Tayzwi

So much to learn, ponder about, and do....

2010-11-17T16:25:00.000-08:00

And so much time to do it.

Scott Aaronson's "rant" on naysayers of complexity theory got me pondering.

Over the last few months, my general scientific pondering has suffered at the hands of real work, startup life routine, system building, and a general state of being occupied by the trite. It's fascinating, but not inspiring. The days are exciting, but not ecstatic. The nights are cathartic, but not liberating.

I miss my aimless pondering days.

I was missing this life then.

So it goes.

Porn and Masturbation

2010-02-28T11:56:00.000-08:00

For a while now, I have observed this disturbing trend of using the words Porn and Masturbation (P&M) as suffixes in hyphen-separated-phrases to convey that the prefix is inferior, waste of time, pathetic, something to aspire against, etc. Cases in question: intellectual-masturbation, achievement-porn, etc.

I find two insulting underlying reasoning schools at work were. One: Just because something is _perceivably_ akin to P&M, it sucks. Two: P&M implicitly suck.

Well, that's it.

Genius

2009-06-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

The Feynman Method

Richard Feynman was fond of giving the following advice on how to be a genius. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”

Dev D

2009-02-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

Color, Pathos, Neon, Blood, Helplessness, Orgasmic, Irredeemability, Red, Anguish, Nods, Honesty, As-is, Succumbing, Delirium, Insecurity, Psychedelia, Skin, Sigh, Bitter-as-coffee, Physical catharsis, Uncontrollable-lust, Random, Wanton, Appreciation-hierarchy, Feeling, Denim, Masochism, Yellow, Numb, Lonely, Cold, Vivid, Very vivid color.

I am happy.

Kanyadaan

2008-06-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Do not influence others. Especially subliminally. Especially with ideals which you have internalized after prolong profound pondering. That's what Nath Devlalikar does. He makes his life an experiment in ideology, and lives to live the tragic consequences. Walking out of Prithvi Theater, I felt an almost biological urge to wail out the anguish I felt for the fallen hero.

Vijay Tendulkar's Kanyadaan is the most hard-hitting play I have seen. Tragedy and irony have never come together so well. The motif of victim morphing to victimizer is brought in a brilliant fractal like way. Son-in-law torturing the daughter to victimize the 'other' society. Daughter comparing her ideological upbringing to a kind of crippling that she can never revert out of. The former acknowledged, the latter acted out brilliantly.

Adding to all the motifs and superb acting - is the strikingly powerful overarching theme itself. The inability to live a life the one preaches, and live it to completion, at whatever cost -- that's what hit me. I remain hit.

And so.....don't preach.

There Will Be Blood

2008-03-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

If you have been waiting for a film for a while, watching it alone in a theater is probably most satisfying. For various reasons, but the most important being - I don't have to justify why the film is worth someone else's time. It would have been a very tough sell in There Will Be Blood's case.

I am not sure if it was Raja Sen's review on Rediff that tipped it for me, or the bulging veins on Daniel Day-Lewis's forehead in some best actor award nomination preview - I had to watch this one.

What's my verdict? I am not sure. Morally corrupt love has always perturbed me. Oxymoron?

There are moments in this film, or vignettes, if you will, that showcase this very corrupt kind of love that elevate it above your usual saga. Love for what you stand for, what goes through your veins, on one side - and on the other side, you have love for another person whom you have internalized as your extension.

ps: I walked out of the theater feeling somewhat like this.

The Long Tail of Blogging

2008-01-19T09:48:00.000-08:00

Here's what Nabokov said at the end of his literature-appreciation course:

"In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys -- literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author -- the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter."

Is this true? When I heard about Lolita, or more so, its purported story's theme, I didn't know that the book was about something else. But I know now. What if I didn't? Or couldn't? Would I have dismissed the book as a cheap attempt at erotica that's not even there? Maybe.

The point is - When I write, I think of a certain type of reader who will get my allusions, and more importantly, whose appreciation hierarchy matches mine. The hope is to create something whose unravelling would thrill a reader - give that shiver of artistic satisfaction. I must also admit that, in retrospect, my posts from the past have given me more cringes than shivers.

Is that you? Not being able to believe that you could've written this? You should read some of the other stuff you've written.

The Master of Chess

2007-12-19T03:21:00.000-08:00

"A Zugzwang!" - exclaimed Grandpa.

"So it seems" mused the other old man. He laid his over-sized black-framed glasses down on the floor and turned to me with a grandfatherly smile. "Your Grandpa will be stuck for a while." He turned towards the old chess board again and gazed at it for a while before smiling back at me. "Do you know what a Zugzwang is?"

I nodded my ignorance. His grin became wider, and those stained yellow teeth, by themselves, were grinning at me now.

Grandpa seemed to come back to this world with a sigh - "Am resigning myself to resign today." Before I could smile at the pun, he went on "I need a tea now. Yes, I think I need a tea now."

I made them both some tea. These tea requests were always special to me. Grandpa loved the special Darjeeling flavor. His friend seemed to not mind. They sipped on it and the game continued.

Their chess was legendary in this part of the world. Grandpa was himself a national level player; FIDE rated players didn't take his old school defensive game lightly. These days, he had picked up some of the newer styles and was runner up in the 80+ category last year.

Surprisingly, his friend had kept up somehow. Loans, deaths, and disease seemed to have not affected him; or at least, not his chess. He was here everyday morning; and Grandpa started each game with his old rival with a keenness that bordered on obsession.

The games went on. Grandpa won some, but lost many. Tea was served always.

Both of them are now dead. When grandpa's rival died, I had gone there to pay my last respects. Few dusty books were lying around. I hadn't known that he could read. A worn out chess book caught my attention and as I was going through it, I could see his wife smiling at me through similar stained teeth. She looked at the book in my hand and grimaced a little - "He hated chess. But he loved your tea."

Favorite Hotels in South Bangalore

2007-11-13T00:22:00.000-08:00

1 - Suprabhata Coffee Kendra: This won't get figured in any top-list (other than mine, of course). They serve the best coffee in town, and probably the best sambhar as well. It's one of those pre-darshini-age standing hotels, and is very popular among our auto rickshaw drivers. It's on the diagonal road connecting Sajjan Rao Circle and Minerva Circle; just before the second hand two wheeler market starts. The good thing about this place is - you get coffee in the afternoons.

2 - Brahmins' Coffee Bar: Idli, vaDe, khara bath, and kesari bath - not to mention the chutney. Don't be too demanding at the counter; you might just have to deal with some polite rudeness from either of the Adiga brothers who serve the food. But the food is worth it - so worth it.

3 - Vidyarthi Bhavan: The story goes that it was started to cater to National College students in the early 50's and some of those students still make it a point to come back (and in some cases like mine, very frequently). The trick to getting serviced here quickly is to know their static dose routing algorithm. Here's how it works: You need to walk up to the kitchen and see which of the servers is getting ready for the next batch, and try to find a seat in his serving territory. If that's not possible, the next-in-line server's territory. Another tip would be to ask for 'less oil' - brilliant dose (crisp on the outside and soft on the inside), and that uddin beLe chutney makes me forgive all of Bangalore's traffic woes. If you can't handle the crowd, just walk down DVG Road to Mahalakshmi Tiffin Room, and you'll do just fine.

4 - Hotel Dwaraka - It's a pity they had to change their location from Bull Temple Road to Tyagarajanagara now, and become a semi-Darshini (of all things!!). But the khali dose still remains as soft and as tasty as ever. I would recommend some palya as well - just to make it a set. Enough has been said about their 'yeraDu dosege mooru baari chutney koDalaguvudilla' notices - and now that those notices are gone :( they do serve chutney thrice :)

5 - Upahara Darshini - Shavige bath, with it's unique chutney.

Before Bangalore became the restaurant city that it is now, it used to have hotels - and I am glad that most of the classic hotels have survived, and thrived. I will write more on this when I cover the Majestic area and Malleshwaram hotels.

XKCD Sucks!

2007-06-05T08:14:00.000-07:00

Well, saying XKCD sucks is like saying C. Auguste Dupin was a very inferior fellow and Monsieur Lecoq, a miserable bungler. And much more importantly, it says that this is the beginning of something more. I think it's not, but I wouldn't mind surprising myself. Well, after that ado, and no further, here is my first cartoon strip.

I have another one up. Already. Sigh.

And another. Can't believe this is continuing.

Counter Example

2007-05-03T04:59:00.000-07:00

Finding counter examples to conjectures can be notoriously hard (pun? I think not). This is an area of creativity that mostly goes unappreciated.

Here's a personal anecdote: my father once came up with an algorithm to solve a hugely constrained version of the traveling salesman problem. The greedy proof was slightly hand-wavy, and I felt it would be an easier thing to find a counter example where his algorithm wouldn't find the optimal tour. Of course, I was just trying to tell him that he couldn't have solved TSP (or even approximated it). I learnt two lessons that day.

Lesson One: One must always speak sweet, because one underestimates the number of times one has to eat his own words.

Lesson Two: Finding counter examples can get quite tricky - and if I may, I would admit that it's not just tricky, it's quite hard - requires tons of patience, and a deep understanding of the problem and the algorithm we are out to disprove. I had learnt a similar lesson earlier in Sundar's Approximation Algorithms class. Sundar let us spend one hour counter-exampling that a minimum spanning tree over the vertex set wouldn't give us a minimum Steiner tree. The counter example used a 'construct' that was quite simple, and took a few minutes of dedicated thought to find. But what amazed me today was this fact about Tait's conjecture:

Tait's conjecture states that "Every polyhedron has a Hamiltonian cycle (along the edges) through all its vertices". It was proposed in 1886 by P. G. Tait and disproved in 1946, when W. T. Tutte constructed a counterexample with 25 faces, 69 edges and 46 vertices.

Imagine the patience, creativity, deep understanding of the problem, and the [least appreciated of them all] ability to borrow from related problems and areas - it takes to come up with such a counter example. And I keep wondering: why research?

Are we blind?

2007-04-09T22:01:00.000-07:00

Or is it just a dark room?

The Nandigram SEZ was supposed to be developed by Indonesia's Salim Group. Preliminary web searching indicates that Salim group has very close ties with Dow Chemical. And of course, Dow Chemical owns Union Carbide. It's up to investigative journalism to figure out the extent to which Salim and Dow are bedfellows; what I find most surprising is that this has not found mention in any major column/article or news coverage of any other form anywhere. I read about it in an Arundati Roy interview in Telelka, and after some serious digging on the web, the best I could come up with was that Dow Chemical was actually invited to bid for the Nandigram SEZ. The collective enormity of these two ironies evokes a very deep and profound rage.

And deeper guilt.

Method Living

2007-01-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

Pre-Script: No spoilers ahead.

In Christopher Nolan's brilliant period sci-fi drama* The Prestige, an old Chinese magician lives his act. It means the following: He understands that his flagship magic trick, to look surreally magical, needs a heavy personality quirk. To ensure that he can pull this quirk on stage, he lives with that quirk off-stage. Every day, through his life, he 'lives' his act. It's quite a small scene, and almost irrelevant to the movie; but for some reason, it hit me that there is this guy who is willing to live an act, consciously, forever. I will not get into acts that we live unconsciously, or sporadically, or with temporal profit in mind for some limited time. This is an act that a person lives - forever. Method Living? Perhaps.

Today, I had a night long conversation with Yakshi, and as we go to a couple of people we know, he claimed that they were Method Living. It reminded me of a close friend who Method Lives. The quirk is in his voice. He'd know it if he reads this. It made the movie seem far more real, and far more hard hitting.

These quirks that Method Livers inculcate in their lives are mostly profit driven. I either want to make the world believe that I am something that I am not, or I have a far simpler commercial motive like the magician in the movie. The former is something that we are all capable of: we either don't, or we don't notice; or we do. The latter, though, is something that would require me to possess a degree of passion towards my profession that would transcend my life.

Speaking of passion, along with Susan Orlean's character in Adaptation, I keep wondering if I will ever have a passion that will consume me - at least make me cut a finger or two, let alone give my life.

* - Christopher Nolan's quote describing his movies: The term 'genre' eventually becomes pejorative because you're referring to something that's so codified and ritualised that it ceases to have the power and meaning it had when it first started.

Bookie

2007-01-02T00:29:00.000-08:00

No significant update. Just removing dead links.

-Aside-
Ages ago, the Intellectual Whores website (now a 404) had given me some solace; but not much hope though. The masterfully written Ladder Theory explains why things are so screwed up; but, yeah, but, so we (whores?) don't lose hope, there are the ever so entertaining whore avoidance tips. Now, after all these years, I finally manage to read Woody Allen's short story, The Whore of Mensa.
-End of Aside-

It made me reminisce my own guilty trips to establishments of that sort. I remember how the Penguin Classics shelves at New India Book Depot in Connaught Place had seduced me. I had no hope. But that was just once though. Not the case with Fact and Fiction Booksellers in PVR Priya though. I got lured there many times; oh so many times. I went there for the smell. But no, it's not easy; I absolutely cannot stand dust. But these people have somehow managed to make the smell pleasurable - the right mix of old dust, new page texture, looming shelves, cozy corners of wood, and maybe they subtly spray bibiliodisiac all over the place. I wonder what will be my stopword this time? How about 'stop'? But before all that, I helplessly writhe and reach out for Simone. I know I have not been able to do her the last time, but hopefully this time...hopefully.

Then, there are the concubines at home. I have left them spread haphazardly on my bed, under it, on the cold steel shelf, on the hard floor, everywhere. And all these are the more prized ones: I could call each one my own Khartoum. I go back to them everyday, I caress their initial pages now and then, but only a few I have managed to take in fully. Well, some day - some day, there will be that grand marathon session. Or some day - some day, there will be that long session where I will reaffirm my intellectual youth by using them with all the rigour that they deserve. Or some day - some day, I will just take them all one by one, till I collapse.

I love them though.

Eigen

2006-11-30T10:27:00.000-08:00

The inimitable quip-fuckin'-master forced a comment which is worth expanding a little more.

Ever since I found that the PageRank vector of the web-graph is the dominant eigenvector of its matrix representation, I have been meaning to get to the bottom of this eigenvector-eigenvalue concept. I am still snorkeling; long time to scuba dive.

Most of us studied concepts like simultaneous equations in our high school algebra classes, but never really wondered about them deeply, or even more so, felt that they were difficult. Problems like - 3 oranges and 4 apples cost 17 rupees; 2 oranges and 3 apples cost 12 rupees; how much does each apple cost? - never seemed that difficult. We knew that the equations that represented these statements were 'fluid,' and need not apply to just these statements, and an overall tool was being mastered.

