The Misadventures of a Curious Character

You changed my world

2010-07-03T23:45:00.001+05:30

Inspired by Vinaya, I've attempted to capture a list of people who "changed my world", but probably don't know it. While such a list is necessarily self-serving (aren't all blog posts? :)), it's a nice opportunity to thank some people who have had significant influences upon me and have in a very real sense, made me who I am today. This isn't about my family members and friends - it is about people of the world, past and present, who have created something that really connected with me - and left me a changed person.

Aldous Huxley, for writing Brave New World - you shattered my naive ideas of morality and the meaning of civilization, and forced me to question things that I was afraid to question.
Pink Floyd - You opened up my mind to the possibilities of art within commercial music. The hours I spent pondering your heartfelt lyrics, hearing your melancholy tunes, and feeling the powerful emotions you expressed in both words and sound were a major part of my angst-ridden college years.
Sherlock Holmes - You will always be the master. You were brilliant, articulate, courageous, steadfast, and just human enough for us to feel connected to you. Poirot, we admire. House, we adore. The master, we bow down to.
Akira Kurosawa - You made many, many brilliant movies. You then made "Ran". You created poetry on film. You painted visuals with rich colours and richer emotions. You had me spellbound. Again.
James Gleick - You aren't the most famous or the best science writer of your generation, but you were the first of the best breed that I read. Your "Chaos" blew my mind. It made me want to learn, to explore this incredible world that I could reach out and touch. I spent hours writing and running fractal programs, staring with disbelief and awe, as incredible complexity arose from simplicity itself. I never looked the same way at Science or Math again.
P.G. Wodehouse - You made me laugh. You made me laugh hysterically. You made me laugh so hard, I was literally rolling on the floor, tears streaming out. You made Gussie Fink-Nottle (not Fitz-Wattle) give that speech while slightly 1 over the 8. You made Clarence Threepwood, ninth Earl of Emsworth put a scarab (Cheops, of the the third dynasty) absently into his pocket. You are the benchmark that anyone aspiring to the description "comic genius" is measured against.
Yes, Minister / Yes, Prime Minister - You are one of the most brilliantly conceived, written, developed and acted TV shows in the history of television. You elevated TV comedy into an art form. No wait, Monty Python did that a couple of decades before you. No matter. In the fullness of time, all things being considered, with deference to the facts, considering all implications, without putting too fine a point on it, you stand alone.
Monty Python - For your show. For your movies. For your audacity. For your decision to break all known rules of comedy (and then some). For the "old man in scene 24, which is a smashing scene, with some lovely acting".
The Coens - For The Dude. For writing some of the most inspired contrapuntal comic dialogue in a movie scene. For Marge Gunderson.
Hergé - For creating this wonderful world that I could escape into, again, and again. For Captain Archibald Haddock. For Syldavian mineral water. For Chang.
Frasier - For Maris. For treading the line between sophistication and slapstick with incredible precision. For making me respect the American way of life.
Richard Dawkins - Your words may hurt, but you speak the truth. You show us the wonder that is life, explain exactly how it works, and thereby make it even more wonderful.

Simon Singh Wins Landmark Libel Appeal

2010-04-16T23:38:00.007+05:30

In an important victory for science and free speech, The British Chiropractic Association has dropped its libel lawsuit against the popular science writer Simon Singh.

What happened was this: In 2008, Singh, the author of such books as Fermat's Last Theorem and The Code Book, wrote an article in The Guardian, accusing chiropractors of 'promotion of chiropractic to treat all sorts of conditions for which it is utterly useless', and lambasted the British Chiropractic Association for promoting "bogus" remedies.

Chiropractic, for those who haven't heard of it, is a kind of pseudo-medicine whose practitioners believe that "correcting" the spine and joints can cure ailments ranging from lower back pain to asthma, or even deafness! Not surprisingly, Chirporactic has about as much scientific credibility as say, Homeopathy (i.e. none beyond the placebo effect). Furthermore, Chiropractic has been demonstrated to be extremely dangerous and potentially fatal due to the inherent risk of manipulating the human spinal column.

Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence backing Singh's allegations (which he even quoted in his article), the BCA decided to go on the offensive, and sued Singh for libel.

Singh was now forced to contend with the archaic libel laws that exist in the United Kingdom (of which Simon Singh is a citizen), which make it prohibitively expensive and complicated for a defendant in a libel case. These laws effectively mean that a rich and powerful organization can easily bully even its legitimate scientific critics into submission, since the alternative for the defendant is a long, painstaking and costly trial in which he/she is saddled with the burden of proof.

In Singh's case, matters were not helped by an English High Court judge's ruling that Singh's use of the word "bogus" was libelous, since this meant that Singh would have to go to trial and prove that the BCA had had knowledge that their treatments didn't work, and had then falsely claimed otherwise. Obviously, this would prove a near-impossible task, for one, requiring Singh to establish the extent of the BCA's scientific knowledge. This ridiculous judgment also put at risk practically every scientific publication in the United Kingdom that happened to objectively question the credibility of an alleged scientific discipline.

Given these circumstances, it would have been easy for Singh to retract his article, and publish an apology to the BCA. However, in true journalistic and scientific spirit, and at great personal expense of time and money, Singh vowed to clear his name. Spurred on by a massive outpouring of support from intellectuals, celebrities, and the general public alike, Singh fought on, and on 1st April 2010, successfully appealed the High Court's decision. Less than a fortnight later, the BCA announced that it was dropping its libel case against Singh, ironically citing the high legal cost involved as its primary reason for doing so.

A delighted Singh meanwhile, had this to say:

"Moreover the current libel law still means that libel tourists can sue in London on spurious grounds, big companies can still bully lone journalists, we still lack a robust public interest defence and we still have an unfair burden of proof on writers. It is important to remember that another libel case involving medicine continues - Dr Peter Wilmshurst is a consultant cardiologist who is being sued for libel for raising serious concerns about the data relating to a new heart device. If Dr Wilmshurst loses his case then he will be bankrupted. It is ridiculous that a respected researcher such as Dr Wilmshurst, someone who has devoted his life to medicine, should be put under such pressure just for speaking his mind.

Our libel laws discourage doctors, scientists and journalists from speaking out. It is only when Peter has hopefully defended his libel case that I will be able to celebrate. It is only when English libel law has been reformed that I will be able enjoy today's victory. Unless our libel laws change urgently and radically, I will not be the last journalist hauled through the libel courts and who will have to face financial disaster and two years of hell simply for raising an important and valid matter of public interest."

Well said, Dr. Singh, and congratulations on your hard-fought win. This is a landmark victory for free speech and the first step towards protecting our right to scientific inquiry.

Lonely Planet on Madras

2009-10-17T08:49:00.009+05:30

Lonely Planet, while a generally good travel guide, has depicted my unique hometown in a rather unflattering light. What irked me when I read their article on Madras was the clearly partisan viewpoint that celebrates in other Indian cities the same deficiencies one sees in Madras.

Krish Ashok absolutely nails it when he lambastes the obvious bias in the article, and demonstrates that a similar article could be written about any of the large cities in India.

Allow me to add my own Rs 0.02 to his points.

Notes:

I use "Madras" instead of "Chennai", because no matter what the politicians say, that is how I will always identify my home town. I am however, forced to use the word "Chennaiite" to describe people like me, if only to avoid the once-inoccuous term "Madrasi" which has been forcibly turned into a pejorative by ignorant Northerners.
I recognize that people love their cities for different reasons. I may not prefer to live in certain cities mentioned in the LP article, but I promise not to diss them.

Madras is hot. Get used to it. A real Chennaiite jokes about the weather, owns one sweater for when he/she has to visit Delhi, and gets most of his/her work done in the morning and evening.
Tamil film stars are 'not that hot'. Let's see. In approximate chronological order, Waheeda Rehman, Vyjayantimala Bali, Hema Malini, Rekha, Sridevi, Meenakshi Seshadri, Padma Lakshmi. I must be missing something. The only other state that has contributed a comparable number of female headliners to the Hindi film industry must be West Bengal.
Madras lacks 'historical drama'. Ok, seriously? Madras may not be as old as Delhi is, but it has had a long, distinguished history of its own. It is home to several stunning temples, some of which are more than a thousand years old, and a culture and tradition that has flourished for much longer. It has also had some unique moments in modern Indian history, like being bombed during World War I (any schoolkid in Madras will tell you the name of the German ship that did it - The SMS Emden), being the final resting place of the apostle St. Thomas, featuring prominently in the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, among others.
Madras lacks the 'optimistic buzz' of Bangalore. We Chennaiites take that as a compliment. Perhaps this sense of realism comes from firm grounding in tradition. Our city grooms us such that we never lose touch with our roots, whether it is celebrating a traditional kolu during Navarathri, learning classical music and dance the traditional way, or even being polite. Madras chooses to assimilate influences into its culture, rather than let them replace what exists already. The strength of its culture also explains why for an Indian city, Madras has a surprisingly large foreign population. The Hindu for example, frequently showcases Russians, Japanese, Australians and Americans who origanally came to Madras to learn classical dance or music, and have since made Madras their permanent home.
Madras is difficult to get around in. Krish Ashok has already touched upon this, but let me reinforce that Madras has long boasted of one of the best (and cheapest) public bus systems in the country. Add to that an efficient multiple-route suburban train system, and the much awaited Chennai Metro, and you have a good model for public transport that other cities in India could take a leaf or two out of. Autorickshaws are another matter altogether, but the emergence of share autos (or tempos, if you prefer) and call-taxi services has somewhat relaxed their once firm grip on our purses.

Its problems notwithstanding, Madras is a wonderful city with plenty to offer, but only to those willing to partake of it. To all the others, we politely say "Thank you for coming. Please come again, and perhaps you will realize the magic of this place next time."

Edit (20/10/2009): Removed Vidya Balan from the list of Bollywood actresses of Tamil origin, since it turns out she's a Palakkad Iyer and not a Tamil Iyer.

Hobby-horse

2009-09-01T14:33:00.004+05:30

Warning: Poor, really poor, absolutely impecunious humour follows.

Q: What did the destructivist artist's two-year old son call him?
A: Dada!

An even more esoteric version that uses the same punchline:

Q: In the dark recesses of an avante-garde museum, a little urinal whispered something to the big urinal next to it. What?
A: Dada!

And so the descent into anarchy continues. Stop me when it stops making sense altogether.

P.S. I can sense the questions. Why "Hobby-horse"? Why a urinal? Why this post? The first two questions can easily be answered. The last question is one for the ages.

A (Self-)Balanced Diet

2009-08-22T18:55:00.005+05:30

Continuing the previous theme of festivals, geek humour and south Indian cultural references, here is something that struck me while contemplating yesterday's lunch (says something, doesn't it?):

Q: What's self-balancing, takes O(log n) for common operations, and consists primarily of vegetables and coconut oil?

A: An AViaL tree.

Happy Vinayaka Chaturthi.

For the benefit of our friends from north of the Vindhyas:
AVL Trees
Avial (I resent the insinuation that the dish is not an integral part of Tamil cuisine - we've clearly been eating this stuff for centuries)

Dvaitamu sukhama, Advaitamu sukhama?

2009-08-14T09:46:00.005+05:30

Yesterday was Janmashtami. In keeping with the Tamil (South Indian?) tradition, my Mom always draws a set of little white footprints leading from the door to the puja room, which is supposed to signify Lord Krishna coming into our house to accept our offering of sweets and delicacies.

This past year, our house has undergone some renovations which for various reasons, have resulted in us having two entrances to the house instead of one. Hence, my Mother strove to cover all bases, and drew two sets of footprints, one from each door, meeting near the puja room.

You can tell that I'm not touched by the festive spirit, since the first thing that struck me when I entered the house was: "In addition to his normal, particle nature, I now see that Lord Krishna also exhibits wave nature".

As always, if you don't get it, consider yourself lucky.

And don't even get me started on the title of this post.

On the Borel-Cantelli lemma

2009-02-09T10:56:00.004+05:30

A recent chat session with one of my most jobless (in every sense of the word) friends went like this:

Him: Prove the Borel Cantelli Lemma
Me: Cogito, ergo sum. Q.E.D.
Him: doesn't prove anything
Me: proves everything
Me: Alternatively, by trivially extending the Carter-Bogdanovich Hyperplane section theorem to include heteromorphic Giandellian spaces, one arrives, by a series of obvious reductions (carefully handling the occasional Jovikechian singularity) to the Borell-Winspolsky theorem. I won't insult your intelligence by pointing out that the Borell Cantelli Lemma is if anything, a weaker statement of a small part of this theorem.

Astute readers would have figured out by now that there is no such thing as the Carter-Bogdanovich Hyperplane section theorem.

(Still more astute readers will realize that if there were, I'd be a mathematical genius. Proof by contradiction.)

My "proof" was therefore nothing more than pseud-sounding gibberish that was the result of being highly caffeinated on a Monday morning at work. However, what struck me when I took another look at what I'd written, was the subconscious influence of things around me.

For instance, Ghirardelli (not Giandelli) is one of my favourite brands of chocolate, and I've been having a lot of their dark chocolate with mint filling in recent times.

Peter Bogdanovich is a legendary Hollywood director, and I've been trying to find The Last Picture Show on DVD for a while now. People who know me will have no difficulty in believing that I almost always have movies on my mind.

Winspolsky was an obvious amalgamation of Windows and Spolsky, the latter being of course, Joel Spolsky whose Joel on Software blog I read as part of my morning routine.

I haven't quite figured out how I came up with Jovikechian, but my friend hypothesized that I must have been subconsciously thinking of the planet Jupiter. Seems plausible, as I was reading about the possibility of life on Europa only last week.

It's interesting to see the kind of meta-semantics that emerge when you let the mind wander. In retrospect, my apparently random statement seems to have been a sort of exercise in free association.

P.S.
For those of you who are interested, the Borell-Cantelli lemma is an interesting result in probability, which seems to be a sort of converse of what is popularly known as the Infinite Monkey Theorem.

Shame

2008-12-01T10:20:00.008+05:30

Pseudo-journalists like Rajdeep Sardesai, who think that the television media (meaning himself) should be appreciated for exploiting viewers for 62 straight hours, bombarding them with foolhardy speculation, irresponsible allegations and rampant fear-mongering, all set to tear-jerking music, when all people wanted from them was honest reporting.

A government which is trying to distance itself from the morally vacuous, quintessential Indian netas whom it designated to protect and serve us all, who were appointed not for their abilities, but for their loyalty to the party.

A Home minister devoid of any shred of human and moral decency, who finally deems it fit to resign under pressure from the said government, but did not feel the necessity to do so after any of the nine terror attacks in the last six months.

An opposition which projects itself as the champion of the masses and our only defender agains terrorism, but whose own record includes Godhra where more than a thousand people officially died, the 2001 attack on our parliament, the Akshardham horror, and whose head was personally responsible for the blackest day in modern India.

A vitriolic, hate-spraying fascist who claims to work for the good of Mumbaikars, but who is unsurprisingly toothless in their hour of greatest peril.

An unsolicited text message that I received on Saturday, which read "The tragic events in Mumbai remind us all of how precious life is. Call XXXXXX for information on life insurance policies."

Perhaps what we lack most as a country, is a sense of shame.

Installing Compiz on Hardy Heron with KDE

2008-11-06T15:08:00.007+05:30

Who doesn't like cool desktops?

I first tried setting up the Compiz compositing manager for Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) earlier this year, but gave up after encountering far too many errors. A few days ago, I attempted the same with Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and found to my pleasant surprise that the installation was a comparative breeze.

These were the steps I followed, collected from various tutorials on the web.

Caveat #1: The actual steps ~~may~~ will differ depending on the version of Ubuntu/Kubuntu you are using and the graphics card on your machine. Google is your best friend.
Caveat #2: As of this day, Compiz is still relatively unstable, despite the huge number of improvements that have been made to it. Therefore, proceed only if you don't mind the occasional screen freeze, slow response or BSOD.

This is the configuration I used:
OS: Kubuntu Hardy Heron (v8.04, kernel version 2.6.24-16-generic)
Hardware: Dell Optiplex 745 with Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6400 @ 2.13GHz, 2GB RAM
Graphics: ATI Technologies Inc RV516

With that out of the way, let's get started.

The first thing you need to do is replace your X server with Xgl in your /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc file.

Install Xgl:

# sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl

Edit /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc and replace a line that looks like this:

ServerCmd=/usr/bin/X -br

with this:

ServerCmd=/usr/bin/Xgl :1 -fullscreen -ac -accel glx:pbuffer -accel xv:pbuffer
# Just so we don't lose it, the old command was ServerCmd=/usr/bin/X -br

Now restart your (KDM) session and hopefully, you will have Xgl running instead of X.

# ps -eaf | grep Xgl
root      5128  5121  4 11:54 ?        00:01:12 /usr/bin/Xgl :1 -fullscreen -ac -accel glx:pbuffer -accel xv:pbuffer :0 vt7 -auth /var/run/xauth/A:0-lpQc9n

Note: If you have any problems running Xgl, you will need to dig a little deeper to figure out what to do. Google with your graphics card info. In the worst case, you can switch back to X by reverting the kdmrc change that we did above and restarting your session.

If you find the performance unacceptably slow as I did, add a line enabling some options in your "device" section in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Option      "RenderAccel"           "true"
Option      "backingstore"          "true"

After restarting your session, you should see things work considerably faster.

Now, install compiz itself:

# sudo apt-get install compiz compiz-kde

To enable translucence and shadows, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following lines if they are not present already.

