Basket Case

There are some moments which make you realize the power of perspective in how we see the world and these moment catch you at most unexpected of times. A new computer science campus in under construction on campus. It is right next to the Newell Simon hall where my dept is situated currently. At the ground floor, there is a huge window which looks down upon the ditch where the new building is coming up. Few days ago, I decided to eat my lunch sitting right next to the huge window looking at the beautiful scene outside what with all the snow covering almost everything. There were some big machines working in at the site. From where I was sitting, I could only see their front part and not the main cabin where the driver sits. They were moving soil and filling up some part of the ditch. I looked at them for some time and after few minutes it was so easy to believe that they are some huge odd looking autonomous things working on their own. I have read a lot of science fiction in which machi...

I am not sure if there exists any soul on this earth who actually enjoys having a cake all over his/her face on his/her b'day. Still year after year the trend goes on as is evident by the mandatory presence of a "caked face" snap in all the photo albums on Orkut and elsewhere. If nobody likes it (as was indicated by a quick survey I conducted on some of my friends and found only one supporter), then the question is why does it go on? Well I have some theories as always :-) 1. It is encouraged by those who don't like cake. So this way they can bring out all their hidden contempt for cake and do the worst that they can do to it i.e. waste it. 2. A slightly less skeptic view says that people are trying to take revenge for what happens to them on their b'days. So it is a vicious cycle in which we are loosing both fun and cake. 3. A more rational explanation by my sister. She says that people do not like to have it on their own face but they really enjoy putting it...

No more poetry, I promise. For sometime at least :-). I have spend at least a dozen hours in last one week going around orkut randomly. Well, not randomly, there are so many interesting games you can make out of randomness. Like you visit the top most friend of the person you are visiting now and see if you come back to familiar circle or not. If you do, you find out a new way of connections that you didn't know existed before. Or you can surf going only through girls/boys profiles which at time can hit a road block. While doing all this, I see patterns, very vague ones and in almost all the cases, false ones owing to the nature of human brain which does a selecting strengthening of evidence. But they are interesting anyway. One of those observations is that a good looking person also seems to have on average, good looking (or photogenic if you want to be technically correct) friends. Another one is that often people who have not put up their own picture in profile , will have more...

नये जौहरी नयी अदा वाले, तौल कर भाव बताने वाले। सब मिले हैं हमे ज़माने मे, यार अहसान जताने वाले। दिल खुदा का है यार का मेरे, और अंदाज़ ज़माने वाले। दिल की कालिख है आंख का काजल, वो हैं आंखों से पिलाने वाले। नाम कहने को है अभागा पर, हैं सब अंदाज़ दिवानों वाले।

This is the long promised article only edition. This one comes from Pakistan, lamenting the bad condition of Madarsa education . Pakistan again, this time a view in favor of the recent step of making English compulsory . Sounds very much like the recent argument of Prasad about English for Dalits. Continuing on the common thread of Urdu, condition of Urdu press in India is not something to brag about. There is hardly a Urdu news paper that commands a voice at national level or even in a sufficiently big region. Moreover, it works both ways. While Urdu papers carry mostly Muslim centric perspective of problems, Hindi press lacks it to a large extent. Here is an attempt to start a Hindi paper with a Muslim perspective . Not sure why this article is called " Hegemony of Hindi " and it is not even well written but it notes an interesting point about mother tongue reporting in census data. Read with a grain of salt. Marathi or Kokani ? As the article says ; India is home to extra...

डरते हैं ना साकी को हम दिलदार बना लें, मय को ना ग़म-ए-दिल का चारागार बना लें। बस्ती से जो गुज़रा तो मुसाफ़िर ने की हसरत, हम भी ठहर के अपना एक घरबार बना लें। है चुक गया इंसान के दिल से खुदा का नूर, कहने को रहे बुत चलो दो चार बना ले । दे दो सभी के हाथों मे कलमें-ओ-किताबें, जुल्म-ओ-सितम से लडने का हथियार बना लें। ता उम्र बावफ़ा रहीं हैं हमसे अभागा, मायूसियों को ही न क्यों हम यार बना लें ।

What a wonderful way of celebrating Republic Day ! I just loved the concept and the wonderful entries. Surely my try out list is a little longer now. :-) A happy and thoughtful Republic day to everybody. May you become a more responsible citizen in the year to come.

