The (f)utility of religion

When I turn on the news to stories of people committing unspeakable crimes in the name of religion, I wonder who is to blame - the people who preach and create religion or the people who blindly practise it? If religion narrows our mind to the extent that we believe in imaginary demons, then what is the purpose that religion serves? Isn't it counterproductive?

Religion is meant to provide us with the moral backing of faith. To liberate our minds as we go about our daily lives by giving us a sense of purpose and introducing an element of determinism to the endless randomness of life. At least that is how, I hope, the people who created religion envisioned it. But what it has turned into and achieved in modern times, is antithetical to its very founding principles. It has created hatred instead of love; violence instead of peace; dogmas instead of latitude.

Only recently, a shameful incident occurred which exposed the hollowness of religion, or at least of the manner in which it is interpreted and practised in most of the world. A woman in Saudi Arabia was raped by a group of men. Instead of pronouncing a stringent penalty for those who had committed this crime, the judicial system of that nation banished the woman and ordered that she receive lashes for 'meeting with a man who was not related to her by blood'. What is worse is that despite international pressure and outrage at the incident, the judiciary of Saudi Arabia refused to reverse its verdict. It instead cancelled the licence of the lawyer who was arguing the woman's case in court.

It was only yesterday that King Abdullah 'pardoned' the woman, although he did issue a simultaneous statement saying that this did NOT essentially mean that the judiciary was being unfair. Such fear does a religious order command even from an all-powerful monarch. All in the name of God.

A week earlier a Western woman in an African country(I think it was Ethiopia although I couldn't be sure) was sentenced to 40 lashes for allowing her junior school students to name a teddy bear 'Mohammed'. Most strong people would not survive 40 lashes.

Has religion constricted our minds and made us oblivious to all measure of reason and rationality? Does it serve the whim of any God to subject humans to this kind of torture. How can we as a civilized society allow such acts of extreme depravity to pass?

I believe that religion as an institution was initiated with a noble purpose in mind. But we never imagined that it would lead to misinterpretations of 'faith' that would lead us to much pain and suffering. It is organized religion that is to blame. I always believe that as long as religion is practised in person, it liberates. As soon as we allow religion to spill into the public domain by practising it collectively and ritualistically it assumes nuisance value. Unfortunately for us, religion has come to symbolize almost completely, its public form. Therein lies its futility.

Emotional Intelligence

The smartest guys in the room have been challenged. The book 'Emotional Intelligence' by Daniel Goleman claims that most of the success in our lives and the way we lead it is determined not by how smart we are as previously thought but by how emotionally intelligent we are. Over the course of the book, Goleman points to specific research as proof that EQ is more important than IQ. He shows how in a number of cases learning to master one's emotions can lead to social and professional success.

The second part of the book shows how most of our range of emotions develop when we are kids. It is these emotions that determine the way we shall interact socially for most of our lives. Goleman therefore warns of the need to emotionally educate young kids in order to ensure they have healthy emotional lives as adults.

The book goes on to show how a number of disorders that people suffer from originate in the mind and specifically how these problems are emotional in nature. Throughout the book Daniel Goleman also takes the pain to explain the biological basis for his arguments. He talks about specific regions in the human brain that are responsible for emotions and emotional surges. He describes the biological process that go on in our brains when we are angry and how depending on the the training that the brain has been subjected to in formative years these 'anger' reactions may either be controlled or spiral into outbursts.

It's an amazing book that can expose you to a completely different realm of thinking. It challenges a number of established beliefs in the field of medicine and also reasons all arguments scientifically. Great read!

Your contribution/opinion/work shall be valuable to us

It's a funny line this one... it holds no jot of truth of course, but bosses/HR managers/leaders across the globe will have you believe that it's gospel truth. Nothing could be farther from it. Having been part of the Placement Coordination committee at college, I had the chance to watch these HR/PR stunts acted out in first person. I noted that in every case, the person delivering such mean punchlines had only one objective: To dupe. And the beauty of it all that young techies fall for this baloney every year. I guess the whole motto of 'studying' HR is learning 10000 different ways of lying effectively to an employee/subordinate/potential recruit... Check this out:

HR Manager during a PPT(Pre-placement talk): "Our company hires only the best people."
After evading a hundred direct queries about the compensation: "Rest assured, our compensation is pegged to the industrial average."
Hmm... so while you have the smartest guys in the world working for you, by some whim of your sadistic management, you decide to pay them only an 'average' salary.... nice... I wonder why you guys aren't professional cons...would make a killing no?

Student during PPT: "Is there any bond we must sign before joining your company?"
HR Manager: "What bond? The only bond you have at [Company Name] is an emotional bond"
Fineprint on job offer-letter: "In the event that you wish to quit our organization, you shall be liable to repay us the entire amount spent on you during employee training programs"
Huh.. and you thought there was a bond? You dimwit!

These are just sample cases from a whole body of damning evidence against the ilk of HR managers... So maybe company PPT's on campus should henceforth come with statutory warnings(with the freaky skull, bones and all..) : "This session could be an insult to your intelligence"

Mumbai Salsa...bah

Timepass... had to do something for timepass.. it is in these exasperating moments that I end up watching these totally whacko movies... mumbai salsa was no exception... having watched veer das on the small screen as a budding stand up comedian, I seriously expected to watch a movie that would do justice to my sense of humour. Far from achieving any such feat, the movie left me gasping for fresh air with its boorish attempts at slapstick frivolity. For some reason, throughout the movie this group of guys kept repeating the colloqualism "khoofiyapanti"... a tongue-in-cheek substitution for chootiyapanti.. which going by the sudden spurt of unprudishness in hindi cinema language would have been quite okay to use in the first place...

But to be fair to the movie, there were interspersed ticklish moments like the times where the protagonist's body builder friend gives him some essential dating tips... apart from these occasional moments of relief the movie had a stifling storyline.. one with no artistic substance. If the movie was an attempt to ape the kind of new age cinema that keeps popping out these days.. the genre of mixed doubles, mumbai matinee and the like, then I must say it was a rather poorly conceived attempt.. now I'm not a movie critic or anything, but when someone wastes my time in the name of refreshing bollywood entertainment, i must cry foul. Let's totally not do the Mumbai Salsa..

Alone

It feels great. After a long time I'm alone again. Being alone is something that's really special to me. It's my way of unwinding and getting in touch with the deepest part of myself. It's almost like the fuel that drives me. It'd be fair to say that I'm at my best when I'm alone. That's when I'm listening to nothing else but that voice inside me. In the white noise of everyday interactions, this voice can easily get muffled. But the challenge that faces me is to never let myself forget the sound of that voice. To make myself long to hear it again. To understand what it's trying to say. To fathom the depths from which it draws its substance. And to allow it to reverberate within myself for just a little while before I'm not alone again.

Lessons in Survival Part 1: Keeping your mouth shut

As I've grown older I've realized that probably one of the most important things that you must do as someone who's looking to survive( I wouldn't use the word succeed because it's all relative if you know what I mean. One man's win is another man's loss and it wouldn't be totally incorrect to say that in the end when a tending to infinity amount of time or its philosophical equivalent has passed, there are no winners or losers, only survivors ) is to keep your mouth shut. Obviously the unwanted side-effect of that action is the typically maniacal cyber logorrhoea that you see on display here. But believe me, it's a small price to pay. The effects of not keeping your mouth shut have been made lucid rather painfully to those who have chosen to learn their lessons the harder way.

