5k New year party

PG was mentioning about the New Year party he was invited for. The party is priced at 5k per couple for THE night. He got a free pass, hence planned to attend and later had to drop the plan as his uncle happen to visit him. The discussion went on to note the cost of such parties and the worth of the same.

VY mentioned such parties are considerable only if we get free passes. JB mentioned the risks in driving during the late nights. Apart from the drunkard drivers and rash drivers, there will be eve teasers all over the city - drunkard eve teasers are still bad. I guess the city looses its safety belt and goes crazy. It is better to stay at home.

Have a small, controlled gathering at home, plan for some games, food and fun. With mild music in the background, I guess nothing outside can come close to it.

Difference in taste

SDP had come to the country on a visit. VY and myself joined him for lunch.
We were discussing about different restarants and the taste.

The food prepared by Indian restarants at US have a different taste compared to what we get in India. May be the ingredients are too refined and hygenic. Most of us prefer the taste in India.

Seems like the Chinese food available at US is closer to the authentic Chinese preparation. In India, the Chinese restarants are highly Indianized with spices of India.

SDP was mentioning the Shalimar, a restarant in SFO. Seems like it is a very small place and got a great ambience. However, the food taste pulls lots of crowd.

The secret of an Oracle

Guess you have gone through the belief on future prediction.

Such belief seems to be a weakness, and a lack of self confidence in doing things.
Where there is a weakness, there will be business. Hence the astrology is a flourishing business, if done in the right manner.

Presenting my views on how a future-reader or a horoscope analyst can tell about our future. Trying to cover as per the reality, may be few points are over-stated or under-stated.

Telling about future is a really a trick, by practice anyone can gain. It is just like how a magician does the trick without exposing the truth to the audience. Future reading involves more of psychology, semantics of words and presence of mind.

Just listen to someone, may be a stranger for five mintues. If possible, try to open up his/her mind to let out the worries or issues troubling him. Just in five minutes you will gain a load of details about their habit, family background, their problem solving techniques, attitude towards life and n number of other inner, finer details. With that information, it will be easy to extrapolate their behaviour and what they will most likely do.

If a person trusts an astrologer kind of guy, then they will start believing whatever he says. That is a positive reinforcement of statements in the mind. Once the person is convinced of the future prediction, the mind start obsolving that fact into deeper part of the mind, may be at sub-consious level. For eg, if the prediction is made that business will pickup better from the month of May, then the person will keep repeating that in mind. By May, the person will be fully charged to do something in business; with such positive spirit it might be possible that the prediction comes true.

I guess Neuro-linguistic programming courses does something like this. If the prediction is positive, it makes everyone happy. However, when the negative predictions are made, it might put down the effort of people. The predictor might have given negative prediction just to have equal number of postive and negative predictions for his clients. (If he keeps telling only good things, people will loose faith).

Semantics too help in analyzing the thought pattern of a person. It tells why the person is trying peep through the future and more importantly, what he is looking forward to happen.

What about the planetary explanations, palm reading, face reading, naadi stuff, parrot-card, and zillions of tools and techniques? In my opinion they are jargons used by the future-reader to gain credibility. Also, to have the art of future-telling to himself rather than make it public.



Why do we need to know about the future? Why can't we enjoy the future as it uncover itself?

Had any astrologer won a lottery?

Why do people return to them inspite of umpteen number of prediction failures? (If a prediction fails, the astrologers have n number of sub-clauses to justify why the prediction had failed, or still worse .. blame it on the customer for not strictly following his prescription)

hmm .. I guess this craze will dissolve only when people shed their fear about future. Seeing the history, I am afraid that such a reformation is close to impossible. All around the world, at all times, from kings to papuer queued in front of the fortune-teller to know something.

Divorce process in Islam

We had an impression that it is easy to divorce under Islamic rule. Folks suggested one should get converted to Islam in order to get a quick solution.

MS clarified certain aspects of this myth. Seems like there are n number of clauses and it is not an easy task as we all imagine. (Definitely not as easy as saying Talaq Talaq Talaq).

However, the wikipedia has mentioned husband talaqing without any other third person as witness, and controversy over allowing text message for talaq.

Seems like there are diverse practises and the exact process will depend on situation to situation. Also, theory might differ from the reality.

Indian and western languages

While reading the book Word Power, I was impressed with the etymology analyzing technique. Another surprise was to find Greek and Latin words to have similarity with Samskrit and other Indian languages. Tried putting few of the words here.

Most of the last column are Latin
eka each
onru, onthu one
dvi dual, two
tri tri, three
chatur quad
pancha pentashut
che sexa
sapta septa
asta octa
nava novem
dasha deci

Samskrit and Latin coincide amazingly for 11 to 29 (that is the last number I could find in the page :-)
vimshati viginti

Naama Name
naukaa nau (boat or sea thing)

upari up
adhaka under

jeevan genesis (life)

The 'a' prefix in Samskrit is to mean anti, for eg, avidya (without knowledge). Greek also used 'a' to mean anti, for eg, atom (that which cannot be cut).

The prefix vi in Samskrit has 16 meaning based on the context and the root word it joins with. Two common meaning it derives are negation and intensification. Examples are placed at Beautiful names. The Latin prefix "in" is a close cousin of "vi". The words indecent, injustice for negation and invaluable for intensification are note worthy comparison.

Guess an detail analyze of these two language might throw some more light on the similarity. I tried google to find any such work. Nothing noted in the first page of search.

Belief in predictions

We had a discussion on belief people have on horoscope. I was thinking in that line and try to reason the unshakable faith.

Any living being is programmed to seek happiness and to avoid unhappy situations. Any complex feelings and interaction can be brought down to these two instinct. Fear is one of the factor bringing such unhappy feelings. Fear of repetition of past unhappy moments, fear of loosing the current happy occasions and fear of untold future.

Uncertainty of anything is an uncomfortable thingy for human. I am very much comfortable coming to my office and going back to my home. I don't have any odd feelings; in fact these two are my second nature and hence not in my mind while dealing at these two places. If I had to go to a new place, I might feel awkwardly uncomfortable, very much aware of my conduct there, will check how people see me. That is due to the unfamiliar environment which made me out of normal behaviour.

Also, uncertainty is risk. There is a chance of success and failure. We would like to gather as much of data as possible so that the risk factor is reduced in order to increase the probability of success. In other words, we would like to reduce the uncertainty factor.

Sample questions : "Has anyone visited xyz place recently? Can you help with good accommodation referral, travel condition, place of attraction etc .. ". This is for reducing the uncertainty.

The future being uncertain, we would like to 'see' something over the time-line and gain something. For eg, if a cat crosses my way, today will be bad. We try to associate something happening now or before and predict something in future. If some good prediction is made, we feel confident to do some activity; otherwise that activity would have left us in double-minded dilemma.

If someone claims to tell our future, we are skeptical initially. However, we wish the person can predict accurately. With such biased expectation, we evaluate a fortune-teller or a future-reader. How the person gains the credibility is dealt in a future article.

Thou the prediction may not be correct, still we would like to consult with such people, just to make sure things are fine. Also, to know something about the future instead of marching ahead without any data.

Can future be predicted? Is there a fool-proof method to know something ahead of time?
Watch for the future article :-)

software design

Here is an interesting article on how software design are quoted. Funny.
Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Science

Got the link from our internal newsgroup.

Horrorscope

Do the stars control the destiny of people?
Why would a gigantic, non-living object, staying trillions of light years away from me, worry about my business prosperity? Does Venus has a database to keep track of personal love life of billions of people? Also it need to adjust the love level of all the billions of people(only people?) on a regular interval of time. While taking decisions, will the planets refer the same horoscope tables we use?

Anyway, it is pathetic to observe the belief people have in these predictive systems. Have heard about people waiting for the right time for their business and only to find that the competition had eaten their share of market.



There are two forgery happening in the matrimonial market. Could be the groom side or the bride side; after knowing the other's party's horoscope details, pass on the 'horoscope' that would match. Still worse, there are people carrying multiple copies and pass the suitable profile.
The second malpractice is to use the horoscope as an excuse to reject a profile. That is a good excuse anyone would accept and not questionable. The reason is that thou the horoscope may match, there could be some other astrologer having a different opinion.

If we brand the above as cheating, what do we say about girls agreeing to cut open the womb to pick the new born at the right time rather than wait for a natural birth?

