The “Kindest” Chains

The real nuisance (yes, nuisance) of helicopter parenting lies in the gaslighting they often deploy on their children.

I take no pleasure in criticizing parents or respected elders. Yet, there are countless moments in the lives of their children, and even of adults, where they have confided in their parents and expected them to respond in a certain way. These children are often well aware of the risks and fully prepared to face them.

The gaslighting begins when these helicopter parents override the reasonable requests or choices of their adult children. The world rarely sees, or even believes, the trust, confidence, sensitivity, and consideration that some children extend toward their parents.

What society has unfortunately normalized, with only a few exceptions facing token reprimands, is the parents’ intrusive behavior masked as care. I am not talking about insecurity. I am referring to that attitude of “If I am doing something for you, it is for your own good.” This becomes an exhausting struggle for those children who have already proven their capability in the very fields where they now wish to pursue their own ventures.

Yes, the world is becoming more difficult and unpredictable. But if one still feels the need to helicopter-parent such children, then what was the point of dedicating one’s entire life to raising them? What good has come from all the priceless education if the end result is to treat your children as naïve for life? What good has come from the emotional support offered, if when the child wishes to be strong, you question the soundness of that strength? What good have all the prayers done if, after seeking your blessings and your faith, your child faces resistance to their own choices? What good can come from a child’s conscious effort to be wise and good when that goodness is always overshadowed by parental anxiety and irritation?

This is a serious problem, one that will grow even more vicious as the world continues to descend into chaos. The worst affected will be those children who truly possess the ability to discern between the real good and the real bad, not through hearsay but through reflective and contemplative minds.

I call them the Ekalavya children. Like Ekalavya, they have given their proverbial thumbs to the very people they respected the most. And they will suffer the most. Their genuine outbursts will be dismissed and lumped together with the noise created by those who have proved nothing, yet pose as “revolutionaries” among equally deluded peers.

I do not know the way out for these Ekalavya children, who will live in an eternal dilemma and drift into a paralysis of action, while their parents mistake that paralysis for obedience.

The Tyranny of Ambiguity

I recently came across some social media posts by bankers who were super frustrated with the workload and abuse they were dealing with. Within the comment section, most of the responses were deriding the banker on how useless most bankers are and why he should quit his job instead of whining like a baby.

With more than a handful of people I know being bankers, the banker’s side of the story was repeated by them as well. At the same time, many banks are operating at an equally awful level, where the customer is rendered helpless and is constantly under severe confusion and stress.

Social media, while allowing both sides of the debate, also made me consider something: we have entered a phase where a Rashomon-like world indeed exists, where the crime, the criminal, and the perpetrators are never fully established. Why? Because the circumstances never allow either side of the tortures to fully have a conversation.

Ask again, why does this happen? Does this have a common thread? Quite frankly, I think it does. The over-enthusiastic implementation of half-assed regulations with zero foresight and dictatorial compliance is at fault. This is the outcome of a centralized decision-making system imposed on an extremely complex and fragile structure. Each day it gets bazooka-ed with another set of regulations and compliance mandates. The result is zero clarity and even more ambiguity.

A very interesting video by Sucheta Dalal on KYC’s disaster is a must-watch for everyone. The nuts and bolts of that video: turning an entire population of over 1.4 billion into headless runners chasing compliance with something that even the authorities are not clear about. That is not even catastrophe; it is straight-up criminality. The difference is that a catastrophe might be an outcome of unintentional actions, but criminality is not. This is a way of creating an environment where everyone is forcefully made accountable by manufacturing ambiguity, with no one having the power to even ask for clarification. Chaos is the new order.

The same sentiment is echoed by other sections of society that simply want to conduct day-to-day operations without getting a “nudge” from the authorities. Chaos prevails there as well. Why? Because the more you remain confused, frustrated, afraid, and without access to clarity, the more vulnerable you are to making mistakes. The more mistakes you make, the more vulnerable you become. Virtue for thee, none for me.

This is the danger that a society aspiring to be antifragile should really be concerned about: self-inflicted wounds with zero benefits, long-term shocks, and very little incentives or progress. Unlike the aspired idea of a system where shocks build strength as they keep coming, this behavior of invisible hands creating chaos and commotion with zero accountability is dangerous. Another unfortunate angle is that this is spreading across various sectors of business as well. It further extends to facets like education, skill development, personal growth, lifestyle, love, marriage, care, and compassion. Someone is dictating these terms and creating a whirlpool of ambiguity, while some people, standing at the shore minding their own business, are forced to jump into it. The “why” for this behavior has its roots in societal chaos, which again is an extension of this invisible hand.

I keep asking people to read much more nuanced literature than the one that is fashionably shoved into their throats and up their asses, because the nuanced and the old ones tell the story of the age before, and presumably the age that at least gives us the semblance of what “order,” “harmony,” “progress,” and “accountability” look like. All together, applying to the same set of people, leaving out no one.

Another unfortunate extension, as well as a peek into an abysmal future, is that soon the world will have its first set of grandparents who have minimal idea of what the above-mentioned words mean, and how they once worked together in a functional society. The dilution will keep happening until these words, their effect, and their sentiments evaporate.

Preservation of knowledge is not just about books. It builds heads and hands that rise, not only for revolution but also for self-regulation, when the invisible hand wants to rule over the chaos it creates.

Points to ponder: if chaos is the new order, do you still believe you are a free citizen, or just a confused subject in someone else’s experiment? Are you brainwashed into believing that chaos manufactured by the apathetic and the braindead, bring order; an order that even they themselves cannot envisage or define?

The One On His Birthday!

…for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places, in so much that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same.

-Plutarch, in Theseus (translated by John Dryden)

Image Courtesy: Ship of Theseus (2012)

It has really been a long time since there was a post on this blog which made sense! That being said, there are no guarantees that this one will. Hello to all the readers and also to those who have stumbled upon this page of obscurity while searching something meaningful. A lot has changed since the last post. There have been times when I was having an immense urge to share something, at length, but couldn’t. Life really sucks when things like that happen. The quote above comes from a very famous philosophy of Ship of Theseus. It is rather self-explanatory and will leave the deeper research and reading to the readers, once they are out, reading this mediocrity!

But why have I shared this quote? Over some time, I have been feeling a bit like it. Things have changed, piece by piece. There is a point beyond which a change breaks you down. Shatters the very thing that you recognize yourself with. Maybe one breaks down to just rejig himself and come out as someone better. It is a hope. I am not yet at that stage of hope though.

I have become that Ship of Theseus. No more am I recognizable to myself. While the flesh remains the same for the rest, the soul has turned inside out. I have all those planks removed and replaced. I have the existence and the clashes of my own identity. I am at the cross roads with my interests and compulsions. I am lost in my own ocean of thoughts while there are anchors all over me. While the water splashing on this ship tries to change its much-appearing stable course, the real direction still remains unknown to the sailor himself. Each splash taking away those planks, one at a time, and my consciousness replacing it with its own construct. I am not arguing with you, I am arguing with myself to why I am arguing with you. I am not loving you. I am merely arguing with myself that I do know how to love. Neither do I know things nor am I trying to be intelligent. I am merely arguing to where I stand in these winds of obsolescence. There are no shores for this ship and nor am I looking out for them.

