Globe Gone Wild

Skynet is already here!

2017-01-08T10:31:00.000+05:30

I wake up in the morning. I check my cell phone before getting out of bed. Look at the numerous Good Morning messages on my family group. Reply to some emails which were sent at god-forsaken 2 AM. Check out Facebook to see who liked the latest photos I uploaded. Look at a few videos of cute cats. Get out of bed and freshen up. See that it's a friend's birthday today. Book a venue for tonight's outing. Go through my daily chores while amidst constantly checking Facebook, WhatsApp, and countless such apps which govern my daily routine.

If you look at these seemingly independent events, you can't help but marvel at the levels to which technology has integrated itself into our lives. Devices are getting smarter by the day, if not faster. You do not need to depend on pesky, nosy bystanders and passersby to ask for directions, you are always connected to your friends and peers, you can hail a ride to go pretty much wherever you want, hell, you can even get a date by simply swiping right when you are standing in the ATM queue!

At the same time, it makes sense to ask how much have we given our lives up to these gadgets? We conducted a survey of about 140 people mostly in the 22-28 age group to share how they feel about their mobile phone usage. Here is the stat which I want to point your attention to:

About 80% of users depend on their mobile phones for professional use, of which about 23% say that they can't live without their phones even for 15 minutes! And this is quite logical, the apps and the hardware are designed such that users get addicted to using them even more. The "look and feel" of apps, the aural response to sounds (of pings and dings), the kinaesthetic qualities of the gamified environment - each and every aspect is designed to give us a dopamine high - a rush of hormones similar to falling in love, to the rush of winning in gambling! According to some studies, we touch our cell phones at a mind-boggling average rate of over 2500 swipes per day!

And this has the potential to screw up the lives of the so-called technology-natives, the cohort which arrives after the millennials which considers technology as their birthright. It is already extremely difficult to manage millennials. I can see that directly all around me - people browsing Facebook and WhatsApp in the middle of class and in the middle of meetings. While earlier businesses competed on appropriating their customers' money, then shifting to time, now it has migrated to appealing to their ever-shortening attention spans. And eminent speaker and thought leader Simon Sinek puts this out in a very sharp way:

While these sentiments suggest how this surge in technological dependence affects managing people, the bigger question to be asked is how does the increasing smartness of connected devices affect employment itself. And this is the same question that popped up when the industrial revolution or automation or even the internet age ushered in a dramatic increase in the standard of living.

The industrial revolution was characterized by mass manufacturing of products which; while replacing the erstwhile slow, skill-based craft processes, segmented the work content such that it enabled time and motion studies to train human beings to work like machines. It democratized the production process from the skillful to the trainable dexterous, and brought upon huge employment opportunities - the reduced cost of production brought more products within the reach of commoners which spurred demand which in turn increased employment. The deplorable routineness of life was depicted brilliantly in Charlie Chaplin's 1936 classic Modern Times.

As we moved towards automation, quite a few of these programmable tasks were made redundant with the advent of robots, who would work even in dangerous environments such as underwater equipment maintenance, welding in particular angles, and hazardous environments of the paintshop. Humans on the other hand shifted towards more challenging tasks such as design, shifting the emphasis from brawn to brain, and there came about a massive reskilling effort to train the workforce in work content which is let's say higher up the value chain. Computers were invented and quite a lot of work shifted to sophisticated IT.

As any industry, work content or work process would evolve, even computer based work content was segmented into the really brainy work such as designing products and the routine and mundane clerical work. The arrival of the internet broke down geographical barriers. And this enabled the low mental effort work to be shifted to low cost countries which were presented with the glorious Y2K opportunity. And as these countries developed, technology itself moved on at such a pace that we are now able to automate even the routine tasks involved in coding and developing new applications.

The pace of this technological advancement today is so high that we now have computers that can think on their own. Historical evidence, as demonstrated above, now suggests that any task that can be classified as modular, repeatable and predictable can now be left to automation, and humans will now have to move higher up the value chain towards jobs that demand creativity and art, jobs that require thinking and feeling - a level of human intervention that an uncaring machine can never possess.

But think again, is it really that difficult to teach a computer what humans perceive as pleasing? Can a computer be taught how to create art that can be appreciated by humans? This is the question that IBM has now set out to answer as its Watson creates a trailer for Fox's Morgan.

This leads us to think about the frontiers to which technology might actually replace humans in every realm imaginable. In fact, I personally believe that understanding man's greed for making money, technology has already started manipulating us to a level such that we ourselves shape technology to modify our behaviour - we design equipment that makes us addicted to them, we become dependent on technology, we become slaves, we, in our ignorance, give up our own will to learn. The last phrase might come as a shock - but research has shown that an increased dependence on something as routine as Google Maps reduces our brains' spatial recognition capabilities. Constant distraction through pings and dings changes the way we think by encouraging information to be little more than a fleeting short-term memory. Instead of retaining new details, our brains process the info and move on to the next tidbit. This impacts the capacity to see patterns.

Till now, we entertained ourselves through science fiction movies - that there might be a skynet which can think for itself and strive for world domination - that we might be living in the matrix as sentients look to destroy that last hope of human civilization. It is high time we start to ponder if we ourselves have inadvertently started to script our downfall. *horrifying background music*

***************
The gray text is taken from class slides used in Prof. Vasanthi Srinivasan's HRM course taught at IIM Bangalore.

Horcruxes and Quidditch Players

2016-12-27T23:37:00.002+05:30

Warning: Here be spoilers to the Harry Potter series. In case you haven't read the books or watched the movies, I strongly recommend that you get all caught up and come back here. And in the modified version of Dan Brown's Leigh Teabing, "If you are a Harry Potter virgin, my dear, trust me, you will never forget your first time"

I've been having this crazy fanfic theory for some time now. Isn't seven the most powerfully magical number? 7 wonders of the world, 7 seas, 7 notes of music, 7 players of Quidditch... What if JKR modeled Quidditch players on the Horcruxes that Lord Voldemort intended to make / made intentionally? Let's have a look at each type of player:

1) Chasers: Players who try to score what must be rightfully theirs. Slytherin's locket and Marvolo Gaunt's ring with the Peverell coat of arms were Voldemort's rightful heirlooms. Tom Riddle's diary which provided access to the Chamber of Secrets, an inheritance of Lord Voldemort's.

2) Beaters: Supposedly tough people who are supposed to smash bludgers towards the opposing team. Hufflepuff's cup and Ravenclaw's lost diadem - extremely difficult to source.

3) Keeper: Someone who protects the goal hoops by staying close to them. Something like what Nagini did, staying close to Lord Voldemort; protecting his precious soul in his protective gaze.

4) Seeker: The lightest player who wins the game in search of the evanescent, capricious, elusive snitch. This has to be Lord Voldemort himself - seeking to be master of death. Always on the lookout for the enemy, always searching for ways and means to vanquish Harry, on the lookout for things that will make him powerful.

Worth pondering, ain't it? As a bonus, I'll throw in a custom designed symbol of the deathly hallows: The dark mark representing the Elder Wand with its bloody history splattered across the pages of history, with the logo of Ouroboros symbolizing the (pseudo) reincarnation brought about by the Resurrection Stone, and both under the protective coverage of the Cloak of Invisibility.

In Defense of RG

2016-01-02T23:32:00.001+05:30

"Don't blame me if you score less marks. It's all relative grading. If you want a better grade, kill your neighbor"

- Prof. Yeti.

This statement takes us back to the sources, implications and the connotations of the now infamous "relative grading" system. At premier educational institutions such as IITs, NITs, IIMs etc., where the input student pool consists of the so called brightest minds of the country, a professor or an evaluator can't set questions that are seen to be run-of-the-mill, straight out of the text book. In order to sufficiently challenge students, it is important that the questions test students on a conceptual level and hence the level of difficulty keeps increasing - through cases, situational analyses etc. One implicit outcome of such a paper pattern is that the highest scores of students is not expected to go beyond 70% of the total score. In such a case, when such students compete against (perhaps for jobs, or for higher education opportunities) students from absolute grading institutions where scores might as well touch 90%+, it is imperative to "normalize" (for lack of a better word) the concept-based test scores so as to compete against students from other institutions or across batches. Given such a scenario where your gain is someone else's loss, this is clearly an example of a zero-sum game. With excess emphasis laid on scores during placements, it becomes even more imperative that one creates a level of information asymmetry not very unlike the one that Rancho creates in 3 idiots with the Chamatkari joke.

But on a macro level, doesn't the whole world revolve around information asymmetry? The entire market for futures, forwards and options works on this concept where you try to outguess your co-dealmaker and in the process make some money. This creates a lot of scope for arbitrage, especially if you have some unique information, or that which your co-dealmaker takes some time to comprehend. Most of strategic competition revolves around creating and sustaining competitive advantage, creating inimitable leverage which might sometimes be covert. Such arbitrage opportunities are also actively sought in product markets where firms try to globalize their value chains by taking advantage of cheaper component procurement (e.g. shifting manufacturing bases to China) or of cheaper intellectual capital (e.g. the rise of the Indian skilled services industry.) More on this has been talked about in Ghemawat's HBR article - Managing Differences (May need a login.)

A different view of the world, though, was provided by Brandenburger and Nalebuff in their strategy classic, Co-opetition, where they talk about the necessity to identify complementors - an outside party who can possibly increase the value proposition of your offering to your customers, hence increasing either total market demand or customers' willingness to pay. The cliched statement that is now common is "expand the pie first, think of dividing it later" and perhaps the most common example used to explain this in business schools is the classic Wintel simulation where opposing teams take turns to play either Windows (Microsoft) or Intel and try to maximize (cumulative?) profits. It remains to be seen how this concept can be better applied to our education system and hence improve the overall learning experience for all stakeholders.

Perhaps the origins of RG-giri were sown by the famous poet H. W. Longfellow:

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight,
but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.

Edit 1: As an afterthought, using cases and situational analyses are a part of expanding the pie. We now just need to find a way of dividing it.

Six Feet Under

2013-01-02T08:39:00.000+05:30

Last night, an Elephant can and a little old hermit convinced me that after a Big Bang Theory season 5 marathon, it would perhaps be better to watch something more serious and hence came the decision to watch the critically acclaimed HBO series Six Feet Under which takes a dark comical look at a family owns funeral service business. It seemed only apt that the long wait till the third season of Game of Thrones be satiated by another HBO original show, which does not generally disappoint considering the prior awesome experience with Entourage.

Now, the Opening theme of the show shows a corpse on a stretcher that is being rolled out somewhere in a hospital like environment with a close up shot of the castor wheels. I guess it is kind of sad that even while watching a dark comedy I was wondering how smoothly the castors roll and how well they were chosen for the application. Later on, they showed a corpse being ID'ed from one of those retractable tables in a morgue. More sadness ensued by the fact that I have chosen bearings for a similar application and wondered if they were designed correctly.

But those design activities were a thing of the past year. An amazing year in retrospect, the only year in living memory where I kept my the-then-new-year-resolution - to maintain an activity log all year round. But also an year where my 14 posts per year superstitious resolution was broken. This was also the year where I thought I had met that someone special who would be "the one" and all that senti crap. But then it turns out she was already married and all hopes were then banked upon the prophesied Apocalypse. Though it would have been fun if the apocalypse had actually occurred.

But then I guess it is time to learn from past mistakes... and make some new ones. As Neil Gaiman rightly puts it:

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever."

