Insaneunknowns

Midnight's Children.... and still living in the dark

2012-01-18T00:01:00.002+05:30

With every passing year, there are recurring suspicions that Indian democracy is growing stronger. Countless newspaper articles and television debates periodically seek to remind us that the times are finally changing and so is the level of political debate in this country. Analysts wax lyrical at how the average voter these days has astutely started focusing on issues like development. I say rubbish. Every year a new ilk of politicians comes along and reminds us that we, as an electorate, are still the evolutionary equivalent of dinosaurs. The latest spate of events on the Indian political landscape, precipitated by the advent of that terrible quinquennial feature called elections, has proven just that. For instance, the government of the day believes that it will clinch the minority vote by narrowly appealing to that section's sentiment in preventing Salman
Rushdie from attending the Jaipur Literature festival (presumably inspired by the same logic that had driven another political outfit into preventing Maqbul Fida Hussain from living freely in this country). It is perhaps the same wisdom that has guided our leaders into outbidding each other to unconstitutionally guarantee a quota on the basis of religion in Uttar Pradesh.

Now I wouldn't be so naive as to assume that the very able politicians who constitute our government are out of touch with reality. If they have decided to deny a man of the stature of Mr. Rushdie (can there ever be a better poster boy for Indian literature than someone who has won the Booker of Bookers?) entry into India, they must have done so after rigorous political calculations and after having concluded that we as an electorate are indeed a sorry enough bunch of dolts to fall for such moves. So let's not get all excited and begin to blame the politicians - they are merely doing their jobs (which I presume, is to engage in politics, the worst kind of it). No, this is an indictment of Indian society. We get the governments we deserve. As long as we continue to pander to this rabble rousing and bigotry, there will be politicians falling over themselves to spin votes out of non-issues. It is perhaps the easiest way for them to get elected - without performing on the real issues that a mature democracy should actually be voting on. Shame on US!

Racist Europe?

2010-09-15T11:34:00.003+05:30

I was going through the papers yesterday and I observed something strikingly odd - there were not one, not two but three major stories on racism in Europe. The first one, of course, is the Sarkozy drama. Being in France, one realizes how politically active these people are. I was talking about this to a fellow Canadian student the other day - I think a nation's character is shaped by the writers it produces, and France, being home to giants like Rousseau and Voltaire, is therefore a society that has strong points of view on politics and public life. Mr. Sarkozy is an unpopular man right now. He is under fire from various quarters for his deportation drive for 'Romas' - the so called gypsies who hail from Romania. Mr. Sarkozy believes that this race is a criminal one and that the French people do not need to put up with the dark face of a multicultural Europe.

The second story comes from the far north - an extremist anti immigrant group called the Sweden Democrats is likely to define the balance of power after elections in that country. This is a group that openly campaigns against the Muslim immigrants of Sweden. They are ranting against the "economic problems" due to Muslims that Sweden is facing. Now think about this for a moment. Sweden is historically one of the most liberal countries in the world. A country that is almost at the far end of the earth and has thus far almost remained cut off from the turmoil and chaos of more centrally located societies. And now Sweden is turning racist. A party like the Sweden democrats gaining popular support is bad news - for Europe, for multiculturalism and for tolerance across the world.

The third story comes from Germany. A former German government official and one of the top shots at the Bundesbank, Thilo Sarazin has stirred up a hornet's nest by writing a book that is openly anti-Semitic and anti-Islam. He talks about something called a "Jewish gene" and claims that Muslims are a severe impediment to growth and prosperity in Germany. His employers have rightly asked him to quit, but it remains to be seen whether he will be asked to step down from his political posts as well.

All this is part of a story that is playing out right here, right now. It's both sad and unfortunate - because I came to Europe believing that it is almost the last bastion of multiculturalism and tolerance after America turned radical in the wake of 9/11. These are stories that are coming from the mainstream of political thought in their respective countries. The people who are part of the drama are respected men in their countries - they hold positions of power and responsibility and it would not be a misstatement to claim that these people influence public opinion. Or worse still, that they reflect public opinion.

No mean achievement!

2009-06-12T17:01:00.004+05:30

I was in Hyderabad for the whole of last year. Working at Deloitte was an absolutely amazing experience. What this also meant is that for the whole of last year I was living at a place that is culturally very different from the part of the country that I hail from. Having spent a couple of decades in the eastern part of India I was pretty used to red tape and a slow-paced life. You always expected that your work would never get done on time. Deadlines were never met - neither by you nor by the people that you dealt with. Promises were never kept and no one ever put a premium on anyone's time. Things, however, turned out to be very different in Hyderabad and especially in a firm like Deloitte. Meetings always started on time and people expected that when you made a commitment, you would keep it! So when I quit my job at Hyderabad to head off to IIM Lucknow, I decided to spend a couple of weeks at home. And that's where I am right now.

So yesterday, I had to pay a visit to a government office in order to get a certificate which I need during the admission process at IIM. The official that I visited is called the 'Civil Surgeon' and it seems it really is a big deal to be a 'Civil Surgeon' in this part of the country. The eastern part of India has a huge obsession with government jobs. These jobs are certainly the most sought after. Probably because the private sector is not very active in this region. Also because a government job translates into millions in bribes that these officials pocket while making an example of the inefficiency and nepotism that the innards of India are known for. So off I went into the hellish confines of this dingy government office, hardly aware that the 'Civil Surgeon' in Jamshedpur would turn out to be anything but civil.

What i needed was a fitness certificate which stated that I am fit and healthy enough to be admitted into IIM. So I came armed with all my medical reports, brandishing them like an accomplishment that I was mighty proud of. Being used to getting things done super quick at a private firm, I thought the whole process would take me no longer than a few minutes. I was in for a rude shock. Well as soon as I went in, I realized that there was an army of subordinates sitting around and guarding the holy office of the big official. To my surprise I was told that the Civil Surgeon was a woman. I was happy to hear that, since I had heard a lot about how women in administration are far more efficient and far less corrupt. Little did I know that this view was to change.

So I was asked, rather curtly, by one of the many 'peons' at her majesty's beck and call what I was doing lingering around the office of his boss. I politely replied that I had come to get a certificate of fitness that was needed at IIM for the admission process. While I am pretty sure he did not understand 'IIM', the word 'certificate' thankfully registered with the blockhead and he ushered me into an ante room to speak with a certain clerk who transacted all the paperwork for her highness. The clerk examined my documents, contorted his dumb face into the most bewildering expression and then asked me to wait in front of the office to speak to 'madam'.

It's interesting how time slows down in these places. And time really is at a standstill in the millions of government offices in our great nation. While I testily waited for my turn to be called in, I ran my eyes around the office - stacks of papers and files everywhere, their pages gone yellow and the dog's ears at their corners bearing testimony to the decades they had spent within the sacred walls of this 'Sarkari' office. A number of trunks and rickety cupboards fit for the antique shop punctutated the rather depressing scene before me. There was no sign of a computer anywhere and the only electric equipment around the place was a bulb and a rusty ceiling fan that made a din as it miraculously rotated overhead without falling off. I was finally called in. Madam was busy scrutinizing papers related to God-knows-what. She didn't even look up through her glasses as the peon introduced me by mentioning the reason why I had ventured into her sacrosanct premises. Without flinching for a split-second she banished me back to her clerk. I had no idea why. Being used to treated with dignity and respect at a 'foreign' firm, I was visibly disappointed at being accorded this stepmotherly treatment.

However, I made my way back to the clerk and asked him what on earth I was supposed to do now. After endless prodding and pleading he revealed to me that I was supposed to write an application stating that I needed a fitness certificate. I was also to mention the purpose for which I required it and I needed to attach the documents that would support my (now failing) case. Of course. The application! How did I even expect to get anything done at The Government of India without a darned application! I cursed my naivete and sat down to do the needful. Then I waited.

After an hour of waiting and fretting, I finally decided to speak to the clerk. He frowned, probably amused by my impatience. I mean, who did I think I was, blundering into a holy government office expecting work to get done on time? Huh! After another round of prodding and pleading, he finally said something that made things a little clearer to me. Obviously I hadn't been watching enough of 'Office Office'. Her highness' hands needed lubrication. A crisp 500 Rs note always does the trick I was told. I was stumped.

