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.