Somehow, the same never happened to tools like primal-dual, or eigenvalues-eigenvectors, or other tools from linear algebra, statistics, calculus, etc. Somewhere, the learning process got fucked because of an emphasis on just the concept, and a palpable lack of intuitive visualization. When people talk about a matrix, I never think in terms of transformations. If I did, I could see that some transformations would leave some 'victims' unchanged. And these victims were the eigenvectors of that transformation. Maybe they could change in terms of scale, but not in terms of what they fundamentally are. Here is an example from the Wikipedia entry on Eigenvalue:

As the Earth rotates, every arrow pointing outward from the center of the Earth also rotates, except those arrows that lie on the axis of rotation. Consider the transformation of the Earth after one hour of rotation: An arrow from the center of the Earth to the Geographic South Pole would be an eigenvector of this transformation, but an arrow from the center of the Earth to anywhere on the equator would not be an eigenvector. Since the arrow pointing at the pole is not stretched by the rotation of the Earth, its eigenvalue is 1.

So, was Neo an Eigenvector of The Matrix? I wonder...

As for what it means when they say that PageRank is the dominant eigenvector of the web-graph, we have to visualize the web-graph's matrix representation as a transformation. The matrix representation has all web-pages in rows and columns, and if a web-page in row i has a hyperlink to a web-page in column j, the [i, j] entry is 1, else 0. What does it mean to say that this matrix is a transformation? And what does it mean to say that it can act on 'victims' to change them? And if the 'victim' happens to be a vector which has the pages' pagerank values, the transformation doesn't affect it. What does that say about PageRank, and how is that related to our intuitive perception of pagerank as the importance of each page on a global scale?

We will get to primal-dual some other time. My head hurts. It hurts.

ps: And these are all just tools; albeit mental in nature. If we don't master them, well, it's ok I guess. We can always go back to intellectual stone age, or whatever was there before that. I mean, I always fancied myself as a Cro-Magnon.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

2006-10-30T18:24:00.000-08:00

It's somewhat sad that the Autobiography of Malcolm X is also meant to be a specific political and social message, as well as serve as a brilliant account of the life of a thoughtful and brave leader. X thought he would be dead by the time the book came out, and was also probably a little concerned about what he wanted his reluctant critics to think about him: so that they would take his message seriously. So, instead of celebrating change for change's sake, X decided to underplay it, to an extent that if don't watch out for it, the book will seem more like a testament to the angst and the rage of the African American in mid-nineteenth century. It is that, I don't deny it; but it's also an account of a man's life - a life of change: change in reverence of concepts, in thoughts, in mind-sets, in lifestyle, and more so, a change in life itself.

Malcolm X went from being a shoe-shiner, to a hustler peddling drugs in the Harlem ghettos, to armed robbery in Boston's Roxbury area, to prison (where he had all his education - not the kind which prisons typically dish out), to being a minister in a temple, to being the most ardent mouth-piece for a socio-religious movement, to revelation in Mecca, to being the charismatic leader of African-Americans, to a martyr.

We see these transitions through X's eyes; and this has to be attributed to the writing skills of Alex Haley, who ghostwrote the Autobiography. But what hit me more was that though the changes are what the book is about, X's thoughts preceding his committing to any change is never discussed. Some changes, he had no hand in them; some others, he went through them while knowing that they would alter the very nature of his built up case, cause, and life. He clearly explains why he changed, but he never touches upon what he went through before these changes. The uncertainty of any major self-orchestrated life change is what I would have loved to see X muse upon.......Every such change in my life, however miniscule it might be, makes me wonder.....

Apart from that one complaint, there is also a shocking lack of supreme skepticism about religion in the book. Someone as sharp, as obviously intelligent, and as widely read, embracing a new religion to the extent of being ready to die for it - makes me conclude that the driving forces must have been of an order of magnitude that I cannot even imagine. Maybe in a larger context of history, it will all make sense. A must read.

ps: Most house burglars get thwarted by dim lights of bathrooms.

Hardy Boys

2006-09-30T11:28:00.000-07:00

From Tic-Tac-Terror (by a Franklin W. Dixon) to Lolita (Nabokov), I've collected more books than I have read. But I have read some.

It started off with Hardy Boys; and I remember Fenton Hardy's case always being connected in some way to the Boys' case. So, during each book, I used to watch out for clues that would link the boys' case with anything that their father was doing at that time (mostly in some other part of the country; just to add to the grandeur of the plot). At one point somewhere during 6th or 7th standard, just to ensure that I could prove to a few friends in school what I had read, I started maintaining a list which had the name of the book, plot, and 'gangleader' written in neat columnar format. A sample line would be like this:

Spoilers ahead:

Tic-Tac-Terror: Moustached guy, emerald disapperance, defection of Igor the international agent, HAVOC - the terror group, and the secret government agency called Burton O Bradley: Gangleader = George Gamma.

Spoilers end.

After hunting down books in remote libraries near home (Indian Institute of World Culture, Desiree Circulating Library, etc.), I was almost done with the 'adventure books,' and was then introduced to the more serious 'Case Files,' of which I sampled a few here and there. I even bought two of those. These were more sinister, and had more fantastic plots, and unrealism was taken to new heights. But for some reason, I don't remember having liked any Hardy Boys book at all. I cannot remember the plotlines of any of their books now; unlike the Three Investigators' books.

Akka insisted that I move on to the cooler underdogs: The Three Investigators. I remember the plot lines from at least a few of their books, like the Stuttering Parrot, the Talking Skull, etc. I even convinced myself that I was good enough to be Jupiter Jones himself, made a Pete Crenshaw out of Sudarshan, and Gautham had to become Bob Andrews, and we went over to the Gavi Gangadareshwara temple to investigate any mystery that we might encounter. Our motto, of course, was: "We Investigate Anything." I will spare you the details of the gadgets we had made for ourselves, for self protection, of course.

Nancy Drew came and went unnoticed somewhere in between, and I could never lay my hands on those Nancy Drew Hardy Boys combined books as well.

Recently, I picked up a few Three Investigators and Hardy Boys books to (finally) start my own collection, and went through a few of them. A few things have changed: the awe-factor of seeing Akka finish these books in a couple of hours flat has disappeared now, being replaced with an appreciation of how simple and easy to read these books are. I never forgot the meaning of words like "sleuth," "cahoots," and "red herring." Maybe the sleuths were in cahoots with the gangleader, or was that a red-herring? I wonder.....

These did open the concept of the Novel to me, and it's a pity (and an irony) that I haven't read Kadambari yet.

Anand Marte Nahin

2006-08-31T07:42:00.000-07:00

I have seen a few many times over; I have seen a few once; and have missed far too many of them.

But with so much more to go, it makes me happy that I still have all the does-idealism-pay-off? thoughts from Satyakam due; can ponder about what triangles he explored in Jurmana and Bemisal; and maybe there is another heart wrenching moral dilemma in some other film that I don't even know about.

Dadamoni has grown on me so much in Mili, that I have to watch Ashirwad again. Speaking of Mili, Badi Sooni Sooni Hai...Zindagi, Yeh Zindagi...Main Khud Se Hoon Yahan....Ajnabee, Ajnabee. Mili remarks that Shekhar sounds sad and I wonder who the orchestrator of the mood is....the singer? the lyricist? the music director? or the director himself, for that splendidly blended video? But then, when Aaye Tum Yaad Mujhe starts....

Not speaking of crying, Anupama's last scene, well....Babumoshai.....Babumoshai, Zindagi aur maut uparwale ke haath mein hai, Jahanpanah. Hum sab rangmanch ki kathputliyan hain jinki dor uparwale ki ungliyon se bandhi hui hai. Kab kaun uthega koi nahin bata sakta. Ha ha ha.

The irony of that laughter. Deconstructing these movies to find where the tragedy, or the humour, or the wisdom, or the values come from - some other day maybe. On a side note, will I ever react to Abhimaan's photographer?

Ruy Lopez - my variation.

2006-07-31T10:57:00.000-07:00

Chess strategy insists that you develop your pieces, and make them take control of the four central squares of the board - either by occupying them, or by exerting control over them. This has to be done quickly, and with least loss of time/tempo.

The question is why? Why should you develop pieces without there being any necessity for them? There is no real check-mating strategy in mind, there is no threat from the other side, there is really no objective. I don't know what's my goal, my purpose, my real goal. Why develop pieces when you don't need them? Why get a masters degree? Why not just move the knight back and forth waiting for the opponent to start his attack? Why not just keep a good job, and do a back and forth from home square to office square? Why open up lines to develop more pieces, even rooks, and not be satisfied with developing just the queen? Why not just make money, and assume that the rest will follow? Why is it considered bad strategy to start a queen-attack in the beginning? Why does investing in money now sound so wrong to me?

I dislike analogies. I especially dislike this one, because it can be stretched so much more. Maybe that's because it was modeled on what I am analogizing[1] it with. A case of 'by definition,' I suppose. But it's inadequacy is evident because it just cannot capture the most important aspect of my life now. But well...maybe if Chess allowed a player to make two moves together...

Coming back to opening moves, the answer to all the why's is quite simple: I'll need resources when I do have a plan later, a goal, a purpose. And some resources are better than none, all are better than some. Developing all pieces is hard, esp. in an adversarial setup. But is Time really adversarial? Developing some pieces is easy, but which ones? A masters degree is harder than learning a new language, or saving money, or doing nothing? But is developing the rook worth it? Can't we manage to win with just the knight and bishop combinations? It's been done before. But, I am not that good a player: someone who can win without developed pieces; without good, well-developed pieces. I castled and decided to quit my job[2], thereby got my masters degree, and got my rook into play. I will now try to open up files for further attack, and maybe even double my rooks in sometime by getting a Ph.D.

[2] - The irony of how quittng my job, which is inherently an unsafe thing to do, is being analogized with castling, I think deserves a footnote.
[1] - I like this particular verb form.

Meta-happiness

2006-06-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

Someone with whom I share an exclusive relationship decides to make it semi-exclusive. This hurts. Sometimes fleeting, sometimes deep. But is this hurt due to the shift of allegiance/love/companionship/friendship(?) causing a void in our lives? or is it due to the shift making a statement about our worth?

I have always claimed that having a richer life leads to lesser jealousy. This seems intuitively appealing to me, and further, if I ponder about it in the light of the above questions, it rings true as well. A richer life leads to voids being filled up again, quickly. A richer life gives us a good measure of self-worth that is hard to dent by one person. But is it this simple always? Can we define 'richer' lives for ourselves easily enough?

Consider this other deeper form of jealousy: someone specific doesn't have to shift to someone else to evoke this feeling. I could realize myself that someone else is better than me at something. A classic example would be from Abhimaan, where a random photographer makes Subir cringe. Or take Salieri's stinging jealousy-ridden admiration of Mozart from Amadeus. Though both movies don't truly redeem the inflicted person, they do showcase the jealousy through some brilliant acting (and direction of course).

Does a richer life help here? What is a richer life in this context? Could Salieri define his life with anything other than his music? What if someone is better at something that I have devoted my entire life for? Does it matter? Here, I cannot even say that "it shouldn't". I don't know. I have not defined my life around one concept for it to hit me that hard. What if a person I have devoted my life to goes away? Is the hurt this time again because of the void she creates? Or is it a statement about what I am in totality?

Does (philosophical) rationalization help? The gap between thought and emotion persists. But over the years, I have felt the gap reduce. The more it reduces the more I can rationalize, and the lesser I get hurt. But on the flip side, the more the gap reduces, fewer things make me happy (to a lesser extent that too). Ironically, the symmetry between happiness and sadness makes me happy. Strange neh?

Romanticising Romance

2006-05-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

As I walk up the dark cinema hall aisle, the screen light falls on people sitting. I don't notice whatever I don't notice; but I do notice some hands holding each other, heads resting on shoulders, arms entwined, shoulders touching, and before I realize it, I am looking for my seat. As I move on with life in such small steps, it hits me that I miss being in love. I don't miss any specific detail. I just miss the feeling. That's just it.

What is this feeling? Is it another emotion that cannot be explained? or is it possible to break it down into more rational axioms and understand it better? I am tempted to say that it could be beyond both; but then, I can't see what can lie outside the inexplicable-explainable spectrum. Continuing that particular sidebar, I am not sure about my feelings for epistemology either; but well, for now, let's cut to Jack Rabbit's Slim's:

Mia: May I ask you a personal question cowboy?
Vincent: No.
Mia: Alright. Have you ever been in love?
Vincent: I said 'No'.
Mia: Don't be so testy. It's not that one; this is a different question.
Vincent: Still seems personal enough.
Mia: Ok.
[pause]
Vincent: Love is a commodity.
Mia: Warming up; aren't we? A commodity, like, for sale?
Vincent: Sale, discount, retail, designer, factory seconds, et cetera, et cetera. They sell. You buy.
Mia: Me?
Vincent: Yeah, you.
Mia: What if I want to buy?
Vincent: Yeah, it looks like you have, already.
Mia: Good one.
[pause]
Mia: So, I bought it. Let's say designer. Do you have a problem with that cowboy?
Vincent: No, I don't. My problem is not with you. My problem is with the next woman I want to fuck.
[pause]

Cut back to blog-post. Insert some dialogue here which deconstructs love along the lines of how much paper, screen space, and network bandwidth it has wasted. I have taken this quasi-Nihilistic kind of approach too. But, the blissful irrational happiness and the forlorn feeling surrounding it (on the timeline): that's undeniable. Also, rational reasoning along the lines of loneliness, hormones, progeny, and other facets (unexplained in their own right) is also appealing.

I have 3 options: a) Don't bother either thinking or feeling. b) Feel. c) Think.

As the camera zooms out and credits start to roll, a pencil is seen shading option (b).

O Discipline, Where Art Thou?

2006-04-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

I read Lapierre and Collins's "Freedom at Midnight" and am incredibly moved, even sobbing many times during the book, and make a promise to myself that I'll learn more about India, and esp. the Partition. So, I pick up Sucheta Mahajan's "India and Partition: the Erosion of Colonial Power in India," and start it with great enthusiasm. At around the 20th page, when going forward with any reasonably degree of continuity requires looking up citations, making notes, and higher levels of concentration, I switch to some pulp fiction.

I love Sidney Lumet's "12 Angry Men" and "Network", and when I spot his book - "Making Movies," on the book stand, I pick it up greedily. I kind of fancy myself as a movie maker in the making, and this book is a must-read for all amateurs. I finish a third of it, and when Lumet starts talking about camera positions, lenses, lighting, and subtler aspects of screenplays, I start watching "12 Angry Men" again. I like re-runs.

As is usual with many a new concept, Samba mentions Prisoner's Dilemma in one of our conversations, and I am into Game Theory from that moment. People are explaining human behaviour using formal theory! This, like many before have come and gone for me, has to be it. The truth must be hidden somewhere in these games. I read up on Nash Equilibrium, Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma, and other popular Game Theory material online, and buy a standard text book to get deeper into it. After reading the table of contents, preface, acknowledgments, and introduction, I lend the book to a friend.

