The Choice

After going through a significant span of confusion, after hacking away at all the extraneous matter, it came down to making a choice between two ways of looking at things:

• To not believe, for the lack of concrete evidence of the presence, OR
• To believe, for the lack of concrete evidence of the absence

I chose the latter - I prefer to call it optimism - and it has made a profound difference. I have since not felt the need to doubt - it is true - and the evidence for the belief unfolds slowly. I am grateful!

The best thing that could happen to the Indian Education System...

... is about to come true!

UGC plans big changes in education

June 25th 2009: Another great development::

Making the Std X. exam optional

Should you go to Grad School...

Should you go to Grad School (in HCI): "I doubt if anyone would claim to enjoy life at high altitudes -- enjoy, that is, in the ordinary sense of the word. There is a certain grim satisfaction to be derived from struggling upwards, however slowly; but the bulk of one's time is necessarily spent in the extreme squalor of a high camp, when even this solace is lacking. ... I used to try to console myself with the thought that a year ago I would have been thrilled by the very idea of taking part in our present adventure, a prospect that had then seemed like an impossible dream; but altitude has the same effect on the mind as upon the body, one's intellect becomes dull and unresponsive, and my only desire was to finish the wretched job and to get down to a more reasonable clime. -- Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air"

Teach India

Teach for India (TFI) takes form in this new Times-of-India initiative. Excellent!

"If you don't know me by now"

I've typed out here a few snippets from Sathnam Sanghera's book: "If you don't know me by now". I could not stop being amazed at how closely some of the descriptions of the Punjabi/Sikh family in the book resembles my own. ("Are all Punjabi families the same!")

Read along for some of, what I thought were, the more captivating lines in the book:

• In the end, I did what came naturally. I lied. I lied three times, like Peter.
• [Footnote] Her conclusion was that people who speak two languages ‘feel like a different person depending on which language they are speaking’
• “Like taking retah to the maru[s]thal”
• I’ve tried to find a word that might describe this not pleasurable, not unpleasant state of intellectual and emotional suspension, and an online dictionary suggests ’hebetude’ which apparently means ‘dullness of mind; mental lethargy’. But the offline Collins Dictionary suggests the word doesn’t actually exist, which seems apt somehow, for a state of blankness.
• It is particularly interesting to read his thoughts on the effects of the illness can have on siblings or children of schizophrenics. “[They] often try to compensate for their ill family member by being as perfect as possible. …”
  
