Anecdotes

An old man walked down the cold street trying to heat himself by rubbing his hands. His employer had thrown him out considering he was old and a young person would do better. The old man could do nothing but leave the job. Now that he did not have a job he had to try to get a new one. He searched his pockets, gathering all the money he had and counted it to be 6 dollars and 20 cents. He had to get food for him and his grandson but with this amount of money, only one of them could have the privilege to eat that night. He decided he would not eat that night so that his grandson could eat well. He rubbed his hands again and then put them in his coat which was torn on the left side. He remembered himself fighting those goons when his coat had torn. He was taking home some food and the goons attacked him. He did save some of his money from getting stolen though he could not save the food. "It would be so good if my son had been alive today !", he thought to himself, shivering i...

Natasha had taken me with her for shopping. I was not good at buying stuff, and so, I was not, I was only holding it for her. She was getting married in about a week now. I loved her dearly, but was not the one who was marrying her. She was beautiful. She was perfect for me. I wanted to do to her what I used to think of doing to every other girl. Now she was my aim in life. I loved her skin. Her smell, her touch, everything. She had real soft skin, was white complexioned and was real fun to be around. I, on the other hand was totally boring. I did not know how to talk to people. People usually disliked me, but I never cared. I only cared about one thing which I wanted to do with her. I had known her for about a week now and was only searching for the right moment all the time to say the magical words to her. And once again she had brought me to the mall. This was the fourth day in the week we were here shopping. My urge now was growing too fast and I was unable to control myself. Bu...

My dad and some of his friends decided to go on a trip and someone suggested that they take their families together instead of just going by themselves. So, there we were, boarding a bus, which was about to pick up three more families for a nice trip to Mussoorie. I never liked such trips, but my parents had convinced me of great fun. My mother and father were the two people I loved the most and would do anything for them. My father, around five feet eight inches tall, a really good man and a man of his word, was about the only person whom I could trust. He kept a moustache but did not mind trimming it at times. He had great determination and was the most disciplined man I had ever seen in my life. My mother, on the other hand, was fun being around. I used to fight with her at times, but that did not matter since she did trust me a lot. She was about five feet tall, with a beautiful face and a well maintained body. She was a hardworking woman who would never leave anything undone i...

A bad start to my day would be looking at the most unfortunate of things happening or which might have happened during the night. I watched a car get hit by a truck ! Very unfortunate, for the people in the car as well as for me. Or was it ? The thought stuck in my mind for a while, then my friends started talking about something different which swayed me from the thought and i forgot completely about it. As the day progressed, I learnt that the results of the previous semester were out and that we could collect ours from the department office. Running to the office I again remembered the incident from that morning and was worried if my result would be bad. I was relieved only after I received my result which did not show any signs of bad. Maybe God did not plan any bad for me that day, or did he ? There was still a doubt in my mind. I went back to my class, full of students shouting and fighting as usual. No sign of unusualness. I sat at my seat, talked to a few people, told them a...

The program was giving me four errors. I had devised a machine learning program for my robotics team. We had to present the robot that we were making for an event that might take us to IIT-Bombay and eventually to Stanford University ! My team-mates were students of the Electronics branch. We had divided work among ourselves so as to not strain a single person with the task of doing the whole thing. Mine, was the last job. All the circuitry had been completed. All that I had to do was to program the robot so that it learnt on it's own how to respond to the path in front of it. Such type of a program is known as a machine learning program. My robot was to run on a path without any remote control, learning the path and where to avoid obstacles. These errors were only declaration errors i.e. errors in which variables in a program have been left undeclared  before they are being called in the program. It took me another five minutes to correct those errors. I looked at my watch. It wa...

I was walking down a muddy path in a dense forest. I do not remember the time or even the date. It was dark and i was only able to see right in front of me. I had a flashlight with me but using flashlight at night would have attracted hunting animals. I was searching for a tree i guess. It was my way out of the forest. I had marked it before entering the forest so that i do not forget the way. My family did not know I entered the forest. I had told them that I'd be back by evening, but now I was thinking that they must be getting worried about me. Why did I ever enter this forest ? I decided to move some distance in the same direction and then change my path in search of the tree. Then I saw the tree which I had marked. Ohh what a relief ! I moved towards it and then something stung me on my ankle. Oh My GOD ! It was a snake ! I had stepped on the snake and so it bit me. The first thought that came to my mind was that I was about to die ! Then I thought of tying a string around my...

