Jayesh Sharma

Episode 2:

I sensed a pat on my back, it was the student on the bench behind me.
"Hi I am Bipin, I didn't see you before in our class last year. Are you a transfer student?"

A puzzled look came over my face. 'Usually when everything seems to go fine you are in the wrong lane' was the cliche' that I recalled. Was I in the wrong lane or wrong class room? Did I  make a fool out of myself by walking into a lion's den and that too consciously? The planning had failed, for simple reason that it did not incorporate for three possibilities- an earthquake, a nuclear war and classroom swap. I needed an exit strategy to make situation as salvageable and to my advantage. Should I just go along with the story of a transfer student? There will be more questions and I will be exposed in no time and when caught humiliation will be worse than the ragging itself. Should I excuse myself for a toilet break, or feign sickness? Oh no they are too lame. Should I use Heisenberg's uncertainty principle as a basis to explain my presence in the classroom? or should I tell them that I came from future, where they accelerated my body to such a velocity that I could bend the time and eventually landed here and then tell them "I will be back" in a coarse machine like voice. If they say thoughts travel faster than light then mine were time traveling, going everywhere except for the problem at hand.

I remembered J Krishnamurthy once said, 'Whenever there are conflicting thoughts in your mind, always follow the path of truth'. No offense to the great thinker but such things rarely work in life and it didn't for me either.

"Hi I am Sunil, I am first year BBA student. I thought this was the classroom for IV batch students, wasn't it? I think I came in the wrong classroom" It was a stupid thing to say after the great deal of planning but I could not think any better.
"No, didn't you see the class room allocation chart near the main entrance?"
"I did, last week. I didn't know they could change the classroom after that"

"Bipin, who is the new fellow? Bring him over, let the introductions begin", shouted a guy who was sitting on the desk, with his feet on the chair. It was a group of four boys. Like every civilization a classroom has its own elements, who form the society. If the analogy is to be followed, these people seemed like the rogue elements of the society. The first one was tall, strong, brawny guy, the kind of one, no body wants to fight against. He had a very bad array of teeth with no symmetry or regulation and swollen gum. A short hair made his head look bigger than otherwise. If I had to prove that monsters do exist to a kid in the next house, I would have used him as an example. The monster was called Aadil. The second one was with average height, a light fringe of mustache and he had somewhat decent dressing sense. He seemed to be the most civilized of the four. The smart one was named Gaurav. The third was short and stubby. He was also the one who did most of the talking. Every time he laughed his eyes vanished in the big hills of his cheeks. His expansive paunch made him look like a comical figure. The stubby one's name was Arun. Fourth one had eyes of a dope junkie. He had long hair and they were of the kind that no amount of combing can make them look any better. I was sure, if I went near him, he would stink. He had a dark complexion and the red pimple blisters just made his face look like an aerial landscape of volcano affected land. The ugly one was called Rajan. I nicknamed them quickly in my mind - The Monster, The Smarty, The Stubby and The Ugly. As I learned later, these four also had a reputation for being the worst in the ragging business and were known as freaky four.

Bipin asked me to go to them, which I ignored without a sound or a gesture. I picked up my bag and was about to leave the class and that was when the freaky four surrounded me.

"Hey smart ass!! we heard you. You are not going anywhere unless we ask you to", said the Stubby.
"Do you know, it is an offense not to listen to your seniors? and what are these clothes that you are wearing. What say Aadil, the new chap needs a lot of training. Should we take him to the stock exchange?", it was Smarty. I kept silent and looked around and a few of them stared at us from corner of their eyes but for the most rest of the class paid absolutely no attention.

Stock exchange was a code word for the small warehouse like place which food mess authorities used for storage. No one went there and it had become a favorite place for clashes between student groups, illegal contraband and some serious ragging. I was already calculating my next moves. Survival guide said - 'In the event where you do get nabbed, keep a smiling face and simply follow what the seniors ask you to do. Act dumb enough to stall them and chances are high they will leave you without much harm.'

