The functional illiteracy called Geography

Years ago, when I moved out of India, I was amazed to find that most conversations in the western world always begin with the weather, something that we never encounter in the subcontinent. If I were to say this now in India - Looks like it is going to rain today, the most compassionate remark I can hope to get is - Are you crazy ? Of course it will rain - it is monsoon now ! And there's good reason to it too. Unlike in the west, weather is totally predictable in India. During summer it is hot, during winter it is pleasant (cold in northern parts), during monsoon it rains. There you go. As simple as it comes. 

The obvious reason for weather to be a hot conversational material (despite the numerous weather apps in the smartphones that people checked N times a day) is because it works as a wonderfully polite, safe, universally approved, social-awkwardness substitute. Elevators, Subway trains, birthday parties,weddings, B-DUBS, you name it. Any imaginable awkward conversation can be handled effortlessly by progressively suggesting weather alternatives - starting off with a mild excitement, transcending to a reticent amusement, or a disinterested observation, moving on to an affable annoyance before finally settling down on explicit bitching. It works - always. 

Extending this thought, I have been consciously trying to experiment with geography as a possible conversational substitute for weather. Over the years, here are a few of the priceless nuggets that came up during the conversation, those which I managed to remember or document. I have tried to present them verbatim to retain their natural conversational flair.

Wait! Korea isn't an island ? I'd always thought it was.

Yeah. Too bad.

I need to take a vacation in the Andamans. That'd be cool. The Arabian sea, I've heard is beautiful. 

You mean the Bay of Bengal, right ?

Same difference.

Really? Hmm. What is the capital of Assam?

Guwahati.

Nope. Its Dispur. 

Dude! You cant make stuff up. There's even an IIT there !

Japan to the United States is a long flight. 

Why ?

What why ? They are at the far end of the maps - that's why.

Which direction does the moon rise?

West, of course. Wait - that's opposite to the Sun right ?

So, if I need to get to Alaska, I have to catch a flight or take a ship right ?

Or you could drive. 

How? Isn't Alaska north-west of Canada ?

Yup. But Canada has roads too.

In the month of January, watching a game of cricket played between South Africa and India..

Why does the commentator keep talking about summer season games? Isn't that like another 5 months away. Brr...rrrr...

If I go across Antarctica, I should reach the Arctic circle right ? No ?

Do you know how many states India has now ?

Now, now. You're just getting political.

You know, the Musi river flows right beside Osmania campus..

He he ! Yeah., right.

The spread of South Indian culture northwards would have happened if not for the Vindhya ranges..

I dont think so. I remember reading that Agasthya had pushed those mountains back into the earth a long long time ago.

Malaysians are good badminton players.

Of course, they come from the Chinese sub-continent.

You mean, south-east asian

No, no. Chinese.

You know, India is divided roughly into two halves by the tropic of cancer.
The tropic of what ?

There are many more, but despite being free, online acreage is to be used judiciously. Jokes aside - the one thing that I want you to remember as a take-away is the value of questioning information that were fed into us as facts. Sun rising in the east is a fact - very few questioned, why? Fewer still, understood. True to the fact that humanity evolves and solves bigger and smarter problems, it remains to ponder what we traded off. A common example is the use of GPS navigators, an epitome of human innovation - replacing human directional skills. Good? Bad ? Your call. 

May our kids be able to spell Geography.

Wabash Wisdom

At a fortunate moment of indecision, I decided to go all the way to Udupi, a restaurant 50 miles away from my dear WestLala, lured by the prospect of gobbling idlis and vadas (yes, you read the verbs right). As an after-effect of the above decision, I was forced to go for a jog in order to fit myself into my T-shirts again. In a certain sense, I'm happy that I decided to jog, since jogging along the northern parts of Wabash Heritage trail was one of my to-do things at West Lafayette. Just in case you are wondering, yes, I'm still looking for the second item in that list.  But let that be. For, as a fall out of my expedition today, I learnt many a thing that I'm postulating here as the dozen pearls of jogging wisdom. 


I learnt 

• that Rajinikanth is right, as always. He once said "vazhkai oru vattam da" (roughly translates to 'circle of life')
• that it takes at least 7 miles of running for your stomach to feel normal after hogging 11 medu vadas.
• that less traversed under-the-bridge pathways are a popular destination for men with OAB, no matter what country you are in.
• that 'The Road not taken' is an inspired poetry is a lie. Robert Frost had once taken a stroll along the N. 9th Street, Lafayette.
• that all roads in West Lafayette lead to the Happy Hollow park.
• why India does not compete in track and field events - we are just not meant to be athletes.
• It is final.  The winner in the category "best music track for inspired running" is Bhag bhag DK Bose. Sanjay Subrahmanyan's Upacaharamu cheseva comes a distant second.
• that fitness Apps in iPhone are not to be trusted for predicting distances. Ever. 
• what Jenny meant when she said "Run Forrest, run."
• that it is a good idea to take bath after running 9 miles . Apparently you turn into an effective rodent repellent after 7 miles.
• deer in west lafayette is not a fable. I saw two by the US-52.
• the meaning of life

