Personal Musings

Change

2010-11-01T00:22:00.002+05:30

Somebody once asked the question, "When does a species evolve?"
He got the response," Only when it is in the edge of annihilation."

Strange. I thought that human mind evolved when it is pushed into a virtual annihilation.

But why are we forced to change. Rather, why cant we change on our own, but have to wait for a threat to appear? Frankly speaking, I don't know. But most of us change only when we reach such a point.

There may be that one exception who had changed his way on his own, but that seldom happens.
In fact, most of our training is to ensure that we change when we are expected to change.

People say we adapt, under newer conditions. The innate nature is changed, when the new condition came in. The real question, then is to ask whether these changes are revertible.
Can we change back to what we were earlier? The answer theoretically should have been yes. But, practically it rarely happens. Once we change from one state, we rarely go back to the old state. Those who are obsessed with the past, make an attempt to reach that old state, but all they are able to achieve is their perception of the old state. Nothing more, nothing less.

Things always move forward. They never go backwards. The statement appears too strong, but then it so not too far away from the absolute truth. The flow, as can be experienced by our thoughts, rarely repeat. Can they repeat? Yes. Its like random numbers we generate. There will be a set of small numbers that do repeat, but they wont repeat long enough. We may experience a set of experiences that may seem repetitive. But it is never going to be same as past.

Let us bring our focus back to the question,"When do we change?".
We like the way things are. The conservative half of us, wants to see the same things over and over again. We like to go to the same barber, like to eat the same type of food,like to wear the same color of dress. If we are doing the same things, we do not have to change. And change needs work. It needs rewiring of our way of life. It needs to learn new things about what is around. It needs us to solve new problems of day-to-day living. It needs us to do a lot of things, and that's why we don't like to change.

Are we keeping us away from change, because we are lazy then? I wouldn't put it like that. Laziness requires us to be utterly disgusted by the very thought of doing something. The conservative self is not lazy, in the sense that people continue to do what they were doing anyways. They just don't want to change their behavioral patterns. That's where the inertia is coming from. For a river to change course, the banks should change. If a hill is on the path of the river, the river wont try to climb up the hill, and then get down. It will just flow around the river, using its simple policy of "flow from top to bottom". Water simple wont flow uphill. It is not part of its innate nature. So, can we change our habits?

Let us look at the way beliefs change. There are some people who have a fixed set of beliefs. The buffaloes. They never change their set of beliefs. Their belief system is as rigid as rock. Once they believe in something, no matter what happens, no matter how much proof is given to them, they will not reverse their belief. Strange to say, many of the things that they believe are what was told to them. Like, Jesus came back to life after 3 days of death. Or, like earth is flat. Or, God is of the form of a man. The extreme versions of them form what is termed as the fundamentalist bunch. These people truly believe that whatever is being taught to them is the truth, and the only truth; and every other view is false. Then, there is the bunch of fickle-minded set of people. They start believing in one thing. They do truly believe in it for some time. And then they hear a new thing and change their belief system to the new one. At any given point of time were they conflicting themselves? No. They were having the right set of beliefs at each instance of time, they are just incapable of sticking on to one set of beliefs. Then, there are people who have semi-rigid beliefs. It is not that they wont change their belief systems. They just ask for different degrees of proof to state that the new system is the better one with respect to their current belief. Just for theoretical completion, I will also be forced to state a class of people who do not believe in anything. Frankly, if there is really a person who doesn't really believe in anything, then he is in vegetative state.

People with rigid belief set are like ASICs (Application-specific Integrated Chips). They are hard-wired to do a particular task. The only way to change them is to change their hardware.
Those who are fickle minded are like software running in a PC. When a new task is executed, then they will work in the new way. They dont have any thing fixed, and hence are easily changeable. (Is there a truly pliable person? That is going to be a quite debatable question. Let me just put this as the other theoretical limit.) Since there is nothing limiting them to one set of beliefs, the inertia to change is minimum. The third category is like programmable logic circuits (PLC). Once programmed, then till the program is changed, they are going to run exactly the same way. Most of us belong to this intermediate category. We have some set of fixed beliefs. We can change them, if get a proof. It is not that we are unwilling to change, but then we need to be coerced to change our beliefs.

The same is true for any sort of change. There are some aspects of us, which are very rigid. Right-handedness, is a simple example. Our nerves have been hard-wired to be like that. Many of the things used for biometric authentication uses these fixed parts of us. Then comes a set of daily routines. They are there for all. Most of us can easily identify with them. There will be some of us, who may have to struggle a bit to identify them correctly. These are not immutable habits. Like, say having bed coffee. We may be having bed coffee as long as we can remember. But it is not that we cant change it. If we got stuck in a place where they dont have coffee, then obviously we have to adapt accordingly. Or, the roads we choose to go to office. We usually follow the same path, but we can always use a new path if there is a circumstance. There are some aspects of us which are very easy to change. Like our dreams. We get new dreams every day.

Those things for which there is no strings attached, we can change overnight. Normally these types of changes are triggered by environmental conditions, and are normally a direct response to some immediate cause. The PLC type aspects of us are not that easy to change. we need to be coerced to change those. It is not that we cant change these aspects. It just needs a strong external impetus that can trigger our inertia to change. The the fixed things in us, that are near to impossible to change. These are primarily things that are soldered with lead in our brains. These cant be changed.

To change a man, may be a few words will suffice. To change a village, more than words are required. To change a nation, the scale changes accordingly, and so too the physical impetus required for the change.Changing a species as a whole species as a whole, lots more is needed. In fact, nothing short of the threat of complete annihilation can coerce the species to change.

Trip to kanyakumari

2010-07-06T12:15:00.002+05:30

The trip to kanyakumari gave me this option to take this pic. The statue of thirvalluvar.

The tn govt must be raking a hell of a lot of profit with this island. the boat trip takes first to vivekananda rock and then to this new island.

This is the only island there with snack bar, and lots of ppl were having stuff in the snack bar.

Free flow of f.........

2009-03-09T20:37:00.002+05:30

Some body said

"If I am not for others, who will be for me?
And if I am only for myself, then who am I?"

I feel, i completely misunderstood the quote. I thought that the quote tells us to help others.

But then Life has taught me the finest of all lessons.

Helping others is a virtue. The willingness to help others is even a greater virtue.
Helping others, without first helping one is the biggest vice.

To each bird, its own nest. To each man his own work. There is nothing wrong in helping your neighbor in times of need, when you are capable of helping and you have all the resources to help others. But if your nest is not built yet, dont go and help your neighbor repair his nest.

Marrige Quotable Quotes

2009-03-09T20:29:00.002+05:30

Accepting with lack of information is suicidal;
Rejecting with lack of information is stupidity.

---- After a long time, a quotable quote by me.

Marriage is one important problem for which you should never give anyone any advice.
Whatever you say will be used against you, when your next turn comes.

In the beginning, God created Adam. He named the class of people like Adam as "single". He lost interest in watching a single person a lot. So he created Eve and betrothed her to Adam, thus creating the second class, viz. "married". Everything was good for sometime. Then he wanted to have some fun. So he created the third class and called it "to be married".

Mumbai blasts

2008-11-27T12:43:00.003+05:30

its truly disgusting at the way people are sensationalizing the despair of others.
I have started feeling that the news channels should be banned totally from showing terror strike footage. at least, i feel it is better to suffer without knowing what is happening around you, than to end up in the trap of news channels to boost their earnings.

the TV footage was clearly showing what is visible from outside. Any terrorist could have observed
the TV footage and changed tactics and end up urting more people.

another thing that was observed was that the reporters were showing images of blood and showing suffering among the affected. A terrorist is a sick person, who wants to see people suffering. They enjoy watching such a scene. they crave for seeing that their planned attack is creating suffering to people. Showing scenes like that will only motivate them to go for more blasts, as it had happened in the Indian mujahideen case.

Of course, i shouldnt be just saying negatively alone. there are good journalists too. for ex, the camera man who put down the camera and helped pickup the person lying in the road, and put him in the car. But then one good journalist really doesnt balance the rest of the unruly mass. i did see cameramen who didnt allow the ambulance door to be closed. that is shameful.

DUBAI

2008-11-27T12:31:00.002+05:30

I have come down to Dubai for a conference.

its a really marvelous city. I guess our government people should look here and create infrastructure like this.

People have a nice sense of driving.

Overspeeding fine is strictly implemented here. I heard the government earns around 1Mn Dh, i.e, around 1.5 cr Rs. from overspeeding fines, parking fines., etc.

Frankly speaking , dubai is just buildings and shopping malls, and te desert safari.

I had the opportunity to go to 2 desert safaris under 2 different companies.

Ppl who are interested to go to desert safari must really spend time choosing the correct company as well.
Personally, my experience with dubai tours and travels services was decent. they charge @ 160 Dh for a person. I heard of another friend of mine who went to a different tour operator's camp. they were charging 300 Dh.
Depending on howmuch you pay, the quality of the desert safari will increase.

more on dubai later

Back after some time.

2008-10-21T17:31:00.002+05:30

Well, better be delayed than never.

The way things are unwinding, I feel it is bad if i also didnt make an entry with regards to the financial crisis.

Lemme see. What is the crisis? for starters, i can say that it is the non-existence of any common sense in the minds of those who are entrusted with the act of creating policies. May be, I should put it simply as "right people in the wrong place". The financial turmoil is the result of people whp act like children, emphatically rejecting that they didn't lose the game.

In effect, greedy people have ensured that even the so called "experts" in the field cant figure out that they have cheated. The real bad part is not how the "experts" concocted strange looking financial derivatives. The real bad part is the actual timing in which the entire problem has surfaced.

Recently I read a news item in "the Hindu" which said that FBI, which is supposed to have arms for dealing with all types of forgery, were simply understaffed for dealing with financial irregularities. In the name of 9/11, which many people believe was orchestrated by some government agencies only, lots of funds and personal were diverted to dealing with a hypothetical "war on terror". A war, which was primarily built up to boost national defense spending in USA, was only intended to give the conservative base some thing to chew so that bush gets elected one more time. But then its effects have finally hit the entire globe.

Earlier, I used to think that the war was only going to affect oil. now it has affected the financial structure. Right now, i feel that Bush has come close to achieving what everyone thought is impossible. He has at last shown how to break USA into pieces. A set of bad policies, directed by a wrong philosophy, and manned by incompetent fools, has at last triggered the fall of the US economic system.

The ensuing recession that is sure to hit USA badly is not only going to affect the US economy badly, but its ripple effect will be felt by almost all nations. Definitely, the current situation will gradually degrade to a scenario where Americans in general will start thinking that "the American dream" is no longer possible. May be, one or two rare exceptional people will come to prove that American dream is still valid.

[This is a old post which I forgot to complete and post]

Meritocracy: A dream or realtiy?

2008-07-19T16:52:00.002+05:30

I was just reading through Wikipedia on meritocracy and I suddenly remembered my favorite style of government,(Some thing I want if I get to rule Mars) use people with skill to man important posts for the government. In fact, it is not just pure skill that happens to be around that matters. May be in the first generation or at most second or rulers, we may have to look at merit from an exhaustive set of tets which include not only testing the IQ, EQ and SQ, but also an elaborative personality test to find the true personal feelings of the person. The later people manning all the posts will be trained for the post. In fact, the emphasis shall always be for training the people needed for the post that is needed, wherever possible. Outsource all other acts as much as possible.

The system of meritocracy depends on the elite at the moment to strongly follow the methods that were used to choose them. And this is one of _the_ most dfficult part of this form of government. In general, at one point of time or other, a person may wish his son/daughter to succeed him in the job that he is currently doing. Genetically, we can expect the child to emulate most of his/hers' parent, but it is not universally true. Also, the downfall of most of the other goverment's seems to be the effective turn towards nepotism.

The beauty of any system that must really be built on top of meritocracy must be its inherent affinity towards merit of the person. For ensuring this, the entry conditions has to be strictly followed, and the method ofchoosing any candidate must be both strict and accountable. In fact, the fear promulgating from accountability must form one of the basic protection for the system.
The selection board shall be highly methodical.

There is one small catch in a highly strict method of governing. Sometimes, some of the best governers were not actually identified as good enough for managing even themselves, but later turned out to be effective governers of vast kingdoms. So, the selection mechanism should ideally be able to incorporate these possibilities. What I feel is the best method is to actually test people based on the skill sets ideal for the job. Once they show that they have the requisite skill sets, make a pseudo appointment of the said people for the task, and evaluate them on the how they work and then only give the full responsibility to them. In fact, I would prefer that the selection process for the successor for any post should be an ongoing process. This is the only way the best available talent can be used for the correct job.

One of the main reasons why any person may think of nepotism is inherent insecurity that expresses itself in a ruling person. To overcome this, effective couner steps must be evolved so that there wont be a sense of insecurity inherently being developed in the governing people.

Energy as chande of state

2008-03-29T18:01:00.002+05:30

It might seam strange, but if we look at most of the processes in the nature, they seem to flow with the sense of innate chaos. For example of water flowing, wind blowing, magma flows, cosmic dust's flow. . . In fact, it even spills over to the virtual workds created by us, like the money flow, or you can say stock market variations. At a glance, they look as if they do have a pattern, but then when we look deeper into them, they simply look unconnected.

In the sense of meditative gabbling , even the electric charges came into the picture. Suddenly the uncertainty principle struck me somewhere. so is there an electron? apart from a sense of abstraction, it is not possible to sense the presence of electrons and protons and their flow over an electric wire. But then, we all can say for sure that just as air exists, so do electrons. Just as tree leaves sway because of the power of air, so do bulbs glow. but then to perceive the electrons are not possible.

Now if it is not perceivable, then it cannot be sensed by the sense organs, and if cannot be sensed by the organs, then the existence of an electron is as questionable, as the inexistence of electrons.

it is more possible to picture the sense of electrons and protons as nothing but the negative and positive instances of harmony. The harmonious one, looses its balance and leads to unharmony, and since the innate is harmonious in nature, unharmony cannot be maintained. hence the unharmony will strive to become harmonious by the flow of air, or the flow of water, or the flow of money or the flow of electrons. As far as the natre is concerned it is not important what constittes it, but in what sense of harmony they are.

Just as water take the form of vessel it is placed in, so do the harmonious mix with one and all in the nature. But the unharmonious cannot mix and merge with anything due to its nature. Hence it needs to seek its compatible other half so that it can become harmonious again. It is in the nature of the unharmonious to seek aggressively for the other. This innate urge itself is the energy that drives the bulb, the force that pushes the leaves, the unforseeable that churns light breezes as well as cyclones.

