Yes, there are differences in terms of cost of living based on location. But I’m writing this from the view of someone like me who likes to enjoy a mix of peace and the occasional fun of a city life and who has been staying in Bangalore for the last two years – I take Bangalore as a reference point.

There are some gross assumptions however. For instance, pursuing things we like does not imply ventures that require a significant sum of personal money to be invested. (Though leveraging is always an option if freedom is first ensured). Reading, writing, teaching, doing nothing etc. makes it to the list while traveling (especially abroad), starting up (bootstrapping) doesn’t.

Let us start with the fundamentals (Roti, Kapda aur Makaan) – Food, Clothing and Shelter. I’ll add health as well to it.  And we need to pay for electricity, gas and water – utilities. As we are not going to own a car or a motorcycle, we need to pay for transport. So the basic list is –

• Food
• Clothing
• Shelter
• Utilities
• Transport
• Health

The biggest expenditure here would be that of rent. It’s a sweet deal if you live in your own house but nevertheless we’ll account for it.

Here is the monthly expenditure for a comfortable life in a city like Bangalore for a single person with no dependents. I’ve considered clothing and health at an annualized cost of INR 5000. I’m factoring the cost of Health Insurance premium for Rs 3,00,000 for a single person of age 27 under category health. I’m not factoring Life Insurance here assuming you have no dependents. For factoring in an unfortunate case of premature death, a onetime funeral cost of around INR 25000 can be accounted (which I haven’t here). As the probability of this occurring is low (as anyway you are pursuing harmless interests including doing nothing ), I’m not accounting for this.

I’ve included power, water, gas and house maintenance expenditure under utilities. The rent of a decent 2 BHK or a very comfortable spacious 1 BHK will be definitely around INR 10000-12000 provided you scout for modest locations. The overall monthly figure you arrive at for bare basic necessities touch a staggering INR 21833.33. This does not even include unforeseen expenditures. Still, this figure is appalling as many freshers (engineers) out of college make much lesser money than this figure monthly. Yes they save by sharing accommodation, but for people who enjoy a bit of privacy and independence an individual house/apartment has to be factored in.

A young person who might want this much money for another 40 years, at a long term inflation rate of 7% and a return of corpus at an assumed 8% would be needing INR 31, 24, 344 in a bank account today. I used this calculator . Even if you live in Tier 2 cities, you might knock off around INR 4000 from the rent monthly, that’s all.

So, that means a simple life is not that simple anymore. Take that Mr. Epicurus – What is good is not easy to get today.

You need Microsoft OneNote for this.

A sample:

1. Picture

2. Just copy paste the picture in OneNote, right click and then select Copy Text from Picture

3. Paste wherever you want

That’s it. Now you have whatever text in an image in editable format.

The Law of Karma is very important in many spiritual schools. It’s a very potent weapon in the arsenal against skeptics to ward off unnerving questions. The most important being why good people suffer badly?

Today I was reading about shifting goalposts in the excellent book Human nature after Darwin by Janet Radcliffe Richards which spoke about bringing in a totally different (seemingly related but actually irrelevant) concept to ward off the questions.

Example :

A: You are parking in a No-parking zone. So, pay the fine.

B: The human mind is always curious and tries and experiments transgression. So for impulsive acts of human mind, I cannot pay the fee.

Now B is completely shifting the goalpost and this would not make A’s specific argument meaningless. But it will allow B to commit all traffic violations without remorse.

Consider this argument:

A: God exists. God is omnipotent, omniscient. He’ll protect you.

B: Why bad things happen to good people?

A: It is because of Law of Karma. People should suffer for their bad karma.

Now this explanation of Karma is like Dan Denett’s universal acid. An acid so strong that it dissolves everything, even the container itself. So where will you hold such an acid? Similarly the law of karma  is so potent that it dissolves A’s first stand itself. If you should anyway suffer because of Law of Karma and God wants you to do that, what is the point in praying to God in those difficult times? In other words, here God himself plays the role of Descarte’s evil genius in making those bad karma guys suffer. So what’s the point in praying?

Again Karma theory is also a strong insulation for predictors. Let’s say an astrologer predicts that a business will go good for you. But in future it fails. Now the predictor can safely say that it either failed because of your past karma or failed because after you had started the business, you had acquired some bad karma.

Now two schools of spirituality that I have come across (ISKCON and Isha Yoga) preach about law of karma. And the ideal state of mind as per both the schools is akarma. You should transcend the dualities of good and bad karma. That’s because even for enjoying the fruits of good karma you need to be in this ‘material’ earth, take rebirth etc. The way to reach this state is the famous but elusive “non-attachment”. The presumptions of the karma theory stands on two pillars – the existence of a soul outside the body and rebirth. Two very dubious and shaky pillars. At this point I’m not taking the psychological or physiological benefits that may arise by following the two schools. I’m just out of doubt raising questions about the ‘other’ gyaan these schools give.

