Fruits of Dementia

Staring into Voids

2011-05-17T01:38:00.000-07:00

Beyond the quagmire of the intellectual pursuit for meaning, lies the profound fear of the dissolution of the soul.

When I gaze at the sky, I feel wonder and awe. I feel divine for it is I who peers into the universe and ponder its mysteries and not the universe, despite its age and size which has the gift of thought. And yet, I feel so incredibly insignificant, that I am certain that I am nothing more than a probabilistic certainty - a blip in time and space and nothing more. I witness the unraveling of the threads of the fabric of creation with our sciences, and what is revealed is marvelous. The order of the universe is incredible and the sheer probability of life, no matter how infinitesimal, flowers all around me with prolific diversity. The grasp of our mind fascinates me, and yet, so overwhelmed am I , that I cannot even begin to understand the great scale of 'existence'. I struggle with my fascinating but feeble mind to grasp the edge of our sciences, and wonder about the corners we have painted ourselves into - where we struggle to reconcile our understanding into a consistent theme. And, I wonder, what's beyond this wall? Would our purpose be any clearer if we are able to see that the fundamental forces of our nature are indeed facets of the same multi-dimensional object?

In this absence of a solid understanding of our creation, must we turn to god for salvation? Is it not a web of lies meant to console and numb our minds? For it is one thing to see the hand of a creator in the incredible juxtaposition of circumstances that make this rant possible, but it is quite another to peddle fiction of the elaborate stairways to heaven, and all the fine ornamentation of a god-fearing life lead on the way to eternal bliss .

It's my hypothesis that fear above all other things drives our conception of a creator - specifically a benevolent creator - purveyor of all things that provide said bliss. Given our infinite curiosity, we peel back the layers of our universe one thin sheet at a time, but forever aware of the dark shroud that separates us from absolute truths. And in this darkness I fear that my soul will extinguish with so many questions unanswered. And that old man , dying in his bed, will be all too aware, that in the 10 billion years of known existence there will never be anything like that tiny blip ever again. And in the end, will another one of us embrace one of the many hands that reach out with false tales of a 'chance to persevere' beyond his last breath?

The coin I once tossed....

2011-04-19T22:08:00.000-07:00

The excitement is palpable as I count down the days to our trip to Roma. I was there once before in 2007, but it seems like a lifetime ago. I was working in Munich for a few weeks for Infineon. Munich was cold and covered with snow. I dont recall with absolute certainty how I got from Munich to Rome, but given that my first memories of Rome were of the Termini stazione, it would be a safe guess that I took the green and dilapidated trenitalia.

I had known little about the city, other than the pop culture reference to Julius Caesar and the catholic church. I had visited the wikipedia / tripadvisor website and prepared a list of places to see. This was, after all, before the airing of ROME on HBO. I spent a day and a half in Rome, staying in a hostel for some 20-25 Euros a night. The hostel, whose name escapes me, was perhaps a few miles north of the Vatican City. I checked into the hotel first, and then with my backpack walked to St. Peter's Square, I remember walking past the door of 'Museo Vaticani', there were no lines, I assumed that it was closed that day. I made my way past busy city squares and turned the corner to behold the Magnificent Piazza San Pietro. There were massive lines to get into the bascilica, so I got in line and waited .

Power

2011-01-15T23:28:00.000-08:00

My thoughts on this topic are immature at best, but I hope that I aspire to ground myself in some of the ideas that I will ponder upon today.

Power - What is it? Is it acceptable to say that, for better or worse, it is the very thread from which the fabric of human history is made? Is there any inherent justification for power? Is there any benefit to the greater masses to submit to power? Is it simply a consequence of the natural order of things.

Whatever I read of history, I find the same pattern, and the same question. How is it that history is the story of so few? The story of many following a few, to death, to greatness, etc. How did this come to be? When was nobility conceived? Was it on the basis of wisdom or might? Of aggression or kindness? If I were to make conjecture, I would say nobility must have had its birth in military might. A family or group of individuals that protected, or perhaps a group that pillaged. But either way, the threat of violence is central.

Hypothesis: Violence is central to our history.

This is not that far fetched to believe, since, this is clearly the natural order of things. Nature is violent, that is in its mechanisms there is little room for the frail misgiving of human kindness. Just the clockwork of survival. So building on this hypothesis, we can also assume that, at least, in part, our beginnings were inspired by fear of violence. The agents of violence could have been nature itself or other humans. Whatever may have transpired seems to have lead to the result that many agreed to the dominance of few. And eventually this lead to the notion of ownership of land. Land as the primary resource must have only become important in terms of the produce. So in providing protection, the leaders of men must have felt a natural sense of ownership to the realm they had control over.

So a natural affinity to family groups and ownership of land must have led to the first distinction of the first noble family. But was it rational to think that the protection provided by the previous generation would be held intact by the next. Or did the mantle of leadership pass fluidly to the next best protector/pillager? Which brings us to the another question? What would those in power do to retain power? I mean they already clearly proficient in the crafts of violence. Political strife aka the struggle to retain/ or assume power is also therefore a function of violence. (TBC)

The Little Green Book

2009-07-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

Source:

http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTDATASTA/64199955-1178226923002/21322619/LGDB2007.pdf

Some interseting comparisons between India and the US:

Overall Population density:

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

USA: 32 per sq Km.

India: 368 per sq Km.

Rural Population density:

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USA: 33 per sq Km.

India: 480 per sq Km.

Per capita Gross National Income:

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

USA: 43560

India: 730

Percentage Urban population:

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

USA: 80.8%

India: 28.3%

Agricultural Land:

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

USA: 45%

India: 61%

Forests:

---------

USA: 33.1%

India: 22.8%

Energy used per capita (kg-oil):

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

USA: 7920

India: 531

Energy from fossil fuel:

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

USA: 71.4%

India: 84%

CO2 emmission per capita:

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

USA: 19.9

India: 1.2

Passenger cars/ 1000 ppl:

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

USA: 465

India: 6

Under 5 mortality rate (per 1000 births):

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

USA: 7

India: 74

Lack of Comprehension

2008-12-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

A condemning fear strikes down
Things they cannot understand
An excuse to cover up weaknesses that lie within
Lies

So many nights I have been up at two or three in the morning, listening to "Death". Feeling this inadequacy, this burning desire to have my axe in my hands, ten thousand watts behind me, and tear through these billion feelings of angst. This unsated anger somehow pacified by the smell of the burning plastic on metal as I shred "Death". The hammer of the double bass booming in the depths of my soul beating in unison with my heart. That's metal for me!

You cant take it out of me. I don't even know what they are singing about half the times, but I rarely listen to metal for its lyrical content. Its primeval, it ancient, a call to the darkest in you.
I can't understand why I am drawn to it, only that I am. Its one of the few expressions of unadulterated passion in me. For me, Metal is not a communal gathering of dopeheads getting bloodied in a mosh-pit. Its far more personal.

A fire is not put out as long its last ember burns. Metal lives in me. As Chuck put it:

"It will take you in. It will spit you out.
Behold the flesh, and the power it holds!"

The Piano

2008-11-14T23:04:00.000-08:00

It was fifteen years ago, that I read about this movie. And for some reason the name stuck in my head. I remembered Ana Pacquin winning an Oscar for her role, her achievement left a lasting impression.

I saw the movie the other day, not having a clue as to what it was about. I finished the movie with exactly the same feeling. Why is it considered one of the better movies out of Hollywood. Harvey Keitel and Holly Hunter generated no chemistry even in their throes of passion. Nothing in the movie moved me. Even the angered husband chopping of his unfaithful wife's fingers. I never understood, why Sam Niel's character cared that much. His character seemed very wishy-washy. Holly Hunter's character screamed three things to me; Stupidity, stubbornness, and moral ambiguity.

I searched very hard for one shred of profundity in the movie, but failed to find it. Besides, I am not sure of the message of the movie. Does it condone the betrayal of Ada? Is it trying to make a feminist statement? I would love to have someone tell me what was so great about this movie. The only thing I found great was Anna Pacquin's acting.

Movies seen recently

2008-11-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

I have been watching a lot of movies on Netflix, before I lose count , here they are:

96. Dev D

95. Slumdog Millionaire

94. Australia

93. Remains of the day

92. Glory

91. Aeonflux

90. The freedom writers

89. The Orphanage
88. Children of Men

87. Charlie Wilson War

86. Mongol

85. Harold n Kumar 2 ***

84. Step Up ***

83. Million Dollar baby ****

82. Prince Caspian ***

81. The Sentinel ***

80. 28 DAYS LATER ***

79. Changeling ****

78. Australia *** 1/2

77. Gajhini **

76. Great expectation

75. Good Will Hunting

74. 15 Park Avenue ****

73. Fargo ****

72. Quantum of Solace *** 1/2
71. The last of the mohicans ****
70. In the name of the Father ****
69. Dangerous Liaisons ****
68. The Great raid ***
67. V for Vendatta ****
66. The Break-up ***
65. 9 1/2 weeks **
64. LA Confidential ****
63. The Piano **1/2
62. Via en la rose ****
61. Les Miserables ****1/2
60. The Prestige ****
59. The Machinist ***1/2
58. The Pianist ****
57. Amelie *****
56. The Constant Gardner ****
55. Shutter **1/2
54. The Big Lebowski ***
53. Pathfinder **
52. Kingdom of Heaven ***1/2
51. Antz ***1/2
50. The Kingdom ***1/2
49. Goya's Ghosts ****
48. Narnia ***
47. The other boleyn girl ***
46. The Illusionist ***
45. Born into Brothels *****
44. Body of War *****
43. Lost in Beijing ***
42. Frontline: Storm over everest *****
41. Murder at 1600 ***
40. Pledge this **
39. Poor Boy's Game ****
38. Screamers ****
37. A very long engagement *****
36. One last thing ****
35. Water *****
34. Ghosts of Mississippi ****
33. Double Take **
32. Pan's Labyrinth ****1/2
31. Vacancy ***
30. The Lives of Others ****1/2
29. The Cell **
28. Deja Vu ***1/2
27. Stargate *
26. Far north ***
25. Devils Advocate ***
24. Perfect Stranger ***1/2
23. Wierdsville ***
22. The Perfect Crime ***1/2
21. Team America : World Police ***1/2
20. Whos your Daddy **
19. Superman returns **
18. Gone Baby Gone ***
17. X-Men 3 - ***
16. No country for old men ****
15. There will be Blood - ***
14. Be Kind Rewind **
13. Dark Knight *** 1/2
12. The Hulk ***1/2
11. Iron Man ***1/2
10. X-files **
9. Hancock ***
8. Empire of the Sun ****
7. I am legend **** 1/2
6. Wall E *****
5. Michael Clayton ****
4. Dan in real life ****
3. City of God *****
2. American Gangster ****
1. 3:10 to Yuma **

The Calm after the Storm

2008-11-05T07:22:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, I wrote about the painful life of an EECS grad student at Michigan. That battle has since been won, and now I will write about my nice and easy downhill slide. In the first half of 2007, I was looking at spending all my savings, in addition to taking help from my family, and an additional $50,000 in loans to fund my graduate study at Michigan. This would put the total cost very close to about $70,000. And this didn't even include opportunity cost or the cost of applying to schools.

In my first semester here, I worked in a cafe. Stocking supplies for the day, brewing coffee, cleaning and making food. Waking up at 5:30AM and walking the mile to work everyday for USD9/hr was a very humbling experience. But, it also stoked a fire in me, a fire to get out of there. And in a few months I did just that. My next job was a computer consultant for the university. That was my story for the first term. My first term was by far the worst. The hours were gruelling, the courses were beyond me. I felt battered by the end of it. I did get one break. An internship with NVIDIA. I was one of the very few to get an internship as early as that. This was, by and large, attributed to my prior experience.

Then I went home in December, and married Tina and I ran into a stream of good luck! I flew into Ann Arbor on 7th January and met with Prof Najafi, who asked me to work for him as a TA. Wow! Out of nowhere! TA for a 400-level MEMs course. I am deeply indebted to him for the opportunity. It was such an awesome experience, I learned so much. Here is a video of the student's projects. This also made me USD 25,000 less in debt.

In the following summer, I worked at NVIDIA, I was made a full time offer. When I came back, I found surprise last minute funding again. Thanks to Prof. Islam's trust in me, I got another USD 22,000 in debt relief, working as a TA. Essentially, when I graduate in december my outstanding debt would be negligible. My cost of doing an MS in US was lesser than the cost of an elite business school in India like IIM-B, and almost half the cost of ISB, which was my other choice. Of cost is not the only criterion for going to grad school. But given the financial basis of my family, it was a very important one.

