Onkar Deshpande's weBlOg

एक्सिडेंटल डिस्कव्हरी

2011-03-20T01:36:00.000-07:00

"(आय) नेल्ड इट !", आपल्या नवीन कम्प्युटर कीबोर्डच्या लाल आय - कि वरून दिमाखात बोट फिरवत रॉय उठला. " सलग १० तासाच्या एक्स्ट्रीम कोडींग सेशनमधून विजयी होऊन बाहेर पडण्याचा आनंद काही औरच. तुम्हा मिडल-क्लास क्लेरिकल कामं करणाऱ्या, ५ - १० हजार रुपड्यासाठी साहेबाची हांजी हांजी करणाऱ्या सरकारी नौकारांना नाही कळणार." आजूबाजूला पडलेल्या कोक , चिप्स, बियर , सिगारेटच्या पाईल मधून अडखळत बाहेर पडताना कामवाल्या बाईने लिहिलेली चिट्ठी त्याला सापडली. "म्या उद्या येनार न्हाय. पोरगी पोटशी हाय. डागदर म्हनला उंद्याची तारिक हाये..." "शिट, चीप वर्कर क्लास साला, कारणच पाहिजे दांड्या मारायला. उगाच नाही ह्यांच्या नशिबी धुणं भांडी येत. डिलीव्हरी डेट अशी लॉटरी मिळाल्यासारखी अचानक येत असते का कधी ?" तिसऱ्या मजल्यावरच्या खिडकीतून खाली बघताना समोरच्या रिक्षावाल्याच पोर त्याला गटारीतून क्रिकेटचा बॉल काढताना दिसलं. आपण काहीतरी घाणेरडा प्रकार करतो आहोत ह्याचा किंचितही विचार न करता ते पोर पुन्हा खेळायलाही लागलं. "कसं होणार याचं ... खर तर रोगराईला हेच कारण आहेत. ह्यांना कितीही पैसे द्या, सुविधा द्या, कधी सुधारणार नाहीत. पोरांना सांभाळायची औकात नाही तर काढायची ... " तेवढ्यात सेलफोन वाजला - अलेक्स कॉलिंग - "डोन्ट वरी अलेक्स, आय टूक केयर ऑफ इट. वुई शुड बी गुड नाउ..." आपल्या आयफोन वरच्या स्क्रीनवर खेळता खेळता रॉय पुटपुटला - "ह्या यु-आय वाल्यांना काही काम नको. इनमिन ३-४ बटण दाखवायची. १० - ५ क्लिक इवेन्ट लिहायचे पण त्यातही मिजास ह्यांची. अरे डेडलाईन कशी असते ते आम्हाला माहित खर तर. काम आम्ही करणार, क्रेडीटसाठी ही लोकं पुढ ..."

एव्हाना दुपारचे २ वाजले होते. आंघोळ करून रॉय खाण्यासाठी म्हणून उडुपी हॉटेलमध्ये गेला. अण्णानी आपलं नेहमीचं गिऱ्हाईक असल्याने "जारे पिंट्या, सायबांना काय पाहेल ते बग" असा हुकुम सोडला. "सॉफ्टवेयर इंजिनियर, आणि तो पण एका एम-एन-सी मध्ये म्हणजे काही साधी गोष्ट नव्हे. समोरच्या कुलकर्ण्यांचा मंदार मेक्यानिकल इंजिनियर असूनही आज १५ हजार महिन्यावर काम करतोय. ते सुद्धा फिरतीची नौकरी करून. नशीब आणि खडतर कष्टाचं फळ आहे कॉम्प्युटर इंजिनियर होणं ..." समोरच्या टेबलावर बसलेल्या दोन बायका (सरासरी शिक्षण इयत्ता ११ वी, सरासरी वय ५० वर्षे ) वेळ जावा म्हणून तोंडाच्या वाफा दवडत होत्या "आमचा संजू यंदा बारावी पास झालाय, काही झालं तरीही बाई मी त्याला कॉम्प्युटरलाच घालणार आहे. बाकीच्या फिल्डमध्ये आता काही राम उरला नाहीये." या दोन बायांचा हा संवाद नकळत रॉयच्या मनाला सुखावून गेला. ऑर्डर येईपर्यंत टाईमपास म्हणून शेजारी ठेवलेल्या अंकावर त्याचं लक्ष गेलं - आजच्या अंकाबरोबर पहा विवाहेच्छुक मुलामुलींसाठी रेशीमबंध ही पुरवणी. तुमचा प्रतिसाद कळवा, मुलामुलींचे पत्ते, फोन नंबर मिळवा. मासिक अंक फक्त १०० रु. मध्ये उपलब्ध ! पुरवणीवरच्या सुंदर मुलीच्या चित्राकडे पाहता पाहता त्याने नकळत माहिती वाचायला सुरुवात केली. "ब्राह्मण हवा, पोटजात कुठलीही चालेल, शक्यतो कोकणस्थ असावा, उच्च शिक्षित असावा, कॉम्प्युटर इंजिनियर चालेल, पुण्यात घर असावे, मोठ्या कंपनीत उच्च पदावर नौकरी करणारा असावा, निर्व्यसनी - मनमिळावू - जबाबदार .... " शब्दागणिक रॉयचा स्वताबद्दलचा रिस्पेक्ट आणि इतरांबद्दलचा तिरस्कार वाढतच होता. एक्स्पोनेन्शिअल ग्रोथ सारखा... शेजारच्या टेबलवर बसून बिडी मारणाऱ्या आणि डाव्या हाताने फुर्र फुर्र करत कटिंग पिणाऱ्या माथाडी कामगाराकडे शेवटचा "डीस्गस्टिंग .." लूक देऊन रॉय निघाला.

"बघतो मी आई. ऑफिसमध्ये विचारतो. मला २ दिवसाची सुट्टी काढून जावं लागेल." आईशी फोनवर बोलताना त्याला नाही म्हणायला पटकन काही कारण सुचलं नाही . आजोबांच्या पेन्शनच्या कामाला त्याला तालुक्याच्या ठिकाणी जावं लागणार होतं. बऱ्याच वर्षात रॉयने आजोळी चक्कर मारली नव्हती. कारणच नाही पडलं कधी. आधी अभ्यास आणि आता नौकरी - त्याला कारणांची कधीही कमतरता नव्हती. कर्जत तसं तालुक्यापेक्षा मोठ गाव, पण रॉयला पुणं सोडलं तर बाकी सगळ्यातच काही ना काही उण दिसायचं. बसमधली ती प्रचंड गर्दी, गावठी धोतर - सदरे - फेटे, त्यांचं दुनियाभरच सामान पोत्यात भरलेलं, बसच्या मधल्या भागातच पसारा मांडून बसलेल्या बायका आणि त्यांची रडकी पोरं. सगळं कसं किळस आणणारं. एशियाडने जायचा प्रश्नच नव्हता, ती कर्जतला थांबायला तर पाहिजे ना. जाण्याआधीच परत कधी येऊ असं झालं होतं रॉयला. ५ - ६ तासाच्यात्या छळातून कशीबशी त्याची सुटका झाली. कर्जतला धुळीचा लोट मागे उडवत ती बस एकदाची थांबली. घरचा वाडा विकून आता बरीच वर्षं झाली होती. स्वताच्याच आजोळी परकं वाटायला लागलं होतं. "ते तहसीलदारांच्या ऑफिसला कसं जायचं ?" शेजारीच उभ्या असलेल्या, त्यातला त्यात सभ्य वाटणाऱ्या माणसाला रॉयने विचारलं. "लाम हाय इतुन. तलाठ्याच्या हापिसला जीपड पकडून जावं लागतं. त्या वडाखाली मिळल बगा तुम्हास्नी गाडी." सभ्य माणसाने दोन दातांच्या फटीतून १२० - ३०० ची पिचकारी मारत सूचक उत्तर दिलं. रॉय जीपजवळ जाऊन थांबला. "तलाठी हापिस, तलाठी हापिस, १ शीट, १ शीट " एका सीटसाठी जीव काढणाऱ्या त्या ड्रायव्हरची तो वाट पाहायला लागला.

"अय पोरा, अय अय ... सूद आली का नाय अजून ? हिकडं बघ ..." एक अनोळखी माणूस एका हातात फोडलेला कांदा आणि दुसऱ्या हातात पाण्याचा तांब्या पकडून रॉयला उठवत होता. "तुज्या जीपला आक्षीडन झालाय. बाप्पाची किरपा म्हणून तू तेवडा जिता राईला." रॉयला शॉकमधून सावरुही न देता त्या माणसाने सगळे डीटेल्स सांगितले. "आर म्या म्हनतो हिकडं डोंगरावरच्या देवीला साडी नेशिव. येक वन बी न्हाई तुज्या आंगावर. चमत्कारच म्हनायचा." आयुष्याची ही असली भयाण क्षणभंगुरता अनुभवायची रॉयची ही पहिलीच वेळ होती. नम्ब होण काय असतं हे त्याला आता कळत होत. जे काय झालं ते सगळं विसरून जावसं वाटत होत त्याला. समोरच दारूचा गुत्ता दिसला, क्षणाचाही विचार न करता तो आत गेला. "कौन कम्बक्थ बरदाश्त करने के लिए पिता हैं, हम तो पीते हैं सब कुछ भुलाने के लिए ..." आतल्या गड्याला एक "चपटी" ची ऑर्डर देऊन सगळ्यात अंधाऱ्या कोपऱ्यात जाऊन रॉय बसला. एरव्ही चकचकीत टेबलवरती बसणाऱ्या माशिचाही राग राग करणारा रॉय आज देशी दारूच्या गुत्त्यात, कडवट विषारी वासात, अट्टल दारूड्यांमध्ये बसला होता. "काय दोस्ता, पैलीच पारी वाटत..." अतिशय घाणेरड्या वासापाठोपाठ एक मद्यधुंद पण गंभीर आवाज आला.एक ३५ - ४० वर्षाचा माणूस त्याला हसत विचारत होता, जणू काही त्याला हे असं जगण माहीतच होतं - नेहमीचंच झालं होत.

"पहिली म्हणजे ? तुमच्यासारखं रोज इकड पडलेला नसतो मी..." रॉयने चिडून उत्तर दिलं. पलीकडच्या त्या माणसाला कोण जाणे ते उत्तर फारच लागलं, दारूचा इफेक्ट असावा कदाचित. "पोरा, तुला म्हाईत नाही काय बी अजून. शिकला सावरलेला दिसतोयस, तुम्हा पोरांना ४ आकडे काय मोजता आले, त्या डबड्यापुढ बसून बटन काय दाबता आली, लय आक्कल आली असा वाटतं का काय ?" "कुणाच्या तोंडी लागतो आहे मी ... " रॉय पुटपुटला, तितक्यात तो माणूस रॉयच्या समोरच येऊन बसला. "माझं नाव संपत. असा बायल्यावानी काय बोलतु ? मर्द असशील तर मह्याबरोबर चल, तुला दावतो कुणाच्या त्वांडी लागतोयस ते ..." आता मात्र रॉय घाबरला. उसण अवसान आणीत म्हणाला "कुठ जायचं ?" " कुठ म्हंजे ? धंद्याचा टाईम हाये. दवाखान्यात चल. तुला दावतो कुट जात असतो म्या दारू ढोसून ते." का कोण जाणे, रॉयला संपत बरोबर जावस वाटलं आणि फारसा विचार न करता तो निघाला. कुठेतरी संपतच्या बोलण्यात सच्चाई वाटली त्याला. दारू पिऊन लोकं नेहमी खरच बोलतात हे खरोखर खरं असेल असं त्याला वाटलं. गुत्त्यापासून थोड्याश्या लांब अंतरावर असलेल्या सरकारी हॉस्पिटलमध्ये संपत रॉयला घेऊन जात होता. हॉस्पिटलच्या दारातच दोन बायका हंबरडा फोडून रडत होत्या, एकीचा नवरा आणि एकीचा तरणाबांड मुलगा अपघातात वारला होता. समोरच उभा असलेला पोलीस इन्स्पेक्टर संपतला पाहताच "नवीन केस हाये, सायबान रिपोर्ट लौकर मागितलाय. पटापट उरक ..." असं म्हणाला. नुसतंच मान हलवून "हो " असं म्हणत संपतने रॉयला बरोबर येण्याचा इशारा केला. पोलिसाला पाहून दारूच्या नशेत असताना सुद्धा रॉयच्या आतला सुसभ्य आणि सुसंकृत माणूस "पोलिसाच प्रकरण आहे म्हणजे जरा चार हात लांब राहिलेलंच बऱ.." असा व्यावहारिक विचार करत होता. हॉस्पिटलच्या एका निर्जन कोपऱ्यातल्या रूममध्ये एक डॉक्टर संपतची वाट पाहत होता. आत आल्या आल्याच डॉक्टरनी संपतकड एक कागद दिला, "सुरु कर" असं सांगितलं आणि त्यानंतर रॉयने जे काही पाहिलं त्याने त्याची नशा खाडकन उतरली...

संपतने पांढरा गाऊन घातला होता आणि शक्य तितक्या निर्विकारपणे तो त्या डेड बॉडीवर हातोडा चालवीत होता... "माय जॉब सक्स ..." असं म्हणण वेगळं आणि अनुभव घेण वेगळ हे रॉयला आता कळत होत. पोस्टमॉर्टम करणाऱ्या माणसांच्या बाबतीत त्याने आधी ऐकलं होतं पण ते पाहायला सुद्धा मिळेल असं वाटलं नव्हतं त्याला. काय न्याय असतो ना देवाच्या दरबारी सुद्धा ? जिवंत माणसाच्या शरीराची चिरफाड करणाऱ्या डॉक्टरला मान सन्मान, प्रेताची चिरफाड करणाऱ्याला अशी वागणूक... दुसऱ्या माणसाबद्दल, तेही थर्ड क्लास काम करणाऱ्या माणसाबद्दल इतका विचार करणं त्याच्या स्वभावात बसत नव्हतं. साधारण अर्ध्या तासाने संपत रूमच्या बाहेर आला. आता त्याचीसुद्धा धुंदी उतरली होती. रॉयच्या डोळ्यात खोलवर बघत म्हणाला "पोट आहे, करावं लागत. तुला वाटत असणार बेवड्याला दारूपायी पैशे लागत असतील, म्हनून काहीतरी काम करतुया... बरोबरे तुझबी. बैलगाडी जशी बिना वंगन चालत न्हाई तसा मी बिना दारूचा चालत न्हाई. चल घरला चल, चा पाजतो..." एका झोपडीवजा घरात गेल्यावर संपतने मुलीला चहा करायला सांगितलं. "हिच्यापाई जगतूया बास... बाकी काई बी न्हाई. बापजाद्याची जिमीन व्हती, भौबंदकीत तीबी गेली. दारुड्याबरोबर कोन ऱ्हानार, बायको सोडून गेली. गावातले लोक शेन घालतात त्वांडात, बायकुला संभाळता नाई आलं म्हनून. आता हिला शिकवायची हाय, लगीन करून द्यायचा हाय. पैका लागतो सगळ्याला, म्हनून हे सगळं. गावात दुसर कुनी असलं काम न्हाई करत. पन म्या म्हनतो भीक तर नाई ना मागत, जवर आंगात रग हाय, तवर म्या हे करनार. काम सोप्पं न्हाई ते, येक दिसात न्हाई केलं, तर मुडद्याला हात न्हाई लावता येत दुसऱ्या दिशी. एका मुडद्यापाठी २० रुपडे, असा भाव हाये माझा. " हे सगळ ऐकत असताना रॉय स्वताची त्या माणसाबरोबर तुलना करत होता. पहिल्यांदा कदाचित दुसऱ्या कुणाची डेडलाईन महत्वाची वाटत होती. अवरली रेट म्हणजे दुसरं काही वेगळं नसतं असंच वाटलं त्याला. "तू शहरातला हायेस, क्यामप्युटर चालवत असशील..." रॉयची तंद्री मधेच तुटली.. "हो बरोबर आहे, मी कॉम्प्युटर इंजिनियर आहे. पुण्याला काम करतो. घरी आई, बाबा, आजी, आजोबा असतात. इकड आजोबांचं पेन्शनच काम होतं म्हणून आलो होतो." चहाचा शेवटचा घोट संपवत रॉय उठला. (वाटलं नाही हे सगळ शिकायला मिळेल म्हणून ... ) मनातल्या मनातच रॉय पुटपुटला. "पुण्याला आला कि फोन करा, भेटू परत ... " आपला फोन नंबर एका चिठ्ठीवर लिहून देत रॉय निघाला. पेन्शनच काम संपवून घरी जाताना त्याला पहिल्यांदा कर्जतविषयी आपुलकी वाटत होती. कम्प्युटरच्या १४ इंच स्क्रीनच्या बाहेरसुद्धा एक जग आहे, आणि त्यातही संघर्ष आहे हे त्याला कळून चुकलं होत...

त्याच्या घराजवळच्या उडुपी हॉटेलमधल्या त्या माथाडी कामगाराबरोबर, चकचकीत कपड्यात एक कटिंग आणि एक सिगारेट मारताना त्याला पाहण आता कॉमन झालं होत !

शिव्या ... शाप की वरदान ?

2010-09-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

भाषासमृद्धी असा काहीतरी शब्द खूप लहानपणी, दहावीत असताना कुठेतरी वाचला होता. तेंव्हा कोण्या एका विद्वानाने भाषा कोणत्या गोष्टींमुळे व्यापक बनते यावर एक खूप मोठा प्रबंध लिहिला होता. जशी प्रत्येक रिसर्च पेपर वाचताना होते तशीच मळमळ मला तेंव्हा सुद्धा झाली होती, आश्चर्याची गोष्ट म्हणजे मला तो विद्वान काय म्हणत होता हे समजत होतं. आणि त्याच्याही पुढे म्हणजे मी बऱ्याच मुद्द्यांवर त्याचाशी असहमत ही होत होतो. पण त्या काळी माझ्यातला लेखक हा लेखक कमी आणि मार्कांसाठी हपापलेला विद्यार्थी जास्त असल्याने तेंव्हा मी फारसा विचार केला नव्हता, प्लस तसे रसग्रहण टाईप चे प्रश्न बोर्डाच्या परीक्षेत येत नाहीत असं "२१ - अपेक्षित" मध्ये लिहिलंही होतं, त्यामुळे त्याच्यासाठी वेळ देण्याचा काहीच संबंध नव्हता. आज वपुंच्या काही गोष्टी वाचत होतो आणि साईड बाय साईड विचारही चालू होता तेंव्हा मात्र मला रहावलं नाही आणि मग लिहायला घेतलं.

माझ्यामते कुठल्याही भाषेची खोली किंवा समृद्धी ही त्या भाषेत असलेल्या शब्दांनी मोजली पाहिजे. तुमच्या भावना तुम्हाला सहजतेने , अवघड शब्दांच्या कुबड्या न वापरता आणि अचूकपणे सांगता आल्या की ती भाषा समृद्ध, असा साधा रुल वापरला पाहिजे. शक्य तितके कमी व्याकरणाचे नियम, मामुली शुद्धलेखनाच्या अटी, आणि ऑटो स्पेल चेक / करेक्शन असलेली भाषा माझी सगळ्यात आवडती भाषा असेल. मराठी भाषा ही बऱ्यापैकी आवडत्या भाषेंच्या गटात येणारी ... कारण एकच - मराठीत असलेला असाधारण शिव्यांचा शब्दसंग्रह ! महाराष्ट्रातच बघा ना - खानदेश, विदर्भ, मराठवाडा, मध्य महाराष्ट्र, कोकण ... प्रत्येक ठिकाणांनी आपली स्वतंत्रता जपली आहे. प्रत्येकाच्या शिव्यांचे कर्ते आणि कर्म एकच, पण सर्वनाम आणि विशेषनामांचे उच्चार आणि ढंग वेगळा, क्रियापद वेगळी - आपली स्वताची एक झलक दाखवणारी. काहींमध्ये ग्रामीण चावटपणा आहे तर काहींमध्ये शहरी सुबकता. काहींमध्ये मराठवाडी ठसका आहे तर काहींमध्ये मालवणी मसाला, काही ठेवणीतले शालजोडे मारणार तर काही सरळ तोंडावर बेछूटपणे सत्त्याहत्तर कुळांचा उद्धार करणार. काही "च्यामायला इंग्रजीतल्या शिव्यात काई दम नाई भो" असं छाती पुढे करून ठसकावणार तर काही "एफ - वर्ड्स" वापरण्यात आनंद मानणार. शिव्या देणं हे चांगलं की वाईट हा वेगळा मुद्दा आहे पण शिव्या देण्याची ताकद देणं ही त्या भाषेची खूप मोठी खुबी आहे असं मी मानतो.

मला सांगा - शाळेत असताना तुमची कधी मारामारी झाली असेल तर कोणत्या शब्दांनी तुम्हाला भांडायचं बळ दिलंय ? बालचित्रवाणीमध्ये ऐकलेल्या शब्दांनी की फटका खाल्ल्यावर त्या क्षणी मनात आलेल्या शिव्यांनी ? आजही जेंव्हा भारतात पाकिस्तानकडून दहशतवादी हल्ले होतात तेंव्हा पहिला शब्द काय येतो मनात ? "निषेध" की दुसरा काही ? खरं सांगायचं झालं तर शिव्या माणसाला माणूस बनवतात - त्याच्या मधलं animal instinct जागं ठेवतात. निसर्गाने दिलेल्या देणगीतली भावना नावाची गोष्ट दुसऱ्यापर्यंत पोहोचवण्याच काम करतात. पण जगातल्या अनेक दुसऱ्या चांगल्या गोष्टींप्रमाणे त्यांच्याकडं आजही वाईट नजरेनेच पाहिलं जातं. आजही शिवीगाळ करणारा माणूस हा अशिक्षित, असभ्य आहे असं समाजात मानलं जातं. वास्तविकत : शिव्या देणारा माणूस त्याच्या मनातलं सगळं बोलून दाखवत असतो, याचाच दुसरा अर्थ तो मनात काहीच ठेवत नसतो, याचाच तिसरा अर्थ तो "पोटात एक आणि ओठात एक" टाईप लोकांमध्ये येत नाही असा होतो.

आपल्याला ज्या सिस्टीमने शिकवलं आहे, त्या सिस्टीमच्या झापड लावलेल्या नजरेच्या बाहेर सुद्धा एक वेगळी दुनिया आहे हे जरा बघा एकदा. वर्षानुवर्ष लोकांनी सांगितलेल्या आणि आंधळेपणाने स्वीकारलेल्या गोष्टी बरोबर की स्वताला पटतं ते बरोबर हे बघा विचारून स्वताला. बघा एकदा शांत डोक्याने आणि स्वच्छंदी मनाने विचार करून ...

Tandoori night

2009-07-03T13:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday - Thursday, July 02, 2009 will be remembered as The Miraculous Day in the history of 207 Main Street. With the grace of Almighty and under the veteran guidance of a room mate Sushrut, coupled with a supreme power of world wide web; I cooked the first dish of my life -Tandoori Chicken. For those who do not think it as an extraordinary achievement for me, I will have to share some glimpses of my past.

