Reflections And Ramblings

Zen and the Art of Rambling

2008-03-22T06:09:00.000-07:00

The title of the post is an oxymoron. Zen as seen its Koans is pithy and seldom stretched in its descriptions. Sample these for starters (more available here) . Don't ask me if I understand these Koans.

What is the Buddha?

Some answers:

"Three pounds of flax." — Attributed to Dòngshān Shǒuchū (洞山守初) in case 18 of The Gateless Gate
"Dried dung." — Attributed to Yúnmén Wényǎn in case 21 of The Gateless Gate

The book I am talking of here, my latest read, 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' is quite divorced from brevity. The author has rather cleverly issued the disclaimer. :)

However, it should in no way be associated with that great body of factual information related to orthodox Zen Buddhist practice. It's not very factual on motorcycles either.

It took me a while to go through the book from cover to cover. To read a comprehensive review that captures most of what has to be said of the book, visit this.

For those bits of insightful remarks scattered throughout the book, I would recommend the book to anyone interested in metaphysical explorations.

Ithaka- A poem by Constantine Cafavy

2008-02-24T10:33:00.000-08:00

I liked this poem 'coz it seems to echo an idea that I have come to realize. At journey's end it is the journey itself that defines you more than the end.

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the journey may be long,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don't be afraid of them:

you'll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won't encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the journey may be long.

May there be many a summer morning

when with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn, and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you're destined for.

But don't hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you're old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you've gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.

You have got Spam!

2008-02-08T00:15:00.000-08:00

And we are back on the air after a long gap

Some of the most entertaining pieces I read on my inbox were the widely scorned threads on our very own institute email service, Smail. I had grown tired of opening mails which promised to bankroll me for life if I collaborated with some Nigerian whose relative was dead. There was also a time when there were plans afoot to screw Apple with distributing free IPods for all those who were generous enough to pass on the favor to their contact list. I grew sick of Tinglebox, Orchute, Farcebook, Shelfairy*(names changes to protect privacy ;)) and the ilk. Err…I also get mails whose content might be objectionable here. However, spam filtering has improved over the years. By and large what meets my eye on Google inbox nowadays is not so much fun. They generally contain mails meant for me alone with a few exceptions. Enter Smail to the rescue.

A Brief History of Smail:

Not such a long time ago, Smail, like many other services provided by the institute, was hardly used by the student community. The institute was naturally unhappy about this situation. It meant students absent for a special class had the excuse of telling the faculty that they never got the message sent on the group. They decided to dole out Smail ID’s to all incoming students, who were naturally excited about having an ‘iitm.ac.in’ on their email ID’s. Just count the number of people with ‘iitm’ in their Google or Yahoo! email ID’s and the reader will acknowledge the latent brand value of an IITM email ID.

Around the same time, a portal was started with a lot of fanfare. The registration for the portal had to be done with an Smail ID. Now like most things that begin with a big bang, the student usage of the portal fizzled out. The very place we eat in, ‘Himalaya’, was the subject of a raging discussion on the same portal. It is another matter that the student opinions expressed there were probably not on the administration’s mind when they went through with the idea. There was also a ‘Lost and Found’ Section on the same portal. Paradoxically, the average Joe is very unlikely to visit the page. The only luck that the ‘loser’ can have is when someone stumbles on the lost article; I would not hazard a guess on the chances of that event. Some smart guys thought this out rather well and decided to mail the whole student group instead about their bundles of misfortune.

Black Holes, Missing Objects and other Issues:

There was a sudden spurt in the number of people losing their belongings. It was as though a black hole swallowed up several lost cell phones and cellophane tapes, umbrellas and undies, purses and pencils and so forth. Oddly enough, most of the items that were lost seemed to have sentimental value to the aggrieved individuals. Some of the offers made in the mails defied economics. I reproduce a specimen below in all its schmaltzy originality. I really admire the courage the individual exhibited in overcoming his ‘serious’ guilt.

[Btech] [Students] wallet loss @ CSU stall--------sorry for spaming(seriously)

i lost my purse today @ ground floor csu stall@himalya around 12:45pm okk i m requesting to the guys and (considering minute probablity) gals to return the purse and i promise the treat of the complete amount in that purse and again i m serious

Another quotable snippet from a different mail, “Please look around for the lost wallet and if found contact me at: XYZ”. Tempers were already running high in a few good men of the institute. Someone with a deliciously inviting surname, ‘Gofech’ *(name changed to protect privacy) chose this opportune moment to let the whole institute know of his lost notebook. What followed was an epic mudslinging match which would have made for a good Prime Time show on Star TV. One from the audience decided that he had lost something of incalculable value, his sanity, and mailed the group asking for help. However, to this day the institute black hole is active and one learns of at least one missing item every day.

This mail sent by OutRaj*(name changed to protect privacy), whose English would have sent the Queen scurrying for cover, takes the cake for its sheer entertainment value:

DEAR ALL,

I M VERY SORRY TO SAY, BUT WHAT THE THINGS GOING ON IN THE HOSTEL IS MAKING ME TO WRITE THIS MAIL.

SOMEONE HAS THEFT THE LAPTOP OF MR. X FROM HIS ROOM, WHEN HE WAS BUSY WITH EXAM IN DEPARTMENT. THIS IS VERY SHAMEFUL ACT, I JUST WANT TO ASK ONE QUESTION TO THE PERSON WHO HAS THEFT IT.....

GOD HAS GIVEN U TWO HANDS AND TWO LEGS THEN WHY U R DOING THIS ACT? IF U WANT TO THIS TYPE OF ACTIVITY THEN WHY U R COMING TO IIT? EXPAND UR THIEFING ACTIVITIES BY EXPANDING UR NETWORK!

A GENTLE REQUEST, JUST THINK FOR THE PERSON WHO HAS ALL THE IMPORTANT DATA, HIS PROJECT IN LAPTOP WHICH WILL BE EVERYTHING FOR HIS FINAL YEAR PROJECT.

IF SOME HUMAN IS LIVING INSIDE U, THEN RETURN THAT LAPTOP BACK.

IF EVEN AFTER READING THIS MAIL, THERE IS NO EFFECT ON U...THEN FROM MY SIDE: GOD BLESS U!

One of the replies was brilliant:

Hi,

Look. I tried too hard to resist spamming. But what the hell, if everyone else is doing it, let me just be a bad boy and simply do it.

Let's read a small part of Mr. Outraj's email, which if I may quote
here:
I JUST WANT TO ASK ONE QUESTION TO THE
> PERSON WHO HAS THEFT IT.....
>
> GOD HAS GIVEN U TWO HANDS AND TWO LEGS THEN WHY U R DOING THIS ACT?

It was indeed very thoughtful of Mr. Outraj to have asked just one question, when he could have easily typed away a hundred, adding more pain to the already pained Smail users. More so, I was expecting the 'person who has theft it' (PWHTI) to answer the extremely thought-provoking question that Mr. Outraj posed.

Many days have passed, but the PWHTI never replied. I guess he stopped using Smail long away, thanks to all the spam mails that keep doing the rounds.

Coming back to the basic question, since it is highly unlikely that the PWHTI is going to reply, I would take this opportunity to answer Mr. Outraj on his behalf, not because I have any sympathy towards the cruel thief, but as a token of sincere respect to the originality of the question itself.

