The Whinchat Sings...

Experience

2011-12-15T18:03:00.000-08:00

You cross over the pedestrian bridge, hoping to catch the train before it leaves. You're two floors above the ground, and taking stairs would be faster. You need to get to the train, and to the last compartment if possible, because it would be closest to the staircase at your destination. You stumble down the stairs as fast as you can, walking as fast as possible, so that you can continue to breathe normally. Just as you exit the stairwell, you hear the crackling of the overhead power lines, heralding the arrival of a train, onto the station.

You look up, and there it is, hurtling close, across the tracks that you must cross to get to the train you need to take. Without a second thought, you begin to run, as fast as you can, across the tracks, right before the train comes in, across to the last compartment of the train. A risky thing to do, crossing tracks right in front of a train.

But it's needed. Because the moment the incoming train comes to a halt, your train will leave, forcing you to wait fifteen minutes in the chilly night air for the next one. You know this, without consciously realizing it, without reading it somewhere, without being told by someone who's familiar with riding the railway system. You know this.

That's experience.

Tell Me A Joke

2011-09-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

What do you do when in an interview, the interviewer asks you to tell him/her a joke? Apparently this has happened, according to http://www.businessinsider.com/17-real-job-interview-questions-you-dont-want-to-be-asked-2011-3#tell-me-a-joke-8

This worries me. I enjoy jokes and funny stories, and I read a lot of them. I have a list of websites dedicated to humour, and I check them everyday for updates. If I pick up a magazine, the first section I look for in the table of contents is the humour page or the cartoon section. Funny videos always get a 'Like' from me in Facebook. And I downloaded and installed the StumbleUpon program just to gain more access to humour.

Part of the reason is I am not usually able to generate humour myself. It's like a vitamin the body can't produce, hence the necessity to look for external sources.

Even worse news follows. I suck at telling jokes, even the really good ones. Partly because I can't remember most of them, although I will recognize a joke if I have come across it before, and partly because I simply don't tell them properly. Telling a joke isn't like writing an essay or making a speech; you can't really just wing it and expect the words to come together. There has to be a good buildup, and there has to be a good finish, when you tell the punchline, otherwise it just can't make an impact. I'm good at talking, and better at writing, but comedy? I just can't get it.

Let's assume I can get over the telling part of it, and am able to tell the joke nicely. Let's also say I remember them fully; for the sake of the interview, I can memorize a good number of them. What kind of jokes do you tell in an interview?

Many jokes that I read are circumstantial; they are anecdotes, and they are funny only when the person relating the experience talks about them. Relaying them to a third person just doesn't have the same impact. Then of course, one has to filter out all the 'dirty' jokes; I can't bring that sort of joke to the workplace. Once that is done, I'd want to knock out all the jokes that are based on stereotypes - the "a physicist, an engineer and a mathematician walk into a bar" type of thing - because those jokes directly make fun of someone. The interviewer may be an engineer, but if his wife or his parents or his kids are mathematicians, that joke is going to get me kicked out. Another common example of this type of joke is the "customer is not always right" type of joke. It may be funny, but it is still humour at someone else's expense. Moreover, my field usually requires a good amount of customer interaction, and while they won't be clueless customers who walk into a restaurant, that kind of joke doesn't show me in a positive light.

Which leaves me with jokes of the following type:

Two atoms are talking. One says to the other: "I think I lost an electron!" "Are you sure?" the other one says. "Yep," the first one replies, "I'm positive!"

It's a great joke, and it's everything I want, clean, based on a pun so it doesn't make fun of anyone, healthy. But it's also the kind of joke that would only appeal to a niche audience of people - those who are into science.

Another one of my favourites:

Two neutrinos walk into a bar. The bartender says, "We don't serve neutrinos in this bar!" The neutrinos say, "That's okay, we were just passing through."

The joke is of course, that neutrinos are very tiny particles that usually just pass through most objects; you hardly ever get to see them interact with matter. They were just "passing through" the bar. It's a funny joke, but it would fall flat if the listener didn't know anything about neutrinos.

Try as I might, it's hard to find the right type of joke! Most humour on the planet seems to be wicked in some way; if not 'dirty', the fun is at someone's expense. So begins my search for good, clean humour, that I can relay with peace of mind to a third person. So also begins my effort to become a better joke-teller. It's funny though, to think that my search for something as vital as a job has to be punctuated with something like the search for humour. It's serious, and it's hilarious.

Water Baby

2011-03-23T03:07:00.000-07:00

They say Sagittarius is a fire sign, and I have no clue what that is supposed to entail, and I cannot say for sure what affinity I have to fire, but I can tell you with certainty that I have a great love for water.

Warm water, fragrant with the lovely scents of cute romance, bubbling and foaming white, as the water level rises. Slowly, I let the water fill, warming my feet, the foam spreading and collecting around my ankles, while my arms tingle with anticipation, waiting for the touch of the fluid. A shiver runs through my spine, making my neck cold, waiting for the warmth to envelope me.

I pull the white curtain out, so that it won't get wet. At last, the tub is full, delightfully fragrant from half a bottle of shower gel. The surface of the water cannot be seen for the mass of thick, bubbly, unbroken foam. I lower myself gently into the water, and the warmth is exquisite, almost shockingly so.

My legs feel buoyant, as if I'm floating in a stream with a strong current in the middle of a forest. I soak my legs, letting the hot water massage them. I bend my knees, and let the water lap over my stomach. I turn over, and let my back be massaged too.

Of course, some elements of luxury are missing, like wine, cheese, chocolate, soft violin and piano music, diffuse lighting, and perhaps, for a very daring, bold mind, a lover to share it all with. All those must be supplied by imagination, which isn't a bad thing, because it instantly takes you to a plane of thought and feeling that reality takes a long time to catch up with, even with such convenient shortcuts as a stolen moment.

I can't see very well, which is why I must always have my favourite pair of rimless spectacles perched upon my nose. In my best moments, I look like a veritable geek goddess - I make no excuses for the nerdy pun; I am that kind of person and I crack that kind of joke. I spend a quiet moment contemplating my learning: where I am, where I have come from, and where I want to go next.

But the water has now lost its warmth: a sign that it is time to go. I sit up, on the floor of the tub; the new drain plug I had had shipped over has done its job well: none of the water has leaked out. I open the plug slowly, and watch while the water drains away. I stand up, dripping wet, and the foam once again surrounds my ankles; I feel like Aphrodite rising from the ocean. The last of the water flows out.

I turn on the hot shower, and the spell ends as the first drops hit my skin. It is time now, to return back to reality.

Theatre Experience, Part 2

2011-02-25T20:44:00.000-08:00

Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare, MFA Acting Spring Repertory

Shakespeare's plays are fascinating. There are several reasons for this: he was the most popular playwright of his age, his plays centred upon ideas and emotions still thought deeply about today, his language and style have a very likable quality to them, approachable and yet transcendent. Which is why people will often read them first as stories, then read or enact the plays themselves or portions thereof, with the culmination in watching the play itself unfurl on stage, with the words, jokes, soliloquies and puns that the man himself penned. Probably that's why the acting class usually ends up using one of his plays for their repertory, an important performance sequence that effectively forms their Master's thesis.

Of course, the experience of watching theatre depends on the skill of the performers, and for someone like me, who has had very limited experience of theatre, every performance inspires new thoughts and new ideas within me.

The performance that I attended was preceded by a talk about the play itself, in this case, Twelfth Night. The talk was given by one of the faculty members of the School of Theatre and moderated by the director of the play. I've forgotten his name. He professed himself a big fan of Shakespeare, and especially of this play, which he thinks has a deeper significance that what people usually accord it. Most people just see it as a comedy, a funny play with funny characters, funny lines, and pranks. However, as with all of Shakespeare's plays, it has a deeper significance at several levels, and carries more serious themes that usually perceived.

For one thing, it's about death, although it references it in a very subtle way. All of us go through life, and every story is told by writers and bards is a journey, through events of life. But what is the destination? Death. Inevitable, inexorably, we move toward death. We may walk, run, leap, trudge, with or without burden, but the journey continues, step by step, ceaselessly. All our life we run after fulfillment, from one goal to the next, but the overall goal, whether we recognize it or not, is death. This is very subtly referenced in the play, in one simple line that often goes unnoticed because it follows some six lines of description of prior events, by one of the characters.

A contract of eternal bond of love,
Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands,
Attested by the holy close of lips,
Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings;
And all the ceremony of this compact
Seal'd in my function, by my testimony:
Since when, my watch hath told me, toward my grave
I have travell'd but two hours.

The last two lines are the ones to think about: "Since these events, my watch tells me, that I have travelled but two hours toward my grave." Cunningly enough, by the time this line is spoken, about two hours have passed from the start of the play.

This leads to thoughts about how we make this journey. Essentially, we run from one fulfillment to the next. Human beings have an appetite; an insatiable hunger for love and contentment that never goes away, no matter how many times we satisfy it. It's true for something as physical as food, and it's equally true for something as abstract as love. You eat, you feel full and happy, and the next day, you're hungry again. It's the same with love. The pleasure of contentment is sublime and deep, but it is fleeting; we run back over and over again for more, ceaselessly all along the journey to death.

The title of the play has a very subtle relation to this. At first look, it doesn't have any connection to any of the actual content of the play - "Twelfth Night" - what does that even mean? It refers to the last night of the twelve days of Christmas; in other words, it's the culmination of the festive season, the last day of satisfying the appetite, spiritually speaking. It's the end of one journey, and the beginning of the next. What does it have to do with the play? Nothing really, except that it was intended as an entertainment for that occasion, and it attempts to inspire a feeling of cheer in the audience.

This much I learned from that talk. The play itself had some eye-openers for me. Theatre is very different from cinema; each has their own challenges, and their own advantages. I've only ever seen movies, and theatre is still very new for me. The most striking thing was how perfect the actors have to be. There is no scope for mistakes in performing one's part - you can't go again if you flub a line or burst out giggling, you have to have perfect timing especially for a comedy, you're so close to the audience that they can see the wrinkles on your face. You have to memorize and speak a couple of hundred lines, which you can't rehearse in between, while portraying expression and body language in accordance with the character and situation.

It's not just about lines and how you speak them. There can be action sequences as well - in this case there were swordfights, juggling, singing, playing of instruments and more. Fight and dance sequences are carefully choreographed - every movement is well thought out in terms of motion, duration and position, and must be executed exactly. Songs and musical sequences must be in tune, and the compositions must be rendered according to the spirit of the play. This play involved one specific sequence, where two characters are juggling, and what's more, they pass the balls between them as they juggle. And they aren't just clowning around to make the audience laugh - there is serious dialogue between the two at the same time, and there are very specific word cues, according to which the balls had to change hands. Juggling is easy to learn, but it requires practice, and it requires some measure of skill to be speaking dialogue and emoting, alongside the juggling itself. That is by no measure easy, especially when there is no scope for mistake.

And none of these actions are written in the original play. Playwrights don't write in actions like that. Those are bits that the actors and their director must add in, to give form and spirit to the play. Playwrights don't write in a screenplay for dances or fights; the players must imagine and execute those. Playwrights don't write songs or music for a play, unless it's a musical. That too has to be taken care of separately. This is why people gain so much in terms of personality when they enter theatre - you have to stretch your imagination so far and wide. Theatre people aren't good at only memorizing and speaking dialogue; they will almost always have a repertoire of other artistic talents too.

An actor has to be able to sing, dance, juggle, fight, perform acrobatics and stunts, play musical instruments and do a dozen other things, apart from just speaking dialogue or emoting on stage. A director must give position to the actors, direct their movements, add in music, dance, fights or other sequences as needed, and bring out the personality of the characters through the actors, by giving shape to the play. This perfection in performance is why theatre people almost always perform extremely well before the camera as well - such rigor is not required in a movie, where you can have several takes for each shot.

I did not have much regard for artistic performers when I was younger - I used to think that they are hyped too much, and given way too much attention. My views have improved a great deal now, thanks to my experiences, both in India and here. I still think most cinema actors are overhyped and given too much attention, talented though they may be. But I have a lot more respect now in general for performers - be they from theatre, music, dance or the fine arts. These fields are more diverse than I originally imagined them to be, and their exponents are usually good-natured, down-to-earth, intellectual and talented people with a passion for their art, which equals any passion that I see amongst the scientific and technical populace for their respective fields.

(My experience courtesy the MFA Acting Class of 2011 at the School of Theatre, University of Southern California, Los Angeles)

You Have The Right...

2011-02-11T15:23:00.000-08:00

I read the following post recently. http://friendlyatheist.com/2011/02/09/mostly-harmless/

The author wanted to start a discussion about groups that are stigmatized for being different, which is often unfair because the difference is harmless. No matter how different you are in what you stand for, you should not face any discrimination, as long as what you stand for is in general harmless. The idea is that different groups of people, such as atheists and LGBT groups, can relate to each other's problems better, because they face the same problems too.

However, after I went through all that, it was the list of ten hypothetical rights at the bottom of the page that caught my attention. The question posed is, is each of these rights harmless? The blog is one that focuses on atheism and related issues, hence the more pointed question is, should an atheist find it logical to support these rights?

The key word is logical. Actually, the key word was probably intended to be atheist, along with logical, since that's the theme of the post. But I'm ignoring that for now, because atheist or not, the logical factor seems to me to be more fundamental in thinking about the question.

Each right really represents a section of people that believe that what they are doing is harmless, and they should be allowed that right without any discrimination from others. More likely than not, there would be at least one right that people would find disturbing or unacceptable. But unless they can bring a logical reason why they would oppose that right, to the extent that they would legislate against it, their objections cannot be considered valid.

Most of us have the ideas of the culture that we grew up in ingrained inside us, and it's often difficult to break out of that training and think logically. We all say that we should be tolerant and accepting and open to new ideas and new people and so on, but in spite of all that, very often, when faced with this kind of a situation, we tend to go along with our knee-jerk reaction, inbuilt due to all that training.

My own responses: (Original author's note: Note that these examples should all be considered consensual, adult situations.)

The right to marry members of your own gender.

I agree. I see no reason to object to a person marrying whoever they choose, regardless of gender. Each person's marriage is their own choice, and and official marriage gives important legal rights which should belong to every family.

The right to adopt children, whether you’re gay or straight, and whether you’re single or not.

I agree. Child-rearing is one of the most primal instincts. Sexual orientation would not affect how a parent behaves towards a child. I would be more worried about a person's history of violence or drug habits, rather than their orientation, if they were to raise a child. As for single parenthood, I personally feel a child would be emotionally happier with two parents rather than just one, and certainly two people together would have more time / money to raise a child, rather than just one. On the other hand, we're talking about adoption, and I'm sure any child would be delighted to have one caring parent, rather than no parents at all. If a single person is emotionally and financially equipped to take care of children, there is no reason to stop them.

The right to smoke marijuana (with certain restrictions similar to those on alcohol and cigarettes).

This I'm not so sure of. To start with, I don't know everything about marijuana, and what I do know could be rather biased. Marijuana is often termed a gateway drug, but it is not in itself very harmful. Alcohol and cigarettes cause enough damage as it is, so why add more? But people are smoking pot anyway, legal or not, and maybe making it legal with restrictions can pave the way to educating people about responsibility and enforcing restrictions better.

The right to choose euthanasia.

I agree. For those who don't know, euthanasia is the practice of assisted suicide, often for someone with a terminal illness with no chance of recovery. I have read enough sad stories about people who due to disease or accident were crippled for life in the prime of their youth, bedridden and paralyzed without a chance to return to normal, brain dead with body breathing. Some of those people might want to live as long as they can, and some of them may just want to end it all and pass away. It is their choice to make, because they are the ones who are suffering. And they should have the right to make that choice.

The right to change sex or gender, whether through surgery, hormones, cross-dressing, or some combination.

I agree. I've learnt slowly over the years, that people aren't just defined into a finite number of categories like a clear-cut diamond. It took quite some reading to understand the concept of genderqueer and such. Each person has the right to choose what they want to be, in terms of gender and sexual identities. It is each person's own choice to make. Nobody should have to dictate to anyone else on this issue.

The right to marry multiple people.

This is a sticky one. My knee-jerk reaction to this one was, no this shouldn't be. But then I reconsidered. And I can't come to a conclusion. People should have the right to live as they choose. If someone wants to marry multiple people, and if that choice makes them happy and harms nobody else, why should anyone else try to legislate that?

But things are not really that clear cut. To start with, there is a great cultural bias against this idea in most parts of the world. It won't be an easy right to get, and it would be even more difficult to practice. Secondly, there is the possibility of abuse of such a right. What if a person marries a partner but does not tell them that he / she has other partners? They should have the right to know, and if they do not want to be involved in a multiple marriage, they should have the right to not be tricked into it. Even if they have the option of divorce or annulment once they find out they have been cheated, there would be so much time wasted for them, when instead they could be with a partner who shares their views. Or, what if a person is in such a marriage, and then later changes his / her mind, and wants out? And this could happen a lot, so how much in terms of resources would we be willing to spend in this sort of thing?

Polygamy and polyandry have existed historically in many cultures, and are still practiced today in some communities. They were practiced for various reasons, most relating to the structure of society as it was at that time. For instance, in some cultures, several brothers would share a wife, because this ensured that family property would remain within the same family line. In others, males were often killed in wars, and polyandry was practiced so that all fertile women would have a mate and produce children, ensuring that the community population stayed stable.

But in today's world, society is more stable than it has been earlier, and moreover, marriage is associated with important legal rights. Having multiple partners complicates these issues to a great extent. For example, if a person dies, how is his / her property to be divided? Equally amongst all heirs - partners and children? Apportioned to each partner equally? Apportioned to each partner depending on how many children were produced? What about the right to make medical decisions? If all partners have the right, and they make conflicting decisions, how is that to be resolved? How do we arrive at a consensus on such things?

The right to have an elective abortion in the first or second trimester.

I agree. There is no thinking about this one. Pregnancy is a complicated issue, and every woman knows best what she is capable of undertaking. Forcing a woman to have a baby when it would be detrimental to the quality of either her life or the baby's is unacceptable. Abortion may seem like termination of life to some people, and it may not feel good to undergo the procedure, but that is no reason to legislate against it. A fetus in the womb is nothing like a baby already born.

The right to have an elective abortion in the third trimester.

The third trimester is special because abortion in this case is somewhat dangerous. A lot of doctors don't feel comfortable about doing it, because of the risk involved. A woman may want her pregnancy terminated for whatever reason, but what if the doctor feels it is potentially fatal to the woman? He / She may not want to take up that kind of responsibility. I'd say that the right to abort the fetus should be there nevertheless. I don't know about the doctor's right to refuse the abortion if he / she in good faith feels that he / she might not be able to save the woman.

The right to engage in incest.

I really don't like this one. If both relatives are consenting adults, why should anyone else interfere? And yet it feels weird, undesirable even, due to social conditioning. It was socially accepted in quite a few ancient cultures and cousin marriages are legal in several places today as well.

The actual trouble with incestuous relations is that children of such relations tend to have a greater risk of genetic birth defects. Inbreeding over generations in succession increases the chances of these defects spreading over the population, causing a dip in the overall quality of the gene pool. This is a long-term effect that would be visible over several generations (check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbreeding#Humans ).

How far can we legislate on this? Should we give preference to the possibility of long-term harm? What if two adults want to have a relationship, but with no children? It's another sticky question, and there is no single "right" answer.

The right to express belief in any religion or philosophy.

At first, this seems like a no-brainer: secularism means tolerance for others' beliefs. But this too has the ability to become a sticky problem.

What if someone's religion or philosophy tells them to cause damage to society in some way? Adolf Hitler's philosophy was that Aryans were supreme and Jews should be eliminated, so does the right to express belief in that philosophy mean we can't condemn him for the death camps he started? Apartheid is the philosophy that dark-skinned people are inferior to fair-skinned people. Should dark-skinned people be expected to respect that kind of idea? A good number of religious texts dictate that homosexuality is a sin. And yet isn't that idea abhorrent to so many of us, homosexual or not? What happens to the right to express belief, in these cases?

Someone might try to get technical and say that this right is just about expressing belief, not about actually implementing it, so it would then simply come down to a matter of freedom of speech. After all, if someone just says they have such-and-such idea, but won't actually implement it, no harm's done, right? I don't think so. Expressing belief is not just about words, it's about actions too. Implementing belief comes under expression of belief; it is not a separate thing.

Certainly everyone should have the right to express what they believe. You can't really legislate against that. But this cannot be an absolute kind of right. Nobody should be able to use this right to discriminate against other people.

I'm no legal or social expert, and I am certainly in no position to legislate on stuff like this. The rights that I'm sure of, well, I'm sure of them, for reasons that make sense to me. The ones I find problematic, well, I can't come to a conclusion on them. I don't want to stick to a knee-jerk response on them, but I won't blindly justify recognition of those rights either.

Blog Reading

2011-02-11T00:14:00.000-08:00

I read blogs. In fact, I read too many of them, so much that my own writing has come to a standstill. Blog-reading was a phase that I fell into headfirst, and too deeply for my own good. It is certainly good to read blogs and to think about what is written, but certain things need to be remembered when reading other people's blogs.

For starters, I started to spend too much time reading too many blogs, and each and every post on those blogs. It started with two or three, and slowly spread to something like fifteen. That was overkill. I realized, that even on very good blogs, it's just not worth reading every single word of every single post. Even with very good blogs, you can separate the really good posts from the just okay ones, and then focus on reading selective posts. Of course to do this, you have to be reading every single word to start with, so that you can discern the good posts from the not-so-great ones! I have been reading long enough to do that, and have already started doing so. This makes more sense, because it allows me to focus my thinking on stuff that really interests me, rather than just read anything and everything.

Then again, it's not enough to just read. Reading is supposed to inspire thinking, and that is what allows intellect to grow. But thinking inside one's head is not enough; I've realized this the hard way, with too much pain. There must be some outlet for one's thoughts; somewhere where you can look back at them and connect the dots to make patterns. This is where one's own writing should help; writing as a habit makes you focus your thoughts, and solidify them. Writing is important for communication too, because if you can write stuff clearly, that allows you to share your ideas effectively.

Reading every single word of every single post is quite frankly, a waste of time. Really a waste of time. Even if every post gave you something to think about, and to write about, it's still not worth it. You don't get left with anything else to do. Thank goodness I didn't start commenting on blogs too. That would've been the end of me. It nearly was, especially with my writing coming to a halt and all.

I've always believed it a bad idea to make promises, because somehow I have never believed that it's usually possible to fully ever keep a promise. Certainly a promise with a forever connotation is a very bad idea. So I'm not going to promise myself that I will get back to my writing and post regularly, but I can certainly try to commit to that. I like my writing, and I often have a hard time believing the richness of thought I used to have as a younger person. I want that to continue, and the best way to do that is to keep up the writing. I will post more regularly. That's all.

How To Juggle Two Balls, and Three Balls

2011-02-01T23:26:00.001-08:00

I remember watching a TV show one day in tenth grade, where a character was shown juggling. It was a young girl, my own age, and I remember thinking, this should be easy to do. I didn't realize at the time that you could probably just look it up online, so I had to develop my own technique for doing it.

It's pretty easy really. Essentially, you just replicate the motions first, and make sure you are comfortable with the sequence, without actually throwing more than one ball at a time. This is so that you get instinctive about when and where the ball is supposed to go, and when and where it should land. Then you try the sequence with upto two balls in the air at any time. You get comfy with two flawless exchanges. Then get comfy with three. Once you get comfy with three exchanges, it's only a matter of concentration for getting more than that.

Everyone usually gets pretty good at doing two balls with two hands. Two balls with one hand needs a little more work. I'm pretty comfy with that, and can do them with either hand, even switching between hands. Interestingly, I learnt how to work three balls, before I did two balls. I practiced with tennis balls, simply because I had a whole load of them lying uselessly about the house.

The position of the balls in your hand, and where you catch and throw them, is important. Suppose you have two balls in one hand. Both balls lie on your palm, one in "front", between your thumb, index finger and middle finger, and the other at the "back", between your ring and little fingers and the ball of the thumb. The position is important, because when you throw a ball, you throw it from the back position and receive it at the front. I haven't tried doing it the other way around, because this feels more natural. My guess is that's because I can control the motion of the ball when I'm throwing it better that way, ie I can control the amount of force with which I throw it.

For two balls, it goes like this.

I have two balls in one hand and I want to juggle them, with that one hand, which, believe me, is not as easy as one may think at first. The motion should go like this. I throw one ball, and before I catch it, I have to throw the other. Then I catch the first ball, and throw it again, before I catch the second ball. This exchange must repeat continuously and slowly, and the balls shouldn't hit each other when I throw them. This is why I throw them a little sideways, so that the overall trajectory of the balls turns out a little oval in shape.

Throw the back ball, and catch it in the front position, in the same hand. This is one exchange. This means that you have to throw the ball just high enough that you have time to shift the ball in your hand to the back position. Too little force means not enough time to shift the ball, too much means the ball will fly off and land somewhere out of your reach. Once that is done, try two exchanges. That means, instead of just shifting the front ball to the back in your hand, throw it - with the same level of force that you threw the first ball. After you throw it, you would catch the first ball, when you do, shift it immediately to the back, and then catch the second one in front.

Then try three exchanges. If you get that straight, try three exchanges again, sideways throwing this time. I found sideways throwing more comfortable, because I get a better idea of the balls' trajectory, since it is in a plane normal to my line of vision. One could in theory continue throwing the balls back and front, but since that happens in a plane significantly away from the normal to my line of vision, my estimate of the force with which to throw the balls soon goes awry. Other people may have different experiences, I haven't checked.

If you get three exchanges comfortably, try going for more. If you got it with one hand, do it with the other. Then try switching from one hand to the other, maybe after about ten exchanges in each hand. It gets super easy with time, once one has the throwing motion down pat.

For three balls, it goes like this.

You'll have two balls in one hand and one ball in the other. The same rules of back and front position apply. The rule simply is: throw the ball in the back position from the hand with two balls. Throw the ball in the other hand before you catch the incoming ball in the front position. Once you catch a ball, shift it to the back position, ready to throw again.