• When it is done well, watching someone perform bhangra can be mesmerizing, but when I did it, it looked as if I was being electrocuted while simultaneously trying to unscrew two light bulbs.
• … represented a matrimonial opportunity for those lingering in the relegation zone of the arranged marriage league table: the over-25; the obese; or the offspring of those parents who were most concerned about Westernization and wanted their children to marry Indian spouses to keep alive their traditions of religiosity, illiteracy, alcoholism, manual labor and domestic violence.
• Because you loved us [mother], we know what love is.
• Until then, organizing weddings had been like voting Tory: we endured the horrendous consequences of other people doing it, but never did it ourselves.
• [Footnote] I’m hoping that writing this in a smaller font will make it sound less misogynistic, but in my experience, second generation Punjabi women – being the product of patriarchal culture – are depressingly servile or terrifying aggressive. As one of them once put it to me – or rather screamed at me – Sikh girls don’t have personalities [as much as] they have post-traumatic stress disorder: They have to fight so hard and so persistently for their independence that they become brutalized by the experience, and even when they have their freedom, they can’t stop fighting.
• It’s not about where alcohol takes you, it’s about what alcohol takes you away from.
• I’d like to say that the room gasped. Or that I literally felt the weight of the world lift from my shoulders. But no one blinked and I felt no different.
• … a powerful surge of anger at the multiculturalists who argue that immigrants shouldn’t be forced to learn English. This is the consequence of not understanding English. It means ethnic communities can’t educate themselves, don’t understand what is happening even when the most extreme things occur.
• And you need only glance at a Bollywood movie to see why they might be perplexed by the idea of a book about Mum and Dad. The misery memoir is very much a first world phenomenon. In India, you only need to glance out of your window to feel grateful for your lot.
• ‘Your kismet is your kismet’
• There’s only one thing more unacceptable than a divorced woman in the Punjab: a single mother.
• On the last day of school I showed up, as tradition dictated, to sign the shirts of classmates I’d known for seven years, and to have my shirt signed in return. The only message I remember is: ‘Don’t kill yourself Sang’. It was no great loss when mom stuck the shirt in the wash.
• ‘Stop laughing so much. You’ll only cry twice as much later.’
  I grew up resenting the phrase, thinking it epitomized the rather joyless, if not at the heart of Punjabi culture, then at the heart of our family life. Mum is never more anxious than at a celebration, or on receiving good news, hovering around with red chillies to frighten away evil spirits, telling us to remember to thank God for our good fortune. I hate that I’ve inherited the attitude: sometimes I can feel the end of good things before I’ve even had a chance to enjoy them. But finally I understood why she was so fond of the saying: that’s how life was for her. Whenever she laughed, she cried twice as much later.
• In other words, she saved my father, she saved her children, and for that I do not need to gather any corroborating evidence, because my entire life, my entire record collection, is a testament to the fact.
• Whereas Puli had not lived up to her academic promise, for instance, I had outlived mine. While I had been permitted – albeit with intense emotional pressure – to procrastinate on the issue of marriage, Puli had married twice.
• I interrupted. “Thing is, Puli, a lot of the family don’t know you are ill. You’re a victim of your success, in that way. People think you’re fine.”
• But another came up with an infinitely more intriguing explanation. ‘He went mad. He became so educated that he went insane.’
• ‘Sorry for calling.’ Puli always apologizes for calling.
• [Footnote] The most a British Punjabi genealogist can hope for is that after months of research, and recurrent visits to the subcontinent, he will discover a small parchment helpfully informing them that his father’s father was a farmer, that his father’s father was a farmer, and that his father’s father was a farmer too. Doubtless, future generations of Sikh Punjabis in Britain will have a similar experience when they learn that their father’s father was an IT consultant and that his father’s father was an IT consultant and so on, back for two centuries, until they eventually discover that – shock, horror – one of their original ancestors was a farmer.
• I’m not going to beat myself up about it, because I know now my family will love me regardless of what I do or do not do, and that is a feeling I never expected to feel and this is a moment I wouldn’t change for anything.

PS: I hope quoting these lines doesn't break copyright rules -- rather leads to a few more copies of this beautiful memoir being bought. [Link to Amazon]

Nah.... Go East!

Economist's View: The Geographic Distribution of Singles

Counter-intuitives : The 'true' misconceptions

Common-sense occasionally dictates us to behave or react in ways that are scientifically irrational...

#1: When the stock market is on a low, economics dictates that one should 'invest' in the market. Nevertheless, our common-sense (and basic instincts) makes us react otherwise and the 'right way/answer' seems counter-intuitive to ourselves.

#2: Often seen on "Khul Ja Sim Sim" or other Game Shows on TV :

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors: Behind one door is a car; behind the others, goats. You pick a door, say No. 1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say No. 3, which has a goat. He then says to you, "Do you want to pick door No. 2?" Is it to your advantage to switch your choice?

This paradox, also known as the "Monty Hall Paradox" has its roots in mathematical theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

------

Question -- What other instances of such counter-intuitives have you seen in life ?

PIFF 2008

Some memories of PIFF '08 before they fade from my mind:

1. Bliss aka Mutluluk (Greece)
   
   
   
2. "The Lark Farm" aka "La Masseria delle allodole" (Italy)
   
   
   
   
3. _Something_ "International" aka "Beynelmilel" (Turkey)
   
   
   
   
4. "Black Book" aka "Zwartboek" (Netherlands)
   
   
   
   
5. Warchild (Germany)
   
   
   

Afternote: Turns out that 'Bliss' and 'Beynelmilel' took away top honors at the film festival.

