The Written Word

Stopped posting ..

2008-08-31T19:18:00.000-07:00

As I don't have time nowadays to do justice to one leave alone two blogs, all further rambling will take place only at despoki.blogspot.com

The Shape of the Beast

2008-06-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

I read part of Arundhati Roy's new book ( a collection of interviews from the past few years, some of which I've already read) in Delhi and was quite affected. One can see the progression in her activism and analysis. First she was actively involved in a particular struggle (the Narmada dams). She puts the defeat of the struggle especially in the Supreme Court in the following perspective: that non-violent peoples' movements, (not just this one) are being comprehensively rejected ('humiliated') by our democratic institutions. This is very serious and leaves pretty much armed struggle as the only other means of change. This is the context in which she views the terrorist, naxal and other recent violent conflicts. She argues that one cannot take the conventional straightforward position of condemning these struggles, notwithstanding, as she is unambiguous about, that many of them are highly unjust and cruel themselves. As she put it, she is in the position of siding with groups who are quite likely to string her up if they come to power. She says that right now therefore what she is interested in is in looking to see if there are effective ways of resisting, in the current political regime.

She paints a pretty bleak picture out of an analysis that reaches very deep. If she's right we'll see lots more of violence and conflicts in the country.

I seem to follow behind her faithfully as she traces her own path of experience and understanding. I remember reading "The Greater Common Good" and just being blown away in the immediate moment, and also permanently affected in my thinking because of it. Later to my delight I found that she too has huge regard for Chomsky. Right now I'm trying to absorb her latest thinking.

Analyzing Delhi

2008-06-01T05:57:00.000-07:00

From a week at Delhi (on work):

Delhi is endlessly fascinating.
How did it manage to avoid the architectural dead-end that all other Indian cities are locked into ? Delhi is simply gorgeous, atleast large parts of it which I have been going through. First there are the lovely colonial era bungalow-style buildings, all uniformly whitewashed. Then there are many red brick buildings which are a welcome break from the usual concrete apartment complexes. There are also more recently using a kind of stone/marble in a beige shade (sorry, no photos) that is just lovely. This time I happened to go to the India Habitat Center -- my god what a spectacular space. ( Some info though no good photographs at http://www.indiahabitat.org/). There are lots of events and art exhibitions going on all the time and with the good public transit, I would think, normal people could actually enrich their lives through it, unlike Bangalore, where getting anywhere is so sucky, that trying to integrate Rangashankara into your life for example is impossible (well, for me atleast).
Now Delhi is implementing Bus Rapid Trasit though its running into a lot of flak. I love it !! Its so great. Its just how the roads should be. There are gleaming modern green buses filled with people, speeding along their dedicated lanes and the rest of us poor car types stuck in traffic. That's exactly how it should be. And they already have the Metro. If the Bus Transit system gets implemented properly it will be a really liveable city for a middle-class person. Unlike Bangalore -- god, what a mess and getting worse every day.
Delhi is also significantly less polluted after the introduction of CNG and in the whole week, I did not feel at any point the kind of air pollution we see in so many places in Bangalore. The roads in lot of places, mostly New Delhi, are relatively not so crowded. Delhi is a car-driven city though (it has more cars than the other 3 major metros put together), and while it didn't show on the streets, it did show in the apartment complexes. The roads inside the complex are absolutely packed with parked cars and trying to make your way through is difficult.
The sheer amount of money and centralization. So many institutes, govt. departments, organisations everywhere, with huge buildings and campuses, all superbly maintained. It is so clear how the government bureaucracy and local elite have hijacked the wealth of the country and used it to ensure a better quality of life for Delhi.

The matrimonials in the newspapers (specifically TOI which I saw on Sunday) have a different flavor from the south, and with a unique delhi tang added. Here's some:

"DLI/NCR settled match 4 prof. qlfd wrkg smart b'ful Jain girl 33/157, issueless divorcee # 989982... Em: rkj1941@.. "

"PG Medico Match for V.Fair B'ful Slim 5'-1" 26 1/2 M.S(Gen-Surg) Garg Girl Status Family rkgupta1953@.. 093169..."

"PROF. qlfd. match of Gupta girl 30/ 5'3" very b'ful MS Comp. Science employed & Perm. resi Canada. From status Delhi fmly. I'less short M/ div. Send BHP. E-mail: storylko@.. "

"BE/MBA/MCA/CA NCR based 4 con edu tall, b'ful, smart MBA girl 26/5-7 wkg top MNC Ggn 4 LPA. Email: ... M...."

These are all verbatim and I'll leave you to puzzle through the acronyms.

more snippets: "high status family" "full of human values" "decent marriage"

The general things that stand out are the emphasis on high status families, (several of the ads are from significantly rich industry-owning families, atleast that's what they claim), and quite a lot of divorced people seeking remarriage.

On the Property side, here is this tidbit" A retail uprise like no other"

Perhaps I should move to Delhi. In a earlier post I said I would flee Bangalore if the Nano shows up. Rather than flee to a village which was what I envisioned, perhaps I will go to Delhi which is now it seems the only city that has figured out public transport at all.

Pic below. Couldn't resist capturing this. If you don't get the joke -- good for you ! Don't try :-)

2008-05-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

I picked up Mulk Raj Anand's "Coolie" and read the last chapter (I don't remember if when I had earlier read it, I had gotten to the last chapter, but I found it a very strong book). This time, it was almost physically painful. In a confused chaotic time (before independance), with a bunch of people fighting for independance, another bunch of people getting onto the british gravy train and the vast majority suffering, this man managed to isolate the very core of the inhumanity and hypocrisy of the society and convey it in simple, straightforward and beautiful language. The critique is still relevant today, with a new set of actors replacing the british.

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It reminded me of when I read Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day". Such incredible writing, that left me with a physical stomach ache.

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I found my Pondicherry CD , "Pondy Groove" which I was quite upset at having lost. Listening to it now. I mentioned it earlier on the blogs somewhere. It is quite a striking fun CD. If you care about music you should take the effort to check them out. If you're interested drop me a note.

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Sometimes (like after reading Coolie just now), I get into this state of mind where I feel that I really *get* this thing called 'life' and I am above it all. And then when I get into the hurly-burly of daily life and interacting with people, the conviction all vanishes and I'm back to being complex and confused. The point is not "how to preserve the feeling even in quotidian life" but that the feeling is not strong enough and therefore not true enough.

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Jiddu Krishnamurthi once said that for all his decades of teaching he was not aware of a single person reaching enlightenment as a result of it. I was reaching a book on Buddhism by Osho and interestingly it had something to say about the Buddha on the same lines. It is a beautiful passage but unfortunately too long for me to transcribe fully. Here is the gist: The gods are upset because after he becomes enlightened, Buddha feels it is the right thing to speak about it. They come to the Buddha with this argument:

"We have found one single, small argument. It is very small in comparison to all the arguments that go against it, but still we would like you to consider. Our argument is that you may be misunderstood by ninety-nine percent of the people, but you cannot say that you will be misunderstood by a hundred percent of the people. You have to give at least a little margin -- just one percent. That one percent is not small in this vast universe, that one percent is a big enough portion. Perhaps out of that one percent few will be able to follow the path. But even if one person in the whole universe becomes enlightened because of your speaking, it will be worth it.. << some more >>"

The Buddha listens and accepts that it is worth it, and the book says that over the course of his 42 years of teaching about a dozen people were enlightened.

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I'm off to Delhi for a week on Sunday

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Oceans Twelve

2008-05-17T23:42:00.001-07:00

This movie is such a pleasure to watch, a real sensual experience. It is amazing -- there is a particular feel to the movie that pervades. It feels like the characters in the movie are consistent with the ambience, photography, cinematography, lighting .. it all just fits together..pretty cool. The feel is smooth, understated, casual.

There is so much going on, the movie is so tight that there is nothing redundant. In fact there is perhaps too much that they try to squeeze in, and you have to watch the movie twice to get all the scences. The surprise twist in the end is somewhat flat, a letdown. Its the kind of movie where reading a good review of the movie which peels apart the layers and is able to analyze why the movie is so cool is almost as much fun as watching the movie itself (this sure ain't that review though!).

PS: I just checked the Wikipedia entry and apparently the critics were not so kind to this movie. Oops. Well.

Killing a tree

2008-05-17T23:40:00.001-07:00

2008-05-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

Shobha De is like a chalk squeaking on a blackboard.
A long time back she called (pejoratively) Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy the "Narmada sisters": bitchyness of breathtaking lack of grace and decency.
In a recent interview she airily told the interviewer '60 is the new 40, you know' -- like she invented the line.
She fits a stereotype -- good taste and elegance, great refinement and sensitivity, having to deal with the burden of the great unwashed of India, awful sex-starved men ogling upper class women, dirty roads and lack of order. Oh to escape to Nice or Davos where you can get a decent pasta.

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Fake Steve Jobs has a terrible Microsoft promotional video - cringe Nandita !!
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/04/this-is-why-we-love-microsoft.html

Credit Card Woes - 2

2008-05-16T01:22:00.000-07:00

As expected, this has become a mess and time sink:

May 9th: I sent them the dispute resolution form. By Speedpost -- because they did not have a phone number on the form which is needed to send by courier (and the address was a PO Box which courier companies do not deliver to).

May 13th: I called HDFC. They said that they didn't recieve it.
I went down to the Post Office where I sent it from and enquired. They don't have tracking facility so they gave me the phone number of the GPO and I had to call them to track. After several trails (engaged) I reached someone who told me it was delivered on 12th.
I called HDFC again and told them this. They asked me fax it. Why should I ? I sent it as per their instructions, they received it, to the best of my information, why should I waste my time. I don't have convenient access to a fax machine. If its more reliable to fax, why didn't they have that on the form and I could have taken some trouble to fax it the first time and be done with it.

May 16th: I called them twice. They haven't received it yet. Finally I told them that I won't send it again and I won't pay the charges. The chap put me on hold, came back and told me it would take a few days for them to process and for it to show up in the system so I should call back after a couple of days. So why did the earlier people tell me to fax it again, if its not that it didn't reach them ?
After the fuss they made earlier about telling me the merchants names, this time they did tell me the merchants' names (without me asking for it). Tata Indicom and IDEA.
So probably if they had reacted quickly, Tata Indicom and IDEA might have been able to stop the usage of the money as phone calls and even caught the person maybe. As it is, its 10 days later (and frustration and anxiety on my side), and not a single action to track down the perpetrators.

Oh I forgot -- the bright side, they responded with fantastic speed and sent me another card. Thank you, I'll certainly continue using HDFC cards going forward.

Welcome to my life Mr. Kafka.

2008-05-13T23:55:00.000-07:00

Bush gives up golf in solidarity to soldiers :

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080514/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_iraq

The problem is, he is talking about it..

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I added two links to the blogroll on the right. One is to a blog by the guy who write "Not Even Wrong" , critiquing string theory, an absorbing read even if I understood only 10% of it. The other is to the hilarious "Fake Steve Jobs" blog, (of which I understand 50% since its too techie and gadgety)

2008-05-11T08:06:00.000-07:00

Was working on something on our balcony at dusk and mosquitoes were torturing me. Mosquitoes are definitive proof that either God does not exist or that the Devil exists

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This weekend, I got a physical hankering to be out of doors in the sun. It felt like my body was feeling a lack of the Vitamin E, or whichever it is that the sun catalyzes, and was making its requirement felt. It was quite wierd.

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Poor Rahul Dravid. It can't be a very fun time for him with the Challengers getting thulped. He just doesn't seem to enjoy captaincy and leadership, the way Ganguly did for example (and Dhoni seems to be a natural). But he's forced into the role and then has a miserable time of it. He should walk away and just do stuff that he enjoys.
He reminds me a little of myself, a strained expression on his face most of the time, rarely relaxes and smiles :-)

2008-05-11T02:14:00.000-07:00

I didn't vote, but co-incidentally exchanged a couple of mails with Vivek Menon, a foreign-returnee who stood for election as an independant in my area (he was a finalist in that strange "Lead India" contest of the Times of India). I didn't vote coz I wasn't in the electoral rolls, coz I have no idea how to get on them.

One of the things that keeps getting reinforced in me but I never change my ways is that when you move to a new place, if you (ie I) don't get the basics sorted out immediately (car regn. , cooking gas, water , electricity and if you care about it, voter id), they never get down and later has a disproportionate impact on your quality of life

There are timid signs of life in the electoral scene with very random people starting to try to do something. There are some tiny parties now (partitrana, jago, loksatta) and independants like vivek menon above who are giving it a shot. God knows we need it.
There is an option when voting to not choose any of the candidates, to express protest.
The newspapers have started giving out the financial worth of the candidates. Everybody is a crore+, and some are way above that. With the rise in tax receipts, government also is relatively flush with funds and it shows in the paraphernalia of governance -- high end cars and SUVs, long road escorts for government dignitaries. It stinks.
NGOs are distributed across the country but they don't have much of a presence in any particular constituency. How to build them together into a stronger voice in politics ?

Credit card woes

2008-05-10T22:49:00.000-07:00

I got a call from HDFC Bank while I was travelling recently -- my credit card was hacked.