Here goes the answer, and hope it answers you Mr. Outraj: God gave him two hands to open the door (I wonder the guy who didn't lock it, also had two hands to lock it, but that's the beginning of another thoughtful question, so shall be left right away), and to pick up the laptop. The two legs, if I assume, were given to the PWTHI so that he could run away with the newly acquired possession. There ends the mystery!

Lesson learnt: God gives everyone two hands and two legs. They can be used to 'theft' a laptop and run away (sad ACT). But they can also be used to lock your door, before you leave for your department (smart ACT).

Ah, spamming really gives me a kick, man!

Regards
Saneram*(name changed to protect privacy)

The Universe in a Gobi Manchurian:

RR Caterers had previously improvised on their biryani prepared in Godavari and done what no chef would think of doing. A frog was found in their dish and the outrage over the issue spread through simple word of mouth. Spamming over Smail had not become fashionable yet. RR were not going to be denied their piece of action on Smail. All that they had to do was add a chicken piece in a dish of Gobi Manchurian and take a seat in the audience. The issues generated by the spamming range from a proposal for a separate vegetarian mess to religious freedom and its ridicule to compensation. Mercifully, the anguished individuals stopped short of a debate on vegetarianism or non-vegetarianism itself. To someone expecting some important mail, seeing 15 emails titled ‘Chicken Piece in Gobi Manchurian’ would either be amusing (which is what I felt) or maddening (for the more impatient type).

On The Shoulders of Giants- The Great Shame of Saarang:

Saarang came and went. People had begun to miss the excitement on Smail. Someone decided that blogging about his opinions on Saarang was probably not the best way of annoying everybody in the institute. He dashed off a mail to the Director, Dean and the whole student group. The mail began, “Dear Sirs…”. Well, I am not aware of when the whole institute came to be knighted. Having flattered the reader, there begins a verbal assault on Saarang that would have probably made a hard core fundamentalist Mullah teary eyed with joy. Naturally, this tirade did not go down too well with everybody. Replies flew thick and fast touching issues like what Indians have to offer to the world. All along the participants missed one point, IIT Madras has probably become the first university in the world to have its email being merged with a discussion board.

A Briefer Peek into the Future:

Spamming on Smail is here to stay. It has been made the fundamental right of every Smail user. It lends voice to the vocally challenged, underrepresented and insensitive students on the campus and ensures equity. It is a pity that I have had only about a year’s worth of entertainment on Smail. I am passing out of the institute soon and I hope the administration allows outgoing students to retain their email ID’s.

Whatever be the complaint of Smail users, I am convinced of two things:

The power of free speech is one of the most ill-abused privileges in the history of democracy and spamming on Smail is a very minor extension.
The job of the moderator on Smail will be one of the most sought after positions on campus after the current occupant retires. All one has to do is accept everything that comes your way and watch them beat each other up.

Here's raising a toast to spamming and Smail.

The post is a tribute to Stephen Hawking whose spirit will continue to inspire us whatever walk of life we choose.

Atlas Has To Shrug

2007-08-11T02:45:00.000-07:00

I have always been proud to associate myself with IITM. It is the place that has given me so much. I came here because it promised opportunities to those who worked to deserve them. Hence, it is with a tinge of sadness that I pen this post.

The situation that IITM is pigeonholing itself into reminds me of the bleak scenario that Ayn Rand so luridly paints in her magnum opus, ‘Atlas Shrugged’. Every direction I look I see rules fettering the activities of students and faculty alike. I mention the faculty taking note of how many of them noncommittally they say their hands are tied on the issue of student attendance. However, being a student working his way through his seventh semester in the institute, I confine my attention to what the students see. The reader will excuse the mood of the post. Being subject to innumerable rules can feel like being in a penitentiary and one never feels blithe in such milieu.

Having taken up the issue of attendance let me take it to a conclusion. Sitting through a class where one does not seem to gain any new ideas can be like watching paint dry or worse. The casus belli for the senate, which issues the fiats, seems to be the matter of respecting the teacher. I can assuredly tell them that if there is involuntary attendance in the class, there is also the simmering discontent that can by no stretch be construed as respect unless you do not look beyond the occupation of benches. Let us assume the problem in question is students not learning or dawdling their hours away in their rooms. It is no secret as to how much is absorbed by a student who forcibly attends a class that he or she detests.

Consider the alternative of having no rules but classes that are more interactive. That would mean that jumbo classes have to be done away with. There are classes with over six score students where at times no public address system is used or more likely does not work as expected. When this happens, it is unfair to criticize the back-benchers for an occasional loss of interest. Let us consider the leviathan class strengths in ID110/ID120/BT101/HS305. It makes little sense to broadcast the lecture live in the adjacent rooms. For all practical purposes, it is the same as students in Somalia gathering together to watch a video of IITM professors giving classes in Chennai; only that most of us do possess computers to watch it at our convenience. I am sure that at least in this supposedly elitist institute, most students are responsible enough to attend classes which they find profitable. As for the black sheep that are glued to gaming, why should they determine the actions of the rest of the institute?

That brings us to the gags on network usage, some of which are plain paranoia and the rest ludicrous. Who would ever turn off the network every few minutes just so that the game freaks are foiled? I am in the middle of a perfectly innocuous chat online and I see the client disconnecting and reconnecting enough times to disrupt the flow in the conversation. Let us examine something worse. I am working on a deadline for a submission that closes around 4 AM IST. The network shuts down at 1 AM promptly again to make sure some mindless folk go to sleep. Whoever said the administration cannot be a good nanny? However, someone obviously did not understand that the whole world does not follow Indian Standard Time.

The above concerns seem peccadilloes in front of what I am about to castigate. I had spent my last seven months in two different universities abroad, four months on exchange and three months on a summer internship. Both have been great experiences and needless to say that I have benefited immensely from them. The internship in particular was beyond my expectations and convinced me that I wanted to do research. Still looking back fondly at the experience, a message from the Academic Section strikes me like a clip from a horror movie. From my interaction with one of the key decision makers, I do know for one that he professes concepts like sacrifice while believing that life is a zero sum game. But this takes the cake.

INDIAN INSTITUTE TECHNOLOGY MADRAS

Academic Section

F.Acad/07-08/B2/2007 Dated: 10.08.2007

Circular

Sub: Summer Training Course – Reg

It is informed that students will be permited to undergo Industrial Training (in summer) only in organizations/institutions within India at the end of Sixth Semester.

It is may kindly be noted that no student will be permitted to go abroad for Industrial Training (in summer) from Summer 2008 onwards.

/ By Order /

The mail effectively bans internships from being done abroad. Though it does not affect me directly, everything about the notice seemed repulsive to me, not including the spelling error in ‘permited’. License, quota and permits were after all what stifled India’s growth till someone had the courage to break the paradigm and open up the economy. World over, people are embracing globalization and riding on the benefits it is seen to offer. Even China, one of the last havens in the world for communist control, is seen actively courting a capitalist cloak.

What does the present move seek to achieve? Honestly, at this moment, I do claim to read the minds of the powers-that-be. Do they intend to ‘make the budding minds work within India for three months and improve the country’? Why not go the full distance and ban students from applying for higher studies abroad? Internship is a period of time where one explores a field and understands one’s interests. There have been a couple of cases last year that are very illuminating. Both internships were done abroad. An internship at an investment banking company convinced the student it was not what he wanted to get himself into. Another found his research internship not so inspiring and took up a consultancy job instead.