THus energy is nothing but the unharmony of one part of the object. But what if the object contains more than one sense of unharmony? What if every time one type of harmony is achieved, another always props up? In the sense that, do all the actions resulting for one type of unharmony effective in achieving the goal?

There is struggle in life, because we need to figure out the mechanism for reaching harmony.

The equilibrium need not be passive inanimate as is usually visualized, but it is to be a dynamic attempt to seemingly r=touch the equillibrium without actually touching it.
It may not really make sense, because it will be beyond sense, but not really nonsense. The thin line (as if lines can be thick too.) Loitering around in the verge, just seemlessly interlinked with other side aside. the waves may churn but they dont exist, as the sound may come out from the silence to. The sense of presence that just about touches, but then when actively sought for, never really was there.

it is hard to type, because of the effort needed, but it is not possible to stop, brcause the gush cannot be stopped. it just flows out , innately searching out the garbled keys of the keyboard, yet unaware that the letters typed do add up to something. there are swirls and there are cross swirls. but then wihout all there, there wont be the wave. do words have to have a meaning, but then f they dont have one, wont they cease to be one.

thoughts stop as if they pass, but then it can only mean that they just stopped being percieved. if thoguhts could stop, then wont the mind go to stop, but then having never seen a mind that stopped because of lack of thought, how can it be made sure that the mind will stop.

if there id no effort to conciously make an effort to be active, then will it be termed inactive?? will it have to be like that?

The ravishing is all but state of mind, but then by acknowledging that the states change and so do the resultant energy waves that flow out too. after all energy is nothing but the shift of the state of the innate mind of an object.

sitemeter and my impression on page visits

2008-03-16T18:17:00.003+05:30

I was just in the process of wasting some time while preparing my bath, and i came across this interesting observation.

People dont usually read the pages that are my hrd core musings.

People stumble upon my page, when they want to get some information. I feel google has given me more page visits, than any one else.

Things I want to actually put in my blog, because of utility factor, is more appreciated by people visiting the pages.

So lesson to learn:

i can happily put in all my musings, because nobody is going to bother on reading it.
if i need to actually improve the number of visits, i must actually put material that is useful to others

Simplest things are the most profound.

Mounting virtualbox vdi disk: An authentic weblog for achange

2008-02-29T18:13:00.003+05:30

Using virtualBox had, of late, made things very easy for me. I am having enough ram to run linux as host OS with windows guest OS.
All the things I need windows specifically, I get to do in the Guest OS. All the normal activities are now in linux.
Using the virtual disk to store valuable information seemed a very nice, and sort of secure, till I finally found i needed some data stored in the virtual file very badly.

My office machine can be connected from my home, but getting the data out was the tricky part.

Stop the Virtual Machine
First problem was that my guest OS was running while I wanted to get the information.

$VBoxManage controlvm "my vm" poweroff

even

$VBoxManage controlvm "my vm" acpipowerbutton

will work. Essentially the first line works as if we are trying to switch off the windows machine. The second method works as if the ACPI is going to shut down the machine.
Note that if giving the name of the vm doesnt work for you, you can try giving the command

$ VBoxManage list vms

This command will list the Guest OS and the Host OS in the machine with all the glory details. The line that you have to look for is

....
Guest OS: Windows XP
UUID: deadbeef-dead-beef-dead-feebfeebdaed
......

You can replace the UUID instead of the name of the vm.

Figure out how to mount
For this half, I had to use the help of a post
http://forensicir.blogspot.com/2008/01/virtualbox-and-forensics-tools.html
by hogfly.
I picked up the vditool from the link mentioned in the blog.
http://www.virtualbox.org/download/testcase/vditool
(You have to right click and do "Save Link as.." to save the above file.)
First, you have to ensure that vditool can be executed.
so, first make it executable.

$ chmod u+x vditool

Then test whether the binary can be executed or not, by using ldd.

$ ldd vditool
linux-gate.so.1 => (0x00110000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x0065e000)
libuuid.so.1 => /lib/libuuid.so.1 (0x00111000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x00a00000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00657000)
VBoxDD.so => /usr/lib/VBoxDD.so (0x00115000)
VBoxRT.so => /usr/lib/VBoxRT.so (0x0090e000)
libstdc++.so.5 => (not installed)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x0062c000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00a0b000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x004d1000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x004b2000)
VBoxVMM.so => /usr/lib/VBoxVMM.so (0x00258000)
VBoxDDU.so => /usr/lib/VBoxDDU.so (0x00679000)
VBoxDD2.so => /usr/lib/VBoxDD2.so (0x00340000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00a95000)
VBoxREM.so => /usr/lib/VBoxREM.so (0x00b80000)
libutil.so.1 => /lib/libutil.so.1 (0x00368000)

In my case, the initial output was like above. Watch out the libstdc++-so.5 line. Initially the library was not installed in my machine. So i had to manually install it first before i could run the library. All those VBox libraries will get installed by default in the machine in which you install VirtualBox. In my case, I had to install compat-libstdc++-3.3 package for my Fedora 8 machine.
(The right way is to install the corresponding package in the system. Expert users can definitely pick and put just the libraries from someother machine to
just get things working for the time being, though it is not recommended at all.)
Once you are through installing all the libraries, it should look something like this.

$ ldd vditool
linux-gate.so.1 => (0x00110000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/libpthread.so.0 (0x0065e000)
libuuid.so.1 => /lib/libuuid.so.1 (0x00111000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/librt.so.1 (0x00a00000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x00657000)
VBoxDD.so => /usr/lib/VBoxDD.so (0x00115000)
VBoxRT.so => /usr/lib/VBoxRT.so (0x0090e000)
libstdc++.so.5 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5 (0x0019f000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/libm.so.6 (0x0062c000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00a0b000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x004d1000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x004b2000)
VBoxVMM.so => /usr/lib/VBoxVMM.so (0x00258000)
VBoxDDU.so => /usr/lib/VBoxDDU.so (0x00679000)
VBoxDD2.so => /usr/lib/VBoxDD2.so (0x00340000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00a95000)
VBoxREM.so => /usr/lib/VBoxREM.so (0x00b80000)
libutil.so.1 => /lib/libutil.so.1 (0x00368000)

Now comes crucial part.

Find disk offset
use vditool to know the starting offset of the Data in the disk.

For this you should know were your virtual machine's virtual disk is stored. If you didnt do it manually, the default location is ~/.VirtualBox/VDI

Assuming that You have put the vditool file in your home directory, cd to the directory with the vdi file.

$ cd /path/to/vdi/file

$ ~/vditool DUMP my.vdi
vditool Copyright (c) 2004-2005 InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH.

Dumping VDI image file="my.vdi" into the log file...
Log created: 2008-02-29T13:20:02.737901000Z
Executable: /home/me/vditool
Arg[0]: ~/vditool
Arg[1]: DUMP
Arg[2]: my.vdi
--- Dumping VDI Disk, Images=1
Dumping VDI image "my.vdi" mode=r/o fOpen=1 File=00000004
Header: Version=00010001 Type=2 Flags=0 Size=11811160064
Header: cbBlock=1048576 cbBlockExtra=0 cBlocks=11264 cBlocksAllocated=11264
Header: offBlocks=512 offData=45568
Header: Geometry: C/H/S=22885/16/63 cbSector=512 Mode=3
Header: uuidCreation={deadbeef-dead-beef-dead-feebfeebdaed}
Header: uuidModification={deadbeef-dead-beef-dead-feebfeebdaed}
Header: uuidParent={00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Header: uuidParentModification={00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000}
Image: fFlags=00000000 offStartBlocks=512 offStartData=45568
Image: uBlockMask=000FFFFF uShiftIndex2Offset=20 uShiftOffset2Index=20 offStartBlockData=0
The operation completed successfully!

Type says whether it is dynamic or fixed virtual disk. (I dont yet know whther it is important, but mine definitely is fixed. I know it because I made it that way.)

actually, you can do a grepping of the output

$ ~/vditool DUMP my.vdi | grep OffData
Header: offBlocks=512 offData=45568

The number sacred to us is 45568.
Now, a normal vdi file has some meta data and then followed by the actual disk data. The sacred number is the offset from which our windows disk starts. But then this offset point to the place MBR is.
So to get the actual data mount, you have to add 32256 to 45568 giving us the final offset of 77824.
To mount,

$mkdir mp
$mount -t ntfs -o ro,noatime,noexec,loop,offset=77824 my.vdi mp

You can now start using the disk contents directly.

$ ls mp
AUTOEXEC.BAT Documents and Settings MSDOS.SYS pagefile.sys
.........

If you feel there needs to be any improvements, please post a comment.

2008-02-29T17:37:00.002+05:30

At last wakes up the sage from a mysterious sleep, but still very tired as if he was working hard all through.

It may not seem sane, but then who knows what goes through when a sage sleeps. For only a sage knows whether he is or not.

That brings us to the age old quote:

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Now the role of gaurdians has increased even more. Only, now they are called as regulators and anti-terrorism cells.There is no better example than the story of Gen (Retd) Musharaf. (Did i make a mistake by calling him 'Gen'???) Musharaf it seems was so fixated with ruling Pakistan, and coming out of his self-imposed rule aive that he did the best thing to safe-gaurd his interests - lick USA's arse. So there he was catching Bush's neocon policy with his own hand and lending to the concept of terror, all the while making his place safe. The issue is that no pakistani could actually do anything about it. Now the results of the electin seem to talk a little different, but then look at the election turnout.
Bush can tell back home that he has brought democracy in pakistan, though he was supporting a dictator for a very long time. He gave Musharaf enough money that if the people who ate money survived the regime change, then they can simply retire and still be able to feed 3 generatoins. Musharaf got to enjoy full power for some time. Bush got away with spending more oney than he could ever spend and still say he was good at it. But then after all the gaga any man can say these people went free because there was no one to call foul.

That brings us to the main question, how can we actually root out the evils from coming in? The essence of solving the problem in the so-called democratic form of government is to ensure that nobody comes up with enough clout to actually make any change in the State. Even if some one does come around, the negative pull on him/her will always be so high that nothing positive could be brought out.
More good had come out during the time of Saddam Hussein, than the two Bush administrations. If you dont trust these words, just look at the state of US economy at the end of the 2 Bush eras. Both Bush administrations converted a good US economy to an economy with recession and war expenditure to top the hardships. A more single-minded Saddam government could actually set changes in the lives of the selected people. But a US with the so-called democratic government couldnt control not just one, but 2 lunatics.

Devolution of power, it seems, is a euphemism for ensuring nobody is left powerful enough to do anything positive. At least, instances like Musharaf will logically be not so rampant then. But then, is democracy so nice after all?

From the start it has been so that democracy had existed without a clear definition of it. The oft quoted "government of the people, by the people, for the people" is so meaningless that everyone feels that it is something extremely great, but just out of the reach of their brains. People are still upholding this talk, because still they havent realized that it was just another publicity stunt. Democracy has always been used by power-hungry people to wrest as much power as is possible, because they are afraid of having to loose the little power that they will gain from the exercise. Even more horrible is the state of the select few, who would rather have no power, if they can ensure that no one else will ever get full power.

Is there any government in which a single party has taken full control of the legislature and the executive arms right now? Even if you may some how spell ot one or two names, a deeper analysis will always show that even the so-called single party that gets into power is so bifurcated that even for a good policy, you will find a sizeable number of people opposing it because of outside influence from own party. It is high time we realize, that democracy is only as good as holding out a dictatorship from happening a few more years. The current mechanism is so flawed that a violent show down will occur anytime. The successful States are only those that delay the final break down as much as possible. It is something like saying, "X went down after having one and half pints of wine, while Y couldnt last more than one".

Fly Fly

2008-01-07T10:50:00.000+05:30

Fly! Fly! With your wings stretched, fly.
Fly, not because you have wings;
Fly, not because you have the urge;
Fly, because you know to fly.

Free the shackles that hold you back,
because they are not yours.
Clean your mind off useless worries,
because they are not yours.

When the urge comes forth to free yourself,
When the urge comes forth to clean yourself,
Just fly... Jus fly ...
Because you know you can.

Tears come down to cleanse my hurt;
Pangs are freed from the chest of wrath;
Darkness and light are but
just two sides of the same door.
When you see them both, you know you are the same floor.

It aint my nor my words, nor my deeds,
It aint the heavens, that knocks nor feeds.
Just open the heart and feel the breeze
the bells that ring, are for me.
So fly with the winds, fly with the rains,
fly with the heavens and fly with the flames.
You know you need, but you just wont heed,
That you know you can BE ...

My visit to wagah border

2007-12-31T18:26:00.000+05:30

i had always wanted to see how pakistan looked like. i just wanted to check out how different it is from india.

Last week, i went to visit amritsar and wagah border along with my uncle. The border closing ceremony was a real delight to watch....

But more stunning was the number of people on either side of the border watching the border closing ceremony. The one thing i observed was the number of people who had turnep up to watch. The indian end of the gallary was packed full. The BSF jawans had to rope in people from gathering too much. On the other hand, the pakistani side was slightly less in number. I think i hardly counted 200.

According to the jawans over there, the rush in the pakistani gallary was more on that day as it was Id. But I seriously couldn't understand the reason for keeping a big gallary in the other end, if the turnout is going to be that less.

The Pakistanis were not much different, except for the dresses they wore. But then many of the muslims in india also wear htat same dress. I think it is more of a muslim dressing sense, than a pakistani one. I didnt notice anyone wearing shirts and pants. But then, I was not in a very good position to judge from that distance anyway.

Contrary to the popular belief in our side of india, pakistanis are not that tall. They are just like us.

After the flag was lowered and the gates were closed, I could get nearer to the border and get a glimpse of the other side. Looking at the other end all I could think of was that it is not that different from this end. On our side of the border there was fields. So too are fields in the other end. The texture of the soil also doesnt look much different. I seriously dont understand why there should be a different india and pakistan.

I think during the time of "independence" there were too many lunatics around. My old urge to capture pakistan and integrate it back to india rose through me again.

When the air is same,
When the water is same,
When the earth is same,
Why then should there be distance
between hearts of two men.

how to defeat USA?

2007-12-17T20:39:00.000+05:30

at last, i have found the solution to one of my favorite riddles.

I feel, to defeat America, all is needed is just one person. And you are wrong, it is not Amma. Te award goes to narendra modi.

this power hungry political machine has the unique ability to talk gibberish, carry a section of people along with him, bring out all his political opponents, and still be able to hold on to his seat. Incredible!!!

If Narendra Modi is elected, then he will be having the hard core backing of religious fundamentalists in USA, the sort of people who dont know what religion tells them to do, but can reproduce any half of the religious text, as if they are stored on some computer's hard disk. And then there will be a string of innocent listeners, who happen to believe his words, without knowing what will happen when they elect him. Among people running for the current election, just look at the ratings of the students of narendra modi to understand what i mean.