"Sorry sir, I was not aware of the dress code. I will keep that in mind. I need to attend my lecture and I think I am already late", I said looking at the Smarty.
"What you think is not important here, you are coming with us", snapped the Stubby.

I had already started my Hail Marys, expecting the inevitable. Even though I was petrified like a mouse in bag full of Cobras, I was calculating my responses for most common acts of ragging. It looked like freaky four had not ragged a boy in a long time and I was the first for the semester. They were not going to leave me till I sated their appetite. I had fallen in a very bad trap. Freaky four took me to the college gymnasium. This was not as bad as the stock exchange but it still was less crowded area in the morning and it gave ample opportunity for them to torture the poor soul. It started with a loud introduction, followed by singing and dancing on popular Bollywood numbers and it went on. My compliance frustrated them even more. Suddenly the Ugly who was quiet all this while, sneaked on me from behind and smacked the back of my head and there was gruesome hostility attached to it. In a quick reflex action I hit him with my elbow that went crashing just above his hip bone.

Survival guide said  "Never ever tolerate physical abuse, it gives the other person limitless power over you."

The Ugly crouched in a pain and the other three ran to comfort him. They knew it was Ugly who invited trouble for himself but they were not going to accept it. Suddenly the atmosphere had changed and I saw four hostile faces staring at me. They reminded me of Kerberos - A Greek mythological demon with four dog heads, guarding the gates of Abyss. Each waiting for someone to make the first move. I knew peaceful college years I had expected for myself were over. I was never a good fighter through my school life and I knew the Monster alone could take me over. But I had been a good survivor and I knew enough through my reading (and partly through my video gaming) about combat skills only that I never put them to use. Rule number one: Stand your ground and never walk backwards unless you are preparing a counter-strike. Rule number two: Never put your head down, aim for maximum punches on nose and centre of chest. Rule Number 3: Hit few but hit with concentration. Rule Number 4... Rule Number 5...I stood my ground in red-vision rage in what seemed like a battle field. I was breathing hard and my heart was pumping more blood than a formula one fuel hose.

'I know you will get me eventually but I will take one of you guys down with me. I will smash one of your heads against the bench, one of you is going to walk away with a bloody nose. Come on and get on with it.'

"Leave the guy alone !!!". It was a voice from back and it changed the expression on faces of the freaky four. It dissolved the expression of rage and fury into what seemed like disappointment and defeat. It was the expression you see when you lose your prey to someone higher in the food chain.

"Let's get out of here", she commanded. No one else spoke a word and stood motionless, not even blinking. It appeared like a scene in those sci-fi movies where they freeze time to take 360 degree perspective. Two hands grasped my arm at elbow and jerked me back, pulling me towards the door. I kept looking back at the freaky four with an agression of a hound and would still have lurched at them at a slightest movement. When I turned to look at the face that belonged to the pair of hands pulling me apart, I was astonished. Not that I took a great interest in looking at women at that age but still from my recollection she was by far the most beautiful girl I had seen then. She was slender, with black shoulder length weavy hair and pale skin. She was a couple of inches taller for an average Indian female. Her square shoulders and straight backed posture with both feet planted firmly apart gave her a quietly determined physical presence. She was wearing military fatigue pants and a loose cotton shirt. Clue to everything a man should love and fear was there, right from the start, in the attitude she sported. She had a pair of eyes that reflected a grace and pride. Without understanding why, I knew beyond doubt that a lot of people would mistake her pride for arrogance and I did not make that mistake. We exchanged that look for two long seconds that seemed almost like an hour. She left my hand as soon as we were outside and walked away and I couldn't resist admiring that confidence beaming from that little physical movement of hers. She didn't speak to me but I read a lot in her eyes in those two seconds. I looked back, nobody came running after us. I went to the main entrance and checked my classroom and joined my real class-mates.