Section "Extensions"
Option      "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

Also edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add this line to the "device" section:
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"

Install compizconfig-settings-manager to help you configure compiz:

# sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

Finally, run compiz:

# compiz --replace &

If you've successfully installed compiz, what you probably want to see is the famous "desktop cube" effect shown in the first screenshot. To enable this, run "ccsm"

# ccsm &

Now under the category "Desktop", enable "Desktop Cube" and "Rotate Cube". Then under "General Options>Desktop Size", set "Horizontal Virtual Size" to 4 and "Vertical Virtual Size" to 1. Press Ctrl+Alt and drag your left mouse button, and impress your friends and colleagues!

If you want compiz to start automatically the next time you login, add a kde startup command:

echo "compiz --replace" > ~/.kde/Autostart/startcompiz.sh

There are several very cool effects listed in ccsm - be sure to also check out "Cube Reflection", "3D Windows", "Window Decoration", "Ring Switcher" and "Negative". Here are some samples:

Window Switcher (similar to the photo browser on the iPhone):

A "ring-type" window switcher:

The "Desktop Wall" effect:

Terror leads yet again to "Security Theater"

2008-09-18T17:55:00.006+05:30

In the wake of the horrific serial blasts in New Delhi, the Indian government is considering making unsecured wireless networks illegal.

Excerpt from the article:

"If you do not lock your car and expect the police to protect it, that is going a bit too far. That's how it is with Wi-Fi," Mumbai's police commissioner Hasan Gafoor said on Tuesday at the launch of a citizen awareness program in Mumbai."

The problem is that securing everybody's wireless networks is not as easy as asking them to lock their cars. We wish it were, but it just isn't. In fact, it is extremely unlikely that such a law will increase the security and accountability of our wireless networks.

For example, I’m sure most people and even law enforcement personnel are unaware of how vulnerable WEP is. Googling for "how to crack WEP" will land you several tutorials and ready made software that will crack a WEP-"secured" network within a minute. Yet, this is what most people use to secure their wireless networks even today. Will the new law mandate the use of WAP2 instead of WEP, and can this ever be practically enforced? Can you really picture a newspaper article telling people that they should switch to WAP2 because it is resistant to collision and replay attacks? Who would possibly care?

Secondly, even hypothetically, if all the wireless networks in the country were secured with WAP2, what is to stop terrorists from walking into an Internet Browsing Cafe (there’s one on every street corner in Indian cities)? Will the police order all Internet Cafe owners to verify ids of all their customers? This couldn’t possibly work, not only because Internet Cafe owners are notoriously lax in monitoring the usage of their facilities, but also because it is near-impossible to enforce practically.

Let's optimistically give our law enforcement agencies a little more credit and assume that both the above laws were implemented perfectly. A terrorist will then choose to send a terror email using the free wireless networks provided by airports, universities and coffee shops around the country (while possibly enjoying a nice cup of coffee).

The sad fact to recognize is that there are just too many holes to plug in trying to secure public internet access. Such a large number, that it is a futile exercise to even try to do it without wasting horrendous amounts of money and causing anything from annoyance to actively inconveniencing the everyday lives of the peaceful, law-abiding 99.999% of our population. Isn't this what terrorists are trying to achieve in the first place?

The temptation to come up with such knee-jerk security "guidelines" is what security experts like Bruce Schneier have long cautioned against. Schneier defines "security theater" as something designed to make people feel secure, without actually doing much to really make them secure. People fall for this because their fear usually overrides their rationality. They are also willing to put up with a surprisingly large amount of nonsense as long as they can justify it in their minds as "I can afford to suffer this, because it makes me secure".

All the money and time spent implementing these foolhardy schemes would be better spent funding our terribly under-staffed intelligence organizations. This way, we can help them do anti-terror work - infiltrate terror organizations, locate their sources of funding and most importantly, stop nascent terrorists. But that's hard to do and uninteresting if done right. Scaring people and making a show of providing security is far easier and makes for a good TOI cover story.

Zealous Autoconfig (Today's xkcd comic)

2008-04-28T13:44:00.004+05:30

This is both hilarious and scary.

It doesn't say so in this comic strip, but with more and more of our private information being made available on social networks like Orkut and MySpace, we are setting ourselves up for a number of attacks ranging from identity theft to online bullying. How long will it be before our personal safety could be threatened?

Link to source image: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/zealous_autoconfig.png

P.S. Read xkcd - it's probably the funniest, most original geek comic strip on the Web today.

A sight for sore eyes

2008-04-24T11:06:00.005+05:30

Have you been to Chennai in the past few weeks? It's still as hot as ever, but it seems cleaner, airier and there seem to be more trees around than you've noticed before. Traffic moves better through its now wider arterial roads, and your eyes aren't sore after a drive along Mount Road.

All thanks to the Supreme Court's verdict, upholding the Madras High Court's ban on illegal and dangerous hoardings in the city. Somehow, the powerful lobby of the hoardings industry has been defeated by the will of the people and the support of a few politicians. Perhaps this is just a populist stunt, but if it means that you can travel through the city without having your senses bludgeoned by unsightly commercial propaganda, it is almost certainly justifiable.

Filmmaker Suresh Menon thinks that it is our duty to acknowledge good deeds like these with the same fervour with which we assail the bad ones. He has, therefore, launched a non-political initiative to say "Thank you" to
the Chief Minister.

So go to http://www.thankyouchiefminister.com/ and leave a note of thanks for cleaning up our beloved city just a little bit.

Put a socket in it

2008-04-10T13:53:00.004+05:30

A network application opens several TCP connections.

Being a devoutly Christian network application, it then goes to the nearest church. It enters the confession room, looks at the priest through the screen; eyes drenched with tears and remorse, and says "Forgive me father, for I have SYNned!"

Ack, ack, ack!

Moral: Wireshark takes a long time to open packet capture files, leaving me with far too much free time.

P.S. If you didn't get it, consider yourself lucky.

There is no way to peace, peace IS the way.

2008-03-27T10:31:00.009+05:30

A bunch of bumper stickers spotted on the road leading to my office. With a car underneath.
For the record, I agree with most of them.

That she hath made thee well

2008-02-12T18:16:00.000+05:30

While I was waiting for some results at work, I amused myself by writing a sentence generator. For those of you who remember your undergrad math (I didn't!), this is a simple application of Markov chains.

We start with some training text (say a work of literature) and calculate which word succeeds a given word most often. Then we start with a word (say "The"), obtain the word which occurs most frequently after this in our text, then obtain the word which occurs most frequently after this, and so on; in the process, producing a semi-readable piece of text.

Here are the results using some well-known texts:

Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray":

"The man who had been a little more than I am not to the world would be in his own soul. You have no one of your life. The painter stared at him that he was something about it. It is quite sure you are really very fond women were so much as if it all my dear fellow, why? Have they reached home, and then we must come with its way, what she cried. "You will never seen her eyes on which there came over him. He felt strangely young-looking face without being talked about. What did so, Lady Narborough, putting some time for me why won't you?" said Lord Henry"

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has an understandably darker tone:

"In the same time I was a few moments of my own mind that he had been so long and in his eyes were not to be an air with which would have no longer see you are all those who could only when they might remain several hours passed away from your fellow creatures sympathizing impulse urged me with their native country. We accordingly put them in this state lasted but it is very little creature on her father thought what she saw him as if any other times worse than all, thy creature, whom we shall soon perceived that, by these feelings which, like yourself, whose existence suddenly transported back upon me."

Finally, the complete works of William Shakespeare:

"Once more, I am not to the King of my lord, and a man that you have been in his own part, And so much as he is no more than thou art thou? Kent. Good morrow, good lord. Ham. Why, then be your Grace shall we are all but for thy father was never saw him with me from her by this day That she hath made thee well. Exit SCENE I. The Duke Humphrey's wife. This night To make it were best way should do beseech you, sir, what they will go along together, As if not, nor any other men may say you? CASSIO. She had rather hear me, I'll tell thee, gentle lady, entertain these two or else But when 'tis most noble lord would fain see how now, Sir John, let us all. Enter KING HENRY. How now! What says she, poor man, woman, therefore take it, though there lies on their heads like an old man. He has done so, sir; fare ye well, sir. FALSTAFF. My Lord Hastings, who comes here? A street near at once again into our great deal upon. Where hast given them up In such another MESSENGER MESSENGER. Madam, we'll follow me. If ever yet methinks you're angry. KATHERINA. Well then, sir? ORLANDO. You must needs dine together. SECOND LORD. [Aside] O Lord, Lord! TRANIO. Sir, pardon; sit down before him, For which now he's out o' th' world can give away upon him. FIRST GENTLEMAN. 'Tis very well enough. Dost understand me?"

The technique can be extended to group words in threes, fours and so on instead of just pairs like I did - this might result in more intelligible sentences.

If this sounds interesting, check out these links:
Markov parody generators
Mark V Shaney

Movie News: "Watchmen"

2007-07-27T12:34:00.000+05:30

Director Zack Snyder has finally announced the main cast of his upcoming adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' acclaimed comic book series, Watchmen. Here is the list:

Walter Kovachs (Rorschach) - Jackie Earle Haley
Dr. Manhattan - Billy Crudup
Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) - Matthew Goode
The Comedian - Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Laurie Juspeczyk (Silk Spectre) - Malin Ackerman

Why all this hullabaloo over yet another comic book adaptation, one might ask. Well, Watchmen isn't just another comic book - it is probably the comic book. Its 1986 publication transformed an entire medium, demonstrating that comic books can be intellectual, intricately plotted and have serious literary value. It is the only comic book to win the Hugo Award (the literary Nobel of the science-fiction/fantasy genre) and to find a place in Time magazine's list of "The 100 best English-language novels (1923-2005)". When one of the most revered works in a genre is being adapted into a movie, people are bound to sit up and take notice.

Coming back to the casting, I haven't seen any of these actors perform, with the exception of Billy Crudup (remember the delightful Almost Famous?). Therefore, I'm hardly qualified to speculate on their suitability for the respective roles. One good thing about the casting is that most of the characters seem to be up-and-coming actors, rather than established stars, which bodes well for a good ensemble performance. There are many supporting characters in Watchmen - the naive psychologist who interrogates Rorschach, the newspaper vendor and the protagonist of "Tales of the Black Freighter", to name a few. Each of these has a small, but significant role to play in the movie, so the casting needs to be spot-on.

A lot will depend on Zack Snyder's ability to translate this complex and multi-layered work into a coherent, yet faithful on-screen adaptation. Frankly, his past efforts are anything but promising in this regard. Given that the book is filled with fantastic imagery and uses several cinematic devices, he would be well advised to use the comic itself as a storyboard, much like what Robert Rodriguez did so brilliantly with Sin City.

If Snyder serves up another mindless testosterone-laden computer-generated wannabe epic , one might well ask (with apologies to the Roman poet Juvenal and Alan Moore),

Quis custodiet ipsos "custodes"?
(Who will watch "The Watchmen"?)

Review: The French Lieutenant's Woman

2007-07-21T19:14:00.000+05:30

Title: The French Lieutenant's Woman
Author: John Fowles
Year of Publication: 1969

What could have been a simple novel about a poignant romance, set in a meticulously recreated Victorian England, is transformed into so much more by a great writer of our times.

I recall the famous "Woman in the red dress" scene from "The Matrix", where Morpheus freezes reality and then proceeds to calmly walk amongst the frozen characters, discoursing upon a world that has been created for us. Likewise, Fowler often freezes the narrative and leads us into his mind. He then reveals his quandaries about letting a particular character react a certain way, provides insights into the popular mindset of the times, and contrasts them with our own. He reminds us constantly that we are in fact, reading a novel, and frequently talks about the world that he has created from his own viewpoint. His genius lies in not letting this skewed and unconventional narrative become a hindrance to the plot, instead helping us understand the characters from the perspective of their creator.

Charles Smithson is a young aristocrat, heir to his uncle's estate and engaged to the beautiful Ernestine. He arrives at the town of Lyme Regis to be near his beloved and to further indulge in his study of fossils. It is here that he learns the story of Sarah Woodruff, whom locals refer to as the French Lieutenant's woman. He learns of her brief affair with an injured French soldier named Varguennes, and of how he left her, promising to return one day. He sees her walk past the seashore each day, looking longingly into the distance. He begins to grow obsessed with her, and is startled to find that she has taken a fancy to him as well. These feelings grow between them until Charles finds himself torn between his duty to his betrothed and his passion for this strange and mysterious woman. Sarah isn't all that she seems, though. Will Charles unravel the depths of her true nature? Will he bow down to society's norms or risk everything for a woman whom he does not even fully understand?

Sarah Woodruff is one of the most captivating female characters I have encountered in literature. Not since Scarlett O'Hara has a woman so effectively commanded my attention throughout the length of a book. The author does a fantastic job of maintaining the mystique of her character throughout, letting you understand Charles' fascination with her. Further, the emotional thread that Sarah provides is so strong, that when the author returns from one of his many stylistic and descriptive digressions, you have no difficulty in picking up where you left off.

The author liberally quotes from the literature of the time - Tennyson's "Maud", Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hardy in particular. The allegories to Victorian England are themselves understated, but unmistakable. The emergence of free thought in science and the gradual transformation and modernization of society are pervading themes throughout the book. We learn that Charles Darwin has just published his "Origin of the Species" and that scientific acceptance of his theories is still in its infancy. The hypocrisy of society is highlighted repeatedly - perhaps most strikingly in the contrast between the sexual repression in high society and the prevalence of brothels frequented by members of the same aristocracy. The stentorian Mrs. Poulteney is symbolic of the still cold and unforgiving society, while the learned Dr. Grogan is the intellectual quietly coming to terms with the rapid changes happening around him.

Fans of Victorian English fiction will delight in the extraordinarily detailed re-creation of an era. The author conjures up vivid images, ranging from the idyllic English countryside to the grime and feelings of claustrophobia evoked by the less honourable parts of London. You chuckle at the fact that Charles' manservant is named Sam, bringing to mind at once Mr. Pickwick's faithful Sam Weller. You are further amused when, in decidedly un-Victorian literary fashion, the author himself points out this similarity in the next paragraph.

The author plays God with his protagonists and settings: he builds, develops and analyzes them in turn. What's more, he even lets us have an occasional peek into this process. Whether this is a true account of the author's thoughts while writing the novel, or a complete fabrication as is more likely, it is certainly captivating writing.

Note: This review also appears on My Favourite Couch.

A matter of style, sense and substance

2007-06-26T11:39:00.000+05:30

There are newspapers and then there are newspapers.

While most newspapers scream at you like a troop of yellow-faced monkeys denied feeding at a zoo, The Hindu resolutely avoids colourful and artificial metaphors like the one above, choosing to focus on content and language instead. In the south, The Hindu's editorial page is still prescribed reading for those preparing for GRE or just seeking to improve their English. For those of us who were weaned on it, the experience of reading most other Indian newspapers is the mental equivalent of watching a Govinda-themed fashion show.

Maybe we are a special, fast diminishing breed - readers who are appalled at headlines like

Freaky FRY DAY!!! Investors visit paranoia city!

and would think that

Sensex nosedives 100 pts!

is overreacting a little. We prefer a more sedate and informative

Sensex falls 100 points - SEBI announces new guidelines

But that's just us.

This delightful column by K. Narayanan, the Reader's Editor of "The Hindu", showcases this community. When readers write in seeking to know alternative meanings of the word "corporation" and questioning the use of the phrase "Petrol pump dealers", you cannot but smile benevolently. "The Hindu" is what it is because its readers refuse to lower their standards, or see their beloved newspaper do so either.

Excerpt:

"From his regular messages, their tone and content, I visualise Kapil Kitchlu (Mysore) as a man with a perpetual frown, anger in his eyes, and vitriol in his pen (keypad). He does make good points occasionally but these have to be ferreted out of the surrounding froth. I enjoy reading his missives, though sometimes I wince! I cannot but agree with him when he slams the use of 'galloping inflation' for a decimal point rise and 'slashing prices' for a one per cent drop, or attempted innuendos like 'incentivised defection'."

There are newspaper readers and then there are newspaper readers.

Recycled sugar?

2007-06-03T12:06:00.000+05:30

When I first heard the title track from "Cheeni Kum" about a month ago, I was - to put it simply, horrified. I couldn't believe that someone would have the audacity to rip off one of Ilayaraaja's most popular and timeless classics, "Mandram vantha thendral" from Mani Ratnam's Mouna Raagam (1986).

[context]

Here is a little context to help those unfamiliar with the work of the Maestro, as he is known south of the Vindhyas. Ilayaraaja is not particularly well-known to Bollywood fans. Even his single greatest work in Hindi cinema, Sadma (1983) was a remake of a Tamil movie, Moondram Pirai, involving the same lead actors (Kamal Hassan and Sridevi), the same director (Balu Mahendra) and most of the songs from the original. One notable exception was "Aye zindagi gale laga le", which Ilayaraaja composed specifically for the Hindi version and has proved as enduring as the other songs in the film like "Surmayi akhiyon mein".

It is in the south, and particularly in Tamil cinema, that Ilayaraaja's real stature is evident. Think of S.D. Burman's incredible capacity for creating melodies, add the musical genius and range of R.D. Burman. Top that off with a knowledge of Indian (Carnatic) classical music that was the envy of professional classical singers, and an understanding of western classical music and orchestration that has invited comparisons with Bach, and you get some idea of where Ilayaraaja stands.

It is also true that while unfamiliar to hindi moviegoers, Ilayaraaja is held in high esteem by music composers from all over the country. For instance, Kalyaniji Anandji used a classic Ilayaraaja tune (Ilaya Nilaa Pozhigirathe from Payanangal Mudivathillai (1982)), with or without his permission, to create a memorable Kishore Kumar song (Neele neele ambar par from Kalaakaar (1983)). A.R. Rahman, among other things, started his career as a keyboard player for Ilayaraaja.