Now all those Moral Science classes and long lectures by the morality brigade came flooding back into my mind. Wasn't I supposed to be an ideal citizen of this country and stop the bribe culture? For a moment I thought, who cares! Let all those high ideals go for a toss as long as I got my work done. In any case, I had waited enough. What difference could a single righteous action by a midget in the system like myself make? But then I thought, why not? What is the worst that could happen? These people could make me wait for an obscenely long time? I am jobless in any case. They can't beat me on patience. So I politely stepped away from the clerk's office and waited outside the surgeon's.

After another hour of cribbing, cursing and staring at the ceiling, I was finally invited inside. This time Madam had the grace to look me in the face. She got down to business immediately. She pointed out 10 different loopholes in my application and the supporting documents. She almost made me feel like a fraudster who was out to dupe her holy office. Then she said something to the effect of - 'Standing like a fool outside my office won't help'. Obviously I could do better. I could offer her a bribe. A bribe that she had almost asked for directly now. I was castled. Her highness had said it herself now. So I did the best thing that I could have done in that hellbender of a situation that I had been put into. I smiled.

I think that put her off really bad. Because then she signed my documents immediately. The dismayed clerk then had no option but to stamp the seal of the Civil Surgeon's office on my documents. I felt like a hero. I had got my work done. The Government of India had functioned without a bribe, albeit a little late. No mean achievement.

A question for democracy

2009-04-14T14:38:00.003+05:30

As the country goes into the 15th Lok Sabha elections, I am musing about a rather fundamental question about voter behaviour: In the General Elections, should one vote on local issues or national issues. I have thought about this long and hard and found arguments in support of either case. It is really difficult to decide which option is right. I hope someone is able to enlighten me by offering the right logic.

On the one hand, there is the case where you vote for a large national party keeping in mind the government that you want to see at the centre. You would vote based on macro-issues such as inflation, unemployment, trade, new investments, education, defence et al. On the other hand there is the case where you vote on local issues keeping in mind the performance of your local MP and the record of the other candidates for your constituency. Here it boils down to more local issues such as local infrastructure, local schoools and colleges, local investments and the like.

There are plausible arguments in favour of either option. Let's take the first case first - Voting on national issues: In a multi-party democracy like India where there are a large number of regional players, it is difficult to keep track of the agenda of each party. The smaller the players, the narrower the issues that they fight elections on. So when you're voting to put a government up at the centre, shouldn't you vote for parties which contest on national issues and possess the wherewithal to run a nation? Also, if you're voting for a local party or an independent, you are more likely than not to be contributing to a fractured mandate and a hung parliament at the centre.

The second option - Voting on local issues: After all, it's your local leader who is responsible for your development. He/She is the individual who is allocated the funds for your constituency. It is the local MP who has more hands-on knowledge about the problems that you face at the local level and can represent your voice accurately at the national level in the lower house. Local investments and infrastructure projects may be initiated by this individual. Moreover, there is the 'Wisdom of crowds' theory of James Surowiecki which states that for the decisions of a large group of people to be accurate it is important for those individual decisions to be independent. Hence, every constituent of a crowd should vote based on his needs and interests, without considering how the rest of the crowd behaves or in this case votes.

I have been racking my brains over this issue and have found no definitive argument that would tip the contest in favour of either of these choices. I need to come across a sound rational logic that would convince me of the superiority of either of these cases. It is an important question - one that deserves to be mused upon and answered. Even if I do not ultimately find an answer to this question, I am sure I will be wiser at the end of the day. I will have understood the nature of democracy and the importance of having a representative government. Being a part of the largest democracy in the world, this is the bare minimum I owe the nation - and more importantly, myself.

A chance to discard the old

2009-04-09T01:47:00.002+05:30

Every threat is also almost always an opportunity. Nowhere could this be more relevant than in current conditions. The global economy is in the doldrums and experts worldwide have been proposing stimulus package after ineffective stimulus package to jumpstart the stalling economic machines of the world. What if we're following an incorrect approach in the first place? What if were are simplistically trying to treat the symptom instead of treating the disease?

The current economic crisis is the result of impaired financial assets, which were overvalued due to complex speculations by greedy and obtuse bankers. Now we are happily trying to correct the problem by bailing out these bankers. What we are NOT doing is trying to understand what they were doing. They were, in a very rudimentary sense, betting on the cash flows from risky financial instruments. But money or wealth should be based on an underlying commodity or product or service. What if these underlying entities themselves are not sound? Maybe we should rethink the origins of our wealth.

If you come to think of it, the current global economy is constituted, mostly, by old world wealth - fossil fuels, obsolete manufacturing and aging technology. The only relatively new source of wealth in the economy is the internet firms which have truly innovated to create wealth. Maybe we should focus our efforts on creating new wealth instead of trying to fix the old sources of wealth. Maybe the General Motors and Fords of the world ought to be allowed to fail in order to make way for new firms and new sources of wealth which are based on new ideas which are relevant to our times. It will be a more painful and drawn out recovery. But we wont have an encore of the current crisis for a long time to come.

All major periods of wealth creation in our history have been based on real innovation and new thinking. Be it the industrial revolution, the space race or the internet. New technology leads the way for wealth creation as a natural progression. Any other way of tinkering with wealth is simply playing with the controls without fixing the circuitry. Maybe we need another revolution in technology which is driven by new ideas - green energy, affordable public healthcare, for that matter any new idea with the potential to transform the economy by driving out the obsolete.

World leaders are myopic by compulsion. They have vote banks to anwer to. But academics are independent. What has surprised me over the last few months as this crisis has unfolded is that every Ivy League B-School professor has simply gone on record to speculate on the duration of the crisis and the origins of it. No one has proposed a concrete plan for recovery based on anything which is different from a rehashing of the old-world thinking.

Now, I believe is our big chance to discard the old. If change has come, then let it come big. Let us go the distance and fix things once and for all instead of prescribing lame measures. Let us alter the patient's lifestyle instead of supporting his failing heart with yet another bypass surgery. I don't think crises of such magnitude deserve to be tackled with half measures. I hope someone is listening.

What is wrong with America

2009-03-11T20:50:00.002+05:30

It's such a pity that the whole world is in a mess. It was created by a singe nation. America. The greatest country in the world has led the world into a mess that was completely uncalled for. For decades we have revered America and aped everything American. Now suddenly the whole world wakes up to realize that most of what they so proudly espoused was actually a pile of filth. A hell of a lot was wrong with America and no one ever realized it.

There is no denying that Americans have been pioneers in a vast majority of fields. Their values of individualism and enterprise have given the world a lot of what it holds dear in terms of true advancement. But that doesn't give a nation the licence to engineer disaster. And that is what America has repeatedly done during the course of its dominance of the world. It has created unprecedented crises time and again.

America, for all its cries about being the champion of democracy and responsible leadership was the first and only nation to use a nuclear weapon against the civilians of another nation. The Atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the origin of the nuclear arms race. Then came Vietnam where America conclusively proved that it doesn't deserve to be the self-righteous leader of the free world that it claims it is. Iraq and Abu Ghraib were shameful corroborations of the irresponsibility of the Americans.

The current financial crisis is America's doing. A nation that doesn't save and spends what the rest of the world invests in it is also the same nation that claims it has the right business lessons for us. America is a nation founded as much on credit as it claims to be on 'liberty and justice for all'. Borrow to spend is the philosophy that the Americans have followed for so long and so shamelessly while driving the world into an economic cesspool. If we claim that an economy is booming just because people are borrowing more to spend more, then there is something fundamentally wrong with the Economics that the world has taught itself.

BIG is a synonym for America. Because Americans want everything big in their lives. They drive obscenely large inefficient fuel guzzling cars, eat unhealthily large meals, carry extra-large bodies and do just about everything on a big, albeit unsustainable scale. This is what they have taught the rest of the world through their capitalist corporations and their political dominance. Even the most staunch capitalist would admit that capitalism is founded on the twin emotions of greed and fear. The interplay of greed and fear is what fuels the economic cycles in the world today. But the scale on which these interactions have been affecting the world order in current times is simply appalling. Screw ups of the magnitude that we are witnessing today would never have been possible without the "BIG" thinking that Americans typically bring to the table.

Every culture has its own unique traditions that get ingrained in its psyche over a period of time. A distinct identity of a race evolves from the experiences that the race collectively participates in and the reactions of people from that race to what happens to them. America has thus developed a culture of free-thinking individualism. Americans, through their historical upbringing have a sense of unbridled ambition that is fuelled by a desire to do more for themselves. No holds barred consumerism is only a by-product of this tendency that Americans have developed over the decades.