Hofstadter, "Dancing Wu Li Masters," "Society of Mind," "Siddharatha," Sartre, Probability, "Crime and Punishment," "Naked Ape," and among many others, surprisingly, even Lolita has gone through this phase with me. That sentence construction kind of absolves me from any blame; but I know better. I got back and finished Lolita, but the rest of them await. It's just a matter of 'when,' and of course, not a matter of 'if-ever.'

Let's Get Into Character

2006-03-29T22:49:00.000-08:00

Think about a paedophile's daily diary: yellow stained pages (or stained yellow pages, if you must), scrawny handwritten accounts of disgusting pleasure, half-baked buns of fantasy smeared with rotten butter, and similar. It will invoke revulsion, loathing, and maybe even sympathy towards such madness. But, would such a diary invoke literary mirth and intellectual satisfaction in the reader? Probably not.

Think about the paedophile's victim: a pretty 13 year old. Innocent to the point of being naive; at least in most matters. Dainty, reciting poems from memory, sobbing, throwing pebbles at the caged dog, slightly sadistic - as only children can be, charming in spite of muddy toes, and sprinkled with other Nobokovian adjectives. Think of the child's Dear Diary: pages stained with salty drops of tears, fantasies of sand castles, running in parks, convoluted stories with toy characters (no adult toys featured in the Dear Diary; those are reserved for real life), candy cravings, a lot of loved loving and a lot of hated loving, and similar. Such a Dear Diary would invoke grief, pathos, hatred, helplessness, love, bitterness, and maybe even murderous rage. But, would it make you chuckle at its wit or marvel at its genius or exasperate you with its self referential cleverness or make you wish that there was an annotated version somewhere? Probably not.

Here is what I think Nabokov did while writing Lolita. He picked a situation, infused some characters, and become one: Humbert Humbert. It might have been difficult to look at the scene from just one set of eyes, in case he had created the scene "objectively." But he did manage to pull it off, and it has become the first person narrative classic. How do I know all this? Humbert told me so. There lies its charm (chasm, I might add). I will never really know what the "objective" scene was. Now, is it possible to go beyond Humbert's viewpoint and extract the "objective" situation from his description: just the facts? If so, is it possible to go further and look at the situation from some other character's viewpoint? If so, what would Lolita's viewpoint be?

I know that Humbert's diary was far from boring, and in spite of disgust, it did invoke literary mirth and intellectual satisfaction in me. Is it possible that Lolita's diary would leave me with the same literary and intellectual high, despite the pathos, helplessness, and pain? I am not sure. Humbert insists that Lolita's viewpoint would be boring. She didn't have his exquisite European cultural tailoring; she couldn't compete with his supreme romanticism; she was not diabolical enough; she just didn't have his genius to write The Confession of a White Widowed Male. That's what he insists, of course.

But for some reason, my gut insists that her Dear Diary, or, as as its alternate title would read: The Confession of a Nymphomaniacal Nymphet - would be as clever, as mirthful, and as stimulating (intellectually too) as his confession, if not more. Imagine Humbert never knowing that she was playing his own game with him. I wonder if Nabokov ever thought about it. He must've; and if he had, did he ever want to write "I, Lolita."

I will attempt it someday. I will get into character.

Of Quests and Barriers

2006-02-22T13:51:00.000-08:00

Just watched Anupama yet again, and am feeling a mix of satisfaction, goose bumps, tears, and optimism; but most of all, I am left wondering at how some failed relationships [in this case, the doomed father-daughter one] can never be overcome. One cannot really move on. One can move on in life, but that particular relationship slot [for the lack of a better phrase] will always be a void.

On the other hand, these relationships are mostly not affected by long-distance, attention-deficit, character flaws, and other parameters that can affect (say) a romantic relationship heavily. Is this because of our long standing childhood relationships with parents that are mostly exclusive? Is this because of the birth-happens-only-once factor? or something more sublime?

In my futile quest to rationalize emotions, I try to analyse love; and as I tackle parental love, I am confronted with more barriers than with most other loves. The rationalization seems to stop much, much earlier. This love seems to be an unoptimizable parameter in the overall scheme of life. Is this due to cultural conditioning? Or is it this love's mammoth scale? Or is it biology? Or is it something sublime regarding the nature of this love itself?

But Bhagat Singh optimized over this love as well; And so did Juror #3 and his son in 12 Angry Men; So, claiming that any love, or anything else for that matter, is beyond optimization in life's overall scheme of things, seems a little too premature. I notice that I am getting back into the analysis and with that, expectedly so, am also hitting the barrier I spoke about earlier. With thought experiments and fuzzy principles running amuck in my head, I end this iteration of optimization.

Quantum Brain?!?!

2006-01-03T23:24:00.000-08:00

In my last post on heuristics and approximation, I asked the question - Given realistic scale and scope, how does the human brain solve such problems (like question-answering)? Does the brain map everything to combinatorial optimization? Can its modus operandi be applied to automated systems so that they solve our problems.... - which leads to further interesting exercises in intellectual masturbation.

Combinational Optimization is about finding the optimal (best/worst) candidate (based on certain acceptable parameters) among all possible options. A large category of problems can be mapped to combinatorial optimization, and most of these are NP-hard. This means that most of them do not have efficient solutions.

But we see humans, with some training and experience, solve many combinatorial optimization problems efficiently using heuristics and instinct. Chess, Go, Sudoku, etc., come into mind. In these games, the human has to search the solution space efficiently to find the correct board/grid position. And we know that humans do not do a brute force search. There is some internal process that short-circuits the search.....somehow.

Now, this somehow-situation could be explained by the following possibilities:

The human brain has a clever technique to narrow search space, and come up with exact solutions. This would mean that P==NP, and computer scientists still haven't found a proof for this. A proof of this would simply be an efficient way of solving one of the NP-hard problems (which, according to this bullet, the human brain is doing right now). We just need to know this purported technique formally to claim P==NP. This situation is highly unlikely because computer scientists have been trying since 1960s to find such a procedure in vain. Of course, their fastidious nature is also making them look for a proof that such an efficient procedure cannot exist (P!=NP). Whether the latter will be proven, or whether the question itself is beyond answer - only time will tell. But the former is very unlikely to be true.
The human brain has come up with incredibly clever heuristics that approximate the search for the exact solution, and give us only approximate solutions. But these are so good, that they look exact almost always. But the fact that Kasparov got defeated by a computer shows that his heuristics used for chess were not infallible, and the computer's brute force search was much better (after all chess is played on a 8X8 board). Go and Bridge players still kick the machine's ass because of their games' bigger search spaces. This seems to be our Winston Wolfe (see Pulp Fiction) for the somehow-situation.
The outlandish situation that my romantic mind wants to use to model itself is a trifle too....er....outlandish. Let me get there. It is known that Factoring a large number into its factors is a computationally hard problem. Its unlikely that a clever technique exists to find exact factors without going through brute force division. But Peter Shor, in 1994, proved that quantum computers can solve the Factoring problem efficiently! Now, quantum computers are still theoretical models which might never get built. Shor and co. coming up with algorithms that work on them motivates physicists and engineers to hopefully come up with a working model of the quantum computer in the future. Now, my outlandish conjecture is that the human brain already has a quantum computer like mechanism built into it, which enables it to solve certain combinatorial problems quickly. Modern physics accepts the reality of quantum mechanical concepts like superposition, etc. in nature. Why is it not possible that such features already physically exist in our brains, and this quantum computing brain is solving problems using quantum algorithms? Is the human brain a realistic quantum computer? Ummmm.....

Its quite possible that a combination of these situations might exist in reality, and there might be more such parameters that actually govern the way we think. Will we ever truly understand ourselves scientifically? or in the end, is it going to be just spiritual enlightenment about the Self? How anti-climactic would that be.

Anti-climax won't do. We need 'em real. That was a long session. Now for the money shot. [insert appropriate onomatopoeia here, in uppercase]

Heuristics vs. Provability

2006-01-03T16:05:00.000-08:00

Given a problem, we can:

Give efficient methods to find exact solutions. When this is possible, all's well. But alas, this is not possible all the time.
Give inefficient methods to find exact solutions (brute force), and bemoan that P != NP (mostly).
Propose intuitively appealing heuristics that are quick, and give "mostly good" results in practice, and hope that the malicious worst case input which can tear the heuristic apart never comes about.
Prove theoretical approximation guarantees about these heuristics so that even in the worst case, the heuristic won't go bad beyond some known bound.

Personally, I am fascinated by #4. Most current large scale problems rely on #3, which hopefully will get elevated to #4 in a few years time, and theoreticians will tell the practitioners - "Yeah, your heuristic will never give a solution that if off the optimal by 200%." As a budding researcher, is it better to build simulations, concrete systems, models, etc., and show empirically that certain heuristics work most of the time? Or is it better to take some small heuristic and prove without doubt its effectiveness under all circumstances?

The latter appeals to me because of its no nonsense, matter of fact, precise nature. But I can also see how we cannot do without the former. The former (heuristics) gets built to tackle real world problems. Theoreticians follow up later by giving provable approximate guarantees for these heuristics. Combinatorial optimization is rife with this pattern. What about other heuristics though?

Take the everyday example of Question Answering. Given a question, and an essay that might contain the answer to the given question, a reasonably educated person can extract an answer without much difficulty. But this simple task is extremely hard for an automated system. It can manage questions of the type: "how much," "what," and "when"; but will get flummoxed by questions of the type: "why" and "how". Practioners in the area of Natural Language Processing come up with heuristics that attempt to answer these tough questions, but there is no provable guarantee that these heuristics can answer all questions correctly all the time.

Can problems from the "Human Domain" be modeled fully as combinatorial problems so that we can hopefully give some approximation guarantee? Given realistic scale and scope, how does the human brain solve such problems (like question-answering)? Does the brain map everything to combinatorial optimization? Can its modus operandi be applied to automated systems so that they solve our problems while we attack other problems that right now are complicated even for the human mind?

This Day, That Year

2005-12-23T22:56:00.000-08:00

I remember being half-asleep in my room, pondering over my travel plans for the next weekend, wondering where it would all lead to, scared of who'd come out of this in what state, whether he would come out of it at all?

I can hear Ma calling out my name telling me that I have a phone call. I groggily wake up and walk over to the phone, and an unfamiliar voice tells me - "It's me." I answer back - "What happened?" He says - "It's all over. You take care of the Bangalore end; I will handle things here." I hang up the phone in simple acceptance of what was most likely to happen, what I had feared the most.

I now understand what it means when they say "It still hasn't sunk in." It hasn't sunk in. I climb down the stairs and start calling my next most trusted friends. Some of them are up, some of them are out, some of them tell me that they are coming over. Ma has come downstairs by now, and I know that Pa is sleeping, as usual, without a care in the world. Ma and I just stare at each other and for the first time in my life, I see it in her eyes, I feel it deep inside; it hits me that my life is my own. The umbilical cord has now been severed.

I started becoming me the day he left.

I miss him.

Lolita Haze

2005-11-23T11:36:00.000-08:00

Feel my heart, reader, feel it, its throbbing and beating, beating me to death. The death of normalcy, simplicity, and all that my earlier normal and simple writing stood for - or shall I say banality? The tip of the tongue takes a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth - Lo - Lee - Ta.

I am in love. In love with Lolita, her simple attire (she looks black and white, but now, she is hardly that, is she?), her appeal's complexity, my inability, or if you generously will, my incapacity to understand her completely, and most of all, that dolorous fact that she will never be mine, fully.....Lolita, you adorn my shelf and my heart. Worn out, you shall be, no doubt, some day; I will buy a new copy then, whatever your price might be. Did I tell you I loved your dog-eared cutie-two-shoes look? Oh, I might not have, due to my adolescent, almost juvenile principal principle that I will shun vulnerability.

Humbert "The Humbug" Humbert: passionate, pedophile, psychoanalyst, prurient, petulant, poetic, pathetic, promantic, pdigusting, padorable, pintriguing, and rest assured, light years far from being non-chalant, or any such "heroesque" trite traits, like Sir Pelham's cheap dandy. Hombert dear, I am so boringly straight.

Lolita: Lo, lore, brat! I hope your readers, those cheap voyeurs, like you the way I do; I, voyeur-extraordinaire. Ma femme, be good to them, in all aspects and respects. Don't kill them. Don't make them hate themselves, and you naive reader! yes, you! Read her, lest your life remain ingloriously incomplete. An exercise in bliss; in literary heaven, let mirthful chuckles run amuck. Feel the hot and cold ends of disgusting imagery and chilling wit.

In a singularly repulsive nutshell (the customary conclusion), its just Humbert and his brethren, Lolita and her ilky silky nymphets, star crossed. O queasy reader, don't be cross at the intricate incestuous labyrinth (of the self-referential type) that is Lolita. Go grab her, and feel her end to end. Trust me not, but you have not felt anyone like her before.

ps: Ulysses, here I come.
pps: Insincere apologies to the scrambled Mr or Ms. Vivian Darkbloom.

Salaam Bombay! (1988)

2005-10-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

IMDb says that Shafiq Syed is repairing auto rickshaws in Bangalore these days. Almost every garage I have seen has either a chotu, or a kuLLa (Kannada word for a short boy). Syed must have been one of them, or probably he owns a garage himself. I have no idea.

In the Salaam Bombay! inspired MTV-India's chaiwala filler, the chaipu pulls off a cute jig to a great Kishore Kumar number. I had vaguely heard that the movie was about one such chaipu (chai serving boy), and his (mis)adventures in the dark underbelly that-is/of Bombay.

Cigarettes are used to great effect in many movies. The Man With No Name chews on his cigar with aplomb. John McClane, Tyler Durden, Vincent Vega, Verbal Kint, Marv, and others have pulled that great looking drag. But Raghubir Yadav beats 'em all in that abandoned railway coach. The sound of Bombay Locals in the background, the light, absolutely no style, no fancy smoke patterns, just smoke, just that. No cigarette has hit me that hard.

Radio cricket commentary and Aneeta Kanwar's despondent walk from the remand home present the simple and casual irony that everyday life of Bombay represents. As for various other depictions of pathos and irony: to describe them, I will have to lay the entire movie frame by frame here. Do watch out for Nana Patekar's fake laughter in the studio; it's a gem. Bombay Ganpati crowds are used in many movies for the spectacle of scale they represent. But here, Ganpati plays (or doesn't play) a role which stands out for its timing, effect, and of course, irony.