It may be possible that none of these reasons actually led to the decision on banning internships abroad. A few offending black sheep spam obscure universities in exotic destinations abroad, fly over and enjoy an all-expenses paid vacation. Should they determine whether the whole herd is to be castrated? But then again, it has become a typical tendency to severe the arm if there is a fly perching on it.

This tendency to solve problems with the imposition of rules is not restricted to the hallowed campus of IIT’s alone. Why else does the country have scads of amendments to the constitution? Several companies that my batch-mates worked for had unimaginably draconian restrictions of internet usage. It goes without saying that the restrictions had the look of well-seasoned Swiss cheese with all their loopholes.

The institutions abroad that I have seen closely work on honor, trust and soft coercion. If the IITs were largely built on the model adopted by the successful Western Universities, what dictates that it turn antediluvian in its mindset? The tendency worldwide is adopt the policy of ‘Laizzes-faire’-let things be. Of course, it cannot be taken too far. Some checks and balances are necessary to keep things from drifting into chaos. But far too many of them just serve to stifle productivity and achievement. We can never know how far and how high we are capable of flying until we leave the ground. It is time we loosened the chains that bind us.

Elixir of Immortality

2007-08-10T03:02:00.000-07:00

He spotted the land at last. It was there gleaming in the midst of the vast expanse of the sparkling blue ocean water. Fortune seemed to have finally relented and decided to place it right there for him. He had traveled many miles in anticipation of this one moment leaving behind his worried family, staking his reputation on this mission. Purportedly saner men had derided him and called his enterprise a lunacy. Now he had a chance to prove them wrong…

It did not take long for them to disembark on the island. His crew was thoroughgoing professional and left for the island as though they were heading out for battle. Little did they know what awaited them. Elsewhere someone was closely watching their movements.

They were in a clearing. Lofty trees and luxuriant vegetation greeted them on all sides. The explorer looked up at the azure sky with a seagull streaking past and smiled. He guessed he got more satisfaction that day than in all his life before it. It was as though he found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that his life and efforts represented. Everything in his life seemed to have found new meaning now. He had lived his life by his ideals and came to where he had always dreamed of being.

Suddenly someone in the touring party dropped dead without so much as uttering a scream. The attack was swift. It was bloody. The native cannibals could possess no mercy. The explorer’s crew retaliated with all their might. It only made sure the natives knew that they had subdued a formidably equipped foe that day. Having well-nigh decimated the crew, the natives wisely retreated before the reinforcements came rushing in.

The crew was left counting its losses. They cried out for their leader. Ferdinand Magellan was his name. He was lying there on the blood-drenched ground with a smile on his face, a smoking gun in his hands and a fatal arrow sticking out of his chest.

This semi-fictional account of Magellan’s death was written in response to a question posed to me on who I would want to be-a pioneer or a settler. I did not have to think twice about my answer.

However, to lead such a life and die by it if necessary requires a lot of gumption. Plenty of people start their life with a lot of idealism. But somewhere down the line, they get stuck in the quicksand of mediocrity and monotony. Indeed, it is much more tempting a peaceful life where you earn your bread doing a routine if not mundane job, raise a family, stack up your savings, buy a house…the whole nine yards.

I fervently hope that I do not succumb to it. Right now there is youth coursing in my veins. Someday, maybe when I am old and crumbling, and when I have to look back on the life I have led, I pray that there is the swell of pride that washes away all possible pain. I long for the ‘immortality’ that Greeks sought. I wish I could say, ‘Remember us’, the way Leonidas said it when he changed the course of history with his last stand.

2007-A Singaporean Odyssey

2007-06-05T21:22:00.000-07:00

To the inquisitive reader interested in the curious incident of a human in the time of exchange: It has intrigued me greatly that despite the rather sporadic entries in the comment box not indicating so, my blog, which I haven't updated for ages, has been receiving a good number of hits everyday from known places. (Courtesy: A Statcounter ;). Big brother's watching!). This was written quite some time back. But to update a dormant blog, it requires the effort it takes to get up from bed at six in the morning on a perfect Saturday. Glad I made it!

I look out of the expansive window in front of me while reclining on a cozy rest sipping iced tea. Airplanes stationed directly opposite wait for passengers who make their way through the gates looking like ants homing on a sugar crystal. My flight on very own ‘Indian’ has been delayed. It could not have turned out any other way for if it was Singapore airlines, this piece would lost a bit of its meaning and if had not been delayed this post would not have been penned probably.

It’s the last hour of my exchange visit to Singapore. It’s the time to look back on what has been a really interesting experience. It is also the time when I though I was frazzled beyond recovery after an entire night of packing.

As if caressed by the sybaritic ambience of the Changi airport, the weariness slowly departs from my body leaving my mind free to wander in the lanes and by-lanes of the past. Four months ago, I landed at this airport with plenty of naivety that I would have vehemently denied then. It was an uncertain package that awaited me in the form an exchange program which was introduced for the first time in my college. Maybe that’s the feeling Guinea pigs go though.

Courses (or modules as they called them) were undecided. I was away from an environment that I had grown used to, learnt to thrive in and where I mingled with people I was comfortable with. Heck, I wasn’t sure of being here until three days from the date of departure. I must thank a friend who calls himself the Robocop for providing me his ‘brute-force’ robot-like formula to get the wheels moving.

Things unfolded in a rather curious fashion. I got courses that looking back gave me well-nigh the best of what a student from IITM with my kind of interests could get-a freedom that the institute could do with in good measure, but then maybe not, for as exchange students we had unbridled choice. It must also be said that going out every weekend in the first month was a nice bonus.

But there was this callowness of someone who was seeing first world life for the first time. Add to this the confusion in the mind of a vegetarian living in a meat-lover’s paradise. A modicum of conservatism completed the picture. It was fascinating observing people (a few friends in particular) and looking at the way my mind reacted. A canvas of human emotions was being painted over in front of my eyes; of promises made not to spill the beans…But the detached perspective that I enjoy now was not there when my mind went into a tailspin of its own.

Slowly but steadily, after a good deal of travel, interaction and fun, I got a much better understanding of what I really am, what gets me motivated and what drives me. With increasing workload of a nature pretty different from what I had seen at IITM, the challenge was not to retreat into a shell. Contact with new-found friends really helped in the manner of light drizzle over parched land.

In the midst of all this, an eventful and thrilling visit to Mao’s country was like a brilliant meteor that lit up the semester and helped me look at a lot of things in a different light. That’s for a post of its own though. (Is this the last time I write that line and not write one? I am not sure!)

Before I realized it, I finished my exams after putting in a performance that more or less gives me a good deal of satisfaction irrespective of what the results turn out to be. I was left facing the last 24 hours of my exchange. It was not easy for me to get down to packing. There was no real time to say a proper goodbye to all the people that I had come to know well. Another experience away from India was looming in the distance. Another sojourn that promised to be as fun-filled and eventful as the one that had just gone past.

The call for boarding my flight is issued. I am woken up from my reverie. It’s time to move on. A song from Alan Parson’s project comes to my mind with its lilting grace:

As far as my eyes can see
There are shadows approaching me
And to those I left behind
I wanted you to know
You've always shared my deepest thoughts
You follow where I go

And oh... when I'm old and wise
Bitter words mean little to me
Autumn winds will blow right through me
And someday in the mist of time
When they asked me if I knew you
I'd smile and say you were a friend of mine
And the sadness would be lifted from my eyes
Oh when I'm old and wise

As far as my eyes can see
There are shadows surrounding me
And to those I leave behind
I want you all to know
You've always shared my darkest hours
I'll miss you when I go

And oh... when I'm old and wise
Heavy words that tossed and blew me
Like autumn winds that will blow right through me
And someday in the mist of time
When they ask you if you knew me
Remember that you were a friend of mine
As the final curtain falls before my eyes
Oh when I'm old and wise

As far as my eyes can see

Discordant Songs in Singapore

2006-12-24T02:41:00.000-08:00

I have been getting a lot of queries on what I am doing with the offer of going to NUS on student exchange. The whole process has been long-drawn and my mind has been changing its stance with the direction of the wind. I feel I owe an explanation.

