Yet another Web 2.0 parody

(but a funny one)

Here's a hilarious video made by some amateur geeky musicians. At least one of them works at Google (though I don't know him)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fi4fzvQ6I-o

Even more geeky humour (this will ring depressingly true if you went to grad school in the US) :
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php

Mee Mazha

You know the problem with Wikipedia?

Google is equally bad. I started off looking at wedding dresses online (P.S.: I want to look like this... or maybe like this)

Four hours of "fascinated clicking" later, I end up on a site for Mee Mazha. Before we go there though, I have to confess my secret shame. I have read very little Marathi literature. Very very little. True, the little I have read is really good. Some stories by P.L. Deshpande. A gigantic two part epic about Shivaji. And, of course, Mrityunjaya - the revisionist story about Karna. My parents were very surprised I made it through that book... they didn't realise that Karna was my favourite mythological character.

But other than those, the only Marathi book I ever read was a little pocket book collection of 4 line poems by Chandrashekhar Gokhale - Mee Mazha. Turns out, it's quite a popular little book, several people quote it online. Which is a good thing for me, because I can effortlessly copy from their sites on to mine, for your reading pleasure.

We'll skip the romantic ones shall we? Happy romantic poems are either trite or cringe-inducingly mushy. Poems about the loss of the loved one are less awful, since the poet has been hit by a healthy dose of reality.

The kind of poetry I like is the cynical type with a tinge of pathos.

इथे वेडे असन्याचे
खूप फायदे आहेत
शहाण्यान साठी ज़ग्ण्याचे
काटेकोर कायदे आहेत

[In this world there are many advantages to being mad. The so-called sane ones need to abide by very strict rules]

पाण्याच वाग्णं
किती विसंगत
पोहोणार्याला बुडवून
प्रेताला ठेवत तरंगत

[Water behaves very inconsistently. It drowns a swimmer, but makes the corpse float]

God, these sound morbid in English! If Chandrashekhar Gokhale were in school, he'd be put under psychological supervision!

Alright, here's one that's more ironic than morbid.

घराभोवती कुंपण हवं
म्हणजे आप्ल जग ठरवता येतं
बाहेर बर्बटलेलं अस्लंतरी
आपल्या पुरतं सावर्ता येतं

[This one is going to be slaughtered in the translation...
We build a fence around our homes, to mark out our world. So we can ignore the messiness outside, and keep our corner tidy.]

No smart exit line for today's post. Just the dawning realisation that globalization can kill cultures. And what shame it would be if my mother tongue died out...

The coalition of the reluctant

The newest political casuality of Bush's war on terror... John Howard. The Australian PM, was defeated in what the BBC repeatedly referred to as a "landslide". In fact, last I heard, he's likely losing his own seat in Parliament. What a crushing humiliation for a sitting Prime Minister!!

And so it continues - Bush's poisonous association fells allies home and abroad. The House, the Senate, the United Kingdom, Australia... But no fear. Bush has promised that as long as Laura and Barney (his dog) are on his side, he's fine. No guilty conscience keeps him awake. He can sleep the blissful sleep of the empty-minded.

As for the rest of us, we can celebrate another small victory for sanity.

Pet Peeve #5678: "Values Voters"

"Values voters" - that was a term tossed around a lot during the 2004 elections, and now its back. All the Republican candidates are flip-flopping like crazy to woo the crucial value voters.

I have just one question - what the @#$!#$% hell are value voters? Since when are bashing gays and forcing women to have children considered "values"?? And what about the other values in life? Like you know, not torturing people, or invading countries for oil? How about not misleading a people into war, or not scaring them into giving up liberties?
I don't even buy the idea that religious people are the "value voters". I mean, doesn't being "Christian" mean having compassion for others? Caring for the poor and the needy? Judging not lest ye be judged?

All I can conclude is that the Republican party has the best PR machine ever. They've convinced the followers of Jesus they belong on the same team as the rich bloodsuckers. And they've convinced the mainstream media to adopt their ridiculous, dishonest characterization of the electorate.

Every age has its heroes

(Despite what it sounds like, this is not a post about Yuvraj or Dhoni!)

I caught a rerun of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (Comedy Central) tonight. An episode I'd missed last week. Usually the monologue's the best part, but tonight was different.
The interview was with Chris Matthews from Hardball (MSNBC?) Chris Matthews, who I've never watched, was promoting his new book - "Life's a campaign: What Politics Has Taught Me About Friendship, Rivalry, Reputation, and Success".

Now, I don't know about you - but when I saw that title, it didn't make me warm and fuzzy all over. "Life's a Campaign" is definitely not the moral lesson I want to pass down to my children. So I wasn't surprised when Jon started chaffing Chris about the title.

"It sounds like a recipe for sadness..."

But Chris disagreed vehemently, and it went downhill from there.

Ok, lets face it - went downhill for Chris, not for Jon and certainly not the audience. There was no shouting match, no fist fights, and both of them were laughing copiously throughout. But it was very uncomfortable laughter - Jon was laughing to take the edge off his remarks, while Chris was just laughing in disbelief. Throughout the interview, Jon didn't back off from his main position; he was polite but insistent. The book did not have a moral core. Political campaigns were a series of orchestrated, contrived, fake events. And telling people to treat life that way - to win by lying and pretending and attacking, was shallow and wrong. Chris, on the other hand, couldn't believe what was happening, he felt he'd been ambushed!

"You're trashing my book!"

"No, I'm trashing your philosophy of life"
...
"This is the worst book interview ever... Why don't you come on Hardball, two can play at this game!"

Jon's response? "I don't troll"

Does this remind you of anything? My introduction to Jon Stewart was the Crossfire interview he did a couple of years ago, where he told off Tucker Carlson. And I stumbled upon that while following Stephen Colbert's extremely ballsy act at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.
I could not get over either of those two videos! Here finally, finally, someone was talking sense. I wasn't crazy to hate network news, it wasn't weird when TV felt like an episode from Through the Looking Glass. There were others who felt the same way! And they were up there, saying it - very articulately and even funnily!
Now I'm a cynic, and I've often wondered about the motivation behind Jon's Crossfire interview. It paid off big time and clearly did wonders for his popularity. Was it yet another orchestrated display of insincere emotion? Was he just playing to his core audience? Maybe. Probably. But at the end of the day, I agreed with what he said and I liked the way he said it. What more can I ask for? A window into a stranger's soul?
Colbert's speech was far gutsier - roasting the President of your country when he's sitting five feet away? Performing before a live audience that you're alienating with every word? Of course, he must have hoped it would become a viral video sensation overnight.. But still, those must have been ten terrifying minutes.

Jon Stewart's show is very hit-and-miss in funniness. But his opinions are sound (or atleast, they agree with mine, which is essentially the same thing). Among all the talk shows I've seen, his - paradoxically, the comic one - stands out for its integrity, honesty and penetrating insight. (Remember, insight is not less penetrating because its expressed as a joke.) And it is pretty clear that a lot of young Americans agree with me. You see all these surveys about how the majority of youngsters are getting their news from Comedy Central these days. But you know what? I've watched Jon Stewart's five minute monologue, I've watched CNN's Headline news and I've watched Fox News' Weekend edition on Sundays. They all contain an equal amount of content. So why the hell not??