I will track the resolution process here

So far:
-They caught the irregular pattern and alerted me -- so : started off on the right note.
-The bank people wouldn't give me the names of the merchants to whom the transaction happened. I have to file a dispute resolution form first. Excellent logic -- they won't tell me information regarding my own account.
-They won't do any follow-up on the transactions until I file a dispute resolution form apparently. The form can't be emailed in (surprise!) and its to a PO Box so it can't be couriered in too. Again excellent -- critical time right after the fraud is lost, while they wait for me to fulfil the formalities.
- The dispute resolution form says that I will bear the cost of the investigations. Thank you for your credit card Mr. Parekh.

Book review: "God's Little Soldier"

2008-05-03T10:56:00.000-07:00

{Pic stolen from Rediff interview below)

After a long time attempting to do a review.

Kiran Nagarkar is truly a cool guy. He's an 'authentic' guy, a person of substance.
'Cuckold' is the high point of his writing so far -- an amazing book. The other books are so wildly imaginative and experimental that they're a difficult read. 'Saat Sakkum Trechallis' (Seven Sixes are Forty Three -- what a cool name) was the most out there of them.

Anyway what to say about GLS ? It has Nagarkar's trademark of hyperbolic language -- nice sometimes but can get irritating after the novelty wears off. I don't have the book with me right now so unfortunately I can't do any quotes. Its also incredibly verbose, another Nagarkar trademark -- I skipped whole pages without losing the basic track. As Nagarkar himself remarks in the afterword -- he was once told by a critic that if he wrote shorter books the critics would read them instead of panning them.
The book is a courageous attempt to plumb what a fundamentalist/terrorist mentality might look like. It didn't quite work (for me), but that's okay. Its a page turner, as his books tend to be -- you read it compulsively.
I think its well worth reading, but probably only after reading Cuckold -- otherwise the eccentricities of his writing might put you off without the countervailing awe that you feel after reading Cuckold.

Here's an excellent interview with Kiran Nagarkar
http://specials.rediff.com/news/2006/may/02kiran1.htm

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To Arvind: since you also liked William Dalrymple, you should try Bruce Chatwin. In a review somewhere Dalrymple was placed in the Chatwin class, and Dalrymple himself once alludes flatteringly to Chatwin in 'City of Djinns' (he sits in the same library that Chatwin visited in New Delhi in an attempt to shake off a case of writers block). I still haven't got around to it though myself.

Musings

2008-05-03T10:38:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I have the opportunity afforded by my current circumstances, to clearly look at my 'market value' and ability to make a living. In a corporate job, you are specialized cog-in-wheel, and enmeshed in a particular context. Coming out of that context and blunting my competitiveness there, I have to look at myself in a general way and see -- where can I add value ? What could I do for a living if I needed to look for a job ? Its a scary evaluation, but liberating too because you are not depending on a context any more.

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Deve Gowda is an ass (oxymoron?). He simply cannot forget that he was a past prime minister. Atleast three times I've seen him in the news (and I don't follow the political news much) saying things like "For an former PM .." , "This is an insult for a former PM .."

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My current job has one fantastic upside -- the incredible relevance to daily life in India. I cannot open a newspaper without immediately noticing an article about water. And whenever I see an article, the next question is -- what can the Portal do about it. Most of the time I can't find an answer, so its frustrating. But, that's a problem worth having .. makes for 24 hours engagement with the topic.

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I didn't get sleep last night and picked up Romila Thapar's "A History of India" and randomly started reading. Cholas attack Pandyas attack Cheras attack Chalukyas attack Ceylon win lose up down dominate recede this king that king .. did it strike nobody that this was a pretty stupid business. And how do we communicate to the children in teaching history that it is so ? Sting in one of his albums talks about how he felt that history was nothing but a depressing string of 'robber baron scumbags' and created a song "History teaches us nothing" around it.
Falling asleep while reading a book is a delicious feeling.

2008-05-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

Rediff.com news stories always have a long trail of comments that i occasionally follow out of fascination for the sheer brain-deadness, and bad english. Sometimes they're funny though. The following are from a cricket story, always rich with expert commentary and analysis:

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shanmuga sundaram on May 03, 2008 09:14 PM
Laxman is the caption

by on May 03, 2008 09:23 PM
Hello Sambar, First learn to spell 'Captain'

RE:Laxman is the caption..thts y
by chandra mouli natarajan on May 03, 2008 10:23 PM
Coward Chappathi, why dont u show up ur name.

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DC has performed very disappointedly
by Krishna on May 03, 2008 09:37 PM | Hide replies

I have come to watch cricket after 5 years(stopped after India lost 2003 WC), as my home city is a participant in IPL. But DC players have performed very badly so far.

RE:DC has performed very disappointedly
by shahjehan on May 03, 2008 09:52 PM
WHY AFTER 5 YEARS... ALL INDIANS NEED EXPLANTION FROM YOU....IT IS MOST IMPORTANT IN THE PRESENT SITUATION....OTHERWISE MANMOHAN SINGH....

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From here and there

2008-03-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

We've been obsessively watching "Lost" and here's a good humor quote: Sawyer in a grumpy mood tramping through the lush tropical jungle: "I take comfort in knowing that some day this will be a nice shopping complex or even an auto mall"

The Economist had an obituary for the death of the last living French soldier who had fought in the First World War, Lazare Ponticelli. It quoted him as follows, describing the war: More than anything, he was appalled that he had been made to fire on people he didnt know and to whom he, too, was a stranger. These were fathers of children. He had no quarrel with them. C'est completement idiot la guerre. To the end of of his life, Mr. Ponticelli showed no interest in labelling anyone his enemy. He said he did not understand why on earth he, or they, had been fighting.

The Economist also pushes Earth Hour on the back inside cover. Visit www.earthhour.org , and switch off your lights for an hour at 8pm March 29th. That's the cool thing about the Economist -- despite being weighty and ponderous it has can throw its weight behind idealistic initiatives like these.

Its been raining heavily and unseasonally in Bangalore and I am getting into a funk about global warming (and more. The country and the world seem to be in a mess and digging in deeper).

Thank you, Mr. Lay

2008-03-21T08:38:00.000-07:00

Lots of places in Coorg were littered in garbage. Tourist garbage. And place of pride for this was for the fine Frito Lay family of products.

Perhaps you've seen this in other places. It would be nice to take photos and pass on to me to add to this. It would be embarrassing to Frito-Lay and they might do something about it. You could contact them at fritolayindia.blogspot.com to bug them about it.

Two puzzles

2008-03-01T08:28:00.000-08:00

I was counting a bunch of cash recently (Arvind will know why) and I got this puzzle idea. I've noticed that I'm really bad at counting cash (or other things), there is some way or the other that my mind gets distracted and I end up never knowing whether I counted correctly or not. So: is there a foolproof method of counting ? Point is -- it can be contrived and laborious, but it should not depend on your concentration, so that at the end you *know* whether you counted right or not. Like a checksum !!!!
One example solution would be to count in batches of 5 and then number the 5*n the note clearly. That way even a ADD-ed person like me would like get the individual bunches right and you even have a numbering to help you recount if you have to. Not a clean or elegant solution but might help you to get my point. Any more solutions ?

The other puzzle is a really cool one I saw at the Vishweshwareya Museum in Bangalore, which despite being a little decreipt, is actually pretty world-class. This is a maths puzzle. Its a board game with 20 positions arranged in a circle. Two people play the game. You have a marker which you can move 1 or 2 steps, and then the other person moves the marker. The person who reaches the 20th square is the winner of the game. The question is: is there a winning strategy to this game ? This is like tic-tac-toe, where there is a strategy where the starting person always wins. This one's strategy is a lot tougher, but I think I cracked it. There was an even tougher version of the game, where I was completely at sea, but I forgot the game so can't mention it here.

Siddhu strikes again !!

2008-02-27T09:35:00.000-08:00

A funny x-rated poster from my talented nephew :

and turning the poster upside-down:

Torrent !

2008-02-17T11:57:00.001-08:00

Finally, I gingerly put my toe into the world of torrenting.

We upgraded our internet connection recently to unlimited download, and I used the opportunity to download Prison Break from off the net. So far, I've downloaded 4 episodes of the current series (they killed off Sarah!! the damned despicable lowlifes. The series producers I mean). It works quite well, though I'm pessimistically expecting a stern call from my ISP -- "Dear Sir, please do not misuse your unlimited connection or else .." -- or nasty extra charges from some fine print or something.

The downgrades work through a protocol called Torrent (or BitTorrent) which I know very little about. I just downloaded it and tried a bit and it worked. The downloads for PB are 300+MB each BTW. This torrent thingy seems like a cool, complex app. The big deal with it is that once you download something, it allows other people to download it from your computer !! That's pretty discomfiting I found. Its all very nice to gain from someone else's goodness after they take the trouble to tape the stuff and upload it, but when it comes to allowing other people to download stuff off my computer -- ummm..

I can trace it to a couple of things -- just an uncomfortable feeling about someone using my comp. without my permission, and the abovementioned fear that my ISP will rap me on the knuckles.

Stumble Upon

2008-02-11T10:12:00.000-08:00

After a long time, I discovered a web tool/site that I got truly excited about -- "StumbleUpon". http://www.stumbleupon.com . It lets you rate cool sites and sites that get rated well by enough people 'bubble up' to the top. Then you can pick topics that you are interested in and just wander through a randomly selected pathway through all the stumbledupon sites of the world. The range and quality of the sites is amazing. Give it a shot. You'll need to download the Stumbleupon toolbar, sign up, and select your topics of interest and you're on your way,

http://www.chaosmatrix.org/library/humor/reject.html : Very funny. I've written the standard polite rejection letter hundreds of times ..

http://www.numberspiral.com : The first page is fantastic intellectual eye-candy but the next page onwards descends (or ascends) into too difficult (for me) maths

PS: I'm wondering if the first two comments on this post are by people associated with stumbleupon. From running India Water Portal, I know this kind of thing happens..

The Clinton crying episode

2008-01-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

I read a couple of times about Hillary Clinton's 'crying' episode (including the dagger-out sarcasm of Pat Oliphant), searched for "Hillary crying", first result was a YouTube video that had the episode with perfect-clarity video and audio. The net works so seamlessly well sometimes. Especially now with the commodification of video on the web.

(My take -- it wasn't spontaneous)

"Impressions of Egypt"

2008-01-15T07:08:00.000-08:00

This is by Arvind. A classic bit of navel-gazing/ mountain-out-of-a-molehill/the-personal-is-political . Actually I think the reasoning is fair enough

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The most memorable part of my trip was neither the history nor the monuments but rather my run in with a local guide who was assigned by the travel company to be part of our tour. So the first blog is based on Wael, who is said to have a degree in Egyptology from an University in Cairo.

We met Wael in Cairo, pretty much upon arrival. He spoke English with a distinctive Arabic accent that was given away when he spoke words such as control (pronounced conthrol.) The first sign of what was to come was when he suggested we visit the Papyrus Museum. Turned out this was a massively overpriced papyrus shop and in the calibration phase of our tour we let ourselves get suckered into making over priced purchases. The next stop he suggested was a Egyptian cotton store, and this time we made the stop but did not buy anything. At this point I had pretty much made up my mind about not visiting any more factories or outlets - because they were nothing more than tourist traps (if all you wanted to do was sight see.)

The next day morning, on the overnight train, Wael made three claims that annoyed me. First he tried to get us to go to a perfume factory. Most of the group was really annoyed by this time and we kind of said no (not firmly at this point.) Vibhats mom showed a very very mild interest, she asked if it was on the way to the Philae temple (we were to visit here) and that was all the stimulus he needed to try and sell us on this. Next he tried selling us Gold chains with our names inscribed in Heiroglyphics - these things are called Cartouches, the price of each being atleast 50 US Dollars. Third, he was trying to sell us the sound and light tour to the temple at nearly ten times the price quoted by Lonely Planet. Jing, found out the price of the tour at the hotel and it turned out to be around what Lonely planet suggested. When we asked him about the discrepancy, (we were still trying to work out a reasonable agreement with him rather than ignoring him completely,) his answer was that the way things work in Egypt is not the way things work in the rest of the world. His claim was that the tour to the temple required a boat ride, and that the fare quoted by the hotel would be arbitrarily increased. At this point, every one in the tour was completely upset with Wael and we wanted to take the Philae temple sound and light show through the hotel. Just before the temple tour was scheduled to start, Wael had a conversation with the hotel manager, who then proceeded to cancel our tour on some flimsy excuse. It was pretty clear to everyone that Wael was behind this.

After all these events we went to Aswan and Philae temple but without the sound and light show. On the way back, he insisted that we tip the boat driver a total of 50 Egyptian pounds, or 10 US Dollars The tip was for all 8 of us, and according to Lonely Planet, the boat ride itself cost only 40 or so Egyptian pounds. Next he insisted, we pay a 50 Egyptian Pound tip to the driver as well. At this point, I lost my patience and asked him what the fare was and we would like to pay a percentage of it. He said something that there is no basis for a fare and did not quote a price and said other things that did not make any sense to any of the group. I lost my temper and said "Don't bullshit me." This line became a subsequent pet line for the others in the group and it was one of the clues for the charades game. At this point, he was a bit intimidated and I left the scene, because I was not helping anybody reach any agreement.

Everyone in the group thought that Wael had it coming and he was getting his just desserts. Nandita too thought this guy was not being honest, but had the view that we were ruining our holiday fighting for relatively small amounts of money although the principles we were fighting for ma have been larger - should you just let some one rip you off even if it was affordable.