This term, I have had a very relaxed life. I work not more than 20-25 hours in school as compared to the 100+ hours last two terms. I work an additional 20-25 hours at home. I still have three course and a TA appointment, but I have always maintained that there are courses at UofM, and there is EECS427/EECS627. So I have managed just fine so far, nothing stellar, but not below average. Now I was lucky once more to recieve my EAD card very promptly and my driver license despite perilous mistakes during the road skills test.

I spend my free time playing music, reading history, cooking and sometimes even working out. I feel Michigan gave me as much as I gave her. I am proud of her, and proud of myself for surviving her rigorous curriculum. Come december, I will take a two month long vacation, travel in India and just relax. Then I will live out my dream of many years, live and love in the the United States of America.

Panipat to Delhi - Rise and Fall of the Turks

2008-11-04T20:52:00.001-08:00

India falls to Islam

In the year 570 AD, a man named Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullāh was born in Mecca. He was to rise and become one of the most influential figures in history. After his death in 632, his word spread rapidly, westward across the northern African coast as far as Spain, eastwards consuming the Sassanids of Persia into the Sindh, the northwestern frontier of India, by 712AD. The word of Islam and its swords were held at bay by the immense armies of the Rajput clans of the Gurjara-Pratiharas and perhaps in part by the lack of economic incentive to invade India, since a trade route to China was already established via the Sindh.

As the first Arab generals looked onto the India proper, a tripartite struggle was unfolding for the control of Kanauj and the heartlands of the Indo-Gangetic plains. The Palas of Bengal, the Rashtrakutas of central India and the Pratiaharas of Malwa and Rajasthan were the key players in this struggle. Evenly matched, they waged a war of attrition that left all of them exhausted and fragmented. By the beginning of the eleventh century, there was a void in the political landscape of northern India.

Further north in the region of the Oxus, the Arab-Islamic control of the Islamic frontiers had waned from the days of the initial conquest in the early eighth century, and in its place emerged the Turkic-Islamic kingdoms of Afghanistan and central Asia. Mahmud of Ghazni, one such warlord, laid destitute the temple-towns of Northern India in order to replenish his treasury. It was a repetition of an old tradition of nomadic people of the Central Asian plains raiding and pillaging the corpulent treasure troves of the plains. One key difference was that these people were now settled in kingdoms sprung from the retreating Arab-Muslim armies. These persistent raids were the precursor to the Turkish invasion that followed.

Almost two hundred years later, having crossed the Gomal pass, Muhammad Ghuri and his generals squared off against the confederacy of Rajput states under the leadership of Prithviraj Chauhan. The two battles of Panipat in 1191 and 1192, and the eventual victory of the Ghorids paved way for the Islamic-Turkic superiority and the subsequent dominion over northern India for almost five and a half centuries by Islamic monarchs.

So what were the reasons for the continued subjugation of the Indian princely states by the Central Asian forces over 500-600 years? And why was the initial struggle not as drawn out as one would expect from the fearful account of the Arabs describing the armies of the northern kingdoms? It is also of great significance to consider that within ten years of the time the Delhi Sultanate was established with Qutb-ud-din-Aybak as Sultan, Chengis Khan and his Mongol hordes overran the homeland of these Turkic invaders. And for its entire lifespan, the Delhi sultanate fended off Mongol incursions into India, before finally falling to the armies of Amir Timur in 1398 AD. In this context, how were the Turks able to withstand a force as great as that of the Mongols, who had overrun China, Central Asia and even eastern-Europe?

In order to answer these questions, I will review Simon Digby’s ‘War-Horse and Elephant in the Delhi Sultanate.’ I will also try to incorporate commentaries on the same issue by historians like Thomas Trautmann and Romila Thapar in attempting to gauge the merits of the arguments of the book.

The Rise of the Turks

Several theories have been proposed by historians in order to explain the questions posed in the introduction. Lack of nationalism, the wide public hostility towards Hindu caste-based elitism, or the notion of the pastoral-nomadic Turks as the masters of mounted warfare are some of the key ideas attributed to the causes of their rise to power. As far as the technological superiority of the Turks in matter of warfare is concerned, Irfan Habib’s claim that several inventions important to mounted warfare were introduced into India at this time and were not available before is investigated. These include the stirrup and the horseshoe, the presence and absence of which could prove to be a big determinant in the outcome of a military struggle. However, the depiction of these items in India predating the Turkic invasion brings into question the claim.

The Adab al-Harb wa’l-shaja’a by Fakhr-I Mudabbir, a Turkish contemporary manual of war is also investigated for any obvious technological superiority of weapons. A detailed list of swords and bows is made and compared and contrasted. With respect to bows, no such conclusive evidence is noted; albeit the bows of the Ghorid arsenal are consider having better range. It is also argued, that perhaps the Indian armies had better access to materials from which the better bows could be made. With respect to the sword, there is clear evidence that the Indians had better swords. Held in high esteem world over and traded in market places outside India, the steel workmanship of the Indian sword-smith is well-renowned at this time.

The author argues that the defeat of the Ghurids in 1191 and the immediate turn of events the year-after, indicate that there was no inherent technological advantage in the favor of the Turks. I find this to be a flawed argument at best. Without a deeper look at the differences in the lot of the Rajput forces from the first engagement to the second, it would be hasty to conclude anything.

It is then argued – and this remains the cornerstone of the author’s claim – that it was the supply of war-resources which differentiated the Turks from their opponents in the battlefield, especially, the continued acquisition of war-horses and elephants. Although a sound argument, I fail to see the complete legitimacy of it as argued, primarily in relation to their rivalry with the Mongols. The Mongols had far better access to the horse-rearing belts of central Asia, and yet proved unable to overthrow the Delhi Sultanate for 180 years. Surely, one must account for other factors leading to the military superiority of the Turks over the Mongols. With regards to their conflict with the Hindus, however, this argument has substantial merit.

Al Barani’s chronicle of the Sultan Balban seems to indicate that the supply of horses with the Rajput armies was severely compromised and that theirs was an army primarily of foot-soldiers. A strong point is made which shows that the Sultans of Delhi had control over regions which were very conducive to the breeding of superior war-horses. And similar case can be made by the possession of the forests of Bengal and the concomitant Elephants by the Turks. Essentially the first chapter concludes by saying that the Turks, even if deprived of their Mongol sources, had sources of their own of excellent war-horses, whereas their Hindu counterparts were now deprived of these sources.

The Veritable Sea of Horsemen

Not having seen horses in numbers greater than a dozen, it is very hard for me to imagine the armies of Qutlugh Khwaja of the Chagatai Khanate (Mongol) laying siege on Delhi with his alleged ‘seven hundred thousand horses” and the equally large Turkic force defending the city. This is the rendition of Barani’s testimonial to the size of the armies of the Mongols and the Turks. Although it is seen to be an exaggerated number, but the scale of these numbers were perhaps not off by an order of magnitude. Hence, we are presented by the sheer size of the Sultan’s army, thereby laying credence to the importance of the supply of these animals.
It is argued that traditionally horses of the Indian plains were considered inferior and the only belt where superior horses were bred was in North-western India. The Hindi horses as these breeds were called were fit to be war-horses, and yet they were considered inferior to Persian of Arab breeds. The discourse then extends to the two modes of importation of these animals: Sea and land.

There seems plenty of evidence to indicate that horses were imported by sea into the Indian subcontinent at the time of the Delhi Sultanate. However, the trade doesn’t seem to be the exclusive prerogative of the sultans. Evidence is furnished which indicates that the southern Kings also engaged in this trade. The terms of trade, in that the kings paid for horses which didn’t survive the voyage, seem to demonstrate the desperation in the need for these animals. The provenance of these horses was the Arabian peninsula, Persia, etc. Therefore, even though the author substantiates the claim that there was a prominent trade in horses, he fails to show how the Hindu Kingdoms did not have sufficient access to this mode of supply.

Pertaining to land trade, the author brings our attention to one of the questions I had raised earlier. How did the Sultans ward off the Mongols with their vastly better and prolific access to horse breeding regions of central Asia? The mulk-i Baladast from whence came the Baladasti horses were controlled by the Chaghata’I Khanate and yet the author states that they did not block this trade to their obvious rivals in India. Was there fragmented political interest amongst the Mongols? Or were they wholly unaware of the impact of exporting hundreds of thousands of horses into India and its consequences on the military conflict between the Mongols and Delhi? This question is left wholly unexplored, the author is satisfied that regardless of this ambiguity that such trade did indeed exist and was substantial enough to be a determinant.

In addition to the tatari and baladasti, there is mention of Kohi/Pahari horses which are found in great supply at the stables of the Ray of Arangal. It is argued that the source of this breed of these horses is in the north-eastern Himalayas. This is further substantiated by the great numbers of horses in Bengal. Of course, Bengal at this time is a under the over-lordship of Delhi and is an Islamic state - the Bengal sultanate. As the possible source of these horses, the author cites the disastrous campaign of Muhammad Bakhtyar Khilji into Tibet, in the makets of which a great trade in excellent horses was common. The account indicates that in the highlands of Tibet and thereabouts lay the source of the Pahari breeds.

Finally, the author cites the practice of neighboring kingdoms to give tribute to Delhi in terms of imported war-horses. This further corroborates the suspicion that the importation of these breeds was not exclusive to Delhi. However, it would appear that the military superiority Delhi forced the Hindu kingdoms to cede tributes of war-horses. It is here, I note, that the difference in the supply of war-horses for the sultanates as compared to the Hindu kingdom is best illustrated. In essence, it was the better funded and better supplied stables of the Sultanate which gave them dominion. However, this still doesn’t answer the question of the initial subjugation of Prithviraj Chauhan.

Elephas Maximus Indicus

“A king who always cares for the elephants like his own sons is always victorious & will enjoy the friendship of the celestial world after death." - Kautiliya

Modern historian would beg to differ. It is widely held belief that the war-elephant no matter how well trained is of little strategic significance on the battle field. Once injured or demoralized, they are prone to fleeing often backing into their own troops and causing havoc. The Greeks document the use of war-pigs whose squeals would cause disarray among the ranks of elephants. The Romans were known to just make way for the elephant charge. Prof Basham, a strong critic of the use of elephants in the field of battle, states that their use was a wholly misguided endeavor on the part of the Indians, and was tragically inherited by the Turks. However the historical evidence of Delhi seems to indicate that the sultans would perhaps agree whole-heartedly with Kautilya.

The elephant had many roles in medieval warfare – for charging the enemy lines, as battering rams, for carrying heavy indivisible loads, carrying important generals and kings, as engineering units that helped bridge rivers. And of course, there was the element of fear, strategically sometimes compared to tanks (albeit inaccurately), elephants could be symbol of power that struck fear into the heart of the foot-soldier or disconcert the enemy horses. Each war-elephant could house on its back an armored enclosure to hold eight-ten men who could shower artillery and arrows on the enemy below. The Turks’ fortune in war, in any case, was not always ensured by their use of war-elephants, and their superiority in war cannot be indisputably attested to.
As for their numbers, accounts vary from 400-30,000. The pil-khanaa, the stables for war-elephants, more realistically would have had at most a thousand animals. Specific citation of larger numbers are attributed to the Ghorid armies a couple of centuries before the two Battles of Panipat. The large differences from the Ghorid pil-khana could be attributed to environmental changes over the span of the intervening centuries. For the period of our concern, the numbers cited for specific events are as follows: 400-500 on Feroz Shah Tughlaq’s march on Bengal, 750 or more in the pil-khana of Muhammad bin Tughlaq, 500 with Akbar, etc. The key takeaway is that their numbers were not as vast as that of the horses, which is clearly understandable. This is further attested by Al-Umari’s testimonial about the Sultan’s three thousand elephants and the consequent drain on the royal treasury for the upkeep of such giant beasts!

From trade, conquest, tribute and taming in the wild the pil-khana drew its provenance. The rebellion of Bengal, one of the primary sources of war-elephants, and the economic woes of the sultanate are clearly visible in the reducing size of the pil-khana. Detailed accounts of entries into the pil-khana logs give us a vivid idea of the numbers and nature of the augmentation of these stables. The later Mughals speak of villages whose inhabitants earn their livelihood by breaking-in wild elephants. This indicates that the wild population was still intact, but perhaps was not as widespread as during the times of the Ghorids.

