Igniting India's mind By A.P.J. ABDUL KALAM

“Words like 'vision' and 'dream' are back in currency. For long, they were inhabiting the manifestoes of political parties and the lexicon of the student who wanted to make a name in elocution. The common man did not believe in these words.

Now, suddenly he does. Many factors have contributed to this recharging of meaning. One is a President, who, by virtue of not being a regular politician, has caught the imagination of the nation. His dream of India becoming a superpower by 2020 has become the people's dream.

But between the idea and the reality falls a shadow, as the poet said. In a series of articles beginning with one penned by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam himself, we do a reality-check on this dream. Experts ranging from Bharat Karnad and M.S. Swaminathan to K. Kasturirangan and Arun Shourie give their concrete proposals on how to turn these ideas into reality. So that dreams do not remain daydreams.

The 21st century belongs to the knowledge age, where acquisition, possession and application of knowledge are the most important resources. To India, knowledge is not new. Ancient India was an advanced knowledge society with a continual process of intellectual renaissance through inspiring contributions by saints of many faiths, philosophers, poets, scientists, astronomers and mathematicians. There existed great universities like Takshasila and Nalanda where students not only from India but also from far-off countries came to study diverse subjects. Many scholars have said that India culturally conquered and dominated China for 20 centuries without sending a single soldier across the border.

However, invasions and colonial rule destroyed these institutions and robbed them of their core competence. People were systematically degraded to lower levels of existence. By the time the British left, India was at its nadir. Now, it has the challenging task of rediscovering itself and become a knowledge superpower by 2020. For this India first needs to transform itself into a knowledge society. Let us see the genesis of such a society, its characteristics and how India can transform itself into a knowledge power.
”

Read more.

Go get a copy of the week's latest issue immediately!

Onamashamsakkal !

Happy onam everyone.

I found this excellent article which I think is worth reproducing here.

Onam - The Festival of Exuberance

Kerala is celebrating another New Year- Year 1179, according to the Malayalam calendar, also known as “Kollavarsham”.

Chingam or Bhadrapada, the first month of the calendar ushers in ONAM, the national fiesta of Kerala. After the rain drenched Karkidakam with its privations, Chingam is a welcome month of plenty. The sky becomes blue, the deep forest becomes greener and it is time to reap the harvest, time to celebrate and to rejoice along with the Nature. And Onam epitomizes the newfound vigour and enthusiasm about everything around. It is celebrated with traditional Malayalee fervour with visit to temples, family get-togethers, gifting each other clothes called Ona-kkodi and lots of merry making.

This picturesque ten-day harvest festival has been part of Malayalee psyche for centuries now. There are records of Onam being celebrated during the Sangam Age. Onam festivities have been recorded during the time of Kulasekhara Perumals around A.D 800. It is believed that during those days the whole of Chingam was celebrated as Onam season.

Q&A with Krishna Bharat of Google News

“Google News is one of the largest and most up-to-date news services online, gathering content from more than 4,500 online news sources around the world, then determining which stories are related and grouping them based on importance.

While the creation of the original articles and their publication online requires thousands of journalists, editors and other news professionals, the organization and display of stories on Google News is managed entirely by computer programs.

Google News launched in September 2002 on www.google.com. Recently, localized version of Google News were created for international markets, including Germany, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and India. The new beta versions of Google News for these countries are available on their respective Google country domains. Other versions are in the works and should be available in the months ahead.

Krishna Bharat,
Google Principal Scientist

Krishna Bharat, the Google Principal Scientist who conceived the idea for Google News, took a moment recently to answer questions submitted by readers of the Google Friends newsletter.”

Read more.

Happy Birthday

It was the october of 2001.

Our client, a small internet based startup, had already been hit hard by the late 20th century collective madness , the dot com boom ( and the subsequent bust ). 911 proved to be the killer blow for our project and we parted ways saying solemn good byes. Faced with nothing to do, our situation was something like that of soldier pulled out of a gruesome war and put in a budhist monastery. We just couldnt take the silence and lack of work.

After days of tea time terrorism discussions and idea generation sessions, we invented creative methods to spend time like network roadrash races and chatting.

Now ever since Internet was introduced in the late 90's by VSNL, I have been online. Those days, you had to fill a form, send to VSNL chennai office and then wait for a good amount of time before VSNL send you back the connection details. Over the last so many years I have done most of which can be done on the net except for one thing : Chatting.

Why ?

Right from my childhood days, I have been this shy silent guy whom you will more often find in a corner reading a book than in the centre of a crowd talking. This has changed considerably over the years but still in many ways I remain such a person.

So chatting was not something that came to me easily. But when it came to text chatting on a computer, I had a small advantage. It is my belief that I am a better writer than a talker. So armed with a keyboard I was a wee bit more confident than I would be otherwise. Using a combination of instant poetry and fancy icons, I managed to build huge friend list in my messenger within a short time.

