The Idea Vault

Arsenal: Premier League Champions again!

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Wed, 20 May 2026 11:52:05 +0000

There is a particular kind of silence that arrives after a final whistle. Not the silence inside a stadium — football stadiums are never truly silent — but the quieter one that settles inside your own room long after the television has been switched off. The glow fades from the screen. Commentary dissolves into static memory. Somewhere outside, a motorcycle passes through wet streets, a dog barks twice, someone laughs from another apartment. Ordinary life resumes with suspicious efficiency, as though nothing historic has happened.

And yet yesterday, after twenty-two years, something did happen.

Arsenal F.C. won the Premier League. And I sat there staring at nothing for several minutes, not because I was overwhelmed in the cinematic sense — there were no tears, no dramatic collapse into memory — but because my mind seemed unable to process the absence of longing. For so long, supporting Arsenal had meant wanting. Wanting relevance again. Wanting dignity. Wanting one season where hope did not quietly rot by April.

Twenty-six years is a strange amount of time to follow anything. It is long enough for your hairline to begin negotiations with gravity. Long enough for entire phases of life to attach themselves to football seasons like bookmarks. School uniforms. College corridors smelling faintly of dust and photocopy ink. First jobs. Rent payments. Late-night streams buffering at 2:15 a.m. because English football was always happening in another timezone, another climate, another universe entirely.

And through all of it, Arsenal remained. Sometimes magnificent. Often infuriating. Occasionally absurd.

There were the barren years first. The years when fourth place became a philosophical achievement. When every season began with optimism and ended with mathematics. “If results go our way…” — a phrase every Arsenal fan learned to mistrust like a politician’s smile. Those teams carried an odd fragility to them. Beautiful at times, almost painfully so, but fragile. Like expensive glassware being transported through turbulence.

Opposing fans developed routines around us. Arsenal were no longer feared; we became material. Banter. Memes before memes had fully industrialized themselves into modern culture. Every collapse arrived pre-packaged for ridicule. It is difficult to explain how exhausting it is to care deeply about something that the world has collectively decided is unserious.

And still, we watched.

Because every now and then there would emerge a player who made belief feel rational again.

Cesc Fàbregas playing passes that seemed to arrive from five seconds in the future. Mesut Özil moving through matches like someone avoiding puddles only he could see. Alexis Sánchez carrying entire games with the fury of a man personally offended by losing. Those years were strange because they were not successful enough to satisfy, but beautiful enough to sustain devotion. We lived on moments. Little pockets of brilliance preserved against the larger disappointment of endings.

And then there was Arsène Wenger.

Looking back now, I realize my attachment to Wenger was never only about football. Of course there was the football — the impossible elegance of it, the insistence that aesthetics mattered, that passing could carry moral weight, that intelligence and grace were not weaknesses in a violent sport. But beyond tactics, Wenger felt like an argument for a certain way of existing in the world.

Measured. Curious. Civilized.

Even during defeats, he spoke like someone trying to understand humanity rather than dominate it. There was restraint in him. A slightly melancholic intelligence. He could discuss economics, psychology, player nutrition, politics, emotion — often in the same interview. Supporting Wenger eventually became something almost ideological. You defended him not merely because he won trophies, but because you wanted people like him to survive in modern football.

And perhaps that devotion became blind at times.

Maybe we defended him long after evidence suggested decline. Maybe loyalty itself became a kind of stubborn theatre. But football, at its core, has never been entirely rational. If it were rational, nobody would willingly return every season to the possibility of disappointment.

The recent years under Mikel Arteta felt different. Sharper. Hungrier. Arsenal were no longer nostalgic; they were alive again. We competed against Europe’s elite. We pushed extraordinary teams to the limit. And thrice we finished second in ways that felt uniquely cruel — close enough to touch glory, far enough to remain mocked.

Second place is psychologically exhausting because it denies closure. A bad team gives you resignation. A great team that narrowly fails gives you insomnia.

There is a particular humiliation in hearing rival fans laugh when you know, secretly, your team is actually good. Every missed chance becomes amplified. Every draw becomes evidence of weakness. You begin matches carrying not just hope, but accumulated memory. Years of failure sitting quietly beside you on the couch.

And maybe that is why yesterday felt less explosive than I imagined.

Not ecstasy. Relief.

A deep exhale stretched across twenty-two years.

Because the thing about waiting this long is that victory stops being only about the trophy. It becomes about endurance. About surviving the ridicule long enough to outlive it. About remaining emotionally invested in something despite repeated invitations to become cynical.

Yesterday did not erase the hopeless seasons. Or the collapses. Or the anger. Or those bleak winters when finishing fourth felt like paying rent rather than achieving ambition. It simply changed the texture of those memories. Suddenly they belonged to a larger story instead of an endless loop.

And perhaps that is what satisfaction really is. Not joy in its purest form, but the quiet realization that your faith — however irrational, however embarrassing, however stubborn — was not entirely misplaced.

Late last night I rewatched the celebrations again on my phone in bed, the room dark except for the pale light of the screen. Players shouting. Fans crying. Red smoke folding into the London sky. Somewhere between clips, an old memory surfaced of myself years ago staying awake after another disappointing season, telling myself maybe next year. Football teaches you to become intimate with repetition like that.

Maybe next year.

It sounds naive until one day it isn’t.

Note: This is an AI generated blog post that I have tried to generate using markdown prompts that are attuned to a writing style that I have written in earlier. I apologise if you felt this was written by me. The text echoes with how I have felt. But the joy of writing it myself would have been far more satisfactory than having AI write it.

Unfortunate Politicisation of ISRO discourse

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Mon, 09 Sep 2019 08:40:00 +0000

The Chandrayaan 2 mission had a setback. A late, heart-breaking setback. The Chandrayaan orbiter was placed in its defined orbit, Vikram lander was released, completed its hard breaking successfully, and began the soft breaking. There were cheers in the control room as everything was going as planned. Just 2.1 kms away from its destination. And then suddenly there was silence. A wait to see the screen update lander's position; a wait to hear the next affirmative announcement. The wait continued, and the live stream began resembling more like reality television. Nervous faces all around. Some had their heads down. There were consultations. The Mission director informed ISRO director of what was known, its implications, and speculations. It was forwarded to the Prime Minister who was waiting in the VIP area. There were consolatory pats, and it all pointed to just one outcome -- bad news.

Having followed ISRO's missions from a distance for a decade, I was delighted by the amount of hysteria surrounding this mission. Earlier, when ISRO's main payloads would just be satellites, there was not much attention that it could garner. News of its successes would appear in some corner of the 6th or 7th page in newspapers. TV channels, that now dedicated uninterrupted coverage for hours, would barely spend a couple of minutes on ISRO's launches. The Chandrayaan I, and the Mars Orbiter Mission changed this. Those two missions were mainly technology demonstrators, and had very basic scientific or experimental objectives. But it caught the imagination of a wider public because ISRO had now embarked into exploration. There were also the debates around the cost of projects, comparison to other space organisation budgets, movie budgets which was a distraction, but it made us all more informed. Only controversy that had to be dealt with then used to be justifying India's investment into such endeavours. And how the rest of the developed world looked at India's ambitions through ISRO's missions. The most heartening part of all of this discourse would be how ISRO united a very diverse India.

And that discourse is now changing. There were fault lines appearing earlier, but now they are widening. There are sides that are appearing, each wanting to stake a claim, to appropriate this organisation which was once a grand uniter of citizens; much like cricket. While all this happens on the outside, we first need to admit that ISRO continues to work independently, in its characteristic silent ways. seemingly unaffected by all the madness outside of it. Entirely invested in completing its objectives, and expanding those objectives.

The fault line was caused by politics. Politics tends to split people into factions. The longer it goes on, the more clearer the factions become, and the longer it goes on, the wider the fault line becomes. The left faction claims that the right faction's PM claiming ISRO's successes as his own is wrong. The right faction will come up with how all previous PMs did the same, or how their PM is in fact better for ISRO. The great marketer has created bigger markets for ISRO. The great orator has motivated ISRO scientists like no other. The great humanitarian has consoled the dejected like no other. These claims of the right faction are then dissected by the left faction in more depth, while trying to find equivalent historical events, or by trying to disprove some claims. I could go on with this by pointing out all the numerous points of debate that are now prevalent, but we need to stop and think. How does the discourse shift from finding out what happened to lander Vikram to "Was it a genuine hug"? How does the discourse shift from discussing the science that will be conducted by the functioning orbiter to hounding boorish journalists? If we don't step back now and see the futility and pointlessness of these discussions, then we'll be diluting the joy that comes along with space exploration.

Like many aspects of this country that have now been polarised into factions, I'm hugely disappointed to see that the discourse around ISRO is also polarised. ISRO belongs to the nation. Not to any current incumbent minister. Not to any factions that support or dislike any political organisation. Not to any religious institution. It belongs to all of us, equally.

"Senior Citizen Android Phone Extended Guide: Operations And Training"

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Thu, 02 Nov 2017 09:26:00 +0000

I see my 75-year-old father and 85-year-old neighbour near our verandah deeply engrossed in a conversation, which to a casual passer-by would seem like a discussion on India's nano-economic performance. Having spent the past few days with them, I hit upon an idea. To start a 3 month digital literacy course on "Senior Citizen Android Phone Extended Guide: Operations And Training". Scapegoat, in short. It is meant to assist those tasked with teaching their parents/grandparents/other-elderly-people-in-neighbourhood on how to use Android Phones for the very first time. Here is the curriculum.

1. Touch Screen. Not a Hammer Screen:
Once you turn on the phone, keep the home screen as empty as possible. While you might distinguish between the icons, for a novice the icons represent secret buttons, a stray finger touch on which could result in a nuclear missile launch in Kazakhstan. It would be advisable to first turn off the haptics on the phone. The vibration on touch might seem mild to you, but for a novice it could be a thunderbolt of a jolt that could result in phone being dropped; in the best case scenario.
The camera app is possibly the safest app for them to use now. They might tap at it hard to increase your blood pressure, but calmly ask them to test tapping as softly as possible to test how soft is soft enough. There's a reason why their fingers give trouble during Aadhar verification.

2. Making/Receiving Unwanted Calls:
Side note: Having only used a cordless phone before, the only reason my father bought a mobile phone was because bank kept demanding OTPs (One Time Password - you'll need to explain this to them too) for every pointless transaction. And he had to depend on either mine or my brother's phone, which would never be with him when needed.

Now that you have a phone, you have to receive calls. It's a given. It's the reason why the phone is purchased. Even if a telecaller calls to sell you cow fodder. Every Android phone has a slight difference in accepting calls, so test it before you explain it. I made the following error, don't do it yourself.

Neighbour (N): "People are calling but whatever I do this phone is not accepting calls."
I: "Ok. I'll call you and teach you how to accept calls."
N: "No no. Just tell me what is to be done. Why waste money like this?"
I: "It's easier to show."
(so I make the call)
(phone ringing)
N: (hits green icon)
(hits green icon second time)
(hits harder the third, fourth and sixteenth time in 3 seconds)
"SEEEEE?! IT DOESN'T WORK!"
I: "You need to touch glowing phone icon ..."
N: (interrupting) "BUT EVERYTHING ON THE PHONE IS GLOWING!"
I: "Ok. Only one of them is blinking, you see?" (call disconnected)
N: "NO! Everything is gone now!" (I call again)
(hitting white icon) (hammering white icon so hard his index finger might appear on the other side of the phone)
"THIS IS USELESS!"
I: "Here, let me show you."
N: (pulling away phone) "NOOOO!!! I HAVE TO LEARN THIS MYSELF! IT'S IMPORTANT!"
I: "Ok. I'll call again. This time, just touch the blinking WHITE icon and drag your finger upwards towards the GREEN icon." (I call)
N: (does it right in the third try. OH GREAT GOOGOL! HE DOES IT RIGHT!) "Hello?"
I: "Hello. Can you hear me?"
N: "Of course I can hear you. You're standing right next to me, you dimwit!"
I: (going farther away) "Can you hear me through the phone now?"
N: "Aaaaaaahhhh! YES! YES! I CAN!"
I: (putting the phone away from ear to save said ear's eardrums) "Great! That's it! You've learnt how to receive calls!"
N: "YES! Let's do it again. So I can be sure I'll do it myself when you're not here."
(after 5 more attempts)
N: "Let's try one last time."
I: " i don't have...." (mutter lost in inaudibility zone)
N: "What? Speak louder, no?"
I: "I don't have enough account balance left."
N: "Arre! Your generation people just fritter away monies without thinking of future. You need better education in handling finances.You ..."
I: (interrupting) "Not my bank balance. Account balance on the phone."
N: "Oh! That balance? Ok. Ok. Ok. Ok. By the way ... how do I check my balance?"

3. The QWERKY Keyboard
For someone uninitiated to the computer keyboard, the default keyboard interface on the Android phone is a jumbled jigsaw puzzle so puzzling that the viewer starts questioning if he really knows the alphabets. Now if you have the time, and if the trainee has the time, and if you have the patience, which I know is running low on fuel, and if the trainee has the patience, which is now running on reserve, then you can explain what the QWERTY keyboard is. How it was designed so that people that tapped hard on keys on typewriters, like the trainee originally tapped on the display screen, wouldn't keep damaging the typewriter's buttons. So a genius designer analysed which were the most often used alphabets and which were the fingers which could deliver the most force and decided to keep them both apart so the typewriter wouldn't fall apart. And since it was a raving success, it was copied to the keyboards used in personal computers. And since people were now so accustomed to it, mobile phones decided to make it easier for them to switch over to mobile phones and continued the same layout. And since now it's everywhere, no one questions why a software can't change keyboard layout designed for 10 fingers and continue using it for an interface that only needs 2 thumbs. Legacies and traditions are such -- you don't question them; just accept them.
And hence, when your trainee asks about the keyboard, you can tell your trainee to just shut up and accept things as they are, because they are what they are, because it's been done like this for ages, and it has worked wonders for others, so why do you have to keep questioning things? With that, you've added few more slaves to the digital era.
You can, however, make the transition easier by increasing the font size on the phone. Not only does that increase alphabet size, it results in the trainee not hitting adjacent alphabets and complaining that the phone has been nabbed by the devil and is spewing out wrong characters.

4. Doing More
Now that 10 days have passed, and your trainee has mastered the arts of basic phone usage, of making and receiving calls, storing and saving contacts, and the scholarly ones have even learnt to text message asking how your mornings are, they will want more. It's the core, raw, human curiosity of wanting to know what else tools can be used for. And it is now that you have the onerous task of explaining what Apps are.
"It's an application."
(blank stare)
"It's a tiny software that helps you do particular tasks."
(blank stare)
"Like, if you want to calculate something, you use the Calculator app and find answers."
"What use is it to me? No use. Remove it from phone. Waste of space."
"Ok. Let's say you want to hear some music, or watch a video. You just use this Youtube app. Type what you want to view and click this magnifying glass icon which can only be seen with a magnifying glass that is no longer available in the magnifying glass market."

After this, my father learnt how to use Youtube to fulfill his desire of listening to all the songs he remembered from younger days but had lost to cassette recorders going out of vogue and cassettes getting damaged or magnetic tapes on it being used as a toy by grandchildren. He hunted and hunted and discovered long forgotten gems. He learnt to connect the phone to his boombox via bluetooth. He stayed up late into the wee hours of night and rejoiced at finally finding one rendition of a rare song by a singer whose name could only be found in the deep recesses of Wikipedia. And only 15 people had viewed that video before he had. You'd see him with the phone and you could mistake it for a new crush. A new interesting person you suddenly found, of whom you want to know everything about. You keep asking them things and they respond with such delightful answers that you want to keep asking more. I wonder if my mother ever felt jealous.
Then one fine day - yesterday, to be precise - he comes to me dejected and says something that sends a jolt through my body. "This phone is useless. This Internet, Youtube, Ola Cola, all of it I don't need. We should just have bought that other phone with a keyboard which can only be used for receiving calls and messages. That much was enough." Still speechless, I looked at the phone. It appeared that the phone was in a shock too. If I could sense its feelings correctly, it was now crying inconsolably. 'All these hours spent together. All these things we did together. All those songs I sang for you. The conversations we had for so many hours. All of it meant nothing to you?' it seemed to be saying.
After ten minutes I recovered and asked, "What happened?"
"Suddenly some screen came and said that all of my content can fall in wrong hands, bank accounts, money, everything can be misused if used by wrong people if I don't do something."
"Do what? What was it? What did it say? Show it to me."
"It's gone now. I got scared and switched off the phone."
"Did it ask you to install something?"
"YES!"
"Was it an ad? Advertisement? They keep showing ads of more apps that you could purchase. Maybe this was a security related app advert?"
"I don't know. I don't want this phone anymore."