One preaches “Brahma satyam jagat mitya jivo brahmaiva na parah” and the other upholds “Hari sarvottama vayu jivottama”. Perhaps why this has not led to a factionist approach towards both these saints would just be the threads of commonality running across both schools. Like Hari/Vishnu being given importance in both the philosophies, the central theist approach and the commonality (to some degree) in rituals. In the Indian household, these saints (include Ramanuja also here) are given an equal reverence to any other God. What they stand for does not become an issue for discrimination.

This is good in one sense that internally people do not fight against each other on the basis of philosophical idealism but it raises a question on whether this unquestioning acceptance without understanding creates a bed for accommodating and spawning hypocritical saints. The beauty of Hinduism lies in its flexibility. It offers a wide range of choice for people to pick and follow with  every imaginable philosophy including the atheism of Samkhya and the indulgence of Charwaka (Yaavt jeevet sukham jeevet). Yet it is bound tightly by a thread of commonality so that the flexibility does not lead into disintegration.

(You may also like to browse Religously Reading – 1)

The answer obviously is no. The reasons:

1. Office has become a ubiquity - It’s like your soap or bodywash. You just can’t do without it.

2. Affordability-It’s not a luxury good. Piracy sadly adds to the affordability.

3. Monopoly - Till date, there is no proper solid substitute for Office.

4. Sales Volume – Very high.

5. Easy upgrades from existing platform.

(While reading, you can find how the bolded out factors play an important role in deciding when to announce an upgrade).

Given these aspects, an early heads up for a forthcoming product creates a positive buzz and increased mindshare. In general the product will be well off than had it not given the early heads up.

Just contrast this with another product – Royal Enfield Bullet. Obviously Bullet is a luxury good and the price tag is monstrous compared to other motorcycles available in India. And Bullet sales are not volume based. A few thousands of every model sells each year. It caters to a niche market.

Now there is official news that Bullet is coming up with 2 new models in early 2010. This news came during the end of 2008. So there is completely a one-year headsup for the new product. Yes this does help in creating the buzz in the market for a while, puts the company in a far more comfortable position in skimming the market when the product is actually launched. But, remember – there is an entire set of customers who are considering the purchase of RE motorcycles in the year 2009. Those who have made the decision to purchase in early 2009 have the following options -

a) Purchase from the existing product lines

b) Wait for the new product

When the fact that the new product is technically superior to the existing versions is also advertised in the heads up, the consumer is now pushed into a dilemma. And once a buyer has decided to purchase a motorcycle, he would want to do it ASAP. There are no easy upgrades for this kind of a product. Add to the fact the technology obsolescence the new product will create to existing product lines. All these will make a rational buyer wait for the new product to become available or go for alternative products which might more or less satisfy the consumer and in this case comes at a reduced price. And one year is not a short wait. Thus the waiting group (consider they are new motorcycle buyers) might get really impatient and they might be forced to buy other available products coming from different brand houses. Thus sales for the waiting year thus might actually go down for the company – at least the product lines where new models are being rolled out. Or rather, the opportunity of making sales for the waiting group would have been lost.

(Two points to note -

1)Enfield wants to create future with the new Unit Combustion Engine and Twinspark technology.

2) But I’ve read somewhere 60% of Enfield sales comes from the Cast Iron engine segment).

I feel company might have been better off not giving the heads up this much earlier.

So I was looking for an online alternative and I found this online metronome quite promising. But I wanted something more. For beginners, there should be a distinction to know when a cycle of 8 (Adi talam) ends and the next one begins. Now this was something missing there. This distinction need not be necessarily aural (though that would be the best way). It could also be visual. For example, it would be extremely useful for me if I can see someone counting till 8 and the metronome ticking to that beat. So, I wrote a simple Python program for this :

import time
import os
import winsound
i=1
while(i>0):
print i
winsound.Beep(600,100)
i=i+1
if i==9:
i=1
time.sleep(.6)
os.system(‘CLS’)

If you keep the font size big on your command prompt, it would do just fine. Now there are some obvious tweaks needed. winsound.Beep just generates the system beep for the desired frequency. You can also record a tap and play that file instead of this using winsound.Playsound function which takes a sound file argument. You can also tweak the program for any talam by simply changing the counter.

Building up on this basic stuff, an online version of electronic tambura, shruti box, tempo meter can be developed and made available for the world free. Any musically inclined software engineer or someone looking for a project could do this. After you do, please share the link. It’ll be extremely useful for the modern music community.