Someone known to me was complaining about the horoscope match. She was mentioning that she did a blunder in life of marrying a person by believing the good matching as sufficient criteria.
Rarely people question about the divorce rate inspite of the best matched profiles. Apart from divorce rate, why isn't the horoscope helping to filter out drunkards, womenizer, loofers, criminals etc?

On the other hand, there are folks thou they like a boy or a girl, they put a halt on further proceeding due to the horoscope blocade.


Anyway, I am sure not to get back my horoscope, which is destroyed completely. I would not go for such stupidity for my kids.


This topic reminds me of the famous Indian proverb, "Fate can be overcome by intelligence".

Movie review : Barnyard

First let us go through this story template.
Father is very brave, heroic, has noble values, protects the citizens. Father wants his son to gain skills and take the position of the father in due course. The son is playful, and not inclined to take the tradition.

There are villain groups waiting to topple the father's regime. One day, due to the negligence or non-performance of duty of the son, the father is killed. Son feels guilty and runs away or attempts to run away.
The citizens pled the son to take incharge, as they will be attacked by the enemies. Son takes in charge, destroys the enemy clan, rescues the folks who got kidnapped earlier etc etc ..
Oh, I missed the heroine. In between, the son meets the girl and falls in love. It is the heroine who gives the confidence to the hero to face the enemies and take in charge.


If the father is a lion, and the story happens in the jungle with all the wild beasts, then the title is Lion King.

If the father is a don of sharks, and the story happens deep down the ocean, we have Shark Tale. A twist in the story is to kill the brother instead of the father.

Go to a barn, let the father be a bull who protects the barn animals, we end up watching Barnyard.

At a distance galaxy, there is a father planet revolving in its solar system. This planet keeps the other objects in the system in tact and protects from harmful meteoroids (the villains). The son planet (actually a satellite of the father planet) is playful, doesn't like to take up the job of the father planet. While guarding the solar system, the father planet is bombarded by a storm of meteoroids and asteroids. It was supposed to be the turn of the son planet, but he was roaming around with his friends at the neighboring planetarium (a place where planets meet). Alas, the father planet is thrown out of the orbit into the deep abyss. The son planet thought of shifting to milkyway galaxy. His girl planet(?!) persuade him and divert his energy to fight against the evil meteoroids. Peace prevails.
This is a story of a feature movie, Planet Particles.

The Utopian girl

Welcome, golden girl from Utopia; hi from earthlings.

I got the letter you sent about the angels. Nice that you are interested in geogamic study. I will be glad to be the guide on your world tour. Watch out for that flight crew, he is dashing towards you.


Prayer

In this part of the world, we start anything with a prayer to Lord Ganesha. Let us do this tour in a traditional and auspicious manner.



He is a smart guy. North Indians know that he is married, twice. However, Ganesha had hidden his martial status to South India. My guess is that he has an eye for a South Indian girl. It is a tough bet with a South Indian girl. All she cares is - the horoscope MUST match (also that 8th square should be empty). Thou the guy may have an elephant head or he is married couple of times, these do not bother her much. So, success of Ganesha depends on effective ways of manipulating his horoscope.




Jai Sri Ramji

As your research involves with monogamy among earthlings, I would take you straight to Sri Ramachandra Maharaj's palace. He is the perfect example quoted for a one-one ideology. A rare thing among gods and kings.

You are lucky to travel at this time, as Sri Ramji had just returned from Lanka. Let us meet him. His wife ... hmmm .. let us put it simple. She had gone hmm ... somewhere, to enjoy the beauty of nature.

Poor guy, after newly married, he was sent to jungle. Had it been with his friends, he would have enjoyed the trek. To intensify the punishment, he had to take his wife and brother. As any girl, she was asking for gold, that too a golden deer. As it happens, that lands into more trouble. A damn damemon picked her up to his country. Ram had to suffer a lot in the search and find (google wasn't available in those days), forming an army out of monkeys etc. Good that he had a great fighting spirit (after marriage effect?), and won against the rakshasha. Only two weeks back they all returned to Ayodhya.

Again their marriage is in a rock. I dont know the exact details, but rumours say that people (who watch many Hindi movies) dont like the rescued heroine to be accepted by the hero. On popular response of the SMS contest, Sita was sent to forest.

My granny used to bless me as, "you should be like Sri Ramachanderji!". I feel it is a curse.

I wouldnt like to visit other gods as you might start hating them.Did I mention the hobbies of the Lord of the Gods, Indra?



Theory of evolution

In Hindu mythology, the evolution of life is personified as avatars of Vishnu. Starting with watery creature, amphibians, then beasty boar, progress is made to half man - half animal, small boy, hunter, farmer, king, king maker etc. Earlier part of the evolution, they had no partners, then they were trying their luck with one - one.

In the line came Sri Rama. We saw his one to one concept and his sufferings. The avatars realized their mistake. They realized the primitive way of thinking. After broadening their views, they refined their thoughts and came up with the last known avatar; fixing all the earlier bugs, the ultra modern social personification ... here I introduce ...

KRISHNA!! man, you rock!!! We are glad that you showed us the path away from sufferings and guided us through everlasting ectasy.

I am eagerly waiting for the last avatar, Kalki. If Krishna had so many partners, let us wait to see the next one. He is supposed to be a slayer. My guess is he is going to chop off all the guys in the world. He will be a single man in all girls' land. hmm .. that is tricky; not sure if that is lucky or would that be pitiable.



History lessons

A pop quiz. Answer short.

Name a monogamous person who may be a king or an ancient time minister, olden days panjayat leader, historic priest, worker in the temple, or a farmer or an artist.

Yes, I can show one from the stone writings I had seen.

His name mentioned there is :
RajathiRaja RajaKesari RajaMarthanda RajaKulaThilaga VijayaParakrama DhushtaSankrasta VimalaAdhithya NarasimhaHamsa VenkataPurana RaghuNandaVaiRagya VaishitaKulathonga Baskaranutha VaraKaraMustika MaathuruBootho VeeraBoopathi ChandrasekaraNruthunga KangeyamKonda VeengiGiriVendra AkilaBhuvanaNayaka MagudaMaguadaAdithipathi Sri Verendra Varaguna Pandiyan, Second

(wooof, let me take a breath)

On reflecting somemore time, it occurs that the following thing might have happened. In those days the litho caligraphers would have charged carving on a per letter basis. As a cost cutting measure, this king would have mentioned the writers, "put my name and any one of my wife's name".




Mathematical proof

I know with the jet lag you have from the Utopian visit, it is difficult to follow up with mathematical equations. I will make it simple.

Is monogamous practical? Let us check with a leading mathematician.

For the sake of discussion, we will assume equal numbers here.
Male = 50%
Female = 50%

As per the monogamous theory, 50% : 50% is the right break up.
However, the data is skewed as the gay population is not taken into account in this calculation.

Let us assume 10% of guys are gays (optimistic). These 10% will lure another 10% guys into their vicious net, as the original 10% need guy partners to acheive their purpose.

=> 10% + 10% = 20%

20% guy population implies 10% of the total population. ie,

10% + 40% against 50% of female

Once you match 40% (most of the time) straight guys with 40% female, we are left over with 10% female. (ie 50% - 40% = 10%)

The government would have to come up with effective campion to convert those 10% into nuns or lesbians. I doubt if any goverment has such plans in near future.

Therefore, we need to somehow convince 10% (of the original population) out of 40% guys to come out of their "primitive" mindset of one to one. We need to provide sufficient incentive for them to consider another girl other than his wife.

Ya, it is a tough task we have ahead, that is to convince a guy to go through another trouble. But we have to do it as the world should be saved.




Modern society
Being in the isolated world of Utopia, I guess you have missed out the social norms here. For the highness purpose, I am blogging couple of cases. You may start with Romeo and Juliet, then with the court case.

btw, while talking about court, do you know that the supreme court had passed a suggestion to other courts in order to refrain from issueing divorce? The number of divorce had shooted up sharply. As a measure, court would like to delay the hearings and put their maximum effort to convince the couple to live together. For what?, to quarrel till life time?

That brings another interesting line of thoughts. If a majority of people in a society are forced to lead a life with a partner they dont like to be with, wouldn't that lead to mass adultry? Let us wait and watch.







Golden girl : " All Men are Flirts ?!"
well, depends.
On how you define flirts.


It is a very nice meeting with you, lady. It should be fascinating to be at Utopia. What a peaceful and happy life it should be with all the virtues you follow there. Once in a while, please come down to earth to realize the reality.