Winner of the National award for Best Film Music Composer three times. The first Asian to have composed an entire symphony for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The accolades are numerous and generally accepted as insufficient.

[/context]

Imagine my consternation when I discovered that Ilayaraaja had himself recycled some of his classic tunes from Tamil cinema. Now frankly, and this opinion is shared by millions, the man is a genius. He doesn't need to do an A.R. Rahman by lifting his old tunes from Tamil cinema and introducing them to the Hindi (or English) speaking world. A composer of his merit can just as easily create fresh and equally beautiful melodies. Let's hope that in the future, the Maestro will leave the copying to Anu Malik and stick to what he does best - creating enthralling music.

Edit: Excerpt from an interview with the director of "Cheeni Kum":

“I am a great fan of Ilayaraja and was weaned on his music. I first went to Ilarayaja, a man who has composed for nearly 900 films which makes his song count around 4000. He liked the script and he wanted to do an original score for the film, but I felt that many of his songs had not been heard by the worldwide cinema going audience so I asked if he would share a handful through my film. He is the king of lavish background music and that too is a plus point, I feel. Though he was originally reluctant to re-hash tunes, he agreed and my personal favourite is Jaane Do Na.”

Happy Birthday, Audrey!

2007-05-04T14:49:00.000+05:30

"I was born with an enormous need for affection, and a terrible need to give it."

"For me, the only things of interest are those linked to the heart."

"I never think of myself as an icon. What is in other people's minds is not in my mind. I just do my thing."

"Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same."

"My own life has been much more than a fairy tale. I've had my share of difficult moments, but whatever difficulties I've gone through, I've always gotten a prize at the end."

And finally, some beauty tips she popularized and lived by:

"For attractive lips,
Speak words of kindness.

For lovely eyes,
Seek out the good in people.

For a slim figure,
Share your food with the hungry.

For beautiful hair,
Let a child run his fingers through it once a day.

For poise,
Walk with the knowledge you'll never walk alone.

People, even more than things, have to be restored,
renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed.
Never throw out anybody.

Remember: if you ever need a helping hand,
you'll find one at the end of your arm.

As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands.
One for helping yourself, the other for helping others."

Audrey Hepburn

(May 4 , 1929 – January 20 , 1993 )

Happy birthday, Audrey!

Farewell to an artist

2007-04-23T14:27:00.000+05:30

A glorious era has come to an end. The greatest artist of modern cricket, that temperamental, yet sublime genius will dazzle us with his stroke play no more. GreatBong pays the great man a fitting tribute:

"But like most great artists, he was temperamental and moody, his career punctuated by spells of under-performance, caused less by the opposition and more by his own attitude. Not that Lara’s achievements are not staggering, but one wonders how greater his legacy would have been had he been more diplomatic, less brusque and more calculating.

Today however is not the day to talk about such trifles. Today is not the day for regrets and what-could-have-beens.

Today is for celebrating the achievements of this giant of the modern game, for closing our eyes and remembering : the aerial pirouette sending the ball crashing to the mid-wicket fence, the crouching tiger-like shimmy down the pitch to the spinners, the savage square cut through the packed off-side. And today is for rejoicing in our good fortune of having been part of a generation that witnessed, first hand, things that will one day become folklore.

Farewell, Brian Charles Lara. And thank you."

Horror on the streets

2007-03-28T15:52:00.000+05:30

Warning - depressing.

Stalkers are scary, traumatizing and worst of all, widely prevalent in the streets of India. Most of my female acquaintances have been victims of stalking and/or sexual harassment on roads at some point of time. Indeed, some deal with it practically every single day.

A shocking example of a stalker who took things to the extreme happened a few days ago in Ethiopia. Kamilat Mehdi was a happy 21-year old who dreamed of becoming an air hostess. One night, a stalker who had been bothering her for over four years accosted her on her way back home from work. His friends then threw sulphuric acid on her face and made their getaway.

Sometimes, only a picture can say it like it is. This is Kamilat Mehdi before and after the attack.

I can't get this image out of my mind.

Read the full, horrifying story.

Justice for Manjunath

2007-03-27T12:07:00.000+05:30

The man who brutally murdered S. Manjunath has been awarded the death penalty. His seven associates have each been sentenced to life terms in prison.

This is a rare victory for truth and justice in India and the Indian legal system. Judgments like this and the sentencing of Manu Sharma are beginning to reinforce our faith in the nation's judiciary.

Well, what do you know?

2007-02-26T18:04:00.000+05:30

They finally did give it to him.

Were they trying to make up for
1. Their failure to acknowledge sheer brilliance?
2. Rewarding star power instead of cinematic wizardry, not once, but twice?
3. Letting fear of controversy get the better of their judgement?
4. Ignoring one half of the most iconic director-actor pair in motion picture history?

On the bright side, at least they got those three to present it to him.

And of course, he was luckier than they were:

The real question is - does the award itself deserve the honour of being presented to him?

Not Quite Quizzing

2007-01-28T11:31:00.002+05:30

Q. Which is the most common name given to male children born in Indian metropolitan cities in the past five years?

Options:

Sachin
Sourav
Rahul
Aryan

A. Rahul

Quizmaster's reasoning: Well, it's not Sachin or Sourav. It's between Rahul and Aryan. The best way to answer this question is to think of how many children you know who've been named "Aryan" or "Rahul". The answer is obvious - it's "Rahul".

I sat silently in an auditorium full of deliriously cheering people, wondering if Indian quizzing had indeed sunk to such depths.

The inaugural Landmark Quiz was held in Pune on Republic day, 2007. Now, to quizzers in Madras and Bangalore, another national holiday (Independence day) has almost become synonymous with the Landmark quiz (patriotism aside). We would go in droves to the Music Academy, squeeze in with more than 3000 others into a single auditorium, and wait impatiently for the sponsors to finish glorifying themselves and get on with the show. Then Navin Jayakumar would come on stage - someone unknown to most people in the first few years, but soon a recognized and highly respected quizmaster.

The prelims questions were crafted beautifully - enough populist questions to keep the occasional and non-quizzers interested and sufficient "hardcore" quiz questions that helped separate the real champs from the others. There were occasional surprises, but in most cases, it was only the very best teams that made it to the finals on stage.

It was in the finals however, that the power and reach of the Landmark quiz was truly showcased. Hardly any seats in the auditorium were ever left empty even during the finals - nobody wanted to miss the spectacle of eight top-class quizzing teams battling it out over questions that pushed them to explore the extremes of their abilities. Superstars were created - Samanth Subramanian, V.V. Ramanan, Arul Mani and a number of others became instantly recognized faces on stage each year and drew the loudest cheers.

Each year had its memorable questions and moments on stage. When participants didn't know the answer, as was often the case, they reasoned it out. The theories they spun on stage were wild, extraordinary, sometimes sublime but always entertaining. When a quizzer picked up the mike and said "Basically, ..." and proceeded to concoct an outrageous connection, the audience roared its appreciation. If wrong, the answer usually prompted a smart rejoinder from the quizmaster. Occasionally, the wildest answers turned out to be correct - and this invariably endangered the ceiling of the Music Academy. This was quizzing at its most entertaining, at its most accessible and in many ways, at its very best.

Cut to January 26th, 2007. The venue - Nehru Memorial Auditorium, Ambedkar Road, Pune. A small auditorium, but a good place to start an event of this magnitude. I teamed up with a colleague named Raghav and his wife Shruti. The quizmaster chose not to reveal his identity during the prelims, but instead spoke from backstage. More on that later.

The prelims involved atleast five multiple-choice questions, the worst of which I described above. Others included "Which of these animals has the warmest fur?" with the options "Reindeer, Musk Deer, Polar Bear and Sea Otter". I don't remember the answer and quite frankly, I don't care! I came to attend a Quiz, not a game show. If I'd wanted to do the latter, I would have participated in Kaun Banega Crorepati or worse, Mastercard Family Fortunes.

The other questions were no better. Try this - "Which is the monument (excluding the Tirupati temple) that is visited by the highest number of paying tourists each year?". We racked our brains to come up with what we quizzers call a "funda" - something interesting, something to make the question worth asking and answering. We guessed "The Louvre", reasoning that the Da Vinci Code mania would have increased ticket sales tremendously. The answer, as was later announced, was the Eiffel Tower. The funda - none! Why on earth would anyone other than a dim-witted nine-year old consider this question interesting? It could have just as easily have been the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Sistine Chapel or the Pyramids. In what way is a person's quizzing acumen, or any ability other than that of guessing tested by this question?

At the end of the prelims, there was a minute-long montage of photos and citations on screen, accompanied by thundering music - the citations read "Best quizmaster - xyz magazine, xxxx year", "Asia's busiest quizmaster - abcd magazine", "Who has conducted several of India's largest general and corporate quizzes?" and so on. Finally, the alleged quizmaster jumped on stage to a standing ovation from the audience - everybody knows Derek O'Brien, don't they?

I'm not even going to talk about Mr O'Brien's personality (he took a dig at an obese man and followed this up with a disclaimer: "If you are offended by any of my remarks that seem personal.... you can leave the hall. Ha ha ha!"). Just a discussion of his quizmastering abilities is enough to reveal his incompetence and charlatanism.

The finals included another trademark Derek-ism: after each round, two teams are eliminated and asked to leave the stage. The words "crappy game show" come racing to mind. Hasn't Mr. O'Brien heard of last-minute charges and thrilling finales in quizzes? Is there any way to heap more disgrace on a team that has beaten hundreds of teams for the right to come on stage, than by casting them out after a round or two?

The less said about the quality of questions in the finals, the better. Mr O'Brien managed to make at least five really good teams on stage look pedestrian, by asking them questions that had no logic, reasoning or fundas behind them at all.

To be fair, not all questions were crappy. Some were even good - "Q: Why were corsets rationed in Britain during WW II? A: Corsets needed metal, which was being conserved for the war effort." However, the sheer number of brainless and insipid questions quickly destroyed any glimmer of interest generated by the good questions. There is only so much nonsense one can take - I left after the first two teams were eliminated.

Is Derek O'Brien the worst popular quizmaster in India? I have suffered the ignominy of having won a Barry O'Brien quiz in college, so I can vouch for his incompetence as well. And who can forget that guru of all quiz hacks, Parnab Mukherjee? In my opinion, Derek is a tad better than Barry, who is merely a quizmaster for kids and not quite as bad as Parnab, who is of course, the devil himself, in a long kurta. However, Derek's unbelievable popularity makes him easily the most dangerous of the three.

To Mr. Derek O'Brien and the people behind Landmark Quiz, Pune: If you want to organize a game show based on luck and trivia that will captivate the public and boost your sales and brand awareness, go right ahead. But please don't call it quizzing.

P.S.
Edited to add links to more info about each quiz hack mentioned above.

The Hindu e-paper

2006-09-09T15:03:00.000+05:30

The Hindu offers another pleasant surprise to its die-hard aficianados, with the launch of its e-paper. This is a real boon for people like me who are unable to get their hands on the traditional paper edition, being forced instead to tackle sensationalism and even social decadence in the morning. I previously used RSS feeds to keep track of my favourite newspaper, but the e-paper is probably the closest I can get to the real thing from where I am.

The free three month subscription is icing on the cake. Now will someone please get me the piping hot South Indian filter coffee in a steel tumbler that I've been asking for?

P.S. Thanks to Rahul for the link.

Of Art and The Scream

2006-09-03T14:44:00.000+05:30

Art has always remained a bit of a mystery to me.

This is something I've deeply regretted, since I trust that I have the intelligence and ability to understand and appreciate art. For instance, I've been moderately successful in my attempts to appreciate classical music and "art" movies. I often reflect on this and draw the conclusion that if I can appreciate art in one form, I should be able to make atleast some headway in understanding other forms of it. Accordingly, I've spent a non-trivial amount of time in trying to understand art movements and figure out why some great paintings deserve the importance they have been given.

Results have been sketchy so far - I'm only beginning to appreciate Guernica and cubism, for example. I've had more success with Impressionism, specially the works of Monet and Renoir (though I don't quite get Manet's work). However, just when I think I'm making a bit of progress, I run into something completely beyond my conprehension. For example, I've never quite figured out why Malevich's Black Square is a classic of abstract expression (despite black being my favourite colour). Nor have I understood why Andy Warhol should be considered a serious, let alone a seminal artist (see this, for example).

Sometimes however, a painting seems to strike the right chord, and when that happens, I just can't seem to look away from it. One such example is Edvard Munch's The Scream.

There are several striking features in this painting, but what grabs one's attention immediately is the vivid, almost startling colour of the sky. The severely distorted landscape indicates that the world seems to be in turmoil, and the intense colours emphasize this dramatically. The figures in the background (all characters in the painting seem sexless) are near enough to the main figure for him/her to feel connected to humanity (and civilization), but far enough for him/her to feel utterly isolated.

In Munch's own words,

I was walking along a path with two friends—the sun was setting—suddenly the sky turned blood red—I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence—there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety—and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

The overall effect of the painting is one of a sudden, mind-blowing realization of loneliness, when everything known and safe seems to melt away, leaving only emptiness and pain - and an individual's reaction at the horror of it all. Powerful stuff.

Incidentally, this piece was written in honour of the safe recovery of The Scream on 31st August 2006. The painting had earlier been stolen for the second time in its history on August 22, 2004 and had been the subject of an massive hunt organized by the Norwegian police.

Welcome back!

Bon Echo 2b2

2006-09-01T17:23:00.000+05:30

Mozilla Firefox 2.0, Beta 2 is out!

Noticeable changes from Firefox Beta 1:

A snappier look (tabs lighting up on mouseovers, better-looking icons)
A button that displays a list of tabs (and better tab-scrolling buttons)
Search suggestions from the search bar (Cool feature, though this seemed to stop working sometimes)

Not-so-noticeable changes from Firefox Beta 1

Better client-side session management
Support for JavaScript 1.7

Plus it retains all the cool new features introduced in Bon Echo beta 1 like a session saver, feed subscriber options, inline spell checking, microsummaries and phishing protection.

Firefox faithfuls, go check it out!

Pune Diary - Part 1 (of more to come)

2006-08-29T19:29:00.000+05:30

I was born in Pune.

Before you start sympathizing with me, let me hasten to add that soon thereafter, I came home to Chennai and my memories of Pune at the time were too hazy and ill-formed to cause any significant damage to my impressionable young mind.

Twenty-three years after I entered Pune, kicking and screaming, I find myself in much the same situation. This time however, my reaction does not have a purely medical basis.

The first thing that struck me about Pune was the weather. It struck me squarely in the face, in the form of a heavy downpour that seemed in no mood to let up - not during the drive from the airport to my cousin's place, not during the two hours afterward which I spent in a fitful sleep, not the next day when I had to report for work and not for three weeks thereafter. When Coleridge wrote something about water being everywhere, I have a feeling he was less inspired by the boundless ocean and more by the water logging that makes Pune the Venice of western India.

Which brings me to the pièce de résistance.

Pune's roads are said to be inspired by the brave Maratha warrior Shivaji's love for challenging pursuits like scaling forts from the wrong end. To keep his memory alive, the Pune Municipal Corporation (affectionately called the PMC by localites) decided to make everyday travel a similar challenge for its residents. The PMC (ever so practical and businesslike) also has a tie-up with the Orthopaedists' Union - Clinics & Hospitals (OUCH), by which they ensure continuing business for the city's orthopaedists by damaging its residents' backs just a little bit, one day at a time. So the next time you wonder why there are potholes everywhere, hidden under three feet of water due to last week's rain, just remember that everything you see (and certainly feel) is both a tribute to Pune's glorious history and to the benefits of modern capitalism.

Pune's people are a friendly lot - the neighbourhood store owner will give you a cheerful smile even as he/she charges such exorbitant rates for a can of drinking water that you briefly consider drinking diesel instead, if only to economize a little bit. The people are also thick... err strong-headed in an equally lovable way. Perhaps the best demonstration of this charming quality can be found in the autorickshaw drivers of the city.

My Chennai antecedents had misled me into thinking that I knew everything an autorickshaw driver was capable of. Nothing had prepared me, however for an autorickshaw driver refusing to take a passenger despite being offered twice the actual fare, plus an additional twenty rupees. I later realized that the good man was merely taking a moral stance - he wouldn't budge, not for all the money in the world. If you ever try to hire an autorickshaw in Pune and are met with a cold stare by the driver, do not waste your breath trying to negotiate with him (or her, though I'm yet to see one here) - your opponent is beyond the lures of such material things as money, a chance to work and good business sense.

(to be continued...)

The Ban That Never Was

2006-07-22T15:24:00.000+05:30

Sepia Mutiny provides a copy of the government directive to private ISPs in India to ban a number of blogs. It does turn out that the government did not intend to ban Blogger in its entirety, and I owe them an apology for jumping to conclusions.

The site also includes a technical explanation of why the ISPs tried to block a few sites and ended up enforcing a blanket ban on the blogspot.com domain name. It appears that our ISPs may not be the spineless yes-men we thought them to be - merely technically incompetent and not abundantly endowed with common sense. Which is not a crime, fortunately or otherwise.

There Is No Person More Dangerous Than A Stupid Person

2006-07-19T21:21:00.000+05:30

Governments, even the democratic ones, will do anything to assert themselves over the people they rule. Usually this means an utter lack of sympathy or humanity, but sometimes it can mean pushing the limits of human stupidity.

The Indian government's decision to ban Blogger is a shining example of just how unbelievably illogical a bunch of human beings can get if they put their minds to it. They have asked ISPs to block a number of blogs for various reasons and have refused to disclose the list publicly. Not to be outdone, the ISPs have risen to the occasion by blocking the entire blogspot.com domain name instead of just the blogs in the above list.

