Where The Mind is without fear

Obsessions

2012-01-10T14:04:00.000+01:00

My long obsession with a simple statement -

"The truth is out there"

has led my subconscious to an obsession with the straightforward question -

"Is there anyone out there ?"

DaisyWorld - why we may not have much warning before the Cimate Catastrophe

2010-11-04T23:41:00.002+01:00

These are some simulations I did for fun, as a small extention of the zero dimentional Daisyworld Paper of Watson and Lovelock in '83. The upper graph has temperature on the y axis, and x axis has the poles on the edges and the equator in the centre. The lower graph has population on the y axis while the x axis is the same as above. Green line is the black dasies and blue is the white daisies.

The basic premise is this - there is a planet whose sun's luminosity is increasing linearly. The planet has white daisies that reflect sunlight (and thus reduce local temperature) and black daisies (that absorb sunlight and thus increase local temperatue) both of which grow at some common optimum temperature 300k, with growth rates reducing rapidly away from this temperature. (fairly sharp gaussian in my simulation).

The surprising result is that the black and white daisie populations at every point are such that the optimal temperature is maintained for as long as possible. When finally the daisies cannot regulate temperature any more, we do not see a gradual degredation of populations, we see a catastrophic collapse.

The earth's temperature and chemical regulatory systems are much, much more complex. But this kind of catastrophic transition is fairly common in complex dynamical systems. It is a possibility that has a non neglible probability.

Music Credit - People Are Strange by the Doors. I do not own the rights etc, I just thought it would make a nice sound track for the graphs. Fair Use maybe ? since its not a commercial movie etc etc ? I dont really know.

Typos - in the initial rolling text, it should be first white daisies and then black, instead of black and black. Also excuse the thin lines on the graph. There are around a 1000 graphs making up that video, I cant be bothered to wait the few hours it takes to generate them. Also, the code is a couple of years old, it'd take me ages to make sense of it ! Now on, I will write clean readable code with documentation and comments !

Very Random poem written 26-04-2010

2010-06-01T04:25:00.007+02:00

_

I stare at the ceiling
Lying in my bed
Afraid of the Voices
Shouting in my head.

Afraid of the silence
Playing videos all night
Alone in the darkness
Afraid of the light.

I listen to lectures
Ignoring whats said
To drown in that noise
The voices in my head.

I talk constantly
I have much to hide
Echoing loudly
the emptiness inside.

I use my words
To hide from my friends
Its standard practice
For one who pretends.

I know what to do
but I don't even try
Leaving my soul
To suffocate and die.

I make no effort
I dabble and pretend
Paralyzed and waiting
For this nightmare to end.

The day is not far
when Ill resort to lies
Extinguishing finally
The spark in my eyes.

I listen all night
I talk all day
I speak the most
when I've nothing to say.

-Yours Truly

Books I've recently bought and cant wait to read ! :-)

2010-05-29T06:23:00.002+02:00

Ever Since Darwin by Stephen Jay Gould
The View From Serendip by Arthur C. Clarke
The Last Spaceship from Earth by John Boyd
The Pollinators of Eden by John Boyd
Report on Planet Three by Arthur C. Clarke
Beyond This Horizon by Robert Heinlein
The Essence of Chaos by Edward Lorenz
Astounding Days by Arthur C. Clarke
The Trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (again ?)

As you can see, that's all sci-fi and science. I keep thinking I have read all of Clarke worth reading and then I pop into a second hand bookstore and am pleasantly surprised by some book of his I had not seen before, it happens all the time. John Boyd I havent read yet, but he looks promising. This Lorenz is the original Lorenz (of the Lorenz attractor) so it should be interesting to read his take on chaos now that Ive had the chance to study the math behind it somewhat. Lee Smolin happens to be my current research supervisor, and that paper is due in soon, so I probably ought to be working ! :-)

A very old War

2010-04-10T18:29:00.024+02:00

Khandava Forest was an ancient forest mentioned in the epic Mahabharata. It lay to the west of Yamuna river, in modern day Delhi territory. Pandavas cleared this forest to construct their capital city called Indraprastha. This forest was earlier inhabited by Naga tribes. Arjuna and Vasudeva Krishna cleared this forest by setting up a fire. The inhabitants of this forest were displaced. This was the root cause of the enimity of the Naga Takshaka towards the Kuru kings who ruled from Indraprastha and Hastinapura.

. . . . . . . . .

Emperor Janamejaya ascended to the throne of Hastinapura upon the death of his father Parikshit. According to legend, Parikshit, the lone descendant of the House of Pandu, had died of snakebite. He had been cursed by a sage to die so, the curse having been consummated by the serpent-chieftain Takshak.
Janamejaya bore a deep grudge against the serpents for this act, and thus decided to wipe them out altogether. He attempted this by performing a great Sarpa satra - a sacrifice that would destroy all living serpents.
At that time, a learned sage named Astika, a boy in age, came and interfered. His mother Manasa was a Naga and father was a Brahmin. Janamejaya had to listen to the words of the learned Astika and set Takshaka free. He also stopped the massacre of the Nagas and ended all the enemity with them (1,56). From then onwards the Nagas and Kurus lived in peace.

from Wikipedia.

Well, as Dantewada has shown us again, they are living in peace no longer.

Notice how the locals (who were presumably referred to as serpents, or perhaps the words for serpent and the local tribes just happened to be the same) are now referred to as serpents literally. Dehumanised in the stories we tell our children, so we can collectively forget that thousands of years ago the 'aryan' invaders cleared the forests and displaced the locals and formed the Vedic Civilization that most modern Indians are descended from.

The story of the burning of the Khandva forest by Krishna and Arjuna - in the Mahabharata - tells us how they set the forest on fire and killed every living thing in it. An exaggeration obviously, but perhaps it captures the brutality of the violence that was perpetrated. The capital of modern India stands where the Khandva forest used to be. Where Takshaka's people were massacred.

I like the irony.

Throughout history, the forest people have not been a part of our civilization. It exists only where we burnt their forests down. Gazni and Ghori and Timur never looted them, the British never really ruled them and the Indian state was conceived and implemented without their participation. And on paper their lands suddenly belonged to the powers that be - in the city Arjuna cleared land to create.

Oh yes, I like the irony.

It is not a law and order problem, it is not merely an insurgency, it is very much a clash of civilisations. To solve it, we must address the problem of somehow including the Adivasi stories and dreams in a composite vision for the future of the land that constitutes the Republic of India. We need to assure them - and change ourselves to make our assertions a reality - that our civilisation is not antagonistic to theirs. The maoists will wither and die if the Adivasis are with us.

Or, bring them to the table through force followed by a place within the Indian Democratic setup. However we go about it, we must first internalize the fact that they are a civilisation seperate from ours which needs to somehow be brought round a point where we can share a nation without risk of future conflict. One way or another.

It is my view that the only way to make sensible policy decisions is to face the truth, and there is much to be said for the paradigm of the clash of civilisations. Looked at from this perspective, it is easy to see why and how events started spiralling out of control once we wanted the lands they lived on. If it was obvious to us that Iraq was about Oil, it should be equally obvious to us that Dandakaranya is about Land. It always has been. For several thousand years.

There are no heroes and villains in this, no great virtuous proletariat fighting for some serene Utopia. There are interests. Do we really care if some large companies make even more money ? Or is it more important to us that the discord and violence that has plagued our country for millennia is finally resolved ? Do we want the freedom to roam through our forests welcomed by our fellow countrymen or are we content to let economics take its course and exacerbate the violence ? what is in our best interest ? Perhaps the market is not the best mechanism to handle this. Perhaps we need a more creative, more innovative approach. Perhaps we need to declare our forests sacrosanct since people depend on them for their livelihoods. Perhaps we need to work out some concept of collective land ownership for tribes that have lived there for hundreds of years. Perhaps we need to do the fair and right thing by the tribals we have forgotten and ignored throughout history, and THEN crush the maoists.

If we cannot be sensitive and innovative, we must at least be decisive and firm. To dither mouthing platitudes is plain cowardice and spinelessness. Are we the "virtuous" ? then lets act like it. Lets do the magnanimous and fair thing. If we are not, lets do the pragmatic thing that has worked for countless empires before us, and subjugate the "enemies" who stand in our way and challenge our state. Its been done before, even by us (excellent article by Shekhar Gupta), countless times.

People who believe their own propaganda seldom solve real problems. We must face the truth about our history, all aspects of it. Every invader and immigrant brings with him new tensions and conflicts. India is a multilayered closely packed collection of such conflicts accumulated over millennia - from the ancient Aryans to the more recent Muslims and British. To pretend that everything has always been hunky dory - while the stories handed down from generation to generation in every language tell of strife and conflict - does not help bridge the divides and disaffections and mistrust that plague our country.

Problems don't go away simply because we try hard to forget them and the harsh bracing truth is always better than the palliative lie and those who forget the past, are condemned to repeat it.

Untitled

2010-02-16T10:21:00.009+01:00

I'm a river creeping to the sea,
I'm a lemming rushing to its fate,
Let me be please let me be,
Its too late, its too late.

With empty words I amuse,
Profound in my decadent state,
I neither accept nor refuse,
Its too late, its too late.

With quiet and indifferent eyes,
I stare blankly at the date,
Silent, watching as time flies,
Its too late, its too late.

The truth makes way for lies,
As the floods of sanity abate,
Songs subside, give way to sighs,
Its too late, please, Its too late.

I feel no love,
I feel no hate,
I feel nothing,
Its too late.

- Yours Truly

Test Batsmen ?

2010-02-08T18:17:00.006+01:00

Look at the records below and assuming all of these players play in the same domestic tournament, on similar pitches against similar teams, please select 3 middle order test batsmen.
The numbers are Matches, innings, not outs, runs, highest, average.

j : First-class 51 86 3 3648 203 44.38
i : First-class 89 141 17 5348 209 43.12
h : First-class 31 44 4 1917 259 47.92
g : First-class 46 74 11 3603 302* 57.19
f : First-class 36 52 4 2641 309* 55.02
e : First-class 36 60 6 3437 265* 63.64
d : First-class 25 36 6 1673 197 55.76
c : First-class 83 120 14 6189 250 58.38
b : First-class 34 55 2 2891 243 54.54
a : First-class 15 24 1 1149 194 49.95

it is obvious that the selection should be c, followed by g and e.

now the key :

a : Manish Pandey : 15 24 1 1149 194 49.95 : give him a few more seasons. he has some way to go.
b : M. Vijay : 34 55 2 2891 243 54.54 : among the better ones, has his chance now. Has to make the most of it.
c : S. Badrinath : 83 120 14 6189 250 58.38 : has his chance now, and should have had it a few years ago. Should be able to make himself a regular.
d : Virat Kohli : 25 36 6 1673 197 55.76 : A decent first class record, as good as M. Vijays. but young....he will have his chance.
e : Ajinkya Rahane : 36 60 6 3437 265* 63.64 : amazing record, 2 splendid seasons, he must get a crack at the test scene before the future Indian middle order is decided, surely. also a youngster...he will have his chance.
f : Rohit Sharma : 36 52 4 2641 309* 55.02 : another good record, he seems to be on the verge of getting his break in the test team.
g : Chheteshwar Pujara : 46 74 11 3603 302* 57.19 : another young man with a superb record. He too much get a crack before the future of the Indian batting order is settled.
h : Abhishek Nayar : 31 44 4 1917 259 47.92 : Probably not test material.
i : Yuvraj Singh : 89 141 17 5348 209 43.12 : definitely not test material, but he has played 33 and is a first choice bat in the middle order.
j : Suresh Raina : 51 86 3 3648 203 44.38 : In the running only because he was Greg Chappel's protege. He has his first test call-up for the second test between India and SA. His first class record is sub-par.

oh the vagaries of selection :)

Whats Important ?

2010-02-08T08:51:00.004+01:00

1. Health
2. Human Contact
3. Fun
4. Constraints

baaki,

ever since I was a little kid, Ive wanted to build a model aircraft (one that actually flies under its own power) and I still do, more than ever.
and not just from a kit....I want to come up with my own designs. how hard can it be :-)

I want to do something really cool with my iTouch and the iPad I know I will one day own. Heck....Id like to control my model plane using my iPad :D

I want to make money by doing something 'useful' in society. Make pans, provide advice(!!), build spaceships, whatever.

Im not sure I want to do a Phd any more....but I need to find a good substitute for a Phd. something I can spend a couple of years doing, thats ridiculous, unlikely, high risk, high return and high impact. before I go home, get married and start trying to not be boring and irrelevant.

Im irrelevant now too of course....but I dont feel it. Im in a place where people are moving, its 'the place to be' in theoretical physics. If a great discovery is made - in any of a staggeringly large number of fields - chances are it'll be by someone associated with PI or someone known to people associated with PI. and then the discoverer will soon be associated with PI :P

Perhaps the reason Im scared of going back home is that I feel I need to be in the 'right place' in order to feel useful and competent. Im scared once I let go of all this, the phd offers, the scholarships and the world in which these things matter, Ill be a nonentity, with no intrinsic value or interest. Maybe I rely too much on where I am in order to feel good about myself.

Maybe this would not be the case if I had some nice round meaty piece of original research in my kitty. Of any sort....something I had built, anything, anything that had come to fruition. other than scholarships I have got based on impressions I have made upon people. I keep telling myself...these are great people (and they are) both as human beings and as scientists, and if they think Im good enough....maybe I am.

Once I go home, whats to certify Im good enough for anything ? Its a family business....I would be much less concerned about taking up a random job. there, the fact that someone was paying me good money would tell me that I was worth something to them.

Nope.....I cant go back unless I resolve this. I need to go home after Ive convinced myself that my worth is something I carry around with me, not something that is bestowed upon me by the institute I am in, or the scholarship I get.
which brings me back to "doing something thats ridiculous, unlikely, high risk, high return and high impact." :D

Typical ~ 1

2009-11-30T16:44:00.002+01:00

click on the image to read the article, its quite ridiculous.

Gabhricha Paus

2009-11-16T04:05:00.007+01:00

Gabhricha Paus is a brilliant marathi movie starring the lovely and talented Sonali Kulkarni and the equally talented Girish Kulkarni, it deals with the issue of farmer suicides in Vidarbha in a remarkably soft manner devoid of bitterness. It does not skirt hard issues and the story is almost reminiscent of Dostoevsky in the way it crushes hope again and again. There are no happy endings, but the movie is not devoid of happiness.

Unlike Aakrosh which portrays the dark and desperate suffering of the advasis, Gabhricha Paus has well rounded characters (Im saying the Adivasi characters in Aakrosh are a little unidimentional, but the effect created is brilliant and legendary, so no complaints). It takes us into their lives, in their language (most urban marathi speakers will be glad for the subtitles quite often) and compells us to share in their fortunes and misfortunes. One cant help but be glad at Sonali's charming half smile when her husband likes her puranpoli (a special sweet dish) after being upset at the expense and we are anxious and worried when Girish (Kisna in the film) stares at the sky standing in his barren field while the song in the background implores mother earth to let the rain pour forth..

The movie does justice to the barren yet strangely beautiful landscapes of the area it is set and shot in and the soundtrack is true to the mood of the film. The songs resonate and are filled with meaning and the acting is quite exceptional. There are several nice touches I will not talk about so that you may have the pleasure of discovering them yourself.

All in all, very highly recommended. Some knowledge of Marathi will help of course, but the subtitles are not bad at all and if you can read English, this movie is a very rewarding watch.

Delightful.

अर्ध सत्य. (Half Truth)

2009-11-16T03:53:00.003+01:00

This is the poem from Govind Nihalani's brilliant second film Ardh Satya (1983). The poem is by Dileep Chitre.

चक्रव्यूह मे घुसने से पहले,
कौन था मैं और कैसा था,
यह मुझे याद ही न रहेगा.
चक्रव्यूह मे घुसने के बाद,
मेरे और चक्रव्यूह के बीच,
सिर्फ एक जानलेवा निकटता थी,
इसका मुझे पता ही न चलेगा.
चक्रव्यूह से निकलने के बाद,
मैं मुक्त हो जाऊं भले ही,
फिर भी चक्रव्यूह की रचना मे
फर्क ही न पड़ेगा.
मरू या मारूं,
मारा जाऊं या जान से मार्डून,
इसका फैसला कभी न हो पायेगा.
सोया हुआ आदमी जब
नींद से उठकर चलना शुरू करता है,
तब सपनों का संसार उसे,
दोबारा दिख ही न पायेगा.
उस रौशनी मे जो निर्णय की रौशनी है
सब कुछ समान होगा क्या ?

एक पारडे मे नपुंसकता,
दुसरे पारडे मे पौरुष,
और ठीक तराजू के कांटे पर
अर्ध सत्य.

-दिलीप चित्रे

Apology to Leo Kadanoff

2009-10-15T17:26:00.002+02:00

I have been fortunate enough to be taught by one of the great physicists of the last century (the century - I do not need to remind anyone - of Einstein, Schrodinger, Dirac, Feynman and others..) : Prof. Leo Kadanoff. Here is a man who laid the groundwork behind some of the most profound ideas (Renormalization Group) that are a crucial part of the underpinnings of the powerful field theories that are the epitome of human attempts to understand the universe.

He taught me - in fact he is teaching me this very moment - a course on Statistical Mechanics much of which is actually material created in part by him. Many crucial ideas in the field theory course Im doing concurrently originate from him and David Tong from Cambridge who is teaching that excellent course mentioned once how sleepish he felt talking about some of these ideas with Leo Kadanoff sitting at the back of the class listening attentively.

He always comes 40 minutes before his class starts and he likes to listen to whats happening in the field theory course, and he loves to then begin his lecture by giving stat mech analogues of the field theory concepts we had been looking at. He is one of the leading proponents of 'Universality' in physics - the idea that phenomena (like critical phenomena, phase transitions) look identical across branches of physics. He likes to say, and show, how we do the same physics over and over again, the same equations reappear in completely different contexts.

He is perhaps one of the most humble most polite people Ive met. And so it is with deep - almost bitter - regret that I admit that I have not learnt much from him at all. It is my fault entirely, I simply did not make the effort necessary to appreciate and assimilate the deep concepts he was good enough to put forth enthusiastically before us, everyday, even at the age of 82. Between field theory and my indolence and laziness, I just did not do what was needed.

I am ashamed. But - if for no other reason than respect for Prof. Kadanoff - I will study and become good at Statistical Mechanics and understand renormalization before Im done with this business of theoretical physics.

I have made many similar mistakes....sleeping in PSB sir's class while he poured his heart into imparting knowledge springs immediately to mind, and perhaps I will never understand DSP and Control Systems as well as I should, but this time, I wont let it pass.

Update : My Year Off with Theoretical Physics in Canada :)

2009-09-14T16:18:00.000+02:00

Hello Folks !

Its been ages since I last sent out an update mail, but that does not mean things have not been happening ! There have been many many months of desperate - and sometimes dangerous - hard work, much agonizing thought about the future, a satisfying amount of cricket, some heart burn some success and a few twists in the tale. Not to mention some inspirational teachers - maybe thats a tautology, anyone who's inspirational is automatically a teacher - and so many delightful friends it was an absolute privilege and pleasure to spend time with.

The upshot of it all is that after spending one year in Belgium sweating out some of the toughest coursework in Photonics along with the Belgians (even Caesar appreciated them - "Of all the Gauls, The Belgians are the bravest !") and one year in Scotland fretting about a singularly intractable and tedious masters thesis while chilling at the whey pat tavern with cheesy nachos after village cricket games, I have ended up in Canada at the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics doing (yet another) masters degree (in Theoretical Physics, obly).

Before you ask "Why ??" and "What ????", This is my year off. Other people travel and take it easy, I got a chance to fulfill a childhood dream. I am studying general relativity at the moment and before Im done at the end of 10 months, Ill have gone through cosmology, string theory, quantum gravity and most of the rest of physics - all at someone else's expense. Its a brilliantly conceived and intense course and if you're interested, take a look at it here.

