Particle physics in the animal kingdom - Part I

We found them in my dad's garage one evening, crying their lungs out, scared, away from their mother, trying to find a sense of security by huddling together. They were trying to find their way back to their mother. Max Planck was the more adventurous of the two, and he would be the one to occasionally creep out of the dark garage from under the tin door. However, fear knew the better of him, and at the lightest sound of the falling of a foot he'd hurry back in.
I was the first one to hear the cries, The kittens were still very young, and even in their loudest, the desperate cries could not have carried beyond a few metres. I only heard them because I happened to be playing cricket on the street, and the stumps were just next to the door of the garage.
Dad was out; he had taken the garage keys with him. In the evening Niels Bohr, in the darkness of the night, perhaps hoping that no one would be able to spot him now, or perhaps scared of being in the dark in the locked garage and wanting to go out where he could at least see some light, ventured out. I was at vigil outside the garage door. Having literally grown up with cats, it did not take too long to take Niels into confidence, and soon he was comfortably huddled in my arms, the task of getting hold of him made easier by his weakness.
Max, however, was a more difficult fish to catch. He preferred to stay within the garage. My chief concern now was that when dad came back, he might accidentally run over Max with his car.
Dad came home late that night, but luckily he did not crush poor little Maxie. The key to the garage now available, we could finally manage to get Max out of the garage.
Mom was a very loving person and she loved cats. It broke her heart every time a cat died or was killed by the curs that made their way through our house. The most favourite cat that we ever had was called Gultu. Once Gultu had such a big boil in his neck that he had stopped eating, and as a result, he had become weak, transformed from a bubbly cat to one that would spend hours lying at the same spot without even stirring.. When mom finally realized the cause of Gultu's fast, she applied hot water on the boil for two days till the boil burst and pus oozed out. Mom nursed him back to health, treating him no worse than she would treat us. One night we had gone out, and when we returned, we found Gultu lying dead in the middle of the courtyard. The curs had killed him. It broke my heart. I cried a lot that day. Gultu was my best friend then. I remember mom had once locked me up in a dark room for being mischievous. I was crying. Then Gultu came in through the ventilation and sat with me till mom opened the door. When Gultu died, mom, too, was heartbroken.
Mom did not want to take the emotional trauma any more, and although she gave our visitors a bowl of milk, she was staunchly against the idea of adopting them. We pleaded with her to take them in, but we only managed to get her to agree to let them sleep the night outside the house in a box with blankets. She deferred the decision of what was to become of them until the morrow.
Mom couldn't put up a hard face, but inside, she was made of soft and warm wax. She could not bear the thought of the kittens sleeping outside in the cold, and at eleven thirty at night, the kittens were in a box under the table which hosted the television.

The Best Laid Plans

Long ago, in the distant and forgotten past, the lion men had been forged in the depths of the underground crevices where lava was hot enough to fuel the never ending power hungry experiments of the Eagle men. Work in these underground laboratories knew no day and knew no night. One group of Wizards worked as two other groups of wizards rested. The work never stopped for they knew that there was not much time.
Cloudbearer was a chip of the old block, the venerated supreme wizard, and although the father was perpetually dissatisfied with the performance of his son, Cloudbearer, was indeed, a prodigy. It was on one of those usual days, after the not so uncommon reprimand by has father, having shut his ears long before his father had uttered his first word, Cloudbearer bent over his microscope.
Something he saw troubled him, something he knew that couldn't be, or rather something that couldn't come so easily. He rose from his stone bench, looked up, closed his eyes, stretched every muscle in his avian body that he could stretch. He felt that he did deserve a break, after two sleepless nights followed by his father's harangue.
Having done that, he returned to his work-bench, squinted his eyes again, and peeped through the same old microscope at the same old spiral structure.
He knew that the only person who he could really go to was his father. In the blink of an eye he was back in his father's room, and before his father could complete the first word of his continued reprimand, he, in his excitement shouted, "Look, father, what I have here!!"
A week later the rocket was launched, and in its heart a single titanium tablet protecting the very secret of the Gods, and a prayer, "Go to the world, be fruitful and multiply." It wouldn't be long before they could move off their dying planet. Very soon, another planet would be habitable. All they had to do now was to track the trajectory of the rocket, and then wait, anxiously for centuries, feeding on the diminishing resources of their own planet, battling the growing heat.

***

Millions of centuries passed. Cloudbearer was totally forgotten, not even a statue remained. Evolution took its course, the Eagle men were no more, but their successors managed to retain the knowledge that was once learnt. However, their ability to make further progress deteriorated, and much of their energy was so directed towards their daily chores so essential for survival in that inhospitable climate, that there was not much room left for any other activity.
Meanwhile, where once a pristine rocket had landed, bearing the very seeds of life, great changes occurred. The pristine DNA that was once deliberately planted was no ordinary DNA born by mistake, from a chance union of the elements; rather it was made by the Gods to be fruitful, to multiply and to mutate. The planet, once filled with vicious and caustic gases and liquids, was slowly but steadily changed to a beautiful blue-green planet.
However, there happened something in this beautiful planet which the Gods themselves had never planned or predicted. Somewhere, deep beneath the blue oceans, a DNA muted and the first animal cell was born. Quickly it multiplied until the sea was swarming with trillions of them. In some deep trench of the ocean, they grouped together. Evolution was now faster than ever. Species appeared and disappeared. Some of them broke the phase barrier and jumped out of the sea onto the dry land. There was mayhem everywhere, creatures both big and small; suddenly the once quiet and beautiful planet was full of activity, full of movement, full of the thumping sound of stamping feet, full of the crunching sound of powerful jaws and sharp teeth.
Centuries rolled by. The planet saw its ups and downs. But the greatest change was yet to occur; the very power borne by the very Gods was yet to be acquired, a power that the Gods themselves were slowly losing - the power to think. The inevitable could not be stopped, and as soon as that ultimate divine power was acquired, the face of the planet changed faster than ever. Unknown to the Gods, the once green and blue planet that they once planned to forge, through their primordial DNA, had turned into something similar to their own - dry and scorching.
For the second time the rocket blasted off, this time never for ever, never to return, carrying the entire planet's life with it and travelled towards what they had planned to be their new abode. But they arrived too late - too late to stay, too late to turn back.

