If you get my drift...

Getting into soup

2009-03-26T14:02:00.002+05:30

Of all the gastronomical practices prevalent in this muddle of a country of ours, the one which never ceases to make me raise a three-fifth astonished and five-sixth annoyed eyebrow is the unreserved splatter of all available sauces into the soup without even a forethought of if a chicken clear soup indeed merits a marriage to tomato ketchup, with soy sauce & chili sauce spreading themselves far

Point & shoot

2008-11-30T22:46:00.002+05:30

The standard Indian explanation of terrorism by the way of pointing fingers toward Pakistan seems rather shallow at this point. Even if it is true, we still cannot justify the failure of our intelligence, police & the general rise of civil unrest in the country based on religious grounds which includes Hindus, Muslims & Christians alike - the difference being one of degree. This is a moot point,

Being Rahul Dravid

2008-11-22T23:46:00.006+05:30

Rahul Dravid is struggling to score runs. And he has been struggling for a while. Whether he decides to quit the game or not is his own call & his place in the side regardless of his personal decision is a question for the BCCI. For me, though, looking at Dravid as just a number 3 batsman in India colours is violently reductionist - it is tantamount to saying that Edmund Hilary was mountaineer

Expanding your....ummm...horizons!

2008-11-02T06:12:00.002+05:30

So I'm stuck again in a hotel room for the rest of this year. I'd have to say that the weather in Alpharetta, Georgia is not quite inclement this time of the year - in sharp contrast to the bally snowstorms in Minneapolis earlier this year.Well, it felt like snowstorms anyway. What do you think I am - an eskimo? Or is it an igloo?So you may be inclined to ruminate about my sharp social encounters

Tea - II

2008-06-09T05:12:00.001+05:30

Though it has been upwards of four years since I last posted on tea, & meanwhile developed a liking for the straw -ey & grassy green tea - as served iced & milkless in many a Starbuck's shop -, in the end, or at least as of June 2008, it is still the Darjeeling Second Flush - the aqueous amber married to an afterthought of milk, & a reluctant sprinkling of sugar - that produces a reminisce,

Pasta, faster

2008-05-18T09:17:00.004+05:30

A easy quick meaty meal to fix yourself when you're short of time, drunk, & hungry:Fettuccine with Italian Sausage:Serves one person:Onion - 1 medium size, finely chopped.Tomato - 2 small or 1.5 medium sized; coarse chunky pieces.Italian Sausage - Chunky pieces;Cut 1 sausage into 4-5 pieces.Bacon (optional) - Nothing like cooking in animal fatFettuccine - A little less than enough for one

Carbon footprint

2008-05-17T20:58:00.002+05:30

Of all the ways we perceive, & change according to, the world around us, one of the important measures to know & care about is your carbon footprint. It is all very well to know about global warming, though I'm personally unsure how much of the global warming debate is driven by scientists as opposed to activists (or alarmists...), however, I think that it is important to know how much each one

Deep thoughts on food

2008-05-14T08:02:00.005+05:30

Usha has tagged me to do a post on questions pertaining to food & the like. While I prefer eating food more than writing about it, I'll do this post regardless, because like Anatole, aunt Dahlia's cook, " I am cool as a few cucumbers." :)What’s your favourite table?Ok, I know that I'm not very smart, but is that a trick question? It simply does not matter as long as what is on it is good. I like

Music & lights

2008-04-23T10:46:00.003+05:30

Well, this again is Bangalore. It has been exactly 2 months since I was here last. And I'm here for just a week before I fly back to Minneapolis again for about 5 weeks - hopefully gorgeous as it can be.Homecoming never loses its potency even if you're traveling all the time. A total of 6 or so months in the last 24 months in Bangalore still means Sangam Reunions - now with expanded families

The ends of love - Dance Drama

2008-03-29T19:45:00.002+05:30

The Ends of love is a dance drama commissioned by the the Stuat Pimsler Dance & Theater group. Staged at The Ritz, across the Mississippi, on University & 13th Ave NE, what amused me to start with was the composition of the audience. With the exception of me, it was all white. And there were two distinct age groups in there. One, college students. And the other, elderly people. You could count

Listening to NPR - Indra Nooyi

2008-03-23T11:05:00.007+05:30

I heard the interview of Indra Nooyi on NPR yesterday. It was a replay of a BBC interview recorded earlier. Engaging as it was, there were many fascinating things Nooyi said that do not quite ring true to my ears. She was insistent on how everybody across the world, India included, has always loved America & continues to do so. She alluded briefly to how people are able to separate people from