I know what you guys are thinking... Seriously, Mugdha? You're holding up a late night fake news comedy anchor as a hero? Well, you play with the cards you're dealt. I would much rather idolize a bright eyed young moral statesman or an idealistic resistance fighter. Even a brave athlete, who wins against all odds. But lets face it - all politicians have lost their wide eyed idealism before they get elected, all resistance fighters are corpulent dictators in the making, and most athletes are either doped up on steroids, knee deep in match fixing or just plain stupid.
I can see now why people got so excited about Gandhi - it is so rare to see an honest to goodness good man on the public stage. The last one I can think of is Nelson Mandela.
Maybe there will be another one in my lifetime.

Until then, I will have to settle for a 5'6" guy who does something very very rare. He comes on in front of a camera, and actually talks sense!

Jon Stewart, you're my hero!
(and Stephen Colbert, you too!)

Don't Tase Me, Bro!

The problem with real life is that it doesn't make for a very good story. Take the recent case of the young man who was tasered at the University of Florida.

If that were fiction, it would be a simple yet captivating story, with police brutality, uncaring politicians and lots of scope for moral outrage. A college student was asking a politician some tough questions. "They" (whoever they are) wanted to muzzle him, and had him dragged away. He bravely stood up to them, refused to go quietly and so, the police - in an unparalleled example of abuse of power - tasered him.

Of course, real life is not fiction. It doesn't tie up quite so neatly. First, it was apparent even from the video that the student was a borderline nutcase. He was suggesting that Kerry threw the 2004 elections because of some massive Skull & Bones (a Yale student club) conspiracy. The audience seemed clearly irritated with his comments and he wasn't really asking questions. It also seemed like he had made a scene to get to ask the question in the first place.

Ok, so he's a jerk, but we don't taser people for being annoying (though we should!)

Then it turned out that he asked a friend to videotape him going up. oh well, so he was videotaping the whole speech anyway, of course he wanted to videotape his own q&a session.

The police claimed he was just publicity hungry and started hamming for the cameras whenever the cameramen showed up. Hmm, have to say - he was yelling just a little too loudly. And made some fairly ridiculous remarks about being sent away to be killed by the government. On the other hand, he apparently believes the 2004 election was fixed by the Skull & Bones society - so maybe he was sincere when he feared for his life.

Still, all this injects that enemy of righteous moral outrage - the reasonable doubt. So I put aside my moral outrage for a few minutes and considered all sides. The conclusion? Maybe he was a publicity hungry kid. And maybe he's secretly thrilled with his overnight celebrity status - maybe he even anticipated it during that painful tasering moment.
Doesn't change a thing. He was being midly irritating, but perfectly orderly while asking his question. Kerry started replying to the question, so there was no need to drag him away. Of course he was shocked at being dragged away from the mike by four cops, anyone would have been. He shouldn't have tried to fight off the cops, but at no point did the situation get out of the cops control. Yet, they made a coldblooded, calculated decision that they needed to subdue him. Instead of taking him out of the room and letting him go, they wrestled him down, pinned him to the ground, and tased him into submission.

*That* was the ultimate problem - the police used force, not to stop him from harming anyone, but to subdue him. At no point did he do anything that could be remotely construed as threatening, to the audience, to the speaker or to the police. The police just decided to hurt him, before he could come up with the idea of hurting anyone.

It was a preemptive strike. Seems like there's a lot of that going around!

Princess Diana

The TV channels have been running shows about Princess Diana over the last couple of days. I guess that means its been ten years since she passed away.

I remember how terrible I felt about the way she died. Hounded by the media, they never left her alone, followed her everywhere, till she had no escape - except in death. That's what I thought. Of course, life is never that simple. Turns out, Diana wasn't above manipulating the media. Generated a lot of the media attention herself, and used it to draw public sympathy to herself.

Yup, that's life. As somebody once said - the truth is rarely pure and never simple. Have you heard of the British king who abdicated his throne for the woman he loved? Edward the VIII... Oh, when I first heard that, it sounded so incredibly romantic! Just like a fairy tale.
Except that Edward was no handsome young prince. He was a 40 year old man who had several affairs with married women. As for the woman he loved - she was on her second husband, had an unsavoury reputation and was already having an affair with Edward. And the whole thing was mostly stubbornness on Edward's part anyway. He wanted it both ways (the marriage and the throne), triggered a face off with his government, and lost. Oh, and did I mention - they were both big fans of Hitler!

Anyway, my point being - life is seldom what you expect. Princess Diana had a beautiful, magnificent wedding, watched live by millions of people. She went through a fifteen year marriage, outwardly living the perfect life. And all the while, her husband was in love with another woman. A woman he had never stopped loving. A woman he finally married after years of separation.

Hmm, now that sounds like a romance... Not the conventional story book kind, but at least it has a happy ending. Princess Diana had the fairy tale wedding, but I guess it was Camilla who got the fairy tale.

my test page

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Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows

(WARNING: SPOILERS! I discuss the plot details in excruciating detail - don't read if you don't want to know how it ends!)

The last Harry Potter has been out for two weeks now. Time to tell the world what I think of it!

I have to admit that my interest in the series has been waning these last few years. I thought the first 4 books were great, just what they ought to be. Intriguing plots, skillful storytelling, well fleshed out characters. Once we got to the fifth book, things slowed down. Let's admit it, the fifth and sixth books were really fillers, building up to the climactic seventh book. And they were of a lower quality. Rowling seemed to lose the self discipline to reign in her stories. The books ran to mammoth sizes; and in such large books, there are bound to be parts that sag. But there was a more fundamental flaw. I really believe Rowling did not have enough material for those books, and yet they needed to exist (7 years of Hogwarts). So she generated story lines that went nowhere, built up suspenseful plots that stretched believability and secrets that were completely predictable. Hence my loss of interest.

But the seventh book still held out hope. It would decide the fate of the Rowling legacy - it could justify the multi-year, multi-book build up. Or not.

Most people I have spoken to loved the book, they think it turned out to be everything they expected.

Me? I was ... disappointed.

Ok, firstly, it must be said that I finished the seventh book in a couple of days. It held my interest from start to finish and I completely enjoyed reading it. And yet, it was not good enough. If this book had come directly after the fourth book.. if it had started off with Dumbledore explaining horcruxes to Harry, and ended with Harry killing Voldemort; it would have been a very good book.

A very good children's book, like the first four.

Unfortunately, the series built itself up to be much more than that. By killing Sirius and Dumbledore, Rowling established a precedent of breathtaking unpredictability. With the horcruxes, she raised the tantalizing possibility that Harry may have to sacrifice his life to rid the world of Voldemort. Through throwaway clues in the last two books, she hinted at shocking secrets to be revealed. And after all that, the last couple of hundred pages of the seventh book turned out to be as predictable as any Famous Five or Secret Seven book I ever read. The big secret about Aunt Petunia is that she was jealous of her sister's magical ability? The big secret about Snape is that he was in love with Lucy?? The big twist at the end is that Harry doesn't die??? No, really? Shocking!

