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“Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the country's biggest software-service exporter, will expand its training centre at Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala to accommodate new global recruits and employees.
TCS, which concluded the country's biggest initial public offer last week raising Rs 5,382 crore, will invest between Rs 50-60 crore by the end of the current fiscal to expand the training centre.
Currently housed in a picturesque two-acre campus, the centre, which provides training to domestic recruits, will now be spread across an additional 10-acre campus with approval from the Kerala government to construct over 50 per cent of this land.
The software firm, which aggressively plans to acquire firms after it lists on the stock market, will hire over 5,000 people in the current year to March 2005. TCS, which last year hired about 3,000 people, currently has an employee strength of 30,121 of which 29,177 are based in India.”
Read more.
Feels good. More so because I am typing this sitting in Thiruvananthapuram.
“Kerala has been selected for the 'India Today' award for its outstanding performance in various fields.
The state was chosen for the Award on the basis of an integrated study conducted on various sectors, including education, agriculture, health, basic amenities and economic reforms, by noted economists Bibic Deb Roy and Livish Bhandari, who were deputed by India Today.
State Fisheries Minister K V Thomas would receive the award from President A P J Abdul Kalam on August six at New Delhi, Official release said.”
Read more.
Two different magazines saying two different things about the same state.
Got a bunch of great snaps of kerala from a website. A weekend cable blackout meant I had enough time on my hands to whip up some new designs to go with them. Nothing complex. Just some photos and colors to go with them.
Sreekanth has been sending horror stories via email about life at IIMA. Put together a bunch of smart people and you are bound to get a challenging competitive environment. But I didn't expect it to be this extreme :)
Bought a bunch of ghazals from landmark a week back. The Jagjit Singh ( live in singapore ) CD is heavenly. One of the good things about buying a live recording is the variations the singers bring in while rendering their hit songs live. Hariharan & Jagjit Singh are two singers especially adept at this.
If you are feeling really bored today,
follow this link.
To end with, lines from a song I am currently listening to,
tum itanaa jo muskuraa rahe ho
kyaa Gam hai jisako chhupaa rahe ho
aa.Nkho.n me.n namii ha.Nsii labo.n par
kyaa haal hai kyaa dikhaa rahe ho.
When you look back, events seem to take a different meaning. Seemingly trivial incidents tend to stick around in the back of your mind. Stuff you never deemed important are sometimes the one you can never forget.
Before I get involved in yet another long winding description of a life gone past, let me stop.
My current preoccupation is a hunt for a new home. Over the next few months, I expect my room mates to get married and that is when I get kicked out. So need to find someplace at the earliest. Not the easiest of tasks especially when coupled with my general lethargic attitude. We will see how it goes.
The India Vs Pakistan series should provide for some good entertainment. Still remember the first ball yorker of shoaib taking tendulkar's middle stump.
The ongoing NZ Vs SA series is turning out to be a nail baiting contest. The last two matches were decided in the final over and how. Any description would fail to capture the mood in those last overs.
More entertainment is guarenteed from the general elections. Things in the media space look different from the last time over. A lot more channels and they are going to try and do everything possible to attract eyeballs. Should be a lot of fun to follow them.
As for my political preferences, I don't have any. I do like Vajpayee & Jaitley on a personal level. Whoever comes should get an absolute majority. Thats all that I wish for. A lot is at stake for India in the next few years. Can't have governments fighting among themselves and derail the economy on the whole.
Lately, I have been hearing from my classmates about burnouts. The stress of an IT career is beginning to show atleast on some of them. Some plan to retire early while some plan to move into a different stream altogether. I would like to do the same but not knowing anything other than coding, I might be at a disadvantage. Ofcourse, I have my share of alternate professions lined up in my daydreams. But then they are not called dreams without a reason :)
So then, after spending yet another sunday at the office, let me start on the way back home wondering all along whether life was meant to be like this.
“Sarovar.org is India's first portal to host projects under Free/Open source licenses. It is located in Trivandrum, India and hosted at Asianet data center. Sarovar.org is customised, installed and maintained by Linuxense as part of their community services and sponsored by River Valley Technologies.
Sarovar is hosted on a Compaq box running Debian woody and GForge.
Please read the site documentation http://doc.sarovar.org for effective use of Sarovar.org. Contact raj at linuxense dot com if you have further questions or comments”
Sarovar.org
I always had a sneaky suspicion that there were a lot of really smart guys in Trivandrum, my home town. This more or less confirms it.
I have joined and have plans of putting my nucleus plugins over there. I have started out on a couple of new projects which hopefully will have a larger user base.
Open Source is a natural fit for India. Behind inherently less materialistic than the West and with a long scholarly tradition of distributing knowledge behind us, I am quite sure that Indians will make their mark in OSS.
India really is shining ;-)
Happy new year, folks :-)
I leave you with the words of one of my favourite songs,
“What is Living In India?
Living in India is a new community 'blogzine' produced by a cooperative of bloggers and writers with a focus on India. It is being developed in conjunction with the team behind Living in China.
A blog (short for weblog) is a web page made up of frequently updated and chronological posts . The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly from links and commentary about other web sites, to news, personal diaries, photography and mini-essays.
Bloggers provide alternative voices to mainstream media. This site aims to showcase the wide variety of opinions and experiences of people living in and writing about this large and important nation.
Content is a combination of original material and syndicated 'RSS Feeds' from our ever-growing network of participating blogs.
We invite all bloggers from India and beyond to participate.
”
Living In India // About Us.
Interesting. Let us see how it evolves.
After thinking about it for a while, I have come to this conclusion.
Brahma created Sati to tame Shiva and teach him the lessions of love. Shiva till then had rejected samsara ( the family way of life ) and was prone to wandering around the jungles and mountains. This caused concern among the gods that others might follow and society itself might collapse if people reject the family way of life. So Sati was created and through Sati, Shiva felt the first pangs of love.
To draw a matrix parallel, oracle ( Brahma ) created Sati so that programs feel love for the first time.
Sati is an avatar of Shakthi, who was born out of the bodies of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. To call Rama her father is ideal in that sense.
Rama being called the power manager is also ideal in many ways. In our trinity, Brahma is the creator, Vishnu is the perpetuator and Shiva the destroyer. Now a power manager is one who sustains the matrix and in that sense is the perpetuator.