Glossary:

WestLala - a rhyming pet name for West Lafayette, influenced by hours of watching innumerable tamizh songs with completely worthless lyrics.  
Bhag bhag DK Bose - hindi equivalent for encouraging a certain gentleman who goes by the name of D.K.Bose, to run. Really. Even Mr.Aamir Khan said so.
Upacaharamu cheseva - a carnatic composition by Saint Thyagaraja in the raga Bhairavi.
Rajinikanth - "      " intentionally left blank, undefined - the inventors of Boson particle at CERN are still working on this
Medu vadas - fried salted spiced lentil donuts. Salt - no sweet,.
US-52 - a very popular and landmark destination connecting the historic towns of Lafayette and West Lafayette across the might Wabash. All visitors of the Walmart definitely pass by this historic location.

A note to the posterity - this is the route that I ran today. May you find peace and prosperity and enough oil to light your lamps!

 
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The art of bus-riding

Today morning, a fellow student accidentally held on to my backpack to steady himself when the bus turned a corner. He looked up at me with a worried expression on his face and said apologetically "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to.. I, I, I... was out of balance.." I looked up at him and smiled.

In the state where I hail from, school kids have a free-ride in government run buses - provided they are able to produce their
bus-pass within a micro-second to the bus-overseer (colloquially: 'kandectaar annan' - big brother conductor). As I was to learn in my undergraduate courses later, this was the speed at which early microprocessors used to operate. Therefore, keeping it folded in the wallet or inside the backpack is both infeasible and unacceptable. I'll avoid getting into the intricacies here, since carrying backpacks while riding a bus requires metier and is a topic requiring an intense treatment on its own. Losing the bus-pass is an expensive incident (as you don't get a replacement for that year) that earns severe rebuke from all affected parties. An exceptionally unfortunate situation is when teh kid realizes that he had lost his bus-pass when asked to produce on-board the bus. Elder co-passengers suddenly realize their social responsibility in educating the already shattered kid on the "art of carefulness".

Often, what clothing to wear when you ride the bus is a great dilemma, especially for the youth. In fact, it puts your morality, up-bringing and social-status at stake and determines where you end up in the social chart of your co-passengers. For instance, a young looking fellow by default is a good-for-nothing vagabond who apparently can have no respectable social status what-so-ever. A fellow with a neatly pressed shirt is tolerable and anyone with a ripped jean has no salvation, ever.

To top it up, bus-riding has a bunch of innate protocols associated with it. Any person who is occupying a double-seater is always required to offer the seat when he sees a couple standing. The decision to offer a seat when you see a couple is intricately complex and a direct confrontation of your morality. The worst part is, the correctness of your decision is never influenced by the ensuing behaviour of the couple. If they are married and abide by the socially accepted protocol of having non-mushy conversations, then your decision to offer the seat makes you earn a scornful look from your co-passengers. In case, the couple seem happy enough, you earn disdain. And if they turn out to be unmarried or just friends -  congratulations, you just got promoted to being an uncouth fellow and an object of sheer contempt for having allowed them to sit together.

With a billion people, buses are the life-line of public transportation in India and it is natural to expect them to be crowded. Bus-riding without jostling or stepping on someone is therefore a rare event and if you manage to get out of the bus after accidentally step on someone without having to put your all your known ancestors to shame, you should definitely buy yourself a lottery ticket that day. As a kid carrying a heavy backpack, my life was always in an unstable equilibrium when riding a bus. Enriching experiences have trained me not to worry too much about what goes on around you when in a bus.

But today, I looked up at him and smiled.

PS. Just in case you were wondering where I managed click this photograph, it was taken at our own Chennai a few years ago when I had been there visiting my friends.

2brnt2b is the question!

It is when you need to concentrate the most does your mind play all the tricks up it's sleeve and more often than not, the mind emerges the winner. Most of my writing is an artifact of such moments, but I'll let that be since that is definitely not the theme of my write-up today. I have always advocated that 'annoyance' is a perfect example of an intangible creation of our own mind, something that you can completely avoid. And yet, I infallibly fall for it every single time. But enough said about the mind, which I know is a product of my own contradictions. The anguished linguaphile in me had to seek solace by writing his agony targeted towards everyone and none in particular. It would be nothing short of being perfectly idiotic to fight for a lost cause, especially when the entire world is against you. But I'll stand up now and dish out a piece of my mind  to the world  in which mutilation of languages is considered fashionable.

Today, I was woken up by the muddled hooting of my phone on receiving a text message which said "tst" which was followed by another which said "txt d msg". And there it was - annoyance on two counts. The first being the most obvious - someone apparently chose me as the lucky person for his random testing of the new features of his/her phone. To explain this in terms of the butterfly effect, a few days ago the 'half-bitten fruit' folks released a new version of their iOS (to be pronounced ayyos), the impact which I had to bear now with some random person's experimental text messages. Following the two minute silence spent ruminating over my ill-luck was a half-an-hour nostalgia session recounting the undergrad days when free text messaging had been in vogue. Back then, it was the bread-and-butter communication strategy for students for a variety of recreational* purposes. The second reason for my annoyance was the content of the message - not the semantics but its syntax. The blatant non-availability of vowels in the message was just the icing that the cake needed.