What is The Proust Questionnaire ?

The (Sunday) Indian Express Column called "Third Eye" by Nadine Kreisberger is a modification of the original Proust Questionnaire

Nadine Kreisberger is a French traveller who has worked in international relations, classical music, journalism and psychology. But it is her particular interest in spiritual matters that has led her to devise this version of The Proust Questionnaire: "It helps us to see people who they really are inside".

Third Eye: Archives on the IE Website

The Proust Questionnaire is a questionnaire about one's personality, first popularized by the responses given by the French writer Marcel Proust.

At the end of the nineteenth century, when Proust was still in his teens, he discovered a questionnaire in an English-language album belonging to his friend Antoinette, daughter of future President Felix Faure, entitled "An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc." At that time, it was a fad among wealthy English families to answer such a list of questions that revealed the tastes and aspirations of the taker.

The "Nadine Kreisberger" Proust Questionnaire asks:

• What does spirituality mean to you?
• Do you believe you are guided and protected by a superior force?
• Do you believe you have a special mission or purpose in this life?
• What is spirituality for you in your day-to-day life?
• What is the role of spirituality in your life as a {business person, politician, ... _name_of_profession_} ?
• Can you tell us about a unique experience that changed or shaped your spiritual beliefs?
• What are your spiritual inspirations?
• If you were to be reincarnated, what would you like to be?
• If there was one question you could ask God, what would it be?
• What is your idea of happiness?

So spake Sudraka

Thundercloud, I think you are wicked,
You know I'm going to meet my own lover,
And yet you first scare me with your thunder,
And now you're trying to caress me,
With your rain hands!

Gone Pondy

Around the last week of ’07 I made a trip I had been hoping to make since almost a year before. And unlike any other trip I’ve ever made I went with nothing but an open mind (no fixed plans, no places to stay, no company!, nothing but a credit card --with a credit limit which can be best described as Puerto-Rican-- and a very old digital camera). So… I decided to write some notes to accompany the photos that I took…

This is not either a Pondicherry Travel Guide or a Trip Report. Rather, it’s a collection of notes on interesting sights and sounds that caught my eye when I was there. If you’re looking for a Pondi Travel Guide, I quite recommend the following:

1. WikiTravel - Pondicherry : Kept up-to-date by wiki contributors, this site’s a concise review of the to-and-fro Pondi experience. There’s a separate page for Auroville. For the hardcore travel-hackers there are wikitravel phrasebooks for French and Tamil.
2. This website, although with an unusual sounding title, had some very good information about Pondicherry and Auroville. The phone numbers and costs are old and unreliable. Better links for those can be found in the next..
   
3. The most reliable source of information on Auroville is the official site, and the Visitor Information, Guest Houses and Services site. Highly recommend calling them up!
4. Similarly for the Ashram… Call up well in advance…. Guest houses are are the best deals you can get in Pondi.
   

Introduction: Pondicherry (now Puducherry, but best known as Pondi/Pondy) is a small town on the east coast of India close to the famous metro of Chennai/Madras. Pondi was the capital of erstwhile French India, and has a whole lot of history associated with it, and could even put a goldfish to sleep. What’s interesting is that present day Pondi still retains a sizeable French population and civil influence till date. I was most impressed with the French architecture on the streets and design of the streets: streets with French names (but also in JalebiScript), tiled roads that cut each other at right angles and houses which were no more than 2 stories high.