A visit to the court

Last week I happen to be in the vicinity of a court. I called my friend who is a lawyer. He invited me to meet him at the court.

The place is quite busy with activity. People were moving fast. Most of them carried a sad face. Lawyers were seen expressionless. Neither happy nor sad, but very busy. I wonder how they hope with the stress level. Just being there was quite an experience.

My friend's senior lawyer took up the case when it was his turn. He was arguing for the client who produced a letter and the court was not in a position to consider that as a legitimate proof. They were asking for authentic one.

Later the senior called me up, after the usual pleasantry greetings, he asked me what my problem was. I had to explain couple of times that I came just to meet the friend. Seems like lawyers don't expect someone to meet them as a casual visit!

During the coffee break, my friend narrated the case to me. It is a matrimonial issue. The couples went for honey moon. On their way, in the flight, the girl mentioned that she has an affair with a guy and she is not interested in the marriage. Good timing sense. The guy felt like jumping from the plane.

The guy filed for a divorce, the girl was willing for it. However, the girl's side expected a heavy compensation for them to sanction the divorce. The guy's side felt angry for their demand, because the cause of the separation is due to the girl's mistake. Mistake in terms of doing things at the wrong times. Thou the guy is well-to-do, they do not wish to give away money for a wrong cause. So, both the parties are meeting in courts in different cities, for the past 8 years. There are n number of alimony like dowry harassment, false notices etc.

Anyway, that is one more supporting factor to consider for self arranged marriages.

Beautiful names Part 1

I like to scrutinize words and find the root words. Take for example, Girija. A simple and usual name looks normal. When we break up the word, we get Giri + ja, or Mountain + born. The mountain-born or born-in-the-mountain is the meaning and the word could indicate many things like timber, river, pebbles, wild life etc. Usually the indicative meaning take out of Girija is the another name of Parvathi, who is born in a mountain or as the myth goes born to the mountain king, Himalayas.

Most of the ja ending names are fascinating. Vanaja, Jalaja, Ambuja, Anuja, etc. Jala and Ambu means water. Water-born could mean lotus, conch, the moon(!), Lakshmi, fish etc.Anu is after or subordinate. Anuja is born-after or younger sibling.

My all time favourite name is Vikramadhithya. Breaking up the word, we get Vi + Krama + Adhithya. Adhithya being an easy one to decipher, means the Sun god. Krama is orderliness and punctuality. Vi is a prefix used in many root words. The meaning of vi should be understood as per the context; it has sixteen different usage. Certain context negates the original meaning. Like videsi, which means non-desi; compared to swadesi - our own desi and also pradesi - other than desi. vi also used to intensify the meaning of the root word, for eg: gnanam is knowing or understanding, vignanam is knowledge, wisdom and usually used as a translation of the English word 'Science'. So, an extra large burger can be coined as viBurger :-)

Coming back to Vikrama, this composition suggests 'intensified orderliness'. Perfection in punctuality. That seems to suit the Sun as the Sun is the most punctual among known entities. The word Vikramaadhithya also makes us feel awesome towards the Sun for the meticulous shower of bliss and prosperity.Out of many other meaning, krama also means power, heroic. So, Vikrama could also refer a great hero, valor power.

Apte online dictionary is a good one to learn many such words. Here is the book at Amazon.

The farewell for SJ

SJ is leaving the company. We all went out and had a good time at Maharaja restarant.

Leason learnt today is never to have veg soup in a non-veg restarant.

Kids' choice

Wondering how the male kids are fascinated at cars and guns; whereas the girls are fond of barbie dolls and kitchen-ware. Today at the shopping mall, we were watching the kids playing at a kids' toys chamber. A cute little (Korean?) girl was playing with the kitchen model and a boy was zooming to her side in a toy car.

Angels in the building

GA saw a girl in a nice attire, shirt and skirt. He suggested to add to the angels list. Hmm, he didn't know that that girl is already in the list :-)

MsAD was surprised to see the new fan joining the busy fan club. Then the original angel (the title given to her by all judges) came in the hall. What a dressing sense! So cute and lovable!! She was in her jeans and shirt. Both dark colored and went well with her fair complexion. Madam had styled her hair at US. That is an added advantage. I gave 20 more points for today's occasion, RS increased by 25.

Wah! what a coincidence! The little angel also came in a similar dress. Good. There are divided opinion on including little angel to the list. I say why not. RS feels otherwise as she is rarely seen smiling. Since I get a good smile at all occasion, I am comfortable vetoing for the cause.

For few of the cubicle dwellers, the lunch hall provides a relief out of the otherwise dull life. The variety of color, texture (I meant the dress), lifts the soul and nourishes a happy mood. Guess many are motivated to come to office with such incentives.

Btw, when I was working in US, this is a difference I felt. At US, most of the Indian guys go alone, after few years they marry a girl at India. One would find very few unmarried Indian girls. Compared to the Indian population, this number could be negligible. In such situation, a guy might be deprived of interacting with opposite sex and may have a suppression of feelings. This may not be explicit or understood by the person, but could cause some kind of loneliness and depression. This is more at a psychological level and may vary between person to person, with their interest and mind set.

Getting experience before getting a job

Few days back there was a question raised in a forum about job experience. Most of the companies ask for experienced engineers. How does one gain experience without getting a job? This is the main concern of freshers.

Here is the reply I gave. Feel free to add more in the comment section.

• There are many forums like javaranch.com There is a section for jobs request and job oppurtunity. Also there is a column in the newsgroup where people want their projects to get done. Choose a project which is simple, close to your liking etc. Complete it and pass the same to the requestor. If you have a coordial communication between you and the other party, ask for a completion letter or a referal. That can be highlighted as your experience. You dont have to stop with one project, take more and difficult projects.
• There are sites like topcoder.com where they conduct weekly competition to test your technical skills. As you solve more problems, you will gain score in this site as well as experience. They give a beautiful logo image which may be placed in your resume. Definetly it will attract the prospective employer.
• Open source code projects like apache.org always needs technical resource.
• Free tools like eclipse.com, htmlkit.com etc has a concept of developing plugin. Anyone can develop a plugin and upload to their site. Based on the usefulness of your contribution, you will be successful among the net community and automatically pull employers interested to seek your service.

Profession

When we read morality, we see that none of the jobs have any difference in status or undue respect. We get thrilled reading poems like Chimney Sweeper

However, in reality, we are comfortable wearing some masks like software professional or doctors. (Just check the matrimonial success of different professionals). Once in a while there is a call inside me or from my wife to shed off this mask and be myself. Glad to know that my wife is supporting such noble thoughts among the materialistic goals of most of us; however at times I need to channelize her thoughts away from seeking max-income-zero-satisfaction jobs.

Many of my friends and relatives have appreciated my way of teaching students on topics I know. I am comfortable with bringing enough analogies to make the points clear. For eg, while discussing about data types in c, it was so easy for everyone to pick up the analogy of parking a car, bike or a bicycle in a parking lot vs storing an float, int or char in a memory location. Also, I liked breaking the conventional mode of teaching and enter into informal discussions. Practical approach is easy to grasp and understand than theoretical abstract concepts.

I do have interest in writing and penned few articles. Have ideas about publishing books but there is always the initial enthusiasm with no follow up.

Will these things in life give me satisfaction? Can a person pursue his/her hobbies and goals without much of income? Will there be a depression in life for moving from a luxurious lifestyle to a minimal income jobs?

On the other hand, how finite are these lucrative jobs? The layoffs are just around the corner. Instead of getting a sudden bolt in life and thrown into a deep pit, I would rather step down gracefully and take up a task of my heart. That would give me much of happiness than the sudden ups and downs of life.

Certain things are unknown in life, may be we will never know. Current questions of that nature are - when is the right time to leave this field and learn a new skill? Will there be content in life with the switch? Wont I be bored with monotonous life?

Inheritance of properties

What is the legal rights of a father over an ancestral property? Does the son has more rights? What if the son sues the father for the property; who will get what proportion (apart from what the legal system eats up)? Who is responsible to a loan taken by the father and he passes away? Will the loan offer can only contact the cosignatories or also the legal heirs? As the girls are legally entitled to inherit properties, will they take a share of debt, if asked to?

