saurabh bhatia - unplugged

Hotel Vijay Park Chennai, MGR and Gemini ganesan

2012-02-09T22:40:00.000-08:00

Syntactic v/s semantic interoperability

2012-01-23T19:40:00.001-08:00

THE QUESTION

Answer summary by IAMI

====================================

Correct answer

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The right answer is A (20% got it)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

LOGIC:

Syntax>> syntactic: e.g. Assume that all of us in this group need to communicate in writing (interoperate). SO we decide that we shall use the Roman Alphabets A thru Z to type out our messages. This is syntactic interoperability.

Semantic: Now that everyone has agreed that they can read the roman letters A thru Z, we need to type them out in a way where the words formed can be interpreted by others to make some sense. So we choose to use English Language. This is semantic interoperability. We could have chosen swedish or German which also use the same syntactic expression (A thru Z).

e.g. If i write "Record Geburtsdatum at aufnahme" will it make any sense to you? Hardly, coz its German. But if i write the same thing as "Record date-of-birth at admission", suddenly it makes sense to you. All this while we were using the same syntax of roman alphabets.

So Semantic interoperability has to be defined in the language of syntactic, and therefore it is a subset of syntactic.

Why not B, C, D?

Syntactic interoperability is a pre-condition for semantic interoperability but not vice versa.

B has semantic falling out of syntactic. This is like inserting Hindi script between english communication.

C has semantic covering syntactic. remember, semantic (words and sentences) can be created using the syntax (a thru Z) only. You cannot create a word in english that is written using something other than a-z, e.g. alpha, beta, gamma, kappa, lambda etc. So semantic has to fall within syntactic

D both are unrelated. Not possible because if semantic is outside syntactic, then it is using anything but a-z, which means it cannot be understood by readers who read a-z.

The contest is still open. you can still vote for your answer or add comments at bottom.

Verify Digital signatures

2012-01-16T22:41:00.001-08:00

How to verify these signatures:

When opening a digitally signed document in Adobe, the application will display an Icon for the signature validation status.
For signatures that have not been validated, the icon for 'Validity Unknown' is displayed:
The icon will be in the Signature Panel at the top of the document window.
PDF documents signed by us will contain embedded information to authenticate the signer. The validation in Adobe does however require that the recipient of the document accepts us as a trusted certificate¹⁾ issuer.

The procedure to accept us as a trusted certificate¹⁾ issuer is:
1. Right click on the actual signature and choose 'Show Signature Properties'
2. On the 'Summary' tab, choose 'Show Certificate'
3. Verify that there is a certification path named 'Saurabh Bhatia (s.bhatia@tsmls.org)'. This identifies us as the owner of the digital certificate that has been used when signing the document.
  
  Mark the certification path named 'Saurabh Bhatia (s.bhatia@tsmls.org)', click the 'Trust'-tab and then 'Add to Trusted Identities'.
  Answer 'OK' to any security question that follows.
4. Check the field for 'Use this certificate as a trusted root' and click 'OK' twice to close this and the next window.
5. Click 'Validate Signature' to execute the validation.
  A signature that has been validated against a trusted certificate¹⁾ is indicated as:
  
  Documents with multiple valid signatures will be displayed as:
Once 'Saurabh Bhatia (s.bhatia@tsmls.org)' has been as a Trusted Identity, any subsequent documents with digital signatures from us will be validated automatically when opened. Any different signature will follow same process.
The validation status of digital signatures can be viewed by either holding the cursor over the actual signature, by right-clicking on the signature and choosing 'Show signature properties' or through the Signatures panel at the left in the Adobe window:

He was wrong

2011-08-28T22:54:00.001-07:00

It COULD come back

Broken!!

2011-07-23T05:36:00.001-07:00

he had been crying for 24 hrs straight…

what goes around, comes around…

sometimes he did things that were ‘necessary’. it was important to do them to maintain some sanctity somewhere.

It did not mean he liked doing them.

Sometimes he had to put his interests behind others’ safety, priority and well being. Not that he liked it but sense of duty is so drilled in a man…

even if this meant losing out on what meant MOST to him; yes, most.

somewhere he developed a hole in the middle of himself. A hole that only that could fill that was lost…

and it was irretrievable… it could not come back. even if it did,rahiman dhaga prem ka, tanik chhitak na jaye, jode se jude nahi, jude gaanth pad jaye…

BROKEN!!

Shadows are falling and I’m running out of breath
Keep me in your heart for awhile

If I leave you it doesn’t mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for awhile

When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun
Keep me in your heart for awhile

There’s a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done
Keep me in your heart for awhile

A seething cauldron

2010-05-15T08:33:00.000-07:00

Written on May 15th @ sunset

Head.
A seething cauldron. Boiling. Overflowing.

Each overflowed emotion drips on the heart. Sizzles. Leaves a scar.

Heart carries on. Hurt. Burning. But still beats.

A pain arises from the head; it runs down the neck and spine. Immobilised. Can't see left or right; can't see what's right, either.

Heart carries on. Hurt. Burning. But still beats.

Some more good pics

2010-04-08T04:07:00.000-07:00

SO here I am with the second edition of pics

The above two are my satire on clean delhi green delhi
neither is it clean, nor is it green

Anyway
Siddhu Paaji made some appearances in IPL
Some of his funny attires are seen here. Sometimes the pug matches the tie, other times the shirt and sometimes it seems paaji's contrast button has gone bad
Enjoy

Its Ok Its OK

Lastly, an internet fwd that i received about tight security in pakistan

Why Shouldn't i die with laughter

2010-03-02T00:43:00.000-08:00

The real book is Many LIVES many masters

International Book Fair

2010-01-29T22:06:00.000-08:00

My Book Indian Corporate Etiquette will be available in the International Book Fair at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi at the following Stalls:

1. Pothi.com: Stand No. S2/12, Hall 1-2, Delhi World Book Fair, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi
Duration: January 30, 2010 to February 7, 2010
2. Cinnamon Teal/ Dogears Publishers: Stall # S1/3 (Hall 7H)

Please do visit

The Fourth Idiot

2010-01-27T03:34:00.000-08:00

So the gardener's son, expert in impersonation from primary school days, goes on to get all kind of degrees and certificates for the rich man's brat, knowing all this while that he is doing it only for 'gyaan';
Oh jee seedhi baat no bakwas. Yeh degree-shegree kisko chahiye man?

Gulp. (gulped) Kool.

BTW, can someone please confirm that considering that movie is made today, and bangdu jee did an online consult with his lady love for doing a eureka-forbes delivery in college, a good about 11 years ago, Airtel had NOT launched USB based EDGE internet dongles like the one showed there.
Oh ho!!!, Chhaddo jee, movie hai. Tussi bhi ki laike vaith jaande ho....

So the gyaani bachcha, who is obviously way too mature from primary days itself, makes it to IIT (ahem!! read ICE) and is smarter than anyone else who came there. Senior, junior, teacher whatever. So what was he? A freak? Another 'A beautiful mind'? We can see a movie on another beautiful mind, fine by us, but isn't he trying to say somewhere that everyone should follow his footsteps? Ok No.
Ajee Usne kadi vi nahi aakhya. He never actually said that.
Oh! OK i just felt it. Am a hero-worshipper, you know. My fault.

And then he spends 4 years becoming 5 point someone and tops it through. So he comes in contact with a few hundred other IIT-ians during these years. And then, poof!! disappears like magic. Becomes a recluse in ladakh with a fantastic school for other bangdus... sorry other brilliant humans. And then he files 400 patents from there... like grinding wheat for getting flour using bicycle principle (hero, atlas.... hello...) or was it to make lassi in washing machine? But anyway. No digs on creativity; it is respectable.
But then patenting such processes looked a little odd coming from a man who believes that gyaan should be freely available and distributed (impersonation, remember?) and patents are hard core capitalistic economy thing restricting free use of such ideas. ideological change, was it? [Let's not even consider that each patent filing costs in excess of 100,000 bucks. so 400 patents would mean 400,00,000/- that's right. 4 crores at the very least. Good job, Bangdu. How do you plan to recover that money?]
Hatto jee. tussi pehe ki hi sochde rende ho. gyaani munda haiga...
{BTW ever heard of open source?}

Of course, the gyaani jee has complete gyaan in life. So he never woo-ed for the lady love. He never was frustrated coz all the other bangdus were learning well. He was the most sought after scientist even though he never attended conferences, never met people (fear of god: what if i come across an IIT-ian of my era)

So the first Idiot is Ch.Bhagat for allowing the 'balatkar' of his book (which is selling more now, it seems)
the second one is the indian public who can't see through this farce
the third one is of course me, who is writing about all this
Guess who is the fourth?

Let's have some fun

2010-01-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

True, it's been a while since i did any serious blogging.
It's also been a while i did any serious fotografy. (Ok, Photography)

But my fone camera has not missed out much.
Here are some for your consumption.

Well, Thank you Mr HaldiR. What did you think WE did with pictures?

The best part is that both these gentlement behave as doctors DAILY. No Dr Jekyll and Mt Hyde stuff here, eh!!!

Good!!. The instructions should always be clear.
This organisation wanted to ENSURE that in case of fire, people just don't break the glass and keep running but actually use the equipment inside.
Some funny ones i found at a food court:

This last one is not a funny one but i do love the chutzpah. (12 hr shifts are against the labour law, BTW)

Lastly, it was very difficult to NOT take a pot shot at the Dell 'Yours is here' campaign :-)

Horn please ok

2009-09-28T22:20:00.000-07:00

2009-09-15T02:22:00.000-07:00

Servile Dog Syndrome

2009-04-23T04:33:00.000-07:00

In a pack of dogs, there is an alpha dog, who leads the pack and remainder are followers.
Alpha dog retains its place by intimidating the remaining dogs. The more he can intimidate, either by growling or by attacking physically, the more the follower dogs respect him.

Result: What is the effect of this constant intimidation on the psyche of follower dogs? They lose self esteem completely and become mental slaves. Physically they may not be inferior to alpha dog, but they lose the confidence of ever reaching there. So the more they are intimidated, the more keen they become to appease their master.

SHIFT OF SCENE:

Humans also suffer from this problem. In my experience i have seen this problem more in women than men but i don't have the numbers to support it. But both sexes suffer from it.

In women, this tends to take a rather strange shape. Instead of presenting the appearance first, i shall attempt to talk about the way it happens.

Children, especially female, with a childhood that did not instill the sense of self-worth in them, tend to suffer more from this. They have low self esteem, which they tend to cover and protect by being loud, materialistic, appear over-confident (even flamboyant, bindass, chutzpah). The behaviour is usually to win public approval or to gain appreciation, if not attention.

These children, when they become adults, have the servile streak in them. This streak remains buried under layers of external behaviour. But in women i found that it gets exposed in the form that when men ill treat them, they accept the ill treatment. And then, to please their alpha male, they tend to become even more servile, only to be ill treated even more.
This becomes cyclic.
The man ill treats the woman >> Woman with low sense of self-worth cowers and tends to please him more and seek his approval >> Man realises that she can take this much ill treatment >> serves even worse treatment to her >> the woman accepts this too and tries to please him even more >> cycle continues...

Usually these cases land up in my clinic as marital discord in which the woman is being battered. It may be physical battery or mental but either way, it's maltreatment being dished out.

The surprising part comes only now. And that is, that the woman usually does not have an insight into this problem. She does not complain of being treated badly. She usually seeks help because she feels "whatever i do, i cannot please him. So doctor, what should i do so that he becomes happy with me?"

And i am usually happy to tell that all she has to do is to stop trying to please him and stop caring whether he gets pleased by her or not. And he shall be pleased.