I do not dispute the fact that there is much to learn from our American friends. They are probably the only civilization that truly respects the sanctity of the individual and holds his rights to be sacrosanct. Americans respect enterprise and risk-taking more than any other people in the world. That having been said, one would do well to remember that no single model of living would fit the whole world today. We are all distinctly diverse in our own ways and socio-economic models can never be imposed on any race without disturbing results. We need to come up with our own models of living and working based on the cultural identity and values of our own race. There are things that we are certainly better at that we must seek to leverage in order to hold our own and excel as a nation or a civilization.

Last, but not the least: God seriously bless America.

Chuck Norris

2008-10-10T20:10:00.003+05:30

I've always wanted to be Chuck Norris. Why?

1. Some kids piss their name in the snow. Chuck Norris can piss his name into concrete.
2. Leading hand sanitizers claim they can kill 99.9 percent of germs. Chuck Norris can kill 100 percent of whatever the fuck he wants.

3. Chuck Norris once visited the Virgin Islands. They are now The Islands.
4. Chuck Norris counted to infinity - twice.
5. Chuck Norris' calendar goes straight from March 31st to April 2nd; no one fools Chuck Norris.
6. Chuck Norris can speak braille.
7. Chuck Norris does not sleep. He waits.
8. Chuck Norris doesn't cheat death. He wins fair and square.
9. Chuck Norris can delete the Recycle Bin
10. Chuck Norris can slam revolving doors.

The list is endless. Keep watching this space for more Chuck Norris facts!!

Living beyond your means

2008-10-09T03:59:00.004+05:30

Just when you think you've seen enough of the present financial turmoil that the world has gotten itself into - another snippet of news flashes across indicating that yet another giant has fallen and yet another index has breached an all-time low. The real surprise these days is when markets are in the green. And even then that is always accompanied by a feeling that this is only temporary and that things are going to be bleak again soon. If you ask experts they will give you a hundred esoteric reasons for the current crisis. Most of those are likely to involve cryptic academic terms(well cryptic to people like me anway) like 'subprime', 'liquidity', 'leveraged', 'toxic asset' and the like. But what no one will be willing to tell you is that we are simply living beyond our means.

I have indicated in previous posts too that the greatest problem with our lifestyle today is that it is unsustainable. For a number of reasons. To start with, we simply do not have enough resources to support the kind of life that we're selling to more and more people by the day. By creating an aspirational lifestyle modeled on cowboy capitalism we're simply stretching the limited supplies of most everything that we have on this planet. Space, clean air, fuels, water - you name it. To further complicate matters man invented something truly ingenious to masquerade as a resource - money. Look how we've built an entire industry out of just that. What every self-respecting Wall Streeter will tell you is that he manages money for a living. So much fuss about something that isn't even backed by gold anymore. Yes, the Gold Standard has long been replaced by Fiat Currency. In other words if you hold a billion dollars of cash in your account and feel mighty pleased with yourself, don't - it's just paper.

What is even more baffling is that some of the people who claim to be champions of the free market and the pioneers of the super-capitalist economic model, find themselves in a soup today. America is crumbling, and how. Make no mistake. This is the very nation whose policies and lifestyles are aped by most of the developed and delveloping world today. And one fine day you wake up to realize that they're wrong anyway. What the Americans have managed to do for so long and so desultorily is live off the rest of the world's money. By promising the world that America is the best place to put your money, they have bloated themselves on the savings of effectively the whole of the global economy. And now they're going down, it's only natural that they should take us down with them.

What if things had been different? What if someone drove some sense into the heads of those hedonistic Americans early enough? What if their politicians weren't the spineless, goading buffoons who simply refused to say at any point of time that the party was over. What if we didn't idolize Wall Street managers who seemed to be the perfect success stories till only yesterday? What if...

The fact remains that there is an urgent need to rethink the lifestyles and economic models that we have been espousing as superlative for the past century. Anyone who has watched 'An Inconvenient Truth' or knows more than zilch about the environment will tell you how we are at the crossroads on this planet today - we could take the bumpier road which entails responsible living or we could take the glistening tarmac that leads to a planet ravaged and overstretched by the gluttons that its inhabitants would have become by then. The choice is ours to make.

The Ob-Man Cometh

2008-09-02T13:37:00.002+05:30

I've been planning to write about Barack Obama for some time now. Just haven't brought myself to doing it. I started out having mixed opinions about this man - and my opinions were coloured by the fact that India's equations with the Republican establishment in Washington are at an all-time high and that India stands to gain significantly from a continuation of that regime in the United States under the leadership of John McCain. But Obama, the man, has changed it all.

The story of Obama is one that holds universal appeal to anyone who thinks that democracies really work and that in a land of freedom like the USA or for that matter, India, anyone with the right attitude and skills can make it... and make it big. Obama stands for what he has preached to millions on his campaign trail - Hope. His two books - The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from my father are said to be remarkable memoirs of an even more remarkable man. They bring to light the challenges faced by most anyone who is born into a life akin to that of Obama - a life of struggle and trials. It didn't help that he was an 'African-American' in a predominantly white nation. What truly brings out his character is that Obama has succeeded thus far, in spite of the odds that he has been faced with.

The story of his life, at least the initial part, is not unlike that of any young man facing many challenges - financial instability, experimenting with drugs and the like. What distinguishes Obama is the choices he made when faced with the same situations that all of us are faced with. Obama, for me, is the greatest beacon of hope in the 'free' world. While he has had his share of not-so-proud moments along this campaign, he's more than made up for those few and far between occasions. And yes, I hope that he becomes the next President of the United States. Despite the fact that he may not be Nuclear-Deal friendly. Despite the fact that he may clamp down on outsourcing. A good man deserves to be on top. Let us not believe otherwise because of our personal prejudices.

Mea Culpa

2008-08-16T20:40:00.002+05:30

Free India is Sixty-one. It's been an Odyssey of sorts - a long and eventful journey for a nation that is truly unique in its identity. That identity too has undergone a transition. We have moved on from being a land that was the spiritual watershed of the world to one that is on the brink of modernity - we're both proud of our past and secure of the present. We have great hopes for the future and a passion to prove ourselves on that stage of the world. But as much as we might want to take heart from the fact that we have moved forward by leaps and bounds in a number of areas since 1947, there are just too many departments where we have shamed ourselves. No. I will not go into a detailed autopsy of the nation's failures. What I will do is fix blame. And I am convinced that the blame lies squarely with one person. Me. India isn't what it should be today because of me, because of my inaction as a citizen. I have failed. And so has every other human being who resides in this country, smug in her air of self-righteousness. The real culprits are those that sit in the comfort of their homes and complain about everything that is not what it should be. We're all wimps. Resigned to our lives of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in a nation where we see only problems and no solutions. The roads aren't the way they should be? Well so what're you doing about it? Have you filed an RTI petition to find out what went wrong? The quality of public health is dismal? Have you done anything to ensure that things change? Well if I haven't, then I also lose my right to complain. Democracy, my friends, is a two-way street. Your duty is not limited to voting once in five years. If you want all the services that you expect from a functional democracy you have to be active enough to ensure that you get them. It is the bare minimum expected from a citizen. The obvious question that comes into mind here is: How can I, a single helpless soul make any difference to a whole system that's composed of countless people and has a lot of inertia going for it? It's simple really. Do your bit and encourage others to do the same. That's the essential nature of a democracy isn't it? The whole thing works on the assumption that everyone will do their bit and that all of it will add up to something larger than the sum of its parts. James Surowiecki calls it 'The Wisdom of Crowds'. As part of a crowd of a billion plus people, all you have to do is make sure you do the bare minimum expected from you. If everyone does the same, there's simply no way the will of the people won't prevail.

Capitalist Coffee

2008-08-08T22:35:00.002+05:30

I have nothing against coffee. Or against capitalism for that matter(well most of it anyway). But I can't stand the way the two combine to represent that which is not right in our lives and times. Truth be told I like my coffee. I just don't like the way it's been commercialized into something way cooler than it really is. Coffee is coffee. When you start charging us fortunes for obscure variants of the same darn beans, you're overdoing it. These days people sell coffee as if it's part of a whole new lifestyle. Dude! What kind of loser do you think your customer is? We have better things going on in our lives than your stupid 'thiswillblowyourmind'ccinos.