That brings me to my chosen theme of the day - spelling. I can possibly understand the intent of robbing the words off its heart, if you were sending a Morse coded message hundred years ago when every alphabet communicated (or perhaps spoken too) was costing you money. Or if you were effecting a will endowing your million rupee property to an orphanage right before your very last breath^. Or if you were preparing** for an examination. But even the gentleman in me just cannot accept an email missing the vowels in a professional setting like requesting an appointment or writing to someone whom you do not know personally.

Very recently, an update appeared on my Facebook notifications; a comment that read thus "gr8,u 2 cum... pls du sumthn awsum dis wknd 4 dat." How in the sweet heaven do you guys even manage to do that! Every single word in there was perfectly misspelt! It has become fashionable to spell 'date' as 'd8' and 'time' as 'tym'. "To be or not to be" becomes "2 b r nt 2 b", "awesome" becomes "ossum" and "right" becomes "rite". And then there is "Choooo chweet" that pops up in all diabetic conversations between couples. And this list is endless. To misspell a word has sadly become a measure of cuteness in writing. If you end up spelling "do" as "du", I really think you should rather spend more time in middle school than on social networking. 

While there is one faction who splendidly mutilate the spelling by truncation, there is the other group who believe in perpetual repetition of an alphabet as a perfect equivalent for punctuation. So apparently, the length of grunting encoded using 'r'  in a "grrrrrrrrr" or the depth of disappointment in a "booooooooo" is a perfectly acceptable measure of your emotion. To say 'cooooool' is super cool and 'beautifullllllll' becomes extra-beautiful. On a similar note, the level of excitement in a "Superrrrrrr" or the measure of awe in a "Woooooooooow" is totally justified too. Sometimes, the length of repetition is so appalling that I often suspect their keyboard could possibly be the miscreant.

To all those who take pride in writing such sentences - Yes, I do appreciate your exceptional ability to comprehend sentences encrypted using phonetics and without vowels. But words are spelled in a language in a certain way for a reason - please let them be.

End of rant.

* includes SOS calls and soul-searching
** if you know what that means
^ if you don't understand this, you really need to watch more Hindi/Tamizh/Telugu movies. Don't look for Kannada, apparently even Google is not able to find any such thing called kannada movie.

The holy dip in the trough

 Owing to the state of shock that beheld the moment, I was caught frozen adoring my mobile phone which at that precise moment was undergoing ablution in the deep-dish Sambar container that our household covets as a piece of priceless possession. The LCD screen provided by Sony Ericsson was ever so refulgent from underneath the translucent liquid that topped it. And no, my cellular phone definitely wasn't an ingredient in the new recipe for Sambar that I was trying out. How it came about to be in this bedraggled position is a story that expresses as much mystery as any typical Tamil or Telugu movie would and so I have benevolently decided to spare my readers of that trouble. In an instinctive reaction, I matrix-pulled the phone out of the container though it was now the phone's turn to get frozen, but irradiate all the same. All the electronics-common-sense that my brain had managed to understand and index through the past decade was swept away by the puerile joy on seeing the phone alive despite the debacle it just underwent.

Murphy and the other genuine laws of physics were not so benevolent though. Fighting my initial adolescent euphoria, I had to try flip the lid down to see if that augured well with the phone. And there it was - the deadly flicker of death, like the sparks of a dying candle, the phone showed a final flare of its former glory before shutting itself off. Damn! I need to get a new phone now. But such kindness was deemed unwarranted to me.  The phone came back to life when I restarted it, but took an enormous amount of time to become operational. And that has been the problem ever since - it has become an obstinate child that needs to be entreated with tenderness, fortitude and oppressiveness all at the same time. It requires careful and delicate touches required of an eye surgeon to make it respond to the charger, an aeon before it responds to an key press or a flip and an equal amount of time to make it stop from any of the random action that it choses to take on receiving an impulse.

The pinnacle of my misery is when someone calls me - the phone keeps ringing despite my earnest attempts to keep it quiet. No amount of pacification helps - neither attempting to take the call nor drop it seemed to work with my phone. It couldn't have chosen a more opportune moment to embarrass me than at the birthday party of a friend with a room full of people pristinely talking and exchanging pleasantries. The volume of its ringing mutated from a mild purr to an ominous hooting proportionately attracting as much audience with every passing moment. I changed colors faster than a chameleon - from white to yellow to pink to purple to blue to green. And then, there had to be this brilliant suggestion from one among the audience while I was trying my best to convince the onlookers about my incapacity to deal with my phone - "Why don't you try silencing it?". Oh, yeah! Thanks! Like I didn't think of that.

