Seema’s unborn sister. - A short-story

Seema’s unborn sister. - A short-story

Beautiful Family: Mohan, Neha & Baby Seema

Two lovers, Mohan and Neha got married only after their parents allowed them to marry. It was a long struggle, to get their parents permission to get married. Neha gave birth to a healthy baby, Seema. The family also inherited lots of wealth. The family was well respected.

Mohan's Evil Sister: Thamarai

Mohan had an younger sister, Thamarai. Thamarai was young, cunning and scared of her parents. She never supported Mohan in his struggle to marry, Neha, just to be on the good books of her wealthy parents.

Thamarai was childless. Thamarai was jealous of her brother's wealth and happiness. Whenever the baby girl, Seema fell ill or failed/struggled in school, Thamarai would celebrate and blame that Mohan and Neha don't know, how to raise a child. Time flew. Seema did slightly above average in school. And managed to join JNU university for Bachelor's degree.

Accident: Young Seema lives with Aunt Thamarai

One day Mohan and Neha went to Goa, leaving Seema at home with Aunt Thamarai, for an urgent business trip. The flight Mohan and Neha took disappeared. All the passengers were presumed dead.

Seema became an orphan. Thamarai became guardian of Seema. Thamarai made Seema’s life hell. But Seema loved her aunt, as she had nobody else. Thamarai started taking money from Seema's wealth as expenses for taking care of her. Thamarai also took money from Seema’s wealth for her fertility treatment. Thamarai wanted to have a child of her own, and planned to use all the wealth for that child. She was undergoing artificial insemination, and got impregnated. And her mood swings due to pregnancy resulted in abuses and more household work for Seema.

Twist: Thamarai panics

Despite all that Seema completed her degree. There were rumors that the flight that disappeared had been hijacked 4 years ago, and the passengers are still alive.

Seema’s parents might actually be alive. Thamarai started panicking and prayed that her brother and sister-in-law, better be dead. She wanted the wealth for her own baby. Thamarai started claiming credit that she raised Seema very well and made her get a degree, while her parents were only able to get her finish schooling. And she cannot live without Seema. So even if Seema's parents were alive, she should manage the wealth and Seema herself, and not give back to Neha and Mohan.

Next chapter: Mystery

The next sequence of events is in our hands. Yes our hands. We have a role in this story. Mohan - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Neha - Nehru. Parents - British. Seema - Schemes. Thamarai - Lotus in Tamil. Unborn Sister - Hindutva.

GWUN

2030 AD. For the GWUN project sponsored by UN, 8700000 instances of the distributed GWUN clients are running busily on Linux Servers.

The global warming has already had a huge effect on the earth. And it seemed to be getting worse in the last 2 years. The poles were melting, sea-level rose, many countries have sub-merged in the sea and the life on earth was fast reducing.

The goal of the GWUN project is to compute the top reasons for global warming and the ways to protect life on earth. The scientists were eager to know the results. The situation was getting worser by the day. Huge corporations around the world sponsored more nodes for the project to speed it up. After busily computing for 27 months, the results were ready.

GWUN result: GWUN project machines were hosted at the Poles, to reduce the power consumption required for cooling those machines. Reducing power consumption was considered as a key factor to prevent global warming. But that released heat directly in the polar region of the earth. If the same amount of heat was released in an already warmer place, the earth's atmosphere would have managed to release/absorb the energy and the polar ice wouldn't have melted.

Beware of Glogle warming. Unknown preventive measures could be the real culprits.

ஆயிரத்தில் ஒருவன்

2009AD. இந்தியாவிலிருந்து ஐ.நா வின் கப்பலில் ஆயிரம் பேர் இலங்கையில் நிவாரண பணிகள் செய்வதற்காக செல்கின்றனர். அதில் கார்த்தி ஒருவன். கார்த்தி விஞ்ஞானி. ஆண்ட்ரியா ஒரு மருத்துவர். ரீமா சென் ஒரு பாதுகாப்பு அதிகாரி. ஆனால் வழியில் சுனாமி தாக்குகிறது. இவர்கள் மூன்று பேர் மட்டும் யாரும் இல்லாத தீவில் கரை ஒதுங்குகின்றனர்.