But wait a minute, you can't keep your mouth shut all the time can you? Of course not. That'd be too much to ask of a human who's over-accustomed to a hyper-vocal social stereotype. It's like they say: impossible. But what is "possible" is to keep selectively shut. What's that now? We've heard of selectively permeable, but what's this thing called keeping selectively shut? Well, it is as you might have guessed, keeping shut when you ought to and not keeping shut at other times if you so please. The natural follow-up query is most likely to be: How do I know when to do what? Well, the answer to that question, I'm afraid is not available tailor-made. It's something you've got to figure out yourself. Like most other things in life.

They say "Even a fish wouldn't get into trouble if he'd just keep his mouth shut." How wise do we think we are? Extrapolating these behavioral ideals in other creatures to human interactions? Aesop's Fables. Panchatantra. Wacky quotes like the one above... Well so what if it worked for some hapless moron of an animal? Why should it work for us humans? I really don't know. That's something you've got to figure out for yourself. Ah yes. Again.

There will be moments when you will be tempted. To speak. To let the words flow. It's the lure of the devil. Mephistopheles himself calls out to you: "Say it. Imagine how great it'll sound." It's up to you to decide against doing that. It's difficult to say no. But it's the only viable option. There's no telling how seriously fucked up your life can get if you say something you're not supposed to.

Speedbreaker for growth

Going forward, the biggest speed-breaker for growth globally is? Even kids would have a ready answer these days. Experts believe the unfortunate answer to that question is the price of oil. I believe there's more to our difficulty than just the price of oil. If it was only energy that needed to be replaced quickly, our problem would have been far simpler. But it's more complicated than that. The average human often fails to comprehend how dependent we have become on oil as a resource - and not just as an energy resource, but something that affects every aspect of our lives.

Let me throw some light here on just one of those many aspects: Food. The natural reaction to this might be: "Food?? How is food related to oil?" The unfortunate and stark truth is that something as fundamental to human existence as food is also seeped in oil. To understand how, just put this in perspective: The world's population has increased manifold over the last 50 odd years while the number of people who grow food for the world has kept on decreasing. As we have grown more complex as a civilization, our occupations have made a marked shift from those that are engaged in providing subsistence to those that are engaged in providing peripheral services, comforts and luxuries. Look around you. How many people you know are engaged in something that can be described as absolutely essential and fundamental to human existence? You'd be hard put to find even 2. That's the point. If less and less people are growing more and more food for more and more people, how are they doing it?

Surely it isn't a miracle. Modern science has done well to distinguish itself from metaphysics and so we have rational answers to almost every question that troubles us today. The way we answer those questions and the long-term effects that has on us as a people, is surely a matter that has attracted far less thought and deliberation than it ought to have. The answer to this particular problem of ours, though, has been rather cliched in scientific terms. Oil.

Oil has been an answer to almost every question that has faced the human race over the last five decades. How do we zip across the globe at supersonic velocities? Oil. How do we substitute metals for building faster and cheaper structures? Oil.( most plastics are derived from oil ) How do we provide energy for more and more people's daily activities? Burn more oil to generate more electricity. How do we feed more people with minimum effort? Oil.

When the second world war ended, man found himself equipped with a technology that promised to revolutionize agriculture and hence the world's food industry. Fertilizers. What rose out of the left-overs for the manufacture of chemical weapons in the second world war, was quickly utilized for making our crops grow faster. Nitrogen, which was earlier fixed by bacteria in the soil was now fixed with the help of fertilizers. Few people reflect on the rather obvious fact that all fertilizers are made from petroleum.

As more and more people burden the earth every day, we rely on fertilizers to grow the food that feeds them. There is no component of the industrial food chain today(almost all of us today depend on the industrial food chain; a minuscule fraction of the world's population grows its food naturally) that is untouched by petroleum. Our foods have come to include more and more artificial substitutes. These artificial components are invariably derived from petroleum.

If oil is a scarce resource today, it implies that we will now find it more and more difficult to grow our food. Something that we take for granted today, may become a disaster of epic proportions for us tomorrow. If we didn't come up with an alternative to the petroleum dependent industrial food chain today, it may just come to a grinding halt if we were to run out of oil tomorrow.

This shows us just how intricately petroleum has woven itself into our lives. We have become a species that subsists on oil. The level of human dependence on oil today is probably unfathomable. The sooner we invest in alternate technologies for every area that is petroleum-dependent, the better equipped for an uncertain future we shall be.

National Shame

The entire nation was put to shame today as a spineless Prime Minister informed the American establishment of his incompetence in getting the 1-2-3 Nuclear Agreement Ratified in this country. It was a rather odd moment in international diplomacy. The most powerful nation in the world makes unprecedented concessions for an emerging powerhouse of a country and months later the reply is : "Oops, we're not yet ready!"

The next natural question that the world would be asking India is: "If you weren't ready for this, why did you ask for it in the first place?" I mean how many times does a cowboy president take personal interest in international relations and oversees the ratification of a pact by congress personally? If there ever was a deal served on a platter in the international diplomatic arena, this was it. It was the ultimate case of indulgent spoon-feeding. Only this time the kid wasn't ready.

There would be a number of nations sniggering behind curtains at India's faux pas. China and Pakistan would be leading this gang. If there's anyone who stands to gain through India's blunder, it's them. China would have gauged the impact on the Indian economy for not being able to secure a cheap source of energy for the future. Pakistan- well, they're happy for the smallest of Indian failures; this one would have called for a party.

I have always been critical of the left. My cynicism has been proved correct. They are the real enemies of this nation- megalomaniacs living in the eighteenth century, who believe in defeatist policies and paleolithic ideals. The left in India has always aped the communists of other nations. It's only deliciously ironic though that the very communist nations that the Indian leftists are aping have discarded these policies as old-fashioned. Both China and Russia have moved on to embrace market economies, having relinquished significant state control over markets.

The left in India is a typical case of power without responsibility. The Left is cocky enough to hold the government to ransom over crucial issues, but they're not virile enough to participate in the government and be held accountable for their actions. They've been eating their cake and having it. And the government of India has been fatuous enough to grant them their tantrums.

The only face-saver though is the gesture on the part of the US, acknowledging the refusal of the deal as an act of political compulsion on behalf of India. They still hope that the deal will be pushed through next year. It's time to get back to work and put our own house in order before demanding nuclear supplies again.

GRE in retrospect: The do's and don'ts

Having received guidance from countless people in my run up to the GRE, I feel obliged to return the favor.

If I were to summarize my advice for GRE prep in one line, I would say: "Keep it simple."

To elaborate on that, here's a step by step approach(I'm assuming you've already registered for the test, otherwise that would be Step 1) Maybe it'll sound cliche'd, but then most things in life do...