Also, one of the HBR blogs quoted that a new year resolution is like looking into the Mirror of Erised and deliberately working towards achieving our deepest desires. Now the same article recommends us to dream instead of making resolutions since it is the wildest dreams that actually bring about disruptive innovations. But then, the Harry Potter series whence the Mirror of Erised reference is adopted says "it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

Anyways, it is time to look at a new year ahead, a year which is full of promises and promises of surprises. It is time to put past failures down; Six Feet Under.

Of Gangnam, Kolaveri and Himesh

2012-11-22T08:09:00.002+05:30

So what is common between 'Gangnam style', the immensely popular gig by humorous Korean entertainer Psy; 'Why this Kolaveri Di?', a Tanglish song from Tollywood; and Himesh Reshammiya? - They were all very famous at one point of time.

If you are unsure of what these three phenomena are, you might probably be living in the long forgotten dark ages where you do not have access to the internet, the television or the radio. But just for the sake of such poor souls, here's what I'm talking about:

Gangnam Style

This obviously hilarious video which is still on the top of many charts has a very peculiar dance style which people can apparently do when they sit on a horse. But if you do not know Korean, it is probably more funny since you are just looking at a person dancing to a weird tune.

Why This Kolaveri Di?

This Tanglish song, though has most of its lyrics in broken English has a peculiar video. And since this can be easily understood, it also conveys a sense of need and belonging. Though I must admit I watched the video for Shruti Hassan; this song did become popular among the masses and this was the first time I heard a non-bollywood song on mainstream radio.

Aashiq Banaya Aapne

And finally a man who needs no introduction - our very own Himess Bhai who with his shabby stubble, repulsive body hugging t-shirts, matching caps and annoying nasal twang came into our hearts and playlists with a bang, had many songs which came and went soon enough and this guy disappeared completely.

So what is common between these three exhibits? They were out of the ordinary. None of these things were ever in mainstream media before. And as it happens, things that are not of beauty may not be joy for long. So the minute they became popular, they died out. And this is the tendency for most music. Music that is not art is enjoyed only for some time. And since it is unique, once the concept is out, people start copying it and adding their own flavours. As is commonly done in the intellectual property protection world, you take a patent, claim what is not claimed and presto-change-o you have a patent of your own. But interestingly, and as a data point for my research, these cheap imitations neither capture as many hearts as the original, nor do they stick around. They just become crazes on facebook.

One such shining example was Pavan on New Year's day waiting for Dhanush of Kolaveri fame to pay tribute to Amitabh Bachchan for his lifetime achievement award in some award function. He made us wait and watch till the very end. But in the wait and anticipation, the hype had grown very high. And in the end the lyrics were so lame that they did absolutely no justice to BigB's glamour, charisma and lifetime achievement. In this example the original artist himself tweaks the performance a bit and it has become way too pathetic. Something similar was the case of K'naan's performance at the 2010 FIFA world cup.

As against these let's look at old hindi songs; which I was never around to listen to when they had launched, but still, will happily listen to them if they are playing in the background; as against the infi long stream of swear words for the people who'll play Kolaveri in the same sense. One thing that makes these oldy goldies so great, apart from the amazing melody and music is the meaning in the lyrics.

And these need not necessarily be restricted to Indian stuff. Try comparing Bieber or Call me Maybe to something like Rolling Stones. On a closing note, here's a clip of You Can't Always Get what you want by Jagger and co. which always soothes the soul at any occasion.

One great point of reference to compare one time hits and one hit wonders against this things of joy is that the limited time hits have parodies and spoofs made of them, but the great ones only have covers.

So, in my opinion, all such things follow the following curves:

PL Strategy

2012-11-13T08:53:00.000+05:30

I love solitude. The lesser the people around me, the more comfortable I am; not that I'm an introvert or something, I'm just wired that way. Even while in insti, I hardly ever went home; always finding excuses to stay back in insti during holidays and vacations. Not because I hate my home or anything, just that being kind of alone in such a huge campus is an exhilarating experience. You get to wake up whenever you want, get to do whatever you want, lots and lots of free time to pursue hobbies and extra-curricular activities. And I find that nothing has changed in me after coming into corporate life.

Now, a PL or a Privilege Leave is a law that compels organisations to grant its employees paid leave for a certain number of days a year. As the name hints, it is leave that an employee earns on working for some time in a company. So, if a company offers 28 days of PL, and an employee takes just 5 days of leave over a year, it turns out from a purely financial point of view that the employee is losing out on (28 -5) 23 days worth of pay (as in working for 23 days while they could have been paid for not working). In order to encourage people to work, corporates may also reimburse the lost leave with additional pay. For instance, accumulate the 23 days' worth of salary and pay it at the time of parting ways.

But this is quite common knowledge, and this post serves a greater purpose. It's Diwali this week with holidays today (Tuesday) and tomorrow. So in essence, if an employee marked yesterday, Thursday and Friday as PLs, they can practically get 9 days of holidays! Pure bliss! And that's what most people do! But there is a catch in this seemingly wonderful plan. Since there are very few people in office anyway, there is hardly any work to be done. The suppliers' places are closed since they're all enjoying holidays. Managers with families are out of town, enjoying holidays. It's like being a kid at home without adult supervision. One can work at his own speed, without any pressure from the top. No one to bother you when you work on part time, "doesn't make sense to the business" work. Hell, one can also set up a library in the time earned!

But then this is a double edged sword. Let's say everybody stays back citing similar reasons. Then the ofiice would be packed as usual, deadlines in place and everybody working full steam to complete their deliverables especially at year end. Which means no free time. Which means in turn, the same work that you do everyday continues without a change. So for this model to work, it is essential that others enjoy the extended weekend.

The down side of staying back is the infi sympathetic looks that people give you when you say you're staying back assuming that you are unwanted at home or something. The worst part is people asking what you did at home this Diwali, for which my reply this year shall be - Grew a beard.

Arranged

2012-11-10T12:37:00.000+05:30

"I hope my daughter breaks many hearts when she grows up. And I'll break twice as many legs..."

Everything has feelings. Even non-living things. Ever since I was a child, I'd always thought that and still do. And that non living thing could also be a grain of rice on a plate that has been eaten from and deemed so insignificant that it is left out to be washed with the plate. So my general tendency is never to leave a single grain of rice on the plate. That tiny grain of rice might have lived, loved and might have had its own ambitions after all; even if those ambitions are as lame as being eaten and not being thrown away.

And this belief that inanimate objects have feelings is more amplified when one kind of develops an attachment to the things one uses. Maybe a favorite t-shirt or a cricket bat.

So now imagine that you are a music lover. From a family of music lovers - a family which, for some reason, says you must only play the tabla and nothing else. But suppose the tabla is in short supply. And good tablas in even shorter supply. But at the same time, there is this new limited edition one of its kind guitar that is available in the nearest music store. Maybe on the lines of a Fender Stratocaster, often cited as the sexiest guitar on earth or maybe an ESP acoustic. It has a great neck, perfect albeit slightly fat soundbox and amazing feel on the fingers. And let's just say you have the money to buy one too. And you care about it since it is the music that matters to you and not whether it's percussion, bass or string.

You visit the music store everyday for weeks on end, stand on tippy toes just for a glimpse of the guitar. You go home and google for images, set it as your wallpaper, become so obsessed with the guitar that you are not sure if anything similar will ever cross your path. You dream of the guitar night and day. You strum an air guitar imagining all the possibilities that could happen with the true instrument in your hand. You visit your friends' place and find used plectrums on the floor thinking, wondering if you will ever have the passion to play the enigma that is the beauty at the music store? If the guitar indeed has feelings, will it ever lend me its allegiance? Will this family of tabla evangelists ever accept a kin with a guitar? You never know.

And within the time that has elapsed in the wondering, the music shop puts up a "SOLD" sign next the the guitar. Your first reaction is disbelief. How can such a thing of beauty go away so suddenly? How can someone claim it as their own? Maybe the guitar clan was waiting for such an exquisite piece to come to the market. But what can you do at that point of time? Will you bargain with the buyer and try to pay a higher price and buy it from him instead? But what if the guitar has already shared its allegiance? Does it make sense to woo the guitar again? Would it even be meaningful? Would the risk of alienating the tabla be greater than the risk of losing a one of a kind instrument? You never know until the waters are tested. Such things of beauty do have a very short shelf life.

Once the disbelief sinks is, there is a small amount of rage - rage on the self as to why in spite of having all the resources, you did not act while there was time. Rage on the clan for not allowing the possibility of stringed instruments. Rage over the universe for creating such exquisite music. Rage over humans having opposable thumbs. And rage due to the Mayan doom's day being postponed.

And after the rage comes acceptance. One good night's sleep followed by a morning dose of hot dark chocolate makes you remember that this isn't the first time that something like this has happened. History will be dotted with such examples where opportunities are missed only to make way for something more brilliant than ever imagined. Maybe that tabla exists somewhere, or has not yet been created, or maybe created, but not yet perfected.

At this point, I recall a beautiful song from the Poets of the Fall called "Maybe tomorrow is a better day" and I quote:

This day will die tonight and there ain't no exception

Why should I wait for nothing to wait for

I won't cry for my solitude, lay my head and dream of you

And hope that you'll come knocking on my door

And maybe tomorrow is a better day...

Catch the full song here.

God Plays with Loaded Dice

2012-08-28T00:19:00.000+05:30

Post dedicated to Pranab Das and Pavan Chivukula.

***********************************Prologue*************************************
Ever since Sangram and the H5 guys went on a road trip to Konkan up to Gokarna, it was a dream to go on such a trip where one'll find unexploited beaches of white sand where you will be the only people around for miles. Such an opportunity sprung up recently, just day before yesterday for that matter, where we coincidentally ended up saving a life...
**********************************************************************************
It is said that the universe conspires to make things happen. Pavan is a forced bachelor these days with his family in Hyderabad. And when Pavan's a bachelor, weekends are filled with trips, treks and plans. Friday evening was ended by a magnificent waste of money on a 11:15 pm show of Expendables 2 at the pathetic Pimpri-Chinchwad Big Cinemas (though some of the actions scenes were damn realistic.) And Saturday morning began in a slumber with an expendable hangover; all promises of meeting Shripad on the cricket field lay forgotten; when Lalit calls and says in his typical Punjabi accent, "Yaar, kal ka plan batao"
-
Saturday evening, 9 pm. I get a call from Pavan.

Pavan: Ramanath, tum aate kya?
Me: Kidhar
Pavan: Sab log chal rahe hai
Me: Par Kidhar
Pavan: Konkan side. We are leaving in 30 min.

And then began a memorable journey with partners in crime Pavan, Lalit, Naveen, Vivek bhai, Ram and Das. We took 2 cars from Vallabhnagar with the humble intention of having a cool road trip to Kashid beach (though only Naveen and Das knew swimming) with expectations of omlette and pohe on the sweetly swinging hammocks. We set out on a longer route, going via Paud road, but got lost on the way.

Whenever we crossed a motel/guesthouse, we could hear Das grumbling, "Let's sleep tonight. What will we do reaching Kashid at 6 in the morning?" By the time we reached Mulshi complaining about the pathetic condition of the roads, it was almost 2 am in the morning with me just drifting off to sleep. The next I woke up at about 6 am, both the cars were at a halt, apparently all the people were sleeping :P

Anyways, the issue was that we had taken a wrong diversion somewhere around Kolad and had followed the road till Mahad, some 100 odd km from Kashid. On the verge of a ruinous weekend, Pavan calls Shripad asking where we can go so as to enjoy "Konkan". What Shripad said as Diveagar was misinterpreted as Divyaghar and Deogarh and pandemonium reigned. Finally, with the GPS to the rescue, we started moving towards Diveagar.

