It is exam time and we, the Grad Students run caffeine in our veins as a dietary supplement for blood. And despite our albino appearance, fate shows no mercy to running us head first into encounters like...
"Hi there, what can I get for you today?"
"Can I have a medium coffee please?"
"Sure. What's your name?"
"Shankar."
"Is that the full name..?"
Venam da... valikkudhu..."Shankar Narayanan"
"The what ?"
Where did you learn your grammar - proper nouns don't have articles as prefixes !!
"That's S..H..A..N.."
"Can you spell that out please?"
Ippo adhu dan da pannaren.. padutharanungley..!
"S...H.."
"etch, what...?"
It's English, not Spanish !! Words in English exist where H is not silent! "H for house.."
"whooos ?"
"H for HULK"
"Ah.. H.. I got it!"
Very smart !
"A...N..."
"Wow.. That's a pretty complicated name..! (beaming).. let's spell it again.."
Aren't the so called 'insignificant' events often the ones that give you the moment that you cherish from a puritan perspective? Aren't these the times when your lips involuntarily smile ever so slightly? Aren't these the times when your throat lets out a brief chuckle and your heart feels a milligram lighter? Aren't these the moments that your mind archives in the briefcase of joy?
At least I think so, for the past couple of week has been a real bundle for me, a perfect cocktail of joy, indecisiveness, peace, disappointment, beauty and euphoria - all in impeccable doses. But then, it's neither me nor my story that would interest the reader. My intention was to bring to fore how grossly we remain aloof to the things around us.
Beauty is all around. And paradise is where you are. And when people say beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, they lie. It is not very often that nature is so benevolent and you get corrected of your mis-perceptions so soon after you err. One of my previous post spoke about the search for the beauty that was ephemeral and today the quest is proven preposterous and void. And why is that? Because beauty doesn't lie in the eyes of the beholder. It lies beyond, all so expansive and emphatic - everywhere. And beyond your perception. The cards are dealt in binary, you either see it or it just doesn't exist.
I was in for a surprise, for amidst my exam schedules and perhaps because of it, my sky-gazing sessions have increased dramatically and I happened to see it. Just another day, like the ones that had gone by in the past few days, but, it was seen today - quite emphatically, showing its disdain for my lack of vision so far! I rushed for my camera, for it is the only way to capture in celluloid (binary in my case) what your mind might fail to archive. I spent a frenzy hour clicking away with my camera only to realize the vanity of the act: you could keep clicking endlessly. Of course, I did come up with a few nature clicks which I am posting for my reader's benefits, but I hope to have conveyed the point beyond it.
And no, it wasn't just the sky or the spring blooms that are messengers of joy. I received an email one morning from a friend of mine, and as I read through it - I smiled. There was joy and beauty in it. And incidentally, the email too spoke in length about both joy and beauty. I spent an evening walking with friends and talking incoherently about a legion of things. I spent another entire evening with a friend of mine at the university talking about how routers should be scoped to be seen as an issue with the internet until they process data at transmission rates. On the new year day, it was a session of 'Vishnu sahasranamam' and 'Sri Suktam' followed up by a payasam with my friends that made the day. Aren't these beauty personified? Aren't these as beautiful as anything that you have felt and would cherish?
I see the point in people readily accepting things of nature as embodiments of beauty, but aren't man made entities beautiful too? Is it not radiated perpetually by things all around? In fact, if you were to look at it, even thoughts (I'd even venture to categorize them as physical entities, but then thats a different thought altogether) can radiate joy and beauty. And so Mr.X(Y) now asks - what should I be doing now?, and the answer would be - "See".
'Not even eclipse is so benign' was what I discovered when I was battling deadlines to patch up a project submission due later that day. Eclipse is one of the few OpenSource tools that I've respected for its utility and its awesome support community. Name a distribution of OS, and you are almost certain to find a suitable build of eclipse ready as ever to be downloaded and used by the click of a button. Well, so I thought, until now..
I wasn't trying anything out of the oridnary: just download one of the numerous pre-built archives that eclipse provides you with. I extracted the archive and wait.., let me back off for a moment. This is a technical post and hence I am at the liberty of adding in more details ;-). Ahem, So, I recently decided to run into "karmic koala' and had to undergo the process of builing my dev-tools from the scratch - hence the eclipse installation and hence the post. So, as you would expect, I extracted the archive into one of the folders and did a
pnsn@ubuntu: ~/dev/eclipse$ ./eclipse
And bang came the surprise:
bash: ./eclipse No such file or directory
I went - what the hell? Just to make sure I was in my sense I did an ls, chmod, and all the tricks that I could think of - even an exec!
pnsn@ubuntu: ~/dev/eclipse$ exec ./eclipse bash: ../../../eclipse: No such file or directory bash: ../../../eclipse: Success
And as I was 2mm close to nirvana, I thought I should perhaps try out what my version of java said it was., and
pnsn@ubuntu:~/dev/eclipse$ java -version
java version "1.6.0_15"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_15-b03)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 14.1-b02, mixed mode)
And so I figured out the culprit -the java was a 64bit and I was trying a 32bit version of eclipse. And the realization dawned - not even Eclipse can be benign! There's no way that you can identify the problem without an error message and there's nothing that can drive you mad than a queer error message that is not obviously related with the actual issue. Perhaps, there's an obvious difficulty that prevents the eclipse folks from figuring out these incompatibilities or redirect to a more helpful message. Not my cup of tea- in either case. There's something that I can do, for the sake of my brothers-in-arm of the programming community who might face this very problem, inching closer to insanity and stumbling on to this page - without any further attempt at modesty, I'll be benign.