This guy knows that you dont need sound economic or social or political plans to run for president. all is needed is the right numbers at the right places. Thats an art, the neocons already have mastered.

Then the next president should be able to do what Bush failed to do. Commit suicide and still try committing it again and again. One attempt, i think people can escape from. But many attempts one after the other, i think is hard to beat.

In short, make sure somebody as insane as bush gets elected, and sit back and relax. USA fill fall. And it will fall very badly.

--------
Disclaimer: any untoward remark against a person or country is not meant on the person themselves, but only a general remark on the way things are going on. The author has no personal grudge against anything/anyone mentioned in this part.

USA - my latest vibes

2007-11-05T19:39:00.000+05:30

Of late, i have been reading something on Nostradamus, and then came the crap about Anti-Christ and stuff like that. some where in the middle i read something like America will fall because of natural calamities.

Unfortunately for me, i read it around the time when there were wild fires spreading in California. Now, it is no fault of mine to start feeling for some vibes and finally i thought, if USA is to fall, it is more likely due to something they are not prepared for. Katrina showed us what USA cannot handle - not because of lack of resources, but because of lack of political will.

Whenever i hear bad news, i always think "GOD save America". When i think of those poor American common men, i really feel for them. They are really victims of the so-called American dream. A dream that many find hard to make true. A dream that many followed without knowing what they will end up doing.

Right now it is official that America did not attack Iraq for oil. The real reason why the current administration attacked, is the same reason somebody will pluck a leaf from a plant in the road and squash it and put it down. I hope what I just said makes sense. If it doesnt, dont worry. Because I also dont understand that reason. But, every human being has the innate ability to just play havoc in places where he should only bne a silent spectator.

As far as my latest vibes go:

The greatest threat to the mightiest empires spring not from outside, but within.

In fact, we often say, the greatest enemy of any man is the enemy within. The same rule applies to nations as well. If we remember the battle of Troy, the winning team attacked from within their enemy. That was the only reason why their enemies failed. Time has come for the American civilization to find out the place where they made mistakes and try to correct them.

The only reason why USA is still a weak nation is because they still dont know themselves.

Greatness is always the result of self-awareness.

Time has come for the nation to spend some time on domestic policies and stop over-emphasizing on its foreign policies. The conservative tactic of staying in power has left the nation weak and trembling in front of "terrorists". In fact, most of the so-called "terrorit"s were made by the conservatives themselves. Common man is not enjoying any benefits of the growth of the nation, and the political system, especially the conservative movement, has modelled the world around them in such a way that people feel that the conservatives are right.

For example, take the ad campaign of Republican Rudi Guiliani. He is coming up with some numbers which do not mean anything. He is talking about getting his prostrate cancer cured, but he never talks about who paid the bills of his treatment. He also never says what people who are not rich like him will do. By not talking about the things that really matter, but talking a lot about unrelated things the GOP was innocently following the same tactics that are the bane of the nation's politics. The "terrorist" health plan is seemingly unrealistic according to his team, and they need to be rooted out. If Mr Guliani is so sure that USA does not need any social plans, then he should look at what Hugo Chevez is doing in his own backyard. Please dont claim now some unrelated crap again on this point.

The real issue with the conservatives is their conservatism. Why the hell do the politicians cry about the immigrants (legal/illegal). I really dont know how many of their own ancestors had come legally to the americas.

May the inner eye open the world outside.

A revelation from my sitemeter

2007-11-05T19:20:00.000+05:30

I was just reading thru my sitemeter. I still dont know why i have it, but it is quite interesting one.

To my utter surprise, there are lot of people reading this blog as a result of search query.

From what i saw, many people are coming to this site by searching "destroy usa".
I think time for disclaimer has come. I should definitely put that i dont want to destroy USA. I dont have the resources nor the time to do such a futile thing. But then, i cant but comment about something that i am sure is about to happen.

Any ways, this post certainly marks my return from my latest slumber

Net is lifeline

2007-09-01T00:29:00.000+05:30

I am proving to be more of a netaholic. I cannot get anything done without net now-a-days.

Even have changed my lifestyle now. I am willing to put more on night time just to visit simple sites, like mail and all, because i cant stand low quality of net in home.

I feel i know the thing that these movie people can do to stop piracy. Just give people quality product long enough for a cheap price. Once they get used to the quality, they cant go and watch some poor print pirated CD.

anyways, thought to feed in some lines, as it has been a long time. For those searching for new updates on my blog, I am still alive. Just waiting for my return to quality surfing.

Justice for justice's sake

2007-07-29T23:11:00.000+05:30

Of late, i have been following the Haneef story in The Hindu and the net. It is nice to know that at last he is with his family. But what happened is something that shouldn't have happened. I dont know how can Australia be still called a democratic country after all this.

No man can be put in jail because of a mere suspicion that he might have done something bad. Especially a charge as gross as terrorism. This is a major flow in the new terrorism related laws.
There were terrorists before 9/11, and there will still be terrorists in future. If my limited knowledge of history is correct, there had been terrorists in the past. But how can know one person is terrorist or not? Is the mere appearance or upbringing reason enough?

I had watched a programme long time back in Discovery or National geographic(I dont know which one) regarding facial symmetry and beauty. It seems some British law officer wanted to know how the roughest and toughest criminal will look like. His basic belief was that if he superimposes all the photos of all the imprisoned criminals infamous for many heinous crimes, then he will get a the face of the monster who will be the "perfect" criminal identifiable by just looking at him. But contrary to his expectation, what he found was that the faces became more and more beautiful as the he continued to superimpose the images. A simple direct proof that looks dont tell what people will end up as by just their face.

I dont know how many people remember the asura in the epic Ramayana who ended up as the good ally of Rama in the fight against his own brother Ravana, who was treading the wrong path.
Proof that environment in which a person is brought up cannot be used to say a person is good or not. Just one of the stories to show that people's background has nothing to do with what a person is and his true character.

Character of a person comes from the way he acts. A person who is spending his life in the business of saving other peoples' life cannot be a person whose character is bad. Unless you have watched with your own eyes a seemingly wrong act and the reason for the act is for something against the moral values, we should not and cannot judge somebody as having a bad character.

From what I have heard so far, the most probable problem right now is that the Minister Andrews is having a serious psychological issue. He made a wrong decision, and now as everyone knows it was a wring decision, he is not able to give up the decision he has made. He must be a seriously insecure guy. He is trying to hold to his decision, just as a drowning person will hold past to bunch of straw floating nearby. In western culture itself, there is enough example to explain to him that humans err and they make up for it. By acknowledging his mistake and making up for it, he will only be raising his own image/honor.

As far as this case is concerned, unless the minister makes a proper apology in full media, i dont think the loss of honor to an innocent honorable doctor, who just happened to be a Muslim and some relation of his happened to do a heinous act, is restored. As far as we Indians are concerned leading a respectable life is of utmost importance. He knows, his family knows that he is innocent. But what is the use of it all, if some would be client looks at him and says, " You were the one Australian Government put in jail for terrorism." Or, some white ignorant racist says,"one of your men blew up . I wont get treatment under you." Such a scenario should never arise. And it is the duty of the democratic system in the State to avert such a scenario. There must be an independent review on why the government made a mistake and how to ensure the same mistake doesn't take place again.

I accept there may be cases in which the law enforcement people may not have enough solid evidence to connect a criminal with the crime. It happens. But why is there a need for a provision in law that enables any one to be arrested without proper reason. The question is such a clause really needed in a healthy democratic society. We may as well go back to the old feudal system, if slavery and forced detention of innocent people is all we want. Anti-terror laws are needed to deal with the wrong-doers. But with what cost? One such law has stamped an innocent civilian as a culprit. Havent we have put so many loopholes in our laws to avoid just such a case?

I am relying on the conscience of the few remaining good Australians to correct this mistake. May be the changes will propagate to other nations with similar draconian laws. I have been saying this for a long time and I am still saying this, It is high time all the "government" people do a root cause analysis and figure out a mechanism to remove the underlying cause.

We cant satisfy all the people all the time. But we definitely can make a difference by satisfying most of the people most of the times.

The essence

2007-04-22T21:56:00.000+05:30

With the onset of the much awaited tempest, the smell of the silent seas left the lush green forest. The buttreflies treating, with the nectar oozng out, it is but natural to be intoxicated with the essence of what is called life. The agile motions are indicative of the fluidity that is inherent. As each little muscle fletches and stretches, the effect of the innate is subliming. The luscious flow intermittently tickled by the gentle cajoling touch of the branches.

As the young bird stretched its wings and made that first flight, amazingly perfect, feeling the wind flow through it, that new feeling of being afloat - so seemingly natural, so seemingly de facto, yet so new - with the nature becoming one with the released self; thats when the essence merges with that stroke of the buttefly.

Ramblings

2007-03-25T04:20:00.000+05:30

The cool breeze was lightly cajoling me to sense the urgency around me. The deep strong desire to just merge with those lush green fields. The blades of grass gently shaking their head in approval. Encouraging me to join them. The chimes of gentle soothing calls were leaving me senseless. The very senses somehow trying to say there is nothing here, but pure bliss. When I breath in, the mild air is filling me with solace. On exhaling, the mildly warm air emanating from me is lightly stroking the greenery around me, as if the gentlest of warmth can somehow thank them for their kindness towards me. The rhythm of breath intermingling with the breeze, and the light rejoice of the green leaves making merry. I dont know whether it is possible to think of anything but the moment. Somewhere deep within the sweet music of enjoyment was flowing. The tune seems so familiar, but without the voices, so awe-inspiring. The muscles go numb with the sense of presence... Each cell in my body can feel the unexplainable presence. Its not in any way intimidating, but the presence makes the feeling of unity with itself. Each muscle in the body suddenly becomes live with sensations hitherto unknown. What is time, what is space ... these are things I just forgot to think about. I feel lightly closing my eyes to savor in more of the feeling But the effort needed to close the eyes seem so much that I just let the eyes remain open.

What makes clock tick?

2007-02-13T22:21:00.000+05:30

What makes clock tick? It is really a difficult question to answer. We can come up with a very technical answer like, there is a quartz crystal,, which generates the ticks with the help of a timer circuit. Or something like, a spring wound tight unwinds itself, generating the tick. The technical aspect of it is superficial. The question can now be what makes the quartz crystal tick. We can yet again come up with lots of scientific answers, but then, they do get questions in turn.

The questions can be answered and deeper questions can still be posed. The question is how long will there will be a tryst to answer the question.

Now, What makes the clock tick? There is a story I heard a couple of years ago regarding an real life incident of one of the greatest American poets. I think it was T S Elliot. This gentleman was walking in the park, when one of his fans saw him. The lady was walking with her 5-yr old kid when she recognized that her idol is walking in front of her. Immediately she approached and self-introduced and poured on to the poor poet the normal ravishing of a fan. Her kid was uninterested first, but after a while, he asked " Can I ask you a doubt?". The poor poet was trapped. He is standing in front of his fan and her child wants to ask him a question.
"Go ahead. What do you want to ask me?"
"Why are the leaves of the pine tree green?"
The mother of the kid was completely bewildered and she wanted to divert the topic fast. But a gentleman as he was, he bent down to the child, thought for a while and simply said : " I dont know, my child."
Why the heck didn't he give the usual discourse of chlorophyll and all.This is quite a learned man, with lots of common sense. But he resorted to the most simplest of answers, simply because he truely didnot know. He knew that chlorophylls give the leaves the green color. But then, what makes chlorophyll green in color. We can boil down to a set of chemicals that has the green color, but then the question is how did those compounds get the color. Even thinking deeply, what is a color? The unending sequence of question continues. And at last we fall back to the simplest of all answers.

So, what really makes the clock tick? I dont know.

Now did I turn defeatist and give up even when the question was asked. There is a thin line. The question is, when the line was drawn, was i standing just one nanometer to the right or to the left. When the answer, I dont know came, it was not because of ignorance. I know the reasons the science behind the working of a clock. But how long will I go answering the counter questions. Did I go deep enough , before I said "I dont know", or was it a shallow search.

There are lots of things we dont know. The question is did we as deep as possible, before we said "this is all I can do".

Often, the simplest questions are the most profound.
Follow these simple questions, and the doors of heaven will be opened.

Netaholic? Guilty as charged

2007-02-13T22:05:00.000+05:30

Well, at last, I have it found out . I am a compulsive netaholic.

How did I find out? I was out of net because of cable fault. For 5 days, I was roaming around not able to know where the problem was. In all these 5 days, I was getting completely out of tune. I slept for 12+ hours for 2 days. Nothing was working for me. I was getting highly irritated at my net condition. I think all these add up to only one thing. The feeling being said by ppl regarding high addiction.

So how do I feel now? I have my net connection at last. I can do my stuff with network. Happy. No... Happy is not the right word. Elated? may be... Exalted.... I dont know. Satiated... Definitely.

What do I do about it, now that I know I am suffering from the disease? This is what I read a couple of days ago. Remember the saying "There is a thin line between genius and insane". Scientists found out that there is in fact a gene which is responsible for higher intelligence, and which is also responsible for schizophrenia. So should the people having this particular gene be called sick (with schizophrenia)? Or should they be simply called great geniuses? I think my disease is not something I have to worry about. Who knows, someday we may find some gene responsible for compulsive addicts? But, who cares?

Hakuna Mataata.

At last made the shift to the new blogger

2007-02-13T22:03:00.000+05:30

I seriously was not in the mood of shifting to the new blogger. But it seems, at last that has just happened.

The murder of Saddam Hussein

2007-01-07T01:13:00.000+05:30

It was with great sadness that i read the brutal murder in the hands of misbehaving lunatics on my way back to work in the train. And what does Indian government do? A lame meaningless show of remorse. It is high time people actually come forward and tell openly "Mr Lunatic, your decision was wrong."

If I were to choose between Iraq under Saddam and current Iraqi scenario, then Saddam was a great ruler. There is no denying that Saddam did a lot of bad things. I am not even trying to defend Saddam Hussein as a great dictator and all. Every one knows what Saddam Hussein has done in the past to his own people; not only to people whom he has openly hated, but also those poor people he has butchered because they tried to hurt his personal image as a great ruler. But, when Saddam Hussein was hanged, all I can say is that the perpetrators did something worse than what Saddam himself has done.

