Born again Soul

Some lines

2011-10-27T09:50:00.002+05:30

Collected memory from the last few weeks -

"A friend in need is a ghost indeed" - From "Hamlet - The Clown Prince" - Adaptation of the eponymous play by Shakespeare - Rajat Kapoor

"...after these long years don't ask me how have I been but instead ask me who have I been or what have I become..." - Bungled / Mungled lines from a play that I dont remember.

As one goes through their lives, dip stick at the 35s should answer the question - "See how much rubbish I have collected over the years"

Some paradoxes that puzzle me -

"Our brains helping us understand about how our brains work." Mighty self referential

On a similar vein -

"Language helping us understand the nature of language itself." We live in powerful, self reinforcing ideas.

Soul searching

2011-09-19T10:00:00.002+05:30

Cat on a hot tin roof, woof woof or rather meow. Very influentials for an 1880's play.

Naseeruddin Shah doing a GB Shaw for $20. Definitely not worth it. I slept through Arms and the man mostly.

I be the difference between Run and Ruin. Wow Linguistic overtures is back.

And finally from the vaults of outbursts of anger - like electricity, anger also seeks the path of least resistance. There is no use putting up to it (or resisting), you will be burnt and the anger will seek a better prospect.

Die all ye people who shout for no rhyme or reason or even for patriarchal reason.

Consumables

2011-02-11T13:11:00.003+05:30

Some thoughts on changing atmosphere I see around -

Indigo Manza is now being called Tata Manza (Guess now it has become a brand of its own)
Facebook Ads - All the options, if one clicks the "x" button is that it tries to get feedback about the ad insert but never asks if the user is actually interested in the ad? Why?

Wordplay

2010-12-10T20:07:00.001+05:30

Trees of fruits bearing life hanging over the river of death. Waiting for their fall!

Resume Hat tip - Peter Norvig

2010-10-08T14:05:00.003+05:30

Job hunting while sucky, tacky etc can be fun as well. Consider this piece from Peter Norvig's (Research Director, Google) resume / bio / self description bit. I consider this ingenious, a great moment to turn the conversation to places.

File it under other information / achievements or just below professional summary. Of course the nay sayers may say only Peter Norvig can do this. I think its crazy style brilliance.

Fun from the world

2010-10-05T14:32:00.002+05:30

As I spend more days waiting for someone's final decision to finally hire me, I continue to enjoy the small world around me. For proof -

Text under the fold is an email I got for a job posting -

Warm Greetings. We have an excellent opening with one of our client for the Position "French resource".
Please find the details below:
Location: Bangalore
Shifts Any one of the below options
1) Rotational shift (Preferable) every 3-4 months
2) Early morning shift starting 8 am
3) Regular day shit-9 am thru 6 pm .... (so on)

Regular day shit - That's one typo I would never forget / condone. Mighty LOLs occured.

University of Iowa's Internation writing programs mentions this -

"His short tories ....."

Short tories ? I understand but short tories. Please explain.

Linguistic Overtures - 29 Sep 2010

2010-09-30T11:06:00.001+05:30

Self sufficient words in a sentence (could not think around it much)

Organism in orgasm ...

(Take "in" out from the organism)

Linguistic Overtures - 20 Sep 2010

2010-09-20T17:16:00.002+05:30

Not at least literally or in terms of language but this is the kind of the firsts for me.

Japan's two cities are infact anagrams of each other -

Tokyo (the capital)
Kyoto (the environment protocol)

Are there any other examples or does this make Japan unique?

Linguistic Overtures

2010-09-07T15:35:00.002+05:30

Noun and a verb as anagrams - proof - see the two end-letter reversal in the word

Noun - Categories

Verb - Categorise

PS - Works in one version of grammar only

Linguistic Overtures

2010-09-02T11:29:00.002+05:30

This one is titled "Musically yours". Well, self explanatory-anagrammatic five letter words presented below -

Till its done well "Notes" and "Tones" are great. If not, all I saw was a "Stone".

Its like this cryptic world view of words.

Rediscovering Saala, Sasur, Devar

2010-08-31T09:20:00.002+05:30

Sometimes it is very adventurous to trace origins of common-place words -

Saala - Brother in law - Shyaalah (Sanskrit)
Devar - Husband's brother - Dhevarah (Sanskrit)
Sasur - Father in law - Shwasurah (Sanskrit)

Such fun !!

The Bombing of Dresden - Kurt Vonnegut's words

2010-08-10T10:23:00.003+05:30

"On about February 14th the Americans came over, followed by the R.A.F. their combined labors killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden -- possibly the world's most beautiful city. But not me. "

Notice the day - Feb 14 (St. Valentine eh!!)

Notice the number - 250, 000 and 24 hours (Oh my god)

Notice the last three words - "But not me" and I am thankful for the above.

Seen somewhere

2010-08-06T11:01:00.001+05:30

A message on a t-shirt

Cogito cargo sum

(Rene Descartes seen committing suicide)

Colour me a few months of life

2010-07-21T02:09:00.004+05:30

The colour of life, lived in the

the colour of lies;

the colour of imagination, lost in the

the colour of effervescence;

the colour of the gaze, seen through the

the colour of a veil;

The colour of the eyes in

the colour of the mind;

Reproduction - Used books

2010-07-06T23:13:00.005+05:30

Found inscribed in a used book, that I brought some time back from the bylanes of Calcutta -

"To Partha,

Always remember

Love,

Papa"

!!Oh the irony!!

Reproduction - Panwari

2010-06-29T13:15:00.003+05:30

Panwari - Shop around the corner selling betel nuts and other uniquely Indian digestives.

Heard from one -

"Saab, choona lagate lagate 15 saal ho gaye" and then after some time

"mera matlab, paan main".

He goes on to justify that indeed it was necessary for clarifying the context as his duty.

Such gems I say.

Reproduction - Shakespeare as a mathematician

2010-06-28T20:24:00.002+05:30

Q - Prove that Shakespeare was a mathematician? (let 2 minutes pass to overcome the surprise)

A - He solved the equation a^2 - 4b^2 = 0

Q - Please prove?

A - To be or not to be

Disclosure

-Again quoting with permission. "Not" to be read as negation and "be" loses an e.

Linguistic overtures

2010-06-28T20:18:00.004+05:30

Discretion provides Directions (only the SC moves)

Note - Long time since some word has really made some meaning while juggling. Well this one came while reading this.

Rant - Chrome

2010-06-26T22:30:00.004+05:30

Having recently switched to Chrome (100 %) I find its handling of RSS Feeds to be poor. Let me illustrate -

So I install this extension for auto subscribing to RSS feeds (Link). This page says "okay I am now subscribing to the feed that I wanted". However even after checking the box above, it automagically forgets that "yes I had indeed asked you to remember that I want to subscribe to all feeds via Google Reader ONLY".

Now this screen says "You are not subscribed to this feed yet". I would swear that I indeed did that before (in the screen above).

Or maybe I am using a wrong extension.

Synonyms

2010-06-26T17:34:00.002+05:30

Permanently useless <> Dead

Customer Service

2010-06-26T17:26:00.002+05:30

While the week long "siesta" continues unabated, I have become used to having everything "eatable" from Hotel Saravana Bhavan. I don't claim that they are the best in customer service.

Like each organization has its own bad ass versions of "I-don't-cares", in the same vein they also have the omniscient waiters who know what the customer is going to ask of. Incidentally while I was en-route finishing one cup of sambar, wondering of the potential combinations of the three chutneys, in front me, that might be used to finish the remaining pongal.

There comes this waiter doing his rounds and sees my plate and quietly brings a refill of sambar. I did not even ask for it (eventually paid him a generous tip as well, he deserved it).

This is the same HSB where one has to wait indefinitely for his glass of water.

What's the difference ?

2010-06-24T20:00:00.004+05:30

What is the difference between

Denial

Apathy / Indifference

Oblivious

Feign

I am really confused here reading about anosognosia (Errol Morris in NYT), a beautiful line comes by -

"Patients that are amnesic don’t know they are amnesic. " (From here)

Reproduction - Raavan

2010-06-24T18:46:00.002+05:30

Don't be mislead by the title, its just words / quotes reproduced from around my gang with permission of course.

My respect for Original "Raavan" has increased after watching the movie.... at least he was straight to the point and he did his job well.... - A review of Raavan from a friend

Original Raavan that took me a couple of seconds to figure out :)

Misspell and coochie cooing

2010-06-24T18:33:00.002+05:30

I guess there is a tremendous market out there for doing a spell check on images.

What an image this one (tsk tsk, oh the spell check fed generation)

Why not ?

2010-06-23T12:10:00.001+05:30

I decided to die but then retracted on that because "there are just too many books left unexplored, just too many films not seen that would not be given a fair chance, if I decide to pack my bags". And so I remained.