So, yes, that is my first complaint about the last book. It is too predictable. Harry is a horcrux (which everybody had guessed by now). Harry fights Voldemort, Harry kills Voldemort. Harry, Ginny, Ron and Hermione live happily ever after. Sure, a few characters die in the process - but the death of Lupin (though he is one of my favourites) is nothing after the dramatic collapse of Sirius. And while the twins were lovable characters, Fred's death only made me thankful that it wasn't Ron who died. Like I said, this ending would have been much more effective if we hadn't spent ten years building up to it. Of course, it also suffered from the Matrix syndrome. You remember, how after the first two Matrix movies, fans were speculating online what would happen in the third? Wild ideas, crazy theories floated by literally thousands of intensely creative minds? No mainstream movie could stand up against that level of expectation. After all the theories that went around, the real ending was just too - bland. And it's the same with the last Harry Potter. I mean, we knew Harry Potter was a horcrux (and if we had any kind of sense, we knew that Snape was a good guy). So where was the suspense? What was the twist?
An ending conceived fifteen years ago, an ending for an innocuous children's book, could not stand up to the expectations built up by several years of Pottermania. Well, but if nothing else, the epilogue could have presented a twist. Maybe Ron and Hermione not together after all? Maybe Luna as Hogwarts Headmistress - who knows? Just something that actually justified an epilogue - not just a four page version of "and they lived happily ever after".

But I'm not done with the ending yet. My second complaint is the double ending. The fake ending followed by the real one. I always hate stories like that - it reminds me of the worst kind of Hindi movies. The kind where the director couldn't decide which ending to go with, so he squashed them both in. In this book, it felt like Rowling almost decided to kill Harry. But couldn't go through with it, and so brought him back to life. With some lame hand wavy explanation about his mother's sacrifice protecting him. And yes, I do think it was lame - just from a story telling point of view, his mother's sacrifice has been done to death. Couldn't we get something new? And from a dramatic point of view, what good is an invincible hero? Why were we so vested in Harry, so scared for his life? Why did so many people sacrifice their lives to save him, if Voldemort could never kill him? It is a dramatic let-down of the greatest kind. And so, we get this remarkably unsatisfactory fake death, followed by a highly predictable duel in which Harry kills Voldemort.

And my third complaint about the book - the supernatural, spiritual, religious, mythical components injected into the story. All I can say is that it was too grail quest-y for my taste. Suddenly, an everyday book about magic, good and evil turned into an epic allegorical tale. I have no objection Holy Grail metaphors in general, but it is not the sort of thing you can just inject into an ongoing narrative. The Harry Potter saga has suddenly lurched into different modes at various times, in a clumsy manner. In the fourth book, a fairly light children's book turned into a darker, more sinister good versus evil epic. And in the seventh book, this epic now tries to take on several dimensions of meaning, far too many for its size. Hence we are inundated with metaphors, the hallows and horcruxes for good and evil. The quest for the hallows - which many have sought and but only the worthy will find. The death and resurrection of Harry, who chooses to return from Heaven, to save the world.

You cannot build a perfectly ordinary world (give or take a few wands) and suddenly turn it into a grand religious metaphor. Not without making the whole thing feel surreal. And slightly ridiculous. The moment when Harry jumps into the lake to retrieve the sword of Gryffindor made me cringe with embarrassment. Don't get me wrong. I do like grand mythological epics. I loved the Lord of the Rings. But it always knew what it wanted to be. It always was a cathedral fresco - not a miniature portrait that became ambitious. The seventh Harry Potter feels like the ending of the Lord of the Rings was tacked on to The Hobbit.

Oh well, I do sound harsh, don't I? At the end of the day it was an entertaining read. And the fastest selling book in recent times (which means the fastest selling book ever). Maybe it's ungracious of me to expect more.

Funny world!

So I was looking at detailed stats on how people find my blog. And a couple of interesting search queries popped up :)

One person came here looking for "kajol showing underwear". While another was looking for "arvind swamy divorce" (is arvind swamy getting a divorce???)
Check it out, my blog is the top search result for both these queries on Google :) [And I've probably strengthened its position with this post!] I'm guessing those two wanderers didn't stay on this page too long. Sorry to disappoint you guys!

Dreamwork's Fables

I saw "Over the Hedge" this weekend. A charming little animated comedy about a group of animal foragers trying to gather (i.e. steal) food in the concrete suburban jungle. They have barely pulled through a lean winter, but now come face to face with the greatest danger they have ever encountered - suburbia!
An adorable turtle is almost run over by a huge SUV. Driven by a soccer mom; a cell phone using, latte sipping soccer mom. His comrades are seduced by delicious, plentiful junk food - one bag of doritos, and they turn their nose up at the homey jungle fare (bark and nuts). But in the end they see this vast food paradise for the cold, sterile place it is... and return to the warmth and comfort of their woods.

Animated movies have come a long way since the Tom and Jerry cartoons of the Hanna Barbera era. They have beaten live action movies in cinematography, production values, music, comedy, even acting (ref. Gollum). And long ago stopped being children's movies. But not content with technical superiority, they now aim for moral superiority. Animated movies are the new fables.

Its a crazy, mixed up world. Our books explore dark, twisted worlds. Our movies glamorize violence and greed, our music videos cannot be watched in mixed company, our athletes take steroids. And our cartoons teach us morality. Talking cars learn to slow down and smell the roses. Ogres teach princesses that appearances are deceptive. Superheroes learn to be proud of their talents. Dancing penguins discover that being different is ok. And cats fall in love with skunks (well it is a cartoon, after all!)

I am happy with where animated movies have reached, I really am. But sometimes I long for the good ol' days, when a cartoon was just a cartoon, an escape hatch from reality. Not the custodian social values. Sure, its nice to see a story about a dancing penguin who becomes popular. But a story that promotes empathy for gays, while criticizing dogmatism, religious fundamentalism, hypocritical preachers, offshore oil drilling, pollution, global warming, and zoos, all in two hours? Please! Leave the clumsy, heavy handed symbolism to independent movies and first time novelists. I just want to see a mouse hit a cat with a saucepan.

गाना आए या ना आए ...

Tonight I came to an earth-shattering realization...
I can trace my personal timeline back with Hindi movie songs! You know, the way we often look back at important milestones in life, the first day of college, the graduation ceremony.. I can name the popular movie songs playing at all those milestones, the soundtrack of my life, if you will.
Bear with me, my friends, as I take a nostalgia soaked trip down memory lane.

प्यार हुआ, इक्रार हुआ है ... growing up, my parents were always playing golden oldies - from the time they were young. Ah, for romance, you can't beat black and white movies!

The eighties, while I was in school, were bad years for music. The movies were the kind spawned by Amitabh-mania. Movies that gave us such gems as मर्द तांगेवाला हूँ मैं।

पापा कहते हैं ... like a breath of fresh air across this desolate action packed landscape, came a charming college love story. A love story! It took the teenage crowd by storm, and us pre-teens too. We were still nostalgically singing that college graduation song when we graduated from college almost a decade later. Finally, melody was back in Hindi cinema.

And rhythm wasn't far behind.

एक दो तीन ... Madhuri swinging her hips to one of the most popular songs of that decade. A star was born, And we had great fun learning the lyrics, remembering what each day stood for, arguing about whether a particular line was from "his" song or "hers".

कबूतर जा जा जा ... Where QSQT led, MPK followed. I have to admit, I never was a fan of this movie. It was silly, the songs were marginal, the actors simpered along. But boy, you could not get away from that कबूतर for a long time.

But movie songs were finally coming into their own. Or maybe, I was coming into my own.

A Hindi movie generation encompasses the ages 13-21. That is when Indians watch the most movies, watch them with a hunger - for entertainment, fantasy and dreams. When we get older, we may still watch a lot of movies, but they are no longer magical. The teenage years, that's when movies grip us. Those are the times we forever remember as the "golden" years.. the days when movies were romantic, songs were melodious and actresses were beautiful. Ask any man my age, and he'll tell you - Aishwarya Rai is gorgeous, but she doesn't have the classiness or the earthy, sensuous appeal of Madhuri. And as for these girls nowadays, stick figures with no personality. Who can even tell them apart!

