Some Vogon Poetry

A Bike Ride to Pune

2009-12-20T01:06:00.004+05:30

It’s another early Saturday morning, and I get off the phone. I look at my watch and it’s about five. I take my feet off the table and collect my gear as I head off to the parking. The cold air is refreshing and I don’t really mind the strap of the bag that is cutting into my shoulder. I have bigger fish to fry. I have to ride 150 km to my house in Pune, after a full day of work and staying late in office.

I switch on the music and put in earphone in my ears. I lay all my gear on the bike, ready to dress up. Having been a veteran at these early morning Pune trips, I have a fixed procedure. First my jacket goes on my torso, and then the cell phone goes into the inner breast pocket. The earphones come out and hang over my ears. The muffler is tightened around my neck and now the earphones go back in. I zip up the front and wear my bag. This is followed by the helmet, and at last, my gloves. Now I am ready to take on the world. But before that, I need to the wake up the watchman.

The watchmen at the office are weird. They lock the main gate and go off to sleep at night. And every single night when I wake them up to open the gate, I get the stinky eye from them. Today, however, is different. The guy is sipping his tea, and gets up before I can break, in front of his cabin. Without much of a fuss, he opens the gate & I’m off. I take the quick start as a good omen, and quickly lower my visor as I speed off towards the Highway.

I’m now on the Thane-Belapur road. This road is very familiar to me, and my mind starts wandering off. I recollect the first time I had biked on this road, almost two years back; That night too we were biking from office. But we had left office two hours early, and were going to Jimmy’s Birthday party in Khargar. What a change in those two years. Not only in me, but also in this road. It was basically a glorified dirt track then. Now it’s a respectable concrete road, one can ride on without too much of trouble.

I reach Nerul, and am riding in Pitch dark. I know when the paved road patch starts, and I’m waiting for it. The undulations of the paved blocks is dangerous, if ones attention wavers, and I want to reach home in one piece. A ST bus can be seen in the distance. It is dark and dusty, with no reflectors or light, so I constantly have to struggle to dynamically place it. It’s moving in the middle lane & I plan to overtake it from the right. Just as about 100 feet separate me from the bus, something catches my eye. I can’t quite make out what it is, but the light from on coming trucks, shows me there is something directly in my path about 100 feet away. Within a few hundredth of a second, I realize that it is a plastic bottle, and I start staring at a spot exactly one foot to the left of the bottle. My eyes are now fixed on to that point, and that is all I can see.

Initially, the bike does not waver, but I have enough fate in myself. I keep staring at the spot, and soon enough, my bike first dips to the right and then instantly to the left. The bottle is coming closer every second and I’m still not sure if I’ll make it. But I have enough faith in my body. The bottle is just about 10 feet away, and just about 6 inches off my path. I continue staring at the fixed point, and as expected I pass over that very spot.

I have now reached the Asugav junction, where the Express way begins. I however have to take a right and go via Panvel to the old Mumbai Pune highway. I hate this stretch, and have to put my mind and reflexes on high alert. This road is a two lane, two way highway with no divider. The oncoming traffic is causing a glare in my eyes, and I am practically blind. Thankfully the road is flat and porthole free, so I don’t have to worry about that. I just tell myself to watch out for oncoming traffic and stay out of the way of stray vehicles. My fears are justified just a few minutes later, when a sumo coming from the other side, is travelling in my lane, and I have to travel on the shoulder of the road to avoid getting hit. I know I can’t rest till I go over the Expressway and reach Shedung village, where the NH4, becomes a four way toll road. Thankfully I have an uneventful ride till Shedung

On the old NH4, the 4 lane road becomes a two-lane road at Khalapur. As I biker I’m very afraid of getting into accidents, and am especially guarded on roads without dividers. Hence my joy on the NH4, ends at Khalapur, and I’m again on full alert till Kopoli, which about 8 Km ahead.
The Ghats start at Khopoli & that is where the fun starts as well. The road is scenic and curvy. There is no traffic on that road, and I leisurely climb the hills, swinging out on the turns. It is still dark, and I can feel it getting chilly as I climb the ghats. I have to ride on low gear because of the steep climb, and my bike has to struggle to maintain speed. The sound of my engine at low RPM is the only sound I can hear. There is no other light around except for my headlights, and I am totally at peace.

I approach the Expressway. Before I get on the Expressway, the road goes over a strangely shaped flyover. It is narrow, has a steep decline and a sharp turn. The view from the sharp turn is amazing and I’ve often stopped there before. You can see the lights of Khopoli and the valley surrounding it. The sun hasn’t risen yet, and there is not much light in the valley, so I carry on, and get to the highest gear as I touch the Expressway.

Even though I know that I have to get to the Expressway, every time I have done the Mumbai-Pune ride, I have this insecure voice in my head, asking me if I am meant to be there. I ignore that voice and carry on. There is a lot of slow moving Truck traffic. I prefer this to the high speed car traffic, since the trucks are slow moving and I can zoom in and out of their paths, without any issue.

I get off the Khandala exit, and begin one of the best parts of the journey. The road from Khandala to Lonavala, is specious, wide and curvy. It lies along the railway tracks, and a couple of times, I’ve has the good fortune to travel alongside a train. If you haven’t done that, you cannot possibly understand the joy and excitement one feels as one races a train.

I pass Lonavala, and the highway expands to a nice 4 lane toll way. I look at my watch and see that it is 6:45. I have been neither too fast, nor too slow. I know I will do the next fifty odd km in about an hour. The road is flat, and the cold air is blowing. My bike is shaking and I’m shivering. It is a good experience, and brings back the memories of the Ladhak expedition. I can see the sun shinning, and look at the big orange blob, as it is rises just a few degrees above the horizon. The day is just beginning and I’m dead tired. It will be another interesting day in Pune.

The transition to GChat

2009-08-16T00:15:00.004+05:30

For the last few weeks or so, I have been using Gchat in office instead of the usual Gtalk. This all began when there were whispered murmurs in Office, that our Instant Messenger conversations were being monitored. This can easily be done by a Network Administrator with tools like IMBoss and IMspector; that's why I didn’t dismiss them as baseless rumors.

I really don’t have much to hide, but I very much value my privacy. Hence to keep my conversations private, I turned over to using GChat, the Chat Widget in Gmail. This uses an encrypted channel when passing information in-between your computer and the GMail Servers, if you have the HTTPS option selected.

At times I have been rather annoyed at the difference when compared to GTalk and at other times, I have been surprised at how easily I have adjusted to the change.

Many people have preferred GChat for many years now. The most attractive feature for many people is the ability to ‘appear offline’ and then chat with people. Somehow this is not important enough for me. I accept that I am an Internet Addict, and am not ashamed to admit it. I have no problems being seen online, since I am online so much. In addition there is no one that I would like to hide my online presence from. I am quite open that way. If there is someone I don’t want to chat with - like a man - I tell them I’m busy, or ignore them.

Now this might come off as rather rude, and quite a few friends have been offended by this behavior of mine. I apologize, but they too have to understand my situation a little bit. When they usually ping me, it’s usually evening or night. They have come home, had dinner and are now chilling out and relaxing. I on the other hand, am working at this time. The evening hours of nine to eleven, are often the most productive part of my working day. And it’s not as if I’m deceiving them. I have put my status as Busy. What did they think the Red circle was for?

In some ways, I think that Instant Messenger conversations are tricky business. You never know what kind of mood or situation the other person is, nor do you often have much to say. Everyone is busy multitasking, so you never have anyone’s undivided attention. You can have only shallow conversations and useless chit chat. This is why I prefer emails. They are very effective when you have something to say, or something to ask. I know that this kind of behavior is rather rare, but I love it nonetheless. They are also better when you work like me: with an intense focus for a 15 odd minutes and then Chill out for a couple of minutes. This way you can reply to them appropriately whenever you get some time out. And since emails are so rarely used for these kinds of purposes, I get so excited, whenever someone actually uses them in this way.

Another reason why I am not so enamored by the ‘Appear Offline’ feature is something that is sort of contrary to the above points. I have often had these magical conversations with people, when I least expected them. I know that these people would not have left me an email and would only have had these wonderful conversations with me after I got them talking. This would not have happened if I ‘appeared offline’ and due to this, they wouldn’t have thought of pinging me.

So after I was forced to decide to use GChat, I decided to make the best of it. Like an obsessive compulsive geek, I arranged my Inbox. I got the GChat window to the right, and switched-off people’s status messages. I minimized the font as much as possible and made sure everything was perfect.

I had earlier decided to try this as an experiment for just a week, and see if I could adjust to it. And not only did I adjust to it, I took to it, like a fish takes to water. After using this setup for almost three weeks, I do have some observations.

Firstly I do miss GTalk. I miss the feature of File transfer that it offers. I miss the way that you can just alt-tab your way through different conversations. Secondly the most annoying thing about GChat, is that when you are IM’ing with someone, and they send you a message: Their window keeps on flashing. It isn’t enough that you have read it. You actually have to go and click on it with your mouse. For me, Gmail was a Keyboard paradise, where I could do everything without touching a mouse, and now I constantly have to use a mouse.

Another thing is that my chatting has decreased. This is because even though Gmail will always be open in one of the tabs in Firefox, it usually doesn’t have focus. I always have Firefox as well as Internet Explorer Eight open. Besides that I will usually have a window of ArcMap open, and atleast two different IDE’s open. If this wasn’t enough, sometimes I am not even working on the same machine. I might be working on a virtual machine or might be working on some other Machine through Remote Desktop/VNC.

This has been doing wonders for my productivity, but I am not sure how much it is doing for my social life and friendships. If you ping me on GChat, there is a big chance I might actually not read it, even though I am sitting right in front of the desktop. Compared to this, the Gtalk windows were prominent and sometimes grabbing attention, even though I was working in Visual Studio in full screen mode. And often at the end of the day, I want to pick up from the same spot the next day. Hence I do not disturb my setup; I just close Firefox so that next day it opens up with the same tabs.

So if I have missed any of your messages, I am truly sorry. Don’t take it the wrong way. It wasn’t personal.

Will in continue to use Gchat? The answer is twofold. In office I will, but at home I can’t live without Gtalk.

Social Networking and Me

2009-08-01T03:51:00.004+05:30

With everyone getting onto the social networking bandwagon, I think it is high time I explain why I’m still very skeptical about the whole thing.

Being an Internet freak, I must confess that I am quite an old hand at these Social Networking sites. I was member of Orkut in mid 2004, when it was just beginning out, and I had very few real life friends on it. I was on Facebook, when it was opened up to the general public, just as everyone else was getting on to Orkut.

Some people have called these sites, Walled gardens, but that is not why I don’t get them.
The main problem I have with these sites is the absence of compartmentalization and the possibility of only one profile, which may or may not be public.

Let me explain. Being a wannabe polymath, I lie at the intersection of almost disjoint social circles.
I have interests ranging from Geeky ones like Physics and maths to not so geeky ones like Biking and Hindi movies. Besides that, I also have professional interests like .Net and GIS.
And my social contacts tend to lie in such kinds of broad categories. I know what you are thinking. These are not my social contacts. These are people I know.

Ok, then lets talk about my social contacts. I could basically categorize them as people from my primary school, those from my secondary school; Some from my JC while others from Xaviers, and some more from SIG. And this doesn’t even take into account the friends I have first met randomly: Either online, or in person via other people I have known, or just plain randomly.

Friendship is rarely transitive, when it comes to me, and most of my friends hardly know any of my other friends. I have such narrow and small sets when it comes to interpersonal relationships, that with many people I share no other common friend.
In this kind of situation, the usual purpose of S.N.S. is wasted on me. I can hardly put up pics and have 20 different friends tagged in it with 20 more commenting.

Further more social network is all about sharing. And what I have to share totally depends on my mood at that time. And what is on my mind at that moment will not be interesting to all my friends. Let me try to explain.

There are certain fora I frequent, where it is perfectly alright to type out DISREGARD THAT, I SUCK COCKS, while at others I could easily begin with Fuck You, two of my friends died… If I did this in real life, or did it somewhere else, people might question my sanity.
Often during the weekdays, I am mostly thinking about work, or have found an interesting thing while programming. If I share that, most people wouldn’t get it.
This is not only with me. If A friend sends me a link to her companies website, asking me to check out their product, I will mark it as spam in a jiffy.

The other major problem I have, is with my worlds colliding. I show a very different face to different kinds of people. Many people think I am quite serious and decent. I don’t want to relieve them of this illusion, and would rather not show them my pictures taken while drinking and other wild things.

I think the problem stems from the fact that we as a society have shifted from having deep meaningful relationships with a few people, to having shallow relationships with a lot of people. The times when a person was your best friend, just because he lived next door,are gone. Gone are the days when your friends group, of 10 to 15 people, would do something together and be happy with that.

We now tend to select friends based on common interests and shared ideals, rather than physical proximity. And our Friendship with everyone is different. We are infact a different person for each one of them.

The Loneliest man

2009-07-21T03:36:00.002+05:30

It was 40 years ago, from today that a man first took a step on the Moon. His name was Neil Armstrong. He was shortly followed by the first man to pee on the moon, Buzz Aldrin. But there was a third man, Michael Collins, the Command Module pilot that we often forget.

I consider the Apollo Space program to be Mankind’s greatest Achievement. At one time over half a million people were working towards a single goal, - of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth- as JFK once poetically said. Never before and never again in the history of the world, has so much mental and creative energy been channelized for such a good cause. I celebrate this day, not only for the three men who were up there, but also for these lakhs of people who worked towards this goal.

No doubt, this day will be remembered in all eternity for this one man:

Not surprisingly, very few photographs of him on the moon exist, as he was the main photographer, and almost all the photographs that we have from the Apollo 11 trip on the moon are of Buzz Aldrin taken by him. This is sort of like how most of the photographs I have, are of different people taken by me. But I digress.

The person I most identify with was actually Michael Collins.
One of the most accomplished Fighter pilot, he was the Command Module pilot. The Command Module(named Columbia) was the Mothership, and orbited the Moon while the lunar Module went to the moon, and part of it came back. The two moonwakers would then re-join the Command Module, and the Ascent stage of the Lunar Module would then be jettisoned. The three astronauts would then reenter the earth’s atmosphere within the Command Module, after it separated from the Service module.

Atleast that’s how it was supposed to work in theory. No one was 100% certain, since the whole system was never completely tested. The Lunar Module had never landed on the moon before Apollo 11, and even the engineers were not sure if the Ascent stage of the lunar module would successfully blast off the surface of the moon at the correct velocity, to mate with the command Module.

As two Astronauts left in the Lunar Module, Collins was in the Columbia, as it went around the moon. The important thing to remember is that when you are orbiting the moon, there will be times when the moon will be in-between you and the earth. In such a position, you are out radio contact. You are truly alone. And you don’t know if your two fellow astronauts will make it back.

I can only imagine what must be going through his head, as he patiently waited in Columbia, hearing nothing from the earth, or from his teammates, as they landed on the Moon. I have always known that in many ways, Coins has the hardest job. He could have faced returning alone to the earth if the two explorers in the lunar module did not make it back.

But thankfully, it all worked out well, and Collins could take this wonderful picture, showing the earth, the moon, as well as the Eagle.

I do not think that any other picture captures the beauty of the Space programme as well as this one.

The Problem in Answering Questions

2009-06-29T03:47:00.003+05:30

Richard Feynman had the uncanny talent for making things so simple, that anyone could understand it. He could look at anything and figure out what is critical to understand it, and remove everything else out of the equation. This comes out somewhat from being trained in science, but he had that special gift, which was beyond all of this.

I have often felt very inferior and stupid whenever I have heard him talk, or read his writings. And I mean this in a good way. He was a magician, and if you looked at him talk, or try to get an insight into his way of thought, you would soon realize that he thought about things in a way that no one else every thought about them. I forget who said this, but someone once said that if you ask Feynman how an electron would behave in a certain situation, he would ask himself: “If I were an electron, what would I do in this situation?”

All scientist in specific and thinkers in general, have a framework for their thought process. You generally, have a framework, upon which you work. You build upon what you know, and use your existing knowledge to understand something new.

In many fields, not only science, the framework itself is so large, that understanding only the basics itself is a lot of work. Take an Accountant for example; He or she will have to know the 3 basic rules of Accountancy. On top of that you need to know your local laws. Add to it the conventions followed in your industry and so forth. Very soon, the knowledge base evolves to a humongous size. No wonder, filing your tax returns is such an annoying task. I should know; I did that just yesterday.

Something similar happens when one is describing basic physics to a lay person. I have no problem understanding how EM fields propagate, and how light is given out by an electron, when it comes down to ground state from and excited state. I have no problem accepting the fact that light is neither a wave nor a particle, but can behave like a wave under certain circumstance and like a stream of particle under some other circumstances. I can sleep perfectly at peace, knowing that particles themselves behave wave-like in some circumstances.

But when you try to explain these kinds of things to the lay person, it is often very difficult to convey the exact meaning without taking too much out of it. We tend to take these things very trivially, because they have become a part of our framework of thinking.

Here is a video of the great master himself explaining this, and telling us why he prefers not to cheat, by dumbing down the explanation.

Feminism

2009-06-27T22:40:00.004+05:30

I was watching this Song on a show on Etv Rajasthan. The name of the programme was Bhule Bisre Geet and the name is perfect. Such a song can never be made today; Not only because there is no one like Shakeel Badayuni, but because such a song would never be accepted today.
Listen to the lyrics of this song:

n jaao saiyyaa, chhudaa ke baiyyaa
kasam tumhaaree main ro padoongee
machal rahaa hain suhaag meraa
jo tum naa honge, to kyaa karungee

If a song had similar lyrics today, the feminists would raise a furor over this. How dare a woman define her happiness by a man? How dare her world revolve around a man?
This in short is my main problem with the feminist movement. With the sexual revolution in the 60’s, women have progressed a lot. Let us get this straight. I am not against women’s liberation and emancipation.

What I am against is the ill-effects caused due to women blindly trying to do everything that men do. It is like they selected the worst things that men do and then tried to do it.
People might not agree with me, when I say that Family is the most important part of life. Life is too short to live it selfishly, in an individualistic life. The Glue holding two people together is the knowledge that they share a world, which is different from the whole world, and is experienced by only those two.

One of the requirements for that to happen is that their worlds revolve around each other. This is true for the man, as well as the woman. And if that doesn’t happen, then the motivation for both of them to remain in the relationship is affected. So is the passion, as well as the commitment.

One must be happy for all the growth in our society and culture; But not for a moment must one think that everything has been for the better.

You know you are a geek

2009-04-04T15:48:00.002+05:30

You know you are a geek, when you can relate to the following article. You can not only relate to it, but you look back at the time you did this...fondly

What Happened to my Laptop

The unique position of Manmohan Singh

2009-04-03T18:45:00.002+05:30

I’ve often been asked about my political views, and I say that all politicians suck. I might agree with one of them on one issue some day, and might call him or her a total nincompoop on some other issue.

One of the very few people in politics that I truly respect and trust (not surprisingly) is Dr. Manmohan Singh. I think that he is the only person with personal credibility and total integrity. I might not agree with everything that his government has done over the past 5 years, but one can’t have everything that one wants.

Look at the recent G-20 summit. The way that Gordon Brown and others treated him, is indicative not only of the significance of India, but also his personal standing. I’m not sure if someone else could have made the same Impact. Imagine someone like Lalu prasad Yadav or Mayawati, or even Rahul Gandhi. I shudder to think what would have happened.

He gave an interview to the Financial Times, which is definitely worth your time.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f6fea0e-1bcc-11de-978e-00144feabdc0.html

Look at the some of the questions that he was asked, and his answers.

FT: What is the future of capitalism, especially in India?

MS: Capitalism with a human face. We are a mixed economy. We will remain a mixed economy. The public and private sector will continue to play a very important role. The private sector in our country has very ample scope and I am confident that India’s entrepreneurs have the capacity, and the will to rise to the occasion.

FT: In your opinion is India a “great power” that can stand up to scrutiny of its internal affairs by the international community? Is India willing to make sacrifices for the good of the world beyond its borders?

MS: I think we have made strides in the past decade or two and the world is taking notice of what India is doing. I cannot claim that we have solutions to all our problems. But we have shown that it is possible for a pluralistic and diverse society to grow and flourish in an open democratic framework. The Indian experience is important for the world. I have great faith in the creativity and imagination of our people to address the challenges that confront us and this can be seen in our growing soft power that is making an impact on the world.

India is deeply conscious of its role in the international arena and we have been seeking a restructuring and reform of the global polity that will allow us to play a commensurate role. I can say with pride that Indians have made sacrifices beyond their borders for the good of the world…

Another interesting question was the last one:

FT: India has been criticised for not doing enough on climate change. Is there really a serious lack of commitment to curb emissions?

MS: India currently has one of the lowest per capita emissions among large major economies including major emerging economies at 1.8 tonnes of CO2 per annum. The US figure is over 20 tonnes. Even in total volume terms, India’s emissions constitute only 4 percent of the global figure whereas the US and China are responsible for over 20 percent each. This is the result of India consciously pursuing a path of sustainable development and reducing the energy intensity and therefore the carbon intensity of its growth. Over the past decade our economy has grown by 9 percent per annum while energy use has increased by 4 percent per annum.

But most of all, I loved that he could answer the first question the way that he did:

FT: Do you agree with China on the failures of the global monetary regime and the case for a new reserve asset in place of the dollar?

Manmohan Singh: Well these are not new issues. I was associated with the first committee of 20 with Paul Volcker in the 1970s. ... There are virtuous technical solutions but I don’t see these are the issues that can be resolved through technical analysis.

America... Land of the free?

2009-03-07T01:47:00.002+05:30

This is something that I have been struggling with, over the last few days. A friend’s casual remark, that called America the land of the free, was what set it off.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on reddit, especially the economic sub-reddit, and am amazed at what I’ve been reading. Over the last few months, with the tanking of the stock market, and collapse of the banking sector, as well as the bail-out have been events, have been the source of lots of frenzied activity here. Not only are the articles informative, but the comments have been interesting. What has been surprising is how pro-market the redditors are, but at the same time, they want stronger regulation by the regulatory bodies. This was just the starting point for my quest.

Their Anthem, might call them the land of the free, but I’m quite skeptical, just how true it is. They might have declared that all men are created equal, but somehow that did not include women and blacks for quite some time.

America has done quite a lot of stupid things when it comes to freedom. And I’m not talking about the things done by G.W.Bush. Remember a guy called Joseph McCarthy? Or remember what happened to the Japanese people living in America during WW2?

Nor is America very free when it comes to sex and what not. If you look at their codes, to prevent the corruption of the Youth, like the Hays Code or the Comics Code Authority, you’ll be surprised. Things got so out of hand, that the authorities were not allowing the publication of a comic, because it mentioned that the story was told by a wolfman. Never mind that the name of the story teller was Marv Wolfman.

And if you look at the things they are doing with respect to science, it’s even scarier. Just yesterday, the Illinois legislature, declared that Pluto was a planet, as far as Illinois was concerned. In other news, in Oklahoma legislature a resolution was proposed, banning Richard Dawkins from speaking at a University.

There is this strange belief that somehow, America, is very special in the world because of its History and ideals and freedom. It is called American exceptionalism. I’m thinking more and more that it might be a lot of propaganda, and you know what? I’m not the only one.