Im enjoying myself and learning a lot. What I will do after this ? Who knows. But I want to travel a lot, and I intend to settle down back in Aurangabad pretty soon. How Im goign to do that without simply abandoning all my random and fairly esoteric pursuits, I do not know, but Ill figure something out :)

Sincerely,
Prasanna

Free to Dream

2009-09-01T05:19:00.013+02:00

"Be very protective of your enthusiasm. Dont let anything affect that ! If you find yourself getting stressed out, if classes seem too much, take a break. This course is for you to figure out what you want to do with your life....but we have definitely packed it with too much stuff !" (or words to that effect)

- Dr. Neil Turok to the PSI students

There are idealists in the world who create wonderful things, wonderful places, wonderful situations and I am in one of them right now, among amazing people. To bring enthusiastic people together and give them everything they need and give them the freedom to dream, think and create new ideas for mankind....surely we need a lot more such places ! As David Deutsch so eloquently said in this talk, the survival of mankind depends on the ability of our species to create the knowledge that we require to solve the massive (existential) crises that we will face sooner or later.

Im really keen to see if I can actually do what Im supposed to do now that Im here : make a real and significant contribution to my species - Humankind and to my planet - Earth, so that we may hope to live and explore and carry to distant corners of spacetime the memories of Earth. We will certainly be extinct one day, but will we leave behind only a few primitive ruins on one planet of one obscure system ? Proof that we never grew up, that we remained small minded and spiteful and primitive ? Or will a million wrecks on a million distant and inhospitable worlds bear testimony to how far beyond its 'natural' mandate this unworthy chemical scum went, exploring the universe simply because it is there !

In The Songs of Distant Earth Clarke mentions a story of a frozen leopard carcass found near the top of Kilimanjaro. (the story happens to be The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Hemingway and almost certainly true) and wonders what the leopard was doing there....what was it seeking in those bleak icy slopes when the plains below - its natural home - abounded with game ?

The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle...

- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky

Image - New Scientist

Perimeter !

2009-08-16T17:49:00.003+02:00

Im in Waterloo, ON, Canada now, and classes at the Perimeter Institute start tomorrow :)
All blogs specific to the Perimeter Institute and my activities here will go here. This blog will continue as it is of course....that one will be a little more tech/subject oriented.

2. The Son of the Soil

2009-07-28T16:50:00.002+02:00

The hard, strenuous life is not for me

And Ive always shunned all labour and toil

That being as it may be

I still wish I was a son of the soil.

As a toddler he played in the puddles

On the track that led to my farm

As I swerved my car to avoid him

He smiled at me without alarm.

Ive seen him walking to school

The wind blowing rain in his face

He's barefoot with a well ironed shirt

Completely at ease in his place.

I pass him by in my car

Insulated from the wind and the rain

and the dirt and germs and the people and pain

and my country and its lovely refrain.

Ive seen him standing at the tea stall

With his cutting chai in his hand

With chappals that have never seen a mall

He's at ease, he belongs to the land.

I pick my way through the garbage

Looking away from the beggars I pity

He strides by with a spring in his step

A villager at ease in my city.

Ive never seen envy in his eyes

and I see him every now and again

He knows he knows and hears what I dont

Our country and its lovely refrain.

I have much and seen many lands

An interesting life without toil

And every moment Im back in my country

I wish I was a son of the soil.

-Yours Truly.

1. The Master of Science

2009-07-06T18:36:00.011+02:00

Much has happened since I last posted anything here. I finished my thesis, I left St. Andrews, I went to Belgium, I had a great time, I left Belgium and I came to India. Along the way I picked up my degree and became a certified 'Master of Science' while drifting as far away from being able to weave the various threads of my life into one harmonoius 'shimmering tapestry' as I have ever been. I - for once - feel reasonably competent at what I do while I have become more aware than ever of the utterly incomprehensible vastness of the abyss that remains beyond all knowledge.

Someone once told me that science is an ever expanding frontier of ignorance. At the Perimeter Institute this coming year I will be transported from one edge of that frontier of ignorance to another, from technology and engineering research to theories and speculations of the most fundamental nature - powerful, far removed and abstruse. In all this esoteric knowledge seeking and continent hopping I have conveniently ignored what I consider my fundamental duties - to have an income, a family and generally make my parent's lives more pleasant in ways more immediate and real than the abstract achievements of research and academia.

I would have loved to write about the absolutely brilliant time I had at the EMMP Summer School in Gent, the fantastic people I met, old friends, old haunts in a city I have come to love and the goodbyes, the firm handshakes and the promises to meet again. A beautiful place, good people and healthy emotion resting comfortably on a bedrock of learning and competence - i.e. all the things that make life worth living were present in generous quantities at that summer school but I can no longer write about any of it. I have spent barely 3 days in India and it has overwhelmed me. The delicate and pleasing emotions that are so natural in the genteel environs of Gent have been swept away by a violent and painfully enjoyable barrage of crowds, memories, relations, conventions, smells, foods, stories and lives.

One must follow one's dreams - that I cannot bring myself to doubt but where does the pursuit of knowledge fit in this mad milieu of noise, money, passion, tragedy and history ? Is this not the first fight I must fight ? To create a bubble of happiness and maintain it till my children take over the job ? Has my father not done this all his adult life, and done it brilliantly without a word, is this not where I still return for guidance and solace and comfort ? I give advice while doing precious little to lend a hand, should I not be helping to strenghten our lovely bubble, expanding it and decorating it, so that my family can rest secure, and my dad can walk without the weight of responsibility on his shoulders for the first time in 30 years ? Is this not my first duty ?

It is. And I have no clue how what I am doing is going to help me discharge it. Im running on faith and hope. India is a wonderful place - painfully, violently, enjoyable. Much more naked and up front than the west ever is. There is more passion and drama on any road in Mumbai than all the couples in all the squares of Paris. India is like a raging river, invitingly mad, cruel and sad, fey and boisterous, shiny and old, silly and wise, it is everything to everyone and I want to jump in and experience it again but I cant. Im in the river but I dont get wet, the water flows over and around me without touching me. I dont look, sound or feel like I can handle the torrents that flow through the veins of India and so I am spared and excluded.

Mumbai speaks to me no longer, it seems I can but watch from afar - I no longer see myself in the people on the roads, I see strangers and I wish I was them, with them, sharing their city, listening to their stories which form the story of the city and the country, my country. Master of Science with 'Great Distinction' is nothing. In my homeland, at home, I have not done my bit, my character hardly has a role while everyone waits for the main protagonist to step up and play his part.

Here, I am no one, I barely exist.

And thats all that matters.

Saving the World

2009-05-07T17:56:00.002+02:00

original here

Gentsefeesten.....Revelry before a lonely summer in '08

2009-05-03T22:49:00.002+02:00

By Request, A real conversation and (Indian) Geeks

2009-04-23T11:41:00.007+02:00

What follows is a real conversation the likes of which I have had many times, with various friends, in various flavours, and it never ceases to delight me :)

All you socially successful, girlfriend toting, well dressed, well adjusted soon to be rich non and ex techies out there ! You might think you have it all, but you cant match our innocent Wodehousian humor and good natured angst :)

anyway, here goes ! :)

me: why cliff ? taken up rock climbing ?
Comet: no..i want to jump off one
me: why ?
Comet: i screwed up the one chance i got after
(i cant even remember how long)
me: chance at what ?
Comet: a girl (with a tattoo on her arm) walks up to me
and chats me up...
me: WHAT :)
wow
how ?
where ?
Comet: and all i ask her in the end is "are u on facebook"
and she says 'no'
which i take as 'I'm not interested'
and buzz off
but it turns out, she really isn't on facebook
can u believe that
me: ohho
so big deal
talk to her again na
Comet: i need to get out into the real world beyond the Internet
me: :)
yes
but who is she ?
where did you meet her ?
Comet: we had a family/friends get-together and
she was the cousin of a friend..

me: vah :)
so you can easily meet her again na
Comet: i suck man...now i cant even focus on work...
i have no contact of her, unless i ask her cousin..
who will understand I'm hitting on her
me: oh gawd
we are all from the big bang theory man.
we're all from inside the sitcom.
easily we will fit in.
Comet: haha..yeah...
me: what deep and profound problems we have !
what lives and what conversations :)
Comet: i hope i get over her quickly
me: oh god...Im laughing and everyone
in office is looking at me :)
Comet: :D
me too but nobody's looking..most have gone home
to the real world
me: we have to get over girls simply
because they spoke to us :)

Comet: what else are they supposed to do to express interest?
me: Ive got to meet all of you again quickly da..
before you get gfs and wives and settle down
and the magic is gone....
no no....you got me wrong.
we're not supposed to be so desperate
that we have to "get over" a simple
expression of interest :)
Comet: haha..yeah, but my CV on these matters does not
afford me that luxury
I'm desperate by design of nature
me: :D what does that even mean !
Comet: how the f**k can i hold a conversation with
a arts graduate (she was one)
i think I'll sign off gtalk, and bury myself
in work now.
work is worship .. work is worship
bye..
me: oh god :)
and I know what you mean.
I cant talk to them myself..mostly,
they talk rubbish :P

"..Yes I am a Nerd, and when the ancestors of the right honourable gentleman were hoodwinking people with preposterous pomposities in the temples of tomfoolery, mine were erecting the pillars of rationality and empiricism upon which our civilization stands....."
-Something I might have said in the Union Debating Society of St Andrews, but dint.

And please, my friends, No Names in the Comments please !

"..and oh, The difference to me !"

2009-04-20T14:32:00.014+02:00

There is a blogger in my mind. She has been a part of many of my dreams and in each one I come to know her a little better - through her blog, a common friend, a news flash or an internet message board. Ive never interacted with her personally but I seem to have grown quite fond of her. In my last dream however, she died. And turned what was otherwise a slightly strange but intriguing and pleasant dream into a nightmare that woke me up - not with fear (which is common) but with mind numbing sadness (which is not). This is about her. In trying to capture her in words I will try and put down only what I seem to remember and not embellish or do violence to the delicate impression of her I hold in my mind. But putting her in words is necessary, lest I forget.

I seem to think - but Im not sure - that she was from Chennai. English speaking and sophisticated without being less South Indian because of it. I always imagined her in embroidered long kurtas and jeans, unremarkable but pleasant. She must have been 26-27 perhaps, single and living apart from her parents and family. At least, the impression I got was of a comfortable urban loneliness born out of an interesting but independent life. Im not sure what her occupation was, or even what her interests were. I did know however, that she was HIV positive. And her story seemed to start there.

It appeared that she was involved with activism of some kind a few years ago, and that led to some sort of enmity with the local police. Or was it some form moral policing that got her into trouble with the authorities ? It seems possible but Im not sure. But something dark and traumatic happened and in her blogs it always seems to have remained nebulous. In other sources many different stories were talked about, but my mind never seems to have settled on one. Seeing the darkness of her past that seemed to hang over her always, I was more melancholy than curious. The upshot of it was that she ended up HIV positive and the police were somehow, unprovably, murkily - perhaps indirectly - to blame for it.

Her blogs were about her day to day life which was quite pleasant and independent it seems. I associate no bitterness and anger with her, so she must have spoken about her battle with HIV and other daemons without any angst. Nor is it pity that comes to mind when I think of her so she must have come across as an independent self sufficient person. I respect her immensely for these things. There is little else, save that I felt very tender towards her and wanted her to be happy.

In my last dream, I was walking around with a motley cast from various phases of my life in a dark and cold hill station, looking for something but Im not sure what. I was offered roasted corn at a lonely stall by an acquaintance from college (who was in rough outdoor clothes, he had apparently joined some kind of communist insurgency) who said the tattered 5 rupee note he held came from a stash that a recently departed acquaintance of ours had been giving to him for years, to "finance the next revolution". But he did not really care, "Lets have butta" he said. I politely refused. Later, we were having ice cream which I did not like at a open air restaurant which was full but still eerily quiet while a pretty girl I had known years ago at school was flirting across me with some half drunk friend of a friend who had just joined us. Thats when I received a call from a person who I did not really know. He was some gay student I had never met, and he was crying on the phone. He told me that she had died.

I hung up the call, sank to my knees feeling intense sadness, numb, heavy and dark.
And then I woke up.
Disturbed and lonely at 4.54 in the morning.

All very strange and vivid . . .

Who is she ? Is she inspired by some real person ? Why is she in my mind ? but most of all, Why did she die ?

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways

- William Wordsworth

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
--Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!

Our Place in the Cosmos by David Deutsch

2009-04-08T00:53:00.006+02:00

A TED talk by David Deutsch - brilliant and inspiring. It sort of reinforces and enlarges the point I tried to make in the post below. The guy is obviously a genius.

http://theclarkeorbit.blogspot.com/

A Story in Snapshots

2009-03-10T12:39:00.021+01:00

Chandigarh, India. January 2002

Two boys sixteen - seventeen years of age are walking down a deserted tree lined boulevard in the twilight on a cold north Indian winter evening. To a casual onlooker they might seem like any two jaunty and excessively happy boys incongruously loud on that mute road, thick with the absence of people the way only an Indian street can be. A more interested observer would have noticed an ecstatic glow on their faces, joy and wonder in their voices and a strange awed exultation in their manner. If the observer had sidled in to within earshot, he might have heard them searching for adjectives to follow "brilliant", "beautiful", "superb", "amazing".....and they seemed to be interspersed with a smattering of topics in general physics and math along with the recurring phrase "N**** Sir".

Surathkal, India. January 2005

A young chap in a loose t shirt and jeans with longish hair and some stubble walks along a beach lined with palms and thick tropical shrubbery. The sun is setting behind the restive waves and he is vaguely aware of the beauty of the scene that surrounds him, the long evening, the tropical breeze tempered by winter, the lighthouse on the hill some distance ahead of him, the people who all seem impossibly distant - their voices carried to him intermittently by the winds. His mind is far away, his spirit is defiant but cracked - though he does not know it yet. He thinks back to the last semester - the ragging and the pressure, his marks, electronics, the stress and his lab partner who went home and never came back. He wonders at his friends who burst into tears in class and others who stood around the campus staring into nothingness.

His mind wanders further back, to the stunning failure that brought him to this place, the indescribable year that went before it and the original failure before that. And finally, with a touch of bitterness he thinks of the two boys walking down that street in Chandigarh - excited and happy in the knowledge that a master had assured them that they had exceptional talent. He remembers the advice the master had given him - do physics, you'll do well at it. He does not regret having ignored those words, (this is India, he could not do a BSc ! and besides, engineering secured his economic future) but he marvels at how quickly his dreams have disintegrated and how quickly "talent" seems to vanish.

Gent, Belgium. January 2008

A young guy in a big black climbing jacket hurries through a cold drizzle on a dark chilly winters' evening. He does not notice the cobbled streets or the lovely medieval buildings. He is mentally kicking himself for not studying when he could have, and getting himself into a tight situation just before his exams. He does not know the hard labour that nanotechnology entails and he is enamored by the power of the concepts he should have absorbed. He is desperate to impress the brilliant professors who taught him so much in the preceding 4 months, and he thinks happily of all the classes he sat through excited and thrilled. "Almost as good as N**** Sir" he thinks to himself. Almost. Deeply grateful for the scholarship and the brilliant teaching, he really wants to do well. He splashes through a puddle and promises to do a good job.

St. Andrews, Scotland. March 2009

A slightly tired looking man in a long black overcoat enters his comfortable room late at night. He has had a good Saturday, though his masters thesis is not going too well. He has interesting friends and plenty of good conversation. He also knows what he is going to do with the next 5 years of his life - an engineering phd with the general aim of someday starting his own company. It seems a little dull and he is vaguely uncomfortable, but he knows he is good at it, his most likely chance of applying his skills to an exotic field has not worked out, and there is nothing that good company and good food along with a spot of cricket cannot cure. He is teeteering on the edge of settling down in life.

He slips into more comfortable clothes and switches on his computer, his mind peacefully sifting through images and snatches of conversations from a day out with friends. He opens his mail box and clicks on the only mail among dozens whose subject line is different from the ones that he sees everyday. His mind does not register the words, but suddenly it hits him. He has been admitted to a elite, intense, 10 month masters course in theoretical physics that pays for all the expenses and needs of the students. He cannot believe it. He is an engineer. He comes from an Indian business family. He will have a masters degree in a few months. He wants and needs to make money. Theoretical physics means completely flying off the rails ! A jump into the unknown ! All these things flash through his mind in a second, and he smiles and knows he will go for it.

He tells his parents (and is relieved at their obvious delight upon hearing the news) and friends. Once the initial euphoria has died down, he takes a deep breath and thinks of N**** sir, childhood dreams, engineering, all the trials and tribulations along the way....and he knows that soon, he will write the most proud and satisfying mail he has ever written.

Dear N**** Sir......

Contemplation and Cricket

2009-02-10T23:45:00.014+01:00

Life can get very boggy and slow at times, lonely and low and stuffy. When everyday work seems like a drag and things dont seem to be going anywhere, when there seem to be no friends and no fun, when nothing seems interesting and the mind withers before a flickering screen and the body atrophies into despairing weakness. And then, onto the flickering screen appears a notice, a message offering not just hope and solace, but rebirth. The Staff and Postgraduate Cricket Club is hosting indoor nets. All are welcome for a fee of 2 pounds.

There is trepidation and hesitation, painful memories of awkward and clumsy performances with old comrades who are forced to be polite out of respect for old triumphs shared, humoring the team mate who cant play anymore but has not realized it yet. Painful memories accentuated by the mind shrunk over many cooped up harried and stressful years, needless needless, a youth needlessly thrown away for an adulthood improperly received. Can the old chap play again ? Can the cobwebs of the mind be cleared away by the winds of graceful freshness and sage history that blow and watch over every cricketing green ? They give 22 minds in pure white the chance to test themselves, their subtlety, character, health and peace, and they imbue them with those qualities. Can it happen again ?

Oh the joy to be had from the satisfying sound of ball hitting the sweet spot of the bat and flying away with no perceptible effort, the ease of instinctive movement to play a good shot as if this was what the hands were born to do, feet getting into position, head still, the bat a graceful arc, batting more akin to kenjutsu than baseball, more to do with meditation than with hitting.

There is hesitation, yes, but there is also for some reason the knowledge that this is an idea, a dream, whose time has come. And so the nets come to pass. He marks his run up. Shoulders aching, feet stiff, there is not much pace in the deliveries but the run up seems rhythmic and the action smooth, and the balls land on a good length again and again and again. He can play. And thus the ice is broken, players introduce themselves without cause, the ball seems to snuggle in the hand, there is suddenly an extra nip off the matting wicket. A few balls are dispatched to the boundary and a few beat the bat and then it is time to pad up. This is the real test...this is where things can go wrong, but the mind is surprisingly calm and focused. The bat seems perfect, the first ball comes in and rattles the stumps. The possibility of panicking is considered and discarded. Know where your off stump is, take guard, go through the rituals, look at the ball and cleanse the mind.

A tall fast man races in with a newish red cherry in his hand, it pitches at a goodlength outside off holding its line, but suddenly its path through to the keeper is interrupted by the smooth swing of the bat close beside a front foot that is already in position to hit the ball on the up and through the line and the sweetest sound in the world sends a red blur careening towards the covers before the net stops it. Time stands still, clarity. The bowler at the end of his follow through nods and claps "Good shot sir !"

Rebirth.
There is no going back.

Cheer up Fed, Cheer up.

2009-02-01T18:31:00.004+01:00

It was heartrending to watch Federer break down after his defeat in the Australian Open final after what turned out to be a tame and sloppy final set by him. It was really too much to watch.

But Victory, when it comes, will be sweeter for all this.

On Politics.

2009-01-23T16:19:00.014+01:00

When I say "politics", I mean it in the broadest and loftiest possible sense of the word, not the petty machinations of lying knaves which is what it has come to mean to most people in India. A prosaic working definition could be "The process by which groups make decisions.". I will start by defining what I consider to be the "National Interest" and by 'national' I do not mean 'Indian' but more generally, the interest of whatever interconnected and interdependent human society we happen to be considering. I will outline a goal of sorts - what I think we ought to try and achieve - and then I will give my thoughts about how/why it might or might not be attained and then Ill conclude with a few remarks about India.

The Magic Carpet.

