silence before the storm

Classic Incantations - A concert of confluence

2012-01-30T00:14:00.002+05:30

AR Rahman's music is that undercurrent in my life which interleaves most of my memorable memories and important instances. His music is not just a means of recreation to me, it is where my rationality fades and I know of one thing but surrendering to his notes.

Today happened to be an excellent opportunity to rejuvenate my Rahmanism, and witness a German orchestra - Babelsberg perform some of his best pieces. The concert was in commemoration of the Indo-German relationship, and aptly the German orchestra performed to AR Rahman.

Although ARR was not at the venue, he did peek in via web chat and greeted the audience.

The impact live music leaves one with is unimaginable, and if the music is something you already relish it elevates the experience one level ahead. Although this I can't claim to be the best live music experience I've had, it did leave me with goosebumps most of the time, and ecstatic at the end of the performance.

My first live experience of a soprano happened today, and after today's brief rendezvous with soprano, I only ask for more of it. If there is one composition by ARR that I have always longed to listen to live in a symphony orchestra it is the opening music of the title track of Rajni starring Muthu. And it was scintillating, as expected!

The exotic theme music of Roja, Bombay, Lagaan, Subash Chandra Bose, 127 hours, Robot, Passage, Mangal Pandey, Warriors of Heaven & Earth, Lord of the Rings, Elizabeth, Meenaxi and Slumdog Millionaire were performed. Each one leaving behind a repertoire of emotions :-)

The last performance, which enchanted the 8000 strong audience was the theme from Swades. Although my favorite portions from the movie soundtrack are different than the one performed it precisely showed the power of an orchestra! Just splendid!

My monotony was undone, and I feel full to the brim :-)

Fulfilling emptiness....

2012-01-26T14:07:00.002+05:30

Both socilasing and solitude arenecessary to keep us sane. Just that we long for one of these, whenthe other has been experienced in excess. But being stuck in one ofthese extremities might render some extreme ramifications – oneeither becomes a hermit, or an identity-less chunk in the crowd.

I am now relishing solitude after anexcessive dosage of socialising. AR Rahman is singing quite aptly andfilling the air with “thanimai thanimaiyo” , as I am writing thisnow.

It is as if I am getting back tomyself; as if to catch up with a portion of me I had forgotten and tosavour every moment with this interaction. Music and unfetteredthoughts both playing at full force : serenity. It seems that I waslonging for it for quite sometime.
You are your truest self, whenalone, I had read somewhere, andwhat better opportunity than when in solitude to rendezvous theunfaking self.

Solitude is not just aboutintrospection, although that comes as default. It is more on thelines of rediscovering, revealing and rejuvenating the self. It has anunparalleled power to appease the disturbances, distilling the mind.

Bliss when caressed secured in thebosoms of Mother Nature and the bliss in the damp warmth of seclusionare but extreme, yet sublime experiences.

My slowly dawning revelation of aclose companion – words, seem to flow out with ease,articulating my thoughts with utmost fidelity in an ambianceuninterrupted by the chaos of the routine. Intimate and profoundthoughts quantify as ideas and take form as my scribblings. At thisjuncture I also am introspecting this companionship, and validatingif I haven't fooled myself. To question my caliber of writing is aroutine passing question.

And even before I have completedthinking of the question, the answer already is surfacing up. Whydoes it have to be gauged at all! It is fulfilling, complementingand extending myself beyond the biological me, and is that not avalid reason to stop questioning of its caliber and let it flow? I dowrite to cater to others, but only after gratifying my own urges tovent out, ideate and express.

The post as you have read on, if younoticed has no structure at all! It is the crudest of my posts, in saying that it alsolacks any intent to pretend or preach.

It is quite an irony to see howemptiness can also be satiating. But is it emptiness at all is thequestion :)

Swami Vivekananda: The monk as man

2012-01-25T10:09:00.000+05:30

Swami Vivekananda: Themonk as man

Translatedfrom an article by Dinesh Aminmattu, Prajavani, 16^th Jan,2012

SwamiVivekananda was a “dull” student. He lost his job as a teacherbecause he was 'not able to impart lessons' to students. By birth hewas diseased. And by the time of his demise not one or two, but wassuffering from 31 different ailments. Matching with his Bengalidescent, he was an obsessive junk food eater. Until the last day ofhis life he was eating non-vegetarian food, and was also able to cooknon-vegetarian recipes derived from national and internationalcuisines. He would smoke cigars and hukkas like an addict. Withoutdistinction of it being Hindus, Muslims or Christians, he would eatat all their homes, Even while he was devoted 'Sanyasi', he would beengaged in all the get together parties that were organisedthroughout the day in the hotels, while he was in the USA....

Ifthese snippets be propagated, to all the people currently engrossedin celebrating the 150^thbirth anniversary of this “Revolutionary Hindu Saint”, they wouldbe taken aback with terror. Nonetheless, these are true facts.

Eventhough from a backward class (shudra), Vivekananda took up Sanyasagoing against the Hindutradition. He denounced the same tradition again by crossingthe oceans. Rebelling againstthe ancient traditionalists he would stay put at the 'unholy' placesof westerners. For the very same reason, High Court judge MurthyGurudas Mukherjee refused to head the Welcome Committee afterVivekananda was returning from the Chicago World Religious Forumaddress. After the renouncement and the 'sainthood', numerous eminentpeople from the 'upper castes' would address him a friendand not as swami. Heexpressed his infuriation about the hoaxes, customs prevalent inHinduism and other perils like casteism, untouchability, blindsuperstitions, temple rituals and these outbursts would for sure haveearned him the tag of an enemy to Hinduismfrom the fanatic proponents of Hinduism.

Swami Vivekananda at Jaipur, ca.1885-1893

Ideas like “Head is superior, and legs are inferior”,which instilled disparity within one's own body and other disparityinstalling mechanisms that are inherent to Hinduism had frustratedVivekananda, and in rebuttal he would say that people should have“Muslim bodies, with Vedic minds”. When the Maharaja of Khitri, adisciple, expressed his dissent about Vivekananda eating at a Muslimhome. Vivekananda retaliated by saying, “I would even eat with thescavengers. I wouldn't be scared of people like you. You don't knowanything about God or religion.” Once, an emotional Vivekanandawent on to say, “If I were alive during the time of Jesus, not withmy tears, I would cleanse his feet with the blood oozing from myheart”.

He would also defer the argument that Hindus wereconverting to Islam because of the force of Muslim rulers. He wouldattribute this migration to the inherent casteism, untouchability andexploitation in Hinduism. When a religion does not recognise andrespect the fundamental rights of humans, then it no longer is areligion, but “dance of the devil”, and the place becomes “hell”,was his perception. He would also reminisce words from his teacherRamakrishna Paramahansa, “Mutual respect between religion is notsufficient, there must be a cognizance of the fact that all thereligions are true”.

Hopingthat the 150^thbirth anniversary celebrations of Vivekananda “Utsavamurthi”would increase the awe and respect towards him, but when experiencedturn out to be a disappointment. Even after 110 years after thedemise of the maverick saint who lived for only 39 years, 5 monthsand 24 days, after endorsing sainthood at an age of 24 years, life of the real Vivekananda is still shrouded in obscurity. Often in recenttimes, Vivekananda is being projected as the “Brand Ambassador”of Hinduism and in this process, traits which weren't his are beingfabricated and portrayed exaggeratedly to elevate him to the place ofGod!

Vivekananda in South Pasedena

This misrepresentation is nothing new. People who havewanted to transform the society by social reforms have all been made'deities' and have been distanced from the common people. The notionthat, if not for an incarnation of God, no normal human being cangrow to have any substantial impact has been shrewdly planted andperpetuated by various religious leaders with political leaders asaccomplice. Starting from Buddha to Basavanna, Vivekananda toNarayan, all these people leaders have been escalated asdeities amidst their 'worshipers' and are today drowned in theanointments and chants of their 'devotees'. Sinking under theworshiping of these these devotees, the real life and ideas of thesegreat leaders are going oblivious in the pages of history.

Last year, Penguin Publishers published a book “TheMonk as Man” by famous Bengali writer Mani Sankar Mukherjee. Thisis the English translated version of a research based Bengali book(Sankar's novels “Seemabaddha” and “Jana Aranya” were madeinto movies by Satyajit Ray). Apart from the ideas and philosophiesof Vivekananda, the little known private life is featured in thisbook. Also other books about their elder brother by Vivekananda'syounger brothers and letters from Sister Nivedita throw light uponthe life and times of Vivekananda.

Another group picture in South Pasadena

Vivekananda would in future enchant the western worldwith his knowledge and mastery over the English language, in spite offaring not academically well in his intermediate and B.A exams. Hescored 46 % and 56% respectively is worth a mention. Out of 500 markshe scored 261 (in Sanksrit he scored 43 and in philosophy 45).

After the death of his father, Vivekananda, out ofcompulsion had to work to maintain the family. He joined IshwarChandra Vidyasagar's education institution. And because Vivekanandawas not able to teach students well, he was sacked from his job by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar himself. If not for his mother –Bhuvaneshwari Devi, the world would not have seen Vivekananda, maybe.Like the thousands of Narendranaths from Kolkata, he too would havedrowned amongst the crowd.

Vivekananda was from a rich family, but with theuntimely death of his father, their ancestral property was swindledby his relatives, leaving the entire family onto the streets.Narendranath was the eldest of the eleven children and theresponsibilities of taking care of the family was already on histender shoulders. While he was unemployed, there were times when hewould wander on the streets wearing torn clothes, having no food toeat on many occasions. The fight in a court that was going onincessantly for seventeen years got resolved only a month before thedeath of Vivekananda.

Shrugging off family responsibilities, Vivekanandarenounced the world and took up Sanyasa, passing all of hisburden onto his mother. His mother did not loathe him because he hadquit the responsibilities of the family in times of deep despair.Instead, she would be proudly talk of her son saying, “My son tookup Sanyasa at an age of 24”. After Vivekananda's demise, shelived for another eight years in tremendous trouble, sustaining onlyon the monthly grant of a hundred rupees from the King of Khitri.Today, the Indian population who are glorifying and celebrating himwere of no use when he was alive. He had once lamented, “ Should Ialways beg to the foreigners”.

Mother of Vivekananda Bhuvaneshwari Devi

“Man of a big heart, broad shoulders, bright eyes...”,are the usual text book descriptions of Vivekananda, projecting himto be the He-Man of Hinduism. Little would the people claimingthese know that Vivekananda was always ill and was suffering fromnumerous ailments. From severe headache to heart problems, he wassuffering from 31 health problems. Apart from kidney, liver andthroat problems, he was suffering from hypertension, diabetes,asthma, acidity, constipation, weakened nerves, joint pain, swollenlegs and was constantly in pain. He had been an insomniac for a longtime, and during the end of his days he would sleep as little as acouple of hours only per day. Even a touch would cause excruciatingpain in his body. He had written to his disciple Mary Hale at the ageof 34, “My hair has grown grey much before my age and my face haswrinkled”. Disheartened by his illnesses once he sighed, “ I havebecome like a limping horse unable to run the race. At least bestowme peace by granting euthanasia (mercy killing). I can no longer bearthis pain”, records Sister Nivedita in her documents.

Even amidst all the ailments, the sharpness of his wordshadn't mellowed a bit. Being the foodie he was, he would eat lot ofjunk food. “I would add chunks of meat in boiling water with somespices and serve a dish to Thakur (Paramahamsa). Whereas,Naren (Vivekananda) would cook varieties of non-vegetarian dishes”,says Sharadadevi in one of her writings. Sister Nivedita has alsoelaborately documented the culinary skills of Vivekananda, comprisingof national and international recipes. The day he died is when theHilsa fish had entered the Hoogly river; he had got it cooked,had it for lunch and later in the day when he was resting is when hebreathed his last that night.

A dull student as per academic standards, ailing fromtens of health issues, shaken by family responsibilities, foodobsessed common people can also grow to become “Vivekananda”, wasproven by Narendranath to the world. While being entangled in thesedifficulties also, he had studied all the religions and philosophiesof the world. He would travel countries and give speeches. He wouldrelentlessly write books and letters. He had thousands of disciplesand millions of followers. He started the Ramakrishna Mission inservice to his Guru. All of this, he had accomplished within a spanof 15 years.

Can a commoner accomplish all of this? Certainly he/shecan. One has to be a Vivekananda for that!

PS: Audio excerpt of Vivekananda's address at the Parliament of World Religions, Chicago in September, 1893

Questions as windows to the mind!

2012-01-21T09:45:00.002+05:30

Judging people and their intellectual abilities based on the answers they give is ineffective, to say the least. Answers to questions, or solutions to problems can be 'learned', sometimes even 'practiced', and necessarily do not convey the independent intellectual abilities of the person and the mind.

Answering questions is not an uninfluenced act of logic or reasoning; It is a response to the question posed, and because the question has already been asked the premise and context of the thoughts and ideas are made available. Now, it is only a matter of ideating on a given plane of thought, within a frame of reference. It for sure requires a radical mind to answer questions by thinking beyond the given plane of ideological reference. And hence the rarity of radical thinkers.

Whereas, when people are to ask questions by themselves, it is more of an independent and self reliant process. Questions emanate out of the inconsistencies of personal perceptions and understanding. It is also a consequence of the self not being able to decide upon the realms of applicability of ideas it possesses. To come up with a sensible question is by virtue of the adjective prefixed a lot more demanding mental exercise than to come up with the answer itself.

Allow me to take one question as an example to substantiate these claims of mine:

There is God, or there is no God.
Substantiating either of the claims might appeal to each of the respective diaspora as a radical answer, but, it is not the answer, the question firstly which is more radical
Is there a God at all?
People to arrive at this question would have to go through a more rigorous exercise than the ones taking either the stand of a theist, or an atheist.
This is true, for any question!

It is not answer that has been changing the world, but the questions!

What if we were not created?
Why are blacks not equal?
What if light is a wave and a particle?
What if time is not constant?
What if there is no God?
Why is there disparity?
Why should it be this way, why not that way?

Ponder, and questions reveal the mettle of an intellectual traits than the answers.
Watch out for people and the questions they ask.

Interaction with Dr.Binayak Sen

2012-01-19T14:34:00.000+05:30

Dr.Binayak Sen

Dr.Binayak Sen, a normal middle class family man and a pediatrician, concerned about his fellow beings, is according to his own sarcastic words different from the rest of the audience in that he has had "the privilege that the majority of the middle class in India have not had: to be jailed and handed a life sentence for sedition".

A senior human rights activist, pediatrician and now an icon of sorts because of the conviction by the District Court of Raipur guilty of 'sedition' for alleged Naxal links and due to the global support his cause received. His work in universalizing health and nutrition in rural India have also gained him wide accolades.

In an interaction at the Indian Institute of Science, Dr.Sen elucidated some of the aspects of his work, the concern he shares with the rest of the population and his take on the current "Sedition Law" in India.

Here is a gist of the interaction:

Malnourishment in India

Dr.Sen being a health specialist and having been part of the Steering committee for the National health policy revealed some data which are hard to fathom.

With about 37% of our population having a Body-Mass-Index less than 18.5, implying malnourishment, India according to Dr.Sen has been in a state of stable famine over large periods time. With this figure today India is the country with the highest number of hungry people in the world.

Deriving from the statistics, Dr. Sen also conveyed the fact that the annual grain consumption per family has declined, and although certain set of people are relating it to increase in consumption of meat, he infers a further worsening impoverishment of the population.

He invokes Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent futile sigh about such conditions where in the PM called it "a national shame".

Universal health care

Another important aspect that Dr.Sen has been working in and wanted the audience to ponder about was the access to Universal health care to all citizens.

Malnourishment interleaved with the lack of basic amenities: starting from sanitation to primary health care at affordable costs has been rendering a huge section of the Indian rural population, scheduled castes, scheduled tribe population into the fangs of diseases such as tuberculosis, diabetes meningitis etc.

According to Dr. Sen, there is no resource crunch in terms of funds, but only lack of planning and reluctance in implementing policies such as health insurance, strengthening Public Distribution system, subsidising prices.

People and politics

When the audience recurrently raised questions on what each one of us could be doing to impact the situation, Dr. Sen had a recurrent answer :
"You cannot stay at an arm's distance to politics and say no to politics and still hope for change in the conditions.

People cannot outsource democracy to about 500 of their so called representatives and forget about democracy until once in five years. Ordinary citizens should get involved in active politics.", were Dr.Sen's views. He also made it clear that he was not talking of any party politics, but only active engagement by people in democratic processes and ensuring that the Government would give heed to the request of its people.

Sedition Laws in India

After having handed a life sentence in the name of sedition by a District court, rejection of bail plea by High court and over ruled bail by the Supreme Court, Dr Sen obviously had a critical view of the current sedition laws.

He said,"In an active democracy dissent should be legitimised, only then can a democracy function. But, according to the sedition law 'any disaffection towards the government in power' is deemed as sedition and a life sentence could be rewarded". This according to Dr. Sen is ironic and a flawed take on democracy itself.

In conclusion, Dr. Sen also hinted at the current neo-liberal policies which allow thriving expropriation of natural resources for profit either by the Government, or the Government in nexus with the corporates. Encapsulating this disparity, Dr Sen recollected a Supreme court verdict in which the Judges analyse the Government's vision as:
Tax breaks for the rich, and guns for the poor!

You know when you flow

2012-01-15T18:43:00.001+05:30

'To Flow' is what I ask people to do. That's my motivation tagline; Yes, it might be that I can't do it as well as the current corporate Gurus, but I preach only what I practise unlike them :)

Culture as a flowing stream and stagnation as a peril, I dealt with one of articles for The Hindu. Now with respect to people when I'm talking of 'flowing', I only imply unfettered living by pursuing ones dreams, without any inhibitions at all. The term 'flow' reminds us of certain adjectives which would do well if observed in our personalities - dashing, hustling, agile, flourishing, moving ahead, destiny!

If that seems cliched, or superficial, you are free to think so :)

My experience is: When you do what you love to do, people love you for you to do; And that precisely is the external metric which one must check up if not contended from within, or is having dubiousness about the life he/she is stuck in.

When actions and thoughts are in synchronism, and efforts are effortless, aging through days transforms into flowing. And flow is always good, for the entity as well as the ecosystem; Be it with respect to Mother nature, or human nature :)

Even if I am to write more lines on these lines I would still only be trying to convey the point that, mere surviving is not a life worth having lived, and to flourish in your life all you have to do is instead of crawl through - FLOW :)

Not really apt, but there's the ocean at the background :P

Bhagawad Gita, the fanaticism, education and secularism

2012-01-11T06:00:00.001+05:30

I have not been following the recent debate of incorporating the 'mandatory study' of the Hindu religious text Bhagavad Gita in its entirety, but with my little understanding of the issue I directly plunge into proposing my opinions.

Firstly, the notion of India being a secular state has for long time been applicable only to school text books, and not in fact to the day to day activities in its truest spirit. Further, the idea that a Hindutva fanatic political party is ruling the state of Karnataka, and has incessantly been trying to aggravate the already fragile inter religious solidarity is of anything but grave concern.

BJP in Karnataka seems to have nothing better to work upon, except for churning out the 'sentiments' based on Hindutva ideology amongst its people. The recent 'made snana' debate, the increasing saffron mutts which have now attached themselves onto the nexus between politicians and corporate mafia trying to influence the opinions of the gullible population of the state by divine order, and now the issue of The Gita in school curriculum.

Religion in its pure form might not have been harmful, but we are to tackle what it is now and not what it could have been

The issue of introducing the study of a controversial religious text as a mandatory portion of the curriculum (although it is being claimed to be a pilot project) operates directly at weakening secularism. It isn't just about The Gita - no single religious text must be enforced on the young minds.

I studied in a Christian school, and the extravagant propaganda of The Bible in fact eased my metamorphosis to take my current stand of an atheist, which might not be the case with all young minds. Likewise, although Hindus might be the majority population in India (even in Karnataka), it does not give them the right to tread on the religiosity of other sections of people - be it Muslims, Christians, or atheists. On the other hand because they are the majority, it hands them the extra responsibility of not hurting other religious and non religious sentiments.

In a TV discussion, one sane head made a valid point of religious education: Either it should be kept entirely away from education, or a comparative study of all major religious philosophies and texts must be conducted in an impartial manner. And I seem to endorse this point wholly. Although even a comparative study of it also might be futile, only to help young minds to look back at all the stupidity that has been perpetrating for centuries in the name of religions.

The specific issue of The Gita being imposed is an open atrocity being committed in the name of religion, for direct political gain. The nature of the content in The Gita - the varna system and the justification of war etc, have been already debated intensely. It is not only a sectarian propaganda, it also gives immense room for all the fanatics or the puritans to perpetrate more atrocities in the form of moral policing and of course more of superstitions, because of their conveniently wrong interpretations.

If it is ethics that the Government is keen on teaching its students, let it strip off the brand of religion, synthesize only the essence from all religions of the world: Living a good and honest life might not require volumes of preaching from people who lived ages before us.

And to adamantly stick on to the antiquity of those preachings is that special absurdity in all religions that makes them redundant, even before the debate has started!

Let there be light!

Reading The Kite Runner

2012-01-05T17:49:00.001+05:30

Well,I knew the genre I was being led into – fiction, but with a touchof reality and I have no complaints, only some reservations. The Kite Runner is certainly no bad read at all. It fallsinto my categorisation of works which I call the “Paulo Coelho type”,whose only work I have read is The Alchemist.

Thisgenre is smooth to read, meticulous in its descriptions, nuanced inexpressing emotions and a light read (for sure does not give aheadache!). Although this is what is successful internationalliterature, this genre by itself is a cliché as per me.

Now,reading The Kite Runner was a nice walk down memory lane, reminscing myinitial years of the usual fiction reading. All you Khaled Hosseini fans,I am certainly not disregarding the quality of the writing that hasgone into it, but only expressing my disadvantage of being a badreceptor of fiction of his kind.

ThingsI loved

TheKite Runner is one of the smoothest reads - in all senses; notmuch to think about, not much to remember, no dictionary look-upsand predictability at about every nook and corner. These are for surea nice respite from the other kinds of my recent literature.

Thebackdrop of the story. It was as if, I was focusing on the unfocusedportions of the scenes throughout. So, how did Afghanistan look? Whydid the Russians invade? Are the Talibans like the ones I have seenon TV? The mountains, terrains, ambiance.

Simplicity: As simple a thing gets, more the beautiful it becomes! This almost holds good here. To see such a simple work to have that beautyand to have appealed to a really wide audience is a testimony to the simplicity and the beauty.

And not to mention, one of myquickest reads.

ThingsI did not love (!=hate)

Thestory by itself is too much of a repetition to what the Indian movieshave fed you by the time you decide not to watch any more of them. Thesentimentalism about relationships, which sometimes go beyondnormalcy are an overdose to me. And I did not for obvious reasonsfeel very appreciative about the turmoils and guilt the protagonistundergoes.

LikeI said, I liked the background better than the main story, for, thereis a weak person as the protagonist. Now, it might seem unreasonable,but yes, in fiction, at least I need an inspiration! Else, come on: There is no point of reading!

Andthe simplicity is too simple; for there aren't many memorable linestoo from the book! I like witty or profound lines, and was for suredisappointed to find hardly a few.

Imight sound like the hungry critic, waiting to chew some cud about a famous work, but no: These are just my personalviews as always. Of all the praises you might have heard for thebook, not many would have had a perception such as mine, that couldbe because of the obtuse nature of reading I am into.

Ilook at reading as an investment, and I am not a happy customer thisaround.

WellI have The Thousand Splendid Suns, and yes will read it, but not inthe near future.

Accommodating myself amidst people and their expectations

2012-01-02T18:50:00.000+05:30

Sometimes I wonder whatever that I am,is it because it was always there in me and I have been onlydiscovering it, or have the people around been operating on me andcompelled me to invent these traits in me as seen today ?

I consciously try not to cater to theexpectations people would want to adorn me with, although with thetruest of their intentions. Or, maybe I do absorb some of theiraspirations about me into me, and then try pushing my horizons.

Once I have expanded my boundaries mentally, Ithen have always tried to fill it with efforts and as it hastranspired hitherto, I have been able to expand myself and to fitinto those larger shoes, and thus my growth.

Is it that I am trying to positionmyself in the image other people have envisaged of me – Maybe, yes!But, only when I am convinced that it would be something congruentand natural to what I have already embarked to do. It should simply align tomy evolving ethos.

It also happens that sometimes theseexpectations might bog one down under their burden; WhileI believe there is a mental threshold which is dynamic, and clips these externalaspirations in order to fit the true person I know I am.