Every one dealing with Saddam knew what will happern to them if they are got working against him. Everyone also knew the day the current American administration declared war on Iraq that all they want is to dethrone Saddam and subdue him. The day the court trials had started, it was quite evident that even the so called justice was merely a show. I am not against killing Saddam. In my personal opinion, all those people who usurp their powers must be punished in such a way that no animate creature will in the near future dare to do some thing like that. But, killng a bad guy as part of justice system and premeditated homicide are entirely different things

First of all, Saddam Hussein should never have recieved so much power concentrated on himself. Saddam Hussein was not a weed that just grew in the some part of the garden. Saddam Hussein was a plant purposefully replanted from elsewhere, just because the gardener liked the plant, and then when his whim for having the plant in the garden was over simply plucked out. He was fed and raised because people thought Iraq is good with a brutal leader like him than with ther rival nations. Saddam Hussein is another American mistake during their cold war.

I remember a story being told to me in my school days. It was about a boy who cut an apple tree growing in his fathers garden. When the childs father asked who cut the tree, the boy apologised and owned up his mistake. That boy was an American gentleman who later on became the President of that nation. In a country where there is already a precident of people willing to own up the mistakes that they have committed, what the current administration is trying to do is to simply cover up their old mistakes and in doing so, making more and more of them. Saddam was a mistake during the cold war times. Saddam was not a tool to divert the attention of people from domestic failings. There are many more mistakes that USA Administration has done in times when it itself thought that it was in war. If we have to go by what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, more such cases will show their head now.

Kamsa had thought that he will meet his death in the hands of Krishna. Even a man who is so certain that his own existence will be under threat, still only put in jailthe parents of his would-be killer. If all that was required was the death of Saddam Hussein, then why the showing of Saddam to media and keeping him alive. THe people who have caught him could have killed him then and there. Instead the world was shown a false show of justice; something not even the most talked about daityas have not done. Much less Iraqi blood would have flown if Saddam was killed within a week of his capture. It would have gone with the set of cruelties normally associated to a war. Not conscious effort to play cat and mouse and let the Iraqi situation worsen. No war is worth being fought, if it cannot end within a decent period of time. Even the greatest of natural predators dont go after a prey that they cannot catch.

The actual untimely hanging of the former dictator doesnot hurt me as much as the way he was ill-treated during the last moments of his death. Hitler was a lucky man. He could orchestrate all the horrible things that are said to have happened and still he didnt fall into the hands of such lunatics. The man was already disgraced by the way he was treated after he was caught and shown around. But denying him the chance to die gracefully. That is some thing that only the Satan can do. And when all these things were happening, the man who was making a case for killing Saddam, was having a peaceful vacation in his ranch and not even bothered about the outcome of his supposedly most important mission in his presidiency.

Time has come to ask the question, "What Next?" Will such outrageous activities continue? Should global citizens like us keepur mouth shut, thereby endorsing the misdeeds of rogue minds, or should we actively go behind people and ask them the difficult questions?

Countries, like human beings, have their ups and downs. US is going through its down. Now whatever they touch is not going to go well. People may still hear them because they were great people before. But time has come for some rather serious unbiased internal discussions. Let the mind of the nation weigh all the past activities and decide the correct path forward. Let the good exercises needed to bring the positiveenergy back to the nation be adopted. All people make bad choices. But the question is, should the bad choices be stubbornly imposed on the self for ever or should corrective measures be taken and the nest step be taken up.

Ancient medical knowledge says

diseases are the bodies way of saying that some thing inside the body is not functioning according to its design. Wise are those who mend their life style and improve their body's harmony.

An old verse goes some thing like this

On searching, one may find a flying bird with no wings.
If more effort is put, even rabbit's horn could be found.
IF utmost effort is put, one may even spot moon on a new moon day.
But in no instance can one correct a fool, unless he corrects himself.

Water and well

2006-11-08T12:11:00.000+05:30

A metaphor i thought of lately

Water in a well is sweat and unique for people drinking it. But all wells need cleaning periodically. If water stagnates too much in a well, then even it becomes undrinkable. Shrewd are those who periodically check the quality of their own wells and do the necessary steps to clean it. If the one taking care of the well is not capable of cleaning it because of any reason, then others who drink from the well must take necessary actions to ensure the quality of water.
No matter how long you use the water from your well, it is insane to think that water comes only in your well. There are others with their own wells. Water is there in their wells also, even though the tastes of the water may be different.
Also, though you may have accustomed to drink water from your well, there is no rule out there that says that water in other wells are unhealthy for you. In fact, try to taste other waters before you decide on the quality of your well. Who knows, may be when you drink water from other wells, you may be able to find out deficiencies in your own well.
The underlying part is, Drink well and take care of what you drink. Do whatever it takes to ensure you are drinking the right thing at the right time.

Supreme Court patches up Reservation inequality

2006-10-20T12:07:00.000+05:30

Today when i put my eyes on the Hindu front page, i was delighted. Supreme Court has taken note of the "creamy layer" issue in reservation of jobs/promotions.

For the starters, reservation policy was intended to help the people who would otherwise not have had a chance to pursue a job in that position due to various factors. Creamy layer is those people who had the oppurtunity to enjoy the benefits of reservation once and then they or thier children started utlizing those benefits for thier own betterment even though their current social position is much better than the real people for whom these policies were designed.

Supreme Court has said that creamy layer must be taken out of the reservation policy. Reservation was meant for people from poor background, not for people living in two-storey building and driving around in cars. The court has recognised that these people dont really deserve any additional reservation.

The logic behind the concept of reserving seats for backward classes was that these people will not have got a chance to work if the government doesnot explicitly reserve a few seats for them. These can be due to social stigma or financial backwardness. But the people have now started politicising a pseudo-stigma binding the well todo families with the truely deserving people. In effect even the undeserving candidates avail the facility.

Supreme Court also set a ceiling of 50% for all reservations. If any state is having people belonging to backward classes more than 50% then they being the majority, no body can stop them from getting good jobs in the state. This is pure logic. Even if the so called upper class are forcing the lower class majority from getting the representation in the jobs, still atleast 30 - 40 % of jobs will inevitably have to go to people in these classes and they in turn will eventually help other people in thier communmity to get the jobs. Actually these problems are more prominent in the Hindi belt than else where. Personally, the inequalities present in the hindi belt is uncurable, simply because even most of the 'educated' people here are not putting the class based discrimination out of their lives. Also there are some state governments that try to get votes by giving more and more reservations. Reservation must be given only for the deserving.

People actually found out that mere reservation of seats was not sufficient to help fill the seats. When the reservation policy was first enforced there were no takers for most of the seats. Government was forced to lower the eligibility criteria to help fill those seats. Look at the pathetic situation in which a well-meaning wrongly implemented policy has fllen into.

There are many educationists who believe that the very conept of reservation has been implemented badly. Reservation must be for getting school education and helping the children come up with good basic education. This will have a cascade effect on their performance in higher education adn job interviews. The basic emphasis on the primary education is still lacking. Reservation in job front iss only supposed to be a short term patch up work to let the first wave of well-educated well-performing first wave of backward class students to come forward. Once that is through, then there is no point in reservation any more.

From what i have seen, it is better to give an admission to a person scoring 80% plus in well-conducted examinations than to give admission to someone who doesnt even have the basic concepts clear for the admission he is seeking for. The funniest part is people seeking reservation for women are following the same pattern of reserving things.

I am reminded of the story of Naranathu Brandan. This chap is considered to be mad by people. One day he was found rolling a heavy rock up a steep hill. Once the rock reaches the top of the hill, he will simply push the rock down the hill. He will watch the rock rolling down the hill and laugh out loud. Then he will again push the stone up the hill. People saw him doing this act many times over and over again. At last one peson sought enough courage and asked him why he was taking all the pains to push the stone up th hill and roll it down. The response to this query was quite simple. Naranathu Brandan said,"I was just trying to find out what pleasure people get from trying to commit the same mistake over and over again."

Are we not doing the same mistake over and over again?

It is high time somebody start dealing with the real issues and stop patchig things temporily. It is better built a proper building than to build one and keep patching it with the real needs.

How to destroy USA?

2006-08-10T07:59:00.000+05:30

Well, this is from one of my converstaions with a friend of mine.
We were just talking about indian politics and naturally the talk came around to some of ppl in power.

"Consider what will happen if amma went to USA? She will become the US President in a matter of months."

"Yes and also make sure that her coffers get filled with US Treasury."

" Think about it, americans will cheer 'anna namam vazhga!!'. All poor people will get 15 kg rice free. ALl students will get 2 chocolates free daily. All teenagers get condom free. Washington, DCs face will change. it will be filled with statues of Anna, MGR (cooling glass inclusive and umbrella as well). Free laptop for all homeless."

"SAddam hussein must only need to pull jayalalitha to US politics to doom that country"

A sample of How The way Amma moves People.

Amma is incredible!!!

The independence of Thought

2006-08-06T09:10:00.000+05:30

Many things have been written about thought that I feel my own words are only regurgitation of some persons thoughts put in some manual script or some where else. But to write is what I do and that is all that matters.

What is thought? I have browsed through many books. I tried to put the question into my own mind and the results that I got were amazing. Thought is that which makes you read, that which makes me write, that which makes us eat; thought is the drive for all our activities; thought is the result of all our activities; thought makes us think, thought makes us not to think; thought makes us dream. Thought is the only thing that exists in our mind. But mind itself is too abstract to conjure.

I said thought is responsive. Then how can thought be independent? Well, for that first I will have to talk about the fallacy called "my thought". "My thought" never exists, because I nor any person can own a thought. It is the nature of thought to flow through us. If I were to take parallels then I think I have to take the case of neurtinos that pass through the earth. The neutrinoes, when they pass through, do contribute their weight to us. The earth's mass does include the neutrinoes mass that pass through it as well. But then try fixing the neutrinoes to earth alone, and then one becomes incapable. At an instant the neutrino is part of the earth, but then it never looses its individuality and the moment it comes out of the other side, it is free from earth.

We think. Our thoughts do become part of us. But they are only part of us, as long as we are following the thought. Once the thought is lost, we don't follow it. Now we can train our selves to follow the same thought again and again. That s possible. But the ownership of the thought will still be with it, not with us.

WE have seen a lot of abstract things. But then to add some more things to it, let us pose the question, "what exactly is thought?". (Too difficult if this was part of my exam papers, I would have left the question.) To put it with some physical perspective, I must explore it as a group of chemicals in my nervous system playing rock music. Our brain brain consists of a lot of nerve cells(neurons). They are connected among themselves at places called synapses. In a synapse, there is a lot of chemicals flying across from one cell to another. There are also chemicals floating around in the vicinity of the synapses themselves. Then the neurons nucleus has also to make a decision whether it must "fire" the synapse or not. All this chemical pout puree with the neurons influence together generate a small flow in our brain. Lots of such flows combine together to create an imprint on our mind that a thought has come.

even the very act of me typing is way too complex. There are fingers moving and hitting keys. These actions have to be coordinated. I have to look at the screen. Parallelaly I have to check whether I am making any typos. I have to follow a sequence of complex signals to generate the thoughts that I am having. And all these things the "I" doesn't do. It is just a sequence of chemical reactions inside my brain. [The question of "who am I", I have not answered and I don think anyone can 'answer' that. So I am lavishly using 'I' even in places I shouldn't be.] all these seemingly complex tasks are nothing but a stream of thoughts. I wont call "algorithmic" because I don't want to feel like a robot myself. But the fact is these are simple set of operations that is inherently taking place inside us all the time.

The nature of the thought purely depends on the input to this massive computer, called as "body". [Why did I say body, and not brain?]

Now will there not be an argument that from what I have said, a thought is specific to an individual body. Well.. Let me try to explain it this way. WE have got thousands of cars plying around. Each one of them has its own petrol internal combustion engines. Now engine is individual, the petrol flowing in different vehicles must also be inherently individual (not same). Then how does all the engines when working, turn the crank shafts the same way. Though the actual bodies may be different, thoughts are like the motion of crank shaft. Crank shaft will move in the exact same direction whenever the engine is running. The mechanisms of the engine force the crank shaft to work in a particular way. I could actually use a generic term "crank shaft" and not bother about specific cars or trucks, simply because the inherent nature of the mechanism is known and it is known to be the same in all instances. The same action will occur in the synapses if the inner conditions and the surrounding area conditions are same. The probability for Murali to throw THE one rupee coin in air to THE exact height and catch the coin in THE exact height catch it in THE particular way in an exact environment condition and get a heads is also is going to be 1. Of the parameters are fully explored and set, then probability will degrade to totality/fallacy, never in between.

Using the same logic, if a person as inside his brains an almost exact replica of brain patterns an another, then both of them will have similar thoughts. The funniest parts of neurons is that they can do the same operation in an umpteen number of ways. So essentially, two people need not have all the parameters exactly same to have the thoughts matching. They can just have 'Equivalent' neuron mappings and related chemical environment to have the same thoughts repeated.

If the same thought can appear in two persons simultaneously, then who will be the owner of the thought? This is a fairly logical question that will follow and the only answer striking me is that thoughts cannot be 'own'ed by a person. If it is to be owned, then it must be under the control of one person alone, and can never be under two persons.

[I am not against IPR] If thoughts are independent, then ideas must be independent as well. Ideas are nothing but a collection of mutually coherent thoughts. Since thoughts in an idea like company - I mean the thoughts that are part of an idea want some exact thoughts to follow them to make them logically cohesive - we have no other option other than to accept that ideas are also independent.

The thoughts need not want a person to conceive, because it already had existed. Just like we don't need to conceive all the atoms in a steel beam manufactured in a factory. The factories processes themselves will eventually bring the sequence of atoms in place. The parameters that fix the thoughts to a person at a point of time manifest themselves to generate the thought. Once the thought has been expressed, the parameters don't continue to be same. And hence they thought drifts. All the thoughts are fixed by their corresponding parameters. The moment a set of parameters repeat anywhere, the thoughts will come back to life just for the fraction of time needed to manifest itself, and then disappear back into the place from where it came from.

||Chintaneeyam chintamanyam chintanam, chintayeraiva chinthayath||

WHY Super-heroes are a failure

2006-08-06T08:35:00.000+05:30

Looking at the title itself, I think, many of you must be wondering what utter non-sense this is. But then, many things that look like non-sense end up having much more sense later on.

Super heroes are supposed to be characters that fly around doing impossible things. People have used super heroes for motivation effectively. For instance, "If Superman, who doesnt know that under wear must be worn before pants can do it, then so can you." Super heroes are super heroes, because

they do impossible things.
they fight for the notions of truth, justice, et al.
they come from seemingly innocuous back ground and use some of their talents, though exaggereated heavily, to become famous.
they are the creation of some person who is obsessed about one special trait.
All commercial super heroes, started decent and then became prey of commercialisation.