1. God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
2. Why I’m not a Hindu? By Kancha Ilaiah
3. Code Name God by Mani Bhaumik
4. The Autobiography of Gora
5. TED talks by Dan Dennett, Julia Sweeney, Richard Dawkins

Except for one book – ‘Why I’m not a Hindu?’ ( which I bought thinking it was some dramatic story of a rebel Hindu discarding his Poonal and letting go of religion being watched by his mother with tearful eyes – which ultimately was nothing more than a seething rant against the Hindu inclusion of Dalitbahujans) others dealt with my interest area of religious philosophy.

One observation is that the western atheist’s argument against religion(of course Christianity – as proof of fallacy of one religion would produce strong misgivings about the veracity of others as well) is mainly focused on creationism and how Darwin’s theory of evolution offers an elegant alternative against the concept of ‘Intelligent Design’ by God. The Biblical Genesis is one of the prime notions which the atheists question and use it as a weapon against religion. By religion, I mean theist religion like Christianity, Hinduism and not non-theist religions like Zen or Pali Buddhism or Jainism(where every soul is considered divine).

But is the attack and argument against creationism a sufficient proof against a polytheistic religion like Hinduism? In Hinduism, creationism as a principle does not enjoy a lofty status as in Christianity. If a census of all Hindu temples are made, I bet those dedicated to Brahma (the creator) would be far less when compared to other deities like Shiva or Krishna or Rama. The only prominent temple for Brahma in India is located in Pushkar, Rajastan.

(Other temples dedicated to Brahma, for the interested are:
There are also temples in Thirunavaya in Kerala, in the temple town of Kumbakonam in (Thanjavur District in) Tamil Nadu; in Asotra village in Balotra Taluka of Barmer district in Rajasthan known as Kheteshwar Brahmadham Tirtha, in Goa (in the small, remote village of Carambolim in the Sattari taluka in the northeast region of the state). Regular pujas are held for Lord Brahma at the temple in Thirunavaya, and during Navrathris this temple comes to life with colourful festivities. There is also a shrine for Brahma within the Bramhapureeshwarar temple in Thirupattur, near Trichy and a famous murti of Brahm? at Mangalwedha, 52 km from Solapur district in Maharashtra, the largest of which is in Angkor Wat in Cambodia. In Khedbrahma, Gujarat, there is a statue of Brahma. A six feet tall statue was also discovered at Sopara near Mumbai. There is a temple dedicated to Lord Brahma in the temple town of Sri Kalahasti near Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh.
Courtesy : Wikipedia)

Obviously, this is a minuscule number when compared to the temples of other popular deities. Far more than the concept of creationism, the propitious nature of the God seems to occupy the central role in Hinduism. The prasadams, viradams, sacrifice etc. appease God for global and personal good. All these elements establish the proposition of a personal God like Abraham. And most of the atheists reject exactly this nature of God. In ‘Code Name God’, Mani Bhaumik rejects personal God outrightly and establishes God as the ‘primary field’ or One Source. Roughly this corresponds to ‘Brahman’ in Hindu philosophy. So at the end, you may see it boils down to a definition issue.

There have been lots of arguments surrounding the existence of God and I came up with something called “The Denial Argument”. You might have known what Pascal’s wager is. Simply putting ‘believing in God is the best bet as it makes your position everything to gain and nothing to lose. Similarly, I propose a counter wager. Even though a person is a believer, it is always useful to deny God’s existence when you are carrying out your duties. Let me try to explain this: This is because as we have come to know, through popular philosophy that God approves of good ethics, morals, hardwork, integrity etc.(Aside: we don’t need religion to set right our values. Read ‘The God Delusion’ to learn about how values are shaped biologically as a survival instinct as is elegantly explained by Darwinism). Also God approves when you give your best in doing what you do. Now to give your best in doing what you do means you should be able to do your duty without any external influences; the output you produce should be dependent on your sole capability (in addition to help from real people) . Thus in such situations even a theist should live presuming God was not there to help him. This mindset would enable him to perform to his best. That is the condition even God would want a man to work.