Deliverance request

2010-06-23T11:16:00.002+05:30

With due respect to my friend, reposting his thoughts that echo the current status now -

Super accurate (especially agree on the school point)

I can't keep cheating myself telling that the next company I join is going to be good...
I guess once you get married it'll serve as the perfect distraction for the shit we are going to do all day long.
Chinna vayasula veetla thara tharanu schoolukku kootitu povanga (till 1st std i think) (translated as remember the way little kids are dragged onto their school while they wail in the background)
Same feeling now except that no one can force us, because we have supposedly grown up (mba lan pannirukkom) (after all we have done MBA etc)...
I guess the force will come again after marriage - parents replaced by wife...

Geeky request

2010-05-09T22:33:00.001+05:30

I thought you had a context switch and then some other thing kept your attention in a deadlock state and I was thinking when to send a hardware interrupt.

Office feel - 04 May

2010-05-04T00:30:00.003+05:30

Obviously - do read the GameWorld trilogy by Samit Basu which was my only escape from the dreary, overloaded office work. Sad but it has to end.

For today - Zilch motivation to go to work / Dreading to return on 05 May

Aaaaaaaaaaarghh !!

Linguistic Overtures

2010-04-02T22:16:00.000+05:30

Redundancy

Utter <> Mutter

Heard today

2010-03-02T00:19:00.001+05:30

A birthday wish -
"Let your tribe increase"

Roomie -
"Shifting with a hindu batchmate. I mean the college and not the religion"

Love the way people use words.

Inside a high quality veg restaurant

2010-02-21T22:13:00.005+05:30

Eating in a around-the-corner, trying-to-keep-the-cash-store-ringing; Here is a place where you, assuming that this place cannot burn a hole in your pocket, can sit and eat, mumbling silently about the "okay okay" quality of food. However here is also a place that "your two downs", monetarily, also come to eat. They come, they eat, their eyes breathe aspiration and also a sense of impending dip of green. While I ordered a mini meal for myself, at measly Rs. 25, which is not much for a post graduate who came out into the world when the latter was going down. Literally!
Next to me, came and sat a group of four. Two mothers, one instinctively elder in a protective way, one probably her junior-in-command and their two school going daughters. As the waiter sold them the mini meal, obviously casting a corner-eye to my plate, they decided to order 4 suchlikes. They did not ask for the price and looked at the price list which boasted of the same dishes in Tamizh and in English with an extra "h". In nanoseconds, the elder one calculated, that's a big note for lunch and her eyes sank and took a look at her purse carefully placed inside her blouse.
Then the waiter arrived with the four meals neatly compartmentalised into - a biriyani, sambar rice, curd rice, single roti, kurma, beans and a sweet.

Mall Recall

2010-01-01T18:24:00.002+05:30

Trudging down an escalator, heard the following from a 4 year child -
"Mom the ad on the escalator has changed to this new one."

Such recall, I wonder. Actually the ad is an interstitial, coming down an escalator, visitors can see this ad over their head. We live in exciting times.

Linguistic Overtures - In Tamizh

2009-12-20T10:51:00.002+05:30

Hell I've been in Chennai for the past 7 odd months, and now this fine thought blitzed past, in my root language (funny expression, I tell you) -

நரகம் - Meaning, well, hell
நகரம் - City

A geographical possibility, it means to me.

Seen today - 1

2009-12-09T22:44:00.001+05:30

09 Dec 2009
A 20 seater mini bus passes me by and I happened to notice the company's name painted over in dark blue font -

Enterprising Enterprises

Sure the founders are very "punny"

Heard somewhere - 1

2009-12-08T23:31:00.003+05:30

"Abe gyaan mat de" roared one of the guys, seemingly referring to a plausible conversation building up in the air. And soon after this happened -
"Sir you will have wait for an hour as I am busy on another call" and continued to blow up whiffs of cigarette smoke with this group of office buddies.
Such are the ways ...

A sudden night in Zephyr's life

2009-04-02T04:23:00.004+05:30

Dear diary,
There is no greater experience in this world, not even love, but the feeling of that good old catharsis. However ineffable it might be, there is a certain elation associated while being liberated in the catharsis zone that is unmatched. Somehow that is why I think, fighting vehemently, staying away and then making up is this world's most underrated yet most significant bunch of emotions. Being a witness to such an event at close quarters is the only thing that probably can take you ever so closer to experiencing catharsis. As a person equally involved with the fighting parties, as a person who both of them feel one of them like a close confidante, as a person being able to say things that otherwise might be rejected as being "none of your business". This is what is catharsis, and I experienced it today. The elation and the smile that fills you up and suddenly revs up certain dead parts inside your existence is what it is. The thing with feeling so is that it also wells up inside feelings of being privileged, that inner smile that so often seems so rare in this world. That is what I experienced today. Seeing people handle themselves in a manner befitting much older, wiser and being able to say things to the same people and who take it with the real gusto of a well deserving human being is what is privilege, is what is catharsis.
I am feeling unusually happy and it seems that my elated heart is up there showing its entire countenance in my teeth and my brain, is something I have never seen, done before. So they say distance makes us appreciate those close to us, so does going away and coming back also achieves the same effect but the emotion build up is all the more stronger and all the more inhuman to witness if handled by such people.
Privilege! Catharsis! Amen!

Which comes first - conflict or cooperation ?

2009-03-06T02:48:00.007+05:30

Image by Delphien Experiences via Flickr

Today has marked a day of twin importance - me crossing 100 posts and the other one, the more important one, having a long discussion with semi-drunks on Richard Dawkins, Selfish Gene, History, Into the wild and much more.
Of course its more of a given that the selfish gene operates at every level of human activity known till now. Its cause is more complicated by the most fundamental arguments of biology (and evolution) that the human end result (not death, though) is attributable to nature or nurture. So our discussion went on when we actually stumbled upon the problem of conflict versus cooperation. I am extremely aware of the fact that such topics of discussion laden with the nature versus nurture conflict raises a lot of pertinent points but the question that really stuck was that of primality.

Which comes first conflict or cooperation?

As I often experience, history and culture are the victims of causality. All sorts of improper causal relations have been sought to explain human character. So I thought whether such a causal relation exists between conflict and cooperation.
At the level of basic thought process, cooperation is fundamentally a more involving mental thought than conflict which is more of a natural process. Therefore, as plotted against the chart of evolution, the idea (here I mean even the basic notion of these two ideas) of conflict and cooperation require different kind of mental acumen. Cooperation, by its nature, requires two or more parties in a state of agreement that requires a mental and verbal (often) interchange of the tenets of working together. Cooperation bases itself on the recognition of the power imbalance and an effort to ameliorate that imbalance while conflict is only an exposure to this imbalance. As a primeval organism, cooperation must have evolved much after the first experience of conflict.
Furthermore its only after experiencing a conflict that the idea of cooperation must occur to any living and mental (not the exclusionary one) organism. Its just goes on to prove (again the influence of causality) that cooperation as a thought is not natural and a post facto concept. A real question to be asked here is that the existence of conflict (or even the visualisation of conflict) is necessary for the formulation of cooperation among such thinking animals. Prima facie a causal link exists on the basis of -

Complexity of thought of the idea of cooperation as against conflict which is readily experience-able
Experiential (imaginary) coexistence of conflict
Requirement of a developed mental faculty

What do I think? Conflict comes first and then comes cooperation, a weak link exists. Am I right?

Linguistic overtures

2009-03-05T21:49:00.004+05:30

Image by margolove via Flickr

D.H.Lawrence once said "trust the tale - not the teller". Well what can be more perfect because anyways all the great fiction writers in essence are magnanimous LIARS. Anyways coming back to the theme of this post of linguistic overtures, I ask you to look at the following very closely

WORDS

Now why these are so powerful so much so that people say "words once spoken can't be taken back" because in them they contain the proverbial

SWORD

On that note consider these words about writing which so mirror the feeling one gets while writing -
"Sitting alone in a room for hours while essentially talking in your head about people you made up earlier and then writing it down for no one you know does have many aspects which are not inherently fulfilling." - A.L.Kennedy
"Another reason is the professionalisation of the vocation so that the novelist is supposed to produce novels as naturally, automatically, and regularly as a cow gives milk." - Amit Chaudhuri
"Writing a novel is largely an exercise in psychological discipline – trying to balance your project on your chin while negotiating a minefield of depression and freak-out. Beginning is daunting; being in the middle makes you feel like Sisyphus; ending sometimes comes with the disappointment that this finite collection of words is all that remains of your infinitely rich idea." - Hari Kunzru
Finally
"Civilisation's greatest single invention is the sentence. In it, we can say anything." - John Banville

Do read this entirely for at least the writing pleasure
PS - 100th post calls for a celebration. I have evolved so would I like to claim, but no I still remain the same and raring to reach 200. This blog still remains largely a self-documentation project which I hope to continue. With that I wish "18 till I die" sine die.

Thoughts

2009-03-05T21:34:00.001+05:30

A dominant sign of human achievement -
Only in today's world could memories could mean two things

Linguistic Overtures

2009-03-01T20:33:00.001+05:30

Image by Μя.ĆăvăŁŁǐ ™ via Flickr

The burden of

CREATION

is the fear and anxiety of

REACTION

Linguistic overtures

2009-02-22T21:06:00.003+05:30

What characterises the oppressive regimes of the world?
Try to
DEMAND
but you will be

DAMNED

Even OUP makes mistakes

2009-01-21T20:56:00.004+05:30

I just got to read a book long due - Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene. I was browsing the table of contents and I saw a word - Foreward, a word that according to the best of my knowledge relates to a van.
I was immediately turned off, how could they do it. Foreward instead of Foreword. Such an insult, OUP. Coming from Oxford, not expected. Nevertheless I will read the book.