Thispost is not to criticize all the real well wishers I am fortunate tobe surrounded with, but only to project out the reality to myself, sothat although sweet I don't get deluded in an illusion. Theseexpectations serve as an incessant source of inspiration and for sure keep memotivated.

All Ican assure to others, and more so to myself is that I will alwaysstrive to get better, with no fixed targets, for, who knows even thatmight become a dead end and halt my growth.

I willflow, and keep expanding.

Metamorphosing out of 2011

2011-12-31T02:27:00.002+05:30

Every year, the year that breezes by feels like the most eventful year of my life, and this year ain't no exception: Better, this has been the best ever in my life! Metamorphosis or rediscovery I am not sure of, but the feeling right now is right and great!

Metamorphosis
The first half of this year was the time when I made some serious structural changes in my life, in all dimensions and have tried fitting myself into a long aspiring role, which has allowed me to rediscover, reinvent,reinvigorate myself and to some extent inspire others.

Long term consequences of these changes although will be unfolding in the numeric change awaiting tomorrow, I will be looking forward to it, as usual.

I have also transcended into the next level of my commitment towards the change I want to see coming around, and will work more effectively come 'new year'.

I am also playing a mind game of sorts with myself: If I want to endorse "unfettered freedom", or "get bottled up", or strike an "unlikely balance". While one of the contender seems to be tipping off the balance big time, I will wait until I bring it to reality.

People
The biggest surprise I bestowed on myself has been the whole bunch of people I am getting to know.
Am i not surprised!
In this regard I was turning into a cynic. Glad now, that people of all nature and kinds, some real close, some working at deeper layers of thought, some resonating with all the action, and some outlawed from my field of interaction are all available, and if not in plenty but in adequacy.
Discovering new wells of resonance, ideating and implementing the collective vision have all had a good start, and within my constraints will sustain them.

Time
If one thing I have grown disappointed with myself is my time utilisation. My efficacy of performing within time has been getting better, wheras the efficacy of allocating time itself has deteriorated. Will consciously improve this time timing time!

Writing
It might not be an exaggeration if I could claim that I have gotten more confident of my writing skills. Not because I get to write technical articles for a newspaper, or I am asked to write for various fora, but because I am these days, more than ever before, able to vent out all of my thoughts, as effectively as the language permits, well within my nascent writing.
Words, are becoming my closest companions, and there's nothing more to complain about. Will allow it to grow as far and wide it can.

Reading
2011- The most read year, as yet! My book collection is taking shape into a precious library. Reading has hit a peak after my metamorphosis, and the rate of reading and the extent of assimilation I am able to do are better. I have acquired an ability to be able to discern literature and have an opinion about it. It is not about the opinion, but the mind that is able to make sensible criticism on ideas presented in the works and sometimes even the quality of the work itself. That certainly feeds fuel to the aspiring writer in me.

Bouncing off the efforts of the 365 days of this year, I am looking forward to the challenges and the camaraderie at all strata.

PS: Well, yes it is just a number, still serves as the right time to self evaluate :)

Dr.Mulugeta: Inspiration beyond Physics

2011-12-27T23:00:00.001+05:30

"I was in prison forseven years, and the first four years of imprisonment, there were 45of us in 4m x 4m room in the central prison in Ethiopia",reminisces Dr. Mulugeta Bekele from Ethiopia, not with remorse, butwith a tinge of sadness of the time spent then, and a subtlenationalistic pride.
Dr. Mulugeta is an associateProfessor Physics at Addis Ababa University (AAU), Ethiopia. Hecompleted his Ph. D in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science,India in the year 1997 and now he's back at his alma matter for amonth. It has been a deeply inspiring experience to have interactedwith him, firstly to know the Physicist he is, and with subsequentinteractions, I have known other nuances of this humble science andmath enthusiast from Ethiopia with a life long of struggle.

Dr. Mulugeta was the onlyPhysics major student at Haile Sellasie University, and he pursued his passionMathematics via Physics during late 1960's, as a lone student duringhis under-graduate days.

After the monarchy in Ethiopiawas overthrown by a military regime - socialist for name sake;although it did nationalise banks, industry and land, it was far frombeing the encapsulation of people's aspirations. As Dr.Mulugeta says,"The monarchical hierarchy under which Ethiopia was ruled untilthe 1974, using military had just lost its head - the monarch alonewas gone, and there was a total military oligarchy. With zerorepresentation of the people's voices, the new military regime had tosuppress numerous popular people's struggles".

The people's struggles whichwere taken up in the form of student movements, workers unions, andother representation of the common man in Ethiopia ended up in aghastly phase of Ethiopian history. During this time, Dr.Mulugeta wasteaching at AAU and did participate in the revolutions during themonarchical oligarchy, and post that against the military oligarchy.

The military regime wasruthless and suppressed all forms of uprisings, and in doing sokilled hundreds of youth and imprisoned thousands of them evenwithout a trial.
The Physics teacher from AAUthat Dr.Mulugeta was during the people's uprisings against themilitary regime did participate in all the youth movements. “As theeducated section of the society, all young students and teachers wereactively participating in the demonstrations, and it was natural forme to join in those struggles”, he says.

The ruthless regime inorder to curtail such people's struggles killed hundreds of theyoung students and put a whole lot of them into prison. Dr. Mulugetawas put into a prison during one such retaliationby the military. He speaks of the uncertainty about the term theywould be serving, or even the future of all the captured people, for,there was reckless genocide going on.

"Weweren't given a trial or anything; Directly dumped into the prisonand we did not even know for long....And when one of my otherphysicist got a trial and was sentenced seven years in prison, westarted thinking of the same luck for each of us. We did not know howlong could seven years in prison be. The first year is Sunday, secondyear was Monday, third year was Tuesday and so on, like the sevendays of the week, each year was to become a really long day for eachof us...”, recollects Dr. Mulugeta from his prison experience.

Describingthe inhumane conditions of the prison cells and the tortures they hadto endure he says that the cell in which he spent his first fouryears of term was 4m x 4m, and 45 people had to live in that! Withvery little time when they were allowed to go out from the cell, itmust have been really hard. Although he does not talk of his owndifficulties at any point of time, he says that before he could beput into that cell, previously there were 88 prisoners in the same 4mx 4m cell!

Apartfrom the imprisonment, severe torture on the prisoners was common,where they used to be chained, beaten, broken and several severed todeath.

Afterfour years in the central prison, where he was moved to a larger main prison where each prisoner the space alloted to each prisoner is more or less similar to the central prison, but the solace was that they could walkaround the prison compounding walls.

WhenDr. Mulugeta was released in 1985 at the age of 39, after spendingseven years in jail he went back to AAU and in 1991 he comes to Indiato pursue his Ph. D at the Indian Institute of Science. Today he isone of the most respected Physicists from his region and inrecognition to his efforts in contributing to Physics and hisstruggles he is being awarded the Andrel Sakharov prize by theAmerican Physical Society, about which he says,” My Ethiopianstudents in the USA recommened me for this and I am happy about it”.

Asimple, humble, erudite physicist with a life story which moves andinspires the young, not only of his own country but well beyond.

The inverse nature of aesthetics and ratification

2011-12-21T00:44:00.002+05:30

Well, in this post I try to give shape to an ongoing discussion about the essence of aesthetics and ratification.

Before I present my views, let me make it clear that although I can be in awe and savour the aesthetics of reasoning (which actually is more gratifying), I am delving into the other realm of aesthetics which is primarily dominated by senses and the 'gray areas of the gray matter'!

Casually many a times in my interactions I put forth a point,
"To sustain interest, intrigue is mandatory; Absolute comprehension is ruthlessly disconnecting!", or something on these lines, correlating the amount of comprehension with the interest on subject.
Take a minute, dwell on this idea, and read on :)

Irrespective of you being convinced or not, the point I am trying to convey here is that aesthetic sense (previously interest) needs a dose of obscurity to attain the 'tending to irrationality' sensations it renders, for its grandest impact. I am not contradicting my previous discourses about reasoning and logic; if so, let it seem so, for now!

Analysing art and photography should give us a good test case, and it shall be a very personal outlook of the debate and I do not intend to take it beyond; nonetheless if one feels coherent - feel free - tag along!

Art as in creative painting is what I mean in this context.
Painting is purely creative. Everything on canvas flows from the mind of the artist, even if inspired from reality - I as an observer has not seen the reality, and I am more than glad to look through the artist's prism. While being immersed in savouring a 'good'(by my perception) painting, the sea of emotions unleashed by the painting could be varying from anything that is euphoric to morose; personally, these experiences would have little explanations, or rather I wouldn't want to pursue it, because it would burst out the bubble of that profound sensation!
I'd rather leave the comprehension away in this case, and let myself be lost in the sensations of aesthetics.

Talking of photography, yes, photography is art. But the amount of impact it would have is lesser than that via artisitc painting. The 'obscurity gradient' inherently is lesser here! In a photograph 'the moment' has been frozen - it is quite remarkable and all. But my mind knows that it existed as it is there, and it is only the perspective that has been altered. Reality is never all that exciting to the aesthetics- it needs something beyond reality - fantasy, something beyond the realms of common sense and that is what is aethetically pleasing to the mind!

And painting, or music churn out things which weren't already there! They create and render the influence of the artists persona and that confluence is what makes all the difference. Surreal!

Take for example that Picasso one above, and imagine a deeply saddening picture of a malnourished kid in African countries (which have been more than adequately photographed). Both make me sad. But I know the reason for the latter - there's a logical chain my mind is already thinking on - famine -govt apathy - policies -exploitation -.... I can explain my sadness here - empathy.

But, the painting I don't know why! It is still inexplicable to me.

The post is not about disregarding the mind boggling skill that photography is,but only analyze in relation to artistic painting. Even in photographs, the perspective offered by the photographer conveys beyond what the reality is.

For instance in this one by me (not a great pic, but the purpose seems to have been conveyed)

It is my perspective and not the reality itself. You would still be seeing it through my perspective, but I haven't created the reality there - it somehow lessens the thrill is my argument.

Both art and photography quench the lacunae of daily life by filling us with inspiration, joy, agony, awareness, love and beauty; No ratification can balance out the emotions, it can only mellow down some of the impact.

ITEC Movie Club scores from Offside!

2011-12-17T23:32:00.001+05:30

ITEC's long standing aspiration of getting a movie club running finally and in a special manner was realized today. The purpose of this club is to watch and discuss progressive movies which would sensitize and increase awareness about issues which many a times go unnoticed.

The first movie screened today was the Iranian brilliance "Offside" by Jaffer Panahi. This being the first screening, the team had hoped to rope in a famous cinema person for the inaugural show.

Prakash Belawadi who obliged to be part of the first screening was the most apt person; with his cinema experience and critique on the IT culture was impeccable for the occasion.

Prakash Belawadi made a couple of interesting remarks about the IT work force and their ethos, which I think is in fact a less propagated reality of the IT culture. "Stuck in crowded work places, reaching via congested roads, slogging more than adequately- having a hellish lifestyle" was his perception of the IT community. Also, the corporate social responsibilty mask under which the euphemistic social endeavours are taken up by the IT diaspora was also retorted by him. IT community, the small community that it is has run away from the realities of the society in India, and without defining which society their social responsibility would be catering to, there would be little sense to their 'responsibility execution' was his straight forward view.

Talking about the need for movie clubs, and apprecating the efforts of ITEC he mentioned that benefits of watching a movie in an audience when compared to watching it in on DVD - the interaction and the commune emotions that are churned out are the things which are not to be missed.

Jaffer Panahi's Offside

Islamic Republic of Iran's oppressive regime and the nature of state controlled media with almost zero freedom are quite well known. Working in such an environment, Jaffer Panahi, has tried to bring out certain important issues via his movies. Currently, Jaffer Panahi is serving a six-year jail sentence and a 20-year ban on making or directing any movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media as well as leaving the country. All this for making progressive movies in a severely constrained society.

Offside is a heart touching story of a bunch of adolescent girls who disguise themselves as boys, so that they get to watch the World cup football semifinal match in Iran, which the Iranian women are not allowed to! A simple tale, captured on film in a documentary style with some exceptional performances by the cast renders Offside as one of the best movies of recent times. As Jaffer Panahi is known to be a neorealist film maker, Offside is a remarkable piece of work which more importanlty portays a retrogressive social practice persisting in a regressive social structure, in the most appealing manner, with subtle and sarcastic mock at the system, while projecting the aspirations of the female protagonists in various dimensions.

Although the direct idea might seem disconnected to our circumstances, it is a symbolic questioning of all the discrepancies of gender inequalities. The suppression imposed on the female population in many of the countries even today is of deep concern and the discussions which followed the movie did show that there is a lot that could be done! In India although with all the freedom we boast of, excpet for in urban scenario the condition and treatment of women is certainly not at par with men.

Prof Chatterjee from Indian Institute of Astrophysics, who was part of the audience discerned India and Iran based on his experiences: India is a country although with advanced consitution of law, women have a regressive mentality, as a whole; whereas, Iran although has a rudimentary consititution, women there have a lot more progressive mentality.

These are the kinds of debates and dicussions ITEC is looking forward to instigate by making the Movie Club consistent.

Offside is a must watch to everyone, and if interested to know more about the Movie club, the movie itself or about ITEC do visit the website http://www.itecentre.co.in/

Day dreaming in dreamy days

2011-12-13T19:05:00.001+05:30

Without getting into the specific time as to when, although many of you might well be able to guess it, last few days have been really conducive for this gratifying, involuntary creative act - Day Dreaming!

There is something unique about day dreams, in that they are not in entirety based on the subconscious and hence most entirely implausible. These are perfect confluence of subconscious' aspirations substantiated by the ratification and planning of the conscious mind,yielding these wondrous mental states.

Deepest longings emanating from the core of the self, take shape and present themselves as realistic and hopeful projections of the mind, seeking whatever it really craves for!

Another important trait is that one does not forget what transpires in these dreams unlike their subconscious counterparts, which many a times need Freudian analysis to recollect and decipher!

While I cherish reminiscing and hoping for these day dreams to see their day, you try working on yours :)

Gullible vulnerabilities of a wobbling mind

2011-12-09T18:31:00.001+05:30

My tending towards arrogance brag sessions about rationality and the import I give to logic and reasoning might already have established a projection of me in your perceptions; if it hasn't I'm glad.

This post is one of those periodic singularities in my blog, where my usual flow of ideas and opinions are obstructed to make way for something more trivial - my own personal commotion from within.

The grand title I have engraved to this post might have led some of you to expect, and I don't know what, but all I am serving in this post is confusion from within.

Ratification is gratification, being my mantra, a couple of minds around have been questioning if this is an absolute principle and would I be able to adhere to it eternally. Even before I could formulate my defense and present it, I introspect to find anomalies and inconsistencies in my proclamation of ratification.

I am so hopelessly irrational many a times, that I know it for sure that I am the most irrational rational around.

What instigates these objective experiences in me is not important, for I am not principled well enough to remain non-subjective. When I call these experiences, responses and expectations irrational, they are more than simple irrationality, these reach zeniths of ludicrousness, at least when probed from the point of the other me I aspire to grow into!

I am gullible most of the time, and this trait isn't about others deceiving me, but more on the lines of self deception. A delusion, that I for always have resented to get away from.

Vulnerable because, I am weak. Weak in the sense that not the strongest as I want to be. There must be some vents through which my strong persona leaks out, leaving me vulnerable.

The responsiveness in me that makes me look like a pathetic simpleton and the impulsive nature of reacting projecting me to be a loose cannon have a deep rooted inconsistency about my mental framework. Impulsiveness and spontaneity in reactions, not even responses have been the devil riding on my back for quite sometime, and I have not off loaded them. Even after pushing myself into super ridiculous and extraordinarily embarrassing situations I oscillate and rest back to abnormality.

The abstraction here is directed back at me, for I know no one but myself can alleviate this sensation of mine.

Hurting my non-religious sentiments!

2011-12-07T22:04:00.001+05:30

/Me is a non-religious person, a proud atheist, and this post might well encapsulate in a frivolous sense the subtle 'trauma' our diaspora is being conditioned to.

Well, here are some of my genuinely exaggerated confessions:P

If you thought non-religious people did not have sentiments, yes you were almost right that we don't have unreasonable ones, like quarreling for a piece of supposedly 'holy' land, or a wall, or adulating each ones idols, or seeking supremacy in relic books. But we do have sentiments, that usually go unnoticed, and I assure you these are more personal, yet sensible stuff!

It hurts my sentiments when I'm asked to write my religion in the religion field of every application form and that 'atheism' is not a recognized entry! Although my recent hack “born hindu” seems to convey a gist of what I feel, that does still hurt my non-religious sentiments!

It hurts my sentiments, when I see that we are non-existent to the Government and media, and they don't want to give heed to this our swelling diaspora. This community, with obviously higher IQ is ignored, for we understand and endorse Darwinism and not the 'magic wand bang creationism'!

It hurts my sentiments, when the religious fanatics' 'hurt and trampled' bleating gets all the unnecessary importance, when there's a whole world full of more important things to be done!

It does not hurt, but only amuses me when an atheist is treated as a traitor or an embodiment of evil, instead of looking at the evidence and reason behind our natural vanity.

It hurts my rational sentiments (oxymoron, I get it), when instead of facing my arguments some of you dodge and hide behind a facade of sentimentalism.

It hurts my sentiments, when they perceive me uncultured, when the truth is that I'm more sanely cultured than even the most religious fanatic, for I have undone the rituals and superstitions and celebrate only the humanness!

It hurts my sentiments, when everyone talks of only sentiments and not of the intellect! How can you run a world by pleasing unreasonable sentiments, blocking all of rationality?

It gravely hurts my non-religious sentiments, when you threaten me of not allowing to have the delicacies for each of the religious celebration, and that alone of all I have mentioned has the most serious impact on me, sometimes making me rethink my stand as an athiest!:P

All said and not done, I feel hurt to see many of you still loosely stuck to your religious webs and pose helpless, while I cherish the bliss of cognizance, that builds through every moment, every day.

Sliding down the memory lane

2011-12-04T16:48:00.001+05:30

After a really long time, I was there,

at those very places,

and I was soaked, really wet in reminiscence.

While childhood memories are nostalgic,

I seldom dwell on my own for some alien reasons.

And today, accidentally when I happened to be there,

and was free and decided to go strolling all the places,

It was, I say gratifying and deeply so.

All of it looks smaller, because I have grown twice taller!

The distances I used to cover running ten paces are two hops now;

The garden beyond the walls I used to climb into, is now accessible via just a peek;

The big trunk trees that we used to climb upon,

They are almost the same, only look much taller;

Remembered the flowers, and it reminded me of their fragrance;

None of the buildings resemble what I remember

Colours have changed, structure tweaked

The place looks concise and all of it looks as if stuffed together.

The games we used to play,

running and hiding and seeking one another;

Felt a hint of pain to see the spot

where I had slid and grazed myself.

Aroma of the legendary Warrier bakery

and vydehi uddina vade,

Made a point to quench my taste buds this time

Finishing with the classic filter coffee;

Resting at the steps of the temple

after the triple conduits of the deity,

Wanted to do it, felt free to have it my way;

Went past school,

twelve years where I learned and unlearned,

Met a pal, who yelled "debian"

Facebook it seems, proclaims more than what I am.

buddy chat, catching up on jobs,past and future.

Between the two no girls to talk about,

Boring it was obviously.

Surprised myself

allowing this sweet sensation of reminiscence

I relish every moment of it,

Sliding down the memory lane.

PS: The first twelve years of my life, approximately half my life I lived in and within the proximity of Rajajinagar. With twelve years of schooling from the very vicinity, all the memories I remember start with the places there: the streets, trees, buildings, eateries, temples, school! Saving it for myself here :)

Religion: That which relies upon relics

2011-11-30T20:59:00.001+05:30

Another installment of the Godly religion debate makes an appearance on my blog, and this time based on a series of discussions with an entourage of a different kind. Without delving into the nature of the entourage, let me dive directly into the arguments.

Religion: That which retrospects relying upon relics
Science: That which refines itself based on skepticism

Science and religion coexising? Impossible!

The aforementioned snippets of wisdom, that I have come to arrive at, based on all the incessant, intense and invigorating discussions on religion and science, kind of encapsulate the two ideologies and place them in a clear scale for dialectical analysis.

If you have been one of those fortunate persons to still have a deep religious faith system and have been part of a debate with me, you would realize your big, bold, blind spot. The dead end one would eventually bump into while sliding down the the tunnel of religion is that religion does not evolve in principle, and I make no mistake in leading you to that point of revelation. It relies on relics, and is never looking into the future. It is simply retroactive.

Like anything that stagnates - goes stale - ends up being perilous to the system, religion with all the centuries of stagnation and more of deterioration has of course hampered the system in a deep and cancerous manner. The pros and cons of this flaw in the society have been elaborately presented in my previous posts. I will only try to talk about the obstinacy that comes inherent to the religious avatars.

Living by a set of principles is any sane and civilized person's natural tendency. If the society feels it necessary to impose these principles based out of unverifiable texts, each boasting to be more antique than the other, onto a system which is dynamically changing on a daily basis - Could it get more ridiculous? Although most of the teachings or rules presented in these texts might be deemed as eternal and universally applicable, I doubt the veracity of this claim, as would many of you.

My problem has never been religion, but the imposition, propaganda and obstinacy that comes inseparably attached to it. Like Kamal Hassan says, “Your religious beliefs must be personal like your sex life, without going gaga in public about it!”.

Now, let us take up the counterpart of this debate – Science.

Science: That which refines itself based on skepticism

Skepticism is inbuilt in the modes of thoughts perpetrated by Science. It is designed to scrutinize itself and to evolve better. This alone has been the common trait through the millenia of science that has happened. Science scrutinizes itself ruthlessly unlike any other ideologies. It is honest, humble and rational. Science too depends upon relics, but of different kinds – fossils they are called and play their part in reasoning, to prove the concept of Darwinian evolution by Natural Selection.

Further, to the minds endorsing scientific thought, it only teaches one to learn and get better. When one endorses the scientific perception, an air of arrogance seemingly would surface up; It is nothing more than a vent out of frustration, for having to look at the world as it is today entangled in multitudes of religious fangs.

In all, the debate of religion and science could go on forever, they can never be coexistent as many claim to synthesize.

Science is when you've realized what religion is, given that in this process you've used your brain.

Industry-education: Connected via a disconnect

2011-11-26T21:14:00.001+05:30

ITEC's convention on bringing in awareness about frauding IT companies brought out some interesting paradigms, to look at a seemingly straightforward problem of frauds and cheats.

Of all the reasons discussed on the lines of labour-capital friction, to the lawlessness one other important and at the same time profound cause that surfaced up through the discussions was the role that professional education has been playing.

Bangalore, is tirelessly addressed as the knowledge capital, and adding to this tag today it is also the IT capital of India. While this entire new diaspora of IT'ians, and all the changes ushered in using them as the vents are remarkable, in terms of the impact and the pace at which it has coalesced into what it is today. A whole gamut of structural changes have been impinged on to the society, and the population has responded by altering a lot of itself. As in changes in the culture, politics, policies, priorities of people, etc... are substantial enough.

One of the most important things that has had a slow,subtle, yet huge impact is the education sector.

First and foremost, the notion of education becoming a "sector" of business can be attributed to the rise of big businesses via the IT revolution India has witnessed. Who else, other than Bangalore could be a better contendor to serve as an analysis point?
A full hundred engineering colleges, churning out the work force in a production line model, without being concerned about the quality of its throughput is a sight observable in Bangalore with ubiquity. This throughput supposedly is to cater to the plethora of IT MNC's based in Bangalore, while that sector itself has one perennial complaint about the 'employability' of these products from the higher education machinery.

As the discussions conveyed: A connected disconnect!

What is the purpose of education?

This question itself needs a whole dedicated discussion. Nonetheless, in the current context of Industry and education, would it not be outrageous to percieve education, even the so called 'professional courses' working at narrowing down the learnability of students to a small cone of technologies, which translate into a smaller window of career opportunities? Is this the role of education?
To educate a young mind in a system is to prepare him/her to become agile and glide through the alleys of life, and not to chain down in one spot, which would grow worse by the day.