In a blog I read regularly, the blog owner had posted that she had recently taken to writing with the pen again. She always writes well, but I was particularly fond of this post. I was about to put up a follow-up comment to the post saying that I had become so much dependent on the computer that I could no longer write with a pen, for the simple reason that my pen could hardly keep up with the pace I thought at. For some reason, I was unable to post this comment, and, later on, I forgot all about it.
A few days ago, I discovered my old Parker. The ink had dried within, and it took me a couple of hours of work to get it back to working condition. Eager to use my newly found antique piece, with the same excitement a child has when he discovers his great-grandfather's half-working pocket watch, I started to use my Parker.
The result was clearly visible when I wrote my first technical article with the Parker. It turned out to be the best technical piece I had written in a while. When, earlier, I was under the impression that my pen could not keep up with the speed of my thoughts, and my eight fingers at 80wpm did a better job, I was utterly mistaken. In fact it were my thoughts, which, in my hurry to publish them, emerged half baked. The use of the pen essentially slowed me down, giving me more time to refine my thoughts, fill in the holes and add beauty in the whole.
I may use the metaphor of the computer for everything that makes up hurry up and multitask in life, but it will not be incorrect to say that the computer has ensured that we will not have another Lev Tolstoy and another War and Peace; we will at best have our Chetan Bhagats and Five Point Someones.

Your toenails are growing, boy; soon you'd qualify to live in the wild among the tigers.
They cut through your socks, boy. Pity the way you are wasting my hard earned money, as if they grew on trees. It has just been a month. And you've already shredded your socks. I bought them for a hundred and fifty rupees, Byford, thinking that it will at least last six months. One day, when you have to earn your bread, you'll realize. I'd rather you had shredded your toenails rather than your socks.
Stop making that face, boy, it ain't funny I tell you. Soon your toe nails will cut throug your shoes. I tell you, its about to happen. And this time I ain't buying it for you. You'll have to wear the torn shoes if that happens, remember.
Some day I'm going to beat the blues out of you. Its three days since you had it last. Missing the rod it seems.
Ah! When will this brute learn.

In 1965, when Bob Dylan visited England, a reporter asked him what his message was. Bob Dylan replied, "Keep a good head and always carry a lightbulb."
Today, it might seem that man has been unable to keep his head good enough to understand his what is best for his own future. With global warming already reaching alarming levels, the green blanket wearing out fast, and the conflict between the interests of man and the (very few remaining) animals of the planet increasing, the future of the planet may seem dismal. Maybe not. Everyday, in small ways, we can help make this planet a better place, not only for us, but for all the creatures that inhabit it, and for our own future generations. It is small individual efforts, which, aggregated together can bring about a sea change in the health of the planet.
Last year, Greenpeace launched a campaign called "Ban the Bulb" in which Greenpeace projected that about 4% of the carbon emissions of India would reduce if all incandescent lightbulbs were replaced by CFL bulbs. The Greenpeace is still pursuing this cause with the Government of India, urging it to make a law banning the incandescent bulb.
Bob Dylan's message would be more appropriate today if it is changed a little bit: "Keep a good head and always use a CFL bulb!!"
May this new year be good for you, your family and the planet.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a very happy new year.