But there are somethings that the phone started doing excellently, sometimes a tad too steadfastly. Alarm, for instance exerted itself beyond its expectations to wake not only me, but also my room-mate whose threw me a few fiery glances powerful enough to cook my breakfast. At that moment, I realized how much I missed my previous room-mate who used to promptly set alarm in his mobile phone and benevolently slipped it underneath my pillow when I am fast asleep. And then there is the MegaPixel camera which I had been once so proud of that no longer wants to turn itself on and the music player which I had grown to love as a soulful companion that has departed never to arrive again. Such dolor forced me to endure the ordeal of looking for a new mobile phone which I assure you is no easy task requiring all the financial tact and wizardry that one could conjure. My provider has this strange policy of extending step-motherly treatment to its existing customers while treating new customers lucratively. It actually took me a few minutes to digest the fact that a new connection would be less expensive than upgrading the existing connection. Take a bow for customer loyalty!

And so, here I am writing the woeful story of how I ended up with a punch-holed wallet and a semi-mortified phone that isn't open to any deal anylonger. On the brighter side, I'll be gifting myself with a new phone absolving myself of all the crime that I had committed and all the trials undergone as a result. Just the fairy tale end that was required to bid adieu to the decade!


Have a great year ahead folks!! 

My fair lady

Famished as much as I was then, I couldn't help noticing the sweet aroma of caffeine mixed with Pecan and Ginger. That isn't the surprising fact, given the recent accounts of my gluttony exploits have been critically acclaimed thanks to my hyperactive socially networked accomplices. But what was surprising was that I also happened to notice a girl sulking at the corner by the window, buried over a mound of books and discreetly fiddling with a brightly colored "smart" phone that distinctly stood out from the general mood of the coffee shop. I ordered my special brew coffee/lunch and went near the glass window which insulates the cold from outside yet lets through the sunlight to provide the warmth - one of the rare moments of pleasure that one can experience on the bright days of winter.

And it was at this juncture that I heard a shuffle behind my shoulders (and thanks to the semi-reflective properties of silicon glass) and realized that the girl was now accompanied by a friend who was a guy. That observation of mine had to be further fine-tuned when I heard the very first words that he spoke to the girl. No amount of bureaucratic or social protocols would have mandated him to apologize as profusely as he did; except if he were her boy-friend. I am almost sure that it beats by quite a margin, a murder convict pleading guilty of genocide and asking for pardon from a death sentence. By that time, my lunch arrived and I was obliged to stay put and hear the ongoing conversation. In my defense, I have to say that 'overhear' is not an apt term I should have used, as the conversation was happening right behind my back and the only option I had was to walk away clumsily with the food in my hand. On hindsight though, I really think that would have been the saner choice.

Now that I have established my innocence, I shall now proceed with relating the crux of the conversation I happened to hear. I'll have to refer to them as the 'girl' and 'guy' since I did not even turn to look at them, let alone know their names. And it is least surprising that I did not learn it through the conversation either, given that human recognizable proper-nouns are to be promptly replaced by diabetic pro-nouns like sweety, sweetheart, sugar, darling, etc., during all conversation between couples. The guy had apparently committed the unpardonable crime of coming in 5 minutes later than she had called him (as he was giving a project presentation), which triggered another round of apologies tendered in all possible permutations known to mankind. To be noted is that my friends have already classified me under the emotionally-challenged species and I was already beginning to feel uncomfortable with all the emotional appeals taking place behind me. For a moment, I felt relieved when she said she was cross with him for being late and was about to walk away. Fair enough, I thought.

Destiny is never so kind! He stopped her and made her sit down which was followed by another tirade of emotions as she began to initiate the intricate process of converting anger into self-pity and started sobbing. Ouch! "Just leave! Get up and just leave the damn place.."- I thought.  The will of my mind was subdued only by the half eaten sandwich and the thought of potentially ending up with a coffee stained T-shirt (provided by my previous employers, of course). Coming back to the present, she was saying that the homework needs to be done in another hour and that "we" would not be able to do it. But it was when he asked, "What time do you need to submit it?" that its implication struck me in full (Again, I'm well known to be spontainity-challenged). Interesting..., I thought, but was interrupted by a fresh burst of vocal cacophony from behind. She said that she was not going to submit "her" homework because "he" was late and "he" was responsible for it. But what totally stumped me was when he started apologizing again and pleaded with her to complete and submit her homework. Oh! the ways of the world!

And what ensued further is chronicled for purely academic interests - She overslept and he apologized. She forgot to bring her glove and he apologized. She got to campus late and he apologized. She couldn't find an "app" for her smart phone that morning (she did have time for that!) and he apologized. She wouldn't pay the bill for the coffee and he apologized. Readers, please pardon me for my inability to elaborate further on those parts of the conversation - our language falls drastically insufficient in its ability to express them with any finer granularity than the term mushiness allows.

As you would have guessed, this emotional overdose was way too much beyond my earthly abilities of forbearance and I took flight at the earliest possible moment. I must have looked quite a sight with a half filled coffee cup in one hand, a bunch of crumpled tissues and silverware in the other and a sandwich stuffed mouth. For, the Samaritan beside me, whom I thought so far to be sunken deep into his MacBook Pro and oblivious to all the ensuing drama, looked up and smiled. The smile said one word - compassion.

~Titan.