1. Buy a copy of Barron's
2. Take the diagnostic test at the beginning of the book. Know where you stand. At this point, also target a particular score.
3. Begin working on the word list. There are umpteen ways to go about this. I started with 'Z' and worked backwards, but that was only a whim.. some people choose to go about it randomly, some start with A... whatever suits you..
4. As you work through the word list, mark the words you didn't know. On further revisions, these are the words you must go through. Doing this ensured that I never went through all 3500 words on my revisions, just the words I didn't know.
5. Revise your word list once.
6. Go about solving the practice exercises on Antonyms, RC's and Sentence Completion( not necessarily in that order)
7. In case you're weak in Quant, go through the Math Review and exercises. I didn't and got an 800, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't.
8. Take PowerPrep Test 1
9. If you've achieved the score you'd targeted in the beginning, nothing like it... else you've gotta get back to work.
10. Revise your word list and practice verbal exercises from other sources( I would suggest The Princeton Review)
11. Around 2-3 days before your GRE take PowerPrep Test 2.
12. Relax

The Don'ts:
1. Don't lay your hands on too many prep sources at the same time. Go about it systematically. In my view, Barron's and PowerPrep were more than enough. Once you're done with these, you may go on and practice from other sources

2. Don't not take your PowerPrep seriously. Simulate exam conditions when you're taking it.
3. Don't panic with your word lists. They take time but that's the way it is with everyone.
4. Don't try to double guess on any question. Mark the option that you think is right.

Where the hell was Abhishek Sahoo?

"I can explain this"- Very familiar excuse. And mine today. I can explain my absence! Was too busy to blog(if there exists such a thing i.e.) - first exams, then GRE and TOEFL( I know.. they're exams too)... But don't worry, I'll make it up.. to don't know who and with I don't know what, but I will all the same.

So much for excuses and alibis.. onwards to renewed blogging ..

Expressions

It's amazing how we communicate without words. Myriads of languages and zillions of dialects. But somehow we manage to express ourselves. With gestures. With our faces. With our eyes. With that elusive smile. And that disapproving frown.

Some of us are more expressive than the others. There are some people like me, who are absolutely incapable from hiding an emotion by keeping it off our faces. There are others who have visages of stone--people whose minds you can never read just because they never so much as betray a single emotion. And there are yet others who switch between these states of extreme expressiveness and extreme phelgmatism.

If you go about observing the expressions of people you can learn a lot. The world is your classroom. This is one area where you can never stop experimenting and also one where it's so difficult to propound a definite theory. Every man on the street and every child in the park is your subject. See if you can fathom their expressions. If you are so sensitive as to gauge the ongoings of people's minds, you're a true wizard.

There are billions of people. And trillions of expressions flash across their faces every minute. How do you make sense of it all? Just go about guessing what each person is thinking? How can you be sure that two different people use the same expression for the same emotion? Maybe they mean to convey entirely different messages. Reading expressions then, is an unempirical science. Or maybe it's not science in the first place. Maybe it's an art. And a difficult one to master at that.

Handling People

As a member of the placement co-ordination committee, one of the primary functions that I must perform involves handling people. All kinds of them. The students, the visiting executives from companies, my colleagues in the committee and scores of others that are directly and indirectly party to the process. It truly is an exercise in crisis management. In the sense that not only is one expected to manoeuvre through crises that crop up, but take pre-emptive and preventive action against ones that we cannot afford.

People drive the placement procedure. Across the globe, as organizations look to hire talent, they design strategies to get the best people to work for them. The Placement Co-ordination office is the singular point-of-contact between the recruiters and their prospective employees. There's people involved on both sides and when you're the medium of exchange, you'd better be good at handling them.

An oft-repeated but seldom comprehended fact is that no two individuals are the same. As a natural consequence of this, you certainly can't hope to have a single interaction strategy for everyone. It is something that must be done on a case-by-case basis, which is what makes the task all the more exciting, albeit challenging. To add to that you must multi-task. You are constrained for time and resources and yet you must employ both equitably to achieve an optimum level of satisfaction for both the students and the companies.

Right since the time I entered junior school, my father has impressed upon me the importance of judging people. If you're able to judge an individual accurately within a narrow margin of error, on first impression, more than half your job is done. When you begin to appreciate what a person needs and how he may behave in a given situation, you have the advantage. This is when you know you can handle the man. After all most people are predictable. When you've identified and accounted for definite patterns in their behaviour, you're in the zone.

As most of the important things in life, people management is a never-ending lesson that must be updated on a continuous and regular basis. In the dynamic world that we live in, change is the only constant. Situations change and as a natural sympathetic reaction, people change. As a sincere learner one must adapt to and embrace change.

If I must point out the single most important thing I've learnt during the past week, it's got to be the imortance of the smile. Cliched as it sounds, the smile is one of the most potent weapons at one's disposal. It's a weapon of mass placation. Someone once rightly said, "I thought I'd never make it through the tough times. Then you smiled, and I smiled.... and all the rest was easy"

The power of the individual

It periodically strikes me how much an individual can achieve. The power of one. They say the Pareto Principle applies equally well to humans. 20% humans do 80% of the work that needs to be done. What this essentially means is that there are certain driven individuals who move the human race forward. They are the ones who carry on their shoulders the burden of the laggards, the second-raters and parasites who feed on the achievements and contributions of those who achieve the tangibles.

Milton was of the opinion that they also serve who only stand and wait. If nothing, the non-performers only increase economic consumption in cases where they are rewarded for gross incompetence which is either unrecognized or intentionally ignored. The fact remains that it is the individual that drives the community, the nation and the globe. These are the giants that tower above the rest and achieve much more in a matter of days than some people would in their lifetimes.

Such is the power of the individual, the monstrosity of human capability. If the inspired individual sets his sights on the goal and unflinchingly advances towards the consummation of his efforts, the world must move aside as for a man whose time has come. You see such people all the time. They are islands of excellence in their respective fields. The ones that stand out as near-perfect. The invincible Sultans of their trades, the ones who never say die and maintain a constancy of purpose that may get scary for the average underachiever.

As individuals we are all answerable to ourselves. No self-respecting human would err to believe that he can live his life vicariously through the praise and deification received from another. If he does, he lives in the proverbial fool's paradise and must needs be jolted out of a dangerous and rancid inertia.

They say we do not utilize more than 10% of the capacity of the human brain. Great ones are the few and far between souls who strive to constantly utilize the complex entity that the mind is. The ones that do, the ones that attempt to remain truthful to themselves in effort and thought are the ones who reach the pinnacles of our world. It's lonely up there, but company would mar that special feeling anyway.

Uncertainty

As imperfect beings living in an imperfect world, all of us face uncertainty. The degree of uncertainty faced by individuals has a large variation in magnitude. But no one escapes the Heisenberg rule. Some of us do our best to attain a state where the uncertainty in life is minimized, but it's never diminutive enough to be neglected. What this essentially means that
there are things which happen to us through our lives which we cannot hope to control. And there are even more such events which we can never never anticipate. The unknown component. Things you cannot predict.

All this implies that there are parts of our lives which we cannot control as hard as we may try to. That there are parts of us which are governed, albeit to a minimal extent, by the acts of other individuals or the nature of circumstances. To some, this uncertainty is acceptable, and there are still others who cannot stand it. These are the souls who cannot come to terms with the fact that there are some things which are beyond the control of the majestic beings that humans are. It's simply too hard and degrading for humans to learn that things are beyond control. Is their anxiety justified? Or are these people just too irked by the insignificant?

The larger question that emerges from this seemingly vague conception is: How do humans deal with uncertainty? Is it ok to worry about the future? To try and predict the outcomes of events which depend on factors other than individual endeavour?
This is a question that I think I must answer as I learn while I move through life. Is uncertainty something to be left unto itself or is it something worth processing in the human brain?

The Shawshank Redemption

One of my all-time favorite movies is The Shawshank Redemption. I love the way the movie sends a strong message about something that's really important-hope. Hope is the central theme of the movie's story. The lead character Andrew Dufresne, played by the brilliant Tim Robbins, is the epitome of the same. He is falsely convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover. He is sentenced to serve a life term at Shawshank Prison and faces the ugly face of reality once inside.