This is meant to be a sequel to my previous post (although, chronologically, this happened a lot earlier), so, please bear with me for more on religion.
I stay in a place called Shillong, which is a couple of kilometres above the sea level. The closest airport is in the planes, in Guwahati, and from Guwahati, one has to climb up through winding hilly roads for around three hours. It was in one of such arduous climbs, that I happened to meet a theology student; well, although he liked to call himself a student of theology, he was actually a student of evangelism.
All show, always trying to be extra sweet, extra polite, and you could easily make out that he was making an effort to do so, and that wasn't the natural him. He was from Tamil nadu, studying in Shillong (Imagine, travelling all that way to learn how to evangelize). What really pissed me off was that he had the habit of prepending all his sentences with the word 'brother', the problem wasn't that he was calling me brother, the problem was that it was such a condescending 'brother'.
I asked him why he came all the way to Shillong, some four thousand kilometers away, to study, to which he replied, that he had the opportunity of being trained by someone who came from the United States of America. The british left India, but our slavery to the white skin continues. No offence to the person who came down from the US to teach about evangelism, just a reflection on our Indian mentality.
It was Durga Puja, and I told him that I'm going home for the Pujas. He started his evangelization, me his guinea pig, by asking me why we immerse the idols after the pujas are over. I was not to be put down, I know what he was driving at, and he did arrive at it later. I just told him that it is symbolical about the cycle of life, that everything came from Earth and water and thats where everything goes back. Not able to catch me there, he asked me why we worship idols. Now, here, he was caught. I asked him why do Christians have the idol of Jesus over the cross, why Christians light candles in front of the idols of Mother Mary, why Christians wear the cross around their necks. Caught off guard, he told me, "Brother. We don't do it. We are Church of Christ. We don't know if anyone else does it, but we don't put idols of Jesus in our churches". I asked him, that traditional Roman Catholicism also has idols of Jesus in their Church, and he was bold enough to say that the Roman Catholics were not the true followers of Christ. I was made to assume here that only the "Church of Christ" christian is a true Christian, the rest are all pretenders, or worse still, devil worshippers.
By this time, I was really bored with the topic, and I was trying to get away from him all the time, but he clung on. He told, "Brother, I was staying in a Hindu family before. But then, the light was revealed to me!" Great, you found light, did you? Some evangelist paid your electricity bill for a month? "We also study about Hinduism, ChIslam, Buddhism and other faiths when we study. We have to pass all those courses, before we have our certification in Theology." Good. They are professional, aren't they. They make sure that you can go back to Tamil Nadu and convert more Hindus or Buddhists.
"You see brother, Jesus is God. He is the only God." I got him here. I asked him where he learnt that Jesus was a God? He told me that it is so. I asked him, have you even read the old testament? He told me that they mostly read the new testament. I clarified his doubts that Jesus is not God, but he is the son of God, he is an apostle. I also clarified his doubts that Islam, Judaism and Christianity have a common history, and the old testament is common to all three. The fundamental difference between these three religions, I told him, is their belief who the last true prophet is. He obviously, dumbfounded, had no answer. He only told me, "Brother. I will go back and ask my sir about it."
Yea, go back, and ask your american evangelist. But don't get back to me, thats all.

Recently, I happened to talk in depth about Catholics and Protestants with a few friends. I also discussed with them the issues of conversion and so on. I have lived my life in a Shillong, where the majority is of Christian faith. What is wonderful about Shillong that inspite of being a majority, they are very warm and very tolerant people. Moreover, nowhere, will you see them distrubuting pamphlets in your home asking you to read the bible.
There is, I must say a really cheap phenomenon undergoing in South India. Outside churches, you'll find , allow me to use the word, advertisements of Jesus printed in bold letters, as if Jesus Christ needed any advertisements. Also, in the south of the country, you find a lot of people hooked on to religious television where they say things like, "You are having difficulty passing in your examinations. Come to Christ. He will help you pass." Ridiculous!!! No. Blasphemous. Christians should actually crucify these people because they are presenting such a bad picture of the Christian faith. Cheap gimmicks.
I was under the impression that the Catholics were more of an orthodox lot, and they resisted change, resisted female advancement, resisted contraceptives and so on and so forth. However, I was shocked when my friends told me that these religious channels, those called miracle performing evangelists, and other cults are mostly products of Protestantism. Its not that the Catholics don't try to convert people to Christianity, but they do it in a more subtle way, in a way no one point the finger towards them, in a way in which I don't see anything wrong; their way is that of the missionary, that of service, service to mankind and service to God. Their work is comparable to those of the Ramakrishna Mission.
Coming to Islam, or Hinduism, I feel that people belonging to both these faiths are becoming more and more fanatical; they seem to feel more and more insecure, I don't know why. I would normally think that in the twenty-first century, a person's faith should matter the least, because, in this age of consumerism, the fast pace of every aspect of life, one shouldn't have much time for religion, even lesser to show antipathy to other religions. However, I was flawed in thinking in this manner. While the consumerism and the fast pace of life has taken away the time to be with God, and the God-fearingness of the common Hindu and Muslim, it has only increased his fanatism, his antipathy for others, his craving for extremist ways. In addition to that, he employs modern technology in his vendetta - the twin towers of the WTC were a victim of this phenomenon.
The modern fanatic is no longer god fearing. He no longer follows the basic principles his religion teaches him. However, he manages to extract the vicious vices from his religious text, twist them and turn them in order to justify his violence.
This discussion will be quite incomplete if a mention of Iran is not made in this context. I was reading the interviews of the Iranian premier, and he seemed to be a very logical person to me, at least on a lot of occasions, inspite of his being an overly religious person. He seemed to endorse free will and free speech. However, in the past, we have known that all Fatwas originate in Iran. I don't actually think that issuing a fatwa for speaking ill about a religion is an over-reaction, I'm sure any other country would do the same, certain factions from any other religion would do the same. A few days ago, when the Tamil Nadu chief ministers made some comments about Ram, a bus was burnt and two people were killed. At least Iran is clear about who made a slandering statement and who should pay; Hindus are not even certain about that, someone makes the statement, someone else pays.
Satanic Verses work in two ways. In one way, such books are essential, because without such books, important issues will never come to the foreground, obsolete and oppressive customs will never be done away with, and face it, no religion is perfect, and without such books, the imperfectness out of religions will never be purged out. On the other hand, these books themselves add to the insecurity among religious community, which in turn add to the fanatism in those communities.
Think about it again, Islamic fanatism was born out of British and American policies in the Middle East. The Arabs, although warring amongst each others, never hated foreigners including those of a different faith; in fact they were known for their hospitality. However, today, we know that the Middle East is behind most Islamic terrorism.