The concept seems clear now that the concept is lost. The very foundation of this construct called life seems like a tedious exercise of self-acceptance and self-consolation. The constructs; talent, achievement, goals, hope, failures, limitations, etc. all seem to be nothing more than continuous reminders of why I am still the same ship, which I, actually, am not. There is no point in defining myself with those things for they have rather changed the entire thing without even me knowing it. Change is constant, hence, there is nothing like existence. The ship keeps changing to its core and not just the planks. The question whose answer I seek is, is this a conscious effort of change or it is so involuntary that it actually laughs at our idea of “existence” and “identity”? I have consciously tried to observe the changes that I feel I have undergone and it is horrifying. There are no good changes, there are starker realizations about what I really am. Some five minutes with myself, all alone and eyes closed, and I saw more than an ocean ready to take this ship apart. There is absolutely nothing that can stop it. It does not have any laws of the world. That deafening sound of those water droplets, leaking through those cracks of the ship. Each drop feels like a huge hammer hitting on every single vein. All alone on the ship and still I cannot hear my own scream. There is no option of jumping in the ocean as it does absolutely nothing to the ship. It may end the sailor but not the ship that has sailed along with him. What there is, is a chasm or an abyss, unimaginable. There is nothing where you can start from the scratch and feel good about it. There is nothing like a road not chosen for the one that has been chosen at that moment has not been the same ever after. How to define right or wrong choices is becoming annoyingly inexplicable to me.

Sometimes, I look at an anchor and start feeling good about its ability to protect ships in the middle of the storms. But here, the anchor, that appears to protect you, drags you in a direction so sporadic and inconceivable. You see a few more ships which appear happy in that direction, but they are no more what they were when they left the shore. They have survived the storm by taking that proverbial anchorage and kept themselves afloat. They have accepted that their ships are no longer what they started with. Ironically, they do not even care what they themselves have become. What has driven them to such a great and happy place? Is this the same thing which I am consciously refusing to accept to lead a better life? Have I become so adamant for my ship that I cannot leave it even if it gets torn apart? Am I hurting the ship too? Yes, I am hurting it. Why? I have seen all those happy ships that have changed their courses just because the anchor made them to. I have seen those happy ships that have accepted their new planks to be better than their older ones, which the ocean makes them appear to be damaged. Shall I give in for a newer better ship for something that I hold dearer? Maybe I am doing it. Maybe I should not be doing it at all. But then, would that be the existence of that ship I came with?

What do such questions do? They have made me question myself at all levels. Those damaged planks are no longer the question since the removal of one of them will actually diminish my own existence. An existence, myself, have not been very certain about but sure enough to sustain it in the same form. I am not being obstinate. Again, I see at all those ships sailing at a cruising speed, away from the direction, they thought they had etched. So, I decide what I need to do. Those ships have accepted the methods that work and have moved past their destined shore, cleverly. My ship sways under my own conflicts and those stormy winds that are compelling me to change. This is what I wish to do. Without those internal conflicts, I cannot get out and fight with the external and natural forces. I wish to accept everything aloud that I am not the person that people are seeing. Maybe I was, but now I am not. There is not an inch of talent left in me. There is nothing left in me that is worth for anybody. There might be unintentional but assured acts of disappointment from my side. There will be actions which will appear disturbing. There will be thoughts that would sound horrifying but thoughts that will keep this ship intact in this storm of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual storm. Without the existence of this ship, I am not even the right ship that reaches the right destination. But why should I do all these?

To keep this Ship of Theseus, the way it was meant to be!

Signing off

*dump*

Free Knowledge: Something We Deserve

Education is the key

To unlock the golden door of Freedom

-George Washington Carver

The true sign of knowledge is not intelligence

but imagination

-Albert Einstein

It has been a really long time since I had a moment to pen down my thoughts and share it. Practically, there were no issues that didn't catch my interest but weren't as strong as to share my opinion on with all of the readers of this blog. Greetings!

P.S.: Knowledge in this blog has been accepted as a misnomer to information just the way our weight is measured in kgs in our routine which should be actually N (newton) ;)

Certain things happened several days ago. A very famous peer-to-peer file sharing site, or in layman's term torrents' hosting site, named KickAss Torrents went down. A very predictable incident of a chor-police drama where the alleged chor mistakenly revealed his identity via purchasing with valid credentials on iTunes and so on. Suing the person for almost $1 billion dollar for infringing copyright and probably various other DMCA complaints. There are a million online pirates who do such things but when the FBI and a billion dollars are involved, and where a huge user base is affected, the news turns into a thriller-story, everyone needs a bite of.

(Source: https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/20/12243592/kickass-torrents-artem-vaulin-founder-arrested-domains-seized)

Certain things happened several months ago. Dubbed as the PirateBay for research papers and journals, Sci-Hub.org was shut down with a complaint filed by one of the leading research journal publishers Elsevier.

(Source: https://torrentfreak.com/elsevier-complaint-shuts-down-sci-hub-domain-name-160504/)

Certain things happened several years ago. Considered to be the cradle of knowledge and learning of the modern human civilization, Harvard University officially gave a statement that with the rising price of research journals, they cannot afford the subscription, especially for Elsevier.

(Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/apr/24/harvard-university-journal-publishers-prices)

So what is in these incidents of piracy and copyright infringement? Why is it such on rise? Is it really cool to pirate someone else's work? The answer to the last question may seem an obvious NO. But as I am not really asking you, so my answer is a YES. It is cool to pirate stuff, especially journals, papers, articles, news, advancements, INFORMATION.

All the file-sharing sites, dubbed as piracy-encouraging business, were not practically "pirating". If a person, well acquainted with the internet jargon, would read then they are just torrent "hosting" sites. Not going into the technical definitions of such, a simple example can be cited as that of a courier boy handing away the parcels at requested and corresponding addresses. Most of the torrent sites and sites like Sci-Hub.org do not encourage piracy but believe in free knowledge. Taking a bit of a philosophical turn here, we can never "acquire" knowledge but what we can really do is be well informed. Information is the part of knowledge. Information can be true or false, which is for the curious to find out. But can something exist if there is a void? Can something exist if the thing isn't even initiated or born yet? So, those banned, shut-down, disputed websites were the part of the process of gathering information, be educated and filter out the nonsense and ultimately lead to a path of knowledge, corresponding to that field.

The reason for starting this post with those two quotes was that although we know that such a gem of an idea exist, we cannot implement it. The entire world is running after a newly-invented business of Big Data, wherein huge corporations will practically invest in knowing its user-bases' activity a.k.a knowing about us a.k.a being informed about us. Ironically, they will create services in which the user will pay for the so-called facilities they provide and in turn, give away their precious data or information to them. Why? Because that information is power for them.

Now, let's come back to the line of a normal user or a common man. How does one know about things? The probable answer would be using devices involving our five senses and brain. What if the information is not palatable to one of those five senses and hence, inaccessible to brain? You lose having that information. So what? Not everyone needs to know everything, isn't it? No. We need to know EVERYTHING or atleast try to be informed about EVERYTHING. The pandemonium happening around us is the result of such misinformed or less-informed people, who probably have not accessed situation and read about it because they fall in the "no-need-to-know-all" category. That creates a huge problem. Every now and then, I come around few people who are impressively well informed and are difficult to shove illogical arguments to but at the same time, there is a mass that hardly is concerned about what one talks and maybe, rest the argument with an absurd remark that the stuff does not concern them.

