Me and my loneliness

My experiments with drowning

2007-06-20T11:24:00.001-05:00

I have been thinking about writing this piece for quite some time. I will recount few(to be pricise two) of my adventures in Caribbean. The idea of the title came from Duh who had the pleasure of actually watching me in action in the sea.

Before we start, I don't know how to swim.

Event 1: I am into extreme sports like ..bogey boarding. (If you guys doubt it ask golu..not about me being into extreme sports but if bogey boarding is an extreme sport)

I saw few people little deep into the sea where the waves don't push you to the shore but you just float on them. It seemed pretty cool so I tried it. It was fun. After some time (may be 10 mins or so) when I thought I have had enough of it I wanted to get back to the shore. But no waves would push me towards the right side and no matter how hard I try I could not swim (while being on the board) towards the shore. And also what I did not realize is that in such case the water keeps pushing you back little when the wave retreats and so I had reached enough deep water where I can drown.

I had read somewhere that most people drown coz they panic so my reaction was to look for Duh and wave towards him. But Duh to my not so surprise could not see me. Then I see this black dude(BD) swimming little far from me.

Me: Hey!
BD: Hey Maan!
Me: Nice weather!!
BD(clearly not interested): yeah!
me: how deep is the water?
BD(will you please shut up expression): Not much..
Me: The thing is, I do not know how to swim.
BD(with an expression of "what the fuck"): Hang on.

He pulled me out towards the beach. I realized how difficult it is to pull some one. That strong dude also took quite a long time (so it seemed!) to pull me by just 15ft or so.

Event 2: I go snorkeling. The crew had planned two sessions, and before the second one duly ask all persons who are not competent swimmers to stay out as the currents were very strong. Ofcourse, I am not one to be stopped by such silly things and decide to get down with the life jacket. :)

Soon after we get into water they realize the currents are too strong which were taking everyone away from our catamaran and the crew asked everyone to stop snorkeling and get on board. One of them started pulling me towards the catamaran. He took me very near the catamaran and then asked me to get on it, forgetting the minor detail that I just cant swim, not even the 10 ft he wanted me to swim. And he just leaves me there. I wanted to convey the same to him but the snorkeling equipment wouldn't allow me to. And just then my life jacket decides it had had enough and decides to shrink. (I remembered the line "If you really desire something the the whole universe conspires to get you there. Somehow it seemed the universe had got mis-communicated about my drowning desires!!) I somehow catch one of the ropes coming out of the catamaran and hang there( again without panicking or at least not showing any signs of it) After getting few more people into the catamaran, he sees me still in water and asks me what am I doing there. Of course I could not reply him again due to the snorkeling equipment which still covered my mouth. So I just stayed there shaking my head - which somewhere rang a bell in him and he goes - oh shit!! You dont know how to swim ..

story of WC 2007

2007-04-16T02:37:00.000-05:00

“We prepared for super eights better than the Indian cricket team. We are here they are not!”

This banner more or less sums up the frustration of Indian supporters in carribean. Even with India not qualifying, and after approximately 70% cancellations there were still so many Indians out there. But there was another set of people who were not as much but a lot disappointed – The Bajans.

We were talking to one of the owner of a small shop who after learning that we are Indians, was very sympathetic towards us.

“Its sad that India did not qualify man. What happened to your team?”

“Yeah, it’s not great but to think of it, it is good for cricket right - Small teams like Bangladesh defeating India and coming into super eights.”

“Nothing is good about it. Bangladeshis are poor people! They don’t come here and spend money. Man so many Indians would be watching the games in bars and pubs in India. They would have been here spending money if India had qualified.”

“But when small teams like Bangladesh and Ireland qualify then it will make cricket more global.”

“Oh yes, Ireland is a nice team. Man, Irish people spend so much money. I hope the final is between Ireland and Australia.”

He does not care about cricket, how it can globalize, how these very matches make it interesting – he only cares about how to make money out of it. This incidence reminded me of a line I read in motorcycle diaries

“Man can think of lot of things, from the loftiest of meditations on philosophy to the most desperate longing for a bowl of soup – in total accord with the state of his stomach.”

Things that could have been!

2007-03-26T10:12:00.000-05:00

During the India-SL match, when the outcome had become pretty much obvious me and my friends were discussing about what all could be done to salvage Indian pride at the last moment.

The unimaginative me came up with the solution that we all should contribute little to a fund which should be offered to the bangladeshi team for throwing away their match against bermuda.

Another one said maybe the Indian team should train the bermuda team for some time. We all dismissed it saying that they themselves could not beat Bangladesh - how can they teach the Bermudans to do the same?

Maybe India should send some players they had not selected to bermuda to play for their team. But this is not feasible.

And then when we thought we have exhausted all options, the genius in one of my friends , Muthu, awoke.

"India should attack and capture Bangladesh tonite. No matter what happens India would be playing in the super 8 then."

March Madness

2007-03-25T12:22:00.000-05:00

I hate March. It always makes me mad and sad!

This month was supposed to be exciting. World cup will start. I was thinking of how to get time off work to be able to watch matches. I am sure there were millions around the world who had made plans to have all nighters to watch the games and somehow still be productive the next day at work.

The "Men in Blue" made it all too simple for all of us. They got out in the first round itself so that Indians wont lose that much sleep and continue to work with as much zeal and enthusiasm as possible.

It is not that they lost but the way in which they surrendered which dissapointed me. I recently read an article about how in a match that was all but lost Brett Lee gave it all into his feilding making englishmen work for runs in a match which they had almost won. And this makes you feel Australia is not just number 1 for no reason. Those guys try that much harder to be where they are. I always feel a team's dedication is shown in the field. Indians fielded like zombies and the team spirit was clearly missing. I am not a big Ganguly fan but one thing that is clearly missing in this team and that of the team when Ganguly initially took over is this zeal. Seeing Dravid field at long on in the 48th over was torture when he gave up a chase where two runs were there for saving. He did not even try. He had cramps - yeah then go to pavalion and sit it out man or field in the inner circle but please dont be fielding in logon in the death overs.

The less said about our batting the better it is. I am just so tired of listening to the cliched line that this is the most powerful batting line up after Australia. No it is not. Tendulkar is not what he used to be. He is a great player for what he has already achieved but not because of the way he is playing. There are so many other player who on current form are better than Tendulkar. Sehwag is lottery - I think Dravid's decision to back him up when he has shown so less potential in 2 years was a bad bad thing for india. Dravid is a good player but not destructive. Ganguly played well but never looked assured or dominating. The only hope in the batting order was Yuvi getting into the form of last year which made him so dangerous. He was there but got run out against SL. Dhoni, I dont know where to put him yet. He looks like Sehwag. The day he loses his form he most probably cant come back.

I was slowly losing my enthusiam in cricket and I should thank this performance on Indian team which has definitely pushed me over the line and I dont think I will an as avid follower of cricket as I was.

Also before ending I would like to express my pitty for Barbados which was supposed to get a lot of revenue coz of the exciting India matches being played there. I still dont know whether its worth it to go to carribean and watch bangladesh vs ireland for which I have tickets.

This much for the mad month of March.

life adapts

2007-02-03T18:54:00.000-05:00

While in school I remember answering one question, in different forms, in many science exams - list the five things necessary for orgination of life , List the features of earth that make life possible etc. I always answered it rightly clearly noting down the temperature, distance from sun, water, the right amount of gravity as different reasons but always inside me there used to be this excitement about what if this is not true and living things very different from us dependent on very different elements existed somewhere else and by chance someday we get to interact with them.

Science has now changed its views regarding this subject (either this or my school books always taught me the wrong thing!) and now scientists are starting to believe that it is not that earth has conditions suitable for life but that life somehow originated and then adapted itself to this environment. This view has gained more support after discovery of some very weird species on earth itself - like one discovered in the vents near the ocean bed which has a temperature gradient of over 100 degrees over its body.

While discussing this with a collegue of mine, he told me a fascinating thing. He said it did not come as a surprise to him and he always thought so. And as part of his reasoning asked me why do I think are air and water colorless, odourless and tasteless - because we have got used their color, odour and taste and cant sense them anymore. So if earth would have been full of ammonia instead we would not have smelled it and normal air would have been stinking as hell!

Inducted into work

2006-10-03T18:56:00.000-05:00

Somehow I was not excited about my first day at office. Though it turned out to be pretty exciting as they did not know that I am joining them. The two HRs who knew about my joining were on vaccation and the HR head did not know any thing about me as I was hired when he was on vaccation.

One lady gives me some papers and asks me to fill them out and tells me that the HR head will meet me after some time.

HR( to another hire who joined on the same day as me): Hey! good to see you at last!
(Then turning to me) : oh Saurav..you are not supposed to be here!!! Did we hire you?

Me: oh yes!! I have the offer letter.
I give it to him.

HR: okay you know what. You are supposed to sign this and send it back to us so that we know that you accepted our offer.

me: I did send it to you and have a mail acknowledging its receipt.