Salaam Bombay! hit me hard, esp. when I, along with chaipu, realized that there was a new charsi on the block. After the movie got over, all I could think about was about those days when I used play with my buguri (spinning top) as a kid. Now, in retrospect, I realize that it was just a feeling of gratitude to the process that decided my life. To objectively think about the merits of the movie, or even about the overall theme, I had to detach myself from the movie experience. It took a while.

Now, the lead actor of the movie works in a garage. A lot of searching couldn't tell me what the little girl who played the role of Manju is doing now; hope she is doing fine. Meera Nair has moved on to other things, Nana Patekar used his dramatic laughs in other exaggerated stereotyped roles. Life goes on in Bombay, with its chai and biscut, local trains, pimps, seal-opens, hopelessness, and hope. There are no obvious messages. Its for me to think about, and hopefully, act.

Adaptation

2005-10-12T08:07:00.000-07:00

Epiphany:
(1) : usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something
(2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking
(3) : an illuminating discovery
(4) : a revealing scene or moment

In the self referential film - Adaptation, Charlie Kaufman (of whom, I don't think so highly, by the way) says:
...but what if a writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens, where people don't change, they don't have any epiphanies. They struggle and are frustrated and nothing is resolved. More a reflection of the real world...

Some of these epiphanies dawn on to me, as I lead my life, various pieces of my mental jigsaw puzzle fall into place, and theories and events make sense. In the past, some have left me shocked, they have shown me my darker side. Some have flattered me. Some, I didn't accept; reason told me they were true, but I just didn't accept them. This "I" which is devoid of reason, this "I" is an interesting being.

Of all these moments of clarity: some get chosen, and become principles; others....well, others become nothing.

Each epiphany is also accompanied by the elation of having discovered something about myself. This elation is independent of whether the epiphany itself is flattering or not. This leads me to believe that a part of me gets happy even if it discovers that the rest of me is disgusting, despicable, not-upto-the-mark, or pathetic. This happy-to-have-known-something-new part, lets call it the audience. The moment the nature of an epiphany is identified: good, bad, flattering, disgusting - another part of me wants to keep it, or change it, or shed it, or in the worst case, forget it. Lets call it the critic. There is a part of me whose acts have lead to epiphanies, whose acts have kept the audience happy, on whom the critic will try to enforce its viewpoints, lets call it the actor. Further on, I lead more life - according to the principles I have made. The part of me which directs life, lets call it the director. The director has the scene in mind, knows what the critic wants, and makes the actor act accordingly.

Some questions remain unanswered:

- Where does the scene come from?
- Are these the only players in the arena?
- What role does time play? Is there a feedback loop that goes beyond the critic?
- Does the actor have to exist? Can principles be built without stimulants?

Stefan Kanfer said that - Philosophy is concerned with two matters: Soluble questions that are trivial, and crucial questions that are insoluble.

Charlie is obviously wrong when he says that the real world doesn't have epiphanies. He wants to believe that life is normal, and boring, and has frustrations which go unresolved. Agreed that my epiphanies are not grand enough to make me change the course of my life visibly. I still contend that innocuous conversations, thoughtful films, great books, games nature plays, etc. do bring about epiphanies in my life; some of which have gone on to become principles.

Even the pilots which went on to become nothing, I enjoyed even those.

Yours sincerely,
Donald Kaufman

White-water Treks & Dark Descents

2005-09-28T00:33:00.000-07:00

A magnificent waterfall is hitting a boulder, and from there, its falling further down through more rocks forming kick-ass white water, and finally on it goes into oblivion. From the other side of this oblivion, we started climbing towards the basin of the waterfall against the flow of water. After finding our way through water and rock, we finally reached the boulder where water hit ground. It was an experience nonpareil, to finally sit on a rock just in front of the waterfall basin, with water gushing all around us, feeling the needle-like spray forcibly closing our eyes.

I looked up at the water falling nearly on top of us, and could see the Sun through the thin film of water, through the spray - I wanted to sit there for sometime; the blanket of nature was ummmmm cozy. A moment to remember. As Keats said, a thing of beauty is a joy forever.

This was at Shivtarghal (ghal == waterfall), a place where Shivaji's spiritual guru, Ramdas, meditated in a cave behind the waterfall, under the mountain (a la Phantom?). From there, we went to the mountain-top fort headquarters of Shivaji at Raigadh (gad == fort). After a winding road journey, we reached the base camp. One can either trek from the base-camp to the fort on top of the hill, or take a rope-car that stretched from the base-camp to the top.

I took the rope-car - a journey through clouds, rain, trickling water falls, facing the mighty Sahyadris, being able to see huge shadows cast by tall mountains, being pulled up higher and higher and finally into Shivaji's fort - to be greeted by chilly rain.

The fort itself is spectacular, and with all the mist and cloud around us, the experience was surreal. We could see small yellow flowers all over the ground through the fort, making it a misty, flower covered heaven on top of a mountain. Somewhere there, we came across this beautiful corridor that went into a misty-void, through which we walked. A moment to remember - this walk.

On the other side of the corridor lay Takmak Tok - Shivaji's execution point (a la Tippu Drop?), a small landing leading off from the mountain, dropping all the way down, and offering a panoramic view of some ten odd anonymous waterfalls falling all over the Sahyadris, miscellaneous streams, and curving roads deep below - some place to be pushed to death from eh? We spent an hour there with the evening Sun, which was clearing the mist to give us a glimpse into the depths and the far off mountains, and disappearing behind clouds and allowing the mist to cover us fully. The walk back from the tip of the cliff back to the corridor in the chilly air with mild-orange sunlight behind us is another moment I will remember. Of course, then came the trek back to the base camp.

A few of us brave souls decided to skip the rope-car journey back, and decided to trek down the insanely slippery route back. Fading light through thick mists, zero torches, stairways that had become streams, and an eerie feeling of being in the middle of black-nowhere- these occupied my mind. Many of us slipped and fell hard on our backs, jutting rocks hit us from all around in the dark, and half way through, the Sun went down fully and it was pitch black darkness. We used mobile phones for torches, crawled our way through slippery moss to avoid slipping (a moment to remember), and with great survival spirit and co-ordinated team work, managed to finish the 100 minute descent. A worthy closure to a memorable trip with great friends.

More photos on my Raigadh Trip Album

Get Shorty

2005-09-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

Ramanand passed me the 55-word-limit-short-story baton and here is an attempt:

---begin---
Am a ten pointer. Doesn't mean that it's been easy. My neighbors (let's call them 'R' and 'P' for now), cheap scorers, but so popular still; seen everywhere, unlike me (sigh). Me, gotta wait for you to complete me. Ah, there you are! come now, lets append ourselves to 'art' near that double word score.
----end----

My love affair with short stories began with Doordarshan's Mitti Ke Rang, which used to adapt the best short stores from the likes of Chekhov, O'Henry, Maxim Gorky, Guy de Maupassant, etc. into 30 minute episodes. This was when I first heard that short stories were a different genre altogether.

Earlier, I had tried my hand (or rather, Akka had lead my hand) into some Panchatantra and other Hindu mythological tales. Later, when I did venture into the world of short stories myself, I was amazed at the depth, creativity, storytelling, philosophy, characterization, and everything else that makes a great short story, not to mention the proverbial twist in the end. I am still to see a short story which anticipates that the reader is expecting a twist in the end, and comes up with a double twist, or no twist at all. To top that, this story must be a part of a compendium which has twists/no-twists in a calculated order to snare the reader throughout the book. Just a game-theoretic idea.

Of all the authors I have tried, I have been most impressed by Roald Dahl, Maxim Gorky, and Jeffrey Archer. Rahl is black, dark, and creates an air of eerie pathos that kind of tells me what horror writing is all about. Gorky, the few stories I have read: they were abstract, and created visual images that were beyond the ordinary. I find it very hard to capture that imagery into words now. As for Archer, he is the master of feel-good cheesy stories with his standard elements - wine tasting, courtrooms, bankers, good looking men and women, Oxbridge, etc. Have read all of his, and liked most of them.

Prisoner's Dilemma

2005-09-11T01:11:00.000-07:00

In one of my favorite romantic films: Before Sunset, while on a cruise near the church of Notre Dame, Jesse talks about how he has this idea of his Best-Self, and he wanted to pursue that, even if it might have been overriding his Honest-Self. This is said in the context of his marriage, and how he married someone by thinking that commitment, appreciation, respect, and trust were all that mattered. This was his definition of love when he got married, and his Best-Self told him that if these were around, he need not really wait for the perfect person to come along, and his marriage would work out. The marriage went on to become a sham because his Honest-Self just didn't love his wife, and his Honest-Self is what lived his real life and decided on happiness, bliss, and peace.

I have felt this Best-Self vs. Honest-Self dilemma in many contexts in life; be it love, relationships, career choices, idealogical living, and countless other everyday situations when the principled Best-Self overrides the self-centered and materialistic Honest-Self - to mixed results.

Are there two or more people inside me? the Best-Self? the Honest-Self? the actor? the director? Why is this craving for the Honest-Self to emulate and finally become the Best-Self? Who are role models? How do we define our Best-Selves? Are people who stick to their Best-Selves all the time better off? Do they become role models?

What about hapless victims like Jesse and me, who have Best-Selves, try to stick to them; but whose lives are being directed by their Honest-Selves, and they just are not able to reconcile...

What about unabashed sensualists who do not bother about idealistic visions, and pursue their Honest-Selves without regret, remorse, or guilt. Do true Hedonists exist? Do they have internal conflicts about duties and rights? Or is there a Jesse in everybody, with differing degrees of will-power, conscience, and principles?

I am sure generalization of this sort won't work, and time and situations bring out a mix of our selves, and we just act on what seems right at that moment. The dilemma only arises when I have the time to decide on which self I allow to dominate me. That's when I have a choice. This choice is also coupled with the knowledge that the dominating self of that time won't be dominating all the time. The future will be different, and I will have changed.

I am a prisoner to this dilemma.

Shantaram, A romantic take on everything

2005-08-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

I love this book because:

Its set almost entirely in Bombay. Salaam Bombay.
It gives a very heart-felt view of India, Indians, and everything Indian.
It reminds me a lot of Godfather (the book). It also reminded me of my first read of Godfather, which, sadly, happened only once.
It also reminded me of Harold Robbins's Never Love a Stranger. There is something about the first person narrative that Nabokov abuses in Lolita to trick the reader, but Roberts uses with elan. I have rarely liked a first person narrative more than this.
I love sweeping sagas.
I loved the trivia: on knife fighting, on the Automatic Kalashnikov assault rifles, the inner workings of the Bombay Underworld, the Afghan War, Colaba, gritty slum life in Bombay, and a whole lot more.
The terrific one liners. There are so many of them, a few brilliant, a few corny, and a few unbelievably true.
Made me introspect on aspects of my life which I had buried for a long time.
Brought tears to my eyes more than once.
Is a gripping page-turner. 900+ pages in 3 days?!?
Celebrates the human spirit.
The romantic in me is happy and content; the cynic in me smiling.

Shantaram will be one of my favorite books for a long time to come.

Jingoism revisited

2005-08-17T00:04:00.000-07:00

People keep telling me how good things will happen to India if we stop complaining and start doing things. I agree. No amount of armchair philosophy and acerbic cribbing can beat direct action on the ground (italics inspired from The Direct Action Day).

NGO's are doing their bit. Examples like Barefoot College, which do transform lives en masse are inspiring. But the question which bothers me is how viable it is as a career alternative? Can I work full-time for an NGO and sustain a normal family on that income? I doubt that. This has a two fold impact. Either people do it part time, while debugging Java code for their day jobs; or highly inspired people take it up no matter what, and don't bother about better living conditions for themselves or their families. Why is working for a good cause not a viable career option? Why does primary school teaching pay so less? Why is the media coverage for these causes so restricted.

Let me elaborate on the media point a little (currently obsessed with this "manufacturing consent" phenomenon, apologies). We have seen India Today do their Person of the Year feature on someone who has made a real difference at the grass root level, we see coverage on some NGO's now and then, we also have sites like Good News India which appreciate and publicize great work done by unselfish people. But if you compare the number of articles, features, headlines, cover stories, etc. covering the BPO/IT sector, covering their glamor, how-to-get-in-tips, going ga-ga over the global economy, etc. with the miniscule amount of coverage that NGO's get, you know why people are not inspired that much. But the reason for this difference in media treatment need not be attributed to Chomskian filters, but can be easily attributed to the fact that NGO-type of work is still not a viable career option for a fresh graduate who is looking for a job.

Currently our manufacturing, government, political, transport, financial and other non-IT sectors are not as lucrative as the BPO sector. The consequences are obvious - we are just losing a huge chunk of educated quality work force, who instead of working on things which do matter to us, are selling long distance calling cards to someone who hates them in some godforsaken place. We have to see whether the money they are bringing in to India is comparable to the benefits that'd have accrued over a long term had they decided to put in their brains and energy into working for India directly. I think the latter would yield better results had it paid as much as the call centers. This is where some amount of Jingoism comes in. I beat my chest and scream that we should not be licking ass, and should be kicking it instead, and I hope that someone (including me) hears me and does something worthwhile.

But why are non-IT sectors not as lucrative as the IT sectors? I don't know fully. Needs more academic study.

Of course, all of it is economics. The Brits looting like common robbers, the Americans doing it in the grab of neo-colonialism, the Elite taking horse riding lessons (couldn't resist this dig S), the Media raving about movies like Page 3, and almost everything that results in anything is attributed to economics. So, if everything were economics, where does government policy come in? why can't free markets rule the world? Why do we need countries, governments, organizations, unions, etc. taking care of people who cannot take care of themselves. I think that is what separates us from the free market loving animals of Masai Mara. We try to take care of people who cannot take care of themselves. And when that doesn't happen, we cry foul. We cry foul because, according to us, exploitation of the not-so-intellectually-or-technologically equipped class of people is not fair. Not abiding by live-and-let-live is unfair. But, free markets do have their place. Aggressive economic thinking resulting in great profits is a great thing. People who can do it should be allowed to do it. But if that starts happening at the cost of an entire set of people, an entire culture, across centuries to alter the mind-set of generations, I have a problem with it.

I am a jingo alright.

Tirade

2005-08-15T14:53:00.000-07:00

My striving for abstractness and ambiguity is all gone and the real context emerges. Next time, I will write in even more cryptic tongue using only pronouns and articles.

With that said - now for the real discussion.

1 - Why do we assume that the British were any better than Chengiz Khan or Muhammaad Ghazni? They did build railways, educational institutions, and postal departments - but we need to investigate why they did it? Was it to help us? Beeeep!! Wrong answer.

Railways to transport goods to and from ports efficiently, educational institutions to encourage the elite Indians (who were already licking the British ass) to study and become employees of the British Raj, and postal departments to serve some similar purpose, its plain economics again. We are dealing with more sophisticated robbers who knew that pointless killing was ...well, pointless.