People and government see piracy as a bad thing because it does not give credit to the owner or its distribution is not righteous, which actually means they cannot be profited. I am going to give an example of myself which most of us will relate themselves to. I like reading and I am also a movie enthusiast. A few days ago, I started watching Joaquin Phoenix's "Her", then went to watch my favorite series of "Mr. Robot", and at the end of the day, I was reading an e-book version of "Tao of Physics" by Fritjof Kapra and then, before going to sleep, had a quick look at the latest New Scientist magazine. Do you think, I can afford them? Frankly, I laughed at myself on asking that question and No, I cannot afford them. So what should I do? Ethically, I should work hard, earn money and spend it later on such magazines. That's a great plan. What if I need to know a few things now like reading about say this, "You are junk: Why it’s not your genes that make you human" or "Internet 3.0: How we take back control from the giants" or "Collapse: Has quantum theory’s greatest mystery been solved?". Ethically, I will have to wait for my curiosity to be satisfied.

Piracy, although a criminal concept in a bureaucratic society, is a boon which many people fail to acknowledge beyond watching movies. Believe it or not, your genius friend is not subscribing to each and every article he knows because an $800 p.a. subscription of a single science magazine out of many of his liking is not financially possible for him. He has a knack for economics but cannot purchase a $500 p.a. the magazine yet possesses information about the same and probably, will guide you in investment too. He loves tech but cannot afford another $200 p.a. for a tech magazine. He loves philosophy but cannot afford books of those great people, who once mentioned knowledge is free, because they are long gone and their "heirs" are now minting money on those philosophical writings. An average avid reader would have to spend at least $1000-$2000 or more, depending upon the interests, on acquiring those information rich magazines and books. An average per capita income of an Indian is just above $1300 p.a. Which means, an average Indian can never afford to have a good source of information or to pursue his liking is financially and economically impractical. So, the only barrier of that impracticality is overcame by the so-called criminal piracy websites, which do not charge a thing for their services. Maybe show ads for their revenue generation and service providing expenses. 

But what is the end result? One gets the latest issue of New Scientist (July 30) from downmagaz.com or one would get a bunch of assorted movies of one's liking from torrent-hosting websites or one would get J. Krishnamurti's book of "The Impossible Question" from libgen.io. All in all, much needed and much loved information is being transferred. That priceless information is getting a priceless dissemination, which it requires the most. It is not only satisfying the interest of the avid but also generating an audience, viewers, readers who will start appreciating the material or start recommending it to others. The current swarm of conspiracy theories and their acceptance in every other field is the result of an uninformed mass. The first step of knowledge is to accept that one knows nothing and the second step is to start knowing and observing. There are blessed souls in the world who have taken the first step in that direction but cannot move ahead because of such restrictions and inaccessibility of information, judging and knowing which, they may be awakening themselves and the others. Patents, copyrights, loyalties, etc. are the hindrances for everyone. Unfortunately, the near future does not seem to limit them so, people will need to "steal information" and garner "stolen knowledge" and lead a life of "stolen intelligence". It reads ridiculous in your mind, doesn't it? 

The more I thought about this, the more I felt great for our sages and scientists of the past. It would be a great thought experiment if every scientist and saints of past, would have put a cost on their piece of parchment. What if Galileo would have started cashing in for his theories which have been the foundation of our modern day science? What if saints and sages would have put up a price-tag or copyright infringement notice on their books? What if Ayurveda would have been exclusively available to the ones who would have been able to pay? What if the polio vaccine creator Jonas Salk would have taken a patent for his drug or Ray Tomlinson would have done the same for Internet? What if Aryabhatta or Al-Khowarizmi would have patented/copyrighted their invention of zero and algorithm, respectively? The world would not have existed in the same way as it does right now. Think about not knowing the Law of Inertia or what f=ma would mean or of Adam Smith's principle of economics or Chanakya's philosophy or Ayurveda or Homepathy and so on. It would be a simulation of what was universe like before the Big Bang. It is unimaginable not knowing things but steadily, we are approaching such a reality, thanks to ideas like copyrights, patents, intellectual property rights, credits, prior art, etc. Every single piece of paper, in any format, must be free to everyone. That would be the first step for the human kind to eliminate issues like global warming, terrorism, extremism, lack of empathy towards each other, scientific dumbness, miscommunication, etc. Think about these problems and you will realize, all of them exist because of an uninformed individual. Ekalavya had to learn and master archery without the blessings and presence of Guru Drona. If that's the thirst for knowledge and if we have learnt anything from that epic story of Ekalavya, let's pledge that we support free knowledge dissemination as a tribute to Ekalavya.

Towards the end, I am going to recommend something I really love and has always cheered me up, the Laurel and Hardy. I could not afford their box-set, so you know what I did? Of course you know what I did! ;)

Let me know how much you liked/hated this post. Good to have a few words from the audience too, isn't it? ;)

Auf Wiedersehen

*signing off*

*dump*

Traversing into that Pathless Land!

Namaste!

After a long time, this page is going to see some activity. It had been a dry spell and a lot of things have happened. No, I was not busy. I had numerous thoughts and ideas that I had penned down to write them here. But there is always a sense of such things sounding irrelevant and obscure to a greater mass. Though a following of some tens of people may not be considered big, I do sincerely consider it to be more than what I had ever expected. Let’s be realistic, no one likes to read about the thoughts of a layman by taking pains to visit his blog and read through his tedious writing. But that is an option available to the audience whether or not they choose to participate, but not to the mind which is responsible for exhibition of those thoughts. Throughout this entire dormant state, I have been travelling places all over the virtual world. With an increasing curiosity in the idea of deep web, I had been in a state of continuous searching and researching about the life and its versions, available to us on this very Earth. This particular post is one of the many ideas, my serious notes, about delimiting Truth.

Truth, like the Light, has always fascinated me. When someone talks about a person telling truth, the thoughts that come to my mind are about the perception of the listener/believer, the point as well as frame of reference he stands and puts the speaker into, and the force of acceptance, which the listener/believer wants. These were “my” methods of listening to anything that was marketed as Truth and was sold for monetary or spiritual or emotional benefits. It is definitely easy and reliable to assume that The Truth can be twisted and it might even lose its meaning when retold with some inconspicuous lies but my question always was “Was this really The Truth or somebody just mirrored something, I  expected to hear?” There will be umpteen instances in our lives where one single sentence or even a single word or even a mere Yes or No will be accepted easily as truth. Probably, that was what you and I wanted to hear. It is simple science. The path of least resistance is always chosen and preferred. And so are our perspectives, bounded with so many assumptions and eternally denied limitations of ours. How can you tie your hands and legs and still expect to swim into a vast ocean? So what do we do? We make our own swimming pools and bath tubs and criticize the ocean for having a thousand dangers. So, I tried to sort things and then jumbled them once again about my thoughts on Truth. Yeah that’s right. We can’t leave things sorted just because that sorting follows our logical mindset. We need to scramble them a lot to generate different possibilities of our logic and its validity.

Truth, maybe, is like an equation. An equation which may become more and more bizarre if you keep adding variables to it. Now, one cannot keep adding a thousand Xs and Ys just to get an answer. So we draw limits. We restrict our equation with several assumptions. For Truth our assumptions are our memory, our physical prowess, our senses, including the mysterious sixth sense and all the hidden ones about whose existence, we are currently unaware but have somehow mingled amongst these limitations. Now adding to these assumptions and limits, we knowingly/unknowingly add our expectations. If I am having a hundred variables to determine one particular Truth, I will try to, first of all, contain the weirdness to my five senses. I will add a sixth sense factor which will give me a let out if my version of Truth does not hold true. And at last, I will add my expectation variable, which, actually, is a constant! Now think this. Am I really going to find The Truth? Will this method really work for all the possible scenarios and inconsistent behaviors? Is this foolproof? Does this method have a variable that will be able to limit the influence of my senses against knowing Truth? Will this equation hold true even if the Expectation variable becomes redundant? And several more questions which will lead to the similar discussion. Even two persons will see a beggar differently. One may be using his senses to judge him of being a true beggar deserving sympathy and help whereas the other person might dig deep into his logical train and come up with an idea of the beggar being phony and the antisocial purposes for which he might use the money. Which one of them is right? Both? None? Did anyone of them dig deep enough to satisfy their curiosity and coming up with ultimate Truth? No.