Crossword has a sense of Humour

2009-03-03T19:51:00.003+05:30

Crossword Bookstore is my favorite bookstore chain. But I've always known that it sometimes puts books in weird categories.

I remember that in the Inorbit store, before it was renovated, the Science books were placed under the shelf named Occult. I've always chuckled at that.

Today I checked out the Oberoi Mall Branch. It places the Astrology\Palmistry and other pseudo-science books under the shelf titled Non-Fiction

You know that people hate Maths

2009-02-05T16:51:00.004+05:30

I have posted a photo of a toothpaste earlier, but now I bring you the ultimate toothpaste, which will not only prevent cavities, germs and bad breath, but will also protect you from Calculus.

This will be a good product for hoverboy to advertise. Don't know who hoverboy is?? Check this out then: http://tinyurl.com/hoverboy

India’s Unending Journey: A review

2009-02-03T18:14:00.004+05:30

Mark Tully is one of the most respected and well-known journalist in India. Probably because he was the voice of BBC, for almost 35 years in India, when the only alternative was DD and A.I.R., and people hardly believed the propaganda that came from the national broadcaster.

When he talks, most people listen, and in this, I am like them too. He has written this book, with a very specific aim in mind. He wants to show the world, what it can learn from India.

Now, Indology, as a subject, has a quite long history, and god alone knows how many forest trees have been pulled down, to make paper for books, with this aim. Yet, this book is different. And it is definitely recommended.

Sir Mark Tully makes many points in this book, and the main point, as I see it, deals with balance. The balance that is a very integral part of everything that India holds dear. Be it about talking about religion, economics, or politics.

We in India, use some words in ways, that the world at large, hardly recognizes. When we say secularism, we mean-to be equidistant from all religions- not ignoring all religions, as the world usually uses it. This is why when France bans the wearing of headscarves in schools or wearing pagdis by sikh children, we in India can not understand what they are talking about.

Tully, even explores why the Muslims in particular and others in general, are so antagonistic towards the western culture, as well as what the west could do to solve these issues.

Tully wanted to become a priest, and became a journalist by chance. It’s now wonder then, that faith plays an important role in his life. He covers his early education as well as why he almost lost his faith. He writes about things that most people will never even talk about, like humility, and the value of not being certain.

This is book that people like me should read. People who are Indian by principles and ethics, but Western by training and education. We are caught in a strange no mans land, and we need the services of a sensitive and articulate outsider, to show what we truly are.

We often find ourselves, at crossroads, where our feeling and thought are contradictory, and these contradictions arise from our dual upbringing. We would be well served if we look this book, because it serves as an excellent mirror; the image it shows, is one we have hidden, or tried to deny; A better Understanding of ourselves, will lead us to greater things, the things we were destined to do.

Microsoft Songsmith

2009-02-02T03:24:00.002+05:30

Microsoft just released on of their research projects, called Microsoft Songsmith, which can provide music to a song, that a user sings. So it basically creates music to vocals. When their advertisement came out, most people noticed that they were using a Mac, in the video.

They did not even begin to imagine how this software could be used. Yes, some sites did review it, like Ars Technica and others.

The advert itself has gone viral. You can check it out here. It’s definitely worth a chuckle.
But once it has been introduced into the wild, it is being used in ways, Microsoft did not even think of.
A lot of people have been feeding it vocals from songs, and asking SongSmith to create the music.
The results have been, from the wonderful:

To the horrendous

Funnily enough, I heard about this from Linus torvald’s blog where he wrote:

This may be a shock to everybody, but I have to admit that I'm not generally a huge fan of most Microsoft software ("No, really, Linus? Tell us more!").

But I may have to admit that I was wrong.

No, I'm not talking about Windows 7. I'm talking about Songsmith, which is clearly a true work of genius. Yes, yes, the commercials are painfully cheesy, but when used right the end result is undeniably art.

The thing that convinced me was hearing Billy Idol's "White Wedding" as re-interpreted through Songsmith. Nobody will ever convince me that that isn't just impossibly brilliant. Sheer genius on just an incredible scale. I'm getting carpal tunnel syndrome from just clicking "Replay" over and over again.

Control is freedom?

2009-02-01T00:01:00.000+05:30

I subscribe to one of those greeting sms services, and usually get some cheesy line to read in the middle of my sleep. There was one message, which however has been troubling me for the past two weeks. And I mean that in a good way.

The message said: Always remember that Self control leads to freedom. Now that sounds quite Orwellian. I can see it nicely mix with the party’s slogan. War is peace! Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength. Now if you just add: Control is Freedom; no one would bat an eyelid.

The reason why this has been such a thought provoking point for me, is that it is sort of my mantra; I just hadn’t put it into words, and this message completely clarify my thoughts. Let me try to explain this paradoxical concept. One would wonder, how in the name of God, can Self control, or ‘holding oneself back’ be equal to freedom?

Let us look at most people, who I know, who keep moaning about life. These are the same people, who do not think about what they are doing, neither are they concerned about the repercussions of their actions. They often find themselves draw into situations, which cause them a lot of grief. They find their options to be limited, and are constricted in their future course of actions.

Now these are the same people who blame me, for being too ’rigid’ or something like that, and claim that I cannot experience all that life has to offer me. Later in the conversation, when they tell me their problems, and ask me for advice, I often give them several options. (Most of which are based on the plan of action I would undertake, if facing such a situation). They would then dismiss these options, saying that they won’t be able to do it, for various reasons. Who has less freedom in this case? Who is being held back?

One can claim that to be truly free, is to be like a cut Kite. If you believe that to be true, then you must also be prepared to be torn in parts, dragged anywhere without your choice, and being subject to forces, beyond your control.

I do not feel that this is what freedom is. Freedom is the ability to have the entire world open before you. You must break free of the shackles and restraints that situations put on you. For this, you may need to put some shackles on yourself. The benefit of these self-made restrictions is that they pain a lot less, and lead to fewer frustrations, and feelings of impotency.

Why is it, then that so few people agree with me on this? I feel this is so, because, it is not easy to set limits, and follow them. You require great strength, when nothing is stopping you from breaking your own rules. The limits, and just imaginary lines, no one will know if you cross them, except for you. One can get weak, and give in to temptation; though this path is simple, it definitely is not easy.

I’ll just like to add a small clarification at the end. Self-control does not mean lack of spontaneity. It does not imply that you cannot flow like a paper boat, on the river of life. All it means is that you are in control of path you take, on the wonderful journey called life.

Ingenuity Of Babylonian Mathematics

2009-01-10T15:51:00.005+05:30

Babylonian mathematics has had a great impact on Mathematics as we know it. It’s a real shame that we hardly every talk about it, and instead worship the likes of Pythagoras Euclid and Archimedes, and other Greek mathematicians.
Maybe this is because the Greeks, valued Mathematics for itself, and did not view it, just as a tool for commerce, which many claim, is what the Babylonians did.

The Mesopotamian region has been the centre of the Sumerian Civilization, which was later followed by the Babylonian civilization. Both of them were largely settled civilizations, with farming and trading as their major occupations. They built large cities, and trading took place. They needed Mathematics for practical reasons, like measuring and weights, building irrigation canals, predicting the seasons and ownership of land.

Algebra as we know it came about much later, and these people had some ingenious methods to calculate.

Take the following example.
There is a rectangular piece of farming land of 168 sq units, and the longer side is 2 units longer than the shorter side.

Today we would solve it, using quadratic equations, like this:

Let the shorter side be x. Then:

x * (x+2)=168
x² +2x-168=0
(x-12)(x+14)=0

Solving for positive x, gives you
X=12

Now this concept, of using x for an unknown quantity, is a very abstract concept, even though it seems natural to you and me. It was unheard of, in those days. So what did they do??

They knew only number, and liked squares, so this is what they did.
You have a parcel of land like this:

You then increase the shorter side by half the difference, and decrease the longer side by the same amount.

Now if you add a small square, with the side equal to half the difference, you get a complete square.

The area of the Big Square, is 168 +1*1=169

Therefore the side of the square is 13

Hence the original side was 13-1=12

This is before the Greeks, who thought that Geometry was above all, and the most beautiful and purest part of Maths.

Just to remind you, the most elegant proof of the Pythagorean Theorem, is just three diagrams long:

A thousand Words

2008-12-21T14:12:00.005+05:30

They often say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and given that I am terribly miserly with the number of words I use, maybe I should use some Images for a change.

This blog is my blog, where I write about whatever is bugging me at the moment. The thing that is topical for me, is my mental degeneration, from being a physicist to my current trolling, on reddit and digg and iCanHasCheezburger. Let me try to trace my de-volution.

I have often said that Physics is very easy, but hardly anyone agrees with me. Maybe this guy does:

Then, I switched over to the dark side, to do a professional course, from Symbiosis, due to which I got a job, where I code for most of the time. Which is why, I can totally see myself saying this:

My Sense of humour, too has degenrated to a new low, to where I find the following hillarious:

What Just Happened?

2008-12-16T23:29:00.002+05:30

Convalescing from a severe bout of Flu, I am surprisingly at home today. I caught the news that a new Terrorism bill has been introduced in parliament and I had to check it out. And I am shocked!
Check out http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/dec/16mumterror-features-of-the-proposed-national-investigation-agency.htm

They have put in a small point at the end, expecting most people would not read down till there. Go read it again. Ok I’ll mention it here, incase you haven’t still got it.
Court shall presume, unelss contrary is shown, that accused has committed offence
Have you digested that? Let me repeat it, in case you still haven’t got it. Court shall presume, unelss contrary is shown, that accused has committed offence.

Do you see how scary it is? We used to think that the BJP/NDA was the scary one, with total disregard for human rights and civil liberties. The congress has once again proved, how it can be even scarier.

If you think I am getting all hyper about something trivial, let me introduce to something called Presumption of innocence or innocent until proven guilty.

What this principle basically means that the accused is presumed to be innocent, until the prosecution proves beyond doubt that the person is guilty. The burden of proof, lies on the accuser, not on the accused.

This has been valid for a long time, and is the basis of most of modern law. It is one of the most important principle in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which they have had all the guarantees necessary for their defence.

Now do you get why the new law is so scary? Suppose you are sitting in train, and you make small chat with the guy next to you. Later that guy goes and does something heinous. The police can just say that you were aiding him, and hence you are now a terrorist. Now it is your job, to prove that you are innocent.

Well actually as they have put it, they don’t even have to say anything. If you are charged under this, then you will be automatically sentenced, unless you prove otherwise. Guilty by association, was never this easy.

Maybe I am reading a simplified version of the bill, or it has been dumbed-down in the article. But as it stands, that is one hell of a shocker.

I don’t even understand how that is valid under the constitution, and maybe other people will scrutinise it further, and throw more light on it. I am going to watch, what happens in the next few days, very closely.

Thanksgiving

2008-12-07T01:00:00.000+05:30

I had scheduled this post to be posted to the blog on the 27th of Nov, but had to stop it, since taking into account the incidents of 26th Nov, it did not correctly portray the state of my mind on that day.

Over the past couple of weeks, more than a couple of friends have told me, how much their lives suck, and how they totally hate what is going on in their lives. A couple of them, even said that 2008, was the worst year in their lives, and they couldn’t wait for it to get over. (As if, the change of a digit, on the calendar can actually be responsible for anything)

I am however, not so pessimistic. This year has been particularly good to me, especially when compared to the previous one. There are several things I am thankful for, and what better day than this, to give thanks for it.

I am not going to mention Family and friends, because that goes without saying. Further more, they all know what I am thankful for. I want to mention the other things, which need to be acknowledged.

Firstly, I’m thankful for the job I have. It may not pay as much, as the other offers I have received, but when I look at the people who took up on those offers, I’m more than happy for the choice I have made. I get to work with some wonderful human beings, doing what they love. Hardly any politics goes on here, and it’s fun all throughout the day. I get to work on something, which is basically play for me, so I couldn’t ask for more.

Besides the actually content of work, work is helpful in a lot of ways. It requires you to follow a routine, thus preventing me from following my instinctive procrastinating ways. It gives you the confidence, to do whatever you want to. It increases your self worth and gives you a purpose, for the day to day life. And Most Importantly, it gives you a steady source of cash to spend.

Secondly, I’m thankful to my Bike. This year, I’ve really ridden her, not only for my daily commute, but also for a few trips, out of the City. This year, we have done more than 17,000 km, through, sunshine and rain, wind and fog, sand and gravel. And she still runs like new. Yes we have had a couple of incidents, but, both of us have come out of it, with only a few scratches here and there.

Some people ask me, how I can bear to bike over 60 Km per day. How do I have the motivation to sit in the saddle, and ride home, late at night, after a grueling day in the office? Well the answer is a secret, which I’ll like to revel. It goes by the name of chocolate. No, seriously… There is a Cadbury factory, very near to my office, and every night, when I leave office, I can smell them making some delicious confectionery. The fragrance of drinking chocolate or coco powder fills, my nostrils, and I’m reenergized, and rearing to go home.

Thirdly, I’m thankful for staying at home In Mumbai. My stay in Delhi and Pune, over the last two years, has been extremely educating, and I have learned more about life that I though possible. But Still I want to stay at home, where the dal will be made how I desire, and I don’t have to worry about small things like laundry and breakfast. Besides the Obvious advantage of living with your loved ones, the other major advantage is that I hardly have to spend money on anything.

Lastly, and most Importantly, I’m very thankful, for that one special thing. Most of you might know that I was crazy about someone for the major part of the year. Sadly it didn’t work out as I would have liked it to. I feel bad for that. It still hurts like hell, and I still miss her a lot. But I’m very thankful for whatever we had, for those few months. Those were, some of the best days of my life, and just because that period has ended, it doesn’t mean that I am not thankful for them. It was good while it lasted, and I’m glad it happened. I only hope it was good for her too.

What were they expecting?

2008-12-06T02:55:00.004+05:30

The crowd at the Gateway, on Wednesday, was an eye-opener for many. Some found it inspiring; other thought it was the mythical Mumbai-spirit on display. I for one found, the whole thing to be disappointing, dismaying and more proof, why things will never change.

Rashmi Bansal writes “Everyone was there out of choice and seething with anger. Anger against Pakistan, against politicians and against the System.”

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that people are angry with the politicians, and the system. But what I don’t get, is what were they expecting them to do during those 58 dark hours? Did they expect that magically those in charge will suddenly do the right thing? How could the public even expect such a thing? Ah, I forget just how stupid people are.

Were they expecting the police to act faster, smarter, to protect the public? This is the same force, which was told by the Kolis, that some 10 strangers have landed by boat, and did nothing. These are people, who are still stuck in a nineteenth century mindset; They do not understand, the internet, and modern modes of communications. After the Emails from the Indian Mujahedeen a few months back, they had made wi-fi as the big-bad boogey man. They instruct hotels to permanently stop providing Internet facilities to patron, to prevent terror attacks. Might as well ask hotels, to do away with walls, and have transparent glass partitions, to keep an eye on all the guests.

Or were they expecting R.r. Patil to do something? Why would he suddenly change his behavior? What has he done in the last five years, besides closing down dance bars? He did nothing after the July 11, and let Raj Thakrey’s goons terrorize Mumbai, over the last 18 months. How can he suddenly provide security to Bombay?
Somehow, we people like to blame others. It’s very hard to accept blame, and acknowledge that we have been wrong. I ask, who made them leaders? People don’t become Leaders in a vacuum. They become leaders, because someone follows them. Who placed these politicians incharge? It is we.

We have failed in our duty, to select the competent people, for the right jobs. We were complacent, and did not pay attention.

Why is it that crowd, at Gateway, suddenly called these politicians, names? Did they become bad overnight? Or is it now their incompetence has become unbearable? Why was it tolerated till now?

A society gets the leaders that it deserves, and we deserve no better. We as a society, we as a culture are stupid, impetuous, hypocritical, and half-baked, as Arvind Agha puts it. Another of my favorite author, Sashi Tharoor, said that “India is a highly developed country in an advanced stage of decay.”

To have a proper functioning democracy, you need checks and balances. All the arms of the state should be cancer free. In india, we have an ill-informed Public (As Chitrack has pointed out, in the above link). When the educated voters are like this, what can one expect from the ill-literate, uneducated, unexposed villager from a remote, part of India? Is it then a big surprise that our leaders are what they are?

I find it highly hypocritical that we complain about our politicians and public officials being corrupt. Who amongst us, can say they have never paid a bribe in their life? Who amongst us, has never greased the palms of cops, when we were caught doing something, that we shouldn’t have been doing? Why do we then get all enraged, when Manu Sharma goes Scot free? Forget that, lets take an example much closer to home. How many of us, enjoy alcohol? And how many of us, actually have the permits, for consuming liquor from the excise department? How can we then blame the politicians for being criminals?

We in india, do not Understand the meaning of leadership. Do you remember a year back, TOI had a public contest, to find a leader from amongst the people? It was nothing more than an entertainment show. What happened to those people? I remember during that time, one of the persons in the race from pune, was a director of one of Symbiosis Institute. The following poster was pasted all over SIU.

One of our classes was stopped midway, so that we students could be convinced to vote for him by SMS. Read the poster carefully. What does it mention? Does it mention what he stands for, or what he believes in? No. I should vote for him, so that the name of Symbiosis shines brighter. So, basically, if he becomes a leader, SIU will benefit. And we find this acceptable. How then, can we look down on corrupt politicians, who personally profit from the actions they take, when in power?

The only thing I’m really surprised about is the way in which the NSG, professionally took care of the situation. The astonishment was due to the fact, that this is what they are usually doing.

We Indians, have this ‘chalta hai’ attitude. Some think, that it is a bad thing. I’m more ambivalent about it. I think it is this attitude that has preserved us over five thousand years of harsh and bloody history. One shouldn’t be in denial about these sort of things. We need to introspect, and think deeply, about what we are, what we want to be, and for that, what we have to do. Just blaming someone, for all our ills, will not make them go away.

Get out my head, Randal - Part x

2008-12-05T13:15:00.001+05:30

Bombay Burns

2008-11-27T17:22:00.001+05:30

Today is celebrated as Thanksgiving in the US. I had scheduled a post that would mention the various things I am thankful for. But after the long night we all have had, I’ve had to rescind it.

I just don’t know what to say. I’m very angry and numb at the same time. It’s the most daring attack on everything I hold dear. My city is burning, people are dying. It’s as if nothing makes sense anymore.

The railway Bomb blasts in 2006, were an attack on Mumbai’s Jugular vein. This one is an attack on Mumbai’s pride.

Let us pray, not only for the Injured, and dead, not only for their families, but for Peace as well.

My Philosophy

2008-11-26T18:55:00.004+05:30

Over the years, I have honed the image of being a wise, omniscient, all knowing guy. It seems to people, that I have all the answers, especially when it comes to life. How Ironic! Actually what everyone is looking for, is for answers. If I look at my Gtalk list right now, I can see several relevant status messages like: Why do so many questions, not have answers?’, ‘Why me god?’ ‘How can he live without me?’ ‘When will this end?’

Now I don’t claim to be a guru, or anything. (Disclaimer: I am one of the founders of Woodism, and have been conferred the title of ‘Patron Saint of Sarcasm’) It’s just that I say things, which people think, are profound, and deep. That’s all bullshit! I just use some common sense.

I often have friends coming up to me, and telling me about the latest philosophy they heard about, which will help them out through their troubled times. I usually proceed then, to call them on the bullshit. Then inevitable comes the question: What is the right philosophy?

I refuse to answer that question. Partly, because there is no right answer. Each one of us has to find the answer for oneself. What I do help them with, is asking the right questions, and pointing out the potential pitfalls, when trying to understand, any of these life-changing theories

So here are some points to consider:

1]Never use a philosophy to justify your behavior!

I am sick of the number of times, that a friend comes to me, and tells me about a philosophy, or theory of life, that has a view, convergent with theirs, and hence are all excited with it. The problem with this line of thinking is, that you choose convenience over truth, Laziness over hard work. If you understand a theory, and make it your way of life, it’s ok. I can accept that. What I do not appreciate is something that you pick up, just because it is easy.

2] Any Philosophy has to help you through failure.

Failure is a part of life. You will not always get what you want. Life will, at some time or other, will go in directions you do not want. If someone tells you, that if you follow something, or do something, or wish hard enough, the world will dance on your tunes all the time, they are simply lying.
You have to accept this fact. And deal with it. There can be no two ways about it!

3] Any Philosophy that denies the presence of the present, is not worth your time.

There are many schools of thought, that say, that life is all maya, and it is not real. Well, it does seem real to all of us. These theories are a favorite amongst people that are suffering a lot. It helps them stay in denial, and lead a passive existence. I don’t find that very useful, and it’s best to avoid these kinds of things.

4] Any thing that promises Quick results, is fake.

I don’t have much to add, except for to clarify, that I am not talking about concepts and insights. These can be quick and simple, but implementing them is very difficult, and a long process.

Feynman used to talk about a saying, he heard in Hawaii. ‘Each man is giving the key to the doors of heaven. The same keys, also open the doors to hell.’

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

Does He know?

2008-11-25T19:27:00.004+05:30

Jai could hear the din of excited murmur, as he strained to understand the numbers in the excel sheet in front of him. He let out a deep sigh, and decided to find out, what the ruckus was all about. As he looked out, through his glass door, he could see Sanjay, come out of the Boss’s cabin, with a packet of sweets in his hands. People were gathering around his seat, and were gesticulating excitedly. Sanjay caught his eyes, and with a shake of his hand, asked Jai, to join the group.

The number crunching would have to wait. Jai, got out of his seat, opened the door to his cabin, and made his way to Sanjay’s desk. “You old bastard! You didn’t tell us about her! When did this happen?” Someone was saying. People were generally laughing and smiling, and making digs at Sanjay. “Come, Jai. You must be the last person to get the news”, he said, and showed jai his left hand. No, not the middle finger…it was his ring finger that everyone was pointing at.

“I got engaged over the weekend, and will no longer be available for all you lovely women!” he joked. “Her name is Kamana, and doesn’t she look pretty?” He pointed at his monitor. There was something awfully familiar about that face, hidden behind those huge sunglasses that all girls suddenly seem to be wearing. Then he saw the small scar, just at the edge of her mouth. It all came back to him.

Life can be funny sometimes. Jai couldn’t help, but smile as he remembered, how he had given her the scar, when he had been playing darts, with rohan, in their room and She had suddenly walked in. “Does he know?” he wondered. Sanjay, was all smiles, as he accepted the congratulations from all and sundry, and offered them sweets in return.

Jai suddenly had more important things to do, and the monthly report, suddenly didn’t seem so important. “You are coming for drinks, aren’t you?” Sanjay asked. “No, I have some work to do” he replied. Jai, locked his computer, took his bag, and left the office.

“Dude, you are at home, right? I’m coming over.” He yelled on the phone. “Ok” came the muffled reply from the other side. “Auto, JP nagar” he yelled at the auto guy, as he got in. Now was not the time for politeness, too many things were going on in his mind. ‘He must have known. How could he not have known about all this? And he never told me. Poor chap. How must he be feeling?’ was his train of though, as he planned his next plan of action. “Bas! Yehi side me laga dena” he told the auto guy, pointing to the wine shop.

“Salim bhai, kaise ho??…haan mera regular. Do khamba shark tooth, aur ek Old Monk…cold drink bhi de dena..Aur kya hai?” Jai knew the owner of the wine shop. He had been his best customer for the three years, when he had lived with rohan, and now that he had come back after a gap of more than 2 years, Salim bhai, was happy to see him. After some perfunctory, small talk, Jai moved on to Majid’s Biryani corner, where he picked up four-plate mutton biryani…the regular order. It had been a long time, since he had met Rohan, and it wasn’t in the best of circumstances now, but it would have to do.