Role of corporates in education

Now, Mr. Narayanmurthy of Infosys, is the new mascot of gleaming India, looking into the future of the world, carrying the young generations to advancement; or at least that is what the media is portraying him to be. He's credibly being accused of nosing into too many domains, certainly beyond his realms of expertise. Recently, in an ironic interview in NDTV he was being questioned about the growth of India in the last two decades, to celebrate 20 years of Neoliberalism in India, beyond the License permit raj. Now, why is it ironic?
Like in Chaplin's The Kid movie, if a window glass is shattered, it certainly is beneficial to the window tile seller! Allowing you readers to ponder further on this, let me delve into the corporate influence on education.

Mr.NRN represents to all our vivid imagination the 'big business doing, good samaratins'. These good samaratins are obviously doing good, but not to the general public but their own vested interests.

The education sector is being modulated to the tune of the market forces. Specialization in education is being performed to accommodate the skills necessary for the industries being set up, and that is deeply influenced by the current trend of businesses thriving. "Education system is dancing to the songs of market forces", as Sridhar, Senior Editor from the Hindu said.

Higher education system, at least the engineering colleges are offloaded IT company training institutes; preparing the workforce as they perceive the industry would want, and becasue the industry is always ahead in terms of technology the efforts by the education system are deemed inadequate!

Higher education should allow people to specialize in their interests, not what the market is interested in. The higher education climate in the last decade at least in Bangalore has been : get hold of an engineer's tag and get into an IT company, lead a happy life! Each portion of which is a hoax of nth order!

While there are bigger and immediate problems to be addressed about the IT sector and its perilous impact on the society, in the long run undoing to education what IT revolution has done would be of highest import, to make the society a balanced one.

ಹಾಗೆ ಸುಮ್ಮನೆ

2011-11-25T23:37:00.001+05:30

ನನ್ನ ಬ್ಲಾಗಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಬರೆದಿರುವ ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕನ್ನಡ ಲೇಖನಗಳೂ ಯಾವುದಾದರೊಂದು ತೀವ್ರತೆಯ ಸಂಗತಿಯ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಇದ್ದಿವೆ. ಈ ಲೇಖನದಲ್ಲಿ ಅಂತಹ ಯಾವುದೂ ತೀವ್ರ ವಿಷಯವನ್ನು ಮುಟ್ಟದೆ , ಹಾಗೆ ಸುಮ್ಮನೆ ಬರೆಯುವುದಾಗಿ ನಿರ್ಣಯಿಸಿದ್ದೇನೆ, ಹೇಗೆ ಮುಂದುವರಿಯುವುದು ಎಂದು ನೋಡೋಣ.

ನನ್ನ ಮಾತೃಭಾಷೆ ಯಾವುದೆಂದು ಕೇಳಿದಾಗ, ನನಗೆ ಎನು ಉತ್ತರ ಹೇಳುವುದೆಂದು ಇತ್ತೀಚಿಗೆ ಗೊಂದಲವಾಗುತ್ತಿದೆ. ಮೊದಲು ಮಾತೃ ಭಾಷೆ ಎಂದರೆ ಏನು ಎಂಬ ಸ್ಪಷ್ಟನೆಯ ಅವಶ್ಯಕತೆ ಇದೆ!

ನನ್ನ ತಾಯಿ ಮಾತನಾಡುವ ಭಾಷೆ ಮಾತೃಭಾಷೆಯೆ?
ನಾನು ಹುಟ್ಟಿದ ರಾಜ್ಯದ ಆಡುಭಾಷೆ ನನ್ನ ಮಾತೃಭಾಷೆಯೆ?
ಅಥವಾ, ನನ್ನ ಮೆದುಳು ಆಲೋಚನೆಗಳನ್ನು ಮಾಡುವ ಭಾಷೆ ನನ್ನ ಮಾತೃಭಾಷೆಯೆ?

ಈ ಗೊಂದಲದಿಂದ ಹೊರಬಾರದೆ, ನನ್ನ ಮಾತೃಭಾಷೆಯಾವುದೆಂದು ಪರಿಗಣಿಸುವುದು ಅಸಾಧ್ಯವೇ ಹೌದು. ಮೇಲಿನ ಮೂರೂ ವಿವರಣೆಗಳನ್ನು ಕುರಿತು ನಾನು ಒಂದು ಭಿನ್ನವಾದ ಉತ್ತರವನ್ನು ನೀಡಬಲ್ಲೆನು.

ನನ್ನ ತಾಯಿ ಮಾತನಾಡುವ ಭಾಷೆ ತಮಿಳು. ಈ ಕಾರಣ ತಮಿಳು ನನ್ನ ಮಾತೃಭಾಷೆ ಎಂದು ಹೇಳುವುದು ಸುಲಭವಲ್ಲ. ನನಗೆ ತಮಿಳು ಓದಲು, ಬರೆಯಲು ಬರುವುದಿಲ್ಲ - ಈಗ ಕಲಿಕೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ತೊಡಗಿದ್ದೆನೆ!

ನಾನು ಹುಟ್ಟಿದ ರಾಜ್ಯದ ಆಡುಭಾಷೆ ಕನ್ನಡ. ೧೨ ವರ್ಷಗಳ ಕಾಲ ವ್ಯಾಸಂಗ ನಡೆಸಿ, ಕನ್ನಡ ಸಾಹಿತ್ಯ, ಆ ಮೂಲಕ ಕರ್ನಾಟಕದ ಇತಿಹಾಸದ ತುಣುಕುಗಳನ್ನು ಮೆಲುಕು ಹಾಕಿದ್ದೇನೆ. ಈ ಕಾರಣ ಕನ್ನಡ ನನ್ನ ಮಾತೃಭಾಷೆ ಎಂದು ಹೇಳುವುದು ಅತಿ ತಕ್ಕದಾದ ಉತ್ತರವಾದರೆ,

ನನ್ನ ಮೆದುಳು ನಡೆಸುವ ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಆಲೋಚನೆಗಳು, ವಿಚಾರ-ವಿಮರ್ಷೆಗಳು, ಕಲ್ಪನೆ ಮತ್ತು ಅಭಿಪ್ರಾಯಗಳೆಲ್ಲವೂ ಆಂಗ್ಲದಲ್ಲಿಯೆ ನಡೆಯುತ್ತಿರುವುದು ಚಿಂತಾಜನಕವಾದ ಸಂಗತಿ! ಈ ಕಾರಣ ಆಂಗ್ಲ ನನ್ನ ಮಾತೃಭಾಷೆಯಾಗಲು ಸಾಧ್ಯವೆ?

ಆಲೋಚಿಸಬೇಕಾದ ವಿಷಯ ಹೌದು!

ಹಾಗೆ ಸುಮ್ಮನೆ ಎಂದು ಹೊರಟು, ಒಂದು ಕಷ್ಟಕರ ಸುಳಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಸಿಲುಕಿಕೊಂದಿರುವಂತಿದೆ. ಆದರೂ, ಎಲ್ಲವೂ ನಡೆಯಲಿ, ಹಾಗೆ ಸುಮ್ಮನೆ!

Journalism, contorted

2011-11-24T17:30:00.001+05:30

I was at a book release function of a senior journalist MS Prabhakara, and some lessons on journalism were there to be absorbed. Journalism our generation knows is entirely different from the work that the people in that hall have lived through.

Nupur Basu, raised a concern asking a question; she apprehended, "Where have our generation of journalists gone wrong, that the best practices we adopted have not been carried forward to the contemporary journalists?"
Although the question itself was deemed beyond the scope of the discussions there, it made a mark on me.

The aforementioned apprehension about journalism having gone out of the ethical and passionate ways of reporting events and honestly communicating to the people is of grave concern.

I am a severe critic of the paparazzi mouth pieces of the day, which spew junks of futile brouhaha, brands propaganda and rarely some news which is either "paid", or extensively contorted. A newspaper which fits this description is the largest and pompously read English daily in most of the metros.

P Sainath in one of his talks mentions that the success of this trendsetting newspaper under discussion is that, it was successful in creating an audience of its own - a mirage of Westernization backed by the globalized market bouncing off the neoliberal policy framework. Treading in its path, even today, people read this particular newspaper to feel "urbanized"! Pity.

Influencing public opinion by whatever means is the most important political tool that could be devised. Print media, although mellowing down has substantial impact even today with all the tens of "news channels" (a term that annoys and antagonizes me simultaneously). Reporting honest news and ethical journalism are confined to few publishers, who in the Page3 world not fashionable enough for the gullible population to read.

Although with the intervention of internet, there is not much of polarization in terms of opinions, the perilous impact of bad news in bad form is out there to be seen - Most of the bad newspaper reading readers feel good about the goodness of emulating other populations, without analyzing the good or bad of bad and good of what is served to them!

Disassembling Logic

2011-11-22T23:16:00.001+05:30

Well out of the lot many things running in my head competing to get out onto my blog, the following post has made it first and for reasons evident in the following paragraphs.

The question of thoughts, ideas, imagination, rationalization, reality and materialism are eternal queries which keep haunting the small gray web that's built within our heads.

Imagine a discourse, in which someone is trying to put forth these very ideas in the most simplistic manner, and you're wondering "No, this can't be real!", as if transported into The Matrix.

Distinguishing thoughts from reality, although is a natural skill each one is designed with, the exercise of documenting this design as an outsider is super cumbersome. Cumbersome because, as all simple things in life, this notion is easy to experience but sophisticated to express. The essence of expressing obscure concepts is to clarify, but when one sets on a goal to express intuition, or common logic is where the pinnacles of obscurity reside.

The very fact that something is simple, and it comes coded in our genes makes it a part of us, like thoughts for example. Now, if one wants to analyze these thoughts as an outsider, it requires immense expenditure of efforts and a great level of associated detachment from oneself and the community around to treat the self as the subject of study. These are the very processes which seem counter intuitive and end up creating the most scintillating works of research, philosophy and literature.

For instance, Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud, with all the criticism to Psychoanalysis taken into account, is still a marvelous piece of literature which talks about the subject of dreams; here, it is the analysis on the subject and not the subject itself that is expanding into realms of disbelief! Now, one would ask what value is the analysis of, if in the first place there were no subject to analyze! It is precisely on these lines that my current reading is going on :)

In the book Dialectical Logic, one of the best confluence of philosophy, rationality and literature I have ever dealt with, the concepts in it tackle simplest of our notions like thoughts, ideas, rationalization etc.. And the initial flow by itself has taken me aback. I am reading it all along in disbelief. By the time I end up reading this assimilated masterpiece I hope to have fathomed the Dialectics of Logic!

A grand extrapolation to the theory of Coexistence of conflicting opposites.

Gabriel Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth

2011-11-18T21:36:00.001+05:30

Reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez (GGM) most known for his book One Hundred Years of solitude (I'm yet to read), is an acquired taste I'd say when it comes to this book of his General in His Labyrinth.

After Oscar Wilde's wit in writing, for the style I would certainly endorse GGM's mannerisms of writing. Even the simplest of the observations are presented in a form that is hard to ignore. Metaphors, similes and verbal decorum are plentiful in his verbiage and keeps the readers entertained.

Talking about the content of this book, an interesting topic to write about - The last days of Simon Bolivar. The dusking life of one of the greatest Generals of Latin America is the protagonist of the book. It is not even Simon Bolivar, but all the nuanced insults, regressions and declines he faces towards the end of his life are unsympathetically, as if in a mode of enjoyment are described by GGM through the book.

Personally, for me the content in the book was super negative, and I for obvious reasons do not enjoy such literature. The main savior for the reader like me to savor this book is GGM's style of presentation as mentioned before.

A couple of pages where GGM describes Simon Bolivar's romantic interests, from the perspective of one of the ladies and Simon Bolivar are the most enjoyable. If it was congruence with my own volatile state of mind, or the pleasure of reading some wonderful writing I might not want to probe into, but those are the pages which stand out, and I might want to quote a couple of lines from memory!

He would leave her on any pretext in a foolhardy effect to escape the servitude of formalized love.
I'll never fall in love again.It's like having two souls at the same time.
He went back, knowing he would sink in her quick sands....

And a whole gamut of zeniths of imagination through the book shaping up as pinnacles of verbal creativity:

Dignified decorum of nostalgia
Lost in the lucidity of advanced levels of insomnia
He had buried her at the bottom of a water-tight oblivion as a brutal means of living without her.
He had the patience of a drowned man..

It is things such as these which kept me afloat through the book, and certainly not the hundreds of Latin American names and places which one is expected to correlate to when incidents are narrated.
Now, I for sure know that Geography of places, and History with names and dates are never going to be my domains of expertise!

In all, looking forward to read One Hundred Years of Solitude sometime soon. And GGM will of course be on my list of favorite writers.
When it is pure genius, it shows!

Crazy and poetry

2011-11-15T02:28:00.001+05:30

I lay here, unaware of the intricacies,
Intertwined with unfathomable intimacies;
While I thought it was, it was you,
You come out as something really new;

Not that I claim I already fully knew,
Did only know better than the other few.
Are you the one I thought you still were,
Or have you juggled yet again like her!

Well, was that a tinge of gleam,
Or am I the oneiric still in my dream?
Why know not, still not know why
Want you here, and do stay by.

If to lose me is to find you dear,
Shed all that you know it as fear.
I am lost, well lost am I?
Confessed I have like the open sky.

Started a rogue, reached here have I
Didn't know the path, nor the reason why.
This way seems not the road too easy,
Ain't it why I'm known to be this crazy!

It's you, and you is all I seek,
You would know it, give my mind a peek.
You're the one, only one you are
Reach me well, before I get too far.

Staying inspired!

2011-11-13T21:22:00.001+05:30

Inspiration is another of those neural obscurities, directly impacting our daily lives and in the long run shaping up our core principles and our personalities.

Deriving inspiration from multiplicity of sources influences our take on life and molds us into the projections of the images of various of these inspirations.

Nature is the grandest of the sources of inspiration. She has been perpetually inspiring some of the greatest minds to accomplish what ever they were to do. Both in the form of art and science, nature gives boundless inspirations, clues, troubles and joy driving our efforts bidirectionally - within us so that our passion gets deep rooted into us, and beyond us to engulf the world with our passion.

Apart from nature, deriving inspiration from ideas is the next and the best way to keep oneself motivated. Ideas are the most tangible of human attributes, which although not quantifiable by themselves have shaped up our history and have constant influence on our future. Identifying oneself with some of the eternal ideas which weave humanity together is necessary to put ourselves into the context of the journey that we have all embarked upon. When we identify and align our ideologies with a school of thought is when it becomes conducive for us to ideate based on this school of thought, or dissent and influence the rest of the world with our ideas, radically.

Nature and ideas are, to put it in a way inexhaustible sources of inspiration. Nature and ideas have a small disconnect of being abstract to some extent.

But, if a person were to derive inspiration from another human being, the inspiration comes with all the gamut of human potentials and flaws, and emulating them helps one correlate well to the pragmaticity of life.

Again, people and inspiration can be of two variants: One from the lives of people who have been immortalized in the pages of history, for the lives they had. Seeking inspiration by reminiscing such great minds is still an indirect but excellent way to position ourselves in relation to their lives.
Galileo, Newton, Shakespeare, Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Einstein,Che Guevara, Feynman, Ramanujan, and the list goes on. Deriving inspiration from these great minds also has the benefit of making abstraction associated with ideas to correlate to real people.

The other category are from our contemporaries and peers. Knowing someone in person and wanting to emulate some portions of that person is in fact the most effective source of inspiration. For, when we know someone in flesh and blood, the efforts that goes into making their lives worth looking up to are visible to us; To know the amount of dedication one needs to put in is something we lose out when seeking inspiration from other abstract means. Sheer luck, or coincidence never can create sources of inspiration in people.

I have been lucky in this regard to have known in person a handful of real inspiring people, and to look up to them - trying to emulate them and in the process knowing that I have grown, is bliss of the highest order.

Staying inspired is the only way of life forward :)

Indulging in wordplay

2011-11-11T20:35:00.001+05:30

I'm not sure if this is a personal fancy, or if many of you have this trend of favorite words: Some word which occupies your mind, conversations and writings either due to its phonetics, or simply its implications. I regularly have these whimsies, and in most cases end up overwhelmingly using these words in my conversations and writing, with surplus utterances and occurrences!

Indulgence is the first of the words which I remember being obsessed about. There is something to the sound of it and more importantly the essence of it. It still is really special - Just to say it slowly, and passionately!

Other words in my favorite list:
cliche :used it until it became what it means. Now stick to using it when necessary only

highfalutin: I remember the first time I read this was in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. And ever since then, if none of the other fascist ideas,I have been using this word quite effectively.

diaspora: Well the current Diaspora* which I keep talking about did not introduce me to the term :) I think because it is a favorite word that I got hooked on to Diaspora* as well.

jargon: It is more to do with the phonetics of the word. To say it gives a nice sensation in the mouth (no, I'm not crazy, just try it out!)

commandante: Spanish word, from a farewell song to Che Guevara. Admire the the man, love the song, and hence the word

chauvinism : Certainly for phonetic reasons only!

There must be tens more. For now, the current word is phantasmagoria . Although very poor sounding phonetically, like sapiosexual it is an experience revelatory term. So just love it.

Mental lethargy: A societal peril

2011-11-06T23:02:00.000+05:30

A recent observation which has been groping me in frustration is the mental lethargy as I call it, observed in many of the minds around me. Now, if all of this is a late revelation, or is there an alteration in the perception in people - I know not. What I know is that, it is a deep problem, with profound ramifications.

Firstly, let me articulate the problem as I perceive it:
Mobilizing people for a common cause, without the paparazzi hype and corporate media incentives, for genuine purposes is one of the most arduous tasks in the ironically 'social network'- ed world. Even if one succeeds in projecting an incentive for the audience, and gets them together at a place, now surfaces a deeper problem : reluctance of the herd to open up their minds.

Without making it abstract, I shall try to convey the fact which is so commonly observed amongst many of us. A sense of reluctance, seemingly emanating out of a tinge of disinterest is gripping a majority around us.
This I would argue is no reluctance or disinterest - it all boils down to an aversion of sorts towards "thinking". Aversion directly based on laziness!

Aversion to think and laziness?
Does it strike as unusual. Well, please shelve the exclamation, for majority of us in reality are lazy, contrary to the third person criticism each one would want to spew out.

While the occasional sense of laziness in physical toil is common and pardonable (in a restricted and relative sense), for not always does one wants to expend physical efforts burning calories and breaking sweat;

But, there is another perilous laziness; This in many cases is permanent and ineradicable: Laziness associated with the mind - An inhibition to think!

While, I do see this as a serious problem, the usual causes which are attributed to it like upbringing, systemic constraints, genetics, etc are superfluous, and serve the least but as an inadequate explanation.

Thinking requires conscious efforts, and focused thinking leaves you with headaches (and me with my migraine attacks!). But, when it is ready made solution that many of us seek, in most cases endorsing them even without questioning the proposals offered, where is the question of 'thinking' at all here? And this precisely is the demon haunting the "public".

We end up absorbing injudiciously all the views perpetrated by media and the ones in power, we seek a revolution with the least intent of self change, we want solutions without understanding the problems! These regressions that have become not so uncommon today are results of a simple, yet cancerous symptom of "laziness to think!".

Now if I were to be asked what is the solution I have thought of to this problem, I'd invoke Morpheus' line,

I can only show you the door; You're the one that has to walk through it!

It is proactive change that can set a mind free from its shackles of lethargy. If one cannot be inspired to attain this change, as History stands as a witness, man made calamities (fascism & racism) do instigate people to think!

The emerging mind, and the overwhelming awe

2011-10-29T23:38:00.001+05:30

The ability to be able to do Science is the grandest gift that has been bestowed upon us Homo sapiens, during the course of evolution, while we were trying to 'survive'.

To be able to understand the intricate patterns of the Universe, decipher the codes of the nature, reason out the fallacies in our presumptions and to inch closer to rationality: Are we not gifted enough?
Why do we need any more miracles?

My latest read, that has increased my inquisition about neuroscience is the book, The Emerging Mind - a long pending read I must admit, and it comes in at the right time - when I'm all engrossed in an involuntary and obsessive spree of revelation after revelation. Written by one of the brightest of the neuroscientists - Vilayanur Ramachandran, the book is a must read to all Science afficiondos.

A somewhat gratifying compliment while reading the book is the presumption of the author that his readers are all Darwinians (which I so am), and would make zero sense in case you are a creationist or the "magic wand-life happening" believers!

The book has lot of medical jargon. It was quite a homecoming of sorts, after a gap of few years since my pre-university Biology and the little gyaan I assimilated there!

Knowing about the least known thing - The Human Brain, is an excellent appraisal of realizing where we stand today in terms of understanding everything. Although, this book by itself is highly speculative at certain claims, mostly it is convincing and I must add that the book is a lovely read, overall. Interestingly, the book has an equal number of pages dedicated to Notes , which are interesting case studies.

Another important aspect of the many of the arguments presented are that, they are efficient in disproving some of the exaggerated Freudian ideas and approaches using the physiology (if there's anything of that sort) of the human brain.

So, I am lesser a Freudian, and more in awe of the chronicles and adventures of the human brain after having read this book.

As Feynman puts it, "Wondering at the wonder of wondering" - Isn't the idea of being able to ideate, and to be able to contemplate the process of ideation itself something unbelievable.

The awe I have developed about the wonders of nature, and that is growing exponentially on a daily basis now has another element added to it.The human brain is equally diverse and obscure as the Universe itself. It is not just the awe about the human brain, but one step ahead, the ability of these jellies of neurons to contemplate and dig into the secrets of the universe, and almost as a recursion be able to stand out as a separate entity and wonder at itself! Wow, what an exercise!

Aren't we the miracles, we keep looking for in fables and gospels, stories and fantasies!

Advertising genes? LOL!

2011-10-27T13:20:00.000+05:30

The incentive for humans to do all that, that is humanely possible to do, has had lots of people speculating in various dimensions. There have been social, economic, philanthropic and biological justifications.

The most entertaining of these, and that is the most convincing as well is the evolutionary perspective.

Organisms, given their conditioning to the law of natural selection, want to transmit the best of the genes to better the process of evolution and hence playing their part in perpetuating the highest quality genes.

The usual example of peahens being attracted towards peacocks with large, vibrant tails, or giraffes with the longest necks etc... are just the tip of the iceberg of the evidence that's out there in front of us.

Talking about ourselves, the evolutionary gift bestowed on us is the ability to think, imagine and create : Our Intellectual abilities. So, the incentive as directed from the evolutionary force, for each of us to be able to be doing what we do, is to advertise our genes!

This has neuroscientific elucidation; There are certain portions of the modular brain that we are bestowed with abilities to enact the trait of advertising the genes for evolutionary purposes, which end up being subsconscious many a times.

I am so resonating with this idea, that I might concur entirely with this argument ;-)

This makes so much sense, at least to me, or the ones like me: I recently discovered that my saga of amorous infatuations (at least the majority of them), have had a categorization! I wholly belong to a genre of people, coded with a sexual orientation called as "sapiosexual" ( a person who is sexually attracted to intelligence in others)!

And because I see myself as a sapiosexual, the notion of me advertising my genes (although it sounds ludicrous), seems justifiable ;)

PS: Suggested reads - works of Wilayanur Ramachandran, and of course Charles Darwin.

Socially necessary value of oneself

2011-10-25T09:32:00.002+05:30

An interesting observation by a fellow rationale was reported to me, about me having a broad network with wide range of people in it (not on Facebook!), but the real people network. Well, even if I was quite aware of this, another aspect of the reporting was about the recognition/id'ing I end up having in this diverse diaspora. As in, the way I value the people in my network, they too I presume value me for some worth in me.

After encountering this idea, I started wondering what is it that makes someone in my network to give heed to my words, observe my actions, and eventually at least pretend that I bear some value to them.

Using a derived idea, I call this "The Socially necessary value of oneself".

Every sect of this network has a commonality between their interests and mine. As long as I am able to cater to the interests of this particular sect, and if I also happen to maintain a gradient, or at least camouflage obscurity as a gradient, the interactions happen in a mutually respectful and responsive manner. The efforts I invest in catering to each of these sects is what I call as the "socially necessary value". This is not me trying to cater to someone else consciously, although that ends up being a ramification. It is more of an exercise of expanding the self.

Now, it might not be a generalization, but based on my interactions for quite a substantial period of time, what I have come to realize is that a gradient helps in getting people to give heed to you. And the more diverse one's realms of gradients are, broader will the diaspora grow into.

The incessant efforts I put in, to keep pace with these other sects conversely are building up my skills and that's not something I might want to complain about.

Top 10 songs in the last 50 days

2011-10-23T19:33:00.000+05:30

The last couple of months have washed away all the music famine, a music afficionado like me was facing. I must admit that for quite sometime, before that there was no music whatsoever,that was even audio palatable! And am I not glad now!