To practice, go like this. Throw the back ball to the other hand, shift the single ball to the back and catch the incoming ball in front. Now the original single ball would be at the back, so throw that to the other hand, and catch it in front. These are single exchanges; you start with two balls in one hand, and you land up with two balls in the other hand. Next, try double exchanges. Throw the back ball to the other hand, throw the single ball in the other hand, catch the first ball in front, catch the second ball in front. You started with two balls in one hand; you'll land up with two balls in the same hand. Then, try triple exchanges. You get the logic. Once you get triple exchanges, concentration and practice lead the way to multiple more, till you don't have the concept of exchanges ringing in your head anymore.

It's that easy. I haven't tried four or more balls. If anyone does, please tell me the sequence.

Random Thought: Rainwater Harvesting

2010-10-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

A certain gentleman of my acquaintance was talking recently about the abundance of comedy in a certain movie industry. "Where do they get all their ideas from? It's like comedy is raining from the sky, and they are standing below harvesting it."

His words were lovely, at least to me. There is a whole world of beauty, elegant yet simple, to be read in them. It's a pity that neither he nor another mutual friend who was witness to the conversation thought so as well, and he quickly recanted his remarks, thinking them to be somewhat silly.

The weather outside was a cloudy sky, light clouds that held the promise of rain, yet not so dark as to be gloomy. Rains have been expected for quite some time here, although so far the promise has not been fulfilled. Is it so surprising then, that my friend should have used an analogy that was based upon rainfall?

Dictionary Definition:
rainwater/noun
1. water fallen as rain that has not collected soluble matter from the soil and is therefore soft

Dictionary Definition:
harvest/verb
1. to gain, win, acquire, or use (a prize, product, or result of any past act, process, plan, etc.)

2. to catch, take, or remove for use

My friend happens to be from that part of my country which is struck first by the rains when the monsoon approaches, and where rains are plentiful throughout the season. I have visited those parts twice, and during the monsoons both times. Also, forget about the recent boom in the IT industry; agriculture is still very important in my country, if for no other reason than that it is a major part of our economy, and a good monsoon is synonymous with a good harvest, which for a lot of people means food on the table for the rest of the year. Crops mean prosperity, and good rains mean a good crop. That idea is imbued in each one of us, very deeply in our subconscious.

But the monsoon is short-lived, and for the rest of the year we must live in sweltering heat, which saps the earth dry. And that is where rainwater harvesting becomes important, the practice of accumulating and storing rainwater, to provide water for household use and to boost up our depleted groundwater table, especially in urban areas where water consumption is immense. In a sweet coincidence, it is also especially popular in my friend's homeland.

The human thought process is a beautiful and elegant thing; it is influenced in a very subtle and complex way by myriad factors. Something as mild as the weather can have the power to unlock deep subconscious cues about the influences on our thought process, and then bring out those cues in our language. It's marvellous to unravel one thread of thought, and see how it gets shaped by everything around us.

Someone Somewhere

2010-08-09T13:02:00.000-07:00

Someone, somewhere, has you on their mind.

Someone, somewhere, is watching for your smile, to light up their day.

Someone, somewhere, is waiting to hear you speak, so that they may comfort you.

Someone, somewhere, is looking at the clock, counting the minutes till you have dinner together.

Someone, somewhere, is preparing for a phone call, so they can hear all about your day, your week, your month, your year.

Someone, somewhere, is eagerly anticipating the next moment they may see you, remembering the last time you got together.

Someone, somewhere, is expecting a photograph, to see how you've changed over the time you've been away.

Someone, somewhere, is hoping for an email, to know that you miss them and remember them.

Someone, somewhere, is looking at your work, admiring your spirit and your energy.

Someone, somewhere, is praying for you, waiting for the day when your labours will bear fruit.

Someone, somewhere, is aware of how you feel, and wants to give you a hug to make it better.

There is always someone, somewhere, who has you on their mind.

With so much love out there for you, how can you feel lonely?

Try Me One

2010-07-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Move slowly. Pack. Drive. Drive through the evening, through the sunset, through the night.

Rejoice at someone else's smile. In your own dark abyss, full of secrets, is a glimmer that came from knowing that you gave someone else a light.

Satisfy your hunger. Then drive some more. And then satisfy your hunger again, and again, and again. And then look upon the horizon and feel hungry again.

Feel hungry. Feel thirsty. Feel lonely. Feel insecure. Feel cold. Feel sad. Feel frightened.

Feel everything, and come so close, and yet not satisfy anything.

Sleep. The best solace. A warm hug. The best comfort. A beautiful ocean. The best rest. The hunger ebbs away gently.

Drink your sorrow away, then sleep once more. Solace, comfort and rest all come together again.

Drive away again. Relax. Breathe. Calm down. Get excited, then calm down again. Feel restless.

Share a joke. Share a laugh. The core of everything is cold stone, but the skin always craves warmth.

Remember an old sequence, from twenty years ago, which looked exactly as beautiful as this. It makes you desperate. You reach out, and the wind envelopes your body, caring nothing for all the props of sophistication and civilization.

The wind will never leave you, never betray you, and you can never betray it, as long as you breathe. For a moment, your despair dies.

And then you come back to cold, hard reality. In the form of a highway that takes you inexorably back to the prison where you have been condemned to die. The trance breaks.

Can you avoid punishment for running away? No. Can you break out and away from the prison, forever? Maybe. That's what this journey was all about.

Random Thought: Boy Meets Girl - the PhD Story

2010-07-15T00:45:00.000-07:00

Boy meets girl. Boy is a few years senior to girl. Boy and girl are both doing PhD, in the same institute, same field. Boy and girl have common friends. Boy and girl and common friends do a lot of fun stuff together.

Boy and girl like each other. Boy and girl go out for movies together. Boy and girl consider that this might be a serious thing. Boy and girl even attend international conferences together (convenient, since both are in the same field).

Boy finishes first, and goes off to a foreign country to work. Boy keeps sending girl postcards and letters about his work and his friends. Boy and girl talk on phone once in a while. Girl keeps on in the meantime with her PhD. This goes on for three years.

Boy comes back home, and gets a job in the institute. Boy and girl decide to marry. Girl tells her dad, who is extremely annoyed, but decides to give boy a chance. Boy cooks dinner for dad, and over dinner they discuss Physics, their common love.

Girl asks dad what he thinks, and he replies that boy's cooking is better than girl's cooking. Dad agrees, though he probably doesn't approve in his heart. But he wants to see his little girl happy.

Boy and girl get married, and later have a baby girl. Baby girl will have her own stories to tell, too. But that's for another day.

(Dedicated to UK and NNR, with thanks for all the love)

Opening Doors

2010-06-16T16:12:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the way I open car doors confuses my friend.

"What are you thinking when you open the car door?"

"Huh? What?"

"You always pause for a moment before you open the door, like you're thinking something, I don't know..."

"Oh... okay... and what do you think I'm thinking?"

"I dunno... like maybe, is this guy a gentleman and will he open the door for me, or something like that... I'm just curious. You're always thinking something."

"Heh heh heh heh heh... dude, I don't need guys to open doors for me..."

What is it with guys and opening doors for girls? More than that, what is it about girls opening doors for themselves or for guys that upsets everyone?

Really, opening a door is not a huge task, anyone can do it. I don't understand why this 'chivalry' factor is so special. Sure, it's a thing coming from old times, and women are thought to be the more 'delicate' sex, and so must be treated very nicely and politely all the time. It may have made sense in those times, if the doors were too heavy or something, but that argument just does not work today.

The history of how this situation comes about is long and complex, and certainly no afternoon read. But it's fascination to observe how it operates. If a third party looks at a guy opening a door for a girl, the unconscious thought triggered is, oh isn't he being a perfect gentleman. If the girl opens the door and the guy just walks through like nothing special happened, the idea generated is, what a jerk! he's allowing a girl to open the door for him! This has actually happened to me. I've gotten those "Oh, poor girl, what a jerk she's with" kind of stares a couple of times.

Guys have opened doors for me before now, for no other reason than that they are guys and I'm a girl. I've opened doors for guys, only to have them look at me awkwardly and then proceed through the door, or try to take the door from me and let me enter first. I've never myself seen a case where a girl opens a door and a guy goes through without thinking anything more or less than that the girl is just being nice.

It's just plain polite manners to open the door for someone else. I'll accept an argument that younger people should open the door for the elderly, or that it makes sense to open the door for someone senior, like your parents or your boss. It's polite when guys open doors for girls. It's equally polite when girls open doors for guys. There shouldn't be anything weird or awkward or extraordinary about that, for either guys or girls. 'Chivalry' isn't something special; it's just this subset of nice behaviour, and shouldn't be considered anything more than that.

I won't bother to talk about picking up bags right now.

Break A Leg

2010-06-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

Everyone should break a bone exactly once in their lifetime. Preferably in your teens or early twenties, so that you are old enough to think philosophically about it, and yet young enough that it heals at a decent rate. I have had my share of accidents and so on, but the worst I've suffered is a muscle pull, which I managed about two weeks back, on a hiking trip.

In such cases, one should also preserve for posterity the way by which one came upon one's injury, embarrassing though it may be. After all, you'll only do this once in a lifetime. How did mine happen? I and a friend were on this nice hike through a rather tricky trail, which effectively went up a hillside covered with rocks and foliage. On the return, we had to take the same tricky path, and going downhill on a steep slope is damned tricky, especially with shoes that are as ill-treated as mine are. I slipped off a rock that we were supposed to jump, hardly four feet in height perhaps, and landed hard on my left side. I didn't break any bones, but I did scrape my knee, bruise my hip and pull my elbow.

In the immediate aftermath of the fall, I thought I had gotten off pretty lightly. The real pains began the next day. I thought I'd have a mild bruise on my knee; it turned out to be a pretty bad flesh wound (the kind you get when you skid a bike on a sandy road somewhere in India). I thought the elbow was just a muscle ache; it turned out to be a pretty bad tear, and I was unable to do anything at all with the entire arm. I had a dull ache in my hip, but only yesterday did I notice the bruise, which is completely below the skin, and covers fully two square inches. I've been limping around for the better part of two weeks, as expected.

What I did not expect was how freaking difficult it is to get through life with something as simple as a torn elbow and a scraped knee. Apart from the limping, I mean. I could do nothing with my left arm for a couple of days. I couldn't lift anything, I couldn't lean on it, I couldn't flex or twist it in all those intricate ways required for simple tasks like turning the doorknob, opening the fridge, or wearing my backpack. And all the while, my knee was no better: it kept stinging all the while, whether I stood or sat, it pulled against my jeans whenever I walked, and it showed just no signs of healing. No amount of medication or ointments did anything to ameliorate the situation for a week. After four days, I didn't bother with any of it, except to use a spray bandage to cover the wound, and I progressed at pretty much the same rate. I may have slowed down repair in the first week by allowing my knee to get wet when I bathed. (The first rule of healing is clean the wound and let it dry up, and don't let it get wet. How could I have disobeyed that rule?)

It was hellishly irritating. Even in my sleep, I'd wake up frequently, because while tossing and turning in my sleep, I'd inadvertently roll into a position of pain, and my body would scream bloody murder. Things did improve slowly, on a continuum. I can't quite point out exactly when what improvement came about, but of course it did, as it was supposed to, and the past two days have been good. I can walk comfortably now, I don't need the spray bandage, and the wound doesn't sting. My elbow hurts if I twist it into specific positions, but I can at least pick up the milk carton (though not my laptop), amongst other things.

I've never actually given any thought to what people with various disabilities must go through. You can read as many books and watch as many videos about different people with various kinds of handicaps and what they must face, about how they must struggle so hard to regain even the briefest semblance to a 'normal' life. I feel a new kind of respect now, one that arises from being aware of what a fellow human being must go through. I feel a little humbled, given that all these small things that I can take for granted in my full health, are not small matters for so many people. Yet they live, they work, and they are happy. It's a really humbling realization.

I shall probably heal fully within another week or so. And I shall be careful not to push my luck any further regarding my health and physical well-being. I've been having dreams from which I wake up and can remember no more than the word osteoporosis, and always then my mother's stern warnings regarding milk and calcium come back to me. Ain't a pretty feeling.

Random Conversation: Your Hair Looks Good

2010-06-10T19:00:00.000-07:00

Me: "Hey dude... I like the hair, looks good."

Girl: "See? See? I told you."

Boy: "Thank you, thank you."

Girl: "Much better than that junglee look with all of it floating around his neck..."

Me: "Hey no, that was good too..."

Boy: "See? I have support!"

Girl: "One supporter... yeah sure, go be happy."

Me: "No, come on, that look was adorable too..."

Boy: (Stunned) "Adorable? I don't wanna be adorable...! I wanna be handsome, you know... sexy... stunning..."

Me: "But you..." (Pause)

Girl: "What? What? Say it fully...!" (Giggles)

Me: "See, you can change your look, and handsome is fine... But you are adorable, and that ain't gonna change. So, live with it!"

Boy: (Speechless)

Girl: (Giggles some more)

Me: (Grin)

California Rocks

2010-05-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

California rocks are amazing. You live, and you feel alive, and you love what's going on in your life, and then one day you climb a bunch of rocks bordering a creek, and you feel like life has started afresh, all over again.

The journey starts when a new friend you've just met invites you out kayaking. Bang in the middle of nowhere. Kayaking? Really?? It's possible in this city??? You have got to be kidding me!!!

It's an awesome experience. It's just you, the kayak, the paddle, the lifejacket, the calm, quiet canals, the warm sun, the cool breeze, the salty water, the friendly people all around, and your own muscles, working away hard, stretching and relaxing, pulling and pushing, until you feel your biceps have doubled in size. It's exercise that requires a lot of focus, and quite a bit of energy, but you do have the option of taking a break in between, to relax, gearing up for the next bout of exercise. It's even better if you row a two-person kayak: you and your partner can row alternately, so that one person works while the other rests, or you can row and rest together (gives an opportunity for some very nice conversation).

The canals follow their own protocols as well. Canal traffic after all, is not very different from road traffic; there can be a lot of it, or there may be very little, everyone needs to use the waterways, there are big boats and there are small kayaks, and it's entirely possible to hit someone and sustain a bad amount of damage. So you need to have some rules to follow. As with road traffic, you stick to one side of the canal; if you approach a bigger vessel, you slow down; and if you cause damage, you gotta pay for it. Of course, you don't get to drive if you don't have a licence, in this case you can't enter the water unless you know how to swim.

The joy of the trip is heightened when you round it off with lunch at a Greek cafe. Not to mention an exhilarating motorbike ride at seventy miles per hour on the freeway.

A couple of days later, you go out for lunch again. This time, the surprise sprung on you is Peruvian food. Again, it comes up out of nowhere, a snug little spot tucked away in a place you'd never have expected to find unless you specifically searched for it. This place is so good, I'm surprised it is still such a quiet place, but I guess until it is discovered, the people who know of it have the pleasure of knowing as well that they are of the lucky few to savor it.

You have to marvel at how life can give you new stuff to enjoy, and think about. I had never imagined before that I would one day taste and plough through genuine Peruvian fare (and I know it's genuine, because my friend has been to Peru and had it straight from the llama's master's table). It's delightful as a cuisine, filling yet lightweight, tasty yet nutritious. They are especially fond of seafood, and have some lovely dishes (my personal recommendation - the ceviche. Delicate parts of fish soaked raw in citrus juices, served with sides of puffed corn and edible seaweeds. Finger licking good). Equally amazing are the juices they make. I've forgotten the names, but they were prepared home style at the restaurant that we visited, and so were absolutely delectable. (When did I become such a foodie?)

The fun doesn't stop there. Next steps, you go for what seems to be an ordinary hike in a pretty little place, nestled snugly in a valley with a creek running right through the hills. It's quite ordinary; you walk along at a nice easy pace, enjoy the creek bubbling along, the birds singing, the leaves rustling. Then your friend pushes you off the beaten trail, onto a smaller one leading into the gorge cut by the creek between the rocks. Soon, there is no trail altogether, and the rocks are all you have. So what do you do? You start moving along the rocks, just above the water, using the cracks and holes in the rocks as handholds and footholds. One false step, and plosh into the cold water you go, so you had better know how to swim, and more so how to deal with cold. Or do everyone a favour, and imagine that it's a lake brimming with lava and brimstone, and just don't fall into it. (Big evil grin)

Before we started, I thought I was a goner, that I was going to plop into the water sometime soon. Amazingly (or perhaps not so), it turned out to be easy, and more importantly, fun. We jumped rocks crossing the creek quite a few times, always looking for ways to proceed further. After a point, there were no more rocks to scale, so we thought of following up the creek to the point where it joins the trail. Follow it we did, but we never found the trail, and had to turn back at sundown, crossing all the terrain we had covered, and then the rocks, in the darkness. I almost did fall into the water at one point, but was rescued by my friend. In my defence, that part was really tricky, and it was dark.

Overall, the whole sequence was something exciting, something brilliant, something new, fresh, invigorating. Somehow, it feels like it would be even more exciting in a subsequent attempt, for now we can proceed further, perhaps in a different direction.

(Dedicated to my friend, el hombre fuerte, to whom I owe the pleasure of these experiences)

Matrimonial Plans

2010-04-04T15:20:00.000-07:00

One of my friends recently wrote to me, asking for advice regarding higher studies in international locations. He's interested in a PhD, but that would take a time investment of five years, which his parents are not willing to allow. They are okay with a Master's program apparently, because that requires just two years, and they want him back home with them as soon as possible. Now that is a completely natural sentiment. A lot of parents feel like that for various reasons. But guess what? One major reason is that they want him married soon enough. In fact, they have also simultaneously started looking for a bride for him. This news freaked me out rather badly.

He's just 21. Why do they want to get him married right now? He's just starting the prime of his youth; this is the time to be free, to be single, to not be burdened yet with the responsibility of keeping care of a family and all. The young mind works best when its free, when it doesn't have to be caged within social relationships. The very fact that they are looking for a 'suitable' match means that they intend to get him wedded within three years.

A friend pointed out that people have religious beliefs that bring about this sort of idea. One typical belief is that parents feel that they must 'fulfill' their duty by finding a suitable match for their kids, as soon as possible (although I thought this idea was applied more to daughters than sons). Another idea is that kids should be married off soon, before they get 'disruptive' ideas that would turn them in other 'undesirable' directions. And especially for a kid who's going abroad, they don't want him to stay there too long and be influenced by the ideas of a foreign (and morally depraved) land.

There are several other ideas of this sort. I don't find any sense in any of them. Teenage and early twenties are the best years of one's life, the prime years. It's a time to grow, to discover, to develop, to explore. And this happens best if you are single. The process of exploration contributes in a big way to becoming a mature person, and it's a little silly to make a commitment as serious as marriage before being mature enough to handle it. People get into relationships to start with, because they allow you to explore, but do not enforce the other serious attachments that come with marriage. (If you get out of a relationship, nobody has to think about who gets the house or how much is to be paid in alimony.) Life is a sort of experiment, and it's only fun if you play with the equipment and the materials yourself and have some freedom to do so, as opposed to someone standing behind your shoulder and whispering instructions all the time. Saddle yourself with a fixed idea right at the start, and that's the end of the experiment.

And people are too young at 21, or even 23 or 24, to get into something so intense as marriage. That's just too young an age to make a decision about something that should potentially last your entire life. The personal bias entering at this stage is the fact that I don't believe in arranged marriages (in fact, I think that entire concept sucks), but even without that, how fixed is your character at 23 or 24? People change so much in their teens, and they tend to start stabilizing in their 20s. It makes sense to make the decision of sticking with one partner for good a little late, when you've stabilized enough and your decision would with high probability be a sensible and reliable one.

In cold, calculative reflection, it's probably very easy to soliloquize about this. I'm sure everyone does it. And yet, people often make such weird decisions with their lives. The moment it's happening to us, the cold calculations all go down the drain. There ain't no solution for that, I guess. Except blogging!

Random Thought: The Nameless

2010-03-27T02:05:00.000-07:00

"Names are not important. To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important. A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a man looks upon reality. He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?' So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world. He tells them, 'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has no form, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer. It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.' Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes. They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by the man who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannot really know it. They can only know of it. But fire comes again into the world, many times. More men look upon fire. After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe. They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together. So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it. They call it 'fire.'

"If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean. So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what fire is like. As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it. They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use. He must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm his hands by it, stare into its heart, or remain forever ignorant. Therefore, 'fire' does not matter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I' do not matter. No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words. The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him. He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time. Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming. The thing that has never happened before is still happening. It is still a miracle. The great burning blossom squats, flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality, the Nameless."

- Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

It's fun to take thoughts like these and think about them. Oftentimes, I won't really think about them the moment I read them. It takes a long sleepy bus journey at two in the morning, from the library to my home, to set me free, so that I would float into the air, drift away, and understand what I've read in my own way.

I had fun analyzing this thought, in terms of digital signal processing. Suppose I see something, I see it in an analog sense. If you see it, you would understand it in an analog sense too. But suppose I see it, and you haven't seen it and I try to describe it to you, it's always going to be a digital understanding for you. And that's an approximation to the actual thing. It's not exact. The finer the words I choose (ie the higher the sampling rate), the better the approximation will be. But it's still only an approximation.

Reality is individual for each person; it's the way each one perceives it. But when one tries to describe it to another, words aren't and won't ever be as complete as the actual experience itself. The process of putting something into words and describing it to another person is essentially a truncation, a sort of sampling, and while that can be made to resemble the actual case very closely, it never is really exact.

It's much more fun then, to examine and discover the world on your own, because that makes for a complete experience. Of course, it helps to go along with others' descriptions and experiences, since those could present different points of view and thus enrich our own experience. But nothing is like the original experience itself.

That's probably also why photographs printed out from film are so much more vivid and lively than digital photographs.

Coffeemaker

2010-03-25T01:39:00.000-07:00

I once read this article in some old issue of Reader's Digest, by some lady who was given an old-fashioned home ice-cream maker as a wedding present. It was a time when a lot of new, zappy kitchen appliances were getting made, and it was a fad to gift things like that, so this particular gift occasioned some surprise to the lady. The old couple who were giving it smiled at the newlyweds' ill-disguised surprise, and told them that it would come in handy one day.

Well, the young couple settled down, and soon their life took the fast lane. Work pressures, kids, strain on their marital relationship. One fine day, when things were getting pretty hot, and everyone was sitting tired and stressed, the woman remembered the yet-unopened wedding present. She tossed up the idea. Everyone was surprised, but they pulled out the ice-cream maker, and started working it, putting together the ingredients, mixing up everything, and cooling the thing in the end. No modern day conveniences there. It was a lengthy process, and took a lot of effort, but it created space for some laughter and some family bonding. It brought a smile back to everyone, and a feeling as sweet as the ice-cream that they finally got to eat. It was a stress-buster. The couple then understood the wisdom of the older couple who had gifted them that ice-cream maker. And once secure in the stability of their marriage, they started to make the same gift to other newly married couples.

Now this story has nothing to do with my coffeemaker, which is about as modern and as functional as any other that you can buy nowadays. It was not a wedding present by some wise person in the hope that it would one day be instrumental in teaching me any valuable lessons about slowing down; it was a birthday gift from my aunt and uncle, in the hope of allowing me some nice modern convenience to save time. It's true I didn't pull it out the moment I got home, but I'm only two months older than I was when I got the thing. And I haven't had to make any great, relaxed efforts to prepare the ingredients; all it takes is cold water and the coffee grounds. I was just thinking of the Reader's Digest story, that's all. This coffeemaker has a different destiny than that ice-cream maker.

I have never brewed coffee for myself before. It was made for me at the local stall outside my undergraduate college, and I paid for every cup that I drank. It was made by a guy who made his living selling tea, coffee and cigarettes day in and day out at that stall, a complete professional in the trade of streetside beverage, a person who knew how to brew the thing properly. I've had the miserable excuse for cold coffee that these modern day coffee bars are fond of dishing out to rich kids who have money to burn on something that doesn't deserve the greens being spent on it. I've never drunk coffee at home; my mother makes it for herself the old fashioned way - heat the water, add the coffee, add the milk and sugar. I've never even participated in the making of it. This was certainly a first time experience, brewing my own coffee, even though it was out of such a convenient appliance.

The thing looks very pretty, very classy, a lovely white coloured thing, sitting on my kitchen counter. I don't know how much it cost, how good a model it is compared with other models of coffeemakers, I don't how how this brand compares with other brands of coffeemakers. Hell, I don't even know whether other coffeemakers differ from this one in any essential detail of structure or mechanism. I just know that this one worked properly the first time I brewed coffee in it today.

I'm no expert on coffee either. I don't know the different kinds of coffee, or the different ways to brew it. I have no clue regarding the differences in flavour depending on where the coffee beans have been grown, or the different flavours that can be achieved by addition of extra ingredients. I know nothing of the differences in price between the various brands that market coffee. I'm not quite sure, even at this point, what the difference is between the coffee powder used to make coffee in the pan over the gas stove and the coffee grounds that are put into the filter of the coffeemaker. I just know nice, strong-tasting coffee when I drink it.

I brewed coffee in my coffeemaker today, and it was the first time for both, coffeemaking, and using a coffeemaker. I did just about everything wrong that could be done. I put in too much water. I forgot the milk and sugar. And I miscalculated the time it would take to brew the coffee, so I ended up having it right after a heavy lunch. It was essentially a strong, black, watery brew. But guess what? It was still fun.

What does your living room say about you?

2010-02-13T15:43:00.001-08:00

There was a very nice young man at my door today; he lives in my building and he's a student with a photography major. He was doing a project of some kind, which involved taking impromptu shots of the living rooms of different people, and he wanted to know if I would allow him to photograph mine. I couldn't see any serious objection to it, so I agreed, and he was one delightful guy.

He came about an hour later with his equipment: a huge camera, using 70 mm film, a light meter, and a studio light on a tripod stand. He set up the light, and showed us how the light meter works. He took different shots and angles of the room, talking about his equipment, what he does, and asking about what we do. He talked about his stay in Paris, and how energizing and humbling an experience it was, to realize how large the world was, because Americans usually grow up thinking that America is the end of the world. There wasn't a single silent moment. His excitement and his love for what he does was palpable in every word he spoke.