Swining in Minneapolis - Gasthof

2008-03-17T05:55:00.003+05:30

Gasthof zur gemutlichkeit, which roughly means the inn of coziness or comfort, is a Bavarian restaurant on the University Ave NE in Minneapolis. From our many visits to Bavarian restaurants in Munich last year, I noticed a few similarities & dissimilaritiesBavarian food is earthy, chunky, & goes down like knife through butter, in Munich & in Minneapolis. It makes you give up pretenses of any

Being Purushottam

2008-03-09T01:11:00.002+05:30

As far as I know, Lord Ram had a rather trying training as a child - living in jungles & reading deep, fat books when other children his age were playing cricket. He had the abysmal bad luck of running into Parashuram once as well. And then he gets himself exiled, has to start living in the woods, gets his wife kidnapped by some weirdo, uncool king & manages to befriend a few apes for

Indian food in Minneapolis

2008-03-07T09:32:00.003+05:30

Well, this post could also be called "how not to have a life". Yes, it is incredibly cold in Minneapolis & I do not want to know exactly how cold it is for the fear of slipping into depression, & I do not have a whole lot to do - except work - & assorted & repetitive disillusionments on the treadmill.Minneapolis has a thriving cultural scene including great music, theater & opera. I'll probably

This I believe

2008-02-14T09:47:00.002+05:30

This I believe is a show on NPR. National Public radio is one of the best parts of being in the US. While we extrapolate an anti-Bush & anti-aggressive-foreign-policy stance to anti-America in general, NPR is one of the many glorious contradictions to such generalizations. While you may read my thoughts on NPR here, I took on the subject of one of it's programs to say this:"How we behave in

That song in your head

2008-02-10T12:42:00.000+05:30

Remember that song in your head that you cannot rid of?I recently read Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks. I've only started recently reading on Neurology, & as a book, I perhaps rate "Phantoms in the brain" slightly higher than this one by Sacks only because I understood a lot more & a lot more was explained. However, the sheer variety of ways in which we appreciate music is quite unfathomable as are

News

2007-12-31T10:03:00.000+05:30

Benazir Bhutto has now been buried. In a certain way, the media coverage of that story is the perfect example of media coverage in general lately. While the concerns over Pakistan sliding down to civil war & the safety of the nuclear arsenal at it's disposal are genuine & have indeed received a good amount of attention, the assassination of Bhutto has also led to needless glorification of Benazir

Labyrinths & lobsters - Fort Kochi

2007-12-06T16:01:00.000+05:30

Tucked away between the Chinese fishing nets, the bustling Ernakulam town, & the now submerged Fort Immanuel lies the sleepy little town of Fort Kochi. Antara & I decided to pack our bags & a little carelessness weekend before last & spend a couple of days in this little town away from the clocks & responsibilities. Even in December first week, Fort Kochi was not the coolest of places, & a 20

Strangers in a strange land - II: The bus to Fussen

2007-11-21T10:35:00.000+05:30

There are two castles that you cannot afford to miss if you happen to be in Bavaria. The Neuschwanstein (literally, the new rock of the swan) & Hohenschwangau (the lofty swan). So when Antara & I, having experienced these two castles & having managed to get drenched in the freezing rain, awaited the bus to Weiskirche at the foothills of the castles, it seemed to me that the very best of our day

Strangers in a strange land - I: The train to Munich

2007-11-16T10:47:00.000+05:30

Certainly, our budget for the Munich Holiday did not account for cloak room charges of 15 Euros per day for 5 days. So Antara, I & our eight pieces of luggage found ourselves with the task of somehow finding our way from the airport via a train ride to the Munich Hauptbahnhof & rolling from there to our hotel. It was not very difficult getting to the airport train station given the trolleys we

Clinton - esque

2007-11-04T07:10:00.000+05:30

The thing about Hilary Clinton is that she seems to always take the side of the correct, while managing to be to as candid as possible with the usual dash of charisma, not to mention caution. Briefly, she is complex. While I think that it makes for a very well-rounded person, I think such a fine balancing act that she has to put on all the time makes her too complex to win an election.Drew Westen

A Saturday bum

2007-10-20T20:38:00.000+05:30

Well, I do not mean bum - the person, I mean bum - the personification. Like the sleeping beauty or the growing lust. Oh wait, that wasn't quite the correct example. Well, what I'm trying to arrive at is that this is as amazing a Saturday as you can hope to see, especially if you're in Ashburn, VA, & you have it all at your whim.Things started off rather splendidly this morning over an Einstein