So I thought only us normal people make typos. Shame!!

Linguistic overtures

2009-01-20T23:18:00.001+05:30

I think I will keep this simple - Freudian Mistake -

Diss ID dent "versus" Diss ent

Dissent just missed an "ID" to become a dissident.

A day in the life of Zephyr

2009-01-14T02:07:00.006+05:30

Zephyr was the man of his own quirky theories and assumptions about the world around him which he carefully and patiently constructed like the way the parents want to see their image in their child or hell, even how God was once seen in the image of man himself. Zephyr proclaimed not to written the last few words after "hell". If Zep was ever to see this, he would have a smile on his face that extended from the outer vicinity of his mouth to the closest inches of his ears.
Does that resemble a creature, this writer, asks - and Zep would have said with a proud grin of his face "Dr. Seuss" you fool.
These were the entries from his diary dated January 13th (year unknown) -
6:30 A.M. (On the way to the day's first bout of tea intake) - Saw a fairly large man riding on a bicycle today. There was a close striking feature about him that almost gave him away. This man, lets call him Mousty, had a bushy moustache and an underbelly that only a married man of 40 years would not be proud of. But this wasn't it. It was rather the feisty cheeks and stretched chin with a jaw that coalesced with the shoulders that gave him away. He was a "Bhaiya" finally Zep deciphered. Mousty had a self confident smile plastered on his face while he was gently combing his moustache with one hand and the other ruddering the bicycle.

"Life almost felt like the morning cold, waiting to be set free by the first rays of sunlight."

12:30 A.M - (in a rather interesting lecture) - I should have two heads atleast. One to monitor what the professor was saying and other perpetually involved in an effort to turn right and catch Zikka unaware without being caught in a reciprocation. Alas I have only one and the other one even if it existed would be involved in a useless exercise. Suddenly Zikka got up and went out and there she goes. Aah she comes back again, phew and craftfully nudges a book in front of me towards my resting palm.
"Is there something called telepathy? Lord Krsna said "don't wait to see the results of your actions", did I do anything or was it an accident? Shup up you fool and believe that it was neither and feel lucky"

7:30 P.M. (On the way to the day's second last bout of tea intake) - Saw a harmless couple walking down the busy road which was trisected by railroad construction which left to fend for itself would take atleast a million years to complete. There was something really carefree about them. The hubby (with a soon coming belly just falling out of his khakis) had comfortably placed his hand around her supported by the envelope of her hand. All this while he was placing a grain of peanuts softly on her lips and criss crossing the enveloping traffic like an experienced gymnast.
"Live in my own shell, self sufficient and deftly avoiding the glare of the surrounding world"

1:30 A.M. (The last tea of the day but this was special) - Every city ought to be judged not by its roads, infrastructure but by its tea vendors. Sample the city at two times - 6 A.M. in the morning and 1 A.M. and count the number of tea vendors that populate the scanty roads at these times. This could give out the actual nature of city pretty well. Walking down the road after seeing a damp squib of movie I stopped for tea at this guy who sells authentic south Indian dishes at 1:30 A.M. in the morning. Of course, it felt like being back in the toddler years, the first nibble of the soft Idli smelling like sweet rice mixed with the sensibilities of a coconut only laden chutney attacking the previous memories of any wheat or any spice that remained after dinner. Anyways on the way back I could see atleast 2 tea vendors punctutating the space between two signals which is a standard distance of 1.5 Kms. All college students coming out for late night snack with the holy smoke. See this thing also applies in the morning as well. The 6:30 tea vendor actually starts out at 5:00 A.M. (must try out at this time as well).

So as per Zep's tea breaks his city or atleast his neighbourhood was devoid of tea only for a brief period of 2 hours. However that spoke volumes about the economy of the city and the entrepreneurship of his city. His city, Zep was really confused. He was undecided between the comfort of tea and comfort of home. He knew the difference but the experience of a late night tea and an early morning tea was something that could never be understood at home. It's different, he concluded concurring with an old ketchup advertisement. He thought all this time bewildered by the industry of the inhabitants of this city. They exploited every services available and offered services wherever there was any opportunity to serve a hidden demand. That is why he kept on reiterating that the true nature of a city is in the pulse of its tea vendors. Therefore a place where you cannot see a tea vendor open shop before 8 A.M. meant that it was a sleepy city, and Zep's experiences seemed to concur.
So after a long day Zep went to sleep silently rehearsing these words in his head "Don't walk away when the world is burning, don't walk away when the heart is yearning" for tomorrow's bathroom performance which had been a consistent spectacle on the 7th floor of his hostel faithfully attended and recorded by the inhabitants of the floor. "Poets of the fall" were the writers of these words, Zep remembered.
Earlier Zephyr posts - (1)

An idea to write about

2009-01-13T12:25:00.003+05:30

A crazy thought if you will (I might try this with Zephyr's character soon) -

What am I talking about - a character in a movie or a book (I prefer the latter)
"Shoot" - Architect a character that ages in the usual way but matures in the opposite. In other words, imagine you born with the mental wit and wisdom of your grandpa - at age 0.
"The suspense" - As you grow only one of the thing increases - your age. Your mental wit and wisdom goes down just like the way in normal life our mental wit increases, supposedly, with age and experience.
"The consequence" - This has always been my favourite part - you will be aged 70 but will behave like a baby and that is what is needed in this mad mad world.
Disclaimer - This does not intend "anterograde amnesiatic" effects to be incorporated.

Amen!

A small exercise

2008-12-21T23:07:00.002+05:30

Do this exercise today -

Blog yourself as a hypothetical character - keep close clues to the real you but weave a story around it
See and observe the comments from the visitors.

While responding to these comments you will be hit a strong sense of duality of the exercise. The feedback could well be for you and/or for the character. This is raw material to build on the idea of making you as a story - powerful, real-time. I love it!!

Zephyr and the intruder

2008-11-30T20:58:00.003+05:30

He liked to stay in his room, where always he felt under control, his feudal kingdom. He felt under control because the elements of the room were under his own supervision. Zephyr could decide on who comes in, including sunlight, how should he react or even ponder whether the other presence deserved a reaction or not. But once Zephyr stepped outside the threshold of the door his control was gone. He was under pressure to respond to the sudden intrusion of external elements. Forced to react to the new sounds, new people, old people and even the Sun's play on him. Sometimes he chose not to and be like a transparent layer between what was on his right and what was on left. He could choose not to but damn those people who knew him well.

"Don't pretend to read", Zikka laughed derisively in a mocking tone. Zephyr knew he was caught while retreating to his shell. He immediately put on that "I am sorry" expression on his face with a fake smile that Zikka could immediately penetrate. Zikka smiled back, conscious of the fact that she had sensed that moment of vulnerability in Zephyr, caught spliced between reaching out and shrinking back. People like Zikka made it a point to blot Zephyr's social journeys, and these were the people who forced him to learn what he called the art. His art was exclusive and its only practitioners were the secret service agents. The art of being inconspicuous, the art of being fluid like a person minus his physical presence. Only because of his art he learnt to be cut off and be sane. Sometime he wondered why people are so fake with a wedge forcefully inserted between their external and internal appearances.

His life went on like this and one fine day came the intruder.

Zephyr had stayed all his life in hostels and knew an empty room without its occupants is a prized possession. Fortunately or not his roommate decided to go for a yatra to attend a marriage. That too for a week. There was he, lying alone in his room wondering what he could do. "Don't be naughty, Zep", someone hollered from the outside. Zep smiled and thought field nights for a week. So he set about decorating the night with a bushel of his favourite cigarette, a comfortable quart of "saste main masti - old monk" and settled comfortably in his universe ready to vanish. Once the rituals were done Zep set on to do his favourite activity of the day - which was to read a book with a glass of the monk and a cool breeze cutting across his thighs. For a bried period he was lost in this reverie and was close to becoming something which was not his character. He for once became a wall completely divorced from his room.

As the time passed by the bushel became a couple, page 6 became page 69, and the quart was reduced to an ounce, the apothecary's ounce. But he was sure saw a silhouette with tail that swished by and he was confused what to attribute it to. "Definitely not the monk" his innards whispered confidently. He chose to ignore it, the voice and the tail. When the quart was done, his day was done, or so he thought. As he retired into the bed and reached for the lights he saw the tail, escape the dustbin lid and not the dark room as he had imagined the room would be. At 4 A.M. end of the day shouldn't have been so bad, Zep thought. He could still see the tail sliding along the lower skirting of the wall into a corner along with 2 pairs of legs. The lights were still on and he tried to desperately search every corner, thanking himself that the room did not have many things on the floor to plunder. Of course the tail eluded him suddenly appearing and disappearing like magic act. Finally at 5 A.M. tired with the search, Zep chose to sleep and chose to forget that the tail could climb up the legs of his bed and put on a late night taandav on him.

