Nachiketa is a horrid singer.

Nachiketa is a bloody awful singer. I have no idea why people listen to him. Biplab once described Jibonmukhi songs to me as 'wake up, brush you, take a shite, go to work, kiss your boss's arse, waste time at the canteen, come home, listen to the wife bitching, eat some jhalmuri, watch the Mohanbagan game, go to sleep. Now make this a song.' Nachiketa is an arse whose music is just that. The only reason why people bother buying the shite he hocks is because of some misguided fools who compare his work to that of Anjan and Suman. Anjan is a brilliant man who has done good things in theatre apart from music. And Suman is a one of his kind, forget complaints that he copies Bob Dylan... Suman will live on long after these artsy fartsy critics die and go to hell.

Meanwhile, Nachiketa is coming to Jersey on a concert tour. I shouldn't even call it a tour. More like ripping off probashi Bangalis (that means diaspora) who have been away from the motherland too long to actually remember what good music is al about. Losers. And everyone I know, or almost everyone I happen to know in the states of NY, NJ and anywhere remotely close is acting so bloody infuriatingly smug about going to this lame arse concert that I am almost begining to regret living in Michigan. But then, its Nachiketa. You fools deserve to listen to bad music anyway. And pay out of your noses for it.

Success beyond reservations and quotas.

Always nice to talk about achievements. These people in Kerala have been making a difference. Their story is here.

Indiana Dunes

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to go somewhere. No particular reason, just a weekend, no exams looming and the fact that the junior, Saumen had not been anywhere yet. Also the fact that my former labmate from the institute, Sujay had come over from Lansing. So C spent some time googling places nearby to go to and came up with the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (http://www.nps.gov/indu/ http://www.state.in.us/dnr/parklake/parks/indianadunes.html http://www.duneland.com/parks/idsp.htm ) now, the whole thing of places ‘nearby’ was rather loosely phrased. This was a bloody four hour drive. Two cars, C and K driving. Me navigating for C. Sa navigating for K. Su with us. The other car managed to take the wrong ramp after stopping for coffee at this tiny café and went along the I94 East instead of West. Not to be outdone, we missed our ramp and went for one of those delightful drives in the countryside. Michigan, Indiana and Illinois have some pretty beautiful places in the countryside, ok the American equivalent of countryside. And the drive would have well and truly been delightful except that we were hopelessly lost. And so was the other car. And Jana called. Somehow Jana always seems to call, or we call her when we are driving aimlessly around.

Some other time, I shall go into a detailed exposition of how we always seem to take exits and ramps just for a coffee or food and end up in random places which look like they have been preserved straight out of the 19th century, or were the scenes of incidents which have inspired axe murderer tales. But some other time.

Anyway, we got to the Dunes around 4 or 4.30 ish.. and looking at the sky, I figured that we had some two hours of sun before we had to head back. Which works out to 8 hours of driving for 2 hours of hanging out at a lakeshore. Yes, we wasted petrol (I don’t like saying gasoline) like proper first world people.

The dunes. Yes, some lakeshore, some people playing, a kid flying a kite, and random tourists. And us. We did the obligatory ‘get your feet slightly wet.. oh shite!! This is f-in coooold!!, whaddya expect nice warm Bay of Bengal waters?’… yes, did that and took a bunch of pics… and then what? We climbed a sand dune. This was pretty much nothing after the MUCH more strenuous Sleeping Bear Dunes which we had visited en route to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Got to the top, then headed down the other side. Found a trail leading to … a campsite! US camping is not quite like camping as we know it back home. Camping in the desh is quite an interesting experience. Finding an unfriendly scorpion in the hole-in-the-ground, which serves as a toilet can be quite an emotional experience. Eating shady ‘dhaba’ food for three of four straight days can give one religion. Or diarrhea, at the very least. Nope. Here camping is fun! One rents or buys an RV, which is a recreational vehicle. This contraption is essentially a house on wheels which is powered by a small thermal power plant, has a bedroom, TV, a toilet and consumes enough fuel to light up small African republics. One goes on long drives, the idea being that you don’t have to stay at a motel. And then one finds a camping ground, pays the supervisor, gets an electrical line. And then one sets up a hammock, drags the TV out into the open and watches the same shite that one wanted to get away from in the first place. Yes. Saw just that.

Finally got back from the campsite. Drove back. Stopped for random expensive and not particularly good food. Tired.

Nothing important.

Another day, another class, another lecture. This time I got some work done. Last night: some weird experimental cooking with mushrooms. Turned out fine. Tonight, capsicum!

Chain Letters and how they make life more interesting

Chain letters. Note that we are not talking about those random ‘fwd this or your ____ (fill in with most important body appendage) will rot and fall off, you will suffer purgatory for all eternity, yadda, yadda, yadda’.

I have been a long term sufferer of non malicious chain letters. The physics department at the institute back home had its own mail server. This was very useful in that we could ‘finger’ other users and find out when they have last logged in and all that. Having a closed UNIX server system is very useful to ping computers/write or talk to people/avoid them… etc etc. Sometimes, however, things got hairy. This would typically start with someone sending off a group mail. Group mails originating from some unfortunate first year ‘I have lost my pain’.. (yes.. I have received that mail) started a storm with replies like ‘pain, sure you meant pain and not pen?’, ‘join a lab, you won’t lack pain’.. all the way to distinctly shady replies like ‘pain? Meet me at the Tbrd at midnight…’.. yes, that sort of stuff.

Then there were the Old Building vs New Building battles. These would again start with some idiot sending off a group mail about the institute administration/the department admin/the current national political scenario/conversion of Hindus/conversion of Christians/condensed matter vs astrophysics… and that would snowball into a free for all on studentmail.physics.

And then there were the football and cricket matches between the Old and the New Buildings. Exhortations to the team, wishing the other team slow and painful death, actually promising them the same and other stuff occupied the ether, or rather the wires. Sometimes, the professors would be dragged into the melee, with perfectly hilarious results and egg on everyone’s face.