Just as with horses, the Hindu kings had themselves a similar albeit smaller arsenal of war-elephants. These kingdoms went to great lengths and paid handsome price for such possessions. Barani cites that Bengal was the most significant source of elephants. And in its varying capacity as part of the sultanate or a tributary state, Bengal was a steady source. Another prominent source was south of the Deccan, where even today in the hilly forests of Western Ghats, elephants can be found in respectable numbers. This was evidenced by Malik Kafur’s subjugation of the Pandyans and the gain of 360 odd elephants. Sri –Lanka is also seen as a source especially for the southern kingdoms by way of trade. Two separate references - that of Afif and Ibn Battuta - even indicate a trade in Elephants from Ceylon to Delhi.

The Timorous End of the Caliphate

The regicidal, fratricidal and patricidal proclivities of the Turk elite, combined with increased decentralization of power reached a critical stage at the close of the fourteenth century. Interestingly, it was the control of the pil-khana and the elephants which was central for this decade long power struggle. The web of deceit that unfolds is beyond the scope of this review, but it suffices to say that several sultans were proclaimed, deposed, proclaimed again, overthrown, regaled, foreign chief interfered, assumed power, were deposed, assassinated, and the likes. The essence of the whole struggle seemed to be driven by the control of the elephants and their use deterrant. The struggle for the greater part unfolded within the city of Delhi, in the neighborhood of Siri, Ferozshah Kotla, Hauz-i-Khas, all names familiar to a denizen of Delhi. This decade long struggle left the incumbents drained and they fell to the armies of Timor of Samarkand, who ended the Delhi’s pil-khana by taking the 120 odd elephants off to his own dominion. It is argued that even such a small number had kept intact the power of the Delhi Sultanate amongst their Hindu neighbors. And after this point, Delhi was reduced to the same military stature as their rivals. Thus it was the lack of supply of the animals of war that had helped their rise to power, that lead to their downfall.

Conclusion

The author argues very convincingly that the supply of war-animals was one of the chief determinants in the success of the Turks in India. I am for the most part satisfied with several facets of the thesis. Namely, that the supply of war animals was indeed critical for supremacy and was a mainstay of political policy of the sultans. The large numbers of these animals were reasonably well established and the inferior numbers of Hindu counterparts were also indicated, although not satisfactorily proven. It can be argued that Central Asia was an abundant home of wild horses, and armies from there could have cavalries of immense sizes and that the pastoral life of the steppes would engender such great dexterity of horsemanship, which when brought to war could lead to decisive military advantages. But the author himself concedes that the Hindu cavalry wasn’t necessarily composed of inferior horsemen, but it was more the tapering off of the supply to these animals once the sultanate controlled the north.

There are, however, some questions that remain either partially or wholly unanswered. I will list the prime amongst them. The first has to do with the initial scene as set out in my introduction. If indeed the Turks had the aforementioned strength in numbers of cavalry, one must come up with a satisfactory cause for their first defeat at the hands of the Rajputs? It can be argued that in a year, the Turks could muster a cavalry of equal or greater strength whereas the Rajputs couldn’t, however the author doesn’t analyse this change in fortune in detail. It is also documented that by the thirteenth century there was a strong trade in war-animals with the Hindu kingdoms. Can it so easily be assumed that the cavalries of none of these Kingdoms had the size of that of the Sultanate? This was not explicitly argued, although given the size of the trade ships, it could be reasonably argued that the time and cost it would take to amass a stable the size of Delhi’s would be prohibitive.

The two of the largest issue that I had with the argument pertain to the Mongols.
• Why would the Mongols allow the trade of hundreds of thousands of horses to their enemies, and then send hundreds of thousands of their own horses to fight the cavalry they helped build?'

• The Mongols would have had as great or greater a supply of horses. And by their success under Chengis Khan, and their expedition during the reign of Ala-ud-din-Khilji, it is clear that the importance of supply was not lost on them. How is it then that the Turks not only withstood the Mongols time and time again, but also defeated them conclusively on several occasions?

I believe that the real reasons lie as much in the fragmented nature of the Indian states, the lack of any religious bond, as it does in the supply of war-animals. The classical Indian state was small and fissiparous, and most likely the sectarian nature of the post-vedic Indian religion did not foster too much communal fraternity. This is deeply evidenced from the period of the Guptas to when the curtain rises on the battle of Panipat. The Rajput kings were not averse to plundering their neighbors wealth and were constantly at arms against each other. Such a political arena proved easy pickings for the Turks and then the Monguls (Moghuls) and then the Colonialists.

My complete and terrifying moral ambiguity

2008-10-13T07:22:00.000-07:00

Over the years, I have come across some really bad news. There is no dearth of this kind of news in the media, or in literature. News of war, greed, hatred and suffering. For as long as I can remember, I have been challenged by the question of what these news imply about our collective humanity. Should I take action against every injustice? Is it not my moral imperative? But then, I pause and wonder, how do these injustices come into being? What is the full story here? Is there a clear victim amd a obvious oppressor? Or is there more than meets the eye?

Depending on who you ask, you will find loathing or support for a so-called social evil. The very fact that social evil exists, implies firstly that a certain group of people support the practice, and secondly that another group finds it unacceptable. Who is correct? As a bystander, are we all to take sides? Or can we remain uncommitted?

Lets look at one such instance, colonialism. Specifically as it applies to the british subjugation of the Indian sub-continent. Can we really typecast the regime as "exploitatively evil" without a detailed knowledge of the Indian past? Should we not consider the plight pf the Indian under the Mughals, or the Caliphate of Delhi, or the so-called oriental-despots of ancient times, before we can make a clear accusation of mis-administration against the British raj? Should we also not consider the modern day benefits of our post-colonial heritage? Alternatively, what are the elements of the Indian plight do we attribute solely to the British Raj? How do you answer such a question? And more importantly, is there an answer?

Take the war on Iraq as another example. Depending on whether one paints Saddam Hussain as a radical leader bringing modernization and secularism to the Arab world, or as a mindless killer of the likes of Idi Amin, one arrives at very different conclusions about the morality of his eventual execution.

So how is one supposed to take a stand? How can one seperate what one knows as fact from what is hearsay? There is original research and then there is secondary research - the survey of the various points of view. It was these questions and there troubling answers that forced me to be a somewhat unwilling nihilist. And yet I was embattled to try and reconcile my innate humanity to this stance. I came to the conclusion, that as a nihilist I must reject my humanity. In this I indentify with Nietzsche's deep concern for the soul of a nihilist. I feel, therefore, that in order to counter this moral ambiguity, I must read.

For an opinion to have any value, it must arise from a deep understanding of the issues involved. Such deep understanding, I believe, elludes the lay-person. Subjectivity, I agree, is inevitable. But often subjectivity takes the garb of a thinly veiled ignorant opinion . Another example is the not so distant clamour about OBC reservation in India. Depending on who you ask, you will think its a social evil or a great provision of the Indian constitution. I , for the longest time, was strongly opposed to the idea, but of late, I have moderated my views. The cause for this change is two-fold. What has changed is my understanding of the underlying situation, and my removal from the context of my own vested interests.

I have begun to see the two sides of every coin. But every once in a while, I am encountered with news and knowledge of atrocities that stripsthe 'beatific' garb off the disturbing realities of the world we live in. Prime amongst these is communal violence and its very disturbing manifestation in the form of genocide.

How can something like that be obscurred by time? And yet it is. Besides being a great two word political slogan, the phrase "Never again!" is like a broken record player playing over and over. I have always been terrified of the humanity, that we hold so dear, which allows these tragedies to unfold. I am told that in a world of political consensus, human evil will always be subjected to censure. But then darfur, rwanda or bosnia, expose such rhetoric as hogwash. The larger question is, is our state as a civilized world making things better? Or is it by the natural struggle for power improving things for a few while injecting untold misery into the lives of others.

Once again I find myself powerless to answer this question. In essence I cite the lack of a solid framework of knowledge as the excuse for my absence of morality. I hope to see a change in me in that I hope to delve deeper into my intellectual pursuits and hopefully develop a more solid moral foundation.

Hinduism

2008-10-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

Long time ago, I wrote that I wanted to read some of the seminal texts of Hinduism. Since then, I have realized that I am unlikely to read even one. Instead, I am posting my book review for my History class at Michigan.

Introduction

What is it that defines the quintessential form of Hinduism? Is it the eternal formless Purusha? Is it the lord of all yogis, Shiva? Or is it ‘The Brahman’? Or the ancient rituals of the fire sacrifice? In these answers and many such like them lie part of a greater answer that exposes the vast diversity and the ever-changing character of the Hindu religion. The vast and diverse spectrum of this religious philosophy is a product of almost three millennia of change and evolution. In an attempt to answer this question, I will try to highlight the key transformations and ideas that the author, Thomas J Hopkins, writes about in his book, ‘The Hindi Religious Tradition’.

The early pantheon of Aryan gods is introduced as a model, which is forever recast as the principal actors of this cosmic bureaucracy gain and loses eminence. The importance of the priestly caste as a consequence of the importance of ritualistic ceremony is then described. Written texts of the period are used to support the cultural and religious norms of the time. These texts – the Vedas, the Brahmanas, the Upanishads, the Sutras, etc – extend the ideologies of their predecessors, and in some cases making radical changes and assertion in the grand scheme of things. The book is, for the greater part, presented as a series of facts. It is sometimes not very clear how the author make certain claims, not necessarily supporting his view. The texts are quoted in direct support, but it is sometimes not clear why the religious thinkers of the time would be conducive to such changes.

Changes

One of theme that emerges from the book is that Hinduism as we know it today is a culmination of a process. It is the final product of the Aryan religion changing over many years. I will try to touch upon some important aspects of this process, some still extant in modern Indian society and others which have been subsumed.

I Laud Agni, the chosen Priest, God, minister of sacrifice,
The hotar, lavishest of wealth.

Thus begins the Rig-Veda, the oldest of the Vedas. The first book of this Veda, lauds Agni and Indra for the most part. And so it remains for quite a majority of the earlier books of this ten book compendium. Thus, the author indicates a pantheon of gods in which Indra, Varuna, Agni among others are preeminent. It is proposed that the writings of the Rig-Veda reflect the changing ritual traditions of that time. It was difficult to understand from where the author makes this claim. Further it is claimed that the Rig-Veda was written at a time when the pantheon of gods had fallen to a stature below that of the ritualistic symbol of the fire sacrifice. The only reason to support this argument is the involvement of fire in daily rituals and its accessibility by the priesthood. The reasoning that the immortal gods would fall to disuse simply because of a more accessible conduit to their divinity, the fire, is at best unsupported in the book. A case is made for the rising importance of the “sound” of the sacrifice and the emergence of specialized priestly castes, namely the Hotris, the Udgatri, and the Adhvaryus. Reference is made that the Vedic tradition believed in a higher cosmic principle than even the established pantheon, later resolved to the Purusha or the Brahmana. In this idea lay the entire fabric of universe and time, a formless divinity. The ever growing importance of the fire sacrifice eventually leads to the idea that the ritual itself was the key element of the universe – from which all things have sprung.

Cyclical Patterns of Rebirth

The intent of the Vedas and the later commentaries on them, the Brahmanas, were written for material gain in this life, and with the merit of enough rituals, the passage to the world of the fathers. This was central to the motivation of religion and worship, however, with the arrival of the Upanishads and the Aranyakas, there was a shift in focus to the question of “Death in the afterlife” which later evolved into the idea of “rebirth”. The individual took importance and thus emerged the ideas of the ‘atman’. The nature of the Brahman became a central question. The inter-relation of karma and the cycle of rebirth was specified, thus it was in the teachings of Yajnavalkya we find this notion – that is so commonly associated with Indian religious lore. The Upanishads forward the idea of salvation as the ultimate goal. It is however, unclear as to what inspired the transformation of the religion from one seeking material gain through ritual sacrifice, to one which becomes organized around salvation. It would be very telling of the society of that time. But these transitions pre-date the Mauryan dynasty and such evidence may be missing.

The author makes a strong case in the point of the rise of new non-Vedic institutions linking them to the changing socio-political climate. The rise of Magadha and the fall of the traditional tribal Vedic states all over north India provide sufficient reason for the collapse of the established Vedic ritualistic tradition. This was compounded by the implications of the teachings of the Upanishads which proposed an unrealistic and inaccessible approach to salvation. It was in this vacuum that the Ajivakas, Jain and Buddhist faiths thrived- all trying to address the central question of salvation, albeit with very different ideologies.

The world view, towards the beginning of the sixth century was that of growing despondency. There was great speculation in the intellectual framework proposed by the Upanishadic teachings, what was needed was more clear directions for what would constitute a moral life and a path to salvation. Several such movements emerged; each spread by wandering ascetics, and many did not survive the death of its founders. The Ajivakas had a fatalist view of the world, in that they did not believe in the role of human action in the path to salvation. The Jains believed in severe austerities and the subsequent removal of impurity as if it were a fine matter deposited on the person. These views were distinctly non-Vedic, and although synthesized to include the concepts of karma, release and rebirth, their ideology was unique. The path of Buddhism was more moderate, austerities and sever bodily hardships were rejected as a positive path. Instead, stress was placed on dissociation for desire and meditation. This path was open to one and all regardless of caste and religion, which must have had great appeal to many lower castes of Hinduism.