The aim should be a society which carries every member on a 'magic carpet' and does not allow any of its members to fall below a certain standard of living. This magic carpet is something that the society as a whole provides to every one of its members - each of whome contributes to its upkeep. The following ought to be guaranteed -
1> Security. Everyone should be free to conduct their lives without fear of death or material disruption. This includes protection from severe weather etc. The basic resources necessary to exist.
2> Food. Everyone should have ample access to varied and wholesome food.
3> Healthcare. Everyone should have access to medical facilities.
4> Education. Everyone should have the chance to attend university level education.
5> Opportunity and Freedom.
6> Leisure. Yes, leisure. Each and every person in society should have the time, the resources, and the security needed to indulge in leisure activities, because it is from these that human happiness most often flows. Everyone should have time in which they are free to do whatever they like, it is such activity that most often leads to the breakthroughs that take our civilization forward.

Is it Possible ?

From a purely engineering point of view, the answer would be a definite Yes. The resources and the technology needed to bring this about exist. I might even go so far as to say, it has been technically possible for a long time now. The real problem is an economic one - How to allocate resources and lay down norms to create and sustain this sort of system. An ideal society has many other characteristics of course, like sustainability, but we will not go into those at the moment.

The State.

The state is the agent through which a society carries out its collective responsibilities (such as security, health, education, law and order etc) and regulates itself. For example, if a society collectively decides that "stealing is bad, and those who steal must be put in prison", then it is the responsibility of the state to conceive and enforce this law. This is of course, in theory. In reality, the state - whatever its origins, history or ideology - consists of a ruling elite which looks after its own interests rather than those of the society it rules. Laws in this situation, are a tool to manipulate and regulate society in order to enable the ruling elite to pursue their aims. All too often, their interests are divergent from the interests of the society, and this is illustrated by human history which is filled with rich aristocrats ruling for millennia over impoverished and helpless populations.

Again and again, civilizations and societies have come to grief because the short term interests of the elite did not coincide with the long term interests of the people. Again and again, the existence of an unchallenged ruling elite has inevitably led to suffering, poverty and eventually, to collapse. This is precisely the issue that Democracy attempts to address. By making the ruling class dependent on the people to continue in power, it forces the elite to factor into its calculations the interests of the masses. If the elite wants to continue to rule, they must be seen to be looking after the interests of the majority of the population. A fairly good solution one might say, though of course, whether the elite is taking care of the long term interests of the society or not is entirely a dependent on how demanding and perceptive the masses are. Which also seems fair, they get what they deserve. There are many other institutions that a democracy needs in order to function, but those will be considered to be implicit when we use the word 'democracy'.

The subversion of Democracy

As one can see, for a democracy to function - i.e. for the ruling elite to feel the imperative need to look after the interests of the masses - there needs to be choice. There needs to be an option that the people can vote for, an alternate set of people who promise and can deliver what the current ruling elite have failed to do. And if such an alternative does not exist, then a democracy (a good one) provides people with every reason to jump into the fray and provide the alternative themselves. This is crucial - for a democracy to be properly functional, common people should be able to contest elections and provide the alternative to the ruling elite that has not delivered. It is here that most large democracies - and especially India - fail.

The bane of Indian Democracy is the rise of a political class with very high barriers of entry implemented through a multi-layered system. Basic neccessities of Indian politics such as vast quantities of (black) money, availability of street muscle and so on, ensure that the vast majority of Indians cannot venture into politics. Thus, the Indian political elite remains - to a large extent - unchallenged. They swap power among themselves, and the elections are bitterly contested, but they all belong to a class who have broadly common interests. None of them want an enlightened, educated and empowered population. None of them want fair and effective law enforcement agencies or an efficient judiciary. None of them are interested in cracking down on organized crime, enforcing financial laws or cleaning up hooligans from the street. All for the simple reason that even though these things are obviously desirable for society at large, they are not in the interest of the Indian ruling elite and it is these interests which the Indian state - as of now - most closely defends and promotes.

Fundamentally, the Indian political class is not interested in removing the socio-economic conditions that ail our people and cripple our country. And they can get away with it because they have ensured - as a collective - that Indian Democracy cannot throw up a credible alternative that better looks after the interests of its people. Thus, it is the high barriers for entry into politics that most subvert our democracy. They maintain their power in the crudest possible manner, by beating up the new comer who dares to stand for election, by threatening his family, by buying him out. And anyone who 'makes it' in indian politics, is forced by the political class to become one of them - he needs the hooligans, he needs the money, and thus, he needs the political class and cannot rebel.

To sum it up -

Low barrier for entry into politics => Choice => state protecting interests of the people and a mature evolving functional democracy => evolution towards a better society with less suffering and more enlightenment and peace, thus freeing up more resources for endeavors of vision and courage such as the exploration of space, the quest for longevity and the search for truth and meaning.

The Next Small Step

2009-01-15T03:38:00.013+01:00

Exams done, and one last semester to to before the grand title of 'Master of Science' is conferred upon me, and the inevitable question that has been bouncing around in my head with many strange effects : "What next ?" is decisively answered. As I outlined in a previous post, I have already made up my mind about that : I will do a phd, and increasingly I feel that it will be in Belgium that I will do it. It will be a four year thing, and for the first time really, I'm looking forward to it. But thats not what this post is about. This post is about the next six months - the six months I have to do my thesis and enjoy myself here in Scotland.

Even so, I am plagued by indecision about some of the most important things in my life. When should I go back to India ? Whome should I marry and when ? What am I looking for in life ? To be honest, now that I've given up on pure physics as well as astronomical instrumentation, anything seems okay as long as it provides decent opportunity and a good quality of life. I gave up my dream in 2008 and in 2009 I am beginning to realize that everything else is just that - it's everything else. Phd in photonics is great, I seem to be good at this stuff, and if I play my cards well now and stay awake and perky for four years, I'll probably have something along the lines of what I want to show for it - the beginnings of a hi-tech startup. I'll then move it or a part of it to India or I'll sell it and go home. I want papa to retire early and relax, but I don't see how I can make that happen short of flying home and helping with the business and slowly easing the burden from his shoulders to mine. That is what dutiful sons from business families are expected to do. But I feel I owe it to mummy and papa who educated me and introduced me to books and showed me the world and encouraged me to dream, I owe it to them to make something of my life in these faraway and lonely places where I have been brought by all that is good in me and all that they taught me to be. I know papa agrees and mummy too, even though these days she wants me to come back.

The point is, now - stripped of idealism - apart from the fact that I have done two years of photonics, there is nothing to hold me to the subject - I like it but it is certainly not my passion, - I might as well have done an MBA or something in software or electronics. So, in the medium term my goals have very little to do with the pursuit of knowledge and beauty in academics, and a lot more to do with getting me a interesting and comfortable life. And in the near term - these six months before I graduate - I'm going to concentrate on keeping fit and healthy and happy :) Ive bought Lonely Planet's Walking In Scotland and I mean to work through as many of the relaxed and scenic walks as I can by the end of June and Ill certainly spend the whole of June relaxing and walking in Scotland, and anyone wanting to join is welcome ! I would also like to learn some application development for the iTouch and most of all I want to remain emotionally stable and physically fit.

And the word marriage is beginning to crop up too many times in too many private reveries as well as conversations. That'll have to be kept at bay I think, right now the priorities have to be to handle the immediate technicalities of life well enough to ensure stability and comfort along with leisure and travel. How happy and healthy and interesting my life is depends purely on how well I handle mundane things like thesis work, cooking, cleaning the room and keeping in touch with friends and thus free up time and resources for interesting activities. It's strange that I have to reaffirm these basics of life, but I as well as the one or two friends I have with me here on this exceptionally challenging 2 year roller coaster through western Europe, have had to discover and rediscover ourselves in order to make sense of the myriad possibilities and choices that lie before us. Most of all, we have had to accept our personal weaknesses, the responsibilities we have or will have and the finite nature of lives, our own and those of the people closest to us. This is adulthood. But again I have digressed - the next small step is to manage the little things in life well, have fun, be comfortable and choose an interesting phd topic. And sorry for the slightly solemn post, but I think I have most issues sorted now, and now for the next four or five years things should be calm, stable and lighthearted and interesting :)

Posted with LifeCast

Where I have been

2009-01-05T17:42:00.005+01:00

1> Watching UFOs :) no kidding.

2> Visiting family :) lovely lovely break that was ! Thank you so much ?&4U:). I don't think anyone will decipher that :)

3> Exploring my new iPod touch and marvelling at the amazingess of it. I absolutely adoooore it. I want to write code for it ! 'nuff said.

4> Dreaming of traveling. The wilds of Scotland in June, and then later in the year, India ! Ladakh and the north east perhaps. the islands maybe, perhaps some really random place finances permitting.

I wrote that on my iPod touch sitting in my favourite coffee shop which has finally reopened post the holidays. Each of the above deserve nice long posts themselves and I did document the ufo sighting quite well, so maybe I'll write it up sometime. And I'll definitely be writing more about my itouch in the coming days. There is so much I can think of doing with it ! First and foremost, I want to get a gps of some inexpensive variety attached to it and accessible reliably enough to venture out with. But these are subjects for another post, perhaps even a different blog :)

Philosophical Catharsis

2008-11-30T15:44:00.013+01:00

As a child I yearned to know everything. I read everything I found, I remembered as much as I could, I asked every question I could think of and argued every point that did not satisfy me. I was always filled with questions and wonder, and only constant reading and asking and learning could hope to quench my thirst. Over time, I lost the obsession, but the wonder stayed, I grew more entangled in the world, and over time, decided that Science was the only discipline capable of answering questions about the world. By definition. I considered the humanities and economics as fraudulent and misleading studies, I dismissed god in a deluge of convincing and impenetrable arguments, and I enjoyed it. I rejected religion, I laughed at spirituality, I mocked the arts. I tried my very best to find in science the right attitudes to life, the universe and everything, I tried to find in science the key to happiness and fulfillment.

And this is the answer I got - there is no meaning. There is no greater purpose. We are marvelously complex self replicating, persistent structures. When we die, the structure dissolves. What we do is immaterial. The universe is too vast for us to comprehend, if we had an appreciation for its vastness and beauty, we would never have been foolish enough to think we were special. And this disturbed me not in the least, for I was young and knew that I could never die, and I delighted in the weakness of my fellows as they clung to their crutches and tried to be happy in the face of the immense insignificance and pointlessness of our existence.

I grew older, and forgot about such matters in a few years filled with the excitement and tribulations of any young adult, but the attitudes I had developed in my impetuous youth remained with me. I took random turns on the road to life and ended up doing this very interesting course bordering both science and engineering on the beautiful and lonely continent of Europe. Thus separated from my country and my friends and all else that was familiar I was forced to live with myself again, and to think and examine life. I naturally slipped into the intellectual framework I had already developed, and with further reading and thought I made it harsher and more brittle. As loneliness set in, the first signs of uneasyness began to appear. I began to wonder what I wanted to do and why, and what, if anything made sense. I grew disenchanted with politics, literature and people (since I hardly ever saw any).

Divorced from common small pleasures that make the day livable, my own life seemed meaningful only to the extent that I understood the beauty and immensity and mystery of the universe through science, and I gravitated toward that all absorbing task like a moth toward a lamp. My work - which had seemed so exciting a few months ago - began so seem impossibly dull. Every day I strained against the ties and responsibilities that bound me, I despised the mere engineering research I was constrained to do. I yearned to gaze at the stars and contemplate the worlds and realms of truth and reality beyond our experience, I yearned to delve into the secrets of space and time and chance, to contribute my little bit to my poor species' understanding, and thus spend my life doing the only thing that had any value in my scheme of things - deciphering all that surrounds us.

In effect, I had given mankind and myself a purpose and a meaning - Understanding Everything. What more worthy goal could we possibly set before ourselves ? What more could we possibly aspire to ? Nothing.

As the strain inside me grew, between the role I was blindly walking into (an engineer and a man of the world) and who I wanted to be (an observer and student of all that is) I grew more unhappy and uneasy. I hated the fact that I would die and cease to part of things, I hated the thought of leaving without understanding. I thought about loss, and about suffering, and I grew ever more strained and uncomfortable. I saw no point in the immediate and the transient, and I saw no hope of the eternal and true. I struggled to find a way to reconcile what I considered the only worthy pursuit (lofty science) and the aspirations and worldly matters I was loath to abandon.

I had (and still have) avenues leading both ways, but yesterday, I made my choice. I will be an engineer and a man of this world. I will do everything I intended to do in the confines of the society I come from and I will enjoy myself, learn and life a healthy life with enough time left over for study and contemplation. I will be happy and cease to be bothered by mortality and the pointlessness of humanity in the larger scheme of things. An appreciation of beauty (science), inward contemplation (peace) and the pursuit of worldly happiness seem to be excellent things with which to fill up the time that is given to me.

Intertwined with this immensely relieving reconciliation among the powerful forces that once threatened to pull me asunder, is a new appreciation for the value of individual contemplation. I am willing to grant the possibility that philosophical insight gained through non scientific meditation may have value, though the vast majority of "spiritual seekers" ingest and spout nonsense of the worst kind. I am not talking about insights into the universe, but insight into human life, and what one should make of it. The universe has overwhelmed me enough for me to believe that the vagrant sadhu with an honest and clear mind is just as close to the mysteries that surround us as the brilliant physicist, though they would never agree, and the scientist is far more useful and accessible to me. Beyond a certain point, science ceases to give answers, but illustrates questions with more power and beauty than anything else.

"Why does the universe bother to exist ?" I will probably never know, but on the whole, I'm glad it took the trouble, and last night, I slept peacefully after a long, long time.

I will not Bend

2008-11-26T21:08:00.004+01:00

"..they dint just kill some of us, they asked us a question. "Hum tumhein aise hi marte rahenge, tum kya kar loge ?" YES, they asked us a question...."

- A Wednesday

I am not in the country at the moment, but if you know anyone who is doing something, please put it up !

Im following this on tv and Internet. all I can say is, Mumbai is my home in many senses, and I will not bend. When next I am there, I will not hesitate to visit all these places where I have spent so many happy times since I was a baby. I will not let them scare me or introduce doubt in my mind.

I will not bend.

The Cats Eye Nebula

2008-11-07T13:54:00.011+01:00

I'm wondering where the passions went
As I ponder the times I spent
Dreaming of whales, planets and you
Walking along beaches,
Thinking things through.

I'm puzzled by my lack of will
To find the path I remember still
Winding through strength, beauty and you
Clambering over mountains,
Not only for the view.

I'm trying to recall the people Ive met
Who helped me build the goals I set
Thinking of glory, eternity and you
Blundering through the darkness,
Trying something new.

I'm marveling over what I meant
When I showed myself how far I went
To touch electrons, light and you
Staring at the stars,
Looking for a clue.

-Yours Truly

A Prayer (of sorts)

2008-11-06T12:08:00.002+01:00

I find myself often idle, vagrant, stupid and hollow. This is somewhat appalling and, if I do not discipline myself with diligent care, I shall suffer severely from remorse and the sense of inferiority hereafter. All around me are industrious and would be great, I am indolent and would be insignificant. Avert it, Heaven ! avert it, virtue ! I need excitement.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pride

2008-11-04T21:23:00.013+01:00

India launched the Chandrayaan aboard the PSLV-C11 rocket on 22nd October, and even as the craft was nudged carefully into a lunar orbit by controlled firing of its thrusters watched over by the bureaucratic, modest but surprisingly effective scientists at the ISTRAC down in Bangalore, an old gentleman wearing a tweed coat and well into his eighties poured me a liberal portion of liquid nitrogen from a large pressurized gourd shaped container.

He is almost completely bald and spends most of his time reading sheets of results and other arcane papers in a nice airy sunlit corner of the lab. Its a pleasant lab too, one entire side of the large hall is all windows and it reveals a wide vista, encompassing parking lots, the sea, the beach and the famous Old Course. He looks very dignified as he hobbles around the lab - looking at each of our setups in turn making sure things are on track - always with a cheerful expression and a twinkle in his watery blue-green eyes with which he peers at the world. In our first session he gave us an introduction to semiconductor physics (the experiment is to determine the band gap energy of Germanium) and he obviously knew and liked what he was talking about. Along with the typed out instruction sheet he gave us photocopies of a page of handwritten notes which he said "Happened to be lying around". Notes neatly written long ago by an old scientist for his students, he enjoyed giving them to us and explaining from them.

He can barely walk, but he handled the experiment impeccably, he got us the deionized water from a machine all the way across the hall, he poured us liquid Nitrogen, it must have been heavy in the large insulated container and he walked slowly across to each one of us and poured us our portions from a smaller jar. He never once showed discomfort or expected us to help, there was just that about his demeanor that let us know that offers of help would be unwelcome. I don't know his name and I don't know his background. I hope he has had a distinguished career and many peaceful and healthy years. I cannot be sure of any of those things but I do know this - in the evening of his life he is a happy and proud man. In his wavering but cheery voice, in his slow but purposeful walk and in his wrinkled but innocent smile there was something that warmed my heart and makes me proud to have been taught by him.

He did not tell me anything I had not been told before by other teachers - people and books - but the manner in which he ensured we went over all the basics - punctuated by self effacing "as you probably already know.."s, his small voice shaking but never hesitant, his words measured but never dull - made a deep impression on me. He told us about semiconductors as if he were introducing us to old friends, he pried the equations open to reveal elegant and pleasant pictures full of cheerful electrons and fussy bonds, he told us how when an acceptor impurity is introduced into the semiconductor, an electron is trapped by it to complete the lattice and "plays no further part in the proceedings" while a hole is left in the valence band "and conducts merrily away..". He made things interesting and ensured we listened and he wanted us to learn. I admire him for it. I admire him for not giving up, for insisting on teaching and teaching well. Even as his body was tired and worn, his mind seemed to carry with ease the weight of the years and the memories of three quarters of a century.

Pride. It can mean so many things, it can mean having discovered a comet, it can mean having married the boss's daughter, it can mean having reached the moon, but at its most elevating and touching it means doing one's job with dignity and enjoyment in the face of weakness and vulnerability, to think about the mundane nuts and bolts of a lifetime - the remnants of one's karma and dharma - with love and humor and cheer everyday even when facing the last abyss.

Off to Oxford and pondering diffraction

2008-10-31T05:39:00.007+01:00

The OxiMUN starts tomorrow and I'm hoping to have a bit of fun and meet some interesting people. Besides that, I have some interesting diffraction phenomena to investigate and explain. When linearly polarised light is incident on a reflective diffraction grating, it does not go onto all orders of diffraction in the same proportions as does unpolarised light. When the linear polarization incident upon the grating is rotated, one can visibly see some orders losing intensity and others gaining intensity. Generally, negative orders go one way (all increase or decrease to various extents) and the positive orders go the other way (again, variable). Its not immediately obvious to me why this should happen, and it'll be interesting to see if I can figure it out Buddha ishtyle. He would appreciate a challenge like this, I'm sure.

Meanwhile, I'm to debate a New Space Treaty at Oxford. I have the vaguest of ideas about what has gone before this, and strong opinions on the subject, which generally makes for an entertaining combination :D lets see how much I can bluff among the best in the country. Well, more or less the best, I think I must be the only person geeky enough to voluntarily opt for the Space Commission !

And I find that my mental abilities have degraded alarmingly in many respects ! I am not as agile as I used to be, and simple calculations and integrals etc which I would not have had to think about at all once upon a time now seem to vex me. This obviously cannot be allowed to continue and so I have already spent lots of money and no time (typical !) on a possible solution - The Art and Craft of Problem Solving by Paul Zeitz. I intend to work through the book and see if my brain can pick up the ropes and go the old Indian rope trick again :P lame.

And on top of all this, I'm supposed to be looking into control systems for a lunar lander and lunar bus even. (Go Frednet !) I have the books, I just need to spend some time and learn some stuff ! and that's what I mean when I say Ive lost the spark and the sheen a bit, the zest for a long tough problem solving and concept crunching session has more or less been evicted from my personality by the mind numbing influence of the Internet, and instead of doing the wonderful stuff I could be doing, I spend time refreshing the same 3-4 pages over and over again for hours.