The desiness of desis

2009-03-31T04:16:00.000-07:00

I had written a post in past regarding 'Indian behaviour'. It came back to me recently because of two incidents on the same journey.

I was travelling on Amritsar Shatabdi from Delhi.

One: I met a man in the train who was a PIO (Person of Indian Origin) but settled in England for last 3 generations. He did not know Hindi. The moment the waiters in the train discovered this, they started flocking around him. Most assumed that i was accompanying him coz i was talking to him. Every two minutes he was asked if he'd like something to eat. He was offered black tea which he refused. After 60 secs, he was offered coffee. Which he again refused. Another few minutes later he was asked 'Non-veg'? Since he was an ISKCON follower, he refused meat. This significantly deflated the waiters coz this was perhaps their last chance of earning a hefty bakhshish. Finally i had to intervene and tell the staff to lay off the Indian firang.

...WHY?

Two: Now this is reverse Indianism. There was this family, which was obviously back from US. (How do I know? Well!! The man of the house was wearing ray-bans at 9 pm; they carried 4 suitcases of obnoxious size [All Indians returning from US carry HUGE suitcases coz the airlines restrict the number of baggages... so obviously, they cannot imagine carrying 'less' baggage... but they carry vulgar sized suitcases instead which give coronary attack to ordinary indian coolies]; The kids spoke only in english while the parents conversed on mobile in crass Punjabi; ... need more evidence?)

So all was well till it was 15 mins to Jallandher where the train stops precisely for 120 secs. What this family decides to do is to lug all their giant suitcases and jam them into the coach's gate. Logic: train stops for only 2 mins and we can't offload all of this...
Of course, it never occurred to them that there are other passengers also who might like to disembark within the same 2 mins. It included a 70+ yrs old lady.
I wanted to ask that if you can't offload this, why the fuck don't you carry less baggage?

The very same guy would have behaved himself socially in US perhaps, but the very act of repatriation re-kindles the spark of desiness, is it?

And there they are, back to square one.

Mama said "Don't do MLM"

2009-01-14T22:16:00.000-08:00

Mama said "Don't do MLM"

MLM is a dirty word in our house.
Multi-level marketing.
Another dirty word is network marketing; which is essentially same wine in different bottle.

It all started with my cousin becoming an AMWAY marketeer. Amway is Ok. I once bought a car shampoo and it was pretty good. But the people who market it are a pain in the ass. So was my cousin.

First they came to my house and showed us pics of their annual convention and how everyone there was filthy rich and how they were enjoying life selling amway products. Then they told me that I could also be rich by doing the same.
Unfortunately, my bringing up says that any method in which you get rich without working hard has to have a catch. SO i was skeptic right from the beginning. But they kept inviting us to their breakfast sessions or this n that and tempt us with it. I stayed away all the time from either buying the product or becoming one of them.

Ten years later, a dear friend of mine walked into my apartment with a "business proposal". The proposal was to start by buying a gold coin whose net worth today was INR 7000/- but i was expected to shell out INR 35,000/- for it. Five times the amount upfront. Daylight robbery? I asked.
No, he replies, this is just a notional cost because this coin will eventually have numismatic value. Then i can sell it for million bucks or whatever. Now i have been a small time collector of coins myself though i don't do it anymore (too expensive a hobby for me) but i have some knowledge all the same. Just coz an asshole decides to buy a coin moulder and smelts some 18-20 K gold into it, the coin does not become a numismatic orgasm for collectors. Not even 100 years later. Not even 1000 years, believe me. So i threw his numismatic theory outta the window. Then he came to business.
I could start my own "network" by selling coins further. For each coin i sell, i get commission. For each coin my client sells, i get even more commission and so on.

Now is it very difficult to comprehend who is the sucker when he shells out 35K for a 7K coin?
The remaining 28K is going as commission to those suckers who are in line above me.

So i say thanks, but no thanks. I cannot earn my living perpetuating this stupidity in the name of numismatics and network marketing.
But he says this will earn me money without hard work.

Oh! said I. How many people have you contacted as yet to sell this coin, dear friend?
About 30-35, he replied.
ANd how many bought it? I asked
You'd be the second one, he told me; to which i shook my head horizontally and with max amplitude.

So you are selling to about 3-4 of every 100 people you contact. Ain't this hard work?
But the return are great... he shot back. Not like selling some cheap scheme, you know.

DO you know what's the cost of this marketing? I asked him
He said just the cost of 3-4 fone calls and 1-2 visits per person before they join.
I smiled.
I told him he'd realise the cost much later.

Today, i avoid taking calls from him (and that cousin of mine). I never meet them socially coz they invariably ask me "So what did you think about it?". I even avoid them on Orkut etc.
This is the cost i was trying to make my friend understand.
He didn't.
He is paying it now by losing one friend after another.
I do not know how much easy money has he made till now.
But in my house, Mama said, don't do MLM.

God is the eighteenth elephant

2009-01-14T00:11:00.000-08:00

I do not wish to take any credit for this story. It's a folklore, narrated to me by a wise man. Only the conclusions are mine.

It happened once that a King was told by his astrologer to divide his belongings between his two sons in a certain proportion. This will, the astrologer said, ensure recovery from the problems that the kingdom was facing. The king decided to conform.

However he got stuck while dividing his elephants. The ratio of division was:
Give 50% to elder son
Give 2/3 of remaining to younger son.
And after this, the King needed at least one for himself and one for the Queen, too.

The problem was that the King had 17 elephants and there was no way he could give 50% to his elder son. The king resorted to calling upon the help of his wise man (aka Birbal, tenaliraman, etc). Faced by the problem, the wise man said:
"Out of respect for you my lord, let me gift you one elephant." And he proceeded to merge his own elephant into the herd thus making a total of eighteen elephants.

He now proceeded to divide them thus:
50% to elder son: 9 given to elder son
2/3 of remianing to younger son: The younger son was given 6 out of remaining 9
This left three elephants, out of which the wise man gave one to the King and Queen each. Thus left was the eighteenth elephant.
"And now my lord" said the wise man, "I see that since everyone's requirement has been taken care of, I would humbly like to take back this eighteenth elephant for it is of no further use to you."

Thus the eighteenth elephant was duly returned to its owner.

I feel that God is this eighteenth elephant. I you think it exists, it can help you solve some problems. If you don't, well you can still solve your problems albeit with a little difficulty and some help. It anyway is a notional concept.

Review: The mistake that was Ghajini

2009-01-10T06:01:00.000-08:00

Saw Ghajini today
Of course the story is baseless and oh-so-stereotype where bad man kills good guy's girl and the good guy wants revenge... but what killed me were some glaring mistakes which do not usually creep up in Aamir's movie's
Let's start from the mildest one and graduate to serious one

The medical record of Aamir shows the degrees of the doctor as "MBBS, MD(Nuero)"... So what's the mistake? Mistake is the degree for neuro comes after MD and is called DM. Moreover, Neuro is not spelt as Nuero... :-)
This is big and looks odd: Aamir was out of control and was given a tranquilising injection and was therefore unconscious. but when the policemen moved his body from one bed to another, nobody supported his neck; which, surprisingly, maintained its position as ramrod straight. Ludicrous , i say. Neck is never supported by itslef in unconscious people and we always need one person while lifting the patient to support the neck... AAmir appeared to be in ophisthotonus or was he poisoned with strychnine.... the 2 possible conditions where the neck could remain straight with such rigidity...
This was GROSS... the medical students got hold of AAmir's diary and were going thru the TEXT, reliving his earlier life. They then decide to look for KALPANA, who's foto they have never seen... only read about her in diary. They decide to search newspaper archives in library and in one newspaper, Kalpana's foto was printed with headlines that did not contain her name; but KUDOS... these girls saw the pic, recognised it was kalpana and then they were able to trace the remaining part of story. LOONY TALE man... What a fucking joke!!!

Review : Aravind Adiga's 'The White Tiger'

2008-12-28T02:54:00.000-08:00

It's easy to write off new writers. It's easy to say that the Booker is a politico-commercial venture and publishers buy Booker's. It's also easy to be cynical and pitch every new writer against the clan of Rushdie, Coelho or Gordimer and whip them mercilessly.

I read several comments about Adiga which ran his book down. They called him an unlikely/ improbable winner. And these were written by those people who write for newspapers and call themselves critics. And then i read the book. And then I said, "What a fucking joke!"

Can't you see the irony of it? Losers, who pose as writers, churning out 10k words / week to earn their bread, have now developed the cheek to deride a new kid on the block who hit success from the word go.

The book is very good. I am not going to make comparisons and say it was like this or that; or may be i will. Simply put, it had merit. The book is the description of India, as seen thru a downtrodden labourer-turned-driver thru a biographical confession. Adiga (pronounced ADIG in my belief) kept me spell bound for most of the time. There are some brilliant expressions every once in a while a la Rushdie. (... and he fell down flat faced in the mud exposing his stained arse to the stained sky of delhi... This one was as good as Rushdie's my father was bent a little forward, towards the future)

The narrative has a very Indian touch and apparently care has been taken not to take away the Indian-ness of the book. Though at some points, it does appear that language used is distinctly Queen's English which is not much in vogue (...you have become vainglorious) and therefore gives a break in the narrative because you do not expect that kind of language from a driver especially since the book has been written in spoken English rather than written English.

But net-net, the book is exceptional. I cannot say whether it deserved Booker or not, but having read some other Bookers, i can safely say that the prize is not undeserved.
Way to go Aravind. And if someone criticises, remember and repeat the words, "What a fucking joke!"

There is nothing like a well read man

2008-12-19T18:10:00.001-08:00

Now guys
what kindda feeling do u get when u see a very well read guy who freely quotes from wordsworth and browning?
Some of us wish we had also read all those classics so that when someone starts talking about the character of mrs. crappy-british-name, we can also chip in to say that it was her drinking/ backbiting/ sleeping habit that led to her fall in the book.... or more of such smart ass comments.
But who has the time to to read 465 page long novels where controller is spelt as comptroller and the hero is the son of a village square with all women anyway swooning for him while he buggers the maid's son?

So here is your chance to read all those classics in 1 hr flat. Amazing? not quite.
Go to this site http://rinkworks.com/bookaminute/classics.shtml
and click the link of your fav book.

Well... see this example. I always wanted to read Crime and Punishment By Fyodor Dostoevsky
This site makes it read like:
Raskolnikov

I'm so extraordinary, I can commit crimes. (kills some people)

Sonia

I'm the spiritual side of Raskolnikov.

Porfiry

I'm the intellectual side of Raskolnikov.

Raskolnikov

I have reconciled the two sides of my personality, represented so well by Sonia and Porfiry. (confesses)

END OF BOOK

Now dare you give me shit about Porfiry... i know she was the logical thinker who made raskolnikov do the crimes while sonia tried justification and renunciation alternately to help raskolnikov reconcile with his true, inner self...
SEE... there is nothing like a well read man

How Steven Spielberg fired my housemaid!

2008-10-25T03:46:00.000-07:00

It was a saturday afternoon.

Steven Spielberg movie was on TV. The kids were watching their own TV in the Lobby so i had turned on my bedroom TV. And of course, it was on full volume.

Wifey dear walks in. She wanted her a-noon siesta. I made faces. She promptly gave me space and said she'll lie down with my mom in her bedroom. Which she did. Mighty nice of her.

The kids saw her going in there and after their show was over, went there to lie down with her.
My mom has queen bed. Since all were not fitting in, she decided to lie down on the couch in the lobby. Very accommodative, I say.

Now our couch has some irregularity in its mattress coz i guess the kids have broken its material by incessantly jumping on it. Expectedly, mom developed a backache in 1 hr flat.