5. The Escape. The Black Hole
My father and our neighbour are not dumb people. My father might tell you he never went to school (which is true) which is why he's so inept with technology. But he did get himself a doctorate in Hindi literature. He still has this research-oriented mind where he uses a multi-pronged approach to find solutions to problems and when he latches on to a conclusion, doesn't mind hearing alternates. And the neighbour went to IIT. He went to IIT during an era when saying 'he went to IIT' meant that the person was brilliant without Bhagat-Kejriwal-esque exceptions. Which is a roundabout way to say that when patience is ending while teaching them how to operate this device, don't blame your trainee. It's the tool that makes them feel inept. And when developers say they made something intuitive, your own tuitions show you how bad the developer's intuitions really are. It's the curse of the technology. It coaxes us in. It cajoles us to give up all of our common sense. And then it grabs a stranglehold on our intellect and forces us to abandon it. To become its slave. I had similar trouble while teaching the mobile phone to my mother. It is then that I found the escape route. It's a route that grabs them into a world from which they cannot escape even if they wished to. Its pull is so strong that they remain glued to it and believe everything it has to offer. It's a black hole. It is called Whatsapp.

Short Story: A Friend in Need

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Fri, 04 Sep 2015 12:05:00 +0000

January 14, 2008

From: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

To: mahesh64@yahoo.com

Subject: A friend in need

Dear Friend,

Firstly, sorry for encroaching your personal space. I have no right to intrude. But I have a lot of hope and very little means.

Secondly, let me introduce myself.

Myself, Kishorechand Malikar, from Daulatwadi, Vidarbha, Maharashtra state, India. I have a very high hope and faith in humanity of strangers. From the history that I have so loved to read, I learnt how people have become successful with the help of total strangers. That faith has allowed me to make friends with people I don't know, very easily. And since you are reading till here, you are also my friend.

So friend, I have to tell you the bad news that this friend of yours is unhappy and needs your help urgently. You must have heard about the crisis in my district in your newspapers and Television. My village is very badly affected. But nobody is caring to fix the problem. I request you to give me help in any way possible. I do not ask for money, because my father, Ravichand Malikar, gave me education. But education taught me, dear friend, that not much can be done without money. I am willing to work hard to free my village from this problem. But I do not know what I can do? Will you help me, my friend?

With deep faith,

Yours truly,

Kishorechand Malikar,

Daulatwadi, Pandergowda taluka,

Vidarbha, Maharashtra,

India - 445207

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

January 15, 2008

From: mahesh64@yahoo.com

To: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

Subject: RE: A friend in need

Dear Kishorechand,

I receive your mail with utmost disappointment. Your friend, Mr. Richard Thabeki dropped a similar mail last week. Another friend of yours, Mr. Charles Sczweksky also wrote to me last month. I was just as deeply touched with their situation as I am with yours. But, I am disappointed in you for not promising me the fortunes that Richard and Charles were so keen on sharing. Did you, by any chance, forget to mention any grandfather of yours who left you a huge sum?

You see, Mr. Thabeki turned out to be the son of a Nigerian dictator! What luck! And he was willing to share a small percentage of the US $255 million that he would make from his father! How thoughtful, don't you think?! Mr. Sczweksky on the other hand gave me the delightful news, that I had won the coveted Euro lottery worth US $2.5 million! Imagine my excitement! I was so thrilled that I couldn't even remember when I acquired a Euro lottery ticket!

But, Kishorechand, your mail, it brings disappointment. Which is why I ask, did you forget to mention an ailing grandfather who was leaving you a multi-crore fortune? Do run it over in your mind and let me know. After all, your town IS called Daulatwadi for a reason!

Despairingly,

Mahesh

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

January 25, 2008

From: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

To: mahesh64@yahoo.com

Subject: RE: RE: A friend in need

Dear friend Mahesh,

I thank you for replying to my email. It gives me happiness to know that Mr. Richard and Mr. Charles shared their money with you. But they are not my friends. I cannot even speak their names. I tried to say Sczweksky, but I bit my tongue while trying. I put my hand on my heart and promise that I have no money to give you and that I speak the truth. It is very sad that my town is called Daulatwadi, when we have no money. My grandfather, Rameshchand Malikar, was a cotton farmer and died before I was born and could not even pass on his stories, forget money. My father and his 4 brothers divided my grandfather's land and started growing Bt Cotton in our fields. But, since rains did not bless us we could not get crop. No crop, no money. Father borrowed from Mulchand, money lender, to pay for my college. Bank gave loan for buying tractor and fertiliser. But what use is that when there is no rain, my friend? All gone to waste. Now bank wants money back and Mulchand sends goondas to get money back.

I have studied B.Sc Botany and want to study further. But my father has been sick for past 3 months and I have to look after my family. 2 uncles committed suicide and the rest of the family will not help me. I can understand. They are also deeply troubled.

I told you in last mail, that I'm willing to work to fix problems. Not just for me, but whole village. So friend, please let me know what I can do.

Happy to have a friend,

Kishorechand

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

January 26, 2008:

From: mahesh64@yahoo.com

To: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

Subject: RE: RE: RE: A friend in need

Dear Kishorechand,

I must seek your apology, for thinking you were part of a phishing scam. One cannot trust the mails they receive these days. I feel mortified for going to the extent of ridiculing you in my endeavour to extract some joy out of the supposed scam. You must forgive me.

Upon your mention of the crisis, I have done some research to learn about the despicable conditions in which your district has found itself. While, I myself am not certain what can be done, I can assure you that I will inquire around to know what assistance can be provided to you. I am sending a cheque of Rs. 25,000/- in your name, to the address you mentioned in previous email. I hope that you can make good use of that money.

Regards,

Mahesh

PS: How are you even getting access to Internet?

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

February 3, 2008:

From: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

To: mahesh64@yahoo.com

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: A friend in need

Dear Mahesh,

I'm near tears right now. I received a cheque a few days back and I didn't know who could have sent it. Your name is M. K. Singh? Only now am I seeing your email and I know that the 25000 was sent by you! I did not put the cheque in bank, thinking it was a mistake. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I can buy medicines for my father with this money. The free medicines given by the hospital are past their expiry date. I'm scared to give it to father. Now I can consult a good doctor and buy him good medicines. Also, I intend to use some money to buy books for children in our school.

But please do not mistake me, Mahesh my friend. I do not think money alone can solve the problems of my village. The Government people also have written off our loan at bank. Some loan waiver, they call it. But this village needs to rebuild itself. With no rains, there are no crops. No crops, no selling. No money in village to sustain, Mahesh. What can be done to revive my village in such hard times?

Thank you again,

Kishorechand

PS: There is an Internet shop 5 kms from my home and I walk here sometimes. Please do not write in hi-fi language, my friend. I do not have dictionary to refer. What is scam? And good joke, Mahesh! How can one do fishing in a place which has draught?!

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

February 4, 2008:

From: mahesh64@yahoo.com

To: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

Subject: Call me

Dear Kishorechand,

I apologise for using, as you called, hi-fi language. Scam is a type of fraud. And ignore my remarks on phishing. I am glad that the money has reached you and I am rather delighted to learn that you have the goodwill to donate a portion of that money for school books. Your worries certainly are justified. I have to admit, that I never put myself in your shoes and was wrong in thinking that just disposing off some money would solve all problems. I will confer with a few of my friends who are entrepreneurs. They might throw some ideas that could prove helpful. Please note down my phone number, 09943523111. Call me on this phone number when you receive this email.

Regards,

Mahesh

PS: Yes. My complete name is Mahesh Kumar Singh.

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

February 13, 2008:

From: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

To: mahesh64@yahoo.com

Subject: RE: Call me

Dear Mahesh,

It was a pleasure talking to you sometime back. You have a soft voice, just like your kind heart! And I'm very honoured to call you a friend, Mahesh! I will start the Self Help group that your colleague mentioned and start weekly meetings to discuss how best we can cut costs in the village by helping each other. We will also try out those crops that require less water. Your involvement gives me hope, my friend. I know this will work!

No words can express my happiness,

Kishorechand

PS: You are Mahesh Kumar - MK. I am Kishorechand Malikar - KM. We were meant to be friends!

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

March 13, 2008:

From: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

To: mahesh64@yahoo.com

Subject: RE: Call me

Dear Mahesh,

It has been a month since the time I began implementing the ideas you mentioned. The Self help group has been formed. But it is difficult to convince elders in the village that even women can work with us. Even in such hard times, they cannot understand how we need to forget old customs that only cause more obstacles. The idea of growing crops was good, Mahesh, but women need to walk 8-10 kms to get even that much of water. The ground water, they say, is getting depleted everywhere. I don't know how long that idea will last.

Just updating,

Your humble friend,

Kishorechand

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

March 14, 2008:

From: mahesh64@yahoo.com

To: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

Subject: RE: RE: Call me

Dear Kishorechand,

It is heartening to hear that you have endeavoured upon setting up whatever my colleagues have told. They themselves are surprised at the speed at which you have functioned. Don't lose heart, Kishore. I am sending another cheque, which I hope you will accept as a token of my friendship. Do not hesitate to call me whenever required.

Regards,

Mahesh

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

June 5, 2008:

From: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

To: mahesh64@yahoo.com

Subject: In distress

Dear Mahesh,

Friend, everything is falling apart. My mother gave some of your money to my uncles, but they demand more. They blackmailed me saying I'm helping everyone except them. There was a fight in the family and they are considering removing our family from the village. My father, in his illness, could not face such shame and committed suicide 2 days back. My own aunts & uncles spread lies about my sister and my mother also committed suicide yesterday thinking everything was true. I do not know what to do. Everything I did here for the villagers is now forgotten and they are threatening to throw me out. I, who wanted to help them, I, who used all your money to do good for them, am being asked to get out! What justice is this, my friend? I do not understand. You are the only one I can speak so freely to. I hope that this too shall pass.

In distress,

Kishorechand

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

June 6, 2008:

From: mahesh64@yahoo.com

To: kishorechand789@yahoo.co.in

Dear Kishore,

By the time you read this mail, it will be futile. It is despicable of your relatives and your villagers to ostracize you so. I am coming to your village to take you away. I have seen your efficiency in managing people and your dedication is something praiseworthy. I haven't told you earlier, but, I am the Chairman of MK Group of companies and I can find a suitable position for you to work for me. You can bring your sister along and give her the education she deserves. See you soon.

Regards,

Mahesh

PS: I hope you are not reading this from our company's terminal! Get to work!

This was the first short story I wrote a few years ago. I wrote it for a short story competition and it got shortlisted to be published in a book. It took 3 years or more for the book - Nude and other short stories - to see the daylight, but it eventually did come out. Since I haven't been writing anything, forget short stories, I thought it would be worthwhile to publish this one here. Oh, and it's also part of the short story book I published - Tales from the Idea Vault

Review: Xiaomi's Mi Band - A Disappointment

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Wed, 12 Aug 2015 07:16:00 +0000

I purchased Xiaomi's Mi Band last week. I was very excited about using it. I've been using Fitbit's mobile app for tracking exercises and calories burned for about a month and the idea of having a wearable device that did most of the tracking seemed like a logical progression. Fitbit's devices are expensive. The more varied type of workouts they can track, the more expensive they get. Then someone mentioned Xiaomi's Mi Band and it was available for just ₹999/-. I made an impulse purchase.

And now the pangs of regret are slowly beginning to show. The first setback was to realise that Xiaomi doesn't have an official Windows Phone (WP) application for Mi Band. (cue: laughter for using a Windows Phone) I admit I knew about it before the purchase, but reviews of the unofficial apps seemed promising. However, unofficial apps don't show sleep information collected by the band. I tried 3 of them and all 3 weren't good enough. Another problem with changing apps and pairing the device is that, every time you connect it to a new app, it erases data; starts from 0 steps taken. While it's easier to test steps taken on apps, it's difficult to see if they can track sleep because of the obvious problem that I'd have to sleep for it. Moreover, Mi Band doesn't track afternoon naps, so that makes it even more difficult.

I accepted that I was in a dwindling minority for sticking to Windows Phone, and decided to use Android phones for testing. Second setback was to know that it needs at least Android version 4.3 or above. This led to a rather pointless debate that was won by my opponents who insist that phones are actually to be purchased based on how many apps are developed on that platform and how good its specifications were to be up-to-date with Android's latest OS updates. Only respite was in knowing that my phone is good enough for all basic functions a phone is required to do.

I finally got the official Android application - Mi Fit - installed on my brother's Moto E. I like the app name. It's as if I'm asking "M I Fit?" and like the proverbial mirror, app opens, syncs data with the band and announces "No". The app showed steps taken during day, just like all other unofficial WP apps. But after 3 days of tracking, neither is it showing sleep information or any historic data of steps taken. I scoured through the Mi forums (fora?) and a lot of people have similar issues. No official explanation comes through.

I tried calling Xiaomi helpline and after 30 minutes of futility, I learnt nothing. I tried online chat and it doesn't work. I sent emails, there's no response. I sent a tweet, no response.

It's frustrating me. Any product that relies on another device to show its information needs to be more open than Mi band. Why can't I just view all the data on a website after uploading the information through some device (a PC and/or a mobile)? The data is, after all, mine. And fitness tracking devices are useless unless you get to analyse the data they track. I can understand it's a new product, but any new product that is delivered by a well-funded company needs to have adequate support services at least. Even that is lacking with Xiaomi.

When I bought the Mi band, I'd imagined writing a glowing review of it on the blog. Quite a few people laughed at me for purchasing this device and I'd resolved to show them that I could get fitter by using the data logged through the device. They continue to laugh -- louder. Perhaps I just need to save a bit more and purchase the Fitbit.

For now, I can be seen wearing something that might look like a watch. But don't ask me for the time; it can only tell me that it's a bad time to ask such questions.

Update: My colleague got the Mi Fit app to show the data doing a few quirky things. The 3 things he did was unpaired the device on the app, removed the device from bluetooth devices on mobile phone and the third is the quirky option. Set a very low, achievable goal (say 1000 or 2000), complete it, check app and voila! Everything suddenly begins to work. I've still been tracking the data on my brother's phone, though as there's no official Windows Phone app out yet.

On Murakami and dreams

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 17:29:00 +0000

I remember it happening quite vividly. I was standing at my window, rain pouring outside for more than the two hours I had been standing there. I was 14. I never found it boring. The five paper boats I threw had drowned. I made another one and threw it outside. The water level had risen and this one fell perfectly on a spot that had a good current. My eyes followed it as it drifted away. It went outside my view. I shifted to a different window to track its progress. It was sailing along gloriously. Until a rock came in front and it stopped abruptly. I'm standing next to the boat, pushing the rock away, watching as the boat joins a bigger stream leading to a puddle. I take out my slippers, put it flat on the puddle's surface and give it a tug with a big thrust. Whee! It splits the water and roars far ahead before stopping and drowning. The puddle leads to a bigger and deeper puddle. More space for my slipper-surfing. Water is up to my knees and this shove of the slipper takes it very far. Far, where the water rises above my head. I'm now standing on my slipper like it were a surf board. Whee! It's my slipper-motorboat that is louder than the rain that has made the city into a pond and I'm the only one roaming around. I push the accelerator to go faster. This is not a motor boat, it's a speed boat now. The pond has long gone. I'm on a river now. I feel like swimming and take a leap into the river and start flapping my arms. The river is strong, but the swim is much more enjoyable because of it. It's easier swimming with the current. I just need to flap enough to stay afloat. I'm like a fish. I don't even like fishes. But I need to go faster. I become a sailfish. I sway about and before I know it, the river is far behind me and I'm in the middle of the sea. I've come a long way from home. I turn around. I can spot the skyline of this bustling city. I can spot my aunt's house. It's a speck on the horizon. I want to talk to her. I swim towards it. I'm getting closer. I can see my aunt's balcony. I think she's standing there. I go faster. She's waving at me from her balcony on the sixth floor. I wave back. I stand on the beach and enter her house from the balcony, beaming at her because I'm glad to see her. I'm completely dry. That's when I hear my aunt's words: "Wake up! Don't you have homework to do?"