I ask the luminaries at CERT-IN:

Blocking a blog site is not a solution to combat terrorism. Terrorists can still send emails, can't they? What will you do, block all email traffic?
If a system on the scale of The Great Chinese Firewall can be breached, what good do you think the simple act of blocking a site will do?
You can't even read all information being transmitted across the Internet. Haven't you heard of PGP?

The bottom line is that Internet censorship is not merely unethical, it is infeasible. People will always find ways around roadblocks. For example, here is a list of methods you can use to bypass the current ban, courtesy of the punkster.

We will not be made scapegoats for our decision-makers' inadequacies in dealing with our problems. Keep blogging, and show them that free speech cannot be curtailed just that easily.

P.S.
The title of this post is a reference to the Fifth Basic Law of Human Stupidity from the famous article by Carlo Cipolla.

A Champion Falls

2006-07-10T05:27:00.000+05:30

What separates a chance for true greatness from eternal and painful disgrace?
Merely a moment's insanity.

Something clearly happened, something intolerable. But...

Why, oh why, oh why, Zizou?

Techcetera

2006-04-16T13:01:00.000+05:30

Here are two vaguely related short pieces, neither of which seem to warrant a separate post.

--
This is probably a pretty late realization on my part, but I thought it fit to share with everyone in the hope that atleast one person might benefit from it.

I like reading blogs on specific topics. I usually discover blogs by word-of-mouth or blogrolls on blogs that I already visit. But I've always wanted a way to automatically detect blogs or specifically, blog posts related to topics of my interest. That's when I discovered Google's Blog Search. It lets you search within the blogosphere, much like the way we search the Internet as a whole.

But wait, it gets a lot better. In addition to letting you search for blogs by keyword, Google's Blog Search allows you to subscribe to the search results. This really cool feature means that you can add a search as a news feed to your feed reader, just like you add any other feed. After that, any time somebody blogs about something that you're interested in (i.e. one that matches your search criteria), Google will fetch it for you, without you having to search for it again and again. Admittedly, this takes laziness to new heights, but it also gives you great power.

--
A few months ago, I was searching the online edition of every South Indian's favourite newspaper for RSS feeds and drew a complete blank. When pretty much every international newspaper and even some leading Indian trash mags had cool interfaces and were publishing RSS feeds, The Hindu had a despicable website design and didn't seem to know or care about the less controversial meaning of RSS. The irony was that I first learnt about news feeds from J. Murali's weekly column in the same newspaper.

Accordingly, I shot off a letter to the newspaper, deploring their lack of interest in exploiting new technology to deliver content to devoted, but remotely located fans like myself (embellished with a lot of soft soap, of course).

Since then, The Hindu's website has remained an eyesore, but for a reason that is probably completely unrelated to my admonition, it has woken up to the power of news feeds. At their site, I found no less than 65 RSS feeds, ranging from general ones like the Main Page to highly specific ones like the Friday Review for the Thiruvananthapuram edition.

Now all I need is some piping hot filter coffee in a steel tumbler and my mornings will be perfect again.

Fans and Fanatics

2006-04-14T13:54:00.000+05:30

What can you say about a 77-year old film star who died of purely natural causes?

A fair bit, atleast in eulogy, one might think. But the very idea of rioting in the streets, lynching buses and hurling stones at software company offices as a result is so absurd, that it can happen only in India.

Welcome to Bangalore. A city reeling from the aftermath of Rajkumar's death. Not out of love for the respected and popular star, who was undoubtedly a hero to his people, but because of the mad frenzy that it has put his so-called fans into.

Angered at not being allowed to see the dead hero's body, a group of fans went berserk and pelted Microsoft's office with stones. Some others roamed the streets, spreading destruction wherever they went. Some even attacked the police who tried to control them, killing one constable in the process. The police apparently went on a rampage thereafter, resorting to gunfire to push the rioters back. The sorry tales of mob hysteria abound. At the end of it all, eight people, including one policeman lay dead, scores of buses lay burnt, large amounts of public and private property lay damaged and the city's good reputation was lost forever.

This is not a first in South India. When M G Ramachandran (MGR to those unfamiliar with him) died in 1987, Tamil Nadu was overwhelmed as well. Scores of people actually committed suicide, unable to bear the thought of living without their idol (these stories would be funny, if they didn't have such tragic endings). The only difference between the two incidents seems to be that MGR's mourners were outwardly more peaceful than Rajkumar's, preferring to target themselves rather than others.

Even if one were to allow for such fanatical attachment to a person whom they had no doubt seen only on the big screen, the events following Rajkumar's death are contrary to logic. Did the rioters actually think that their actions would resurrect the dead man? Did they even think about the kind of farewell they were giving him - one of violence and terror? Of course, these are arguments based on logic, and logic has no place in the middle of an angry mob. I remember reading a quote that said something like "Individuals are intelligent. People are stupid."

Bangalore can make no more pretensions about being a modern city. It is still a part of India, and there seems to be a little bit of the barbarian inside every one of us.

Say What?

2006-04-08T20:14:00.000+05:30

The following are excerpts from the Wikipedia page on NZSL.

New Zealand Sign Language, or NZSL, is the main language of the deaf community in New Zealand.

(and now for the interesting part)

NZSL became the third official language of New Zealand on April 6, 2006, joining English and Māori. At the first reading, on June 22, 2004, it was supported by all political parties. It was referred to the Justice and Electoral Committee which reported back to the House on 18 July 2005. The second reading passed 119 to 2 on February 23, 2006 with only the ACT party opposing. ACT opposed the move because:

The government is not planning to fund services to support NZSL
The bill only recognises a language, not the whole deaf community
Not that many people [sic] know NZSL
Users of other languages may want official status too
Spending money on treating deafness may be a better idea

The bill passed its third reading on 6 April 2006, and hence passed through the House of Representatives, by the same margin. The bill is still to receive its Royal Assent, a legal formality.
...

In a nutshell, I think it's pointless.

Before legions of people pounce on me to denounce my lack of sympathy for the deaf or for physically handicapped people in general, let me hasten to add that I am neither heartless nor thick-headed. In particular, I believe that in a country like India, public consciousness about facilities for the disabled is practically non-existent. The disabled are left to fend for themselves, making their everyday life a great struggle. Contrast that with a place like Singapore, where every building has a ramp, practically every elevator has buttons marked in braille and so on.

In my opinion, an official language is a recognition of a significantly large community within a populace. The idea of declaring NZSL (or any other language for that matter) an official language just to popularize it, seems ludicrous to me. Analogously, we could start declaring our various tribal languages (no offence meant, just to indicate scale) or God forbid, Madras Tamil as an official language of India.

To me, the decision of the New Zealand government smacks of misguided enthusiasm. I support the views of the ACT party in principle - I believe that the deaf community of New Zealand would be better served by the government spending more money on their welfare. More institutes to teach NZSL, more money to be spent on research into hearing problems, cheaper hearing aids - moves like these would make more of a difference to those concerned.

To end on a positive note however, I still salute the NZ government for what seems to me to be a radical move. We need creative thinking like this if we are to make the world a better place for all of humanity, including the 650 million of them who are disabled in some way. India (and the rest of the world) should take a leaf or two out of the Kiwi book.

rm -rf *

2006-04-04T20:15:00.000+05:30

(Warning - geek post!)

The geekily inclined among you would have figured out that the title of this post represents danger, an invitation to stupidity and hours of patch-up work afterward, especially when your current directory is your home directory.

For the benefit of everyone else:

In Unix, rm is a command used to delete a file. rm -r deletes all directories and subdirectories, while rm -f does so quietly, without generating any warnings (and removing even write-protected files on the way). Put them all together and add a * (which stands for "all files"), and you get an invitation to disaster.

In a nutshell, I ran the above command and deleted all my files at work. Every single one.

No, I am not a masochist. I'm not even remotely suicidal. And yes, I'm a Computer Science student.

It was an honest mistake. I was cd -ing and cd .. -ing (ok, navigating) through my directories at a blistering pace, on a mission to free up space and bring a semblance of order into my cluttered filesystem. I spied a folder full of photographs (of the Holi celebrations at IITK) and I said to myself "Aha!". Pleased with the prospect of freeing up many a precious megabyte at one stroke, I issued the aforementioned command. With the aforementioned disastrous results.

A surprisingly large number of techies I know have had times when they felt like utter nincompoops (read newbies) in a technical environment. I've had my share - I've called a switch a router in an term paper presentation at the graduate level and I've typed a password without realizing that the cursor focus was in a plain text field. But trust me, there is no lower feeling than having to ask your system administrator "I just did an rm -rf * on my home directory. Do we back up the system at all?".

Just to make things more fun, it turned out that our system administrator never bothered with backing up the system. (After all, who's dumb enough to delete a file that they need?). So he and I spent a good part of the evening running various data recovery utilities (there aren't too many for Solaris, as we discovered today). A utility called lazarus saved the day - it copied the entire disk's contents into a single dump file (unfortunately, it's not freeware, so I can't post a download link). All 5 GB of it. Then came the best part of the day - searching through that gigantic file for my few miserable kilobytes of source code - a month's work, no less! (Oh yeah? Well, try building a Swing GUI from scratch and you'll understand how precious code can get.)

Oh well, atleast I learned why commands like more are still around, despite less and vi seeming to be infinitely superior (try opening a 5 GB file with any of the latter and you'll understand why). I learned that the Solaris version of grep sucks (we needed the -A flag, available only in GNU's version, which we proceeded to install. Chalk up another one for the Free Software Foundation!).

And I learned that people can be helpful and understanding when you least expect them to. My sys admin sat with me for more than 4 hours, patiently grepping (searching) through the dump file for bits and pieces of my code. And he didn't laugh at me. Not too much, anyway!

P.S. If I inspire anyone to do the same on their Unix machines, here's a handy tutorial on how to recover your data. Stay safe!

Rediscovering The Web

2006-03-09T10:48:00.000+05:30

This post was inspired by an email I recently wrote to a friend, describing my workspace. I was surprised to find that many people I know, even some of the geekily inclined, didn't use stuff like Firefox and RSS feeds - things that I find indispensable. Much or all of this will be old news to fellow Firefox aficianados, but for any Internet Explorer users reading this blog, this is for you!

My browser is by far the most-(ab)used application on my computer. It's usually the first application that I open upon booting and the last to be closed (of course, with Session Saver installed, I don't bother to close my browser at all... more on this later). Browsing used to be a bit of a chore in the past, when I used to use Internet Explorer. Opera was better, but it had an annoying advertisement bar at the top, and didn't give me many features other than tabs. Then came Firefox. And browsing was never the same again.

Mozilla Firefox is an open-source, free-to-download, cross-platform web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation. It has chalked up more than 150 million downloads since its release as Phoenix in October 2002. The current version, v. 1.5 was released in November 2005. Its share of the browser market is close to 10%, by far the biggest threat to IE's dominance today, and is still climbing all the time.

Here is a screenshot of my workspace.

The first thing you'll notice about Firefox is the tabbing facility. By opening multiple web pages in tabs, rather than in separate windows, you save a lot of memory. A single window means that your taskbar is never cluttered with multiple browser windows, leaving no room for other applications. Also, switching between tabs is much faster than switching between windows. Finally, if you're like me and like having your fingers in many pies at once, you'll love the flexibility that tabbed browsing offers you.

Now notice the darkness of the browser's interface. Firefox lets you comprehensively change its look and feel with the use of themes, which can also be developed and distributed by anyone. This particular theme is called Pitch Dark - it keeps the interface dark (just the way I like it - there are Pinkish themes for the suitably inclined), yet makes the icons clearly visible. Firefox also lets you customize your toolbars, letting you add and remove buttons, modify the way each icon is displayed and so on. I've reduced the size of each icon to maximize the size of the web page display. I've also added frequently used buttons to the menu bar itself, rather than add a whole new toolbar and waste that much more space.

All that was just the appetizer! Now, on to the main course.

By far the best thing about Firefox is the plethora of extensions that it offers. Extensions are basically small features that can be developed by anyone and added to Firefox, usually regardless of the underlying Operating System. These are typically small utilities that do very useful, innovative or even silly things. If you find an extension that you like, just click on it to install. You can always remove an extension later if you are not satisfied by it.

There is a little pop-up at the bottom right, displaying the time in Singapore, Chennai/Kanpur and LA. That's FoxClocks - it displays the current time in places around the world. Pretty useful to help me decide when I can call someone in a different place.

Near that, you can see a little fox icon with a time in seconds next to it. This is FasterFox - a performance optimizer for Firefox. It uses prefetching, caching and multiple connections to load web pages at great speeds. The time shown is the time taken to load the current page.

Now look at my Yahoo! inbox. You'll see that I'm reading a mail right from the inbox page. In fact, each message has a little (+) sign next to it, which I can click to expand the message right there. I can even reply to messages from the inbox page itself. This is possible because of an extension that enables AJAX support for Yahoo! Mail. AJAX is the technology that makes Gmail so fast - it sends requests for parts of web pages instead of whole pages. Also, it uses Javascript to modify the existing page, rather than reload it (for example, when you click on "Reply" in Gmail, it adds a textbox to your existing page rather than load a new page with a textbox in it). So because of Firefox, my Yahoo! mail is almost as fast to use as Gmail!

Also, there is a bookmark in the toolbar named Bloglines - it's a reader service with which I can register RSS feeds from blogs and other websites. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication - it's an excellent way to monitor websites without having to visit them continuously. For example, if there is a blog that I like, I can add the blog's RSS feed to my RSS reader (also called a feed reader or news reader). Each time the blog is updated, my reader can pick out the updated content (in this case, the latest blog entry) and display it in a common place. This works specially well when you need to keep track of a large number of blogs, news and technical sites, like I do, and don't have the time or patience to visit each site every day. The advantage of using a web-based feed reader like Bloglines is that my feeds travel with me wherever I go, unlike if I use an application like Thunderbird's in-built reader. There are plenty of Firefox extensions to read feeds as well (try Sage).

There are many more handy little extensions that I am currently using or use frequently -
Session Saver, which saves and restores all tabs and windows, even if my browser crashes (happens frequently on Solaris). Which is why I have the liberty to close my browser at any instant, or simply kill the process from the command line, if I feel particularly devious! I just restart Firefox at a later time, and everything is right there, just the way I left it.

Image Zoom, which lets me zoom into or out of images from the broswer itself, saving me the trouble of saving the image, opening it with an external application and then zooming.

Fission, which puts the progress bar in the address bar, so when the page is loading, my address bar shows me the progress in the background and my status bar is free to display long URLs.

Foxy Tunes, which lets me control any media player from my browser. It also includes utilities like an alarm clock and a sleep timer for every player.

It's the little things that add up to make Firefox what it is. I love my browser!

Credits:

Thanks to Ciju Cherian for introducing me to Firefox in the first place.

Varun and I religiously follow the latest extensions being released on the Mozilla site and rave to each other about our latest favourites. He suggested many of the extensions I've described above and told me about Bloglines as well, when I complained to him about Thunderbird's poor news reading features.

What they undergo each day

2006-03-06T09:11:00.000+05:30

There are some evils in the world that we find to be routinely described on television, in movies, newspapers and books. Perhaps we are so used to some of these things being talked about all the time, that we almost become oblivious to their existence. And the distance between obliviousness and apathy is not much. Then comes an account of the same thing from a person you know. And the true horror of it hits you all over again, leaving you with a feeling of shock and disgust.

Read Deepti's horrifying account of what it means to be victim of routine sexual harassment. Or equivalently, what it means to be a woman in India.

A Dollar A Day

2006-02-02T19:30:00.000+05:30

First I saw "Rang De Basanti" last night, which led to hours of debates with my friends about how the situation of the country could be improved. Then, this evening, I read about the start of the National Rural Guarantee Scheme of the Congress government:

I quote from a BBC News report:

Under the National Rural Guarantee Scheme, one member from each of India's 60 million rural households is guaranteed 100 days of work each year. They will receive a minimum (daily) wage of 60 rupees ($1.35) or an unemployment allowance if there is no work.

More than a third of India's population of more than one billion people lives on less than $1 a day.

To support the programme, the government will launch a series of road-building, water conservation and other similar projects across the country. The idea is for these people to work on projects that are also useful to them once completed.

This has got to be one of the most utopian schemes ever conceived in modern India. Consider all the money that will be lost due to corruption amongst the middlemen. Prefential allotment of jobs, scams in procuring materials for the projects, the possibilities for siphoning off money are endless.

But rather than be negative about such a momentous step forward, let's be supportive, yet realistic. Having undertaken this praiseworthy cause, the Government should now step up and make a special effort at transparency in its implementation. Maybe a special, independent committee could be appointed to monitor the project. Better still, the project's data could be made available publicly so that independent watchdogs can spot irregularities. And if such irregularities are found, the guilty should be speedily hauled off and damage control should be done.

When so much of our money is being spent, for however noble a cause, we have a right to know exactly how it is being used. And if the scheme does work, even partially, it will be an achievement that we can all be truly proud of.

But I'm almost afraid to hope.

Birbal And IITK

2006-01-10T08:54:00.000+05:30

A BTech friend at IITK told me this joke which is apparently making the rounds of the undergraduate hostels here.

Four students arrive at the court of emperor Akbar with a problem for Birbal. All of them are IITK students, but one of them is a BTech, one is an MTech, one is an MTech (Integrated) and one is a PhD student. They challenge Birbal to identify which person belongs to which program.

Birbal asks for a week's time. He goes to the students and tells them that there will be a test in a week's time and provides them with some notes to study from. He then observes their behaviour over the course of the week.