HR: oh! I guess then you must have been hired. Welcome aboard.
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After that there has been not much work. I am doing some self training. I guess I should enjoy these days as much as I can. I think I will be on a project from next week. My schedule till then is reach office read some stuff, go for lunch and try out the snacks that they have in office which includes M&Ms. Ispe golu ne kaha "sale tu kaam nahin kar raha hai..mere se jyada salary kama raha hai..upar se tujhe free M&Ms miltey hain!! this is not fair."

But I think golu and life both have never been fair hence no complains.

ps: Dont dont mention company name in comments. I dont want to get into any trouble for blogging.

Good bye

2006-09-27T12:42:00.000-05:00

No this is not my last post on this blog!! It is just that this is the last blog as a student. I will be starting a job from this monday and it is so scary. I hope I would have time to blog from next week.

Getting out of the comfort zone of the city and friends is so difficult. I guess once I settle down things will be good or even better as I am moving into NYC from baltimore. :)

ta from graduate panda

(this post was written last week and i just forgot to publish it. I have already started working now)

Love does not cost a thing

2006-09-03T13:18:00.000-05:00

The traffic was really bad. Everybody had been blocked and nobody knew why. Vehicles were just moving like snails. And Gautam sat in taxi cursing himself. He would surely lose her. He tried calling her again but the same result - "The number you have called is either switched off or out of range. Please try calling later." He started getting restless. Why the hell did he have to wait for the last minute of her leaving India to tell her how much he loved her.

"Yaar, kahin se is road se nikal kar short cut nahin le sakatey kya? Mujhe jaldi airport pahunchana hai."
"kya boltey saab? Idar se kidarku jate. sab jahag se blocked hai. Nikalnaich muskhil hai."

His could feel his heart sinking. He had lost her.

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Gautam's and ishita's story had been like a movie. They both knew each other from school. Gautam could not remember from what time he had been friends with her. As far as he could remember she had always been with him. Was it love at first sight. He doesn't know. He could not remember when exactly he started feeling as if she is not just a friend but something more than that. Dammit!! He still did not know if she shared his feelings.

Gautam's father Mr. Singania was one of the richest industrialist in town. Gautam had always been in awe of his father. His mother had died when he was 5 and since then Mr. Singhania had been his father and mother. Though a busy man he had always tried to be there for his son when he needed him. Although Gautam was never satisfied with his dad, but he always knew he was trying hard. And he also knew that to his dad success and money were very important.

And this had been the problem between him and Ishita. Ishita was from a middle class family, her dad being a government employee. For all her good looks and manners, Ishita had no hunger to prove herself professionally which meant she never tried hard and ended up as a software professional in a small company. Now Mr. Singhania's expectations from his daughter-in-law were much more than that.

Before revealing his heart's feelings Gautam wanted to make sure his dad would approve of Ishita. His worst fears came true when his dad simply put his foot down on the issue. Ishita did not deserve to be in their family.

"How could you even think of her in such a way, Gautam? Look at her family and look at us. Our status is no match for them"

"Dad! try to understand me. I love her."

"Some day you will realise son that all these feelings come to nothing. They are worthless in real life. Money and status are the most important things, and I am trying to get a girl for you who would bring both of them in abundance to our family"

"Someday you will realise how wrong are you? You have been blinded by money's power. Love stands over everything. Your money can buy many material things but can never buy love."

"See, lets stop all this. You wanted to know what I feel about Ishita and I have told you that. Rest is upto you."
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His father's strong denial weakened Gautam. He thought about this for a long time. He could not talk to Ishita cause he could not stand in front of her without expressing his feelings. And as hard as he tried he could not go against his dad's wishes. He was getting torn in this situation of indecisiveness.

But all changed the day Ishita was to leave. He made up his mind. Heart won over head. Love over money and status. And he decided to tell everything to Ishita and stop her from going away from him. All the events from past two weeks were running though his mind but when he looked around, nothing had changed. His taxi was not moving. He got desparate. He looked at watch and realised it was the time for Ishita's flight. He had lost her forever. And he sat in the taxi weeping and waited for the traffic to clear up so that he could go home.

"Hey, do you know what? I missed my flight. I got caughtup in this stupid traffic jam and now shall have to wait till tomorrow for next flight. I reached home and realised you had called me up. whats up with you yaar..where have you been..did not want to see me before I leave?? "

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"Sir, heard about your son's engagement!! congratulations.."
"Yeah, yeah thanks...you know young generation. Can not walk two steps in real life and think they understand what love is. But thats all right, after all he is my son."
"Sir, the travel agent had called. He is demanding twice the charge saying you used up the trucks for double the time of what he had agreed on. What do you want me to do?"
"Ha, give him whatever he wants? Those trucks bought my son his love!!"

Non-representation

2006-08-29T23:18:00.000-05:00

Hmm..so this is going to be a boring post..but it will raise a few questions regarding the bill passed by Lok sabha to have reservations for OBCs in institutes of higher education.

So how long exactly did it take for these politicains to pass this bill..some months..

Okay..how long have you guys been hearing about a women quota bill ?? I have sure been hearing about it for ages....Can you think of a reason why it is taking so long to pass..yes because it directly affects these politicains..many of them are sure to lose their main source of income if this bill is passed as they themselves will be out of Lok Sabha...seriously this is a case of democracy being hijacked by a group a old farts who have taken complete control of our democracy..

Next question....what percentage of population over 18 is under 25?? I havent tried to find out but since India's median age is 24, I suspect it is a huge percentage..And how many elected representatives are below 25..I dont know of any?? Guys we are the non-representated section of the society..the most neglected ones..

And this exactly is the reason why this bill has passed so easily and this issue has been handled so recklessly because the people who are most affected by it are not representated in the parliament!!

Is this war really against terrorism or for it?

2006-08-22T06:42:00.000-05:00

When the leaders of many countries gathered recently for a meeting to increase cooperation among states to fight against terrorism, they ran into a big problem -they could not agree on the definition of "who is a terrorist?". As is true about life someone's hero is always someone's villian.

Anyways presently the west defines terrorists as the Islamic Jihadis. And war against terrorism is defined as war in Afganistan and Iraq, trying to exterminate the islamist extremist. But I would say it is these sort of wars that create more terrorists. These wars not only lead to hatred against the west in the young minds because of all the destruction caused but also creates more people who have lost everything in their life - parents, children, house, property, happiness. It is these sort of people who have nothing to lose who are most dangerous. The seeds of rise in suicide attacks can be traced back to these wars. Closely inspected these wars are actually not against terrorism but are supporting it by churning out more probable terrorists.

Just look at the present scenario between Israel and Lebanon. Just after Hizbollah had kidnapped two Israeli soldiers a survey showed majority of Lebanese condemming Hizbollah. One month, thousands of dead Lebanese, several bombed cities and a complete shutdown of economy later another survey states, dont be surprised, a majority thinks Hizbollah did the right thing. Now Hizbollah has more prospective suicide bombers to recruit from. The faster these countries realise it the better it is for the world.

Just Imagine this scenario - if Lebanon had been as prosporous as Israel and if there would have been a huge economic dependence between the two, do you think this situation would have arose. I don't. Coz people on both sides would have had lot to lose in case of war and they would have forced the their countries against such a situation.

Similarly, I think a war against terrorism should be one that cuts of the supply chains of the terrorist organizations. Supply cahins not of arms and ammunition but of human resources, of 'having-lost-all-lets-destroy-others-kind-of -minds'. That can happen only if everybody in the world has somethign to lose that they love. As convoluted as it might sound the best for Israel should be to help Lebanon build its economy. Pump money into Lebanon so that there are more industries. Make it easier for Lebanese to come and look for work in Israel. I dont think many Lebanese would support Hizbollah's suicide bombings in Israel if many of their own loved ones stay across the border. Best for US would be to stop spending money trying to hunt Osama (and in process killing innocent people) and try to build the economy of Afganistan and Iraq.

One pakistani ex-military man was once qouted - "I think we should start a nuclear war with India. We would destroy them. India might bomb us but I am sure the amount of destruction they would cause would be less than the price of their nuclear bomb. Also, I am sick of seeing hungry children on our streets. It is better that they die instead of living such a life." So Indian government should also get a clue from this. And things are actually easier in here because there is already so much dependence across the two countries. So many people have relatives across the borders.

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This same logic scaled down to within cities can give you a good idea that rise in crime in cities shows a huge correlation with socio-economic disparity. There has been a increase in incidence of crime in bangalore in India and I would put it down to the large influx of people into the city looking for jobs but actually not getting it. In hyderabad police are surprised at the rise in percentage of educated people in crime. Reason: There are particular jobs which pay much higher than others for same educational qualification leading to economic disparity. And hence to match there fellow graduates in living standards some people have resorted to crime. (Crime does pay well!!) Though it is difficult to suggest a good solution to this problem.
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ps: I am just curious who are the persons from Omaha, Nebraska and Nellore , AP who check my blog very frequently. Would be nice if you guys could leave a comment or two so that I know who you are:).