Call centers and BPOs are the poster material for many people these days who firmly believe that English is the way to go forward. I have been trying to see how far their stand goes. To me the whole hoopla about the necessity of learning English seems more like a rather short sighted view. the BPO and the call center industry primarily serves US and UK now a days. Together they constitute a very small part of the world population. Two of the major developing countries of the world, China and India still have only a rather small portion of their population using English for their daily transactions. The huge number of English speaking population that are reported are a little misleading in this respect. Consider that India is estimated to have 35 crore English users. For example my father would qualify as a English user since he is able to use it on purpose but he is not comfortable using it in his daily life. Now consider that the developing economies of these countries are creating a ...

I hold you as a thing enskyed and sainted; By your renouncement an immortal spirit, And to be talked with in sincerity, As with a saint. Measure for Measure, 1. 4 USA remains one of the only 3 countries which do not use Metric System of measurement. For somebody coming in from a country that uses metric system, it can be a real pain in the ass. So temperatures are in Fahrenheit, distances are in miles, weights are in pounds and liquids in gallons and I am in trouble. So how do you decide how difficult would it be to walk home from a grocery store which is 1 mile away, carrying 4 pounds of potatoes and 1 gallon milk when the temperature is 60 degree Fahrenheit. I would rather walk and find out. Even now it is so easy to get lulled into the sense of closeness when suddenly a factor 1.6 pops up. Now I don't have any pro or anti metric stand since I haven't found any huge benefits of one o...

Many overdue posts lurk in the darkness while I sleep and dream the Czech Dream . Journey of a nation from a communist past to Capitalistic future seen from the eyes of two cynics, I mean in a good way, the kind of cynics every society needs. How the people depraved for years become such a easy target for consumerism - that endless world of cheap deals, huge super stores and feel good experience and how the media plays a associate while claiming innocence. An exchange between the directors and ad agency guys who are a part of the whole game is very telling: "Maybe you filmmakers lie to people, but we advertisers don't!" However the film is a very clever one. Not because of the prank but how it pretends to hold up a mirror to a consumerist society but along the way slyly puts the partners in the game, the advertising agency, the media production companies, the market survey companies under scanner. It is them who are the real subject of the movie and the whole prank is ju...

This dose of LangDig is going to be a pretty big one, owing in part to my extended vacation and in part to the accumulating bits from every edition. I have tried to organize the clips in categories so that they are easy to follow. Some of these stories are now around 1 month old but better late then never ! Also it is broken in two parts, this one being news and the second one being of general articles. Political : Let us start by looking at the reactions to the Marathi being compulsory in all the schools. CBSE is not amused . IBN tries to carry out a debate over the recent spat of make-compulsory steps taken in Karnataka and Maharashtra and when Congress has done it, can Bala Saheb be far behind ? Taking a clue from the neighbors, Andhra Govt is considering making sign boards in Telugu compulsory . In a function organized to award Gidugu Smaraka Puraksaram-2006 to C Dharma Rao , who has done lot of work to bring up Telugu, Andhra Pradesh CM said that they will push harder to get cla...

also wants to have a say, not because it rejoices at the new year but because it sees everybody else rejoicing ! I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Take a bow for the new revolution Smile and grin at the change all around Pick up my guitar and play Just like yesterday Then I'll get on my knees and pray We don't get fooled again ! -- The Who, "Won't get fooled again !"

- Today, tomorrow, next week, next year - Somewhere a full stop. - The fear of death - Of a life again - Of never waking up - Of an endless wake - Of things words don't know of - Because we go to them in silence - On the floor of reason - The what ifs hang - Protected from love - walk we safe - And we count the years - One two and three - longing for insecurity - longing for no name - craving for loosing the me - Let this be the year - Let this be the day - Let this be the hour - To you I wish - Not conquest - But surrender ! Have a magical and most wonderful year !