The next morning was very happy for Zep thinking that the tail would be gone, but this elation lasted only for 30 seconds, for now in broad light he could confirm it was a rat. Sadly he surmised that from now on his control area, his terra firma, would have to be shared between him and the rat. Atleast the rat couldn't be Zikka, thanked Zephyr and went about doing his job - hiding from any external intrusions and calculating the area the rat would need in his room. He was firm and decided that the rat could not be allowed to prance in his whole territory till his roommate returned. Then it would not be his headache alone anymore.

Forget the quartiles !!

2008-11-29T19:36:00.001+05:30

Don't target the 1st quartiles or the second or hell even the third. As per Pareto, and the tribes, its the quintiles that matter.

Can't think of a title

2008-11-29T19:14:00.004+05:30

"
There was a young man who said: Run!
The end of the world has begun!
The one I fear most
Is that damn' Holy Ghost,
I can handle the Father and Son.
"
(Unknown limerist, early 21st Century) - From William Poundstone's Prisoner's dilemma

Meanwhile the fires must linger (from a friend)

MBA Hazard

2008-11-18T19:40:00.004+05:30

On two different levels, I think there is a problem with this statement -
A good piece of statistics or a good piece of fiction, which is tougher to create?
I think, after undergoing the tortures of regression, clustering, multivariate analysis, the former is not a cakewalk.
However, the years of endless reading also says, the latter ain't that easy either. I think lets leave it to the Poissons, flauberts to decide.

Linguistic overtures - reloaded

2008-11-17T22:45:00.006+05:30

Presenting the linguistic overtures, the longitudinal collections. At the behest of a cynic, here it goes, the time warped collection of tilted view of words.

Collection 1 - "Around the world"

Saluting the spirit of obsession - "Lust is contained fully in being a slut"

And they say the problem with the devil was that - "Even after reading it backwards it lived"

Devil and lived

Infact it goes a little inside as well, evil when prodded backwards is live

It's very puzzling to see two words describing the same action, having different connotations but the same letters just rearranged. I need not explain, but see the difference between -

Veto and Vote

Two difficult words with the same letters but very different consequences for our world, today. How a flip can make something so dangerous?

S AC RED
S CA RED

Collection 2 - "Mathematics on english - English language quirks, mathematically speaking."

A matter of taste : State - Taste = '\0' (Null character) which means for me (stating without having a sense of taste is meaningless). I am just curious or plain "wanton"

Matter - Meter = Eat

Touch taken to hurting proportions loses a "t" and becomes ouch.

Intim"id"ate - Intimate = " ID ", coincidence or Freud coined these words.

Propitiously "women ...... men" and the question to you is what fills that dots (a mathematical symbol). The answer is ">" because men on both side cancel out. Now this has some deep insights.

Collection 3 - "Quirky, related? Yes the words in English"

Gateway = Getaway (flipped the three letters in between, and backwards)

Incidentally if you have not wondered ever "Bedroom" has an interesting jumbled up word which is "Boredom".

Two unseemingly related words which are again jumbles of each other -

"Teacher" and "Cheater"

"Fresh from the rakes inside - doom is also after all a mood"

Disclaimer - Some of the listed contents above are plain rants or even beyond redemption. I know or sometimes I donot know. I have just documented as they occurred in that moment. Let me know which are "Meh"!!
PS - Meh is the latest addition to the English dictionary.

Random Quotes

2008-11-11T16:34:00.003+05:30

A small session of random quote making progressed in the ideation area of my brain. So here is a couple of rant / quotes / whatchamacallit -

"Photography is just an eye between an intrepid at one end and the world at the other end."
"Death is also like photography but intrusive. The act catches a snapshot of life but in the process ends it. "

Linguistic Overtures

2008-11-10T20:18:00.002+05:30

Saluting the spirit of obsession -
"Lust is contained fully in being a slut"

And they say the problem with the devil was that -
"Even after reading it backwards it lived"

Juste comme ce la

2008-11-06T11:33:00.000+05:30

The journey of internet - from period to dot.

Linguistic overture

2008-11-06T11:30:00.002+05:30

Two difficult words with the same letters but very different consequences for our world, today. How a flip can make something so dangerous?

S AC RED
S CA RED

Twitter curious

2008-11-03T17:51:00.004+05:30

Apparently when someone tweeted a gmail address, I checked out whether GMAIL is on twitter.
Lo and behold - YES!
Where on twitter - Here
Soon I visited the profile only to see this and twitter offered me "actions" to block "gmail".

Well, the gaffes of technology ...

Linguistic overture - 7

2008-11-03T17:32:00.002+05:30

State - Taste = '\0' (Null character) which means for me (stating without having a sense of taste is meaningless)
I am just curious or plain "wanton"

2008-11-02T10:03:00.004+05:30

The Hindu's Literary review is a treasure trove to discover your likes and dislikes for a host of books. Some of them in today's issue -

"I have long subscribed to the idea that one of the novel’s primary tasks is to produce a map of the contemporary. By one definition, then, the province of the novel is what you read in your newspaper each morning or watch on your television at night. The novelist’s task is to explore how the news enters people’s lives and indeed becomes a part of daily life." - Amitava Kumar in his piece on Aravind Adiga's 'The White Tiger' (This is great)

"These are women who live a humdrum existence, mainly jobless, surrounded by children, a world so common that I sometimes think it does not deserve to be written about." - Rumina Sethi in her book review "In the country of deceit" (Now this sounds really apathetic, isn't great literature about what is everyday and common, like the above quote. I felt offended.)

"

A falling petal

Strikes one floating on a pond,

And they both sink.

" - quoted by Ravi Vyas in his article on classics revisited (This is spellbinding. Poetry is a real dense form of communication and often very tough for me to even get near to it, forget comprehension. But this enthralling, WOW)

So for me THLR is a treasure trove. For many who really do like it, here are date wise listed archives

A sign of things to come

2008-10-31T09:05:00.002+05:30

" but we really don't care about OS's the way we used to. I switch back and forth between my Vista and OSX boxes with ease. Why? Because everything I do now is in the cloud so all I need is a Web browser. Hint: starting a web browser up on both OS's isn't that much different between the two. After getting my browser started I really don't care about the cool desktop search or the improved wifi features (at least not that much). It's not like the early 1980s where there was deep pain in using these systems and each update brought a TON of new stuff.."

This is from Robert Scoble. Although I am not that well informed/aware of the cloud computing business and all, but pretty much of my activities today are centered around my browser. So more power to such things.
What I do understand is -

The OS will become a "low involvement purchase".
Browser will be the cynosure of activities.
Apps will become indifferent to the underlying OS.

An issue with design

2008-10-29T09:56:00.004+05:30

We are being exposed to a lots of good looking and useful applications these days. Top of my list that have really broadened what I know today are - Friendfeed and Twitter. But the problem still remains, the disconnect between semantics and application design. Sample this -

A business veteran of 30 years of experience has been wiped out. But the feature of "liking" an article says below that "someone liked this". I know that the person who liked it was referring to the article. But for god's sake someone has been wiped out, and the application says - "someone liked it".
As I see it there is a disconnect between the application side (the content) and the human side (emotion). This is pretty much disconcerting for me at least. Semantics is therefore about two things - the application, the human.

PS - The person who found this article "intriguing" is a great guy.

Grammar 101.2

2008-10-22T17:28:00.006+05:30

Today I was looking for books to populate my new bookshelf after shifting to a new home. I found it really curious and oddly intriguing. In terms of the job, it is a sheer pleasure (remember I am not saying SHEAR, imagine the consequence otherwise). In my own queer way I was searching for books are reflect something about me, something about my journey through these books. However, given that I have about 100 odd books, which pretty much seems like a tyro's library, I gave up pretty soon.

What did I do? Revel in my own collection wondering "aah - I do have this book, oh - I have this book as well, now I don't have to buy it again". So I had the likes of Francis Fukuyama, "A Portrait of the Artist as a young man", "Vedic religion", Primo Levi, Andre Gide, "Tin Drum", "Remains of the Day".
Out of the dark comes this book by Lynne Truss titled "Eats, Shoots and Leaves!". What is it about? Well, for those who are familiar with the term "grammar nazi", it is about punctuation. So I am back to my own favourite topic - finding gaffes in english usage around me. Perfectly captured here by the author -

"If this satanic sprinkling of redundant apostrophes causes no little gasp of horror or quickening of pulse ...."
"... it will trigger a ghastly private emotional process similar to the stages of bereavement."

It is always such fun to read about "mis-punctuation". Sample this (A panda comes to a hotel, eats a sandwich, fires two gunshots in the air, and leaves. When asked by the waiter, as to why, it says, refer the wildlife manual which mentions- )
"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves"
Understand? Coming to the title, presenting today's gaffe over the web -

PS - What the two words really mean?

Fore·ward

The van; the front. [Obs.]

Fore·word

A preface or an introductory note, as for a book, especially by a person other than the author.

Well, what can I say am I a grammar nazi? Well, yes. Maybe, no. Ohh! All of this later!!

