First causes

Moved

2008-05-10T23:31:00.000-07:00

The entire blog has been moved to onetechmonkey.com. You will quickly be redirected there.

A festival of lights

2008-04-12T02:40:00.001-07:00

It's the end of Navratra tomorrow. The nine day festival of lights and fasting. And at the end of Navratra, like every year, the search begins for young maidens. It's traditional to invite back nine of these young maidens back to the house and feed them with a nine varieties of food. After which you wash their feet and seek their blessings. And traditionally like every year, women all over India start searching for nine of these young maidens who can be fed and who will in return bless them. Only year by year, it seems to be getting tougher.

As well it might. In prosperous Haryana and Punjab where Navratara is celebrated with fervor there are only 777 women for a thousand men. The rest have been killed.The number is still lower in some of the rural areas. And least in some of the metros where urbanity it can seem can go hand in hand with some extreme barbarism. While the usual process is the ultrasound followed by the quick abortion, for many others it is a quick short burial of the baby in the backyard. The social reasons could be many. But for some of the people this killing too is traditional. Which is the scary part.

The repercussions are many. In some ways a girl has become a scarce resource, and people in power have derived their power from control of these scarce resources. Which they are attempting to do now. There are bars on marrying people of a different or lower caste, different religion or marrying people of the same 'gotr'. Honor killings are rampant, and tragically so are the suicides.

Thanks to all of this Haryana seems to be getting a few new traditions. It's called the bride trade. Where a bride is purchased from another state outside Haryana. "I couldn't find a local
girl," said Chandram, who purchased a wife last year from Bangladesh.
"So I had to go outside to get married. But it wasn't cheap." Thousands more like Chandram exist in Haryana. And they are looking for brides. Only year by year it will get tougher.

The root of all Evil

2008-04-11T22:00:00.001-07:00

If I were to tell you that by abstaining from one act today, you could potentially save your child from pedophiles I am sure you would happily abstain from that act. But if I were to tell you that that one act is religion?

When you light that one candle, say that one prayer, you use the word: faith. Faith in perhaps your God or your country, you worship one or the other deity. But the fundamental message there is your faith. Your belief in the absence of evidence. And the other implied message. Faith is a virtue. Belief is a virtue. Even in the absence of evidence. Especially in the absence of evidence. And once your children are willing to believe anything (in the stark absence of evidence), then it becomes a simple matter to ensure that they do believe anything. From "uncle (well auntie too) touching them is good for them" to "strapping on bombs and blowing up people".

This is one of the compelling arguments made by Dawkins (and the neo atheists) against religion today. I'll confess here. I am a Dawkins fanboy. However the argument is entirely valid. Faith (and by definition religion) leaves our kids vulnerable because we ask them to just about believe anything we tell them. So how do we ensure they only believe things which are good for them (or which we think are good for them). We simply can't. If they are going to believe anything then they will believe anything. Including stuff which is harmful to them. The only way out of this loop is if they check that evidence. Checking that evidence is what programmers call a guard.And guard it does. From a program going the wrong way to self detrimental belief.

One of the arguments trotted out immediately to the above argument is that when you check evidence you compare this evidence with a standard, you don't know what the standard is, and that by definition religion is that standard. Well it could be. I'd still like to see the evidence. If I were a Jew (or a Muslim) then one of the criteria which would be good for me would be abstinence from pork. I'd still like to see the evidence for it. Why
is it bad for me? Why is it good for others to have it, but bad for me to have it? God, said so. Fine. But why? Does it increase my cholesterol? No, it hurts me spiritually? Well then show me how?

However every time I say that the immediate response is: Physical evidence is not the only evidence. Well maybe. But then if you are going to claim otherwise the onus of proving it is up to you. I might as well claim that if there is something other than physical evidence then you are a murderer. You would then call me absurd. However when you claim that there is a God, then there is no onus of proof on you. Now that's absurd. However the two integral percepts of any religion are: a complete lack of evidence or the need to provide evidence and of course complete belief in the absence of that evidence. The only other place besides the inside of a temple (or a church) where I have seen these two percepts being held fondly ( I could say almost religiously) is with madmen (and madwomen).

This is why I have continuously and spectacularly failed to believe in a specific or a general God. I don't even believe (as my family would fondly wish) in some type of a God. I am an atheist. Through and through. I don't believe in God because there is no evidence of God. There. I said it. I am now (probably) eternally damned. That won't be a problem though. At least my children will be safe. And for that I am willing to go to Hell. Any day.

Roshogollas

2008-03-02T08:46:00.000-08:00

After dinner, on the train and things are heating up. After the missus and I had pushed and heaved two heaving pack mules (also called suitcases) onto the train and set them under a berth we were catching our breath and thinking of something else to do, when we were infested by a group of large Bengali women. The fact that two non Bengali speaking people had penetrated into the depths of a Bengali train was more than their brain could accommodate and the fact that we were occupying the luggage space under the seat 36 and 37 while we had been allocated 35 and 38 an assault on their very senses. This travesty of justice was more than could be taken by any self respecting, peace loving, pan chewing, toothbrush mustache toting (this includes the women mind you) Bengali. The fact that putting our luggage under seats 35 and 38 would mean that we had to chain the entire aisle was not a sufficient deterrent. The women especially were appalled by these lax moral standards. What would the pinnacle of civilization come to if luggages (and foreigners) were not put in their proper place? So after hectic consultations (with a lot of furious finger pointing and mogu mishaiing in chaste Bong speak) two of the women pushed their men folk towards us and the men folk then putting on their best voice said "Excuse me could you move your luggage please".

The missus and I pointed out that it worked out to all the same, since they had more than ample space to accommodate their single bag. However that was not to be. While the men were happy to accommodate, the women decided that they were not going to let anybody walk over their husbands (except them of course), so rudely brushing them aside confronted us. The argument was short and sweet. How can you argue with the sublime piece of logic that they could not keep their bags anywhere else since it was not safe and they wanted it to be in the corner, or the other piece of improvised reasoning that they could only keep their bags under seat number 36 (such are the mental rigors required to elect a communist government term after term). Interestingly theirs was the only bag under the seat, after we moved our luggage once again. Shortly panic set in when they realized we had a chain and they did not. Two more large ladies were recruited into a furious session of hand waving, gesticulating and speaking to us in rapid Bengali (when mind you it was very evident we couldn't understand a word of it). Then in a move that surprised everyone present everybody else got off except one obnoxious Bengali lady and a man who hadn't been seen with her ever before (we can understand why). The lady who had objected in the first place had got off too. And then there was peace in the land of the Bongs. Two innocent bags were peeking out from under 33 and 34 while a single bag winked like a lonely star from under seat number 36 only to disappear early in the morning.

First time in Bongland

2008-03-02T08:21:00.000-08:00

In the land of the gol gappa, red flags and large fat farting women. We are in kolkotta now and the difference is obvious from the minute you leave the airplane. All visitors to Kolkotta's domestic airport are greeted first by a large sign exhorting them to visit the ladies' toilet. If that isn't wierd then there is the sign observing that the bong administration is inbetween negotiating contracts for a new trolley service and apologising for the resulting inconvenience. The sign is however dated backwards by a couple of years which leads me to conclude that at a minimum it takes upwards of four years to negotiate a contract at Bongland. I wasn't too off the mark either. At various other transactions I performed later the general air was of someone doing you an absolute favour. From the prepaid taxi booth to the cab driver the air was of a people interrupted from some lofty pursuit into performing something almost trite. The cab driver seemed to be involved in some deep analysis of eighth century Bengali literary circles and his general attitute was that he was filling in for a friend. "Only for the time being", he seemed to be saying. "It's only a favour for a friend, while I am waiting for something better to happen".

The impression seemed to gather momentum as we left for the station in a rickety Ambassador which had seen the light of better days as the official cohort for 'Jyoti Basu'. When we got to the railway station we were mobbed by a group of porters who offered to carry our luggage for as little as twenty rupees into the station. The same in Delhi might have cost ten times as much. When we refused the porters gave up much too easily, perhaps leaving to perform their analysis of Neo-Marxian principles. Calcutta it seems is waiting for something better to happen.

Office and Offensibility

2007-12-26T21:05:00.001-08:00

It has been recently pointed out to me that my blog has the capacity to cause offense to its readers. Considering that the number of readers till now has barely crossed ten I wondered who I would be giving offense to. It was pointed out to me that I was offending (through my blog):
1. Tambrams
2. Most of the rest of humanity
3. The goats of the animal kingdom whom I had implicated as having carnal relations with some Tambrams and most of the rest of humanity. (Mamis and large predatory females kindly note these are carnal relations not cornell relations. Get your daughters married there at your own peril)

In fact my post on family values has irritated a few people. Upon further inquiry it transpires that it irritated people because:
1. It was basically their own values
2. I am a horrible git
(What is this compulsion I have with numbered lists. Irritating!!!)

However considering that this is India and considering that if ever Tambrams decide that their relegious sensitivities are hurt they could not just sue the bejesus out of me, they could also come and burn me I guess some steps will have to be taken. In fact consider Tasleema Nasreen. Here are the facts of the case:

Tasleema Nasreen was assaulted at a function she was attending in Hyderabad by a member of a relegious minority ( to whom Taslima also belongs) because her book had insulted the member's sentiments. The member spoke only Telugu and Urdu and had barely passed the second standard.

Hang On!!!

So here we have a man who hit a woman because he believed her book had insulted her relegious sentiments even though he couldn't read her book even in his own mother tounge (leave alone the original in Bengali).

However this is India where other members of the relegious minority then bought the book by the dozens and burnt them in order to protest which lead to:
1. The publisher ordering the printing of 10,000 copies because they were selling so fast
2. The book moving to No. 128 in the bestseller charts (it hadn't even figured there before)
3. Global warming and the breakdown of the Kyoto protocol and a lot of exhausted penguins who couldn't locate the ice pack

No. Seriously.

Considering that this is serious stuff. Here's what I plan to do.

1. Write something in this blog that offends the three major Abrahamic Relegion and the Mormon Church
2. Write something more offensive about Hinduism and Buddhism
3. Call up an Imam, a Pope and the Bajrang Dal and warn them about the offensive nature of the blog.
4. Once the carnage begins book myself on a flight to London and request political asylum (seeing that they let ugly mug Salman Rushdie in how bad can it be for this Tambram)
5. Ask Penguin to publish the book since they can be now assured of a bestseller

I have a feeling that this should work. The Christian will buy the book because Muslim sentiments are hurt. The Muslim because Hindu sentiments are hurt. The Hindu because Christian sentiments are hurt. Then they would all proceed to burn the damn thing because their own sentiments are hurt. The publishers would make a killing, I would be in London, preferably with a large bank balance and some nice scotch. How bad can it be?

Random ramblings

2007-12-25T03:37:00.001-08:00

It was recently pointed out to me that one of the girls who was in school with me, a specimen whose pimply face we used to make fun of, who we popularly used to call 'nani ma' (meaning old grandmother for the not-so-familiar-with-hindi-parties-reading-this-blog), whose lunch we used to steal and whose dress we used to splatter with the ink of many a shattered nib has now made a career as a fashion model. Which leads me to dispense this nugget of advice:
Girls on whom we throw ink become models.

Sorry. That wasn't the moral after all. No the moral is this. Never make fun of girls. Especially pimply ones. Thanks to the wonder of modern pharmaceuticals (and I am not discounting acid here), they all end up as models thereby making sure we all have extremely horrible lives. Here! They seem to say, I am now loved and adored by all, whereby I should now enjoy a hearty laugh if the number of people who adore you is more than the pinkies on your left hand. I am sure there are classmates of the inestimable Deepika Padukone who are suffering the same tortures now. Sigh!

So there that's it. The one piece of advice I would like to leave the younger generation with. Do not poke fun at girls. Especially the types you love to nickname(nani-ma, boothni etc. etc.) The other piece of advice I have to dispense has nothing to do with girls but an awful lot to do with cricket.

We used to play cricket in our school when I was very young. The fact that we didn't have a cricketing field, did not deter us from playing cricket. The fact that we were not playing anything resembling cricket did not deter our sports teacher from labeling the game we played rather euphemistically as "French cricket". Never having been to France (or having played French cricket there) I cannot comment on what we played, but the game went roughly like this.

One designated person used to stand at the center of a rather large field (dustbowl) while the rest of the class (numbering nearly in the hundreds) used to form a circle around the guy in the middle. The outer circle was huge. I mean really huge. Sometimes occasionally you could see the other guy who was diametrically opposite you. He really looked tiny. The game consisted of trying to hit the player in the middle between his knees and his ankles. The batter would try and swat the ball away. At least attempt to since the only guy who could get the ball into the inner circle was a guy called... let's call him Jo who had failed the grade four times and was regularly to be found bullying smaller kids. The rest of us heaved and flung the ball but rarely did it go anywhere close to the inner circle. It just more or less dribbled to somewhere in between.

I didn't fare any better when the batsman managed to connect with the ball. On the rare occasion the ball came anywhere close to me I would be looking in exactly the wrong direction, digging my nose, eating boogers, whatever. Most other kids managed to stop one two balls occasionally. I managed to miss most of whatever was hit in my direction. So the game consisted of basically Jo running round and round in circles attempting to hit the batter between the knees and the ankle with the ball, the batter making wild ineffectual heaves at whatever we tossed and jumping up or dodging away whatever Jo tossed, and me missing most of whatever was hit in my direction. Entertaining it was not. I was plain bored. Sometimes the batter would stumble as he attempted to dodge and stub his toe, but mostly he was too far away to be seen, so I would just hear his enraged yowl.

I devised ingenious ways to overcome this torture. First was the discovery that a pair of rubber bands could deliver a projectile almost right next to the batsman and with stinging velocity. Four weeks later weary of the assiduous practice schedule I had assigned in my class (aim two feet left of the teacher, two feet above, two feet right), I put small stone to rubber band and let loose. The ensuing yowl let me know I had succeeded. I didn't know if my missile had hit the target. Too far away.

Thus was born my passion for physics but mostly for projectiles. I discovered the ecstasy of elasticity, the subtlety of stiffness, the sublimity of strength, the accuracy of aim and most importantly the power of the projectile. What Jo would manage in an hour of running around was now carelessly in fact nonchalantly achieved with a little application of brain. Which would have all been fine, if not for the damn geometrical implement called the divider.

It was a rash impulse which had led me to brag to my friends about this new found power of mine, and they challenged me to prove that I could actually hit the batsman. Unsatisfied they egged me on to prove more concrete results where nothing would be left to chance but the result would be plain unambiguous for everyone to see. Two weeks later after careful experimentation and sixteen rubber bands stolen from the lunch boxes of unwary children I managed to make a compass and a divider fly accurately.

Which I put into practice in the next sports period. Unfortunately the compass hit the batsman and in the quite fleshy part of the leg between the knee and the ankle. Having hit it politely refused to bounce off but remained embedded in his leg like a tranquilizer dart, while three friends, bosom buddies who I lost touch with after school and who I hope have a job washing trucks pointed to me and immediately said "Sir. Sir. He did it!!! He did it!!!!".

After the ensuing session with everybody (including the director of my institution) the one person who still consoled me and allowed me to continue stealing her lunch was 'nani-ma'. Nani ma! Forgive me. I was cruel to you ( and perhaps the batter who got stuck with the divider). In fact the only person I was more cruel with was an old math book of mine and another girl called 'RoadRunner' who also became a model in her own way. Which brings me to the important cricket advice and the even more important piece of advice.

Cricket advice: Next time your friends want you to do something for a bet stick it to them (kindly also use the divider)

Even more important advice: As a general principle never make fun of pimply girls. The pharmaceutical industry is far too good nowadays

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Things that irritate (Part 2)

2007-12-03T03:46:00.003-08:00

(Formal versus dehyde)
During this recent event I was also asked to choose "formal" clothes. I had appeared with a dark blue suit a light blue shirt and a dark blue tie (pinched from Mottai Shankar Ram) with yellow darts on it. This wasn't considered formal.

Me: But this is formal enough for BT VP
Mum: Dark colours are used only for mourning. Abasakunam. Abasakunam.
Me: But traditionally Hindu's wear white for mourning.
Mama: Which reminds me, don't wear that light colored shirt.
Me: Which leaves me with nothing to wear.
Dad: How irresponsible can you get? Important function and you don't even bother to pack your clothes.
Family: And look at the Western wear. We will not tolerate such clothes. You need to be formally and conservatively dressed.
Me: But this is formal and conservative.
Mama II: But western. Though we respect the western tradition of wearing dark clothes at a wedding so you shouldn't.
Chorus: And also no light clothes at wedding since it is Hindu Mourning Color.
Me: Joy!!!