I came to Binghamton in August 2008 and since then till yesterday I haven't cooked a single dish. I know, this is not something to be proud of but my room mates are so caring that they did not allow me to cook for last two semesters. Or if you see from other angle, they did not want to take risk of "swallowing" the food that I cooked. You see, medicines and clinical checkups are very costly here. This doesn't mean I was not helping in kitchen - but I was more of a rookie , just another guy who can "cut" vegetables, onions and anything for that matter. But now, I could be the most important person in the kitchen - someone who understands howto's of cooking. With this feather of "cook" in my hat, a sense of independence passed my mind. I felt like a free man after getting my first job, but the feeling of seeing myself as a cook was much stronger. Now that I can stand tall on my own feet, I don't have to listen to the blabbering of Sooraj, Sachin, Anurag and Rohan. No longer I will be known as a man who eats boiled eggs all (any ?) time !

I got a kind help from my room mates in this venture and also this link was really helpful in setting up the oven's temperature and adding some extra seasoning that we might have missed. This was the first time I learned that cooking is not difficult, it is more of an art than a science or a mundane task. All you need is a help of some hands, a really good recipe, and most importantly - a good heart, a huge appetite, a stomach (if you understand what I mean) and taste of a food lover ...

Looking forward to cook more ....

Appreciations, Encouragements, Teasing, What's so great in it ? like comments ... Welcome !

MS renamed MJ - Masters of Jugaad

2009-05-14T23:07:00.000-07:00

Jugaad - an arrangement or a work around, which have to be used because of lack of resources and/or will power.

Some people here in my university have enlightened my mind with this word by their exemplary performance. A google search on Jugaad gives some positive meanings also, but here I do not intend to mean it positively. For me, it is an act of using people ( by some uncanny tricks ) for your own benefits and getting rewarded for something which you do not deserve. A person who is known for such acts is called as Jugaadu in colloquial Hindi language.

I have been observing few people are getting extremely good grades in many subjects despite of their very little participation in doing things on their own. These people make a network of similar souls and share code, assignments and everything that they could share. Needless to say, they themselves do not put in infinitesimally small amount of time / efforts in making it happen, instead they ask for help to some of their friends ( here literal meaning of friends should not be taken into consideration. Friend for them is someone who can directly share rather give his code without even worrying about the consequences - and their "friendship" could break into pieces the moment a motive is achieved). Few days back, I was extremely agitated by some incidents and wanted to write about it, but my finals were approaching so did not really get time for that. Now that I am free, I will be kicking some serious asses today.

Copying somebody's work and putting it under your name is a crime in itself but many people disagree to this point. Chalta hain, dekha jayega, sab karte hain like statements are nothing but a cowardly act of supporting your baseless points. Someone who puts in efforts and works out things must get credit for his / her work. And somebody who is copying his / her work must get punished, I know I am sounding really harsh on this point but you would think exactly same if you were in my position. The root of this problem goes right into the mentality of human. Many of us (including me) want things to be available easily and readily and do not want to take efforts in making something work. But I think, higher education has offered me a chance to disprove the above statement and I should try my level best to do so. Some people do not seem to mind this fact seriously, though. All of them want to have a very high GPA and a very high paying job, but they want it without taking any pains. A jugaadu in general will find another talented / hard working guy and will do anything to please him / her , cause he / she is the one who is obviously doing all work and our friend is least bothered about it. I am not against making good teams but think everyone should have an active participation in their work if all of them want same grades. Some people are even more worse, they themselves don't know what is going on in their project and somehow end up getting close to 'A', and preach others how easy the subject was and how stupid others are. Such flavor of jugaadu gives me nothing but aggravation.

I would be more than happy if the problem ends here. But alas, as they say one rotten apple spoils the barrel, a jugaadu advocates and attracts someone with similar characteristics. When such people find a higher position in any hierarchy, they start expanding their vicious circle until the system becomes a big, intermingled web of mess. Many deserving candidates get nothing but rejection when such people make their decisions, and that is a serious problem. After that overwhelming incident few days back, I felt some people do not deserve a master's degree - forget about a job in United States.

But one can't help this - there are always some elements in every system who are corrupted and the system is functioning properly only because of some honest people. Fortunately God has given us that much ability to decide where we want to see ourselves.

Whatever - one thing is true - MS is no more Master of Science for me, it's Master of Jugaad !

Words of wisdom

2009-04-19T17:45:00.000-07:00

Many times one does not find wisdom in books, the pure and heavenly presence of wisdom can only be felt when you get to the state of enlightenment. Wisdom should not necessarily come from highly educated person, often some experiences of common man and quotes teach you so many things which you would never understand by reading books. To add to this argument, one does not have to use words with deep, mystic meaning. In fact, the simpler is the word, better is the effect. I always had a dream of being a truck driver since childhood, don't ask the reason but somehow I felt he understands world better than rest of us. Maybe because he has seen and explored world much more than you and me, he has a higher insight of complexities of human life.

My dream of being a truck driver shattered into pieces when I found engineers and doctors with their beautiful wives; realities of life and steep inclination towards materialistic things once again conquered the pure, pristine ambition of a child. It was going very routinely until yesterday the thought popped in my mind and I started it putting here. I would say that truck driver's contribution towards the human development is always neglected and considered inferior. I know the society is always biased towards intellects who are highly educated than the real wizards, but heck ! I will not second society on this, I have some examples which will prove that truck drivers also have equal depth of knowledge as that of the celebrated philosophers. I will be explaining meanings behind the one liners that you often find at the back of a truck, many of you mock it but I call it words of wisdom , so here it goes ( For those who do not have indic fonts installed mostly on Linux Box can install it from here ) -

चुन्नू मुन्नू दे पप्पा दी गड्डी |
- Don't laugh. It shows the earnest love of a father who is away from his family for many days because of the nature of his job. He is reviving memories of those unforgettable moments he spent with his offspring. I don't understand how come people remember those sad dialogues of A.K. Hangal in Sholay or Naseeruddin Shah's classic performance in Masoom and at the same time laugh at our driver's emotions.

दोस्ती पक्की, खर्चा अपना अपना |
- This is business buddy ! I have never seen any other better statement than this which clearly and succinctly expresses the boundaries between a friend and a parasite. If you know one, send it to me through a comment on this post.

खेतो पे किसान, सीमा पर जवान |
- I don't think there is any dispute over this line, as told in our 4th standard's social science's book , we all know Indian economy is highly dependent on it's agricultural development. And it is the truth that we have a sound sleep every night only because our jawans are trying really hard to protect our borders from intruders.

जगह मिलने पर साइड दी जायेगी |
- Many of us do not understand the simple meaning behind this line. It shows the clarity of thought and a level of maturity to understand need and urgency of others. How else a truck driver could convey his thoughts to someone who is behind him? They do not have high tech wireless radio systems to exchange words in case of urgency.

चलती है गाडी, उड़ती है धुल |
जलते हैं दुश्मन, खिलते हैं फूल ||
- Apparently, these two statements look unrelated, but as I said earlier, you need to keep your biased mind away in order to understand the hidden wisdom behind these lines. Our driver is saying that when someone makes progress, there are people who are always jealous of his / her achievements. But irrespective of their envious nature one has to keep travelling the path of glory. What a way to put things in such a simple words !

अमीरों की ज़िन्दगी बिस्कूट और केक पर |
ड्राईवर की ज़िन्दगी क्लच और ब्रेक पर ||
- I can see your laughing faces. But believe me, you need to have a heart and soul of a truck driver to understand the meanings of these lines. I am often amazed by seeing the driving skills of truck drivers and hence totally support this statement wholeheartedly.

नदी किनारे मैना बैठी, दाना खाए छल्ली दा |
तू तो राजा बन गया ड्राईवर, दिल ना लागे अकेली दा ||
- I don't know about you guys, but tears rolled on my cheeks when I first read these lines. Can you imagine the situation of driver's wife when he has to go for a long trip? Tell me, we see number of movies in which army men return to their posts on a very short notice, but why don't we apply same rule to truck drivers? Why is the approach so partial ?

पापा ना पियो शराब |
खरीद दो मुझे एक किताब ||
- Well, this is more of a self awareness kind of initiative. Yes, truck drivers are also human beings and they also need some education. And they don't want it to be told in a complicated manner. I appreciate the honesty behind these lines.

१८ के फूल, ८४ की माला |
बुरी नज़र वाले तेरा मुह काला ||
- I am a strong believer of believes, some of you guys derogatorily call it as superstitions. Since this is very close to truck driver's religious beliefs, let's not comment on it.

क्या साथ लाया है, क्या साथ ले जायेगा |
खाली हाथ आया था, खाली हाथ जायेगा ||
- See some similarity? Raksesh Roshan should be sued for stealing these lines. I think, now you people's perspective towards drivers should change significantly. If you trace the roots of these lines, you will find it in Bhagwad - Geeta.

मालिक की गाड़ी, ड्राईवर का पसीना |
चलती है रोड पर बनके हसीना ||
- This is my personal favorite. Truck driver's profession is still in demand because of these lines. See the self esteem and self respect ? Such lines make me still follow the good old dream of mine. It portrays a responsible, hard working and carefree bird like attitude of a driver which gives him the strength to walk the less traveled road. Hats off to your attitude guys !

Finally, I want to conclude - truck drivers are not like the one which we see in Hindi movies, they are normal humans like us with emotions. They also have problems and dreams like all of us. I honestly expect after reading this post, you guys will start respecting truck drivers in a same sense as you do with doctors, engineers and so called professionals.

Comments, suggestions, more words of wisdom are most welcome !

Sanjay Dutt's crap

2009-03-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

We all know that there is a big unending chain of incapable and uncreative political leaders in India. Sanjay Dutt added himself in that league yesterday by giving his debut speech. As always, he looked unprepared for his highly celebrated 'gandhigiri' stunt, at first I thought he was on medication or "high". As expected, in his small real life appearance ( which by the way is more difficult and real than the usual cinematic appearances ) Sanjay showed his lack of understanding about issues in India. And I believe this is not his fault. How can you expect someone who has spent his life in living a lavish style understand the problems of a common man ? Wearing Samajwadi Party's ( which is going to be the next most highly desired place for actors / actresses who have pending cases against them) laal topi, Sanjay addressed a big crowd that he came here not to give speeches but to work. Instead of telling how his political ambitions are helpful to the public of India, he wasted the time by giving crap about what his father has done for the country. I understand that when you do not have any points to put on table, you seek help from "mere pitaji" like fillers, but he should know that not everyone is as dumb as those who attended the rally in Lucknow.

There has always been discussions if a party should allow a candidate of criminal background to campaign for elections but these discussions always ended with no decision. I believe, majority of people in Indian Democracy are still blind, if they are not, then they would not have gathered in such a large number. Movie / Cricket stars in India are praised to such a high level that people start thinking them as real life heroes, capable of doing anything anytime - single handedly. If we see the history of politics, southern India has given many film star come politicians who are found to be negligibly concerned about politics. Many of them actually are not even serious in attending parliamentary discussions. No wonders, why Govinda, Jaya Bachhan, Dharmendra get notices for their very low attendance in houses. Besides I seriously doubt their intellectual understanding about the issues that are discussed in meetings. You do not need to be a Ph.D. to be a member of parliament, but at least you should have experienced something in your life which will make you considerate about people's problems. Someone who has no idea of what is going on, is next to a useless creature in such discussion.

I did not see how news channels spread this news, but certainly some of them must have showed how Sanjay Dutt is close to Mahatma Gandhi ( come on, there has to be something in Sanjay's life which bears exact similarity to what happened with Gandhi, you don't know - he might have fought for prisoner's rights when he was arrested ) or how he has transformed into an actual person ( which to some sharp minds counter intuitively suggest what he WAS NOT earlier ) after his TADA case and all. Some of them might have showed Sanjay's photos feeding a beggar on streets, or donating for an orphanage. Some channels might be broadcasting this as a breaking news - Sanjay Dutt ki Gandhigiri, parde ka mahatma ab aam jindagi me . I will not be astonished to see this news some day - Sanjay Dutt elected as a MoP defeating ( someone like Ram Naik ) by 40,000 votes in loksabha elections. I would also not be surprised if Mohammad Azharuddin gets elected with similar majority. I better not comment on what will happen - some wise mind has already said it before - which aptly applies to mentality of Indian public -

विनाशकाले विपरित बुद्धी ...

Valentine's Day - What else ?

2009-02-14T22:22:00.000-08:00

Alright, this fits quite well on a new year's eve but let me take this opportunity and say - Every valentine comes up with a new "hope". Sharp readers will certainly point out the pun intended here. I don't know about couples but I am trying to represent singles or so called lukhha community here on my blog. I took some time off to read around 2-3 newspapers today - they are almost completely filled with stories of how couples met 40-50 years ago and are still together, how did they celebrate their first valentine and all. Nobody, literally nobody wrote anything about single people. I think this is not fair and hence thought of writing something in support of singles.

Many people including those with whom I am quite acquainted and those whom I hardly know asked me a same question today - "What did you do on valentine's ?" I am damn sure many of those know the answer but they wanted to hear it from me. So here it goes -" Well, I did my assignment today - wrote a small recursive descent parser." Of course - when you are doing master's in my university and you are single then this is pretty much of what you can do ! Anyways, university and the-pain-of-being-there is a different story all together. Coming to the point of hope, every couple should try and find out their single friends and try to set them up somehow. Not to mention, they should do this while keeping in mind the mutual compatibility between both parties. That way, they can attain the real grace of cupid. Instead of cornering singles or almost denying their existence by NOT writing or mentioning anything about them on this day, they could do a real charity work. Nothing is more angelic or saintly than connecting two minds :-D

I am not saying that "It sucks to be single". There are certain advantages of being single which are already mentioned in my last year's post. But I could not see the mournful faces of some of my friends and can't stand up to the intensity of feelings that they are burying inside them. As a good friend, I owe them this post. I often hear it from people and many times see it in movies that everyone should fall in love at least once. But unfortunately, people forget that there are some living entities present on this mother Earth who are extremely eligible to be a couple one day. But they can't make it because they don't find the perfect match, this is not the lack of ability but the dearth of chance. When some gifted souls pass on the light to these (currently unfortunate ) guys, that day my friends , will be the REAL VALENTINE'S DAY for all of us.

Amen ...

Things about situation comedy

2009-01-04T22:13:00.000-08:00

With a few notable exceptions, I never used to follow serials before. But recently I found out some things about these serials which make them popular. There is something in these serials which make you follow them. This is probably the reason why I check Project-Free-TV to see if somebody posted How I Met Your Mother‘s links or not. It all started when I saw Friends for the first time. That was the most amazing sitcom I ever saw, and when I compared it with the serials which I used to hate, I found a great difference. These are some of the points that make situation comedies (sitcoms) famous –

The hangout place – In HIMYM, there is this bar called MacLaren's where the group meets almost every day and discusses their routines which often take a hideous turn. In Friends, it used to be Central Perk, the place where these guys had fun.

Characters with unique and bizarre characteristics – This is the essence of sitcoms. Each character has some weird traits, often to make things little more interesting. Friends has a great combo of such characters which made them a real success, HIMYM is not that great as Friends, but not bad either.

Sarcasm – I am a great fan of sarcastic people and believe that sarcasm should be considered as one of the most important things that human needs in order to survive. Chandler Bing is my favorite character in Friends and Barney Stinson in HIMYM. If given a chance, I would definitely like to meet those script writers who compose their dialogues. This job is really tough and needs a high level of creativity. So to make a sitcom famous, there has to be a sarcastic person who himself need not be a great character, but someone who knows how to hit the bull’s eye.

Differences – When I saw some episodes of Scrubs, I didn’t like them much, maybe because all of these characters belong to same hospital and there is nothing new in their lives. I mean there are some good moments but I never felt like laughing my heart out anytime, which was often the case with Friends. If the serial has few characters that go to totally different work places, then there are higher chances of getting variety of experiences, which adds a lot of masala in the plot.

Bindings and Breakups are important – The show must go on. Nobody feels too bad when someone breaks up, nobody feels too good either when someone gets into relationship. In fact, more the ups and downs in a character’s life more are the chances to create funny situations. In a comedy serial, you don’t expect a relationship graph as a straight line with slope 1. This might not be true about the serials I used to like before 6 years, but now I know that ups and downs are part of life, I take them very lightly and appreciate the comic sense behind it.

Making sure that addendums are taken out from time to time – Addendums here mean the characters which are important for an episode or two. You don’t really care what the hell happened to them when they are done with those episodes. This is difficult to achieve each time, some people might like the addendum and they may feel like he / she should be a part of group, but no. If you compare this point with usual soap serials, for them following this point is next to impossible. Their life can’t just go without complications, there has to be an infinitely long chain of family relations, with at least one extra marital affair between every possible pair. Indian soap operas might rule their world for the height of pathetic creations and series of nonsense incidents. There are some serials where the main character just do not die, it’s like he / she is immortal, time never ages them, even if it, the character is so strong by will that it can survive for almost ten generations. Anyways, I can write a separate post on my take on soap operas, don’t want to eat up space here.

Showing the facts – I like this point very much. Sitcoms are very good at showing what they want to show. There is no ideology which they follow, no guidelines as such. They do not give out any social / non-social message which are similar to self help books. There is absolutely no problem when rest of characters make fun of the lead character and he / she does not always win. The main idea is the lead actor is so common that he / she could be one of us, one of the common people. The belief that he /she is amongst the aam janata creates a very positive impression on audience and hence these serials win.

Thoughts @ new year eve

2008-12-31T22:40:00.000-08:00

This new year has a really dull start. I was alone for last 5 days in my room since my room mates went to visit their relatives / friends. I was not hoping to have such a spoiled start after arriving in US, you know, generally US seems to be a fun place but after coming here, there were very few fun moments. I am not complaining about the life here but honestly, I was hoping to see a lot fun here, but India seems to be far better place. Last year I remember spending 31st with lots of friends in a boisterous way but this time it was dead cold. We used to have so much fun, ate at almost every place on JM road, checked out girls and then had a very long walk on quite roads at night ! I seem to miss everything here. It's freezing cold ( -12 degrees ) and I am enjoying the new year eve with rice and flower chi bhaji ! I could have gone to my friends, but doing that would have ended in the same way, I bet.

To add to this boredom, I was having cough and cold for last 4-5 days and slept for like 18 hours per day ( really wanted to do this after exams but certainly not this way ). Laptop and internet connection is the sole savior here, thanks to those streaming sites without which life could be hell. I am sleeping at about 3-4 AM and waking up at around 3 PM. Funny thing is in around 2 hours the sun starts setting off and it feels like night again. A cold weather, a heated room and a warm bed - it's so tempting to sleep. Some of my friends suggested to go to downtown and have some fun, but the problem is I don't drink or smoke so there is nothing much left for me to do in pubs. Plus, I am so good at dance that people might stop dancing after seeing few of my ganapati dance steps :-D Since I don't want to spoil their holidays, I don't go to pubs ( what a reasoning !). After doing a lot of thinking ( unfortunately, this is THE THING you do when you have nothing else to do ) I came to the conclusion that this is happening because of the place where I am living. Binghamton is really dull, maybe an ideal place for retired people who want to spend their last days in absolute serenity. I am too much used to crowded places and people and this quietness is killing me. If I were in a city like NYC, life could be much better. Sometimes I wonder how could these people celebrate their only festival in such way. There are so few people, maybe families coming and seeing each others once in a year or so. Younger ones go to pubs and discs and oldies go to churches, I believe this is what I've observed.

I am seeing this as part and parcel of my decision - being here in US. Maybe there is something in my plate worth waiting for. When you experience these days, you really know the value of people, relatives, friends. You don't feel their importance when they are with you, but only when you are alone like me. Each new year has taught me lots of things, this year comes with its own teachings and I won't forget it in rest of my life.

Enough of boring stuff , wish you all a rocking new year !!!

India - the land of eunuchs

2008-11-26T17:25:00.000-08:00

For those who don't know the meaning of eunuch, let me clear - it means following

A castrated man employed as a harem attendant or as a functionary in certain Asian courts.
A man or boy whose testes are nonfunctioning or have been removed.
An ineffectual, powerless, or unmasculine man.

I, being an Indian fit in that definition. Because there is nothing that I can do to save my country from those bastards who did the heinous act in Mumbai. I am feeling like a hijada or chakka since I don't have any control on thing happening in Mumbai. I can see news and feel extremely agitated by looking at dead bodies, I can curse politicians and the corrupted system once again, I can blame a certain group or religion for it at the same time I can point out the flaws of India's homeland security system, I can badmouth the so called “intelligence” agencies in India, I can suggest prime minister of India to launch a fierce war against Pakistan, I can tell him to surge in the military forces in Pak Occupied Kashmir, I can dream of driving a fighter aircraft bombing all over the terrorist hotspots. I can think of starting POTA once again. But in reality, nothing will happen. You know why, because we all are eunuchs. We can only see them coming with weapons in hands, starting carnage all over the place. This is fact, and they have proved it one more time!

Today news channels are filled up with "live coverage" of how terrorist could kick our asses and tomorrow they will cover special condolence / condemnation programs. Nothing will change; Mumbai will start its routine once again like nothing has happened. People will blame others, go home, sleep and start another day. Some pundits will argue that "this is life! Shit happens and it happens every other day!” Several people like me will waste yet another important page on internet by writing this useless post and nothing else. The government being the most powerful entity on Earth will promise that they will find out the brains behind it and start up a new team to investigate the matter (which might find out the real culprits). Bollywood will produce one more masala movie showing how powerful a just another stupid common man could be. Those who have lost their family members were the ones, who will remember this day for rest of their lives.

Great job India! The world salutes you for your cowardliness and inability to act on any terrorist attack! It salutes you for being consistent and successful target of terrorism ... There is no other country in this world which is as eunuch as you....

Keep it up! Let people die and let the evil win.....Hats off....

Celebration !

2008-09-27T23:02:00.000-07:00

Birthdays are always special occasions. And they become even more special when you celebrate them outside your home country. You meet some people just before arriving to a new place and get mixed up so easily that you never feel like staying with some strangers. That's the magic of friendship , I must say. My room mates celebrated my 25th birthday with such an enthusiasm that I almost forgot I am doing it away from home. Last time it was like a very quite kind of thing, with some of my best friends and yesterday it was with my new mates here in US.

Early in the morning ( FYI it was 10 in the morning, but that's still too early for me ! if you don't think it's true, ask each of my room mate how do we get ourselves going for algorithm's classes ) I got a call from Aai , so my day started with the best wishes of the loveliest person in my life. You know, we generally don't appreciate these phones and internet , maybe because they are overused and commonplace things now, but when someone calls you from thousands of miles, I still get a great feeling while talking to them. So after a long gtalk conversion of 1 hour ( I must write a testimonial for Google now ) and followed by a call from Aaba, I lazily started getting ready for routine.

After some greeting calls , at night we had a small get together with friends around and had fun ! Here is how I looked,

pardon me for the close up smile, but can't help, - with tooth wide open is my style ( people suggested to take bath and wear new clothes but didn't agree since I don't want to loose the original and non formal touch ... aah ! you are right, that was just a sincere attempt to hide my old lazy habits ) and I know, I am having a really bad haircut, but if you see - 12 $ is much worth considering than the time frame for which you look really messy ( due to the hair cut ), the catch here is people think of you as a person who is so busy in his assignments and projects that he doesn't care to take a look at mirror . I really look terrific without my glasses, you know when I saw this picture, I felt proud of my decision of wearing the glasses all the time, otherwise people here get frightened easily and could call 911 anytime they see me around :-D

comments , suggestions on new hair cut, on new resolutions ...
anyone ?

A budding coffee maker ...