For all the visitors to this page, who might have come here expecting something inspiring, sorry fellas. If you think this stuff is going to bore you, it would be a good idea to stop reading the post at this point.

September 3’rd Week:

“I don’t know if I’ll go to NUS, but why not give it a shot”.

I get a mail from the department telling me that a chance to go to NUS on exchange for one semester, in my case the sixth semester, is up for grabs. Though NUS does not exactly sound like the seventh heaven for academics, I apply anyway. Buying time for such decisions is a habit I have picked up of late, as you would have realized at the beginning of the post.

September 4’Th Week:

“Yuck, the whole process is so messy, I don’t know if it’ll come through at all”.

There is word spread that a list of courses has to be prepared, but when we get to the faculty advisor we are told that it is still some way off. This is only one of the many instances where the lack of a central co-coordinating person/body at IITM was sorely felt. Going pillar to post to get some tiny bit of information was not uncommon.

October 1’st Week:

“I am finally done with it, or am I? Something didn’t seem all right…”

The hard-copy of the application form is submitted. My passport application is doing its rounds in three different states and I cannot not attach its copy. It was at this point that I make my only error in the whole application procedure. Blame it on Shaastra, my carelessness or whatever you will; I forget to attach a copy of my grade card with the application.

October 2’nd and 3’rd weeks:

“Wrong e-mail id? Never mind I can manage! ...Hey, maybe not...HELP!!!”

In the middle of my busiest semester yet, I figure out the mails from NUS are being sent to a sancharnet id that I had given to the institute two and a half years back, that might seem eons now. One of my friends plays the good Samaritan and forwarded me the two or so mails when I told him of my predicament.

I really should have sent them the correct e-mail id immediately. But, maybe I thought with all the mail being sent to the whole group, I could get away with it. By the time, the correct e-mail id that I sent percolated to the different tentacles of the NUS octopus, a fair amount of damage had been done. I had missed a few important mails. It still boggles me how they could turn a blind eye to the email id on the application and instead use some defunct one retrieving it from the depths of the institute archives.

I manage to talk to a few professors about the exchange and got a mixed response from them. With a few big things coming my way and looking like they would need my continued attention here, I am increasingly skeptical about the whole exercise. Nevertheless I make up my mind to continue with the formalities and take the decision when all the information I need is at hand.

November 1’st and 2’nd weeks:

“Oh, damn! Why the f@#$# did I forget the grade card?”

I always thought Indian babudom set the record for the longest and heaviest red tape. I hadn’t seen the world yet. Turned out the Singaporean bureaucracy would give our system a run for its money. Referring to the missing grade card copy, they ask me to send the transcript. The academic section sends an attested copy by fax and in turn, I inform them by e-mail of this make-shift arrangement. It takes them two solid weeks to tell me that a photo-copy of the grade card that everyone else had sent was absolutely necessary. How a photocopy has more validity than an attested fax beat me and the academic section.

November 3’rd week:

“Hey, the offer’s tempting. But what about the loose ends?”

The flimsiest of the ‘hard copies of my transcript’, a photocopy of my grade card, is sent to NUS through the academic section duly attested.

Meanwhile, I figure out that most of the applicants from IITM are actually accepting the offer. Bit by bit, it seems to be a nice deal after all. For the first time, I give it a really serious thought. Issues of credit transfer and grade equivalence are cleared; however a few other concerns have to be ironed out.

November 4’Th week:

“Bugger off! I have end-sems!!”

Understandably nothing much is done.

December 1’st week:

“Gosh, I’m screwed! Never mind, these little things will fall in place…”

Everyone except me and another chap gets the offer letter. The other chap, Puneet, assuages my ruffled temper telling me that he would make calls to Singapore for free(one of the perks of being the branch councilor) and make enquiries.

I am occupied with bringing out the TFE and continuing with the development my IDP design. I knew from the start it would be the busiest month in my stay at IITM and nothing has made it look otherwise so far.

December 2’nd week:

“Semi-bliss and a pin-prick, ouch!”

I have a wonderful time at Digha in the winter academy. Last minute preparation has become the rule for me of late, it was no different here. I will save this experience for a separate post.

On the 13’th I get a mail that I am unable to check till the evening of 15’th owing to the lack of connectivity there. When I see it, it tells me that I have to send in my courses by 15’th. As could be expected, there was no way I could make up a sane list of courses in so short a time away from the resources that would have helped me.

December 3’rd week:

“That’s the last straw. Singaporean red tape is invincible!!”

I have all but decided to go when this appalling piece of co-ordination from NUS stops my application in its tracks. The person handling the department courses apparently went on leave from the afternoon of 15’th and would not be back till the 26’th. Talk of timing your leave to perfection. Filled with disgust and loathing, I send my course list to them anyway.

December 4’Th week:

“The situation is out of my hands-I wait and watch with the maximum passivity possible from a man whose butt is on fire”

I am told that the offer letter could be sent by e-mail as a soft copy for contingency to make up for the delay from the department (refer to the leave episode). That went a long way in removing the heebie-jeebies.

This was the calm before the gale. The death blow came when they assigned my accommodation to an off-campus location. The reason apparently was both due to the ‘pending status’ (my foot!) of my application and the shortage of rooms. There is no way I could accept this raw deal. Why me? I must have asked that questions so many times that I hate the sound of it now.

Latest status:

I have sent them a mail telling them that in the absence of on-campus accommodation I would be forced to reject the offer. With the air-ticket blocked I still have the option of going there in the event that this ultimatum does something remarkable.

Writing this has been a cathartic experience. Mentally and materially, I am prepared for either possibility now. I am glad I have not burnt the bridges and IITM would not kick me out. After all, it has most of my good friends in a setting that I have grown to love with all its flaws.

PS- I'm done with the whole affair. It's good ol' IITM for the next sem.

Libretto To The Central Laundry!

2006-11-01T05:54:00.000-08:00

If there’s one place in IITM that can undisputedly lay claim to being the best in business, it’s the central laundry. Which other laundry can boast of a color lab so sophisticated that, almost invariably, dark clothes come back with white streaks and white ones are mottled in a manner that even a virtuoso artist would find really hard to replicate?

And as for the staff there, there is no danger of making an overstatement. They have mastered the relativistic principles of time dilation and expansion to answer all our enquiries about delays. If those arguments seem to be beyond the understanding of the cerebrally less endowed students, explaining the harmonic oscillation of the workforce strength always works out.

To make up for the above mentioned oscillation, the active workforce at the laundry at any point of time is always the number on the payroll plus the number of students searching frantically for their clothes- a masterstroke that would leave the best of management gurus speechless in wonder.

In true ‘pun’dit style, they would call out, ‘Janta laundry people have come’(Read it as ‘Janata Laundry people have come’ or ‘Junta, laundry people have come’). Of late though, they seemed to have grown tired of putting up the same ‘phun’ show (pun or fun, you decide) and decided that it is a better strategy to have the clients come to their netherworld ‘office’.