To be continued --

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

 

           - William Butler Yeats (source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_Coming_(poem))

 

 

 (image source apple.com)

• Camera - It still stands at lowly 2 Mega pixel and no video shoot option, where rivals like nokia and samsung are already offering 8 Mega pixel capability and cheapest camera phone on market lets you shoot videos these days. Did I hear optical zoom? Cellphones always missed critical optical zoom capability, thankfully newer model are coming up with it (samsung SPH-2300 etc) and iPhone seems light years behind.
• MMS - Well iPhone is so rich with the features (of no use) that you tend to overlook some of the basic features that are lacking in it. Believe me it does not have a MMS feature.
• Bluetooth - I had expected some improvement in the bluetooth connectivity with the new model. Apple has been focussing so much on the new and innovative features that it has completely ignored the basic features that exist on 90% of the cell phones on the planet. The bluetooth on iPhone can only serve you for hands free calls and does not let you share/transfer files from PC or stream music to bluetooth headphones or any of those hundreds bluetooth facilities.
• Flash - It simply does not support flash file format. So if you want to watch one of your favorite TV show or movie on one of those websites streaming flash video, you will be disappointed. For youtube, it redirects you to Apple specific version of Youtube website which converts the flash file in the quicktime format before streaming it. Also you may not find all the videos that you will on regular Youtube site.
• Voice Dialing, Speech Recording - Missing

Click the picture to know more..

A week back (or whatever) I watched this movie Tashan. Can not say what made me go to a cinema hall and spend money to watch this one. Well if someone is still willing to watch this movie (I guess it ought to be out of theaters by this time), then this is my advice - Dude, go watch some B-grade movie in morning shows that will entertain you more and if not then at least you will know exactly what to expect from it. I had read that it is same director who directed Dhoom 2 before, has written and directed Tashan. I mean how can someone let a person like that loose in public and if not enough then sponsor him for directing another movie. I seriously believe we need to come with a law for people making such movies. On second thoughts I believe the director was "inspired" by one of the Frank Miller movies (Sin City and likes of it) and tried to recreate something similar for Indian cinema. In the process he bungled, butchered, massacred the essence zillion times over. I wonder if the director, any of the cast members or hapless distributors did actually watch the movie before the release? If yes, it must take guts of iron for someone to put this kind of a flick on the market. I see, IMDB puts it under Action genre. I believe they should rather invent a new genre for movies like this and name it "Abuse of IQ". The writer (who also appears to be the director) was quite certain the people will be dumped into slumber while watching the movie and is probably the reason every half and hour or so one or the other character mentions word "Tashan", to give them a quick reminder for the name of the movie they came to watch. The dialogs are just as trashy as they could ever get. I am not sure about what effect director wanted to create out of it, if it was humor then it was light years far from it. Did someone say  - Kareena in green bikini?? then be prepared to see Anil Kapoor baring his chest and pot belly too. Final word of advise - Keep your children away from it, change the  channel if it is on TV, delete the file if it is on computer and demand nothing less than 1000 Rs if someone is willing to take you to watch it.

Resuming from a long hiatus. Can not say it was blogger's block, but it was sheer laziness, some busy schedule and lack of motivation. The motivation was quite high after watching Tashan but subsided within a day. May be I still can write about it when I am done with this.

 So coming back to the subject. Dreams Unilimited.. Hmm.. I am a dreamer and not quite restricted to the night time dreaming. Fantastic and crappy ideas come while you are dreaming and yesterday I quite had some similar experience. I had a bad headache, last night and fortunately I found sleep quickly, only to wake up with a nightmare at 2:30 am in the morning. Was finding difficulty catching sleep after that. Ideas kept popping in my head one after another in quick succession. Just jotting them down here.

$$$Money$$$ - I was wondering about the nature of money. The term money has boiled down to. All I see is an electronic receipt on a website that I have earned X dollars. I login to my bank account and see X dollars were deposited. I spend on credit card and my credit card statement shows I spent Y dollars. The concept of money has boiled down to an electronic entry in the entire transaction system. I remember a time when I carried only a five dollar note in my wallet for almost three months.I took a class in my bachelor's course "Principle of economics and management". There I learnt a few deal about concept of money and banking. A few years later, Google and wikipedia taught me a few more things about it and now at 3:00 in the morning, I was thinking about it. With injunction of electronic money we are only binding ourselves tightly to a system which thrives on credit. Unlike every other existing process on the earth (or universe), the credit system we have is completely NON RECYCLABLE. We have come to a point where we are trading credit against a credit and not against any natural resource and it only puzzles me all the more how the economy is able survive through this unbalanced equation.