So I spent a large part of my fortune and time on Saturday trying to purchase a piece of garment that was not dark and not light. Here were the formal requirements for my clothes:
1. It could not be dark
2. It could not be light
3. But it had to be bright (pallichu for the Tamil speaking)
4. But not too showy
5. Modern (but no cargoes/t-shirts/short kurtas or long ones)
6. Yet traditional
7. Veshtis are passe
8. Yet jeans are not in.

Finally after a long afternoon spent with salesmen who had every reason to believe I was mad, I finally got the following:
1. A pink shirt: By far the only thing that satisfied requirements one, two and three
2. Khaki pants: That satisfied four to eight

Thank God they still think homosexual still means "sex with humans".

Things that irritate (Part 1)

2007-12-02T08:09:00.000-08:00

(Causation versus correlation)

I was in Chennai recently for a "family function". Here are a few general observations about people:
1. They get terribly offended if you don't do exactly as they do
2. The reason they get offended is that they think since your action isn't exactly what they would have done, they have to defend their choice.

Considering that there are a million things you can do which is different from what your relatives do this can lead to some fairly interesting conversations.

"You brush with your left".
Considering that I am a part lefty that's about the only thing that makes sense. However...
"I brush with my right. You know Vatsyayana recommended brushing with the right since it stimulates the karmic center of the wave function".
I refrained from mentioning that Vatsyayana may have recommended brushing with the right hand but it would certainly not have been the teeth.
"You use Close Up. I prefer Colgate since it's been proved to be effective in preventing plaque". And thus went the long afternoons...

One of the things which came under this category was of course the assertion that "the reason America has so many divorces is because they do not have so many rituals governing their marriage".

Sigh!

The statement above is a perfect showcase of bad thinking. Let's see how.

The statement hinges on the assumption that divorces happen when rituals do not happen. However even if we are willing to concede that rituals (or the lack of them) are a very important factor contributing to a divorce how do we know if they are the one all important factor which cause divorce.

This is a classic case of causation versus correlation. While countries with high divorce rate have lower rituals they also have higher GDP and happier citizens. Whoops! The point is countries with higher divorce rates also has a lot of happier women. In fact countries with a higher divorce rate all also lie to the west of India. Co-incidence. I guess not.

That's the problem with causation versus correlation. Something that anybody who took QT anytime in life should be able to appreciate. Guess our man hadn't taken that course.

P.S: The guy who made the statement did take a QT course in his lifetime. Guess he just doesn't feel like applying himself to the subject or the subject to himself. Watch out for Things that irritate (Education versus Literacy)

Family Values

2007-12-02T00:29:00.000-08:00
I don't like tradition. Marriages are tradition. According to those over forty in my family they are the only institutions that foster "family values". I wonder what those are? If those in my family are any indication they include:
1. An apparent dislike towards supporting anybody over eighty which leads to what I call the super-senior lawn tennis tournaments.
2. An apparent dislike towards treating your wife as your equal
3. A stodgy determination that borders on incenstual xenophobia
4. A fond belief that anything today is described in the vedas including lingerie, MTV, educational cess surcharges and the Smashing Pumpkins.
5. The ability to treat your kids as your own property. Even if they are already married. And if they are not they are tradeable properties.
6. A fond reverence for anything with a three letter or less label (IIM,IIT,REC,MS,PHD). Sorry SOB still does not qualify.
7. The ability to eat only vegetarian food at a Continental Restaurant in Singapore.

P.S.:
I forgot to add these
8. Claiming that the University of Oklohama is amongst the ten top universities in the USA
9. The fond but unique belief that Johnny Walker is a shoe brand for the aged.
10. An apparent need to listen to scratched Mohammed Rafi LP's recorded on DVD's through a BOSE home theater system.

Sigh!

What's your family's values?

Civalization-Grihasti Chapter II

2007-08-18T13:19:00.001-07:00
I have finally become civilized today. After two weeks of living in a paleolithic fashion today I bought my first civilized tool. Surprisingly enough it was a spoon.And I have been in raptures ever since. For all those who are not following this blog (and boy are they a large number), I am living in a flat with a guy called Divak and for the last month we had survived without a spoon. Hell! We survived even without soap. Primitive it was. Plates were a luxury. We have been eating from a place called Chik-Chiken (sic). Cheap bastards that they are meals come in little plastic tubs without a plate. Or a spoon. Divak and I enjoyed these "finger foods". Roti was finger food. So was biryani. Considering that the food looked like melted lego blocks (and tasted like it too) our fingers were the only natural thing about our diet. The one day we managed to bring back curd we scooped it up with our fingers. Considering where our fingers have been (I'm staunchly Indian in matters potty though not vice versa) I could only hope Divak washed his hands. Sugar when we wished to mix it with our coffee was done with the aid of our fingers. Nevermore...

Today I have a spoon. There are a lot of advantages to spoons:

1. You can use them to get jar from the bottom of the bottle when your fingers just don't reach that far. This is going to prove very useful on those days Chik-Chiken remains closed.
2. You can stir sugar into coffee without inflicting painful and lasting damage to your digits.
3. You can use them to spread cheese on a piece of bread without slicing off your fingers. I nearly did this last week.
4. It's close to impossible to lick a knife clean of said cheese. Forked tongues though useful for conversations with snakes makes kissing impossible. Spoons score heavily here.
5. It's possible to drink cough syrup without glugging it down. You can of course indulge in the traditional cough syrup tasting and then wax eloquent about the "spirit of Korex" and the "body of Woodward's Gripe Water".

Aah... such fun.

Stirring news. Next week I plan to get a plate. Watch this space.

Grihasti

2007-07-22T11:52:00.000-07:00

Moved into a new house today. It's a 3BHK flat on the fourth floor in a spacious block of flats called quite mysteriously Windsor Park. The name Windsor is quite the favorite with the builders here. During my short trip from the hotel with luggage my auto stopped at Windsor, Windsor Manor, Windsor Fields, Windsor & Sunova and finally at Windsor Park, which didn't improve my mood at all.
We had met the owner on Saturday and sealed the deal over a massive lunch after which I left for Gurgaon to meet 'The horizontal one'. We spent our time comfortably horizontal.
Slight hitch: The toilets have no bathroom fixtures. This means that most of the time we perform our ablutions with the room door open ensuring that flat mates can acoustically detect each other's locations much like the common bat and can hence ensure we don't embarrass each other. One of my flat mates is down with stomach flu ensuring that the only person he's been embarrassing has been himself. How terribly embarrassing!

Atheist And You bet I'm proud of it

2007-07-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

and a fucking skeptic too, so fuck you...

Concert Time

2007-07-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

Attended a concert today after a long time.
Not a lot of people around,
Sat and listened to the chimes
The tones of the sax
and bass that shook the ground.

No people who talked,
each song my choice
Hell I even walked
and followed that
heavenly voice

Such perfection I'd like to
thank God
Atheist though I am
Thank him for the iPod

Ban the hand

2007-06-22T23:43:00.000-07:00
MP, 23rd August

In a move that was shocking, surprising and yet eerily familiar the Madhya Pradesh government has decided to pass an ordinance banning hands, digits and bananas in the state. "We all know that these items can be used for causing sexual pleasure, and we are against people pleasing themselves sexually. Sex can only be used as a means of reproduction not for pleasure.", said one of their Public Works Development Minister.
The move comes days after MP banned the sale of condoms with vibratory rings. The CPI and the CPM and other left parties in the state also expressed support for the move as being in line with Indian values(TM). Plans are now underway to remove the hands of most of the people living in the state.

Reuters

oh! the truth

2007-06-16T02:48:00.000-07:00

a random cycle

2007-06-11T00:26:00.000-07:00

a random cycle

2007-06-11T00:21:00.000-07:00

a random cycle

2007-06-11T00:18:00.000-07:00

a random cycle

2007-06-11T00:10:00.000-07:00

a random cycle

2007-06-11T00:07:00.000-07:00

a random cycle

2007-06-10T23:33:00.000-07:00

2007-05-01T08:13:00.000-07:00
I have finally realized that the old argument of fate versus free will can be explained by the fact that some of the games described in game theory are co-ordinated and deterministic while others are not co-ordinated. Since we play both types of games and we require one rational explanation for both types comes the duality of the determinism of God versus the free will of mankind. When you look at either argument as an observer you only observe game theory.

Cult Cult

2007-05-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

One of the foremost problems I have had with relegion is the emphasis on faith as a mental mechanism. I have a problem with faith as faith is a word that has entirely too many meanings attached to it. Faith is after all humanity's explanation for random variables and this would have made it confusing enough in itself. But that it has also been used as a tool to enforce agreement with prevailing orthodoxies means it is by far the one tool which has the potential for most misuse and I do include nuclear bombs, paneer and Punjabi folk songs in that arsenal.
To have faith in something can mean you believe in it. Of course believing in something can either be through rationality where the validity of rational premises makes you believe something, or you could believe it inspite of there being no rational reason to do so. Unfortunately over the last century faith has come to mean exclusively the latter and I hope that 'faith' does pick up this pejorative meaning since doing so would stop people from using to justify everything
As you can see I am a little upset about this issue. Faith which would mean belief is not strictly binary. There is a spectrum of faith. The simplest is belief in that which is evidently true. In the middle is normal self belief which is faith in oneself. And at the other end is of course belief in miracles and faith based healing. Where you believe in the system because you have faith in it. You don't believe it because of certain premises, but you believe it because of course you believe. Exercises in circular reasoning notwithstanding the irritating thing is that this is the only valid argument put forth by practitioners of relegion today. Especially when they wish to convince me. And when I point out this logical inconsistency all they have to say is, "But faith is the basis for eveverything?". Of course they aren't the only people who are out to convince me using that particular dodge. How can I forget Amway distributors?
I had a pitch from an Amway IBO to join the business which I had rejected. For personal reasons. I am not interested in soap as merchandise or as a business idea. I can't sell soap. Soap doesn't excite me. But of course. I didn't understand the business.

It was explained to me that the whole idea of the business wasn't selling soap but recruiting more people so that they also sold soap. Profit came from building a team. Hmmm. Good idea, but who were they selling soap to? They were selling soap to those people they had recruited. But was there some end to this consumption at a non-distibutor? Nope. Which meant that consumption was driven entirely by each distributor who purchased these products for personal consumption. My earnings of course were a percentage point of all that me and those under me had purchased. My objections:

This is an excellent case of incentive bias.

This is an excellent case of conflict of intrest

Let me explain
If my goal is to maximize my earnings, I would be forcing my business partners to purchase the maximum amount of soap, since my consumption too is limited. Unless of course I can sell to people outside Amway. Which would mean advertising cost. However since by Amway regulation I can't advertise it would mean that my profit would only increase if I sell a lot of soap to my immediate business partners.

Even assuming my business partners are willing to buy this amount of soap from me, why would they want to do it? There could be two reasons for this:

They need those products for their use

They need those products since it increases their percentage points in the business

1 would mean that if you need to make a profit in the business household consumption should increase marginally but increase month on month from completely independent causes. While household consumption does improve how this can do a month on month increase or sustain I do not see. However 2 is what what makes it a complete conflict of intrest.
Even if I could maximize my profits only by selling soap to my immediate business partners there is no bias if the entire evaluation of the soap in question is objective and there is no extra incentive to buy the soap other than the normal ones. Does the soap clean? Is it worth the money? However if there is the extra incentive that if I buy this soap my business standing goes up, there is quite some potential for misuse. A person would buy this product not specially because of it's own attributes, but because of it's other advantages. Where is the thin line when Amway introduces a new product. If there is motivation for me to purchase it, is it because it is actually useful for me, or is it because it is more useful for my upline that I purchase this?

Of course I also incur a benifit when I purchase this product. But the return oninvestment per purchase is lesser than the return on investment/advertising dollar that my upline spends. Since if I buy the product, nobody profits except me,however if I buy that product, my upline probably profits even more. So overall there is a tilt in the balance towards making me spend more and more on unwanted personal consumption.
So I looked for two clues:

A remarkable set of products that I normally would not have any necessity for

And a pressure to purchase those products from my uplines

Guess what I found? Both. There were a tremendous set of products all of which I did not want. Ginseng Bilboa, Protienex and softeners for my clothes, stuff I would never have considered buying. And then of course there was the pressure. The IBO who pitched it to me, said it was necessary to purchase all these products month on month and use them, since I needed to be fully confident about each of these products before I could sell it to my customers. Which again had a grain of validity. Where I drew the line was that I would have to buy cassettes and motivational books from the support organization to Amway e.g. BWW, IDA and others. Spiritual (sic), support organizaitions whose system(sic) I had to follow if it was anyway necessary to make a profit.
I drew a line at that. Support organizations and psychiatrists I am wary about since it is always in their best intrests to keep their patients dependent. Ensures book sales, motivational tapes keep selling. However that argument was met with, "don't worry I believe it". Whoo! Hoo! Explanation: I believe it. So do so many people. That doesn't mean it's wrong. And that's because we all believe it. At which point the primal fault having been so clearly displayed I firmly rejected the offer at hand.
However it's not surprising that Amway and it's support associations have decided to so fully follow relegious memes. Which brings up a few questions:

Are there a list of mental memes?

What are the other circular reasoning memes that have existed since history? Have any been as successful?

Since I consider such thought patterns almost pathological, is there some cure for such patterns? Other than thinking of course? Or even certain arguments?

#Comments are open. So feel free to do so
*The support organizations fall under the definition of cults

so what do you pay for?

2007-04-25T07:21:00.000-07:00
Believe me. The answer could stun you. I am writing a new piece on pricing. Should be out by tommorow. So wait for it

ITunes

2007-01-16T01:17:00.001-08:00

The silliest piece of software made ever known to man. The usb dangle that connects the ipod to my computer was a little loose. iTunes tries to upgrade my ipod to a better firmware version. I should have said no. iTunes fails mysteriously (expected since the dongle was loose), but then concludes my ipod must be damaged and hence makes sure I reset my ipod. Time to sync music 4 hours. Sigh! I really should get a new computer with USB 2.0 support. Just that I have spent so much time with this one. Been through everything together, just don't feel like heaving him out onto the street. So the wait just goes on. Wish I had an iRiver to listen to in the meanwhile

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A simple question of mathematics

2007-01-12T06:42:00.001-08:00

So here I am a hundred million stories to tell. Of friends. Heart breaks and burns, Straight players and those who turn. The occasional googly. It's a malestorm of emotions here. I am here caught in the middle of all of this, observing, watching, learning. Things I wanted to know. Things I never wanted to know. People maddening people.

I don't see what the point is. A normal day is 24 hours. 24 normal hours, why would you want to spoil all that. 24 hours. Eight of which you spend at office. Two more hours which you have to work since your life depends on numbers. At least your clothes depend on one specific number. Two more hours commuting to and fro from your place of work. Sometimes more. Which leaves us with the remaining half of the day. Of which you need at least six hours sleep. Leaving us with one fourth of the day. Of which two hours are gone early in the morning. Filling in water, making food for the family, having tea, getting your kids to school. Which leaves you with four hours for yourself.

One third of the day is all you have to yourself. In which you have to read the newspaper, solve crosswords, surf the net, watch TV, watch movies, read books, paint, make cartoons, read, play with your toys, have sex, drink, smoke, talk to your parents, neighbours, friends, family, stay in touch, write letters, file IT returns, fix your kids geometry box, do his homework, throw out SPAM, clean the house, manage your finances, invest, divest, jest, watch Porn and live what remains of your life, till you move to a glad and comforting death, where you retire and would love to do all of this, but couldn't since your joints long away gave out due to lack of exercise.

The exact quality time you are going to spend with your spouse after you do all this is going to be what apart from the time you have sex. Fifteen minutes, half an hour? What is it going to be?

Man if he were a rational animal would settle for an intra-office affair. I know where I'd try. Corporate here I "come"

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The quest for a profile

2007-01-07T12:41:00.001-08:00

Incompetency in HR means:

have to attend interviews to find out what job you have to do
may still not be the job you get to do
loose respect for people
waste your time
But I do owe the kids a cricket kit

Have to get it tommorow if I can get my bike started

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free

2006-12-24T11:53:00.000-08:00
to eat, sleep, drink, read, play, jump, write, paint, sing, hear, talk, think, think, think,to dream, gaze, view, see, craft, make, model, sketch, pencil, putdown, create, think, think, think.
to pick up, to drop, code, debug, re engineer, pattern, argue,debate,walk on grass, lie on it, smell it, run, play down the line, across, plot, scheme, guile, place, win, run, freeze my nose, my ears, listen to the whirring of a fan, the clickety clack of keyboards expressing the pulse of electrons in my brain, to learn haskell, to code grammars, to learn about monads, recursion, parse::RecDescent, ajax toolkits, ruby to swf, laszlo, chickane, remixing, music, movies, music videos, irony, virago, ode to the pythons, slipgut, 50 pushups everyday, two kilometer runs, swim, dance the salsa, impress, read McLean, Sharpe and Bear, to drink tea, feel the warmth inside the rajai and the feeling of a nice morning sun, frost, fog, dew, mild lager drunk slightly warm, the liquid fire of smooth whisky, the oily fire of vodka, the tang of brandy or the smooth sourness of wine, the smell of cheese, green characters on a black background, litestep, TAG, techpreneurship, F.E.A.R, computer games, pixellation, rendering algorithms, DSP, Supply Chain, the comfort of a nice pair of clean fresh new socks, the snug feeling of gloves as you drive away into the horizon, bright stars, a home made telescope, warm peanuts, cheese and wine, fresh smell of tobacco smoke, the local beedi, hot chai steaming from the little shop, fried eggs for breakfast, the cool sip of slightly cold dark sugarless black coffee, the cold tingle that your fingers go through in the morning, fresh toothpaste squeezed ever so gently out of its tube, hidden so well from all those who dare look upon it as theirs, the smell of iodine and medicinal brandy, smoke from those fires at night from the guards in their huts, to hunker down and smell burning wood, to know where you came from, where you will go, the strains of music from a tea stall in the middle of the night, of unfortunate punjabi songs, empty corridors and empty roads, to stand alone at night in a field, stare at the sky and know in comfort that it's only a lifetime before something nice happens for a change, the sudden cold dust that blows down as we think from the very poles, the emptiness of a place emptied.