Well, there has been AR Rahman, Coldplay, RHCP, Maroon5, some new bands and even a kannada song as well! Here I just am in a playful mood to index these tracks in a seasonal, personal favorite countdown.

10. Days are forgotten from Kasabian's Velociraptor

Wow! This is one of those songs which hook on the very first few seconds you are into it. I haven't been aware of this decade old band-Kasabian;nonetheless now I'm glad. With this song I am going a little retrospective into their discography and pick out all their best. For now, this song is going to be on my playlist for sometime now. The aaaannn-nnnnaaaaaa-aaaa hum is super haunting, and adding to it is a cool video. Days are forgotten!

9. Kathlalli karadige from Yograj Bhat's Paramatma

Well this witty of a kannada track from the movie Paramatma, has all ingredients except the picturisation to become a memorable one (irony is that I had stopped listening to it after seeing the video!). Nonetheless, the song by itself is full of sarcasm, mockery and unheard kannada slang - I just love it!

8. I don't mind from Superheavy's Superheavy

An awesome duet by Mick Jagger and Joss stone with some deep lyric. I can almost visualize AR Rahman playing the keyboard for this one. A haunting bass goes through the song and is one of the most effective songs in recent times. A great venture by the team of Superheavy to mix cultures and give us some vibrant music. Superheavy the album itself is a great listen. And Joss Stone in this song sounds like Dido in the Eminem version of Stan, while Damien Marley sounds the most comprehensible in this track :P

7. Munandhi saaral ni from Harris Jayaraj's 7am Arivu

First and only Tamil song which has been exceptional in the recent months comes from Harris Jayaraj in this tamil biggie. Karthick, one of my favourite singers renders a magical touch to this deeply romantic track picturised on the gorgeous Shruthi Hassan. Looking forward to the entire video, this time!

6. Satyameva jayate from Superheavy's Superheavy

Second of the tracks and first direct one from AR Rahman is this amazing track titled Satyameva Jayate, and gets on to become a peppy number. The main chorus with all the artists singing to an awesome guitar piece sticks to one's head.

5. Moves like Jagger by Maroon5 and Christina Aguilera

Mick Jagger's third time already :D
Although in this one, he's the protagonist, and not the artist. In a tribute to Mick Jagger, Maroon5 collaborates with Christina Aguilera for this hilariously shot video and a great number, it starts with a funky whistle apt to feature Mick Jagger's clones! Although, Christina's vocal contribution to the song ain't much, I'm not unhappy that she's featured in the video ;-)

4. Sada Haq from AR Rahman's Rockstar

Okay! If this comes as a surprise, as in not to have made it to the top - I guess, then there is something better than this awesome track. One of the best guitar leads for an Indian song, from Michael Jackson's lead guitarist Orianthi Panagaris. The lyrics are just ground breaking and I love the way this track catches its tempo - Keeps ascending through the song. Another masterpiece by the genius. It would be apt to mention another track from Rockstar "Naadan parindey" deserves to be somewhere on the list, and most apt would be along with Sada haq. AR at his best in both the tracks.

3. Paradise from Coldplay's Mylo Xyloto

Audience can be led into the closest sensation of musical meditation in contemporary music only by Coldplay. Is Chris Martin's voice magic? I might agree! Chris Martin singing "para para paradise, everytime she closed her eyes" is as magical as something could get. An amazing song, no one but Colplay can do something like this. A great album overall, better than their previous Viva la Vida, and the track Paradise is my favorite in this album.

2. The adventures of rain dance maggie from Red Hot Chilli Peppers' I'm With You

Talk of groove, funk and jump, there's RHCP for you. The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie has an impeccable groove through the song and the teasy lyric of RHCP in this song catches on from the very first moment. Further, the classic "Heyyyy noooow" by Anthony is as good as it could get. The casual video on the beaches of California is also something pleasant to watch!

1. Jo bhi main from AR Rahman's Rockstar

Well, if you have not heard this song yet. You might be surprised to listen to it. This is not one of those impulsive songs which you start liking the very first time. This is a classic AR Rahman track which grows onto you, each and everytime you listen to it. Mohit Chauhan's best ever, and a great track in this amazing album. The song gets better with every piece of instrumentation, carried all over really well by Mohit. The song has some profound lyric yet again! This is one of the tracks which will stand the test of time!

Revisiting the JanLokpal debate

2011-10-20T21:29:00.002+05:30

For some organizational purposes, friends and myself from ITEC visited Justice Santosh Hegde, former Lokayukta and a core committee member in the "Team Anna", and I was looking forward to meet him in person after all the initial genuine work he did, and the intrigue grew subsequently after the media portrayed him as the lone anti-corruption crusader.

Warm, humble and sensible are the words adequate to define him.

During the course of our discussion, as I was hoping, the discussion did get routed into the Janlokpal debate.

If some of you have been closely watching the Janlokpal (the debate about the bill, not the TV drama!), the points of contention were about who would be brought into the ambit of the bill. And the media was chewing the cud over and over again about the PM being brought into the ambit of the bill. While more saner heads around were asking everyone else to look at the obvious miscreants, and pull the corporates and now the latest threats NGO's into the bill.

But, the media and NGO's both are run by the Corporatocracy, as is most of the Government itself. And the media has hushed up about these two aspects.

While I was certainly endorsing the idea of bringing the corporates and NGO's into the ambit of the bill, I had presumed that Mr.Santosh Hegde would have adhered only to bringing the PM into the bill (my ignorance), and making it 'stronger'. While we were more on making it 'stronger' and 'sharper'.

It came as a surprise today: The first thing he spoke about while discussing the Janlokpal bill was the fraudulence associated with majority of the NGO's, and how myopic the bill was without bringing in the Corporates into the bill.

His frustration about the NGO's and their parasitic nature of thriving on the misery of others was a lot more sensible than whatever TV appearances he's been making. The venting out against the Corporates with all the work that he's been doing is something that few people have given heed to.

It is intriguing to see how we are all made to believe that the real villain is our saviour. That is, talking about the role of corporates, who are pretending to be
the nice guys, and acting as if they were the ones who could abolish
poverty (ex, recently the Coca Cola -NDTV school campaign!)...
Irony in the first place is that, it is because of such profit seeking monopolies, that the disparity globe across has grown to this extent.

Bottomline: Corporates need to be brought into the Janlokpal bill, if ever it is going to be implemented.

ಯರೂ ಕಾಣದ ಆಪಲ್ ಕಂಡ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್

2011-10-17T11:48:00.001+05:30

ಗಣಕಗಳನ್ನು ಜನಸಾಮನ್ಯರು ಬಳಸಲು ಅನುಕೂಲವಾಗುವಂತೆ ತಯಾರಿಸುವುದಾಗಿ ಹೊರಟ ಆಪಲ್ ಕಂಪನಿಯು, ಗಣಕ ಮತ್ತು ತನ್ನ ಇನಿತ್ತರ ಉತ್ಪನ್ನಗಳ ಸ್ವರೂಪಕ್ಕೆ ಅತಿ ಹೆಚ್ಚು ಪ್ರಾಮುಖ್ಯತೆ ಕೊಟ್ಟರು. ಈ ಕಾರಣ ಆಪಲ್ ಸೃಷ್ಟಿಸಿದ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನವು ಗ್ರಾಹಕರಿಗೆ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರತೆ ಇಲ್ಲದಿರುವ , ಅತಿ ದುಬಾರಿಯಾದ ಉತ್ಪಾದನೆಗಳನ್ನು ತಯಾರಿಸಿ, ಗ್ರಾಹಕರಿಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದು ಚಟದಂತೆ ಬೆಳೆದ ಆಪಲ್ ಕಂಪನಿಯ ಸಂಸ್ಥಾಪಕರಲ್ಲಿ ಮುಖ್ಯರಾದ ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ,ಇತ್ತೀಚೆಗೆ ನಿಧನರಾದರು.

ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ನಿಧನರಾದಂತೆ ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಮಾಧ್ಯಮಗಳಲ್ಲಿಯೂ ಅವರ ಕೀರ್ತನೆಯು ನದಿಯಂತೆ ಹರಿಯಲಾರಂಭಿಸಿತು. ಈ ವರದಿಗಳನ್ನೆಲ್ಲ ನಂಬುವುದಾದರೆ ,ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ೨೧ನೇ ಶತಮಾನದ ನ್ಯೂಟನ್, ಐನ್ ಸ್ಟೈನ್, ಎಡಿಸನ್ ಎಂದು ಹೋಲಿಸಿ ಹೊಗಳುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಅದೇ ಸಮಯ ಹಲವಾರು ಬುಧ್ದಿ ಜೀವಿಗಳು ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ರವರ ಕೆಲಸ ವ್ಯೆಖರಿಗಳನ್ನು ಮತ್ತು ಅವರ ಸೃಜನಶೀಲತೆಯನ್ನು ತೀಕ್ಷ್ಣವಾಗಿ ಟೀಕಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ .

ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ರವರನ್ನು ಹೊಗಳುವುದೇ, ಅಥವಾ ಟೀಕಿಸುವುದೇ?

ಅವರ ಜೇವನ ಮತ್ತು ಕೆಲಸಗಳನ್ನು ಪರಿಗಣಿಸಿದರೆ , ಈ ಪ್ರಶ್ನೆಗೆ ಉತ್ತರ ಸುಲಭವಾಗಿ ಅರಿವಾಗುವುದು. ಒಬ್ಬ ಗಣಕ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನಿಯಿಂದ ಆಪಲ್ ಮತ್ತು ಪಿಕ್ಸರ್ ನಂತಹ ಬೆಟ್ಟದಾಕಾರದ ಕಂಪನಿಗಳನ್ನು ಬೆಳೆಸಿರುವುದು ಒಂದು ದೃಷ್ಟಿಕೋಣದಲ್ಲಿ ದೊಡ್ಡ ಸಾಧನೆಯಂದು ಪರಿಗಣಿಸಿದರೆ. ಕ್ಯಾನ್ಸರ್ ನಂತಹ ರೋಗದಲ್ಲಿ ನರಳುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾಗಲೂ ಜೀವನದಲ್ಲಿ ಹೋರಾಡಿ ಜನಸಾಮಾನ್ಯರಗಿ ಒಂದು ಸ್ಪೂರ್ತಿಯನ್ನು ಒದಗಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

ಆದರೆ , ಅವರು ಈ ಸಾಧನೆಗಳನ್ನು ಮಾಡಿದ್ದು ಹೇಗೆ, ಎಂಬ ವಿಷಯವನ್ನು ಯಾವ ಮಾದ್ಯಮಗಳಲ್ಲಿಯೂ ಚರ್ಚಿಗೊಳಗಾಗುತ್ತಿಲ್ಲ.

ಕ್ರಿಯಾಶೀಲತೆ ಮತ್ತು ಸೃಜನೆಶೀಲತೆಯು ಬೇರೆಯವರಿಂದ ಅನುಕರಣೆ ಮಾಡುವುದೇ ಅವರ ಕಂಪನಿಯ ಬೆಳವಣಿಗೆಗೆ ಕಾರಣವೆಂದು ಒಪ್ಪಿಕೊಂಡಿರುವ ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ರವರು ,ಅವರ ಕಂಪನಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ಉತ್ಪಾದನೆಗೊಂಡ ಒಂದೊಂದು ಉತ್ಪನ್ನವೂ, ಅದರಲ್ಲಿರುವ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಶವು ಗ್ರಾಹಕರಿಗೆ ಕಡಿವಾಣ ಹಾಕಿದಂತೆ ಇವೆ. ಅವರು ಮಾಡಿದ ಅನುಕರಣೆ ಹಾಗು ಅದರಿಂದ ಪಡೆದ ಲಾಭವನ್ನು, ತಮ್ಮ ಗ್ರಾಹಕರು ಪಡೆದು, ಬೆಳೆಯದಂತೆ ಒಂದು ಕಾರಾಗೃಹವನ್ನೆ ನಿರ್ಮಿಸಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ತಂತ್ರಾಂಷ ಆಂದೋಲನದ , ರಿಚರ್ಡ್ ಸ್ಟಾಲಮನ್ ರವರು ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ರವರನ್ನು ಕುರಿತು "ಗಣಕವನ್ನು ಕಾರಾಗೃಹ ಮಾಡಿದ ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ರವರು ನಿಧನರಾದ ಮೇಲಾದರೂ ಅವರ ಕಂಪನಿ ತಾಂತ್ರಿಕ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರತೆಯನ್ನು ತನ್ನ ಗ್ರಾಹಕರಿಗೆ ಒದಗಿಸಲಿ ಎಂದು ಅಶಿಸೋಣ " ಎಂದು ಹೇಳಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

ಗ್ರಾಹಕರ ಸ್ವಾತಂತ್ರತೆಯ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಇಂಚಿತ್ತೂ ಆಲೋಚಿಸದೆ , ಲಾಭವೇ ತನ್ನ ಪ್ರಮುಖ ಗುರಿ ಎಂದು ಗಗನಾಂತರ ಬೆಳೆಯುತ್ತಿರುವ ಆಪಲ್ ಕಂಪನಿಯಂತಹ ದ್ಯೆತ್ಯವನ್ನು ಸೃಷ್ಟಿಸಿರುವ ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ರವರನ್ನು , ಬಂಡವಾಳಶಾಹಿ ಮಾಧ್ಯಮವು ತನಗೆ ಬೇಕಾದಂತೆಯೇ ಒಬ್ಬ ನಾಯಕನನ್ನು ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ರವರಲ್ಲಿ ಕಂಡು, ಪ್ರಚಾರ ಮಾಡುತ್ತಿದೆ.

ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್ ರವರು ವಯಕ್ತಿಕವಾಗಿ ಹೋರಾಡಿ ತಮ್ಮ ಜೀವನದಲ್ಲಿ ಹಲವಾರು ಸಾಧನೆಗಳನ್ನು ಮಾಡಿದರು ಎಂದು ಹೇಳಿವುದಾದರೂ, ಆ ಸಾಧನೆಗಳ ಮೂಲ ಆಧಾರ ಎನು? ಎಂಬುದು ಆಲೋಚಿಸ ಬೇಕಾದ ವಿಷಯ.ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನದಲ್ಲಿ ಅಸ್ವತಂತ್ರತೆಯನ್ನು ಸೇರಿಸಿ ಕಲುಷಿತಗೊಳಿಸಿದ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ಞಾನಿ ಸ್ಟೀವ್ ಜಾಬ್ಸ್, ಎಂದು ಸಮಾಜದ ಮೇಲೆ ಕಾಳಜಿಯಿರುವ ಇರುವವರೆಲ್ಲರೂ ಒಪ್ಪುವರು.

ಹಿನ್ನುಡಿ: ಜನಶಕ್ತಿ ವಾರಪತ್ರಿಕೆಗೆ ನಾನು ಬರೆದ ಲೆಖನ

Mistrust and Marketing

2011-10-13T22:09:00.002+05:30

The notion across the manufacturing and non-manufacturing industries, and more so amongst the consuming end-users is that Marketing in essence is the pinnacle of product development; And that without this piece of gimmickry there would be not much of value that could be associated to the technology itself; This is I must argue the most flawed of the perceptions that is around. This perception, of course has been perpetrated by the current modes of economic models in business.

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development (wikipedia).

Because it is from Wikipedia, it gives the average accepted definition of marketing. Nonetheless, the point is how far have we taken this strategy? What are the ethics it is based on?

Putting this question on hold for sometime, let us also analyse a close associate, or a jargon sometimes interchangeably used with marketing : "Advertising".

This facet of product market, which actually is an interface between the industry and consumers has lost its original purpose;

Advertising was supposed to be simply a means of propaganda; While the necessity of propaganda itself is quite debatable, I am on the YES side of the debate. It would merely, but importantly serve as a means of spreading awareness in its original form. When the market is flooded with products, simple advertising gives consumers a choice. Presuming that there is no fraudulence associated with this information, it presents itself as the entropy using which people make their choices.

Getting back to the question of Marketing, the tricks it engages in are directly oriented at manipulating these very choices, by altering the nature of information entropy, propagated via advertising!
Marketing in today's global markets has gained a definition something on the lines of "verbiage deception, accomplished euphemistically".

If the reader has already noticed there is extensive cynicism that has been exhibited on this post about marketing. The root of this cynicism is something psychological, and only is a special case of mistrust.

When relations involve money, the chances that mistrust creeps in are higher. It is natural for the human psyche to perceive it that way.
A talk by Lawrence Lessig on these lines would substantiate my claims better.

The unwritten rule of marketing in the current context is to hide flaws and maximize profits. And it is such trickery that has appended this extent of cynicism to the act of marketing!

Over this discourse, an impression of me being highly prejudiced against marketing must have surfaced. This is in no manner a prejudice alone. First hand experience and some rudimentary understanding of the system has what enabled me to argue on these lines.

To see what some of us see, you will need to look through a different paradigm. A paradigm where people come first, and not commodities or profits.

ಸೂರ್ಪಣಂಗು : ಒಂದು ಪ್ರಭಾವಶಾಲಿ ನಾಟಕ

2011-10-11T21:24:00.000+05:30

ಹಲವಾರು ದಿನಗಳ ನಂತರ, ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಒಂದು ಲೇಖನವನ್ನು ಬರೆಯುತ್ತಿರುವೆನು. ಈ ಲೇಖನವು ಒಂದು ತಮಿಳು ನಾಟಕದ ಕುರಿತು ಎಂಬುದು ವಿಶೇಷ. ಸೂರ್ಪಣಂಗು ಎಂಬ ತಮಿಳು ನಾಟಕ ಇತ್ತೀಚಿಗೆ ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನ ರವೀಂದ್ರ ಕಲಾಕ್ಷೇತ್ರದಲ್ಲಿ ಪ್ರದರ್ಶಿಸಲಾಯಿತು.

ನನಗೆ ಹಲವಾರು ಹೊಸದಾದ ವಿಚಾರಗಳು ಮತ್ತು ಮಹತ್ವದ ದ್ರಿಷ್ಟಿಕೋನಗಳು ಈ ನಾಟಕ ಹಾಗು ಅಲ್ಲಿ ಸೇರಿದ್ದ ಜನರಿಂದ ಅರಿವಾಯಿತು.

ಸಮಾನತೆ ಎಂಬುದು, ಬರಿಯ ಪಠ್ಯ ಸೀಮಿತ ವಿಚಾರವಾಗಿದ್ದು, ಇಂದಿಗೂ ಹಲವಾರು ವರ್ಗದ ಜನರು ತಮ್ಮ ಹಕ್ಕುಗಳಿಗಾಗಿ ಹೋರಾಡುತ್ತಿದ್ದಾರೆ. ಇಂತಹ ಒಂದು ವರ್ಗದ ಹೋರಾಟದ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಈ ನಾಟಕದ ಆಯೋಜಕರ ಮೂಲಕ ತಿಳಿದು ಕೊಂಡೆನು.

ಲೈಂಗಿಕ ಅಲ್ಪಸಂಖ್ಯಾತರು ಮತ್ತು ಅವರುಗಳ ಸಾಮಾಜಿಕ ತೊಂದರೆ, ಕಷ್ಟಗಳು ಮತ್ತು ಹೋರಾಟಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆ ಒಂದು ಇಣುಕು ದೊರಕಿತು. ಅಕ್ಕೈ ಪದ್ಮಶಾಲಿ ಅವರು ಲೈಂಗಿಕ ಅಲ್ಪಸಂಖ್ಯಾತರಲ್ಲಿ ಒಬ್ಬರಾಗಿದ್ದು, ಅವರ ಅಂಗೀಕಾರ, ಹಕ್ಕು, ಮತ್ತು ಸಮಾನತೆಗಳಿಗಾಗಿ ತಮ್ಮ ಸಂಗಾತಿಯರೊಂದಿಗೆ ನಡೆಸುತ್ತಿರುವ ಜನಾಗೃತಿ ಚಟುವಟಿಕೆಗಳ ಬಗ್ಗೆಯು ಅರಿವಾಯಿತು. ಇಂತಹ ಅಸಮಾನತೆಗಳ ಗೂಡಾಗಿ ಬೆಳೆದಿರುವ ನಮ್ಮ ಸಮಾಜದಲ್ಲಿ ನಮ್ಮ ಪಾತ್ರವೇನು ಎಂದು ಆಲೋಚಿಸುವ ಅವಕಾಶವಾಗಿ ಈ ಅನುಭವ ಒದಗಿತು.

ಸೂರ್ಪಣಂಗು ನಾಟಕವು ಕನ್ನಡ ರಂಭೂಮಿಯೊಳಗೆ ತಮಿಳು ರಂಗಕ್ರಿಯೆಯ ಅನುಸಂಧಾನವೆಂದು ಪರಿಗಣಿಸಿ, ಪ್ರಸ್ತುತಿಸಿದರು . ನಾಟಕ ಗ್ರಾಮೇಣ ಮತ್ತು ಶುದ್ಢ ತಮಿಳಿನಲ್ಲಿದುದರಿಂದ, ನನಗೆ ವಚನ, ಸಂಭಾಷಣೆಗಳು ಅರ್ಥವಾಗಲಿಲ್ಲ. ಮಾತೃ ಭಾಷೆಯಾದರೂ ಇಂತಹ ಅವಸ್ಥೆಯಲ್ಲಿದೆ ನನ್ನ ತಮಿಳು :-)

ಸಂಭಾಷಣೆ ಅರ್ಥವಾಗದಿದ್ದರೂ ನಟರ ಅಭಿನಯವು ಯಥಾರ್ಥವಾಗಿತ್ತು. ಗ್ರಾಮೇಣ ಪ್ರದೇಶದಲ್ಲಿ ಹಬ್ಬಿಕೊಂಡಿರುವ ಹಸಿವು, ಕ್ಷಾಮ, ಬರ ಮತ್ತು ಜೇವನದ ದೈನಂದಿನ ಹೋರಾಟಗಳನ್ನು ಅತಿ ಪ್ರಭಾವಶಾಲಿಯಾಗಿ ಅಭಿನಯಿಸಿದ್ದರು. ಆ ಪ್ರಭಾವವು ಪ್ರೇಕ್ಷಕರಾದ ನಮ್ಮ ಮನಸ್ಸನ್ನು ತೇವ್ರತೆಯಿಂದ ಬಿಗಿ ಹಾಕಿತ್ತು. ಹಲವಾರು ದೃಶ್ಯಗಳು ನೋಡುಗರನ್ನು ತಳಮಳಗೊಳಿಸಿತು. ಹೆಂಗಸರಿನ ಮೇಲಿನ ದೌರ್ಜನ್ಯ, ಕಾರ್ಮಿಕರ ಮೇಲೆ ಅತ್ಯಾಚಾರ ಇಂತಹ ಸಂಗತಿಗಳು ನಿಜವಾಗಿದ್ದರು ಅದನ್ನು ಒಂದು ಪ್ರಭಾವಶಾಲಿ ನಾಟಕದ ಮೂಲಕ ಕಾಣುವುದು ಬಹಳ ಕಷ್ಟಕರವೆನಿಸಿತು ನನಗೆ.

ಸುಮಾರು ಎರಡು ಗಂಟೆಗಳ ಕಾಲ ಗಾಢವಾದ ಪರಿಶ್ರಮ ಮತ್ತು ಉತ್ತಮ್ಮ ಪ್ರತಿಭೆಯನ್ನು ಪ್ರದರ್ಶಿಸಿದ ನಟರು ಮತ್ತು ಅವರ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನವು ಮನದಾಳದಲ್ಲಿ ನೆಲೆಸಿದೆ. ನಾಟಕಕಾರರು ಪಡುವ ಪರಿಶ್ರಮವನ್ನು ನಾವು ಉತ್ತೇಜಿಸಿ ಬೆಂಬಲಿಸಬೇಕು. ಹಾಗು, ಇಂತಹ ನಾಟಕಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಹೇಳಲ್ಪಡುವ ಸಂಗತಿಯನ್ನು ನಮ್ಮ ಜೇವನದಲ್ಲಿ ನಾವು ಸಂಧರ್ಭ ಬಂದಲ್ಲಿ ಅಳವಡಿಸಿಕೊಂಡು, ಸಮಾಜದಲ್ಲಿ ಸುಧಾರಣೆಯನ್ನು ತರಲು ನಮ್ಮಿಂದಾಗುವ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನವನ್ನು ಪಡಬೇಕು.

And down grounds the ego...