Icons and Image-Worship

Losing ground to these new religions, there seems to be evidence of a restructuring of older Vedic ideology and formulation of more practical approaches to salvation. We see this in the emergence of Yoga, to achieve salvation through discipline and the attainment of a super-consciousness. Iconic worship also emerges in the era of Mauryan rule whereas traditional practices in pre- Mauryan Vedic rituals did not depict the image of gods. The ritual sufficed as a primary conduit. However, we see incidence of portrayal of the Buddha in human form. Some of this art had strong foreign influence e.g. Hellenistic influences in the northwest. Perhaps, as a consequence of this idea of icons, we see also an emergence of icons of classical Vedic gods, and resurgence of certain pre-Vedic gods which may have survived in popular cults for almost two thousand years. This is also evident in the theism of the later Upanishads. Brahma was more and more associated with the god Rudra. These icons or idols are mainstays of Hindu practices today.
The Orthopraxis of the Kalpasutras tried to provide a practical set of guidance of what is appropriate for the common given his status in society and his age in life. The Varnasrama-Dharma proposed in the Dharmasastras became some of the most influential ideas of the Hindu religion. It described what ‘ought’ to be done by people as a function of their Varna (caste) and of their asram (stage in life). The importance given to marriage and the role of the householder is what made this approach practicable and thus revived the interest in Hinduism.

Rise of Vishnu
Another coup-d’état occurs in the pantheon of gods with the popularization of the epics of Mahabharata and Ramayana. Vishnu-Shiva-Krishna step to the forefront and ascend to the cosmic throne. In the Mahabharata, on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, the Pandava prince Arjuna is taught by his charioteer, Krishna, the ideas of Bhakti. The text comprises the Bhagavad-Gita, which to this day remains a household reference on the philosophy of Hinduism. The addition to these epics of books focusing on the theism centered on Shiva and Vishnu indicate strongly the emergence of a new theism. It is the Puranas, which although in existence from the time of the Vedas, and modified and developed at this time, that define the modern day theistic norms of Hinduism.

Theism under the Gupta showed a major drive towards the building of temples along with the prominence of sects of Vishnu and Shiva. The Gupta monarchs were evidently followers of Vishnu, calling themselves ‘parama-bhagavatas’. Land grants for the building of temples in this time are well documented. Three major themes that are pervasive in the Indian household of today had their beginning in this era. The first theme is that of the Hindu puja and the second is the standardization of the murti of gods. Gods cast in sculpture holding typical mudras became a common form. The puja became a dominant form of worship as opposed to the sacrifice, which was reserved for larger occasions. The third is the worship of the devi, or female god, prominent among them was Durga. The worship of durga , for example, is the chief religious festival of eastern India, especially west Bengal.

The rise to eminence of the Krishna-Vishnu diety as the primary god of various Hindu sects becomes more evident. In the Bhagavata Purana, we see the rise a devotional sect that focuses on Krishna. Various devotional sects become popular especially in southern India.

Reform and Foreign Influence
In the concluding chapter, the author speaks of the stability of centuries which bound together the various threads of the Hindu religion, till the coming of Islam. It is purported that Islam did not leave its mark on Hinduism, except perhaps to have won some converts. Hybridized religions and views popularized by Kabir and Guru Nanak did however leave a mark on the religious landscape. British India, however, was noted for its deep impact and reform. Several practices of traditional Hindu society bordered on criminal for the British rulers. With a section of India society, educated abroad, came reforms in the person of likes of Raja Ram Mohan Roy, the founder of the Brahmo Samaj. The organization stood to eradicate the evils of contemporary India society and supported many western / Christian views. Arya Samaj called for a radical regression to past beliefs, in the literal meanings of the Vedas, often rejecting the philosophy of its many derivatives. This led to a resurgence of Hindu pride.

Vivekananda and his mentor Ramakrishna are painted as saints who transformed the Hindu religion by popularizing it and making it accessible to Indians abroad. Another example is that of the organization called ISKON, which derives from the vaishnavite sect centered around
Krishna.

Conclusion

The author draws a very convincing picture of the changes that made Hinduism as we know it today. Drawing from a wide variety of socio-political circumstances to give reason for particular changes, the author makes a very strong case in this particular evolution of the Hindu religion. A lay person may mistake the Hinduism of modern India to be emanating from one source, but the author shows correctly that no one idea represents Hinduism. He establishes without doubt, that various synthetic evolutions came together, rose and vanished, remained in fragments to produce a multi-faceted canvas that is ‘Hinduism’.

Forbes 2000

2008-06-07T16:13:00.000-07:00

I recently came across the Forbes 2000 list for the year 2008. And it was astonishing to see such a wide array of statistics piled up for corporations across the world. I wanted to make some observations. According to the list,
1. The company with the highest Market Cap was china's PetroChina
2. The technology company with the highest market cap was not Microsoft! But china's ChinaMobile.
3. The technology company with the largest revenue was AT&T.
4. WalMart still retained the number one spot for the highest revenue
5. Japan's Toyota had a similar revenue compared to GM, which it ousted as the the world's largest manufacturer of automobiles. What was striking was the ratio of the two's market cap. Toyota's Mcap was almost 13 times that of GM

A promise kept

2008-03-24T06:38:00.000-07:00

If I was any less theatrical about it, then the point would be lost. Almost eleven years ago I made some friends, who to this day remain close to my heart. They remind me of a time when I was different. When the world was constantly intimidating, and yet frequently awesome. A time when the canvas of my imagination was untainted. Hopes and dreams pranced playfully behind my embarrassing photochromatic spectacles.

An Indian kid in New York. I learned so much in that city. I learned about love, as much as I learned about humiliation. I learned about ambition and about race. I learnt about money and the fact that I didnt have any. I learnt about promiscuous girls and about blondes. It was tritely put ' the best of times and the worst of times'.

The shy and awkward kid I was became less shy and more awkward. I was trying to fit in into a world that I had no understanding off. People making out in stairwells, hot teachers, kids the size of school buses ( maybe a little smaller), tattoos, piercings, and unwanted pregnancies . All of these things were uniquely American and very new to me. Yet in the maelstorm of changes, I found some friends who have forever remained close to me.

The years I spent in Delhi, I wrote them and they wrote back. I even kept all the correspondence from each and every one of them . But then I grew jaded and shed my sentimentality of these things. But we all stayed in touch. Through the years, I had made a promise that I would come back.

Well, I did. So much was the same. A lot was different. People grow over time, people get caught up with lives - theirs and others. But the spark always remains. Old friends are difficult to shed. They remind one so much of what one was and so much of how far one has come.

To old friends and memories.

Life of a EE grad student

2008-02-21T22:23:00.000-08:00

Its 4 in the morning. Its white all around. The crunch of the snow underneath my foot keep me company on my walk home. Its 17 degree below zero. There sidewalk is frozen solid underneath the snow. Had it not been for the snow, the ice would have been twice as dangerous. On some nights, there is no snow and the ice is treacherous. I have no tracion, and sometimes find myself standing at the same spot trying to avoid a fall.

And yet I never take the cab home. The university provides free cab rides to students after 2 in the morning, because thats when the buses stop running. Its just that the cabs take 20-30 minutes of waiting time, and since it takes me about 20 minutes of a leisurely stroll to get home, I dont see the point in waiting. Of course, now that I know more people, I get a ride back very often, but only if I am leaving by midnight or so.

The cold is very refreshing, especially since I spend from 10 in the morning to 3 or 4 the next morning hunched over a computer. I generally do longer hours than most of my colleagues, largely because I am so far behind them. When I was in DCE, I never understood any of the Electronics basics. I barely passed those classes. I attribute it mostly to lack of interest and poor quality of professors. I never quite understood KCL and KVL till about fourth semester or so. When I arrived, I didn't know anything about transistor theory, did not have any experience with transistor design, and in my three years in Infineon, I moved as far from those fundamental concepts as could have been possible.

I sit in an empty library, surrounded by a few familiar faces long after the crowd has left. And most of these faces are EECS majors. Given a 10AM-3AM day, I put in 17 hours every weekday and close to 10 hour days on weekends.. These are my 100 hour weeks. Now I have gotten to a point where I can no longer sleep. On the rare days I come back early, I still stay up till 3-4 wasting time - doing nothing. I wonder from time to time, if all this will be worth it.

In terms of what I have learned, its already worth it. It is an incredible sense of achievement what this kind of drudgery will do to your skills. I am more concerned about how this will fit into my career. I have very high expectations from the industry, so high that I am sure I will be disappointed - which is a strange cocktail of feelings. What I expect is nothing short of a quantum leap in my standard of living and not the gradual next step.

The costs have been great. Above all the cost to my health. I am concerned. I get no exercise. And I eat crap. I have cooked less than 5% of the meals I have eaten in the US. Its the price I paid to do well. I feel I am falling apart, I cant even climb a flight of stairs without panting. Its horrible, and I know I need to do something about it. But I dont have the strength, When will I work out? At 3 in the morning? I have thought about it. Well, didnt get me far.

The worst of the best

2008-01-29T00:22:00.000-08:00

Fueled by insomnia, I will hunt down the greatest metal song with the SHITTIEST videos. One might point out that all metal songs have crappy videos, but I will insist that these are the WORST. Don't get me wrong, if you ridicule any of these songs themselves, I will KILL you, MAIM you, DESTROY you. This is a place of worship, not for the faint of heart!

Holy wars - Naked dudes all in a circle!

Death- Lack of comprehension- I worship this man, but boy does he show up in a bunch of crap!

DIO - Holy diver - This one is one of my favorites

Sepultura - Territory - Its all great ... till the band decides to show up! Oh the anger!! Try 1:26 - HILARIOUS!!!

Testament - Electric Crown - OH WHY??? WHY??? SOME PEOPLE SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN FRONT OF CAMERAS

Michaelangelo Batio - What can I say he is funny and EXTREMELY GIFTED!

Amon Amarth - Gotta check the swirling heads! They actually do this in all their vides

The places in my head

2008-01-27T23:11:00.000-08:00

One of the more compelling reasons that i wanted to come to america, was so that I could see the world. Its 1 in the morning and I have been sleeping at 5 for the past week and so I am wide awake. I figure I will make a list of all the places I can think of that i want to see.

1. Hawaii
2. Yellowstone
3. Niagara
4. Bhutan
5. Egypt
6. Lhasa
7. Leh
8. Japan
9. New Zealand
10. Australia.
11. Singapore

After ten random names I realized that I probably want to go everywhere.

Broken Guitars and broken promises

2007-12-25T17:28:00.000-08:00

My first guitar was an ancient dusty wooden box which I discovered underneath the bed, I think it belonged to mom many years ago. I had not heard of pearl jam then, and thus the fact that it was a Hawaiian guitar wasn’t of much consequence to me. Little did I know, that my future as a metal-head was severely jeopardized. I was sent off to the local guitar maestro, who taught me more about the English language and eccentricity than I would care to write about. He also taught me to play a Bengali song (which I do not remember). Playing my first guitar could only be described as painful and being instructed by the man even more so.

My second guitar was a work of inspired labor. It was as if the luthier had decided to make a chair and halfway through changed his mind and made a guitar instead. His inspired work cost my dad a whopping hundred and fifty rupees and cost me bruised fingers for several months until my mother came to my rescue. The guitar’s fret board was almost an inch below the strings, and was an excellent example of warping and bad intonation. But there was indeed something very special about this guitar. It was a Spanish style acoustic. I don’t remember whether it was my insistence or the fact that it was the cheapest guitar available which swayed my father’s decision in its favor. I like to believe it was my insistence, contrary to everything I know about my father. My teacher however, insisted that this was a honest-to-god Hawaiian and continued my instruction for the same. He didn’t have much of a choice as he did not know anything about Spanish guitars. But since the guitar was so poorly constructed, it did serve as a decent hawaiian.

One day, I came back home from school to find the guitar smashed. I held up my close friend in its death woes, and slowly watched it die. I was angry, I wanted to know who had done this. I discovered that my mother driven to another mad rage by my father had gone on a rampage, and my guitar had fallen victim to her pent-up frustrations. I was furious with my mother, but in retrospect I thank her for it.