I especially hate it when you go around telling me that this or that brand of coffee is a specialty that you've imported specially for me from half way around the world. Now hold on a minute. Either of two scenarios is possible here. Either you're lying, in which case eat shit and die. Or you're suggesting that you shipped something as trite as coffee over thousands of miles just to sell it to eager dimwits who'll roll their eyeballs and lap up your pseudo-special cup of capitalist coffee. In which case don't bother selling your stuff to me. I ain't buying. Literally.

And it's not just coffee. These days everyone from everywhere in the world wants to sell us everything. There are guys who want to sell us three McMeals a day. And unfortunately for a few of us, they manage to stay in business. What most of us fail to understand here is that we're being sold a lifestyle which is not only unhealthy, but also unsustainable. For all of capitalism's great boons, this is something which is simply not acceptable. You can't try to get the whole world to eat your way simply because you can sell it cheap by leveraging your huge industrial supply chains. It'll screw up the planet. If you think about it, you're suggesting that food which is consumed at Point A be produced and shipped over from Point B, on the other side of the globe, just because someone's figured out a way to do the whole thing profitably. There's something so inherently wrong about this that in the long run, it could challenge a whole lot more than just our health.

To be continued...

How do I make a difference?

2008-08-03T20:07:00.002+05:30

A couple of days ago I was having this discussion with my friends. After a hard day's work(especially on days when you've been rubbed the wronged way in most of your interactions with other humans), these discussions tend to border on both the insanely idealistic and the depressingly cynical. And the 'tone' of the discussion usually fluctuates randomly from one side of the aforesaid thin line to the other. So, anyway, this discussion was about what we should do with our lives. As young kids straight out of college we still have some dreaminess left in us - the part that wasn't drowned out in the drab practicality of the so-called 'real' world. So you see, we're still in it to make a difference. How we're going to get anywhere close to achieving that, I have no idea. And it's probably because we felt that maintaining the status quo won't get us anywhere close to being able to make a difference, that we had this discussion in the first place.

So how does one make a difference? And to dissect this godforsaken question even further, who or what do you intend to make a difference to in the first place? To society? To your sense of duty towards yourself? I don't really know the answer to this question or any others which we may have posed to each other and to ourselves during the course of that discussion. But what I do know is that the discussion kept going back to a well-known speech by a certain Mr Steve Jobs. That impassioned speech by Mr Jobs to the graduating class at Stanford exhorted his audience to 'find what you truly love'. I guess that's what it boils down to at the end of the day. If you're trying to make a difference, you're going to find it really difficult unless you love making a difference with whatever it is you're doing.

The nature of these discussions never allows one to draw a definite conclusion about the conclusions from the discussion. You just feel better because you had the discussion. That's a great reward, per se. So it was with this one too. We never reached a consensus on what it is we should do to make a difference, but we did remind ourselves to continue to keep looking for such pursuits.

I will always remember...

2008-05-26T08:51:00.002+05:30

I will always remember...

Those mornings and afternoons spent sleeping...
The nights spent watching movies..
The zillions of hours killed in the canteen..
The long walk back from Khalsa...
The mad mugging on the last day before all exams..
Those countless hours spent on 'bakwaas' in other people's rooms..
Those anxious minutes spent waiting for the BIT bus at Xavier's..
The daydreaming and sleeping in all classes...
The fight to somehow reach 75% attendance..
The constant cribbing about Mess food...
Those afternoons and evenings in OC doing nothing..
The Samosas and Chais in Sharma Dhaba..
The mad rush to the birthday boy's room at midnight...
The 8 PL's spent doing everything but preparation..
The fakait cricket matches in front of the hostel..
The thousands of CS matches and the myriad cries of "Fire in the hole!!"
The placement parties in Madhuban...
The beauty on campus just after the rains..
The bitter winters spent cuddled in the hostel room..
The 5 Rs coffee at IC..

All those magical moments spent with friends at BIT.. I will always remember every one of them... Cheers bhai log!

Bad, Bad Times

2008-04-02T17:08:00.000+05:30

I've been thinking about the world at large recently- about the events, people and attitudes that have shaped our world in recent times. And I have to say, these are bad, bad times. I didn't find much to be cheerful and optimistic about. Why do I feel this way about things? Well, to start with the general politico-economic mood in the world is gloomy. The greatest country in the world is in the throes of economic recession and the repercussions are evident the world over. Every day in the news we get to hear about another financial institution having run itself into muddy waters.

Till just a year ago, our country India seemed unaffected in the face of this global gloom. We seemed to outshine circumstances with our internal growth story. People said that India's economy has finally come of age and things will continue to look up the way they have. Our Sensex scaled astronomical highs within weeks and experts were out of breath just imagining where it might go in the future. But very abruptly we were reminded that we're living in a world where everything is increasingly interconnected. Just one of the perils of our globalized times. When one section of the seamless global economy feels the heat, so does everyone else.

Oil prices are rising and with it the prices of all essential commodities. Our populist government has tended to keep us insulated from high oil prices by passing on the burden of subsidies to public sector oil majors, but that seems to be an increasingly tenuous solution to our problems. Inflation rates are at their peaks and garrulous housewives are complaining. To add to all that an unforgiving summer is approaching fast. This could mean more power cuts and water shortages in a country where the infrastructure has never kept pace with our huge population. Of course, come monsoon showers and we will conveniently forget our summertime woes. And come autumn, no one will remember the floods of the rains.

As if all this were not enough, our country has run itself into a huge food deficit. Our per-capita agricultural production is at the levels of the seventies. Which essentially means that after the Green Revolution we conveniently assumed that we had done enough to ensure food sufficiency and happily went to sleep. This time around though things are different. Given the steep rise in commodity prices across the globe, no country will be willing to export important agricultural products like wheat - at ANY price. We can't even buy our way through this mess.

The alarm bells that are ringing now should have been ringing long back. Even now most people choose not to hear them. Those who do are bemoaning the vileness of these times. I say if God has been waiting for an opportune moment to send us a Messiah, THIS is it.

Give it back to the Aussies

2008-02-28T12:28:00.001+05:30

It's getting out of hand now. Sledging and 'psychological disintegration' is one thing and being assholes is quite another. The Aussies have overdone it now. When Matthew Hayden called Bhajji an 'obnoxious weed' on Brisbane Radio he proved to the world that the Aussies indeed are a bunch of overweening jerks who do not play with any sense of values. Apparently to them, winning is everything and they are willing to sacrifice the spirit of the game on the altar of victory.

Even the occasional sledging that the Australians were accustomed to could have been overlooked and wished away as part of their twisted 'strategy' but the cheating and foulness that they have resorted to in this tour is simply unpardonable. They may be the best in cricket at the moment but they rank right at the bottom when it comes to sportsmanship. Perhaps Aussie behaviour is a good instance of atavism gone wild-after all most of them trace their origins back to hardened English criminals who were banished to run free down under.

The Indians have been given a raw deal on this tour. Far from being shown the requisite hospitality that we could have expected from our hosts as reciprocity for our own 'Atithi Devo Bhava' principles, we have been alienated and offended. So enough is enough. It's time to give it back to the kangaroos. The only recourse for the Indians in the finals of the Commonwealth Bank Series is to sledge when necessary and leave no gibe unanswered. The likes of Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting and Andrew Symonds who never seem to get tired of displaying their needless arrogance need to be brought down to earth and silenced with their own medicine.

India has some good young blood on the team. Uthappa, Ishant and Sreesanth should take it upon themselves to challenge the foul-mouthed Aussies and humble them on home soil. Give it back to them guys!

I believe.

2008-02-23T19:40:00.000+05:30

It's the age old question. The question of faith. And when it comes to this, you're either on this side of the fence or that. You couldn't be sitting on it. You either believe or you don't. People do call it fashionable names. Atheism, Monotheism, Polytheism, Agnosticism, Mysticism... there are as many creeds as there are philosophers around every street corner. But if you were to have to break all these belief systems down to their most fundamental notions, you would have to hinge each one around a single pivotal macro-question: Do you believe? I would urge you to note here, that this question is very different from another omniscient query repeated across the many neatly printed philosophical volumes relegated for eternity to the antiquated shelves of obscure libraries: Is there a God? You may have reason to believe that the answer to the latter question is in the negative and yet choose to answer the former question in the affirmative. It's only a question of faith. And faith, does not draw its lifeblood from the drab morass of reality. It's something more sublime and pure of spirit. Faith is made of the same stuff that gives life to living.

