Tuesday, January 17, 2006

To Build A Tale

This January 12 was the 130th birth anniversary of one of the greatest ever writers of America : Jack London. His novels "White Fang" and "Call of the wild" continue to inspire millions across the globe. His short story "To Build A Fire" is the best one i have ever read....
Talking of short stories, the authors that come to my mind in a jiffy are Saki, O Henry and Guy de Mauppassant..Saki is the greatest writer of short stories. The sheer beauty of his language, the irony in his words and most important of all, the unexpected twist that he gifts the reader are difficult to find elsewhere. Among his short stories, "The Open Window" and "Shredni Vashtar" stand out in my mind. If you havnt read them yet, well, you are missing something in your life....
Who can forget O Henry, the man who penned down such fabulous tales as "The gift of the Magi" and "The furnished room". You are bound to read his stories again and again for their simple but racy style. Guy's "The diamond necklace" deserves special mention for its ability to make you almost cry and wish for another climax.......But the story which truly had me in tears(no joke this) was Leo Tolstoy's "God sees the truth but waits".
Inspite of all the modern novels that I read, the short stories continue to allure me....Is it because i can finish them off in a matter of minutes??Or is it because they require less usage of the grey cells??Anyway, they have taught me a very important lesson in life: It is the simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences..

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Of desperate diodes

Now, I am a proud member of the elite circle of the net freaks: "the bloggers". Unlike my friends, I didn’t have to think a lot for a name for my blog...There it was, clearly carved out in my mind. I would do justice to the name by telling you the long process which culminated in me, a desperate guy, writing a blog.
I was one among the many students who chose engineering because they didn’t give a damn about medicine. The budding electronics engineer that I am, I cannot but think about how I secured a seat in an NIT. After the tenth standard, I decided to try for engineering for the simple reason that I didn’t like biology. That is, between biology and computer, I liked computer science better. For those of you in the dark, we students had only two options: computer or biology...So, I decided I was born to be an engineer since I liked computer science better.
Now, after three semesters of the damn course, I really feel that I could have done something better.....Something which I would have liked to do more.....I can only blame myself for the sorry plight which I have managed to pull myself into.
All said, I feel that the students should be exposed to the various career options long before they finish their schooling, lest they follow the footsteps of desperate fellows like me singing Metallica's "Turn the page":
Here I am, on the road again,
there I am, up on the stage
There I go, playin' star again,
there I go, turn the page.