By the time Spielberg was over, it was nigh 4 pm, time for our maid to come to make tea. Well! she was a tad bit late. Just about 15 mins, let's say.

By the time she arrived, my mom, irritated by her displacement, irritating bed and the resultant nagging backache, pounced on her vehemently.
The maid offered a stoic response; 'who-cares' types.
Result: She was promptly fired coz 'she doesn't care about our chores anymore'

Someone once told me about the ripple effect of a butterfly batting her wings over amazon. Its gotta be true man.

The "plagiarism" that was the monk who sold his ferrari

2008-10-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

This was one book which i had missed reading when it had been released and i was rather keen on it. I have read the first 78 pages as yet, and surprise! surprise! i have already found two "plagiarised" phrases. Although i personally quote my favourite writers liberally when i write, but i usually try to provide reference to the original quote. (See this, too)
Robin didn't.

Kavya Vishwanathan was hung, drawn and quartered but Robin wasn't. Either coz no one found the phrases (unlikely) or because they are minor (hmmm!!)

One is the phrase where Robin writes about the whole universe conspiring to come together to fulfill your wishes. A direct pick from Alchemist. (Paulo Coelho has given a review of this book. So may be he gave permission.) (Om Shanti Om has also used this line in urdu. "Kahte hai,agar kisi cheez ko pure dil se chaho to puri kaynaat tumhe usse milane ki sajish me lag jati hai." and "Itni siddat se maine tume pane ki koshish ki hai ki har jarre ne mujhe tumse milane ki sajish ki hai. ") (Javed Akhter Sahib! Sun rahe hain? Humko maloom hai, aap masoom hai, per achchhe writers se bhi ho jaati hain galtiyaan, plagiarism se nahi aap mehroom hai)

The other is uncanny. It was, Your mind, use it or lose it. This bears uncanny resemblance to Bach's Perspective, use it or lose it (from Illusions). (Though i daresay that so much work of Bach itself appears to be translations from Geeta)

Let me finish the book first. then i'll talk more on this.

My Bookshelf

2008-09-29T02:11:00.000-07:00

Here is the list of books on my active bookshelf. It's a subset of the books that i possess and also a small fraction of books that i have read. Photography books are at the bottom.

Gandhi, CEO by Axelrod
Geeta by Lord krishna, Penned down by ISKCON
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Murakami
A case of exploding mangoes (Hanif, M)
Multimedia based Instructional Design
The Secret (R Byrne)
The Winner Stands Alone (P Coelho)
100 Years of solitude: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Siddhartha: Herman Hesse
Shantaram: Gregory Roberts
The Kite Runner- Khalid Hosseini
Kahlil Gibran's 12 books collection
Mein Kampf - Adolf Hitler
I am Ok, You are OK- Dr Harris
Midnight's Children- S Rushdie
The White Tiger Aravind Adiga
Mritjunjay
Poison in the Tale by Noel Keymer
Selected Short Stories
Layman’s guide to mutual funds
How to make money trading derivatives by Gujral
Advanced approaches to stock selection by Burner
Count your chickens before they hatch by Arindam Chaudhary
Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
The basics of speculating by Kreetz
Family Wisdom by Robin Sharma
Sights and Sounds of the world by Khushwant Singh
Living and working in Australia
Living and working in America
Women, love and lust by Khushwant Singh
Natural remedies by Dhar
Seven best books- RD review
One by R Bach
Illusions by R Bach
Notes to Myself by Hugh Prather
One Minute manager
Outlook Traveller Mumbai
Times Goa Guide
Fury by Salman Rushdie
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Jane Eyre
Emma
Little Women
The Negotiator – Forsyth
If Tomorrow comes- Sheldon
Among the Chatterati- Gahlaut
The Catcher in The Rye- JD Salinger
Jonathan Livingston Seagull- Bach
Catch-22 Joseph Heller
Jeffrey Archer’s complete short stories
The Sucker Punch- JH Chase
Short Stories- RD Collection
Double Sin- Agatha Christie
Living and working in London
First Among Equals- Archer
All Things wise and wonderful- James HErriot
The writers’ handbook 2003
The complete long stories of Sherlock Holmes- Sir AC Doyle
Asylum USA- Boman Desai
Bridget Jones’ Diary- Helen Fielding
Prophecies of Nostradamus
They came to Baghdad – A Christie
Bartholomew Fair Murders- Tourney
First Light – Peter Ackroyd
Chess Master
See Jack Run- Mills
Hospital- Arthur Hailey
Skeptical Essays- Bertrand Russel
Trusted like a fox- JH Chase
Who moved my cheese
A soldier’s diary- Harry Baweja
Inscrutable Americans- Anurag MAthur
Making the Minister Smile- : ”
Chess- end games
Chicken soup for the romantic soul
Short stories of Chekhov, Maupassant, O Henri, Saki
Fish
Man and his stages of life
The art of counselling- Rollo May
Games People play- Eric Berne
The Road Less Travelled- Scott
Personel excellence
One Minute sales person
You can Negotiate anything
Socialite Evenings- Shobha De
Surviving Men – Shobha de
The story of my experiments with truth- MK Gandhi
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintainence- Robert Pirsig
The Monk who sold his Ferrari- Robin Sharma
A beautiful mind
A Story of Light
Breakthrough Business Negotiation-Corner-Wiley
Cosmic Catastrophes
Darwin in the Genome
Dragon Bone Hill
The_Goal- E_M_Goldratt_-_
Earthtime
Evolution of Death
The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka -
German Made easy
How to win friends and influence people-Dale Carnegie
HumanEvolution
The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini -
Can You Keep a Secret Kinsella Sophie
Moby Dick
Tech analysis A-Z by steven achilles
The Osterman Weekend
TWILIGHT
Liza of Lambeth- S Maugham
Of Human bondage- S Maugham
The moon and six pence
Deltaneutral e-book on derivatives
A guide to business analysis BOK
Adam Bede
Crime and punishment
Edgar Rice burroughs
The man who knew TooMuch- POE
Ulysses- James Joyce
Barrie's PeterPan
Great Expectations
Far from the madding crowd Thomas HArdy
Mayor of the casterbridge Hardy
HEART OF THE WEST BY O'HENRY
JANE EYRE.pdf
Kipling_JungleBook
Maupassant_Story
OPTIONS BY O HENRY
Paradise_Lost_ Milton
Poe complete works
POEMS
ROADS OF DESTINY BY O HENRY
THE GENTLE GRAFTER BY O HENRY
THE PROFESSOR BY C BRONTE
TWO SHORT PIECES BY C BRONTE
Vanity_Fair William MAkepeace Thackeray
VOICE OF THE CITY BY O HENRY
WHIRLGIGS BY O HENRY
WUTHERING HEIGHTS BY EMILY BRONTE
THINK AND GROW RICH BY NAPOLEAN HILL
Quantum Fields theory
Writers' guideline
Kama sutra e-book
Snapshots - Shobha De
Shock Treatment- JH Chase
Way for a shroud - JH Chase

Photography Books

Encyclopedia of digital photography
Digital Photography
Making more of colour
Photography- OP Sharma
50 Photoshop Tips - Computer Arts
A Short Course in Digital Photography
Digital Camera Magazine - Complete Photography Guide - Master Composition
Digital Camera World - Complete Photography Guide - Master Colour
Digital Photography - Tips & Tricks
Digital Photography Expert Techniques
Digital Photography my collection
Digital Photography
Outdoor Photographer - 20 Landscape Tips Photography
Photography_Fundamentals
Shoot Like a Pro - Digital Photography Techniques

Coming Shortly

2008-09-28T00:19:00.000-07:00

My Software Collection

My Music Collection

2008-09-27T23:51:00.000-07:00

I am mentioning only the Names of artists i have here. Mostly i have the most famous albums. In case you wish to exchange music from me, come to. Some special songs have been mentioned in parenthesis. $$-very good

Beatles
Love songs (Every breath you take, Sacrifice, Lady in Red)
Bob Dylan (Three unreleased albums)
Bon Jovi, Best of
Brian Silas (Piano, 0ld Hindi songs)
Chet Atkins and MArk Knopffler (Neck n Neck) $$
Crossby, Stills, Nash and Young (3 albums, Best of)
Dire Straits (Best of, all famous works actually) $$
Elvis Presley, best of
Eng Fast, contemporary
Grateful Dead
JJ Cale
John Lennon (Imagine)
Kenny Rogers (42 songs, best of)
Lobo, BEst of
MeatLoaf (Bat out of hell)
Mementos (Old songs, Bangles, Louis Armstrong etc)
Prince (2 albums, best of)
Rod Stewart (2 Alb. Some guys have all the luck, Reason to believe, Rhythm of my heart)
Simon & Garfunkel (Bridge over Troubled water, El condor pasa, Boxer, best stuff)
Pink Floyd, The Wall 1, 2
Smokie (Living next door to alice )
Tracy Chapman (3 albums, Fast Car, Talkin' 'bout a revolution)
George Michael- Wham!
Jagjeet Singh, my custom collection
Random songs (Hindi+Eng contemporary)
Bruce Springsteen
Deep Purple
Eagles
Golden Greats
Millenium Hits
That thing you do- album
Great Duest Hindi- $$
LAtest MP3- (Ajnabee etc)
Nusrat FAteh Ali Khan Sufi qawwali
Soundscapes
Umrao Jaan
Saath Saath
Vivaldi- 4 seasons
Elton John
Eric Clapton
Phil Collins
Old Hindi MP3
All Time ASHA hits: 1.1 GB of pure bliss $$
George Michael, BEst of
Summer Album (Ketchup song)
Country Songs (non-stop-70)
DJ PArty Time
Non-stop Kishore Kumar
Country Song collection
Bolton Michael
Love Songs collection
Hazaron mein ek collection
Fourmat-3, contemporary english
Abba
Bee-Gees
Jethro Tull
Sting
AFMC Day- poora freak out mixed collection
QSQT
My Rock Collection
pink floyd1
pink floyd 2
Beatles
Bonjovi
ELVIS -- THE ESSENTIAL COLLECTION
BONJOVI--CRUSH
Bruce greatest hits
Best Of Lobo
Desert Grove
Best of queen
Best of Daler Mehndi
Vengaboys
Adnan Sami- KAbhi to nazar milao
A R Rehman, best of
Ghulaam Ali, best of
Bazaar
Super hit Hindi collection
20 Country songs

My Movie Collection

2008-09-27T23:28:00.000-07:00

$ Good, worth the money
$$ Favourite

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid- $$
Body Of lies
Fahrenheit 9-11
Shoot On sight
The Graduate$$
UFOs-The true Story; History Channel
The Lost worlds- Palenque
The Lost Worlds- Knights Templar; History
The Lost worlds; Atlantis; History
The Lost worlds: Egyptian world
The Lost worlds: Athens Supercity
The lost worlds: Secret cities- A-Bomb
The lost worlds: Supercities by Hitler
The Lost Worlds: Kama Sutra
The Lost Worlds: Ivan's Fortresses
The Lost Worlds: Sin City of west
The Lost Worlds: Pirates of the carribean
The Lost Worlds: Churchill's Secret Bunkers
The Lost Worlds: Al Capone's Secret City
The Lost Worlds: City of Armageddon
The Lost worlds: Jekyll And Hyde
Erin Brokovich
Hancock
Mongol
American Pie
Waterhorse
In Bluges
The Philadelphia Experiment (Documentary)
Pirates of the Silicon Valley
Lost Empire- $$
Looney Tunes- $$
Snow White- $$
GodFather $$
GodFather 2
GodFather 3
Scent of a Woman- $$$$
A street car named desire
Michael Jackson Video collection
Ice Age- $$
Drona
Fashion
Kidnap
Golmaal returns
Yoga CD1, 2
Dil to pagal hai
Wellcome
Ugli aur Pagli-DVD
Johnny Gaddar- $$
Dhol
Dhamaal
Agaar
Buddha Mer Gaya
Chak de India
Dus Kahaniyaan- $$
Om Shaanti Om
Aaja Nachle
Goal
Saawaria
Bunty aur Babli
Kya Kool hai Hum
Kaal
Mai aisa hi hoon
Return Of Hanuman
Dil Dosti Etc
Laga Chunari mein daag- $$
Jab we met
Bhool Bhulaiiya
No Smoking
Halla Bol
Ganesha
Hey Baby
Cars
Rock on
The Last Lear- $$
Singh is King
Dilwale Dulhaniya le jaayenge
1920
Rubaru
Hijack
A Wednesday
Hari Puttar
RAfoo Chakker
Phoonk
C-Company
Scream and Die*
Naked Lies*
For your eyes only ***
Rolling Thunder ***

Out of mind...