Show me one project that the British started to help the Indian poor of that time, did they build dams to irrigate lands? did they start mass education programs at the primary school levels? Did they bring in the British army from the UK mainland during partition to prevent bloodshed? Did they do anything at all for the Indians?

They just packed their bags and left when they thought that the time had come to leave. It just didn't make any economic sense to stay back. The logistics was getting too expensive, Gandhi was getting on their nerves, etc. But mostly it was economics. They had looted enough, and the entire colonial model was failing, and it was high time.

Now again, there is this perception that the British were a "gentlemanly" class who were somewhat better rulers than say Germans or Japanese who would've fucked us even more. I have seen many people feel good about how we were ruled by British, and we were able to develop an English educated elite who could use the language superiority to serve the British/West after independence too. But were they really that good, the British?

Isn't it possible that they were humane because they were entirely dependent on the Indian working class at that time to get their jobs done? They just couldn't afford to have Mangal Pandeys rising all over the place, and screwing up their supply chain, army, etc. Personnel from the British Indian army were fighting British wars in Afghanistan, South East Asia, and other places. Oh, you couldn't kill their brethren in Uttar Pradesh and expect them to fight your battle for you, can you? The Gentlemanly touch was just to ensure that the average worker wouldn't complain. The extreme complaints were dealt with quite effectively in Kaalapani.

Also, the whole English language thing. The gift from heavens which have made us oh-so-competitive in the international market. I wonder how the French, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, etc. are competing in the same market? Do you really think that in this age, language matters? And imagine how gleeful they must have felt when they saw that they could still use their left over labor in India for back office work. Who do you think is complaining about outsourcing in the US/UK, and when is this complaining happening? Right about now, and not any earlier. I think that the 70s and 80s management of US/UK fucked up a lot with a lot of misplaced attention at other things (communism, nuclear apocalypse, etc.) to actually see where the real problem was brewing. Their problem of concern should have been how their delicately established setup of the third world was breaking up, and some of them were catching up, and they just didn't notice. So, the current Indian growth is better attributed to their complacence during 80s than their benevolence in the 50s.

2 - Most of our middle class BPO employees speak in an American accent, they know about the fifth amendment, they know about the civil war, Martin Luther King Jr, Mardi Gras, the New Jersey Turnpike, etc. And its not just America the country; we are clued into the inner workings of that country. And whats happening there - they ask you whether you are from Kerala? I wonder how they would react if they knew that the current government is held by the Communist Party of India, and Kerala, ironically is Communist too. Do they really know about the problems which North East India is facing? Do they know about the multi-facedness of Indain Cinema? Tsk tsk. And, please talk to a few people from the Mid-west whether they know about the capital of India. Now, how do I know about the Mid-west? Well, I am a product of this fucked up system as well. Sigh.

3 - We need more than just elevated thinking to get us where we should be, much more. We need a cultural revolution. I am with Samba on this. We have been screwed so thoroughly - by the media, by the continuous brainwashing, entire generations are screwed; and to get out of our awe of the white skin, to develop a little bit of self respect and sustain our identity - it does need a revolution of sorts. Elevated thinking will just make this neo-colonialism more efficient. And that wont help us one bit.

And I haven't even touched on how the global corporate culture has entered and ingrained itself with the Indian corporate scene. And as Soumen said in this post, MacCaulay is back to taste native blood again. Large scale media manipulation is just starting. How many indigenous products are advertised on TV now. Vicco Vajradanti? Oh no! its Pepsodent time now. More on this later.

Long time

2005-08-14T16:17:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since they left us. It's been somewhat long since we allowed them to send stuff back to us again. Now, we are also doing things for them at half price. We love their football, we love their movies, we love their currency, we love their literature, some of us even try to speak like them, notwithstanding that we are already speaking their language.

It hurts.

Why?

I don't know. In spite of sustained efforts, I cannot rationalize a few core principles of my life - this hurt being one of them. This inability used to bother me a lot before. It bothers me even now, though not as much. But the hurt still remains.

Why again?

After all, my being here is just a geographic coincidence. I could've been anywhere, anyone. Now, the I-could-have-been-anyone thought is a digression worth its own space, and it will get some here later. So, I could've been anywhere, and would I be lamenting about my current home's state of affairs today? As an academic, maybe I might have, and the hurt would have remained academic. But it wouldn't have hurt this deeply. This one cuts deep. There is something that ties me to my origins, to my people; Part hereditary, part cultural, part self, part randomness: all of these contribute. As for now, I have succumbed to faith and don't question my origins, I am just thinking of the next level problems. It won't surprise me if I, in the future, succumb to other faiths as well. Leaps of faith seem to be inevitable.

So, what is the occasion? Oh yes, we are free! Free as in entitled to free beer? Free to install software? Free to make money? Free to think? Free to think fair? Free to rule ourselves? Free to defend ourselves? Free to participate in the the economics of the flat world? Free to do what we want?

What is it that we want? We wanted to be free. Now what?

Extreme Rainwalking

2005-07-27T07:30:00.000-07:00

It rained in Mumbai yesterday like it has never rained in India before, with 37 inches of rain, thereby beating the high-school trivia of Cheerapunji, which had some 30 inches of rain in 1910. It poured, oh-my-freaking-heavens, it poured. I was mostly in my lab through the deluge, now and then flinching at the force with which rains lashed the huge glass walls of my department, which at worst saw some slippery corridors. The worst was elsewhere.

My first reaction was that of ecstasy, with this primitive desire to get drenched in the wonderful rain. So, a few of us guys ventured into a rainwalk from the department to our hostel - the excuse being that we were all hungry. Down the IIT main building road, and well into the road section near the grounds, it was just heavy rains. The intensity of the rains, and the failure of the storm water drainage hadn't dawned on us yet. The first signs of trouble were near the hostel 11 entrance. H11 is the PG girls hostel, and has a very short roadway from its gate on the main road till the guard booth, and into the hostel itself. The entire road in front of H11 was submerged in ankle deep quick flowing water, all of which converged at the H11 gates, and were gushing through the small gate into the roadway of the hostel like a scene from some disaster movie. White water nightmare with super-quick currents. Cycles were being swept away in front of our eyes. Ecstasy had turned into horror.

As there was no obvious call for help from H11, and we could see a few guards and women watching the floods with some interest, we walked on towards H8, the first men's hostel on our way. With no power, H8 looked like a gloomy Titanic deck, with knee deep water rushing through the gate into the corridors. I guess all the water from the highlands of the academic area was rushing into these two hostels, on its way into Powai Lake. I also heard that there was some fish in the water that was flowing on the grounds. Sure death awaited anyone who stepped into the drains that surrounded the grounds. 6 feet deep, water rushing at breakneck speeds. Screwed!!

My hostel, H5 greeted us with water rushing in through its gates into the lower rooms of the first wing. My very close friends, KantuPatil, Rajveer, and Kaushal got screwed with knee-to-waist deep water in their rooms. A few computers, beds, clothes, and related stuff got screwed. Surprisingly, the mess was serving some really good food, and we hogged like pigs, hung out at Nishant's dry room for sometime, and then, walked back the same route back to the department.

Later, I heard that the PG girls had formed human chains to get people into the hostel from the main road, their flooded mess blocking an entire wing, power shutdowns, flooded computer rooms and ground floor residential rooms. H6 and H9 had submerged cycles and cars. The newly constructed H12/13 basement mess was fully submerged in water, with tables and chairs floating all the way up. I have no idea how they cleared it.

This was just IIT. Mumbai suffered more. 50 dead, gazzillions worth of property lost, transportation halted - life came to a stand still. For others who were not so fortunate, it was the end of their normal living conditions. My heart goes out to them.

Similar weather has been forecast for the next 48 hours, and this time, with heavy winds as well. Hopeth against hope that the worst has passed. I love Mumbai rains, but this was not what I had in mind.

Attention Deficit

2005-07-23T04:24:00.000-07:00

I am passionate.

At this point, I tried looking up the meaning of the word "passion" in a dictionary, and much to my consternation, I couldn't find a concise meaning that I could use here. So, I will just stick to my own interpretation of the word.

I have been passionate about quite a few things (for the lack of a better term). Most of these passions have been purely academic; I have never acted on any of them. But a few of them, I charted my life around them; I followed them. A long time ago, I started acting on the management bug. I read books, followed people, perused biographies, idolized the likes of Iacocca and Welch, and was convinced that an MBA was all that was missing in my arsenal. But as time went on, this passion in management waned. I tried to analyze why this happened, and could come up only with two axiomatic reasons which couldn't be questioned further: lack of intrinsic interest and no pleasure. Maybe those two are closely related, but thats a different thought altogether.

Computer Science has been a passion for a long time now. First, it was programming to reverse a number, sorting, and some level of computer architecture. Later it was fueled by other sublime ideas like NP-Completeness (Intractability), Undecidability, Incompleteness, AI, space-time trade off, etc. At this point, I figured that this was one area which could lead to the next level of bliss, if pursued under formal tutelage. I also was in a good shape to try because the computer science bandwagon of the nineties had landed me with the basic qualifications.

During the days leading up to my admission to IITB, and for a long time after coming here, I was awed by all the new concepts I came across, the little anecdotes of the great people in this area (a few of whom I have seen in person here), the underlying mathematical foundations, the so called cutting-edge research that was actually happening here, etc. This awe convinced me that I had made the right decision in turning my life around to get here.

But all's not well in passion-world.

After a year in the middle of it, the awe is gone - replaced by some form of pragmatic understanding of how all this fits into the real world. I sense that every school of human thought converges into reality. As of now, this convergence seems to be governed by economic principles. Agents like religion, morality, computer science, emotion, management, philosophy, political thought etc. seem to interact in games controlled by demand, supply, comparative advantage, prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons, etc.

And now, the ruling academic passion seems to be the Principles of Economics. Currently, I am in no shape to go formal in this. But time will tell.

Kamsi Kamsa

2005-07-17T05:11:00.000-07:00

An ashareera vaani tells the magically endowed evil tyrant that his sister's eighteenth child, as yet unborn, will be his death.

He kills the first seventeen of them, and before he gets to the eighteenth, some heavenly spells aid the poor father and he saves our child-hero from the tyrant. I am yet to explore the Moses and the Red Sea connection here.

A second prophecy is revealed by the substitute eighteenth child that the real child-hero has been saved and death awaits Mr Evil Dude, after sometime though.

That time is judiciously used to give us a glimpse of the Leela. As our child-hero grows up, we see him like a normal troublesome kid, flirt with the neighborhood girls, fall in love with an older girl, attend schools, thwart all attempts at his life by the uber-villain, and eat pot-loads of butter.

Finally, our child-hero does kill Mr. Evil Dude.

Deja Vu?

Up, arranged, and re-chopped

2005-07-08T17:01:00.000-07:00

Jadav (Bhatt ko) - Pralaynath Gendaswami kaise dikhta hai?
Bhatt - Kya?!?!
Jadav - Kis desh se hai tu?
Bhatt - Kya?!?!
Jadav - "Kya" naam ka koyi desh maine to nahi suna? "Kya" mein Hindi bolte hai kya?
Bhatt - Kya!!
Jadav - Hindi maadarchod!! Hindi - Tu bolta hai kya use?
Bhatt - Haan!!
Jadav - Toh tu jaanta hai ki mein kya bol raha hoon
Bhatt - Haan!
Jadav - Bol ki kaise dikhta hai Pralaynath Gendaswami
Bhatt - Kya?!
Jadav - Ek aur bar "Kya" bol, Ek aur bar "Kya" bol - mein tujhe chunauti deta hoon, mein tujhe dugni chunauti deta hoon maadarchod. Ek aur baar "Kya" bol saala!
Bhatt - Kaala hai!
Jadav - Aur????
Bhatt - Takla hai...
Jadav - Kutti ki tara dikhta hai kya?
Bhatt - Kya?!?!
Jadav Bhatt ko kandhon pe goli maarta hai...
Jadav - Kutti ki tara dikhta hai kya?
Bhatt - Nahin?!?!
Jadav - Toh phir kutti ki tarah usko chodne ki koshish kyon ki tune?
Bhatt - Nahin, maine nahi kiya
Jadav - Haan tune kiya!!! Haan tune kiya!!! Bhatt, tune usko chodne ki koshish ki...
Bhatt - Nahin..
Jadav - Pralaynath Gendaswami ko yeh pasand nahi ki Srimati Gendaswami ke siva use koyi chode..........Tu Gita ko padta hai kya Bhatt???

Jules (Jadav) and Vincent could be two facets of any human being (say Impulse and Logic) trying to accomplish something for a higher control (Marsellus). Impulse fucks up (Vincent shoots Marvin), and somehow logic, with the help of some luck (Winston Wolf) gets them out of the situation. Butch (conscience) has some weird nostalgic attachment (the watch) which drives his value system. But he evolves from killing a boxing opponent (evolving conscience making mistakes earlier), to saving his worst enemy (the supreme magnanimous sacrifice). And of course, at some level, they are all controlled by/related to the higher power of Marsellus. Conscience (Butch) killing Impulse (Vincent) in an impulisve reaction (the toaster timer) has an element of Tony-Rocky-Horroresqe irony. If you like this pilot, I can churn out more.

Is it the deadpan dialogue? Is it the black humour? Is it the inexplicable element of style? Is it the countless references to American pop culture? Is it the seemingly arbitrary choice of music? Or is there something more to Pulp Fiction? An (over?) extensive philosophical analysis can be found at Pulp Fiction - The sign of the empty symbol (on MetaPhilm). This particular interpretation of the movie is all about how Jules and Butch start seeing more meaning to their lives as the events of the movie unfold in this almost meaningless fucked up order. Of course, if I tried hard - real hard, I could interpret movies like Hot Shots, Sholay, or Godfather in a similar vein. Any small sequence of events can be explained by some pattern or the other. So, is trying to find meaning in Pulp Fiction an exercise in futility? That'd be a damn shame. No "quack quack" any more; and so, here is my own allegorical attempt (a la Upendra's Upendra)...

Anyway, as of today - Pulp Fiction is my favorite English movie. Jatin and I are attempting to translate it to Hindi, while keeping all the deadpan-ness and black in the dialogue.

Meta-blogging

2005-07-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

"The more interesting your life becomes, the less your post... and vice versa." - Jorn Barger

The first blog I came across was Kalyan's, sometime in early 2002, and it struck me quite strange that someone could actually maintain an online journal. For the next two years, blogs appeared in and around places I inhabited, mostly computer science technical, a few on everyday happenings of people I was close to, and a few opinion journals on interesting topics.