Am I going to offer a method to know Truth? Absolutely, not. What I may offer is a thought of not following any cults or religions for knowing Truth. Why add more limitations to our already set limiting factors? They set up with an ideology or a path or a process which it says to follow for knowing their versions of Truth. Much of the religious philosophies are only as old as we humans are, still we fight for our survival and existence. Keeping that thing in mind, one should adopt the philosophy of viruses which have been in the Universe since the first molecule came into existence. Aren’t they the ultimate Truth of survival? People who follow science will get the point that there have been numerous incidents where a well-established method is challenged and overthrown to pave way for more accurate method, which in turn gives us more precise results. No one can offer Truth or even a foolproof method of knowing it because it cannot simply exist. There is nothing like an absolute Truth or an absolute Lie, unless we confine ourselves with boundaries. Something that gives result, which may explain the condition of that time, isn’t Truth. It is mere our logic. We need to accept that we are definitely trying to refine our logic but it is nowhere near the perfect Truth or even the perfect Logic, something that is infallible, irrespective of space-time or the versions of Truth.

Religions and cults are pathological and to some extent pathetic. They all tend to sermonize us to restrict our lives in one way or the other to achieve The Truth. Does that mean that The Truth is so condensed that it cannot remain valid under myriad conditions? If that really is the definition of The Truth, there is no point in wasting our time. Truth is out there somewhere, with all the burden of our limitations!

Many of my points might be arguable and won’t be coming up easy with most of us. We all have been taught how to “know” The Truth ultimately by a bunch of people whose knowledge is impeccable on the literature which profoundly restricts our thinking. That is really amazing and depressing at the same time. But there cannot be achieving without refining, isn’t it? Who said that this write-up is The Truth? Comments, thoughts and criticism awaited.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

*Going Offline*

*Dump*

Let's Make an iPhone in Rs. 699!

Hello Readers,

In this season of misleading political manifestos, promises, agendas, etc., I, myself, tried to lure some of the greedy brains to read something that may mean more precious than an iPhone! Safely, no one can sue me here because I didn't make any inappropriate remark on any inappropriate political reader. That is saved for the further reading, provided you buy the premise that this post has actually nothing to do with building an iPhone.

As usual, passing the time in the scorching summer of India, I was unusually invited to attend a regular academic conference where "they" were keen on "bridging the gap" between students and industry and were "mapping the brains" of their students. Now, as far as Indian inferiority complex and English language's jargony is concerned, such titles always attract the people who are NOT associated with the hosting institutions and are "invited" to attend their "brain storming conference", just because they "sound good". And just like the misleading title of this post and like you, misled readers, those industrial people (some of them out of certain obligations), attended the said conference.

Without falling off the topic, the conclusive terms coming up every now and then were those above mentioned jargons, which the management kept on repeating like some holy mantra. But I sensed something very awkward there. They wanted the industries to help the students to guide them for the projects. The industries will define, the students will work and boom, the problem ends a better society develops! Had it been that shit easy, Africa would have been the leader in innovation. [See TedTalks video: You Don't Need an App for That] The problem they equivocally and ambiguously discussed was the indisciplined approach to involve theindustries to get the students. The management sent out some erratic ideas which rather than being out-of-the-box were actually closing-the-box-for-eternity ideas. Amongst some 50 faculties as qualified as M.Tech/PhD, I was probably the only one holding a B.E. and a project coordinator. So there wasn't much of a case to put forward, when I had raised a doubt and was ephemerally heard while the listener picked up his nose in this already dry environment.

I have a primary question. Why would an industry, give you their problems? Why would they rely on a Bachelor when they can have the same thing, effectively solved by a better, experienced person? Amidst the haphazard policy framework, our industries lack the corporate social responsibility. One can easily blame them. I wouldn't.

Let's take this example. Why do you pick up a smartphone from Apple or Samsung or Google or Blackberry, when even a simple PDA was enough? Why do you purchase an Samsung S4 when you already had S3? Why would you think of purchasing an iPhone 6 in 2014 when you've already purchased the 5S in 2013? Some call it splurging, some call it utility and the others are Indians because for us, the name itself is enough! For anything to sell, the consumer must need to have a strong reliability 

1. In company 

2. Product's validity over the time 

3. Product's utility

4. Innovation/New features

An intelligent consumer, will definitely keep in mind the above points and maybe start saving for a product sufficing all the above mentioned criteria. But the other splurges, the wrongly philanthropists, don't. The essence of the idea is briefly shown in the figure below:

The point is, when Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Narayan Murthy or Azim Premji become philanthropists, they don't turn themselves into ascetics. They are developing a model where not only their money is being poured into something fruitful, but in a way, it is actually helping their firm to innovate in different areas and fields. [Excellent interview at TedTalks: Bill and Melinda Gates]. In an indirect sense, they are innovating to create a wider scope and arena for their firm and towards the entire economy [Read the abstract: The role of innovation in driving the economy: Lessons from the global financial crisis by Angela Hausmana, Wesley J. Johnston]. If one thinks deeply, this connects somewhere with the academic institutions and their ties with the industries. An academic institute should be able to produce more innovative output (students) rather than focusing on (read, just!) policies to make the students innovative. Somewhere, down the line this is not going to happen.

The current educational system is destroying the curiosity, thereby strangling innovative approach of the students. Even one of my previous posts focussed on the same idea. It is a simple. How are you going to sell a product if it is as conventional as a decade? Will you purchase a Nokia 3120 at a price of Rs. 5500 in 2014? Will you purchase a Maruti Van priced at Rs. 5 lacs in 2014? Can you even think of selling a day old product at the same price as purchased? Unanimously, the answer is "No" for all the questions. If you, as a customer, do not purchase a product that is even a day older, how can an industry pour its earning into a system that is teaching them technology almost 20 years older than what they are using now? What is the meaning of giving the students a project of working on speech recognition software when they have a hard time decoding a simple C/C++ program? What is the use of asking a mechanical engineering student to design an aerodynamically efficient car when he hardly knows anything about the structure of the car? In this time of universal crisis and slowdown, industries are not that wealthy anymore.

Personally, I find the idea of fingerprint recognition in iPhone 5S as supremely idiotic. Although a great admirer of Apple products, but this really is a gimmick for any hardcore smartphone user too. But still, it can be sold. It has a new, innovative feature something the other competitors do not possess, yet. The leaked iPhone 6 is supposed to be made of Sapphire Glass, superior to suddenly-turned-into-obsolete Gorilla Glass. The quality of the glass being, it is the second hardest material after diamond! [Read: iPhone 6 and Sapphire Glass]. Isn't this a heftily paying innovation? What's the source? Curiosity. Apple designed and patented its own process to manufacture sapphire glass on its flagship iPhone 6. [Read: Apple's Patented Sapphire Glass Manufacturing Design]. There can be no money without competition. There can be no competition without new products. There cannot be new products without invention/innovation and there cannot be innovation without curiosity. See? There is no formal education in the cycle! ;)

That conference literally bored me to death by discussing the policies that can be framed to "make students innovative". Due to certain ridiculous circumstances, I had to bear the entire 3 hour ridiculous movie of this great innovators. A movie that was so realistic to get a mention in IMDb's Bottom 100!