On reaching Diveagar we checked into a cool MTDC run resort, the drivers (Pavan and Ram) needed all the rest they could get before enjoying the black sandy shore. So just after lunch, Naveen, Lalit, Vivek and I moved to the shore; where I accidentally dropped Lalit's camera in the water (I'm very sorry Lalit, if you're reading this). The beach was fairly empty with about 25 people max.

After about 2 hours at the beach and returning to the cottage, we found a disgruntled Ram abusing Das for having slept in instead of going out in spite of having had a full night's nap. The first batch of beach boys began freshening up while "The Dirty Picture" played on the television. We next watched some hindi dubbed South Indian picture where a hen was killing a gunda with a knife tied to its leg, when the second batch returned with a thralling tale:

Das had saved a life. He saved a young ~ 10 year old boy who was drowning in the sea. He was accompanied by 3 elders and about 9 young kids. When our heroes saw the kid first, he was drowning. His relatives had started praying to their God, hoping for a miracle. Pavan and Ram, tall that they are, were in neck deep water, when Das, without bothering for his own life went ahead and caught hold of the boy, the waves crashing over his head. Even Das had lost hopes, when suddenly, the boy grasped his hand. With a humongous effort, Das dragged the kid to where Pavan was and they then dragged the water laden kid back - unconscious and so heavy with the ingested water that pulling him out to the shore was no little task, even for two people. The kid's family then rushed the kid to the hospital; we didn't follow.

This was truly a chance of fate. We could have gone to Kashid. We could all have gone to the beach first and rested later. We could all have slept in and watched the dirty picture. We could all have stayed at home living our mundane lives. Das could have gone to Nashik on a job assignment which he held back because he had commitments on other projects. Lalit could have never asked for us to go anywhere. We could have gone back to Pune after our disastrous detour. But the young boy was meant to (hopefully) live another day. It is amazing how each and everything falls in place to make the big picture. In moments like these, it is astonishing that humans can fight against their brothers in Mumbai for something that is not related to them that has happened in Assam - while here, we have a living example of a northeasterner saving an innocent life from that very same minority community. All other things are superficial and all life is sacred. I seriously doubt Das would have even wondered about what the religion of the drowning boy was.

The return journey was without much incident unless you count the amazing Kolhapuri Misal Pav at a dhaba at Mangaon. By now, our lives had transformed. We went for a completely GPS/GPRS guided route; straight to Lonavala and then back home via the expressway. By the experience of the weekend, I can sing but one song. A song which has only very recently become one of my favorites. A song, by The Rolling Stones, which graces every season finale of Californication:

You can't always get what you want...
But if you try some time...
You just might find...
You get what you need!

Hiatus

2012-08-26T23:22:00.000+05:30

I had mentioned in the last post that I was not really sure how long I would be able to maintain this blog. But the fact of the matter is that I don't think I can go any longer without posting in it, the wannabe attention whore that I am. I was quite stubborn on not updating it since I didn't believe that I could gather sufficient data for 14 posts this year. You see, this is a kind of tradition that I've been personally following - to consistently have 14 posts per year; since the past 3 years at least. So I thought I'd just lie dormant and keep listing the things that I'd like to write about and barrage the whole lot in the next year and hope that people simply do not realize that I have skipped a year in between.

So what have I been up to in the past 8 months? Well, lots! Receding hairline, for one, which I conspicuously blame on the pathetic hard water that we have in our area and the harmful chemicals in our shampoos ( a few strands of hair are falling as I am typing this.) Work has become more interesting than ever. I hardly notice how time flies when I'm at work. I've started reading the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series by George R.R. Martin - people might know it as the hit HBO original - A Game of Thrones; but more on that later. I have also jotted down a list of items which I want to blog about; but then I lost the list when I had to get the motherboard of my phone changed.

But regular followers might recollect, this blog is not just about phenomena/reminiscences, but more often than not, it has been about, as the tagline says, my ("almost") everyday take of what's happening in my life. And there have been a few incidents in the past few months that I can scarcely stay away from blogging about any longer. I shall try to put these posts up in the next few days so that they do not lose their relevance due to significant time lapse from the day of the event.

But then, this one post has its own plus and minus sides. While this particular post adds no actual value to my blog apart from explaining the 8 month long break in blogging, it also binds me to my informal obligation to have 14 posts a year - a number which was I guess was chosen because I either needed one more post than 13, or just because of an ego issue with my one year younger self to prove that I can maintain 14 posts per year. It serves to act as the first post among the next 13 to follow in the remaining 4 months of the year - a seemingly daunting task since my past track record has seldom exceeded 3 posts a month.

But still, this is a challenge that I shall take in the right spirit. There's plenty of stuff to come in the next few days - the hopes of a ticket, the sweet sorrow of severing ties, the joys of a few memorable trips and maybe some observations in and around daily life. Keep watching this space for more...

Apocalypse Now

2011-12-21T06:52:00.000+05:30

It is the 21st of December, 2011. (IST. Blogger follows US time and hence shows 20th) And followers of this blog would be well aware how idiotically superstitious I am about the end of the world that looms before us in the coming year. One. Precise. Year. But it is interesting to see how such a situation is possible and also to ponder upon the various stupid things that people would do when they know that the end is near. (On this note, I am remided of the pathetically sung "yamma yamma" 3.5 years ago by people who are currently in Stanford, the Goldman Sachs and a healthcare company.) The reason for such doom might be as scientific as the CERN LHC producing as much antimatter so as to cause large scale annihilation, something as pathetic as human ego and nuclear war, something as lame as the universe imploding upon itself, time moving backwards and the dead rising out of the graves causing a Zombie apocalypse or something as stupid as everyone simply forgetting to breathe. But among the hullabaloo let us fortget the cause and let us explore the consequences of such an apocalypse and try to predict what foolish things humans will do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The Mayan Stone Calendar of Doom! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let us have a look at the facts and try to make a few logical (?) assumptions.
Fact 1: This belief was found in an ancient scripture buried under ground.
Fact 2: The dinosaurs reached extinction by an unknown cause.
Fact 3: Dinosaurs are buried under the ground.
Fact 4: Ancient civilisations are buried under the ground.
Assumption 1: Everybody firmly believes the rock of doom.
Assumption 2: We are the generation of the civilization of the rock predicting doom. (Or atleast our such interpretations of it).

Assumptions are meant to amuse rather than assume.

Now let us take a completely logical argument as to the possibilities that may occur and the implications:

This is not the first time that the end of the world has been predicted and neither will this be the last. Nonetheless, there is all possibility of climate extremes killing off loads of people or a massive earthquake/tsunami if the movies are to be believed. But one thing is common, people are bound to freak out if the Indian media lives upto to the pathetic standards that it has created for itself and creates a hype greater than the tall tales of Digvijay Singh. This would be as if you are told that you are suffering from a malignant tumour. Perhaps people will sell their houses and start spending all the money and improve India's presently poor economy. Perhaps many people will elope to be with the love of their lives. People might even commit suicides as was seen during the CERN firing up - believing hanging to be a much painless death that the thought of annihilation by antimatter. Or maybe in a final desparate attempt to save face,the UPA will table the JLPB. I predict a purely Harry Potter-esque scenario where everyone runs helter skelter and takes rash decisions.

But again, the world shall (hopefully) live on - perhaps even starting from scratch! But we shall linger... like we currently find the remains at Harappa and Mohen-jo-daro. Hopefully the whole of evolution will start all over again. In all probability, fire will never have been discovered! Humans might never develop opposable thumbs and life would be peaceful again. Our scriptures shall be found but the script would have been forgotten. But in the very rare case that the script is deciphered, imagine the kind of utopia where Harry Potter will be considered as ancient text! Voldemort shall assume the place of Ravan! (The 10 headed one and not the stupid Random Access One) But God forbid that twilight be found, then the future of this planet is really in danger. And amidst all this chaos, I really hope we could get back at those darned cockroaches who defy almost every law of evolution.

So in conclusion, we have one year to live. Try to make the most of it. As they say, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara!

Yessssssssssssss I've kept up my goal of 14 posts per year \m/. Though I am not sure how much longer I'll be able to continue this blog.

Deja Wooed

2011-12-04T09:09:00.000+05:30

******************************************************DISCLAIMER*****************************************************
I do not claim to be a psychologist but am deeply interested in phenomena concerning the human mind. The theory proposed in the following post in entirely my own and has not been researched. Professional psychologists may feel free to adapt this theory in any form. But as is the painful disadvantage of posting stuff on the internet, I cannot legally claim to be the proposer of this theory, but out of common courtesy, it would be great if appropriate credit is given. Theory released under the Ramu Public Licence (RPL).
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The human mind is trained to correlate. Right from birth, we teach our young to recognize and remember. The child first relates to its family, its surroundings and its possessions. As the child grows older, it recognizes experiences - trying to enjoy the good ones and avoid the bad ones. All these experiences and acquaintances add to the child's personality, ever so increasing its correlation and memorizing skills. The subconscious mind plays an important role in assimilating these little encounters as a vital part of one’s personality.

Coming back to the topic at hand, Wikipedia describes Déjà vu as:
Déjà vu (literally "already seen") is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the prior encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined. The term was coined by a French psychic researcher, Émile Boirac (1851–1917) in his bookL'Avenir des sciences psychiques ("The Future of Psychic Sciences"), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", "weirdness", or what Sigmund Freud calls "the uncanny". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past.

But then, I had the ever familiar sensation of Déjà vu a few days ago. We were in an EMI/EMC familiarity lecture conducted by a colleague in a training room. The design of the training room is not much unlike the design of present day JEE coaching classes in Mumbai – small, with slightly uncomfortable seats. And during this training, we were shown an image of a EMI/EMC testing room which triggered the déjà vu. I felt as if I had undergone this training before, and knew the topic pretty well. I could even feel the déjà vu persisting for the next few moments. But then, on careful reconsideration, I recalled from every bit of past experience, that I have never been in any session involving EMI, and I sure as hell don’t dream about it either.

What had actually happened was I had seen the photo of the EMI testing equipment a while back, and I had been in the coaching environment for two years in my past life. In such a situation, probably the image of the tester got registered in my subconscious mind and I did not pay much attention to it. I probably saw it, and forgot it. But, when it came back again in that environment, it struck as if I’d done it before!

Hence, Déjà vu can probably be explained as a juxtaposition of past, but distinctly time and space varied content and the environment, tickling the subconscious mind and forcing the conscious one to correlate as to where this event has occurred before, and the subconscious mind overpowering the conscious to believe that this event has happened before. If the conscious mind is strong enough in such situations, Déjà vu can probably never occur. What follows in the subsequent scenes is that the conscious mind now completely believes that the event has happened before and tries, in vain, to figure out when, since the event has never happened. Of course, all of this might be non-sense, but this is my 2 cents worth of thoughts.