My father promptly dispatched us to the guitar-shop where he had bought the guitar to get them to repair it. The luthier laughed and said something about firewood. Thus began my guitar deprived months. My father promised to buy me a nice guitar, and I waited excitedly, and then waited some more. The puja season came and I was given money by all my relatives. I had been saving and had not spent the money I had received last puja either. The total was now at Rs. 1200 and I gave this money to mom for safe-keeping. I still waited for the guitar. Then one day my dad came home with a nice acoustic jumbo. It was the most beautiful thing I had heard. The smell of fresh wood and the sound of new strings marked the beginning of a long love-affair. I never saw my money again. So I came to the conclusion that I had paid for my own guitar. She lasted me almost eight years and still lies at home – old and neglected.

A few years later, my family and I went to a music store in New York. And there were these electronic keyboards on display. I gazed at them with admiration. I wondered at what music could come of these black and white keys. Infinite possibilities loomed. I was distracted by loud voices in the store, and recognized one to be my father’s. He was complaining about something, and the clerk was trying to tell him that he wasn’t finished with the last customer. The fact that my father waited for a while as the clerk finished with the last customer equated to racial profiling to my father and he made his displeasure known clearly. He kept saying he was a diplomat, which I found embarrassing and amusing at the same time. The clerk told him that he wasn’t behaving like one. So my father countered by saying that he could buy the whole shop if he wanted to. And my mom pitched in to defend him, and said, he would buy anything for his son. After we were told to leave, my mom explained to me that my father meant well, and would indeed buy me a keyboard, because I had such potential. My father also told me all about how these white people don’t like catering to us brown people. I was very excited at the thought of learning the keyboards and I waited for my mother to make good on her promises. I was fourteen and today I am twenty-five, I have never owned a keyboard and I stopped waiting a long time ago.

Patriotica incognita

2007-04-25T21:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I guess I AM a patriot! But I hide this feeling, I hide it beneath some other pressing emotions...mostly disgust and dissappointment...

There was a time not long ago, that I believed that living in India sucks real bad!
And believe it or not, I had/have my reasons. But I was told,
"Its just as bad everywhere!"
"Oh! You will get used to it!"
"But, you will be a second rate citizen!"
"You will have to do your own dishes!"
etc.. etc..

I am a first-rate citizen as opposed to anywhere else right, why should I complain?
Well, on a average 30 minute ride, roughly 30 autorickshaw drivers will suddenly cut into my path, some 20 odd taxi-drivers will honk incessantly, even though there are ten cars in a jam in front of me...

Almost everytime I stand in a queue, at least two three people bypass it. Of course by the time I am done with the third guy, the fourth guy gets the picture. And this happens everywhere, railway tickets, airline check-in counters, public bathrooms, you name it...

In india you stand in queue for everything, want your hair cut, wait in a queue!! want to arrange transport , wait in a queue! wanna take a piss, wait in a queue! There are just so many people, that everything is a struggle. Of course, thats just how I feel , for the rest of the people, or at least a sizable portion of them, a queue is a synonym for "Hey! Fuck all these idiots standing in the queue, lets just walk to the front!"

By the time I get to work, My hair is caked with dust, and I travel in a rickety BMTC bus, whose manufacturers think of a suspension as a design overhead. As I bump and grind through the traffic at work, I am pretty much done for the day...

There are rats in the mall!!! Yes! You heard it right! The singaporean company that runs the IT park, of course, does not care much because ... "it's indians we are dealing with... the first 100 or so complaints are ok!! Surely we can wait for some mass epidemic of some sorts"

And this is one of the best software parks in Bangalore, or so they say!!

The postal service is so inept that they take forvever to deliver my passport to me, they sit on it for ten days, when I go to the post office they send me back saying that it hasn't arrived yet!

Well, if by now I am not feeling like a first grade citizen, then there's more...

...to be continued...

Variable Performance Happiness

2007-04-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

I remember the joy I experienced when I found out that I had landed a job at Infineon. Some guy at the hostel came up to me and told me that two guys were through and I was one of them.
I was incredulous, and walked to the placement block in the hot afternoon. After searching the display boards for a while, I found it. There it was- the key to my happiness - my name in bold along with Saurabh's. The joy I felt that day I remember. I could even say that I was happy.

"The dissection of happiness"

I wonder what was it that made me feel that way, or what is it that makes me happy.
I wonder coz it would great help to know in which direction I should be headed towards.
Doing something extra-ordinary always has made me happy and so has doing something creative. But beyond that I am not sure. Winning makes me happy, so does eating exotic food.
Company makes me happy and so does intellectual debate. A full day of doing very diverse stuff makes me very happy. Like ...

"Hey Ori! Why dont we hit the ice skating rink after your performance at the wembley stadium?"

"Hey Ori! I know flying around in a fighter jet can be tiring, but why dont we spend the rest of the day climbing all the stairs in the petronas towers?"

I am crazy right? perhaps, but these rising expectations of what is the minimum threshld to tickle me is very frustrating to keep up with...

Vae Victus

2007-02-15T19:58:00.000-08:00

When Brennus the lord of the Gaul army threw his sword upon the scales, he claimed that in defeat people have no right to justice. The vanquished romans acquised. That was in the year 387 BC. Almost 2300 years later, when American politicians latched on to Rudyard Kipling's "White Man's Burden" as a noble pretext for imperialism, the context was perhaps the same. Only this time, the context had taken racial hue.

Racism, and the allied concepts of supremacism, propagates the "feeling" of superiority of one race over another. But for me, this is quite a difficult concept to grasp. For one thing, I don't quite understand the concept of race. For another, I am not sure in which field this "superiority" is being judged. My instinct tells me that it is, perhaps, technological or even cultural practices which creates the illusion of racial superiority. The statistics of asian student in american university is a sure indicator of the fact that technological knowledge cannot be owned by a race. A patent can be owned, but knowledge cannot be contained- or anti-piracy laws can always be circumvented in China.

I have always lamented the "subjugated" history of the nation I hail from. I am alarmed by how a small contingent of European troops conquered the nations and kingdoms comprising India. The british didn't even send their royal troops. We kinda got whacked by the "security troops" of a trading company? Where these europeans truely heroic giants, who smote my people hither and thither? Did they sit astride their magnificent golden steeds and strike fear into the heart of the nawabs and shahs and what-nots ( whose dynasties invaded India a few centuries ago. ) Or where they conniving balding men with gastric ulcer, kissing the feet of our Afghan/Arab/Mughal princes and then corrupting their minds with diplomacy and greed.
I honestly don't know.

But what I do know is that the fate of a conflict is decided by various parameters. And I am of the opinion that the dude with the biggest guns usually beats the crap out of the ethiopian militant with a machette. Unless the dude has been giving very ambiguous instructions by the UN. For e.g. "Seargant Big-Gun! You are a peace keeper. DO NOT open fire! I repeat DO NOT!! IGNORE THAT MAN HACKING YOU TO DEATH!!"

I am sure that there have been instances when the technologically weaker party to the conflict emerges victorious.. leading to many teary-eyed-happy-ending to those underdog war movies.
But, I am forced to ponder how that island the size of Tamil Nadu came up with that ridiculous concept of the perpetual shining sun and all! Industrial revolution, perhaps... or was it the age of exploration?

Genocide

2007-01-20T10:32:00.000-08:00

For the longest time, I have been gripped by a need to understand people. Why they do what they do? There is so much to study to answer this question, that I am convinced that a person with my levels of motivation can never come to answer the question. Well, the truth could be that no one can answer these questions. It is the story of human suffering which I want to probe, the tale of greed, corruption, war and genocide - to chalk out the true character of man. I am 24, and I am somewhat inclined to believe that mankind is largely a deplorable species. I have had no dearth of wonders and miracles which I attribute to my kind, but yet I am convinced of the inherent wretchedness, selfishness and cruelty of man. I am commited to this belief, and try to hope that in the course of my journey, I will learn to think otherwise.

Many years ago, I dont quite recall well, perhaps when I was 10, I saw "Escape from Sobibor". I remember my father telling me that it was a movie worth watching. So I stayed up late, and watched it! It is the first time in my life I learnt about Nazism, concentration camps and genocide. Since then, I have travelled to europe and seen some of these concentration camps. I have seen countless documentaries, hollywood productions, browsed through wiki and even read some books on this topic. As I think back to these periods of learning about these atrocities, I am shocked about how I felt when I visited the concentration camps.

I was shocked by not what transpired there, but was shocked by the fact that I didn't react at all. I was unmoved. I was untouched by the tales of human tragedy. I was untouched by the pictures I saw of human corpses piled outside gas chambers. I was untouched when I saw the size of the bunk-beds and the tales of how many people were crammed into that little space. I merely blinked when I saw pictures of emacited men working away to death..."

"Arbeit macht frei"

"Work shall set you free" - These word greeted the newly arrived detainees at concentration camps. For me it was more like "Exposure to humanity will set you free", I realize that all those years of disturbing footage has desensitised me to the plight of humanity. I am free from the grief I should feel, but yet not free from a deep seated feeling that ignorance is a sin. Ignorance of what really happened and who it happened to? And who committed these crimes?

I list below some genocides that have occured in the past ( source: wikipedia )
Place : year: people killed: people displaced
1. Sudan (darfur conflict) : 1983 : 2,000,000 : 4,000,000
2. Rwanda : 1994 :900,000
3. Bosnia : 1992-95: 8,000
4. East Timor:1975-1999: 150,000
5. Cambodia:1975-1979:1,700,000
6. Burundi:1972: 150,000
7. Bangladesh : 1971 : 1,500,000
8. China : Communist Era : ???
9. Armenia: 1915-1923 : 1,500,000
10. Germany : WW-II : 6,000,000
11. Congo: 1880-1920 : 10,000,000

Flex your Mussels

2007-01-18T10:31:00.000-08:00

Mangalore Pearla!!
After all this racism talk on tv, I hope my habit of ending all words with the trademarka aaa wont get me into troublaa ... Anyways, all thats besides the point.. My long running boredom and unhappiness was abruptly brought to an end....by mussels... more accurately by a combinaion of prawns, chicken, squid and mussels. Not to mention today was month number 7 for me and tina...yeah!!

I loved the dinner!! I haven't eaten this much in a while...

I am hungry again...damn...gotto go

This feeling

2007-01-17T23:08:00.000-08:00

Of late, I have been gripped by this feeling. I cant explain it, but its one of the worst feelings I have ever had. I am constantly controlled by it. Its a feeling of hopelessness. Its a feeling that all that was exciting and all that was new is now over. A voice in my head constantly reminds me of the fact that I will not experience anything novel again.

I am surprised by the lack of any true meaning or direction to my life... and this bothers me. Perhaps, this is the culmination of years of cynicism. Or, maybe, it's just my inner conflict causing me great grief. For many months , I have not been dedicated towards work. Have not really put myself into it. The scary thing is that I feel that I never will. What exasperates e even more is that there is nothing else that I would rather do. If I had not been really depressed in the past, I would be inclined to believe that I am depressed now.

I wonder, what is it, beyond the context of work, that defines me? What am I? I feel this questions are no entwined with the remainder of my life. I was at a crossroads sometime back. A crossroad of career choices, and now that I have made my choice, I am scared whether this is the right road for me.

Its an effort for me to write... for I am just not driven enough to do anything more than, eat ...work... sleep...

Children of the damned!!

2006-11-02T19:55:00.000-08:00

Belief! Unconditional infallible belief! The boon of humanity. The panacea to all suffering. That which bestows grace in adversity. The belief that one is an extension of something larger than themselves. Where does it come from? It comes from within. Why do we need it? Because we feel helpless. Why do we deify it? Because we need idelogical totems to look up to, to fall back on, and to provide us with courage, hope and strength, and, most importantly, to provide us salvation eternal.

The question of belief and the answer it provides, in my humble observation, are to do with death and beyond, and, life and its obvious inequities and suffering. The fact that "we" or the collective "I" cease to exist when the circulation to the brain is cut off is still a horrifying thought to most of us. I am sure there are plenty of other ways to cease existing, but I shall not be listing them here for the fear of making this rather morbid topic downright macabre. But I will reveal my thoughts on the afterlife later. For now, let me tell you a story.

In the town of Bambaboor, they had a peculiar economy. Since eons, the only commodity in the town was "phood". People stored it, grew it, sold it, decorated it, put it in banks, invested it, and even ate it!! There was a simple classification of people in the town. The minority was the phood-rich class. Such was there affluence, that they even build houses with it. The majority was the phood-poor class. They were so poor, that they worked for phood, but those were the lucky ones. As with all economies, the minority could not generate enough service-demand to employ all the poor people. So many people had no phood. So they started starving.

