The country everyone loves to hate....

When I was in school i used to be really really impressed by the US. First man on moon, weapons, fighters ..wow. This country was just amazing. The kind of confidence Americans exuded on the world stage was sumthing that struck an impressionable teenager like me. Millions liking me in India look up to this great country as of the nearest thing to utopia.
It was the great concepts of America..freedom of Individual , Enterprise, Equality, ..and yeah Hollywood and Baywatch ..which made me think i was born in the wrong country. And most of my peers also thought on the same lines ...! It was always me comparing the pot holed roads of my street with the manicured SuperHighways of US,the great universities lawns vis a vis the derelict main building of my college ..etc etc. Everyones living dream was to migrate to US .

Even now one will find a vast majority waiting for the golden ride...

Anyway as I grew up my priorities and my idea of America changed. It had nuthing to do with Economics. It had more to do with being exposed to the truth about this great country. I dont deny that what this country has achieved is stupendous..but I wudnt want India to be America. Not in any way....Not ever. Why?

The main reason is that after visiting and seeing 11 countries in my woefully miserable life ..i have realised that there are much stronger things in India which will take thousand of years for america to develop.
1. The fabric of Liberty that America is based on is actually not liberty ..its scant regard or concern for a fellow being. We in India are too much into each others life...so much so that a country which prioritises individual freedom becomes a messiah in our eyes ..! But if we look closer we will realise .. its not respect for freedsom ..more so its a total lack of concern.

2. We assume that Americans are total Rationalists . They believe in Religion Of Science. Nuthing could be farther than truth. The Victory of George Bush(II) was highly attributed to severe Right Wing Politics(our Viswa Hindu Parisad ,equivalent). When u hear MrBush say "god ordered me to send troops to Iraq" ..u realise that we are better off here. Just Imagine Mr Manmohan Singh sayin" Wahe guru ne bola hai ki Reserve Banks ke rates bada do"...

3. America is a comparatively safer place. Yes there are amazing health care facilities and the police are well paid and trained.But to assume that its a safe place is a fallacy assumed by ppl who have never been there. Try strolling alone for a golgappa or a chat ..after 7 o clock in the evening and for all u kno u might be killed for ur watch or ur sneaker.

4. There is equality for all. Well thats again a myth. Blacks are severely discriminated against and sometimes even basic medical facilities are not made available in name of color of skin.

5. Although most business principles of management and trade have come from America, the ethics behind them are highly questionable. Its a quick quick way without any thought . Ask any management graduate ...and u will realise the hollow foundations on which these business practice stands..

6. The social values and culture of America is non-existant. Ppl are good but in absence of a structure the society cant sustain change or mould itself..

there are many a small points...too numerous to mention here that have undermined my desire to make India , America...!Put in a nutshell I now have the impression of America as a dazzlingly packaged , low standard cake , sold at an exorbitant Price. When I have the option of the healthier version of it made at home (albeit shabbily Packaged) ..I wud go for it.

There are lots we shuld learn from America. But i feel all the knowledge we want is already with us. America can teach us very little. Unless we want to be the most hated country in the world....

Mithya- A Review

I have seen Rajat Kapoor on the NDTV show..Lounge. I was actually surprised to hear that he was a director and that too of "Bheja Fry" ..one of my all time favs.Recently his film "Mithya" was launched and I saw it on my lappie .

I feel that any review of the film ..any film ..shud not mention the storyline. Its irrelevent to the fact wat the movie does to u. Any great movie should be like an eagle flying and soaring in ur conciousness ..and u tryin to hold on to its legs in order to get a glimpse of the higher sky its flying to. Mithya does manage to take off but I found it letting me go at crucial junctures..!

The story is a dark take on "Don"...! Both hero and heroine die at the end. Thats it.

What actually stands out in the film is the desperation of a low time actor brought out by Ranvir. one can see the fleeting shadows of a man clutching at the last straw of hope amidst total rejection. Ther is no glory and joy but the struggle to just live on in hope of some thing bigger while not denying the gutter of the prsesnt is at the same time uplifting and depressing.