Glocalisation

2011-10-02T22:54:00.000+05:30

**********************************************CAUTION**************************
The views expressed in this article are the author's alone. I am not an expert in Globalisation and I haven't researched any of this and is only my point of view. The author is not responsible for the repurcussions that may arise from citing this post in formal documentation. This is a note, just in case you arrive at this article while googling. But please, do leave a comment if you have views on this article, I'd definitley like to learn more.
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It was in the 1990s that the term "Globalisation" started to appear very commonly in the news and in business circles. I, obviously, do not remember how it all started, since I was only 2 or may be 5 back then. But yes, we are the children of the era of globalisation. In finance circles, this meant that foreign companies could invest in the Indian stock markets and our public companies could be hosted in the NASDAQs and the Dow Jones' of the world. But for industry, it meant a revolution altogether. The Indian scene, which was rife with trade inhibitions and strict reguations even in the auto industry to prevent foreign companies taking away the share of indegenous Indian industries threw its gates open to foreign companies. The arrival of the internet hastened the speed of the ever diminishing world as communications broke barriers that were hitherto unbreachable. A company could have its software developed at Bangalore, the design in Germany, the manufacturing done in China, the corporate office in Norway and sell its products in the US. Companies which were afraid to have the "Made in China" mark took the easier alternative. McDonalds, Kentucky's Fried Chicken and Cocacola became household names even in the remote towns of Africa. The companies in the US pay Indian BPOs for the hour and the latter make a lot of money by paying their employees by the month, hiring them at dime-a-dozen rates in the first place.

But, when a company goes overseas to capitalise on business opportunities, the bigger slice of the pie comes at a price. The company has to keep in mind local customs and traditions; and this is where Glocalisation comes into the picture. In India, for instance, the Big Mac was substituted by the Chicken Maharaja Mac. I still remember the fiasco that McDonalds had to go through when news broke out about bovine fat being used for French Fries. Even if you look at Dominos, the taste is completely different; much more spicier to suit Indian tastes. Last year, we tasted pizzas in Quebec city, Rome, Venice and Mumbai, and trust me, it tasted different everywhere. But the cheese burst at Domino's is still the undisputed champion. But, then it is only my opinion. Under such circumstances, it is risky that the original products undergo heavy dilution and an entirely new product is developed. And this happens in something as small as a cigarette. The ITCs and the Godfrey Philips' get in foreign brands and try to "Indianise" it and sell it under the same trade name (with permissions of course). It is in this regard that I respect Coke for maintaining the uniformity in taste all over the globe.

I am currently watching old episodes of Heroes, an absolutely wonderful television series which aired in America a few years back. One of it's main characters is an Indian. So this guy's born and brought up in Madras and speaks flawless English. For me, as a true and skeptic Indian, it is completely wrong to portray a South Indian speaking English without the Ra's and Da's! It is blasphemous! If you want to copy something, copy it correctly! And even in India, he speaks English! And his name's Mohinder Suresh! A Punjabi first name to a South Indian - Not unheard of, but highly improbable. All of this is nothing but glocalising - selling foreign stuff to natives in a manner they can digest. But then again this leads to dilution of India's true culture. The people in the US might think that everyone in India is BPL after watching Slumdog Millionaire! Anyways, this series also has a couple of Japanese characters but they speak Japanese all the time. Now, I haven't been in the writer's head, but he might have thought getting the American people hooked on to Japanese would not be a problem especially since animes, mangas and more popularly, hentai are already a craze among the people.

Perhaps the most recent example in people's minds today is the Maruti advert. It brings forth the very nature of every Indian. No matter what features a particular product has, Indians will always look at cost and affordability. It is in our DNA. And designers, engineers and corporations must understand that if they want to survive in today's world, they have to adopt their products to suit local needs. Gone are the days when you could take a product built for the US, strip a few of its features and sell it in developing countries for a lower price. The whole business paradigm is rapidly changing. Look at the cell phone industry for instance. From Nokia's point of view, the competitors of the future are not the Samsungs or the htcs, but unseen and unlikely competitors like the Googles and the Dells. In conclusion, I thank Shashank Totre for making me aware of this quote filled with uncanny genius, which perhaps succinctly summarizes the present scenario: The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. - Alvin Toffler

MHRD wishes all IITians a "Happy" Engineers' Day

2011-09-17T19:38:00.000+05:30

Yesterday was engineers' day, the birthday of Visvesvaraya, often cited as India's first engineer. And yesterday, a memory came back to my mind. It was 26th December last year. Alumni Day at IITB. My 25 years' ago's wingie saying: I am proud to say, "I am one of the very few of our batch who has still stuck to engineering and not moved over to the management side." He had his own manufacturing factory. He was creating jobs for people, jobs for India and producing goods, in effect, for the world, in this era of globalisation (soon to be glocalisation, will be explained in another post.) That year, that batch of silver jubilee alumni raised a sum total of donations amounting to over one crore. This particular (ex)^25 wingie of mine said that he was proud to be giving back to the institute. He had finished his 5 years (At that time it was a 5 year B. Tech.) in a meager six hundred Rupees. He also recalled that the batch size was about 200 students with vague departments like EP still non-existent.

As regular followers of my blog might know from here, I look at everything from a math perspective. So lets do the math. One crore by 200 is about fifty thousand per person assuming everyone contributed equally. That's about 5000 times more that wht they had investd initially! Also, if you assume that India's economy and the value of money has grown about 100 times (HUGE approximation), these guys are paying back 50 times their investment! Even if you assume that the govermnet invested 10k per student at that time, it still amounts to quintuplying that very investment! And this is especially significant when we've had times in the past when the income tax rates have been as high as 60% if not higher. Phew, which savings scheme gives that kind of returns?!?

Anyways, moving on to what I really want to talk about: I was shocked to read this article. It says that the government today invests 6-8 lakhs per IIT B.Tech student (haha. Scope with a capital S) and that it will soon be recovered from us. The means of doing so is to grant a "Demat degree" which tells the employer to pay money to the insti rather that the individual. This is exempt only to those who go for higher studies "in insti/India" or to students belonging to the reserved classes. Now, I have nothing against reservation, it was there since before, and will stick around for some time, but I would suggest people go and watch the movie Aarakshan. No wait, don't watch it, it's a pathetic movie. Flawed that the movie is and the fact that it hardly has anything related to reservations, it does point out that we should concentrate more on primary education to develop backward classes rather than suddenly giving loads of concession at the higher education level. Moreover, the article and hence the logic of the "Honorable" MHRD is highly flawed.

Also talking in terms of people going for higher studies, those who pursue a management degree will conveniently hide under "higher eduction". Also, not to be neglected is the legion of students going abroad for MS and PhD many a times unfunded, taking loans to the tune of 25-30 lakhs. Moreover, these guys have to submit their degrees to the universities. Imagine how it would look when it appears that these students have not yet paid their dues in their UG degree. How can they be expected to pay up during grad school?

On IITians being in great demand

I ask honorable Mr. Sibal, what great demand are you talking about? I sincerely think that IITs are piggybacking on past glories. If you consider what your ministry did in the past four years, increasing the number of seats without a proportionate increase in infrastructure and the rampant increase in the number of IITs which will surely lead to dilution of quality, I highly doubt that we will be in that much "demand" in the future. Moreover, the hard reality in our passing out Mechanical batch is that half the students have no clue of refrigeration of air-conditioning or of IC Engines or of Machine Design even.

Also, please do not be fooled by the highest salary that is quoted by random newspapers. The 60-lakh-a-year earning people work on oil-rigs off the coast of Nigeria and the one crore-ish Facebook offer is a one in a million case. The ground reality is that the average salary on the base level is not more that 4 lakhs. now take this hypothetical average person with a young sister at home to be married and a very old dad who works on a meagre pension. (Yes, general category students also suffer from these difficulties. Look at Three idiots for better picturisation.) Lets say he spends 2 lakhs a year in rent, deposits, LIC, PETROL (wtf, you increased prices by pi!) etc. Puts in 1.5 lakhs into his sister's marriage fund and is left with 50k. What will his savings amount to at the end of the day if you take that away from him too? And this is only the hypothetical average guy I'm talking about. What about those who get paid lesser? And what about those guys who don't get a job on campus at all? (Yes, such people also exist)

On Expenditure

You say, "honorable" minister, that the government spends 6-8 lakhs per B.Tech students. But we do not see that much money coming in. The staff that you hire to handle all the bureaucratic work in the acad office are a bunch of procrastinating individuals with whom you have to follow up a lot to get some transcripts! Also, while calculating, you might have done a sigma over all students and then divided it by the number of B.Techs. Also, we are not at all satisfied with our departments (Except perhaps EP or aero) - where professors ask you to make blowers instead of competing in racecar competitions. Also, I request that you do not count the concession that IITB gives festivals like MI and TF that it lends its rooms for events at half/30% of the price. Hardly anyone other than some 22 odd managers and some 75 off wannabe managers and freshies who simply like donkey work actually enjoys these festivals. If stopping concessions to these festivals will reduce the burden on the establishment, has that avenue been explored?

On a much more serious note, have you taken into account the money that the ministers from your government embezzle in frauds and scams? Please do not impose those scams on IITians. It is like you are making us pay for those scams while the guilty people go free after perhaps a few months in jail. Why not divert that money to help us out? Moreover, I have a serious doubt that out of the 6-8 lakhs which is sanctioned by the government, about 2-3 lakhs might not even see the light of day and go directly into the pockets of the higher ups.

Moreover, there is talk of scrapping JEE citing that there are a total of 150 Engg entrance exams and we need to cut it down to one. One question I'd like to ask here is that then it will be a hit-and-you-miss chance that some deserving student might not get IITs or NITs even. I didn't go and give all 150 entrance tests just because they existed. I knew my limits and applied only to those where I thought there was a chance. Please do not stop JEE. You will have no benchmarking standard. The people with lowest ranks in IIT get negative scores in JEE. Now simply think about what the average engineer would score in a One-exam-fits-all scenario.

On IITians contributing to Society

There's also news that consultants from E&Y helped the government in deciding to implement this step. I have a feeling that it would have been done in the purest of all sarkari manners: 3 tenders invited, McK and BCG quoted high, only E&Y could fit their pocket. I doubt they might have take into account how much we pay back to the society. I work in the healthcare sector and the products I design touch hundreds of lives even in the remotest of government hospitals. We go out and create jobs that add value. And in spite of this, we try to repay our debt as alumni, atleast once - 25 years down the line - to the prestigeous campus we proudly call alma mater.

I forsee that this decision will have a horrible impact on alumni donations. Think about it - Why would I want to pay back if you subject me to heavy financial burdens in the very days that I start earning?

A New Beginning

2011-07-27T22:48:00.000+05:30

Post dedicated to Nishant, Saurav, Chatty and Raj, who have selflessly allowed me to take refuge in their house in such testing times, I really hope you get rid of all the millions of cockroaches in your house someday; and also to all my IIT Bombay friends who have helped me create such a strong network that I believe such help will be available to me in almost every major city, not just in India, but in the whole wide world.
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This is a story that almost everyone goes through while starting on their first jobs, or any job for that matter, especially when you are placed away from home. My tale is no different; only a bit more complicated since I initially had plans to go for higher studies abroad. My parents decided that it was time to move on, and wanted to move back to their native place. It was as if the timing was made by God. But then, fate always has other other plans. I couldn't land funding for my education; and have ended up in perhaps the best job that would have suited me in insti - an R&D job in an MNC which is just setting up such a center for the first time in the world - bringing 60 years worth experience in a start-up like scenario, a job which I might have landed even after an MS; but more on that later. This post is more about the other stuggles while shifting out - looking for accomodation. So sit back, relax and enjoy a thrilling tale filled with anxiety, uncertainty, freshiness, n00bity, hatred, cheating and desperation.