They had been like brothers, in those glorious days of Engineering, and they had enjoyed all the 6 semesters they had been roommates. They had been virtually inseparable, and people often thought that they were a gay couple. This was ironic, because both of them had various girlfriends, during the entire time, and enjoyed going on double dates. Kamana was one of those girls…Rohan’s best girlfriend, as they had once joked. Jokes apart, she had been his longest relationship, and always had a special place in his heart.

He still remembered the time Rohan broke up with her. It was actually she who had broken up with him. And that had mainly to do with Jai, being always around him. She had asked him to choose between Jai, and herself, and like a loyal friend, he chose Jai. He cried over the turn of events, and always remembered her after that, but not for a moment did he question his choice.

Rohan opened the door, only after Jai rang the bell for a couple of minutes. He hadn’t taken the news well. Jai couldn’t bear to look at his friend. Unshaved, dressed only in boxers, and a thin shirt, with red eyes…he really looked depressed. Even though it was still daylight outside, it was dark in the room, as the drapes had been drawn. The laptop, was belting out a, blues song, and one could feel the morose atmosphere of the small apartment. Jai went and hugged Rohan. “You should have told me about this.” He said, as he kicked off his formal shoes, in the living room.

“You have been crying, haven’t you?”
“No! I tried really hard, but couldn’t. My eyes are red…since I haven’t slept a wink since I heard the news last week. I don’t know why it is affecting me so much. It’s good that you came”
Jai, settled down on the rug in the living room, and began to spread around the stuff he had got. “Don’t worry! Jai is here. We’ll have Sharktooth, like the in old days. And plus…Ghum ka saathi Rum”

Both of them had been through a lot together. The good as well as the bad. They had seen India Lose the world cup, had been there when they had finally passed their BE’s, and the regular problem with the girls. The answer to every problem had been ‘Chalo! Peetai hai.’ Be it a celebration, or mourning, alcohol had been their savior, and tonight, once again, Jai hoped, it would ease the pain. Jai knew, what he had to do. He had to listen, and let the drink do its thing. It was a difficult time for Rohan, and Jai just had to be there.

A couple of biryani, and four patiala pegs later, Rohan was in a much more somber mode. He had his head back, and was listening to the Himesh number, coming from the laptop. He was rolling the glass, between his fingers- and Jai knew- he was thinking before he began his dramatic monologue.

“I don’t know why I’m feeling this way” he began, “ I didn’t even care about her. I had almost forgotten about her, till Priya told me about her situation. Priya, you remember her, don’t you? The tall one, with lips like Catherine Zeta Jones? Well anyway... it was a bolt out of the blue. I don’t know why it hurts so much. Suddenly I feel it’s all wrong. I shouldn’t have ended it with her. We didn’t end it for a good enough reason. Wait, I don’t mean it in that way. I would never have trader you for her. I mean…I should have made her see my point of view. We often do things that we think are right, for the right reasons. What we don’t understand are its full implications, and these small things come to haunt us.

We had potential dude, great potential. She was the one who made get up every day, and go the gym. She made me stop smoking. She actually changed me. And that is more than what I can say about the other short skirts I chase. You remember how I came back from Lonaval…all happy? I don’t think I have ever been that happy.

Happy...that is what I said I wanted her to be, when Priya told me about her engagement. But I was lying. I want her to be happy, but only with me. It hurts me to see her smiling, along side that monkey.

But what can I do? Life’s like that. You do stupid stuff, and have to bear the consequences. You know, these emotions are a weird thing. It’s so silly of me to live in the past…focus on something, which in reality we might not even have had; but I can’t help it. I know, you are going to tell me to get over it. To ignore it, and live even in denial if that helps. But you know what? I don’t want to. I’ll rather prefer to have this sorry state, than get over her. She was one in a million. I can’t deny that.

I can’t hate her even. I know I tried. She had the gall to send me an invitation via Priya. It is far too easy to convert love to hate, but I don’t want the easy way out. Ya, I do love her…and I’m going to accept that. I have no other option.

But this is all a moot point. Abhi chadi hai, that’s why I’m saying all this. Tomorrow morning, It’s going to be the sorry old me, and nothing is going to change. She is going to marry that bastard, and I’m going to die all alone.

Maybe that is what is bugging me. Ya, I hate that I’m alone. Ya, I’m seeing someone, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m lonely and alone. What the hell…Make me one more large peg!”

Jai knew, that it was all going to be okay. He smiled as he passed on a large Rum and coke.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

Web 2.0 and what it means

2008-11-24T18:13:00.004+05:30

This term-Web 2.0- is a very ambiguous and nebulous term. No one exactly knows what it means. Wikipedia says that “The term "Web 2.0" describes the changing trends in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aim to enhance creativity, communications, secure information sharing, collaboration and functionality of the web.” , while It is more cynically explained as “You make all the content. They keep all the revenue.” on bash.

It has been hailed as the democratization of the web. Anyone anywhere can edit the web, and make their mark. You can post your own video on youtube, comment on any blog or article. If you have more to share, start your own blog, and air out your views to the world. It was because of this phenomenon, that Time magazine, named You as the person of the year in 2006. Soon, I’m told, Obama, will answer comments in his weekly webcast once he becomes the president. On our own Indian side, the people’s president used to check his website, and answer the questions and emails that he got.

But all this creates a false sense of mass participations, as it is currently pictured. The Web still is heavily one sided, with a small minority of users, creating the content, and the majority passively consuming it. This was studied in a project, where edits of Wikipedia were watched. They found that “50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users ... 524 people. ... And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from "people who [are] contributing ... a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix ... or something like that."

What was more interesting was that for a certain article(chosen to be studied), most of the content was created by just a couple of people, and the other, just made minor changes here and there. Read more about it here.

I recently could see the terrible one-sidededness of the web, on this very blog. A friend had a problem with his laptop, and I helped him to solve it. While searching for the solution, I found that quite a few people, were facing the same problem, and there was no coherent and exhaustive solution available anywhere. I solved it, by trial and error, after looking at hints here and there.

So I decided to document the solution, and put it up, on my blog. That post was this one. Now this entry comes within the top 10, of a google search, using any of the keywords, which a user would use, while searching for a solution, to this particular problem. And many did search, and a lot of people did come to this page. If you look at the screen shot below, you’ll see that over 170 people have seen this entry, most of them coming from search engines.

On an average, 4 to 5 people come everyday, searching for a solution to this problem. But how many people have left a thank you, or a comment? Only 1. Is this bad manners or lethargy? I don’t know.

What it does show is that, even with the Web 2.0, the Internet is very much a one sided flow of information, and the discussion, one thinks of, is rather limited.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

You know you are a sexist!

2008-11-21T17:23:00.001+05:30

A couple of days ago, Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, lost her Tool bag, while doing a spacewalk for a repair to the ISS. Read more about it here: NASA Astronaut Loses Tools, Gets Screwed Over By Space

Today we hear that one of the spiders is missing from its expected position in the ISS. Read more about it here: World Wide Tangled Web

On reading this, one of the slashdotters commented:

That's why Heidi let the bag go yesterday. I know my wife runs out of the room screaming when she sees a spider.

And you know who laughed out loud. Or atleast now you know.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

Geeky Humour-1

2008-11-20T17:57:00.001+05:30

I like to place the blame for all my problems, at the feet of my geekiness. Somehow I have made it the central pillar of my character, using it, as an excuse, as well as a justification for moth of the things I do, which tend to deviate from the things common people do.

I wear my geekiness as a badge (You’ll see it on the right hand column of this blog as well). It is a badge, which in many ways is unnecessary, because it is hardly a prerequisite for most things I love doing. Where it is required, is to explain my behavior to non-geeks, the muggles of this non-magical world.

Today I’ll like to talk about one thing, which is hardly ever understood by non-geeks; that is geeky humour. It is not that we are unfunny, or that we don’t get the usual jokes. It’s just that we find some other things funnier. And these things require the usage of the left-brain, a little more than with your usual joke.

Now Rrandall Monroe, had once said that analyzing a joke is like dissecting a frog — it can be done, but the frog dies. Hence I’m not going to do it. I’ll try to talk about things that we find funny.

We find jokes, where you have to think, funny. Especially when the punchline, is something exactly opposite to the conclusion that you come to after joking.
We like Puns. The more abstract, the better.
We like references to geek culture. The more obscure, the better.
We like to make fun of people, who do not think (or rather make a virtue out of it). This mainly includes people in Management, people who do a lot of spinning (people in advertising, or the media in general), wannabe geeks, and a few others
Our jokes will often have an appearance of being very hi-brow, but once you think about it, they are as crass as the grossest joke.
Jokes which show off your knowledge about an obscure field are appreciated. This is mainly due to the fact, that to understand, the listener also needs to know about that particular field; thus earning points for all concerned.

This is all but a small subset of the jokes I enjoy, and I’m sure I’ll add to the list, as more things come to mind.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

Clichés to avoid

2008-11-19T16:48:00.001+05:30

English is a difficult language. Good English, is even more difficult. Language is the main component of our communication. We speak and listen, read and write, all to communicate our thoughts and ideas, feelings hopes and aspirations. We transfer information, and not to forget, communicate, just to connect to someone.

Sometimes we get lazy, and use the same clichéd expressions, which become Irritating due to their repetition and improper Usage. A book by the name of ‘Damp Squid’ is currently in the news, for talking about them. This article talks about the ten most irritating expressions

I personally found the article to be quite interesting. One might think that one is using fairly unique language, but we often tend to reuse the words and ideas that would be easily be understood by all. At the end of the day, we are trying to communicate with other, and often people don’t want to think; they absolutely find it easier if we speak in metaphors already known to them. It’s a nightmare, having to think originally, and using sentences that will sufficiently convey what you want to. With all due respect, people who use any of these clichés should be made to compulsory read at least five good books. There could be some better punishment, but at this moment in time, I am unable to think of any. People shouldn’t of be mentally lazy, and use the same old expressions. 24/7 we are thinking, how hard can it be to mindfully select the words one uses? It’s not rocket science!

The BBC’s Magazine, came up with 20 more phrases.

If you have a look at it, it’s basically a list of phrases that have lost their appeal due to repeated usage. To be fair, sometimes, these phrases might be the best ones to convey our thoughts. But to be honest, I believe that the usage of these is indicative of mental lethargy, rather than anything else. Going forward, we should try to use the appropriate words in the right places. The fact of the matter is, the use of such dull language, can be quite boring, and let’s face it, that is something no one wants. We need to touch base with our inner author, and try to avoid them like the plague. Ask yourself, ‘Are you giving your 100%? Can you do better?” It might take time, for our language to get better, but the change is in the pipeline. The reason being, that language is dynamic, not static and stagnant. I’m not being funny, but a stagnant pool gets covered by moss, and all living things in it die.

You know, that you don’t want to follow down that path. Think about it. By the end of day’s play, I want you to decide whether you want to improve or not. How boring does it get, when we are singing from the same hymn sheet. I simply can't get my head round how we can just sit here doing nothing. I don’t have a raft of proposals, to roll out. You need to think on your own. Don't just talk the talk, you got to walk the talk. Read good books. Talk to interesting people. Stimulate your mind.

If all of look at the history of the world, Lessons will be learned. We’ll definitely open our eyes. We need people to actually start using better language

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

The Killer Cellphone

2008-11-18T17:24:00.001+05:30

As a geek, I love technology and gadgets, but there is no gadget that I share as much of a love-hate relationship with as the mobile phone.

Yes the mobile phone is very handy and useful. It can be used as a camera, as a handy calendar, a replacement for the radio And so on, saying nothing about its usage for voice communication. I’m always amused to see old TV shows like “The Jetsons” where they tried to show the futuristic world as best as they could imagine, and totally missed the humble cellphone. Who would have thought, that sms would be such a ubiquitous mode of communication, and used everywhere. Some people even go to great lengths, and call the cell phone, the end of all other gadgets, and write articles like this: Five Gadgets That Were Killed by the Cellphone

I am more skeptical about this. Yes it very useful to have everything in one device –You don’t have to carry many different appliances, each with their own charger and wires-, but then you end up with a device, that is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. Give me a scientific or accounting calculator over the Cellphone for calculations anyday. Any two-in-one gives better radio reception than a Cellphone ever can. It can catch more bands, and from a wider bandwidth as well. As for playing mp3s, very few devices come close to the user friendliness of an Ipod. And don’t get me started about the camera on a Cellphone.

What scares me more as a geek is that you do not have redundancy, or multiple points of failure. If by mistake you lose your cell phone, either by misplacing it, or due to a technical failure, you lose everything. You lose your music, your appointments, your messages and your contacts. Of course you could religiously back it up every night, but truthfully who amongst us does that?

Another reason mobiles irritate me, is that they depend on electricity for everything. If you are out of battery juice, you are out of luck. You can’t even get out the number of person you want to call and warn that you won’t be able to call. Cell phones, should fail gracefully, with different levels of non-functionality as the battery power goes down, and not suddenly become an expensive brick, as they do currently.

They irritate me for a different reason too, but that one is social, not technical, and I should write about that soon. Till then enjoy this joke: Dave's New Cell Phone

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

Dasvidaniya-A review

2008-11-17T16:11:00.002+05:30

Talk to any hindi film lover about a Man dying of cancer, and Rajesh Khanna’s Anand will be the first thing that will come up. Rajesh Khanna has a sort of monopoly on the character of a dying but cheerful protagonist, in the bollywood lover’s psyche, with films like Anand and Safar. Those are very big boots to fill, and Vinay Pathak and Shashant Shah do it convincingly.

This is Shashant Shah’s first film, and I didn’t know much about him. But all I needed were just a few Google searches before I figured out why he could succeed, where several others have failed. He has been the director of several comedy shows like ‘The Great Indian Comedy Show’. The writer of this movie, Arshad Syed, has been the lead writer for TGICS, as well as, the writer of Javed Jafferey’s Videocon Flashback. Leave it to the comedy writers to make such a wonderful film on death.

But actually, even though the film is about death, it is more about life and living, not just existing. Amar is an accounts manager in a small firm, and is living a utterly banal life, till he comes to know, that he has stomach cancer, and just about three months to live
The major part of the movie deals with what he does after he comes to know of this fact.

We often live utterly boring lives, saving up for a better tomorrow, and sometimes that tomorrow never comes. What would you do in such a case? What about your dreams and hopes and aspirations? What about all those things that you had thought you would do? Sometimes you need a deadline, and not everyone is fortunate enough to find when theirs is.

Vinay Pathak, is a fabulous actor, and everyone knows about it. This is a film with a lot of cameos: from Ranvir to Saurabh Shukla, from Neha Duphia to Purvi Joshi, Gaurav Gera to Suresh Menon, and several Others. Most of them were from the cast of ‘The Great Indian Comedy Show’ and the director uses them in the exact required dose.

This movie is not about great people, nor about big locations and glamor. It about regular people like you and me, who have dreams of their own, and want to achieve them one day, but somehow they are lost in day to day life.
This is a movie, which is not great, but is definitely worth your time. Go and watch it.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, every remaining day of November minus weekends, public holidays, and any day i might get laid.

True Love

2008-11-14T17:49:00.001+05:30

I still remember that night, as if it was yesterday. I was still huffing, and catching my breath, when I plopped down on the berth. The old man, in front of me, smiled and said, “I’m glad you could make it. We were worried that you would miss this train, and after this one, there are no other trains for four days.” And he offered me the chips he was having. As I munched, on the chips, I could see the city moving past me, through the window. This mass of disorganized light, twinkling through the dark window glass.

He was right; I almost hadn’t made it. The day was Christmas Eve, five years back. The climate was weird; like almost every winter evening in Mumbai. The Air was heavy with the smell of the salty ocean. And I was stuck, in a traffic jam at Bandra Kurla complex for the last hour. The wind came from the direction of dharavi, carrying all the pollutants from there, along with it. The heat in the taxi was suffocating, and my time was running out.

I could see bus after bus, filled with drunken villagers, shouting political slogans, being directed by the police, along the highway. You see, this was no ordinary day. It was the day, that the so-called savior of India, the last hope of every Indian, the champion of the masses, had her rally at Shivaji Park.

And these buses, were full of her so called supporters, who had been brought from outside Bombay, in hired buses, just by promising them free food and booze.

I still had half an hour, to reach Dadar. And as the last of the buses, receded from view, I might just be able to make it. Now you already know, that I did make it to the train, and there is no need for me to labour on, and tell you how it happened. It suffices to say, that I had to jump in the running train, which would explain why I was huffing, when I sat in front of him.

I described the traffic jams, caused by these paid supporters, and he just smiled. He just looked at me with his wise eyes, and said:

“You might think, I’m joking, but I can’t really expect you to believe me. We were from a different era, when a leader was really a leader. People loved him, and came from faraway to see him. They would leave their offices, and come to hear him speak. Schools were closed, so that children could line the roads and see him go past.

I saw him on a sultry summer evening. He had landed at the Juhu airport, and was coming down to Bombay, to meet one of his old friends from the freedom struggle. Mind you, this was a time, when Bombay central, was really the center of Bombay, and Dadar, was considered the outskirts of the city. I had just finished an operation, and was cleaning, up, when I heard that he would be traveling along the road in front of my hospital.

I got out, and stood near the gate. There was already a big crowd there, waiting for him. I could see several thousands lining the street. The kids had flags their hands, and the Adults had equally awed expressions on their faces.

Finally I could see his motorcade, coming along. In those days, there were no security problems, and the leader was truly loved.
He just had one police escort, and he was traveling in an open-air convertible. Some people had flowers in their hands, and he passed, they threw it up in the air, so that the leader was greeted with a rain of flowers. He did love this adulation and seemed very happy, with the reception, his people were giving him.

A few feet away from me, was a maimed beggar, with no legs, sitting on his pushcart that he wheeled around in. In his hands he had a single rose. As the car arrived closer, he raised his hands, so that he could properly aim the flower, and at the right moment, he threw it.
I wasn’t the only one watching him. Even the great man, saw this touching act of affection and stopped the car.
He got down, and talked to the beggar. And more flowers rained down on the pauper and his great leader”

On his Birth Anniversary, let me pay tribute to this great man, the architect of modern India.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

A geek's rant

2008-11-13T17:10:00.003+05:30

Being a geek has its advantages. You can repair you own computer, you don’t have that confused look on your face, when talking to someone about something you know absolutely nothing about, and you often can get modern electronic appliances to do your bidding.

There is a major drawback to being a geek. You are passionate about obscure and obstruce things. There is hardly anyone to talk to, about these things. People don’t get why you get all riled up about such things.

And god help us, if we try to explain this to others. They will fail to get why you are so obsessed about it, and then look at you in disturbed wonderment when you are not affected by what irritates them, and moves them to tears.

See this for example:

This has been a common gripe of mine for the last few years.

When you have a screenshot, send it as a .png, and when you have a photo, send it in .jpeg. How hard is it to understand?

I could go on and on, about jpeg artifacts, or compression ratios. I could tell you how you will be saving bandwidth by sending a png, or even how beautiful it looks, but you just don’t want to listen, do you?

You just want to carry on, in your simple little world, without thinking of what you are doing. You might even try to convince me, of how Jpegs are more convenient.

This is not a debatable point, like which is better C# or VB.net, or even is it S-Q-L or sequel

This is something un-debatable. Repeat after me: “When you have a screenshot, send it as a .png, and when you have a photo, send it in .jpeg”

But maybe I expect far too much from people. People send me screenshot as .bmp (arggghh!!!!) or god forbid, I might get a word document in my mail, with nothing but a print screen in it.

/rant

You can probably expect nothing better from us. We are beyond all hope of getting better. When you show us this Playboy centerfold, we’ll immediately start discussing it’s compression properties.

After looking at it, all I have to say: How ironic is it, that this image is a png?
Yes Irony...well what to do? I’ll go and cry in a corner now.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

A Stylist or a Story Teller?

2008-11-12T15:05:00.002+05:30

I had been watching the interview of Alan Ball, the director of Towelhead and he made a point, which I think is very important. He said,”… a director has to make a decision early on in his life. Does he want to become a story teller or a stylist?”

This goes to the very heart of what is wrong in the Hindi film industry. On one side you have excellent story-tellers, who weave rich tapestries with vivid emotions, new ideas and fresh situations. On the other hand, you have some filmmakers, who repeat and rehash the same old tales, and try to present them in a stylish new way.

We Indians, have a glorious tradition of story telling, and at some level, we all love to spin yarns. Some of these talented men and women are present in the film Industry, and do try to bring their aesthetics to the films that they make. Let us take Amir Khan for example.

I always knew in my heart that he knows what he is talking about. When he made his first film, we were all eagerly waiting to see what he comes out with. We were not disappointed. He produced a convincing piece of art, with a wonderful storyline, that touched everyone who saw it. I am not saying that he didn’t do it stylishly. He did. But he got his own aesthetics to it. He didn’t let what was fashionable, dictate what he should do with his story. Other men would have balked at having a painting competition as a climax, but Amir Khan, managed to convincingly pull it off.

On the other hand, you have numerable other, far too many to mention, who are just stylists. They will shoot a song in Egypt, just because it provides a picturesque background, for their dancers, in a particular song. There are others, who will cram in an item song, for the pleasure of the first row audiences. Others, might base their films, in imaginary fantasy locations, where the characters have no sense of geography. They do not speak in any particular local accent, nor act in a way that would indicate their origins, nor wear clothes suited to a particular climate or local culture. Who can blame the actors? The director was far too busy styling, to pay attention to the story.

You can see this difference, everytime we discuss a film in company. Do we discuss the storyline, the emotions, and the characters? Or do we tend to focus on the costumes, the jewelry, the stunning locations, and the stars featured in them?

There is another simple test to find out, if a director is a stylist or a story-teller. It is called Chekov’s Gun. What it basically says, is that if there is a gun on the wall, in the first act, it has to be used in the second act.

You need to see if there is anything in the film, that seems out of placed. Is there anything that is present, just because it is pretty to look at? Or is it integral to the story? That should lead you to the answer.

One might say that why is this so important? It’s all right, as long as one enjoys the movie. The problem with this is that style is temporary, while great stories live on for ever.

I forget who had said this, but whoever it was, was a wise artist. A piece of art is not perfect, when there is nothing more left to add. It becomes perfect, only when there is nothing left to subtract.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

Death

2008-11-11T15:09:00.002+05:30

The last 12 to 18 months, have been a learning experience for me. I have seen more of life, and death than ever before; especially death.

We can intellectually accept death as a Natural part of life. It is the only thing that is inevitable for all of us. It is the only thing that is guaranteed to happen. But when it happens, it hardly seems natural. When a 20 year old boy dies from jaundice, there is nothing natural about that. A 21 year old boy, complaining of chest pain and passing away in a day, is scarcely understandable. A 22 year old girl losing her father, hardly seems natural.

When one sees death, one stops... You just can't go on with what you doing. Some might conjecture that this is because you are thinking of your own mortality. While that might me true for some, it is not for me. I know, or rather feel that I am not afraid of my death. Death only takes away the deceased, it's those that are left behind, who suffer. The loss of a person hurts us, not because it indicates that we will leave some day too, but because it is a loss. It is often as simple as that.

