The Galaxy Nexus wallpapers looked gorgeous, so I extracted the default ones from the SDK system image.
You can download them from here - http://cl.ly/B548

(Short story, based on a true incident)

I stepped out of the Metro train and watched, with much boredom, as a sea of people ran towards the exit gates. The imaginary race to get out of the station is something that most people on the Delhi Metro participate in. I usually loiter around the station for two minutes after getting off, sometimes watching the race with amusement. The exit queues are full of interesting people — nervous young girls, nonchalant men, aged chatty couples, a few kids, the occasional mother with a baby — a perfect slice of the city’s varied population.

I glanced at the clock as I got out of the station. 2201 hours. It was late by mom-standards, but I wasn’t worried. Mum wasn’t home, she’d gone on a holiday for ten days. I would’ve headed home on any other day, but I was hungry and I did not have dinner waiting for me at home. The Sector 50 market is just two kilometers from the station. I decided to have dinner there, instead of fixing something myself.

Ten minutes of brisk walking later, I was standing in the market. I surveyed my choices. I didn’t want to eat street food, otherwise I would’ve gone to my favorite place that makes excellent egg rolls. It was then I realized it was a Saturday. Saturdays mean one other thing — cheap Sub of The Day offers at Subway.

I walked into the restaurant, headed straight for the vegetarian counter and said, “Bhaiyya ek Veg Shammi band dijiye”. After not getting an acknowledgment for two full seconds, I looked up. I was taken aback to see this girl staring back at me with big, black eyes. I’m a regular at this Subway; I had never seen a female employee here before. “I’m sorry, I was expecting one of the regular people”, I said. She gaped at me, then broke out of her stare and said, “Sorry sir. One Veg Shammi? Which bread?”. “Parmesan oregano, with cheese, heated”, I answered. She smiled and gave me a nod. After carefully placing two cheese slices on the bread, she put the bread in the oven and set it to heat for a while.

I noticed the badge on her t-shirt said, “TRAINEE”. Oh, so that’s why she was acting odd. I continued observing her. Jet black hair, tied in a bun. Long, thin fingers that she kept tapping on the granite platform, while glancing at the oven… and arrestingly beautiful eyes. Even in her boring black Subway uniform and at 10 in the night, she looked graceful. She would have fit better as a concierge in an upscale hotel.

The oven beeped and she took out the bread.

“All vegetables?”, she asked, as she placed the bread on the platform.
“Yes please, with extra lettuce and tomatoes.”
“With or without onions?”
“With onions.”

She paused for a moment, and then proceeded to make the most beautiful Subway sandwich I have ever seen.

I say beautiful because there is no better way to put it. She carefully put on a fresh pair of gloves, picked a generous helping of lettuce and spread it evenly on the bread. Like other Subway chefs, she did not throw the toppings in quick, repetitive fashion. Instead, she mentally measured everything before using it. Tomatoes and cucumber slices were placed at equal distances from one another. Jalapeño and black olives were given due respect and placed in a straight line, surrounded by capsicum shreds. She was slow, but I did not care. I could not stop myself from staring at the sandwich and her hands which moved across the platform with careful precision.

“Which sauces would you like, sir?”

It was my turn to feel lost, but I quickly answered “Mayo, southwest and a bit of red chilli and mint mayo”. Then, as an afterthought, I added “Extra mayo, actually”. She gave me another smile and picked up the mayo bottle. I wondered if the sauces would get the same attention and respect as the vegetables. I was not disappointed. She spread the mayo evenly on top of the vegetables. Hints of chilli and southwest were dropped between the mayo. Mint mayo was added last, and unlike with every other chef, I did not have to tell her to go easy with the mint. Too much mint destroyed the rest of the flavors and she obviously knew that.

I wished I had my camera with me. I would have shot the entire preparation and her too. I cursed my luck.

She wrapped the sandwich carefully and asked “Take away or have it here?”.
“I’ll have it here”.

She put the sandwich on a tray, generated a bill and said, “That will be 99 Rupees”. I paid, picked up my tray and walked to the table. I slowly opened my sandwich and there it was. It looked perfect. Barely any sauce dripping at the sides, no mess, just simple culinary perfection. I took a bite and it tasted as good. I could have jumped with joy. I looked up and she was looking at me from behind the counter. I smiled at her.