The motto

2007-10-20T02:03:00.000+05:30

Do you remember the motto of your school? Well, you might if you think about it. For some reason, sitting here alone in the office on a gloomy & humid Friday, I started thinking back on my school days & finally landed upon the Wikipedia pages of my school. Exactly how I jumped from there to the the motto of Kendriya Vidyalayas, I've no clue. But I vividly recall the Hindi teacher in viith

Back in the States

2007-10-15T17:44:00.000+05:30

Well, I'm back like a counterfeit coin. Hardly two months between leaving the Dulles airport & rebounding back to it.Coming to the Virginia's high-tech corridor time & again has reduced coming here to an absolute non-event. That's not necessarily a bad thing because that invariably implies how smoothly I can now work with the system here. Of course, the wide roads help & my mammoth Mitsubishi

Rescuing Bismil

2007-10-01T12:17:00.000+05:30

One of my most enduring memories of watching Rang De Basanti is the incredibly powerful rendition of "Sarfaroshi Kee Tamanna" by Laxman Pandey (Atul Kulkarni). It was a poem written by Ramprasad Bismil. I have not been able to find these lines in the audio CDs of the movie though the other part of the same poem is rendered equally powerfully by Aamir Khan (this time with accompanying music) later

Power in a project

2007-09-16T17:22:00.000+05:30

Recently, a colleague & a good friend of mine talked about the problems he is facing in his project, inter-team loss of credibility, poor communication, & the inability to keep the personal away from the professional. I did not really have too many words of advice for him at the time but since then, I've spent a little bit of my ghastly commute thinking on these issues. One of the problems of

Toronto

2007-09-05T14:54:00.000+05:30

Toronto, or may be Canada in general, is spoken about easier by the way it differs from America & not so much if you try to talk about it in isolation. At least, going to Toronto after about 10 months of living in the USA, that was the way I looked at it. My first impression upon entering Canada was that Google map directions were not so darned

Come on now

2007-09-03T11:23:00.000+05:30

Or as they say in English, on Television, & in newspapers "Chak de!" Its everywhere; ubiquitous & refusing to go away. Cricket, football (the recent Nehru cup), hockey (the Asia cup & the Indian team's laudable performances) - there are just two words that we have to talk about all of this. Wikipedia has an entry on the film "Chak de, India" & the literal translation of this phrase is "Come on,

Bandwidth

2007-08-28T14:23:00.000+05:30

So we're back in Bangalore, & we're setting ourselves up with a rental flat & the assorted arrangements you need to make to live. Now, do not get me wrong, I know that what I'm going to talk about may not be an issue that affects all of India, or at least there are other, bigger problems which other Indians live with & I don't; at the same time, we're really facing energy crisis for fueling/

Munich

2007-08-27T15:49:00.000+05:30

After almost a year of living in a spacious American suburb of Washington DC, Munich, at first, looked incredibly homelike with its sheer density of population & the consequent premium you pay for space. I do not say this in a negative way; indeed, our stay in Munich was one of our most wonderful vacations ever, I say this only to draw underline the difference between what a city has come to

Of all the Presidents

2007-07-24T09:10:00.000+05:30

Now, with the presidential elections over a year away, & public memory being typically short (Whatever happened to the outrage over Saddam's execution?) it is very difficult for anybody to hazard a guess as to who would be the next US President.However, how can you really resist a political position? :) Well, the fact is you probably cannot. The CNN & YouTube debate today was quite outstanding

Whatever...

2007-07-17T06:19:00.000+05:30

Obviously, you've encountered that expression before. And probably with an alarming regularity. But no, I'm not writing this to accentuate the difference between types of English, spoken or rolled.I got into this conversation with a colleague over lunch & talked about gun control, & the state of creationism & the religious right here in the US - you know, the kind of juicy "isms" that make me

The subcontinental

2007-07-03T06:02:00.000+05:30

Invariably, it appears that when Americans are thinking of India, they're really thinking of Chicken Tikka Masala. Or, Tandoori chicken. And some of them think, I'm told, that the Tandoori chicken , owing to its crimson complexion, must be very hot. I've been asked if we eat Tandoori Chicken everyday. I did not have the heart to tell the person that my resources back home are too limited to

American discoveries - NPR

2007-06-21T07:02:00.000+05:30

NPR is one of the more refreshing surprises in a country where politics, world affairs, religion, trade, foreign policy & such generate little conversation. Or, so has been my limited experience. To start with, my feeling was that, particularly in today's times, Americans will find most of these topics embarrassing, & they're just being guarded in my presence. My slow but increasing familiarity

American discoveries - Microbrews

2007-06-11T07:27:00.000+05:30

The world experienced through the World Wide Web is a place of diminishing wonders. Especially in the IT industry, there is no dearth of people who have experienced this country in many ways over varying degrees of time span & directness of experience. I've been to this country thrice before, & yet, it is this time, now that I've spent months living in this country, that I've discovered aspects