Another delightful ritual was to wait until some unsuspecting poor fellow left his mail account open and went out for coffee/tea and then send love/hate letters to everyone on his/her account. This kind of sledging kept people on their toes and made everyone more or less mindful of internet security.

Things are different here. Or maybe not. A chain letter at the U of M escalated to the extent that there is a wikipedia entry for it here.

Chandennagore

A small, sleepy town in West Bengal on the banks of the Ganga. Apart from an ancestral connection (my grandma was born there), the only reason I remember that town is I once got hilariously sloshed during a college picnic. This place has a homepage.

Spelling, Grammar and other things which make my life interesting

Me being hypocritical about grammar and spelling.

I have perfectly awful grammar, and even worse spelling. So why bother complaining? There is a perfectly justifiable reason. I suspect that a large fraction of the people who use fractured language in their daily lives have, in fact forgotten the original version. People are addicted to SMS and other media way more than they have any reason to be. The results show up everywhere. Look at an “official” letter written by any random idiot belonging to this current generation and laugh. Sure, MS Office is an amazing tool for our daily lives, but sometimes it pays to write. You know, the way people used to.. with pen and paper. And there is the persistent, pervasive influence of the media around you.. I’m lovin’ it!! A long time ago, someone told me that I apparently speak in complete sentences. What was really surprising was that he meant it to be pejorative! Twerp! Listening to some of the people talk around me makes me wonder.. here is an example.. ‘I went to the show, and it was like, you know, awesome!’ If someone left things to me, I would fine anyone under the age of 21 a quarter each time they used ‘like’ and ‘you know’ unnecessarily. The fine for older people would be.. like.. a dollar.

Rant, this time, not mine.

I found an anti blog rant here.

Ooty

I opened my eyes to a blue haze at about five and a half feet from the floor. My eyes started burning. Apparently that was not too much of a problem for the bloke sitting next to me. It took me a few minutes to figure out that this bloke was Sikdar. And that what he was offering me was a shot of rum, no water. ‘what the hell?’ I thought and it went straight down the hatch. To join the five or six shots of mixed liquors which were competing for lebensraum in my much abused stomach. Now we get back to the blue haze. How does one create air pollution of that kind? Well, take a small hotel room, preferably one with little or no ventilation. This room was supposed to be a four seater at a really shady hotel near the City railway station at Bangalore. There were some eight of us. The door had a prominent notice which said ‘No Smoking, No Drinking, No Gambling, No Immoral Activities’. To my shock, it was spelt correctly. Seven of the group belonged to Sikdar’s college in Delhi. It included a couple of swell chaps, one purrfecto arse, one bloke moaning about this girl, a couple of blokes I have managed to forget quite completely, and of course, Sikdar. It had been a good three years since Sikdar and I had met up, and we had managed to become delinquents of remarkably similar tastes quite independently. After a day or so of exploring and raising hell in Bangalore, we were off to Ooty for a day trip the next morning. Well, atleast the car was supposed to turn up at 6 am. And yet, it was half past 12, and no one seemed to be sleeping. Of course, people dozed off all the time for about fifteen minutes until someone decided to use them as an ashtray. Someone got sent out on refill duty. This was the most sober person around. A little later, stocks replenished, Sikdar and Sidd initiated the serious work of finished those stocks.

After sometime, Sik suggested that we leg it to where we might breathe the free air. We tripped upstairs.. found a vestigial balcony mostly occupied by sleeping hotel employees.. this was no Ritz. And then a ladder to the roof, which in our current state of inebriation was not that easy to negotiate. Having made it to the roof, we proceeded to pollute the whole city’s air. Sik lit up, Joshi followed. And after a few minutes of perfectly companionable silence, someone asked if we believed in ghosts. There is always someone like this in a large group. The guy who initiates a debate on ghosts, or something equally nonsensical like,…. arranged marriage when everyone is sloshed. Well, the guys started arguing. Finally, someone appointed me arbiter.. which was quite hairy.. I think I suggested that we kaput the guy who started the topic and find out for sure.

I don’t remember much of what happened later. I do remember waking up to a blue haze around five feet above the ground. I must have made it down the ladder to the room again. Joshi was fumbling for something on the ground near my feet. My feet, I should mention were dangling over the ground. Joshi got up. He held three of four almost completely burnt down cigarettes. We had run out of smokes. He then proceeded to smoke the last five millimeters worth of tobacco on each of them with great enjoyment. Then all kinds of cellphone alarrums started going off. We had an hour to get ready to go to Ooty.

Amitava Ghosh, a reminder....

Amitava Ghosh's profile is here. For the unintiated, he is one of the better Indian authors writing in English today. He is also a Bengali, something which is quite apparent, given the setting of his tales. Although I have just read the Calcutta Chromosome and the Hungry Tide, which people tell me are NOT his best works, I think I will forgive his being a Delhi University bloke. In the meantime, here is a review of the Hungry Tide which does not do justice to the book at all. I will just have to write one myself. And also remind myself to actually visit Canning (its just a short train ride from where I live).

Issues

Just happened to go through Loren’s blog today and I came across this: Now I am slightly confused and bemused by this. I really don’t know if I should take a stand on this. I mean, such lists certainly have their uses. But doesn’t the compilation of such a list go against your fundamental rights in some way or the other? There is that old saying which goes ‘give a dog a bad name, and hang him’. I also read this article: Again, I do not know where to stand on this. In fact, I should (when I have more time) talk about this whole issue of the public living in an atmosphere of fear and the issues that rise out of it.. I mean, there have been innumerable accounts of this type.. but why not another?

Vir Sanghvi on Pujo and Calcutta

This came to me on orkut.. it is written by Vir Sanghvi, an Indian journalist.

subject: Pujo by Vir Sanghvi
What 'Pujo' means to a Bengali

Most modern Indian cities strive to rise above ethnicity. Tell anybody who lives in Bombay that he lives in a Maharashtrian city and (unless of course, you are speaking to Bal Thackeray) he will take immediate offence. We are cosmopolitan, he will say indigenously.