PS. I had drafted this write up almost a year ago, but was not happy either with the phrasing/structure or the authenticity about the generality of the content. The former was remedied with rephrasing the content and latter by various similar encounters and snippets that had been related to me.

Behold the beauty!

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".

On a Spring day

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?

Simplex, duplex, complex, multiplex ?

Having been re-accustomed with examinations recently, I have been hearing people say "This is complex" or  "That's actually simple" more often that I began wondering what actually the word simple/simplicity means. Well, the reasoning was simple enough - something that's simple for a person might not be same for the other. That just not shows, but proves that 'simple' and 'complex' are relative terms, a mere shamming up of words that people came up with to hide their incapabilities. And I am the culprit to be blamed as I was at the receiving end most of the times - most things appeared complex to me. And the worst misnomer (according to me) in the past 6 months was a tool called "SimpleScalar", which is full blown out-of-order processor simulator!! Well, while thirty of us thought it was extremely complex, there was someone who thought it was 'Simple'....

When someone says something is simple, it is a clear indication that he/she is in complete understanding of a particular aspect of the thing. But wait, does this mean he/she is an expert on that thing..? No, this is again a relative measure - a measure that only you, yourself can come up with and is therefore highly a personal grading of your relative understanding of the subject. There is every possibility that your understanding of the subject is completely incorrect and therefore you find it simple. Nevertheless, the fact and truth is that "your" perception of the subject is perfect under your evaluation and therefore it becomes simple. The aspect that your understanding being incorrect is irrelevant of it being simple for you. It is simple but incorrect, but simple nevertheless.

That brings me to the another ambiguous analogy of simplicity. A very vague analogical example which most of us can associate to is the 'simplicity' that we relate to asceticism. We say ascetics lead a simple life - where the simple is just one of our definitions - with respect to material aspects or renunciation. But, there are people still leading a simple life despite this renunciation - are they less simple? less spiritual? Isn't  it their definition of simple that actually matters and not ours? This analogy is further made difficult by the fact that a large percentage of characters that we Indians look upto for spirituality have seemingly mixed simplicity. For instance Shri Ramakrishna was a man that would match a definition of economical and visual simplicity whereas Shri Vivekananda has throughout led a complex life- running institutions, writing books, asking questions, answering them, giving conferences, making public appearances; all that negates our definition of being simple. So is simplicity an essential ingredient for attaining peace ?

In both of the above versions of simplicity - an object and of a person - it is very evident that we rely upon the definition of the term simple. When we refer to an object as being complex, aren't we explicitly trying to provide an excuse for our incapability of understanding it? When we say that we lack peace due to our complex lifestyle, aren't we again providing an excuse for our incapability of retaining a mental balance? Looking back, it seems that I have been providing ample examples of my incapability in the past years ;). And if you were wondering why this post all of a sudden - I was trying to understand waveform multiplexing and I found it complex!

College life - Part 2

A lot of my blog readers have asked me if Purdue had conspired enough to subdue my interest in writing. And I had to prove them wrong, especially since they couldn't have been more right. Hence this post.. But yes, I do have to 'make' justice to my readers, who hopefully, have been reading content that they find worth reading. And what better occasion than today, when Google Analytics sent me a mail today saying that my blog page has taken 5000 hits this year.

If you had been reading my posts regularly, you would have seen my inability to get to the topic of my post right away. I have been vehemently trying to make an impression with my opening and have been failing to do so with infallible regularity. This post, as most of you would expect is going to be about what I have seen at Purdue for the past couple of months. You would find this post to be randomly placed with an abstract ending the reason for which I am still unable to reason out.

Last week was one heck of a ride for me with my first exam in three years and it wouldn't be just right if it weren't destined to be an algorithms paper. And it wouldn't be right at all if I didn't have to submit a programming assignment and three other homeworks on the very same day. One of the first things that struck me at the University was the height of the buildings. Most of the buildings were just a couple of floors tall but inconspicuously held another three floors below the ground. And so there I was, locking up myself in one of the subterranean rooms of the library wondering how the complexity of finding my way through the university buildings could be bound asymptotically by a polynomial function. The thought provoking dream ended in an hour with the evening exam which is oxymoronically named (there.. I've invented an adjective) as it was held at 9PM.

As I made my way out into the maze of corridors fighting against my dis-oriented and dyslexic vision for routes, I was joined by a couple of fellow conspirators (from now on I've officially discontinued the usage of the word classmates for aesthetic reasons) who were battling out for the maximum number of questions they had attempted. For some reason, then perplexing to me, people here at Purdue talk about 'attempt' synonymous to 'correct' when in an academic context. Around the corner were another group of students who were boisterously considering the fabrication of a covert transistor (whose sister? ). A part of me felt immensely proud to belong to the league of geeks (a claim that we proudly print on our department T Shirts)and be capable of these discussions at unearthly and the bell tower (another landmark at the university) brightly screamed 11 PM to drive home the point.