My thesis is beginning to look up too, I have some nice mask design to do now, and then some modeling and fabrication side by side. The modeling is for some innovative new devices and the fabrication is for an old device I had tried over the summer but it dint really reach a full and satisfactory conclusion. Apart from that there is all the totally fascinating slow-light stuff which I just adoore, and I intend to get into that majorly. Plus there are the awesomely exotic essays I have to do for the Lab course and the "Experimental Quantum Physics at the Limits" course (dont you just love the "At the Limits" part of it ! thats what made me take the course :D )

So all in all, life looks good :)

Untitled Poem. 27-06-2005

2008-10-26T00:44:00.005+02:00

Something I wrote a long time ago, as the date indicates. But I thought Id put it up here anyway.

The tides of time rock the isle of the mind.
The world mirrors that interminable sequence.
A welcoming door on an empty street,
The unconscious patter of well shod feet,
Its the most random thoughts that make most sense.

The air is heavy with the smell of rain.
The twilight softens the garish hues.
A cute girl with a smart lad,
The waitress with her note pad,
Its the obvious things that are most abstruse.

The cafe is mellow with the sound of voices.
The music lightens the sombre mood.
Blinking lashes and twinkling eyes,
Stunning truths and prosaic lies,
Its the highbrow things that are shallow and crude.

The curtains are billowing with the freewheeling winds.
The landlady brightens the room with her smile.
Hot coffee in a large mug,
Tired feet on a soft rug,
Its the forgotten heroes who were devoid of guile.

The dull grey skies are darkened by ominous clouds.
The flowers splash colour on old wooden tables.
A haggard face and a meditative sip,
A lovelorn gaze and a quivering lip,
Its the most honest men who are acting out fables.

The cobbled walks beyond the windows are wet.
The smell of fresh bread perfumes the air.
Faded paintings in bulky frames,
Old men playing quiet games,
Its only tired folk who want the world to be fair.

The raindrops carried by the swirling winds are cold.
The slight smile cannot hide the determined chin.
A broken nest by a fallen tree,
A lonely speck on an empty sea,
Its when the storm without is loudest that peace reigns within.

Run !

2008-10-19T17:16:00.017+02:00

There was a time when I could run. I could run and not care, I could run and not feel my legs, not feel my body at all, I could run and imagine I was flying. I ran through the countryside simply to remind myself I was alive, I ran in races to feel my heart thumping within me, to taste victory and defeat, to run faster and harder and further, I woke up every morning when I did not need to and ran by myself, I missed parties and trips and movies just so that I did not miss out on running. It was purifying, elevating and liberating.

Years passed and I became careworn and tired, I had faced disappointment and become cynical, I had become unhealthy and unhappy. I worried about victory and was afraid of defeat, I no longer relished the race (any race, for I no longer ran) and its uncertainty and its drama. I was scared of life. I became indolent and fat and bald, I became unfeeling, unthinking and long winded. Gone was the direct and carefree demeanor, I was now timid and obscurantist, needing mindless sophistry and convoluted words to have an identity beyond the obvious lazy heap that I had become. I quizzed and I relished the power of knowing intricate trivia and pitting my wits against fellow obscurantists, I wrote and enjoyed exercising the imaginary power of impotent words. With time on my hands and a world to explore, I became more and more involved with vague fears and complexes and more dependent on verbosity and trivia for my self respect. I had long ago forgotten what freedom meant.

Then - due to what little honesty and steel remained in me - I got a scholarship and came to Europe, I did well, very well. I clenched my teeth and dived into the deep end. I wasted time, I buried myself in TV shows and movies and Causes, but I did enough to do well and hence Im still afloat. I scrambled to keep myself above the dark and corrosive waters of fear and weakness that I have let accumulate around me. I was still enslaved and worse, I was beginning to think this was life. And then St. Andrews with its broad playing fields and open spaces, the vast beach and the North Sea reminded me of freedom.

I must Run and be free. Run despite the wind and the rain and the fear, I must run to tear from my mind the suffocating cobwebs of vague mistrust and cynicism that have enveloped and weakened and stunted it ! I must remember what it was like to walk erect, stride confidently and think boldly, and for that I must run with freedom in my heart and wings on my heels ! :)

To hell with News !

2008-10-17T20:09:00.005+02:00

Because this is the sort of news that is dished out even by the BBC - the best of a sickeningly bad lot. What have we come to ? is this really the sort of thing that the public care about or want to read ? Why does making money have to mean that only the most stupid crass, gross and sickening things get printed ? Im through with this. Im done with mass media and conventional ideas of culture and entertainment. It makes me angry and sad. how did things come to this ? bombs, death, fun, murder, sex, lust, consumption consumption and god. I hate the whole lot.

The Opportunity for a New Rennaissance

2008-10-16T11:21:00.023+02:00

Image Source BBC

A Soyuz rocket leaves the Bainkour Cosmodrome to take a new crew to the ISS, representing the greatest achievement of our species and all that is good in it. It is symptomatic of a remnant of the pioneering spirit that has led us to the domination of our biosphere and made us the most successful species (in terms of complexity and versatility) that our planet has ever seen. It is no mean achievement, and many times in our past we might have become extinct had it not been for some fortuitous circumstances coupled with our own ingenuity. What has distinguished us from all other species goes beyond what we label "intelligence". It is not merely the capacity to process information and manipulate the environment with our opposable-thumb-equipped appendages, but the desire and the drive to learn and explore and stick our neck out, that has set us apart.

In the past the great expansions of our species and the great migrations (including recent ones like the American conquest of the wild west and the Russian conquest of Siberia and the far east) have been driven by economic factors - a thirst for resources and food, driven by the people at the bottom of the pyramid, who had the least to lose and most to gain from taking risk and braving the dangers of the unknown. The rich might finance the discoveries and administer the empires, but it is always the poor who actually make the land their own and make it productive, and provide the expendable numbers who die and reproduce to push ever further the boundaries of the domain of mankind.

We already dominate the land masses of our planet, and we are fast stripping them bare and the unsustainable nature of our civilization is making itself obvious to even the most obtuse among us. Millions of our fellow men go hungry because we just cant be bothered about feeding them, our civilization has insulated most of us from human suffering and has insidiously sucked us into a vortex of shallow entertainment to the point where we are perpetually bored. This is a result of the complete lack of opportunity for worthy exploration and meaningful risk in our societies today. The only risks we take - in mountains and rivers and jungles - are for our entertainment and pleasure. Perhaps today, even when so many of us have so much leisure and vast resources and knowledge bases at our command, the number of explorers and pioneers as a percentage of the population is at an all time low. And so our kids do drugs and play video games and preach jihad when they should be picking up the skills that will stand by them on some worthy task.

The reasons for this web of interrelated problems lie in the fact that our species is at a crucial point in its history, we are at the base of a great leap, one that we cannot break up into manageable hops and cannot hope to take in the natural course of events - because, the next phase in the expansion of our species must play out in the vastness of space and the depths of the ocean. It is not possible for individuals or small groups to participate in this,without heavy investment from the defining institutions - nation states - of our era. The very nature of the challenges we face is such that they require us to act together as a species rather than as a collection of random individuals, and so far, we have shown ourselves to be quite incapable of doing anything of the sort. We have been vacillating for decades if not centuries, bickering and butchering, we have become soft and feeble minded. The lives of men - and any meaning that might be found in them - are determined by the quality of the ideals and utopias they choose to pursue, and we have spent too much of recent history in the bloody and perfidious pursuit of narrow, contradictory and stunted ideas. Men need worthy challenges and dangers to bring out what is best in them, men need impossible odds and mighty causes to bind them together and it is up to our leaders, who are in the privileged position of being able to allocate the truly vast resources brought together by our civilization to give mankind the chance to galvanize itself, to sally forth into the unknown and conquer and toil and set up new worlds.

The conquest of the oceans and of the solar system will provide inspiration to a disillusioned race, it will revitalize the population, it will provide chances for the risk takers to seek fortune and the the frustrated to redeem themselves, it will be the most splendid stage men will have ever had to cover themselves with glory. It will distract the devout among us from the rantings of priests and save the skeptical from the blatherings of politicians, it will force the greedy to be brave and the offer the bored a chance to be audacious, Men will see vistas and wonders hitherto unimaginable, and that is why we live is it not - to go further, venture deeper, learn more than ever before ! What can be more pointless than stagnation and the pursuit of money and riches without tying it into exploration and knowledge ? what can be more boring than living exactly like our forefathers, seeing only what they have seen (now polluted, and on a computer screen), what can be more sad than young men looking for adventure in computer generated illusions !

It is time mankind dared to live and dream again. It is time we realized, as our faraway ancestors did, that our species and the pursuit of knowledge and the exploration of the unknown are things glorious and magnificent enough to die for. The physical and psychological challenges of space and the deep ocean await us, we must accept them, we must live again !

St. Andrews

2008-10-10T09:10:00.005+02:00

The Playing fields of the University

The landscaping along West Sands (beach)

A view of the beach.

Tri-colour :) I am rather fond of this one :)

At least Google has them figured out.

2008-09-16T20:47:00.003+02:00

The Scientist

2008-09-12T20:29:00.011+02:00

In lonely valleys
along forgotten streams
In solitude and peace
the scientist dreams.

With eternal questions
and wondering eyes
he dreams up celestial catastrophes
and quiet blue skies.

Glimpsing subtly vast infinities
And profoundly delicate forces
With arcane equations
From elementary physics courses.

He ponders equanimously
waltzing galaxies and life on mars
unconcerned by his airy prison,
Splendidly encrusted with glittering stars.

Writers and Poets and Painters
Talk pompously of beauty and art
but in the revelation of the loveliness divine
theirs is a minute and transient part.

In Churches and Mosques and Temples,
Fools dish out answers and lies,
In the minds of the god fearing faithful
Truth withers silently and dies.

Beset with Gods and fears and fairies,
He champions the freedom of thought
In books and classes and bars
Battles for our future are fought.

He asks nothing of his world,
He does not expect life to be fair,
In his humbleness he sees the truth,
Which is that It just does not care.

He has touched the beauty of this realm,
So it does not pain him to see
The Void that lies past the moment
that he stops and ceases to be.

- Yours Faithfully

Kashmir and beyond : Further Thoughts

2008-08-31T04:24:00.021+02:00

In my last post (Kashmir : Give them Azadi) the implicit assumption I had made was that the entire Jammy division was predominantly Hindu and would thus stay with India. As the map above indicates (if it is accurate), this is not the case. This changes several things since this means that the section of Jammu that is likely to stay with India unequivocally is not contiguous to Ladakh (in which sector India will not have any problems winning any plebiscite) making the strategic cost of giving all the Muslim parts of Kashmir azadi a lot higher, and making it very very difficult to contain anti-India activities (should there be any, and as I have indicated previously, we must expect the worst) in Himachal, Jammu and Ladakh. Also, this leaves Ladakh very exposed indeed, since it will then be precariously placed between 2 hostile powers, with only one road connecting it to India (the Manali-Leh highway) which is open only 2 months or so in a year. In the case of large scale aggression, the defence of Ladakh will be untenable.

Of course, it is possible that the Muslims of the Jammu division will not want to be part of a new state dominated by the Kashmiri's of the Valley (and such a split was indeed indicated in the participation of Muslims in the recent protests in Jammu). If this is indeed the case, then my analysis of the previous post holds. There is of course a third possibility - we hold on to the whole of Jammu division regardless of how it votes, but that rather defeats the purpose of the whole exercise I think. However, as the map below indicates (IF it is correct), the Muslim parts of Jammu division share a common language and culture with the Valley, so the reports of Muslim participation in the protests in Jammu likely referred to the Indian Muslims living in Jammu the city and surrounding areas.

This does severely restrict the possibilities that India has in terms of granting Independence. I am inclined to view these maps with scepticism however, since they originate from a site that seems Pakistani, and both the maps just might have a certain amount of disinformation built in. (It is however, a fascinating site with lots of geographical information about Kashmir and the surrounding region and detailed survey maps)

The more I read about the tensions and conflicts in our neighborhood and beyond, the more convinced I am that India needs to scale up its military in a significant way, the debilitating shortage of officers in the Army and pilots in the Air Force is shameful, and the Govt. of India must take urgent steps to rectify these circumstances. Also, a blue water navy, AWACS and in Flight Refueling systems to increase the range of our aircraft are necessary if we are to harbor hopes of power projection into the heart of the Eurasian landmass. Kashmir is the closest modern India has ever been to this region, and Indira Col above the Siachen glacier is the magnificent watershed between the Indian Subcontinent and Central Asia. We have spent a lot of blood and money on being there, and handing it to anyone on a platter is hardly an option.

I am thinking in terms of "empire" of course (Arundhati Roy would be very angry indeed), and in many ways that is not helpful, but one has to appreciate the fact that there are places which from time immemorial have been points where races, cultures and peoples (which organize themselves into Empires ) have crashed into each other. Never in history has the Himalaya been straddled by a kingdom, never has the Gangetic plain and Tibetan plateau been part of the same nation. Never has India broken through the Northern wall that isolates us, this is the nearest we have ever come - at Indira Col. Will an Indian force ever control lands on either side of that dramatic, beautiful and immensely powerful geographic laxman rekha ? Not in the forseeable future. But we are making progress - there will soon be a fully functional IAF base in Tajikistan at Ayni,/Farkhor which is 2 km from the Afghan border, not very far from the Wakhan corridor and Pakistan, and if we can maintian good relations with Russia (which is not a given any more, after the fracas about the Admiral Gorshkov and our current affair with America) more can follow.

How many ironies History throws up ! Once upon a time the Wakhan corridor was given to Afghanistan by the British to create a buffer between the ever expanding Russian Empire and Britains Indian possessions. The British fears of a Russian invasion of Afghanistan (which prompted the Brits to fight 2 disastrous wars in Afghanistan themselves) in order to threaten the greatest colonial prize of them all - India - never materialized as long the British were here. When the Soviets (Russians by any other name..) did invade, it was the Americans who were most worried, because they had interests in Iranian oil, so they financed and helped (through Saudi intermediaries - Osama) a Tajik warlord - Ahemed Shah Massoud to make the war too expensive for the Soviets who ultimately withdrew after suffering heavy losses. In this process they used Pakistan (formerly a part of British India) to create and train the Islamic army of brainwashed irregulars, who later went out of control and overran Afghanistan. When America wanted to go after these guys because they were hiding Osama (who after 9/11 was Public enemy No. 1), the Americans turned to - guess who - Ahemed Shah Massoud, relying heavily on Russian(!) and Indian support to equip and train the Northern Alliance of warlords which eventually overthrew the Taliban. Through this, India finally got a foothold in Afghanistan, and opened a military hospital in Farkhor on the Tajik-Afghan border (with blessings from Russia of course). When Al Queida (formed by Massoud's former comrades in arms) managed to attack the Lion of Panjshir, the hero of the war against the Soviets, using a bomb concealed in a camera taken by 2 chaps posing as western journalists, he was rushed to the foreign medical hospital in a former Soviet country and breathed his last tended by Indian doctors.

Central Asia is extremely energy rich (alone reason enough to go there), provides access to immense resources and trade routes, is a reasonable sized market, has vast spaces for Indians to settle on, and is important for our security - if we are in a position strong enough to open a Western front on Pakistan, they will never attack us. However, if India is to have a realistic chance of breaking out of the subcontinent in terms of influence and economic reach we must find a way to stabilize Kashmir and consolidate our military presence there in terms of large, long range, sophisticated airbases and eventually, we must open the ancient trade routes to central Asia, and we can only do this if we are in a position of overwhelming strength which we will never be unless there is Peace in Kashmir. Apart from Kashmir, India needs to settle the fires that rage through it before thinking of exerting its influence overseas. Naxalism and the closely related phenomenon of alienation of poor rural and tribal communities, infrastructure development and a subtle but implacable nationalism achieved through a vigorous and positive campaign to engage and integrate the minorities into the mainstream. Carefuly chosen infrastructure projects and wise investments in heavy industry and careful nurturing of the agricultural sector to preserve social cohesion in rural India are all vital to ensure that India grows out of the "sub" and takes its rightful place on its continent and the world.

Image sources : Blank on the map, Maplandia

Kashmir : Give them Azadi

2008-08-27T00:37:00.033+02:00

Thats not as radical as it sounds. You see, "Kashmir" is only a very small part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. For the uninitiated, J&K consists of 3 major regions - Jammu, the Vale of Kashmir and Ladakh. Ladakh is culturally close to Tibet and is largely Buddhist, while Jammu is very like Punjab. In any plebiscite, these 2 regions will certainly vote overwhelmingly to stay with India. The Valley of Kashmir which is quite small in area but has a large population which is now overwhelmingly muslim (after the Kashmiri Pundits (400,000 of them) were systematically massacred and forced out in the early 1990s) will almost certainly vote for Azadi or union with Pakistan.

Let them go.

The major objections to such a move are strategic and not ideological or value based. One of the 2 highways that goes to Ladakh passes through Srinagar (the other being the Manali-Leh route) and is as such a vital road to keep Leh and the Siachen Glacier supplied. Ladakh is contiguous with the Aksai Chin region occupied by China and is a theatre where the Chinese have been making repeated incursions and provocative moves in the recent past. This means that keeping Ladakh well armed and supplied is vital.

Secondly, once the Valley of Kashmir is free (and if they remain free, I respect them and wish them well) or a part of Pakistan (in which case they will have made a mistake, and it'll serve them right !) one must expect that it will become a hotbed of terrorism and anti-India activity. Therefore, we must ensure that all around the Valley of Kashmir we control the passes and the heights. Our armed forces must be in complete control of the borders before any independence is given, and must oversee the opening of the borders with Pakistan (if that is to happen) in an orderly fashion. Most important of all, we must spend years (maybe a decade or more) developing an alternate route to Ladakh through the harsh terrain of the trans Himalayan ranges that avoids the Kashmir Valley altogether. We could also take this opportunity to strenghten the road and military infrastructure along the border with China in that region.

India can only gain from this arrangement. The land area we are giving up is small (though beautiful, fertile and heavily populated), and through careful preparation it might be possible to keep the strategic disadvantage to a minimum. Kashmir is a huge drain on our resources, financial and military. India spends 10 times more per capita on Kashmir than on any other state (excluding military budgets, this is simply aid from the Union budgets) and the social indicators in Kashmir are among the best in the country. For years, India has sunk billions and billions of dollars into the beautiful black hole that is the Vale of Kashmir and it will remove a huge burden on the exchequer once it is off our hands. Not to mention the fact that something like 200,000 troops will be free to go home, rest and redeploy in more useful places like the Bangladesh and China borders, our capacity to face bullying from China will increase manyfold.

Besides, what more can we do ? I think I am right in saying that Indians do not see themselves as imperial occupiers, we do not want to be imperial occupiers. India wanted Kashmir to be a happy prosperous and peaceful part of the Union. India was willing to give special privileges (as we have, in many cases being unjust to Ladakh and Jammu, and that anger is now boiling over) and infinite amounts of money. The classic case of the beggar giving away his bread to win hearts and minds. And yet, and yet it remains a dangerous place for our soldiers and policemen, it remains a place where security forces regularly have to fire on protesters, where Hindu and Sikh communities in remote mountain villages where they have lived for centuries are massacred, where the population justifiably feels repressed and humiliated by a huge military presence that dominates their daily lives. We can do no more, its time to accept defeat, strengthen our hand strategically for the post Kashmiri independence situation, and get rid of the issue.

Maybe things will work out, maybe they will manage themselves well and Indian tourists will flock to Paradise on earth, but we must prepare for the worst and expect that they will find more reasons to attack our country and murder our citizens. We must give them freedom, and we must ensure that they cannot harm us once they are free. Kashmir is a disgrace to India, we are an occupying force, our soldiers kill and die there every day, they hate us, they celebrate 15 August as a black day, they wish us death and sing odes to Pakistan (of all the messed up places !) - why should we spend our money (and we are a desperately poor country) and the lives of our soldiers on them ? What do we gain ? Hate and international embarrassment and frustration. Its just not worth it.

Let the Valley of Kashmir go its own way. India has more pressing matters to attend to.