It's always something new for Indians, to meet such people who are, as we put it, "always excited", because we as a people are so reserved in our manner. We seem to believe in keeping our emotions to ourselves, something that has come from a couple of centuries of British rule, no doubt, because those people are the last word in reserve of manner. I used to be quite a 'hyperactive' individual myself, but years of exile in a land of 'dull' people have worn me out, enough that it's somewhat of a wake up call when I see such an 'excited' individual. They are just so much more expressive than we are.

His project got me thinking too. I don't exactly know how he's putting it together, but the immediate vision that appeared to my mind when he mentioned his project was one of a huge collage, on a white background, of several different photographs of different living rooms, each photograph having on the back of it, a short precise description of the people whose living room it was. It got me thinking. If someone were to see my living room, or photos of it, without ever having met me or knowing anything about me, what conclusion would they come to?

I vaguely remember something of this nature being talked about by that wonderful young writer Malcolm Gladwell in his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It was something to do with how much you could learn about someone by spending just ten minutes in their bedroom, compared with how much you could learn by going out with them for lunch everyday for a month (or something of the kind. I don't have the book at hand, so I don't have exact details). And that's a great book by the way, definitely worth a read (several, actually), and worth buying.

Of course, there are two views you can take of anything. The same thing might suggest a positive trait to one mind and a negative one to another. My living room is something like this. One half of the room is completely clear. And by clear, I mean that there is nothing but the carpet, and the internet modem and router, and associated wires. Occasionally you might find a couple of laptops and phone chargers lying the corner, somewhat out of the way. The other half is complete chaos. There are three tables, black ebony wood, standing against the three walls. Each table has a set of built in shelves, stacked with various things including textbooks, stationery, CDs, bags, flash drives, portable hard disks and other things which are good to keep handy. The tabletops themselves, usually have books and papers scattered on them, cleared up only when the table is actually used for writing or studying.

There is a chair to each table, and occasionally there may be a jacket lying on a chair. There is a printer in one corner, covered by a cloth except when in use, and its power cord and USB cable are within sight. The printer's box, as well as that of one of the laptops is also in the same corner, albeit not very neatly arranged. There are also various bags, but no guesses as to the contents. A laptop bag in the same place reclines against my table, which is located on one side of this corner.

The shelves of my own table also include, apart from what has already been mentioned, books for general reading, the college academic catalogue, stacks of coins, an i-Pod charger, a point-and-shoot camera and its USB cable, and binders containing class notes. The top of my table usually carries a mug with a steel spoon, some tissues, my i-Pod, phone, laptop, spectacles, a four-foot long pair of tube-lights in their holder, a couple of hair accessories, my contact lenses' pouch and cleaning solution, and several sheets of paper containing scratch work. If I'm at home, add a flexible binder containing the notes of the day's classes, and maybe my set of house keys too. My chair may also hold a towel, a pair of jeans or shorts, or a t-shirt, apart from the jacket.

So what does such a vision suggest to you? Of course, one can't escape the clues that lead to the conclusion of a student-run household - the textbooks are the biggest giveaway, as are the abundance of filler paper and class notes. Of course, this is my place, so nothing would strike me about it, except that it's familiar and it's normal... but you, oh reader, are not constrained thus... but perhaps I can ask questions to guide thinking?

What ideas do the following things inspire, for a start?

One half of the room is clear, and the other cluttered.
Each person has a different number of books - one person has very few while another has nothing but books.
One table has an excess of scratch paper.
There are no other photos or personal memoirs on any table.
One table has what looks like a personal diary.
One table has a plate with bread crumbs on it, next to several pages written and initialed in very neat handwriting.
The various clothes lying on the chairs.

What impression do these facts give you, when you consider them separately, and then when you consider them together? You see? It's really hard to generalize. And yet - "Same story, different versions, and all are true." - Tia Dalma, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

"Hi, I'd like to talk to you about..."

2010-02-01T02:29:00.000-08:00

Well, it had to happen one day. I'd read that you can't be for too long in this country before you encounter an evangelizer, who's going to start the conversation with a huge smile and a big, Oh my, you're from India? and then ask if you have ever thought about life, and God, and what is the purpose of life.

It's easy to see the purpose of their life. They have nothing better to do, than go about trying to achieve conversion of the people, who aren't already of their flock. Now, as an atheist, I seriously believe that most people are simply fooling themselves with whatever concepts of divinity and religion they're feeding on, but really, most of those people are harmless, and dangerous only to themselves, and as long as they stay that way, I really don't give a damn. It's when they start preaching their ideas to you, without any sense or invitation to do so, that they begin to get on your nerves.

I don't have anything against Christians, or people of any religion for that matter. Rather, I should say that I do not think any the worse about someone simply because of their religion or religious belief. I do think their sanity is somewhat questionable, but that doesn't mean they can't be good people at heart. It's an open question, and though I believe what science has to say about the world, and I feel that science has the greater probability of being right about the issue, I will go so far being politically correct as to acknowledge that others have the right to think differently, if such is their inclination. No, the problem arises when people try to inflict their ideas on other people, without offering any reasonable justification for what they believe.

I met a couple of young women today, out strolling their babies on the college campus. This is pretty common: the campus is a lovely, peaceful place, and it's nice to take a walk there. What I don't usually get is being stopped and questioned about my beliefs. They said hi, introduced themselves, and told me they were alumni, and had studied so many years back (not too long). Then, gently, they asked me if I have ever thought about life, and the purpose of life, if I had thought about what is lacking in life and happiness, even though humans have so much in their lives for them.

I knew what was coming. The next few sentences would be evangelical lines, and come they did. They started out by saying they believe in God, and they believe in Jesus, and they believe that Jesus loves them. They paused to ask me what I think. I replied stating that I have never thought about it, because I don't think I'm old enough yet to think of it, to which they immediately replied that "you may think so now, but one day, it may be too late to think about it", and something of the sort. They asked me if I knew anything about Jesus. I said yes, I've read about all the religions in school in Social Studies, and I have Christian friends too, I'm quite familiar with all the ideas.

The funny thing is, instead of picking up on that, as I was expecting them to, they went off in a totally different direction. "Oh, we guess you must be a Hindu?" and then they started on a tale of how the reason that we are always searching, is "because God is a virtuous God, a holy God, but Man is not so; Man is born sinful", followed by something about "searching for something to fill the emptiness inside, and that's why people make up so many religions, but in spite of all that, the search never ends", and then one female said something pretty weird, in the vein of, "you say you have Christian friends, but... don't know how Christian they are..." Then followed some idea about how "we all are sinful, but Jesus died for us, and so covered our sins, so that when God sees us, he doesn't see our sins, because Jesus is covering us".

I got a little angry at this point. It's hard to believe things like this really happen, that people can be so brazen, even though you've read about it a hundred times before. So people make up religions, do they? Well, darling, of course they do, and your own is equally made up, and there is not a shred of evidence to support any one religion more than any other, be it a religion in my country or yours. And I suppose my friends were not "Christian" enough, because apparently they hadn't tried yet to convert me! (This is one thing I read about on the net. Some people are convinced the only "true" Christians are those who actively work to convert all non-believers.) If you try to get picky and take apart that last sentence, about the 'covering' and the rest of it, you get lost somewhere. It just does not make any sense at all.

I purposely did not (and do not usually) let out that I am an atheist, because I was in no mood to get into a beautiful argument about belief and non-belief. My hair would start to whiten prematurely with having to dish out the same argument to every person I meet upon the street corner. I am not really a good debatist either, and I was also in a hurry to get someplace that was more interesting than anything these two would have had to say. Already, I was regretting trying to be politically correct by humoring their idiocy.

Fifteen minutes of beautiful time utterly wasted. Of course, this sort of religious idiocy is not something possessed only by Christians. There are a whole bunch of people back home, who believe in all sorts of religious bullshit (horoscopes, eclipses are evil, superstitions of various kinds, etc), but their bullshit is easier to ignore, because it's more of a personal practice. If my friend thinks that the shadow of an eclipse is something evil, she can satisfy herself and stay at home, but woe betide her if she tries to press that idea on me, and stop me from leaving the house, and she knows that.

People back home usually don't bother with forcing their ideas on you (although I have a feeling it's mostly due to the misbegotten idea that you think the same way that they do). Works fine that way. And when they do try to impose, you can actually just tell them to go rot. They won't care. They won't bother. "The rest of the world can go to hell if it chooses to; I'm gonna take care of myself." We each follow the same policy in the end. Religious bullshit here might prove to be a lot more difficult to handle though, because there's an entire force of idiots actively trying to feed it to you. "Oh no, we can't and won't let you go to hell, when you can be SAVED!!!"

I wonder if a change in policy would help.

Geek, Dork, and Nerd

2010-01-27T15:28:00.000-08:00

Geek: A person who finds interest in quirky, out-of-the-world, uncommon stuff, and becomes fanatically obsessed with knowing every detail of it.

Dork: A person who is socially clueless.

Nerd: A person who prefers intellectual activity to social activity.

Which one are you?

Source: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=401

Theatre Experience

2010-01-25T01:35:00.000-08:00

August: Osage County by Tracy Letts, Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize, Steppenwolf Production Company

Love's Labour's Lost by William Shakespeare

Palestine, New Mexico by Culture Clash

I never went to a play in India. I never got to go to a play; my parents weren't so much into theatre, or rather we couldn't be, because theatre is not so commonplace that it is affordable. Plus, there wasn't much to be said for English language theatre where I grew up. And once I reached an age where I could have taken up an interest, it just didn't happen. Certain personal circumstances interfered with it, one of them being the fact that I was in high school, and high school in India means a never ending series of books to study. Not even read. Study.

Still, not being sharp doesn't mean you're condemned to be blunt. Being in Los Angeles, and being in my university brought me the perfect opportunity to at last taste, somewhat belatedly, a lot of the things that I never got to experience at a younger age, one of them being theatre.

It is something, to watch a play unfold on stage before you. Sure, it is not exactly like watching a movie. You get to watch only certain angles. You don't have mikes on stage, or at least not ones that will capture a tiny whisper, so theatre dialogue has to be conducted with a certain loudness, a certain toughness, a certain carrying quality of voice, so that the lines may be understood. Emotions are thus more dependent on facial expression, rather than a combination of expressions and dialogue delivery. Actors have to be able to connect with the audience. It's a very personal thing, seeing an actor up there a few feet away from you, visually telling you a story. You start to enjoy a play, when you can immerse yourself in the story, and connect with what the actor is telling you, thinking about what that character is doing and why.

Plays written today are different from the plays written in the past. Each play represents, somehow, the period it was written in - not just in style, but also in the story, the characters, the way the play treats the situations it addresses, and the reason why it does so. Shakespearean plays were made sometimes for entertainment, as in the case of As You Like It, sometimes about the comedy and tragedy of love, as in Love's Labour's Lost and Romeo and Juliet, sometimes for drama, exemplified by Macbeth and Hamlet, and sometimes for history, King Henry et al. In later periods, before motion pictures became so popular and widespread, theatre was the main form of entertainment for presenting a story. Agatha Christie, and others, wrote quite a few plays, apart from the usual novels and short stories.

Modern plays are about people, and the way they interact with each other. August: Osage County, for instance, is about a family, and the different tangled webs of secrets, lies, personal problems, and convoluted sexual relationships that the members of that family are entrenched in. Palestine, New Mexico, is about an army captain who goes to talk to the father of a Native American soldier who died under her command, and in the process uncovers the realities of life on a Native American reservation - the way they struggle to deal with different identities of religion, race and tribe. Modern theatre nowadays is as much an art form, as painting and sculpture are.

The characters of plays are also as distinct as the stories, in relation to the period the play was written in. Modern plays deal with very realistic characters, with very realistic traits and behaviour, because the stories they tell are those of people you can relate to. Some exaggeration was allowed, and in fact necessary in earlier plays (again, compare something from today, with something like anything Shakespeare wrote). Dialogue has always been like the speech of the current time, which is why plays today have direct speech that you can follow, while with the older plays, the older it gets, the more convoluted the language. (Though it's hard to believe that people spoke with that kind of convolution in daily life in those times. Perhaps only the lettered and educated people did so.)

There is also a distinct difference, in the setup and logistics of plays, as they are written today, and as they were written in the past, apart from the obvious differences of story and characters. Plays nowadays won't have too many costume changes. The stories cover a very short period of time, and often do not have more than one change of scene, so that the sets need not have more than very superficial changes, mostly some quick shifting of small furniture, and very cleverly coordinated lighting, so the entire play must be seen essentially against a single setting. This also allows that single set to be pretty elaborate and detailed; there can be structure in it. The set for August:Osage County was an entire three-storey house, with the kitchen and living room detailed across the stage. The action involved frequent climbing of the stairs from the living room, and disappearance behind doors which led ostensibly to bedrooms. The set for Palestine, New Mexico was a small clearing in front of a small hill, complete with the shrubs and sands of the desert and plains, rocks and caves, and steps leading up to the reservation on the top of the hill. The play is worth 80 minutes of time, and is performed continuously without an interval.

The set for Love's Labour's Lost was composed of a brilliantly constructed and painted facade, which had sliding panels, ladders, doors and curtains, so that it could be used alternately to represent a room in the castle, or the gates of the city, or the woods outside the city. Furniture was quickly moved about in the few seconds of darkness between subsequent acts of the play. They couldn't have done it otherwise; Shakespeare's plays were written at a time when just such things were required of the stage managers; to produce a forest, or a castle, or a courtyard, when needed to. In the older days, they would've just presented beautifully woven backdrops.

Of course technology today continues to bring forth ever new ways of enhancing the quality of the experience of a play, by allowing for increasingly grand sets, sound, lighting and even special effects. Indeed, it is pretty normal to have some nice pyrotechnic effects, very realistic booming gunshots, roaring ocean waves, and even the relative time of day, created by some smart stage engineers, working with sound, light and special props. Palestine, New Mexico had a rather delightful trick: a special burner, which when triggered, instantly gave out a bright, very convincing campfire. That wouldn't have been so easy to pull off in the old days.

I daresay regular theatre fans have seen all of it, and know intimately the finer nuances of theatre past and present. But to someone who hasn't ever experienced it before, it's certainly something novel, and exciting. And with time to soak up the new sunshine falling on me, my own intellect will make good hay, before the end of the day.

(My experiences courtesy the Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, The Broad Stage, Santa Monica, the Mark Taper Forum, Los Angeles and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles)

Free Stress Test

2009-12-24T22:09:00.000-08:00

While roaming around one of the most popular streets of my current city of living, my friend and I were stopped by this soft-spoken gentleman about taking a free stress test, with some advice on how to deal with it. Now I am very well clued on how to deal with stress, but even then I wouldn't normally resist something that was being offered free, just to have some fun; I noticed just in time that this was a store that was into selling and promoting the works of L. Ron Hubbard, the chap responsible for Dianetics and Scientology. Indeed, the store display was lined with copies of the book in various languages. I was all for turning away, but was not quick enough, because my friend, knowing nothing about the subject, thought it was a great idea and walked in. I had no choice but to follow.

It turned out to be a fun(ny) experience anyway. The testing equipment consisted of a sufficiently complicated looking device, with a pointer display, some knobs and dials, and two hollow metal cylinders hooked up to it. All you had to do was take one cylinder in each hand, sit down and relax, and think about the questions the guy was asking. Depending on how your mind reacted to the thoughts in your brain, you'd have some invisible response, which would measure up as stress on the display. The funny parts were two: the guy could not convincingly answer any questions we asked him about how the device worked, and secondly, I managed to actually hoodwink the machine.

Anyone with basic high school science education should have been able to figure out that the entire setup was nothing more than a very elaborate stethoscope: your fingers carry a very gentle pulse, which would be transmitted through the cylinder and wires and fed to a very sensitive transducer, that would produce a very tiny current which would move the pointer accordingly (using a basic galvanometer arrangement). It helps that I'm trained as an electrical engineer, but these are basic concepts that you learn in Class 9 Physics in school. One can also design the thing to have knobs to control sensitivity and the zero setting of the galvanometer (which was there in this case).

My friend went first. Certainly, the machine reacted the way I expected it to react; the pointed zoomed out of range when he thought about stressful things. The guy didn't spend much time with him; hardly thirty seconds, because he simply asked him to think about his life and recent events in it. After my friend answered, the guy asked him what he had been thinking about (as expected, the recent exams and the grades that followed). His basic method was easy to figure out. By asking you to think about something, he's very indirectly leading you to think about something stressful, because most people usually have some problem bugging them, and if you sit them down and ask them to think about recent events, their thoughts will jump first to that problem, and their pulse will correspondingly rise, depending on how deep the problem is. To generate a little more 'stress', the guy can start asking questions relating to specific areas of life - family, relationships, work, social activities, anything. Somewhere or the other there is bound to be something, which generates an emotional reaction, leading to that increase in heartbeat.

When my turn came, I kept a smooth, even tone of voice, and a steady breath, to control my heartbeat so that the machine wouldn't react. As expected, it didn't. The guy started to ask me questions almost immediately, starting with what I do. I answered I'm a student, so he asked me if there was something bothering me there. On purpose, I brought a worried tone to my voice as I started talking about courses and grades, but kept my breathing even. The machine stayed even. The guy started to increase sensitivity at various intervals then onwards. He next asked about my family, if I'd had any losses or tragedies. I lost my grandfather a few years back, but I've had deeper losses than that, and I was able to lie my way through it without the machine turning a blip. If the guy was discomfited, he didn't show it, because next he went on to ask about relationships: if I was presently in one, to which I said no (actually the answer is yes); if I had been in one earlier, to which I answered yes (truthfully); what had happened to that relationship, to which I said it hadn't been working out so we broke up.

At this point he came out, saying that I was a very unusual person, because most people get pretty stressed when they think about past relationships and their breakup. My heart did a flip, hoping he wouldn't figure out that I had deliberately been cheating on this test, and then the pointer zoomed! He noticed this, and was quick to jump on it, asking how it was that I wasn't feeling stressed out when thinking about past events of my life, but was showing a reaction after I was done thinking about them. I had to look straight at him and invent a fib on the spot, which wasn't too difficult; I simply told him that I'd moved on quite definitely from my past and had made my peace with it, and thinking about my own past again did not cause me any stress; what did cause me stress was him asking about how I'd made my peace, because that hadn't been an easy thing to do. This wasn't completely a fib though, it was at least partially true. I checked the sensitivity knob surreptitiously; it was at 9 on a scale from 0 to 10!

We asked him about how the device worked, how it actually was able to measure stress. He did not answer clearly. Either he was ignorant of how it worked, or did not want to reveal it and spoil the wonder device for us. We mentioned that we study engineering, and this device looks interesting and so on, but he was careful to lead the conversation towards what was really on his agenda: to talk about Dianetics; the philosophy, book and its author. That Hubbard discovered the 'active' and 'reactive' mind and how the reactive mind behaves, that he wrote this book which is the best selling book in the world today (huh? I thought that was the Bible, but never mind), and that he founded Scientology, which is helping so many people overcome their problems by aiming at the root, rather than the symptoms. He talked about how psychology is now dead, how modern psychology treats humans as mere animals, without paying any attention to the 'spirit', and deplored the state of psychology medicine today. What nonsense. (It was funny to watch him sidestep the questions though.)

I haven't read Dianetics myself, but I remember I did try once. I couldn't get beyond the first page. I've read summaries of the ideas in it, and by all standards, they are fanciful and despicable. That so many people believed in that nonsense, started over fifty years ago, and still believe in it to the extent that there is now a Church of Scientology which feeds all those and even crazier ideas to the unsuspecting public stands testimony as to how stupid people can be. And cleverly enough, the Church maintains a strict copyright over its documents and teachings, so that only initiates have access to it, and those who do cannot make them public for fear of severe legal action. Of course, there are always leaks, so we have some idea of what those teachings precisely are, but I would think that one read of Dianetics (for those brave enough to undergo such torture), or of the gist of it (for those smart enough to spare themselves the torment) should be enough to indicate the level of ludicrousness that Scientology must be attaining with its initiates, never mind the secrecy.

Anyone who wants to read a good summary of Dianetics can read the relevant chapter in the book Fads & Fallacies: In The Name Of Science, by that excellent gentleman Martin Gardner. The language of the book may seem harsh to many, and the book was written in the 1950s, so quite a few of the fads mentioned have been rendered irrelevant in today's world. Nevertheless, it is an excellent book, painstakingly researched and written, evident by the details presented in the book. For those who want to buy it, it's available on Amazon. (If you'd rather just read about Dianetics and Scientology, you can read up on Wikipedia. It is truly hilarious.) Fifty years on, I would be highly delighted to read a book written and updated to reflect pseudoscience today (hopefully there isn't too much of it floating around, apart from this Scientology madness). Of course, it won't be easy, with all the tangled webs of copyright protections and such, but if anyone can direct me to such a book, I'd be highly grateful. If there isn't one yet, maybe I'll write one in due time.

And moving back to the stress test, well, once we were done with the Dianetics lecture, I made a firm case for leaving, without buying the book (he offered us a Hindi translation of it!), and once out of there, explained the entire thing in detail to my friend. To his credit, he is not a gullible person and had retained enough skepticism all throughout the session to be able to see through the charade, and we laughed a lot over the entire thing afterwards.

You'd ask me why I was fooling around with this guy; even if it is pretty elaborate, at least he is giving you a stress test and telling you that something's not okay, right? Wrong. If it's nothing more than an elaborate stethoscope, let him come out and say that. There is no cause for anyone to try make an impression by showing magic tricks and illusions in matters such as stress, which have been shown to profoundly impact health. Also, this is not being done with a goal to helping people; it is nothing more than a money-making exercise. The aim of going through that entire routine of a stress test is to harp on later about Dianetics and how great it is, this is a sales pitch in the end. Don't sit back and tell me that the choice of buying the book is mine in the end. People are smart enough to know without being told that they are under stress.

I do not have to waste time sitting through this charade of a stress test, then find out that I'm stressed, listen to a sales pitch from someone who has little or no training in medicine and finally buy and read a book of pseudoscientific fairy tales. It makes much more sense to seek professional help (qualified professional help at that). Any good psychologist would be able to not only tell me if I'm stressed, but also help objectively determine factors causing that stress, counsel me accordingly, and prescribe lifestyle changes, diagnostic procedures, therapeutic treatment or medication as required. The last thing they would do is tell me to read some crackpot book and believe what it says. If nothing else, this episode highlights how important it is for every individual on this planet to have a firm grounding in basic science at the school level.

Dancing Lady

2009-12-18T10:45:00.000-08:00

Thanks are due to the naughtiest guy in class for this. It's not spectacularly amazing or anything, but just pure fun, and really, really, time consuming.

Which direction is this lady dancing in? She is definitely spinning, and she is spinning backwards (for herself). But is she going clockwise or counterclockwise?

There are probably hundreds of such trick images circulating the internet, each one perhaps equally interesting, because each probably presents a different trick, or a different way in which our mind plays tricks on us. Of course this particular one has no answer, because depending on how you see it, she can be moving in either direction. If you try hard enough, you can see both types of spin, and you can even train yourself to make her change direction at will. It's actually really simple: you just have to figure out that critical point of her spin, from where your brain starts to pick up on the direction of her motion. If you happen to start looking at her only from that critical point onwards (achieved easily and simply by a quick shutting and opening of the eyes), you can make her change direction. It's important not to preserve the image of her motion in the mind as you're trying this.

If you received this in a chain mail or forwarded message over the internet, you probably also got a lot of text about left brain and right brain and their relative abilities and so on and so forth. While all of that is probably very interesting, it is perhaps best left to the explanatory capabilities of Wikipedia or some other reliable encyclopedia. For the moment, concentration on enjoying the illusion. This is magic at its best - the magic of the human mind.

(Image courtesy http://www.nicholasroussos.com/ who're hosting it up there for people to link to)

In A Mood To Experiment

2009-12-06T20:20:00.000-08:00

Experimentation is an awesome thing. I'm not talking about huge things like going on a bungee-jumping adventure or something wild like that. I'm talking about simple everyday things, mundane things, things that you would never think twice about in the normal course of life, things that don't count way up there on the Bucket List or anything. Simple experiments with how you live and what you do in your daily life. They enrich life, spice things up a little, are fun to do, and often end up with rather positive results.

One experiment I did recently was chop off my own hair, rather than go to a hairdresser. Now I confess, I'm no professional. I did a rather bad job of it. I used a pair of scissors which has become a little blunt through years of use (in cutting paper at that). I cut the entire thing very unevenly (it's turned out shorter on one side that on the other, and quite a few locks of hair that should've been cut were left untouched). I cut it shorter than I intended to. And yet, with all that, it's not a huge disaster that I absolutely cannot deal with. Lucky for me, my hair curl and wave a lot, so that covers up the uneven length. Because of the way I cut it, I ended up changing my style entirely, and guess what, the new style is pretty flexible and suits me too. And regular shampooing and conditioning ensures that they stay manageable. I probably couldn't go to a formal party looking like this, but nobody in my daily life seemed to feel there was anything wrong with it, which is a lot more than I ask for.

Another experiment, which effectively occurs twice a week, is my cooking. I have no training of any kind there either, whether by a professional expert, or by an amateur one (by which I mean my mom). Every time I enter the kitchen to cook is a time for a new experiment, a new random choice of vegetables, spices and cooking time. Well, not completely random either, I do try to make things conform to what has been approved already by the experts. But my lack of expertise means it won't always turn out that way, and often there are no preapproved guidelines to follow. So it's effectively an experiment, and quite often, if I don't worry unnecessarily about the results, it turns out pretty decent.

A third, more general experiment, is walking about and negotiating stuff alone. A slightly risky experiment to make, I admit, but this falls more into the realm of exploring. The fact that each human being needs to seek their own way and learn to negotiate the world on their own anyway doesn't make it any less of an experiment. An experiment seems to indicate some sense of underlying choice for most people, the choice of whether to do the experiment or not, in which case, negotiating the world is not an experiment, because you don't have a choice there. I disagree, because an experiment is anything where something new is attempted to gain a result, and you don't have to know that result. You only have to find it. Doing it with someone always makes it easier, simply because you have two thinking minds, so you can have two varying opinions, and some amount of cross critical thinking can get you far ahead. Doing it alone is slightly more of a challenge, because you have to pose questions to yourself and answer them yourself as well. But that makes the challenge only more challenging, doesn't it?

