We, I and a Why?

6 T Options

2011-01-05T21:14:00.005-05:00

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.- Alighieri Dante

As India eagerly awaits the result from the 5th day of Cape town test, we the people of Telangana have something a lot more important which will decide our destiny. 6 Options, we hear, the Sri Krishna Committee has made regarding the future of our people in Telangana. Let me take a guess at what the 6 options are and how they pit against each other. (It is hardly a secret that I support the Telangana state, so feel free to conclude that I am biased)

1. Separate Telangana state. What most people in Telangana want. The TRS option.

2. Status Quo. Continue Integrated Andhra Pradesh. The Lagadapati option.

3. 3 state formula. Divide into Telangana, Andhra and Rayalseema. The TG Venkatesh option.

4. RayalaTelangana. A new state with Rayalseema and Telangana combined. The JC Diwakar option.

5. Hyd as separate union territory. Nobody's first option but most of Seemandhra's second preferred option.

6. Hyd as joint capital for limited time. Again nobody's first option.

1. Separate Telangana state: Ideal scenario for the folks of Telangana. This is what they have been demanding. Not so ideal for Seemandhra leaders who have illegal assets in and around Hyderabad. Should not matter for most of common folk in Seemandhra as long as peace prevails and they can continue going about their business in Hyderabad without hindrance. Government should provide some assurance to Seemandhra businesses/people to ensure their safety in the separate state.

2. Status Quo: Continue the current status of an integrated state and provide safeguards to Telangana. Nothing new about this. Telangana was provided safeguards earlier.Multiple times. But they always lacked the will to implement and therefor failed putting us where we are. Will only postpone the problem before it comes back to haunt us and further disrupt the lives of 8 crore people.

3. 3 State Formula. An argument often brought only when the T movement gets strong. Never found much support even in Rayalaseema. Will not stand much of a chance as there is no strong will.

4. Rayalatelangana. An out of the box solution proposed by JC Diwakar Reddy. Sounds reasonable for Rayalseema but has not won much support anywhere. Not very practical given the historic context of the whole issue.

5. Hyd as union territory: A fairly popular idea in Seemandhra. But that's probably because they don't understand what a union territory is. If it becomes a union territory the central government directly governs. This means loss of power for local politicians. MIM which is strong in parts of Hyd, contrary to popular perception is against making Hyderabad a union territory for this reason. Some congress legislators mooted the idea of having Hyd as a separate state but was soon rubbished. There would be security implications also to separating Hyd, given the communally sensitive regions.

6. Hyd as joint capital for limited time: Might be the most realistic solution. There might be some common ground for both Andhra and Telangana here. Hyderabad will be in Telangana but will serve as capital for both Telangana and Andhra. Central govt can administer the law and order in the city for neutrality. Andhra govt can continue to run offices from here. Seemandhra people will still have a sense of belonging in Hyderabad. They can feel assured about their safety, jobs and businesses. Telangana will get administrative power which is their chief demand. Overtime Andhra can develop another capital city, which is in their best interest. A portion of the revenue from Hyderabad can go to Andhra which gradually decrease to 0 by the time they have their own capital.

I think this solution solves the rational issues of both sides. Telangana wants administrative power to make its own laws and govern itself. Andhra is concerned about their people, jobs, businesses in and around Hyderabad. Both of these will be taken care of. The irrational ones like driving away Andhras from Hyderabad or separating Hyderabad from Telangana will not be.

And coming to Cape town test, it won't be easy scoring 340 runs from 90 overs on a dusty pitch with uneven bounce. Will need a blaster from Sehwag to swing it our way. I'd rather like it if they play for a win and lose than try to save the game and end up with a draw.

Vastedvoters guide to Indian politics

2009-05-14T03:26:00.003-04:00

VastedVoters is as you must have guessed the universe's most acclaimed guide to Indian politics. Much of its popularity is because it makes the General Elections very simple to understand by innovatively dividing them into 3 major parts

1. Pre elections
2. Elections
and heres the surprise
3. Post elections

Pre Elections:
This is the period before the election commission releases the election schedule. About a year before the expected polls the ruling party cures its amnesia and starts to work towards implementing its most populist promises. Like last year we had
1. A one time farm loan waiver of about Rs 600 billion
2. Increasing the threshold limit of exemption from personal tax by 50%
and not as widely noticed but very importantly
3. The customs duty on helicopter simulators was removed. Yeah Helicopter Simulators to train more pilots and make heli travel cheaper. This was supposed to make it easy and cheaper for the politicians to reach their electorate without bothering to build roads.

The earlier 4 years of the tenure are typically spent on rather boring things like scams, creating traffic jams, appointing committees to study issues they don't want to decide on, raising tax rates so that they can be reduced in the 5th year and so on. The action starts 6 months before the anticipated election date. Parties flirt and woo each other with a charm that can parallel NTR's or MGR's in yesteryear movies. Successful suitors get to form ridiculous live in relationships to get through the elections. There are a few fairly locked in relationships purely due to lack of other options to both the parties involved. However the understanding of these relations is still very poor and there is a newly evolving branch of mathematics dedicated to this. The new branch called the poll arithmetic, is yet to find its Aryabhatta and establish how the basic operators like addition and subtraction work in such alliances. So it's still unclear how the tradiional voters of each of the parties in an alliance behave.

Once the alliances are made, there comes a very sophisticated negotiating phase where the leaders of the parties sit with their alliance partners and start negotiations which can put Chennai autowallahs to shame. Unlike the autowallahs however there is not much historical data and is still a very interesting topic of research. The autowallahs, as has been widely publicized, start by quoting a price of 300 to take you to IIT Campus from Chennai Central. A novice would fall into the trap and start negotiating at 20 thereby ending up at the average of 160. Seasoned IITians though have realized that the rate drops exponentially as you go closer towards the bus stand. You walk until the asking price comes to 180 and then start negotiating to go to the targeted 100. (This was in 2004, please adjust for inflation. And did you hear about this guy who tried to negotiate with the auto guy to make a deal at geometric mean instead of arithmetic)

It is widely believed that the best results in politics are also obtained by overstating the seats to be asked by 200%. There are others who strongly dismisses this hypothesis as it is purely based on the well researched and documented pricing strategies of Chennai's auto unions. However some of the most successful party leaders were known to start negotiations at 350 seats as part of the alliance in a legislative assembly with 294 seats. As a counter strategy the negotiated parties in recent times learnt the concepts of negative integers and put it to good use. Somebody did try the geometric mean also and realized that it was much easier to explain the concept to Chennai Autowallahs.

About this time the election commission will be done with a thorough analysis of the security requirements and available personnel and makes detailed schedule of the election. And thus we enter an exciting 2nd part.

2. Elections:
India holds a very unique distinction of having prolonged elections which can last longer than the governments they produce. The polling process needs lots of planning to sort out the colossal logistics and security issues. This year the actual polling is spread over a month in 5 phases across the country.

Once the election schedule is out the parties lose no time to zero in on the arithmetic mean of the proposals from the two sides. Then another round of negotiations starts to sort out which of the seats should go to which party in the alliance. This often gets dirty when both the parties are strong in a particular constituency. There are street fights, burning of effigies and other popular forms of entertainment employed by party cadres. After the nuisance deciding on the constituencies of each party, the parties start a dramatic and often embarrassing episode of choosing the right candidates for each constituency. This process has been highly simplified lately to a single variable, the net worth of the individual. The higher the net worth the more suitable the candidate is purely because of his ideology. This will quite inadvertently ensure there is enough money for the campaign, beer, biryani etc. Some more sophisticated parties found ebay an excellent tool to sell their tickets on auction and maximize the party funds.

Unlike most other spheres of life, discipline is quite a liability in Indian politics and it often goes unrewarded. Indiscipline on the other hand is very well rewarded and has created many a fortune. So partymen who realize they cannot contest on their party ticket anymore find it an opportune time to rethink their ideals and realize that the other party is a lot more inline with their idealogy and in a swift move change loyalties overnight and get a ticket to contest on. In other cases money changes hands liberally to entertain rebel candidates from opposing parties to stay in the poll fray and split the vote. There are more elaborate and higher order strategies employed with the sincere intention of hurting the prospects of the rivals by throwing money around.

Once the dust settles on the candidate list, the parties start on the campaign trail criss crossing their target constituencies. Road vehicle sales in India have increased by over 10000% in the last year thanks to the popularity of the road shows. Everybody who is somebody took out a road show in the last year. The filmstars are the best roadshow artists because of their obvious appeal to the masses. This has spelt doom for the film industry as the movie production came to stand still as all the stars are on the roads trying to woo the voters. Also this further deteriorated the condition of recession hit Indian workers in USA who depended heavily on Indian movies for entertainment. Lots of Indians devoid of their chief entertainment form were forced to follow the elections for amusement.

The campaign draws to a close a couple of days before polling. And then it starts pouring liquor. There is more liquor available than drinking water in those 2 days. Even money gets distributed to buy votes at a price. The voters get royal treatment which naturally they would love and want to get more often. So I would expect them to love frequent elections. But quite strangely, it is widely believed that voters feel elections are a burden and don't want them frequently. I think its more the thought of urban educated intelligentsia which seldom votes. They'd naturally want their tax money spent on other things. For the rural poor though elections are an awesome time with so much money and wine circulating in the rural economy.

After 2 days of drowning in liquor, the polling happens. Responsible citizens go cast their vote. Some lured by their favorites actors, some by the money, some by the wine and yet quite some purely by a belief in the World's largest democracy. Let us give some thought to the scale of this exercise. Here are some interesting stats
1. 700 million voters. Thats more voters than North America and South America combined

2. The largest parliament constituency Ladakh is 173266 sq. km in size. The smallest Chandni Chowk is 10.6 sq km
3. 828,000 polling stations across the country including the high himalayas, the deserts of Rajasthan and the dense Gir forests which has only one registered voter.
4. 6.5 million poll personnel. A million more than Denmark's population.
5. Elephants, mules, Yaks, camels are some of the animals which are get to be part of this grand spectacle ( on the left its an elephant carrying the electronic voting machine)
6. Rs 11.2 billion is the expected cost. A paltry Rs 10(2o cents) per head in a country of a billion.

Post Elections:
This is the time between close of polling and proving the majority in the house. It is the shortest and what is going to be the most exciting phase of these elections. Heavy trading happens during this time with MP's commanding prices that can make many a Harvard MBA grad rethink his/her career strategy.

There are three major blocks in Indian Politics
United Progressive Alliance (UPA)
Natioanl Democratic Alliance (NDA)
and
The Third Front

UPA:
Congress is the permanent member and the central part of this block. Congress is probably the only party in India that has stuck to the principles of its formation. Back in 1885, Congress was formed by some intelligent British dudes to pacify the Indians and keep them from rebelling against the exploiting rulers (who were British). They have amazingly stuck to the task only they have replaced the British with themselves as the exploiting rulers. And still mostly British educated or lately American educated. Congress is more a religion than a political party. the leaders are born in the right families not made. All Congress party members believe that all Gandhi family members including their foreign wives and mistresses (or husbands and whatevers) are avatars of God and should lead India forever. If they have their way the Congressmen would love to make the young girl in the pic, Priyanka Gandhi's daughter, the Prime Minister of the country tomorrow. They don't have any fixed economic principles and are quite flexible to work with anyone as long as they accept the supremacy of the Gandhi family.

National Democratic Alliance:
This is a BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) centric block. They got popular by raising the slogans of Hindutva and reminding the majority Hindus of the attrocities performed against them and their religion by the non Hindu rulers. Shiv Sena is only other permanent member actually amuses itself on Valentine's day by marrying off lovers seen together. They also burn down enterprising gift shops. They are against westernisation of the culture and so don't approve celebrating the New Year's day also. Some of their other dubious sister associations indulge in more severe cultural intolerance and moral policing. While officially BJP does claim secularism, they tend to turn a blind eye on the moral police and give them a free reign. Natuarally most of their leaders are made in India and attended Indian schools and colleges. Economically they are a little right leaning. Relatively more reform and privatization friendly.

Third Front: Third Front is tricky. There are no permanent members here. Indeed it is largely believed to be a figment of imagination of doped communists. Communists have a presence in 3 of the 28 states and dream of ruling the country one day. They even claim they are an alternative to the other 2 fronts. There is no common agenda other than keeping the other 2 fronts away from power. The parties in here can be divided into 2 large categories. One, opportune parties which find it an excellent spot to park themselves and wait to see which of the other two fronts end up stronger and gravitate towards it at the right moment. And two, parties headed by people who aspire to be the next prime minister.

So once the results are out, the stronger alliance will be an obvious choice for most of the fence sitters in the third front. Historically we did have times when the Third front stayed united and forced one of the other 2 fronts to back them to form the government. But it would be increasingly difficult because the parties now are all so regional with almost no opinion on national issues. Most of them got through their campaigns without even mentioning the popular nuclear deal.

The large parties woo the smaller ones with promises of giving them almost everything they ask for, often at the cost of their own principles. Well atleast at the cost of the lesser important principles, power being the most important principle for all. The smaller parties for their part try to make the most of this time and demand the moon. Jayalalitha's AIADMK and Mulayam's SP have already offered to support any govt in the center that will dismiss the state govt's in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh respectively. The parties which cannot form a government on their own in their states will be open for negotiations with almost everyone. The only unlikely combination are 'Congress and BJP' and 'Left and BJP'. With the boogie of nonsecular BJP, the Congress and Left will invariably find common ground and get together. Congress has been and will continue to for another 50 years, seek votes purely for being more secular with no economic contribution.

And so I wait eagerly for May 16 when the EVM's reveal what the Indian voter wants. And then we'll have the action packed climax with parties changing sides and candidates changing parties. And the drama unfolds to establish the next king/queen of Delhi.

Nostradamus on elections 2009

2009-05-02T00:17:00.007-04:00

I was reading Nostradamus and found some interesting verses which might be related to current times. As with all prophecies they are pretty vague and am sure they could be connected to several events that have already occurred and several that will be occurring. Its probably due to my preoccupation with the ongoing election in India that I found the correlation striking to the Indian politics. These verses did not occur together and I totally agree that statistically when you put down enough vague lines, you have to find some which match any situation. I am not trying to convince you of Nostradamus's predicting powers and I myself am far from being convinced. But nevertheless they do make amusing read and so I wanted to share. There are some other pieces which I thought related to various other things, but for now I'll stick to the general elections at hand.

annus of hostilis in terra of thres luingumus

satraps vadum perdo vox

dum in meridianus

tigres es venator mortuus

translates to

the year of the enemy, land of 3 luingums (lingams)

the rulers shall lose power
while in the south

tigers are hunted dead

land of 3 lingams is an obvious reference to gultland, trilinga desa. the rulers (Congress) will lose power. (I could not find the meaning of the word "Luingums" but it is hard to miss that it sounds so very close to lingam) and in the south, (must be Sri Lanka) the LTTE tigers are being killed in the war.

matris constituo tunc rex rgis

ut procer iacio exspecto
flax quod pango vadum non opus

capit nonnullus veneficus

mother shall decide the next king
as the princes lay waiting
sickle and hammer shall not work
it needs some magic(maya)

Mother (amma) refers to Jayalalitha, who going by normal Tamil voting trends should sweep Tamil Nadu this time will decide who comes to power in Delhi. The sickle and hammer symbolising the leftist parties wont have much of a role but maya (mayawathi) will be needed.

licens malum vicinus tentatio
uber es plurrimi vulnero
infortunatus civitas depono
Romanorum viduata in vox

unchecked evil neighbours attack
rich are the most hurt
unhappy citizens dethrone
the Roman (Italian) widow in power

the first line i believe is a reference to the Mumbai attacks. rich are most hurt. the attack was on the financial capital and upscale south Mumbai and targetted the rich in 5 star hotels. and if it predicts right, Sonia Gandhi the Italian widow who was practically the prime minister will be dethroned.

And here's the last one. This one ain't related to the elections but the connection is too good to miss.

vereor vadum permoveo lusum

permaneo alio adveho primoris
dum totus regius , rex rgis
quod suum miles militis morsus pulvis

fear shall move the sports

the last ones come first

while all the royals, kings

and their knights bite the dust

Too obvious. GO DECCAN CHARGERS

Terrorists have no religion???? huh

2008-11-27T09:23:00.017-05:00

Mumbai attacks are sad. It makes me angry when I think about it. Angry because of the several failures of existing systems that led to it, Angry because of the lax attitude of the current govt. towards terrorism. Angry at how slow and inefficient our response has been. Angry at the insensitive media. And the irresponsible politicians didn't help much. Like most common men, I mouthed some choicy cuss words for the terrorists and wanted to have some friendly interaction with Qasab in person. And decided not to go to Ravi Kebobs, DC area's finest Paki restaurant, just so as to cut down that 0.01 dollar of my haleem bill which would go to fund some dubious religious charity in Pakistan from where it would be re-routed to rip apart the flesh of my fellow Indians.

India has not stated any concrete steps that would be taken yet. Some ministers were blamed and kicked out. Dr.Singh made a bland address to the nation promising strong action against the terrorists which we have got so used to in the past 5 years. And thankfully we passed the bill to form a centralized intelligence agency and decentralize the NSG commando forces. Both big loopholes in our system which needs to be addressed at the earliest.

US has taken notice of Pakistan's involvement with the terrorists but I don't think they'll go beyond words to take any action due to their own constraints. It would be stupid for India also to act directly given that they are our neighbours with Nukes and missiles that can reach deep into our country. We should continue applying the diplomatic pressure and resort to some economic arm twisting, directly or indirectly, to force Pak to act on these anti India organizations. However given that the average Pak junta is sympathetic to the Kashmir cause it will be difficult to wipe out the support completely. But we should at least ensure that it becomes difficult for these anti India organizations to run operations on their soil.

Coming to the attacks, I was surprised at how seemingly well prepared the media was to ditch the much popularized Mumbai resilience from the last attacks. It was the darling of media during the previous bomb blasts. Everybody praised the mumbai spirit and resilience to the sky. But there were absolutely no takers for it this time around. Probably because they have abused it so badly the previous time. What has become extremely fashionable these days is saying "Terrorists have no religion".

NONSENSE

Terrorists have a religion and that is THE PROBLEM. Face it. Religion is the problem, not the solution anymore. Statements like this blatantly deny the problem. Why would the 20-25 year old youth take up arms and walk into certain death instead of doing more productive things like maybe having chilled beer in the friendly neighborhood bar? What could motivate them to give up the prime of their youth and go die for a dubious cause? The promise of a paradise and the 72 virgins waiting for them over must definitely have been an influential factor in their decision model.

And who are these 20-25 year olds anyways. We have established that they are Pakistanis. But irrespective of their nationality, I'd like to know what they did before they got into this. And if my guess is right, they would be fairly normal people, without any serious criminal offences. Unlike most of us they probably didn't booze, watched no porn, ate according to their Holy book and prayed 5 times a day. The moderately sinful people like us, who drink an odd beer, gamble, watch adult content etc. could not even think of doing anything even remotely so destructing and stupid as what they did. For one, I am not very convinced of the 72 virgin paradise and would rather stay here and try my luck. That makes a big difference as I want to live vs. these folks who probably aren't having much luck here and can't wait to see their 72 girls. Once the zeal to live is gone they become infinitely more dangerous. And secondly, I don't believe that there is anybody jobless enough to watch over my acts and judge them. So I give myself the responsibility and I tend to be pretty ruthless. I'll never allow myself to cause such grief. Most of these folks also under normal conditions would have been good to others. But their cause, the religion, gives them the license to destroy in its name. They have the comfort of prayer and religion which will absolve them of their sins. I don't have such comfort. And if these guys really didn't have that comfort, they would never have been proud of taking this extreme step.

Apparently the Hindu fundamentalists have also recently made their decent to these abysmal levels of violence. Almost every other major religion has also proved its capability to destroy under favourable conditions. So if provided suitable pressure and temperature all religions can get destructive. Nothing can fill people with such pure hatred as religion and make them feel great about it. Religion gives people an identity and makes a reason for "us" to fight "them". If there was no religion, there would have been no "us" vs. "them". Actually that's not true. There would always be "us" vs. "them". If it is not religion, man would find other innovative ways to differentiate among themselves and reduce it to a "us" vs. "them".

As much as I'd love to, I am not asking Man to give up religion up yet. I understand Man has not yet evolved enough to do the right thing without the fear of some kind of ambiguous supernatural power. It would actually be disastrous for people without a good conscience to give up religion as they won't have a reason to be nice to others. So religion is still required at some level. But we should atleast acknowledge the problem and give religion the credit it is due. Denial of the problem doesn't help us at all in finding a solution. Atleast not a solution that can work in the long term.

It might give you popular support from religious people if you claim that the terrorists have no religion. It won't help the nation to deny the problem, repackage it and sell it in a more marketable form. Stand up for the truth, do the right thing. The truth is religion is the mother ship of terrorism.

Origin of ghosts

2008-11-01T00:13:00.013-04:00

This is NOT Ghost Physics 3. Ghost physics 3 has been suspended indefinitely due to matrixophobia, fear that the 3rd part will ruin the excitement of the earlier 2. Some trilogies are best left without the triquel.

Ghosts! Those gracious charismatic elusive electromagnetic afterlife forms. The concept of ghosts is also the second most popular hypothesis with no solid proof. They have captured the imagination of many generations and have carved out a niche segment for themselves in Hollywood, Bollywood, Tollywood and all other respectable woods all over the world.

Ghosts have been very profitably employed by almost all civilizations throughout the history of mankind. The earliest known reference of ghost was in 8347 BC when the 6 foot 3 inch hunter felt there was someone watching him in the deep forests in central Africa. He thought it was his mother-in-law whom he had killed the previous week due to some domestic differences over portioning of dinner. The feeling sent a chill up his spine and he ran away from the place. He later informed his beloved wife of his experience much to her amusement. A week later he was attacked by a pack of wild wolfs and was never seen again. The tribal chiefs attributed the disappearance of this fine hunter to his old mother-in-law's ghost.

Within 2 days the news spread to the entire African continent and was well on its way into Europe and Asia. Dedicated gossip mongers were also dispatched to Australia, Antarctica and the Americas and never again heard about. Their disappearance is also very conveniently linked to the ghost of the MIL. Several other killings, disappearances in the forests over the next year were attributed to the ghost of the MIL. Soon several other men all over the world started seeing their dead MILs in lonely places. All these men, a later research found, were directly responsible for the death of their MIL.

A decade later it was observed that the average life expectancy of MIL's grew by 7 years. There were fewer instances of domestic differences at dinners leading to murders. And an average man started being much nicer to his MIL. About this time the phenomenon of ghosts has started spreading to include other relations. Consequently the general homicide rate went down significantly much to the relief of authorities. Buoyed by such positive results, the authorities were inspired to put to good use the fear of the ghosts.

The first known conscious application of ghosts was in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. On the banks of river Tigris, there was a small tribal settlement in the exact space where a notorious jail, Abu Ghraib would be set up centuries later. Several kids from the tribe were lost in the waters of Tigris much to the grief of the community. The octogenarian chief thought up of a very original and path breaking idea which changed the course of evolution of Ghosts. He gathered the tribe for a GBM(general body meeting) and told them in graphic detail his encounter with the terrible ghost at the Tigris and how it drinks the raw blood sucked out of innocent kids. The message got home very well and the child deaths in Tigris decreased by 98.34% within 6 months.

