The conman was seated at his usual vantage point, a place that afforded a clear view of the populace exiting the railway station. As he stubbed out his morning cigarette, he was sure he'd spotted his first quarry.

"Aren't you from Sivan Master's household?" the conman accosted him as he was crossing the subway under M--- Road across the Central railway station.

"Sivan who?"

"Err... Are you from Kerala?"

"Yes, Palakkad."

"Where in Palakkad?"

"It's a village, about 12 kms from the town."

"Ah! I am not mistaken then! Do you know postmaster Balan?"

"No"

"Well, I am his son. I knew I had seen you somewhere before! You're on your way back from home I gather?"

"Yes". The conman appeared to ponder this awhile.

"What is your ancestral name?"

"I am from the Mele Paadam house."

That seemed to clear the matter at once. With the widest grin he'd ever seen, the conman remarked, "Indeed! I know your family very well. You should ask your parents about Balan postmaster's son Vasu. You perhaps don't remember, but I have been to your house many times."

He just smiled pleasantly and continued making his way through the morning rush of work and school bound humanity.

"You won't believe the trip I had yesterday night!" Vasu persisted, "The train we were in was stopped by dacoits!" This halted the quarry in his tracks.

"Dacoits?!"

"Oh yes! Rumor has it that it was Veerappan! Haven't you read the papers?" he paused, "It perhaps hasn't made it to the press yet. But I am sure you'll read all about it in the evening edition! Suffice it to say that I am extremely lucky to be alive!"

He looked at Vasu with concern and remarked, "That's quite awful!"

"Yes! Yes! My wife wasn't quite so lucky though. She has been admitted to the general hospital which is where I am headed right now. Oh! I don't know what I'll do!" Vasu was visibly distraught. They were out of the subway by now.

"They took everything you see." Vasu continued, "We escaped only with the clothes on our back!"

"Tragic! Quite tragic!"

"Yes! Yes! Quite! And I am so new to this city. I am so glad I saw you - you're a God send!"

He faced Vasu and said abruptly, "Well, Vasu it was nice meeting you. Hope your wife recovers soon. Goodbye!"

"Yes, thank you! Goodbye then!" Vasu replied and turned away walking towards the hospital.

The quarry had waved an auto rickshaw and got into it before he heard the familiar voice call out to him again.

"I feel so embarrassed saying this to somebody I've just met, but it is a desperate situation you see. Like I said, they took everything; even the money in my wallet! May they be struck by lightning!" Vasu cursed, "I am completely broke right now. Would you be able to spare some money? I will personally return it to the Mele Paadam house once I get back. It will be a big help."

Seeing him hesitate, Vasu was quick to remark, "No, that's quite alright. I completely understand. Please forget that I ever asked. I apologize. Please give my regards to your parents." And made as if he would leave.

He stopped Vasu and said with feeling, "No Vasu, that's not it. It's just that... I don't have change you see. All I have is a Rs. 1000/- note. If you can spare Rs.100/- for this auto I'd happily hand it over to you. I am sure you need it more right now than I do."

There was an expression of genuine surprise on Vasu's face. He quickly recovered and said, "Thank you so much Sir! I was right, you truly are a God send! I do in fact happen to have this one Rs.100/- note. They forgot my secret pant pocket you see!"

They quickly exchanged the money and Vasu said as he handed his hundred rupee note, "I promise to return this money as soon as I get back home. I shall never forget this favor! Again, thank you Sir, may God shower His blessings upon you."

"Oh! That's quite alright. Please go attend to your wife now. Goodbye!"

As the rickshaw sped away from the station, he thought, "Now, if only the rest of the fake notes were as easily spent!"

PS: My colleague cum boss cum general pain in the wrong part of the anatomy (otherwise known as Aravind) is writing a series of really short stories over at his blog Moving Horizons and doing a pretty good job of it - so much so that the writing bug seems to have bit me too now! This little short here is my first shot at the genre (or any genre in writing any kind of ficitonal prose actually). Feel free to critique, slobber mindlessly at its sheer blinding genius etc.

There I was, boarding a train on the day lovers consider special filled with the blooming hope that large scale celebration of love in global proportions will somehow cause the very atmosphere to be so infused with the romantic spirit that it would prove to be all but impossible that I will find myself not sharing my cabin in the train with a ravishing coy charming single female. By the time the first hour had passed however it dawned upon me with unusual distinctness just how possible the impossible can actually be. For to my right sat a slumbering sardar whose stupendous snores seemed to provide additional forward momentum to the train. Opposite him sat a middle aged gentleman who seemed to have only recently discovered the joy of leering at lurid pictures of scantily clad women in seedy magazines. To my left sat a government servant with an iPod firmly lodged in his ears and completely oblivious to the strange disturbing sounds that were emanating from his person apparently in tune with some melody that only he was privy to. In their midst sat the glum author of this post who before quietly crawling up to his berth spent a solemn moment in silent wonder of what the good saint Valentine must have in truth perpetrated to produce an effect of such undiluted strangeness upon circumstances long long after a tear was shed and a sermon was said upon his grave!

There is a certain superior kind of person who is frequently fond of making scandalous remarks in order to appear unconventional and witty with the equally frequent consequence of appearing merely impertinently conspicuous. He¹ insists upon being decidedly disagreeable - solely counting upon the possibility that the contrary opinion will often prove to be the correct one. While this is found to be so in the general case (and all generalizations are of course, false, not excluding this particular one) when given that most of those who are party to an argument participate in it merely on account of a habitual inclination towards exercising their vocal chords rather than a genuine desire for expressing original opinions, one would err to rely entirely on it if he wishes to maintain credibility.