The cake has been cut, the Orkut messages are raining, phone has done its own share of ringing and I am writing a blog post. In few hours from now, I would complete my 25 years of existence. Although 21 is the age at which you become adult in India for all practical purposes, 25 seem to be a landmark in its own right. So in Indian tradition, I am officially out of Brahmacharya part of my life and in US, I can now rent a car everywhere. Hardly sound like things to care for ! When we were young, we all dreamt of growing up. I think 25 is closest to the dream age to which every child wants to grow up. This is the point when you are supposed to have grown up and ready to take on the world. I feel like the life till now has been spend in a kind of preparation and now is the time to go ahead and do what you want. Irony is that in the last years of all the preparation you realize, you have taken the wrong road may be ! But as the Led Zeppelin said, Yes there are two paths you can go by but in...

Sorry for the long delay but somethings in life just cannot wait and semester end seems to be rather full of them. but back we are and here we go. Madras HC sees little use for Tamil without proper infrastructure being in place. This is in responce to Govt's move to make Tamil as the court language. In the education field, Kannada and Marathi are now compulsory in their respective states for 10th and 12th standard kids. It is not very clear is this is for state boards only or for ICSE and CBSE also. In Kashmir also, efforts are on to introduce Kashmiri in the private schools . Urdu medium schools in Delhi are not able to find Urdu speaking Science and Maths teachers and so students are having problems. Central Institute for English and Foreign Languages has been accorded University status . I hope now the research section on their website will come out of being " under construction ". After schools, it is sign boards in Karnataka . The national association of the Deaf...

Though it looks like there was no damage, it has left me feeling utterly insecure. Before entering any password I think twice what if he left a backdoor or Trojan or keylogger and would be back later to pick up all the goodies nicely stored in a file somewhere on my disk? Anybody having any ideas about detecting a Linux keylogger running, please get back to me. The only good part is that I actually saw it happened and so was able to get in the damage control mode immediately. When we came here, we were told that computing environment here is extremely hostile and that any vulnerability will be exploited within a day of being exposed. My VNC server could survive may be 10 hours. A look at the /var/log/messages shows consistent attacks on ssh every 4-5 hours. Living in the famous parts of IP namespace has its own disadvantages. And this happened when I was still trying to recuperate from the yesterday's misadventure with new Airtel call home service. I tried to register at their webs...

There are several interesting news stories from back home today, some of them good, some of them bad and depressing. The good news comes from my home town Lucknow. Lucknow University (LU) has long been a den of criminals of all kind of hues. There are student leaders there who are always in the jail. Due to the strong backing of the political parties, administration is hardly able to do anything. LU has gone down steadily in the quality of education. Now the current VC of LU has decided to take the bull by the horns. He has closed the university sine die and has suspended around 135 students with criminal records. This despite the hoopla in the assembly against him. No wonder a majority of the suspended students belong to SP, the ruling party and that head of SP, Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav was the most vocal critic of the VC, Dr. R P Singh. Anyone who knows the situation in LU would have to admire the courage required to do such a thing. You can read about it here , here and here . Spe...

Well, I must admit that I am given to the vice of over-dramatization but I take care to always have a premise ! So the question is, are you at a new blog or are you at the old blog? Should I welcome you or should I welcome you back? Is it "nayi botle me puraani sharab" ya "puraani botel me nayi sharab"? Nevermind as Kurt said, we have labels now and we will be putting them over everywhere so that nobody gets lost in this basket case ever again. But till that is done, you are advised to tread cautiously and heed to what I said in the first paragraph. I am given to over-dramatizations ! The track will be back in a short while !

This post is the last one on this blog. Blogspot has been a pretty good host but now it goes to where it belongs, hall of fame. Here comes Blogger 2, just in time for the new year party with all the new goodies ! Let's party !!

"Where is love? Where are dreams? Where is the bloody justice?" These are tough questions, questions which lurk just around the corner but we avoid asking them. Because facing them means questioning the most basic assumptions of our lives and then everything threatens to just fall apart. Not something we can afford to. Right? But what do you do when life forces you to ask these questions and refuses to answer? This is the point in the life of Mariola when we leave her at the end of the movie. The life has turned a full circle for her, she is back in her familiar surroundings, among friends and well wishers but what has changed is her. She is no longer the little princess who just wanted to be happy . The movie is the story of how that happens, how the psych of a simple polish girl is damaged beyond repair, how the heart is hurt beyond healing. A story that is not unique to Mariola but to thousands of girls all over the world who are pushed into flesh trade by those very hands...