Reading a Murakami book is like walking into a lucid dream. It's the kind of dreams where some thoughts slowly drift from the extremely ordinary to absurd, almost seamlessly. All the while, everything that happens seems perfectly logical. It's almost as if all the parts in your brain that are meant to caution you, flagging all logical inconsistencies, are numbed. It's a delightful feeling that allows a seamless flight to fancy. Murakami's stories are a bit like that. A story plot starts, it's ordinary to the point of being boring. You wonder why it's even being mentioned or why the character is so dull. An old, not-so-bright man that makes money from locating lost cats. A teenage girl wanting to kill herself because she's in pain. A man who retired from army after being a prisoner of war. Then they begin opening up, narrating their ordinary stories. Soon, they are no longer ordinary. They are a complex web of interweaved stories. Then comes a shock. Totally unexpected. You never saw it coming. The old man is talking to cats and is able to control the weather. The pain the girl feels is so much that you can feel it as your own and all you want is to put an end to it, to feel numb and painless. For her; for yourself. The military man describes witnessing the most shocking torture and living through a harrowing ordeal in a deep well, where the only important thing to happen are five seconds of sunlight. And he lives his whole life in those five seconds. Murakami's characters are set up so brilliantly that you never get enough of their stories and you almost want to will them into sharing more.

The process of thoughts leading to a dream have always fascinated me. It's probably from the time I read Tolstoy's War and Peace. The flow of thoughts as they move from the logical, breaking down slowly into the absurd is difficult to convey with words, but we all feel it as we slowly drift into sleep. I tried similar narration in a couple of my short stories. A friend read it and said I would enjoy reading Murakami. I made a mental note of it. An year later I read Norwegian Wood. While I loved the simplistic way of no-holds-barred story narration in it, there seemed a sense of depression pervading through it. Norwegian Wood didn't have any of the magical reality I was told Murakami's books had. I chose the wrong book. Two years later I read Kafka on the Shore. I couldn't get enough of it. I picked up Wind up Bird Chronicle after it. And I still feel like I want more of it. The passages of stories taking the flight to magical reality, the complex plot easily slipping between multiple universes was very riveting.

Sometimes you wake up from a dream and you can feel it slowly dissipating. You regurgitate the events in the dream over and over in your head trying to capture it in its entirety. You try to make sense of things. Most of the times the memories slip away. But sometimes you gather just enough to piece the rest of it together. Those are the ones that you remember forever. They stay with you vividly. I think Murakami writes those dreams. Not exactly the dreams he dreamt. But I feel that he forms a vague plot and sleeps on it, allowing his brain to do the fancy and then he wakes up and writes the rest of the plot. You can sense it in the stories. You can sense it in his words when he says "the story demanded it". But not everything in a dream makes sense when you are conscious. How did my slipper become a surfboard? How did it become a motorboat? How did I swim to the sea when I can't swim at all? How did I enter my aunt's home in the sixth floor and how was I dry? It doesn't make any sense at all. But it seemed perfectly logical in my dream. And everything in Murakami's stories seem just as logical. And just like you don't remember everything about a dream, there are numerous loose ends left unexplained in Murakami's magical world. Maybe if you regurgitate your dream and find the threads, you might make sense of your dream. Maybe if you reread a Murakami story, you could make sense of the unexplained. There is no closure to your dreams. The stories of Murakami are also incomplete similarly. Like I said, reading a Murakami book is like walking into a lucid dream.

What if your idea is wrong?

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 09:35:00 +0000

It happened again. Someone mentioned a word and it happened again. The word was infinitesimal. It lodged itself in my brain, took control over it and an idea struck. Words give birth to ideas. Are ideas made of words?

I saw a photograph the other day and it happened again. Exploding gases pushing away clouds of molecules to long distances. Distances as long as a hundred, thousand light years. Gases were from an oversized star that blew apart millions of years ago. Something was blowing the gases away - another star. What would become of these clouds, these gases? They will form another star; many more smaller stars. Are ideas made of images? Ones that we give words to?

I walked down a road some days back. A tree was shedding its leaves and the smell that emanated from them grabbed me and shoved me back in time. Twenty years ago, I had smelled something similar. Something strange had happened that day. And now strangeness is associated with that smell. The strangeness gives me ideas. Are ideas made of senses? The senses that give us taste, smell, touch, vision and the words we associate with them? What are ideas made of?

Physiology might have the answers. To understand it, we must first be self aware. We must stand outside of ourselves, allow ourselves, the original body, to be consumed by an idea. It is a quick process. We must break it down to small units; infinitesimal units. Senses are switched on. Nerves are carrying messages to the brain. It has registered. More neurons are now fired up. Synapses are forming in numerous places. The oxygen is being drained from the brain. It needs more blood. The body is giving it everything. The pores on the skins are popping out forming goosebumps. Synapses work feverishly, forming patterns. Numerous patterns are tested; some accepted, others discarded. Slowly, patterns are accumulated; layer upon layer; with words, with smells, with images and all senses the body can conjure are now alive; and they are aware of a new existence. The idea has taken over the whole body. It tells the brain that it has found a truth. Nay, The Truth. The one and only truth that can ever be. It seems so right that any fact proposed against its validity will be struck down by adrenaline. Ideas are made of those.

When the blood has cooled down, adrenaline drained away and sanity has returned, if the idea still seems true, it persists; it becomes a fact. A mountain of facts are collected. If it fails the tests, from other relevant facts, it is discarded. The mountain of facts keep growing. Could it be that some of those facts in the mountain are wrong? Could it be every one of them is wrong?

I was struck down by that idea some days ago. What if everything we have ever known was wrong and we still continue to believe it to be true? Facts have proven to be wrong in the past. Time was supposed to be a constant. What is a second anyway? A unit stripped away from a unit called day. A day is the time taken by a planet to rotate about itself; a random planet, revolving around a random star, placed on a random arm of a random galaxy, in a universe of innumerable galaxies. You split the day into hours, minutes, seconds and run every clock on the planet in sync with it, because you believe it to be true. Same goes for an year. But we saw it was wrong. Actual time for rotation is 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. One orbit is actually 365.2563666 days.

Those errors can be corrected. What about the lie of time being a constant, though? Someone was struck by an idea that time was not a constant, and when objects tended to move at speeds close to speed of light, time dilation occurred. You couldn't see it happening directly. You're too slow yourself for seeing it. But it could be proven mathematically. Mathematics - another pattern; another tool we use as a language to store our ideas within. It showed Time wasn't a constant and relativity was introduced to us. But is that proof enough? Time dilation has been experimentally tested. On satellites revolving our planet. The satellites that are used for GPS tracking have a correction of 38 microseconds to factor in time dilation. They have built machines as big as 27 kms under ground where they accelerate particles to speeds close to speed of light before smashing them with other particles to see its constituents. Time dilation has been observed there too. All of these ideas work within the known universe. And that, is supposed to be proof of the truth.

Universe. What do we really know about it? Is that another lie? 13.8 billion years ago, they tell us, it was small. How small? Very small. Smaller than you can imagine; infinitesimally small. And it was dense. And it exploded. And within the first few minute fractions of seconds, it expanded in a way that no word can describe. And you have to believe this because it can be proven mathematically. What was that particle from which Universe was born? What were its properties? Is there another such explosive particle somewhere? Are you all just lying to us because we don't understand your language of mathematics?

How do you go about proving such absurd, outrageous, yet imaginable theories? It's about scales. It's about history and the marks that known phenomenon leave on things; in our known Universe; on smaller scales. They first noticed that galaxies were moving away from each other everywhere they looked. What was pushing them away? Were they together before? Then they found a faint glow of unaccounted temperature permeating the Universe. Then they made some more theories. And some experiments were conducted. And some more theories were suggested. Words like cosmic microwave background, gravitational waves and ripples within them were put forth. Polarisation was another word thrown in with the theory. And eyes as big as telescopes in remote parts of the planet peered into the dark skies to see what traces of explosion that occurred 13 billion years ago could be spotted. And they told us they had spotted traces. Their mathematics tells us the proof from observations is significant. It brought theorists to tears. It brought their society to cheers.

But what about us? Must we blindly believe you? What if your theories are wrong? What if that pile you have built up to be called mountain of facts is wrong? What if you missed something right in the beginning? What if an assumption you made long ago was so detrimental, the rest of the mountain would not stand on its own? What if? What if we had another equally intelligent species starting from scratch, building up a theory from all evidence that was available to you? Would they come to the same conclusions as you did? What if they found something you didn't? I don't know what it does to you. To me, it robs away my sleep at night.

India and its Space Ambitions - a Justification

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Sun, 10 Nov 2013 18:51:00 +0000

"Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Many passengers would rather have stayed home." ~ Carl Sagan

In 1977, a 722 kg spacecraft left the Earth in the hope of doing something no man-made object had ever done - escape the solar system. After 36 years, having travelled almost 19 billion kilometres, Voyager 1 entered interstellar space, an environment whose composition was unknown when it was launched. Before doing that it had flown past Jupiter and Saturn and returned photographs that would stir the minds of plenty of humans for generations to come. One of the photos inspired the now famous Pale Blue Dot commentary by Carl Sagan. It also returned wealth of data about new moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the composition of their atmosphere, composition and spread of Saturn's rings and it continues to teach us about space where our Sun's influence dwindles away. The Voyager 1 has power which is a fraction of what a smartphone these days possesses.

As an astronomy enthusiast, I have enjoyed seeing the successes of NASA and ESA's various projects including Voyager missions, sun revolving observatories, Cassini spacecraft, New Horizons and also the robotic rovers on Mars. To see the photographs of these distant worlds, to learn of how different they are from Earth, to learn of complex atmospheres and bizarre storms is awe inspiring. When I read about India announcing a mission to Mars, it filled me with joy. To know that my own country was willing to embark on projects that could add to the existing knowledge of our solar system was exciting. A lot of people share that enthusiasm and it makes me very glad. However, in the period surrounding the launch of the mission, there were numerous detractors, outside the country and within it, who questioned such investment. I will attempt to justify the mission to each of them.

ISRO for a developing nation
"We can't have toilets for our people, but we want to send spacecrafts to Mars", "People are dying of hunger and Rs. 450 crore is being spent on a Mars mission", "We can't lay proper roads, but we want to send vehicles to Mars" were some of the comments I came across. If you look at them closely, the problems are real and the intent behind the comparison is for the general good, so I shall not belittle those asking the question.

What I would ask them to do, is to get acquainted with the website of ISRO - http://isro.org. The focus and the motivation of ISRO so far, is best encapsulated by what Vikram Sarabhai said of it when he was instrumental in forming ISRO.

"There are some who question the relevance of space activities in a developing nation. To us, there is no ambiguity of purpose. We do not have the fantasy of competing with the economically advanced nations in the exploration of the moon or the planets or manned space-flight. But we are convinced that if we are to play a meaningful role nationally, and in the comity of nations, we must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to the real problems of man and society."

Over five decades, ISRO has done remarkable work to complement and aid the growth of the country by efficiently and effectively using space technology.

The INSAT programme has revolutionised the country's telecommunications providing access to remote locations not easily accessible through land or air. The numerous satellites launched as part of the programme have assisted in TV broadcasting, DTH services, tele-education, village resource centres, tele-medicine in aiding health-care and family welfare programmes, land and water resource management and disaster management. The expertise gained through years of investment in these projects have made ISRO one of the leaders in using space technology for the benefit of a developing country.
The advances in information exchange from satellite data to aid agriculture/horticulture, water management, fisheries, skill development, empowerment and such, which assist rural development is praise worthy and has largely gone unnoticed.
Mapping and remote sensing applications have been a tremendous achievement too. Their application in weather prediction and disaster management was evident in the evacuation planning in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh when the cyclone Phailin was to make landfall.
Military applications of remote sensing have also made our borders more secure than before.
Aiding studies of atmospheric science will help in challenges that climate change will bring. Other experiments in space sciences are mentioned here - http://isro.org/scripts/spaceandscience.aspx

"That awkward moment when you realise a company making energy drinks has a better space programme than your country." Someone from India tweeted that after Felix Baumgartner jumped 39 km from a Red Bull balloon to set a world record. Remarkable feat, but I was enraged at the ignorance of ISRO's space programme among most Indians. The PSLV has 23 continuous successful launches and the technological prowess of India's space programme is comparable to the best. When it comes to application in promoting development in a country, it is the best. And yet, many Indians continue to remain ignorant. Ignorance can only be overcome with information. Apart from the local applications, ISRO also has a marketing arm called Antrix Corporation which was incorporated for "promotion and commercial exploitation of space products, technical consultancy services and transfer of technologies developed by ISRO". It is a highly profitable venture getting a revenue of Rs. 900 crore and net annual income of 150 crore.

The total expenditure budgeted by India for the year 2013-14 was 16,680,000,000,000 INR (16.68 trillion INR). Of which, less than 1% was the budget for Ministry of Science. The various ministries haggle, jostle and argue to make a case for higher allocations every year. Some question investment in infrastructure, others on military, on science, on agriculture, on industries, some others on welfare schemes. Questioning is healthy for a democracy. It sorts the priorities of the country. Each ministry is answerable to how it implements its budget. When the space sector (which gets a fraction of the Ministry of Science's budget) delivers so much within its budget, it has the right to say that it has used its pie effectively. So, when the question of toilets, roads, hunger and poverty are raised and linked to space sector, the question should be turned around its head. How has the Ministry of Rural affairs implemented its scheme? Despite the investment in National Urban Sanitation Policy why are so many Indians without toilets? How are the welfare schemes for poverty alleviation being implemented? Why aren't local corporations investing to improve quality and longevity of roads? Or, if you really want to link them to Space sector, you could ask, how to utilise our resources in Space and knowledge gained through them to overcome these issues? Best solutions arise when ideas from diverse groups collaborate.

India and the Poverty narrative
When the Mars mission was launched, every second article in a non-Indian newspaper mentioned poverty alongside the Mars mission. It is a pertinent question, because India ranks very low in Human Development Indices and about 30% of its population earns less than $1.25 a day. The $1.25 a day is the International Poverty Line used by the World Bank. Here is a list of countries by percentage of population living in poverty. Since India's space ambitions are compared to that of China, here is the Wikipedia article on Poverty in China. The Space sector in US took off in early 70s and this image depicts Poverty in US between 1959 to 2011.

While everyone is free to draw conclusions of their own, my conclusion is that percentage of poor people is not a correct metric to gauge a country's ambition in space sector.
Poverty alleviation is a complex task and requires sustained initiative along with various investments. Food, healthcare, education, jobs are some common solutions quoted. Space sector has already assisted in health care (tele-medicine) and education (tele-education) solutions and to an extent has aided agriculture and fisheries. It could be used more effectively, no doubt. But not investing in space sector is definitely not a solution. As far as jobs are concerned, direct jobs in space sector are few, but spin-offs from space technology in other applications has a potential to generate jobs.
Space technology is a high end technology demanding very high precision, planning and testing. It is such challenges that improve a country's technological prowess. The applications of the knowledge gained through space technology are plenty and still hold enough potential for future applications.