That person might have been the world to us, or not. What truly hurts is the finality of it all. There is no permanence in anything except death. You might not meet a friend for a long time, but somewhere at the back of your mind, there is the thought of meeting him or her. You might have had a fight with someone, and you can always make up with him. There is always time...or that is what you think.

Once death comes along, everything changes. Death is permanent, things become irreparable, and there is no going back. You cannot talk to that person, nor convey what he or she meant to you. Death leaves a lot of things unsaid.

Man by nature is hopefully. Be he rich or poor, successful, or struggling, he always hopes for a better tomorrow. And this supposes, that tomorrow will be there. Death, lets go of all that. And that is why death hurts us so much.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

The White Tiger: A Review

2008-11-10T14:59:00.005+05:30

This book has won the Man Booker prize this year, as has no doubt been highly praised in the Main Stream Media as a result. Some of you might remember my aversion to popular books, as such, and especially those that have been recently awarded prestigious prizes. One would wonder then, as to why I would read this book. The answer is that I wanted to read this book, even before it was awarded the Man Booker Prize, and Arvind Adiga became the toast of the pseudo Intellectuals in the mainstream media. With that confession off my chest, let us get on to the book.

A superficial review would describe the story of the book, as the story of a man, who gets out of the village, becomes a driver, kills, and then goes on to have a successful life as an entrepreneur. It is written in the first person, via a series of letters to the Chinese premier (of all people).
But that would ignore the nuances of the story, or the skill of the story-telling. It would be glancing over the several themes that are touched in the book, or the characters that we meet, or their minds that we enter. It would fail to mention that this book is also an edge-of-the-seat thriller, with the reader, waiting for the next part of Balram’s life story to be brought to light, as the novel thunders to its inevitable end.

So what is the story, really about? It is about a lot of things. It is about the new India; One that appears to be shining through Glass buildings, fast cars, easy money and malls lit like Christmas lights, while at the same time, it is hollow within, and the tension between this superficial prosperity, and the utter poverty and helplessness of those that actually make and build this India, and make sure it works like clockwork. It is about those areas of darkness, which lie within the minds of people that are the fuel of this machine. They are there in our cities, but not living in them.

It is about Balram, the driver of a rich landowner, who has made quite a lot of wealth, of course, with several irregularities, and corruption. His son, a foreign returned Ashok, is in Delhi, paying off the Babus and the Netas, to make the Tax problems go away, as the family picks on a fight with the politician of that area. It is with this son that Balram serves.

The story deals with the Master-Servant relationship, in general, and is told from the perspective of Balram. We follow him, from his school days, as he has to drop out, to pay off loans, then migrate to the local town, and how he finally gets the Job. All along the way, we get lessons in ambition, and getting ahead in life.

This Balram, goes on to become an entrepreneur, in Bangalore. He tells us along the way of how he wants to get ahead in life, but how, he is caught in his instincts to be a good son, as well as a loyal servant. He calls these instincts, ‘the rooster coop’. He had dropped out of school, and become a ‘half-baked Indian’, but he never gave up on educating himself on the ways of life.
This is a story of how he learns about a new morality that would be required in his quest to the top. He has been once called a “white tiger” by a school inspector, who was surprised by adequate talents, in an inadequate village school. This tiger has to get out of his cage, learn the laws of the jungle, and rise to the top of the food chain, giving up on most of the things he once believed in.

This book is sort of a confessional, written as letters to the Chinese Premier. All men believe that they have a story to tell, and seek an audience for the same. We want to audience to believe us, so we often choose those that are like us, but at the same time are very different. It is easier if they were searching for what we have to offer, and this is why I believe, Balram, choose this particular recipient for his letters.

This book is a compelling, perceptive, sensitive and probing story of the New India, and I can’t recommend it enough.

This post is a part of the November madness programme that I am following, where I attempt to post one entry on this blog, everyday for the last 3 weeks of November.

The most powerful man of the Internets!

2008-10-10T12:26:00.003+05:30

I often wonder: who is the most powerful man on the Internet? Who can change the landscape of several sites at will? Who has a following amongst the high and might, elites of the web? Whoz work has the most far reaching consequences?

The Answer is very clear. It is Randall Munroe!

For those of you, who sadly don’t know, who he is, I say, go to http://xkcd.com/ and spend an hour or so. You will come out as a fan. I have been his fan for a long time now, and have even posted his comics here a couple of times.

If you still think, that I am wrong, let me provide conclusive proof.

On 12th Jan, 2008, XKCD published this comic:

Within a day or two, the results got highly skewed. The results for “died in a blogging accident” rose from 2 on that day to over 6 million today. Read more about it, at: http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/blogger/2008/01/13/the-xkcd-data-died-in-a-blogging-accident/
He is one of the most popular authors amongst Geeks, and his talk at Google is a treat to watch.

But now, he has outdone himself. He recently published this comic:

Now the guys at Youtube , went and implemented this suggestion. Wow! Just Wow! You should check his reaction at: Youtube Audio Preview.

Isn’t he the greatest?

Drivers for the SIGMATEL STAC 9228 C-Major HD Audio, on a dell Inspiron 1420

2008-10-07T17:33:00.004+05:30

This is a documentation post, and may not be useful, to my regular readers. They are requested to ignore it.

I have been breaking my head over this small problem, for the past two days, and finally found a way, to solve the Issue. I though that I should document it here, since many others are still facing the problem.
So here is the History. I got a Dell Inspiron 1420, with Vista installed on it. Since I wanted to run some programs that run properly on Xp only, I had to downgrade the System to Windows Xp (some might say, that Xp is actually an upgrade, instead of a downgrade, but that is a debate for another day).

So here is what I do:
1]Wipe the entire hardrive with GParted.
2]Install Windows Xp SP2 from an Orignal Media
3]Install the Windows SP3
4]Install the drivers, downloaded from the Dell site, one by one.

I got everything to work, except for the Audio.
After searching here and there, I found that a lot of people were facing the same problem. there were a couple of solutions at : http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7813_102-0.html?forumID=5&threadID=264247&messageID=2588300 and http://www.davidreedonline.com/wordpress/2007/08/03/installing-windows-xp-on-the-dell-inspiron-1420 But none of them helped. The Sigmatel company itself does not offer any drivers for download.

I gave up, and was about to reinstall Vista, so as to have a Dual Boot Machine. When I happend on to this question Experts-exchange (these people are unethical #%$&!@ of the highest order, and you won't get to see their answers, unless you have a referral from Google. So here is the cached copy of the question) at http://209.85.175.104/search?q=cache:LAi_EE9bgSAJ:www.experts-exchange.com/Software/System_Utilities/Drivers/Q_23511686.html+http://www.experts-exchange.com/Software/System_Utilities/Drivers/Q_23511686.html&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=in.

A guy called clutch23, gave a solution which worked for me.

Turns out that there is a bug with Windows, which is responsible for it. This has been documented as kb835221
As this Bug is applicable on to Xp SP1 and SP2, but not for SP3 (which is funny because, the bug is actually there even after SP3), the patch does not work for XP SP3.

So here is how I got the Audio to Work:
1]Uninstalled Xp SP3
2] Downloaded the driver from : http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R171789&SystemID=LATITUDE%20PRECISION%20M90&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=8907&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=3&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=3&fileid=235761
3]Ran the Installer till it unzipped the setup, and then pressed Cancel
4]Went to the Unzipped Location
...\R171789\HDAQFE\win2k_xp\us
5]Run the kb835221.exe
6]Reboot
7]Then run the R171789\setup.exe - this time it found a driver and it worked!
8]Install Xp SP3

Now I have an up-to-date machine, which works perfectly. Hope that helps anyone who is searching for the solution.

=================
Please let me know, if this helped you out by commenting on is post.

My Virtual Life

2008-09-22T19:58:00.005+05:30

I had gone back to SIG on Friday, for a presentation, and I talked to some of the Juniors. We talked about a lot of things, and I suggested to someone, that we could carry that conversation online, on Gtalk. This is when, somebody commented, “Sir, is always online. You can talk to him anytime!”

Now I agree that I live most of my life online, in the browser (the rest I spend in Visual Studio), but I’m surely not online all the time. Or so I thought.

Today while checking my Google reader, I was just going thru the trends, for a lark. A screenshot is below, for anybody who is interested.

But I truly realized the extent of my Online affliction, when I checked the time, I read posts.
Apparently, the only time I’m not online, is between 6 AM and 10 AM. Go figure!

The Chromology of a One-Night Stand.

2008-09-03T17:50:00.003+05:30

Now all of you know that I am a Google Fanboi , and how much of a techno-geek I really am. It’s no wonder then that I often get a nerdgasm whenever Google comes up with a really big announcement.

This time it was slightly different. We heard of Chrome from Philip’s blogoscoped on September 1. Geeks all over the world rejoiced at the sneak peek at the newest girl on the blog, Chrome. She came from a royal heritage. She was from the House of Google, no less.

And what striking features she had …

Each of her tabs had its separate process. So when one of those would irritate you, you could just close that one, and she would carry on like nothing happened. She was very forgiving.

She had an all-new way of working with Javascript. Not only could she last longer with the Javascript, she was way faster than any of her competitors. You could take her to digg, and she would live to tell the tale. She would still Obey you and do your bidding, long after the other prospects had given up, all tired and confused.

She was also discreet. She had an “Incognito” mode, where she promised you total secrecy. Whatever happened there would remain between you two. She wouldn’t gossip about it to others, nor remember those things, and use them against you, at a later point. It was like every Guy’s dream come true.

What was most hearting to see, was that she was very easy on the eyes. She loved exposing herself, and had the largest area where you could play and surf. While you were required to turn on others, before you could this with them, Chrome was always in this state, every ready to fulfill your wishes. She wasn’t all decked up, in useless frivolous things, and had a minimalist look on life.

What turned on every geek who heard about her, was that she was Open Source. This was the highest possible qualification, anyone could have, and all geeks began to dream about her.

I was no different. She had tickled my interest, and now there was no going back. I had to have her. I wanted to play with her and I wanted to make her mine.

I hung around Google, all day and Night, waiting for her to make an appearance. I would relook for her every 5 minutes, but she was nowhere to be found. I left Office, dejected.

I reached home, and decided to try my luck once again. I was lucky. I saw that she had just made an appearance, and snatched her, and brought her, close to me.

I still remember, how I approached her with trepidation. I wasn’t sure whether all my dreams would be fulfilled, or I would face disappointment. When I introduced my self to her, I realized that she already knew me. She had taken down all my details, from her friends already residing on my HD, and was ready to do my bidding.

What they had said about her was completely true. She was so different from all the others I had experienced before. She was so beautiful, and without the fuss. I fell in love with her. She made me feel young again, and I felt as if I was experiencing the World Wide Web for the first time. I was so happy. I thought we would last forever.

Being the Nice-Guy that I am, I acted like …well a nice and normal guy. I did what a normal User would do. Read my email with her…took her to youtube for a few Indie Movies, read some news, heard some gossip on Eonline.

I thought I was set for life.

Then I decided to stretch my luck. Asked her to do a few things that I really wanted to do. I took her to facebook. Showed her who my friends were. That’s when I decided to write something on the wall of a Hot girl I knew. But Chrome straight away refused. Not that she gave me any reason…she just didn’t do it.

I took her to a site with RSS feeds, but she was confused with it. She just didn’t know what to do. My immense happiness of just a few minutes earlier, was disappearing into thin air. I decided to call it a night.

Maybe she was not comfortable with the surrounding, so I decided to explore her on my other two computers. Here too, she refused to do anything out of the ordinary. She was just a plain girl, who had the appearance of being hot and happening. She refused to do anything exotic. My dreams were shattered.

I decided to give her a last chance, in Office. I tried to get her to me, but I had to jump through hoops to get close to her. She found the environment very restrictive, and refused to be flexible, and listen to me. She went off on a repetitive drool about how she could not do this or that, but refused to hear me out, on solving the Issue.

Nor could she take extensions, like my old girl, firefox…I realized that we were over. It was time to call an end to our relationship, when I still had some respect for her. It was a roller coaster ride with her; The supreme Happiness of getting the things I have always dreamed about, and the depths of despair, on not being able to do things, I was used to doing everyday.

Chrome, you showed me a lot of dreams, and successfully achieved them with me, but you could not do a few simple things, that I really want. I’m so sorry…It’s not you, It’s Me. I hope we can be a couple some day… Till then, on lonely nights, when I am all alone, I will hear the wind…and think of the night we spent together.

Weird People

2008-08-21T03:26:00.003+05:30

If you ask me, I would love nothing better than sitting at home, with a glass of chilled Ice tea in my hand, surfing Digg all day. But, alas, we do not get to follow our dreams. Someone has to get the bacon home, and hence, I have to get off my ass, ride over 65 KM every day, and get to office.

One would assume that the most annoying thing about work, is well...work. But I beg to differ. The most annoying parts of work-life are the coworker that one has around us. These annoying people are everywhere in your regular office. I am willing to bet that besides you, everyone in your office, falls among the following catagories.

1]Slap-you-on-the-back-dude. This is a guy, who appears to do nothing, but take frequent loo breaks. It so happens that your seat falls on the route he takes to the loo, and he playfully hits you on the back everytime he passes you, as if you wanted to know that he has been to the loo. If you have such a guy in your office,all, I'll like to tell him is, "I hope you washed your hands, after you did your business in there"

2]Eye-on-you-lady. This woman, appears to have no life of her own, and is very intrested in what you are up to. She keeps an eye on the wearabouts of everyone in office. She is looking at you, when you are chatting on Gtalk, when you talk on your cell, and even when go for a coffee break. I'm pretty sure, she keeps a count, on how many times you go to the loo. All I'll like to say to her, is, "I know my life is much more exciting than yours,but that doesn't mean you keep an eye on me all the time"

3]Bugs-you-before-you-are-settled-guy. You have just reached office, all tired from the long journey from home, and are settling down. You haven't even switched on the computer, when he appears at your desk, like a waiter at a prompt restaurant. He probably has some work with you, but for the sake of god, he can't understand, that you need to settle down, before you can do it for him. He will look over your sholder, while you fill in your password, while constantly bugging you about a file that he wants.

4]I-Smile-you-do-my-work-girl. Ok...you know her. She probably is pretty, and used to getting her way with men. If she looses her pen, 10 different guys, take their pens out of their front pockets, and offer it to her. This example was a metaphor for what they really want to offer her. Whenever she has some work to be done, 10 different guys are fighting with each other, over who will get to do it. Now, when she has some work with you (probably something that she should do, but dosen't want to do), she comes up to you, smiles, and asks you to do it for her. More precious than her smile, is the incredulous look she has on her face, when you refuse. She doesn't know how to react, and she either goes away confused, or gets angry at you.

5]Been-there-done-that-guy. He is probably 10 years your senior, and has done a lot of stuff. Worked on the latest stuff, changed hundred jobs, seen the world. Somehow, he thinks it's his job to educate you to the ways of the world. He will talk a lot of how he did this and that, but when you try to pin him down to specifics, he will baulk. He will advise you to stay out of Inter-office politics, but will be the orcestrator, of most of it. God forbid, but If you ever go to him for practical advice on something, he will claim that it's very easy, but will actully fail to mention anything remotely useful.

6]I-have-a-boyfriend-behenji. This girl, is one, who you would never have turned out to give a second look. She probaly has never been with a guy alone, but has somehow managed to get some desparate guy to make her, his girlfriend. She is overjoyed at this development, and wants to announce to the world, that she has a boyfriend, as if she has met some important benchmark. She will chat with him loudly on the phone, mouthing the most cliched fuddly-duddly stuff. She will be on the lookout for anything she can misconstru as a flirting, just so that she can annouce that she has a boyfriend. She will initiate conversations about how weekends are fun, just so that she can say, she is going for a movie with him.

7]Don't-rush-old-guy. This guy has been stuck on the same post, for as long as anyone can remember. God knows, he might have been on the same post, when the company began. He will ususally try to tell you, not to work hard, or be over ambitions. He will advice against showing initiative, and will try to bolster his case, with anecdotes, about how people suffered when they showed initative.

8]Pointy-haired-boss. How can I miss him? He is everywhere, trying to motivate you, without undertsanding you, or what you do. He will be unskilled in most of the things, that people under him do, but he will still tell them how to do, what they do. He will be the most mathematically-challenged, but he will be the one, that will throw more numbers around, than everyone around.

I could go on and on, about him, or other weird characters in Office, but then, this post would never end.

Sourav Ganguly

2008-04-14T00:57:00.004+05:30

I have been a big fan of Saurav Ganguly. I remember his first test match, in which he made 131, Or even his first ODI back in 1992 where he had scored just 3 runs.
He is the best SouthPaw ever, and only the third Indian to never have a Test average below 40 (Even Sachin does not belong to that exclusive list).Rahul Dravid had once commented, "On the off-side, first there is God, then there is Ganguly”.

I have always believed that when dada is on the pitch, magic will surely happen. He showed his magical abilites with the Bat, once again in the third Test match against SA, when he did this:

Now show me one other Batsman who can do something like this. Scoring runs against such an Opposition, and on such a pitch is a different thing, and levitating his bat, is another.

My Beloved

2008-02-03T13:41:00.000+05:30

Are you angry with me, because I have been away from you for two months? You have got to believe me, when I say that I was thinking of you all this while. I've just reached home, kept my luggage, and have come down to see you.

I still remember that rainy August evening, when I saw you for the first time. The setting sun's red glow was falling on you thru the glass. Your blue highlights were gleaming. It had just rained, and there were still a few drops on you, and you looked just perfect. It was love at first sight, I must admit.

We have been thru a lot. You were there when the accident happened, and both of us, fortunately escaped unhurt. We have been to beaches, thru Mountain passes, into the dense fog, in the chilly winters, and the wet rain. We have been together for a really long time. You really don't believe that I don't care for you.

On the flight home, I was thinking of you, and how you would respond. Are things going to be totally different between us from now on? Are you going to the give me the same response when I touch you? I'll have to see for myself, right?

You lay there under the sheet, while the sun is bathing you in the gorgeous morning sunlight. I can catch glimpses of you ankles, but you are hidden, as if angry at me. I come and pull the sheet off you, gently. The sheet moves over your curvaceous body slowly, and it's good that I don't see you completely at first. As each and every part of your body is exposed to me, one by one, I fall in love with you, all over again.

I drop the sheet aside, and look at you face. Your deep eyes, look sleepily at me, and your smile is still striking. There is a smudge of dirt on your forehead, and I lightly brush that off. You shyly turn your face away from me. I trace your figure with my fingers, and every contour feels so familiar. It's as if I had never left you.

Does your heart still beat for me? There is only one way to find out. With a quick twist of my wrist, I turn you on, and you purr like a contended kitten. I reach down to touch your throbbing bosom, and I am reassured by the rhythmic beating of your heart.

I know things will be fine between us.

Disclaimer: I had written this when I had gone back to Pune after spending two months in Delhi. I didn't post this then, because I thought, it was rather personal, and quite pornographic. A casual conversation yesterday evening, just made me rethink, about how much I love my bike, hence I decided to post it now.

Wrestling with a pig

2008-02-01T01:42:00.000+05:30

Many of you know, that I love to argue, and I could argue for argument's sake, but I usually don't. And that's because most people lack the intellectual capability to take a line of reasoning to its logical end. Most people also are ignorant of the various fallacies and tend to muck up. Arguing with them is useless. It is like trying to play chess with someone who has never played it, and refuses to learn the rules.

However, when someone tries to convince me to change my behavior or outlook, I have to defend my self, and tend to bring the full arsenal at my disposal. Something similar happened today. Someone was trying to convince me, that I should be less skeptical. I was not going to take nonsense like that, and argued till the other person had no point to make. This is when she said

That when wrestling with a pig, at the end you are both filthy and exhausted –but you get the distinct feeling that the pig enjoyed the experience.

It suddenly struck me, what an absurd metaphor it is. Firstly, What kind of person actually goes to wrestle with a pig? And even if someone actually did, what is the best outcome that he or she could expect?

Even though this metaphor was totally irrelevant here, it says more about the person who gets in to wrestling with the pig, rather than the pig...

Nehru: The Invention of India A review

2007-12-21T11:55:00.000+05:30

Jawaharlal Nehru, in his 17 year long innings as Prime Minister, had influenced India more than anybody else has ever done in her long History. For most of the world, India was Nehru and Vice versa. His actions, his morals, his principles still hang around today. He is said to be responsible for everything that is good, as well as bad in India today. Quite a feat! But one must realise that he was at the helm of a nascent India, and he could have chosen any path he wanted, and India would have followed. That is why M.J. Akbar named his Nehru's biography as 'Nehru, The making of India'. In 2003, one of my favourite author, Shashi Tharoor wrote his version, 'Nehru: The Invention of India' which I just finished reading.
Tharoor confesses in the preface that it 'is not a scholarly work; it is based on no new research into previously undiscovered archives;...It is, instead a reinterpretation-both of an extraordinary life and career and of the inheritance it left behind for every Indian.' Fair Enough. He has an incredible way of putting things across, and It would be interesting to note his take on Nehru. Alas I was far too disappointed.
The book, even though it is an reinterpretation, contains no new insights. We already know Nehru's life was one of comforts, and his schooling in England, first in Harrow and then at Inner temple was not one that was 'average' and 'undistinguished'. Tharoor tries to bring out the father-son relationship, but one feels that he he could have done better. Tharoor is known as a novelist, and one would expect, that he would bring his considerable talents, and write a passionate and evocative narrative, which is wholly missing.
We plod through Nehru's early Public life, till independence, and the book read like a newspaper article. Instead of an emotive narrative, we have a elegantly written piece, that does not show us the real Nehru, only his achievements and movements. Ironically enough, Tharoor's 'Great Indian Novel' gives a better insight in to Nehru, his mind and his emotions then this one does. Another fact that bugged me a lot, was that th is a singular focus on Nehru, with Gandhi & Motilal Nehru, sharing some of the limelight. It seems like there is no one else. This somehow leaves a gaping hole, in our understanding of Nehru. The narrative reminds me of Bollywood Movies, where the hero is all-important, and the secondary characters serving only to be at the receiving end of the hero's actions and words.
The post-independence part of the book is somewhat better. The first Chapter in this section deals with his foreign policy initiatives in the Post war world. This is where Tharoor brings his diplomatic expertise at the table, and wonderfully wields his pen, to provide an insightful analysis of Nehruvian diplomacy. The next chapter deals with Nehru's declining years, and ST manages to paint an heart retching scene of Nehru beyond his prime. It is the last chapter which deals with what ST loves to write about quite passionately. He writes about Secularism, democracy and other legacies of Nehru.

My biggest criticism of this book, would be with its title: 'Nehru: The Invention of India'. It is a rather Pompous title, and Nehru wouldn't have ever thought that he was inventing India. India for him, was always there, with its 5000 year old history and culture. Nor was it just an idea for him. It was there, just waiting to be discovered. No wonder then, that he wrote a book, which briefly described the History of India, called 'The Discovery Of India'. But let us give ST poetic license to name his book what he want.
Where he fails is to do justice to the title. The book hardly touches how India was 'invented'. Yes he does mention the ethics and morals of Nehru, but that does not make India. ST might think that India is just about secularism, democracy, foreign policy and socialism...it is not.
This book would be welcomed by people who know nothing about Nehru, but given a choice, I would recommend M.J.Akbar's biography over this any day.

