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Franz Kafka was a german writer who is known to have
highlighted,nay, brought to light, no no, epitomised,immortalised a new
language to bring about the irony of life. I am not talking about some
new script or a new grammar, but the language within the language, a
unique style which bears his imprint. I will not go on about Kafka ;
there is enough material spread in the internet about his life and
works.
I have read just one short story written by him-- The
Metamorphosis. And it has left a deep impact on my mind. Again I would
not review his short story here for goodness sake. You can find it in
the net. And it is highly recommended.
Well, that was the preface. Let me come to the real issue. I
wanted to describe the grim,dark,punitive,highly demanding IIT[Indian
Institute of Technology] system and was not getting the exact word to
describe it until 'Kafkaesque' flashed into my mind (hence the long
preface about Kafka). This is what the system is.And the professors?
Well, I have a perfect expression to describe them--"wont to schadenfreude". I will have to learn
German to describe my institute, since it seems that the model for my
institute was made keeping german language in view. Now, to all those
who do not know IIT- and as a result I am highly offended that you do
not know about my almamater, nay a brand, no no , an iconic brand, a
name to be reckoned with, a brand that produced such great stalwarts in
IT/VC world as Vinod Khosla[co-founder of Sun microsystem], Rajat
Gupta[former MD of McKinsey & Co. worldwide],Neeraj Kayal[Godel
Prize winner],Narendra Karmakar[who revolutionised computational LP],
RaghuramRajan[Chief Economist IMF], Nandan Nilekani[co-founder of Infosys
Technologies] and many many more, the list goes endless.
Since, they all come from the same institute[MY institute]
first guess would be that it is the institute which will have something
to contribute. Actually it does have something to contribute, but in a
more convoluted way than you can imagine. First thing-- even to enter
IIT you need to pass a gruelling and highly competitive test,aka
'survival of the fittest'.Hence when you enter here you are already
hardened up and by sheer effort[some call it talent] you have become
creme de la creme of the country. Two-- they put you under so much
pressure, so much pressure that you either fool yourself into a
delusion that you are having so much fun here(thats what most of the
IITians boast of to others) or just get into a spiral of metaphysical
pain(first option is better).And when you finally pass out( I do not
mean 'faint) you feel SO liberated and so confident after surviving
such oppressive concentration camp that you think that the world is
your oyester- you can survive anything, you can make anything work. And
more often than not it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Add to that
the load of expectation that you carry on your shoulders. You GOTTA do
something big.
So where was I? Actually nowhere, I was just rambling(as usual).
-
There art two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness.
- --Franz Kafka
PS: Actually I would say 'fear' and 'laziness' , and these are the key
reasons why humanity is filled with so many zeroes in history.
PS: The cartoons above are our friend Scott Adams singing praise of IIT[hee hee, Narcissus anyone?] in his famous comic strip Dilbert.
PS: Kafkaesque--Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger:
“Kafkaesque fantasies of the impassive interrogation, the false trial,
the confiscated passport... haunt his
innocence” (New Yorker).
PS: Schadenfreude-- Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
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| In keeping with the topic of the blog, let us start with
something less sensuous—Google. It is another thing that the name always
excites me[in a non sexual way]. Business mantra of Google is something I have
always admired. Others base market on pre-existing technology, Google bases
technology on market. In other words others ask the question:” Here is a
technology, where do I find a market for it?” Google asks: “Here can be seen a
potential market, what technology should we create to make it manifest?” Google
is the answer to the aggressive American style marketing[ironically Google is American too]. It has shown that big
business can be based on austere solid work without relying on glitter. Well,
may be in some distant future the scenario may change and Google might prove to
be yet another Microsoft,chasing and bullying competitors out of market; but as of now—Google is a force to reckon with in
terms of ethical business[now don't make funny faces at me and say ,"what about the China episode?"].
Now moving on to more interesting topic, sex. Google tries
on new product in its GoogleLabs. Here is a very interesting product[still in
making]—GoogleTrends. Here you can find out the relative frequency of searched
terms in Google. You can also see which region of the world the highest number
of searches are coming from. So here I did some interesting searches:
- Sex.
The largest number of searches coming for sex was from Pakistan with Egypt
following closely. In citywise record Chennai[India] comes first with New
Delhi[India] following second. Chennai as a city and Pakistan as a country
certainly are very much curious about sex and want to know all about it.