The success of this strategy spread like wildfire through the extensive human information network spread over the world. Soon several other tribes followed the best practice and replicated the much sought after success. Inspired by this initial success many smart analysts the world over modified the ghost characteristics to customize to the local needs and designed elaborate campaigns to publicize them. These customized ghosts were employed very innovatively in diverse fields for diverse tasks. The most popular applications of the ghosts can widely be classified as

1. Protect property. Especially employed by the rich people mostly because they are the ones who have any property. When the rich have to stay away from their property for whatever reasons, there is no better caretaker than a terrible, ruthless ghost. This is by far the most important and most used/abused application. It has modified and used in different formats on different kinda properties, almost always with positive results.

2. Keep people away from danger. This is again the earliest known use. And again presented in different formats to suit the location of danger. Like, yours truly while in school was told of a ghost that lived on the terrace of his school. This was ofcourse to avoid school kids from getting on the terrace and jumping/falling down. The inquisitive stupid kid he was, went to check it out one day only to find the door firmly locked. In retrospect he thinks that the ghost must have existed before the school authorities bought that shiny lock.

3. To scare people away: Mostly employed by people involved in illegal activities. They use ghosts to keep people away from their dens thus keeping their activities a secret. This is a rather modern application and again very effective.

4. Entertainment: This is economically the most viable application. All major movie industries of the world have dedicated horror genre of movies. Collectively they rake in up to $10billion annually in sales. They have amongst the best risk/reward ratio among all movie genres. apart from movies, there are popular TV shows, books, comics, video games etc which use the ghost theme.

5. Tourism: There are 537 towns on the east coast of USA which claim to be the scariest towns in the world citing important metrics like absolute no. of ghosts, ghosts per sq. inch, ghosts to people ratio, ghosts per Hooters and so on. These towns typically are the ones settled early but where not much happened since then, other than the death of its founders. To attract visitors, these towns have well organized ghost tours around the old houses, graveyards, churches etc conveniently scheduled in the night to capture the ghosts in all their glory. Again fairly profitable, creates employment opportunities and helps the economy in dead towns.

6. Psychic reading: This is a very sophisticated and smart application. Psychic readers are very well trained individuals with an impeccable attention to detail. They have an extensive knowledge of the most common characteristics of typical people based on their age, gender, race, geography, language etc. They use this easily gatherable knowledge from their subjects and use common names, general characteristics to convince their customers that they can communicate with the dead. Just check out how Darren Brown does it here.

7. Stupidity: Not strictly an application but 80.38% of the ghosts in existence can be directly attributed to this very entertaining human characteristic. People attribute every unexplainable thing to either God or ghosts largely depending on the mood of the first person who experienced the phenomenon. These ghosts are the ones which are most inconsistent, contradictory and useless. The one found in the gas station in this video is a good example.

And if you haven't figured it out yet, the blue angel is very likely some innocent fly(or some other bug) hanging out on the camera lens.

Ghosts will continue to amuse us, entertain us and in their own ways, help us. Love them or hate them, they are here to stay.

PS. Just in case someone is jobless to check out Abu Ghraib on google maps, it is away from the Tigris because that bloody river has changed it course over the years.

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

2008-10-20T20:25:00.008-04:00

"Well you see, five million years ago the Galactic economy collapsed, and seeing that custom-made planets are something of a luxury commodity you see ..."

He paused and looked at Arthur.

"You know we built planets do you?" he asked solemnly.

"Well yes," said Arthur, "I'd sort of gathered ..."

"Fascinating trade," said the old man, and a wistful look came into his eyes, "doing the coastlines was always my favourite. Used to have endless fun doing the little bits in fjords ... so anyway," he said trying to find his thread again, "the recession came and we decided it would save us a lot of bother if we just slept through it. So we programmed the computers to revive us when it was all over."

-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This is one of my favorite parts of the book. The comparison to the current mortgage crises is tough to miss out. Bernanke actually gave a serious thought to the option of sleeping through this but ruled it out in favour of a 700 billion bailout.

I don't really know how I managed to stay away from this book so long. It finally found me, at Duke University bookstore when I was there on a recruiting trip recently. And thanks to a review I read recently it managed to grab my attention and the alumni discount made it affordable. Now I'm trying to spread the goodwill and reduce the number of people who managed to stay away from this book.

It is always easier to review crappy works, 'cos you have the liberty to get creative in making fun of them. Not so much fun when you endorse something. But I'll try.

The first couple of pages are slow like the roller coaster going up the slope but once the plot opens up, you take that big plunge down and have the adrenalin rush. Chapter after chapter of wild twists, meaningless jargon (I love the Infinite Improbability Drive) and some of the finest British humour. The satire, subtle pun, irony, sarcasm and random nonsense make it an absolute fun to read. The random nonsense is my favorite chracteristic. It makes it impossible to predict whats coming at you . Just surrender to the author and enjoy the pleasant surprises which extend your imagination beyond the nuiances of the day to day world. You wouldn't look at the mouse the same way after you read this book.

The comical science fiction is complete fun. I have always loved Wodehouse and I find lots of similarities ( and some differences) between him and Douglas Adams. Both have the wit typical of British authors which makes it a thoroughly enjoyable read. Douglas Adams is a lot more wild and unpredictable. And thats probably because even he did not know what was coming in chapter 23 when he was writing chapter 20. Wodehouse would have got the larger plot first and then add his wit to make up funny situations. Douglas Adams has a fertile imagination which can go into more dimensions than you can imagine and in the process sometimes contradict what he said earlier. Do not expect him to be consistent. It is a small price to pay for the wild imaginative ride. Also give him the liberty to break a law or two of physics in the greater interest of the galaxy.

I can't wait to get to the second book in the series. Douglas Adams passed away but the good news is that the publishers are coming out with the 6th book in the series next october to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the first one.

Go grab the first book and get on it now.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Chiranjeevi, an NTR Sequel?

2008-09-06T17:07:00.009-04:00

Finally after several months of speculation, gultland's mega star made his plunge into politics. And his entry has been very similar to NTRs 26 years ago. He, like NTR, chose Tirupathi, the abode of the planets wealthiest God for his first political public meeting. NTR has toured the state and made the name of the party public before the grand meeting. Chiru initially wanted to hold the public meeting on his birthday, like NTR himself did, but like it so often happens with huge projects, the time lines slipped and they had to look for another date. The nearest date available was Mother Teresa's birthday on Aug 26th. If they waited another day they would have had the privilege of doing it on the 100th birthday of the previous century's greatest entertainer, Don Bradman.

Tirupathi is a natural choice to launch a political party in gult land. It has the religious angle. It is used to huge inflow of tourists and has the infrastructure and transportation facilities to handle them. And then half of gult land at any point of time has an unfulfilled "mokku*" to Lord Venkateshwara, the presiding deity of the seven hills area. So when somebody comes along and offers them a free ride, stay and food at Tirupathi, it would be tough to refuse. Throw in the opportunity to see their matinee idol live and you end up with a million jobless gults congregated to watch Chiranjeevi launch his party on a Tuesday afternoon.

Chiru read from his well written monologue giving us an insight into his life, hardships and achievements. Great, awesome. It is always inspiring to hear from people who have had to strive through life to get on top of it. I would have loved to hear it in my extra mural lecture series back in IIT. But this is a political talk and I would rather have liked to know what his policies are on major issues. What does he think of Kashmir? the nuke deal? and Telangana? And that is where he disappoints. He did spare a couple of words in praise of Telangana history and culture and then added something like "if those people still want to fight for it, I'll let them". He did worse on both Kashmir and Nuke deal. He is probably not even aware of whats happening in Kashmir, which is understandable since it all happened so quickly and he was busy launching his own political party and had quite a monologue to memorize. But Nuke deal was tough to miss out. I think he just doesn't care about it. It will have huge implication for all of us in the long run and he had a golden opportunity to let us know his thoughts on it. But instead he chose his filmi lines like "naaku ganji telusu, benji telusu" , "ammaku boy ayina, adukune toy ayina nene ayanu".

As of now the party has nothing more to offer than the charisma of its founder. The policies are so shallow that the naxalism's "thupaki rajyam" is actually more appealing than this "praja rajyam". This is probably where he differs from NTR the most. NTR's had his USP clearly spelt out when he launched the political party. His was a regional party to work for telugu pride. His speeches even sound a little fascist with frequent references to telugu atmagauram and liberal use of "telugu jathi", "telugu bidda", "telugu gadda", "aaru kotla andhrulu" etc. this song from one of his movies captures his USP very well

NTR did not care much about the national level issues. He probably wasn't even aware of most of them. A reporter asked him if he was left of center or right of center and our man replied "we are a regional party. we don't have anything to do with center". He went on to sweep the next elections winning 200+ of the 294 assembly seats. He had no opinion on Khalistan movement which was at its peak then. And he was definitely ignorant of the differences between the left and the right wing ideologies.

Chiru probably did his homework and is on the track he wants to be. But for someone like me, Chiru has nothing new to offer yet. And given that I have not liked any of his movies since "kondaveeti donga", the charisma wouldn't be enough. Like NTR, I expected chiru to pick up some ideology from some of his best movies. My natural choice would be "Kondaveeti Donga" where he played a Robin Hood, with a leftist inclination. But his first public speech was a let down. He doesn't seem to have the guts to stand up for the truth. He doesn't seem to have the strength to "do the right thing"? He has do more to convince us that he is capable of making tough decisions. Right now he is in a cinema hero-ish please all, hurt none mode. It wouldn't last long in politics, as he will have to take tough stand on real issues where there's little black and white and lot of grey. So I remain cynical and wait for him to come out with his agenda. Until then, I'd rather vote for Laloo Prasad Yadav and watch Chiru bash up the baddies as kondaveeti donga.

*Mokku is the bribe you pay the God for tweaking the laws of nature in your favour.

Bloody Tuition

2008-07-12T12:16:00.015-04:00

This is a story of discrimination, exploitation and human right violations. A story of unparalleled courage and sacrifice. The story of my favourite hero.

Long long ago when clean water flowed through the Ganga, "Nishadha", an indigenous tribe of hunters, inhabited its plains. The Indus valley civilization was in the decline for a while and the new kingdoms came up along the banks of Ganga. The Vedas were in wide circulation and provided the much needed spiritual guidance to the citizens. The society was well fragmented along the caste lines with the Brahmins at the top and the Sudras at the bottom. Nishadas were Sudras and therefore at the bottom of the pack. They were predominantly bird hunters, fishermen, forest dwellers by profession, living on the outskirts of the villages. They were considered lowly in the well defined caste hierarchy and were treated as appropriate according to the holy texts. (It is believed that Valmiki's Ramayan was inspired by the cry of the bird who's mate got killed by a Nishadha.)

Lowly, the tribe is, but they did have a well defined internal hierarchy. Their leader, the king of the tribe was at the top of the hierarchy. He represented the tribe in the court of the local king. The tribes warriors would take commands from him. The tribe would align themselves with the local rulers and provide them with human resources when needed in a war. They probably were just about average or even slightly below average ranked warriors. They are mostly foot soldiers and are usually the worst affected in an event of war. Being at the bottom of the hierarchy, they were denied training in the Kshatriya warfare arts like archery.

The kingdom of Magadha was ruled by Jarasandha, a king of questionable integrity.There was a small tribe of Nishadha's in this land led by Hiranyadhanus, who was a commander in Jarasandha's army. Hiranyadhanus with his Nishada tribesmen lived on the edge of the city. When not called for duty the Nishada's would live by hunting in the forests for survival. Hiranyadhanus and his men formed a significant part of Jarasandha's army which was an easy military pushover like much of Indian armies at that time (which is why we had a steady stream of invaders from all over the globe).

During the peace period, Hiranyadhanus would venture into the forest with his men on hunting trips. On one of the trips, after a successful hunt he and his men setup a bonfire in a clearing and started partying. Koilkanta, the world famous singer and the "magadha idol runner up" fueled the party with his songs which are written in praise of Hiranyadhanus and Jarasandha. (That was the only kind of music which got rewarded.) The drinks included the local favourite Sura, arishta and a super strong Madira. (Low cal drinks were not in fashion as people had enough to do to burn the cals). When they woke up in the morning with hangovers they found a young boy wandering aimlessly in the forest. The kid was dressed well and seemed to be from a well to do family. He seemed oblivious of the surroundings and did not seem to be afraid or feel lonely. Hiranyadhanus, the leader, who has not been blessed with kids, inspite of the regular fastings and pilgrimages, was impressed by the bravery of the kid and decided to adopt him. The followers in appreciation of their beloved leaders benevolence raised slogans and proclaimed the new kid as the future commander of Nishadas of Magadha.

The kid was taken home and given the name, Ekalavya. He grew up with fellow Nishada kids in the tribe. He was a very inquisitive kid with a zeal for learning. He wanted to grow up and be strong like his father. He liked the meat of the hunted animals and often pestered his father to take him along on hunting. Hiranyadhanus, like any father, did not want to expose his beloved child to the wilderness of the forest. But he couldn't see the disappointment on Ekalavya's face each time. So when Ekalavya was old enough to protect himself, Hiranyadhanus took him on his first hunting trip. Ekalavya was very excited that day. He drank the milk and ate the roti's his mother made before his father. They packed some roti's and spicy blackbuck masala for their lunch and possibly dinner. Since they have the kid, Hiranyadhanus ordered his men to stay away from alcohol for this one. It was nice bright sunny day as they started from the fringes of Magadha into the dense tropical forests.

Ekalavya who was super excited about his outing made no attempt to conceal his energy. He was walking faster than most of the men and keenly looking around. Their first hunt that day was a wild boar which Hiranyadhanus killed with his sharp spear as Ekalavya watched from behind. The kid was slightly disturbed by the struggling animal which laid fighting for life as the poison started working into its bloodstream. After 20 mins of struggle, the animal calmed down and breathed its last. Having got an early kill, the party settled down to have their lunch. Ekalavya, who was not used to the wild, was drained and tired by this time. He enjoyed the mela with his Mom's blackbuckmasala and soon found himself dozing off. Hiranyadhanus left one of his men with the kid and went back to hunting.

Ekalavya woke up and did not see his father. The other man was happily sleeping with his back rested against a tree. With the intent of finding his dad Ekalavya climbed the tree to look around. He found some men moving in a short distance and thought it was the hunting party and so went in their direction. As he came closer he realized that they were not his tribesmen. What he found there was fair, well built, young boys being trained in warfare. The elderly man was teaching the kids to use a bow and arrow. This was the training school of Dronacharya the top ranked guru of that time. He was also appointed as the teacher for the princes of Hastinapur, the capital city of Kuru kingdom. Kuru was a very powerful kingdom to the northwest of Magadha. It was much bigger than Magadha both geographically and economically and hence was very influential. Hastina and Magadha, were not in great terms historically due to a multitude of reasons.

Drona was preparing the princes for their tenure as the royal family members. Apart from the literature and basic sciences they get rigorous training in warfare. Among all the princes, Drona has a special liking for Arjuna, the third one among Pandavas (Sons of Pandu) . He was his favorite pupil and so he promised to make him the best archer in the world. Arjuna for his part was a very dedicated student himself and has shown great promise. He had unparalleled focus and dedication to learn. Thanks to the pampering of Drona, he convinced himself that it was his right to be the best archer.

Our dark skinned kid from the forest was very impressed by the skill of Drona. The young heart wanted to learn the art himself and be able to shoot the arrows like the fair princes of Hastina. He didn't want to be crowned the best archer of the world. He didn't want to learn so that he could fight his opponents and expand his kingdom. He didn't want to learn to show off his skills and win the fairest princess in a "swayamvar". He wanted to learn for the sheer fun of being able to shoot the arrow straight. He probably at most wanted to use it as a hunter and earn his daily food.

The innocent young boy with dusty skin burnt by the sun and sweat dripping from his matted hair, decided to plead Drona to take him as his student. Little did he know the complex human needs of hierarchical superiority. Neither did he know that he belongs to the lowly tribe and cannot be taught the kshatriya arts. All he knew was that he wanted shoot the arrows. And shoot them straight. With such sincere intentions of learning archery he approached Drona and made his case known. Drona listened to the tribal boy and was impressed by his pro activeness and courage to come talk to him directly. He thought it was his fortune that the boy found him. To get started with the official application process Drona asked details about his birth, his parents, caste etc.. Ekalavya, with little knowledge of Nishada's place in the caste hierarchy, was always very proud of his father. He proudly informed Drona that he was the son of Hiranyadhanus, commander of the Nishadas. Drona was very disappointed to hear this and told him that he was unfit to learn the sacred art because of his lowly birth. He told him that Nishadas are Sudras and are not supposed to learn the kshatriya arts like archery. the holy texts forbid it and breaking it could bring the wrath of the Gods. He advised him to drop his plans immediately and go back to his ancestral profession of hunting.

Ekalavya was terribly disappointed to hear this. He did not understand why he cannot learn what the fair princes of Hastina can. What this difference in treatment Why is he not an equal? He went back home and asked his mother. His mother, sympathized with her child but knew she was helpless in this. She was always told she was inferior and did not know the answers herself. She cared for Ekalavya and wanted him to forget this episode. So she told him to make an image of Drona and practice before it.

The obedient son he is, he made an image of Drona and started practicing shooting arrows in front of it. By impeccable dedication and undivided focus, he learnt the art painstakingly by trail and error. It took him a lot more time than it would have taken under the guidance of a trained guru. As his father and his men ventured into the forest for hunting, he would go back to his shooting range where he had the image of Drona and practice his art.

One of the days as Ekalavya was practicing a hunting dog came over to his place and started barking wildly. Disturbed aand annoyed by the dog, Ekalavya shot several arrows at blazing speed into the Dogs mouth. Dogs mouth was filled with arrows but it wasn't hurt. There was not a drop of blood. The dog unable to bark anymore quietly went back to its master. Ekalavya returned to his practice. The dog belonged to Drona who was on a hunting trip with the Princes. They were impressed at the skill of the archer who fired arrows into the dogs mouth without hurting it. The dog lead them to Ekalavya's place where we was practicing blinded folded archery. Arjuna himself has not yet learnt blindfolded archery and was terribly upset to see someone do better than him. It hurt his ego as he always thought of himself as the world's best archer.

Arjuna lost faith in Drona and wanted to know who the guru of this boy is. Ekalavya told them it was Drona who taught him the art and pointed to his statue. This further enraged the young prince and he demanded an explanation from Drona. Arjuna felt cheated and fooled by Drona's promises of making him the world's best archer. Drona who was still in a state of shock did not know what to reply to his favourite pupil Arjuna. He has loved Arjuna more than his own son Ashwadhama. And now he has to be in a situation to justify his promise.

Drona knew that it was in the best interest of his career that he make, Arjuna the finest archer the world has seen. It would earn him brownie points in Hastina and grow his influence. He has done all he could to impart the finest skills of archery to Arjuna. Arjuna has been a receptive student and learnt all that was taught. And still today they find someone who is more skilled. And someone who claims Drona as his teacher. Drona knew that this wouldn't go very well with the powers of Hastina. He had to set things right to live upto his promise. And there might be some collateral damage in the process.

After careful analysis of the situation, Drona commended Ekalavya for his skill and said

"Now that you claim me as your teacher, wouldn't you give me a guru-dakshina" (Guru Dakshina is the fee you pay your Guru for the skills imparted. Often the guru would ask for it after the education. "Tuition" in simple English)

Ekalavya, was very happy that Drona has accepted him as his student. This was a great victory for a young boy who not long ago got turned down to be taught archery because of his birth. And so he replied very humbly

"Guruji, it is my honor to give you Guru dakshina. It is a honor I have been looking forward to. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to serve you. What is it that I can do for you?"

Drona relieved that the young boy buyed into the concept of guru dakshina so easily, lost no time

"uh..Can you please chop off that thumb on your right hand and place it at my lotus feet."

The princes of Hastina were aghast at the cruel request of their teacher. They could not believe what was happenning. Even before they recovered from the shock, the lowly Nishada took out his sharpest arrow and chopped off the thumb from his right hand without giving it as much as a second thought.

severed thumb laid dead

shivering four fingered palm

the highest fees ever paid

art learnt never taught

The princes sweated

Drona composed

the dog had to vomit

the sight indigestable

cold blood soaked

the earth trembled

no arrows to break its flow

wind froze in tribute

The arrows wept in silence

the bow mourned

the dog howled long

it was the men least moved

Ekalavya, held out the hand with the thumb laying on the four fingered palm to Drona. He knew he wouldn't be the greatest archer anymore. But he never wanted to be one. He never cared about it. For him it was all about the sheer pleasure of using the bow and arrow. For him what mattered more was that he be treated equal to the fair princes of Hastina. His skill at archery would have got him there eventually. Now by asking for guru dakshina Drona has accepted Ekalavya, a sudra, as his student. By chopping off his thumb and offering the guru dakshina, Ekalavya has defeated a system. A system that has been the nations No.1 problem for a long while, discrimination based on birth.

PS: One of the later books actually mention that Ekalavya was the original son of Devashrava, who was Vasudeva's brother. Vasudeva was Lord Krishna's father. The young boy was sent out of the home by Devashrava. Hiranyadhanus found the young one on one of his hunting trips and adopted him. I think this must be done to reinforce the belief of the discriminators that a Sudra cannot be so talented.

There are other variations, very likely from the same sources, which justify Dronas actions on the grounds that he established Ekalavya's place in Mahabharat. I don't much resonate with them. I'll punch Drona on his face if I run into him in hell.

Nepal turns republic

2008-05-28T23:28:00.007-04:00

I am glad that Nepal has thrown their royalty out of the palace and declared itself a secular republic today. It took a little longer than I would have liked but am glad it happened. Now that the maoists have done their job successfully, its time for them to disarm themselves. That might however not be happening anytime soon. I am kinda sympathetic to communists when they are in the opposition. I think they make very good opposition and fight for common man's issues. However they make miserable policy makers and should not be entrusted with policy making. Often the power gets concentrated among individuals and that effectively makes it hardly better than a monarchy. So I hope, Prachanda, for all the good work he's done takes a back seat and lets the political parties make the policies. While I can still hope, I do feel he is more likely to take the Fidel Castro route and rule Nepal until old age forbids him. In the process he might even shelter and nurture the Indian maoists.

So India should watch it closely and try to build pressure on Prachanda to stay away from power. The communist backed UPA will probably not be able to accomplish this due to conflict of interests. I would assume both CPI and CPM would be extermely supportive of Prachanda, 'cos they all basically believe in the same book. And the Congress wouldn't dare to do anything that doesn't have approval from the leftists. So again goes back to my point of why we should not have the communists in a policy making position. Communists make an ideal opposition and its in the nation's best interest that they remain there.

PS:This is a good time to revisit my earlier blog on Nepal.