Along with discussion, I shared a 'smart' father's decision which I happened to hear else where.A father had traditional mind set and wants to beat the new law permitting women to inherit. Hence he made his two daughters sign in legal papers stating that they will not claim for the property. He threaten them not to do so after marriage. He had also prepared a will for allowing his brother's sons to enjoy the properties after his death.

Just wondering how his last days would be. High probability is that his nephews would kick him out. His daughters may not be able to support him as their husbands/in-laws will be angry at not passing the wealth to the daughters.

Casteism of our society

Recently I got a chance to look at a community's monthly magazine. There was an interesting article about dowry system. The writer elaborated the evil of dowry and how families suffer due to such practices. He/she was encouraging the next generation to throw away such injustice social norms and improve the community's harmony. So far so good. The last statement of that article was interesting. The rough translation was like, "Due the evil nature of dowry, boys and girls are not married at the right age; because of this delay, they are pushed to a shameful act of finding a spouse outside our caste".

The above article made me think. It is a good sign that many are raising their voice against dowry and we see a positive response from the younger generation. However, I am not able to conceive inter-caste marriage as something sinful. I could understand that in a community magazine, they may not encourage their community person to marry outside the community - but that is not justified to portrait a broader vision (of inter marriage) as sinful.

Reflecting back the history of the caste system practiced in India, we might find the root in Aryan civilization. May be it made sense at that time to classify people based on their occupation. One might observe that this classification was far humanity based compared to slavery practiced in the rest of the world of that age. Major disgrace is that, when the rest of the world had banned such sinful slavery, we Indians try to cling to it dearly. We are proud of this stupidity.

The recent reservation scheme raises another serious concern. The reservation system was brought in to equalize the otherwise uneven society. However, giving this kind of tool to a selfish politician would use it to cut the society treating that system as a weapon. What a harmful effect of the reservation policy causing a permanent demarcation of the society based on the caste! Unless our community feelings are triggered and a vote bank can be milked, we might have to go through this kind of sub-standard life.

It looks like a chicken-egg problem. Politician finds it easy to reach people based on community and get his needs met. Same way, people find it easy to approach political parties with the background of representing communities and hence getting benefits out of the ruling parties.

The other supporting factor of this caste system is the individual family. The irrational parents do not weigh the importance of their progeny's welfare and happiness. Their standard thinking pattern is: if I get my children married to some other community, what will those "four people" talk? Who are those four people? Nobody knows. They are nameless, jobless stupids. Parents are willing to forego the life of their children for the sake of their dignity and pride. Their cowardice nature of being afraid of facing the society is the reason for the evil of caste system. They think what will their relatives and friends circle speak. This is again an irrational thought, by not realizing that those people will talk for three or four days and beyond that they have their own headache to mind. The spineless activities of the older generation is molding the future generations also into the pit of the evil.

Is there any government policy or social organization working towards eradicating caste from the society? Eager to know.

Upon reflecting what could be done from individual, these are the things came up:

• When a man or a woman is ready for marriage, the person needs to identify the kind of spouse one is looking for, list out the characters and try to find a person outside the same caste. Intercaste marriage will be a strong bolt against the current practice.
• An interesting point at this junction. The thousands of caste system we have in India today is not solely due to the ancient practice. In olden days they had four major sects. The intercaste marriage is the culprit spawning hundreds and hundreds of subsects in due course.
• The next generation should not be exposed to the poison we have. They need to be tagged as non-casterians. We need to voice up for organizations to accept such category. Again, we need to be extra cautious in not forming new sects in mutations or making this non-casterians as a new sects.

Feel free to add your suggestions in the comment section.

I am able to express to this extend because I fortunate to be in a happy inter-caste marriage.

Romeo in India

Earlier we saw US-returned Juliet, and Romeo at Australia. Here are the updates.

Ramasamy is a first cousin of Juliet. Hence all her relatives visited her home and passed on their wisdom. Definitely it is not an easy job to face everyone and go through their 'worldly knowledge'. The statement Juliet has is in this line .. irrespective of Romeo, she had decided to move away from Ramasamy. Ramasamy is also echoing the same view. He is not interested to live with Juliet anymore as she is looking forward to lead life in different direction with different person.

Out of all the relatives, Juliet had discussed the issue in depth with one of her uncle. He looks to be stable minded and gave some solace to her. Uncle mentioned that let Romeo come down to India. If Romeo agrees to marry and lead a harmonious life, and the uncle is satisfied by his commitment, then uncle will support Juliet in marrying Romeo. In such situation, it might be feasible for uncle to convince others too.

Romeo was informed about this development. He took the next flight to India. His close friend received him at airport by 3am IST. I doubt if Romeo had come at any other time, he would have hardly expected anyone to welcome him. Looks like love brings fame and charm.

SJ questioned the credibility of the uncle. What if the uncle calls the local goons once Romeo lands in the country? Uncle might beat him to death. That is the risk one needs to take; and for love any sacrifice may be made.

Most of us felt happy for the re-union of the lovers.

Romeo discussed this movement to his parents. Father mentioned to disown Romeo, and Romeo accepted the same. Mom confined herself to a room and not interacting with anyone.

'To do or not to do' is no more the question. 'How to do' is what is interesting now. Let us wait and watch.

Reviving the language

GA and myself went to Karikudi mess for lunch. He is very much into the study of Samskrit. I asked him the current growth and prospective of the language. He mentioned there have been good progress. In the study center he attends, there are lots of young crowd. That is encouraging to hear.

We shared our ideas on complete revival of the language. GA mentioned the hindrance in gathering the required attention deserved by the language. Foremost is the result-oriented society expecting some kind of monetary benefit out of any activity. Studying or reviving the language doesn't seem to have a direct result for a commoner.

Weighing the vast knowledge one might gain out of bringing back the language, justifies the difficulty in the process.

Ancient wisdom

GA sent a link to our internal newsgroup. The link contained discussion about a book, "Pride of India". It was a well researched book about the Scientific frontiers India was leading ages ago. The author clearly illustrate the acheivement made by Indian and what we are lacking today. Gives a direction to move towards.

Worth reading.

Whose jewels are they?

Today we went to Gramin. Out of many topics, Gandhiji's autobiography came into the discussion; rather I should say I brought in. Got so much inspired by reading his book. It moves like a suspense novel, particularly for someone who had forgotten the history lessons. Couldn't resist reading six or seven chapters a day. (My usual speed is two chapters).

When we think of Gandhi, we get the image of 'mahatma', the great soul. To think about the pair Gandhi and his wife, we have an impression of an ideal couple. That is how they were portrayed to us. Reading his own words, we are pulled to a surprise.

Here is the sample from his book. Part III Chapter XII

Gandhiji was returning home from South Africa (second trip). The NRIs threw farewell parties with large gatherings and showered with costly gifts including gold and silver. Gandhiji didn't want to retain those gifts as it was not his liking to be gifted for public service. After lot of thought, he decided to leave the gifts with the trust of South African Indian community.

He had to convince his wife. Instead of daring to tell her, he talked to his sons (eldest around 12 years old), got their approval, asked them to talk to their mom.

**********************
'Certainly', said they. 'That is our business. She does not need to wear the ornaments. She would want to keep them for us, and if we don't want them, why should she not agree to part with them?'

But it was easier said than done.

'You may not need them,' said my wife. 'Your children may not need them. Cajoled, they will dance to your tune. I can understand your not permitting me to wear them. But what about my daughters-in-law? They will be sure to need them. And who knows what will happen tomorrow? I would be the last person to part with the gifts so lovingly given.'

And thus the torrent of argument went on, reinforced, in the end, by tears. But the children were adamant. And I was unmoved.

I mildly put in: 'The children have yet to get married. We do not want to see them married young. When they are grown up they can take care of themselves. And surely we shall not have, for our sons, brides who are fond of ornaments. And if, after all, we need to provide them with ornaments, I am there. You will ask me then.'

'Ask you? I know you by this time. You deprived me of my ornaments, you would not leave me in peace with them. Fancy you offering to get ornaments for the daughters-in-law! You who are trying to make sadhus of my boys from today! No, the ornaments will not be returned. And pray what right have you to my necklace?'

'But,' I rejoined, 'is the necklace given you for your service or for my service?'

'I agree. But service rendered by you is as good as rendered by me. I have toiled and moiled for you day and night. Is that no service? You forced all and sundry on me, making me weep bitter tears, and I slaved for them!'

...
I somehow succeeded in extorting a consent from her. The gifts received in 1896 and 1901 were all returned.
...
I am definitely of opinion that a public worker should accept no costly gifts.