Dus Kahaniyaan---A review

2007-12-13T20:00:00.000+05:30

There was quite some Publicity buzz around this movie, and it seemed quite interesting, so I had to take a look. This is an anthology of 10 short stories, in the visual format; 6 directors: Hansal Mehta, Rohit Roy, Meghna Gulzar, Apoorva Lakhia, Jasmeet Dhodi and Sanjay Gupta, paint an engrossing film of just above 100 minutes. So how is it? Well..let me first tell you about the 10 different stories.

The film starts out with quite an engrossing tale, called Matrimony, featuring Mandira bedi and Arbaaz Khan. Mandira Bedi is more famous for her spaghetti straps then her 'Shanti' and Arbaaz Khan is hardly known for his Acting Skills. Given this background, we hardly expect them to perform so well. The story has an 'O Henry-isque' ending, but the story works, even though it is quite predictable.

Then we have High on the Highway which is the worst of the lot. Not only do we have wooden performances from Jimmy Shergill and Masumeh Makhija,
but the director doesn't help either. There is no buildup, for which the frequent flashbacks are partly responsible. The main blame however lies on the story, which has no essence, or even the ending, where he dies a romeo-like-death, unable to handle a loss.

This is followed by a very wonderful film, Pooranmashi. It's a film staring Amrita Singh and Minsha Lambha. Within a few frames you start believing in both the characters, and mourn the eventual sad ending. However the scene where the daughter faces the villagers could have been better handled, given that there is hardly any interaction between the Mother-daughter, when the whole story revolves around them. There was so much potential for Minsha to act here, but she is not upto the task. Amrita Singh, however comes out with flying colours.

Strangers In The Night, is a film high on Substance as well as Style. It features Mahesh Manjrekar and Neha Dhupia, as a couple, unmasking their deepest secrets to each other. Here you have neha's character telling us about her most Intense moment, and We are first shown the incident from one angle, and then the same incident in it's entirety. These contrasting angles are so antagonistic, that instead of it being a twist in the tale that we would blame ourselves for, we tend to blame the director. This one, out of the 10, had the maximum potential, but until the second angle is better handled, it leaves us unsatisfied.

Zahir, is a film featuring Dia Mirza and Manoj Bajpai. It starts of quite well, with the canvas being painted in just a few scenes. They are beautifully handled, but then the story starts losing it's grip. It starts feeling jerky, and instead of the story moving continuously, we find that there are lots of gaps. The ending is as predictable as hell, and we are left mourning over what could have been.

Lovedale which stars Neha Uberoi and Aftab Shivdasani, is the first film after the intermission. It's a sweet love story, but I felt the writer was trying too hard to be 'arty'. It ends up looking like something a teenager would write and claim that it was going to be the next big thing.

Now comes Sex on the Beach, which is story featuring Dino Morea and some hot chick. This film provides the horror quotient to the anthology, and works beautifully due to the background music and cinematography. There are seriously scary moments during the film, and in a way provides an interesting contrast to the last one. It treats lust and paranormal phenomenon in a way that is antithetical to the last story, which I found to be quite thought provoking.

Now comes the most awaited section, Rice Plate, featuring Shabana Aazmi and Nassurudin Shah. We know that both of them have a lot of talent, but Shabana's portrayal sometimes feels like a Caricature. Nassurudin is perfect as expected with his understated performance, but when you get them together, magic happens. The débutante director is however unable to use them properly and he chose to focus on unimportant parts of the story, while glossing over the crux of the story, which was the realisation that dawns on Shabana's character.

The ninth film is called Gubbare, which has a stellar performance from Nana Patekar. Nana can set the screen on fire, on his day, and this was his day. The story moves towards its inevitable conclusion, but Nana's voice holds you hand along the way, and for once, the predictability is the strong point of the film. It leaves you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, and not in a bad way.

The film ends with Rise and fall, which is the most stylish of the lot. It is low on substance, but you don't mind it. There are two parallel stories, and by mid point you realise that a flashback sequence is going on. The action is wonderfully shot in the rain. It might not be matrix level, but you feel each blow and cut. Sadly there is no novelty factor, because we have seen the same kind of stuff from him earlier.

Now that you know what the short films are all about, comes the important question. Does the Anthology work? The answer is not in black or white, but in the greys. Anthologies work when either you have a common theme, or if the sections provide a different insight to construct the whole. It is on this count that the film falters.

There is no unifying theme or idea. The only thing that could be construed to be the theme, would be the travails of lust... Sensual lust, carnal lust or even lust of power.

There have been attempts along this path in Bollywood by RGV, with his Darna mana hai series, but those failed because the individual stories sucked. Here the short films are of a higher caliber, and the film as a whole provide good entertainment for almost 2 hrs.

You know that you are boring

2007-12-12T20:56:00.000+05:30

You should know that you are boring when I feel that talking to A.L.I.C.E. will be more fun.
[I actually was thinking about that when someone was boring me over Gtalk]

Where lies my Kingdom???

2007-11-21T18:17:00.000+05:30

I haven't forgotten you, my 3 year old blog. It's just that I have been rather distracted by certain important things. 'What?' you ask. Well I have been grappling with profound question. Question regarding me, my purpose in the world, and where I am headed...those kind of questions. Questions which are very difficult to answer, because you are never sure whether, the answer you have is the right answer, or whether there is in fact a right answer at all.

Ever since August, I have had this internal struggle, these innumerable doubts about my life, and the way it has been shaping up. I am not writing to say that I have found the answers to these questions, but rather to say, that I have found a helpful hint. I am quite sure that I will never be satisfied by any answer I get, so it's foolish to even suggest that. My revelation has been much smaller, but yet, it can be described as a 'paradigm shift' (I don't believe I just used those words).

You may be aware that I have eclectic taste...weird interests you might say, or even varied passions. I love reading, photography, traveling, adventure sports, conversing with interesting people, biking, eating and a hell lot of other things. I am currently at such a stage of my life, where I am officially stepping out from the role of a student, into that of a professional. You can well imagine, where all this mental torture comes from. I want to know clearly who I am. Now some post-modernistic physco-babble would say that I am a mixture of all these things, and much more than the sum of these things. But while that seems reasonable to the brain, the heart is not satisfied.

I had an insight out of this chaotic darkness today. I was generally wondering what I have to show for the month of November, the last 3 weeks. And my answer to that question, showed me the way out. Let me enumerate the things I have done, that I am particularly proud of:

I wrote an Arcscript to make cartograms from shapefiles, which create maps like these.
Not satisfied with that, I renewed my Knowledge of XML, explored Kml, and created a tool to enable shapefiles to be displayed on Google Earth.
Wrote a bash script for automatically installing a programme from its tarball
In another practical, I handled exception in JAVA programming, without using 'exception handling.
Somewhere else, I presented a programme, which accessed a database using C# and .Net framework.
I learnt the basic principles behind semivariograms, and understood where they fail.
I manage to shrink a partition, and repartition another disk, and to make it work, I had to get my hands dirty with GRUB and fstab.
I rewired a room, so that I could run a modem, on low voltage.
Figured out a way to calibrate a projector on my own, after getting some hints.
Beta tested Firefox 3, and submitted a couple of Bug reports.
Corrected Philipp Lenssen

Do you see the pattern here? All of them are related to Technology in general, and computers in particular.

This is not to say that I did nothing else. I met some great people in Ashagadh and Pune, biked about 700 Km in 4 days, did something for the underpriviledged kids in the Rural camp, Spent some great days with family, shot some amazing photographs, read interesting books like Shame and 'Penguins stopped play', saw entertaining movies like OSO and Jab we Met...

Yet what are the things I am most proud of?
All these techy and geeky things.

I think I can now accept that my life lies in geekdom, and I am sure I will rule there. I will sleep comfortably today.

P.s. I think I can now assure my mother that I am doing productive things, when she complains of me being online the whole day. If she persists, and asks what is productive in all this, I will rehash the Feynaman quote that I always use: "Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it."

A lesson from Life

2007-10-26T21:43:00.001+05:30

Dumbledore is Gay!!!

2007-10-22T17:26:00.000+05:30

J.K. Rowling is an evil, evil woman. First she write a terrible book called Harry Potter and the deathly Hallows. She makes such good characters like Harry Potter mouth Bollywood dialogs like, "There is nothing between us. She is like my sister!" Then she goes on to describe their sad life after 20 Yrs..like we needed an epiloge.

Now she comes along and takes away the one good character that I loved. Dumbledore was a leader, the last man standing against 'he who shall not be named'. He was an Ideal and Idol for many. Now that he is out of the closet, his fan following will decrease.

No longer can I openly say that I truly loved him, and would lay my life down on his orders. I used to say that he touched me in ways, no one else ever did. That is going to be greeted with giggles now. 'Dumbledore's Army' will soon been an euphemism with a totally different meaning.

Thanks for Nothing J.K. Rowling... I'll go back to reading about the platonic love between Samwise Gamgee and Frodo Baggins in LOTR .

You know you are in a new league

2007-10-06T08:44:00.000+05:30

I have to admit, that SIG has blasted me into a different league all together. I am definitely on my way to a professional life, and no matter how much I crib about SIG, I ought to credit SIG with this.
So how do you know, that you are in a different league altogether?

You spend 4500 on drinks in four hours, and you think it was value for money.

You meet so many Municipal commissioners in a day, that you hardly think anything of it.

You have met so many experts and authorities that whenever anyone mentions that so and so person is being approached for a project, you instantly, recall their name and designation, and can go on talking about their expertise

The Commissioner of Kanpur begs you for a photo you just took, since it happens to have him as a tiny dot in the photo of the bureaucrat who happens to be sitting on One Lakh crores.

You move around with the Newsmakers, and hear stuff from their mouth, which makes the front page of tomorrow's newspapers. This has happened atleast 6 times in the last 3 weeks.

Chatting with Matt Cutts

2007-09-18T11:41:00.001+05:30

I'm so sad that I am not a SEO professional (Though I could help you out if u needed some help). I could have used the above screen shot to claim that I regularly chat with Matt Cutts, and collaborate with him on several Projects. Just Imagine the amount of Money I could have made...

Statastical Analysis of my Life

2007-09-11T08:57:00.000+05:30

Once again, we have a masterpiece from Xkcd

The 3 Question Test

2007-08-10T19:35:00.000+05:30

Your Personality Is

Rational (NT)

You are both logical and creative. You are full of ideas.

You are so rational that you analyze everything. This drives people a little crazy!

Intelligence is important to you. You always like to be around smart people.

In fact, you're often a little short with people who don't impress you mentally.

You seem distant to some - but it's usually because you're deep in thought.

Those who understand you best are fellow Rationals.

In love, you tend to approach things with logic. You seek a compatible mate - who is also very intelligent.

At work, you tend to gravitate toward idea building careers - like programming, medicine, or academia.

With others, you are very honest and direct. People often can't take your criticism well.

As far as your looks go, you're coasting on what you were born with. You think fashion is silly.

On weekends, you spend most of your time thinking, experimenting with new ideas, or learning new things.

The Three Question Personality Test

My way of Thinking

2007-08-07T21:05:00.000+05:30

I had this conversation with a friend, that has set me thinking, and I am still searching for answers.
You see, we have this class, were we learn how to solve question that we would be asked in the aptitude tests, in the various placement interviews. These questions are the usual CAT type Quantitative questions, which are concerned with using some basic concept of Maths, like SI, percentage or GCD/LCM ect. Now you all know that I would not be having any problems with this, and you are right. I treat the whole lecture like a long and drawn out Puzzle session, and try to solve the questions in as many ways as possible. Very often it happens that I solve it much before anyone else, and sometimes even before others have started working on it.
It was regarding this that we were talking. She asked me, "Are you studying for these problems?" I said "no". She then asked me how I could come up with solutions so fast. Before I could answer that, she said, "Everyone requires time to think with logic"

This is when I realised, how differently I think when compared to most people. I tried to answer her question, but I could not articulate myself properly, so she was rather unsatisfied. So let me try to say here what I wanted to say.

I do not think with logic, I just think. Very often, my thinking is not logical; it is a series of random unconnected thoughts. But that is besides the point.
I do not need to think to solve these elementary problems. I can see the solution. It is after I see the solution, that I have to convince myself, which I do by thinking. There could be many reasons why my brain works like this.

Firstly, I have been solving puzzles for a long time. And compared to them, these problems are very simple. Hence I can quite easily abstract the mathematics out of it, and form an equation.
My experience also helps me out here. It tells me the best way of solving the equation, and shows me any short-cut, if any exists.

Further, more, I have always played around with numbers and am not scared of them. This might seem trivial, but I know so many people who do not realise what numbers are, and are more caught up in their properties and characteristics. Let me illustrate with an example. For me, 0.7, 70% and 7/10 are the different aspects of the same thing. I can use them interchangeably, because I am manipulating the Number underlying these representations, not the symbols. I am surprised when people say, "Why are you using 0.7? The question says 70%." This point is an important point, which many people like us, fail to grasp.

Further, more, once we have converted the problem into the language of maths, it can only proceed logically; there is no other way. I realise that I have so internalised this language, that I do not have to work at it, it works through me.

However, is this just a result of familiarity, where I have internalised so many things, that they seem natural (like we have memorised tables, and have no problems believing 3 times 17 is 51). I think not. I think there is something deeper. This is where I am having problems with articulation, and will be quite helpful, if you help me out.

As I see it, my thinking, is different from my expression of thinking. So When I say that I see the solution, I mean that my brain-processes are unconscious. I do not need these symbols, laws, and rules. They are followed implicitly. It is when I convey my thoughts to others, that I need these symbols and rules.
That is where the 'Think logically' comes in. That is where one is in control of thoughts (I'll prefer to say that one can choose which thought to focus on).But for greater part of my conscious time, I do not think consciously.

I'll illustrate this with an example. When I am on the bike, and taking a turn, I have to bend inwards. This I do without thinking. Even the amount of leaning is unconscious. A similar thing happens while walking and jumping. If you just try to think of what you are doing when you do these things, you will be surprised by the number of decisions you are taking, and how fast you take them.

I guess my rational processes also are performed at the same baser level, and by training and experience, I am capable of expressing them in a verbal way.

Metro- A review

2007-08-02T19:16:00.000+05:30

A lot has been written about these Multiplex Movies which are targeted towards a certain niche audience in the Metros. Life in a metro is one such film. I have wanted to watch it for a long time, but somehow one or the other reason I haven't been able to do so until today. It features two actresses who I have had a crush on for a long time: Shilpa & Kangana. I was weary of watching the film because I was afraid that it would disappoint me, and would have a non-existent storyline, with symbolic stereotypical characters. However, when I watched it, I was pleasantly surprised.

The story is a multiple-story, running parallel, which connect together in the end (Isn't that also the rage nowadays?). You have the sweet love story of Dharmendra and Nafisa Ali, the loveless marriage of Shilpa and Kay Kay, the unspoken love of Sharman for Kangana, the love affairs of Shilpa with Shiney, and Kay Kay with Kangan in addition to the unexpected love story between Irfan & Konkaana.

In spite of this somewhat complex character list, the Director has managed to make it an integrated story, which runs well. This is the strength of the movie. Before the climax, you don't have a single cliché dialogue or scene.

You have such a strong star cast, that they leave you spellbound in spite of the weak character development. Shiney plays a theatre actor, and he has one particular scene, where is giving a theatrical soliloquy on stage. This scene could have easily gone downhill with hamming, but Shiney manages to use just the right amount of control, that it appears to be something that would have been said on stage, but not hammed out. Kay Kay once again shows his immense talent and skill, as a husband in a love-less marriage. There is this scene where he confesses his affair and begs for forgiveness, only to hear Shilpa confess hers as well. You can feel the confusion in his mind, as he goes from the sorry one, to one wronged. Only He could play the chauvinist husband -who feels that his indiscretion should be forgiven while his wife's peccadillo is unpardonable- with such calm and total believability. His one movement of hands shows his entire state of mind.

Then you have these great actors: Konkaana and Irfan. They might have very few scenes, but when they meet, you can see the magic. Irfan has maybe 5-6 scenes, but he performs so well, that it is his dialogues that you remember. If lesser actors had been used, then the film would have surely failed. Sharman manages to do well with his limited character, and Kangana has once again to play the depressed and weak character that she has played in all her movies so far. The characters are one dimensional, but the actors playing them play them with so much gusto that we get a sniff of what they could be. I don't know why film-maker still think that character development means showing the audience what the character's life long ambition is.

This movie is more rooted in reality then the recent 'Metro' movies like Delhi heights and Ek Chalis ki local. Here Mumbai permeates ever scene, unlike Delhi heights, which could have been based anywhere in spite of the name. Now, I know I am a Mumbai-expert, but I can recognise every public place shown in the movie, be it the footpath outside Britannia, or the platform on Khoparkhairane. It is beautifully shot, with wide camera shorts that span, the entire scene, that make you feel as if you are there. The rain is also beautifully used in a number of scenes.

Along the way, it successfully deals with several competing emotions like, life ambitions, jealousy, Boredom, fear of society, lust, passion and loyalty. Now that is a very wide range, and maybe that is why the tagline of the movie is One city. Countless emotions.

Another thing I liked is the way the songs are pictureised. You don't have the usual song and dance routine by the characters. Now don't get me wrong, I love that a lot. I can't put into words how much I enjoyed the songs from 'Aap ka Surror'. Here whenever there is a song, the singers magically appear in the frame, behind, in the background to the main characters. It is a sort of magical surrealistic feeling to see them appear suddenly, and sing songs while the characters go on with their lives, but somehow I like it a lot.

After seeing this movie, a friend's sister had sent out a questionnaire, from which I'll like to quote:

hey everyone…last night I saw the movie “life in a metro” n was i glad i did..(hey! this is not a film review..it's better than that..) those of u who've seen the movie will agree with me that this film is nothing of the unforgettable or 'the one u take home' sorts..but something during the course of the movie really made me sit up and take notice of it (besides irfaan's performance tht is!) which is, that I could see almost everybody, and i mean everybody, stare at a reflection of themselves on d screen…and on not just one, but many occasions…The reality or rather the “familiarity” of the plot was just too strong to ignore and the next thing I knew, I was crafting this questionnaire to see how many of us could relate to the movie and in what way. The movie is definitely not a straight "A" but it does leave one with a strong aftertaste of the sex-driven, slick n fast-paced life we all call metro..the kind of life that we’re all subjected to..the kind of life that we’re all invariably bound to..and it was the realisation of this immense "common factor".......

Overall, I'll say it is a good film, definitely something I'll watch again.

You know that Reality Shows are fun

2007-07-26T22:10:00.000+05:30

Ever since "Survivor" hit the airways, Watching Tv has been fun. Reality Shows have taken over the Channels, with reality shows featuring fat people competing to lose the most weight, to modern versions of Cacofonix, crooning for the hearts of the audience.
I have never liked the India Reality shows, because they seem scripted and phoney. I'll rather prefer shows like "The Beauty and the Geek".

But I read about a Show, that I'll love to watch. Where did I read it? In the crime section of the Asian Age. You can read it at http://www.asianage.com/presentation/leftnavigation/news/top-story/raj-santoshi,-himesh-death-plot-is-foiled.aspx

In Case the link becomes dead, I'll post the main paragraph

An Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force on Wednesday arrested four criminals who had come from Mumbai to purchase weapons that were to be used to kill noted singer-actor Himesh Reshammiya and filmmaker Raj Kumar Santoshi. An earlier plot to kill Reshammiya in front of the cameras during the course of a TV show failed because the hired assassin was eliminated from the show in the early rounds.

I'm sure that if that guy had succeeded, I would have tuned in to watch it on Tv. I am sure that the channel would then have a sms vote, to figure out whether that guy should be hanged or given life imprisonment. Imagine the votes that would pour in for this guy...

You know

2007-07-06T19:55:00.000+05:30

You know that you read too much, when this is what you call light reading, and you read it all in a week.

You know you are truly blessed, when this is what you see landscape like this for 4 continuous hours

You know that people who told you not to bike on this highway, had no idea, what they were missing.

Chasing the Good Life: On being single

2007-06-28T18:43:00.000+05:30

I found this book in the strangest of Circumstances. The previous night, I had this long conversation with a friend of mine, about being single. We discussed the benefits, the gains, as well as the travails of being Single. We talked about going over to the dark side, and whether it was worth it.

I went off to sleep in my parent's bedroom, because my mom was asleep in mine. The room was dark, it was late, and I was tired. So I went of directly to sleep. In the Morning, as I was woken up by the chirping of the birds, my eyes turned to the nightstand, and I saw this book. Chasing the Good Life: On being single, I read. I thought I was still dreaming, so to check, I took the book in my hands. It was real.

I proceeded to the Index. Khushwant Singh, Radhika Jha, Farrukh Dhondy, Dolly Thakore, Suhel Seth, Jerry Pinto; People I have read before and liked. So I was intrigued. I wanted to know what these people had to say about the Singleton’s life.

Don't get me wrong. At my age, I am not thinking of Marriage. But being single is not having that special someone to share things with. For most of my adult life I have been single, mostly out of choice, sometimes out of circumstances, because destiny willed it so. I have been accused of being everything: from a Gay to a misogynist, to even a venustaphobe. I have usually replied that I like the company. Very often the word single has a particular meaning which it is meant to express, without using the appropriate word. For Most people Single=Alone=Lonely. Now I don't think that, that is a valid assumption, but I can't change how other people think. I wanted to know what these people feel about the single life, and I began to read it with much interest.

As one contributor said, 'This... was meant to be a breezy, witty, sassy piece on the joys of the single state'. So is it? It most definitely is, but it's much more than that. It not only is a heartfelt, humorous take on single hood, but it also manages to capture the subtle nuances of their life.

The best thing about this book is the variety it offers. It has 28 contributors, from all ages. These singles, are not only the unmarried single, but the divorced, serially married, widow(er)ed, as well as one, who claims to be a Married Single.

It starts off with an introductory essay by Bhaichand Patel, who regales us with his reasons of staying single, and even mentions in passing, how he almost got married to Rekha. Khuswant Singh mentions how he enjoys the pleasures of farting, while Radhika Jha notes the problems faced by a single person in finding a place to stay.

As Kanika Gahlaut says, 'The trouble with Single in the City chick-lit outpouring is that they are as predictable as a J.J. Valaya fashion show. You know what to expect. Either they are well-written Whines or they put forward the 'I lead a swinging life, who needs a man anyway' argument- both streams having spewed avoidable isms and literature worldwide. The truth about singledom lies somewhere n the middle.' This anthology tries to follow the middle path.

You have a beautifully written piece on becoming 'Suddenly Single' by Gouri Dange, you have the problems of the single mother brought forward in 'One plus three' by Anjali Puri, while Annes Jung touches us with her piece 'A world of my own'. On the other hand you have the always entertaining Suhel Seth, telling us his secrets of Seduction, Renuka Narayanan informing us of the advantages of singlehood in 'Minority Report’ and Rahul Singh excusing his singlehood, by blaming it on his 'imperfections'.

The problem with this anthology is the one that is there in all. All the contributions are not of the same level. Karan Thapar's piece is not even worth reading, while Dolly Thakore's essay, though from the heart, seems like a school essay, given it's pedestrian language and banal ideas. As someone wrote in this book, 'It's difficult to write about something that is a state of being as if it were a choice.' Not everyone can do it, but those that manage, do it beautifully. The Book should be definitely read, for the wonderful insights of all these people, whether we get them or not.