It’s a real pity then, after the barrage of rains that Chennai has been reeling under, that their ‘office’ is now submerged under water deep enough to rival the swimming pool and raises a stink that would make a skunk feel good. Of course, there is no saying on what the state of the clothes there is!!

If anyone has got anything interesting to add, do comment.

Simian Shenanigans

2006-08-31T01:53:00.000-07:00

Monday morning, 7:00 AM- The alarm goes off, crash-landing the wonderful dreams I have been flying on in the scientifically best possible state of sleep (the REM sleep which occurs only in the morning, now one knows what early risers miss!). I struggle to drag my stubborn body and press the snooze button before hitting the sack again. Away from home for some time now, dreams of basking in that mellow warmth and comfort flit in and out of mind …7:10 AM- The alarm goes off again, only this time I do get up, as unsteady as an elephant on a tightrope. I open the door with the woolgathering expectation of seeing a family member at the door trying to wake me up. Reality strikes me hard. It is a relative, all right, albeit a simian one nibbling at the clothes I had laboriously washed yesterday and hung up on the line. I get a vicious snarl from the monkey and I get a feeling I have something in store for me that day.
Having got used to a bit of ‘monkey’ness on the corridor, I mutter a few curses at them and head for the eponymous bogs (short for ‘Bathrooms Of Graduate Students’). And before I have the opportunity to shake the sandman off by splashing water over my face, I am forced to wonder if those who coined the word for that dank and malodorous place by some rare foresight made sure it expands as ‘Bathrooms Of Grouchy Simians’ as well. The place has been ransacked! For some inconceivably gross reason perhaps, the pisspots seem to be their favorite haunt in the bogs.
Somehow I get by all that mayhem and finish my ablutions. But now that my senses are fully awake, the corridor stares at me in gastronomical glory. Every single remnant of food consumed in the wing and consigned to the dustbin is there for me to see. Quite often I wondered if these creatures were conducting some sort of survey of food habits of uncooperative IITM hostellers. At any rate, I do know how many packets of Lays my neighbor has munched on, how many pizzas were ordered recently in the wing, what’s hot on the Marrybrown menu and all those little bits of info not easily obtained unless I were a professional ragpicker.
Wait a minute; was there a heated discussion on the deleterious effects of pornography on the denizens of this prestigious institute? Well, up here on wide open spaces of the third floor you see simian fornication on a scale that would have made a Heiros Gamos pale in comparison. No wonder their tribe is growing!
There is an aphorism from the scriptures preaching universal brotherhood. Willy-nilly we are forced to practise it sharing our drinking water (yes, this is not spared either!) and food and even bathrooms with our cerebrally less privileged simian visitors. However, Benjamin Franklin hit the nail on the head when he said, “Fish and visitors smell in three days”. Only he probably should have used monkeys instead.

Newspapers and nostalgia

2006-07-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

He finally decided it was time for the proverbial spring-cleaning. The room was dirty and unkempt from lack of care. Cobwebs had gathered in every nook and crevice of the room. A layer of dust covered the unused articles in the manner of patina over copper. Books seemed to be everywhere except on the bookshelf. But it was the pile of old newspapers lying in a corner that caught his attention first. He decided to start with moving them out of the room.
But as it often happens with quite a few people, one’s attention gets easily diverted by the headlines you see on a scrap of newspaper in which you have received a packet of groundnuts, laundry, groceries or any conceivable object. Imagine being deluged by a flood of such scraps with all the time in the world to spare, as was the case with him.
The newspapers were stacked orderly enough, in spite of the mess he used to plunge the works into.
The Mumbai blasts were the first thing he chanced his eyes upon. Enough was written about it and discussed among the intelligentsia. Yet he could not help feeling again that the country would never be considered developed until it learned to value every human life the same way a politician of today cares about his booty from office. Maybe that is why the country never really embraced family planning seriously; talk of foresight! Scarcely had he sifted through a few more newspapers when he saw images of the same city grappling with floods, as if it had to relive the nightmare of the last year. He clenched his fists in sheer frustration at those using the ‘Mumbaikar spirit’ to conveniently brush under the carpet the burning issues including but definitely not limited to the incompetence of the intelligence agencies and lack of initiative of the civic planning organizations.
The frustration had hardly subsided when he remembered that ‘Shiv Saniks’ had run amok in the city just a few days prior to the blasts to avenge the disrespect shown to their leader’s wife; that it was not the ‘holy’ leader himself seemingly made it that much more an issue of honor for the marauding maniacs. This incident probably mirrored a much more inexplicable riot on the streets of Bangalore some months earlier. The ace thespian, idol of the masses, winner of the highest national honor for cinema, Dr. Raj Kumar, had died. Was every Tom, Dick and Harry not being allowed the ‘privilege’ of viewing the mortal remains being carried out in a ‘state’ly procession reason enough for youth to go berserk in large numbers and destroy every piece of property in sight even killing a few of their own group during the cremation? Who was responsible for allowing the scheming politicians to manipulate the youth to suit their parochial interests thus laying waste the potential makers of the country? No easy answers came to his mind.
So much for the cities, he thought. The newspapers were being moved out at a snail’s pace. He felt the need to hurry up, but the image of the failed launch of Insat-4C held him back. Just below it was the headline crying out the failure of the ‘Agni III’ missile. These were ‘failures’ he could not digest easily. Weren't satellite launch capability and ballistic missile development one of the few strongholds the country could boast of? How could technical failures creep into the elite establishments of ISRO and DRDO all of a sudden? He wondered whether the government’s desire to have a finger in every pie had been stretched to these sensitive places as well. After all, even education was being tampered with in the worst imaginable manner…
This brought him to the series of front-pages with large chunks of journalistic space reserved for the ‘contentious’ issue of ‘reservation’ in institutions of higher education. How in their right minds could these lawmakers achieve social equality by constantly highlighting the differences and lowering the productivity of the institutions that matter (read killing the golden geese)? In the first place, how could mealy-mouthed politicians ascend to the ranks of cabinet ministers dictating the future of the country?He fought hard the idea that we as a people are responsible for all that befalls us, for do we not elect these people in the polls? Surely people ought to know that there are developmental issues larger than television sets being disbursed free when it comes to evaluating a manifesto and voting a party into power. But there was also the question of the demagogues keeping their ‘vote banks’ in the dark swearing by the credo ‘Darkness is power’. He was not sure of what was the chicken and what was the egg.
Before he had realized, the newspapers were all cleaned up and piled outside consigned for trash. Maybe, this is the way we deal with things, he thought. When the incidents strike us, we pause to think of them, even express our outrage at them. The media has a field day covering it every which way earning the bread for a few ‘experts’ in the process. But public memory is short and soon the existing set of issues, which is bound for the ‘trashy’ recesses of the public psyche, is supplanted by a different set of issues. Perhaps this is what the current crop of leaders thrive on and exploit to get away with what they do. Sighing deeply, he felt the emotions ebbing away. He wanted to complete cleaning his room and get on with his work. He decided vaguely that he would start reading the newspaper from ‘Page 3’ onwards every morning; why should he begin the day on a sour note for no fault of his?

An excerpt from 'Atlas Shrugged'

2006-07-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

This was the best exposition that I have come across to date on the place of money in a society. You may wish to go through the context of this excerpt from Ayn Rand’s ‘Atlas Shrugged’ here. What follows is lengthy rhetoric, but I would assure you that it is worth your time to go through it.

Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, "Don't let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil – and he's the typical product of money."

Rearden did not think that Francisco could have heard it, but he saw Francisco turning to them with a gravely courteous smile.

"So you think that money is the root of all evil?" said Francisco d'Aconia. "Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can't exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

"When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

"Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you'll learn that man's mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

"But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

"To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men's stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man's productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

"But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

"Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he's evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he's evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

"Money is your means of survival. The verdict that you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men's vices or men's stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment's or a penny's worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you'll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

"Or did you say it's the love of money that's the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It's the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

"Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

"Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

"But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

"Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators' avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they've passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

"Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society's virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account that is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: 'Account overdrawn.'

"When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, 'Who is destroying the world?' You are.

"You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it's crumbling around you, while you're damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men's history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody's mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

"To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man's mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

"If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase 'to make money'. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words 'to make money' hold the essence of human morality.

"Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters' continents. Now the looters' credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

"Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out."

What an afternoon!

2006-06-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

It was a scorching Chennai afternoon when every living entity wishes it was not stuck in this place. I entered the power-centre of IITM, the administrative block, and took the elevator to go the fourth floor. The usual thing for any member of the student species at IITM to do at the ad-block, only that I was to turn right to Mr. S’s office rather than head left to the labyrinth of cubicles. It was not the first time that I was going to the Mr. S’s office in the two years that I’ve been here. (The first occasion was for an interview that was an exercise in formality.) Yet I had a gut feeling that something lay in store for me. Maybe it’s because of the fantabulous tales of Mr. S that my friends brought to me.
Innocently, I asked the bloke at the table outside the DAc*s room if I could meet the personage (Mr. S of course). I was told that he would be back in some half an hour and I could wait for him if I didn’t mind it. There were some inviting seats for waiting and I ensconced myself in one. Now here’s a confession I have to make. I often suffer from these bouts of utter madness when I don’t work at all when the time beckons me and on the most inappropriate of occasions I find this voice telling me that this bum (read myself) has hardly worked. Thus I took out ‘Probability and Stochastic Processes’ from my bag and started going through it like I never had in the last fifteen days.
Some five minutes through the book, I noticed a swarthy guy of around mid-thirties in age entering the room with a degree of chariness you would associate with a school-boy forced to meet a martinet of a headmaster. He took a seat next to me, after extending me the courtesy of asking me if I would mind it. I was engrossed in the world of random occurrences and only vaguely conscious of the undeniable fact that he was watching me with unrelenting curiosity in the manner imitated only by that of the schoolboy (again!) looking at a modern art painting in the headmaster’s room.
I was wondering what this guy found so captivating in me, when he mustered the courage to go through with what he wanted to find out about me. The conversation has been pruned to remove the irrelevant drivel. (That this whole post is mostly about drivel is beside the point.) His diction has been preserved to the extent possible.
The visitor: Are you a student here
Me: Uh…Yes, I’m.
The visitor: What are you reading there?
Me: Oh, it’s a book on ‘Probability and Random Processes’. Just though it was a nice thing to go through. (wasn’t it?)
The visitor: You people study a lot?
Me: Uh… Yes, maybe (second thoughts on that)
The visitor: (borrowing the book for some time) You’re trying to read some textbook here. You don’t want to waste time?
Me: (What the hell?) No I try to seize every moment. (Carpe diem!)
The visitor: That is really good.
I returned to my book and was immersed in it until he shook me as if a brainwave struck him.
The visitor: What’s the secret of making the best use of time?
(Turns out it’s a brainwave after all!)
Me: (Heavens help me! I’m dealing with a genius or a nincompoop!) Err… I dunno. (Would you be so kind as to condescend and tell me what goes to constitute it?)
The visitor: Try!
Me: (This was getting on my nerves but I managed to tell him calmly) I dunno!
The visitor: Ha… ‘Probability’ is the secret of making the best use of time.
(My face went blank…)
The visitor: You see when you toss a coin you don’t know the outcome. So the answer to the question, ‘how to make the best use of time’, is probability…

The grey matter in my head was being fried trying to decipher the jabberwocky that was thrown at it. I got up and decided to strike at the root of this annoyance- ask the office helper if Mr. S was going to come at all. Almost sadistically, or so I felt, he asked me to wait for another ten to fifteen minutes. (It goes without saying that time is often as elastic as bubble gum with lots of people of that stature if one is on the wrong side of the table.)
A few minutes later, Mr. S walked into his room messianically. A group of professors were waiting outside and the worst possible case would be a meeting with them preceding my opportunity to meet him. So I got up and presented the picture of a businessman eager to finish a deal. Hell no, I realize my casual clothes are a give-away of just another student who does not want to wait. After the formality of writing out my identity and purpose on a chit and passing it to Mr. S, I was allowed in. Mr. S surveyed me from head to toe. Nothing wrong was apparently found for he waited for me to open the conversation. Now for the raison detre for this post.
Me: Sir, there was this choice to be made on my preferences for an application. The topic, semiconductor materials and components, leaves some ambiguity as to whether it’s oriented towards the electrical side or the materials side. Since you’re the person in charge of handling the applications at IITM, I have come to you to have that clarified.
Mr. S: The words are crystal clear, semiconductor materials and components, what more do you want?
Me: Sir, I’m from the electrical department and I don’t want to end up with something to do with materials. ‘The words are crystal clear but I want to know whether it is a piezo-electric crystal (read electrical) or a lead-crystal (read materials).’
Mr. S: (his eyes widen at an opportunity while his body shrugs to indicate his disappointment with the general state of affairs.) That’s the problem with you guys. Why are you so rigid about what you want? (Meanwhile, he realizes that I would be better off sitting in front of him if he is really going to unleash a sermon.) Take a seat.
Me: Thank you. It’s not that way, Sir…
Mr. S: You see, it is not always possible to get what you want. (‘I see the point, Sir…’) You cannot be so choosy. It is anyway a general problem with IITians. It’s a ‘disease’.
(I gasp… what a word! None of its synonyms come close to the starkness associated with this word.)
Mr. S: This is the trouble with students coming from single-child affluent families as is the rule now. It’s only that class of the society that can afford the exorbitant costs of coaching institutes. You know… Ramiah, Kota and other places…
Me: (Smelling a chance to get out of this mess) But, Sir, I didn’t attend a coaching institute. (I prudently hide the absence of any siblings as if it were sacrilege. After all, I intend to convey to him that this talk is not meant for me.)
Mr. S: That doesn’t matter. It hold true for most IITians. You might be an exception. What I tell you now is with regard to the general student population.
(My hopes of liberation fall with the last of those words.)
Mr. S: Students scarcely hold any respect for the professors. (‘To be frank, Sir, the respect I had for you is in free fall right now.’) They realize only after they go out of the institute that their attitude doesn’t pay in the world outside.
(He, at this point of time, realizes that his subject looks thoroughly defeated and confused, which I was.)
Mr. S: Don’t worry too much. (‘Sir, I’m past it now’) It’s only that observing the ossified mindsets that students have, I have taken it upon myself to try and disseminate this message to as many students as possible. (Do I feel like a cruel joke was played on me? Yes I do. But I’m a really conscientious chap and will do my bit to propagate your message from my little nook of cyberspace.)
Mr. S: Anyway, I don’t think I can give you more information than what you already know. (Do I feel like time was warped onto itself in defiance of physical laws? Yes I do. But I’m a really conscientious chap and will maintain that I got something out of the whole episode)
Mr. S: There’s this e-mail id and you might try to get more information from. I must warn you though that the German professor may not understand English. (This is the straw that breaks the camel’s back)
He then proceeded to tell me how to write the letter, how to appear sufficiently respectful and such sort. I put on the pretence of taking all that in…
The ordeal is now lodged in some indelible corner of my memory and I look back on this afternoon of mine and don’t know what to make of it. More so, because the e-mail id, which was the only thing I could irrefutably say was something I got out of the whole charade, was with me even before I went to him. Probably, the idea of using ‘probability’ to make the best of one’s time makes some sense after all. In almost all ‘probability’, my visit there was going to blow in my face…maybe this…maybe that. I don’t have the heart to take the reader further on a tour of tripe anymore.