One student starts burning the midnight oil from day one, while the other three play cricket all day. Four days later, another student starts studying hard for the test, while the other two are still enjoying their cricket. On the night previous to the test, the last two students are observed to be writing furiously on small bits of paper.

D-day arrives and Birbal summons all four students before the emperor. He identifies the student who started studying from day 1 as the MTech, because IIT MTechs are not very bright (after all, GATE is a fraud exam) and need to study really hard to keep up with everyone else. The student who started studying four days later is identified as the PhD, because though PhDs are usually as dumb as MTechs, they have been around long enough to realize that tests don't really matter - they get paid as long as they submit weekly reports to their advisors.

Birbal confesses that he cannot differentiate between the remaining two students, because all JEE-qualified students stop studying once they enter IIT and throw away their moral values in order to survive. He suddenly has an idea and whispers something in one student's ear. The student merely grins back in response. Birbal then whispers the same thing in the last student's ear and the student reacts by hurling abuse at Birbal, then at his neighbour and finally collapsing in tears. Birbal then triumphantly identifies the former as the BTech and the latter as the MTech (Integrated) student.

Curious, the emperor asks Birbal what he whispered in their ears. Birbal smiles and says "Just two words. MATKA M*D*RCH*D!!".

(For the uninitiated, Matka = IITK lingo for an MTech/MTech (Integrated) student. You may also substitute M*D*RCH*D for an expletive of your choice.)

Not the funniest joke I've heard recently, but one that reveals the popular mindset on campus.

Misplaced Anxiety

2005-12-29T15:41:00.000+05:30

Placement season is always a glorious opportunity for a variety of psychological insights into the behaviour of the masses, individuals and oneself. I remember the placement season in my undergraduate college as a time when the strongest bonds between people were broken and seemingly impossible relationships were made. Friends became back-stabbers and pure strangers turned out to be people's only hopes, as people revealed their true colours when there was money at stake.

The placement season at IITK started on the 22nd of December, 2005. It's been just a week so far, but I've learned a few things already, this time about the power of insecurity.

First up was Google - everyone's dream company. After that, the companies followed in rapid succession: Amazon, Trilogy, Cisco, Oracle, Mentor Graphics, Veritas/Symantec, Yahoo, Sybase, and TI so far. The punishing schedule only stopped the day after Christmas and will resume immediately after New Year's day. Thankfully, Veritas/Symantec made me an offer that I like, so I don't have to go through the whole process again from 2nd January!

More than the hectic schedule, what gets to one is the feeling of rejection. After clearing gruelling tests and getting to the interviews, only to find yourself practically humiliated there by someone who's probably been coding OS kernels for years, you begin to question your confidence in your abilities. Or get extremely frustrated when someone whom you know you are better than, seems to be doing much better than you. It's an interesting effect - people tend to conveniently forget the fact that they have made it into IIT by virtue of their abilities . When fear and insecurity start playing with your mind, logic goes haywire.

This effect is shockingly evident in the fact that when Infosys comes to our campus, it receives a huge number of job applications. This is for a package of 1.8 lakhs, cost to company! I find it beyond belief that people as smart as IITians can settle for something as low as this. Even ignoring the appallingly low salary, the job profile is something even a non-IIT undergraduate will have trouble with. Imagine a guy who has cracked JEE or GATE, sitting in a cubicle in Infosys, stuck in a dull testing job.

To be fair, it's easy to philosophize when my own position is relatively secure. I've even seen my friends in CSE settle for relatively low-end jobs just for the security they offered. After rejections in Google, Amazon and Trilogy, I was questioning myself too. But it's still a long way from insecurity to the situation I described above.

People should really believe a little more in themselves.

Inspiration - Part II

2005-12-06T22:57:00.001+05:30

My post on Inspiration (or the lack thereof) seems to have found resonance with a surprising number of people, including a few whom I never suspected of being confused about their careers. Thank you all, for your comments. Glad I gave you something to think about :)

The immediate effect of the post was to be subjected to intensive counseling sessions by my close friends! After a few weeks of that, I feel as confused as ever, but gratified that so many people found it necessary to take time out of their lives to call me a nincompoop who doesn't know how to be thankful for what he has!

Better still, some of it even helped me find a reasonable path towards the solution of my quandary. An important insight that I managed to obtain was that it is useless to evaluate a profession from a layman's perspective of it. If I seriously want to consider a career (journalism, for example), I need to get both theoretical and practical exposure to it. I need to make sure I'm in love with it (journalism) and that it's not just another crush that'll die out in a short time!

I'm giving myself a maximum of 3 years in which to learn as much as possible about my dream vocation, while continuing along my current career path. At the end of that time, I want (hope) to be in a position to make an informed decision about which world I really want to conquer. Afterwards, there will be no looking back. No regrets.

In the words of T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia),

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

Inspiration

2005-11-16T03:30:00.000+05:30

In my class here at IITK, I've not met more than a handful of people who are truly passionate about what they are doing. The rest seem to be like me - here by a combination of choice and circumstance, mostly the latter. Not that these are people incapable of good work - they are all selected through extremely competitive exams and tough interviews. But what really drives them to do what they do?

Money, the prestige of an IIT degree, the security of a job in a reputed company - these are some of the reasons I can think of to explain why most of us are here. It's a bit of everything for me as well, in addition to the chance to learn more about a field that I really like. But I'm not here out of a true passion for learning Computer Science. Fortunately or unfortunately.

I'll probably get out of here with all the above benefits, which is great. It will allow me to live life with a little more freedom than I could have if I had not made it here. For instance, I probably won't have to hesitate or worry about the cost before picking up a DVD or a book any time I want to. It goes further than material benefits, however. I won't feel uncomfortable walking into a job interview or a high-profile meeting at work - the IITK experience has already taught me not to feel intellectually intimidated by anyone.

Yes, my life will be better as a result of what I'm doing.

But then, should my job be something I do to facilitate my life, or is it something that should define my life? That's precisely the distinction between good things and great things. I don't think great things are ever created out of mere competence. I can realistically expect to become a good software/research professional, but I will never become a great one. Is that good enough?

Satyajit Ray was a good advertising professional, but he achieved greatness only when he followed his dream and became a filmmaker. Had he not taken the plunge, his would have been another in the millions of such lives lived everyday - happy, comfortable and secure, but incomplete. A life that I would regret having lived.

What use is 99% worth of perspiration without the 1% that really matters?

SSETI Express

2005-10-29T19:20:00.000+05:30

What does it take to launch a satellite, even a small one? A crack team of experienced engineers, several million dollars in funding and a well-equipped space center, just for starters maybe.

Or it could be done by a bunch of students.

The SSETI (Student Space Exploration & Technology Initiative) project is what I would call a really neat idea. It consists of students from a number of universities in Europe working together to build satellites. The cool thing about this project is that the work is divided and assigned to university groups based on strengths. Hence, the University of Florence handles the Power aspects while the Inperial College, London does Integration and Testing. There are even groups that handle legal and PR work. Collectively, they build something that is almost impossible for one or just a few universities to do.

All in all, it's a project that alows sharing of expertise and development of a strong, multi-talented workforce in space technology, which is one of its main goals. Theirs is a fine example for Indian universities to emulate. If the IITs, IISc, NITs and other top institutes could work together, we could build on our talented student base and create modern and useful technology.

Follow the progress of SSETI's first microsatellite - SSETI Express, here.

The Inner Fire

2005-10-26T14:49:00.000+05:30

Antaragni - that's the name of IITK's cultural festival. To us IITK students, it's rather more than just that. It's 3 1/2 days of pure energy. People are driven to put in long and difficult hours organizing events, taking care of participants and visitors, solving the numerous problems that come up and most of all, having fun.

My Antaragni kicked off a day late, because I was conducting a quiz on the second day. As a result of my shoddy preparation, I ended up spending the entire Day 1 frantically trying to get things ready before the event, missing the chance to participate in Passwords (an audio/visual clue-based quiz) and the Crossword. It finally got underway about an hour late, but things picked up from there and the participants later told us that they really enjoyed the event. I've conducted quizzes before at school and in my UG, but this had a special feeling associated with it, being my first big quiz at IITK and my last Antaragni as well.

After that, there wasn't a moment to rest. When the quiz ended at 1:00 AM, it was on to the next event - the Treasure Hunt. Our team (Ashish, Dhiraj, Mausoom, Neeraj, Palak, Varun and myself) roamed around campus, trying to make sense of clues like "Don't wash your hands here, you might get hypothermia" (a reference to the Liquid Nitrogen plant on campus). We spent almost the whole night following clues and finally gave up around 5:30 AM because of a poor clue.

Day 2 began for me at lunchtime, when Arjun, Palak and myself teamed up for the Dumb Charades event. We performed poorly in the preliminary round and barely scraped through to the finals. In the finals, however, we did reasonably well. Some good miming from Arjun and co-ordinated guessing from Palak and myself ensured that we got the third place - not bad for an ad hoc team.

After the dumbc, I teamed up with Kiritee and Kinjal for the General Quiz. The quiz was conducted by Satyajit Chetri, who is rapidly developing a fan following among quizzers in North India. We first encountered him during Nihilanth, the inter IIT-IIM quiz fest held at IIT Delhi in March this year. Impressed by his MELA (Movies, Entertainment, Literature and Arts) quiz, we invited him to conduct the MELA and General quizzes at Antaragni. We weren't disappointed. The General quiz was extremely interesting and closely fought. In the end, we lost to the deserving winners, Arun and Srivatsan, one of the best home teams. However, we did give some good answers. My favourite was a connect between HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Visconti Family (an Italian noble family) and Cianti (a type of Italian red wine). We were the first to give the correct answer - Hannibal Lecter from The Silence of the Lambs.

After that gruelling quiz, I was in no condition to stand in the long line to enter the discotheque. I headed back to my room for a few hours of much-needed sleep, while the rest of the guys stuck it out and entered the disco. I missed some interesting incidents involving Arjun, a girl, ball dancing and coffee. Arjun finally did put up the details on his blog!

Day 3 kicked off with my favourite event of Antaragni - the MELA quiz. I teamed up with Kiritee and Sripath for this event, also conducted by Satyajit Chetri. We started off very well, quickly grabbing the lead and holding on to enter the last round on top. This was an extremely interesting round, made up of 5 sets of questions - 8, 6, 4, 2 and 1 question per set. Each set of questions was linked by a connect and all 5 set connects were linked by a grand "Mother-of-all" connect! Though the round was extremely interesting, we performed pretty badly, missing out some easy questions and making some bad guesses, resulting in negative points. When the last question of the quiz was asked, we were in third place, with the team next to us one point behind us in fourth. They answered the question, getting two points and moving ahead of us by one point to take third place. We were crushed because the same team had done exactly the same thing to us two months ago at IIT Delhi's cultural festival, taking third place from us by one point by answering the last question. Suddenly, inspiration struck and we attempted the grand connect (King Kong, Alexander, Hanuman, Rustam-e-Hind and Tarzan). We were right! The correct answer (Dara Singh) fetched us two points and moved us ahead of the other team by one point, into third place. Revenge is a dish best served cold :) IIT Delhi beat us in one quiz and we beat them in the other - it should be a good battle in next year's Nihilanth in January.

The rest of the day was spent roaming around campus, watching bits and pieces of various events and taking in the general flavour of the festival. After dinner, it was time for the grand finale of Antaragni 2005 - a concert by KK.

Now I'm not a fan of KK or hindi pop music in general, so I went to the concert with some reservations. To my pleasant surprise, the singer sang some really melodious and soulful numbers, starting off with "Yaaron, Dosti..." from Rockford. He even sang a Tamil song, "Strawberry Kanne" from Minsara Kanavu (Sapnay). The high point of the concert was a searing rendition of "Tadap Tadap" from Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam. With a minimum of accompaniments, he sang with real heart and succeeded in moving the crowd to an introspective silence. He then laughed, apologized for dampening everyone's spirits and compensated with a series of racy numbers like "Aap Ki Dua". The last song was one of my favourites, the pulsating "Koi Kahe" from Dil Chahta Hai. We danced like maniacs and suffered stiff joints for two days afterwards!

That ended my last Antaragni. It's strange how I've become so attached to a college fest, and one which I've participated in only twice. I'll really miss the spirit of it all - the unbounded enthusiasm around me despite the long hours of work, the drive to have fun and make things fun for others and the general spark in the air. At (almost) 23, it still made me feel younger than I am!

Writer's Block

2005-10-26T14:45:00.000+05:30

Or rather, that's the excuse I"m giving for updating my blog maybe once in the past 2 months. Let me try to be more regular from now. After all, it's not like I'm doing prize-winning (or any other kind of) research to justify being busy, is it?

The Bright Side Of Death

2005-10-05T18:01:00.000+05:30

To me, Monty Python is all about irreverence. John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones broke every rule, changed every paradigm and redefined the traditional idea of British humour.

Perhaps their attitude is best summarized by the eulogy that Cleese gave at the memorial service for Chapman, who passed away in 1989, in which Cleese became the first person to say "fuck" on British television. It's irreverent & shocking, yet sweet & moving and most of all, funny!

(Here is a video of the first part of the speech, along with a moving rendition of "Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life" by Eric Idle and the other Python members - from their movie "Life Of Brian")

"Graham Chapman, co-author of the 'Parrot Sketch,' is no more. He has ceased to be, bereft of life, he rests in peace, he has kicked the bucket, hopped the twig, bit the dust, snuffed it, breathed his last, and gone to meet the Great Head of Light Entertainment in the sky, and I guess that we're all thinking how sad it is that a man of such talent, such capability and kindness, of such intelligence should now be so suddenly spirited away at the age of only forty-eight, before he'd achieved many of the things of which he was capable, and before he'd had enough fun.

Well, I feel that I should say, "Nonsense. Good riddance to him, the freeloading bastard! I hope he fries. "

And the reason I think I should say this is, he would never forgive me if I didn't, if I threw away this opportunity to shock you all on his behalf. Anything for him but mindless good taste. I could hear him whispering in my ear last night as I was writing this:

"Alright, Cleese, you're very proud of being the first person to ever say 'shit' on television. If this service is really for me, just for starters, I want you to be the first person ever at a British memorial service to say 'fuck'!"

You see, the trouble is, I can't. If he were here with me now I would probably have the courage, because he always emboldened me. But the truth is, I lack his balls, his splendid defiance. And so I'll have to content myself instead with saying 'Betty Mardsen...'

But bolder and less inhibited spirits than me follow today. Jones and Idle, Gilliam and Palin. Heaven knows what the next hour will bring in Graham's name. Trousers Dropping, blasphemers on pogo sticks, spectacular displays of high-speed farting, synchronised incest. One of the four is planning to stuff a dead ocelot and a 1922 Remington typewriter up his own arse to the sound of the second movement of Elgar's cello concerto. And that's in the first half.

Because you see, Gray would have wanted it this way. Really. Anything for him but mindless good taste. And that's what I'll always remember about him---apart, of course, from his Olympian extravagance. He was the prince of bad taste. He loved to shock. In fact, Gray, more than anyone I knew, embodied and symbolised all that was most offensive and juvenile in Monty Python. And his delight in shocking people led him on to greater and greater feats. I like to think of him as the pioneering beacon that beat the path along which fainter spirits could follow.

Some memories.

I remember writing the undertaker speech with him, and him suggesting the punch line, 'All right, we'll eat her, but if you feel bad about it afterwards, we'll dig a grave and you can throw up into it.'

I remember discovering in 1969, when we wrote every day at the flat where Connie Booth and I lived, that he'd recently discovered the game of printing four-letter words on neat little squares of paper, and then quietly placing them at strategic points around our flat, forcing Connie and me into frantic last minute paper chases whenever we were expecting important guests.

I remember him at BBC parties crawling around on all fours, rubbing himself affectionately against the legs of gray-suited executives, and delicately nibbling the more appetizing female calves. Mrs. Eric Morecambe remembers that too.

I remember his being invited to speak at the Oxford union, and entering the chamber dressed as a carrot---a full length orange tapering costume with a large, bright green sprig as a hat----and then, when his turn came to speak, refusing to do so. He just stood there, literally speechless, for twenty minutes, smiling beatifically. The only time in world history that a totally silent man has succeeded in inciting a riot.

I remember Graham receiving a Sun newspaper TV award from Reggie Maudling. Who else! And taking the trophy falling to the ground and crawling all the way back to his table, screaming loudly, as loudly as he could. And if you remember Gray, that was very loud indeed.

It is magnificent, isn't it? You see, the thing about shock... is not that it upsets some people, I think; I think that it gives others a momentary joy of liberation, as we realised in that instant that the social rules that constrict our lives so terribly are not actually very important.

Well, Gray can't do that for us anymore. He's gone. He is an ex-Chapman. All we have of him now is our memories. But it will be some time before they fade."

Movie Flavours

2005-09-29T15:23:00.000+05:30

Kierthi and I discovered that we both share a love for good cinema - in particular, off-beat movies and foreign productions that are not widely known or appreciated. Accordingly, he's set up a movie review blog where we hope to introduce some of these movies to others. We'll also be reviewing plenty of mainstream movies that we happen to strongly like/dislike - so there should be something in it for everyone.

Check out Movie Flavours - our first reviews are up already.

A note on the American spelling of the blog's URL: Kierthi and his Americanization are entirely to blame!

Touched By His Noodly Appendage

2005-09-04T11:33:00.000+05:30

I got these links from a discussion on SP's blog.