2008-09-03T22:20:00.000-07:00

Until I got the on campus job, there was nothing that I could do except studying. And looking at my past record of being such a great student (:-D) , it was very difficult to pass time. Also, I was thinking of those who spend their precious time in reading my blog, you see - I am consistently searching for something presentable. Fortunately I got a job in on campus coffee shops called Gourmet Beans and Jazzman's Cafe. From the beginning I was open for all kind of on campus jobs including serving in dining halls to monitoring / assisting in public computer laboratory. And as it is I am not having money to spend (after working for two years, you should not ask your parents for money - is my thinking), the job was like a golden opportunity for me, and fortunately I grabbed it, and you people got a new topic to read!

So as it went, I was given a form which I was supposed to fill and then wait for the SSN to arrive, SSN here carries a lot of importance just like the ration card / driving license / PUC (in case you are nabbed by a mama ) in India. I was on the payroll after around 3 days of my application. On my first day, I met a guy called Steve - my manager to discuss my schedule. Steve happens to be a strict professional but an approachable person also. The first day at cafe house was kind of hectic for a new recruit like me. But people here are very generous and kind, my colleague Dorothy (DoT ! her pen name - the exclamation mark is a part of her name, FYI) and few other helped me a lot. There are these 10-15 different types of drinks and remembering how to prepare each is not a easy task for a beginner. I now know the life of a drink maker and cashier, when you work for a software company you feel like you are the only one who is highly stressed, but after seeing people working in dining halls and coffee shops, believe me - It's nothing different! In fact, a software developer's job should be considered less hectic than this, I must say. My roommates are working in few dining halls and I could see how exhausted they look when they come back home after work.

Anyways, forget the stress. Being a drink maker is a good thing for me, I can now make almost all coffee drinks that you people can see in CCD's and Barista's. Every good thing comes with its own counterpart, you can't see pretty chicks while making drinks - that's really bad :( I am trying to achieve both objectives though - I am thinking of devising a new work plan (remember Ford's assembly line principle?), where everyone gets ample time to check out the crowd :-). Cashier's job here is really easy, even a kid who has one working finger and some basic ability to count things and remember the names of beverages can survive. The counting machines are really sophisticated; with touch screen monitors, you just have to select drinks and charge by cards or cash.

Most important thing and a per month account for that sake -
Deductions -
House Rent - $275 + Grocery - $80 since I eat a lot + some more expenses which are rare in my case.
Earnings -
7 $ per hour - 16 hours per week - 64 hours per month = $448
Looks like I am saving some amount Uncle Sam …

Update - Recently I learned that there is going to be a tax deduction :-( which will be reimbursed in the next year.

Into the wild

2008-08-24T16:33:00.000-07:00

Man, after a long time there is something worth seeing. This movie was on my hit list since many days but did not get a chance to see it. It's rated at #137 on imdb, but its worth a top ranker. Anyways, who the hell cares about rankings? It's about a graduate student who turns down his normal life and becomes a voyager and then a super tramp ( Alexander Supertramp rather !) I was lucky to see it with subtitles which created a permanent reflection on my memory. I will never ever forget those great dialogues. If you like nature and if you feel great serenity by being close to it, this is THE movie for you. It's not just about the nature and about an urge to cross almost every human limitations to meet the eternal joy, but it has got a standing of its own.

I generally like out of the way movies, the ones with different story line and plot. And this one came with a complete package - eye catching cinematography, ultimate screenplay and lovely music; philosophy + drama + biography, what else can you expect from a movie. More than everything else, I really liked the message that the audience get ( or at least what I got). I initially used to think that one needs to live a highly materialistic life in order to get away from it, sounds somewhat similar to Osho's principle, whatever. And I somehow always used to think that materialistic people are happier than their counterparts. But when I saw this real life story, it changed my look towards the world. You know what, there is always a deep and mystic relation between human and nature, but we ruin it by our so called mannerism and principles of society. We look at everything, literally everything with a predisposed mind that we could not see something beyond certain limit, we judge people by the look they wear, by the language they speak, by so many things that we sometimes forget that human is also nature's creation and it has some instincts of its own, just like the free bird who lives its life in a way the nature has told it to do, in pure organic form. There are no boundaries, no false limits, no 'so called' fear !

Into the wild is a great movie and I really loved it. Some people might find it boring or a little bit slow, but that's how things happened in Christopher McCandless's life and I really respect him for whatever he has done. In fact, somewhere in my mind there is a rebellion who wants to go to the remote place without having any connection with the world. I don't like to replicate things but think this is a place where I should post some really good dialogues, see if you can find some philosophy behind it.

There is pleasure in pathless woods ,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is a society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea and the music in its roar ;
I love not man the less, but Nature more.

- Lord Byron

Rather than love, than money, than fairness, give me truth

- Thoreu

I will miss you too, Ron. But you are wrong if you think the joy of life comes principally from human relationships. God's placed it all around us. It's in everything. In anything that we can experience. People just have to change the way they think about those things. You ought to put a little camper on the back of your pick-up and go take a look at some of the great work god’s done out here in the American west.

TWO YEARS HE WALKS THE EARTH. NO PHONE, NO POOL, NO PETS, NO CIGARETTES, ULTIMATE FREEDOM. AN EXTREMIST. AND AESTHETIC VOYAGER WHOSE HOME IS... the road. Escaped from Atlanta. Thou shalt not return ‘cause the “west is the best.” And now after two rambling years, comes the final and greatest adventure. The climactic battle to kill the false being within and victoriously conclude the spiritual revolution. Ten days and nights of freight trains and hitchhiking, bringing him to the great white north. No longer to be poisoned by civilization, he flees, and walks alone upon the land
to become lost in the wild.

HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.

CALL EVERYTHING BY ITS RIGHT NAME.

What if you saw me running into your arms... Would you see then... ...what I see now?

- CHRISTOPHER JOHNSON MCCANDLESS.

First post from America

2008-08-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

Finally I reached US safely. Wednesday, 6th AUG - 2008 is going to be one of the most memorable days in my life. I came before two days in Mumbai and stayed at my uncle's place. Every day in last week I could see mixed emotions on my mother's face, little bit happy but more worried face. Her son is going to study abroad and doesn't know when he will be back. He doesn't have a cell phone to reach and doesn't have much money to spend. His son called her once when he reached airport but couldn't speak for more than a minute in four quarters of a dollar. The Internet is well developed these days but she doesn't know how to contact him through it. With the help of my brother she tried a lot but alas ! the place where I belong has got a load shedding of 9 hours and also the timings does not always match. When I talked to her on gtalk, she could listen to my voice but I did not. So, my brother typed in her words and I replied via my voice chat, so nice way to talk to your dear ones ! I could have bought a calling card or cell phone but looking at its prize I didn't feel doing so. Poor me !

Something about the first air travel -
I did not have a jet lag even though the flight was late by four hours. On the airport my cousin gave me lots of instructions of where things are and where should I start from, what should I do and what I shouldn't at custom checks. I was a bit numb while leaving my family but kept my face smiling ( didn't want to increase the intensity of my absence ). Didn't even cry since when I am here in US. The flight was good ( didn't have any benchmark to compare since this was my first air travel so felt quite okay. ) I did not like the vegetarian food served in flight and the entertainment facilities. Watched Kung Fu Panda for some time but somehow it stopped in between and did not come up again. After trying whatever I could, got fade up and slept for about 8 - 10 hours. I was feeling bit cold so wrapped up the blanket all over and had a nice sleep, in the mean time my friends kept on looking for me all the way but could not see my face :-D. After completion of formalities and custom checks at Newark Airport we stayed for an hour or so and got into the bus which was arranged by our seniors.

About seniors -
Three cheers to you guys ! You are so helpful and understanding that you almost made us feel this country as a home away from home. I really appreciate your help since the first day when we new students contacted you. Thanks for taking your time out of your busy schedules and helping us in every single thing which could have been a disaster without your help. I am looking forward for continuing this tradition ahead when I will be at your position after one year.

Some updates -
I am done with getting my student ID card, which means I could travel all over the city using the buses for free of cost, I could use internet facilities and of course ring up people in America from free phones available in the university. I really like the idea of free phones, I must say ;-) I am quite settled now and got a rented 5 BHK apartment with my room mates, costs 275$ ( including heat, water and electricity) per head, each of us have a separate bedroom and a common hall, kitchen. Two of my room mates are first time away from home and adjusting the turns of five people in one toilet + bathroom + basin room is going to be a real challenge and fun :-D

Looking forward for learning lots of new things which in turn means making lots of mistakes !

Clearing the last hurdle

2008-07-09T02:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a big day for me. After going through a painful process of applying to universities, waiting for their admits / rejects, gathering hell lot of document to prove that you are financially strong to survive in States; I was at the last resort yesterday - The Visa Interview. I remember someone saying, appearing for GRE and TOEFL is just the beginning, I whole heartedly agree to that statement now. This process has taught me lots of things of how system works and what it takes to leave your country and go to some unknown place for pursuing your educational interests. Right from getting the study material, preparing and appearing for exams, sending application packets, shortlisting universities, selecting between admits and not crying over rejects; I have got a lot of support from people around me and that's why I feel very much fortunate today. I messed up a lot in between the process, sometime I made terrible mistakes but somehow by hook or crook it got carried away; though I have to pay the prize of my laziness and nonchalance. For someone this post might seem like exaggeration of my feelings but it isn't, if you were at my place, you must have felt the same way. If you are unknown of the minute details and intricacies that needs to be cleared or thought of while / before appearing for a visa interview, go see someone who has gone through it.

I made some mistakes while filling up an online form and that delayed processing of my i20. This was essentially the reason for taking the visa date in July, ideally people get it done in 1st or 2nd week of June or beforehand. But what generally / easily happens with people never happens with me. This is a general observation and I have many experiences to support this argument. This D-Day interview was yet another story to tell. Before going to the consulate, everyone prepares the answers of standard questions and by the wish of almighty, they are asked same questions. As I said it earlier, it didn't happen with me. I was standing last in a queue of 7-8 candidates and everyone in front of me came out with a granted visa in a very short time, none of them had to show any documents. As it happens always, I was standing last and was thinking that they ( visa officers ) can't just let people go merrily without being asked tough questions. Being the last man, I knew that I will have to go through a tricky interview. As I entered in the visa interview compartment, I was welcomed by a middle aged (around 55 years) , fat white woman. She was wearing spectacles and has got a typical style of looking through the passage between eyebrows and the glass. I did not care about her looks as I was known to such styles since my school days, many of our khadoos teachers used to stare like that. But contradictory to what I perceived , she was totally different. She was very well mannered and pleasant, she did ask me lot of questions which don't fall in the list of FAQ's but never ever I felt myself uncomfortable while answering them. In fact, I was very confident, looking directly into her eyes, fearless. She even cracked a joke in my interview, which I did understand and I responded by smiling back, but somehow she knew that I was not in the mood of appreciating jokes at that time. 'I was just joking, please don't take it seriously' was her response to my reaction. Sometime back I used to think of what must be going on in the visa officer's mind ( I am even planning to do some research in this area !) , so that I can use it for my interview. Everyday they take hundreds of visa interviews, ask lot of similar questions and get similar answers always. It's not at all bad if someone enjoys pulling the legs of the candidate at the time of interview. When she joked and I replied back by smiling to it, a thought just passed through my mind - 'Maam' how about exchanging our positions? How about me asking you questions and cracking jokes? How about me deciding your fate of being there or not being there in United States... ' I am quite sure, if I would have been sitting at her place, I could have done lots of mischievous things.

So, after a rapid fire interview ( it lasted for around 300+ seconds including my answers, which were often precise except at few places. Later when I calculated the time, the rate of asking questions came out to be 1 question per 2 seconds) , it was a time to hear the golden words, words that I read lot many times in other people's visa interview experiences. ' Alright Onkar, I am granting your visa. You will be flying with your i20 and will get your passport back in 3 working days through courier. Wish you all the best in your master's studies, have a nice time'. I felt great after hearing it, and thanked her for her kindness. After many days, I did something which was very satisfactory.

Via Darjeeling

2008-06-30T08:02:00.000-07:00

Saturday is the best day of week for me now, earlier it used to be Sunday until I started working. It starts at 11 o'clock and ends at 12 o’clock; you are just at the beginning of a nice weekend. This Saturday was one of the most boring days however. I don't know the reason but may be it was cloudy and almost all of my friends were busy with something. Me and my room-mate decided to go for a movie. As we ran through stupid films and there endless insane narrations / promotions in Pune Times, it was really hard to find a good movie. But we are so determined and hopeful that we decided to go for it anyways. Via Darjeeling was selected mainly because it's a Hindi Movie (my roomie's primary concern, he can't tolerate English movies unless they are action packed ) and the star cast. Kay Kay Menon, Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak, Sandhya Mrudul and Sonali Kulkarni was a solid combination I guessed. But initial half hour was enough to prove that I was terribly wrong. A boring Saturday morning followed by dose of crappy movie ruined the whole day.

The movie starts with a quarrel between a hired car driver and Kay Kay. It doesn't stop with few heated exchanges but goes on and results into some serious repercussions. Kay Kay and Sonali's honeymoon turns into a nightmare when Kay Kay goes missing. Sonali calls up a police inspector (Vinay) to investigate the case. Upto this level, the film is tolerable but it looses the track when the story suddenly moves to a small get together in Rajat Kapoor's house where Vinay narrates his experience to the group. Then there is a series of endless, illogical and irrelevant discussions. Each one of the group members is from a background somehow related with media and they each narrate a plot of what could have happened to Kay Kay. The movie is a poor mixture of their views about the characters and nothing else. The songs are ultimate examples of how things could be misarranged and lyrics are in any aspect not related to the theme. About acting, everyone played their part but no one is really mentionable. About the overall plot, its very badly arranged, the characters look like not attached to each others and there seems to be a shade of artificiality in acting. The dialogs are so shoddy that at some time audiences feel that they could have written in better ways. On a positive note, the director has shown something which is new to Hindi cinema but the presentation could have been much better.

Few lessons that I learnt:
1. Do not judge a film based on it's cast.
2. Do not go for a movie when you are not sure if it's worth watching or not.
3. If you have an intense desire to waste your Rs. 150/- ; bring some good food, eat and sleep.
4. Always prefer a little nap over any film.
5. English / Marathi movies are generally better than Hindi movies ( this in fact is my opinion since start and Via Darjeeling has made it even more stronger).

ice'2008 digital short film festival

2008-06-12T08:38:00.000-07:00

I have never been to a film festival before. It's my friend Waghya ( Amol Waghmare) who took me to my first film festival. The "Catalogue" of the movies to be screened created some interest, at least the plots of some of the movies looked good. They were casting top 5 films that received various awards. After a small introduction to ICE (International Cultural Exchange) and their initiative in promoting and celebrating the quality cinema in genre of digital short film, the screening started. "Hridayattileykku Oru Madakkayatra" was awarded as the best film and there were few other films got awarded in their own category.

Honestly speaking, I did not like all of them. I do respect the hard work and money that these film makers have put in converting a passion into something worth seeing, but I was surprised how some films got awarded. I don't understand film critics and don't have an eye of jury but for a common man like me, some of them were of a very average class.

The 5 films were :-
1. Naanum - Me too : (10.10 min)
An unborn child wants to live with her mother and family but her father doesn't want the breed of pre-marital relations. The child was too cute but overall film was not that good.

2. Life In Sine : (08.45 min)
The title seems catchy but the film isn't. A story of a patient whose mental stage changes from one to another and how a small thing makes an impact on his life. The small thing is a small bush which the patient used to water turns into a dead plant. It has to be one of them, either the film is too good or I don't have an appetite for such movies.

3. Kya Aam Admi Surakshit Hai? : (19.50 min)
Looks like a pretty serious film from name but turns out to be a comical portrayal of how media shows simple things in dramatical ways and make people believe in it. Points to be mentioned are the coverages shown of the local, national news channels whose names sarcastically resemble to news channels we see these days. The news reporter and their style, the comments of people and leaders are fantastic. Worth to be screened in a film festivals.

4. An Insight - Beyond Headlines (19.56 min)
A serious documentary on the burning issue, SEZ. A small group seeks opinions of the people who are actually affected by SEZ (includes people from Raigad, Mundra port ). Some real information which we don't see on channels and don't read in newspapers. Appreciable efforts for bringing out bitter realities behind the national policy of SEZ.

5. Hridayattileykku Oru Madakkayatra (15.00 min)
The best film (which is also the director's diploma project) of the festival, and certainly deserves the reward. 'Theyyam' is a ritual dance form in the northern region of Kerala. The story revolves around a life of 'Chemmaran' the Theyyam player and his family. 'Prabhadhan' (his son) is going abroad discarding his father's wish of making him a 'Theyyam' artist. The first scene tells that this movie is special and made by hands of an adept director, Abhinand H Kumar. It shows the father coloring himself and preparing for a performance. Then in the second scene there is a lovely use of camera which shows different stages of father's life (His son goes abroad, gets a citizenship, marries a German girl, becomes father, the couple splits apart, son decides to come back home with his child). The last scene is also good when the father asks his son to dip into a kunda to become sacred again and the son after bath, turns into a Theyyam player.

In all, a good experience. I wish ICE a very good luck in future and hope to see some great short films ahead. Good work ICE, keep it up !

Mango-Days

2008-06-02T07:46:00.000-07:00

Every summer comes with a variety of fruits, mango being the favorite , often celebrated as the "King of all fruits". When I go home on weekends, my mother brings in lots of mangoes for her beloved son. This may sound like a small kid, but when it comes to fruits, I prefer being called as bachha. This Sunday when we were eating Aam-Ras, we had a discussion about the good old days we spent in my small village with my grandparents.

My forefathers ( starting from my grandfather ) lived in a very small village called Rajuri ( Jamked Taluka, Nagar District). Even today, we have our land there and it's cultivated and nourished by my father with help of a local person (called as sarakati in Marathi). These days we hear enormous prices of mangoes, 300-400 Rs. per dozen if you are going for Alphonso and similar ranges if you go for other brands. My great grandfather planted around 50+ mango trees before 150+ years and we used to enjoy the fruits of his efforts lately. I vividly remember those days when we had summer vacations. Myself with my brother and cousins used to go to the farm where mangoes are taken off the trees. We used to sleep in the deepest shadows of great trees and eat paad ( state of kairi, when it is about to be called as a mango ). We used to help those people in whatever they do, bring back the unripe mangoes home on a bail-gaadi , arrange them in a linear fashion called as Aadhi. As the days passed, the unripe fruits get really sweet and juicy. My uncles and their families, other relatives and few guests loved to eat home made Aam-Ras from our farm. My Aajoba ( grandfather) used to offer us a Paan after a heavy lunch, we often played carom / cards together those days. At night, he used to tell us stories ( even when I was in 10th or 11th std.) which were always new; without a single repetition and I used to sleep listening to them.

But they say, time changes and so do things. Our old trees no more bear any fruits. They are too old to stand in a hot Sun and these days we have a great water crisis. My grandpa and grandma both passed away recently and nobody lives in the wada, which was once considered as nothing less than heavens. Today when I add milk in Aam-Ras, I feel very bad ( we didn't do it in those days, neither did we add extra sugar), also I don't like crushing the mango pulp in mixer. And when I hear such high prices, sometimes I feel proud of myself that I have seen those Mango - Days.

P.S.
Being a problem solver by nature, I proposed to plant few new breeds of mangoes so that we could see those days again but the water crunch is a major hurdle. Also, trees in their initial days need great care and being a so called "professional" deeply engaged in materialistic, urban and suave lives, I could not go to my village and do it myself. My father is aging and can't push this extra burden on his shoulders. In all, I am not sure if I can see those sweet mango-days again ...

Jaipur Serial Bomb Blasts

2008-05-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

Before 60 years, there used to be a big country, they called it "Bharat". The countrymen fought for the freedom of their motherland and worked with shoulders to shoulders. Their efforts bear fruits when they got freedom, but it came with a cost of partitioning. Then after some years, another nation was born called Bangladesh. If you trace the roots of these nations, you essentially find exact similarities. They belonged to the same civilization and had similar culture, their religions and customs were different, but they still lived together. And today, the sons of same soil are turning into beasts, hungry for their own brother's blood. Go back and read news papers, bomb blasts are becoming as common as street accidents these days. And it's not India alone but all of these countries are severely affected by these "self-run" calamities. I don't know if there is any other example in world's history which showed such a hatred in a society who was known for brotherly relations.

The Jaipur serial bomb blasts might bring a medal of honor to someone or maybe an increment to the post of commander, for someone it might be an ultimate way to reach Allah, for someone it will be a sacrifice of Jihad, but for those who lost their loved ones, it will bring nothing but tears and lots of uncertainties. Our intelligence agencies will certainly find the culprits but one thing should be made clear, are we really catching the big fishes, the masterminds or are we punishing the pawns? There are clues that the RDX was brought from Bangladesh and this heinous act has a lots of similarities with earlier series of blasts. It's clear as water that we do have large number of traitors inside our homes and they should be punished to death. They all should be killed in a similar manner as these innocent people. Unless we clean our homes from such unhealthy worms, we will never be able to fight against the external forces. And to be very clear, one day will definitely come when Pakistan and Bangladesh have to pay the prize for knowingly / unknowingly supporting these activities.

Jaipur was known for its tourist spots and there are many other cities in India which are on hit-lists. As a responsible citizen it's our duty to report if anything "fishy" happening around us. It's seen that the terrorists are using new technologies to make this happen. I would be much more than happy if by any means I could be of any assistance to the country.

Sherlock Holmes rules !!!

2008-05-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

Some legends are unforgettable, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of them. These days I am virtually living at 221B, Baker Street, London. In school days, I read a translated Marathi version of Sherlock Holmes and used to tell those stories in class. But being a translation, it did not create an impact as such. After all, it's difficult to keep the same original level in a translation and it makes even more difficult when the original work is of someone like Sir Arthur. One thing is sure, Sherlock Holmes impresses every age group - from a school going kid to a retired old person. There is something in his character that creates such an influence that nobody forgets him. There are his ways of deductions, which seem so simple, yet so uncommon and productive.

I am about to finish the first volume ( Study in Scarlet), probably I am way too late, since some of my friends have already read the complete collection of stories. The language is not easy, certainly not like we normally speak, but it is written is such a way that we don't mind keeping dictionary besides us and understanding every difficult word that comes across. I am getting a severe headache because of my late night readings, and also these days I reach office at around 11, I never had such experience earlier, never ever I was so much into any book. Sherlock Holmes' narration is so perfect that as if we are seeing this great consulting detective working in front of us. I envy Dr. Watson who had a chance to see Holmes so closely and who observed his intellectual prowess . Sherlock Holmes rules the hearts of readers and I bet, world will never produce someone who will surpass the magic ( rather the deductive reasoning ) of Holmes. No wonders, people still write their cases at his address.

O.D. salutes you S.H. and pray, you live long in my heart ...