But if you notice carefully, all the characters were made in situ. The story revolves around their surroundings. What I am syaing is that the superheroes functioned and usurped their current surroundings for all the things they did.

All superheroes were lonely people. Some of them identified their special traits very early in life. Others just stumbled upon them. But whichever way it goes, it was something great which they suddenly got.

The main problem with these superheroes is that they are not trained. They just happen to possess what ever special thing they have. I will accept that superheroes were made because some body wanted to put their imagnation to the extreme. But you dont get special powers unless you are trained. I am happy to believe in a Jackie Chan movie in which he flies from top of building (into a net) than a super hero simply because the kung fu movis show level oftraining involved before these people show their stunts.

No man has ever gotten anything without a mentor. Ok, Ok. There was some one as a mentor for many of the heroes involved. But what did these mentors do? They did not teach them hw to use the powers. They were in most instances only motivators. But the heroes never recieved a well-organozed learning strategy.

I have been blabbering about training a lot. But what is the real significance of training? Take the case of ean Claude van Dam's martial arts movies. Specifically I want to say about the one with coumingtang. There the master trained the student to deal with the fight. His training strategy not only involved giving special skills, but also sharpen the already existing skills. (remember the scene where van dam was blibd folded and asked to serve tea. this effectively helped him win the fight even though the opponent had put chemical in his eyes and he turned partially blind). Similarly, in Yodha, mohanlal was trained to fight and protect appukuttan. The character Akosoto was given skills and also the training to use them. That is where our superheroes lack.

Our superheroes know their skills. They have been fed with various concepts of truth, justice, etc. by simple common people. The people who were metnoring probably had no idea what the capabilities of the person are, and how can you improve upon them.

Another problem with super heores is that they were all loners who sddenly emerged out. Since they were loners, they start reading the signs wrongly. World out there cannot be mastered if you are a loner. This is a simple fact of life. What these people needed is just a set of people who can show them around. Not developing super powers and end up saving the world.

The main objective of such a person is to project his own inherent weaknesses of loneliness and so on onto the world. Frankly speaking, world doesnot need some one to save it. Humanity may need, but humanity is way too small. As the scientists try to put it we have been here only for 6 seconds if we consider that earth was created in a day. The real quality that must be cultivated is to understand the right thing to do and do it. do it not becuse it satisfies a fancy condition called justice, but do it because the soul says "do it".

"WE can become responsible fo our actions, only when we are aware of our actions. All the training that is given to us is just to do that. Be aware. "

Nothing in special - usual time pass

2006-07-31T22:10:00.000+05:30

Feeling bad that i had not contributed anything to the blog recently. Been a bit busy recently. When sh.......it happens, it happens all of a sudden.

To stimulate my cranium, Vimal's company has been great. He explained to me some of the tiruvalluvar sayings. What I was thinking all the while was how could the guy who lived so many years ago come up with easy correct and eternal quotes. There were some simple quotes that simply said a doctor must find the disease, find the cause for the disease and then find the cure and after considering all the sides of the cure give it to the patient. Simple effective facts of life. But then valluvar simply turned it to give deeper philosophical insights into many many things in common day-to-day activities.

I am still forced to believe that sight is completely dependent on the beholder. The deeper the beholder wants to see, the more enhanced his sight will be. Pretty hard to chew even for me. But as someone said, truth is always bitter.

I met the chowky yesterday night. I still dont remember his name. But then spending some time with him was good. We talked about many things, but nothing in specific. Just the usual time pass talks. I told him about the article on Nostre Damus on India & BJP in astrojyoti.com. We just talked about the greatness of a man who lived a couple of centuries before us and still he was able to say what happens now. The power of astrology is great. Both of us agreed that it will be BJP this time.

During the conversation he told me that his insincts say that another bomb explosion is on the way. I did not agree with him totally, but the times are quite turbulent. Now-a-days you dont really need Pakistanis to plant bomb here. There are enough bad elements in our own nation to do the damage.

Lesson I learned:

The best way to motivate yourself is to be in good company. It doesnt matter who the other person is and what the exact topic you talk on. All it matters is the vibrant positive energy that must be shared among one another. AS the great man said, "Until you start talking, you will never know how big the world really is and how well knit all of us really are". Motivation doesnt need words. All it needs is the vibrant energy. Words only act like a strip of gold that is used to keep the diamond in place.

From RAZA's blog Excerpts from FROM THE PRISON WRITINGS OF ABUL KALAM AZAD

2006-07-27T18:38:00.000+05:30

"People are always searching for ways to achieve great things in their life, but they do not know that the biggest task in life is life itself, ie. how to live happily. There is no task more difficult than that you live, after all, dying is the easiest thing. One who has solved the problem of living joyfully has acquired the greatest achievement of life.

Perhaps the ancient Chinese had understood the problem of life better than other nations. In an old Chinese proverb a question is asked ‘Who is the wisest person?’ and it is answered ‘One who lives happier than everybody else’. From this we can learn the Chinese philosophy of life and there is no doubt that it is true. If you have learnt the art of living happily in all kinds of circumstances, then believe you me, you have learnt the biggest thing in life. Now, after this the question does not arise about what else you have learnt. Be happy and keep telling other people not to make their faces sorrowful.

I liked a saying of one contemporary French writer, Andre Gide, written in his autobiography – to be happy is not only a physical need but a moral responsibility. The effect of the quality of our individual life is not restricted only to ourselves. It is contagious, it also affects the people around us. Therefore it is our moral duty not to make others sad by being sad ourselves. Our life is a room of mirrors. Every face is simultaneously reflected in hundreds of mirrors. If one face is downcast then hundreds of others will become the same. Our lives are not individual events, they are collective events. On the surface of a river one wave rises, but with one wave countless others form. There is nothing that is solely our own. Whatever we do for ourselves, others also share in it. No happiness would be able to make us happy if we are surrounded on all four sides by sorrowful faces. By being happy ourselves we make other people happy and when we make other people happy we become happy ourselves.

It is strange that religion, philosophy and morality all tried to solve the problem of life, yet all developed the tendency against life itself. It is commonly thought that the more despondent and long-faced a person looks, the more religious they are, the greater philosopher or greater moralist - as if knowledge and piety makes it a necessity. This insult and humiliation of life was not the trait of the Greek cynics only. The stoics and the peripatetic philosophers shared these elements. Gradually sad and sour looking faces became the predominant trait of the philosophers. Even the followers of eudemonism and hedonism had a tendency to display a similar despondency.

In the world of religion and spiritualism, dry piety and coldness have become so popular that now you cannot even dream of a pious or religious person with a happy face. Religiousness has become synonymous with harshness of character. Even if just one religious bigwig appears in a gathering, then a dark shadow is cast, making everyone uncomfortable.

We have to admit that by putting on the dry mask of a philosopher, pious person or a Saddhu we do not fit into the creation of the universe and the nature around. Nature’s forehead is shiny like the sun, and its face smiling like the moon. The twinkling eyes of stars, the dance of trees, the songs of birds, running water, the colourful play of flowers – dry and long faces have no place. Only life which has a warm heart and a shining forehead would have the effect of moonlight on a starlit night that would be like a flower among flowers."

Azad (1945) ,"Ghubar-e-Khatir" ,pp 96-100.

FROM ORKUT post on democracy

2006-07-27T18:36:00.000+05:30

FYI, there was democracy even before the greeks in Tamil Nadu in India. I had the oppurtunity to read a small excerpt from one of books of Thiruvalluvar. There he had written the qualifications for a head of Panchayat, king and emporer. He was listing in modern terms the managerial skills needed for the post. There was amention of a person practically proving his own business before he can be chosen for a village pacnchayat chief's post. A King must similarly be capable of running 3-5 villages effectively before he can become a king. An emporer must be capable of leading 2-3 kingdoms before he can be made an emporer.

Democracy is not only of people intelligently choosing a leader. It must be for ppl to make a choice for a leader among highly competent leaders. The Europeans diluted the real definition of Democracy because they wanted legitmacy for their barbaric governments. Even the famous quote of "of the ppl, by the ppl..." was made in a rally to increase the popularity of the person.

i motivated someone - from orkut scrapbook

2006-07-27T03:39:00.001+05:30

murali: For my PhD qualifying I spend 45 days for studying 9 papers. All technical. all for subjective questions. Since it was me, i used to sleep only 3-4 hrs for 4-5 days then took one day off for sleeping 16hrs. I think i should rephrase the sentence as i studied for 20 hrs for 4 days in a row and 8 hrs in the next day. If I can do it, so can you. My motivation for studying like that is to force myself to think that I will be doomed if i dont do it. I made myself believe that it was a life/death issue. That is the only secret for me qualifying the exam in the very first attempt in first chance, which turned out to be a record in BITS history. Bottomline, work real hard for it as if there is no tomorrow. Use dedication. Listen to motivating talks(usually your friends will do tht for you). CAT exam will be only as difficult as you want it to be. All the best.

One of the responses for the scrap:-

Ebin: hey i just read one of ur scrap to suman.i dont know both of u in person but
that was one real collection of words that motivated me.i have saved the scrap to take a print out.
thanks

Its always nice to hear that some words that come out of me accidentally reaches some one and benefits him.

Another proof for my theory of Information networking.

Drug Addiction in Pakisthan

2006-07-25T12:34:00.000+05:30

Today i read an article in India stating that about 3.5 - 4 million people of 150 million in Pakisthan are drug addicts. This is a huge number. It says about 2.5 % of Pakisthanis are addicted to drugs. I think the poliical instability in Pakisthan has taken its toll. How else can one take such a huge number into account.

Of course, in the article the cost of one "wrap" of heroin was out at 58 pak rs. I dont know how much alcohol costs in pakisthan. but then, the fact that many people are turning towards drugs despite the social taboo associated with it shows the level of degradation in the society. It seems as if the people are not getting enough ways to release their tensoin.

Anyways, I think the topic must be discussed in detail with a Pakistani. There is no point in speculation.

Just on hindsight, i wonder how many cigarete addicts and alcohol addicts are there. I have always thought that a minor fraction of smokers and drinkers only go for drugs.

Name problem with softwares

2006-07-24T20:33:00.000+05:30

I hope Google AdSense will be coming up in this blog shortly. Anyways, I suffered again in the hands of wrong naming procedures. This time courtsey Google.

I am not anti-Google. I just disagree with their way of handling some things.

The reason for this post is to simply point out how nameing is a difficult task.

My Name as on Records is "Murali P". I had no choice in that. The Teacher in first standard (i dont blame her for that), just wrote my name as "Murali P" in the attendance register. Neither me nor my parents bothered about this. It is common in our school have a first name followed by an initial (first letter of father's name) written as name of student. There have been instances where people have a first name and a last name, as with my sister. There were people with three names as well. Now how is a common man about to think that every name must have a first name, middle name/initial and a last name. Asking for such a thing is preposterous.

If needed to insert, I should have written my name as Murali Paramaswaran Iyer. Murali is my first name. Parameswaran is my father's name. and iyer would be my "surname". Iyers are basically Tamil Brahmins. and I am a tamil brahmin. But, from my grandfather's (father's father) time, we never used to add Iyer to our name in our family. My Grandfather's official name is P B Rajan. My father's is just B Parameswaran.

Now, when we go to North India, everyone is assosciated with a surname. The is indicative of the caste of the person. In mumbai especially, you will hear a lot of Kulkarnis, Malhotras, Iyers etc. In fact, when my cousin went to Mumbai for job, he had to forcibly use Iyer along with his name, because that is how people address there. Its part of the culture their. Unfortunately for India, there has always been too much North India in the government procedures. So, you can find the column "Surname" in most of the application forms. WE dont NEED a surname. But then, you cant change a culture of a section of the nation, just because your part dont agree with it.

I am not quite an authority in Naming schemes followed elsewhere. But my observations have been like this. In general, many places have three parts in their name. A lucky few are bestowed with even seven or eight. I have heard of a chat friend mentioning name containing a first name, a church name , a latin name, a fathers name, a family name. Sorry fellow, the names seem quite confusing to me.

Anyways, coming back to the topic, When softwares started to pop up, they drew their line on the Name criteria. They started following their own "general" rules for names. SOme places, they dont really mind if the name is entered as "zzzzzzzzz". some places they are quite certain that a name must be of the form "XXX YYYY ZZZ". Some places insist on "XXX Y ZZZ". Some others leave the middle one optional. Poor VVS Laxman. COnsider him applying in a online form, which has porvision for just 3 parts. But then again, take the example of my friend Vaibhav, whose official name is just that.

Should the sites ensure some rule for the names? Well, just because I happened to learn to write an "int main()" in C, I would say that some rules are needed. It is easy for a person to give a simple name as "zxcv" because that is easy to type. I dont know whether in any culture, a person can have such a name. [If any reader knows such a line, please send comment]. The question is where do the rule makers have to draw the line.

I myself am quite confused about this problem. A better question for the designers will be, "Can i trust the user to enter his/her ACTUAL name?" Difficult Question. But then, a person inclined to write a bogus name will do that, no matter what rule you apply. Even if a form accepts a list of names as legal entries, still some tom, dick or harry will come in and pick up a name randomly from the list. I am of the strong opinion that users must be given the freedom to use their names.

My Google AdSense application was first rejected, because I had gven the name as "Murali P". When I responded to the AdSense team stating the reasons for the name change, (and I changed the last name feild -- i knew the fault is with the code script only and not on the person per se) a Mr. Andrsej responded to me promptly with a reply. I am thankful for the team members response. It at least shows that Google is run by real people and not by some bot. Still, there is nothing that the poor man could have done. Even Google is not at fault, because their design team must have thought of following this rule of first name-last name out of convention. Nothing wrong in that. But then to a user like me, it still is a jolt to hear that my name, the name in which I am known in my official records, is not acceptable in some place.

I hope, some day people will start using the proper names in all forms, and the programmers can start easily assuming that whatever their user enters in the field is going to be correct. But till ten, this will continue.

[I will enter my usual thoughts in true significance of name in some other post.]

About my political leanings - A Reassertion

2006-07-23T12:06:00.000+05:30

This is a reaffirmation.

I dont support or oppose any political, philosophical or theological stand of anyone what so ever.

I believe in

||Sarvam Krishnamayam Jagat||

All is the same in the core of things. Heaven and Hell are one.

Though some of my ravings are becoming pessimistic in nature, I am not. You put a parrot in a brothel, it will only make sounds of the brothel.
I only respond to what is happening. I am becoming more concious of OSHO's urge to 'respond'.

I am forced to reassert only to aliviate any doubts that may creep into the minds of anyone.