Web Interface Design - Carrying my thoughts from banking, I pondered upon banking applications. They appear so naive and non-intuitive. Consider front end web interface on your favorite bank's website. Every time you make a transfer you have to enter the name, account number etc of the party in a non-so-flashy text box. How about juxtaposing two windows one that has credits in it and one that has bills in it. Dragging amount from credits to the bill payments and woooof it is done. How about having buddy icons who you regularly transfer funds to. Say 1 gold coin for each 100 dollars. Dragging 10 gold coins and dropping it in your buddy's account and you have a successful funds transfer. I know it is pretty much doable using Ajax.

Telemetry of sensory perceptions - For a long time we could send 2 dimension video with synchronized sound and today some state of art technology enables us to send holographic motion picture. But it still does not fulfill what could be a realistic experience. I mean, can you make yourself be felt in Sahara desert or Antarctica, through a conditioned room? We have something called as virtual reality but but that still does not give us complete 360 x 180 x 90 degrees of vision. It basically restricts your view to maximum of 240 x 160 x 90 may be. That too is just the vision and hearing part. What about the other senses like touch, taste and smell. What it would be to be sitting in a theater and watch a Yash Chopra movie and find Shahrukh Khan Rani Mukherji dancing next to you and you could find yourself in middle of saffron fields. You could smell them (ofcourse saffron plants and not SRK or Rani Mukherji),  touch them (ofcourse Rani Mukherji) and even find the taste of saffron pollens in the air. Zz.. I see there, some people already prepared to bash me up.. for writing such a blog entry..if they at all they cared to read this further..

I guess we must have already celebrated century for automobile industry but driving is still a skill that one needs a lot of practice. It is just not something that comes obvious to you like getting attracted to opposite sex. The problems are multiplied if you are driving a manual gear shift car. I had my share of frustration and cursing during the initial days. It was as if - "Every one in the world out there can drive it but just I cant" "They say it is as simple as lifting clutch and pushing gas (accelerator) but in the entire forsaken world I cant seem to notice what is going wrong" "Practice practice practice, damn I am tired, tell me how much practice, I cant get this damn piece of junk to work for me" "Shit, I cant stop it from rolling back, on an incline, damn it is gonna hit the car behind me, somebody help !!!"

Everyone has his/her own issues but I can certainly jot down things I find could be useful for a new driver.

• First Gear Woes - If you can put your car in motion, through first gear 8 out of 10 times, you have won half the battle. Find an empty parking lot, and do a lot of practice for starting the car from first gear. Till you cant start the car from first gear 8 out of 10 times do not drive off the parking lot, you will be in a dangerous spot.
  
