My First Talk with a Pakistani

Since my young age I was very curious about my neighbor country Pakistan and its people, as this country comes at the first place in the list of rival countries for India. I always thought that these people must think the same way as we thought about them. After long wait I got chance to met a Pakistani accidentally. Not in India or in Pakistan but in USA, when I was deputed by my company for one of its client in San Francisco. Below is the description of one day event when I was planning to go to market to buy something for my dinner.

Today I decided to go to market in evening to purchase the chicken curry from one Pakistani restaurant. Here in San Francisco lot of Indian restaurant available. But most of them are being running by Pakistanis. They all have named there shop like Indian and Pakistani cuisine. So I went into one of that shop near Market. Although I was in search of “Pakwan” restaurant, but I could not found that and found another one.

So I went into that restaurant and ordered for 2 plate chicken curry to person on counter. As this was my second time that shop in duration of one month, so just after seeing my look, he recognized me. After few minutes he asked me, “Are you from India?” I answered him “Yes”. Then he asked me in Hindi, “Kahan se ho bhai?” I replied, “From New Delhi”. He was very curious about my arrival to USA. He also told me that in morning one girl also came from New Delhi. And want to know why there is lot of people from Delhi, Banglore? When I told him that these area are now having lot of software companies that’s why lots of people got chance to come here. He was little amazed.

Till now I could not know the person’s nationality. After talking various things about behavior and habits of local people, he told me the reason why he is here. According to him “Mulk mein agar kadar hotee to yahan pe thodee hote?” Then he told me that he is actually a Pakistani. He asked me what I do here. I was thinking how I should describe him as it is little difficult to describe a software professional job to a non-technical person and that too is having a totally different profession. After little thought I told him that I am software professional. To my surprise he was well aware of word Software Job and Project. Then he told me that one of his friends do this software job in Karachi. Then he told me that he don’t know much about the details of Software. Just he was aware of that some project exists in that and big companies are involved in this. So now in his mind I was now a person who got good money from a software company.

Then suddenly he asked me, weather I like spicy chicken curry. After my confirmation in yes, he said, “Chicken-Curry ka maza hee kya jub tak wo jaban pe na lage” and said, “Yahan pe ye log pata nahee kya-2 dalwate hain chicken-curry mein, cream etc. per spicy nahee kha pate hain”. According to him, Local person don’t do anything, they just enjoying their life, as they are not lacking any thing in their life. And we Indian and Pakistani are actually running the country at lower level. That is actually a future truth in my view. Till that time chicken-curry was ready, I paid him and returned back to my apartment to write my first experience with a Pakistani.

But after all this discussion I realized that although person can live in another country for the job and making money. But still he can not dissolve himself in the culture of that country, which is so different from his own country.

Solving the Puzzle

Today my friend, Sharad Katiyar sent me a mail, stating a challange for solving a puzzle which he was able to solve in just two minutes.

The puzzle description was pretty simple. There was a two dimensional maze (remember windows maze screen saver!). And I had to start driving a car from one entry and had to exit by abiding some constraints defined within the puzzle.

As the constraints was pretty hard and one can't remeber during driving his car, so for ease of that, puzzlemaker has made a .swf file and incorporated all the constraints within that.

This .swf file supposed to be executed with help of Macromedia Flash Player. But unlucky me! (or should i say myself lucky!). There was no Flash Player installed neither on my laptop nor on my machine. So i tried to open it with the one of the media players available on the machine. And i was successfully able to open that file. (There was no unsuppoted format file error!)

Now intresting thing happened, First few seconds (15-20) passed in understanding the puzzle. Then i tried to drive the car thorugh the help of arrow keys. But everytime something bad happened and i lost my control over the car i was driving. I tried to drive the car again by reseting it with the help of mouse, dragging the forward indicator to it's intial position.

But every thing was going in vain after couple of tries. At last (after 40 -60 seconds) I lost my patience and instead of concentrating on the puzzle, i just started to play with the forward indicator. At first I forwarded the indicator to extreme finish point, and i just noticed that car was also moved to somewhere else position from it's initial position at where I lost my concentration.

So now i was reversing the indicator to back slowly and found that at some place (60-65% forward from intial position) my car automatically was at the exit position. Hey!! Hey!! just a minute, Puzzle has been solved! And i was happy to solve that puzzle in less than two minute duration as my friend was challanging.

Now that was the time of (re)action, I immidiately replied my friend that there was nothing to be solved in the puzzle and described the quicker way to solve that puzzle.

I just received response from my friend Sharad Katiyar. He was very much dissapointed the way i solved the puzzle. He also suggested me the solution for playing the .swf file. But who cares now! Ulitmately solving the puzzle was the main motto. :)