On the question of faith, I always reflect back on the events that unfold in a certain movie that I watched some years back and have watched numerous times since- The Polar Express. It's a simple children's film-one of the many that are repeated on one of the 'English Movie' channels on Indian television every Christmas eve. The theme, again, is neither novel nor curious like some of the more recent Hollywood movies aimed at a school-going audience. But it raises and addresses a question that draws you in and forces you to stop munching on your jumbo pack of Act II popcorn. The question of faith. Over the course of the movie, a young boy's faith in Santa Claus is rattled by a series of events. He is on a train known as The Polar express, one that takes kids to the North Pole to visit Santa Claus. One of these kids will be the lucky one and will receive from Santa the first gift of Christmas. Right through the eventful journey, the boy is made to question his beliefs: Is this for real? Isn't it bizarre that a train should travel to the North Pole in the middle of the night to meet a guy called Santa Claus? Huh. What hogwash. Isn't this guy bogus anyway?
But that's not even the point. Even when the boy gets to learn of the answers to these myriad skeptical questions and reaches the North Pole to meet Santa Claus, he's faced with another crisis of faith. He discovers that he is unable to hear the bells of Christmas. Flustered and disappointed he watches on as all the other kids rejoice at the sounds of the jingling bells and the sight of Santa Claus and the elves.

Then it happens. He raises the bell to his ears and whispers.. almost in doubt, "I believe." Then louder again, " I believe!" And now he gives the bell a little jiggle and lo! He hears the most beautiful sound in the world. It is for the movie to narrate the rest of this most delightful story. What baffles me is how, through such a juvenile plot, a question of such immense import can be addressed. Do you believe? Well that's all that matters isn't it? It doesn't even matter what's true and rational and scientific and logical. What matters is what you think. The story in the movie is narrated by the same boy who has now grown up and is an old man. He ends the movie thus: "As years passed by, most of the kids around me stopped hearing that bell... because they stopped believing. My parents could never hear it. My sister stopped hearing it. But for me, and for those who truly believe, the first bell of Christmas still tolls.... "

Of lazy Sundays and quality time

2008-02-19T01:40:00.000+05:30

I simply love Sundays. That's one day of the week when I get to do what I love most-be lazy. That's the only day in the week when I let time pass by unhindered without worrying about absolutely anything under the sun. Although some Sundays in the month do end up getting devoted to 'cleanliness', I see this as more of a necessity-part of my desperate attempts to keep myself and my surroundings civilized.

I never set any kind of pace for myself on Sundays. That's taboo. Things are left to happen by themselves. I just happen to be a casual participant in my life's events on Sundays. This is when free will and the stuff that fills endless management self-help books melt away into oblivion and what results is pure ecstasy. The sheer joy of having nothing to do and no compulsion to do anything seems blissful.

Last quizzing season of college

2008-02-06T03:55:00.000+05:30

Been quizzing lately. I'm mid-way through my last quizzing season in college. It's been a lukewarm start. We won the regional round of the IMS Quiz at Patna. Since then it's been hard work and no rewards. We moved on to NIT Allahabad for their annual quiz fest Gnosiomania. We were in for a rude shock when we found ourselves up against corporate teams. What's more, these guys were behaving worse than school-kids in their desperation to win. Our team from BIT was by the far the best among the college teams. Our best result at Gnosiomania was a 2nd place in the Corporate quiz conducted by Biswabijoy Sen. Lost by narrow margins in some others.

After a week-long breather, it was on to Kshitij, IIT Kharagpur. We reached a day after the fest had begun, so we were made to run around for accommodation. You would think that IIT Kharagpur would be more amiable when it came to their neighbours from BIT Mesra but nothing of the sort. We weren't any good when it came to the Tech Quiz hosted by Avinash Mudaliar. Came in a close 4th in the Biz Quiz conducted by Arul Mani. Feeling kinda down. By this time of the year, Shoaib and I usually have our pockets nice and warm with a few thousand quizzing bucks. Well, looking forward to giving the eastern teams a good fight in the quarter finals of the IMS Quiz in Calcutta. Will be another good quizzing weekend.

Haven't spent a single weekend in the hostel this semester. Been traveling all over on quizzing trips. My expenses have gone through the roof. The prize money from NIT Allahabad would help to buffer it out for some time, but that doesn't seem to be coming in either. That's the big problem with college fests in India. The prize money never comes. They all make big promises. In this case, a certain Saket, the chief organizer promised us that we would receive our cheques in a jiffy. Never happened. Still waiting. I really hope the rest of the quizzing season is more productive materialistically.

Where does it all go after this? I don't know. I have no idea whether I'll find the time to quiz with the same fervor in the coming years. Been one helluva time quizzing in college. Great win record and even better memories. Some really fun trips to unlikely places with friends. It's not over yet. You can't take the quizzing out of the quizzer.

The (f)utility of religion

2007-12-20T00:29:00.000+05:30

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

2007-12-18T11:07:00.000+05:30

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

2007-12-17T22:18:00.000+05:30

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

2007-12-17T21:54:00.000+05:30

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

2007-10-20T11:15:00.000+05:30

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

2007-10-20T00:33:00.000+05:30

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

2007-10-18T15:27:00.000+05:30

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

2007-10-17T07:11:00.000+05:30

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

2007-10-08T07:58:00.000+05:30

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?

2007-10-08T07:51:00.000+05:30

"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

2007-08-12T12:28:00.001+05:30

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.

2007-07-27T11:01:00.000+05:30

Handling People

2007-07-27T10:20:00.000+05:30

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"

2007-07-26T03:25:00.000+05:30

The power of the individual

2007-07-26T03:03:00.000+05:30

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

2007-07-18T17:34:00.000+05:30

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?

2007-07-12T00:21:00.000+05:30

The Shawshank Redemption

2007-07-12T00:01:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-07-07T00:14:00.001+05:30

Short term memory

2007-07-06T23:49:00.000+05:30

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.

2007-07-05T22:48:00.001+05:30

Maintaining Objectivity

2007-07-05T22:38:00.000+05:30

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

2007-07-05T22:33:00.000+05:30

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

2007-06-26T15:27:00.001+05:30

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

2007-06-24T21:51:00.000+05:30

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

2007-06-23T23:18:00.000+05:30

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

2007-06-21T09:25:00.000+05:30

Listen to Gore

2007-06-20T22:35:00.000+05:30

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

2007-06-19T11:48:00.000+05:30

Work and Play

2007-06-19T11:14:00.000+05:30

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

2007-06-17T18:48:00.000+05:30

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

2007-06-17T01:01:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-28T16:03:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-21T21:53:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-17T15:26:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-17T15:13:00.000+05:30

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!!

2007-05-14T23:55:00.000+05:30

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!

2007-05-11T21:20:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-05T09:50:00.000+05:30

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

2007-05-01T20:09:00.000+05:30

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

2007-04-27T20:02:00.000+05:30

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

2007-04-25T20:15:00.000+05:30

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

2007-04-24T20:00:00.000+05:30

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!

2007-04-23T20:10:00.000+05:30

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...

2007-04-21T20:15:00.000+05:30

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?

2007-04-12T19:54:00.000+05:30

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

2007-04-11T20:12:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-14T20:07:00.000+05:30

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?

2007-03-10T18:13:00.000+05:30

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

2007-03-02T08:10:00.000+05:30

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

2007-01-26T22:02:00.000+05:30

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......

Lalu Yadav meets HBS

2006-12-29T15:52:00.000+05:30

A couple of days ago I watched on the news something that I would call the most memorable one liner of the year. And of course it came from none other than the inimitable Lalu Yadav.

He was meeting a contingent of students from Harvard B School who were eager to learn how he had managed to turn around the Indian Railways...

At the end of the session someone in the audience asked him sth about the internet or the world wide web( or sth to that effect) to which he replied :

"Dubloo Dubloo (ww..) Babloo ka Bhai Hai... "

I was rotfl ...

Science or Democracy?

2006-12-28T00:05:00.000+05:30

Imagine the following situation: It's armageddon. All hell has broken loose, the world is about to come to an end. In his sympathy for the lot of his creation, God descends from the heavens and tells us that he shall make a last ditch attempt to save us. But by some divine whim, he decrees that in his future exiestence, man is only allowed to have only one of the following: science or democracy. Man must choose and keep only one of both.

