Dirty Indians

Yesterday I was strolling through the streets. How dirty we are!! Garbage thrown all over the streets, stagnated sewage, small restaurants dump the wastage in the road side, mutton shop hang the skinless animals for display, hmm .. I wish I was else where.

What is that we lack to keep our surrounding clean? Relatively our homes are cleaner than the surrounding. Before blaming someone, let us look out the answer within. Foremost factor is laziness. We are too casual to throw plastic wrapper, waste paper, empty can, used clothes, anything we don't want on the streets. We don't know the right way to dispose things.

During college days, a friend of mine taught us how to dispose waste during travel. Simple things like carrying a plastic bag to collect waste, throwing it in a bin at any stop point, reducing the intake during travel -- were few tips. I try to follow whenever possible.

As any Indian, let me bash the governing system. We do have waste handling process in the city. People are paid by the corporation to clean the roads, collect wastes from door to door, ply vehicles to transport the waste out of the city etc. I have seen uniformed people doing these acts. Are these adequate? Nope. We need a system which would be responsible on what it does and result oriented. I had seen these people dumping the waste they collect from homes into a nearby empty sites. In due course, this empty site becomes dumping ground for the houses nearby.

Considering the health risk we have with these unhygienic habits, I hope we wake up early before some irrecoverable hazard.
Thou I dont have answers to many questions, I would like to involve in betterment of the city.

Beautiful names Part 2

Like the vi- series in part 1, we have ni- words like Niroopa, Niranjana, Nirguna etc. This prefix negates the meaning of the root word. Hence the above three words could mean formless, beyond-desires and characterless(?!). These words has positive annotation to mean someone or something who is not restricted by the forms, desires and the behaviour; something that had transcended or overcome these qualities.

su is the prefix to indicate auspiciousness, goodness and prosperity. suguna - good or pure charactor, swagatham - agatham is to inviting someone, swagatham adds a wellness to it to become 'wel'come. swarna is auspicious or nice color, usually this word is used for gold.

Anirudh is a quite common name we hear these days. I was curious to know the depth of the name. Happen to read a book about Krishna, the flute guy. Krishna's grandson is Anirudh and Anirudh is the only survivor of Krishna's community. Rodhah is to block or stop something. Nirodhah is to imprison and stop the flow, and hence Nirodh is the right word for condom. Anirudh is someone who cannot be imprisoned and in this context, the one who didn't let the dynasty flow to stop.

Such etymological analysis helps us to understand the words better and also throws some light on the language/word creators. We will be able to extrapolate the ancient life style, social values, ideas and ideologies. That is a Science by its own with the name Semantics.

Quest of the students

When I get a chance, I will be visiting my college. Last week I went to my native and thought of going to the college. As usual, staff members asked me to handle a session and discuss about industrial experience. Students were quite interactive and asked many questions. They were very curious to know the working culture, the interview process, the technologies that are in demand, what is the good approach in studies and many more. Had a healthy discussion which was very useful to me and hopefully some of them benefited out of the discussion.

A team of students were asking about designing a sniper utility and asked my opinion on using ejb versus corba. Since they need a minor interface between c and java for their network oriented project, I suggested corba instead of going through ejb concepts. Off hand, I am wondering if a xml data exchange would have been a better choice for them. Need to understand their project and suggest the best approach. Nevertheless, I thought of discussing this question with my friends and pass on the details to the students (if the students contact me through mail).

I mentioned about the blog I had about gaining experience without getting a job. Forgot to mention the hunters04@yahoogroups.com details. I should have asked them to join this group which sends job related info.

Overall, it was a nice experience being in the campus and interacting with fresh minds. Would like to do so frequently. Once in a year seems to be optimal. I should prepare well to face them again.

Who is intelligent?

A friend of mine sent this webpage. The message lingers in the mind even after the smile of the joke fades away. Is the society biased for the 'intelligent' species or is that the payment society gives for the learnt who really contribute? Is the mechanic really sees the smartness in people or he releases his frustration?

Water Water

Was reading this article about Cauvery water dispute. The issue had worsen in recent times due to increase in population in the river belt areas and cities which are dependent on Cauvery water. I guess the situation is going to become very bad down the line as the water scarcity is expected to multifold across the globe.

Wish we could unite the rivers in the country and improve our prosperity.

Apart from this water issue, I feel the borders between states should dissolve and we should think more about the country rather than the local state. The way we are divided by caste, creed, religion, language etc are the barrier for us to raise. These divisions may be useful for few people but not for the commoners.

Chennai marriage

Went to Chennai for LN's marriage reception. After having dinner and wishing the couples, just relaxed in the hall and looked around. I thought of speaking to LN's mom as I happened to talk to her whenever I visited their house.