Time changes and so the interests

2008-05-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

After a very long gap today I happened to see my Orkut scraps. There should have been a award called largest turnaround time ever or the laziest Orkut user on Earth, and I would be amongst the highly nominated candidates for it. Some of the scraps were 7-8 months old and still waiting for reply. I hate people who don't reply and that makes me most hated person. I don't remember if I replied to all of them but at least to those which sounded like "How are you?" because others were wishing me "Happy Holi", now God knows in which month Holi comes but I can't now reply them saying "Happy Holi to you too !"(assuming that I don't have a cron job that identifies Holi and keeps scrapping all of my friends each year)

When I was in college, (we are not talking about ancient times here, I am not that old) before around 2 years, Orkut and those social networking sites popped up like anything. There were other similar sites I was knowing but didn't try their taste. So someone from my friends sent me the invitation and it all started. I did not have internet connection at home in those days (neither do I have it today), so I remember sitting in my college's internet lab and scrapping like a crazy person. I had a good reason to tell and that was my BE project which kept me away from the bureaucracy of public internet cafe. Later people started me finding all the time in that cafe and some of my juniors started thinking me as the person who runs the lab. On a positive notes, some of them also started looking at me like a person deeply engrossed in his project work. As they say, overuse kills everything, I gradually lost interest in social networking. Today even FaceBook and their fancy applications doesn't attract my attention. When I joined my company, emails were my prime means of passing time. I used to forward almost all crap that I was receiving until I read about a serious article on network traffic and spams. That backed me off from forwards but I still like to send good emails, although they are rare these days ( or my interests are changing).

I have now found out other ways to use ( waste is the proper word ) my time. It's searching anything on Google, anything here means stuff that adds to your useless knowledge quota. I am glad that it's not that useless as you see on the link. And since the time I came to know about Wikipedia, I am again back in Orkut phase except this time it's Wikipedia. There are two more things I am enjoying after engineering - blogging and reading. I have a habit to read nice post or articles on internet. Today when I was looking through my 450+ Orkut friend's list, I was trying to find a Blogger Friend, someone whose blogs I can read ( with a little but practical hope that he / she keeps the blog updated), but I did not find one. I wish people should start blogging now. All of us have a life which is full of incidents, encounters and emotions. Shouldn't blog be the place to put those reactions or views?

But it rained ...

2008-05-06T08:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you know that something is going to happen. You kind of have a premonition. Your good old friend had also seen the same days. But you have hopes. It's important for you since it's THE THING for which you do all this stuff. You try to prepare yourself for it. And suddenly the D - Day comes. You sit and listen. You listen to all the crap that the person in front of you is talking about. You suddenly "discover" things which are expected from you. Imagine, you are expected to know lot of things in a small time frame and you try for it. But poor you! the knowledge is so vast that your small information is hardly useful. Then what you do? You seek help. And there you are !!! You made a greatest mistake, you have done things which you are not supposed to do. You suddenly EAT UP other's precious time, so now the verdict is : face the music.

You have never felt so stupid before. You don't speak neither answer. You do have cards to play but someone with such a feeble brain is sitting in front of you that you take a step back. You don't shut yourself up completely, but again when you listen to the childish remarks from the other person, you feel awful. It's like you are talking to someone who knows it but tries to cut things in between, creates a scene in which he virtually BALANCES things. Really, your comments / opinions hardly matter in a predefined world. It's just an illusion that you see, which sometimes gives a feel that you are in control of things. You think, you WILL get what you have expected since you worked hard for it. But alas! some external factors make so much impact that your real efforts are not at all appreciated.

And you know the worst thing? It hurts. It god damn hurts a lot!!! It takes out the zest / joy of doing things. Had it been the case that you didn't put in efforts, then it's OK. But what is painful is instead of your honest contribution, you never get counted. You never get what you deserved. You get bitter lessons from life that teaches you hell lot of things and bring you back on Earth. You are not perfect, there are certainly things to be worked on, but they are weighed in such a negative manner that it crosses over every good thing that you have done before. And you know, you are sick of being called as GOOD, you starve to be EXCELLENT and in pursuit of this excellence you give your 100% and in doing that you forget about the system for which you are doing it.

The result is , you think it will shine tomorrow but it rains !!!

Movies are all that I have

2008-04-16T08:00:00.000-07:00

It has to be either books or movies or a cricket / football match. These things give me ecstatic feelings, that's why even after coming home at about 10 o'clock in night, I prefer watching movies or reading books before going to bed. Last few days I am enjoying movies on a regular basis, a daily ( and partially nightly dose you can say). Few of the ones that I saw were The Shawshank Redemption, Blood Diamond, Rendition, American Gangster, The Holiday, A Walk To Remember and some more.

The Shawshank Redemption is the best movie I have ever seen, in fact I have already seen it twice but watching Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman in their perhaps best performances is a treat in itself. The specialty of this movie is the powerful storyline and splendid performances. It's ranked at 2nd / 3rd place in IMDB after Godfather, but I believe it deserves the top rank. A must watch movie.

Blood Diamond is a drama film inspired from a true story of a diamond smuggler and an African fisherman about their quest for two different things. Leonardo DiCaprio is in search of a diamond which is buried by Djimon Hounsou who wants to rescue his family from the rebels. After seeing this movie, I literally started hating the diamond makers and their advertisements.

Rendition accuses a controversial CIA practice called extraordinary rendition through which US has transferred suspected terrorists to countries which are known for harsh tortures and interrogation techniques. It's a story of a chemical engineer who has Egyptian origins, lives in states since about 20-30 years. He gets kidnapped by CIA under his suspicious links with the terrorist groups.

American Gangster is a typical Ridley Scott movie inspired from true life stories of Franc Lucas and Richie Roberts. The film is about bringing down a Franc Lucas's drug empire. Denzel Washington played a character of Franc Lucas who smuggles heroin directly from the makers in Vietnam and uses US military planes for the transport. Russel Crowe, a detective and a womanizer who has lost his family life exposes the racket and sends almost 150 criminals behind the bars. Again, must watch movie.

The Holiday is quite nice movie with a different storyline than typical romance comedies. Thing to enjoy are Kate Winslet's performance and lovely sound tracks. Jack Black's small but jolly role is also worth seeing. A Walk To Remember is a romantic movie between a popular but rebellious high school student and a daughter of a reverend. Mandy Moore's soundtracks are worth listening to.

Prabhakar Pustakalay - An eventful journey of 75 years

2008-04-09T07:56:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went to Nagar to see my parents and celebrate Gudhi-Padwa with them. In Hindu rituals, Gudhi Padwa is considered as one of the most auspicious occasions and as it is a beginning of Hindu New Year, it is chosen as the best day to start new things. 75 years back my friend Nikhil Dharmadhikari's grandfather chose the same occasion to start a book shop called Prabhakar Pustakalay. Today Prabhakar Pustakalay is considered as one of the oldest book stores in Nagar and known for giving an honest and transparent service to the customers and a place where you can find rare books.

I was invited to the Satyanarayan Pooja on Sunday. It is a small but nicely organized store proudly presenting the history of its birth. There was a small album with black and white old photos of my friend's family. One of the newspaper cutting was showing a small introduction of how things started in early days and how the founder struggled to make it happen. People came and congratulated Nikhil's father for carrying on the lamp ahead and I could clearly see a "feel of satisfaction" of Dharmadhikari Kaka's face. When they asked the question, who will be taking care of this store after you? He proudly said that it's his next generation. I didn't believe it as Nikhil and his brother both are software engineers and settled in their lives. I didn't expect they will carry on the tradition.

But when I asked Nikhil what he thinks, he said "We are going to do it. We will be bringing in latest technology and modernity in this shop. The day will come when Prabhakar Pustakalay will compete with other book publishers worldwide". I took it lightly and laughed at him but what I really appreciated was Nikhil's attitude. It's great to see our generation, even though technically, intellectually, economically and materialistically considered forward than their ancestors, still value the feelings and traditions. Not only he wants to keep the things going but also wants to change according to the time and that's really a good sign.

Nikhil and his brother will both be having a MBA degree in few years and I will not be surprised if they take their family business to a new horizon. And who knows this could be the first blog which introduced Prabhakar Pustakalay on internet :-)

Wish you all the best guys!!!

Now students evaluate their teachers

2008-04-03T07:34:00.000-07:00

University of Pune has come up with a really good scheme to evaluate a teacher's performance. Now the students will be appraise their teachers. Looking at UoP's age, this should have been implemented years before but anyways, it's not late to start a good thing. The VC said that this move will bring in greater transparency and accountability in teachers. I am a bit confused with the word "greater" here because there was "no" transparency earlier. Student is always assessed on a lot of factors be it academical, social, behavioral or anything. However, teachers are rarely applied to such criterion, at least not after they get a job in an institute. There might be factors to be considered in teacher's appraisals, but students were not directly involved in it.

I recently came across a shocking article in a Marathi newspaper that questioned teacher's ability to teach children. It was showing all the statistics of how the quality of teaching is degrading day by day and the possible reasons for it, money and surprisingly decreasing social respect were the most important of them. There were times when a teacher was very much respected, it was until I went to high-schools. I feel very lucky to have some great teachers but now when I go to the same school and see these teachers, I feel ashamed. We used to have some classmates who were notoriously known for some reasons which I can't explain here, these guys are now teaching at my school. I guess, the system is turning out to be so bad that we hardly can expect something from it. I teach a small 3rd standard boy everyday. He is very regular in his classes, does his homework timely, get it assessed from teachers. But when I ask a simple problem, he gets totally lost. His teacher says that he is a good student but doesn't seem so to me. She teaches a class of around 60 kids, you can see how extensively she worked on her students by looking at their notebooks but that impression vanishes the moment you ask something. This is because the students never "understand" a subject, all they do is mug up things and put them on papers. Students are built on foundations and if one does not have it then all we are going to get is a "crowd" having smart degrees but no ability as such. I remember my teacher S.D. Kulkarni Sir who used to teach all classes from A to G ( supposedly "brilliant" to "poorest") and God knows he was liked by every student. That's because he had an amazing knack to get hold of students and create a joy of learning things. I doubt if such thing ever exists today. Maybe all of talented junta get lucrative job offers and no one cares / wastes ( if this is the word they use) his / her life in being a teacher.

Certainly this new scheme has a power to change the things provided it gets implemented with similar seriousness. Students could be very good to get feedback from since they are the ones who knows what they want and what is being offered to them. More importantly the implementation of these scheme should be transparent, if the teachers are willing to change / modify their skills then students should see it from their teaching otherwise this will be just another thing which is "routinely" done at universities. Students also have certain responsibilities, if they are appraising someone, they should have that "level of maturity" otherwise it will be a mess all around. I think such things should be implemented in Engineering colleges also, and what I mean by implementing is "followed very strictly" just like the way it is done in Corporate Sector.

Nine things developer wants more than money

2008-03-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

Prashant forwarded me this link that discusses some of the things a developer looks forward for. Pretty much realistic and direct to heart conversation. Some of the points are quite well mentioned and explained. However not all points are agreeable, especially point #9 ( Having few legacy constraints). What I infer from that point is nobody likes working in a system which is poorly designed and buggy. And while implementing something one needs to follow lot of constraints which takes out the gist or joy of writing a software. To approve your fix or new enhancement in a "working" system, you gotta go through series of reviews / meetings (if needed). According to the author, this is what a developer hates. I believe some part of this argument is true ( sometimes we see a strong reluctance from the approver) but certainly there are few things I disagree.

I don't think you always get "bored" while maintaining some legacy software, provided it's not exceptionally stable. One thing is true that some day or the other we have to maintain a software if we want to make money out of it. If you have got customers who pay for your product, you can't just go on pouring your ideas in a working code, you gotta look at the issues of a current system, issues that a customer face while using it. Howsoever brilliant and well tested your software is, it gets a real taste when some potential user uses it. And I believe, fixing those issues do need a lot of creativity. Such fixes might sometime increase your knowledge, who knows, you might come up with a great patch which fixes a nasty bug nobody have ever thought of. On a positive note, you get a great code repository to walk through. We always read and analyze algorithms but in a system like this, you see their real life implementation which is never seen in any book. It's always good to design and code something "from scratch" but to do that I think, one needs to have a great expertise. It's a thing which comes to oneself when one writes and "reads" good code. And such systems actually give us the opportunity to do so.

However, not everything is as rosy as it seems. Sometimes I get stuck at some point and can't do anything. A complete code doesn't help me reproduce a bug. That's because I don't understand why that code is written and don't find a document / note which explains me its purpose. I really get frustrated / bored and all I need is a guy who knows how this works. And once the problem is understood, half of the job is done. To me, reproducing and fixing a challenging bug in a complex system is as fascinating as developing an equally good code.

Out of their minds & Programmer's at work

2008-03-24T07:37:00.000-07:00

I started with a book called Out Of Their Minds : The Lives And Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists few months ago but because of lots of disturbances in between, could not finish it completely. And when my librarian called me asking for that book, I had to return it. I fairly read that one but completing it would have been more fun. So, that books tells a story about 15 greatest computer scientists who, with their fundamental research gave a new dimension to the world of computers. Everyone of the mentioned scientist holds a Turing Award for their great contribution in the field of computer science. The book is exhilarating and engrosses a reader with small anecdotes of the life of these scientists. I was surprised to know that many of them earlier had a lot of different interests other than computers. Many of them came across computers at the time when they had done nothing promising in their lives, someone learned computers to earn money some of them just wanted to try out few things. Out of the one's that I read, Donald Knuth and Edsger Dijkstra were the most appealing chaps.

While returning this book, I took another one called Programmer's at Work which is a collection of interviews of some great programmer's of all times. The most common thread which they share is that all of them loved mathematics and had a great ability to simplify things at the deepest possible level. These guys tell us some of the TODO's which they followed before writing any program. I am currently reading this book and enjoying it very much. Seems like there are a lot of things that I don't do which these great people were practicing since the start of their career !!!

Concepts-2008

2008-03-17T07:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to PICT ( Pune Institute of Computer Technology ) to see their national level technical event called Concepts-2008. I have always loved such events, the reason is I really enjoy watching people materializing some really cool ideas into reality. More importantly it gives a well set platform to students who wish to contribute to the diverse and dynamic world of technical advancements. Unfortunately our educational system differentiates students depending on their grades / marks in a particular examination and not on their understanding. I am not against it, in fact I agree that this is the fairest way to measure one's academical abilities. But, we must think that there lies a huge real world which needs problem solvers and not bookworms who are practically of no use. Such event are the places where we can find these independent thinker and problem solvers.

Concepts has always been a great place to present your project in front of large cognizant audience. The people who have expertise in a particular area come to judge your projects, sometimes you are praised sometimes completely trashed. But that's not important. What is important is you get a place where you can show that look, this is what I can do. I may not have good marks, but hey, I am good at this. I may not be amongst the smartest in the class, but I have proved myself that I am amongst the best in certain domain. Some startups deliberately sponsor and judge such events in order to find the hidden potential amongst the students and call them for interviews if they feel the candidate is apt for it. I believe, it's the best way to catch the young talent.

PICT has got a good tradition of taking initiative in such events, they deserve all praise. They also have got a good alumni network which really cares for their juniors and nourish the talent. Unfortunately this does not happen in all colleges, some of them are still stuck in the old theories emphasizing more on attendance and jeopardizing one's career for the sake of it. I pray, one day these colleges will understand what's really important and learn from their mistakes.

I should have attended Concepts for all three days but could not do so. Last day is so short to see all good projects. Good job PICT, keep it up !!!

Murud-Anjarle-PratapGad Trip

2008-03-06T07:01:00.000-08:00

So, looks like I am traveling a lot these days. After Pabe's nice trip, I went to Konkan with my project mates. It was supposed to be a small trip sponsored by our client, but my team size is so big that we decided to share the expenses together and add few people from different groups of our project. We planned to have a one night stay in Murud and were back to Pune on Sunday evening. Since there was no girl in our group, staying was not a problem. We moved early in the morning at around 6 o'clock. It happened that at one place we stopped by to wait for some time, and a van passed by. I didn't notice it as I was busy taking snaps but other guys said that there were pretty girls sitting in that van and they too were heading towards Konkan!

Hooha !!!! Suddenly some of our project mates got a mission to accomplish. We started chasing the van with all our strengths and fuels, but we couldn't since some of our gentlemen were busy vomiting.... :-( I hate this but one can't stop the nature's call and after all they were my project partners and so I stood by them. After a long relentless pursuit, we managed to find that van but unfortunately learned that those girls were going towards other place... There came a glitch in everyone's plan... alas.

But everyone forgot whatever happened as we moved into the coastal areas of Konkan. It's an amazing place. One can never find the serenity that lies in listening to the sea and wind if one lives in a crowded city. We stayed in a local house in Murud and had lunch in a beach resort. There is this place called as "Kadyawarcha Ganapati" in Anjarle, a small beach in Konkan. The way to Anjarle is full of turns and twists and there are some great spots to stop by. We visited an old but nicely maintained Ganapati Mandir and while our way back, stopped near a Sunset point. That point was far above from the sea shore and we could see small houses of a village called Harne. We didn't mean to see the sunset, but what we saw that day was simply wonderful. I have never seen the GREATNESS of sea before. That was hot and scorching sun but we were truly mesmerized by the beauty. There was this blue sea all over and some of its portion was literally illuminated by the sun rays.

We had a lot of fun on the beach that evening, swam near the shore till we get really tired, enjoyed a lovely sunset and came back to where we stayed.

Next day, we headed towards Pratap Gad, I haven't seen it before. Pratap Gad is situated in one of the highest ranges of Sahyadri. These days we have vehicles and roads but in early times one has to cross the deadly Javaliche Khore to reach Pratap Gad, some of the trekkers still prefer that way though. We visited the fort itself and Bhawani Mata Mandir where Shivaji Maharaj was bestowed by the Bhawani Mata with a sword. The Gad was quite well managed and they have preserved lots of things which still today showcase the legacy of The Hindavi Swarajya and its Shiledar. After remembering the great Shivaji Maharaj near his statue we went to have lunch and then on a way back to Pune.

One the way back home, all of us have shared a common bond. One of our team mates, Harish, doesn't understand Marathi but Vivek was prompt enough to translate every detail that the guide told us about Pratap Gad. We had a nice chat that was far better and real than the one which we do everyday. We definitely shared a great moment.

Aniket, Kedar, Harish, Vivek, Mayuresh, Samir, Nikhil, Urjit,Tushar, Milind thanks a lot for spending your time with me. Let's hope for yet another trip in future...

Pabe Ghat Trip

2008-02-25T07:05:00.000-08:00

I haven't heard of Pabe Ghat until Jogya told us some interesting stories about it. So, after hearing so much about it, we have decided to visit the place. Contrary to my earlier trips, we made a plan before around 7 days or so and surprisingly kept our words . We ( Me, Kedar, Sneha and Jogya) went to Kedar's place last Saturday morning at around 5:30 AM. It has been ages since all of us saw the beauty of rising Sun, so we chose to go early in the morning. Of course, as expected Kedar took more than 25 minutes to get ready and we slipped off a bit with our schedule. But with Kedar, it is obvious and I have kind of expected this to happen. There is always an incentive when you have a girl traveling with you in a trip, you don't have to bring anything. Sneha, being a typical Puneri Mulgi, bought few eatables and a bottle of water . FYI, that bottle was so small, that one could sip it up in one shot, but you know, girls and their girly things ;-)

After Kedar's typical "I am sorry" apologies, we headed off to Pabe. It's a beautiful place in the curvy mountain roads, usually chosen for biking . Jogya is a regular visitor of Pabe and since he was knowing everything about it, he became our driver-come-guide. After some great scenery and lots of hard turns ( which demonstrated Jogya's driving skills ) we reached to the place. The Sun was about to rise but the skies are already showing the great glory of golden rays. It was an amazing experience to see the sunrise after so many days. We took some snaps of it and parked our car on a mountain top. This place was really great. You can see Torna and Rajgad through a small mountain passage. Since it was a clear sky and a beautiful morning, we could see a sharp range of Sahyadri without any problem, (things which you can't see through polluted air of Pune). I always have a feeling, if you want to really know who you are and where you stand, compare yourself with a great mountain and you will have an eternal feeling of legacy of the creator. I revived this feeling after a long time.

After visiting Chapet Dharan which was built by Dnyan-Prabodhini with the local co-ordination, we went back to Pune. It was a great experience overall, and I am looking forward for more such trips. Kedar, Sneha, Jogya and I will never forget this wonderful experience.

V'day Special

2008-02-14T07:24:00.000-08:00

Well, I could not come up with any other name than this one for a post. As it is 14th Feb and I do not have anything to chew on, thought of writing something about Valentine's day.

For someone who is enamored about someone else, this day may carry lot of importance. But for me, who is 'happy to be single' this is just another regular day... Today morning, my friend Harshad analyzed the current situation and explained the reasons behind my 'single hood' ( I am unaware if English dictionary has this kind of word in it, but will still use it.) I admit that there are very few girls in my friend circle, but almost all ( without some dignified exceptions ) boys fall in the lukhha category. I am writing this post to just remind them that it is neither a high time nor end of the road. We still have got lot of time in our hands. I realized that people might get disappointed while seeing others seeing each other but there is nothing to worry about it. So, today/tonight if you happened /happen to see a couple getting cozy with each other, don't take it personally. Today it has happened with someone else, tomorrow it could happen with you too...

Generally, there is a common myth ( of course , amongst my friends) that, it needs a lot of time / money / ... to get someone fall for you. I totally disagree with this because likings are all relative. Someone might like your nature, other might get impressed with your face, someone with your overall personality. So, you never know who likes what. Today if you are changing yourself just to please others then it will be a biggest defeat ever, if someone really likes you, he / she should accept you as you are. And who cares? We are enjoying every moment of being single. One day, everyone is going to get married and going away from this phase of life. Instead of craving for these wonderful days then, shouldn't we enjoy right now? I mean, it's so nice. You don't have to ask anyone before doing anything, you can come home anytime you like, can wear same jeans for two months without ever washing it, can grow hairs like hippies used to do, can hang out with friends late night, can do whatever you want to without bothering about social etiquettes.

This is heaven... Why should we spoil a life of a free bird ? Consider this, how about watching Friends / Football or Cricket or Tennis matches / Movies all over the night than going out with your girlfriend to some boring place ?

My message to all singles : We are leaving in paradise, so enjoy your life as it's going to change one day when you will starve for these days.

To hell with Valentine's day ;-)

A waste of 3 / 4 hours

2008-02-03T03:41:00.000-08:00

One of my friends called me yesterday and said that he wanted to meet me. I was not in much contact with him and since he has called me after long time, I said yes. We met near my company and he asked me to come with him to a place. Neglecting my question, "Where are we going?" he took me to a cafe restaurant in Kothrud where I was supposed to meet his new FRIENDS. These guys ( who work for so called "Indian Software Giant" firms) earn money in their leisure time by working for a company in chain marketing. I was brought there to meet a guy who was very good in marketing that company's product, a gold coin which costs 30,000 rupees. To prove his point, that the coin is not just a 'lump of gold but a rare piece of art' ( fyi, this coin is for numismatist), he started to give me company's overall information.

I was not told that I will be sitting for his presentation when my friend took me to the place. Maybe that's because my friend ( who is a part of the chain) must have thought that after hearing it, I might not come with him. But I wasn't new to the presentation. This company is supposed to work in 100+ domains and have a variety of products, and being a so called smart software professional (who knows nothing but working for 5 days a week and freaking out on weekends, still considered as the brilliant of all white collared corporate people), he invited me to listen to his plan . So, the presentation started off with a question 'Do you want to earn money or not' ? I was kind of surprised, first thing is I just know this person ( the presentation guy) for not more than 5 minutes and he is asking me a question for which everyone will answer 'yes'. I don't want to start the presentation with a shade of quarrel so I answered yes. Then the guy was like unstoppable. He explained me like what is the company, showed me the details (registration no., ISO-9001 certificate, some token of appreciation from some British Institution) for authentication. Then he talked about various products that the company makes and came to the point that I should also invest my money to one of their products , a gold coin.