However, I could not help feeling bad about the situation. I really was in a position of power because I had the wealth - at least by Egyptian standards. Wael had the power of local knowledge and he was prepared to use it to his advantage. But the question that bothered me was this - Should any man have to put up with another man yelling at him? To me the answer seemed no - yelling is a symbol of domination and power and no man, it seems to me, should let himself be dominated and over powered by another. I suppose in a situation where two men are each trying to dominate each other yelling would be an acceptable currency for transaction, but in the situation I mentioned, I felt that I was abusing the power of wealth. No doubt Wael was not an honest person but I still could not condone my behavior. So then it was clear to me, that I could have resolved the issue with out trying to dominate. This should have been the case, independent of whether the person on the other side of the argument is honest or not. Clearly Wael was not honest.

I started developing other thoughts about honesty. It is quite easy for me to be honest, in most circumstances, because of the security I have in my education and the wealth of America, where I live. This is a bit like a batsman who walks when he knows he is out even if the umpire thinks he is not out, but does so provided he has already scored a 100 runs. Now, even in India I would say I was honest, but I would attribute most of that to the security at home, the values my mother instilled in me and in the belief that I would some how be successful. If I did not have all of the above, I tend to think I would cheat and be dishonest. Also, another empirical piece of evidence is worth recollecting. I found it entirely acceptable to copy Engineering Drawing diagrams at IIT. This was a completely conscious piece of action, and to this day I defend and am proud of the practice. The reason is this, no matter what system I sign up to, IIT or not, there will be parts of it that suck. In the case of Engg Drawings, the need for people to do this was made by some retarded, IQ below 15, stuck up Professor who did not understand the importance of specialization and therefore insisted that we all be Jacks of all trades. So I felt and still feel within my rights to not respect the rules of a stupid system. Now, this same thing could be applied to Wael. I can think of many reasons why Wael should not feel any respect for the wealth distribution and generation schemes in his country - an unpopular regime supported by the West. So, if I could be dishonest in one system, are my actions any different from Wael's?

BTW, if some one still does ED at IIT, and he spends more than 15 minutes and does not copy, please let me know, I would like to give him a piece of my mind and ask him to better spend his time else where. Preferably, I would like to pay a local Goonda to give this dude a sound thrashing.

But back to Wael. Turns out the Guy was quite intimidated by us - this is what he told Nandita. Apparently, he used to work on Cruise ships as part of the cleaning crew before he found a way to get to school and study. This is really quite a hard life. Away from family in a pretty cruel environment. He also mentioned the following claims about the tourist industry in Egypt.
( a ) The tour companies charge a fee for usage of services provided by the small dudes - the guys who drive the boats to the temple for example, but
( b ) the tour companies do not pay the fees collected and instead pocket it themselves and
( c ) leave the small dudes to survive on tips.

Now, there was not enough ideas to verify the claims above in the time we had. So this was troubling if true but we had to be skeptical about it. On the other hand, I can see why they might be true. When a country is ruled by forces that are propped up by self serving interests of other countries, these types of things could arise. So this piece of information did little to change my situation.

Then a different thought occurred to me. As I looked at Vibhat, Jing, Nandita and I, who all work for major power player corporations, I came to a different conclusion. The four of us were locally honest but globally dishonest and Wael was locally dishonest but at least on the surface not aligned with any forces of global dishonesty. Well how so? First we all live in a country that uses maximal power plays to get advantages to itself. BTW, this is not a statement about the US it is a statement about any country that is the most powerful - if India were to be the most powerful, all Indians will enjoy the abusive excesses of power. So while we ourselves might lead a honest life here, we are no doubt reaping the rewards of abuse of power at some level. So I convinced myself that we are no different from Wael.

So after feeling not so good about myself about wealth and power, I finally found a solution that made me feel better. I decided to give the guy a generous tip - 60 USD that seemed to make him happy. I was happier at not having to deal with the ethics of the situation, because the spot light started shining on me. So there in lies the moral of the story - Money, the cause of and solution to all of mans problems.

Arvind

====
Editors comments: Parts of the above sound very like Noam Chomsky -- you are complicit in the wrong actions of your country. Chomsky's very sound response then is that you have to be highly subversive and work within the high degree of internal freedom that the US provides to mitigate the wrong actions. Is the final statement tongue-in-cheek ? If not it spoils an otherwise nice analyis. The point is not money but power.
Re ED: well its too much to expect analysis from Arvind without some nonsensical idiosyncractic neo-fascism creeping in.

And more on cars

2008-01-13T19:50:00.000-08:00

Today the Hindu has an article saying that the 'authorities' are considering letting even and odd number plates run on alternate days to reduce congestion. Whoa ! Such revolutionary. I'm all for it, though I'm completely unprepared for it (I'll have to check if my scooter and car have different endings in which case we're sort of saved).

Some prelim possibilities:

-- the proposal is probably DOA as all the powerful people will be against it
-- there will be a mad rush to get a second vehicle. Along with it a thriving business in picking even or odd number plates, fake number plates to alternate on your car etc.
-- should this be applied to just cars or two-wheelers too ?

Water Design competition

2008-01-13T07:49:00.000-08:00

We're sponsoring an architecture / design competition for students at the Water Portal.
http://www.indiawaterportal.org/design
If you know someone studying architecture or design, encourage them to take part.

(No connection with the photograph above by the way)

The Tata Nano is here (well not quite)

2008-01-11T23:49:00.000-08:00

In continuation of my previous post -- The Tata Nano is here. Time for me to skedaddle ? Well I have a little more time I guess for it to actually hit the road. I broached my theory to Priya and got a very frosty reception so I guess its an uphill task.

Two points I could add to my earlier analysis: one is that there is a safety aspect that Ratan Tata talked about that is very nice. Whenever I see families of 4 or 5 precariously travelling on a two-wheeler, I found it quite irritating and ungraceful. Why do people do these things -- why do you insist on having 2 children without the wherewithal to transport them in a decent, safe way ? Perhaps that's too harsh and for whatever reason people are stuck in that situation and the Tata car will be a godsend for several such people who can afford it. And the safety value of driving your family around in a car rather than a 2-wheeler is something that these people will always be grateful to Tata for.

The other thing is more or less obvious -- having a car and driving around in it, and taking potshots at the Tata car for worsening congestion is a dummy thing to do. I guess I have no leg to stand on, since I haven't made any serious attempt to use public transpo myself. All the more reason then to take the dignified option and flee to the countryside ?

Edmund Hillary passes away

2008-01-11T23:18:00.000-08:00

There's a whole bunch of coverage in the Hindu on this, that prompted several thoughts. The first is the sheer volume of coverage -- big front page headlines (including the very nice photo above), editorial and op-ed, whole last page and 1 inside story. I may be just ignorant about Sir Hillary's achievements but whoa ! It reminds me a funny little secret of journalism -- it seems the New York Times and other large newspapers maintain ready obituaries for prominent older people, otherwise when the person dies they have to scramble around and put one together in just one days time.

One of the articles talked about a recent instance when a climber on Mt. Everest who was having health problems was ignored by other people intent on reaching the top, and the person died. Hillary called it 'horrifying' that climbers could leave a dying man on the upper slopes. I felt it is a reflection of our times. Lots of people spend a lot of money and take a real risk to try to climb Mt. Everest. After all that training and spending all the money, you get your shot at the top, and then you have the dilemma of giving it all up to take care of another climber. Hey, nobody forced the other person to do it, he took the risk just like you did !

What would you do ?

The 1 Lakh Tata car and the how-many-ever lakh Scorpio mHawk

2007-12-21T08:53:00.000-08:00

Two car stories today:

One more article in the Hindu today regarding the Tata's 1Lakh car. Ratan Tata brushed off a question of the environmental impact of a horde of new cars on the road saying that it will be one of the greenest of cars.
For some time now I have been whining to my wife that I want to get out of B'lore and relo to a saner place. In general greenies like me complain a lot about how things are so bad and what with climate change things will get worse and so on. But in actuality we don't do so much. Probably because the concerns are at the level of the mind and don't go deep into the consciousness. But reading about the 1 Lakh car ought to get anyone not just a greenie into a panic. Can you imagine making cars purchasable to some multiple (say 2 or 3) of people who have the purchasing power to buy a car right now ? Anybody with any sense will retreat to the hills. I will mark the date for the release of the 1 Lakh car on my calendar and plan my escape (where to, is a whole other matter).

There is a elitist perspective in the above ('I-drive-a-car {though one getting a little seedy at this point}, and-I-don't-want-the-great-unwashed-to-do-the-same), but clearly that's not the point. If cars can be made cheaper, that is by itself okay. The problem is of course the inadequacy of the infrastructure. So we have an interesting problem of economics here where so far it is the pricing aspect that have kept the roads motorable. Now that barrier is being torn down. The right economic solution would therefore be to allow cars to be priced at whatever the manufacturers can price them, but to make buying a car a lottery kind-of-thing simply because the roads cannot manage the load. You have to wait for your turn to buy a car. What say ?

The other thing in today's Hindu was a full page for a new Scorpio, the mHawk. You can see some of their collateral at mahindrascorpio.com. I automatically (I'm proud to say) looked for any green features and found absolutely none. I got irritated enough to shoot off a feedback at their website, conveying my peeve. I encourage you to do the same to build pressure on them. Besides the basic stupidity of their car, there is the additional stupidity of an ad that is like a dinosaur while everyone else is chattering about global warming. (What, you aren't ?)

For a while, I've had a great deal of congnitive dissonance with the real estate ads in the papers and billboards. On one side, the ads are nice and attractive and I feels like buying one of the fancy places and feel envious of those who can afford one. At the same time, I used to have a real uncomfortable feeling which I was not able to pin down. It had something to do with the paradox of terrible urban infrastructure and crowding and the contrast with the fancy picture of these ads. And also that there are so many green things that one can do in building houses and apts and none of these people do them. So I end up wondering if I am the stupid-ass unrealistic idiot and should I get with it. And then one day it struck me -- absolutely not ! These bozos spend so much money on doing all kinds of fancy things in the apartments and they can't apply themselves to do the most basic green stuff. They should all be kicked on their ass, and as soon as I build up a critical mass of right-thinking followers, I will do just that.

H-Dog OUT !!!

Speed SMS

2007-12-09T18:53:00.001-08:00

My nephew. He can SMS the way I can type :-)

Bleak House

2007-11-29T19:16:00.000-08:00

Does anybody feel that we're passing through a pretty bad phase in India roundabout now (circa November 2007)? Let me depress you:

-- the shameful events in Nandigram
-- the revelations on Tehelka re. Modi and the possibility that Modi will be re-elected yet again (some analyst said that if this happens Modi will be in a position to come on the national scale -- like BJP's PM candidate. Joy.
-- the complete breakdown of electoral politics in Karnataka
-- our monthly or bi-monthly terrorist attack
-- The joys of Taslima-hounding
-- little-little killings every other day in the Northeast

A design classic -- lotto flip-flops

2007-11-16T19:37:00.000-08:00

Last year I went flip-flop shopping after my Teva and Columbia flop-flops from the US weathered out. I looked at a bunch of stuff with really bad designs costing quite a lot 1000/- upto 4 or 5000. None of it looked really appealing. And then I stumbled across Lotto flip flops. They're cheap as hell around 250/- or something. They have excellent minimalist design: the simple narrow straps which is what I was looking for and which no one else seemed to have -- everybody else seems to widen the staraps and do all kinds of stupid design things with it. And they say "Lotto" very clearly which is excellent advertising for the company, and which I wouldn't care for much except in this case the logo is stylish so I don't mind. This pair has served me really well for the past year or so, but looking a little shabby at the moment.

So lets hear it for Lotto flip-flops : a design classic.

Oxymoronic English

2007-11-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

In my recruiting efforts (not very successful so far) at Arghyam, I often come across resumes where the claim of good English ability is belied very clearly in the language of the resume. Less usual is where the person manages to shoot themselves in the foot in just a single sentence. Like this one:

"A command on English language worth the reckoning"

Perhaps I'll have more such gems to add as I continue to screen resumes

Two good songs

2007-10-31T22:31:00.000-07:00

This is apparently someone called "Annie" from Pakistan ..

http://www.youtopia.in/viewfile/4b57dd4bc29c669a8ff62bcd1a623413

And this is another one from the guys made Hotel Keralafornia:

Delhi Metro

2007-10-28T00:27:00.000-07:00

I stayed at Karol Bagh in Delhi during the trip and travelled on Delhi Metro a few times. Works very well. See the card that you use for swiping, it has a Citibank ad on the back.

I was struck though, by how raw and unfinished the logo for the Metro looks. Compare it with the sleek London Underground image.

The Hotel 'Cartel' Palace ...

Burma protests

2007-09-30T09:53:00.000-07:00

I've always felt bad about the Indian government's pusillanimity on Burma. A dictatorship in our backyard and we don't have the decency to call it like it is and stand up for their people. Personally it pricks even more since I have huge problems with the US for doing things like this, so felt good to leave, from that perspective, but hey, here too !

I wish I was doing more, but right now, all I can say is that my thoughts and prayers (so to say) are with those amazing monks and civilians protesting.