Rama is the seventh avatar of Vishnu. Now Neo is the sixth version of the one according to the architect. So Sati, Rama's daughter might be a symbolism to indicate that she is the next version of the One. Unlike the previous ones, she may not use brute force as her weapon but might use love instead. A new utopian world, maybe ?
Coming back to Neo. If he is the sixth version of the one, can we assume he is a symbol for the sixth avatar of Vishnu, Parashurama ? Unforunately, I really don't understand why the brothers would choose Parashurama among the avatars of Vishnu to represent Neo.
There are a couple of interesting similarities.
- Parashurama was a reluctant fighter. There are peculiar circumstances connected with his birth. It is said that his grandmother mixed a secret potion so that she and her daughter could get warrior sons. It was not until his father was killed by rogue princes that Parashurama picked up arms and ended up killing twenty one generations of kshatriyas. In the end, he repents.
Now Neo is again a reluctant fighter. He was expected to tbe the One but this did not happen till late into the first film. He could then be seen as going on a killing spree of the machines ( Ksthariyas could be seen as killing machines ). In the end, Neo stops fighting and wants peace.
- Parashurama and Rama meet during the swayamwara of Sita.
In the matrix too, they meet.
What does all this show ?
If you have enough time on your hands and an ambigous story like matrix replete with vague symbolisms, you can derive an infinite number of conclusions :)
Asatho Maa Sad Gamaya,
Thamaso Maa Jyothir Gamaya,
Mrithyo Maa Amritham Gamaya.
(
Lead me from untruth to truth,
Lead me from darkness to light,
Lead me from death to immortality.
)
Thus ends the Matrix revolutions, with a prayer for moksha from the eternal cycle of birth and death.
Much has been written about the trilogy. Popular opinion seems to be against the sequels. Too many seem to have gone to the theatres to find answers to the tantalising questions posed by reloaded. Perhaps, the greatest triumph of the trilogy is that there were no answers. Only an interesting way to look at life and ask questions that the vast majority would never think of.
It wasn't perhaps the easiest of films to understand. Everyone seems to have interpreted the film through the filter of their own beliefs mostly religious. The fact that the brothers chose to derive from multiple belief systems makes every interpretation seem correct.
Here is my interpretation.
Humanity has been enslaved by the machines to generate energy for them to run. The fact that skies have been scorched by a nuclear war prevents them from using the sun as the source. Now to keep the humans alive and interested, the machines plugged them into an illusory world called the matrix.
The architect, the program responsible for the creation of the matrix, created a perfect world in its first avatar. But he soon saw that perfection was not acceptable to humans. Indeed humans rejected this world ( Smith says humans define their existence through misery ) and this led to the crash of the system. The architect then devised a program with a lesser mind, a more intuitive one if you will, the oracle to understand human behaviour and build a system which will last longer. The oracle understood that humans needed to believe that they have choice even if there was really none. This arrangement worked out well for 99% of the humans. But a 1% of the humans still saw through this illusory world and felt something was not right. Now it was the oracle's responsibility along with Mr.Smith to “control” this few people and ensure that they don't go out of hand.
The oracle did this with prophesies which led to the creation of zion and the human resistance. At the end of every cycle, there would be a war between the machines and humans with the One required to make a choice : Whether to return to the source and reload the matrix or to go back to the matrix and risk complete anihilation of humanity and the machines. For five times, Neo has chosen to return to the source reloading the matrix and picking the 23 people who will lead the human resistance in the next cycle. It is not Neo but the oracle which makes the choice for him everytime.
The oracle got tired of this endless cycle of creation and destruction. She wanted a way out, a peaceful way out.
She played a game, a dangerous one. She introduced a new variable into the system. Love in the form of trinity.
She hints to trinity even before she sees Neo that she will fall in love with the one thereby ensuring she does.
When the time comes for Neo to make the choice, for the first time he choses to go back into the matrix. Indeed he doesn't need to make the decision. Like the architect says, the decision has already been made by the oracle when she made him fall in love. All he needed to do was to understand it.
Smith is again different this time around. Neo entered him at the end of the part one and changed him to become his antithesis. Now smith is a program with “one like” powers. This ensures that he goes beyond the matrix to the other world thereby taking a step beyond the machine's control.
Seraph, the oracle's bodyguard is ofcourse a previous incarnation of the one and the one which caries the program code of the one which the oracle uses to create the one in every cycle.
Cut back to the sixth cycle. Love makes neo re-enter the matrix to save trinity. He brings her back from the dead at the end of reloaded. Remember she did the same thing to him at the end of part one.
The war between the machines and the humans start for the sixth time. Smith meanwhile has found his way into the real world and engages in a battle with Neo blinding him in the process. With his eyes blinded, Neo is able to see for the first time. Neo and trinity go back to the machine world into the heart of the machine city. The machines attack and trinity dies relieving neo of the final attachment he had. Now Neo understands his true karma without the distraction of love.
Neo goes on to make a deal with the machines. Peace in return for the killing of Smith who had gone beyond the control of the machines. Smith and Neo engage in a battle of titanic proportions reaching nowhere since they are both equally powerfull.
At the very end, Oracle speaking through smith shows Neo the way out. The death of neo is the purpose of Smith's life. Smith will die the instant neo dies. The solution is clear. Like christ, neo dies for humanity by carrying the burden of their sins ( Smith stands in for evil ) for them.
If you have read till this, you would have seen I have not chosen to comment upon the little girl sati. Indeed her presence puzzles me. What does she stand for ? The next generation of programs able to feel emotion ? An elaborate take on Shiva's wife Sati who commits suicide by burning herself and being reborn as parvati ( Trinity being reborn as Sati ?? ). Or is she the next oracle ? Or the next One ? Or the next architect who defines a matrix born out of love ?
Still a long way to go before I understand the matrix. If you have any thoughts, jot them down here.
I saw Pithamagan, Bala's much hyped film, yesterday.
Before I talk of this film, it is important to take a look at the kind of films that Bala has done in the past : Sethu and Nanda.
The best description for Sethu would be “morbid”, The film disturbs you at a fundamental level.
God knows enough films with “everything is fine and everyone are happy” endings are dished out every year by our directors. Rarely do characters which are out of the common, stories which haven't been explored and situations out of the ordinary get tackled on the screen. To tell such a story and to tell it in such a way that it is a commercial success and not just appreciated by a few “intellectual” critics shows the director's calibre. Afterall, film making is just the new age revision of the age hold art of storytelling in an engaging manner. To succeed in holding the audience's attention with such a morbid story speaks eons about the director's capabilities.