I'm in a mood to experiment. I have been for the past few years in fact, perhaps a little passively, perhaps only in erratically timed spurts. The mood feels good, and a little more active right now. I'm happy.

I Went There. So?

2009-12-06T16:45:00.000-08:00

I'm an atheist, or at least I am far on the side of the spectrum that leads towards atheism. I don't believe in gods or in divine or supernatural presences, and I think people who do are kidding themselves in some way. But I still participate in certain religious ceremonies or excursions, when my family or friends have them. In a way, I think it's hypocritical and it is, but blandly saying that I won't be a part of it because I don't believe in it is also a little difficult for me.

The trouble is most of these religious functions are also social functions. I can't refuse to attend my cousin's wedding just because it's a religious ceremony; it's her wedding, she's happy and I'm happy for her, and I should be there to celebrate it with her. The same goes for every wedding ceremony or reception that I've ever attended. I've never gone to a wedding that was simply a court marriage followed by a simple reception or celebration party. Or if there's a festival around or something, and everyone's going to a temple or some kind of celebration, it's not just about going there to worship or pray. There's a kind of social bonding taking place as well, the very act of going out together, cooking together and spending time together. And people just expect you to be there, without asking whether you believe or not: they just assume that you do.

So I go along for the ride, I go to all these temples, I take the offerings that are given, I go through all the rounds of worship rituals. Actually, no, I don't do most of the ritualistic things. I simply stand there while everyone else is doing them, and I look at everyone and feel lost and awkward, because in my heart, I know I should not be there. Then once the ritualistic part is over, the social part starts. The food, the photographs, the talking, the laughing. Apparently it's a package deal; I cannot just avoid the ritual part of it and stay for the social part of it; it's either take it all or leave it all. Even if it doesn't mean anything to me.

I've tried objecting to it, even screaming at times that it doesn't make sense because I don't believe in it at all, but would you believe it, they still want me to go through with it. They think that either I'm being deliberately difficult, or I'm somewhat misguided, or that I should be made to do it for my own good, even when I don't believe. It's even funny in a way: people will be pleased with an outward show even when I openly declare that I do not believe, while the reason that they themselves do it is because they sincerely believe. Apparently, it's also a face-saving exercise in the end.

So now, I just go along for the ride. I still have to deal with the feeling of being lost and awkward, but once that's over, the fun begins. So, I wait for the party to start.

Schrodinger's Rapist

2009-12-06T16:04:00.000-08:00

Awesome post. It highlights a lot of things that are not often understood by a lot of people.

Schrodinger's Rapist

Unfortunately, this situation creates problems for me, because of my innate nature. I happen to like being friendly. I like the idea of being able to say good morning to the complete stranger on the bus, without worrying about whether that person is going to take that as a signal of some kind. I like being able to talk to the person behind me in the queue, without worrying about whether he is some kind of threat to me. I like being able to ask a question to the guy sitting next to me in the auditorium, perhaps even have a normal conversation, without that person trying to push his way into my inner circle.

And, unfortunately, that doesn't quite happen. If I behave friendly, even in the slightest way, a guy is going to take that as a signal that I'm interested, and perhaps interested in something more. Rather, he's going to jump ahead to the idea that I'm interested in something more, because of course, most other girls are so aloof, so untrusting, so if this one is being friendly, she must be having different ideas. This is not just speculation. It has actually happened. Of course I have different ideas. I believe in being nice to the people around me, but I expect that niceness to be reciprocated, and I expect that they in turn should not try to be more than nice. I'm trying to not send out any signals to indicate any interest or lack thereof, I'm just trying to be pleasant-mannered, but somehow, that in itself ends up being a signal!

It sucks.

Cheat The Prophet

2009-11-29T16:31:00.000-08:00

Just found a very likable quote all over again.

"The human race, to which so many of my readers belong, has been playing at children's games from the beginning, and will probably do it till the end, which is a nuisance for the few people who grow up. And one of the games to which it is most attached is called, "Keep to-morrow dark," and which is also named (by the rustics in Shropshire, I have no doubt) "Cheat the Prophet". The players listen very carefully and respectfully to all that the clever men have to say about what is to happen in the next generation. The players then wait until all the clever men are dead, and bury them nicely. They then go and do something else. That is all. For a race of simple tastes, however, it is great fun."

I'd recommend reading the book from whence it came as well: The Napoleon of Notting Hill, by G K Chesterton. It's available for free from Project Gutenberg, and I've just started it. It seems it'll be a good read.

My Journey To Atheism

2009-11-08T11:53:00.001-08:00

A topic that has been a recurring interest for me, particularly in an active manner in recent months, is atheism. I have been an atheist for a very long while now, but it wasn't until pretty recently that I started thinking more actively about it.

I used to be religious as a kid. Or rather, I thought I was. Sure, we read in Social Studies about all the major religions of the world, and I studied in a secular school run by a private trust, so there was no religious propaganda of any kind. Indeed, one of the best-liked features of school was that every religious holiday was indeed a holiday; there wouldn't be any religious ceremonies in school, so we all enjoyed the benefit of one more day in the week on which we could sleep late! I knew I was born to a Hindu family, and so was heir to all the religious traditions and beliefs that Hindu families inherit through the generations, and for a long time I thought I was religious enough in my own way.

How wrong I was.

I never learnt any prayers, neither did I ever worship regularly, nor did I like visiting temples. This stemmed initially from the fact that I was too lazy to do stuff like that. Later on, it became laziness plus the fact that it all seemed rather pointless. For instance, it felt somewhat weird to be chanting strange words whose meaning I did not know; my mom, with huge efforts, taught me one or two prayers, but when I asked for the meaning of the words, she didn't quite take me seriously (though she is well-versed with what the prayers mean), and I lost interest quickly. Neither did the idea of bowing down before someone else sit well with me; that was probably partially due to a sense of ego, but at any rate, it did not make sense to me.

My mom prayed and worshipped everyday, and still does, but she never insisted that I should do so as well; this is the first point of difference between me and most others my age whom I've interacted with. My dad was already an atheist, so there was no insistence on religious customs coming from him, and he too never insisted on my either worshipping or not worshipping, leaving the choice to me. He was secular minded too, which may sound weird when said in connection with an atheist, but I can't really infer anything else on seeing the various religious books and texts that he collected over the years (we had the Bible and Quran, apart from the standard Ramayana and Gita, but then we also had various philosophical works, such as essays by Bertrand Russell and the like).

And what of me? I thought I was quite a religious person, because I used to watch just about every mythological serial that came on TV, and for quite some time, I did believe that every detail portrayed was literally true. But science education intervened, and subconsciously I came to the conclusion that these are just stories and cannot be true in the literal sense. The big bang theory, evolution of life, models of the atom and descriptions of subatomic particles had a more convincing ring to them, and I discarded the idea of gods and goddesses and mythical kings and queens for these more tangible mysteries, presented by science. I still continued watching the TV serials, because the stories were interesting enough (and there was nothing else that I could watch on TV).

The real change came about due to Social Studies, in Class 8. That was when we studied modern history, and in particular detail about all the social reformers of the 18th and 19th centuries: the beliefs they held, the societies they founded and the ideas they propagated. Most of them, while not seemingly atheist, at least believed that religious and spiritual belief are personal matters, and the worship of idols or images, or the practice of mindless ritual does no good to anyone. Reading about these people led me to actively think about what I believe, as far as my spiritual beliefs are concerned, and I realized I was already pretty non-religious, by all standards, only I hadn't known it before then.

Class 9 and the next three years were a sort of accelerated maturity period for me. I grappled with the ideas of atheism and agnosticism, flipped and flaunted the names around without really knowing or trying to know what they imply. I also found a new interest in reading non-fiction, and I read quite a few religious books, as part of that interest, though not with any spiritual inclinations in mind. I also happened to read quite a few excellent general science books. And once I was done dabbling with all the different aspects of the matter, I realized that I was still an atheist, not believing in gods or indeed in anything of a supernatural nature, and if anything, my convictions were only strengthened, as a result of my reading.

The next four years, after I was done with school, were when I started reading actively about atheism and atheist activity in the world. It's not been much so far, except for finding out which of my friends are atheist, and reading about atheism in the western world and what it implies to be an atheist in the west. Thus far I was shielded, in part because I wasn't proclaiming my atheist beliefs out in the open world. Atheists in the west have to contend with deeply religious people, who frown upon atheism as a source of degeneracy. Hindus also frown upon atheistic nature, but at present we have enough problems in the form of interreligious disharmony to deal with, alongside terrorism and the like, so nobody's going to worry about who's atheist, in all the mess.

Most of my reading thus far comes from people who have lived and grown in a predominantly Christian community, so their views and their reactions are quite different from what I have developed so far living in a predominantly Hindu community (of course, there's also the fact that I haven't yet gained enough experience in the world to talk very conclusively about what I've observed). These people have lived and faced an entire world of differences, arising solely from their lack of belief in any kind of divinity (which is quite an issue with most religious people in the west, who feel their identity is under attack if their religion is attacked). There have been a lot of words written and spoken on the matter, and a lot of ideas and opinions aired. So there is this entirely new point of view to think about, and at present I am devoting quite some energy to it.

My journey is still continuing. It's like watching a flower bloom - with every layer of petals opening up, a new and more intricate structure is laid bare to look at and analyze. But I still know, at the end of it, how I've travelled and where I've ended up: for all practical purposes, I'm an atheist.

The Music of Laughter

2009-11-06T10:30:00.000-08:00

Dictionary Definition:

laughter/noun

1. the action or sound of laughing

2. an inner quality, mood, disposition, etc., suggestive of laughter; mirthfulness: a man of laughter and goodwill

3. an expression or appearance of merriment or amusement

4. Archaic an object of laughter; subject or matter for amusement

I love the sound of laughter. Warm-hearted, deep-throated, genuine laughter. It could be guys guffawing over a shared joke, girls giggling over a shared secret, friends amusing themselves over silly behaviour, but laughter still has a peculiar quality, of conveying something beautiful directly to the heart, much the way that music does.

Why does it affect me so powerfully? There hasn't been much for me to laugh about in a long time; I have a rather degenerate sense of humour, which is why I find people who do have a good sense of humour irresistible. I mean, there is a lot going on, but it's mostly neutral stuff; there's nothing to be depressed about, but then it's not exactly ecstatic joy either. I keep cheerful most of the time, but it's not very often that I get to hear free, open laughter, which conveys genuine enjoyment of the moment in progress.

Laughter conveys goodwill, delight, an extremely positive vibe around oneself, and if the vibe is strong enough, it reaches everyone around the person laughing, which is why they say laughter is infectious. Unfortunately, it's a little rare to hear genuine good laughter; mostly it's people throwing out a fake laugh, trying to appear cool or be snobbish or just make a lot of noise. Fake laughter puzzles me more than it irritates me; I can't understand why anyone would want to laugh if they don't feel like it. And the lack of genuine laughter is also due to the fact that people often don't laugh when they feel like it, simply because they're trying to appear cool or be snobbish or they just don't want to pitch in to the general goodwill. Suppression of laughter puzzles me more; I simply cannot understand people who try to control their delight, even when it's clean and bright.

It's important to have a sense of humour, and it's important to use it, and use it well. If you don't have a sense of humour, it's important to be around people who have one, and it's important to be able to pick up on it when it's being used. Life would otherwise be a very cold place to be, with a very dim sinking glow on the horizon.

Art Experience

2009-10-31T18:31:00.000-07:00

We engineers lose out a lot when we're stuck in our rooms doing nothing but solving equations. Sure, there's internet and there's music, but there's art too, but not many people are into that.

Art isn't just a pretty painting. It ties together history, observation, ideas, themes, and beauty. Sure, you can find any number of books to teach you how to appreciate and identify artworks, but there's nothing like the experience of being face to face with a beautiful artwork and having an interactive session with someone who's involved deeply with art and with teaching people about it.

This is probably why I was never quite as impressed or excited about museums and their collections back home. Sure, there were loads of things, and loads of beautiful things, but unless you have that human touch, of someone who knows and understands the significance of those things, and can convey that opinion (if you don't want to call it anything else), you can't really begin to form an opinion of any depth of your own. I now have had the opportunity to go through a museum gallery guided by someone, whose particular interest it is to cultivate interest and curiosity, and most of all, wonder, in others, in appreciating the richness of the legacy passed down to us, and it was a wonderful opportunity and experience.

Art isn't just paintings. It's also about sculptures, scrolls, costumes, furniture, and just about anything that conveys the aesthetic bent of the mind, or rather of the collective mindset that represents a particular era. This mindset is very fickle; it will change even from decade to decade, but that change isn't an unwelcome thing, because it makes for progress, for innovation, for a new kind of creativity to take birth and shape itself.

I had read about Renaissance art, and something about the artists whose works defined that period, and in fact, sub-periods within that period. But this occasion, I was face to face with a painting from that period. I was asked to describe what I saw in that painting. It was from the early Renaissance. What did we notice? There was a prominent solid gold background, solid gold halos about the figures, very rich and vibrant colours, though darkened with time due to the use of tempera colours, an extravagantly larger size for the more important figures in the painting, a triangular shape for composing the figures, a lack of three dimensional perspective (depth). The figures themselves were of the Virgin Mary, the baby Jesus, and saintly figures of their time. Each figure was distinctly identifiable by certain accessories that were peculiarly assigned to them; for example, the Virgin Mary is always clothed in a red robe, symbolizing the sacrifice by her baby Jesus, and a blue cloak, symbolizing her exalted status (certain exotic shades of blue were a very expensive pigment to make, especially if you made it from lapis lazuli or the like). These are tiny things, but they make all the difference.

The next painting was also of the early Renaissance, but at an advanced stage, perhaps thirty years later. What was similar or different between it and the older painting? The same figures of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, with saints, but with more figures this time, including angels and women. The same gold halos and solid gold background, but this time with a sense of perspective, with arches and platforms added to give a sense of depth to the painting. The same use of tempera colours, but with a little more delicacy.

The next painting was a complete contrast. It belonged to the high Renaissance period. Again, the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus. But, there was now a background, of a village, a hill, a river, an entire countryside. A deliberate arrangement of ledges and steps, to give both a sense of depth, as well as a sense of immediacy, as though you could reach out and touch the figures. The materials were oil on canvas, which led to the portrayal of much finer detail than is possible with tempera on wood. The halos which so blatantly declared divinity were now simply reduced to faint gold circles, to convey a subtle message rather than a blunt one. The colours were still rich, but now more subtle, with folds and curves very delicately worked out. The figures were of proportionate size, but the triangular composition style was still preserved. The entire mood of the painting was one of peacefulness and serenity, which are rather human qualities. Compare this to the earlier paintings, which you could say were intended to inspire respect and awe for the divine figures that they were portraying. The focus in this painting was on realism, trying to show things realistically, exactly as they are.

The next painting was again different! It was of the period of Mannerism, where the focus was on showing the manner of things. This one again featured the Virgin Mary, with baby Jesus, but equally prominent was her cousin St Elizabeth. Also shown were John the Baptist and two angels. The mood was one of violence, fear, concern, anxiety. John the Baptist was dying, and painted in the classical pose. The two angels were in shock. Jesus was afraid, Mary was unhappy, and Elizabeth looking very grim. The figures were all disproportionate (Jesus, who would've been only eight months old or so was almost the same size as Mary) and muscularly built. There were no fine details, only broad swathes of colours and tiny lines that combined to produces the general effect of figures. There was no background, no intention to convey depth, no halos, no calmness or serenity, no delicacy or subtlety. A cursory knowledge of the events of the New Testament tells us that this is the point when Elizabeth warns Mary that her son would be killed, with this idea being conveyed to the viewer in the form of John's dying posture, John being a sort of precursor to Jesus and their lives running on somewhat parallel lines.

This, I then understood, was appreciating art. Not merely admiring it for its aesthetic beauty, but also understanding its significance in relation to the life of the people when it was created, and the purpose for which it was created. That tends to lend it a fuller quality, and your appreciation then gains some substance, much like the way you would admire someone better when you can see their intelligence aside from their good looks.

The next leg of the tour explored American Art, and its evolution from the time when the country was born until the second world war. The art from the various time periods in American history reflect the ongoing themes and turbulence of the times, as all art does. A young country that has just started to take shape is fresh with the ideas of exploration, patriotism, innovation, individualism, aspiration to perfection, and utilitarianism, and this is precisely reflected in the artworks of that time.

We started with portraits of famous and prominent figures, which were just that: portraits; paintings by skilled artists to immortalize the subjects of the paintings. The centerpiece of the gallery was the bust of George Washington, portraying him in a stern and serious mood, as an orator, a statesman, a man with a huge responsibility on his shoulders. Equally striking were the paintings of famous landscapes, showing exploration of the new territories that would form part of the young country, as well as paintings of scenes of patriotism arising from both the War of Revolution as well as the Civil War, the most striking of which was the painting of Lady Schuyler burning her fields.

This latter painting shows a young woman, Lady Schuyler, picking up a torch and preparing to set fire to the wheat fields behind her, as her husband helps and her daughter watches, along with another young woman and (presumably) a young slave boy helping. Lady Schuyler is the most prominent figure, dressed in white, blue and red (the colours of the flag, and hence of patriotism), deliberately placed in the centre and given a very discernible triangular composition, in spite of the figures all around her. The scene is easy to understand given the context; the family has learned that British troops are approaching, and rather than be conquered, they would set their fields on fire before they fled to warn others, so that no resources would be left behind. One doesn't know how true the story is, but the painting serves to portray and inspire patriotism, in a very symbolic way, and must have conveyed the same ideals throughout time, wherever it was displayed.

Also striking was a certain quilt made by a pair of young ladies for their home, beautifully crafted and carefully preserved. It may seem odd for something as simple as a quilt to be displayed in a museum, but remember that art is anything that's beautifully crafted by human hands. Quilts were in fact rather important items in early American history, indeed there were customs such as quilt-making parties that served to foster community bonding. The women of the household typically made all the household linen themselves, or at least for ceremonial occasions, and both men and women got together for quilt-making parties and each one would make one part of the quilt, the whole being put together when everyone was done. This particular quilt was probably made for a ceremonial occasion, given that it has come to us so well preserved.

It was formed in the main of two kinds of motifs, one being a simple yet elegant flower motif, probably signifying growth and flourishing of the community and the nation, the other being a rework of the bald eagle emblem, complete with drum and other attributes. The pattern was laid out in nine squares, four bearing the emblem motif and five the flower motif, symmetrical in layout, though each individual motif was not quite symmetrical, with the whole being bordered by a simpler flower and leaf pattern. The colour theme was white, with pink, red and green used for the flower motifs. These colours were also symbolic of prosperity and continuing stability. Most interestingly, the word LIBEBTY was worked into the eagle motif, though whether the spelling was deliberate or accidental we may not know. One might suspect it was deliberate, because of the custom amongst craftsmen out of humility to never allow anything crafted to be absolutely perfect, because only the Creator is held to be perfect, and challenging his perfection is to invite trouble.

And this museum is a publicly funded museum, which means around half its operating budget comes from public taxes. The rest has to be raised through private donations, as do the collections themselves, because a museum operating on public funds does not have the kind of money that private museums or vanity museums do, for purchasing works of art. A publicly funded museum cannot spend 15 billion dollars for one painting, the way a private museum could. The collection is thus painstakingly built up, over decades, by convincing people to donate money and fund the museum's activities, including helping it acquire pieces for the collections, as well as donate their own collections as a civic responsibility. The dynamics of how this works also add to the awe you feel as you walk into such a place.

Museums are all about preserving history. Preserving, as best as we can, every representative material piece of the past, and recording our history through each of these pieces. An art museum simply preserves history through the arts, adding a touch of the aesthetic to our sense of history.

(My experience courtesy the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the University of Southern California)

Random Conversation: Sexy Alu Mattar

2009-10-01T16:57:00.001-07:00

"Oh man, I had a full meal."

"What was for dinner?"

"Alu mattar. My roomie made it. It was sexy."

"The alu mattar? Sexy?"

"Yes, of course!"

"Do you realize you're changing the definition of sexy?"

"Why, what's wrong with calling it sexy?"

"Oh really? So... what were the curves like?"

"Of the mattar? Absolutely round and fresh, man, and the alu? Such lovely angular shape... And the tomatoes, so perfectly soft and mashed up... and the garlic and ginger paste and the ajwine added such lovely flavour...!"

"You know, that kind of description could be used for..."

"Yeah, I know."

Pay It Forward

2009-09-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

They say, that humankind has a natural, inexplicable, karmic gift: what goes around, comes around. Actually, that is only half the circle. If you want the full circle to exist, there is an accompanying responsibility: what comes around, must go around. In simple words, that means everyone must be at the giving end when they can give it, if they wish to be at the receiving end when they need it.

Human society is huge. We number somewhere in the neighbourhood of seven billion people, every single one different from the other. We live in organized cooperative society (or at least, most of us do), where each one must contribute, so that the collective good is served. So why is altruism necessary? Why would one want to selflessly help someone else, without any expectation of reward?

It makes immediate sense when one says that each person must contribute; each one must work and earn a living, and the combined contributions of each person help sustain the community as a whole. Earlier, we had the barter system so the reward for contribution was direct; now we have money, so it's a little more complicated, but it's still essentially the same in principle. But it wouldn't make immediate sense to someone extremely practical, that going a little bit out of your way to help out others without any expectation of reward is just as important. You don't get a clear answer to the question: "What am I going to get out of it?"

Anyone who's interested in why our ancestors developed a sense of altruism and why we still have it today may refer to the relevant chapter in The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. The book is about atheism, but Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist, and he offers an explanation from that point of view. Altruism is essentially an investment, due to the extreme unpredictability of life. I cannot be sure of getting food everyday, but if I live in a group where everyone tries to get food, and shares equally whatever is obtained, surely my chances of starving at the end of the day are significantly lesser, than if I were to live alone. I share my excess today, in the hope that tomorrow someone will share their excess with me, if mine depletes. Individuals who possess this sense are more likely to survive, more likely to reproduce, and more likely to pass on this trait to their offspring, which is why we have it today, so many generations after it developed in primitive humans.

There can still be an objection raised at this point. Alright, so someone does you a favour. Why should you not return the favour to that person, the one who did it to you? That person deserves it more than anyone else, why must one be altruistic in general? And isn't such an investment a dangerous one to make at all? What if you do something for someone who will never be capable of returning the favour back to you?

There is nothing to prevent us from being good to people who do us a good turn. In fact, it's a very nice thing to do. It makes perfect logical sense. And as for someone who can't return the favour back to you, how do you know that there isn't a third person, who can do you good, but who is in need of something which the second person can give? How do you know that there isn't a chain of such people? The whole concept of altruism is based on this, that it works in a circle, and that such a circle is possible, never mind its actual realization in life.

The movie Pay It Forward was based on this idea. You may not always be able to return a favour that someone does you. Someone else may not be able to return you a favour that you do them. So why not just go on helping people anyway? Someday you will receive help too, because you are part of the circle. And the more people you help, and the more you encourage this concept, the bigger the circle can be.

The next observation is, how do we know that there is such a circle at all? There are hundreds of people in the world who do not receive the help they need, at the most critical points in their lifetime. Isn't the circle supposed to include everyone, if it exists? It's true that there are people who don't receive help. There are people who are harmed for no fault of theirs, often even deliberately harmed by someone else for that someone's personal benefit. But that makes it all the more urgent for people to understand and adopt the concept of altruism. It's true that you need to be able to support yourself at a minimum level, before you can support others. But doesn't it fit in, that others can help you reach that minimum level, from where you can take off and then begin the paying forward process yourself?

Most of all, it often doesn't take too much effort to go out of your way to help someone else. Helping out can be for things as simple as helping your neighbour with heavy bags, or giving someone a lift. That kind of thing is not just manners; in a way, it's altruism. If everyone gives it, everyone receives it too. And if you receive it, you should think about giving it too.

Deadlines Matter To Us!

2009-09-14T18:31:00.002-07:00

A firm of surveyors, in the mood for some whacky fun, took an extremely fat book and went out to study the reaction of people in various professions.

The doctor looked through the book, pausing to note intriguing passages, and declared his opinion that it would take him six months to complete a study of the book.

The lawyer skimmed through it, flipping quickly through the pages, and said it would take him a couple of months to plough through it.

The manager glanced at the book and its title, and averred it would take him a week or so to get through it.

The engineer didn't even look at the book. "When's the exam?"

Many thanks to the two lovely ladies who told me this story.

Being Feminine

2009-09-10T05:58:00.000-07:00

For some time, I have found my thoughts often turning to the concept of femininity. Femininity, not feminism. I am already a rather headstrong feminist, in that I believe in equal rights and opportunities, as well as equal standards and regard between the sexes. The trouble is the latter part seems to somewhat collide with popular perceptions of femininity.

What does it mean to be feminine? I have good reason to ask, and good authority to answer, since I was labelled a "non-female" by a good number of people (men, actually) for quite some time, for different reasons. What was different about me, that people thought I wasn't feminine?

I was a tomboy for quite some time. A very long time, in fact. I always wore jeans and t-shirts, and they were the baggy, loose kind, that guys usually wear. I never wore makeup or jewelry; never bothered with my hair except for keeping it clean and tightly tied up, away from my face; never worried about getting rid of acne; never giggled with a group of girls, talking about boys or movies; never went for any intense grooming sessions; never displayed those typical gestures or mannerisms that most "feminine" girls seem to have. And then there was the matter of attitude too. Apparently I simply didn't "behave" like a girl, whatever that is supposed to mean. And several times, people advised me with earnest and good intentions to change all that!

Things did change gradually. My tastes in clothes changed a little; I still wear only t-shirts and jeans, but these are now somewhat of the "feminine" kind (read better-fitting). I wear a minimal amount of jewelry, and I keep my hair more loosely tied now, so that some of the neatness has been sacrificed. I do some minimal amount of the grooming part, with the emphasis on neatness. I still don't wear makeup or giggle, though I laugh a lot. I don't roam around with a pack of girls talking about boys or movies. I don't know if I have yet developed "girly" behaviour or not.