This was not a normal gold coin, but instead the one on which you get an embossed image of a famous personality. The company get these coins minted from some German minting company and for each image that it emboss, pays royalty to the person who is being embossed. This was about the coin, what I was supposed to do was to pay 30,000 Rs. to a person and get this coin ( which was assumed to be of 99.9999999% purity, 24 carat gold) to join their business. If I want to earn some money, I should refer few of my contacts so that they can buy this coin. If I could refer total 6 people, my account will be credited with 11,500/- check and as the chain grows up, I will be benefited. To explain the business strategy, he talked about the tree structure of the business, the profit that I will be getting after each 2 raised to n people at each level and so on. Moreover, according to him, this was a zero investment business where you can pay 30,000/- by using the credit cards of several banks ( transferring the money from one bank to another ). Then came the most clashing point, he started comparing this business with that of Ambani's, Tata's and all big shot entrepreneurs. I agreed to his point that by traditional means of a job, one can not make a huge money, but strongly disagreed to his analogy that by doing this business I could be rich like Ambani's. Come on. they did not start a crap chain marketing business, all they had was a vision and a strong desire to achieve their aim. I did not see anything of that sort here. Moreover, these people did not have a product as such which has a potential money making future.

So, after wasting my 2-3 hours listening to that guy's management / marketing fundas, I said "Just stop it, I don't want to hear you anymore" and walked away with my friend. It should have been much more better if we could have met for some REAL BUSINESS or for some social cause or just to say hello. Why are we in search of quick money making mantras ?There are so many things which we can do other than chain marketing, real estates, bidding for stocks and can still earn money. I would definitely love to join a thought provoking seminar or a meeting where people come and discuss ways to CREATE / IMPROVE any open source software, put forward a nice idea that could be marketed or maybe start implement yet another killer software application. I would like to join hands and more importantly contribute to ameliorate the current situation of software field or social atmosphere.

This guy and his plan, I think was just a waste of time and nothing else.

Talya got married :-)

2008-02-01T07:22:00.000-08:00

Talya, one of my best friends, got married last Tuesday with Chaitrali. It was great to see someone from our group wearing a 'married' tag. They looked very pretty and we friends could really sense a 'made for each other' look on the couple's face. Talya was wearing a cool Sherwani and she was wearing a Saree. He somehow looked much more matured than what he is , maybe because it was his wedding that day and I have never seen him before in Sherwani. I think, you gotta look like a MAN than a BOY when you get married. Talya has invited few of our friends for his wedding but Sankya, Babu, Charya were in Japan, Canada and USA respectively so they couldn't come. They must be missing him very much, after all, you get married only once and it was really a special moment for us as it was to Talya and Chaitrali. Me, Chaddya, Dhumma, Anpya and Sankya's Aai( on behalf of Sanket) were present on the occasion.

Talya and Chaitrali were college friends and fell in love with each other in Engineering. Soon as their families knew about it, the couple decided to start a new inning of life. After seeing him getting married, I felt that he is transformed from a usual Talya ( remember, who used to play Cricket like a crazy person ?) to a guy who has a wife and a lovely married life ahead. But at the same time I had another thought that he will not be with us anymore, as he has to spend most of his time with the better half. We will not go out in the midnight say to have a cup of tea or a mastani or an ice- cream anymore. Suddenly, he will have more responsibilities than earlier.

But anyways, I was more happier on that day, because someone from us has just started a league of married couples and the honor for that of course goes to Talya and Chaitrali. Let's see how many more are joining this league...

I have some snaps of the JODI but could not post them here. You see, internet is no more a safe place.

Wish you a very happy married life Talya and Chaitrali. May God's blessings and the happiness shower your life forever...

Mulashi Trip

2008-01-22T03:45:00.000-08:00

After a long gap, we went to a trip. Last time it was Konkan and this time its Mulashi Dam. Paresh was the reason why we went for an outing otherwise we do not usually roam around on weekends. And that's really bad because since we left VIT, there are hardly few occasions when we friends have spent some time together. Seems that everyone is so busy in their work that we forgot to relish some small moments of happiness . First rule of going to a trip is don't plan it, because if you plan well before time, reasons start coming from people and then the whole purpose of the trip goes futile.

So, as usual we did not plan it. We gathered to Vaibhav's place and decided to go to Mulashi Dam on Sunday. We did miss Tejas, BD, Vikya, Moonchacha, PM,Sachya as almost all of them were present in Konkan Trip. After a hour of riding, we reached to Mulashi. I was planning to go further to Tamhini Ghat but there was not enough petrol in my bike so we stopped. We parked the bikes in a nearby hotel and went out to see the beauty of nature. We had two digital cameras with us which were sufficient to capture some small wonders . After hanging around for some time, we went for lunch. The hotel was very good, especially good for family outings. They had a big chess boards placed over there which has big pawn, king, rook, bishop, queen and knights. My friends sat around the board and posed a highly thoughtful avatar as if they were playing against Vishwanathan Anand. Being a nice friend and an Orkut lover, I took their photographs so that they can flaunt their styles. All except me and Mukul everyone was tired because of a long journey or might have over eaten and needed a small nap. I don't want to waste time in sleeping so went out with Mukul to see few more places.

It was around 5/6 PM when we left for Pune. In all it was a wonderful trip. We had a great time together and enjoyed it very much. There is always something in nature that has a power to refresh your minds and helps you start a new day with new spirit. This trip was no exception.

Click Mohsin's post and Paresh's Post for some more details of the trip.

Tim Lak Lak De Tim Lak Lak

2008-01-15T07:21:00.000-08:00

Remember Aamir's dialogs from 'Rang De Basanti' ? It refers to Aamir's reaction that one day all of his friends depart from each other to find their own ways.
Ek Din Ye Kuch Nahi Rahega... Life De Ishaaron Pe Nachte Jao, Tim Lak Lak De Tim Lak Lak...

I am experiencing this harsh reality today. I belong to a small town called Nagar and have got my intimate feelings with the city. People call Nagar as the Biggest Rural City because of its lack of advancements. Some of them even say that its not a city at all as Nagar could not fulfill the basic criterion of being a CITY. But I feel that there is something worth in Nagar which I could not find anywhere in the world. The worth things include my family, friend circle and the festival of Sankrant.

Unfortunately Pune do not celebrate Sankrant with zest. In Nagar you will see lots of thing happening on Sankrant. In fact, from the month of December, the skies look multicolored. Boys play kites all the day. And believe me, its not just a game, it is a ritual. I remember, making a manja ( A sharp thread using which you fly kites), the art of making a manja is called as manja sutavane in Marathi. Few days before Sankrant, you do following things in order to make sure that you own one of the best manjas and you rock on the day of Sankrant.

1. Find the best thread in the market
2. Gather initial stuff required to make manja, e.g. tyre tube ( when burnt, used for heating), a sticky thing called shiras ( using which you apply powdered glass to the thread), Aloe-Vera ( you intend that your manja is smooth enough to cut other manjas) , powdered glass ( preferably of tube, and you don't buy it from stores, instead you break the tube-light and mill it down to turn in a smooth powder). A big iron tin ( in order to heat the shirash so that it acts as a glue)
3. Find a big ground and gather few of your expert friends, go to that place to prepare a manja.
4. Once that is done, bring new kites.
5. On the day of Sankrant, do not, I repeat, do not go to you home for whatever reasons, you are supposed to be on the field ( be it your terrace or ground) to enjoy the lovely world of kites. In my case, my mother comes to the terrace and I have my lunch there only.

This whole procedure takes a lot of time and needs lot of enthusiasm and interest. I could not find time to do this when I was in Pune during my Engineering and started buying Bareli manja, to spare myself from the above ritual.

Today is the first day in my life where I am not in my home town amidst my friends playing kites and that's why I feel devastated. I enjoyed Sankrant more than any other festivals including Diwali and today I am not present to catch the glimpses of a great festival. Believe me, I have never felt so bad about myself. I could not find time out of my office schedule for whatever reasons and hence could not go home. One of my friend Sanket, who is in Japan currently shares the same feeling. My job is the reason why I am not in Nagar today. I have never thought that this day will come when I need to adjust my priorities so early, I am just 24 years old and like every small child, have a right to enjoy this game. But my stringent and always demanding job does not allow me do it, I envy my friends who work for a small printing press, marketing firms, and some still doing their studies.

Aamir said it right... Tim Lak Lak De Tim Lak Lak.... :-(

Taare Zamin Par

2008-01-07T08:02:00.000-08:00

... And I kept saying that Indian Film Industry is not trying out new things, the 'bollywood' fails to make a movie which gives a social message, I must confess, that Taare Zameen Par is THE MOST emotional Hindi movie I have ever seen. Going forward one step, I will say that it tops the hall of fame Hindi Movie list.

Yesterday morning when I went to see this movie, I was aware of the storyline and the plot. But the way, it is presented is just awesome. The fragility of Inoo's little world, the imaginative mind which accepts no bounds and compares 3 * 9 with Earth colliding with Pluto. The innocence and originality that you see in his drawings and imaginations truly mesmerize the audience. The harsh and competitive world which continuously burdens a child's beautiful world with cutting competitions, never satiated greed of success, the unending pursuit of gaining materialistic achievements are portrayed with an absolute reality. Perhaps the most important aspect of the movie is the wider range of the audiences that it covers. Keeping the Dyslexia as the reason behind Inoo's lack of grasping things, the story ends up giving a great message which everyone should take into consideration. Every child is special, the tag line, proves it all.

Aamir keeps up with his 'the perfectionist' image and does not give room for a single mistake. From the beginning till the end, the movie focuses on the central character. Aamir himself take a position of a 'maker' than that of an 'Achiever'. The most appealing point is the intensity of Inoo's feelings. Meri Maa is sung and presented in such a perfect way that tears roll on our chicks and heart cries out with a grief. Look at the music and lyrics, Adnan Sami's song when a drop of paint falls on Inoo's cheek and the ecstatic feeling we see on his cute face is beautiful. The scene of Inoo's hug when he wins at the drawing competition shows that all feelings can not be expressed in words like Thank You! ...

I have never cried so much in the theater before,and must admit that this movie is the milestone in the Indian Film Industry and has shown that people still appreciate human emotions more than anything, as sometimes tears convey more than what words can ever say...

Hats off to Aamir Khan and Darsheel Safary.... Hope Aamir will come up with some more fantastic creations wearing his 'Director's' hat.

Folklore.org

2008-01-03T05:27:00.000-08:00

My friend Mohsin, 'stumbled upon' a link called, folklore which narrates some anecdotes about development of Apple's original 'Macintosh' computer and the crew which developed it. There are total 118 stories, I have completed reading few of them and believe that all are enchanting.

We are living in a much simpler world of computers these days. When we scroll our mouse nicely and easily to read something on the monitor, plug in head phones to listen to songs, press a key on keyboard to see a character printed on screen, we did not appreciate the efforts that are behind implementing this magic. We must thank those legendary software programmers and hardware engineers who simplified initially cryptic world of computers so that an average person can use it without knowing the internal intricacies . After reading some stories, we understand the challenges those people faced while making a full-fledged COMPUTER with the optimized use of hardware and smart programs communicating with that hardware. It involved right from developing a small kit which has a limitation of addressing 64K of memory( which is solved by using cascaded memory banks) , a graphics routine which shows a Scrooge McDuck sitting on a large pile of dollars saying 'HELLO' to the user ( remember those were the days when GUI was in its nascent stage, and 'Look and Feel' concept was very new ) and many more challenges. Those were the days when people worked hard to increase Apple-2' s 192 scan lines to Macintosh's 256 scan lines. There were times when people need to put in extra intelligence to pull up extra bit from a stream of 8 bits in order to increase the bit density by using group encoding technique instead of FM encoding. The stories also depict the 'cult' work culture at Apple. The developers there enjoyed playing Nerf Ball after lunch and even went out to play a video game at the nearby restaurant in the lunch time. Like every work place, there were some sad events of firing from the job, some encouraging moments like promotion, words of appreciation. In all, those stories are so real yet look like so dramatic and interesting that the reader wants to be a part of Macintosh Team.

In all a worth reading link...

31st Dec.

2008-01-01T03:02:00.000-08:00

So much of hoopla and hype... New year comes and goes as always and we do not let 31st Dec. go away without boisterous merrymaking. What's so special about 31st? Is it another reason for revelers to booze off? Is it another 'marketing day'? Is it a day for making resolutions ( and in my case, never try keeping them)? Is it a day to see celebrities flaunting all the way? Is it a day of retrospecting 'all that happened' in last year and hoping to perform better in the coming year? What is it exactly?

I went to see few of my friends yesterday who came from Bangalore and had a chat with them. Being a person who likes to eat variety of food and also love to see people celebrating, as usual I went to Fergusson College (FC) Road and Jangli Maharaj (JM) Road. Had some food in a Maharastrian Restaurant and then went on walking to see the 'glimpses of crowd'. This is undoubtedly ONE OF THE REASONS of being there at FC and JM. Missed some of my old friends very much as they are either not in India or Pune. Somehow this 31st was much boring than earlier ones, may be because I am doing the same thing again and again. No special places to go with special people, no fun as such makes it a stereotyped 31st. It would have been far better if I would have celebrated it at my home in Nagar. At least I might had a chance to eat some special recipes of my mother. It is really fun watching Marathi Programs with her on TV. I missed it very much this time. We were planning to go for a movie but people did not turn up on time and plans went awry.

So, in all a boring 31st Dec, but I pray that this new year will come with lots of surprises and with much of the fun....

Wish you a very happy new year!!!!

A wake up call ...

2007-12-28T05:45:00.000-08:00

My friend pinged me to give a shocking news yesterday - 'Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto assassinated'. 'What?' was my reply in complete disbelief. But as I read through the link on Rediff.com, my disbelief turned into a truth.

What a pity... A lady who just survived a deadly blast killing hundreds of innocent people, is murdered in a similar fashion. Some of the reporters say that there has been 4/5 attempted assassinations since this October. There was a baby suicide bomber, a 15 years old boy loaded with explosions was trying to kill her. In spite of such dreadful incidents, the Pakistani government failed to protect their one of the most influential political icons. What could be the implications? In an utter anarchy, a big shot political leader like Benazir is shot dead, where the hell an ordinary Pakistani will look for safety? The problem and solution might be found in the Pakistani Mentality.

Pakistan is always been notoriously known for its political turmoils and lack of respect towards the democracy. There has been a bunch of Generals, ISI honchos, Mullas - Maulawis who molded the principles as per their way just to fill up their own bags. And unfortunately, the Pakistani Aawam failed to recognize their hidden motives. To exacerbate things, there has been international pressure and interference in Pakistan's politics. This assassination is not the end, it's the beginning of realization which should force Pakistan for an introspection. If we look at past 50 years from Pakistan's birth, we will hardly find any strategic decision made to speed up the growth of economy, to provide basic needs of an individuals. Compare it with India's maturity as the World's Biggest Democracy, you will see a country willing to accept changes and the other one which is sticked to useless fatwas. We hear the news of hatred between the Shiyas and Sunnis, a violence on the borders of Baluchistan, a continuous struggle between people from rich Sindh area and other undeveloped areas for political supremacy, a militant, a self-consecrated leader who dreams of Islam Reign in Pakistan sits in a Masjid and challenges the Pakistan's very own constituency. What can one infer from this? Pakistanis are not learning from their mistakes. They are falling to the same delusion of 'Raat Ka Khana Delhi Me Khayenge...' slogan, which once visualized as a symbol of Pakistan's greed and so-called-pride, now leading towards their self destruction. I don't know the meaning of Jihad, but let it be whatever, you can't kill the people in the names of Allah....

The Islamic groups, Inter Services Intelligence, once built keeping in mind the interests of politicians were the icons of strength ( at least that's what they pretended to be). Now they are nothing but the boomerang of threats which has gone very much powerful in recent years. They are not only disastrous for Pakistan but equally dangerous to India's 'Sarwabhaumatva'. In India, the ISI has already gone far deep, and if it is not rooted up now, one day, we will also have to face some such blows or maybe catastrophes. Benazir Bhutto's assassination is a wake up call for all those who are promoting terrorism / fanaticism under the guise of false patriotism.

It's Modi Again ...

2007-12-24T07:34:00.000-08:00

It wasn't a shocking result, in fact very much anticipated by political pundits. But some of them did claim that this year will be much more tougher for Modi than his first term. The poles have proved it wrong and BJP is elected with huge leads over Congress. I am not a follower of BJP or Congress but somehow elections create a kind of interest for me, except election there is nothing in politics that I appreciate much.

Many newspapers claim that Congress's lack of ideas / focus on the local issues is one of the reasons of their defeat. On the other side, Modi's firebrand image, outspoken personality and 'straight from the heart' speeches are rewarded with a clear-cut lead over the opposition. Some of the speakers of opposition also lament saying that its a win of devil over god or bad over good. No doubt a bit of communal touch is given to this election, you can refer to Modi's statement about Soharabuddin's encounter and Sonia Gandhi's much criticized remark of 'Maut Ke Saudagar'. But somehow I believe that BJP did not win on the basis of these usual 'election mantras'. Modi has proved to be a good chief minister having nice portfolio of development, especially his prudent decision after Gujarat Earth quake and even after Godhra . Also his various 'vikas yojana's' over Gujarat are primarily focused during the election campaigns , a stand for which Congress has no answers. Modi's elections campaigns were more inclined towards promising a new, developed Gujarat while Congress was much into riots issues. Naturally, a positive attitude won over the negative one. Sonia Gandhi worked really hard with countless rallies but her 'Des ki Bahu' image did not create magic in a common Gujarati's business oriented mind. Congress did touch upon the sensitive and emotional points like Mahatma Gandhi and his connection with Gujarat, but again , failed to attract voters on their side. I personally feel that political parties in India should not use any of India's heroes in their election campaigns , it's because these great souls did not have any political motives behind their deeds. Let me clear one thing, the list of Great Souls does not include Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru !!!

People might come up with different conclusions after this result and may even predict that Modi will be next Advani, or The Saffron Brigade will get a rejuvenation after this win, or there will be more communal riots in India or anything... But I think, Gujarat election has put forth an example that the democracy is changing now. Gone are those days when people vote you just because you belong to some so called elite family, or a powerhouse of India. Now, the shrewd 'Aam Janata' find her leader with much precaution and after deep analysis, of course there are places in India where someone votes for you just for the sake of Rs. 100/- and a 'Desi Santra' , but we can look at it as a beginning . I suppose the voters should take decisions on the basis of the 'work done' and not on the basis of anything else. Gujarat gave Modi another chance and now its Modi's time to keep his words.

My tryst with GRE extra score reporting

2007-12-20T09:34:00.000-08:00

I was reporting my GRE score to ETS tonight. When you appear for GRE, ETS ( the institution that conducts GRE and other tests) allows you to send scores to 4 university without charging a single dollar. But as I am applying to more than four, I called up ETS to report extra scores. I actually planned to do this before 4/5 days, but as usual my laziness stopped me from doing it. Now that I am on the verge of missing a deadline, today was the D- day for me. Generally ETS takes 5 working days to report your scores to the respective universities and that means from 20th Oct it will take around 31st Dec. to reach my scores at the concerned universities. It's because, they have a holiday on X-mas (23rd and 24th Dec) and I suppose they don't work on SAT-SUN. So, if I would not have called today, there would have been fair chances of missing the deadlines of 2 universities, one of which is 'safe' for me. FYI, safe in GRE aspirants world means some university from where you are cocksure to get an admit.

But it was not the end of the story. When you call ETS, it allows you to send your scores to 8 universities in one call. Again, I made a blunder there. At the time of taking my test, in free score reporting, instead of applying to University of Texas at Dallas, I applied to University of Dallas. And to my utmost insanity, I did not notice this while calling. When I hanged off the phone, and cross checked the code with that of Kedar's, I came to know about the stupidity. Now, I could have called ETS again to report the score to UTD, but thought I will send it by fax. Anyways, UTD's deadline is not yet close.

After this incident, I came to one conclusion. Whenever there is an critical moment to act comes, I make a mistake. That has became a characteristic of my personality now. I thank myself for at least knowing my mistake (some time later though). If I would not have understood the silliness, I might not have sent the GRE score to UTD, and will be happily waiting for a reply from their side.

One more bitter lesson from life !!!

Think, I need to keep the "thing over my shoulders" very cool, otherwise one day it will sink me down .... :-(

Fantastic Link

2007-12-19T07:50:00.000-08:00

Today Mohsin sent me a link The Programmer's Dress Code . One of the most hilarious and informative things I have ever read. The author of this post has got a great collection of some of the legends in the computers. Out of those, I liked Jaron Lanier's photo and especially the witty punchline 'No Woman, No Cry'. Must be showing the realities behind the virtual world. ;-)
Others are also quite good. Look at the smile on Dorothy Denning's face. How pretty and original , those spects are just the reflection of fashions at their times.

Anyways, thanks Mohsin for a nice link. I have forwarded it to all of my colleagues and they are really appreciating it.

Latest Obsession : Algorithms

2007-12-12T10:24:00.000-08:00

These days I am reading 'Introduction to Algorithms' by Thomas Cormen. I wanted to take DAA ( Design and Analysis of Algorithms) as my final year elective but my project partners forced me to take AI ( Artificial Intelligence), so that our group can remain in the same class. In fact there was no logical reason behind leaving DAA and taking AI, but that time I didn't give it a thought. And as far as getting good marks are concerned, I am a total waste in AI as well as in DAA. As per the new syllabus , University of Pune has made DAA a compulsory subject and I believe that's a good decision .

Now that I am reading the book, I am finding a different chord of interest there. I have just read Insertion Sort and loved it. The language looks okay except few 'bouncers', but that's accepted. When someone does a deep research in a profound field like Algorithms, the 'tangents' are bound to be there. Similar things happen when I read Kerninghan and Ritchie ( fondly called as K & R), so it was not new to me. After reading so many engineering books, you get kind of expert in digesting things even if you are not able to grasp it properly ;-). But Algorithms are not that easy, unless you are damn clear with what you MEAN by something, the corridors of uncertainty can trap you anytime.

The real fun comes when I start writing code, that's the thing I love the most. Backspace is the key which I use most of the times and sometimes I get so bored looking at code,wondering what have been written, I wipe out everything and start from all over again. I am looking forward to take a course in Algorithms during my MS, with a hope that this latest obsession will turn into a life long passion.

Wish me best of my luck for completing the book and implementing the assignments with some intense coding sessions.

Bug?

2007-12-05T07:29:00.000-08:00

I am having a lots of problems while adding a friend in my 'Blogger Friends' list. Posts on forums showing howto's of manipulating the template were of no use. As well as the official help from Blogger.com is not worth. The problem was, when I tried adding a friend in a list, it could not add him. I initially thought that there is a limit of 10 friends but it wasn't true. We can add as many people in the list. After Mohsin's suggestion, I even upgraded the template to see if something useful comes up or not. But again, the effort was futile.

When I clicked on Page Element tab, I could see a nice layout of everything but after clicking on edit button of Blogger Friend's tab, I could not really edit the things. "Add Link" tab could not do what it is supposed to do. Also I could not delete few links on my blog. It was so irritating that I eventually tried removing the complete page element. But that also did not work. ;-)

My other friends did not have similar problem with their blogs layout. Frustrated, I went to try out my luck on Internet Explorer and to my surprise, it worked. I could easily manage the things from IE but had hell lots of problems in doing the same on Firefox.