Lastly, I want to bust a myth popularly termed as "Knowledge" in 2014. What we, as a students, are gathering, is simply information, which has been misnamed as knowledge! With all these Googling, Wikiing and App downloading, it is just that shared information being passed on. Try searching the patent sites (e.g. Wipo, USPTO, etc.) about the ideas you have or ever had. You will see, what the world really is!

Flick Suggestion: Inside Job. A gorgeous, Academy Award Winner documentary, which although has no direct connection with the post but actually shows the curiosity of director, which has lead to a fabulously researched and awesomely made documentary. Must watch!

Signing Off

*Dump*

Sissy Secularism vs. Apathetic Atheism

Hello Critics!

For the first time, I am addressing my nice bunch (modest 14!) of readers as critics. There is always a reason behind such change. Why? One, "Change is Constant" and Second, "God doesn't play dice with the Universe". In no case, I be alleged of proclaiming myself as God. This is what Einstein tell. But again, Bohr jawed him by saying, "Stop telling God what to do with his dice.". So at the end, sorry for the detour, but again, Hello Readers.

Secularism is no new word for any of us. Mostly, the Indian definition of secularism actually limits us to ponder thinking ONLY about the minorities and their welfare. Had it been "Minorities" only, there would've been no problem. But unfortunately, we know what exactly is happening. There is no point in discussing about the same as here we are not one those demo-weird-cratic poly-retard-cians. As the elections of 2014 knock at the door and harder knock the knocked heads of our Indian political drama, something usual occurred in Muzaffarnagar of Uttar Pradesh. Following the proud tradition, the riots were labelled as more political than communal (there is an invisible line differentiating those two things, don't you think?!). Hullaballoo of everything and Mahalo for nothing!

Since independent India's inception (I think our independence is dream too and we are given sedatives named Superpower India!), secularism has been the root of more vices than the virtues it carries. Be it Gandhiji (meticulously, ignored and no, I don't give any importance!) or Sardar or Lal Bahadur Sastri, all of them have been infected with this virus named secularism. Let's just define the word: 

Secularism: the principle of separation of government institutions, and the persons mandated to represent the State, from religious institutions and religious dignitaries. [Source: Wikipedia]

Secularism: a doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations [Source: Princeton Edu]

One thing that obviously catches the attention is that the both of the definitions "reject" religion in secularism. What we are facing is the loophole politics of the definition. Let's follow the Indian mutilated version of secularism.

Secularism in India: Citizens have complete freedom to follow any religion, and there is no official religion. The Government treats all religious beliefs and practices with equal respect and honor.

[Source: Wikipedia]

Wikipedia has garnered more criticism than praise for its authenticity. So, I went to download the Indian Constitution for the same. Here is something more revealing, more than just the definition.

"Subject to public order, morality and health and to the other provisions of this Part, all persons are equally entitled to freedom of conscience and the right freely to profess, practise and propagate religion." [Source: Indian Constitution, Page 485 "Right to Freedom of Religion"]

The only part I want to emphasize is that in the right to freedom of religion, specifically mentioned is the propagation of religion which technically, legalizes all the religion conversion business. Well, does legal or illegal really matter in India? That's an LOL.

What my thought was about the way of changing the word itself. Why not be an atheist state rather than a conglomeration of colorful religion and their ever colorful conflicting doctrines. Not philosophizing, but I believe that apathy garners more impartial behaviour than love. You can love the evil blindly (e.g. Dhritrashtra) but you can be an apathetic and be more impartial (e,g, Krishna). Mythology has its own power but what is wanted is a philosophy where there is no religion in ruling the state. Religion means believing deeply in something. It maybe a human, animal, object or even an emotion (that's why we pray smileys! :P ). But atheist encapsulates none of them. It is like a crystal clear water of river, where the imperfect pebbles and the perfect stones can be separated. It is like fire which will melt everything, regardless of gold or rust iron. Love is always blind, apathy cannot be. Love has a pair of spectacles corrected by the numbers their sympathy is measured, atheism or apathy is like glasses of Leonard Hofstadter (Trivia: Leonard Hofstadter has spectacles without glasses! The Big Bang Theory Trivia).

About The Pic: Arjuna pondered deeply on Krishna's suggestions. He was mesmerized when he saw the different avatars of Vishnu. What are the chances that he would have been Krishna's blind follower if Krishna had shown this before? What are the chances that Arjuna would have been more sure about Krishna than his Dhanurvidya (skill of archery)? That's the same with monotheism and polytheism/Indian secularism. Our Constitution is mesmerized by so many religions. Maybe, it has blind faith in them more than the power of its own self.

Let's assume that for a second, India becomes an atheist nation, where the only thing that matters is the rules prescribed in its constitution. Now visualize this. A road nearby your home is broken beyond repair. Thousands of people are stranded and chaos seem to be never ending. An old man has to detour to his home in the perspiring hot summer due to that road. You cannot go to the movies because the rickshaw or the bus just can't enter. The reconstruction is currently impossible because there is a religious place situated amidst the road. Neither can they divert nor can they demolish. But if the laws are apathetic to the religion, the site will be demolished and the road will be prepared. No one can do anything. Why? The laws will dictate that neither of the religions be given importance in the work of government. Think what will happen to that noisy, blasting and irritating garba parties then. Think, what will happen to communal riots when communal word itself is purged and is a criminal offence? I think that's the utopia of India.

This is a thought that is never going to be reality, because it will defeat the entire post 1857 Indian history. It shall put the father of the nation behind the bars, will hang its first prime minister just for signing a treaty, will smother the current Indian "progress" (aka congress (a.k.a is antonym known as, for here only!)). It will slit the throat of those vociferous but hollow religious leaders who are leading the cattle of 120 crores to Hell, which they say as Heaven. But again, that's the theory of relativity!

Comments are welcome and obviously that means, at least some one is reading! ;)

Signing Off

*Dump*

Science: From Overture to Symphony. Now to Finalé?

Hola Amigos,

Quite after a long time! Ideally, quite after a long space-time. But who cares to be that precise. Even with the modern knowledge, we are still going on with our weight represented in kg, whereas even a school boy knows that the unit of weight is Newton. I was recently watching A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe and playing the character of great mathematician John Nash. I was awestruck in one of the marvelous scene of this extremely pleasant movie. In one of the scenes, he and his group are observing the college girls and imagining various “games” with them in their mind. The approach is perfectly boyish. All for one (duh!). Now, there is the complexity of human brain and behavior. All the other group members are trying to woo one same gorgeous blonde and so the normal world problem of “Who goes first?” comes into existence. Born genius, all those math wizards put on their thinking cap and ponder over the problems playfully yet deterministic. But as they are mathematicians, there moves to woo are as real as their hypothetical theories. Nash is already stuck with his career hitting a dead end and is mentally somewhere else already. The atmosphere of the bar is hardly any concern to him. But just at that instance, in his subconscious, he starts to think about the problem his friends are having. They propose using a very famous the then economic model of father of economics, Adam Smith. Simplistically speaking, the model proposed that if each one of the group members played for his own interests, the whole organization will be benefited. Enter the genius, Nash. Sublimely and with his day dreaming eyes, Nash declares that Smith is wrong as his theory seems incomplete. He proposes a theory which initially radicalizes the thought process of his group for achieving their target. Then, he storms out of the bar thanking that blonde in a real genius manner i.e. looking into her eyes momentarily and with utter thinking train rumbling fast in his mind and eyes. From that little incident, he proposes a theory which technically, uproots the 150 years of backbone theory of governing dynamics of economics. Rest is history. Brilliant movie, but still a tragedy to a great extent.