Andrew Dufresne is a qualified banker and runs a few financial errands for the staff of Shawshank that earns him respect and approval in a place and situation fit to drive an innocent man mad. Throughout the movie, the audience is kept on the edge of the sofa by the brilliant narrative of the inimitable Morgan Freeman who plays 'Red'. Halfway through the movie, Andy discovers that there is one man who can prove him innocent. What ensues from this point onwards and the spirit with which Andy faces it, is best left to the movie to narrate.

To me, the message that the movie seeks to convey is profound in its simplicity. Hope is what makes the world go round. We all hope for a better tomorrow. A good life. That's what motivates us. The question is, faced with dire circumstances and difficult times, are we gullible enough to lose this hope. Or are we strong enough in spirit to fight it out to see the light of a better tomorrow? If hope is what we let die inside of us, betrayed by destiny and challenged by fate, then what is it that we live for? Is it order? Or routine( as signified by the drab monotony of prison or parole life) ?

There are, as the movie goes on to say, people.....individuals who are like birds whose feathers are so bright that you know it was a sin to lock them up in the first place. You know it's for the better that they are gone and free, but the place you live in is all the more empty and devoid of life now that they're not around. It's a tribute to the strength and resilience of the human spirit that does not bend or break when put to the test. The Shawshank Redemption is a legend in its own right.

Short term memory

One of the greatest flaws of human nature is short term memory, both voluntary and involuntary. What is voluntary short term memory? It's the short term memory we cause oursleves to suffer by imposing it on ourselves sub-consciously. Involuntary short term memory, by that definition then, is something really rare, because you really forget something because, deep down somewhere you actually wanted to forget it. Not in a way that may seem obvious to you or others, but unconscious to even yourself.

Voluntary short term memory is also a case of not being able to get yourself to want to remember something badly enough. Because, again, deep down inside you may not want to. It's a question of tendencies then. If you're able to fight the tendency to relegate any part of your memory to the short-term component, you'll never forget it. But it's not easy. Because if you're able to fight the natural tendencies that have set into your system with uncanny regularity and ease, you're super-human and you'll, as a rule, be super-successful.

Bad experiences and mistakes are almost always relegated to short term memory. Why? Shouldn't we want ourselves to keep that in long-term memory so that one can reflect upon these in order to prevent repetition of the same? The question really is how badly you want yourself to not repeat that mistake? Individuals who are hellbent upon learning from mistakes and bad experiences make sure at all costs that these are ingrained in their long term memories. Others who don't have a desire to do so that's strong enough are doomed to repeat these unpleasant unwanted mistakes.

Truly successful and great people never repeat mistakes, not only because they recognize their follies and admit the same, but also because they have these experiences and adjunct lessons engraved in red letters on their brains. Short term memory is more dangerous than we shall have ourselves believe. 50 first dates was romantic enough, but that's the stuff movies are made of. You're never supposed to try it at home anyway.

Maintaining Objectivity

As I 'grow up' I realize that one of the most important things that an individual must learn to do as a mature, discerning adult is to mainatain objectivity. It sounds real easy when I say it like that, but believe me it's as complicated as getting yourself to use one part of your brain over the other. By default, emotions tend to predominate. But then again, could it not be argued that in certain situations, one must let emotions guide us? Well, maybe. But the empirical rule seems to be( at least for me): think hard and think objectively.


Thinking rationally is a talent. It's something that may not come naturally to most people. Not that people don't have the inherent ability. It's a matter of practice....and tendencies. Some people take 'gut decisions' so often that the rational thinking component of their brains has been suppressed into perennial dormancy. Consequently, they may find it difficult to summon that faculty at will. Everything takes practice. So does objectivity.

So can you maintain objectivity in say interpersonal relationships? I couldn't say for sure. I need to practice harder to find out. But having learnt what I have, I shall go ahead and claim that objective thinking has its upsides everywhere. I'll stick my head out and proclaim that on a personal level I have benefited greatly at times by keeping it 'objective', by checking knee-jerk emotional responses to difficult situations. Maybe, just maybe, I haven't yet encountered a large enough sample space of situations to generalize just yet. But then so far so good. Keep it simple.

'Dam'med if you do, damned if you don't

I recently watched a news programme on TV that sought to convey the plight of those who are about to lose their homes, thanks to dam-building activity on the Narmada river. The journalist intervewed a number of residents of a certain temple-town that was about to get submerged once an adjacent, recently built dam became operational. The town was seeped in tradition. Deeply religious, with a number of temple-ghats on the banks of the Narmada river, in the remote hinterlands of Madhya Pradesh, it seemed the perfect poster-boy for the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

The plight of the residents was bemourned by a local author who blamed the corporation that had constructed the dam, for the mess that they'd been making in the town. As a gesture of goodwill, the corporation had tried to contribute to the local community by restoring a section of the crumbling ghat-temples. What displeased the author-historian is the manner in which the restoration work was carried out. He claimed that since the corporation was into the hospitality industry, all they knew was building hotel lobbies and that is exactly what,he said, they had renovated the temples into: glorified hotel lobbies.

There were people in the town who were afraid that the local heritage was disappearing into oblivion thanks to dam-building and token temple renovations that did more to obliterate local tradition than restore it. There were a group of nomadic-weavers who complained that they couldn't receive any compensation from the government like other residents had, because they had no permanent dwellings. They depended entirely on the local economy which was about to vanish thanks to the dam devouring the town. Everyone who depended on the erstwhile local economy should receive compensation, they said. A local boatman who ferried on the waters of the un-harnessed river supported the argument.

All through the programme, the construction company that built the dam and the state government came across as villains....terminating the life of a heritage town and depriving people of their livelihood. And the same case is made at every town that's part of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Now, as an uninvolved, yet concerned outsider, I often find myself asking questions as to which is more important: allowing locals to live their lives in harmony and tradition or providing power and irrigation to the millions of rain-dependent farmers of the country? Can a balance be striked? Or is this an impossibly one-sided situation where you're either for one side or against it...no middle grounds and sitting on the fence?

Can India move forward without sacrificing local closed economies and traditions on the altar of economic and infrastructural growth? It's a question that haunts me very often. One that I have no answers to. After the news programme ended,the channel aired an advertisement for the same construction company.

Dear Abhishek

Dear Abhishek Sahoo,

Here's wishing you a very happy birthday. Have fun. Enjoy yourself. And as you move through the rest of the day, do reflect on the fact that this may well be a milestone in your life. A landmark and a crossroad which can take you one way or next.

You're about to graduate in a year. Soon you'll be able to find out what course the next few years of your life will take. Whichever path you choose and whatever decisions you make in life, carry some advice from me. Be Brave. Have the courage to stand up for what you believe. And never do things by half measures. Setbacks are part of normal existence. What's the fun in an unchallenged life?

And in case you falter through these years, glance back at these Ten Commandments of Living.

1. Thou shalt work hard. Effort shall see you through
2. Thou shalt keep thy eyes and ears open. Remain altert lest thou get juggernauted by competition.

3. Thou shalt respect people. There's something to learn from everyone.
4. Thou shalt have faith. In thy abilities. In the certainty that nothing bad can last forever.
5. Thou shalt work smart. I shalt say no more.
6. Thou shalt remain happy. That's the purpose of everything.
7. Thou shalt think straight. Keep it simple.
8. Thou shalt speak less. And listen more.
9. Thou shalt practice what thou hast learnt. It makes perfect.
10. Thou shalt remain responsible and steadfast to thy word.Lest the world take you less seriously.