But this was my generation's music...
We sang खंबे जैसी खडी है on our last day in 10th standard. We listened to देखा है पहली बार from Saajan and thought it was so romantic (heck, we even thought Madhuri looked sophisticated in those hideous clothes).

When Aamir danced in slow motion to पहला नशा, I declared it the most beautiful song ever composed. The choreography was sheer magic - was it this movie that made Farah Khan a household name? How incredibly romantic it seemed, the hostel set in idyllic Dehradun. I was just a year away from going to college myself, and I indulged in some healthy fantasizing about how my college would be like the ones in this movie.

Ofcourse when I eventually got to that college... lets just say Pune is not Dehradun! But not to worry, fresh songs awaited, to take their place in my memories. The year I got to Pune, two very different songs blared from every music playing device in sight.
One was a truly unique song - unique in its lyrics, its melody, its choreography, in the fresh blooming beauty of its Nepali actress. एक लडकी को देखा skyrocketed to the top of the charts and refused to shift for anybody.
At about the same time, my neighbour began every single day with बाज़िगर, ए बाज़िगर blaring from his radio... And I never got sick of hearing it, as I dressed for college - in that temporary apartment with no furniture and so many memories.
Shah Rukh (aka the Khan, aka Boss) had come into our world. And throughout my college years, he was the sweetheart of all my friends. He was on a roll, he left an indelible mark with "kk..Kiran" and then got back to good guy mode with Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa - कब से करें हैं तेरा इंतज़ार...

Right from my first year in college, Shah Rukh had established himself as "King of the Indian teenager's heart". The "Queen's" position was occupied by Madhuri, but then along came a plump, dark skinned, ordinary looking girl with an unshapely nose - and deep, intense eyes. And they paired up in the defining movie of our generation..
Kajol standing in a field of flowers, a strumming guitar starts up, accompanied by her lover's voice... and then Lata's broken tuneless voice trembles - तुझे देखा तो ये जाना सनम ...
Kajol and Shah Rukh's undeniable chemistry, the lavish splendour of filthy rich NRI-dom, and gorgeous Punjabi weddings. Yes, DDLJ was the defining movie of my generation.

Not that there weren't other popular movies.. we were now entering the era of gross overexposure - every cable channel (of which there were now maybe 500) had their own song countdown shows, which provided endless advertisement for upcoming movies. These would usually contain just a single shot, a couple of lines from the song - teasers if you will. We were treated to countless repeats of the peanut hitting Madhuri's blue butt, before we saw the full version of दीदी तेरा देवर दीवाना ... Madhuri had put up a fight for her crown, HAHK was the highest grossing movie of all time.

But while the actors battled it out, there was a quiet revolution afoot in Hindi music... thanks to a Tamil movie named Roja, and a boy genius named AR Rahman. Chinna Chinna Aasai - and Hindi music would never be the same again. And just as Shah Rukh and Kajol were the actors of our generation, AR Rahman was our composer. Urmila swaying to याई रे याई रे and Arvind Swamy singing तू ही रे ... these are what got us through the tough slogging at college.

After college, I moved to Bangalore and the first movie I saw there was Dil to Pagal Hai. A good movie, with nice songs. But for the life of me, I can't explain the power they have over me. Any song from this movie hits me like long lost personal memory. To this day, listening to दिल तो पागल है or अरे रे अरे or even भोली सी सूरत fills my heart with aching nostalgia. Nostalgia for what... my first days of freedom and independence? The Bangalore roommates with whom I shared so much more than rooms and meals? Who knows.. But one line from any of these songs sends my mind flying to the little bungalow on Ulsoor Road, makes my heart heavy with longing.

Not that I heard no other good songs in Bangalore. Yet another candidate for the "best song I have ever heard" came along the very next year.. Shah Rukh (yes, him again) dancing on the roof of a train, the music echoing the train's repetitive motion - छैया छैया ... to this day I cannot listen to it without bursting out in song myself.
I was almost past the "movie generation" now, but there was room for another Shah Rukh, Kajol starrer - no prizes for guessing which - तुम पास आये, यूँ मुस्कुराये, - a whole new "generation" was in college now, and ready to fall in love with Shah Rukh and Kajol.
But she made the mistake of getting married. And left the stage open for another heroine to step up. I watched Aishwarya pick up this mantle with हम दिल दे चुके सनम .. the last major movie I watched before I left India.

Not that I have been unmoved by Hindi movies ever since, of course.

Hrithik Roshan made me sit up and take notice when he danced to एक पल का जीना in Kaho Na Pyaar Hai.

Aamir Khan went for quality cinema when he "came of age" jumping up and down and yelling कोई कहे, कहता रहे ...

Ajay Devgan showed that he could pick good movies too, and swept me up in his patriotic fervour with सरफरोशी की तमन्ना ...

And the evergreen Shah Rukh Khan brought me full circle when he reprised one of Amitabh's most famous roles, and danced to one of his most popular songs. After all, who can resist
खैके पान बनारस वाला, खुल जाये बंद अक्ल का ताला ...

Ever randomer thoughts..

What surprised you about the US when you first got here?

The first thing I remember is the restrooms.. Seriously. When I got off the plane and entered the airport bathroom I was shocked by the restroom stalls. Such an advanced society and they can't afford doors on the bathroom stalls? Or walls for that matter? Open at the top and open at the bottom, not to mention the generous cracks on either side of the door. It was several weeks before I was comfortable in those drafty, un-private, peekaboo loos. I really didn't understand it.. don't Americans put a much higher value on privacy and personal space than Indians? And yet they are fine with the exposed bathrooms.. and what about the fragile apartment buildings where one can hear every movement in the flat above? How is that acceptable? My first apartment, on the first day, the downstairs neighbours came up to complain about the noise I made *walking* in the apartment! I felt like I was living in a Bombay chawl.

I grew up watching American movies and American TV shows. So I thought I knew everything about the US. I wasn't expecting culture shock, I wasn't expecting to be dazzled by high tech gadgets, I wasn't expecting to be shocked by loose morals.
Well mostly it turned out exactly as I'd expected. There were the skyscrapers, the suit clad purposeful businessmen, the fancy appliances, and the loose morals. Pretty much as I'd expected.
But even so there were a few surprises. Like the tank tops. My first summer at my American university, I was genuinely puzzled. All the girls wore spaghetti strapped tops, you know, tops with very thin straps. So thin that most of the time the underlying bra strap showed through. But the surprising part was that no one attempted to hide them. They didn't opt for more discreet underwear, they deliberately flaunted the bra strap as a contrast to the spaghetti strap - often with a contrasting color. I honestly didn't get it - its not like there's something seductive about it, I could have understood that (ref. loose morals). But this was just - sloppy. Who walks around with their underwear showing??
Apparently, American college girls... and boys! Have you seen those boys with pants pulled half way down their hips, underwear showing? I wonder how many of those boys have accidents with that arrangement.. its gravity defying!