• Wheel Control - I was driving an automatic car before I switched to manual transmission, so wheel control was not a problem for me. But if you are starting your journey with a manual transmission car then this is something extra you have to learn. You will have to stop at signals and will have to make left or right turn. Holding steering wheel with left hand and shifting gears at the same time with right while negotiating a curve will certainly require a good skill.
• Gear Shifting - I still fumble with this a lot of times. They say use lower gears at slow speed and higher gears at greater speeds. I would like to make my little amends to this rule - Use lower gears for greater acceleration (2nd gear for accelerating from 0 mph to 40 mph , 3rd gear for accelerating from 30 mph to 60 mph works fine for me) and higher gears for cruising at constant speed.
• Braking - There are two cases - a) Say you are driving on freeway and you just want to slow down a little and not stop completely. In this case simply push brake a little, there is no need to use clutch. b) You are approaching lights, push the clutch completely and brake appropriately. Let the car halt completely and bring your car to 1st gear.
• Driving on Incline - By saying this I mean, starting your car from halted state (say signal) on an incline. Well this is trick, which took me the most time to learn.Learning this is just not as simple as releasing clutch and pushing the gas. While you practice, for this, you have to release the clutch little by little till you feel vibration under feet, release the brake and start pushing accelerator at that time. Vibration Eh?- How in the world do I sense this vibration thing ? It is a point where you start hearing this purring sound, your steel wheel starts vibrating and with little release of brake your car seems to go forward or at least does not roll back. They also call it a friction point. I would love to describe the internal mechanics of the same but I want you to read this blog further and not just run away.
• Listening to your car - With practice you will know when to change gears depending on the kind of noise your car makes. Like you slowed down your car from 60 to 20 mph while still in 4th gear and you start accelerating back again, without changing the gear, then the car will start shaking badly and make this weird rattling noise. If you accelerate too much on lower gears then the car will let out a cry of over exertion.
• Parking on incline - Requires a lot of practice, especially if it is parallel parking and on the incline. I still find trouble with it even now. It is difficult while your head it twisted 120 degrees and you have to follow same regime as for the first gear.
  
• Use of clutch - Use clutch only while you are changing gears or braking for all the other times release your foot off the clutch. Do not use the clutch paddle as a foot rest. Strictly keep your foot aside, dont let it touch the clutch when use of clutch is not required.
• Backing off - Rules for using the reverse gear are same as for first gear because in both cases you start from zero speed. Clutch and gas paddle co ordination has to be mastered. Just don't simply look in rear view mirror and start backing off, instead extend your right (for left hand driving) hand passenger side seat, turn your head completely back and then start backing off. It is a common mistake to check just rear view mirrors while backing off.

I guess I have summed up every challenge I faced during my course of learning, when I went out there looking for help on Google for lessons on driving manual transmission car, I could not find any. I am not sure if Google search will show link to this blog entry ever. But still, I hope !!!

I deleted my last post, it was too pessimistic. I got up today and suddenly a thought came to my mind, we are not driving cars, we are driving death machines. Every year more than 35,000 people die in united states in car accidents (census link). That is almost equal to five Boeing 737 jets crashing with no survivors. A friend of mine recently met an accident, driving his 50 grands worth German car. By grace of god he got away with minor injuries because it was an expensive German car. The car was total wreck though. But imagine state of all those, including me, driving economic Japanese cars, even a crash at 40-50 miles an hour can be fatal. I plan to be more careful henceforth while driving, paying close attention to speed limits, traffic laws and no speaking on cell phone while driving. Yes perhaps I could add this to my new year's resolution, thought I don't believe in the resolution system ;-)

The powerful always seek to limit freedom by talking of the misuse of freedom, but freedom cannot be called freedom unless one has the right to misuse it... More than evil itself, I have learnt to fear the menace of good that comes in the form of improving others...” (Rabindranath Tagore from Jibansmriti, Rabindra Rachnabali, cited in Nandy 1994)

Well, I must write about this one. I have really liked some Hindi movie after a long time. Chak De India was nice but this one beats all the other films that came this year. It was beautifully written by Amol Gupte and well directed by Aamir Khan. Director/script writer have paid attention to minutest detail with a deep understanding of child's psyche. They beautifully portray problems in child's world and how everyone else is so oblivious to them. There were a couple of dialogs  in the movie, for which I was like bowled over, they seem to hit right at the bulls eye.

• Why would a kid say he has problems, when he sees everyone else around him can do things with an ease that he struggles with. Isn't it easy for him to say he wont do it and get away with it? and isn't this what they learn from elders too?
  
• Putting burden of your (parent's) ambitions on child's shoulder - is worse than child labor. If you want competition then breed race horses, don't have kids.
  