Abdul Kalam's dream - India to be a super power in 2020.

Abdul Kalam's dreams come true in South Africa. Dhoni leads the way.

A Pakistani player apologizes not only to all Pakistanis but to all Muslims around the world. For losing that is. Wait a minute. There are Muslims in India. Wait a minute more. There were Muslims in the Indian cricket team and they played an instrumental role in India's victory. Why was he apologizing then?

King Khan bleats his lungs out at the stadium. Halal Cut King Khan, the golden bakra voice of the hottest hunk, the Bruce Lee Bodied actor. Where's Karan Johar, or Himesh. Or, who's the new guy? Wait a minute, he is a Muslim too. Come on, you don't have to apologize to King Khan. The King was there to cheer India.

Another Pakistani player congratuled "All the Indian nations". Congrats West Indians. Congrats American Indians. Congrats Aboriginal Indians. Wait a minute, Americans and Aboriginal Indians do not play cricket. I'm confused.

Video con ad. Uniforms of 6 or so countries hanging from a clothes line. Dhoni ne sabka dhulai kar dala. Dhoni with a bit. A videocon washing machine beside him. Wait a minute, if he used his bat to wash the clothes, then where did the washing machine come to picture. I get it, before putting the clothes to the washing machine you need to hit it with a bat, otherwise they don't go clean.

Mithai wallas were the true supporters of India. Through thick and thin. Through rain and puddles in the municipal roads. They made sure that they had sweets stacked. Sweets sold like hotcakes.

Fireworks all over. People dried the damp, rain sogged powder in the fireworks in the Videocon drier. The pollution control board took no readings of the air pollution the next day.

Prime Minister and President congratulated the Indian team. Of course, they have nothing better to do. At least this is one job Pratibha Patil is capable of doing.



Now India doesn't have to play for 3 years.

Midnight again. My old, faithful 'Vim' again. (Guess its time I should move on and get myself a new, fancier dog, Vim 7.0).
I wanted to write this since I don't know when, but I never managed to find the right words. Even now, I scarcely caress the notion that I will be able to express all that I feel effectively, but, you know, I have to do it sometime, and if I don't start, I'll never do it. Maybe I'll write again, but then, its common knowledge that it turns out best when you do it the first time.
"Where is the horse that doth untread again
His tedious measures with the unbated fire
That he did pace them first?"
These, obviously, aren't my words, and Willie Shakespeare quilled them a few hundred years ago.
Unfortunately, what I'm going to write about now, wasn't something that Willie could ever write about, because such a situation never arose during his time.
Ditch England and Willie, and come over to our own backyard - Andhra Pradesh. Well, I, and possibly you may ditch England, but a true Telugu will ditch Andhra, and, by hook or by crook, get a green card. Somehow, a man isn't a man in Andhra unless he has visited the states.
Most of the times it has to do with dowry. A man's value doubles after he returns from the states.
Funny. I've known a lot of Telugu people, and, most of them are highly intelligent people. Yet, unfortunately, very few of them could break out of the shackles of caste and dowry, and yet fewer of the fantasies of migrating to the US.
If you've stayed in Andhra, you would know that films like Hyderabad Blues aren't an exaggeration. In fact, there is a temple which is popularly known as the "visa temple".
Well, I once had a discussion with a person who had moved to the US. She was really urging me to make the move as well, and she gave me arguments like what is good in India, you can do better work in the US, you can earn more money in the US, everything is so much better in the US and so on and so forth. Unfortunately, she never cared to dig below the surface and find out the reason why US is thriving.
Well, what is America without immigrants. The native American (by native, I wouldn't go as far back as red Indians, but by native, I would refer to the whites and blacks who settled more than a hundred years ago) is mostly uneducated, useless scum of the Earth, who, invariably, possesses a gun and is not afraid to use it. He believes that the US has attained an elevated state in this world, and now, it is the duty of the US to elevate the rest of the world. What has he done to elevate either himself or the rest of the world, he won't be able to tell you. In fact, 10% of the Americans are so backward that they think that the Sun revolves around the Earth (When was Copernicus born? They are even more primitive than that).
And yet, America is, today, after the demise of the erstwhile Soviet bloc, the only superpower in the world. I guess I've made my point, but, the question still remains, will the Telugu be able to read between the lines, and, more importantly, change himself and the state in which farmers commit suicide on a yearly basis?