Special case: UK and Indian aid
When the economic slump hit UK and austerity was regularly being mentioned in the debates, conservative MPs brought up the annual financial aid of £250 million to India. While some publications responded saying the aid was to overcome poverty, some others said it was to ensure it would result in exports of their products, services, technology to India. Most begun questioning the aid mentioning India already had a bustling space sector and claims were made India invested UK's aid in space exploration. Guardian ran a story dispelling that claim by providing detailed break up of the UK's aid to India - http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/apr/14/uk-aid-spending-history. India's space sector is funded by India alone.
Then came India's announcement that its Air Force would be buying the French multi-purpose Dassault Rafale fighter jets over the Eurofighter Typhoon, part of which is manufactured in UK. It was a deal worth $10 billion. That deal soured the narrative on UK aid to India with some tabloids calling India ungrateful. The debates in UK reached a melting point and the aid to India is being ended by 2015. The move was welcomed by both sides. The intent behind the aid was very noble, but when a relationship is soured by a narrative it causes embarrassment on both sides.
With this background, it is not surprising that whenever any news about India's space mission gets mentioned, UK media always brings up the aid. Even the correspondents from Guardian are not yet convinced that the aid was never used in India's space sector.

Space Exploration

"We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars." ~ Carl Sagan

No one is insulated from being questioned about huge investments. NASA is regularly questioned on its expenses. The media in UK questioned its own investment in hosting Olympic games. Even CERN had to answer why massive investments in building particle colliders were necessary when major part of the world still grappled with poverty. In the answers to each of these questions lie the justification for a country, any country, to invest in Science and its allied industries.

CERN director Rolf-Dieter Heuer talked about the foundations on which technology stood. "Fundamental science. Applied sciences. Innovation. Applications. Technology. You can't ignore fundamentals, the base." CERN invests huge amounts of money in understanding underlying intricacies of nature - the Fundamental sciences. That knowledge is used in applied sciences. Innovative ideas based on these sciences lead to applications in solving problems in other industries. Applications lead to technology. The investment in fundamentals always pays off in the long run.

When a nun from Zambia wrote to NASA's director of science questioning investment in the Curiosity rover, he replied in an excellent letter explaining why exploration was important. It can be read here - Why Explore Space? As CERN's director mentioned about applied sciences and applications, the letter shared an anecdote of a Count in Germany who encouraged a man's hobby of grinding glass to view tiny objects when the epidemic of plague was ravaging the country. The hobby eventually led to microscopes, which over the years have helped in curing numerous diseases, including plague. He also mentions that there have been thousands of applications in technology which have been improved by the knowledge gained through space technology. Sometimes the link is not so evident immediately. Sometimes it takes decades. But it is difficult to predict how one investment will reap benefits or how quickly it would do it. Prediction also carries the problem of being discarded as mere science fiction.

Those are some rational justifications of investment in space technology. The underlying inspiration, though, is much more fundamental, an almost animalistic instinct of curiosity and wonder of what lies beyond. Of seeing the stars light up the sky, imagining the vastness of the Universe, peering closer to find it even bigger and weirder than imagined and wondering about our place in this monstrosity. Astronomy makes you feel insignificant and yet fills you with awe. Throughout history, it has been mankind's inquisitive nature that has forced him out of his territory, first to wonder of what lies beyond, finding means to get there and learning how to adapt. Until now, the curiosity was limited to Earth. The last century has given us the technology - the means to fulfil the curiosity of the world beyond the skies.

The challenges of space are enormous. The precise calculations, intricate, detailed planning, accurate construction and fine grained deployment of technology is a quantum leap in manufacturing. Getting to Mars is not easy because the acceptable levels of errors are very minute. Numerous articles have been written explaining how Rs. 450 crore for a Mars mission is very little and hence commendable. If an Indian made spacecraft were to get to Mars it would display an enormous leap in displaying our prowess of developing such technology. We have already displayed how it could be done within a small budget. Even if it fails to get to Mars a wealth of knowledge would have been attained from the mistakes. Not to get too drawn away by a country's pride, the ideal way forward would be to avoid competition with other countries and instead promote more collaborative efforts.

I end the post in the hope that India continues its prudent investment in the space sector and achieves a good balance between aiding the country's growth and charting a promising future with exploration.

Friction - A Short Story

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Fri, 16 Aug 2013 19:25:00 +0000

"How does it end?" she asked.
"With us getting married. To each other." he replied.
"It's not good enough."
A look of dismay appeared on his face. "You're turning me down?"

*** 2 years ago

"I hear you got lucky, Ashok? Got yourself a female lab partner." said Harish.
"Lucky? Have you seen that girl?" asked Ashok.
"No. But I would gladly trade Kishore for a girl as a lab partner."
"And so would I." said Kishore.
"Any other girl and I’d be just as glad as you both. But you guys haven't seen Sandhya."
"What about her?" asked Harish.
"Dude, she's this short." he waved his hand around his shoulders. "She has these ugly looking spectacles and the worst part of her is her hair. Her hair is shorter than Kishore."
"How does she look?" asked Kishore.
"Ordinary and boring. You look better than her." replied Ashok.
"Then why don't you marry him and live happily ever after?" came a voice from behind.
Jolted, Ashok turned around and saw Sandhya standing there.
"Oh God! I'm ... I'm so so sorr... ", before Ashok could apologise, Sandhya walked away.

***

"I'm Professor Suryanarayanan. You already know that since you’ve put in a request to be mentored by me. I repeat it so that it's clear how you’ll refer to me while we’re in this laboratory. It’s 9 syllables long and 9 is a good number - a perfect square. What we’ll be doing in this lab will involve cutting edge research in the field of optics. I’ve read the papers the two of you have turned in. Even though it was about something I consider trivial, what stood out was your grasp of underlying mathematics. Professor Chandresekharan speaks highly of you. I hope you both are intelligent enough to be able to apply that knowledge wherever applicable in our research.
"I’ve prepared a brief on the subject of our research. Read it, discuss it and we’ll talk when I’m back from my lecture. See you in an hour."
Sandhya pulled a chair and started reading the brief.
Ashok stood nervously fiddling around with his pen, wondering how to apologise to her and fix the awkward situation.
"Err ... San ... Sandhya?"
"I am Sandhya Shivashankaranpillai. It’s 9 syllables long and I mention it so you know it’s a perfect square."
Ashok let out a laugh and caught it halfway as it came out too loud. "You're funny."
No response.
"I wanted to say sorry for my behaviour the other day. I really didn't know you were standing behind."
"Is that what you are sorry about?"
"Yes."
"Let's get this straight. You are sorry you said something nasty about someone in front of them. It would be alright if I wasn't there to hear it?"
Ashok hesitated. "I see your point. I shouldn't have said such mean things at all."
"What about thinking of mean things? Is that acceptable?"
"Are you going to tell me what’s right to think about and what’s not?"
"No. I'm just trying to find out how your mind works."
"You think I'm a bad person?"
"I'm not wasting time on talking." saying which Sandhya continued reading the brief.
"You're very ... Never mind."

*** An year ago

"Do you understand why Fast Fourier Transforms are used?" asked Professor Suryanarayanan.
"It's a quicker way to compute Discrete Fourier Transforms." replied Sandhya.
"That's the answer you must have memorised to score high marks. If I prod you more, you might add a 'and its inverse' to tell me how it can just as easily be converted. What your generation lacks is insight. You know a solution, but not why the solution is chosen. FFT is chosen because it converts our signals to the frequency domain where we can do our computations and convert it back. You change the problem to a dimension where it's easier to attack. Your silly mistakes have altered the expected results."
"I’m sorry. I'll be more careful."
"That’s the least I expect. What about the 3 weeks we've lost?"
"Professor, it was a marginal error. She's been working very hard with very little sleep. Mistakes are bound to happen." intervened Ashok.
"I expect you both to work hard. I expect you both to be just as passionate as I am. It's the only way we can make progress. It's a tough world out there. We don't prove our theory by results, someone else will do it before us and all the work is wasted."
"I understand the urgency and the importance. I suggest that we spend a day every week to cross-verify our work. That way all the work can be seen without bias and errors can be minimised." said Ashok.
"I like that idea. I've seen you both quarrelling often. It makes reviewing each other's work even more intricate. You arrange it between yourselves." said the professor and left.
"Well?" Ashok looked at Sandhya.
"We can meet on Saturday after 7 p.m. 2 hours should be sufficient to analyse your work. If it takes you longer, you can take my work home and we'll discuss it every Monday." said Sandhya.
"That works for me. But I was referring to the confrontation."
"What about it?"
"A little Thank You won't harm."
"Oh! Thank you, my great saviour! My handsome knight in shining armour! My messiah! My deliverer! I am forever indebted to you for this immense grace you have shown!"
"Why are you being so sarcastic?"
"What else do you want me to say? Did I ask you to stand up for me? Do I have 'Help Me' written over my face?"
"No. But I thought you would appreciate my getting you out of a tough spot."
"Why would you think that? I'm perfectly capable of doing my own work, justifying my theories, holding my convictions, for accepting my mistakes and for taking flak which comes as a result. It's just as important as accepting plaudits. I wouldn't run away from it. And I surely don't need someone to do me favours and then demand appreciation for it." saying which Sandhya walked out.
"You are impossible!"

*** Last week

"I've decided. I'm going to propose to her." said Ashok.
"To whom? And propose what?" asked Harish.
"I'm going to ask Sandhya to marry me."
Harish and Kishore looked at each other with amazement. "Should I take you to a doctor? Rao’s clinic is open till 11 p.m." said Kishore.
"I'm fine. I don't need a doctor. But I've made up my mind." said Ashok.
"Are you mad? For 2 years, we've only been hearing how much you hate her for being rude all the time. Now you want to make that permanent?" said Harish.
"She can be crazy at times. Do you know what she does when she sees a book? She flips to the last few pages and reads them. I recommended a movie to her once and you know what she asked? 'How does it end?' I asked why it mattered and she said, 'I need to know if it's worth my time. Most movies start well and make no sense by the end. Absolute nonsense. I don't want to waste 3 hours of my life in something I dislike at the end.' I think that's why she reads the book endings first, too." said Ashok.
"That's convoluted." said Kishore.
"I don't know. Maybe everyone shouldn't really think like everyone else. Isn’t that how research works too?”
"No. But what of all the nasty things she calls you?" asked Harish.
"Oh! She's so creative with her insults." said Ashok.
"Ashocker was good." said Kishore.
"She called you Neils Bore once, didn't she?" asked Harish.
"Those are nothing. She once called me a nefarious nescient nincompoop. And I called her a vacuous vicious vilifier. And then we traded some more alliteration. When she called me a boisterous bothersome buffoon, I couldn't hold back my laughter. She looked at me weirdly for a few seconds and began laughing herself. Oh! She looks so pretty when she laughs." said Ashok sighing.
"Pretty? Do you want us to remind you of your first impressions of her?" asked Harish.
"I don't think like that anymore."
"Have you forgotten how nasty she is to you all of the time?"
"She's a tough nut to crack. But there was this one time that I saw her weakness show. The professor was giving her hell and she was on the verge of crying. I could spot tears forming in her eye and see her body shake trying to fight them off. That was the first time I felt that she was human after all."
"And now you want to marry a human who hates you openly, insults you creatively and leaves no doubt that she enjoys doing it?" asked Kishore.
"Maybe that's how she displays love." said Ashok.
With a bemused expression Kishore looked at Harish and gestured to show that Ashok had totally lost it. "Stop making fun of him, Kishore. Our job is to make him snap out of this masochism and not let him get hurt." said Harish.
"Oh! It would hurt if I kept this all to myself and not let her know. It already hurts." said Ashok.

***

"I need to speak to you, Sandhya." said Ashok.
"Can it wait?" she asked.
"It can't wait another minute."
"That serious?"
"Very."
"It better be important."
"It is."
"Ok. You have my undivided attention. What is it?"
Ashok hesitated. He looked at her and suddenly lost all courage. There she stood confidently. He had mocked her height and her appearance once, but she was more self-assured than he was. She had changed her spectacles and now it was easy to gaze into those penetrating eyes that shone with knowledge. They didn't flutter even a bit. They showed how much they had grown accustomed to what was being seen. A mild amusement was showing up in them now.
"Yes? You seem to have lost your voice. This is a first. Wish I’d seen more of it in 2 years."
"I ... I've not lost my v-voice."
"W-W-Well w-w-why don't you t-t-talk then?"
"Don't make this more difficult."
"You know I love to."
"I love you. And I would consider myself the luckiest man alive if you married me."
Sandhya remained silent. Ashok had blurted out whatever he had practiced to say. And now the silence hung around making time run slower than ever.
"How does it end?" she asked.
"With us getting married. To each other." he replied.
"It's not good enough."
A look of dismay appeared on his face. "You're turning me down?"
"I'm only saying I don't like the ending."
"Why? You don't like me?"
"I don't like the marriage to be the ending. I want to spend the rest of my life making my husband's life as hard as possible and bringing out the best and the most brilliant facets in him. I want to spend my life knowing I will have for a husband who will not accept mediocrity from me and will always push me to become better at whatever I want to do. I want to be accepted for the person I am deep within the tough shell of defence that I put up. I want to let in only one person in there. A person who can see my weaknesses and still not take advantage of it, despite all the nastiness. A person who isn’t afraid on having seen the worst of me, deserves to get the best of me too. And that person is you, Ashok. Our marriage will not be an ending. Our ending will be decades from now when we are lying in our death beds next to each other, competing on who wrote better papers in their life."
"I like the ending."
"Then don't waste more time. Get working on it, already."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(I wrote this story for a short story competition organised by Helter Skelter magazine for their 3rd volume. It had a theme - Strange Love. It's possibly few of those subjects which I'm very uncomfortable writing about. Perhaps, while reading, you even felt it. I cringed while writing some of the lines! When I saw the theme, I thought writing about strangling love would be much easier than strange love. Anyway, what's the point of writing if I can't go beyond the comfort zone and be a bit more adventurous, right? The friends with whom I shared the story didn't take to it well and I agreed with them. Needless to say, the story wasn't selected for publishing. So here it is on my blog)

Kingfishers in the backyard

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 19:06:00 +0000

I have a favourite bird. I never thought I would have a favourite bird, but the White Throated Kingfisher is one now. My mother kept mentioning a blue bird appearing behind our house early in the morning. She said it had a long beak. I never wake up early in the morning. Things changed. I still don't wake up early in the morning, but the bird began appearing more often. I even managed a few photographs to share it here earlier. I still thought it was a passing visitor who halted in our backyard by mistake. There are no water bodies nearby for it to find fish.
But the bird stayed. Much to the dislike of the numerous crows that felt threatened by it. I slowly recognised the sound it would make. A deep, prolonged, shrill voice that would stand out from the rest of the noises in the backyard. I started spotting it more often. The 100mm became a permanent fixture on the camera, just so that I would be ready to take a picture when I spotted it. What you see above is one of the successful attempts. It spotted me, as can be seen, got scared and flew away. Maybe it was the camera with a long lens. Or maybe I should stop wearing bright red shirts at home.
Luckily, it didn't get scared enough to disappear. It seems to have made our backyard its permanent address and gets its daily ration of insects behind our home. I tried leaving water for it, but it is never thirsty. And then one day, I saw two of them! It appeared they were fighting. A beak hitting the other beak, a flutter of the wings and some more bouts exchanged. I ran in to get the camera. Before I could click, they both flew away. Their flight is so elegant. So unlike the pigeons, who are clumsy. And very unlike the crows who make so much noise. The flight of the Kingfisher is a seamless blending of the blue of its plume to the colour of the background. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps they weren't fighting. Perhaps one of them was a female. I can never tell apart a male from a female when it comes to birds. Perhaps they were simply pecking and I innocently, ignorantly turned out to be a voyeur.

Few weeks passed and I spotted another shade of blue. This one came closer to home. And it was much smaller than the other two I had noticed. Maybe this was a young Kingfisher! An offspring of the latest family in our backyard! I clicked, got closer, clicked again, got closer, clicked again and just when I thought this young fellow wasn't shy, he proved me wrong. I share the best click below.