2011-10-05T09:32:00.001+05:30

While it all seems like a frictionless glide, allowing the ego to swell to the fullest and the momentum to go full throttle, there comes a necessary prick. A prick which deflates everything that's swollen and grounds the now helium filled ego down to an equilibrium point. It hits like an unseen obstacle on the forehead; RSVP's a serendipitous encounter with the ever humble, unfaking, simple revelation: The Reality.

When unchecked, the chances of losing oneself in his/her own oneiric world, detached from the roots of reality are extremely high. Such a state is not only temporary, it also erodes the quality of the time to come.

The constant cognizance of the fact that we are nothing but deep voids,and no amount of straw filling can even begin filling up these voids must be borne always. The scale of learning, growing and disseminating each one engages in is miniscule, when compared to all that is yet to be sought.

Vanity in relative superiority is perilous, and there should be only the aspect of pride when appraised with oneself. The metric should always be ourselves; never should we delve into relative comparison. By saying this I don't imply to endorse 'hypocrisy with a tinge of humility', but only the realization of the cliched fact that "Known is a drop, and unknown is an ocean".

Relative comparison either puts one in a deludingly superior position, or a depressingly inferior position; Both of these are unnecessary when one thrives to increase and make positive the rate of growth of the self at this instant, when compared to some recent point in time in the past.

Information gradient

2011-10-02T20:03:00.005+05:30

Asymmetric Polarization has been a certain trait of society, as far as all the documented history of human race have revealed. This conscious polarization of the society into one small advantageous section, and a large suppressed section has been true since the times of patriarchal settlements to the current civilized democracies.

Creating a gradient in the society using various manipulable parameters, with an ultimate motive of facilitating oppression has been the unwritten rule throughout. The parameters, which have been manipulated at various epochs of History have been different: Class, Caste, Gender, Land, industries, and today we are at a point where Information is this gradient causing agent.

Controlled knowledge as misinformation, and suppressed information in the form of secrets have become the weapons of 'mass' destruction in today's Information society. While there is information mining on certain type of information using all means possible; there is also an astronomical way of suppressing another kind of information.

Stuck in the middle of this Information Revolution, most of us are the ignorant technologists paradoxically driving the motors of this oppression regime. Like I usually end up saying,
The problem often is not arriving at the solution, but in many cases realizing the existence of the problem itself!

Even in this case, the lack of cognizance amongst us about the perils of the information gradient, that we are very much a part of, is of more concern than even the contemplation on the solution to this threat.

As instances of whistleblowing, RTI's and WikiLeaks in general have shown the ever increasing risks involved with the just attempts of declassifying high level classified information should put us at alert, and we must begin to analyze the inertness of ourselves and the hyperactivity of the suppressors who would in turn manipulate and try disabling us!

We help build the gradient which is favourable to them, while ironically is perilous to ourselves.

The Picture of Dorian Gray

2011-09-30T18:01:00.001+05:30

Is Oscar Wilde one of the greatest writers ever?
Certainly, yes!

The first of his work which I have read is the uncommon fiction The Picture of Dorian Gray, which serves more as a critique on the etiquette of the 19th century English society, which is more relevant today than even when it was written.

This is an extraordinarily written story about a naive, young man and his tryst with narcissism, which turns him into a devil from within, while still retaining his physical appearance. Narcissism, and the consequences of mad obsession of one's own physical appearance and addiction to pleasure without gauging the rights and wrongs are the rest of the book, ingeniously written.

Apart from the exceptional plot, the consistent wit associated with every parable puts the reader at awe, incessantly. Especially the philosophical discourse, a character Lord Henry spills throughout are unbelievably witty, although the morals of the same could be severely debated.

This work by Oscar Wilde is a tribute to youth of people, as was his entire life. The vanity, curiosity and hypocrisy of the protagonist, which the narration elucidates are the manifestations of the life and personality that Oscar Wilde was.

Oscar Widle, as an author, to have written and to have endorsed this work in the 1890 is something of a great achievement by itself.

A personal favorite passage towards the end of the book; It stands out while reminiscing the book.

Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dreams. You may fancy yourself safe and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play--
I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us.....
The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

Stop. Look. Proceed

2011-09-25T17:50:00.000+05:30

An apprehension that has been perpetually haunting me, from the time I remember my own conscious thoughts is the sensation of having done so little, while there's so much more to do be done. Even in some previous posts I must have expressed this private concern. The apprehension is neither exaggeratedly confined at the macroscopic level, or simply at introspective level. It is a boundary less visualization of everything, including the task of realizing my own potentials to the fullest.

I do not look at this as a question of accomplishments or unquenched goals. These are voids which I know I can fill with with my efforts. For some inexplicable reasons I feel as if I am running late - Sometimes, as if I have started late!

Today for reasons symbolic only, the day is an epochal one to me. And although symbols are mere symbols, they serve to highlight some specialty associated with their endorsements; It is such symbols which serve the purpose of revealing aspects of ourselves to us.

Will this remembrance serve as a wake up call to some extent? Not sure. But, I would certainly strive to get better, in all regards.

Comprehending fear

2011-09-23T21:35:00.002+05:30

Over a casual discussion with a friend, which as usual ended up being vibrantly philosophical, the question of fear and the sources of fear surfaced up. A consistent definition used by me, did fit the context well: Ignorance.

Ignorance, adding to its list of accomplished human vulnerabilities also is the certain root cause of fear.

While obscurity and lack of clarity can be attributed to natural curiosity and inquisition, ignorance and misinterpretation can conveniently be attributed to fear.

And this aspect of ignorance when left to grow, will mature (or can i say immature!) as fear, to become one of the most efficient instruments of exploitation at our disposal.

Oppression in the name of classes, castes, race, color have all been possible because institutionalization of fear emanating out of ignorance has been transformed into reality. Inequality coupled with ignorance can be used to force a reign of fear upon people, as History stands to testify.

Conquering ignorance, and invading into the exciting realms of reasoning is the scientific penance each one must consciously be engaged in. Enlightenment is not an spasmodic transformation, it is a gradual revelation!

All art is quite useless

2011-09-18T12:16:00.004+05:30

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies.

An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.

From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.

We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

OSCAR WILDE

PS: I have quoted Oscar Wilde verbatim from the preface to his book The Picture of Dorian Gray. I could not contain myself to complete reading this book and then write about it.
He is truly the First Modern Man.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations

2011-09-13T21:44:00.002+05:30

The Wealth of Nations is considered to be the basis of classical Economics which has today grown to become the foundation of the Free Market Economy, maturing into Capitalism.

The book Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is a ghostwritten work by Karen McCreadie . It is a brief commentary, but in the contemporary sense of the impact of the basic ideals put forth by Adam Smith in his humungous five volumes - The Wealth of Nations.

It isn't surprising to hear the statement "Even Adam Smith would turn rounds in his grave, if he'd know what has come of his ideas of free market , to have culminated into today's ruthless capitalism". Even in this book, this apprehension is reiterated numerous times.

This book by Karen serves at best as a perfect primer to introduce Adam Smith's ideas, in correlation to the Economic bubbles and busts we are experiencing even as I write of it. She explains Adam Smith's ideas in relation to the global economic ambiance fluently.

One conclusive excerpt from the book:

The biggest challenge with The Wealth of Nations is that it fails to take human nature into account, which by all accounts is a serious mistake. Free enterprise can be valid economic system, but this is on the assumption that human beings will not exploit each other, that the strong will not take advantage of the weak, and unfortunately that assumption is misplaced in the 21st century, perhaps especially in the 21st century! Capitalism without decency, humanity and moral conscience is tantamount to evil, whatever century you choose to examine.

PS: It is interesting to note that the very fundamentals of today's global free-market economies: loans, credit, mortgage, gambling (speculation etc.) and other villainous tactics while are hailed today in the name of Adam Smith and his works - We were warned about these perils by the very person!

Contentment and discontentment of similarly dissimilar diasporas

2011-09-12T17:29:00.001+05:30

When I'm with students, the aspects of contentment and discontentment are all the same - exams, projects, jobs

When I'm with working professionals, the aspects of contentment and discontentment are all the same - hikes, pressure, jumps

When I'm with kids, the aspects of contentment and discontentment are all the same - chocolates, homework, play

When I'm with an exclusive chunk of femina, the aspects of contentment and discontentment are all the same - infatuation, surreality, alliance

When I'm with activists, the aspects of contentment and discontentment are all the same - change, society,vision

When I'm with FOSS enthusiasts, the aspects of contentment and discontentment are all the same - proprietary, GNU, Linux

When I'm at home, the aspects of contentment and discontentment are all the same - future, work, sedimentation

When I'm with my small tribe of mavericks, the aspects of contentment and discontentment are all the same- unconventionality, creativity, expression

But, when I'm with myself, the aspects of contentment and discontentment are never all the same - ponder, wonder, forget!

PS: Every diaspora has its own undercurrent, defining trait and objective; And this is what discerns the similarly dissimilar diasporas from the ever similar rest of the plethora.

Right Ho, Jeeves!

2011-09-07T18:59:00.001+05:30

Got on to reading fiction after quite sometime; And this time I made it a point to get hold of some humor. Based on the collective opinions of some friends and a huge reputation online, PG Wodehouse was the name appearing everywhere.

Right Ho, Jeeves! was the book, and I am relishing the fact that I was smiling almost half the book and giggling within for the rest of it. Also having known that the subtle and witty Jeeves was played by one of my favorite actors Stephen Fry, Jeeves throughout was played by him in my imagination.

Although Jeeves has very few lines, and very little presence on the scenes, he's undoubtedly the protagonist and most of the scenes as imagined by me also had him heavily occupying his master Wooster's thoughts !

And this vividness PG Wodehouse brings about with his simple language and effective narration allows one to travel into the country side house and be part of the audience in most of the hilarious scenes.

Will be looking forward to some more of PG Wodehouse books; for now, will try to own the Jeeves and Wooster TV series with Stephen Fry playing Jeeves :)
Right Ho!

Not just another brick in the wall!

2011-09-05T12:34:00.001+05:30

I must finally, and gladly admit that the last one month of my life has been the most satiating in terms of the quality conversion that has been in progress, of time into tangible efforts.

Not teaching, but facilitating, and at extreme cases mentoring as I perceive is what I have been engaged in my own alma matter. A matter of pride and privilege as I see it.

The efficacy I have been able to incorporate into my routine in terms of the amount of reading, studying, discussing, ideating, implementing many of the discussions, and of course having fun has been super exhilarating.There is also a reasonable amount of vanity in the impact I seem to have made already. Wholly, it has been quite remarkable, this known cum new experience.

I have wanted to discuss this discourse, but am inhibited by my own clauses I will keep it brief and pretend to have obscured you.

If the following lines sounds rhetoric, it would purely be coincidental, and I certainly did not have any such intentions. These are merely my deep experiences of the last few hundreds of hours of my life.

There has been little time that I have been whiling away! The cribbing sensation I used to feel previously, while I had to while away time forcibly has vanished, replaced only by a deep sense of gratification. Understanding has been elevated to newer levels. My days are swift, productive and in the end deeply satisfying.This is not complacence in any sense, but a strong motivator to drive me to strive further.

With contemplations of bigger and better plans I have ushered into a new realm, with the least bit of doubt as apprehended by my well-wishers I shall stay put and do my best operating in this environment.
And rest assured,
/me not just another brick in the wall!

My humble wishlist

2011-09-02T23:29:00.001+05:30

You might want to brand me a knurd, geek, or any other stereotype, into which I might be far from being congruent.
Nonetheless, as I lay on my bed thinking, or maybe just when I was at the rim of my conscious mind entering into subconsciousness, I stumbled upon a fanciful wishlist of sorts; Today being my birthday and all, I allowed myself this privilege of posting it up on my blog!

To understand the General and Special Theory of Relativity in a manner Einstein would have wanted everyone to
To read Charles Darwin's elegant work, and to take a voyage of evolution along with him sailing on HMS Beagle into the nature's womb
To revel through the profound obscurity of a mind that Karl Marx was, and observe the polity of economy
Fighting with Sigmund Freud to look into the mind as taught by the Father of Psychoanalysis himself
To play around with Quantum Electrodynamics and understand almost everything that fascinated a mind like that of Feynman
Someday to have learned Tamil and to fathom the gist of Thiruvalluvar's Thirukkural
And to have my own Theory of Everything!

Is this a lot to ask for?
Hmmm, maybe :)

Hope I someday draw myself closer to understanding few of these minds and the greatness imbibed in their work.

The eternal fountainhead

2011-09-01T23:26:00.001+05:30

Well, if you are expecting Ayn Rand and the selective endorsement of her individualism on my part in this post, after having read the title, let me warn you that it is not going to be about it.

A personal, childhood question if creativity was inexhaustible, or whether we would run out of it seems really amusing in retrospection. I intend to reminisce this silliness of mine.

When I was ten or something, I remember deeply analyzing the prospects of humanity running out of creativity, which was according to me then the only discerning factor between humans and animals. My concern then had been on the certain possibility of us running out of it ;-)

The creative run of humanity, keeping music as a domain for analysis, I had then concluded would get 'exhausted' for, we had extended far beyond our abilities to churn up creative music. (This claim by me then, sounds to me like the 'laugh at you' scenes of the Truth Happens video).

Not that I relied for long , nor that I still dwell on these lines of thinking. But, it certainly puts me at awe, as to how we are able to push the envelope farther everyday.
Worth wondering is the fact that we end up inheriting centuries worth of efforts by our ancestors, as snippets of intuition and go on to expand the boundaries of our understanding of Nature, and conquering the ignorance that keeps haunting and eluding us.

The regression of saving an idea today, apprehending that one might not be able to churn up a better one tomorrow is the proclaimed death of creativity.

PS: Truth Happens, one of the best videos ever

Truth Happens from 521studies on Vimeo.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman

2011-08-26T19:44:00.001+05:30

Reading this autobiographical, tell-all book by John Perkins seemed surreal.
I am not someone who is very naive about manipulations; I would at least be able to discern between genuine attempts of foreign support, with those of attempts towards hegemonic domination, better than a lot many of us who are blinded and fooled by the corporate media.

But, this detailed reporting from an insider sends shivers down my spine.

A "superpower", pushing beyond the realms of being anything but ethical in order to dominate countries under its vindicative goverment, run by selfish, greed mongers in the background is hard to believe. The USA with its ancient Manifest Destiny and other crap, now has accomplished an indomitable position, where it has the say about anything and everything about every country.

While even countries like India (ironically the largest democracy in the world) is far from being soveriegn, as revealed in the recent WikiLeaks cables, where a cabinet reshuffle in Indian Ministers portfolio was instigated by the lobbyisits of US. When such is the case with the largest democracy, other countries in the middle east, African continent and Latin America, except for a 'few nations' are all entangled in this web unleashed by the aspirations of one country in its distopian dreams of a global empire with a "free" world market, based on exploitation of the majority for the benefits of a small minority, increasing the disparity ruthlessly at a global scale, including amongst its own people.

Instiutions such as the IMF, World Bank and even the UN have evolved to become primary tools used by this superpower and its allies to arm twist countries retaliating against the submissive nature of their hegemony.

This book gives a scintillating account of all the dirty tricks, evil ploys and inhumane nature of functioning of the system as it is today.

Defying the system when it is this hostile is the most natural response anyone who recognizes this hostility would end up doing. But, the efficacy of this system has been its subtle and orchestrated perpetration which keeps all of this hostility hidden from us.

That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.
Something on the lines of what Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix, is the current state of the world.

Nonetheless, this ain't no movie - People are dying, countries are getting impoverished and future is getting bleaker. We are all part of this megaplan of hegemony and exploitation,both by getting exploited and exploiting at various levels.

Defy and change!
We need to change it to a different world: A world as we dream of it, as John perkins puts it in the book.
Now what is the dream of the world we wish to live in is upto each individual to choose upon.

Less personal,More social

2011-08-25T09:47:00.001+05:30

A personal observation about the contents I'm discoursing on my personal blog: It certainly is getting unbalanced. Unbalanced in terms of the contexts of the content being discoursed.

My initial posts, if some of you have read/ been reading, would make it obvious that those were primarily venting out of personal experiences, with a narrow scope in the content. Those posts, if read now seem trivial, nonetheless seem special and cute to me. They imbibe some of the best moments of my life: Rendering those moments immortal.

Off late, the content of the discussions in my posts are seldom pertaining to anything intimately personal at all, and seem to be digressing into wider realms of understanding everything around me, keeping myself as the observer. This again is a phase, which I attribute to the growth I have had. An evolution into mindsets which are capable of comprehending some crucial aspects which shape our lives and mould the society. This again is important and I am glad to be able to doubt, understand and critique these subtle, yet powerful forces honing us.

This stop and look back post was instigated by the observation that my audience is getting diversified, and some of you have been part of this journey seeing me metamorphose into someone that you think that you know.

Be it personal or social, ideas will forever remain immortal.

Life and works of Acharya PC Ray

2011-08-21T19:50:00.000+05:30

Talk by Prof.SChatterjee

Sciencecan afford to wait but Swaraj cannot ...

P C Ray

The prolonged Indian Freedom struggle, and its chronicling inretrospect seem to focus only on the efforts by a select fewnational heroes. Whereas the freedom struggle itself wasbrought to its momentum by hundreds of intellectuals andrevolutionaries, thousands of toilers and millions of the masses.Reminiscing the contributions by many other great minds are certainlyneeded to expand the understanding of our History, legacy of ourstruggle, to further interpret the current state of affairs.

Prafulla Chandra Ray, the entrepreneur and scientist behind the Bengal Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals, who was dearly called as Acharya Ray played an important role. Acquaintingwith his life and works, certainly help us to understand theIndian freedom struggle better from other necessary dimensions.

On the 15^th of August, 2011 a talk about the Life andWorks of PC Ray by Prof. Chatterjee was organized at the NationalInstitute of Advanced Studies, IISc,Bangalore. This informative talk,followed by a detailed discussion session certainly threw light uponthe life of the great confluence of an academician, entrepreneur,scientist, historian, nationalist, pacifist and patriot that AcharyaPC Ray was.

Prof.Chatterjee traversed through the life, ideals, work andaccomplishments of Acharya Ray in an exhilarating talk which span forabout an hour. Prof.Chatterjee communicated all the dimensions of thismulti-faceted being in the most convincing manner. The correlationthat was brought between science, scientists and their socialresponsibilities were elucidated in a comprehensive and rivetingmanner.

PC Ray apart from being the entrepreneur behind the Bengal Chemicalsand Pharmaceuticals, was one of the important scientific visionariesof pre-independent India. Under his guidance, his students would go onto expand the realms of scientific contribution in India. Hisstudents were of the likes of Meghnad Saha, Atul Chandra Ghosh, andothers who made significant contributions to develop science andtechnology in India.

Acharya PC Ray was contemporary to Rabindranath Tagore, JagadishChandra Bose, Subhash Chandra Bose, MK Gandhi and other influentialpersonalities during the Independence movement. PC Ray had his owncrucial contributions to the Freedom struggle. Apart from propagatingscience and grooming technology, PC Ray was known to have shelterednumerous revolutionaries and provided them with support for theirwork.

Prof. Chatterjee in his talk brought out the contradiction betweentoday's statesmen and the so called 'intelligentsia', with that of thestatesmen and intellectuals of the era of PC Ray, using PC Ray'snotions about self-reliance and sovereignty as examples.

The audience resonated to this contradiction, when excerpts fromAcharya PC Ray and another modern statesman were quoted for comparison.

PC Ray in his Essay “India before and after the mutiny” writtenin 1885, makes a profound analysis of the British rule in India:

"Englandunfortunately now refuses to recognize the hard and irresistiblelogic of facts and does her best to smother the nascent aspirationsof a rising nationality. The selfish, and therefore, harsh and cruelexigencies of an alien rule have imposed various disqualificationsand disabilities upon the children of the soil.... The lamentablecondition of India at present is due to England’s culpable neglectof, and gross apathy to, the affairs of that Empire. England hasfailed, grievously failed in the discharge of her sacred duties toIndia... Tomorrow you will be the arbiters of the destinies of 250millions of human beings, your fellow subjects. We fervently hopeyour advent to power will be a death knell to the existing un–English regime... I was a believer in those days in the doctrineof mendicancy and with child like simplicity held that if the wrongsand the grievances under which our country groaned could be broughthome to the British people, they could be remedied. The disillusionmentwas not long in coming...

Thegreat mutiny had entirely unhinged the financial equilibrium. In 1857the public debt had stood at 60,000,000 pounds. In 1863 it rose tothe incredible sum of nearly 110,000,000 pounds. Thus the indirectexpenditure incurred for mutiny amounts to almost 45,000,000 pounds.And it is notorious that England did not contribute a farthing toIndia as financial help.... India is a famished nation rather than ofRajas and Nababs....A government which can squander 10,000,000 poundson palatial barracks,but cannot spare a farthing for laboratories should forfeit the titleof a civilized government....The Indian government is essentially atax squeezing machinery and not a government for the people...."

And here's an excerpt from one modern Indian statesman, whohas the following perception of the same relationship, and wasquoted by Prof.Chatterjee towards the end of his talk:

Today,with the balance and perspective offered by the passage of time andthe benefit of hindsight, it is possible for an Indian Prime Ministerto assert that India's experience with Britain had its beneficialconsequences. Our notions of the rule of law, of a Constitutionalgovernment, of a free press, of a professional civil service, ofmodern universities and research laboratories have all been fashionedin the crucible where an age old civilization met the dominant Empireof the day. These are all elements which we still value and cherish.Our judiciary, our legal system, our bureaucracy and our police areall great institutions, derived from British-Indian administrationand they have served the country well. Of all the legacies of theRaj, none is more important than the English language and the modernschool system. That is, if you leave out cricket!

Like in the audience at the talk by Prof. Chatterjee, itis hard to guess that the above mentioned statesman is theDr.Manmohan Singh, exhibiting what could be termed ananti-nationalist stand.

This instigated a good round of discussion amongst thepanel members. Arguments whatever arose, ultimately ended up rebukingthe statements that were made by Dr.Manmohan Singh in his convocationspeech at Oxford University in 2005.

Also detailed questions about Acharya PC Ray'sprinciples happened to be discussed, during which again the multifacetedmaverick that PC Ray was was much discussed and reminisced further.

One important aspect of the talk itself was the mannerin which it was presented by Prof.Chatterjee. The audience presentcan be categorized conveniently as the intellectual elite and mostlyapolitical. Prof. Chatterjee, nonetheless was able to communicate allthe aspects of the life of Acharya PC Ray in a subtle but impactingmanner, which certainly got the audience thinking in relation to thecurrent scenarios. And that was the objective of the talk, which waswell accomplished.

Slides of the talk byProf.Chatterjee: http://bit.ly/rrek5w

The God Delusion

2011-08-18T19:10:00.002+05:30

How lucky we are to be alive, given that the vast majority of people who could potentially be thrown up by the combinatorial lottery of DNA will in fact never be born. However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn't this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place?

Think about it. On one planet, and possibly only one planet in the entire universe, molecules that would normally make nothing
more complicated than a chunk of rock, gather themselves together into chunks of rock-sized matter of such staggering complexity that they are capable of running, jumping, swimming, flying, seeing, hearing, capturing and eating other such animated chunks of complexity; capable in some cases of thinking and feeling, and falling in love with yet other chunks of complex matter!

-Excerpts from the book "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins

I have already attributed Richard Dawkins to have facilitated my transition to become the ardent and absolute atheist that I am now, in previous posts. And like in his documentaries, he is cleverer and super accurate with his arguments in The God Delusion.Impeccably convincing!

Turning towards the book itself, it is a quick and joyous read in the literary sense. But, this book symbolizes an apprehension of serious scale and it ain't just the literature one needs to ponder about. What actually dawned upon me while reading the book was the intent of the book itself. Pushing science and rationality amidst the infinite bandwidth white noise of religion, Gods, and the related blah blah!

Religion is ubiquitous, and it certainly is perilous, whatever small subjective positives one might have experienced. This ancient dogma has to be stigmatized for, eradicating it would take a long long struggle against many maniacs.

Nevertheless, increasing the consciousness of people pertaining to the futilities encapsulated in religion as a whole will slowly evolve to eliminate this weird but natural seeming, artificial digression of us humans.

While Science is what has given us answers, drawing us out from the shrouded clouds of ignorance, into light and still leading, Religion is that strong regressive force holding back majority of the Homo sapiens , bound to the shackles of faith, blind faith and dumb blind faith!