I wish I was Jerome Klapka Jerome, because, in relating a funny incident no one can even come close to him. I'm especially badly suited to write what I'm going to write. But then, Jerome is out of my or your reach, and so you, the reader, will have to settle with what you get, or else you can choose to discontinue reading this.
An hour ago, I wouldn't have given a small little mouse much respect, but something happened.
Earlier this evening, at home, I had seen a tail rush from the door to one of the crevices of my bedroom, to hide behind my small little book-shelf. The speed at which the tail took flight hindered my seeing what man, beast, imp or god it belonged to, but, since my house happens to be a tropical paradise for lizards, I assumed it was something that always followed an unusually large lizard. I didn't give much attention to it. I reckoned that lizards are good for my house, as they keep the number of insects down.
It was midnight, and I was, as they say, burning the midnight oil, trying to get a lot of work done, when the shy Mr. Mortimer first showed himself to me. Only for a split-seconed. I immediately realized the urgent necessity of banishing the shy unwelcome guest from my house. My initial reaction was to lunge at it, hit it with my shoe and kill it. I tried that, but Mr. Mortimer was smarter than I was and took refuge in the little nook behind the steel wardrobe that I have. Not able to reach him, I decided to force him out his sanctuary. I fetched my can of cockroach-killer (Hit) and sprayed him on his face. He ran. I thought I had him. A pair of slippers flew, one missing him half a centimeter, the other falling where he had been one-fourth of a second earlier.
Mortimer then ran to the kitchen, took refuge in one of the cupboards. Now I really had him. One by one, I took out the contents of the cupboard, carefully, so as to prevent him from going out of the cupboard, cornering him each time I took out something. When the cupboard was empty, I didn't give Mr. Mortimer a chance, and lunged at him with the slippers. Again, Mr. Mortimer, an expert at the art of dodging took flight and returned to his favourite bedroom, which, until a few hours ago, was still my bedroom, and mine alone.
I ran to the bedroom. By this time I had a strategy in mind. I looked at the bed. It was littered with clothes, and the blanket looked like a mountain range photographed by a satellite. I knew that if Mr. Mouse found his way into this, it would be difficult to ever find him, if I ever did. The four legs on which the bed stood were smooth, and there was no way Mr. Mouse could have climbed that. (He did try this approach once or twice, but my ploy worked). His only way upto the bed would be to climb up the hanging sides of the bed-cover. I denied him this approach. To block his exit from the room, I locked the bathroom door, and the door that led out to the hall.
I moved the steel cupboard and the bookshelf so that there was plenty of space behind them and towards their rear. Mr. Mortimer, you know, had this uncanny nack of finding crevices and lodging himself in there, safe from the probes I launched against him, and I, his opponent, wanted him to have as few of them as possible. The next move was to move the stuff the other stuff that were lying on the ground to the top of the book-shelf; these incuded a few bags, a mat to sit on, and newspapers.
This was the beginning of my exercise for the next half an hour. What followed was a pretty much predictable and cyclic repitition of three things. Mr. Mortimer would hide behind under the steel cupboard. I'd spray Hit to force him out of there. He would then hide under the book-shelf. I'd move the bookshelf here and there, trying to get him out. He would then run to the other end of the room, reach the wall, realize there is nowhere to hide there except the bed. He would then try to jump up and reach the bed, failing which he would try the bathroom door, which was, again, locked. He would then make it back to where he started from - beneath the cupboard. Everytime he was out of cover, I'd lunge at him with doormat in my hand. By now I had lost the desire to kill him on three grounds - fistly I'm an animal lover; secondly, if I killed him, I'd mess my home; and lastly, he was a sweet little mouse, and I had already become a fan of this sweet little intelligent Jerry. I only wanted to catch him now and throw him out of my house, away from the prowl of dogs as well. My strategy was pretty simple, when he was under cover, try to grab his tail by some object (it would usually be my hand covered by a doormat, or a plastic straw), and when he was in the open, try to net him with the doormat. The first didn't work, though, because he always managed to get his tail out of the grip of the straw, and the second almost worked twice, when I had him under the mat and surrounded, but as I tried to catch him firmly, without actually hurting him, he managed to slip out. I didn't want to catch him with my bare hands for I didn't underestimate the gnawing power of a champion tunnel digger.
This continued for half an hour. Mr. Mortimer running the standard 400m Olympic track more than 45 times. I was already sweating. Come on. "Come on, you've got to get tired sometime," I thought. "If Arican bushmen can catch a deer by just running after it and making it run till it tires out and gives up the run, I can tire you out as well." Apparently, I couldn't. It was only my good luck that I managed to banish him out of my house. As I was getting him out from his hideout under the bookshelf once, by moving the bookshelf, all the stuff I had stacked over the bookshelf fell, including the bags. Mr. Mortimer also got scared by the sound of the fall, and jumped into the nearest crevice he could creep into, and that, fortunately, happened to be one of the pockets of my bag.
I lost no time in picking the bag up, and blocking Mortimer's exit from the bag. All the other compartments of the bag were swiftly chained. All contents of the compartments Mr. Mortimer had lodged himself into were quickly but carefully removed. As I was emptying the contents of the compartment, I could see Mr. Mortimer curiously looking up at my face, and wondering what lay ahead of him. The bag was taken outside the house, and with a few good shakes, Mr. Mortimer was out for ever.
I have been reading Frederick Forsyth for a while now, and Mr. Forsyth, if you know him, regards the Mossad and the MI5 very highly. Well Mr. Forsyth, you haven't met my little shy Mr. Mortimer yet.

