To the one who has it all figured out

Hey,

I enjoy reading books, and currently, I have many books at home, all written in a language I do not know. There are books written in English available online, books that I have wish-listed. However, I find happiness just looking at these books, knowing I cannot read them until I learn the language. This is precisely how I prioritize and choose among things.

Am I missing the obvious? Why am I searching for hidden words when there is hardly any meaning? Why do I tend to exaggerate the smallest of things while I ignore well-stated facts? Why do I oscillate between fiction and reality when I am well aware of the bridge between them?

I want to dance. I want to scream out loud. I want to run. I want to fly. I want to breathe. My hands are tied, my legs are numb, and not a word comes out of my mouth while I wait to bare my soul. All it takes is just a word, but you do not know the struggle that lies behind it.

It all seems simple yet complicated. I am constantly revisiting the past and continuously being anxious about the future. Amidst all this, I forget the present, the only reality that matters. I ask myself if this is what I want or what it is that I want. I seek answers, yet I see no solutions.

Do you have it all figured out? How does it feel not to worry about uncertainties? Is it as simple as saying, ‘Don’t be anxious about the future, just relax’? People often advise taking risks, but I find myself torn between practicality and romanticizing life. I yearn for days when I don’t merely live vicariously but make my dreams a reality. Does a perfect balance even exist? I’m not fragile, but I can break too. I’m not running away; I fulfill my responsibilities by doing chores and paying my bills. I’m not oblivious, and what I need isn’t a reality check. What I long for is a smile, a pat on the back, and reassurance that I’m not the only one, that I am not alone.

Lost & yearning,
A tired soul

To the girl who loves writing letters

Hey,

I know you have always loved letters, especially hand-written ones. Well, I agree; they are indeed unique. You may not have received many of them, but I know you still cherish the ones that you received. To me, they symbolize effort, patience, love, and warmth. More than the content, this is what makes them close to my heart.

My journey with letters started when I was around 3, just a toddler. Whenever my mom wrote letters to my grandparents, I told her that I too wanted to write. Well, I could hardly pronounce words or speak proficiently. The funny part is that she used to let me write. Back then, it used to be inland letters, a sheet of paper of fixed dimensions where you write the address on one side, and on the other, you write the content. So, at the end of each letter, my mom left a small space for me to add my writing. But I did not know how to write; still, I had too many stories to tell my grandparents. I guess nothing could stop a determined toddler. Each sentence used to be a circle; let’s call it my script. By the time I finished writing, the bottom part of the inland letter would be full of circles. My mom used to post them, and I have no idea what my grandparents could understand.

Recently, I came across one of those letters; yes, they still had it. I was happy to see those circles because I could imagine the excitement of 3-year-old me. I could sense the warmth and love I had felt while writing those letters—well, circles. It’s been years since I wrote a letter. It’s all about emails and chats now, and why not? They are convenient. But recently, I saw an Instagram profile that encouraged sending handwritten letters, and it reminded me of how much I love them. I cannot send out letters now, so I thought of writing them here. So this will be a series of letters addressed to those individuals I believe should receive them. It’s also a way for me to connect with myself.

Love & warmth,

The nostalgic self

An unexpected road trip from Delhi to Kerala

After about a month’s quarantine, students from various states started returning to their hometowns. To initiate our travel to Kerala, we contacted a lot of people, including our respective MPs, district collectors, etc. We hardly received a positive response from any of them. Finally, a few of the students arranged a bus by contacting a travel agency. We were ready to bear all the expenses. We informed the Kerala house authorities in Delhi who promised to help us with the border crossing etc. The Malayalee associations and a few NGOs supported us to arrange food for the three days of travel.

We received the travel pass and each of our no COVID certificates at around 1 o’clock on April 11th. There started our journey to our hometown after about a month’s quarantine. Though all of us were excited, we were all enough worried about how the travel was going to be. It was three days of travel with no proper arrangements. What made it stand out was the fact that India was under a 21 days lockdown. We knew that it was going to be tiresome. We did not have any high expectations regarding the food and other facilities on the road.

Though all of us were tested negative, the possibility of contracting the virus on the way was still there. We assured ourselves by wearing masks and not getting down the bus unless necessary. I slept all night and woke up around 5 am to see a beautiful sunrise. Thanks to the jio networks for having kept me updated each time we entered a different state. According to jio, we were in Rajasthan. I did not even know that we would have to cover a small part of Rajasthan.

Quarantine Days

On March 15, we landed at the Delhi international airport. The officials took us to the ITBP camp near Chhawla, Delhi, 14 days of quarantine were arranged over there. They provided us with all the essentials like masks, blankets, water bottles, individual cupboards, soap, kettle, slippers, etc. The food was nutritious as the diet included fruits, milk, salad, etc. Every day we were subjected to a routine medical examination which included temperature and BP check-up. Until the test result came, we were all tensed as we did not know if we had contracted the virus. For once, none of us wanted to be positive but negative. On the third day, the results were out. Except for two of them, all the passengers in our flight were tested negative. Doctors shifted the infected to a hospital and sanitized their room. The everyday medical examination continued even after the test.

My room consisted of 7 girls, including me. We were all allotted with unique bed numbers. Both my friends were with me while the rest of them were from Venice. Soon we became friends and were finding new ways to kill time. We installed games applications for ludo, UNO, etc. Well, social distancing at its best. We were tested again after about 14 days, luckily all of us tested negative. Honestly, it was a huge relief. The staff at the ITBP center were quite friendly and were always at service. The facilities provided on day one did not deteriorate even after the first few days.