Further in Hinduism, the overlapping of God and Brahman weave an intricate conundrum which becomes even difficult to decode. I knew ‘Purushasukhtam’ ever since I was a kid, but only recently I tried to understand the meaning of it. Consider the following four lines:

“rucham braahmam janayantaha |
daeva agrae tadabruvan |
yastvaivam braahmaNo vidhyaat |
tasya daeva asanvashae|”

The meaning of these lines roughly translates to: This essence of Brahman, the Gods realized early on and said: Whoever realizes the Brahman, they will have mastery over Gods. (http://www.srivaishnavam.com/stotras/ps_meaning.htm). This implies Brahman is something that is even more powerful than Gods as realization of it gives mastery over the Gods themselves. Thus God and Brahman are different concepts in Hinduism and hierarchically, Brahman is above God. Thus speaking, Brahman(the infinite, omnipotent, omniscient) realization should obviate God worship. So it’s better to focus on that than latter. Realization is something very subjective and thus Brahman gets one more attribute to its character – the indescribable.

This essay however doesn’t try to prove any point. Just that how difficult would it be for an atheist to pick and attack Hinduism as a religion. I was just consolidating and clearing my own thoughts.

Mashups offer an elegant solution for this problem. If Cadbury wants to promote Bournville over the web, putting product description on their website, creating a Bournville forum, creating a Twitter stream are all going to help but to what level? To tap the full potential of all these online footprints the company and consumers leave all over the web, Cadbury would be better off creating a single RSS feed that pulls in data from multiple sources (can also be dynamic) and giving it to the user. One person might have written a blog post about why he deserved and how he earned the chocolate and some other guy might have taken some beautiful pictures of it and uploaded in Flickr. All these data could be pulled into one data feed to which people can subscribe. If Nikon wants to promote its range of DSLR cameras, it could create an RSS feed for top rated Flickr photos taken using Nikon equipment and promote it. Check out Pipes on how to do this. And obviously name the URL of the RSS feed elegantly to reflect the brand image. Try to promote this feed in addition to or better instead of promoting the website. Mashups are like the icing on the cake of online marketing. Measuring the impact of the initiative can also be done easily through Feedburner to begin with.

Further if this is done and managed well, your feed is going to sit right on the reader of your consumer. What more can you do to increase the mindshare of your product over the web? Giving the feed to the consumers is one thing and the consumers subscribing to your feed is some other thing. How can you make consumers subscribe to it? That is a different topic altogether. It’s the same as why Harley Davidson owners join HOG and why thousands of CAT aspirants flock Pagalguy.

If I explain what Pipes is in my own words, I’m sure it would underplay the full potential and features of Pipes. Hence quoting from Wikipedia “Yahoo! Pipes is a web application from Yahoo! that provides a graphical user interface for building data mashups that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services, creating Web-based apps from various sources, and publishing those apps. The site works by letting users “pipe” information from different sources and then set up rules for how that content should be modified (e.g. filtering). A typical example is New York Times through Flickr, a pipe which takes The New York Times RSS feed and adds a photo from Flickr based on the keywords of each item.“

I first created my own RSS feed of all my online activities at one place. Just add this link to your Google Reader subscriptions and you’ll get all my twitter updates, flickr updates, blog updates, Google shared items in your reader directly. After completing this, my friend was asking me how I did this and wanted an aggregated RSS feed for him as well. So I made a customized aggregator which could be used by anyone to create a master RSS feed of their online activities themselves.

It’s available at http://pipes.yahoo.com/shreyas/masterfeed. You can go there, give your usernames for various social sites and the URL of your blog and click Run Pipe button. After that, just click ‘Get RSS’ button to get your own master feed. In fact you might say I can do this through FriendFeed itself. But you can’t get contents directly through FF, only the links. And you need to sign up for FF. Anyway the point is not to prove the superiority of FF or the masterfeed. It’s just to show a sample of what can be done with Pipes. This example just scratches the surface of Yahoo! pipes. You can build some amazing web applications using Pipes. Just go ahead and check it out.

a. I have free time
and
b. I find something really interesting

Having said that, I recently analyzed my tweet frequency(http://tweetstats.com) and blog frequency.

Now, if you take a look at my tweet statistics, they peak on the months of October and November.And take a look at my blog posts. In the year 2008, September + October has seen 5 out of 14 posts. The average posts per month in 2008 was around 1.2.

From Sep 8, 2008 to November 8, 2008, I was doing my autumn internship as a part of curriculum. And it was this period that witnessed maximum tweets and blog posts which conveys I had free time and I found something really interesting. When I go back and see the subject of the tweets (and blogs), it’s hardly connected to what I was working on. This means, I found something really interesting either in addition to my work or other than work.

In the essay, Good and Bad procrastination, Paul Graham argues
“There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or(c) something more important. That last type, I’d argue, is good procrastination.”

As per this point, it becomes fairly clear that I wasn’t tweeting and blogging in addition to my work because I would have ideally procrastinated these two activities. So it all falls into place. I didn’t try to exit the subjectivity band and was totally falling in the ‘in between ‘ region. And I even know why – I was not loving what I was doing.