PS: Well, I can also mention this Facebook group that was set up in solidarity with the protestors and is organising a worldwide day of protest against the Burmese government. You guys rock.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=24957770200

Shocking

2007-09-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

A bunch of (probably) BJP goons got together and burnt a Chennai bound bus in Bangalore last night. This was because of something M.Karunanidhi said in the context of the Sethusamudram controversy, I guess it must have reflected his atheist beliefs. What the goons neglected to do was check if there was someone left in the bus during the pandemonimu before they set it alight. As it turned out there were indeed two people and they were burnt to death. Such are the times we live in.

A big deal !

2007-09-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

Look over here for a big deal !

Hotel Keralafornia

2007-08-28T02:49:00.000-07:00

http://ishare.rediff.com/filemusic.php?id=19516

Listen this spoof of Hotel California - Hotel Keralafornia

Comments: First - what doesn't work : its a spoof so not that original, I didn't find a particular meaning in the song (same as the original!), the lyrics jar at places.

BUT...

The song has a remarkable depth in some ways. The singer doesn't seem to be native Mallu but is able to do an excellent imitation of Mallu. He seems to really understand the rythms of Mallu-speak and how they interact with English to produce beautiful sounds sometimes (I would guess that it takes understanding both English and Mallu really well to do this). The tone of the spoof is so beautifully laid-back and restrained - doesn't push too hard. The music complements beautifully. Overall the effect is like a verbal and audio velvet bed -- something to luxuriate in.

Funny

2007-08-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

I first read this ages ago in the US. I ranked it among the best pieces of humor (for the discriminating reader, of course) I'd come across. I googled it recently and found it. Its still pretty funny not as much as it seemed then. I think the flaw is that it doesn't develop enough, stops too early.

PS: I have to say, I kind of side with the guy.

RECEIVED FROM AN ENGLISH PROFESSOR:

This assignment was actually turned in by two of my English students:

Rebecca and Gary
English 44A
SMU
Creative Writing
Prof. Miller

In-class Assignment for Wednesday

Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.

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

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The camomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked camomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So camomile was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a
hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel." Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously
excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth -- when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President,in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow'em out of the sky!"

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.

Asshole.

Bitch.

Prison Break

2007-08-06T08:41:00.000-07:00

A friend passed on the first season of "Prison Break" and its ruined my life. Its bloody addictive and I keep trying to squeeze in time to view it instead of preparing for meetings and other such essentials.

There are several irritating things about it but nevertheless its got a certain something that keeps me going back to it. However, I may try to avoid the 2nd season, I think the big conspiracy theory is too cliched and hard to believe. I'm just happy to see these folks get out of prison and fulfil the promise of the series title.
The Wikipedia entry had a nice dig about the series -- about how they finally managed to get out on Plan Z after being in danger of running out of letters of the alphabet.
Wentworth Miller acts great. The whole strong silent thing -- works great. And bloody good-looking.

Some spoiler discussion:
At the end of one of the episodes when Scofield scalds off part of the map -- that was one of the low points. It felt so contrived.
I just saw the second to last episode where the fat guy gets RG-ed. Quite sad.

I got press :-)

2007-08-04T10:41:00.000-07:00

A local paper "The Bangalore Mirror" did a piece on the Water Portal. The paper doesn't seem to have a website yet, but the article can be read here:

http://journodiary.wordpress.com/2007/08/01/out-of-it-techies-join-hands-for-social-cause/

Its certainly hyperbolic, but enjoy.

"Not Even Wrong"

2007-07-27T19:43:00.000-07:00

I've been reading (which in this case does not necessarily mean understanding) Peter Woit's book "Not Even Wrong", subtitled "The Failure of String Theory and the Continuing Challenge to Unify the Laws of Physics". Some pithy stuff from there, hope to add to this post at intervals:

( Wikipedia would have entries for most names or terms that you don't understand below)

"Not Even Wrong" -- this was Pauli's way of describing a theory that he felt was worse than wrong. Woit's taking a dig at string theory by reusing that phrase.

From a strong criticism of string theory by Sheldon Glashow:
"...Until the string theory people can intepret perceived properties of the real world they simply are not doing physics. Should they be paid by universities and be permitted to pervert impressionable students ? Will young Ph.Ds, whose expertise is limited to superstring theory, be employable if, and when, the string snaps ? Are string thoughts more appropriate to departments of mathematics, or even schools of divinity than to physics departments ? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin ? How many dimensions are there in a compactified manifold, 30 powers of ten smaller than a pinhead ? "

A topologist is someone who doesn't know the difference between a coffee and a doughnut

The Hindu's opinion page is crap !

2007-07-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

The Hindu had a major redesign/revamp almost a year back and finally it dawned on me that its Opinion page has become a complete mess. It still has a decent article on an average once every 2 days or so, (like today's one about the Archeological Society of India) but other than that its pretty terrible. I tend to respect their Editorials because of their on-high tone but then recently read a critique of editorials on thehoot.org that made me realize that they were probably not so hot. And sometimes they have these asinine paen editorials to Roger Federer or other sports personalities. Or weighty weigh-ins on the state of the cricket team.

But much worse they have this major syndication thing going with the Guardian of the UK. The syndicated articles might fall into one of these categories:

1.) An article about the US. Mostly I find these run-of-the-mill left wing stuff that doesn't show any insight. Great -- we get to understand America through the standard British left-wing lens.
2.) Some stuff utterly irrelevant to India like obesity epidemic, curbing unsolicited telephone calls, how secure FaceBook is (!!!)
3.) Somewhat more relevant stuff, usually ponderous meditations on terrorism.

The local opinions tend towards being monopolized by a small set of people and generally don't merit being on the edit page. Sometimes the articles are cringeworthy.

However it does compensate by some truly excellent occasional articles. Sainath gets a look-in every now and then, and its always healthy to be reminded that there are still people committing suicide at regular intervals while we grow at 9% (although when he goes off-topic he sucks). There were a couple of great pieces by Krishna Kumar the head of NCERT. I remember 1 or 2 great pieces by Jean Dreze.

Umm... well that's it I guess. Not a very coherent post.

Woh Lamhe

2007-07-21T08:46:00.000-07:00

Quite a raw, wince-worthy film but with some sweet scenes. I'm happy to see a sensitive film about mental illness. The real interest is that it is inspired by Mahesh Bhatt's relationship with Parveen Babi. I also find the title echoing in my head "Woh Lahmeee, Woh Lamheee..." and the flower artwork on the poster is nice.

Book reviews

2007-06-30T23:14:00.000-07:00

Its not often that I go back and read something I wrote and like it, but I'm really quite pleased with how these book reviews came out :

http://www.shvoong.com/books/173331-spoke-wheel/

http://www.shvoong.com/books/184776-cuckold/

http://www.shvoong.com/books/political/172828-bapu-kuti/

Read and praise me !

iPhone

2007-06-30T21:41:00.001-07:00

Being relatively divorced from all the iPhone hype, it only recently impinged on my consciousness with any depth, after the launch. The way the UI works -- horizontal and vertical views, magnifying, 'swooshing' and so on ... all very cool. What it makes me think about is what it takes to take things to a next level (Like with the invention of the mouse). I think the guys at Apple *really* understand the idea of a User Interface. At a lesser level of understanding, a user interface is the keyboard, mouse and screen and a person would try to think about how to improve the way a keyboard works (qwerty and so on) better mice (cordless) and all that. All nice, useful neat stuff. But when something like the iPhone happens, it seems the guys have been thinking at a much higher level, at a meta level, which requires a deeper understanding of what UI is. I remember a snippet from a book by Bruce Tognazzini, one of the gurus from Apple (he was at Healtheon for some time), and he talked of going camping and then coming back and bumping into things all over the house because the nature of the space was different. This chap could it seems relate UI and design to the much broader area of the relationship of yourself to your surroundings. And if you're able to discipline yourself enough to apply such broad concepts to the concrete task of making a cellphone UI, then you come up with something cool like iPhone. Steve Jobs perhaps brings the ability to make talented designers focus in that way.

If you're as out of it as I am, here's a page with iPhone videos. The one titled "Apple iPhone" does a demo of all the cool features.
http://www.cnet.com/apple-iphone.html

"Tentative Manipulation"

2007-06-29T21:54:00.001-07:00

I remembered this suddenly and I couldn't resist putting it down.

I was pretty bad at college at lab work. In Intermediate Chemistry I would routinely work back from the expected answer and fudge my observations to get the right answer (with a little offset of course). This became so necessary that I even came up with a title for it: "Tentative Manipulation". I had a rough section with this heading somewhere where I did the calculations required and came up with the provisional 'observations' that I would need to use. A friend (Sridhar of BVK College Intermediate -- if you see this and remember it, drop me a line!) saw this once and gave me a hard time about it. Until he did that, I didn't realize that there was something a little precocious about it.

Nice

2007-06-18T05:19:00.000-07:00

I thought this captures well something that I try to wrap my mind around often -- evaluating how the country as a whole is doing, where do we stand, is there cause for alarm, and so on ..

http://www.dfid.gov.uk/consultations/three-indias.pdf

2007-05-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

A little something for the corporate types to mull :

To Remake the World
Something Earth-changing is afoot among civil society
by Paul Hawken

I have given nearly one thousand talks about the environment in the past fifteen years, and after every speech a smaller crowd gathered to talk, ask questions, and exchange business cards. The people offering their cards were working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. They were from the nonprofit and nongovernmental world, also known as civil society. They looked after rivers and bays, educated consumers about sustainable agriculture, retrofitted houses with solar panels, lobbied state legislatures about pollution, fought against corporate-weighted trade policies, worked to green inner cities, or taught children
about the environment. Quite simply, they were trying to safeguard nature and ensure justice.

After being on the road for a week or two, I would return with a couple hundred cards stuffed into various pockets. I would lay them out on the table in my kitchen, read the names, look at the logos, envisage the missions, and marvel at what groups do on behalf of others. Later, I would put them into drawers or paper bags,
keepsakes of the journey. I couldn't throw them away.

Over the years the cards mounted into the thousands, and whenever I glanced at the bags in my closet, I kept coming back to one question: did anyone know how many groups there were? At first, this was a matter of curiosity, but it slowly grew into a hunch that something larger was afoot, a significant social movement that was
eluding the radar of mainstream culture.

I began to count. I looked at government records for different countries and, using various methods to approximate the number of environmental and social justice groups from tax census data, I initially estimated that there were thirty thousand environmental organizations strung around the globe; when I added social justice
and indigenous organizations, the number exceeded one hundred thousand. I then researched past social movements to see if there were any equal in scale and scope, but I couldn't find anything. The more I probed, the more I unearthed, and the numbers continued to climb. In trying to pick up a stone, I found the exposed tip of a geological formation. I discovered lists, indexes, and small databases specific to certain sectors or geographic areas, but no set of data came close to describing the movement's breadth.
Extrapolating from the records being accessed, I realized that the initial estimate of a hundred thousand organizations was off by at least a factor of ten. I now believe there are over one million organizations working toward ecological sustainability and social justice. Maybe two.

By conventional definition, this is not a movement. Movements have leaders and ideologies. You join movements, study tracts, and identify yourself with a group. You read the biography of the founder (s) or listen to them perorate on tape or in person. Movements have followers, but this movement doesn't work that way. It is dispersed, inchoate, and fiercely independent. There is no manifesto or
doctrine, no authority to check with.

I sought a name for it, but there isn't one.

Historically, social movements have arisen primarily because of injustice, inequalities, and corruption. Those woes remain legion, but a new condition exists that has no precedent: the planet has a life-threatening disease that is marked by massive ecological degradation and rapid climate change. It crossed my mind that
perhaps I was seeing something organic, if not biologic. Rather than a movement in the conventional sense, is it a collective response to threat? Is it splintered for reasons that are innate to its purpose? Or is it simply disorganized? More questions followed. How does it function? How fast is it growing? How is it connected? Why is it largely ignored?

After spending years researching this phenomenon, including creating with my colleagues a global database of these organizations, I have come to these conclusions: this is the largest social movement in all of history, no one knows its scope, and how it functions is more mysterious than what meets the eye.

What does meet the eye is compelling: tens of millions of ordinary and not-so-ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.

2007-04-30T05:40:00.001-07:00

http://www.chakree.in/home.htm

Does anyone remember the musician for the music at this site. Its a very distinctive rock/pop hit song from college days (Wham ?) but I'm not getting it at all.
The website itself is kinda... interesting huh.

2007-04-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

The H-Dog is back at the Onion and all true connoisseurs are rejoicing.

Mani Shankar Aiyer -- renaissance man ?

2007-04-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

I was forwarded this (IMO) truly remarkable speech by Minister for Panchayati Raj, Mani Shankar Aiyer. I found it 1.) intelligent and perceptive 2.) sensitive 3.) insanely honest and courageous. The speech is rambling, the historical and ideological analysis contestible and some of the things he talks about are fairly common left wing 'party line'. Nevertheless.