Story touches a very sensitive social issue and sends out a very positive message. Well it is a story of us all (Indian kids), trained to survive in the fierce competitive world. Khemkaji told me of kids who start preparing for IIT-JEE/PMT right from VII standard. It means an Indian kid knows at age of 13 what he wants to be. I don't think anywhere in the world, a kid must be making career choices at such an early age and while doing this I am not sure how much of an interest factor comes from the kid and how much of it contributes to the pressure from the parents. Parents want their kids to be everything that they are not and this specifically hampers the growth of creative talents. There could have been a lot of successful photographers, singers or painters out there, who by misery of fortune are working in some software firm doing mundane coding in Net or Java in some corner of India Why go far, I myself am a by product of this rat race. I wanted to be an architect but my career choices pushed me into IT Networking. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy it but certainly it was not my first choice.

This year was important for Indian cinema industry as we saw two films which were different from mainstream production "factory" and were not a mere outcome of a batch processing and both did commercially well (well it has been only a week since Taare Zameen Par released but I dont think it will face any problem gathering commercial success). Off late, Indian cinema is coming to an age where we see films without a romantic angle being well produced and equally well received by audience. Also the directors finally are beginning to pay attention to the importance of songs in the movie. Personally I feel songs should be inline with the story and should have lyrics that have something to do with the plot and not something like "Dard E Disco" which might be catchy, may earn you some moolah but it discredits one as a creative and thinking director. We also saw some low budget good movies like, Ek Chalis Ki Last Local, Johny Gaddar both of which were offbeat - distant from stereotypical plots and were quite entertaining. Moral of the story is - You dont need top notch actors dancing in saffron fields of Switzerland, or posing against Manhattan bridge for a film to be commercial success. All we demand is to be served with something different, give us a break from romantic stories. I guess film makers have tried every permutation and combination of it already in Hindi cinema and they still are not relenting. How much of one guy vs two girls, two guys vs one girl, two guys vs two girls should we see now, at least try two boys vs one boy or two girls vs  one girl now.. ;-)

Well how many ardent book lovers we have left today who would want to go ahead and buy this device paying 400$. I guess everyone worth their salt are joining the bandwagon of entering into consumer product market. Apple chose long before, that it could not just rely on computer hardware business and it needed something extra ordinary to revamp its business model. Fortunately Apple has someone like Jobs with correct focus and deeper understanding of consumer needs. I guess Amazon merely tried to mock the market trends without any foresight. I mean I could not just make out what would Kindle offer me that my PDA or iPhone can not. It weighs almost 1/4 kg and would not even fit in my pants pockets. What would justify me carrying a mobile phone/PDA and an Kindle together when my PDA will do everything that Kindle does and  even more. I went on to read the features and I would have shouted at first glance  when I found :"IT DOES NOT HAVE A COLOUR SCREEN". It does not have gyroscopic motion or alignment sensor to switch from portrait to landscape view automatically, even cheap cell phones have that these days. Well, Amazon is offering a wireless connectivity based on 1-X EVDO, they still have to make it clear whether the subscription if free for lifetime or just for limited period. There is no wireless LAN access again, so you still have to surf on comparatively slow EVDO when you have tons of bandwidth available in your LAN. Don't ask what to do when you do not have EVDO network availability in  your country or city, you will be stuck downloading data from PC, storing in SD card and docking it on your Kindle, wow so much for comfort of a non techie user.. I could not help but go on to read what are the recurring costs, some 10$/month for newspapers, some 2$ for  blogs (and they call it free blogs access ha ha ), some X $ for magazines and pay per book on download.  There is no built in internet browser and I guess they have a built in application software for browsing catalog limited to searching news, blogs and e-books. (On second thoughts it does not even make sense having a browser with a gray screen. ). Perhaps it will only show e-books that amazon has to offer and not from other vendors. Coming to file formats, it uses its own proprietary file format and if you need to read your personal document like a word or html file then you need to "email" it to Amazon, amazon will convert it into Kindle recognized file format and send it back to you. What in the world happened to privacy fellas? It sounds so silly, Amazon could not bundle a chip/software to handle on device file conversions inside a 400$ device. It does not even support "PDFs" even with that file exchanging business!!!!! where I believe 90% of the e-books that exist on internet today are PDF files. Amazon has adopted a complete GREEDY business model focusing only on Amazon's revenues and completely ignoring what customer would get out of it. In my first opinion, I do not see a bright future for this device unless they come up with some radical fixes.