**************************

I felt very happy to know that his wife 'talks' in a similar way like mine :-)

I didn't intent to de-mean the great soul. His frank narration increased the salutation for him. Most of the description show the pain and sufferings (not only at the family front :-) ) he went through at various stage of life. When I took the book, I expected to see a super hero who had universal solution with larger than life strength, who had never felt the pain. Indeed it was surprising to see an average Joe kind of neighbor, who goes through the joy, sorrow, desire, plans, disappointment, sufferings etc like most of us. The Himalayan difference comes out by the way he responded back to the injustice thrown at him, and at a later stage to dissolve his complete self and possession for the entire community cause.

There are interesting observations he found and the suggestions he makes. So far I had an impression that raising money for social cause and maintaining a fixed deposit is a good idea. Seems like Gandhiji faced issues with this and hence suggests against the same. Thought provoking.

We not only learn the history of our nation, but also the wisdom of an old man. Very valuable - the book and the lesson learnt.

Silapathikaram

MsAD had a view about Romeo and Juliet. She mentioned that even if Romeo and Juliet unite, Romeo needs to be extra-cautious in accomodating Juliet. One or two years down the line, he should not refer the US life of Juliet - neither in humorous context nor in a heated argument. Such words may hurt Juliet more than the pain she has now, which may lead to another drift.

MsAD is true in this aspect. This point reminded Silapathikaram literature. In this story, Kovalan is the hero. He leaves his wife, Kanaki, and leads a life with a dancer, Madhavi. Kovalan and Madhavi live together enough to have a baby girl. Thou Madhavi is from an unchaste community and leads a life of dancer, she has a loyal relationship and faithfulness towards Kovalan.

On a spring evening Kovalan and Madhavi were enjoying the breeze by the Cauvery river side in Pokar (modern name is Kaveripattinam). Kovalan sings a song refering the flirting nature of the river. In return, Madhavi sings a song hinting her affection towards someone else.

This creates a drift between them and Kovalan leaves Madhavi, reaches for Kanaki.
(Story picks up further speed from this point towards Kovalan's death and Kanaki's standpoint).


Coming back to Romeo and Juliet, let us hope Juliet will lead a happy life ever after (with whomever she chooses at this juncture).

Romeo, Juliet and Ramasamy

Are you thinking .... Ramasamy... what the hell? Read on.

For those who have not heard about our time's Romeo, here is a quick flashback. The next few paragraphs are the part one of the ongoing series.

Romeo and Juliet were in love with each other. Romeo had a nice session from his dad after expressing his interest to marry Juliet. Since he couldn't convince his parents and didn't feel like eloping, the pair decided to move in their own path. She got engaged to an US software guy, Ramasamy. Marriage was fixed, things were going smooth. Three or four days before the marriage, Romeo realized it is HIS girl who is getting married. He called the girl and suggested her to walk out of the house. She was in a confusion. She had never mentioned about him to her parents because he never took a strong decision. She couldn't refuse his approach, at the same time not interested in spoiling the marriage at the last moment. She was crying in silent mode. Romeo was talking to her over phone and no other moves from him. Nothing interesting happened except for Juliet to marry Ramasamy. She flew to the great land of Indian hopes.

Romeo was not perturbed by minor incidents like marriage and US migration. Technology aided him in keeping in touch with Juliet. They enjoyed fine moments of what a usual yahoo messenger conversation would provide. They relished on the past, recollected each other's company. Juliet expressed that she is not quite happy with Ramasamy. Romeo tried to convince her to return to India so that they could marry as per their original plan (never understood how his dad is going to approve this).

We could safely assume that Ramasamy is a typical Indian nerd calculating $n * 45 and buying moving sale stuff. It is quite obvious that such a nerd could never match to our Chennai stud Romeo.

Nothing much happened and slowly we didn't hear from Romeo or Juliet. We closed the chapter thinking that Juliet leads a real life with Ramasamy and maintains a virtual contact with Romeo.




Now comes part two of the story. Less than a year after the marriage.

Juliet is back in Chennai. She had told she is never going back to US. Looks like Ramasamy is not that a nice person to be with. He had tried some crooked means to block her from returning to India and other undisclosed deeds. Juliet's parents, as any middle-class-narrow-minded-Indian parents would do, were not happy with her decision. They tried to convince her of different approach. Juliet should have picked up presentation skills from US; she convinced her parents of her decision.

Now let us see the twist in the story line. Where is Romeo? He is in Australia!! May be he felt Chennai without Juliet is dry and flew out of the country. He had quit his job and went for studies. His dad is financing the studies and he will not be able to support himself in the foreign land.

His plan now is to find a job for Juliet at Aussie and get her to that place.

Will the lovers merge? Will there be more hurdles? Come back to know the climax.
Feel free to post your comments and suggestions for the true love. Leave out the oldies, we can discuss about the three characters, Romeo, Juliet and Ramasamy.

The cities

An interesting observation about cities and town. From any part of the country, if we travel 50km, we will have a town. If we travel 250 km, we will find a major city. Upon thinking the reason behind this, came up with a small theory. This is a hypothesis and most likely to have happened during the early civilization period. While people had to move around for trading, they would have traveled on foot or animals. 50km is a normal distance to be covered in 5 hours. As they might have halted for lunch break during the travel, requirements like motel, refreshments would have gathered and due course formed township. 250 km is the distance that can be covered in roughly 18 hours. That would have been ideal to halt after a long journey. They might have needed further sophistication like special suites to take rest, do business etc. That location would have to hold more people for a longer period of time. That is likely to have gathered mass as human power is needed to cater to the traveling folks. This would have formed into cities.

Rural development

I had registered for MA course in Rural development. Last week I got the study material and I am going through the same. Discussion started in that line.

VY: After reading the rural development policies and plans, you will be shocked to see the reality. You might wonder where all the money allotted to those plans had gone into.

KM: The government disperses a large amount for such development programs and usually the money ends up in few hands in the middle.

JB: True, the study is all about these state of affairs and more. The improper execution of these plans are sole reason why we still talk about rural development.

VY: I saw a program in tv where an IIT graduate is teaching school children. He conducts classes in different manner where the students are finding easy to understand the pictorial lessons taught. It seems the scheme is working well and he is going to many schools to propagate his findings.

JB: I guess you are mentioning the same person who came to our office for discussing such activity. He had a good idea of the social condition and ways to improve the current state.
His views about current educational system was interesting. Only 10% of the entire population really apply the lessons learnt in the curriculum. The rest do not find the school/college useful at all. Thou very less apply the studies, the entire population is forced to study something of not their interest. Such compulsory studies of complex matters (like calculus, finding atomic mass of a molecule ...) leads to 40% of students dropping at the school level. His views about teaching were more practical. He shared his experience of teaching street kids about how to divide their work load mathematically, how to calculate the principal and the interest rates etc. Seems like his approach worked well since the kids were eager to understand the subjects of their interest.

Website decisions

The discussion today was around the technicalities behind designing a website. The number of options we have, and what are the technologies involved and what kind of end user experience we provide ... it is an infinite combination.

The site I am working involves dynamic pages with data pulled from a db. Planning to provide a newsgroup facility to the users. First decision I was faced is the basic web programming environment to adapt to. Had a choice between java world and php. After working with php for two weeks, I decided to move to java. In php, I started implementing common utility modules, navigation control, generic database access etc. Slowly I realized that I am writing a framework of my own ideas. The more I was thinking .. the more I realized I was trying to simulate mvc in php and starting from scratch. That was not convincing thing to do. So, I moved to java which can give me rich frameworks and other standard tools, concepts.

Then I downloaded eclipse and playing with it. For Jsf and hibernate, I felt the myeclipse plugin might be useful. I might have to pay $30 for using this. The other alternate is using jdev and adf. After pondering on adf, I realized that I will be limited to use hibernate in jdev as jdev is friendly towards toplink. So, I switched back to eclipse wagon.

The current issue I am trying to work out is to find integration means to bring the mvnforum and new jsf apps together. I want the mvn to register user and login them; my jsf apps will use the logged in or registered users info.

Apart from these issues, the webhosting companies are a different set of discussion with wide scope of topics like technology, database, size, speed, support etc.

Will update you folks on the progress.

What is in the name?