{{Okay -- let the flame wars begin. Arvind, no doubt you will accept the privilege of the first salvo}}

================

'I was always Leftist. Economic reforms made me completely Marxist'
Mani Shankar Aiyar

In a speech at a CII meet, Mani Shankar Aiyar argued that policy is hijacked by a small elite. That the cabinet he belongs to is quite comfortable with this hijacking. That India's system of governance is such that Rs 650 crore for village development is considered wasteful but Rs 7,000 crore for the Commonwealth Games is considered vital. The classes rule all the time, Aiyar says, the masses get a look-in every five years. A few weeks ago the newspapers reported that the number of Indian billionaires had exceeded the number of billionaires in Japan, and
there was a considerable amount of self-congratulation on this. I understand from P. Sainath that we rank eighth in the world in the number of our millionaires. And we stand 126th on the Human Development Index. I am glad to report that last year we were 127th. At this very fast rate of growth that we are now showing, we moved
up from 127th to 126th position. This is the paradigm of our development process. In a democracy, every five years the masses determine who will rule this country. And they showed dramatically in the last elections that they knew how to keep their counsel and show who they wanted. We, my party and I, were the beneficiaries and we
formed the government. Every five years, it is the masses who determine who will form the government. And in between those five years the classes determine what that government will do.
In determining what that government will do, the CII has played an extremely important role. I am not surprised, as that is its job. It represents industry, and therefore it argues for the interests of the industry. Industry has been enormously benefited by the processes of economic reform that we have seen in this country over the last 15 years or so. But the benefits of these reforms have gone so disproportionately to those who are the most passionate advocates of reforms that every five years we are given a slap in the face for having done what the CII regards as self-evidently the right thing for this country.
It is a sustainable economic proposition, because our numbers are so vast, that there are perhaps 10 million Indians who are just as rich as the richest equivalent segment anywhere in the world or in any group of countries. There are about fifty million Indians who really are extraordinarily well off. That's the population of the UK.
But if you look at the 700 million Indians who are either not in the market or barely in the market, then the impact of the economic reforms process, which is so lauded by the CII, makes virtually no difference to their lives. That is why there is a complete disjunct between what the democratic processes are trying for in the short run and what those who have made an enormous success of our achievements
in the last fifteen years deem to be, at least in the short run, their own requirements.
So when you talk of a nine point two per cent growth rate, it becomes a statistical abstraction: 0.2 per cent of our people are growing at 9.92 per cent per annum. But there is a very large number, I don't know how many, whose growth rate is perhaps down to 0.2 per cent. But certainly, the number of those who are at the lower end of
the growth sector is very much larger than those who are at the higher end.
Yet what happens when you have the budget? As an absolute ritual every finance minister (my colleague Chidambaram is no exception) will devote the first four or five pages of his budget speech to the bulk of India and there will then be several pages, including whole of part B, which deals perhaps with one or two per cent of our population.
Almost the entire discussion that takes place at CII or CII-like forums, will be about Part B rather than Part A. There are comfort levels that you get from statistics — for instance, suddenly Arun Shourie, announcing in the NDA government that our poverty rates have fallen from 35 per cent to 22 per cent. He did it by changing the basis on which you estimate poverty. You cannot compare apples and oranges. The next national sample survey has shown that our poverty levels have actually increased. Are we going to be mesmerised by these statistics or understand that 700 million of our people are poor? So we have an Indira Awaas Yojana which will ensure that there will be a 'jhuggi' for every Indian round about the year 2200. We have the PM Gram Sadak Yojana which was supposed to complete all the gram sadak in seven years — we are in the eighth year. And where we are told that the education of 1000 may be covered, who knows only the education of 500 will be covered. And if you happen to be a tribal in Arunachal, you are told that because of your social custom you are to live in one hut atop a hill, we can't provide you a road.
I was always something of a leftist. But I became a complete Marxist only after the economic reforms. Because I see the extent to which the most important conception of Marx — that the relationship of any given class with the means of production determines the superstructure —holds.This ugly choice is placed before the government. An unequal choice, because you have organised yourself to say what you want to say but the others are only able to organise themselves and that too without
speaking to each other in the fifth year when the elections take place. That is why this expression anti-incumbency, although the Oxford Dictionary says that it is a word belonging to the English language, is a peculiarly Indian phenomenon. Because everything that goes in the name of good governance like the economic reforms either
does not touch the life of people or affect them at all. We have seen what happened at Nandigram, we have seen what was happening at Singur and we have these propositions that say that SEZs are going to come and lakhs of hectares are going to be utilised for the good of the country. For what's the syndrome in all this, it's
still 'do bigha zameen'. The chap says that I want my one bigha of zameen to be reinstated, but you offer double the compensation and "baad mein dekha jayega". You go to Hirakud, which is where Jawaharlal Nehru actually used the expression modern temples of India, and you ask what happened to the tribals who were driven out of there. Absolutely nobody knows. Coming to the cabinet, you see what happens. The minute suggestions are made as to what would perhaps benefit the people and what would benefit the classes, the tendency is to say that our great achievement
is 9.2 per cent growth. Our great achievement is that Indian industrialists are buying Arcelor and Corus. That Time magazine thinks we are a great power. In these circumstances, when a proposal came before the government to spend Rs 648 crore on the Gram Nyaya department, we were solemnly informed by one of the most influential ministers in the government to remember that we are a poor country. I was delighted when the next day he was with me in a group of ministers and I reminded him of his
remark and said in that case can we stop spending the Rs 7000 crore on the Commonwealth Games and he said, "No, no, that is an international commitment and a matter of national pride." This national pride will of course blow up if you spend Rs 7000 crore on the Commonwealth Games. We will be on the cover of Time and Newsweek.
I have always wondered why this rate of growth and economic reforms process is dated to Manmohan Singh. Because actually it should be dated to L.K. Jha's book Economic Strategy for the 80s. It is the decade in which we quickly recovered from agricultural depression and registered a double digit growth. At the beginning of the decade our biggest import was crude oil and after that it was edible oil. By the
end of the decade we were exporters of several kinds of edible oil. Why is it that Nehru became successful with his Hindu rate of growth? The reason is that the Hindu rate of growth was five times what our pre-Hindu rate of growth was. From 1914 to 1947, the figures of which are available, the rate of growth of the Indian economy was 0.72 per cent. And we got the Hindu rate of growth which was five times that and it made a difference to the people. The minute you had solid land reforms, the people had their 'zameen'. That is what Mother India was all about. People felt that they were involved in the process. All the political talk was: gareeb ke liye ham kya kar sakte hain. Indira Gandhi matched it beautifully when the entire political
spectrum joined hands against her by saying, "Woh kehte hain Indira hatao, hum kehte hain Garibi hatao."
There is nobody so marginal in a government as the minister of Panchayati Raj. I count for nothing. Nothing! When I was the minister of petroleum, I used to walk surrounded by this media. I kept on telling them that petrol prices can do only three things — go up, go down or remain where they are. And it was all over the place. But try and get them to write two words about the 700 million Indians —
absolutely impossible. And now with terrestrial television it is even worse. You have to be quarreling with your mother-in-law or hitting your daughter-in-law to be able to hit the headlines. It is impossible to get particularly the pink papers to focus on issues that affect the bulk of the people. And it is so easy to get them to focus on issues that are of high relevance to only one or two per cent of the people.
I believe the CII, if it is serious about the issue, should not be restricting itself to 25 minutes discussion before lunch but hold discussions for ten days and maybe something will come out of it.

Edited extracts from a speech at the CII Northern Region annual
meeting 2006-07, New Delhi, April 4

Newspaper watch - Turkey

2007-04-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

The Hindu on Turkish politics: "<<..>> However the decision is unlikely to resolve the chronic tension between Islamists, internationalists, and reformers on one side and nationalists, secularists and conservatives on the other"

Say what ??

=========

There's also a article on Francois Bayrou who came third in the French elections. He seems quite a smart chap and perhaps the messiah France has been waiting for. His critique of Segolene Royale and Nicolas Sarkozy:

" By his close links to the business world and media powers, his taste for intimidation and threat, Nicolas Sarkozy wll concentrate powers as they have never been. By his character and the themes he has chosen, risks worsening the social rift through a policy that benefits the richest.

Segolene Royale appears to have better intentions in terms of democracy. She seems more attentive to the fabric of our society. But her programme is full of state intervention, perpetuating the illusion that is it up to the state to do everything, that it can do everything. This programme goes exactly against the steps needed to give our country back its creativity and balance."

Firefox

2007-04-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

Firefox (the browser) has this absolutely amazing ability. Firstly it has tabbed browsing so you can have all you browser sessions up within the same window. Then if the browser crashes for some reason, and you bring it back up again, it will ask you if you want to restore the sessions. If you say "Yes" it will actually manage to restore the sessions perfectly including logging back to your email like Yahoo Mail or GMail. There are few things that have amazed me recently as much as the sight of a Firefox browser that just came up and is busy recreating like 12 different sessions that I had up previously. In fact, why do this only on a crash ? If I could bring up and log into the 4 or 5 different sites that I frequently visit when I go online without the headache of doing it for each one, it would be a big happiness gain for me.

Go Firefox.

2007-04-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

For those who care ..

Did I post this already ?

2007-04-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

The beauty of Indian telecommunications.

From a billboard ad for Kingfisher Airlines:

Call 1800 2333 131 / 020 2729 3030 / 080 4197 9797 / 022 6649 9393 /0124 2844 700 or 1800 1800 101 / Contact Your Travel Agent

And this might be of interest to some

Globalization, meet localization

2007-04-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Making pizza at home was never something that I seriously considered (or knew anyone who seriously considered) while in the US. However we're (well Priya's) now making pizza at home. I think the process can be traced as follows:
-- pizza comes to India
-- kids like
-- moms don't like the cost, but have cooking smarts and (relatively) more time
-- someone figures out there's a market in home-made pizza

Now its relatively easy to find pizza base and sauce and cheese at supermarkets here.

==========

Curious personal development website:
http://www.centerpointe.com/

Checking out

2007-03-29T10:45:00.001-07:00

It is becoming more and more obvious that the blog(s) are not going anywhere fast, which is to be expected coz I have a fulltime job. I think I should accept the inevitable and formally close up shop here. The blog was supposed to track my sabbatical which comes to an end in late April (21st to be exact), if I use the 1 year timeframe I started with. So we are coming to a logical end anyway. A pseudo-profound taking-stock post is obviously called for, and hopefully I'll pull my thoughts together and do that.

The blog enabled me to keep in touch in a nice way with several people, I wonder if there is some way to keep that going without the heavy duty time commitment of a blog. I've heard of this tool called Twitter, does anyone know more about it ?

2007-03-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

http://gentopix.blogspot.com/

Cool blog !

2007-03-21T12:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.gsi.gov.in/rajasaur.htm

The kind of trivia that is so uniquely web...

2007-03-19T05:12:00.000-07:00

A seed from a tree near the Arghyam office. These seeds have been drifting down from the tree in great numbers over the last few days. It comes with its own 'natural' plastic shrinkwrap.

Film -- "Vanaja"

2007-03-09T19:17:00.001-08:00

I just noticed this site off a Google ad on despoki.blogspot :

http://www.vanajathefilm.com/

It sounds like a cool film and the site is a masterpiece of tasteful minimalism.

Georges Simenon

2007-03-03T21:00:00.000-08:00

I reread Georges Simenons' "Sunday" recently. Simenon is a remarkable author. He transcends 'Frenchness' (actually he was Belgian) to universal appeal. There are some explorations that can be done along this line of thought. There are not that many European authors that I like (Albert Camus and Umberto Eco stand out, even then only some of their books). I don't know if this is because I'm too rooted in my Anglo-american reading background, or because the authors are not universal. It would be interesting to know how the reverse works -- do European readers take more easily to English (or other like Indian, South American) writing ?

Back to Simenon. His writing is completely about human nature. There is an endless creativity in his writings and an infinite variety of situations and responses. His Inspector Maigret series tends to be lighter and and more about creative murder situations :-). They can be a lot of fun, in the "Light reading for the serious reader" category. His other books, like the ones in the photograph, can be quite dark.

Definitely someone to try if you are on the literary trip.

Some stuff about Simenon

PS: Salon has an interesting article that gives you some feel of how the literary scene in France works

Word for the day

2007-02-26T16:37:00.001-08:00

Topical word of the day:
Chindia

Interesting word of the day:
(Dis)gruntled

Obscure word of the day:
antimacassar

Absolutely wierd word of the day:
etaoin shrdlu

CK Prahalad's "Bottom of the Pyramid"

2007-02-20T07:32:00.000-08:00

I haven't yet read this so I found the summary of the ideas in that book here:

http://www.ckprahalad.com/2006/01/29/selling-to-the-poor-by-allen-l-hammond-ck-prahalad/

a good read.

I think its a really fantastic idea to be able to spend some time and ingenuinity in coming up with a useful service for the poor. Some of the examples in the article are really stimlating. However I feel you can't fundamentally change the situation without heavy government investment in rural development, education and healthcare and so on.

To tie this up with another line of thought: the communists and socialists make a similar argument about 'government investment in rural development ..." -- Yes, yes, all this is very important but the real thing is land reform. I find it the right argument in some cases, but the world is moving away from the times when ownership of land was such a key determiner of your status. The government may better invest its efforts in enabling poor people to take part in the modern industrial and service and knowledge economy than in worrying about land issues.

More than you wanted to know

2007-02-16T09:23:00.000-08:00

Here are the latest in diet types after vegan. Diet with a political angle:
Freegan, meagan, and flexitarian

I'm delighted to hear that there's a word to describe me: flexitarian. A flexitarian is a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.