The words that they use, the ideas expressed and the metaphors used are wonderful, and humorous at the same time. When Mahua Sen mentioned 'carrying the heavy corpse of my own life' I know exactly what she meant, even though she used it to describe a different situation. Somebody else talks of the word Singleton, being a cross between single and Skeleton. What surprised me, as well as the editor, is that few people have written about sex or lack of it. Apparently there is more to life then just sex.

In the end, if you can learn anything from the book, it should be what Namrata Joshi Says, ‘I guess most of us singles are idealists, hopeless romantics who are not denying company but looking out for that perfect attachment, a soulmate.'

Yeah Baby! I'm back

2007-06-21T21:07:00.000+05:30

This Tuesday, I came from pune on my bike. I took 3 hrs and 50 mins for the 178 km ride. I didn't want to rush, given that the monsoon is on. The weather was so wonderful, with cool air, but no rain. When we go thru the Ghats, I felt like I was going thru the clouds...

I was Thinking of this ad as I was riding

I began to think, that who are the people that I am still angry at, and I need to forgive...As I rattled my brains, I came to the conclusion, that I had forgiven everybody. It seems, that I forgive people who hurt me quite easily. But, I know there was one person I was quite mad at; Myself. I had forgiven others, for hurting me, but not myself, for trusting them. Until I forgive myself, the healing won't be complete. With this realisation, I think I the job is half done.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Did you read about the Road China is going to build till the Everest Base camp? It's indeed an sad day. I think we are loosing far too much in this race to be the best in the world. Hitler and Germany in 1930's had gone through the same phase, where they built the largest ships, the largest airliner, the best engines, believing that having material things makes you the best. It's sad to see a Wise civilisation like china, following the same path.

~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was in Delhi, I had met Mr M.B. Lal, who asked me whether I read books. I had jokingly replied that I read far too much, probably too much for my own good.
I know that I am a geek/nerd & love reading books. But I truly realised the extent of my bilomania, when I saw the books that I have began reading in the past 2 days.

[I was going to put up a Picture of all the books I am currently reading, but I found out that I have left the camera cable at Pune. SO depressing]

I have began 6 books in all, which will add up to about 2500 pages in total. & I am sure that I will finish them all by next week

~~~~~~~~~~~
The News coverage of the return of Sunita Williams has been disappointing, to say the least. I know that many people are interested in this story, and this could have been used as a way to teach people about the wonders of space, and teach them about Science. Instead we have News Channels here covering the Havans & the namazes that people are offering for her safe return. Now I am not saying that Prayer is bad; It does have it's benefits. What I am saying is that we have lost a wonderful opportunity to popularise Science and Space travel.

2nd Delhi Vignettes: 2 Proposals, 2 biharis, 2 movies....

2007-06-08T18:12:00.000+05:30

As my stay in Delhi draws to a close, I think it's time for the second instalment of my observations.
Delhi is very weird city with the security apparatus being very in your face. You have traffic on large wide roads, crawling to a halt, only due to a traffic roadblock, manned by maybe one or two policemen. I wonder what they are looking for. You have two lines when you enter the metro station, one if you have no baggage & the second one, where you will be checked, if the guy is in the mood. Even at red fort, they have an X-ray machine, and you are physically frisked as you enter. The funny thing about all this is that even though there is a lot of security, nothing is secure.
The reason is not difficult to imagine. The checking is very often Perfunctionary. Like several times, I was more enthusiastic to get my bag checked then the guy was to check. Funnily enough, at Red fort, both my pant pockets were bursting forth with 2 cell phones, a camera, a water bottle & a pen Knife. The guy patted me down and let me go. I was left wondering whether he just wanted to feel me up or what...
Now we all know how I don't suffer fools gladly...You hardly need to be reminded about the fake ID scam or the incident at BARC. But I don't even want to resist here, coz it's really sad and scary. I'm having a hard time figuring out why there are not more incidents here, if the processes are so shabby.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have begun to realise how sad the life, of an immigrants to a city, is. You know hardly anybody, have pretty much nothing to do, and frequent the same places and meet the same people again and again. For example, two weeks back, when due to some medical emergency, we were not getting food at the guest house. So we had to go to the M-Block market to grab the grub. Naturally we frequented Subway, for its Sub of the day, which for just 56 bucks is filling, tasty, healthy and wholesome. What more does a guy want? We used to eat there everyday, except for Tuesday & Thursday, when the sub is Veg. I realised that we were visiting it, a little bit too frequently, when the guys started saying "Welcome back Sir". I used to go there with Rohan every time, and I'm sure they thought we like some gay couple or something, coz when I went there all by myself, they were quite surprised.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I happened to meet my elderly Relatives on Friday evening, which was very depressing for me. They have known me from my birth, and it was a real pain to see them in their sorry state. Senile Dementia has set in, and they asked me the same question again and again. They didn't remember me visiting them last year, but could remember me as a 14 day old baby. These were one of the most well read and intelligent People I had known, and it was with a heavy heart that I was interacting with them. You have really grown up, when you start wondering about your mortality.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The chicks in Delhi are weird. They come in only two varieties. Either they will be slim & come to your shoulder, or they will be hefty and you can see eye to eye with them. Another weird thing we have noticed is that it's very hard to guess the age of a female here. She can be an aunty, a college going chick, or maybe young enough to make you question whether you are a paedophile. It's really that hard. I never had this problem in Pune or Mumbai. There you can figure out her age with an accuracy of +/- 2years. Maybe the girl at matheran was a delhite. But this is not the weirdest thing yet. I am not joking when I say that I haven't seen a single chick with curly hair. No one. not one. Even the South Indians I know have Straight Hair. Rohan & I have a bet. The first one to see a curly haired chick wins. When Rohan and I were at CP, we were generally bird watching, and we must have seen at least a thousand of them, but not a single one with curly hair. The prize is as of yet unawarded.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The project has finally come to an end. I decide to sit up for as long as it takes, and finish the work. When we showed it to our boss, he was quite impressed. He already made us a pre-placememnt offer. But the late nights and early mornings are having their effect. The Physical stress as well as the mental trauma and strain has finally caught up with me. I am having this really bad sore throat, along with a really runny nose. I think it might take a
couple of days to convalesce.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Finally, I should be in Mumbai by mid next week. Yey!

Delhi>Mumbai...Ha ha...Nice Joke

2007-05-29T12:05:00.000+05:30

Over the past week, I saw that my visitor count was rather high, and on checking the logs, I came to know that quite a few people had come to my blog, by searching for Delhi Metro on Google Blogsearch. I am quite happy actually...atleast visitors will not go away disappointed, like the ones who come here searching for weird poetry...(Try it: Searching for some weird Topic+poetry & my blog is within the first few pages on Google, with a pagerank of just 4). So I decided to find out what else they were reading.

Firstly this Blog post (http://www.sprangleblog.com/?p=61). It's written by a certain Joe Harkin who appears to be from the US. His views and observations are quite interesting. And just read it for kicks.

Secondly, a Guy called Kartik Kannan has put up some pics, the first of which is rather interesting. Cleo had told me about a similar vandalised sign she had seen. I don't know whether she saw the same sign, or that he was a serial defacer, who goes around the metro leaving his mark.

Thirdly, this post by some looser who claims to be a journalist, but has no sense of judgement or ethics. He has put up pics and then writes at the end that taking pics in the metro is banned, and one should not take them. Further more the blogger writes:

This world-class transit system has upped Delhi's prestige and in my opinion has helped it replace financial hub Mumbai as India's hippest city.

It was on reading this sentence, that I was forced to blog.

This is a classic case of what is called a non sequitur.

Ok, the Delhi metro is better than the Mumbai locals by certain narrow parameters; but that's pretty much it. How does having a metro that closes down by 10:30 in the night, make your city a hip place???

I didn't want to make this a Delhi v/s Mumbai post. As Prashant Parikh says on a particular community on Facebook:

I'm SICK of ppl comparing the 2 cities, isn't the answer OBVIOUS?!?!?!
It's not that Delhi is a BAAAAAD place, it's just that Bombay is so much better!

See, when I usually say that Mumbai is better than Pune or Delhi, I usually mean that it is more convenient. I know it inside out; don't have to think at all while doing anything... So it's easier, and more convenient. I'm sure that when a delhite or any other outsider visits Mumbai, he or she too, will be confused by the system, and will prefer their home town. But one should also remember that when we talk about anything, we do that using our subjective background. So when I compare Delhi to Mumbai, I am doing it because, that is the only reference point or control I have.

Just as I understand that saying Mumbai is better than Delhi would be unjust, the converse too would be incorrect. Just having a Metro in certain parts of the city, and big wide roads and 12% canopy cover, do not make a hip city. What makes a city hip is being free to do what you want to.

Being free to go out whenever you want to, and being confident that you will get food to eat.
Being free to open your mouth and say what you want to.
Going out at whatever time of the day or night, without being concerned of your personal safety.
Knowing that, gods forbid, some calamity fell on you, people would readily help you.
Knowing that people generally help you without exploiting you.

It's things like these that make a city hip and liveable.

Delhi Vignettes - 1

2007-05-20T11:52:00.000+05:30

After two weeks in Delhi I have sort of settled down, and stopped being shocked by the varieties and the idiosyncrasies that this city has to offer.
As a Mumbaikar, the most striking fact is the pace of the city. In Mumbai, we are used to the fast pace, where time is very valuable, and everyone tries to do things in the most time efficient manner. Be it the shopkeeper who directs a boy toward you if you are standing idle in his shop, or the Auto driver who takes the money and gives you change in a flash, everyone is quick and nimble. P.L. Deshpande had written in one of his short sketches, that for a Mumbaikar, the watch is attached not only to his wrist, but also his destiny. When I told a co-worker that I was from Mumbai, the first thing that she said was 'Life bahut taze hota hoga, naa.' I don't know whether our life is fast, or theirs is slow, but the relative difference is striking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
I happened to travel by the Delhi Metro, this Friday. Now the Delhi Metro is matter of prestige for most delhites. When I had told some expatriate Dilliwalaas that I would be in Delhi, the first thing most had said, 'You have to travel by Metro'. Whenever some foreign Dignitary comes-a-calling, they are shown the Delhi Metro as a symbol of India's Development. I wonder what they think about it. They must be wondering, 'These Indians call 'this' modern? Then they are behind London by almost 120 years.’ What did I think, you ask? Frankly speaking, I am not at all impressed.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
As a Mumbaikar, I am used to long distance mass transport being a challenge. The Indian Railways must have decided that since Mumbaikars do not have much time for exercise, their daily commune should involve a sufficient quantity of it. This will lead to a fitter citizen and a healthier life. The Metro people here have no such lofty aims.
When you want to go up, you have the option of an escalator. Paying the fare and buying a token involves standing in a line for hardly any time. As you wander in the station, you don't have to raise you hand either to your eyes or nose, to avoid your senses from being offended.
There are markings on the platform which tell you where the doors of the coach will stop, and how you have to stand. When the metro train comes, you gather at the sides of the doors, and wait for them to open. Once they do, then people will come out from the centre, while you enter from the sides. In about 30 seconds (30 seconds??? the local trains in Mumbai stop for barely 11 seconds) the doors close, after an audible warning. This is what disappointed me the most.
You cannot show off you simian characteristics, which survived so many million years of evolution. I am of course talking of 'Hanging out’. This is the most fun part when travelling by locals, back home. Also you cannot show-off your feline skills, by rushing off to the closest available forward facing Window seats, due to the very absence of such kind of seats. Further more, vertical distance between the platform and coach is hardly 1 cm, while horizontally it is about 4-5cm; something that will hardly be called a gap by a Mumbaikar.
~~~~~~~~~~~
The announcements however, are as funny as in B'bay. There we have the announcers asking us to 'Pay your attention' like it some extortion money we have to dole out. Here you have a male voice in Hindi, and a female voice in affected English, talking to you while you are travelling inside the coach. They help you out by telling you which the next station is, implore you not to litter the stations, and remind you to save you limbs by staying away from the doors. The female voice at times tells you to 'Please mind the gap.' This is the aforementioned gap. Methinks they should say 'Please don't mind the gap' since it is so small. The passengers are also warned to take care of their valuables, since ‘Pickpockets have been identified in the coaches’. I wonder that if they have been identified, why they haven’t been arrested as of yet, and instead allowed to roam free.
There is however a nice egalitarian result of the Metro. There is only one class, and no ladies or handicapped or luggage compartment. Everyone travels by the same class. You will see laptop toting executives and cloth bag carrying dehatis besides each other, hanging on to the same hand support, which like always, comes at my cheek level, threatening to destroy my eyesight.
~~~~~~~~~

~~~~~~~~~
The food is going to be a problem. I am used to blazing through the day with only a couple of Vada-pauws and a cola, in my stomach. Lunch here consists of proper Punjabi Veggies, deep fried is the most cholesterol high oil, to be eaten with Roties covered with a thick layer of butter. No wonder I feel so sleepy in the afternoons.
~~~~~~~~

I visited Rajiv Chowk at CP after ages. It is now totally changed. The Rajiv Chowk Metro Station is underground, with two lines crossing; So It happens to be the largest station, or so I am told. For this they had to dig the Chowk up completely (as seen from the Google Maps) and they totally redesigned the garden. It now has beautiful walkway, manicured lawns, Powerful fountains and a nice open Air Amphi Theatre.
I also happened to dine at Nirula's. The standards seem to have fallen. I was looking forward to pigging out like I did along with Zulfikar back in 2001, but the first dish I had, itself was disappointing. I had asked for a footlong, and I got something that resembled a Long Pizza, with the mushrooms being dry and the cheese being chewy and not at all creamy. Nirula’s seem to have lost their identity, post their takeover.

~~~~~~~
In case you think I am being too harsh on this city, please remember that this is the Vindictive and arrogant Opinion of a pure thoroughbred Mumbaikar, on seeing a superior city. When you come to Delhi, you feel like you have come to the 'Rajdhani'. Be it the elegant curves under the flyover for U-turns, or the sparkling lines of led's on the road dividers or the uniform Urban fixtures, or traffic signage that actually makes sense, all make you feel like you are at a Special place. Infact I'll go so far as to say that if you have a place to stay, there is nothing like Mumbai, and if you have accommodation and your own vehicle, there is nothing like Delhi.
On an ending note...You feel the grandeur and the royal heritage of the city, the moment you land here, either at the railway station or the airport, when the Auto-wallas claim astronomical sums for short distances.

Fear

2007-04-20T22:45:00.000+05:30

"Have you seen Real fear in someone's eyes?" he asked me. "Real terror, fear of death, nor your ordinary, help-me-god fear."
I was travelling on a flight back home, with the latest Grisham in my hands. I had first seen him at the security check. He looked quite out of place, with his old fashioned tweed coat, and a brown leather suitcase. With his hennaed beard, and the thick glass spectacles on his nose, he strangely appeared quite self assured, a person who had seen the world. I had figured him out as a talkative type, and when he came and sat down next to me, I buried my nose in the book, trying to appear as asocial as possible.

"A look like that can change your life for ever." I silently wondered why I always get such talkative people as my co-passengers. Why do people of his age think that have figured out the world, and why do they want to bore other people with their theories? But I remained silent, in deference to his age.

"Let me tell you a story. A story of an experience, which changed me for ever." I realised that this was going to be a long one, so I ruefully closed the book. I was in half a mind to hit him on his bald scalp, with the thick volume.

"Some time has passed since this happened. It was a sleepy Sunday afternoon. The sun was high up in the sky, and the air was warm. Too warm infact. It was the kind of heat, in which even flies do not fly around, eating rotting flesh. I was on a village road, happily riding my 1953 Royal Enfield. The warm air felt like warm sand running on my skin. Not that it mattered. I had no care in the world, no deadline to meet, and petrol was not a problem.
There was not a soul on the road. Who would venture out in this mindless heat? Most people were sensibly enjoying their siesta.

This is when I saw a dark figure in the distance. I thought it could be a mirage. As I went further, the figure split into two, and I could make out two women trying to cross the road. Both of them crossed, and then one figure went back to middle of the road and stooped. I was approaching that spot, so I honked to warn her. The one at the side of the road looked at me, but the one in the centre, wasn't even aware of my existence. I honked once again.

She pulled herself up to her full height and began to look for the source of the honking, first in the wrong direction. Finally she saw me. I motioned her to cross quickly. I was hardly 15 m from her. But she saw me approaching on this huge motor cycle, and she froze. Like a deer in the headlights. She moved neither backwards, nor forward. She stood motionless, in the centre of that narrow road.
I realised that it was too late to change course, and I slammed the brakes hard. I could see that I was heeded directly towards her. I stood on the breaks to apply even more pressure. By now, I could look into her eyes. That is what we were doing. I was looking in her eyes, while she was looking in mine. I saw a look of sheer terror in her eyes. I didn't know what was going on in her mind. Was her life flashing before her? Or was she remembering her loved ones? I don't know. Her face had contorted into a disgusting scowl. It was a strange cross between biting one’s lips, and an open, gaping mouth.

I suddenly thought of skidding the bike to avoid her, but since I was within a few feet of her, it wouldn't have helped. Thankfully I felt the bike slowing down. I heaved a sign of relief, as I stopped within 6 inches of her dainty toes. The strange look on her face evaporated. Before I could even say anything, she jumped and joined the other woman.

I was too affected to follow her or talk to her. For a moment, through our eyes, we had spoken to each other. I don't know in which language. But for a few moments, my soul knew what hers was feeling. I had felt the very same fear that she was feeling. It was one of those threads of humanity that goes through each one of us. It is at times like this, that they come to our rescue. That is our Insaniyat, the things that make us human."

I took a deep breath, and opened my mouth. "Son, I am 73 years old, you must be in your twenties. Don't think you have seen the world, till you really have seen the world. And never ever keep me away from my Grisham. One more thing: don’t go bald for style. You will miss your hair, when you are of my age."

Infra Red Photography

2007-04-15T13:54:00.000+05:30

I have the most boring paper tomorrow, and hence my mind is easily being distracted. A Few days back, I was surfing Orkut, (i.e. checking out random profiles) and I found this community for Infra Red Photography. I checked it out, and it had every thing, except anything on IR photography. The absence of anything worthwhile, planted a seed in my Brain. I had to find more about it.

I already know a few things about Infra red light and photography.

Firstly, most CCD sensors can record IR light, but the lenses have special coatings, or special filters are used, to prevent the Camera from seeing this, for two reasons: You can see thru people's clothes using IR, and the IR light can totally mess up the 'in camera' calibrations.
Secondly, Shooting in the Near Infra Red band can have its advantages. This is from Remote sensing that I have been studying. Water appears dark in the IR band, while Vegetation appears bright. This forms the basis of mapping out vegetation using Remote sensing data.

In my search, I came to know that the IR blocking filter is present only in the recent models. Now my camera is around 430 camera-years old, since I have been using it for the 5^th year running, so in no way can it be called recent. Maybe I can after all do some Infra Red photography with it. I figured that since I was not going to study, I might as well do something constructive.

Firstly I checked whether my camera can see IR. This was achieved by using the most important invention ever manufactured, the humble TV remote control. The L.e.d. in the front gives out signals in IR, and hence can be used as an IR-only source. (Check it out. You should not be able to see the l.e.d. giving out light, when you hold it in front of your eyes)

Here is how the pulse appears to the naked eye

Here is how it appears to the Camera. (You can see a bright light emanating from the led)

Secondly I had to make a filter, which cut of the visible light, and allowed only IR to pass. I googled around, and found that you can use unexposed developed film, to make an IR pass filter.
So I searched high and low for some film of this kind, and finally found some.

On placing 2 layers in front of the lens, this is how the remote control signal appears.

Finally, after I figured out that it would work, I had to make a filter out of the film. I'll spare you the details, and just show you how it looks.

Now I can just attach this to my camera lens, and am good to go.

*
**
***
****

So I present to you, the World through IR light:

Here is how a Tungsten Bulb looks like:

Look at these flowers

In IR

Or these

In IR:

You will realise that what happens is, that the flowers, reflect very little IR, while the green leaves reflect a lot. Also the twigs, and the dry parts, that are in direct sunlight, reflect light throughout the spectrum, as can be seen in the normal as well as IR photographs

Now look at this place. Notice the white marble, the grass, as well as soil that can be seen.

When you see them in IR, you see that the marble reflects very little IR, while the Grass and Soil is almost indistinguishable.

Finally, the pièce de résistance:
You can see a variety of Objects in this Picture: Water in the swimming pool, the grass, trees, buildings, sunlight being reflected from glass...

Now look at them in IR

Whooo!
What they have been teaching us in Remote sensing is true...

~~~~~~~~~~~~
A note: I have a paper on Image Interpretation tomorrow. It deals with looking at satellite images, and then inferring from them what is on the ground. You can find out, not only whether it is agriculture or Forests, you can also tell which type of forest it is. If you are really experienced and skilled, you can even say what specie of tree it is. I am too bored to study it, and thought an experimental approach would help me get more marks. Let’s see whether this turns out to be true.
~~~~~~~~~~

P.S. This not meant to be an artistic post. It is to satisfy my geeky urges. And if you don't think, that making something on your own, finding new things, and using things in a way they are not intended to be, you are not a geek of my type. And if you haven't experienced the joy of seeing the theory working out in practice, I pity you. It’s one of the most beautiful things in the world.

Teri Yaad Aati Hai

2007-04-12T20:04:00.000+05:30

I have been an Adnan Sami fan, ever since I heard his voice along with Asha Bhosle in 'kabhi to nazar milao'. The same album contained his 'Lift Karade' which I totally loved. Here was this round, fat guy, who was having fun, could sing well, and laugh at himself. Why He even made fun of himself in the remix of that song.

Soon songs came and songs went. Every bollywood heroine, wanted to feature in his songs, and I really didn't mind. His songs were as beautiful as ever.

In the Middle of 2006, he went into hiding. Maybe a month back, we heard that he was exercising and losing some weight. We said, 'good for him'.

A week back I heard he was back. Back with a new song, as well as a new waist line; look at him at the Miss India contest:

Apparently the man now weighs 97 kilos and looks pretty happy with this achievement. Not only was he looking slimmer and trimmer last night but also appeared to be in a peppy, naughty mood while interacting with the contestants.

When I saw his new song, I was floored. Not only is it a beautiful song, but it struck a chord.

Have you guessed why it touched a chord?

Well coz it features SXC.

He reminisces about a woman whom he loved and grief over losing her just after professing his love for her, But for me it's something totally different. I left Xavier’s just when I was having the most fun. It's like just when I was having the most fun, I had to stop. So the "Teri Yaad aati hai' is for college, and the fun we had there.

On a related note, you will see that they have made the first quadrangle, look like some European cafe or something. Actually the first Quad has always reminded me of Venice’s Piazza San Marco

Why? The library building clearly is influenced by Doge's Palace

Don't believe me?

Well, look at St Mark's square in a 360 degree panorama: http://www.italyguides.it/us/venice_italy/doge_s_palace/doge_s_palace.htm

Now come back and look at some pics of the Library Building

and

Now what do you think?

I first got this image when I saw the first Quad flooded in 2003, when I had come on a rainy day.