What else? Oh yes, the fat people! You see, the people in Hollywood movies and American sitcoms are all thin and beautiful. The people on the streets and in the malls - different story. I realised that I had never understood what fat really meant. These were not just protruding bellies or wide hips, these people were fat! limited mobility fat, circus freak fat! Buy an extra airplane ticket fat! But the funniest part - the fat people are usually the poor ones.. Really. The poor people eat at cheap fast food joints all their lives, and are too busy to get exercise. Exercise is the privilege of the rich, healthy diet food is the privilege of the rich. You know you're in a rich country when its the poor people who overeat!

Of course, the most common thing we hear about Westerners in India is their loose moral standards. All that part was fine enough, divorce rate at 50% (or whatever), lots of unwed mothers.. all as expected. The liberal society didn't surprise me at all - what caught me off guard is - how conservative America is. I've been here several years now, and I understand the nuances of religious and social politics - the culture war as its been called. But I had never in my life dreamed that in this day and age, any developed country would have public arguments about abortion and evolution.
Evolution?? Of course, I understand things better now. I understand the conflict between science and religion. This isn't a modern conflict, it's been raging since Darwin postulated his theory. It is based in fear, the fear of the unknown, the longing for safe, comfortable ideas.
I understand it, but I don't have to like it. And I am happy, that whatever Indians may do in the name of religion, they don't question science. Most Indians are far too pragmatic to let their religious beliefs get in the way of reality.

Oh well, here I go again - back to my pet topic: American politics. Time to wrap up this entry. Maybe I will go into the whole Hindu vs Christian, religion vs scince, spirituality vs faith thing next time. Certainly a topic close to my heart. Oh, and definitely one about Hillary's presidential bid. And maybe the media. Anyway, today's post was supposed to be about apolitical culture shock moments..
Suffice to say that you can never take any place for granted. The real America turned out to be a very different place from the Hollywood America.

The Meta Blog

I am constantly amazed by how much time I can spend online, browsing the blogs of perfect strangers. On Orkut, I once found a girl's blog. I had traversed through several links of friends' friends, and for some reason I stopped to read this girl's blog. She was Maharashtrian, and lived in the bay area. That's it. That's all I knew about her: a single Maharashtrian 20-something FOB in the bay area. I read her blog for something like 3 hours. I read about her roommates, her fiance, her colleagues, diwali celebrations and barbeque parties. It was a busy, ordinary life - a carbon copy of the one I live, all my friends live. And yet I was totally fascinated.

Blogging is a unique medium: at once intimate and exhibitionist. Some people use their blog as a soapbox, discoursing to an invisible audience, holding forth on science, technology, religion, what have you. Others use it to keep their friends updated, in lieu of writing mass emails. And there are those who use it to put their life on display: come look at me, I'll perform for you free!

I often thought about how much I would enjoy blogging. I'm sure everyone has, at one time or another. We all have a story to tell, or an opinion to express. But I held back for years... never knowing how to structure such a blog. Writing about one's life is hard. For one, I am too private a person to discuss my feelings before everybody I know. Besides, you cannot discuss events without discussing people, and it is hard to candidly discuss the people in your life. No, actually, it is scarily easy, but that is called gossip :) And I have to admit, a blog about my daily life would quickly become, how should I put this.. boring. I have trouble enough coming up with things to tell my parents in our weekly phone call. And these are people who are interested in what I had for dinner yesterday. Much more interesting to talk about my opinions on life, the universe and everything. So I've been writing about important, interesting topics: politics, spirituality, women in engineering, and ofcourse, my phone. It's fun, and I enjoy it.

The fact that some people have actually read these entries is unnerving, though. It is nice in a way, (because there is an exhibitionist inside each of us). On the other hand it makes me very self conscious. The knowledge that somebody may read an entry invariably affects how it is written. Sort of like Heisenberg's principle. Or, if you prefer, like Phoebe from Friends.. you know the episode where she sings on the street outside the coffee shop to piss off the coffee shop people? She sings some lame song and makes a dollar fifty. But then she sings Smelly Cat and only makes 20 cents. So she's torn between fame and artistic integrity :)

Wonder how long I'll keep up this blogging thing. It is a shame that most good ideas come to me when I'm in no position to blog about them. On the other hand, the few times that ideas strike at the right time, blogging sure beats talking to myself!

The truth about cats and dogs

Have you ever asked yourself the tough questions? The uncomfortable ones. The kind that get Larry Summers into trouble? You know Larry Summers - the Harvard president who suggested that men are smarter than women. Ok, not smarter, but better at maths and science. While women are better at, you know, colour coordinating outfits.

It is a strange, strange world.

All those years growing up, I knew I lived in a bubble. Inside the bubble, boys and girls were treated almost the same. Parents encouraged their daughters to excel in school and seek exciting careers. Girls walked around in jeans and skirts, free to say and do what they pleased. Every now and then we bumped up against the walls of that bubble. Our maids told of being beaten up by their drunk husbands. Our professors thought we lacked motivation. A school teacher once told my class that working women took jobs away from men who were the sole breadwinners for their family. In engineering college, only 30% of the students were girls. Well, of course, what do you expect in an underdeveloped country like India. Then as we went from one year to the next, it became clear the boys were out performing the girls. It's not that all the girls were flunking, it's that none of the top performers were girls. There were a lot of socialization issues there, girls hung out and talked about clothes and movies. Boys hung out with their seniors, discussed computers, kept updated with the latest technology news. Indian girls grew up in such an inherently sexist society, they were always at a major disadvantage. The stereotypes drilled into their minds by years of subconscious learning could not be easily erased. They were afraid to think for themselves, and if there's one field where a gal needs to think for herself, its software.

In the infinite wisdom of my youth, I knew exactly where the problem lay. It was our backward society, and we had to cast off the shackles. Ofcourse, in a place like the US, things would be different. Feminism had come to America atleast a generation earlier.

Yes, of all the surprises I found in the US, this was the most - surprising. All through my graduate course, I met 0 American women - count them, 0. Of course, there were very few Americans in the first place. There were lots of Indians, but only a handful of Indian women among the engineers. Among the far east Asian students, the proportions were much closer, a sizeable number of women. Apart from that, there was one European and one Jamaican. No Americans. I didn't even notice it at first.. was too caught up in my own life. But as time went by, I noticed it more and more. TV shows that implicitly associated women with shopping and cooking and dressing up (and being emotionally unstable). Movies that painted scientists as absent minded, socially handicapped, geeky men who never got any action. In fact, I'm trying to think of a female character who's smart technically and doesn't look at intelligence as uncool - so far, I've come up with Lisa Simpson.

What is most disturbing is that in this post feminist world, women have made a lot of progress. They are powerful politicians, chairmen and CEOs. But not scientists, not engineers. I remember Newsweek did a cover story about women leaders one time. I searched through their list for technical women leaders... in vain. The CEO of HP came up the sales/marketing/finance ladder. Meg Whitman of eBay is not a geek either. Later, somebody made a list online about top 10 geek women - apparently they were so starved for candidates, they added Paris Hilton; and Lisa Simpson!

I'm rambling, I know. I'll try to pull this post into some kind of structure...
A quick recap - I start out in life with wide eyed innocence, and naive confidence. Women are every bit as good as men. Then questions start to arise - why are so many of the girls in my college dumb? They do well when it comes to learning things by heart, but are terrible when it comes to applying their mind. Possible reasons come to mind - years of social conditioning, afraid to think for themselves,
uninterested in pursuing the field they've chosen. But then, what about a place where women have had a generation to get over these hurdles. A place where women are assertive, show great creative skills, great leadership skills - and yet fail to produce great technical skills? Is it social conditioning again - is it just a different kind of conditioning? Instead of being taught to be submissive and unobtrusive, American women are being conditioned to be materialistic, beautiful and air headed.
A strange kind of equality, which allows shows like "Beauty and the Geek" to be produced.