*The post tries to maintain some neutrality as far as identities go. If you insist let DAc stand for ‘Dogma of the Anti-cortical’

Dream on!

2006-05-20T05:58:00.000-07:00

Enough has been said and written about the role of dreams in sculpting a ‘success’ for an individual or even for that matter a nation. Though I am not sure whether the exhortation to dream includes the license to day-dream, there cannot be any trace of doubt about the ability of dreams to awaken the creativity of the mind’s eye and galvanize the body to act in the desired direction. It is, by definition, something removed from the realities of the world, harsh or otherwise and hence necessitates movement from one state of existence to another. Unfortunately, in our haste of getting to the dream double quick, most of us hardly spend any thought at all on what path we embark upon to realize the dreams. Wait a minute…. maybe we do-How short is the path??
In this context, I would like to share the disturbing message one gets from the movie ‘Requiem for a Dream’ directed by Darren Aronofsky. This gripping and indelibly chilling movie is about an aging widow and three unremarkable youngsters whose lives go on a devastating downward spiral of no return when in the pursuit of their dreams their obsessions consume them. The lonely widow gets a phony phone call (pun intended) promising her an appearance on a television show. She fantasizes getting into a gorgeous red dress she had worn for her son’s graduation. To her dismay, she no longer can fit into it owing to her bloated waistline. Appearing on the TV show and dazzling the TV audience becomes an idée fixe and she starts on diet pills. But the uncorking of the diet pills sounds the death knell for her aspirations in life. Elsewhere her son along with his girl-friend and a chum steps into the perilous world of drug dealing to earn some quick buck and realize the ‘American Dream’. Fair-weather prosperity shrouds their reason and they don’t see the storm clouds gathering in the distance. Bit by bit their drug-addiction forces them to tear apart their dreams with mind-numbing (pun unintended) efficiency. Going more into the ending would be spoiling the experience for those who intend to watch it. Suffice to say that as the name suggests it is indeed a funeral set to really haunting music by Clint Mansell.
Although the motif for the movie is drug-addiction the message one gets from the movie is more profound if the ‘addiction’ is extended to anything obsessive one gets ‘hooked’ onto with immediate sensual pleasures alone in mind. Bribes and kick-backs are the first obsessions that come to mind when you take up politicians and bureaucrats. In particular, Gautham Goswami’s experience is something that needs mention. Less spectacular
cases are unearthed on a daily basis in the media. Moving onto other domains of activity, bankrupt industries like Enron stand testimony to how deep the fall can be for large enterprises. The case of the disgraced army top-brass who sought to win awards by a burlesque of bravery is pretty recent. Needless to quote plagiarism (The ‘poetic’ justice meted to Kavya) and academic debauchery (the stem-cell research discovery by a South Korean researcher comes to mind). Andy Warhol’s ‘fifteen minutes of fame’ could not have had a truer meaning in this age of instant heroes and exposed celebrities. Coming to our student lives, cribbing answers in examinations readily comes across as a habit that turns difficult to kick later. The list goes on. This big wide world has enough things that can turn into obsessions for the none-too-impregnable human mind.
Most obsessions take root in the human psyche when it seeks to find a shortcut out of the normal course of life where some effort is needed to obtain the rewards that we have a natural propensity to crave for. However, one of the main faculties of the human mind that separates us from the ‘lesser creatures’ is the ability to postpone immediate self-gratification in anticipation of more fulfilling rewards in the future. But as with most of our evolutionary acquirements it is not perfectly developed or perhaps never can be. In contrast, the instinct for survival, or being less basal, the instinct to get the job done by whatever means runs strong in almost all of us. Likewise, the desire for ‘pleasure on tap’ is primordial. This leads us often to think of the ends as justifying the means howsoever ugly they may be. This has been so ingrained in our culture of late that it could be held responsible for most of the evils the country has to grapple with today.
To come back to the moot point, many individuals who choose what appears to be the easy path over the harder path do it with the belief that they can get away with it. The prick of the conscience is short-lived and with the increasing repetition of the offending act it fades away. Conscience, after all, has a breaking point. But what happens when the dream they have sowed in the mind, watered with their misdeeds in the name of the fruits expected later, comes crashing down blighted as it is by the tainted water that fed it? This may not always happen but at least living with a diseased tree and rotten fruit becomes inevitable. Alas, it might be too late to plant another seed!
Enough of pessimism! That is hardly what the doctor can prescribe for anyone. What is needed is the courage to follow the inner voice through the labyrinth of life’s challenges while following our dreams. The path may not
me easy and there would be temptations strewn along the side-walk and even hoardings inveigling us to use the cross-roads masquerading as short-cuts. But once we have achieved the dream through a path we can proclaim as right without a pang of the conscience the joy is ours to savor. May all our dreams come true in a manner we can be proud of!

Getting mushy.....

2006-03-31T02:59:00.000-08:00

She was the best love I had in my brief life so far. I had thought nothing on heaven or earth could part us. Dreams were built about our life together.
There was so much meaning in her eyes. The unmistakable charm in her dulcet words could lure even the most unsuspecting of men, or so I thought. She had a lineage that would have put any royalty to shame, enriched as it was by the great deeds of those who left their mark on her. But that didn’t come in the way of our relationship because I wasn’t one to be intimidated by that aura.
I must admit though that it was with some trepidation and a bit of compulsion (It will clarify itself later) that I approached her. Initially rebuffed and confused, it was through a savior who had known her really well that I began to understand her better. It is said you know that a relationship has really blossomed when silence turns comfortable. But silence was always preceded by ruminations and discussions whose profundity is beyond these mundane posts. She surely had a way of explaining all the events that affected our lives. Our relationship drank from the Pierian Spring and matured into a tree.
It came as a jolt to me then when things came to a pass where we had to go to different places to continue our journey. I seriously considered giving up the opportunity I had earned through years of assiduous work and joining her. But relatives and friends, and to my surprise the savior himself, advised me against doing so. They gave me the impression that it would be tantamount to insanity to turn down such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (I seriously doubt the last term even to this day, though the recent changes in the pattern of admission to this institute constitute a welcome movement towards it). She herself seemed indifferent. She probably knew that there would be enough guys to keep her company. Besides I had done nothing spectacular to win her over, this in large part owing to the rather late relationship coupled with the limited resources that I had to contend with in the area I hail from.
And so we went in different directions. We promised to keep in touch with each other and we did succeed in doing so for a year. Then things took a turn for the worse with the demands of the academic straight-jacket coming in the way. I came to think I could forget her and go ahead with my own dreams.
It was with this mindset that I decided to turn my back on her. She was offering herself to me in the package of physics minor. But I thought that the curate’s egg was not worth it. The kind of physics I treasure was present only in one course and the rest , I both heard and felt, was applied physics being taught in some of the most insipid ways imaginable-pardon me if I sound harsh to those who do not agree with me. Thus physics was relegated to the second choice with a slim chance of my first choice not being given to me.
But life is not so simple, is it? It turns out that, while my minor stream is not yet known for sure, I don’t find it easy to take her out of my mind (I must thank someone for getting me to think seriously on this). And so I embark on this tight-rope walk of balancing my interests in my major (Electrical) and physics (my first love and probably my best). As Neils Bohr famously put it: Prediction is difficult, especially if it is about the future.

