the e^xponential stress

Short answer - Learning guitar is very easy. I learned to play the guitar in 30 days. But, there is a catch. Read below to learn more. And, before I actually start answering how I did it, I think it is important to lay down a brief background of music in my life. I haven't gone under any formal music training but during primary school days in DAV, we had a compulsory class of vocal music and classical dance. I was in awe of my music teacher mimicking the sound of running horses on his pair of Tabla, and I had learnt a bit of Kathak. I was part of various school functions either singing in choir or dancing in the group. I didn't pursue dance much but I did become a permanent member of the choir group for 6+ years. Growing up, I tried instrumental music too as my ECA and, learnt to play a bit of the banjo. Banjo was considerably easier than the Tabla. I tried my hands at the drums and xylophone too but failed to learn them. Keyboard and guitar always gave me goosebumps so never t...

"My hobby is to pick new hobbies" My creative brain requires rewiring every now and then. In simple words, I like to learn new things, read new topics, build habits...I am always on my toes striving to be a better man, a kinder person who does good deeds. Ah! a tough goal, I know! But, I'll keep at it.  While we were doing our M.Des, our profs gave us a lot of different materials, assignments, theories, designing practices to shape our brain to become better in the creative and research process so that we could think differently, do something unique, build new designs...and more. But, it's not since the M.Des, my brain has been trained to be creative ever since my primary school, DAV where I learnt new art techniques from my drawing and clay modelling teachers. Actually, I believe that I was born as a creative soul thus leading me to like the art classes. I have always been good at drawing since childhood. Sadly, my explorations lie mainly in the creative side of min...

This year, I completed my second-longest stint with a deactivated Facebook account, a complete 3.5 years while I write this post in July 2020.  I have had my Facebook account since December 2009 which apparently was created by my college friend Alok who couldn't see me as the only person without a Facebook account in a batch of 60 engineers :D. One day while we were sitting in the computer lab, Alok scraped my education details from LinkedIn and created a Facebook account with my name, and started adding my school mates too. For a complete month of December, Alok acted as Chetan on Facebook until I accepted to take over the account and maintain it. I had to give in before he did anything more in the name of Chetan :D though Alok was my best buddy so he wouldn't have done something funny with my account yet to be square, I took over the account. He had kept a geeky password 'Efficiency' to start with. From January to February 2010, I added all my mechanical engineering...

This story is in continuation of  Stranger Friends . If you haven't read that, I would recommend reading that first before reading this second part. Bangalore wasn't new anymore. I had obvious friends in the office as well as in Uniworld, my guesthouse. But, there was one unique friend, a stranger friend in Uniworld, the housekeeper! I had been talking to him about random things around me in the city, office, life, and whatnot. Strange but, true; I would talk to him generally during weekend mornings. After completing my stint of four months in Infosys' Bangalore Campus, I had taken a transfer to their Jaipur DC. My transfer is another interesting story highlighting the politics in the corporate world of Infosys; will write an article separately on that. On my last day in Bangalore, I had my bags packed and kept them on the floor near the room's door. The housekeeper did all the cleaning chores and while he was leaving the room, I looked at him. "Sir, ja rahe h...