I was happy and in a way lucky to be placed in Pune - the land where the grass is green and the girls are pretty, even in insti; and that says a lot. Anyways, the current temporary office building is in Hinjewadi, an upcoming place outside Pune; and quite a few of my friends from insti and the seniors who work at the office live in Aundh, a newly developed area on the outskirts of Pune, but 12 km away from Hinjewadi; so it was obvious to me to look for a place in Aundh. Now, very few people from insti are placed in Pune, and most of them had already jugaadofied acco. The HR guys at my office were kind enough to give me 7 days worth of acco in my company guest house, after which I moved to Aundh with a few seniors - Mohanty, Nishant, Chatty and Raj, though I met Raj only after moving in with them. Now, the office was supposed to shift to Pimpri in about a month's time. Pimpri, Aundh and Hinjewadi form a rough equilateral triangle of length 12km and it is a difficult commute in the absence of a private vehicle.

My house hunting in Aundh was getting nowhere, especially due to the dearth of a flat-mate; and the work too, hadn't begun; we were shunted from room to room - wherever there's space - there have even been days when we had to change rooms 3 times! Luckily, I found another new joinee also looking for a flat. It was then that someone suggested that I look for a place in Pimpri, where our office would shift in a month's time; a place which is to Pune as what Ambarnath is to Mumbai. In the meanwhile, Nishant and I got slightly addicted to this show on TV called Crime Patrol - Dastak - a must watch - wherein they show real life stories of crimes and how every crime has a warning "Dastak" signal. This was also along the time when I was contemplating on replacing my Uber slow N70 with an android, preferrably the HTC desire. But while living with Nishant and encroaching on bed-space, I found this copy of the incredible Bhagavad Gita and it's translation. The best part about the Gita is that it is not meant for any religion. It is just an open conversation between Arjun and Lord Krishna left to open interpretation; and this was all that I needed. I thought about convenience of everyday travel rather than living in a posh locality. I (almost) gave up all desires and started looking for a flat in Pimpri.

We contacted a broker. Here's a little summary of our endeavour.

Day 1 - I went to look at houses. He shows me 2 houses. One extremely good looking, with ceramic floors and absolutely no furnishings except for fans and lights and one cot and bed and a cooler. The rent quoted was 8.5k, slightly higher for a place like Pimpri (though we could easily afford it). We requested the landlord to pitch in a geyser instead of the cooler (Who needs a fucking cooler in Pune anyway) and/or an extra bed. He refused point blank and in turn laid down additional terms and conditions. All his money - even the deposits - were to be made in hard cash and he won't give us any receipt for the rent (we need them for tax benefits). He said he'd sign our receipts only if we were ready to pay the taxes he would incur on him earning the rent on our house. This was definitely a Dastak of some jhol/lafda. After feeble attempts of trying to negotiate, he didn't budge, and we ditched him - in no way am I interested to transform my hard work's earnings into black money.

Day 2 - Another house, this time closer to Chinchwad, an utterly desolate rural area. This house was a 1bhk with 2 cots and a geyser, 7k; but very very shady place. I got repulsed just at the sight of it.

Day 3 - We contacted another broker. After 7 more days of randomly going to Pimpri and trying in vain, just as all hope was lost, a miracle occured. The second broker showed us two flats. We liked one of them and decided to finalise it. We are in talks with the owner and hope everything will be hunky-dory.

In these experiences, I have truly seen what I believe to be the good, the bad and the ugly of house hunting. All this at a time when I had just started working, with almost zero money in the account - no money, no inflow, only expenditures. I learnt that looking for a new home is like looking fora girlfriend... The good looking ones cost a bomb to maintain and the affordable ones are plain ugly... but I'm no expert on either :(

Himalay ki God mein

2011-06-08T00:09:00.000+05:30

Post dedicated to Cavvy, who taught me climbing down is just as easy as, if not easier than, climbing up; to Vora, the selfless dufus who covered five days worth of climbing in two days in spite of taking an ailing brother to safety; and to Sangram, who unselfishly shared his A/C during the sweltering BTP days.

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When we were traveling in Europe, we always used to travel by train during the night. This saved us the cost of accommodation. But whenever we needed to stay in cities like Amsterdam or Paris or Munich, we booked youth hostels, which, apart from providing economical accommodation, are wonderful ways of making acquaintances and learning what people do around the world. I only recently came to know that such hostels exist in India too, and moreover, organise treks at several places across India to promote national integration. What's intriguing is that this organisation, Youth Hostels Association of India or the YHAI has been in existence for over 30 years. The trek was a should-have-been-there kind of experience and this post hardly does any justice to the fun we had during the trek.
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I say today's kids' minds are corrupted by watching mindless cartoons like Ben10 and Oggy and the Cockroaches. But the good old days were when we used to watch Small Wonder and it was since then that I always dreamed of camping... sleeping under the starry skies... erecting tents... cooking on an open fire... This craving was ever more fueled when I read The Famous Five or The Secret Seven always camping, sleeping on heather. You can imagine my dismay when I came to know almost none of it happens in India...

Circa September 2010. Cavvy tells me the past year's Mech B.Tech batch had been to the Sar Pass trek organised by YHAI and we should do something similar. And so after endless hours of debating over Sar Pass, Roopkund or a Leh Ladakh bike trip, we finally settled for Sar Pass sometime mid February. Gearing up for the trek, we started running crossys across the insti and timing quite a few laps of the insti grounds. In due course, the tickets were booked, reservations done. We were to halt at Delhi for a couple of days, then set out to the YHAI base camp at Kasol. Delhi was quite uneventful. We did all touristy things that tourists do. Perhaps the most memorable thing would be our stay at the youth hostel and the trip to Paranthewala gully at Chandni Chowk for which I claim full credit :P. Everybody out there in Delhi is on their toes to dupe you and make a quick buck, but more on that some other time. We reached Kasol on the 17th of May - Us 12 cowboys with our cowboy hats!

Base Camp - Kasol

Our first stay at Kasol was quite uneventful, marked with a lot of Mafia, judgement and a lot of innuendos from Gunda, the Mumbai girl abusing boyfriend audio clip and a third video whose name shall not be revealed, but all the "pachees pachees" references come from it. We went for an acclimatisation walk on top of a nearby hill on the second day, where we met Padam, the guy who owned the base camp area. In the afternoon, we were guided about altitude sickness and the various problems that Himalayan trekkers face. We met the rest of our SP-17 group, which comprised of people from a variety of professions, mostly engineering, but quite a few businessmen and a choreographer! Demographically, the group consisted of people from Mumbai (us and girls from St. Xavier's), Nagpur (Dinesh, Raakesh, Nilesh and Sarang), Bangalore (Intel junta), Goa and Surat (infi jovial and awesome gujju group). The Nagpur guys had done Sar Pass 10 years ago. We had awesome rock climbing and rappelling sessions on the third day. Everything seemed perfect except for the fact that 4-5 amongst us cowboys had serious stomach issues, yet, we continued on our journey to higher camps on the following day.

Higher Camps - Grahan, Padri, Ratapani and an unforgettable life-threatening hailstorm

Day 4 involved moving up about 1500 feet to the first higher camp near the village of Grahan. You get glimpses of what looks like weed all the way up. We didn't have a guide on the first day, with just arrows on stones guiding us, but we did have a stray dog helping us out, we had dogs accompanying us from every camp to the next. If you ever get lost during this stretch, it is worthwhile to use the mantra - follow the dung - since where there is dung, there are mountain goats and hence, a village. Our entire group reached the Grahan camp at different times, much to the displeasure of the camp leader. The trip to Padri on the next day was casual. Once we reached Padri, we went to a nearby glacier to slide down - just for fun - and what fun it was indeed. Climbing up the ice is difficult enough, I found pleasure in slipping and inadvertently sliding down back to the base of the glacier!

The real adventure began on day 6, when we moved from Padri to Ratapani. It was Suyog's birthday, and he had a war cry - Oho Ratapani, aaj chalegi apni manmaani - from the video-that-must-not-be-named. The trek till the lunch point was excruciatingly steep with loose soil and stones all over the path. This part was a real test f stamina. I realised quite a few things - I, for the first time in my life, wasn't the slowest in the group for a physical acivity; the small stint we had in insti for improving fitness was a life saver at those high altitudes; there shall always be people slower than you, but if you are the slowest, there'll always exist people like me, who'll thank you for getting the group to wait for you. And so, we reached the lunch point, which was almost at cloud level and had a breath-taking view and with an airtel range! We SMSed home that all was great and we had reached the camps safely. The guide who had come with us went back and we were supposed to follow the arrows.

As soon as we set out, it started to hail. Rain and hail in the himalayas last for about 15-20 minutes tops, but the Gods had something special in store for Suyog on his birthday. He gifted us 2 hours worth of hard-hitting hail with the wind taking the temperatures to as low as 10-12 degrees. Since we were moving, none of us had our thermalwear or gloves on. Hands numb and almost freezing to the point of frostbite, we wore our gloves while all the while trying to protect ourselves from the unfogiving hail. We had already climbed a decent bit and it would havee been too risky to go back to the lunch-site or even to continue ahead, where trees had fallen and one slip of the foot and we'd be tumbling down into the unforgiving valley. People (I) started to remember their loved ones. But staying there would mean imminent and definite death by frostbite. All the while, we had Suyog saying "I don't want to die on my birthday." It was with great nerve and perhaps 2 gulps of Romanov each that Nilesh, Raakesh and Dinesh went ahead, with great risk of life amidst extremely slippery melting hail beneath their feet and guided everyone else across the perilous path to the next camp - Ratapani - bilkul nahi chali apni manmani - where soup and bataate wade were awaiting us. The entire camp site was picturesque, covered with snow with only a few green patches visible. It was here that little Nandan Vora contracted a very bad bout of altitude sickness and we had to leave the Voras behind. The 43 strong group was reduced to 41, much to everyone's dismay.

Nagaru, Sar Pass, Biskeri and Bhandakthatch

The next day, SP 17 saw unity which was hardly ever seen before in the past 4 days. We trudged along and reached the snow-covered Nagaru camp at an altitude of about 12000 ft, perhaps 5 ft below cloud level, quite soon underneath a perfectly cloudless sky. The snow was our waste disposal system; the instructions were simple: dig, dump, cover; and to tell you the truth, anyone who has taken a dump at that altitude in the cold at 2 am in the morning, can take a dump anywhere in the whole wide world. We used to humour ourselves saying that somewhere in the world, there exists a warm place with hot water where you don't have to wake up at 3 in the morning for the so-called "bed tea". And then we thought of Ansh; who came from a college with 80% female population; while we were miserable at IIT. We started our journey to conquer Sar Pass at about 4 in the morning with 2 sherpas and 2 sherpa guides. The air was very rare and we took 2 minute breaks every 20 minutes. "Sar Pass" came as an anticlimax as all we did was simply cross the Sar lake from the side, always under apprehension that one wrong step, one wrong move, one slip of the foot, and you soar into oblivion unless a sherpa pulls you back.

Slowly and steadily, we made our way through the slippery melting ice and eventually climbed up a slope which I would guess to be no less than 75 degrees. Now came the interesting part. You basically climb about 6500 ft from the base camp in 4 days and slide down some 1500 ft along a ~2km stretch of snow in roughly 10 seconds in a matter of three slides. We, that is to say Nilesh, Sarang, Rakesh, Dinesh, Ansh and me were last amongst the group (me being the slowest); the others already having reached lunch point. The first slide was pretty mundane, but the second one had jumps that could rival even the most dangerous rides in a huge water park with several jumps. Rakesh, Dinesh and Ansh went ahead, I went across next, jumped badly on the first jump, landed horribly on my left knee, lost balance and went rolling off-course about 300 metres through the unforgiving ice. I didn't dare open my eyes fearing my spectacles to be damaged. (Snow blindness is highly painful.) I lay in a heap almost unable to move my left leg in the cold. And then suddenly I heard a scream from behind. I squinted and saw Sarang rolling towards me. He had landed on his back and lost control. He collided against me and we braked together. I got up; my sprain was only minor (though i still cannot bend my knee completely), Sarang had taken the brunt of the fall on his spine and found it difficult to walk without support. We moved very slowly towards the lunch point.