The other fact about this particular movie is that it does not shy away from darkness. There is no romanticism in the shadows of this film ..no chiaroscuro effect emerging from the shadows. One can almost smell the rotten fungus in the shadows of this film. And the film uses them to create an effect of a vile and foreboding ..and real. There were a few scenes which i thought would end in a witty dialogs ... but ended in the brains being blown out with an automatic gun.Bravo, Rajat...

Its no doubt a brave film ...But somewhere i found the film faltering in trying to be something its not. There were very few scenes like that but they were there. There is a scene where the relicated Don, "Raje"( Ranvir as the replaced don) plays out the "failed underpaid actor" bit to a builder...or the "to be or not to be.." scene with his wife. Not required. Its like trying to put in a bit of Soda in a glass of wine.

Neha Dhupia, my my that girl can act . No, really..her big butt not withstanding the lady CAN SERIOUSLY ACT...! Ms Neha if u are reading this ..please stop shaking that booty and do some serious films...U dont have a figure to be a bimbette but u are a boon for serious acting.

A very mature and understated performance by her ..Esp when I had seen Rama Rama Kya hai ye drama ...a day before. She compliments and enhances Ranvir in every possible way.

Cant say much abt Naseeruddin Shah, Vinay or Saurabh Shukla..They are excellent as usual.

I wish that "Mithya " having taken me on such an awesome "eagle Ride" had not dropped me at few places..What the hell..even with those drops the View was awesome. Highly recommended for sum intelligent viewing.

"Saas Bahu " and "romentick" ppl pls do the movie a favor ..Stay away!!

"Its just a remote"

I guess i can be teased a bit abt being a mama's boy(not exactly but never mind)...when i write this but if u think i care a damn abt that think again.

When ur mom comes to stay with u one thing u can count on is that ..u may be 40 but u will get shouted on for not getting up early morning or being too much on computer..as if the time between ur school and IIT never happened. Time is relative ..especially for a mom. Anyway that being the case ..
Few days ago my mom lost the TV remote. Not exactly lost ..but i suspect she dropped it in the dustbin by mistake and the garbage bag obviously got thrown out. The remote is pretty expensive and its definitely a thing that cant be done without..! But wat i was surprised is that my mom was genuinely sorry to the point of being apologetic about it. She was like really really sad that she put me in such a financial crunch....! She wud clean the house thoroughly every day for four consecutive days .. thorough means rite from the kitchen shelves to the bedroom corners...to find the remote. ..and at the end of the day when i wud come back she wud say that till now she did not find the remote.I cud see that remorse on her face writ large..
Its just a shitty remote . Things get lost ..not an issue. I was just thinking of a time when i was arnd 6 and i broke my dad's AM transistor(i was always destined to be an engineer). I was shit scared . I ran to my mom and told her
"maa..i broke the radio" ...

"Wat radio?"...

"u kno the black one ..the one dad hears the news on?"


"i was opening the screws ..it dropped from my hands and broke..i dont think it can be repaired"

I remember this incident because i was genuinely scared ..i had tears swellin up in my eyes...and to tell u the truth i was truly repentent..i shudnt have touched it.

My mom hugged me then and said with a smile..

" arrey ..nuthin has happened ..its just a radio..atleast u did not break naa..ha ha "

I think today i think will say the same thing to maa..

"its just a remote maa...atleast u did not get lost ..he he "