Food

2007-04-30T06:14:00.001+05:30

I was recently quoted as remarking " The only good use of time is one which involves alcohol & meat". Now, I myself would raise a few eyebrows - if such a thing was possible - at such a sweeping generalization, particularly because it does not consider sports or sex.Why be a foodie? Why not eat for a better metabolism than for gustation? Why count calories & why confuse prime ribs with animal

Courting rituals

2007-04-07T03:27:00.000+05:30

Of the many different ways of experiencing the US, I had the misfortune of indulging its judiciary. To those of you who may be secretly unleashing toothy smiles picturing me at the gaols, I'm sorry to say that nothing quite as interesting happened. I did not get jailed, & outside of my careless yawning while I was being made to promise something I did not want to promise, you can call the whole

To Die For - III

2007-03-09T21:40:00.000+05:30

Recently, a gentleman mailed me about campaigning to redeem Hinduism from the clutches of rising Islamic clout - the protection it gets from apologists, the secularists, & the government in the name of welfare. As always, when somebody asks me to actually do something, I begin to shift my weight uncomfortably knowing that this'll require me to make up my mind about the issues, & the mind is the

The moralist

2007-02-19T08:32:00.000+05:30

One of the interesting points of view, or theories - fairly explicable, in Dawkin's The God Delusion is how morality, more than anything else, could be seen as a function of time. Of course, a more interesting study dedicated to understanding morality across geographies, cultures & other factors can be found in Moral Minds. However, it was interesting for me to note how what we currently view as

The atheist

2007-02-18T23:25:00.000+05:30

My reading phase has entered some kind of pattern. Over the last one year, I've read at least 3 books on atheism. Well, that's not really true. We can say that these books, while only some of them are blatantly atheistic, primarily suggest, at the very least, a total lack of any conceivable reason or cause behind a continuation of belief in religions.But my own transition towards a public denial

Racy thoughts

2007-01-15T09:01:00.000+05:30

So why so much on the issue of race & gender? All people are a product of their geography, if you're to believe my oversimplified summary of Jared Diamond's book. Well, while at a macro-level Diamond's book is very well argued, I'm not sure what to make of it if we try to extrapolate or bend. For example, I perceive that while over time geographic factors might have been the most regulatory, as

And you are?

2007-01-07T22:15:00.001+05:30

One of our pillars of identity is what we eat. In fact, what we eat can be so parochial in nature is that if you try to arrive at the idea of a nation based on food habits – as is possible in a foreign land – the whole analysis is practically useless in the way of categorization but does harbour serious possibilities as farce. So, say for example, some tourist has been, just by chance, to an

Spinning the web

2006-12-28T22:50:00.001+05:30

What if you could access all your contacts, all your photographs, all your music, all your videos & all your blogs from one digital dashboard? With multiply, you have now a single-sign-on dashboard for all your digital content. And perhaps the web needs a third dimension? Perhaps your bookmarks should not be 2 dimensional list of websites but really an art gallery like setting which you walk

Footnotes this year

2006-12-23T02:39:00.000+05:30

What is so endearing about a gregarious magician pulling fast-ones on a humoring crowd by the chesapeake? And is it not nice to be able to climb 600 odd steps barefoot on a burning afternoon in distant Shravanbelagola? What is the best setting to have a scalding thukpa, if not by a frozen Tsongmo lake? What kind of of people sculpted Hampi, Halebeedu & Belur? And what about the Shenandoah river,

Winter conversations

2006-12-09T20:04:00.000+05:30

Emigration has come up repetitively in my conversations recently. Sometimes, depending on age & familiarity, the question is rather direct & at others, it is arrived at slowly. And there are far too many obvious pluses about the USA that I've already experienced during my short stay here, that it really becomes difficult to justify anything thing other than "I'd love to sometime soon" or words to

Ritualization

2006-11-15T06:20:00.000+05:30

Oftentimes, we talk of processes & improving them in the project management space. In fact, a seamlessly integration of teams & its various processes is the state that every project manager wishes to take her team to & make it stay there. As frequently stated in many PM books, teams go through typical stages of the formative, the storming or conflicting, normative or the settlement & appearance

Signing up!

