Spotted at the Paris airport.

They may wear a lot of clothes, but they do it with style.

Delhi

Memories have a nasty way of sneaking up on you. Right now nothing seems as far as home. Yet, thats where i want to be right away.

Rules for the Future

Time travel is round the corner. Maybe its already happened and we left it back around the last corner. But whenever it decides to go public, there will be chaos. And whenever there is chaos on an international level, US rushes in to take control and Al-Quida wants to take on the blame. So to stop this monotonous drama, my colleague, Sugna Jairam (from hereon referred to as Chachi) and I, Krishanu Mathur lay down the rules of Time travel.

As Science in its myriad tales will reason out, going back in time is not an option. Time travel helps you jump the time coordinate, but you can not interact with the space around you. So, the following rules have been laid out keeping in mind the following:

1. You can only go into the future

2. Since you can not interact without the space around you, you can not change nor become a part of the future. This effect will make it impossible for you to listen to people's conversation and observe anything else except what you came to see.

3. A person's future is a perception of his/her mind based on his personal life and decisions over the past. This inherent property of time travel deprives the user to use time travel to see someone else's future apart from his/her.

Keeping all these things in mind, here are the rules:

1. Everyone gets 3 trials in a lifetime to visit the future

2. These 3 trials can not be utilized before one turns 21 years old

3. Everytime you visit the future, the year you travel to becomes your minimum compliance. i.e you can not go to a time before the years that you have already visited.

4. You get a birds eye view of your future and can travel from one spot to another as long as it is in direct relation to the topic you came to explore.

5. Since a person's life is controlled by innumerable variables, the future is decided looking at a persons past decision making abilities.

6. Every minute spent in the future will be x times the minutes in the present. This x will not be 1 and in most probability will be less than 1(we'l let science take care of that).

7. For every minute you are not in the present, your life comes under the control of random sampling and decisions taken during that time will rely entirely on the global mean of decision making.

8. Respecting the notion of string theory, the more the number of people that use time travel and are close to you, the more focussed and probable will be your future.

Play safe.

SAYONARA STEVE JOBS!!! MAY NOW YOU REST IN PEACE

Obituaries are hard to write. Double so if its for someone you loved with your heart and soul.

I remember as a child, my neighbor had lost his wife of 60 years. He was a painter by profession. Portraits were not his biggest strength but he indulged in them when the subject was right. On being asked why he had not paint his demised wife as an expression of love and remembrance, he shook his head and in a voice befitting a person who had lost a part of his own body and replied, "I was with her for 60 years. I saw her in her prime, i saw her carry my kids in her belly. I saw her when she had her first knee operation. I saw her cry herself to sleep when she found out she had cancer. I try and put her on canvas, but every time i start with a different face, and give up in the middle with a different one in mind."

A few days back, the world lost one of the greatest visionaries of all times. A digital age DaVinci. A person, who through his own personal experiences grew into something that fairy tales are made out of. Maybe i don't have those same emotions for Steve Jobs as the other hundred million who mourn his death. But my love was pure. A love that secretly grew from respect. It was only after 2005 that i started reading about him. He had created something so beautiful and had gone on to be thrown out of his own company. His resilience saw him rise again through new names. And when the time was ripe, he got back with his old company and has never looked back ever since. He was always in the media. His opinions mattered. The whole world stopped to listen when he was on stage. It was not his powers of oration. It was his magic with technology. Making something come alive that existed only in our dreams and big budget movies. He was also brick bated on his personal life. His relationship with his employees and his high headedness about his company.

His ways were critical. His targets were not. His leadership was questioned. His accomplishments were not. His strategies provoked responses. His milestones, silenced them. So, as i sit here in front of my mac and try to pen down an obituary for someone who was like a pillar from which many drew strength, i wonder to myself if i should highlight his miscalculations or praise his success. And just like my neighbor, i bow my head and start with a face, only to give-up in the middle with a different one in mind.

New Country, New Rules

I don't know how, but i have somehow managed to cross an ocean, 2 continents and 7315 miles in a span of 24hours and just a couple of drinks. It feels good. No home sickness, till now. The weather is same as back in Delhi, maybe a couple of months too soon. People are nice and the streets are clean. Cars are fast and the life slow. The commercials are different but the message same. In a world infected with globalization and mass production, this small human being will be as much as at home as he was back in delhi. Well, at least thats what i am hoping for. It wont be long before i realize the hard truth - I'm no more the majority. I am an alien, a foreigner, an uninvited guest who has clearly forgotten his place in the pecking order. But till that day comes, and it will come someday, i will take in as much as i can and give back equally. Let this day mark a new beginning, a fresh page in my book of life. And for all of you who are watching-"Fasten your seatbelt madam and messieurs, its going to be a bumpy ride."