The first blog I started to seriously follow was Lance Fortnow's very technical blog on Computational Complexity. Now, this blog was really serious stuff, and it might even have convinced the ever skeptical Nandu that blogs could be cool. From there, I went over to the Geomblog, and then to the very technical (again) hunch.net. Sometime thereabouts, Sudeep had started Alpha-Q, and his dry wit was rampant through the first few posts. He gave me write-rights and Lo! I was in the web. I have found blogs that were, in the least, informative; or sometimes, intriguing; or inspiring even.

As far as I know, the big search engines do not re-crawl the web frequently enough to get all the dynamic content on the blogosphere. Smaller ones like Technorati and related companies do blog-crawling, trackbacks, analysis, and of course, blog search. One cool thing about this particular blog-search on Technorati is that they subjectively boost up a few blogs' ranking in the search result-list to encourage quality blogs, and not just heavily linked blogs (a la PageRank of Google).

To digress some more, this boosting up introduces the very interesting "Exploration vs. Exploitation" problem. Say Google decides to tinker with its results-list-ranking function and boost up a few webpages based on some other judgment (other than the in-link count based PageRank), it will definitely help a few webpages and give them the deserved traffic; but Google's users will also suffer because inferior websites might be ranked high, and the overall quality of the search engine decreases. So, the explorer suffers. While the explorer suffers by boosting low ranked webpages, these webpages' visibility increases, and they are gradually linked to by other sites, thereby increasing their in-link based ranking. The exploiter waits for this to happen, and enjoys the fruits of having the erstwhile low ranked good pages being highly ranked now. This develops into an interesting game between big search companies, and is a research problem involving ranking functions and game theory. There is an outside chance that I might work in this area in the near future.

Coming back to blogging, read the Wikipedia article on blogs to know how they are shaping the web, who the most influential bloggers are, and a host of other information. If you already have a blog, and want to contribute to a better understanding of the blogging community - take the blog survey conducted by MIT Media Lab by clicking on the link below. Won't take too much time.

On a personal note - I am waiting for Samba, Akshay, Archana, Deepti, Nandini, Nagesha, Jatin, and Raghotham, among others, to either start blogging, or renew their blogs. And hopeth against hope, it'd be superlatively cool if Soumen or Sundar started blogging. Wishful thinking I guess.

A Subtle Shift of Power

2005-06-27T15:41:00.000-07:00

In reasonably traditional/orthodox Indian marriages, the bride's first name is also changed. The 'also' is to underscore the point that the last name gets changed almost always. The first name of a person, I have always believed, is very important to her. If that is indeed the case, I am surprised that some Indian women are happy/OK with this name-changing business.

Its not just names we are talking about here. Indian weddings come with dowry, customs that ridicule the bride's family, how the groom is the King during and after the wedding, and a whole lot of other male chauvinistic cultural elements. As an anecdote, during a recent wedding, a North Indian friend of mine was shocked to see the groom taking photographs of a group of the bride's brother's friends. He was shocked to see the men of the family taking care of cooking and serving a traditional meal at another religious occasion. I guess South India is a little more progressive/liberal regarding these gender roles than the North - but its all still pretty much the same.

My first reaction has always been that of guilt and sadness about how the entire setup is not "fair." This kept haunting me for a while, and I had questions regarding whether I'd personally be up to being fair when it came to my turn in a similar setup.

On deeper thought, I noticed something else in an ideal male dominated relationship. This is mostly seen where the man is dominant, but is also a mature and loving person, who genuinely cares for the relationship. Of course, it also involves a woman who submits voluntarily, consciously, and with full consent. In such a case, somewhat counter-intuitively, the lady holds the key. She holds the power. She is the one who can end it all. She can stop giving, stop accepting anytime. The day she says "enough!," - the male dominance ends.

Why does it end? It ends obviously - as the giver has stopped giving. But thats not the interesting part - The interesting part lies in the expectation of the stop-event happening. Any thoughtful dominant person knows that the power exists as long as the submissive is happy. This apprehension of the submissive not remaining submissive anymore always keeps the dominant keeping the submissive's happiness as first priority.

This doesn't mean that the submissive can walk out anytime and the dominant is left nowhere. If the dominant has a lot of choices in life, in relationships, other more important things happening in life - this might not matter at all, and he might wait for the next submissive to come along. But if the relationship is something that cannot be done without, that cannot be broken easily, like a marriage - oh boy! the dominant is in quite a situation.

I suspect that Indian marriages is aware of this equation; of this imminent shift of power. and is probably one of many reasons why they are statistically more stable than others. Interestingly, BDSM literature also emphasizes on this virtual power that the dominant holds, and a possible power-shift towards the submissive, just whose knowledge is enough to keep the balance, and of course, increase the "fun."

I have seen this work in relationships from both sides of the fence, and of course, none of it has been as clear cut, or as ideal for easy analysis. But I still see this shift of power leading to the dominant appeasing the submissive in various capacities - in everyday life - in major decisions.

PS: Genders here are incidental - it could always be a dominatrix who is apprehensive.

Reconciliation of the elusive kind

2005-06-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

Different priorities exist. Broadly, Maslow established them at a high level, and I try to think about them at some level of granularity that might or might not fit into his framework.

Partition of India, the Holocaust, Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Corruption in the corridors of power, Organizational Behavior, Poverty, Administration, Political Science, Computer Science, Logic, Formalization, and various other aspects of my world hold me captive. These affect me deeply. But this is almost always restricted to the intellect. I get depressed or elated when I am reading about them, when I am talking about them, when I am writing about them. But rarely have these affected me from within - Deeply.

Emotionally, I am much more troubled by close death, lost love, nostalgia, scary social embarrassment, great effort leading up to nothing, strained relationships with loved ones, and so on, and in no particular order. With limited success, I have tried to intellectually rationalize the pain which these bring. This reasoning works - but only during the reasoning period. Then, there is some peace; everything is not actually over; desperation is not at its peak; hope has not hit rock bottom. But as the reasoning period fades, as friends with whom I am talking go their ways, as the bottle becomes empty, the intellectual rationalization disappears, and pain almost always re-appears. Only time heals these wounds. Slowly, and hopefully, surely.

It seems that the earlier priorities that I mentioned, which are global, both in time and scope - never seem to hold emotional water to soothe the emotional pain. There is this phase of rationalizing which has to connect these, to give me the big picture, and console me to some extent. Why is it that the big priorities of life never become emotionally so close that they actually take care of the almost trivial emotional pains even before they begin? Why do I have to go through the rationalization phase every time?

To give an example - say I am screwed in an even imperfect relationship, it'll take me ages to recover emotionally. But at that moment, when the emotional pain hits, there needs to be this emotional feeling for the burgeoning Indian Population that puts it all into perspective, and the relationship pain just doesn't seem important at all. This is not instinctive. As of now, there are many sessions of rationalization that are needed to get here. This is the elusive reconciliation I am looking for.

It will bring its own problems. I might end up being perpetually sad, emotionally, about all the problems facing humanity. I cannot comprehend that situation right now. But well, if it ever happens, I'll have to see how to handle that.

Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi (Review)

2005-06-14T02:59:00.000-07:00

Following repeated recommendation, I finally watched Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi. It is an interesting love story set against the backdrop of the Indian political unrest of the late sixties and seventies, culminating in the 1975 Emergency. A good movie, bold in its theme - which could be the eternal debate between kraanti and playing it safe in this world, or an alternate theme of the growth of the protagonist - Geeta. But first, a comment on the female lead herself - she looks gorgeous. Its been a long time since I have been so enamored by a woman on screen. I don't know if its just her looks, or whether its her personality that captures me. But I digress.

Coming to the themes - Capturing the Kranti vs. "conventional success" debate on screen would be very hard. I have never seen it done on film before. Here, they make do with showing how one of the main characters' life changes from bad to worse, how his living conditions deteriorate, how his parents go from disappointment to despair, and finally, how he ends up with nothing in the end. His ideology is not met, and everything else that a common-man has, he doesn't. As road maps of ideologically driven people go, I guess this movie gives a very realistic look at how badly screwed up it can get. Not everyone becomes a Gandhi. And that is something that is not acknowledged enough. This theme is well presented in the movie. And to put my own self in better light here, I still haven't managed to read The Communist Manifesto, let alone ponder over it.

As for the growth of Geeta, our heroine - the movie shows various aspects of her life, how she handles the men who covet her, how she hold her own in an Indian Marriage, how she manages to stay with her heart and her conscience till the very end. Her sense of friendship, class, fairness, and mostly, love for her man, and what she can do for it, and finally, how she chooses something else over it - shows true character. I'd love to meet this woman.

As far as film-making is concerned, the movie is amateur at best. Editing, acting, dialogue, and barring music, everything about the movie is sub-standard (the music is superb). But that doesn't take anything away from the theme, and the overall impact. A must watch.

Banavasi to Gerusoppa

2005-05-28T06:06:00.000-07:00

Update to remove broken links. No other meaninful update.

Staying in Bombay for a year now, I have seen how Shivaji, and his heroic acts, are now a part of lore, and more so, a part of their core identity - Maharashtrian Pride. After visiting Banavasi, in the Kannada heartland tucked in the Western Ghats, I remembered the historical king whose introduction to me was through the glorious movie - Mayura. I guess he, and the story of his ascent to the Kadamba throne has enough heroics and romance about them to merit some place in the Kannada identity that many in Karnataka are trying to seek.

I have seen them (the many) taking resort in various symbols like Rajkumar (will come to this irony in a while), Kempe Gowda, etc. It's also manifested in their (quasi-)hate for various other concepts like other regional languages, non-Kannada movies, BPO-IT-Mall culture, proliferation of non-Kannada speaking people in urban centers, etc. It's lamentable that they haven't used political and other related machinery to invoke Kannada pride in Kannada people by having other more meaningful symbols - Kannada literature, historical figures like Mayura Varma, classic Kannada movies, Kannada speaking intellectuals like Girish Karnad, etc. The irony I was reffering to earlier was that while they can have Rajkumar as a symbol for Kannada identity, they don't look at the glorious characters he has played in Kannada Cinema. Also, again ironically, a popular Tamizh speciality restaurant in Bangalore goes by the name "Kadambam." Hmmmm

Anyways, the Madhukeshwara temple at Banavasi felt great in spite of us not having a guide, and therby missing all the unique things that the temple has to offer tourists, Kannada identity seekers, or people who come there to worship. I will ensure that I won't miss those again. On an aside - there was this "seve" that someone was having there, and during their lunch, we managed to get two glasses each of the fabulous tangy 'n spicy Malnad drink: Mavinkayi Neergojju or AppehuLi.

Gerusoppa, popularly called Jog Falls, is now maintained by the grandiosely named "Jog Management Authority." I guess its job is to ensure that the visiting area of an entire two square kilometers is clean, safe, and fun for visitors. That apart, the waterfall itself is quite spectacular. I will upload photos here once Nishant's (analog) SLR camera rolls are developed. At 8 in the morning, the mist, the clouds, the overcast weather, the chill, the silence, the smell of water, the sound of birds, the rustle of leaves, echoes, the great view from the bridge before the falls, and of course, the light spray of rain now and then, made up for the lack of a gushing waterfall. Tragically, we just caught a small stream trickling down the massive wall of rock, but it was still worth the early morning drive. And of course, the drive itself is worth the ...er....drive.

Analogies and more

2005-05-18T06:48:00.000-07:00

This is typically how Analogies work. I want to explain some concept to someone, say A->B (A implies B). After a while, I find that the logical relationship between A and B is quite difficult to get across. I then resort to an analogy, say X->Y (X implies Y). I pick this analogy from everyday life so that the logical relationship between X and Y are evident, if not obvious. Then, with some conviction, I claim that as X->Y is so obviously true, A->B must also be true. The unsuspecting listener vaguely gets A->B, but looking at how strongly X->Y holds, she is convinced that A->B must hold as well.

The catch is that whether A==X and B==Y is never touched upon, let alone proved.

Let me give an analogy to explain this - (grimace)

Say my aunt wants to prove it to me that a guru is required to navigate the path to enlightenment, she first tries to convince me by using just their merits and interactions. I am hardly convinced, and thats when she resorts to an everyday analogy. We all know how a little curd is necessary and sufficient to ferment a whole vessel of milk into curd. Similarly, a guru is necessary and sufficient to get you across the sea of ignorance into nirvana. I am now thinking - Oh! Where do I find my own guru?

See the catch? Who is to ever suspect that my aunt never touched upon the similarity between the situations? Did she prove that a guru equals a tea spoon of curd? Or that I am a vessel of milk? Or that enlightenment is a vessel of curd that I am interested in, etc.

Informal reasoning of this sort has had me always suspecting every analogy that anyone throws at me to make me see their points. I grimace every time I do it myself. This had led me to believe that there are some severe restrictions when it comes to proving something to someone.

As I lamented about this with the vaakpatu (vaachaLi?) Nisrani Ramchandra, he told me that Nyaya says that there are four odd sources of knowledge.

- Pratyaksha (Perception)
- Anumana (Inference and Contrapositive)
- Upamana (Analogy)
- Aptavakya (Testimony)

If A->B was obvious by perception, there would be no need for a proof. If whenever A were present, B were seen (inference); if whenever B were not present, A would not be present (contrapositive) - QED. We have already covered Analogy. And of course, if some one whom I consider wise, someone whom I trust, were to tell me that A indeed implies B, I would just believe it. That would be Aptavakya.

I also want to add two more such concepts.

Proof by Contradiction: When you see that everything else is eliminated, whatever is left, however counter-intuitive, must be true. (Sherlock Holmes would've smiled)

Proof by Enlightenment: When you know that 'it' is true. You just know it. No proof is ever required.

I wonder what formal logic theory says about these techniques. I have seen various mathematical proofs which use these notions formally, but when it comes to social sciences, or philosophical reasoning, I feel the void. Many a time, I have felt this desperate craving to have things formal, so that the wheel of thought need not be reinvented during each dialogue. Sigh.

Finally, in spite of so much thought about logic, conviction, proofs, etc., there is this feeling that everything comes down to faith/belief/trust; Or so I believe.

The Best Movie Album

2005-05-11T03:47:00.000-07:00

Listening to music from Dil Se now, and thinking of the best movie album that I have heard....the most important criterion is that all songs must be good. All of them. Overall listening satisfaction must be high. As Jatin said, I should be able to play Side A and Side B of the tape without any need to forward/rewind/stop. To be fair to Indian Movie culture, the album should have at least 5 songs.

Ok, without further ado, here are the contenders for the top 5 favorite albums of all time:

Dil Se - But for Satrangi Re, this would have been a clear winner. Also, could have had a theme song. But the overall effect is incredible. Rahman has elevated music to true bliss in those five other songs. Classy Urdu lyrics in Chaiyya Chaiyya, also an element of abandon that hits me each time I experience this song, great fusion stuff in Jiya Jale, the absolutely haunting Ae Ajnabi, and the I-cant-place-my-finger-on-it-but-something-about-this-song-captivates-me title song....