Tell a Delhiwalla that his is a Punjabi city (which, in many ways, it is) and he will respond with much self-righteous nonsense about being the nation's capital, about the international composition of the city's elite etc.

And tell a Bangalorean that he lives in a Kannadiga city and you'll get lots of techno-gaff about the internet revolution and about how Bangalore is even more cosmopolitan than Bombay.

But, the only way to understand what Calcutta is about is recognize that the city is essentially Bengali. What's more, no Bengali minds you saying that. Rather, he is proud of the fact.
Calcutta's strengths and weaknesses mirror those of the Bengali character.
It has the drawbacks: the sudden passions, the cheerful chaos, the utter contempt for mere commerce, the fiery response to the smallest provocation. And it has the strengths (actually, I think of the drawbacks as strengths in their own way).
Calcutta embodies the Bengali love of culture; the triumph of intellectualism over greed; the complete transparency of all emotions, the disdain with which hypocrisy and insincerity are treated; the warmth of genuine humanity; and the supremacy of emotion over all other aspects of human existence.
That's why Calcutta is not for everyone.

You want your cities clean and green; stick to Delhi.
You want your cities, rich and impersonal; go to Bombay.
You want them high-tech and full of draught beer; Bangalore's your place.
But if you want a city with a soul: come to Calcutta.

When I look back on the years I've spent in Calcutta - and I come back so many times each year that I often feel I've never been away - I don't remember the things that people remember about cities.
When I think of London, I think of the vast open spaces of Hyde Park.
When I think of NewYork, I think of the frenzy of Times Square.
When I think of Tokyo, I think of the bright lights of Shinjiku.
And when I think of Paris, I think of the Champs Elysee.
But when I think of Calcutta, I never think of any one place. I don't focus on the greenery of the maidan, the beauty of the Victoria Memorial, the bustle of Burra Bazar or the splendour of the new Howrah 'Bridge'.
I think of people. Because, finally, a city is more than bricks and mortars, street lights and tarred roads. A city is the sum of its people. And who can ever forget or replicate - the people of Calcutta?

When I first came to live here, I was told that the city would grow on me. What nobody told me was that the city would change my life. It was in Calcutta that I learnt about true warmth; about simple human decency; about love and friendship; about emotions and caring; about truth and honesty. I learnt other things too. Coming from Bombay as I did, it was a revelation to live in a city where people judged each other on the things that really mattered; where they recognized that being rich did not make you a better person - in fact, it might have the opposite effect. I learnt also that if life is about more than just money, it is about the things that other cities ignore; about culture, about ideas, about art, and about passion.

In Bombay, a man with a relatively low income will salt some of it away for the day when he gets a stock market tip.
In Calcutta, a man with exactly the same income will not know the difference between a debenture and a dividend. But he will spend his money on the things that matter. Each morning, he will read at least two newspapers and develop sharply etched views on the state of the world. Each evening, there will be fresh (ideally, fresh-water or river) fish on his table. His children will be encouraged to learn to dance or sing. His family will appreciate the power of poetry And for him, religion and culture will be in inextricably bound together.

Ah religion! Tell outsiders about the importance of Puja in Calcutta and they'll scoff. Don't be silly, they'll say. Puja is a religious festival. And Bengal has voted for the CPM since 1977. How can godless Bengal be so hung
up on a religions festival? I never know how to explain them that to a Bengali, religion consists of much more than shouting Jai Shri Ram or pulling down somebody's mosque. It has little to do with meaningless ritual or sinister political activity.

The essence of Puja is that all the passions of Bengal converge: emotion, culture, the love of life, the warmth of being together, the joy of celebration, the pride in artistic ex-pression and yes, the cult of the goddess. It may be about religion. But is about much more than just worship. In which other part of India would small, not particularly well-off localities, vie with each other to produce the best pandals? Where else could puja pandals go beyond religion to draw inspiration from everything else? In the years I lived in Calcutta, the pandals featured Amitabh Bachchan, Princes Diana and even Saddam Hussain! Where else would children cry with the sheer emotional power of Dashimi, upset that the Goddess had left their homes? Where else would the whole city gooseflesh when the dhakis first begin to beat their drums? Which other Indian festival - in any part of the country - is so
much about food, about going from one roadside stall to another, following your nose as it trails the smells of cooking?

To understand Puja, you must understand Calcutta. And to understand Calcutta, you must understand the Bengali. It's not easy.
Certainly, you can't do it till you come and live here, till you let Calcutta suffuse your being, invade your bloodstream and steal your soul.
But once you have, you'll love Calcutta forever.
Wherever you go, a bit of Calcutta will go with you. I know, because it's happened to me. And every Puja, I am overcome by the magic of Bengal.

It's a feeling that'll never go away.

Blond(e) Joke

Here.

The Gamma Song.

This was written by a couple of physics dept. blokes at IIT Kanpur (where else?), the link is provided here. I found this on a Presidency Physics page on orkut (again, where else?). It is in tune with something called the Llama song. There is a wikipedia page on it as well here.

Pink is the colour of love!!

A long time ago, my friend D told me that her friend A had once gone batty and had begun yelling, 'pink is the colour of love!!!'. In the middle of the street. It is indeed. This article is an extract from the Statesman, today.

Colour me pink... or an anti-Maoist magenta!

