A mockery of methods

In today's world when we talk about making girls stand shoulder to shoulder with any man in any career she wishes, i am aghast at the prospect of the future of engineers that our country is producing. And that too at a place none other than what is considered the epitome of technical education in India, an Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Roorkee. Where the girls are forced to get locked up in their hostels by 10:00 PM. Today when we strive to make our cities safer for women working 24X7. We get a college that can't make its own campus safer for its own students. It is anybody's guess how would the mentality of the young minds be moulded and the budding engineers be shaped, how will they go out in the real world and accept assignments that would require them to be responsible for systems and mechanisms that indeed run 24X7. Unlike routine classes in a college, the world doesn't stop when the sun goes down, the world doesn't stop spinning.

I know the arguments that are going to be put up against any such opinion, but i also know that the answer is better education and a better awareness. I hope that if someone who is responsible for making rules such as these, is reading this, WAKE UP. No one can stop thinking at the ring of a bell, the education that u wish to provide does not stop at the end of your lectures, it only starts there. The thinking goes on. If u are asking someone to close their books in library and give up their thoughts in labs, u are killing that thought, u are stopping an innovation. Wake up and welcome to the real world where men strive to be better than women, in the world that appreciates talent, in the world where women win Nobels, and if you can get the Nobel laureates to say that they won it without burning the midnight oil. I am willing to give up my argument.

Memories of yesterday, lines of today

Anyone who has read my blogs earlier would know that i do some writing now and then, if not as in poetry then just as in rhyming sentences and keeping them legible. Touch of Love was surely not my first effort but it was the first that i carried so far. Apart from that i keep writing a few lines every now and then and they generally go up consuming the space on my chat status in Gtalk, Yahoo and others. Bored as i am today, I thought i will put a few of the ones i liked up here, maybe it would brighten or err... Most probably sadden someone's day ...

Free to cry

I prefer to be free,
Rather than flee,
Under the shadows,
Of guns so eerie,

I want a world,
That's not so twisted,
Not so curled,

I want a dream that makes me cry,
Not with pain but sheer delight...

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Hoping...

Happy to be happy, for the hope of the heart,
Happy to be happy, until the heavens do part,
Hoping for an hour, an hour of just laugh,
Waiting for the hour, when my happiness never departs.

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Look for a reason...

When the eyes are heavy, but still cant sleep,
When the truth untold, makes u weep.
Then live for a reason, so simple and deep,
Live for a reason, live for a reason to keep...

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Passage to Hell

I found a stick that wanted to walk,
After a while it started to talk,
It wanted to be cherished,
It wanted to be free,
It wanted to be cared,
Without a burden to carry,....

Of the loads it had carried,
Of the people gone awry,
I was made to realise,
That i should be sorry,....

And sorry yes i felt,
For my want of a walk,
For i could have as well,
Read my passage to hell.

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Wish

I wish for a place, where the wind is true,
The air that blows, is not for the few,
It blows for a reason, and the reason is you.

Lessons from the trip to Malaysia

There is going to be no random stuff today. I was recently on a short trip to Malaysia, and i thought i should write down some things that i had figured out so that anyone making a similar trip in future would be more comfortable.

Well here was my list of questions before i went there:

1. How do i keep in touch while i am there? Should i take my cell on roaming?
2. How much cash should i carry? How costly would things be there?
3. What places to visit there?
   

Ans. (1) . The first question was the more troublesome one, international roaming is absurdly costly compared to the ISD calling rates of course. Matrix cards were another option. But they turned out to be a bit cumbersome too. I had tried activating my international roaming, but when i landed in Malaysia and my cell didn't work, there was really nothing that i could have done other than curse the call center people who had assured me that it would. Anyways, the best option is to get a a local number when you land in Malaysia. They don't make much of a fuss about it. All that they ask for is your passport for proof. And the call rates are good too. I got a connection from an operator DiGi, and they had pretty good service and call rates too.