I have baffled myself over this question over the last couple of days and predictably enough i do not have an answer. I do not know if there is a satisfactory means for arriving at an answer to questions such as this. I mean if man can claim that he has achieved anything substantial in the period of his existence on earth, I believe it can be attributed to either of these two things. Science has changed our lives and taught us all we know about ourselves and the world(and beyond). But democracy has defined our success as a civilization as opposed to the failures of the generations that have preceded us. How are we to choose one over the other?

If we choose science and let go of democracy, we'll slip into chaos. Lawlessness will prevail or we shall go back to the days of repression under dynastic rule, subject to the whims and fancies of a few.

If we choose democracy and let go of science, we are doomed to remain ignorant unto eternity, with no hope of moving forward as a species.

I once read an excerpt from a book by Bertrand Russel, in which he argued that scientific knowledge is useless, even dangerous without the sense to apply it correctly. He essentially implied that our emotional quotient is perhaps as important and indispensable as our intelligence quotient. Man has achieved great feats and shall continue to do so armed with science and tools of scientific enquiry, but if science is not guided by good sense and applied positively, we may soon face annihilation.

So maybe questions such as this one are among those which have no answer. You or I may have an opinion, but I am loath to believe that anyone can claim with certainty that any one argument is more rational than the other. In fact as humans I think we should be happy that we are confounded by such questions. It only means that we are mature enough to fathom the importance of both science and democracy. For once maybe,no answer is a good answer.

Dangerous Trends

2006-12-12T11:03:00.000+05:30

Over the last couple of years, India has experienced phenomenal growth. The Sensex has moved to all time highs and has made experts euphoric about the future. Thanks to a global surge the economy is growing at a whopping 9%, although those levels are less likely to remain sustainable in the event of a global slowdown triggered by an American recession. In any case India has a great growth story to tell in the coming years.

But what’s worrying is the socio-political drift in the country. Politicians are talking dangerous. Well, what I or a certain section of society sees as dangerous may be welcomed by others. But the Indian political horizon is changing fast by any standards. At the centre of the storm is the very controversial issue of social justice. Well, social equity is certainly a goal for all democracies, yet the way you implement it may make or break you as a nation.

What India is trying to implement and what I find most alarming is ‘Equity by Brute Force’. This essentially means that the Indian state is trying to be an external, artificial agent of change in one of the largest and most diverse demographies in the world.

When you undertake forced change on such a grand scale there are bound to be repercussions. For one, the changes that are being proposed are politically motivated. We would all be kidding ourselves if we said we didn’t know that our leaders are trying to score votes with a certain section of society.

I do not stand for social inequity; I only believe that it cannot be brought about by artificial means. In the 21^st century, the only way of raising people out of poverty and backwardness is through an agenda of economic liberation.

Our politicians need to facilitate poverty alleviation by creating an atmosphere that will allow wealth generation to flourish. The state should not be a direct agent of change. It should allow the forces of Globalization and Free Trade to shape Indian society.

To be more precise and forthright, instead of bickering about reservations and the cost of implementing them, our country should invest resources in building infrastructure (read roads, power, telecom) that will facilitate and attract investment. I believe it is this investment that will liberate the backward sections of society by trickling down to the lowest levels.

When Income levels rise across the board in all sections of society, people will value education and go after it with all the resources that they can expend. This, I believe will create more lower caste scholars than any reservation programme in the world.

Another dangerous trend is the criminalization of politics. Well, individuals may argue that this has been around really long. But the effects felt now shall be greater than ever before. Because now, more than ever before India needs a transparent system of governance to assist in the economic boom. Any factor that destabilizes transparency and security in the country will eventually slow us down-something that we cannot afford at this point in time.

The conflict between the legislature and judiciary has spiraled almost out of control now. It is not a matter of coincidence that the judiciary has moved forward to reign in the excesses of a corrupt legislature. But then, the judiciary cannot go on and on. Who is to say this wanton wielding of power will not corrupt the judiciary? (Remember what Acton said?)

Well, what we need is a more accountable legislature, not an overactive judiciary. Of course, they ought to go hard at crime, but beyond that the legislature needs to make itself more transparent by ensuring that it keeps out criminal, manipulative elements in the first place.

India is at the crossroads. Where we go from here will define us in the next decade. We can either grow into a strong, secure democracy with a wealthy populace or a failed state where economic chaos is the norm. These are interesting times.

Microcredit and Woman Power

2006-12-12T01:00:00.000+05:30

This year the Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to a guy closer to home-Mohammed Yunus from Bangladesh. What’s his claim to fame? Well, for one, this guy went ahead and revolutionized banking in a predominantly rural Bangladesh. How did he do it? Woman empowerment silly! You know... the age old idea that women manage money better than men and all…well, he put it to practice.

By championing the cause of Microcredit and lending with a bias towards the fairer sex, Yunus ensured that the money loaned was spent well. It’s an established sociological fact that when women are entrusted with the budgetary strings in a low-middle income scenario, the benefits that result for children are far greater.

According to Yunus, the women were initially reluctant to try out the new schemes, and yet when a small group came on board, the rest of the community followed suit (the guy attributes this phenomenon to the jealousy that ensued, the others simply wanted to copy the women who had succeeded in the credit experiment).

So what’s the lesson to be learnt? (Well, apart from the fact that in some areas women are, unfortunately clearly better) India would do well to emulate this credit model at the rural and BPL levels. Initially in our country all banks have been reluctant to lend in rural areas because of the poor repayment history there.

When banks were nationalized, officials were forced to lend to rural masses, knowing fully well that they would never see their money again! That was more about politics and socialistic idealism than economics, but I guess, now that we’re over the dark ages of banking, it’s time banks considered the lucrativeness of the rural demographics in our country, while carefully placing money in the right hands. You see, it’s all about Woman Power.

P.S. The author is a male and does not happen to be a feminist.

Some people i admire

2006-12-11T01:35:00.000+05:30

Well, there are some people I really respect. For what they've achieved and believed in..for the things they've stood for, the causes they've championed or simply the attitudes they've carried. I believe some people are clearly far ahead of the 'average human' when it comes to tapping human potential. now believe me that's a fairly loose idea...for one all of us may be endowed with different abilities and potential and then all of us have different tendencies to apply these abilities. to demonstrate what i mean by the latter part of the previous line, here's an example...arguably 2 of the most inspring leaders in history have been Gandhi andHitler...they only chose to wield their leadership for achieving completely antagonistic objectives.

One guy I have tremendous respect for is Tiger Woods. He's the top guy in a sport that's predominantly white. He's a young kid excelling in a sport that's perceived to be an oldies game...he had all the odds stacked up against him and yet he went ahead and conquered every great frontier in golf.

Then there's Lance Armstrong. This guy epitomises sheer zeal..an unending zest for life and a commitment to winning..there's just so much to learn from him.

And yes, other people who strike me as amazing include: Bill Clinton(defamed though he is, this guy has loads of charm), Dhirubhai Ambani, Steve Jobs....the list goes on as i discover that so many people have led extraordinary lives that we ought to learn from..

here i am

2006-12-03T00:08:00.000+05:30

i deserve applause...yes there are at least a thousand others on campus who do too...we've been through our most gruelling exam schedule till date and survived!! the last six days were one hell of an experience..well now it's time to get back home and catch up on some much needed sleep...you have to be around to see how sleep deprived individuals behave..well, i've got great hopes for this vacation..as always..plan to enjoy to the max...just hope it turns out great..

Life without TUV

2006-11-06T00:12:00.000+05:30

A couple of months ago, the '8' key on my cellphone went dead. It simply refused to respond to any magnitude of force from any physical object. The result: I'm living my life without 8. I can't dial phone numbers with an 8 in them(apart from those in my phone book). To make matters worse I can't type in any T's U's and V's on messages.
So what do I do? Well, I type in hybrid language. Hinglish to the rescue. I try and substitute some of the words with their Hindi equivalents(provided the equivalent contains none of the 3 taboo letters)
And in cases when even that is infeasible, I simply misspell, hoping that the person on the other side has an IQ fit for the MENSA and that by some divine providence he/she'll get what I'm trying so hard to say.