Image sources : Wikipedia, BBCnews

ichi go ichi e

2008-07-30T03:26:00.020+02:00

Ive been in back in Gent for my summer-internship-leading-up-to-masters-thesis for 3 weeks or so now, and its been one of those extremely rare times in my life defined more by friends and social activities than anything else. That it was so was helped by the fact that the Gentsefeesten - an annual 10 day extravaganza of free music, all night food and drink that all the locals look forward to for months - just wound to a close, and provided everyone with a reason to hang around in Gent all this while.

O, A, Mi and Mu were the people I spent a lot of time with, especially O and A. The first five days I was here I spent working and meeting O every evening. The work, thats been very interesting as well. New software, new concepts, things I have always wanted to do. Its just so terrific when childhood dreams come true, and now that I think back I realize that most of my most cherished childhood dreams were geeky in the extreme. More accurately, the path to most of my most cherished childhood dreams led through dedicated geekism, and after my 4 year diversion in NITK (of my own making, it was a splendid place to be a geek) Im slowly diffusing towards it, with plenty of random walks and back tracking and looking around all wide eyed and lazy. I will one day understand cosmology, quantum physics, causality, Information theory and black holes. I know that however random my actions might seem, somehow, slowly they lead me to where I want to go. Its a comforting thought :)

I love the universe we live in. I love the little bit of it I understand and work on, the tiny fraction thats my domain, and I find it thrilling that deep and wonderful concepts lay waiting to be pondered upon. I like walking in a familiar but foreign city with people I dont relate to but feel a connection with. I like spending time sitting around while nice people chat inanely, and adding my bit of unpopular gyan once in a while. I like feeling accepted and unnoticed. Its been a strange year - full of solitude and yet not really bereft of people and occassional sparks of genuine friendship. Science, excitement, pressure, and my ever present flaws its all added up to a wonderfully complex and interesting set of memories.

I have learnt a lot from people around me - Peru being the chief contributor. He was just what I needed when I came to Belgium after those cynical and dark, yet brilliantly enriching 4 years in NITK. He is sincere in a hard hitting idealistic sort of way. He is enthusiastic about academics in a agressive passionate manner. It was an eye opener. It freed me from my baggage, and it set the standards for good attitude in the class. I was vulnerable to change, and because of him, I changed for the better. Then there is Abhi of the pleasant and popular disposition, good cook and with the remarkable gift of causing everyone to like him. Olga ! well. the sharp, the enthusiastic, the clear and decided, Ukranian and blonde, smiling and quite charming. Mingyee, Mukesh, Raj.....and Aditya, the person I probably spent the most time with in the first sem. Relaxed and (by his own admission) firmly unambitious yet stimulatingly intelligent and hence always happy. Made good coffee, and his room had free fast wireless :D and then of course there were Roel and Irina. It was a pleasure and a priviledge to attend their lectures. He is the straight talking gentlemanly buddha of the highest integrity, the man who knows everything and she is the Lady, caring and brilliant. A grandmother and a scientist, comforting with her presence and exhilerating with her ideas.

I feel wonder more easily than I feel affection and I feel indifference much more easily than I feel loss, but this course with its frequent shifting and transient student populations has taught me something. The importance of the here and now and the people in it. One never comes back, there is never a second time.

ichi go, ichi e - One time, One meeting.
this moment, this thought, this action, is all that exists, and might be all that ever exsists - give it everything.

Almost everyone leaves in the next few days, leaving me here for one more month to roam the all too familiar streets, alone.

Who am I ?

2008-07-30T02:47:00.006+02:00

Im a twenty three and a half year old electronics engineer studying photonics and trying hard to maintain the wonder and excitement I felt as a child looking at the stars. I dont know how this blog will develop, but I dont think it will be a place for gloomy rants and long self referencing meta blog posts. It will, I hope, be informative and interesting and will acquaint the reader with some of the stories I have seen and heard - about people, places, science and life.

I look forward to writing !

Questions for a PGDM

2008-04-05T16:02:00.000+02:00

why are food prices rising all over the world ? how is the price of oil determined ? what justification is given for the assertion that wealth trickles down ? what do consultants do after 5 years of consultancy ? what are they good at ? why do derivatives and other financial "products" exist ? what purpose to they serve ? why are the richest and most cash rich sectors (investment banks, consultants etc etc) the ones that create no wealth ? why do people with bad credit histories provide the major portion of bank profits ? why is fractional lending allowed at all ? what controls the amount of money in the economy ? what relation does amount of money in the economy have to real income ? what is real income ? why cant we have a fixed amount of money circulating ? does that even mean anything ? what percentage of consulting income is result dependent ? what percentage of consulting income in india is from family owned businesses and what percentage from government ? why do pgdm related jobs like investment banking and consulting tend to be so elitist and opulent ? why is the guy who makes a better chulha not rewarded more than a man who talks nebulous bullshit in the current economic system ? the pharma business is the most profitable in the world, followed by food, why are these not govt controlled to ensure food, medicine pricing and availability ? who controls commodity prices and availability and how ? who regulates them (both prices and people) ? what justification is given for the assertion that there will be less corruption if the private sector controls sectors that are currently govt controlled ? in a free market, what represents a person with no money ? where did the money lent out in the sub prime crisis go ? if it is circulating in the economy, some one must have it, so why is there economic slowdown in the US because of that ? what punishment has been meted out to the rating agencies who messed up on such a large scale ? why do IIMs need to have such ridiculous fees when they require no expensive labs, no special equipment apart from good class rooms ? do corporations HAVE to increase profits for shareholders ? cant the charter mandate instead a maximization salaries of employees or minimizing acres of rainforest cut ? why should corporations have the same rights as citizens ? why is no human liable for the misdeeds of a corporation ? how foolish is that ?

as more questions occur to me I'll put them in another post. Please feel free to comment and clarify, correct, explain any of the above, or connected things.

Chitrangada is Coming Back !

2008-03-31T08:22:00.000+02:00

I put the same photo again, because I find it stunning. Take a look at this article from Tehelka which gives a good account of her history and the effect she had on people, including me. The article also talks about her upcoming movies and her own reasons for leaving when she did.

Finally, something positive happens to Bollywood !

The Greatest Ever

2008-03-12T21:45:00.000+01:00

An article by Rohit Brijnath, this is a moving tribute to Dhyan Chand. It was part of India Today's 100 People who shaped India series of articles. This is the link to the whole article on the India Today website. Notice how shoddily we have always treated our heroes. We are a hugely callous country. We dont deserve our heroes. We certainly deserve our politicians. If you know what this article talks about, and if it does not move or sadden you in any way, chances are, you're Indian.

They say you can judge a man's legend by the quality of myths that surround him. By that measure itself Dhyan Chand was an extraordinary man. To hear tales of his craftsmanship was to wonder whether his stick was designed by Merlin himself. They broke his stick in Holland to check if there was a magnet inside; in Japan they decided it was glue; in Germany, Adolf Hitler even wanted to buy it................

..................................................................................................................................................

........When he fell ill, liver cancer it turned out, and came to Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences, they dumped him in the general ward. A journalist's article eventually got him moved to a special room, but that public memory had to be jogged tells its own story.

In Jhansi they had a funeral, not in the ghat, but on the ground he played on. Players came, but it seemed a little too late. It made it hard to forget the first few words of his autobiography Goal: "You are doubtless aware that I am a common man." He wasn't but he died like one

But we did not

2008-03-09T23:53:00.000+01:00

India lost 2-0 and will not be playing at the Olympics in Beijing.

I want India to win . .

2008-03-09T09:38:00.000+01:00

against Britain tomorrow in Santiago. India has played in every men's olympic hockey tournament since 1928 (and won 8 of them) and in order to play in Beijing, India need to beat Britain tomorrow in the final of the 6 nation qualifying tournament from which only one team will play in the olympics. India lost only one league match, and that was to Britain a couple of days ago, a very rough match in which 3 players were reprimanded for bad behaviour, and India lost in in the dying moments when Rob Moore scored for Britain to give them a 3-2 win. (bringing back memories of that last minute goal we let in against Poland in Sydney (to make it 1-1), we were 1 minute 41 seconds away from our first Olympic semi final in 25 years.) That was only Britain's 10th win over India ever.

China, Korea and Pakistan, South Africa, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium and Australia have already qualified for the olympics. Belgium ? Korea ? and India is struggling ? This story goes back to the 2006 Doha Asian Games when for the first time ever India were ousted in the group stages due to a loss to China who are considered minnows in Hockey. India had won a medal in every previous edition of the Asian games, and apart from a Bronze in 1986, we won either gold or silver. That failure to qualify for the semis and win a medal at the Asian Games meant that India did not automatically qualify for the Olympics. And so here we are . . . Needing to beat Britain to get to the Olympics. and once upon a time Beating britain would have been no problem at all, Pakistan beat them 8-2 or something in the last olympic games, but they have a higher world ranking than us (they are 8th and we are 9th) and nothing can be said about the Indian Hockey team anymore. We lost the league game to them after all.

What happens to Indian Hockey if we dont qualify for the Olympics ? so much history, so much pride, and once upon a time so much glory went with the Indian team's exploits at the Olympics. The coverage in the Indian media (from what I could gauge over the internet) was desultory, and apart from one article on Indiatimes by the coach Joaquim Carvalho none of the articles went to the heart of the situation the Indian team finds itself in. There were no statistics anywhere, (I got a few numbers from a Pakistani newspaper, which sounded like it really wanted India to qualify, if only for the sake of tradition) no analysis, no recoup of the Indian team's recent results, no analysis of the system for qualification of the olympics (I had to go to the olympics website to check which teams had already qualified) nothing. The fate of Indian Hockey in the near future hangs in the balance, generations of pride and a splendid record hangs in the balance and the country refuses to notice ?

Its a shame. Shame on all those who call themselves sports fans and sports journalists in India and shame on the Indian public which obediently drinks whatever rot the BCCI dishes out and refuses to look around for itself - there is greatness and pride in all sport and very very few sporting teams in history have provided as much drama, brilliance, glory, and now tragedy as the Indian Men's Hockey Team.

If I could go back in time and choose a sport again, I'd choose to play Hockey.

Its gone too far

2008-02-23T17:07:00.000+01:00

I, P B, hereby declare that I will not watch, read about, talk about, or in any way encourage the proliferation of any event, product, person or subject that has any connection to cricket in India.

2008-02-02T00:27:00.000+01:00

Here's a story.

After much huffing and puffing and tension, my exams finally got over on the 28th of Jan 2008. and then, instead of breathing a sigh of relief and enjoying for a few days, I had a take home exam to do to be sumbitted on the 13th of february for a subject we freshers had been advised not to take on account of its advanced nature (and so of course, I went and took it. I insist on finding new instruments for my lazyness to torture me with). I had reconciled myself to my 10 day holiday being washed out in yet another tense period of wasted time and desperate concentrated work coupled with irritated house-hunting (the latter the courtesy of the VUB housing department), but my parents had other ideas. They had decided that I was working too much (hear ! hear !) and needed a vacation. They dint say it, but they clearly thought I was becoming(?) psycho, sitting in my room all day, eating by myself, not meeting people and generally brooding over a cold grey cityscape and inscrutable equations and growing slowly but surely fatter and balder. (all of which happens to be true) So, when my dad visited me on the 29th, he was quite insistent that I finish my paper before friday (thats today) and go meet some friends in Switzerland over the weekend. the more he spoke of it, the more inviting it seemed, and I promised that I'd do something about it. So, after I got back to my room before lunch on the 30th (I was in Brussels with dad) I promptly took my computer over to Aditya's place (apart from being a splendid chap with a large room, his landlord provides free, fast, unlimited download wifi access) and proceeded to watch some 10-15 episodes of the Xfiles well into the night.

I slept feeling quite guilty. So the next day (the 31st, yesterday) I woke up before lunch and found out that the housing problem had been kind of, more or less, solved, but my internet was not working and my phone was lost. Understandably, I thought myself exceptionally vulnerable to attacks by hi-tech psychopaths and alien abductions, so I spent most of the afternoon fixing my internet and finding my phone (which I had forgotten at Aditya's place obviously) and so on. I gave my nonlinear optics a cursory glance and in the night, settled down for another bout of the x files in my room. By the time I slept I had realized that the time had come for desperate measures.

I woke up today morning and decided that I must go to Switzerland and meet the few friends I had there and take a break (theres irony in there somewhere). I realized (admitted is a better word perhaps) that I'd never get down to work unless I gave myself a fixed inflexible deadline. So the obvious course of action was to book my tickets to switzerland and then make myself finish the needful before then. So I thought to myself - thursday I go to Switzerland, spend friday and saturday there, back on sunday, and next semester starts on monday, so by wednesday, I have to finish my exam, attend a meeting in brussels on monday, wind up my affairs in Gent, arrange for my luggage to be shifted to Brussels in my absence, and make arrangements for Aditya (who is staying in my room for a week because his contract expired in January).

Easy.

So I started looking at the various low cost airlines. I needed to go to Zurich, thats where the chaps are, but Zurich turns out to be an expensive place to fly to. So I was prepared to fly to anywhere in switzerland, and there were 10 open tabs with any number for airports and flights and few were affordable. Finally, I saw a list which read something like

Basel - EUR180
Bern - EUR132
Geneva - EUR156
Zurich - EUR1023
Nice - EUR3

AHA ! I said to myself ! finally ! So I clicked on the last dot, filled in my card details, paid, got my ticket in my mail and as I was about to print it out, I saw something that should have been horribly obvious right at the beginning - Nice is in FRANCE !!!!! its 600km from Zurich ! and the flight is on Tuesday !!

But the deed was done. The gods had spoken. there was no turning back. . . . . since then, I have bought myself a nice medium sized backpack and a good North Face jacket (my first major non food expenses in europe and they wiped out my savings for january) and helped Aditya move to my room and fixed an appointment to wind up my room contract on tuesday afternoon. I leave for Nice on tuesday night, reach there at 10. I'll spend a day or two around Nice I guess and then go to Switzerland either via Grenoble or Milan (I've been to north Italy, so Grenoble seems a more interesting but less convenient option) and my flight back from Geneva reaches Brussels at the exact time that the first class of my next semester is supposed to start. I dont know where I'll stay in Brussels when I get back and what I'll wear to college on the first day, but I dont care.

As usual, I'm in a tight corner, but I can assure you, its a lot better than being rooted in front of a flickering screen in a dark room feeding on cheap vicarious thrills ! I'm looking forward to wide landscapes, the sea, the mountains, the flavours of faraway cities and the winds of foreign lands :-) Should be fun, especially after 4 months of motionlessness :-)

And there is the small matter of doing 2 months worth of work in 2 days, but thats routine. Thats precisely what my Bachelors degree was about :-)

2008-01-25T09:37:00.000+01:00

Thats Chitrangada Singh - for those of you unfortunate enough never to have seen her before. Her first movie was the superbly made "Hazaaron Khwaahishein Aisi" (2003) - a movie that lingers in the mind long long after its over. It is set in the 1970's in Calcutta and traces the stories of 3 characters who - in all their flawed tragedy - symbolize the spirit of those times. But the movie goes further than that, it makes the viewer ask himself fundamental questions about his own ideas of morality and idealism. It left me slightly disturbed and slightly sad. I watched it more than a year ago, and it still comes back to me sometimes, undiminished in its power, pain and the aftertaste of melancholy. And the most stunning performace in the movie belongs undoubtedly to Chitrangada Singh. 'The Lamp to the other characters Moths' as someone put it. She carries herself superbly, and is polished, understated, intelligent, sensual and flawed in her choice of men (in my opinion anyway :D ) Shiney Ahuja puts in a splendid performance in what is his debut movie as well, and his character provides the conscience for the movie, an upwardly mobile, ambitious and crude, but faithful and passionate counterpoint to the self righteous, misplaced and ultimately fickle idealism of the well heeled and well off. A movie well worth the time, surely one of the most remarkable movies ever made in Hindi.

Chitrangada acted in only one other movie called "Kal - Tomorrow and Yesterday" (2005) which was a well made thriller aimed at the so called multiplex audience. And then she got married to "ace golfer" Jyoti Randhawa and has never acted in a movie since. Mr. Randhawa had better be shaking up the golfing world in a big way soon, because he has taken away the lady who is Indian Cinema's best young actress by a long long way. Had she continued (and she still can come back) she could have been to our generation what Smita Patil was to the last. A beacon of intelligence and beauty in a world populated increasingly with 'item girls'.

She will be missed !

__________________________

2008-01-19T23:02:00.000+01:00

ख्वाब तो मैंने बहुत देखे है, लेकिन दिल लगा कर खेले हुए बरसों बीत गए. शब्द बड़ी आसानी से निकलते है मुह से, मन मे महल बड़ी आसानी से बनते है, लेकिन डाव लगता नही है मुझसे, ज़ंग लड़ी नही जाती, मंजिल तै नही कर पता हूँ मैं - लाब्जों की दीवारों के पीछे छुपकर मुकर जाता हूँ मैं. हारना तो मैं जानता ही नही हूँ - मैंने खेलना ही कहाँ सीखा है ! ख़यालों मे खोया, फ़र्ज़ निभाना भूल चूका हूँ मै. बडे दिन हुए सिर उठाके चले हुए - हर मोड़ पे गलत रास्तों पर बिखर जाता हूँ मैं.

"हजारों ख्वाहिशें ऐसी
की हर ख्वाहिश पे दम निकले,
बहुत निकले मेरे अरमान
लेकिन फिर भी काम निकले . . "

I have seen the light

2008-01-12T22:09:00.000+01:00

I write this to remind myself of that fact.

Exams, Cricket etc

2008-01-11T09:53:00.000+01:00

I've become very bored and too comfortable in the middle of the exams. I liked my subjects while I was studying them, I was excited, but now that the exams are here they have become a drag. I fail to see how performance in an exam can be a good criterion for judging a masters level student's aptitude for research, and they are certainly a HUGE waste of time for all concerned, so I'm very surprised to find the intense, lengthy exam periods these people in Belgium have. I am keen to get done with them as soon as possible and get on to the next semester of learning. I am quite disappointed to find that "careless mistakes" are still very much a part of me, and my math exam which could so easily have been a triumph has left me feeling quite disappointed and a little bit helpless. To be honest, at least some of the lack of focus that might have resulted in the mistakes I made will have to be attributed to my excessive involvement in the tumultuous exploits of the Indian Cricket Team.

There have been reams and reams written about the Sydney match, and I have soaked it all up. I have read every blog, every article and followed every comment and its aftermath. I have seen all the videos on youtube and I have reached the conclusion that the whole matter is too obvious to comment on, and that I have nothing to add to the huge body of material already published (and indeed, is still being published). But, I do support the Indian team, not just because they are the Indian team and the underdogs but because most of them are gentlemen worth emulating in many respects.

I do wish they'd come up with some steely performances and win though. I miss India !

Update (20-01-2008) - Yesterday, they did exactly that ! A magnificent win at Perth !

On Solitude

2007-12-27T21:16:00.000+01:00

I have had unparalleled opportunity to be alone with myself and meditate, both upon my life and upon my subjects, and (I regret to say) after making a very promising start 3 months ago I rather tired of my quiet isolation and yearned for the company of old friends and the comfort of old haunts, the warmth of home and the careless lethargy of an unambitious life. The splendid solitude of the earnest savant that I so relished at the outset of this journey became a burden and slowly I wandered from the path of learning, maintaining enough of a hold to keep track but not enough to delight in it. As I have so many times before, I saw the light and somehow, I forgot. I have been competent all this semester, but there was the opportunity to be exceptional, to be inspired, and I squandered it in my indolence, my mind clouded by false concerns and intellectual diversions just engaging enough to hide the damage being done.

Just this afternoon while I mused upon life, I identified "a willingness to be alone" as the factor that separates the definitively ordinary from the potentially great. I then realized that in this semester, that was exactly where I was found wanting. I could, after a point, no longer sustain the mental focus that forms the basis of productive meditative solitude, and it became all too easy to find ways to be entertained and thus not have to think. Being alone induces a state of honesty and introspection that many people find abhorrent, and I - having conquered the daemons of self deceit - threw away for no reason the purity of mind earned over weeks of silent work and thought. I reached the very edge of genius and turned back, unable to maintain order and peace when they were most important.

Genius is a state of mind, and it is earned through sustained meditative work. If I dont get there in the next year or two, I will never get there. There is a definite window of opportunity, I know the path, I have but to walk it, my mind at peace and my voices silent.