2006-10-24T06:09:00.000+05:30

As a part of setting our rented apartment up, I called up a telephone service provider. It took us, I & the customer service representative, the better part of two minutes to get through all the information that was needed to set us up with a landline connection.The representative first guessed my name as a Greek one. And then, as he was entering all the information into the system & going

The Blog Boom

2006-10-12T12:47:00.000+05:30

I have this opinion that blogging as social networking platform is slowly eating away at certain other networking platforms such as ryze, or Orkut. Per this article, the total blogs in April 2005 stood at 50 million with approximately 1 million blogs from the Indian Subcontinent. Here are my reasons why blogging is such a growing medium, not necessarily in any order of significance:Your blog is

The devotee

2006-10-09T16:18:00.000+05:30

Recently, there was an editorial in TOI about the Islamic world & a very short historical analysis by Murad Ali Baig on why certain aspects of Islam are the way they are today. Particularly, there was a note on how there was one consolidated Medina version of the Qu'ran compiled in 665 A.D. & how the various other versions of the holy book were burnt. Now, it is very possible that such a

Set Pieces

2006-10-04T13:59:00.000+05:30

Vishy Anand has appeared in many NIIT commercials. The connection is obvious - intelligence, speed, strategy, & whatever other parallels this game represents. And such a notion is not a parochial one, but fairly universal.In May 1997, Deep Blue defeated Gary Kasparov, compelling us to rethink what we mean by intelligence, to look again at the possibilities of capturing our elusive moments of

Tagged!

2006-09-26T11:42:00.000+05:30

For lootenant Usha, who, in spite of a marked lack of stiffness, is the right sort:1. Are you happy/satisfied with your blog with its content and look?Does your family know about your blog?With Blooger Beta, looks & usability have certainly improved. I'm, at best, satisfied with the content; there are only a handful of posts that I'm happy about. I'd definitely like to improve the variety of the

The cult

2006-09-24T09:52:00.000+05:30

Jeffrey Sach's book "The end of poverty" talks about, among other things, how developing poor countries is in the social & economic interests of developed countries. At the time when I read it, it looked like a very plausible & no less noble idea. He built his case around, very convincingly with well-argued cases, that economic development & opportunities will definitely eat away at the roots of

In a General way

2006-09-23T20:45:00.000+05:30

The Hindu today published a review of Pervez Musharraf's autobiographical work called "In the line of fire". You can also read a rather insipid review here. The book is out on Monday, 9/27, in New York. As you'd expect, there is no dearth of dramatic material; & from an Indian perspective, some of the colouring that has been used to represent certain incidents is blatantly polemic, to fight the

The Indian Constitution

2006-09-21T15:08:00.000+05:30

Jug Suraiya, the eternal secularist, has written this piece. I found it totally hilarious; though certain Indian communities have gotten more publicity than others.

The decision maker

2006-09-19T11:58:00.000+05:30

Usually, it is believed that a logical decision maker & an emotional decision maker cannot co-exist. That is not to say that any person cannot be either at different times, but that is to say that you have to choose between a value-system based decision & a rationality/logic based decision when both systems offer you an viable alternative in a typical right vs. right situation. For example, your

Blogger Beta

2006-09-11T17:01:00.000+05:30

In case you did not come across this yet, Blogger Beta is here - full of exciting new features, & a cool set of blog customization tools. This blog is a blogger beta blog.

The stride

2006-09-06T14:36:00.000+05:30

Winding by lanes of 4th T block evenings, strange stares from strangers, two main roads, a nice little park - almost a square -, ghastly statues in the park, couples whispering on the benches, a sometime gang of longtime friends, Carnatic classical meandering through rather conspicuous speakers, children in the play-area, walkers in sneakers & denims.Running shorts, running shoes, chronograph,

I'm watching you!

2006-08-29T14:10:00.000+05:30

With Google Analytics, you can pin down the exact city in the world that your blog/website is getting a hit from. Those of you who are interested in web-analytics should really see it for yourself.

The adjective

2006-07-24T15:33:00.000+05:30

Probably because of the sheer volume of it, all historical representations are bound to be selective. So while a high school history student reads about the Indian freedom struggle, she studies the most limited references to the revolutionary period of our struggle for freedom. She learns what Gandhi did, she does not learn what he did not do or what he could have done or if our history post M. K

Personality tests

2006-06-28T13:52:00.000+05:30

I'm sure from time to time all of have taken some kind of personality tests. It is 'most inescapable with the net being so full of them & the amount of unsolicited mails one possibly gets from these sites. They judge everything from your ability to turn an omelette to your expertise on leaving a peck on the neck. However, some are, if not exactly informative, generally accepted to be of value or

The paradox

2006-06-19T15:50:00.000+05:30

It is generally accepted that of the following three options, only two can be satisfied at a time:To do something wellTo do something fastTo do something cheapWe can combine the three & say that doing something well takes time or money, sometimes both. While money is the external market factor, taking time to achieve a goal & achieve it well, more often than not, translates into time taken to

Photography blog

2006-06-13T14:32:00.000+05:30

I now have a new blog. It is a collection of some of the photographs I have taken. While I like some of these, I'll try to focus on the technique & aspects of composing a photograph. I'm hoping that a written journal will help me be a better photographer.I have a link to this blog on the right sidebar, too.