Well, this entire process is frustrating to say the least :p ..... the whole problem has affected me deeply-- I often find myself trying to kill me, having been totally psyched out at being deprived of my T's U's and V's. Life feels incomplete(incomple_e). Exis_ence is a bane. How long does des_iny wish _o torment me? (HAD to use a 't' there ;) )

Of Senile Generals and Stone Ages

2006-09-29T09:02:00.000+05:30

The honourable military dictator of Pakistan claims he has been in the "Line of Fire" all his life. Cheap publicity stunt? Retirement booty collection? Who knows? and yes, when it comes to incredible people like the general, who cares?

The book has shot up to the top 20 on Amazon's bestselling list. Partly on speculation about what the man has claimed in the book and partly on a desire to get a perspective on what self-righteous dictators think about the rest of the world. So what does General Pervez Musharaf do in the book? Well, he does what he does best---lie. That's right. Anybody worth his salt, having read the book would confirm with a squirm on his face that the goddamn book is a pack of lies.

The General has made ludicrous claims that the Kargil infiltration was in response to Indian activity on the border.... that the whole operation was a 'victory for the Pakistani army'. Perhaps the most deliciously inappropriate claim made in the book is that the Americans promised to bomb Pakistan 'back to the stone age'. Well, maybe they did, but I guess, it wouldn't exactly help Mush to antagonize his good friend Dubya at this point in time.

All said and done, more was said than done. The book is probably a flash in the pan that will interest people for a few months because of the General's good PR. But what after that? Well, maybe Mush should answer that.....

Sleep Issues

2006-09-25T13:13:00.000+05:30

Whenever I come home from college one thing changes dramatically:my sleep patterns. I start sleeping like I've never slept before. I'm not used to afternoon siestas so my sleep's always concentrated in the nocturnal hours. But then once I hit the bed at night...there's no telling when I'll be up. I just seem to sleep on and on and on....like there's no sunrise or morning or a world outside of my bed.
And yet in college one tends to stay up late--because that's when all the fun is.....watching movies late into the night is a favourite pastime back on campus. I am really unpredictable when it comes to sleep. Friends have caught me sleeping while they're still talking to me...in the middle of a movie....at times when everyone should be up and studying for an exam the next day, I invariably doze off.
The best part is when friends wake me up and talk to me- they borrow stuff from me or come looking for something....and when they ask me the next day I remember nothing of the conversation....almost as if my body was operating on auto-pilot after been shaken out of deep slumber.
Six for a man, seven for a woman and eight for a fool: they say that's the number of hours of sleep you need depending on what category you belong to. Well I guess, you can only apply that rule to people who follow a definite routine in the first place....not to dimwits like me who do not have a functional biological clock. I can never go to sleep saying for sure when I'll be up. Any number of alarms are just a waste of energy. I simply turn them off and go back to sleep. The interesting part I never remember switching off the alarm! It's only when I test the alarm later to see if it's working that I realize I must have turned it off.
One of the greatest challenges that faces me today is to work out a consistent sleep pattern. To set my biological clock working. It's a daily fight for me. It's tough and leaves me frustrated and disgusted with myself more often than not. It's been so long that I've tried and failed to work out my sleep issues.....

Krishna on my mind

2006-08-26T23:50:00.000+05:30

Janmashtami was more than a week ago. But I have Krishna on my mind. Here is one character that has always enamored and fascinated me with his unique persona.

Krishna is a God from Indian Mythology and yet there is something human(e)ly mystic about him that probably makes him a shade more accessible to mortals than ‘any other’ God. Krishna’s attitude towards life and the way he lived it is truly incomparable and has a certain ‘coolness’ about it.

Not for him the perfection and self-righteousness associated with the Gods….not for him the idealism and utopianism associated with sages….This dude stands for practicality. He believed in doing what needed to be done and achieving what needed to be achieved. He just didn’t care. On some level, he emphasized the ends more than the means; although this certainly cannot be interpreted as his tolerance for wrongdoing. After all, his greatest battle on earth was against evil.

Krishna knew how to bend the rules. That’s what made him stand out. He could be larger than life and yet have his feet firmly set on the ground at all times. He is someone that the masses could instantly connect with, that hot chicks could carelessly flirt with…..and yet Krishna’s divinity shone bright, leading millions on the path that he had laid out for them.

This guy was someone who could operate on different modes all through life—he could be playful, pensive, assertive and amiable ….and he could shift gears between modes at the drop of a hat. He’s the same bloke who sneaked into his mom’s dairy for a helping of curd, but he also sermonized to Arjuna on the philosophy of existence.

He is the subject of one of the most important books in human history-the Gita; he’s a source of inspiration and devotion for millions across the globe. The message he carried rises above religion-he’s probably larger than Hinduism in his appeal to an overwhelmingly large number of people. All said and done, Krishna is by far one of the most intriguing concepts of Indian culture.

Krishna is a fountainhead of strength, of courage and conviction for many like me…..he shall continue to occupy a special place in my conscious and sub-conscious—he’ll always be on my mind!!

Indian = ?

2006-08-17T00:22:00.000+05:30

I once sat down to wonder what being an Indian really means....maybe I had just too much of free time...but nonetheless, the thought seemed important to me, and soon I was asking myself why I hadn't raised the question before.
What is that one thing(or more than one) that holds the fabric of indian society together? I mean, we're all so different and yet we have a lot in common to bind ourselves as fellow citizens of the same nation. Is it our culture? naah...that varies faster than latitude in our country: there's hardly anything in common between the culture in ladakh and nicobar now is there?

Is it our politics? probably not..we have more political parties and ideologies than the Sheikhs have oil wells. It's not even the food...you can't boast about a great meal without a helping of butter chicken in Punjabi style and yet, even garlic is taboo in some parts of the country.

Maybe it's Bollywood that binds us together(what with all the song and dance and general psychedelics)...

Maybe it's something more serious...like democracy or our commitment to it....maybe it's our constitution and all the nationalist paraphernalia(the flag, anthem and all)....
But all said and done...you've got to admit that it's a special feeling...something that comes straight from the gut....where else in the world would you not think twice before pissing around the next street corner...
So Indianness = complexities that not many people understand. It's engrained in the DNA of your brain....it's part of you without you realizing it on a conscious level.....
We're all Indian----right up to the bottom of our hearts!!

Hyderabad Diary 2

2006-07-19T08:24:00.000+05:30

Hyderabad embodies the duality that India stands for in the world today:the juxtaposition of the new rich and the dilapidated old. So where you have the latest retail chains and urban spaces, you also continue to have the long forgotten bylanes that breed the spirit of India.

Old Hyderabad is as conspicuous by its architecture as by its sights and smells. You have the towering Charminar that stands as a sentinel of the traditions and history of the city....the adjoining market that has been where it is since ages....and the people who, though traditional, have learned to move forward with the times.

When you're in Hyderabad, what hits you from out of nowhere is the pathetic condition of the traffic. People seldom follow rules and sometimes it beomes a free-for-all on crossroads. The city would have been so much better had its people maintained discipline on the road. For a changing city, I am sure this too is bound to change.

Hyderabad, the city of Nawabs is also the city of the software majors.....of the Telugu film industry and the delicious biryani. Like most of the places in India it is full of culture and yet...has a contagious freshness about it. As I flashback on the week I spent back in Hyderabad, there's one thing for sure....I'll always carry the memories that it has left with me.

Hyderabad Diary 1

2006-07-13T11:37:00.000+05:30

When you go south of the Tropic of Cancer in India, you might as well expect to find hot, sultry conditions awaiting you. At least that's what I expected of Hyderabad. But I was pleasantly surpised otherwise. The place was remarkably cool for this time of the year.

So what's special about yet another teeming metropolis in a country of the teeming millions? To the people who live and work in the big cities-nothing. But to someone who hails from a small town-a lot. I was amazed by the manner in which Hyderabad is at the forefront of almost everything happening in the country. But people there told me that the place was no longer as happening as it used to be, ever since a change in government in the state. And yet, Hyderabad, to me was in stark contrast to the sleepy township that I come from.

The city is certainly one of the IT hotspots in the country, and often competes with neighbouring Bangalore for IT related investments. But, unlike Bangalore, Hyderabad is also a city that is steeped in antiquity. A place that has, through the centuries, learned to strike an intricate balance between its glorious past, rebellious present and a future full of possibilities.

Secunderabad, Hyderabad's twin city, separated from it by the majestic Hussainsagar Lake, is rather special because of the large expanses of Cantonment Areas there. These areas, habitated and maintained by the Indian Army are the epitome of excellence in civic planning. Lush green acres, dotted with Victorian buildings for residential and administrative blocks-that's the typical geography of this area.