George W. Bush and his retrogressive associates have come out in support of Intelligent Design, a 'scientific' theory which says that the universe was created by an external force. What is funniest about this theory is the way in which it 'proves' its assertions - by taking credit for everything that evolution does not explain. If something is not explained by natural selection, it is taken as 'proof' that it was created by ID. The scary part is that ID was officially approved by the Kansas School Board in May 2005 for integration into the school curriculum.

For the record, I am not an atheist. I am merely pointing out that a matter of faith does not translate into scientific credibility. The fact that you believe in something does not make it logically true - this is the essential distinction between science (logic) and religion (faith). Evolution is a logical theory that tries to explain the creation and sustenance of life through observation and scientific rationalization. ID is a logically flawed (if a greater being created everything, who created the greater being?) attempt at rationalizing religion. It is by no means a credible scientific theory. Teaching ID in schools is the same as integrating religious instruction into the curriculum, only infinitely more dangerous because it masquerades as a scientific theory, blurring the boundaries between logic and faith.

On a lighter note, a wily chap named Bobby Henderson came up with another 'alternative theory' called Flying Spaghetti Monsterism (FSM) which uses the same logical basis as ID to 'prove' that the universe was created by an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster. Another hilarious assertion of this religion is that global warming is caused by the decline in the number of pirates since the 1800s (a parody of ID's practice of correlating unrelated sets of data to prove its results). Henderson 'proved' this assertion with the following graph, based on actual data values:

The sad thing is that more and more states in the USA seem to be switching over to teaching such pseudo-religious hogwash as part of the curriculum (Minnesota, Ohio and New Mexico had previously approved the move, making Kansas the fourth such US state).

Like Einstein said, "Only two things are infinite - the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the former."

Three Days Of Heaven

2005-08-29T12:45:00.000+05:30

Most of the MTech CSE 2004 batch along with a few special guests took a trip to the idyllic hill resort of Panchmarhi over the weekend. The outcome was three days of unlimited fun, adventure and camaraderie. Here's an account of the trip written by Arjun and myself.

Night 0:

Panchmarhi, or what little we knew of it was awaiting us for 3 days of fun. All we knew about it was through word of mouth and a few web pages. And yet here we were, 25 of us - half of MTech 2004, the legendary Neeraj Kayal, and the altitude-challenged Nitin Dhara and Aparna Gorthi. A light dinner settling inside, backpacks strapped, spirits high, and as expected, a little too late for comfort. We still made the IITK bus to Kanpur Central and after an unsuccessful attempt to find a decent place to eat, boarded Pushpak Express for Bhopal. Cards, photos and plenty of laughs kept us enthusiastic, and the rest of the bogey annoyed.

Day 1:

Bhopal was nice and chilly, a good change from the searing heat of Kanpur. After having a taste of the famed poha-jalebi at joint near the station, we got on a bus to Pipariya, which is about 45 kms from Panchmarhi. Not letting anyone sleep for long enough gave us something to do during the picturesque 4 hour journey. An added bonus was getting to see one of us throw up every 10 kms. The journey from Pipariya to Panchmarhi was in 3 Tata Sumos. A fast, enjoyable and pleasant journey... the only annoying part was the driver honking his horn every five minutes in a forest zone. An hour later, we arrived - tired, hungry, full of enthusiasm, and nowhere to stay! Well, that was fixed soon enough. An economical lunch and some freshening up later, we were ready to head out.

Dividing ourselves into 3 groups in as many jeeps, we headed out towards our first destination - the Panchmarhi lake. Seeing a children's park brought out the child in most of us, and we climbed onto a merry-go-round for a bit of fun. And then came the fun-filled paddle-boat ride. Lots of head-on collisions, strategic battle planning and furious paddling followed. Of course, we had our quiet moments too - basking in the sun's golden rays and the watching the birds while floating peacefully on the shimmering water (sigh!). We briefly cursed the guy who blew the whistle indicating the end of the ride, and rushed to the jeeps for our next destination - Sunset Point. The view was breathtaking; we caught the sun setting behind a beautiful mountain range. A few moments of quiet enjoyment and a few dozen photographs later, we headed back to our hotel. The fun didn't stop there, a few people decided to commit as many sins as possible in one night, but failed miserably. In any case, we all stayed up really late and had an absolute ball.

Day 2:

Getting up early is never easy, specially not on a trip, and definitely not when you've stayed up half the night. So perhaps it was inevitable that we all got up late, took tickets for the bathrooms and took turns at waking up the more sleepy ones amongst us. A good two hours late, we started for Jata Shankar temple. This temple has been formed naturally - a narrow gorge leading to a cave, with rocks that resemble Indian Gods. Water is known to flow out from the walls here, and it sure did. We then left to the Bison Lodge to get our tickets for the tour for the day. Bison Lodge also houses a tiny museum that displays a miscellany of artifacts from Madhya Pradesh - the most impressive being models of tigers and lions. We then headed to Pandava Caves - one of the many caves where the Pandavas supposedly spent part of their exile (rather obvious, isn't it?). The caves weren't extraordinary (some of them being smaller than our hostel rooms!) save for a beautiful view of the garden below.

And then came our first real trek - a 1.5 km trek to see three waterfalls- the Big falls, Apsara falls and Panchali Kund. Stones, ranging from smooth slippery pebbles to huge boulders were found on the way, and we realized the inadequacies of our footwear as we stumbled and slipped along. A viewpoint gave us a great view of the Big Falls, and after lingering on for (what else?) a few snaps in weird poses, we headed to Apsara falls in anticipation of a chance to swim. Men turned into (half-naked) boys as clothes were discarded eagerly and we dived into the 20-odd foot deep pool at the base of the falls. A bunch of splashing contests followed, and some got the spectators wet as well. Some of us swam across (and hence did some justice to our swimming classes) to feel the water of the falls pouring down on us. The more adventurous of us dived into the water from a height of about 10 feet and lived to tell the tale. A few lucky ones took a detour and ended up at Panchali Kund, which was a small but picturesque cascade. The trek back up the mountain was much more difficult, and we were famished at the end of it.

A heavy lunch later, we left for Bee Falls, and definitely the most gruelling trek of the trip. The trek was a 2.5 km path along a steep mountain, and we took shortcuts to save time. The final steps leading down to the falls were particulary arduous, but the fun we had down there well made up for it. Once again, clothes were shed (eagerly) and we ran to the base of the falls. While some fished, others stood right under the terrific force of water falling from about 40 feet, and a miserable few were content with wetting their feet. After a blitzkrieg of splashes, the girls were completely soaked and joined in the fun. An hour or so later, we decided to head back. The walk back up was ten times more difficult, and we took a lot of time to get back to the jeeps. Unfortunately we missed the chance to catch the sunset from Dhoop Gharh, another sunset point. We went back to the hotel, dejected but not ready to give up.

One of us then had a bright idea - to arrange for dinner over a bonfire. Some scouting and negotiating later, we had everything ready sans the people. The crowd arrived some time later with renewed enthusiam. A game of Antakshari woke up the Kishores and the Rafis in us, atleast in spirit if not in voice. The dinner was scrumptious, and disappeared rather quickly. As a special surprise, Neeraj Kayal then treated all of us to some delicious ice-cream. Not ready to call it a night, we danced around the bonfire, brandishing logs of wood, pretending to ride horses (a la Monty Python and the Holy Grail!), performing marriage ceremonies and basically just going crazy! A good three hours at the bonfire, and we headed back, singing ad jingles like 'Zandu balm' and the Mowgli theme song on the way. A torch was carried back from the bonfire to lead the way. Although we tried as hard as we could, staying up that night after all that fun was close to impossible, and we promptly fell asleep when we got back to the hotel.

Day 3:

We knew that we had very little time on the last day and much to do, but you can't straighten a dog's tail, and so we woke up late as usual. The first stop was a viewpoint notoriously known as Suicide Point. The view again was quite beautiful - a narrow and extremely deep gorge with atleast 5 mountains visible in the distance. One could say that the gorge was gorgeous! The guides there showed us some interesting things like a temple on top of a hill, a spot where you can hear upto 7 echoes, and a rope that tribals apparently use to descend down into the valley to gather herbs.

The next destination, Reech Gharh, was probably the most exciting part of the trip. This place had everything an adventurer would want - a great trek, lots of rocks and hills for climbing, and a set of beautiful caves to explore. Remnants of cave paintings from the era of Shahrukh Khan (from the filming of the movie Asoka!) were all we found on the cave walls, but the caves themselves were of varied shapes and sizes and all beautiful. Most of us took to amateur rock climbing and scaled a mid-sized hill. We were quite proud of our effort and team-work because some parts of the hill were not easy to climb. The view from the top rivalled those from all the viewpoints we had seen, and was much more satisfying. There were some scandalous moments that happened amongst a few people that we'd rather leave to your imagination and word-of-mouth accounts. But all in all, the climbing, trekking and exploring was a great deal of fun and turned out to be a really memorable experience.

Our final destination was a beautiful church built during colonial times. The smooth and textured limestone and the stained glass paintings inside were awe-inspiring. We sat inside for a while, some in prayer, some in contemplation and others just taking in the moment. The priest there was more than patient with us, and gave us some interesting trivia about the building.

Refreshed with a light lunch and not all too ready to get back to civilization, we boarded a specially reserved bus back to Bhopal. Most of us promptly fell asleep initially, but we all woke up a couple of hours later, spirits rising yet again. Because we were ahead of time, we decided to go down to the Narmada river as we passed it over the Narmada bridge. Our timing couldn't have been better as the sun was about to set, and made for some extremely beautiful photographs. Back inside the bus, we went crazy yet again, turning a relatively civilized game of Antakshari into a shirt-ripping contest. Howling and yodeling totally off-key, we managed
to mercilessly massacre some classic songs in Hindi, Telugu and Bengali.

The station seemed to arrive all too soon, and after packing some dinner, we settled into the train for the night. Only, most of us just wouldn't settle! After a few engaged in card playing sessions, a few other mischevious ones decided to bring a (white) smile to the faces of the people who were sleeping. The ones who were sleeping reaffirmed that Pepsodent toothpaste was indeed tasty. Card playing and pranks continued well into the wee hours of the morning, and we had a tough time getting up when Kanpur arrived. We spared each other from sentimental end-of-journey cheering, choosing instead to relive the moments individually during the tempo rides back home. It seemed that the trip never really ended till we finally smelt the familiar musty odours of our rooms.

A picturesque destination, an optimal duration of stay and the most adventurous and fun-filled company you can get. Class trips don't get better than this!

Dancin' In The Rain

2005-08-22T02:07:00.000+05:30

It's not often that you get a chance at a second childhood.

Kanpur's unpredictable weather started living up to its reputation again today, as a bright and sunny afternoon turned into a squall in just the time it took us to have lunch. After a lot of waiting and hoping for the rain to go away, we decided to make the journey back from Hall 7 to Hall 4 in the rain, just for the heck of it.

What started off as a mild attempt at getting drenched turned into a whole lot of fun for us, as we decided to stay out in the rain as long as we could. Not content with walking around campus, we started splashing in the puddles on the roads. A couple of freak splashes turned the thing into a proper water war, with each of us attempting to splash as much water as we could on the other.

Apparently, I have a real knack for splashing water - I was able to quell even Mausoom's typically ferocious assault. It's strange how some talents reveal themselves most unexpectedly.

Why would anyone do push-ups in a puddle of water? I don't really know. It was perhaps in keeping with the madness of our whole exercise - when you do something silly, it's often best to go all the way. There were a few passers-by who were wondering just how much we had lost it. To maintain the dignity of the CSE department, we shouted "BTech MME" and "PhD Civil" whenever somebody passed by (no offence to those departments!). In the end, we just gave up and started splashing without a care in the world - it was more fun that way.
A la "The Shawshank Redemption". Freedom at last! For me, it was the feeling of accomplishment - I've never played in the rain like this in my childhood. Perhaps I never will again in the future. What mattered was that I'd finally done it.

Hap To The Rescue

2005-08-19T17:30:00.000+05:30

(Read my previous post, if you haven't)

At eight in the morning, I had a sudden insight into my problem. While discussing it post-breakfast with the guys, it even seemed to make sense. Two hours later, I had come up with three primitives that I thought were pretty cool. And my guide agreed!

Hap, you're a life-saver!

My Guardian Angel

2005-08-18T23:11:00.000+05:30

I strongly suspect that I have a guardian angel watching over me.

This statement is not a reflection of my religious beliefs, the amount of caffeine I consumed today or the number of sentimental movies I've watched in the last few days (just 1, actually).

I picture her (of course it's a her) as someone as beautiful as Audrey Hepburn, who played Hap - Richard Dreyfuss' guardian angel in Steven Spielberg's "Always". Sigh!

But I digress.

Unlike most guardian angels, my angel (let's call her Hap) does not have to rescue me from failed parachutes at 3000 ft above sea level, shark attacks off the coast of Australia or poisonous snakes in the Amazon. Hap's duties are mundane by comparison, having mainly to do with saving my skin every time I have a academic deadline which is almost impossible for me to meet (having spent my earlier time in more engaging pursuits such as sleeping, playing the fool and Orkutting). The job involves a lot of effort and creative thinking, but is very low-paying. I do my best to cheer her up, however - I give her as many opportunities to save my neck as I can. There's nothing like helping another person (the more nincompoop, the better) to make you feel good about yourself.

For example, when I needed to present a term paper along with Palak on Virtual Honeypots for my CS628 (Computer Systems Security) course last semester, Hap had her work cut out for her. After all, we were a little more than 12 hours away from the presentation (mostly night at that) and were tired from evading all the other work we were supposed to have done by then. To make things worse, we hadn't read more than a couple of pages of the two long papers we were supposed to understand and present. Finally, our professor's words were ringing in our ears - "If the presentation is not upto the mark, you will receive considerable negative credit for wasting my time". Oh, and did I mention? - we hadn't made a single slide of the presentation yet.

Six hours later, we were still in the lab - mosquitoes cheerfully biting us at regular intervals to keep us awake and going. I don't remember exactly how many slides we had made, but it wasn't more than seven or eight. Our target had been to reach 40 slides before we went to sleep and then review the whole thing in the morning. Evidently, this called for a change of strategy.

We began to read the same paper in tandem, occasionally gently chiding the authors for calling a spade a three foot long appendage-powered earth crust relocator. Four hours and an incredible reading effort later, we had come to 35 slides - including the title, outline, conclusion and references. Reasoning that an hour of sleep was worth more than 5 slides, we headed back to our rooms for a serene one-hour nap (actually, I vaguely remember throwing in the towel an hour before Palak did and going to sleep in the lab itself).

At 8:30 AM, my alarm clock did its duty faithfully for which it rather undeservingly got a nasty response from me. We made ourselves as close to presentable as we could and headed to CS101. After a presentation by someone else, which we spent nervously looking at our notes and (me) contemplating staging a fake attack of appendicitis, we were ready to present.

This is where Hap was supposed to do her thing.

Now, to the uninitiated, Palak is famous for sleeping in various positions - in bed, while talking, while giving presentations etc. Don't get me wrong. He's a gem of a guy, very bright and great fun to be with. While he's awake, of course.

When he stepped on stage that day, I was hoping for a good presentation, because I knew he'd read his part well. What I didn't expect was for him to charm the hell out of our instructor. He was eloquent, articulate, insightful and answered all questions with panache. No, really.

By the time my half of the presentation came up, I was relaxed already. No matter that I made a boring second-half presentation, no matter that I called a router a switch and tried to justify my statement. Palak's virtuoso performance had carried us both to the no-harm mark. Hap had done it again, in the face of impossible odds. (See the fruit of her efforts here)

The reason I'm writing this entry now is because I have a thesis meeting tomorrow at noon. At last week's meeting, not knowing when to keep my mouth shut, I promised my guide that I would come up with an implementation and rethink the primitives of distributed debugging, all within a week ("Yes sir, I promise to move that mountain from there to there. Are you sure that's how far you want me to move it? How about to the next continent - I hear it's nicer there").

It's 12 hours to H-Hour and I'm completely blank. But I have no fears. Hap is giving the matter deep thought, I know for sure. She'll come up with something. Jeeves couldn't do it better.

Cloistered Souls

2005-07-30T12:10:00.000+05:30

I can't get Dharavi out of my mind.

In May 2004, I was called for a written test/interview by many IITs, including IIT Powai. Since a classmate of mine had also got a call from IIT Powai, we decided to make the journey together. He proposed that we land in his relatives' house in Mumbai and then decide whether to stay there or at IIT itself. Accordingly, we (my friend was accompanied by his father) landed in Mumbai the morning before the day of the test.

I knew that my friend's family was not very well-off, but I wasn't prepared for the fact that his relatives lived in Dharavi. It would be hypocrisy to deny that I had many apprehensions about going there - on the journey, I made many feeble attempts to propose going directly to IIT instead. In the end, I had to go along with them after all, to avoid being rude.

The first thing that struck me when we turned the corner leading upto Dharavi was the smell. The place smelt of garbage strewn liberally on the streets. Of course, in India, garbage on the streets is not uncommon by any stretch of imagination. Despite this, that smell made me feel a little sick. We then entered the residential parts of Dharavi.

The term "residential" understates things a little. The density of residential quarters in that area was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Buildings were long, unbroken structures separated by streets (more like paths), some of which were so narrow that only two cyclists could pass through at the same time (I shudder to think of the effects of a fire in some of these places - or a flood). Liquids ran continually along the paths and in the open gutters by the side - waste water with some phenyl added, I think, to reduce the probability of disease spreading.

We needed to find out where my friend's relatives stayed (there didn't seem to be any visible door numbers or street names) and asked a shopkeeper. The mention of a name was enough - a cheerful young man walked with us to the place, without us asking him. Everyone seemed to know everyone else and eager to help.