Although I like tea better, I don't exactly hate coffee but too much of Cafe Coffee Day has done its trick - I don't like being Jailed in their different but rather ordinary brews and American style service.
I happened to stumble into this place in Hyderabad called Finjaan which served wonderful tea - mind it, the shop belongs to a connoisseur, and he simply won't allow you drink your tea with milk - in imported German glass-ware. The moment we went in, we were greeted by a warm smile, two rows of air-tight bottles containing tea leaves at the counter, and two glasses of cool water at the round-table. I could open each air-tight bottle and smell the tea before choosing.
I had one of my friends with me, so I chose a nice smelling Darjeeling tea for him and a white-tea for me. The next course was a white tea called White Peony tea for me, followed by Ginseng tea and Chinese Jade Rings tea.
It felt good to have tea for the smell, rather than the kick, on a hot summer afternoon when the outside temperatures were around 42 degrees Celsius. It also felt good to be in the shop of a connoisseur who made sure that he gave us wonderful treatment - right from the glass of water, to brewing the tea in a glass flask, to serving it in German glassware. He also made sure we knew of all the medicinal properties of the tea we chose - I'm ashamed that I don't remember any of that, but it felt good. I wonder what it takes to be a connoisseur and what feels to be one.

It is just amazing the way Laxman can capture a certain facet of India so completely in the little corner of the front page of TOI. What is even more amazing is that he not only captures the problem but demands a change. I always marvel at his ability to chrun out such masterpieces with unfailing regularity. What I have done maybe once or twice in my life, and have patted myself on the back for, he does everyday.

One of the most remarkable aspects of human mind is its ability to work even in the most hostile of circumstances. Even when the environment is utterly gloomy, the human mind is capable of producing first class work. Take the case of Kazi Nazrul Islam: he was writing his best songs of the happier mood around the time of the death of his son, because the Gramophone Company of India wanted them.
Or take for instance Richard Feynman. Arlene, his wife, was dying in the hospital, and he was in Project Manhattan working hard five days a week producing first class work, and on the weekends hitch-hiking a ride to the hospital where Arlene was.
Another instance would be that of Louis De Broglie. Dismayed with the way the war was progressing, holed in his room with a pen in hand and loose sheets on his desk, he came up with a paper that made the entire world think again about matter and waves, and how they had treated the two till then.
We can never forget the contribution of Nicholas Copernicus made at a time when the Church governed Science.
Gauss, the King of Mathematics, was born to poor uneducated parents.
I can go on and on listing examples of genius born in despair, but I guess I have already made my point.

Ashok and I started gym-ming together, knowing that left to ourselves, we would never go to gym; we, therefore, banked on our ability to pull the other person to gym with us.
Now, after four months, Ashok pays about Rs. 300 per day for the gym, and I pay about Rs. 20 per day for the same gym.
Surprised! Here is how it is done. In the last three months Ashok has visited the gym approximately six or seven times. Given that we pay Rs. 600 on the completion of every calender month, that makes Ashok spend Rs. 300 per session.

I hate to put pictures up in my blog simply for the reason that they take up too much time to load. My idea of a webpage is that it need not be flashy but it should provide me with the required information without my having to wait for too long. Anyway, this is not what I'd like to write about in this post.
This post is about Keshav's cartoon about the indian economy which appeared in the Hindu today. So, you see, I couldn't have done anything else but to paste this cartoon in my blogpage.
As IT grows, so does the divide between the rich and the poor. Every now and then we hear the slogans of "India Inc." and "India Shining". Is the availability of the fruit kiwi in food world the index of India's shine? Or is the stock exchange a mirror of the true India? IT, or all these multinationals provide jobs to a miniscule fraction of people in India. I agree that it brings in a lot of capital to India, but this capital remains in the hands of the select few.
Its a pity that communism did not work.
Ironically enough, I was seeing this cartoon on my laptop's TFT monitor.

The newspaper read "Good Morning Bengalooru" (Gosh, I still can't spell it, and perhaps, I don't want to spell it that way). Karnataka became more Suvarna today. Kannada language was enriched today. Today is a proud day for every Kannadiga.
I fail to understand what changing the name of a city has to do with Karnataka becoming Suvarna. I'd rather say that it is a sad day for Karnataka. I wonder how much money must have been spent to change the name of Bangalore (which sounds so good) to Bengaluru. Where did this money come from - the tax payer's pocket. There were so many ways to spend this money in a better way, but alas, all they decided to do was to change the name. Vote bank politics. First, make the Kannadigas feel that their culture and language is under threat, and then, do something to make them feel more secure. That will fetch you votes. At the same time destroy the country.
Come to think of it another way, does it really fetch votes? I mean, the number of votes is constant, and every party is lobbying for the same thing, every party plays the same partisan politics - give more quotas to SCs and STs, change the name of Madras to Chennai, Calcutta (I still love the name Calcutta and I refuse to use the name Kolkata - yes, I am a Bengali) to Kolkata and Bangalore to Bengaluru. So if one fine day, all parties suddenly decide to stop doing partisan politics -- now note here that I'm not asking these parties to work dedicatedly and sincerely for the betterment of the country, but to do something which won't harm their vote bank and satisfy me and many others like me as well -- none of the parties will lose votes; rather they would get a chance to gain more votes because if they stop doing partisan politics, India, some day will become a super-power and poverty will be reduced. More money will flow in. More money means more guns. More guns in the hands of thugs will enable the same parties to do more rigging during elections.
I don't understand why all these political leaders don't have the common sense to understand that their election budgets are, in a way, restricted by the Indian economy. If the economy grows, their election budget will as well.
Make me the prime minister. I will, at least, rule the country with common sense, if not with sincerity and patriotism.