Automatic doors have been one of the things that I truly hated here in the US - you never know when the open up. I invariably end up clutching thin air instead of the door knob with amazing regularity. But this time, it was a person who opened the door from the other end. "Excuse me, I'm sorry" said the mammoth of a guy who opened out the door. The apologetic gestures are one of prominent things that I've noticed here, and surprisingly still, it came from my fellow countryman who I'm sure, if it were to happen in the Chennai streets, wouldn't have had thought twice about bashing me (if I'm lucky enough) apart from swearing right through my ancestral chain.

To top it up, my name has added incredible complexity to my life at the university. The length of my name has already become a legend at the university and to top it up, I am now being called 'The one with Three parts to his name'. Not to mention the fact that the delivery folks get a free practical training on Adiabatic Random variables thanks to the various permutations that they work out on my name. But yes, until now, I have managed to stick to my identity and have successfully thwarted the temptation to call myself John, Superman or Pinocchio.

All things said, it still is one of the fruitful period of time that I'm spending here and yes, I am enjoying what I'm doing here. If you know me well, you would know enough that I'm a person incapable of living a dream, or even dreaming in the first place. I'm far too lost to have these thoughts that belong to the Utopian realm - they have ceased to exist even in my conception. I let my surroundings carry me through to where it wants - I live in a world where people still try to build a perpetual motion machine and solve P = NP...

Wondering..

Wondering what goes through my mind when important decisions are taken, a whole lot of change is expected in your routine, a mad rush of adrenaline, disillusionment, retrospection and insomnia is what I am facing when I pen this post in the wee hours of the morning, sitting on my bed with the continuous drone of the ceiling fan ringing in my head. All because tomorrow would be the last day at work, insignificant in the whole scheme of things happening in the universe, but one which alters what I had gotten used to for the past three years. No, I am neither being sentimental nor agnostic, but being a mere spectator of the events happening around me, created by me.

The last two days have also thrown in a lot of surprises on me - I have seen people getting sentimental, utilitarian and pragmatic all the same. I have been a witness to the "Little bird effect", events causing a multitude of thought process in the minds of many. I am appalled at the expectations that various people have of me, expectations that I might have unwittingly set, most of them too stupendous and distant for me to imagine. I have seen a large variety of emotions around me, emotions like concern, joy, sympathy, benediction, misery, jealousy, quizzical (am stuck for the right noun here), nonchalance, surprise, delight and a few other abstract noun forms that the languages are yet to quantify.

It has been days of hellos and byes bundled together in a unique fashion. No, this was not what we would have faced during our last days at high school or at college where you find alarming unity of thought and emotions. A unity that is achieved by the certainty and unbridled rectitude. If you thought emails have lost their ability to communicate emotions, believe me, it is not the case - I have had two worders to two liners which have been loaded abundantly with the intention of the writer. It makes me respect the concept of writing as a means of communication.

As I step into unemployment for the first time and into a new venture, it feels like it was ordained to be so. It would be interesting to see what happens tomorrow, it would be interesting still if nothing at all happens. I am not going to guess or predict or even offer my suggestions, for I am not a prognosticator.

If, at the end of all this, you were to ask me what sort of a state of mind that you are in - the reply would probably be "wonder".

Badminton days

I have been left in the lurch of the term that would best describe this short narrative that I am about to pen. As most of my posts are, this, again is the result of a latent thought of mine, resurging in a moment of weakness of the mind. A very abstract beginning to a post that it totally unrelated to what I have said so far. A lot of people have asked so many questions about my association with badminton and even if I were to make a very short story of this, it would at the very least, date back a little over a decade.

A short stick with a round end between which I could poke my fingers into successfully is how I identified a badminton racquet when I first saw it. I was about 10 years old at that time and every male member in my family owned one of these rotund headed object that I could not spell. I even remember having used it more than once as an instrument to try and catch hold of butterflies and failing unfailingly to do so. But, in the next ten-fifteen years my association with the sport did not grow in tandem with my ability to spell.

The ‘shuttle’, as it is christened in India, was always an elusive sport reserved only for the most deserving - financially. It is truly so, even now. I can remember myself waiting amongst a bunch of kids waiting eagerly for the gentlemanly elders to finish of their game so that we could get the used shuttles. Only the most scuttled shuttles were given to us by the ‘elders’ with a scorn on their face, a benediction that we accepted with little discernment of the intention with which this grace was showered on us. A fresh shuttle was a treat, something that we could aspire for only when we played the ‘tournament’ - an annual event that was held for the neighborhood kids.

Cost was not the only thing that we needed to brave while playing badminton. Since, an indoor stadium was still a fantasy, something that we had seen only in the television, we had to often play within a tornado (or one of its numerous relatives) that comes unfailingly every week end/holiday/whenever we were allowed to play on the open ground. We had to do so much math to calculate where the shuttle would land up when thrown up in the wind, that most of us ended up as engineers. Undeterred, we still played on, waiting for the D-day(deliverance day), when we had a brand new shuttle and a windless morning. When I moved into the 8th grade, I realized that racquets that came as an incentive with ’Boost’ (a health drink) were better that the ones that I owned. Any word that was uttered by us in favour of buying a racquet would evoke a tacit reply if we were confident of becoming ‘Mr. Padukone’. Oh, yes. This is the guy who is the father of Deepika Padukone who also was by the way one of the best badminton players produced by India. Coming back to badminton, in those days, Yonex racquet was like an expensive jewel, something that only those in the royal bloodline could afford to touch. I totally believed in the myth that if the mud-bloods were to touch a shuttle with that racquet, it would be blown into smithereens and I into sacrilege.