Follow this code by the skin of thy teeth and victory shalt be yours my boy.
Happy birthday.

The politician's call, not the people's

They say people are the central theme in a democracy. I say that's all hogwash. It's a big illusion that politicians create mate. And the sooner you realize that you don't run things after all, the better for you. I mean who cares if the people really want President Kalam for a second term?
It's not your call is it? It's what the politicians say that matters. After all you elected those bunch of jokers out there( or did you? )

President Kalam was the first people's president of the country. But does that matter to Sonia Gandhi? She just needs someone who must kowtow to her every demand. In Pratibha Patil she finds the perfect cronie who will not oppose a single political move of hers. It's all a matter of convenience...why should the people come into the picture?

Democracy in India, is for the most part, a farce. The Prime Minister of the country has no real powers. A great man, who was once the stalwart of economic reforms and started the country on the road to progress must today denounce corporate pay packages to appease his narrow-minded electorate. If this is not the real death of a nation, what is?

I completely agreed with Swaminathan Aiyar when he lashed out against Dr. Manmohan Singh in his editorial page column in STOI for having discouraged corporate lifestyles, without first putting his own house in order. Who doesn't know that the real problem in this country is not in corporate governance but in political governance?

And when after ages you get a President with a backbone, that doesn't go down too well with the politicians of this country. I mean seriously dude...why do you think you get to choose? It's not Rising India or Shining India or Mera India after all.....it's Neta's India.

Prayer for the hopeless

God, Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I cannot accept....and the wisdom to know the difference.

Can't buy me gas

Listen to Gore

I don't think it's cool to rubbish global warming as mass-scientific-community-paranoia anymore. It's for real. This much seems obvious to all beyond doubt. Now that this question seems unimportant and not worth arguing on, we must now all move on to asking each other the next inescapable question: When are we going to do something about it?

All efforts so far to get all nations to develop a consensus on how and when to tackle the problem have failed. Why's that? Because Economics comes over Environment. The developing nations claim that if the developed nations led by the US which are the major contributors to this problem refuse to take action, then why should we? After all China and India( they say ) have a right to pollute the world while moving into the big league of the super rich.

The blame game never ends on the big stage. No one refuses to back down for fear of being mistaken as weak by domestic audiences. But what nations do not seem to realize is that they hurt their domestic populace even more by sidelining the issue of Global Warming and delaying action taken.

It seems more and more evident in the present global scenario that for absolutely anything substantial to get done, action needs to be taken at the micro level. At the so called grassroots. No longer does the real power to make things happen lie with the bureaucratic government machinery of our large, inefficient governments. It's people power. The story of people power has been made possible by technology. Cheap technology has delivered power into the hands of the common man in every nation like never before.

As a rule therefore, what must be done, must be entrusted to the masses, not the leaders. There are exceptions like Al Gore who have the gut to talk about the real issues in spite of ignorant domestic masses rooting for fuel-guzzling SUV's and powerful industrial lobbies hollering for the status quo to escape spending a few bucks. But the average politician is out to score brownie points with those who have so brazenly rubbished the Global Warming theory.

Geekiness

Work and Play

Long ago I read an excerpt from Mark Twain's book, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It was titled 'Whitewashing the Fence'. From what I remember of this narrative, the protagonist, Tom Sawyer is given the task of whitewashing his fence. To make matters worse, as Tom sits down to do the needful, his friends come traipsing along, having all sorts of fun.

What follows in the story is an amazing dispay of Tom's socio-emotional dexterity. He convinces his friends that whitewashing the fence is 'play'. Even more play than what they were doing. They are manipulated by him, without their knowledge, into whitewashing the fence and thinking that it's 'play'.

The lesson the reader is to take home from this episode is the looseness of the definition of 'Work' and 'Play'. There's a really thin line that divides the two. One that exists only in the minds of people. When we talk about loving what we do, we probably mean that when you fudge that line dividing work and play you invariably do better.

Work is by compulsion. Play is by volition. When we decide to do something because we genuinely get the inner urge to do it, we tend to do it better. But work is after all what we consider mundane and tiring.

So how do you mix work and play? How do you take something boring and make it deliciously interesting and fun? I guess it can only be achieved by taking control of that elusive, ever-distracted entity called the mind.

Mediocrity

I always believe that what is rampant in the world in any realm is what exists betweent the black and the white. When it comes to competence this fuzziness is best described by mediocrity. What you'll see in the world around you in great abundance is not excellence or gross ineptitude, it's mediocrity.

For those who choose to be perfect, excellence is a way of life. And for the dull-witted, idiocy is the norm. It's the mediocres who are stuck in the middle of nowhere, deciding to leave a stamp of mediocrity on every piece of their works. It's like a handicap. A disability of habit.

We probably don't realize it but the world is driven by the top 1-2%. And it's also pulled down by the bottom 1-2%. The rest contribute to global warming.

I know for a fact that mediocrity is the worst kind of disease. Most of us suffer from it in one form or another. And while there still are people who can remain committed to excellence in some walks of their lives, they are only mediocre at others.

So what's the cure? Gas people as Hitler did and raise the overall excellence level of humanity? Probably not. After all we have moral and ethical constraints. And then there's that odd piece of shit called reality. Which screams loudly into all our ears reminding us how we are all mediocre but arrogant.

The prism of the mind

All of us think differently. There are no two individuals on this planet who think alike in every respect. At least that's what identity is said to be about. So what constitutes identity? When we speak of an identity that stems from the mind we must understand that this is something that's completely different in the sense that it's transient. We have constantly changing thoughts and beliefs and hence our mental identities are as ephemeral as our ever-mutating cerebrations.

What we think changes everything. The way the mind processes information about the world influences our lives more than anything else. Every individual's mind is like aunique prism. One that takes thoughts, feelings, events, information and virtually everything else and processes it for making sense of it all. But 'sense' is variously defined for everyone. That's because we see things differently.

To broadly categorize schools of thought( believe me a broad categorization is blsaphemy...a meek understatement for something so profound)....there are those who think positive and those who think negative. The proverbial optimists and the doomsday cult. And there are the multifarious shades of grey between the black and the white.

To those who think positive, life has a definite pattern.....everything follows a rule....a rule that nothing goes wrong...usually that is. And for their negative thinking counterparts with a negative psychic prism...nothing can go right....not even occasionally.

The prism of the mind does amazing things to all of us. It holds us prisoner of our own thought process. What becomes a set pattern in the mind becomes very difficult to change. It may seem remarkable then that the world is many different places at the same time simply because we see it so differently. Through the prism of the human mind, reality is suddenly a variable. But the view is great.Right?

Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi

Hazaaron Khwaahishen aisii ki har Khwahish pe dum nikale
bahut nikale mere armaa lekin phir bhii kam nikale



All I want is everything. Desires. They seem to have no beginning nor end in space, time or space-time. It's like a continuous cycle of unlimited demand that worldly supplies can never keep pace with. What I want today, I get for myself tomorrow and what I get tomorrow leads me to yearn for something new and beautiful which kills me not to have.