If you are the kind who looks for a hidden deeper meaning in everything, you will appreciate the way Bala deals, albeit in an exagerrated manner, with madness inherent in every love story, in Sethu.
Nanda's uplifting moment is Raj Kiran's scene where he proclaims “every human who fights evil is God” with a tinge of Bhagavat Gita thrown in for good measure. The exact opposite ideology of Kamal's “Love is God” Anbe Sivam. It was saved from the mediocrity of a thousand similar movies by the out of this world cinematography, Surya's arrival as an exceptional actor, Bala's deft direction and this particular scene.
Now comes Pithamagan. Bala doesn't deviate from his favourite theme : Tragedy coupled with unusual characters.
Porraying a character with well defined mannerisms is an easy job for any actor. More difficult is to portray a “normal” human being which calls for a subtler treatment. Kamal excels in the former while Mohanlal excels in the later. Audiences around the world tend to lap up and appreciate the former a lot more than the latter which is indeed a shame.
Anyways, coming back to the film on hand, Vikram does a good job at living the character of chittan with all the exagerrated mannerisms you would expect in such a character but let us not forget the excellent job done by the others like surya, laila and sangeetha.
A lot of questions remain unanswered, the most important of which is why does Vikram end up behaving as if being caught up in a time warp. Surely, anyone who ekes out a living as a cremator would have had semi-regular human contact ( the relatives of the dead ). To show him as a “normal” person with a dead heart would have lifted the film to a different level. Maybe the down to earth sensibility of a malayalam director would have conjured up such a story. Jayaram in a movie remarks with characteristic humour that everything is a bit exagerrated when it comes to the people of tamil nadu. In doing so, he makes a telling remark on the inherent differences between the two states to be found in everything from day to day behavior to the acting styles of a kamal and mohanlal.
All I know is this. Bala is a brilliant director with I suspect a tinge of madness. Eventually, he will come around and let his hero to be a normal human being. I will wait for that day. Patiently.
Meanwhile, go watch Pithamagan. There is indeed a method in Bala's madness.
PS : I am a big admirer of both Kamal and Mohanlal. My remark about their differences is not intended to be a flamebait for either side.
“Money, says a study, may not have much to do with human happiness.
A survey of 65 countries, published by British magazine New Scientist, says that Nigerians are the happiest people on earth, followed by the Mexicans. Venezuela, El Salvador and Puerto Rico are close behind.
India has been ranked 21st in the world happiness index.
Nigeria, with an annual per capita gross national product of slightly over $300, ranks among the world's poorest as also the most corrupt countries.”
Read more.
Are you happy ?
“Economists have a hard enough time predicting gross domestic product in the next quarter let alone the next half century, but Goldman Sachs has revved up its econometric models and taken a stab at it. What it has come up with is a radically different world economy as Brazil, Russia, India and China — the ”BRICs“ — power their way to the top.
The new Group of Six will be led by China with estimated gross domestic product of nearly US$45-trillion in 2050, followed by the United States at US$35-trillion and India at about US$30-trillion. Bringing up the rear with much smaller GDPs will be Japan at around US$6-trillion, followed by Brazil and Russia.
In total, the BRIC economies are now worth less than 15% of the current G6, in U.S. dollar terms. The economists predict that by 2025 the BRIC economies will be more than half as large as the current G6 and in less than 40 years they will surpass the G6. (With GDP of less than US$1-trillion, Canada is not part of the G6).”
Read more.
Frankly, I love reading such articles talking about a vibrant India in the future.
I firmly believe, the world would be a much safer place to live in if the current income disparities are slowly done away with.
Too many of the world's current problems start with an empty stomach, isn't it ?
Travel is the biggest fraud I play on myself.
People who know me, know that I rarely deviate from my home-office-home lifestyle. Inspite of having lived in bangalore for the last four years, there are vast portions of the city that I know nothing of.
Still, I live in the hope that one day I will start travelling around this world or atleast around India.
Occassionally, I turn to google for finding new travel websites to plan out this distant future of mine ( remember we are talking something atleast twenty years ahead and no, I am not mad :) ).
I came across this particular website
http://hill-stations-india.com/ today and was immediately impressed by how pretty it looked and how usable it was.
This ofcourse underlines the fact that there are countless such well designed Indian websites out there which I know nothing about.
So here is my question for the few readers of my main page. What is your fav
indian website ? Please try not to answer with the usual suspects like rediff which everyone knows of. I am looking for the hidden gems.
Kindly indulge me.
It is something that has been in the back of my mind right from my college days, yes even before I started working :-)
Once you take out work from your life, you have an endless supply of time in your hands and life suddenly seems teeming with possibilities. The promise of doing something new every single day is tantalising, dont you think ?
Ofcourse, boredom is a highly possible outcome. The trick is to keep yourself occupied, this time around doing something you enjoy rather than something you get paid for.
Social service will be the first thing I take up. To be able to make a difference, however small, in someone's life is the intended redemption of a human life. This will most likely involve teaching. I used to teach a good number of my classmates and have been given fairly good reviews of my teaching capabilities. So teaching is definetely on the cards.
Sreekanth and I must have talked endless hours about how with a little effort you can change a lot of things you despise around you. Hopefully, at some point in our lives, we will be able to do something about this rather than keep talking.
Other stuff that I will be doing include,
Travel. First the whole of India and a few choice destinations around the world. Travel is ofcourse expensive and would most likely to remain an unfullfilled dream in the back of my mind ( It must be getting crowded in there :) ).
Learning a musical instrument is something that I have always wanted do.
It is a sad fact but I really do like sitting in front of a computer for endless hours, browsing, reading and occassionally writing. I am perhaps too addicted to the internet to let go completely. I mean where else can someone like me get to be a
fashion designer ;-) At some point in the future, I would like to close down all my “for profit ventures” and create something which is informative and usefull.
The word “Family” is ofcourse an unknown variable in this equation. Being a bachelor is investing in time. Getting married is investing in love. Hopefully, I can get a fair dose of both :-)
More than anything else, I would like to slow down my life. I am tired, very much so, of the constant hurry burry of the daily life. Images of a slow calm life, somewhere along the banks of the backwaters of alleppey is a recurring image in my dreams. Someday, I want to open my eyes and find it to be true.