I have read that every animal has its own personality. You just need to observe them for long. I haven't spent enough time observing them. The crows however have adjusted and are no longer hostile. Last week, I stood near the backyard munching my breakfast. A crow leaped and came near. Hoppity, hoppity, hop, he kept coming near and made eyes looking at me chew my food. Who needs languages. I could feel him inside my head demanding food. I threw a few crumbs. Instantly, it caught it and gobbled it. And it looked at me with those eyes again. I threw some more crumbs; this time a bit far off. Before it could get to it, a deep, shrilled, prolonged noise was heard and a blue bird darted straight at him and shooed him away. Oh boy! The Kingfisher can be bossy too!

On Arsenal 2013-14: The Season Arrives

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Sat, 03 Aug 2013 10:10:00 +0000

Last few months have been dull. Weekends have been excruciatingly boring and pointless. What does a person do when he gets home on a Saturday evening and has nothing to look forward to on the television and the 24 deadening hours that make up a Sunday? Especially when there is no football to be watched? But I got through those months; somehow-anyhow-do-not-ask-how I made it and only 2 more weeks remain. The excitement expectation brings will see me through. I know it will, you have to believe me! Or not; who cares.

Which brings us to The Arsenal; and Arsene Wenger; and finances, economies of football clubs, transfer contracts, player valuations and the most important of all - the fans and their expectations. (Just kidding. I'm not going to talk of it all) 8 years without winning a trophy, Arsenal have gone from being a title contender to a Champions League position contender. That feeling of animosity with Manchester United, that boiling of blood when a match against them begins, that delightful feeling when they lose their matches against other clubs - schadenfreude - I've missed it. Missed it for quite a few years. Now I feel like the fan of a mid table club that gets elated if Arsenal beat ManUtd, thinks a draw is reason to rejoice and a loss shows we tried hard. There is disappointment, yes. There is a sense of resignation, yes. There is a revulsion for the manager, NO!

Gooners - the fans of The Arsenal - are split right in the middle. Either you are for Wenger or anti-Wenger. I've been reading the views of hundreds of them on Reddit, blogs, website comments and on Twitter. There is this pessimism and a sense of hopelessness that comes when a person has forgotten what it feels like to have won something. Every little action is scrutinised with an electron microscope, every failure derided vociferously laced with the I-TOLD-YOU-SOs and every little success dismissed as luck. And all of the blame fall on the aging, weakening shoulders of one Arsene Wenger. 17 years he's been on the job and now all his actions are met with unbridled cynicism.

Cynicism (noun) - a cynical feeling of distrust.

Cynical (adjective) - believing the worst of human nature and motives.

This happens a lot. Look up a meaning of a word and it throws a word whose meaning you don't know. Here's another word - parsimony. No, it isn't the money earned by selling Robin van Persie. Arsene Wenger is accused by fans for being parsimonious. While the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea have sunk in millions of pounds in the past 8 years to buy talented players, in the overall player expenditure list of Premier League clubs, Arsenal are at the bottom. Put another way, they've made the highest profit. Arsene Wenger has a post graduate degree in Economics. The club turns in a profit year on year, a rarity among football clubs worldwide. (I've often wondered if I should've been an investor in Arsenal Football club instead of being a fan) Financial stability, however, has no bearing on trophies, unfortunately. The term marquee signing is virtually unheard of at Arsenal. This year was supposed to be different. "WE HAVE MONEY!" announced Arsenal CEO Ivan Gazidis to the press, "AND WE WILL BUY WHOEVER WE WANT!" 26 players have left Arsenal since. One has arrived - Yaya Sanogo; on a free transfer.

I reread this post till here. And boy, is it boring! I came here to write about how this cynicism and dismissive nature of gooners was affecting me and how difficult it is to not get angry. I wanted to write about how fabulous the current squad was in the final stretch of last season when they were written off, how they managed to finish 4th and showed immense courage in defeating mighty Bayern Munich at Munich, the same team that defeated mightier Barcelona 7-0 on aggregate. I wanted to write about why it is important to show support for this remarkable squad that stuck together, improved upon numerous flaws, played against all odds and won themselves the Champions League spot. I wanted to display how the players were gelling together as a unit, interchanging roles when needed, looking after each other keeping the team ahead of the individual. I wanted to write about why it would be improper to believe these players didn't have the capability to win a trophy without buying 3 or 4 people worth £100 million in all. But as I started writing the post, I realised the truth. I'm just another blogger writing about football, whom no one reads and whose writing will have no impact on football. So, instead, I keep my views to myself and wait patiently, with building excitement and hope for the new season. COME ON YOU GUNNERS! (COYG)

Knowledgeable Chennai Crowd

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 11:48:00 +0000

I've been a proponent of the idea that all cities are mostly the same and it's the people that make a city and not the other way round. I also believe in the process of adaptation and evolution and any city old enough to see a few generations pass, tends to develop a personality of itself. Not wanting to drift into a city vs city debate, I'll generalise a bit and claim that, while in some cities power or money matters, in Chennai, what one knows matters. While in some cities, some might ask "Tu jaanta hai main kaun hoon?" (Do you know who I am?), in Chennai they ask "Unakku enna theriyum?" (What do you know?). While in a city that measures a person's worth in money, what they wear, where they live and how much they earn, in Chennai, the schools and colleges attended, the number of degrees earned and the organisation for which they work matters more. For an outsider to Chennai's schooling, as myself, I've never understood how "Of course he turned out like that. He's from PSBB, da!" (or DAV or PS) ought to explain everything about a person's personality. Pick up a wedding invitation of a Tamilian wedding and see how the worth of the bride and groom is measured by the number of degrees affixed next to their names. Some seem to have a goal in life to ensure that all alphabets from A to Z are covered in the acronyms of degrees they've acquired. Qualification proves quality. And it is displayed proudly.

Which brings us to the post title. The term Knowledgeable Chennai Crowd was possibly coined when Sachin Tendulkar played a valiant knock against Pakistan in Chennai, got injured and left 12 runs to be scored by the 5 people that came to bat after him. And they didn't score those runs. The Chennai crowd, first shocked and dismayed, got up to give a standing ovation to the Pakistani team. And as I continue living in this city in the tenth consecutive year, the term just doesn't seem to go away. This fixation for information among some of the people I meet is enormous. They don't just know cricketer's names. They know their batting and bowling averages, date and place of birth, best knocks and best bowling spells, favourite books, most common words used in a post match presentation, stories of their parents and grandparents and other trivia. They have already spotted errors in my post and are itching to point it out.

The same amount of drive to learn everything on a topic is widely seen in their music. Come December and the newspapers and twitter feed become indecipherable. While a novice as myself is enjoying Carnatic music, the knowledgeable crowd is deducing which raga is being played, how the sruthi is slightly off by the fifteenth of a pitch and how the Mridangist isn't keeping up with the talam, which they are calculating by slapping their hands on their thighs. This is followed by a debate on which raga is better and why, which accomplished singer is hyped and why and which hall has better auditory pleasure and why. Why is the most important portion. They have ten bullet points covered in the why. It's astonishing.

Books. Oh boy, never get into a conversation about books with the knowledgeable crowd. I declared myself to be a P.G. Wodehouse fan. They are not Wodehouse fans; fanatics rather. They have read every story that Plum has ever written, including the rare ones that you can never find sold in India, twice; at least. They have seen all the shows and movies made from the Wodehouse stories and will tell you why Hugh Laurie wasn't the best Bertie Wooster. Same goes with every author they adore. Once, I told one of them that I liked Tintin and Asterix comics. What followed was two hours of monologue on why Tintin lacks the depth of Asterix and mention of other comic books, publishers, graphic novels and a dispassionate comparison of them. I don't call myself a Wodehouse fan anymore. I keep quiet about the books I've read.

My aunt likes to recount this particular incident. I was 13 and she asked me who my favourite actress was. I, apparently, instantly answered Shilpa Shetty. She asked why and I said I just did, no reason. The knowledgeable crowd would despairingly disapprove of such insipid indifference. They can tell you why a particular actor is ill suited for a role, why a certain TV series is overhyped, why a particular music score was misplaced in a movie and why on earth Benedict Cumberbatch was the worst choice for Khan in the Star Trek movies. Again, important word is why. You can't win a debate. They beat you with information. Unless you're also part of the knowledgeable crowd yourself. Then I just sit by the side and enjoy the bout.

To the question "How does a car run?" some might answer Petrol or Diesel; I would. The knowledgeable crowd starts from the front of a vehicle and rattles out all the essential components that are needed in any automobile, the optimal engine capacity, type of engine with bhp and torque and what-not, ideal chassis, optimal size of tyres, best designs, ugliest designs and the history behind the automobile's manufacturers and the various models they have designed. Same goes for numerous equipments, machinery and technology.

Sometimes, when I'm bored and brooding on all things unnecessary, I tend to wonder about the passion the knowledgeable crowd displays to learn everything about anything that interests them. It's a productive mechanism. You have to know more than the other person and it drives you to learn more and discover more. They are never satisfied. I sometimes attempt to imagine the time and effort I might need to learn a fraction of what they know and I begin sweating. I think I'll be happy with Shilpa Shetty, thank you very much.

Pointlessness

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 11:57:00 +0000

"I filed my IT Returns. They have sections asking if I'm Portuguese or if I made earnings overseas. If only it were true!"
"I completed Norwegian Wood. I would have mentioned an innuendo on the title but the book was rife with direct implications."
"Schadenfreude. *checks spelling* That's what I feel right now."
"Arsenal is willing to throw money behind that Uruguayan. It's joined the Suarace!"
"These are mushrooms growing in my garden. [link to photo from mobile phone]"
"This is a bokeh of a bougainvillaea shot with a Canon 50 mm f/1.4. [link to Flickr]"
"Hubble finds a new moon of Neptune. On Earth, we have one every month."

Are you getting the drift? Those would have been tweets. Those are the thoughts that occurred to me over the past week; a week that I stayed away from Twitter. When I read them, I realise how pointless and silly they all seem. I don't understand why I thrust such fatuous thoughts on the people that follow me. I used to thrust them on my friends. But they were friends. Such agony was assured as part of the terms and conditions in the friendship contract. No such contract with Twitter's followers. And yet they follow. I feel guilty. I try my best to be as informative and intelligent I can't be, just so they get the worth they were assured when they clicked the follow button. And I end up displaying a personality which is as far from my real self as Greenland is from being green in winter.

"Bibulous is a word that might not be seen written in flattering terms in the Bible."
"You must be a fool to take Twitter so seriously!" ~ every fool that takes Twitter seriously.

It's a fantastic world with fantastic people, Twitter. I've come across so many fantastic people doing fantastic things who are willing to open up and share their fantastic mind and discuss how they conjured such fantastic things. I listen to them in awe and write fantastic some more times. It shows how my vocabulary has shrivelled to select terms. Most tend to begin with F and are surprisingly not abusive. Which brings us to conversations; or the lack of them. I can't hold up my end of non-Twitter-life conversations for long these days. Two or three points of arguments, one deliberate counter argument to show I'm a contrarian and then I spit out an unfunny joke and laugh alone. There are longer conversations. I'm mostly quiet in them. The speaker is led to believe I'm listening, but all I'm doing is conjuring up some tweets and wondering how I'll fit them in 140 characters.

Which brings me to word associations and actual feelings and George Orwell's 1984. There was an idea about how some thoughts and feelings could be subdued just by removing words that signify that thought from the language.

"What if maverick, rebellion, revolution and similar words never existed? Would there be resistance?" (not an actual quote from the book)

The dismissive ones dismiss it with a snort, the unthinking ones elicit a 'Whoa!' and the rest mull over its implications and ready themselves for a conversation. I'm in no mood for conversations. I'm already surfing science portals looking for interesting articles on science that I wish I would understand. That's one good change that the last detox break from Twitter resulted in. I made a separate list for profiles writing about science and being a good imitator, I picked up interest in a variety of such topics.

"My book is out!"
"Ok. I'm repeating, with as much enthusiasm, my book is out, guys!"
"Sorry to interrupt your current political outrage, but, hey, my book is out!"
"My book is free for today. Please read it!"
"Book is free today too. Can anyone read it? Please?"

The short story book turned out to be as pointless as this post. I put out the first novel for free, 30-odd people read it and that became my value -- Free. So, this time, I put a value to the book. Six fabulous people bought it and I'm forever indebted to them. I tried free promotions and a hundred people downloaded it. One person has read it. I fake the open minded approach most of the time. It's all a learning process. Now the open mind is like a solar array in the night searching for one bright speck of positive outlook. But I continue writing stories. And instead of hoping that people find it, I've been thrusting them into their mail boxes, forcing them to provide feedback. Cunning mechanism with proven success! What valuable feedback! I feel like writing more and more stories now. Wrote 3 in a month.

"How does one pass time when access to the biggest pastime is taken away?"

How to replace one addiction? Replace it with another addiction. Reddit-ing and failing.

The Blackout

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 18:28:00 +0000

"Do you know where I wish to be now?" Silence. No answer. "I'll tell you. Imagine a garden, a well maintained one, in front of a farm house far away from the city. The sun is setting, just like it must be setting now. The sky is turning from orange to pink to red. I'm on a hammock, a book in my hand and by the hammock is a table on which my favourite drink resides. The birds are chirping in the trees around, calling out their family members to announce their day's end. My evening has just begun. Guests will arrive soon. There's a big party, lots and lots of friends; and they all love my parties. There will be music, there will be food, there will be conversations, laughter and dancing. And she will be there. She'll be wearing a dress as blue as the sea, her hair falling off her shoulder as she dances, gold earrings flashing; just like her eyes do when they meet mine. There's a mischief in them and I'm drawn towards her. I smile, she returns a wide smile and my heart skips a beat. I stand next to her, hold her hand and look deep into her eyes. My heart is running fast and my mind is running amok with all the things I would like to do right then. But, instead, here I am, here, in this godforsaken place, stuck with all you miserable people for company!"

"Cool down, boy. Cool down. That thing is never going to happen anyway."

"How would you ever know?"

"I know about these things. It's my turn now."

"Go ahead."

"Do you know what I would be doing? I would be eating. I am so hungry right now that I could eat a lasagna, a whole pizza with some tomatoes, olives, capsicum, chillies and the pizza is dripping with cheese. And then I would eat a bowl of pasta. Yes, I feel like eating Italian today."

"Monica Bellucci?!"

"Hah! No. And after I'm done eating Italian dishes, I'm going to have a tiramisu and a cheesecake. Lots and lots of cheese. Man! I'm so, so hungry right now. I haven't had anything to eat for 8 hours. I wish we could order some food and get it delivered here. "

"Sure, go right ahead. You have a cellphone in your hand. Make that call. But, no wait, THERE IS NO CELLPHONE RECEPTION IN HERE!"

"Don't shout. Calm down, you two. There's no need to panic now, is there?"

"What are you so calm about anyway?"

"I'm just practical. There's no reason to get so anxious. Here, let me teach you all how to meditate. It should calm you down. Sit cross legged, like this. Yes, that's good. Now close your eyes, relax every muscle in your body and start to think of calming things."

"That's what we've been doing, genius!"

"You've been fantasising. This is different. Think of something like the sea. Think like you are on your hammock in that garden. It's swaying gently. There's a gentle breeze; it softly touches your face and puts a little smile there; it's moved to your hair, tousling it about. It passes through the trees which are swaying like your hammock. The leaves are rustling and there's a whistling sound; a sound that is soothing your nerves. You've closed your eyes and there is the gentle caress of sleep."

"What's the time?"

"It's 6 a.m."

"What Nonsense?! You put us to sleep for 10 hours?! You drugged us, didn't you? What did you do?"

"There is nothing here. No food, no drinks, no drugs. How can I drug you? We're all very tired and weak. It must have made us sleep so long."

"NO! It was your meditation rot that put us to sleep! We wasted 10 hours!"

"What would you have done instead?"

"I would have yelled and banged and stamped on that door and tried to break it down while shouting for rescue! What else do you think? What if the security guard came by for his nightly checks and just went away because he heard nothing?"