Sister-$&#*#$

2006-07-30T15:25:00.000-05:00

what is common in Ares-Pujuju, Shib-sekki, Mother- fucker, madar-chod ...

yes, they all mean someone who has sex with his own mother in different languages. As is my inquisitive self, I have always wondered about different swear words from different cultures. Other guys are also always interested in such topics. Everytime I have had exchange of such knowledge one thing has surprised all of them - "Behen-chod". Apparently this swear word exists only in our sub-continent.

Now After many such discussions obviously I began to think of reasons. One reason that actually sounds logical to me is that maybe they do not consider it as an insult. Isn't it quite reasonable that people would use as swear words, only things that actually are insulting and hurt the other person. Nobody gets insulted if you tell them -"wife-fucker". So, maybe Incest is not quite frowned upon in these cultures hence sister-fucker is not insulting and hence no swear word as such.

After Golu's comment I can think of a more logical reason. As he says that there is higher probability of insulting someone by saying "mother-fucker" as everyne has moms but few people do not have sisters. Now in India the probability of a guy having a sister is also very high. (rakhi fundaes) Hence the probability of you insulting someone with "sister-fucker" is also very high which leads to its more common usage.

Now all this was just a preview to what I actually wanted to jot down. It was another debate with the same labmate with whome I had a debate over accents.

LM: hey, you guys are pretty creative with your swear words.
Me: Now I still do not understand why sister-fucker is creative.
LM: Man!! it is not english.
Me: What?
LM: Yes, sister-fucker is just combination of two english words. But it means nothing.
Me: And mother-fucker!! what about that?
LM: That is an accepted english vocabulary. It is a slang and everybody understands it.
Me: You mean if I go around in US saying sister-fucker to people, they will not react!!!!
LM: Yes, they will look at you funny coz this word means nothing.
Me: Balls to you man..I am sure the word is pretty self explanatory.
LM: It is like say...ummm..ball-kicker. It is two english words and means someone who kicks balls. But it is not english as it is ambigous.
Me: I can bet with you that if I go asking on this road to all persons if they understand sister-fucker, allmost all will exactly know what I am speaking off. There will be no ambiguity that you are speaking off..
LM: I just know it is not english. It means nothing!!
Me: Okay, Indian subcontinent takes pride in giving english a new word - "Sister-fucker". If anybody does not understand what it means you can ask any Indian around you.

travelogue

2006-07-26T21:24:00.000-05:00

BWI - Neewark

The only thing I can say is do not fly US airways unless you realy like joy rides. I had resorted to ramramramram...maramaramaramara in between. The most jerky flight experience for me in those small aircrafts.

Neewark-Mumbai

Everytime I travel, I hope that this time my fate will be like SRK or Aamir or goddamn any hero and there will be a nice, beautiful, cute or MSR (golu's favorite type) next to me and my flight will be over in no time...I will spend the entire time talking to her...she will turn out to be a Oriya (I know it's far fetched, but if I were to dream why not dream for the most ideal situation!!)..We will exchange phone nubmers..baat aage badhegi and blah blah blah..

The important thing is this never happens and I end up cursing all the movie makers of the world..I enter the waiting area for my flight and in the entire space there was just one good looking girl (GLG)..now the probability of her sitting next to me is very acute (for your info Boeing 747 has 385 EC, 24 BC, and 12 first class seats...you can do the calculations...if not then you are intellectually not developed enough to be reading my blog!!)..Thats why I did not feel very bad when next to me, sat a fat dark gulti girl...I took out "A heart-breaking work of staggering genious" and started reading it..

The next few lines will describe situation in a Air India flight..

Guy 1: I can already see it is going to be a bad flight..I can not stand this smell..Air India sucks..
(The bathroom stinks..it did not help that I was on the row just next to bathroom)

Air plane announcement: Please remain seated, pull your chair to upright position, we are about to take off.

Many people still continue to open the over head luggage compartment, some are walking I do not know why?? May be they wanted to get out..the crew should have simply thrown them out but instead they went to each one of them and politely explained them the situation..after two three iterations everybody was seated and then the plane took off..

Air plane announcement: We are arriving at Paris. We have a 1.5 hours stopover here. The passengers who are with us till bombay are kindly asked to remain seated. Please do not use the toilet during this time as crew is coming up to clean it and the water pressure will be not there for some time for flushing.

As soon as the plane lands, people queue outside the toilets. As I was next to the toilet I was very scared. If flushing does not work I will have to deal with the smell. Any ways people use it..flush does not work. They have to call up people to fix it. The take off is delayed.

The guy next to me aptly put the whole situation in words.."If you ask an Indian not to think of Pink elephant, he will think of a nice pink elephant"..I dont know why he chose pink elephant but I agreed wit him.

The clean-up team which had come up to clean the plane was also pretty mad because people kept roaming around affecting their efficiency..It did not help that they did not know english..

After a long time (at least it seemed like a very very long time) the plane landed in Mumbai..Again everybody started taking off their stuff from the over head cabin before the plane had come to a halt...people were trying to get out as quickly as possible..In between there was this female cursing Indian mentality saying she should be allowed to leave first as she is with an infant..started praising How other air-lines take care of it..middle age whinning females are very irritating..

Any ways I get out and, whoa!! the GLG is standing right next to me..But from close up I saw that she is not that maal..I was happy that I actually did not go through the pain of calculating the probability of sitting next to me and it would have been worthless..

Bombay-Hyderabad

Very short flight..though it was delayed bt 50 minutes..But the most painful part of flight to India is the baggage claim..This was the third time and never has it taken less than an hour..there was a guy from Suadi Arabia, who was very frustated and kept saying in saudi arabia it takes only 5 mins..I want to be proud of India and being Indian but these things are kind of reality check..

The only satisfaying thing after all this is that I get home and have a nice cup of tea with my dad and we talk about my new born nephew who I am going to see this weekend or early next week..

Accent

2006-07-17T19:58:00.000-05:00

I was having lunch with my labmate. We were having random converstaions with topics ranging from Iran's president, MRI, zidane head butting materazzi......asihwarya rai..It was then I mentioned to him how she had a strong american accent during the CBS interview and also added she has that while talking to indian reporters too and that pisses me off..

Suddenly my labmate's facial expression changed to the one that Joey has when he tries to multiply 13 with 11 or some numbers like that, basically you guys get me right..

LabMate: hang on..hang on..what did you say -- american accent!!
Me: Yes, the accent with which americans in general and you in particular speak.
LM: No man, I do not have an accent.
Me: Dude any creature who speaks has a language and an accent.
LM: No man..This is the reference accent. You can say some people have northen accent, some have southern but I have no accent.
Me: yes, exactly you have a general american accent.
LM(Now visibly irritated): No man, this is the way english is supposed to be spoken. You have an accent. An Indian accent.
Me: Yes, I have an accent and I do not see the need to change my accent according to some american's needs unless I am doing buissness with him/her and my interaction is necessary. Since I am in america, I put in extra effort to understand you and try to speak in a way that you guys can understand. If you were to be in India it will be otherway around.
LM: No man. This is the correct way of talking in english and you guys should try to speak like this instead of critisizing the lady who is trying her best to do the correct thing.
Me(Must have an utterly amazed and angry look): Shut up man. There is nothing called correct accent. Language consists of grammar and pronounication but not accent. Go and ask any linguist.
LM: Man!! you are getting too technical
Me: !@##$$%%%^^^
LM: Lets ask people around. I am sure everybody wants to speak english the way I speak. (cleverly not using the word accent!!) In Korea I am sure people will pay me to learn to speak english this way.
Me: Is english a main language in Korea.
LM: No.
Me: Now it makes sense. There is no english hence when they try to learn obviously they try to go for the most global accent(hats off to spectacular hollywood movies.).
LM: No man. I am sure Indians will also try to speak like this. If not they should start doing it. Americans define english.
Me(I must be shouting by now): Bullshit!! In that case only english people can say that they have the right accent and even they talk to each other saying you have yorkshire accent and stuff...never say you guys invented english. English was introduced to Indians before it existed here. And Indians learn to speak english from their childhood.
LM(Now completely at loss of words): You mean people talk english in daily lives in India.
Me(By now exhausted with excitment): Yes man. And thats why we have our own accent cause we speak like that from our childhood. We do not have to learn "how to speak english" from americans.
LM: man, whatever I do not have an accent. I define the reference accent as the most prevelant accent in the world. Something has to be the basis.
Me: You might be shooting yourself in your own foot. I am not sure but there might be more Indians speaking english than the population of americans who speak with your accent.
LM: fuck off man..you understand what I mean. Let me change the definition as the basis is the accent which is prevelant in highest percentage population of any country.
Me: First of all you just can not define things as you like. Second, again maybe australia or england beats you in that coz they have less immigrants.
LM: Thats it man. Our definitions are different. Both of us are correct in our own ways. We spend so much time debating such random topics.
Me: Yeah, We could not convince each other over such a trivial matter. Think about when countries have differences in opinions!!! Anyways man you should know that anybody who speaks any thing has to have a language and and accent. Go and ask any linguist.
LM:@@##$#$%$

I really get entertained debating with this labmate of mine. Do not make any conclusions regarding him just on the basis of this blog. He is a very nice guy at heart. The guilt conscience in me makes me write this as he has been very helpful to me in lab and here I am making fun of him.

