New Car - The Agony & The Ecstasy

10.08.2011 : Dear Diary, I am so excited! Today, I took possession of my new car. The salesman proudly claimed that this was the first vehicle of this model to be sold in Chennai, and went on to describe how he had to fight with his boss to make sure that I was the Chosen One. This, he said, was out of love and affection for me. I believe him. He is a nice guy, and seems genuinely interested in my welfare.  

11.08.2011 : Dear Diary, what a bundle of joy my baby is! I love the mocha color and the superb finish. The envious looks from the neighbors helped. First stop at the local temple, Puja and garlanding ceremony done. All set now.

Started out for my office, full of anticipation of all the pleasures ahead of me. I have been driving for some years now, so one would have thought that I would be perfectly comfortable with my new baby. But you know how it is. The protective instincts that had long dulled while driving my battered old car had awakened with a vengeance. I was committed to protecting my new baby, and the goal I set for myself that morning was that that “First Scratch” would never happen to my baby. As I made this resolve, I could feel my entire self being elevated to a higher level of purpose. What a noble goal! After all, this car came into this world through me. Everything paternal in me rose to the fore.

It’s funny, but in hindsight, I thought the drive to the office was extremely stressful. The entire world seemed to have resolved in reverse – do harm to my baby. After many near misses, I arrived, but perspiring from every pore and quite spent. Luckily, I keep a bottle of deodorant in my office!

14.08.2011 : Dear Diary, today, I saw the enemy. It is called "Motorbike".

I had stopped at a signal. There was a small gap between my car and the one in front, but that did not prevent all these bikes from driving through this crack and winning their way ahead. As each of these bikes passed through, it was like watching a brick falling on my head in slow motion, knowing that it’s going to hit, but hoping that it would vaporize before contact. I couldn’t back up as there were more bikes pouring into the gap between me and the car behind. So, I just sat there biting my nails, turned down the audio system with ears pricked for the smallest of sounds that indicated contact between metal and metal. Luckily, my baby survived the onslaught.

One learns parenting as one goes along. The next signal found me more prepared. I moved so close to the car ahead that the gap was too narrow for even a pedestrian to squeeze through. I sat back, threw a triumphant glance at the frustrated bikers around me, and turned up the volume!

20.08.2011 : Dear Diary, nothing prepares you for this bizarre phenomenon called Autos! They seem to be made of some sort of solid metal, but equally possess the ability to flow like liquid through any opening in the traffic, and the gas they emit would make a Leather factory chimney blush with shame at its own inadequacy. They defy the laws of motion, can turn within a half meter radius, move laterally at high speed and seem to delight in doing the unpredictable. And given its aerodynamic shape, the only thing the auto driver can see in his rear view mirror is his own mug!

My hands were trembling as I won through to my office yet again. Mental note : replenish the bottle of deodorant.

25.08.2011 : Dear Diary, thick traffic today, blaring horns. It’s amazing what you can communicate through the language of horns. The deceptively simple alphabet consists of two letters – the short blast (like the Di of the Morse code) and the long blast (like the Da of the same). Based on different combinations of these two letters, every conceivable emotion can be communicated. Sample provided below.

Horn Sound	What it means
Di	I am coming, watch out.
Di Di	Hey, didn’t you hear me the first time? I am coming, man!
Di Di Di Di Di	Hey Rahul, we are waiting for you. Move it man, we are already late for the movie.
Daaaaaaa Daaaaaaa Daaaaaaa	You fool, the signal turned green 0.2 seconds ago. Why don’t you just run over the guy in front of you and get going??!!
Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa	You piece of &@#@$, I am parking in that vacant slot. Now back off!

Ever since I got into the skin of my new, protective parent avatar, I have been quite sparing in my use of the horn. But I find that I am constantly under-communicating, and consequently being unfairly misunderstood by my brethren on the roads. I am beginning to feel lonely. But the good news is that I got 50% off yesterday on my new bottle of deodorant!

05.09.2011 : Dear Diary, I’d like to confess that I don’t feel too well these days. In fact, I am not far from being a nervous wreck. The constant pressure of saving my baby from the perils of the road and preventing that First Scratch is choking me. I miss the carefree days of the old car, where the thing was so badly dented that any further dents would only improve the overall shape! 

I feel hunted. I have lost 5 KGs in the last month. My BP has shot up. I am going bust buying deodorants.

10.09.2011 : Dear Diary, finally, it happened today! I was passing by the same temple (refer entry dated 11.08.2011) this morning, where a chap was going about the cheerful task of breaking 108 coconuts. Probably, he was close to finishing and therefore a little fatigued, thus throwing his aim astray. The coconut in question split into two halves, ricocheted off the road and made straight for my car. One half struck the bonnet. The other one cracked the windshield. There was stunned silence in the road for a few seconds.