“Enakku thevayelaam ettu mani neram thookam, poo pola naalu idli, pudhina chutney, manssukku niraivaana vellai, appa ammavoda oru kai rummy, pooncholai gramathilai oru azhaghana rakshasi .. sunday evening titanic .. saravana bhavan tiffin”
It is a line mouthed by the middle class hero in the Shanker superhit, Mudhalvan. A line which underlines Sujatha's astute understanding of the Indian middle class.
There is one quote which I use whenever talk centres around India. It goes something like this,
The rest of the world has the “haves” and the “have nots”. Only India has the “have but did not wants”.
The dialogue from Mudhalvan best illustrates this. To be satisfied and be happy with the simple pleasures of life is a gift which adversity has bestowed upon the Indian middle class.
Capitalism is fueled by ambition. The great american dream has its roots in the ambitions of the immigrants who set foot in the land of oppurtunities with dreams of making it big.
India is, ofcourse, well known for its “chaltha hai” attitude. A casual approach towards work indeed towards life itself is what best charecterises India. You don't get to find a lot of perfectionists, go - getters, people bend upon conquering the world from India. Occasionally, a raw talent like tendulkar comes around and suprises the world. But people are still searching for the Steve Waugh from India.
Why is this ?
Can it be something as simple as the fact that oppurtunities were simply not available as a result of which lethargy set in at a national level ?
Or is it simply a lingering legacy of the british rule which left behind an absymally poor country and people shorn of ambition ?
Or is the fact that knowledge/art and not business was what was encouraged during the ancient maharaja days.
Or is it the fact that from a long time back, we have had a history of renunciation where people realising the meaninglessness of the material world have given it up and found comfort in the spiritual ? The idealogy behind the matrix, that the world that we see around us is an illusion, is something widely prevalent in local literature and nothing new to us.
In any case, the new wave of capitalism is changing the way India functions. National research instituitions which for a long time worked under the “knowledge is free” principles are actively patenting their ideas and defending their IPs. The IITs are getting more and more concerned about their industrial collaborations and profits.
Capitalism definetely has its pluses. But it distorts the moral fabric of the country. Americans are just waking up to this fact.
Should we be worried ?
I dont know. Change is as always inevitable. Clinging to age hold traditions will take us nowhere. Looking back and glorifying the past is something Indians are good at. Something which I regularly indulge in.
But I can't be oblivious of the fact that poverty is rampant. Money, however ugly the word might sound to be, is what is needed to take us forward.
Let us take an example which I am best qualified to talk about. Me. Here I am, doing everything in my wherewithal to earn more. There was a time when I used to write simply because I enjoy writing. Now I try to think of ways in which I can increase my traffic and earn more.
Still, I console myself by thinking that I am doing this with a short term goal of earning more to meet a long term goal of early retirement and social service.
The sheer fact that I am ashamed of thinking up of ways to earn more shows the deep seated guilt in the middle class minds associated with earning more than what is reasonable.
Maybe, I am a hopeless romantic or an idealogical fanatic or an emotional fool.
But here is what I hope,
I hope to see an India where money is seen as a means to an end and not as a lifelong quest. I hope to live in an India where people have all the money in the world and are still able to give it up if needed.
A return to the time of the Budha, someone who had everything yet gave it up all and embarked on a search to find the true meaning of life. The only worthwhile quest that life has to offer.
I love a good debate. Occasionally, even flame wars will do. If you read my comments elsewhere on the net, you will, more often than not, see me take a contrarian view to the popular opinion, just to liven up the debate.
Something of a prankster ( slashdotters might prefer flamebait ), you might call me. Occasionally, I step beyond the line and get burned but then that is an occupational hazard.
It is my belief that more can be learned by seeing the issue from both sides than passionately sticking to a single viewpoint. Everything is relative, anyways. In my school days, we used to do this fun activity where the same guy had to defend and criticize a topic, switching viewpoints at the sound of a bell. “Just a minute”, I think it was called.
I learned this form of debate growing up in kerala discussing films. Yes, films. Keralites devote ( atleast used to ) an unusual amount of time discussing the question : “Mamooty, Mohanlal : Who is better ?” Since I didn't have a preference either way, I used to oppose the prevaling opinion in the crowd that I was in, for the sake of a debate :-)
I think, it is this middle of the road approach, that made me an Agnostic. I enjoy riling up atheists by asking them to explain the fundamental issue about the origin of the universe ( “How something can never come out of nothing” ). To theists, I normally ask, “If God exists, why can't he do a better job at proving he exists”.
Ofcourse, there is a problem with not having strong principles, best said by the quote,
“If you don't stand for anything, you will fall for everything”.
Still, I prefer it this way.
Why am I writing all this ? I have been part of several debates on the future of america's economy on public forums lately. I have written both extremely positive and highly negative predictions based on the type of the forum I am in ( the opposite view to the popular opinion ).
Paul krugman and others well known columnists have been extremely critical about Bush's tax cuts and the burgeoning US budget, current account and trade deficits. Paul krugman infact goes on to say, in one of his regular columns in NYT, that America possibly can face an argentina style crisis if tax cuts are not rolled back and government spending curbed. Coming as it is from the man considered to be the world's foremost expert on currency crises, it has caused widespread concern.
These columns about “america needs a billion a day in FDI to finance the ever increasing debt of the country” or the “fundamental shift in the economy which has resulted in a jobless recovery” get endlessly discussed in public forums with ridiculous suggestions like “Let us build a fortress around america and ban all imports” thrown around as possible solutions.
It is fun to occassionally step in and point out that for the last few decades, america benefited most from globalisation. Now is payback time.
What americans are most concerned is the apparent lack of care shown by big companies when sending jobs offshore. They forget Capitalism is not driven by ethics but by profits. Capitalism is inherently cannibalistic in nature, a dog eats dog mentality as well chronicled in the history of microsoft.
There is already increasing evidence that although the US GDP is picking up, the benefits will not reach the “common” man but will stay at the top level in the hands of the already rich. Fortune's latest list of the 400 richest americans seems to confirm this when it says that the rich got richer. Not consistent with the situation on the ground. Infact, The word “Oligarchy” has started making the rounds.