That's the absurdity of desire. Of that insatiable lust of the human mind for more and more. Success, happiness, love, fame, wealth, health..... no wonder Bruce Almighty couldn't catch up with people's spam prayer-mails. It's an inexhaustible, ever-expanding, all-encompassing monster of a emotion, is desire.

So is desire evil? Is it an agent, an instrument of the anti-christ? The very lure of the devil's apple? Maybe. But to find out the answer to that question you'll have to fall prey to desire. That's probably the only way of finding out what lies beyond. It's the passion of desire that pushes the human race forward into inexorable progress. Hazaron Khwahishen- a thousand desires are the cornerstones of our quest for a better tomorrow.

Romancing the unromantic

How do you take something as unromantic, drab and boring as steel-making and try to make it look even remotely fascinating? That's the answer that I've been looking for over the last two weeks.....without any success. It's just so in-the-face dismal and depressing.

But.....it has to be done nonetheless and the fact of the matter is that people are making fortunes making steel. Mr. Mittal has made himself the third richest man in the world and the richest man in Britain thanks to steel. Steel drives the global economy like no other raw material does and for decades on end, a nation's steel consumption has come to indicate it's level of development and pace of growth.

So unless you look at the ends, the means shall carry no appeal. If you think of steel-making as an essential, indispensable part of industrialization and technology and then look to make better steel for better industrial applications, only then do you stand a remote chance of romancing the unromantic! It's all about the big picture baby.

Six degrees of separation

To get you started on the six degrees of separation, I'll quote Wikipedia: "Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that, if a person is one "step" away from each person he or she knows and two "steps" away from each person who is known by one of the people he or she knows, then everyone is no more than six "steps" away from each person on Earth."

Amazing isn't it? Just the thought that there are no more than six people between you and.....well, George W. Bush, Julia Roberts or even Fidel Castro! That's how small the world has gotten. And it's no news that it's getting even smaller. So what are the factors that are literally challenging the expansiveness of the globe? I personally postulate that online social networks are one of the most significant shrinkers of the world today.

It's an analogy to globalisation. Thomas Friedman theorizes that globalisation is a flattening force, in the sense that it's making our world "flat" and giving us a level playing field in a global economy. Well, I hypothesize that our world is getting smaller and the degrees of separation between individuals are successively diminishing. Thanks to the Orkuts, Facebooks and scores of other burgeoning social networks on the world wide web.

People across various cultural and social fraternities are getting to know others way beyond the limits of their geographies and demographies. And online social networking is makng it possible. Think about it. You now know about 400 different people from 30 different countries who share the same birthday as yourself. You can now connect with individuals who share with you an obscure passion or an esoteric hobby or a vague fear. And the fact that you know them brings you a "step" closer to the acquaintances of these people, two steps closer to the acquaintances of their acquaintances and so forth. That's phenomenal if you grasp the immensity of the idea.

So what's next? One degree of separation? Maybe. But there are other natural and artificial forces which tend to subvert or neutralize the "shrinking world" phenomenon, the effects of which are trivial, yet not negligible. Population explosion for one is a disrupting factor. When there are so many people entering the world every day, you tend to fall behind on the shrinking ;) Then there's death. If an important link in your chain of global acquaintances passes away, you've lost a large chunk of contacts!

Upsetting tendencies apart, the "shrinking world phenomenon" has gathered a tremendous amount of momentum for any force to able to reverse it in the near future. I see the world as a place that'll be much smaller for me tomorrow than it'll be today. Literally.

Gaining perspective on commerce

It was an unlikely Eureka moment for me today, after my first visit to Tata Steel. Watching Steel being prepared from scratch and following the lifecycle of a bar of steel was eye-opening to say the least. Steel is a primary mover of industrial growth for any nation. Name an application and chances are steel was used in the making either directly or indirectly.

So I've been wondering....steel is a raw material that's used to produce other goods. And what are these products? To name a few.... automobiles, machine parts, pipes, air-conditioners, construction materials.... the list is literally endless. Now, it's not difficult to see that among the consumers of these articles are industries and among industries....well, steel plants themselves.

So steel plants use a lot of steel ; in the form of finished products that required the use of steel as a raw material in the first place! For eg. employees in steel plants use vehicles--which are made of steel (among other materials)...... the steel making process involves the use of heavy machinery, piping and construction equipment....all of which involve the use of steel.

It' a viruous cycle. People live in townships, cities, villages......all settlements are based upon the use of a large number and variety of goods. And if you observe carefully, all we're doing as a "global civilization" is fulfilling each others' endless needs. What this essentially means is that we're indirectly engaging in...barter!

So millennia have flown by but the cornerstone of commerce, the very founding principles, reasons and motives of trade continue to remain the same. You make me some steel, I'll use it to make you a car that'll help you to commute to your steel plant, Mr. X in the next city will take care of garment manufacturing, Mr. Y will grow us some food, while Mr. Z will build all of our homes....

That's how complicated trade is. One significant change in the nature of trade since its inception is the fact that services have probably dominated products in importance over the last century. After all our needs stretch beyond the material. So where does trade and commerce go from here and what role does steel have to play in the journey? I guess we'll have to wait to find out...

Surprise! It's not about you!!

I was going through Paul Graham's blog a couple of days ago and I came across an idea that I found really interesting. I obviously hadn't realized this myself before and now that I do, I really think it has changed my perspective about..well, a lot of things..

Now, the argument put forward is that most selections or judgments about you...are...umm...not about you. What this means is that most choices that people make in selecting other people in various realms of life are impersonal. Paul Graham vividly illustrates this by an example: A selector picking a football team( assuming it's from a group of non-celebrities) wouldn't quite care about who got picked and who got left out as long as he thinks that he did a good overall job with the team... i.e. margins for error are accounted for by the quality of the median.

Now if only one were to realize this, you may start to see that a lot of selections or omissions that you're involved in, which you thought were either fair or unfair.....well, they weren't about you anyway.....the person doing the selections was more concerned if he did his job well on the average.....so if you're not getting picked on a team and the average team member turns out to be good....chances are there's no use thinking the selector was unfair because he wasn't judging you personally anyway.....

Lessons to be learned? Well, for one....relax....take it easy....the world is not out to get you....for all you know...most of the time it's not even about you....and on a positive note....maybe you need to work even harder now that you know that the individual selecting you is probably not going to make too much of an effort checking up on your case.....

Well....there it is...take it as you please...but yeah...it's not about you!

Intel Inside!

Funny bone moment of the semester!

My friend's new "Dual Core" notebook seems to be in deep shit.....This is what another friend had to say about it:

"U See, the problem with having 2 processors( Dual Core!) is that each processor thinks the other will work and neither does!"

Now I'm not too much of a Mu-P guy, but really....is this what they mean by Intel Inside?? lol!!

Some of the best feelings in the world

It's like that sublime emotion. That feeling which comes and stays but for a fleeting moment and leaves you mesmerized and longing for more. It happens when you're least expecting it. May not coincide with the greatest achievements in your life. But when it appears for that evanescent instance nonetheless, it leaves you feeling like you're on top of the world and life couldn't be better.

It's often very hard to equate these feelings with material pleasure. You can't buy that emotion for the world. Some of these feelings may just come from doing something that you wouldn't usually do.

Ever woken up at the end of the night to see the moon shining its full glory, even as daylight edges in stealthily? It's the diurnal inflexion point of sorts. A time when it's neither this nor that, and yet there's both. And even as you watch on, daylight creeps in adamantly, forcing the majestic moon to surrender in subjugation.