 - Then I
ran a comparative search trend between sex and love. Certainly search
trend for sex was higher than love in general. And boy! Sex in India far outstrips the love part.The only exception being
Phillipines where love ranked
higher. Seems Filipinos have got all the sex they need. Or are they that much more
romantic?
- Another
interesting search was of the bollywood star ShahRukh Khan. Surprisingly
he seems to be more popular in Morocco than in India. Even Pakistanis
seems to like Shahrukh more than Indians. Morocco tops the list for his
search- a bit of surprise for me. Another surprise was Peru, where he
seems to command much popularity just next to India.
 - After
this it was but natural to do a comparative popularity study of the three
Khans: Salman, Shahrukh and Amir Khan and not so khan:Hrithik Roshan[his
wife is a khan though, Suzanne Khan]. Evidently Salman Khan seems to top
the chart, Shahrukh coming second and Hrithik at the bottom of the pile.
Salman seems to be immensely popular in Nepal. The only country where
Shahrukh outstrips Salman is in Morocco[by a BIG margin].But on an
aggregate Shahrukh seems to be more popular than Salman.
I am sure there would be many more interesting comparisons
and search patterns for you to explore.
Now after the juicy matter let us dwell on some
technicalities. While comparing love and sex – love actually topped the search
than sex. But then I soon realized that it is because of Courtney Love and it
added to the number of searches for “Love”. Hence, I searched for love sans
Courtney. You can do this by searching for “love –courtney” , means love minus
Courtney, and results will come up sans “Courtney”. Another point is that the
above conclusion are based on many assumptions. Let us say, if a country does
not come up for the search item –“hair cut” it most certainly does not mean
that the people of that country don’t go for haircut. It may just be that the
general populace may not be booking their hair cutting appointment online or
may be they may just be hating google and not searching from it. So take this
result with a pinch of salt, but just that – a pinch, not more.
Enjoy and remain creative.
- I like ads.It's not that we don't like ads,we just don't like ads when they are out of place.
- --Bill Barnes, How to Blog for Money by Learning from Comics, SXSW 2006.
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We used to have picture comprehension exercises when we were
in school. There was a picture and we had to write a story around it. It was a
very creative exercise – though we didn’t do much of it. It did not occur to me
that it would be such a nice revisit to me when somehow[link to link to link..]
I landed up on a site maintained by a Pakistani guy who writes beautiful
picture stories. Well, it was a very long time ago when I visited his site[more
than a year?], hence I am sorry I don’t remember the site link. So I am acting
on my inspiration after one year. Big deal. Well there is another big deal—I am
writing two blogs in the same day—a record!!
Their story is the yardstick against which all the stories
of love would be measured. One is the sky and the other is the earth. It is
decreed that they would never meet. Sky sheds rains of tears and the earth
shakes violently. The only thing that united them was man. The sky and the
earth nurtured them like their own children. The earth like a mother nourished
them from her womb- with flora and fauna. Sky like a father protected them from
everything, which lurked outside to scorch them, to disintegrate their body.
Although they could never meet, they had found a source of
their happiness-mankind. For centuries they saw them grow and prosper. They
would shed blood, but they progressed. The sky and the earth stood amused at
the ingenuity of man. From the age of stones to the age of machines; they had
seen it all. How much they loved their adopted children! Without having a union
they could have this happiness. How much they thanked God for this!
Man- as he was by nature, forever ungrateful. It produced
gas and chemicals which tore down the protective cover which the sky gave them,
recklessly cut foliage and made the earth barren and ugly. Too late. The last
hope, the last happiness had turned against them. They remained pained,
embracing each other in their imaginary embrace—earth and sky. The grand love
story comes to a sad end in the embrace of the two lovers—crying for want of
happiness from the children of sky and earth.The sad poetry goes on in their midst, but they remain unmoved. God has mercy on them. It is said that on the full moon day, they are allowed to meet to share their common pain. And that day the seas swell with emotion, tides rise high, the moon shines with full light brimming with sentiments and night cries dark tears of gloom.
==========================================================
p/s: OK! I know is lousy, but atleast I tried lah!
Goodchild:
There must be. Your way, the way of intelligence is the way to
destruction. You made man make that choice, you made him violate the
natural law.
Sky:
No, human life has scorned both of us. The chaos to come is of man's own making. Neither you or I can help him now.