What do you call civilization?

Many years ago, man used to live in caves and forests. He graduated from stone age to bronze age, bronze age to machine age. Each time letting himself adapt to the surroundings sometimes in attempt for mere existence and sometimes to add comforts to his life. We created our own sphere, with our own protocols, our own rules, overriding the rules of nature (think of dynamic polymorph ism here).  In an attempt to adapt to the nature we created an environment where one needs to adapt to this human created environment. If one goes to look, needs of a human being they are very minimal, food, shelter and well I need not specify the third one ;-) but we have this conditioned environment, where our needs have grown far beyond the necessities. As more sophistications were added to our lives, more complicated the life has become for us. Someone out there dictates, that by age of 6, you should be learning alphabets, by age of 15 - you should know fundamentals of trigonometry and calculus, finish studies -  get married - get laid - get paid - and be dead many years later. We are only trained from our early childhood how to survive in this man created complex world but not ever taught how to live in this world. All we are doing is adapting, re-adapting and re-adapting all our lives. News, politicians, text books, teachers, internet and all that we consider as our source or resource knowledge, are all a part of a self-sustaining mechanism of psuedo-evolution. Just like software, we build one system on top of other, drivers on top of hardware, APIs on top of drivers, applications on top of APIs and more applications on top of applications each time adding another layer of complexity. We get so overtly reliant on technology that we are made to believe this could be ultimate solution man kind could have. We had electricity for over 150 years but yet we could not see an electric car for so long - because there was a lobby who thought, IC engine is the ultimate solution that we can have. There were other political interests concerned with oil too but that adds an altogether different dimension to the story. Should one ever give a thought, take himself out of this conditioned environment for a while and think how should the life be, rather living under a constant, persistent, subliminal pressure, fear, of tomorrow. No money or nothing in this man created world can free us from our worries except two things - death and a radical thinking.

Well I am not here certainly to write about Gandhi's doctrines, his thoughts ideas, short comings etc. A lot of it already has been written on that subject already. It is just about this little conversation that I and my professor shared yesterday. I had taken my appointment for next Tuesday and he said that's 2nd October. I said - "Oh that's Mahatma Gandhi's birthday". We both have had lengthy interesting conversations (not related to research) before about everything from the kind of food to Amish people to Turkish and Indian cultures. This indeed was one of the same kind. My professor has a great respect for Gandhi and he asked me how do you feel about him. I said, I like his ideas, his thoughts, the sacrifices he made for the country but I dont agree with with everything he did was right. Of course whatever little recognition India has in the world before IT revolution is mainly contributed to Gandhi. Even today, most Americans would not know India for its IT potential but they would certainly know India for Gandhi. We went on talk about separation, my professor is of the opinion that separation was a good thing to happen to India. I said there were millions of people died during separation to which he said it was good they died once, if it was not for the partition the killings would still not stop. I said Gandhi was one of the contributing factors for separation and I did not like it. I dont exactly remember the details or his rationale for giving a go ahead for separation but I certainly know the consequences. I knew there were a lot of people who opposed it including Sardar Patel but still Gandhi had his say. I told my professor about a movie on Ambedkar, which goes on to portray Gandhi's attitude in the post freedom era. Satyagraha and hunger strike were his inventions but he started using it against his own people. He turned into a black mailer, knowing people had his support. He would dictate Ambedkar do this or else I go on strike. So I told my professor, it was good thing for him to die and there was nothing wrong with the person who killed him. In fact the person (Nathuram Godse) bowed to Gandhi first before shooting him, which certainly shows he had respect for Gandhi. I told him about Gandhi's efforts to eliminate social divide based on caste system which I really appreciate. He asked or rather pointed out - The caste system still exists there. I said yes thats a sad fact but it has not been eliminated as yet. I said, it is still much proliferate in the rural parts of India but in cities you dont see much. But it also a fact that 80% of India's population lives in rural areas. He asked me - Considering a hypothetical situation would you get married to a girl from untouchable caste ? I said I dont have any qualms. We discussed about quota system and  he  was in favor it because he said underprivileged should be helped before I explained to him - In our country, you don't decide, your privilege level based on the resources you have access to but you decide it on basis of which family you are born in. There was whole lot of it that went on but right now I am too tired to write about all of it.