I am free to enjoy all that

Sixth term just began.

Banned for being funny

2006-12-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

Content Blocked

The requested URL http://www.wondermark.com/ has been blocked because it belongs to one or more of the following categories:

Humor / Comics

This site is restricted based on your company's corporate resource usage policy. Please contact your network administrator if you feel that the requested URL has been blocked inappropriately.

If you feel that this URL has been incorrectly categorized, click the button bellow to submit it for review.

SPICE MYKEY

2006-11-29T02:06:00.000-08:00
A sordid tale of what a PG can do to people....

Irony & Virago

2006-08-14T04:52:00.000-07:00

Maybe I am too bored with CB. But here it is...

Resolutions

2006-08-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

Never, ever give someone a book
if it will not be read.
It serves no purpose
A book unread is an idea dead.

For an idea is bulletproof.
It serves to protect,
a piece of magic.
But now it lies deep in neglect.
Beneath the siren call of work, comittments, family and all.
Waiting for its place in the sun.
Beneath summons to come work in the fall.
An idea, patient, waits till other ideas are done.

Magic doesn't touch all our souls.
Some already are slaves,
to the drudge of the daily toil.
Tasks to be done, people to meet,
things to write
and other such feats.

I though will read the book.
I will still be free.
There are some parts I cannot sell.
Some parts will always be me.

For all those who sleep alone

2006-07-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

--Vikram Seth

Maybe the whole world feels the way I do.

duet

2006-07-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

the song I sing,
it's words are yours.
our voices different,
the meaning still ours.

life has two sides.
so does time
day begins
night hides

a river is one
it's banks two
hapiness is life
sadness too.

we are the same
nations differ
let our voices unite
that we'd prefer

An or(kutti) world

2006-07-12T16:09:00.000-07:00
Orkutting today.

A few thoughts on how the interface can be changed.

Searching is a pain.

1. Considering the fact that I am searching amongst my friends, who would belong to the same community that I belong to, it is very silly that any name first does not get searched along these lines before being passed off onto general search.

2. Account management still sucks. Why Oh Why, can't they simply have one login and translate them automagically to gmail logins. If you already have a gmail account with the same name, integrate it.

3. It's not integrated with Gmail. And gmail should be able to tell me if someone has messaged me on orkut and make it appear right there as a mail message. Not done :(

4. Communities are again a plenty. Lots of scything required there.

5. Does not work over my mobile phone, does not integrate into my address book. Waiting for 3G

Pleasant , but can be much much better

clubbed to death

2006-07-06T15:50:00.000-07:00
After a rather pompous show of each club of MDI with it's associated activities, in resplendent PPT or flash I am left here clutching my head, wondering if it all really makes sense. The fundamental argument for a club is that it does something valuable for the individual: it makes a leader out of him; teaches him to work in a team; helps develop his managerial attributes.

BOLLOCKS!!!

Most people are associated with a club for about eight months in a B-school. What are the chances that eight months will accomplish what could not be done in twenty three years of upbringing. People who are new to the club will anyway end up working on a small aspect of the club activity. Bollocks to leadership there. People who are capable of managing an event will manage one event, just one event in their two year stay. Their chances to learn from this are simply zero, since it's very unlikely you will do another event. So your learning goes to zero, unless you count learning as learning what happens in an event. So you are given ringside seats to an event management function. Leadership qualities my ass!!!

This brings me to an opiniated succinct summary of all clubs in MDI. It's down to one line, so no problems there.

Clubs at MDI. The cult of the politburo...

Imperium: Let's have a Beerfest, but call it by some dignified name.

Illumina: Hell we had too much fun at Imperium, let's do something with the corporates.

Delphique: Shit! We still had too much fun at Illumina, so let's do something more with the corporates, but then let's make people dress up in monkey suits now.

Corp-Comm: We don't have anything to do, so let's cut out newspapers.

Iteration: We like an e at innapropriate pelaces.

Mandolins: We love to screech, but we call it talent

Natyamatics: We also love to screech, but we call it a performance.

Sports and Cultural: We love to screech and we call it sports, we also love to screech and we also call it a cultural event.

Ramanujam-of-the-month: We believe that all Ramanujam needed was a gel pen.

Prayas: My dad owns a store

Unnati: My dad owns a bank

Samaritans: I wish I could teach my colleagues to read

Monetrix: I like numbers, but I am essentially lazy

Placecom: We love a bunch of suckers

Yea! Yea! I can feel my leadership gushing around. Just don't step on it!!!

2006-05-05T05:15:00.000-07:00
Highmaster recently wrote a mail. I shall reproduce it here so one and all may look at it, observe it and learn all the common mistakes they should avoid when writing a mail. Highmaster, thank you, thank you, thank you....

Dear All,
The students of PGPM 2005 and PGHR 2005 are away for their summer internships and check their (WHAT??? High Master does not mention. What do the students check for important academic announcements. Their nether regions, their neighbour's potty. What do they check HIGHMASTER what do they check?) for important academic announcements, although not as frequently as they would like (Abject generalization. How do you know how frequently I like to check my mail and that too for academic announcements. Evidently that's a nice variety of pot you're smoking. Pass some here) Hence, kindly do not send across your large word files as they clog our small inboxes (this is like describing a medical condition)and do not let us get the important mail (are you requesting that they not let you " get the important mail" whatever that is, or are you simply requesting them to not send large attachments as they are wont to do?).When the students come back ( are you stating that you are not a student or your actions depend on the return of students and hey! if we are all waiting for `students' to come back then what the hell are we. I had always assumed that I was also a student) some of us ( count me out) may fill in the forms for your project survery (when in Faruary?).

The confusing thing is his mix of students as entities distinct from him and most of his friends (who also happen to be students but he has decided to ignore it for the time being, high no doubt) and the form provider, who also happens to be a student for goodness sake. To top it all of he's in the communications club. Kamwali must surely be a genius.

The Great Indian Democratic Poll

2006-03-06T15:22:00.000-08:00

DEMOCRACY!!!

Since we are celebrating some random event to commemorate Abraham Lincoln loosing his undergarments in the White House when he got the “loosies” after consuming Maggi at the fast food joint right across the White House, or the joy that is spreading across the hostel since people would like to live together with “transparent” roomies for the next year and hate their guts (their own not their roomies though we are not discounting the possibility) comprehensively, at the end of it we bring forth the MDI Democracy at Large Poll:

Q1. My favorite democratically elected leader:

- Richard Nixon (who falls into the Pinocchio category)

- Atal Bihari Vajpayee ( who also falls into the my favorite poet category)

- Lallu Prasad Yadav ( who falls into the man who best loves buffalo category)

- Jayalalitha (who falls into the buffalo which loves mankind category)

Q2. I most like to vote because:

- The voter ID card tells me who I am ( blinded by illicit liquor category)

- I like licking the ink off my finger ( midday meal category)

- I love stuffing the ballot ( government employment category)

- The burly guy in the locality told me to ( non-refundable hospital bill category)

Q3. The thing I like most about democracy is:

- It’s derived from latin ( so I get to speak Latin for a day category)

- I can bring my wife into politics (falls into the man who best loves buffalo category)

- I can make a buffalo the CM ( the whole of Tamil Nadu category)

- I get to participate in MMS scandals ( from the bribe taking in the nude category)

Q4. What I think democracy is:

- Letting apes broadcast animal porn ( Radio K.A.O.S and owner category)

- Wanking off on the net to my own video (oops! I left the webcam on while taking bribe in the nude category)

- Decision making under flying footwear (Lok Sabha category)

- Decision making when fossilized (Rajya Sabha category)

- No decision making at all (Democracy category)

Q5. What I think democracy should be:

- A large McDonald’s burger ( food for work category)

- Red flags flying on Jyoti Basu’s forehead ( I have had too much crack category)

- Lallu for president ( president of the bufallo’s union (Moo!Moo!Maa!) category)

- Fair and unbiased ( I am definitely delusional and should be institutionalized category)

Q6. How should we elect our ‘democratic’ “leaders””

- Ask me (Fidel castro category)

- Call an openhouse with the entire population of India (all student council category)

- Spam about it till every single cockroach left on this earth accepts your decision (student body category)

- Secretly whisper into your neighbours ears that you have biological weapons and politely invite Bush to invade your country ( Saddam Hussein category)

- Keep harping on the Baghvad Gita and the land of Kurukshetra till everyone decides to curl up and die (‘Darmashetre Kurukshetre’ category)

- I am not worried about this because I am an HR manager with an IT background, worrying about what kind of job profile I will get ( I need to have my guts slitted category)

Please submit all your entries ( if submitted from an anonymous mail id we'll know it is from a-rather-concerned-mandevian category) , after which they will go through a conjoint analysis and will produce random mutant goats with factors instead of horns and certain boring MR professors instead of gonads. In the meantime watch animal pr0n on Radio K.A.O.S

Dedicated to all those souls who dry run...

2006-02-02T04:49:00.000-08:00
Some things in life are bad,
They can really make you mad,
Other things just make you swear and curse,
When you're chewing life's gristle,
Don't grumble,
Give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best.
And...

Always look on the bright side of life.
Always look on the light side of life.

If life seems jolly rotten,
There's something you've forgotten,
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps,
Don't be silly chumps.
Just purse your lips and whistle.
That's the thing.
And...

Always look on the bright side of life.
Always look on the right side of life,

For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word.
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin.
Give the audience a grin.
Enjoy it. It's your last chance, anyhow.
So,...

Always look on the bright side of death,
Just before you draw your terminal breath.

Life's a piece of shit,
When you look at it.
Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true.
You'll see it's all a show.
Keep 'em laughing as you go.
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And...

Always look on the bright side of life.
Always look on the right side of life.

The calm of code

2006-01-30T13:37:00.000-08:00
And the excitement of working on a screen with green characters on black. I can't explain it anymore than I can explain first love, or the pang of pity I feel for all those who'll never be able to understand the beauty of deb. I'd surely put it in but then I cannot risk having no os now. Z if you are reading I'm running naked linux (stripped to the bare essentials) now from my flash disk. Need apt so that I can install video4linux. It's three in the morning but I do enjoy the quiet of my own mind.....

the nuptial nub

2006-01-29T13:20:00.000-08:00
Placement at a B school and an Indian wedding is more or less the same. The candidates are virginal in their ignorance, much like a bride. They want everything to be perfect on that day. The company much like the groom is in a position to make outrageous demands. The candidates don't want any company to know that they are flirting around with other companies, while the companies are so much in denial that they expect every candidate to attend only their process. The college authorities much like the bride's family is impotent, highly uninterested and only interested in washing the bride off their hands.
It's only much later that the bride realizes that she is going to be brutally fucked, a part of the bargain for being fed all life long, not that it is in anyway assured. And we have the gall to be proud of our Indian B-schools????

kadhal kadhal kadhal

2006-01-29T07:01:00.000-08:00
a brilliant song....

and so I smile...

A personal loss

2006-01-29T06:53:00.000-08:00
I lost all my data today. Technology does that to you. It extracts a sacrifice before it lets you tame it. Thankfully only my pictures got deleted. Let me list out the stuff that went out:

1. My sketches (around 0.5 gb)
2. Pictures/Wallpapers/rendered images (around 2 Gb)
3. Personal snapshots of me, friends (around 4 Gb)
4. Stuff that I had written down (round about 2 Gb of text, short stories, articles ) all of them....
5. Poems, lots of poems...

It's a stinging feeling of loss. Ununderstandable to anyone else. But something which means that I have cut off ties to a land, a time of long before. Au revoir my childhood. I am ready to move on....

I laugh so that I don't cry....

2006-01-21T21:33:00.000-08:00
Class. Sometime between 10.15 and 10.45.

While I am pleasantly sitting with my nose two inches from the bench before me, and my eyes tightly shut, the proffesor drones behind me...

All of a sudden, I hear a spark of passion, a ghost that left this place quite some time ago, only to return, to startle both the student and the proffesor with the strength of the violence he can kindle in you.

The proffesor says, "None of you can ever become CEO's, other than a very few. Most people in this college cannot take a risk at all. You are all forty year old retirees at the age of twenty-three. And most of you don't have any guts..."

I thump the desk in appreciation.

I thump alone.

Thump! Thump! Thump!

It is the only sound being made in class.

While most of the class is sitting shocked at the vehemence in his voice, the truth of what he said and the apparent insult to their egos, I have yet again failed to notice all this and am busy thumping the desk all alone in the class of sixty.

Sleep and stupidity have conspired once again to make me a rebel...

After class, favourite tea shop. My morning dose of tea. Mak with his `honto ciggarantes`. Me with my tea and butter biscuit.

A comes up to me. He's with his friends. Animatedly discussing class. He comes up to me. Heaven knows not why!!!

A goes, "Dude! You know I completely agree with him. Man I am going to be a CEO man. It makes no sense being a manager. At least after three four years".

I stand there politely nodding and drinking tea, wishing hard that he would go away.

Then he hits me with a stunner.

"Dude tell me how did you have the guts to thump the desk like that. I really wanted to but I was afraid of what others may think of me. That was a big risk you took man".

I was late to class again. Laughed so hard couldn't find my way to the classroom.

Of mice and men (Part I)

2006-01-10T12:31:00.000-08:00
I am sitting here in a small darkened room four hours after my bedtime, while all round me goes on a circus that is common which has become regular if not mandatory in the circles in which I now currently move.

I am waiting to tell a story.

I do not know who said it, but man as an animal has a habit, of rationalizing and quickly adapting to situations. It's scary though. The question is whether the position he now adapts is tenable. That is something I am not seeing though.

So I sit here and think about Turing's theorom.

This is going to be a long expose to write on the process, perhaps a way of living which mad though it is, will dictate the lives of one hundred and eighty reasonably sane people, who cannot see beyond their nose. It is too long a story to be told in a single night. But it is a fantastic tale of not just tilting against windmills but against a fundamental distaste for rational thought.

Like I said,

I am waiting to tell a story...

My apologies to W.H. Auden

2005-12-25T04:16:00.000-08:00
Dedicated to all those who cannot resist. May God provide them with a backbone...

Some say that we MBAs have no souls.
That some live in mansions, while some live in holes.
We still have no souls, my dear, we still have no souls.

Once we had a life and we thought it was our own
Then came B school and now we have an educational loan
We do not have a life now, my dear, we do not have a life.

In the college yard there grows an old tree.
Set in concrete it can never be free,
We are like that, my dear, we are like that.

Placecom banged the table and said,
If the company asks you then go with them to bed.
And we said gladly, my dear, we said gladly.

Went to an office to sit on a chair,
where no work was ever done year after year.
So what do I do today, my dear, what do I today?

Came to a BTL the speaker got up and said,
You are our future thought leaders you'll be our head.
Instead we were forced to give him head, my dear, instead we were forced to give him head.

Thought I heard thunder rumbling in the sky.
It was just the dean and his bag of lies.
All that's in his mind, my dear. All that's left of his mind.

Saw a man on a saturday go for a swim.
saw my life and boy, was it grim.
He wasn't an MBA my dear. He most certainlly wasn't.

Went down to the harbour and stood upon the quay.
Nothing there that I could see.
Trained to be blind, my dear, trained to be blind.

Walked through a park, felt quite at unease.
Shit, this was the first time in ten years I was walking through a park please.
What a shit of a life, my dear, what a shit of a life.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
Nine hundred CA's, one window, and one whore.
The whore was me, my dear, the whore was me.

