The physical vapor deposition of a relationship

Last weekend, I was out with my friends, having a good time. There was drinking, and a lot of heated/passionate discussion. About world issues, nationality issues, and finally on issues related to perception of relationships. During this conversation, I came up with an analogy on relationships.

The topic of dicussion was, what is the incentive to get into a relationship. My point of view was, if you feel the other person is not someone you will marry, you get out of the relationship. It does not make sense to work on a relationship you don't think will turn into lawful union.

The opposing view however, was that you cannot think of marriage when you get into the relationship. You have to grow in it, make the relationship grow and then, if alls well, you get married.

Seems to me like two perfectly legitimate approaches and the choice is matter of personality. But what I did realize was that, a relationship building follows a procedure similar to physical vapor deposition of metals onto devices.

In the process of device fabrication, it is often required to deposit metals on the surface of the device. The idea is pretty simple. You put your device upside-down on top of a pot containing the metal. Then you heat the metal until it evaporates, and this metal vapor rises and gets deposited on your device in a monitored fashion.

The important point is, the act of boiling the metal is protocoled. It is not like boiling a cup of tea, where you put water on the stove and don't bother to check back until you hear some bubbling. The heating process for melting the metal first involves lowering the chamber pressure. At low pressures, the boiling point of solids is lowered. This facilitates the deposition. The vacuuming of the chamber also minimizes chances of impurities getting onto your device. Having pumped the chamber down, power is applied to heat the metal and make it boil. The application of power is gradual and divided into two distinct rise times and two soak times, followed by the actual deposition time. The idea is to ramp up the temperature of the metal in a controlled fashion, raise it to a reasonably high level, and then soak the metal in that state. This is followed by a second round of rise time, another soak time, and finally a shutter opens to allow for the vapors to rise up to the device. This very well-planned procedure gives rise to a uniform layer deposition of metal on the device and works pretty darn well, everytime.

So the point of all this technical jargon, now follows. The above procedure can also find application in building relationships of the union kind. First you have to create the circumstances for a successful relationship. Just like you create a vacuum in the chamber before deposition, you need to create some sort of a vacuum in your life. Whether it be lack of activities, or more spare time, or lack of good company. This is followed by choosing the person you find yourself interested in, just like you select what metal you want to deposit. What follows is a controlled growth of involvement, through multiple rise times and then soak times in the relationship. Sort of like building terraced fields. Incidents happen, characters are revealed, and this takes you through rise times of the association. Every soak time provides an oppurtunity to look at the graph and evaluate the direction of the relationship. If you are dissatisfied, you pull the plug and head your own ways, or you wait eagerly for the next rise time to happen. And finally, just like when the metal is right for deposition, you open the shutter and let the union of metal to device happen, so would you pop the question of a lawful union with the other person involved.

The one big difference is, atleast for the elements of the periodic table, the duration of the two rise and soak times is well documented and highly repeatable. The big question is, what is a good duration for the rise and soak times in relationships, which involve the much more uncertain and unpredictable "human element".

Desperation, now I know!

Despo - is a commonly used term in daily life. Mostly a synonym for a pervert, I too have always associated the word with people who were sexually frustrated. Like a despo, who hits on any girl types.

But today while talking to mom on the phone, I realized a whole new meaning of the word desperation. And I believe that I am getting desperate. And not the sexually frustrated kind. But the kind that sticks more to a dictionary meaning - "having an urgent need, desire, etc".

I am really waiting for things to click in my research. And the lack of it, is making me desperate!! I have never been like this before. But now that I am there, I suddenly feel for those who have been through such stages.

The question is, what do you do when you are frustrated? Do you keep doing things and hope things will work out? Or is it time to turn around and stop doing things that make you desperate?

I guess only time will tell...

Batting 101

Okay this has to be the biggest discovery of my athletic career. It happened yesterday during my weekly cricket session. Now before I talk of my discover, it is necessary to note why it is the most important discovery of my athletic career.

As a normal child who grew up in India, I have played cricket all my life. And I am mad about it. I love the game, to play it, to watch it and to read about it. And to be honest, I always thought I was good at it. Bowling, fielding and batting. Bowling wise, my best moments are a limited and fielding wise, well that is what got me into the game in the first place. I was ten-eleven, when I scored my first direct hit runout in the fountain-garden outside my parents' house. I threw the ball from point, having only one stump to aim and successfully knocked off the bails to run out Ashwin Kulkarni. So big was the moment, that people ran towards me, amazed at what they witnessed, picked me up and cheered like I was the new king.

Batting wise, I have had more than one green days. Some of the best of them I should mention was the day during my summer holidays during ninth standard vacations. I hit the crap put of all the bowlers and I still remember Swapnil Totre, my team mate in that game, getting frustrated with the onslaught I was commiting. Then there was the day when my class at VESIT went to play cricket in RCF. Then too I whacked the ball out of the park all the time. The pick of the comments was Varun Bhagat's, who exclaimed that he would want to be in my team any sport, any day, just cause I was good at them all!!!!

And then there was yesterday. Not as glorious as some of the other days, but I am sure will go a long way in remembrance. My team was chasing a big score. I went into bat three down or something. Had the roughest of starts. Missed about seven to eight balls outside off stump, without even connecting. Shyam, my captain and non-stricker was too gettting frsutrated. He threatened to retire me out if I was not doing any good to the scoring rate. And then it happened. I changed my bat.