I Sea.

2007-12-24T18:05:00.000+01:00

The Giant Squid (genus Architeuthis) has been photographed alive in the wild only once (2004) and taken on video alive only once (2006), on both occasions by a Japanese expedition. Giant Squid are the stuff of countless maritime legends, but their existence has been scientifically confirmed only for a couple of centuries (in 1888 to be precise), and attempts to study them have been severely limited by their propensity to die as soon as they are captured. Most of the specimen studied are those that wash up on beaches and are thus in very bad shape. It was once thought that giant squid were primarily delicate drifters which just ate whatever happened to pass by. However, the photographs taken by the Japanese team (with the help of a baited hook) show much more robust and belligerent predatory behaviour.

To me, this raises some interesting issues. In any ecosystem predators tend to be more intelligent and capable of adaption than other animals. Surely, the fact that the Giant Squid is a predator (of a fairly aggressive sort too) means it might have a brain capacity greater than once thought. My speculation is of course, fueled by the fact that they have large and (even in death) disconcertingly conscious looking eyes, and their bodies look very much like the elongated shapes of super intelligent aliens one so often sees in charming sci-fi magazines (which seem to primarily come out of America. A population that has supported science fiction for 70 years cant be all bad !) and thus the whole effect begs the question, what sort of intelligence do Giant Squid possess ?

And it turns out that the brain of the squid is very large and complex and it has a very highly developed nervous system. But what really intrigues me, is that they might posses that faculty to which might be attributed all of human progress - curiosity. Again and again through history sailors have reported squid checking their ships out, even attacking them, far outside their zone of comfort which is deep cold waters. In fact, coming to the surface leaves them very vulnerable to attack by sperm whales (who the squid can only beat by preventing them from coming to the surface to breathe). But squid, more than any other deep sea creature (save the sharks perhaps, who will attack anything that moves) seem to have a fascination for human craft. The encounters of giant squid and human vessels have been well documented in recent years, and even if one discounts the legends (though they were right about the existence of the giant squid after all) there is surely a case to investigate further the cognitive capabilities of the giant squid. Furthermore, if we can be offended by the killing of whales (and everyone here in europe seems to be absolutely outraged by japan killing whales) then surely surely, we ought to extend the same concern to a creature who is certainly a worthy adversary to the whale, and might be just as intelligent. I would love to know the results of any tests that might be conducted on Giant squid in the wild in the future, and their response to various stimuli.

Something in their eyes tells me they're smarter than we think :-) Wikipedia, Youtube and Google yeild some interesting results on them Squid. and the Giant Squid is not the end..apparently there is something called "Colossal Squid" ! :-) I love the deep seas almost as much as space and they are so much more accessible and plausible too !

Surely one of the most fascinating things to explore in the deep sea are the extremophilic lifeforms that live there (and they have been caught on film in a visually stunning but otherwise mediocre documentary. What a waste ! the possibilities for that documentary were immense), under incredible pressures and near hydrothermal vents with superboiled water that cant evaporate due to the pressure. They prove that complex life forms can arise even in areas devoid of sunlight, drawing their energy from deep sea vents that spew sulphur and other compounds that are harvested by sulphur eating bacteria (which are also fairly common near volcanic vents) as well as other larger lifeforms and they fuel a food chain based on sulphur instead of oxygen. A whole new biology which has evolved independently of the rest of the world. And the volcanic vents are many times widely seperated making biological exchange between them impossible, so there might be (and probably are) many independently evolving ecosystems (planets for all practical purposes) under the sea ! When a vent shuts down (as must happen every once in a while) so does one entire ecosystem around it. The sea floor must be littered with them. Arthur C. Clarke envisioned this kind of life on Europa (I dont know if he was the first one) and speculated as to the evolution of intelligence in such circumstances. Why not ? It is a challenging and constantly evolving environment. But of course, any given vent might not last long enough for intelligence to evolve (but then again, who is to give Nature a time limit ?) and it has been speculated that Sulphur based metabolism is not efficient enough to sustain intelligent brains (but maybe our brains are energy inefficient, spoilt by the abundance of oxygen). It is certainly possible.

One does not even need to go deep into the sea to find extremophiles and species evolving seperately from our ecosystem. They can be found in caves, and the way troglobites have evolved, very obviously from terrestrial creatures that went into the caves and stayed there, and how different they now are, is surely a brilliant and dramatically clear illustration of evolution at work ! and america has some of the most remarkable caves. Take the evangelicals to the caves I say, and maybe they will see the light. And their world view is as backward as cavemen anyway. (okay okay, sorry, but I could not resist that) In the deep caves too one sees sulphur eating bacteria and a food chain that has them at its base, though its not as dramatic as the sea based ones. Here too, one sees different species in every cave ! thats evolution.

All this of course, goes some way to reassuring us of the tenacity of the phenomenon we call life, and increases our hopes of finding it somewhere nearby. And if some signs of tool making and intelligence - however rudimentary - were to be found somewhere deep in the sea, it would change the way we look at ourselves, and remind us of our transience. We will be lucky if someone finds the shells of what we once considered our achievements and wonders if they are signs of intelligence.

Let there be Light

2007-12-15T09:23:00.000+01:00

I dont know how else to put it - I have been taken over by science. Physics and mathematics are all I seem to be able to talk about, my thoughts revolve around questions as arcane and arbit to most other people as they are delightful to me - questions about everyday life, and the world around us.....a common one, "How is a rainbow made ?" the answer to that is surprisingly intricate and pretty and hides some nice complexities in a particularly beautiful phenomenon. (wikipedia is quite good on this check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow) Another one, seen as almost trivial by many people is "why is the sky blue ?" that deals with rayleigh scattering, which is the simplest type of scattering and if you want to look deeper into scattering you quickly get into Raman scattering and Brillouin scattering and nonlinear optics (which is my bane this semester).....and then there is the small (and some would say pressing) matter of increasing the efficiency of solar cells and that question takes you to quantum dots, Excitons, and a maze of quantum mechanical equations and greek letters one will despair of ever figuring out (if you have the heart to read them at all).....if you study the subject of light (as I happen to do), you will come across many wonderful phenomena, photonic crystals, mirrors that dont invert left to right, amplifiers that are based on light diffracting off a diffraction grating made by light ! or sound !!!

It is an interesting thing, to stay in "middle europe" - a prosperous and gray city, a class filled to the brim with geniuses as well as arbit characters, a foreign land with a different language and to study light. There is something about light. Not only to man and his mind which pines for it but also in nature. It has been the key to EVERY major theory advanced in the last two hundred years, from maxwell's electromagnetism (which first gave us a clue as to what light "actually was" (if there is such a thing as "actually being") ) through relativity (the postulate about the speed of light being constant along with the postulate of relativity of motion yeilds the whole theory ! ) (and I have always wondered, "why light ? whats so special about the speed of light ? why that number ? does it follow from somewhere else ? why cant gravitational waves, (which (at least so far, as far as I know) are not connected to light) have a speed greater or less than the speed of light ?" and the refinements in understanding make it even less comprehensible, apparently, phase fronts can and very commonly do travel faster than light, but 'information' or 'wave groups' cant ! why ? what is information exactly ? what is the relationship between information and "order" (because surely they are related, I have studied information theory at college and dealt with the concept of 'entropy' but I do not know enough thermodynamics to relate the information theoretical concept of entropy with the thermodynamic one) and what has any of that to do with fundamental limits to speed ? questions questions questions ! but they convince me that light is central to our understanding of the universe and will continue to be so for some time.) and then of course there is quantum mechanics and its connection to light is so well documented that I wont put it down. As a matter of fact, it is convoluted and complicated and dare I say it, "messy" and at the same time is wildly accurate. The universe is strange and and beautiful and unfathomable. It constantly challenges our limited brains (to be fair to them, they evolved to maximize procreation and food intake in a world where everything that mattered was macroscopic and moved slowly so its a little unfair to expect them to be naturals at relativistic and quantum mechanical phenomena, as it is, they dont do too bad - after years of frustration and training :D ) and fills our pitiful imaginations and puny hearts with awe.

Reality is the most wonderful thing we have, and we are given a staggeringly short time to contemplate it, and it pains me to think that the majority of people waste this time being scared of it and forcing themselves and their children to believe crude, simplistic, stupid and harmful stories written by the worst kind of people living in sick societies thousands of years ago. They are arrogant enough to claim that they can explain not just the origin and the present state of the universe, but also its 'purpose'. I am so stunned by the sheer arrogance of it, that I cannot think of a good enough repartee. Anyone who has studied science knows.

I am still a lazy man, and dont study as much as I should, but then there is the universe to think about ! and I miss India and its teeming millions. Europe is a very beautiful place to be lonely in. Very gray in winter, and somewhat similar to that Island mountain in another dimension in "Grimus" by Rushdie.....you can only survive if you are passionate or obsessed about something. Unfortunately in my case, being passionate about something does not imply I work terribly hard for it :D

A brilliant series from the BBC

2007-09-18T20:20:00.000+02:00

http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=135
http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=136
http://freedocumentaries.org/film.php?id=137

These are links to episodes 1, 2, 3 respectively of a BBC documentary series called "The Power of Nightmares : Rise of the politics of fear". Wide ranging in scope and with some absolutely brilliant footage as well as superb and startling journalism, it surprises the viewer again and again with its calm maturity. It builds up slowly, and the three episodes really go together very closely, and it ends on an absolutely brilliant note. Made with passion and commitment, I take it to be the revenge of the BBC for the tamasha that started with Andrew Gilligan's report on a "sexed up dossier", reached its lowest, most disgraceful point with Dr. Kelly's "suicide", and ended with the recriminations that followed Lord Hutton's infamous whitewash.

Before you see another news program, watch this.

2007-09-06T15:59:00.000+02:00

In a beautiful country of chocolates, cobbled streets, waffles, civilized rivers and quaint buildings I sit in a room and feel time flow past me. I loose myself in the current, letting the past wash over me, knowing that its over and done with. I let visions of the future, multitudinous and fantastic stalk me enticingly, knowing full well how short lived, weak and pathetic they are ! The present ? the present is nothing ! it is a point where there is only awareness of its existence. Everything else is in the past or the future - unreal, immaterial, impotent. They are the imaginary winds of our creation, we unfurl imaginary sails and set forth on fantastic journeys, borne hither and thither by gusts from our pasts and our future. Pull the sails down, and not only does the wind disappear but also the sea. All one is left with is consciousness. The present. The one point, the only point at which we know we exist.

Big Jan and the TdF

2007-07-18T18:29:00.000+02:00

Something I stumbled across -

Associated Press
July 11, 2007
Jan Ullrich criticized former teammates Rolf Aldag and Erik Zabel for "acting like saints" once they had admitting their doping past.

Ullrich, who won the Tour de France in 1997, was one of several riders kicked out on the eve of last year's race after being implicated in a Spanish doping investigation. A sample of Ullrich's DNA was later matched to one of the blood bags in the doping affair. Several former riders of Team Telekom, including Zabel and Aldag, recently admitted they used erythropoietin in the 1990s while riding with Ullrich, who has retired and denies any wrongdoing.

"To carry on working, they need to confess their error," Ullrich said in an interview with L'Équipe, the French daily. "It makes me laugh, because I know they spoke about my case while acting like saints."

Ullrich was particularly angry over Aldag.

"When I heard Aldag talking non-stop about me on radio or on television, I was really outraged by his attitude," Ullrich said. "He made a lot of money because of me. If he found it so dirty, why did he never give it back?"
The former Olympic champion says he just wants to be left alone. "I've nothing to say, my career is over." he said.

Ouch.

The emphasis is mine. Its an unfair unfair world.

Vino is riding with 60 stitches in his knees and elbow, and most people have written him off. Kloden ought to replace him as the team leader for Astana (if logic prevails), but then I dont think he will. When Vino rode with the T-Mobile team for Ullrich with Kloden, he was always a bit of a loose gun, especially in 2005. When there was bitterness in the German team, Vino was alone and understandably, Kloden was with Ullrich. Its a Kazakh team now (along with a Russian or two), people Vino rode with in his youth - for Kazakhistan and the USSR - and Kloden is the outsider. He is way ahead of Vino in the general classification, and surely surely with 60 stitches Vino cant now claw back eight and a half minutes over the yellow jersey in the Pyranese and the two big individual time trials ! and yet all his teammates are faithfully clustered around him while Kloden rides a lonely race. Kloden fractured his tail bone too on a crash on the same day mind you, but he seems to be in good form all the same, seems quite comfortable on his bike. Vino was with the race doctor during the flat 10th stage to Marseilles today, getting the dressing on his wounds changed while still on the bike, hanging precariously on to the doctors car, his leg off the pedal, in tremendous pain. He ended yesterdays big Alpine stage in tears of exhaustion and disappointment.

"I couldn't even feel my muscles," he said. "But the worst thing was to be left behind while there were still 60 guys in front of me... It was a humiliation. I have never liked showing that I was suffering, but there I just couldn't do anything else."

Tough guy. Proud man. 60 stitches.

Logic and Limits go flying out the window.

Raireshwar, Kenjalgad and a jolly good weekend !

2007-07-16T07:29:00.000+02:00

I reached S's mama's house in Poona late on friday night (after hitching a ride with a man who turned out to be a newspaper editor fighting for superstition !) only to find that M and N had not reached yet and that nothing had been decided for the weekend ! After assorted arrivals (everyone seemed to be surprised that nothing had been decided) a plan for the next two days was sketched out (hatched ?) with the help of an excellent book called "The Sayhadri Companion". We (four of us) slept at 1.30 and woke up at 5.30 saturday morning and left immediately for a village called Korle in Poona district in the Bhor region. The plan for the day was this - we climb up from Korle to a place called Raireshwar, traverse the ridge to Kenjalgad, climb to the top of that, climb down to Korle from there via a different route and then drive to Mahabaleshwar for the night.

We parked the car in Korle and after a bit of haggling with a local who was to show us the way, we sent him off and were on our way up at 9.15. The weather was cloudy and pleasant at this time and the path was more of a jeep track, so we were all a bit disappointed, having hoped for something rather more adventurous. We reached the top of the ridge at about 10.30. At this point the path went to the left towards Kenjalgad and one to the right to Raireshwar. By now the wind was quite strong and clouds were billowing all around. We walked along the top of the ridge for some time (and took a few photographs and videos - my last for a long time on this trek) and reached a sudden steep ascent upon which cement stairs had been built. Along the razors edge of the mountain, the wind was quite scary and the steps were a comfort. Soon, the steps gave way to 2 flights of rickety steel steps/ladders in a very steep and exposed rock outcropping. The mist around us was very dense now and we could not see much at all. The last part of the ascent was a steep but well marked rock patch with a thick rope fixed to the side. Once on top, we walked along a misty, windy and rainy plateau ( picture below) for quite some time beside lakes, through paddy fields (rice seems to be the main crop of the entire region) before stumbling upon the village temple of Rireshwar. It was a temple and location with a very unique atmosphere which I would dearly have liked to have captured on film, but the weather was foul and it was all we could do to find some shelter and have something to eat. In fact, there are no pictures in Raireshwar and no pictures till we were almost down from Kenjalgad. The most exciting parts of the trek I was unable to photograph because of the rain, I did not want to risk my camera. The temple, (which was a bit like the temples one sees in the villages of Konkan but made of black stone and looked more rugged and weather beaten and less refined - a frontier temple perhaps) as well as all the buildings around it were open and empty. Rows of houses, another temple of similar size, all seemed abandoned. We shared the shelter of one of these with a few dogs (who N felt very sorry for and she wanted to shower them with food but was prevented from doing so by vehement protests from S and me) and had a bit to eat.

The boards written in marathi in the area near the temple (which was dotted with remains of old buildings here and there) informed us that it was at this unlikely but beautiful place in this strange old temple that Shivaji with a few of his companions first declared on 22nd October (I think) 1645 that he would fight for Swaraj. I wondered what the people felt then, what did swaraj mean to them ? Did Shivaji ever return to tell the simple village folk of the swaraj he had fought and earned ? Did he really give more freedom to the common people of the Deccan ? The Cambridge University history of the Marathas rejects the notion of Shivaji as a 'Hindu King' saying that he was a maratha nobleman who did what he had to do to come to power and whose armies were a mixture of religions, locals and pathans and villagers from all over which was common to all powers on the Deccan at the time. The author says that all references to him being a 'hindu king' are later additions by hindu revivalist historians and stories of him being influnced by Ramdas Swami and Dadoji Kondev (who were both brahmins) are later brahminical additions made in order to capitalize on the popularity of Shivaji. Possible and fair enough. But then one begins to wonder if Swaraj could have actually meant anything to the village folk of the Deccan. Shivaji was a fort based king, his armies harried his enemies from high inaccessible forts and he did not have a large standing army which could protect the territorial integrity of his dominions. Invaders would regularly sweep through his lands without being able to take all his forts, and be beaten back after periods of harassment by small skilled troops riding down from his mountain strongholds. So he never really provided the majority of villages on the Deccan - the ones which did not lie in the immediate vicinity of one of his more powerful forts, any degree of security but did levy heavy taxes. So what Swaraj did he provide if not a vague religious one ? The notion that one is oppressed by someone of ones own religion and not another although it made little or no difference on the ground. It is a question that the author of the Cambridge University Press History of the Marathas needs to answer.

There were a couple of other boards, one of which told us that in 1642 a poojari named Shiva Jangam was brought to the village to perform ceremonies at the temple and was present when Shivaji made his declaration and that the family still performs the poojas at the temple, while the other board was a reproduction of an edict by Shivaji for the villagers telling them to use the resources of the forest carefully and never to rape it (literal translation). It was still raining heavily and the fog was thick when we started on our way back. We roamed the plateau of Raireshwar for 40 minutes, dashing hither and thither looking for the path by which we had come, wet, muddy and in good spirits. The photo below is a burnt hut (with the bed and everything still in place) we saw while wandering around on the plateau. After we had finally located the right path we ran into a man tending his buffaloes (with the typical protection of a sack/plactic looking like a pointy hood thrown over his head and back) who asked us if we had had food and if we wanted to stay. He had a large house near the temple apparently (which we did not see) and could accommodate 15-20 people. His name was Shankar Jangam from the family of the temple priests. I began to wonder if - in the three fifty years since Shiva Jangam - the family had only progressed as far as Shankar. Shiv, Shankar, Shivshankar etc etc.

We got down from Raireshwar fairly rapidly to the spot where the road led towards Kanjalgad. For sometime the road let through dense insect infested jungle but we reached the village through which the path leads up towards the top of the gad. It was immediately obvious that this was going to be a stiff climb. A lady in the village told us that it was a clearly marked path and that we must not leave it and go into the jungle. "Payakhalchi vaat sodu naka" she said. Bur the path bifurcated into equal halves every 10 steps and we were quickly on a very steep, muddy, slippery patch struggling to pull ourselves up, and it was very obvious that we were lost. After some exploring and scrambling around we spotted the right path which led us fairly smoothly to the top of the shoulder of the mountain from where we could see both sides of the 500 foot cliffs that protected the top of the gad. This is a formation very common in this part of the range, a forested hill with a sheer vertical outcropping of rock protecting a large plateau above. There are generally only one or two possible routes to the top and so these are ideal locations for forts. I wonder if these are entirely natural (they seem quite unlikely) but then, for someone to have hewn them out at that hight seems incredible. We went along the path towards the cliffs facing the side we had climbed from and after a small rocky patch the stunning sight of rock steps hewn into the cliffs, 2-3 m broad, and very slippery. All this while the weather had been merciless and we were all tired and hungry. We reached the top along those steps and found some shelter in a old structure whose roof had partially caved in and had the excellent excellent theplas M (who is Gujju/Kutcchi) had so thoughtfully brought. After a moment of panic in the dense impeneterable fog, we found the steps leading down again and were quickly to the village. The path leading back down into the valley was found after much exasperated shouting from a large troupe of ladies and girls who had gathered to watch us leave (I guess we were quite a sight, muddy and shabby with M and N being highly incongruous in the surroundings) and among them was the lady who had told us the path when we set off to the top. "Ranat gele na tumhi. Sangiltla hota na, ti vaat hitun an hitun ashi ashi jaate te !" We said yes, we had made a mistake and thanked her. The photo above is of Kenjalgad taken on the descent, it looked quite imposing. We climbed down to a village called Yeli and then walked across the pretty pretty valley to Korle. S carried N on his back for some time much to M's (and my) surprise. We reached the car and borrowed a news paper to spread on the seats to protect them against us.