2008-09-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

You are no longer the first thing i think of in the morning.

Though sometimes i forget that you have died within me.

How can i believe you anymore?

2008-09-10T08:48:00.000-07:00

Even if I listened long enough to you
I wonder if i'd find a way to believe that it's all true
Knowing that you lied
straight-faced,
while I cried
Still I look to find a reason to believe you
And i find myself, staring blankly, at nothing at all...

Flexi Brain

2008-08-27T02:19:00.000-07:00

Opening Scene:
The crypts of human mind are perhaps the most enigmatic of all the natural phenomenon.

When people talked about soul, they talked about self-awareness (This is MY interpretaion. Need not be accurate) And because of this self-awareness we were placed at a higher notch than animals because animals survive on instinct (simple flow chart program).

Scene shift to personal life:
How much does this awareness help in day to day survival?
I am aware of my short-comings. But what do i do to overcome them? People may argue that action is in your hands; to which i agree, but i want to say that awareness perhaps makes you aware of certain needs. It need not necessarily push you to overcome them. There you again go instinctive.

Existentialist interpretation of life, as my interpretations of Kierkegaard (Pro:keek-gaw) and Nietzsche, has been my pillar for years where i have always looked at religion and morality as something meant for that class of humanity which either lacks the ability to think for itself or is unwilling to do so.
But my failure comes from the facts that where as i have never believed in religion and morality, i have been let down time and again by people who i need to interact with and they have firm belief in such things.

Man is not an island. Born free, i am free to maintain my own philosophy. But how do i ensure that these popular ways of living, where life is a no-brainer and must be lived from birth to death in a pre-defined manner, do not step on to my toes?

Most of my personal failures can be attributed to my complete lack of ability to take into account what religion and morality means for other people and how strongly it interferes in their rational thinking process. I have found several people who share my point of view in principle and enjoy my company, just before getting up and saying "i have been enjoying your company thoroughly but i am sorry, i ahve to go for evening prayers, which i have never missed"

My grudge is that neither religion nor morality can be logically argued against. Years of faith, bringing up and brainwashing has lead to generations and generations of humans who follow the norms, instinctively.

Are we still fit to be categorised above animals if most of us have lost our ability to think rationally and get guided by pre-defined principles?

Mediocrities cannot understand when a man does not blindly subjugate himself to hereditary prejudices but genuinely uses his intelligence.
(Adapted from Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence. - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

)

Chasing Happiness

2008-08-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

Happiness is a selfish feeling

It's selfish because it is something so highly personal that no one else can feel it but you. You may spread it across, yes, but even spreading happiness is actually an act of perpetuating that happiness for oneself.

So chasing happiness is usually the biggest driver to do anything.
This includes religious, moral and philanthropic work. This also includes making friends, falling in love etc.

If you fall in love, you are chasing happiness. If the whole act of love, starts begetting pain, is it worth chasing love anymore?

Dil Dhoondta hai phir wahi, fursat ke raat din...

2008-08-14T02:30:00.001-07:00

Baithe rahein tassavur-e-jaana kiye huye

Sometimes i feel i suffer from manic depressive behaviour. When i am very happy, i also start getting depressed; perhaps to compensate that extra happiness.

Sometimes we used to see in movies about a man or woman who always maintains a happy facade when in public but you can see through him if you watch him in the intervening seconds during conversation. Her jovial guard used to drop and pain or loneliness used to be visible for a fraction of a second, like the colourful truck you can see on the opposite side of the railtrack while the train is speeding past you. Hint of a glimpse and yet you can make out what exactly is it. And somehow that truck which appears infinitely attractive when watched from the intervening bogeys of the speedy trains suddenly looks very ordinary when the train passes away. Same happens with the facade of happiness. How many times will i need to recognise that that face is none but my own? Yet i see it every time I think that i have just solved the mystery of this cryptic face.

There was once a song:
People say I'm the life of the party
Because I tell a joke or two
Although I might be laughing loud and hearty
Deep inside I'm blue
So take a good look at my face
You'll see my smile looks out of place
If you look closer, it's easy to trace
The tracks of my tears..
I need you, need you

The need for human company has been so strange with me that at times i have been gregarious beyond compare while other times have seen me become reclusive to the extent of sitting alone in a locked room with lights switched off; not for pleasure but due an internal cringe at being exposed to light.

And yet, the biggest stimulants have been humans. I have been a gadget freak, reading freak, music freak and yet... nothing really compares to agreeable human company where hours can pass without knowing the difference. The catch word though, is agreeable. And that, like good guitarists, has been difficult to find.

I have been lucky for the past 34 rains to have good company every now and then, but the internal call for someone to enter my soul and see me for what i am remains unfulfilled. It is, to some extent, the soul's wish to strip and run naked in front of someone, who will be able to tolerate the nudity of my soul. And accept it for what it is.

Another wish, unfulfilled, as yet.

Hazaron khwahishein aisi ki her khwahish pe dum nikle
bahut nikle mere armaan lekin, phir bhi kum nikle
nikalna khuld se aadam ka sunte aaye hain lekin
bahut be-aabroo hokar tere kooche se hum nikle

The Indian Rajasthani Girl dance

2008-07-12T06:40:00.000-07:00

We went to Sanskruti, a picnic spot on Sholapur road, near Pune today.
At 1000 bucks for entry fee for a family with 2 adults+2 kids, i was a li'l skeptic about whether it'll be worth it or not. But later we realised that this included goodies inside like snacks, lunch (which was grand, BTW) and small shows like magic show, puppet, rajasthani dance etc.
Overall, i think it was worth it.
But the cake goes to a li'l gal about 8-9 years old who danced on OSO number. She was good in my opinion. Make your own opinion by seeing this video.

VIDEO

The Great Indian Dog Trick

2008-07-05T21:47:00.000-07:00

5th July 2008
NIBM Road

A Pomeranian was made to jump thru 5 feet high loops. Equivalent of a man jumping thru 15 feet high loops.

Then it was made to sit on increasingly smaller tin cans, the last one being just bigger than a coke can. A dog sitting on a coke can!!

Vodafone and their Pug were victimized for lesser. But what about this?
Are animal cruelty associations interested in real stuff or merely using the facade to target corporate giants who can possibly cough-up money to keep their trap shut.

You decide. See the video.

Regrettably Indian

2008-06-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

Oh! the duality of survival.

Once i heard a joke about a man painting his car half blue and half white. Reason: "If i meet with an accident, the witnesses will be grossly confused whether it was a white car or blue car." It appears silly but this dichotomy has been shown in our mythology in the form of ArdhNareeshwar, too, where the god is half man and half woman.

Coming to the dualities in my life. Two things deserve highlighting. My marriage and my country.

Take marriage first.
Before my marriage, i had an image about myself as a benign guy. One who minds his own business, does not meddle into other people's affairs, is not malicious to anyone and in general, follows the 'live and let live' policy.
12 months into marriage and my wife had decoded these for me.
One who minds his own business= utterly selfish
does not meddle into other people's affairs= doesn't care about anyone
not malicious to anyone= completely passive
follows the live and let live policy= lacks killer instinct
In general, my image in my own eyes now is that of a self-centred, selfish loser.

Take my country now.
I had always seen it as a giant who was in chains till 60 years ago; Was humiliated, raped and bludgeoned into abject poverty by the British. After independence, the giant became somewhat introverted, as expected from a man scorned, and consolidated itself for 4 decades improving its own economy and infrastructure.
After that, having gained adequate confidence, it opened itself up to the world. And in a short while it became a global force to reckon with.
Then came the foreigners to do trade with us. They sent their citizens on ex-pat assignments to work in India for steering the businesses.
One decade of ex-pats and the image of my country has been painted as a country with bad traffic, corrupt police, money minded disloyal employees, lack of original thinkers and in general, a nation of suckers.

I do not know which image to believe in, in both cases- marriage and nation.
-a selfish loser (me), and a giant that sucks (India)? Is that all that i am/ we are?

And these judgements have come from people who have spent miniscule time with the subject of the judgement, have seen things with colored goggles and worse, are not even aware of the magnitude of the capabilities of their subject. And yet they pass judgement.

Sleeping habits of Akbar

2008-06-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

(Explicit content. Reader discretion advised)

It was a coincidence that I was reading Khushwant Singh's comments about Akbar when Jodha Akbar was released. KS says:

Akbar never slept with any woman twice. Jodha was the only exception. He was also known to take a virgin to bed every full moon night.

This started the following chain of thought. Historians have labelled Akbar as a just king, running a welfare state. Thinking from his subjects' perspective, it would be a tough call for the men of his kingdom to let their virgin daughters or sisters be whisked away regularly for the king's pleasure. In what situation would this be allowed and yet the king be viewed as a benevolent one? Three possibilities come to my mind:

1. The King was autocratic and refusal to serve women would result in death or imprisonment etc. But this would be a police state then, more like Aurangzeb's rather than Akbar's; So this appears unlikely

2. The second possibility is that the men were bribed with seriously obnoxious amount of money to allow their women for king's pleasure. This appears a far cry, too because Akbar did not need to please them for something that he could forcefully acquire.

3. The third and the most likely possibility in my opinion is that in such situations, the state sponsored propaganda usually did a lot of help. The formal deflowering of women through the king would be portrayed as an elite ritual, out of reach for the commons. Since he did it, apparently, only once a month, the men would practically start booking slots to get their women the elite status of having been deflowered by the King. And even women have been known to suck up to this kind of stunt. (Ref 'Mirch Masala' where a woman goading Smita Patil to sleep with Naseer says: "Our own menfolk are weak but He is strong and a real Man. He alone is capable of making a woman feel like one. No wonder he's the boss of our menfolk")

This is nothing unprecedented. In certain African tribes, it was common for the village head or the priest to publicly deflower women who were married into the tribe. So if Akbar capitalised on this propaganda, it was nothing novel. But it certainly lowered my opinion of him.

It also triggered the thought that was this the reason why Hindus started marrying their daughters at pre-pubertal age so as to get them out of the 'virgin' ambit? Were such weird practices of kings responsible for the practice of child-marriage? I am not sure but it may have been contributory, if not causative.

On a lighter side, I was wondering what did he use to do for the remaining 27 days of the lunar cycle. With his self-imposed restriction of not sleeping with anyone twice, Jodha was the only option. And she too, was entitled to a few headaches every month, wasn't she? So perhaps even the king was left to amuse himself using time old male pastime on weeknights.

Closest friend

2008-06-08T07:48:00.000-07:00

Khushwant Singh is perhaps the only writer whom i would have deigned to befriend. Unfortunately he was born a good about five decades before me and is a grumpy old man now. His self confessed "I am not a nice man to know" is perhaps a calculated disarming strategy, but it's brilliant all the same.