Ever understood someone completely? It's that feeling which tells you that you're in complete harmony with the other person, that you can understand his every emotion and almost read his mind. That's the perfect sync.

Ever been to the top of a hill or a mountain only to see the world in a new perspective? To realize that only if you rise above the confusion and chaos at the lower rungs, there's calm and serenity at the upper echelons. It's that feeling of getting the big picture. Of seeing everything from a different vantage point. It's when you get that Eureka feeling of disillusionment, of having the muddled clouds in your mind clear out forever. It's difficult to describe, but it's as beautiful as it is indescribable.

You can't exchange these emotions for anything in life. And it's as difficult to feel this way of your own volition. It's probably serendipity. Random occurrences-sporadic distributions of ecstatic elation on the fabric of your life.....

Terrorism : The Why's and What's behind the twisted thinking

It's very difficult to look for reason in an act where a gun-sporting juvenile massacres fellow humans whose "ideology" differs from that of his own. But then, there must be something that drives a young man, extremely capable of achieving a socially productive end, to annihilate hundreds of people. The question then, is, what cause can be so all-effacing and overpowering?

Religion, they say, is one overarching motivation. I personally have my doubts. If you seek to define religion, in its authentic spirit, as devotion to a superior force, then I'm not inclined to believe that thousands of fanatic young men do what they do for the love of God. It's got to be something else. Like brotherhood, of an evil variant. Like sympathy, for a radical belief.

I can understand when the hungry, exploited kids in Africa carry guns, firing arbitrarily to maim scores of people. But I fail to comprehend why well-fed Britons and their perverted Sheikh counterparts from Saudi Arabia, take to terrorism. How Osama Bin Laden and his accomplices have come to believe that they shall someday be exalted in the eyes of the Almighty because they have slaughtered the infidels, is beyond my reasoning.

So is there a cure? Or are we certain there's a disease to begin with? It's tough to say. And even as we try and figure out answers to this and other such baffling queries, the pervert is planning his next massacre.

Hail to thee rebels

This one's for those who challenge the norms. Those who refuse to "conform". These are the few and far between souls who choose to question before they follow, before they accept history and tradition at face value. The Howard Roarks of our dreams and the Mahatma Gandhis of our times who choose to do it their way.

I salute the audacity of the rebel with a cause. Of the man who stands up for what he believes and lives out the meaning of his convictions. It's hard to imagine what the world today might have been without the vision of these individuals. Had a man with a telescope and a fire in his belly not challenged the didactic doctrines of the church that sought to have us believe that the sun went round the earth only because they found it biblically convenient, we wouldn't have looked beyond the realm of our blue planet.

We understand the world around us by questioning. This the maxim that science is based upon. Unless we question often enough and earnestly enough, we're unlikely to find answers. And event then most of us fail to question. Because we "conform"..... and take things at face value more often than not. A society that must foster a healthy spirit of inquiry must learn to respect those who inquire. As a child moves through his formative years of education, he must be made to believe that questioning is a virtue.

An integral part of learning to question is keeping your mind open. Then again, one must learn to ask the right questions. And have the right intentions when asking the right questions. With malice towards none at all.

In the spirit of the ideas I elucidated, I quote these lines from an Apple commercial which carries the credo: Think Different

Here's for the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes,
The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them....
But the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They push the human race forward.

And while some people see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world......
Are the ones who do.

Congenital Prosperity

Quote of the day: "Call me Priyanka Vadra, not Gandhi."

When the first daughter of the country(for all practical purposes) says that she doesn't want to be known by the name that got her where she is in the first place, that smells of hypocrisy. For one, Priyanka Gandhi(or Vadra, like I give a shit....) has no business being in politics. The fact that she is only goes to say that India is a "dynastic democracy".

It seems to be getting more and more obvious that this country is repeating its own history by making sure that an individual's birth decides her fate. Just like it was in Vedic India. If you're born into a political family, chances are :

1.You'll be rolling in great wealth.
2.Rules that apply to lowly citizens will not hold for you.
3.You'll continue to amass great wealth(not a penny of it your own) throughout your life.
4.The law of the land will contort under your will.

The next best thing:
If you're born into a family that was branded (under)privileged by our constitutional fathers sixty years ago, you'll never have to struggle to be among the meritocracy. Life for you shall be "reserved". You may not have learnt shit through your school years and that won't stop you from getting into the finest educational institutions in the country. And even if you flunk there, there are jobs and promotions waiting for you outside...

The bottom line: There are those of us who work our ways up through life. There are others who suffer from Congenital Prosperity.

An ode to Counter Strike

The bug has bitten us. The Counter Strike epidemic is spreading. And fast. I guess it's one of the side effects of a "wired" life. All you hear all day long now in the lobby is: "Fire in the hole!!" No one seems to be able to resist the Counter Strike juggernaut....AOE fundamentalists have converted. Warcraft is passe. In the realm of LAN gaming, CS rules supreme unchallenged. No one seems to be caring about the exams either!

So do I like what's happening? Can't say. I'm an addict too. I mean yes I'm tired of the snipes and headshots that I end up on the receiving end of, but then there's always that desire to keep playing.

Bleary eyes, aching metacarpals and throbbing temples..... no physical discomfiture seems to be strong enough to curb the zeal for the game. Servers run 24x7, interrupted only by the not-so-infrequent power cuts( that are greeted with the choicest expletives). DC++ forums are flooded with CS talk... casual banter on the games of the day and innumerable requests for CS IP's....

Wonder if this will ever end. I know for sure I don't want it to. 2 months of summer vacation may only increase BIT's obsession for CS.... So next semester when placements commence, don't be surprised if you hear a distressed call from inside the cell... I'd bet I heard something like :"Need Backup!!"

So you don't understand life?? Good for you!

There are those who spend their lives trying to understand it and there are those who spend their lives....well, living it. Now, what I'm saying is that the latter end up leading better lives. Think about it. Is analyzing life really worth it? There are individuals who keep asking themselves....So why does man lead a life? What after life? What before it? I say: Hardly matters. Your singular purpose on the earth is to LIVE your life....not understand it.

So isn't it unscientific to stop questioning the meaning of life? I don't think so. If you really want to understand life, do so by trying to understand the world around you. Two reasons why this is a better approach: First, you're more likely to get some answers and second, you're more likely to get satisfaction out of the quest....

Which is exactly why I respect Newton more than the Buddha. Newton gave us deep insight into our physical lives....he defined man's existence by unravelling the mysteries of the physical world. The Buddha did his thing too, but the answers he came up with are ambiguous to say the least and disputable by all means.

If the Buddha got saddened by some unsavoury sights of the "real world" and decided to go into penance.....well, that's his life....but I believe a better approach would be to try an d take action against the misery that's around you....not sit around analyzing it.

Philosophers will disagree, but those who believe in living life through action will corroborate my beliefs. That's what the Gita said anyway..

Just when I thought...

It's uncanny....just when I thought we'd had enough cultural policing(read previous post)....some white guy comes in and pecks out Shilpa Shetty.....I mean did he really think he'd get away with that??

At an AIDS awareness campaign??

Will Liz Hurley be prosecuted?

I'm amused. Again. We've taken the most innocuous issue and made it into national headlines.....Liz Hurley didn't take off her footwear during her "Hindu" Wedding. Someone's already filed a case against her and her father-in-law is willing to testify against the couple(or so I heard)

I have a good laugh and keep asking myself how we as nation keep raking up non-issues and making them into matters of national concern. I mean does Liz Hurley not removing her footwear warrant judicial action? And we call ourselves a liberal society?