Inglish

2007-02-16T07:25:00.000-08:00

I updated my old article on Indian English, so thought I would push it here:

http://www.geocities.com/ahminotep/IndiaBlog/inglish.html

It could actually grow to something quite substantial at some point (definitely there's enough bad usage around to make it substantial)

On another front, there is a small project that I started but haven't made much progress with yet. The idea came from a Tintin comic where Thomson and Thompson introduce themselves as 'Thompson with a p as in "psychology" and 'Thomson, without a "p" as in Venezuela'. Don't worry if you didn't get the second part of the joke, I didn't too, for a long time. Anyway the 'p as in 'psychology' is something that always amused me. I want to come up with similiar ones for all the letters of the alphabet. The only criterion is that it should be confusing and not illuminating and each one should be creative and different from the others . Here's my list so far:

a as in 'awe'
b as in 'bee'
.
e as in 'eye'
f as in 'effort'
.
o as in 'circular'
p as in 'psychology'
(or p as in 'urinate')
.
s as in 'sea'
.
u as in 'usufructuary' (yes there is such a word. I've come across it in water-related contexts at Arghyam. As the link says its one of the few words that has 4 'u's in it. What better ?).

Help me complete it.

More music from Salon Audio

2007-02-10T23:50:00.001-08:00

European Oils (Destroyer): Another track from Destroyer, according to the Salon critic, harks of Bob Dylan

Anorak Christmas (Sally Shapiro): Very nice pop from a Scandinavian group

Lies (Carl Hancock Rux): A cool moody piece that I can't slot very easily, somewhere in the blues range I guess

Spirits Rejoice (Albery Ayler): A gospel piece done in full-blown orchestral jazz with lots of funky playing around and improvisation

These (and my previous music recommendations) are all really good. You really should get off your butt and download one of these and check it out. They deserve it. Yes, I mean you ! Now !

Newspaper watch -- The Hindu's 'human interest' page

2007-02-04T09:35:00.000-08:00

The last page of the Hindu is 'human interest' stuff, generally wierd and offbeat stuff. Mostly they're not so interesting. Here are a couple of recent interesting ones:

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told some younger women at a TV awards dinner, "If I wern't already married, I would marry you right away". His wife Veronica Berlusconi was not amused but he refused to apologize to her. She responded by publishing a letter in a newspaper demanding an apology: "These are affirmations that I see as damaging to my dignity, affirmations that .. cannot be reduced to jokes. To my husband and to the public man I therefore ask for a public apology, having not received one in private". She got it: " Here I am, saying that I'm sorry. I was recalcitrant in prvate, because I am playful but proud too. Challenged in public, the temptation to giv in to you is strong. I can't resist", said the tycoon.

Its interesting for me to see the human side of this political leader who is quite terrible in his policies(IMO). There was a similiar story about George Bush who writes bad poetry to his wife:

"Roses are red
Violets are blue
Oh my, lump in the bed
How I've missed you.

Roses are redder
Bluer am I
Seeing you kissed by that charming French guy"

For the full story (and poem), check out this page. You'll need to search for "Bush" on the page to find it. Also if you're tastes run that way, there seems to be poetry by Rumsfeld there.

We're getting off-topic here, it was supposed to be about the Hindu. The other article I wanted to note is that Rowling has apparently finished "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", the last in the series. There was some stuff which I forget about readying child counsellers since a couple of prominent characters are bumped off in the book. More info here . And here's her nicely done official site

Airline Interior Design

2007-01-26T03:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a very fun article from Salon on airline interior (and exterior) design. The chap who wrote this does a regular Salon column called "Ask The Pilot" which is very cool and captures the romance of flying.

For a taste of what the article is about, take a look at this :
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0892433/L/That's how you could fly first class on a Japan Airlines flight !

And here's your own private cubicle on an Emirates Airlines flight:
http://www.airliners.net/open.file/0768182/L/

The 'creation hymn' of the Rig Veda

2007-01-14T06:54:00.000-08:00

Quoting from PT Raju's book -- "The Philosophical Traditions of India":

Even the Hymns are not devoid of philosophical enquiries. The first most important philosophical hymn ever composed according to Max Mueller, by the Aryan race, is the Nasadiya Hymn of the Rgveda. It raises questions about the origin of the universe in the abstract terms of Being and Non-Being. It reads:

There was no Non-being, nor was there Being
What were its contacts, but where ?
In whose protection did it exist ?
Was there water, deep and unfathomable ?
There was neither death nor immortality then.
There was not the guidance of night and day.
That One breathed by its own power, without air.
Other than that there was nothing.
Darkness was concealed by darkness then.
All was water indistinguishable.
That which was coming into Being was covered by void.
That One was born through the power of penance.
Desire was in the beginning,
That was the first seed of mind.
The wise discovered in their hearts
The bond of Being to Non-being.

This is a philosophical questioning about what there can be beyond Being and Non-being, with which we are acquainteed in thsi world. And the composer himself of this Naasadiya hymn ends:

Whence is this creation ?
Is it founded or not ?
The presiding Deity in the skies knows it,
Or perhaps He does not..

YouTube is 'uuuge'

2007-01-07T08:01:00.000-08:00

When somebody told me about the Ali G/Chomsky interview, I looked it up on Google and found it at YouTube. Then I looked up Chomsky (since I think so highly of him) on YouTube and found a whole bunch of uploads of his talks. And then I remembered the old Russell Peters stuff and looked him up, and again about a 100 Russell Peters uploads there. And then it struck me that YouTube is now almost like a Google for video, or a Wikipedia for video (or more ominously for it, a Napster for video). It your first stop to check for anything interesting in video and in that way its seems a perfect match for Google to buy. (Thinking deeper into the analogy it breaks down, as Google just points you to stuff, whereas stuff actually resides on YouTube)

Wikipedia is other cool site on the web that I've used quite a lot during my explorations of the past few months. But it deserves some more research before a post on it due to the interesting sociology of Wikipedia. For now, I'll just link to it, and increase its Google PageRank infinitesimally as a token of appreciation.

Addendum: It occurred to me later that none of the cool stuff above and and all the other cool stuff on the web (tell me if I'm wrong), has anything to do with Microsoft. In fact no website that I spend any length of time on, has anything to do with MSFT, and that's not because I consciously avoid them either. My theory is (or perhaps law, it seems obvious) that Microsoft culture is fundamentally orthogonal to community/sharing/no-profit ideas. So they just don't know what to do about all this stuff. Must be rough on them, slaving away in Redmond on Windows Vista (where's that at now?) watching all this other cool stuff unfold. BTW -- so far I've managed (not swimmingly, but managed nevertheless) without installing Microsoft Office on my laptop at home. I've been using Open Office which is quite nice.

2007-01-07T01:12:00.000-08:00

I thought I would bring in the new year with some music. A little late but here it is anyway:

These are all free downloads from Salon. Go to salon.com, get past the initial ad and then use the links:

Marion Brown, Capricorn: A long and very nice jazz piece

Look up the sky is beautiful: Japanese pop. Simon and Garfunkel in Japanese. I like.

Destroyer, Painter in your pocket : A moody, unique rock thing

Kawan: A really cool punjabi electronica thing that I've pushed earlier on the blog.

More Ali G

2007-01-07T01:10:00.000-08:00

I tried out some more Ali G with less successful results.

Here he's 'moderating' a discussion on "Animal Rights". I think this must be from his TV show. Can someone enlighten me: do the people on the show come on voluntarily knowing the nature of the show ?

Thomas Frank

2007-01-05T14:11:00.000-08:00

"Even while we are happily dazed by the mall's panoply of choice, exhorted to indulge our taste for breaking rules, and deluged with all manner of useful "information", our collective mental universe is being radically circumscribed, enclosed within the tightest parameters of all time. In the third millenium there is to be no myth but the business myth, no individuality but the thirty or so professionally-accepted psychographic market niches, no diversit but the happy heteroglossia of the sitcom, no rebellion but the pre-programmed search for new kicks. Denunciation is becoming impossible: We will be able to achieve no distance from business culture since we will no longer have a life, a history, a consciousness apart from it. It is making itself unspeakable, too big, too obvious, too vast, too horrifying, too much of a cliche to even being addressing. A matter-of-fact disaster, as natural as the supermarket, as resistable as air. It is putting itself beyond our power of imagining because it has become our imagination, it has become our power to envision, and describe, and theorize, and resist"

-- Thomas Frank, Dark Age, The Baffler

Ahem. Discuss?

Borat -- Evil genius

2007-01-04T08:47:00.000-08:00

Well, we'll get around to the new year thang later. If at all.

I met a bunch of IITM classmates for dinner yesterday and one of the things that came up was the Borat phenomenon, which I had vaguely heard about before. During the get-together I got a lot better but still very general idea of his whole deal. I don't want to put that half-baked knowledge down here, but the sense I got was that this guy was truly a jaw-dropping phenomenon. There was a comedian called Andy Kaufman during the 60s who really pushed the envelope of comedy far beyond what it was at that point, and I think Borat is similiar. I just got the first taste of Borat on the web today. Its one of his less-successful exploits I think, but even that was way, way cool and completely lived up to my expectations.

In this video clip, Borat in one of his alternate personas, a rapper called Ali G, interviews Noam ("Norman") Chomsky. Its a fake interview, Ali G is basically stringing Chomsky along. The results are unbelievable. Pehaps, I'm exaggerating here, but the effect for me, was mind-blowing. Parts of it come from the fantastic impersonation (Ali G/Borat is I think a white Jew in real life) and part of it is the enormity of pulling this off on someone of Chomsky's stature. And the questions he puts and the language he uses are just so jaw-droppingly absurd. Borat is going to be a huge goldmine of exploration for me.

Here's a hilarious snippet from the interview, though it loses a lot in transcription:

Ali G: How many words does you know ?
Chomsky: (gives a reasonable answer)
Ali G: What is some of them ?

I totally cracked up at this one. If you got the humor in the above, I'm sure this video will have the same effect on you as it did on me.

From a previous post ..

2006-12-27T11:47:00.000-08:00

Responding to comments on this post

Alexander McCall Smith : a good find ! I'll try them

The Curious Incident .. : Sounds great, I am going to try it

Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha .. doesn't sound at all like 'Light reading', but sounds like a very good book, so I'll read it sometime.

View With a Grain of Sand Poems by a Nobel Prizewinner for light reading ? No thanks ! but perhaps I'll get around to trying it someday.

I'm very glad to have got introduced to interesting new authors. Look for reviews on the blog later

"Fire on the Mountain" by Anita Desai

2006-12-26T20:53:00.000-08:00

Do you remember the old rhyme: Fire on the mountain , run run run ...

I read this book at the suggestion of an old Timpany friend. Its written by Anita Desai, mother of Kiran Desai, recent winner of the Booker Prize.

I don't know dude. There is a class of authors, usually women, that write this very strange kind of novel. Anita Brookner, John Banville, Yann Martel, (two other Booker prize winners), Ruth Rendell, to some extent Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, come to mind. The books are ... 'hypersensitive' is the word that conveys the feeling. They take a normal everyday kind of situation and then start going into detail in the mind of the protagonist. Every act becomes pregnant with meaning, every emotion is magnified to bursting point. Day-to-day tensions and quotidian struggles become unbearable. That kind of thing. Usually the writing is pretty good and often with a vocabulary that sometimes exceeds me.
This novel falls well within that category. Having got that rant off my chest, 'Fire on the Mountain' is a pretty nice book. It has a suspenseful quality that is surprising, given the kind of (mostly) sedate story it is. I read it at one sitting. Worth trying for a serious reader.

Some background on the author and her books here

Inromenow

2006-12-19T22:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.inromenow.com/site%20templates/Frame_BlogPage.htm

I surfed to this site (off an ad right on this site, btw).

Even for the brief time we were in Rome in May (or was it June), I found it a gorgeous place, and the blog above is nicely in sync with my conception of the place.
The post on getting a driving license is astonishing -- I didn't know Rome was an honorary member of the third world (and PS: nobody don't dare to flame me about the unPC language).
I wish I were inromenow.

2006-12-16T12:13:00.000-08:00

For those who enjoy Rusell Peters, which should be pretty much anyone, here is some more. This is an interview with him, not much from his show. Apparently he worked for 14 years at doing standup comedy without a great deal of success and then someone went and put him on YouTube and boom! he's now a huge star with a worldwide following. Cool stuff

http://vivekshah.wordpress.com/tag/canada/
Scroll down a little and you'll see the post about Peters

Light reading for the serious reader

2006-12-16T05:58:00.000-08:00

Warning: post could be interpreted as pretentious but is not meant to be.

Having read so much in my life, I find that I have now painted myself into a corner. I think I have become a fairly discriminating and perceptive reader. Also having read a lot, that leaves less in the way of story ideas or technique that are genuninely new and therefore compelling. The result is that with most fiction writing I can quickly detect false notes or deja vu that make the book more or less unreadable. I wrote sometime back about re-reading Alistair McLean. The quality was quite appalling though I feel bad to use such a strong word. But the level of capturing of human nature is so low in those books. At one point I argued to myself that that's okay -- at a certain age stuff like this appeals and one just outgrows and that's natural. But I now think that's not the right judgement. Even books for kids or teenagers should have a basic... perhaps 'authenticity' is the word. If one grew up reading Alistair McLean and the like, I would guess that ones understanding of human nature and humanity is as juvenile as these books. Not great training for becoming a responsible citizen.