I was listening to my mum, talking about her mother, my nanny. She told that even without the formal education, she was so brilliant. Though being a sub matriculate person, her common sense was par excellent. I almost hope that most of the readers will agree with this thing that their forefathers, or even their fathers and grandfathers were much “cool” in common sense and knowledge. I was listening to my mum, with great gusto. A minute later, after she left, I was immersed in my thinking. I started with our ancient Indian scientists, rolled towards Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Einstein and Hawking. Then I started to think about them more when suddenly my mum came back and asked me about the iPad and its gorgeous performance and features. I then had my “little” speech of 20 minutes starting from modern computation and retrospecting the Shockley et al inventing transistors and silicon chips and logic gates and binary. When I informed her about the working of binary system in computers, she was amazed. That watery sparkle in her eyes gave me a shudder of greatness. Of what? Greatness of how those early geniuses came up with such mind bending ideas. Who would have thought of processing information in just 1 and 0? How can someone digitize everything into 1 and 0? I, myself, was thoroughly amazed that I knew them. And I was disappointed too because I ONLY KNEW them.

Thoughts are like wild fire. They destroy and also reconstruct the entire landscape. I was flying in my own ideas and a question arose in my mind. Are we advancing or retreating in science? In music, there is a prelude or an overture that slowly starts any piece of music to thrill the audience. Subsequently, starts the main piece or the symphony which spellbinds them. And then, the finale, an obvious ending of a masterpiece. I started comparing music and science, as both of them have a huge impact on thinking humans (HR fans, bitch please!). Science started with genuine curiosity of ancient humans. Some of them assumed what they thought and kept on hauling that idea as the reason. Some over smart tried to get some basis. Experimenting, checking the authenticity. And when the notion fell apart, they began to re-search about the probable explanations. This is how science ever came into existence. Mild curiosity was transformed into strong emotions to know. Ironically, also to let down the theories proposed by the enemies. But of all that, we got was the science of everything. Religion is also a science of living a life with utmost humility and intelligence, all rolled into one. I marveled and relished the yesteryear inventions and was getting chills of nostalgia.

The pre Newton era was actually the most controversial phase of humans in science. Zillions of theories put forward. Millions discarded. They injected God element to ignore the unexplainable phenomena. Then come the rationale like Copernicus, Galileo and Newton, who changed the way the human race, would ever think. Newton never had a calculator. Neither had he had access to super fine resolution telescopes nor did he have any electronic devices to help him out nor did he have internet access to various forums and ask “Why did that apple fall down and not go up?” Let me rephrase it, can we do the same? Things, right now, are so simple. You have a doubt, you search on the Internet, ask on various forums, have an easy access to various libraries, Skype and what not. Just imagine, how would have Newton formulated his laws without super sensitive sensors. Without Mathematica or without any references available from Google or Wikipedia. Furthermore, he never had any scientist buddies on Facebook or a group there, who would verify his papers, theories and suggest him solutions! Neither was there any group on Facebook during Galileo’s time that would protest against the church or sign an online petition to save Galileo’s work from being burnt! The overture of Science was just getting better, bigger and thrilling.

The symphony began between late 18^th and early 19^th century, when brilliant minds like Bohr, Rutherford, Einstein, Planck and almost incredibly brilliant minds were born and came into action. It maybe the Industrial Revolution that is being considered that has redefined us but I strictly believe that this whole lot of scientists were the backbone of what we say, the modern science. Those who are even a little bit familiar with quantum mechanics would know how hard it to visualize is. It is just stupendous to think so much out of the box. Dual nature of light, photons, orbitals, existence from zero, black holes, quarks, gluons, leptons…Oh! I am exhausted. Most of the theories were tested in an unsophisticated environment, without computers and circuits. Relativity! One word and we bow down with respect and thorough amazement. (People always argue about relativity’s real life utility. I say, “Just give it a little space-time! ;)”). The explosion created by Einstein stirred the entire world just like the by-product of his theories, the atomic bomb. Newtonian Universe was in a head on collision with Einsteinian Cosmos. Ramanujam was almost a poor man with richest brain, which boggled the minds of high profile mathematicians like Hardy. Chandrasekhar proposed an elegant theory of Chandrasekhar limit which the arrogant Eddington refused to believe till eternity. Von Brown created rockets. Destructive at first, that maverick invention is reason you can read this blog at home without suffering the pain to see me in person! So on and so forth, clashes of human intelligence and actual smartness led to some of brilliant fireworks of brains. Ford introduced the concept of assembly line which is the foundation of current industries and production. People enjoyed, the world progressed.  They were all INVENTION.

Coming in the early 20^th century or the 90s, the humanistic progress was throttled with the groundbreaking discovery of computers. The telephones, cellphones and all those amazing devices came into existence due to Shockley et al gigantic invention of transistors in the mid-20th century. Nerve bending computational speed and complex data calculation and accumulation changed the way we used to see the world and vice-versa. Music was revolutionized. Movie making was revolutionized. Everything was revolutionized. It was INNOVATION.

Nothing to prove and nothing to grieve, but this is the thing I am concerned about. The human life and its progress started with meager curiosity. We landed on invention and now it is in the phase of innovation. Thing is, invention is a phase where something maverick comes out. To summarize, invention is like the Big Bang moment. It may not be having any strong factor or base, nothing at all in the time before. Right now, people are obsessed with the word innovating and creativity. They throw those words relentlessly and freely. Yes they are important. Innovation is very important. Modification, ramification, changing the perspective, yes, is important. But, have we invented everything? Is everything already invented that we need to just modify them now? I highly doubt that. Current concern is this thing. Apple and Samsung are two giants whose locking horns are giving the geeks orgasms of electronics. What I have observed, that nowadays, the only thing that is coming out is the apps. The high end graphics, the superb touch, this many GHz, that many cores and CUDA and teraflops and petaflops but no ground breaking invention like transistor. No path breaking theories like gravity. No unnervingly brilliant ideas like quantum. We are just flowing with the flow of river or to be frank, like a flock of sheep. The only difference is that some of the sheep are thinking a little different. We have encased our thinking to the limited theories that we know. To the limited devices we can improvise. But can we have a device, just as astounding as computer, now? Unfortunately, even innovation is being subdued by resurfacing of creativity. And creativity is dryly apprehended as designing a little better with totally a consumer utility based logic. Seems that consumerism is the main culprit here. Moreover, we are losing the magnitude of intelligence too. With reference to my mother's inputs about my nanny's times, people had a greater common sense and practical knowledge. Of course, they weren't all that geeky smart but the overall intelligence and reasoning of the mass was stronger. Right now, the intelligence of a handful of mass is staggering. You can't compete with them but the common man is really turning into a stupid common man. Their mind has been purged from the quintessential common sense. I always ask my mum in a sarcastic but genuine worry tone about who is going to follow the legacy of cooking now. Their delicious hand made cooking is also becoming extinct, as a greater mass of fairer sex is getting involved with job. I have the same worry about invention. Legacy lost? God, hope not!

Nash didn't overthrow Smith’s theory for money. Einstein didn't oppose Newtonian mechanics for any monetary gains. Chandrasekhar didn't argue with world class physicist Eddington to achieve any financial appreciation. Ramanujam died poor. All these examples point us out that in the race of earning money; we have devolved from inventors to innovators. Furthermore, innovators will be converted to mere formula restricted designers. All of the things that changed our entire human race’s thinking were not just to encash money but were the fruits of original and myriad brainy thinking. Tesla is nowadays considered to be one of the greatest innovators. But his genius was more in the arena of inventor rather than innovator.