Grammar 101

2008-10-19T15:06:00.002+05:30

Okay I cannot claim to be a "know-it-all" as far as grammar is concerned. But given minimal awareness I may not make such mistakes. This is live from a B-School (event frenzy in B-Schools going on these days)

"---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Events Coordinator <events@%$$%%.org>

Date: Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 3:15 AM
Subject: $%$%$ presents Paragana 2008 :Launch of Chrysalis and Engrave ,Business Plan Competitions
To: events@%$$%%.org

Hi All,
due to a server error the attachments could be delivered.
Kindly RESEND this mail to all your college students.
Apologize for any inconvenience caused.
"
Okay so due to a server error normally the attachments cannot be sent, but curiously it was sent in this case. D'accord
But it get curious-er (pardon me), they want the receipient college to apologize for the server error. LOL, LMAO, ROFLOL and suchlike.

(so much for event organization pressure)

A complaint

2008-10-15T10:20:00.003+05:30

I just have one complaint against the "book" - It does not capture the transformation of its own author as a character without, while doing the same within. Or perhaps this could be an idea that could be explored in the same book.

Linguistic overture

2008-10-08T09:08:00.002+05:30

It's very puzzling, for me atleast, to see two words describing the same action, having different connotations but the same letters just rearranged.
I need not explain, but see the difference between - Veto and Vote

Linguistic overture

2008-10-06T11:56:00.001+05:30

Touch taken to hurting proportions loses a "t" and become ouch.

Technology as an enabler - chuck that

2008-10-06T10:52:00.002+05:30

This happened to me just now -

So when I am commenting on an article I am reading on LiveMint, which had some problems in linking. Apparently the third page of the article has been wrongly linked to another article by Vir Sanghvi on Rolling Stones while I was reading an article on data mining. I try to point out that, and I get this error (INVALID written next to my first name).

So today's discovery- I have an invalid first name. Thank you Amma, Appa for giving me an invalid name. Ayyo!!!

Linguistic overture

2008-10-06T10:04:00.002+05:30

Matter - Meter = Eat

The bus and the child

2008-09-30T09:14:00.003+05:30

I am sitting in my dreary bus ride back to home from my place of work which is so far that I could come from Bombay to Bangalore in that time. Fortunately the bus is unusually empty, meaning the average visible range is greater than 2 metres; which for me is a blessing. Don't confuse the bus being empty to having empty seats, all I am saying is that the seats are full, and there are very few people standing.
So I do what I like to do, just see what is happening around me and we reach a bus stop en route. Not so suddenly, but I see a pair of eyes that board the bus. A pair of young eyes, if you might. A pair eyes that are so wide as if they want to take everything around them in a single swoop. A pair of eyes that have the glitter of a young child who wants to know what is happening around, saying silently "I want to be there, I want to be here, I want to be everywhere". I presume that they still are not familiar to the idea of selective perception (blaming it on evolution) or become so apathetic to what happens around us (blaming it on age).
What I do notice in them is the thirst and vivaciousness which have long dried away from my eyes, the zeal to absorb every little detail around me with equal zest and without no bias.
Has age caught up with me or have I become too much selectively perceptive? It just goes on the reinforce what I have long believed to be true and now it is approaching the proportions of being declared as an axiom that "whatever be my age, the day the child inside me dies; that day I will believe that my age has finally caught up with me".

So back to the bus, the child (with these eyes) initially scans her environment, seeming so excited about everything enveloping her, the bus, the metal pillar in between her and the empty seat, the TV hoisted above her head, the sounds around her, the whistling of the conductor, the horns of desperate people in motorised vehicles, the blur of lights in the front, the incessant braking by the driver and the people. She feels wobbly being in a place which looks beyond her control and feels puzzled and excited by the gush of all these intrusions. Finally a hand comes from behind and they are safely anchored to an empty seat ending the intrusions and she settles comfortably into the world she knows best and is comfortable with, the world created by her mother who is travelling with her.

!! I/He/She just want to be 34 !!

2008-09-22T14:48:00.002+05:30

They ALL WANT TO be

I tried playing badminton resolutely for 4 hours a day and for a month and finally on one fine day someone said "you have lost infinitesimally". I felt "how mean can people be?"
She tried being in a GM, although "genetically modified" would have been a better preference. But it left her high and dry. Zapped, tongues unleashed looking for something that had a zing.She cried "what a waste of time?"
He tried catching the "11 number ki bus, the faster version". However his perfection got in the way because he could not do it just like that.

Then I and he tried smoking which they said helps. I and he realised "in addition to want to being 34 now I and he have to want things not black".
Oh! Then I and she just said "those 32s will always live in perpetual fear of reaching 34s". Someone said "that's escapism". I and She realised "damn you will power".

But then we realised we are just the way we are, unlike a Sisyphus, we have stopped climbing and have stopped wanting. Whatever comes our way is something unasked for. So when someone repeats that infinitesimal argument, we just feel happy for being rewarded for a perception that is a result of not being with us for some period of time. We know because we have not done anything, yet for someone I/he/she felt marginally less than 36.
Oh! Did I tell you, I am 36, he is 38 and she is 35.
PS - Numbers greater than 30 denote waist sizes and number 11 denotes a figure of speech for walking.

Authors I don't know

2008-09-18T14:25:00.004+05:30

Periodically I read something and find out that there are so many authors that I just -

Don't know about
Have heard the name and the works but never sampled them.

This is a list which I think would be aggregating from now on to index my ignorance. Today's list

David Foster Wallace - Suicide death on Sep 12, 2008, apparently very famous for Infinite Jest. A remembrance posted on Slate can be found here. Target #1
James Joyce - I know about Ulysses, never read it, but now in Marshall McLuhan's book "Understanding media" I keep coming back to Finnegan's Wake. Target #2

May God grant me the humility to understand that I cannot read all such great people in my finite life. Let me know if you people know about them.

AMEN.

Update 1 - David Wallace's short story "Incarnations of burned children" can be found here

Disease in a pseudo mathematical notation ...

2008-09-18T14:25:00.002+05:30

Pseudo rant follows.
I've been reading Marshall McLuhan with avid curiosity for the past week. I cannot claim to understand every word that he writes, so much so in certain places he seems far beyond my intellectual capacity. Anyways there are truck loads of gems in the seminal book "Understanding Media" like -
"Medium is the message"
"Global Village"
"Media as an extension of the human body"
"Electric age as the mirroring of our own central nervous system"
"Mankind's history is the result of 'taking up the chin'"
I've been altered by his message forever. Coming to what I was thinking, let us denote disease as a pseudo mathematical function - D(O) where
D- Function representing the verb "to induce disease or any other kind of discomfort"
O - Object of the function namely an organism
The current approach in healthcare is simply this function "D" calling itself. In other words, the modern day approach towards healthcare is just D(D(O)) where -
The inner paranthesis denotes the attack of the disease on the organism
Outer paranthesis denotes the attack of disease on the disease itself or in order to cure a disease, the disease must be subjected to discomfiture. Phew, lots of disease in that statement.

Technology as an enabler - Rethink

2008-09-16T12:03:00.000+05:30

My energies and time and everything else had been devoted to our nouvelle marketing blog - admark.wordpress.com and I feel like a real traitor writing about wordpress in blogger, anyways who cares.

Coming to what I wanted to rant about - is technology is really an enabler? In India? At a big software company?
The Scene - Induction program for new joinees at a big S/W company where I am interning.
HR Speak - Dear what is your second name?
Secondname Speak - Ma'm I dont have a second name. (That does happen, don't raise your eyebrows yet!)
HR Speak - OUR DATABASE cannot accept a name without a second name.
****
Me Speak - WHAT (for the database comment)? What technology is this? How can this happen at this company?
Me Speak - What kind of technology is this? I know they might use a combination of the first name and the last name as the primary key for their database, but the instant reaction was - WTF?
****
Secondname Speak (in his/her head) - Phew! Now I have to invent a second name?
Ya! Its okay to raise your eyebrows now.
Amen

Let's talk Harry!!

2008-06-28T12:06:00.000+05:30

I am back and with me I bring along Harry and his cohorts.

Believe me Harry Potter is either a piece of Blytonian kitsch or a great adventure similar to the likes of the Hobbit in the Lord of the Rings. It is either this or that. Can I say either you love or hate him? Probably yes but I count those who say the series is okay among the supporters. Reports abound the fourth estate that Harry and his ensemble have instilled the fun of reading into kids. Again!! Do I think so, I am a vehement affirmative. Let me relate my story. I started reading when I was past 15, and started off with popular Sheldons and Ludlums and Archers. Slowly I graduated to literature and the likes of Michel Foucault and Jean Baudrillard. But then Harry happened. The initial wave of exhilaration that started with “Philosopher’s stone” was enough to sustain the energy to wait, to be anxious and to be satisfied for the “Hallows” which came this year (2007) on July 21st in India, so to say.