I got out of the car beaming, like Atlas who had finally shrugged off the crushing load, looked over the excellent bumper dent and the artistic windshield cracks with a benevolent eye, ending my inspection with a firm clasp of my savior’s hand, and profusely thanked him. He probably thought a splinter of the coconut had caught me on my head. A stout fellow, but one who could not appreciate the enormity of what he had achieved with only one of his 108 coconuts.

The weight had lifted. The bike that was coming towards me on the wrong side of the road was asking for it and I swerved sharply towards him before avoiding him, and was rewarded by the sight of his discomfiture. What a wimp I’ve been these last 30 days! The protective parent was gone, replaced by the lion tamer. I looked ahead at the road, taking in the buses, autos, bikes, cars, pedestrians and even animals with a careless eye as I cheerfully shifted into high gear and felt the surge of the Beast.

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Password Protection? What an Oxymoron!

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“Wrong Password” blinks the screen in glee.

Aaaaaargh!!! There I go. Another password forgotten. One more try. Same result. The final one – I know this one could be the end of the road, and take my time, racking my memory, and enter the one I think is it, but with a sinking heart. “Wrong Password. You are now locked out.” That’s it. I am now banished, and I need to go through a little bit of torture to be able to have the pleasure and privilege of getting back in.

The story goes that Kasim, after entering the cave and loading his horse with all the jewels he could gather, forgets the key words – “Open Sesame”. Such a simple password, and he couldn’t remember it to save his life! So, how are we expected to cope with all the complexities of our multi-password world?

In the early days, when we just had to remember one or two passwords, it was actually quite cool. Conventional wisdom goes that the first girlfriend becomes your wife, failing which she becomes your password. I’ve checked this theory out with quite a few people and believe me, it’s more true than you would think. I’m quite sure it works the same way for women too. I keep a close watch on my wife’s password! Incidentally, if any of you know of someone called Tom Cruise, please let me know – I need to have a serious chat with the bloke.

All this is fine as far as it is just a password or two. Soon you start hitting critical mass. You now have accounts for e-mail, bank, the credit card, the airlines, Facebook, Linkedin. So what’s the big deal, just maintain the same password for everything and that’s the end of the matter, right? Wrong! One day, when you log on happily, feeling superior to these damn machines, they suddenly want you to change your password. It’s all in the name of security and in your best interests – keep changing your password every 3 months. Sure, will do - anything to stay connected…

But it doesn’t end there. Now the password has to conform to certain rules. It has to be long. You need some numeric characters in it. You need to include some of the funnies like # and &. There is even a Strengthometer sometimes – a bar that measures the strength of your password. And this one can really make you feel inadequate till you hit upon a horrendously complicated password with all kinds of funny and easily forgettable characters and achieve the “Strong” rating.

So now we are deep into the muck. From a time when the only user ID and password I had to remember were Venkatshankar and Aishwarya_Rai (remember the girlfriend theme?), I have moved well beyond critical mass. And with about a zillion passwords to remember, I get 3 chances to guess the right one on each login! Mostly, I do not. And then what? I click on the most clicked on link of all times – “Forgot Password? Click here.” And then the password is sent to me. Except that, it is sent to my mail so that it is secure. And guess what – I need to remember the mail password to get to my inbox. And so it goes…

There is another infuriating phenomenon for a while now – all the user ID’s have been taken. Now, when I try to get the monster to accept my name, it is taken. Taken! With a weird name like mine, I thought there would be too few of us in the world – but puzzlingly, Venkatshankar1 to Venkatshankar1000 are all taken! Including all the variants with underscore, hash and @. So now, apart from passwords, I have to remember a few hundred user IDs along the lines of FGS358_VL8$3. And don’t even get me started on T-PIN and other such related scams. Forgot password? Obviously! Forgot User ID?  All the time! In fact, forget the whole online thing – I think I’ll just leg it to wherever and transact with a human being of some sort…

I know people who seem to have it much easier than me. Maybe they have a memory like an elephant.  Maybe they store all their passwords in one file. Catch is, this file is probably password protected. And since your entire online security resides in that file, chances are that you follow the usual best practices and set a suitably convoluted password for that file – in which case you are already back on the old slippery slope!

So where do we go from here? Being the paranoid kind, I am getting weighed down by my conviction that this is a conspiracy by the Machines. This password racket is the Machines World’s way of ultimately locking me out of my bank, my credit card, my airline, my social network and so on, till I am alone and isolated. You may scoff, but if you do, I recommend you watch Terminator and Matrix.

I am tired now and am shutting my laptop down. I only hope that, tomorrow morning, I can remember my Power On password and my mail ID and password so that I can send this message out in the hope that it reaches someone who can save the world.

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