Is necessity really the mother of invention??

2006-06-30T18:29:00.000-05:00

During my trip to India I read the book "Guns, Germs and Steel". A very interesting book which analyzes why it was europeans who conquered the whole world rather than the other way around. One of the most interesting arguements in the book was about how inventions are more due to environment rather than just the random genious of a person. Also how there have been many inventions which actually were not made for the specific purposes they are used now a days.(steam engines were not made because all of a sudden rail transport became necessary!!) For example we always learn about how Edison invented incadescent lamp but do you know there were 18 patents on it already. Not taking any thing away from Edison, he made a tiny improvement. The time of invention is very important. When Edison invented it in US electricity distribution was also just picking up hence his invention became a house hold thing. Hence they quickly found a use for it rahter than some necessity leading to the invention. I saw a immediate parallel in the market of online search engines. There was a search engine before google came but at that time net itself was not big enough to support such things. Later google came and we know what it has done to us. So big inventions are actually small additions to existing systems and somehow find a ready application. This process is fecilitated by good communication among competition which happened to be "just right" in europe during the 17-19th century.

Interestingly there are examples when very big inventions died out because there were no use quickly found for them. The most surprising casuality happens to be "writting". Writting came into Roman civilization and became extinct because they apparantely found no use for it. :) It had to be invented again :)). Also the earliest printing press excavated was from some BC. Though it was a very primitive one used to print on the tablets but still the idea was right. But it again died down because writting and reading was prevelant among a select top tier of society and it was mostly used to keeping records and hence no need for many copies.

In Da Club main Jayein

2006-04-21T09:04:00.000-05:00

This is a pretty common thing to dismiss remixes as no-music. The general thinking is that DJs do nothing but take nice old songs and just put dancing beats into them. Maybe one reason for all this is that every Tom-Dick and Harry is coming out with his remix album and the few good ones get lost in somewhere.

I always liked remixed music. Few of my favorites being "Dil kya kare" and "Bahon mein chale aao" by Instant karma. But as with anything untill you actually do it, you never realise how much skill and hard work goes into these things. So I went ahead and made one myself!! ( yeah ,yeah.. I can already hear- here goes another Tom..)

It was not me alone and one of my experienced friends "Kitty"out here at Hopkins helped me out. (help => He did it as I watched!!) First you have to choose two songs which can be remixed. Then you have to figure out exactly which parts of the song can actually be mixed. Chalk out the parts where you think the beats can never match. Then increasing and decreasing of tempo to match the two songs. We used garage band software to do all the DJing. My friend always wanted to remix the "Kissi Disco mein jayein" song and I suggested "In Da Club" to him. After listening to them once we made up our mind - "In Da Club Main Jayein" was to become reality. After some 4 -5 hours of playing, mixing and matching different parts, we had this version. It was so much fun and also I got to appreciate the art of DJing even more.

Does this help anybody?

2006-04-17T07:22:00.001-05:00

Recently the HRD ministry in India made known its desire to have 49% reservation for ST and SCs in institutions of higher education (IOHE). It came as a shock to me and I can not understand how can anybody in the world justify this. So I am going ahead and putting down logical arguements against the ones used my the goverment while comming up with such policies.

1) Education is important for everybody and since ST and SCs figure with lowest literacy percentage they should be given reservation.

Education is important for everybody hence make sure there are more schools so that everybody can get free education. IOHEs should intake students solely based on merit.

2) The higher cast are monetarily better off hence have other resources to benifit from while preparing for exams for these insitutions.

Now this is one thing that comes up very regularly. I strongly oppose this statement. First, Its not always that higher cast people are monetarily better off and have better resources. If you want to help the poorer people act at a more basic level i.e. have reservations for economically backward groups (EBG) and not socially backward (SBG) ones.

Infact, I can go ahead and say that if you do have to give reservations then it should be for people coming from villages. This is so because I feel its not money but the resources which affect preparation to enter into these IOHE. And even the the EBGs in cities have access to better resources than rich people in village.

But inspite of all this I feel these people should be helped with resources and money rather than just giving reservation to them. Take all the groups of the scoiety to a level ground and after that it should be competition. The way its being done now, the country gets worser engineers, doctors and researchers and the brighter ones get bogged down. I would say it also affects the brighter students among the reserved castes. I am sure they would not work as hard if they know their chances of getting into these institutions is very high.

** Also I would argue that its a general trend that ST and SCs are always economically more backward. Actually Ithink its funny for a such a statement to arise in a country like India where Ambani's, Premiji's and Tata's exist. Wow!! not one of them happens to be from higher cast.

3) Even after 60 years of reservation ST and SCs are still backward communities hence percentage of reservations should increase.

I will try to argue against this with two points. One, actually if you see there is a class of SCs and STs who have benifitted from these policies more than other. Take the case of the first generation who benifitted from these policies, the family has come up both socially and economicaly but the children still use these policies and are benifitted a great deal.

So within the reserved castes there is skewed competition. Obviously the huge percentage of reserved catogories are still backward because they have to compete with the developed half of their own for the reserved seats and no doubt they lose. So the ones who have benifitted from these policies long back are continuing to exploit it whereas the new ones can do nothing but just watch and ponder why even after so many steps by their lovable government they are still backward.

****I would have no problems with these reservation plicies if there is an added clause that if one or two generations of a family has benifitted from these pollicies then they are no longer eligible for reserved seats and jobs.

Second arguement is - yes, if something has not worked for 50 years dont you think that may be because there is inherently a flaw in the policy or its implementation and we should try to find that out rahter than still conitnuing it.

I dont know about all of you out there but I seriously get very upset with the whole thing beacuase I can not voice my opinions in a valid forum where somebody hears to them and answers me. Please leave comments about this situation, write your own opinions and may be later these can be compiled and sent over to some better forum.

"Hey, nobody died!! "

2006-04-01T20:08:00.000-05:00

I am talking about the last test match between India and England at Mumbai. Yes, Dravid chooses to ball first, Tendulkar failed twice, Dhoni played what may be termed as the worst possible shot in that situation, and the famed Indian batting order collapsed in 15 overs after lunch.

The Indian fans and journalists take out Indian cricket team's obitury. Sachin Tendulkar was booed!! And such a hue and cry was raised all for a small game of cricket and that too a not so significant match....

Just to put things in perspective, lets go back to WC 1999. Yes, I am going to talk about the greatest ODI match ever played. The semi-finals between Australia and SA. Lance Klusener who had till then played as if he is GOD took SA to all but one run from victory when Donald was run out going for the winning run. Match was tied and SA was out of the World Cup in which arguably they had been the best team. Forget all that, there was one person who didnt deserve to be on any losing side that world cup - Lance Klusener. And in the post match conferance when journalists were waiting for some philosophical statement from the dejected Lance guess what he says - "Hey, nobody died!!"

I guess the fans also should realise it is after all just a game. Enjoy it while it goes on and then forget about it.

What a relief

2006-01-29T10:19:00.000-05:00

I was in india for close to a month and hadn’t watched a hindi movie in theater. It was a relief that at last I watched two movies last week and was happy to see the kind of hindi movies being made.

Rang de basanti…I think a must watch…a combination of dil chahata hai, the legend of bhagat singh and Yuva..so u guys can imagine..There are some hard hitting and thought provking lines in this movie. After watching such movies you feel like stop cribbing and rather than wanting a change, be the change that you want to see in society around you.

The other movie that I saw was Zinda..The thing I liked about the movie is it’s originality and very unpredictable twists. Also the casting was great with Sanjat Dutt and John Abraham fitting their characters very well.

Of later there have been a spat of very original movies being made in hindi. Iqbal, Hanuman and 15 park avenue to quote a few.

yeh duniya ek rangmanch hai....

2006-01-27T02:23:00.000-05:00

Actor I. S. Johar was passing through the town of bargarh (Orissa) in his car when he was abruptly stopped by this man who seemed to jump straight out of 18^th or 17^th century. Dressed in princely clothes he stopped the car and asked Mr. Mukherjee to pay 1000 gold coins as penalty for trespassing through his territory. As large men looking like the King's bodyguards gathered around the car Mr. Mukherjee panicked and started pleading his case. When some of the city residents saw this they started laughing and one of them explained to Mr. Mukherjee how he was now a character of the play being organized in the town.