Ofcourse, when I point out all these on the “Nothing can touch US” forums, I get very few people to agree with me. More often than not, I get flamed to hell :-)
I like the socialist welfare economies of europe. They have taken the middle road between capitalism and communism and seemed non the worse for it. There is a serious risk of deflation for a few of them but then that might be because of the export dependance on the states.
China is an interesting study. Perhaps, theirs is the hardest task of all. To preserve a communist styled leadership while having a capitalist economy. For now, the western MNCs are interested in tapping china's huge and seemingly endless supply of $100 a month cheap labour. Once popular issues like China's human rights track record have conveniently been relegated to the background in a relentless pursuit to improve their bottomline, a popular buzzword in a recession. If china manages to pull it off inspite of all these, it will be a miracle unmatched in the annals of human history. Only time will tell.
Finally, there is India. If there is any award for the country with the maximum potential, we will walk away with it hands down. Sadly, the potential rarely gets realised. Unfortunately, the very diversity that we are so proud of is proving to be our bane. A collective decision is more or less impossible in our scheme of things.
Like our cricket team's reliance on sachin, will we will always end up depending on individual brilliance ( Naidu ? ) to save us at the end of the day.
Luckily, we seem to be finding a new hero ( anju george ? ) regularly these days. Maybe, it is a tide of better things to come.
All these forums did help in increasing my limited knowledge of how the global economy works. Till I lose interest, my occassional ramblings on politics/economics will continue. Anyone wants to take a contrarian view ?
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.
“He was the first to predict the massive downsizing of organisations and the increasing emergence of self-employed professionals. In fact, back in 1981, when Charles Handy said that the huge corporations that were the pillars of employee life in the twentieth century would be superseded by small independent operators, people chose to not listen. But prediction after prediction turned out to be prophetic, and the world tunes in to Handy now. So listen to him as he predicts a new world order: Fifty years from now, I see India and China fighting over which will be the next America, he told Corporate Dossier in an exclusive interview.”
Read more.
I hope, I will be alive fifty years from now to see all this happen :-)
Anyways, for some time now, I have been interested in our economy. Readers might have noticed a dramatic increase in business related articles posted here and over at netlife.
For as long as I can remember I have been interested in business, probably sparked off by an amazing rags to riches story I read in my high school about Dhirubhai Ambani. Lately it has assumed obsessive proportions wherein I have been reading everything I can about our economy and even ended up updating the
wikipedia page on the Indian Economy. The fact that media is ripe with positive stories about our economy helped quite a bit in this regard.
I can see that I am not only one interested in business these days. The fact that youth of the country seems to prefer anil ambani over sachin and shah rukh as the MTV youth icon of the year, says a lot about the aspirations of the current generation.
Now if you have been following up on the economy, you would know that comparisons between India and China are the favourite pastime for economists world over right now. People just cant get enough of them and they all end up giving different predictions.
It is indeed quite difficult to predict the winner. The explosive inorganic growth achieved by china via the FDI route suggests it might be the winner. But then almost all of china's manufacturing units are owned and operated by outsiders, making many say that china is nothing but america's economic colony. The fact that almost all the leading economies of the world are moving away from an industrialized to a service dominated economy is not helping china either.
That is where India comes in. India already is a service dominated economy ( 50% of GDP as per last year's figures and growing rapidly). Further, we are much more of a domestic oriented economy with exports as percentage of GDP being quite small. This essentially ensures that our economy is virtually shock proof from external factors unlike other leading asian economies like singapore & thailand wherein exports form a significant portion of the GDP.
Indians have traditionally done well when given the right platform which is seen by the fact that the Indian population in US has a per capita income higher than the national average of US !
Finally, after decades of inertia, the conditions are becoming favourable for Indians at home. This when combined with the fact that a significant amount of our population is young as against the rapdily aging population of Japan, Germany and US gives us a great advantage over them.
How well we make use of all these remains to be seen.
But for now, the readers of this site will have to bear with me as I continue posting all the business related articles that I find interesting.
“A bold paper which has highly impressed some of the world's top physicists and been published in the August issue of Foundations of Physics Letters, seems set to change the way we think about the nature of time and its relationship to motion and classical and quantum mechanics. Much to the science world's astonishment, the work also appears to provide solutions to Zeno of Elea's famous motion paradoxes, almost 2500 years after they were originally conceived by the ancient Greek philosopher. In doing so, its unlikely author, who originally attended university for just 6 months, is drawing comparisons to Albert Einstein and beginning to field enquiries from some of the world's leading science media. This is contrast to being sniggered at by local physicists when he originally approached them with the work, and once aware it had been accepted for publication, one informing the journal of the author's lack of formal qualification in an attempt to have them reject it.
In the paper, ”Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity“, Peter Lynds, a 27 year old broadcasting school tutor from Wellington, New Zealand, establishes that there is a necessary trade off of all precisely determined physical values at a time, for their continuity through time, and in doing so, appears to throw age old assumptions about determined instantaneous physical magnitude and time on their heads. A number of other outstanding issues to do with time in physics are also addressed, including cosmology and an argument against the theory of Imaginary time by British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.”
Read more.
I just had to post this on the main page. I mean, with a title like
Indeterminacy vs. Discontinuity, how can you ignore it ?
“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.
It was one of those days which stick in your mind no matter how old you grow.
It was the 17th of August, 1998.
I hadnt slept well the night before. Not without a reason for
Wipro was scheduled to visit our college for a campus interview that day.
With a mind rapidly oscillating between tension and anticipation, I remember driving down to college that day dressed in a white
van heusen shirt (for the first time in my life :)) already feeling a bit lost and out of place.
Seeing the same “I am scared but I wont show it on my face” look on many of classmate's faces, I eased up a little.
The written test was much easier than I had expected and I settled for a long wait for my interview which was scheduled at 9:30 PM in the night.
I have had several extruciating waits in my life but that one must rank among the most painfull. I waited and watched quite a few of my classmates enter and leave the room displaying a wide range of emotions a kamal hassan would have been proud of :)
In the end after what seemed like an eternity, I was called in. With trembling hands and a heart beat faster than schumacher, I remember entering that room. What followed was a surprisingly pleasant conversation instead of a nightmarish situation I had conjured up in my mind.
By the time, I came out, I was back to my confident best almost sure that I would be selected.