I expected the buildings to be made out of thatch, but was suprised to find that many were constructed out of concrete, with metal roofing sheets. These were also used innovatively to create walls and attics within the buildings. The living portions were themselves less than a couple of hundred square feet in area. Within this small area, a kitchen and a living room had been carved out, with the living room doubling up as a bedroom. The bathroom was a tiny cubicle of about five feet by four, with a sliding door instead of one that opened outwards - another innovation to conserve space.

A further surprise was the presence of a colour television, washing machine and a telephone within those cramped quarters. Evidently, these were not people who lived in poverty. Our hosts were a family of three - parents and a daughter about 20 years old. The father worked in something like a clerical position, while the daughter was doing a BSc in Computer Science. They were extremely nice people, who insisted on us having breakfast with them (and stuffed me with idlis till I nearly stopped breathing). What I liked most about them was that while they seemed a little apologetic about the living conditions, they were in no way ashamed of them.

In the afternoon, we went to IIT, where my friend and I elected to stay. My friend's father went back to his relatives' place. After my admission test, I went to my uncle's place in Chembur. It felt good to be in a place like home again, but I felt no sadness for the people of Dharavi - only admiration.

Salaam, Bombay!

2005-07-29T11:35:00.000+05:30

When I went to IIT Powai for my MTech interview last year, I came back without an admit, but feeling inspired and awed by the magnificent city of Bombay. A visit to Dharavi alone was enough to give me an indication of what it means to be a Mumbaikar. When a million people can live in an area of 175 hectares, special bonds develop between them that enable them to face the incredibly poor sanitation, lack of hygiene and the overcrowded accomodation. The feeling that you get in Dharavi is not one of claustrophobia, but one of openness and acceptance. "We are all in this together", the residents seem to say with their actions. "All we've got is each other".

When I read about the terrible floods and the fire at Bombay High, I was terribly saddened, despite finding out that my relatives and friends in the city were all safe. Then I remembered Dharavi. Any place, where people have the kind of spirit I saw there, can take care of itself.

I was not mistaken. Here is an moving and inspiring eyewitness account of the stormy night by an advertising executive who found her way home from her workplace. Whatever the calamity, the gallant Mumbaikars will go on, undaunted, strengthened and heads held higher than ever.

Making A Song And Dance About Things

2005-07-16T00:52:00.000+05:30

The song is a much-maligned compenent of the Indian cinematic tradition. Hollywood turns its nose up at the concept while applauding in the same breath even mediocre musicals like Moulin Rouge. It is certainly true that most songs in Indian movies are now more an unnecessary legacy rather than a useful cinematic device. However, it is also to be accepted that a good and relevant song can add a whole new dimension to a movie.

What defines a great song? A fine blend of the music, lyrics, the quality of singing, the picturisation and the way the song fits into the context of the movie. It takes a combination of the director, music composer, lyricist and singer to create and realize the perfect song, one that enhances the narrative in ways that a dialogue cannot. While only a handful of directors seem to understand this concept (most directors seem to prefer item numbers and vulgar dances in exotic foreign locations), there have been a fair number of excellent songs that have been created and used with great skill in Tamil cinema (and certainly in Hindi cinema as well, but that is a topic for another day).

Accordingly, here is an attempt to pick the best of the above. This is my list of the ten greatest songs in Tamil cinema:

(In no particular order)

1.
Song: Paattum Naane, Bhavamum Naane
Film: Thiruvilayaadal
Singer: T M Soundararajan
Music: K V Mahadevan
Lyricist: Kannadasan

When the conceited musician Hemanatha Bhagavathar threatens to enslave the Pandiya kingdom on the strength of a bet with its king, Lord Shiva assumes the role of a woodcutter to quell Bhagavathar's ego. In front of Bhagavathar's house, he sings a song so divine that when the song stops, all of creation ceases to move.

Whatever your religious convictions and opinions of the stereotypically garish Tamil devotional movie, you cannot but be amazed at this brilliant song. TMS was never better, effortlessly convincing the listener that his voice is more divine than that of the supreme Carnatic master, Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna (who sang "Oru Naal Podhuma" for Bhagavathar's character). The brilliant lyrics allow Lord Shiva to tell Bhagavathar in no uncertain terms who the real master is.

"Asaiyum Porulil Isaiyum Naane, (I am the music in all things that move)
Aadum Kalaiyin Naayagan Naane, (I am the king of the art of dance)
Ethilum Iyangum Iyakkamum Naane, (I am the creation inside all creation)
En Isai Ninraal Adangum Ulage! (If my music should stop, the world will come to a standstill!)

(A famous dramatic pause in the song where the seas, birds and wind cease to move)

Naan Asaindhaal Asaiyum Agilamellaame, (If I move, the world moves with me)
Arivaai Manidhaa, Un Aanavam Peridha?" (Learn this, human. Is your ego so great?)

But what takes the song from being merely good to possibly the greatest ever in Tamil cinema is Sivaji Ganesan. Often criticized for overacting, he proves conclusively that only he could have pulled this off in the way he did. In doing so, he creates a Lord Shiva who winks at the viewer, plays every musical instrument so realistically that it doesn't even cross your mind that it's merely an act and conjures up entire characters where all that was needed was a set of faces (my personal favourite is the flautist). The instrumental sequence at the end provides him with an opportunity to exhibit the magnificently diverse histrionic skills he was endowed with. When Marlon Brando said "Sivaji can act the way I can, but I cannot act the way Sivaji can", perhaps it was this aspect he was referring to.

Song: Ponn Ondru Kanden
Film: Padiththaal Mattum Podhumaa?
Singers: T M Soundararajan and P B Sreenivas
Music: M S Viswanathan
Lyricist: Kannadasan

Can a song define a movie? Whe you watch Padithaal Mattum Podhuma, the memory that lingers the most in your mind is not the story or the acting, but Sivaji and Balaji's duet. In just four minutes, Kannadasan explains the past, present and the future of the 150-minute movie in his characteristically simple and beautiful language that possesses numerous subtle implications.

Sure, the picturisation could have been better - two guys faking swimming doesn't do justice to the song. Even that doesn't deprive the song of its rightful place among the greatest.

3.
Song: Senthaazhampoovil Vandhaadum Thendral
Film: Mullum Malarum
Singer: K J Yesudas
Music: Ilayaraaja
Lyricist: Kannadasan

Ho hum. Another Kannadasan song in the list. This is hardly surprising, not because I am a great fan of his, but because his influence on Tamil cinema is perhaps the only topic that Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha, MGR and anyone even remotely associated with Tamil cinema will agree upon. (An illustration: Once, Ilayaraaja had a fight with Kannadasan. Some time later, Ilayaraaja decided to make amends and told his assistant to "fetch the Kavignar (Tamil for poet)". The naive assistant enquired "Which poet?". To which Ilayaraaja reacted by giving the assistant a dressing down and telling him "There is only one Kavignar." Millions of Tamils agreed and Kannadasan is still synonymous with the word Kavignar)

This song is sung during a drive through a picturesque mountain path. The music and singing are special, but Kannadasan's lyrics blow you away. By comparing nature with a woman, the Kavignar brings out a desription of beauty that can only be described as beautiful in itself! Also of interest are the tributes to God, which marked clearly Kannadasan's conversion from being a staunch atheist to a devout Hindu.

4.
Song: Pachai Niramae
Film: Alaipayuthey
Singer: Hariharan with backing vocals by Clinton (not William Jefferson)
Music: A R Rahman
Lyricist: Vairamuthu

The most recent entry in the list. Mani Ratnam is highly regarded in Indian cinema for raising the bar and successfully getting the masses to appreciate better quality of storytelling and a number of relevant social issues. He must also be thanked for redefining the concept of a song and converting it from a liability into an opportunity for experimentation and innovation. Right from the simple elegance of Chinna Chinna Aasai (Choti Si Asha in Hindi) in Roja to the beautiful cinematography in Hey, Goodbye Nanba (Hey, Khuda Hafiz in Hindi) in Aayitha Ezhuthu, a Mani Ratnam song is often instantly recognizable.

He takes this talent to its greatest height in Pachai Niramae. Using Vairamuthu's scintillating lyrics, he weaves a colourful tapestry that leaves the viewer mesmerized.

When Hariharan sings

Alayillaatha Naazhi Vannam (the colour of a waveless lake)
Mugilillaatha Vaanin Vannam (the colour of a cloudless sky)
.....
Ellaam Un Kannil Minnum (All these (blue) colours sparkle in your eyes)

you are lost. Lost between admiration of Hariharan's voice mastery, Vairamuthu's elegant love poetry and the spectacular shot of the heroine in a blue dress in a boat in a blue lake that reflects the blueness of the sky.

5.
Song: Mandram Vantha Thendral
Film: Mounaraagam
Singer: S P Balasubramanian
Music: Ilayaraaja
Lyricist: Vaali

From SPB's anguished, stirring cry at the start of the song, to Ilayaraaja's melodious music and the excellent lyrics which beautifully express Mohan's character's anguish, there is little wrong with this song. The visualization also allows us to catch a glimpse of Mani Ratnam's unique style in its infancy.

Vaali is a talented lyricist often used poorly by filmmakers to churn out numbers like "Muqala Muqabala" in Kaadhalan. In the right hands (in this case, Mani Ratnam's), Vaali can create beauty - this song is a good example.

6.
Song: Ilangaatru Veesudhey
Film: Pithaamagan
Singer: Sriram Parthasarathy and Shreya Ghoshal
Music: Ilayaraaja
Lyricist: Vaali (?)

This one is going to ruffle some feathers for sure :-) I have many points to offer in support of my decision to include this song, however.

The song is one of Ilayaraaja's best efforts in many years, with his trademark flute and violin combined with an assortment of instruments to create a beautiful, earthy sound, perfect for the village scenario of the movie. The lead singers are fresh voices who do an excellent job - particularly Shreya Ghoshal who pulls off some tricky Tamil pronunciation.

An important aspect is Bala's picturisation which draws the viewer into the lives of the charaters being portayed. Finally, there are Surya and Vikram's remarkable facial expressions that convey the essence of their characters without the necessity for a spoken word - they make the visuals speak for themselves.

7.
Song: Poongaatru Pudhidhaanathu
Film: Moondraam Pirai
Singer: K J Yesudas
Music: Ilayaraaja
Lyricist: Kannadasan

This will earn its share of brickbats as well. After all, am I not choosing this song over the infinitely more popular "Kanne Kalaimaane", which was also Kannadasan's last song and a brilliant one at that? Let me attempt a justification.

Firstly, Yesudas' voice is merely sad in Kanne Kalaimaane, while it exhibits both a depth and a variety of emotions in this song. For instance, in the "Maragatha Pillai Mozhi Pesum" line, you can feel the raw pain that Kamalahasan's character is living with. There is joy, sorrow and pain in Kamalahasan's character and in Yesudas's voice - this song brings out each aspect separately for us to appreciate. The lyrics of this song are also brilliantly Kannadasan in their own way, and can hold their own even in comparison with Kanne Kalaimaane.

When you watch the ending of the movie, it is a culmination of events in the movie which really creates the effect on you. This song is perhaps the single largest such factor. The impressions of love and devotion you see from Kamalahasan and the ingenuous love and trust shown by Sridevi are created almost entirely by this song. The scenic visuals, the simple, yet poignant events (Kamalahasan teaching Sridevi to read and write, feeding her, combing her hair) and the realistic expressions from both actors help the viewers empathize with the characters and lay the groundwork for the magnificent ending of the movie itself.

8.
Song: Adho Andha Paravai Pola Vaazha Vendum
Film: Aayirathil Oruvan
Singer: T M Soundararajan
Music: M S Viswanathan
Lyricist: Kannadasan

Whatever one's opinions about MGR's acting abilities (the very existence of which is questioned by some), there can be no doubt that he was and will remain the most towering figure in the history of Tamil cinema (Rajnikanth has tremendous adulation, but I don't see anyone committing suicide if he pops off tomorrow).

I was hard-pressed to choose between this song and "Naan Aanaittaaal" from Engal Veettu Pillai. In the end, this song won for its deeper meaning (the other song was just a popularity vehicle for MGR). A great song about the meaning of freedom is the perfect way to celebrate the liberation of a set of slaves from a tyrannical ruler - which is why the song fits the movie like a glove.

Also a plus is a slim and trim Jayalalitha - who atleast back then, couldn't be accused of having disproportionate assets (sorry, I couldn't resist!).

9.
Song: Sippi Irukkuthu, Muthum Irukkuthu
Film: Varumayin Niram Sivappu
Singer: S P Balasubramanian and S Janaki
Music: M S Viswanathan
Lyricist: Kannadasan

A truly spectacular song which conveys many lovely ideas in its words. The basic premise is simple - Sridevi hums a tune and Kamalahassan, the budding poet, instantaneously composes a lyric to match the tune and sings it to her. What makes the song incredible is the knowledge that Kannadasan actually composed the lyrics in exactly the same fashion - MSV composed a piece of music and Kannadasan wrote lyrics to fit the music instantaneously.

Mayakkam Thanthathu Yaar? Tamizho, amutho... kaviyo? - Who mesmerized you? Was it the beauty of the Tamil language, was it the melody of the song... or was it the poet?

I vote for all three.

10.
Song: Maraindhirundhu Paarkkum Marumam Enna?
Film: Thillaana Mohanaambaal
Singer: P Suseela
Music: K V Mahadevan
Lyrics: Kannadasan

This one belongs to Padmini all the way. Her talent as a classical dancer is showcased throughout the movie and in this song in particular. The chemistry she had with Sivaji Ganesan is there to be seen in her playful glances and veiled taunts and in Sivaji's mesmerized expressions.

What is even more astounding is the way this chemistry is conveyed by the force of suggestion alone. There is no wonder then, that this movie holds eternal appeal for the most conservative of Tamil housewives.

Well, there you have it. There were a few songs which almost made the list, but had to be kept out to accommodate others, possibly due to personal prejudices. In my opinion, these are pretty much at the same level as the ones listed above, and could just as easily find a place in the list.

Chinna Chinna Aasai (Roja) for the phenomenon named A R Rahman that it introduced to Indian Cinema
Nilai Maarinaal (Paava Mannippu) for the brilliantly reflective lyrics
Ponaal Pogattum Poda (Paalum Pazhamum) for becoming a catchphrase to express sorrow and loss in Tamil Nadu
Roja Malare Rajakumari (Veerathirumagan) for the sheer beauty of PBS and P Susheela's voices
Paattu Paada Vaa (Then Nilavu) - For A.M. Raja's voice and style which make the lyrics and Gemini Ganesan's expressions even more enjoyable

And some recent songs worth an honourable mention include:

Ennai Konjam Maattri (Kaakka Kaakka) - who says good songs are not made in today's cinema?
Nyaabagam Varudhe (Autograph) - refer above point. I was delighted when the film won a National award, but when I read that Veer Zara got the exact same award (Best Wholesome Entertainment or something of the sort), I felt really sorry for Cheran.

(Thanks to Rahul for lots of info about old Tamil songs in general and some long discussions where we repeatedly agreed upon Kannadasan's genius :) Also, my apologies to the non-Tamil readers, if any, for the highly localized content)

Aaarghhh!!!

2005-07-14T11:10:00.000+05:30

Life is cruel!

She Cries Softly To Herself In The Corner...

2005-07-11T00:21:00.000+05:30

This is in reference to my friend Kierthi's recent blog entries 1 and 2, and the related link he posted in one of them.

I felt ashamed to be part of a class of beings capable of such dastardly acts. I kept picturing my mother, my sister and my friends in such a situation - the very thought of it was unbearable.

Why does our society blame the victims? Why do we make the victim undergo more trauma after what they've been through already? Why are crimes against women dealt with leniently? These incidents are not just fodder for trashy Indian movies - thousands of our women go through these every single day.

I remember an incident during my BTech days when I was travelling on a bus with some of my classmates (whom I didn't know very well). A guy standing next to the conductor was talking and laughing rather loudly. I didn't pay much attention to him at first, but I realized something was wrong when a classmate of mine started exchanging angry words with him. I then realized that he had been passing petty comments at my her and her companions. What had prevented me from realizing what was going on in the first place was that the conductor was joining in the fun, laughing with him. I spoke a few hesitating words to add to my classmate's mincing tones and the miscreant got off at the next bus stop.

My classmate, who later became one of my closest friends, stared long and hard at the conductor and got back to her idle chatter, with an air of impregnability surrounding her. The other men in the bus however, just looked at her as they would look at a freak.

Despite all the cynicism surrounding it, we are a indeed a long way from achieving empowerment of women. We have yet to accord them the most fundamental right of all - dignity.

Wish I Was There!

2005-07-04T18:32:00.000+05:30

On the 2nd of July, after almost 25 years, Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Richard Wright and Nick Mason put aside their differences to spend 23 quality minutes together on the largest stage in the world. Pink Floyd performed from Hyde Park, London to an estimated worldwide audience of 2 billion(!) as part of the gigantic Live 8 concert to exhort the leaders of the G8 countries to help eradicate the problem of poverty in Africa.

The show lacked the dazzling lights and lasers that epitomised the Pink Floyd concert experience. In contrast, the band kicked off with the benign Breathe from Dark Side Of The Moon. Perhaps as penance for his autocratic attitude, which caused the band to break up, Waters was content to play a subdued bass and leave most of the singing to Gilmour. It was evident however, from the faces of the other three (and particularly Gilmour) that all was not forgiven and forgotten.

Money screamed and wailed into the night - perhaps the only song appropriate to the event.

Money - so they say
Is the root of all evil today.
But if you ask my advice it's no surprise
that they're giving none away.