Welcome to "Dhanu Yatra". It is a festival celebrated over 11 days where a common man takes over the role of the great demon king Kansa. He rules the city (Bargarh becomes Mathura) for all these days and can call upon anyone onto his court during this time. (The actor knows his limitations though) There is no line written as he just wanders in the town and punishes and rewards people based on his wisdom. A Huge court is erected for his evening court sessions with his ministers where he discusses state affairs. He calls upon many well known personalities who are then placed as accused or guests in his court. The evening I attended the festival, the unlucky ones were two politician brothers- one is the MP and one is the MLA of Sambalpur. They were brought on elephant and it was funny to see their uncomfortable faces.

A nearby village is turned into Gopapur, where Little Krishna does all his Bal-Leela. The festival ends with the annihilation of the demon king in the hands of Krishna. That day the whole city mourns the death of their king and infact it falls on a day which is celebrated all over India but this city weeps. Traditions are sometimes so amazing. I dont think any other thing comes close to the famous lines from movie anand - "yeh duniya ek rangmanch hai aur hum sab iski kathputaliyan!"

Edge??

2005-12-18T16:58:00.000-05:00

friday: Hmm..nice shall celebrate PST's bday watch match and mug for Matrix analysis. Start image processing tomorrow.

saturday: Image processing is easy..will do it tomorrow..Let me do timepass listening to songs and watching stupid movies like "Fitfth element"

late on sunday afternoon: Fuck yeh kya hai? mid sem ke pahele to bahut easy tha..yeh sab kab padhaya usne.. Oh!! shit mein to mid sem ke baad kabhi class hi nahin gaya...

I went into a deep NBD state..and started mugging...by monday afternoon I almost gave up..but somehow kept studying and went to the exam room...I was so nervous that I started laughing in the exam room...Yeah I do that when I am freaked out..How can I ditch this exam? How can I convince the prof to grade me on my mid term? I was thinking all this when the question paper was given to me and it looked very very easy...I started doing the problems quickly...

I had reached as far as the 2nd question when I got stuck and realised I dont know somethings that I need to know..The question was to localise an edge ...forget the technicalities and read on what happened after that...

I walk upto the prof..

Me: Sir, I don't see an edge in this function. Its derivative exists everywhere.

Prof: Oh no! think about the general definition of edge ..

Me: !@#$%^&

Prof: I had discussed it in class...do you remember Marr-Hildreth algorithm!!

Me: Oh yes!! got it. The one with pyramidal decomposition..

Prof: (With a smiling face) Ohh! noooo....Try to remember. It's easy and I have almost(!!!) given you the answer.

(After solving all the other questions xcept one)

Me: I kind of forgot the definition of the unconstrained restoration. Can you jsut remind me. (I dont think I have ever played so much on my luck :))

Prof: Oh what do you think you have to do?

Me: Sir, do "some junk".

Prof : Exactly !! thats write jsut write it down..

Me: thanks..hesitantly..(by now actually embarassed at myself for being so cheap)coming back to the edge problem...I can not remember Mar-Hildreth algorithm.

Prof: Oh..okay..what do you think you have to do to detect edges.

Me: Sir, Are you talking about the thing where we smoothen the image using....hmm... gaussian and then take ...err ..laplacian operatorrr...

Prof: (very excited!!) Exactly!!..(He seemed to be more happy on me being able to crack the funda.) Now since this is one dimensional problem what would be the Laplacian..

Me: (By now completely it ease with a thinking that even if I dont get it he will definitely tell me the solution) Second derivative?? so I jsut take smoothen using Gaussian and then take second derivative?

Prof: Actaully no need to use the Gaussian. That whole thing is another algorithm which uses this method. To localise the edge you just have to take second derivative and then find ..

Me: zero crossing. Okay thanks for your help.

This must have been one of the most funny exams ever taken by me. Anyways the moral of the story is always ask questions if you don't know something, be shameless and never give up ...

Paying the price of forgetting my nationality!!

2005-11-21T23:15:00.000-05:00

If you are an Indian here is a big suggestion. "Never forget that you are an Indian, try to be cool and go and play flag football".Golu did his bit and tried to remind me so much that my body is made only to play cricket and not physical sports like amru futball. But I was like "koi farak nahin painda". Par farak to padata hi hai bhai.. Here is the result of the tournament.

matches played: 2
result: lost both

my contribution: I was a receiver and the game plan was to fake first and then run towards th post and the Quater back throws a long pass. I did the same, out-ran the guy covering me, jumped high up and caught the ball above my shoulders. In the mean time all the defence team was on me but I still heroically dogdged them and when they almost brought me down I jumped and stretched myself full length to get a spectacular touch down and in the process i badly injured my knee badly.

OK..this is what I would have liked the story to be!!!! In reality I was running , turned back to see where the ball is and I don't know how I had twisted my body that when my right foot touched ground I heard kat-kat and thats it. I ended up with a badly sprained knee, missed two days of lab (I dont exactly regret it), got bored and started writting blogs again.

But seriously it is fun :D :D Especially when you go for practise and your american friends talk like "hey!! Panda is natural man" ;) Don't fall for all this crap and just go and do what you are good at - play cricket!!

Anyways guys have a nice thanks giving break!!! Njoy the turkey with your family!!

The return of GOD!!

2005-10-27T12:40:00.000-05:00

Maharoof drops the ball a little short, the batsman shifts his balance a little from front to backfoot and almost effortlessly picks up and pulls the ball for a mighty six. And you can surely say "GOD is back".

Yes! it was Sachin's first innings in like 6 months and what a innings it was. It was not as much as how many runs he scored but in what way he scored them. You could see the old tendulkar in there. The tendulkar of 90's. The tendulkar whoes arrival at the crease used to make the whole nation stop. There has been lot of debates about who is the best batsman of modern era and how Tendulkar can't be it for the lack of match winning knocks to his credit. How he fails under pressure while chasing. If you leave the numbers out for sometime and try to name the batsman watching whom gave you the most pleasure then I am sure Tendulkar would be right up there. And coming to numbers he isnt bad either. He has 51 man-of-the-match awards(ODI) and 29 have come while India was chasing. Infact I think Sachin can have a Phd in how to chase totals of 200-250 in one-day games!!

Anyways when India plays SA tomorrow, Tendulkar would become the most capped player in the history of ODI. Hats off to this run machine for providing us entertainment for over 15 years now!! And to think of it he is just 32. I just hope he bats this way till he retires!!

trivia: Who is the only current batsman whoes test strike rate is not on records??
ans: TENDULKAR !! Yes, among current cricketers he is the most experienced. And when he started paying innings length (in tests) was still measured by minutes rather than no. of balls faced. So his strike rate can not be caculated !!

One night in the lockup

2005-10-23T16:23:00.000-05:00

"One night in the lockup and your lives will change for ever"

At 3am in the morning these words were uttered by a cop to me and my roommates and that resulted in the end of the fun party we had at our place - the house warming. I had heard that term a lot here and to me this sounded more fun than the more familiar "Gruh-Pravesham Pooja". So when we moved into our new house we decided to throw a house warming party.

It required some convincing to make PST (the old daddu of our house) agree to the idea. Then it was a case of just calling all your friends and we ended with a 80-odd strong list. While buying alcohol for the party my room-mates were very excited to discover what they call "daru ka walmart". Daddu was for a change happy that we were having the party...

The day came and it was all going as expected ..the house was crowded...alcohol flowed..nice music playing...the old cranky neighbor complaining about the noise..and then it happened!! Golu got drunk..now the guys who have seen him drunk will understand the impact he has on a gathering while he is drunk..He had a big "panchayat session" and it was lot of fun..and while all this was going on our neighbor kept complaining and calling the cops, the cops arrived once to warn us, hopkins security came and asked us to make sure nobody is outside so that we dont get into trouble, the cops came again and thought we were not making enough noise. But then our neighbours persistence paid of and the cops decided to stop our party at 2:30 am. And after getting all the guests out of the house the cop came up with the line while asking us not to repeat this mistake -

" You guys know right!! One night in lock-up and your lives will change for ever"

The funny thing was the affect this had on golu. Just two minutes ago this person couldn't stand on his feet and now was in total control of himself. After the cops left he was like "man this is the best medicine to get of high"...

Ashes!!

2005-08-30T21:09:00.000-05:00

This years Ashes has been by far the most dramatic series of all times. If there is anyone reading this blog who doesn't know what cricket is then they should definitely follow this series and I am sure they will be addicted. The third test I think was the best. Till the last two hours of play in the test all the four results were possible. I think a draw was just fair as neither of the teams deserved to loose. But here is a incident during the fianal stages which amazed me.

"Before Stephen Harmison started the final over Stuart MacGill rushed out to tell Glenn McGrath to bat a metre out of his crease to reduce the chances of him being given out lbw. What MacGill forgot to tell the fast bowler - why are we always portrayed as being dumb? - was to get back in your crease once the ball had been bowled.

McGrath lurched forward to smother the second ball of Harmison's over but missed it, and Geraint Jones, the wicketkeeper, threw the ball to Matthew Hoggard, who was standing next to the stumps. Thankfully - it would have been a totally immoral way to win a match of this stature - Hoggard chose not to break the stumps, but this did not prevent MacGill feeling that he had almost cost his team a Test match."