Why WAR is eminent - a reflection

2006-07-23T11:39:00.000+05:30

I am strongly of the opinion that a major war is going to erupt. Dont ask me where or when. But this is out of strng intuiton. And I trust my intuition well. My past has proved me that my intuition is almost always right.

Right now, there is all the ingredients for a major war to erupt. Biased hate to sections of society. Racism. When I say racism, it is both the "blue blood" syndrome and the feeling of victimisation caused by other people. Hitler called "Jews" as some one uses the F word, because he belonged to the later group. Then there is clear sign of "blue blood" syndrome coming from a select individuals in Israel and USA.

More people are becoming aware of immigration problem. Immigrants provide cheap labour. But they also reduce the nationalist identity. Add to it a few job losses, a few right wing propoganda to show the immigrants as BAD and voila! we have a potent population thinking that they are the victims of planned immigration by some tyrant.

The fundamentalists are gaining popularity. (for fundamentalism there is an earlier log.) In fact, fundamentalists are using one another to gain their popularity. And all these 'leaders' are minting huge money. I think, right now the fastest way to gain immense wealth is to sart a 'terrorrist' organization. Though the risks are immense, many people have started looking for it. I dont know whether there is even outsourcing involved in this act. But articles on abdul karim tunda make me feel that they are also rampant.

sometimes I am led to believe that the big war is already going on. Though I am not yet ready to believe it. You can blame it on lack of propoganda by those in war.

WE are covered by unfortunate events. There is bombings. there is kidnapping and kilings. There is outright show of military might. Israel is doing that. And then there are a hell of a lot of gainers among the non-participants. For example, China is booming because of Israel.

I am reminded about the story of Jackal making two goats fight. And when the blood started trickling, he started liking them.That jackal ended up dead, because he didnt have the dearth of management experts and strategic analysts in his pay roll. Now-a-days the jackals have turned professional, like many others. Rigth now, it is impossible to spot the jackal. He remains elusive, holding back his greed. Of course, he does lick blood that is falling down. But niw he does that while ensuring that nobdy sees him. And when someone does spot him, his PR gang comes in and bring forth other things so that no one notices that the jackal licked the blood. The Jackal has also become Conservative. He doesnot wait for the goats to die. In fact, he doesnt WANT the goats to die. He is using tactics to ensure that the goats remain alive, remain spiling blood and always elieve that the other is vile.

One of the important reasons for a major war is economics. Either a fear that the economy of a group will plunge, or a sight that lots can be arned by encouraging war.

The sadest part of the entire scenario is that people dont know what they are falling for till they finally enter the point-of-no-return.
I hope that there is GOD in reality and some how HE does something to save life on earth.

Better no man with life, than No life with man.

Democracy: Is it worth it?

2006-07-21T23:43:00.000+05:30

There has been lots of support for spreading democracy in the world. Nations have been attacked, internal tumults have taken place; all in the hope of making a nation democratic. There have been Afghanistan, Iraq, Nepal, just to name a few. But no one has asked the real question; "Is it worth it?"

The preceding events in many of the countries have been exquisite. There have been instances when everyone agreed democracy is the right solution. I am not here to argue against the flow of events and their appropriateness. For that there are other blogs.

Also the question has to be understood in te right perspective. I am not saying that these countries don’t deserve democracy. I am not even suggesting that other democracies are not worth. It is true that many nations have developed with the help of democracy. But the underlying question is whether the changes needed to convert a nation to democracy really justify the ends. Is democracy so nice that it deserves to be spread in all parts of the world?

Let me start with my understanding of democracy. Democracy, as is being said, "is a government of the people, by the people, for the people". The main idea behind democracy is that the land must be ruled by the people according to their demands. Since a simple voting mechanism is being used, it is always so that the opinion of the majority will be followed. It is assumed that the majority will be sensitive enough abut the minorities apprehensions and will not do anything that will hurt the minorities. Democracy is the informed choice of a people to actively pursue the form of government that they shall follow with common consensus to help the people of the state live in the best possible way being carried forward by the people themselves.

I am not going to delve into the plus points of democracy to much. Yes; democracy seems to be the right thing for any place. what else is better than people themselves decide how they want to be ruled. After all, all the decisions are made by the people themselves. I am not going to talk about other good things about democracy. My main emphasis in this article is to point out the weaknesses of democracy.

By definition, democracy wants each person to be able to make informed choices. But how many democratic nations have above 95% of literacy? Even places that boast of high literacy rates, the functional literacy rate is still found to be less. (People interested to verify the validity of the above statements can use google. My words are based on findings from the various reports of NGOs in India and Latin America read in various news sites). The fact is that more than 35 % of population is functionally illiterate by the best estimates. I mean most people cant read and interpret what they read correctly. OK, there is still a vast majority who are still functionally literate. Will they be not enough to handle democracy well?

Here comes the next stumbling block. An average person is a highly prejudiced. The prejudice may be on something as silly as creationism or evolutionism; or something even more vague. People are led to believe things based on what others say. They will always be relying on self-serving people for gathering their knowledge. Even if someone is having the best of reasoning capabilities, still they can easily be subjected to propaganda. A quick glance through the various referendums is enough to understand this. There have been referendums passed and stopped because of pure propaganda. The issue of European parliament is itself a good example. People have voted for the wring reasons. My point is, there is usually no informed choice in practical democracy, simply because a nation is made up of individuals with all their follies.

Man, even from his earliest days, have always followed a leader. In very few cultures there have been mechanisms where the entire group of people sit and work out their problems rationally. I am sorry to say that the modern culture is not among them. Its almost always just the words of a few chosen that always get undertaken, whether they are right or not. May be once or twice their choices may be opposed. But in almost all the cases, it will be the rule of few even in a dempocratic setup. In effect, we dont have people making decisions, but only a few individuals.

Even in this modern age, discussions in their truest sense rarely takes place resulting in common consensus. Usually consensus has been used to mean that the current stand is the result of negotiations. Even if someone comes up with a nice policy by accident, by the time the policy is announced, it will be diluted enough by these negotiators leaving the policy almost worthless. So is democracy truely "is a government of the people, by the people, for the people"

[to be continued.]

Prof Venkateswaran's talk

2006-07-20T08:15:00.000+05:30

I feel that I could listen to a great man talk yesterday when i heard Prof Venkateswaran in an informal meeting. I ended up cursing myself, why I didnt listen to his earlier speeches when i had a chance. All I can blame is on my general aversion to speeches. I think this is another area where I need improvement.

Extracts from the speech

There was a mention of dealing with others. Prof Venkateswaran is famous for his easy, warm handling of people. His advice on handling people is quite simple. Find out the beauty in the other. If you find something beautiful in some one, then there is no other way you can communicate to him/her. Deadly!!!

Another thing that struck me is his general sense of right. He kept on emphasising the importance of doing the right thing with all his real life example. It was quite inspiring to me.

He also talked about "going with the lot" scenario. Again the mention of doing the right thing was put forth. But here, he also mentioned lateral thinking concepts. He emphasised the importance of being able to do what can be done. He also implored us to think out of the box.

He quoted a couple of examples where he approached the problem differently. There was a situation in which a student had approached him for admission. His admission was not possible because of a technical glitch. What Prof. Venkateswaran did was altering the entire technical glitch totally. the student was not given because his father was only a daily wager. The Prof converted the status of the employee to regular worker. There was a feeling among some administrators that there may be a problem in future because of this incident. But then, no problem occured because everyone agreed that this was the right thing to do. The emphasis again is on right thing. There was another similar example where the use of alternating thinking is put forward.

In his speech, Prof Venkateswaran showed how to deal with responsibility. He had both academic and administrative responsibility. His approach of dealing with his responsibilities effectively is by not considering them as 'responsibility'. He assured us that there was no feeling of burden when he dealt with his responsibilities. All the work he did came to him naturally as the best thing to do. Hence he didnot have to consider them as responsibility. To him, everything was a situation, and his responses were always the right response to the situaton in hand. (I dont understand why this looks like spirituality than management technique.)

There was no moment in his talk, when he never directly or indirectly did not demonstrate the need for becoming a good communicator. "There are two things important in a good communication. One is speaking; the other is listening. A good communicator does both."

He mentioned one technique to remember the name of students. I have to do some sort of training to remember the name of people I meet. I am still lacking in that. His technique is simple. I am reminded of the malayalam proverb whose rough traslation is : To eat hot rice soup, start from the side. (Kanjikku choodu kooduthalanengil, vakkil ninnu thudanguka.)

His speech impressed upon me the need for training. Though he only mentioned the importance of training in relation to Library book reading habit, the significance of training was always looming some where around in the speech. From his speech, I was able to make out many areas where he had trained himself. I should find ways to conciously and unconciously train myself to be a better being.

Just like Ramkumar used to talk about incidents with students in his career, there was also mention of similar thing. There weremany places where the tones matched those of Dr A C Mathai in some of his speeches way back in raset. My observation is that all these people must be training themselves to deliver speeches in this particular pattern. I think this is a speaking technique. If it is a technique somebody must have written about it. Which again tells me to read more of management books.

Prof Venkateswaran touched upon the topic of reservation. Like me, he also is against reservation in higher education. He emphasised on the need to improve school level education before going to higher education. He pointed out the lack of apporpriate effort on the part of the government to improve the school education for the 'reserved' people. If they are given proper training in the school level, then they will be able to go to higher education with their merit alone. If a student is not able to apply because of fees, then now itself any banls are willing to come forward to provide educatoinal loans. The merit of the student doesnot depend on how much money his parents have; but only on how much effort he can put in.

I came out of the lecture hall thinking why I was not able to meet this person earlier.

|| Sarvam Krishnamayam Jagat ||

2006-07-14T23:21:00.000+05:30

Sarvam Krishnayam Jagat.

Everything is filled with Krishna. This is what some of the folks say. Lord Krishna is expected to be present in every animate and inanimate object.
In every thing Paramathman resides. There is nothing in which That does not exist. The isness is expounded in every aspect of the living. The isness of the animate and inanimate is established due to the presence of the Lord. It can also be said that the isness is established of the Lord as well. There is no difference in meaning, because the Lord exists in all, and by existing is made to exist in all.

The story of Prahlada illustrates that Lord exists in every thing. The story is not merely a bedtime story. The insight provided in the story is massive. When we say, "exists in all", the question arises as to what exists. The answer logically is "Krishna". Who is Krishna? The bhakti saints spent their lives on understanding and loving Krishna. By Krishna only Paramathman is meant.

BUT, there exists another interpretation for the same sentence. Krishna also means Black color. So the sentence means, "everything is filled with blackcolor". Or, "Everything is filled with blackness". That will mean that everything is engulfed in naught. there is nothing in any direction we see. What is percieved doesnot exist. hence whatever is present in the perceptable world doesnot exist. This is entirely opposite to the previous interpretion, in which we stated that everything is filled with Paramathman.

So what is the real meaning of the statement? The one interpretation says one thing, while the other says the exactly opposite thing. The answer is qute simple. "Both".

This is when people will say that there is definitely something wrong. We have been taught in logic that everything is either true or false; either black or white. But no one has taught us about the greys in life, because people thought that greys were too obvious to mention. I said in a polished way. Actually, people dont know how to interpret seemingly self-contradicting things.

World is filled with Nothing and yet it is filled with everything.
The world is the product of Maya. Hence we can say that world doesnot exist. But to a person living, he cant accept tht whatever he sees and touches and senses is non-existent. But he can relate to it being filed by GOD.

GOD was invented by man to hide the Nothingness.

Hence the actual interpretation is in accepting both, because in Nirvikalpa samadhi, neither there is existence nor non-existence.

Thus the sentence is truth whichever way it is seen.

an about me

2006-07-07T22:22:00.000+05:30

To me, I am not.
But to be I certainly am.
Truely there is certainty,
that to me is to be.

I have absolutely no idea wht tht means. but then to rationally explain all things around me; that is the only trait i dont want to master anyway.

It actualy took me one neural cycle to understands the vastness of the statement. The feeling at that instant was sort of engulping the entire globe and yet be out of it. I was hit by Krishnan and i hit him back. But anyway, wht matters is tht it seems nonsensical, and yet it is completely meaningful. Just like me.

I still can think of existential reality only. The non-existential reality is still a puzzle to me.

something i wrote in response to an orkut message

2006-07-07T22:09:00.000+05:30

when the water flows, it doesnot know whether it is rock or ice. It just flows. In flowing water exists. SWirl water, and water gets swirled. blocked water and water gets blocked. its just water, so why cant the water be allowed to be water.... to flow, to not flow, it is helpless, for all it is is water.
How can i quote myself? and if i dont quote myself, who will quote me? And if I only quote myself, then who am I?

There are things tht just happen. its better to leave it like tht.

Better be what you believe yourself to be than to be brought out as what you will never be.

Dominoes Effect - The quote

2006-07-03T10:32:00.000+05:30

Its lot like the last domino standing happily near the chip that is going to be tapped first. The chip falls, forcing the next one to fall and all that it thinks is " Look at the beauty of dominoes". Occasionally a philosophical "Wow!! Here lies the proof that all are connected" hits its clay-filled cranium. When the pyro effects go, it becomes so very excited; waiting , watching and getting into a beautiful trance. Entrenched in this stupor, it wishes that it can also do rounds and keep falling like the other chips. Poor thing!!! It doesnt know that it will also fall. But till the end of the show - when every other chip has fallen and it becomes its turn to fall - it doeesnt even anticipate that it will also fall into the same trap.

[Everyone can use this quote anwhere, anytime, provided this is used to show the gullibility of a person/body/Institution as part of an advice.]

Behaviour - Part I

2006-06-21T19:21:00.000+05:30

Crazy as it may sound, I have finally taken it to road. The unconcious urge to understand the subconcious has resulted in the resurgence of the sublime spirit. If you didnt understand what that means, its ok. Even I didnt understand it. But who cares?!!!

I am very much prone to the think that the mind is a direct result of the hardware called our body. Programming of mind makes sense to me. I mean, look at almost all of our deault behaviour in a new circumstance. If it is a new event in our life, we almost always do wht our genes tell us to do. i.e, Our simplistic behaviour is governed entirely by our genes.

Then there is the unconcious self programming. We are all apes. Apeing is our birth right, our innate behaviour; and our prime duty to our society. Society likes apes. People who seemingly copy the actions of someone else in the society. The transactional rituals are inherently copies of some behaviour performed by others. The only difference between ape and us is the human hipocracy of glorifying our own dropings, while ridiculing all the nice things that drop down from heavens.