Manoj Chaurasia
PATNA, Sept. 18: The Bihar government hopes to be in the pink ~ literally. In a move more usually associated with camp interior decorators on home makeover shows, officials in the state have turned to colour therapy to solve crime, painting a notoriously lawless town pink in the hope it will drive out criminals and promote harmony.
The district headquarter town of Aurangabad in central Bihar, which is known as a hub of Naxalite activities, was painted a uniform shade of rose ~ or “anti-Maoist magenta” ~ two weeks ago on orders of the district administration. Officials believe the lick of calming paint will foster “universal brotherhood” in the communally-sensitive town and put a stop to the violence that has marred the area for the last two decades. Jaipur already goes by the sobriquet of “Pink City”, though one imagines the founding fathers of the Rajasthan town went about it for different reasons.
“We decided to paint the entire township a soothing pink after getting formal consent from all sections of society in the hope that it will foster communal amity and keep a check on unlawful activities,” Aurangabad district magistrate Mr Birendra Bahadur Pandey told The Statesman.
The man behind the decorating is said to the sub-divisional officer (SDO) of Sadar Aurangabad, Mr Arvind Kumar Singh, who proposed the colour change at a meeting of the Town Development Council held recently under the chairmanship of Mr Rais Azam Khan. “Everyone appreciated my idea and it was decided to seek consent from residents before going ahead with the plan,” Mr Singh said.
The campaign has been launched with the motto: “Pink Aurangabad, green Aurangabad; clean Aurangabad, discipline(d) Aurangabad.”
“We requested citizens to raise funds and launch a drive to plant trees. We have requested residents to voluntarily remove all illegal encroachments from government land and become ideal citizens by disciplining themselves. The response has been tremendous”, the SDO added. “Within a fortnight, more than 70 per cent of the town (with a population of more than 500,000) was painted pink and we hope to paint the rest by Deepawali when most householders like to give a fresh coat of paint to their dwellings,” he said.
Aurangabad has witnessed more than 1,000 people killed in Naxal-related violence over the past 20 years, including when 54 people were hacked to death in a late-night attack by the banned Maoist Communist Centre (now the Communist Party of India-Maoist) in the upper caste dominated Dalelchak-Baghaura village on 29 May, 1987. Now, the town’s authorities hope their makeover job will have the town in the news for other reasons.

Monday morning blues.. posted on Tuesday

Monday morning blues.

To being with, Mondays are bloody awful!!! Not because I shudder at the prospect of a week of work, nothing like that, not remotely, I assure you… in fact, I go to work with a carefree whistle on my lips and walking pretty much on clouds. No, the problem is more insidious… it has something to do with the fact that my roomies, yes, both of them were up at 1.15 on Monday morning, or was it Sunday night.. whatever.. listening to random music videos. With rapt attenshun, I might add.


Sooo, Monday blues… I have to get to work, well, am working on this thing, which I shall refer to as Rich Dark Chocolate. In fact, it has nothing whatsoever to do with chocolate, I just call it that for my own satisfaction.

Yes, blues. I was watching Scorpio last night, and there is a review of that somewhere on my blog. I also fixed and posted a few pics, which can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feelingdisconnected/

I also got into a slanging match with my good friend Sick. He isn’t really sick, we like to call him that. Sick flies planes for the Navy.

Recollecting Saturday.
It was all my fault. I had suggested that we go to the arboretum after the picnic. Which we did. And that led to the infinitely shady series of pics which feature earlier in the blog. After which we decided to indulge in some som-ras. Som-ras, is the classical Aryan word for.. booze. Yes, som-ras. I asked S to use his discretion and get some whiskey. Methinks Ousghian Zodas are what make liff that much more tolerable. For reference, read the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Well, S went and got a half of Johnny-f-in-Walker!!! Do I look that well off? Whatever, having never tasted booze soooo expensive, yes, reader, I am something of a plebian.. and really unapologetic about it… yes, I have to say that it was worth it. That stuff goes down without a murmur, and makes for a great mix. The damper was the fact that my other roomie, another S has a completely unhealthy obsession with the movie Troy and insists on seeing it as many times as possible. For instance, while having lunch, while tying his shoelaces, while having whiskey.. get it?

Sunday:
Cooked a pseudo chili for lunch which went quite well. Also cooked a Malabar chicken preparation in the evening, except that I went and (on Ma’s advice) added a glass of milk towards the end and thus made it somewhat Kashmiri. So if you start with Malabar and then go Kashmiri, that becomes…. Marathi?

Kurioser and Kurioser

People who have read Alice in Wonderland will immediately recognize the reference. And then wonder why I have spelt Curioser with a K. Well, this is why: we went to the Nichol's Arboretum this Saturday. Now arboretum is just a fancy word for Botanical Garden, so what you expect is some landscaping, some very pretty trees and flowers and about that. We also had a little river running through it. The first K, Krishnan found a convenient tree with its trunk drooping over the river and clambered on. The second K, Karthik followed. With a Kamera. And proceeded to take some very shady pictures of Krishnan. Rather, he took pictures of Krishnan's Kro***. Which are presented here.

Incidentally, other and non shady pictures of our afty are available here.

Scorpio

There are loyalties to the country and then there are the realities of the job. There are orders issued by nameless bureaucrats from high above, and then there are requests from old friends on the lam. ‘Scorpio’ is about Cross, a veteran cold warrior, played by Burt Lancaster wanted by his superiors at the ‘Company’ for unnamed crimes. Meanwhile, Alan Delon plays Scorpio, a French contract assassin employed at an arm’s length by the Company to eliminate troublesome people. Cross, shown as a master at streetcraft is Scorpio’s case officer. When the Americans want Cross’ head, they recruit none other than his own protégé; Scorpio. The movie rapidly turns into an intense cat and mouse game, except that the mouse is no mouse at all, but a hardened field agent who has played the game as no other. This is not for people who love chick flicks and simple minded stuff. There are distinct flavours of ‘Hopscotch’, Brian Garfield’s tour-de-force about a renegade CIA agent being pursued by his own best friend. We are firmly on Cross’ side, but is he innocent of the double agent charges leveled against him? Or is there a more sinister underpinning to this tale? The movie dares to walk in that area of moral ambiguity which is normally best left as the preserve of people like John le Carre and Len Deighton. If there is a message here, it is brought home when Cross seeks shelter with Sergei Zharkhov, a KGB agent, and thus, a member of the opposition. The line which has immortalized the film was, ‘I have known Zharkhov for thirty years, as an ally and as an enemy; but always as a friend.’