It took another 3 hours for Wipro to announce the result. I still remember sitting of the steps in front of my class room talking about my dreams and the life ahead with a friend who goes by the name Vishnu. Both were selected but he has left wipro long back for pursuing higher studies in the states.
What is clearly etched in my mind about that night is the drive back home on my trusted kinetic honda. If there is one moment in my life worthy of the song,
aaj mein upar,
aasman neeche,
aaj mein aage,
zamana hai peeche,
it was that.
The cold wind running through my hair, the biggest smile possible on my face, the empty roads ... It was a surreal moment alright :-)
The smile on my mother's face when she heard is yet another moment etched on my mind.
So why I am writing all this ?
Tomorrow is my last day at
Wipro. After 3 and a half years, I will be going to a
different companynext monday onwards.
How does it feel ?
A little bit of nostalgia. A little bit of sadness. A little bit of happiness. A cocktail of emotions is perhaps the best description.
Wipro was fun. I had some of the best colleagues a man could ask for. In the end, nothing lasts forever. I had to move on lest I run the risk of being stagnant proffessionally and financially ;-)
So if you have been mailing me at my wipro email id, send them for the time being to anand at this particular domain. I will update you when I get the new one.
I dont know what is in store for me in the new place. Life is best lived moment to moment and so will I.
Al vida. I will be back :-)
Damn it. There is a tear hidden somewhere behind my eyes waiting to come out ..
I guess, only when you walk out of something, you realise what you are losing ...
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.
Something new is happening at
itismylife.com.
I have started something there which I hope will grow over time. Each of the pages there right now has a different design or rather a different graphic on the top and a matching color scheme. Let me know whether anything there is to your liking.
netLife will link to anything new that appears there. So for all practical purposes, you can continue visiting this page to read anything and everything that I write.
The reason behind the lack of updates on this site can be summed up in two words : world cup. When all you do is to track the scorecard during the day and rush home in the evenings to catch whatever little action is left, you dont have much time left to do anything else least of all blog.
It feels great when sachin is in such fine form, isnt it ? I read a while back a stock broker proclaiming that the BSE sensex shoots up whenever sachin scores a century. Just the other day, I was reading an article saying the viewership on setmax goes down by 20 percent when sachin gets out. It is amazing how much power one man holds over the collective psyche of a nation. Is he the most popular man to have walked on the surface of the earth since Jesus ? If you go by just the sheer numbers of his fan following, I would say yes :-)
Masala gets a new url :
netlife.tamizhan.com. From my referrer logs, I can see that people tend to make the mistake of thinking that the name masala implies content, the sort of which is found on sites like
these ;-).
Last week, something interesting happenned on
my site which even I failed to notice till yesterday. For some time now, I have given the option to
advertise on my site. Never thought somebody would actually do so. So imagine my surprise when I found out that
somebody has done just that. There is indeed an advertisement
there now. So if you are not doing anything in particular, do go there and click on the ad. Since it is a CPC ad, I need to get another 25 odd clicks before I get money from my advertiser.
Thanks goes to my
sponsor. I hope, you got something out of this and even better, keep doing this again and again :-)
Before I wrap up this entry, there is one surprise news. We had an impromptu indian blogger's meet yesterday at koramangala, bangalore :-).
Shyam was in town. So was
nilesh.
Vignesh is always around. So we decided to meet up and the conversation went on expected lines atleast for me :-)
Shyam was the observer. He is a lot similar to apna vignesh, though to be fair to him, a lot quieter :-) Nilesh was the thinker and he reminds me of
sreekanth. Both have a serious air to them though the smile is never far away.
Suresh as always kept all of us smiling.
A major portion of the conversation was around my still to be released article titled Thrill Vs Peace. I have been teasing vignesh about this for a while now since he plays the main role of the thrill seeker. I get the author backed role of Peace Lover. This article is going to unleash the flame war to end all wars ;-) The moment I decide how to end this article, I will be publishing it. So stay tuned.
Well, As expected the
google takeover is shaking up the blog world. Enough time and words have been spend on what it means, why it was done and what we will see in the days to come. There is probably nothing more to be said and no angle left to be probed. Still, I will make a couple of points which stuck me as pertinent.
Google's traditional model is to wait for information to be created and then go and look for it. There is a significant time lag in this process which might prove to be critical when an user needs information and needs it now. Once google gets into the business of content generation ( courtesy an army of mostly free volunteers ), they no longer need to go out looking for it. They will be the first to know when new content has been created and will be in the best position to function as an information gateway which I think is what they are aiming for. This perhaps is the single most best thing to come out of the whole thing.
But for all this to succeed, Blogger must regain its once pre-eminent position. Blogger is only a few features ( comments, categories, titles, trackback ) away from doing so. And once you have those google PhDs developing for blogger, who knows what they will conjure up :-)
News for too long has been diluted by the commercial aspirations of the news reporters. It is time to set news free.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that
rediff has re-designed. And even more pleasantly surprised to find that they have given their
blog service such a prominent place on the main page.
This augurs well for the indian blogland. A few people I know visit rediff daily but have never heard of the word blog. This might the stimilus needed to bring such people into the blogging world. Kudos to
rediff for spotting this trend at such an early stage.
I havent taken a close look at their tool but i must say that the lack of commenting option is disappointing especially since their main site now supports comments beneath all articles. It wouldnt have been difficult to add that here as well, isnt it. Maybe, in a later version.
All in all, good days ahead for indian blogland.
Now if only,
humblog would take off ...
I am a big fan of
nucleus ( which is what is used as the backend script for this site ).
Why ?
The first choice to be made when anyone looks for a weblog script is to decide whether to go for static publishing or dynamic publishing. Dynamic publishing can be a big overhead if you have a lot of visitors and the database chokes on the number of connections per second. On the other hand, static publishing can be a big pain if you change your templates or skins as frequently as I do.
I did play around with
movable type for some time but found it incredibly slow. Again, the fact that 2.51 might be the last free version ( ? ) put me off. I didnt want to get stuck with something which will not move forward unless I pay for it.
I found
nucleus to be a well-designed script with a really cool plugin interface which enables me to extend the script in whatever direction that I want without bothering
karma :-)
I have been writing a few plugins for
nucleus like the
Macros plugin or the
Ping pong plugin or a few others about which you can find more information
here.