Stood upon a plain to reclaim my life, my turf.
This fucking MBA has just made me a serf.
I got to do my assignment, my dear. I got to do my assignment.

it's fun

2005-11-05T10:47:00.000-08:00
and a little bit revealing when you realize you can politely ignore the lettered readings of a monkey with both a testestrone and a bad hair problem (Sudhanshu goyal *pg04sudhanshu_g@mdi.ac.in* who will later on no doubt go on to do great things like killing someone) and a mute (mutant?) savant who only now discovered that the dictionary works if it opens from the right and not the left (Abhik Sanyal *pg04abhik_s@mdi.ac.in*). I have published their emails here in full. All and sundry spammers who wish to pick it up may go right ahead.

What's a blog if you don't abuse it eh?

Like in love stories everywhere

2005-09-29T11:30:00.000-07:00
I sit and watch her from my seat. As I smoke those endless cigarettes I watch her walk, watch her toss her hair, watch her thin figure. Thin like the cigarette in my hand. I watch her small waist, her body. Graceful. Lithe. As she weaves away she leaves this trail of hers. Of perfume. Why is it that I find perfume, a smell so much more evocative than an image? Is it because of the suggestion that here goes a woman or the fact that so much more is left to imagination? Or is it just because it is such a pleasant change from the whiff of tobacco? I don't know. I watch her and think to myself that I could never tell her. Not today, not ever. So I sit her and smoke away those cigarettes and watch as they turn to ash. Ash. Like I'll be. One day. Like her. Like these words. Let's pray they stay. Because I could never tell her. Never.

But I did...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

I could never tell him. From where I sit, I can see his chin. The way he tilts his head. His strong yet soft hands folded so neatly on the table before him. The way he stares in class. The way he asks questions. The way he suddenly laughs at the jokes of the girl who sits next to him. Why? Oh God! Why do I feel such a pang of jealousy then. When he leans back against his chair and tosses his arm casually behind the chair of the girl sitting next to him. When he remains so quiet, and when he laughs so softly at jokes tossed by others. Calm, discreet yet strong, why do I watch him so much? When he doesn't watch me at all. When he just glances at me. When he doesn't ask me. I know he's interested. But why doesn't he? I don't think I can ever tell him. Not till he tells me. Not before. Never.

But I did...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know how to tell her. Can I? Should I? I know she looks at me. Why can't I turn my head and look at her? Why do I feel my ears burn so much when I want to turn around to look at her. Why did my parents give me a name which is so much lower on the alphabetic scale. Why does she make me feel so inadequate? I want to tell her so much. Yet I have to restrain myself. And when she laughs at someone else's joke why does my heart twist around so much? When she tosses her hair back why do I wish I could watch it forever? I don't think I can tell her. Everyday I lean back in my chair and toss my hand over the chair of the girl who sits next to mine so that I can lean back and see her out of the corner of my eyes. All I can see is her frown. Does she know that I am looking at her? I think she does. She disapproves. What can I do? I don't think I can tell her. I am too scared to tell her? What if she breaks off? I don't think I'll tell her. Never ever. Never.

But I did...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I told her. But she told me first. Wow! Was I happy. I said YES! In capital letters. I don't think I could ever be so happy. To answer a question. I am glad she told me. As I am glad I told her. I'd better go now. She's waiting. I didn't think it would ever happen.

But it did...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I told him. I didn't think I would ever but I couldn't tolerate it when he threw his arm over the chair today. I was so angry I wanted to fight with him. But he answered yes. And then he smiled at me. It filled me with so much warmth. Why is my heart racing so much now? I want to dance now. I never thought he would say YES! Not with that girl there. But he did. And he danced. I never ever thought he would say it. And he said "YES!". I never thought it would ever come out of his mouth.

But it did...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I told her today.

I sat down only to find that I couldn't see her from where I sat. I didn't know where she was. As I panicked I got up to see where she was. She wasn't at her usual desk. Three rows away she was sitting with him. As I walked down the rows to sit where I could see her I could see the anger on his face. For the first time I hated a man for no other reason other than that he had made her angry. So I sat. And watched. And panicked, as I saw them furiously write. And touch each other. When he touched her shoulder. I watched from afar. As she loosed her hair. I watched, as my heart raced. When he smiled I don't know why I felt such a sense of loss. As I walked out to tell her I didn't really believe I was still praying. Wishing. And then I saw him dance and say YES! I knew then. I didn't think I would ever tell her. But then I did. Why did I do it? I'll never know. As I saw her face fall I knew. I said "It's O.K. I know." I don't know why I told her. But I did. Later as I sat and watched the cigarette burn to ashes I wished it wouldn't blur. I then prayed that it wouldn't.

But it did...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ten reasons to hate accountants

2005-09-21T00:13:00.000-07:00
Reason I:

Shareholder's equity= Net equity= Equity=Shareholder's funds=Net worth=Shareholder's worth=Book worth=Book value=Whatever????

I don't need to know accounts. I first need to learn their lingo.

A rose by any other name smells as sweet, is still a rose. It's just that talking to other people about a rose can get confusing.

a piece of parchment

2005-09-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

Wake up in Your room. While the trees outside stretch their branches and stretch You reach for Your glasses. It's eight and you already know how the day will be. You wake. You reach for your glasses. Toothpaste on brush. Scratch. Brush. Life boring as it is, is the only option.

Check the phone for missed calls. Its eleven thirty in the morning. Sitting on an office chair in a dim cubicled office. You don't know what You are doing. You sit and stare at the screen. The forty-fourth forward of the day reaches me. As comforting as television. You return to the spreadsheet before me. As comforting as brain death.

Lunchtime is an illusion. Of social connections. Of society. Talk revolves around life. Someones had a kid. You can't seem to remember their name. Or their face. What is your performance appraisal? When are you going for a deputation? My project sucks. You have learnt new things, all of them useless. Uninteresting too.

Walking back must be one of the few pleasures or privilliges left to man. Though very few seem to exercise it. Colleagues zoom of on bikes and cars. You are in a different time. You like walking back. You walk back. "Sir? Auto?". You shake your head and walk.

The quiet in Your mind is comforting. Sometimes it gets to you, which is when you wish for someway of talking to someone. But the quiet wraps around You. As you search for people to talk to, you call them up.

What do you talk to them about. How do you tell them about the quiet. The desperation to go elsewhere. The weariness or your passion which sustains you. "So tell me?", they say. You hang up the phone. You don't know what to say. Which is why you called up.

Why can't they write letters. The feel of parchment, the ink. It represents an investment. Something more than the casual fling at a keyboard that just allows someone to say anything that they want and then to dissapear. No memories exist. Unless you remember what you seek, what will you find?

How many times have you asked her to write to you. "Would you I rather", she says. So you drop it. You hope your eagerness shows. She gets the clue. She never has. Sometimes the silences are better. So you stay quiet. And watch as the silences grow around you. So you think. Quiet.

Somedays as you come back to your room you ask the guard what he has for you. If he has anything for you. He shakes his head. No one ever has stuff for you. So you watch other packages. Brown enevlope and yellow ones. Written in a variety of hands. Lettered with all kinds of ink. Blue and black. With names written in trembling hands, or steady ones. Some with parts underlined twice emphasising the anxiety of the sender. Some bulky. Would they have books. Some thin, they must contain letters. Who writes to them. Would someone ever write to you. The one with the words "Rakhi" and "Speed Post" dually written in opposite corners on the top margin of the envelope. Hoping that these words incite the human touch in a beauracracy large and uncaring. So you wait. Quiet.

Walking down the corridor to your room is the one thing in your day which you wait for. Walking down you nod to the guard. Ask him. He nods no. Routines are comforting. You walk to your room. Quiet. Out come the ciggarettes. You sit down at the computer. Draw the keyboard towards you. Loose yourself in the cool world of green on black. Quiet.

Walking down the road again. Office it is. As you walk quiet immersed in your own thoughts you walk down the corridor. Ask him. He says Yes. You wait there as he hands over a cream coloured envelope to you. Some changes do comfort. You walk back to the room the cream coloured envelope clutched tightly to your chest. Sometimes even a telephone bill is comforting.

where do accountants get their clothes?

2005-08-20T10:13:00.000-07:00
At the GAAP

;)

mid terms tommorow

2005-08-07T11:06:00.000-07:00

this is what I feel. Fuck you MBAs.
I am still an engineer. And proud of it.

here's where I was

2005-08-07T07:45:00.000-07:00
T.Nagar

here's where I am

2005-08-07T07:42:00.000-07:00
MDI Gurgaon

Irony the Whale and Virago the Sperm

2005-08-02T03:56:00.000-07:00

Inspired by this awesome piece of art above which I saw here, I plan to make a short cartoon series titled "Irony the Whale and Virago the Sperm" about life in a B school. Yes! Irony really attends B-school. So does Virago. It's meant to be funny. So go boil your head. The above piece
is Robin Joesph's creation, his copyright. Nothing to do with me. I have just been inspired by that and a large double of vodka. Robin if you are interested in animating it, just talk to me man.

cellphones as universal consoles????

2005-08-02T03:50:00.000-07:00

think about it. Use it to do everything needed. they don't require any local storage space. You can do it using the network. Small, accessible and almost everyone knows how to use it. So is the next year going to be one of the cellphone? And I am talking basic models here. Use smses to program the house. :)

Not only that. Think about the kind of applications we could run on them if we only decide to junk porting Windows to the phone, none of the gadgetry or windows or dongles but only the very basic. I am talking of a vim for the cellphone which allows the cell to do anything. Schedule meetings, talk to people, have fun, look for promotions, look for events, search.

Is this the universal console? Hey you! You freako MBA's are you noticing the next biggest trend? I am here shouting it out from the rooftops. I unclog my nose in your general direction you MBA pigs. Did you hear that! Yes! I unclog my nose in your direction. And your mother was a hibiscus and your dad a rather large prune. I fart in your general direction.

Gill te guitar

2005-08-02T01:18:00.000-07:00

A translation of Rabbi Shergill's Gill te guitar. Dedicated to all those who lost touch with friends they like so much. Or liked so much

Friends we were four in photos
Standing side by side
Teased the girls a lot.
Their dads tanned our hides.
Pallah left first
Then aeru went far
Sangah is now in Dubai
Left is me and my guitar

Pallah had a luck.
Which was worse than mine.
Kept teasing girls
But none fell into line
Who knew that pallah wouldn't
talk to me for seven years
Who knows how tommorow goes
rain or skies clear

Friends we were four in photos
Standing side by side
Teased the girls a lot.
Their dads tanned our hides.
Pallah left first
Then aeru went far
Sangah's in Dubai
Left is me and my guitar

Aeru was tall.
While I was quite short
He was quite calm about life
While my anger was quite hot
When we fought, which was quite a lot
we wouldn't speak for days
now we don't share
even the sorrows that we face

Took a walk went quite far
Looked at the images floating in my mind
Isn't it that only whenyou meet dangers ahead
that you think of friends left behind

Our sangah was a man
Calm and with elan
never seemed to miss us
pine or make a fuss
sangah after long time phoned me.
said the day passed him quite quickly
but not his eve.

Friends we were four in photos
Standing side by side
Teased the girls a lot.
Their dads tanned our hides.
Pallah left first
Then aeru went far
Sangah's in Dubai
Left is me and my guitar

Here's the original...

ve yaar mere kade sege tin chaar
katthe ched dey si kudiyaan
katthe Khaadi assan maar
Pehlaan Pallaa gaya
phir aeru gaya baar
hun saanga vi dubai
bache gill te guitar

palle te meri kismat si buri
assi firde rahe par na manni koi kudi
bhave kahk si kaj si (?)
sannu si nasha
Kadde hovange kalle
sanu ki pata

ve yaar mere kade sege tin chaar
katthe ched dey si kudiyaan
katthe Khaadi assan maar
Pehlaan Pallaa gaya
phir aeru gaya baar
hun saanga vi dubai
bache gill te guitar

Aeru si lammba main si chotta
main si bahutaan kharab oh zara si thoda
uddon lad ke kai din na assan bolnaa
hun chah ke vi milda na dukh kholna

mileyaa kal ik raahi mainu
kehndaa gal sun meri tu khol kann
jaddon na kujh agge disse
tahiyon bandaa vekhe picche

sanga apna si bandaa tagraa
kade darr na fikar udde nede lagaa
bare din baad kal aaya udda phone si
kehndaa din taan lang jaada ae
par shaam nai

ve yaar mere kade seege tin chaar
katthe ched dey si kudiyaan
katthe Khaadi assan maar
Pehlaan Pallaa gaya
phir aeru gaya baar
hun saanga vi dubai
bache gill te guitar

ve yaar mere

ve yaar mere

ve yaar mere

ve yaar mere

to the financial guys in class

2005-07-31T13:22:00.000-07:00

This is dedicated to all the guys who are desperate to take up finance in my batch. May you live long and mutiny with such passion. I know you pray for it as fevrently as I pray for a chance to do something, anything which is as funny as "The Crimson Permanent Assurance". Laugh guys. Laugh.

It's fun to charter an accountant
And sail the wide accountancy,
To find, explore the funds offshore
And skirt the shoals of bankruptcy!

It can be manly in insurance.
We'll up your premium semi-annually.
It's all tax deductible. We're fairly incorruptible,
We're sailing on the wide accountancy!

Next post is about the different ways in which you can study and other assorted gyaan I gave "the beast" today.

a ditty for the entire batch

2005-07-27T13:07:00.000-07:00
I think I'll just keep updating it as and when I find enough material to write about.

Hada likes to get drunk
Fly so high, to a crowd confide
The one good friend
Who gets him tight
Is his blender's pride

Bhobe worked hard we felt
But that was just a sham
In the library we saw him sleep
But never did we catch it
on a webcam

Ramesh sleeps
through every class
He even snores
It'll be a miracle the day he passes
A single financial course

Suresh sleeps on the last desk
That's not so bad at all.
Quiet through class,
he wakes up only
for nature's call

Sethu tries with all his might
to speak in hindi which is the key
he feels to get the girls
closest he got
was when he said 'mataji'

Deepa spends her time in a trance
asleep all the time
when dozing concerned,
she takes no chance
to sleep, to dream perchance

pranesh sleeps in every calss
suddenly he wakes upto seek
an answer
while the whole class thinks.
what a sensational freak

shradha is as close to a fresher
as we can possibly get
so naive
behind the ears
she's completely wet.

megha tries to sit so quiet.
and be a good student gel
well she can't
so we chant
you should your computer hurl

prashanth sits and sticks out his hand
he looks like a superman
to wear his undie over his pants (sigh!)
he would if he can

samrat sleeps through every class
only to be jacked in law
something the whole class feels
will happen again
when he meets his in-laws

Gurgaon, MBA and Profits (not particularly in that order)

2005-07-27T11:43:00.000-07:00

MBA. Mighty MBA:

I am standing here before the counter waiting to deposit my plate at the window which I call 'the gateway'. I wonder if people know what sort of gateway it is. How deeply it reaches, and the distances it bridges. The queue before me lurches forward. Hunger bounded by time is causing people to bolt their food. Some of them are wiping their mouths on their sleeves as they leave for class. Some of them are eating, reading their books and attempting to talk and flirt. Simultaneously. Funnily enough I watch their smiles disappear as they near 'the gateway'. It's the laughter which first disappears. Then the smiles, then they rearrange their faces. "Don't!", it seems to say. "We are from far away". And then they deposit their plates at the 'gateway', faces blank and unstaring looking away to a future they can see only with their eyes. That includes money, a wife, kids, success but not the small diminutive Nepali boy standing on the other side of the window, looking to clear our plates. He looks at our books with hungry eyes, at the thought of walking hand in hand with his sweetheart through a campus. Of being free. Of learning. Of classrooms of ours and how they are so different from the small TV room down below the ground, where it's hot and how he can't sit there. He smiles so broadly at me, and I think to myself. There's got to be a better way.

Gurgaon. Heppy Gurgaon:

I am standing outside Gurgaon's centre pieces of attraction. Two malls that seem to fill the sky and our hearts with desires. Demand and consumption. One is an urge to be satisfied, the other is a disease. But then economics is as far away from etymology as can possibly be. Hilbert space. I stand outside, breathing in the fuming air. Ten in the night, but the dry night air could be as hot as burnt rubber. The moon full in the sky seems to be looking at me with a rather mournful eye. I look at the six rickshaw wallahs standing by the side of the road.
-MDI
-Beez rupiah saab (Twenty rupees)
-Areh? Hum toh pandrah hi denge (Our offer is for fifteen)
Five minutes later, I am sitting in the same rickshaw, as a frail young boy attempts to press the pedals, to propel us the distance to a college which is to him as far away as the moon. I can smell the vodka fumes from the friend next to me. Burly as I am, I look at the rickshaw puller. Thankfully there's always a chance. As I share the beer I purchase with the rickshaw driver, I can see his shoulder blades bunching as he takes a long draught of beer. As he pulls us with his feet to distant shores he may never reach I see him turn around to smile at me. I think to myself. There's got to be a better way.