I find him as acerbic as i like to think I am; and yet as self effacing as one needs to be to put across a point without appearing involved in it. His calm acceptance of his limitations as a writer and his equally confident declaration of those names of Indian Literature who he thinks are below him, is perhaps the result of years of introspection and self-examination. The result is a completely calm view on oneself as if one can watch oneself from a height and pass judgments.

And his open love for wine, and even opener acceptance of constantly being in awe of feminine beauty are something that i've found in myself repeatedly; though my confessions have been more candid.

The only point where he loses respect is when his articles appear colored in his religious prejudice when it comes to Sikhism. Even there, it's only human that he has used the power of his pen to elucidate something which he felt from his heart but i feel a little restrain there could have taken him miles ahead in my eyes.

Even though someone said that the hottest thing he ever slept with was his water bottle, KS remains the guy whom i would have loved to have as a friend.

E-2 Mini Re-union

2008-04-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

SO it came to pass that e-2 iites were doing MOJC for sometime at Pune now and a good about 30-35 of them were here. So a bash was on the cards.

Apna Micro-Surd Dippy Gulati took the initiative to host everybody at his home. His enchanting son and gracious wife made it a moemorable affair.

I got in a little late reaching Micro's Victoria Road residence and most were 'chitt' by then. I don't, and can't, remember all of them who were there, but will still try to list amap: [Those i forget, pls don't think i think lesser of you; just that memory is not what it used to be :( ]

Dilpreet and wife Beenu
Rajneesh agarwal & wife
Rajput & wife
DK
Don
CS Pant
Gandhi
s karthik
Amit Sreen
Ankit mathur
Panda
Bihari
Amit K Das
K Jyoti
Kullu
Atul Gupta
Sasikanth
Roy
Rathore
sahu pk
Tejomurthalla Venkat Sathya Venu Gopal Krishna Tilak (I love spelling his name out)
Gill
KK Bhatt .....and many more, including yours truly.

Dippy served chivas in a regal decanter and none knew the limits :)

Panda held court most of the time regaling his escapades of college days.

Food was served by 11 i guess and we kind of loot-oed the house.... or may be ransacked Beenu's kitchen. But she was admirably up to the task. every time we finished a dish or the cutlery etc. and hoped her to shrug her shoulders, she'd do a houdini and come up with more. I hogged after a long time and i MEAN hogged.

Sweet dish was rogered mercilessly by all of us; including Behari who started eating from the bowl itself. see pics. And then guys had such Bonhomie that people were seen feeding each other with dessert bites... OOH! La! La!

Quality of pix is regretted coz they are from my fone and shot without flash. For full size fotos, click on the slide show.

Done with dessert, someone discovered ice cream in the fridge. This was hacked to pieces within minutes. Till now, Dippy and beenu had not had a morsel of anything :(

I offered them khichdi from leftovers at my house :)

Suddenly the ladies realised that next item on the table would be ice-cubes from ice tray and perhaps that was sufficient to call it a day.

We split at 0030 on the next day but not before everyone had hearty hugs, good byes and dippy's cute son was given a joy ride in the car for putting up with us louts late thru the night

Good Fun, for E-2 and after a long time too.

STRONG Tech Support

2008-04-08T00:04:00.000-07:00

SuperMac records a certain number of technical support calls at random, to keep tabs on customer satisfaction. By wild "luck", they managed to catch the following conversation on tape.

Some poor SuperMac TechSport got a call from some middle level official..from the legitimate government of Trinidad. The fellow spoke very good English, and fairly calmly described the problem.

It seemed that there was a coup attempt in progress at that moment. However, the national armoury for that city was kept in the same building as the Legislature, and it seems that there was a combination lock on the door to the armoury. Of the people in the capitol city that day, only the

Chief of the Capitol Guard and the Chief Armourer knew the combination to the lock, and they had already been killed.

So, this officer of the government of Trinidad continued, the problem is this. The combination to the lock is stored in a file on the Macintosh , but the file has been encrypted with the SuperMac product called Sentinel. Was there any chance, he asked, that there was a "back door" to the application, so they could get the combination, open the armoury door, and defend the Capitol Building and the legitimately elected government of Trinidad against the insurgents?

All the while he is asking this in a very calm voice, there is the sound of gunfire in the background. The Technical Support guy put the person on hold. A phone call to the phone company verified that the origin of the call was in fact Trinidad. Meanwhile, there was this mad scramble to see if anybody knew of any "back doors" in the Sentinel program.

As it turned out, Sentinel uses DES to encrypt the files, and there was no known back door. The Tech Support fellow told the customer that aside from trying to guess the password, there was no way through Sentinel, and that they'd be better off trying to physically destroy the lock.

The official was very polite, thanked him for the effort, and hung up. That night, the legitimate government of Trinidad fell. One of the BBC reporters mentioned that the casualties seemed heaviest in the capitol, where for some reason, there seemed to be little return fire from the government forces.

Note from SB: The incident of a coup appears authentic; I have not verified the support story though.

2008-04-03T01:42:00.000-07:00

TE Pune: Prize Distribution ceremony held by TEETA

TEETA held the prize distribution ceremony on 27/03/2008 at 04.45 pm at TE Pune Terrace for the winners. Guest for the ceremony was Michael Waldbrenner, Director Global Sourcing HC&W India.

Dr Saurabh Bhatia was given the prize for winning the chess tournament held at TEI, Pune.

The great indian self-esteem

2008-03-29T02:42:00.000-07:00

I am sure most of you are familiar with those small 'Burger Mail' joints; small pick-up truck converted into a mobile burger joint. They do good business.

It so happened that i was standing at one of them, eating a burger when this Firang walks up to it and orders a burger. He was probably a European, as he was poor at both Hindi and English. Almost immediately he got his burger; But before eating it he ordered another one. Fine, till now.

When he finished the first burger, he started to crane his neck left/right to look for a dustbin to dispose the used paper plate & napkin. He was standing on the starboard side of the vehicle while dustbins are kept at port side. I was about to show him where the dustbin was when the counter guy promptly offered to take his used plate in his hands and threw it away for him. (No tray, mind you). Then he handed him the second burger.

Now he'd never have done this for any of Indians. When i had been there first time around, even i had difficulty locating the bin; but he had promptly shown me where it was; But never did i see him taking someone's refuse and disposing it himself.

But soon he got what he deserved. The moment our Firang finished his second burger, he promptly handed back the refuse to the counter guy once again. Had he not discovered the bin by now, considering that at least 5-6 other patrons, including me, had used it buy then?

I would not like to write what message to take home from this. Every one must take home their own interpretation.
But I'd certainly like to ask that when will we start respecting ourselves?

Review: Shifting from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

2008-03-27T08:19:00.000-07:00

Review: Shifting from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon
A USER'S PERSPECTIVE

How long will i have to dump perfectly fine laptops/desktops just coz Billy boy's bloatware requires increasingly heavy hardware; not to mention increasingly heavy paycheck for the OS.
I have been using various flavours of Linux since 1999 as a USER (and not as a geek)
But sorry to say that for a windows power-user like me, it was really difficult to migrate.
Add to it the need to go to the c-prompt terminal for rather small things.

So when Ashish lately assured me of the goods that Ubuntu delivers, I decided to give it a try.
And i am penning down my own experience here. Some glitches that i mention may appear silly to Geeks who can solve them instantly by typing some gobbledegook on the terminal. But these issues are real for a normal windows user.
So those of you who can solve the issues i have mentioned, please mail them to me/write comments on this blog about how to solve them. Those of you who are contemplating this migration, i hope it helps. If you do not find the critical application you use and want me to experiment on it in LINUX for you, feel free to write a comment on this.

This document determines the feasibility of completely migrating to Linux from Windows.Understandably this document evaluates if applications similar to those in Windows are available and are actually usable in Linux. This alone determines if working in Linux full time is feasible or not.
This my personal experience and i am no techie. So if I can do some stuff, any one can do it.
On this page you'll also find links to

Instalingl Linux Ubuntu
Transition guide and installing common softwares on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10

Click on this to read-Review: Shifting from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon

Cardiac rehab video

2008-03-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

Dr Saurabh Bhatia launching...

2008-03-15T22:56:00.000-07:00

Dr Saurabh Bhatia launching the new website for KWMPA, Pune

A must see video

2008-02-09T00:32:00.000-08:00

How-to-put-on-a-bra

This video is a MUST see.
It's not really adult but avoid seeing it at workplace.

Ever thrown out of a house?

2008-01-28T02:29:00.001-08:00

Let's call him JB.
'Twas friday evening and i was leaving workplace early when he accosted me and asked me to drop him near a cinema hall. He would then walk down to his house. I agreed. We made small talk while i drove. He told me that he's rushing so that he could take his family to attend a function where his kids were singing and all. Meanwhile his wife called him and asked him to hurry up. In his hurry to reach home, and this is my conjecture, he asked me to take a detour and drop him to his house instead. But what he said was that he wanted me to see his house and have coffee over there. I refused politely stating that they have to rush to the concert.

Once we reached his house he insisted on my coming in. I gave way. Once inside, there was no one in sight. He called for his wife, to no response. He proceeded to show me around in his 5 bedroom house. Meanwhile his parents turned up, all decked up to go. JB completely forgot about the coffee and i didn't want to have it either. It took him around 15 mins to show me around. The moment we were back in living room, he asked me to have a cold-drink, a home made sherbet. Now i am really finicky about the source of water i consume and was having a sore throat too. So i refused. He insisted thrice. I saw that he was beginning to feel a little hurt that i was refusing repeatedly. Somehow this got me and i blurted "I'd rather have something warm than a cold drink". "Tea?", he asked, and i acquiesced.

JB asked his mom to prepare tea for us while we settled on the living room sofa. Moments later his wife rushed in, visibly severe and angry. She saw me but did not acknowledge me. (After all I am so insignificant anyway). She gave JB a severe look and shot off in their local dialect, of which, contrary to popular belief, i CAN catch most phrases. She demeaned him initially for being late, then for turning up with a friend, then for not being there to drop the kids in advance for the function and then for sitting on his ass talking to a totally unimportant friend(me). Thankfully JB still thinks that all that was gibberish to me.

In reply to this, a blushing JB told her to carry on while he has tea with me. God save the guy from the look his wife gave him. She stormed out of the main door, just as JB's mom was serving tea to us. I knew the faux pas had been made, but i'd rather be at the receiving end of the faux pas instead of doing it myself. I again protested to JB that we shouldn't have had tea and he protested back as to why not.

Then both of us silently busied ourselves taking quick gulps of HOT tea so as to finish it fast. During this, JB's parents also exited thru the main door and went to sit and wait in the car. I was really desperate to go away now. Soon my mug was half and JB's 2/3 finished. Just then or presumably then, his wife came in front of the main door and, at full volume, screeched "JayBeeeeeeeeeeeee".....and this was like the police siren to a bunch of criminals. JB shot out of his seat, picked up my unfinished tea-cup, unfinished, and literally threw both tea cups in the sink. I had stood up by then and he almost shoved me out of the main door, apologising profusely for shoving me out of the house. I didn't even know what to say, so i said "i told ya, man..."
We received that cold stare outside again while both JB and I hurried to our respective cars. Even before i could reverse, JB had left the premises with them.
I came home laughing at myself.
I wonder if JB had that luxury, too.

Gandhi

2008-01-27T23:29:00.000-08:00

As a kid, we were taught about Gandhi in school. In much the same way we are taught religion and God at Home. With unquestionable reverence.

No questions should be asked. The anecdotes are authentic. and the Greatness proven. So just accept the fact that he was Great; a Mahatma. And bend your head in respect whenever he is mentioned; and put a 'ji' after his name whenever you speak it. Don't say Gandhi, but 'Gandhiji'.