After this tremendous (in/ac)cident, the rest of the trek was extremely mundane with just a descent to look forward to. We reached Biskeri on the same day and then Bhandakthatch-the most beautiful campsite-beautiful because there was no snow in sight and because it was on a plain lad rather than on a slope. Here we met Vora! He had escorted his brother back to Grahan and joined SP17 on day later and reached us after covering 5 days worth of gruesomely steep trekking within 2 days!

Manikaran and Return to Base Camp

The last day's trek involved walking to the village of Barseni some 17 km from base camp and then taking a bus to Kasol. We made a halt at Manikaran where there are hot water springs; and after bathing in the hot water; we set out to Kasol. The trek had finally come to an end. We met Nandan, who was almost bored to death before we came. The specifics of our return are too shady and shall not be mentioned here.

On the whole, I learnt quite a few things from this trek:
1) Trust is extremely important during a trek - you need to trust your shoes, your stick, your friends and yourself. You need to believe that you can finish the trek.

2) The stick can be a huge help - especially with an injured knee.

3) Climbing down is easier than going up. Always mimic the dogs - they move their bodies first and legs later.

4) Where there is shit, there is a village nearby and you are on the right track.

5) Reiterating, there shall always be people slower than you, but if you are the slowest, there'll always exist people like me, who'll thank you for getting the group to wait for you.

6) I do not need my cell phone or the internet or my laptop or an enclosed toilet to survive; just get me enough toilet paper roll and maybe some food.

Zoon barabar zoon

2011-03-26T10:43:00.000+05:30

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DISCLAIMER
The following post is purely with respect to a dramatics event at IIT Bombay. Any resemblance to any person or organisation, dead or alive is purely coincidental
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It's PAF season again! I strongly believe that the world will end in 2012 according to the Mayan calendar and I have no reason to believe I'll be in Mumbai next year around this time, so in all probability, this is my last PAF season. From my experience of watching three of the past seasons, it is my observation that the first PAF is usually quite mediocre (ref Ramleela). This might also be since they have nothing to compare themselves to.

There were very high expectations from the first PAF this time around, titled 'Zoon', performed by Hostels 3, 5 and 10 - a very formidable and culturally sound group. 3 has traditionally been a stronghold for dram and dance, having h10, a girls hostel, throws open infinite possibilities for the story-line/theme and h5 has been the undisputed champion in prod in the past several years (when I say prod here, I mean only the structures part. The tech part has been 8 or 3). With such a strong ensemble, it was only natural for our team to feel a but unnerved at the beginning of the PAF season with our group being 1, 6, 7 and 11 (we are working our asses off, I assure you, but we definitely lacked the fire-power at that time that this team promised. The following is the pre-PAF video by InsIghT.

The PAF

It started with what I can only hope to be a Republic / Independence day parade in front of Lal Quilla. An evident flaw in the FA was the conspicuous absence of the Indian flag on top of the fort. Then entered some extras (read freshies) in NCC uniforms in a haphazard march-past followed by autonomously moving replicas of some missiles. The second "movable" prod consisted of something supported on pillars with "Jammu va Kashmir" written in Devnagri. Now one of these pillars was dangerously swaying and fell down in the middle of it's journey. This prod even threatened to crash into the voice-over box, and would have done so too, were it not for the Prod junta's presence of mind.

Then there was a street-play - the best thing of this PAF - with a nice emphasis on the power of responsible media and public opinion and voice and an excellent satire on today's irresponsible journalism. But beyond this point, the PAF started going downwards. There was a court scene with Dabri's extremely nasal voice-over and pathetic forced stale humour and they somehow link the street play to Kashmir. The theme was how the army inflicts pain on the citizens of J&K and how the people sometimes take recourse to militancy. (This story is fictitious. I am NOT saying this actually happens. Not having been to Kashmir myself, I have no clue what happens there, but I am proud that Kashmir is a part of India)

The story apart, coming to the elements of the PAF:

Prod: Disastrous pach right at the beginning. They had 2 heavy people on what looked like tables protruding out of the centre-stage and the tables were threatening to collapse any minute. There was a lake in the middle of the quadrangle and the water reflecting off of the centre-stage was imply charismatic. This lake also had a stationary boat. There was also a butcher shop which hardly anyone could see since it was shadowed by a tall building.

Lights: Many screw-ups with the moon and the main lights. Actors acting in the dark. Lights turning off when they weren't supposed to.

Choreo: The video showed people dancing with un-lit flaming sticks. There were flaming sticks all right, but they extinguished as soon as the choreo junta came in. This only reiterates the need for full "costume" practices. There were many places where choreo was forceful and downright unnecessary. This one time, the choreo junta took their positions about 3 scenes before their gig was due and stayed there lying on the rough concrete floor in the dark. The choreo which seemed so perfectly synced in the video was only better than the un-synced NCC parade at the beginning.

Music: With Rejin and Kritin, we expected a good performance in music, and they didn't fail (though Rejin wasn't playing). Music was good. Songs were sung in a slightly childlike tone. The quawwali could have been done away with, no one seemed to get the gist of what was being said.

Script: Most of the script used Urdu words. Now, Urdu is a beautiful language, but hardly 5% of the crowd would actually know more than some 10 commonly used Urdu words. Most of the dialogues couldn't be understood. Sorry rahega people.

Dram: Disconnected story line. H10 always does that I guess. They have cut-scenes or choreos which have no relation with the story and confuse the audience as to what's happening (Najafgarh Express, Ramleela). This time it was the shenanigan about the Darwaja in Rajasthan - which was climactically driven home in the end in a very lame fashion. (This is my interpretation and I might be as woefully wrong as anyone who predicted South Africa to reach the semi-finals.) There was this random girl who was a guest and who wanted maggi. The old guy went to the shop to get some but forgot about it all together!

The InsIghT video

If you are still with me in this post, I suggest you have a look at the video, if you haven't done it yet, before reading further.

The drummer looks infi bored in the practice session. The Original compositions were nice, but the lyrics weren't memorable and most of the songs were in high pitched female voices. Prod: movable, realistic - they say. "Prod toh hum hi jeet rahe hai... techapa... prodapa..." Sorryapa people. Choreo - flaming sticks fail - out-of-sync throughout, unnecessary choreo. "Dram looks to be easy, but it isn't." - Puhlease - you don't know how to act. The last statement by the bloke says it all. We did leave the PAF happy saying "Apan hi hai, inka kuch nahi hone wala".

At the end of the day, no one knew the meaning of the title of the PAF. My lit secy later told me Zoon means hope. It means moonlight, and in a poetic sense, hope amidst darkness. A paradoxical name for a hopeless PAF.

Nagpuri Tamase

2011-03-22T19:49:00.000+05:30

Date - Circa 1st Feb 2011.

Someone says : Beee, India ki match ho rahi Nagpur Mein.

Someone else says: Mereko match hona.

The first someone says: Tof Taf. Chal Chalte apan.

And then began a very memorable journey that shall stay vivid for a very long time if not forever.

Partners in crime:
Channe aka Channa
Rakshas aka Sajna
Cavvy aka Cavy
Anish aka anus
Phalak aka PFAlak
Kishti aka matka
Kotkar aka Kotex
Lale
Ron
Pulkit aka Pullu
Akshay Amdekar
Rahul Srivastava

With great ease, we managed to jugaadofy 10 tickets to the India v. SA match at Nagpur. We had booked the Duronto Express train from Mumbai to Nagpur on Friday the 11th of March. The best thing about it was the non-stoppedness. It halts only at a few stops to make some technical changes / a refill of water, 5-6 stops in all. The whole journey was filled with infi Mafia and an infi senti me over the precious pack of cards we had bought from Paris for 2.5 Euros.

Now we were highly excited about our trip to Nagpur. We have about 5-6 friends from Nagpur and by God, all of them have their own unique style of speaking. All 'chahiye's become 'hona's, all 'crack's become 'tof's and all 'haan's become 'hao's; even while typing in the chat box! This is a worrisome thing because 4 years down the line, these loonies have iinfluenced our languange in spite of retaining their own unique style!

We reached Nagpur early next morning where Pullu, Lale, Rahul and Ron left us. The rest of us went to Sajna's place for a quick refresh and awesome lunch made by auntie. We left for the stadium at around 11 for a 2:30 match since we had to fill the car with gas and the routine sutta stops in two cars: one courtesy Sajna and the other courtesy Channa. There was another unscheduled stop by the Channa car to buy a couple of Indian flags. We passed by the "Pride" hotel where the players were staying to find a huge gathering of fans outside waiting to catch a glimpse of their heroes. We reached the stadium at around 12. After a long walk we reached a juice stall and the juice vendor goes "Santra hona ya lemon hona?" while in the meantime, we got our faces painted with Indian colors.

The Match

We had front row seats; just by the boundary rope after a barbed wire pit :P just next to the drinks cart. It is quite amazing that the huge ground that we see on TV isn't really that big. It must have been max 1.5 times our insti cricket ground. There was a loud cheer whenever any player came into the dressing room. After a while, the Proteans came on to the field to practice with infi stuff. Infi nets and infi cricket gear. Their parctice was great and they were playing as if they were playing the real thing. Team India entered one-by-one and then started tossing around a football. x-(

India won the toss and elected to bat, and boy, what a treat it was. Sehwag scoring a rapid-fire 70! After about 15 overs, the huge screen displayed that the projected score was ~430 and the crowd went mad and all hell broke loose. Watching Sachin bat is more than what it is hyped up to be. It is pure class. And the best part about the match was that he was scoring at a strike rate of a 100+! Simply aweinspiring. Now, we had probably the cheapest seats at the place and by extrapolation, even the people in our stand were cheap; with infi anti cheering for AB(CD) de Villiers and Amla (kahaan hai Kamla) who were fielding by the rope. Once in the ~36th over, when we took the powerplay, we lost Sachin and the whole crowd was stunned. But we were more bewildered when we crumbled within 30/9.

The SA innings was uneventful, which involved a Cavvy going to sleep, the only enjoyable part was the infi Mexican waves that we were enjoying with the wild cheer for every occasional wicket. We also watched Sachin diving and hitting the stumps from within 10 ft! We also saw some second had bookie betting; the people behind us betting on the outcome of the match. All the while people surrounding us were like "abhi wicket hona", "Tamase nahi hone chahiye"... When the last over was given to Nehra and he was washed for 18 runs, thus we lost the game after a very exciting match. All of us were flabbergasted save for the people behind us who became richer due to their bets x-( It is at times like these when you get so emotionally charged and then become sad at the end you think that the butterfly effect might just as well be real; that maybe perhaps India could have won if you'd worn a different pair of jeans or something.

Remainder of the stay

That night after an excruciatingly painful exit amidst the humungous crowd (which was well managed by the way) we went to "Babbus restaurant" with infi of Channa and Sajna's Nagpuri friends, where we caught hold of awesome valfi material on these 2. You'll have to come to 6 to listen to them, I ain't postin' it here.

The next day, we woke up at ~11 am and again after a quick wash moved to Channa's for a lunch. We also visited VNIT where I met a few of my old friends. We then went to this Air conditioned Aashirwad Paan shop with infi varieties of paan; a true delight. We also went to Haldiram's headquarters which is a huge sweetshop.