The first rain drop came rushing towards the small gap that existed surreptitiously between the black leather coat and the Yankees cap waking me up into the realization of a welcome change - spring. The temperature rose with the rain, brining in warmth on my body and within. I inhaled deeply, the fresh smell of earth tingling my memories, space warping me into my pseudo-hometown at Kerala. Its definitely not a place frequented by me, but there are bits and pieces of memories that I hold of my ancestral place, the bits and pieces which rejoined for a few brief moments, here, in West Lafayette. If you were a believer of 'you are where your mind is and your senses are', then I was out in that small village of Kerala at that moment. I am sure it is not joy or happiness that I felt, and if at all it was a feeling, it was an intangible adjective yet to be baptised.
You never know if it was the rain, the warmth, the smell or the imaginative mind which was the cause. It was one of those moments when nature conspires against your logic and rationality to bluff your senses. Why bother about the cause when the effect is magical. I had to take a walk - to try and regain the perception that jolted me by its brief sojourn. And walk, I did, though that hardly helped - it was compulsion and excitement that motivated it, not logic. Nevertheless, walk, I did through the trail that was so conveniently placed right next to my office building. The trail was beautiful and thoroughly enjoyable (I'd recommend it to my fellow folks here), but the magic was missing, the secret ingredient of the secret ingredient soup.
Incidentally, I also happened to hit upon a nature trip to one of the most beautiful locations in the central United States, and a part of me was searching for the same experience. And as is the rule- you seldom get to what you look forward to! The trip was beautiful and amazing though - I really did enjoy the long hikes, the mad rush of water and the refreshing rain, but the magic was missing. If you think I was sad after these feeble yet ordained attempts of recreating a wonderful feel, you got me all wrong so far. I do have those moments archived in my memory, though as the result of an unconscious choice made by my mind.
Why am I reminded of this event today, impulsively and out of the blue? I took a long walk and the early spring bloom on my courtyard grabbed my attention and admiration. I stepped out to take a deep breath and admire the lovely flowers and felt the cool breeze showering me with warmth. If Spring chose to showcase its first bloom and beauty right in my courtyard, why would I miss it?
To start with a disclaimer is a benign way to start rendering an apology - the only appropriate way to misuse media for a propaganda catering my own selfish desire. No, its not myself that I am going to start plugging in this post not it is going to be Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan whose speech at the last RTC on Parliamentary affairs is the sole inspiration behind this post. I had come to watch the video recently, a month back, and since it has been around in the wide world for over 6 months, I had imagined it would have been watched by a good many number of people. But a recent post in Facebook that attracted comments stating this particular speech as mind-blowing (which it is!) attracted my attention towards the fact of this particular speech not having attracted as much attention. And hence my post.
People who have known Dr.JP would probably need no introduction, and people who do not yet, it's time you do some reading about this personality. Adhering to spirit with which I started this post, I am not publicizing this speech of his because he is a visionary, pragmatist, an amazing orator and a person whom I respect for his abilities (though all of the above is true). I am doing it for my own, selfish reason to have a better India in the future- not for you, not for the sake of people, only for me. Though I am intending to add a few extracts from his speech, I would highly recommend that you listen to the speech first hand, there's a good chance that you could come up with a better perspective.
Dr.JP has shared his thoughts starting with optimism, not because things in our country are painting a rosy picture, but because there is a possibility for us to paint that picture in future. And he brings out sound reasons why he entertains these optimistic feelings - Indian political system he says has
- Competitive elections.
- Political Freedom.
- Winners do not punish losers just because they are losers.
- Elected Government is truly in power.
Given that, I shall now probably surmise what I felt were the four key take aways from the speech:
Lack of faith and utter contempt of the Political faction has triggered in the non-democratic organs gaining popularity in our country,which is a very dangerous feeling that is currently developing in the country.
Systemic issues with the political parties and election systems. Entry barrier for decent elements into politics who have no chances of winning or contesting an election through legitimate means. As he rightly put it, "buying" of votes through money and freebies (including the Rs.2/Kg rice, bicycles, television, liquor) has become absolutely a necessary, but not sufficient condition to win an election. Also, politicians have resorted to these means possibly because they have to win and not merely because they want to be dishonest.
The importance of marginal votes and the lack of a proportional, representative system of election at the centre. This is the only plausible way that each individual's vote would translate into the centre- something that wouldn't happen with our current first past the post system.
Empowerment of the MP's in the parliament- which is essential for the best material to come to the fore. No party member would now go against the party views even if they are not in agreement with a policy. An MP has now become a mere number, ballast, in our current system.
I just loved the way he closed his speech "there is a real chance that something can be done, and this is the window of opportunity". What struck me about his speech is the fact that he propels not mere allegations and poking of the wounds that our political system has, but provides workable solutions (some of them which he feels implementable are still a black box for me). But there was enough sense in what he said, to make me understand that, there is a distinct and possibility for the change to happen - not for the nation, not for the people but for the political fraternity itself.
Though a long shot, I have one further reason to be more optimistic than Dr.JP, it is a young India now with the median age of the population being 25.1 years. There is huge window of opportunity for our generation to make a mark and there are quite a few people who have already embarked on this task!
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