It was during this period that I met the person for whom this post is being written. The first thing that stuck me is the unabashed joy of living seen in the person.

I need to digress again and detail a personal quirk. By the by, a complete listing of my personal quirks might take more space than my host provides :) Anyway this one details my friends. A long time back when I was an antisocial nerd ( I still am in a small way ), I had oh so serious friends, People who find it easier to quote Nietzsche than wear a smile on their face. Luckily this guy stepped in and more or less changed the way I used to go about life. Ever since, I have been fascinated by people who are genuinely happy. Pretty soon, my craze for chatting died a natural death but my friendship with my new friend endured.

Thus in the strangest of circumstances started this special friendship. Now I have a couple of friends who could perhaps one day start a new cult among them with the title, “The Joy of Living” :-)

Today is my little friend's birthday and so here comes the wish for which the whole post was written.

Happy birthday, my dear friend.

History

Tomorrow, I complete one year of blogging. It is only natural that I indulge in a little bit of nostalgia at this moment and look back at what led to the birth of this site.

Long back ago, during the time of the internet boom, there was a company by the name namezero which decided to give away domain names for free. Yes, you read that correct. Domain names for free. I must admit, a bit shamefacedly, that I took full advantage of this offer and ended up booking close to 50 domains :-) In addition to itismylife.com I had other interesting names like infosys.org and imaginati0n.com. But I never used them for anything other than vanity email ids. By the by, I used to get resumes from unknown people hoping to land a job at infosys !

This state of affairs continued for a long long time. At around this time last year, India was rocked by the Gujarat riots. In a mail to a classmate, I wrote up something which I thought needed a much wider audience. The idea of putting it on my website came to my mind and I searched for methods to do it. It was at this point that I came across the word blogging for the first time and immediately I was hooked. I signed up for a blogger account and published my article at blogspot.com.

The article was later on published at rediff.com.

Within a short time, I understood the deficiencies of the blogger system and jumped over to upsaid.com. I was with them for a long long time and it was a fruitfull association. Meanwhile, I was send to the united states for an assigment.

With a few dollars in my hand, I suddenly had an itch to move to a self hosted solution which is what I did, getting a new domain in the process. I also discovered the power of nucleus and ended up contributing quite a few plugins as can be seen at the forum.

Since then, Things havent changed much but for the entry of suresh.

So that in a few words was the history behind this site.

What lies ahead ?

I am planning to relaunch itismylife.com at some point in this month. The idea is to have a couple of niche blogs ie blogs targeted at a niche audience and highly specific to one topic. The pages here will continue to be the place holder for my general writings and link collections.

If all goes well, I will be writing a similar post one year from now :-)

Anbe Sivam

When I started this journal a few months back, I had but a vague idea about what to write on these pages. The idea was to mostly write around the two topics close to my heart : Philosophy and Movies. Now Philosophy was a recurring theme during the early days of this site. But strangely other than just passing references to films, It was mostly relegated to the background.

Why did this happen ? It was not as if I was seeing fewer films. Infact, ever since we bought our VCD player, We have been absolutely living on films. The real reason was the fact that I did not see a single film which was worth writing about.

That changed last week.

I happened to see a film which was a perfect blend of philosophy, realistic acting and the fine art of film making. I am talking about the latest kamal - madhavan starrer Anbe Sivam.

Now, I am not a big fan of kamal. Never was. The arrogance so clearly etched on his face is a major put off for me. But ever so often, Kamal makes me admit ( albeit grudgingly ) that he is the best at what he does.

The philosophy of the film is best explained by the words of the title song,
...
Aathigam pessum adiyaarkelaam sivamme anbaakkum,
Naathigam pessum nallavarrukko anbe sivamaakkum.

Yaar yaar sivam ?
Nee naan sivam.

A rough translation goes something like this,

For the theists, God is love.
For the good among the atheists, Love is God.

Who here is God ?
You and me.


The story is written by Kamal as is the screenplay. He has sung a couple of songs as well out of which the haunting title song stands out. Madhavan is but a tool in kamal's hands which he uses effectively to his advantage.

Kamal's character changes from that of a bumbling idiot in the first few scenes to a communist union leader with a artistic vein in the middle scenes to a god like figure in the last few scenes. In the last scene, as kamal walks away into the horizon, we are left with no option but to stand up and salute the indomitable spirit of a man from whom life has taken away so much but still manages to smile.

I wouldn't describe anything more about the story because any words that I can conjure up here wouldn't be enough. The film tells a philosophy that is best seen and understood.

When Love lives in your mind, you are God.

3

I have three designs and a question for you.

Do you guys/gals like the

1. the current design of tamizhan ?

2. or the new sandalwood re-design of masala ?