Aaradhana - Legend has it that R.D has as much to do with this as S.D. Either way, father and son have come up with this truly evergreen music album that every romantic swears by. Sapnon Ki Raani is my personal favorite, with great romance, loads of attitude, and the echoing train jingles in the background. The romantic Kora Kagaz Tha Yeh Man Mera, the peppy Gunguna Rahi Hai, the seductive Roop Tera Mastana, and the pathos-filled Saphal Hogi Teri Aaradhana....probably any music director's best rendering of his own song ever....

Geeta (Kannada) - This is one incredible composition by Ilayaraja. All songs are top notch. Except for maybe the antara sections of Kelade Nimageega where the tribal stuff starts. One classy album, this. The best use of drums in Indian music. Check out the title song....Boy!!

Khamoshi (New) - I might be a little biased toward this one as I heard this when I was in the throes of first love. But I still like it, I love it. Jaana Suno, Bahon Ke Darmian, Ae Dil Sunraha Hai - All of these take me back to the glorious days of second year pre-university.

Rangeela - None of the songs are exceptional, but all of them are great. For overall satisfaction (at least for me), its up there at the top. I remember having listened to this tape over and over again, maybe Kya Kahe Kya Na Kahe more times than the last one in Side B that was sung by Rahman. But overall, this one makes it to my top-5. Maybe I am biased, but I do love this one.

Very close next-level contenders are Guide, Abhimaan, Bombay, Roja, Kati Patang, Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Ayi, Aashiquie, Raaja Nanna Raaja (Kannada), Kavi Ratna Kalidasa (Kannada), Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Dil To Pagal Hai, Safar, Jewel Thief, Amar Prem, and a few more...Of coruse, its just my list, and overall satisfaction was the main criterion. If individual songs were to be considered.....I would be literally out of words.

Magnanimity and Leadership

2005-04-21T10:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to live up to a few of my own magnanimous gestures at times. Having given myself more credit than I deserve, I have fought hard to live up to my promises; sometimes, to others, but often, to myself. I am just one person, responsible for my own actions, and the only one to bear the consequences.

Imagine Gandhi, Nehru, and others, who took a few such magnanimous decisions for 700 million Indians. Was Gandhi fair in asking the Indian Government to give Pakistan the money India technically owed them, so that they could fund their on-going proxy tribal war in Kashmir? Was he trying to be fair because India had to be fair to her neighbours? or was he exhibiting some personal gesture to himself? - that the people he leads are always fair to others. What statement was he trying to make?

Was Nehru fair in asking India to be secular? Did he (or they, the Congress) base the decision that allowed Indian Muslims to stay in India, on his own principles or on a more collective mindset of India? Pakistan was enforcing the Hindu exodus from its land and Nehru decided that India will accept them all, and there would be no corresponding enforcement from the Indian side. In a way, its like offering the other chin.....

Now, on the history per se, I have no strong opinion because I am not really privy to what exactly transpired then. The facts, the thoughts, the opinions; I have to read a lot more history before I am even close to giving my own opinion....But the point in question here is about whether leaders have the rights to be magnanimous, when all they are implicitly entrusted with is just the main cause. There are two "causes" here -

- The issue where magnanimity is being shown - India being secular (Nehru), Give Money (Gandhi)
- The issue on which leaders were made - Independent India (Nehru, Gandhi)

I might be mistaken here; these might not be two separate entities. Independent India might subsume Secular India or Internationally Fair India. But from first looks, it appears that some form of constitution had to be in place before the leaders took these decisions. But of course, I am grossly overlooking the urgency of the situation in 1947. The extreme nature of Partition might make these arguments on academic aspects of leadership look trivial; or to some extent, even offensive.

But in less extreme cases where leaders make choices for their "subjects," do they have the right to be magnanimous on issues that are out of their leadership domain in a strict sense.

At a personal level, when individuals make commitments, stick to their signatures, their word, their promises, do they reckon with all the other agents who actually have to carry out their word? Agents like emotion, selfish instinct, reflex, malleable thought, maturity, micro-evolution, etc. Leadership at the micro level seems to be so hard......I wonder about Gandhi...

Proud to be Indian?

2005-04-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

Well, somewhat....

Traveling Salesman

2005-04-02T06:27:00.000-08:00

The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a very simple combinatorial optimization problem. Given a set of cities and distances between each pair, the problem is to find the tour of least distance that travels each city exactly once. Simple - as in simple to state. But from what I have seen this seems to be the hardest of the hard problems to solve.

To give some background, there are these famous hard problems in Computer Science that do not have "efficient" solutions. Brute force solutions work very easily on them, but take an eternity to run. In spite of 40 years of extensive research by some very smart people, brute force seems to be the only solution. For example, the TSP can be solved by listing all possible tours covering the cities once, and picking the one with the least length. This takes an eternity as there are an exponential number of such tours (n!). These problems are the (in)famous NP-Hard problems. Stephen Cook at the University of Toronto proved that if one of them can be solved efficiently, all of them can be!!! A very intuitively pleasing fact.

Tragically, most combinatorial optimization problems in nature turn out to be NP-hard. As 40 years of research hasn't found a good solution to these problems, people have begun to approximate the solutions. Say, for TSP, if the least length best tour is around 100 KM, a procedure that finds a tour of 150 KMS would be considered good. Of course, if the length of the best tour is around 5000 KM, the same procedure should return a tour of length 7500 KM. This means that the approximate procedure for TSP should return a solution that is always some fixed fraction times more than the best solution. Most of the NP-hard problems have reasonable approximation algorithms; the TSP does not!!

It is proven that you cannot invent a procedure that can take a set of cities and give a tour that will always be some fraction times more than the optimal solution. TSP seems to be very very very very hard. But of course, most of this theory would collapse if someone comes up with a good way to solve one NP-hard problem.

In spite of my being really really really bad at this academically, I am completely enamored by the theory of NP-completeness. Somehow this notion of possible but not-feasible seems to make it intriguing. It is incredibly fascinating to see how all NP-hard problems are closely related to each other, and solving one solves them all, but approximating one, doesn't approximate them all. Seductive!!

Reminds me of Dijkstra's famous quote - "Computer Science is as much about Computers as Astronomy is about Telescopes."

Religion

2005-03-25T15:02:00.000-08:00

I, like most others, did not have a choice when I first chose a religion to follow. I was....er....born into one. After spending quite a while seeing it being practiced, practicing some of it myself, defending subtle nuances in quasi-intellectual arguments with friends, thinking about it for quite a while, I gave up on conventional religion. This decision was driven by conscious rational thought and emotionally charged events.

From the outside, this gave me a chance to look at religion as a concept. I respect conventional religion for its ability to give solace to helpless minds. There have been times when I wished I could enjoy religious comfort. I am amazed at how religious thoughts have united various peoples across time. One's belief in religion constitues a big amount of one's identity.

Of course, the importance of religion could be accepted if religion were to be defined by its followers as "code of conduct in ALL aspects of life." I am sure most religions define codes of conduct for most aspects of life. Rules and consequences of (not) following them are written down with great clarity. "Popularly understood religions" have unambiguous rules and even more unambiguous consequences. This is what makes them popular I suppose.

However, to understand the "whys", the "how exactlys", the "what ifs", and other questions, deeper thought and more importantly, deeper study into religion is required. This, unfortunately, takes a lifetime. The irony of the situation is that religion tells us how to live, and its takes a lifetime to understand one religion. So, what is the way out?

It is evident that we have been leading lives. Without much problem, that too. Codes of conduct have been easy to follow. We do not break legal rules in most situations. People, mostly, are fair to others. So, why this fuss about religion?

This is because people mostly lead double lives. The life of day to day actions, intuitively selfish decision making, profit maximizing, etc. The other life of love, fear, insecurity, emotional traumas, indecisions, ego, inner-conflicts, peace-seeking, theorizing, etc. Of course, these two lives are closely intertwined, and with some people, are not separable at all. Religion, at some level, helps the latter life, and brings the two together.

Out of all the knowledge I had acquired over the years I have been thinking, and the built-up emotional reserve that had some thoughts of its own, I had come to the conclusion that I could formulate my own religion. Of course, an informally specified religion will have its own pitfalls during testing times, and mine was no different. Formally specifying religious tenets proved to be extremely hard. Achieving completeness seems intractable, if not undecidable.

So, currently, I am thinking about respecting centuries of distilled wisdom. The best approximation seems to be Hinduism, as it seems more liberal than other choices. Approaching a religion with absolutely no pre-conceived thoughts seems to be impossible. But I am giving it a try, and lets see where it leads me.

On an aside, I think that human thought has not been able to generate really significant movements for the last so many centuries because I do not see any new religion that has been developed. Have we really advanced in terms of thought and its corresponding conviction? Einstein supposedly believed that God is a "natural order of things." He could have made a religion out of it. Formulated a set of principles, etc. But I guess he didn't fully get it to make it into a full fledged religion.

No clue.

Days

2005-03-18T18:36:00.000-08:00

I was told once that we make a lot of special days: Birthdays, Anniversaries, Valentine Day, New Year's Eve, etc. We expect a little too much these days, we want things to turn around from how they are, and suddenly become utopian, we want surprises, we want perfect days. All this, all the while sets us up for some kind of disappointment at the end of the day. Sometimes, the foreboding thought that expectations will not be met is enough to induce sadness.

Inspite of a lot of rationalization and tons of realistic expectations, I have felt the agonies of these days. Each time, I have been bemused at my own thoughts of these days, and how ironically, I have made them far worse with these overwhelming thoughts, instead of just having fun.

Here's to having fun through the year, and without expectations, putting in more personal effort on these days instead, and making them memorable, for all the good reasons. Its my friend's birthday today, and I want him to have the best of times.

Example:
Jules: We happy? ..... Vincent!! we happy?
Vincent: Yeah, we happy.

Fuzzy thoughts (contd.)

2005-03-08T23:09:00.000-08:00

The nature of the Self is dominant in what we think/do/feel. But what makes it fuzzy is the priorities given to the levels of selfishness under different circumstances. There are people who die for those they love. Those who sacrifice years of life for ideologies. Martyrs who die for their countries. Revenge, Patriotism, Love, Sacrifice, etc do not fit well into the conventional thought on selfishness. Now, here is where we see skewed priorities, and in my attempt to explain some of them, I run into a wall of fuzzy thought, which in itself goes unresolved. The priorities and their explanations flutter precariously in the wind. And now....

I listen, I think and I blink
Each time it feels lacking in something
I console myself; its a matter of time
To get it all in order. Peace.

After a while, a riddle resolves.
I take to poetry, fuzzy my thoughts.
Feelings become thoughts,
thoughts try a few words;
I try to save them
before they get caught in form.

Dangerous this is,
I can read these words many ways.
But that is Thought,
I haven't known it anyways.

PS: Thanks Saraswati, you have no idea how this helped me.

Someone else

2005-03-06T12:24:00.000-08:00

I am mostly someone else to the world. I am not what others consider I am. This might be true with most of us, but what surprises/saddens/shocks/intrigues me is that I am mostly someone else to myself.

A simple question settled my doubts on this regard. How many times have I told myself that I was good (bad) at something because of some (lack of) intrinsic ability, while time and experience had shown me otherwise? I have fooled myself many times this way. A game of football, chess, academics, work, physical abilities, and mostly - events of everyday life and my having total control over all of them. Everyday events are strange; they don't mean much in the long run, but they have shown me that my level of control over things are somewhat hazy, mostly absent. I don't have full control, but it doesn't seem to matter very much.

Hold on.

As I am typing this, I am being faced with a very familiar but creepy situation. I know I have some train of thought in my mind about fooling myself, control, pretense, etc. But, what is happening is that this thought is based on half buried axioms, half baked theories, and incomplete experiences. This fuzzy mix of thoughts has happened to me many many times. I have made a fool of myself trying to defend some viewpoint from this mixture in many an argument. I have built more screwed up theories on these fuzzy thoughts. I have gone to the extent of defining some life policies based on these fuzzy thoughts.

What are fuzzy thoughts? Here is an example. Take my love for everything India - Indian politics, dingchak movies, pride about roadside mostly un-hygenic food, vernacular languages, my compassion for anyone who looks Indian, the deeper amount of pain I feel for those who died during the 1947 Partition as compared to the more academic pain I feel for the 1940s Nazi Holocaust victims. This sense of one-ness with India is a classic Fuzzy Thought. I really cannot explain this love for India fully - This is because rationality tells me that location of birth is incidental, and love for one's birth country is unfounded. This is how the classic fuzzy reasoning goes, and goes nowhere after a while......Fuzzy thoughts define important priorities. It seems unfair that so much is decided by them, but well......I don't know whether I can dub that unfair without figuring out what these thoughts are, and what they mean.....

So, as for whether I am someone else? A lot more has to be figured out before I get here....

A song is worth a thousand theories

2005-03-02T14:15:00.000-08:00

I am listening to Tere Bina Zindagi Se Koyi Shikhwa Nahin from Andhi, sung by the I-can-so-imitate-him-but-he-still-remains-elusively-inimitable Kishore Kumar and Lata. It is so easy to lose myself in this song, in the lyrics, and in all those emotions and memories that take over and transport me someplace else.

This particular song has a curious mix of pathos and elation. The protagonists feel bad about the lost years that they couldn't be together, but in their glances and gestures they display a love which transcends age and which speaks of a hope about the future. This paradox of emotions is captured in the first 2 lines of the lyrics -

Tere bina zindagi se koyi shikhwa to nahin, shikhwa* nahin...
Tere bina zindagi bhi lekin, zindagi...toh nahin, zindagi nahin, zindagi nahin...

*shikhwa == complaint

I resist the urge to ponder about why I feel so strongly about a song; what it is that results in a rush of blood to the head, a rush of blood to the heart. Literally.

I ponder about listing all those moments when I have felt similarly. Can I figure out some pattern? I am anyway not able to deduce any deterministic theory to explain emotions.....but I do sense a very strong link between music, memory, and emotion. Music moulds memories around dominant thoughts and emotions about current events as I listen to it. The same music is able to recall those memories or emotions about the same events in a jiffy after ages. What baffles me is that simple commands are enough to recall facts, but recalling emotions seems to be much harder. But music and smell have helped me recall emotions. They have made me re-live some of the same emotions now; I am re-living one right now.

the What?

2005-02-26T15:56:00.000-08:00

I have never heard the Who's music; and scientists have always wondered about the Why's; Science mostly explains the How's; Today's question is the What.