When the topic under discussion is music for instance, this superior person will be found waxing eloquent in resolute criticism of artistes the public in general considers as being masters of their art. He will further extol upon the virtues of other, sometimes lesser known equivalents, who in his opinion are better deserving of the public adulation. Now, it goes without saying that we live in an unfair world where all too frequently factors that have little to do with music or with ones proficiency in it are the factors that in the end contribute towards an artiste's success (success by popular definition that is). It is certainly tragic that deserving practitioners are often not paid their due. That is however no justification for the vilification of artistes who do become successful on account of genuine musical ability.

It is the bane of mankind (and sometimes a blessing too!) to occasionally err. An artiste in this respect is no different. But to seize upon such instances paying little attention to all of their other innumerable successes is, to say the least, being shockingly myopic apart from also being a dreadful display of lack of compassion.

Appreciation of music, in my opinion, demands a certain kind of open mindedness that is willing to acknowledge excellence where it is found. If the patron is unable to influence mediocrity in a positive manner then he would do well to ignore it. Now, this is not to be mistaken as an appeal for toleration of incompetence (as might happen if you were made to put up with my singing for instance); merely that a greater display of compassion is in order when considering brilliant but fallible priests of that most divine of art forms - music!

[1]	No gender bias is intended with the use of the pronoun "he" and is used here merely as a matter of convenience. The reader is free to read all instances of it as "she" if she so chooses to.

Vendors of "free" software programs have started getting into this annoying habit of forcing updates down users throats these days! The sad thing is that these updates aren't updates in the traditional sense of the word; they just make you re-download the entire software again!

The funny thing is that the software seems to just give up the ghost after a preset period of time has expired! There are no discreet checks with an internet server to see whether a new version is in fact available! I wonder what would happen if the time expires and the vendor doesn't manage to release a newer version! So far I've found Google SketchUp and the VMWare virtualization server behaving this way. When they say its free, it should be free forever! It is pretty silly making people download updates when the user is not looking for one especially when these updates are king size files (around 19MB for Google Sketchup and around 150MB for VMWare server)!

Now don't get me wrong. I think it is really cool that these corporations are letting people use their software for free and it is even cooler that they want them to always use the latest and the greatest version. Its just that I don't want them deciding when I need the software updated (security updates are an entirely different issue altogether though; they're like medicine, you just hold your breath and swallow!).

4 little babies of this animal were found in the attic of my home in Palakkad, Kerala.  Cool eh?  I am not sure what its called in English.  The Malayalam name for this is merugu.

The February edition of the Chip India magazine (the dead trees version that is) reports that the United States Department of Defense now has a tool that let's them remotely detect whether somebody is lying!  The Remote Personnel Assistance (RPA) will apparently be used as a "remote or concealed lie detector during prisoner interrogation".  It works by reading information from beams reflected off a suspect's body.  Where's the planet heading I ask, if a man cannot lie in peace!

In other news (again from the same magazine), scientists at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology have found found that algae can help clean the planet up by laundering it off all the CO₂ spewed out by factories and vehicles.  That's good news because now you can present a straight face while telling your spouse/parent that they are acting in an extremely un-eco-friendly manner by asking you to clean your room up and that such interference while you are busy saving Mother Earth is not appreciated!

Hallelujah!  The Nerdworks Blog is finally underway!  Phew!  I would like to say that this blog is a culmination of years of hard grinding work, only, it isn't.  It actually took me 2 days to put everything together (and maybe another 1 day hunting around for a good ASP.NET based blog site without much success).  All said and done, it was quite an exciting little project.  Here's the 50,000 foot view:

• Nerdworks Blogorama is an ASP.NET based website that let's me spew forth random pieces of mostly useless information at will
• It was written and debugged using the free Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition which by the way, is an awesome development system (really sweet of Microsoft in giving it away free).  It even let's me directly deploy my site from the local box to the hosting provider's server (using the Copy Web Site option).
• An admin console called the Blogorama Console was written using the freely available Visual C# 2005 Express Edition.  This console let's me create new blog entries, edit existing ones and even delete entries that kind of... you know... suck!  The admin console talks to the blog engine via a webservice that I have hosted there.
• The blog entries are stored in a SQL server database that my hosting provider provides.  During development however I used the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition which is, again, a free database server that Microsoft so magnanimously provides.

There's quite a bit of work left though, like for instance:

• The UI could use some re-work so that it looks more cool.
• The admin console does not currently require authentication.  That needs to be fixed.
• Blog entries should get archived automatically every month and appropriate links need to get added somewhere in the sidebar.
• Must provide the ability to search by category (blog entries have a category associated with them you see).
• Must add a section for putting up links to my favourite places on the internet, again, somewhere in the sidebar.
• Implement some way for embedding images in blog entries.
• Implement WYSIWYG editing in the blog console (right now I paste in the HTML directly).

That's a pretty large list.  But hey, the first version has gone out through the doors!  Now, if you wish to contact me you can do that in one of two ways:

• Leave a comment by clicking on the green Comment link below, or
• Click on the Email the author link in the sidebar

If that doesn't work for some reason (it's still beta you know) then you can email me using this address - avranju[at]gmail[dot]com.