Saturday Morning Sale

2008-05-15T20:22:00.005-04:00

Most of my regular readers are aware of my long term aspiration of being an entrepreneur. Towards that end, I keep thinking of ways to add value to the society and make money out of it. Not many ideas survive the rigorous thought experiments they are put through. But one of the ideas I have had recently has come a long way.

It was inspired by a not so pleasant Saturday morning towards the end of last year. I spent a good Friday night playing poker, returned home to watch the world famous gult flick, "happy days" and slept somewhere in between wondering why the director had such a huge crush on females in "langa-oni" (half Saree). I never cared to have a well formed opinion on half sarees, probably 'cos I never found them attractive and was fairly surprised that people could get so aroused by it. (Interestingly the wiki description says that they are worn by unmarried females. Probably it is an indication that you could go hit on them.) Before you jump to conclusions I am not planning to make a fortune by selling langa oni's to the world, though it might still be a good idea going by the success of this particular movie. So going back to that day, it was well past 6am by the time I slept. And at around 11 am I heard a knock on the door. When I opened the door, still half asleep, I found 2 neatly dressed men in black pants and white shirts, with sweet manners. They very politely asked me if I'd be interested in buying their product and I, as politely as I can, told them I wont need it since I don't use it. They tried their best to educate me on the benefits of their products and why it is better than the gazillion other ones out there in the market. I thought of making a case for the benefits of not using the product at all and persuading them not to use the product either, to make the world a better place, but it was Saturday morning and I wanted to get back under my comforter. So I just told them that I am not interested and sent them away, as politely as I can.

I, understandably, was not very happy with these blokes who spoilt my nice Saturday morning to sell their shit. I went back still angry with them to salvage what's left of my hard earned Saturday. Later that day, when I am significantly more conscious, I thought about their business model and it made perfect sense. The market is huge and there is lots of money out there. This is the field to be in.

The market is pretty big. Of the 6 billion people in the world, 5 billion actively use these products. There are 2 major players spread over the globe. The biggest player has 2.1 billion dedicated customers and is continuing to grow in newer markets. The next biggest player has a customer base of 1.5 billion and it also has very active acquisitions strategy. There is one regional player confined geographically, with a little less than a billion customers. They don't have a very aggressive acquisition strategy which is why they have not expanded to other regions. And then we have 1 billion who don't buy any of the products currently available in the market. But atleast about 80% of them are not sure of their needs and will very likely buy if you have a right customized product for them. The other 200 million think they don't need the product, like yours truly, and are virtually non existent for our purpose.

The two major brands in this space have been highly successful in expanding their operations. They competed fiercely against each other to capture new markets. As you would expect, there is not much love lost between the two brands. There have been several ugly instances where they had come in contact of one another. They monopolize the markets they are in and restrict the entry for other players. They have monopolized some of the markets so badly that they have to diversify the brand and compete fiercely with themselves.

The third big player, the regional one, has not been very focussed on the expansions and acquisitions. They have seen some amazing internal organic growth, which has almost become unmanageable and are now trying to restrict it. They have also started some acquisitions overseas but still very small in numbers and is negligible.

All these big players have a common strength of highly loyal customers. They have never tried the other products but are convinced that their product is far superior and believe that everybody in the world should use it. A good percentage of these customers are actively involved in acquisitions and help sell their products to new customers. They even try to poach customers from the other brands. Very often from the smaller players who don't have very organized operations.

And the money is big too. While it is tough to get the actual incomes of these huge players as they are spread over several countries and diversified several times. But the largest subdivision of the biggest player had an annual income of 422 billion dollars in 2001. It is known to be growing at 7% on an average every year which puts it currently at 677 billion USD. They have a customer base of 1 billion. So by quick extrapolation we can put the potential market size at 4.06 Trillion USD annually all over the world. Now even if we only target the confused customers who currently don't use any of the available products, we have a potential opportunity of 540 billion USD. Capturing even 1% of this particular sub segment will still make us 4 times bigger than Infosys by income.

So you see, this is the most happening thing to be in. Lets go sell FAITH on Saturday mornings.

Crossing the bridge????....not yet.

2008-03-23T20:39:00.016-04:00

8 new IITs and 6 new IIMs to be set up (in response to my earlier post)

Tata buys Jaguar and Land Rover opening up the wonderful possibility of owning an Indian car in the US

We have riots in Tibet followed by the violent crackdown by the government of China.

Bear and Stearns the fifth largest i-bank in US went down

Sensex lost 25% value YTD

Clinton and Obama are still fighting it over the democratic presidential candidacy

Pakistan have a democratically elected Prime Minister...well almost

Sehwag scores the fastest triple century and does to Proteas what they did unto Bangladesh

All of these were very worthy news for my blog. But for the benefit of Mankind and the rest of animalkind I have to use this blogpost to get this clear and out

I AM NOT GETTING ENGAGED*

Please do notice the asterisk. You have to read the fine print, I work in marketing strategy for a credit card company.

For those of you who don't know, I am going back to India next month for vacation. One of my cousins will be getting married and it would be good fun will all the family there. But thanks to the precedent set by lots of dear single desi's who went to India and got back successfully engaged, the first question when I tell somebody that I am going to India is if I am getting engaged/married.

This is how a typical day in my life goes:
I get up early in the morning. Call up home to talk to parents. After some customary talk about the health and weather, Mom tells me that she went to one of my classmate's(from high school) wedding the other day (In a place like Warangal, a good % of your classmates will be your distant cousins). "Good for her", I say to myself and make a mental note to congratulate her. Then Mom tells me that one of her uncle's got a prospective bride for me. Awesome, it feels great to be wanted. Initially when somebody told me such news, it would give me a huge ego boost, making me feel important and on top of the world. As one of my friends suggested , I should probably ask for the photos of all these girls and paste them over the wall in my room and claim that they are all the girls who are dying to marry me. Eventually though as it becomes more frequent, it becomes less of a joke and more of nagging. It is probably a subtle reminder of my duties towards evolution and survival of the human race.

Having done with the call, I have my favorite honey roasted cereal with almonds for breakfast and head to work. One of the advantages of getting married would be availability of Idlis and dosas for breakfast. But what the hell, I love my honey roasted cereal with almonds. They taste awesome and the only effort I need to put is in getting a clean bowl to serve myself. So, I don't care about the idlis and dosas , I am happy with my honey roasted cereal with almonds.

After recahing the office, on the way from the parking lot to the building, I try to make a conversation with another young analyst. We have some insightful discussion on the weather in Richmond, compare it the weather back home in India and China respectively. And then I tell him that I am going to India next month.

"Ooh! so are you going to get married?"

That's not the first time I had that question. But I still haven't found a sophisticated answer.

"No... not exactly....I'll be going to attend a marriage though. One fo my cousin's is getting married"

Thankfully, the parking lot only allows for so much conversation as he hits his cube and I head to mine.

Later in the day I am in a meeting and before we start...

" Hey do you know XYZ...he went to India last month and now he is back, engaged"

Very nice. The Vedas should soon be updated to include this highly regular phenomenon and make it a ritual. Every single Hindu boy should make a holy trip to India before he is 30. Research is still being done on what the most optimal age would be. 30 is just a temporary placeholder. So yup he did go to India and get engaged. And I agree there is very high probability than an Indian analyst visiting home is either gonna get engaged or married. Very high...not 100%.

At lunch, I am with a bunch of friends in the capital yum.

"I will be out next month as I am going to India"

"Ooh so you are going to get engaged this time..."

Well, thats a very good analytical deduction, especially given your sample data set which was unmistakably pointing towards it. But sorry to disappoint you, no not yet. I am an outlier you want to ignore for your analysis for now.

After work we have a team happy hour and I see a girl who got engaged recently. She looked super happy and tells me "I used to say that too. 'What! me getting engaged!!! No way'....but I got back with this" pointing to the ring on the appropriate finger. With her "been there done that" stance, I had no defence. I sip the beer......and realize it wasn't what I ordered. Tough day.

Come back home and I find one of my good undergrad friends online and ping him to inquire about his MBA interviews. Once I am done with my inquiries our man starts with his, on the objectives of my India trip. I assure him that my risk appetite currently is zero and would like Status Quo for a while .

Since there is so much speculation out there on the objectives of my India trip I have to come out openly to establish the facts. For the benefit of all the concerned parties I am laying out the chief objectives of the trip in no particular order

Be there at cousin's wedding and meet up with the larger family
Eat fine biryani at Bawarchi and Paradise and if time permits the Hyderabadi house
Eat lots of Mangoes...btw, believe it or not, the mango trees are also gonna get married, that would be fun, especially the goat that gets sacrificed on such occasions
Get passport stamped with appropriate visa
Meet some old friends, its already 10 years since I graduated from high school
Watch IPL...go Hyderabad...I pity Bangalore
Check out the library in our village school. If you remember I mentioned in one of my previous blogs sponsoring a library for RLF. We got it started.
Watch gult movies and gult channels...some of my high quality summer afternoons will be spent watching Shoban babu movies on Teja TV
Eat lots of homemade food and gain back the 10 pounds I lost by working out for more than a year
Have Idlis and Dosas for breakfast

I hope I've cleared any ambiguity around this. I will cross the bridge when I have to. But until then lets make fun of it.

One of the constant feedbacks I have been getting on my posts is that they never give any insights into my life. I have actually tried hard to keep it that way 'cos my life isn't entertaining enough. So yeah I'll back back to more mundane topics like the ones mentioned at the beginning of the blog, once we get this important stuff out of our way.

*Does not apply if a super hot rich girl hits on me. Super hot rich girls are always exceptions.

T stalemate

2008-01-27T19:20:00.002-05:00

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

-Mahatma Gandhi

Congress led UPA has been in power for almost 4 years now. And how many times did Sonia, the UPA chairperson, utter the word "Telangana" in all these years? ZERO

They did constitute a 3 member commission which met like 2.5 times including once for a meet and greet to know the other 2 members. 4 years later the 3 guys don't even seem to be on the same page on the existence of this commission. Atleast one of them thinks its dissolved, one thinks its working and both, along with the rest of the nation, forgot who the 3rd member was.

Present day Congressmen are by definition impotent. Telangana has been fortunate enough to have some of the finest breed of these men. They have over the past 4 years made several arbitrary, irresponsible, nonsensical statements (not that there is much sense in politics otherwise) about Telangana. Sometimes completely rubbishing the need for it, sometimes asking for a second SRC, sometimes demanding a separate state. But always trying to fall in the good looks of the higher powers and earn some brownie points. 57 people were bored to death when Digvijay Singh said "Madam is considering it and will fulfill the wishes of Telangana" for the nth time. Another 87 succumbed to boredom when he added that "YSR is doing an excellent job at developing the region".

In the good old days when the original Gandhi was leading the Congress they did indeed have some principles which most of them believed in and lived by. However historically they never had any action going on. The present day Congressmen are doing a superb job of keeping this spirit of inaction alive and took it to a whole new level by getting rid of the noble Gandhistic principles of truth, simple living etc which needed some proactive action on their part. They have an amazingly versatle framework that can solve any problem within the confines of the principle of inaction. The framework has 5 steps

1. First Identify the problem.
2. Then ignore it completely.
3. It either disappears or gets magnified
4. If problem Disappears go to 1. and find another problem to solve
5. else goto 2

This framework was successfully employed in the case of Telangana. They identified the problem successfully around 1969 and then ignored it. Then they thought it disappeared. But BJP bowled a googly at them and passed a resolution for seperate Telangana which brought it back to life. Congress continued to diligently ignore it. TRS took birth with the slogan of a separate state and made some inroads in the political space. BJP tied up with TDP and suffered a memory loss on Telangana. Congress stuck to their faith of inaction. Come election time and they again accepted the existence of the problem. TRS which had a bigger enemity with TDP joind hands with Congress. Congress surprisingly themselves pleasantly win in the centre and state and continue with their framework of ignoring. TRS born and brought up on reslessness cant digest the inaction and tries to infuse some action but soon finds itself out of the UPA. Congress continues to ignore Telangana religiously.They even go to the extent of prohibiting their partymen from speaking on the issue. Nothing can get more undemocratic than that. Free speech is a founding pillar of democracy and the elected representatives are supposed to "represent" their voters and be their voice. So when the Congress asks its elected leaders to "shut up" on Telangana, its not just the leaders they want to shut up.

Then suddenly out of this infinite sea of inaction, some idiot utters "second SRC" and all hell breaks loose. The Prime Ministers Office instantly denies having anything to do with it at the first available opportunity and avoids it like plague. The left parties who are the oxygen supply for the UPA are super pissed off. Random people from different parts of the country find it a very opportune time to ask for a separate state. TRS growls, though it has a good reason to be happy. This stupid utterance has given them a new life and a reason to fight for. With rejuvenated enthusiasm they threaten to resign from all public offices unless the government starts the process of carving out a new state.

Then the grand old men of Telangana Congress finally wake up. Historically whenever a congressmen had to choose between their leaders who could put them in good public offices and the people who elected them, the people got ditched. So you would expect that the Congressmen would live upto their expectations and come out in full support of 2nd SRC and even claim it as their victory and ditch their electorate who wanted a separate state. But in what seems to be a finely orchestrated drama, the impotent old men suddenly found their voice and raised it in support of a separate state and against the 2nd SRC. They even realized that they have actually uttered Telangana before anybody else was born, back in 1969 and claim complete copyrights to it. 1969....well 39 years is too fresh by Congress standards, they typically take 62 years to achieve anything significant. Congress existed for 62 years before India got her independence. 62 years from independence , 2009 is about the right time for another achievement.

Meanwhile the Social engineer from UP, Mayawati sees a wonderful window of opportunity in Telangana and comes sprinting down in support of the statehood for the region. Telangana has a high proportion of backward classes who have not had had proportionate political representation and are looking for parity rather than charity from the dominating classes in the existing parties. She has a good chance of repeating her highly successful experiment from UP down here. Atleast I thought she did until the tollywood fired their bhrahmastram..

The Gult Film Industry decides to send their Mega star into the arena, realizing that the politics have been giving a tough fight in the world of entertainment. Chiru is by far the biggest hero in telugu, several careers have been launched by mere association with his name and some unfortunately destroyed for being improperly associated. His chief contributions to the film industry include over 100 movies, great dance sequences( including world famous girly man), one senile brother who couldn't pass high school and the concept of "Time Capsule". Chiru the demigod of gult land who must be in the top .00000001% of rich people in the state suddenly realized that he actually belongs to a backward caste and decides to put it to good use. This, ofcourse, bothers some established politicians whose only source of income is politics and the accessory businesses. All of a sudden poor Chiru finds himself in soup more often than he ever was. First his brother's failed marriage is pulled out and digged into thoroughly, then his daughter elopes with a dubious fellow with the help of some mysterious guardian angels, and then people who claim to be his fans attack another gult hero who coincidentally makes use of the media attention and comes out in total support of statehood for Telangana.

Chiru himself has spoken about as much as Sonia did on Telangana, but it is widely speculated that he would come out in favor of a separate state too. I find it surprising because I would have expected him to want to rule over a big state and have more power. Atleast thats what YSR or CB Naidu wants. Naidu for his part seems to have started hedging his bets on Telangana. He has been desperately trying to put together a third front(UNPA) which currently only seems to amuse regional parties which are out of power. He probably wants to make use of this UNPA to garner more power at the center when he loses control over Telangana and gets restricted to a smaller state.

With the TRS deadline of March 6, getting closer, the upcoming parliament budget sessions could be important in the history of Telangana. BJP is planning to introduce a bill in the house and expose Congress. Telangana Congress leaders are trying to build up the pressure and have not stopped speaking out on the issue inspite of the orders of high command. These guys are making a serious claim to the credit for creation of a new state. Congress never wanted wanted TRS to fly away with all the credit for the new state. And that seems to remain their biggest challenge right now, How to carve out the new state and get all the credit for it? And if they lose out on the opportunity to grant statehood, BJP will latch on to it and make a state when they get into power. That way the T-state has an additional benefit of getting rid of the impotent congressmen who have slept for 4 long years when they were needed the most.

We lost but atleast we played cricket

2008-01-09T20:27:00.001-05:00

I don't have much to say on this.

I am proud of Team India. We played better cricket at SCG. Sadly we were the only team playing cricket out there.

Predict Me?

2007-11-18T22:32:00.001-05:00

Ok before you start, if you don't know my date of birth please goto the comments on this blog and write what you think my zodiac sign is?

Seriously.....please do it. I have a point.

This dude called me a typical Aries...

As peace loving and tolerant as I am, there are things that can irritate me. I don't like people telling me that I am a function of a single variable, my date of birth. And I strongly advice that you don't try it even for fun, unless ofcourse you want to be knocked out like this poor fellow.

I am arrogant enough to believe that I can choose what I want to be. Actually, I mean "I chose to be arrogant enough to believe that I can choose what I want to be". I own my mistakes, successes, strengths, weaknesses, shortcomings....I like to think I have the choice to be what I want to be and dictate my own fate.

It is shamelessly denying the responsibility and accountability for your actions if you admit that you are defined by the day of your birth. It is abysmal escapism where you blame all your fortune/misfortune on the day of your birth and do nothing to overcome it. Even stupider is the assumption that everybody who is born in the same month any year would have similar behavior.

Several people including me, read the horoscopes just because it makes for an amusing read. When you are in a boys hostel deep in a jungle you will be very amused to read that "Since Venus and Pluto have not yet left your travel, academia, and multicultural sector, this is an awesome time for romantic weekends away from home and love affairs with foreigners". I don't see any harm in amusing yourselves a little, especially in aforementioned circumstances. But taking it seriously to start making decisions based on it is ridiculous.

Many a people wait for the right alignment of the distant planets to move into a new house, start a new job, take the marriage vows, buy a new vehicle. At a grander scale we have governments swearing in at the right time and rockets launched at the right muhurtham. Of course rockets do need a precise window of planetary alignment but there is no reason to believe that the alignment that favors "operating new machinery" would work for the rockets since the calculation of this muhurtham is based on an analysis done in prehistoric times with assumptions like mysterious snakes swallowing up the sun and moon at regular intervals to cause the eclipses.

Some of the analysis is reasonable, like the full moon being auspicious for doing anything and the no moon day not so auspicious. Back in the pre electricity days Sun and the moon were the chief sources of light and the full moon night would have enough light and is generally safer to go around as you can see the surroundings. So in defense of our predecessor, the smart analyst, he must have based his recommendations on the emperical data he had. A simple compilation of the data would have shown him that it is 20 times more likely that you get hurt on the no moon night than the full moon night. But any respectable modern analyst should be able see that it is not because of the phase of the moon but because of the difference of visibility. So it does not make much sense to wait for full 15 days for the full moon when we have man made lights powerful enough to replicate the midday visibility. And we did not have all the print media, 24x7 news channels, flashy billboards to communicate to people. The most effective and efficient form of communication was through religious texts. Nothing trickled down to the common man as well as the religious texts. Any and every major event required the presence of the learnt priest who is well read and has expertise in the religious texts. So the religious texts were the most efficient way of enforcing public policy and seem to have been put to good use by adapting them to their respective times. It worked well until mass communication tools became widely available and the religious texts stopped keeping up with the pace.

Now coming back to the horoscopes, I always find people who tell me I am a highly typical Aries. However they all think so only after knowing my date of birth. They suddenly see all the traits that would define Aries in me. While there might be some truth to the traits because when people learn that their zodiac tend to behave like that, they become more conscious of the traits , especially the ones they like in their zodiac, and they start getting more prominent in their behavior without any special effort on their part. So a very interesting test would be to see how much the people who are aware of their zodiac confirm to its traits versus the people who don't know their zodiac. I would also really like to know how many people would expect me to be Aries when they don't know my DOB. I would be very surprised if it is significantly greater than 8.33%. (1/12th), assuming I get a good sample size.

If after reading this, you think this post is very typical of Aries, I pray that God bless you with
2 dozen healthy kids

Shankar dada turns Lingam mama

2007-10-18T21:30:00.001-04:00

If you saw the video and say to yourself "so whats the big deal, two consenting adults getting married, happens all the time", then you obviously don't understand what Chiranjeevi means to the gult land. The matinee idol has a fan base which has grown bigger than him and more powerful than him. To his credit, our man did not really abuse the fan base to the full extent, atleast not yet , and has only used them to sell more tickets of his movies at higher prices. Indeed he has a very impressive brand strategy but lets not get there now.

Ok coming to the newly wed couple, I am impressed by the detail of their planning and the apparently flawless execution. Indeed if I had the power to, I'd send the guy a "pre-approved" job offer. He's analyzed the situation well, assessed his risks, mitigated them and executed with six sigma quality. Ofcourse they were lucky in having uncorrupted dedicated broad minded media which over zealously broadcasted the news all day. I wonder what the media would have done if it was somebody who has more power, like the CM, to directly affect the fortune of their company.

The kids (ok...constitutionally adults), understandably were forced into the extreme step because of the not so Gandhistic, "dont practice what you preach" attitude of her father. And then the single data point she had on her father's behaviour in similar circumstances historically was not very favourable either. Chiru successfully destroyed the career of a budding gult hero whom his father daughter had a special liking for. Chiru was so successful on that mission that my "ardent fan" cant even recall the name of that guy now. So obviously the risks were very high in letting chiru know about their love and the returns almost assuredly negative. Would they have gone all the way if not for that single historic data point?

I have grown up watching many a Chiranjeevi cinema where our man does exactly the same routine, poor confident guy eloping with a dumb hot girl of a rich dad. Not just chiru but the whole Gult film industry seemed to have survived on that theme since the neolithic age. Even Lord Krishna has a "Gandharva- vivaham" routine when he elopes with Rukmini and marries her. With such glorification in all forms of literature, it is natural that the young mind would love to get into the adventure. I soo want to be a part of similar adventure that I even offered my friends to train myself in relevant arts such as Tata sumo driving and "karra samu", if they are going for an adventurous wedding. Of course I'd like it to be little more adventurous with the whole Million Tata Sumo caravan chase sequence and the ultimate 1:57392024 fight between the good and the evil.(with the 1 good defeating the 5 million odd evils)

So I should say I am fairly jealous of all those friends who were part of this highly covert operation. They have had all the fun , perhaps even more than the bride and the groom. And the best part, they did not have to put anything at stake. Chiranjeevi will probably feel bad for a day or two and then continue with his focus on his son's career launch. Chiru's fans who seem to be the most hurt in the whole episode will also probably come out of it eventually with some scars. For the bride and the groom though, when the adrenaline stops and the cameras roll away, they'll realize what a fine mess they got themselves into and will bear the brunt of it for the rest of their lives.

If Chiru does go about setting up his much publicized political party, he should push for increasing the minimum marriageable for girls to 21. Girls at 19 have proven themselves to be stupid enough to ruin their lives and others in the process, with the right to marry.

The Unclear Nuclear Act and the clear side effects

2007-09-23T10:17:00.001-04:00

I love the Hyde act. Honestly I don't know the specific details of the whole deal and possibly we could have negotiated more aggressively and got a better deal. But apart from the directly intended pro's and cos of the deal, its greatest contribution to the nation would be destabilizing an impotent government at the centre. A government that can only watch and express regret as the flesh of its citizens gets ripped apart by powerful bombs in one city after another.

