called it Friends Marble Emporium.

After a month, Dad moved to TVM with mom, me and my sister. Mom had a tough time talking to the landlady, worst was going out to buy groceries and other household things. She had to take care not to finish any of the dals [pulses], masalas, spices etc completely, she would take some of it as a sample to the shopkeeper and ask him to get her some of that. Funny, something like you take two cards and do a match-match by looking at both. Things you do to overcome communication problems!

My sister and I joined nursery and picked up the local language quite fast. We went to Rajasthan and Delhi every year during vacations and we were quite amused to see some of the differences. And as kids one of the most often asked question was what we preferred - the south or the north. In Kerala, people dressed up very simple. There were many instances when we would mistake a customer for a worker. During weddings, women wore gaudy looking silk sarees and were decked with piles of gold attaching no concerns to the overall look. And they wore slippers. Men wore lungis even for weddings. It’s only later that we got to know that lungis were the equivalent of dhothis in the South.

Women washed clothes by flinging the clothes against a washing stone in the south and in the north they would wash clothes by bashing the clothes using a bat. The south Indian temples required men to be in lungis only [You don’t say topless for men, do you?] to gain an entrance in the temple. In Trivandrum every kid had tuitions, in the north tuitions meant the student was weak and needed assistance outside his/her school.

Things have changed a lot in the last two decades. A lot for the better. It is still very amusing to hear notions that people have about the opposite end. When I went to Rajasthan recently, I enjoyed listening to people talk about South India. Some facts and many stories ;)

Its even more funny listening to some of them talk about computers and technology. I kind of love our country for the diversity. While on one end we are advancing, learning and growing in terms of technology, on the other end there are people expressing wonder and shock about the things they see. When one of them described this thing, [which happened to be a palm] that he happened to see and hear about, as a miracle, a saadu’s magic gadget or something, I couldn’t help smiling. I was in love with their innocence and their interpretations of what they saw around. Even more with their openness about wanting to hear and understand it.

[Desi?]

I am starting this new category called Desi which will be more like a scrap book. It doesn’t exactly qualify to be a blog entry and will be largely centered around India. Until I figure out where exactly this fits in, I shall be writing about movies, cultures, men, women, children, festivals etc in this category.

[Hindi]

Aaj mein upar, Aasmaan neeche

Aaj mein aage, zamaana hai peeche ..

Tell me Oh khuda, ab mein kya karoo

Chalu seedhe ki ulti chaloo …

Well, before I let out the big news, here’s your chance. Any guesses? </chuckle>

Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,

With the old Moon in her arms;

And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!

We shall have a deadly storm.

            (Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence)

I work out of the 10^th floor, the view from my window is splendid. All I need to do is turn around and look out of the window, the glass-panes open into this picturesque view  encompassing ulsoor lake, the sky above it and the trees around. I will miss the view; wherever I go.

The past few weeks have been crazy, with disparate advice spurting in from relatives, friends and colleagues about what I should be doing in life for a better future. I was thinking if I had no cares and responsibilities [na, I don’t have too many of them. Fortunately] and if safety was not a concern, what I would do and how different would it be from what I am doing now.

Well, I am in for some changes in life. To start off with I will have to be more diurnal ;) and less nocturnal in my habits. The bigger changes are something I look forward to.

It’s a little more than half of the year, life has been following this topsy turvy curve. The highs have been higher than ever and the lows, err lower than ever. And, the inkling that this year will decide a lot about the coming years, persists.