Emotional Inertia

I never thought I will be able to write on such a vague topic as this but then I surprise myself(more often than not ..unpleasantly). As weird thoughts go I was just thinking that how much difference does death or separation of a very close companion/guardian makes to us. ... I mean separation as in permanent without any means of reconciliation.
I think at the time of separation(also in death) it shatters the world frame we live in. We find it hard to accept the simple fact that he/she is out of our lives and maybe wat we know as "life" will change forever for the worse. Be it love , infatuation or simple emotional attachment we find ourselves without an anchor.
But ... rather than being just foolhardy abt it have we given ourselves sum thought as to why such a thing happens...
For one i think it such happens because we like inertia. Emotional Inertia. We take comfort in knowing that we "know" this guy. We are secure that this "guy"(or gal) is sumtone who will not be heavy on our emotional resources. We built layers and layers of thoughts and actions in the sheer inertia of not moving out of our comfort zone. And the person also because of his/her inertia builds this shell. When this shell breaks ...its the breaking that discomforts us. We hate movement and its this loss of onertia of rest that unsettles us.
Secondly..have we ever given ourselves a thought ..how life changes for us when that person so special in our life moves away(again ..it cud be death or otherwise) . In 90% of cases that i have had a chance to see from close quarters..Life doesnt change. After the initial shock we settle back into the fabric of life as if nothing has happened. Drop a steel ball on a stretched rubber sheet. You will understand wat I am talkin about. A small perturbation..it doesnt break the rubber sheet and the ball also settles down to its own weight..again Emotional inertia rules .
Thirdly ..have we ever carefully observed how much of a difference our sorrow makes to the world. I wud say minimal. Not that our friends are cold and heartless creatures..but frankly it doesnt matter. Look at is this way. ... Suppose a family member close to u passes away. Apart from a few sympathetic words how does that shake up your best friends' life. It doesn't. Tomorrow his routine wont change ..he will get up ..brush , shave , have his breakfast and will perhaps give a few milliseconds to think abt ur tragedy..but life wont change a wee bit for him while u may be emotionally be damaged. Its not only him..Life wont change for any one else..be it ur uncle..aunt ..ur chowkidaar or the milkman. Again its not that they are too cold but its just that their Emotional Inertia is too heavy to feel a neighbor's perturbation.
Emotional Inertia cant be described as good bad or ugly..Its just there. We cant control it. But yes admitting it will make life a wee bit easier

Old Story - The freinds Part IV

This story is in continuance with the previous parts..scroll down and u will get the parts..

Suddenly he felt a stop in the pushing of the raft...He looked down and saw that the turtles had left .. the raft was swinging back into the sea stream..!
And that was bad news...!!!
At the mercy of the gulf stream , the raft will get further out into the sea and most probably will get sucked into one of the vortex that accompany such streams... Aiyratna could only grasp helplessly at the raft and look with sheer desperstion to danu. Danu had almost but given up and his eyes reflected a detachment Aiyratna found both irritating and dead ...
Too much desperation can lead to a state where the mind goes blank and one sees only wat is infront of him ..The same was happening to him as the only thing he could think of were the swirling waters of the sea current and the almost transluscent green algae as it swam effortlessly with the flow...
The water was surprisingly clear upto a few meters and he could make out some commotion ahead of the raft..A kind of turbulence which was small enough not to panic but big enough not to ignore. As he peered down for a closer look .. One of the turtles darted past him in water comin from the front and missing his nose by a few inches..
hmm..so they are still around...but hey wait wats coming up behind him..!!? From far it looked a pack of water insects but Aiyratna was a fisherman and he knew them when he saw them..It was a small school of Sardines moving straight towards his raft...the school being kept in formation by his two turtles cutting circles above and below them..
Its sometime difficult to hear unspoken gestures ad sometimes its too obvious to miss. ... Aiyratna did not waste any time in whipping the cloth out and dipping it into the sea ...His first catch was twenty small sardines ...
Too small a catch but will do...
As sson he had emptied the pack on his raft floor ...he saw the school approachin for the second time ..again marshalled by his freinds...
This went on till the raft floor was full and there was no space.. As soon as the last ones were caught ...Aiyratna sat up and told Danu to prepare the catch..
Within minutes the turtles were back at their stations and Aiyratna felt the reassuring push of the raft out of the stream.. As one by one the sardines were gutted , blood drunk and flesh eaten. Aiyratna and Danu tied up the remaining two thirds in the cloth for the next day and for first time in three days both of them lay down on the raft ....with a full stomach...and night fell on them as the raft drifted out of the main gulf stream..
To be ontinued

Stochastic Dude theory

Now that Dude Calculus has been elaborated by Pradip. I think there is a controversy on weather Dude is a continous or a stochastic Process. I strongly think Dudes are stochastic although in certain distributions like "fine Arts colleges" , "Humanities" like environment they can be taken as crowded enough to be continuous. However in rest of the situations they are stochastic variables.