Congress for its part is doing the right thing by pushing for the deal and the left doing a "right"er thing by threatening the coalition in power. Their major difference being that the Left doesn't want India to get closer to the US because of their ideological repulsion with the World's most capitalistic country. They do claim that they will not support any move that will threaten the sovereignty of the nation. (It is a completely different thing that when the Chinese attacked the Indian troops back in 1962. I assume it was a friendly game of age of empires, and not a threat to the sovereignty. )

The act itself seems to be fairly complex with each of our noble parliamentarians understanding it differently. I'd assume about 90% of them don't know any more about it than common newspaper educated folks like us. While our law makers find it very easy to reach a consensus on popular measures like extending reservations to OBCs, not many of them really bother themselves with understanding the fine print in international policy. I think the Hyde act would have rolled out much more smoothly without many people noticing it, if not for a very aggressive statement by The Prime Minister in an interview with the media. Out of the blue, chumma to make the proceedings more interesting for common folk, our man challenged the left parties to withdraw support. The left parties very kindly seem all set to oblige. Would the left have gone all the way, if not for that remark? I guess not.

Apart from the unclear Nuclear benefits, I see the huge potential strategic and economic advantage of teaming up with the lone current super power in the world. US over its brief history has been loyal only to itself and its assets. If the American firms start investing and tarding with India big time, thus putting big stakes in the region, the US govt would never dare do anything that would destabilize the nation. They will probably even send the Marines to fight our war against terrorists, so that the friendly customer service representative of Dell in Hyderabad gets to help the US customer whose laptop is overheating, without getting blown up by bombs on his way. So yes, assuming the Indian diplomats weren't very stupid to pen down something that terribly jeopardizes our ability to develop our own nuclear technology, I think we should go ahead and sign on it. It is definitely NPV positive in the foreseeable long term. And once we get close to US, we can flaunt all the rules. The selective treatment of the American foreign policy is very well known. They have always treated their friends very differently from their enemies, the rogue states. The trade takes precedence over all the democratic values it preaches. They will turn a blind eye as long as it is good for the shareholder wealth. The obvious advantage of increased trade with US is that the world's strongest military force will want India to be secure.

The leftists continue to live in their ideal world and quite rightly interpret the Hyde act as India's leaning away from Nehruvian socialism and non-alignment, both of which have impeded the growth of independent India for a long time. And therefore they are not very happy about this "right" turn by the govt. and are seriously considering withdrawing their support. This I think is the best part of the whole deal. Its like a bumper bonus to the voters of the nation. Most of us have been brainwashed from our childhood that the elections are very costly for the nation and we need stable 5 yr governments in the office. I think its pure bullshit. It is an outdated medieval concept fired at gullible modern minds.

I am a great fan of the med-term polls. Indeed I believe its high time we update our constitution to make them a regular feature in our annual calendars. They are like the appraisals we have in the corporate world. They help keep the government on its feet without getting too comfortable and taking things for granted. It also ensures that they go back to the people every year and be answerable to them. In the current system, every politician begs the party leadership for a ticket starting about 6 months before the election, and once he gets it, goes to the constituency and begs for the votes for 1-2 months before the election. In the meantime they make ridiculous promises like free power, free food, free housing etc... There is also a huge correlation between Vijay Mallya's net worth and the Indian elections. The few big brewing companies in India must be makeing huge profits in the election season, given the amount of booze that flows around. All this is the investment our prospective candidates are very willing to make to ensure a place in the electoral office. Now once he is done with the investment phase and gets elected, its time to reap the benefits and he has full 5 years to accomplish it. Lots of these politicians grow their net worth by the order of 100 over this 5 years.

With such good a Return On Investment, it is not surprising to see why anybody who is somebody wants to get into the political bandwagon. We see film stars, cricketers, intellectuals, rowdies, factionists and even businessmen trying to get into the game. And since so many ruthless people with very high ambitions are in the fray with very high stakes, they could potentially go to extreme measures to ensure a victory. This makes it absolutely necessary to have high security to ensure free and fair elections. And that makes the elections costly.

Now if we reduce the term to one year, the ROI comes down drastically, since the candidates have much lesser time to reap their benefits and have to come face the voter and spend much more often. This should make it almost unfeasible for them to spend extravagantly on their campaigns every year and thereby reduces their stakes in the election. Ideally the NPV should go down so low that the candidates would realize that there are more profits to be made by selling pani puri on the Tank Bund than by holding the public office for one year. And then that should lead a good number of respectable greedy people to choose more lucrative careers in other fields leaving the public offices for more dedicated and relatively honest individuals. Given the lower stakes and the not so greedy contestants, the spending on ensuring a free and fair election can be cut down drastically.

Now we all know that elections are costly. Really? for whom? It costed Election Commission an estimated 13 billion to hold the general elections in 04. ref And a good chunk of it was spent on the introduction of new electronic voting machines, Voter IDs and educating the people about these things. our annual budget is of the order of 7000 billion. so the election expense is like 0.18% of the annual budget. That must be lower than the error in the estimation of the annual budget. It must also be lower than the money we as a nation spend on watching soft porn movies from bollywood packaged as wholesome family entertainers.

Back in the late 40's when the constituition was written, things were slow. What the initial governments could do in 5 years, we can do in 5 months now. For better or worse, the world has become faster and there is no denying it. (Even the 5 day cricket has given way to 1 day version and now to the half day version.) But probably India is not yet ready for this paradigm shift in its political sphere. And obviously none of the political parties ( which spent about 55 billion in the 04 elections) will like it either. But I strongly believe that sometime in the future , we will get there. Maybe 50 years maybe 100 maybe 1000, but eventually the timelines for the public offices have to shrink. And when the day comes, I hope somebody unearths this page of my blog, fossilized on a primitive information network.

Girly Man

2007-09-12T22:11:00.001-04:00

Today at work, one of the distant colleagues who gets to interact with me like once in a quarter, surprised me by showing this video after a meeting. Its the good old chiranjeevi 50 years ago. The funny part is the subtitles. They are not translated but phonetically converted to English.

On another note I watched Chak De recently and it had its own "Girly Man". It was a fairly tolerable movie. I am not very impressed by the ending though. If I were to have my way, the captain of the girl's team would be Christian and she would miss the last shot against the Aussies in the Finals. And then she would have to come back to India and everybody calls her "gadaar" or the feminine equivalent and eventually she ends up coaching the men's team to win a gold she never won. And thus we would get into a perpetual loop.

Between did anybody else wonder why ShahRukh's girls didn't defeat Pakistan in the Finals? I think it is because Pakistan does not have a women's hockey team. Not to mean that Pakistani women cant play good hockey but they have a very different social, religious and cultural dynamics which is probably more discouraging for the ladies than the Indian model.

Like in the movie, today Zimbabwe filed a surprise victory over the highly ranked Aussies. The Aussies will definitely spring back from the humiliating defeat handed over to them, but it goes to show that they are not "unbreakable" as many people seem to believe. I wonder how the Indian team would do. I am glad we at least have a captain who wants to win now. We should probably stick to this team even after this tourney. The old men should focus on making themselves good commentators for the future.

PS. Read Keerthi's critical review in the comments

60 year old maiden

2007-08-13T22:59:00.001-04:00

"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity........................"

-Jawaharlal Nehru
On the eve of Indian Independence

Thats the beginning of India's most popular speech ever. And like so many other things, Panditji got it wrong. Whole world sleeps????? He defintely should have had an idea about the time zones. But well not many of his audience did. With a literacy rate lower than Dravid's strike rate in his latest innings, you cant expect many people to be aware of the time zones. (Actually the literacy rate was slightly higher at 12%.) Like any politician worth his salt he exploited the ignorance of his subjects though in this case for a safe cause.

60 years later have we redeemed India its rightfully place on the world stage. We are all born in the capitalistic age in which the power of a country is directly proportional to its GDP. So lets see where India stands in the world GDP by PPP. And where you can expect it in the next 20 years.

That doesnt look all that great. The per capita GDP at PPP is still at the lower end. Lower than most countries which got liberated from the Imperial powers at about the same time. This, like the friendly capitalistic media loves to point out, is largely due to the closed economic policies and the permit raj which did not encourage entrepreneurship in the young nation. However in 1991 the liberalization was forced upon us by the prevailing conditions and the economy starting taking off only since then. So what do the next 20 years look like?

Hmmm not very good I'd say. Well I am demanding and it is tough to make me happy. With a billion people, India should be contributing atleast 16.67% to the World GDP. Actually historically i.e pre industrial revolution times , India and china were contributing more than 50% of the World GDP. The British rule in India during the Industrilaization of the world left India out of the game and it slowly lost its share in world GDP. At about the same time US starting increasing its share and eventually became the single super power of the world.

This graph shows the story of how India missed the boat on Industrialization thanks to the foreign rule. A point of great interest here is the 1600 where India's share of World GDP seems to be higher than US's has ever been. The share fell down steeply from 1600 till late 1900's. At the same time US and the European powers increased their share starting 1700 due to Industrialization.

India and China seem to have reversed the curve towards the end of last century. They should continue that growth for many years to ragain their lost territory. China with its capitalistic ideals under the communist mask is well ahead of the passive, democratic India remote-controlled by confused communists. But we will get there, not because of any visionary leaders but inspite of them.

Sports superpower??????
In the capitalistic age if you have the economic power everything else falls in place. The most direct relation would be with sports. Once the Olympic association realizes that there is enough money in India, for its own benefit it will try to make the Olympics more appealing to this large market by including intriguing games like "gilli-danda", "kabaddi", "kho-kho", "carrom board" and even the "french cricket" and "gully cricket". Well they are all as skillful sports as any Olympic sport is. Just that these are not known in the countries which contribute upto 60% of the World GDP currently.

It is however very surprising to note that none of the American sports are popular anywhere else in the world. Basketball is somewhat popular and widely played but the other games like American football and baseball are never seen in India. It must be easier to find a white American doing a Surya-Namaskaram in Lake Michigan on a December morning than finding someone play American football or baseball in India. The first time "super" and "bowl" occurred together in print in India is also the first time "wardrobe" and "malfunction" occurred together. (And I thought Super Bowl was baseball until I came to US.) I think the ignorance of the world to American sports is because Americans never tried to sell them anywhere else. They never needed to. They had the single largest market on the planet and it was good enough. Also Americans never really acknowledged the existence of the rest of the world and so never bothered about international sports. Their biggest sporting events are all domestic annual affairs. The rest of the world did try to push their sports into the huge American market but had little success.

So if India manages to achieve the economic strength it deserves, the sports will evolve to let India win more often. 16.67% of World GDP is all I want. And No, I cant wait 20 years.

Migratory Birds

2007-07-15T21:34:00.001-04:00

-IVAN L again

One of the things that has held my interest of late has been the behavior of migratory birds. The patterns and the changing bird demographics make for amusing reading. The lush Indian forests used to be home to a very rich variety of flora and fauna. Towards the end of the previous Ice age, when the temperatures starting rising to uncomfortable levels during summer in the tropics, the birds started going northward to find refuge from the soaring heat. Also it was difficult to find water during the dry season. Over time the birds evolved a pattern in their seasonal movements. They started migrating to Siberia every summer. Siberia had a very hostile weather for a great part of the year. It is completely uninhabitable except in the hot season. Only a few species survived the harsh Siberian weather and evolved to adapt to the weather. The Migratory birds from the Indian jungles found Siberia a welcome change from the overcrowded jungles back home. The food was much easier to get, there were lesser predators and life was much easier in general.

At the same time, the forests in the subcontinent were getting over populated. There was lots of competition from different species for the limited resources. So fewer and fewer birds chose to return from their seasonal migration to Siberia. The few which returned to visit did inspire many more to go to Siberia with the glorious tales of the land of plenty. The flight from India was not a easy one and had its own fair share of hurdles. It was a long distance and takes a long time. Then there are several predators all along the way in the parched deserts, looking for signs of life. Only the fit , well bred, able bodied birds were able to survive the grind and show up victorious.

And after the tiresome journey, the life in Siberia wasn't very easy either. Everything was new to the migrating birds. The trees are different and so have to be their nests. The pests and worms were different too and so their diet had to change. Even the mating rules were different, the new land being more liberal making up for the lower fertility. Everything seemed temporary initially as the birds knew that it was not their home and they have to go back to their near ones back in tropics. But eventually as the migrations became more popular, the birds found more of their ones migrating with them leaving almost no one back home to go back to. The second generation of birds identified themselves better with the local species than the migrating species from a far away land they have never seen. These birds got assimilated into the local population well and overtime emerged as a different species. Several thousands of years later they would start going to the warmer lands in the south to escape the harsh Siberian winter. About the same time a higher species, the man starts to follow the migratory pattern of the ancestors of these very welcomed Siberian guests.

However now there are more organized laws for migration and it is not an individual choice. It is indeed a very debated issue on both the sides, the land migrated from and the land immigrated to. India debates the brain drain vs. the dollars remitted. US debates the loss of jobs to immigrants vs the wealth they create for the shareholders.

Immigration is to America what reservations are to India, a sensitive political issue which has the nation divided into two well defined classes of people. Which side of the debate you are on is very much a function of your birth. The well educated affluent class with a share holding in corporate America are generally more tolerant to immigrants than the lesser educated, poor people who find it hard to find jobs. ( It is no secret that the rate of growth in average income of African American population is inversely related to the rate of immigration) The big corporations all seem to be pro-immigration. Bill Gates has been lobbying hard for an increase in H-1's and so is Google and almost every major software firm. They are only pro-cheap labor. If you can give them cheap labor, they don't care whether you are an immigrant or a resident, an animal or an alien. Naturally you seen them lobbying to increase the number of temporary work visas, thus giving them access to large pools of cheap workers ideally with restricted rights and limited aspirations. And they also help keep the local wages down. It is true that USA will not be able to compete with the rest of the world if not for the cheap labor from the developing world. They help keep their costs down and make them profitable.

Europe is socially more liberal but economically more conservative. They don't like immigrants much and have very strict laws for work visas. Therefore they register much lower growth rates than the USA. Their economic conservatism might be because they care more for the people than the money. US being the capitalistic paradise follows the principle of every dollar is equal. So your value in this country is directly proportional to your Net Present Value (NPV). So naturally the 20% who own the 80% of the country get what they want. Europe seems to be democratic first and so it follows "every man is equal". And a majority of the men want to keep their jobs. US is an employers paradise and Europe an employee's. Asia doesn't have much to bother about immigrants yet, (at least not the legal immigration) as they are on the other side of the equation. They are the biggest suppliers of manpower in the form of immigrants to the world and their only worry seems to be brain drain which is often negated by the fact that the dollars remitted by expats are usually more than the wealth they could have created by staying back, thus making the migration NPV positive.

The US corporations sold the world the idea of globalization to expand their operations into new markets. they wanted a world where the goods and resources could move freely across the national boundaries. They did a good job of selling the idea and got access to sell their goods in all the major markets in the world. Now they have to sell the idea at home to open doors for the flow of human resources. The average American though does not seem to like the idea as is evident by the following video. But lets hope that the noble ideals of capitalism will prevail.

PS:Has anyone cracked IVAN L, obviously its not random but its easy guys, I am expecting at least 2 of you to crack it

Demographic Segmentation

2007-06-04T23:49:00.001-04:00

By IVAN L, the insensitive analyst.

Whats the news from India?

Gujjars protest seeking ST "status" in Rajasthan

They block the capital city of Delhi

In the west, In Maharashtra
Thousands of people discover Buddha

In the south in AP
Malas protest against classification of SC'c into A,B,C,D

Further south in Kerala
More ridiculously a supposedly famous Guruvayur temple officials cleanse the temple performing their notorious purification ritual after a non-Hindu wife of some congress leader stepped in for her grandson's feeding ceremony

The common theme along all these is "caste/religion". Probably India's biggest problem, after hunger. And going by the news, unlike with hunger, we don't even seem to be heading in the right direction. Far from trying to erase these differences we are actually nurturing and feeding them. Political parties find it very advantageous to strengthen the caste identity and use it to create vote banks. They call it social engineering, which I think is squarely insulting us poor innocent Google worshipping engineers.

Gujjars in Rajasthan want to be included in the ST castes, while Meenas who are already ST's don't like the idea much. In AP Madigas want the SC's to be further classifies as A, B, C, D s thus ensuring that they get their fair deal in reservations. Malas who are supposedly relatively affluent, understandably don't like the idea. All this if anything shows that the backward/scheduled castes aren't different at all from the forward castes. It is just that they never had an opportunity to exploit earlier. If they have an opportunity they are as competent as any forward caste to put it to good use.

A lot of people belonging to the forward classes who find themselves disadvantaged in the new social structure, would love to see the caste differences evaporate. Much the same way, the underprivileged classes must have felt for several centuries of brutal exploitation. While these liberal thinkers belonging to forward classes profess that there are no backward classes, most of them would still want to marry their offsprings within the caste. This has been the secret of the huge success of the segmentation of the population based on castes. They all inbreed and thus keep their caste identity for longer than they live.

I believe defeating the well evolved caste system is actually easy and needs only one generation of "committed" youth. All it needs is for a whole generation to fall in love. And no, not manage to fall in love with someone from the same caste, as it so often happens, but genuinely fall in love. (Even by random selection some will find themselves with a partner of the same caste but they would be a negligible minority) That should break the spine of the caste system irrevocably and spare my India many a trouble.

The love marriages do come with some extra domestic friction due to the lack of lubrication that the caste is so well designed to provide. An Indian arranged marriage within the caste is, more often than not, between two families rather than two individuals. The fact that both the families belong to the same caste ensures that they are n-th order cousins where n<=5. This makes the potential barrier to break the marriage very high. (That coupled with the many years of brainwashing of the Indian female with concepts like "paathivrathyam" and stories of the great "pathivrathas" ensures the divorce rate in India is ridiculously low)

Now what is actually so bad about the caste system? why should we destroy it? Don't we have many other segmentations among ourselves? Men will always look for identity and tend to associate themselves with like minded people. True, there are many other demographic segmentations of the society. Like lets say based on ones profession. The doctors obviously understand other doctors better and tend to keep their company. Similarly lawyers, engineers, IT professionals, artists, sportsmen, designers everybody have their own well knit professional circles. They even have professional associations, conferences etc. Well actually that's how the caste system started too. Except back then the profession was inherited. So a lawyers son would always be a lawyer. And to make things more interesting, he can only marry another lawyer. A smart thing to do. Since the profession is already decided, they are only trying to supply the most suitable genetic material for success in the profession. Its the awesomest thing to do if you were a Japanese automaker. But well we are humans and tend to believe in our "right to choose". Caste is bad because people are born into it and have no choice but to live with it. It is like race, you cant even convert. Probably the caste system was a well designed segmentation for its day back in 3000 BC. But since then mankind evolved, and maybe caste system also did to an extent, but didn't really keep pace. I think man will continue to differentiate himself based on his work unless we all reach the idealistic stage of Marxist society. Until then, the least we can do is come up with a better designed segmentation with a choice for everyone to choose from.

I find US fairly similar to India when it comes to population segregation. In US we see people segregated by race, nationality, language. I have seen places so full of Indians and Chinese that the probability of finding a white American is greater in Warangal's mandi bazaar. Their professions are also fairly differentiable. Take any modern company with a very diverse workforce. You'll see that all Indians work in IT, Chinese are statisticians and data analysts, Americans are in operations, Hispanics in building maintenance and support, African Americans in catering services. There are as always some exceptions but this is predominantly the trend everywhere in US.

And what about the Indians in US? Surprisingly they seem to be fairly conscious of their caste identity. The telugu speakers have two huge associations in USA, ATA and TANA. I never quite understood the logic of it and thought it was probably the Telangana and Andhra divide. But then a visit to their websites made it all clear. Here's the Tana website with its 1000 executive members in a well defined hierarchy. And here's ATA's board of trustees. One quick read through all the names and you should notice that one last name is very prominent in ATA's list is absent in the other. That very well explains why we have 2 associations. It's the same reason why Gujjars want to be STs and Madigas want the ABCD classification. They all want their identity.

PS: IVAN L (pronounced IVAN the 5oth, L is the roman numeral there and not initial) likes to state that any inferences on his personal life are stupid, unsubstantiated, irrelevant and will attract a call from his lawyers.

Adavari Matalaku Ardhaley Verule

2007-05-20T22:50:00.000-04:00

The leading lady if you notice carefully is reading Ayn Rand's Fountainhead. I have tried several times to finish off the book but never succeeded. I give up on it and soon somebody will praise it to the end of the world and I get back on it. Each time raising my tolerance for the boringly lengthy prose but she always beats me. Finally the last time somebody praised the book, I asked "if Howard Roark would ever read such a book". The answer obviously was "no". And thats the end of it.

Unfortunately I cant apply the same logic to this movie and say "Will Venky watch this movie?". Of course he will, probably even 23 times. But I can stick to my original question "Will Howard Roark ever watch this movie?" Hell no!!!!! Not even if you pay him a million bucks, with stock options on the movie. But no that doesn't stop me this time. Its passive entertainment and my tolerance is much higher.

Venky does disappoint yet again. Something he's been doing since Subhash Chandra Bose(easily the Worrusst movie ever) I think probably the campaign makers and the movie makers never met. The campaign posters like the one here set your expectations on a completely different plain from what the movie offers. With a name and colors like that you would expect a light hearted romantic story. It wasn't lighted hearted, no... like not at all. Neither was it romantic. It is closer to a family tragedy than anything else.

The little comedy they had must be amusing to a 10 year old who probably was the target audience. I did like some scenes though. My favourite is where the kids tell the grand old chauvinistic man what Venky was saying about him and then the little girl says "nuvvu psycho vanta....blah blah blah", closely followed by the one in which Venky stays overnight in the office to set right the code and gets the message on his DOS desktop "Code accepted" and then prints out twenty thousand copies of the code to be adapted as the company bible and distributes to all associates . I drew lots of inspiration from this particular scene and I went to my office and stayed overnight and started printing twenty thousand copies of my spreadsheet model. Don't think many people liked it. None of them realized that I stayed overnight and almost everybody cursed me for keeping the printer busy, some of them using choicy four lettered words to describe the dumb ass who gave such a huge print job. After sometime, I couldn't resist and I also joined the party in cursing the dumb ass. Needless to say I never picked up the print outs much less distribute them. Hmm..I think I should join Venky's company, where such hard work can be well appreciated.

The director probably never graduated from high school. He seems to think that the managers treat their subordinates much the same way as the teachers of some 2nd grade private school proud of its SSC rank holders, would treat their students. Or maybe even worser. Venky the jobless ageing man finds a job thanks to a lot of favouritism shown by Keerthi(Trisha), who is completely oblivious of the fact that Venky is the hero of the movie. Poor fellow Venky misunderstands the favouritism and thinks that Trisha already understood the fact that he is the hero and gets slapped around by many people for it over the length of the movie.

Like it so often happens in real life they have an important client project for which Venky and Trisha have to go to Australia. Now if you didn't know, Telugu heroine is a very interesting species. They can run fortune 500 companies single handed, bash up 500 gundas if needed, outsmart the cunningest of mother in laws and as I recently learned, even read Ayn Rand, but none of them can tell the difference between coke with alcohol and without. Yup none of them. And without exception all of them seem to like it with alcohol and end up consuming it like a thirsty camel which found water in a desert after 6 months. What happens next is boringly predictable with the hero playing the responsible caretaker spoiling what could have been a very interesting night.