Hmm, so much for the structure, I'm rambling again. But I do have a point - are women "differently abled" than men? Does that extra limb in the second X have maths inhibiting genes? Given a wide choice of career fields - most women here have chosen non-technical fields. Overwhelmingly so. Is this social conditioning or intrinsic ability? Nature or nurture?

It's an uncomfortable question. On the one hand, it goes against everything I have ever believed, to think that women just may not be made for scientific thinking. On the other hand, scientific thinking demands that we think objectively - objectively speaking this is always a possibility.

Undoubtedly, something keeps women away from maths and science. Until we isolate the maths gene, we can only argue about nature versus nurture. In the meantime, we have to fumble our way through. Let's not take the weight of our sex on our shoulders, lets think of ourselves as individuals and see what we can do. Let history make the judgment.
I look at all the intelligent women I do know - the ones who are passionate about what they do, and have had successful technical careers. Its not many, but it is sufficient.

After all, even if it is true that men are smarter than women - even if there is only one freak-of-nature woman (in the entire world) who is truly smart; wouldn't it be a terrible injustice to that one woman to claim that all women are dumb?

After all, a zillion truth cases cannot prove a theorem, but one false case can disprove it.

nothing to see here

Lazy Sunday Afernoon

I have to admit, I don't have any topic to blog about today. No rant about incompetent officials, no spiritual discussions about karma..
(hmm, this is really weird.. I have a new version of firefox, which comes with an inline spell checker. The spell checker doesn't recognize "blog" but it's ok with "karma". Maybe a spell checker for a web browser should be more internet aware?)
Anyway, so like I was saying - I have nothing to say. I'm here to celebrate a weekend spent away from work. It's a lovely spring day outside, warm and sunny (sorry to the folks who're still shoveling snow!) And I have no deadlines to worry about, nowhere to go, no work to complete. I have cleaned the kitchen, watered the plants, done my laundry, paid my bills and thus am feeling greatly virtuous. Only one regret - I have been robbed of a full hour of my life, thanks to daylight savings..

Oh, and I'm a prisoner in my home - this one is a funny story, just don't tell it to my parents!
So Thursday evening I was pulling out of our office garage when another driver started gesticulating wildly at me. I had no idea what he was complaining about - I wasn't blocking his way, he was blocking mine. But it turns out, he was telling me that my headlights were off. So I pulled into the next parking lot and took a look. Sure thing, they wouldn't turn on. It is strange that both headlamps would blow off at the same time, so there's probably something wrong in the controls. Fortunately, the high beam came on and I was able to drive home. Of course, Friday I forgot all about this and had to drive home on high beam again. And it turns out that the VW service centers are closed over the weekend. Great, this means I can't drive after dark at all this weekend! Anyway, yesterday morning a friend came over to look at the headlights - I wanted a second opinion in case it was something trivial. He was examining the headlights and asked me for the drivers manual. I pulled it out of the glove compartment and caught sight of my insurance card - my insurance payment was due March 5th... I had been driving around without insurance for the last week (they can probably jail you for this!) So I went back into my apartment and frantically called Farmer's. They gladly took my payment over the phone, so hopefully that's taken care of. But when I was putting the insurance card back, I found - you guessed it - my registration card. Now that one had expired a month ago!
So for those of you keeping score, if a cop had stopped me Friday night - I would have been driving (a) without headlights, (b) with high beam on the freeway, (c) in an unregistered car and (d) without insurance. I guess it's a good thing nobody stopped me on Friday. Turns out my lights blowing out was probably for the best. You know, like in that story where the king cut his finger and got angry with his minister.

Hence my self imposed house arrest today. And first thing tomorrow I get to go to the DMV. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of visiting a DMV in the bay area, its about as much fun as a trip to the Pune RTO.

So this weekend has been a bit of a bummer, but not a total loss. I did go out yesterday (I didn't drive) - and checked out a Toyota Prius. I am itching to buy a new car, and living in tree hugging Northern California means that I feel obliged to buy a hybrid. It's not a bad car; it has all kinds of cool gizmos like a navigation system, rear view camera and cool graphics for energy generation, consumption, battery charge etc. And bluetooth, and a smart key system, which means the key communicates with the car by wireless and doesn't actually have to be inserted anywhere. (It has been six years since I last went car shopping, and it feels like there's a whole new generation of technology! And when I first came here, I was impressed by remote keys and garage door openers) And all this at about three times the fuel efficiency of my current car! Ok looking, the shape feels a little weird at first but grows on you.

And so there is my weekend in a nutshell - oh and I had "desi" pizza which was alright, and watched Man of the Year which was just too random for my taste.

No pithy comment to end the blog.. Oh yeah, Firefox spell check is bad. It also doesn't like bluetooth, inline, hmm and ok. It doesn't approve of firefox or internet with lower case first letters. And it insists on spell checking 3 letter acronyms, so it also flags DMV and RTO. tsk tsk.

The human angle

You know how Hollywood is a sucker for the "human angle"? How they love to tell the story of an epic historical event through the way it affects the life of a regular person?

Well, if they want to tell the Iraq story, they can use this boy's life. It is one of the most harrowing things I have read in my life... the blog begins at the end of 2003 sometime, started by a 16 year old schoolboy who barely speaks English. The first year's entries are almost entirely about soccer. And computer games. When the body does mention the political situation, he is the epitome of the grateful Iraqi - you know, the kind who would welcome American soldiers with garlands. He talks excitedly about Bush visiting Iraq.

A couple of years later, he talks excitedly about being old enough to vote, finally! His entries are full of optimism, hope, national pride. Thrilled to have a free country, excited about the anticipated progress, enthusiastic about new leaders.

Then an anxious note creeps into his blogs.. he notices that Shiite militias are attacking Sunnis like him. He is afraid. But then the Sunnis react by trying to keep Sunni students out of universities. He is exasperated at the idiocy of his own people. And then the situation spirals into madness. After that, his entries morph into one long desperate scream for help - for rescue from the nightmare that is his daily life. Shells exploding outside his door, neighbours being struck dead by randomly aimed mortars. Always existing in the shadow of death. He is applying for a student visa abroad, and is not too proud to ask total strangers for money over the internet. No more pride in his country, no more desire to make his mark in the new society.
Now he is just looking to get out as soon as he can.

In three short years, from soccer in school to shells outside his house, Nabil has come a long way. In December 2005, his entry said "Just wanna say that I am still alive (lol) ..."
If he wrote that today, I don't think there would be a "lol" at the end of it.

Ridiculouser and ridiculouser

(yes I know, lousy title!)

Sometimes I don't know what the people "in charge" are smoking! Boston went into panic mode Wednesday because police got calls about terrorist bombs in subways, bridges, tunnels etc. After half the city was shut down for several hours, turns out the "bombs" were just a marketing campaign for a TV show. A marketing campaign, btw, which has run in other parts of the country for several weeks without generating any panic.
Of course, politicians and policemen tried to save face by blustering about "insensitivity" and "post 9/11 world" and so on. Fine. But then, they went and arrested the guys who put up the signs. And I do mean the guys who physically put up the signs. What a logical and completely appropriate way to make up for their previous overreaction! In this bizzaro world, the CEO of Turner was forced to apologize for the whole situation.
And everybody from the man on the street to editorials in newspapers are talking about how this was a completely rational reaction in this "post 9/11 atmosphere" to strange electronic devices on billboards "with wires sticking out of them". Yeah, these were clearly dangerous bombs -

Article

Yes, do check out the picture on that article. If you have time, read the article too - and weep. Weep that on this poverty stricken, starving planet, (somebody's) valuable money is being spent on this ridiculous prosecution. Two men are being put through all this torment by little-minded people trying to save face.