The God Delusion is a must read for everyone: Of course it will be offensive to the strong theists. But, for anyone who's just swaying away from the absolutism attached to religion, it will certainly help and enable them start drifting farther away from religion and closer to rationality - All for the good.

I might personally want to see religion eliminated from the face of the earth; But, it is even more complexly interleaved than even Dawkins himself projects.

Let's hope there's light, sometime soon, if not spontaneously!

I don't try to imagine a personal God; it suffices to stand in awe at the structure of the world, insofar as it allows our inadequate senses to appreciate it.
Albert Einstein

Totem revolutions

2011-08-13T18:12:00.007+05:30

The exaggerated rumours during the Egyptian revolution, that the revolution itself was a ramification of the existence of social networks like Facebook and Twitter is preposterous, and indicates the myopic understanding of such analysts.
While Facebook and Twitter did influence the rate of information dissemination and to some extent online mobilization, the idea that if for no Facebook and Twitter the Egyptian revolution and the Tahrir Square struggle would not have occurred is simply ridiculous.

The reason I am delving upon this example is to show the contorted reasoning people end up believing in. The idea that a revolution/ a change/ metamorphosis could be instigated and perpetuated via social networks or some other online token actions has been imbibed into the minds of people by the media, and a majority of the gullible have certainly endorsed this idea.

The Facebook Campaigns like Save Tigers, Support Anna Hazare, Stop Corruption, and others are to be treated as awareness increasing campaigns, using a new means of reaching out to people:Online Networks.
Unfortunately, posting up these campaigns on one's page and clicking the 'LIKE' button seems to be the end of this campaign to a lot many.

While nothing can replace the basic ground work in terms of understanding the problems, mobilizing people beyond the online networks (for, there is at least three quarters of the country out of this reach), contemplating pragmatic solutions and persuading the authorities to implement them, or in compelling cases (like in Egypt, and middle east) involving in struggles will what reap benefits. And certainly not just the Likes, reposts and shares of links and tweets.

The tendency of individuals to have executed their duties of being a citizen by performing these token actions online is highly increasing. People, I guess are considering this to be an extrapolation of online payment of taxes. Performing your duties online!
And such tendencies is what I am terming as "Totem Revolutions".

The token-like actions, the symbols which rise to become powerful totems in the current context are futile. Manifestation of the the cliche: "Means mistaken to be the ends". The acts of sharing web links, retweeting, forwarding mails, display picture badges, giving out one-ring calls (!?) and other product marketing-like strategies are most efficient in attracting the less concerned crowds, for the ones who really bother wouldn't require any of these wake up calls. These tokens, growing into totems should not be given anymore reverence than treating them for their worth,i.e, they are the newer means of mobilizing and awareness increasing methods at our disposal. I again reiterate, these are no ends by themselves!

"Symbols are given power by the people. Alone a symbol is meaningless but with enough people blowing up a building (symbol) can change the world."
V for Vendetta

And a converse of this is also true. People who only cling on to a symbol forget the reality and are busy obsessing the totems! This, off late, has become the ubiquitous behavior of the 'concerned citizens'.

Online protests like the Anonymous groups, and the DDoS attacks in support of WikiLeaks had some tangible results, for, they didn't only mobilize online, they were conducting their struggle online, for they were fighting a peril being perpetuated online!
The arenas were different.

Further, using centralized and Government monitored networks like Facebook, Twitter would cripple any such movements. WikiLeaks versus VISA/Paypal/Amazon incident is a manifestation of this apprehension.

Here's the link of the manual circulated during the Tahrir Square protests, urging people not to use Facebook/Twitter!
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/01/egyptian-activists-action-plan-translated/70388/

Cumulative observations on these lines, through months has made me sit down and write this post. The increasing tendencies of the online activists, to trigger campaigns online is perfect. But, the aspect of clarifying that the means aren't the end have not been profoundly proclaimed by many of them.

And please, no more of Totem Revolutions.

Understanding the Information Economy: ITEC Seminar

2011-08-10T23:18:00.002+05:30

ITEC has been around for sometime now and has been taking up some important tasks pertaining to the 'elusive' IT industry. Attempts at increasing the awareness about the pitfalls in the industry using instances to be concerned about, like fraudulent IT companies, work pressure and related issues have already been basis of their work.

In the recent campaign ITEC had organized a seminar on understanding the "Information Economy". It certainly was an eye-opener to all the 50 participants. Suresh Kodoor and Vasantharaj were the speakers, highly apt for lecturing on the lines of "Information Economy", moderated by Prof S Chatterjee.

The seminar was arranged at the new Jaaga, on an overcast Sunday afternoon.

The gist of the talk, as I have understood would be as follows:

The transition from a manufacturing and product based economy, which primarily produces tangible products, to now an economy extensively 'speculative' in their own jargon has turned out to be more on the lines of selling out information as products, driven by finance capital. This new era (which is at least a few decades old) has brought in a paradigm shift in the businesses of the world.
To understand the contradiction between the two ways, look at the growth rates: The information economy mammoths show 20% + growth on a normal basis, while the veterans of the manufacturing industry still are steady with their 8-10 % growth.

To understand the differences that have been ushered in by the Information economy a brief comparative study in the way these two business models are run was explained by both the speakers. The common contention putforth was the lack of innovation in India, even in terms of self-reliance of software products to cater to our domestic needs. Secondly, the lag in investing in hardware manufacturing for telecom, defense and other critical sectors needs was discussed. The need to resuscitate the dying PSU's was mentioned as well.

On Sunday, when day the seminar was held is when the news of the S&P downgrading of the US creditability from AAA to AA+ had occured and we were only speculating what else could go wrong. It seems as if most of the talk that proceeded on that day was as if prophesizing the subsequent hours which were to put the financial world at unrest. Once the markets reopened on Monday the symptoms of the second dip recession have surfaced visibly and lot of suppression tactics are being implemented, as I am speaking of it. There's turmoil and apprehension filling in the air.

And this time, in case a second wave of global recession would hit, India wouldn't be as immune as it was in 2008! The 'outsourcing' menace as naturally seen by the people of the US and other European countries has taken its toll and now stands at the threshold of a breakpoint. Unemployment, public benefits cut down , inflation, taxation and dipping stock market are gelling up to become a dangerous threat to the global stability.

The ITEC seminar did certainly help us to comprehend both sides of the stories, while the speakers convicned us of what could be the solution as well: Self Reliance!

Secluded in the cities

2011-08-03T21:57:00.005+05:30

Over a casual chat, a friend discussed an observation to me, which was rather very interesting, and worth pondering further, beyond the discussion.

According to him,in the daily urban chaos, the aspect of socializing (in the real terms), which is the essence of all humanity is being lost, and that we are getting narrowed down to really small, shrinking diaspora, which consists of very few people.

And after thinking some more on these lines, I tend to agree with his observation. It ain't even individualism that is being practiced. These conditions which are getting so ubiquitous around us, I might want to term them as a kind of forced urban seclusion, and that has come to be the widely agreed standard. Each is left with little, or no time to bother about anything apart from very personal matters.

Socializing (only) on online networks has deteriorated the already bad situation. While it can never be a replacement to interpersonal rapport, these networks have played the subtle but hostile roles of alienating the social beings within us.

Coming back to the point of forced urban seclusion, it is a convergence of the hectic and reckless lives that the city drives one to lead, with no care whatsoever to the conditions around. It is a pathetic state to be in, for, it breeds cynicism about the (world minus us), and an expanding void within.

There is little that the 'bhag bhag' lifestyle has ultimately showered us with on the bright side. While there's a lot more it has forced upon us to crib about.

All said and done, if one wants to break free, there's all the control given, but then aren't most of us either way, comfortably, or uncomfortably numb about it ?

Last official day at my first professional job :)

2011-07-27T23:27:00.004+05:30

A new experience it was, altogether today. It will stay with me forever.
Bidding adieu to my first job at MRO-TEK turned out to be harder than I had imagined it to be; I hadn't imagined it to be hard at all. Nonetheless, the day took me aback, and it turned out to be an emotional and deeply touching farewell.

In my farewell mail, I called my job at MRO-TEK, which happens to be my first job to be equivalent to The First Love, and rightly so for, I already seem to have forgotten the few negativities and have started relishing upon all the positives encountered by me.

The affection my colleagues had shown through my tenure by itself was overhwelming, and today it was taken to new heights. Sweet chunks of advice, geneorus words of praise, lots of aspirations and a deep sense of nostalgia, all of it surfaced one after another, making the rendezvous heavier with every passing moment.

I haven't discussed my job, or the nature of my work at MRO-TEK on my blog, and now that I am done with it, I still wouldn't want to talk of it, for, as I see it now the love and affection I have earned amongst my peers speak louder than everything. And so be it!

Mine was a short tenure at MRO-TEK, just a few days less than an year and nine months. It has been quick, exciting and vibrant! The industrial exposure will enable me set the right path to my goals. While all the maturity I have assimilated, pondering for these many months in a different framework has certainly made me a better and sophisticated human being.

The quality of discussions with certain resonating colleagues, day in and day out will be missed deeply by me. So will also the lovely campus, with an earthly serenity attached to it be missed.

This current phase, when I am just drifting away from a bondage into newer realms renders me exhilirated, while soaked in nostalgia. And I am relishing it.

In the end, what I take back from my first job is a new me, who has matured enough to work in aligning myself closer to the utopian me.

Riding on the experience of yesterday, backed by all the courage of today, I am excited about facing the challenges posed by tomorrow!

Making my moves, like i wanted to!

2011-07-26T18:20:00.003+05:30

Taking decisions in life, now, when I am at the verge of an important decision feels like playing a tricky game of chess!

I have thought deeply, evaluated the consequences, guaged the prospects and hoped for the optimum, and it feels precisely like an important move you've done on the board of chess; when you know the pawns will have a radical change, while you are desperately hoping the ramifications to turn out to be good!

It is easier said than done, to steer the happenings of one's life to fall in congruence, or at least near the mental envisage of what his/her life should become. But, once a while, a few important decisions put us right into the pilot seat and present us an opportunity to change the course of our lives.
And, to brave up and take those small risks to move closer to our purpose of life is as good can one's life can get.

Now, I am embarking upon a certain path, which will lead me closer to the essence of me. It might not be something grand or exciting to an outsider, but I am swelling with enthusiasm and euphoria, while I still feel a small tinge of apprehension :)

More than the future prospects, the current contentment I derive out of the control I have exhibited and the confluence of all the right things which have fallen into place make me feel wondrous and simply happy.

Banking on this hope and confidence, I am on MY WAY!

How far can one go riding on rationality?

2011-07-17T21:22:00.002+05:30

Encountering rationales is getting tougher by the day in today's technology driven world. As paradoxical it might seem, irrationality is getting ubiquitous in the 21st Century. In a world run on the principles of scientific inquisition and technological accomplishments, a counter wave of revived illogic and neo-superstitions are spreading quickly amongst the individuals.

Incorporating the paradigm of logic and reasoning in one's life is not an easy task, agreed. It requires lot of courage and strong conviction to defy the orthodoxity and conventionality that is piously preached by the society.
But it certainly is the only way forward!

In an attempt to categorize the minds I've known based on the rationality exhibited by them, here's a four grade demarcation :P

The ones who don't take off: Have known and continue to know many more who belong to this clan. A strong force acting within these people repels all the logic and makes them imperveous to reasoning.
Traits: Relucatance, apart from the natural obstinate ignorance

The ones who break down en route: These are the slender and fragile ones, who make an attempt but certain adverse situations put them back to square one, or to the level mentioned above.
Traits: Timid and voluntarily cornered

The ones who apply with exceptions: A new creed I am discovering amongst my own regular diaspora. These semi rationales apply rationality with exceptions, and many a times at their convenience. I don't know how they do it, but they successfully detach from their plane of thought and contradict themselves, ending up irrational.
Traits: Opportunistic and of course undone.

The ones who perpetuate forever: These are the ones who wouldn't contradict the subjective realities in variation with the objective conditions. Consistent with their logic, and adamant on their perception.
Improvising a cliche here: Rationality isn't a destination, it is a journey!
And to hang on to this journey, it is nothing less than an incessant struggle; Struggle with one's beliefs and prejudices, and an everlasting process of clearing the smog unravelled by the rest of the three clans.
Traits: Strong conviction and pragmatists

It takes continuous effort and consistent show of mental strength to endorse a lifelong paradigm of rationality. Lethargy, reluctance, hesitancy, selectivity and cowardice are the hurdles to cross if you want to embark upon this enlightnening and gratifying journey.

செந்தமிழ்நாடு மதுரை - Madurai !

2011-07-13T19:17:00.006+05:30

Numerous ancient temples, variety of deliciously tasty food, detailed political gyaan at every corner of the road, meter-less auto-rickshaws, the more familiar heat of Tamil Nadu, and a lot more is what I have experienced in my first visit to this ancient city of India - Madurai, also known the Temple Town, with an exquisite legacy and heritage of its own.

Madurai, is also dubbed to be the Capital of southern Tamil Nadu, in colloquial terms. And with its experience of being the capital of the immensely successful monarchies like the Pandyas, Madurai can less be ignored.

My two days in Madurai has been the ideal hangout for a gypsy that I tend to be. Needless to mention that I enjoyed it tremendously for, it was my first trip to Madurai.

The memories I carry from here for this time, are of mixed nature; Some vivacious, while some are subtle, perfectly depicting the nature of the city that Madurai is.

Mind blowing temples, which form an important aspect of discovering ancient India are housed in Madurai. The official logo of Tamil Nadu - The Gopuram, has elaborate presence all across the city.

The world famous Meenakshi Amman Temple, for all its grandeur and legacy was one place I was certain of not missing. And I did spend an elaborate five hours scanning through the layered alleys of this marvel. The awe inspiring architecture of the temple, the symmetry and the scale are the traits which have given it the status it enjoys today. More importantly the devotion and emotion associated with the temple and its deities, which bring in the thronging crowds aren't to be missed either :) The only complaint I have is the newly done stark paintings performed throughout the temple. Although in some places it increases the aesthetics of the architecture, I certainly would have loved to see it as it was done by the masters then. I call them the masters, for accomplishing a masterpiece of this sorts then, with the little resources they had is mind boggling, and I believe it would be undo-able today, even with all the resources and technology.
We have simply lost the passion our ancestors possessed!

Apart from the Meenakshi Amman temple, there are a host of other temples and places to visit, but I couldn't go on, given the time and energy constraints.

Second and most importantly, the food everywhere in the city has been sublime. Ethnic south Indian cuisine, with all the creativity and the entire spectrum of non-vegetarianism in it has been a treat for a foodie that I am. I have tried numerous new eatables this time around in Madurai.
Here's a list of new on my food list:
"Parutthipaal" made out of cotton seeds extract.
"Jigarthanda", a Madurai special natural cool drink
"Pathaneer" with the sap of tender palm fruit as the main ingredient. This again is a natural coolant, much needed to beat the heat!

On the non-vegetarian side of the food, I had "Muyal Biriyaani", that is authentic Tamil biryaani with rabbit meat in it :)
Also, mutton omelette (finely chopped goat meat, with beaten eggs), likewise sea-food omelette, boneless crab omelette and chicken omelette! Then the addendum to the "muttai dosa" list was "chicken/mutton/all-meat/seafood/prawns dosas", which are instigating my salivary glands as I am writing this down! All of this in one classic place - Amma Mess.

Then the roadside idlis with chicken kolumbu, and the ever enticing "muttai kotthu parota": An adventurous preparation yielding yet another mouth watering delicacy.

In all, Madurai food was Sublimely delicious, and vibrantly various!

The warmth of people in Madurai is very visible and that comes natural with their living ambiance, which is still based on the human values. Drawing in the cynicism I have developed towards the the IT/Corporate/LPG-sick city that Bangalore is coming to be, I was so glad to see a place where people on the lower middle and lower sections of the economic spectrum have chances of survival unlike in other metros! It isn't about the prices being nominal alone, even the lifestyle of people matches their living circumstances, and the people are contended and more importantly proud of what they are, again unlike the hypocrisy full, West emulating trends in other cities.

Overall, Madurai stands out as one of the best places in India, more for its culture retention and pride of its local (not in the derogatory sense) authenticity.

There will be complaints about everything we observe, but in this log I have subdued one or two negative aspects which I observed for, the rest of it is all so awesome!

The droppings of capitalism!

2011-07-09T12:17:00.002+05:30

Capitalist modes of running a society and its criticism is a highly elaborate exercise, and to take up that task I am still inadequately equipped. I shall save it for the future, to make it more convincing.

In this post, I want to focus on certain profound ramifications rendered by the crowning jewel of capitalism - Neoliberalism.

As David Harvey in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism points, "Neoliberalism has, in short, become hegemonic as a mode of discourse. It has pervasive effects on ways of thought to the point where it has become incorporated into the common-sense way many of us interpret, live in, and understand the world."

And I want to concentrate on the way many of us perceive, interpret and understand the world, well in an increasingly contorted way. To hint at what I am talking about, allow me to present a couple of contemporary ethic statements as heard by me!

"You know you are poisoning the customer, better give him a slow death than a sudden one, so that you get out safe... "

"When you're faced with a vicious snake and a close competitor, kill the competitor first!"
Theories like,
Profit making by legal, although unjust means is perfectly sane.
Professional life comes first, and personal life is secondary.
Rivalry amongst peers taking newer heights of animosity.
Exploitation legitimized in the name of profit making.
And many more observations, which are getting ubiquitous and are successfully draining out the core values of us humans. It is evolving into a system where cynicism and skepticism are increasing instead of trust and belief amongst people.

Even this aspect of declinging trust is not of concern, as much as the silly sancitity assigned to these anomalies. These digressions away from the human values, inclined, contrarily towards the market values have found way into the ethics of the society. And that makes the future bleaker!

A price tag and a profit margin on anything and everything, including emotions and basic necessities is the fundamental basis of Neoliberalism. And we, the mere droppings of this system are more than willing to endorse and live by these false standards. If not a systemic revamp, at least pursuit of consciousness at a personal level against the perils of a system,which is polarized away from our natural good is imperative.

The booming spiritual bloom!

2011-07-05T14:00:00.002+05:30

"Inner Engineering", "Spiritual Software", "Cosmic architecture", and many more paradoxical terms have seen a sudden boom in the last decade. This is the new set of jargon presenting itself when the need has arrived.

The blend of spirituality and technology seems to be the USP of the recent resurgence of the spiritual heads from India, whom I categorize as the "Corporate Gurus". This entire saga of Spirituality and India is a deep rooted gimmick, which has flourished through centuries and still growing, better than ever.

Ancient Indian philosophy, when traversed through without the prejudices we might have inculcated in today's world, is nothing but contradictory to the current preachings of today's spiritualists. In Debiprasad Chattopadhayaya's book "Indian Atheism" he elucidates the fictitious nature of the contemporary spiritualism. He argues and very well validates the absence of the concept of God in most of the ancient Indian Philosophy, which on the other hand is the underlying basis for the contemporary spiritualism.

Another important aspect which comes under the scanner is the plethora of lost minds who are seeking solace from this trend. If narrowed down, the ones seeking 'spiritualism' today mostly are workers deprived of their rights!

An employee who works for 14 hours a day, with no time to spend with his/her family, with no sense of satisfaction and with almost zero interaction with the society in its real terms are the ones who are driven to such extremities.

If one extremity is falling prey for depressants like carcinogen, alcohol and other hallucinogens, the other 'respite' to this new class of social destitutes is seeking spiritualism in order to fill in the voids left by their exploitation.

Capitalizing on this new class of desperadoes is the new thriving 'industry' of spiritualism. Most of these Corporate Gurus bamboozle the vulnerables into their traps, with nothing but sweetened non-sense and a heavy 'donation'.

While Indian philosophy has homed the greatest of the philosphers like the Buddha, Kabir,Shirdi Sai Baba, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Swami Vivekanada, and certainly some contemporary ones also who haven't shot to 'fame'. The discerning factor between these philosophers and today's swindlers is their motive.

While the genuine gurus were preachers for the sake of betterment in the society, the contemporary Gurus are lavish charlatans who have made the most out of the vulnerabilities in the society. While the ancient philosophers were reformers, who fought against social practices which made the lives of the people miserable, today, the Corporate Gurus are the parasites feeding on the exploitation rendered by the system, and who have zero consciousness of the problem in its entirety. They are mere pseudo embalmers, pretending to salvage the depressed.

It ain't just pretension, the Gurus of the day are frauds of the highest order.
Take a look at some of the programs and ideas propagated by these self proclaimed teachers and leaders!

Walk without Feet, Fly without Wings and Think without Mind!

Art of breathing, to teach you the Art of Living!

As we have physical science to create external well-being there is a whole inner dimension of science to create inner well being. I call it Inner Engineering!

With so much debauchery surrounding the entire scene of spiritualism today, the crowd thronging at them mainly is the learned urban middle class. Isn't it a shame that an educated section of the society can endorse and let such attempts to thrive!

Discerning the materialist in me

2011-06-27T22:04:00.001+05:30

Am I a materialist?

Yes and No.

Yes: In the context of non-idealism; in my manners of understanding everything around me. This tinge of materialism in me is what has enabled me to grow an outlook endorsing rationality and self verification, and am usually not driven by the momentum of the legacy of beliefs. 'Doubt everything', as one great philosopher put it is the underlying perceptive principle, out of which the materialism in me emanates.
Looking for the logic behind events, reasoning for occurrences, with an incessant urge to question is how life should be lived. It gives immense gratification, which is otherwise impossible to be rendered by the other ubiquitous means for 'pursuance of truth' like spiritualism, religion or superstition!

No: If being asked in the context of being 'materialistic', i.e.,belonging to the creed manifesting greed, in the purest sense of commodity seeking behaviour. This category of consumers are technically not materialists, but only materialistic in nature.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Materialism

I recurrently am encountered with questions about my aims in life.
And even before I start to formulate my ideas, the questioner starts off, "A plot of land","A posh flat", "A gizmo car", "A heavy account balance", and blah blah. If these are not blah blah to you, you are one such prospective questioner I would despise if you go on to presume something on those lines. Contradictory to the conventional trend as it may appear, I treat commodities as mere commodities, and not goals of my life.

It doesn't mean that I do not want to lead a comfortable (economic stress free) life. I would not give any more reverence to the commodities beyond that. My objectives in life, if I were to even think of them are more on the lines of expanding my own abilities, bettering my skills and in this course to throw some positive influence on others.

Inside WikiLeaks, and inside Inside WikiLeaks!

2011-06-22T18:08:00.002+05:30

I am a self proclaimed admirer of Julian Assange [J] and more so of WikiLeaks[WL]. Let this trait of mine not induce an idea that this post of mine is in favor of J or WL, in manners more than what they deserve.

Daniel Schmitt [D], actually the pseudonym of Daniel Domscheit-Berg is the author of the supposedly tell all book about WikiLeaks in his recent hurriedly written, crib-log Inside WikiLeaks.

I took up reading this one for, this is the first account of any details from within the secretive whistle-blowers platform WikiLeaks. But, as ridiculous a book could get, Inside WikiLeaks is majorly the yanking of D about J's personal habits, dressing sense, his perception of women, arrogance, egotism and everything that should have been confined to one's personal observations about a fellow comrade in their struggle against secrecy, and for transparency.

Non conformity with the book

WL has always propagated that "Transparency is only for Governments and big corporations, and not necessarily for individuals". I think D had got this idea distorted and goes on yanking about J's personality, and reporting nuances of J's behavior like kids would do in kindergarten.

J eats with his hands, and wipes off on his pants.
J taps the keyboard hard, creating disturbing noise.
J wore the same white shirt for both the days of the conference.
J eats faster and leaves me little to eat.
J gets more importance, and not the team, or myself.
J wears my jacket, and goes to sleep.
J pounces on my cat.
J is not bothered about selling the T-shirts, he's busy philosophizing.
J is paranoid!
And lots of commentary on J's sexuality, to the extent that D brands J a sexist.

D, for all the credibility he has as being an important person who was working for WL, hailng from the Chaos Computer Club, and to come out with a kindergarten complaint book of this sort is silly firstly, and also puts the work he had contributed to WL in bad light. I can very well anticipate the quality of work he would have been contributing to WL with a mindset such as this.

The claims of him being sidelined, and that J was getting more attention is again a point not worth debating. WL is the ingenious and courageous brainchild of J, and if he gets credit better than his counterparts, there's nothing wrong in it, unless you have peers who are trivially bothered about it. This is a normal issue in any team, and I can testify with first hand experience, like many of you would as well.