Probably it is a time to add a entry in blogger's bug database. They should have a consistent behavior irrespective of the browser that I use.

Hollywood vs Indian Film Industry

2007-12-03T07:07:00.000-08:00

I wanted to write about this topic way before this post but somehow it didn't happen. Now since I am much into movies, the thought popped up again.

I am not a specialist or something but being a person who likes to watch good movies, I wish to compare Indian Film Industry with Hollywood. Now, someone might say that its totally a waste of time as the situation in US and in India is too different and one can not compare them. But I am in total disagreement of this point. We must admit that our film industry is often ridiculed by the name 'Bollywood' a similar connotation to that of Hollywood. And it is because of a major number of 'INSPIRED FROM XXXXX' movies from Hollywood. Our movie makers get furious when they are called as Bollywood's director than a Dream Merchant of Hollywood. But believe me, there is a bitter truth behind this word 'Bollywood'.

How often do we see a beautiful script equally presented by a connoisseur eye of a director? As far as the ones that I watched, I could separate out a very few. To name them, from oldies, it could be Sholay , Anand, Deewar , Bawarchi, and almost all movies of Hrishida . And about the latest ones, well, we know them very well. I might have missed upon few, but at this moment I don't remember all of them. Except these movies, all we see is an attempt to make a movie. I haven't made any movie yet but have read a lot about what it really takes to make a movie. All I want to say that if you are anyways doing it, why don't you do it with all your hearts and heads? What is the point in making a straightway copy of a Hollywood flick? Don't we have great authors and latest technologies? Don't we have enough money ?

The real problem is the lack of a good script and real actors... Actor here means , someone who gives his 100% in acting, who might not have inherited "so called" traits from godfather actors / actresses or in some cases both, who might not have dude / cool/ hunk / macho looks, who hadn't ever taken part in or won a beauty pageant, instead who has an extremely clear voice and pronunciations, who HAS a knowledge of what is called as acting. How many of these actors / actresses do we have in our industry today? I bet, we could not cross a figure of even 20. All we see here is a bunch of useless people who have got money and know nothing about acting. There are few exceptions though, I am not at all leaving them. On the contrary, in Hollywood, we see different shades of life in their movies. Be it romantic, action, Sci-Fi film or be it a drama full of emotions or a real life story inspired from a lovely novel. I am not saying that there are no flops and BS movies there, but what I see is at least they dare to show something different, something original ( which is very rare in 'Bollywood' of course with few notable exceptions).

50+ years of experience is much more to be a versatile film industry. I am not only blaming the film makers for this situation. We, the people are equally contributing towards this nonsense. We could not differentiate between the real gem and some haphazard sequences of ostentatious display. Otherwise, all those crap beauty contestants and miss / mister universe / world / galaxy/ milky ways / comets / or whatever hadn't been established here as a actor / actresses.

Show some maturity and originality man, and then hope for the prestigious Oscar. It's not a boys game out there. And if we really want to see that our movies getting a world wide recognition as a fantastic movie, we should better stop our current stupidity and seriously think of doing something really original.

Treat for a movie freak ...

2007-11-30T06:01:00.000-08:00

I am hunting for movies these days. It has been days since I had a Movie Marathon at my place. FYI, Movie Marathon is a term introduced by us (friends) which means watching movies all night. We used to do this earlier when we are done with the engineering exams. After seeing a long list of "haven't seen" movies, I am waiting for this Saturday. Saif Ali Khan's dialogs in Dil Chahata Hai, "Hum Cake Ke Liye Kahin Bhi Ja Sakte Hai" perfectly fits for me in the context of movies . I will be going to my friend's flat tomorrow to get some nice Hollywood movies. He stays around 20 kilometers from my home and tomorrow morning with the first ray of Sun, I will be heading towards his place ;-)

Here is the list of the movies:
The motorcycle Diaries, Wait Until Dark, Carlito's Way, Apocalypse Now, Being There, Casablanca, The City of Angels, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Glory, The Gods must Be Crazy, The Groundhog Day, Love Actually, Raising Arizona, Requiem for a Dream, Saints and Soldier, Sideways, Taxi Driver, The Hudsucker Proxy, The King of Comedy, The Others, The Shining, Amadeus, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Entourage, Garden State, It's a Wonderful Life, Leon, Roman Holiday, Scum, Sling Blade, The Merchant of Venice, The Road to Guantanamo, Trainspotting, Unforgiven, Fargo, Rebel Without a Cause.

Well, I don't know how much time will it take to see them ( at least once) but this much of stock is fair enough for a movie freak like me !!!

Klueless3

2007-11-29T07:04:00.000-08:00

Finally it arrived.... It was a long awaited and much appreciated online puzzle competition. After solving Klueless1 and Klueless2, you get quite addicted to this kind of game. What is different this time is the difficulty level of Klueless3 . Earlier we used to get easy ways to find an answer but this time the kluemasters have put in lots of brains in it, and lots of ( Wikipedia research also).

After getting overloaded by the same kind of boring work everyday, you need a break and some online hunting place. Such competitions just provide what you want, a change. And it really tests your patience. Lots of googling and with some hints from Klueless's forum and friends I could get to level 11. I am still stuck at it but will find a way soon. When I got its link from Punit, I was not knowing that it has been released already. As expected, I am spending much of my office time digging through HTML source pages, Wikipedia . And I am not the only one who is involved in this "fond act", there are 4-5 members already working hard on it...of course,using company's resources...

Hope will find more and more online refreshments like this one...

Fun in the lift

2007-11-27T06:34:00.000-08:00

Today's incident was too much. I often look around here and there to find some pretty faces around me and most of the times, do not get caught watching them. After all, its all about experience, I have been doing this from ages ;-) but till today, I have never taken a step ahead. It's not like I am afraid or something, but somehow I feel 'the one' is still to come in my life. Whatever happened today was not planned at all, it was just natural.

Coming to the point, I was going to the cafeteria for my lunch and was standing in lift. Kedar and me, as always were playings pranks at each other. At some floor, the lift stopped and someone went outside. As the lift was about to close, I saw a "pretty face" waving her hand for lift. Being a "good boy", I moved my hand through the door to stop it from closing. I could not see her face clearly but being a seasoned person, I am quite sure that she must be a good looking girl.

As she came towards the lift, I started looking at her and the door was again about to close. I wanted her to come in, but was so much into staring at her that I forgot to move my hands through the door. Instead, I was pushing the door in a opposite direction with all my strengths and in doing so, I almost fell in the lift. I was trying so desperately to prevent the door from closing , but finally Kedar managed it on time. I was like 'What the hell I am doing" as it looked too bad. She must be thinking what an idiot person I am. A "Thank You" from her brought a smile on my face but I did not even replied her saying "You are welcome". What a jerk I am ! By the time the lift went on the last floor, Kedar and me blasted into laughter. Fortunately she got off on 6th floor. We were laughing for about 5 minutes and Kedar was showing me how stupid I looked in the lift. I must have looked like Mr. Bean :-). As Jogya and Sneha came, he shared the story with them from start, not only by narrating, but with acting also.

One should take lessons from every incident in his life and I am looking forward for another opportunity to correct these mistakes ;-)
Amen...

Free as in Freedom

2007-11-15T05:24:00.000-08:00

Free as in Freedom is a book ( open book rather) which narrates Richard M. Stallman's journey of Free Software. I finished reading three chapters and can't leave this book aside. It's fantastically narrated and articulated written. The depth of details and style of narration shows that Sam Williams, the author, has taken a hell lot of efforts in bringing the life and career of RMS to larger audiences. It's a typical biography kind of book that tells us how a simple incident of a jamming a printer's paper in MIT's AI lab could be the harbinger of a big movement of open software. Also an incident when a professor at Carnegie Mellon denies to share his copy of a program with Stallman has a tremendous effect on Stallman's mind that it totally changes his path of career.

Stallman's life, his great contribution towards Free Software Movement, the respect that he earned in programmer's community all over the world by his elite yet free programs definitely deserve the attention. Almost everyone who is somehow related with computers knows Richard Stallman. I remember watching a video of his speech on my friend's computer but did not get a chance to read about this revolutionary hacker. This book will certainly add to my knowledge and introduce me to the concept and history of Free Software Movement.

One more notable thing about this book is, for its electronic version, you can pay in free software manner, i.e. by contributing towards it. The book is distributed under GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) , so that we can help improving the work and can create a personalized version and release that version under the same license. Just like any other free software program, this book will also accept patches.... Interesting !!!, I haven't heard of any other book which accepts patches !!!

So, that's what I want to say about it... 11 more chapters to go... I need to finish it up as soon as possible :)

Diwali...

2007-11-13T07:21:00.000-08:00

Diwali is one of the most awaited festivals for me because it brings at least 2-3 days of vacation with itself. And those 2-3 days + a weekend can easily make up a half week leave for you. You get an official reason to run away from the work. :) Let me tell you one thing, on the day before the vacation starts, I do nothing. Nothing means nothing related to work, I use my precious time in planning what to do and what not to do in those 2-3 days. Earlier I used to write postcards ( mind you, postcards and not mails) to my friends which generally have a poem of a famous Marathi poet followed by a Diwali wish. I left doing it from last 2 years when my Grandmother and Grandfather passed away.

My mother always complains that I am too busy with my friends when I go home and seldom stay with her. This time I tried to be with her for almost all of the time. I had an urge to meet my school teacher Mr. Kaundinya sir but somehow could not manage it for many days which I finally did now. He is having his by-pass surgery today. My mavashi ( mother's sister) and her two kids ( Pratik and Pratiksha ) were our guests for this Diwali. Pratik is a biggggggggg fan of cartoons , Pratiksha is very cute and loves to dance ( even if she is in lower kindergarten). As always, I met other relatives and had a chat. I went to Shaggy's place ( Shaggy = Abhishek Dnyate) along with Sanket to meet his parents and wish them a happy Diwali.

This Diwali, I had a continuous thought running all over of my mind. This is going to be my last Diwali in India. At least for two years. I will not be here for 2 years, if I get an admit from some university plus the rest of the process goes smoothly. And that, added some tinge of sorrow in the celebration. My mother said it twice or thrice that she will be missing me a lot in next Diwali. I replied saying that we can celebrate Diwali together through web cam, but that did not stop her saying the same thing again and again. I am kind of confused and emotional at times, sometimes I think that I am very selfish in the sense, I am leaving my family and home at the time when they look at me as a responsible person and going away just for my future. And sometimes I feel that this is the right time to achieve something in life and one should take all kinds of risk for it. But many times the second thing overcomes the first one... I should slowly start adapting to it. And that's why I will be going home regularly from now onwards.

Arsenal vs. Manchester United

2007-11-05T07:14:00.000-08:00

What you see when you have Arsenal playing against Manchester United? A thriller... This match wasn't an exception. William Gallas's injury time equalizer exemplified the greatness of the game of football, its uncertainty. I was almost breathless when the captain pushed it in the nets. What a relief !!!!

But I must admit that the red devils were superb on the ground. In the first half, Arsenal was having 57% of the possession and they still could not score a single goal. Of course, Adebayer, Fabregas, Hleb and others were trying their best, but somehow could not get the ball through . On the other hand it was the impressive Rooney who gave ManU a breakthrough. Arsenal must be missing Van Persie at that time. Rooney was continuously accompanied by magical Ronaldo and veteran Giggs. But gunners were not sleeping, they are known for bouncing back hard. Eboue gave a lofted pass over the head of the defender; Van Der Sar defended against Adebayor's ground shot but made a big mistake. The ball was going to the byline and ManU's defenders were static, waiting for the ball to go out of the game. There came Sagna who slided the ball to Fabregas. The Spaniard scored his 11th goal of the season.

There was a desperate try form the 18-year old Theo Wallcott who replaced Eboue. His attempt was almost a goal but missed it by a few inches, quite resembling to that of Ronaldinhio's one of the goals in World Cup.With about eight minutes remaining, Evra pushed the ball back to Ronaldo, piercing Gunners defense and Ronaldo slammed it to the empty net. I thought it was the end since ManU were looking aggressive and the gunners were loosing their grip on the game. It was frustrating. It went on to the last two minutes to see a decider and yes, gunners made it. Call it a luck, but still, it was sweet stealing the victory from the visitors.

Hail the gunners !!!!

GRE

2007-10-18T05:54:00.000-07:00

I had my GRE on Tuesday, 16th. This was my second attempt and was hoping to score more. I had a poor 1030 in my first go and this time its 1200. So, I did improve but not sure if this improvement is enough to get into a decent school. My scores in mock tests were consistently above 1300 and was quite sure to fall into the same range in the final. But, something went wrong and my plans went awry.

First section of Issue was quite easy. Second one ( The argument) was like a lolly-pop . I took more than expected time in solving first 10 quantitative questions and that sucked. I remember it took me around 5 minutes to solve first problem :( , and it was not that difficult but I was over-cautious at that time. So, having messed up with timings, I should have recovered from the early loss of 4 minutes. but didn't. I am quite sure of solving first 10 questions correctly, but later I must have made some serious and series of mistakes that landed me in a poor show of 690. Verbal was comparatively easy, easier than what I expected. I have a great faith in my vocabulary and that helped me somehow to get into an average score of 1200.

So, that was my second tryst with GRE. I made a same mistake of fumbling at the most important moments and thus incurred a loss of around 100 marks. If it would have been 1300+, I would have been on cloud #9. My academics are not convincing though they show a rising graph, and scoring around 1300 was a must for me. That could have bolstered the chances of getting into some of the good universities. But alas, I did not make it. After talking to some of my friends, I learned that 1200 is not bad at all, and can take you to a decent place, but I am a bit skeptical about it. So what's next? Need to find out a good counselor and search for good recommendations from professors, I am having few names to request for. On 28th I will be having TOEFL, and after that, I have to look into a list of universities for selections. I am god damn sure that this process of selection, getting reco's and SOP's , transcripts. sending them to the concerned persons will definitely take a hell out of me.

I am prepared for one more hectic month!!!

The boys are back!!!

2007-09-26T04:16:00.000-07:00

I am back and so is The Indian Cricket Team. The only difference is they are back with a bang!!! They say that India vs. Pakistan Cricket match is more like a war than a normal game and the Twenty20 final on Monday is just the manifestation of it. Our team has done it and created a history of being the first team to win the first T20 world cup.

After 'thrown out' of the world cup, the team must be aching with the bruise and T20 gave them a way to thunder. Remember, these guys are considered as underdogs and someone who are unaware of even the basics of Cricket ( remember Ricky Ponting's bitter remark ?). But boys showed their mettle and rose up like a Phoenix.

One notable thing about this new team is its energy and zest. Young and Restless. Something that Team India never had before, a strong determination of giving an individual's 100% out there on ground. World cup title, fame and all, are secondary outcomes of this win, more important reward is a great confidence booster. And when you have a team of beginners who present itself as a compact, bundled package of talent, unity and professionalism , this confidence is just THE THING which makes such victories possible.

But it's not the end of the world, it's the beginning. On his column in TOI, the veteran Alan Border said that Dhoni and company must keep up with this tempo. They must not get carried away with the praise. Winning for the first time is easy if you have a talent of doing so, but the most difficult thing is to have a habit of winning, something that Australians are used to of. So, if we want to really perform like the world champions, we better start studying ourselves from today. There is still a lot of scope for improvement.

A road to perdition

2007-06-22T03:00:00.000-07:00

This is ridiculous. How the hell one can build a road to Everest? And look at the reason for doing it... China wants to create world's most far reaching Olympic torch... And they find Mount Everest as the god damn place to prove their madness. How enlightening!!! isn't it? I probably feel the eternal or divine bliss when that light goes over my house. It will be like being in heaven, isn't it? But who cares ? China is notoriously known for its leaders and their ambitions . And they are right, why should they care about environment and all? They are not going to get affected anyways. Because today we are least bothered about the nature. What we bother about is everything else than nature . We bother about our career, our job, our salary, our so called FUTURE. In the rush of pursuing our materialistic goals, we are degrading the nature, which is in fact the most influential factor of the life on Earth.

History has shown it thousands of times, that whenever a human goes to any place which is naturally blessed earlier, he makes a hell lot of wastes there. And still we call a human as the most intellectual animal on Earth. God's masterpiece. Such a pity. We go for trekking with lots of plastic bags and we throw them anywhere in spite of knowing that plastic is not naturally decomposable. Similarly, China wants to build a road to Everest to make a showy display of their abilities. The abilities of crushing the rules of nature. And India is no different. Look at what we did with the lovely Badrinath in Uttarakhand? It used to be a pure place with not a tinge of pollution, and now we made it our home. A home of unmanageable people and lots of wastes.
And the saddest thing is even though we know that we are messing up with the ecology, we keep on doing the same. Imagine how pristine Ganga would have been in her early ages? How calm and clear would have been the bays of Bengal, the Arabian Sea?

It is not unknown that we will be facing a monster of Global Warming in the upcoming century. And if we keep on doing the stupid things , one day we will have to say a final good-bye to this lovely world. China and India both will be suffered from the preposterous idea of building the road. Here is what experts say...

Syed Iqbal Hasnain, senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research and a renowned glaciologist, said, "Such an idea should be condemned outright. A road in an area like that can completely change the ecosystem dynamics. Glaciers are super fragile systems. If indirect impacts of warming can be seen so dramatically, such a direct human intervention would be dangerous for the Himalayan ecosystems in the areas the road goes through. Even in Alaska, the government refuses to build a second road despite people being there, because everyone realises what a road can do to such habitats."

He added,
"Already, there are reports of problems in glacial melt-based rivers in China suffering flooding, and India too has its share of problems from global warming. A road is like a direct attack on ecology. You have to put up the entire set-up to run such a high-altitude link. At present, people talk of removing debris & waste from the base camp and surrounding areas and now this shall completely change the dynamics

Right now I am searching for the ways by which I personally can protest this decision of building a road. Finding out some online petitions which I can fill. Do let me know if I can do something in this regard. After all, we must shoulder a share of our responsibility to protect the mother Earth.

शत जन्म शोधितांना

2007-06-15T01:43:00.001-07:00

I was in my home-town, Nagar, before two weeks. I generally don't watch much of the television, but that day I planned to see French Open-2007 men's final between Fedrer and Nadal. So just switched on the TV. There came and advertisement of "शत जन्म शोधितांना" on ETV- Marathi, and I decided to watch that program.

शत जन्म शोधितांना - सावरकरांच्या अलौकिक प्रतिभेचा शोध was arranged by Maharashtra Military Foundation. As the name of the program suggest, it was an attempt to look at Savarkar from a perspective of a poet. I have gone through some of his poems earlier and was aware of his thoughts. So, this was another treat for me. The specialty of the program was its simplicity. There were no high-class instruments, neither a flashy display.

For the first time I heard a लावणी ( Lawani, a type of Marathi folk dance ) written by Savarkar. He is generally known for his patriotic songs and his revolutionary thoughts on Hindutva but on that day I was seeing another unseen side of one of the greatest legends of all times. He has even written some romantic poems, in midst of hardships when he was deported to Kalepani (Black Water) jails of Andaman-Nicobar. He has also written some of the plays in Marathi. As one of the scenes of a plot, Nina Kulkarni was reading dialogs of a mad woman who comes to Madhavrao Peshwe and asks him to take the revenge of Panipat's defeat. Followed by that, there was a पोवाडा ( In Maharashtra, the narrative hero laud is called as Powada, where a person tells a story in high pitched voice. A melodramatic acting is a soul of a Powada.) In all, it was a great experience to see that event.

I am currently searching for some of his poems and posting them here...

Freedom of expression

2007-05-17T03:03:00.000-07:00

I don't understand why such incidents keep on happening. We had enough controversies when M.F.Hussain portrayed indecent pictures of Hindu deities. And this time we have yet another so called Expressive artist Chandramohan Srilamantula, who was considered as an award winning student from Vadodara's Maharaja Sayajirao University.

When I read a newspapers, everywhere I see people pin-pointing Bajrang Dal and other organizations who believe in Hindutva. Especially editor's of almost every newspaper try their best to prove how violent or iconoclastic these groups are. At the same time they deliberately overlook the root cause of the agitation. When someone uses the freedom of expression to express something which is morally very hateful, then he / she must be punished and should be shunned from doing so. It's because freedom of speech does not mean expressing something that will hurt the sentiments of the society. One should not take liberty of doing anything just because he / she lives in a democratic country.

Few of these questions that I would like to ask to those existing and emerging "Expressive Artists" and to the useless National Human Rights Commission of India and to all those who don't understand the difference between a sacrilegious act and a real art.

1. Why is always a Hindu god / goddess chosen to express their aesthetic approach. Why not any god / goddess from other religion ?

2. Why the name of a painting is related to India, e.g. Bharatmata drawn by M.F.Hussain? Why can't it be Queen Victoria? Why can't it be a icon of Christianity like Pope? Why can't it be Mohammad Paigambar.

3. Why is Nandita Das named as Sita and Shabana Azmi as Radha in the movie Fire? Why can't they find any other names?

4. Why only minorities are counted as seekers of justice? Why not the pracharak of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha who were hostages for a long time and found dead in North-Eastern India?

5. Why an Al-Quida bellicose who killed hundreds of innocent people is suddenly considered as humane at the time of testimony?

Wikipedia effect

2007-05-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

These days I am enamored with Wikipedia. It is such a wonderful site. Each day you get lots of new stuff to read. And though the contents could be edited by anyone, we get highly authentic information. That makes it a true wiki site, combined with a great oracular repository of information.

I was reading Srinivasa Ramanujan, C.V. Raman, Chandrasekhar Bose, Dr. Homi Bhabha and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai. Their work and their contribution towards our motherland was amazing . These eminent Indians did a pioneering job in Mathematics, Physics, Indian Aerospace Programs. And they did suffer a lot while doing so, perhaps that's what made them so great. After completing these articles, I started experiencing pity on myself. There are people who had done some great jobs in past and here I am, pushing each day, waiting for a rosy weekend.

I don't want to compare myself with those great souls. But still, I feel I should do something that will make me feel proud. Leave the rest of the world, I want to make myself happy.I argued with one of my friends about my monotonous life . I was not convinced that my job makes me so exhausted that after office hours all I can think of is a sound sleep. Neither a fact that we did not meet with a situation that could foster our creative thinking. I fretted about my problems and hardly tried to solve them. And these great people faced difficulties, surmounted them. Their difficulties were certainly bigger than mine.

I need to read more and keep myself motivated by these sources of information. Let's see if it can make some change in my "way of looking at things" and could help me somehow?

Thanks Wikipedia for those nice articles.

Birds fly away to the southern sky searching a home

2007-05-03T07:29:00.000-07:00

This is a line from Parikrama's song 'But it rained'. I am writing this blog when one of dearest friends Sanket is flying to Japan. His company has got a Japanese account and they need him on site. It will take almost a year for him to come back to India. When I first knew it I was delighted. And why shouldn't I ? You don't go on-site so often; at least not at the start of your professional career. It's not that I am not happy but I don't know why I feel so nauseated.

Sanket, Bhushan, Charu, Nikhil, Abhishek, Amey and me. We had some great times in our college-days. I still miss those golden moments that we enjoyed together. But someone said is right, time doesn't wait for anyone. As days passed, we graduated, earned jobs. And now I see, we all are cruising towards some aim, a demanding aim that will never keep us physically together. We will never play cricket in the scorching sun neither bunk our computer classes for a football match. We will never talk about 'always welcome' topics of our discussion that includes everything in our little world ,neither will spend a complete night bugging each other.