Anyway, the world is moving fast. Hoping for a better future of science and better definition of invention.

Must see: Apple's WWDC XIII keynote. Something for the readers to get spellbound beyond words. Enjoy!

Signing off

*Dump*

The Private Proclamation

Hello Readers,

Ever since the last post, there has been a significant amount of change in our lives. News have already changed. Lots and lots of information. Science, religion, politics, anything that shared a common wall with the Time, has changed. Some sounded louder and some were faint. Some of them had a party and some of it mourned in silence. The Time saw it, heard it, felt it and then kept moving in the endless infinitely dimension Universe, remaining passive at the back of the wall. India and Indians, experienced some best moments and some worst scenarios.

I am not going to talk much about Delhi incident. The entire Internet has been filled up, like a compendium of the ideas, frustration, protest, vulgar writings and much much more about it. The entire world saw it, felt it and has remained stuck to its routine. The news channels telecasted endlessly about the girl and her condition. Twitter and Facebook went nuts by continuous sharing of the type of punishment, people wished. Adding fuel to media's havan, our begrime politicians passed comments and stole the limelight of that victim by being dissented by the public. The entire humdrum of the incident turned into a sadistic bonfire for Sodom festival. The rallies were stoned and curbed. Candle light marches. Guys, stop there. Give your mind a break. Think. Who are you dealing with? You're dealing with one of the most corrupt and filthy generation of bastards who can rape anyone and still make it a case of consensual one or in their own "Lalu chaap" humor, sperm donation. You're dealing with a dark species of inhumane, who are literally million times cruel than Idi Amin or Vlad Tepes Dracul. Hitler has been continuously epitomized as the face of cruelty and inhumanity but I bet that the world hasn't seen Hitler's Big Brothers, yet. 

I came across this film named Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom by Pier Paolo Pasolini. I still remember this film for two things. I will go for the second thing first. After watching this film, I failed in my class test of one of my most favorite and mastered subjects. I still recall that I nearly puked while giving that exam and was so uncomfortable, that I almost decided not to attend the other day. Now, this might seem a hyperbolic reaction but I assure you that no one and absolutely no one can watch that movie for more than 15-20 minutes. Come to the first thing. I will never ever forget the horror, depicted in that movie. It isn't just the gore that makes it intolerable, the way it is so grim, so ever horrorealistic that maybe you would (at least I felt!) want to format your brain and make it sure that you never watched it. So what about it? I recalled the same movie after this Sodom festival of Delhi and the first thing came into my mind was that it was quite equivalent to few scenes of the movie. Although there is no point in discussing this thing here but I believe that the perpetrators shown in this movie are perfect mirror images of our politicians. No hyperbole here and no unrealistic comparison. In the movie, the sadist ministers, who have abducted those unlucky souls, perpetrate unbelievable and unimaginable atrocities on them. It's done one by one. And the ones who are chosen are punished and enjoyed by the others like them, who are in line. That means, the left ones rejoice (or are forced to rejoice) because it isn't their day and they are spared. The punishment dim the word gruesome, setting aside a newer definition of sadism. The leftover group isn't spared. They are made to sit in their own shit and things that might make your stomach bereft of food. But their turn is on the next day, again in couples, a girl and a boy. Again, the remaining group torture them and laugh at it. It goes painfully on and on.

Saw the similarity? I did. I hope you will find it too. Maybe the movie was in 1975 and since then everything has changed. But I found this. I found that that group of hostages are like our people and but of course, the perpetrators are our politicians. Just like them, they found fun or were unmoved by the plight of their fellow hostages. Cause they knew that it was their turn next and they couldn't do anything. We all are in the same boat. The movie shows a prostitute who sing songs erotic stories which arouses the politicians. I mirrored them as the media and people who have lost senses of their tongue and lead to horrors. They say, it arouses. Ergo, compared to the tongue torture of our PM, son of a President (sounds like S-O-B, right?) and many others. Indian people, we are being sodomized. I am not accounting this thing for the recent unspeakable Delhi horror, I am actually seeing that we are being inflicted upon at each and every phase of life. We are those unlucky Salo souls and we won't do anything because "Chalo, humare saath to aisa nahin hua! Thank God!". Rallies, candle marches, signing petitions, are you people freaking idiots? If this had to happen and awake these bastards, we would never have needed this. 

Drop the candles. Put on an empty AK-47. March now. Show that this guns are just empty at this moment but may empty your bodies if we suffer injustice. This isn't uncivil. This is perfectly civil. You're not going to use a weapon unless you're in need of self defense. Don't show your frigging candle. Don't burn those effigies and all. Cordon a police station. House arrest them. Make them do the justice and the inquiry. People, you give the deadlines for the case. You set the courts. You set the morality values. It needn't be democracy, it needs to be the "YOU"th now. If it isn't "U", it isn't "US". Think this; a female CM (Sheila Dixit), a female behind the curtains PM (Sonia Gandhi), a female Police and former Interpol (Kiran Bedi) and still their safety is at stake. Well, we people maybe intelligent but we are severely dumb to our own selves. We march and protest silently when these dogs of Hell laugh and derogatorily comment. Worst feeling and idea, which I got; maybe that girl was "kept" alive for the TV TRPs and when the politicians show that she was ruining their limelight, they started pissing from their foul mouth. They will keep cornering this case. Will increase diesel prices so that you start redefining your budget. Will make India-Pak match super exciting, so that the TRPs and the attention will be diverted. Maybe, by 2014 election, a series of bomb blasts, scams and God forbid, but a 26/11 attack might be hosted so that this Delhi case is forgotten.

But guys, do we really remember that?

MovieBank: Came across Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange". Thought for a moment that such treatment might be helpful to set our pee-liticians straight. But the end justified that we still live in India.

Offlining

*Dump*

The Humanity Hogwash

Hello Readers,

I had this blog already written before a fortnight ago (as you will feel the "bump ahead") but...Come on! Do you need to ask for everything? Certain things have no reasons, which is my another way of saying, that I got a bit lazy to transfer this post from laptop to here. Anyway, the thing is the examples/incidents maybe "old" but not the topic.

The Indian Brangelina got married. The best joke I found on it was people telling to Saif’s children, “Congratulations! Aapko mummy hui hai!” Maybe that’s what they needed after their real mom, Amrita Singh, was abdicated from the position of Nawabi (I don’t think this is the correct feminine form of Nawab, but it’s okay.). At the end, the media got what they wanted, the couple already has what they wanted and I got what I never wanted. Boredom. But when the best option are Internet and a Windows 7 Ultimate running PC, then fudge the son of the badge called TV.

Navratri is being celebrated just in the way, UPA celebrates scams. Everyday, the faces are new but the story is same. Politics is much more interesting than Navratri. Here there is no garba but a fast moving DJ dandiya which actually needs no music to play. Available for free on TV, we still waste money to go for garba. God will help us again.

The other night I was at CEPT, went for a Navratri celebration with my dear friend. The purpose was of meeting and playing just for a while. Had fun because CEPT-Ahmedabad is one of the most creative institutes in entire India and to enjoy it, one either needs to be inside the college or should have huge money plus great contacts, to get in.