Now if australia win the final test and draw the series they will keep the Ashes and somewhere in the bottom of Hoggard's heart he must feel guilty about it. Infact I think this article shouldn't have been published as it puts his live in danger in that senario. Personally I also think it was stupid of him if he did that. Thats a way of getting a batsman out and it is not immoral at all to use it.

Trivia: Did you guys know that all tests in England start on thursdays. There have been only three exceptions in history so far!

Will we ever grow up?

2005-08-30T20:02:00.000-05:00

August 15th. A quick look at "Times of india" bombay edition -

"At Anand, state co-operation minister C D Patel and Anand district superintendent of police B S Jebalia saluted the national flag while it was yet to unfurl."

Mr. Patel and Mr. Jebalia have received a lot of flack over this. But what else could they have done. If they stopped the national anthem and asked the flag to be unfurled again I am sure the headline would have been about the same people direspecting the national anthem. If they would have moved to ask somebody else to unfurl the flag properly again the same result. I felt these are unncessary things to be reported. The media should mature beyond this.

"Dalit woman not allowed to hoist national flag in chhatisgarh."

If the earlier news was frustating this one is disgusting. Especially for people like me who always argue that one of the reasons why reservation should be removed is that there is no more distinction among castes in modern India. I if this sort of thing is happening after more than 50 years of independence, then there is something seriously wrong in the way the country's population is being educated.

The only consolation is these things are not unique to India. Such narrowminded people have universal existence!!

insensitive

2005-07-23T23:52:00.000-05:00

Tsunami strikes south east asia. More than 30,000 dead!!

I read this and it doesn't affect me at all. I mean not at all. I read the whole article just as any other article. I attend some shows whoes earnings was supposed to be sent for relief fund. I dont get moved by most of the pictures that I see. Once discussing tsunami with my labmate, I suddenly realised that I don't feel anything for the people who suffer from this. The idea of me being so insensitive scares me sometimes.

"Mein marne se pahele ek baar apane potey ke saath khelna chahata hun "

I was watching the movie "waqt": some random hindi flick about father-son relationship. I tried hard but couldn't stop tears. I dont remember at what point but something hit me and I started crying. While I was crying, somewhere in my thoughts I was feeling happy that I am afterall not so insensitive. I do get moved somethings. It was quite relieving.

I realised news dont affect me but stories do.

Two of my favorites

2005-07-15T12:51:00.000-05:00

After seeing many photoblogs, I am also getting enthu to upload some pics. Here are two of my favorite photographs taken during my sis wedding last summer.

The below one was taken on the afternoon of the weeding(wedding muhurat was at 2 am!!). My sis had just been painted with mahendi.

The first one is during the hasthbandhan. This is the time when the groom for the first time takes the hand of the bride in his own hands which is symbolic of "will be there for you always".

Arranged marriage

2005-07-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

I have had many non-indian friends ask me of how arranged marriages work. After I joined the lab two labmates have got married arrangedly.(I dont know if this is a proper word!!) And after every such event the non-indian labmates are shocked as they dont understand how can it possibly work. Actually my labmates are awaiting my visit to India this december:).

Here I would like to put forth some facts which would explain the high success rates of arranged marriages. OK, my arranged marriage doesn't include child marriages or something like that. My definition of arranged marriage is subject's parents (or some omnipresent matrimonial aunty) find a girl and then the subject meets the girl two-three times and then based on the consents of the individuals the marriage can go ahead.

Now for the reasoning part. The human brain is very good at identifying personalities. The brain very quickly makes judgement regarding wheather the new aquaintance is going to be helpful or harmful to us. And more or less we reach the same conclusion after staying with the person for a long time. We see much more in a first impression than we realise.(Read the book "How to move mount Fuji?" to know more about the significance of first impression.) That cute smile, firm handshake, graceful walk, hair falling over shoulders, confident talk, husky voice, deep eyes - all this hits us together and the effect is much more than their combined sum. Our body says a lot about our inner self than we can imagine and surprise, surprise our brain can read all this. The marginal information that we gain is much less as we spend more time with them. So, the amount of information that you receive in those first n seconds more or less decides your relationship with the concerned person.

Now you guys will ask then why the two three meetings why not the first look itself. I knew this would come. The answer is "People excel at reading facial expressions quickly, but only when a countenance is genuine." . I guess in the first meeting people may be different from their trueself (voluntarily or involuntarily!!!). To bring out that inner personality we require a few more meetings.

Incase people have questions regarding all this can happen in love marriages also and this is no arguement for arranged marriage against love marriage, please read I never said I will do that. I only went ahead to say why arranged marriages work as well as they do.

Do you know poker?

2005-07-12T23:42:00.000-05:00

Poker is a very entertaining card game. To explain in simple terms you have 2 of your own cards and 5 community cards and you have to come up with the best hand of 5 cards with these 7 cards to win. The fun part is the community cards are not made public all at once. But first 3 cards (called flop), then 1 (turn) and then the last one. (river) After every round there is betting and the next card is delt only after all the players who are in the hand match some particular bet. The order of the hands from low to high is high card, pair, two pair, trips, straight, flush, fullhouse(and trip and a pair), four of a kind, straight flush, Royal flush(highest straight flush). Now the chances of you actually seeing a straight flush while playing a game is very very low. And as you can guess its pretty exciting when someone actually gets it.

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I was at atlantic city last semester to participate in a poker tournament at a casino called Tropicana. Fortunately or unfortunately me and one of my friends (Allen) lended up in the same table. So, we made a deal if one guy bets then the other one backs out. This would make sure that atleast we dont lose money to each other and possibly will stay longer in the tournament. In one round the dealer deals me two kings (Now this is the second most strongest hand to start with!!) so I call the minimum bet. As the bet goes around the table, I got a big shock as my friend went all in with his money. I was completely taken aback!! Now as the betting circle continued and I got my chance and now it was my friends turn to get a shock. Now this put me in a very difficult position as you can imagine. I had one of the best hands so I started thinking. My friend was really confused and he tried to remind me of our deal in all the subtle ways like coughing and making eye contact. :) But at the end, I thought to go all in so that even if I lose my friend will have a big stack to play with and that way there is more chance of one of us winning. The rest of the table backed out. So the dealer asked us to flip our cards. My friend flips his "Two queens" and there were few murmurs at the table. And then there was a loud gasp when I flipped my two kings. And I could hear my friend going nuts. As I doubled up my money my friend was left with the minimum money to play a hand. I mean he had the money to just bet the minimum to stay in so he had to put all his money in no matter what hand he has.

Bouyed by the hand win I went all in in the next hand also. One other guy called me and this one went to the last card when I managed a straight to his trips and won the money. But the fun was not over yet. As the whole table was busy looking at our cards everybody forgot that my friend is in the bet by default. My friend gets up and throws his cards on the table and says "Shit man!! I have a straight flush!!!!". The whole table was amazed and it was worth a big laugh as the best possible hand helped my friend win so little money. (You can only win the amount that was matched to your bet in this case it being the minimum possible bet) The fun part in this whole thing was the contrasting feeling of my friend on getting a straight flush to any other person. He was simply frustated and cursing on why he didnt get it in the last hand. Oh boy, I love poker!!

The sky

2005-07-06T22:17:00.000-05:00

The colors of sky have always attracted me. I have been so happy just looking at it many times. I had always tried to capture the magic of sky in camera picture but never managed it. One crazy morning, my eyes just opened and I saw the sky. I couldnt stop myself, ran out and immediately took pictures. But like every other time I didnt find the colors good enough. During my trip to NY, I saw this view of sky from kakkad's apartment and asked Gogo to take picture with his camera(costlier and better!!). And amazing, for the first time I felt the picture reflected the true colors.

Do I know him?

2005-07-05T17:20:00.000-05:00

Has it ever happened to you that you bump into somebody whos face doesnt ring any bell in your brain but the other guy knows everything about you. And you get embarrassed that you dont know him at all. In such situations either our brain starts fabricating illusions of having met the person sometime (his face suddenly starts looking familiar) or you just put an end to the all your pains by pretending that you remembered the person and start having a conversation.

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I was once walking in IIT in my second year when I see the group of freshies walking towards H-4. From their talk I figure out that they are from hyderabad so I just ask "hey!! sab hyd se ho kya?"

They all turn back with consenting expressions on their faces. And just then one of them goes "Saurav..Saurav Panda..AIR 184 ...electrical department...Ramaiah evening batch..Ratna college."..Even I dont remember how I felt then but I was completely taken by surprise as the guy blurting out all these stats about me was a complete stranger to me..I was amused and I thought might be he knows this by some newspaper or Ratna advertisement..so I ask "abey mein itana famous hun kya?" and then the reply just killed me.."Abey mein Kapil re..saath mein bus mein aatye the..You are from Uppal na..no. 113 bus be..ratna mein tere baju baitha ta tha kabhi kabi...Ramanthpur mein utarta tha" You guys can guess my embarassment as I still had no idea about who the hell was this guy...But I just made up an expression of "oh haaaaaaaan.." and exchanged some pleasantaries and quickly tried to get away from the scene.

ps: Oye Kapil if you are reading, I am sorry but I still dont remember ever meeting you in hyderabad. But it doesn't matter anymore..