In country full of cricket lovers, Hidayat and Peter Gade are as common to the people as floccinaucinihilipilification to the english dictionary. I remember the days when I used to sit late nights to watch the Indonesian Open being re-telecasted during the off hours in DD Sports channel. It was during my early undergraduate days that I first played badminton in an indoor stadium and have been playing in one ever since. And it was after an year since I began to earn my living and a year ago from now, that I could finally bring myself to own a Yonex. Well, this might indicate why badminton, whether you like it or not is only for the affordable.

I was in for a shock, when I finally thought that my badminton has improved considerably. And my backhand in which I particularly took pride in, was beaten all ends up by a kid who was about the same height of my raquet. I realized, for me, perhaps, the resurrection in badminton came in a tad too late, when I have both lost the stamina and the time to pursue it as a passion. Little would I have imagined at any earlier time that badminton would one day become a sport that I would end up playing just for the sake of remaining active. Now, I think, I would rather pride in encouraging youngsters (my age and a couple of years lesser) to play more badminton. ;)

A Pensive Thinker - Part one

"What do you think could be the difference between an invention and a discovery?", I asked, trying not to spill the glass of water that I held precariously, trying to balance myself on one foot, for no seemingly good reason whatsoever. "None, I think..." came the reply, quite instantaneously from one of my room-mates. Four of us stood in a conglomerate within precincts of our tiny kitchen, trying our hand at a cup of tea - one at making, two of us at drinking it and one other abstaining from it. An uneasy silence of fifteen seconds was broken by me again - "Okay, Let's start with the definition of both." That got the person making the tea into the act, and said he : "invention is creating something new, innovative, something that is non-existent at present. Discovery is finding out something that is already there. Like the discovery of America..". "Precisely!", answered the third, probing with his fingers, for the existence of a imaginary pocket that would never be found in his track-shorts. "Anything that is created new is an invention. Electric bulb is an invention!" said another with finality, flinging a tennis ball careless amongst the pile of dishes that was strewn around.

I decided to take it one step further - "Okay. Now that we have the definitions in place and agreed upon. Can one us try and corner how an invention takes place. For instance, electric bulb was being worked upon for ages and every input required for the creation was already known to the inventor..". "Not really!", he snapped his fingers still groping for the pockets - "Agreed that he had the data/analysis required for the right configuration, but it was by a stroke that the right permutation of these inputs clicked." A mild smile played on the others lips. "Okay, now you have to identify or at least provide me with a quantifiable example of the spark, that you had mentioned", I said. "There's a very thin line of difference!!" he managed to spur it on having been able to recover the tennis ball from the mess. "Perhaps he learn't the correct permutation for the invention" volunteered the one with the probe on. "But, isn't learning and documenting discovering a fact that you haven't known so far?", said me again.

The next ten minutes was one of the rarest happenings in our house - all were in deep contemplation between cups of steaming tea. "It is impossible to identify that" said one placing his tea cup down with determination to put an end to this conversation. "You know what? Let's just call this as a lucky chance or an educated guess that we call as an invention." said another trying to put through the same determination in a gentlemanly fashion.

post-mort: If we all had agreed that the inventor had all the inputs for the invention, then is it not closer to discovery, because the invention comes about by chance? If yes, doesn't it mean that there is nothing to be invented in this world? If yes, don't we all know everything in the world and that we are just trying to remember things that we already know everything about? What a miracle!!

Primeval laws...

Herbert Spencer in his famous paper "The principles of biology" in 1864, says, "This survival of the fittest... is that which Mr. Darwin has called 'natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life'." I have very often envisaged the possibility of this law perpetuating into our daily lives and its possible outcomes. Not a very comforting thought, is it ? The more I contemplated on this, the more apparent were the foot-prints of it's carnage. Extinction has been on a steady proliferation leaving its evident impact on our already cacophonous existence.

There has been umpteen opinions on the theory of evolution, but all concur the fact that the struggle for life is an instinctive action of all living things. The better
entity, not necessarily the one at the top of the food chain, survives by eliminating the inferior species. We have arguments that disdains man's will to have more, which I would deny with great indignation. It is his innate nature to strive for his progress. As John Nash once said, the best probability for success lies in the working towards the betterment of the group. Group at a macro level corresponds to humanity where as at a more granular level boils to communities. Those who think this would be a boon, think twice; for once we have achieved the best for us, the 'us' would no longer exist. Elimination would begin within the community.

If you consider my prior statement a whim, please find real examples in real world. The dinosaurs once reigned supreme on earth though through more brawn than brain. Their annihilation came about by mutual carnage, the law of the survival of the fittest. Guess they lacked the knowledge that Mr.Nash possessed. If you still fail to see the reason, 'competition' is a usage of great artifice which provides an efficient camouflage for the 'survival of fittest' (SOF) rule. When we say that today's world is competitive, what we inadvertently imply is SOF. A person vanquishes another for better education, better opportunities and better life. We forge a loser for every winner that we create.