Then, with sudden inspiration, I called out to her, pointed to the empty chair across me and said, “Have a seat?”. She looked taken aback but said, “Sorry sir, we aren’t allowed to sit when the restaurant is in operation.”
“Oh come on, it’s almost closing time and it’s a weekday. Sanjeev, do you mind?”
Sanjeev was the other chef standing at the non-vegetarian counter. I knew him well. He gave me a look that said, “Yeah, right, go ahead, flirt with the trainee”, but the word that came out was just, “No.”

“This is by far, the nicest Subway sandwich I have ever had. You are awesome.”
She laughed and said, “Thank you. Par maine abhi last week hi join kiya hai.”
“Maybe that is the reason. The experienced chefs have speed and don’t really pay attention to, uh, shall I say, beauty?”
She gave me a sharp look. “Beauty?”
“Yeah, you know, careful preparation and not just throwing everything in. I would have clicked a photo of my sandwich, had I got my camera with me.”
She laughed again.
“Where are you from?”
“From Delhi only. Ghar ke pass kaam dhoond rahi hu, but abhi ke liye, this is the only option I have.”
“Ahh. Yeah, happens.”

She kept touching her hair nervously. I tried not to stare at her, but she was strikingly pretty and it was tough not to. I quickly finished my sandwich.
As I was picking up my tray, she said, “I’ll take that”. I politely refused and said, “Thanks”. I threw the tray paper in the bin and kept the tray on the stack. She was still standing next to me.

“Nice sandwich and nice talking. Good night!”, I said.
“Good night, sir”, she replied with a smile.
I opened the door and stepped out but I did not walk.
I turned around, looked at her and said, “You’re very pretty.”

She blushed to the color of a tomato and I walked away.

<lut4rp> I want to suicide by the time I'm 30.
<prtksxna> Why?
<lut4rp> What's the point of living beyond it?
<prtksxna> To get all the experiences in life that one should have.
<lut4rp> How do you decide what experiences one should have?
<prtksxna> The experiences that make you want to live life.

(How... insightful)

(This is a very personal post. You may not like it. I wrote it because I felt like it.)

As much as I despise the word and the objectification it brings to the minds of people, I've never had a "girlfriend". Some people find that stupid, some people find it horrifying and some people give reactions that lead me to believe I'm not part of a very cultured society.

I've always been very social, perhaps extremely social if you consider me a part of the "computer geek" community. Our kind doesn't really believe in person-to-person meetings. But I've always had a large group of friends and I like to meet new people. No, I don't always like to sit in front of a computer. Yes, you can call me strange.

I've always known so many brilliant and awesome people, that I never found the need to have a female companion. Life is always interesting. But sadly, that's a major point people throw at me, "What do you do when you're bored? Don't you feel like hanging out with someone?". Uh, no. Never felt bored enough that I'd want to hang out with a girl. In fact, why would I want to hang out with a girl only when bored? Over the years, friends have given me "advice" on why I've never had a girlfriend. Some of the responses have been…
- "You're too nice"
- "You're too geeky"
- "You think too much"
- "You're too thin"
- "You don't have a bike!!! You don't have a car?!?!!!"

You get the flow.

Societal norms are the least of my concerns and peer pressure is a joke. But I've had my share of (albeit rare) girls who I have really liked. Evidently, none of them ever got converted to the "relationship" state. The major reason I would attribute that to is my experiences at school. Studying at DPS for almost a decade teaches you more about this stuff than any other education. School had a very open environment, kids came from varying family backgrounds and I saw too many people get together and "break" up. The whole tearjerker saga. It made me apprehensive of getting into a relationship with someone just for the sake of it. My friends are those who I get along with all the time, who I can bank upon. Whenever, I'd want a girl like that. Friend first, everything else later. Somehow, this was a very, VERY hard concept for people to understand. Still is and I don't see why. Hell, there's an entire concept around that idea (Remember friend-zoning?).

So the next time someone asks me the damn question again, you know where they are going to get pointed to.

Sign me up for 'reclaiming the street' but I think you’ve articulated a troubling vein of appearance/lifestyle critique that only further serves to reinforce narrow, patriarchal ideas about women. It shouldn’t matter what other women look like–this obsession with appearance is yet another part of the tyranny to be overthrown. We should be more concerned with each others’ opinions, and not reduce ourselves to visual caricatures. This tyrannical ‘freedom of the individual’ argument fails to acknowledge not only the manifold obvious and invisible ways we are all connected, but the very material fact of a human as a socially constructed being.