Ans. (2) . The answer to the second question came from my brother. He remembered the McBurger Index published by The Economist. And it turned out to be pretty accurate. Food is not very expensive there. In fact its the same price that you would pay in any decent restaurant in metros of India. So for day to day expenses one need not carry a lot of cash with them. As for shopping. I personally think the place isn't cheaper as compared to India. However there are some Malaysian crafts that one can lay their hands on while there. So for shopping there is no limit on the amount of cash that you can carry.

Edit: Its called the Big Mac index. http://www.economist.com/markets/bigmac/ . Thanks to anonymous... :-) ...

Ans. (3) . As for the places to visit. It is very important to have a well laid out Itinerary. Almost all first time travellers will have Kuala Lumpur in their itinerary. And its a beautiful city and must be visited when in Malaysia. However there are a number of things that one can see in KL. Its best to ask your travel agent for a detailed itinerary and make sure there isn't a lot of time devoted to malls and going around to various shops(I would suggest not having any time for malls, there is really nothing that you cant get in India, at the same price). One can visit the Bird park, the museum, The aquarium at KLCC. Watching petronas at night is a must, its a beauty and being there and not seeing that would be like going to Mecca and not touching the sacred stone. If one is open to a bit of adventure and trekking, there are places within short distances from KL which provide beautiful getaways. Though i haven't been there i heard a great deal about Langkawi and Penang. And one can explore options of touching those places too.



And lastly, always keep the Embassy numbers handy, and don't take chances with strangers that you don't know, unless they show proper credentials and speak a language that you can understand. Enjoy the Malaysian food, don't go Indian restaurants only, though there are a number of them there.

I am open to any questions, you can post them as comments below.

I had a dream...

Woke up a while ago, and wondered why i had overslept, there was this strange sensation of quiet because of which i was not angry with myself. Anyways i carried on, and suddenly it all came rushing back to me when i laid my eyes on the camera. I was having a dream wherein i was out somewhere, i don't remember either alone or with someone, but i saw a new bird, i do remember thinking that its a Brahmin eagle and that i was supposed to capture it, however though the colors matched i think they were shaped a bit like vultures(if i don't make any sense, blame my dream). Now comes the interesting part, i came back to my room and got my camera, and wanted to get back and see if i can get the birds, but somehow for one reason or the other i was held up one or the way. Because i wanted to click the birds i did not want to end the dream made me to keep on sleeping, but the fact that i somehow knew that i was in a dream and should continue sleeping made my wish to click the birds a futile quest. Whats interesting about this is that, i had the knowledge about two facts that i acted upon, such that the knowledge of one nullified the other or rather the fact that the mere presence of one made the other an impossibility. But still in the dream they did not contradict each other. They coexisted, the existence of one made the other a reality instead of contradicting it, I think after the idea had taken root, and i had made up my mind that i should not get up, i had latched on to my result, and forgotten about the process that led to it, and followed the other course blindly. I think the same thing happens a lot in reality. We often discard the obvious and base our decisions on past line of thoughts, and just remember the decisions that we had taken. The need of every hour is to take the changed circumstances into account and make fresh perspectives and better decisions, that better reflect our present circumstances.

As i think over this, i am realizing that there are things in my life too that i had decided upon a long ago, but never ever subjected them to a review. I will need to reconsider them. But just as in the dream, we never really realize the mistake until its over. Now the dilemma is, even though i realize that i was wrong, or rather, am wrong, the fact still remains that i am living in a dream, one that may have to wake up from to actually realize how wrong i was.

When politics got personal -- Mandate 2009

This has been one of the elections that i have been following closely, trying to keep an unbiased opinion which is most of the time impossible because everybody says the same thing, though with a different tone, timing and tact. However one of the notable features of these elections has been the rise of the educated and the well-to-do, into the political space. What has come out has been a clear involvement of the people who actually seek change and talk about change in their living rooms going out to get it for themselves. The idea that one man can make a difference, which has been rather difficult getting into our collective Indian psyche post independence, is rather unfortunate because we already had examples like Gandhi in our midst. However the huge persona of the Father of the nation was such that i believe that people were unable to identify themselves as belonging to the same creed, and his sudden departure did not help matters either. The same lack of self importance reflected in our social behaviour, self governance, and our lackadaisical approach to our own quality of life and society in general.