Heard about Bengalooru? Bangalore is renamed. I feel the names are chosen based on popularity than the origin of the name. For example, shouldn't the city be renamed to Benthekalooru? That is what I heard about the original name of the city. Even other cities like Kolkatta retain a name convenient for them instead of digging the origin.

What is a city has many names in the past, like Delhi. Which name is the right one? Instead of getting into these controversies, I prefer the current name.

Even our country's name doesn't reflect the right expression of ourself.

These dual names are not unique to our country. Around the world each society and country goes with two or more names. Came to know that Germans address Germany as Dautche or something. Not sure about the spelling (if u google, pls add in the right spelling in the comments :-) )

Survey

A relative of mine wanted to do a survey for her school work. I requested friends to take up the survey. It was quite interesting; it was about Science & development of India. There were few questions and couple of them were debatable. We carried the discussion over the lunch table and spent quite some time in analyzing things. Interesting question was about social impact on science and science's impact on society. I gave the sample of internet changing the social style in terms of bringing people closer. The example for social condition driving the Science is the military needs arising out of society and the way military drives innovation out of Science and technology.

Other question was to find the responsibility of Historians, Journalist and Scientist. I found an odd combination of profession to compare or discuss. Later it strike at me to realize the domain or tense in which these people involve .. ie the past, present and the future. Thinking in this line, the Scientist seems to be both promising and threatening lot compared to other two.

Gandhi's life

Today we went to Utsav. Had a pleasant time in the restaurant as the people around were also good.

While KS was talking about 'Balaji disease', it came to my mind about Gandhiji's autobiography. He is the man of guts. He was able to expose his deep secrets and make his inner struggle as a public book. There were many aspect of the book (read only 70 pages so far and it is so insightful; regret of missing this for a long time, thou I had bought the book couple of times).

We are able to perceive the social structure in the 19th century, the culture, people's mind set, practical aspects are clearly documented. It is like traveling back to the past and meeting people of different time.

Then comes the aspiration of people and how the inner desire pulls people out of their shell and makes them roar to the sky. Gandhiji never used to travel out of his town; however when he sought of going to England, he build up the courage to speak to people to get support, also to face the wrath of his community elders who out-caste him for traveling abroad.
Even this desire driven revert is minor compared to his transformation from a meek, shy person who is afraid of public speaking into a giant pulling a nation behind him. He says his shyness helped him to using words carefully .. but to think about what passion and focused mind can transform the personality is ... just amazing!!

Read the book and you will enjoy it.

Back to work

Nothing much interesting today or I was not participating in the conversation. People came back from loooong weekend. Some talks about movies was running around the table.

CTC in marriage market

A friend of mine is scanning through the matrimonial site to fish out a groom for herself. Out of few criteria she has, one of them is that the salary (CTC - cost to the company) she earns should be less than that of the groom.

Sounds logical requirement. Her justification to hold such belief is based on cases where there is considerable ego clashes between husband and wife. In a traditional settings, husband is expected to earn. While coming to dual income, there is an unwritten expectation from the society or the couples that the husband should be earning more. When this situation is violated, there is a chance that the couples pick up some kind of inferior/superior complexities and leading to frictious altercations, drifting from the harmonious life.

Hence my friend feels she needs to find a person whose ctc is more than herself. This fix seems to be difficult but doable. However, in my opinion, this workaround seems to be superficial and doesnot address the original problem.

If the friend finds the person who meets this criteria, and after marriage the friend gets a hike ... there are few paths she could take.
* Tell her manager that she is not interested in the hike and put down the hike
* Request her manager to delay the hike till her husband gets the raise
* Accept the hike and never tell that to anyone .. that will prevent the ego clash

Well, none of these seems practical.
My friend's response to this case study is to manage the situation at that point of time. If the situation is manageable at that time, why not relax the criteria and seek a person who is mature enough to cooperate in managing such situation?

MsAD dreams

We would expect her to have a pleasant dreams as she is scanning through 100s of profiles in the matrimonial sites. However, the dreams seems to be scary but interesting.

Seems like she was dreaming about talking with RS and suddenly he was hit by something or someone. He had to be admitted in an ICU. MsAD was listening him talking in that state. She was horrified. In the same thread of dreams, she was with friends and JB is telling that he is able to see ghost. Others are not able to see.

JB: wah! I like that. From childhood I used to fantasize about being with ghosts. When I became a teenager (that is 2, 3 yrs before), the fantasy improved and started specializing in handling feminine ghosts. Did you dream about male ghost or female ghost?

MsAD: If you are seeing it, it has to be a female ghost.

JB: That is good. I like female ghost. There are lots of good points and advantage with them.
1) They come in white, transparent saree; if we are lucky they get drenched in rain.
2) Usually they are beautiful.

RS: Ya, sometimes they are prettier than the heroines. I dont know why the hero doesnt go behind the ghosts .. they are good looking and powerful.

JB:
3) They dont insist on long term relationships.
4) They dont bug us in the daytime .. they come when we need them :-)
5) No hint or request or order for any ornaments. They can pick what they want.
6) You never need to be in a situation to pass comments on "will the green salwar go with this chudi or should I wear the pasta colored saree with peach bindi". It is easy to buy a dress for them (globally).
7) You think and she is there. That cuts down the money wasted on std calls.

RS: That is cool. So, MsAD, what kind of ghost you were seeing?

PG: She would have seen a male ghost.

JB: Let us see the advantage for MsAD.
1) No dowry requirements.
2) Never heard of Mother-in-law ghost etc. So, no issues from the in-law side.

PG:
3) He will carry you and fly where ever you want. No travel expense. Even entire family can be carried.
4) He wont be a drunkard. Have you seen a drunkard ghost?

RS:
5) They will have a romantic honeymoon. Imagine an aloof hillstation settings .. in the middle of the lavish greenery, there will be milky smoke covered bed!

JB:
6) None can deny her request. She can demand the manager for vacation and ask him to complete the tasks. Everything will be done as per the request.

Accidents

Yesterday there was a freaky accident in the airport road. A luxury bus lost control and ramped over few vehicles. Paper says 2 person, rumor was for a higher number. The bus driver ran away from the scene. Mobs torched the bus and 74L was burnt into ash.

Discussion revolved around accidents, carelessness of people etc. Stupidity of people crossing railway lines and when they are hit by a train, they expect goverment to compensate ... also unsafety in the railway coaches, derailing of trains etc.

PG narrated an agressive driver and a narrow escape from accident.

btw, due to Diwali, the caterers arranged for special food. Got some chat items, icecream etc.

Marriage customs

We went to Nandini. We started talking about Deepavali and who are traveling home etc. The topic went to Deepavali customs of newly wed couples invited to in-laws house.

Took AD as example and if he is invited to in-law's house, FIL need to give him a gold ring.

JB: At my town, for 3 months after marriage, the groom will stay in in-law's house.

RS: Daily?

JB: All three meals. The have to treat him royally with proper care. For a guy like me working out of the town, if I marry a girl from that town, I may not be able to opt for that practice. Instead, guys like that used to get some object in return.

GA mentioned that a community in his locality has a different customs. After marriage the groom stays at the girl's house .. forever. This is the custom practiced at all marriages.

JB: At other places rarely such marriages happens. If it does, it means due to a rich parents not interested to send off their girl to another house. Usually they do not get a match as per their status. They have to go slightly below their status to find a guy to accept that norms. Also they might have to pay a hefty dowry for that.

GA: Even in that community, dowry is normally huge.

JB: So, if the boy gets the dowry amount, will he brings the money to the girl's house? :-)

GA: No. May be money goes to the guy's father.

JB: In our community, we normally do not ask for cash. We ask for gold and that gold belongs to the girl alone.

JB: Also one more good thing in my community is, the groom's side and the bride's side during marriage ceremony arranges two separate halls .. may be some distance apart. Both the parties do not mix each other. During the rituals, groom's side start a procession and reach the girl's hall. Marriage happens and immediately the groom's relatives go back to the groom's hall for feast. Even if the girl's side ask them to have food at girl's hall, they will deny to do that. The expense incurred by one party is borne by the same party. In that sense, lots of quarrels are avoided and the marriage expenses are shared equally.

RS: That looks good.

JB: However, I am not for a marriage which spends lakhs of rupees and waste the money on two days. Instead, I will have a simple marriage in a temple like I did and invest that money in some properties or savings.

SJ: Well, marriage is an occasion where the money gets spread out and many get employed. Instead of buying one property, you diverse the money for many to get benefited. Particularly that is the time when black-colored money comes out.