About this time Kota realizes that the movie is indeed boringly predictable and decides to kill himself after getting slapped by Trisha, to give it a much needed twist in the tale. With some more very logically laid out twists, Venky finds himself in Trisha's house back in her remote village. Our man has a good time with all the kids, one of whom even has a crush on him much like Venly has a crush on Trisha. Unfortunately for the sis, she is not the leading lady and her crush remains a crush while Venky's graduates to true eternal love, a "janma-janmala bandham"*. Our man says he is hungry and 50 people come with 3.46 tons of food to feed him. How I wish it happens to me. The last time I was hungry I had cereal with milk.

The leading pair goes through very complex human emotions during the rest of the movie, which I am too immature to understand and make sense of. I think this movie if anything endorses the age old "manu"istic wisdom of marrying the girls off before entering double digits in age and saving the family "whose females are looked upon as equivalent of goddesses by the villagers", some potential embarrassment. It was a good risk mitigation strategy developed by India's most influential philosopher ever and like all best practices has survived the test of time.

Its a movie lost between the philosophies of Manu and Ayn Rand. The campaign is all Ayn Rand but the movie is only good old Manu. Or maybe the campaign was done by the ladies and they lived upto the title of the movie.

Graduation

2007-05-14T22:14:00.000-04:00

In a highly improbable scenario of you missing the fact, this is the graduation season in USA and you should notice that about half of all orkut users find it a convenient time to update their profile pic with a pretty one in a black gown. (my rather high standards of laziness doesn't permit me to indulge in such laborious activities). This is also a good time to look back at the time spent in school and see what you have learned and achieved. Some people are actually known to do that. Rest of us, the simple people, use it only as an excuse to have fun.

I have been away from Durham for 5 months now and was expecting a heroes welcome, like what Abhishek Bachan got in Sarkar when he returns to Mumbai. My expectations proved slightly ambitious as I realized that only 4 people in the Durham area(including the Biryani House guy) recognized me and only one of them thought that the probability of my first name starting with a V is greater than 1/26.

We had too little time and too many things to do. Waiting for good weather to play volley was not really very practical so we had play in the pouring rain. And then there were n-th order treachery, vengeance, egoism, jealousy, revenge etc. which resulted in us watching the Telugu flick "Aaduvari matalaku ardhaley veruley" later in the day. All that I can say about the movie now is that "it is very worthy of a review". For a brief moment I thought the villain would be a much detestable "America pelli-koduku" who always performs a wild card entry into a nice romantic love story, but thankfully I was wrong.

Anyways after enduring the emotional turmoil, I thought I had enough of family values but
unfortunately Pichuk(who got engaged recently) and Rohit (who cant wait to get engaged) had other plans. They are co-authoring the book "101 Best Practices to avoid domestic family friction in the early stages of Indian marriages" and decided to share some of the tips with me. Chinnu, the younger brother who also happened to be in the car during the discussion put the time to good use by reading relatively interesting stuff like the ATM receipts and gas bills lying around. Thanks guys for all the liberal advice thrown in and educating me of all the nice things like changing diapers and why the second kid will be much tougher to handle than the first. I am sure I will put everything to use someday and appreciate your spirit to share the best practices.

The graduation ceremonies were quite an experience by themselves, where everyone tried to strike some nostalgia for all the time we spent there. The graduation advice this time being "Don't overplan", which I liked maybe because I always followed it unconsciously. (My graduation advice from IIT was "Wherever you go, Whatever you do, stay with passionate people", which also I liked). The MEM reception however was disappointing as the space soon ran out. Either they under forecasted the no. of guests which is a sign of poor project management or they must have said to themselves "Lets make our large contingent of Indian students and their families happy by recreating the Chennai local train atmosphere right in the Fitzpatrik center". Apart from that everything else went smoothly, with the photographer dictating which way the graduates should walk.

And then the gowns got removed, the bottles emptied, the guests gone, the music stopped and its another bright day of explaining the negative slope in many a graphs back in Richmond.

Did I say Graduation is a photographers conspiracy?

Thank You Lara

2007-04-22T20:15:00.000-04:00

Thank you Lara
Thank you for entertaining us for 17 years
Thank you for the poetry written with your bat
Thank you for the most stylish batting in recent times
Thank you for not letting the numbers change your cricket
Thank you for being human on the field and not a "run machine"
Thank you for being the best

We dont need no guns

2007-04-22T14:54:00.000-04:00

We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness ... We are the Hokies ...
-- Nikki Giovanni, VA Tech Distinguished Professor, poet, activist

33 humans, 2 Indians including 1 IITian.

Its a shameful meaningless wastage of life. Shameful because it could have easily been avoided. Shameful because this was not the first time it happenned. Shameful because nothing was done to avoid it from happenning again. We have mad men all over the world. But the school shootings are largely restricted to USA. Most of the violence in the rest of the world is justified by greed, hunger, freedom. The school shootings however have none no such strong reasons. It is most of the times just personal hatred which is vented out using powerful arms. You possibly cant stop people from hating one another but you can easily deny them access to powerful weapons. I was surprised to know that everybody has a right to carry arms in USA and actually feel lucky that this hasnt happenned more frequently. I think there is no better tribute to the 33 lives lost than tightening the gun control laws. Anyways I am just another bloody international student here and I dont even intend to stay for long. So I guess I shouldn't bother much about the American gun policy. Let the people who have to live by them, make their laws.

So again who killed all these people?
Cho Seung Hui. Conveniently referred to as a resident alien, a korean immigrant, a student of Asian origin, rarely as a VA Tech student but never as an American. He came to US when he was 8. Now he is 23. Isn't he more american than korean? and did anybody mention his religion.....

Apology

2007-04-19T23:34:00.000-04:00

I want to offer my sincere apologies for unintentionally hurting a lot of fans in my previous blog by comparing Bangladesh with Manchester United. It was the least of my intentions to demean the fans or hurt their feelings. I do not want to spread propaganda on my blog and try my best to be politically correct but things like this keep slipping once in a while. I understand the severe trauma this has caused to numerous fans worldwide and I deeply regret the same. To make up for the unintentional pain, I would request all my readers to read the sentence as "Do they take out mock funeral processions for the football players when they lose to, lets say, a team like Liverpool(footballs equivalent of Bangladesh)?". I expect this to work well because the only Liverpool fan I know is also the only fan, I know, of Bangladeshi cricket.

Once again I express my sincere apologies to all Bangladeshi cricket fans for having compared their team to a T-Shirt selling company which is largely mistaken to be football club.

The best World Cup....... ever

2007-03-31T00:56:00.000-04:00

And I am not even sarcastic. This is the most balanced world cup since 92, when I started watching cricket. We have atleast 4 good teams contending for the top spot and none of them have a huge lead over the others. I am betting on SA to win. But if the kiwis manage to beat SA, I'll shift my loyalties back to NZ. Both SA and NZ have strong well balanced teams. Gibbs I think is the most likely batsmen to get to 200 in a ODI. And Styris has been doing a great job for the kiwis destroying the opposition. The best part neither of the teams is very dependent on individuals. Aussies also have a good team, but then like any non Aussie cricket lover, I don't like them and sincerely hope that Bangladesh beats them tomorrow. If they actually do that, India should give citizenships to all the Bangladeshi refugees. SL also has a very strong team which almost pulled off a miracle the other day. Malinga with his weird hairdo and awkward bowling action did exactly what a 4th standard kid in Warangal, who woke early on a cold winter morning, expected Kapil Dev to do to the Aussies back in the 1992 tour of Australia. Much to the disappointment of this moderately optimistic kid, Kapil never claimed 2 hat-tricks to seal the match. But Malinga must have made it a day for some Sri Lankan kid who decided to stay up the night and watched till the end with the same moderate optimism. I am soo jealous of that kid.

It is quite ironic that this also must be the least watched world cup thanks to the exit of India and Pakistan, the two big cricketing nations. It probably also is the least profitable. If anything it shows what a bad business model ICC has. The World Cup with the best cricket also quite sadly has to be the least profitable. We didn't have as many good teams back in 2003 but then India stayed on till the end making it highly profitable, inspite of the mostly mediocre cricket. I was actually surprised that ICC let India get out of the world cup. They very well know the impact on the sponsors and their future sponsorships. It shows that afterall, thankfully, there isn't any fixing in the game anymore. But still the truth is ICC is overdependent on one country for its profits. Actually it probably cant help that part. What it help itself with is loving cricket more than the money. It has to put cricket higher than money in its list of objectives.

ICC oflate has become too greedy and has not even made an effort to hide it. They look up to FIFA and shamelessly copy their business model which unfortunately doesn't suit the gentleman's game. Thanks to all the ICC's measures of taking cricket to more people, we now have cricket fans who can compete with the English football hooligans anywhere. Probably even put them to shame. Do they take out mock funeral processions for the football players when they lose to, lets say, a team like Man Utd(footballs equivalent of Bangladesh)? guess not. Cricket fans however were taking them out in every city in India like there is no tomorrow. I think cricket can do with lesser number of fans. It'll mean lesser money but better, pleasanter cricket. I hope the guys who ruined Dhoni's house or the ones who took out the mock funerals never go back and watch cricket ever. I can understand the disappointment and frustration to watch their favourite team lose, like I myself was, but the problem is with the way they are venting it out. And unlike the soccer hooligans they dont even have the excuse of being drunk.

When I saw the news about the Indian fans reaction to their loss in the WC, I was like "Thank God! they don't follow puzzles so closely". And then I realized that the Indian team is indeed doing well at the World Sudoku Championship(WSC) this year. They are placed 12th out of 24 teams at the end of 4th round, just behind Britain(11) with which we have a one sided rivalry.(Poor fellows, they don't even know about it) Also its the only other cricketing country in the championship. Ofcourse I don't yet consider Canada, Holland and even Ireland as cricketing nations, inspite of the fact that the Irish went further into the tournament than India. Anyways here's wishing Team India luck, and hope they beat GBR convincingly. Looking at the fine team we have now, I will have to do lots of work if I have to earn back my position in the team to go to WPC, Brazil later in the year.

Go India Go

Image Copyright protected.

Are you a blogger?

2007-03-24T19:51:00.000-04:00

300

2007-03-22T22:29:00.000-04:00

If you are not a Telugu you will probably be amazed at what could be the inspiration behind this fantasy filled action thriller. There is a remote chance that you actually think that it is inspired by the spartan military culture. If you do think so then u should catch the nearest available Telugu guy and ask him about a movie in which

1. the hero is born into a family that produces sons only to fight and derive sadistic pleasure from the cries of the enemy. And the mothers are very willing to offer their sons for the benefit of the tribe

2. the hero and the tribesmen talk gloriously about their tribe's rich war history and their fighting culture

3. The hero can single handedly kill four million five hundred and ninety seven thousand three hundred and twenty three warriors of the lower tribe before the first drop of sweat materializes on his body

4. The villain has a never ending arsenal of mediocre quality warriors who invariably flatter to deceive and end up dying in the hands of the hero after typically at least defying gravity

Any self respectable gult should come up with at least a dozen movie names which satisfy these criteria.

300 is a movie blatantly copied, or inspired as they like to say, from one of those more popular Telugu movies which glorify the vengeance and the factionism prevalent in the Rayalseema seema. 300 glorifies the Spartan culture and military values in pretty much the same tone.

The movie starts with a flattering introduction to the making of spartan warrior kings. After being crowned and having a kid, life comes full circle and he starts training his son. But then the Persians had other plans. They send a messenger who very humbly requests them to surrender to the mighty Persian God-king, the ruler of the world, or lose to him in the battle. The Spartans, whose brains dont seem to be in any good proportion to their muscles, obviously decide to kill the Persian messenger. When the messenger realizes his fate, he says "This is Madness" and the king replies "This is Sparta", which roughly translates to "yes" in normal English. Just as you get ready to watch a nice historical war movie with all skimpily clad warriors with graphic muscles, the story takes an ugly turn . Ugly it is. There are some arbit ugly old men on a random mount Everest Jr. with one beautiful young girl randomly dancing all alone, probably under the influence of some home made illicit liquor. They tell the king not to go to war after listening to the naked girl sing "manmada raasa" in some funny language nobody understands. Sparta has a senate and an unwritten constitution which forbids the king to go to war unless the wasted Oracle says so in her funny language which can only be deciphered by, you guessed it, the ugly old fellows. So there our man is, all his meticulous training useless just because the heavily drunk semi naked young girl wouldnt agree.

These guys the Spartans are about as fond of war as any respectable Quaker is about playing quake. The king being the finest of the spartan warrior, too excited to get into the arena and assembles 300 of his finest men and marches to the coast to fight what looked like 300 million Persians. And these Persians are funny folks, they have giant slaves pulling the grand oversized chariots, when they actually seem to be their best warriors. The Spartans do a god job of fighting the Persians and killed at the rate of about a 1000 Persians per hour. They also make very novel and effective use of the corpses, by using them as bricks to build a wall. The corpses just keep piling up with the Spartans tearing through the Persian lines as if they are static butter at room temperature. The battlefield seemed like the safest place on earth for the spartans, going by the number of injuries they suffered. I am sure relatively speaking, there must be a greater possibility of getting injured by watching this movie.

The movie drags a bit initially with arbitrary skin show but is largely tolerable once the war begins. The queen for her part tries to amuse the audience with her own little desperate act. There are quite a few nice disgusting creatures with random features and excess foaming skin all over. You'll probably like this movie if you are a fan of Lord of the rings, Harry Potter or well maybe the popular faction movies from tollywood.

Fallen Goliath

2007-03-18T22:01:00.000-04:00

I woke up on Saturday morning, eager to watch my heroes do to Bangladesh what Gibbs did to Holland on the day before. But well I should have known the Indian team better. With a captain whose risk appetite is of the order comparable to zombies, mermaids, fairies and other nonexistent things, he would only treat Bangladesh as he repeatedly said "seriously". That's what Dravid always does, treat all teams equally seriously. An attitude as flawed and damaging as the Indian Foreign Policy. India used to treat every sovereign country as an equal. So whether you are USA or USSR or Djibouti or Somalia you were all treated equally. Makes very good rational sense but highly unrealistic, ineffective and worse, damaging. Thankfully the Foreign Policy guys are smarter, realized the flaw and adapted.

Dravid is the least effective captain since I have started watching cricket maybe even since I was born, actually since the birth of cricket. You'll probably find 2-3 lesser effective captains if you include the veteran cricket,gully cricket, french cricket and book cricket.......... of all ages......... and genders. 3 might be tough but you should find 2 with some effort. All the games India won under him were more because of individual brilliance than inspirational captaincy. He is not the kind of guy who would take the attack to the opposition. And the only time he inspires is by being the top scorer in a game India inevitably loses. India lost a greater proportion of matches when Dravid was the highest scorer for the team. Quite understandable, he never was a match winner. He can at best make the losing a little less embarrassing. He does have a huge fan following, especially among the young females, who probably only get to watch him selling some pink stuff on gigantic billboards or during the break of the 347th episode of their favourite daily serial. If only they had endured the pain of watching one of his acclaimed "wall" innings where he ensures that the ball always gets pitched within the 1 feet radius from his legs after hitting the bat, they'll understand me better. He might be a good model but he is a boring cricketer, more boring than those daily serials. Probably if you are capable of enjoying those infinitely prolonging intricately woven family dramas you might find Dravids batting as divine poetry and vice versa.

As bad as a captain we have, he cannot be singularly held responsible for every body's performance. He can be blamed for their attitude though. Whats missing in the Indian team was the killer instinct we had in 2003 under Saurav. I am not a great fan of Saurav either and believe he definitely deserved the sack he got. And he's doing much better now than he did before the sack, so I believe the sack did work in his case. But he was a good captain. He pushed the team, lead them, took tough decisions when things didn't go his way and well, he was a successful captain.

Coming back to yesterdays game,m ore than a batting failure or a bowling failure I think it was a lack of will and attitude. Sharav girls have shown more determination to win the annual 9-a side in IIT Madras than India did the other day. Bangladesh on the other hand played extremely good, sensible cricket and nailed India comprehensively. They have come a long way from the previous WC when they even lost to Canada. They have embarrassed the kiwis in the warm up match and now the Indians. It is disappointing to watch India lose, but then trivial things like nationality shouldn't come in the way of appreciating good cricket. I think only one team wanted to win and, quite rightly, it did. Bangladesh has a young team with a good attitude. They, like most of us, must have grown up watching and idolizing the Sachins and Sauravs. It must be terribly satisfying to hand them their asses on a plate.

And then Pakistan, the other fellow south Asian team had a worse day. They are the first team to get kicked out of the World Cup 2007, thanks to another minnows, Ireland. Now the first round matches have become infinitely more important and interesting. And it gives cricket a great hope, maybe someday soon we'll have 16 good test playing teams. Though the Paki-Ireland match relieved some of the disappointment out of India's loss, I felt really bad for the Pakis. And also for all the Desi's who booked their tickets for what they believed to be India-Pakistan super 8 match. Now they'll end up watching Ireland-Bangladesh.

PS. The saddest part, by far, however is the tragic death of Bob Woolmer. I remember him more for his tenure with the proteas, when they brought in a new level of professionalism into the game. When things like this happen you realize how trivial cricket really is.

GodFather

2007-02-28T01:47:00.000-05:00

"Swamy, here is my first child, give him your blessings my Lord?"
The tranquil saffron robed swamy takes the soft baby in his hands and closes his eyes to go into the divine transcendence. A pleasant smile radiates on his face, "Oooh my foolish Son, you still think its your child? You should come out of the darkness and realize that it's mine. All living beings are my dear children and my blessings will always be there with them."
The excited man says, "Thank You my Lord, Thank You. We are truly blessed and honoured to be in your presence today. Please do also give the child a name, Swamy."

"But before that you have to promise me that you will take good care of my child and bring him back to me when he turns 13. Thats the prescribed age in the Vedas for the divine linga darshanam."

The proud parent was blown away by the luck bestowed upon his infant. People from all over the globe come for the divine linga darshanam. Only a few actually get an opportunity to experience it. Typically only young boys between 10 and 15 are given the opportunity.

"The child has very inquisitive eyes, and arms strong enough to break pillars. So, I'll name him Hiranyakashyapa"

The honest disciple was happy that the Avatara Swamy blessed his child with a name. But he was a little taken back by the choice of the name. Why would the swamy name him after the notoriously evil king of rakshasas?

The Swamy, who is an incarnation of Vishnu himself, knows whats going on everywhere in the universe and obviously knows whats going on in his disciple's head. "Ooh dear, see how ignoranat and foolish you are. Hiranyakashyapa inspite of all his acts, was a great devotee of my other form Shiva. I hope this child also grows up to be as great a devotee. I would have named him Prahlada but then you know, its not very lucky for the father. "

"Ooh lord pardon the ignorance of this fool. How can I doubt the intentions of my master, my creator." The repenting man falls at the feet of the swamy seeking his forgiveness.

The smiling swamy picks up the the disciple and gives him a warm hug. "Dont worry child. I have only come to show you the light and put you on the right path. I'll deliver you from the ignorance."

"Remember my child , 'All creatures have to reach God. It is the destiny of man to journey from human-ness to divinity, as he has already journeyed from animal-ness. Some may ascend a plane, others may travel by car or board a bus, some may prefer a train journey, others may like to trudge along -- but all must reach the goal, some day or other. ' "

Releasing him from the hug he says
"I dont see your wife here. Its been quite sometime since she came here. havent seen her here since the avatara swamy pournima night. Its been what, nine months?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A dirty story. Probably offending also, if the foundations of your faith are as fragile as the GE made light bulbs on the floor lamps. If you are offended by the story, this is a good point for you to stop reading this post. A better point would have been immediately after the Title of the blog, but then you wouldnt know if you are going to be offended.

Well I had to take a dig at the God-men and their disciples. Disciples because I think their foolishness is more dangerous than the God-Mans intelligence. Its the foolishness of followers which gives the million of swamies, their power. It gives them access to lots of money, power and ofcourse people blessed with the brains of a frog, (actually a mentally challenged frog). Is there anything more dangerous than a foolish follower of these godmen? An intelligent follower could be.

Lets consider the most powerful of all these godmen in India(probably the world), Sri Puttaparthi Sathya Sai Baba. Ok, First the positives, what do I like about him? hmmmm....the afro and hmm......hmmmmmm........Ok guess thats it. Then there are a lot I hate about him. But Paedophilism makes everything else look infinitesimally small. Not everybody would agree that he is a paedophile but there are many accounts about his activities published in print, online , TV etc. People choose to happily ignore them blaming the malicious intent of the greedy passing dog!!!!!!!

I actually asked one disciple about the paedophilism and he said
"As the elephant goes, the dogs bark. But the elephant doesnt bother, it lets the dogs barking. The barking dogs cant stop the elephant".Yup, quite sadly, the barking never stopped the elephant, which went ahead with its "divine" activities.

Another defense thrown in by many followers is, all the social work he does. They say he is trying to do so much good for the society and that some greedy, stupid people who cant tolerate his popularity are spreading the malicious rumours. True, he does fund some social service activities. He invested in drinking water for chennai, a super speciality hospital in puttaparthi. Good. Appreciable. But malicious intent????? People jealous of his popularity???? why? Did anybody ever call Mother Teresa a paedophile? She should have been a much easier target considering she spent so much time with children. She was attacked left, right and center by the hindu rightists and the communist leftists. But no I dont think any of them called her a paedophile.

Ok, maybe we can give him a benefit of doubt for a second and see how credible he is been otherwise. Unfortunately not much. If he were to apply for a Capital One credit card, he wouldnt qualify for a credit line of 10$/month after paying an annual fee of 200$. His favourite past time activities include produceing a lingam from within himself(pun highly intended) every year at the time of shivarathri. This video captures the divine moment.

This is a cheap, badly executed trick and if nothing else, it is highly insulting the intelligence of his followers. It also shows how poor the Indian primary education system is. The people should have had a greater belief in the law of conservation of mass and energy. Hmmm... there is a good chance that they actually believe the law and also the baba. They are just incapable of realizing the obvious contradicion.

Oooh thats not just it. Hes also known to produce gold chains, holy ash, sweets...etc. from thin air. My favourite though is producing watches. Wonder what brand they are? And dont they have a "Made in where-ever" label? Watch more of "Magic 101: Introduction to pseudo religious big-bang"

Going by his scale of godliness, David Blaine must be a much more powerful god.

There are many other spiritual leaders in India but none with as big political, economic clout. There is one lady, Mata Amrutananda mayi, down south in Tamil Nadu who goes on a hugging marathon. She apparently hugs all her followers to relieve them of their pains and anxieties. Probably she took Munnabhai a bit too seriously. Or maybe thats where Munnabhai picked up his "jadoo ki jhappi". If the guiness guys ever bothered, she would enter the records as the most hugged person, beating her closest contestant by a margin of a million hugs. She also supports some commmunity development activities and runs some educational institutions.