Thermodynamics

sorry, this post is actually about thermodynamics. there is a very interesting review of the Gibbs' Paradox here. quite an interesting perspective. personally, I believe that no teaching of thermodynamics can ever be complete without referring to both the axiomatic formulation by Caratheodary, which goes in one direction and then to walkk into applications of the various thermodynamic potentials. but then again, it is probably a good idea to talk about the Legendre transformation. this will take up time though, which ... people do not have!

Nmap, Trinity and other stuff

someone showed me this link the other day. it would appear that there people out there waaaaay more geeky than I am accused of being.

Equilibrium

A monochromatic world.

Equilibrium. See the movie. This is had the misfortune of being labeled as a Matrix clone, which it is not. In fact, the Matrix trilogy, while inspiring a whole underground internet culture, finding its way into videogames and the like has also set standards against which all future SF (NOT scifi) efforts will be judged, and for a while, at least, found lacking. This is sad. While I am a pretty big fan of the trilogy, I sometimes think that the scriptwriters were definitely smoking something illegal late at night when the script was completed. But, back to Equilibrium. Again, the question is to obey or not to obey. The government, in this case. The movie borrows from a rather old idea of SF; that of the ‘unemotional society’. A future in which emotion has been banned because of the trouble it causes. A very simple concept of abandoning everything, that brings happiness into our lives because by sacrificing happiness, we have banished despair. The eternal trade-off, completed by governmental decree, issued in the name of an enigmatic ‘Father’, and carried out by daily injections of mind, but not body numbing serum. The very concept of uniformity is shown by the monochromatic shades of the world. This movie looks like it has been made by someone who has read the books, and done his homework. But like a perfect piece of schoolwork, it suffers from perfection. Within their own limitations, the actors have performed very well. Christian Bale looks like he is made of stone, but that is exactly what he has been turned into. Sean Bean is very convincing as the enforcer who is beginning to turn into a heretic. Heroes are not supposed to suffer from cowardice: that is something better left to the character actor who plays the sidekick. In this case, Bean came off looking great as the cleric who is human, but, unfortunately human enough to fear death; until, of course his last moment when he displays textbook dignity. This is my crib; this movie had to be made in the shadow of greater efforts, and is well made for that. But it does all you expect it to, and nothing more. This is a good movie to learn from. But it fails to rise to the heights which it should have rightfully gone to.

call it the anti incumbency factor. call it hating the giant. fact: intel leads the world in hardware. fact: microsoft leads the world in software. mad about it? go raise your blood pressure, nothing we can do about it.

but then, do we have to do anything about it? things seem just fine to people the way they are. and sometimes it is way more trouble doing things the 'right' way, rather than the PC Windows way. so we do it the intel/MS way.

but in the meantime, the transition has just taken place. just as in, about a month ago. and G5 fans will now have to back down to second place. the fastest desktop in the world will now be the Mac Pro running Intel Xeons clocking upto 3GHz. it remains to be seen whether there will be any further development from IBM on the powerpc line. i saw this review which compares the xeon, the P4, the G5 and the athlon..... the conclusions seem to tell us that the G5 is the processor to watch, but overheating problems...

however, the other thing to watch is the OS battle which should hot up with Leopard taking on Vista with much the same hardware underneath.. and if Apple stopped their incestuous relationship with MS Office and started supporting an independant platform like.. say StarOffice, maybe the war will be fought all over again.. more power to the user!

Vande Mataram

Religion, obfuscation and genuflection.

We Hindus have been, for a long time touching the feet of our fathers, our seniors, family elders, and of course idols. Something that perpetually keeps gnawing at the back of my thinking is this: man created religion. We peopled the skies. I am not an agnostic, rather the view I maintain is that, if the effects of certain belief and faith are indistinguishable from a miraculous act by a divine power, then the question of the existence of that power is quite rhetorical. That is, if you believe that God exists, then he/she/they exist(s).

Didi has been calling me a right wing Hindutva fanatic for a while. In fact, most thinking Hindu men go through an adolescent stage of being extremely right wing, sometimes to the extent of thinking that a certain Adolf had some pretty good ideas.

Most of my friends call me a rabid foaming at the mouth leftist. Such leftists are also usually atheist. I do not know if it is possible to decouple politics and economics from religion.

I prefer to label myself as a ordinary or garden variety Hindu with no particular political leanings. Having said that, there are a few observations to be made.

Religion was created mostly as an aide to survival. Survival comes from being social. This sentence is loaded with multiple layers of meaning. For example, the Great Jasagh, the written code of the Mongol Empire under its greatest lord, Genghiz Khan allowed for respect for the elderly, tolerance for al beliefs. it also called for savage punishment for crimes like gluttony, urinating in running water and so on. All of them crimes against society, things which could hardly be tolerated in the steppes, where survival itself was a matter of cooperation.


Most modern religions have at their base a simple base of rules that make for an ordered society. It is the perversion of these laws to suit the makers which results in the discord we see. At the risk of being a heretic, I could say that we might easily substitute the Indian Civil and Penal Code for the Gita, the KoranSharif and the
Bible. Think of it logically, Prophet Gates provides true believers with a new version of his code every couple of years. He even provides patches and security updates online if you have a registered version. Isn't it time most of the world religions got an upgrade?

So, coming back to the Vande Mataram controversy. This song was called the Indian National Song. So why not sing it? It is also a beautiful song, and actually easier to sing than many national anthems. And lastly, in an era where children do not know who Khudiram Bose and Bhagat Singh were, it might be of some value to sing some patriotic songs to them.