JB: I agree that for a wealthy person such splash out are needed or acceptable. Think about the most common marriages .. happening in the have-not families. They still need to keep their family pride or status. They borrow the entire marriage expenses, bloat it out in two days and suffer for the life. That is pathetic.

Balancing the head

MS was mentioning about a feeling of imbalance. He feels physically fit but his is not feeling all right. Seems like when he spoke to his doc, she asked if he had a problem in ears. PG added that such imbalance sense could arise out of excess or lower fluid level in the head. He was explaining how one of his friends got similar feeling and a bulging sensation of eye balls. That was scary. Good thing is, such state of liquid can be controlled through medicine or by removing excess of liquid from body.

That line of discussion again brought my usual way of thinking in terms of balancing done by nature. If we look around, we can understand the unusual balancing act performed by mother nature ... like the temperature, pressure, water content, sun ray, ... just suitable for the living beings to sustain and continue.

Thank you, nature.

Village festival

We all went to Gramin. The discussion went around the restaurants in the city. Looks like there is 'Romali with a view' a North Indian restaurant with good food.

On our way back to office, we walked thru the shopping mall and enjoyed the shows and events happening there. It was like a village carnival festival. They have set stalls selling ornaments, cheep dress materials, tattoos etc. There were games like throwing rings, blowing out the cans with balls, gun shooting etc. We had lots of fun playing those games and we won some prizes.

PG wanted to check with the mall marketing guys about the stall rental etc. His wife is running a business of fancy ornaments and jewels. He was enquiring for the same.

Flight crash

Seems like yesterday a flight crashed against a raised building in Manhattan. People panicked by recollecting 9/11. RS started with the National Geography's aircraft investigation documentaries. He was narrating who interesting they are and many more details.

RS talked about the pilot who made a mistake of switching off a working engine instead of a malfunctioning one. In such state of condition, he had to crash land and led to many loss of life. JB brought in the flight whose top was ripped off while flying high; the pilot managed to fly home safe in spite of the missing roof.

We were watching lots of flights landing continuously .. may one in every two minutes. We thought may be they have some emergency drill or something.

The coming Sunday, most of us are planning to go to an amusement park. Talks about the thrill rides, who likes what etc were discussed with great excitement.

Self-arranged Vs Others-arranged marriage

Ten of us went to Taste of Rampur. Buffet lunch was good. Interesting topics turned by during the conversation. The teenage date line, Feb 14th law in UP, etc were hot topics. Slowly the discussion moved on to our ever time favorite discussion .. the self-arranged marriage and the traditional cruelty.

JB: Heard from unofficial source that NT govt has passed a secret note to the courts in the state. After seeing the alarming divorce rate, the govt wants to have a control over the situation. They have asked the court not to involve the parties into arguments, instead drag the case for 2 years or so by conducting consoling and hearings. This way the number of divorce that need to be issued might come down because the parties might frustrate and turn away. That seems to be a stupid move. When there is a problem with the basic process upon which the marriage is build, we will be seeing such collapses in the relationship matters. If the root cause need to be address instead of doing a superficial polish on the outer side.

VY: JB, what do you think is the cause for the sudden raise in the rate of divorce?

JB: I would say that the main cause is the parents', relatives' involvement in deciding the spouse of a person. The criteria of the parents for a person is different from what a person might be looking for or need. That needs to be looked into. When we see a marriage advertisement, we always see the detail about caste, community, status, horoscope, occupation etc. Those are the criteria the parents think are required for a happy married life. If you consider a boy and a girl deciding to marry, none of these criteria comes into their absolute requirement ... not even a 'preferred' to have list. So, there is a vast different between their perception.

SJ: Let me tell you why the parents' pick is better. Before marriage, the couples will try to impress each other and try to put their good characters out. After marriage the real face turns out and frictions comes in. Parents and relatives come in help to resolve the differences and soothe the relationship.

JB: I agree. I don't say that self-arrangement imply that they live happily ever after. They will have to face issues, frictions, they might divorce etc. But I am talking about the criteria to choose a partner.

GA: A divorced person can never find happiness. He or she might marry and get divorced again and ruin their life.

SJ: That was the case 30 yrs before. There was no life beyond a normal married life. Marriage means for life two are together .. they like it or not. The society looked it like that it was impossible to come out.

JB: Today it is different. One can jump out of marriage, in one week marry again etc. It is possible.
The point here is that boys and girls have matured much beyond what we were earlier. We have more exposure. We can choose things. We want to decide our own life. In such cases, it is difficult to walk through the path chalked by others.

PG: JB, parents have also changed. In our house, when we are looking for alliance for our sister, we asked her her preference, if she is interested in someone. We included that boy in the list of prospective and considered in par with others. We didnot promise to pick him but we will be choosing the best out of all.

JB: That is nice to hear. Wondering how many are broad like.

GA: Most are like that. It is not that they fix someone and you have to marry. They ask your opinion and if you are not interested, they drop the proposal.

JB: Not sure if it happens like that everywhere.
Anyway, the case of others arranging marriage is not unique to our country. It was followed all over the world. The problem with us is that we hold some tradition too dear to heart in spite of its danger. None of the other country practice such barbarian acts.

SJ: Just because others have changed doesn't mean we should follow them.

JB: I didn't mean to follow others. I would like to see the society becoming mature enough to grow out of the old way of thinking.

[Note] Thou we had discussed this topic for n number times in a lengthy manner, never we had come to a conclusion.

The lighter side in today's lunch is after RS dropped the spoon and the barrier picked it up. RS was able to related it to a joke and shared the same. I asked if it is bloggable. SJ suggested to point to google. Yes, I am able to find the same joke while searching for "spoon, waiter, thread, joke" :-)

Variety in life

Had a task at bank and hence skipped the lunch at office. Planned to have lunch outside somewhere. It took quite a time in the bank, more than the expected time ... or should I expect that to be normal because always I end up doing something or the other in the bank usually in a messy situation. This time it was a wrong form they gave me to fill and had to redo after they figured it out. After the bank, I didn't feel like having lunch. One reason was lack of company. Few years back, I never felt odd having food alone. These days seem to be different. May be I got used to the company of friends and hence finding difficult to be alone.

Hence I thought of picking up a quite restaurant, have something light like a soup and a salad. I slowly directed the bike while watching closely to the buildings and people around. During school days, I used to do such things frequently ... that is to roam around aimlessly, just to be in my cycle, keep going in any direction I felt like, mostly to roads I have never been. In such moods, I liked watching strangers, their dresses, their style, behavior extra. Even had a habit of looking into the houses (not starring for even a short time), seeing their decorations, furniture, pictures in the wall etc.

After a long time, I felt like doing the same (not the house part but roaming around stuff). I took deviations from the usual route to some unknown areas, slowly riding the bike and gazing the new places. It was a nice experience. I was looking for some restaurant to suite my mood at that time. Found a vendor in the road side with tender coconut. Had one and continued by voyage. Seeing the changes in the localities made me feel like traveling in a train; the way sceneries changes from lush green pasture of fields to swampy water land then to waste land, perhaps some coconut groove with mountains at the background ... same way in the city, we could feel the changes in the posh-ness, slummy things, typical middle class chaos, then the busy streets, deserted loneliness ... gave a different picture about life by just going out of the routine path and thinking.

Usually I have a sense of direction. Even while taking random paths and getting lost in different places, I kind of figure out the way to go home back (well, if I have time at hand, I wouldn't like to waste it by asking directions :-)). This time that campus in me failed a bit. I was in a big loop reaching the same place where I started from the bank!! Had to travel through the entire circle again and winded up at Shiva Sagar, a restaurant near by office :-)

Communal Violence

Today's topic went into violence that sparked up in Mangalore. As GA is from that locality, he was able to give better picture about the scenario there. He was talking about new communities colonizing and causing disturbance in the otherwise peaceful atmosphere.

Slowly the topic shifted to broader discussion -- how we perceive things and how conflicts between cultures and faith happens. It was interesting to discuss upon different sects in Hindu society and their belief. Some of the communities stick very dear to their ritual that they forget the reason behind those.
This is not something happening only in India. Through out the history of civilization, there are hundreds and hundreds of samples were culture form out of nowhere .. settle in a place and slowly growing big enough to out-number the earlier society and frameworks. Things keep changing, either we accept and adapt or get carried away in a forced manner ... Or take a firm stance to retain the values one stands for.