Its Sunday today, and after a long time, I am not at my aunt's place on a Sunday. Sunday is mostly meant to be a holiday - I reckon this is Europe, or more specifically Christianity's gift to the world. Perhaps, it was originally a mandatory holiday to allow people to go to church and pay due respects to Rome's authority.
Over the centuries things haven't changed much. I'm not talking of people still going to church on Sundays. That context is meaningless in today's world - only a ritual everyone does for old times' sake.
The real essence of Sunday today lies in consumerism - the very thing that drives the economies of the world. Six days a week you strive hard in your factories to make the things which you are 'told' you need, and on the seventh day, the same factories give you a holiday for you to go and buy what you produce.

My colleagues say that I really think out of the box. I disagree with them. My ideas are as down to earth and as normal as they can be. I don't know what made them brand me as an out-of-the-box-thinker, but the other day my ideas almost had all of them fainting on the floor. I only said that they should design the next Power machine with a robotic arm which spanks the user on the head and says "you idiot" when he types an incorrect command, grabs his head and makes him read the automatically opened manual page. Read the f***ing manual. Now, really, I don't think this idea is as much out of the box as the idea of eating rice with a pair of chopsticks.

Finally we are moving to a new house tomorrow. This house that we are living in now is no better than a dungeon - perhaps a prisoner rotting in the dungeons of a medeaval knight, as described by Mark Twain, will find me a little better than him, but again, that would be debatable. Bangalore is a city blown out of propertion, a city trying to become what it is not, trying to become what it can perhaps never become, trying to become what it should not become. It shows everywhere - the way people talk, the way houses are built, the way the roads are designed, the way people drive their cars, the way offices are designed, so on and so forth, the list will be endless. No one bothers about the laws, nor does anyone have any of the civic sense South Indian people were revered for earlier. People drive over dividors, ride their bikes into footpaths. While building houses people don't follow the regulations, but save a lot of construction cost by having a common wall for two houses.
Enough of cribbing. I am finally moving to a house in which one knows whether its the day or night when the clock shows 12 AM.

I haven't updated my blog in a while, and I guess it is ok not to do so. Writing is something that should not be done as a profession; when one is asked to produce words on demand, at best a soulless beauty is produced. My uncle once told me, to write something, one should be like a glass filled to the brim, the convex surface of the water above the edge, and then a single drop more is enough to serve as a trigger to spill all the water over.
One may argue that it may not be so - columnists produce columns at regular intervals, and even Ruskin Bond published beautiful stories in the Telegraph every week. We forget one thing, how often different people feel varies widely, and it was not necessary for Ruskin Bond to follow a routine and write one story every week. He had the liberty to write his stories and keep them for later use.
The only people, who, I grant, can do something at regular intervals and still produce something soulful are cartoonists.

Now one can write blogs by using mail. Isn't it wonderful? This is my first attempt at using this feature.

Ustad Bismilla Khan Ji died a passed away days ago. Ustadji, single-handedly, took up a folk instrument having its origins in Persia in his hand, and turned it into a classical instrument - such was his genius, such was his devotion to music. The demise of Ustadji has left Shehnai crippled.

Listening to a record of Ustadji, I remembered listening to an interview of Ustad Vilayat Khan a few years ago where he said, "Thumri gaane ke liye allah miya ek alag dil dewe." Ustad Bismillah Khan Ji was the only person had that "dil" when it came to the world of Shehnai. The heart of Shehnai has stopped beating.

We were talking about attitude recently, and a senior of mine, who has just completed his masters from an IIT, expressed his disappointment at the attitude of students in IIT; the students who are the brightest minds in the country, the students who are to be the future of the nation. He would get really frustrated seeing them leave the lights and fans switched on all the time. In his hostel, there was a toilet flush which would keep flowing, if, after use, the knob was not manually turned the other way round, and amazingly, there were very few students who would take the 'pain' of doing this simple thing. My senior put up a notice in the toilet drawing attention to the problem and listed the simple solution. Nothing changed.

In contrast, another senior of mine narrated another tale about the attitude of a four year old child. He was travelling by a train in Germany by which a four year old girl and her father were also travelling. The girl was licking an ice cream cone in her hand when the ice cream fell on the floor. Silently, the girl took out a polythene bag from her father's bundle, picked up the stuff from the floor and put it in the bag. She then took her handkerchief, wiped the floor with it, put the handkerchief in the polythene and replaced the polythene back in her father's bundle. And all this while, her father took no notice of what the little girl was doing and kept looking out of the window.

Isn't it rather strange that an attention seeker like Janis Joplin would sing a song like "Me and my Bobby McGee"? It is even more strange that she sang these few lines in the same song :

Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose
Nothin', that's all that Bobby left me, yeah
But, feelin' good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues
Hey, feelin' good was good enough for me, Mm-hmm
Good enough for me and my Bobby Mcgee

And in another song, she sings in a very atrocious voice, which, obviously is to draw to herself the attention she always seeked in her life :
This is a song of great political and social importance

Oh lord, wont you buy me a mercedes benz ?
My friends all drive porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So lord, wont you buy me a mercedes benz ?

Another time, a photographer wanted to shoot her, and she started stripping. The photographer explained to her that he would rather have her with her clothes on, but she stripped anyway, and that photograph is, till date, the most famous photograph of Janis Joplin.

Ironically, a few months before her death, it is said, that someone told her, "We actually liked you."

Though this be madness, yet there is a method in't.