அங்கே இயற்கையில் உருவான டைம்-வார்ப்(Time-warp) பாறை ஒன்று உள்ளது. அதில் உள்ளே நுழைந்து அடுத்த பக்கம் வந்து பார்த்தால் காலம் கீ.பீ 209ஆம் ஆண்டில் சோழ மன்னனுக்கும்(பார்த்திபன்) ஒரு ராணிக்கும் இடையே போர் நடந்து கொண்டிருக்கிறது. இவர்கள் ஒளிந்திருந்து கவனிகின்றனர். போரில் தோற்கும் பார்த்திபன் மற்றும் அவரது 17 வீரர்கள் சிறை-இல அடைக்கப்படுகின்றனர். கார்த்தி அவர்களை காப்பாற்றி மீண்டும் அந்த டைம்-வார்ப் பாறையில் புகுந்து இக்காலத்திற்கு(2007 AD) திரும்புகின்றனர். மறுபடியும் இலங்கைக்கு அருகே உள்ள தீவில் திரிகின்றனர். அப்போது புலிகள் பயன்படுத்திய ஆயுத கிடங்கு ஒன்றை கண்டு பிடிக்கின்றனர். அவற்றை எடுத்து கொண்டு பார்த்திபன் மற்றும் 17 வீரர்கள் மீண்டும் கீ.பீ 208 செல்கின்றனர். இப்பொழுது மாடர்ன் weapon-களை கொண்டு போரை சுலபமாக வெல்கின்றனர். இதனை பார்த்துவிட்டு கார்த்தி/ரீமா/ஆண்ட்ரியா மீண்டும் தற்காலத்திற்கு(2008AD) வருகின்றனர். வந்து பார்த்தால்...

இந்தியா உலகின் மிகபெரிய வல்லரசாக இருக்கிறது. இப்பொழுது நாம் பார்ப்பதை விட அறிவியல் மிகவும் முன்னேற்றம் அடைந்து இருக்கிறது! அமெரிக்காவில் லியோ-நார்டோ டி காப்ரியோ எனும் நடிகன் "10 incarnations " எனும் லோக்கல் மொழி படத்தில் நமது அதிபர் மன்மோகன் சிங்க் மாதிரி ஒரு ரோல் செய்கிறார். அமெரிக்காவில் உள்ள ஏழை மாணவர்கள், இந்தியாவிற்கு on-site வர துடித்து கொண்டு இருக்கின்றனர். office-க்கு, வேட்டி-துண்டுடன் formals-ல்தான் வர வேண்டுமா என இந்தியன்-embassy-il கேட்டு கொண்டு நிற்கின்றனர்.

மீண்டும் கார்த்தி அந்த டைம்-வார்ப் பாறைக்கு திரும்புகிறார். அதிலிருந்து வரும் காற்றின் கார்பன் வெளியீட்டை அளவிட்டு, future-க்கு செல்ல எந்த திசையில் செல்ல வேண்டும் என கணிக்கிறார். செல்கிறார். (முற்றும். கற்பனை: Nikanth, Sankarlal)

Letter from a software engineer to his boss who is a computer literate

I am no car mechanic
The Volkswagen beetle is popularly known as bug. But there is a very big difference between fixing the car and S/W. All the bug cars have a fixed/same design. So it is like, we have the fixed/bug-free code in hand, and there is a copy of modified/buggy car. The mechanic needs to find the diff and patch which is quiet mechanical compared to fixing S/W. S/W is like making each and every car with a different design, engine etc.. (It is because they do different things as opposed to cars which do the same thing). It is like different vehicles but way more in no(infinite to be precise) than flights, ships, cars, sub-marines, hower- crafts etc... put together. Then fixing it is find the flaw of the original itself. This needs skill.

I am not changing tyres
Buying a new tyre is may not be cheaper but easier than fixing the old one. Fixing bugs is not like changing flat tyres. Fixing bugs especially in source that you didn't code can be a very hard problem. It is impossible to generalize difficulty in solving bugs or adding features. So do not measure the work done by counting the number of features added or number of bugs fixed.

Train is not a type of car
Size matters but not the way it is used. Some bug fix might require just adding one char say making "<" as "<=". But the complexity might be more depending on the size of the project, reproducibility etc... That changing a smaller wheel of a train engine might be harder than changing a bigger F1 car's wheel. I think LOC of the whole project being fixed is more relevant than LOC changed.

I am also a manager
You should know how hard(!) it is to manage multiple people. But managing multiple headless people is even more difficult. Parallelism with shared data in s/w is a beast. If there are 3 people with 3 jobs, say Aswath has to dig, Billa has to drop the seed and Chiru fills the hole with sand. Managing people is easy because they learn and adapt. But software, if there is a race, Chiru might fill the hole before Billa plants the seed or even worse try to fill the hole that is not yet dug. IOW, the programmer has to think for all these people, but you manage people who can not only think for himself but for many others as well. But yes I manage people who are obedient ;) - but I do not ask them to do what they can't.

Not all tennis players are champions
Teaching Sania Mirza to get an ace against Sharapova is difficult than making her serve right without hitting the net or out. Usually performance issues are hard which you don't count at all as they are neither bugs nor features :(

Let us make Abhinav Bindhra captain of the Indian Cricket Team
Yes, you read it correctly. That is what most of the Indian-American software companies do. People from different game tries to be a captain of a very different team game. For a team to do reasonably well, the captain needs to be an expert in the same game. There are some games where the captain can be a non playing captain, but still the team would need an expert with great knowledge of the game. The games board can be run by some sports people need not from the same sport. But still sports people. As the level goes up, the need low-level knowledge fade. Remember, baseball is still different from Cricket. And some times people who are not even sportsmen are made the captain. Please play at least few games with us. Better Learn the game.