Today another interesting topic came up which happen to be talked for a longer time. MsAD had registered in a matrimony site and getting lots of interests. She had threatened me of facing consequence if I write about that discussion; hence I dare not. .. as already I am handling another controversy elsewhere, I better not take this too at this time.
I am sure something interesting is going to come up soon and I promise to share with you ...

TV market

After a week, most of us gathered at the lunch table. Nice to be back in the group.

MsAD is planning to buy a TV (got approval from akka and bawa; yet to get a nod from naina, amma, mama, chikkanaina, his maid servant and 15 more ppl).
MS: Sony and Philips models are costlier compared to LG. With LG we get almost the same qualities and features. Go for 29"
MsAD: Oh! I am looking for a simpler model. If I want 29", I can as well go for plasma.
MS: That would start from 75k. 29" starting price is 17k.
MsAD: SJ, are you planning for a plasma?
SJ: I might go for a lcd. That is wall mountable.
MS: Can't we place a plasma in the wall?
SJ: No, plasma comes with its own stand. Lcd is very light and slim. Can be mounted in the wall; also can be used as computer monitor since the resolution is same as a monitor.
VY: MsAD, you can buy a high end model now so that AD need not buy in future.
MsAD: Let me wait for him to buy.

A Taste of Rampur

Went out for a team lunch with my manager, hq visitor and colleagues.

The ambience was simple but good. Taste was wonderful. Since YW traveled through China, the discussion revolved around China.

SA: We see movies and get an impression that all Chinese are martial art experts.
RP: All guys from China looks like Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan :-)
YW: Rarely anyone goes through such practices. In schools we have basic exercises.
SA: Most of the kungfu movements are based on animals; like tiger, eagle, elephant, monkey etc
JB: Even yoga postures are formed based on animal movements.
YW: Ya, JB is an expert in yoga. Do you still practice?
JB: Yes, I do.
PV: Getting up early in the morning is the tough part.
JK: YW, do you watch Hindi movies?
YW: No, I have never seen one.

The girl in yellow churidar

Today I had my lunch with another team. The reason were 1) due to extended long weekend, many of the usual lunch mates did not turn up to office; 2) my manager called for an ad hoc meeting, which was supposed to get over by 12.30pm, however extended much up to 1pm.

I pushed myself to the table where AT, VG and KD were having lunch. They were having a serious discussion about the girl waiting in the lunch queue. By the time I went in, I got pulled into the discussion.

VG: JB, you have to help in setting with that girl.
AT: Till now only 3 of us were competing, now you have brought in one more.
VG: No, JB is like my elder brother. He will help me.
JB: As I am your elder brother, I need a major share.
VG: Hi JB!! how can you tell me like that. You know, in Ramayana, Valli was told by Rama not to seek his younger brother's wife as Valli should respect her as his sister.
AT: Now it is in a deciding stage. Once she is decided as your wife, we will all treat her as our sister.

VG: I don't find anyone 100% perfect in this world.
JB: You will not find a perfect person to your likings. Instead you can take my suggestion.
KD: Pls tell me, JB
JB: You find someone 75% perfect, after that look for someone 25% perfect. In that way, you will have a satisfaction of finding all that you want.
AT: That is a good idea

Well, I find that it is not only me or our team that is 'checking out' things or looking for 'perfection'. It is happening elsewhere too ... may be everywhere.
I didnot have a chance to look who that yellow churidar is. Her face was not visible in the queue. VG told she is passing us, after she was far away from our table!

Meta Blog

Today's menu at office was different. Due to Durga pooja festival session, they have brought varieties to have. It was a change for a time, a good change thou.

Yesterday I had forwarded the blog link to the lunch group (mailing list). Couple of them had seen that and started discussing about it.

GA: Need to be extra careful while talking these days.

SJ: In 2004 I started 2 blogs ... stopped after 3 or 4 postings.

VY: Can we place different topics in a blog? Can we list out under topics?

SJ explained the blog world to VY. GA mentioned about the ways to earn money and how people are cashing the chance. SJ gave tips on pulling crowd to the blog.

I shared the Archie's cartoon clipping related to blog.

Lunch at Punjabi Daba

This is a real Punjabi Daba run by Punjabi guys. If we get bored at office, We usually hang out at this place during lunch time.

Food was tasty. I like the pulkas here. The side dishes are not much spicy and tastes like home made. Ambience is also homely.

The discussion went along the spoof movies in English.
SJ: A good guy in a movie has to be white. If he is a black, he will have to loose his life or girlfriend or something.

RS: I like the spoof more than the originals. When I watched the Ring movie, I felt bad watching it; felt thankful to watch that only after watching Scary movie. Classic man!

SMD: Liked the way they depicted the ring.

RS: Hot Shots is another funny movie. They show Saddam and Bush. They have a fight and mock the terminator. Very interesting.

JB: Police Story is also very humorous. They have 7 movies in it.

Karnataka bundh

Belgam people want to find their identity. Should they go the Maharastrian way or stay back with Karnataka? The major population in this area being Maharastrian, seems like most of them want to merge with Maharastra.

If there is an issue with a city, why would the govt announce a bundh on the entire state? Well .. that is how things happen in India.
[sorry, it is not the govt announcing the bundh. Few activities had called for the bundh. However, the govt seems to support the cause instead of supressing such motives to disturb normal activities]

Anyway, people are happy that the long weekend is extending for 2 more days :-)

Government service and private service

It all started with the revenue improvement of railways department. Is the upward trend due to the leadership of the railway minister or the country's economomy triggers lot more goods transport, travel? GA was in favor of leadership idea. I was pointing out the economy boom.

GA: Not all depts are doing loosy service. Take for eg, post office is providing better customer experience than before.

JB: That is because the post office is a dying dept. It is loosing its revenue in all front. It has to care the customer for survival purpose.

MS: A card costing 2 rupees will be sold for 50p by the government post office; it is meant to do that. It was never designed to make profit. So, they will never kill the post office.

GA: Also, the private players concentrate only on 20% of the geography. 80% is covered by postal dept. Not everyone can afford to pay for a private couriers.

JB: 80% of the transaction is done in the 20% area. So, postal dept is not going to gain much by working on 80% of locations and gaining less than 20%

MS: The postal dept doesnot look at profit. It purpose is to serve the people.

JB: Agreed. However, the expense was, let us say, Rs 100 in those days and they earned Rs 80. Govt buffered the Rs 20 loss. However, today the expense could be more than Rs 120 but the profit is less than Rs 20. This cannot run for a long time in this manner.

GA: A govt should not privatize anything. The private players will have many hidden agenda.

JB: I am fine paying more if the service is good, with quality, and timely manner. I can question anyone in a private firm, walk into manager's cabin and complain to get things done.

GA: A common man doesnot expects such facilities. He needs the work done ...

Is a post office determined to run on loss? Should it be considered for shutting down?

Today's topics were hopping from one to another. Nothing serious but happy hop, hop, hop.

The strength was also low as MS and PG went to their native. KMS started his fasting and will not be joining us for lunch for the next one month.

VY started with the movie review on Stalin. We went on with the acting, how superstars contribute to the society etc. Info gained is Rajnikanth is into national river linking project and Cheranjivi into blood donation etc.

Ms AD asked about Trisha's acting in the movie. RS, SJ and myself had a private chat on the bath scene. Was it a natural or an artificial imitation, was it a key hole etc. Thou an old topic, this was the live one in today's conversation.

From there we went on to a kid suffering from Leukemia and getting treated at Vellore CMC. The cost of the treatment was discussed and compared with US medical rates. RS asked about the normal pay structure at US and their tax breakup. SJ mentioned about the marital benefit wrt tax. Discussion went on into their free form of marital bonds and their flexibility in forming families.

that is for today.

During the lunch hours at office, ten of my friends sit around tables and start talking about anything from pension plan for nuclear scientist to the extinction cause of the dodo bird.

Last week (18th to 22nd Sep 6), there were interesting topics like the meaning of the name 'Vikramathithya', and later regarding the gay activities in India. I thought it would be nice to jott down these discussions and read it later ... hence this blog came alive.

The fun part of these discussions happening during lunch hour is that none of us are experts in the topics we open up .. and most of the time one of us start with something they had heard, seen or read...followed by thoughts, ideas, suggestions, complaints, repulsion etc etc flowing in.
Read along ...