I don't believe in an object oriented world. I guess even Bjarne Stroustruppe didn't. True. Ada is a true object oriented language, and philosophically complete, but did it succeed? I know they coded in Ada for a long time, I admire its philosophical beauty, but it was more or less useless.

Even Bjarne never believed in object orientedness, or did he? Unfortunately we will never know. But rumours do go around that he didn't, and he even gave an interview to the IEEE ridiculing what he himself created - C++.
http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/Invention_of_Cplusplus.shtml

But again Bjarne Stroustrup denies it in his webpage and he says http://www.research.att.com/~bs/ieee_interview.html is the real interview. I don't know. Maybe even he was under too much pressure from the Software Engineering world to deny ever having given such an interview. Who knows. There are Titans, Zeuses and Neptunes in the Software world who wouldn't let anyone escape with ridiculing what has kept the industry going on for years. Not even the man who started it all.

I did a little bit of experimentation with Java. Its really nice to code in java, I agree : it makes you lazy and produces a program which takes a million years to load and get started up. You never realize how much every function (or whatever is the OO equivalent of it) costs. You just don't understand, and don't bother to find out, because you are spoiled.

They always tell you, don't do too many mallocs : does anyone know why? Most people don't. How many programmers today care to open the source code of malloc (now don't tell me that you don't have the source code : get the glibc code)? I am afraid there won't be many.

Now I know you'll say why don't I ask everyone to go back to the days where everything had to be written in assembly. Well. Assembly is too difficult. And the bloody thing gives nothing. You just spend your time in the nuances and forget what you are actually trying to do.

Some day a revolution will come. We will go back to text mode. I will wait till then.

I have two mailing lists - one is called 'forward' and I forward only decent mails to this list, the other is called 'forward-safe' and I forward any uncensored explicit mail to this mailing list. The other day, after I forwarded such an explicit mail, a colleague belonging to 'forward-safe' walked up to my desk and said with a sparkle in his eyes, "One day, you'll put 'forward' instead of 'forward-safe', and that is where all the fun will begin." I guess his wish will never come true.

Last week was particularly busy for me; after a week at home, as it is a lot of work had piled up, and if that was not enough, new work arrived to make me feel more 'needed' in the company. It is needless to say that I was going early to office and returning late. I had to spend the Saturday in office, and was planning to spend yesterday (Sunday) in office too, but getting up at seven, I felt drained and felt the crushing need to go back to sleep.
I was actually enjoying the pleasures of procrastination under my blanket when the cellphone started beeping announcing the arrival of a friendship day greeting from a not-so-close friend who was bulk sms-ing to all the contacts in her phone book a message she had received from someone else.
Darn friendship. Dash friendship day. I feel like an Al Capone for some time. "Where is my tommy gun?" Not finding it, I gently take my hands to my head and uproot a bunch of hair from my fast balding scalp. Still dissatisfied, unable to be a capone, I decide to become a raging bull and try to ram the wall down with my head, but the pain that follows soon restores to me my senses. I remember the words of Sri Sri Ravishankara. I take slow deep breaths. I feel myself calming down. I feel one with the universe.
Next, I pick up the phone, dial that friend and wish her "happy friendship day", and follow it with an inaudible "dash you and dash your friendship day."
Thank you Airtel. Hope you do good business on independence day. Or is there a special day before the fifteenth?

I found out yesterday that putty supports full screen mode. Now I can telnet/ssh to my favourite *nix machines and press alt+enter. Abracadabra. Everything that reminds me that I'm using a windows vanishes. The old world charm of text-only mode returns. I am transported back to the age of chivalry, where knights lanced each other to kiss the hands of ladies who wore corsets and those beautiful dresses. It is so romantic ;)

I get brilliant ideas and then they fade from my mind was that I can't read anymore so. Yea but I want to read.
It doesn't take much to tell a Bush joke. And I actually quit doing it. It is like topsoil on fertile ground. You know they are just magnificent jokes. But I told in concert in which I was telling i won't tell you. and the audience just howled. And then I got a really beautiful from a conservative man and he said it hurt the feelings of the people who he was with so badly that they had left the auditorium. So I wrote him and said thanks for turning the light on, you know, that doesn't really help that stuff. He would say, excuse me Gandy, and then I would tell a joke. And then I read "Bush On The Couch" and if you haven't read its really helpful.. no serious.. to find out about his little sister who died when he was something like eight she was 3 and they played a lot together, I guess they were very close. But that secretive family never told him why little by little she was getting weaker and why he should be when they played... then she would be gone for longer and longer time obviously to the hospital but they never told him. So the first he knew... By the way the day after the little girl died the parents went golfing. And i think thats a wall of denial thats all it is. And then they came home and George W was waiting to see his little sister and she wasn't there and they told him "she's dead". so thats enough of a trauma really to set off this whole mentality because he never could look at it never could get any help with it. His mother's hair turned gray and he started to "you did. You're white". And she went into terrible depression and he stayed in there and he tried to cheer her up which could explain also some of his behaviour. So I stopped hating him at that point. I still turn off the TV when I see his face. but I stopped hating him.

Joan Baez
Camp Casey, Crawford, Texas, 21/08/05.

Hyderabad, my beloved city, looked even more beautiful from the air. Like a brooch of gold and white diamonds. The sight was so beautiful that I didn't mind the the fact that I wasn't travelling by the lowest possible fares.