Rather than exerting so much energy defending some people’s nebulous ‘right’ to call themselves what they want, to find what they find sexy sexy, we should be questioning and deconstructing our socially-defined concepts of sexiness within the lived and undeniable framework of patriarchal rule and cultural misogyny. Reclaiming or re appropriating the term 'slut' does not make their patriarchal origins or history of female objectification go poof! If anything, reinforcing sexist imagery won't.

And so I regurgitate the same - why would any sane woman want to claim such a weapon word as slut to describe any part of who they are? I am NOT a slut if I choose to have sex with whom I want. I am NOT a slut if I choose to wear what I want. I am NOT a slut if I wear high heels or shave. I am NOT a slut if I say NO to unwanted advances.
Considering how even women in burqas get raped in this country... 'nuff said.

— Priyanka Rajan's reaction on the use of the word "slut" by Slut Walk Delhi (https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=134134013328137).

Today morning, I read this blog post titled Why Indian startups need to get off their asses and learn to program (via HN). Even though the post is specific to what Infinitely Beta experienced, it quite correctly describes how most Indian startups don't really bank upon building quality products. They think core work can be outsourced and they don't have a team of solid technologists. If you haven't already read that post, I suggest you read that before you read what I have to say.

So what am I writing about? About why (IMO) this is happening. Why Indian tech startups are failing to understand what it takes to deliver a quality product or service. Something fundamentally wrong with the CS industry here.

Point 1: Underestimating the importance of quality. There's barely any tech products that have come/are coming out of India. Why? A major reason for that is building a product means more risk than delivering a service. Risk is something that we here don't take so easily. We're easy going people :-) It's in our culture, you could say. Is it a bad thing? No, of course not. But it's something that you need to break out of, if you want to deliver a product. Services are easier to do, so most people pick them.

However, even in service companies, the usual quality of work is rather crappy. Not everyone can build products and the market needs services too. Service companies don't mean "cheap labour" and they shouldn't! There's nothing stopping anyone from building a quality service company, you can even charge more and your clients won't mind :-)

Point 2: Lack of passion/direction. I just finished my bachelors degree in CS. During four years of college, I've visited, traveled, met up and talked to tons of CS students. The situation is disappointing. Most people who pick CS do it because of reasons like "it will get me a good job" or "that's what every high-ranker does". I don't think more than 15-20% CS students actually want to study it. But they do. And they suck at it. They don't like it. They don't love their jobs. They just want to live a life. So they do the bare minimum that their job asks. They don't have that drive to excel at their work.

However, even people who do like CS, are hit by other issues. Outside of IIT/NIT, the CS syllabus and teaching is horribly outdated and broken. It is taught like we were taught history in school. Rote-based learning. Ugh. They don't see the joy of programming. They don't see the magic of design.

Then there are the "inspirational" companies. Ask any regular CS graduate "what is your dream company?" and I can assure you, you'll mostly hear Infosys/TCS/Accenture/HCL foo. That's your dream company? Companies that don't even judge you technically during their hiring process? You can't think of Google even in your dreams? That just saddens me. People need to start thinking broad, wide and out of the box.

Point 3: The "Design is gay" misconception. This one's a real shocker. I know a fair bit of people who work as "Graphic Designer" or "UX developer" but don't really like design nor do they have an eye for it. They do it because the job asks for it. If you know me, you'll know I'm rather "aggressive" when it comes to design. I can't tell how many people look at me with twisted, cringed looks when I talk about design. What's interesting is how people think good fonts or clean layouts are pointless BUT the same people will ogle at a beautiful car or exquisite jewelry. Wake up, morons. Design is appreciated everywhere. I'm going to do a plug for Infinitely Beta here, because their service paisa.com has a stunningly awesome UI. I was blown away when I first saw it and I don't know how many people I've shown that website to, as an example of good UX.

If this is to change, we need a fundamental shift in the way people think about computer science. No, it isn't easy to get a job in CS. Not the work is not trivial. People need to do things they love, not something daddy, Uncle X or Friend Y considers good.

PS: I recommend reading Computer Science FAIL on GeneralMaximus's blog, for his hilarious first-hand CS education experience.

Update 1: Edited certain words for clarity.
Update 2: Found and fixed some design glitches, thanks to so many comments.