But, it seems this was enough to change that tag! I thought being feminine meant having or displaying qualities that are unique to one as a female; that means you get those qualities only if you are a female. Nothing has changed in my essential mind or body in the past ten years, and yet, a simple change of clothes and elimination of acne seems to have changed the tag. Is that all femininity is about? The clothes and the hair and the makeup? If so, it isn't exactly a very useful or practical thing, is it? And if it has no use, why in the universe would I go to the trouble of developing that feminine quality in the first place! How presumptuous indeed to imply, that an essential part of my worth comes from such superficial things!

The other aspect is that being feminine apparently requires certain social attitudes as well. But in a way, this seems to be trampling on the ground of feminism, insofar as that is used to view certain social mores and norms. For example, I can cross a busy street in India without getting killed, and I'm quite skilled at that. Crossing the road alone is not a problem for me, and neither is it for hundreds of girls in India. Yet, if I happen to cross the road, or even walk by the side of the road with a guy, he will invariably move between me and the oncoming traffic. This is regardless of how much the guy knows or doesn't know me. Of course, he has been taught by his seniors and his peers that this is how you must treat a female, so it doesn't matter if he's a friend or a stranger; he will still walk on the side where the traffic is.

Now I can complain about this, protesting that it is really unnecessary and I am quite capable of crossing the road facing the traffic myself, thank you very much: this is the feminist in me speaking. Or I can quietly accept it, because part of the "feminine" social deal is that it's okay to let a guy care for you any way he can; that in fact, it's supposed to be that way, that it's a guy's duty to take care of any female he's with. What makes it funny, apart from complicating matters, is that when a female refuses a male's "protection" or "care" in this manner, she actually affronts his "masculinity" (read male ego)! Whenever I protest against any guy trying to keep me away from the traffic, even on the safest and most orderly of roads, they physically pull me to the other side, saying things like, "You won't understand! Just come to the other side!" Those who don't or won't go so far as that, give me a look that combines surprise with a shade of being offended.

There are plenty of things like this, that a guy would do trying to be chivalrous: picking up bags, extending a hand over difficult terrain, opening doors, holding out chairs and so on. I find it rather strange; I don't need anyone, guy or girl, to do things like that for me. Yet tons of girls accept such behaviour, and indeed expect it from guys. So, is this attitude also part of being "feminine"? I've never seen a girl pull out a chair for a guy. Ever.

Surely, being feminine must be more than dressing yourself up or acting like a wimp? I still wonder.

New World

2009-09-06T23:57:00.004-07:00

A new world is mine to make my own. And yet, life is no different in this world than it was in the old one.

How does it matter which side of the road you walk on? You still have to walk.

How does it matter what time of day or night you walk? It's still unsafe to walk alone.

How does it matter who you meet and talk to and roam about with? You still need friends, and you will find them wherever you go.

How does it matter, who cooks best and who cooks worst, or indeed, who cooks at all? You still have to eat food to live. And to eat that food, you have to cook it the best you can.

How does it matter how many people in the city you talk to? Girls will be girls, and boy will be boys. And girls and boys will always have the same issues around them and between them, that they always did.

How does it matter how you try to disguise yourself? Your heart is always the same, still beating strong within you, with the rhythm that you have learnt and developed over so many years.

How does it matter which song you listen to? Music is universal, it speaks to the mind in a language that does not have words or alphabets.

How does it matter how many stories you hear? There will always be stories, and each brings out a new and fresh aspect of human nature you never knew existed before. And you will have your stories to tell and reveal too.

How does it matter how far away a friend or a parent or a lover may be? You send them your love every time you think of them.

And how does it matter how far your goal is? In your dreams, you still see that which is most precious to you, that which is most priceless, that which you desire to have and cherish so passionately that when you awaken, nothing will stop you on your journey as you step towards it.

At the end of the day, when your mind is exhausted and your heart begins to have misgivings, your sleep will rejuvenate you, invigorate you, and cheer you and offer you solace, so that you may continue with the next leg of your journey on the morrow.

This new world is then, already my own.

Bonny, and Blithe, and Good, and Gay

2009-06-30T10:46:00.006-07:00

So India finally had its first major step in bringing homosexuals back to the community - decriminalizing their existence.

That was a pretty harsh step - condemning gayness to the point where it was actually a crime. It was an archaic and idiotic law at that time, and it is even more so today. Imagine the horror of having your existence labelled a crime, and for something that's actually a personal matter - the matter of who you fall in love with.

People who have opposed homosexuality usually have one of four particular reasons to oppose it: either that it is not permitted by religion, or that it could have adverse consequences for society (in terms of demographics), or that it involves 'unnatural' thinking or behaviour, or that it would lead to higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) amongst the existing population.

I find all these reasons weird.

The argument of religion is perhaps the most ridiculous. The idea of religion determining the validity of one's sexual orientation is most horrendous, for all the good reasons that atheists proclaim aloud all the time. It is rather alarming, to find that your entire social and moral structure is dictated by a belief system, which rather than being all-encompassing and tolerant, instead preaches the "righteousness" of only one set group of attributes in people, and condemns the rest. I would not, for one minute, accept any religion that effectively said that a certain denomination of people must be discriminated against; neither would I accept the preachings or claims of any so-called spiritual or religious or moral teacher who said so. If there is a divine being which created everything, then homosexuals were created by that same being, hence there is no call to treat them lesser than heterosexuals. If there never was any divine being, it doesn't change things, because everyone is still born with the rights of equality and freedom.

Another common argument is the fact that homosexuality could lead to a "breakdown in the fabric of society". What kind of breakdown are these people talking about? Any child which is raised in the home of a loving, honest, upright, caring family is likely to imbibe those attributes as well. How does it matter whether that family is two men, or two women, or a man and a woman? A child needs a safe, happy home to live in. A large number of children come from different kinds of families. There are children who have lost one parent, children who have lost both parents, children who have divorced parents, children who have been adopted, by either single parents or couples, children who have been adopted alongside natural children, children who have step-parents and step-siblings, resulting from extension of a few of the situations above, and so on. Even with the differing conditions, these children can be happy, if they have a happy and loving home atmosphere. Why should children with homosexual parents be any different?

One more objection is that homosexual tendencies are "unnatural". This sentiment reeks of bigotry. If someone is different, either actively or passively, that does not mean that they are criminals. If you think someone is unnatural for not thinking or acting the way you do, that means the other person has the right to think the same way about you. Sexual orientation is moreover, a private matter, that has no direct bearing on anyone except each individual for himself/herself. There is no call for anyone to go about labelling anyone else's sexual bent "unnatural".

Some people use the unnatural tag with the argument that children can be born naturally only to a man and a woman together, thus it is unnatural for any other liaison to exist. But how does it matter? Gay couples can always adopt children, apart from using one partner's sperm with donated ova, together with help from a surrogate mother. Lesbian couples have an added advantage in only needing the sperm, since either partner can herself become a mother. Infertility treatments allow for the conception of children by couples who couldn't normally have them. Isn't that going against the "law of nature"? But nobody in their senses would oppose the use of such treatments to have children, so how does this particular argument justify going against homosexuality?

The last problem - the one of spread of STDs - is a legitimate concern. But again, there are no grounds for condemning homosexuality, because the latter is not the only reason for spread of STDs. Unsafe sexual practices are followed by hundreds of people, heterosexual or not, often unknowingly. Those who know, often don't care until it's too late. Open any personal column or sex advice column in any magazine, and you will read plenty of cases about boys who visit prostitutes to "check their virility", about people who indulge in unprotected sex with partners and later realize that they know nothing about their partner's sexual habits or history, and about people who don't even understand the concept of protection, either against pregnancy or against STDs, much less know any level of detail about how various forms of protection work.

A lot of people don't know that there are STDs apart from AIDS, and many people live under the delusion that AIDS spreads mainly (or only) due to homosexual contact. Thanks to this state of affairs, and the equally dismal level of basic sexual education in the country, STDs are spreading at exponential levels, and instead of fostering sexual education and promoting safe practices and preventive procedures, people are instead attacking homosexuality as the cause.

Some basic sex education needs to be provided to teenagers at the right stages of life. After all, would it not be much better to arm adolescents with correct information and equip them to make good choices, rather than let them find out a whole motley bunch of mistruths on their own? Sex education is a separate issue on its own. People would rather not have any sex ed given to their children, for fear of encouraging experimentation in "evil practices" (of which they consider homosexuality is one). Unfortunately, in an age when information of every kind, true and untrue, is available at one's fingertips, unless active steps are taken to combat misinformation, things are likely to go down the drain.

And meanwhile, the issue of homosexuality stands on its own. Some progress is apparently being made in recent years; some homosexual marriages have been solemnized, by religious priests, and the parents of those couples have been accepting of the situation. There may be many more couples in nooks and corners in the country, quietly living their lives, keeping their secret. With at least their existence now no longer criminal in the eyes of the law, there may now come about a slow social revolution, culminating in a fairer quality of life for a significant part of the human populace.

Read A Book Daily...

2009-06-15T10:37:00.005-07:00

I'm a condemned person for some time now. I'm about to jump off a precipice and find out whether all the effort I've put into designing and building my wings is going to work, because now I have to fly...

But there's still time to jump off that precipice. I have to find a landowner who's willing to let me use his property for my take-off.

And in the meanwhile I've to wait. So what do I do?

I read a book daily.

I've harboured this idea for a long time - I want my own library. A huge cupboard full of books, all neatly categorized, covered with good newspaper to protect the delicate covers from scratches and brutal treatment, and looking beautiful and inviting. I go crazy every time I go to a bookstore. I can't resist the temptation to buy just one more book, one more beautiful piece of writing, and my heart breaks every time I see the prices. I often soothe that wound by buying a Penguin classic that I don't already have - it's a bargain, seriously. You get a nice classic for just around one hundred rupees, and it's a good book to add to the collection. Penguin has its own taste in selecting books to publish, and it's taste matches with my own, and the best part is, my taste isn't confined to just one type of literature.

And now there's a new form of entertainment. It's called thin-slicing, the concept for which you should thank this young man. You get to read the first chapter of a book totally free, and from that, you must thin-slice and make out whether you'd like to buy the book or not. It's a great way to find out about books. And it makes for great recreation too.

Heh heh, you can let your imagination soar about the chapters you read too.

I've decided to read a book daily. Not just the actual paper that I can clasp in my hands, hold up to my face and smell deeply, write my name on and declare my ownership of, but also a trial run for all these new books by all these various authors, which I might probably not even see in my local bookstore.

It's probably also good to have a way to evaluate the books without the danger of falling to the temptation to buy them, which is likely to happen in an actual bookstore.

I can't help it, the atmosphere is just too tempting!

Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?

2009-06-04T10:21:00.005-07:00

This seems to be the smartest program on TV just about now. I knew there was a reason why I stopped watching TV except for Looney Tunes and Tom & Jerry.

The contestants are equally smart. I'll tell you the story of a contestant who got knocked out in just three questions, having used a cheat on each one of them.

Question 1: How many consonants are there in the word "Vowel"?

Question 2: True or False? "Vincent van Gogh was born in France."

Question 3: How many demonstrative adjectives are there in the following sentence? "That scruffy dog chased the multicoloured cat up the tall fence."

Now, I'm guessing that most people would score on the first one without skipping a beat. Our smart young lady chose to save herself instantly. Her idea was, there are two consonants in the spelling of "Voul". She learnt the correct spelling on the show.

Not many of us really know where Vincent van Gogh was born, but I think the name is at least a sufficient indication that the guy is a Dutchman, and not French.

Not too many people would remember third standard English grammar, which happens to be 5th standard English grammar for the Americans, but a demonstrative adjective is one which points towards a noun, rather than qualitatively defining it. There are only four in the entire English language: This, That, These, Those. No prizes for guessing the answer on this one.

This is the state of the language, amongst the people who are supposed to be the experts in it. And I, though living where I do and yet promoting the standard of language that I do, am still forced to shell out 8000 in cash, to pay for a test to prove my proficiency in the same language. And no hope for a reprieve. The little consolation I have is in watching the show, and gloating that I am smarter than an American 5th grader, and definitely much smarter than an average American of my age.

Colourblind

2009-05-19T02:50:00.001-07:00

"Don't try to understand bureaucratic logic. Trust me, you don't want to," said my wise friend Marcus Licinius Crassus. He told me the following story.

A steel company in a small central-eastern state in my country, once wished to set up mining operations there. They penned a letter and sent it to the Department of Administrative Affairs to seek the required permissions. The Department flipped the moment they received the letter. Reason? It was in green ink.

"Oh no, our department correspondence and work is carried out only in red and black ink," said they, and so the forwarded the application for a second opinion to the Ministry of Interior Affairs. And those guys flipped out too. Reason? "Green ink is used only by the top guys in the military."

So they forwarded the application to the Ministry of Defence. And again, those guys flipped out! Reason? "This is nothing to do with us or our department! It must go back where it came from!"

And so the application found it's way back, over the course of eight months, back to the Ministry of Interior Affairs, which sent it back to the Department of Administrative Affairs, which sent it back to the steel company, stating that the application needed to be in line with the law passed two months back, stating that all applications and forms must henceforth always be penned in blue or black ink.

I don't know about the steel company, but Reynolds, Add and Cello must have made a fortune in blue and black ink since then.

Warning: True story. Oops, you already read it. :D

Viva la Project!

2009-05-04T03:30:00.005-07:00

What have you done in this project?
Nothing, really.

Why do we need hybrid systems?
Environment friendly, you big bad smoking chimney!

Why do we combine solar power with wind power in a hybrid system, of all the renewable sources we can use?
Reminds me of the beach. Soak in the sun, with a cool breeze flowing... Gets me started, man!

What have you done in one year?
Watched movies, went on a trip, drank chai, got drunk, ate lots of nice food, celebrated my birthday, what more do you want to know, you sneak!

What is the efficiency of solar system/wind system?
Should be good, else we wouldn't use it.

What have you actually simulated?
How the thing works, you doof. Why not just read the damn report?

Why have you used voltage signals in the simulation, when a power system deals with load?
Coz that's what's possible in the goddamn software! Man, talk about being a prof...

Why have you chosen LabVIEW instead of Matlab?
Coz that's what my guide told me to do. Plus, it has a nice view... isn't that what it's supposed to be? Lab-View?

What are the voltage ranges we can deal with in this hybrid system, ie what is the load you can supply?
Whatever load you want, you build a big enough machine, and it'll supply. Talk to Homepower.org, they deal in installation info.

What is the use of your project?
Getting a grade so I can get out of here. Also perhaps some kid could copy it and get a grade too.

What machine is used in a wind turbine system?
The one that's used in all of them.

How can you increase the efficiency or power output of a hybrid system?
Umm... throw out the garbage on time? So that the system doesn't have to waste time doing it.

How cost-effective is a hybrid system?
Not much. I spent all my time and energy on this one, and that other idiot spent only 10 grand on his... and got a better grade! Talk about unfair!

Animal Tales

2008-11-15T21:13:00.004-08:00

I know a dog, a black Labrador, owned by a friend of mine. He is huge and fat, being very well cared for, and also lazy, except when it comes to visitors to my friend's home. If you love dogs, you'll probably fall in love with him the moment you see him, like I did, and you'll never have a peaceful moment during your visit, since the dog will simply try to jump on you and tear you up in his excitement. If you show the slightest sign of being scared, God bless you. This is a dog that likes to scare people for fun, and will capitalize handsomely on the slightest sign of fear that you show.

But there are other animals in our lives too, besides the pets of our friends. Most of us do not bother to think about them, simply because they don't really have a ground shattering effect on our lives.

This junior in college recently brought to me a little box, containing three little baby rats. They were almost newly born, not more than a week old, and could sniff around, though not one could open its eyes. The mother may have abandoned them, but my juniors didn't have the heart to. They even inquired at a vet's if there was any sort of protective vaccination available. Sadly there was none, but last I heard, they have been trying to devise effective ways of feeding the little babies.

Then there's this mother cat in my hostel, who moves around with two beautiful kittens that bear the same colouring that she does. Kittens are such tiny delicate creatures. Cats are known to be rather aloof: they don't like being petted the way dogs do. They don't trust humans too much either. I managed to touch the cat, but she was averse to it and showed it too. The kittens moved away entirely from my range of touch.

The kitten tale reminds me of the kitten on Borivali Station in Mumbai. Another little baby probably abandoned by its mother, or perhaps orphaned. Feeble and cold, it tried to warm itself by sitting between my legs. My friend and I realized that we could not possibly take the kitten back with us, since neither he nor I would be able to take care of it properly. We tried to feed it, and it responded by climbing up into my lap on its own.

On a jog one cold morning in October, another friend and I found a litter of five pups lying bang in the middle of the road with no mother. It's common enough for the mother to give birth just about anywhere, though she does try to find a warm place which could be safe too. Stray dogs die easily, because if they aren't poisoned by unscrupulous householders or crushed by speeding vehicles, they are killed in fights with other dogs. These pups weren't newborn, but they didn't land up in the middle of the road by accident and were shivering badly. We thought to shift them to the bushes by the side of the road, and perhaps get some kind of cloth to serve as a blanket. The puppies didn't object to being touched, but the wail set up by them on being picked up brought the mother out of the nearby bushes where she had been resting onto the road, barking angrily. That was unnerving, but still reassuring. All mothers are indeed fiercely protective of their young.

Another jogging trip brought us to another puppy, this time alone, with no mother or siblings in sight. Pups are never born alone, but always in a litter, and while growing they rarely move far from each other. This little one had strayed away quite a bit, and though shivering in the cold, was not weak. It was sniffing quietly, looking lost and sad. My friend and I were wiser this time, and only remained with it till it wandered off on its own. It didn't object outright to being touched, but I don't think it liked it either. Stray dogs seem to be born with a sort of instinctive fear of being touched by humans. They need to be taught to like the touch, as pet dogs do.

I am reminded of the time when a young neighbour of mine brought to me a baby squirrel that he had found. That one had fallen out of its hole or nest wherever that was, and the mother hadn't retrieved it yet. If left on the ground without protection, the baby was likely to be eaten by a larger animal such as a cat or dog, which was why my friend picked it up. Squirrels hate to be touched even more than cats do, and this one had to be held cunningly so that it couldn't escape. It did manage to free its head for a few seconds though, and neatly sank its front teeth into my hand. They have really sharp teeth, needed for cutting and breaking through the seeds, nuts and pods that they eat. I am a creature large enough to be able to bear the pain of a squirrel bite, but that was a moment to be treasured, being bitten by a squirrel.

This other time, a squirrel got lost in my house. It found its way in and couldn't get out. For three days my mother and I chased it all through the house from room to room, and finally managed to corner it behind a door. I would have liked to tame it and keep it as a pet, but my folks won't abide animals, so I received the honour of releasing it back into the domestic wild from whence it came.

There was also once a toad that jumped into the kitchen, and this one we trapped under a bucket and led out of the house. And there was also the occasion when a young sparrow found its way into our house. At night too, so it took an hour of chasing and constantly light switching to enable it to find its way to the open air outside. That didn't help completely either, because the best we were able to do was guide it to the room with the largest window. We had to trap it and then release it. It wasn't a full grown adult; it could be held easily with two fingers and a thumb. The beating of its heart was faster and harder than I'd ever felt in my own pulse.

There is this lady who sells roasted corn stalks in the evenings right outside the college gate. There is a dog that frequents her stall, though keeping a distance, hoping to salvage a few grains from discarded stalks once people finish eating. My friend and I fed it a few grains at first one evening, feeling sorry for it. It wouldn't come any closer than five feet to us, so we left the grains on the sidewalk a little bit away. It lapped up the grains hungrily, not leaving a single one. We couldn't help it. We tore out and gave the remaining grains from the stalk as well. Even the gift of food wouldn't encourage enough trust in the animal to come closer to us. We had to leave everything at a safe distance from ourselves to encourage him to eat it. The slightest extension of a hand would drive him away.

There are a few dogs that frequent the tea stalls outside college in the mornings. These dogs are often fed biscuits by the people who come to jog on the college grounds. I once expressed a desire to my friend, the owner of the black Labrador, to feed them too. "Do it," he said. "I assure you, you won't ever regret it."

Yaay for Feminism!

2008-11-06T00:06:00.005-08:00

Barack Obama has won the President's election in the USA. Love it or hate it, the affairs of the USA do affect the rest of the world, the simplest reason for this being that we all live on the same planet. You can't run away to the moon if you don't like what's happening on earth.

This victory means victory for women's rights, for pro-choice activists, and for feminists. There is now hope that the long battle for equal rights will now be won: the right to have equal pay and equal insurance premiums, and to receive contraception and abort children that we can't bring up with a satisfactorily standard of living, without any question or opposition on religious grounds. (After all, we tend to copy the USA in everything. Why not copy some sensible things too, if this comes to happen?)

A lot of people feel things are gonna be bad for India thanks to Obama's policies. That is a topic with huge scope for debate. But frankly, the prospect of having Sarah Palin in a position of influence in one of the most influential countries in the world is scary. She is a shame to all feminists, ie people like me. That doesn't mean that we are going to slink away in humiliation or "hang our heads in tearful shame" (the chauvinistic, mean and unkind words of an acquaintance of mine, who was trying to irritate me). She was defeated. Her stupidity backfired on her, thankfully for the rest of the world.

Meanwhile me and fellow feminists will continue to gloat in victory, though it's not strictly our victory. We're happy for the following, and my warmest love to all those who created them.

Drill, baby, drill!

The difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom

Will update this post as fresher links walk by me.

Love to all feminists :)

The Bad Credit Hotel

2008-10-29T07:46:00.005-07:00

The biggest news at the moment is how the United States market has crashed, how millions of people have been left homeless due to foreclosures, how so many investors have lost their life savings due to bad loans and bad debts, and how many companies have been taken over or filed for bankruptcy. Not just in the US of A, but the whole world as well.

Meanwhile, the blame for this comes down not just to head honchos for making irresponsible decisions, but to every individual on his own for fueling an existence based on virtual money that doesn't exist, including bad financial behaviour such as taking loans you can't possibly pay back, and paying using credit that you can't possibly fulfill.

No comments from me on the matter: I've been trying to read and understand the matter but I am not a financial expert of any kind. I don't understand all these complicated investment matters and new schemes that keep floating around; I'm of the old school. But I do understand a few basic things: Buy now, pay later is a scheme that leads inevitably towards ruin, one must never spend more than what one has in one's wallet, and there is absolutely no excuse for spending needlessly.

People will still indulge in credit schemes though: the temptation to be able to own something right now and pay for it leisurely is too difficult to resist for most humans. The United States Treasury Department brought out this little idea to teach people to respect the institution of credit and use it properly, to avoid ruin. I've played the game. It's a little boring, since I don't have the patience to read through all those pieces of advice, and besides the rules don't apply exactly to me, since I do not reside in the United States. But the idea is likable indeed.

Have a go. You've got nothing to lose.

Marble Dreams

2008-10-28T11:09:00.003-07:00

When the high Creator decided to bestow stone on the planet, in its myriad shapes, textures, colours and forms, little did the Mighty One, or anyone else for that matter (if they existed) realize that one of the most fascinating stones would be that with the perfect shape, the smoothest texture, the purest white colour, the most dazzling form. A stone so highly prized people dreamt of having it as their floor, because nothing speaks of affluence so much as the ability to have the whitest stone below the feet, used for the basic purpose of a living surface, when so many people could not afford even cheap stone for it, and lived on a surface of mud.

Marble. A stone that fascinates. A stone that is fascinating, because though it is abundant, it is highly prized and highly sought after. Especially pure, white, blemish-free marble, of the variety that was used to create the Taj Mahal, is very highly desired. At least it is, by a older generation of people who defined class by the ability to walk on marble floors. People nowadays prefer tiles of various kinds; those are much easier to clean, and don't really get very dirty in the first place.

Marble is not a precious stone. Indeed, it is not so precious that humans would give it the kind of importance that rubies or diamonds have: the honour of being worn upon the human body has not been granted to marble. But marble is an expensive and beautiful stone for construction, and is in that field, treated like diamond. Temples, community halls and other places of public use and worship are created using marble, the outer facades and porches of huge mansions are made with marble. The average middle class houseowner doesn't use marble for his floor; there are cheaper and more convenient floors available. Thus comes the idea that anyone who uses marble for his floor must be rather affluent indeed, and must be enjoying the greatest of joys and comforts.

My left foot and my right eyeball. This very same marble is a pain in the neck for me, because my mother, subscribing to the same old school of thought, installed marble floors in her house, making it impossible for me to move about the house, whether it be my body or the furniture I work upon, for fear of damaging the beautiful white floor. I am under strict orders to never even contemplate shifting any furniture, which would inevitably involve running the risk of scratching the floor. I'm sick of this. I wish I could move normally. I wish I could move my table the way I like without having to worry about scratching the floor. I wish I didn't have to worry about spilling anything onto the floor (because if the marble gets stained there's no way to remove the stain). I wish I didn't have to deal with the extraordinary amount of fine dust that creeps into the marble and eats it away, if the marble is not cleaned everyday. I wish I didn't have to worry about accidentally using acidic cleaners to clean the floor (because if you mix acid with CaCO3, which is what marble is, you're going to get a salty residue that would be the permanent ruin of your expensive marble).

But all the same, you have to admit it: the marble is magnificent. There's nothing to match the feeling of beautiful, sparkling, cold white stone that feels like butter when you sit upon it, after you've given it a thorough scrubbing. You feel royal, you feel like the queen sitting upon her throne, only the throne is not just a chair that you sit on, but has extended to become the very floor you live on. And this is why the old school, brought up to live life at just the right pace - neither unbearably slow nor excruciatingly fast - who didn't need to worry about spilling stuff or dragging furniture, harboured visions of pure cold white stone - marble dreams.