The French people have really integrated themselves very well in Pondi. Although the town’s population is 90% Tamil —and that’s understandable as Pondi is surrounded on three sides by Tamil Nadu, and by the Bay of Bengal on the fourth – the French influence is pervasive. The city’s population thrives on a steady diet of tourists from all over India and the world, all of whom come to see either the aforesaid ‘The French Riviera of the East’ or The Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Which brings us to the Ashram... Sri Aurobindo was an important figure from days of the Indian Freedom Struggle and had played a leading role in organizing the ‘extremist/radical‘ forces in Bengal. He found his spiritual calling whilst in jail and gained enlightenment during subsequent practice in Pondi. With the growth of his followers and after he was joined by his spiritual partner (Mirra Alfassa aka the Mother), an ashram was set up in Pondi and the ‘Auroville‘ experiement was started about 10kms from there.

As must be evident from what I have written till now, Pondi is quite a ‘spiritual‘ city. And so, there’s not much to do for the AVERAGE tourist, who basically seems to want to visit generic tourist spots (read melas) and party at local haunts. The discerning traveler however, knows what to look for in a city like Pondi. And he finds that partly inside the heart of the city, and a lot more at the City of Dawn (A’ville) outside the city. For the first half of my trip I stayed at an Auroville community called ‘Sri Ma’… and it was beautiful as these photos tell better:

Pondi is not irrelevant to the general tourist either. After having walked the Promenade at Goubert Salai (‘Salai ‘means road in Tamil), one can get a fine cup of coffee or ice-cream at “Lé Café”, or French croissants/Danish pastry/German Marble-cake at “Hot Breads”, to be followed by dinner at “Lé Club“. No Le Disko unfortunately. Pondi is a really small city and, being the type of guy who ENJOYS his walks, I used to take these excursions from one end of town to the other. For the 3 days I was in the city, I think I covered the length and breadth of the city atleast 4 times on foot! Small place… It’s easy to rent a cycle, a motorbike or a car from the tourism infrastructure in the city for meager rates, but I highly recommend either the walk or bicycle to not miss any of the sights, sounds or smells of the city.

It was during these walks that I was also mistaken by a few (many?) people to be a local of Pondi! [:D] Dressed in a tee, sneakers and cargo-shorts, humming Brimful of Asha, and with a tan to add the credibility of a local to my already ‘approachable-and-friendly’ image, I was consulted a few times by distressed French tourists and bored Indian tourists for directions and advice on a city I had barely discovered myself. On times that I failed to deliver, and/or when the tourist found a ‘real’ local, I saw amazing spectacles of French people talking in fluent Tamil(!), or Tamil people speaking fluent French(!)..... “Oui Mademoiselle!”

One sight and one sound from my trip remain stuck firmly in my head:

This one evening on a walk around the Tamil part of town, at a Tapri that I crossed, there were some local Tamil men sitting around, in their dhotis, down on their haunches, sipping some chai, and basically doing their thing. Right then, a (White) French man, wearing an Ascot cap, Chucks and three-fourths comes around to the Tapri, orders some tea, pulls up his pants a little, and joins RIGHT in the conversation with the others in fluent Tamil! There he was, slurping his tea like they do it there and talking the talk… Wow, what an awesome spectacle! Now, THAT’s what they meant by “When in Rome…!”

On the bus journey from Pondi to Chennai, I heard a Tamil song that sounded vaguely familiar in tune. I didn’t get it till midway through the song, but then it hit me – it was a note-perfect copy of one of Rihanna’s songs - being sung in Tamil! Some remake!

All in all, an good trip and a refreshing change!

Here's the full album on Picasa

Truth Alone Triumphs

"Satyameva Jayate"

...it's the national motto of India!

What is the real purpose of professional sports?

Good Question: What purpose does professional sport serve in modern society ?

* Is it to inspire us to play sports at the level of a personal activity ?, or
* Is it to way for some to achieve their athletic potential ?, or
* Is it a way for others to watch and vicariously live out their dreams ?, or
* Is it just good business ?

Saira's Questions

Q: Why does the truth fool us so well ?
Comment: I didn't really get the intent of this one... I hope it meant "the apparent truth", or else it's way beyond me.. Help!

Q: Does a rich person have more or need less ?

Q: Through gossip, do we secretly seek the destruction of people we know ?