Turning from Boston to Norwich, Connecticut.. where a teacher was found guilty of "risk of injury to a minor" and "impairing the morals of a child". Heinous crimes these, felonies - with a possible maximum of 40 yrs jail time. What do you suppose the teacher was doing to these children and their morals? The imagination reels..
Shall I tell you what she is accused of?

Pop-ups!
Yes, ladies and gentlemen - the computer in the classroom went into an endless loop of pornographic pop-ups. The "computer illiterate" panic-stricken teacher ran to the teachers room to fetch help. But too late - atleast 10 kids had seen these images and are now scarred for life! The prosecution claims the teacher surfed porn sites in the classroom. The defence claims spyware infected the computer and caused the pop-ups. The prosecution says the defence is lying. Except, of course, the defence has experts who diagnosed the computer and found that it did in fact have spyware. OTOH, the prosecution has experts who claim the computer logs show she did visit those websites. Of course, I am not a "computer expert" by any stretch of the imagination, but there is just the teensiest possibility that these logs track HTTP requests made, and not mouse click positions on web pages. But of course, the judge would know more about such stuff. She allowed the prosecution's claims, but wouldn't let the defence experts say that there was spyware on the computer. (No idea of the reason behind this)

So is it fair to say the jury may have got a slightly unbalanced view of the case? I don't blame the jury for convicting actually - they do what they do. I blame the prosecution. Prosecutors have to protect the law - they don't have to prosecute someone unless they actually think the person is guilty. If defence attorneys refused to defend guilty people, they would be out of a job pretty quick. But if prosecutors refused to prosecute innocent people, they would still have plenty of cases to try.

Why, oh why, then, do they go after these obviously innocent people? Just because uninformed people in the community are "outraged" by half baked stories they hear - Why do the prosecutors have to go along? Why do they participate in what can only be described as hysteria driven modern day lynching?

Funny thing - just as I asked myself that question, I remembered a story from my high school English textbook. It was something about a man shooting an elephant in Burma. The villagers thought the elephant was mad, and they expected this man to shoot it. The man could see that the elephant wasn't mad - but what was he going to do? There was a crowd of people gathered to watch him, he had the rifle raised to his shoulder, the elephant in his sights. Was he just going to put the rifle down and walk away? He could, but that would look so.... foolish.

So he shoots a healthy elephant in cold blood, rather than risk looking foolish before a crowd.

Wow, I'm glad I got the moral of that story, even if it did take me 15 years :)

The way of all flesh

A few months ago, I was shopping around for a new phone. So far, I've been a cheapskate - I just get whichever phone comes free with the cellular service. Which means that 2 months ago, my phone didn't even have a camera (*gasp*). But this time around, I had to shell out cold cash - and I figured this one had to last me a couple of years at least. So I shopped around a little, asked around a little. A colleague completely sold me on the Nokia e61. A nice big screen of amazing clarity, qwerty keyboard, full-functionality browser, tons of mobile apps to download, tons of symbian apps to run (even ssh). And wifi. Actual wifi. Though not in the standard US version - nooo. Cingular took the wifi out before marketing the phone to Americans (hmm, I wonder why).

And so my decision was made. I would get the e61, which meant I would have to order it online. It wasn't easy. This is apparently a very popular phone, and most places were on backorder. After waiting more than a month for Amazon to fulfill my order, I finally bought it from eBay. Now, I've never bought anything from eBay before, so I was on tenterhooks till the box arrived on my doorstep.

Finally! It was here, my beautiful, fabulous new phone!


I was finally up to date with the digital world. No longer was I the cheapskate with the low-tech phone. My phone was right up there with the trendiest and the coolest. It had a beautiful screen, an awesome browser, lots of cool apps, and ofcourse - wifi. I spent the next couple of weeks boring the heck out of everyone I met. How it had a qwerty keyboard, how you could ssh from it, how I had beaten the system (i.e. Cingular) by ordering the wifi version. [My father wasn't impressed - no camera? he said disdainfully] One time, I insisted on doing a side-by-side size comparison of the e61 and the Blackberry (*blush*). I even spent eighty dollars on a completely unnecessary bluetooth headset, just so I could use my phone's bluetooth feature.

You know what happened last week? Everyone was talking about it - everyone was looking for it - everyone was drooling over it. Steve Jobs announced Apple's entry into the cell phone market with ...




This is why I never go for "the latest gadget" thing - the latest gadget is obsolete by the time you unwrap the packaging. *sigh*
And you know the unkindest cut of all? Cingular's going to sell the iPhone *with* wifi.

Karmic Energy

(Is it normal to be writing blog posts at 1:30 am after a 12 hour workday? Probably. *sigh*)

One of my pet peeves is the English use of the word karma - you know, as in "chaarma". And even worse, "chaarmic". It's one of those overused, grossly misunderstood, new-agey words tossed around as a poor substitute for actual philosophy.

But yet, I personally find Karma yoga, as described in the Geeta, fascinating. And somehow very... satisfying. Let me elaborate..

For a long time the concept of Nishkaam Karma seemed totally unrealistic to me. Basically, it says - "You have the right to act, but not to the fruits of your actions". Do your duty, but without consideration for the result.
Now firstly, how would one generate the passion for action if one is not to think of the reward? But more importantly, if we take the result out of the equation, what is the *motivation* for the action in the first place? What makes the action right or wrong if not the result?
For e.g., If I see a drowning child, I ask myself - what should I do? Should I try to rescue the kid or should I continue walking? The "fruit" of my action is the child surviving. Now if that is irrelevant, then what difference does it make what I do? Why is jumping into the water right and walking away wrong?
Inescapable logic, right? This whole nishkaam karma thing is garbage - dump it! Oh, the blissful arrogance of being 21 :)

And then, years later, it finally got through my thick head. It took a few knocks of fate, and some in-depth reading.. But, one morning as I was brushing my hair, it fell in place - the whole thing makes perfect sense! In fact, its the most logical thing in the world.
The only thing you control in this world is *your own actions*. You can influence the fruits of your action, but in the end you cannot control them. So, you concentrate on what is in your power, and don't worry about the part that isn't in your power. It's not some ghastly self-sacrificing philosophy, it's the most empowering thing in the world. See, I could set a goal - say, getting a promotion. I could work my ass off, take great risks, pull late nights, jump hoops. At the end of a year, my boss decides that I shouldn't get a promotion - and what happens? My goal is not met, I am a failure, I am miserable. On the other hand, what if I say to myself - I am a software engineer, therefore my duty is to be the best software engineer I possibly can?
I still work my ass off, take great risks, all the same stuff. At the end of a year, I ask myself - was this the best I could be? Now, my goal is entirely in my own hands, my happiness is in my hands, my success is measured completely by things under my control. And as a nice side bonus, I probably get promoted too.