Hampi

2006-06-12T15:41:00.000+05:30

I do not quite remember the source of this discussion, but I seem to remember somebody, probably an Indian film director, characterizing great art as something that manifests itself bodily upon its viewership/audience.While the merit of such a definition is rather open to debate, the sight of the Vitthala temple by the setting sun produced a veritable lump in my throat - a second time in as many

The Reservation Debate - the good part

2006-06-02T17:16:00.000+05:30

I'm sure all of us have been following the reservation debate, like it or not, for the TV channels are full of it. No doubt, we have our own opinion on it, probably a strong one at that. For most readers of this post, it is not very difficult to guess what that opinion is.In addition, the same debate has had many political ramifications. Manmohan Singh has a tough job balancing out demands of

The opinion

2006-02-22T18:17:00.000+05:30

The Danish Prime Minister had gone on record before the cartoon imbroglio stating that he could not tell newspapers what to print - or what not to. Then we have the cartoons appearing in Jyllands-Posten. Then France Soir publishes them too, & the paper's editor is sacked. Following this, Chirac comes to India & talks about achieving multipolarity in France & possibly Europe, in

The Travel

2006-02-01T11:02:00.000+05:30

I'm at my wit's end.It was an interesting journey, though not really a long one.

The balance

2006-01-10T20:30:00.000+05:30

Many consultants use a 2 by 2 matrix to understand, & hopefully solve, all that is wrong with the world. I quite like it too for thinking in two dimensions is about the depth of challenge I can handle. One such issue is whether our jobs are a means to our career goals.So you can make a 2 by 2, say by having priority on one axis & fulfillment on the other. Goals that are high on both priority &

Crunching numbers - I

2005-12-18T07:16:00.001+05:30

A little bit of mathematics:Two people define one communication relationship, three people define three, & four people define six & so on. Extrapolating the logic geometrically, if resources are represented as vertices of a polygon & communication relationships as sides & diagonals, then the total number of communication relationships can be calculated as:# communication relationships = n + {n*(n

Every once in a way

2005-12-12T03:28:00.000+05:30

The good part about being in India is that you toss your clothes into a basket & back they come washed & pressed. In the US, you can still toss your clothes into a basket but in this country, they just sit there looking dirty & crumpled. So you'll have to demean yourself by washing your own clothes. And while you're at it, you might as well be reading a book by the hotel's poolside, if listening

Diwali

2005-10-31T13:26:00.000+05:30

Maala pherat jug bhaya, phira na man ka pherKar ka manka chhod de, man ka manka pherQuestion, examine, do not be institutionalized. A slightly bird's eye view of this Kabir doha learnt decades back. And decades later, the same lessons put down in print by a New Yorker. Edward Said & Kabir. Eons apart, aren't they?Traditions of yore. Continuation for the sake of it. Unconditional acceptance of the

Us and them

2005-09-07T11:16:00.000+05:30

Among one of the things which is sometimes not addressed by managers while they are forming a team or when a project is starting off is the team or role specific bifurcation of goals which at times leads to the warping of the overall business goal. So the testing team does just testing, the development team does just development, the manager does not really care too much about the business domain

The city dwellers

2005-08-01T21:02:00.000+05:30

When I tell you that a Banyan tree is about my idea of wilderness, & a crow is about how much I care about ornithology, you can make out exactly how much of an city person I am. And Venkat, I do not think has made it too much beyond the borders of Chennai, to start with and Bangalore lately, for anything more than a weekend. For him, if a place does not sell Scotch you can safely call it

Nukes, America and India

2005-07-27T10:39:00.000+05:30

Published: July 24, 2005, The New York TimesWASHINGTON — President Bush in effect legitimized India's nuclear arsenal last week, offering to sell it technology that has long been forbidden to anyone who played outside the world's nuclear rules. So what will senior officials say on Tuesday morning when North Korea opens its long-delayed negotiations with the West? "I can just see it now," said one

Law and all that

2005-07-25T14:34:00.000+05:30

It seems to me that in a lot of cases we are fine with just being legitimate, & not looking to see if the legality ensured justice. A law is a broad guideline and needs to be put in the context of its application. A guideline cannot possibly engulf the total possibilities of its application and all the nuances of each possibility, & the comparative importance of each such nuance.To consider an