I believe with this elections the politics in India has surely come a step further, and has come closer to becoming what Nehru would have called the awakening of the Indian politics. I have always held the belief that no matter which party gets the mandate, as long as it is clear, and coalition politics does not tie it down terribly, the governance and the policies would continue to be along the same lines as before, because the needs of India remain the same, and for benefiting the people of India as a whole, its the same path that would lead to prosperity. This is the same as the observation that the opposition in India has often been for the sake of opposition, for the opposition must have done the same thing had they been in power. Having said that i believe that could change in the near future as all parties would need to connect with the educated voters and must make their policies and actions based on their promises. I sincerely hope that the next elections are after 5 years and many of the positives that came out during these elections are carries forward and get translated into actions.

The idea of Ideas...

U know there are many different things in life that shape the way with think about ourselves and the way we perceive the world. We form certain perceptions earlier in our lives that we adhere to for the rest of our lives, knowingly or unknowingly. All our pains and happiness depend upon what and how we develop them in the first quarter of our lives. If the rest of our lives conform to the way we thought , life is a bed of roses, else its a bed of thorns. Not exactly that extreme, but i believe for one to be truly happy these ideas are very important. Trying to change them is heresy, anything against them is unacceptable, and anything that contradicts our thoughts are difficult to digest or accept.

It has many implications in our life, it strives to make us stable and our responses predictable, after all what is intelligence but to predict, to be able to foresee. And our eternal quest to make things predictable and stable makes us the same. This is the reason why old people have problems with adapting to changes, its the reason why the first love is always the best because it shapes ones opinion, its the reason why the first language we learn is the one we speak in at the time when we are the weakest, its the reason why everyone in their hearts wants the "good old days" when they could tell what was good and what was not. In this day and age, the new generations are not fixed on places, are not troubled by changes in the way of working,... But even we have our nuances, the bits we don't want to change, the people we want to be, (the websites we don't want to be redesigned.. :-) ... ). Among many others... yes a lot has changed, but we are all still human, I guess staying human is the tough part after all.

Quantity we have, now we need Quality...

I was recently witness to an incident that made me wonder what does it mean to be alive but not be able to live the way one wanted to. I was sitting in a hospital with a friend of mine waiting for the doctor when a boy was brought in, probably in his teens, for what appeared to be clearly a suicide attempt. The conversation around the boy indicated that he had taken some pesticide or rat poison lying around the house. What was of particular interest is the fact that it took the doctor hardly fifteen minutes to diagnose the patient and send him off. Whatever was needed was available at hand and at no point in the whole event was anyone morbidly tensed as to the fate of the boy. Everyone there knew and believed that the boy will be saved. It is this very feeling that made me wonder what was it that could be missing in the whole sequence of events. At this point of time through whatever means there are amenities available all over the country which may not have been possible in the not very distant past. But what was missed in the whole episode are the reasons which could have triggered the boy, I am almost sure that there will be nothing done to address the reasons for the same.

On a very similar vein, recently a batchmate of mine passing out this year from college was worried about kids said to be just barely above the permissible age of child labour(15 yrs.) working in our hostel canteens. We did not want them to be just thrown out of the work because we did not know where they were going to end up next. A short interview with the child revealed that he worked there along with his father for a meagre sum of money, asked if he wanted to study he said no he did not want to(I cant blame him for it, i don't remember kids actually thinking that education is necessary, the realization comes only later).

As i remember Alvin Toffler the renowned futurist in his books had predicted an age when services and goods will be produced in such quantities that they will be available to the common man. Its in the same age that we are living right now. We did not actually cross the eras of telegraphs and telephones and jumped directly into this age with mobile phones. In the process i feel we lost the ability to innovate and improve upon and bring the changes as an improvement in our lives, rather than as a service. Yes its an era of global cooperation and sharing, but as i recently heard, its the local solution to global problems that is going to save the world. No matter how much we become like one another, its managing our differences and understanding them that's going to make us succeed.

Now merely increasing the quantity would not have the required effect on our lives that we desire, or at least i desire. The need for maintaining high standards of quality in every field of our endeavour, is what is going to bring forward the next revolution in our life.