The kinder rich people gave away some phood! But couldnt decide how much to give away. Surely they couldn't give away the million-strong phood stock in the banks. So they were very disatisfied with the continuing equity and its conflict with their own continued well-being. One day a stranger came to town, and was quite surprised to see the rich hoarding phood of all kinds, and others dying from the lack of it. He said to the poor people, "This is not right, I come from a town much mightier than Bambaboor, and its called Thae-Ven. And there everyone has "phood". To go there you need a key. And I am the ONLY one who has this key." He took pictures of himself with the key and distributed it to everyone as proof. He also laid down some rules for those who wished to attain this key. The poor were happy, they now lived there lives in the same misery but were hopeful, rumors abounded about the beauty and the abundance of Thae-Ven. And people spoke of it with great joy.

The leader of the rich was preplexed, and wanted to know how they could get to Thae-Ven, surely it would be a place which would rid them of their guilt and the conundrum of plenty among poverty. The stranger told them the same thing as he had told the poor. The rich were delighted and took the instructions and the picture of the key and went back to their lives, few even gave away all their phood! But the poverty continued...some grew hopeless again...

A few years later, another stranger came to town. And spoke thus... "This is not right, I come from a town much mightier than Bambaboor, and its called Yawee. And there everyone has "phood" and then some. To go there you need a key. And I am the ONLY one who has this key."

The aspirants for Thae-Ven were quite un-happy with this imposter! Some spoke of throwing him out of the town. So they confronted him about his lies. He said he was the chosen one, the only one. And he produced a parchment to prove it. Some rich folks had a change of heart, some went home, some poor people were convinced, some continued dying. The rest is history...

The art of getting lost in exotic european locations

2006-10-09T06:37:00.000-07:00

Today, we shal be discusing in detail the sheer brilliance of the act of "getting lost in semi-rural france". Although this work has been attributed some serious critic appreciation, it still has a few aspects worth pondering about. Let us start with the first question, "How the fuck do you get lost in the first place?". To the uninitiated, the answer might be quite simple, something like, "You have to be a complete idiot". Well, although, the above answer explains part of this elusive act, it still does not explain how a complete idiot could get lost in a country where pretty much everything (time tables and routes) is published and clearly written out.

Let me give you a hint, the french dont like english much!!! And all those brilliant signs and information boards are all in, you guessed it, French!!!

Tales from Germania - Episode Cote-d-azur

2006-10-09T06:08:00.000-07:00

Well, to start with, anyone even remotely familiar with the german countryside can tell you that "cote-d-azur" is not a part of it. But since I am presently sitting in Munich, it shall be fair enough to continue where I left off in february, The tales from germania series.

So, it is october, and I find myself again in Europe. This time it is in the lovely french countryside in the most romantic province of cote-d-azur. Literaly translating to "The coast of the Blue seas", actually meaning, "I dont wanna go back to India". So there I was on a train, hugging the mediterranean coast, on my way to Monaco. The scenic hills on one side punctuated with small french riviera towns and villages, and the wide expanse of the mediterranean on the other. You could pass through some ten french towns in the 30 minute ride from Antibes to Nice.

Monaco is the world's second smallest country. It is about 2 square kilmeters and has a population of roughly 32,000 . It also haapens to be the world's most densely populated country and also the world's richest. If I were to rant off a few words about Monaco, I would say: gorgeous, Casino, F1, Marina, Aquarium, Ferrari. That is in short what I am going to write about.

So I set out from Sofia-Antipolis early in the morning and walked into the bus-station. A half-n-hour ride into Antibes and then by train to Monaco. Antibes is pretty little town, but thats a story for another time. The first thing that srikes you about the station at Monaco is the fact that it is in a tunnel. The station is sort of inside a hill. And in character, it is in stark contrast to the other open-air stations of the other riviera towns.

I got busy getting myself a country map of monaco, they had pretty good ones at the station itself and then stepped out into the sun. The weather immediately raised my spirits to a new high. Monaco that day was bathing in the "perfect weather for tourists".

Monaco is in fact a collection of two major natural marinas buffeted by rising cliffs. The lower city embraces the marinas - this is also where you will find the F1 track and the casino. The upper city is built up on the hills surrounding monaco- this is where you will find the palace and the older city.

Monaco is well suited for the pedestrian tourist, or alternatively you could hire one of the many scooters. All in all, with a day ticket for the local bus service and a good pair of shoes, you wont need much else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco

Tales from Germania - Episode "Weiss Men zay!"

2006-02-15T02:52:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was booze day.
A german colleague of mine along with three other french colleagues went out for dinner. It was a typical bavarian place. The thing to note about the place's entrance was the fact that it would pass you by if you didnt know it was there already. Not like the neon lit entrances common in bangalore....

i may told you of my scandalous affair with weisewurst ( white sausages) , but what i haven't told you about is my even-more demanding relationship with weisebier...made from wheat and totally delicious... its sweet without any hint of alcohol....so I drank 1.5 litres of these awesome stuff....and dinner was equally great...pork chops in bavarian beer sauce and potato dumplings!!! Then we had a shot of schnapps each,..this is a loaded mixture of fruit alcohol, brewed in house....very very strong stuff...as much as 30-40 % alcohol...

Later, we headed to the center of town for a couple of rounds more...some strong cocktails followed, and my tiny body was saturated with alcohol...

On my way home I forgot to get off at my stop , much to the amusement of my french colleagues, and spent fifteen minutes and a completely deserted s-bahn stop. what was not funny was that the litres of alcohol were strongly impressing their will on my bladder....

well , I did manage to wake up today...

Tales from Germania - Episode "Walk the Walk"

2006-02-02T23:19:00.000-08:00

Its 7:30 in the morning...The chill in the air soaks through my jacket and sweats. The 10 below wind freezes portions of my anatomy, the thawing is a rather delicate process which I shall presently not go into.

I am being swept on by the crowd that just came out of the S5 train at Fasanenpark. The Campeon campus, some half a mile away, stands out in a field of snow. I am told that there are lakes and green grass in the spring. But for now , there is just bleak white stretching in every direction that you look.

What strikes you at such a time is the effort youu have to put to keep up with these germans when they are walking. Is it there natural stride to move this fast, and where do they get this awesome sense of urgency? Is it simply the cold, or some form of implicit discipline which requires them to be at their desks at a certain time of the day ( give or take a few picoseconds - Yes! Yes! i am a VLSI engineer).

But I am not alright with being outdone by these obviously larger, stronger, and atheletic race of people. So I start keeping pace...huff puff... As I am put into 5th gear of walking ( we are talking some severe overdrive here), I am still outpaced by the more determined of these people. As i walk into the office, I realize the level of my general fitness pales in comparison to the average german's.

I was told by quite a few of my colleagues, in a "matter of fact" fashion, that they often run 10 kms a day ( or was it 10 miles). Well I'd like to see myself complete half that distance. By the way these are people in their 30's. Some cycle to work, and obesity is almost absent here. Most people have great posture while they walk , and somehow reflect great health just by the way they walk.

Tales from germania - Episode "i-Pot"

2006-02-01T07:13:00.000-08:00

I am going to reveal a great mystery to you. Not the run-of-the-mill mystery that you would see agatha christie tinkering with. This is a mystery in the class of "why did the chicken cross the road" or "What do them scots wear under those kilts?".

The mystery that we are going to reveal is:
"How the hell do those europeans keep their shit-pot so clean?"

Working at ITPL, I have often wondered if it would do us a great benefit , if we were to potty-train all our engineers. Well, if you ever plan to take a dump in our established company, then bring along your own tissue paper, a brand of industrial strength disinfectanct, rubber gloves, etc etc.

So there I was , Looking at the next innovation at Infineon's new site CAMPEON. Everything here is supposedly state-of-the-art , we have iPrint, iE-mail, iScan , in addition to the mundane iPod. But what I beheld was far more sophisticated. Yes!! IT WAS THE i-POT. Some innovative engineer in our organization had christened, what is otherwise called a loo (where I come from), the iPOT.

It was 2 minutes to noon, there it stood, unperturbed by my presence, it almost twinkled in contempt. The scene for this western was set. I stood at the other end of the booth, with my hands on my waist.

When it comes to performing in such a situation, I suffer from severe stage fright. Playing metal on stage, thats easy. Taking a shit in the pin-drop quiet of a german bathroom , that takes courage.

There was not a single trace of water anywhere....And then it dawned on me like a understanding usually dawns on people of mediocre intellect. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my memory, a voice was remarking about european ways of cleaning, it was saying " European methods are dry methods, these are efficient methods where water is scarce"

Well the mystery was solved, no water, no splashing, clean loo .

In the begining there was darkness, then there was light, the heavens, the earth and the paraphenalia, and finally there was tissue paper

Tales from J.A.F.A - II

2006-01-24T19:50:00.000-08:00

Why men turn into JAFA:
They say that the more you dance, your ability to squeeze out pheromones increases linearly, and that most women are driven crazy by throes of lust and you are clobbered to a lustful death, right on the dance floor.

They also say, that it is highly inadvisable to actually go to a dance floor without dousing yourself in deodorant, as the more your dance your ability to suffer from WSA increases exponentially. WSA (aka Wet Smelly Armpit) has been known to destroy libidos, lead to depression and severe bouts of loneliness.

And any Ph.D in Maths will tell you that linearly gets its ass whooped majorly by exponentially ( with the minor exceptions of the region between 0 and 1, where a linear function rises faster than an exponential one, except of course on the planet of "Ericteel Tis-Phunktionalla", where nothing rises!)

It should be needless to mention that deodorants destroy the action of pheromones. Thus leaving most men in bangalore dancing very clumsily, desperately hoping to strike a right balance of pheromones and WSA. However, Newton's Law of Universal JAFA states that "Clumsily Moving men on the dance floor leads to some very bad vibes and repels women into a state of fury, and thus a JAFA is born" . The only know exception to this rule is that "Clumsily Moving Women lead to immediate Erectile disfuction ( no relation to the phonetically similar planet ), and a JAFA is suddenly filled with hope of living out a grossly insipid life- thus renouncing their JAFA-hood"

Tales from J.A.F.A. - I

2005-12-22T20:24:00.000-08:00

As a quick update to the previous post...the job that was gonna make me rich, well...I didn't take it. I was persuaded to stay by the management and my brother...

Leave out all the patriots...and leave out the people who dont read, and, perhaps, leave out all other J.A.F.A's , well for all the rest... I have a confession to make.
You see, I am a JAFA , always been one, its just that it takes certain things in your life for you to realize that you are one...

Just Another Frustrated Ass-hole (aka JAFA) . Somewhere between my aspirations for things great and small, and what I actually get , I have taken great strides forward to own this title. Not to say that what I have is insignificant, I have a job, friends, I have passion to learn...so on, and so forth...

I will not be going into a monologue on what I expect from life (the reader can thank god for small mercies!) But I will tell you in short why I am an JAFA, and maybe you will feel that it is not so bad to be a JAFA after all (besides that grouchy bitter frown on your brow all the time)

I am a JAFA because I was born in India to a middle class family but quickly, under the tutelage of my father, grew to despise anything remotely middle class and love everything american. Wierd dont you think, excercises in hating everything that surrounds you .. No wonder I am an hopeless elitist. I suffer from ARGS (Aspirational-to-Reality Gap Syndrome)..see what i mean....I am inflicted with the american obsession with syndromes . They have one for everything. like the DNRS ( Dad Not Rich Syndrome)... and anyone who's seen the latest hip-hop videos knows about the OBWBRHS . No? Its the Obese Below Waist But RED HOT Syndrome ...that describes whole new class of commodifying well-endowed african-american women...but ARGS is newly coined I hope ( oh! the joy!)

I am a JAFA because I was born in a country, which despite all its greatness and Infosys, forget to learn how to build roads...( i pay taxes by the way)

I am a JAFA because after torrid sessions of VH1, I keep hoping that the lifestyle of Justin Timberlake is actually accessible...and to aggravate matters I have not gone dancing in four months...

Welcome to the life of a JAFA... dont go away, I will be back after Bnaglaore has beaten the shit out of my aspiration for seeing something classy in the city...

THE JOB!!

2005-11-19T02:05:00.000-08:00

So they say that by monday I will have the magma offer...
So thus begins the journey to be filthy rich..well not really...It will be 1 and a 1/2 years since i started working, and this offer should make me happy...money wise...

Kinda nervous about what it might entail.. i would like to have a calling towards work... they cant be paying me so much to just sit around....

Monday will come and the initial enthusiasm of they giant paycheck will wear off... and i will wait impatiently for the next big bump up.... till then... hmmm ... the clock will tick

Bday bash!