From Wikipedia: The Piazza San Marco is the lowest point in Venice, and as a result during the Acqua Alta the "high water" from storm surges from the Adriatic, or even heavy rain, it is the first to flood. Water pouring into the drains in the Piazza runs directly into the Grand Canal. This is ideal during heavy rain, but during the acqua alta it has the reverse effect, with water from the canal surging up into the Square.

Namesake: The Movie Review

2007-04-05T19:48:00.000+05:30

About a year back I had read the novel, and had reviewed it: The Namesake

When I heard that they are making a movie on it, I was worried. The book is so beautiful, with characters sketched in details, lovely scenes, subtle references ect. How would Mira Nair cram all of this in two hours? I waited with bated breath.
Slowly the marketing hype began to be built around it. Mira Nair and Tabu even came on Koffee with Karan. It was left to be seen whether the movie would justify the hype.

So how exactly is the movie? Not too impressive. Let me elaborate.

The Good:
The movie has Tabu as Ashima, a role which she pulls off with ease. You can imagine her as the lonely woman who does not want to raise her son in this foreign country, or as the woman who tries the prospective groom's shoes before she accepts him. When you see her suddenly start singing, embarrassing her children in the process, you can see your mother in her.

Irfan as Ashok Ganguli, is perfect, with his diction, his mannerism or even the way he talks to his son.

Zuleikha Robinson is exactly what I had pictured Moushami to be. She looks just like the shallow, confused, hot slut that I had pictured her as, after reading the book.

The Bad:

Kal Penn is definitely the weak link here. He definitely has talent; he not just Kumar or the secretary of the Party liaison, but he is dwarfed by Irfan and Tabu. Or maybe it's the director's fault that his character's growth is not shown properly. His sister, as well as Maxine make just guest appearances, a far cry from the pivotal roles they play in Gogol's life.

The Ugly

The blame without a doubt, lies with Mira Nair. She has been faithful to the story, taking small scenes from the book, and bringing them out wonderfully on the screen. She brings out the subtleties like the expressions on Ashima's face when Maxine calls her by her first name. Or the small fights between the siblings and so on.

Where she fails, is in properly sketching out the characters. There are about 2 scenes describing Gogol's angst against his name, before he decides to change it. Or that the interaction between Gogol and Moushami is almost nonexistent, before they marry. On seeing the scene where they have their first date, you feel that he is attracted to her only sexually, which is not the case. Or that you almost don't know the sister. I could name a thousand different things which bothered me. The movie seems to lack continuity, and seems patchy.

Another problem, is that there are several jarring scenes. Take the weeding night scene. I really don't see why you have to have them dance on Hindi film music or mouth clichéd dialogues. Or take Ashima's speech in the end. How in the name of god does she come up with that kind of language? It just seems so out of place.

Ok I think I am being rather unfair to the movie; No movie can capture the soul of a book...
Wait... Peter Jackson did.

Poignant Point

2007-04-04T18:29:00.000+05:30

After the recent SSC paper leak in Maharashtra, a lot of vernacular newsprint has been wasted on the issue. As expected, Nothing constructive, or original appeared...till today.

My grandfather saw this reader's letter and read it out to me on the breakfast table. Let me summarize what the wise man wrote to the newspaper:

It is indeed sad that some students had to resort to cheating in the exams; But if you think about it, almost everyone copies. Some copy from chits, while others copy from their friends. Meanwhile the Toppers, copy from their memory.

I can bet that this point will be lost, on the majority of the readers.

Love lost: An allegorical tale

2007-04-01T20:08:00.000+05:30

Their first meeting, was totally unexpected. He was with his friend, while she was with hers, amongst thousands of people on a January morning. That cool winter morning, running along with entire Mumbai, along Marine drive, he didn't feel strange to stare at her. When their eyes first met across the road divider, he was stunned. He hadn't seen such beautiful eyes before. It didn't matter that she was soaked with sweat, for so was he. It didn't matter that her hair was messed up, coz no one can have beautiful hair in such a situation. She had a beauty, which shown thru all of that, and he himself was surprised to be attracted to her physically, when all along he called himself an intellectual creature.

He felt a surge of energy, felt more alive then ever before, and began to run faster, so that he could catch up with her. Running so fast made his friend breathless, but it hardly mattered; he had to meet her. When he reached closer, by some strange twist of fate, which god had planned all along, his friend recognised hers. Soon they were chatting, which was hard to do, when you have got to run 13 miles. So began that unlikely bond. By the time the foursome reached the finish line, he knew he had found 'the one'. Our crocodile hunter had found his Terri.

That race turned into lunch, lunch gave rise to coffee several days later, which grew into daily encounters. Meeting her totally changed him. He began to dress well, turned into an extrovert, he began to be concerned about his appearance, and he became more cheerful, confident, and so on. Most of people around him recognised the change, and wondered about its source.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well it didn't entirely change him. He was still afraid, very afraid. He never got the guts to tell her how he felt. He preferred to remain alone, rather than experience something new, which could hurt him. It didn't help when he told himself, that just because some other girl had hurt him years ago, this one would too.

Looking back at this, all of that felt like a joke. Did he really love her? Then why couldn't he muster the strength to tell her. This probably meant that he didn't love her, he told himself. It was just too difficult to accept that fear was stronger than love, especially when all love stories said that love conquers all, especially fear.

So had all this been a dream? The evenings at Kala Ghoda, the dinners at Leo's, the walks on the beach, the waiting on the platform, those conversations over cutting chai? What was all of that? He remembered being happy, having fun. Really, what was all that? It was too late now...She was leaving for the U.S. 'Who goes to the U.S. nowadays?’ he asked himself, 'especially when everything is available here?' He conveniently forgot that the root cause of cynicism is usually jealousy.

What about the fantasies of growing old with her? Of seeing the world together? They had a lot in common, and that is why he was drawn to her in the first place. He had enjoyed doing these kinds of things with her over the past few months, and had hoped to do so throughout his life. All those fantasies were now lying in the wastebasket of time.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
He met her that last one time, to say his final goodbyes. He had been telling himself over that last few days that he would be better off without her, but he didn't believe that lie, one bit. But it was too little, too late. He still couldn't muster that mythical strength, to confess his love. 'She probably doesn't love me, for if she did, she would have said something’ the coward within him was saying. He approached her with fear in his eyes, and hugged her one last time. As she crossed over into the departure lounge, he thought he saw sadness in her eyes. Something died within him that day.

P.s. This is an allegory, and any conclusion you draw from it, is a reflection of your mental state

The Night I Met Einstein

2007-03-12T21:21:00.000+05:30

Einstein has always been one of my favourite persons, not because he discovered the Theory of Relativity, but because he was a wonderful human being who just happened to be a great and original thinker.
If you see him as a genius, you are missing the most inspiring part of his personality, which is his humility and his basic human-ness. One should read his Ideas and Opinions to get to know him better.

Today I read this great article in RD, and thankfully found it online.

A young man who was tone deaf, happened to be attending an evening of Chamber music, and Einstein was sitting next to him. When this young man confessed that he was tone deaf, Einstein took it upon himself, to introduce him to Bach. What really made it for me, was how Einstein explained this activity:

"My young friend here and I, however, were engaged in the greatest activity of which man is capable......Opening up yet another fragment of the frontier of beauty."

Read the complete article:

The Night I Met Einstein

You Study at SIG if:

2007-02-26T20:49:00.000+05:30

This post may not make much sense to my usual readers, the aim isn't to make any sense; In fact if it made any sense, I would hardly be blogging about it.

So You may be a student of SIG if:

You pronounce 'Pen drive' as 'PAN Drive'
You Want every software available on the face of the earth, without knowing what it does, whether you need it, irrespective of whether you system supports it,or even without enquiring whether it run on your OS
You suffer from 'Laptop Envy' [similar to Penis Envy] if you don't get your laptop to College
You carry a flash drive around your neck, as if it was a Gold medel you won in the Olympics.
You think a chick is hot, just because she studies at SIMS
Your greatest regret is that the Comps in the Lab cannot access Orkut.
You life's ambition is to access the Net using SIMS Wi-Fi.

You Know you are in my hell when...

2007-02-24T15:56:00.000+05:30

Most of you know how much I hate shopping, especially the window variety. I am more of a Go-Look-Like-buy kind of shopper, and have a tolerance for maybe an hour or two of window shopping.

At a recent visit to Chennai, we had gone to a mall, called the Spencers Plaza. This is a huge place, spread over, what appeared to be like a gazillion floors. Each floor is vast, designed like a rat's maze, with the path having twists and turns. I was exhausted by the end of an hour of this touristing, and my sister promised me that we would stop to eat, at what appeared to be the last turn in the path.

Imagine my Horror when I saw the following sign.

[For the differently Visual & Humour Impaired : The sign mentions 'More shops' as If the ones we had been in, weren't enough]

Shashi Tharoor on Colbert report

2007-02-17T16:59:00.000+05:30

I just love the way in which Stephen Colbert presents news. He once appeared on Whose line is it Anyway?, but he gained popularity on 'The Daily News' It wasn't long before he got his own show on Comedy Central.
He presents news in a fun way, often asking questions and getting answers, which not even the best journalists could get.
So when Shashi Tharoor came on his show, I had to watch it. I hope you all like it as much as I do.

Planet India: How the Fastest Growing Democracy Is Transforming America and the World

2007-02-13T12:44:00.000+05:30

A Review

India is the flavour of the season, and as my father reported, the west is suffering from a collective Indomania. A plethora of books have been released, concerning the rise of India, and this book obviously belongs to that genre.

The topic of Indology has a long history, with each writer trying to understand 'The wonder that was [is?] India'. The fact is that India is a country that does not clearly lie in any particular class; it defies classification. It does not have a unifying or typical language, nor a single culture or religion. Politically, though India calls herself a socialist country, she lacks the basic features of a socialist society, viz: Universal education and healthcare. It is not a pure capitalist economy, since it has lacks a completely free market. Any parameter you try to measure India by, the results are ambiguous. Due to this, India is in a class by herself. Hence the age old need to understand and explain 'this working anarchy'

In the first few decades after Independence, India was caught [or rather preferred to be in] in No-man's land during the cold war. There was a heavy tilt toward the Soviet block, and hence India was a subject, which was not too high in the public consciousness of the west. The economic story was nothing much to write about, with India having the growth rate of about 3%, which gave rise to the term 'The Hindu rate of growth'. The south-east Asian economies with their high rates of growth were much more 'hot', and India's destiny was to be known for its spiritual power and as the land of poverty, disease, and snake charmers.

In the last two decades, first with Rajiv Gandhi's forward looking government, and then with Manmohan Singh's liberalisation, things began to look up. Things began to change slowly, and this change was almost imperceptible for the first 15 years. People began to realise that a new India was looming when, during the 2004 elections, the Government came out with its 'India Shining' campaign. BJP lost the elections, and the subject became taboo and politically incorrect to discuss. But the world at large had already started noticing the shift, not because of the advertisement blitz, but because of first hand experience with the Indian economy.

Slowly and surely India began to be placed on the same pedestal as China [It's an ironic thing. A hyphenated relationship seems to be India’s curs. Earlier the term ‘India-Pak’ was in vogue, and now India-China seems to be, the talked about phrase, in western Newspapers. A new term, Chindia, has recently risen to fill the need of a shorter name for this economic phenomena]. As the potential for Business in India increased, people began to write about the 'wonderful Economy' of India.

One of the first and the most influential book so far, has been Thomas Freidman’s 'The world is flat'. In this book Freidman talks about what he has seen in India, and how he thinks India has made most of the opportunities she has got. Another recent book has been the extremely readable 'Inspite of the Gods' by Edward Luce.

Mira Kamdar's Planet India also belongs to this category, but it is different for many reasons. Yes, it does have lots of quotes by Nandan Nilekani and Azim Premji, but it also quotes farmers from Vidharbha. She writes not only about Infosys and Wipro, but also about NGO's working in rural India. I think the cause of this major difference is that, she is of Indian Origin, and has seen India since the 1960's. Unlike foreigners, who are surprised that there aren't too many snake charmers on the street, she knows where the snake charmers are. Her acquaintance with India prevents her from being overwhelmed by the so called exotic experiences in India.

She does not write about 'The Art of Living' and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar as Luce does; Nor does she focus excessively on Infosys Campus as Freidman does. She talks of things that are rarely seen in foreign articles on India. She begins with describing the past and the present relations between Americans and Indians, which will help in providing a perspective to her main audience: The American Public.

She has devoted an entire chapter on the Indian Media, and how it is influencing the world. She talks of Shekar Kapur and Deepak Chopra. She informs us of the happenings of the Indian Animation Industry and its phenomenal growth. She talks of the huge impending change in the Indian Retail sector, which I have hardly seen being discussed in such great depth, elsewhere.

Nor does she paint an entirely rosy picture. Her writing might not be as pessimistic as some we see in our Newspapers or read on blogs; She walks on the middle path. She writes about her visit to Vidharbha, along with Dilip D'Souza, where she enquired about farmer's suicide. Her empathetic account is an eye-opener. Nor does she rest there: Pesticide Contamination, use of genetically modified crops, the impending water crisis, all find a mention. In the end her Optimism shines through, when she talks of how the corporate sector is in fact heralding the maximum change at the fastest rate.

Her sixth chapter - The Other India- is the most interesting one. Here she deals with the problems of health, disease, communal violence and sexual discrimination in India. I think she likes to end on a promising note, and that is why she places the section on a charitable hospital, which is helping in providing health care to poor people and yet making a profit, at the end.

Her last chapter is perhaps her weakest. She talks about the Geopolitical situation, and the rise of India as a regional power, but she has failed to present it in the same enlightening and holistic manner, that her earlier chapters have accustomed us to expect.

That all was her content, but how about the language? Her words flow freely, hardly ever using pedantic words, which might send a reader scurrying towards a dictionary. Her metaphors and ideas are easily understandable. I think this is possible only when the author has an intimate knowledge and love of the subject at hand. She is Inaccurate on certain Points [for example: The Prithvi missile is named after the element of earth, and not after Prithvi Raj Chauhan; The wheel in the centre of the Indian flag is the Ashok Chakra, not the wheel of the Khadi Charkha] but I believe they can be overlooked as minor.

All in all, this book is an extremely readable presentation of the situation in India today, and the problems it faces. It is up to us to look at these problems and solve them. The problems are huge and affect a lot of people, and if we don't do anything now, we'll never realise our true potential. As someone recently said, 'The world is India's to lose.

You Know-I

2007-01-10T19:43:00.000+05:30

You know that money can buy everything, when you have a toothpaste like this:

Science and technology have gone too far! Chocolate flavored toothpaste! huf!
What will they think of next?

[for those interested, It taste's like peanut butter]

Merry Christmas

2006-12-25T20:26:00.000+05:30

I have often seen comics or cartoons about my first love [ie Physics], But I have never seen a cartoon about my new field: Geoinformatics.

I saw a nice one from a really funny comic writer: Xkcd. You can check out more of his cartoons on xkcd.com

Wish you all a Merry Christmas & a rocking new year

Some Stupid Quizes

2006-12-10T19:38:00.000+05:30

I have found this site that has these silly quizzes, which answer questions like:

SO i gave some of them, just for Kicks, and here are the results:

Your Dominant Thinking Style: Exploring

You thrive on the unknown and unpredictable. Novelty is your middle name.
You are a challenger. You tend to challenge common assumptions and beliefs.

An expert inventor and problem solver, you approach everything from new angles.
You show people how to question their models of the world.

What's Your Thinking Style?

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You Are 28% Paranoid Schizophrenic

You're pretty grounded, though you have your occasional paranoid moments.
Just make sure to ignore those voices in your head!

Are You A Paranoid Schizophrenic?

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Your Expression Number is 1

You have the skills to be a top executive or businessperson.
But first you must develop your natural capacity to be a good leader.
You are truly original - with a creative approach to life and a very sharp mind.

You reach for the sky, and you have the potential to reach it.
Assertive and straight forward, you have little need for supervision.
You are self-confident, self-reliant, and courageous in your convictions.

While you sometimes fear loneliness, you prefer to be left alone.
A bit self centered, you may be hard to life with at times.
You also have a strong dominant streak - which can push others away at times.

What's Your Expression Number

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You Are The Opposite of Machiavellian

You don't have a cynical, power hungry bone in your body.
Honest and kind, you believe being a good person is the most important thing.
While your upstanding morals should be admired, be careful!
You're at risk for being manipulated and toyed with.

How Machiavellian Are You?

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Your Hidden Talent

You have the power to persuade and influence others.
You're the type of person who can turn a whole room around.
The potential for great leadership is there, as long as you don't abuse it.
Always remember, you have a lot more power over people than you might think!

What's Your Hidden Talent?

You Know you have Changed places

2006-12-10T18:30:00.000+05:30

It about 5 months, since I shifted to Pune, and some recent incidents have caused me to reconsider whether I should now stop calling myself a Mumbaikar.

You know your old home is less than a home when:

You can't switch off the fan in your sleep, coz you have forgotten which button is for which electrical device.
You find yourself saying 'I left it at home' and you mean your new place.
You don't have the keys to the main door.
You have forgotten the placement of the various channels on your Television.
The new watchman asks you to sign in when you enter.
You find that your wardrobe has other people's stuff in it.
You get to eat your favorite food for every meal.

My Home

2006-12-02T01:30:00.000+05:30

Several People have been asking where I am staying at the present moment, so I thought of puting up a picture: Click on it to see a larger image.

Secret of Longitivity

2006-11-24T13:17:00.000+05:30

This is just so damn funny! I was rontflol when I saw this:

The Visit to Xavier's- I

2006-10-20T12:39:00.000+05:30

This post is dedicated to Chitrak, who made a very passionate and scary request for it.. ;-)

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So I finally paid a visit to my alma mater, i.e. Xavier [It sounds so weird to call it that, rather than my college, but well change is always weird in the beginning.]. I am here in Mumbai for my diwali vacation, and I had many reasons for going to Xavier's.

As I was entering the gates, I realised that I did not have an id, and the watchman would surely ask me for one. Thankfully, it was the lull time of afternoon during the vacations, so the guard was not too interested in checking who was an authentic student and who was not. But just to prove a point, I asked for the entry book, and entered my details. There you have to mention who you are going to meet, and I was stumped for a while. Should I write that I am here to meet Terry, or should I write that I am here to visit the Physics dept, or should I say that I am here to sit in the foyer and bird watch, or am I here to claim my refund from last year's fees, or am I here to buy a T-shirt or two. Finally, I realised that I am a Physics pass out, so with loyalty towards Lr 14, I filled the Physics dept as my official destination.

On entering through the door, my legs surprisingly took me to the Heras notice board, which I used to look at only during the Maritime course. By the time that I scanned the board, and found nothing of interest, I was struck by a thought; will I meet anyone who remembers me, or will I be able to see only strangers in the campus? I shouldn't have worried. As I entered the first Quad, I noticed a lot of familiar faces. Most of them belonged to people from the SSL, and so my eyes jumped towards the SSl Notice board (let me explain here that I was primarily here to meet Terry, to request him to let me attend the rural camp, and had chosen this day as the initiation meeting was to be held, which I meant to attend.) I saw that the time had already passed, so I could continue with my aimless wanderings in those memory-filled corridors.

I saw Arjun, who told me that he would be coming to camp, so I was slightly placated. As I left him, I saw Achintya sitting in the tunnel, with someone from his usual crowd. After the perfunctory greetings, we got to the real thing, the usual Physics talk: abusing the professors, and at the same time saying how lucky we are (should it be were?) to be in Xavier's. Talking to him brought back memories of our foyer chats; some things never change. He mentioned how Rajesh had been prowling Orkut, and had found a couple of communities (you know what I am talking about) which do not show the dept in good light. Those were not Rajesh's words. He used the phrase 'Pattwardhan fan site'. See, I do not have anything to worry about, I already have passed out of the dept, and so I can bitch about it openly, and betray all the inner workings to the world at large. However, for people like Achintya, who have to meet the concerned professors day in and day out, those things can pose a dilemma. I was so busy laughing, that I did not correctly hear his reply to Rajesh.

As we were conversing, he came to know that his Ithaka practice was cancelled for the day. So after cursing the Ithaca people, we got back to cursing the Physics dept. He even went to the extent of declaring that he would be majoring in Maths. Physist are prone to making hollow threats. Since there was no special reason to hang out in the tunnel, we proceeded to the foyer. As I saw that wonderful place, it brought back so many memories, some bad, but mostly good. As I tried looking here and there, trying to locate the various spots I had stood at (and the garbage cans too) I spotted Rohit. He has been doing MSc Physics at National college, but has been missing Xavier's (well, who hasn't been?). He was there to collect the refund, just like me. With a fellow lr 14 sufferer, I decided to pay a visit to the dept and entered the Junior Lab. I saw Rajesh chatting with some of the junior students, with Veda standing in the background, doling out her motherly advice. Both of them recognised me and were asking about my whereabouts. They were interested in the news about other students. Veda was quite interested in Rahul's whereabouts. On hearing that he was working in the Diamond Industry, like all of us, she too was surprised.

Pune Diary

2006-09-10T12:51:00.001+05:30

On the road home from college, I saw this board, stating:

This road is maintained and repaired by MSRDC.

Now don't get me wrong, we see these kinds of boards in Mumbai too, especially the new concrete ones. On several of these boards along Link road in the Western Suburbs, the BMC has pasted its own logo, because they claim that they have done the actual work. The new roads are much better than the old ones, and both these authorities are trying to claim the goodwill of the public.

Not so in Pune. This particular road - University road- is nothing to be proud of. It has portholes, the size of graves, and the metaphor in my opinion is entirely appropriate. The traffic is so bad that it can take up to 25 minutes for a distance of about 400m. Not bad considering the road has been narrowed down to less than 5m due to construction activity, which has already extended beyond its completion date. In short, this ain't no expressway.

This would raise the important question: why would MSRDC claim that it maintains this road, when it is clear that it does not?
Methinks that this board has been put up by the PMC rather than the MSRDC.
Let me explain. Pune has horrible roads. They are narrow, Unplanned, with an excessive share of two-wheeler traffic. The buses that run on them look so broken down & ill-maintained, that would not even be accepted in Sub-Saharan Africa. The portholes are so numerous that it is hard to figure out which is road, and which is a porthole. They would be an excellent training ground for WRC enthusiasts. A common joke in Pune goes thus: 'In the rest of the country, you drive on the left of the road. In Pune, You drive on what's left of the road.

So it's no wonder that the PMC has been facing a lot of flak, with the mayor even threatening to resign, if the roads were not repaired. Some Guy in the PMC must have realised that if there was a way to decrease the brick-bats, it could at least name the road that were not under its jurisdiction. It's like when we were kids. If some toy broke, we would say, "Don't blame me, he was playing with it"

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On the 7th of Sep, there was a small function to sing 'Vande Mataram' in my society. Now I live in a sort of old-age home, with a majority of the population over 60, so you can imagine that there was a lot of enthusiasm to celebrate it.
I happened to be wearing a crème coloured T-shirt and my brown coloured Shikari Shambu shorts. Some one cold have easily described me as a cross between Jeff Corwin and a RSS volunteer. Further more I was the only fellow below the age of 30. So it was no wonder that people were looking at me with wonderment.
A large tricolour was attached behind the podium, and there were speeches noting the history of the song. Before we sang the song, it was announced that keeping the sentiments of certain people in view, only the first and accepted verse would be sung. The Old Timers were visibly dejected. Further more the anchor explained, that the song would be sung to the original tune. The Old Timers smiled.
Then people began to sing. I haven't heard such an out of tune, inharmonious song before. People were singing it on their own tune, at their own speed; it was total cacophony.