I saw her in green saree, coming out of the dinning hall. Started a conversation with her.
Me: Hello aunty, how are you doing?
She: Fine. Who are you?
(Surprised that she didnt recognize me).
Me: I am friend of L and worked with him.
She: Who is L?
(hmm .. does she has some kind of memory prob?)
Me : LN
She: oh .. maapillai paiyanna?
She: ok, nice to see you.

I felt strange about the way she was talking and walking away in a relaxed manner.

After 30mins, I saw her again in red saree. She was quite active and energetic. Just to check her reaction, I walked in front of her. She recognized me and started talking. I introduced my wife to her. She enquired about our travel, dinner and usual queries. I mentioned about the strange green sareed lady. She laughed and mentioned she is her sister. What a resemblance!

However, I still carry a pinch of suspicion. My wife and myself were curiously observing certain odd things. We never saw LN's mom and the green saree lady together. When we spot green saree, LN's mom would have vanished from the stage. When LN's mom comes back, the green saree would be out of vision. We had fun trying to put forth difference theories. Recollecting various Indian movies where the same person swaps into different roles by simple attire change ... It was quite interesting evening.

Sales skills

PG narrated his experiences with Multi-network marketing companies. These companies train the members in sales and marketing skills. They shed away their inhibition in meeting strangers and socializing with them. PG mentioned couple of incidents at the shopping malls when he went with his wife. The sales couples used to approach PG and his wife on some context. For example, the lady would start a conversation stating the girl looks beautiful. With such pleasantries, the ladies would start discussing. Obviously the guy would be left with nothing but to talk to the other guy (the sales guy who would be waiting for a talk or start one himself). At the end of the discussion, they would exchange the contact numbers. In a day or two, the sales couple would call and propose a business opportunity. The rest is the usual talk and conversion rituals.

The other ice breaking openings range from "I have met you somewhere" to "you resemble like my cousin" ...

In the first meeting itself, they would extract enough details about a person and use this detail to assess the suitability of the person into their gang.

Thou these kind of marketing skills improve the communication of people, unfortunately there is a chance of becoming socially out casted. After attending couple of sales seminars and trainings conducted by the company, the members are too obsessed with success and money. Their thoughts, mind, soul, house, car and whatever they have are filled with the company's motto, logo, posters, articles and other junks. They speak about the same to all the known circles they have. After a while, their friends and relatives would start avoiding them. Once their known circles are exhausted, they venture into unknown territories and circles.

Not sure how they come out and what happens further down. I guess these people's behaviour and social interactions are worth doing a research.

btw, I happen to buy (was led into buying) a small bottle of some super-powered medical capsules for super-duper amount. I am trying to resale that bottle to some bakra like me and never did that in this one year of attempts. I guess I need to attend one of those trainings.

Tips for health

My wife forwarded few articles related to health. She thinks I need to gain few good habits to maintain my well being.

sleepfoundation.org talks about myths and truth behind sleeping. Very interesting to know about new info and burst few old thoughts.

This article lists out 13 tips for overall healthy life. Topics like morning breakfast, planned food nutrition, exercise, social well being, dental hygiene, skin care, balanced mental composure, fruits, water, milk intake etc are discussed in detail.

If you suspect depression, here are few tips.

Land cost

Today VY, MsAD and myself went to Adigas. Good food.

VY was mentioning a piece of land in the city. Also, we were discussing about the appreciation of land price. Over the past five years, the rate had increased 10 fold in most part of the city. Not sure if such sudden raise was realized in any part of the country in the past.

Recently we happen to know of two BHK renting out for 21k. This is not aimed at hi-society ppl but for the upper-middle class (whatever that means; when we are at it, why is the middle class broken into three? Are there more divisions?). In the same area, a single BHK was shown to a bachelor for 14k.

A year back, there was lots of demand for rental houses. Never we could see a 'To let' board as people would occupy when there is a vacant portion. However, these days we see lots of boards of vacant houses. Many are not occupied for a long time. May be the rent had shooted too high and owners are rigid in spite of no takers. Even with such trend, there are umpteen building constructed all over the city and beyond.

Let us observe the progress and see how things move. Most probably we might have to put up with this raise as the money generators like IT industries are still growing with more activities. We can expect a saturation in IT sector once the cost of living raises in par with western countries. In such case, outsourcing might become costlier than inland development/service.

cost of music

Today we went to the shopping mall. Had lunch and then went to the bookstall. I wanted to buy refill for the diary. Quiet lazy! Each year while buying the refill, I use to resolute that for the next year I will buy during December. Never happened so, always it was by end of Jan.

Before getting the diary stuff, I was browsing through the cd racks and picked few music. While comparing the prices, I got the following idea.