More about Old Hyderabad in the next post....

College life....past, present and future

2006-06-25T03:49:00.000+05:30

It's been two years now......Halfway through college and I decide to do a little flashback...put all those days in retrospect. There have been days of elation, revelry...and days of desperation. I've had the good times and of course, my share of tough times......There are ways in which college has changed me, and there are so many other ways in which I remain the same.

The fact remains that these days have brought some of the best times I've ever had.....so many more pals, so much more fun, frolic,excitement and what have you.... it's been as they say: 'the time of my life'. My college has a great spirit-a unique one. It's one of the oldest educational institutions in the country and more often than not such places tend to have a culture of their own. When you come in, you become part of the family and join in the BIT experience....whether it's cursing the administration, enjoying the scenic beauty of the place or simply whiling away time around the canteen...

What I like about this place is that it's constantly on the move.....not in a manner visible to anyone, but discreetly...people are moving ahead all the while. Exploring new ideas, changing old attitudes, adding to their personality and constantly gaining in the whole process. You may not be at the forefront of a revolution to realize that you are changing...and yet you are!

I would much rather have preferred if my college was not as sleepy as it usually looks....laid back and quiet like a place isolated from the world: physically but not socially. This particular quality of the place leads many people to believe (incorrectly I contend...) that there's nothing going on around here....

All these days have flown by like a dream....classes, exams, parties, fests, arguments.....and yet there's something that tells me that I haven't even seen half the fun yet.... There are so many things left to be done...and just two years to fit them in....challenging, but exciting all the same. And so as I laze around at home, wondering what the next two years of college might be like, somewhere at the back of my mind I know that amazing times are ahead!!

I have a dream.........reloaded

2006-06-12T23:50:00.000+05:30

I have a dream….
A dream that one day my nation will stop spitting on its streets,
That one day all the institutions of this country will magically free themselves of the malaise of nepotism…
That justice shall not be denied to the parents of the next Jessica Lall…

I have a dream that my country will stop dividing itself…..
That my countrymen will stop multiplying themselves….
And adding to the endless list of national woes…

I have a dream that India will never again talk of banning The Da Vinci Code,
That we shall instead focus on real issues and ideas
That one day politicians will get the spine to stop appeasing their vote banks….and retract the quota system…..

I have a dream that some day in the future every Bollywood movie will be a work of art and not just a scene by scene copy of Hollywood flicks….
That one day Aishwarya Rai will tend to her attitude problem….

I dream of a day when roads will be better…..when clean water will not be a dream for half a billion people….
When India will stop watching inane Saas Bahu soaps….

I have a dream that one day I will stop blaming people like I just have….
That I will wake up trying to change things ……
And start with myself……………

Will the real Marxists please stand up?

2006-05-26T01:52:00.000+05:30

The ‘Left’ in India is probably facing its greatest identity crisis ever. So who are the real ‘Leftwallahs’? Is it the ‘Karat’ and stick brigade….the kind that vehemently oppose any trace of development at the centre or the Buddha-Bhadralok brigade that does to Kolkata what they would not have the government do to the rest of India. So is this a case of double standards on the part of the third largest political group in the world’s largest democracy or just ideals and ideology gone berserk?

On the one hand, Mr. Karat goes on record to say that the government should not privatize airports and on the other his colleague on Alimuddin Street promptly congratulates Praful Patel on the Mumbai and Delhi airport modernization and urges him to do the same for Kolkata…..so is the left playing its cards real crooked or is it suffering from multiple power centers (something that the central government is often accused of)

Obviously, one faction of the left has to be wrong….because both these factions have completely contrary visions for the country. One of them clearly wants the country to go to the dogs…..what with their constant attempts at sabotaging every reformist move that the liberal face of the government tries to make. Someone please tell Mr. Karat that the Jurassic Park ideologies that he advocates today have been abandoned by the very countries that formulated them in the first place.

Everywhere in the world, communists are converting…..in China they are the biggest propagators of free market policies and reformist ideologies in the world today……There is nothing communist about the communists in China today…except of course their name. These people have long realized that in the best interests of their people, they must make their country and their governance and their markets competent enough to survive in the world today.

In the sixty odd years of our country’s democracy, the left has done nothing but retard growth in every step of the way. These are the people that caused the biggest stock market crash in Indian History a few by demanding that stock brokers be taxed. Even on the matter of reservation….they had nothing to say on the main issue….only that ‘creamy layers should be kept away from the quotas’ ……In the name of the Lord, what do these people have against the rich? If Communism is to be believed then it does not matter if you work eight hours a day and are a PhD from Harvard or if you work eight hours a year and are nothing from nowhere. Because to them everybody should have the same amount of prosperity/poverty.

Someone rightly said that communism is a means of redistributing poverty…not redistributing wealth. These people will definitely make sure that everyone becomes equally poor.

The Left has a habit of choosing for itself the most convenient position in every situation….this is just why they are maneuvering the UPA government from the outside. They do not want to participate in the government because that would make them accountable to the people of their country.

And now, after so many years, we suddenly get to see a face of the Left (read Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee) that is just so……well…..Right! So is the ‘common man’ not justified to ask: “Will the real Left Front please stand up?”.

The death of promise....

2006-05-07T00:27:00.000+05:30

This week the nation watched with baited breath as a man held back death...fought for his life incessantly as a warrior thrown into a losing battle. Pramod Mahajan died this week and with him another bright star of the country's future passed into oblivion.
Inspite of the many allegations and controversies that the man was neck-deep in, one could hardly miss the fact that this was one of the most progressive and confident faces of a dying institution....the Indian political system. Here was a man who came closest to representing the dreams and aspirations of the youth of the nation.

I still remember the first time I saw the words flash across the screen of my television set: "India Shining". They said it was a bogus claim...that India was never shining, but groaning under the burdens of poverty and destitution....Mr. Mahajan was accused of hurting the sentiments of the languishing millions by claiming that India was shining.

Well I do not know what the facts on the ground were at that point in time, but I can certainly speak for myself....I know what India Shining did to me......
India Shining instilled in me confidence and pride of living in a nation that was on the move...I knew there were people left behind, but I also knew that they would be taken along subsequently;we had embarked ont the journey of a thousand miles...we had moved forward on the path of progress confidently and with belief in the abilities of a great nation that would decide its destiny by making a tryst with technology.

But apparently there were people who felt otherwise...there were people who felt that India should take a step back and go back to its old self where there was no disparity.....because everybody was conveniently poor. Well, in the end it was these people that had their way....it was they that decided that India was not shining.....but they kept missing the woods for the trees, thinking there was no fire because there were only sparks that flew around...no flames. So they doused whatever sparks had been there.
For me, Mr.Mahajan was a hero....he was a man with promise....promise for a better future....a future which envisioned a developed India, a technologically advanced and confident India or as he said....a shining India.

pakistani music rocks bollywood

2005-12-09T08:58:00.000+05:30

ok what the hell! i'll post the second blog if nobody will. been wondering for quite sometime about how paki music is now a rage in this country. not that i disapprove. i love paki music.
its got that hip and happening flavour that is,lets face it, often absent in our own filmi music.

and music is probably playing a key role in bridging the gap between two countries constantly at loggerheads. we need paki music nad they need our audiences. marriage of convenience? i think not. our appreciation of paki music and their desire to entertain india probably arises out of years of isolation from each other.

and everyone invariably loves these new kids on the block: jal, junoon, strings, rahat fateh ali khan, fuzon........ and then there are the old favourites: ghulam ali, abida...the list goes on and every day india discovers some new talent from across the borders.

the truth is the two countries and their people are not very different after all. so what if our politicians seek to divide us on some petty issues? the overwhelming majority of people on both sides want healthy interaction. (indian guys sure wouldn't mind paki babes coming over to study in our colleges.)

welcome aboard!

2005-12-08T20:59:00.000+05:30

hi this is abhishek sahoo.

welcome to my blog!

i see this as a really great way of communicating.i would prefer blogging to e-mail because people have just stopped sending personalized e-mails. now its only forwards (most of it chain junk that people fall for) that keep circling the globe aided by people who dont find the time to write their friends an email.

so what would i like you to post on this blog??
well just about anything!
from rantings on soviet communism to your views on premarital sex. if it's on your mind, just make sure it's on the blog. only...no bullshit please.