The most importantly ignored aspect about J, or WL in the book has been the security threats they have been undergoing. D pretends as if they were functioning in a safe and secure IT firm, just writing code. Even if some of the threat claims made by Assange have been exaggerated, instances where WL whistleblowers were killed, or Amazon, Paypal, VISA withdrew their services reveal to great extents the opposition WL was/is being conditioned to. And because J had to front end WL in times of most turbulence, even his safety and well being is at evident risk.
The circumstantial allegations of the sexual misconduct by two women, to get J grounded is more than a normal reaction to what could have been J's actions.

Conformity with the book

Although the book is filled with nonsensical commentary on J, the details about how WL functioned initially, or at least to the point of narration where D is still not jealous of J is quite a read.
A single decade old server hosting WL for the first whole stint, and portraying it differently to the external world, or about the impact their leaks had is enjoyable.

The criticism on the disorientation of WL from its core principles of neutrality, because J wanted to go head on with the US, if true is a point I too would be worried about. As far as D has written in this book, J's anarchist tendencies have driven him to a war with the US. But, I cannot deny the fact that, when you take World politics and are trying to make it transparent, the US of course would emerge from under everyone's carpets. And to expose the world, is in reality exposing the US, for, the US is so intrinsically involved with the rest of the world!

Holding back of leaks, or if any bias has happened to them as D alleges, that again is a matter of immense concern. Although, apart from the commentary which influence the opinions of the audience, the material by itself will be authentic, or the concerned authorities would certainly pull WL into intended espionage.

About alleged mishandling of the donations to WL, which is the core motive which has driven D to write this book according to me, must sometime come under scrutiny, or better if J would publish the transactions to shut the critics.

The internal structure, and inherent secrecy of WL as an organization is understandable for, they're in a tough game, playing big opponents and functioning with transparency is something a small team like theirs cannot afford to.

About Open Leaks [OL], I am certainly looking forward to it taking off. For, if OL can be better than WL, by not influencing the nature of leaks, or precedence, or of the recipients of the leaks, it will certainly be better. Transparency on their platform theoretically sounds very promising, and if accomplished it can certainly become the baton holder of whistle-blowers after WL.

D says,
"There's enough injustice in the world to occupy more than one (whistleblowing) platform.", and let us hope both together can make the world a better place.

All said and done, WikiLeaks made the world aware of the importance of whistleblowing to a greater extent than ever before in the History, encouraging a lot of dissidents to take up the cause. Julian Assange, irrespective of his gray shades personally, has been the spokesperson for transparency of Governments globally and will remain an icon ( maybe not of Pop icon nature, as claimed by Daniel), but more important than that – A role model to today's technologists to take up issues of social concern, without secluding themselves from the realities around...

Self deception in the process of gross deception...

2011-06-15T13:50:00.002+05:30

It's quite amazing as to how we can make ourselves believe, almost in a manner of self-deception, by repeatedly emphasising on something fictitious to be factual, either about our own persona or of our perceptions.

Being absolutely honest about oneself is impractical, and more so not pragmatic. There is a trade-off between the quality of the character we possess and would aspire to possess as depicted to the external world. And many a times, these aspirations transcend to become traits, because even we start to believe that these fictions are facts, just like we would have wanted the rest of the world to perceive.

There are principles, and then there are beliefs. While principles are the schools of thoughts endorsed by the mind and there is a tinge of stubbornness attached to it. Beliefs are more on the aspirational lines.

The realities as portrayed by us to the ones other than us, slowly creep into our being and after a certain threshold level of belief, these 'beliefs' become one with our set of principles, mostly attributable to one's depleting ability to discern between the facts and fiction. We convince ourselves while in the process of convincing others, that some of fictitious beliefs are facts as well.

Just like the creator getting lost in his/her own creations, our mind creates a panorama of beliefs to either influence others, or sometimes just to move on with the proceedings.
After having succeeded in making others believe in these created projections of ours, ironically even we end up believing in these projections.
Self deception in the process of gross deception is what all of this seems like.

Asymmetric geniuses!

2011-06-10T18:27:00.000+05:30

Thanks to one of my fellow rationales for discussing this observation with me, which I have only tried to substantiate in this post.

It indeed is a very good observation that many of the 'geniuses' are in fact asymmetric. Asymmetric as in, either they aren't the best at their 'social etiquette', or the best of the home-makers!
But, does that mean they are unworthy of their ingenuity?

What most of us, who want to be the "Jack of all, Master of none" accomplish in the end is tagging ourselves onto the humongous and over-crowded cloud of mediocrity.

In order to focus and excel in all domains, the resources allocated to us when we are the conscious part of the Universe are in deficit. As a result, we can channelize our efforts to few domains, and can succeed in fewer.

So, becoming the "Master of all" isn't feasible, in reality.

When such is the case, geniuses from any field have tried to make a trade off between their work and social/personal lives. The likes of Newton, Tolstoy, Marx, Shakespeare, Einstein, Feynman and many other minds who have put us at awe with their groundbreaking work have had 'problems' in their social or personal lives, gauging them with the rest of the mediocrity. Criticism and attacks on these minds for not being upto the society's mark in their etiquette has testimonials throughout the course of civilisation, which is absurd.

Weird, really??

Recently, Julian Assange the founder and Chief Editor of WikiLeaks, a genius and maverick of sorts, has had to face a lot of mud-slinging. This coming from, as expected, the rest of the mediocrity.
My point has always been, why bother about the individual's personal/social life unless it affects you directly! Whether he/she likes cats or not, if they wear the same shirt for more than a day, or if they keep changing their girl friends?
It should be of no concern for, the work from them is what influences us. Unless they try to influence their supposed wierdness onto us, we should be least bothered, or distracted about their lives.

In the case of WikiLeaks, this has been an extensive smear campaign against Julian Assange , who has been the Spokesperson and the front-end to the entire movement of WikiLekas. By distracting the audience from the essentials, the media certainly has done its job of trying to reduce the credibility of WikiLeaks amongst the gullibles, of course. But, where has all the grey matter of people vanished? Most people actually seem to be concerned more about Assange's wierd hairdo than the ideals he has brought to life with his work.

Asymmetric nature of minds at work should be recognised as a necessity for them to concentrate their efforts on the work they do, rather than expecting them to be the clichéd, stereotype social animals.

To be, or not be?

2011-06-06T22:52:00.001+05:30

When an intimate episode of life is hinting at its formal end, how do you respond to it?
Do you rejoice in a reminiscing mode, or regret in a remorseful one?

The conflict has been if I should bid adieu in a delightful manner for, I can forever be nostalgic and hence indebted to those memories. Or, do I go cribbing about it?

But then, I directly arrive at the logic and /me missing it now, makes no sense at all, as I knew it was coming, and coming this way.

Life to me as yet, has been a beautiful compilation of lovely chapters, with each one embodying special protagonists other than me. Everyone of these other protagonists have changed me, and all for the good, or that's how I see it.

Like I have always said - It doesn't take me long to get off my obsessions.
I had done it before, numeorus times, and will be doing it again.
This particulaar trait in me sometimes makes me believe I am the most strong headed person I have known!

The question 'To be or not be a remorseful cartoon' surfaces up, only to find the obstinate answer ever ready.
Thanks for the memories...

PS: As a rare coincidence, I happened to listen to this great track by Fall Out Boys in the morning, and these lines have been lingering in my head. So apt!

It's always cloudy, except for,
When you look into the past.

One night and one more time
Thanks for the memories
Thanks for the memories...

Fast Forwarding India: Anna and Baba way!

2011-06-05T22:53:00.002+05:30

If I were one of the high TRP media channel ( almost all the hundreds are in fact of high TRP!), who feeds junk to people, at this moment I would be gleaming at my own fortune! Drama, action, emotion, music, and even some Indian acrobatics ( yoga) in impeccably packaged episodes running to full houses for quite sometime now.

By the way, if there's anyone apart from me, who's also finding it difficult to relate to the time period we actually are living in, given the course of events unfolding, here's a reminder: It certainly is the 21st Century, after the age of Communications, well into the age of Information and Technology. And in this time frame, we are witnessing some of the greatest regressive approaches to revive India, by Fast Forwarding her: : Anna and Baba way,

Corruption is not something new to India, or to any society for that matter. The sudden surge, a giant leap forward in the scale of corruption is what has come to the notice of the civil society off late. Thanks to some loyal Govt. officials like the Lokayukta and a specific Gandhian to have had it echoed throughout the country, which otherwise is comfortably dormant, highly middle classed society.

Looking back, before a couple of months during the Anna phenomenon, almost all of the tax paying, middle class citizens were poised together with Anna Hazare to put a full stop to corruption in India by tweeting, facebooking, reading the bill draft, participating in meetups and discussing out of desperation the pros and cons of an inherently flawed approach towards tackling corruption.
This entire fuss about eradicating corruption and the antidote in the form of another parallel bureaucratic system called the "Jan Lokpal", which has been under way is, if at all implemented going to be a superficial medication for a deep rooted problem in a severely wounded system.

The entire polity and economics of the system must be resuscitated and revived to see any hope of betterment.

Without delving into this repetitive argument on my blog, let us look at the situation at hand.
A Yoga Guru, who is left out of the Drafting Panel of the LokPal committee for obvious reasons, decides to redo the exercise of emancipating the country within a couple of months after the hysterical Anna Hazare movement. He is doing it again because.... I'm not really sure! Maybe the Lokpal committee didn't want to incorporate his ingenious demands to curb corruption. Demands like capital punishment for the corrupt, demonetizing Rs.500/- and Rs.1000/ currency notes, and the Prime Minister being directly elected by the people, which apart from being unviable are simply ridiculous.

With other demands like undoing Indian black money in foreign banks, Ramdev had hit the chord of double standards: While he has declared his own assets which reach upto Rs. 1000 crores and Islands as property (with suspicion on the sources) he seeks an anti-corruption campaign!

Like the Congress is now branding Ramdev as a thug, he is at the first place unfit to call for a campaign for a cause of this nature. I might even tend to pardon him, but not the gullibles who went behind him, including the UPA Govt. Imagine the spite of the Government,when it sends four of its ministers to negotiate with a thuggish Baba who threatens to go on a fast along with his followers.

Now, when the police in a surprise action has shaken up the India Fast Forward program by the Baba, in an agreeably undemocratic manner, they have made an unnecessary Hero out of a thug. I can only hope not for all the drama that is going to unfold in the bleaky days to come.

And the BJP with their saffron connection with Ramdev and his act, would be more than happy to lift off from the "Ramlila Maidan atrocity" directly to power. They have already started comparing the incident to JalianWala Bagh massacre of 1919 and PM and Sonia Gandhi to General Dyer!

Where has all the sense in this country vanished!

I only can hope that there aren't anymore Fast dramas,and people concentrate on the real issues which are giving rise to these high levels of corruption and injustices.

Corruption and Price rise: Campaign by Samudaaya

2011-05-30T10:41:00.000+05:30

After two weeks of Jaathas across Karnataka, both the Samudaaya teams converged in Bangalore on the 28th of May, 2011 for the culmination of the event.

“What we want to do is: Sensitize creative people to use their creativity as a means of expression to take up issues of social importance and reach out to the masses”, says Surendra, General Secretary of Samudaaya, the cultural troupe in Karnataka that has been on a state wide touring called Jaatha. In this Jaatha, Samudaaya is reaching out to the rural masses, increasing the awareness about corruption, price rise and their causes.

Samsa Open Theatre is where the final Jaatha happened in Bangalore. This Jaatha was presided over by some of the eminent anti-corruption activists and progressive thinkers in Karnataka.
Justice Santosh Hegde, Lokayukta of Karnataka, who is currently at the end of his term is one of the recent officials who has striven hard, given the restrictions and limitations imposed on him to make impact on the corruption scene in Karnataka. If not systemic changes, he has been an instigator for the ever dormant middle class to at least shake off the frost and voice some opinions against corruption.

In his speech during the Bangalore Jaatha, a witty point made by him about the Prime Minister does hold good. Justice Santosh Hegde compared the self proclaimed helplessness of the Prime Minister with that of the elders who witnessed in silence the act of harassing Draupadi in the mythological Mahabharata. Justice Santosh Hegde also picked on the famous statement by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about the “Zero tolerance for corruption”, which according to Mr.Hegde should be interpreted as the “Tolerance towards the number of zeroes being appended to the figures of the scams”. He urged the citizens to dispel corrupt politicians, without endorsing them over and over again with all their glorified flaws. He appreciated the efforts taken up by Samudaaya, of educating the masses, which according to him is the most important step in the fight corruption.

K Maralusiddapaa, former chairman of the Karnataka Nataka Academy went ballistic against the Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization phenomenon in the past two decades. He equated this process to be a morphed means of nothing but exploitation. Exploitation of developing and the third world countries by the developed ones, and in turn internal exploitation of the weaker sections by the powerful people. He also raised doubts about the Anna Hazare movement, and he warned the supporters to be cautious of the other organizations which are clinging on to Anna Hazare, apprehending it would become another JP Movement. KMS again appreciated the efforts by Samudaaya at the grass root level amongst the rural population and the urban youth.

T N Sitaram, famous small screen director, took on the aspect of increasing disparity and the lifestlye of the capitalist barons, calling them unethical and inhumane. In order to convey the point that elections are won only when the candidates are rich and powerful, he went on to say that even Mohandas Gandhi would not have got a seat in any of the major parties in Karnataka, and likewise at the centre.

Professor GK Govindarao, expressed his anguish against the “common man”, who is complacent and doesn't bother to question the system beyond superficial discussions at home. He also expressed his deep dissent against the media for their charlatanry in the way they make and feed news to people. His rest of the talk comprised of blatantly spilling out facts agaisnt the BJP governance in Gujarat and Karnataka.

In all, the speakers were in unison in their ideals agaisnt Corruption and price-rise, with each one of them urging the common man to dive into the cleansing process.

As an addendum to the Samudaaya campaign, a recent development in the campaign against corruption : Wikileaks was proposed by Senthil, from the Free Software Movement-Karnataka, wherein he touched upon the need for publishers such as Wikileaks, by using instances of RTI activists and whistleblower deaths in India.He urged the gathered supporters to also endorse this latest means to fight against injustice.

The final speech was impeccably presented by Mr.Hudugi, who is the Secretary of Samudaaya. He briefed about the Jaathas. Mr.Hudugi arrived upon the proactive nature and strong conviction of individual citizens to fight against injustices which ultimately lead to consequences such as corruption and price-rise.

While all these talks were in progress, interleaved with the talks were a few excellently written and sublimely rendered protest songs which were sung throughout the Jaathas. Finally, the Maalur Samudaaya team put up a play, an adapted version of the famous “Vikram and Bethal” fiction story to match the agenda of the Corruption and Price-Rise.

The message this Jaatha has left behind is that we need to shake off the frost and get into action against injustices. No more should we bear atrocities such as corruption and price-rise. A movement from the grass root level should compel systemic changes for the good of the society.

More on Samudaaya and the Jaatha : http://samudaaya.wordpress.com/

Surely You're Joking Mr.Feynman!

2011-05-22T23:17:00.000+05:30

Feynman, the prankster;
Feynman, the magician;
Feynman, the flirt;
Feynman, the educator;
Feynman, the musician;
Feynman, the adventurer;
Feynman, the artist;
Feynman, the genius;

Yes, Prof.Richard P Feynman was all of the above and a lot more. A true rationale, an inspiration, a role model for ages to come and an unrealistically honest human being.

I haven't mentioned 'Feynman, the scientist' if you've noticed, but you don't call someone who lives a life of Science as a mere scientist. He is one of the greatest minds to have lived before us.
He was an embodiment of many different traits, tied together by Science at every nuance of his life. While many of us try to get better at only one of those traits in our entire lifetime, Prof.Feynman did in actuality live many more lifetimes by being all of it that he was in his single life span.

The amount of motivation and drive that he exhibited throughout his life is something each one of us should inculcate.Not to mention his perpetual light-heartedness and eternal wit.
If there's one negative aspect of his life, which he too confesses midly is the utter disregard he exhibits towards the State, and also him shrugging off the responsibility of Science. And irresponsible science is lethal, when it reaches the hands of power hungry bureaucrats.

Nevertheless, to have lived a life like that of Prof.Feynman, you would get to see the recklessness, which was so true to him, in all facets of his life.

We have to look up to great minds, and the ones like Prof.Feynman are the rarest. Trying to emulate him in whatever little way we can is the best way to admire him.

There are two types of genius. Ordinary geniuses do great things, but they leave you room to believe that you could do the same if you only worked hard enough. Then there are magicians, and you can have no idea how they do it. Feynman was a magician
Hans Bethe, Theoretical Physicist

When procrastinating hurts real bad!

2011-05-21T22:44:00.003+05:30

A random routine, with lot of running around,yanking and thinking, talking and more talking, with little attention to my food, health or exercise has been my lifestyle for quite sometime now, against all the earnest advice of all my well wishers, including my perennially concerned mother.

It is not that I chose this adhocism, but this has been the best I could do with all my resources. I usually never procrastinate the work on me, it just gets extended most of the times. The only aspect of me which wholeheartedly procrastinates is to attend to myself. My immunity has taken a hit in this regard, and have been catching cold every now and then.

So, who gives the wake up call - A good old, dreadful friend - Migraine!
Although, I wouldn't usually put up a post about my migraine hit, this one was perfectly timed and un-ignorable!

It comes during a period of time, when as if to predict it, lot of my friends and at home had been warning me :D

Enter migraine-2011: I easily could claim this to be the most severe attack I've had since I was medically diagnosed with migraine, before more than six years!

The experience: First, I feel wobbly on my way back from my cricket practice on my cycle; decide to give it a push, than a peddle.
Reach home, and I am all blacked out; the right portion of my skull is excruciatingly under pain (it hits me only the right side of my head!), almost like being crushed and is joined climatically by a stint of nausea, leaving me flat!

And now, If you thought I was done for another day or two: Nope!

I was up and running to normalcy in another 4 hours. How?

The only three words which I would never forget in my life came to rescue (the tablets to alleviate such migraine attacks), along with some aromatic therapy of herbs and spices at home, and two hours of sleep bounced me back to sense. Nevertheless, some important plans of the day were jeopardized.

Moral of the story: I will take care of myself for, it costs me more when I'm blacked out, courtesy: migraine!

Public voice and Democracy

2011-05-20T19:23:00.000+05:30

Conflicts and friction between individuals and bodies of authority have been consistent throughout the evolution of human civilization. Every time humanity has been witness to this abrasion, it has resulted in consequences which have reverberated throughout the rest of time. In most cases, the bottom line cause for these frictions have been the question of Rights and Liberties.

Perpetuation of the hard earned rights and liberties of individuals, enabling a free society can be accomplished only when there is a guaranteed voice for the public. This highly important voice of public has undergone extensive metamorphosis, and has been evolving with greater capabilities with every passing day.

Like every other social asset, these media are natural, double-edged swords with opportunities of using and misusing them. Although the primary objective of these public voices, or the media is to become what they were created for, i.e, to present the combined opinions of the masses as a single, unified, loud voice, which the authorities, in many cases the Governments would give heed to.

On the contrary, and quite as expected, these channels for public voices, instead of talking for the people, have many a times taken a U turn and have been engaged in curtailing the quintessential rights of people.

This toggling behavior of the media has been true in the case of most of today's obvious technologies: The Printing Press, Radio, Television, Telephony, and now the Internet. These have all played major roles, either by supporting or hindering the rights of the individual.

The historical understanding of the role media have played very well substantiates their importance.
Betrayal of the people by the media, and taking up a stance against the people, on behalf of hegemonic authorities has been a symptom indicating unhealthy governance systems. To eradicate such cancers, a neutral medium, independent of the Governments, or monopolies had to be created.

The Internet, started off by giving lot of optimistic hope on those lines, and was successful until only it was sparsely available to the common people. With its increasing ubiquity, the threat Internet could pose to the biggies in their anti-people endeavors has been shrewdly identified and all efforts to curb the democracy in the Internet is underway.

Curtails on the freedom of expression, on a media like Internet could be catastrophic. A collapse of democracy in the Internet, would naturally culminate into the collapse of democracy in the Governance itself.

The Internet has the potential to become the most democratic voice of the masses, which has eluded the human civilization for ages. It has flaws, but it is the best tool at our disposal in today's world. Instead of making it better, a growing menace of curbing it and negating the essence of democracy in the Internet has been ongoing at a very brisk pace.

When sanguine initiatives like the Wikileaks, in the people's perspective are being harrassed and abused by the most powerful of the Governments world across, it acts as an indicator of the quality of democracy, or the pseudo democracy we all believe to be living in.

In the conflicts of people and the authoritarian regime in the oligarchies of the day, we need to vanguard the one, big voice we have come to arrive at : Freedom of Expression in the Internet. With the trend of increased laws and curtails on the Internet, we will lose out, probably the best opportunity presented to our generations.

Keeping Internet closer to the people, is the only real way forward.

PS: Working on these lines, we have started campaign in support of Wikileaks and Web Democracy. If you feel concerned, join us.
http://wiki-leaks.wikispaces.com/
Sign up on the signature campaign to show your intent about Wikileaks.
http://www.fsmk.org/support-wikileaks

400 posts: A lovely log to reminisce

2011-05-14T23:51:00.003+05:30

I finally am publishing this 400th post, after quite a lot of delay :)

time taken for each of the 100 posts

And in this one, I am recollecting some of the nicest, funniest, memorable and thought provoking comments by some of you, which have made my blog richer and a valuable possession of mine.

These comments are in the increasing chronology of their occurrences in my blog.

Quantum of Solace First comment on my blog :)

lakshman said...

a brilliant statement made by a highly observant person.. it reflects the height of self assessment...AMAZING!!!!

Dishum dishum bang bang

shreyansi said...

oh yeah i remember poor thing but then also u dnt seem to change, ur such a stubborn gypsy i think u luv to hurt urself n shud hav mentioned abt ur habit of forgettin as well as avoiding things to the limit that even if vehicles run over ur foot u dnt mind isn't it?

The India Quiz

srilakshmi said...

Hey maverick, your 'The India Quiz' was so well orgnised that it kept the audience engrossed throughout. There was not a moment when we felt we were waiting for something. And the way you dissent makes the opposite side agree with you!

At the end of the day, it was JOB WELL DONE. Keep it going.

No "Love All" policy;"Hate none" is my choice

anu* said...

The one thing i know to be true is "Love and Hate are two sides of the same coin!" Hate is such a strong word that you can feel that much animosity against someone only if you once loved them that much... Love and Hate are perhaps the most painful feelings ever, where on one hand you're on top of everest, and on the other, you're falling down a bottomless pit! Extreme feelings are damaging so i suppose such feelings get compartmentalized into different intensities. Ayn Rand is truly great! [but i didnt exactly quote the same philosophy]

Beauty beholds in the eyes of the admirer..But why???

SUGANYA said...

yeah i do agree with you....!!!
The real beauty is always invisible to the eyes...or i would like to say " the essentials are always invisible to the eyes".most people admire nature, but,a person's admiration is unique when he finds a unique beauty in anything."
........ not all women can be beautiful (physically), but all can be charming... to find the charm in their eyes is a skill....!!!so the hidden beauty can be found only by the "skilled eyes"(the admirer)...!!!!so rightly said:
"Beauty beholds in the eyes of the admirer"

Freudche

$@ndhy@ said...

brilliant!!! -Sandhya & Pradeep

Stratum 3: Why the frivolous stratification?

anupama said...If each of us truly listened to ourselves and set our own goals to realize, we would be least bothered about worthless issues like caste, creed etc. I feel that the eagerness to be accepted and fear of being shunned makes us endorse these issues blindly

de l'amour à faire l'amour

Lakshmi said...: Raghu, not all do that. There r people who live just in wait of that love. A little feeling of specialness is felt only one is in love. I hope u agree to it. That feeling of specialness comes only when there is love... Love is not only for the life partners but it is beyond that... I would like recommend ma today's blog to u... please go through...

Anirban Basak said...

I totally agree to wat u say... It reflects the world of today n how this delicate feeling is percieved..!! Good one.. ^_^

God,Men and Godmen ;)

Vincentvikram said...

update: The LOve GUru admits to his act ;)

Defends himself by saying they were wearing clothes(what a relief!!).

Right to (quality) Education...

vaish said...: I totally agree with your view because I've seen live examples of people not being able to produce caste certificates since they couldn't get the required documents from the tasildars and hence, not being eligible for the respective post. The 'weaker society' needs a desperate push to get past this problem which is the root cause for the decline in improvisation. If this is not addressed to right now, it is definitely going to take eons to revive the backward classes!