• Old classical film songs are quite cheap. If it is 40s and 50s era, then you get those vcd for Rs 40 or so.
• Then comes the devotional section. Starts from Rs 60 and keeps going up. Most of the cds are for 125. This depends on the time people are invested to prepare the audio collection and how popular that theme is. Celebrity singers' work fetch above 200.
• Also looked at the drama section. The comedy drama collections are above 200
• The dvd prices usually starts at 350 to 400.

Most of the above are available in our street video parlour in mp3 format. Price? Rs 25 for each burn!

Bangalore riot

In a far, far land there lived a tyrannic king (as per Western view). Once his government was toppled, the people in that land held him guilty of genocide and other crimes any normal dictator would do. He was hanged.

A month later of that court ruling and execution, Muslims in Bangalore gathered to protest that act. Fine, their choice. However, what does that execution got to do with the peaceful people who were walking in the streets of Bangalore? Highly unlikely if anyone in Bangalore had any remote connection with hanging of that leader. (None of the Indian media held a sms polling for the hanging).

Anyway, why should our buses, shops, people be attacked when some activity happens half a globe away? If some pope guy comments negative about a particular community, why should my way to office be blocked?

Does such mobic riots happen in other parts of the world; particularly curious to know how the Islamic developing countries like Malaysia handle such world events.

Interaction in a website

GA and myself had discussion about the technology. We were going through the advantage and disadvantage of a website allowing users to interact to a contribution level. User participation may be through wiki kind of editable page, blogs or forums.

Advantage

• The site comes alive with lots of interaction, awareness and many useful activities
• An integrated website may provide multiple facilities like forum, catalog, customization, wish list etc (depending upon what the website is aiming to do and the audience)

Disadvantage

• Need for continuous monitoring of the posted articles for maintaining healthy quality of the website
• Required resources for addressing the queries raised by users
• Able to take ownership and responsibility of the website content

I tried convincing GA by the fact that a team of staff would evolve out of the user community. They would monitor the content and such team would be a strong resource. This will avoid burdening the site owners. The staff can answer the queries pasted by the users and if the queries require the owners' attention, the staff can raise a prioritized attention grabber.

Let us see what GA decides.

zaika!!

Today we went to the restarant, Zaika, in Raheja Arcade. Earlier this place went with the name Annambrahma. Now the same management had renovated the place.

Ambience is fine. Tasty North Indian food. Price as you can expect in any such posh restarant; around 150 to 200 per head.

Try it out.

T-Shirt slogans

Like to read t-shirt wordings? I am with you. Some people feel that it is not a good habit. If that is so, why do we have those wordings?

I wish there are few facility available in such t-shirts. To start with, we need a comment column just like this blog has. When someone feel like posting a comment on the wordings, the t-shirt should open-up a section for it ... okay, before we get carried away with further imagination, let us get into work.

Here are few wordings I had noticed, and wished to comment in this line.

No job, No girlfriend, No Problems
No life!

I like you, will kill you last
A killer with conscience

Virginity is curable
Guess the treatment involves some injection.

I am rich. Marry me.
Thanks for the invitation. Let us wait for the gay marriage clearance from the legal dept.

MBA - Master of Bad Activities
I guessed it after interacting with our HR


If you have any, post in the comments.

Bookmarks

The bookmarks I use are of wide variety. Off late, KPN bus provides a counter ticket while boarding. It is a good one for bookmarking. That too it helps a lot as I would start reading a book in the bus (their TV system is too loud while playing some stupid movie). When I go to bookshops, they give complimentary bookmarks with their advertisements. I get couple of more from them. Another favourite bookmarks are visiting cards!, either mine or whoever passes to me. If nothing is reachable, I tear a small portion of newspaper or waste paper for the purpose. As I don't like spoiling the books, I don't fold pages to mark them. I like the books which comes with a small thread to use as bookmark.

Now I am planning to design few bookmarks for myself. I want to distinguish the books I am currently reading, books I am yet to start and those which I have read. Want to place different colored bookmarks to separate these three categories. Hence I am planning to cut bookmarks out of red, orange and green thin cardboard. Red is for books yet to read, orange for ongoing books and green for completed one. Actually I don't need green marks, I could assume books without marks are completed one; but to match with fancy traffic colors, I can have green too.

If you have better suggestions, please pass on to me.

Thiruvasagam

Happen to hear Thiruvasagam as composed by Illaiyaraaja. A feast to ears and mind. It is a music blended with Eastern and Western instruments. The foreground goes with the classical Tamil lyrics, and mixed with English translated verses. The CD came with a booklet containing the lyrics. It is easy to listen the songs while reading them. My wife and myself used to pause at the end of each song and go through the meaning of the song. Overall nice experience and worth trying. Planning to play it frequently.