"I don't think he would suspect us to be in here. The power went off for the whole building. The backup power doesn't function for this lift. He must have assumed no one would be here."

"It's all your fault. It was you who talked us into staying back to complete the work when everyone else had left. You're the one who pushed the guilt of not meeting the deadline. If we had left like everyone else, we would be at our home now and the power cut wouldn't have happened when we were in this god-awful, rotten piece of a junk of a lift! It's all your fault."

"Cut it out guys. There's no point fighting like this."

"Yeah?! What other games do you suggest now? We should see the lighter side of all this now, should we? We should crack jokes and laugh? Is that what you want? Huh?"

"Jokes would be good."

"GOOD?! Good. You want jokes, do you? I have one joke for you. It's a knock-knock joke. You want to hear it?"

"Knock. Knock."

Silence followed. A look of disbelief had grappled the eyes that were now looking at the lift's door in the shock that followed a couple of knocks; from the outside.

"Is there anyone inside?"

The shock was so high that the mouth was wide open to shriek, but the lungs had lost all breath to give power to any sound that came out.

***

"Man Rescued From Lift After 30-hour Ordeal"

The blackout that affected some parts of the city turned into a nightmare for a man who was stuck in a lift in an office complex. The guard who finally rescued him after 30 hours found him in a very unstable state and he had to be hospitalised. He is recovering well.

On e-books and its future

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Thu, 30 May 2013 18:40:00 +0000

"I find television to be very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book." ~ Groucho Marx

It's good to start a boring post with a good joke. It's been 4 months since I've started reading on my Kindle and it's been longer since the idea of e-books eventually replacing printed books was sowed within me. The seed of the thought was a piece of audio recording by Douglas Adams where he traced the evolution of books from rocks to silicon. An interesting animation of that can be seen in the accompanying video.

The advantages, efficiency, availability and ease of storing information in a newer format would imply that eventually, the newer technology would be adopted in its entirety. Hindsight gives us the leisure of jumping to that conclusion. It is in the transition process, though, that things wouldn't seem as lucid as they seem now. There probably was a time when the Egyptians were attached to their papyrus and dismissed the idea of paper. Similar reactions must have surfaced when the printing press became prevalent and it was possible to print books in huge quantities. Going by the numerous debates on e-books and printed books, it would be safe to assume we are at one such transition. Of course, it comes with some assumptions based on adoptions, lack of which could imply e-books would disappear entirely. But in this post, I attempt to make a case for e-books.

Advantages of e-books

They don't take up space: Shelf after shelf of books makes for a pleasant and inviting sight. I can't deny it. I'm always drawn towards it. But are all the books worth reading? How many more shelves can one have in a house? How often does one clean up the shelf to discard books that will never be read again? Renting books from library can overcome most of these issues. But with e-reader, the only space constraints are in disk space; which are very cheap.
They don't weigh you down: Have you read War and Peace? Or Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy? Or for that matter, some of the thick books colleges prescribe as reference books for a subject? It's a big load to carry and it is burdensome while reading. Weight of an e-reader is less than a kilogram. Much less in some cases.
Easier to locate content: To locate an algorithm that solves the knapsack problem in a book for computer algorithms, I could go through the index or the glossary to locate it quickly. What if I didn't the term knapsack and was just searching for the problem by general terms? Without reading a book, could I locate passages where specific characters, terms or theories were mentioned? A simple search in the e-reader fetches that. It's just like how physical maps have been replaced by digital maps.
Number of prints is not limiting: Our college specified reference books for some subjects. The poor condition that our library used to be in, there were only 3 or 4 copies of the books. Most of the times, someone would have borrowed it. With e-books, the number of prints is not limiting. Educational institutions can distribute as many copies as there are students. The excitement of standing in queues in front of a bookstore over a long night to be among the first to get your hands on a new release cannot be matched by e-books, though. But then, you also wouldn't be turned away from the store for the book being out of stock when your turn arrived.
Easier to update content: Books on technology are dated. Sometimes the content changes within months and the edition you possess is outdated in a few months. The writer provides all the updates in the next edition of the book, which you are denied. e-books can overcome that problem.
Cheaper, maybe?: Since the cost of printing and the cost of material is not relevant to e-books, they would be cheaper compared to their print editions. Some authors even bypass the publishers and sell directly, thereby reducing prices even further.
Environmental impact:
"'Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read." ~ Mark Twain
When I begun writing this post, I was convinced that reading a book on an e-reader was far more environment-friendly compared to a book. Compare the trees felled for getting out a print edition. Thousands for ordinary books, millions for books by famous authors. And many books would collect dust in warehouses of publishers or sellers. Despite recycling, tree farms for paper industries, and alternate materials for pulp, I was convinced impact of e-reader would be miniscule in comparison to books. But researching the topic showed me otherwise. The most quoted article was - Are eReaders really green? - which is a very well written article that has collected relevant information to do the comparison. Its conclusion? Printed books are greener than e-readers. The only flaw I could locate in the argument was that it assumed the charging of e-readers will be done solely on electricity generated by fossil fuels. What if I charged through solar power? What if manufacturers came up with more efficient batteries and batteries that charged with cleaner energy than fossil fuels? Surely, the scales would tilt towards e-readers then? But it's a conjecture and a guess that would or would not come true in the future.

What advantage does print have over e-readers?

Read more: With varying sizes of books and 2 open pages, you can read more in a printed book. It is possible to have pages side by side on some e-readers, but amount of content reduces thereby.
Make notes: People make notes by the side of the page. Some even put dogs-ears to bookmarks pages containing favourite passages. Note-taking and highlighting can be more efficient in an e-reader. But it will detach you from the page.
Colours: Graphic novel fans will no doubt mention the vibrant colours in print and how it affects their imagination and connects them to a story. Kindle doesn't have colour, now. e-readers with HD screen, on the other hand, can do better than print with colours.
Sharing is easier: Which is why libraries flourish.
Smell: There are a lot of people who love the smell of a book.

As far as I see, the advantages can be overcome with progress in technology of e-readers. For the technology to progress, it would need adoption. There is a concept of increasing returns. As opposed to diminishing returns, adoption of some technologies increase as more and more people embrace that technology. Take the case of music, for instance. It has moved away from gramophone records to magnetic tapes to CDs to disks (general term for media in which it is stored these days). For large scale adoption, what is needed is an eco-system that can sustain the demand. An eco-system consisting of efficient e-readers, common formats for e-books and availability of books. Once those are provided, the adoption would keep increasing. The trends show that e-books are being adopted at a higher rate as each year passes. Which can be used as a proof for my claim of transition of technology.

I admit that it is easier for me shift to e-books, since I am not a voracious reader. My attachment to printed books isn't as strong as some who do not consider e-books as real books. Such purists (for lack of a better word) would only dwindle as a new generation grows up using a tool which they consider to be more efficient. What would not change, however, are books; the wealth of information they contain and the worlds within which a reader can live in.

If you resist reading what you disagree with, how will you ever acquire deeper insights into what you believe? The things most worth reading are precisely those that challenge our convictions. ~ Author Unknown

Tales from the Idea Vault

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 19:10:00 +0000

It is Live! The e-book is out! It's available for purchase on Amazon's website here - Tales from the Idea Vault

I was wanting to collect my short stories and make a book out of it earlier. It would be a good way to have all the stories in one place and getting a default copyright, or at least attribution, for the written work. The option of getting it published through a publisher was tempting. But going through the process of finding a publisher, facing rejections, understanding the workings of pricing and royalties and most importantly, delaying the release, thereby reducing enthusiasm, made me shy away from it. Self publishing it would be; again, like my first novel - Everything Has a Purpose. For this one, I chose the Kindle Direct Publishing. It's a platform I came across when I bought my Kindle and forgot about it. The enthusiasm to publish it there was re-kindled by my friend Niranj Vaidyanathan. I must also thank him for going through the first few revisions of this novel and for providing frank feedback. If the book is in presentable format, it is thanks to him.

Coming to the title of the book: It's too simplistic. Tales from the Idea Vault are the stories I've written on my blog, which I changed to The Idea Vault (from Professional Pakau) some time back. As to the idea behind Idea Vault itself, I'll share the Preface of the book.

Ideas are the soul of an inspiration. Ideas are the rush of blood that you feel when you are captured in the grip of a thought. Ideas are the views that you are suddenly made aware of after contemplating on a thought for long. Every idea is a unique experience to the person who thought it up. But how do you share these with someone else? Language is a hindrance when it comes to transferring the exact experience which has been felt. While language fails in providing adequate terms to describe an experience, it makes up by helping us describe a world strung delicately by words into a grand design that we call a story. It is the story that connects two people. It is the story that shares the experience of an idea. And it is in the stories where the greatest of all ideas have been hidden.

Like everyone else, I am a collector of ideas. I store these ideas deep within my mind and I hold them as dear as a treasure. I call it my Idea Vault. Sometimes, in a state of heightened consciousness, some of these ideas collude with each other and force me to give them a form. What comes out are short stories. I share some of these escaped ideas with you as the Tales from the Idea Vault.

I hope you enjoy reading the tales that have escaped from the vault. If you don't, please share your criticism. As is often said, no feedback is worse than a bad review.

Update: Q: Is Kindle necessary to read this book? A: It can be read in the Kindle for PC (or Mac) application also - Kindle for PC / Kindle for Mac / Kindle on iTunes

The Biggest Fan

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 06:50:00 +0000

Dear Mihir and Dear Manoj,

\m/ - That is how we give salutations in our hallowed order, don't we? The order of rock-n-roll. Fist pump in the air, fingers spread out sideways, all energy directed through it. I am certain it is this salutation that makes the atmosphere in concerts electrifying. Suffice to say that your band - Duality - rocks and rolls, like no other. I would congratulate you on the release of your first album - The First Born, but that would be too formal for our order. A fist bump, a growl or just a w00t would be more appropriate. w00t!

It's time to introduce myself. You know me as Krypto. Yes, that's me. I am the faceless person with whom you have interacted on Facebook. I am the maniac that on one fine day flooded your notifications with likes on all of your status updates. I couldn't help it. I was excited. I was so inspired that I couldn't control myself. It was the first time I came across something that resonated with my ideas almost entirely. Maybe a background might help.

I teach Physics to students here in my town. It is my goal in life to make my students as curious about Physics as I am. And if I can't make it interesting, they won't find it interesting. There is this concept of waves and particles for explaining properties of Matter. Some properties are easily explained with the particle theory. Some explained easily with the wave theory. The fact that both need to be independent of each other is the paradox that triggered the field of quantum mechanics. I'm still a classical physicist. And it is my lectures on wave-particle duality that makes my students like Physics. It makes them inquisitive. Which is where Duality, your band, comes in. A student of mine came across your music and shared your Facebook page.

Pardon me for going overboard, but I would like to call myself your biggest fan. I wouldn't tolerate anyone else taking that position. I would prove myself to be a bigger admirer. I've heard every song you have ever played on soundcloud; at least 20 times. I know all the 30 places that you have performed at. I know the set list you played in each event. The covers you played. Not only have I memorised the lyrics of your own songs, I know all the back stories too. How Mihir suddenly came up with the lyrics of Stranger. How Manoj wrote the lyrics of The First Born in a boring lecture in college (I hope none of my students are as bored!). I've seen the videos a hundred times. I see you both in it and I can tell how your personalities in real life would be. One outgoing, adventurous, willing to push the limits - Particle. Another calm, composed, flowing through, while living within, with crests and troughs, giving a balance - Wave. I can look at the lyrics of Let It Rain and tell why Mihir chose words like "They can not liberate, enslaved lives". I run through the lyrics of Rust and I know why Manoj would choose to write "While the world is paralysed".

I attended your album launch. When I learnt of its release, I was overjoyed. I had to be there on such a grand occassion for Duality. I booked the train tickets and booked a hotel for my stay. It was my first trip to Chennai. The train takes 3 days to reach there. The language people speak there is as alien to me as Quantum Physics is to my new students. But I was going to be at your album launch! I was finally going to meet you both! I can't tell you how excited I was to finally witness you perform live. Loved your new songs! You both are exactly as I imagined you to be. I saw Manoj slip a tune, and immediately noticed how Mihir corrected it. I heard Mihir dropping his tone a bit and Manoj covering for it. You complement each other so well. Duality! Maybe the crowd wasn't so appreciative. I wanted to cheer every song, maybe even sing along. But I could always tell you what I thought of it when the show was over, right? Then you played Crusader and the crowd finally gave you your due.

I was thinking of all the things I was going to tell you both, when you began with the thanksgiving. I was shocked when you mentioned me, Manoj. The words are etched in my mind.

"Finally, I would like to thank all our fans. We wouldn't be here if not for you all. Your appreciation leaves us thrilled. Your criticism makes us work harder. Your continued support is the reason why we get inspired every morning; to make something as beautiful as this music. So thank you, fans. And especially, you, Krypto. You are our biggest motivator."

That was it! That was the moment when reality dawned on me. When you mentioned my name in that crowd. That was when I realised what our relationship was. I need your music to inspire myself every day. To think of new ways to inspire the coming generation in Physics. To never give up. Every time I lose faith, I turn to your music. And in turn, I prod you to churn out better and more inspiring work. You need me, as much as I need you. "It controls you. It governs you. Gives you the choice in Life. Duality."

I bought your CD and left for my hotel without introducing myself. Had I met you, Mihir and Manoj, I know we would become friends. I know you would be as glad as I was in my heart to see you. But friendship would break this arrangement, this bond that we have of inspiring each other. It is not something you want. It is not something I want. It is our Duality.

Rock On! \m/

Krypto

Review: Kindle Paperwhite

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 19:10:00 +0000

I purchased a Kindle Paperwhite last month. I was eagerly awaiting international shipment of this product and I placed an order almost immediately after its announcement. It was delivered to India in 20 days after customs clearance. I paid $193 for it ($139 for the product + $12 for shipment + $42 for customs clearance. Close to Rs. 11,000/-) After a month, I have the following review to share from my experience of the product.

Paperwhite vs. Paperback
The display of Kindle Paperwhite has the electronic ink technology which is a close mimic of ordinary paper. You can read it in broad daylight and you can read it from a very wide, almost 180-degree angle. To read it in the night, unlike its predecessors, the Paperwhite has built-in light. I used to trouble people at home by keeping lights on in my bedroom while reading a book late into the night. With the Paperwhite, I can lie down on my bed and read a book in the darkness. If I tend to drift away into sleep, I press the only button on the Kindle and put it on standby.

Is it as convenient as holding a book?
Maybe more convenient. The Kindle is 6.7 inches in height with a screen size of 6 inches. It is 4.6 inches wide and as thin as 0.36 inches. (see image) I've read some thick books (e.g. Tolstoy's War and Peace, Vikram Seth's Suitable Boy) and I've been weighed down by them, figuratively and literally speaking. The Paperwhite weighs just 213 grams and is perfect for light reading, literally speaking. I am a lazy person and as I loll around in my bed, I can continue reading in any posture I find myself in.

Touching words give meaning
In a rather profound touch, an excellent feature is provided in the Kindle application. Touching particular words will result in a pop-up with a dictionary entry of the word. Terms can also be looked up on Wikipedia (if Wi-Fi is turned on). Additionally, words, sentences can be highlighted, noted or shared. You can choose one of 6 available fonts, change their sizes, alter line-spacing and margins to what you find convenient. There are utilities which allow you to jump to particular pages or chapters, others which keep track of your reading speed and mention location within book, time left to read book and time left in chapter. Kindle books have an option of X-Ray which shows characters, terms, chapters and their mentions throughout the book.

What about smell of a fresh book?
I'm biased towards smells from gadgets over smell of paper. But hopefully, in the future, Amazon might provide a spray-on perfume which will smell like your favourite paper. Do put in a feature suggestion.