As a teenager, when one tends to think one can think, one tries to break the shackles of convention. So adolescence heralds skepticism and even iconoclasm sometimes; like in my case. I had read 'My experiments with truth' when I could not make head or tail of it. Only part that confirmed my suspicions about his vulnerability were when he described the death of his father. To the chagrin of my parents, I always remained anti-Gandhi. Retrospectively perhaps i may say that the real pleasure was probably to hold views that were against the conventional views of my parents. This is usually normal when one tends to find one's own identity.

Over the years, i have read innumerable things about Gandhi. I have seen Richard Attenborrough's rendition of Gandhi and have even critiqued how Ben Kingsley portrayed him. I have re-read some parts of his book though, i'll confess, i did not find time to go thru it fully again.

It has taken me so many years to "realize" what was taught, by rote in school, that he was a great man. But the difference is that today it is my own opinion and not someone else's opinion pushed down my gullet. And secondly, perhaps you yourself need to attain a certain level of maturity before you begin to comprehend the enormity of Gandhi's approach.

And lastly, you have to be at a stage where you are not fighting with yourself to determine who you are. Somehow this makes you more amenable to accept others, too.

Somehow I am feeling like a grown up today.

Time Flies

2008-01-27T07:38:00.000-08:00

Time flies.
What does that phrase mean.

Can time stand still?
Theoretically, time moves at the same speed forever.
The proof :
Under the International System of Units, the second is currently defined as the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.^[1] This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K (absolute zero). The ground state is defined at zero magnetic field.

So time moves at the same speed forever.
Flying of time is Perception.
Which varies, dependoing on the kind of time you are having.
A minute with your buddies or a minute with your Boss.

Depends.

Lead India, Please

2007-10-05T23:56:00.000-07:00

"Since I had been invited as a member of the jury, Madhu & I drove about 30 kilometers to attend the Lead India Contest on 05th October 2007 at Wakad, Pune. I adjudged them along with about 15 more jury members and about seven Judges. None of the contestants came close to my idea of leadership. Everyone spoke about either what he/she would do or what he/she thinks is wrong with the system. No one spoke about the concept of leadership itself; which in my opinion would be to be the person to guide the masses to uplift themselves, and not profess willingness to shoulder the onus of development and welfare single handedly. None, except Rabinder, came close to that. You can also watch the videos of them speaking which i shot personally. All videos are in flash but around 5-6 MB. So better to right click on the links and save them to play unless you have a really fast net-connection." see it at New Page 1

A road less travelled

2007-08-10T03:03:00.000-07:00

This came up in response to this post of Neeta.
I am not quoting verbatim but narrating from 'A road less travelled'.
The writer(W) went to his Dean and told him about the problem he was facing in working with patients. Most of his colleagues used to adopt shortcut methods and dispose patients quickly. consequently they had a lot of time on their hands. But the writer used to see his patients more regularly and for a longer hour, too. result: he was strapped for time and had work-life imbalance.

On hearing his woes, his Dean said "I see that you have a problem"

Then W said what should he do.

The Dean repeated his words and again went back to his work.

W was enraged and he asked again. The Dean turned his head up and said "you did not hear me clearly. I said you had a problem"

Later it dawned on W about what the Dean had said.

The dean had said, whatever you do in life, whther it is eating something specific, living at a place, working a certain work etc....you do them because you actively chose to do them. Even though you complain about the inconvenience, still you do what you do because it was your number one choice fromavailable options.

Could you have gone back to live in the jungle, you would have.

You didn't. this was an active choice. You pine for it is different. Kids pine for moon.
But the fact that you are here is because the sum total of all your experiences, your wishes and your ambitions dictate you to stay here and not in the jungle.

Ownership

2007-06-28T11:14:00.000-07:00

Ownership.
Conversation with Neeta prompted the chain of thoughts towards the concept of ownership. So here thinketh I.
I don't know how many of you were around when 'Sukhram' happened in India. (He was a minister who was found with loads of cash stashed everywhere at home). But the interesting part was a 'Middle' written by Jug Suraiya (TOI) about him. Had i been able to reproduce it, it'd have sufficed; but I can't so I'll pontificate myself.

There has been a view about the children who have constipation. They apparently have a difficulty in 'letting go' of their stools. They unconsciously feel that this is a part of them (something they own) which is being severed and they will end up being a lesser being once this thing (in this case-their feces) is taken away from them. This instinctual behaviour probably arises from some inherent or conditional insecurity; but this is a major trait that will shape this individual's personality later on. This dependence upon 'owning' something to feel in control can be devastating.(extreme examples being Hitler, Harshad Mehta, Sukhram etc.)

But in general, all humans and all animals tend to define themselves as per their ownership. Animals 'own' areas and demarcate boundaries with pheromones while humans tend to rets their self-esteem upon their possessions. So much so that social heirarchy depends upon having or not-having something. So ownership esentially emanates from instincts of survival which may be important in defining one's position in the pack, one's self-esteem and consequent confidence level and , the biggest, the feeling of being in control in at least a small environment.

Ownership means a lot.

Freedom fighters

2007-06-19T23:53:00.000-07:00

Freedom fighters

This has nothing to do with years of Ghulami (slavery) which led us to be in a state of constant alert and produced freedom fighters. This is about the Babudom which post-independence India created which resulted in a new variety of freedom fighters- the ones that wanted everything free and fought if they were made to pay for anything. So they fought for their freebies which effectively made them freedom fighters.

Start with Police- everyone’s favourite punching bag. They want things for free right from a free ride on your bike, to free intercity hikes on trucks, to free bhaaji (grocery) from the grocer, free shoe polish and the list goes on. Higher up we have IAS who want free house, free car etc. Not satisfied, they want free passes to theatre and shows, free chicken from neighborhood Qasai, and once again, the list would be endless.

And then you have the politicians who practically never earn anything. Spend their lives on freedom.

But not to be outdone it’s the masses that have taken to this freedom. They want free medicine, free treatments, free trains, freedom to run businesses without paying a penny, free electricity, free water, free roadside accommodation and free education. And the worst part is that the government intends to provide them with.

IS it not true that freebies are the most looked-down upon items? Why do we feel that just because we are born in India, the government is responsible for seeing that we live life king size? Why do we not want to pay for services?

I feel this expectation that government will do everything for us and we’ll just watch the fun while voting once every 5 years that is pulling this country down. Until we relinquish our desire of this type of freedom, we’d remain where we are.

On being an Indian

2007-06-13T03:02:00.001-07:00

On being an Indian

Strange things can happen. In fact they usually happen. Like being a very happy and satisfied soul lurking in heaven and then discovering suddenly that it’s your turn to take birth as a human. You may choose between Caucasian, Afro-American, Latin American or Chinese.

Stranger things happen if you are a soul with a bad track record lurking in jails of heaven waiting for the sentence. Suddenly you discover that your sentence consists of being born as an almost human. Your choice lies between being born in Bihar, Andhra or West Bengal. If you file a plea for mercy, you may be allowed Delhi or Mumbai but that is as good as it gets.

So your Hard-disk has been formatted, your RAM is minimum, your BIOS flashed and you have been issued with an over-clocked CPU. And you come into this world crying. This is because even till your mum’s delivery, your soul was hoping for resurrection into heaven. But when that did not happen, you cried at your fate and just then all memories of heavenly jails were erased from your brain. And you were born as yet another addition to the already existing 10,00,00,00,000 (count the zeroes, baby).

So you grow up in India. You start getting used to Indians. Some of them you can recognize from your past world, too. You begin to imbibe Indian-ness like a dry sponge thrown in water. You begin by pissing on the roadside because you learnt it from your father. Of course it’s alright to do so. India has survived in spite, or may be because of billions of litres of nitrogenous fluid being added to soil everyday. Indira brought about the green revolution in this manner. Her policies used to piss your father off frequently and it was only later that he realized that this was a high-level plan to get the Indian soil back to highly fertile level. The plan was logical:

Government will make a lousy policy decision
People will get pissed off; In absence of any place better, they’ll get pissed off at road side
Government had already planted eucalyptus trees by road side which got good nourishment and grew phenomenally
India brought about the Green-Revolution.

Congratulations. You just learned how important it is to contribute towards your nation’s growth even if it means pissing on the roadside.

DREAM

2007-06-13T02:58:00.003-07:00

DREAM
Dream, as you do,
And dream a little more too,
Expect not all to come true
For there will be a little one,
Closer to heart,
Fonder than rest,
More plausible,
Achievable;
Achieve it.
And then dream a little more again.
And achieve it again.
And stop not dreaming ever
Till the old ticker in your chest stops beating
And chest whiffs out the last draught
And having dreamt a million dreams,
Achieving a few at last,
You feel you are ready to depart.

The light at the end of the tunnel

2007-06-13T02:58:00.001-07:00

The light at the end of the tunnel

Light, bijli, power, etc were the colloquial synonyms of electricity. And ‘load shedding’ was the term used for power cuts or the government sponsored disruption of normal life by the periodic curtailment of electrical supply. We as children used to love those disruptions, for, if nothing else, just the deviation from the usual, the normal, the monotony of normal living which entailed long hours at schools followed by long hours of home-work (the method adopted by teachers to rope in the inefficiency of parents to take the blame for the pathetic level of education imparted to us).

The kids in the entire colony had a preset conspiracy as to the drill that should follow, following the power cut. The days would have to be one of the long, sultry summers of Indian subcontinent (winter evenings were cold enough to preclude any outdoor activity as such.). The time would usually be that of the evening by which we had already exhausted our ‘play-hour’ and were being given the third degree by our parents, already exhausted by a hard, working day, to complete those academic tasks which even our teachers (with all their degrees and diplomas in the art of teaching and education) had failed to extricate out of us. The moment the ‘light’ would ‘go’, we will simply push our desks and run like emancipated prisoners of Sobibor. The nearest available verandah would be the meeting place. Everyone from the age of five onwards up to anything including the graduate, unemployed wastrels of the colony (produced by the same education system which was in the process of producing us) would gather. Then would start the formation of groups as per one’s own priority. Since it was usually dark, this was achieved by shouting names and shouting ‘come this side’. The ‘side’ which was usually defined as ‘this’, or ‘that’ or by simply ‘here’ was anybody’s guess. So a lot of groping around would follow (in which the teenagers would invariably try to grope around the fairer members of the colony) and would also include shrieks of ‘eh’, ‘get away’ from our senior girls. We, as pre-adolescents would feel enmity towards those boys who otherwise were nice and played good cricket, but were unable to keep their hands under control whenever in a one meter radius of any member of the opposite sex.

The groups would soon sort out. The younger groups like ours would be of mixed sex, but senior groups were divided by the ‘great wall of Indian sexual bias’ and would entail games, songs, antaxry etc which were girls v/s boys, and included suggestive jeering. The younger groups were blissfully unaware of such ‘casteism’ and would form intermingled groups which would essentially follow similar games as the elder ones sans the lewd remarks. Touching was not a problem too, for the pre adolescent girls were usually unmindful of holding hands (the maximum that even the elders dared to do) and would usually take initiative in holding their group around them by any means deemed fair.
This happy hour would usually last for an hour or so. Even if the ‘light’ didn’t ‘come back’ from where it had gone , the mothers would start shouting for their teen daughters owing to their skepticism in leaving their daughters in the company of colony wastrels for a longer period. And the groups would start dismantling and go home where , the home work pardoned, we’d be forced to have an early dinner in lamp light or candle light so that the beds could be shifted to the terrace for spending the night(the sub-continental summer nights can be very oppressive indoors.)
The parents would usually be grumbling and swearing to God that come next election they wouldn’t vote for this government. The ‘light’ was a bare necessity, they’d say. How can they do this much ‘load shedding’ (read power cut)??? We’d usually be unmindful of the mild discomfort because the sleeping in the open on the terrace usually brought another flood of excitement in the form of shouting and communicating with friends on the neighbouring terrace; the conversation usually limited to “what are you doing” and reply “nothing”, and then the same being asked and replied vice versa. We usually used to look forward to such ‘going away’ of ‘light’ for the excitement it brought. And when in the school they talked about the ‘light’ at the end of the tunnel, I used to wonder why they want that light and not enjoy the dark tunnel for what it was?
Anyway, my son would never enjoy those dark hours when ‘light’ used to go out of our lives. I have an inverter installed. He can’t shirk his homework away, either. Our family still votes for the same government.