Profits. Peppy Profits:

As I wake up I hear the voice speak again about "Profits". "Profits", is by itself something I can tolerate. I bristle at "Thought Leadership", and fume at "People policies". "Profits" is a milder cousin. "Profits" is the black sheep. "Profits" is something I can live with. Not what comes next. "Profit is everything".
- Excuse me prof. Everything?
- Surely that is the fundamental premise of operating a company.
- I nod my head and think about a far away place like Flint. And as I look at the windmills of my mind I think of a place closer to home. Gurgaon. And then I think to myself. There's got to be a better way.

There's got to be a better way.

An inventory problem

2005-07-24T12:09:00.000-07:00
I don't have enough clean underwear. Got to wash more of them, or get some more I guess. Theme song till I get some fresh underwear is Pink Floyd's "Wearing the Inside Out". Thaankfully don't have to go "commando" for some time.

Do I need a new haircut? Tales of a hairy farter....

2005-07-18T23:24:00.000-07:00

Way back home getting a haircut was decided on a poll, whose major participants were my parents. Occassionally my sister, who made up for the occasionally bit by the vociferous bit. My grandmother who pleaded with me sometimes and the local neighbourhood girls who would giggle and remark about how they wished they had as much hair as I had. But then, I have happy hair. Very happy hair.

So the question remains. Do I need a haircut. Look at the photo and then tell me....

in fear

2005-07-15T23:08:00.000-07:00
I wonder,

A step is taken.

A start is made.

Will it last,

or will it fade?

We work the black seam

2005-07-09T09:57:00.000-07:00
Dedicated to all the mess workers here in MDI Gurgaon,

The rickshaw pullers too.

The unseen lot who clean our plates,

Thank you..

This place has changed for good
Your economic theory said it would
It's hard for us to understand
We can't give up our jobs the way we should
Our blood has stained the coal
We tunneled deep inside the nation's soul
We matter more than pounds and pence
Your economic theory makes no sense

One day in a nuclear age
They may understand our rage
They build machines that they can't control
And bury the waste in a great big hole
Power was to become cheap and clean
Grimy faces were never seen
Deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon fourteen
We work the black seam together
We work the black seam together

The seam lies underground
Three million years of pressure packed it down
We walk through ancient forest lands
And light a thousand cities with our hands
Your dark satanic mills
Have made redundant all our mining skills
You can't exchange a six inch band
For all the poisoned streams in Cumberland
Your economic theory makes no sense

One day in a nuclear age
They may understand our rage
They build machines that they can't control
And bury the waste in a great big hole
Power was to become cheap and clean
Grimy faces were never seen
Deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon fourteen
We work the black seam together
We work the black seam together

Should the children weep
The turning world will sing their souls to sleep
When you have sunk without a trace
The universe will suck me into place

One day in a nuclear age
They may understand our rage
They build machines that they can't control
And bury the waste in a great big hole
Power was to become cheap and clean
Grimy faces were never seen
But deadly for twelve thousand years is carbon fourteen
We work the black seam together
We work the black seam togethe

bring on the night

2005-07-09T09:54:00.000-07:00
The afternoon has gently passed me by
The evening spreads its sail against the sky
Waiting for tomorrow, just another day
God bid yesterday good-bye

Bring on the night
I couldn't spend another hour of daylight
Bring on the night
I couldn't stand another hour of daylight

Zero sum games

2005-07-05T07:25:00.000-07:00
Zero sum games as they are played

none of the players realize

they are the actors in the arcade.

an ode to HBO ( Human Behaviour in Organizations)

2005-07-05T06:51:00.000-07:00
HBO I'm sorry to say.

is not as good as the original.

I expected Arnold Schwarzenneger.

The Pope or at least a cardinal.

Hell! I am sorry to say.

To class we got an old bat.

Who comes and drones and drones and drones....

While we get comfortably flat.

zzzz(contd.)....

2005-07-05T06:50:00.000-07:00
Elephants dancing around my head.

Slides look so bright and pink.

Hangover from party last night.

I'm giving up on the drink.

zzzz(contd.)....

2005-07-05T06:37:00.000-07:00
Years come and years go,

we go and get our books again.

Massive tomes on economics.

Marketing and the supply chain.

Tomes so big and heavy and hard.

that they'll put you off to sleep.

case studies and methodologies

that make sure you always weep

quizzes, tests, presentations galrore.

all the stuff that'll make you groan.

soft stuff that'll drain your brain.

As excitement you try to feign,

while cgpas decide your fate.

as your slides to the class are shown.

you think to yourself

"This MBA"

"is making me a marketing drone"

zzzz(contd.)

2005-07-05T06:32:00.000-07:00
Why do profs speak so slow

The pauses between last years.

I strain again to open my eyes,

and with my ears to hear.

While he lectures us on topics so dear

and to us pours out his heart.

I think to myself:

What a conniving old fart.

zzzz....

2005-07-04T02:44:00.000-07:00
I sleep asleep at the wake of dawn.

I sleep again some more.

I sleep my life away, a second at a time.

Ain't an mba a big bore.

water water everywhere....

2005-06-30T16:53:00.000-07:00

Had a water fight today. Four in the morning. Actually thought the entire hostel was being burnt down. Came out to have prat greet me with a fresh bucket of yummy water and the everhelpful but inane "Welcome to MDI". Every time I hear it, it means I have been doused with water, kerosene, set on fire, pocked with long pointed sticks or generally been very unkind to.

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Another day.

Went and stood near the girl's hostel entreating them to come down, get the cold water and feel nice in life. They didn't. Locked themselves up in their rooms. Other than a few sporty and happy individuals (2M, shre and a few of the sinnies), nobody came out. Trust girls to be incredibly unsportsmanlike and stuffy about all this.

P.S.:

It felt nice being able to douse people in water. Running around screaming, dreaming about lemmings and new worlds and explorers. Sorry guys. Just can't be proffessional. Somewhere within me is still the brat.

Talking to sid. He can be quite a calming influence. And he is right.

Men want only one thing. Snifff......

To fall in love again

2005-06-29T13:28:00.000-07:00
It's been an interesting week. Ever since I arrived in Delhi a week back, to begin what has been called by various people at various times as my: new direction in life; break; vacation; party and oh! my chance to get a girlfriend it's been revealing, entertaining and certainlly funny.

I have laughed. By God! How I have laughed. If I introspect I suppose I would find out that tiredness, pressure and stress just bring out the farcical and deeply rebellious and subversive elements in me. I don't buckle under pressure. I just laugh it off.

I had two hours of sleep over the last three days. Two hundred people. It didn't matter. I found the experience liberating. Not having to sleep. Having to do something well into the night, to keep doing it. It's fun.

I also achieved the zen like state of being there and not being there too. If you can alone see what that means.

Interesting bit.

We had a talk by Ishita Swarup. CEO. A company called Orion. We had had just three hours of sleep over the last two days. We had been falling of our chairs, sleep not just knit the sleeve, she bound us to her. We slept in doorways, standing up, anywhere. We had just slept through a lecture by the Dean.

Ishita Swarup walks through the door.

She's petite. And bubbly. I can't guess her age. Two hundered sleepy people. One woman.

She takes stage. She talks.

We don't sleep. Forget sleep. We sat up. Sat straight in our chairs. Looked into her eyes, concentrated for an entire hour at her. Pin drop silence.

No shuffling, no scratchings. No body looks at their neighbour. We just look at her.

Listen to her bubbly enthusiasm for her slight eccentricity as she calls it.

What the combined efforts of fifty proffessors, each excellent in his own way, distinguished in academia, knowledgable and intelligent, and veritably bald and fat--if you are not tickled pink and refreshed from sleep by the sight of a fat pink bald man, exorting everybody to wake up you sir, don't have any sense of humour at all--couldn't accomplish, one young petite girl did.

With flair.

Which she had already done. But she did it again and again. As I think she will. Since she had done it again and again.

Provided she can do something which others can't. With flair. Panache. A sense of humour and a smile.

As she bewitched us, inspired us, serenaded us with siren songs, as we fell in love with her (two hundred sleepy people with three hours of sleep in four days), we hope she'd do it.

Again and again.

As she will.

Again and again

Barbers at the Bombay Gates

2005-06-10T05:35:00.000-07:00
I don't know why but most of the guys I saw in Mumbai seem to have had some kind of argument with their barbers. At least an argument when the barber was about to cut his crop. I say this because every one of them looked surly and had a haircut that could have only ensued if the barber had grown very angry and very distracted. I don't know how these guys could have distracted the barber. Far from being able to distract somebody they looked singularly repulsive, the kind you'd rather ignore, so distraction was out of the question.

So why were their barbers so angry, that they chopped up their hair into so many tiny pieces? In the case of one specimen, it had been cut and dyed it into such an exquisite circus, that from far away, I couldn't make out if the guy had an orange stuck on his head or whether he was just terribly sick. I secretly dubbed him 'William of Orange'.

The guy ( and in general all the guys) himself looked terribly mean and upset, only as someone who has paid an outrageous fortune to look like he either had a face transplant with an orange or a rather serious scalp infection could look. He also looked terribly built up, with muscles bulging around in all directions. Some of his muscles also seemed in danger of leaving his shirt and leading an independent existence, roaming the city and joining one of the numerous gangs that no doubt abound the city, looking to beat up barbers.

I am terribly confused. Someone suggested that all the barbers are equally to blame, that they are nothing more than over glorified lawn mower men. I agree, that's what they normally do to my hair. But to have all the barbers go about doing it? And to do it to someone as muscular as 'King William' seems to suggest a sense of reckless daring, audacity, suicidal insanity and a slow if painful death if buddy 'William' ever manages to brush back enough hair from his forehead to actually be able to see.

Meanwhile the barbers seem to be winning this war of the hair. Really. I said meet. Not argue.

I wonder why

2005-05-26T20:22:00.000-07:00
An ode to heroes everywhere. May their tribe grow. Inspired by Strings' Naajane Kyoun. This isn't the exact translation, but one of the english translations. How do I explain Sukh Ban gaye sapne?

Clouds on a blue hill,

Will they rain again?

Flowers in my hand,

Were they all in vain?

Did I ever laugh?

Or did I dream it in my sleep?

All I have dreamt.

Was never mine to keep.

The days they slip.

Many have I lost.

No nights to sleep.

When have they paused?

All passions spent,

All races run,

As the frames of my mind,

Twist and Burn,

The flames lick the sky,

Far and high,

I wonder why

I wonder why

Like faintly ghosts,

Memories return,

As the frames of my mind,

Twist and burn,

The flames lick the sky,

Far and high,

I wonder why

I wonder why

a pug in the system

2005-05-26T20:19:00.000-07:00
I finally managed to reformat my computer. Due to a shiver in the power system my computer melted on me and I have been busy pulling out the hard disk parts and trying to reformat the system. The computer didnÂ?t go down quietly. It was a vicious hit, it not only hit my boot sector, it took out random bits in files leaving me with 2 MB in bad sectors spread around my disk like dust.

Quit like dust in fact. I put in Knoppix and tried doing a system check, and all seemed fine. But WinXP refused to boot and since I had previously configured my primary partition to just 4GB I decided to thrash the system and go for a new partition scheme. But first I had the job of backing up my music and video collection, some of which had bad sectors right in the middle. Whoops!

Thankfully most of the time I use a utility to download, so I knew which websites each song came from (crucify me RIAAA) so I wrote aPerll script that copied those songs which were corrupt into a new database.

I then reformatted the system and promptly lost my downloaded copy of dhaani by strings, including the music videos I had downloaded from the strings website and a few more mp3 files that contained a recording of my nieceÂ?s voice. Aarrgghhhh!

BTWtw, I am going to the next stringÂ?s concert which is within 300 kms of wherever I am. These guys are terribly nice.

I have reformatted my hard disk so I now have four partitions, two whopping 40 GB partitions for media, one 40 GB partition for downloads and a 20GB primary partition and a 20GB partition to play around with. I have got a 10GB Linux install which I am now using to play around with Asterisk and PUGS.

BTWBtw, I think PUGS is great. Whenever you wanted to write a new language it was mandatory to bootstrap it using C, which meant lex or yacc, which meant a lot of trouble, long build cycles and a lot of teeth gnashing before you could even solve simple problems. ItÂ?s great to see something as malleable as Haskell being used to develop Perl 6. You can quickly get your hands dirty restructure the language and very quickly prototype, prototype, prototype. It gives me a warm fuzzy glow.

Hey lookit them monkeys

2005-05-26T20:17:00.000-07:00

In a sudden break with tradition the RIAA appeals to consumers to fight monopoly!

Whoa!!!

What's been happening here?

Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe

2005-05-26T20:12:00.000-07:00
Just been reading Haripi's blog on

the angst of being a tambram lad

Hari we are not alone. It's almost as if all of India is along with us.

Read on......

New Tech-Support Caste Arises In India
NEW DELHIÂ?Thanks to widespread outsourcing of telephone-service jobs, a sixth caste has blossomed in India: the Khidakayas, a mid-level jati made up of technical-support workers. "I am happy to be a Khidakaya," said technical-support agent Ranji Prasat, who speaks English with a flawless American accent and goes by the name "Ron" at work. "While we rank below members of the reigning order, those of us responsible for helping Americans track their online purchases and change their account PINs share many privileges not enjoyed by the merchant class below us." Prasat said he expects to marry another tech-support worker.

Courtesy The Onion

Wishlists

2005-05-07T01:51:00.000-07:00
Bookmarks. My kingdom for a set of bookmarks. Nice, java scriptable, server side stored, intelligent, with rss feeds and integrable with google or yahoo, so I know if the third result on page four has already been seen bookmarked by me, and if that's a favourite for me.

And also a good search engine, for blogs. Google sucks at tagging content. It would be great if I could do something like humour blogs and get blogs that others think are funny.

Belive me, it's the links which are important, not the content by itself.

Music on my cellphone. Streamed to it. So that I can sit away quietly wherever I am and listen to music. Or a mp3 player as a present. I am not too picky.

A rather good digital camera.

Six pack stomach. The ability to do a three point backflip. Run ten kilometeres without fainting at any point of time.

My very own server running off on a nice super cluster.

Radio shack in India. My very own research labs.

All the monty python movies and tv-shows.

A copy of bob dylan's "Things have changed", as a good quality mp3.

A copy of Harry Potter's latest adventure.

A chance to sleep, to sit and enjoy.

To drink tea, in the rain.

Space to put my books.

To not have any books, except on my server. To be able to read them everywhere.

To remove my glasses once and for all.

To sleep perchance to dream.

The myth of the moral

2005-05-07T01:41:00.000-07:00
The interviews in SP Jain this year had this rather unfortunate and disgusting emphasis on Morals. One question went like this:

Let's say you manage a company in Nagaland, and some BODO militants spirit away one of your workers and threaten to kill him unless you finance their activities. Would you do it? What if they asked you for a one time payment? What if they kept on regularly pestering you for payments?

Most of the participants said they would not make the payment, which according to me is the most cowardly and unethical choice there is. As an employer you also owe some responsibility to your employees and the state. So I would make a one time payment, or finance their activities (which would also be a one time payment at least initially), and then go to the police.

The next question came back: What if they keep pestering you for money ever afterwards?

Hell! That is the entire principle of taxation, progressive or otherwise.

The government comes around and asks you to pay them a large and substantial amount of your earnings, otherwise promises to throw you into jail (i.e. kidnap and hold you incommunicado). Well, well! When I am paying the government such a large amount of my money, I don't see why the terrorists shouldn't have their cut of my earnings as long as they are doing something useful with it like blowing up a few politicians. Probably most terrorists are ministers (most ministers certainly are), not the villains they are painted out to be (though most ministers are), doing what they are doing because the finance minister left them out when he was distributing the loot.

I really really would like somebody to make a cogent and clear argument as to why taxation is not just extortion when the only difference I can see is just that.

The finance minister though hasn't taken this lying down or horizontally. Money isn't reaching the militants, so he's decided that it's because there isn't any money to go around.

Result: Drop your pants, and I tax you.

The first ministry to actually put into practice the cliche': Taxed when you are born, and taxed when you die.

I now have to pay these guys a huge and wholesome tax when I take money out of the bank, when I buy an article and pay them a tax again when I earn the money in the first place. If that doesn't look like extortion, I don't know what does.

I hate this emphasis on ethics and morality that is plaguing India. The sooner we accept the notion that ethics are only a convenient fabrication of ours to act in strange and irrational ways, the easier it will be for us to do sensible things later on. After a certain point the emphasis on morality becomes less an emphasis and more of a xenophobic crusade. You do wonder whether these morality freaks actually mean what they say or if their mouths are on auto-pilot. Besides morals are a luxury, a weak and rather troublesome indulgence, like black coffee or hashish and only does more harm in the long run, by eliminating your capacity to think.

I hate morals and ethics.