Up north we have a Chandraswamy who successfully executed a national scam. He also has a good political influence, which he effectively utilized to implement his scam. There are many more spiritual gurus going around in luxourious cars and living in huge palaces. They have followers all over the world. One of the lesser known guys from Hyderabad actually visited and gave a talk in Duke while I was there. It was a sunday, he was using our auditorium and there was Indian food. I went in with a pious heart to learn from the guru. Amazing things he told taht day and it would require an univided attention of one whole post on my blog.

There are also some gurus like the Shankaracharyas, jiyyar swamies who lead a relatively simpler life. These guys are more conventional and religious in their approach. They get their pleasure out of making people clean and touch their legs. These guys dont seem to be as much interested in money and power as the babas and matas, but they typically have a wide influence among the higher classes of the society. Jobless middle class housewives in the gultland find them the most entertaining way to spend their afternoons, after the daily serials featuring complex human relationships. These guys are also typically more learned, dont indulge in as much boasting and almost never in cheap street magic.

The most popular of these Shankaracharyas, the one from Kanchi, was a prime suspect in a murder case. He however handled it with grace and offered himself at the service of law keepers. I dont think sai baba or his followers have the moral strength to behave themselves if put in a similar situation. They are more likely to call bandhs and indulge in damaging valuable public property. Theres a good reason for that.

Most of Baba's followers are goons, who have a stronger belief in corruption than in God. They believe everything is corruptible, even the God. Also they are greedy and highly conscious of their social status. They take the easy ways to satisfy their greed. Most of these easy ways qualify as sins in the holy scriptures. They want to buy their penance and liberate themselves from the knowledge that they have sinned. So they corrupt this guy whom they believe to be God, so that He overlooks their acts . These are the foolish followers, whose need to cleanse their sins overpowers whatever little reasoning ability they have. Lots of politicians, contractors, businessmen, corrupt government employees make up this category.

Then there are the smart and dangerous followers. These guys have a level head on their shoulder and understand very well the drama of the baba. So they bribe him to manipulate the foolish followers who are in important decision making positions. So the more people the baba knows the greater his influence is. Baba's strength here only comes from his well-knit network.

So, Why does he have such a strong network? Why do so many people believe in him?
Well this is how it works. A government engineer goes to the baba and tells him he wants a promotion. Baba waves his hand in thin air, produces some manikchand ghutka from the air and asks the man to take it daily twice before and after using the lavaratory. The happy man leaves letching at the divine substance. Later Baba calls up some minister who also happens to be his disciple and orders him to promote this guy. The minister, who has previously confided a bit too much to the baba, complies. The engineer gets the promotion, reinforces his faith in the baba and he is also addicted to that sweet smelling prasadam from baba. He loves it so much that he starts shitting twice a day.

Then another day a contractor comes to the baba and tells him about how his payments are getting delayed. He also gets the ghutka(they only use manikchand, cos they follow high quality standards, u know "oonche loog, oonche pasand"). Now the baba calls up the engineer and orders him to release the payments. The engineer is very happy to serve the Baba and he gets some extra prasadam as a tip. Several years later the engineer would develop mouth cancer, but thats another story.

Hmmm sounds like God-father right, the Mario Puzo one. Baba does favours for others and expects them returned. Ooh he even makes offers people cant refuse. The Street magic is definitely excusable, cos it is not very harmful by itself. And anyways we have much more serious criminals. But the mafia hes running? No. Well I know he is running that super speciality hospital also. But that doenst mean you can accept the mafia. If we can accept it then by extending the same logic, we should give Bharat Ratna to Dawood Ibrahim for providing emloyment in the rural hinterlands of India's least developed states, UP and Bihar. And the Paedophilism, huh........, sometimes I wish there is a hell, a very well designed one.

Indiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

2007-02-13T22:42:00.000-05:00

I am back. And its another blog on myself. I've been away in India for 40 days. It turned out to be a dream vacation. Obviously got pampered with Mom's food, watched lots of cricket, slept long hours, watched gult TV. The only sad part is that my waist size has gone up again and I, like always, have glorious plans of bringing it down soon.

Kee, Bhar, Pich also came down at the same time. Pichuk made the most productive use of the vacation and got engaged. Bhar also made good use of it and got his bro engaged. Kee among other things used it to catch NTR junior's movie on the first day. Puri got married at about the same time in Hyd. He is the first one to take the step from the greater Saras gumbal. The busy people couldn't attend the wedding but I was pretty jobless and theerfore was present there. Was actually disappointed that only Pondy and Badri made it from the saras gumbal. hmm..... busy people. I guess the number will only go down as we all move ahead in our careers.

As you see my friends have started to slowly settle down in marital bliss. Even I had to face some music from people eager to push me off the cliff. It was interesting sometimes and sometimes ego-boosting but mostly embarassing and I've decided to ignore them all for now.

Among other things I visited some temples giving some of my readers an opportunity to question my faith or rather the lack of it. They should have known that I believe in "Follow the least path of resistance". And anyways reading Mein Kempf doesn't make you a Nazi, does it?

And then I visited some of the rural schools(zilla parishad schools) in Warangal and Karimnagar districts where RLF(Rural library fund) runs libraries. The govt. run schools as u must've heard lack basic amenities and infrastructure. (One of the schools was sanctioned computers but they don't have electricity yet. ) But they don't lack in spirit, the kids were happy, cleaning their campus and decorating for the republic day celebrations. And the libraries, I was impressed. I have made up my mind to fund a library myself. RLF supplies them books every month and the students run the library every day for a honorarium of Rs150(~$3)/month . The idea is to foster reading habits at the young age and increase awareness about career options, current issues etc. The kids seem to love the facility. Most of these kids come from poor illiterate families which survive on about $30-50/month. They have no access to books/newspapers at home and for some it is tough to even get the second meal everyday.

One of these libraries had a small collection box for the kids to drop coins, on which was written "please help the poor and needy".

The year at Duke

2006-12-10T23:17:00.000-05:00

The roller coaster ride has come to an end. And what a ride it was. It started with Sherry and Pittu picking up the 5(Anil, bhar, kee, pich and me) of us at RDU. Got an apartment right above theirs. Bought laptop which in later days was put to good use of writing these blogs. Played cricket in an almost vacant house and destroyed the blinds n lamps several times. Made schedules and cooked exotic stuff. Downloaded and watched the arbitest of gult movies. Listened to countriest of gult, tam n hindi music. Letched at girls from all over the globe. Started wishing strangers. Walked up the hill in the cold weather to attend all the classes. Applied and got part-time job, cell phone, social security number, license, credit card in a painfully slow process. Attended many boring info sessions. Gave many boring interviews where people wanted to know an instance where I had a female in my team who always cried and how I resolved it. I wish I ran out of the room. Not surprisingly got all rejects. Come spring break and we went skiing in the appalachians. Attended more interviews and got more rejects. Even attended recruiting dinners and tried to socialize but only ended up opening the mouth to eat the not-so-tasty food. Started watching American games, learnt about the blue devils. Watched them lose to UNC. Called 911 for a fire emergency and found the house surrounded by fire trucks. Bought a TV for 10 bucks and discovered ice hockey. Cheered for Carolina Hurricanes. Ended the semester with a 4 point GPA. We came in as 4 singles and one committed and by this time it was 4 committed leaving me single. Finally got an internship with a company impressed by the resume. Moved to Augusta for a lonely 3 months which produced some of my favourite blogs(check mate). Bought a car. Cheered USA in the WC but had to find another team soon. Went to GTech. Met aeromates from IITM and realized how little of aero is left in me. Stopped boozing. Lost faith. Gained confidence. Attained nirvana. Came back to Duke.

Life's much easier with the car. Biryani house and Galaxy made good profits. Played lots of sports. Vp joined us from IIM-C. Made a cricket team and participated in a tournament. Got humiliated. Discovered the sand volleyball court on central campus. And the TT tables in the gym. Started working for OIT. Tried to make new friends with little success. Continued with the info sessions, interviews and rejects. Attended seminars on the same topics from the same speakers as previous semester. Put hazaar psued and attended Nobel prize winner Myron Scholes's lecture in Fuqua and fell asleep in 10 min. Went to a state fair, which is an American equivalent of hyderabadi "exhibition" and equally hate-able. Finally got a job offer from a company which thankfully didn't care how I handled the crying female. Went to smokies for a grand reunion. Watched Duke beat UNC in Cameroon. (ok... UNC-Greensboro). Conducted the first MEM PokerNite and gained some popularity. Attended a talk by one of the finest economists, Jeffrey Sachs and listened to him(rather than sleeping).

Decided against a full time MBA and mugged for one last time for the finals. And then the roller coaster stopped. No not quite yet. Have to clean and vacate this place. Go buy some stuff for India trip. Transport all my stuff to Richmond. Make the much hyped spoof movie. Update the blog. No the roller coaster hasn't stopped yet.

Lets get Geeky

2006-11-18T01:32:00.000-05:00

If you are here, you must be fairly geeky. My geek quotient, I'd assume is also fairly high. I love gadgets. My joy doesn't come out of owning them but out of knowing them. I have always been and will always be an engineer. I enjoy making things work. I love to know what makes them work and sometimes even break them to understand how they work.

Another big passion of engineers is efficiency. There is no greater joy for an engineer than using his tools to get work done efficiently. Engineers cannot and should not tolerate inefficiency. Inefficiency is a cardinal sin. You should always follow the path of least resistance. If you can get the same work done, always choose the one which requires lesser effort from you.

Ok I am sorry if I bored you with that little prose. I actually found some nice videos which I wanted to put up here. And then I thought I should write a prologue and ended up with that free gyan. If you guys like this, I've got more videos.

Enjoiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

The first video is about Meissner effect. Its a nice movie showing the exclusion of magnetic flux from a superconductor.

For more gyan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meissner_effect

Non-Newtonian Fluid
A fluid displaying dynamic viscousity.

More gyan at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Newtonian_fluid

Magic Sand
Movie showing a hydrophobic material, in sand form.

More gyan at http://www.reade.com/Products/Sand/hydrophobic-sand.html

P.S. If you have technical queries about any of these, google, dont ask.

The oppressor

2006-11-10T19:13:00.000-05:00

This man is one of the worst tyrants the world has seen ever. He has led his country to numerous wars over prolonged periods much to the displeasure of his own people. He has control over weapons of mass destruction which could potentially destroy the whole of mankind. He tortured the ones who rebelled against him in the most inhuman ways violating all human rights.

He was very greedy and worked only to increase the wealth of his near and dear, even if it comes at the cost of the poorest people. He acted only in the interest of a select few greedy rich people, who had great control over him. He had a very biased government which exhibited shameless double standards and differentiated his close friends from his enemies. In the worst display of his imperialist tendencies he occupied a smaller nation only to be humiliated later.

Several innocent people had to suffer under international sanctions which he is directly responsible for. He only has a minority support in his country but still held sway over the whole country and used his force irresponsibly.

A minority community from a remote part attacked him unable to bear his high handedness. The cruel tyrant avenged the attack by exterminating the whole community. He killed many innocent people in the process to take his revenge.

He definitely deserves a sentence, doesnt he?

Now can you spot HIM in the picture above? Look carefully...........

IITs, Do we need more of them?

2006-09-28T09:51:00.000-04:00

YES please.

We need them. We need a lot more IITs to satisfy the thirst of a billion countrymen. India needs quality engineers who can create wealth for the nation. Engineers who can propel the nation from a Agri based developing economy to a tech-based developed economy.

I have seen many IITians, especially when back in college, averse to the idea of more IITs. They were bothered about the quality going down and the brand losing value. Thus making life tougher and more competitive for them once they pass out of IIT. (This is a perfect example of "The Indian Railway Compartment Syndrome". When you are outside the coach, you try to barge your way in. Once you are inside, you keep all potential entrants out — by force.) The basis of this assumption lies in the fact that they believe a 4000 th ranker in JEE is infinitely less talented than 3500th ranker. (assuming there are 3500 seats in IITs). But the fact that a lot of people actually repeat JEE successfully and end up in IIT disproves it.

Also India has been changing fast on several fronts but the growth of IITs hasn't kept pace. The first IIT was setup in 1951 in Kharagpur. By 1963 we had 5 IITs serving a nation of 462 million people with a literacy rate of 28.30. i.e One IIT per 26.2 million literates. And now in 2006 we have 7 IITs serving 1192 million people and 65% literacy. i.e One IIT per 110 million literates. Even if we have to match the ratios of 1963 we need 21 more IITs. And it should be a continuous process to add more institutions proportional to the increasing population and literacy. The 1963 figures itself are not optimal but only a very conservative estimate. The changed balance of the economy in favour of technology only demands more people with tech skills.

It is a different question if India can afford these abodes of elite education when 30% of its citizens are below the poverty line and very likely go to bed on a starving stomach. It is not justifiable to subsidize the higher education for an elite few when a good percentage of the citizens cant even afford primary education. The government should consider waiving the subsidies it has been offering to IITs. Most of the research in IITs now is govt funded directly or indirectly. IITs should be encouraged to increase their industry interaction and find ways of supporting research and making money in the process. Inspite of all the praise showered on IITs the research output from them is very mediocre and there is a lot of space for improvement. Also they should make their coursework more suitable for the immediate industry of the region and introduce new courses as and when the industry demands. Or if none of these work they should charge the students. There are lots of banks very willing to bet on these whiz-kids and give them educational loans.

The government of India however got smart and thought of renaming some already existing universities as IITs instead of setting up new ones and making huge new investments. The last time an idea of this order of stupidity was mooted in India was during the reign of one Mohammed-bin-Tuglaq. Changing the name doesnt increase the quality of faculty, students or infrastructure. the institutes which were considered had their own long histories which had no resemblance to that of IITs. Atleast one of them saw political murders on campus. I will be surprised if the IITs are eager to share their brand name with institutes which are more in news for the political activities than tech activities. All these universities have definitely contributed to the progress of the country in their own way and should continue doing what they are good at.

So then where do you get the money to invest in these new campuses. IITs definitely proved to be a very good investment for India. Arguably they offer the best returns to the students for the price they are paying compared to any institute of higher education in the world. There is something else IITians have been contributing to besides the Indian Economy, yeah the American economy. US is reaping the benefits from IITs without making any investments. Now that even the US Congress has recognised the contribution of IITians it is high time they invest in them. The returns are good, it benefits their economy and in the process it increases the standard of life in the third world which is very important if US has to feel secure.

I dont have reliable data but with some conservative approximations I estimate that the IITians in US pay about $4 billion in income tax every year. (trust me very conservative estimate and only income taxes, no corporate and indirect taxes) And it only takes $300-400 million to set up a new IIT.

Vande Mataram

2006-09-13T23:24:00.000-04:00

When Bankim Chandra Chatterjee wrote the national song a hundred years ago, he might never have thought that his song would actually drive a wedge between Indians. I have been singing the song all my life without ever really knowing the meaning. And so have a greater part of a billion others. Vande Mataram, the slogan which has united the Indians in their struggle for independence(or at least in what is claimed as), is now being actively used to divide them.

A certain 70 odd year old bearded man in Delhi suddenly realized that singing Vande Mataram is against his religion and preached the same to his followers. Most of these guys, the followers, are fairly sensible people whose hearts have got filled with pride, almost irrationally, each time they sang the national song and will continue to. Though most of them ignored his words, the jobless protectors of Indian culture sprang into action and gave the issue an importance only accorded to milk gulping idols in this country.

I am not really bothered whether Vande Mataram is against a religion or not. For me religion is the single biggest contagious disease of mankind, and its almost incurable. But what I am bothered about is
"Should every Indian necessarily sing Vande Mataram?"

No. I don't think it should be necessary. If you are a sympathizer of one of the afore mentioned protectors of Indian culture you must have arrived at a conclusion that I am unpatriotic, anti-national etc. And probably you are right. If patriotism is supporting the nations mistakes and stupidity then I am not patriotic. If nationalism is endorsing the imperial tendencies of your country then I am not a nationalist. Is patriotism loving your national song, national bird, national animal, national emblem, national flag and a thousand other official national things but hating the fellow national citizens?????? And what if somehow beef tikka masala ended up as the national food, would all the protectors of culture slaughter their Mother-Godly Cow and eat them to show their patriotism?

One of the foremost principles of Democracy is Individual Liberty. Forcing someone to sing a song or believe in a spiderman is blatant denial of individual liberty. There are a zillion infinitely better ways than singing a song to express your "love" for the nation. Forcing the citizens to sing a song doesn't make them any more loyal to the nation. So it doesn't serve any purpose anyways. Congress for once is thankfully on the right side though for its own stupid reasons. Congress, the master of "vote bank" politics is not going to hurt the sentiments of any section of the society which it sees as a potential vote bank. The mild reaction to the Mumbai blasts can also be attributed to this same stinky vote bank philosophy.

Some smart "patriotic" fellow said that people should leave India if they don't want to sing Vande Mataram. A similar incident happened in another country that prides itself in its democracy, USA. An equally smart and patriotic American asked all Atheists to leave USA because USA's constitution says "In God we trust", which is also what their currency proclaims.

hmmm......... so where do I go now????.

An affair with Telangana

2006-08-22T18:22:00.000-04:00

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality.- Alighieri Dante

1947:
All the princely states decided to either join the Indian Union or Pakistan. Nizam wants to merge the state of Hyderabad(including Telangana, and parts of Karnataka and Maharashtra) in Pakistan but chooses to exist as an independent country for fear of internal strife. Telanganites fight the Nizam in what is termed "Telangana Saayudha poratam", Modern India's largest armed agrarian movement, to establish a communist state. Hyderabad existed as a separate country until.....

1948:
Sardar Patel sends Indian army and annexes Hyderabad. Hyderabad joins India and exists as a separate state until 1956. Andhra is separated from Madras and also exists as a separate state with Kurnool as capital. (I wonder why only the latter was taught to me in school. Hyderabad state was never mentioned)

1950s:
States reorganization committee recommends a separate state for Telangana. Central Government decides to go ahead with a unified state for all Telugu speaking people, against the scientific recommendation of the SRC. Telangana hesitates to join. The concerns about Telangana were manifold. The region had a less developed economy than Andhra, but a larger revenue base (mostly because it taxed rather than prohibited alcoholic beverages), which Telanganites feared might be diverted for use in Andhra. They also feared that planned dam projects on the Krishna and Godavari rivers would not benefit Telangana proportionately even though Telanganites controlled the headwaters of the rivers. Telanganites feared too that the people of Andhra would have the advantage in jobs, particularly in government and education. Several safeguards of Telanganas interests are promised like the Gentleman's Agreement.(GA)
For at least five years, revenue was to be spent in the regions proportionately to the amount they contributed. Education institutions in Telangana were to be expanded and reserved for local students. Recruitment to the civil service and other areas of government employment such as education and medicine was to be proportional. The state cabinet was to have proportional membership from both regions and a deputy chief minister from Telangana if the chief minister was from Andhra and vice versa. Finally, the Regional Council for Telangana was to be responsible for economic development, and its members were to be elected by the members of the state legislative assembly from the region.

1969:
Telangana gets restless at the discrimination and lack of commitment to the implementation of Gentleman's Agreement. Students of Osmania university start agitations for implementation of GA. Government employees and opposition members of the state legislative assembly swiftly threaten "direct action" in support of the students.Indian army is called in and 400 Telangana students died in the violent agitations.

1971:
Telangana Praja Samithi goes to polls with a promise of separate Telangana and bags 11 of the 14 Lok Sabha seats. Congress makes more promises about the development of the region and safeguards against discrimination. TPS joins Congress. None of the promises were ever fulfilled. Nobody ever talked about any of them until 2001.

2001:
TRS formed and brings back the Telangana issue to the fore-front.

As a kid growing up in Warangal I romanticised the idea of a separate Telangana when BJP passed the Kakinada resolution of "one vote, two states". But when TRS was formed in 2001 I like most other media educated pseudo intellectuals believed Andhra Pradesh was shining under Chandrababu Naidu and thought that Telangana was only a imagination of the politically jobless. The fact that KCR didnt have the glamour or charm of NTR or the media backing of Chandra babu made me stay away from supporting the cause initially. I threaded the middle path of "I don't mind if Telangana comes".

But now I believe a separate state is neccessary and have my reasons. Lots of media educated people jump on me when I voice my support for Telangana. Media for its own interests has been very skeptical of the demand for separate state. It lost no opportunity to malign KCR as an opportunist who only wants power and has no interest in Telangana. Well he is an opportunist. But show me a politician who isn't? Show me a politician who doesn't want power?(Why would he be in politics) And Telangana doesn't have a better option. He is the only one who has raised the voice for them. Even assuming he did it for his personal gains, he is answerable to the people of Telangana, which is why TRS had to resign from the central cabinet. If not for the pressure from the people, TRS could have continued in the ministry. He cannot do anything against the interests of the region atleast in the interest of his career. The Congress leaders who have actively pursued Telangana not long ago are all mum under their foreign bosses. They are more bothered about keeping their bosses, who'll give them the cabinet berths, happy rather than the people who elected them.

I'll try to answer some of the questions, lots of smart people who read newspapers and watch TV ask.

What is the problem with Telangana, why is it underdeveloped?
Lots of reasons. All the development in AP is strongly polarized in favour of the coastal regions. The uneven distribution of the no of members in legislative assembly might be the reason for this polarization. In AP Chief Minister is the the only decision center. look at the present government or the previous one. YSR makes all the calls in any department. Irrigation Minister Ponnala Laxmaih is sometimes informed only after the media about decisions pertaining to his ministry. All the MLAs are loyal to their bosses because of this and tend to neglect the issues of their region. Some Telangana leaders served as chief ministers but none of them completed their terms and could never implement policies benefiting Telangana.

What exactly does Telangana want? A separate state or development?
Both. Telangana wants leaders who can speak for the people and that wont happen in a unified state. Neither did the development happen in the past 50 years of unified existence. Telangana leaders under Andhra bosses are not comfortable talking about the issues of Telangana for a variety reasons much like I or most of Telanganites would be uncomfortable discussing the issue with any of their friends from coastal areas. The odd Telangana leader who raises a voice is quickly quarantined, putting his political career in a jinx. That's exactly what Congress is doing to PJR and Marri Shashidhar Reddy who have raised their voice against Pothireddy Padu. People talk about developing only as long as the separatist movements are strong. If only they lived upto their promises of development there wouldn't have been any separatist movement in the first place.

How will Telangana sustain?
I am surprised by the no. of people who think Telangana is sustaining at the mercy of rest of the state. Far from it, Telangana is a net loser in the unified state. It was the richest princely state in British India and has existed as a separate state for about 10 years. Telangana has the resources, only it never reaped the benefits.

Doesn't more states mean more Administrators and more expenses?
Yes exactly my point. We need more administrators. Telangana now has 35 million people and is larger than AP when it was formed. It is also larger than most states in India. They do mean more expense but they are worth it. Telangana needs administrators committed to the region and is ready to pay for them.

What happened to Jharkhand, Uttaranchal and Chattisgarh?
All of them are doing much better after separation than they did in unified states. Jharkhand now produces 40% of the output of erstwhile unified Bihar. Chattisgarh produces 30 %. And both these were not even a quarter of the unified states. Uttaranchal has been promoting tourism bigtime and made good progress.