3. or the govinda re-design of punnagai ?

As you can see, the three are different color schemes applied to the same design.

I have put up an ad at masala or rather a way to put up an ad. Anyone wanting to advertise there can use the link there to do so. I dont expect anyone does though ;-)

Among other things, I have plans of putting up “theme based links” on masala. The idea is to celebrate a particular week as say philosophy week and then put all the links that I like and can find on philosophy in that week there. Just to add a little bit of novelty to the proceedings. Let me know if you guys/gals like the idea. Suggestions for themes are welcome as well.

Moving over to cricket, I do think that these defeats are a good thing. Once we come out of the hype, we can take a realistic view of the whole thing and learn a lesson or two. Ganguly definetely needs to be axed from the test team. Maybe, it is time to give sachin a chance to lead the test team and see how things work out. Maybe, age would have added the necessary qualities required for a captain to sachin.

More chitchat :
I just love the two centershock ads. From the name of the product to the message they want to convey to the ads themselves, everything is in perfect sync. It must be a whole lot of fun working in such ad agencies, isnt it.

Waiting for the reliance infocomm service to start in bangalore. I am most intrigued by the 144 kbps internet connectivity advertised. If that comes true, then it will be mobile blogging now onwards. Thoughts as it strikes posted on the web. Maybe, I am hoping too much ?

Gayathri

I swear that my 6 month old niece is the cutest kid in the whole world :-)

Merry christmas folks. I remember Harris telling me during the bangalore blogger's meet that today is his birthday as well. So a happy birthday wish goes out to him as well.

Tata Indigo update : We have booked an artic silver one. It is supposed to take close to 20 days for the car to come. Here is one strange little fact for you. I dont how to drive a car :P The first thing to be done when I return to bangalore is to enroll myself in a good driving school. Any idea how long it will take for me to learn driving and get a license ?

Planning to wake up early tomorrow to catch the first one dayer. The absence of sachin is a dampener though :(

Anyone seen kante ? Is it good enough ? How about sathiya ? Since I have seen the tamil original, I dont think i will be seeing it.

I thought 24 is quite young. But my mother and sisters think otherwise. They have already started the bride hunt! But then I am not going to give up my bachelor status that easily ;-)

Let us try this again.

Long back, I tried this little experiment. It was not to be. People are talking about it again. I would love to see this idea come alive.

In my opinion, the source code of blo.gs should be a good place to start.

As for the name, a couple of silly ones come to my mind for now, blogdurbar.com or humblog.com.

I am sure one of you can come up with a better name.

So what do you say ? Shall we try this one more time ?

Distance.

Distance is the best measure of love.

Put a little distance between you and the things you love and you will know the depth of your love.

I used to wonder whether the fervent note of homesickness heard in songs like the chitthi aayyi hai ghazal by pankaj udhas was true or was just a commercial gimmick. Now I know.

A while ago, it seemed a good idea to visit the states, get to see the places and make some money. But then you never know until you are actually in it and that is precisely what happenned with me. In the final analysis, It was an okayish trip. Had its highs and lows as with anything else. But in the future, I will think twice before embarking on such a journey.

So thats it folks.

Today is my last day at work in the states. Tuesday I fly back. Thursday afternoon, I reach home.

I am happy :-)

PS : updates on this site will be sparse over the next couple of weeks.

Films.

The other day, me and my good friend Gautham, were discussing screenplays. Now before I proceed further, a little background information on me. I am a hardcore film buff. The emphasis is on hardcore. I dont just watch films. I note the camera angles used, the frame composition, the editing techniques and what not. I have carried along with me, for a long time, a secret fantasy to be a director. :)

Gautham is no different from me and he has a bigger range since he also watches telugu and english films ( which i dont but for a few ones).

I started tossing ideas at Gautham but he was quick to point out almost always that a film had already been made on my idea :( Originality is difficult these days for there are not that many ways left to tell a lovestory. Ranging from a ideology conflict set against the backdrop of the freedom struggle to a new age love story of an anti-devdas, almost everything has already been tackled by our film-makers. Just when it seemed hopeless, I was able to come up with an idea which seemed original to both of us. So in the coming days ( after I reach bangalore ), expect a screenplay to be put up on tamizhan.com. I will be interested in knowing all of your opinion on the same :).

PS : Gautham, Considering that hey ram flopped, maybe the idealogy conflict against the backdrop of the freedom struggle might still be a good idea for a second screenplay :-)

PPS : All these as always is for fun. Maybe, Maniratnam might accidentally visit my website. What if I caught his fancy with a crazy idea. Who knows :-)

Sleeping On A Bench.

Yesterday, 6:45 PM.

The old school bus, doubling up as the AT&T shuttle bus in these difficult days, pulled into the parking lot of the usually deserted train station. The sole occupant of the bus, on his way out, exchanges a few pleasantries with the bored driver. He slowly makes his way to the Track no 2 to catch the New York bound train. It will be atleast 45 minutes before the train arrives.