P.S.:

After the interview, I asked a current student if interviews were usually this long and this pointless. Her reply?

"Just pray you get in. This is the best institute to teach you decision making."

The interview was a six hour long one! Ah! Decision Making....

Heaven help us all.

P.P.S:

I also hate taxes and P.Chidambaram

2005-05-07T01:34:00.000-07:00

yes! It is computer generated

In a moment of quiet solitude

2005-05-01T11:29:00.000-07:00
There are days when you walk alone, then there are days when you walk all alone. Believe me being alone is not some function of distance. It has nothing to do with people. People think it is something that you can easily remedy, walk over to a friend's place and you aren't alone. I wish it were that simple. Being alone has more to do with time or even with reality. You can be all alone in a high swinging party, but you come back to your room and then dance to your music ( Summertime by Ira Gershwin ) and you do feel conencted to the world in general. Being alone is being alone. You can be alone in time, alone in space or all alone in the high reaches of your mind when you sit and think and think and no one, just no one, can even begin to understand what you are thinking about, or even less know how you feel.

Then there are days, when the loneliness sits on you comfortably. Everyone has those moments when we wake up and would like those five minutes, all to ourselves, to compose our thoughts, to think about the day, a period for introspection. Then there are days, when you think and think and then you need to come down from those high mountains and you want to talk, not because you are bored but to anchor yourself to reality.

Thought does cause loneliness. Thought is supposed to be encouraged by solitude, quiet and contemplation but I think solitude and quiet are the direct by products of thought. To think, is to be alone. Believe me, it is. To think, is to question. To question is to be alone. It may not seem obvious, but thinkers are always alone. They are ringbearers.

I somedays don't believe in reality at all. Reality after all is nothing but a very very thinly stretched set of conventions that describe my existence. Somedays, I think and I edge closer to breaching that thin skin, that is invisible to most people, but against which I bounce everyday. Somedays I think I am close to flying through that thick skin to what lays beyond. But then I look back at that gravity well. It's warm there, ever bustling, and there is life, ever eternal, content, existent, but of thought I see not a sign.

I am outwards bound now. I think therefore I am like one of the stars. I may shine brightly, I may cause others to wonder about what I do, even provoke a few others to think, but I lie far away from all others. I have an infinity in which to think. I am alone.

I hide in my mind. It's my last defense, albeit not a good one, but somewhere where I can rest, where this reality that is defined, does not exist. I see only possibilities. Some of them are good. I see planets. No, not planets, but binary stars. Each orbitting the other, wary but at peace, frentic yet sedate, a dance defined by no one except those that decide to dance. I am the sun. I shall nurture, I shall provide. I have an infinity in which to think. But I am not alone.

A Geek tragedy

2005-04-19T23:43:00.000-07:00
I am a geek at heart.

It's my blessing. It's my curse.

Born with all the trappings, from an interest in astronomy, to the even more esoteric passion for learning strange and difficult languages like Snobol -- all those who think French is a language are non-geeks. Period-- I am a geek through and through. This being the case I have frequently been teased, hit, chased and once even come close to being lynched by my very own family.

Somedays the geek in me reveals itself as a rather heavenly aura filled with random bits of geekish knowledge like the configuration parameters for an FCO card, or the exact mind numbingly large command to type out to install boot loaders on a remote network machine; while some other days, it lies just dormant making people (especially young pretty girls), believe I in fact am human, if they shut their eyes rather tightly and exercise their imagination to the fullest ( N: do you recognize the symptoms?). Of course, I refrained from exercising my imagination to the fullest, lest I do something indecent, but then again at most times it was/is evident that I am a geek.

Somedays it doesn't take much to see the geek in me. Like today. I had to call up a rather distinguished "Ah"merican firm to get them to give me reset my password and they very properly asked me my login id, which was my name.

"R-Anant", I went.
"Kenurepeethat?" he went.
"R, hyphen, A, N,A,N,T", I went.
"I'msorrybutisthatan.... Arrr as in Romeo", he went.
Well, that was rather dumb of me. I should have used the phonetic alphabet.
"Yes" I replied, "and an A as in Apple".
"I'msorry".
"Try A as in ermmm...", I finally managed. Damn! I couldn't for the life of me remember a single English or British name
"OK".
"N as in...".
Flummoxed!! I couldn't really remember any name with N. Not even the obvious Nancy or Nicole or Next or Nasty or Never came to mind.
"I'msorryisitannoranem".
Damn! Desperate now, I decided to speak the one name I could remember which started with an N.

"Nynquist".

Long and contemplative silence, then he went.

"I'm sorryit's what?"

So how do I explain, to an American liberal arts student that Nynquist is the only English name I am reasonably familiar with?

The next choice was highly ermmm... Revealing.

I chose Nimrod, not for it's Biblical connection, because that was the name of a British Aircraft.

Damn!

Then came T.

I couldn't for the life of me remember any name starting with T. Not Ted, Timothy, Todd or Thomas.

Guess, what I chose?

Go on, guess?

I choose Tannenbaum. Yes! Our very own and famed Tanenbaum of the Network Theory fame.

The shame!

Like I said, I am a geek at heart.

It's my blessing. It's my curse.

P.S.:

The call center chap actually put down the phone on me. Which was very good, because I couldn't have taken more of that Luddite's company, as he couldn't obviously put up with mine. I did have the supreme satisfaction of writing him an email ticking him off for his rather rude behaviour, and of course I did get back my login. Thankfully, I didn't get lynched. So I guess it wasn't a tragedy after all.

a long long time later

2005-04-17T07:34:00.000-07:00
It's been a long long time since I blogged. I know. To while the time away and as a kind of ceremony I have been involved in a number of creative ventures, which, to quote the inimitable Douglas Adams, "are extremely brilliant, but will never see the light of day". I see what he means. Then again, maybe they will see the light of day.

Life has been intresting otherwise. I am teaching myself Lisp and boy!, I do have a lot to learn.

Btw, why are most Linux distributions so screwed up? I have spent an exhausting Sunday just trying to get rhythmbox to install in Linux and failing quite miserably, for a variety of reasons.

Sigh! Maybe Linux distributions will catch up; and a long long time later I may even install one in my system.

P.S:

Anybody has a cheap sound card that they are willing to dispose, just call me up. I need to go and dot chipmakers VIA on the nose.

the ties that bind

2005-04-14T08:17:00.000-07:00
this is something that happened to my friend amit. I hardly have a clue if he will put it up in his blog. But I am putting it up in mine. I hope somebody reads it. I really hope somebody does

A typical tiring day at office. Deadline is dancing on my head and I am slogging to come over it. I left office around 9 p.m. and am still writing the report in my thoughts. I am not very sure that was report I was thinking about, I stressed myself to quite an extent to figure out what I was thinking and was lost in, but nothing helped. Did not realize when did I reach Victoria, got into the right platform, got down at Stockwell and then was standing at the right platform waiting for the tube. I wonder how was I doing things right, which I seldom do when I am to my senses.

I almost lost my balance by a wind gust and then I woke up and realized that the tube has arrived. The door opened with the same regular voice and I saw the door blocked by some n number of luggage items. Being sure, I searched for an Indian around and saw a beautiful young Punjabi girl standing at the back of the pile of luggage items. I somehow made my way jumping over the luggage items and managed to get into the tube. She smiled. I passed a baffled smile back. I saw an old lady and another middle aged lady sitting inside and trying to avoid the spilling of the stuff from polybags they had. I felt pity and the old lady passed a meek smile. Only seat empty was the one next to middle aged lady and I captured that without any hitch.

The youngest and the oldest were talking in Punjabi/Hindi and I could hear some filmy dialogues going on. Some maa-beti scene was going on probably. I could barely make out what the issue is and the middle aged lady next to me puked !!! Right on her feet, inside the almost air-tight, underground tube and immediately all white skinned left their seats and went to the other side. Before my reaction time could made me respond, my side of tube was empty and I did not know what to do? The lady puked more and more and that seemed endless. The damsel seemed to have a faster reaction time than me and I do not know when but she put in lot of tissue papers on the floor and almost cleaned everything. I grabbed my wits and finally offered some help. I asked if they have any medicine for her and she asked the same in return. I said I have just the pain killer which might not work here. "Jo bhi goli ho de do" and just in a fraction of second the young lady offered the pain killer and medicine to the patient. I guess she belongs to the school of thought that any medicine can cure any illness. Whatever, the sick lady looked up with watered red eyes and denied to take the medicine and sat back in terrible pain.

The real story starts now. We came to talking terms and oldie told me that they are coming from the Heathrow airport and are going to Tooting Broadway. I asked how will you go with so much of luggage, is anyone coming to pick you people up. She looked up with dried eyes, raised her hand to join the palms in air and said "Upper wala he kuch karega ab to". Humm .. situation was pretty filmy and before I could turn to the younger one, Tooting came. The youngest and the oldest started pushing the luggage out of the tube to the platform and I said, "Mein aapki madad ker deta hoon" and did the same. Finally the bold and the beautiful took the command and we pulled everything thru the escalators to the ground floor. I proudly used my Oyster card and came out of platform barricades and she got struck as probably she did not know the same travel card cannot be used again at the same station. A cop came and helped her with that and somehow we all finally came outside with all the luggage. I asked "London pahli baar aaye ho" ..and she replied ..."nahin ..mein to pichle 17 saal se yahi rahti hoon ...tooting mein". I got stunned. To this the old lady came to me .. took my hands in her hands and with motherly voice she said "bahut bahut meherbaani beta ... upper wala aapko bahut barkat de" ... The beautiful also looked at me with praising eyes and the whole filmy scenario pushed filmy dialogue from my mouth "nahin nahin aunty, ek hindustani he ek hindustani ke kaam aata hai" ....and the oldie replied with a glitter in her eyes with no break "beta hum to pakistani hain".

A quiet month overall

2005-02-25T03:27:00.000-08:00
It's been a quiet month overall. Quiet but rather busy. I have attended some four interviews for buisness schools, which is something rather sorry. You would have to be brainless, spineless and blind not to be able to see something painful in a thousand engineers go head to head for one management seat.

Why?

We create the largest educated work force in the world, and throw them at solving problems, that just stifle the same work force and cause them all to attempt to do something else, which they believe will be creative: a naivete which is charming till you realize that the whole thing is just a rehash of the emperor's new clothes.

I don't really belive that these engineering students, who wish to go to b-schools actually believe they will achieve their creative fulfillment by getting into management. Who are they fooling? Creativity is something that they have to achieve in their job, and I do not think even for a second that the IIM's, hallowed though they are, are in anyway teaching their students to go do something creative or constructive in their life. More so, I don't think the students themselves will dare enough to go do something creative or constructive in their life. Most of them just prefer to go get into the corporate rat race and just accrete in middle or upper management.

We don't innovate. What was the last product that India actually made? I disagree with Narayanamurthy and all the other old mules, who preach that service knowledge is a valuable asset. We need to balance our industry, not just have a services sector, but also a thriving innovative industrial workforce.

However most IT courses are a vocational course in Java and most management courses are a vocational course for McKinsey or investment banking. Yes! Other than the ISB there is not a single B school that even offers you a course in entrepreunership. Oh! Most schools have an entrepreneurship cell and funnily most students enter this course because they believe that this stint in an e-cell exhibits their latent entrepreneurial talent which any corporate welcomes. I know that sounds cynical but I am agog with wonder, when most corporates atleast bigwigs don't want entrepereneurs but managers.

I am actually quite sick of it all, and if some highbrow from IIM B can explain to me very patiently why he is adding to India's value by doing an MBA, or explain why parents tend to favour that course more than somebody who is trying to startup a company that atleast makes testing easier.

Btw, here is an idea for automating testing.

Build a tool that analyzes an exe and generates a literal xml representation of the gui. If for example the application has just a window which displays hello world, then we generate a xml window which states it has a window like this, and a css style stylesheet that specifies where the fonts go, what the fonts are, their sizes and everything else. This being an xml/css application validation would be simple. Plus the srs of the gui app can be just cast as xml and you can match them. Or you can just get the spec. team to mock up the gui and then save it as an xml file, and then we could just run a compare of both of them and we would have an answer as to whether the gui passes or not almost instantaneously.

We could also separate the functionality. The xml just access a func-call in a library, so we could separately test the library to see if it functions perfectly. I know such a system is going to be difficult to build if not to sandbox, but we would then have a solid base testing tool instead of a hundred million programmers. We could then just automate the tests better than WinRunner or SilkRunner which perform this by learning the app but require human interaction for learning about the app.

Ok just an idea, but what about it....

(Hope to write about a lot of stuff over the weekend. Hope I do it... :))

wisdom and the mirror

2005-02-21T06:53:00.000-08:00
Japaneese philosophy values the mirror as the most potent of weapons, because it shows you something which only your foes can: Yourself.

I am holding up a mirror for all of us. It's not pretty. It's not even funny.

Here it is.

It doesn't fit in too well with my three column page, hence the external link.

Enjoy all the same.

Thanks to musings....:)

Luseletter- Reflections of a software industry(Jan 1)

2005-01-13T00:44:00.001-08:00

Recently a friend forwarded a mail to me which was ermmm... quite intresting. I am reproducing the letter below....

Hi Pooper,
Cheers!!. It is fantastic. Congrats to your Brat Pack team. Very good innovative idea. Hope the trend continues. HEDGE is going to be Livewire for EDGE. Congarts to Amit for motivatingt the team, dead to ferocious snakes.

Feed back will be given soon.....

With regards
BAnjar

This was the forward but it set me thinking. I continue to remain amazed---perplexed would be a better word---at the way some people choose to express themselves. Reminds me of an old article in the Sunday times which went, ni chandrababu naidu garu ochindhi. Me chesku neku worship karthaundi. That was in Telugu.

I know none of you understand Telugu but bear with me; there are a few things here I fail to understand.

For one: why is Amit dead to ferocious snakes? Or is it, “death to ferocious snakes”? In which case why are mild snakes exempt, and what about a mild snake that has been roused from quiet slumber by ponderous footsteps?

Or is Amit dead to only ferocious snakes but alive to rather mild ones? Quite a slur on his character I think. I am not too happy about inviting this guy over to dinner, when at the first sign of danger he is going to slink off in private and go hide behind the couch and get it rather wet.

Or is it Amit dead, to ferocious snakes. My imagination boggles when I think about amit, cadaverous though he looks, morphing from a quiet dead body to a ferocious snake firing toothy fangs to all corners. In which case, wouldn’t it make the title of a rather nice documentary? Ouch! I have been bit (Amit: From his death to his metamorphosing as a rather ferocious snake)

Actually reading the letter again, I find I have got it wrong. Here are the actual words:
Congarts to Amit for motivatingt the team, dead to ferocious snakes.

This is even more confusing. Is he congratulating Amit for motivating the team from a state of death, to a state where they are ferocious snakes, biting into each other and shedding skin and blood in copious and equal quantities? Granted, the skin could be used to make attractive if rather illegal wallets, but I have to wonder here how useful a snake would be in a large service industry. They can’t write code, they can’t talk to IDM (though I have a feeling that hissing things in that quarter may be a better way to get things done), and they can’t punch an elevator button or fill up ultimatix timesheets. The only things they would be useful at is intimidating people or biting them, so the only useful openings for them would be either in security or as customer liaisons methinks.

Or is it “Congrats to Amit for motivating the team: death to ferocious snakes”? Which catchy though it is makes about as little sense as, ermmmm…, say the software industry?

Or is it “Congrats to Amit for motivating the team dead, to ferocious snakes.”? This is fairly puzzling and brings forth a huge multitude of questions. Why was Amit motivating the team so much that they all died? Is it possible to motivate them so much that an entire team actually feels it’s better to give up the fight and go quietly to the large service company in the sky? Don’t you feel it’s rather nice that one pl, by the dint of speech alone---I have heard of motivational speeches but this is something else---is able to recreate exactly the same scenario that Hitler was famous for? Do you think Amit is responsible for the insanely high suicide rates in and around Delhi? Where is our ethics council when somebody is motivating a team dead? And the most intriguing of them all: Why is Banjar (drunk though he normally is), drinking a large and very merry toast to of all things, rather ferocious snakes.

These are things that I’d like to ponder over my evening drink, for they promise to lead onto a quite interesting argument for a case which examined closely will I am sure, reveal, if not truth, at least the reason why these people should be educated about the nuances of the English Language. And if that doesn’t work I’ll just raise a toast and say: "Dead to ferocious snakes."

P.S: I invite other people to now politely tear up my article for alleged illegal grammar, split infinitives and other pedantic mumbo jumbo.

P.P.S: To all those who find this article lacking in basic decency or truth and to all others who lack a sense of humour, I say bugger off.

P.P.S: Or more so "Dead to snakes".

P.P.P.S: Hey!!! This dead to snakes is quite a cute expression. I am adopting it as my motto.

P.P.P.P.S: Clarification. I was going to adopt the statement and not the snake as my motto.