Theories are quite frightening I would say, with great reticence though, as they expose to us the glimpses of what the future holds for us. This particular theory of SOF is no exception.. It never ceases to amaze me when I think of what would go through my mind if I am found the most powerful being after subjugating the rest of the world, "What next... ?" Well, the search goes on....

Anger.. where art thou ?

"Don't you ever get angry ?" asked one of my close associates (accomplice ??). I gave yet another wry smile of mine in a cold fashion which would have even put off a wisecrack. The matter was dismissed thus with an utter disregard for the question.It was a couple of days later that I realised the question had struck a few strings within me. Something about the question disturbed me very much. It wasn't a serious impediment to my normal thought process, but it did lurk up occasionally causing some uneasiness within me.

When the frequency of this "gyan darshan" increased, I decided to sort it out once and for all. This seemingly simple remark had raised quite a few questions the answers to which wasn't as simple. I felt as if I had lost an emotion, an emotion which was quite frequent in the past. Now this part is very tricky, anger is definitely not one of the better human emotions that you would want to stick to. This is what happens when you lose something that you possessed for so long a time. The dicey part component is that you never know whether you should be happy or sad. Part of me was happy that I was oblivious to anger, while the other part was quite concerned whether I had lost the capacity to get angry...


The next few days were quite funny when I think of them now. I tried my level best to get angry at every possible opportunity. I hoped to surprise my friends with my "attitude", but I ended up surprised when they found my antics rather comical ! The more I tried to get angry, the more aware I was of my thoughts and the more I felt as if I were fabricating anger. It was pretty pathetic when you consider my attempts at getting angry. But there was definitely one thing that I gained out of this.. I could easily pretend anger with amazing ease. I was no longer artless...

Then one day it happened.. for a few moments my mind was under seizure, I couldn't think clearly, I was definitely in a different plane altogether. Some uneasiness hit me from the most unexpected quarters and brought along with it the emotion which I had lost. I was getting angry, but habits stay alive my dear; I could see and feel that I was getting angry. Well, it lasted for hardly a few seconds but again the impacts stayed long enough. For some strange reason, happiness was what I felt after that. I had not lost the capability to get angry ! Well, the next question wasn't far out there.. Does a man require negative emotions to make him complete ? Well, the search goes on.

Say.. An intuition.....

A lazy mind is Devil's workshop..A weekend resonant with sleep is the most susceptible for contemplating odd topics. Very recently I chanced to ponder upon the word 'intuition' which was raised by one of my kin. It seemed such a mystique thing that I wanted to document it for clarity of thought, and thus this post came into existence. Pardon me if this post seems to be a broken array as I am literally penning down my thoughts in no particular sequence whatsoever. It would be better to start off with the definition of intuition which I would put it this way(because I simply failed to contrive anything better!).. Intuition is something that cannot be defined by its occurrence. It is defined by the absence of something else (I would replace 'something' with 'Logic').Ideally intuition is a thought which has absolutely no logic/analysis involved in it. It is easier to say this than personify this, because the word 'thought' is again very hard to be defined. These are abstract concepts that we are talking about and one should visualize his own version.
It is a know fact that there are various levels at which the human mind involves in each activity/inactivity performed. Most of the things that we seem to have forgotten are quite clearly recorded by our sub-conscious mind. A possible reasoning for this fact could be that our logical mind 'shelved' these items to be not worth remembering. That is how we sometimes blurt out certain thoughts, which make sense once we try to trace its origin. Such is the indexing power of brain. But this is not what we are talking about now, the only reason why I gave this particular example is to prove that intuition could be easily be confused with such shelved thoughts/analysis. These would easily pass to be intuitions whereas it could be a shelved thought in reality. Intuitions could also be simple reflexive or natural actions like ducking when a stone is hurled at you. Since most of us don't have the ability to read the differences between these, it is very difficult to say if intuition is a true concept or not. Due the absence of proof we say for now that there is no such thing called intuition.

Having said that doesn't mean that we don't have to trust our 'intuitions' as they very well could be one of our shelved out logical thought. There could be so many concepts that we have just seen working but have not bothered to analyse.. these could very well come out as intuition. Please note that here i use the word intuition as there is no logical analysis done by the mind, it is just an observation. In most of the cases these 'intuitions' would work perfectly as they are the results of a working concept that we might have just observed. It could also be the result of a very quick logical analysis of our mind. Something like calculation of the distance we jump. Now a disclaimer, intuition could also be a half-baked thought or a wrong perception of a fact. Moreover the moment you find that your intuition works awesome for you, the more you try to 'intuition'alise your thoughts. This could be disastrous as we would end up doing something that has absolutely no possible hidden rationale. So what would be a probable solution ..? I would say 'don't fabricate an intuition, analyse your intuition if time permits, if not go by what your intuition says'... it could after all be one your pre-analysed thought !