It perpetually surprises me that Indians tend to undervalue their nation this way. Freedon did not come free of cost. That is something that young people should be taught.

and a birthday

people sometimes celebrate birthdays. i wonder why. anyway, they do. a couple of weeks ago, Rachna had her... well,... something-eth birthday. asking a lady her age not being the politest thing to do, lets just leave it at that. and C and I were invited. P came down from wherever he was doing his internship. or maybe it is 'came up'. not sure. anyway, there was a party of sorts. with one very jetlagged chief guest and a bunch of guys who appeared quite inebriated without a single bottle of wine opened as yet. and two cakes. yes, two cakes. one of the cakes was brought in by P. the other cake was of quite unknown provenance. after a while, the room started filling up with random shady indian people. here are the pics.

graduation party

people have been accusing me of turning political. i take serious offence at such accusations. to begin with, there is an inherent implication that i am actually THINKING. as anyone who knows me knows, the last time i thought was in 1987 and the consequences of that were not too good. anyway, to bring the blog back to what it was born as, a documentation of the lives of people around me, here is a new entry.

my labmate G graduated very recently. he is planning to move on to social work and make a difference in people's lives where it matters. here are some pictures from his graduation party at our advisor's house.

Acts of faith

It takes a certain amount of faith to live in purdah and still believe that the world outside exists. For those people whom we have started to forget, the burgeouning economy and tax cuts mean nothing. Votes mean precious little to people who are hungry and where life does not cost too much. How much longer will we continue living with such things on our conscience and not do anything? Read this.

Chicken Soup

i have frequently been told by people that being happy is a function of telling yourself that you are
happy. that being in love with someone is a function of telling that person that you love him/her.
such advice is frequently backed up with heartwarming stories of 'chicken soup for the soul' variety.

i have also been told that reading some stuff will make me a better person. tyically the type of
reading that is suggested is again, of a very decent and heartwarming theme. there are no four
syllable words, sentence construction is kept to a minimum and no great concepts are propounded.

while i agree that in an age of increased mechanisation, sometimes an 'emotion made easy' is
necessary, disagree that it should be universal.

the points i make are the following:

1. the objective of sentient life is not necessarily to be happy. if that were the case, then all
children, once off the feeding bottle would be dosed regularly with psychotropic substances which
would give them greater happiness that anything else.

2. the purpose of sentient life is to ACHIEVE. let me say that again. TO ACHIEVE. to reach higher,
and greater than before in every sphere possible. in order to achieve, we must, first try making sure
that everyone gets to eat and be clothed. telling someone who is poor and hungry that he should be
happy is not just stupid. it is cruel.

3. unhappiness is an indulgence of the well fed.

4. little heartwarming stories designed to make people cry have their uses. however, the ability to
THINK AND FEEL is one sorely lacking in most. people with a minimum of education should not need such
shortcuts.

5. there is decent reading out there. what makes me slightly angry is seemingly intelligent people
around me reading shite which is supposed to make them empathise. things seem to tend to move towards
the simpler and the simpler. this is sad.

Rat Kings

Just finished reading 'The amazing Maurice and his educated rodents' by Terry Pratchett. I realise that I am envious beyond belief of the good Mr. Pratchett. Reasons will be gone into in some later blog. This book deals with Rat Kings. There is a great reference from Wikipedia here. Meanwhile, there is also a nice review of some of Pratchett here. And finally, a tiny little extra: a scence fiction listing here. I am going to wrap this up without a review of Pratchett myself. Surprised? Well, it will just take too much time.... way too much. Just this, the book I told you about,.... frightened me.

Photocopying nightmares

Photocopying: Sealdah and Ann Arbor.

People photocopy stuff all the time. Students, more so than other people, I imagine. Bad for the trees, and in the long term, bad for us. It would be nice if someone came up with a paper substitute which would also be easily biodegradable and clean. Meanwhile, this blog is about copying stuff. Back home, Xerox has become a substitute word for photocopying. Fine. So we Xeroxed stuff all the time. Books(yes, mostly stuff that was out of print, and we needed just that reference on special functions published in 1960!!), notes, and the rest. At that time, electronic media was still somewhat exotic. (shite, I feel old!)

The best place to xerox stuff was at Sealdah. A couple of my friends and I had spent time exploring the back alleys of Sealdah, so we knew where to find the best deals. This place is home to some of the most interesting trades in the world. Keymakers, micro-publishing from tiny places hidden away in alleys which you have to know exist (sort of like Diagon Alley in Harry Potter, if you don’t know it exists, you simply do not see it). This was home to perhaps a few hundred thousand people who lived and worked all inside a tiny area of less than a square kilometer. It would not be inaccurate to describe it as the armpit of Calcutta.

In that place was our favourite Xerox shop. Yes, at that time, we did not have access to things like department copier machines. So we legged it all the way to Sealdah and found a place where they copied stuff for 30 paise a page. And then found suitable binders where the could hard bind, spiral bind, soft bind, pretty much do anything you wanted. These Xerox shops had maybe six sweating blokes operating six machines on two levels (the room was split into two levels). The guys were sweating because the best ventilation in the world cannot take the heat away from six copiers running ALL THE TIME, and they did not exactly have access to the best ventilation. More like one of those high speed pedestal fans. They used to take turns operating the machine closest to the fan; the most comfy position to be in. And they did business with us. We got special deals for bulk orders (as in, the whole class wants the book), and sometimes got stuff Xeroxed on wastage paper (you have to ask for it, they don’t tell you that it exists) There was something called oil Xerox, where they use minimum toner so that the copy does not last forever. Very useful to copy notes which will become absolutely redundant after the exam (assuming of course, that you pass) at which point, the paper can used to simply write stuff on.