It was a disappointment for many, as we saw Prashant Tamang being crowned as Indian Idol - 3. Well he certainly did not have a talent to get into even top 5. This yet another time, where we see democracy has flawed to get the most deserving candidate. In our culture where the choice is highly driven by sentiments than quality or talent, these kind of incidents are not really rare. The best example could be political elections and the number times we see the most worthy candidate, getting elected for the right position. I guess sponsors will have to keep their word and eventually would have to make an album with Prashant Tamang. His chances of making it to playback singing are almost as certain as a rainfall in Sahara. Promoters will have to use some very aggressive campaigning to market someone like Prashant Tamang. May be, it would be the same people who voted for him, will go out to buy his album(s).

Found this on the street, outside my apartment... ;-)

 

Error:
Generated SELECT statement.
     Error in WHERE clause near '@'
     Unable to parse query text

In SQL query Access database needs "?" as a parameter while for MS SQL database will need "@param" as parameter. Believe me there are millions of other caveats which Microsoft does not reveal in documentation or tutorials . You only find them on forums. I wonder what it would be, without internet. I would be lost under a pile of books trying to figure out source of error and may still never be able to find out.

A sign found at 7/11 gas station..

Note: Some people could not make any sense out of this. Hence giving some background. The convenience stores attached with the gas stations face a robbery threat during the night times. Hence 7-11 chose to post a sign mentioning, at no point there will be more than 30$ in the cash register.

If you are one of those aspiring youths of the nation with dreams, thoughts of making it big into the world, thinking of sending your kids to Harvard and spend your retirement years in Bahama, then a degree in engineering, business or medicine wont take you there - nor will cricket or tennis. Why not try a career in politics instead !!! Just follow this link and you will know why?

Taking a break after season - 2 of Prison Break series. Watching the first two seasons consumed most of my time in last two weeks and not to mention the people around me who had to suffer so much with me trying convince them (in vain) why there could not be a single reason for them not to watch it. It has been a while since I saw a real spine chiller till I came across this one. I was cooking the other day and Nehal had rented this copy of Prison break first season's first DVD. I just overheard Chetan describing the synopsis of the TV show and it was very moment I found my interest in it. I always like the stories about prison breaks, great escapes, some high tech robberies (Ocean's 11, Score, Entrapment etc). This one was like culmination of all. I mean just everything fits together so nicely - the background score, the plot, the characters, the slang. It is just a perfect combination. However, the second season gets more into cop - con chase and more stereotype. But still it maintain the thrill and suspense factor. However there are lose threads, and some events seem just too implausible viz. the ease with which Scofield finds out location where Cooper has buried his 5 million, the way all the characters make their way to Panama. I mean T-bag makes it to Panama because he had overheard Scofield say that Panama is safe place. T-bag is not a character who would keep trust in anyone's word. Then sudden termination of Nick and Veronica made it look as if the artists went out of contract and they somehow needed to be eliminated. The time when everything seems not to be working they brought Burrow's father into picture, who does nothing except rescuing him once. The way they handled Terrence Steadman's character too was a weak spot. I hope the third season will bring us back to the actual prison break, only this time it will be Panamanian prison instead of Fox River. I don't plan to watch third season for a looooong time. Reason 1 I dont have that kind of time now. Reason 2 - This is the last season, so if I watch this one there will be nothing more left to watch. :-)

I was purchasing this insurance policy online, so I had to fill in this web form. Might amuse a few of you.