I don't find this problem at all in non-fiction, most non-fiction I pick up (except perhaps management and motivational literature) I find pretty strong and readable. However when I want to read something light to relax I don't have much to turn to. Kinda rough for a voracious reader. I wonder if this a more generalizable concept. Perhaps there are authors who are similiarly very discriminating, and at the same time light and who are right for me. There's a phrase in literature -- 'a writer's writer' . Perhaps what I'm looking for a variation of a writer's writer, a discriminating reader's writer.

Here are a few authors that still appeal to me:
-- Georges Simeon. Somewhat heavy at times, but nevertheless good entertainment. A random recommendation is "In Case of Emergency" which is one of his heavier books.
-- John Mortimer's Rumpole series. Really excellent in its ability to capture the poignancy of life in a humorous way
-- Kiran Nagarkar's Cuckold, and Amita Kanekar's "A Spoke in the Wheel". Both lovely historical fiction works that are not heavy, at the same time very true-to-life and satisfying.
-- Colleen McCullough's Rome series
-- Boondocks and Trudeau comics. Calvin and Hobbes is pretty good, but having read all of them there is nothing left. And there is also a repetitive tendency to them, you can see why Waterson decided to quit when he did.

I would love to get recommendations.

Happy Birthday

2006-12-11T08:55:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday dear Sajini and Nandita
Happy Birthday to youuuu....

History Lesson

2006-12-09T11:12:00.000-08:00

I've noticed especially over the course of this sabbatical that I have a genuine interest in history. To me a time machine where one could go back and see how people actually lived at different points (medieval Indian history, Indus Valley, Mohenjodaro, Troy, Rome to name a few) would be one of the coolest things. Of late I've read a few historical books. Here's some reflections from 2 of them, Caesar and The October Horse.

These are the last two books of Colleen McCullough's (henceforth CMC) epic series about Republican Rome. Okay some historical background but don't quote me on it. The Greeks came first with their Aristotle, Socrates, Hippocrates and the others. I haven't read that much about the Greeks, but generally they are revered as the fountainhead of Western civilization. However they never managed to unite and run a real nation-state, and at some point the Romans overtook them. I believe after the Roman ascendancy, the Greeks existed in a benign colonial subjugation where they were mostly left alone. In Rome's history there was a period of time when Rome was republican -- meaning that it was not ruled by a king. The details are a little complicated and I don't understand them too well myself. There were classes of people with different levels of power. The lowest was slaves, the next was (what CMC calls)the 'Head Count', the landless poor who did not have any voting privileges, then landed people with a vote and so on. At the top of the hierarchy was the Senate composed of the most distinguished and powerful of Romans and later another institution the 'Tribune of the Plebians' which helped to loosen the stranglehold that the patricians (those of high birth) had on the power through the Senate. Decisions were taken more or less democratically after discussion in the Senate or the Tribune.

There are several fascinating aspects to the whole Roman thing. One was how come what was basically a single city managed to establish its pre-eminence over so much of the world. Romans always identified with Rome, there was no dilution of the Roman identity to a broader one such as Italy. How come a single city could control so much power ? One reason was that their military machine was unparalleled in their time and they controlled or conquered vast portions of Europe, Africa and Asia. The other was their relationship with the rest of Italy, which occupied a subjugated position to Rome in the earlier days and over time became more and more integrated, with Italians getting access to Roman citizenship. The Roman Senate in CMC's books is a fascinating organization. Rhetoric plays an important part in its working, with great speakers (Cicero was one of them) being able to sway arguments in their favor irrespective of the merit of their position. This seems to have been kind of accepted -- great speakers were honoured for being such and their ability to sway arguments was not seen in a negative way.

The two books mentioned follow the course of Roman history during Julius Caesar's time. In CMC's writing he comes across as way way larger than life. As one of the truly great kings or people of any country anywhere. He was multifaceted, an adminstrator, general and man of letters. His great military achievement was bringing present day France under Rome and he even invaded England (the river 'Tamesi' is mentioned). The French united (after a fashion) under a new leader Vercingetorix but could not match the Roman military machine under its greatest general. Vercingetorix occupies pride of place in French history books for his role in that resistance. Later Caesar fathered a child with Cleopatra, Pharoah of Egypt, a child who was later killed by Octavius Caesar. Octavius Caesar is Caesars' relative and adopted son and a fascinating character. The October Horse is the last book in the series and covers the asassination of Caesar, familiar territory from Shakespeare. However Shakespeare's version differed from historical fact in many places, and in other places the facts lend themselves to various interpretations. I am trusting CMC's historical reconstruction here, though she admits that a lot of her work is from an imaginative though not fanciful recreation of the facts. Mark Antony (Marcus Antonius to give him his actual name) is a talented soldier but otherwise a person without any sophistication or appreciation for Roman values. In the book he actually was very ambigious about Caesar (Caesar's preeminence left him little power) and was to a small extent complicit in the assasination. However seeing the popular winds after the assasination he teamed up with Octavius Caesar (a mutual detestation existed between the two) to hunt down the assasins including of course Brutus ('and Brutus is an honourable man'). Marcus Junius Brutus is a weak, money-loving character who was promised Caesar's daughter in marriage, whom he adored. A promise that was subsequently broken, and a heartbreak that he did not quite recover from. The assasination scene itself is tremendously intense in the book -- one of the high points. Octavius and Antony fell out and had a final decisive naval battle with Octavius and his loyal lieutnant Agrippa on one side and Antony and Cleopatra on the other. Octavius won, Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide and Octavius murdered Cesarion, Cleopatra's child by Caesar. Octavius went on to become unofficial emperor of Rome, signalling the end of the Roman republic.

I've only touched on some points of a tremendously fascinating story. The books are huge and painfully detailed, so an appropriate strategy for dealing with them is to skip over large swathes of the book when they meander (I usually read perhaps 60-70% of the books). BTW, CMC is an accomplished author with several other striking books to her credit -- one that I enjoyed a lot is called Tim

Some trivia: atleast two phrases in the English language owe their origin to ancient Rome: all roads lead to Rome and crossing the Rubicon. The first one I don't know a specific reason for. I guess it relates to what I said about Rome being the defacto capital of the (western and a good portion of the rest) world. Also the Romans were great road builders and there was a spider web of roads radiating out of Rome in all directions (via Saleria, via Valeria, Via Domitia, via Appia ..). No ring roads though :-). The other phrase has a very definite origin. After his campaign in Gaul, Caesar was in danger of getting convicted of treason by influential groups in the Senate who were jealous of him or alarmed at his pre-eminence and disdain for the Senatorial procedure. Caesar decided after much agonizing that the only solution was to march on Rome with his armies and take over as Dictator. Given the all-consuming position that Rome had in the mind of Romans, it was an unthinkable thing to do for a honourable Roman to do(although it happened a few times). Crossing the Rubicon river into Italy to begin his march on Rome was an irrevocable step that changed the course of Roman history and ultimately lead to the fall of the Republic. the Laxman Rekha in Indian mythology is so strikingly similar in meaning.

The Hindu and China

2006-12-09T10:24:00.000-08:00

Past posts on this topic have dwelt on Sikhi's deep suspicion of N. Ram's communist leanings. But this post is on a different topic. For a while now there have been atleast one and perhaps two Hindu journalists sending regular despatches from China. The more prominent one is Pallavi Aiyar who has written a lot of articles on a whole bunch of stuff from dining (she has disturbing tales of culinary excess and prestige meals that are the current rage among the well-to-do), the railway to Tibet and Beijing hutongs. I was beginning to get a little irritated with all this stuff when it struck me like a sledgehammer -- of course the Hindu and every other newspaper should be doing this ! We have this country sitting in our backyard that is all set to become perhaps the premier power of this century and we don't know anything about it at all (especially in comparison to our knowledge the west). While we have all manner of correspondents in the West breathlessly reporting to us of "Washington" and "Paris"'s doings and opinions, we know remarkably little about the dragon in our backyard. Let the march east begin !

You can go to hinduonnet.com and search for Pallavi Aiyar and get her articles.
Just for a sample here's something from her writing. This is from Tibet:
===

"She's from India," people point at me in loud whispers. "My uncle is in India."
"My brother studied in India." "I love Indian music." "My best friend taught
me to cook Indian food." Everywhere I go, ripples of excitement spread. The
longing with which the people I meet imbue the word "India" is unusual to
me. This is what I imagine Americans must feel like in many parts of the
world.
While eating lunch at the home a peasant family in Hamugu village, just
outside the main town, I am introduced to a boy of six; a novice monk at
the Songzalin Monastery. He wants desperately to travel to India. "Can
you help me get a passport?" he asks. When I gently explain my inability,
he looks disappointed for a second but brightens up a moment later and
suggests we watch an "Indian movie". I concur, expecting Bollywood
masala and am surprised instead to see an opening shot featuring six
Tibetan Buddhist monks in full ceremonial attire blowing mightily
into long horns.
Slowly it dawns that this is a burnt DVD copy of a homemade
film in Dharamsala. We all watch the film for a few minutes in
silence. Then the boy's father asks me where I live. "New Delhi,"
I say. "How far away is that from the capital of India?" he queries
back. I explain that Delhi is in fact the capital. There is a stunned
pause. Finally he replies, "You mean Dharamsala is not the capital?"

===

Howard Zinn

2006-12-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

Here's a lovely passage from American historian Howard Zinn:
==
"I don't want to invent victories for people's movements.
But to think that history-writing must aim simply to
recapitulate the failures that dominate the past
is to make historians collaborators in an endless
cycle of defeat. If history is to be creative, to
anticipate a possible future without denying the
past, it should, I believe, emphasize new
possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes
of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people
showed their ability to resist, to join together,
and occasionally to win. I am supposing, or
perhaps only hoping, that our future may be
found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion
rather than in its solid centuries of warfare."
==
The full article is here

More Hampi slices

2006-11-23T20:27:00.000-08:00

Current day Hampi can be quite an incongrous landsacape. There are many things of different sorts being juxtaposed. Start with the rocky boulder strewn landscape through which the Tungabhadra flows. Courtesy of a (so I read) excellent irrigation system built in Vijayanagar times, that has lasted to this date, put in farms wherever there is some non-rocky land. Then 'strew' in the the ruins among all this. Finally give the place "World Heritage Site" status, ensuring a lot of tourists especially foreign. I had pasta for dinner both nights and onion-tomato-cheese omlette for breakfast while I was there. Since I don't get much opportnity to eat Western at Bangalore, took the opportunity at Hampi :-). There is a profusion of restaurants serving (mediocre) Western food. I chatted with the cook at one of the places and he explained how over years of interaction with foreign tourists, he learnt to cook their food. There is a shop selling "German bread" fresh baked daily, and restaurants that have Israeli food (pita, hummus), and even (I think) Hebrew signs. I spied a local kid shouting out to a surprised tourist something like "Bonjour, ca va bien?" and getting a reply in the same language.

Perhaps I can add as the last incongrous element: me cycling around looking somewhat clownish, black leather shoes, formal clothes and an ill-fitting cap.

Newspaper watch -- Cricket

2006-11-19T20:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a little bit of news for the cricket types: The record partnership of 664 runs by Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli was broken recently. Bodepalli Manoj Kumar and Mohammed Shaibaz of St. Peters High School in Hyderabad set a world record with an unbroken 721 run partnership in the inter-school under-13 cricket tournament at Parade Ground in Secunderabad. The opposing St. Phillips team was skittled out for just 21 runs. Which takes the shine off a little bit, as the opposing team it would look was not exactly competent.

Dunno how this stuff works, and how under-13 tournaments qualify for records, but apparently this is 'kosher'. It got good coverage in the Hindu including some praise from Kambli. The Hindu also had a nice cartoon with Tendulkar holding aloft a whole heap of prizes and records, and this particular record slipping off the pile.

I haven't dug through, but you may be able to find the photograph in the Hindu online edition.

====

Addendum: Too good to be true. If you had a sneaking suspicion based on St. Phillips low score (21), you were right. In a followup report yesterday, the paper says that that team was absolutely clueless and barely knew the rules of the game, leave alone played with any kinds of cricketing strategy. Their bowlers could just about get the ball rolling in the right direction but not much more. Takes the shine off the achievement.

Lonely Planet -- the new gold standard

2006-11-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

The pictures should speak for themselves. They were all taken in Hampi, but I have seen similiar signs elsewhere eg. at Amristar.
For those who are not aware, Lonely Planet is an international travel guide series.

===

And something else, just for fun. This was painted on the back of an autorickshaw, again at Hampi

Rusell Peters comedy show

2006-11-08T11:58:00.000-08:00

I got this from a post on my high school (Timpany) alumni group.

This link is to a complete comedy show by an Indian comedian Rusell Peters. Very funny and occasionally x-rated.

If the link doesn't work for some reason, Google for 'Rusell Peters' (note the spelling) and click on the first result.

Have fun.

Bangalore slices

2006-11-06T09:42:00.000-08:00

Halloween trick-or-treating in our apartment complex. I'll refrain from adding any comments !

Gorgeous Bangalore Palace. I was there recently for BangaloreIT.in, but didn't spend enough time or see that much noteworthy stuff to do a blog post on it.