For seasoned readers like me, what comes with the package of Harry Potter is very unique. It lets me, and people like me, to fulfil the voids left by “not” reading the Enid Blytons, The Erle Stanley Gardners, The Nancy Drews and The Famous Fives. It always feels like going back and regaling me to the wonder that is the creation J.K.Rowling. I often wonder what would be the reaction of an adult who is given an opportunity to read Enid Blyton for a fortnight. I know that “I am 23 years old and I am too old to read that now” would be the reaction. This is the challenge that Harry Potter poses to the “kid” among all of us.

But to say that Harry Potter is “child-lit” is to do a grave injustice to the evolution of the series. The silhouette of the characters has progressively become darker and darker. Atypical of “Child-Lit” Harry potter resembles many of the “special-power” men like Batman, Superman so on and so forth. All of them are orphans or have become situational orphans. The special power inside them is different and in fact differentiates them from the other lot. In this case Harry has the magic but the “power of love” is what differentiates him from the “others”. All our superheroes have troubled childhood and often find a paternal figure somewhere during the course of their growing up. The similarities don’t stop here. Somehow the superheroes and in our case, “Harry” are all socially aloof. Harry Potter and his cohorts are agents of therapy of older souls like me and countless others.

However Harry Potter is a linguist’s delight. For those of you who love the gift of language may take note at the first instance that the word “Harry” means to loot or to plunder. Isn’t that an anathema of name the protagonist like this? Phew!! It does not stop here. The entire story from book one to book 7 is littered with linguistic revelations like this. Let us take “Avada Kedavra” or the killing curse. Does the second word look familiar? Kedavra is derived from the word “Cadaver” which means a corpse. What about “Wingardium Leviosa”? Well this is the charm that causes objects to “Levitate”; I guess the connection is clear. Probably the best one is “Levicorpus”. It is an intelligent combination of levitation and corpus which means body. The list goes on with the ilk of “Oppugno”, “Expecto Patronum”, “Fiendfyre” and several such likes. The antagonist “Voldemort” is derived from the word “mort” meaning death. Harry ultimately steals his death from Voldemort by dying himself first. The book is a treasure trove of innocently named characters which when seen in a perspective turn out to be a real surprise. Perhaps in the rush of reading one might not note that “Kreacher” sounds same as “Creature”, a derogatory remark on the lowliness of the house elf. The endearing character “Molly Weasley” is an overprotective one, now does “mollycoddle” sound related. I guess I could go on and on.

Perhaps then Harry Potter is all about magic and it depends on the way you see it. The naming of characters, places and the spells draws from such varied sources that I cannot stop and wonder where I should stop. The esteemed reader of this eulogy will know that I am an aficionado of “Harry the-boy-who-lived Potter”.

"Small wonder that spell means both a story told, and a formula of power over living men." - J.R.R. Tolkien

Life like it was not

2008-06-19T18:20:00.003+05:30

Some random observations on my existence follows in a list style.

Nowadays it is harder to decide whether to read a book or attend to my blog feeds. Well don't give me the structure, form and the plot based logic. It is failing and I am witnessing it destroying my reading capacity (books only).
Now I let the world know what I am doing, feeling now and real time. Thanks to twitter and the great minds that I am following on it.
It is both amazing and appalling to see the kinds of minds that exist on the web. The majority is still towards the amazing side.
Agencyfaqs throws up some interesting thoughts - SMS is more powerful than SPAM. What the fuck? So now I will get promotions to enlarge my "weeny" on my mobile phone.
Indian homes still have one TV set though the members of this family keep on changing their apparel, mobile phones and what not. Agencyfaqs informs that another TV could kill the family by letting everyone see his/her own channel when they want it. Perhaps its the time to further nuclearise the Indian nuclear family. So the TV manufacturers should say "We offer you a TV that you can own and see it without the hassles of "agreeing" to see what your family wants".
Cleaning the blog feeds, for those on the web constantly, has now qualified to be tagged as "doing a chore" like cleaning those windows after 6 months. Just that it happens once in a few days or weeks. Talk about everyone being an information voyeur.

Amen.
-Egghead

Rants due to the distresses of a vacation

2008-05-06T20:46:00.003+05:30

Catching up with friends of the yonder has become a tedious job now. Suddenly I have to put up with monosyllabic replies from those who used to talk loquaciously (at least not the extreme of being monosyllabic).
What is it that has changed?

Is it me?
Is it my attitude?
Is it the whole deal?

This is the conversation that typically happens -
Me/Them - How are you?
Them/Me
(If the reply is "hmmm ... fine", there it goes for a toss and forget catching up)
This is a typical defensive reply implying "I am okay and do not wish to divulge/share the details of my own life".
This reply can be delayed by deliberate additions of "Who are you", "What are you doing here", "Long time yaar" etc etc.
Me/Them - How is work?
(Again if the reply is "hmmm .. fine", it means that yet another thread for opening a conversation is lost. I don't try and neither do they)

Lessons learnt -

Catching up means like a cultivation. Without the regular watering and tilling, the soil won't produce cauliflowers (a flower, still)
If you have not caught up, try as soon as possible. But in my case, my conversations have dried up and I have not picked up the skills of how to keep a conversation fertile.
I have lost and have stopped catching up. I always see the same question in my mind - "On what pretext should I talk? What do I speak with them?"
Friendship is an effort and distance not only separates them but also their lives, from me. There is always an implicit need to keep that connection with their lives. Once the connection is lost, all such conversations become superficial and baseless without the "masala" that I used to share.
Friendship can become a chore more often than not it can become a useless chore.

All throughout I just remember one song that has pestered me long enough. Verbatim copy of lyrics, now make much more sense now.

Champagne Supernova / Oasis

How many special people change
How many lives are living strange
Where were you when we were getting high?
Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannon ball
Where were you while we were getting high?

Some day you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky
Some day you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova
A champagne supernova in the sky

Wake up the dawn and ask her why
A dreamer dreams she never dies
Wipe that tear away now from your eye
Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannon ball
Where were you when we were getting high?

Some day you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky
Some day you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova
A champagne supernova in the sky

Cos people believe that they're
Gonna get away for the summer
But you and I, we live and die
The world's still spinning round
We don't know why
Why, why, why, why

How many special people change
How many lives are living strange
Where were you when we were getting high?
Slowly walking down the hall
Faster than a cannon ball
Where were you while we were getting high?

Some day you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky
Some day you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova
A champagne supernova in the sky

Cos people believe that they're
Gonna get away for the summer
But you and I, we live and die
The world's still spinning round
We don't know why
Why, why, why, why

How many special people change
How many lives are living strange
Where were you when we were getting high?
We were getting high
We were getting high
We were getting high
We were getting high

Rants of the misguided nature

2008-05-06T20:12:00.003+05:30

Days before the election day in Bangalore a billboard on the road exclaims -
"YOU are the reason why we are ashamed of ourselves. Change that and don't forget to vote this time"

Excuse me, I am the reason why some crapbag is ashamed of himself. Much fun came along. Perhaps they meant that we should be ashamed of ourselves for constituting such a lackadaisical political setup. That is why we should go ahead and vote and constitute an incrementally better setup this time.

But am I offended, yes. Everytime I see this billboard. Gosh my english sucks.

Fights of logic in a vacation

2008-05-04T20:46:00.004+05:30

Scene - 1
Vacationing in Sringeri (a Jyotirmath) and on a dip in the nearby river of Tunga.
Scene - 2
Perfectly undressed (with the undergarments on, I mean) man jumps for the water with shampoo on his hands, waiting to be applied on his head.
Scene - 3
Lets call the man, TM (troublemaker). TM's wife (TMW) calls out loud in an endearing tone (for her husband) which more than reveals a fear inside (of the guard sitting beside) and says

TMW - TMji don't use shampoo or soap, otherwise the guard will do some galatta (create a scene)
TM - No it does not matter (and rinses his hair and his action is perfectly coordinated with the movement of the guard's neck away from the river)

Me - Sir, please don't do that. Like you there are zillions, like me, who like to and love to take a holy dip in these waters (and do their pujas etc).
TM - How much difference (damage he should have said) can the amount of shampoo, on my head, can make?
Me - (Boom, baah, bust) I mumble. Can I say that the 8 grams of shampoo on your head causes a damage of Rs. 1000 worth of aquatic life.

Lessons learnt -

Economics - Had it worked?
People - Only driven by fear, ruckus and not logic.
Education - My education is not helping me and most importantly his education is not making him aware as well.

What the heck?

Linguistic overtures ...

2008-03-03T19:41:00.002+05:30

Quirky, related? Yes the words in English !!!
Gateway = Getaway

On a completely unrelated note, a quote that I coined yesterday which had been on my mind for long. I can't prove but an empirical study on me reveals so -
"Success of any education is a direct measure of confusion that it creates."
So long as I did not know why did I pay so much for a popcorn in a multiplex, I paid. But now I know it is due to couple of factors -
1. Simple economics - demand and supply - Inelastic demand. (Is it right? I doubt)
2. Marketing - Discriminatory pricing, fleecing the customer.

A good education just widens the ways and angles in which your mind can roam. It gives structure but it also gives you so many roads and alleyways which you can now roam. Earlier there would have been the way, only one way or you thought there existed only one way which was the right one.

Sometimes...