2007-06-13T02:57:00.003-07:00

WHY DO I HAVE TO GET ON TO MY TOES
JUST TO LOOK BEYOND MY NOSE?

HMM??

EXCERPT FROM ONE OF THE BOOKS I AM WORKING ON

2007-06-13T02:57:00.001-07:00

Friday, June 25, 2004
THIS IS AN EXCERPT FROM ONE OF THE BOOKS I AM WORKING ON. I JUST THOUGHT THAT THIS INCIDENT WAS WORTH SHARING
............Fish were caught from mid-morning till early afternoon. Then the Khalsa officer and I would retire in the thick bushy undergrowth right behind our officers’ mess. We’d have our own brands of liquor, he consuming rum and boiled eggs to go along with fish while I with my beer and beer belly to contend with, would wine and dine through the afternoons. The afternoons were thus spent successfully avoiding the heat, work and patients.

The evenings would be groggy and spent with lots of coffee and a second round of shower with the three buckets we had. If either of us had the urge to go to the loo, well, you had to wait because there was only one loo. And relieving yourself in the thicket was against the officer like behaviour. Actually I learnt this the hard way round. The thicket had several footpaths in it, which were traversed by our sepoys and civilians alike, as a short cut to the nearby bunch of shops which was inadvertently (under some delusion of grandeur of the tradesmen there) referred to as ‘market’.

One afternoon, I decided to skip the trip to the loo (being beer drinker, I was the more frequent visitor to the gents) and relieve myself on one of those desolate footpaths, away from the Khalsa’s eyes. The moment I began to leak, a group of four sepoys appeared from nowhere, marching towards the market in proper military manner of 2x2 formation. Their group leader, a Nayak, recognized me, and while I took the leak he discharged a full throated command of salute and the group executed the full salute drill while passing me by. I, of course, was in no position to move my hand to salute back since the hand was busy holding my honour. But that was enough to prevent me from taking any further leaks at any unofficer like place.

PROFESSIONALISM

2007-06-13T02:56:00.000-07:00

Saturday, June 19, 2004
SATURDAY, THE 19th day of HOT, HOT JUNE OF 2004

PROFESSIONALISM

Oft I have been asked by people regarding the profession that I follow. I have been questioned with eyebrows raised and questioned with disdain; questioned with condescension and though rare, questioned with appreciation. But why should there be so many questions about my profession?

Anyone who has visited my Ryze page will be aware that my time is split mainly between four activities which I pursue viz. practice of medicine, writing, stock trading and computer related works like web-designing and making presentations. I have not written them down in the order in which I prefer them nor are they arranged in order according to which I give them time.

If I am questioned in the neighbourhood of the hospital or the hospital itself, I usually tell them I am a general practitioner who is doing post graduation in psychotherapy. Further questions follow about why not a more conventional line of practice like surgery or medicine. My reply, that I have not much interest in medicine because medicine leaves little scope for the use of grey cells, has often landed me in trouble especially with senior doctors. I have often failed to convey my free-winged spirit which finds no joy in the fact that if the treatment for disease ‘X’ is ‘exomycin’, then I can do little else than giving exomycin to the patient. The only usage that my grey cells undergo is in arriving at the diagnosis, which, given all modern facilities of investigation available to me, is no great shakes. So needless to say that this just does not provide enough stimulation to my grey cells. There is no scope of creativity.

Out of the campus I prefer to tell my profession as a writer. This I do for two reasons. First, the moment you utter you are a doctor, people start doing two things almost instantly; one, they start addressing you as ‘doc’ and two they immediately start consulting you about their diseases and disorders. There is a stage when you enjoy this too, but not now; not at my age and experience. During the final year at college I often used to spend my entire journey from Pune to Delhi in Goa/Jhelum express dispensing prescriptions. And it used to give me a kick too, I’ll admit, for who doesn’t enjoy being the centre of attraction of a whole railway coach except perhaps the ladies of decent heritage who abhor being the focus merely on account of their gender. And secondly, writer is what I wish to be. So till I’m not able to break the shackles of my present profession to follow writing full time, I can at least imagine myself being one.

However when I mention writer to them they ask me if I am a professional and which books have I published. When I tell them I am not a professional they forget about writing and again start goading me for the line of work which provides my dough. I avoid telling them that being in army I have been prohibited from publishing since 1992. Prior to that my published works were only in US of A and two or three odd awards at some non-descript competitions and a few poems in a local magazine (what else could I do at 15 years of age?) I have been accumulating my works since but they want to talk literature only with a professional. I know if I’ll name a few books to them then they’ll try to place me in some category; Elliot-yeats-keats, Sheldon-ludlum-higgins, Bach-dwyer-blanchard…….worst is if you are Indian then you are simply in the Rushdie-naipaul-nirad category. I would rather be placed in Ruskin-kipling-narayan category or maybe in Moraes-ezekiel-thakur category but NO! It’s Rushdie-naipaul-nirad category for me. By no means do I intend to say that I’m fit for any of the categories but then if someone is hell bent on placing me in one, I’d rather be in the category which I like best.

In certain circles I acknowledge my talent for stock trading. Earlier I was not so discreet but you learn with experience. I have learnt that the label of a stock trader is somewhat akin to being labelled as scum, lawyer, politician, loan shark, and all of these words are synonymous to most people. They also think you will be filthy rich (which I’m not) and they think you make easy and illegal money. But believe me dear reader, stock trading is a very patient exercise in which the amount of time and drill I have to put in is nobody’s business. It is as assiduous an effort as it is to be a genuine professional anywhere and the money seems easy to others because you are not constantly plagued by a nincompoop who happens to be your boss or are not subjected to constant glares and paws if you happen to be a woman. So over time, I avoid telling most people about this part of my life.

Lastly we come to my computer expertise. I’m a completely untrained individual. Never have I steeped inside any NIIT/Aptech etc and yet I teach computers. I have no degree under my belt yet I am in-charge of a national level telemedicine project. I am no hot-shot doctor yet I am invited for lectures in medic-IT.

Who am I? What professional should I call myself? Am I jack of all trades? Or do you think I have written this post merely to brag? I wonder when will I realize where my heart really really lies.

REPLY TO COMMENTS ON LAST POST

2007-06-13T02:55:00.002-07:00

Friday, June 18, 2004
THIS MAY PLS BE TAKEN AS A REPLY TO COMMENTS ON LAST POST

Writing this piece was easy and quoting proverbs easier...(like Lord Peter Wimsey ( of Dorothy L Sayers) once said that quotation is the best foil for lack of original thinking)....but the idea of writing this piece was to acknowledge the REALIZATION of the subject....known i have it for years...but realized it now....and another quotation which i may fail to quote exactly but will still do it, used to appeal to me for it relates to my profession and my God both. It goes-

God and doctor
men have most alike treated
when the need is over
God is forgotten
and the doctor is slighted

so long

CHICKEN SOUP FOR GOD’S SOUL

2007-06-13T02:55:00.001-07:00

Monday, June 14, 2004
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

CHICKEN SOUP FOR GOD’S SOUL

TIME and again I have been the culprit of God for criticising and cursing Him for giving me troubles. Predominantly I have done this on account of my son’s health who frequently falls ill, usually develops complications and takes longer than usual to recuperate causing much heartache to Madhu and I.

The first time I cursed him was when he was sick for six months continuously and showed no signs of improvement. I cried one day and cursed him for being so callous to my little baby. That very evening while strolling in the garden I came across another small child, younger than my son, playing happily in the garden. He was our neighbor’s son. Keenly looking at him I realized that he was blind. Further discussions with parents revealed how he was one of the twins. The first one died while he was given some wrong treatment by the doctor resulting in blindness. The parents had become rather stoic and tried to make good of whatever faculties he was left with. I was shocked to see the family and Madhu reminded me of how lucky we were for though our child fell sick frequently, he had no permanent disablement. That evening I thanked God.

Second time around when I cursed Him, it was on account of his poor performance in class. An exceptionally brilliant child that he is, he has selective difficulty in learning certain subjects. Though he remains a top ranker in class notwithstanding those difficulties, even his teachers are of the view that he does not justify the potential that he apparently has. I went to my senior psychiatrist and we discussed his case considering learning disability, dyslexia and what not and it turned out that he may have been suffering from something. I cursed the God.

That very evening while I was on night duty my senior ophthalmologist brought his son to me. They were passing by and had just dropped in. I found the child a little odd. Subsequently I was told that he was autistic. My own colleague’s son and he was comfortable and did not crib like I often do. I was ashamed of my shallowness and I thanked God again.

This Saturday my son had to be admitted in ICU for having a vomiting of blood. Bleary eyed and numb minded I cursed God again and again. Two days later when he is slightly better today I had the wits to enquire about a five year old girl on the neighboring bed. She, it turned out, was hit by a vehicle driven by their neighbor and had head injury. She had permanently lost her speech and her intellectual capacity was also jeopardized, likely to remain somewhat compromised for the rest of her life.

I did not know how to respond to that child’s misery. But thank you God for giving me misery which is much lighter than theirs. And I think I’ll never curse Him again

Sodom and Gomorrah

2007-06-13T02:54:00.000-07:00

Sodom and Gomorrah
(Complete)
(To the reader: this is a longish story (2630 words) so I have divided it into three parts for reading convenience. U R REQUESTED TO COPY IT AND PASTE IT IN UR MS WORD FILE TO READ IT AT LEISURE.The story is complex and will take more than two readings to convey all that it wishes to convey; this is mainly because it does not follow a single theme at any given moment but follows several lines of thought, the mark of a stoned, rambling writer. The towns of Sodom and Gomorrah actually existed in history and Sodomy and Gonorrhea terms came from their overt practices of the same. The story that I have woven is fictitious and completely unrelated to the real towns.)

The beginning

Very long time ago, located in the infamous strait of Sicily were two adjoining islands by the name of Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact they were so close that only a small perennial stream separated them from each other. Inhabitants of each could swim over to the other island easily in practically no time but rarely did. This was on account of very different nature they had from each other. The people of Sodom were as different from Gomorrah’s as anyone could be.

At this juncture it’d be wise to let the reader know a little about the history of these two islands. None of the islands could boast of any aboriginal resident. The two islands were fairly small and were largely uninhabited save a few tribal groups who were insignificant and very timid by nature. So when a certain group of people were expelled from their society for behaving in an abnormal manner, a motley crew of ostracised people got together and inhabited these two small islands. They had further divided themselves into two different groups as per their priorities and settled down happily avoiding interference with each other by and large, though complete disconnection cannot be claimed as one could always find people who did not really know in which island their heart lay.