P(Dude) >= zero

However like PSO(Particle swarm theory) we can assign weights and velocities to dudes) thus

P(Dude)= [ p1 p2 p3 X v1 v2 v3.....]

p1 = Position in society
p2= Educational Qualification
p3= Maturity

while v can be the velocity of movement like

v1= Rate of displacement(ie bike or car)
v2= Want of upward mobility
v3= Desire to spend cash

Having characterised these dudes by such PSO variables , their movements and positions can be tracked stochastically and analysis will most probably show the optimum spacetime position of the dudes.

Having thus gained a thorough knowledge of their actions we can iterate their future behaviour by matrix transformations consisting of elements of society variables like

[ s1 s2.....]

Where s1 , s2 are social conditions like no of pretty chicks in vicinity, lack of studies workloads ..etc

Say wat , Pradip?

DudeCalculus by Yemula Pradip

My dear freind Pradip has sent us this original paper on Dude Calculus... We will shortly be doin an analysis on basic Dude Graph theory and Markov Chains also

following the same spirit of dude matics let us now have a brief session on "dude calculus"

d(dude)/dt >= 0
(once a dude, remains a dude or becomes a bigger dude)


d(k*dude)/dt >= k*d(dude)/dt
('k' dudes hanging out together would result in greater dudeness in time then when the dudes are saperated)


d2(dude)/dt2 >= 0
the rate at which the dude becomes a bigger dude is also positive.


d(dude)/d(money) >= 0
it cost's money for the dude to become bigger dude. which they become anyways.



d(dude)/d(girl) = girls^(her intelligence)
The more intelligent the girl is the more dude the dude becomes... (which in turn costs him money)


dude has no additive inverse!
dude + (-dude) = 2*dude


Therefore,
d(dude1 + or - dude2)/d(same girl) = 2*girls^(her intelligence)
(an intelligent girl takes advantage of both the dudes, irrespective of whether the dudes are friends or enemies)


integral(dude).dt = area covered by the dude roaming behind girls


integral(integral(dude)).dt.d(girl) = area covered by the dude roaming around the same girl


dude + bike = bigger dude
therefore

integral(d(dude+bike)/d(girls)).d(girl) = girl + shopping + multiplex + restaurants

a dude with bike roaming around girls, ends up as a paying driver


dude + mobile = bigger dude

basically
dude + anything = bigger dude

actually
dude +/- anything = bigger dude

wait that proves my original axiom that
d(dude)/dt >= 0


- thanks and regards,
"intelligent dude"

New Branch of mathematics- DudeMatics

I am sure most of u have come across "dudes" who try too hard to be wat they are not and vice versa...

But strangely these "dudes" have sum properties that are so similar that one can put them into a set which is a subset of "fake" individuals. Mathematically

P(dudes)

now dudes group/set follows a few axioms

a. Dudes are Dudes( which is self evident)

b. Dudes + Dude = Dude

c. Dude+ intelligent = Dude+ Frustrated Intelligent(this is a transformation matrix)

Dude Dude [ intelligent intelligent] = [ DI DI]

Dude Dude X

Here the dude is the transformation matrix and not the intelligent, In lay man terms dudes transform the intelligent guys and never vice versa.

d. Dudes always spew gibberish.

Ie. [dude]X ( any signal)= Total White noise

This is sumthing like the infinite series property.