I thought I would check out this new bat that Pratik's father had brought from India. I picked it up, went into stance, and it felt different. Pratik delivered the ball, I swung my bat, and the ball just flew off the bat with the slighest of efforts. Unfortuntately, it hit the roof at fell straight down, but it felt good to contact the ball in that way. Next up, the ball that Pratik delivered, I whacked it straight over his head and the ball crashed into the fence at about a ten meter height. Everybody went bonkers looking at that shot! Me too.... It was my cleanest hit in the last six years or so!! Brilliant to watch. I could have an orgasm just remembering the shot! That good!

I went on to hit three more fours that day. Probably as much as I have ever hit in the indoor arena. And then it occurred to me. It was all about the bat. The trick to a perfect bat is not only its weight and grip, but most importantly it is the height. It is very important that the bat puts you in a very comfortable stance when you are about the unleash. You dont want a bat that makes you bend too low, neither too less. You should have to be able to lean with ease on the bat, and if you got natural timing, good bless the bowlers and the bowl!!!

Having found my secret recipe for batting, after soo long of playing the sport, it feels great!! I am looking forward to many more smashing innings to come and soon make a name for me in this league.

Anything that glitters is definitely not gold

I was at the Indian Classical Music and Dance (ICMD) concert yesterday. To me, the Chandra Haasato Abhang was the highlight. However, more importantly during the concert, I realized one thing. People who are the most visible/outgoing, are usually the worst performers.

What I mean is, amongst a relatively unfamiliar batch of performers, the person whom I have interacted the most/met the most/know the best, is usually the worst performer of the lot.

And this is something I want to disprove by example. I always want to be a sweet, nice guy who is (unlike most nice guys) highly successful. I want to be a friendly person for everybody to approach, and at the same time, be sohisticated. I want to be the most known performer and also the best!!

Rule of thumb for married friends

This is a request for all married people. Whenever you go out, and you happen to be with other single friends, please make it a point to mention it to the singles. It is just wrong to uphold that information (if you have it, that is).

Ending a relationship.

It was not very long back during my stay in the US that I toyed with the idea of "relationships coming to an end". Given my life back in India, I did go from one place to another, one school to another, one tuition class to another. But none of these so called "relocations" ever entailed me to end a relationship with old friends, while starting to make some new ones.

Like for example, my first friends' circle was with my people from Tata Colony. Amazing friends they all are. Ofcourse, I have not spoken to some of them in more than five years now. But still, they ARE my friends! Same with people from school. And then my friends' circle in BTS-MTS (some really characterbuilding friendships I had). The Junior college junta, and the most recent VESIT public. All of these are well in the past, but I never really counted them out of my friends list! Although I am pretty sure I might never see or even hear from many of them ever again!


And most of these friendships were gems for me. Everyone of them taught me something, helped me grow various dimensions of my personality and the people were a blast to hang out with. I play the guitar thanks to Naval, I excel in studies thanks to all those nerd friends at BTS-MTS, I developed good leadership skills thanks to people in school, I was good at most sports in Tata colony thanks to my friends there, I developed a great sense of humor thanks to people in VESIT, and the list could keep continuing if I thought more about it.

So there are three questions that arise in front of me here. The first is, are all those beutiful relationships over?? Am I simply in denial when I still hope that they will resurface later in my life again and I can relive their glory?? The second question is, if these friendships were such golden phases, why haven't I ever tried to hold these things back? What have I ever done to make sure I don't lose track of all this affection that people showed for me in the past? And lastly, assuming the age old fact that good things never last forever, even if these relationships had to end for any particular and justified reasons, there is no good reason for them to end so abruptly!!!

All this thinking has only led me to the conclusion that I need to start ending my relationships gracefully, before they drown into the deep lull of nothingness over time.

Group Dynamics 101

This weekend I had a very involved discussion with Rishi about the movie Rang De Basanti. Cool movie and all that, but I really liked what he had to say about the movie. And the biggest thing that we agreed upon was the brilliant group dynamics between the five main characters of the movie. And that got me thinking, what really is the main constituent of such brilliant, life changing and life-long lasting friendship circles???

Rishi did bring it to my notice that the kind of relationship those guys in the movie shared was indeed very similar to what Kunal, Bhushan, Vidya and Rishi shared during their undergrad years. Since then, I have been trying to find that little connection that he was so passionately talking about. I wondered what made both of these groups of friends so special. Comparing the two groups and my current group of friends, I realized what the most important constituent of brilliant group dynamics is. Its a VERY SWEET GIRL.

Vidya is no doubt the "very sweet girl" in Rishi's group and the character played by Soha Ali Khan was the same in Rang De Basanti's group of people. And the lack of a group feeling in my current group is explained by the absence of any such "very sweet girl". (Please don't get me wrong on this. What I say is supposed to be a very subjective opinion, and the subject is "my thinking". It may not be the truth, and is most definitely not the whole complete picture.) I am not very sure how to define a phenomenon like "a very sweet girl". But looking at the people I have met in life, the people whom I recognize as "very sweet girls" have always built a strong bond of friendship within their groups. Sandhya Rao is one such person. I remember how she dominated the attention of all her friends in my sister's group and really held it together. Nithya from Junior college was also another such person, very vibrant, spontaneous, and full of life. Each of these persons has convinced me to believe that to have a great friends' circle, you need to find the right girl to start off with. Thats what determines the winning combination.