2005-10-09T21:50:00.000-07:00

My first complete "honest to god" blackout!!!!!!
Oct 8th - Party at my place ...
Among other things of interest, My face got pasted with 3 rounds of cake and one round of dip..
After having chaged my shirt three times, we started our tequila shots...courtsey Rama.. i was pretty enthusistic about my first shots ...and 5 shots later .... I picked my guitar...enthusiastic about my songs, I started grabbing bottles and glasses from everyone and drank everything, three songs later, I couldn't distinguish the two necks of my guitar and had trouble directing my four hands to them. Twenty minutes later, I passed out. 'Puke everywhere' is the title of the story... which I only got to hear in the morning!!! For the last twenty minutes I have no recollection of what happenend!! I woke up in my underwear, coz i had been drenched by litres of water, which had no effect other than getting my pants wet, which were promptly removed!!!!

Well that was A BLAST!!!!

Of a thing called boredom

2005-09-14T20:34:00.000-07:00

chronic, never-ending boredom...thats what life is in bangalore...There are things which generate excitement in retrospect. Things you did in the past which you felt nice about, but bangalore has offered me very little of that. The contrast to my life in college is huge. I wasn't eactly a party animal in college, but i had a wide variety of things to keep me happy...And i had people...every once in a while there would be something to do... HEADS UP!!! thats the only thing I can tell myself...I wnat to break this pattern of monotony. And whats somewhat consoling is that I am not the only one. People who have come from delhi and are somewhat driven for their careers find themselves in a odd spot, coming from delhi gives you that craving for a social life and the drive for the career means you are probably involved with something that gives you no time to indulge in a social life. the situation falling out of these contradictions is compunded by a mad "bigger paycheck" rush. Sanity is very subjective.

To trust the "KNEE"

2005-08-05T01:40:00.000-07:00

this weekend's trip to kodaikanal was awesome fun!
misty mountain tops ! a walk in the clouds !
and some semi-serious biking and trekking!
i hope there are more of these in the pipeline!
A big refreshing change!!
Climbing up a hill on a bicycle is a killer!!
But at the same time it outs my trust back on my knee...
I wasnt in bad shape...but i guess i can only get better...

The resolution!

2005-07-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

I have almost been broken in the past one month.
It all started with dav coming here...
It is now time to re-evaluate my life...

My public resolve are these
1. I will overcome the ligament tear
2. I will be someplace else by next year march. (8 months)
3. I will have rediscovered my inspiration.

Desperation or drive!

2005-07-26T03:38:00.000-07:00

There are times when people do things just to claw back to the surface and save themselves from drowning! Even though this requires tremendous effort and will, this does not constitute drive. Drive, is the most supreme of human qualities, that combined with your luck, makes the difference between lance armstrong and the bum you step over on your way to work. Wait a second, come to think of it, Armstrong wasnt very lucky, unless getting cancer makes your day...

Drive is the quality that differentiates your reaction to life-breaking events. Here are few that I have observed:
Some people just look away and ignore the situation and never let it bother them as it slowly kills them within.
Some people immediately make up their mind that their lives are over, and there is nothing to live for.
Some people overcome, with great strength and effort. And these are the people who survive almost anything (other than their eventual demise)

So what is it that differentiates these people?
Are they born with it? If so, this discussion is over? Because then you can assume that everything is pre-ordained and your effort makes no difference...I disagree...there is that example about choice...
A gets run over by a car and loses his legs....A has a choice to fight for what remains...or just give up...
As the first choice plays out...there is a hope, actually a distinct possibility, that A will ressurect his spirit. He will never have his legs, but he will have something...

As the second choice plays out...there is sadness...there is fear...there is loss of faith...a constant reminder of the handicap...there's frustration...and theres lonliness...a life wasted...

in retrospect this is an easy choice...but if the context is more present...its a test of your mettle...
we all have a choice to fight for what we want, we may come close and lose it, and then we have a choice to give up for what we fight for, and choose something new. But in doing this there's a danger of diluting your focus...

where does drive come from?
it comes from a will to excel, from a passion to exceed limits, to tell yourself that you have added value, its the same thing that drives a successful businessman and a freestyle rock-climber.. it is the epitome of indulging yourself for your own sake...

why would it be absent?
trauma...painful experiences..repeated failure...mental illness...all the above could combine to a situation wherein the person lacks drive...it could be due to lack of inspiration...or lacking self-belief...lacking any acheivable short term goals...but most of all I think its the lack of will and positivity.

will and positivity ?
These will prove to be the two most important concepts of anyone's life. There are those who can do without it. However, if you aspire for the extraordinary, dont leave home without it. In fact, make a choice early in life. Do you want to sacrifice ambition and afford yourself a 'loose at the edges' will ? Or do you want to sacrifice leisure and comfort, and beat yourself into pulp driving yourself? When you are beaten to a pulp, you look at yourself in the mirror...and this is where positivity comes in... Perception is wielded by you...you are a product of your perception...and nothing more...

THe road to success:
1. Discipline your life, to give your will a chance to grow.
nothing like following a routine and resolutions to believe that your will actually has a say. And dont trivialize the "no matter what" phrase, I am sure many use it to egg themselves on, and before the blink of an eye, the pastry that was "will not eat, no matter what!" turn into "well I do plan to run this weekend!"

2. Train your perception . And here again discipline is everything. Look at everything with a positive view..Here are a few things which are affected by perception.
a. People
b. Situations
c. Prospects

Never make judgements about people, for this immediately limits your perception of them. Never be emotional about situations, as this clouds your response. Respond to solve and not to absorb the manifold implications. Prospects, always take a deep look at the brightest and a quick look at the gravest. Make a decision and never look back at the grave prospects...

drive cannot be switched off...switch it on only if you need it bad..or just simply cannot do without it...

The fight against despondency

2005-07-21T02:45:00.000-07:00

It has struck once more at the core of my heart!
The forlorn longing for one who you cannot have ...
I am told to keep busy...in order to distract myself...
No amount of effort done for the misguided reasons can fill the void
What is needed is a willful and motivated progress to a long desired dream.
My long desired dreams have kind of fallen flat in the aftermath of this emotional
struggle which has by now lasted more than a year.
Most people dont see it, but my struggle to surface is all too real...
I have drifted too sporadically in and out of despondancy,
and I have no doubts that i have fought it. Music, food, fitness, work, knowledge, books, creative writing...I have tried them all...but in the end all I need is people I can relate too. PEOPLE!
Lonliness is the flavour of this month...mind numbing lonliness
career? yeah ! everyone thinks I am slated for the big leagues...No doubt about it...
But I can only see short sightedly now... no longer do I have the vision to see beyond 10 - 20 - or even 30 years...
My untiring drive is back... and I am hoping to piggyback it to the next milestone in life, when I can read this journal and empathise in retrospect...
although it is headless right now...it is full bodied... and exudes a lot of energy...I wake up everyday...with one and only one thought ALONE!! ( my greatest fear has come true) I cannot control the first feeling in my head when i wake up..and the taste lingers through the day...
But fight i shall , and fight I must...
because I am ME, and there is a person in the future who beckons to me...to tell me its gonna be ok. It is I, many years from now...driving myself forever...

VROOOM!!!!

2005-07-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

Do you hear that???
That low hum , slowly spiralling into a high pitched whine,
do you feel the earth shake and send warm vibration through you...
that powerful sensation of having a 300 HP beast rearing to go ...
well thats my drive coming back online after a year long hiatus...
a man is defined by his will to achieve...and without focus and motivation, there is no such will.
I have missed sorely, my age old companion. My drive, my soulful inspiration, the desire to be something more than 'all around you'..
I lost it in great turmoil, and great turmoil has restored it ...

Love, Erudition and Money

2005-06-16T02:35:00.000-07:00

i have for a long time believed that the things of greatest importance to me are
love, erudition and money. And till recently the order was as listed. Nothing like heartbreak to reorder your priorities, so here is an insight to how the heart of those in love works as opposed to those fallen out of love.

Initially when i planned to write this, i wanted to write a very impersonal journal of what i felt were my priorities. So i will try no to deter from my initial objective.

Love : By this I mean two kinds of love, the intimate shared with only a few. And the much wider love that comes bundled with achievement, the love of a friend, of an admirer, of a junior who thinks you are the best thing since elvis presley, or a fan at a concert who tells you that you have a n awesome voice, or the love of a fellow intellectual whose strife for a conversation partner is temporarily subdued by your presence, by a young woman who thinks you rock when you move on the dance floor, by the geek who thinks you look great on that bike, or the even the envy of those single men out there as they check out the 'very hot' women by your side. I strive for both these loves. I want to be recognized for who i am, I am desperate to prove my individuality from the throngs of billions of humans...I am different...know me for it...I want to assert...

The love of a woman...the most intimate that a man can find...eludes me...
and presently wouldnt want to express much on that...

Erudition: Knowledge is the fruit of human existense, in its study I find that I am part of something timeless and immortal. In a constant quest to define who I am, I feel it nessecary to read history and stories of human trials and endurance. What are the quintessential human qualities?? is it greed and hunger or is it love and communal harmony? is it desire which turns us poets or carnal lust which makes criminals of us?? If it is both, which one am I?

Money: Hmmmm.... its the certified universal symbol of your "survivabilty quotient' ...Money sure cant buy happiness...but it buys everything material and many things abstract from here to the ends of the universe.... for me it just symbolizes an opportunity which if i miss out now, i will regret later...I am not overpowered by any desire to own a ferrari, however prudence is best excercised now ...than be burdened with the onus of a wasted youth...

The Biggest Superstition of all times- GOD.

2005-05-23T02:12:00.000-07:00

“He loves us all. He is kind and great. He sees us through our bad times. He is omnipotent, all powerful, all knowing, benevolent and graceful. Our lives have been pre-ordained, and there is a perfectly good reason for all the suffering, which god shall reveal to us in the afterlife. Have your faith in god, and all will be well. Take his hand! And you shall be in his kingdom for eternity!”

As I wrote that I was beginning to feel this benign feeling of calmness spread over me. I was beginning to feel that I am taken care off. By the third sentence, the sharp edge of my sarcasm began to wear off. Boy! I must say that the lure indeed must be great. No accountability, no need for soul-searching, no existential angst, no worries, just you and bottle of wine in the kingdom of heaven. I would take that any day over an all expense trip to the Hawaii. That is if I was dumb enough to think there was any truth to this preposterous idea.

“I am an aetheist," and I proudly avow my inclinations. That being said, I would like to rant on a bit about my belief (my convictions really). On the issue of god and his kingdom, there are two brands of fools on this planet ( I am not totally sure, maybe it’s three, and may recall this statement on being subjected to any form of inquisition ). There is the average ordinary fool and there is the extra-ordinary fool. Let us examine closely these two broad classification of the species homo sapien.

The ordinary fool. Well since a vast majority belong to this class. You may be it, but maybe not…The kind who is very pragmatic, as long as something works, doesn’t care for changing anything… believes what he reads…does very few things to reason his beliefs…very likely to say things like “I felt his presence”…and most importantly “very uncomfortable at his beliefs being questioned”…Religious fanatics, the priestly class, terrorists, and a lot of average ordinary folks…

The extra-ordinary fool. Well, this class would be the atheists. Going to all lengths, to remove from their minds any hope of a divine answer to this mess of creation. No jingling bells, harp slinging angels, or white fluffy stuff in the afterlife, just dreary and slow decomposition. Whats the fun in that??? No fun at all, but I do believe a lot of truth.

I remember a time, sitting on a bench in HohenSalzburg, a elderly woman and I got into a chat, she was a teaching at a missionary school and took her views on the afterlife very seriously. She carefully, yet authoritatively asked me about my views on what awaits me in the afterlife. I melodramatically replied, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And that’s it.” With great dismay she told me that I should reconsider my views on life and the journey afterwards. I thought I heard fear in her voice, fear for my soul.

Fear, is the mother of most superstitions. The need for our intelligent species to explain that which cannot be explained, urges us create intricate stories of all sorts. I was once told by a colleague, that the value of religion is not in the conception of gods and the mythological stories therein, but the moral values taught in these stories. So, according to him, someone thought of a clever way to teach moral values…but posterity took the stories literally and made one big mess. I agree with him, however not on the assumption that all scriptures were written to teach values, I do think some of them were actually meant to be explanations for the universe. Immensely creative as some of these works are, they are just fiction and equivalent to early man’s bestsellers.

Through centuries, there’s been a need to define god. On an individual level, this was required to quench the eternal questions with simplistic axioms. On the societal level, this had strong political repercussions. People who believe in the same fate can unite more easily. Thus there is no doubt that many military generals have exploited this. The raging lines of war even in today’s world are often on the same line that divides differing religious ideology. I will not explore the political consequences of people’s perception of god. I will only explore the individual’s search.