As I see it today, Amey is getting married soon. Charu and Nikhil are enjoying their jobs in Bangalore and are planning for their post-graduation most probably in US. Abhishek found his love and will soon be getting engaged and will be pursuing his PG in States. Bhushan is doing his job and looking forward for C-DAC preparations. And I am preparing for GRE. Looks like everyone is set for a new beginning.

Yeh, this was bound to happen one day, we knew it. But I never thought that this day will come so sooner. I may sound a bit emotional, but guessed that this is a right topic to write a blog on. Thanks a lot to the revolutionary internet,messengers and emails, phones that will keep us all together.
So, here I am taking an opportunity to wish a bright career to all of my friends.

We will always be in touch, wherever we go...
Friends forever!!!!

Hacker.Dropout.CEO

2007-04-20T06:41:00.000-07:00

There is this guy called Mark Zuckerberg who ventured a social-networking site Facebook . Check out... Here is the link that narrates the journey from a small startup to the latest buzz of Silicon Valley.

Mark, like almost all entrepreneurs, was a prodigious child. He and his friend built a MP3 plugin for Winamp that adapts to the test of your music and accordingly creates play list. Upon seeing their software under freely-downloaded category, Yahoo! came calling. Both of them turned down an offer of Yahoo and pursued their graduation in Harvard and Yale.
Harvard was reluctant to give away the information of the students and that made Mark to hack into Harvard's server. That is the birth of a new baby-Facebook. After dropping out from the University, Mark and his colleagues devoted themselves to a new startup .Starting from a normal web-portal, Facebook engrossed into a multi-million dollar company that never looked back. It even turned down a lucrative buyout offer of $1 billion from Yahoo!

I think, to be a successful entrepreneur, one needs a sight to foresee the things, and a immense self-motivating force, an ability to take risks. Naturally, one needs to have an "Out of box" thinking which anticipates the changing colors of market. Nowadays, we see IITians, IIM graduates getting caught by an entrepreneur bug. But being a successful person, doesn't need any tag of IIT or IIM. It all depends on how alert we are.

I always dreamed of starting my own software firm. There are certain steps that I am taking to achieve it. And I wish one day that dream will come true.
Amen...

Namesake

2007-04-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

A perfect treat for those who like watching soft, real life stories. And why not? When Jhumpa Lahiri's narration and Mira Nair's adroit direction comes hand in hand, no wonders we meet some great creation. The title of movie itself is quite meaningful. If a person, place, or thing is named after a different person, place, or thing, then one is said to be the namesake of the other.

The story begins with a first generation of immigrant Bengali family to the United States of America. Right from acclimating with a cold weather to getting accustomed with totally different culture, we see lot of small situations making an impact on the couple's lifestyle. Ashoke Ganguly (Irrfan Khan ) and Ashmita (Tabbu) manage themselves to a new country, but the problem comes with their next generation. Nikhil "Gogol" Ganguli, and Sonia Ganguli, both are americanized are unaware of Indian culture. Then comes the tragedy of the family. Of course, this seems to be a tragedy to an Indian, not to an American because of the cultural differences.

The reason why Ashoke names his son after Nikolai Gogol, is very touchable. The bond of emotions between Ashoke and his son Gogol is presented in fantastic way. The pros and cons of an American culture make us think.

Irrfan Khan as always puts a solid performance. He easily manages to speak Bengali and English in an Indian's accent. But I have to say who acted best in the movie, I will select Tabbu. She presents an orthodox middle class woman Ashmita, who comes to an unknown country with her husband. Shouldering her responsibility of growing up her children and finally when everyone settles in their lives, she quietly returns to those things which she always wanted to do. Kal Penn, Gogol looks like a perfect ABCD (American Born Confused Desi). He lives his life his own way, an American's way and looses his love twice, struggles through emotional decline but settles.
One last thing to mention, the music. Truly melodious. The background scores give a typical Bengali look to the film.

A must see movie...

In the times of TOI

2007-04-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

On this Sunday, I happened to read Times of India. There is a small supplement called Time, we get these days. And guess who we had this time? It was a male stripper. The punchline was 'The confession of a male stripper'.
I am reading TOI from last 5 years. But from last 1-2 years I could see a debacle in its overall quality. TOI was never well-known for its editorials. I read it just for the sake of reading. I am living with my roomies and all of them except me love Times. So, I fall in minority.
If we look at past 2 years of TOI, we could see a drastic change. Earlier there were no Page-3 news, neither were useless articles gossiping Bollywood/Hollywood actors/actresses. I don't claim that it was an ideal paper. But these days what I am seeing is TOI doesn't have anything worth reading.
Try retrospecting Time, we had 'A confession of a bar dancer', so called bold interview with a girl who left her home in her early ages with a man whom she though she loved, a new metro sexual man... the list goes on. My question is , is this a real India? Is this what we think when we dream of a modern India?
One more thing I feel contradictory is the news that we see in Pune Times. Now what does Pune have to do with Hollywood's current affairs?
I came across an editorial of Lokmat, a Marathi newspaper. There was some comment from Dr. P.C. Alexander. I don't remember the actual wording, it was about the non-sense news that media is spreading these days.
I think, instead of wasting those soft pages on pairs of Aishwarya-Abhishek, Liz Hurley-Arun Nair, better talk of something really useful.
Let people know that there are mavericks out here who devoted their lives for some good cause. Let them know that there are still some figure who stood tall against throughout their fight and whom we see as a source of inspiration.
I don't know if TOI have a time for its introspection, but for now I am switching over from 'The Times of India' to 'The Hindu'. At least, I could read some good Edi's here.

The Pursuit of HappYness

2007-03-13T06:52:00.000-07:00

I saw this movie last weekend. I will say, after a long time I saw a stunning performance. This movie should be considered as the best-of Will Smith. Although, Smith didn't get the best actor's award this year, but man, he makes you cry and he makes you clap. We see an emotional push throughout the movie and at the end we see an inspiration, that shows us the imperishable power of love and determination.

First thing, a fantastic script and storyline. Chris Gardner's life an inspiration for all those who want to pursue an American Dream. He struggles all the way, for everything in his life. Right from his homeless fatherhood to his apprenticeship in the stock market. He struggles and finally he wins.He cries, he claps, he celebrates. Just like a common,hard-working man. This is what strikes our mind and touches our hearts.

Some of the scenes are truly marvelous piece of acting and direction.
First- The conversation between Chris and his son, when they play basket-ball. "Do not let anyone tell you that you can't do it." , "You have to dream and you have protect your dream"...awesome.
Second- The scene at the tram-station. Smith tells his child that the machine he is carrying is a time machine. The homeless child being very innocent, follows his dad and sleeps in a toilet. Smith cries.
Third- (This is the best one...)Smith gets selected and his interviewer offers him a job. He accepts it. His eyes speak. He walks out of the room to the pathway, remembers his hardships, cries and claps. He goes to his son, hugs him with all of his joys... "There is a little place called heart and there lies the happyness..."

Hats off to Gabriel Muccino ,Will Smith, and Jaden Smith.
Outstanding!!!

Women's day special...

2007-03-09T07:04:00.000-08:00

It was Women's day yesterday. We had a small discussion in my room about women's contribution towards the computer related fields. We could hardly come up with some names. And so, at the end, we concluded that women are "weak" in computations. Today, I was passing time, and came across some information that I was unaware of.

Here are some of the womens who are remembered for their pioneering efforts in the field of computation.

1. Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), promoter of Charles Babbage's analytical engine
2. Grace Hopper (1906-1992), first programmer for the Mark I Calculator
3. Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jennings, and Fran Bilas, original programmers of the ENIAC
4. Jean E. Sammet (1928), mathematician and computer scientist; developed FORMAC programming language
5. Barbara H. Liskov (1939), first American female Doctorate of Computer Science (1968)
6. Irma Wyman, first Honeywell CIO
7. Sally Floyd (computer scientist), most renowned for her work on Transmission Control Protocol[1]
8. Frances E. Allen, first female recipient of the ACM'S Turing Award
9. Anita Borg, the founding director of the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT)
10. Shafi Goldwasser, theoretical computer scientist, two time recipient of the Godel Prize
11. Eva Tardos, recipient of the Fulkerson Prize

This list was sufficient to prove the fallacy of our conclusion!!!

Happy Women's Day... :)

Police raid Pune's Rave party.

2007-03-06T07:34:00.000-08:00

Pune Gramin Police arrested around 251 young people doing a rave party at villa near the National Defense Academy in Khadakwasla, 30 km from Pune. The party-freaks were caught red-handed with a large amount of narcotics and Afim.

The accused involve young IT professionals and students, including 29 girls and 12 foreign nationals. All of them were booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act as some of them were found to be in possession of drugs and most others under its influence, police said. The party was arranged and the invitations were sent through SMS, e-mails etc. It's also found that it involves an international racket of Drug-Dealers. When these party-animals are arrested, they were not in a position to understand the seriousness of the matter. Even after their arrest, they were found making some indecent remarks at the police and media personnels.

The serious question that arises here is, why is our young generation is so fanatic about drugs? Those who are arrested are from so called high-class society and are highly educated. I think the excess of money that these people possess and the ignorance from their busy parents make them so ecstasy-addicted. There is a large population of students that live in Pune. They are the one most falling for this addiction.
The Superintendent of Police Vishvas Nangre Patil was the brain behind the raid. He has got all those virtues which an ideal Policeman should posses. I am sure, he will definitely dig into the roots of this matter. The police has an important assignment, to find out the system that spoils our young generation.

Good job Nagre Patil, keep it up...

Arsenal Vs. Reading

2007-03-04T20:26:00.000-08:00

It was this Saturday's Premiership match at The Emirates Stadium, London. Arsenal was playing without their Ace players like Henry, Persie, Adebayer, Flamini. Fabregas and Baptista were having the "not so easy" responsibility of strikers. Arsenal finally won the match with a score of 2-1 but it could have definitely been 5-1.

In the first half, Arsenal lost some great opportunities to score. Fabregas was in a great form on that day but somehow he could not covert the chances into points. He just could not finish it properly ( remember the chance where Fabregas and Baptista were playing stupid game of passing the ball to each other and finally Fabregas lost an easy chance to score!!!)
You can't be that careless.... It was Arsenal's luck I will say on that day, that made them win. Imagine, what could have happened if there was someone other than Reading?
Walcott, the young sensation was looking good. But he again proved that he needs to work on his physic.
Lehman, was cursing like anything out there. The way, he pushed Gallas was truely unprofessional. They could have a discussion in the dressing room. I think,Arsene Wenger should take a strict action against this issue. Certainly, this wasn't expected from a player like Lehman.

I strongly think that Arsenal needs to shape up their attack more and their players need to grow up a little bit. Everyone knows that Arsenal has a great young talent but then its' their responsibility to nourish it.

The open source

2007-03-01T06:32:00.000-08:00

Here is what I understood from the concept of Open Source:

Open source describes the principle and methods using which one has an open access to production and design of the goods, resources and products. This allows the user to create new revisions of the software contents by either incremental individual efforts or through collaboration.
The name Open Source has got an interesting history. This term was coined out of a strategy session held at Palo Alto, California. It came through an announcement from Netscape in release of its Navigator's source code.Netscape licensed and release their code as Open Source under the name Mozilla.

Most economist agree that Open Source candidate have a public good aspect to them. The original work requires a lot of time, money and efforts. But when someone reproduces it, it's cost decreases. It could be so low that the additional users may be added to low or zero cost. This is called as a marginal cost of product. So, here comes the concept of copyright. When something is copyrighted, you have to pay something to access it. But this cost is more than the cost of making additional copy but less than its original price. Thus the consumers will pay the access cost.

The basic idea of the open source is to reduce the restrictions of the copyrights. This will add to the original work and will get the social benefits. Some argue that since the monetary benefits which one gets from open source are less, there is a less chance of its development. However, history says that larger corporations have often taken over startups who compete with them in development of a particular product. In other way, they intentionally slower down the development of the product. Some counterparts argue that opening the door of development to many will definitely increase the product's capabilities while benefiting the original creator. The creator gets reputation, becomes an expertise in a specific area. He/She consults some software firm where their experience and skills are valued.

How to contribute to Open Source ?
http://today.java.net/pub/pq/18
http://www.kegel.com/academy/opensource.html
http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/contributewithoutcoding.htm

After writing this much, I think I should also try to contribute towards it.
After all, Linus Torvalds must have thought something before saying
'The future is open source'....

How things work?

2007-02-28T20:46:00.001-08:00

I love Physics.
While surfing through the net, I came across a link. It explains some interesting real life problems and how Physics help us to solve them. Thought is worth sharing.
http://howthingswork.virginia.edu/

The top of the atmosphere

2007-02-27T07:36:00.000-08:00

Atmospheric gases scatter blue wavelength of visible light more than other wavelengths, giving the Earth's visible edge a blue halo. At higher points the atmosphere becomes so thin that it ceases to exist. The image shows the translucent moon emerging from behind the halo.

There is no dividing line as such between Earth's atmosphere and space, but it is useful for the scientist who study the balance of the incoming and outgoing energy of the Earth. They conceptually think of the altitude of 100 kilometers above the Earth as the "top of atmosphere". The top of the atmosphere is the place where solar energy enters the Earth's atmosphere and the thermal radiations from Earth release. So, the balance of incoming and the outgoing energy determines the Earth's temperature. The ability of the Greenhouse gases to change this balance by reducing the amount of thermal energy exiting is called as The Global Warming.

Greenhouse gases are not the only part of the Earth's system that affects the balance. The percent of the incoming sunlight that Earth reflects ( called as 'albedo' ) is also one of the influential factor. Clouds over Earth's surface, snow, ice are highly affected by the Earth's reflection.

Because snow and ice are so reflective, scientists have long expected that melting of snow and ice in the polar regions will accelerate climate warming by reducing the Earth’ albedo. Atmospheric scientist Seiji Kato of NASA’s Langley Research Center and several teammates have used a suite of NASA and NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) satellite observations to investigate whether this feedback is already underway. The team compared reflected sunlight, clouds, and sea ice and snow cover at polar latitudes from 2000-2004. What they found was a bit of a surprise: while snow and ice in the Arctic declined, the albedo didn’t change.

The above picture was acquired on July 20,2006 with Kodak 760C digital camera having 400 mm lens by the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The International Space Station Program supports the astronauts to take the picture of Earth that will be of great value for scientists and for public.

The sharpest man made object

2007-02-27T07:29:00.001-08:00

Researchers from the University of Alberta in and the National Institute for Nanotechnology in Canada created the sharpest object ever made. The new nano object is tungsten needle tapering down to about the thickness of single atom. The breakthrough might help improve future scanning tunneling microscopes.

The needle, made by Moh'd Rezeq in the group lead by Professor Robert Wolkow at the University of Alberta and the National Institute for Nanotechnology, was initially much blunter. The needle was exposed to pure nitrogen atmosphere which made it thinner and thinner. Tungsten is chemically highly reactive and the nitrogen is used to roughen the tungsten surface. But at the tip, where the electric field created by applying a voltage to the tungsten is at its maximum, N2 molecules are driven away. This process reaches an equilibrium condition in which the point is very sharp.

Furthermore, what N2 is present near the tip helps to stabilize the tungsten against further chemical degradation. Indeed, the resultant needle is stable up to temperatures of 900 degrees Celsius even after 24 hours of exposure to air.

The probe tips used in scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs), even though they produce atomic-resolution pictures of atoms sitting on the top layer of a solid material, are not themselves atomically thin. Rather their radius of curvature at the bottom is typically 10 nm or more.

According to Wolkow says that although a narrower tip will be useful in the construction of STM arrays (you can pack more tips into a small area; and a wide array might even permit movies of atomic motions) the spatial resolution won't improve thereby. The real benefit of the sharp tungsten tips, he believes, will be as superb electron emitters. Being so slender, they would emit electrons in a bright, narrow, stable stream.

The picture shows a field ion microscope (FIM) image of a very sharp tungsten needle. The small round features on the image are individual atoms. The lighter colored elongated features are traces captured as atoms moved during the imaging process (approximately 1 second).

How technology delievers for UPS?

2007-02-26T02:53:00.000-08:00

Ever thought of the technologies that UPS might be using to get the right things at right place at right time? Here is something that I found while browsing.

A truck driver of UPS in Atlanta checks out his hand held device to find out today's schedule and finds out that it's gonna be a busy day for him. 400 packages to deliver till the day ends. If he doesn't want to use some intelligence, he will have to bang the customer's door at nights also.
And in fact this was the condition until recently, but thanks to a custom-built software program that UPS began rolling out before two years. Now the driver makes up all of his deliveries before 6p.m. and comes back to his home well before the dinner.

Not so long ago, UPS drivers worked off maps, 3-x-5 note cards and their own memory map to find out the best path to deliver their packages. It was until 2005 when UPS began to implement a $600 million route-optimization system -think MapQuest on steroids. On each evening,this system maps out the next day's schedule for its 56,000 drivers. The system is said to be so sophisticated that it designs a route to minimize the number of left turns, thus minimizing the time and gas the drivers waste idling at stoplights.

This is an example of how technology helps companies to capture their institutional knowledge of the customers. Earlier when a truck driver walks out of the company's premises, leaving the job, his experience walks out with him. But now, as the information is stored in a centralized system, training someone becomes more easy.

But what about the efficiency of the system? No question at all. In November alone, the company's driver logged 3 million fewer miles than they did the year before.

The GPS ( Global Positioning System ) technology, warns a driver with a beep if they are on the wrong-way. Since the exact position of driver is known, UPS can send a the closest driver quickly after you call in for a pickup.

This is what is the real-application of technology, that makes the business grow and that too in a simpler manner.

The Michelin Tweel

2007-02-23T07:01:00.000-08:00

Michelin invented the first radial tyre fifty years ago. The first tubeless tyre was invented before around 100 years and now they are back in the mood of doing something really innovative. Tweel is a prototype designed by Michelin. In a crude, simple language we can say that it is a tyre without air pressure.

Flexible spokes are fused with a flexible wheel which deforms to absorb shock. The Tweel also has a unique capability to have different vertical and lateral stiffness.
Vertical stiffness affects ride comfort, and lateral stiffness affects handling and cornering. The ability to tune these two parameters differently allows the best of both worlds, ride comfort and superb handling!

Though it looks new, but some complains that it's ugly. But we need to wait until Michelin comes up with a beautiful look for their Tweel.

When I showed how this new technology works to one of my friends, he said that they are not going to work on Indian roads as Indian roads have got there "special characteristics" :-)

How to make money by Blogging?

2007-02-06T02:21:00.000-08:00

I wanted to try out some new internet browser so I installed Netscape7.2 The thing I like about this browser is its homepage. Some fantastic news and polls are posted there.

I heard about Google's Adsense and fortunately got an article which browsing through Netscape. Here is a link.

This is related with a guy called Kevin Vahey's website on Boston transit and how he generated a revenue out of it. It also mentions a website http://www.problogger.net
I am yet to go through it, but it seems useful. It teaches some basics of blogging and making money out of it.

So, I searched on Google and applied for their AdSense program.
Let's see if I can get a confirmation from their side or not?

Grad's HelpLine

2007-02-03T01:51:00.000-08:00

My friend Vijay designed a web-site for GRE-GMAT-TOEFL preparation.

Here is the link
http://www.freewebs.com/vijaybahirji1985/

Hope that, he gets more free time for such on-bench activities...
:-)
Jai GRE!!!

Our "Sabse Tez", "24x7" news channels...

2007-01-30T07:27:00.000-08:00

I was not knowing the name of Major Manish Pitambare until I read that mail. It made me think.

The body of Major Manish Pitambare, who was shot dead at Anantnag, was cremated with full military honors at Thane on Wednesday. This was the news on BBC that day. Manish Pitambare fought for us and he laid his life for our country, and instead of publishing this news our news channels were busy in something else.

Those so called "Sabse Tez" and "24x7" channels were paying there salutes to Sanjay Dutt by trying their best to prove his innocence. And to support their mission "No Bhai Sirf Munna", they were interviewing the great Salman Khan. Now the whole world knows what kind of person Salman is. To add to this, Amitabh Bachhan was remembering the relationships between Bachhan and Dutt family. And was proud enough to say that Sanjay is a good kid. He is like a elder brother to Abhishek. By the same time, Sanjay Dutt was ruling all news chammels. His love towards his daughter, his prayers in temples were shown in such a way as if he is the only person who cares for family, who looks after the children, who offers prayer, puja.

The worst thing is, there was not a single Indian news channel who was interested in Major's news. He killed Hijbul Mujahiddin's most wanted terrorist Sohel Faisal. Leading the operation he lost his life and other four were injured. We see it everyday. Celebrities, politician are always there in headlines. They even show some crap incident of someone trapped in main-hole and how he is been helped to come out of it. Our parliament discusses Greg Chappel's comments , Shahrukh Khan's KBC. When there are some riots, they even don't think of the consequences of the news which they are spreading.

One thing is clear, media is no more a formidable, unbiased pillar of democracy. Like everything else it is also sold .

I am proud of you Shahid Major Manish Pitambare.

Hail the gunners

2007-01-23T05:17:00.000-08:00

Gunners did it again. Last time they said that it was Adebayer's sheer luck. But Persie and Henry showed Manchester United their real place.

Rooney's stunning header put ManU ahead but that wasn't enough to take them through. Indeed, that goal was a class act. And there was absolutely no chance for Lehman.
ManU 1 - Arsenal 0.

But ManU's celebrations were ended when Persie came with a superb equalizer. That was such an athletic performance. At the last moment, Persie managed to push it in the nets.
ManU 1 - Arsenal 1.

By the time three of ManU's player were "rewarded" a yellow card.

The rivalry continued till the extra time. And finally when about one minute was remaining, gunners had a treat. Thierry Henry's brilliant header turned the tide towards gunners.
ManU 1 - Arsenal 2.

Right said, Arsene Wenger , Henry is back and hungry.

Arsenal had a great comeback. After lagging behind by one goal, the came up and crushed Manchester United. They showed up the skills for which they are widely known,
TOTAL FOOTBALL.

GURU

2007-01-19T07:37:00.000-08:00

This was a long awaited movie. I had more expectations from this one, because it is inspired from the life of Dhirubhai Ambani. A package of typical Mani Ratnam's touch and Rehman's melody. Throughout the film, we never loose main storyline. Of course, there are some places which could be reshaped. e.g. instead of focusing on Madhavan and Vidya Balan , they could have made the last court-appearance more interesting and exciting. Also there are some songs (like the one which Abhishek and Aishwarya sing after she gives birth to her twins). And in fact, the way Abhishek pleads in court and wins the lawsuit against him is more dramatic than realistic. He simply doesn't prove to the court instead he runs through a kind of public speech and that's it. But I guess, we need to grow up in order to accept some see real-whacky-shaky courtroom arguments on silver screen.

Rest is fine. Abhishek once again proves that he has a potential to be a good actor ( when he works with a good director) . Madhavan is decent enough in his small role. Aishwarya and Vidya Balan didn't get much footage. And last but not the least, Mithunda , after a long period, we could see him doing a good role. (Remember Agnipath ? )

DOR

2007-01-01T06:48:00.000-08:00

Yet another brilliant piece of art. Nagesh Kuknoor has proved it many times before Dor. These days, we hardly see 'acting' in movies. Especially when we have those model-turned-actors/actresses all over , we should not expect some great things happening. But Nagesh has put forward a masterpiece and proved what difference could a connoisseur director make with a seemingly simple script. Gul Panag, Alisha Takiya were superb. And as expected, wonderboy Shreyas Talpade was awesome.