Today my boss told me to copy the handouts for his class (I am the TA). The department has its own funky copies with some fifty odd modes and infinitely many features. So its started out by working just fine. About when I was getting confident enough to tell the machine to copy 25 sets, collate and staple them, it started misbehaving. First, it chewed up the original. I got that out. Then it ran out of paper. Ok, I loaded extra paper. Then, it tried to feed paper from a reserve sheet. Which went wrong. Meanwhile, the stapler unit had gone crazy. It started folding the paper any which way it wanted and stapling all over the place. I could just imagine the copier going, ‘aha, this is a class on protein folding, lets start by folding the paper!’ And finally, with a very ominous rumble, the copier jammed. I took five deep breaths and started opening the machine up. I extracted some ten odd papers jammed in strange place in the machine’s innards. It told me to open door 5, press lever 6, pull open slider 8, and pull out the paper. One of our research scientists came in, saw what I was doing and told me that the spectrometer is more complicated. That did not help. I obeyed the instructions, opened door 7, did some stuff and the machine yelled. This went on for a while. Finally, I asked someone from the office to help. He came over. After a while, here we were, both scratching our heads. Then someone else came over and took charge. And we just could not figure out where the FNS conveyance door was. Such is life. Sometimes, FNS conveyance doors will come between you and your happiness. Finally, another member of the staff walked in, and fixed the problem in a jiffy. Bingo!

Higher education in West Bengal.

Higher Education in West Bengal.

There is some misinformation around regarding the quality and relevance of higher education in West Bengal (WB) which needs to be removed. I am going to address various issues individually.


1. Lack of engineering colleges.

As recently as a decade ago, there were merely a handful of engineering colleges in WB, mostly run by the government such as Jadavpur and Shibpur. These colleges were, and still remain highly regarded centres of excellence competing effectively nationwide. The paucity of private engineering colleges lead to a migration of students to other states, principally Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu. The departure of perhaps 50,000 students each year lead to an expenditure of 50000 X (40,000+40000) = 4 Billion rupees per year. This money was pumped into the burgeoning economies of these states and it came from the not very deep pockets of middle class Bengalis.

In recent years, there have been many private tech schools established. At last count, there are 91 registered under the umbrella of the West Bengal University of Technology.http://www.wbut.net/ The outflow of students has reduced somewhat, but still remains.

What matters is the economic cost. Most of our departing students do not join centres of excellence like the IITs or BITS, where many students receive scholarships. These students pay hefty fees to study at perfectly average institutions. Money which could have been profitably rerouted to WB.

2. Engineering vs Science vs Commerce vs Humanities.

Most students in high school try to take the tried and tested route of an engineering degree followed by an IT job. Few have the courage to try other things, and who can blame them. Most employers seem to take the blinkered viewpoint that an engineer is the only employable person around. There are precious few engineers who do engineering anyway. By and large, most of our bright girls and boys are busy writing code. Thus, the intellectual, monetary and temporal investment in a BTech degree, in perhaps Mechanical Engineering is largely unutilized. Do note that I say ‘unutilized’ and not ‘wasted’.

The other side to the thousands of IT jobs springing up all over is that all other fields are suffering. Very few students take up the humanities by choice; in most cases, it is an inability to perform in the mathematically intensive fields of engineering which pushes someone to, perhaps, comparative literature. This will undoubtedly have a profoundly deleterious long-term effect on the balance of values we ascribe to things. A society, which lives by the technology of iPods and does not care much for the music which is saved in them is in for trouble. Remember that although Sparta won the war, it is the greatness of Athens, which we speak of.

3. Tuitions.

The practice of high school and college teachers offering private tuitions is a cancer, which infects all of Indian education. This is not endemic to WB at all. All the states of India suffer from this, some more, some less. However, blanket bans on private tuitions have not achieved anything worthwhile. As long as there remain colleges with faculty positions, which have not been filled, tuition classes will continue to thrive. Another factor is the intensity to which competition has been taken. The average student is at war with the system and the system does not take prisoners. People who flunk any major exam like the Class X, the Class XII slip between the cracks in the floor. They are the casualties no one talks about. Sad, but true. One might suggest raising the wages of teachers, especially in Government institutions. There is then the question, ‘where will the money come from?’ Well, raise the fees at the colleges to more realistic levels. Apparently student unions raise hell at this. The members of those same student unions do however, pay, quite substantial sums to their private tutors. Rather fallacious, is it not?

4. The role of elite institutions.

Calcutta is home to some of the better known colleges in India: Jadavpur, the Indian Statistical Institute, St. Xavier’s College, Ram Krishna Mission College, Scottish Church College, Bethune College, Lady Brabourne College and finally, Presidency College. Most of these places operate under the University of Calcutta. The current myth is that these institutions have lost their relevance and that the best in liberal arts education has shifted to other places. The India Times college ranking currently places Calcutta colleges somewhat low on the pole.

The first point to be made is that opinion polls such as the one mentioned above are based on opinions. If one looks at results, the picture will be rather different. So what are the results we look at? From my own perspective, students of the pure sciences and the humanities usually do not enter the job market right after graduation. They typically stay at school for higher degrees. In that context, we might ask what happens at various nationwide entrance exams for graduate degrees in the liberal arts.


Again, from a personal perspective, the important exams in Physics are: the Joint Entrance to Master’s programmes conducted by the IITs, the IISc entrance test, the Joint Entrance Screening Test (conducted by 12 research institutes), the National Graduate Physics Exam (conducted by the IAPT). Speaking from personal experience, at most of these exams, students from Calcutta tend to wipe out the competition. As a case in point, at the 2002 NGPE, 18 of the top 25 students were from West Bengal. All of the final 5 gold medalists were from West Bengal.

This is due to the rigorous syllabus at the undergraduate level followed by Calcutta University. (Most other universities in WB tend to follow CU’s lead.)

Another perspective is here.

To be concluded.

Drizzle-Downpour-Depression-DVD

D-day.

D day corresponds to the unnamed day on which a military operation is started. Probably dreamed up by some theorist at Sandhurst. The world knows D day as the 6th of June, 1944 when a few hundred thousand Allied soldiers stormed Normandy and established a bridgehead on occupied Europe. D could also stand for Desolation. It could also stand for Drizzle. Which we could upgrade to Downpour.