Q: If our secrets were discovered, would they destroy the life that we built for ourself ?

Q: Do countries have a 'male' or 'female' gender ?

Q: Are [truly] great artists like Mozart and Chopin truly dead ? Or are they still around and taken totally for granted ?

Q: Why does it take such a long time for us to learn what we don't understand?
Comment: My version - Why does it take such a long time for us (as a civilization) to learn what we do understand? Equality, Peace and Good Intent works...

Blogging with MS Word

Interesting….

She sez...

"We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect.
Alanis Morissette "

Mine Eyes Have Seen the Gory Realities of Nearsightedness -

"So what does that leave for me? Well, I understand that many highly trained individuals are prepared to shoot lasers into my eyes. Normally, I'm way into lasers. Whether in pointer or Zeppelin form, the laser is a real draw for me, but I just don't feel prepared to have lasers shot into my very eyes.

I'd be happy to undergo phaser eye surgery. Phasers probably have a setting for 'improve vision' as well as 'kill,' 'stun' and 'fail to do anything useful for plot purposes.' But lasers? I keep thinking maybe I'll go ahead and get it, and I go to the optometrist, and he's wearing glasses. So laser surgery is like ordering the cut the butcher won't eat. I'll stick with the traditional ugly, itchy and/or grime-encrusted forms off vision correction. For now.

Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become nearsighted, shortsighted and excited."

Drwn News: The end of poverty

"

The end of poverty

I'm convinced. We can end global poverty. Someone just has to offer enough money.

The corruption stuff is a canard -- at least half of the extremely poor countries are not very corrupt (democratically run, at peace, trying hard -- e.g., Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Malawi), while many very corrupt countries have developed handsomely (Bangladesh, Indonesia). If we don't give the money because of corruption, we are kidding ourselves.

The answer 1) stabilization (through things currency and inflation control through fiscal and policy measures, once unfavorably termed "shock therapy"), and 2) capability-development of infrastructure, capital, public health, etc.

The answer is pretty cheap too - $200 billion per year for 10 years. US contribution would be less than what we are spending directly on war costs in Iraq (if you included the cost of the $75 barrel of Brent, then the entire cost of the programs would be equal to 1 year of the Iraq war's impact).

African is still crippled by tropical diseases and AIDS (unlike colder climates). The technological investment hasn't been made to develop climate-appropriate crops (as it was made in Asia's Green Revolution). There is no capital asset base to drive productivity, since people are so poor everything they earn is consumed not saved. There is no public infrastructure since governments are too poor to build them. People are too sick and poor to be educated. Anyone who does get educated is immediately tempted away to foreign markets, so there isn't any pool of doctors, scientists, etc.

Plus countries are sinking under debt servicing loads from the last generation technocrats' bright ideas of World Bank-funded dams and airports, etc. The reforms the West insisted on to stabilize the markets (austerity) were designed only around starvig the beast of socialistic state industries, but not around funding the development of infrastructure, capital, etc. The US has massive centrally managed spending infrastructure, scientific R&D, public health and public education spending -- all to support the "free market" of private enterprise. By contrast, we have spent 50 years underfunding such programs in the developing world.

What do you get for $200 B a year? As far as I can tell from reading this book, you get a detailed plan of action for achieving the reduction of poverty on Earth by half in 10 years."

(Not an original post... Click on title link to get the author's post)

System Shutdown...

Not that I've been blogging regularly but anyway...

This post is to formally announce the death of the ColourBLOG.


Goodbye.

Witty Repartee

"After one of his many drinking binges, an inebriated Churchill was interrupted during dinner by Nancy Astor, who said, ''Winston, if you were my husband, I'd put poison in your coffee.''

Churchill's famous reply: ''Nancy, if you were my wife, I'd drink it.''

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When Nikita Kruschev took off his shoe at the U.N. and slammed it on the lectern The former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's calmly looked to an interpreter and asked: ''Could I have that translated, please?''

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