Today, I have coded up something which I wanted for a really long time. Click on the comments link and check out my new threaded comments plugin. This is alpha code. So please be gentle with it. If you come across any errors, kindly send me a
mail with a small explanation of what went wrong.
Enjoy :-)
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 ?
Happy New Year.
Funny how things look different on days like this. It is a sad fact that the mind needs a reason to be happy. I wonder what it takes to be happy on all days. I guess, you have to be very young, a saint, mad or in love :-) Anyways, as long as there is a reason, let us go for it. Live it up this year, folks.
Here is hoping that a smile will be the only emotion that your face will wear all year.
I will leave you with a few lines from a lata mangeshkar classic,
Kaanton se keech ke yeh aanchal,
Tod ke bandan baandi paayal,
Koi na roko dil ki udaan ko,
Dil woh chalaa,
Aaaj phir jeene ki tamna hai.
I am yet to come across a december which makes me happy about the year that just went by. Promises made to self are the easiest to break. Guilt is a momentary flutter easily forgotten.
Still, It never prevents me from looking forward to the new year with the eyes of the young kid who has just realised that so much can be done with the gift of life. SO MUCH.
For now though, I have to live out December and so for a month, this site will reflect the general dullness in the air.
When the new year comes, when my mind wakes up to the possibilities, so will the color scheme of this site.
Till then, This will be the color.
Been blogging for over eight months now. A pre-occupation with design and frequent changes in the backend/host has meant that writing has taken a back seat.
Note to myself : write more.
Sreekanth, Please get back to blogging.
Bill Gates will be giving a speech at the wipro amphitheatre in ecity day after tommorrow. The thought of kidnapping him and asking a BIG ransom appeals to my criminal mind :-)
The one day series without sachin holds no interest for me, more so since the Indian bowlers seem to be in a genorous mood.
The ban on tamil movies in karnataka has meant that I am yet to see even a single tamil movie released on Deepavalli. Gotto to get my hands on a VCD soon.
The new ThumsUp ad with Akshay is cool. Finally brawn takes a backseat in a ThumsUp ad.
The Vaa Nila song in the latest rahman album, Kaadhal Virus, is groovy.
Time to get a snack.
Feels good to be back in bangalore.
Busy searching for a new project. So updates will be sparse over the next week or so.
Meanwhile, I have restored itismylife.com to its previous state.
Yet Another Redesign :-)
Things look a bit different, dont they ?
Played around with some syndication stuff and a photograph of arjuna's penance from the mahabalipuram site.
itismylife.com will be re-directed to tamizhan.com for a few days to popularise this way of reading all the stuff I write at one place. It will be restored to its previous state in a few days.
Note that the content syndicated at tamizhan.com can be read individually at
oru.tamizhan.com,
anand.tamizhan.com and
masala.tamizhan.com respectively.
As always, I am interested in all of your opinion on the new design.
naan saibaba illai,
endha pakkamum sayadha baba.
annikku solrathuthan innikkum,
innikku solrathuthan ennikkum.
Bhagawanne kumbidu. Inda Babavai nambidu.
Asantha adikkarathu maththavanga policy.
Asarama adikkarathu taan en policy.
en vazhi tanee vazhi.
ennodu puthu email id :
naan.taanda.tamizhan@tamizhan.com.
One of the advantages of owning a domain is the ability to have vanity email ids like my new one above :)
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 :-)
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.
“Who are you ?”, You ask me.
Not used to answering such blunt questions which probe the reason for my very existence, I try to pretend that I never heard that question. In an attempt to divert your attention, I point to the poster of the upcoming Rajni movie,Baba and start off on what was supposed to be a long monologue on the star and how he might represent a new hope for a state tortured, indeed mutilated, by politicians taking advantage of the gullibe, simple and loving folk. Something in my actions, ( the fear of the question or the ignorance of the answer showing itself ? ) makes you repeat the question.
I realise with a sinking feeling that today, I will not get away unless I answer that question. I ponder the various approaches to take. Should i do a straightforward name address occupation recital ? Something in your manner shows me that you are not interested in such a superficial understanding of who i am. You show with your questioning glance that today what you are interested in is knowing who i really am.
I turn away lest my face betrays my true emotions. I lock my eyes on the horizon which inevitably leads to looking inside.
“Who i really am ?”. Now that is a question which has teased me all my life. Every now and then, I get glimpses of the answer. But then Time has always stepped in to prove that what i thought was an answer, was an illusion. Illusions that my mind makes up in attempt to pacify my heart. Deception of the heart by the mind to justify a mundane existence in a mediocre world which has seen only a few flashes of brilliance. I check myself before i go into a loop. I inadverdently go into an infinite loop of self loathing when that question comes up. My mind not able to control itself goes off on a tangent.
There are dreams waiting inside my mind. They have only seen the dark of the night when i let them loose inside in my mind. They complain of being afraid of the dark and want to come out with me in the day to see the world they have heard so much about. I lock them behind doors lest the world sees and laughs at them. I carry on with my ordinary life doing not what i want to do but doing what the world asks me to do. Doing not what gives me hapiness but doing what gives me money.
Money steals away from you what you could have been and in return decides who you are and what you would become. The purpose, the motive of life has become to earn money and more money. Money is happy only when it sees more and more of itself and in turn makes its owner feel the same.
When a few sheets of paper decide who you are, that is when you want to run away from life.
All these thoughts flash past my mind as i struggle for my answer. In a sudden moment of inspiration, i hit upon a way to answer your question. I take out a few scenes of your life and scratch away the superficial motives with which your mind was deceiving you.I show them to you and return the question, “Maybe, you could tell me who you really are ?”.
You realise that some questions do not have answers. Maybe, The answer to this one will be a consolation prize God gives you when you die. Or maybe, He himself is searching for a reason for his existence beyond that of a support system for a man too weak to live life on his own.
Lately, I have been reading MY blog. Strange as it sounds that is exactly what I have been doing for the last three days. Before you guys put me in a straightjacket and pack me off to the nearest asylum, let me clarify myself :)
As you all know, I have this terminally ill and close to dying site called
Tamizhan.com. After briefly entertaining notions of building a community site built around it, I have dropped the plan for lack of time, energy and motivation. But I cannot sit idly watching that site die :( So I decided to approach the problem seriously and do a complete re-organisation of that site and along with that, this site. So I have been reading my blog to solve the question of how to re-organize my sites.