Breathability

Interesting to know something about breathing. My wife is submitting a thesis on breathing. She had done some experiments on how deep breathing helps in improving the coupling of heart and lungs. She explained some fundas like amount of air we intake per minute, how it is related to respiratory rate and intake capacity. There is a cool formula.

TV * RR = MV

Here TV is tidal volume, RR -> respiratory rate and MV is minute volume. TV is how much air we inspire in one breath. RR mentions how many times we inspire per minute. Multiplying these two numbers, we get the total volume of air we intake per minute; this MV is required for our body. The breathing system works efficiently when the TV is increased and RR is reduced; in other words, we should fetch maximum air during each breath and also reduce the number of intake. That way the organs involved in these operations will be used less and effectively.

While understanding this, I was able to relate to a familiar concepts in computer networking. When we have a greater than 2 tier architecture, typically we have clients and server. The clients keep pinging the server to retrieve data. The network efficiency is achieved by reducing the number of round trip to the server and by increasing the data transfer in each trip.

Awesome similarities.

Reading classics

So far I had seen two classifications in Indian classical literature. The first category narrates some event, person or a story. Either events and person are explicitly named to identify or portrayed as generic characters like hero, heroin, mother etc.

The second category deals with morality/code of conduct/mannerism of people, social norms and ethics. There are many such books. Other day, one such book was lying in my desk. Friend of mine picked the same and glanced through it. He wasn't very happy about what he was reading. He felt those do s and donts were impractical; also a waste of time to go through such materials.

That was an interesting remark. Are all our ancient wisdom a waste of time? I was thinking in this line. Here are few thoughts came out.

In our modern age, we have hundreds of authors writing self-help, personality development books. In a sense, these books are the continuous progeny of the ancient moral texts. Most of the do s and donts of a by gone era may not be applicable today. However, we cannot throw away all of them as useless ideas.

If they are not applicable today, why should someone read them? I read to gain an insight into the ancient world. What was their social practices? Which are the pressing issues they had to address? Reading history itself has lots of advantage. A good reason for human being to go through history pages is not to commit the same mistake again.

Apart from these mundane reasons, there are recorded facts and findings which stands good in spite of the deadly factor called TIME. For example, recently I was reading a newspaper article about harmful effects of hot water bath. Due to regular usage of hot water for head bath leads to headache, memory loss and other brain related issues. This is due to sudden raise in the temperature during bath. Mainly this affects the brain. Since this info was new to me, I was surprised to read this; also worried because I am take hot water head bath on a daily basis. Found a remedy for the above situation in an ancient literature. Different protocols are suggested for cold water and hot water bath. Following that could reduce the effect of the above brain attack.

Suggestion to my friend is, to read books of wide range and variety. One need not follow everything written in the books. However, it is essential to expand our horizons by exposing to different ideas.

Strange practices in funerals

Loud beat of drums, merry dance by drunkards, bursting crackers ... these are common in Chennai funerals. Somehow I don't understand this custom. Why are people happy about the death. Are they feeling happy for the person to pass away from this sorrow filled world or are they relieved from the pain created by that person? :-)

Upon googling, I found that such funeral dances are practiced at different parts of the world like South Africa, China, Ancient Rome and Egypt. hmm, we have/had company.

Anyway, a recent news in the paper related to funeral was amusing. Villages of Eastern China have a belief that the more people who attend the funeral, the more the dead person is honoured. In order to achieve this target, the relatives try ingenious practices. They hired stripteasers!! Here is the video. Also, news at BBC News.

Later the parties were arrested and such practices are banned in that area.

Wondering how people interpret believes and twist the original thinking into drastic practice. If there had not been any law enforcement on this new approach, soon people would have assumed this as a local customs.

Elephants

Read a small book on elephants. Amazing facts about them.

When we think about capturing elephant, we recollect the familiar method of digging a pit and camouflage it by leaves and branches; and capture the elephant that falls into it without knowing the same. This book illustrates another method to capture an elephant herd. This involves thousands of men working as a team. They dig a massive excavation which can hold may be 100s of elephants. Thick teak stems are placed inside the pit. Imagine a big circular well which is planted with teak close to the inner wall. A heavy door is available in a portion of the wall. A slope is raised from this door up to to the ground level.

Once the construction of this trap is readied, they locate the herd. Start making loud noise with instruments (hmm .. it would have been awesome to listen to hundreds of instruments). They direct the elephants towards the slope and finally into the well. After getting them in, they lock the door.

Elephants are starved, so that they don't have enough energy to fight back. People walk in through the teak columns with spear. They check the elephants, if found not suitable, they release them in the wilderness. Each elephant is assigned to a mahout. The wild elephant is approached with 2 tamed elephants until it is tamed.

This looks like old method. Modern hunters use darts to capture animals as a faster and easier means.

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 :-) )