Book formats
The Kindle store is one touch away. Close to a million books of Kindle format (AZW and AZW3) can directly be downloaded to the device. Which, of course, is after you pay for it. If you've provided details of a credit card, a purchase is one-touch away (it's as convenient as it is scary!). Apart from that, I tried loading a document in the .mobi format and it worked fine. The only features which didn't work were the X-ray (summary of book, characters etc.) and Jump to page feature. There was one document which lost all formatting and was impossible to read with no paragraph and page breaks. It was an exception, rather than norm. I tried a PDF document and it worked fine too. Except, the options to change fonts, sizes or margins disappears entirely. Might be irrelevant.

Kindle vs. Tablets
The temptation to buy a tablet was high. The electronic ink (with built-in light) not being a strain on the eye is an advantage to the Kindle. However, the technology is limited to black and white display. If you plan to read colourful comics or graphic novels, this might not be an appropriate device. The clincher was my thought that without the distraction of Internet, I would concentrate on reading the book alone. Alas! The Paperwhite has an experimental browser which is as good as a mobile browser. You can view web pages for news, check emails, Facebook, Twitter, view images and browse the Kindle Store, of course. But you cannot view videos (no Youtube distraction, yay!). The keyboard is terrible. I can't find a way to shift the cursor to a location to correct a sentence.

Touch screen
Which brings me to the capacitive touch screen. It isn't very sensitive. For reading a book it is perfect. Tap on the right side, next page arrives. Tap on the left, you can see the previous page. But the precision which better touch screens provide, effective while browsing and editing written content, is lacking. The swipe is used in the home screen and during web browsing. While switching screens, there's a glitch in the screen as the images change. It's part of the electronic ink technology as the particles rearrange. I've a feeling that the life of the touch screen will be 3 to 4 years. After that, I'll have to knock instead of touch!

Battery life
In the month that I've had the Kindle, I've charged it twice. I use it for 2-3 hours a day and the Wi-Fi is always on. So, a charge lasts for 3 weeks. (I had a problem after charging for the first time when the unit wouldn't switch off or move to standby. I put it on charge again and while charging, switched it off. Fixed the issue). The unit starts charging when you connect it to a terminal, so battery life is not an issue. On stand-by, the particles of e-ink just rearrange into some beautiful images set as default screen savers and consume no battery charge at all.

Storage and Management
The device has 2 GB of storage. Of which, 1 GB is used by the Operating System. e-books being small in size, the remaining 1 GB is sufficient. Additionally, you are given 5 GB of space on Amazon's cloud and it's just as easily accessible through the Kindle. Managing books and documents might get inconvenient if the number of documents is high. You can make collections and shift documents under directories. But, if like me, you are an inefficient organiser, managing too many documents could get tricky. Luckily, there's a search across contents available and it's just one touch away.

To summarise main points:

Pros:
Electronic Ink
Strain free built-in light
High battery life
Ease of handling

Cons:
Lack of Colour
No Sound (for audio books)
Capacitive touch screen
Bad keyboard interface

P.S: I've not been an avid reader of books. I barely read 15 books a year. I've rarely re-read books and giving rack space for books is an issue. Which is why I prefer a lending library. But my library didn't have many books I've wanted to read. Which makes it easier for me to become an avid reader of e-books over books and makes perfect sense to get an e-reader. The cost of e-books is still an issue. The prices of books are in dollars as compared to rupees. e-books costing $5 might be cheap in U.S, but when converted to rupees (at a rate at least 3 rupees more than standard rates) it's quite high. I am hoping that Amazon opening an Indian e-commerce website might give more affordable rates. Until then, I'll try my best to maintain a monthly budget for books.

The Forgetful Husband

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 12:39:00 +0000

Mrs. Kavitha Karnik's house was in order. It was in perfect order. Every article in the house had its place and it was never out of its place. Vessels in kitchen had their places within shelves and you would be assured to find them there every time. Home appliances had their positions and any accessories for them were right beside them. The various remote controls to electronics had their own compartments. It would be unthinkable to make the TV's remote control run the air conditioner. Her husband had once tried to find the Channel No. 10 and had ended up giving everyone a freeze. The books had their shelves and they were sorted by categories. One, in the mood to read about the behaviour of animals in the wild, wouldn't want to come across a book that would teach you how to roast said animals. Everything had to be in order.

Among Kavitha's circle of friends, they called her house a museum. And in this museum, these said friends had now gathered.

"Am I allowed to sit here?" asked one. "Did I leave my footwear in the right compartment?" asked another. "Are we allowed to eat sitting on your sofa?". "Is there a seating arrangement you have prepared for us to sit?" and similar other questions were raised.

"Why? Have we decided to play musical chairs today?" asked Kavitha. "Of course, you can sit where ever you wish to sit." Everyone seemed relieved. "But only until I start the music. Then you'll have to switch your seats. And if you forget to pick your plate or even a little bit of food falls on my sofa or chairs, when you are moving around, I'll see to it that you will be hungry for the rest of the day." The relief was replaced by consternation. "I'm just joking!" said Kavitha and they all laughed.

Lakshmi was a new friend and had come there for the first time. She didn't know what others knew and out of curiosity asked the obvious. "Are you so meticulous about everything? Is this like a disorder? Like an obsession or something?" she asked. She was riddled with stares that hit her like darts on her face which was now the dart board. Every stare was hitting the bulls eye. A short silence followed, which slowly began filling Lakshmi's heart with fear.

"It isn't a obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD as everyone calls it." replied Kavitha. "It's just that we like to keep things simple around our house."

"Oh. I didn't mean to sound rude. But I don't understand how things can be simpler with this level of meticulousness."

"It's alright. I get asked this a lot. It's simpler for my husband this way. He has this condition where he works efficiently only with his short term memory. So, if everything has its place, it's easier for him."

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."

"There's nothing to be sorry about. Let me explain. If you've been to a fast food restaurant which has about a hundred customers, you would have noticed how the waiter works. He doesn't take notes on table number and order like bigger restaurants. There's no time for it. He remembers the order, narrates it to the kitchen manager, delivers it when ready, prepares a bill and forgets all about it. If he remembered everything everyone ordered, forever, he would drown in all the information. Even in his dreams the poor guy would be completing orders. How they work is by using their short term memory. They repeat the order over in their head, memorise and once the bill has been paid, erase it. My husband works just as efficiently because of his condition. He doesn't have much of a long term memory."

"It must be difficult for you."

"Not really. We love to work together to find solutions. In the beginning, every task to be done at home was put down in steps and every article which was involved in the step used to have a sticky note on it. Like something on a washing machine would have -

1. Put the plug in the power socket.
2. Insert water hose into the tap.
3. Open the lid.
4. Put washing powder (2 spoons).
5. Load the clothes from cloth basket.
6. Switch the power on.
7. Press Start.

"Such notes would be stuck on all appliances and everywhere around the house. We even had sticky notes for managing sticky notes. Sticky notes would be part of our monthly purchases. This one time, I was so angry with him that while he was sleeping, I stuck a sticky note on his head and it read - 'I HATE YOU'. I woke up next morning and walked over to brush my teeth when in the mirror I saw a note on my head which read - 'But I don't. I love you'."

All the women started gushing on hearing of that gesture. "So how do your kids cope with it?" asked Lakshmi.

"They've grown up around him and they are accustomed to it all. This one time, in a hurry, I asked him to pick up the kids from school. I forgot to give further instructions on what next to do. So there he was at school, with the kids with him and not knowing what to do. The kids were smart enough to know his predicament. When I came back late in the evening, they entered the home with ice cream candies in their hands, after having gone to the amusement park, the zoo and having eaten everything I forbid them to eat. Those mischievous scoundrels! They took full advantage of the situation."

The ladies had a wonderful evening afterwards and the conversation drifted away from Kavitha's husband. When everyone had left, Lakshmi stayed behind. She was still curious. She asked Kavitha "I admire whatever you are doing. I can't even imagine how I would flip out if my husband was as forgetful as yours. I am amazed at how you have overcome these issues with so much courage. Specially, with raising kids alongside."

"I thank you for being so concerned. Like I said earlier, it isn't tough because he recognises his own shortcomings and is always forthcoming with solutions and their implementations. The kids enjoy it too."

"But even then, there are things for which long term memory is necessary. Fond memories of the past, experience which comes from bad memories, shared moments of intimacy and nostalgia. It's like a whole range of emotions is locked out for you to feel."

"I can see that you've thought about this. It makes me happy, this concern of yours. There was a time when I used to be sad for being unable to enjoy those emotions you mentioned. Then I thought about the problem. Here is a man who works only on short term memories. Given a task and the steps to perform it, he does it perfectly and the moment it is complete, he forgets about it entirely. All of it wiped out from his memory; forever. It felt like living with a robot. But I knew he was a human in many ways and I tried hard to look for ways to bring out that human side of him. It was tough. Until I found the solution for it."

"Oh, you did?! What was it? Another level of tasks? Like sticky notes for sticky notes?"

"Something like that, yes. What was essential was to find when those levels would appear. I thought hard about the problem and I realised that the moment the memory is erased is when the task is complete. If a task wasn't complete, he would be a bit irritated and would keep thinking about it and keep asking us what was to be done next. That was when it struck me. Only way for me to make him remember things worth remembering was by ensuring he never completed the tasks associated with them.

"I read a bit about it. There's something called the Ziegarnik effect. In many ways, we all behave like him. We too forget so many little details of our lives after we have completed them and got a mental closure on it. I read that many writers used the Ziegarnik effect to write incomplete stories. They would end it abruptly and would promise to reveal everything in the next publication. The suspense would ensure that readers would read the subsequent story. They wanted a closure on the story too. TV shows too use the Ziegarnik effect effectively by ending the story at a crucial juncture and leaving us with a to be continued.

"When it comes to our family, with the happy moments, with sad moments and the intimate ones, I improvise. It is the reason why he continuously thinks about the kids; about me. Because he thinks his responsibilities to us aren't complete yet. If he didn't get a closure, he would continue remembering it. It makes it easier for him to cope with bad events. I tell him it's all over and in the past and he can forget it. We cannot. It's his gift. You mentioned nostalgia. That is something I've still not figured out how to evoke in him. But I have an idea which I'm working on. Maybe in a month or two, I could tell you how it turned out."

Books: 2012 & 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 16:00:00 +0000

Greetings, Earthlings! 2013 is here. It's not important in the astronomical sense of our Earth completing a revolution around the Sun starting from a random point on its orbit. It's important because we Earthlings survived 21-Dec-2012. It isn't as if I believed in the doomsday rumours surrounding the day. I had actually relied on that prediction to come true so I wouldn't have to do all the pending work at office that I keep delaying. That didn't work out well, as more work joined the pile. I didn't even plan much for my bland personal life beyond 21-Dec-2012. Had the world ended that day, there would at least be one person who would have died peacefully. So 2013 is here and I have no clue what to do with it.

What did I read in 2012?
As is known to regular readers, I read little and I read it slowly. Very s - l - o - w - l - y. Goodreads had a reading challenge where I vowed to read 20 books in 2012. I managed just 15. Most of them turned out to be Science Fiction. It wasn't planned that way, but it turns out I enjoy the genre more than others. (An analysis of the why portion of the statement gives me opportunity to write another blog post) Finished Arthur Clarke's Odyssey series. Absolutely loved it. Started Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Absolutely loving it. Couple of Michael Crichton books and one by David Baldacci. Also read The Idiot by one of my favourite authors Fyodor Dostoevsky.
In non-fiction, there was P. Sainath's Everybody loves a Good Drought. And Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene. Both affected my thoughts and philosophy quite deeply.
And then there was Kurt Vonnegut. Life would be boring if I wouldn't find something new to inspire me. Vonnegut's Slaughter House 5 was on my Flipkart wishlist and a friend surprised me by gifting it. So it goes. There was something about the narrative style of Kurt Vonnegut that held me wowed. There wasn't much to the story, but all through the book, all I could think was, "If I could write stories, this is how I would want to write them." I've read and admired the narrative styles of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Salman Rushdie earlier. Even Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red showed how magical a weaver he is with words. But something so simple in Vonnegut's writing struck very deeply. I hope to read more of Vonnegut in the coming year.

What of 2013?
Which brings us to this 2013 again. It's the elephant in the room. 364 days more of it, demanding me to entertain it for all those days. A little deviation here. Let me relate a story that my boss relates quite often. He'd gone for a mountaineering course in the Himalayas long back. The trainer used to be in the Army earlier and he led the training in a similar style. Strength and endurance training would be taxing and when someone in the group couldn't do some of the exercises, and there always was someone who couldn't, the trainer would yell at him. It was a young group of mostly 20-somethings and they talked back to the 50-year-old trainer. "Oh! Why don't YOU do 20 push ups after running 3 kms?" And then, just like that, the trainer would do it. As the complainant stood dumbfounded, the trainer would calmly walk over to him and say, "Double. Now." Since I managed a measly 15 in 2012, I resolve to read 30 books in 2013. Double. This year.

What to read?
Someone on Twitter once wrote: "If you read one book a month, you would read 120 books in 10 years. Choose wisely." It hits you and knocks you over. Recommended reading list of books is always too long and it always keeps increasing. To complete that list would need a superpower of sorts. (Recently read of a man who read 366 books in 366 days) The next option would be to choose a good subset of that list. A good mix of books desperately wanted to be read for long, favourite genre, a new author, a favourite author, some non-fiction and a few more fillers just to ensure that they make good books seem good, by being not so good. In short, selecting a short list of what to read needs analysis and work of its own. But that should be fun as well. If nothing, it helps in building up aspirations and excitement around those books.

I had planned to write about the problem with my library, buying and storing books and buying a Kindle. I had also planned on writing about books and movies made based on them. But I'm bored of my own writing which makes me hungry. 2013 is here and I hope the hunger to read and learn isn't satisfied this year either. I need it. To feel inspired.

On Incomplete Front Page Articles: A Letter

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 13:51:00 +0000

Respected Sir,

An Uncle of mine suffers from a curious case of Attention Deficit Dis.. something. He starts talking about a certain topic and suddenly goes quiet. The silence used to be mistaken for a breath taking moment, considering the speed at which he spoke. But when he started speaking again, he would speak about something completely different. When prodded to complete the previous speech, he'd ask us to wait until he finished his current speech. Needless to say, this speech too met the same fatality of being incomplete. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have a convers...

I write to you as a friend. Because I have a feeling your editors are also acquainted with my Uncle and you are facing this unending problem too. They, your editors, seem to have picked up this strange habit of my Uncle -- of starting a breathtaking story and not letting it reach its deserved end. For instance, take today's front page. While I was immersed in the steely story of some Naveen Jindal making claims against a news channel, the article stopped abruptly and wouldn't end. “The biggest gain is that there is no further..." (Continued on Page 12) it said and left me filled with enormous suspicion of the gains. In my eagerness to continue further to mentioned page, my eyes fell upon some beautiful advertisement of gadgets, power cut schedules, disturbing photographs of politicians, editorials about them and cartoons. By the time I reached page 12, I had forgotten why I was there and closed the newsp...

I just remembered that I could read the news on your website. I quickly search for today's paper and lo! - http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/jindal-plays-cd-claims-zee-editors-demanded-rs-100-crore/article4033163.ece. Even here, I'm directed to a Page 12. But I have no clue where the Page 12 would be. Luckily, the distractions on the webpage are just as plentiful as in your paper. I ended up buying a gadget from one of the advert...

Coming back to your editors: Could you please request them not to spend much time with my Uncle? And ask them to finish words, sentences and paragraphs before directing us to another page? It would be grateful for my attention span. As for my Uncle, his unending problems are being handled by my beloved Aunt. What she is doing is... (Continued in next email)

Regards,

Sudhamshu Hebbar

(I mailed that to The Hindu's Reader's Editor)

Encounters While Time Travelling

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Sun, 21 Oct 2012 11:22:00 +0000

The memories are fading. I can feel them slowly receding into a corner into the realm of the forgotten. I want to hold on to them. It has nothing to do with their being good or bad. They just belong to a time when I was happy. I like regurgitating them in my brain and imagining myself to be happy again. But they are fading and I try hard to keep them alive.