A scenic drive to Wai (which has some old and pretty riverside temples) and then to Mahabaleshwar (we gave a couple of garrulous villagers a ride to Bhor too). Some excellent sandwiches and pizza at Mapro and some very average rooms in the MTDC resort. The next day started comparitively late with a brilliant breakfast of Makai patties and frankies at Hirkani dhaba and then a walk to Arthur seat (3 hrs, and for much of the time we were convinced we were lost). It was raining heavily throughout and we waded through calf/ankle deep water at regular intervals. The jungle was dense on all sides and the mist added a lot to the atmosphere. (In the photos where its misty, nothing at all can be seen ! so none of those are put up here) Mahabaleshwar was very misty overall, making driving tricky. After much walking we reached the parking lot for Arthur seat, and found that we had been walking along "The Lady Willingdon Gallop". We started walking down the main road back to where we had parked car and were given a lift by a chap playing Himmesh songs very loud. We reached the car and started back, and had excellent Pithla Bhakri at a place near Poona. Then we dropped the girls to their transport back to Mumbai, while I went to S's mama's house, freshened up and then S and me went out for dinner like old times after which I took the 11.00 Asiad back to Aurangabad and was home at 4.30 today morning.

Ideal weekend.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid

2007-07-10T15:07:00.000+02:00

I finished the book in one sitting. The narrative is fast and often subtle, but overall, the book is slightly disappointing. The characters are not as consistent and well fleshed out as they could have been and the author does not tell us anything new about ourselves. The plot and the setting too are fairly ordinary, and only interesting because of the prevailing political and cultural climate in the world. The book is raised above the common by its form (which is flicked directly from Albert Camus' brilliant and disturbing novel The Fall) and the portrayal of how Pakistanis view themselves. The viewpoint is quite unabashedly Pakistani (which is one of its assets) and the author's longing for his homeland can be clearly discerned in the various slightly boastful references and idealizations that are bound to creep into the writing of a proud man living in a society that does not give his roots their due.

The entire book is a monologue, one side of a conversation between an American and a Pakistani at a roadside restaurant in old Lahore. The Pakistani man is telling the American his story and most of the novel is a flashback, with occasional charming descriptions of the market around and the passage of time and one particularly gruesome description of the food that they order. The American's responses are to be inferred from what the Pakistani man is saying - exactly the form Camus used in The Fall.

The story too borrows form The Fall insofar as it describes how an outwardly successful and happy man is drawn by his mental daemons to give up the life he has built and choose a completely different existence. The main character, Changez, is a young, Princeton educated star employee of a elite valuation firm and the novel is the story of how, post 9/11 and all that quickly followed it, it became impossible to separate the personal from the political and public. Hamid's protagonist and his reasons are nowhere as subtle as Camus', and thus are easier to appreciate. The author strikes a chord when he describes family life in Lahore, and Indians will easily understand how the protagonist feels when his country is slighted by a successful New Yorker. In his concern for his people when war with India looms after the attack on the Indian parliament, for the first time, I saw how 'they' see us - bigger and always threatening to swamp them and their identity. The response - a mixture of bravado and anxiousness - rang true. The picture the author builds through small descriptions tinged with regret of his once wealthy family slipping slowly but surely into relative poverty in the new economy will resonate, and somehow reminded me of Agatha Christie's post war novels with their descriptions of old families in rambling houses which have seen happier days and are now difficult to keep up.

However, the author never really displays the depth that would have given the reader an insight into the events shaping his country and the mind of his protagonist. He does not build a compelling enough case at the intellectual level though perhaps at a purely emotional level one can understand why his protagonist does what he does. The book is a tightly constructed saga of the symptoms of a complicated global malaise and their effect on one man's life. It owes a lot to the suspense the author builds surrounding the two men in the restaurant and how the tension in the atmosphere increases as the story nears its conclusion, night falls, the market empties and the the two are quite alone - almost.

I think the author wanted the two threads - the one in the present in lahore - and the one in the past to meet at a point with interesting results. Both narratives are quite interesting in themselves, but they dont come together compellingly enough. All in all, the book promises a lot but does not quite reach the heights it could have, it does not cut deep enough.

Certainly worth a read.

Contrasts

2007-07-07T19:28:00.000+02:00

I could not sleep that night. In that remote, impossibly beautiful place, with my head throbbing painfully every time I moved, cold, uncomfortable and overawed by the sheer scale of everything around me - the mountains, the sky, the silence - I walked slowly around camp, alone, (which is when I took the photo that accompanies this post, the only star in the sky) with my puny headlamp, thinking about a city I have never lived in.

I grew up in a medium sized industrial town in the underdeveloped interiors of the Deccan plateau where the roads are broad, the houses large, things are well spaced out and the people gentle - the very definition of respectable middle class suburbia. But the city I missed that day was not the city I knew so well and liked so much, it was a city I actively detested and avoided, like all those around me. The old town, with its tiny gullies and overcrowded, overflowing garish shops, the open drains, the thick smell of chaat, gutter, cowdung and sweat gathered over years and years, the food, the temples, the burquas and the chatter ! The vibrant, colourful, bustling city full of verve and dash and spirit and devoid of the antiseptic snobbery I have always practiced.

In that moment of cold loneliness I longed for the proximity to other human beings that the old town enforced, the impossibility of ignoring the outside world, it bombards every faculty one has with insults, invitations and paradoxes. From beautiful handiwork to the cheapest chinese goods, from the ultra conservative to the inextricably mixed up, it has everything. Cows and horses in houses smaller than my room off a street narrower than my bed, a colony of temple brahmins under the wall of a white mosque, a girl looking wistfully far away into the distance from a window overlooking 10 feet of road and a thousand people.

Uniformity is the curse of the modern world, the sheer life that one can feel coursing through the tiny unkempt streets of the old quarters of even the smallest towns cannot be matched by the myriads of sleek cars that whizz - in all their air conditioned arrogance - along the eight lane highways we are taught to be proud of.

I'll take some photos and see if I can convey what I mean, if I can capture some of the atmosphere on film. I'll try.

Lies

2007-07-03T18:52:00.000+02:00

A word which describes everything. What we accept as the truth is only what we want to believe and what follows (through meaningless sophistry also of our choice) from what we believe. The basis as well as the structure of all arguments and discussions about people, ideas and the 'real' world are fairy tales which we seem unable to escape. Even the most trivial, unnecessary statements are falsifications, very often deliberate. Every thought we think about anything external to our minds is a gross simplification which has no connection to anything that 'actually is' and is designed to fit in with all the other mental illusions and constructions we have already manufactured in the past. And so we painstakingly build our castles of delusion, walls and rooms and halls and corridors infused with joy and loss and pride and tears and jealousy and faith and laughter and everything we ever felt, with the power of our agile minds we place stone upon carefully fashioned (unreal and arbitrary) stone, join and reinforce them with the mortar of our (imagined) relationships and satisfy ourselves that we have lived.

Write again

2007-06-28T18:50:00.000+02:00

I wrote something on another blog not so recently, and this is the link.....

http://hivaatdoorjaate.vox.com/

I'll dump "lit" stuff here, and write more of a personal diary sort of thing there. Lets see, I have not written in such a long time, I no longer know if I can. I find it impossible to write without some target audience in mind, and the person who was always the audience in my head, who always (inside my head) judged my writing, a person with impeccable taste who possessed the beautiful economy and elegance of expression I yearned for, that person has overgrown blogs and writing of this sort. I dont think anything I write, however good, will make any impact on the lady (for I must confess that the person is a Lady) in question. Writing well is just not an accomplishment that has any value in the world we inhabit now. In college, second year, it seemed terribly important to be articulate and be noticed for it, now its just irrelevant. Achievements are larger now, and are metered in Rupees (and present value of future cashflow is taken into account too). No longer is a tightly constructed, evocative description enough to impress anyone. Nothing short of a successful published book will draw any but the mildest response. And anyone who reads the painfully garbled, neverending and boring sentences of some of the posts preceding this will know that I will never (without strenuous practice and study) attain the grace and lucidity that a good author must possess.

The early posts on this blog, the first 7-8, showed some promise, I still think one or two of them to be good and enjoy reading them again. After that the writing became labored and contrived. It lacked flow and direction and cohesion. It lacked purpose. I only write well when I write for her, and not always then, but I'll try and write anyway because it is something I enjoy doing, and who knows, perhaps - after many days and hours of editing and rewriting - I might be able to produce something that would once again entertain her, give her something to smile about, perhaps a nice way to pass the time or take a break. Maybe I'll grow to write well enough to write to her again someday, and in that hope, I'll write again.

2006-05-16T15:58:00.000+02:00

I'm finally home and as a consequence am feeling more peaceful and comfortable than I have in a long, long time. With peace and comfort comes a strangely easy and wonderfully pleasant lucidity. Take away physical discomfort and let a chap feel removed from the turbulence, the trauma and the wild moods and extreme views brought on by the skewed perceptions, lonely unfamiliarity, unnecessary discomfort and exaggerated pressures that seem to go with hostel life and what you are left with is the only healthy kind of philosopher - the kind who finds philosophy stuffy and redundant. Take away the emotional biases and duress - mental as well as physical - that cause opinions to crystallize into sharp weapons causing injury to oneself as well as others, and it becomes remarkably difficult to decide one way or the other about most issues of note. The clarity bestowed by peace makes it possible to perceive just how astoundingly complex and subtle the world is. People turn out to be multi layered and faceted, geographies more intricate and histories more interesting, the past difficult to judge and the future a lot more varied and promising.

Thus, everything having become an object of infinite wonder, it becomes next to impossible to write about anything.

2006-04-06T12:00:00.000+02:00

I'm still around - struggling, thinking, searching, happy, miserable, ill, worried, looking for peace, for reassurance form a world that's built to disappoint, getting things done, keeping it afloat, excited sometimes, bored mostly, appalled that the universe is unkind enough to exploit every weakness, every anomaly, every mistake one ever made and extract the market price. That is the only universal law I've experienced. No one gets away with anything. You been a bad boy ? Whether you knew it or not, whether you accept it or not, you will suffer. So will I.

We pay for the things we defile and degrade - including ourselves - and we pay for believing too much and we pay for believing too little. A price is extracted for every happy moment experienced, every good day, every piece of fortune, every favour taken, every minute spent wallowing in self pity, every dark thought, every task postponed and every promise broken.

To appreciate beauty in peace and languor without losing vigour and valour, to feel free without having to rebel, to be happy without self deceit, to face a just universe and see oneself reflected in it with a steady, unflinching, critical and honest gaze . . . . . . . .

2005-12-31T11:15:00.000+01:00

And therein lies a tale.

To be blank inside
With the remnants of promises made
Dreams woven
Lingering uncomfortable shadows
Tugging persistently
Like ghosts that wont let go
Reminding, painfully painfully
Of a world that had meaning
A life that had faith
Smothered by thought
Textures so subtle and fascinating
Flattened by knowledge
The magnificence of the universe
The insignificance of man
The arbitrary nature of decisions
The vagaries of fate
Textures erased by the flamboyance of creation.
Leaving serene emptiness
A long life to be led
Sleepwalker in a marathon
Saddled with baggage
Cheered by friends
Called ever forward by spirits
One more step one more step
One more step
And therein lies a tale.

The beach.

2005-12-14T05:15:00.000+01:00

Its a lovely 'ol place is our campus beach, about two kilometers of white sand, fringed with a large variety of palms and other trees, with some very charming approach roads and our very own lighthouse on a hillock with a temple.

The vast sea with its slow but intense moods, its constant overbearing rhythm, the sky sometimes tinged with the most delicate, tender and wispy pink and othertimes heavy and angry with dark clouds of a vulgar and overly demonstrative purple, the superb contrast between the two temperaments, one inertial, more circumspect and deliberate, mostly harmless but with the potential of immense destruction, always giving generously and sometimes taking with limitless fury but ever respected and even loved, While the other more fickle, breathtakingly beautiful on occasion and impossibly fragile, and then suddenly and apparently without reason, ominous and menacing, cajoling her more phlegmatic but more effective mate to do her bidding, for her airs are impotent without him. Like a base beauty manipulating a just and powerful prince to her own petty ends. The winds blow madly and scream their mindless hate in our ears, but the waves rise with a slow roar and the firm and heavy restraint of the vast wise ocean behind them and almost always, stay their hand. That is the way of the strong.

I have always wondered why this splendid drama played out constantly before me did not free my mind and raise my spirit beyond the twilit shadows that plague it. I always thought, after watching many a magnificent sunset, "I must come here in the morning". I've done that now, and its very depressing. The sea is calm. Not a breath of air. A strange dead light illuminates the world. There is none of the freshness and hope that one associates with mornings. This vast body of water does not have it in itself to illuminate, raise or edify. It cannot inspire bold strokes or infuse strength. It cannot awaken a man to freedom or peace. It has about it an aura of decadence, temptation and painful beauty. Its domain is the charm, allure and turbulence of starry skies and stolen kisses, of desperate thoughts and lonely walks, of clenched fists and limp heads, of crumbling lives and trembling lips, of last stands and bloody massacres, of glory tainted with darkness, of joy twisted by pain, of lonelyness trying to escape itself, of books snapping shut, friends leaving and curtains falling to the absolute silence of an empty house.

Then, yesterday while reading Kiran Nagarkar's "Seven 6s are 43", I stumbled upon the answer.

"The sun does not rise in this sea you know, it only sets here."

I wait

2005-12-12T08:13:00.000+01:00

for Silence and Solitude to fill the emptiness that curled up and settled inside me so long ago

the emptiness that has no business being here

the emptiness that causes reasons and feelings to implode and explode alternately

the emptiness that makes words lose meaning and conversations hollow

the emptiness that leads to doubt fear and defeat

She speaks in a soft cajoling sympathetic voice

She spouts the velvety philosophy of decay in lilting perfumed double edged words

She carefully nurtures all that is vile and base within us

She's the devil's favourite whore my friends, and far more dangerous !
Crush her !

crush her i say

Emptiness and the devil

I'll tear her out if I've to cut myself open to do it

they shall not prevail that venomous pair emptiness and the devil

they shall not prevail

It has been a losing battle most of the way comrades and now I rest awhile

And while I rest, I wait for Silence and Solitude

Sachin's 35th.

2005-12-10T16:35:00.000+01:00

I walked into the TV room of a nearly deserted hostel when he was on 77 and settled down on the floor there in the hope of watching him create history, regain his lost form and most important of all, become once again a beacon of hope to millions, a source of pride and a good enough reason to be a complete, absolute and unhesitating fan.

His appeal lies in the fact that he has become what he has, not due to any special circumstances or because he has been arbitrarily gifted by god with inhuman talent, though of course he is extremely talented, his success and his wizardy and his persona on and off the field - one gets the feeling - owes more to his doing the simple things right, listening to his parents and practicing everyday than to reasons exotic and mysterious. There is that about him which reminds us of the uncomplicated good things that we were told about as children and which we all too often forget or ignore as adults, especially young adults. He always chases the ball to the boundary, never contests the umpire's decision, never says anything untoward, never throws tantrums, always gives it everything and does not crib and make excuses about failure.

He is that incredibly rare thing - a man whose greatness owes itself to values and ideals purely middle class. The Great Indian Middle Class. The back bone of the nation, its work horse. Everyone who becomes successful and famous seems to have to change his/her way of life, and 'break the shackles' of the 'common man's' way of thinking. People talk so often about 'thinking outside the box' and what not. Here is a man who did not see the basic values of truth, hardwork and simplicity as 'limitations', who did not see the need to change anything about the 'naive' ideals and aspirations of the educated common man. A man who is the very embodiment of all that is straightforward, decent and solid and that is so often mocked at by others who have supposedly 'made it'.

Thats why I am a fan of his. He is proof that all I have been brought up to believe actually works. One does not have to modify, stoop, distort and defile to succeed, even in this world.

What a man !

Take yourself away

2005-12-10T07:42:00.000+01:00

Disappear, fight, conquer, observe, smile, live and don't give a damn.

On Culture and Liberalism. Part 1

2005-12-08T13:39:00.000+01:00

This is a world in which geographical distances are fast being reduced and a world which is becoming 'smaller' in a very real way. It is remarkable that this process has not - in general - made different cultures and races more acceptable to more people. On the contrary, it has resulted in more people being insecure about their own identities because of the unexpected proximity to a large number of others. Exposure has resulted in increased paranoia rather than increased open mindedness and acceptance. This is a strange, unfortunate and unexpected phenomenon the causes of which I will try to explore in this article.

The crux of the matter lies in the subtle but powerful distortion that has crept into the modern left liberal definition of the term 'open minded' . It has come to mean not just that one accepts and appreciates other cultures and civilizations but also that one must suppress one's own culture and civilization in order that one might not inadvertently 'offend' others or make them uncomfortable. Once one has accepted this, it is not a very long distance to "since its difficult for everyone to be comfortable with everyone else's cultural identities, everyone must suppress their own identities so that everyone is comfortable."

It sounds perfectly preposterous when stated that way, but it is what the current definitions of 'equality under law', 'open ness' and terms like 'the global village' etc imply . It is only to be expected, under such circumstances that there will be an opposite reaction from conservative religion with sees in these ideas a possible erosion of its power and field of influence. The insecurity naturally felt by human beings towards anything new is definitely heightened and accentuated by this quite senseless idea that being open minded implies being able and willing to hide one's identity. The idea, as one can immediately perceive, is quite absurd. If one enforces - through deciding what is 'politically correct' and what is not - a degree of uniformity among the public, that does not make them more open minded, it merely removes the need to be open minded.

These ideas have been taken to an extreme by the communist philosophy which denies and seeks to suppress (note the inherent paradox there, Communism is littered with them) any and every expression of individuality. Much of liberal philosophy has is roots in or has developed parallel to and has had close links with communist and socialist thought. A lot of the most disgusting tenets of communism are extreme extensions of ideas that are commonly considered 'progressive' and liberal.

A reasonable and possibly more acceptable definition of a healthy liberal or open minded society would be "A society whose members can accept and appreciate without prejudice people who are different culturally and racially from themselves, and do not feel the need to modify their own behaviour in order to appease anyone else."
The last clause helps allay any fears that conservatives within the society might have about interaction with aliens, and thus in effect, furthers the cause of diversity and liberalism not by suppression but by consolidation and strengthening of indigenous culture. Also note that 'assimilate' does not imply (as it seems to do in modern terminology. A melting pot of cultures is where everyone loses their cultural identity !) that the newcomers mix and 'fit in' culturally with the existing populace, rather it implies that they are integrated into the socioeconomic as well as political fabric of society without having to modify their behavior significantly. This is possibly what the definition was, and doubtless formally still is to many people, but it has been modified in a very fundamental and powerful yet subtle and hence more dangerous way by distortions and mutations caused by extreme left philosophy and ideas.

I have in essence implied that liberal thought, through the corruption that it underwent and the disfigured form in which it exists today has contributed heavily to the rise of religious and cultural extremism all over the world. Whenever a way of life is threatened or is perceived to be threatened, the people who follow it will naturally stick to it more than ever, view outsiders with suspicion and any suggestion of change with hostility.

Not all of what is said above applies as it is to India. In India there are further complications and nuances involved in the evolution of 'secular' thought (its a word that has completely lost its original and intended(?) meaning in our country). I will deal with the Indian scene in the next post, and maybe further develop ideas expressed in a slightly unorganized manner in this post.

Happened to notice this....

2005-12-04T10:08:00.000+01:00

"People's Democracy" - the weekly organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on the subject of Savarkar.

"...For the major portion of his life after making peace with the British his politics was oppositional to the Congress and the Left led movements rather than the British. As leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, he made sure that movements like the Quit India movement of 1942 passed without any participation from members of the Hindu Mahasabha or the Sanghathanists. He categorically called on the Hindus to give no support to the movement' (see Amba Prasad, The Indian Revolt of 1942). ...."