Poster advertising camel meat for sale at Shivajinagar. (The poster itself was at Ulsoor market, a pretty cool place worthy of a essay)

A pool club in Sivanchetty Gardens (Ulsoor sounds better!). There was a similar one in Hyd which had table tennis too where I played sometimes. There is a certain no-nonsense 'real men only' atmosphere to these pool clubs which is quite nice

Siddique's -- a Bangalore institution

Infosys Puzzles

2006-11-03T22:27:00.000-08:00

As part of preparing for the Bijapur thing, I spent yesterday trying to solve a whole lot of puzzles that are usually asked at Infosys interviews. Most of them I found straightforward but here are a couple that are more challenging. I didn't find a logical way to do these just had to try being creative. Answers are in the first comment to this post

In a 10 digit number, the 1st digit is the number of ones in the number, the 2nd digit number is the number of twos, and so on. The 10th digit is the number of zeroes. Find the number

I haven't cracked this yet:

a + b + c +d = d + e + f + g = g + h + i =17.
If a = 4, what are the values of d and g. Each letter taken only one of the
digit from 1 to 9.

More books

2006-11-03T21:58:00.000-08:00

'Ravan and Eddie' which I talked about earlier, turned out a disappointment. Not a very fun book to read, although lots of the author's talent in abundant evidence. Similiarly with 'City of Djinns' by William Dalyrymple. I had ready "From the Holy Mountain" and was hugely impressed by it. City of Djinns is about Delhi. Dalyrymple notes that he had a huge struggle to finish the book and it seems to show. There are lots of interesting things he explores but some not-so-interesting ones too and the book doesn't have much of a theme and direction. It comes across like my own writing -- raw and whimsical and too often frivolous :-).

I picked up "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, but didn't finish it. It was a Booker Prize winner and I'm not impressed at all. It has a story and all, and the writer has some talent but really didn't capture my interest at all. I think this is a personal opinion. Most of the time, I feel my comments are reasonably objective, occasionally not, like this time.

All the above were from Easylib, so its obviously been working great for me, though looks like I might overdo it. Here's my current waitlisted books on Easylib:

Boundless Energy : The Complete mindbody programme for overcoming chronic fatigue by Deepak Chopra. I feel quite lethargic most of the time, hence this.
In Xanadu: A Quest: By William Dalyrymple again. Giving him one more chance
Gods Little Soldier: By Kiran Nagarkar. Ditto
Fire on The Mountain: By Anita Desai. This on a recommendation by an old Timpany classmate, Geeta
Weekend Breaks from Bangalore: I would like to go hiking in Coorg or somewhere
The Motorcycle Diaries: About Che Guevera. Was made into a acclaimed film which I missed on my trip to the US
Caesar: From Colleen McCullogh's tremendous series about Rome

As I said, I'm in danger of overdoing it :-)

Strutting Siddhu's stuff

2006-10-31T14:00:00.000-08:00

Apparently this Osama Bin Laden is Siddhu + Photoshop. Hard to believe

Notice something funny about the girls ?

"Mirror, Mirror, On the wall,
Who is the genuine one of them all?"

And a self-portrait

Asalu needi post office kelle mohamaa ?!!!

2006-10-29T20:59:00.000-08:00

I detest Telugu movies, I find them really brain-dead and decadent and other bad things. But a couple of movies I saw recently lead me to believe that the patient is still breathing. One is Pokiri, starring Mahesh Babu who is a really charismatic actor. The movie is quite unremarkable, but there were some decent comedy scenes. One in particular cracked me up. Mahesh Babu acts a general rowdy kind of guy, a 'pokiri'. He skips a meeting with the heroine claiming that he had some work at Kacheguda post office. Later on being found out he gets a talking-to from the heroine who didn't believe him in the first place. In that scolding is this great line: "Needi post office kelle mohamaa ?". It would sound even better with an "asalu" in the beginning, but I don't remember if that was in the movie or came out of my mind.
The literal translation of the above is "Anyway, is your face one that goes to the post-office ?"

Yesterday we saw Bommarillu. This was a nice light comedy with a genuine theme, a son struggling to find himself in th shadow of his controlling strong-personality father. Lots of good jokes and genuine creative stuff and it also had a touch of genuineness and handled some serious themes well.

We also saw 7/G Brindavan Colony recently, quite good.

Here are two Indian movie sites: Sulekha, and Idlebrain

SMS jokes

2006-10-28T21:33:00.000-07:00

Priya's animation course classmates are a funloving bunch. They keep sending her stuff on SMS. Here are a couple of jokes:

=======
A scientist cannot become a President ... But Kalam did it

A poor person cannot become an engineer ... But Vishweshwaraya did it

A monkey cannot operate a mobile .....

BUT YOU DID IT

=============

Stand by, a Brain Refresh will happen in 10 seconds

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Error, refresh failed .... no brain found

2006-10-28T20:08:00.000-07:00

Siddhu (my nephew) and I have interesting IM conversations. Here's one we had today. You have to have seen Lage Raho Munnabhai to understand it, though.
===========

siddhu7_d: hey!!
ahminotep: hi
ahminotep: how're you :-)
siddhu7_d: how are you?
siddhu7_d: me is the good!
ahminotep: Doing fine!
siddhu7_d: i've got to tell you about this movie.. lagey raho munnabhai!
siddhu7_d: seen it?
ahminotep: Yes :-)
ahminotep: What did you think about it
siddhu7_d: wait..did you get to see rang de basanti first?
ahminotep: No, I haven't seen RDB
siddhu7_d: its really good...but i dont knw whether gandhigiri works out practically...we tried doing it the whole day after we saw the movie in the mornin show!!!!
ahminotep: How did you try it ?!!!
siddhu7_d: there were people pushing in the line after the movie..we just stood aside and sent them one by one!!!!....then there was a stiff between two friends..we peaced them up!!...
ahminotep: :-)
ahminotep: Quite cool
ahminotep: We should talk about it in detail sometime
ahminotep: What do you mean you'll stood aside and sent them one by one
siddhu7_d: Yeah... exactly...i'd love to!..i was thinking the whole night after seeing the movie!!
siddhu7_d: Well...there was a heavy rush that day coz it was a sunday and guess people wanted to hurry up things or something!!!...so..instead of we people going along with the flock, we stood aside and sent them one-by-one...rather like the gate keepers in the theatre!!!!!!!
ahminotep: Why did the movie excite you so much
ahminotep: That's a very nice thing to do !
ahminotep: Reminds me of some gandhigiri I did long long ago
siddhu7_d: you did gandhigiri??
ahminotep: I was travelling in a train and the guys near me had bought some groundnut and they were shelling them and eating them
ahminotep: In 15 mins the entire floor all around the area was a disgusting mess with groundnut shells all around
ahminotep: I got so angry with them , but instead i just cleaned up the mess myself :-)
siddhu7_d: coz its a real deadly concept... i was thinking whether it would practically work out in THIS age!!!!
siddhu7_d: Awsome!!!...i expected that!
siddhu7_d: if you like munnabhai...u'll surely like RDB...and how come you haven't still seen RDB!!!!!!!!?!?!?!?
ahminotep: We should definitely talk about whether it would 'work' in this age. But the thing to think about is -- should you just do it because its the right thing to do, or should you worryabout whether it works or not . I'll leave you to ponder about that
ahminotep: We got it on video and saw some of it but it was actually quite dragging and because it didn't have subtitles, we didn't understand it properly. I've been meaing to get a DVD with subtitles and see it again
siddhu7_d: i've thought about that too...but if i really put it to work..surely i'll be the one to stand out and undoubtedly i'd be left out from the others!!!!
siddhu7_d: hey...the original dvd was out long back!
ahminotep: What's wrong with standing out and being 'left out' :-)
ahminotep: Okay, I'll get it and see it
siddhu7_d: Practically....You are in a group of people with whom you'd love to hang out and be with always... but surely none of them would never like it if you keep doing something so ruly.....
ahminotep: Well, think some more about the above statement you just made and see if there might be some errors in it or whether there are solutions
siddhu7_d: anywayz...i'll definately make an attemp to do something like that!...lets see whether it works out!
ahminotep: :-)
ahminotep: Best of luck ! Let me know how it goes
siddhu7_d: yeah...you too!

===============
I am somewhat patronizing with him, aren't I :-)

Here's another conversation:

http://www.geocities.com/ahminotep/Writings/generation.htm

This fellow is a creative chap with some very cool stuff he's done already. I'll upload some stuff that he's done.

Flickr badge

2006-10-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

Flickr has this neat way of showcasing photos from Flickr on your website by this 'badge' thingie. They also let you 'tag' photos so that you can classify photos by themes. So I added a flickr badge to this site (scroll down a bit if you can't see it). The idea is to change the theme fairly frequently so there's interesting stuff showing up. Right now, I'm starting off rather tamely with 'nature', while I work on some more interesting themes

Arvind -- Classes 3 and 4

2006-10-25T09:33:00.000-07:00

Amidst the constant change is there anything that is constant. From your infancy to now, many things have changed. The physical structure of your body, opinions, thoughts and so on. But yet we use the word "I" to indicate a constancy through all this change. Is it a meaningful word in any non trivial context. It's a pretty deep question – is there any thing constant at all in you. And this is one avenue to answering the question "who am I?"

First, here is one way of answering what is constant.

Imagine that we assemble a computer and aside from the hardware we embed it with some learning software. This learning software keeps making changes to its axioms and its view of all true and false statements. In addition this computer knows how to make hardware to modify itself. And can also replicate itself. So while the shape of this machine and its view of truth and falsity is constantly changing, is there anything that is constant. In this example yes, the learning program which is a set of clear coded instructions.

It seems to me that the parallels between life and the example above are not far off. Simple survival rules embedded within basic bio chemical building blocks have over time molded us. Our bodies and minds are simply state of the art hardware additions made to a core set of simple hard ware and an enormously powerful but simple bio chemical software that can replicate itself. By analogy we say can say what constant – the dna that carry all instructions for survival including our necessity to discern truth and falsity (is it a tiger or is it a leaf) in order to survive.

The second approach, put forth by the` class is this. Yes there is something unchanging. This is the real you. The real you can be understood by first observing yourself – for you are not anything that you observe. Peel away layers of yourself until you understand what you are. The real you is no different from the real me.

The over simplified pseudo scientific model that I put forward and the mystic model put forth by the school have one thing in common. They both reduce each of us to one thing – dna in my model and something un-nameable in the mystic model. Further the one thing is common to all of us in both models – the starting instructions in my model (our common ancestor according to Darwin) and the unnameable unity of the mystic model. However, the mystic model alludes to something more. It refers to consciousness at a very deep level and I suppose that is the synonym for the word "I". When we say "I" we probably mean what ever it is that provides "consciousness". This is not a problem reduction by any means because I cannot begin to tell you anything about consciousness. Notice again, the key statement about you are not what you observe to be applies to consciousness in the sense that the consciousness that is constant through our life time is not what we observe.

States of consciousness

Although consciousness itself is a tricky beast that we cannot easily trap and study, some things statements can be made about related properties. The class posits the following levels of consciousness. Note, these are basically measurements of something that we cannot define and the measurement is not the measured.

· Restfull sleep (or as I say post jetlag sleep)

· Dream Sleep (Sleep on other days.)

· Waking Sleep (how I or most likely you spend most of your life.)

· Fully awake (When I play tennis. Despo, heres why you need to play something. This state of existence is far better than waking sleep.)

· Higher Consciousness (Not gotten here yet.)

The idea behind the teachings of meditation and another exercize (pick any one of 5 senses and spend a minute on it) is to help revert back to fully awake and sometimes if your are really lucky move to the higher consciousness state (I am wondering if that's what LSD does for you. Spiders on LSD are known to weave better webs than without LSD. In that case screw philosophy and become a junkie!!)

The power of observation and isolation

One of the ideas that has become crystallized (I was a practicing fellow earlier but now I am so much more aware of its power) is the enormous potential of observation in problem solving. In many cases, merely dissecting the problem to its centre and observing it is the solution. I do not mean observation leads to a solution - rather I mean that observation is the solution. The problem vanishes on observation – I suppose in this context I understand the statement you are not what you observe yourself to be. For example, in my previous post I discussed how I overcame the uneasiness I had earlier felt about accusations of the course being offered by a cult.

The trick though is that it requires great honesty to be a good observer. It is a process of letting go – all my prejudices, all my vanity, all my so called achievements (Despo, since you still are hung up about achieving something, this is specially relevant), and every thing else that I cling onto. It is not hard but needs devotion. Screw determination. And especially screw discipline.

Volver

2006-10-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Arvind,
Volver is releasing in NY on Nov 3rd. See it, atleast for me, if you don't have the discrimination to appreciate Almodovar

Two serious websites

2006-10-20T13:42:00.000-07:00

www.indiatogether.org
www.znet.org

India Together is a really good site with lots of stuff on all sorts of public interest matters. They cover a really wide range of things and what they say almost always makes a lot of sense. The site itself is a little hard to negotiate and a bit off-putting, but they have an excellent biweekly newsletter with the most recent article. When I read the newsletter I always find most of the articles worth reading.

Znet is a huge left-wing American site with tons of articles on everything under the sun. Lots of Chomsky.