Sundry Saturday Thoughts

2005-06-04T12:33:00.000+05:30

There is this debate raging in the news channels about banning smoking on screen. A lot of film makers are being shown protesting against it. Mahesh Bhatt wants to show his grand mother smoking a beedi in a film on her, I believe its hypothetical and do not know if he actually meant it, and asks what right does anybody have to stop him from doing so. Shyam Benegal doubts if the thing is

Opportunity Cost

2005-05-31T12:59:00.000+05:30

Opportunity cost is defined as the cost of writing off the second best alternative. For example, if you have money enough to either afford a dinner or a visit to the movies, then choosing to dine entails the sacrifice of the pleasure of watching a movie. This pleasure, then, is the opportunity cost of choosing to dine over going to the cinema.Nothing, nothing at all, drives home the concept of

Python

2005-05-10T11:57:00.000+05:30

Begin post:I generated the Fibonacci series using Python this morning. Just two basic observations:I enjoy writing code, when I am not being paid for it.I haven't improved since first semester; its been seven years since. My basic logical faculties remain rather basic.Should you decide to leave a comment or two on this post, please begin with either:# or, /End post:

Aspects of a song

2005-04-30T01:47:00.000+05:30

The Indian national anthem is excruciating in its detail and correctness. It is blatantly geographic & the slight element of poetry lies, in my opinion, in putting such details to verse. Contrast this to the national song which, essentially, describes, from the poet's point of view, the Indian experience - never mind the constituents which the anthem places more stress on. So while Tagore

The one

2005-04-04T19:35:00.000+05:30

Just when the first dapples of doubt begin casting their ghastly shadows, just when you start wondering - chewing your lower lip with gusto while you are at it, for you like paying attention to such seemingly insignificant matters - if the hottest thing around is not you but the weather, the mists gather, the winds stir things up a bit & it rains.Do you need further proof?

Goa

2005-03-28T16:22:00.000+05:30

It was, in many ways, a typical Goan dinner.Candles & alcohol on a windy seashore. A confusion of lights on pretty faces. Irregular conversation & flashes of skin. And the Orion, perhaps having mixed drinks, a wee bit tilted and amorous on the horizon.And though this nothingness was beautiful, it was the next day - having walked about over a kilometer with luggage in the hot afternoon sun, hungry

Abstraction

2005-03-16T12:29:00.000+05:30

As a first, one's sense of self, or ego, is a mental projection of one's interpretation of one's past or history, primarily. To simplify, we aren't bothered with factors like prejudices & the like. As any other human faculty, the ego has its good and bad. Refining again - evaluating ego as bad on the whole - , it is easy enough to deduce that minus the memory of the past & its glorified

The insular

2005-03-13T18:14:00.000+05:30

Its about 1730. SA, having tried his luck at mastering fiscal policy earlier in the day, has been sleeping in a grotesque posture for the last forty five minutes. VH is in Madras. MG is doing his weekend supervision of the house he is building. And SC...well, he is, lets say, just away. And I was sitting in the balcony upon a very accomodating bean bag with my cup of Darjeeling second flush

People: SC

2005-01-24T14:19:00.000+05:30

Portrait of SCPhotographed by souvik. This, then, is the immutable SC. Lanky and caring enough to arouse suspicion, SC wields wizardry in the kitchen usually with a halka saa this or that. A sometime poet of might have beens, SC also paints in shades of grey, puts happiness to shame around his many children friends and reads fat books with gusto. In the four years that I have known him, he has

Are you game?

2005-01-17T14:38:00.000+05:30

About nine -ish each evening the bean bags are strategically positioned to save the telly and the sound boxes in the hall. The doors are pulled. A stool is summoned. Light at one end switched off. A plastic bat is harnessed and a tennis ball dug up, & a group of gentlemen in their late twenties, not to mention shorts, gear up for a quick game of cricket.I am sure that each one of us has some

Deductive thinking

2005-01-10T10:43:00.000+05:30

Everybody knows that we are the absolute tops. I mean we invented pizza, not to mention shoving the MIR space station right out there. We decomposed the DNA into selective & sequential base pairs, and fought apartheid with gusto. In principle, we are nice things enjoying our tea & prising institutions of virtue - things also of our own invention. We make movies that revolve around the resilience

This year

2004-12-29T18:57:00.000+05:30

The one strong aspect of this year, at a personal level, has been the near maniacal urge to learn more. It became increasingly important to demand more from myself, primarily in terms of variety than deep, razor sharp skills or perspectives about a few focus areas. I bought a Nikon. I traveled a lot. I liked Hindustaani Classical. I read close to twenty books. I gave better this year.I smoked