The common man's simple joys :)

bharge said...: good one again as customary... simple things in life holds a bubble of happiness in the end... whether the hot chai/egg dosa in a road-side stall... or getting drenched in the rain (a personal favorite of mine), listening to the birds chirping, making others arnd us happy, etc... ppl shud def have a stop/pause button in their lives to come off their life on fast lanes, enjoy the lil things... we seem to forget though money is imp for a decent life, its not the most imp thing... after all, u can only be at one place at a time... and yes indeed, the taste u get out of the eatables in any road side shop will beat any 5-star hotels hands down... and thats the best thing about india...

Re-contemplating the existence of a Principlist..

swathi said...: Hi Raghavendra, Adding onto your post, I don't know is its related or not but thought its worth a mention. With experience sometimes we set experience because of simply dabbling onto an issue without knowing on what built it on.So what happens as days go by is, this(principles) sort of modifies.I am saying this as a novice, because I have done that mistake.So it evolves and becomes something better.

Flora, Fauna, Fantasia and Femina :)

G.Suvetha said...: The Flora, The Fauna, The Fantasia and The Femina ... What a rhythm ! Love & smiles..

Let's Talk Ideas

Srilakshmi Jayaramappa said...: Sensible minds are hard to find, trust me! Many simply do not want to see the point.

Minds for reference

2011-05-07T00:02:00.001+05:30

While in conversation with a good friend of mine, we happened to talk about the sensation and impact rendered while interacting with famous and influential people.

When I started thinking what sort of impact they'd have, and been having on me, the first thing I had to admit was that I do not get exaggeratedly excited when in their company. I don't mean that I'm not in awe, or in admiration of them, but only that I wouldn't be highly excited to lose my senses in their presence.

A necessary clarification at this juncture: I'm not talking about the paparazzi celebrities, but of the people who deserve to be celebrated. Dedication, the mindset and efforts emanating from such people are always inspiring,and it is people of this genre that I am talking about.

Interactions with many such influential people, serves as a great motivation to me. I would certainly want to learn, improvise and better myself by emulating little important traits of many of these great minds. This motivation is good, if one sustains it by converting this influence into tangible efforts.

Sometimes, this motivation, starts haunting me.
It contrasts my own stingy efforts to me, which even I would admit aren't very impressive or even adequate at all. Meeting famous and influential people, acts as that reminder which admonishes me for my inadequate efforts.

Benchmarks or frames of reference, when are set of high standards, they help us to better ourselves. Interactions with great minds are always a boost to the morale and motivate us to take up our efforts with more dedication.

nanos gigantium humeris insidentes

My interpretation:

All that I, a little dwarf, am trying to do is, stand on the shoulders of giants to see farther and aspire bigger.

Standing on the shoulders of giants

Songs of Protest: A forgotten tradition

2011-05-02T23:12:00.006+05:30

जाने वाले सिपाही से पूछो
वो कहाँ जा रहा है
जाने वाले सिपाही से पूछो
वो कहाँ जा रहा है

इश्क है कातिल -इ -ज़िन्दगानी
खून से तर है उस्की जवानी
हाय मासूम बचपन की यादें
हाय दो रोज़ की नौजवानी
जाने वाले ...

कैसे सहमे हुए हैं नज़ारे
कैसे डर डर के चलते हैं तारे
क्या जवानी का खून हो रहा है
सुर्ख है आंचलों के किनारे
जाने वाले ...

कौन दुखिया है जो गा रही है
भूखे बच्चों को बहला रही है
लाश जलने की बू आ रही है
ज़िन्दगी है की चिल्ला रही है
जाने वाले ...

-Makhdoom Mohinuddin, during the World War II, about the meaninglessness of war and violence.

A song I hadn't heard until I did listen to a different version, very recently.
This one has been rendered with a classical touch by the very talented Sumangala Damodaran.

"Songs of Protest" is the album, a rare one in today's chaotic music world dominated by noise, non-sense and anything but music. A compilation of some of the greatest protest songs, not just songs, but symbols of some of the epochal events in the Indian freedom struggle. The nine songs in Hindi, Malayalam and Bangla are more than just old songs being revisited, but like the album cover says it is a glimpse of The Forgotten tradition.

Although my Malayalam and Bangla are equally distant from making much sense to me, I have been relishing the quality of the songs, and at every opportunity have been asking for translations from relevant friends.

Here are the previews of three tracks, and to buy the audio you can flip the cart.

Jaane Waale by SumangalaDamodaran

Aarkotokaal by SumangalaDamodaran

Aarkotokaal by SumangalaDamodaran

Don't miss Baba, he'll be back!

2011-04-27T01:01:00.003+05:30

After being unable to resist the temptation of writing about the great incarnate of the God : Sathya Sai Baba, I stand here guilty spilling out my deep, heart felt thoughts and softened emotions to you.

Who said the Baba is no more!
This incarnation of God, who had proclaimed he had created the world has taken a sabattical from his created world, temporarily.
Maybe, he's out there paying visit to his peers in the other parallel universe. When the mortals of the Earth say, 'He is no more',it implies, he is no more available to us. Like a network outage, but in the cosmos. Signal will be back soon and with better reception.
In the end, as all his devotees would ardently believe, he's out there somewhere, serving the poor and the rich of another world 'impartially' as he did on this, now God-forsaken planet of ours.

Baba was beyond the realms of materialism...
When followers offered him grand donations, Baba was only unloading them off the materialistic burden and bearing it himself on behalf of all his devotees. In his earthly absence now, this burden is going to create havoc in his own institutions, and this shows how great a cushion he was. He for all these years, silently was bearing all that humungous burden, which amounts to about 1.4 lakh crores of rupees in assets and some extra few tons of gold.
Can any mortal of this world even think of bearing such a burden? No.
And hence proved: He's the God incarnate.

Baba was no materialist!
He was never a materialist: His simple saffron attire, gleaming smile and the radiant dark eternal hair, were all manifestation of his abundant spirituality.

Further, his idea of materialistic detachment was contemporary, and not ancient. Not ancient for, some of the previous great seers (like the one I'm named after) seen by India,had attained their Samadhi voluntarily to relieve their bodies of the worldly burdens. Baba wanted to show how close to the humans he was, and how advanced his methods of operation were. So, he like just another man laid unwell in his own world's, his very own hospital under ventilators. This distinction makes our Baba stand out, but closer to us, the mortals.

Baba's prophecies weren't wrong!
There have been numerous reports ever since the Baba started flourishing as the self proclaimed God he became, about his wrong predictions. It is the dim-witted mortals such as these rumor-mongers who fail to notice and croak that his predictions aren't coming true.
It is like the elusive Space-time relationship. When Einstein theorized that time was not absolute, but relative, the world was turned upside down. In the same manner, when Baba predicted his own death at the age of 96, it was not in the Arabic numeric system and our mortal counting practice. It was in the divine numeric system of the great cosmos, which we mortals wouldn't be able to fathom.
When he predicted great catastrophes, he didn't mean only to us humans. There are great catastrophes unleashing,every minute, with thousands of lives being lost in the form of anthills getting washed away in the rain, and insects being eaten away as preys. And, that my friends is the catastrophe, which we the selfish creatures wouldn't be able to comprehend.
Every prediction by him has come true, and his reincarnation will happen like he had prophesied.
Have faith my friends, have faith. Faith is the key, and lock to everything.

Baba will strike back!
Posthumous criticism from all the so called rationalists has been flooding and mind you rationals, your nemesis in the form of Baba's reincarnate is under way. Remember what happened to your dear old friends - Kansraj (courtesy Krishna), Hiranyakashapu (courtesy Narasimha), Bali (courtesy Vamana), Raavana (courtesy Rama) and many others.
Mind it! Baba will strike back!

I am no Sachin Tendulkar to grab media attention when I cry, but i think tears are rolling down my cheek. I do not know if it is at the thought of demise of this version of Baba, or the expectation of his upgraded version, or imagining the state of his abandoned children. Nevertheless, the secretion from my lacrymal glands would remain the same.

Let there be light!

PS: This eulogy of mine has been written earnestly. If the reader is satiric about it, and finds anything sarcastic, as the composer of this post I take full responsibility.

Whether Weather rescued me?

2011-04-22T19:11:00.002+05:30

Okay, no high hopes about this post. It ain't a log of an action filled rescue operation, or anything stereotype that has been coming out of me off late :P

For a couple of days, for some reasons inexplicable even to myself I have been feeling all down and drowning ( that's actually an exaggeration, now in retrospection). I hadn't been able to comprehend what occurrence had instigated that deep dip in me.

I was trying to read, but wasn't able to. Tried jotting down on my notepad, but wasn't able to make any sense. Sat down watching a movie or a documentary, wasn't able to complete it. Eating has been a little on the lines of disinterest as well. Even attempts to think and set right were failing, for I wasn't able to concentrate.

It might sound all filmy, and you are free to imagine any causes for these symptoms. You are free for, I myself didn't know what was going on. All that I could feel was uneasiness, coupled with a sense of hollowness.

And, I wake up today in the morning; Get on to my morning stroll to the dairy, and as if a huge dose of serenity was injected to me, with light drizzle, wet roads, damp air, cool breath, flowery embroidered pavements and the chirp of birds I was propelled to almost my normal state of existence. Then, I felt better, a lot better, not best though.

The grandeur of nature, not for a moment ceases to impress me, her little one

To make me feel the best came the slow joy ride to work, with the thinnest spray of rain kissing my face. This, coupled with the vista through the empty roads (today's Good Friday) added to the impact. And the climactic consolation came in the form of some good old music; Thanks to my friend at work. Started off with Careless Whisper by George Michael, Eagles' Hotel California, With or Without you by U2 and great other tracks, to pump me back into reality. To finish off things, my colleague's wedding lunch (pure veg:) was satiating and finished this wavy episode of my routine.

Bouncing off the opinion!

2011-04-17T13:12:00.002+05:30

Have you ever been in a situation when things that are logically apparent to you is perceived by your counterparts in an almost alien manner?
I find myself in that state almost on a daily basis :D
They seem to be fixed on a different plane of thought, which is not accessible to you because you are based on your reasonable plane of thought. You can't reach their plane, for it requires you to take a huge leap of faith.
On the contrary, you can't get them onto your plane of thought,as it involves matters of 'faith' and 'belief', while your own processes operate on logic and reasoning.

These interactions span an entire spectrum: Amusing,ridiculous,disappointing,appalling, and some times frustrating and also infuriating.

While I have been trying to equip myself to handle such situations ably than I already am, it requires me to put myself into their mindsets and firstly perceive like them. Even this simulation is unbelievably silly to me. When I try to emulate myself in their mindsets, starting from the first moment there's a grand voice in my head calling out "That's so obvious, why wouldn't you want to look at it?", "Trivial.", "You can't see it because you don't want to!".

With this method failing, I am still not ready to counter them convincingly.
Then I come to realize, in my live encounters, my arguments are actually bouncing off obstinate opinions from the other end and not from sensible counter arguments.
Then I reach a state, yelling within myself.
"This is unfair!"
You can't debate against prejudiced and obstinate opinions; Synergistic and ground breaking debates happen over dynamic and vibrant ideas.

I also have come to understand, this will be the case with majority of people. There seems to be a denominating cloud of reluctance and obstinacy amongst people, which makes them stick rigidly to their opinions.

I can gauge that there is sentimental value to one's opinions.
And having an opinion is a personal accomplishment of sorts, but when the prejudice faces the reality, every sensible mind should let go their precious possession and endorse the truth.

Back, looking at myself.

2011-04-13T13:53:00.002+05:30

After quite a while, I'm trying a stint of introspective post on my blog.

The circumstances I am conditioning myself to, out of conscious choice are of different kind in nature. It is a drift from surrealism to realism. It is like trying to look beyond the Matrix as said by Morpheus to Neo. This perspective really makes me wonder: Yes, this was always there, but darn, I, like the majority of the others hadn't observed it all!

There have been a lot of changes, hopefully all for good, but there is an apparent under utilization of the skills and resources under my own disposal.

While the responsibility and dedication towards the tasks I have taken up has certainly increased, there is a subtle sensation of lethargy which is creeping up in an almost parallel manner. Allocating and utilizing time effectively was one trait in me which I hadn't worked consciously upon, but had evolved to the best. These days, I am having to put in extra effort to see that I utilize the time with my resources in the best possible manner. There is a disconnect developing, and to keep myself aware of it, and to better this syndrome is why this open contemplation is happening.

Increasing distractions would certainly top the list of factors that have put me into this circumstance. Some are necessary, few are involuntary and while the other are parasitic in nature. These are generic to anyone I understand, but when I categorize my own, I am kind of startled. This does require a little bit of sorting to be done.
I do not believe in curbing an instinct which is developed, but only to grow it out. While suppression is bad, transcendence positions itself as the apt solution.

My role models have all been exemplary examples of absolute dedication. After incorporating lot of their ideas into me, I am now attempting to emulate this essential aspect of theirs.

Corruption: The Opium of today's masses

2011-04-09T23:13:00.003+05:30

It has been overwhelming for the past four days here in India, with the Anti Corruption anguish of the people taking shape in the form of a nation wide Gandhian style hunger strike, protests,extensive discussions and substantial involvement of 'the common man' in India.

The Jan Lokpal bill which has been endorsed by the entire country ( well, at least the majority of them) as the solution against corruption, that has gotten deep rooted into the system was the driving cause for this national agitation . The Government now obliging to frame this bill which would include 50% of the committee ombudsmen from the civil society, while the other 50% as appointed by the Government, this team will be looking into the the nation's scams-convict the guilty and reclaim all the losses to the country in terms of revenue. Although the draft is in circulation, the final version will be drafted in some time, which will be looked into by the Union Law Minister, and the other ombudsmen: Most important of them being Anna Hazare, the social activist who was the nodal point and instigator of this ad-hoc (soft) revolution.

"Cynicism has now turned into optimism", said one news reporter.
True. 'A don't care attitude' to, 'We care' is a great improvement.

Lot of arguments have been flying between my friends and myself about the impact of this entire hysteria, which I am so tempted to call a 'Soft Revolution', (by the way, that's not the Free Soft Revolution I'm talking about); Soft as in fluffy. Well, I was and am in full support of this campaign against corruption, but when I observe people bluntly believing that this bill could eradicate corruption is I must say : absurd.

Corruption is a consequence, not the cause.
We are talking about corruption, which is the culmination of all the loopholes in the Democratic System in Independent India for 63 years. It is a ramification of multi-layered flaws in the governance of the country, and corruption is only the most visible manifestation of it. Trying to tackle only the most visible symptom is analogous to treating blood cancer by bleaching just the skin!

Old habits die hard
A bill like the Jan Lokpal, unless implemented and its pragmatism is not tested out, the hype around it is only an exaggeration. Unless the system is not restructured to avoid the voids which gestate corruption, bills such as this one might have impact, but not all the necessary impact.
Something is better than nothing, doesn't quite set well in this context.

Mass hysteria
The post caption reads "Corruption:The Opium of today's masses", and the statement is not a speculation, but articulation of the already witnessed manifestation. I have been part of a mass movement that raises its voice for multiple causes, and if there's one 'cause' which rings bells and pulls out people from their lousy lives to the streets is Corruption. Why only Corruption is a pretty much straight forward analysis, and hence it is the Opium.

My big concern through out this Anna Hazare week has been that people will settle after the Government agrees to draft the bill. People will go into hibernation, if not, will already feel that their national duty for their generation has been done and their quota of patriotism has been shown. My skepticism about this bill has been interpreted as cynicism, which I actually don't bother to distinguish about. What does matter is sustaining this urge to better the nation, not only by fighting for a bill, but to stand adamant and change the nation's will.

This is not the end people; Let this nationalism be a consistent one, and let it perpetuate; There's little that has been done, and there's lot more to do!

Eulogy to the resurgence of cricket

2011-04-03T23:20:00.001+05:30

When there's so much happening around for the last one day in India, and all of it being about cricket, the portion of a cricketer and a Cricket fan embedded in most Indians does seek some means of expression. For some the means of expression is an exaggerated display of admiration, and as I am intending to keep this post positive will save the abuse to that plethora of fanatics for a post in future.
I intend to express it by reminiscing about cricket in all my years until now.

Like all the kids who grow up in India, one childhood passion that clung on to me as well was to obsessively watch and play Cricket. The great tensions of watching a match and the intense ball by ball discussions in school over the next days went on until the 2003 World Cup.
At this point a personal anecdote about this particular match is worth to be put on record.
In 2003, I was studying in Class X and we had the board exams scheduled within a day after the final match between India and Australia. Until that match I had almost never missed a ball during any of the Indian cricket matches telecast on TV. But, as the world saw it, we lost in the most pathetic manner. An ardent cricket fan was disturbed: I decided not to watch any more cricket, 'wasting' 8-10 hours. And since then, I have never seen a cricket match in its entirety. Hadn't seen Cricket for more than a couple of hours continuously until this world cup, where I would watch the last 15-20 overs.
Off late, with all the fixes and patches, a sense of cynicism has reduced the extent of entertainment watching cricket used to give.

Talking about playing cricket, the spectrum of balls used for the games through years ranged from plastic ones to rubber, tennis balls, hand made cork balls and now to the proper cork/leather ones! For a small stint in school I was the Vice-Captain of my House cricket team, and we did win that year.
Apart from watching and playing, collecting trump cards ( had the cards of almost all players and knew most of their statistics by heart!), stickers stuck everywhere. My cousin was a big fan of Saeed Anwar and I am still a fan of Shahid Afridi. And between us, we used to have the tedious contests about these cricketers.
I still treasure the first bat I owned and played with ( it is about 12 years old) and today I enjoy playing cricket all the more, with my bettering bowling and tending towards betterment batting performance during my Company cricket practice sessions.

This World cup win by the Indian cricketers has had some influence on me (I am writing about it!). Not that I'd again endorse cricket as I used to ( I can't afford the time and ignorance).
Even after this performance by India, I might still not watch cricket, but have certainly found another individual to look up to in this process: MS Dhoni. Whether it is his genuine nature to stay calm and composed , or if he has inculcated it, in either case, I would certainly want to emulate him on those lines. Not because he's a superstar cricketer, but he has been consistently exhibiting it over a long period of his tenure as the leader.

Most of my eventful childhood memories has immense influence of cricket in it, like the many of you. The best time with my cousins, friends have all had the cricket moments to it. So, when people say cricket is more than a sport, I agree to the extent that it certainly is a nodal point in many of our lives, through which some intimate and exquisite moments pass through.

As a final thought, Cricket as a sport and not a corporate business is what I want it to be!
Congratulations to the Indian cricketers on their accomplishment.

Science: A religion for Life

2011-04-02T17:29:00.002+05:30

"When I call myself an atheist, it is not that I do not have a God to believe in, or a religion to piously follow:
Nature is my God,
Science is my religion...."

While clarifying my stand on religion and God to a certain sect of 'believers', who were unhappy to see me wear the tag of an Atheist, I happened to articulate the above statement.
It does encapsulate my 'faith system' clearly. Nevertheless, an elaboration of this statement was over due for sometime now. And in this post, I simply speak of my religion.

Why do people endorse and live by religions?
They need a system to provide comfort and solace; To seek and understand answers to the big questions of the Universe; A rulebook of sorts to help them lead their lives.
That is what religions are/were supposed to be doing. I shall not delve into analyzing how religions of believers has either succeeded or failed in this objective. I shall contain it to only the arguments for my religion:Science.

We humans are the niche results to have culminated until now in the race to evolution. We have accomplished something that none of the other species hitherto had even tried to, i.e, to curb the grand and ultimate arbitrator: Nature.
We are undoubtedly the first species to have successfully honed the forces of nature to favor our comfortable existence, although to a small, but substantial extent . This advantage humans exercised over nature,has been purely based on Science.
Now, the concept of hope and faith got imbibed into us and became aspects of our lives when we were less equipped to blend with the environments, mainly due to the lack of scientific advancements. To cling on to something because it is antique is, as ironic as it might seem, is also very absurd. Our forefathers weren't equipped with all the reasoning which comes to us as almost intuition.
All that was ignorance, is transpiring to become cognizance with the help of Science, and today we are privileged to inherit this cognizance as intuition.
When such is the case, Science has to be the most rational way of life.
Without hope, faith, illusions, delusions, Gods and Demons, our lives would be less intriguing and would certainly put us into positions of self responsibility. Science hands over the control of our lives back to us. On the other hand, popular faith based religions try to shift this responsibility to irrationality. If irrationality and irresponsibility is what someone seeks, faith based religions are what they'd endorse. Science presents us with the simple truth and sensible rationality, coupled with common sense and quintessential responsibility, with an extra topping of Math! Math, not being mandatory for the followers of this religion, the rest of it is what we need to inculcate 'to live simply and happily'.

Imagine the bliss one could regularly experience, when looking at the world with a paradigm endorsing 'verifiable reasons and convincing explanations' to all the small nuances and all the humongous wonders of nature. Isn't that the bliss which every religion entices its followers with? It would be the blessing unreachable by any other fictitious Deity or Godmen.
Further, the fruit of worshiping Science is Technology which helps us lead a life of ease, comfort and satisfaction.

Rationality is what each one of us should perpetually try to endorse and live by. To do this Science is the best religion.

The Priesthood of Science

Stop Farmer Suicides: Candle Light Vigil as a reaction

2011-03-27T00:21:00.005+05:30

Urbanites are individualists, who are complacent with their lives, engrossed in its sophistication. The widely accepted fact that they don't and wouldn't bother about the other sections of the society is almost true. But, when there is at least one genuine event, where you find around two hundred urbanites, varying from IT employees, students, researchers and academicians come out and take a stand for the cause of a totally different sector of people - The farmers and their troubles, I tell myself that the situation is not hopeless, and there is still a speck of hope.

The rally with slogans and placards

This point was manifested in today's Candle Light Vigil in Bangalore, which was organized by ITEC, AID India, Sugathi and a few other socially sensible groups, voicing on behalf of farmers, bringing up the issues of farmer and the anti-farmer policies endorsed by the Central and State Govt.

Inequality at its zenith!

As Senthil, one of the main organizers of this event rightly put, this was still only a 'reaction' to the recent suicides of the sericulture couple in a village near Malavalli. With this reaction as the start off point, it should culminate to become a People's Movement, where the supposedly "intellectual elite- the urbanites', take up the issues of other weaker sections of the society, work together with them and that would be the best fitting response to the peril of crisis in agriculture.

A whole gamut of the urban intellectual elite, for farmers

While the main objective of today's event was to project this issue in the bigger arena, for the media to capture, this is still a humble start. This objective was accomplished to a good extent, with the rally, sloganing, street play and the Candle Light Vigil giving the media some cud to chew upon, centered around the sensitive issue of relentlessly increasing farmer suicides in India.

The rally with slogans and march started off from Mysore Bank Circle to Town Hall ( about 1 km). The march was peaceful, with slogans and pamphlet distribution, grabbing the attention of the commuters. Once we were at the assembly point for today's event at the Town Hall, the display of all the profound slogans and facts on each of the placards made a strong statement as a whole.

An impact filled street play, accentuating the inequality and apathy shown to the weaker sections

After today's event one friend aptly said,
"Despite all the joys & happiness, it is often suffering that truly binds us and a means to draw inspiration & survival...."
We did see a lot of us show deep solidarity, bound by the concern towards Agriculture crisis in India.

To hear the details of the mishap from the father of the deceased was heart wrenching. His only request was to take care of his grand children, who are now orphaned without both their parents. He also mentioned the obvious flaws in the Govt Policies, which directly hamper the interests of the farmers.

With all the groups mentioning their various, but conforming views about the agriculture crisis, increasing farmer suicides and the apathy of the Govt, the next steps are being contemplated. As a first step, a visit to some of the affected villages to assess and understand the ground reality by a dedicated delegation will be happening over the second weekend of April.This will be crucial to come up with a framework, which will be able to lend our support in a more systematic manner to the farmers in need.

The Candle light vigil with apt songs

If any of you are interested to be part of this delegation, please write to one of us.
http://farmer-suicide-and-it.wikispaces.com/
http://www.itecentre.co.in/node/57

Let us remember that nothing is unchangeable; Most of the times change takes time. With our persistence and efforts we will leave behind a better future for the generations to come. We have had a start now, taking it forward with all our support and participation will take us closer to the goal.

Painting by Balaji Kutty, depicting the increasing suicides of farmers

Farmer suicides is Government sponsored murder!!!

United to Stop Farmer Sucides