The level of self programming that we do deserves much comment. Do we really do self programming? The question is simple. The answer is an even simpler 'Yes'. But to realize it, some effort is needed to understand our own working. Given a new situation, our brain first checks and confirms that the sitation is new. Then it searches for similar experiences. The big advantage of having neurons in our heads is that they easily approximate. Neurons inherently give the closest computation that it has recently successfully completed and used. This is the nurture part of our character. But if there is no comparable experience then it wil just follow the results of the native mappings in our brain. This native mapping is that provided by nature. That is our actions correspond to how we are nurtured to respond, or we may choose how we as per our nature.

Lets take the simple example of our behaviour when we meet another of our species. When a person is born, he doesnt know the rather complex ritual of "Hi","Hi" and "How are you?","I am fine". This complex action is not in our genes. But gestures like twitching of eyes and lip muscels, is something we innately do. This is the reason why people acting to be blind have to train a very blatant face. The sight of anything simply triggers all our natuaral mechanisms and if not checked they will give away the disguise easily. What the actor is doing is training himself to go around the natural behaviour.

Nurture is all about doing the training to alter the natural flow of action. It defines the desired action. In the "Hi" - "Hi" scenario, the person is to be trained to say the "Hi" and wait for the response "Hi". Everything additional branch from this scenario is learned by supervision or learned by action. Learning by supervision is basically the apeing part of us. We ape what our supervisor does, training our neurons to perform the action. In training by action, we have no reference point to ape. So we simply do what we think the supervisor will do. i.e, we perform a virtual apeing.

More on this on a later day.

Collection of many musings written over time

2006-06-14T19:27:00.000+05:30

Converting Heaven to Hell : THe Reservation Issue

Once upon a time there was a village by the name of Utham. People there were good, living a harmonious life. Each man chose his profession and was good at it. Slowly over generations, just because son always wanted to follow the foot steps of father, families became dedicated to one profession or other. Thus castes came into being. This is the story that I have always heard.

So if all were one once, then why should we differentiate one from another.

I think we should go a few years back in the pre-WW2 era. This was a time when eugenics was gaining popularity. People suddenly started to think, the genes had something to it. What they really want to say is "My family is better than yours". Or "I am better than you because I come fron so-and-so family". For ages the human ego had always wanted to say just that. "I am better than you". So what does that have to do with whatever I was talking about. Well, before the idea of eugenics even evolved in the Western mind, we Indians had already given a nice heirarchial mechanism for that by name of casteism. Utham was before our subtle attraction towards eugenics surfaced.

As far as the
--------------------

[will continue when i get time]

2006-05-07T22:41:00.000+05:30

The light breeze was flowing past my ears. Tingling me to ramble into the nice reverie about nothing I can point my finger at. I like the air to flow past my ears. I zeroes in on the direction of breeze, feeling the air flow past both my ears with same sound. Some was flowing through the bridge of my nose, trying to invigorate my thinking process.

Why do people make so much fuss about monogamy? I mean whats the big thing in conceptually folowing the same woman the entire life. Rather, why have a woman all the life? Is marriage an integral part of every man's life? I cant answer that question. I may be able to say when I get married; if I get married. But as of now, having to mend for a woman is a pain for me.

Coming back to the question, WHY? I think a good insight is provided in the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus". Two different poles, attracted by some magnetic force. Some can just have one from the other planet. Others are obsessed; they cant stop with just one. A few others are happier without the other. Some have an aversion to the other. Some just havent any idea about the other. So they are blissfully unaware of the other.

[I lost the flow. May be I will continue after some time]

The truth in the eyes

2006-05-07T20:27:00.000+05:30

Today i saw a gorgeous babe in an ad. I recollected that the same babe was in another ad last week. There was something special about the girl.

So i took the two ads and I checked what is so special about the girl.

She was innocent looking. Neither old to be called a woman, nor young to be called adolescent.
There was something serene about her. A relaxed look. An easy way of staying as the individual.
There was no yearning to show that "I exist". There was no expression that says "Look at me".

(The look-at-me expression is usually assosciated with people who are not in peace with their self.)

Her expression seemed to say " Ok. I am here. So whats the big deal about it? Why are looking at me like this?"

But then there was something else in her. She didnot evoke any sexual feeling. That is out of question. Then I thought; may be, its the serene look of hers. I looked at her and well, she didnot appear to be serene. Then what?

I looked at her eyes. It is said that eyes is the window to the self. What does those eyes say to me?
I looked at her eyes, till I could feel nothing but her eyes looking at me. She was looking at me on that instant. Whatever is in her was for me to see and understand. And shejust looked nervous. It was more of a feeling of, "Look Mr. I am posing for this snap for I-dont-know-how-long. So, just go ahead with it."
Her breath was shallow. "Am I doing this correclty." And then another part says, "This is not the first time I am posing for a photo. SO what's the big deal in it?" "This cushion is soft. I should get something like this for my home too." "Is it what the cameraman wanted me to express?"

Every person is a mixture of emotions.
Its a boiling cauldron in which cognitons are dumped; some from one jar, some from another, and others still from yet another.
These cognitons just buzz around from here to there. Some pop up, others just play around in the depths. Just because none have poped up doesnt mean that they dont exist and one is completely peaceful. And just because many are there coming up, doesnt also imply that one is confused.
Its all about seeing through things that are beneath: and shutting eyes from seeing things.
The superficial is so peaceful that it hides the inherent mirage of cognitive particles. The abundance is simplified by our inherent inability to iron out the crusts and troughs. Its our inability to percieve that leads to the ironed out view of simplicity.
As Richard Bach said in Illusions

The Simplest Things are the Most Profound.

I am as innocent of all these raptures as a young duckling following its siblings. No thought is wasted on this and that side. Life justs flows its way through me, leaving me unspoken, unseen, unheard, and utterly non-existant.

About my political leanings

2006-05-01T14:14:00.000+05:30

I have been thinking what is my actual political leaning.

I dont like any of the political parties. So i thought myself to be some breed of liberal; Anarchist may be. But then I have always been interested in dictatorship. So i thought i may be some supporter of autocracy.

After lots of thought, I am happy to say, I am neither of any of these. But the explanation is going to be tough for me.
I am a person without any "ism". What is so tough in it? Well, logic says a person who is refraining from any "ism" is "an anti-ismist". I am not even that.

By not confirming to any single disciple, I am free to use the nice things in all the disciplines, without the negatives in them.

My basic principle is, "give to patient according to his desease".

The beauty of practical politics is that all the theory in the books are good only in some situations in some places during some era only. Though many things prescribed will work in most of the similar places, nothing can be confirmed because of the very innate temporal identity of the polity.

Conduct of Elections , 1961 (rule 49 O) - Elector deciding not to vote

2006-05-01T13:58:00.000+05:30

This is from a mail i recieved from one of my friends, and my response to it.

well, i did some background check on the 49 O

this is what i found from the Conduct of Elections , 1961 from the Law Ministry site(http://lawmin.nic.in/ld/subord/cer1.htm)

"49-O. Elector deciding not to vote.-If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form-17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark."

"49L. Procedure for voting by voting machines.-(1) Before permitting an elector to vote, the polling officer shall-
(a) record the electoral roll number of the elector as entered in the marked copy of the electoral roll in a register of voters in Form 17A.
(b) obtain the signature or the thumb impression of the elector on the said register of votes; and
(c) mark the name of the elector in the marked copy of the electoral roll to indicate that he has been allowed to vote:
Provided that no elector shall be allowed to vote unless he has his signature or thumb impression on the register of voters.

(2) Notwithstanding anything contained in sub-rule (2) of rule 2, it shall be necessary for any presiding officer or polling officer or any other officer to attest the thumb impression of the elector on the register of voters."

Its a true shame that ppl dont know the beautiful provisions in our own Law. I think GOI and P&B Dept must be charged with aversion of truth.

God knows what other good provisions are there in the law that is similarly hidden to even educated ppl of the nation.

--- xxxx@****> wrote:

> People�
> Please take some time to read this entire mail. You
> will definitely feel its
> worth.
>
> Hope some of you have already got this mail and got
> to know about the *49'O*..
>
> It says :
>
> "In a particular constituency, if a voter has
> dislike to all of the
> candidates competing there,
> Then he can show his dislike to all of them by
> registering for *49'O*.
> Steps for doing this :
> 1. while registering the name by the time of
> voting, convey the booth
> officials that "I want to go for *49'O*".
> 2. Register your signature in the *49'O* form
> available there.
>
> Done.
> Now, if the number of *49'O* count is larger than
> that of the winning
> candidates total vote count, then a re-election is
> called there.
>
> The rule 49 (O) of the Conduct of Election Rules
> 1961 gives the electorate
> the right to register at the polling booth, get
> their index finger inked,
> but refrain from casting the vote. The electoral
> officer then has to make
> an entry under the rule, but the noting is not a
> secret.
>
> If the rejection exceeds the number of votes polled,
> a re-election is then
> ordered, *but the rejected candidates do not have
> the right to contest
> again.*
>
> More than all, the shameful fact is,
> This *49'O* is available ever since 1960, but it is
> in no way conveyed to
> the people.
> Neither the government communicate this, nor did the
> election commission.
>
> As long as the people are unaware of this one, the
> political parties are
> enjoying by winning the election and ditching our
> country.
> To stop this disaster to continue further, we don't
> need to take a sword and
> fight against the government.
> Just help every citizen to know that they have such
> a powerful weapon which
> can be used for ensuring their welfare.
>
> None of the media will be ready to publish this
> *49'O*.
> Let us do this by ourselves.
> Communicate this information with all your family,
> friends, neighbors as
> much as you can and let them know their right.
> Please send this mail to everyone you know and
> request them to spread it
> across to everyone.
>
> Convey this information to as many people you know.
> Not only, we get a satisfaction that we have done a
> good service for our
> country's welfare.
>
> This is very well equal to what our patriots have
> done for the independence
> of our country.
>
> Very less time left before the next election drama.
> Before that lets make sure that everyone speaks
> about this word "*49'O*".
>
>
>
> --
> B. M.P

Murphy's law: Murali's corollary on open book exams

2006-04-23T22:02:00.000+05:30

Murali's corollary on Murphy's Law states

In an open book exam, a question will come from that book which you missed to take to the Exam Hall, and more likely than not, it will be the first question in the paper.

back in action

2006-04-23T21:42:00.000+05:30

At last i have given my qualifying exams. Now i can add tit bits to the blog.

I have to start working on my piece of work soon now.

More importantly i will have to carefully choose my topic so that it forms a part of the big picture.

Water analogue of Soul - A thought

2006-03-20T23:34:00.000+05:30

Soul of a man is like a pitcher of water kept in the open. In the beginning, it was pure, colorless, odourless. But over time, because of the cause-effect cycle, dust and chemicals pile up in the water. According to the dust falling into the pitcher, the taste and color of once pure water changes. The water no longer remains oure. This doesnt mean that the purity of water is lost for ever. By carefully countering the impurity causing materials with their duals, it is possible to reinstate the old purity. All life our efforts must be to maintain the purity of water. If suppose somebody looses purity, they dont have to get dijected thinking that the purity canot be got back. All religions talk about how to achieve this purity only.

2006-03-07T19:51:00.000+05:30

I, Me, Myself (Its really me.)

today's quota

2006-03-02T23:55:00.000+05:30

The following is the actual text from a message forwarded to me titled

A Letter to the British People from a daughter of Iraq

I'm sending this letter to the British people and in particular to the residents of London. For a period of hours, you have lived through moments of desperate anxiety and horror. In those hours you lost a member of your family or a friend, and we wish to tell you in total honesty that we too grieve when human lives pass away. I cannot tell you how much we hurt when we see desperation and pain on the face of another person. For we have lived through this situation – and continue to live through it every day – since your country and the United States formed an alliance and laid plans to attack Iraq.

The Prime Minister of your country, Tony Blair, said that those who carried out the explosions did so in the name of Islam. The Secretary of State of the United States, Condaleezza Rice, described the bombings as an act of barbarism. The United Nations Security Council met and unanimously condemned the event.

I would like to ask you, the free British people, to allow me to inquire: in whose name was our country blockaded for 12 years? In whose name were our cities bombed using internationally prohibited weapons? In whose name did the British army kill Iraqis and torture them? Was that in your name? Or in the name of religion? Or humanity? Or freedom? Or democracy?

What do you call the killing of more than two million children? What do you call the pollution of the soil and the water with depleted uranium and other lethal substances?

What do you call what happened in the prisons in Iraq – in Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca and the many other prison camps? What do you call the torture of men, women, and children? What do you call tying bombs to the bodies of prisoners and blowing them apart? What do you call the refinement of methods of torture for use on Iraqi prisoners – such as pulling off limbs, gouging out eyes, putting out cigarettes on their skin, and using cigarette lighters to set fire to the hair on their heads? Does the word "barbaric" adequately describe the behavior of your troops in Iraq?

May we ask why the Security Council did not condemn the massacre in al-Amiriyah and what happened in al-Fallujah, Tal'afar, Sadr City, and an-Najaf? Why does the world watch as our people are killed and tortured and not condemn the crimes being committed against us? Are you human beings and we something less? Do you think that only you can feel pain and we can't? In fact it is we who are most aware of how intense is the pain of the mother who has lost her child, or the father who has lost his family. We know very well how painful it is to lose those you love.

You don't know our martyrs, but we know them. You don't remember them, but we remember them. You don't cry over them, but we cry over them.

Have you heard the name of the little girl Hannan Salih Matrud? Or of the boy Ahmad Jabir Karim? Or Sa'id Shabram?

Yes, our dead have names too. They have faces and stories and memories. There was a time when they were among us, laughing and playing. They had dreams, just as you have. They had a tomorrow awaiting them. But today they sleep among us with no tomorrow on which to wake.

We don't hate the British people or the peoples of the world. This war was imposed upon us, but we are now fighting it in defense of our selves. Because we want to live in our homeland – the free land of Iraq – and to live as we want to live, not as your government or the American government wish.

Let the families of those killed know that responsibility for the Thursday morning London bombings lies with Tony Blair and his policies. Stop your war against our people! Stop the daily killing that your troops commit! End your occupation of our homeland!

Iman al-Saadun, Friday, 8 July 2005

I dont know whether it is really genuine; but the message is conveyed in nice words.

Regarding Indo-US Nuke deal

2006-03-01T18:19:00.000+05:30

Much have been said about the Indo-US nuke deal in the newspapers. Many people have came up with their opinions, both for and against the current deal

My gut feeling says, the deal must not happen.There is no point in rushing to a deal, if we really dont benefit from it. Going for a deal will put India in difficult situations in the near future, when the direct effects of the Global power equations change. At that time, we should definitely be having a free unbounded say regarding our nuke status. The responsibility with which India has carried out its nuclear facilities is unquestionable.