Infinity X any finite Qnty = infinity

Hence Dude is Human equivalent of infinity

e. Dudes don’t always understand each other

Ie. Dude1 --à Dude2 doesn’t necessarily mean

Dude 2--à Dude 1

Which basically means that Dudes are not commutative

f. Dudes deny their culture even while staying inside it

Own Culture Set

Dude Set

g. Dudes do not have any weight hence the total mean of Dudes is zero

ie. Sum (Dudes) = 0

Using these basic Axioms we can build a new branch of mathematics and use it to study “dudes” . Any scientific papers on the subject are welcome on this blog

Forgotten Memories

While watching "the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" ..I was thinking (maybe due to the very plot of the film) ..That there are indeed memories in all of us that were the sweetest when they happened but are painful when recollected. There are memories which were true when they happened and their beauty lay in the moment they happened ..but when u look upon them they only disgust u at the fact that taken in some other time and context they lose their lustre and become dirty and artificial.
We all have such memories ..and mind u not all of them are romantic.
These are memories that make it difficult for u to break off ..to cut urself and decide on a future which u want free of past prejudices. Memories make it difficult ..but these memories are the easiest to overcome because of their very nature. They may have been pleasant but lookin at hindsight they become a part of a larger fakeness . Their whole artificiality aids in their ease of being forgotten.
When they replay they are seen thru todays lenses and they lose their genuineness. Gradually and surely the mind accepts them as not truth but illusions that spun u around when they happened. But ultimately were illusions which you had so innocently believed.
We all hide such memories in our bosoms . The longer we live such memories become lesser and lesser..as we become more and more cynical.
We become confidant that being rooted in ugly reality is better than taking flight in falsified atmosphere. We become confidant that the higher we fly , the harder we fall. We lose faith in magic and become mundane. We give up our magic at the altar of these memories. We fail to feel the pain sorrow and happiness of these forgotten memories.
We transform these beautiful things into ugly truth and these also transform us in a way we dont want to admit. A part of us ..be it minute is swallowed and digested by these memories . The more these memories the more of us they eat and rot. We of course allow this because the part they eat is a part that we do not love . Its a part that was loved and cherished once but now has become old and dying . Its a part that gave u ecstasy once ..now an useless piece of splinter in your eyes.
The beauty only lay in our admittance that they were the loveliest things that happened to us when they had happened and although they have wrinkled grown ugly and become rotten and stinking ..they were beautiful once in time and space.
Our forgotten memories!

Just thinking aloud

Somedays ..like today..I was thinking of why so many ppl try to find the meaning of life. Why ppl try to find what is ethical non ethical..right or wrong. My thought was triggered off by a discussion with a freind i had yeaterday....but it got me on a tangential anyway.

Why do we think and think of so many things ..judging our own decissions ...putting someone on a pedestal ..pulling them down. Making relationships ,breaking many others. Going about something as if we were damn right about the whole thing and then realising what fools we have made of ourselves. Creating delusions ,living in them..! Making ppl love us hate us ..ignore us.

This actually doesnt make sense...Atleast to me. I sometimes see ourselves as ants scurrying around "doing " something always. "doing " doing doing...! Yes we are doers but to what final result. I am not goin to get senti on the "meaning of life bit" but ..then..
Forget it . Maybe I am just tired

Of Science and art

I have had many a discussions where I have been told by hard nosed engineers ...with a sneer how everything is "scientific" deterministic and well...lets say "definable". If one appreciates the fragrance of a rose or jasmine these "scientific" guys wud give a patronising look and say " buddy those are just chemicals" ....Or maybe if u descriobe the beauty of rustle of leaves on a summer after noon they would get into the differential equations of wind and laminar flow....and maybe joke.."wat a day dreamer" or may be " he he we are not into this art fart thingy"
I feel pretty strongly that these are people who neither know science nor know art. I strongly agree with David Knuths statement:
"Science is what we can tell a computer to do....everything else is an art"
and David Knuth should know ..he is the father of algorithmic computing.
To enjoy art , ignorance is not an absolute necessity. One can still enjoy the wind on his face knowing full well the laminar theory of fluid flow. This knowledge does not interfere with the sheer beauty of the moment. Knowing the composition of the Organic paints does not interfere with the beauty of Rafaels Oils...Knowing the geo-Composition of a rock does not interfere with the beauty of a sculptor..
To enjoy art is to elevate urself into a plane where things are more beautifull..symmetrical and complex ...To clsoe eyes to art in name of science is an insult to both