The Tortoise and the Hare - Extended Version

2008-09-30T04:46:00.001-07:00

One day the hare was getting bored. He decided to challenge the tortoise to a race, thinking it would be fun to tease the tortoise about how slow he was. The tortoise accepted the challenge, and on the day of the race, things happened according to the old fable. The hare slept off in his arrogance, and by the time he awoke and reached the finish line, the tortoise had already won.

The hare was extremely unhappy. He knew he was the faster animal, so the next day he challenged the tortoise again. The tortoise couldn't refuse, of course. As expected, the hare, having learnt his lesson, stuck to the race and won it.

Now the tortoise was the unhappy one, feeling that his hard work had come to nought. He challenged the hare to a third race the next day, which the hare couldn't refuse. The hare started running, thinking that the tortoise was stupid as well as slow, since he couldn't possibly win. But suddenly he was brought to a standstill, and could go no further. He had reached a deep river, and there was no bridge to cross it. He remained stumped at the riverside, while along came the tortoise, who swam across the river, reached the finish line and won the race again.

What was the outcome of this? The hare and the tortoise became friends. On land, one was the powerful one; in the water, it was the other. There wasn't any point in striving against each other.

Life's like that, too.

Story related by my favourite teacher in college.

Life Without a Camera

2008-09-11T11:45:00.001-07:00

I'm depressed. Well, not really. I'm just unhappy about my camera. Its power supply circuit seems to have some problem, so it ain't working, and I'm sad coz of that.

May be weird, but it's justified. I love my camera. It's a very simple old model, and there are much better ones available on the market today. But I am attached to this one, because of the simple awesome pix I have taken with it. It has come with me wherever I have gone, and I have gone so snap-happy all over the place, it's hard to imagine life without it.

Sure, there's a lot of trash floating around about how the best pictures and the best memories are always in the mind, and can never be captured on a cam, and so on and so forth. Get real. We live in a material world, and I like to have something solid and real to look at, when I'm remembering an old friend or a nice trip. Taking a trip down Memory Lane is a lot simpler and a lot more lively when you have the photo to look at, of each turn and twist of the lane. Besides, it always feels good to look at th3e reminder of what you've done - the photograph taken by your camera.

My cam needs repair. Hopefully I'll be able to find a place that will repair it well enough that it stays repaired. You can't trust anyone these days.

DRDO (Disaster Reaches out and Destroys Opportunity)

2008-08-25T06:06:00.003-07:00

I am usually lucky, but I have the worst of bad luck if it ever happens to me. I sat for a job interview with DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organization), the Indian defence technology unit, which is supposed to be a research based job, and which will take only the best, though it pays the same as any ordinary software company. I was eligible so I sat for it, and it happened to be the worst thing in terms of an interview that ever happened to me.

I had a splitting headache in the morning as soon as I woke up. Yet I couldn't cancel out on the interview, because that would be the worst thing to do in the face of the Don, the head of our Training and Placement Department. I called him and asked him if I could cancel, but he snappily asked me to get dressed, take whatever medicine I wanted and get to the interview room asap. He offered to send his car if I wanted. So with my head spinning, not having bathed, and my portfolio in pieces, I landed up for the interview.

I was not prepared for a core based interview. I hadn't sat for one before, and I had no clue of the sort of questions they liked to ask. As a result I made a fool of myself there. I couldn't answer simple basic questions that I'm supposed to know as an electrical engineer, and now I wonder whether I should be given the degree of an engineer at all. The panelists actually commented, that I was giving answers that were too generic, and I seemed more interested in electronics based subjects rather than electrical.

My Head of Department was on the panel too. That was a shock, because then it felt like a viva session, and I am bad at viva sessions. To top it all I was staring at him for the first few minutes, and I was wondering whether it was really him, or just a guy that looked like him. It was only after he spoke that I was sure, because I recognized the voice. It was embarrassing, because I gave all those horrible, generic answers and made a fool of myself right in front of my HOD. The icing on the cake came when one panelist asked me to name the subjects we were studying this semester. I flubbed even on that question, pathetic as it was. I named four of five subjects. The one I forgot was the subject that my HOD teaches.

How does one recover from a shock of this kind? I have never had such a disaster before. I have been assiduously avoiding my HOD since then, though I couldn't escape him in the classroom the next lecture after this, when he commented that he hadn't expected this from me. The story of forgetting his subject though, seems to be a hit amongst all my batchmates.

Five Smells on a Train

2008-08-15T23:29:00.006-07:00

Train journeys in India (especially those involving a ride for over five hours, standing in a crowded, dirty stinky compartment with no place to sit, grateful for a place to stand and highly obliged for having been able to climb into the coach in the first place) are an experience that should be had at least once in a lifetime.

I travel around twice a month or so, between college and home, by train, and I have a plethora of experiences to relate. The most striking one was the latest one that I had, which was in fact, yesterday. Travelling in the rainy season can be hectic, but in the monsoon season, it is madness.

The first job is getting into the train. It ain't as simple as step inside, haul luggage, move inside. It means yell, rush forward like mad, yell, push through and clamber into the coach, yell, pull luggage inside after you (sometimes along with a friend who is unfortunately stuck somewhere behind you), yell, move inside, yell, find a place to stand (which is more likely to happen than finding a place to sit) and yell again until the train starts. In this process, you are pressed against a dozen other bodies, all of you sweating and struggling to find a foothold, hitting and being hit by luggage flying all over the place, and if you're a woman, may you be blessed. That's the first smell that will strike you as a woman, if you're entering the general compartment (the general general compartment, not the ladies special coach). The overpowering smell of masculine sweat.

The next job is finding the most comfortable position to stand in, for whatever period of time you need to stand, be it one hour or five. The best place to be is at the door of the compartment, since you can enjoy some fresh breeze, and actually sit on the footboard, if you feel like it. People often do that, sometimes for journeys as long as sixteen hours. But bless you again if you're stuck anywhere on the inside corridor between the two facing doors. Over there, the stench of the lavatory is inescapable, especially since it is overused and never flushed. The stink is often so powerful that it hits the senses almost immediately upon entering the train.

Another smell, which I have never understood, is that of fish. For some mystical reason, the general compartments always carry an overwhelming smell of fish with them. I suppose it is due to the proximity to the goods carriages, which are close by, but nevertheless, the degree of penetration of the smell is marvellous.

The fourth smell is one that is probably not noticeable to the masses of labourers and rural working force who mostly tend to use the train and it's general compartment, but if you're like me, a student who has mostly lived a smell-free life, you're likely to notice it. It's the thick and extremely heavy hair oil that is used by the rural women, for its cheapness and its ability to keep the hair straight and manageable without too much effort. It's called jameli ka tel in local dialect. There's nothing like the smell of it. All I could think of before I was able to place it was what the hell is anyone doing with rotting flowers in here. Does Rafflesia smell like this?

The fifth smell is occasional, depending on your luck. It's that of alcohol. Alcohol consumption is banned by law in this state, but in a few territories it's allowed, and of course bootlegging is one of the biggest black industries in the state. The poorer folk in particular tend to consume the locally made liquor, which is very strong, often freely adulterated with spirits that don't exclude methanol and the like, and which stinks to low hell, the odour bearing uncanny similarity with fresh puke. You need to watch out with this drink. It can work like nothing else in corroding your inner tissues, bringing on early blindness, poisoning and death. How anyone survives it is beyond me. It's called crimpy in college argot. Also called, tharra, pauaa, or just simple desi daru.

If after all this you still find any pleasure in travelling in the train, congratulations. You've just attained a higher level of tolerance for worldly evils.

My Political Stand

2008-07-06T02:28:00.003-07:00

I took a test recently to determine my political views. For those who are interested, here is the link:

http://www.politicalcompass.org/test

I have never been too political minded. Current affairs I find boring, except for the main headlines, because some nation is always warring against another nation, or with its own people. The country's heads are always doing a salsa at top speed, while attempting to perform juggler's tricks at the same time, what with international treaties and policies to make, and the snivelling tricks of the opposition at home to deal with. I do not understand the subtle talk and cues that countries have with each other, or the underlying messages and currents of the acts and deeds that happen to or are made to happen by the leaders of the world. I need somebody to explain these things to me.

Economics I don't understand, except that the rich people are trying to get richer by making more profits, and the poorer people trying to get richer by squeezing out as much as they can using any power that they hold (for example, pay the sarkari naukar small bribes every time you want him to do something for you so that he won't make you do garba between all the various departments).

Social problems are a mixed bag of fruit. You have the rich mangoes, who genuinely try to help out the underprivileged; the sour grapes, who keep their position by trodding over the poor; the squashy bananas, who are trying to avoid being squashed and move towards a decent living; and the rotten apples, who want to feed off all the legal privileges they have, without lifting a finger. Somewhere in between you have the firm pears, who have no idea what caste or class mean, and simply want to earn enough to keep happy and comfortable.

But regardless of how much or how little I know, I have an opinion, because I have a brain that can judge the content that enters it. And whatever be your colour in this tapestry and your take on the picture as a whole, there are words to define what you believe, and categories to sort you into, so that you realize you aren't alone in what you believe. This test attempts to give you a broad generalization of what you believe, by asking some 60 odd questions and sorting you into one of four general categories depending on the answers you give: libertarian or authoritarian, leftist or rightist.

There is an economic axis, simply labelled Left to Right, or rather, Communism to Neo-Liberalism. At one extreme, you have the belief that everything to do with the market must be controlled by the state, while the other belief holds that extreme regulation is good. Everybody, depending on their belief of how the economic market should exist, ie to what extent should it be state-controlled and to what extent free, is somewhere along this scale. The other axis is the social axis, which from top to bottom is labelled Authoritarian to Libertarian (or if you like, Fascism to Anarchism). Everyone knows about Fascism, the absolute authority of the government on all social ideas. The extreme opposite is Anarchism, absolute non-interference of all policies relating to society on the part of the government.

And why do these two axes put together determine your political stand? Because, in the end, economy and society are the two single most important factors that influence a person's public life: his ability to live according to his needs and wants. And hence when you choose your government, or as a government official formulate your policy, you will do it according to whether your requirements in these spheres are met. For a more complete explanation/analysis, refer the site. This is simply how I understood the basis of the test.

I turned out to be Libertarian Leftist. What are you?

NITs With Merit

2008-06-25T07:47:00.004-07:00

Beginning 2008-09, the rules of admission to the prestigious NITs, second only to the IITs, will change. Instead of getting admission to an NIT outside your state on the basis of your state rank, you will now get it on the basis of national rank. Which means that there is no statewise quota distribution, and students will be admitted purely on the basis of merit, ensuring that students who are higher in merit get seats, or at least better branches, than those of lower merit.

How does it work out? You see, under the previous system, 50% of the seats of an NIT were given on state rank basis to students from the same state, while the rest were distributed to the remaining states, with seats allocated to each state proportional to the population. Thus consider for example, that NIT Surat offers two seats to Assam students and four to Bengal students for a particular branch. If only one student applies from Assam, he gets that seat no matter what his rank. But if Bengal has ten students applying, only the top four get the seats, and the remaining six won't get it even if their ranks are all higher than the Assam student. If the second Assam seat is not taken, it remains unfilled, and won't even be offered to those six Bengal students.

In the new system, the 50% seats for the same NIT will remain, but the system of state quota for the remaining seats will be removed, and instead students may apply to any institute on the basis of their national rank. This means that the higher you are in merit, the wider the choice offered to you. So, the higher merit students are more likely to get a preferred branch in a preferred institute, and will not be shunted to lower preference branches simply due to state quota restrictions. Which overall means that merit is accorded more importance than it was earlier.

So what effects will this have? I had a talk with a friend and senior of mine working in Bangalore, and he highlighted a few things that hadn't occurred to me. First of all, national ranking is not evenly spread across the country's states. The higher national rankers tend to come from the north and east, because those people are generally those who appear for engineering entrance exams after dropping one or two years after school, meaning they are extremely well prepared for the exams, and tend to score higher, having the benefit of both content practice and time management practice. The entrance exam for the NITs (All India Engineering Entrance Examination, AIEEE) is taken by over one lakh students every year; the combined strength of seats offered by the NITs is a little less than one tenth that number. So if ten thousand seats are offered, and five thousand seats are given to students of the same state, and the remaining five thousand on basis of national ranking, it's natural that the bulk of the seats will go to students of the north and east (the ones who tend to score higher). Even after allowing for factors like students not going for their own NIT first, students joining the IITs or other private engineering colleges, students taking up medical school or other fields rather than engineering and the like, the proportion of students from the north will be more than students from the south.

Next, students of the south actually get a better deal upon joining local colleges, or at least colleges in Chennai or Bangalore. Placements there are said to be equally good as the NITs, or at least on a comparable level. Plus, the college is much nearer home, and not much travelling is thus required. Also, they get to live within a culture that they have grown up with, and the local language is also one that they are more likely to familiar with (given the tremendous multi-linguistic tendencies). They would rather go to these private colleges, never mind the high fees and the extra donations required to be paid. These students wouldn't bother even appearing for the AIEEE. Some still would obviously, because if they do well, AIEEE allows them entry to the NITs of Surathkal, Warangal, Trichy and Calicut, which they would certainly love to join.

So what does this spell all in all for the NITs? For the near future at least, the proportion of southie students would be greatly reduced, except in the southern NITs. The northern NITs would be populated by northie students and pseudo-southies. Diversity of the campus crowd thus goes for a toss.

Nearer home, what does this spell for our own NIT Surat? Interesting college politics. With hardly any substantial southie population, the bulk of college power falls to the hands of the northies. Particularly Gujarat, UP and Bihar, and I suppose the north east as well, seeing as these people would constitute a major chunk of the crowd. In a democracy, majority always has the power (regardless of whether it is right or wrong!), and with these people playing college politics the way they have always done so far, the scene looks set for an interesting politics session. Of course, the rule will begin to be implemented only this year, so the effect will be quite moderate, but two or three years down the line, the party should be in full swing.

Canteen Chronicle

2008-06-12T04:32:00.003-07:00

Enter the most glorious hall of all those in college. The centre of life and living. The haven of that delight called food. That wonderful meeting place for all minds. The hangout for before college hours, after college hours, in between college hours, and of course during college hours(!). The college canteen.

Axe any course or department from the college, and you axe off a few students. Axe the canteen, and you axe the lifeline of the entire college, the thread holding it all together and providing survival to all its denizens. It is truly one of the few (arguably the only) parts of the college, which truly unites the college, having something of use for anyone (except the food of course) no matter what their taste.

The studious nerd can find a quiet corner where he can sit and study his notes, all colour-coded and arranged by subject on his laptop, referencing the internet to solve doubts (thanks to Wifi). The hot model of the college meanwhile, can find an entire hall full of people to admire her new stilettos. The gang of geeks can find good space for the weekly meeting of the local chapter of Hackers United. The ubiquitous gang o’ gals meanwhile can get their own table to sit and discuss the latest gossip and ways to spread it, over lunch.

The college jokers will always arrive there, since they’ll never be lacking an interested audience waiting to be entertained. The college tomboy will always someone to show off her new sneakers to, and someone else to practice her martial skills on. The college faculty have a place to relax and rejuvenate themselves, away from the claustrophobic office spaces allotted to them. The omnipresent truants meanwhile have a place where they can feel welcome and at home, during the usual routine of truancy (which can be quite taxing!).

Truly, the canteen represents unity in diversity. Analogous to college culture, every college also has a typical canteen culture. A college with a canteen and without canteen culture has something seriously wrong with it.

The canteen is where celebrations begin, right from birthday treats all the way upto pre-graduation revelry (in the countdown to the day they leave college) including but not limited to India’s success in the latest cricket or football match. It is where news is passed on and gossip is spread, right from exam dates upto the juicier details of the faculty members’ profiles on Orkut and Facebook. It is where college traditions begin: introduction to freshers and farewell to final year seniors. It’s where students pick up a quick fix breakfast before running off to exams, and where they return for a restoring lunch, groaning after a disastrous paper.

If you want to measure the pulse of a college, you need to know its crowd. And to know that crowd, visit the canteen where that crowd hangs out. You’re sure to get a taste of a slice of the life of the people there. And, a delicious morsel it can prove itself to be.

Employment. And how it happened to me

2008-05-28T07:13:00.004-07:00

Employment brings satisfaction. Everyone wants to be employed. Why wouldn't they? Humans are egoistic above all else, and each wants to be able to have and maintain dignity and self-respect. In a world driven by money, being employed and earning a wage means they are able to support themselves, that their brains and their hands are able to produce something that is considered of enough value that it brings in money. Even the poorest beggar on the street would earn his keep if he could. The begging brings in pity and a corresponding lowering in self respect along with the coins. People do it if they have no other choice, but nobody would want to have to live like that, dependent on someone's pity for their survival.

Heavy funda. It's due to the recent session of on-campus recruitment carried out in my college recently. Companies come every year, analyze and interview young twenty-somethings who have just completed their third year in college and decide if they are worth placing in their company. The software companies usually come first and recruit nearly eighty percent of the total batch. I too have been recruited by one of these companies.

A couple of people put up a drop-box in the canteen, inviting people to write in their feelings and their placement experience, and what was special about it. I saw that, and then it struck me. Do I understand the implications of this? This is the first job I have been offered. This is the first time I spoke face to face with officials of a company, telling them why I think I should be employed by them to work with them, what I can do for them, what they can do for me, the first time that I tell someone that I should work for them and they should pay me for it.

The way it took place was funny too. I was suffering from viral fever two days before this company turned up for the recruitment process. Viral fever means a constant headache, loss of appetite, recurrent high fever, and a general weakness that overpowers every effort you make. I took to my bed and stayed in it for two days, swallowing medicine, bread and cheese sandwiches, and glucose drinks until I felt confident of getting up again. The medicine did help, and I was just left with a heavy head and a complete lack of appetite the day of the recruitment. Oh, I forgot. I was also left with the remnants of a rather unfortunate accident as well. A guy on a motorcycle ramming into me in a big hurry left me with bruises all over, and a rather nasty wound on my right arm. The healing took long enough, thanks to the fact that viral fever had cut my blood count by half.

But life's exciting enough. And fate likes to keep people on their toes. Which means that apart from nursing my injuries and dealing with a heavy head and general tiredness, I swallowed the last dose of medicine and gave the written test with absolutely no preparation. The amazing part is I cleared it too. This in the morning. Happy thoughts of having some time to rest before the next stage were rudely interrupted by the declaration of having that next stage immediately, which means I go to participate in group discussion in the afternoon in the same state of no food, no rest, heavy head and injury. And I clear this stage too!

Okay, so much for one day. At least now I could rest. They'd do the interview thing the next day. But no! They are such energetic people... they declared their intention of starting it in an hour. That very evening. That should give students enough time to change to formal dressing, gather their portfolio, and fill up the employment application form, in preparation for the grilling. For me, it was just enough time to swallow some fruit and an analgesic for my headache, wash my face, dress in formals, pick up my certificates and marksheets and the file they were supposed to be in, and run to the spot where they were checking and verifying students' academic records before sending them to be interviewed.

I had to hurriedly cram all my papers together and fill the form, which I botched up in my fatigue. That meant an extra procedure of ducking around the guy distributing the forms (who happened to be, that day, the senior professor in charge of all training and placement activities in my college) and get a second form out of him. He would have been really mad if he'd directly gotten to know I'd botched up the form. Then the long wait before my turn, and then actually sitting for the first serious interview of my life.

It was an HR interview and it was fun. Okay the guy wasn't smiling or anything, and I don't think he was entirely pleased with the answers I gave him, but somehow I enjoyed the process. His questions came shot after shot like gunfire, and I responded in like fashion. Then he slowed down and asked the questions that required thinking for a few seconds before answering. I bluffed answers in a couple of questions, and got away with it too. All along, I was carefully monitoring my body language and vocal expressions, as well as my eyes, so devastatingly giveaway for me.

Careful to sit the right way, so that I appeared upright and confident and yet wasn't discomfited by my elbow injury, careful to look into my interviewer's eyes but not stare, careful to moderate my voice to contain and display respect as well as self-respect, careful to express softness and yet sharpness, intelligence and yet wonder with my eyes at the appropriate moments, careful to think on my feet but not let my thoughts show in my eyes. The best part was all this came naturally to me, sitting there. I wasn't stiff when trying to control myself. The control was spontaneous, natural. I certainly wasn't stellar, but I must have done well enough, because I cleared it through to the second interview. I hadn't even attended their pre-placement presentation.

The second interview was the next morning, and it was a technical abilities interview. It didn't really go too well. My interviewer was done with me in ten minutes, and I myself was not satisfied with my answers. The one simple question he'd asked me to solve, I botched the logic of it. I didn't think I'd make it, so after another futile attempt to rejuvenate my appetite (really, loss of appetite is dangerous. You won't feel like eating, so you won't eat, and you won't get the strength so necessary for you to actually recover from what you're suffering), I returned to my hostel to sleep. Strangely enough, I cleared the second interview too, because a couple of hours later I was roused by frantic phone calls and messages, telling me I had cleared it and been selected, placed, employed, and I should get there as soon as possible. Not that it really helped me to get there; it was nothing but a set of thank-you-for-your-nice-hospitality speeches and advice for the future with the company and so on and so forth. I returned after this to sleep peacefully again.

Employed. It feels great. Of course, the actual employment, and working and pay package and all comes after a year, when I actually graduate and join the company, but it still does feel good to think that I'm employed. That someone talked to me and actually thought me good enough to work for them and be paid by them. It ain't that easy to convince someone to do that, no matter how good you may be.

An Equal Society

2008-02-27T19:28:00.006-08:00

Someone recently gave an article for the college newsletter. It was a very basic article about how girls are not treated on par with guys on campus, and how irritating it is to be made to conform to restrictive policies with little or no sensible justification.

This got me thinking. Women have equal rights under the law and everything. But does anyone in this country really understand the concept of equality? As in equality between men and women? They think they do, and they feel we are really progressing in issues like women's liberation and so forth. The sad truth is that even in a college housing two thousand people on a campus of two and a half hundred acres, I have found hardly two people truly understand it, and practise it as well.

This can be analyzed by taking several little individual examples. Think about clothing and dressing. Men can roam about naked and women scream in embarrassment. Any sign of extra skin on a woman, forget being naked, and the men stare around, lewdly happy. In both cases, it's the woman whose 'chastity' 'stands at risk'.

Certain things are stereotyped as typically masculine or feminine. Very prominent in this list are clothes. Men's clothing with appropriate styling (I mean jeans and t-shirts) is now a part of the woman's wardrobe, but feminine styles of clothing are still common, and for some reason those are considered more 'appealing' than the masculine derived styles. No objection there, but that doesn't mean that a woman should be judged on the basis of her wardrobe. Worse than the judging is the discrimination a woman faces for being anything that's not typically feminine, be it clothes or anything else. I remember this movie that was extremely popular ten years back. I had liked it too at that time, but later I realized how it portrays what I'm talking about. The main female protagonist is a tomboy and like all humans, falls in love, but her love goes unrequited as long as she remains a tomboy. To put it in the words of a leading critic, her love is returned only when she resurfaces, "sarified and narified".

The ideology associated with this is also stereotyped, biased towards men. A statement I made today to a group of people and the response I received illustrates this perfectly. The topic under discussion was a recent beach trip we had taken, and one guy was describing somewhat merrily how I had stared at him and his abs when he had taken off his shirt to wash up. I retaliated saying that if it was okay for men to stare at women and their figures, there's no harm done if a woman looks at a man. Men will stare at women no matter what they wear or don't wear, so what's wrong if it happens vice versa? Everyone protested loudly at this, girls and guys both, and I only succeeded in furthering my reputation as being somewhat more forward in behaviour compared to the other girls who live on campus.

Next, take issues like boozing, fagging or doping. Some people associate a sort of morality (rather a lack of it) with these activities, and call them vice. I'm no stranger to the thought, since I myself once used to subscribe to it. And no issue with it; everyone is entitled to their own view. It's pretty normal for women to indulge in them the world over. Focus only on the two thousand people who live on my campus, since that's the model of the country I'm out to live in. Any woman in this college, who drinks alcohol and openly admits to it, is considered forward by any standards, in the eyes of the college public. Find out that she smokes or dopes, and she rises even 'higher' in estimation. For some strange reason, people consider it more of a vice when a woman indulges in any of these activities, than when a man does so. It's even more shocking to hear people say that it's okay or unavoidable in case of men, but that it's wrong for women.

Living in college broadens your horizons to infinite limits. You are exposed to a wider world, different ideas, different possibilities. You question this world and its rules and add your own opinion to it. And your morals and principles undergo the most drastic restructuring possible, because of such wide exposure. You get to meet so many different people, across the entire spectrum of mindset and mentality. Their company, their ideas add their influence. This being the case, it really shocks me to still know of people making statements like "Girls shouldn't compete with boys". And that came straight from one of the guys of my own college: a person who has studied in the same class as me right from my freshman year.

Consider security. Amongst crimes that are specifically targeted at women, rape is one of the nastiest and most serious. Sexual harassment is the more generic term for it, including with it everything from lewd comments and stares, upto rape. What is people's solution to this problem, apart from laws? "Don't wear provoking clothes."

Again, it's the woman who has to bear the brunt of it. Why did she get raped? Because she was wearing 'provoking' clothes and men are such beasts that they can't (and won't bother to) refrain from helping themselves to what seems a most delicious treat. So, rather than teach men that it's wrong for them to treat women like objects of pleasure, they want to teach women to be more submissive.

What does security mean? According to the chauvinists, a woman is well protected if she stays inside the house after dark, which is when she is most threatened. So to keep her safe, cage her up after dark! This is enforced by both spoken and unspoken rules everywhere. Why did she get raped? "Because she went out of the house after dark. She was asking for trouble. She deserved it."

A group of friends had a party recently. The majority were men, but there were a fair number of women as well. The party was on till late night but the women were required by rules to return strictly by a certain time. They did. The men were also required to do the same, but they didn't bother and returned well after curfew. Of course they received a yelling.

Note a few facts about this. First, the guys only got a yelling from their supervisor. Had it been the girls who were late, they'd have got a yelling, a fine imposed as punishment, and a good deal of character sludging. Next, the guys were found complaining the next day. "If it's ten-thirty for the girls, it can certainly be much later for the guys." Why should it? Why at all? I took issue with the guy who spoke the sentence, and who also happens to be a close acquaintance of mine. His defence was that girls should not stay out late, since safety could then become a problem.