I do envision the equations to start changing by 2020. I actually was about to type 2050. Actually people would have thought that it is a much better analysis of the equation. But I am feeling more optimistic about the shift in paradigm. What we have to watch for is the upsurge of ungderdogs. Its going to come. But when and from whence, nobody knows.
(did i sound a bit poetical)

Tumutous times are approaching. Both in terms of nature and Man. The next 200 yrs is going to pave way for rather dramatic changes. People will start talking of nibbing buds and fertilizing plants. Its going to get more chaotic as it goes ahead. But things will come to a dynamically stable equilibrium.

my words have started to diverge into multiple topics that need to be dealt with individually.

To end with a quite that Ican think of right now:

What has come has to stay;
What has stayed has to leave;
But what has left stays forever.

In the winds arise the sound;
In the sound broils the field;
In the field manifests the eternal;
But eternal reamins the same.

I dont brew words,
for I dont know how to brew them.
But words flow out of me;
like water flows out of the springs.
Ideas trascend through words. And
since i dont brew them the words,
Ideas also ebb out uncontrolled.
What is words but idea transcending;
And what is idea but expressed as words.
Hence I dont think, thoguht comes to me.

I open my heart to those who know me;
But the words decieve themselves and I am left unsaid.
Where I leave, I dont see;
From where I came, I dont think;
But come and go I do every now and then.
Just as the waves that hit the shores.

Sudoku in reader's digest

2006-02-28T17:46:00.000+05:30

I was browsing through the latest rd and found sudoku in it. There is a slight variation intriduced in the game. Additional contraint was placed for the diagonals as well.

I relearned the lesson that

Question must always be read before answering it, even if you inherently know the wordings that will come in it, lest they decided to change the wordings in the last minute.

Surprised regarding the American people

2006-02-28T17:37:00.000+05:30

My previous post was triggered as a response to what i read in one of the forums in rd.

After reading it, i am really surprised. People can be easily fooled if they are shown only one side of the story. That much i can understand.

But how can people be fooled so perfectly; and then later admit that they had fooled them perfectly ; and still continue fooling people.

I desperately want to get training from Bush on how he does this. This is a well-commendable skill.

As long as few people can sway the opinion of masses in America, that country will never surface from its current position. Already the nation is walking a tight rope. Now it seems they are trying to juggle balls and also walk on the tight rope simultaneously.

In response to a few words supporting war on Iraq

2006-02-28T17:17:00.000+05:30

Now i understand why Bush was able to go to war in the first place. If educated people can be misguided about the 'legitemacy' of a 'war on terror' then Americans deserve to see their soldiers die. US soldiers have always had to bite the bullet because of some stupidity that their political bosses dream of when having a nice time in a fancy spa. the way jkendalls has said it, what is see is the direct effect of misinformation. The fact is the so-called terrorism is the by-product of all the failed missions of american intelligence agencies.

The macho words of "getting them in their own turf" is pretty nice if you are a general about to attack someone. This sort of aggression is the prime reason why the suicide bombers are motivated to blow themselves up. No sane man can commit suicide for any course. Please recollect the amount of motivation given to the Jap Kamkazees during WW2.

My friend, dont talk about the feelings of people whose living conditions you cant even imagine in your dreams. Please visit the places where the so-called terrorists are born and the circumstances that they grew up. Normal Iraqi people didnt hav any problems with US before they attacked Iraq. Then why should they attack the US forces now.(verbally and not physically. they are too powerless to attack physically.) What you are seeing is the slightly rotten side of an apple. Now the question is are you willing to cut just the rotten half and eat the nice part or are you going to curse the apple for the small part getting rotten and destroy the entire apple? Please think about it gentlemen.
America spewed aggression on other people. The foriegn policy after the decline of USSR was more towards making America the only nation that can say anything. Most of the policy decisions have knowingly or unknowingly angered one section of the world or the other. Now other people can easily be told that USA is the culprit and any one can easily motivate people to attack US. Even now the arrogance of the cirrent administration has not reduced. Please recall the article of Ms Rice in washinton post (I think). That is direct challenge to poor people. It simply says, "Right now I am the powerful person here. So if i say you should lick my feet clean, then you must do it. Period."

Regarding Bush's as President, I think you just have to see what he has done for Common American. Just to get a sample of what he has brought home, look at the budget deficit. Look at the amount of manipulations the administration is doing to hide the real state of affairs.

The fact is Bush fooled American citizens and used their money to wage a war that he and his dad had always wanted.

My favorite Quote:
"You can fool all people for some time.
You can fool some people for all time.
But you cannot fool all the people all the time."

Gas connection in my home

2006-02-27T15:56:00.000+05:30

At last, I have got gas connection in my home. Took it from Victory Gas agency.(Indane).

Now i think i can built upon my culniary expertise.

Quote i read in "The Hindu"

2006-02-27T15:51:00.000+05:30

This is a nice quote from an article on WIll Smith during his visit to mumbai.

"Success does not change a person. It only magnifies you. It allows you to be who you are"

Pretty interesting... eh

Many people ought to read this I guess.

Quotes

2006-02-23T11:50:00.000+05:30

Strange is the way the world moves. It emphatically says that it has one direction, but never follows its own course.

Israel Has Started its Doom !!!!

2006-02-21T15:15:00.000+05:30

Before I write anything, legal clarification. All the thoughts expressed are personal opinion and need not in reality reflect the ground facts. As for all my writings, Reader Descretion is strictly recommended. I dont have any personal grudges against Jews per se. Neither do I have anything against common Israeli citizen.

Israel is again trying to prove why Hitler was correct for all his Anti-Semitic outbursts. I mean, how else can anyone justify what the Israelis are doing against Palestinians. Come on. Everyone have fought. Every one have bought in bitter terms too. But no one drags meaningless things for years. Especially when a generation has passed. Now is the time when Israel must act in a mature manner and tame Hamas to come to lenient terms. Of course, to gain something, you will have to lose something.

Palestinians deserve the 50 million USD that comprise their genuine earnings. If I collect rent for some fellows home, and I happen to have a fight with him, I dont think I will deny him his rightful money. I will be throwing all the money I must be giving to him on his face . Then a simple dialogue like "if you want to collect your rent, do it yourself" will follow. What Israel is doing now is choking Palestinians. If you push someone, they may back off. If somebody backed off and you assume that its because you are strong and continue to bully, they may still be backing off. But a point will come when everything falls apart.

I am reminded of a Japanese anime that I saw in some TV Channel.(I think its Anime World. Not sure about the name.) In it a small orphan child was shown to be forced to work by his relatives. The child was heavily abused. Then in Nana Patekar model, one fellow came and told the child, "World will not help you for your troubles. If you are in trouble, you have to stand up on your own." The guy gave the kid a sword. "Fortune favors the stronger. It’s up to you to decide whether you are going to act strongly to your bullies or not". Just the few words were enough for the kid to slaughter his relatives when they harassed him next time. The point I am trying to drive is not that all Israelis must be butchered. I am just saying that the Palestinians will retaliate strongly. Retaliation wont be a set of "childish-like" suicide bombs. Psychology says, when nobody takes note of a person when he steals, then he will graduate himself to murder. When nobody takes note of a person when he kills, then he will try to find out more ingenious crimes that he can perpetuate. Hamas is that suffering child. Some wise people told it that it has to stand up on its own. The child took the sword. But then nobody cared. They tried to bully the kid with bigger swords. The child will try to find out more inspiring methods to convey the point now.

One thing, I have not yet understood is why Israel is so much upset about its so-called sovereignty. The fact is that Israel is a petty coin thrown to the Jews like some body throws it to beggars. In the current case, some fellow forcefully took money from one person and threw it as alms to the beggar. Perhaps Einstien denied the chance to become Israel's first leader because his conscience didn't allow him to earn the life from somebody else's alms. Israel never was and the very existence of a place called Israel is against the very tenets of the religion. I really want to see an English-speaking nation to be named as Heaven or Paradise. Forget a nation with that name, I would definitely like to see at least a city with that name. But there is no point in talking in those terms because most of the Israeli leaders know nothing about their religion and tradition like many of the fundamentalist clergy belonging to other religions. The formation of the Jewish nation was the biggest mistake of humanity.

The fact of the matter is that the entire Europe despised Jews. A quick glance through the popular newspapers at the time is enough to convince even a small baby that Europeans considered Jews as scum. The reasons for their hatred were varied. The negative image of Jews was popularised under the regime of Hitler. I dont think popularised is the correct word. The shrewd politician in Hitler understood that this general contempt is the jugular vein of the European people, something that he can hold to gain support. The entire was playing second fiddle to the whims of these dangerous concepts, till the so-called colonial super powers thought that Germany has grown bigger than them. Its a well known fact that everyone were jealous of Germany's development. Hitler used it to show Germans that he is delivering what he has promised. Europeans saw it as the showing off of German muscle. Most of the critics might try to argue that so many things went wrong. But the real achievements can never be hidden. Because of Hitler's open Anti-sematic talks, the buggers in the power centres of Europe found an easy scape goat in Hitler. They soon found out that they can put all the blame on the Nazi regime and get away with anything that they do. Just as the current Bush Administration has put the blame on others.(Please read Paul Krugman's column in "The Hindu" that came on 21-2-'06 titled "The mensch gap")

Statistics speak for themselves regarding the facts of World War 2. As the great Siddhuji said, "Statistics are like mini-skirts, they reveal more than they can hide." Already I have read enough material to seriously doubt the 6 million figure that is supposed to have been perished under Nazi era. And even if the figure were true, that doesnt give the Israelis all the liberty that they enjoy right now.

The images of the dread atom bombs that fell on the two Japanese cities show the real people who suffered in the second world war. Americans, it seems, had developed the habit of using any gap that they can find to show themselves off. Everyone must thank the American administration at that time to convert a simple European war into a world war. If the power centres at that time were so concerned about all the nice things that they profess, then the American base must have vanished from the Japanese soil. The Americans desecrated a mighty old culture, by forcing the Japanese Emperor to disown himself from his Godhood.

Godhood is the wrong term. People in the Eastern cultures know the truth about God. That’s something that very few in the Christian clergy at that time really knew. (Regarding the good and bad things of the Christian culture I will leave it for another day.) Even today, if any country can have a real say about anything that happened in the second world war, it must be Japan. I am still astonished at the despicable conduct of the American military, who dropped the second bomb after knowing what had happened with the first one. I don’t believe in the bullshit that people didn’t know the consequences of dropping an atom bomb.

The support given to Israel by USA is understandable. Unless the entire bunch of pro-Israelis that have infiltrated the US administration are not purged, I don’t think there is going to be any markable progress in the near future regarding the Israeli crisis.

What the good people in Israel must really be thinking right now is how they can solve the entire issue in a matter of 20-25 years. I think that is the amount of time it will need for USA to nose-dive into a powerless nation. The facts and figures from the administration is proof for that. And due to the good things that the Bush family has done to the world, American fall has accelerated. In a span of 30-40 years, Western domination of international political space will vanish. There will be three groups to content with. viz, Indian front, Chinese Front and Latin American Front. It will be as if three upcoming companies have taken over the market share of two heavy weights, who have forgotten the rules of the game. There will be a recycle of "Social values" in the west, with a string tug of war between the fundamentalists and the liberals. America and Europe will succumb to the disease that they spread to other places. There will be coalition Politics running in USA and ll major European Nations. Already the shift is visible in many of the nations. Israel will have to not only think, but feverishly worry, about the question of its existence at that time.

It is high time Israel decide that it has to let Palestine be its neighbour. And provide a corridor between the two pieces of Palestine. A better suggestion will be to say that they cant accept a single country by the name of Palestine, but two countries, Gaza and West Bank. No nation has lasted long if it is being split into two politically active chunks. (The case with USA is because the two parties fought like iguanas.)

But then from the signals emenating from the nation, it seems Israel Has Started its Doom !!!!

In'nova'tion - truth or farce?

2006-02-16T09:34:00.000+05:30

The other day i was just meditationg on discovery and it struck me the futile nature of innovation. What is new? if we call 'new' as something that exists now, but didnot exist before, then there can be nothing that can be termed as new. As soon as something new is created, its existence is established. In the very next instant its existence cannot be termed as new.
Even otherwise, how can a 'new' thing be created. If it is possible to manifest something, then by nature its existence predates its first manifestation. The reasoning behind it is quite simple. What is manifested in reality? Only something that is manifestable can be manifested. For anything to exist, it must first be comprehended in a mind. Without a means to comprehend in a mind, nothing can exist. Thus if we have found out something that is manufestable, but yet not manifested, then by the very fact that it is manifestable makes it already manifested in a mind which comprehends it. Thus it is already manifested, when it becomes manifestable.

Now, when can something be manifestable? It depends on which mind we are talking from. If it is the Universal mind (assuming that there can be anything that can be termed as Universal Mind), then its existence predates everything. Hence everything is manifested in some distant past. Now, if we consider the case of a limited mind, the first question to be asked is how does anything get manifested in mind. Thought is the key to an idea. And thought cannot be born. thought is only the manifestation of a pre-existing idea. Its like rain is termed as the manifestation of cloud. Rain exists because of the cloud. By identifying the cloud itself, the imminent rain is manifested.

Thus innovation in reality is nothing but extracting a hither-to unseen cloth in a huge pile of clothes. The cloth is already there. What is to be done is to remove the other clothes that are covering it. the revelation of the other clothes lead to the revelatoin of the 'new' one.

Quote --->>

2006-02-15T18:57:00.000+05:30

In noise blosoms silence. If not, then how can noise be?

Pradeep was playing with composer in my mobile. he was churning out too many tones, just pressing randonly almost all keys. At first it was irritationg. Then i tried to follow the tunes. It was noise, pukka.

the tune was buzzing for some 15-30 secs and then suddenly it stopped. And silence ensued.

it was the sweetest silence i've ever percieved. The whole world coming to a stand still. And then like a blosoming flower, the surroundings were engulfing the self. i could hear a lot of sounds, but then at that instance there was no perception. The thing that i wanted to do and was thinking that i will need to practice a lot, has come and struck me at my face.

there is only one question that arises right now.
Why are the questions answered in a latent manner, esp after pondering and leaving it aside?

its incredible how a little time spend writing is churning up my cognitons.

" Beauty of writing at last is drenching me in a stupor"

TODO Lists

2006-02-15T18:53:00.001+05:30

I have to start organising my briwsing habits. reading too many unrelated things.

Have to get TODO notes for my self.

First post

2006-02-15T18:37:00.000+05:30

At last i have finally decided to do blogging on my own.