And the very final word, ermm..., words:

"Dead to snakes"

the howl of the baskar villas

2004-12-30T08:53:00.000-08:00
Sometime Yesterday...

Amit me and dilip are sleeping when at round about 12.00 all the dogs in the neighbourhood start barking. I very politely observe that this probably means an earthquake or two and then go off to sleep.Half an hour later we are woken up by all the dogs yelling and running around and kicking up a tremendous fuss… Hah!So we go out to observe and all the dogs immediately quieten down and become model citizens.So we go back to sleep when hark! In just half an hour they all start barking again….

Amit politely is like “Big earthquake”.

Dilip gets up and is like… “Earthquake. I’ll show you bastards.”Well well well... He first goes into the bathroom and fills up the bucket full of water. I mean to the top. Amit and I are manfully waving about our arms and trying to remove the dogs from the porch when dilip comes with his huge bucket and whoosh!Completely misses all the barking dogs but pours the entire lot onto jimmy (technically the dog of the house) who is usually a very quiet animal.Stung to the quick, ( not to forget also wet), Jimmy decides to vent his frustration on the other dogs, since he can’t actually jump on Dilip.

So there goes jimmy fighting the good man’s fight amongst all the other mongrels, and the combatants have left the house and are sparring on the road, when Dilip runs down.Dilip clambers over the gate, and there on the road, picks up stones and with the vigor only a wronged basketball player can exhibit begins throwing stones at all the dogs.All this while yelling “Kutte, tera koon pi jaoonga”. “Kameene” and such….

All this at round about 1.30-2.00 in the morning….

End of all of it, he like picks up the bucket and is about to fling it too.When amit says “Hero! Bas ho gaya. Ab andar aa ja”.As dilip is walking back up the stairs I wonder what we would tell the house owner if he were to come in...

Ah! The joys of bachelorhood.

P.S. : Lux has pointed out to me that I ought to be happy that Dilip did not bite the dog. I totally agree with Lux.

sharjah shake

2004-12-19T02:06:00.000-08:00
Had my first sharjah shake after around one and a half years....

Mmm... Words can't describe the wave of nostalgia and the supreme feeling of contenment that swept over me. Chocolate sharjah is such a good good thing to have, I'd seriously reccomend it....

But it was a long time ago that I had one... I am going to sit back and just enjoy this for sometime if you don't mind now.

DPS- Dispiriting Public Spanish Inquisition

2004-12-17T22:28:00.000-08:00
What's this about the DPS school scandal that's kept everyone fascinated for so long....

I mean I go to an aunt's place the other day and she decries "these things", that modern young people are upto nowadays.

Excuse me! But should I construe from that statement,"that you never ever did it in Life" ( to quote the actual girl in the DPS piece).

Surprisingly I'd think that they never ever have. Whatever else may be blooming in India, Indian hypocrisy regarding something as mundane and silly as sex hasn't certainlly undergone any change at all. It's quite depressing really. I mean, we give our kids potty training. Why not some sex education too.

But what really amazes me is the hoopla surrounding it. So, two kids in school engaged in a little something, that in a better age or time would have got each of them about two hundred lines, and a little more sense. Instead of treating the situation with the little maturity that you'd think a principal would bring to the proceedings, there was a kneejerk reaction, and the principal threw both kids out of school. For What? Because they had sex? Or because the guy actually distributed the video? Or was it actually because the girl had the guts to actually make that little quip to the princi?

Pretty dumb if you ask me. What was necessary was a little bit of careful counselling and perhaps a tight one across the guy's face ( I mean a slap here). Instead they were both expelled because the school's reputation had ostensibly been damaged and it's morals corrupted. Oh! Yes. Sweet little boys and girls don't indulge in anything like this. They all reproduce due to osmosis. Oh, come on! It still surprises me as to why something as important for life as sex is still treated in such a parochial way. Seems to me to be some kind of Victorian hang over.

To top it all, the principal next banned cell phones in school. Why????

It makes no sense at all. If they were thrown out for indulging in a sexual orgy, was the cellphone instrumental in causing that orgy?

Did the boy and girl stick it into each other?
No!

Can you stop two people from having sex by making sure they don't have cellphones?

Is the school afraid that this would start off a trend of students selling pornographic videos of each other?
I am clueless to see how the school could prevent this by preventing students from getting cellphones to school. Believe me, there is no place more inconvenient for having sex than a school toilet, with it's lingering smell of phenoyl hanging about in the air. Kids today are much more intelligent and they could very well hike back to their own place, and indulge in a little "tiffin", tape it and sell it on the internet. What is the school going to do about it? Go into their houses and monitor them? By the way, from what I know the whole act did not take place in the school toilet (clue: there's a freaking big music set in the background. I have seen strange stuff, but a music system in a school toilet??? ). So why is the school kicking up such a delicious fuss about what did not technically take place on it's property? And more so to the point, how or why does it think banning cellphones is going to discourage people from having sex in their homes or places, clipping it and sending off copies to friends, family and relatives???? Expelling the students is a little extreme, but the school is well within it's right to exercise that privillege (very stupid of it, but excusable). But to ban cellphones is just freaking big time dumb. And all this from a school which is supposed to teach rational independent thought. Well, thank you so much.

Print media and others have gone overboard too. The Hindu, most "venerated and respected of print newspapers", can't have enough of sensationalizing stuff. There's a centre page spread on social evils of cellphones. And this case is their primary example. Excuse me! But the entire print media is based on the printing press, which was almost banned by the Church because for quite a long time it was used almost exclusively to print pornographic stuff.

And then the police and a few other bigwigs go about and arrest the CEO of Bazee and an IITian for no other reason other than that he allowed the damn thing to be sold on his site, and the dumb dick from IIT put it up. This despite the Legal Agreement when you bid at Bazee, that Bazee is not legally responsible for what is sold on it's site. The IITian in fact technically did peddle pornographic material so he could go to jail, but the other guy was an auction house for God's sake! But then rationality and the Indian police don't go well together. I am suspecting the unseen hand of the girl's father (a rather high flying army officer from what I have heard), to prevent the stuff from reaching a wider audience, but he's only making it worse for himself and his daughter.

Meanwhile all the newspapers have a circus to write about, and invite willing and top notch colmnists to write their opinion pieces about morality, forgetting that the two main parties are minors. They're kids damnit!!! They are entitled to planting their own wild seeds. Don't make it even more difficult for them.

All in all it's a little disquieting when you realize that there are no respectable Indian print houses but a lot of old graying yellow ones that would love to sensationalize even the smallest of man looses shirt pieces to sell more. They have the core values of CNN but rather more endearingly speak of Indian values.

What a bunch of incompetent hacks!!!!

P.S.:

B.t.w. who else is sick of India's tour of Bangladesh. I am all for good cricket, but when you have a bunch of minnows like Bangladesh and then Dravid hits another century, things look a little uneven. But the newspapers are delighted. They are all talking of a masterful century and all that, but fail to report that it's off a group of players who are amateurish at best, and are bowling the kind of tripe young trainees at the Academy bowls to the visiting team at nets and a pitch that is so flat it looks like an ironing board. Excuse me, but a century against Bangladesh on a flat track, in a two test series is not as glorious as you make it out to be.
I don't know what they are playing at, but it's certainlly not cricket.

P.P.S:

Was watching it on ESPN or something and Sourav Ganguly was batting. The ball was a fast one but was bowled not at middle stump or even at Ganguly's ribs, but nicely angled across Ganguly and a feet outside of offstump. Ganguly impetuously thrust out his foot, and crashed his bat into the ball and sent it through the offside field, between two fielders who couldn't believe that the bowler was bowling this ball the fourth time this over and then began a long chase after the ball. Not surprisingly it was a four. Ravi Shastri or Harsha Boghle or someone mumbled inanely, "The trick to that shot was that he didn't hit it too hard. Wonderful offside player Ganguly". Times like these, I wish we had Boycott back at the mike. I can just hear his drawl.

"Aw no Harsha, the trick to that shot was that the bowler deserves to have his head examined. He's done the same thing four times this over, and once more now. Surely my old mother could have done better than that".

P.P.S:
Chennai has been having a cold spell. Which means that the temperature is 24 degrees instead of the customary 32. So people are dressed in sweaters (the turtleneck variety) and a jacket. Chap came into office in a sweater and was talking to one of my friends (the voice over IP buisness).

Chap-It's a little cold here.
Friend-Really? How much?
Chap-24 degrees.
Friend-Centi or Faren.
Chap-Centi? How is it there.
Friend-18
Chap-Centi or Faren.
Friend-Faren you nitwit!!!

the myth of the cat - Part I

2004-11-15T01:12:00.000-08:00
Sitting at home, without the aid of a right hand and a large displaced internal chunk of your nose, you tend to get bored. So bored, in fact that slashdot, desi sites (;)) and rediff just bore you. Besides, parents have the odd habit of asking you every five minutes to rest your broken hand. This led me to visit the time (cat tutorial guys) site. It also made me write a small script that allows me to type left handed (thank you linux for letting me mess with keyboard opcodes). But the time site had some especially interesting data.

1. The highest salary got by anybody at IIM is 14 lakhs
2. The average otoh is 7 lakhs
3. This is excluding the bevy of guys who get dollar salaries....

I thought about this for sometime and well, “decided to run the numbers”, as the mbas amongst us may say.

Here’s what I did.

I first assumed that the IIMs have a batch strength of 300 per batch. Quite an arbit number, but the IIM site confirmed me on this.

Next I assumed that 10 students got a salary of 14 lakhs. So now I tried working out what the average salary of the others were (those of you who are taking the cat put down your hands, I know you know the answer). The average salary was 6.75 lakhs, approx. 7 lakhs.

So if 10 students got a salary of 14 lakhs 290 of us would get a salary averaging 7 lakhs.

Next for the 7 lakhs, what if 10 students get a salary of 13 lakhs? Then the average salary of the rest drops to 6.3 lakhs. I tried going on this way till when I had 10 students getting 6 lakhs, the average salary of the others were 5 lakhs.

That’s right. So some of those students had a chance of getting a salary lesser than 6 but greater than 5, while the rest would get a salary of lesser than 5.

And the number of students who would be getting a salary of lesser than 5 lakhs: 210.

A whopping 70 % can get only a salary of lesser than 5 lakhs.

If you were to take that figure as a probability measure, than the chances of you getting a lesser than 5 lakh job is 70%.

So how high is 70% Well, the chances of you getting killed in a bike accident when travelling from your house to your office is 70%. Go figure...

Slightly confused I tried increasing the number of people in each salary slot. Woo hoo....

If the number of people getting a salary of 14 lakhs, or 13 lakhs or 12 lakhs is 20 instead of 10, the probability increases to 90%.

Of course, this is provided you assume that the numbers reflect the probability.

By now I was entranced with these figures, so I made two excel sheets, with the slot size (10,20,30) and the average salaries.

You can find the sheets here and
here and

To look at the sheets, pick a row in the student’s column. Now ask yourself the question. If 10 students each got salaries of 14 and 13 lakhs, then what would be the average salary of the rest? Go to where 10 under the student’s column intersect the column mysteriously named 13. Yes. That’s the average salary of the rest.... 6.31 lakhs

The other sheet works in the same way, just having the students going from 1 to 10 instead of from 10 to 300.

If you look at the probability of a lesser than 5 lakh paying job in the 1-10 sheet, you find that the probability for a slot size of 1 is....

97%

Yes!!!!

97% (which according to me is a bloody cert. unless India are playing)

So, even if there are lesser number of people getting the 14 lakh salary then we find that there is a 97% chance of you getting a lesser than 5 lakh salary, while the probability of you getting one of the 7-14 lakh jobs is 3%(Of course, the calculations may be severely flawed for all I know. I am not staking my professional reputation on this).

Now if you were to consider the number of students getting high salaries as any indication of smartness, then your chances of getting a good salary from the iims are easier if you are in a smarter batch. However if you are quite dumb (as I no doubt am. My parents and well wishers pointed this out to me, remarking that if I were to cast aspersions on the well beings of the IIM I would be burnt at the stake. I don’t particularly bloody mind), then the chances of you getting a pretty pathetic salary are also greater.

Now I don’t know how valid these calculations are, so I’d be most interested if somebody would actually come in look my calculations over again, and do a general review of my work. Because to me it looks like if you are writing the cat to get a good salary you are doomed. The CAT seems to be a myth to me....

Footnotes:

1. Yes. This essay was typed out entirely with my left hand, on a linux box, running vim and some wicked cool mods.

2. The excel, sheet was all done with the mouse.

3. Life is like a grapefruit.

a dented nose

2004-10-26T07:00:00.000-07:00
had an accident...

broken nose et al...

posts in their own sweet time...

thanks gang for all the help....

thanks everyone...

Squawks from the Horizontal

2004-10-17T03:10:00.000-07:00
People sometimes ask me, why I spend so much of my time writing about
TCS, and the innate stupidity of large corporations and consultancies,
when I could be writing stuff, which could still be as funny, but of
much more general nature.

Well, for me to want to write about something, it needs to be funny,
quite idiotic and well... a large corporation like TCS is likely to have
a much larger concentration of idiots, than the normal world.

The corporation functions as the kidneys of society, which if you know
anything about kidneys becomes rather nasty, except that when talking
about corporations the nasty bits are even nastier.

A corporation takes in a large number of people (this is called
recruitment). A recruitment drive resembles the feeding of a large
killer whale, rather than the selective pecking of the average Briton,
and that's saying something about the people who can't get through the
interviews. After this, the corporation retains, the waste parts, the
rather poisonous elements, and the rest of the recyclable stuff which is
still useful or moderately intelligent to society, escapes (quits), does
the collective post graduation, which is either an MBA or an MS, and
rejoins the corporation again, this time with an added vehemence, and
becomes middle management, which integrates the verticals.

Not very intelligent, but on the whole we need to remember we are all
descendants from one single ape, who tired of foraging for food decided
to sit in a boardroom and delegate, outsource, and decided to branch out
into the service space.

But a lot of idiotic things happen in TCS which still continues to
surprise me, because well, they are just so darn idiotic!!

Consider the screen saver for instance.

TCS has a large and broad selection of screensavers, which would
gloriously refresh, rejuvenate, and make everyone happy about his/her
job, if all the screensaver were to do is stay pitch black.

Unfortunately it displays, some vague corporate MBA mumbo jumbo like
"integrating verticals", "do it to a llama", which makes life quite
miserable for most of us.

But what, really takes the coconut, cake, or the llama, is the fact,
that the screensaver, is written in Flash, and then installed by the
support people almost exclusively on machines which do not have flash.

My machine has flash, but I don't have these new screensavers.

Well, I felt I needed those new screensavers, since I like my bit of
self inflicted violence.

So I raised a request for the new screensavers.

I got back a message stating that my system did not have the necessary
requirements.

So I asked them, what they were.

And there came the reply.

"You have FLASH".

Excuse me! But you are supposed to install that damn thing on machines
which have FLASH. Not on machines which don't. But these arguments did
not hold water with ISM, who promptly came and removed FLASH on my
machine, and then installed the screensaver.

Result:

Every time I step away from my comp, the computer like a recalcitrant
child starts beeping in a monotonous, one beep every one second fashion.

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

It keeps going this way, till in a fit of fury somebody else who is near
your cubicle gets up and switches it off.

So I have a question...

WHY IS EVERYTHING IN THIS ORGANIZATION SO FREAKING DUMB???

Or is it that my standards are too high.

Or, is it just a diabolical plot by HR and ISM to let all the world know
that we are not working at our desks.

And so it goes, life which is quite miserable when you are staring at
green on black letters on your screen and gets even worse, when your
computer decides to let the whole world know how much it misses you by
hiccupping every second like an incontinent dog.

Another thing which is extremely idiotic, dumb and nonsensical has been
the talent show organized by HR, to unearth the talent amongst us.

This is quite laughable when you consider that HR policy in a place like
TCS is to hire people who are intelligent, but not too intelligent, and
don't have any special skills.

HR policies in fact, quite closely resemble the policies of poachers who
went after gorillas in the Congo during the 1800s, and later shipped
them off to zoos around the world, but mostly in Britain.

The trick was to catch a gorilla that wasn't too smart, or he would
simply go bonkers, when he is put into his little cage.

One also had to avoid the rather dumb gorillas that had absolutely no
talent, because they would not get the zoo any eager patrons.

Nor the aggressive ones, which were let's say tricky to handle, and bit
one rather savagely in the butt.

The trick was to collect a group of docile individuals, who were almost
exactly like each other, and did not display any aggression except in
private, and had no individuality whatsoever.

That's the policy of HR

And that would explain the hoards of people, who work in software
industries, and are completely indistinguishable from each other, and
even themselves. All of them have their cell phones which they whip out
as they talk to their girlfriends before climbing on stage to render
another song, or to dance, a jig, all of it a pale representation, of
their awesome talent, that they hide, so that they can live, another
day.