--From movie: Sky(1976)
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Mumbai train blast is an old story now. Much has been
written about it- postmortems and analysis. Here is a small snippet of views of
some mumbaites:
But the mood at the
Mumbai Stock Exchange is relaxed. You can tell the brokers in Dalal Street are
relieved when they hear that the attacks may have been organized by the
terrorist group Lashkar-e-Toiba, rather than by al-Qaida. Bombay's stock market
index Sensex didn't crash; most stock prices actually went up.
"If it turns out
to have been al-Qaida, then what the world will remember is that Osama bin
Laden's terrorist network is now active in India. Then international investors
will say: Bye, bye, India," fears Deepak Nair. "Al-Qaida would be the
worst thing that could happen to us." [Source: Der Spiegel;LINK]
It is so ironic that the
situation is so grim that people actually feel relieved that the attack is from
Lashkar instead of Al-Qaeda. This reminds me of another cynic[and sad] thing I
felt in the wake of Gujrat riots. How I missed those untargeted indiscriminate
killings like this train blast. Atleast they are not targeted and pointing at
you. It is strange and also scary that someone actually misses indiscriminate train blasts.They are like accidents, somehow even impersonal. Like
earthquakes or floods- they are indiscriminate. Events such as Gujrat massacres
or say Holocaust are so much pointing-at-you kind. It is somehow more scary.
That shifts focus on
another catastrophe happening in Palestine,and air raids on Lebanon by Israel Air Force[Force for good or bad?].Hezbollah captured
2 soldiers of Israel and desires to trade them for some women and
children in israel jails. Israel is bent on a collective punishment-
and the last time I checked[and that was a long time ago] 60 civilians
were dead by Israeli air raids. I know it is now an old and
threadbare topic. But it is happening so frequently and with such an impunity
that we tend to forget the sufferings and get desensitized to a humanitarian crisis
of such a large scale. It is some kind of mystery to me why USA so blatantly supports
not only the unjust occupation of Israel but on-the-face-square gross human
rights violations by Israel. It is not even subtle, it is open and obscene. Is it
because of the Israel lobby in USA, or what? It is still a big mystery to me
just as the question ‘where do stars get their light from’ was a mystery to me
when I was a child. I still don’t exactly know how do the stars shine, because
it involves some complex[super-complex infact] mathematical explanations which
are a little beyond me[who is a master degree holder in ‘Mathematics and
Computing’] – but atleast I have a clue as to why they shine at all. In case of
USA support to Israel, I am virtually clueless.
I hope someone would
provide me a comprehensive answer. I repeat-“comprehensive answer”[remember my
standards are very high?]. Still on a lookout.
Be safe and happy.
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die
fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the
capitals.
--Edward Abbey
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|  Well, I am supposed to pen some golden lines on my birthday. So here I
am.Well, no no, today is NOT my birthday - it was ages ago,and it comes every year. But, since I am a big fan of
Einstein and his theory of relativity, I like to stretch time a little.
And believe me, my golden words would be anything but profound. So
don't expect a lot.
Ok! Well, there is not much to pen anyway, except for the holiday I had under the sea. You can see me sitting on the long chair under the sea in the picture painted by William Blake whom I transported through time into the time of my holiday.Oh yes William Blake was also a very good painter. I didn't realise that unless I met him. And well we strolled under the sea and talked a lot- some pretty boring stuff. Why should I be the sole victim? So here I present to you some of the proufoundest philosophical-torture that I ever underwent, I give you an abridged edition of the topic of our discussion. Existentialism-- what is it? Before that--what is essence? Did
essence come first or the form? Essence is a concept, form is its
concretisation. If I say table-- first I have an abstract form of
'tableness' and only then I go ahead and build it. It may have
different designs, but 'conceptually' all are tables of different
designs.Hence, essence precedes the form.
But what about us? What about me? I have a concept about myself.
But did it exist before my form existed? My conception could not have
existed in my mind before I existed. So which came first? Form or
essence? In my case it is essentially form. It was first my existence ,
and then my essence. And that is the essence of existentialism.
p/s: Now ofcourse this was one head trip of mine to my fantasy land.Talking to myself. Now- don't tell me I didn't warn you before.
A story like mine should never be told.
For my world is as
forbidden as it is fragile.
Without its mysteries it cannot survive.
-(Memoirs of a Geisha)
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