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I recently had a trip to NY with Ramya, her room mate (Shalu) and Sameer (Gogo). We met up Kakkad at NY and went around NY. Soon we found out that Soumitri(Mimi) was also in town and decided to meet her. We were pretty excited for our small reunion with old friends. And thats when I realised Shalu (Who by then had been through so many discussions about IIT) must be bored of this now. So I planned a prank so that she has her share of fun.(Sorry Mimi that it had to be at your expense!..) We tell Shalu everything about Mimi and ask her to pretend as Mimi's senior at IITB. This is what happened later...

After Ramya introduces Shalu to Mimi..

Shalu: Hey!! You rrrr..Soumitri right..I didnt know she is the Mimi you guys were calling up till now..
Mimi gives a surprised smile..

Shalu(now getting comfortable with her acting): You dont recognise me kya? You were in geology dept right..room 214..

Mimi: Oh my gawwwwwwd!! I am so sorry I dont recognise you ...You even know my first name..and pronounce it exactly as it should be (I dont know how everybody else pronounces it!!)

Then they have discussion of where they had met..And Shalu gave a full demonstration of her acting skills as she made Mimi come of with names of all the functions as she didnt know of the IITian lingo..

After about 5 mins Mimi was visibly embarrassed about the whole situation and says what we all were waiting for:).."Actually now I remember you vaguely now..freshies party ..hmm..yeah yeah..I remember you." And thats when I decided that it was enough and stepped into to explain Mimi the whole situation and she was even more embarrassed.

ps: Getting back to blogging and it feels good.

Ignorance is Bliss

2005-07-05T17:10:00.000-05:00

I was in boston visiting my friend Mukul (aka magar). Giving me a guided tour of Boston, he took me to the MIT science museum. If you happen to go there definitely see the hologram section. It is amazing.

Being engineers, Me and Mukul were carefully disecting all the exhibits and having the "wow" affect when we discovered the principle by which the exhibit works. But one small incident made us both miss the times when we had no idea of how these things worked and simply enjoyed the exhibits.

We were making our calculations infront of a exhibit getting pissed of on not being able to crack the funda when a small kid comes to the exhibit, looks at the result, jumps in joy, laughs and leaves feeling very happy. We both stared at each other both of us had expression of bemusement on our faces. These are the times when you feel Ignorance is bliss.

Research

2005-06-20T21:51:00.000-05:00

Such a grad student topic. I came to know of a guy who was doing research on "swear words used during medieval times". From the face of it it looks like some fraud research topic but to think of it it's a very difficult topic. How do you get all such data..certainly there is no literature on it..He actaully went through the court proceedings (yes!! court proceedings of times 700-800 years early exist in some european countries thanks to no natural disasters..) for them..He went through documents with no grammar or standard spelling which is very painfull...

Oh yes!! I know you guys want to know the conclusion..So one of the most offensive used swear words were "GOD's dick"..and people had been hanged for uttering these words..

This guy happens to be the brother of one of the profs in my lab. And after he told this we had a long discussion on how every culture has its swear words some of which dont make any sense at all when translated..for eg. choot ke pakode and jhant ke pasine..On hearing jhant ke pasine..the prof goes like "thats interesting..pubic hair is such an insignificant thing and so is sweat..why would you guys even use this!!"..

The post doc in my lab told abt how dutch people just say some words with the swear words just to have rhyming effect :). So guys we are not alone who come of with innovative things such as -

behen ke ghode ..
choot pakode...
maar ja laude..

Any ways I feel rather than the words it's the situation when you use it has impact upon the guy on receiving end..

ps: Yaar bahut din se kuch nahin likha tha aur kuch chamak nahin raha tha so this ..would come up with better topics next time..:)

Who wants Mokhsya?

2005-06-13T20:16:00.000-05:00

Mokhsya is defined as the state where you know everything that is there to be learned. You have no material feelings and no desires. Nothing can make you sad or happy. In the state of Mokhsya you have your union with the one. You become the ONE.

Hindu Philosophy says that all living beings go through the cycle of life and death trying to achieve the Mokhsya. Until you achieve that state you will have to pass through all the pain of material life again and again and again. And our purpose of life should be to achieve mokhsya.

But given a choice, I would rather like to go through this life again. It hasn’t been that bad after all. I would want to again go through the playful and carefree childhood. Again go through the entertaining youth. Again bring smiles to the faces of people I love. Celebrate with them in their moments of triumph, console them in their moments of sorrow. Basically, I want to live this life again rather than being transformed into something with no feelings like a rock. I might be wrong in my whole interpretation but if I am right then I will try hard to do things so that I never achieve mokhsya.

"He was just doing his job!!"

2005-06-12T11:10:00.000-05:00

"You must have shit in your pants!!" I said laughing out loudly. Ritesh sulked.
"Yeah, when you have the sharp edge of rampuri knife touching your throat I dont think you have many options!!!"
"Abey yeah very bad. These guys should be made to suffer in jail"
"No man, he was a nice guy. Good at heart. He was just doing his job."

* * * * * * * *

Ritesh was returning from another hindi flick. As the road was very busy he was taking the underground crossing. He was still thinking about the scene where aishwarya ray bends down for that now famous taal shot. He was oblivious to his surroundings. If he would have paid a little more attention then he would have realized that two guys who didn't look like meaning any good buissness were advancing towards him. Suddenly Ritesh felt as if he was flying in air and before he realised he was pressed against the sidewall..

"Sale humare area ki ladki ko chhedega?? madarchod"
"Ji aapko galat fahmi ho rahi hai. Meine kisi ladki ko nahin chheda!! "
"Chutiya dikh raha hun kya? Behenchod, tereko aaj batate hain ki ladki ko chhedane se kya hota hai?"

As one of the guys was doing all this talking the other one has been looking around and on finding no one around pulled out his rampuri from his pocket. The guy holding Ritesh lets him go. But before he can have a breath he senses the knife on his throat. And this was the time when he shit in his pants.

"Ji jitna paisa lena he lelo..please marna mat." Saying this Ritesh gives his wallet and watch to these two goons.

"Kafi samajhdar hai be..Sabko itana deemag hota to humara kaam bhi jaldi hota..sale aadhe timetak rote rahatey hain ki humne kisi ladki ko nahin chheda..maa ke laudoon..hume bhi maloom hain tumne kissi ko nahin chheda" ..With this they let go of Ritesh and started running towards the exit.

Ritesh was just trying to come out of this trauma when he heard the deadly voice again.

"Abey bus ke liey paise hain tere pas..yeh le panch rakh..chal phir"

He forces 5 ruppees into Ritesh's trembling hands and runs towards his compatriot who is waiting very restlessly.

* * * * * * *

To this day Ritesh still vouches that the man who robbed him of everything but Rs. 5 was much better than most of the other humans on the face of the earth.

The Award

2005-06-09T01:27:00.000-05:00

It had been a tough week for Lal Bihari but the sweat had been worth it. Half the battle was won. He at last got his passport. After so many rejects, near-misses, heart-breaks he at last made it. Come on you guys must be thinking getting a passport is no big deal!! But he overcame a handicap that you can’t even imagine – He was DEAD!! Now the next hurdle, the US visa.

* * * * *

Govind comes running into the house. He is panting, wants to say something but words won’t come out of his mouth. The expression on his face is of complete astonishment.

“Bihari, who log tumhari zameen le gaye!! Kahtey hain tum mar gaye ho!! Saath mein police bhi hai!! Hum lut gaye, barbad ho gaye”

“Oye Govind! Kya bol raha hai? Pagala gaya hai kya? ”

“Arey nahin Bihari kaka..jamnagar mein jo aapke mama hain who aaye hain!! Kahatey hain peechale mahine ke train accident mein aapka dehant ho gaya..kuch to bahi-khata bhi leke aaye hian..”

“Uske kahane se kya hota hai? Tu chal mere saath..mere zinda hotey koi meri zameen nahin chheen sakata”

Yeah only if he could have proven he was alive his land would have been his own..But his uncle had all the evidences. Bihari had no chance in front of law..his uncle had a paper from the court and land registry office stating that the land now belongs to him after the death of his nephew Lal Bihari. Lal Bihari did all he could..cried, wailed, shouted loudly “arey bhai mein zinda hun..meri zameen mat chhino mujhse..mein zinda hun”..but to no avail..It was clearly written on the paper “Lal Bihari: Dead, in the train accident”..It also had the district collector’s signature on it..now it was Lal Bihari’s walking, talking cadaver against the word of the collector…Of course he was dead..Why couldn’t he understand sucha simple fact.. His uncle infact tried to console him from the grief of his very own death!!