People shy at the thought of not knowing their fate, so here is a brilliant mechanism wherein they are provided an illusion of knowing. And what they know is guarded by a thousand years of dogma and the veil of the unimpeachable. What is never questioned can thus never change, and it is this immutability which transcends GOD to the upper strata of human conscience. People draw comfort in knowing with certainty that this world is but just a small part of the greater journey, helps alleviate the sorrows of poverty, grief, hunger and loss. I can only envy the piety of a poor man, for it is his soul’s food. But the piety of an educated bloke is contemptible. I guess the habit of deluding ourselves with false hope is an incorrigibly human habit. ‘God’ is this false hope. There is however one phenomenon, relating to this superstition, that I find immensely disturbing; the habit of abnegating responsibility of things done in the name of ‘GOD’. Many people absolve their sins and assume forgiveness. That’s nothing but forgiving yourself, but since we would be exposed to ourselves as being unrepentant and selfish, the forgiveness acquires divine scale and becomes instantly more appropriate. Who would not love a person, who will forgive you for all your sins? Who will not embrace such a god? Who will not bleed for one so merciful? What could be more attractive than believing that all your suffering is by the will of this magnificently benevolent person? Its all too easy. Just a product of the human endeavor to be escapist, and find the easy way out, just a way to be lazy and not tax your mind with the unanswerable. However, to me it seems a lot that is branded as unreachable is reached, a lot which has no explanation is explained. And yet people stick to their dogma. And finally, the idea of god creating man in his own form is nothing but human obsession with creating the creator in ‘human’ form. People should get over themselves…this species is transient…just a stepping stone to the next rung on the evolutionary ladder.

The cheapest bottle of beer!

2005-05-23T00:56:00.000-07:00

It was race day! Monaco circuit! Enigma in bangalore ...and i had just put away my 5th fosters ...and all i paid for all five was 40 ruppees...and no it was not stuff they pulled out of an expired lot... just that 'Strange Brew', bangalore's recently launched music magazine, had come up with a new promotional stint for metal heads and beer drinker..buy their magazine for Rs. 20 and get two fosters at chosen few pubs in the city on race day... I bought a couple...

One great moment in the nacant life of Psychrome ...
when there was a power outage...they were actually shouting our 'WAR CRY!!'
I almost cried....

At the venue, more magazines were bought, a page was reomoved and the magazine discarded promptly....we even got a couple free... our fisrt perks of being in a metal band..tee hee...
all in all great fun.... MUST READ THE MAGAZINE THOUGH....

Religion, science and me...

2005-05-13T02:45:00.000-07:00

“Take this book. It has all the answers.”

There was a famous gentleman who taught maths in the Italian town of Padua, and of a certain religious text (which happens to be the biggest bestseller of all times) he had one notion which has struck me as, what I can best describe as ‘bold’.

“Written by the ignorant for the ignorant”

This gentleman was Galileo Galilei. It is possible that I am not qualified to quote this long deceased man, for I had to look up the spelling of his name. But, I am qualified to endorse what he said. For I immediately felt a kinship to him, when I read this, whether a person of his stature would feel a similar kinship to me is doubtable. Coming to the issue I did want to address, I wanted to write about the brilliant propogation of the scientific backwaters that is conducted by some religions. That, religion and science, are not bossom buddies, is an irrevocable fact. There was a time when great thinker hesitated to express their views in fear of contradicting the words of this bestseller. For the curious soul, I would like to mention that this bestseller is yet to make its appearance in paperback.

Many people say that the story in this book….you know what… we will give this book a name…lets call it ‘The older promise’ (which eventually was broken by a newer one). Yes, where was I? Ahh..the stories in the book…so some people say that they are only allegorical, but some take it quite literally. I am one of those mere mortals who fail to see the greater message…You can call me an infidel..or something like that…I have always wondered how could you fit all the species in the world on a boat…and sometimes I have wondered which has more truth to it…Jurrasic park or ‘The older promise’. The latter is relevant because if the world was created in seven days….then that leaves very little time for evolution…(Damn Mr. Darwin, that blasphemer!!! How could he suggest that men and monkeys are related. We don’t even look alike!!!)

There was a science book I once read and it spoke of the dating of matter using half lifes of certain radioactive substances. Unless there is some heavy-duty dilation and contraction of time going on, ‘The older promise’ is off by a few billion years when it comes to the concept of genesis…but we all know that time passeth at different speeds in the house of the lord….

Science cannot explain everything, the point is it doesn’t try to…it’s a constant work in progress. There was also once a wide held belief, because ‘The older promise’ said that the earth was at the center of the universe. Along came, Copernicus and blasphemed and then some…what do you know the earth is but an insignificant speck of cosmic dust. The third rock from the sun. Facts upheld have fallen…the book will yet never fall..or will it?

Not exactly A patriot

2005-05-13T02:42:00.000-07:00

Its well within the realm of the irrelevant to debate the concept of nation and how its nationality extends to one born on its soil…But, I will pretend that I am no stranger to arguing the unarguable. I have felt at times, a lack of affection on the land on which I was born, and this lack of love was ostracized by those who were certain that I owed something to plot of land in rajender nagar where I was born. The reactions have varied from a mild annoyance to the militant kind. But I have been bright enough not to express my views so plainly that I arouse mass hysteria and get killed or vehemently enough for someone to label me a traitor and hang me for treason…that would be imprudent on my part. Not to mention that dead people seldom debate….

India is an ancient nation. This statement can be best qualified by a historian, but I always thought that India with its present geographical boundary did not exist till the time of independence. The fact that some people saw the opportunity to forge a great nation at that time is a great credit to them…to say that India as a nation is constant and old as time seems, to me, far from the truth. One of the first great nations to emerge which remotely resembled the country of India, appeared under Ashoka, and even then there were differences…Everything is evanescent…the concept of worshipping that which seems constant can only be human perception, in which case I should be allowed to form my own.

We, the proud people of India, are quick to boast of our heritage and cultural diversity…
And yet when faced with a diverse cultural group, many are hostile… A common experience for me was to notice, in college, people of the same ethnic background stuck together, not only that, but to preserve the hurt ego of one of their members, militantly confront another ethnic group. The brutality of the communal riots are well documented. As far as I am concerned, the cultural diversity is primarily a result of our isolation from each other, and is a boon to the tourism industry, but beyond that I don’t see it as a necessary bounty to the nation.

If I were to say something sharp regarding the history or the present attitude of the people of this nation, no doubt, those who would be inflamed by it, feel no qualms about passing remarks about other culture. I dismiss this attitude as short-sighted.

World religions

2005-05-13T02:38:00.000-07:00

Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha- all of these men spawned what were to become world religions. If the numbers of their followers are added then we get more than half the world’s population. The story of the conflict of Christianity and Islam makes an interesting tale…spawned in two cities not very far from one another. The might of the followers of these two religions have clashed since the birth of Islam, and do so till now. Whether this conflict is primarily a conflict of nations or of ideology, I do not know…

"To maintain that each of these leaders is equivalent is not to argue from tolerance but from ignorance. In comparing Jesus with them, we discover a number of unique features in Jesus' life and ministry."

I read the above concerning the three subjects of my essay at a site for promoting Christianity…and I was amused…This was no doubt written by a man whose erudition far exceeds mine…It was interesting for me during the course of my research that roughly 4% of the people of the world are atheists.

Buddha is the oldest among the three. He was born roughly 600 years before Christ. And Buddhism spawned from Hinduism, whereas the other two spawned from Judaism. Buddhism had little conflict with either of the other two religions…

Religious fervor, a quality which emerges quickly and causes much damage, has many roots. Some can be traced to the current leaders of religion, and some to the originator themselves. I sometimes wonder how many Christians know when Jesus was born. Or why he is called Christ? I am in awe of the religion…and a hundred questions swarm me…what feeds a religion, I ask. The greatness of these men or the lack of greatness of their followers…for the sheep the Shepard is the lord. A metaphor so commonly used by the pious- Jesus the Shepard of men. I find it difficult to think of myself as a sheep- whether it be metaphorical or real. It also pains me that I am surrounded by people who like to think of themselves that way…There is sometimes a thin line between tradition and the perception of reality. It takes for a thing to be repeated through a few generations before someone starts believing it to be the universal truth…For example…Christmas was originally not celebrated on the 25th of December, but how many Christians will vow that Jesus was born on this day?

To claim that one is a son of god would be a truly audacious statement; that is if one was lying. The only man in history to claim that he was the son of god…it is odd though that the inmates of certain institutions feel that way today. It is well possible that their feeling that way got them where they now live…

Was there only one prophet in history to be executed? Was crucifixion a rare site in Judea under roman rule? Was there only one roaming prophet? Is it divine to walk into a city where all religious prophets are not favorites with the government and have a feeling that you are in danger? Is it divine to feel that one of your associates will betray you? Certainly wouldn’t be the first example of betrayal or paranoia?

To claim that there exists only one way….is interesting…for the lack of a better word. For almost 2 billion people to believe it…hmmm…sheep and shepards….it is odd that how we admire these men for their courage to question what is accepted. To think for themselves and to contradict what has been holy for eons…Isn’t it tragic how we try to immortalize and stagnate the perception of one individual because we cannot think for oursleves. A supermarket for religion: pick and choose, extra toppings, 10% off, ours is the best…These are marketing paradigms often used by the institution that these men begot.
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The bane of the intellectual

2005-05-13T02:34:00.000-07:00

The forever striving have little time for the subtle joys of life. They sometimes don’t see it, and more often, having seen it, forgo it. They create an atmosphere that can be best described as malignantly stirred. Those of less vigorous disposition find themselves spontaneously agitated in the subject’s company. Why the need to stir up a storm when there is none…

Possibly belonging to the class of storm stirrers, I have always felt that people like that don’t create storms but see one before others…This quality of foresight enables them to play out various scenario and perhaps find the one best suited for themselves and for their peers. At this point, such a person will find himself being thrust into a position of leadership. This quality comes at a terrible price. The bearer is often shrouded in a cloud of despondency. To see so much truth can indeed be burdening. But is it the truth they see, or do they see their own fears and like a dark prophecy set out to realize the worst. In which case, such individual are but more a menace than beneficial.

To see everything, and to question everything leaves one feeling extremely cynical and at the same time very full of musings. To introspect each of one’s action, can be a task for a greater portion of one’s life. But where does all this lead. Firstly, it leads to misery, and if fortunate then to self-realization. But like a socialist ideal is forever trapped in the vice-like grip of a command economy, such a person is often trapped in his own miserable conclusions about his own existence.

So is there a point or a direction to such intellectual pursuits?

Class, Techies, and me

2005-05-13T02:30:00.000-07:00

What is the story of civilization if it isn’t the story of class struggle? Blood has been shed and forgotten, just to be shed anew… Every morning, I take the bus to work…and though sometimes I imagine myself surrounded by highly intellectual and highly educated people…I most often liken my being to a labourer being herded into trucks and asked to break rocks all day…

As George Orwell put it in his book, 1984, the high, the middle and the low. Which class of people, I belong to beats me. Whether the question is relevant or not is a different issue altogether, but since I am driven to write about it, I will assume its relevant enough for me. In the Indian context, I find that an engineer is somewhat of a dull creature…devoid of any recreational pursuits…driven solely by his desire to …umm…code. It appears to me that people are bent over backwards to be technically proficient…whether it appeals to them or not, I will not comment on. A profession of your own choosing will make you happy…is what I had heard when growing up…I find it difficult to swallow that so many of our fellow countrymen are driven to engineering because their heart desires it.

My batch was full of people wanting to get into management…To this regard I want to share an experience with you…Once preparing for his MBA interview, a batchmate asked me to test his knowledge on engineering issues…lest they ask the same of him in his interview…among other questions I asked him ‘How does an aeroplane fly?’ .The question was met by silence, one could always argue that it is not in the domain of an final year electronics student (one of the toppers) to know such redundant details…or could one??…my point being …a B.E. is worthless…the skill set required to do most of the work in the present scenario can be taught in two years…or less….

Out of place and out of scope, the two great descriptors of the mammoth majority of Indian engineers…
Creativity is often, a word they have their last encounter with, in school…A relic of a forgotten childhood…The masses sing praise for the regiments of able engineers passing out every year…But I see an army of shovel wielding blue collar workers…typing away incessantly with their legs chained to giant balls of steel…with a salary enough to make him stand proud among the vaster army of farmers and labourers…but too little to give him anything he really wants…Yes I am the middle…never the high