That's my point exactly. Safety should not have to be a problem in the first place. It's a knotty issue, on the borderline of the realms of freedom and equality. For goodness' sake, the world is supposed to move towards equality. Not just equality of laws. I mean equality ingrained as a quality of behaviour. I mean absence of discrimination, and absence of this attitude of chauvinistic high-handedness. In all essential social terms, equality needs to become a mindset, a part of one's natural thinking. A woman should be free to walk the roads alone at night. Not just free under the law. But free from fear of being raped, from fear of being ostracized, from the persecution caused by social backbiting, from chauvinistic nastiness that's totally uncalled for. Free, and equal.

And apart from having this equality, a girl should assert her right to this equality. She needs to be strong enough to know and recognize injustice and fight it. Unfortunately, centuries of downtrodden existence have brought in a mentality of dogged submissiveness in women. Those few who fight, find themselves speaking in a land of deaf people. Like I do.

It's not an easy task. It's one thing to impose a set of rules that must be obeyed, but how do you change the mindset of an entire generation of people, let alone three generations coexisting together, who have all grown up thinking in the way of their forefathers? How do you get people to see and accept the rationality of those laws and rules? One person alone can't do anything against an army of people who together form society. But individual people waging on the war can set a precedent, which more people from coming generations can take up and follow. That is how slow and silent revolutions in social norms have come about. And that is my hope, that I too may learn, and thus teach, and play my part in this revolution.

How to flash through seven places in eighteen days

2007-12-31T13:54:00.001-08:00

Somebody once travelled around the world in eighty days. I did something better. I travelled seven places in eighteen days and managed to do some sight-seeing and family-bonding as well as a great deal of joy-sharing as well in those eighteen days. How did I do it?

Spent the first day and most of the next morning watching the Konkan coast from the window of a train. Reading why school teachers are like sumo wrestlers, why drug dealers live in their mothers' homes, why crime rates fell in the United States in the nineties, and how exactly, with statistical proof, does parental care affect children. And listening to Incubus alongside.
Spent the afternoon of the second day lazing idly in the garden of a little house in a tiny village.
Spent the third day roaming with family on the beaches nearby. And took some beautiful pictures all the way.
Spent most of the fourth in a six hour bus journey from the village to another little town, escorted by a favourite cousin, and was met by a whole host of cousins, aunts and uncles who hadn't seen me in three years.
Spent the fifth day in a grand birthday session, the first time I celebrated my birthday with my dad's people. Starting with furious session of midnight callers, a visit to the temple in the morning after bathing (normal for some but astounding for those who know I'm a stubborn atheist. But some things have to be done to please people too, at times), a humongous lunch in which I stuffed myself so full I could have gone the entire month without eating, and a surprise birthday party, which included amongst other wild whacky unexpected things: me wearing a saree for it (again, some things have to be done to please people), a green birthday cake (incidentally, the same colour and flavour I had for my first birthday), two weeks' worth of newspapers shredded to bits as confetti, lollipops and a bright pink squeeze toy as part of the gifts package, me lighting with a cigarette lighter the same candles that I blew out on my cake, and a special photo session with my paternal relatives surrounding me on all sides. Could I have asked for anything more?
Spent the sixth day visiting my dad's sisters. Everywhere I go, I'm treated like a little princess.
Spent the seventh day visiting more relatives. And also found the means to see the college where my dad studied as a youngster of my age.
Spent the eighth and ninth days in one of the most dynamic cities one could hope to live in. And found out that my cousin sister, who so staunchly disapproved of all notions of falling in love and things of that sort, was seeing someone. And it's a serious relationship with indications of being something really, really long term. The guy is seriously good, too. Unfortunately, he doesn't have a younger brother or cousin who I could hit on. :P
Spent the tenth and eleventh days in the house of a gentleman who was earlier a professor in an IIT, and now Professor Emeritus in the university where he served as Principal and Dean for so many years now. And finally understood some aspects of my stickier subjects from him. I happen to have taken the same course of study he did in his college days.
Spent the next six days in my grandfather's house. In a suburb in another huge city. And what days those were. Spent the first day sleeping all day and waking up to wish everyone festive greetings for the holiday season.
Spent the next day with a family of cousins, in their house that cost them ten millions to build, with a garden that gave life to every seed thrown into it, and an approach road that for five kilometers (no less) threatened to shake the traveller off his vehicle, as though traversing that road were a crime of the highest order.
Spent a lazy day playing games. Then received the terrifying news of the execution of the last step of a regular series of torturous college events. During the reception of which I received the even more horrendous news of the assassination of one of the most powerful leaders of a neighbouring country - a woman who had once been the Premier of her country, against all odds and opposed to all kinds of perverted forces. She fell to their cowardly yet ruthless attack.
Spent the fourth day roaming around one of the busiest sections of Chennai. A street so full of people it's a crime for a vehicle to be driven there. Wondered yet again, for the umpteenth time, how so many gold and jewelry shops manage to set up such huge mall-sized shopping complexes next door to one another and still maintain business that sustains them. Ditto for the silks, the vessels, the clothes and the sweets. Bought a complete set of newspapers on the way back, which contained altogether four puzzles of a particular game that I favour. And all four puzzles a very hard level! Broke my brains trying to solve them :( Finally managed one out of four.
Spent the next day with my mother's friend from her own hostel days. A bright dynamic lady who doesn't deserve all the crap that she's going through right now. The best was hearing her and my mom come alive again as though they were young twenty-somethings, yet with all their experience and maturity to back them up and protect them. A close second was hearing all the naughty things my mom did in her younger days, and which she so routinely scolds me for doing myself! And managed to get a second puzzle at night.
Spent the day packing. And still trying to solve those damned puzzles. I think I overdosed myself. And I discovered one more messaging partner.
Spent the morning in the flight back home. Solved one more damn puzzle in the morning right before the flight left. Surfed the net the rest of the day at home.

And all along I discovered a new joy in travelling and meeting people, especially those who love you, and how important it is to keep up those links. Everyone needs something special to keep their minds occupied, and sometimes, it's just as well that you be the source, rather than the seeker, of that something special.

Dolphins!

2007-11-23T01:50:00.002-08:00

Dolphins, to most people, mean this cute little sea creature with a reputation for being friendly. Some countries have dolphin parks, where they house and breed dolphins and show them to people. As a three year old I've been to such a park. They are usually associated with large aquaria or zoos. Of course, this wasn't in India - our country sadly doesn't have such a good system that would take care of wildlife - forget wildlife. We're having a serious problem taking care of people as it is.

Anyway, dolphins are supposed to be real friendly creatures. Cartoons of all kinds abound with episodes where dolphins are seen helping out the protagonists in all kinds of sticky situations. They are supposed to be pretty intelligent creatures too. Though what precisely is meant by their intelligence, I don't know. I mean, how do marine scientists define intelligence when they say these creatures are intelligent? For instance, can they count numbers? Or can they recognize different species of aquatic plants they eat as food and decide which one they like best or better? ("Oh, this is plant X... I don't really like this one. Let's see if there's any of plant Y around..." (Hang on a second. Are they herbivores or carnivores? Gotta check that.)) I haven't read A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.

Can they distinguish between different people? ("Oh there's Joan. I like her; she's real nice." "Hmmm, looks like Matilda is gonna feed us today.") Can they talk to each other?

For the record, dolphins are mammals, NOT fish. It took me half an hour yesterday to convince a friend of mine. In the end I had to show her Wikipedia's article on dolphins to convince her. You can see it too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin Nice, easy-to-read article it is. Dolphins are mammals. They give birth to live young, and they have some equivalent of sexual intercourse.

That article had something else about reproduction in dolphins. Quite a few people apparently know this, nevertheless it was something new that I learnt. Apparently dolphins engage in sexual encounters for purposes other than reproduction, and some of these encounters may be homosexual as well. And they may have such encounters with members of other species too, including humans!

So dolphins, with acute eyesight, sharp hearing, advanced sexual practices, keen intelligence and a general attitude of friendliness, represent creatures of goodwill with rational minds and radical behaviour. I love the whole picture.

And it is so befitting. I walk around now with a pair of leaping dolphins made of gold in each ear. :)

Electrical Machines

2007-11-22T01:40:00.001-08:00

I hate the subject. Shameful, since it is part of my chosen branch of study (but that's excusable, since I didn't take it up by choice (but still now so excusable, since I did not chuck it and take up something which was ultimately better for me to have done (but never mind now, and I probably should stop this coz this thread is going on too long!))).

At any rate, at least the textbooks are funny sometimes.

Sample this for instance. Excerpts from Electrical Machines by Vandana Singhal and whoever was the other chap who wrote the book with her:

Chapter 5: Introduction to Synchronous Generators
A synchronous machine has a rotor and a stator. (Wow! I didn't know that at all! As though other electrical machines have something different altogether.) The rotor of this machine always moves at synchronous speed. (Isn't that hard to guess now?) It may be a synchronous generator or a synchronous motor. (Amazing! So we can't have a synchronous transformer!) A synchronous generator receives mechanical energy from a prime mover to which it is mechanically coupled and converts it to electrical energy. (I see. So what do other kinds of generators do?)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHH! I'm supposed to give a test to determine if I know this crap???? :P

Care For Your Body

2007-10-20T07:11:00.001-07:00

There's only so much punishment your body can take. It ain't nice to deprive it of food, sleep, rest, and most important, joy. I've done this for the past seven weeks now, and finally have come to the point where I get to rest. My body has taken it all silently, all the beatings and harsh treatment. I'm sorry I had to be so cruel to myself, but my work, for which I had to endure this is now complete, and the results have compensated for the pain I had to bear.

I'm happy. Nothing pleases me more than to be busy, to be employed usefully, to be part of an activity that produces something creative and/or useful, and to finally taste the sweetness of seeing that work complete and the results out. It offers me a high so potent, I do not feel the need for any external stimulant. I'm simply ebullient with delight.

I've also learnt a lesson from this. It's important to be kind to yourself. To be kind to your own body. Dedication and work all notwithstanding, it's necessary not to overdo it. My body hasn't complained, but I've faced the consequences elsewhere. You can't afford to hurt yourself. You have only yourself and your mind, heart, soul and body, as a constant, as eternally part of yourself. All these self-help and personality development gurus teach you that to be happiest you need to mentally strengthen yourself, and develop strong character. Protect your mind and your heart from the ill intent of others around you. It's equally important to protect your body. You deserve to be able to eat and sleep. You deserve to be able to share and receive affection. You deserve to be able to care for yourself.

If you put pressure on your body, you are already mentally very strong. You don't need to worry about that part. Take a small example. Try combing your own hair the way you do for someone you care about, your brother or sister or partner or anyone. Close your eyes and try to recall a song you like as you're doing this. Think about something good that happened during the day, something good for you. Enjoy the quality of your own hair. When you open your eyes, you'll feel a new kind of care for your own skin, your limbs, your hair, and everything that is a part of you. This care is always there, but you'll feel conscious of it this time round.

No teaching anyone to be Narcissus over here. But without being overly luxury driven or self pampering, it's important to realize the importance of caring for your own self. This is also why suicide is considered a crime, punishable even. Deliberately causing harm to anything that can feel for itself is an offense, even if it be you hurting your own body. It's also why the Sikhs forbid the cutting of body hair. Your hair is also a part of your body, even though it be dead cells. That's being somewhat idealistic perhaps, but the rationale is easy to understand in the context of what we're talking here.

So what's my resolution finally? No more depriving my body of its essential wants, just for the sake of getting some little booklet printed. My body will not hesitate to remind me that it wishes to be treated properly, as lovingly as my heart and mind are cared for.

Razorback

2007-08-22T03:08:00.003-07:00

I just gave myself a most precious gift. A bicycle. Yeah I know some people will think I'm being silly, childish or even uncool... but as far as I am concerned it's one of the best things I could possess at the moment.

Weird name. Razorback. What are they trying to convey through the name? It doesn't actually mean anything. A razor. Brings to your mind words like sharp and cutting, meaning to convey the impression of the edge, the edge of something steep. Alright so you have stuff like sharpness and preciseness coming to your mind, but what does that have to do with 'back'? What can 'razorback' convey? The name actually means nothing. But it doesn't matter, because those of us who own one know what we wanted.

The bike itself is damn good. Unisex, so it can be ridden by both guys and gals. Perhaps a little high in the seat, but its dynamics are pretty good. It's strong and durable, comes in great colours, and looks pretty good too. One of the few things that has charmed both men and women simultaneously, though a lot of guys still prefer to go for typical male bikes (which have those high bars in front, from just below the seat to the frame supporting the handlebars.

But it's not just the fact of having an easy mode of personal transport to wherever I wish to go. Cycling on its own is a marvellous way of spending time, either with yourself or with others who think the same. There are people who use bikes less as a form of useful transport and more for recreation. There are always the naysayers who will sniff at the thought of expending energy as a form of enjoyment, but that doesn't matter. If with friends, you've gained a great way of spending what can rightly be termed quality time with them. It's not something random or impersonal or automated. It's natural, intimate, delightful. And if with yourself, you've just gained one of the best ways to relax yourself, exercise your body, refresh your mind, and work out your problems. Nothing works for solving your troubles as well as straining every fibre of your being in the most complete way possible, inducing your mind to work as well. Nothing works in the same way to calm you down and restore presence of mind.

You need something to distract you from your unhappiness. Something, the mere thought of which gives you relief; assurance that things will be normal. For most people this thing turns out to be a relationship or a cigarette. I have neither. The first is unlikely to happen and the second is dangerous to take up, bodily and socially. And it is this vacuum that makes me love my Razorback so much. It is something, that can give me comfort, that I can partake of without feeling guilty or sneaky, that I can openly revel in with joy and pride. I'll be heartbroken if this one too gets stolen, like the last one was.

God bless those unsung heroes, the innovators of the bicycle through the ages.

My Lover

2007-08-20T03:43:00.004-07:00

I stand alone. Empty. In surrender; no resistance. Ready. Waiting.

And there my lover comes. He surrounds me. An envelope of alternating warmth and coolness, sending such delicious tingles down my spine, from where the thrill spreads through every fibre of my body, right down to the tips of my fingers. His touch caresses my skin, tickling it gently, exactly where I like it, delectable, sensitive, even caring. Delightful, pleasurable, without feeling guilty.

The air is so clean, fresh, pure, fulfilling even. Everything feels hallowed, blessed, beautiful. Sanctified, almost. The sensation striding through every nerve under my skin makes me feel so protected, so secure, so loved even, as though there is a promise of affection and passion that is unyielding as granite, inflexible as steel, steady as light, everlasting as time. Something that is always mine to count upon as my own. Something that I can be sure will always be mine. The love of this lover of mine.

I feel blown away. Swept away off my feet. I stand tall and straight and confident, and no trouble can destroy me. No sadness can still me, no regrets can besiege me, no words can hurt me. Such a heady potent cocktail of delight, calmness, joy, serenity... and I feel supreme peace.

The love which no living individual may be ever able to bestow upon me, which may never be mine to have from a living person, which it may not even be in the capacity of any living being to give to me - such love is given me by this lover of mine. The promise which no man alive would ever commit to me - such a promise is given by him, every time he touches me. The joy of being ever straight backed, proud and confident - such grace is granted by him, every time he caresses me.

Such is my lover for me. My lover, the wind.

Are You Going To Scarborough Fair?

2007-08-10T01:47:00.003-07:00

Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Remember me to one who lives there,
For she/he once was a true love of mine.

Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Without no seam nor needlework,
And then she'll be a true love of mine.

Tell her to wash it in yonder dry well,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Which never sprung water nor rain ever fell,
And then she'll be a true love of mine.

Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born,
And then she'll be a true love of mine.

Ask her to do me this courtesy,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
And ask for a like favour from me,
And then she'll be a true love of mine.

Have you been to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Remember me from one who lives there,
For she/he once was a true love of mine.

Ask him to find me an acre of land,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Between the salt water and the sea-strand,
For then he'll be a true love of mine.

Ask him to plough it with a lamb's horn,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
And sow it all over with one peppercorn,
For then he'll be a true love of mine.

Ask him to reap it with a sickle of leather,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
And gather it up with a rope made of heather,
For then he'll be a true love of mine.

When he has done and finished his work,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Ask him to come for his cambric shirt,
For then he'll be a true love of mine.

If you say that you can't, then I shall reply,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
Oh, let me know that at least you will try,
Or you'll never be a true love of mine.

Love imposes impossible tasks,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,
But none more than any heart would ask,
I must know you're a true love of mine.

I love this song. I simply love it. For days now, I have been able to sing nothing else, listen to no other song. This is the full text of one version of the song, though it is considerably shorter in the version sung by Simon and Garfunkel.

But more than the S & G version, I love the instrumental rendition by Lori Pappajohn. On the Celtic harp, accompanied by flute, percussion and violins. Totally amazing... and the best part is, unlike other pieces of music, though it keeps on playing in my mind, having it in the back of my head doesn't irritate me. It keeps me cool, calm and collected at all times.

Cartoon Characters

2007-08-03T02:54:00.003-07:00

Entertainment always comes knocking on your doorstep. And it's always waiting to be received. You have to be sharp enough to hear the knock and let it in. That's all.

I've just come back to the place which I call my home at present. I've been here for two years and will be here for two more. And I've just realized that I can't be starved for entertainment in this place. Not if I look for it well enough.

There are the practical sessions. Where each group consists of eight people working together to prove a result. Rather, one person tries to figure out what exactly is going on and how it's supposed to go, another person writes the numbers like the family munimji, while the rest sit around watching the effort and providing much needed comic relief.

There's the prof who takes one of the weightiest subjects that could have been devised for the purpose of self-lobotomy. We think he's got a wig. Don't know for sure, but we can't help feeling so, thanks to that fluffy hair and smooth neck... his neck is smoother than mine! Unless he is in the habit of shaving that area of his body everyday, it just has to be a wig. We need to find a way of finding out. Of course, a little bit of string, a hook and a convenient place to hang them might just work out...

There's one of the most intelligent men I've ever had the fortune to meet, a friend of my father, and father of one of my closest friends. Did you know that if you double the size of a raindrop, the energy with which it hits the ground increases by a power of seven? Yes, seven. And a power of seven, not a factor. It's rare enough to find examples of physical laws in nature which involve powers higher than 3. The law of blackbody radiation is the only well-known examples involving a power of 4. The rest are all pretty detailed and obscure. This particular law is the only one yet known involving a power of 7. The physics behind it is simple and interesting. A gentle perusal of any decently written high school physics textbook will lead you to derive and understand the physics.

There are the young men and women who passed out of college and who still maintain links with us. Though of course they may probably just forget us as time passes. Still the stories of the ones who left their mark remain evergreen. No one is going to forget the young man who went to Spain for a conference, and packed his bag full of Parle G biscuits so that he wouldn't have to eat trash!

And there are the new cartoon characters, who come to 'further our education'. I don't want to spread unkind gossip bordering on slander, but really, I can't help mentioning the female who made a face when she was told the strength of the class for which she had to take roll call. "Number 83 tak call karna padega mujhe? Errrrrrrwwwww!!!"

Randomly On A Train Journey

2007-07-18T07:00:00.001-07:00

I hate a dirty train. Especially when my hair is also all messed up, my forehead is grimy, I'm hungry but can't eat because of some weird inexplicable stomach cramp, I'm seeing a lady cuddle her newborn son and change its nappies while I sit wondering and confused, trying to make out if it's laughing or crying, and I'm writing all this with a pencil since my entire stock of good quality fountain pens is buried deep in my luggage between my night suit and my lingerie.

As if that wasn't enough, the only food I have right now is peanuts (literally), which I suspect are giving me cramps in the first place, and the only good I can expect on reaching my destination is roasted and buttered American corn. To top it all I just received a dinner invitation, and I can't go because I won't reach in time for it!

Wow. We just rode onto grassland. Savannah type landscape. At least that's what it looks like, seeing as there isn't a single tree for miles.

There's a pile of work waiting for me when I reach. Vacation ain't over and I'm already saddled with fresh work. To top it all I haven't even done my homework, so it's going to spell trouble for me...

Plus, I need to think up a fresh batch of excuses for not having called up so many people... though that isn't an issue, seeing as I wasn't at liberty to do as I wished to. But I'm gonna have my work cut out for me anyway, softening all those angry people. Each one will have a grievance of his own.

I like Sudoku. It's only recently become some sort of fad, some sort of phenomenon, which is really amusing. The game in question has been in existence for years and ages now, but it's only in the alst two years that 'western civilization' has noticed it. And that's where all the sudden hype is coming from!

And while it's nice timepass, it's really quite a mind numbingly simple game. More complex than Sudoku is Kakuro. Sudoku is simply a play on number patterns. Kakuro involves addition as well, and hence requires more brainwork. More brainwork means more effort and more patience but people don't really care about those nowadays, do they?

Meanwhile, it's back to the 'nuts' for me, and I'm slowly becoming a nut myself...

I still hate dirty trains.

God bless Bugs Bunny.

Carrots wait for no one,
So I'll pick them now.
Before they are eaten
By some snobby cow...!

Birds of One Feather

2007-06-26T05:05:00.000-07:00

Picture postcard railway station. And a train two hours late. Not much scope for amusement. It's in places like that that you get to see the weirdest things.

I saw a crow. I couldn't figure out how old or young it was. It would have been completely unremarkable at first sight had it not been for the fact that its neck appeared to have been cut away, leaving only a stub of sinew still keeping its head on its body. After being arrested by such a sight at the first glance, all of us on the station paid a little more attention to it. Apart from such a disastrous neck, its wings seemed to have been ripped badly to pieces, looking on the whole as though it had escaped from the butcher while being chopped up alive or something. Such a feeling of pity came into my heart as I had never felt for years.

It wasn't alone. It couldn't fly so it kept hopping all over the ground, squawking all the while. Overhead on the beams of the roof on the platform were two fully grown healthy crows, also squawking and following its movements. My first thought was that they were looking out for a opportunity to get hold of it and eat it (crows are omnivorous, or at least are thought to be). Later, we all realized that they were actually watching over it and protecting it, from the two stray canines that were roaming around the creature, probably looking for an opportunity to grab an easy meal. They did not attack it though, as if aware of the nasty repercussions that could follow from the sharp beaks of its protectors.

The scene almost made me cry, when I realized what was happening. That the healthy birds were trying to protect their mate, ready to attack if needed. That they were ready to use their muscle, and the dogs on the ground were withholding due to their fear of being attacked by the birds. Quite a different scenario from the usual one of the more ferocious creature playing predator and the weaker one being the prey.

The truth to realize is that what is perceived as weaker is not always so. People can never be underestimated, coz you never know when the sleeping tiger would awake and gobble you up.

Rediscovery Of Reading

2007-06-10T05:30:00.001-07:00

I am a student, and I must be as any student is, eager to learn, to reflect upon learning, to derive an opinion of those reflections, and to express that opinion. A beautiful thought always comes unbidden, and it is a crying shame indeed not to be able to record and preserve it somehow.

I am travelling home at the moment, and I have been granted a seat by the window, which is well; since it offer me a chance to observe that which I always miss when I travel this route, since I have alwyas so far passed though at night, when there is too little of illumination to enjoy what the eye may perceive. It just occurs to me that this is a beautiful time at which to be traversing this route.

I am alternately reading and writing, and the tome which submits to my perusal at the moment is a classic, a masterpiece of English literature. I certainly approve the content, the plot of the story, but earlier it was just a story to me, set in very refined language; this time, after a space of four years as I read the lines, I am delighted to rediscover my love and appreciation for good literature and expressive language. A mark of a good book would be that every perusal of the book leaves you with something new to think about; something to set you little grey cells buzzing, a process which certainly leads to intellectual excercise, and more importantly, the blowing away of cobwebs that set in and build up due to an overdose if entertainments that do not essentially require an alert and active mind.

In this reading of my book, I have singled out a battery of words and expressions that I should like to inculcate in my daily vocabulary; I have rediscovered a style of speaking, writing and thinking that has to my mind, expressiveness without sacrificing brevity and clarity; and in examining the characters of the main players in the story, I have been reminded forcefully yet subtly, of those noble qualities and refinements, that I wish to have imbued in my own character.

I am grateful that Providence guided my hand to this book, when I raised my arm to choose. For it is just one more incident leading me to rebirth and rediscovery.

Lucky Me

2007-05-25T07:40:00.000-07:00

What is luck?

Different people think of it in different ways. And everyone creates their own definition of luck. Some of these definitions sound so wise, you'd think they'd been spoken by some hotshot religious leaders. But it ain't like that. You can have your own definition of luck, but unless something lucky happens to you, you don't get it.

There is nothing called luck, actually. It is just a concept that the mind of mankind has created, skulking around looking for a solution to some random question of philosophy; a solution that cannot be called false since it does not cross any principle that has yet been established as reasonable true, and while yet lying in the realm of doubt, is comfortable enough that it may be accepted without too much discomfort. Basically anything that happens in such a manner that you wanted or expected or hoped it would happen, is taken as an instance of luck.

Logically, is this justified? Not really. Because almost everything that you do nowadays has your hand in its making, consciously or unconsciously. You get whatever you worked for. And based on your own experience, you know, consciously or subconsciously, how well or badly you performed, and what the outcome of what you did should approximately be. You would thus end up with some expectation, however slight, of the result. Human nature never talks of itself exactly; it's either always self-glorifying or self-deprecating. So when the result comes out better than expected, it's good luck, and if it's worse, then it's bad luck.

Look at it this way, and you'll be able to actually explain all those instances of 'good' luck as very favourable or pleasant logic. And then you'll see that the instances of actual 'luck' are nothing but very nice coincidence. And they will be quite few and rare to find!

But regardless of how rare the coincidence it's fun to see the consequences of it. Like when you have a certain minimum score that you're hoping to get in a test, and it turns out that you just manage to get that minimum score. The luck part of it is that you got the bare minimum you need to scrape through. And as a result, a lot of nice things happen, because life just got a little simpler with that bare minimum score.