And those were the rebels. Most of the docile lot sang old Hindi and
Tamil numbers, in a voice quaking in parts with stage fright, and
nervousness.

The event is on Saturday, but I can guess who the first prize will go
to...

It will certainly not go to the guy, who sang "Welcome to the Machine".

But I am going to participate. And rebel. I am going to do a pole dance.
I even have a title for it.

I plan to call it "INTERGRATING MY VERTICAL".

The Village and the previous article

2004-10-01T07:42:00.000-07:00
I thought about writing a movie review of Shyamalam's The Village....

Would do that later.

But to summarize the movie.

It's a continuation....

Ponder that

Time travel, programming, long friday afternoons

2004-10-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

Old basic joke

10. PRINT BASIC SUCKS
20. GOTO 10

--comp.lang.bashing.basic

Long day here on Friday, and I am so enamoured with the concept of continuations, that I am going to risk trying to explain it, by putting it up on the blog.

Warning: The following stuff is highly technical, but not difficult to understand. It's not a humourous article, but a good explanation of an esoteric programming concept. So, make a choice.

Having got that out of the way, let me try and explain what a continuation is, but before that I will have to explain what a program is.

Programs and their souls

A program is a set of instructions that you give the computer to execute. That's it. It's as simple as that. Advances in modern computing allow gives us leeway in expressing these instructions. So we right now set out only a few broad general policies, rather than the exact, electron wrenching, gate breaking, conductor doping instructions. And the general trend is towards higher, and higher level languages.

But how does it happen?

To understand that we need to examine the stack.

The stack is like a todo list we maintain in our heads, on a piece of paper, or in your cellphone. Where you store it isn't as important as what it actually is. A set of things that you do one by one by one, from top to bottom ( o.k. I work all over the place on my list, but for this article the todo list is just top to bottom).

The instructions that need to be executed are stored in the stack, and are executed, by whatever needs to execute these instructions. Why is it a whatever, and not a processor. Well many high level languages, don't want a moron programmer, to actually get hold of something as valuable as an actual processor. The programmer usually ended up thrashing any valuable resource (e.g. Windows). So the language, or an intermediate program execute the instructions on the stack.

Now consider a stack of instructions for making a sandwich:

1. Get the bread out of the fridge.

2. Pull out knife

3. Slice the bread with a knife.

4. Apply butter on the sliced bread.

5. Eat the sandwich.

Now at step 2 if you are like me, you must be trembling. I can't cut a sandwich for nuts and usually end up slicing off a quite substantial slice of my finger. So let's say you wish your bread were to get sliced magically. You don't care what you did, you just wanted it sliced... Then what....

Enter continuations....

At this point you take what is known as a continuation and stick it into your pocket.

And go on and slice the bread and your finger.

At the end of the bloddy ordeal you pull out the continuation and invoke it.

And voila'. You find yourself exactly at step two, but with all the bread sliced....

And that's what a continuation is....

Most people get confused here. Is it time travel?, is a question that's famously asked.

But I'd like to draw your attention that time by itself is just an interval between two events.

Let's say you were in a room, and I closed the door, and blindfolded you, how do you keep track of time then?

You can't.

Atleast not the way we all know it. Maybe you could count the number of your heartbeats and calculate the elapsed time.

What if you lost that ability too...

What if in a bizzare accident you lost all senses, including the ability to think. What is time then?

The simplicity of a processor

The processor ( by processor I mean all programs that are being executed), are very simple minded as in their view of the world, all of it, is restricted to what they can see on the processor stack.

If I were to put you in a house, and lock the doors, draw the curtains and claim that it was night, all you'd do is to walk out of the house. But if you couldn't.

Then at the absence of all possible information you'd have to assume that this was true. (Of course after 12 hours if it were still night, you'd suspect something was afoot, but that's because you have other information available).

Processers are like that. In this case, which instruction a program is executing on a stack indicates where it is temporally.

Time to a processor is it's location on a stack.

And processors can move both up and down a stack.

This does not mean it's time travel. The more fundamental truth is that time itself is just a basis of space (Einstein said this in one way).

If I were to mark a certain event as a passage of time (let's say water dripping from a jug), then if I did not have any other time keeper, if the interval between two drips grow faster or slower I cannot be certain if they have grown faster or slower. (For more fascinating discussions of this concept try and read up on Hindu reincarnations :) )

The intent of a program

The instruction a processor is executing on a stack, (I'll henceforth call this it's location on the stack), indicates the further intent of the program. It is infact the snapshot of the program, or what it intends to do. A snapshot of the stack at any instant is an intent of what the program probably means to do till the end. Consider the sandwich making stack...

1. Get the bread out of the fridge.

2. Pull out knife

3. Slice the bread with a knife.

4. Apply butter on the sliced bread.

5. Eat the sandwich.

Now instructions 2-4 indicate the intent of making a sandwich.

Instruction 4 is about buttering the sandwich

While 1-5 is the intent of making a sandwich and eating it.

Keep this in mind....

Enough. So what is a continuation anyway...

Well simply put it's the address of that stack location. (Well that's simplifying things a grand deal. It's actually a lexical closure over the stack.). More or less. So when you take a continuation at any point. You are saying what your program will do till the last instruction on the stack is met.

So in the sandwich making example if I were to tak e a continuation at step 2. The continuation consists of the address 3.

The fun thing about this is that all loops are primarily continuations....

Consider this while loop

i=1
while i<5
print i
i=i+1

You can express this in a similiar form

1. i=1
2. take a continuation here and put it in a special place register 1.
3. print i
4. i=i+1
5. goto the line number in register no. 1

Observe here that the value of i is retained through succeeding iterations of the stack. If you were to delcare the value of i after you take a continuation for i, i would get redeclared over and over and over again.

The purists among you, may object to the above code.

In fact I am sure some of you may scream, "It's nothing but a goto".

Well in a way it is...

But in some ways it's not.

So let's look at a few more examples of continuations..

To continue...

Continuations are a concept. This means that like object orientedness, it's just a feature that may or may not be supported by the language, compiler, version, library, so on and so forth.

The difference between a goto and a continuation is that while in a goto (no pun intended), the main stack is itself changed, in a continuation the contents of the stack are copied, and stored in another location on the stack. Since so many stacks can get confusing, computer scientists use the term 'frame'. The frame indicates the remainder of the stack upto the end of that scope/block. Who! What do I mean by that????

Consider the following pseudocode:

{
i=1; //Outer scope
print i;

{
j=2 // Inner scope
j=j+1; // j=3
i=i+1 //i=2
print j;
}

print j; // undefined j
print i; // 2
}

In the above example, the variable i can be accessed in the inner scope, the commands within the inner set of braces, but the value j cannot be accessed in the outer scope. Scoping is a nice mechanism for making sure you don't run out of variable names (besides other things). So consider the stack

1. set i,1
2. print i
3. make new stack
4.start new scope
5. set j, 2
6. j=j+i
7. i=i+1
8 print j
9. remove j
10. close scope
11. print j
12. exit

Any two instructions, and the instructions between them can constitute a frame, but usually a frame for purposes of understanding is a contiguous block of instructions that can be executed, without doing any branching. So 5-9 constitutes a frame. If we were to write this with gotos, the instructions would look something like this.

1. set i,1
2. print i
3. goto line no. 6
4. print j
5. exit
6. set j,2
7. j=j+1
8. i=i+1
9. print j
10. remove j
11. goto step 4.

So the actual stack contents are not modified but traversed in a completely confusing way. If you were to draw lines indicating the flow of instructions processed, it would look like one of the connect-the-dots pictures after a little too much white rum. In fact, it would look like spaghetti and that is what is known as sphaggeti programming, programming with too many gotos.

But with continuations this is what happens.

Frame 1:
1. set i,1
2. print i
4. execute the continuation stored in place B.
5. take a continuation and store it in place A,.
5. end

Place A (Storing the frame)
1. print j
2. end

Frame 2:
1. Take a continuation here and store it in place B
2. set j,2
3. j=j+1
4. i=i+1
5. print j
6. execute the continuation stored in Place A.

Place B (Storing the frame)
1. set j,2
2. j=j+1
3.i=i+1
4. print j
5. execute the continuation stored in Place A.

In the case of continuations, the main stack is over written with these frames, and the executing program/processor keeps swapping in frames back and forth.

Some of you may say, "Hey! a continuation is nothing but a subroutine".

Well, you wouldn't be wrong. It is. Just an orderly way of representing subroutines and the flow of a program. Previously the entire program was just tossed onto the stack, in a haphazard manner, but here the stack is neatly divided into frames, and everything looks cool.

You may also observe that there are a lot of places that the frames/continuations seem to be getting stored, that are global to the entire scheme of things. This could be the stack.

Notice also that frame 2 can access i, while frame 1 cannot access j. I will explain the advantages of that with another example.

O.K. That's a lot more confusing than the normal goto stack, but here's the deal. While programming complex loops with gotos is nearly impossible, continuations make possible a huge load of nearly impossible things. Resumable functions, co-routines, very light OS independent threading, and design patterns that are scrumptious....

Last examples....

So what stuff can be solved with a continuation. Consider this resumable function. I want this function to return a new value every time it's called, but without using a static variable. How do I do it.

function a{
i=1;
return a_continuation_from_this_point_to_the_end_of_this_function;
return i++;
}

get_the_continuation=a();

...do some other stuff...

execute get_the_continuation;

The a_continuation_from_this_point_to_the_end_of_this_function returns the frame upto the end of the function. The frame also contains the variable i, and also the code to increment the value of i.

The first time the function is called, the continuation is returned.

Every time the continuation is executed, the frame is pasted onto the stack, which is literally equivalent to jumping back into the function.

And each time the continuation executes, the value of i is incremented and returned, over and over again.

This is better than the one with static variables because
1. space is not wasted holding onto a static variable.
2. once the get_the_continuation variable is dropped, the associated frame can also be dropped saving memory.
3. the implementation is simply an order of magnitude easier.

So that's a continuation ladies, gents and wild programmers... I have written it out in simple pseudocode instead of actual real world examples involving Ruby, but that's a good thing, since this is meant to be a gentle introduction to it. Not an encyclopedia.

Conclusion:

There's a lot more to continuations than just this. In fact, it's one of the hottest research areas, in language design, and also spirituality.Just google for continuations to learn more about this concept, that in it's very simplicity, essence, and advancement is truly indistinguishable from magic.

Why the heck is it a continuation (The philosophical aspects of it):

It all started with the question.

How does a program exit? ***

At it's very basic, when a program exits, it calls an operating system function to kill it, clean up the mess it's going to leave behind, and that function then calls an OS function which restores control back to the operating system.

The program hasn't ended, or returned to the shell. It's just called another function. In other words, it continues. The program in itself has ceased to exist, but the flow is still taking place.

The death of a program ( end doesn't sound as dramatic), is not an end in itself. At it's very core, the program hasn't ended, there is no break, between the existence of a program, and it's non-existence. The program passes from being to gorily undead, it's shifted form, but nothing stops (well, atleast for well behaved programs). The OS continues, the cycle of life, and death, as the OS itself goes from being sunnily alive (when the system is idle), to completely dead (when another process is alive). When you think about that long and hard, you will realize that it's the same dance of life and death,the tandav, that is best exemplified, in other schools of programming, among them Zen and Hinduism.**

Old programs never die, they just continue....

Footnotes:

*** Well, it actually started of with a question about lambda calculus
** The ones I am familiar with. Please mail me if you want to talk about this and other metaphysical concepts in other releigons.

What's my password? #@^^#$^% you ducker. (Passwords and Pestillential phoners)

2004-09-23T08:56:00.001-07:00
What is it about computers, that people keep running in to Tidel to become software engineers. The job? I don't think so. Software engineering is about as much hot air and bullshit that it just sucks. I should know. I am an old hand at it.

Besides it's bewildering.

Check out TCS's COHRPHORATE security policy. I mean, everytime you log into an application you have to change your password. Wow! Nice security man. But this would be great if I oh! Log into this application once in a while.

Since I have to log into this application six times a day, I have to change my passwords six times a day.
Plus, numerical progressions are not allowed. So I cannot have a sequence of passwords that go password1 password2.

Oh! No, that would be open to attacks, and therefore it needs to be randumb.

I NEED SIX DIFFERENT PASSWORDS AT ALL POINTS OF TIME.

End result. I can't remember my password at all, second time around. Which means that my only use of that specific application till now has been to login.

Change my password. (This is some totally random stuff that I type out. Besides not allowing progressions it does not also allow you to enter something remotely similiar to what you entered before.)

Log out again.

Scratch my head since the password I entered before was random text and there is no way I can remember it now even with the aid of metaamphamines.

And then go off straight to the special group that looks after that application and request them to reset my password.

And then login again....

So all day long I have been sitting here just logging into the application and not doing anything else with it. I mean, yeah! Software is cool, but it can't be so incredibly cool, that the only benifit it offers users is logging in, and logging out. Besides of course, the random clueless guessings indulged in between logging in and logging out.

Oh! Oh! And to top it all, guess what this application does.

Its a problem logger, so that people can come and then rectify problems later on. So why do you need to change your password everytime you log in.

Because an evil user may get your password and request installation of Doom III on his machine and play them all day long, thereby causing jealousy amongst those not fortunate enough to have had the brains to implement such an idea, and those dumb enough to actually go for it.

Ah! Life. . .

Sweet Life.....

And corporotitis, which is just the general disease of large parts, that continues to plauge not just corporates, defined as general dumbness....

PERSONAL RANT:

My cubicle neighbour has a phone on his desk. Oh! Joy. Sweet Joy! This means his friends call him up. For coffee, tea, general visitations.

Now if he's sitting at his desk, he answers the phone at the second ring. Which is normal. I mean even if he was abnormally lazy, he would still possibly pick it up by the second ring if he were at his desk.

So by the second ring it should be possible to find out if he is at his desk or he isn't.

But NO! "The motto is think and you die", so callers end up holding onto the phone for thirteen fourteen rings, and then hang up.

Here's a clue for the clueless, if you are calling a guy at his desk and he doesn't pick the phone by the second ring he is not at his desk....

Oh! the joys of programming perl in the midst of these jokers.

PERSONAL NOTE:

Instead of clamouring for change become the object of change yourself. Next time on the third ring I plan to pick up the phone and ask for pizza

Wednesday blues -> brights

2004-08-24T22:37:00.000-07:00
Wednesday morning. Yawn! Today is a beautiful example of how
thoughtful the gods can be when they decide to poke their god like
noses into the affairs of mortals like you. Unlike the extreme
thoughtlessness of the ICICI and the BCCI and the Australian Cricket
Comittee that decided to hold a cricket tournament in the Netherlands
in Autumn!!!!

I mean how dumb can it get!!!

It's even dumber than Lotus Notes.

I mean consider. What do the English do during their year. March to
July they play cricket. But come August, they put away stumps, bats,
wickets, pack off those stout and dour umpires to Scotland, and decide
to murder each other on the rugby field.

Digression:
I mean it could be because of the cold, but whenever I see a rugby
game, within minutes of play commencing all the players are lying on
top of each other. Or hugging each other rather brutally, or like the
local puppies in a gully literally falling over each other. Somedays
it gets pretty embarassing. When they stop resembling puppies and take
to clutching each others private parts with great abandon.

And I have rarely seen a rugby match played in the Sun. Chances are
in a rugby match the full field is mud. It starts out as good grass,
but due to the RAIN, it turns to mud.

Yes! In those angreez countries it rains. A lot.

If the BCCI were not aware of this little piece of information, they
could have just called up Flintoff and asked him. Or Tim Corbett, or
even Zaheer Khan, who spent his time playing county cricket.

But in a wonderful example of whimsy they held it in the Netherlands.

Result:

On an average each match has had about ten overs bowled before the
ball was lost irretrievably in the larger size lake that the grounds
had become.

Players are getting rather water logged what with all the rain.

And the matches get over before I even get home. Arrrghhhhh!!!!

Plus, Netherlands is below sea level. Chances of water draining out
from the pitch are pretty bleak. I mean where does it drain out to.
These guys actually pump rain water out into the sea, being below sea
level.

I mean! Come on! Does this make sense. (O.K. I meant the cricket matches....)

Man oh man oh man.... What a bunch of dweebs.

Oh! Plus links are down. SO no work till they come back on. Am gonna
use this time to update the blog and write a lot of stuff that I
always wanted to write about....

yes! yes! yes!

2004-08-11T07:13:00.000-07:00
somebody somewhere finally read my mind and posted this great critique of lotus notes on the web.... wow! beautiful. here's the link to it. I shall now quote out juicy parts of the article which shall stand monument in this web of dreams, against such a boorish software like lotus notes, and all the idiots who actually go and purchase it. They are only unrivalled in stupidity by those who go out and purchase exchange server