All Telugu speaking people must live in one state.
Why? When we can live in 23 different districts and still love each other whats the problem with living in 2 states? Its not like we will be in different countries and you'll need a visa to visit each other. Don't we have Telugus living happily in other states under other governments. States like districts are only for administrative efficiency and linking them to language was one of the stupidest things done in Independent India.

Large States means more MPs and more influence and more development
Huh...Explain UP and Bihar, the two states which send most MPs to Lok sabha? Some of India's most developed states Punjab, Haryana, Kerala, Goa are all small. Its not the no. of MPs that matters its the no fo MPs who can speak for you. Currently Telangana has only 5. In a separate state we will have 14.

Maoists will gain strength in a separate state
Another common misconception. Maoists are not a problem. They are a symptom. The problem is unemployment, economic inequalities, social discrimination. If the lands of Telangana were irrigated like the coastal areas, people would never have had time for Maoism. Telangana needs more employment opportunities for its youth.The no of industries in Telangana(minus Hyderabad) now is lesser than what was in 1956 before unification. So you see the problem is again discrimination in a unified state. While on the topic ,I think Maoists deserve some credit for atleast one important change in Telangana . They succeeded in fighting the social injustice and feudalism rampant in these regions. I feel the social discrimination in Telangana is much lesser now than in other parts of the state, thanks to the Maoists. (The tollywood however is still obsessed with the feudal lordish movies. and why not. people still watch them)

I firmly believe India needs smaller states. Its got states bigger than 80% of the countries in the world. Large states make for ineffective administration as can be seen in UP and Bihar. Smaller states ensure better delivery of public services, greater accountability and greater opportunities and access to opportunities.

So who is opposing Telangana and why?
YSR and Babu are both against because they want to rule over a larger state. All Telangana Congress MLAs spoke for a separate state and campaigned using the slogan and are in favour of a Telangana. But as I said they have to keep themselves in the good looks of YSR. BJP has had an on and off affair to suit its needs. Communists like always are buried in horribly outdated principles and are in favour of Linguistic states. TRS is the only party which has shown more commitment than what most people expected them to. Congress is in absolute confusion. They haven't made a clear stand yet inspite of all the happenings. They only say people have elected us for 5 years whats the hurry? That's Congress for you. An obvious intention of getting political mileage out of the credit of creating a separate state in next elections. Let the farmers commit suicide, let the Maoists go on a killing spree, let the state government sell Hyderabad, let the people of Telangana starve, nothing matters as long as it cant bring down Congress Govt as Diggy Raja himself said.

I dont mean to say creation of a separate state is the solution to all problems of Telangana. It is only the beginning of a solution. The problems will only get addressed in a separate state. Telangana is not asking for lands in Vijaywada or jobs in Vishakapatnam. Telangana is only asking for a right to make its own decisions, a right to speak up for its own people, a right for its children to get educated, a right to a peaceful employed life and a right to get out of a failed marriage.

Check-Mate

2006-07-24T18:32:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer:All characters are purely fictional and owe their birth to the limited creative intellect of your beloved author. Any resemblance to any person or animal, living or dead or anywhere inbetween is purely coincidental and unintentional. All the names of the characters are completely randomly picked by a super computer which can be heartily blamed for doing a bad job.

Teodory, the smart young girl of Polish decent was listening intently to the class discussion on "Insomnia and other popular sleeping disorders". Next to her is a rather country Indian student happily sleeping to glory, completely ignorant of the relevance of the discussion to the current situation. Indians have a wonderful talent of not letting their education ruin their daily rituals. Keerti(Kee), the Indian student in question is a thriving example. Kee maintains the sleeping hours constant by using the classes as a buffer. Nights are meant for more important things like Girl Friends calling from India. Its a rather beautiful day in Stan and a human of lesser self-integrity and greater vocabulary would have launched themself to describe the beauty of the weather, the red/orange leaves and the beautiful architecture. Our protagonist Kee is on a much higher pedestal of life to be influenced by such mundane things. 6 shots of Tequila, a couple of martinis and a bloody Mary can put you on the same pedestal if you are a normal human being. But if you are Kee, you'll need twice as much of each.

Teodory(Teo) didn't really recognize Kee at first. Not surprising cos only one of them belong to this class. The other one obviously over slept thru the "Medieval Ages and the awakening of scientific thought" class. Teodory tried hard to remember where she met this lazy genius before. Oh yeah Kee is a genius.(This is a good time to remind yourself of the disclaimer). Kee can play chess blindfolded against 32 people and still manages to fall asleep inbetween moves and win all the boards. Teodory herself is fairly geeky and indulges herself in blindfolded chess very often. She isn't much of a social animal. The last time she partied was, yeah that's when she met this amazing, charming, lazy genius. It was an Indian party hosted by one of her best friends in Stan. Both Kee and Teodory got drunk enough that day to shake their leg to the countriest of Telugu music. Kee being a gult can even sing the songs and has actually overpowered the 1000 watt speakers when it started playing "Laxmi bava". Kee was the life of the party and every boy and girl wanted to dance with this dancing legend. A lot was said about Kee's girl friends and the hosts even dedicated the popular telugu song "Delhi nunchi gulli daka unnarandi girl friends" to them. As the party progressed the normal earthlings starting succumbing to gravity under the effect of liquid spirits. Soon only Kee and Teodory were left and they were dancing as if no one is watching.... which is actually true. It didn't take long for Kee's charms to start working on the innocent girl and the next thing she knew was the bright Sun in Kee's room the next morning. It is easy for a Stan grad student like Teo to extrapolate the available data and infer what happened. In a more conservative corner of the world people are known to suffer from extreme guilt following such incidents. But this is California and our lady only blushed, picked up her stuff and started yet another bright sunny day on a right note.

She never saw Kee again until today two weeks after the incident. Now that she remembered it all she thought of waking up the unconscious soul but decided against cos she was really more interested in the insomnia class than a sleeping drunken dancer. Very aptly the discussion today was on "The effects of alcohol on sleep?". Teo had the fortune of having a practical life size example next to her. After the healthy informative lecture was over she raised herself to the task of awakening the polar bear from hibernation. After some commendable effort paralleled only by what Ravana did quite sometime ago to wake up his brother Kumbakarna, Kee got up and reflexively checked the mobile which was in silent mode. It had 12 missed calls and 8 voicemails, all of which were deemed unfit for immediate attention after a brief glance at the caller list. Kee thanked Teodory, picked up the bag and left with a finesse which can be achieved only by constant practice. The female looked familiar and Kee thought that she must be one of the less regular classmates. Well not all geniuses employ their grey cells to remember their girls. Kee is exceptionally bad at it. It is famously said that Kee can remember the whole menu of the Lebanese restaurant visited 5 years ago but not the girls met a week ago.

Teodory like any normal girl, started analyzing the rude behavior of Kee. She called in her 5 undergrad friends for a conference call later in the day where every move was critically analyzed, several hypothesis were put forward all of which were critiqued and violently disputed, several instances from the past were referred with a noble intention of reducing it to a previously solved problem but none of them passed the rigorous analysis and after 4 hours 38 mins of airtime the group decided not to come to a hasty conclusion with insufficient data and incomplete analysis and decided to meet again the next day to continue with their destructive work.

The next day as Murphy would have predicted Teo again ran into Kee in the corridors of the Library. She wanted to avoid a confrontation but the highly bubbly Kee was heading straight to her with a big smile and really very happy to see her. This threw all the previous nights well documented analytical work of Teodory into a trash bin. They'll need to do an analysis with radically changed assumptions again tonight. Kee came to her and after a typical "wassup?", "how u doin?" asked about her program in Stan, where she stays etc followed by a lot of sweet talk and finally asked her out. Teodory mentioned how well Kee can sing and dance much to the amusement of the local rock star. Kee whose memory of the Indian party night was completely flushed out, thought she must have seen the Indian troupe perform in some desi function.

Kee liked Teodory more than all the previous girls, just like the feeling towards all previous girls. But Teodory is different because she's the first one who can play chess blindfolded. After an evening filled with some French sounding country American wine and a country sounding classical music they decided to try out a game of chess blindfolded. Teodory is smart and plays blindfolded only against blindfolded opponents one on one. Her fool proof strategy gives her an indisputable advantage in blindfolded games. But she didn't really have to cheat today 'cos only one player wanted to win, the other has lost even before the game began. Maybe it was the wine or maybe the classical music or maybe the combination, whatever Kee's heart was won over by Teodory. It was a very familiar feeling for Kee but each time it gets more and more special. Lose a battle to win a war they said. Kee would say lose a chess game to win a heart.

Teodory quickly blindfolded herself back before checkmating and whole heartedly enjoyed the liberal flattery bestowed upon her by the loser. Kee having set the stage pulled out the diamond ring which is always ready at hand in anticipation of such developments. Teodory for her part like the many girls before her thought that it was all a very well planned proposal, custom made for her tastes. The decision process in trivial things such as marriage is known to be catalysed under the effect of alcohol, very often producing the wrong result. Also a shiny diamond ring isn't something a broad minded liberal girl can deny easily even if it comes with some unwanted baggage.

Now that the ring got accepted, they had to work out some logistics. To begin with ones a Pole, the other an Indian and thankfully neither of them cared about the nationality. Both of them were however quite religious. But thankfully both followed the same religion, Mickeism. Mickeism is a fast growing religion popular among the urbanites the world over. They believe Mickey mouse is the only God. Mickey has come to Earth to liberate mankind from the sins of the world wars. Disney is the prophet who has come to deliver the sacred message of GOD and the promised land in the form of several Disneylands. They also site examples of Mickey's early episodes where he cautions mankind of the impending AIDS , 9/11 and some other big events which can only be deciphered after the occurrence of the events. They are a very conservative breed and hate all those who dont believe in Mickey. Mickeists are very particular that if one can play blindfolded chess then they should only marry a person who also can play blinfolded. This particular clause has left several blindfolded chess players unmarried and there was a serious threat to their survival. Luckily Kee and Teodory got through this clause also and removed the religious barriers. So they can both happily practice Mickeism and seek salvation. But then they did have some serious problems. Their marriage is not legal in ths state of California. They'll have to go to Massachusetts to get married. California accepts same-sex unions, but Massachusetts is the only state in US where the Lesbian marriages are legally valid.

Bathing Gods Starving Kids

2006-07-02T08:53:00.000-04:00

I am sure most of you have seen the depressing picture on the left and know what it is about. And incase you don't, this is the standard description that comes with the picture.

" PULITZER PRIZE winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan famine. The picture depicts a famine stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.
The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat it. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.
Three months later he committed suicide due to depression."

That's about how much I know. Well I am not brave enough to google about it and learn more.

Now on the right you can see some expat Indians doing a abhishekam to the Shiva Lingam which is basically cleaning the idol with milk. You can see there's a huge queue of people waiting with a bowl of milk to clean the idol and get His blessings. I have nothing against these people. They might actually be very benevolent donating half their earnings. But don't waste milk. It can be put to infinitely better use than washing stones. And imagine... the kid offering abhishekam could have easily been in the other pic. Effectively, they have stolen the milk from the kids lips to bathe the idols.

From Maslows hierarchy of needs, the spiritual needs come at the top and the physiological at the bottom. Milk can satisfy the physiological need of the kid in the first pic and unfortunately also the spiritual need of the people in the second pic. Now the ones in the second pic being more affluent can afford to satisfy their spiritual need at the cost of the life of the kid in the first pic. There are many other ways of satisfying your spiritual needs. Spare the milk for the starving kids.

What do you say? Would you wanna be bathed in milk when a child of yours is dying of hunger? Neither does God.

For the love of Chicks

2006-06-17T20:45:00.000-04:00

This is about my dream last night. I saw men and chicken exchange roles. The chicken were out there driving the cars, going to schools, working in banks, glorifying the God and killing others in the process. They had races based on the color of their beaks. The red beaks were in constant fight with the yellow ones. They also divided themselves based on language which had an exhaustive vocabulary of pretty much one word which can mean different things depending on the situation and the tone.

These chicken had an interesting history. They had some wise hen which claimed to have been sent by God to spread his word. Some of these wise hen actually believed that the Sun went around the earth and wrote it down as word of God and punished some other not-so-wise, arrogant hens which came much later and said that the earth went around the Sun. Another wise hen thought that the eclipses were caused by two painful characters swallowing the sun and moon. The not so wise rest of the hen easily believed in the wise hen and doubted the ulterior motives of the arrogant hen which claimed to speak sense based on logical reasoning. The common-hen found great comfort in placing their faith in this wise-hen who knows how the universe was created and how it will end. He knows what happens after death and also advices on how to ensure a happy life after death. The logical hen on the other hand had no explanation of the creation and no idea of what happens after death. So each of these wise hen soon impressed upon the local flock easily and started building their own following. For most common-hen it was a question of who reached them first. They did not give it much thought and believed the first wise hen who came their way and joined their flock to spread the message of God . The wise hen then took care that his flock wont take interest in the other wise hens preaching. The first thing the wise hen would do is to blind the hen with faith and devoid it of reasoning power. The common-hen shall never question the wise one and are supposed to follow the word of God as written down in the holy scriptures. Then the hen would spread this blind faith among its offspring from their infancy. Most of these offsprings grow up in such ignorance that questioning and reasoning about God would be considered a sin. As you can see there was a terrible early entry advantage. Its like the ones who tasted coke first never even try to smell pepsi and also forbid all their offsprings from doing it. Thus each wise hen built an aggresively loyal following with little or no tolerance towards the others. This process went on for generations and even today the modern hen is tied to the scriptures written thousands of years ago. The God has sent them updated scriptures with lots of patches but the hen wouldnt believe anything. For them the ancient scriptures are the final word and they are not ready to listen, no not even to the God.

Now coming back to the present, most of the hens favourite dish is human tikka masala. They grew humans in large farms resembling our poultry farms. They are allowed to mate under controlled conditions under the expert supervision of the veterinary hen. In one part of the world men are put up in cages in meat shops and sold. The butcher has a sexy knife which goes through the human flesh in one go. The butcher is rather ruthless and goes about his job very professionally. He picks up the man according to the customers wish. Ties the hands at the back and puts him on the balance and weighs him. After a brief negotiation they fix the price and the butcher hen takes the man inside and cut the heads off and throws the torso into a tub where the man struggles and loses life. Then again the torso is skinned if the customer wanted it to and cut into smaller pieces and delivered. In another part of the world were such specialized retail shops are unheard of, this process of cutting and dressing the human meat is taken care at the farm itself and comes to the retail stores in frozen packs. The customer hen can choose from packs of human breasts, human breasts boneless, human thighs etc. I remember one hen wearing a T shirt which said "If God didn't want us to eat humans why did He make them of meat?".

Last summer they had this mammalian flu and all the farms slaughtered the men. An estimated one million men were killed in one day and dumped away. They cant risk the hens life for a dumb mammal.

So how do you interpret this dream. Whatever guys, please stop eating chicken. Would you like it if humans were really treated like that????? Neither will the chicken. And more importantly if YOU stop eating, the prices will come down and I can afford more. Stop eating chicken, please.

Dance Monkeys Dance

2006-06-16T06:55:00.000-04:00

Art, a matter of the heart

2006-06-10T21:47:00.000-04:00

I am handicapped. Yes, I cant appreciate most forms of art. I have tried time and again but in vain. GOD didn't give me the ability. It is a handicap. This doesn't get me reservations anywhere and anyways I would never use nor need a reservation 'cos this doesn't cripple me from doing anything. Well maybe I wouldn't be fit enough to become a singer or a dancer. But well... I don't want to be one. So even if you provide me with reservations they aren't useful.

Not many people can understand this handicap of mine. I know lots of people who cant appreciate modern abstract paintings. But when I tell someone I cant appreciate music, they are like "WTF, u don't like music". Well its not that I hate music its just that I am indifferent. I don't care. It doesn't inspire or irritate me. Play your Guns n Roses or Balamurali Krishna I wouldn't really care. Its like your feeling to abstract art. Would you care if there was a painting hanging down some remote corner of your living room?

Well I have made several attempts to overcome this handicap. Believe it or not but when I was much younger I actually participated in drawing and singing competitions. There were six contestants in the singing competition and there were 5 prizes. You can guess who did not get the prize. My singing career ended even before it began. This tragic incident in the formative years had a tremendous bearing on my budding senses. AHH SHOOT....... What nonsense. I actually never had a sense of music which is why I lost that god-damn competition and I never cared about it. Coming to my drawing skills, my primary school teachers were not very much into this modern abstract art. They never understood the deeper significance of the noisy colors on the papers. I was portraying the inner turmoil I was undergoing but hell they wanted to see me paint a hut with windows, a sunset in the background and a couple of birds in the sky. Not my cup of tea again. I hated moving my pencil along predetermined curves. An artist always wants freedom to express his feelings in a medium of his comfort. The artist in me was murdered brutally. Much later in my life I had to do some engineering drawing and I liked it. It wasn't art, it wasn't creative..... afterall its engineering. Its smart, its anaytical and its useful.

The reason why I thought about writing this was my recent trip to the "Nasher Museum of Art" at Duke University. Duke being filthy rich could afford to spend quite a fortune in this beautiful building. It has quite a varied collection. The International collection was pretty interesting with the urns from Incas, statues from Greece, and art from medieval Europe. I tried to feel important and enjoy the moment of looking straight into the work of late 15th century artist. The American collection was boring cos these guys neither have a great history nor a culture. Then there is modern art which included cubical concrete blocks and scrap picked up from a automobile crash site. After this goofy visit I thought its time to establish the fact that I cant appreciate art.

Many people have told me that my head dominates over my heart. That was a more subtle remark. the not so nice said I don't have a heart. Well all I can say is your biology teacher will be ashamed of you. They claim that you need a heart to appreciate art. You should feel and identify with the emotions of the artists. huh...... I better be handicapped. I don't have a heart which can appreciate the scrap in a crash site. But I do have a heart and it bleeds. It bleeds when I see kids denied of education working in garages. And if I had a million dollars to buy a art piece of the 14th century European artist, I'd rather give it to this kids education. And to the education of thousands of others. I think that's a far more satisfying investment that a bloody 4'x4' frame hanging down your wall.

When I was working in Chennai, we had a pretty good design team. There was one rather sweet girl with a degree in fine arts who showed me her works and asked if I wanted to buy. I got out of the embarassing situaton by promising her that, she will be the first artist I'll buy. I'll probably tell many others the same, atleast if they are sweet girls. And I'll live upto all the promises.....

x == y == z

2006-05-21T19:29:00.000-04:00

Last week I was walking back from school along with A and B. B suddenly said "Ooh shit! I cant use the dirty language from tomorrow". Well he's going to visit his parents and some relatives for the next 15 days. It was funny to hear a 23 year old Indian boy say that. For someone who has stayed in a boys hostel for 4 years, adapting different languages should come as a natural skill. Not just the language he should have a different personality to present to different people. Afterall (My webskills aren't good enough yet, but I'd like you to play the Mission Impossible theme music in your head at this point)

Everybody is a multiple personality

You might say I am dreadfully late on this topic. Both Chandramukhi and Aparichithudu are over an year old now. True, but I am not talking about those radical personality changes where one conflicts with another. I am discussing the multiple personalities that exist amongst us all. These multiple-personalities work in mutual harmony. Each personality is aware of the existence of the other. Only they aren't aware of the fact that they are aware until now.

An average 23 year has to put up with several personalities within himself for different people. One for your parents and family, two for work- one for colleagues and one for boss, one for your classmates, one for your teachers, one for the opposite gender, one for your high school buddies and one for your blogs. Each of these have to exhibit different characteristics and often opposing ones. Like you have to be an obedient, humble, hardworking son for your parents. Try showing this guy to your friends.

Sometimes two or more of these personalities come together at the same time, like running into your teacher with your parents. You have to switch between the two personalities but you will soon establish an equilibrium and as time goes on you'll get used to living with this new equilibrium. As you get older switching between personalities becomes easier and all of them start converging.

This multiple personality syndrome is not a disorder. It is a necessity for a middle class Indian. The more disjoint worlds you live in, the more personalities you have. For someone living in the country side, one personality is good enough because all his life revolves around the village. All his worlds are overlapping and converging. His family, teachers, work, schoolmates, friends all know each other. So he doesn't need separate personalities and anyways will not be able to sustain them. In a cosmopolitan city the life is entirely different. Your school is 10 Km from the house and your schoolmates are an entirely different set from your colony mates, assuming you have any. Your teachers lives in some other pigeon hole in some other corner and very unlikely to run into you after school. Similarly your colleagues at work. They are all different and disjoint worlds. To keep up with the competitive world you are forced to adapt a personality for every world. This is good because you will adapt a personality which will be the most efficient for the given world.

It is very challenging and demanding to live with these multiple personalities because you are trying to be superefficient. It takes a lot of energy to convince multiple people from multiple worlds of multiple things. If you don't adapt multiple personalities, you become incompetent in the modern world and lose out the race. Even as I write this B is happily holidaying and am sure he's switched his personality. And when this new personality reads this, he will surely curse the other guy who made the innocent statement which resulted in this blog.

Another IIT Another Death

2006-05-04T16:38:00.000-04:00

Its all over the news. Another IITian commits suicide. Everyone will find it an opportune time to ask "Who is to be blamed?". And many will eagerly pitch in for some IIT bashing. Soon everybody will forget it all. Life will return to normal on campus and off campus. People will give JEE with the same zeal and energy. Americans will use every opportunity to praise the contribution of IITians to the only thing they are bothered about, their economy. And one fine day one of my good friends will send me a link to a news-site like this.

Making JEE easier or increasing the quota of seats is definitely a step in the wrong direction if you want to avoid suicides. I think IITs are what they are because of the rigor of the course., because of the stringent grading system, because of the world class faculty. I think it is unfair to blame these very characteristics of IITs whenever someone commits a suicide. It is definitely very sad to see such bright young minds end life in such a sad style, but a beautiful working system like IIT cannot be blamed for it.

So wheres the problem if not in IIT itself?what needs to be changed???
The problem is the importance given to grades by the society in general. I am sure this guy was more worried about facing the society with bad grades and extra semester rather than the grade itself. My faculty advisor in IIT Madras has repeatedly and very wisely advised me to take a lower course load and finish the program at a slower pace with better grades. I was pretty immature back then and all that mattered was to get out in 4 years with a degree and a job. How can I show my face to anyone if I stay back for an extra semester/year. Yeah my perception was screwed up. It does not matter how much time you took to complete the course, the only thing that matters is how much you learn.

But living in India where your life is so much a part of all your relatives' lives , neighbor's' lives and their relatives' lives, it is difficult to live by what you believe in. Everybody is so socially conscious. And the middle class Indian parents only obsession is their kids education. They want their kids to have all the fun in life they couldn't afford. All their dreams and ambitions are about the kids. The parents are divided into social strata depending on which school their kids attend. In these circumstances there is extreme pressure on the kids to perform and excel. And perform consistently or you could become a social outcast. So the students are effectively bearing both the academic and the social burden. And this academic- social link has to be broken.