Return Journey

Our return journey was by the Vidarbha express. Again infi Mafia! This time with lovebirds; and this round involved an awesome round in which I as a Healer saved the city by killing the two lovebirds Channa and Kotex and being the sole survivor! The only pain on the train was that people with W/L tickets also get onto the sleeper coach and sleep on the floor. It is a horrifying sight when you go to the washroom: People lying around like corpses as if an invisible tidal wave had swept over all the people in the aisle. It is indeed a pathetic way to travel. We reached insti early on Monday morning.

The whole trip was planned more or less by Rakshas. Kudos to him and he is hereby awarded the Raptors Organisational color. We had an awesome time and experienced first-hand; as someone puts it; "Nagpur mein sab hepalte hai!" Nagpuri insti junta, you are the best. You rock!!

Next planned trip: Saar Paas trek and adventure sports in May.

Polt ke keede

2011-03-16T09:57:00.000+05:30

#iitbelections

It was election season with a twist! The usual run-of-the-mill insti elections were made more spicy this time around by the introduction of IB (independent bodies like MI, TF etc) heads to be elected in a surprise move by the profs in the SAC council to have a "more democratic" election and transparent selection of these IB honchos. This, I believe is a wrong move since you are letting the fate of the biggest cultural/technical/ecell-ial event of IIT Bombay to the hands of people like me who don't give a damn or people like my sadist friends who have voted exactly for the other candidates whom these IBs wanted to be elected. If the passing out council had been a bit more serious and responsible, they would not have agreed to implement this in the best interests of the insti and the IBs.

Up to last year, the MI/TF/Ecell OCs would be chosen by the end of Feb and the CGs/Managers would be selected after infinite rounds of horrendous interviews inevitably on the day of the elections. This way, you could get all the wannabe managers and CGs to machaofy for a given candidate, especially if the said candidate was a part of the IB team in a past life.

The authors of this blog also would like to bring attention to a new class of people - breed, if you will - who have a lifetime of about 3-4 days - 2 before the election D-Day and one after (in case their candidate won) - who support their closest friends and peers and machaofy among random people or vice versa. These people are disguised as the other guy you meet, you'll never suspect him(/her I'm not gender biased), whom you would have never ever seen in your life, but he would machaofy against someone you strongly believe in. This class of people also involve many wannabe-UG matkas who generally suck the life out of you, but stick close when they want to machaofy polt. Now, I have 2 M.Tech students in my wing, who are well, the matka next door, not interacting (thank god, I guess) and also having been asked to move out by a set of thirdies who wanted to be single. I saw one of these same thirdies machaofying for a candidate with him. Sheesh! Treating them like scum (I'm against this too, but it is 20 against 1) throughout the year and getting all comfy with them just for elections! infi max gandagi!

But I guess that is what elections do to you. You and your closest friend might believe in two different candidates, people whom you would have met once, or people who are mere acquaintances, or perhaps you played with them in inter-IIT or would have been to Chaos together, and you end up ruining your relations with some of the best people you meet here in insti. And the horrible stories you hear! For instance 2 of the candidates were TAs for courses and apparently tried to bribe freshies with marks to vote for them. All in all, I am very happy with the election results, though I still believe both GSAA (UG) candidates were equally good for the post.

One good thing that came out of elections this year was undoubtedly the creation of the "real election dope" satire blog maintained be a certain "fakeelectionofficer". Now, this blog ridiculed every contestant and tried to bring to light some kingpins (no offence to RoSi) and had a very light-hearted view over the elections. You can see the current status of the blog due to it's being "banned" by the higher authorities just because they said stuff which was in a lighter vein. Perhaps they shouldn't have mentioned stuff about a particular person or even hacked into (used the ID in some way but not hacked to be perfectly honest) GSAA's account and mailed it to every student in the insti, but still, "the authorities" have tried to implement "democracy" by killing free speech saying "it was the opinion of only a few people" especially when people are still angry about not being allowed the use of dark and isolated places, which I believe should not exist in an insti which is so frequently under threat from panthers.

World Cup Fever

2011-02-19T12:54:00.000+05:30

Personally, I am not a very big fan of cricket or any other sport for that matter. But there is always something about "the World Cup" which always makes me follow sports, be it cricket or football. I supported Germany (I was very sad when Paul died though,) during FIFA 2010 WC, and India for all of the ICC WCs. I guess it is the atmosphere which makes one crazy. It is highly impossible to miss the electrifying enthusiasm on all the TV channels, newspapers and on the internet. Hell, I was even psyched up about the Quidditch WC in HP and the Goblet of fire! But coming back to the scenario at hand.

They say that in India, cricket is a religion and Sachin is a God; which is kind of true. I am pretty sure there will be millions of aunties out there performing poojas, yagyas and other ceremonies in front of photographs of cricketers, praying that we win the world cup this time around. All this is excellent, but the picture isn't always as hunky-dory.

Wherever there is religion involved, parasitic fanaticism is never far away. An example would be the 1996 India v Sri Lanka semi-final. Sri Lanka won the first semi-final over India at Eden Gardens, Kolkata in front of a crowd unofficially estimated at 110 000. Chasing Sri Lanka's innings of 251 for 8, India had slumped to 120 for 8 in the 35th over when sections of crowd began to throw fruit and plastic bottles onto the field. The players left the field for 20 minutes in an attempt to quieten the crowd. When the players returned for play, more bottles were thrown onto the field and fires were lit in the stand. Match referee Clive Lloyd awarded the match to Sri Lanka, the first default ever in a Test or One Day International.

At least this fanaticism is restricted to the field, where frustrated crowds simply throw stuff on the field and nobody gets hurt. Perhaps the most horrendous display of this frenzy was when we lost to Bangladesh in the 2007 world cup, when houses of our players, those very people who were prayed to and sent as heroes, were vandalised, over a loss in a game which we like to show off as our religion.

I'd like to take a small detour over here. I had this excellent opportunity to be in Toronto last July, coinciding with the 2010 FIFA world cup. I was staying at 89 Chestnut, one of UofTs accomodations, just minutes away from Dundas square. Now, Canada has nothing to do with football (or soccer if you will), nor did either of the two finalists have anything to do with Canada. But the enthusiasm was extremely contagious. (Well, a partial reason for this might have been the extremely hot bevy of Portuguese speaking girls from Brazil and Argentina who were residing at Chestnut, but we'll overlook that). The people at Dundas were dancing in red, celebrating the Iniesta-Fabregas goal. (Well, I know their names too, the WC fever does catch up with me, doesn't it?). It is only when you experience such a scenario that you actually realise the "market share" that football has over cricket.

Toronto pics courtesy Ashwin Carvalho

From that day on, I believe we should consider a sport as our religion only if we know how to celebrate our victories and humbly accept our losses and respect the patrons who represent our country. With less than 2 hours for the world cup, which by coincidence is India v Bangladesh, here's hoping for a very successful (though the cup is jinxed, no host has ever won that edition) endeavor for the Indian team and expecting the crowds to behave maturely.

Valentine's day special

2011-02-14T14:04:00.001+05:30

तिला पाउस आवडतो,
आणि मला पावसात ती...

तिला बोलायला आवडतं,
आणि मला बोलतांना ती ...

मला ती आवडते,
पण तिला आवडत नाही मी ...

म्हणून गावात गेली ती
आणि आज सुखात आहे मी

Yeh Saali Zindagi

2011-02-12T19:41:00.001+05:30

where - R-city Mall, Ghatkopar
when - 11th Feb 2011, late night show
Partners in crime - Khandya, Kotex and Lale

************SPOILER ALERT**************
This post does not reveal any of the storyline, save for a very small Rajnikant-ish scene at the end
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We went to watch Yeh Saali Zindagi yesterday for a late night show. The movie has been running a house full across theatres in it's opening week and I was eager to see it owing to rave reviews from many of my friends. The advantage of going to late night movies is that there are hardly any wailing babies (though they would be big fools to bring kids to YSZ), and the irritating "waiters" at big cinemas are conspicuously absent.

I admit I should have done some basic googling about the actors in the movie, but I was pleasantly surprised that it starred Irrfan Khan, the ravishing Chitrangada Singh and two new faces: Arunoday Singh and the extremely hot Aditi Rao Hydari. Arunoday Singh happens to be the grandson of the great Arjun Singh, whose noble deed led us to stay double even in our third year, but that is a story for another time. The opening credits of the movie come in a James Bond-esque fashion with bullets flying all over the place from animated guns and hitting (if I remember correctly) silhouttes of people. The movie starts with an extremely fast pace with enough swear words to put the average IITian to shame. Most of the movie is based in Delhi and surrounding areas and involves a lot of Prince of Persia/Aladdin rooftop stunts.

An amusing thing about the movie is the lack of songs. There is only one song with dance accompanied which introduces Chitrangada's character and also happens to be the title track. The music is extremely catchy. Since I follow the Matrix OST, it was not at all difficult to recognise Prodigy's "Mindfields" playing in the background score, and I am yet to find a reference of it on the internet. The other background scores are also to the point and always in context.

The film also has a hot love making scene between the new-comers Hydari and Arunoday. Many kisses on the lips, but the whole thing is shot very tastefully and maturely, and I think that is another advantage of going for the movies late at night - the absence of wolf whistlers, and I am thankful not having taken Channe or Shakti with us, one Kotkar was enough.

The movie does take extremely arbitrary turns once in a while, which led to Lokhande nagging at my side. Well, the point of such movies is to leave your brain back at your homes/hostel rooms and take the inconsistencies with a pinch of salt. There is not a single moment in the movie which bores you. All the characters are extremely likable, except for the shady Shyam, whom I will not forgive for trying to cheat two girls at the same time (don't worry, this isn't a spoiler) especially when there are people here without a single girl. The movie goes extremely well until (SPOILER ALERT) one of the very last scenes when the bullet fired from the gun misses its target and ricochets off the bars in a gate and off walls to give a gult-godgiri-video feel.

All in all, YSZ is a very bold move for Indian cinema - the absence of songs, an excellent cast ensemble, well shot love-making, awesome cinematography and Arabian nights rooftop stunts. One might be reminded of Jane tu ya jane naa, which is definitely from a similar genre - the leave your brains behind movie. This movie, definitely recommended!

The math behind the unearthly hour

2011-01-13T20:05:00.001+05:30

***********************************Background***************************************
Our Insti has this mailing list called "student notices" which can be accessed by the Deans to send public messages to the students regarding insti policies, research opportunities etc. It used to be very quiet and useful till our first year when we used to get about 1 mail on it in a month on an average (or it didn't even exist, but that's just a technicality). Also, the DoSA referred to in this blog post is not a south Indian food item.
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Since 2008, the DoSA has wrought havoc on student-notices by spamming irrepressibly. This mailing list, though intended for the dissemination of institute policies and emergency holidays (read Swine Flu), was (mis)used by many of the institute's various student bodies (sorry to say I was one among them), and thus was born the "events" mailing list so that anyone and everyone can spam hundreds of mail boxes at will.

But this was not sufficient for the holier than thou cult (again, I have nothing against you guys) council which continues to send emails via the DoSA about theater fests and cultural nights. And more recently, even the security office joined in the bandwagon. Just two days ago our inboxes were flooded with innocent looking emails titled " Rules relating to motorized vehicles, I-cards, etc. " We did get a reminder of the normal rules of motorized vehicles and I-cards but the 'etc.' was extremely amusing. It read:
"
7. Roaming/sitting in dark or isolated places with opposite sex during unearthly hours.

All the above acts are unwarranted behaviour on the part of the student
community. Students are warned not to indulge in such acts. If found
indulged you will be fined."