The problem is that this is not the only occasion when such a thing has happened. It happens all the time.....every other day..... we talk about banning the Da Vinci Code without even watching the movie.....We assault unsuspecting couples in parks in the name of moral policing....and the list can go on and on.... I mean are we so jobless as a nation?

If we wish to be taken seriously by the world henceforth, we should stop acting like clowns. But the question that needs to be answered in the immediate future is: Will Liz Hurley be prosecuted? I know I won't be surprised if she will!

Losing my religion

I'm losing my religion. Don't get me wrong...I'm not converting and I'm not announcing my belief in atheism....I'm happy with the Gods, it's religion that bugs me. The thing is that in my country religion is maniacal....it's associated with a host of unwanted activities that rational people( like me I suppose) could do well to avoid. Like rituals. Like sacrifice. Like rioting. The real issues I believe have long lost themselves in the mires of the non-issues.

Religion in India, especially over the last century has done us more harm than good. It's divided us, both as a country and as a society. In an otherwise peace loving region, where hospitality is the shibboleth, religious intolerance is an ugly scar on the face of our humanity.

Religion, I believe is something deeply personal. It's your hotline to God. And it isn't something that's meant to be conducted in public. As soon as you pull religion out of the private domain and bring it out into the public domain, trouble brews.

My advice to fellow Indians....Pray by all means, worship by all means but please.....be wary of those who claim to "unite" you in the name of religion.... that's where hell begins...

Exam-end traditions

For the last three years my classmates and I have followed a certain tradition. Every semester after our exams get over, we invariably go down to Khalsa Dhaba on NH-33. It started out with us feeling the need to detox after the gruelling exam schedules in BIT. There are almost no breaks in the schedule ever. Only Sundays save us. What freaks us out most during those six-seven days of exams isn't so much the way we lose sleep/peace....but the fact that in engg college, you can never make it without rote learning.....and so everyone mugs( The mugger shall inherit the earth...) ....and so in order to survive, you mug.....and in the process lose the last bit of your sanity.....hence the need to de-stress the day exams get over...

When it started in 1st year, most of us didn't booze( I still don't )...but then more and more guys made the shift, so to speak, and drowned their sorrows in endless pegs of rum, vodka and whisky...
I never feel left out because I really enjoy watching these guys get high....and believe me, when a BITian gets high, that's something you wouldn't miss for anything.....all the frustration just breaks out and flows in a free stream of the choicest expletives.....the discussion suddenly shifts from the sane to the insane, from the definite to the abstract and more often than not, no one knows what we're talking about(or wanted to talk about in the first place).

And the best part is the long walk back to BIT---some distance to BIT-More and then the lonely trek to the gate....that's when the magnitude of the situation sinks in......If it's past ten, then you're probably debating whether to get in through the gate and risk getting questioned by the guards( and sometimes unceremoniously having your breath analysed...) or to simply sneak in through the cricket grounds.... but irrespective of how drunk ppl are.....this is the part you tend to enjoy the most.....the road is pitch dark, no souls are visible anywhere on the route and the night sky stands out....sparkling with the zillions of celestial bodies that lend an almost mystic feel to the night....

And the talk....oh the talk! Everything from how fucked up life is, to how God hates us and....you get the drift right? Sometimes people ask me why I never booze....why don't I just "try"? Well, when you're having all the fun watching others getting drunk...who needs the alcohol?

So what good can come of exams?

Every time I answer my semester exams(that's four times a year..) a familiar question pops into my head.....Why am I doing this? I mean I do understand that it's something I'm not allowed to question in the sense that exams are a time tested phenomenon that cannot be wished away by morons like me.....but anyway, now that I'm answering these exams, I might as well do some brainstorming(as if studying for them wasn't enough!)...

Well, frankly, in my opinion exams don't mean much....at least not in India....they just encourage rote learning and challenge our crisis management skills like hell. And if you ask me,for starters, we in India take too many exams...exams to get into school, exams when you're in school, exams to get out of school....and repeat this procedure for undergrad and grad college...and what you have is a people who are probably more obsessed with exams than any other race in human history....

So what good can come of exams? Do you learn a shit? I guess most of us(the people I know at least...) can't remember what they studied for yesterday's exam...yes, we Indians do have brilliantly short term memories...so if exams are not meant to help us learn and if they don't accurately judge how much we've learnt, then why do we have them in the first place? Some kind of tribute to the eternal rat race are they?

Well I guess, it's not my mortal business questioning the efficacy of exams...I mean how dare I?....So I don't see any respite from the dreaded exam phenomenon in the recent future....do you?

I Procrastinate

I live, I breathe, I sleep, I procrastinate. Thats how bad it is. I dont know why i do it...or even why I dont stop doing it....but it keeps getting worse.
Procrastination is a way of life for me...its as ingrained in my existence as say, the appreciation of good food. Ive tried in vain to get rid of this habit. Tried preparing for my exams well in advance...tried packing my bags well in advance of leaving for home....doesnt happen!

Its not like I dont try. Its like my mind deceives me. Tricks me into wasting time. Sometimes I dont even realize Ive wasted time till I glance at the watch. Its official. Theres an ongoing war between me and me. The me that subconsciously wants to waste time and take it easy and the me that says "enough is enough dude, get back to work, lest you get screwed this time" I just hope its the latter that wins. But then, having said that, Im sure that it was the latter me in me that wants me to get back to work..... The other me just wants to blog some more.... but I gotta go design some machine elements....

Impossible is Nothing

If I die today, I'd like to be remembered as a hopeless optimist. I don't believe in giving up. Just because someone else says that it's too hard, can't be done, you're not good enough, never been done before, impossible! Well, people say you must be practical. That you must remain rational in a perfectly irrational world, is a lame excuse for not playing with the impossible. That to maintain your own sanity you must recognize the insane and then stay away from it is leading a drab existence.

But what people forget often enough that it's people who play with the insane that take the human race forward. Normal, 'sane' people like you or me watch quietly from the sidelines as the insane define the pace of the world. They create, innovate, dream, invent and do everything that we lesser mortals brand impossible. For them challenging the status quo is a way of life.

I love the Apple ad that's a tribute to the great people who think differently. It really reminds us that there are some people on our planet who lead an existence that's not bound by rules. People say that the best thing about children is that they don't know what can and can't be done. Their innocence is their greatest asset. I guess for kids the line between dreams and reality is a wee bit more blurred. As we grow older there's just too many things that we know can't be done. That, I believe, is our undoing.

This week, I experienced how people take the easy way out by trashing a new idea with the impossible tag. The guy just wouldn't have any of it. Perhaps our ideas clashed with his traditional school of thought. Or how he saw the world. Or knew it. But immediately after listening to us for twelve minutes, he had his judgment out: It's impossible. Too much friction. Reversible Processes don't exist in practice. Your idea is great in theory but it can't be implemented.

Crestfallen and challenged for hope, we came back and googled to find out something about the feasibility of our idea( So far, we assumed it's possible). What we found out confirmed our faith. The idea was not only practically feasible, some people had already begun implementing it. That sure gave us hope. Hope that we've been holding on to. Hope that some day we're going to get back to the dude and show him how the impossible was made true. We're going to tell him that easy as it was for him to dismiss what we had told him, there are some people who prefer to believe that impossible is nothing......