The message

2004-12-23T23:56:00.000+05:30

In whatsoever way men approach Me, even so do I bless them, for whatever the paths that men may take in worship, they come unto Me.- Chapter IV, Sholka 11 in the Bhagvad GeetaIn my opinion, there are two important aspects of our lives that this Shloka talks about:For one, being religious essentially means having faith in a Supreme reality, its relatively unimportant how this idea of the Supreme

Apposition

2004-12-20T16:45:00.000+05:30

Constricted francophile byways. The barren sea, the sodium winds of its womb, a dilapidated jetty holding on to hope. Walking within. Jaundiced bars of bonhomie - some canopied, some celestial. Apparitions, renegades, saints and the adolescent moon. Long shadows and dark skins.Pondicherry.

Linefeed

2004-12-15T17:52:00.000+05:30

Since our best dissertations are comma separated, and since all poems are porous, and because there is a twilight in between, and because our arms are meant to contain, and because there are seasons between seasons; so we need voids to experience continuity; space, therefore, to expand; distances, then, to close.Gaps, like friction, are a necessary evil.

Sighting by the Mississippi

2004-12-14T09:35:00.000+05:30

You'd probably want to go to Mardi Gras, if you were around in Conway, Arkansas in February. However, the lure of skin & intoxication was not quite as powerful as the dread of driving all the way to New Orleans and so, one fine weekend self and colleagues turned east on the I-40 & set sail for Memphis, Tennessee.For those of us used to shaking it on Bannerghatta road twice a day, driving on an

Taking stock

2004-12-10T13:34:00.000+05:30

There are 206 bones & 600 skeletal muscles in the typical human.I can feel almost all of them....ache by ache.

a disappearing poet of always

2004-12-07T13:16:00.000+05:30

here's to opening and upward, to leaf and to sapand to your (in my arms flowering so new)self whose eyes smell of the sound of rainand here's to silent certainly mountains; and toa disappearing poet of always, snowand to morning; and to morning's beautiful friendtwilight (and a first dream called ocean) andlet must or if be damned with whomever's afraiddown with ought with because with every

The key

2004-12-03T13:28:00.000+05:30

Man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much... the wheel, New York, wars, and so on, whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely the dolphins believed themselves to be more intelligent than man for precisely the same reasons.-Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyVery funny

The premium

2004-11-30T22:58:00.000+05:30

Despite their possible importance for questions of human evolution, detailed ethnographic accounts of food collectors were rare until the second half of the twentieth century. It was usually assumed that these people led harsh and precarious lives and had to work hard to survive. This picture was demolished by Marshall Sahlins in a famous essay called The Original Affluent Society. Sahlins showed

A royal repast

2004-11-29T09:33:00.000+05:30

Dr. Eom Hie Yong who runs the Soo Ra Sang, a Korean restaurant in 6th block Koramangala, is as affable a lady as you'll ever meet. And a rather straight business woman. And her general awarenes, particularly about Chennai - a city where she did her doctorate in Sanskrit -, leaves you gaping.The restaurant is decorated to give it a touch of Korea. The illumination is white & the walls are full of

Sunday

2004-11-29T09:27:00.000+05:30

Books, portraits & an ashtrayon a bed that disownsthis afternoon of mediocrity.

The choice

2004-11-23T13:45:00.000+05:30

When a number is expressed in scientific notation, the number of significant figures is the number of digits needed to express the number to within the uncertainty of measurement. Say, we have eight thousand and two hundred. Using scientific notation, this can be written as:a) 8.2 x 10^3 - This representation has two significant digits. This means the number can be anything between 8200 and 8299.

To die for - II

2004-11-20T09:58:00.000+05:30

A, around twenty years of age, is in the defense. He is not very educated but his family makes ends meet because of the grants and concessions that the Indian army gives them. B, educated, lean & well off, is in there as well. His passion for flying has just taken wings. C had to jump in too. It’s in his blood.And you could not keep D, E and F away. We do not know them well enough to know why. A

The catch

2004-11-17T21:03:00.000+05:30

There is a nice coconut tree in the lawn of the house I stay in. It’s tall and handsome, and if you look close enough you'll notice a slight curvature. Its striations of light and dark brown are almost perfectly symmetrical. It does not come in the way of the wires just because it has been there longer. I do not think it is particularly useful but it, with a little help from a banana plant

Blasphemies

2004-11-08T13:31:00.000+05:30

Music.Pinnacle of human magnificence. A million ramifications. Seven notes.The guitar of picturesque roads. The flutes of sirocco. The drums of Africa, the violins of our sorrow, the piano of our sacraments.The fish do not understand all this.And I do not think that they pray.Or, need to.