This raises some eyebrows:

Let's take our batch for example. There are 36 girls among 500 odd boys. Assuming a "committedness" rate of 60% among girls (yes, does sound absurd considering this is IIT we are talking about, but what the heck) that makes the number to about 22 happy couples in our batch alone. Let's say about 30% of these guys are out on a given night and 80% use dark and isolated places. That takes the number further down to about 6 happy couples. Now, what is the point of spamming 500 mail boxes of people just to catch (?? what was the point of it really?) 12 people who don't use earthly hours to sit with the opposite sex in dark or isolated places? I personally feel this as a slap on my face. The DoSA mocks me saying "look you idiot, others are capable enough of Roaming/sitting in dark or ... unearthly hours and you can't even talk to a female." and then I empathise with a certain Rajesh Koothrapali and feel the infinite urge to blog.

Following this outburst from the DoSA, many wannabe cool doods have decided to have a peaceful protest, the times and dates etc can be found from any brain-washed person. And more importantly I don't see any of the "roaming/sitting..." junta among them. They hardly ever care about such non-sense. This, according to me is an election gimmick and in all probability someone among these will stand for GS cult. (I am supporting the protest btw, I am an attention whore after all)

The misuse of student notices crossed all limits when we got a mail from the security office "advising" us to use the footpaths and not walk on the roads as it causes problems to the "traffic". It appears that the security section has nothing better to do but to harass innocent students. Here are a few reasons why this email was non-sense:

1. The foot path is very small.
2. The foot path exists only on one side of the road.
3. Cows and random bull fights cause more traffic disruption than students commuting to classes.

Here are somethings that the security office must really do:

1. Ban all autos which refuse to go outside the insti.
2. MANAGE THE FUCKING TUM TUMS so that people don't have to wait for unearthly time periods for a ride.
3. Restrict cow/bull motion.

Well, extrapolating the frivolous use of the Dean's mails, I project the following email to appear on student notices in a couple of days time:

Dear Students,
Off late it has come to my notice that students are using excessively foul language and it irks everyone around them. It is to be noted that such behavior is not warranted from the student community and anyone caught exclaiming expletives shall have his i-card confiscated and a fine will be levied according to the following rules.

(a very long list on swear words and the corresponding fines)

God save the dean.

My New Year Resolution

2011-01-11T16:52:00.000+05:30

Aaah, a new year, the time for making new year resolutions. This time right now, one week down from the big day, would be the time to break them left right and centre. Well, after seeing myself fail miserably through exercising, playing a sport regularly, trying out all flavours of Naturals, sticking to a time-table, studying regularly and many other such futile resolutions, I believe my faith in the concept of a new year resolution has dwindled. I request the readers to go through this very short excerpt from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling. I find I am very much similar to Harry in this case, will be extremely modest and sarcastic and stuff with friends and online, but when it come to talking to a girl, well, not that quick in the top floor. I quote:

"At the end of an hour, Harry called a halt.(from the DA lecture)

ʹYouʹre getting really good,ʹ he said, beaming around at them. ʹWhen we get back from the holidays we can start doing some of the big stuff ‐ maybe even Patronuses.ʹ

There was a murmur of excitement. The room began to clear in the usual twos and threes; most people wished Harry a ʹHappy Christmasʹ as they went. Feeling cheerful, he collected up the cushions with Ron and Hermione and stacked them neatly away. Ron and Hermione left before he did; he hung back a little, because Cho was still there and he was hoping to receive a ʹMerry Christmasʹ from her.

ʹNo, you go on,ʹ he heard her say to her friend Marietta and his heart gave a jolt that seemed to take it into the region of his Adamʹs apple.

He pretended to be straightening the cushion pile. He was quite sure they were alone now and waited tor her to speak. Instead, he heard a hearty sniff.

He turned and saw Cho standing in the middle of the room, tears pouring down her face.

ʹWha—?ʹ

He didnʹt know what to do. She was simply standing there, crying silently.

ʹWhatʹs up?ʹ he said, feebly.

She shook her head and wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

ʹIʹm ‐ sorry,ʹ she said thickly. ʹI suppose… itʹs just… learning all this stuff… it just makes me… wonder whether… if heʹd known it all… heʹd still be alive.ʹ

Harryʹs heart sank right back past its usual spot and settled somewhere around his navel. He ought to have known. She wanted to talk about Cedric.

ʹHe did know this stuff,ʹ Harry said heavily. ʹHe was really good at it, or he could never have got to the middle of that maze. But if Voldemort really wants to kill you, you donʹt stand a chance.ʹ

She hiccoughed at the sound of Voldemortʹs name, but stared at Harry without flinching.

ʹYou survived when you were just a baby,ʹ she said quietly.

ʹYeah, well,ʹ said Harry wearily, moving towards the door, ʹI dunno why nor does anyone else, so itʹs nothing to be proud of.ʹ

ʹOh, donʹt go!ʹ said Cho, sounding tearful again. ʹIʹm really sorry to get all upset like this… I didnʹt mean to…ʹ

She hiccoughed again. She was very pretty even when her eyes were red and puffy. Harry felt thoroughly miserable. Heʹd have been so pleased with just a ʹMerry Christmasʹ.

ʹI know it must be horrible for you,ʹ she said, mopping her eyes on her sleeve again. ʹMe mentioning Cedric, when you saw him die… I suppose you just want to forget about it?ʹ

Harry did not say anything to this; it was quite true, but he felt heartless saying it.

ʹYouʹre a r‐really good teacher, you know,ʹ said Cho, with a watery smile. ʹIʹve never been able to Stun anything before.ʹ

'Thanks,ʹ said Harry awkwardly.

They looked at each other for a long moment. Harry felt a burning desire to run from the room and, at the same time, a complete inability to move his feet.

ʹMistletoe,ʹ said Cho quietly, pointing at the ceiling over his head.

ʹYeah,ʹ said Harry. His mouth was very dry. ʹItʹs probably full of Nargles, though.ʹ

ʹWhat are Nargles?ʹ

ʹNo idea,ʹ said Harry. She had moved closer. His brain seemed to have been Stunned. ʹYouʹd have to ask Loony. Luna, I mean.ʹ

Cho made a funny noise halfway between a sob and a laugh. She was even nearer to him now. He could have counted the freckles on her nose.

ʹI really like you, Harry.ʹ

He could not think. A tingling sensation was spreading through him, paralysing his arms, legs and brain.

She was much too close. He could see every tear clinging to her eyelashes…"

I just experienced all the biopsychological phenomena that Harry went through (without the kiss of course) but yes, Rowling has captured the "felt a burning desire to run from the room and, at the same time, a complete inability to move his feet." and the "paralysing feeling" very nicely. So my new year resolution for the year 2011 (and I hope I fulfill it) would be to feel comfortable around everyone and anyone.

Mood Indigo 2010

2010-12-24T22:45:00.000+05:30

2010, my last mood indigo as a student, I was expecting nothing less than what MI had offered last year, and, I was alone for yet another MI. Very few people attended MI this year; might have been for the lack of a weekend and also due to less fire power in the proshows. I am single, yet again, which is kind of sad and inferiority complicating because throughout MI, I saw these infi hot chicks with infinitely <****fill appropriate swear word here ****> guys.

Day 1 was pretty mundane with many events, none of which interested most of the insti seniors. I was expecting a grand concert by Asha Bhosleji in the evening, but that was a let down too. Amit Kumar is not as good a singer as his dad, and it is time that he accepted that. He tries his best to hit it off, but fails miserably. There are a million other Kishore Kumar impersonators out there who are much better than this guy. Also, the songs that Ashaji sang were very old and lacked the "crowd spirit." All songs started with full crowd support, but the moment the song went into the Antara leaving the Mukhada, it went downhill.

Day 2 was spent running around the insti primarily due to Sachdeva having roped me in to play treasure hunt. He told me an excellent example for the causality-correlation paradox (?) The concert that day was Katatonia and Indus Creed. IC was nice, Katatonia became noise after some time.

Day 3 had nothing that could interest me get out of my room. Even the night wasn't that appealing to my taste; met a few old friends currently at VNIT Nagpur and caught up a bit. Sumo wrestling was awesome with Manas and Edul being thrown about the ring by Sumos. Day 4 involved me taking a reluctant Khemani to roam around the campus. Mantra finals were awesome, IITB winning both Mantra and the music trophies.

What followed immediately after Mantra was nothing short of disaster. It was Amit Trivedi's performance. His troupe consisted of two chicks with EXTREMELY irritating voices. They were promoting a new film that shall not be named for an hour and sang encores of the same songs. Making guest appearances were Rani Mukherjee (another irritating voice) and Vidya Balan. What stole the show was Rani and Vidya's reluctant / fake surprise smooch, which the media wasted no time in fussing over, as seen in the link. Also, it appeared that there was some bad blood between one of these gorgeous ladies and a cameraman. They left after an hour of agony, and then started the real Amit Trivedi concert with superb hits from DevD and Amir.

All in all, not that good an MI. Could have been way better. Very little could be done for the atmo over the desi theme, as compared to the plethora of trappings that was bestowed upon the crowd with last year's pirates. Even the website was extremely random. Hoping for better MIs in the future.

The E-edge

2010-12-12T22:50:00.000+05:30

Please have a look this video. It is a bit long, but nonetheless, interesting.

Well, yes, as IITians, we do have a lot of confidence and ambitions. The level of confidence is so high that it actually radiates from us to all in close proximity to us. H6 junta will remember Sandy, the guy who used to make Chinese food at our canteen. Those noodles were some of the best I had ever had and they have never been the same since he left. After a while of wondering where Sandy went, I came to know he now runs his own canteen at H5. Well, a canteen owner who isn't named Raghu is a pleasant break from tradition, but that is a story for another time.

Yes, entrepreneurship is in our blood. We want to keep people happy and we want to make money -- not necessarily in that order. Just a month ago, I asked a sophie in my wing what his plans for the future were and he replied that he would love to open a software company after passing out. Yes, software is the "in-thing" these days. This is rampant in the existence of a truck-load of companies still coming for placements looking for CS students oblivious to the fact that there are hardly any CS students left to be placed. Zynga, which owns something as lame as Farmville has overtaken EA sports in market share!

Now look at the hard facts: Just as there is a lot of room for new software development (since it is very easy and requires almost no investment), it is equivalently true that there are probably a million others who are working on the very same things one is working on. If you turn out to be the leader of the pack, you might, in all probability, be bought by google. Which turns out to show that it is extremely difficult to sustain a company which does good software stuff or uses existing technology in general. As Nandan puts it, sustainability is a load of crap: All good things in life must come to an end.

Also, even big companies must be on the lookout for change. My manpro prof has 2 very interesting anecdotes to share with anyone who would listen:

1) Why did the MAC fail against the PC? Well, the MAC came bundled with the hardware and one couldn't buy the software independently. On the other hand, MS DOS could be carried around in a floppy.

2) Why did Apple succeed with the ipod even when Samsung had the market share with the walkman? Apple came out with the revolutionary iTunes, which, apart from being excellent software for playback, allows you to download the songs you want to listen to. Beats the hell out of buying the whole album just for one or two songs.

On the same bandwagon comes Samsung who saved the cellphone industry with its sizable foray into the touchscreen market, putting an end to the Nokia dominance. (The contributions of the iphone and the android based open handset alliance to the Nokia monopoly debacle is also appreciated.)

All these examples suggest only one thing, if you want to make it big, use new technologies and out-of-the-box ideas. Software won't take you far away. I wish Sandy all the best for all his future endeavors.