In his hand, the young guy ( the sole occupant will be now onwards referred to as the young guy ) carried a plastic bag with a few sheets of paper in it. Extended waiting times at the train station had taught him to come prepared. It is his habit to print out a short story or two from the gutenburg site to read while waiting. However having exhausted most of the titles from the short story section, he had printed out a translation of the Bhagavad Gita on that particular day.

Having spend most of the day conducting training sessions for new developers taking over his project, the young guy was not in a mood to read. The wooden bench on the platform beckoned him to lay down his tired body in its lap and enjoy a few minutes of rest. Without a moment's hesitation, he streched his long lean body on the bench, using his bag as the pillow and closed his eyes for a small nap.

Unknown to him, on the opposite platform, a middle aged american picked a cellphone and made a call.

A couple of minutes later, a police car pulled into the train station. The young guy was woken up ( he was not really asleep in any case ) by the flashing lights of the car. He watched as a young clean shaved policeman came out of the car and looked around. The moment the policeman's eyes met that of the young guy, he started walking towards his direction. Not thinking much of it, the young guy continued in his horizontal position. When the policeman came and stopped in front of his bench, it dawned upon the young guy that the police man had indeed come to meet him.

This is what followed.

Policeman : “whats going on ?”.
Youngguy ( with a shrug ) : “Well, I am waiting for the train”.
Policeman : “I figured that”, with a cold stare.
Youngguy : “Well, why the question then ?”, with an attempt at a smile :).

The Policeman showed with an expression on his face that he was not in the least bit amused.

Policeman then asks, “whats your name ?”.
Youngguy : “anand”.

The Policeman's eyes drift towards the young guy's AT&T badge, pinned on his shirt, and find a different ( and in no way related ) name there.

Policeman : “Well, your badge here says something else”.

I ( now onwards the young guy will be referred to as I since as you would have guessed by now, he is me ) : “Well, Thats my real name. But since it is so long and difficult to pronounce, I use my nickname which is anand”.

The Policeman is not satisfied but still buys my argument.

Policeman ( now pulling out his notebook ) : “What is your home address ?”.

( I had recently moved from one apartment to a basement sharing arrangement with a friend. I only knew how to walk to my new place from my station and had no idea of the *actual* home address. )

I try to explain my above predicament.

Policeman ( getting annoyed now ) : “What is your home phone number ?”.

I did not have a phone for my personal use and had no idea about the owner's number.

Policeman : “Show me another id, Please”.

I did not have any other.

Policeman ( getting a bit frustrated here ) : “What is your Social Security Number ?”.

Me : “I dont remember :(”.

Policeman ( now getting really irritated ) takes a look at my plastic cover : “What is in there ?”.

I say,“Just a few printouts” and hand it over to him.

Policeman opens it casually to find the title on the first page saying Bhagavad Gita. Now getting increasingly interested in me, he says “Do you always carry the Gita with you?”

I say defensively, “I just printed it out to read while waiting for the train.”

Policeman asks me many more questions during the course of which I blurt out ( quite honestly, I must add ) that I am flying from JFK next week.

The three letters, JFK, had an electric effect on the Policeman.

He walked a few steps away, pulled out his walkie talkie and called ( presumably ) his superiors.

I ( watching this scene from a distance ) was getting a wee bit worried. My position definetely looked bad.

A couple of minutes later, a bigger police car made its way into the now slightly crowded parking lot. A big fat guy and an old wise ( the reason for him being called a wise guy will become clear in a few lines from now ) guy got out.

A few more questions later, We still dont reach anywhere. There is nothing on me to prove who I am and nobody nearby to tell them I really am what I claim I am.

The three men start an internal discussion at a small distance from me.

The young policeman says “We must detain him until we can verify his id.”.

The old wise guy takes a look at me and says, “He doesnt look suspicious”.

All three look at my direction. I put on my best smile and try to bring an expression onto my face which says that I am the nicest guy on planet earth :-) The three men realising that I have overheard their conversation walk away a bit further with a sheepish grin on their faces.

An even longer discussion ensues with a lot of shaking heads and gestaculating hands. I watch in rapt attention while three men discuss about who I really am.

Finally, the three men walk towards me with the old guy leading the way.

He asks me a strange question. “Where you sleeping on the bench ?”.

I reply in the positive.

He replies with a weak attempt at humour. “People dont do that in these places.”

I raise an eyebrow and say nothing.

It seems a gentleman ( the middle aged american on the other platform ? ) had called in to report a suspicious character. With a friendly warning to carry an id with me whenever I go out, he wished me good night and walked away with the other two.

and I turn back and walk, in the land of free, unable to sleep on a bench.