I was on the driving seat that day. We had been stuck in a traffic jam since the last half an hour. I had been irritated by the laziness that i had shown in the lab today. I had failed to do one of the easiest things. A process scheduling program was among the easiest ones in Operating System ! No doubt I was a loser. My mind was totally offset. Why ? Why not just mine ? Almost everybody had done it, why could I not do it ? I mean, is this the reason why I took up computer engineering as my subject. I had been very confused all the time. I could not drive, my God ! Why was I even here ? I had to become a business manager. God ! and why do such thoughts come to my mind ? This was too much. One of my friends offered me some water in the bottle cap, okay, he wanted me to drown in that water ! Is it not amazing what our mind makes up when we are sad. People commit suicide when they are sad. They do not consider the possibility that there could be others who may be loving them more than th...

While I was in school we used to have quizzes in class when there used to be just a few kids who had come to school. That day we had only about fifteen or twenty students in the class. Our teacher had been tired herself, so, she decided to take a quiz that day. You know, quizzes are actually fun way to recollect what you have learnt and display your knowledge just so that you win the game. So, the teacher divided us into groups, as per the rows such that row 1 became group 1, row 2 became group 2 and so on. I was in the first row I guess and used to get very excited in these quizzes. Since such quizzes lead to shouting and carcass in the classroom, so our teacher had set a "-1" point for the row which was heard shouting. And so, the game began! It so happened that after about five or ten rounds, my row i.e. group 1 was seemingly the last in the number of points we had gained and had got a passed question to answer so that we gain an extra "+2" and could at le...

My heart was throbbing. I wanted to meet her again. All of the class I had been thinking about her. She had blocked all my senses. She was so beautiful and self-effacing. The more i thought about her the more number of questions I was not able to understand. The Micro-controller class never bothered me. It was my favourite subject. I used to answer every question of my teacher in the class itself. I was choking. Will I be able to meet her again ? Would she have gone back ? I could wait for hours on a stretch just to be with her. But I had never told her how much I liked her. "You should not be thinking of her.", said a voice. I looked around. Everyone was busy talking to their partners or jotting down what the teacher was writing on the board."It is me, you numskull !", said the voice again. Oh ! It was my conscience. "Don't think about her.", said the voice. It was right, I did have to stop thinking about her. She was not the end of the world. I coul...

The polite group discussion was now turning into a melee. All the other people of the group were forcing their views on others. I looked around to see those sitting silent, then saw her gaping intently to something or someone. She had those glorious green eyes which seemed to be in deep thought. I thought of going upto her and asking her what she was thinking, but i waved it off. She seemed melancholy and lonely even among thirty people in the same room. Suddenly, she got up and left the room. I guess I was the only one who noticed her go. Even in the lectures i used to stare at her all the time. My mind used to be fixed on her. She knew i loved her and whenever asked I would behave mealy mouthed, never wanting to tell her what i really felt for her. I went after her. She seemed so depressed that i had to ask her the reason this time. She did not say a thing, but then I would never back-off from such a situation. I asked her if she wanted to divest something, and she replied in ne...

I looked out the window to distract myself from the boring lecture on Digital Signal Processing, the DSP or frequently called, the Degree Stopper ! Why was I not able to do what i had planned ? Was it due to lack of concentration or lack of determination ? I brushed my thoughts away coming back to the boring lecture ! The professor was erasing what he had written on the board, I had not copied it, but my mind was building castles in the air. I had done almost nothing related to the topic. Why was i even here in the first place ? I could've chosen acting, I am good at it, or that is what i thought, could've tried 'Arts' or 'Commerce' as my stream. I remember the day i gave my IIT exam. That paper yielded nothing to me. Although i had worked really hard to achieve a neat rank, I could've given it much more. The mere thought of it made me feel malaise. Well, now i had moved forward, I was going to give the GRE in a few month's time. I remember my father ha...

Hopping in the rain one day a frog thought about his ineffectual and unproductive work throughout his lifetime. All that he did all through his lifetime, he was just an average and had never ameliorated. He ruminated what all he could have done had he been born a better frog, a more intelligent and powerful one. He mused that he could have achieved anything that was now beyond his power and ability. He could have not just survived to fit on this planet but have lived his own life, fulfilled his visions and fantasies and not have been following what he was ordered to do. He always kept equating himself to its friends who were more skillfull and cognate whom he coveted to be. He wondered why he was not able to do what others were able to. Right then he heard someone pass by, humans! Humans, the most doomy creatures because all they did to frogs was play with them. He found a nearby hiding place and hid himself. After hiding inside, he looked out and sited his friend been caught betwee...