By giving up the fruits of your actions, you are not giving up happiness. Quite the contrary, you are saying that you and you alone control your happiness. You are taking charge of your destiny. Why waste time and energy worrying, hoping, envying, craving something that is beyond your control? And it is beyond your control, everything in this world is - other than your own self, your own actions. Take all that energy you spend dwelling on the outcome, and channel it into your effort. Ironically, it will only make the outcome easier to achieve.

It is an awesome philosophy. It is a strategy for success and a moral compass, all at the same time. After all, suppose you'd bad mouthed your rival colleague to get the promotion? And you still didn't get it? You would be stuck with the same sucky job, your colleague would hate you, and you wouldn't be able to sleep nights. The way I look at it is, you never know for sure what result your choices will lead to. So, just choose the path that lets you live with yourself, and leave the rest to fate.

It's a scary thing to do - we are not wired for this sort of thinking. Self interest, self preservation even, gets in the way. But try it sometime. Instead of asking - will taking on this task make me look good; ask - will taking this task be the right thing to do? When you can do it, its incredibly freeing. Funnily enough, once you get past the terrible fear, the second question is easier to answer than the first. And the pleasure of doing a good deed, and doing it well, can generate a passion all its own.

And as a bonus, you'll always have a clear conscience. After all, the greater cosmic question is not "Can I rescue the child?" The question is "Did I stand by and do nothing while a child was drowning?"

(P.S: Yes, I know, I've skipped over key issues, made some leaps of logic, and conveniently ignored some of my own questions. Whatever! Its almost 3 am, and this is a blog post, not a book!)

Lynching Despots:

Yes, I know, it's been more than a week since Saddam Hussein was executed. But the controversy surrounding his death is very much alive. I wasn't following the news too closely, so I'm not sure when the execution of a criminal got spun into sectarian lynching. But it baffles the heck out of me. It's one thing for the execution to generate controversy in the middle east. In that pressure cooker, it is inevitable that every action, every gesture gets interpreted and reinterpreted for ulterior motives.

But I can't understand the global outrage. Could the execution have been handled better? Probably. But guys, pick your battles. Talking heads all across America are complaining about the unseemly haste with which the sentence was carried out.. Would you prefer that his case languish through years of appeals? Did the Iraqi prime minister hurry the execution through? He probably did - so would you, if you had a ticking time bomb like a condemned Saddam sitting in your jail. This is a lawless country where insurgents set off roadside bombs in the capital daily. A determined escape attempt could very likely have succeeded. Isn't it possible the prime minister was just trying to get the whole thing over with? Then there's the "unseemly" behaviour of the guards. Apparently they were taunting him - Shocking! A barbarous tyrant was being led out to receive his just deserts, and the people he oppressed and tortured were taunting him? I thought they'd be handing out flowers!
The guards also shouted Moqtada Al Sadr's name several times. This did bother me, actually - it bothered me enough that I looked up more information on Moqtada online. (Yes, I'm ashamed of having to do that, but I needed to separate facts from impressions). Apparently, his party is actually part of the coalition government. And according to a US poll, some 67% of Iraqis support him to some degree. Hardly seems surprising then, that among the guards were some who admired him enough to shout his name. After all, his father was a highly respected cleric, murdered by Saddam's thugs.

NPR had a piece about the "incident" today. The expert commentator was, of all things, an art critic. He talked about how the grainy, unprofessional nature of the cell phone film gave the execution an air of seedy underhandedness. Well maybe it did, but considering the film was unauthorized, you can hardly blame the Iraqi government for its nature. He also complained that the setting was undignified - a dark, dingy, crowded little basement. He would have preferred a more open, lighted area (the town square perhaps?). It would have given the picture better - I quote - production values. What universe do these people inhabit? Are they so completely clueless about the incredibly harsh, terrible conditions in the country they have torn apart? I imagine secrecy, expediency and safety played a bigger hand in choosing the location than production values. Sorry about that guys.

Now stop shedding tears over poor Saddam, and turn to more important matters like fixing that whole damned mess!

(Postscript: The art critic also referred to the cell phone video as a "snuff film". And I rewound the video three times to verify that Saddam was praying when he died - ewww, I'm a snuff film buf!)

New Years and Resolutions

The last time I made New Year's resolutions was four years ago. I have happily lost the list I wrote up that time, suffice to say it was such a spectacular failure that I swore off making resolutions ever since.
Well, for some reason, I was feeling very positive and ambitious, and so I decided to go for it again this year. The best part of resolutions is making them, and I have always loved planning and making lists. Though, I belong to the "This weekend I am going to fix my life" school of resolution makers, so the hardest part was restricting myself to something reasonable.
Fortunately, I have a new plan to deal with this habit of mine. It is the rule of 3: I would make no more than 3 resolutions for the new year. I spent a pleasant few hours trying to prune my laundry list of resolutions. Finally, I cheated a little by framing "goals" instead of "resolutions". Actually, it isn't a bad concept - I realized that several of my resolutions were related, and were action items aimed at fulfilling various life goals - career advancement, losing weight (never seen that on a new years resolution list before!) etc. So instead of making resolutions about individual actions, I set myself 3 very concrete, measurable goals - i.e. "lose X pounds" instead of "go to the gym everyday".
Now of course, you can't attain goals without a strategy. So I made out an action plan, consisting of 3 lifestyle changes per goal. You know,
"lose 50 pounds" by
a) going to gym everyday
b) eating celery for all meals
c) running a marathon
(No, that's just a deliberately exaggerated example for illustration purposes - I would never be so unrealistic, not since 2003!)

So I have 3 concrete goals for this year, and a strategy of 3 lifestyle changes each to achieve these goals. Excellent! Now for the bad news - I have effectively managed to slip a list of 9 resolutions past my stern rule of 3. Therefore, I had to prioritize (and stagger). I picked one lifestyle change from each category, and that's the one I will concentrate on first. Good, we're now down to 3 resolutions again, but only for the first couple of months. Then, I'll have to maintain these 3 resolutions and additionally, pick up the next 3. Sounds easy, right? What could go wrong? This is why I never managed to keep a New Year's resolution - no planning, no strategy. All it required was a few hours of careful thinking. Onward & upward!

Then, a couple of things happened over the weekend. First, I tried my hand at snowboarding in Tahoe - and discovered that I sucked. I sucked so bad, I sobbed over my snowboard and swore never to go near the snow again. But fortunately, there was a friend around who didn't think I should give up "so easily". So I was cajoled out on to the slopes again. I strapped on the board, and bounced my behind on the Sierras several more times. I didn't exactly conquer the mountain, but we called it a draw. Then, later in the evening, I discovered that I had made a mistake at work. Just how big a mistake, I'll find out when I go in to work next week. But in the best case, it is still a pretty bad mistake. I spent all evening feeling like there was a huge weight in my abdomen. My can-do, conquer the world spirit was shattered into a million pieces. Where on earth did I get off thinking I had it in me to do everything I was planning for next year?
And then it came home to me - the failure of past well meant resolutions was not caused by lack of planning. The reasons were far more pernicious - getting easily discouraged, and losing self confidence when things went wrong.

So my friends, if you wish to keep your resolutions (and I know you've made them) - here's my advice... Don't let temporary setbacks, the caprices of fate or even your own stupidity, hold you back. Get up, learn from your mistakes and try again. It ain't over till it's over. Oh, and find yourself a friend who won't let you give up on yourself.

Goodbye, and a happy new year to all. What are my resolutions for this year, you ask? Well, I think its like with birthday wishes - if you tell, they won't come true.