The locations were simple yet rich. No show-making, no jazzy Hollywood style flicks. All that flows is a pure creation, a melodious music and great dialog-delivery.
Indian audience is "famous" for their movie-tastes. But this time, Nagesh got accolade for his creation. Let's hope that this creativity and originality continues in Bollywood. Definitely, Dor is there in my Hall of Fame movies and Nagesh, you are too good...

Keep making these kinds of Great Movies...

Cool Quotes

2006-12-22T07:03:00.000-08:00

I just love quotations. After a long and intense Google search I found some of these interesting quotes. I often use them as my email-signatures. Here is the list.

Minds, like parachutes, function best when open.

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

I've given up trying to escape from reality; they always find me anyway.

Don't worry about life; you're not going to survive it anyway.

When at the edge of the unknown, faith provides the wings to fly.

Wise men talk because they have something to say. Fools talk because they have to say something.

"All I ask is a chance to prove that money can't make me happy."

"A leader is one who knows where he wants to go, and gets up and goes."

"Remember: the average is as close to the bottom as it is to the top."

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.

Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.

When you lose, don't ever lose the lesson learned.

The only place you will find success before work is in the dictionary.

It's not the pace of life that concerns me, it's the sudden stop at the end.

A ship in the harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

I always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific.

Education is when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don't.

'The harder I work, the luckier I get.'

Hard work never killed anyone, but why give it a chance?

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered desk drawer.

I cna ytpe 300 wrods pre mniuet!!!

"The believer is happy. The doubter is wise."

God is real, unless declared integer

Before borrowing money from a friend, decide whether you need more.

Death is hereditary.

An expert is someone who takes a subject you understand and makes it sound confusing

Many things can be preserved in alcohol. Dignity is not one of them.

Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference.

Cheer up, the worst is yet to come.

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

Everyone makes mistakes. The trick is to make them when nobody is looking.

Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won't expect it back.

If you can't see the bright side of life, polish the dull side.

Where there's a will there are five hundred relatives

Everything is funny as long as it is happening to somebody else

Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn't work out, you haven't wasted a whole day

I'm not afraid to die. I just don't want to be there when it happens

Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't

Don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out of it alive

Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.

I DON'T HAVE AN ATTITUDE PROBLEM, YOU HAVE A PERCEPTION PROBLEM.

Last night I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky, and I thoughtto myself, "where the heck is the ceiling?"

I don't suffer from stress. I am a carrier.

After any salary raise, you will have less money at the end of the month than you did before.

When you don't know what to do, walk fast and look worried.

Whenever I find the key to success, someone changes the lock.

To Err is human, to forgive is not a COMPANY policy.

Alcohol doesn't solve any problems, but if you think again, neither does Milk.

In order to get a Loan, you first need to prove that you don't need it.

If at first you don't succeed... Destroy all evidence that you ever tried.

If you have bunked the class, the professor has taken attendance.

Anniversary Gift for parents

2006-12-18T08:15:00.000-08:00

Actually I wanted to give this gift on my first salary itelf. But something changed my plan. It's 11th Dec.; marriage anniversary of my mom and dad, (I call them Aai and Aaba). Aaba is a die hard fan of Marathi songs, especially of Sudhir Phadake's . And my Aai likes all genres of music, except hard-rock :-)

So, I bought a set of GEET-RAMAYANA, the divine creation of Sudhir Phadake and G.D. Madgulkar. My parents both just love it. They said that this is the best gift they have ever recieved from me.....

Absence of choice...

2006-12-15T08:02:00.000-08:00

I had a thought in mind "The absence of choice is a circumstance that is very, very rare" . And I want to write something about this thought.

Firstly, what is a choice? Choice is the process of making out one selection from a number of available options. Naturally, to make a choice, you should have more than one options.
I think that throughout the whole life, we never had an absence of choice. Here the stress is on the word absence of choice and not on choice. So, we do have choices, but to go with them or not is the decision to make.
Even if we broader our view a little bit, we could say that even animals also have sense of choices. Think of how they find their mate? There is a certain ritual of doing that choice.

So, what could be the circumstances and what are the choices? The decision of going with one of the choices depends largely on various factors. They could be economical, moral factors. They could be the factors involving relationships. responsibilities. e.g. a person scores good marks in an exam and still he could not opt for a good university just because its costly. A person, feels that he is a maverick, he wants to leave his job, grow long hairs, devote his life for guitar.
But he can't do it!!!
Also time is the most crucial factor. Even if I go with one of my choices and later found that I chose a wrong way, the time doesn't permit me to get back my old days from where I started.

So, in all what I think is, all the time we play a game of choices, one who gets it right, goes through, one who doesn't, flunks...

Lost in work!!!

2006-12-12T07:55:00.000-08:00

I joined a guitar class and gym in last month. Everything was going merrily for one month after that. And then I understood that life is not sweet as it seems. I had a sudden workload and couldn't catch up the timings for gym and guitar classes. So here I am, sitting on my chair, looking frantically towards my screen, which shows nothing more than a unix console, doing my job.

Hope I will soon find a way out , and will join the gym and my lovely guitar classes.

Amen...

Raigad ...

2006-12-01T07:27:00.000-08:00

It was our passion for trekking that finally took all of us to Raigad Fort. Maharashtra has a splendid history of Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the founder of "The Hindavi Swarajya" and one of the greatest kings in the history . We reached to Pachad, a small village near Raigad Fort at about 6 PM. As per our expectations, it was raining hard. We started trekking at 7. Actually, by any means it was not trekking, cause Raigad have around one thousand steps to get to the top. That didn't sound good to me and I was a little bit disappointed. We stayed in a MTDC( Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation ) room that night.

I heard a lot about Raigad, and didn't want to miss the sunrise that day. But clouds faded my wish. But as we strode there, I went into a kind of influence. The influence, that every "Marathi Manus " must experience. Everything there takes us so close to Maharaj that we get totally astonished by his vision, his wisdom, his prowess, his faith towards the ultimate aim of Swarajya and what not.

There has been plenty of research done and there is enough literature available that tells us the greatness of Maharaj. We had a glorious history that very few of the countries have. But one thing I must say, Raigad gives us an inspiration and reminds us the duties that we have towards this mother-land. One must go there at least once to feel that influence.

George Constanza's "Words of Wisdom"

2006-11-22T01:00:00.000-08:00

It was a forward from a friend, Here it goes...

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What's that, a bonus? !? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you go live in an old age home. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, then when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work forty years until you are young enough to enjoy your retirement. You drink alcohol, you party, and you get ready for high school. You go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become little baby, you go back , you spend your nine months floating with luxuries like central heating, spa, room service on tap, then you finish off as an orgasm!! Amen "

Isn't this funny and creative?

We are getting warmer !!!

2006-10-26T05:39:00.000-07:00

There is a warning from a group of scientists from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, that 2005 was the warmest year on record since the last major ice age nearly 12000 years ago. The other statistics are even terrifying.

When the industrial revolution began, the Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere stood at 280 parts per million. Today it's 380 ppm and is continuously rising. An estimate from a NASA's scientist James Hansen says that human made GHG's (Green House Gases) have warmed the Earth by 0.6 degree Celsius over past three decades. Even though this looks quite sober, the further rise in the temperature by 1 degree Celsius will equal the maximum level experienced in a million years. A warmer world will have an adverse effect on the biodiversity. Around 1700 species of plants, animals, insects have already moved towards polar regions since the second half of the 20th century.

This clearly tells us that day by day we are getting warmer, and there is a steady rate for this to happen. If this continues, the day will not be far long, when we all have to shift to the polar regions finding some place in Igloos'. The choice is ours, either control the pollution or go to hell !!!

One thing we can certainly do. We can start planting a new seed on each of the upcoming birthday. And more importantly, we will grow it, look after it, nourish it like the way we brought up the newly born baby.

Outsourcing in Software Industry : My thoughts

2006-10-16T22:54:00.000-07:00

It was a mail titled "The jobs aren't coming to US" I read today morning. The punch line was the statement of Intel's CEO. He admitted that new jobs are being created but the CEO's are making it sure that they are in India, China and not in the United States of America.

The New York Times estimate : millions of jobs have been moved offshore since March 2001. Barret Gartner predicts that one of the ten tech jobs will be moved offshore by the end of the next year and half of them will be skilled engineering positions.
Now the mostly affected group by this decision will be obviously Middle Class Americans. This is because almost all of their jobs are been outsourced. Thus, a mere engineering degree in America nowadays will no longer guarantee employment.

The companies like Intel,IBM, Microsoft do a lot of outsourcing in Asia . The basic reason behind this outsourcing is the cost-reduction. We all know that developing a particular software sitting in Seattle's will definitely cost more than doing the same in Pune. In fact, a large share of income of Indian software firms come from these outsourced products. Even if we are seeing this trend these days, I have some doubts.

If we look at IT giants in India, we can conclude that major part of there income comes from services. As opposite, if we look at the successful companies in USA, we will find that they had been founded out of some "core idea". Now by core idea, what I mean is there is certain concept running behind there foundation. Look at Google, it was the paper The Anatomy of Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine that made the web-search so easy and a high selling concept. If we look at Apple, the story is no different. This is the thing which the Indian IT giants are lacking of. Surely, there are some products in market by Infosys such as Fiancle. But if we start counting, then the list is not unending.

All the Indian companies need is the new concept that is purely original. Of course there are some startups who are putting their brains in and are competing to Giants of Silicon Valley. But if we look at the harsh competition, we need some supporting hand. So, instead of looking at Outsourcing blindly, we should make up the right guesses and take necessary actions. The Indian firms should not only develop outsourced products but also start building something that is completely new and yet untouched. That will be the beginning of a new era where we will have our own revolutionaries like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Lawrence Page, Sergey Brin.

A. R. Rehman talks about music and music artists

2006-09-28T09:42:00.000-07:00

Some days before, one of my friends went to a meeting. The meeting was arranged for all fans of A.R. Rehman. He sent me a message having Rehman's quote which goes like this:

" If a music artist wants to blossom into a full-pleaded person, its not enough if he knows only classical music; nor it is enough if he is well versed only in ragas and techniques.
Instead, he should be a knowledgeable person interested in life and philosophy.
In his personal life there should be at least in some corner of his heart, a tinge of lingering sorrow."

I think this is the best message which a music icon can give to all of his followers or music- aspirants. This is so true. I am a poor fellow when it comes to talk about music and its related fields. But when a legend says, it definitely makes a difference. Probably the days from which Rehman rose, must have made a deep impact on him and their might be some "tinge of sorrow" in his life which made him what he today is.

Being a poor fellow, I can only think is before human learned how to talk, he must have learned the music. He must have listened to the wind, to the sea, to the nature and His creations. And that might be the reason why even today, we get a lot of stimuli's when we listen to some great music.

I think music is the essence of life.

An experience worth living...Lonavala

2006-09-21T03:39:00.000-07:00

It was not preplanned. We had almost finished our mini-project, and were in a party-mood. So, we went to Lonavala yesterday...

As usual, we started the journey late. We were waiting for one of our friends and he didn't turn up. So, we lost our one hour. But then at about 3:15 PM we were heading towards Lonavala. As the time passed, we drove our bikes through heavy rains.The roads were smoky and clouded turning upside down through the green lands.

We reached there at about 5:15 and had snacks. When we were moving towards Bhushi Dam, traffic police caught us. We do have our bike licenses but Aniket (friend of mine) screwed up with his bikes' PUC. The result was a fine of Rs.100/-

But as we moved to see Amby Valley, there were no ends to our joy. We were almost walking through fog.... There were clouds everywhere ....one of those glimpses of the great artist of all times.....NATURE !!!!

We returned home cherishing those memories....
I think, we must have a trip to some hill station once in two months.... :)

An evening in a MEHFIL

2006-09-21T02:38:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I attended a Ghazal Mehfil. But in the last week, I had an opportunity to attend a program of Jagjit Singh's Ghazals. Evant Surana was the main performer along with Kafila. The program was jointly arranged by Musicurry and PAC- Persistent Art Circle.

I was pretty impressed with his voice. Even though, I never have been in Jagjit's concert, I see no difference between his and Evant's ADAKARI. The way he sung was really mesmerizing. And I was even more surprised when I heard that Evant had did not learn any type of Classical Music. His Kafila was equally impressive. The violinist was just perfect when Evant sung 'KOI FARIYAAD' .

Now, I am hunting for more live concerts like this one....
Good job PAC, keep it up, thanks a lot!!!!

Stay hungry.Stay foolish

2006-09-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

Today I read an email from my friend. The mail was having an attachment of Steve Job's speech at Stanford University in 2005. It was saying, You've Got To Find What You Love....He tells us three stories from his life.

Steve was a college-dropout and he tells us how being a dropout made him follow his dream. He took a course of calligraphy and that helped him building the first ever fonts for MAC.

He talks about the way he was fired from Apple, the company which was his own baby. This devastating incident helped him to come up with two brilliant creations, NeXT and Pixar Studio,the companies Steve founded.

Steve was diagnosed a cancer which was cured later. But that gave him a new insight to look at life.
As a piece of advice, he suggest us to do those things which we love to do.
I personally liked that article very much. He says, "Start searching for the things which makes you feel good. If you don't find them, try again".

When he was young, there was a publication called The Whole Earth Catalogue,sort of Google in paperwork form. On the backside of the its final issue there was a photograph of an early morning road. Beneath it were the words,
" Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish"
It was their farewell message as they signed off.

I think, that is one of the most beautiful one-liners I have ever seen....
And indeed, this gives me an inspiration,an enlightment, a new way to live life...

Shocking Survey

2006-09-13T06:22:00.000-07:00

Today I read about a survey made by Times of India and was published in Pune Times.

Generally Pune Times surveys are useless. Usually the include who is world's most sexiest woman/man?
or Can some "bahu" ( sister in law) in a typical Saans-Bahu serials will survive against her household tension or not?
or will the relationship between Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes last long or not? kind of polls....
But this time it was something worth discussing and equally stunning.
Around 50 college students were asked a question.... Do you know who is the writer of Our National Song?
And the answers were:
1. I think, A.R. Rehman recently composed it. And let me tell you I am very patriotic person.
2. Vande Mataram is our national song and was composed by Rabindranath Tagore.
3. Jana-Gana-Mana is our national song.

The actual answer was Vande Mataram by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay.

Out of 50 students, only 4 came up with the right answer and hardly one of them could sing Vande Mataram correctly.
What a pity. We keep on saying effortlessly that India will become a superpower in 2020 and here we are. I can bet , that if this survey would have been taken all over India, the result would have hardly differed.
Are we forgetting those people who fought for this land to achieve the independence?

I know that political parties in India do create an issue of this. But to be very frank, I think we don't value our independence. Otherwise, we could not have created this mess over Vande Mataram.

As an exaggeration,I remember one of those famous quotes of Hitler,
France was not defeated on the battlefield but was defeated in the night-clubs of Paris.

I think, that itself is worth quoted!!!

Movie week

2006-09-13T05:37:00.000-07:00

This is been a movie week for me. My new roomies are having about 35-40 movies on their computer's hard drives. So, from two days I am enjoying a home theater. The movies I saw in two days are The Cinderella Man and The Pink Panther.

I was planning to watch The Cinderella Man right on its release day. But my plans didn't work as exams came in between. So, I missed that chance. But this time I was lucky enough.
As per my expectations, James Braddock (Russel Crow ) was outstanding. It is his one of those power-packed performances. The movie is inspired from a true story and goes into those recession days or days of great depression. It shows us the story of James, a supposedly washed out boxer, who comes back and becomes an inspiration of billions of Americans.

The other one, Pink Panther is a lighter story of a man who thinks himself as world's most admired detective. The story revolves around a pink panther, a priceless diamond. This diamond is somehow stolen and then followed by a murder of the owner of Pink Panther. Steve Martin ( Mr. Closore') is appointed as an inspector to investigate this matter. The way Steve Martin finds out the culprit is amazing. The movie shows some fantastic incidents created out of mismatches between French-English accents. e.g when Martin was asked to show up his pocket on the airport. The way he pronounces "hamburger" is awesome. One thing to watch in this movie is the brilliant use of French accents. Steve Martin really creates a typical Frenchman on screen. And Beyonce Knowles as always looks stunning.

These are my two shows in two days...
Right now I am tempted to watch the remaining collection of my room-mate.
I have already scribbled my calender and wrote this week as The Movie Week!!!!

I am one of the most luckiest persons on this Earth!!!

2006-09-05T06:51:00.000-07:00

I was going to my hometown on Friday. When the bus was about to leave the station, a person along with his family came in. He was wearing a dusty shirt and a worn-out trouser. His wife and kids were no different. They came in , all barefooted. They were belonging to those labours who build the buildings and who work for building constructors. I could hardly guess from their language, what they were talking about.

The journey started. It was about half an hour or so, the smallest of those kids started feeling uneasy. And he started vomitting. That child was too young to speak a word. His mother literally dragged his mouth outside the window, giving him a space to vomit. Instead of asking him if he was feeling ok or not, she started beating him. I wondered how could a mother do this to her child.

The next stop came. They bought "vada-paav" to eat. I saw that man bargaining for "vada-paav". It generally costs 4-5 bucks. They ate hurriedly and went to sleep.

I started thinking. I felt myself lucky. I have very loving and caring parents. I can afford not all but almost all luxuries which an ordinary person would like to. At least I never went to sleep without eating anything!!!
What was happening to that child would also had happened with me if I were at his place. It is just the matter of luck. sheer luck...

Still I get angry on my parents. Still I don't care about their emotions. Still I am not happy with whatever food I get for lunch, for dinner.
I remembered an e- mail having a picture of a very small african kid, almost dying, because he don't have food to eat.

I think, I am one of the most luckiest persons on this Earth!!!

वन्दे मातरम्

2006-09-04T03:22:00.000-07:00

सुजलां सुफलां मलयजशीतलाम्

सस्य श्यामलां मातरंम् .

शुभ्र ज्योत्सनाम् पुलकित यामिनीम्

फुल्ल कुसुमित द्रुमदलशोभिनीम्,

सुहासिनीं सुमधुर भाषिणीम् .

सुखदां वरदां मातरम् ॥

सप्त कोटि कन्ठ कलकल निनाद कराले

द्विसप्त कोटि भुजैर्ध्रत खरकरवाले

के बोले मा तुमी अबले

बहुबल धारिणीम् नमामि तारिणीम्

रिपुदलवारिणीम् मातरम् ॥

तुमि विद्या तुमि धर्म, तुमि ह्रदि तुमि मर्म

त्वं हि प्राणाः शरीरे

बाहुते तुमि मा शक्ति,

हृदये तुमि मा भक्ति,

तोमारै प्रतिमा गडि मन्दिरे-मन्दिरे ॥

त्वं हि दुर्गा दशप्रहरणधारिणी

कमला कमलदल विहारिणी

वाणी विद्यादायिनी, नमामि त्वाम्

नमामि कमलां अमलां अतुलाम्

सुजलां सुफलां मातरम् ॥

श्यामलां सरलां सुस्मितां भूषिताम्

धरणीं भरणीं मातरम् ॥

Soft drinks are really soft?

2006-09-01T04:54:00.000-07:00

I don't understand why people drink Coke,Pepsi or whatever. It has been proved a number of times that coke contains pesticides. Still our governement is backing them up, giving them the clean cheat...

What is in coke that makes it so cool? ( or thanda probably!!!) Is it the hype created by so called celebrities or is it a symbol of high-class socialization?
When I ask people for this reason, they say that they drink it for the sake of their favourite actors/actresses .Those stars( this is another word I hate to use with respect to Film actors- actresses ) can do anything for money...Then why the hell we are following them?

Are we confident enough that pesticides will not harm us at all? Or are we practising ourselves to sustain against anything?

This is the time to think, to act.
Don't drink any kinda soft drink .They are not at all soft!!!!

Second salary

2006-08-31T07:30:00.001-07:00

I should have written this blog at the time of my first salary itself. But I was not blogging before one month. So couldn't have a blog as FIRST SALARY..

But anyways, this salary is not of less importance than the earlier one. I am gonna buy a new pair of shoes and possibly some T-shirts and jeans.

Then ofcourse like an obedient son of my mom, ( usually seen in crap Hindi movies) I will be putting rest of the salary in her hands!!!!
She might be knowing some better ways to spend the money.... You know womens are kind of experts in this area....

Got the mini project

2006-08-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

My bench days are over today. After around a week or so,I got some work to do..
Let's see how far can we reach?

Kya deadline ke pahele hum complete kar payenge ye project?
Kya kuch naya sikhne ko milega?
Kya naye dost milenge cubicle me?

Janane ke liye dekhte rahiye....
HUM LOG!!!!

A tribute to Hrishida

2006-08-29T06:57:00.000-07:00

He is amongst my hall of fame directors. I guess, no one can forget his masterpieces like Anand, Khubsoorat,Bawarchi,Chupke Chupke,Golmaal...

Middle class was his forte. His stories were happy-go-lucky and focused on the mischiefs happening in the common man's life. He had a great knak of showing complex human emotions in a simple yet appealing way.

That's what made him so popular. By any means, he was not a biggest showmaker or something like that.
We will always remember his creations.....

After all,
ZINDAGI AUR MAUT SAB UPARWALE KE HAATH ME HAI....

Hats off to you Hrsihida!!!

Long awaited queue at the university

2006-08-29T05:11:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the University of Pune to fill up the form for the convocation. After waiting in a long queue for about 2 and half hour I managed completing formalities. Some smart people came there with Demand Drafts and got there job done in few minutes.
And I enjoyed standing in a queue,wet behind the ears....

Those two hours didn't get wasted completely,coz I saw a lot of pretty faces in the University Campus. And those faces made my day!!!

The government way of doing things

2006-08-28T05:30:00.000-07:00

This is the common thing which we come across in all government run offices. I was sitting in a passport inquiry office. I have already submitted all concerned documents which are prerequisite for my passport.
The guy who was the authority started asking questions..

He: Show me your original documents..
Me : Here they are.
He : Where the hell is your original school leaving certificate?
Me: Sir, we are not allowed to take it with ourselves unless we submit a proof for joining some new institute. So I don't have the original one. But I have attested the true copy of it.
He: ( in a sarcastic tone) This won't help my dear!!!:(
This is a police enquiry... You gotta show some proof.
He went on asking questions n I answered them honestly.
And then totally ignoring me, ordered me to sit on other chair.
(well thanks for the honor!!!! )

There were other people standing for the same reason. He inquired them the same way.
After some time, he came out hurriedly from his room. After wasting 5 minutes per head,( total of 15 as we are three peoples out there) he came again playing with his cellphone...

This time he directly asked me for bribe. And being an honest Indian I gave him...

Well thats how our system works.....right?
I started understanding it!!!!

Now I understand, why those Bangladeshi Intruders gets all facilties and voting rights...I understand, why those politicians who protest Vande Mataram get elected....

Well I know, I indirectly supported him, but then tell me, what I should have done?
After all, I don't want to create hurdles in my passport processing!!!!

Yet another day on bench

2006-08-28T04:35:00.000-07:00

I am fed up of this.
This was 4th or 5th day on bench... I am waiting for the interview and it gets postponed every time. I try to prepare and after sometime get bored of it....
please take my interview!!!!
for God's sake!!!:(