2008-02-22T21:29:00.002+05:30

Sometimes its just the music in your head that you don't need anything to sway.
Sometimes you can just float in the crescendo inside that takes your breath away.

Sometimes its not the lights and the water that tell.
Sometimes its just the reflection beneath that come alive and your eyes are swell.

Sometimes its not the outside that tears you apart.
Its just the inside which holds you apart.

Sometimes its just ....
you are good, you are bad.

Sometimes its just ....
you are ugly, you are beautiful.

But still its just ....
you want to be with a feeling of someone
who feels that the sunshine still comes up your arse :-)

Sometimes
Its just
plain
and
its just
you.

And before this moment of light dies,
I want to be my own sunshine, not someone else's.

The inspiration -

Talking about "IT", getting miffed and finally pissed!!!!

2008-01-18T01:19:00.000+05:30

Apparently "Crossword" does not have a tab for searching books and I was miffed. When I tried to Landmark this is what I got -

I am pissed. The website was devoid of any eye-sore but this is not even an eye-sore. IT miffed and pissed. This is what I was searching for -Nytimes recommends it here.
Amitava Kumar recommends it here.
Marginal Revolution's post here.
Finally TED's post here.

All this while my bated breath dies out looking at the alien oriental font tracked from Landmark to Sify. Phew !!! I wait to pounce on it.

Movie today !!

2008-01-12T01:36:00.000+05:30

There are some feelings that rush up inside you when specific things happen. Today, while opening the first pages of "On Beauty" by Zadie Smith, some thing happened. I guess it is the bliss of first few pages of a book, when you are off reading for eons. Worded descriptions became beautiful visual treats and at once I felt I was back, in my elements, enjoying the word-play of the author and revelling in it, yes that's the right word "revel".

The movie ended, and "the bluest eyes in Texas" is still roaming somewhere in my damn head playing on and on. The effect is the total incapability of emotions that strike you after a "breaking" experience, that sometimes, movies can be. Emoting is taken for granted, well I felt today, no you can lose that, ineffable, that's the right word. The lump in your throat lingers on and on and on, and refuses to let go.

Now showing - Never see, but once seen you will never forget!!!!
With "Bluest eyes in Texas - By Nina Person/ Nathan Larson

Movie today !!

2008-01-12T01:28:00.000+05:30

Not a movie by any stretch. A ride in damned hell for sure. See it for yourself and see if you can pass the night sleeping. I don't care to say no more.

Now showing -

Linguistic Overtures

2008-01-09T20:04:00.000+05:30

English language quirks, mathematically speaking.
Intim"id"ate - Intimate = " ID ", coincidence or Freud coined these words.

Movie today !!

2008-01-09T19:50:00.000+05:30

Self referential dialogues, add to that a father who defends cigarettes and tries to be the "role-model" for his son, phew!!! I would say tough job and definitely principled negotiation turned on its head!!! Let me make my point on self-referential dialogues - clear (like GNU!!!).

Nick Naylor (NN): What about lobbyists? (in a lecture to 3rd graders)
Kids: What do you talk about?
NN:I speak on behalf of cigarettes.
Kid:My mom used to smoke, she says cigarettes kill!!!
NN goes on to refute the kid's argument by saying that her mom is not an expert, then he says -
NN:There will always be people trying to tell you "what to do" and "what to think". I am here to say that when someone tries to act like some sort of an expert, you can respond "who says".

Now this response undermines the authority and hence the dialogue. But imagine if these kids respond "who says" and that's where GNU comes in, for information GNU is self referential - GNU Not Unix. Anyway I am high on gas, enjoy this piece of great film making.

Now showing

Movie today !!

2008-01-09T19:44:00.000+05:30

Style, independent film, perfect cast and direction they say. I say stylish, dunno much about direction, positional bargaining (eeks!!!) and "Either its my way or the highway". Now do I need to say more?

Now showing -

Movie today !!

2008-01-09T19:40:00.000+05:30

Well, strange homecoming, with all those "i-had-left-them" friends who keep waiting for you and ever be the faithful one. Add to that lingering tracks - sample them
1. In the waiting line - Zero7
2. Don't Panic - Coldplay
3.Love will come through - Travis

Well, nostalgia for out-boarders, reminiscent and reminded me of home, friends and forgetting and remembering that I have forgotten.

Now showing -

Movie today !!

2008-01-02T12:24:00.000+05:30

One day down from ++2007 and a tepid movie with some real mind-bending soundtracks like Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan. Glittering eyes, Ernest Hemingway, some real nice dialogues, but forget the movie listen to the following -
1. Angel - Sarah McLachlan
2. Iris - Goo Goo Dolls
3. If god will send his angels - U2
4. Uninvited - Alanis Morissette

Now showing -

Movie today !!

2008-01-02T12:19:00.000+05:30

Exams screwing around and new year that just meant, in programming terminology, ++year. To add to that all and sundry sending mail and for-what-I do-not-know wishing everyone. Anyways movies and romantic it is.
A Good Year - bond yields, overworked MBA life's post-cursor and a cute french femme to top it all. See once - forget later.
Now showing -

Movie today !!

2007-12-16T18:51:00.000+05:30

He wants to die and you wonder, why does suicide need more than a person, other than the self-perpetrator. The movie is a story of a Sisyphus, the mythical man who does his job only to lose it all at the top and start all over again. By the end it is the viewer has the responsibility to decide whether Mr. Badii is a sisyphus or not.
Mr. Badii sits in a mountain-esque setting, all alone, with sounds of excavators and dumpings all around. Just him and these sounds, a very profound scene, if you can figure it.

Now showing - My first Iranian movie - Thanks Saurabh.

Movie today !!

2007-12-11T00:21:00.000+05:30

The man, the voice, the void and the end!!! His profligacy and his popularity were of the extremes. The problem with not liking this movie is many fold. After all the more uncertain the character is the more certain is his demise. All great things come in small quanta. In retrospect I wonder whether had he been alive, would it have made the difference. Try to prove it, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt have one thing in common. The number 27, go figure.

Expressions like demi-god seem like compromise. He talks of limitlessness and freedom yet the next moment he seeks a hand. He talks of Oedipus, 1984 seems to be written for this song. I am losing myself in “the end” and so whatever may everyone say, The Doors is good, sad, limitless yet constrained by the rule of 27.

“I am the poet and you are my muse” lying in Pere-Lachaise.

Now showing

Movie today !!

2007-12-10T09:59:00.000+05:30

A meditative study on individual / group behaviour, negotiation schemes, personality types, and the definition of reasonable doubt.
Now showing

Movie today !!

2007-12-08T17:27:00.000+05:30

Bang!! Bang!! Bang!! ... "Ha Ha Ha Ha" - Li'l Dice after his first kill and a fatal grin!! Reminded me of that "ultra violence" and "clockwork orange". After seeing so many "bloody" movies even I have been normalised by violence. Showing violence does not seem to offer that "tense" moments that reveal the vulnerability of the character, to me. So I search for the subplots and the context, and damn the same old zero-sum game, the same vicious circle is what I see.

Damn the normalcy of violence. Some days before I met an ACP here, she also seems "normalised" by violence. "Abhi ek threat aaya", she said with a grin on her face, and her eyebrows in constricted "tension".

Now showing - real story of the favelas, Li'l Dice nee Li'l Z and Buscape, por favore !!!

Movie today !!

2007-12-07T18:29:00.001+05:30

"I think dad is having me in my dreams" - A daughter
Disturbing, yet evoking no comments as revealed in a "Festen". Thanks Saurabh !!!

Now Showing Dogme95 style

Movie today !!

2007-12-06T23:47:00.000+05:30

Who watches those who are watching and those are who are watching know that they are being watched? Surveillance is a zero sum game by above and our innate scepticism.
-- "The Departed".

Now showing -

Paati, me and murukkus !!

2007-11-12T23:04:00.000+05:30

Paati means grandmother in tamizh (and not tamil, I hate that spelling). She was making what we relish as murukkus, which are a snack made of rice flour and a complex web at that. This is what a murukku looks like -

And I wondered isn't this magic. I was looking at the sharp twists and turns and was wondering at their preciseness and I remembered science. Wasn't science all about preciseness and a kind of beauty that lends itself to mathematics. It was the same case here, but this was made by my paati. Well I wondered this is not science but what I learnt long ago called as tacit knowledge, which is reinforced by years of practice. It is very interesting that small events and anecdotes build one's knowledge which in retrospect seems very obvious. A typical example would be to see how her fingers roll around the rice flour to make this perfect shape, which she says she finally achieved in 1982, quoting "25 years of service". Do I say "ROFLOL", no. I said you are wonderful darling.
My paati says she has been making them since she was 10 and her mother used to make one on each hand i.e. two per person and my paati was using one hand. And I wondered how ?
Then I asked, has she ever wondered who can make them like she does and she was blank. Then it stuck me like a loss staring at me, that will catch up unawares sometime in the near future. Interestingly, she said her daughter can match up with her, sometime. Interestingly, none of her maatu-ponnu ( daughter-in-laws) can ever achieve this level that she has managed to achieve. I wonder this is six-sigma or not. So I thought then on, what happens to such tacit knowledge which gets filtered across generation. Why does this get filtered? Well is it a question of interests or relevance or priorities or sometimes just the vicariousness of the experience or just that because it is available outside? Tomorrow the next generation would forget that someone in their own family used to make it by their own hands labouring for 4 hours for 2.5 kilograms of rice flour.