When the familiar strains of Wish You Were Here started, Waters finally addressed the audience in a choked voice: "It's actually... quite emotional, standing up here with these three guys after all these years... Standing to be counted with the rest of you. Anyway...we're doing this for everyone who's not here... and particularly of course, for Syd." The vocals were divided between the two - first Gilmour, then Waters and then both emotional voices together.

How I wish, how I wish you were here...

They were calling to Syd together, as they had once called out to him three decades ago.

With an uncharacteristic "Here we go", the four launched into Comfortably Numb. During Gilmour's legendary guitar solo at the end of the song, a huge "Make Poverty History" sign was displayed on that eternal Floydian symbol, The Wall. But amidst the bright lights, the stirring music and the sheer magic of the moment, nobody really paid it any attention.

The last beautiful notes died away and the cymbals crashed to signify the end. Roger invited his three former friends to salute the audience together. The four of them stood, arms on each other's shoulders, facing the world, facing the greatness they had achieved in the past and facing the harsh reality that the song was over.

I've been book-tagged!

2005-06-30T19:50:00.000+05:30

Arjun decided that I should put the excessive amount of time I've spent reading books to some use and book-tagged me.

Number of Books Owned Exclusively by Me:

Hmm... considering that I bought most of my own books, not many. Around 30-40.

Number Of Books I Stole From Neighbours And Friends:

Maybe 5. Most significantly, The Complete Illustrated Sherlock Holmes (Dinakar, if you are reading this, it's fair trade - you have my copy of Nicholas Nickleby)

Number Of Books Neighbours And Friends Stole From Me:

More than 5, certainly. All this despite my extreme disinclination towards lending my books.

The Best Non-Fiction I've Read:

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - Richard P. Feynman
Iacocca - The Autobiography of Lee Iacocca

Books I Can Read A Thousand Times:

The Blandings, Jeeves and Golf series by P.G. Wodehouse
The Sherlock Holmes Stories
The Godfather by Mario Puzo. As Tom Hanks says in "You've Got Mail", The Godfather contains the answers to all the questions in life.

Books That Influenced My Life:

Animal Farm by George Orwell
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
The Catcher In The Rye by J.D. Salinger (no, I'm not planning to assassinate anyone!)

Books That Disappointed Me:

The Alchemist by Paul Coelho - Balderdash!
Arthur C. Clarke's sequels to Rendevous With Rama - What was he thinking?!

Books I Never Finished:

Focault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco. It was like reading an encyclopaedia whose articles are all mixed up. It got tiring after the first 100-odd pages.

The Fountainhead (or was it Atlas Shrugged?) - The one with Howard Roarke. Beats me how people are inspired by it. I couldn't decide who was more annoying - Roarke or his girlfriend/enemy.

Ideal Reading Position:

In my bed, propped up against a pillow with some quiet, meditative music like Bach, Enigma (once upon a time), The Doors or Coldplay in the background.

A Book I'm Possessive About:

I'm possessive about all my books. I lend them to VERY few people, who I know I can trust them with.

I'm probably most attached to my copy of Brave New World, which I've only lent once, to someone very dear.

Current Read:

Just finished Methuselah's Children by Robert Heinlein. Pretty good, though it dragged in many places. Not Asimov level, but good sci-fi.

A Hundred Examples of How Not To Do an MTech in CSE

2005-06-27T01:20:00.000+05:30

When I heard from Bhaskar that he had seen over a hundred movies since coming to IITK, I thought to myself that his would be an easy record to beat. Accordingly, I started listing out the movies I had seen in my room, in the auditorium, in Mausoom's room, Palak's room and a hundred other places where the only thing to do seemed to be to watch a movie. To my surprise, my progress beyond the first 50 was rather slow. At one point, I even started to doubt myself! Then I realized, watching movies was the one thing I had been doing sincerely since I came to IITK (don't even mention thesis/course work). With determination, I ploughed on.... and the milestone was reached at last!

Here are the 100 movies that I can remember (and I'm recalling more every hour). These are all movies that I had never seen before I came to IITK. I also excluded Hindi movies (except Monsoon Wedding) and movies that I saw in theatres in Kanpur.

1 23 (Yes, that's the name - A German movie)
2 2001: A Space Odyssey
3 A Clockwork Orange
4 Almost Famous
5 American Beauty
6 American Pie 2 (I know.)
7 Analyze That
8 Analyze This
9 Annie Hall
10 Antz
11 Apocalypse Now
12 Around The World In 80 Days
13 Baran (Rain) - Iranian
14 Before Sunrise
15 Before Sunset
16 Being John Malkovich
17 Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
18 Citizen Kane
19 Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
20 Fargo
21 Fiddler On The Roof
22 Finding Forrester
23 Funny Face
24 Good Will Hunting
25 Goodfellas
26 Hannibal
27 Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban
28 Heat
29 Hot Shots Part Deux
30 How To Steal A Million
31 Ikiru (To Live)
32 It's A Wonderful Life
33 Jackie Brown
34 Kagemusha (The Shadow Warrior)
35 Kill Bill Vol. 1
36 Kill Bill Vol. 2
37 La Strada (The Way)
38 Life Is Beautiful
39 Lolita
40 Meet The Fockers
41 Meet The Parents
42 Memento
43 Million Dollar Baby
44 Monsoon Wedding
45 Monster
46 Monsters, Inc.
47 My Big Fat Greek Wedding
48 My Fair Lady
49 My Name Is Nobody
50 October Sky
51 Oldboy
52 On The Waterfront
53 One Fine Day
54 One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
55 Psycho
56 Pulp Fiction
57 Rain Man
58 Ran (Chaos)
59 Rashomon (In The Woods)
60 Rear Window
61 Rebecca
62 Red Dragon
63 Ronin
64 Rosemary's Baby
65 Saw
66 Scarface
67 Se7en
68 Serendipity
69 Shinchin No Samurai (The Seven Samurai)
70 Shrek 2
71 Sin City
72 Singin' In The Rain
73 Sleepless In Seattle
74 Sleepy Hollow
75 Snake In The Eagle's Shadow
76 Spiderman 2
77 Strangers On A Train
78 Taxi Driver
79 The Apartment
80 The Big Lebowski
81 The Gods Must Be Crazy
82 The Gods Must Be Crazy - II
83 The Gold Rush
84 The Killing
85 The Ladykillers
86 The Maltese Falcon
87 The Naked Gun
88 The Naked Gun 2 1/2
89 The Others
90 The Party
91 The Ring
92 The Shining
93 The Usual Suspects
94 The Wicker Man
95 There's Something About Mary
96 To Kill A Mockingbird
97 Twelve Angry Men
98 Wait Until Dark
99 When Harry Met Sally
100 Wrongfully Accused

And I solemnly promise.... that I shall keep this fire burning.... until all the movies on the IITK LAN are exhausted... until I am hired as a special consultant to IMDB.... oh, whatever... I'm off to see a movie to celebrate! :)

Lights! Camera! Strip!

2005-06-18T13:29:00.000+05:30

Last night, I saw a movie called The Wicker Man. It's a story about a devoutly Christian police officer who goes to a private island to investigate a disappearance and finds that the residents of the island indulge in pagan rituals like human sacrifice, nude dancing, public copulation and the like. There was one scene where the cop is in a room, unable to sleep because his landlord's pretty daughter is dancing naked in the next room. It got me thinking about nudity in movies and whether it is necessary to show skin where a suggestion would do.

I've seen movies where a nude scene is pivotal to the entire movie - some that readily come to mind are Buffalo Bill's dance before the mirror in Silence Of The Lambs and Helen Hunt's bath scene in As Good As It Gets. I really can't imagine either of these movies creating the effect they did without that particular scene being shown the way it was.

(As a digression, I couldn't help but imagine what a Shiv Sena activist would have done after seeing one of the above scenes. There would have been indignant cries of moral degeneracy and personal threats would have been issued to the filmmakers. And then all the activists would have gone home and happily watched a voluptuous Indian heroine make several sexually suggestive motions in the name of dance. There is degeneracy all right, but in people's mentality.)

Great filmmakers have been known to regularly use nudity. Stanley Kubrick was famous for putting nude scenes in his movies even before he made Eyes Wide Shut (remember the bathtub sequence in The Shining and Alex's test in A Clockwork Orange?). Bernardo Bertolucci uses nudity, as does Roman Polanski (the surreal sequence in Rosemary's Baby and Faye Dunaway in Chinatown).

Equally, there have been masters of the medium, contemporaries of those mentioned above who have never used a nude scene (Akira Kurosawa never used one, neither did Satyajit Ray and David Lean). Did that in any way diminish their brilliance? Did that constrain the subject matter of their movies in any way? If Kurosawa had made A Clockwork Orange , would he have done it without all the nudity?

What about mediocre movies? What about movies like Road Trip and American Pie? Should such movies be allowed to showcase body parts in the name of entertainment? Agreed that these movies cater to an entirely different audience, but shouldn't we draw a line between expression and titillation, just as we draw a line between movies and pornography?

The truth is that drawing such a line is rather more difficult than it sounds. I think it all boils down to a director's style and his interpretation of the script. A director should be given the creative freedom to express his ideas in the manner which he sees fit. If that necessitates a nude scene, then so be it. In doing so, we may allow the mediocre movies to get away with depravity, but the price we would pay otherwise is higher - that of stunting creativity in the most expressive of all media.

Of Geeks and In-space algorithms

2005-06-10T18:59:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, Palak posed the following problem:

"There are 2n+1 positive integers, n of which are duplicated. There is one number that does not have a pair. Assume that the numbers are not repeated apart from the duplication i.e. that there are n+1 distinct numbers in the list. Give an algorithm to find the unpaired number, which is linear in time [O(n)] and constant in space (ideally, the solution should be in-space i.e. requiring no additional storage space other than say, a counter)."

I thought about it for a few minutes and then promptly forgot all about it when I remembered that I hadn't signed in the department register for the day. This evening, I gave it some more thought and came up with the following solution:

Take a variable called sum and initialize it to 0. Now, for all 2n+1 numbers, add 10^i to sum (where i is the ith number in the list). At the end, the value of sum will have a bunch of 0's, 2's (representing the duplicate numbers) and just one 1, the position of which gives the value of the distinct number (one less than the actual value, actually).

When I gave Palak the solution, he wouldn't accept it as being in-space or even constant in space. My contention was that the storage space I required was a constant function (10^x) of a constant (the largest number in the list is a constant for a given problem, and can be found in linear time) and hence, the storage I required was also constant with regard to n. He pointed out that according to my logic, even a hash table would be acceptable, which seemed wrong to both of us. Unable to come to a conclusion, we went to complexity guru, Sachin. After several arguments and counter-arguments, Sachin finally gave us the answer we were looking for.

Given that there are exactly n+1 distinct numbers in the list and that all numbers are positive integers, the largest of them is atleast as big as n+1. This implies that the largest of them is linearly bounded by the problem size, n. Which meant that the largest number in the list was not a constant and depended linearly on n. Which meant that I had egg all over my vegetarian face.

I realized two things from this incident. One was that I can often be terrible at problem-solving and even worse at accepting that my solutions could be wrong. More importantly, I realized just what a great place IITK is. There are people here who think that posing such problems is fun, there are people who think solving them is fun, there are even people who get their kicks out of finding loopholes in other people's solutions. We may be geeks, but atleast we're all geeks here :)

Incidentally, I solved the problem two minutes after the above argument, salvaging some dignity. The answer is below, encoded in ROT-13.

Fvzcyl qb na KBE bs gur ovanel ercerfragngvba bs rnpu ahzore. Gur qhcyvpngrf jvyy pnapry bhg (n KBE n vf 0) naq jung jvyy or yrsg vf gur ovanel ercerfragngvba bs gur hacnverq ahzore. Abgr gung guvf fbyhgvba vf va-fcnpr, erdhvevat ab nqqvgvbany fcnpr ng nyy. Bs pbhefr, vg vf nyfb yvarne va gvzr nf erdhverq.

Let me ask you something...

2005-05-22T01:40:00.000+05:30

Ah! Something to do at last! After weeks of rumination (thinking, not chewing the cud), I've hit upon the marvellous idea of starting a Quiz blog. See my Quiz blog for a new question every couple of days.

Did somebody mention thesis work?

No Kidding

2005-05-05T02:46:00.000+05:30

"Mummeee...... Abhishek mujhe upar aane nahin de raha hai........" (Mummeeeee... Abhishek is not letting me climb up)
"Mummeee.... didi mujhe chips nahin de rahi hai....." (Mummy, sister isn't giving me chips)
"Mummeee.... bachchi ne soo-soo kar di" (Mummy, the baby had a disaster)

The last statement made me most nervous because the baby in question had just been dispatched to the berth above mine. Luckily, my fears were unfounded as the extent of the baby's damage was not very large and a prompt mopping operation by the mother saved me a most unwelcome shower.

I like kids. I like train journeys. It's the combination that I fear.

My trip home for the summer began innocuously enough, with an eventless overnight journey from Kanpur to Bhopal. I got some good sleep, little realizing that I would need all of it in the ordeal that would follow. I caught the Tamil Nadu Express at 8:00 AM from Bhopal, looking forward to 24 hours of peace and quiet and hoping to read a book that I'd been saving for a journey like this (Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed). I arrived at my seat and was instantly put out of my illusions about having a quiet read.

There were four of them: a little boy who had the lungs of a Hercules, two little girls who spent most of their time alternately causing the little boy to exercise his aforementioned lungs and finally, a baby girl who seemed to cry at regular intervals just to assert her place in the group. In the center of the commotion was a sack of chips, biscuits and other snacks that could have comfortably fed the entire population of the coach for a day. The uproar had been caused because the little boy felt that his sisters were conspiring against him, denying him a fair share of one of the packets of chips just opened (and generously distributed all over my seat). The baby girl was just crying to get a piece of the action - I'm not even sure she had teeth.

I stood there, a little unsure of myself, not knowing how to ask for my seat (I even contemplated standing for 24 hours). Finally, mustering enough courage, I located the mother (who was, curiously enough, reading a magazine in the corner) and stuttered something to the effect of "seat.... mine... number 30.... lower berth". She glanced at me, then at her warring offspring and with a courage that astounded me, picked up the baby girl in one hand, pulled the ear of the little boy with the other and said "Abhishek, let bhaiya sit down". I gingerly sat down, amidst scowls from the kid with the pain in his ear. The kids luckily transferred their attention back to the chips and all was well.

Three hours later, I was just figuring out where the book was going when the baby decided to do her best to enliven the journey (ref line 3). I got out of that mess unscathed, with just a warning grin (it really seemed like a warning to me) from the kid - "Take me seriously, or else!".

More trials followed.... one of the girls decided that I was reading a children's book from the pretty picture on the cover. She sat down beside me, patiently reading along with me how Shevek came up with his principle of Simultaneity. When I turned the page, she smiled sweetly and went back to her other sister, to engage in a conversation punctuated largely with giggles. I put my head down and continued reading. Five more hours of daylight before I could retire for the night.

Finally, night time! I had actually finished my book, despite all the obstacles placed in my path. It was time to celebrate with a good night's sleep and wake up in my beautiful Chennai. I glanced down at four kids, sleeping peacefully. They looked really beautiful - even the kid with Herculean lungs. I realized that you need to put up with a lot just to appreciate the beauty and innocence of childhood. I closed my eyes and thought about a childhood long gone....

Testing Times

2005-04-29T01:26:00.000+05:30

My second semester exams just got over today.

Since I've (hopefully!) completed the coursework requirements of my MTech degree, I have only thesis work to keep me occupied for the rest of my programme duration. This effectively means that

I HAVE JUST WRITTEN MY LAST EVER EXAMINATION !!

Well, sure there'll be placement exams and all that, but no more exams in their most dreaded sense :-)

I can't help but stop and think about all the exams I've written throughout my life. I remember finishing my primary school exams in one hour and being forced to doodle on my question paper for an hour because the invigilator wouldn't let me out before the end. I remember panicking before my eight standard half-yearly examination when I realized that I had prepared for Math instead of Biology! I remember being petrified before my tenth standard board exams when I couldn't find my hall ticket (only to be rescued by my Mom who rushed to the examination center with my hall ticket and gave me an earful of reprimands).

I fondly remember my many BTech examinations where I often used the information in the question and my own creativity to come up with complete formal theories (I should've sent some of those efforts for publication). Most recently, the exams I have encountered in IITK have been extremely interesting and of an excellent standard, with few (but significant) exceptions.

I have special memories about most of my examinations. Some of them have pushed me upwards in my academic endeavours while others have propelled me towards the dark depths of despair. However, I can't help but get a special warm feeling about sitting in a hot, humid and tense examination hall and attacking a problem, figuring out ways to get some credit without actually answering the question or rarely, smirking to myself about cracking an especially tough one. Examinations have helped me grow in many ways - I would be a lesser person than I am today without exams.

What's that? I need to redo CS728 coz my end-sem exam was disastrous? Forget what I just said... Exams are tyranny; persecution; unspeakably evil things that confine the brightest of minds to mediocrity .....

What a mess!

2005-04-23T15:25:00.000+05:30

Enough people, whose opinions I respect, have told me that I should start blogging. So I thought to myself, what better time to start than the end of the semester when 2 exams and a term project presentation loom large over my head?

Life at IITK is rather unique - one week you're devouring movies at the rate of three a day, stopping only for meals and some Orkutting; the other week you're engaged in successive night-outs, getting some obstinate piece of code in your term project to compile and finishing a semester's worth of work in 24 hours.

I guess if I was more organized and methodical, life would be a lot easier. But my hero is Sherlock Holmes, not Hercule Poirot! It's fun to be messy - as long as your work gets done. This is who I am - this is how I do things.

Some things never change - nor should they.