Interesting things happen in life. You only need to keep your eyes and ears open. You'll never know what's happening otherwise.

Parallel To A Football Match

2007-05-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

I'm watching a football match on TV at the moment. Everyone's asleep. I've never paid football any attention before.

A friend of mine just recommended this match. He seems to be a sports freak - I've only recently started talking to him. I don't know any rules of football, I don't know the playing procedure or the scoring protocol; I've never even kicked a ball before, let alone play football. But I'm still enjoying the match.

I'm on vacation, and I'm pretty bored at the moment. A vacation is supposed to be spent usefully, to take time out and do stuff that you don't normally have time to do, in the course of school, college or work. I'm not doing anything. I feel like such a lowlife, such a cheat. I'm ashamed and that's probably why I haven't called or talked to anyone. The list keeps mounting day by day.

Anyway this match is something different. I'm feeling the urge to write, so I guess this means some of the cobwebs are being blown out of my brain. I wish I had a proper writing table.

Okay, one team just scored. Both teams seem to be quite evenly matched - this team that just scored got it because it was a penalty kick awarded thanks to being fouled by the other team. I get the feeling a lot of goals are scored that way... else the way this game seems to proceed, each team will always get blocked every time they try to score! Even though the goal net is so wide, it doesn't seem to be an easy task to kick the ball in, particularly when you're being cobbled by the other team, and you have a particularly wary goalie facing you!

Anyway game's over, and one team managed to win. God, they're so happy. They have a goal to chase!

Meat!!!

2007-05-05T06:35:00.000-07:00

For this I thank the one with whom I've been friends before birth. Sorry girl, for ripping the link off your blog, but believe me, I give you full credit for spreading the cheer!!!

Enjoy!!!

Meat!!!

(Update: In case the link changes again, here's to make sure that the story isn't lost.)

THEY'RE MADE OUT OF MEAT - by Terry Bisson

"They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"Meat. They're made out of meat."

"Meat?"

"There's no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They're completely meat."

"That's impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?"

"They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines."

"So who made the machines? That's who we want to contact."

"They made the machines. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Meat made the machines."

"That's ridiculous. How can meat make a machine? You're asking me to believe in sentient meat."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. These creatures are the only sentient race in that sector and they're made out of meat."

"Maybe they're like the Orfolei. You know, a carbon-based intelligence that goes through a meat stage."

"Nope. They're born meat and they die meat. We studied them for several of their life spans, which didn't take long. Do you have any idea what's the life span of meat?"

"Spare me. Okay, maybe they're only part meat. You know, like the Weddilei. A meat head with an electron plasma brain inside."

"Nope. We thought of that, since they do have meat heads, like the Weddilei. But I told you, we probed them. They're meat all the way through."

"No brain?"

"Oh, there's a brain all right. It's just that the brain is made out of meat! That's what I've been trying to tell you."

"So ... what does the thinking?"

"You're not understanding, are you? You're refusing to deal with what I'm telling you. The brain does the thinking. The meat."

"Thinking meat! You're asking me to believe in thinking meat!"

"Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat! Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is the whole deal! Are you beginning to get the picture or do I have to start all over?"

"Omigod. You're serious then. They're made out of meat."

"Thank you. Finally. Yes. They are indeed made out of meat. And they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred of their years."

"Omigod. So what does this meat have in mind?"

"First it wants to talk to us. Then I imagine it wants to explore the Universe, contact other sentiences, swap ideas and information. The usual."

"We're supposed to talk to meat."

"That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. 'Hello. Anyone out there. Anybody home.' That sort of thing."

"They actually do talk, then. They use words, ideas, concepts?"

"Oh, yes. Except they do it with meat."

"I thought you just told me they used radio."

"They do, but what do you think is on the radio? Meat sounds. You know how when you slap or flap meat, it makes a noise? They talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even sing by squirting air through their meat."

"Omigod. Singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise?"

"Officially or unofficially?"

"Both."

"Officially, we are required to contact, welcome and log in any and all sentient races or multibeings in this quadrant of the Universe, without prejudice, fear or favor. Unofficially, I advise that we erase the records and forget the whole thing."

"I was hoping you would say that."

"It seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with meat?"

"I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say? 'Hello, meat. How's it going?' But will this work? How many planets are we dealing with here?"

"Just one. They can travel to other planets in special meat containers, but they can't live on them. And being meat, they can only travel through C space. Which limits them to the speed of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact."

"So we just pretend there's no one home in the Universe."

"That's it."

"Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You're sure they won't remember?"

"They'll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we're just a dream to them."

"A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat's dream."

"And we marked the entire sector unoccupied."

"Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?"

"Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen core cluster intelligence in a Class Nine star in G445 zone. Was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again."

"They always come around."

"And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone ..."

My Visual DNA

2007-05-05T01:42:00.000-07:00

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

The Last Day in College

2007-05-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

It's the last day in college. Of this semester.

For me, of my second year as a college student. There are so many things I've seen, so many things I've heard, and a glimpse, very vague, of the huge amount of stuff yet to come.

There are just a few hours left. Before I leave this city. Before an entire generation of people leaves forever, embarking on a journey each to his own horizon. Only a few hours I have, in which to gain the maximum I can from this generation. There are only four that I really want to know or meet. Three are easy to obtain. It's the thought of the fourth that kills me.

My character has gone through a complete apostasy. It's not visible to most, though. But where it is, people are completely shocked, though they're getting over it now. Not more shocked than myself though. It's amazing how someone can change in twelve months.

My thinking, my attitude, my behaviour, my tolerance, the rationality of judgement, the purity of my character, the sweetness of my nature, the generosity of my heart, the clarity of my mind - everything has gone through a sinusoidal shaped curve upon the axis of time. I am quite still what I was, to a great extent, and yet some things have changed, irreversibly, some things have begun, irrevocably, and some things have ended, irrefutably. I have both lost and not lost, gained and not gained.

I didn't have any idea where I was headed. Or where I wanted to be. I still don't. Time's ticking away, and it's so unreal I could just stand still and watch all the colours just swirl and spin by in fast motion, and nobody would ber able to catch me as I fall, and I wouldn't be able to comprehend what's going on around me, even though my mind is completely aware of what's taking place.

I'm actually writing all this, and will type it into the blog later. But at the moment I just realize: I have really nice handwriting.

People are amazing. And the way you can get to meet and know people, interact with them, learn from them, teach them, talk to them, argue with them, make acquaintances, make friends; it's all just so amazing. I've come to meet and know three times more people in second year than I did in first year, which is natural and logical, and yet pleasing to know.

So many events have shaped the course of thought, as it meanders over the plains of time, to join the ocean of the past.

I've had so many firsts this year. So many new things as well. So much has happened to me, both good and bad. Everything has served to teach me a lesson. Somebody once told me, nature teaches you a hundred lessons everyday, of which perhaps only two get into your head. Doesn't matter, because the remaining will continue to be taught, until they get drilled into you.

How right he was.

2.5 Diggers? I Say It's Possible!

2007-04-30T23:11:00.000-07:00

Textbooks can say a lot of stupid things as well, besides the sensible stuff. Of course, very few textbooks actually go to the extent of giving wrong stuff (unless they're sponsored by the State Government!), but there are some priceless examples which are technically correct, but just can't be allowed all the same!

Take for example, Organic Chemistry, by P.L. Soni. It lists out the uses of paper:
1) As tissue paper
2) As napkins and toilet paper
3) As gift wrapping paper
4) Envelopes and packaging
5) Cardboard
6) Sandpaper
7) Heat insulation
8) Writing and printing books
9) Printing newspapers
And yes, they are printed more or less in this order!

More examples to follow as the process of discovery continues. Watch this space.

The Story of A Calculator

2007-04-24T03:19:00.001-07:00

Hi. I'm just an ordinary calculator, belonging to an ordinary person and leading the ordinary life that most calculators do. I help my young lady with the stupid calculations that she doesn't have the brains to do herself and get her through her engineering exams.

People think life as a calculator can be boring but that's not true. Apart from getting to hear all the abuse and praise (yes, there is praise too!) that students heap upon their courses and teachers, I also get to see firsthand what they go through, and why they go through it. And apart from dry academic stuff, I'm also a firsthand witness to how young students behave in general, with their friends, with acquaintances and with strangers. And most of all with themselves.

I'm a dumb witness so I get to see without any pretense. Without these kids trying to be fake or trying to hide how they feel. People can be so nasty at times and so nice at others. And some people can be really so nasty and really so nice.

I got separated from my lady two days before her exams. Careless woman just left me in the classroom one day while trying to complete some class report, three hours overdue at that, and she had to call for help, and someone else picked me up after that. My lady lost all hope of recovering me, and hunted and hunted, so I heard, and was on the brink of buying another one to replace me. It's her luck that a sequence of nice young cultured gentlemen passed me on, one to another, until I landed up with a young man sitting two benches away from her in the exam hall. And he very graciously returned me to her, and I can tell you there was very sincere gratitude and genuine relief in her eyes. Which was needed, since she has begun to lose hope that there is goodness of heart and mind in this world.

The moral of the story is don't ever lose faith. Faith in what? In the innate niceness of people. It's difficult to believe people can still be good. I could very well have been kept by some unscrupulous young ruffian, or been sold by some member of the domestic staff for a little extra pocket money, or perhaps just been lying around for days in some lost lonely corner, seen by the eyes of none, my life wasted and deprived of the purpose for which I was built... but someone bothered to pick me up, maintain me and restore me to the person to whom I matter the most.

And that's why I also say: WRITE YOUR NAME AND CLASS ON YOUR CAL-C!!!

2.5 Diggers? Not Possible!

2007-03-02T00:21:00.001-08:00

Of late, I've been fortunate enough to be reading scientific books, both the general variety and the textbook variety, and I've been reading good books. The most striking quality of these books is the way they have been written, informative enough that they grasp attention, and yet light hearted at the appropriate spots, so that they don't lose that attention. And as for the textbooks, even good textbooks are of two kinds: the kind that just drones on about the subject in a clear, complete, and concise manner, and the kind that does the same thing while ensuring it doesn't get monotonous.

There aren't too many examples I can quote here. I don't have that kind of energy. But I do want to record those few examples. I don't want to lose track of what I've realised. It's really cute when you're reading the thing with a serious mind, and then the author puts in an appropriate line to make you smile. That really allows you to enjoy the whole process of reading the thing.

Sample this for instance. This was taken from "Engineering Electromagnetics" by Hayt and Buck.
"It is philosophically satisfying to have the most general result and to feel that we are able to obtain results for any special case at will. However, such a jump would lead to many frantic cries of help, and not a few drowned students."

Another quote from the same text. "We are faced with a choice of many methods by which to evaluate this component, and we shall use but one method and leave the others as exercises for a quiet Sunday afternoon." (!!!)

And yet again. "Since one coulomb of electric flux is produced by one coulomb of charge, the inner conductor might just as well have been a cube or a brass door key rather than a sphere, and the total induced charge on the outer sphere would still be the same. Going one step further, we could now replace the outer sphere by an empty but completely closed soup can. Q coulombs on the can would produce W = Q line of electric flux and induce -Q coulombs on the tin can.
"If the soup were a perfect insulator, it could even be left in the can, without any difference in the results!"

For those who aren't exactly physics freaks, my apologies. It's amazing, the kind of things you can learn. While dealing with the physics of time, pure mathematicians (theoreticians all of them) have gone through the pain of creating worlds (in theory) where you can travel back in time. The entire story is given in "The River Of Time", by Igor Novikov, a book on quantum principles and how they affect time, for the layman. Quote:
"These worlds are generated by solving systems of equations of general relativity. It appears that the general opinion has been that these solutions have no connection whatsoever with reality, despite being of great interest for studying the structure of the theory itself. Everyone knows from one's acquaintance with school arithmetic that the formulae of a correct theory can give incorrect - 'physically meaningless' - results. It is sufficient to insert inappropriate numbers into the conditions of a problem, for arithmetic to generate an unacceptable result: say, to excavate a hole in the ground of volume 30 cubic metres in 4 days, with each digger capable of digging 3 cubic metres per day, you need... 2.5 diggers. Results of this sort made more than one pupil cry."

Thinking leads to chaos! And how! A brilliant example on how to understand entropy, given in the same book. I loved this one. I quote:

"The heat released as a consequence of 'memorizing' makes the ambient air warmer and thus increases 'chaos' (entropy) of the Universe. It is always larger than the order introduced into the storing device when information is recorded. Stephen Hawking gives the following example. If you learned by heart each word in a book like this, your memory would record about two million bits of information. This is the measure of how much order was created in your brain. However, reading the book, you have transformed at least a thousand calories of ordered energy stored in food into disordered heat dissipated into the atmosphere. This increases the chaos in the Universe by about twenty million million million million units of data. This is ten million million million times greater than the gain in order in your brain, and that only if you do remember everything in this book..."

Triumph: The Importance of Being Nice

2007-02-17T02:33:00.000-08:00

Good afternoon - honoured judges, esteemed teachers, and dear friends. I am Saxicola rubetra, from Class 12 Science, and having been offered this platform, I would like to express my views about the importance of being nice to people. It may seem to be an unusual topic, but when I finish, I think you’ll agree that it is a subject highly relevant to today’s teenagers.

Hundreds of books have been written about social graces, etiquette and formal manners, ranging from fifty-page self help books of the one-minute variety, to sturdy volumes that include detailed histories of manners and etiquette. Formal manners might require help from a book, but what I wish to talk about is our basic attitude and behaviour towards our friends, family and colleagues in day to day life. That is something that cannot be learnt by reading any number of books. It has to come from within.

Parents tell children when they are little, that when someone gives them something, they should say thank you; if they do something wrong, they should say I am sorry; if they ask for something, they should say please. Children mechanically obey these instructions, without really understanding the meaning behind it all. That understanding comes only when they grow older and more mature. Having understood that thanking or apologizing is an expression of gratitude or regret, as the case may be, the sincerity of that expression should increase. On the contrary, we find that basically, as students grow older, they grow ruder.

Nobody really thinks about this at all. The case could be as simple as borrowing a pencil. When we were younger, we would go to a friend, who we definitely knew had one and ask very politely, please, may I have that. Nowadays, the situation is something like this. You need a pencil, you see one lying around in a pencil case, you don’t know who it belongs to; you pick it up and use it. How many would bother to put it back where it was taken from? Very few indeed. In a lot of cases the pencil in question is just thrown around somewhere and the owner is left to find it missing and then look for it. A pencil may not cost much, which is why people don’t bother too much. But this attitude of not caring for the fact that it does belong to someone else shows how unconcerned, how disrespectful we have become. We are very fastidious when it comes to our own stuff and very casual when it comes to other people’s things.

Our basic behaviour is what others judge us upon. The way we speak and act leads people to form their opinions of what we are, and what they can expect from us. People go to a lot of trouble to make a good first impression on new acquaintances. It might help to some extent, but how long does one go on making a pretence? If one is not basically nice by nature, the truth comes to the surface sooner or later. In your own friends’ circle you will notice, that when in trouble you tend to approach a few particular people more than others. And those particular people are much nicer in their general behaviour than the ones whom you don’t go to.

A self evaluation will show us how shockingly rude we have become. We take everyone and everything for granted. We are not bothered about misusing other people’s property. We do not care about being disrespectful to our elders. We say inappropriate things, which can really offend other people. We take a sadist pleasure in seeing other people squirm with embarrassment or humiliation. The worst is when we try to justify our misbehaviour quoting the other person’s conduct as a precedent.

Being nice shows consideration for other people. It shows that you are interested in creating harmony in society. It doesn’t really take a huge load of effort to be nice. It only needs a little change in attitude. That isn’t asking for too much, is it? If we were all a bit nicer to each other, the world could be a much better place for all of us to live in.

Thanks.

I remember this occasion in my last year in school, when we had this elocution competition, and all of us high school people had to be kicked by our teachers into participating, since we were too lazy to take the initiative ourselves. I was one of those kicked into it. And I didn't get past the preliminary round into the final on-stage round. But my teacher liked the prelim round speech I gave in class and she had me prepare it and speak it on stage anyway, as a guest speaker.

And that occasion was memorable. I'm a stage fright kind of person, and I usually go bonkers at the prospect of a public performance in front of an audience. And here I was, in front of three hundred people for the first time in my life. And it was great. I didn't fumble or stammer or forget anything of what I wanted to say. The feeling I had was beyond exhilaration. It was the feeling of triumph, over my own weakness, the joy that I had surmounted, for once at least, a mountain I always dreaded having to climb. It was just that: triumph.

Blue Sky and Golden Sun

2007-02-11T19:55:00.002-08:00

I'm sick. I'm sad. And I'm broken.

And I've missed the lecture of a screwy prof. The first lecture of the day. The first lecture of the first day of spring.

The first day of spring. It's warm again. The sun is shining again as the sun shines, golden shine warming up the green earth. It's beautiful; not blazing hot, yet sunny and bright. And I'm sad. And broken.

The first day of spring. Winter has been delightful, like it always is in these parts, but today brings the first blue sky in weeks. Bright blue, beautiful deep blue, blue in all its shades, from the eastern horizon to the western, and all shades merging together like no beginning and no end, no line and no border, reflecting the green and brown shades of the earth. I don't know why, but there is more green today upon the earth's face than there has been for weeks.

The first day of spring. Golden sun under a blue sky. I bunked the first lecture of the first day of spring. And I'm alone on the roof above the classroom where my fellow students are working their brains. While I work my senses. And above my head is the commonest sight humans ever see, but I'm seeing it in totally new light. The commonest thing people feel, but today I realize it. And I'm broken.

But I'm healing. Slowly.

The Heart That Beats

2007-01-19T22:47:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I saw a tree. Just an ordinary beautiful tree. Spreading out large branches, covered with leaves. Little insects crawling all over its body, while larger, sometimes nastier, two-legged insects roamed uselessly around it.

Two moments later, I scaled it and came to rest in its boughs. A gentle breeze rustled through the leaves, creating a song. Not musical, yet enchanting, because intertwined in its tone was a delicate peal of laughter. Distinct, yet indistinguishable.

I lent my ear and my bosom to the tree. And I heard it whisper to me. I felt its heart beat against my own. As gently as the leaves flutter to the ground. Calming, soothing, comforting. Caring. I am solid, I am strong, I am faithful. I care. I felt a voice within whisper to me. It too has a heart that beats.

The day passed. I don't know how the day passed. And it ended very sadly.

I ran. I just ran. I don't know where I ran. But I just ran. And then I stopped. I dropped down. I was at the foot of a tree.

And once again I was surrounded by its arms. Once again I heard it sing so mysteriously. Once again it whispered comfort to me, as I felt my heavy heart beat.

I am solid. I am strong. I am faithful.

I care.

And you must care for me too. For, I too have a heart that beats.

Random Thought Process? Hmmm...

2007-01-01T10:36:00.000-08:00

People, people and more people, presenting the seemingly random yet intricately complex and altogether marvellously chaotic thought process of two young residents of the living kingdom...

Power to the White Moon!

The Holiday Armadillo: i'm just ferklempted so i am saying crap
The Dragon Lady: no matter
The Dragon Lady: go on talking as u like
The Holiday Armadillo: hehe... one of the true patrons of the true form of nonsense
The Holiday Armadillo: ahhhh... how i misss this
The Dragon Lady: i know... i get high on the air and start talking crap...
The Dragon Lady: and ppl tell me to shut up
The Holiday Armadillo: they hardly know anything about any sense... whoever expected them to understand nonsense...
The Dragon Lady: rite...
The Holiday Armadillo: there are very few people left who can understand our kind of non sense
The Dragon Lady: eksaktly
The Holiday Armadillo: the victorian kind
The Dragon Lady: uve hit the nail on its head
The Dragon Lady: the poor wall is screamin frm the pain
The Holiday Armadillo: the nail hit me on the hammers head
The Dragon Lady: owwww! tht wudve hurt
The Holiday Armadillo: nope... the nail is screaming cuz it twisted its point
The Holiday Armadillo: too hard a skull you see...
The Dragon Lady: oh my god! the nail lost its nose!
The Dragon Lady: aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh...
The Holiday Armadillo: i see you got the POINT at the END
The Dragon Lady: ah yes... the end... to which all our discussion was pointed...
The Holiday Armadillo: yup, it pretty much had me right on the edge
The Dragon Lady: yeah... tis fun when ur turning the corner
The Holiday Armadillo: give up already... the moment has passed
The Holiday Armadillo: lol
The Dragon Lady: i know... sigh!

Hold Closely...

2006-12-04T10:29:00.000-08:00

Dictionary Definition:

hug/verb

hold closely in one's arms, keep close to

hug/noun

a hugging movement

It's been a long time since I hugged someone. Since I really hugged someone. Since I really held them so close I could hear their heart beating, so tight I could almost not breathe, so completely as though we wouldn't ever let go, so lovingly, as though someone was filling warmth like a liquid into my entire frame, flesh and soul.

Hugging is a very powerful act, but people don't realise it. A 'little' thing, yet conveys a lot. Nothing else will give you the feeling of love, protection, security, kinship, comfort simultaneously in a potent mixture so magical it has no equal.

The last time someone hugged me was when a friend comforted me, fresh after someone else had quarrelled majorly with me, almost treacherously. I couldn't let go of her, and for the first time in my life I shed tears in public. The tears couldn't stop, but it didn't feel wrong, while I was in my friend's arms, receiving solace.

A hug is especially powerful when someone else gives it to you. And you can't expect to receive a hug unless that someone truly understands that you need comfort but can't express it, can't ask for it. A hug you ask for can never equal one you receive without asking. Because the latter means your friend knows you, cares for you and watches over you.

And nothing is so ecstatic and heart-warming as the knowledge, when you are feeling low and vulnerable, that you are so well loved by someone, who isn't of your blood or flesh, but treats you like you were.

Today is International Hug Day (apparently). 23 hours and 59 minutes have gone by since the day began, and I haven't yet received a hug from anyone. Probably because no one knows that it's Hug Day. And even more probably because a hug is something spontaneous. You don't need a special day for this.

But I miss a hug. It's been very long...

And that, every time, is what makes it so precious.

And Where's the Desire for Freedom?

2006-12-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

I live in a cage. A condition to which I willingly resigned myself in exchange for an opportunity to shape my future by furthering my academic prowess (if that’s wht they have the temerity to title the crap they dish out here). I mean, this is quite literally a cage, because I’m under lock and key for nine hours every night. The fact that I keep the key notwithstanding.

The most ironic part of this arrangement is how we complained and screamed initially about it, and now one year down the line, we are so used to it, we can’t live without the cage. There was an outrage last night when I locked the gate half an hour later than the correct time.

It happens like that on a much wider scale to a broader extent in a huge variety of aspects of life too. We complain in outrage about our restrictions. About the subjugation we are forced to endure, to be allowed to exist. About the unfairness of it all. And then we get so comfortable in our cage, we don’t feel like leaving it. We feel insecure outside the cage. Without the lock. We don’t want to venture out, seek the path we so fervently once desired, spread our wings and learn to fly. And then we can’t bear to be allowed free. Even when we ourselves hold the key.

Beautiful

2006-12-01T04:30:00.000-08:00

You're beautiful to me.

Even in your absence, your essence is enchanting.

I could capture your smile and engrave it in stone, and there would it remain carven for as long as weather chose.

I could enshrine the twinkle of your eyes in a single leaf on a single stalk of a single branch of a single plant, and it would grow thence, as long as the tree of love is watered.

I could weave your voice into the bars of the wind, and hear the sound of comfort caress me every time the earth breathes.

I could ensnare your laughter in the flame of fire, to shine bright and warm my soul, in the cold of the moonlit night.

Most precious of all is the pristine clarity of your mind, the flawless logic of your reason, and the magical madness of your creativity. Beautiful is the rationality of thought, and rational is its beauty.

And enthralling is your spirit, even in your absence.

And beautiful you are to me.

(Dedicated to ASR)

Hooked, and Bringing Others to It Too...

2006-11-29T22:29:00.000-08:00

I'm a spoilt brat. I mean, I am spoilt now. Five times in four weeks have I perfumed my breath through flavoured water, and now I can finally achieve the feeling of floating amongst the clouds, simply through my breathing...

I love Nirvana. I love breathing it. And I love tasting it two hours later, when it is just a memory, sweet and sad.

Let me tell you of this person I wanna call Dragon Lady, coz one of my friends titled her that. Wild black hair cascading onto her shoulders, black clothes hugging faithful limbs, and white smoke issuing forth from her lips like dragon's breath frosted and moving in slow motion, twisting and curling through the air and spreading the essence of Nirvana to intoxicate all who are near enough to be captivated by the spell. Add a cigarette, and the picture of a female motorbike maniac, wild and dangerous, becomes complete. Though the cigarette ain't there yet in the picture, and the bike's missing too, so we're not quite there. But the Dragon Lady is still quite dragon-ish on her own. With the smoke still curling out from her lips...

She ain't alone. There are others too. The Happy Chords Lady, and the Stranger With Candy, with the Sweet Cute Sexy Chick too. It's girl's night out, and celebration with perfumed smoke just brought life back to dead people in a dead city. All hooked, and fantasy is reflected by the glimmer of a sparkling sheesha.

Existence ain't a pretty thing. But it can become beautiful, for a brief sliver of time, when you have an ambience that is the total opposite of reality. But smoke floats up, disperses and disappears, and when the mist clears, you're back to square one, ground zero, where you have to continue on the road you're building for yourself.

I guess that's okay. Coz too much smoke can choke you.

Hooked on It, and Now High Too...

2006-11-23T20:58:00.000-08:00

I love hookah. Alright, I still don't know how to breathe it the right way, but I did it yesterday properly for the first time (my fourth session in three weeks, and I've just started), and I got my first real high.

Dry yet high.

My head feels dizzy, my stomach feels queasy, my world is spinning around me, and I wanna sleep off in this beautiful fragrance pervading within my body and without. The first high feels real good, especially since you've never had one before. Apart from the fact that you feel you shouldn't take any more else you'll puke, and you have like, next to zero capacity.

The taste lasts long, real long. It feels almost royal. But have it only when you have nothing immediate to think about. Coz the thought of that test the next day really kills the fun...