Will someone preserve this tacit knowledge? I sure wanted to and made a start today and this is what I managed. I have made a start but wonder whether would I be able to capture all that my paati has in her head before she becomes inaccessible? Do I know is a wrong question because no one else knows? After all does this change the end result - everything is crushed in our mouths and it does not matter from where it comes. Just that if my paati makes it, the relish is much more exponential.

Will someone preserve this tacit knowledge? It matters to me and I realise I have at least taken a step forward and hope someday I will be making them the way my dearest paati made it.

Amen !!!!

Slokas, sastrigal and me!!!

2007-11-12T22:26:00.000+05:30

Certain events that happened recently have caught me in a difficult position. Dying traditions across generations within a single family, perhaps. The death is chosen changing priorities and also the environment in which the generation is brought up.
We had a house warming ceremony and as usual I and my dad were chanting the Sanskrit slokas which I had learnt. This induction to slokas is a normal part of a tam-bram upbringing and so I learnt it along with rudram, chamakam and Vishnu sahasranamam (a thousand names of Lord Vishnu) as well. For the uninitiated they are slokas and pretty long ones at that.
So everyone, by implication my relatives and our generation, watches us dumbfounded along with the sastrigal, who conduct the ceremony, wondering -
1. How come they know all this ? ( how come we missed it ? )
2. How come they know all this ? ( this time the sastrigal, wondering about a professional threat or a sense of relief that there are people who know these slokas )

So I wonder who chose not to learn? I have learnt some Sanskrit and it feels wonderful reciting them with the intonations and all. To quote a specific example - imagine about 50 people reciting slokas together in a crescendo and wonder the kind of environment it creates, quite akin to a concert of Oasis or Pt. Birju Maharaj. Within my family tree, generations have side-stepped these things. Well is it a question of interests or relevance or priorities or sometimes just the vicariousness of the experience? I am gloomy at what I see.

Linguistic Overtures

2007-09-11T23:21:00.000+05:30

I am writing again after a long long time. This time my focus has somehow turned into language and its peculiarities. Here are some gems (according to me obviously).

1. "Begum" - "Be"+"Gum" meaning without any sadness, what a farcical word this one.
2. Incidentally if you have not wondered ever "Bedroom" has an interesting jumbled up word which is "Boredom".
3. Two unseemingly related words which are again jumbles of each other - "Teacher" and "Cheater".
4. Propitiously "women ...... men" and the question to you is what fills that dots (a mathematical symbol). The answer is ">" because men on both side cancel out. Now this has some deep insights.

Languages created by humans are so beautiful and they are so quirky that no one notices these small yet very profound links.

A realisation albeit late

2006-10-12T17:48:00.000+05:30

It's lying in front of you and me. It's just that we do not realise that. Living its life in an afterglow, a shakti. I hate to submit that it is the social mores that seek to "disgregate" them into conventional roles, which are then appendaged with prejudice, discrimination and countless violations, so much so that they (the latter) become common place (consequentially).

Linguistically speaking, I want to take a bow, be apostate, to the person who coined them, such genious.

In case you are wondering what this is all about, ever heard the words "he" and "she". I realise now that -

He is a part of She,
Man is included in Woman,

Without He there is no She,
But no Woman means no man.

I will just say that. Rest is upto whoever reads them, such beauty in a language and in reality. I just hate the social mores and my upbringing.

As an afterthought consider this -

Expense for operating my two vehicles - Rs. 30,000
Expense for the drivers that I employ - Rs. 12,000

Expense for educating my son - Rs. 3,000
Expense for educating my daughter - Rs. 300

PERIOD!!!!

(All figures indicate monthly expenses of my Cab Driver who drives us (carpool) from our workplace to our residences. Font sizing is for emphasis.)
tag:Prejudice

Who am I - A Bad bad post

2006-07-18T14:37:00.000+05:30

This is a bad bad post. Stuck in my mind for more that two days, hence I guessed it will be a real sucker.
Please send all your hate mails (if you happen to read this)here.

Title - Am I me ?

------------------The words---------------

I long for that horizon,
that is not mine, that cannot be mine.

I long for that sense of me
which finds me everyday, in the dark alleys of my mind,
yet,
which betrays me everyday;
for I exist, I conclude,
in a farce; in a Truman's show;

He asks "Who are you?"
I say
" I am that hope which will not emerge"
" I am that purpose which is never fulfilled"
" I am that dream, which is meant to be broken"
" I am that war where needs massacre wants"
" I am that void, that canvas, in my soul
that wants to be freed, from
that wants to be coloured, not in
the monotony that is me"
" I am that yesterday, where winds of change lead to"
" I AM the sisyphus"

He is disgusted for I ask him
"What have you made of me"
He says
" You are the victory of grotesque choices over nascent volition"
He says
" I should not seek that horizon,
I should not see that image which is me, for
they are lost, squandered, in the silhouette of my past"

I console myself, for
what I do, what I will do, become
the horizon, the dazzle of new found hope, the dream, the compromise of realising
me,
a true me,
and a new me.

ASE

Why books, why why?

2006-07-07T11:15:00.000+05:30

So after a long slumber, I am back to my elements and feel like scribbling.

And meanwhile I have been reading, in the office, at home, on the bus, in the night, well during the entire day so I asked why why books?

LA VIE ET LE LIVRE (LIFE AND THE BOOK)

Books are quirky creatures, so do they make of the people who get in contact with them. Books exist on this earth in various facades - small, large, paper-back, local, on-the-footpath, pirated or whatever. Sometimes they are ostentatiously challenging you in a book fair or sometimes, well, I feel sorry for this, lying like a hapless orphan in your attic or even in your “almirah” (cupboard). For me reading a book is like the essential chemistry experiment. You look out for that pungent smell, that crimson-red coloured vapours or the yellow viscous residue. But sometimes the experiments fail but the objective is never left unfulfilled.

On reading
Reading books is like having an emotional as well an intellectual orgy, it is a symbol of an indulgence or rather over-indulgence in which time and space lose their meaning. Eyes are perched in the middle of the book and I miss the last “Virar-fast” in order have a feeling of satiation, that glow, that lump in my throat that tells me that the journey in the pages is over and it is now time to go home. My two or rather four eyes, for I am bespectacled, are jumping hither thither, abruptly stopping and abruptly moving, sometimes fast and sometimes slow. Then I realise that my daily travel to my office is a bumpy ride and hence by reading I am putting my eyes to great peril. Reading on the bench staring down, reading on your bed (in the morning I have a craning neck), in the light-less moments using that darned mobile to some productive use (Oh I realised it emits bright enough light), never giving that candle a short shrift. Of course I realise that flipping the pages is like de-flowering the book. It gets creased; the pages marked for future reference and yes the distinctive epithet appears on the first page. I wonder of what good is a book that is still a bachelor, wait a spinster suits better.

On buying, owning, discovering and suchlike
I have always had a penchant for genuine books so I would rather empty my pocket than rather owning that spurious copy which is not loyal to its author even in the way it smells. Hey it is a question of loyalty and I do not want to be an infidel. It often appears to me like a twist in the tale but I have never believed in libraries. For me they are just beacons, vanguards, like an indirect reference which/who lead me towards an unearthed treasure, a treasure which I initially see over and then win over. Enchanted or rather helpless is what I become when I am under an attack in a book shop. I stumble, I totter, I glow, I discover, I feel sorry, for what I intone? Well you know that right. Oh the moments of guilt and remorse never ever trouble me when I am under such a siege. Months later I retroactively take an oath that I shall not buy to what ends I wonder? Apparently it is human to realise that the gap, between what I have read and what I have to read, is burgeoning. After all even if you lose war you still have won the battle and that ecstasy is self-sustaining.

On types
Unlike humans, books are creatures having a singular quality. Like humans, they evoke a marquee of emotions on contact. First impressions might not be last impression. Sometimes they are just so awful you just want to behead them. Sometimes they are the silent warriors with a motto – they come, they see and they conquer. Contrariwise they become my lovers, the affair starts from the first page, and to my grief it ends suddenly. Then I realised why not fall in love over and over again. And there are the “other” types, which are essentially like wine or that “20 year” aged scotch. I do not wish to continue for the inebriation, which appears like consequence, is in plain words, ineffable.

On life and death
I fervently believe that books never die for they are the “epitome” of immortality. They are just carried over from generation to generation, god willing. They are nomads and the journey insulates them from the monotony of immortality. They pass from one hand to the other, from one attic to other, from one library to the other library or just plainly from one “kabadi” to the other. Given the bounty of books, I hope no one kills them, nor does anyone find them being shredded page by page. Ah! What cruelty? If anyone has such an experience, do inform me I am ready to set up a book-adoption society.

So much so for “Le livre” that I am convinced beyond reasoning, beyond the rational that
“Je suis, parceque je lis” (I am, because I read), period.