Of rituals and righteousness

2006-02-05T08:16:00.000-08:00

This one was long overdue. The very fact that this post is put up indicates how strongly I feel about it. The motivation for this post comes from an event in the last week of December.
It was the ‘house-warming ceremony’ (more familiarly perhaps grihapravesham) for our new house. Almost inappropriately, I felt a sense of dread and indifference simultaneously. Indifference because I have believed that these rituals are as superfluous as things can get. The dread because I had to put on a veneer of enjoying the ceremony while wondering all the while whether I was in Hades or not. I kept telling myself that things would turn out to be better than I anticipated. As so well brought out in the movie ‘Memento’, we all lie to ourselves for surreal gratification. In this case reality was far worse than I could imagine.
When a triumvirate of pot-bellied priests reached our temporary residence, I knew ‘it’ had begun. Something or the other was always missing for some or the other worship. Damn.., why couldn’t the intransigent priests manage with whatever was available and be done with it?The ‘code of conduct’ mandated ridiculous restrictions the way even mundane stuff was to be dealt with. The obligation to be sensitive to those around made me docile. Then the ‘homa’s * began and got the lachrymose glands working overtime. I had always thought that entering a new house was a joyous affair far from the ‘tearful’ affair it turns out to be with these rituals. I had to keep rubbing my eyes (no pun intended) to convince myself that it was after all a ceremony for the well-being of everyone (was it?). Finally after what seemed like eternity the ceremonies got over and it was time for more pot-bellied and bare-chested and occasionally even hirsute (a deadly combo, trust me!) Brahmins to serve you lunch (or was it ‘prasadam’). The only saving grace was that my parents usually excused my rebelliousness providing me an avenue for letting off steam.
I would be misleading you if I gave you the impression that I am an atheist or agnostic or some such sort. My near unshakable respect for and, to a significant extent, practice of the fundamental tenets on which the magnificent edifice of Hinduism is built would, I presume, give me the authority to say a thing or two about the way it is currently being followed. I am humble enough to acknowledge alternative points of view.
The raison d’etre for any religion is to offer solace to the human mind whose restlessness can know no bounds. The objectives of preserving morality or organizing populations are only spin-offs. The religions surviving today are testimony to this. Rituals come in to reinforce the tenets central to religion. When they become a rigmarole whose primary objective is to give someone the feeling that by merely performing a rite he has purged himself (the other sex is not excluded) of all wrong-doings or evil-influences-not that I believe in them, again, they reduce to a parody of all that religion should be. Sadly, this is the current state of affairs.
True Hinduism, though I admit this is subjective, when practiced would give everyone the will to surmount any challenge in life, achieve what was previously thought impossible, reach a plane of living where no material occurrence can deny bliss. Bliss, the elusive elixir, is after all what most of us are after, consciously or unconsciously.
(Please bear in mind that the post does not intend to offend anyone who holds the rituals highly. If it makes the reader reflect on the 'utility' of rituals and their realtion to religion and culture, I have achieved my aim)

On cloud 'Ten'

2005-12-20T09:24:00.000-08:00

The third semester has drawn to a virtual close with most of the grades being declared. We, as students, look forward to or dread the ‘symbols of proficiency’ as rewards for the effort or the lack of it during the semester. Some wear smiles of success while a few others start soul-searching. A few others adopt a ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude. I must state here that, in my experience, the last category is rather superfluous, for most who profess to that category are internally as much concerned over the grades as anyone else. The Bhagavad-Gita has not yet made such an impact in the country of its origin.
I have my share of the ups and downs of the institute’s much despised yet pretty effective relative grading. After hitting a rather discomfiting and possibly discouraging trough in the first semester, I came to realize that a change of approach was necessary. Failure, particularly when it hits you the hardest, gives you the opportunity to stare at defeat in the face and understand what needs to be done to get away from it. It teaches you not to chase success but only excellence. The former is something pretty difficult to define in the paradigm of relative grading. But the latter is something very tangible and readily digestible. As some poet put it, ‘There is no ecstasy parallel to that got when you lie on the battlefield exhausted and victorious’. The victory is according to me always personal. If you have the satisfaction of having given the battle everything you possibly could have, that is ‘personal victory’. This is independent of the outcome and hence helps you come to grips with reality better.
Coming to more mundane stuff, the best thing about the third semester was that I didn’t have to attend the workshop in the most odious of uniforms for the drill of having to chip, file, press, turn and so on (is there any end to it at all!). The drudgery had been compounded by the fact that it had been my undoing in the first semester. I got a ‘decent’ A-grade in the second semester after what I thought was dedication to physical labor that I had never ever displayed before in my life (much to the disdain of my father) and never might display again. Nonetheless, I gave more than a serious thought to burning the workshop uniform in the hostel quadrangle. Possibly what prevented me was beginning the course ID 120 on Ecology and Environment on the wrong foot even before the first lecture began. After all it didn’t seem to be in harmony with the environment, did it? It later turned out that the course did deserve the dread quite a few of us had in out minds after the ID 110(its elder brother) ‘experience’. The physics lab, where you get an ‘A’ even if you leave no stone unturned to impress the guides there, was not there either. The lack of a physics (theory) course was the only thing I could cavil about. But as they say, you cannot have everything.
The semester, I realized, demanded greater application than I initially thought. All my dreams of an easy-paced semester where I could devote more time to extra-curricular activities came tumbling down. Particularly, after a rather rude wake-up call in EMC (short for electromagnetic circuits), I realized the need to make some corrections in my approach because there was really nothing much I could do on the studying front. Getting six on twenty in a quiz where the class average was twelve and half a dozen blokes got the maximum was not something that could sink in easily. Clearly, with nothing inadequate on the preparation part by way of studying, it had to be the ’approach’. Comporg (short for computer organization and design) with its leviathan syllabus was the only exception to the rule. The most important achievement, if there is anything at all, was conquering the ‘inner demons’. That included not letting my confidence slip. Slowly but surely, things began to fall in place. I was set for the consistent performance in the end-semesters that the results have so far verified.
While looking forward to a possible ‘perfect ten’, something prized by any sincere IITian, I realize that one of the worst enemies for anyone is complacence. I realize, more importantly, that grades are after all only one of the several things that I should try to excel at in my stay at the institute. Grades are indubitably vital but for someone with my kind of aspirations independent work approaching research is the lifeline of true progress. Of course, I intend to hone my skills in the extracurricular stuff and such sort. Nonetheless, better time-management remains the key to doing all I intend to do in what is turning out to be a truly wonderful journey of self-discovery at this premier institute of engineering education.
PS- This was written before I got to know of AM110 grades. I did get a ten this sem. The inordinate delay from the ApMech department did rankle my nerves. However, all's well that ends well. This certainly did.