Over a period they developed their own trade practices, language and nationality and though religion would be an exaggeration, but cult they surely had their own. The people of Sodom specialised in ice-cream business while the Gomorreans revelled in rubber products. They had their own dialects but it was mainly English. The Sodom people, known colloquially as Sodomise (pronounced sodo-meez), spoke English with a small pebble tucked in the left cheek of their mouth. The sounds thus emanating became their dialect called Sodomy. The Gomorreans on the other hand spoke with no pebble in their cheeks. Their dialect came to be known as Gomorrhea. However the Sodomised, (as in urbanised) usually spoke with a pebble in their mouth and thus could only pronounce it as ‘Gonorrhea’. And since the Sodomise were larger in number and occupied a bigger island (they were known to have a penchant for size and obsession with the big) Gonorrhea became the colloquial name for the dialect of Gomorreans.

The Gomorreans however believed that this was superior to Sodomy largely because it came to them naturally. Moreover it was much closer to the Queen’s English which Sodomy was not. They were quite sure that the given a choice the Queen would not prefer Sodomy at all. That she was sometimes forcefully subjected to it was merely due to her inherent inability to say ‘no’. So though they were an independent country now, they still could not help thinking that whatever was liked by the Queen had to be superior, even if not very practicable.

To the dismay of the Gomorreans, Sodomy became predominant. The traders would believe more in the people who they felt were Sodomised. Sodomisation practically became equivalent to urbanisation. The people who belonged to the old school of thought still believed that Gomorrhea had a future. But the people of Gomorrhea themselves had started losing faith in their own survival. And all this just because Sodomy was more popular than its counterpart.

The middle
The chief of Gomorrhea would often pay visits to the president of Sodom. During the meetings he tried to imitate the way their president behaved. He would eat the same dishes and would laugh out aloud at his jokes even if he did not find them funny. His table manners were also imitated. In short the chief of Gomorrah tried to appear as Sodomised as possible. He even tried to get his children educated there so that their Sodomy was flawless and in future, either due to economic reasons or to personal preferences, if they had to shift to the island of Sodom, then Sodomisation would come much more naturally to them. They’d also know a bit of history of Sodom and it wouldn’t matter much if they didn’t know much Gonorrhea or spoke Gonorrhea with a Sodomised accent. This was because of his status as chief of the island and nobody in Gomorrah would be able to say anything.

Soon this became a trend. The better performers of the Gomorreans would prefer Sodomy to what they naturally should have. Their children would grow up in an atmosphere where they felt that being Sodomised is the ultimate aim of life. Even the girls started to prefer it. Not because it was something pleasurable but because it was fashionable. It was painful sometimes but then women of this earth are known to be very tolerant to pain if it is for the cause of beauty, fashion, appearances or sex.

It not only caused pain but also caused bleeding and tears of the tissue. The doctors attributed it to the pebble these women kept in their left cheek. These pebbles were locally smoothened and thus did not have the same refined quality as the Sodom pebbles had. After all, Sodom had been using the pebble for much longer period and they had some kind of secret recipe to make the pebble smooth and the result was that the act was neither painful nor injurious. But then what is a little injury to a cheek to that female species which has already undergone more painful things like backboard, iron shoes, seam stressed garments, first night bed sheets, vulval thorns, public deflowering and even sati.

But as mentioned before, the pebbles of Gomorrah were not of the same quality and even contained trace amounts of pesticides, insecticides, and had it on both the sides. The result was a painful pronunciation of Sodomy and occasional bleeding from inner cheek. And God forbid if anyone became involved in a verbal duel while trying to refine his Sodomy; Apart from bleeding and pain, a few ‘aahs!’ and ‘oohs!’ were heard and the agitating protagonist would be prohibited from Sodomy for a few weeks by the doctors.

The worst sufferers were the traders. As is known the Gomorreans specialised in rubber products. But abnormal inclination towards Sodomy and an accompanying condescension towards one’s own culture led to a significant decline in the usage of rubber products. People would feel happier sodomising rather than use a locally made rubber product. It became bourgeois to use rubber. The result was a decline in profits, worsening economy, and a renewed belief in the burgeoning economy of Sodom which was based on talking sweetly in Sodomy and promoting their ice cream as an effective replacement for all forms of entertainment, food and education. Their ice cream provided a source of entertainment by binge eating, it was food for many in the sense that those who couldn’t eat it could at least earn their bread by selling it and lastly it afforded the education for all and sundry because this was the axis of their economy.

Soon the Gomorreans realised that their rubber products were no good. They could not be eaten. Their entertainment value was low, for almost everyone preferred Sodomy and it was hardly educative to stand by a pot of boiling, strongly stenched molten rubber. Worse, even the foreigners had begun liking Sodom and their rubber was falling out of favour. So the chief came to the conclusion that they must change their way of life to a more Sodomised one.

This’d involve eating corn-flakes in the morning rather than the usual bacon and eggs. And some fruit juice thrown in chilled would be eminently likeable. Subsequently they should go to their work places which should have ‘Sodom is great’ written all over. This was not exactly true of Sodom because they did not write ‘Sodom is great’ everywhere but merely rubbed it into every visitor at the port and airport, but the significance of this was immense for Gomorrah for this would make them feel closer to Sodom and thus they will feel good overall about everything and a situation of widespread bliss would exist, and that too for no particular reason. It’d also make Gomorrah more attractive to the foreign traders and tourists as they’d also be anointed with this feel good factor about Sodom and the widespread practice of Sodomy would be all too obvious.

Next step in Sodomisation of the country would comprise of banning all forms of lunch. Only Sodom ice creams would be allowed in work station canteens. They would preferably be of the leading brands called ‘choke’ and ‘tipsy’ but local brands who have been patronised by the Sodomised companies like ‘seven-times-up-yours’ and ‘A-thumb-up’ would also be allowed. Cultural food and drinks like rose sherbet would be a strict no-no because it was impossible to qualitatively control the quantity of pesticides, insecticides etc in local food. In Sodom food at least they were sure of the quantity they were consuming.

Last casualty was the supper. It was simply renamed as dinner. The contents remained the same but now it was mandatory for all Gomorreans to discuss the calorie value of their food, its health quotient, the effects that it’d produce on their heart, lungs, gut and sex life, and also discuss whatever was published about the latest research on dinner in the latest issue of the official culinary health magazine ‘Readers cannot digest’. They were not expected to change or alter their dinner habits as a result of discussion but it was understood that by discussing the folly of the dinner, they’d appear well informed and Sodomised and this’d go a long way in improving their self esteem. Moreover it was well known that whatever the latest research said in ‘Readers cannot digest’, the exact opposite would be published a few issues later and that’s why they made it optional to alter the dinner habits.

There were a few more minor casualties at the altar of Sodomisation. Drawing rooms were re-christened living rooms. Toilets became ‘loo’ while biscuits became ‘crackers’. White socks became permissible with black shoes and neck ties were allowed on half-sleeved bush-shirts. But all these were minor issues.

…….and the end
But in all this we simply forgot to discuss the point of view of the Sodomise. Well, they certainly had a condescending attitude towards Gomorreans. They realised that Gomorrah chief was subjugate to the president of Sodom in attitude and thus they decided to take the advantage of this.

A committee was formed in Sodom whose job it was to determine the best way to eke out maximum benefit out of Gomorrah but without adopting the headache of ruling it. The president of this committee was a well known ice-cream dealer named Cock Roachee. Cock Roachee did a lot of hard work. He first contacted the biggest business house of Gomorrah run by Gomo-Ja brothers. He offered them dealership of vanilla as well as strawberry ice-cream. In return, the Gomo-Ja brothers would give Cock Roachee ideas about reaping the economic benefit from Gomorreans who were hard working people but had an inferiority complex and thus whenever given a task by a Sodomise boss, would work their ass off to prove that they were as good as Sodomise , if not better.

Gomo-Ja brothers suggested using this trait. So Sodom started importing labourers from Gomorrah in the name of ‘outsourcing’ their projects. The Gomorreans would work their ass off to complete the projects of Sodom and bring lots of cash for Sodom, but themselves still working at minimum wages. Subsequently, whenever the need was over, the Gomorreans would be dumped back to Gomorrah in the name of ‘rightsizing’. But as was the nature of Gomorreans, they were oblivious of the bigger picture and were happy to work for Sodom for a few morsels thrown contemptuously their way along with a big appreciative ‘aahh!’ and ‘ohhh!’ mentioning their special ability to speak Sodomy so well.

Meanwhile Cock Roachee got hold of an old book from Gomorrah called ‘Arthshastra’. From this he learnt a very good trick to milk Gomorrah. He offered the chief of Gomorrah to accept his son at Sodom's premier university for higher education. Gomorrah chief could not resist this and sent his son to the Brogue University of Sodom for higher education. Meanwhile Cock Roachee sent his niece called Goldie Loathe-thee as a waitress at Brogue University canteen. Goldie managed to attract the boy and Sodomy notwithstanding, Cock Roachee managed to marry Goldie Loathe-thee into the ruling family of Gomorrah.

For this achievement, Cock Roachee was awarded the ‘Royal Condom of Sodom’ while Gomorrah conferred many business contracts and ‘The Jewel of Gomorrah’ on Cock Roachee because they knew he was the provider of the Sodomised daughter-in-law.

When Goldie Loathe-thee came to Gomorrah she brought along with herself several people, apparently her subjects and servants. Prominent among them were a group who called themselves ‘Human Aids’. Their job was to provide various types of aids to Gomorreans. This was very easy now that the Gomorreans predominantly practiced Sodomy. They went on with their jobs with great flair, giving aids to unsuspecting Gomorreans. They mainly gave aids in the process of sodomising them, but even otherwise. The Gomorreans didn’t even know when more than half of their community had received aids from HA. And within a very short period, this ‘aided’ half gave aids to their other half. And thus the whole of Gomorrah had aids given to them by Sodom.

They became listless, helpless and didn’t know what to do. Their chief was dead by now and the elder son, husband of Goldie Loathe-thee was ruling the island. He was equally clueless and soon killed by rebels who felt that Cock Roachee and Goldie Loathe-thee were the main culprits for the fall of Gomorrah. Fall, I say because after receiving aids from HA the Gomorreans became ill and the cure lay only with Sodom health dept which treated them only when they gave their whole property and money to it.

And thus the hapless Gomorreans lost their money, their land, got aids (which was incurable but Sodom had advertised a myth of possible treatment to fleece the Gomorreans) , had no honour left, got their leader killed, screwed up their own economy, had their best workers working on Sodom island, had their second best workers running dealership showrooms of Sodom ice-creams, had their wastrels and thieves working for themselves. Not knowing what to do, they beseeched Goldie Loathe-thee to rule them. Cock Roachee and Goldie Loathe-thee were waiting for this opportunity. But Goldie Loathe-thee did not take the job herself but chose a pig headed Gomorrean for this job. Did I say pig headed?.....sorry, I meant a big headed Gomorrean as a puppet for herself.

And Sodom prevailed over Gomorrah.

The unkindest cut came when they renamed Gomorrah and simply erased the entity of Gomorrah from mother earth.
Any guesses what name did they give to this new slave country? Hint: this country, unlike any other in the world, had three official names, one in Sodomy, one in Gonorrhea and one in the language of another neighbouring country.

2007-06-13T01:38:00.000-07:00

Originality v/s plagiarism

Ever after the Kavya Vishwanathan episode in the writing world, I had decided to add more lines to the disclaimer. But to put it across blandly I’d say that there is not a single word or expression in English language that has been either coined by me or has not been used by others in this world. In fact Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries can even sue me because all words printed here have already been printed by them before.

So if you find a phrase which sounds familiar, assume that I have also read it from the same book where you read it and my mind had stored it somewhere as an eminently usable expression; therefore when the need arose, my mind promptly reproduced the phrase for accurate expression. Wherever I’ve remembered the origin of the expression I’ve tried to put an asterisk in its vicinity but then I reiterate, not a single word can be originally mine.

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