People should understand that the grades/marks or rank are not the end of life. They are just another stupid number you'll have to live all your life with. Lots of people who have had exceptional academic success failed in life and vice versa. What good academics can do is hedge your risk and increase your mean success probability. Nothing beyond that. Good academics doesn't mean one will make a better son/brother/husband(or the feminine equivalents) as is widely perceived.

And people should accept failure. Failing is not a sin. Not attempting is. I am sure his IITian friends can accept him inspite of his failure. I have seen atleast one person take 7 long years to complete his BTech and was pretty popular even in his 7th year. IITs themselves don't really care how long you take to complete the course. But the outside world, its a different story. This guy, who committed suicide, must be among the handful who cleared JEE from his hometown. Now he knows that he'll have to stay back for another semester/year to complete his degree. Every JEE aspiring household in his town where he was idolized only a few days ago will now discuss him. They will wonder how a smart chap like him faltered in IIT and had to stay back for an extra year when the other guys who couldn't clear JEE and went to arbit colleges got their degrees and jobs in Indian software MNCs. He didn't want to be that guy. He chose to be remembered as a "Bright young IITian who committed suicide".

Beauty of Nepal

2006-04-24T16:25:00.000-04:00

I am really excited by whats been happening in Nepal over the past couple of weeks. I am not sure if you can see any beauty in it but let me tell you why I feel it is beautiful, more beautiful than Manisha or the Mt Everest.

Last couple of weeks has seen the common man in Nepal stand up to the King. They have come together like never before against their King who not very long ago was thought of as an incarnation of Vishnu. So what's great about that? There were lots of revolutions in which the common men slaughtered the royalty like the French or the Russians. True but the beauty of the Nepali protests is the lack of individual leaders, this is a true people movement. They are dictating terms to everyone. There is no individual leading them in the rallies. It is ordinary students like me, like you standing up to the batons, the tear gas shells, the bullets.......... If you see images from Nepal you wont see any leader participating in the protests. It is largely young people predominantly students challenging their King. You see them standing up to the armed forces to fight for their rights. And they won. This is the kind of stuff that typically only happens in the climax of Shankar's movies.

The protests have relatively been peaceful for their size. The leaders of the coalition are hiding indoors from the curfew but the common man went to the street to fight against the tyranny. The political parties would have happily accepted the initial truce offer by the King. Infact most of the world welcomed the truce offer only to be embarrassed after seeing the people's reaction. They want nothing less than complete democracy. They have forced the coalition to turn down the Kings offer. They have forced the king to reinstate the parliament. They have changed their destiny, the hard way and will cherish it for long.

Amidst all this our very own rediff.com came up with a article with a heading like
"Gyanendra:Last Hindu Monarch?". I have seen many outrageous headlines on rediff but this must be the most disgusting. I would really love to see the King dethroned and him to be the last Hindu king. The Kings should be in the museum and not in the constitutional bodies and that's irrespective of religion. Hope the Brits realize that sometime soon. They spend a lot of time and money on all the stupid things their royal family gets into.

And finally for all the Manisha Koirala fans who have read this far I didn't really want to disappoint you. So watch this.

A year of a life-long journey.

2006-03-17T22:19:00.000-05:00

This might appear to be a digression from the general theme of my blog. My blogs are typically loaded with criticism, irony, sarcacism, humour and horror in them. Whats missing is emotions & sentiments and what better time to introduce them than this the birthday of my beloved .......

I know this comes as a BIG surprise to those who know me well. But just look at what shes done for me over the last one year and I'm sure you'll understand.

I first met her on the 21st day of March, her birthday, in Adyar. She was there waiting for me and I was immediately attracted to her awesome looks. Thus started our relationship which kept getting more and more intimate with each outing.

She has been a great pal throughout my lonely existence in Chennai. She was always there when I needed her. She was there to accompany me to any late night horror movie in Satyam, anyday. She was there to come to the Marina, on a odd day, when I wanted to go on a jog. She was there when I wanted to go rowing in Chennai's biggest "koovam". She was there when I wanted to have a fruit juice at 3 am in "hi-look". She was there when I wanted to go all the way to an abandoned air-strip in Sholavaram(22km from chennai) to learn aeromodelling. She was there when I just wanted to enjoy a ride on the East Coast Road. And except in the last case she rarely got any of my attention.

And all the while she never whined, she never cribbed. She never wanted me to change and never tried to exercise any authority. I havent been so good to her. I have been very selfish and only used her when I needed her. I conveniently forgot about her when theres a cricket match. I never bothered to call on her unless I wanted to go out with her. She never expected any great gifts from me. She costed me quite a lot but then she was there only because I wanted her to be there. She also consumes a lot of those costly imported liquids and leaves a lot of smoke but again it's all just to keep me happy.

When I decided to move to Hyderabad, she was very supportive. She completely understood my love for Biryani and soon followed me to the land of Nizams. She still didnt get any better treatment from me. But she was still the same angel she had always been. She never bitched about her friends and never asked me any stupid, annoying, obsolete questions. She didnt demand that I talk to her all night over the phone discussing any and every person or thing in the world.

And then I had to come to US leaving her behind. I have no words to express how badly I miss her here. Its only now that I realize what she's worth. I know she'll be waiting for me back home and I know one fine day I'll close shop in US and go back to her......... forever.

I wish I had her pic to show you. All I could get is this, one of her fairly identical sister.
Click here to see her.

(Now understandably you might want to re-read the post.)

Ghosts reloaded

2006-03-15T09:03:00.000-05:00

.......continued from previous

As I stood in a shock, the lady with the candle was coming closer with no signs of deceleration or change in direction. Mother nature also thought that this would be a good time to make her presence felt with a strong wind coupled with a majestic display of lightening. All this hardly seemed to bother the lady. She was as peaceful and unperturbed as Gibbs chasing 434. By the time I realized that, it was too late to avoid a head on collision. She just kept walking..... Right through me and kept going forward as if nothing has ever happened. As if she was an unpicked baggage on a conveyor belt.....

Soon my heartbeat returned to normal, sparing some oxygen for the grey cells which soon reminded me of the class and told me what just happened will be a picnic compared with what could happen if I am late to the class. I gave up the hunt for the eternal truth and raced to the institute. Now I am pretty much convinced that she must be a "ghost". That's the only possibility left.

I tried to learn more about ghosts. There are so many hypothesis on them and each one invariably contradicts the other. Even the experts in the field did not have convincing answers and most of the hypotheis failed when simple Newtonian physics is applied. So with such scanty, unreliable information I started preparing for the next confrontation. I did a SWOT analysis of the situation. This is what I got
Strengths: My bike- Max velocity >>>>>>>>> u(uniform velocity of the ghost)
She is not made of matter. So chances of her hurting me are greatly reduced.

Weaknesses: Lack of knowledge-ignorance of her powers. She could be energy and annihilate me at her will

Opportunities: seeking THE TRUTH

Threats: Knowing THE TRUTH, the hard way.

It was easy to find a pattern in her sightings.They happen once every month on amavasya, traditionally believed to be an auspicious day for ghosts the world over. I thought of discussing this with someone, but I knew they would come to the conclusion that I was crazy, much sooner than you have now. I chose to face one ghost rather than 1000 humans who think I am crazy.

I started collecting various religious symbols which can be worn. This was done with a noble and smart intention of scaring the ghost away incase she turns hostile. I had a pretty good collection ranging from "katta misamma" to "Mbwenega" a powerful deity of a sub-saharan tribe to "Chuomg Pheing ", a mandarin angel. I am sure you have not heard of the last two and trust me you wont 'cos they are soon losing out to the capitalists with a stronger financial arm. (don't waste your time googling for them, you wont find them)

I believed she was basically an electromagnetic field. This explains my fluttering headlight in the last meeting. Now by creating a suitable field she can control an individuals thoughts, afterall thoughts are electrons in motion. So this also explains how ghosts possess people. There's little possibility that she can see because most of the light passes through her which means none of the photons are captured and therefore no image formed.

The next amavasya it was time to put my hypothesis to test.I went upto her and asked her what she's upto in 3 different languages( telugu, hindi and english) with no response.I would have tried Sanskrit also but by then I only learnt ramam, rame , ramo.... etc and I couldn't make a meaningful sentence with them. She kept walking but I knew she was aware of my existence. For lack of anything better to do, I offered her a lift. She looked at me from top to bottom the way filmi heroines look at the "rent-a-goonda" following her and I suddenly realized the virtues of pursuing classical physics to Ghost physics. So I went back to my bike but couldn't start it. I realized the cheap trick, she was manipulating the spark plug. Before I could say anything she made herself comfortable on my bike and it started immediately. She raised her hand to show me the direction. After carefully analyzing all my options, which didn't take long as there weren't many, I followed her orders. She took me all the way to "Purani Haveli".

After returning to the safe confines of my room I tried to make sense of what happened. So she can see afterall. But then why hasn't she noticed me the other day. Probably because she only has infrared vision and I was cold with fear on that hot day. She couldn't talk. She never did atleast. That's probably because sound is vibrations of matter and she isn't matter. How can she hear?? Probably she can read the electric discharges from my brain.

I never saw her again. I kept looking for several amavasyas after that but with no luck. I think she is resting at peace in Purani haveli. There were no paranormal incidents in my life for two years. In the meantime I landed in Saras at IITM. One fine day,10 of us from the coveted 8th wing of saras sat together for a session on the OUIJA board. We called in several spirits and asked several stupid questions. Unfortunately none of us knew how to let the spirits leave. One of the smarter guys very courteously requested them to leave in plain English. We all thought they went away. But no, I later realized, much to my own horror that they cant liberate themselves from the board. They are tied to the board which was lying somewhere in the infinite rubbish in my room. They are getting frustrated. They are not amused by this guy who spends days and nights playing bridge and judgment, watching stupid movies and worst of all putting night outs before the exam to learn some vulgar Aerodynamics.

P.S: You should have guessed theres a 3rd part.this is just reloaded..................

Ghost Physics, A Modern neo-liberal Approach

2006-03-11T10:57:00.000-05:00

My fantasy of ghosts dates back a long time. As a kid I used to wonder, why lead such a mundane and powerless life as humans when there's the exotic option of being an all powerful ghost. Ghosts have so many powers right? They can move at the velocities greater than light, have very flexible body which can sneak in through key holes, they don't get injured and anyways are already dead, they have access to a wonderful GPS which can trace you with an accuracy of the order of 10^-200 m and is very reliable, always on ,very fast-almost instantaneous. They can also shift from one body to another with little regard to Newtonian and Einsteinian physics.

But after a careful study which spanned over 22 years, I have discovered the physics they have regard for. As in most research the first 15 years were spent on finding the problem and then it was all very easy.I was unable to disclose this earlier because of several non disclosure agreements I had signed on. All this is copyrighted and tardemarked stuff. And thanx to my intellectual property course, now I know how to sue you for all you are worth presently and for all your cash flows for the next 20 years if you reproduce any of my work in part or in full without my prior written permission.

The following is as real as real can be. It is true to the best of my knowledge and I would appreciate it if you can take it seriously.

How it all started???

1998- June
As a plus two student back in Hyd, I used to go from Tarnaka to Shanker Mutt daily at 3.30am to attend my classes. You might expect that to be a very productive hour in the Osmania university through which I had to pass. But no, unlike the nocturnal IITian species these guys seem to actually work, if at all, during day and sleep at night.(I strongly recommend the concerned committee to consider this important element of IITian culture before granting the status to any college). So the road was completely deserted at the hour and I used to go through with absolutely no incident.

On one of such days, which I later learned was an amavasya(no-moon day), I saw a lady walking on the pavement. She was wearing a self-luminous white saree(it was "Tide" magic white). My unfinished math homework ensured there was little processor time and memory to process this data. I forgot about her as soon as I went past her and returned to class to learn about a medieval Mathematician from some remote part of Europe, which you hear about only when there's a football world cup.

I drove for another month without any incident. And then came another amavasya, and I saw her again. This time it grabbed both the memory and processor time completely but the auto-pilot mode ensured that I drove past, to the institute, thinking about her. I had several questions and my curiosity grew. I also noticed that she was carrying a lighted candle. After class I rushed to the university where I saw her earlier in the day and looked for some dripped wax on the pavement. As you might have expected, from your vast bollywood and tollywood experience, I found none. I thought of several possibities to explain her presence in such attire and at such odd hour. But none of them was completely satisfactory. As days passed I again got lost among the theories postulated by the afore mentioned mathematician.

Then I saw her for a third time. This time I stopped my bike and started analysing the situation. I ruled out one possibility conclusively. This couldn't be MTV bakra. She was walking slowly, steadily with a uniform velocity quite oblivious of her surroundings. She was looking straight into infinity. She doesn't seem to be aware of my existence. I started following her slowly on my bike, keeping myself right in the middle of the road. Her image was hazy and slightly transparent. So she isn't visible in a bright background. I wondered if she is made up of matter?Or is she just energy? And this reminded me of my homework and class. I stopped to see the time and realized that at this pace I can assure myself of missing the next two days of classes. I was about to start when I saw her stop abruptly and perform a 90 degree turn to face me. She started walking looking right through me.I stood there completely dumbstruck.My mind went totally blank. The extra oxygen saved by my non functioning brain was quickly lapped up by my heart which started pumping twice as hard at thrice the normal frequency. My headlight started fluttering and a distant dog found it an opportune time to give out a long howl.

to be continued...............

Jeong Kim

2006-03-03T20:05:00.000-05:00

I have attended what probably is my best lecture ever. I am sure my highly informed readers,like me, haven't heard of Jeong Kim. Well he's a Korean immigrant to America who started his own company and featured on the cover page of businessweek ten years ago as a most promising technology startup or something of that sort. He later sold out that company to Lucent for a billion dollars and went on to become the President of Lucent Technologies Bell Labs. Yeah President of Bell labs, the mother of inventions. He's also on the board of several companies and teaches at University of Maryland.

His is a story of great inspiration to engineers and entrepreneurs. Well the google guys are smart n all that but they never really had to worry about food and shelter like Kim.

Thanks to his inspiring and informative lecture I had the opportunity to hold a "million dollar" chip and a real Grammy. The lecture started with his introduction where the introducer was trying to compare what he did in business to something more familiar to undergrad American students and ended up saying that its like winning NBA, SuperBowl and Major League in the same year. An Indian equivalent would be scoring 10,000 runs, 300 catches and claiming 500 wickets in Test cricket. Now I am not going to tell you his story here because I know I cant do it any better than this www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/kim1int-1

Jeong caught the room full of engineers on the wrong foot by asking them if they have seen the Grammy awards last month. Not a single hand went up. He isn't disappointed, he knows engineers. He then passed on the Grammy which Bell Labs won in some technical category. I haven't any great respect for Grammy but still its nice to hold it. I was more amused to hold a million dollar chip he passed. For a brief moment I was a dollar millionaire.

He said his biggest challenge has been to choose the right people. Once you have the right people everything else falls in place. Not very surprising to hear from the president of Bell Labs, an institution that took pride in employing the largest no of Nobel prize winners. Then he went on to pleasantly surprise me with some liberal praise of IITs and IITians. I've heard a lot of good things about IITs here. Lots of people tell me "Wow!You are from IIT.Its impossible to get into them".(Well, their understanding of "impossible" is slisha different). I thought it was just that they are happier glorifying IITs than MITs and Stans because IITs are so far away in a distant land, which 80% of Americans cant even point on a globe. Its like saying "hey MIT, we are almost at the same level if u compare with that guy IIT, he's way above us". This syndrome is popularly found in our very own bollywood stars, who invariably give a hollywood name when asked who their favorite actor is.

Coming back to Kim... Heres the president of Bell Labs, the premier R&D centre with loads of Nobel laureates, and what does he talk about when speaking about his people?
IITians.... and no he doesn't even mention the Nobels. I was surprised because I never had a high opinion of IITian research activities. They make good entrepreneurs, agreed. They make good Wall street stuff, agreed. they make good Managers, agreed. But research???? Well if Kim says so. Now one of the reasons I looked down on IITian research is because none of them ever won a Nobel. Maybe Nobel isn't a good measure afterall. The brainy among you would remember my ultimate goal of winning and turning-down a Nobel. Well its just got changed. I don't give Nobel a damn anymore and anyways I have already got the net result.

Of Matinee idols and their "Abhimaana Devullu"

2006-02-25T10:15:00.000-05:00

matinee idol

n : someone who is adored blindly and excessively

that's the technical definition but I'll confine this blog to "filmstars who are adored blindly and excessively".

All these stars nurture strong fan-clubs, in which very often the most educated guy has successively failed at 10th board exams atleast 3 times. This is kind of the basic requirement if you are planning to move up the hierarchy in the club. These clubs have some very amusing activities which include but not restricted to squatting and disrupting the traffic, decorating cinema halls, suicide threatening. They have special teams identified as suicide-threateners. Recent research by FBI actually proved that these people are indirectly responsible for the rising oil prices globally. They drench themselves in kerosene in full view of the cameras and threaten to kill themselves unless their demands are met. Now what are their demands typically? Here are some of them

a) Action should be taken against "So n So & sons " newspaper which has misspelled the middle name of their hero's pet dog.
b) In retaliation of a scene in the movie in which the hero tilts by 15 degrees after being hit by a shatabdi express which ob'ly gets stopped in 2.37 millisecs after the high mass head on collision.
The hero has, among other things, beaten 20000 well built goondas, dodged 80009098 bullets by bending to the left, right and back. This scene is largely mistaken to have started with Matrix. Latest evidence proves that the cavemen of "ajantha" employed strikingly similar techniques to dodge the man eating dragon flies prevalent at that time. With the extinction of this deadly species of insects the special art also disappeared.
c)Hang Mr.Somebody Notsopopular who has ditched the 3rd daughter of the hero's fourth wife.

The list goes on but I have to stop here to keep my blogs good enough for a healthy family reading. The Heroes themselves strongly encourage such activities and participate in them regularly to boost the morale. It is very important for the Heroes career that he keeps his fans happy. They typically employ very good HR practices so that the attrition rate at the clubs is kept low. The fans are often referred to as "abhimaana devullu"(fan-gods) and the first show of the stars new movie is reserved for them in lieu of decorating the hall and the cutouts. Most of the fans are college kids or the ones recently out with no stable income. They are often encouraged to forget college and watch movies. The heroes are least bothered about the careers of the fans, they are only interested in getting them to watch atleast 10 shows of each of their movie.

Sometime ago I was watching a phone-in program of a rather goodlooking young actress on Gemini. Some guy called and said that he was her fan and watched her latest movie and liked it a lot n all that. After some highly informative talk from both sides the actress asked him "How many times did you watch the movie?". This shows that she's convinced that the guy was jobless enough to actually go to the theater multiple times to watch the same rubbish. The guy,who passed inter and is actually more educated than the actress, replied "once". The actress looked upset enough that I wondered if the guy used some other four lettered word. Then the actress asked "What? Only once. You call yourself a fan?".......... I wish the guy actually used some other four lettered word.

First Quiz

2006-02-20T10:15:00.000-05:00

I have given my first quiz in the "developed" world. Have you given GRE and Toefl and ever wondered what purpose the stupidest exams you ever wrote serve. I still think they are stupid but they do serve an excellent purpose. They prepare you for whats in store in the US universities.

Its been a long time since I wrote a exam where they tell u in class "f(x) = a" and ask you in the quiz "f(x) = a True or False?". They dont challenge your intellect in the exams. Either you know it or you dont like that wonderful GRE verbal. I guess thats because the education here is not exam centered. In India it did not matter what you did all along the semester. It all boils down to the quiz day. You crack it and you are the star. So people like me got along well cracking the big exams on the big days and relaxing the rest of the time watching mediocre telugu movies and playing tennis-ball gully cricket.

Out here they make sure you come prepared for every class. Its actually pretty easy for them. They charge me $3750 for every course which translates to $200 per every class. So I better be prepared and learn something in the class rather than reduce it to a self-study overnight course. And missing a class? nice try I am gonna lose my 200 bucks.

Their philosophy is you put all the effort during the semester. They grade you on things as obscene as class participation and peer evaluation. Quiz forms only a small part of the final grade. If you have worked on the other things you should crack the quiz easily. So though I still watch mediocre telugu movies and play indoor cricket(weather doesnt permit the more popular gully version) I have tons of assignments, case studies and readings for every class.

Freedom of expression

2006-02-11T19:26:00.000-05:00

I was looking at the most influential cartoons ever drawn. Several lives have already been lost. Several are threatened. Several flags have been torched. Sevral embassies were attcked and several got closed down. It almost led to World War III. This time between crusaders of religion and advocates of freedom of expression. And we are not yet completely out of danger.
Look at this map
You should have noticed that all the "developed and civilized" countries are advocating this freedom of expression and found great pleasure in publishing the cartoons. All of these countries are well aware of hurting the religious sentiments of the other side. To me it appears as a sincere attempt of provocation. They blame it on the freedom of press.
I appreciate this particular freedom because without it I wouldnt have written this. But isn't the basic law of freedom "Your freedom ends where another man's nose begins". Does freedom of expression mean freedom to hurt? Isnt press expected to be responsible? Why dont they restrict their spectacular intellectual ridicule to products of their own imagination.

Now coming to the other side.
Looks like there were several of them just waiting for a provocation like this. Surprisingly not one of them came out when MF Hussian published some very objectionable paintings on the Indian Gods(yeah we hav several of them) earlier in the year. Most of India happily ignored them. We are too busy to care about this mad old guy, who anyways hasnt much of life left in him. But unfortunely the guys who are hurt in the cartoon episode seem to be pretty jobless. They ended up giving infinitely more publicity to the cartoons than what the original publishers would have ever dreamt of. Thanks to them, several more jobless people, like me, got interested and got to see them with the help of google.

So who gained out of all this. I did. And maybe you did too. I got a topic for my blog. And you read it:-)

P.S:I think the cartoons are pretty stupid and not worth the effort of googling.

The Job

2005-12-16T08:46:00.001-05:00

I have not come to enlighten and liberate the earthlings from all their sins.
Actually I havent figured out the purpose myself yet.So while I do that I found it an opportune time to punish the computer literate homo sapiens by writing blogs.You are reading this not because of all the cyber-sins you have committed in your previous birth or in the past in this birth but because of the cyber-sins you will be committing in the future( including the ones you might commit because of reading this.)

Now would you like this job:
Its very simple.You are the only one who can do it but its not at all challenging for you.
There are no ups and downs.You always succeed with no effort.
You dont get paid.But you wont have any needs or wants unsatisfied.
You are the super boss of about 6,000,000,000 people most of whom constantly pester you with their domestic problemss as they firmly believe that you can solve all their problems.
They form groups dedicated to glorify you but pretty often end up fighting and killing each other in Your name.
Some of them shave their heads, some climb hills, some walk on burning charcoal, some offer animal sacrifice, some human, some fast, all to impress you.(smart ones like the author even bribe you)
They compare the man,who can hit a 1.5 inch radius ball the best, using a 4 inch wide bat, with you.
No leaves, no vacations, no bonus, no appraisal, no promotion.
Well its my job n am quitting.Wanna be GOD?