But it's the though that counts.

Vande Mataram

2006-09-06T17:06:00.000+05:30

Tomorrow happens to be the date that the GOI wants students to celebrate the centenary of a wonderful song, Vande Mataram.

There has been much controversy over this issue:

Firstly experts claim that 7th of Sep 1906 has no significance for this song. History records that Bankim Chandra Chaterjee wrote this song in 1875 and an abridged form appeared in his 1882 Magnus Opus Ananda Math. It was well known but it made its mark in 1905, in the struggle against the partition of Bengal. It was the December of 1907 that it was adopted by the Indian national Congress. So why was this particular date chosen? Only Arjun Singh knows, and we can't be too sure about his judgement.

Secondly there are questions about its secular credentials. It was no doubt written as a prayer to Goddess Durga in 1875, but it had a wider & different meaning in 1905 and was explicitly adopted by the INC, as an anthem, dependent on that fact. There will always be people wanting to pick up fights, and appear Victims. There will also be lots of people wanting to believe in conspiracy theories, despite evidence to the contrary. A case in point being the forward going around on Orkut that Jana Gana Mana being a homage to George V. Tagore had laid that controversy to rest years back, but these people were neither born then, nor do they have the brains to accept his defence.

The words 'Vande Mataram' have been a wonderful rallying point for millions during the freedom struggle, and even today to signify the Mahatma's presence in Munabhai lage raho, the lyricist had to come up with the song 'Bande me tha dum, Vande mataram'.

Frankly I don't care a damn about any of this ignorant crap. It's a wonderful song that is very beautiful when you hear it. Even if you do not know the meaning of the words, the words have a very musical air about them. It expresses wonderful ideas, and conjures up a very beautiful image in front of our eyes. It is sad that the people have had to been reminded about it and some elements are forcing people to sing the song.

Also read this wonderful article by H. Y. Sharada Prasad.

A Political Song

Finally here are the accepted lyrics of the song.

[This is from a Picture I took in Trimurti bhavan last year]

Discover: The Bike & Biking

2006-08-11T19:39:00.000+05:30

It's been two weeks since I have been riding my new bike, Discover from Bajaj. As Chit asked for the pics, I thought that I might bundle a short post along with those, detailing my first experiences of riding in Pune, which is considered the two wheeler capital of India.

When I took admission in Symbiosis Institute of Geoinformatics, [SIG for short; ] I had realized that I would have to bike everyday to college, since it's about 7.5 K.m. from home, and no India city can boast of such an efficient and comprehensive Transport system like Mumbai.

With this am in mind I had asked my cousin brother to teach me some stuff, coz he is a total petrosexual, and he bikes to his college in Andheri. The first two sessions went exceedingly well, but at the end of the second session, after riding beautifully for two hours, I skidded on a turn, just below my house.

After scraping my skin and injuring my ego, my knee was immobile for almost a fortnight, so practicing more was out of the question. By the time I could flex my leg, it was time to shift to Pune. Thus When I bought the bike, and took delivery on the 31st of July, all I had, was the experience of about 3 hrs, that too on safe roads which were unfrequented by traffic.

So Was I prepared?
No.
Was it stupid and naive?
Definitely.
Was it fun?
Not so Much.
Am I better off because of it?
No doubt about it.

The roads in Pune are terrible, and with the incessant rains, they have literally gone down the drain. You cannot figure out whether you are driving on Gravel or the ruins of a road. And on my everyday route, they are building a flyover. This has slowed down traffic so much that it takes about 25 minutes on a 600m stretch. The portholes on the road are numerous, and the surface would provide excellent practice for future astronauts, wishing to travel on the moon.

It was in conditions like these that I am learning to ride. The thing about learning on your own is that there is no one to tell you where you are going wrong. In fact you do not even know whether you are going wrong or not. Thus you keep on repeating the same things, and wonder why you are not getting the expected results.

For example: My bike is a 125 cc, electric start version. The important point is that you don’t have to go in neutral every time, and kick start it. You can just press the clutch, press a switch, and the engine roars into action. This means theoretically you can start in any gear, though it is not recommended. What happens when you do this is that you have to delicately let go of the clutch and rotate the accelerator at the same time.

As it is, my hands are not very delicate. They are digital, not analog. I can give either full force, or no force; something in between is very difficult, and almost impossible to control. Because of this, the engine used to stall, frequently with a lot of traffic honking behind me. You can imagine how difficult it must have been for me, and how much of a handicap I suffered.

Today, it struck me that I did not suffer from this problem when I was using the kick start, and this solved my dilemma. While using the kick start, I used to start the motion in first gear, which is made for exactly that reason. Using the electric start, I used to try to start moving at a higher gear, and these usually fall when the bike is in motion.

If someone was teaching me, he would have found this fault long back, but learning on my own, I had to figure it out by myself. After this, I truly enjoyed riding for the first time in a fortnight.
It was this moment of self discovery that I truly cherished; I also understood why I love Physics, but still hated it in TY.

It was this self discovery that I was missing in TY. Earlier I could calculate and derive formulae and model situations, and they corresponded to reality. In TY, I could follow the derivations, but they did not relate to an immediate reality for me. I was missing the feeling of figuring out things on my own; the mythical 'Joy of finding things out'.

On this note, let me show you my bike

The Great Divide and Biases

2006-08-08T21:51:00.000+05:30

There has always been a wall, on the wrong side of which, I often find myself. This wall apparently divides the fun loving people from the serious minded people. I call it apparent, because I do not think that this distinction is a valid one.

Most of you, would have been accused of being serious and sincere [I am not quite sure of what sincere exactly means in this context, though I include it, because I have been accused of being so, more then once], because you love doing things, which the world at large, finds to be boring and useless. But we still do them. Why? Simply, because it is fun.

I read Shakespeare in archaic English, not because it makes me look smart, but because it is so much fun. I love having discussions about philosophy and finding answers to abstruse questions, because it is fun, and I find it enjoyable to do so. I find Physics wonderful and interesting, not boring and useless.

This wall exists for people who do not find these things 'fun'. They would not willingly undertake tasks like these. It is for this reason that they think all those who undertake these 'endeavors' are serious people who are different from the world at large. What hurts even more, is that they assume I am incapable of having fun.

This just goes to show that we are so keen to label people and slot them into certain stereotypes. We would rather believe people who are different to us in certain things, to be different in other things as well. It sure is difficult to know a person, but I bet that you'll find you have plenty in common with any given person. You just choose to notice the differences, focus on them, and use them to define a Person and judge him.

I believe this stems from the old Brain/Heart divide. It is often [and wrongly I might add] assumed that evryone has an emotional side, while only a select few have an intellectual side. This makes it socially acceptable to have 'emotional talents' like singing and dancing, while Intellectual pursiuts are only for the chosen few, as it cannot be apreciated by everyone.

I have often seen that those who the world calls 'serious' do not make this mistake; this is really not surprising. I would not call someone who loves talking, singing and dancing fun loving, because according to me everyone is fun loving, the only difference is the source of their enjoyment. This view I derive not from some intellectual reasoning, but from everyday experience. I know people from both sides of this mythical divide and know that they are not unlike each other. Sure, if given a choice I would spend my time with people who have more things in common with me, but that does not mean I don't mix with the 'other' group.

This quality has given rise to humorous comments from others. Like yesterday, a girl asked my friends, 'why does he hang out and speak to you?’ This question is a loaded one, and has two implied meanings, none of which I agree with. Firstly it implies that my friends are not worth hanging out with and talking to. Secondly it implies that I should not hang out with people who seem different to me. Both of these, as you can imagine, are totally unacceptable and ideas
not worth following.

Only if people did not jump to conclusions, rush to judge people, and be content with their judgment, the world would have been an easier place to live in.

Some Things That Amaze Me

2006-08-01T20:33:00.000+05:30

It is said that when one spends time along with oneself, it will lead to self realization, about self, about the surroundings and and finally the universe.

Here are some things about me that amaze me:

That I miss the madness called Mumbai
That I judge people by their way of speaking English
That I value sophistication so much
How conservative & tradational my ideas are about feminine beauty
How much I miss the sea
That I can be so snobish
That my background in Physics & thinking can be so useful

Humour and the Blasts

2006-07-13T12:31:00.000+05:30

Here are 2 of the funniest cartoons I have seen on the Blasts:

This one from the AsianAge:

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While this one is from DNA

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It seems some of you didn't get it, that the thought I had last expressed was a sarcastic one. I wrote that coz some sill hack would soon claim some numerical reason for the bomb blasts happening on 11/7/2006, and I wanted to pre-emept that.

And low and behold, I got two emails claiming exactly that.

The first one claimed:

11 minutes 7 places 8 blasts.
Tuesday was the 11^th day of the 7^th month, in the year 2006; and we know the numerical root of 2006 is 2+0+0+6=8

while another claimed that :

The blasts happened on 11/7/2006; Now 1+1+7+2+6=17; 1+7=8;
now we know that 8 is the number of Saturn, which brings along calamity and destruction; Further more 8 will explain why bad things happen on the 26^th; becaue 2+6=8 [refer to my earlier post: 26, The bad luck day!]

The thing with numerology, and especial this hindsight kind of numerology is that once you have a series of random numbers, you can definitely find some complicated formula which will fit that data. I'll start believing in numerology, once they effectively predict a future event, and it happens exactly when they claim it will happen.

Mumbai Train Blasts

2006-07-11T20:48:00.000+05:30

So Mumbai now suffers from Terrorist attacks after the onslaught of Rain and hooliganism in the matter of 10 days.
They have attacked trains, which as you know are the lifeline of Mumbai. They have not only been well planned, but well executed as well.

If you look at it, they are quite different then the 1993 bomb-blasts. Those were targeted at prestigious places like Air India Building and Passport office.

This time the bastards have acted smartly. They have targeted those places which are frequented by the common man. They want to spread panic, terror and mayhem among the ordinary citizens of Mumbai.

Think about it: As an ordinary person how many times do you go to the Air India building and the BSE? Wouldn't you spend more time in the trains everyday.

With these blasts wouldn't you worry a little bit before taking a train? But the sad thing is that you have no choice. There are very few people who can travel by car or bus to work. About 5.5 Million people travel by train everyday, and some of those who left today morning, won't be reaching home tonight. Really sad to think about it. May god give strength to the families of the victims.

A totally inappropriate thought now:
Today is Tuesday, If you look at one of my earlier posts, http://dev3.blogspot.com/2005/08/26-bad-luck-day.html
Most of the incidents mentioned, also happened on Tuesdays
A lot to think about tonight.

Feynman

2006-07-03T20:08:00.000+05:30

Whenever we think of something, we often have thought along similar lines before, and we extrapolate that thought process to solve this new problem. Other people might call it 'Assuming'. Nothing wrong with it, except for the fact that this thinking becomes sort of mechanical and very often we do not understand the problem in a fundamental way. Feynman was never like that. He would like to understand a problem from a fundamental view in a sort of unconscious way and he would often come up with a totally new and better way of looking at the problem. His thought process was a very unique one, because he refused to have any preconceived notions and assumptions, looking only at the relevant factors. For example look at this link:

If Richard Feynman applied for a job at Microsoft

let me quote to show you how he thinks:

Interviewer: I mean, why are there round ones at all? Is there some particular value to having round ones?

Feynman: Yes. Round covers are used when the hole they are covering up is also round. It's simplest to cover a round hole with a round cover.

If you have more time, look at this link:

Richard Feynman and The Connection Machine

Tags: Feynman, thinking, though process

Pune

2006-06-25T15:46:00.000+05:30

I have been enjoying a much needed vacation here in Pune, and Here are some bullets:

Pune is well known for it's arrogant shopkeepers. After hectic shopping at West side we proceded home for lunch and we got a call from them explaining that there was some billing problem, so they asked us to come back. We thought that they had forgotten to bill something, and so were asking us to pay more. We asked them to come home. When they came home, they tallied the bill and told us that they had wrongly billed us for an extra Rs 499, which they will return! Punyat Ase hi hote!
I am busy noting all the good eateries in Pune and today, I found the Pune University canteen to provide a heavenly Vada Sambhar.
I also took all my younger cousins to watch Krrish and I might write abt it later.
Now I am highly knowledgeable about Bey-Blades, which I am told is the latest rage amongst kids today.

Movies & more

2006-05-03T01:08:00.000+05:30

Most of you know that I have a chronic affliction of watching movies, even bad ones. While chatting with someone, I was accused of wasting time watching movies, which according to him, I could have better used, by making something of my life.
I strongly disagreed with him, and here I would like to note down the things I have learnt from movies, which I could not have got from any other source.

Lessons from Movies

The best time to do a quick Reconnaissance of a room, and check out the entry/exit points, as well as spy on the people present, is while doing a complicated dance, with atleast 50 extras dancing the same step in sync.
[On a related note].. The easiest way to gain entry to a high security party is to masquerade as a dance troop.
There are 2 ways in which a boy can meet a girl in college; firstly by having a big fight & secondly by being very clumsy and running into [literally] her, which result in both of you dropping all your stuff on the floor, thus giving ample opportunity for both of you to take each other's stuff.
If you meet someone and start off on the wrong foot, and you don't know their name, chances are high that, you will be spending a lot of the next day and a half, either saving the world from Nuclear disaster, or saving the POTUS, or falling in love, and quite possibly all three.
The skill most required of a criminal, is an ability to dance well.
If there is a shootout between rival gangs, the newbie will have the best aim.
The best time to have a secret, heated discussion with ur significant other is during a ball dance.[Ok I know I am coming back to dancing, but that's what I have noticed]
A Spy has the best sex life. [Even Arnold in True Lies has one by the end]
A porn star can pretend to be a hot school teacher and no one but the priest will know her true occupation.
Mafia Dons can't plan their next move unless the are being fitted a suit by an exclusive & expensive tailor.

These are the thing I have learnt in the past 3 days by watching movies, what have you learnt?

Finally

2006-04-29T12:15:00.000+05:30

I just read this link: Google route to track militants

Till some time ago, we used to read how pissed the Indian authorities were with Google earth [even APJ Abdul Kalam had spoken out against Google earth]. They were worried that terriorist and Naxalites could use Google Earth to undermine the security forces.

Now the army has realised that two can play at that game. Let me quote:

....that the satellite pictures would be able to pick out the green cover and the terrain clearly, enabling the forces to plan much better. They said it would be like flying over the area physically, instead of depending on two dimensional contour or relief maps.

Maybe now the Indian Government will realise that the benifits of Google Earth far outweigh any risks associated with security issues.

Google Earth, India

Wow! did you read this?

2006-04-15T21:01:00.000+05:30

I have just read a column on rediff.com Mukesh Ambani's great gamble . I would suggest that you read this.
My jaw just dropped when I read about Mukesh's plan. Let me quote

coming up across India's commercial capital, on as-yet fallow land in what is just another squalid suburban slum, is India's first 21st century megapolis. With its own dedicated airport, a rapid transit sea-link connecting it with Mumbai, and living conditions on par with the swankiest, most sophisticated cities of the world.

I Have Reservations

2006-04-11T23:01:00.000+05:30

Arjun Singh's announcement on 5th of April about reservations for OBC's in Centre funded educational Institutes of Higher Learning has started quite a debate. I have followed this debate in the press, TV news Channels and on the internet with great interest, and I am still not satisfied.

Reservations have been an emotional issue since the days of the British. If you remember school history they were first introduces as a solution to separate electorates in the 1930's. Reservations in Governmental jobs and educational institutes were introduced by VP singh on the recommendations of the Mandal commission. The first wave of reservation was greated by self-immolation of young students in Delhi.

Fifteen years have passed and this time the issue is much more serious. What is different this time is that the OBC's will be at the receiving end of the charity and the total scope of reservation will reach 49.5%.

Its no wonder then that there has been passionate pleading from both the supporters and the opposers of this move. The problem with this debate as I see it is that it has been more of a rabble-rousing, emotional inciting then a logical persuasive way of making the other side understand your point of view.

Both sides have been using anecdotal evidence to promote their cause and recalling hearsay and extreme stereotypes of the opposing camp to malign them. It just so happens that those who are opposing this move, tend to be better looking, more educated and are used to captivating others with their sophisticated and suave ways.(for example look here)

The supporters will talk about B R Ambedkar, and how he gave a voice to millions of Dalits. They will remind us that the so called education institutes produce professional who will happily sell their soul and leave for America for a Dollar Salary. The opposers will introduce anecdotal evidence about how students from the reserved categories fail to keep up with the work at IIT.

I will not get into specifics as I am not an expert on these issues, but I will try to look at some of the arguments as logically and rationally as I can.

1] The Supporters point out that the Upper Casts make up only about 16% of the countries population, but their fraction in the professional as well as higher educational streams is more then the proverbial Lion's share. I agree with this point, but not with the conclusions drawn from it.

Let me give an example. The Parsees are a miniscule portion of India's populace, but they have been responsible for so much. According to one study, 7% of India's population depends directly or indirectly on the TATA group of their daily bread. They have been responsible for so many institutions that are well cherished in Mumbai..... Most of the capital in the stock market is held by people form Gujarat.

While the statistic that, there is such a miniscule proportion of the disadvantaged sector in the higher institutes of learning, is shocking, these people fail to follow their logic and ask for the same data from the 10+2 and Graduation level. They do not want to talk about the reasons behind these numbers. I can't see how you can solve the problems without going into its causes. Its like a doctor giving cough medicine to a patient who is coughing without ascertaining whether the patient has AIDS, TB or just plain flu.

2] The opposers of the move regale us with tales of reserved seats candidates doing badly at IIT/IIM.  I can't use this as a factor in reaching my decision, as there is no hard evidence. All I am asking for is some Freakonomics type of research. Here is how someone can do it. Take data containing marks for all years from say 3 IIT's, 3 IIM's 3 NIT's and 5 Medical colleges from the last 15 years and 5 other colleges and see if their is some correlation between the scores of those who got in on Merit and those who got in on Reservations. Further more you could actually then see how both the groups progressed and you could even see how much each group improved over the duration of the course after normalizing scores for each group separately. After someone does this study, use this data to actually see how helpful reservations have been for those who have benefited from them.

3] The supporters claim that these institutes have been set up by the Government to help India.  Sorry they have not been set up for this purpose. Look at the mission statement of IIMA  let me quote: IIMA's mission is to help India and other developing countries improve their managerial practices....Objectives:...To provide learning facilities to men and women of exceptional calibre for pursuing careers in management or becoming teachers and researchers in different management fields.I don't read anywhere.. Help Indian citizens get better jobs...or anything like that.  At most they say...To participate in and contribute to the formulation of public policy, which would provide answers to questions of social importance. These reservations at this time seem to be a political gimmick without actually any thought being put into it. It seems there is more to this announcement than is visible [I am talking about Arjun Singh's political ambitions]

It’s not as if anyone wants to help the OBC's. As I see it, no one is questioning why in the first place so few people of these particular casts fail to score high on the entrance tests. Is it because they can't put as many hours in to study as those of the higher casts do? Or is it because they lack certain skills which those from the higher casts are gifted with. Or is it genetic and their brains work in a different way then others and hence they can't score as high? [Like blacks scoring lower on the SAT's in the US]. Further more, aren't these entrance tests an indication of how well you have done so far? And wouldn't there be a high chance that this level of performing would be carried over in the future?

When I look back at this, I wonder why I staunchly support reservations on the basis of sex but not cast. I think it is so because I fear that these concessions will not be used by those who actually need them, but by those who are already empowered. This is why I would strongly support reservation based on economic status. I believe that once you become rich enough [how rich is a different question] you should stop being a burden on the government and society. This is an important issue and we all need more inputs before we can decide on it.

The Ekka speaks

2006-03-26T17:03:00.000+05:30

I have long respect Amir Khan. Whenever you talk to this man and listen to him, you realize that he is saying it with sincerity and after a lot of thinking. He has a lot of things to say about the media.
In this Interview to tehelka he talks about his views on the media and why he has stopped talking to reporters.

One of his quotes just say it all :

First of all, its meant to be a watchdog of society not a lap dog! Very broadly speaking, I feel the media has a grave responsibility as far as news reporting is concerned. They should be accurate in their reporting and they should weigh which news is more important in terms of how it affects society and people and, at a national level, what is important, as opposed to some titillating news about some celebrity.

I get a lot of newspapers at home (all of 780 grams on a weekday and 1110 on a Sundayy. I have actually measured it.) and I find that most of it is full of crap.
One of the Jain Brothers wants to give away the Times free to the readers, and I think they would still make a lot of money from the ads and the 'news' that they print on payment of money. Asian age is good only for the Oped articles, and HT is still trying to be different. And don't even get me started about the News channels.

The things that the media would like to call 'news' just makes me cringe. Its high time someone said something about all this, and I am happy that Amir has put forward his thoughts.

Hypnagogic Musings

2006-03-26T02:13:00.000+05:30

There are times when one has had a hard day and wishes to switch everything off. Something similar happened to me yesterday. After the exam, I had coffee at CCD and went to the station. The day being a Saturday, the crush dense load was missing and I happened to get a place to sit at Charni Road. The train happened to be the 'illenium Rake'. I haven't named it so; The M has actually fallen/stolen from the coach. The interiors might be shiny and open, a refreshing change form the old shit coloured coaches, but the seats suck. Firstly the place between seats is too small, and with my long legs, it hard not to hit the facing co-passenger in the groin. Secondly the distance between the back of your head and the wall behind it is about 4 inches, so its very hard to sleep.(ok I'm digressing)

Thankfully I had got a window seat and I had nothing better to do, so I started snoozing. I was sitting in an awkward position and had just had black coffee, so its no wonder that I found myself drifting from consciousness to alertness and back again. This continued till I made myself at home in the Hypnagogic state.

This is a state in which one is not quite dreaming, but neither is he fully awaking. You might be vaguely aware of what's happening around you, but its a weird state to be in. The curious thing about all this was that I was aware of all this and did a very Feynman'isque thing. I started to observe that there were times when I was not aware of my Hypnagogic state. Everytime I came back, I knew time had passed but couldn't tell how much or how I knew.

I remember having had experiences like this before and now that I try to analyze, I can see that the common thing to all of them is that I have been in this stage right after I stopped doing mental tasks which were excruciatingly exhausting. Today's task being keeping all those equations and theories in my memory. What I think happened was that after this hard works, the brain cells to protect themselves switched off or something. I realize that I am not being very lucid or even articulate here, but bear with me.

As the exam was over, I no longer had to remember all that stuff, so it was like my brain was formatting itself. I don't know if what happens at the neuron level can be compared to the hard disk, but that's the best way I can put it right now.

As I reached Borivali, the sun had set and darkness had fallen. Then this deep gloom came over me, which I have recognize whenever my body/or my unconscious gets confused. I know its night but I am not quite sure that its time for nightfall. In my gloom i felt that it was quite dark. To check I looked at the streetlamps, and many of them were infact off. I am not implying that in some mysterious way my mental state affected the halogens and switched some of them off. All I am just saying is that since I was in a particular state of mind,I remembers the darkness. It affected me, because I was partial in that mood. If I had been cheerful or something, I would not have noticed the partial darkness.

As I trudged back home, I remembers that Homes had once remarked to Watson that the 'nothingness after a case' was a funny experience (or something to that effect) I think he was referring to this very feeling.