Next day, as usual as my routine, I was heading towards my college with my friend. On the way, we saw a terrible accident. Two people, man and woman, both were in sitting position trying to stand up, amidst the dumbfounding situation and trauma of sudden accident. A Skoda had flung them almost in the air. Just to paraphrase the accident, the car’s bonnet got a big man-size dent and the windscreen got damaged as bad as Manmohan Singh’s reputation. As usual, the crowd gathered and was trying to revive them up. We were operating under the assumption that someone had already called 108-Emergency service. At that time my friend silently uttered in my ear, “Shall we go? Late honge toh ek CL (Casual Leave) pad jayegi. Vaise bhi apne kuch nahin kar sakte yahan. Chal.”

I was looking at that ghastly face of both fortyish people. One can’t imagine their condition for sure. My train of thoughts was stopped by the statements of my friend. I was so angry but was he wrong? No. Was the rule right? Yes. Were we behaving the way we should have behaved?

I saw this scene in front of my eyes. Me getting injured badly and people would just make a sympathetic hiss and leave because their job was not allowing them to attend any such “nonsense”. The company has a reputation of having many workaholic people who don’t have any other life than the one with the laptops and desktops. Files and folders. PowerPoint presentations and statistical conundrums. Their life ends at the desk and the office itself. I am not in a corporate job. But certain rules are too convoluted in each and every nook and cranny of universal job culture, that whether you’re a peon or a Picasso, you need to get in time.

I thought, what is this “time”, if it compels us to leave our loved ones in lurch? What is this “time”, which forces us to abandon a suffering person on the road unattended just because it may cost you your one dear leave? What if that leave was too important for you because one of your family members got some problems and you had to leave? What is the use of you getting salary, if you cannot buy that time? I know one cannot buy time but at least one can try to buy some sympathy by spending that money? But is anyone doing that? Not a single person.

We might be having a head, higher than cloud nine, if we’re working in a MNC. I would rather say we are behaving like an ostrich, which hides its head in soil during any calamity, so that he cannot sense danger. Great. I was so shocked that how much helpless and useless can I be, if such really important incidents, which in some cases may mean life or death, remain neglected just because of the petty leave or a day’s salary. I don’t want that and I won’t do this from now on. Any such emergency should be and would be attended.

People were discussing that what a #$%* that driver was who hit those people. I believe he was the son of parents, who couldn't spare their one day of their busy days or take a leave, when he failed his driving lessons and still got a license from a bribe bitching police man. It’s not only parents, it’s that police man too, who couldn't take a leave or rest and went berserk by giving license whoever came that fateful day. I believe. People love that bastard, who killed so many people beneath his car, number of times, and is now running some organization for “Human Being”. We aren't hypocrite. We are the damaged dipsticks.

Maybe, God will give us a leave, one day, from calling ourselves humans.

“Man is God’s most beautiful creation”

-Told by whom? A Man!

Signing off

*Dump*

Secularism: The Wrong Turn!

Dear Readers,

(DISCLAIMER: This post does not blame any religion or an ideology. I am not God or so to do that. This is a heat jet that was burning my soul against the practices of the selfish rogues. All the religions are great. But the people, talked in this post, propagating their wasteful ideology, are not.)

Time sure flies and surely it makes me feel the way I don't like. Sad! I can myself analyze myself as a lazy blogger. I was just thinking of writing something which I wished. This topic has always whirled into my mind but just it didn't had any thrust to come up till the blog post. Nevertheless, der aaye par durust aaye!

The political humdrum is already creating a noise of criminal intensity. Pitt congratulates India's cheap class Saifeena. At that point of time, I really felt that Pitt has no work to do now. On the other side, I also assumed that this must be a media hype. I have observed that no foreign actor ever pays heed to what Rajat Sharma and company people spread. I was wondering if India TV would come up with a news item like the Brangelina gate crashing the wedding of Saifeena. The "Coalgate" was easily side tracked by the announcement of FDI in retail and the staggering Rs. 5/liter hi-hi-hike!

But above all that, I saw a problem that has been in a total vagrancy. The world "Secular" is a fancy, modern word that almost all of us know. It is like disregarding all the religions. Basic definition of secular is: 

Secular: not overtly or specifically religious (Merriam Webster)

Secular: Of or relating to the doctrine that rejects religion and religious considerations (WordwWeb Pro)

I have a bet over here. Ask any youngster who says that he/she holds a secular view. And the most common answer is that they believe in all religions to be treated equally. I would rather term it as polytheism. But the nomenclature isn't a specific topic of interest here.

The worry is that no one understands what it is. I don't even care if you're secular or not. Just because the "cool people" say that they are secular doesn't put you in a crack to accept it without using your brain. Everyone is entitled to have their opinion. But what opinion? What do they know about secularism?

This time I felt that the people talking about secularism/polytheism are the people who lack in knowledge of all the religions that encompasses and defines their secularism. I was with this book by some Iranian Ayatollah and read a few topics. The topics on foresightedness and its virtues were almost as good as any Vedas or the shloks of Bhagvad Gita. But you know that there is a trend. To blaspheme any particular religion has become a sign of you being secular. Our shithead Central Government has always been pro-minority. Now here comes the debate. How are they secular then? If they aren't considering any religion as their fundamental identity, how come they favor the Christians and the Muslims? If they really don't care about any religion why there is a 55% reservation based on the caste and religions? Why is it like that if there is a panel of deserving advocates, who coincidentally happen to be Hindus, it is forcefully changed to an entire Muslim one, just because they can prove them secular?

Many many other questions on the list to make this blog unreadable. But this is the truth. We all know this. Why has UPA delayed the death sentence of Kasab? Just because they can get sympathy of some minorities? What is the use of that minorities, who have a soft corner towards such a son of a bitch? A bastard who attacked an entire nation's mind and soul and even profoundly the heart of a small boy to his  80-year old grandfather? If this is what the minorities need, just because that attacker belongs to their community, then I believe that we all should be ready for an internal war. Today it is a Muslim favoring a similar caste terrorist. Tomorrow, it can be a Dalits favoring the Naxalites, who might kill a DRDO scientist. So what kind of secularism is there?

Taking a political turn here. BJP and RSS have always been criticized as the fundamentalists and extremists of Hindus. I still remember the Kandla storm incident when the foul smelling dead bodies, completely distorted due to the fungi on them, were efficiently cleaned up by the workers of RSS. No one else showed up. Did they see whether the dead person was a Hindu or not? But here comes the game. Congress, the worst progeny of some slut, doesn't care because it wants to fill its seats using the minorities. They have never shown this and why should they? Right? Fuel hike, astronomical scams, black money and all the banality of the bastard Congress politicians will be eclipsed when the elections will arrive. Reason? The minorities will vote them just because they think that this spineless swines will "protect" them. Isn't it mentioned that the Haj be carried out without any help from anyone? Without borrowing money? Without going into a flight? Definitely.

But one more tragic side. The well know majority isn't the real majority. To get their names written in the good books of "intellectuals", the so-called and so wrongly called Hindus, have started blaming and carving their own scriptures. If Rushdie cannot write "Satanic Verses" then who the hell was that rascal M.F. Hussain to paint "Bharat Mata" as nude? But with the tears in the eyes, he was well praised by our "cream" layered intellectuals. Blaming Hinduism is the shortest (and kind of proven) path to sit on the bereaved seat of popularity. We don't even care. Worst thing!

I once had a dream to be an intellectual. When people will share my ideology with respect. When I will have a single word having an impact of millions of action. When my smile will put the devils on sleeplessness mode. But if this what the definition of intellectual people, then I decline and deprive myself to ever pursue the dream of becoming one. I am bestowed by a religion, by my own Bhagwan, inherited from my own respected and revered ancestors and I won't leave it unless my He calls me back!

Signing off

*Dump*