Innocuous comment on Wikipedia.

"The Hindu Mahasabha, under Savarkar's presidency, did not support the Quit India movement launched by Mahatma Gandhi in August 1942. The Communist Party of India and Muslim League were other parties which did not support the Quit India movement."

I have a lot to say about Commies. At last, I have something to go after :)

2005-11-26T17:01:00.000+01:00

Women are the devil.

One never knows what they mean or think or feel. Unless a man is remarkably self centered and foolish (ah lucky idiots !) it is impossible for him to be certain about where he stands with a woman, especially if the woman is one who knows that he likes her. The very fact that he has told her or indicated with a degree of certainty and candour that he likes her puts him in a weak and disadvatageous position. Women simply dont have the same conception of things like honesty, transparency, selflessness etc that men do nor do they set any store by them. This is why they cannot know how much a man's word means to him and can only pretend-if they think it worth the effort-that they value it and respect him.

I find it abhorrent to think that the only thing that might make a woman not take a man for granted is her dependence on him since dependence almost entirely precludes affection, but I can see no way out. There is nothing 'pure' about a woman's affection. It is a remarkably practical 'emotion' dependent on factors superficial. And when the causes are even more cheap and superficial than usual, and the girl goes off with some absolute rotter and ruins her life, it is given as an example of the passionate and irrational love that women are capable of.

One cant keep away from them, but association with them complicates life to no end. Things dont remain like they were once a woman comes onto the scene, however 'good' she is supposed to be. Women give happiness of a remarkably wholesome and complete kind when the illusions of truth and genuine feeling they create are convincing, and feelings of infinite foolishness, regret and bitterness at the unfairness and ingratitude of it all when one finds out (as is inevitable, and the sooner the better) that they were illusions and thats all they were- again. But, if a woman is direct and candid, all men know that that means she thinks the man is not even worth the regular cheap act she generally puts up (like all the rest of 'em) and that really hurts the male pride. Its a lose-lose-lose situation for the man.

Women, I repeat, are the devil.

Sunder Kavita.

2005-11-16T02:44:00.000+01:00

How much should I give, and how much should I take
The Sky has come to an end
The moon comes into the cup of my hands
With softly shut eyes.

I'm trying to traslate this, but as you can see I'm terrible at it.

Please help !

Its a poem by Mangesh Padgaokar from his collection "Oonjhaleet Swar Tuzhech"

"Servant of God, Well done ........."

2005-11-14T09:00:00.000+01:00

Yes, times are bad and I'm in a really really tight spot.

The huge inertia of a dismal position, the months of indolence, the opressive sinking feeling in my stomach and the crushing weight of seemingly inevitable disaster which I feel upon my heart is fast taking me inexorably towards the end I'm so desperate to avert. The tension which makes action impossible, the fear which precludes clear thought and a mind too nervous and twitchy to calm down and concenterate are the three insidous foes I have to overcome if I'm bite the bullet and face this like a man.

I do not aim to undo the damage already done, nor do I wish to perform any heroics. My ambition is remarkably modest for one in my condition. I just want to do the best possible thing in the time remaining. Thats all. There is not much of the game left, but whatever there is, I want to play well.

If I can say to myself, that from this point on, there was nothing more that anyone could have done, I will have put my ghosts to rest. The shadow of doubt that darkens my life will lift a little, and my friends and allies of old - impossible hope, ridiculous optimism and lofty dreams - which presently lie weakened, mute and scared in the deepest caverns of my mind, will once again emerge strong and smiling, once more will they lift my spirit and bring a twinkle to my eye, "Thank you friend" they will say "We are back."

"..........for thou hast fought the better fight."

Diwali.

2005-11-02T06:40:00.000+01:00

I'm not even sure what I would like to write about.

I could write about how the festival has been celebrated in my little city, and how things have changed over the years, how the euphoric and blissful diwalis of childhood under the watchful eyes of grandma seamlessly gave way to the daring deeds of boyhood when parents and elders were viewed as needless nuisances to be kept away from the festivities as far as possible and the comfort of grandparents and legions of cousins was ignored and forgotten in the heady daredevilry and the innocent competition that accompanied it and how this strange but happy state of mind quite suddenly turned into the surly disinterestedness of the teenager when the whole thing seemed silly, the rituals a huge pain, the smoke a disgrace, all relatives were bores and everything was pointless and why, after all that, this young man now feels that the diyas were brighter and more colourful, the houses more brilliantly lit by hands more loving, the sounds of crackers exploding were more civilized, the smoke was less pungent, the faces were friendlier, the smiles were wider, eyes sparkled and twinkled like stars, the air was suffused with happiness, minds were more willing to care and the world was a better place . . . . . when he was a child.

But whats the point ?

What sort of a person am I ?

2005-10-26T12:58:00.000+02:00

I genuinely do not know.

I have deliberately forgotten.

Because then I would not have anything to be melodramatic about.

Tear away the cobwebs !

2005-09-11T15:04:00.000+02:00

The years of inaction and directionless meandering come back to me and attach their long sticky filaments to my person. The minutes, hours, days, weeks wasted in pointless dallying and sordid wallowing all shoot fine and persistent threads that effectively imprison my mind and consign it to an existence of shallowness and fear. They weave a stifling cocoon around my heart, deadening it, unable to feel, to be inspired, to fly. The cobwebs I've neglected too long, they hang in thick bundles and clinging curtains all around me, making movement impossible, turning every effort into further entanglement, completely shutting off the world, smothering me, burying me alive.

Inside out and Blank.

2005-09-08T17:07:00.000+02:00

Smooth, gooey, tasteless and silent.

2005-07-28T22:17:00.000+02:00

The warm grey twilight of the Deccan, a sky painted with bold strokes of vibrant purples and reds, the mad games and the glorious mud, the ajjis and ajobas walking with a slow and easy gait, kindly smiles and twinkling eyes all bestowed by long years fruitfully spent, walking and watching us as we played the exuberant and carefree games of our vigorous and happy childhood, watching us but seeing themselves, in a time long gone, in a world no longer theirs, as they played games with names now strange, with companions long forgotten, but seeing the same flushed faces, the same excited voices, I wonder if they did not feel just a bit sorry for man, and us kids, destined to move on and forget, the exausting and cozy evenings of boyhood, the casual familiarity and implicit trust of treading on land well known, the food we knew awaited us when we went home and washed off ourselves the day's grime, the delight of fathers returning, the comfort of mothers scolding, of siblings fighting.

What life, what man be so forsaken that there are none who are awaited, none who have the time to scold, none who will dispute and argue secure in the knowledge that destinies so intertwined cannot be burst asunder by trifles !

Blood is thicker than water they say and the love of the land more dear than money. I will miss them ! The roads I have always detested,the neighbours whose existence I rarely had the energy to acknowledge, friends whose names I no longer recall, the strange, rich, multi textured smell that suddenly springs out of books long unopened awakening memories long buried, they wave me onward on my journey, they let me go secure in the knowledge that they shall never be lost to me, that I should continue working the spectacularly beautiful, impossibly intricate, consummately eternal tapestry of which my life is a small part. It is hoped that my little contribution shall be of good workmanship, that it should - at the least - be suitably profound and appropriately bright.

I shall do my best then, but from time to time I'll miss them all, and one day, if only to be able to see what I have really done, I will come back.

2005-07-26T11:26:00.000+02:00

And Suddenly, I do not want to write anymore. When its all one can do to keep from imploding into the vaccum within, its difficult to throw anything out. Its difficult to speak when a brooding silence fills the void, engulfs the heart and subdues the mind. Faint and vague ripples over the texture of conciousness - silent but disturbing - give subtle but sanguine indications of a struggle - slow and quiet - taking place in dark, profound and misty reccesses, where immense forces are mustered from nowhere, exert themselves mightily against nothing, and thus having expended themselves for no reason, mutely disappear whence they came - the obscurity of faliure.

Outside, one sees only a manner that is sometimes energetic and suddenly blank, eyes that can flash with spirit before looking timidly at the ground, and sometimes, a faraway smile or a doubtful laugh.

Thats all there is to it.

I do not mind.

2005-07-26T11:19:00.000+02:00

(Why should I ?)

About itself.

2005-07-16T09:52:00.000+02:00

Its quite sad really, and makes me feel not a little guilty, that I dumped into this post and subsequently deleted, two random thoughts that occurred to me before I started blogging. The purpose of my blog you see, is to write. My purpose in writing is not to blog. Its strange that the deepest guilt and hurt are felt when we defeat our own purposes. If our purposes are defeated by circumstances, then we are sad, but sadness is a burden man has been given the ability to carry, for it has been, is, and will ever be, his companion - sometimes forgotten, but always there. Guilt, however, is a load that quickly becomes unbearable, and results in men either cracking or trying desperately to undo their mistake. A very nice example of the latter, is this little paragraph of mine.

I could have written a lot. I could have shared the thick, fragrant, soothing taste of a divine scoop of sitaphal icecream, the quiet but disconcerting hum of a cold computer lab in the wee hours of the morn, the cool silence projected by the silvery glitter of a grassy maidan on a moonlit night as seen through clumps of dark swaying trees or the loose relaxation and quiet satisfaction brought on by a good head massage. But I did not, because unlike feelings of anger, bitterness, frustration and their kin, feelings of gentle peace, detached loneliness (mostly), enthusiastic interest and likeable pressure are easier to experience than to write about.

One for Buzz Aldrin.

2005-07-11T06:32:00.000+02:00

Along with le Tour de France, two very different but inextricably entwined stories will come to their conclusions on the 24th of July 2005.

One the story of an average man overcoming great adversity, and rising to dominate his profession to an extent unprecedented in history. The story of a man who is as revered as he is disliked all over the world. His successful fight against debilitating and mortal illness inspires devotion, and his impersonal, machine like and extended domination of his sport fuels discontent. There are two kinds of people in this world - those who love Lance Armstrong, and those who despise him. The other story is strikingly different. It consists mostly of frustration, criticism and bad luck. Don’t get me wrong, Jan Ullrich is a great cyclist and a very successful man by any standards, but with 5 second places (3 of them to Armstrong) after being one of the youngest winners of the tour in 1997, a tendency to come into the season slightly overweight, and consistent failure to do justice to his talent, History will judge him harshly.

But then, History is a bitch.
It is she who has decreed that the difference between being 'there' and being 'almost there' is the same as the difference between immortality and oblivion. She bestows her favours upon those who court her. The 'big' people. People who say the things that she considers right, people who fight and win enough battles that she considers to be important, people who manage to put upon themselves a veneer of goodness and invincibility. She cares nothing for the rest.

If Armstrong wins his 7th tour on the trot, he might deserve every accolade and every superlative bestowed upon him, but that will cause everything else, the daily heroism of so many men on the tour, the brave, the resilient, the stoic, to not only be forgotten, but under the ubiquitous shadow of that celebrated achievement, also belittled. In the frantic celebrations that will follow, with everyone scrambling to outdo everyone else in congratulating the champion, inventing new words, spending millions of dollars on congratulatory advertisements, who will have the time or the inclination to remember the brave Erik Dekker at the fag end of his career on a long breakaway, refusing to give in, refusing even to look back at the chasing peloton led by the sprinter's teams, the young Nicholas Portal, from a different team, weak and exhausted but helping Dekker all he can, doing his time at the front to give Dekker some rest, sticking to the task for no reason other than character and pride, the spectacular ride of Mike Rassmusen who rode 167 km all alone on a average mountain stage and won it, the resilience of Christophe Moreau and Jens Voigt as they tried to chase him down, the spirit that caused Moreau to stop when Voigt had a puncture, and the countless, countless other examples of all that is good in man that the Tour throws up with such breathtaking regularity ?

People will talk about how dominant Armstrong was even on his last tour, passing his main rival Jan Ullrich in the time trial on the first day after starting with a one minute deficit, and not a thought will be spared for the pain, anguish and despair of a proud man with his last chance to make amends and pull something back, as he saw himself being overtaken and left behind.

A win for Jan Ullrich, on the other hand, will force history to look at the other men who rode with Armstrong, it will add a huge amount to what will otherwise degenerate into a long paean to the praise and glory of one man at the cost of all others. It will be a demonstration that not always will the favourite win and the mighty triumph. It will be reassuring to see the beleaguered and fallible triumph against the perfect. It is the same fight that you and me face everyday, the fight to overcome our faults, to justify our talent, to fulfil what we consider to be our destiny. It will add balance to scales that are tipped overwhelmingly towards those with success and power, and that strange blinkered vision that causes a man to achieve impossible things. It will bring a ray of hope to so many of us, who battle against overwhelming odds and stifling systems, against our own record of indolence and failure, against the unfair and cruel manner in which the world determines who deserves to be respected and who does not.

When Jan Ullrich rides out on to the Alps tomorrow, he rides not just against Armstrong, but against History. He rides not just for himself, but for all those of us who have had too much to do with the words 'imperfect', 'incomplete' and 'unfulfilled'.

To 'flow', 'lilt', 'tune' and other precious things

2005-07-07T17:15:00.000+02:00

Sarojini Naidu: Palanquin-Bearers

Lightly, O lightly we bear her along,
She sways like a flower in the wind of our song;
She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream,
She floats like a laugh from the lips of a dream.
Gaily, O gaily we glide and we sing,
We bear her along like a pearl on a string.

Softly, O softly we bear her along,
She hangs like a star in the dew of our song;
She springs like a beam on the brow of the tide,
She falls like a tear from the eyes of a bride.
Lightly, O lightly we glide and we sing,
We bear her along like a pearl on a string.

That something so prosaic and mathematical as symbols representing sounds can be arranged into patterns that carry meaning quite independent of the specific interpretations of the symbols themselves, that there exist certain forms and structures that strike a chord within the beholder which is independent of the function/meaning associated with them, that this effect is remarkably universal in nature and transcends race, background and age, surely, surely in these degenerate, disturbed times these things should tell us something about ourselves and our place in the loose but omnipresent structure of our splendidly exasperating species.

One for Bertie.

2005-07-05T17:40:00.000+02:00

Note that a lot of what is said below, applies to itself.

Implicit in maintaining a blog, is the wish/expectation that it be read. It may help the writer organize his thoughts, yes. It may help the writer write better, yes. But a blog is primarily meant to be read. Otherwise, one would write in word, and make a folder on the pc, and not take the pain (not that there is much of that) to put it all on a website.

To verbalize what is felt, seen and thought is an extremely uninteresting thing if done for itself. Writing, being much more involved a process than speaking, (atleast for beginners like me) the motivation for it can only be found if one wants to be heard.

There are several different reasons why one would want people to receive any thoughts/ideas that one may scatter round. Some of these being -
1> The need to be understood/appreciated/be shown sympathy. (selfishness)
2> The feeling that one has something so important to say, that it might be in people's interest to read it. (altruism)
3> The feeling that change can be brought about in the world by ideas expressed through writing.

The first is weakness, the second presumptuous and the third naive.

How much we presume !

We think that the simple act of criticism puts us on a higher plane. We think that we can escape responsibility for the state of affairs by dissecting it. The more bitter and verbose our critique, the better we feel about it. We let off steam and frustration by tearing apart that which we ought to fix. Trying to hide impotence by ranting against fertility clinics. We fool ourself into thinking that we know, because we have not the strength to face the infinite complexity of our issues, the deceit and darkness inherent in the multidimentional character of our people, and the terrible contradictions underlying our nation. We choose our opinions and jump to one side of the wall, because to sit on the fence, to reserve judgement, would be to be able to see both ways, and our sanity would not survive that. We are mortally afraid. Afraid that we might find that Gandhi, Godse and Laden are all wrong. Or even worse, that they are all right. Where would that leave us, and our selfrighteous, indignant, verbose rantings ? Where would we put all our literary references and quotes then ?

We presume too much.

"Behold we know not anything,
I can but hope that good shall fall,
At last far off, At last to all,
And every winter change to spring."

Said some guy. Nice thought, but its not going to happen. This is the way things are, and this is the way they are always going to be, so we could shut our sensitive eyes, cover our snobbish noses and daintily try to pick our way through life (saying clever things all the while), or we could stride along, taking in the sights and smells of our world, willing to administer a firm tap on the jaw as well as lend a helping hand, right in the thick of things, lost but comfortable, minute but measureable, helpless but happy.

And if I see one more flower because I kept my eyes open among the dungheaps, I'll consider it a square deal.

"As long as she swims, I will cook !"

2005-07-01T14:09:00.000+02:00

If time is not flowing in the smooth, mellow and scenic way that one would want it to, if the whole idea of continuing in the same way has begun to seem dull and uninteresting, if one more obstacle in the way threatens to end the journey, if one is enmeshed in a web of spoiled relationships that threaten to slip carelessly away, if hollow, insecure, bitter, petty aims and feelings threaten to take over one's mind, it is time to dig deep, make a stand, show some fiber, scavenge some defiance from those ruins, summon some pride, find that courage, and after having done all that, with the comfort of having arrayed all that you have around you, show some restraint.

For it is not always doing what one can and saying what one might, that add to a man. Often it is not doing what one could have, leaving clever words unsaid, that remove bitterness and add peace. Any random obnoxious fool can call a spade a spade, but it is a wise man who will leave it alone, give it the benefit of the doubt, and save himself the anguish that invariably goes with trying to say things as they are, because all too often, they are not.

The title, intended to signify dogged defiance and adherence to personal beliefs in circumstances of great adversity, comes from a brilliant passage from Joseph Conrad's "The Nigger of the Narcissus". The ship has half overturned in a terrible gale, and has somehow stabilized in that position. The sailors are all lashed to the deck. The winds are icy cold and the rain continuous, and the men have been that position for days. They are dying from the exposure. The cook, an extremely eccentric religious man, suddenly lets go of his support, and precariously begins to make his way to the galley. The bewildered sailors are shocked, hoarse and weak voices ask him just what the hell does he think he is doing. With a strange light in his eye, his ragged clothes flapping in the wind, he cries out "As long as she swims I will cook !" Unbelieving men say that he is mad, "I will get ye some coffee" says he "Till she swims, I will cook !” A weak and pitiful cheer goes round the desperate company, "Cook ye are a gent!" cry hard men with tears in their long suffering eyes, "Till she swims I will cook !" he cries again and disappears with a bound.

The situation loses a lot in my rendering of it. I had tears in my eyes when I read the book.

"As long as she swims, I will cook !”

The way ahead....

2005-06-28T13:43:00.000+02:00

The light at the end of the tunnel..a mere speck though it may be, gives man access to reserves of hope and optimism that he did not know he possessed.

Give a man the chance he never had, and he'll take it.

Give a man hope and he will go on.

Give a man the spark that he had lost, and watch the trail blaze.

There is no hole so deep, no problem so big, and no man so lost that he may not one day climb out, overcome, and find his way home.

.......and lo !

2005-06-28T11:08:00.000+02:00

The conditions of conquest are always easy. We have but to toil awhile, endure awhile, believe always, and never turn back.
-Markus Annaeus Seneca

sad day.

2005-06-23T10:57:00.000+02:00

Just a bad day.

One of those when just as you think you're getting somewhere, walking past the shadow, the past comes up, grabs you by the throat, and shows you your place.

One of those days.

well well well.....

2005-06-22T04:41:00.000+02:00

Its almost dinner time, and I ought to have figured out the hspice netlist for the scba by now, but I've been playing around for the last couple of hours, reeling under the shock of an unexpected capacitance value. It turned out to be a typing error ( that was about 45 minutes or so ago ) and so I ought to have got on with the calculations, and finished my work well in time, done some extra, impressed my prof, extracted a good recco, gone to a good university............but now I'll prolly go and have a spot of dinner and a walk, then I have the whole night ahead of me in which (I hope) I will finish my work, do some extra, impress my prof, extract a good recco, go to a good university.......................

and so....

2005-06-21T21:37:00.000+02:00

So I did finish (more or less) what I ought to have finished. Would have been nice if I'd run the simulation and seen what the graphs looked like, (they're expected to look really really bad...I dont expect anything to work) but the've some server maintainence to do, so thats that for the night.

Well....

as ol' Scarlett so famously said, "Tomorrow is a new day...."