My mind, it is a time machine. I close my eyes and wait till everything is dark. Electricity passes through synapses. I can feel it. There are images cropping up. Faces of people flash by. Saeed, Geraldo, Louis, Adam, Suleyman, Yujel, Rasheed, Mike, Mustapha, Tom. Their names get registered. Some are nameless faces. They all keep scrolling by so fast. I concentrate harder. It is slowing down. I'm getting closer. It's happening. The mind is about to jump back in the past. Concentrate. Just a little longer. Grit your teeth. Close your eyes harder. Embrace the darkness.

It's 31st of August, 2012. I'm here in a Saudi Airlines flight. Passengers from Jeddah are filling the seats to fly to Istanbul. The window seat next to me is empty. A bearded, spectacled man in a yellow t-shirt, blue jeans and black Adidas sports shoes walks in. He deposits a boy in a seat in front. Holds the hands of a young girl and puts her in a seat before it. Behind him are two indistinguishable women in burkhas. They take seats next to the kids and the man smiles at me and says, "Excuse me brother. Can I take my seat?" Saeed has sat down and he offers me a chewing gum. "It's good when you're flying. Helps your ears." I politely decline. I'm prejudiced right now. I didn't like the Saudis. They made me feel unwanted in the airport. Saudis ignored my existence. I feel hostile towards them, a reciprocation of what they feel towards me. Saeed is a Saudi and he is reading a local Saudi newspaper and laughing at some news. He's flipping around his smart phone taking pictures. Takes out a laptop and starts watching episodes of The Office and he's laughing again. I've answered his polite inquiries about me. My turn. Saeed is working with the police in Riyadh. He graduated as a software engineer, like myself. I find that interesting. He says it's fine. In between helping out his kids to the bathroom, we're talking of the vacation in Turkey and our expectations of it. I like Saeed. I don't dislike Saudis anymore.

The face of an Ecuadorian woman flashes by. I concentrate. "What's her name?" She's fading. I can sense she doesn't like me. No, that's another woman, the French. *puff* Gone. I'm in a bus in Istanbul. It's 2nd of September, 2012. As I watch buildings, trees, mountains, cable cars and the sea outside the window, a face is smiling at me. Subconsciously, I return the smile.

"Hello! I'm Geraldo. Where are you from?"
"Hello! I'm Sudhamshu. I'm from India."
"You know, back in Brazil, where I come from, they tell me I look like an Indian! You see it too?"
"Yeah. A bit." I lied.
His hands are next to me. "See? Our skin colour also matches a bit." I smile.

I want to be careful. I don't know how racism is perceived in the West. Geraldo is from Sao Paulo. His favourite football club is Santos. He came on a vacation to Turkey with his girlfriend. They enjoyed Greece, Bodrum and partied in Istanbul. His girlfriend went back home and Geraldo has 15 days to relax. He's also going to Cappadocia. He's reading a George R. R. Martin book. Sudharsan discusses the book and a TV Series. A month later, in a moment of embarrassment, I will realise that this book is A Storm of Swords and they are talking about the TV Series Game of Thrones, which I thoroughly enjoy. Geraldo gets into a bus to Göreme 30 minutes before us.
It's fading again. I grit my teeth. There's more. We meet next morning at Nevşehir. There's a confusion and our phone isn't working. We used Geraldo's phone to clear the confusion. Not this, something else. The memory comes in bits. Geraldo couldn't find his hotel. He landed up at our hotel. We spotted him at a cafe. He was reading the George R. R. Martin book.

"Taawwm! Waake up Tawm! Taaawwmm! It's 4 now. Wake up!" If some girl called me so lovingly I'd keep pretending to sleep. But not Tom. He woke up and came down from his bed. Which was the bunk bed above me. Tom is from Hong Kong and he works in a hospital. He's very meticulous with his luggage. He knows a bit about India and is a nice guy to talk to. He hasn't planned the rest of his trip. But our paths cross again -- in Pamukkale. We recognise him on the travertines. Despite the mud from the calcium carbonate springs packed on his face. He picks up some more mud in a bottle. Now he's asking Sudharsan to take a picture of him with the Sun setting in the background. We meet him again in the bus that takes us to Selçuk.
What? What are you asking? Your voice isn't so clear here in the past. "Who is the what?" You need to speak louder. Oh! Who is the girl who woke him up? Not his wife; or his girlfriend. Just a friend he made in our dormitory.

I'm losing the grip on my memory flashes. Images are flashing by too fast to comprehend. Persistence of vision, perception of motion. If I blinked fast, some images might stick. Like seeing the blades of a moving fan. It's working. There! That was Mustapha. He was the pilot with whom I did tandem paragliding. And that, that was Mike -- an Englishman from Birmingham. He piloted the hot air balloon. There's Rasheed from Netherlands. Now I can hear singing. A Turkish song. I can't identify the words. It's a love song. It's filled with grief. I can sense the emotions. The man is questioning the lover he lost. Begging explanation from her to explain why she left him so sad. The date is 4th of September, 2012. I'm in a cave hostel in Göreme and Suleyman is singing. Suleyman works at the hostel and he likes Football. He's a fan of Fenerbahçe. We're talking of Football. Of Nuri Şahin, Dirk Kuyt, Raul Meireles, Andre Santos. I forgot to tell him about Eboue. Football. There was a keychain hanging from a van. A jersey of Fenerbahçe hanging from it. I asked Yujel if he was a Fenerbahçe fan & his ever smiling face morphed into disgust. "No way! I'm a Galatasaray fan. The driver is Fener fan." Yujel is our guide for the Southern tour of Göreme. He laughs & jokes all the time and tells interesting stories of the past of this town. When we told him we were from India, he asked if we knew Tamil. "That song, Kolaveri, it's hilarious!"
I am laughing as I remember him laughing. Indescriptable, nameless faces keep scrolling by, but the synapses are not forming completely. I think it is 10th of September, 2012. There's that German woman. She was in Konya, near the luggage locker. Or did we meet her at Ephesus? Or in both the places? There's the Australian wind surfer. Was his name Adam? His face flew away with the wind. I spot faces of beautiful girls flash by. She was in Fethiye, that was on 8th, she was in Pamukkale, on 9th, she in Istanbul, on 1st, she paraglided on 7th. All whizzing past faster and faster. I can't get a hold on this. The flashing faces finally stop at Louis.
It is 12th of September, 2012. Sultan Hostel's dorm is so quiet, a ruffling plastic cover is considered noise and so I'm whispering when I talk to Louis. Louis is a law student on vacation. Louis is wearing a T-shirt that says Australia. Louis is from Bordeaux, France. I tell him I know how it's spelt because I know the Football club. He plays Rugby. He has the physique. Louis says people from Nice are not nice. Louis is telling stories from Argentina. Something about Falkland Islands. *poof*

I'm in an airplane going back home. Babies crying loudly on my left. Babies crying loudly in front. Babies crying loudly in the back. Synchronised baby crying in the airplane. I turn around and spot a known face near the toilet. I wave at him. He looks past wondering whom I wave to. He gives me a closer look and he is smiling widely. Saeed has recognised me. Coincidence wasn't coincident enough to put us on seats next to each other again. But when Medinah arrived, I sat next to him to hear his stories. His wife passed a phone from front. There was no phone call; it contained photos from their vacation. She remembered me too, even though we never spoke. I'm still wondering if the other lady too is his wife. I don't mean to be rude to such a lovely family. I don't ask.

The mind returns back. It's too tired from the time travel. I run through all the memories I could store from the time travel and I begin to wonder. Here I am, unwilling to go out and meet new and interesting people. And there I was, in those memories, eager to mingle and discover. Which of the two is real?

Between two cities

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 18:43:00 +0000

I'm unhappy. I can't figure out the reason behind the sadness. It isn't depressing, but it doesn't allow me to be happy. I'm supposed to go and meet some friends. I look at myself in the mirror. I feel fat. My hair doesn't seem right. I don't like the dress I'm wearing. The shoes are dirty. They aren't even shoes. They are slippers that I call floaters. I think they stink. I can hear people complaining about their lives. All the time. I'm in my room. The TV is switched on. A webpage is open on my laptop. A book lies in my bed. I'm sitting listless, ignorant of them all. I can hear a question being asked. It pricks me. I ignore it. I don't react. The questioner is gone. The question reappears. My conscience is repeating it. The pricks go deeper. Face grimaces into a disgust; at myself. The pricks are gnawing in my mind. I think of the question. I know the answer. I don't like the answer. It goes deeper. The pricks are like nails in my heart. Something wants to come out. The answer, maybe. But it stops like a lump in the throat. In the distance a song starts playing. I can't recognise it. I concentrate on the words. Is that Hindi? It gets louder. No, just some beats of Hindi music. Still louder. I've heard this on TV. It gets louder. No, not on TV, somewhere else. Still louder. On a mobile phone? Louder. Whose phone? Louder. And then it strikes.
I open my eyes from the dream and look straight. This isn't my room. This isn't my home. This isn't Chennai. This isn't even India. I turn around in the bed. The alarm has stopped ringing. My friend has woken up. The Australian on the bed above moves as the bunk bed creaks. The Japanese on the left smiles. He's saying "Good Morning." It sinks in. Not slowly, but like a jolt. The mind is suddenly transported across 6000 kilometres. I boarded a flight some hours back. I'm in the dormitory of Sultan Hostel. This is Sultanahmet. This is Istanbul. I'm in Turkey.

"Turkey? Why Turkey?"
I asked that to a friend, four years ago, when she said she'd been to Turkey. I was ignorant. Turkey was like a dot on the map. I could point it on the map but knew nothing else about it. A friend on Twitter asked if anybody would like to join him for a backpacking trip across Turkey. An unknown country, unknown companions, new challenges, no one to help me. I wanted to experience that. I said Yes. I told my parents and dad asked, "Turkey? Why Turkey? And why for 14 days?" I didn't have an answer. So I started reading about it. There was the historic city of Istanbul. I remembered Constantinople from History books. It's now home to 20 million people. The dot on the map grew bigger. We were going to visit Cappadocia, Kayseri, Konya, Antalya, Fethiye and Pamukkale. We didn't have time for Black Sea, Bodrum, Troy, Mount Ararat or Ephesus. I read about them. It would take long bus journeys between towns. The dot on the map grew wider in area. I began reading Orhan Pamuk's My Name is Red and the rich cultural history of Turkey was being narrated to me. I remembered Age of Empires. There were Greeks in Turkey, there were Romans and then there were the magnificent artists in an erstwhile glorious Islamic nation. The dot on the map grew bigger; not in space, but in Time. I started learning Turkish. Saw a few movies. The country captured my imagination. The dot on the map was not a dot anymore. It was a black hole that was pulling me towards it. I went to the check-in counter of Saudi Airlines in Mumbai. The attendant saw my ticket and asked, "Turkey? Why Turkey?"

"Merhaba!"
That greeting accompanied by an eye-shining wide smile is how I remember most Turks. I had to fake my smile to match their happiness. There were also the other pleasantries in Turkish that I'd memorised which needed that emotion. I needed a big heart. And Istanbul is big. It has big mosques. Their domes are huge. The minarets are tall. The Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia and the numerous other mosques that pop out in the landscape. You stand next to them in awe of their size. They engulf you. There are magnificent palaces -- Topkapı & Dolmabahçe. History is reeking out of its strong walls, narrating stories of rulers, their love for art, for jewels, for food, for weapons, for women, for power and for their people. Writers that have fallen in love with this city have called it the centre of the world for centuries. It is the link to the vast and glorious history of the East, of Asia, to the dominance and wealth of the modern West, of Europe. You stand in the middle of all this and get amazed at how such stark cultures blend almost seamlessly right here. But there are differences, if you dig deep enough. The blending has been going on for centuries; it's still going on. And it's given the city a unique character that no other city in the world could boast of.

I can't stop thinking of Istanbul. Of the calmness I felt inside Hagia Sophia as I kept taking pictures of its grandeur. To see how a huge structure could be a Basilica and then a Mosque and still hold its identity. Of the intricate, symmetrical, colourful artistry in the walls and domes of Topkapı Palace. Of the opulence of Dolmabahçe Palace. Of the walks on the Galata Bridge. Of seeing a football crazy city where the fans of Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe have been warring with each other for more than a hundred years. Of the cruise to Princes Islands and the cycling we did in Büyükada. Of all the smells emanating from the 300-year old Spice Market. Of the cloudless, spotless blue sky. Of the Sama we attended, the music resonating off the walls of the Sirkeci railway station as the dervishes whirled in devotion. Of the long walks inside the half century old Grand Bazaar, getting lost in similar sounding lanes and similar looking shops. Of all the beautiful girls that walked on the stone paved streets. Of Turkish Delight and the joy of discovering Haci Bekır's shop in Eminönü. Of the desserts we ate. Of the numerous flavours of Turkish tea we drank. Of all the flags that waved from streets and balconies. Of all the smiles that adorned people's faces when they greeted us. Of the gladness in their hearts when they learnt we were from Hindistan. At the end of 14 days, the fake smile on my face was as genuine as theirs. And it wouldn't leave my face. I was as glad as they were. I can hear them calling out. I tell them Görüşürüz, that I'll see them later. The call is getting louder. It isn't their voice. They are just smiling in the distance. They're getting farther away. The call is louder. The word is familiar. I don't want to turn around to see where the sound comes from. It's louder. It's my name. Someone is calling my name and it's getting louder and Istanbul is getting farther away.

I wake up in my bed. My mother tells me I'm late for work. I look at the wall and the ceiling. I'm in my bed. This is my room. My shirt hangs there. The one I wore when I flew back. My mind has been transported back. But not my heart.

I flew away for a while

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 17:16:00 +0000

I went with a heavy mind. I went with a heavy body. When I came back both were lighter. My skin wasn't. I was in a dark mood when I left. I went 2,000 metres high on a cliff. I jumped off it. The beautiful, pristine blue of the Mediterranean right below me. Hot air filled up a balloon that lifted my spirits in Göreme. Both soared the skies watching a unique landscape form beneath them. I went underground; into a cistern. Into an underground city; to seek refuge from the searing heat above. I went on a cruise in the Mediterranean. I dipped my feet into the Aegean Sea. A boat took me to an island meant for Princes. I cycled through its streets. I drove a scooter on the wrong side of the road for my country. And I walked. I walked the paved streets of a city that encompasses two continents. I walked through desolate valleys carved out by lava from volcanoes. I walked through historic towns that had a rich history -- 7000 years of history. I walked on travertines. I walked on roads which, years ago, people from my land used for trade. I walked through palaces, mosques, dilapidated churches and monasteries. I walked through 500 year old bazaars. I walked in shoes a size shorter than my legs. I made a huge dent in my savings. So it flows. I tried to learn a new language in 30 days. I failed to form a single sentence in it.

"I'm from Hindistan", I tell them and their eyes light up. That's how India is known in Turkey; and the Turkish love this country. I don't know why. I know it isn't to do with Bollywood. Something to do with history. Both countries seem to share a long and similar history. I made history too; a personal one. Left the shores of my country for the first time. I went to Türkiye. For 14 days. I've told you what I did there. I've told it in brief so you wouldn't have to read long stories and experiences of places I saw. Those stories will be written. I will write them not because I want to share it with you. I will write them because I want to share it with my future self. I'll let you read them too. I'll even share some photographs for you to associate with them. For now, sonra görüşürüz.

Sometimes I think

noreply@blogger.com (Sudhamshu) — Wed, 30 May 2012 07:47:00 +0000

Sometimes I think.
Of Governance; citizens.
Of Righteousness; self-righteousness.
Of Aspirations; inordinateness.
Of Cynicism; hopelessness.
Of Expectations; pointlessness.

Of Intolerance; ignorance.
Of Never ending demands; rights.

Of Patience and the lack of it.
Of Energy expended; frivolousness.
Of Ostentations. Of Austerity.
Of Pretentions.
Of Life away from all of these.
Of Enjoying; being; belonging; believing.

Sometimes I think.
That time is now.
And it disappoints me.