So, his land was taken away from him. He could do nothing but just look at his uncle reaping the harvest from it. But Bihari didn’t give up. He decided to fight against this injustice. He tried his level best to prove that he was alive. He tried to run for parliament, kidnapped the son of the uncle who had stolen his property, threatened murder, insulted judges, threw leaflets listing his complaints at legislators in the state assembly and demanded a widow's pension for his wife. But this was not enough in the eyes the law. It’s not for fun that people made movies called “Andha Kanoon”. He was arrested after his acts and duly placed in prison. After all everybody knows how harmful dead people can be to our society!! And the law enforcement officials see to it that we lead a safe life.

* * * * *

The turning point of his “dead” life came when he decided to join hands with other dead people like him. He became the founder and first president of “Association of dead people”. To his surprise there were hundreds of his kind in the state. Shocking!! How people couldn’t see so many dead people walking all around them. Their combined efforts soon started reaping results.

It took 18 years of hard struggle of Lal Bihari for people to finally see the signs of life in him. Law could no longer attribute his actions to “late” Lal Bihari. He got his land back. He was happy. But the icing on the cake was when he got a letter from the “Association for Faltu Activities”. They had decided to award him “The AFA peace award” for his outstanding achievement of championing the cause of dead people who have been the most neglected faction of human society in whole history!! The award ceremony was to be held in washington, DC where president George Bush was to give him the award.

That night before sleeping Lal Bihari said to himself “At last, I can die in peace!!”

-Inspired by true adventures of Lal Bihari, who was awarded the Ignoble peace award in 2003.

Does democracy work?

2005-06-05T19:50:00.000-05:00

I was always against reservation policy of Indian govn. . I am sure all the great minds behind its inception never wanted it to be this way. The way it is being implemented right now doesn’t come close to serving its purpose – “To provide equal opportunity to all across the society”. If you observe carefully you can see that this has done nothing but raise the gulf between the rich and poor of the scheduled castes and tribes. I agree it was started with a noble intention but if something hasn’t worked for 50 years don’t you think time has come to try something else. How can people be so blind? This has infact lead to India’s society being divided into two categories – reserved and unreserved.

But the most ridiculous thing is reservation in the house of representatives – the Lok sabha and Rajya sabha. I expected that in modern India, it’s youth will rise against such policies. But to my surprise a large group in India who almost form 50% of the population (read women) are asking for their reservation in the houses. Infact they project themselves being very fair as they are asking only for 33% of the seats. Bullshit. Any demand for reservation in the representative houses is based on three assumptions –

One, only members of one group can help others in that group. Two, Parliament must function like a pollster's sample group and constitute an exact reflection of the composition of society. And three, people don't vote as they should. Combination of these three assumptions cries out loudly - DEMOCRACY SIMPLY DOESN’T WORK.

So those fighting for this noble cause should first decide what they are fighting for. If such a large population fights for a just cause like removing reservation from all aspects of Indian society then I guess India will be a much better democracy as well as country. This is what I feel!!

Artistic Liberty

2005-06-04T00:40:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I read an article about Indian govn. banning smoking scenes from movies!! Why? Coz they think it makes smoking look stylish and kids copy on it. Now movie-makers say they project the society and they show it because thats the reality. I feel the govn is taking a short-cut solution to the problem. I think the right solution should be to advertise against smoking and leave the decision to the people. Govn. can not and shouldn't start taking decisions for the citizens.

But on the same site I read a report about some sikh organisation (SPGA or something) calling for the cutting of scenes in a movie showing a sikh girl doing drugs!!!! If the above mentioned ban was ridiculous I dont know what to call this one.

But then I realised we come from a country where people in a train can be burnt to death just coz they were returning from certain place..In retaliation thousands can be killed...media can fuel fire to it and make sure more people get killed..Every body makes sure to benefit from the situation at the expense of common man..It doesn't matter which faith, cast or sect he belongs to. I don't know what others think but in such a sensitive country I guess it makes more sense for the govn to take decisions to stay out of trouble rather than thinking about artistic liberty!!! For me human lives are a higher priority than satisfaction for some one off film maker..

Jeongwook learns about India..

2005-06-03T15:42:00.000-05:00

This is about how my friend Jeongwook (He prefers to be called Allen due to unknown reasons)got educated about India. It happened in bits and pieces and I am going to just mention some of these situations.

Lesson 1: Indians can speak english!

Me and Allen going to pick up golu from airport when he arrived in US for the first time.

Allen: Does your friend know english. I mean can he get around if we are a lil late.
Me: He is pretty good at english. And for the records I could also speak english before I reached US. We infact Indians do almost all of their higher education in english.

Lesson 2: Internet exists in India.

Me: I don't prefer to check e-mails in India.
Allen: You mean you can check it if you want. Is internet that accessible in India!
Me: Most of urban India and some parts of rural India has internet connection.

Lesson 3: There is satellite television in India and Indians watch many American channels.

Allen: So which all global programs do you watch in India?
Golu: X-files, Simpsons, Friends, infact all of your cartoon channels, and a lot of music and movie channels
Allen: wow!!
Wrong conclusion by Allen: So 50cents must be very popular in India!!

But the most funny of these conversations was actually the one in which Allen explained me the probable reason why Americans have such wrong notions about Indians.

Me: I am amazed why do most americans think like this about India when they can see so many well educated Indians around them?

Allen: The only hit movie in US which dealt with Indians through out the 80's was Indiana Jones: The Temple of Doom. I guess you have a clue now!!!

'How do u get a girl, man?'

2005-06-03T09:00:00.000-05:00

We are having this nice talk abt Thesis, Phd, Latex and everything else when Bhuvan asks "How do u get a girl, man?"

I am sure you have been in this situation in some exam, where you felt terribly helpless and very angry on the professor coz the question he has asked is out of the syllabus and simply can not be answered. I felt not exactly but something similar to it.

"Abey!! yeh kya hai??"

"No, man tell me. How do u get a girl? See you are a phd here. By the time you finish it you will be 28. I am sure your mom will find a girl for you then. In fact you will be running around her, asking her desparately to find one. In case you didn't realise, when you decided to get into Phd, you basically signed an arranged marriage agreement!!!"

Teaun!! This is the sound that comes from Mac's heart when sudden realisation dawns upon him. Now who is Mac is a not related to this blog. But for records he is just another guy.

Before I can come out of this Teaun, the hammer strikes again "Ok, Saurav! You tell me 'How will you get a girl, man???'. Suppose you meet up with a girl in a pub. What will be your conversation?"

---------Pub scene. Dhik chik Dhak chik music playing------

After initial pleasantaries...

Girl: What do you do?
You: Err!! hmm!! I am a student. I mean not exactly. I do research. You can say somewhere between 'a man with a job' and a student.
G: So how much do you make out of it?
Y: (Teaun affect again!!) Lets just say that I get a stipend.
G: Oh!! may be thats why you couldn't buy me that drink.

-----------Back to reality-----------------------------------

"So, Do you think you will get a girl like this? I am sure no. I have seen some indian grads settleing down with some other phds. But I think thats sad!! They reach a position in their life when any thing will do. They want to use it before the expiry date is over!!!"

(Can't this guy talk anything better than this!! I am sure I am going to have nightmares on it tonite!!)

"Abey!! Lets start an indian grad what-do-they-call-it matrimonial. I think we will make good money as well as will be doing something good for our fellow grads."

"This is the first good thing you have said today. But all this time I was thinking and at last got a way to get a girl! Finish Phd, get a great job, have tons of money and money will bring the girls!! And now you can leave so that I can sleep in peace!!"

I was happy. Swelling with pride that I atlast found the answer to the out-of-the-syllabus, can't-be-answered question !! Just than Bhuvan psyched me out!!

"Man!! how do you think to get a job with so much money after PHD??"

GRE

2005-06-01T13:28:00.000-05:00

Fact 1: Indians find the GRE quant test extremely easy compared to the analytical test. (This test has been changed to essays siince 2003.)

Fact 2: Americans find GRE quant and analytical tests to be of the same difficulty level.

Discussion: It's not just that the americans find quant tougher, they find analytical test much easier than us. (Conclusion after discussing with the set of two americans !!) A bunch of guys(lukkhe PHDs from Hopkins) had a discussion on this on their way from library to "One world" for dinner. Here is the accepted conclusion.

The analytical test is about understanding a situation, assimilating the given data and analyzing it. So if the situations given are well known to the candidate he/she feels very comfortable with it and solves it quickly. On the other hand even if the situation is easy but involves alien terms the candidate becomes very careful. Indians get thrown off on seeing a question like jonathan was watching a baseball game with his friends julian and blah blah. They take time to understand and misinterpret it as difficulty. If the question would have been Krishna ramamurthy went to watch a kabbadi game with veera venkataramana, then the americans will find it a lot more tougher.

- The giant panda