So it was raining yesterday. Big deal. What is a little rain? But then, there is rain, and there is rain. Rain follows me around. On my more paranoid moments (usually on Thursdays) I imagine that I am turning into that truck driver in the Hitchhiker’s Guide who was followed by rain all over. I like a lot of rain as long as it comes down at one go and then clears up. I dislike the sky being overcast. It makes me feel mildly miserable.

So I started seeing “Ab Tak Chappan”, a hard hitting movie with Nana Patekar playing Sadhu Agashe, an ‘encounter specialist’ with the Special Unit of the Mumbai Police. And the DVD was so badly scratched that it refused to play for more than ten seconds at a go. What do these people do with the DVD, clean it with sandpaper?

So miserable again. So read ‘The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents’. And slept. Today is workday, midweek, Wednesday. Wednesdays are funny. I always go through at least one existential crisis each Wednesday. Finally figured out how to get the pretty software to talk to me. Ya!!

I never knew that Manoj Bajpai acted in Drohkaal. Got to go back and see that movie again. Also never actually made the connection between Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series and Hans Gruber in Diehard. Remember that famous line, ‘Now I have a machine gun. Ho Ho Ho’? Well, both by Alan Rickman. One great actor.

Vijaynagar

This happened en route to Vijaynagar. The time: sometime during my last semester at the institute. Didi was in town. So was her entire lab. In fact, it seemed like all the theoretical physics people I knew from Calcutta were all over the department. So al those random and not so random people from my batch onwards and maybe upto three years my senior were around. There was this school on Statmech, you see, at the department. Now what do we ‘umble spectroscopists have to do with things like renormalization group theory? Answer: nothing. However, all those theorists do, and having an elder sister amongst them makes things interesting.


So someone in the Calcutta gang decided to organize a trip to Vijaynagar. The last trip that I had been on with this gang, or its equivalent about a year ago was during StatPhys 22 when I ditched a lab meeting to go to Nandi Hills and was duly punished by the rain gods for doing so (somewhere in my blog…). So, Vijaynagar. I may have talked about this place earlier in my blog. But just in case I haven’t please bear with me for a couple of sentences.

1336. The small states of the South like Warangal unified under the banner of the principality of Anegundi. The relentless Muslim onslaught was arrested and brought to a complete halt by the newly founded city-state of Vijaynagar (literally, ‘city of victory’). At its peak, Vijaynagar ruled the vast majority of South India, collected levies from perhaps two hundred ports. It started as the rallying point and banner of Hindu resistance and became an empire so powerful and rich as had never been seen.

In 1556, the five Muslim kingdoms of the south formed a grand alliance and marched against Vijaynagar. These kingdoms were Ahmednagar, Berar, Bijapur, Bidar and Golconda. They faced the armies of Vijaynagar near the banks of the Krishna, in what is modern Karnataka. Descriptions of the battle that remain are inevitably from the perspective of the victors. The king of Vijaynagar, Rama Raya was captured and beheaded. His army was routed. The nobles of Vijaynagar fled. For three days, the citizens of Vijaynagar waited, sure that the invaders could be bought off with gifts from the treasury. Then the Muslim armies arrived. The sacking that ensued was again one, the likes of which had scarcely been seen before. The armies carried out their task of utter destruction with such hideous precision that when they were ‘finished’, all that remained of the greatest civilization of South India were pathetic ruins.

The city was never resettled, never repopulated. Ironically, the Dakhan Sultanates, which had defeated Vijaynagar fell to the Mughal Empire in a few short generations.

Oops, that was more than a couple of sentences.. I will probably have to finish this one later.

Ok, later is now. Now is a week or so after I started writing this blog. The reason that I started writing this blog was not quite Vijaynagar, more like a song. To be specific, ‘Aadorer Nouko’ by ‘Chandrabindoo’. This was part of the album that someone on the trip played ad-nauseum on the trip. So much so, that the song wrote itself in my head. I was listening to the song some afternoon, and suddenly it all came back in a rush.

The Sumo was crowded and were packed like tinned fish. And we had this bloke singing. There are people who cannot sing, those who really should be prevented from making a nuisance of themselves and then there are those for whom singing should be made a capital punishment. And I was nodding off, each time, being woken up by this completely unsonorous bastard howling in my ear. And he was Didi’s batchmate, so by virtue of sheer seniority, I could not tell him to shut up. The others seemed content to just roll their eyes and not do anything else. I decided to take matters into my own hands. When we stopped for a midnight snack at a Dhaba a couple of hundred kilometers from Bangalore, I took this guy aside. I made sure that Didi was not in earshot. And then I told him, in all absolute seriousness that any further singing would have me shoving my unwashed socks down his throat. I don’t know what got to him, the threat or the fact that a junior was doing the threatening. Well, he stopped singing.


We got to Vijaynagar in the wee hours, had enuf time for a brief nap and then went prowling the ruins. The first day, we stayed near the living temples in and around the Hampi bazaar. The last time I had been here was with Toton and her folks. That trip, I had made a rather interesting observation: while lining up for ‘Charanamrito’ from one of the temples, I noted that the ‘ghee’ for lighting the lamps was kept in a pint sized bottle of Old Monk rum! This time, unfortunately, I saw no such thing. In one of the temples, Dipanjan making good use of the optical zoom on his digicam found something interesting. Tucked away amongst the sculptures on the huge walls, some twenty feet up, almost hidden between two figures of chariots and elephants, was s sculpture depicting a man and a VERY well endowed woman, well, doing the good job. This was a distinctly Khajuraho thing. Vijaynagar is not at all known for such sculptures/paintings.

The next day was spent prowling all over the ruins, getting lost amidst the rocks about fifty times. Each. And of course, doing the leetil boat trip. These were the same kind of round bottomed boats which I had encountered at Hogenakkal. Apparently these are quite the rage in South India. So, boats, a few wild scares… put five theoretical physicists in a boat and they actually calculate the centre of mass for optimal balance!!! I have seen it done, people!!

The trip home was somewhat anticlimactic. Music, thankfully from the car stereo and not the passionately unmusical idiot of dubious parentage. Fun.