Milan to Delhi during the days of coronavirus

Phase I

I was reading the news and came to know about the new virus that was spreading in China. Well, I did not read in detail about it. The virus was not even called covid19. Later I came across more articles regarding the same and gradually understood the severity of the situation in China. Countries began evacuating their citizens and the world was slowly realizing the potential crisis. Even then, we were in denial because we were living in Italy. Honestly, I did not expect it to hit Europe. Exams, study holidays, cooking experiments, and our lives went on smoothly without any troubles.

Phase II

The virus had started spreading in India as well. It had reached Kerala to be more precise. But Kerala had taken enough measures, in fact, praiseworthy measures which helped them to contain the virus. Within a few days from then, Italy reported its first case. Luckily it didn’t spread much and all the other infected patients healed. Though we were slightly concerned, we were still in denial. We tried to believe that the virus would not hit any other country and that we were safe.

Phase III

Not after many days, Italy started reporting cases. The cases were in Lombardy, the province which includes Milan. We followed the news regularly, debated about the spread of the virus and measures that we should take. Even then never did we expect the virus to spread this vigorously, not just around Italy but around the entire world.

We started getting messages and calls from our loved ones inquiring about our health and situation in our area. We were pretty optimistic and believed that we could survive without facing many difficulties. Against everybody’s expectation, the count increased drastically, infecting almost thousands within days. Most of the students returned to their respective home countries. The university was supposed to reopen in the last week of February but postponed it by a week.

The Journey never ends

Four years have passed and my college life has almost come to an end. Well, as we all know time flies and waits for none. I was never a computer enthusiast and did not have any particular reason for taking up Computer Science for my bachelor’s degree. But now I am more passionate and do not regret my decision at all and the FOSS club at my university has played a major role in that.

It is FOSS@Amrita that made me explore, learn and love the work that I do. When I joined the club, I did not have many expectations and all I wanted was to equip myself with something. That turned out to be one of the best decisions that I have made. In the first year, all of us were assigned a mentor who was a senior student and we started off by learning some programming languages and doing small projects. The club does not follow a spoon-feeding culture and thereby gives us the freedom to make mistakes and learn the hard way. There are mentors and guides who are always ready to hear our problems and help us through the difficult times. Many people, including my family, have asked me how I could manage both academics and the club activities. To be honest, I have never found a problem in handling both of them together and in fact, one thing that I have understood is that when you really want to do something, somehow we will find a way.

Memories brought by a pine tree

I was sitting on the floor, ready to listen to a talk when something caught my attention. There was a small window right in front of me through which I could see a few branches of a pine tree through it. It took me back to my school days when I used to look through my class’s window at the pine trees that stood on both sides of my favorite pathway. The environment at my school is just spectacular. Situated in the valley of Ketty, amidst many huge trees, wrapped with a misty glow is my school.

The pine trees in front of the hostel cottages, long roads with the canopies and flowers that beautified the hostel garden have many stories to tell. They had remained my companion for a long five years. Never did they complain or hesitate to put up with my insanity. They have heard all my stories and have seen me both dance in joy and sink in miseries. It was never a bed of roses. But it did give me a handful of memories to cherish for a lifetime.

Django Girls workshop – Thiruvananthapuram

This was my first experience as a coach! I had started learning Django towards the end of my second year in college and now it has been almost a year. As everyone says it is the perfectionist’s framework. It was never an easy task to learn Django though now when I look back it seems to be a simple framework. I had a tough time and somehow I happened to like the framework and went on to do some simple projects with it.

I had been following Django Girls organization since the time I had started learning Django. Their workshops used to be conducted all over the world. It was during my winter break I happened to notice the Django girls workshop at Thiruvananthapuram which is only around 2 hours far from my college. By then I had learned Django so I decided to apply as a coach. I also informed my friends who later applied for the same.

Green Programming and Green Software

Green programming is an energy saving software technique. We are very much concerned about using the renewable sources of energy to save the earth, similarly, we should also use reusable software elements to create efficient code to reduce power consumption. Green programming is an attempt to build green software that will extend battery life for mobile platforms and improve energy efficiency. Increasing energy consumption by powerful computers, mobile devices etc has introduced the need to look for methods to reduce the energy use of these devices.

There are many projects that focus on more efficient or energy-saving power modes. To make energy efficient design, understanding the CPU’s defined energy states can help us. If the CPU is not actively processing the information it is said to be consuming less energy. The CPU has two states called C-states and P-states. C-states are core power states that tell us to which extent the processor is sleeping. C state corresponds to a state when the CPU is active, it is busy carrying out some task.

Elasticsearch – Important terms

Elasticsearch is an open source search and analytics engine developed in Java. Elasticsearch admits JSON documents and is designed to take data from anywhere. So we don’t have to define fields and datatypes before adding data unlike in the case of relational databases. Communication with the search server is done with an HTTP REST API. ElasticSearch provides a REST API, which we will use to upload data, and later retrieve it. Elasticsearch is a near real-time search engine. If one makes a change to one of the index, this change is propagated throughout the cluster within one second unlike in relational databases. This makes it scalable. In elasticsearch, index corresponds to a database, type to a table, document to row, fields of a document to a column and mapping to a schema.

Near Real Time (NRT):

It is a near real-time search engine. If one makes a change to one of the index, this change is propagated throughout the cluster within one second unlike in relational databases. This makes it scalable.

Cluster:

It is a collection of one or more nodes, consists of one or more nodes making it extremely scalable. The collection of nodes contains all the data in the cluster. A Cluster provides indexing and search capability across all of the nodes, no need to worry on which node the document is stored. Clusters are identified by a unique name that defaults to elasticsearch.