Here is what I found out ( Nothing earth shattering really :-) )
Three things happen here :
1. Every once in a while, I manage to write something reasonably long and worth reading. This is a rare occurance and happens mostly once or twice in a month :-)
2. I post a lot of links to other sites/stories. This happens frequently.
3. Rarely, Very rarely I write about myself. The archives show me that this has happenned maybe less than 10 times in the last six months.
Now I have two sites and three types of articles.
For the first type of articles, I have re-designed
Tamizhan and am re-opening it. ( PS : I am not the kid in the photograph there :) ).
For the second type of posts, I have started a new chota blog at
masala.tamizhan.com under the name
masala : netLife. This should be the most frequently updated of the three.
And the third type of posts, the ones which talk about my own life, will remain in this site. I hope to write a lot more of what happens in my life in an effort to create an archive of my own life so that at a later point in life, I can look back and laugh at myself :-).
So thats it folks.
Hop over to
Tamizhan and
Masala to see the newly opened sites. Not much of a design there actually. Something barely enough to hold the content. A more complete design will be put up shortly.
Do tell me your views on all three :-).
It is time now for the Brahma hypothesis.
I am going to use the usual method that people adopt when writing a hypothesis. Collect a few known facts, add a couple of leaps of imagination and present in a whole new style, claiming the idea as my own.
The brahma hypothesis is the expanded name given to the BHM hypothesis which in turn stands for the Brain, Heart and the Memory hypothesis.
All forms of sensory input create a new memory.
The Brain uses memory to create thoughts.
The Heart uses memory to create emotions.
The Brain and Heart battle for our mental space and what we currently feel is a direct outcome of who is in charge.
We all want to be happy, agreed ?
Now we must take a look at the cross-section of humans who are generally considered the happiest among us. Kids.
What do you see ?
Not so developed brains. Heart completely in charge. More emotional than a kamal trying for a national award. Generally seen to be happy for the smallest and the silliest of reasons.
As we grow older, what happens ? Brains start to develop ( well, in most cases :) ) and the more we get older, the more we think. What does your brain do ? It comes and stands in the way of you and your happiness. Now the brain doesnt allow you to laugh easily. It needs a strong reason to laugh. Gone are the days you could giggle without feeling embarassed. Now you will start displaying controlled emotion. Watch a govinda movie and your brain will step in and stop you from laughing telling you that it is a third rate joke not worthy of your laughter. At the end of the movie, the simpleton from the village would have laughed his guts out while you come out shaking your head mutterring about a complete waste of time. Who is the loser ?
An abundance of thought has generally led to sorrow and depression more times than it has led to hapiness. The person who feels hapiness as the end result of series of thoughts over time is rare. But I can show you a number of people who think a lot, get worked up and generally feel unhappy.
Ever looked forward to something, expecting a truckload of hapiness and when the moment finally came felt a sense of disatisfaction ? The brain imagined a hapiness which was not there, in the meantime forsaking the gift of the moment and the opportunity for hapiness in it.
We now take a look at literature and the movies in an attempt to see what they say. We find that almost always the simple folk are shown to be happy while the city dwelling, cultured and the “intelligent” person is often found to be irritated, frustrated, lost in his thoughts and generally unhappy.
Now we will take a look at that noble attempt to understand the human psyche and the meaning of life : Philosophy. Prominent figures like krishnamurthi have written about the need to eliminate the thought.“See without judging. Observe without analyzing”. The exotic religions like tao and tantra talk about living for the moment. That ( in my current prejudiced state of mind :) ) translates to doing away with the brain. Jesus in his famous sermon has said, “The meek shall inherit the earth”. What does this mean ? The meek not in a physical sense but in regards to your brain. Do away with your brain. Do not doubt. Do not think. Live without thinking, Believe without doubting and this world will be yours.
So what do we conclude ?
Do away with the brain. kill the thought. let the heart be the sole contender for your mental space and be happy.
Problems ?
When you live in the moment and let your heart rule, your happiness will be a function of your environment and the people around you, in short you will be vulnerable. You have nice people around ? you will be happy.
The Brahma hypothesis is the brain concluding that it is useless. It is the suicide call of the brain.
Kill the brain and be happy.
Believe in Brahma.
Words Fascinate me.
I am starting a series of blogs wherein I will be talking about the books that I haved loved the most.
Let me start off with one of my all time favourite books,
One hundred Years of Solitude by
Gabriel García Márquez, one of the masters of the Magic Realism genre. To define what Magic Realism is indeed difficult but let me make a try.
Magic Realism is seeing life with a new set of eyes : combining magic with the mundane, coupling the ordinary with the fantastic, seamlessly blended so much so that you are left wondering what is real and what is unreal. You cannot survive from the hands of a master of magical realism like Garcia, without doubting your own sanity. You will learn to laugh when you should be crying and cry when you should be laughing. In short, at times reading a book like this can be a life altering experiance :)
One hundred years of Solitude is easily his best book : a story about the island of Maconda depicted on an epic level ending with its ultimate disappearance. An extract from the book :
. . . for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth. (422 ).
read an interesting lecture on this book
here.
Learn more of Julio Cortazar, the argentine master of the fantastic short story -
here
An extract,
"'It's like a waiting room, life is,' said the bald gentleman, carefully grinding out his cigarette with his shoe and examining his hands as if he didn't know what to do with them now; the elderly lady sighed a yes born of long years of agreeing, and put away her little bottle just as the door at the end of the corridor opened and the other lady came out with that look all the others envied, and an almost sympathetic goodbye when she got to the exit.' (from 'Second Time Around')
Read an excerpt from German Master of Magical Realism, Gunter Grass
here
A couple of extracts,
Often after airing he finds time to sit by my bed for a while, disentangling his strings, and spreading silence until I call the silence Bruno and Bruno silence.
I shall begin far away from me; for no one ought to tell the story of his life who hasn't the patience to say a word or two about at least half of his grandparents before plunging into his own existence.
and how can I forget our own Salman Rushdie and his Midnight's Children, that fantastic interpretation of Midnight, August 15, 1947.
An extract,
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. Suppose yourself in a large cinema, sitting at first in the back row, and gradually moving up, row by row, until your nose is almost pressed against the screen. Gradually the stars' faces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny details assume grotesque proportions; the illusion dissolves - or rather, it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality.
read more of him
here.
Have fun.
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