On first glance, the What appears to be tame compared to its illustrious peers. While beginning Jaynes's tome on probability, I came across this quote said around 1948 and attributed to von Neumann - "For those who believe that comptuers cannot do all that we humans can; please explain in finite, precise steps, what it is that you can do; I will make the computer do precisely that."

This is precisely the importance of the What. What is it that we are doing here? What is it that we want? What is it that happens when we breathe? What is emotion? What is thought? What is pride? What is light? What is everything....

A what can mostly be answered by enumerating all the members of the answer set, and hopefully some abstraction will come out of it so that the next time, we use the abstraction instead of enumeration. But the first time, or till the time the abstraction comes out, we are stuck with the enumeration of all members of the answer set. Here is precisely where things might go out of hand. We might not be able to enumerate all that we think contribute to the answer to a single What. There might be just too many of them.

Let me elaborate that with an example. If someone asks me - What is poetry? - I can either come up with an absract answer which encapuslates all forms of poetry, all poems ever written, all poems that will be written in the future, all poems' purposes, all this, for all languages. The abstract encapuslation of these needs to be simple, concise, and should give a precise description of poetry.
OR
I can simply enumerate ALL possible poems there are, all of them, in a set, and give the enumeration set as the answer to "What is poetry?".

It seems that for all the NP-complete problems, we are stuck with the enumeration till the abstraction for all enumerations is found. We don't even know if such an abstraction exists. This is the famous P vs NP question, and well, there is a chance that this question itself is beyond answer.

My next post will elaborate on my current thoughts on the relevance of the P vs Np question in the eternal human-vs-machine debate.

ps - while writing about that poetry example, I remembered that there was something called Information Complexity which I had read about somewhere, and here it is. It goes by the name of Kolmogorov Complexity.

A short story....

2005-02-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

I feel the gulp in my throat, as I see his fleeting image so clearly. Is it my mind ?? I suddenly realize that it is indeed him. Its him!!! It is him!! Awgh, that green sweatshirt! It does suck! But hold on, I am thinking about his sweatshirt now when he is disappearing around that corner. With that thought I break into a run and knowing that I have always been able to outrun him, I sprint towards the corner where I saw him disappear three seconds back.

With bated breath, I come to the corner and turn around the white walls and see him standing in a queue on the other side of the street. With that sweatshirt, I could have spotted him from a mile. Seeing that the queue is quite long, I walk slowly upto it, catching my breath on the way; the thought that there is absolutely no traffic on these streets does not even strike me. As I pass a few others in the queue walking upto him, I am quite surprised that no one is complaining that I might be jumping the queue. Well, polite people. As I approach him, he turns to me and smiles, as if he is expecting me - "Hi Moms."

As I gaze at him, his face breaks into one of those fondly remembered trademark grins. Before I could return the smile, we have reached the head of the queue, and as we both try to enter, the gatekeeper blocks me with a gruff - "You sir, not yet!". The gatekeeper ignores my partner as he continues to smile at me while he goes in, and I keep staring after him, somehow he is walking away while still facing me. Going deep inside. Facing me he is. Still, through the transparent plastic in my wallet. I sigh and pocket my wallet on a pleasantly warm Republic Day afternoon and board a local train from Dadar.

What started out as a blog....

2005-02-25T06:03:00.000-08:00

ended up being this. Do check out Cosma Shalizi's Notebooks. What amazes me is the amount of reading a person can do. And the diverse range of reading interests anyone can hold. This is by far the widest range of reading that I have seen anyone accomplish.

I wonder where time passes us by. Passed me by. I need to rework my schedule.

In other news, Aishwarya Rai has been asked to present an Oscar. Why her? and why this? Of course, she is beautiful, artsy, speaks good English, hazel eyes, brown hair, high cheek bones, the works. First, Cannes, and now Oscars. I guess she is just what the media wants; here, as well as in the west. The clueless reader from Bangalore will be proud about how India has finally arrived on the World Stage and fold Bangalore Times, finish her donut, exit a Starbucks like coffee shop, and don her headphones, and become Melanie again.

I am really not sure what I am lashing out against, but somewhere, it hurts. It also feels bad cuz the hurt is not fully backed by logic. And the hurt is not strong enough to change the way I am. I can't find a consistent set of theories regarding why things are happening the way they are. I can't reconcile my own desire for pizzas with my empathy for the Tsunami victims. I hate it that I take refuge in the fact that Gandhi used to be a fashionable dandy during his London years, and only became the Gandhi we know after his stint in South Africa. Its a screwed mix of thoughts, and needs a lot of figuring out before real plans of actions are charted out. Of course, I can't wait for all that.....I need some food now, and thats where Pizza Hut comes in. I am waiting for the sensualist in me to die....

Manufacture of Consent?

2005-02-21T18:15:00.000-08:00

Currently a very heated discussion is on in the IITB.general newsgroup here at IIT-Bombay. The topic is somewhat pertaining to the lack of academic and research interest of undergraduate (UG) students (as compared to postgraduate (PG)), and their building interest in extra-curricular activities. Replying to the "IIT-B.Tech-praised-by-press-across-the-world" comment by some UG, one of the professors replied that both the Indian and the US presses are biased and self serving, or serving some kind of big-brother of sorts. These presses want go glorify BTech education in IITs, and not bother about MTech and PhDs, and esp any form of research conducted in IISc, and IITs. Why is it that we never hear about IISc in the Indian Media? Is it cuz it is sub-standard? Think again!

I have put the entire text of the professor's IIT newsgroup posting in this blog entry. Make sure you read the last section about Indian Media, and self-censorship. The posting was titled "Mysterious sedition on part of Indian Press," and here is the full text.

After reading that, followed by summaries and excerpts of Manufacturing of Consent, I was put into some deep thought regarding what I personally think are cool in this world. Here are a few questions that I asked myself:

- Why do Star Movies/HBO rarely play non-American movies (with English subtitles) ?

- Same applies to TV series on AXN/StarWorld/etc

- Why do I know the Fifth Ammendment of the US consitution? (courtesy TV series - The Practice)

- Why do I care about Mardi Gras?

- Why am I charmed by NYC so much?

- Why do I understand the American accent better than I understand, say British?

- Whatever happened to Varsha Bhosle and Rajeev Sreenivasan and other columnists of that ilk on Rediff.com?

- How come European sites never get listed as frequently on Google's search results as are American sites. Trust me, this is more common than you'd notice, and you wouldn't notice it probably cuz of the what you are reading right now.

- etc. etc.

I do not deny the non-American influence on me, and of course, the native Indian/Kannada/Bangalore/Family influence on me is perhaps the strongest; but the proactive pro-American influence on my thinking, actions, personality and what I spread as my sphere of influence on others, is incredibly high, done subtly and is very effective - startling!!

I really need to rework myself. Never knew that I, as an individual, had a ghost of an elder brother.

The Jackfruit Letter

2005-02-19T18:33:00.000-08:00

The Indian Railways is so fascinating. Mesmerising legacy, mindboggling scale, unbelievable efficiency and of course, the romance of a train journey. My earliest memories of train fascination is that of Gopi: a very close friend from high school days. He used to rattle the starting and ending stations of _all_ train names from the Railway Timetable. Believe me, I used to actually quiz him with that book.

There is this very cooL urban legend about Gopi that made its rounds in our high school corridors (I think its due to Dhruva, but he might claim innocence, like always ;-> ). Legend has it that when some friends had been to Gopi's place to call him for a customary game of cricket. Gopi and his brother were all dressed up and ready to go somewhere. They were pestering their father about how they would be late for some train and would miss it and all. The unsuspecting friends assumed that their pal was going out of station or something, and decided not to include him in the next day's game. But it so turned out later (much to their amazement) that the party was going to the Bangalore City Railway Station not to travel soemwhere, but to check out some train that would halt there for some half an hour, and had some "cool" technical specification!!!. Whoa, now, that is a true enthusiast, considering that we were around 12 that time, and his brother was barely 10. Imagine being 10 and being interested in Railway Gauges. Anwyays, thats just the legend. I wonder if Gopi still has his passion for Indian Rail.

Of all the longest-fastest-oldest of the Indian Railways, I find Bangalore only once; The Bangalore Mail has supposedly been running since 1864! If you did visit that page, do check out the listing of speciality food items in specific stations. I am pleased to see the very delicious Maddur Vade listed (and not pathetically called "vada", but sticking to the Kannada "vade"). I also feel quite sad that I missed out on all the Lonavala and Khandala station goodies during my train rides between Mumbai and Bangalore on the very normal and quait and non-famous Lokamanya Tilak Express. Will make it a point to eat the Chikis and the Burfis the next time around. Gosh, in retrospect, flights are somewhat boring.

As for the title of this posting, its worth checking out the Jackfruit Letter. Quite funny.

Anchor Text and Focused Crawling

2005-02-17T18:33:00.000-08:00

Its been a while since I have blogged anything technical.

These days, I am working on the open source search engine, Nutch. Before I get into what I am doing, let me explain why, in the last sentence, I put the phrase "open source search engine" as a part of the href tag. Search engines use anchor text extensively to figure out what a page is about. For example, the home page of Tejaswi doesn't have the phrase "home page" anywhere. So, by looking at the anchor text of all the in-links to a page, the search engine figures out what the content of the page might be about. This is a latent way of identifying the content of a page: by looking at what in-links call it. Now, when I say "the open source search engine Nutch" in the anchor text and link to nutch.org, that phrase gets associated with the site, and helps someone searching for an open source search engine, but has no clue about Nutch itself.

Currently, I am working on the crawler part of the search engine. The crawler/spider is an offline process that goes all over the web and gets pages for the search engine to index. The idea is to start the crawler with a set of seed pages. The crawler then starts indexing the textual content of each page, and recursively crawls each page's out-links. This goes on ad-infinitum. This part is pretty standard, and is already implemented. My job is to ensure that the crawl is not ad-hoc, ie. not all out-links are crawled. I am trying to "focus" the crawl so that only pages pertinent to certain topics get crawled, and subsequently indexed. Topics like "cycling", "art cinema", "photography", "BDSM" etc. Why do we need to focus a crawl?

Google currently claims that it indexes 8 billion webpages. According to recent estimates, un-indexed pages outnumber indexed pages by a factor of 4-5. This means that there are at at least 33 billion pages out there that Google can index, but is not indexing. Why not? well, for one, more pages doesn't necessarily mean better search results. Good number of pages representing a broad range of topics means better search results. This is where a focused crawl might be preferred over an ad-hoc crawl. If you are really interested, take a look at my advisor's Focused Crawling page for more information.

In other news, read Jeremy Zawodny's post on Mark Jen to know about the Google employee who got fired for blogging some company internals. All corporate bloggers out there....you reading this?

Nostalgia

2005-02-14T18:37:00.000-08:00

While browsing through someone's website, I came across this thought provoking take on nostalgia -

"I've always viewed nostalgia as a heresy, but it becomes increasingly harder to fight it off as one grows older. Perhaps it is part of the mechanism we use to cope with regret: when enough patina accumulates, mistakes can be viewed as formative experiences, and switch from being sources of regret to being key moments that contributed to the development of one's present self. Viewed in that light, nostalgia is a form of self-deception, which doesn't make it any easier to accept."

I pondered over it for a while: in the abstract, through the light of my own experiences, my own ideas on it. I conclude (at least for now) that for me, nostalgia is prevalent, but not important/controlling/mood-altering. As I write this, a nagging doubt that nostalgia is indeed mood altering, though not controlling, is creeping in. Why do I say this? As my mood....

I lost a few "instense-nostalgia-triggers" with my wallet a few days back. The first thought was of sadness at loosing these nostalgia-triggers. And now, I can think of the sadness these triggers themselves used to bring about each time by making me take nostalgic trips down memory lane. Now, as I think of the lost triggers, I am struck that I now have memories of my memories. Time to move on.

H. W. Longfellow thought that Nostalgia is a feeling of sadness and longing that is not akin to pain, and resembles sorrow only as the mist resembles the rain. Poetic eh?

Unromantic Romance

2005-02-14T18:36:00.000-08:00

Here is a song for the day.....(do read the lyrics till the end)
-------------------------------
And so it is
Just like you said it would be
.....
.....
No love, no glory
No hero in her sky

I can't take my eyes off of you
I can't take my eyes off you

And so it is
Just like you said it should be
We'll both forget the breeze
.....
.....
Did I say that I loathe you?
Did I say that I want to
Leave it all behind?

I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind off you
I can't take my mind...
My mind...my mind...
'Til I find somebody new
----------------------------

Blogger Help

2005-02-11T18:51:00.000-08:00

I check around 4-5 different blogs a day, and all of them are on blogspot. But, I get kind of irritated each day because I have to remember all 5 of them, type in their URLs on the browser and check whether they have updated their blogs. I am wondering if blogspot has some feature similar to livejournal, where you can add people as your friends and read all their blog updates on a single page. If you want to know what I mean, visit http://www.livejournal.com/users/tejaswi/friends/ . Anyone knows?

JEE, GMAT, CAT - Harnessing efforts

2005-02-09T18:38:00.000-08:00

Here is my interpretation of one of Samba's various bursts of inspiration. An abstract idea whose viability, logistics, implementation etc. need to be worked out.

We know that a lot of effort goes into the preparation for these competitive exams; out of which only the top 2% or so make it in to IITs, IIMs etc. Out of say every 100 candidates that takes each exam, 2 of them actually make it in, and so, in some sense, their efforts are not wasted. And I will assume that around 40 of them just took it up as a part of their regular path, and weren't really serious about them. These numbers can be inaccurate; but bear with me.

The real wasted effort lies in those 50 of them, who actually put in a lot of effort, and out of them, there are at least 10 of them who almost as good as the 2 of them that get in, but just cannot make it in because the number of seats are limited. Now, the question is: can this effort be harnessed to do something good? something profitable? Can the exam structure or the interview structure be changed to do this?

One concrete implementation of this idea. The top few percentile people from CAT are called in for a GD/PI stage, where they are put against each other, and are evaluated for managerial potential, stress, ability to think on their feet etc. One idea is to divide them into chunks, and assign them to random villages in the rural heartland of India. Their job is to stay in these villages for a week (along with an official from the IIMs), and involve themselves in some constructive activity. Call this a real case study as opposed to the arm-chair variety that gets done right now.

This suggestion is not all that preposterous for few reasons
- Candidates are quite serious about their admissions and an IIM admit is a great incentive.
- Its more realistic than an arm-chair case study because real results can be evaluated giving better candidates to these institutes.
- The candidates are smart and some real work that might be useful to these villages can be carried out.
- As CAT filtering has already been carried out, we have a more manageable number of people.

Of course, all these details, and the basic idea itself are up for debate, and thats why the posting :) The rationale behind this thinking is to somehow harness the efforts and the incentives that are a part of this big circus.

Any ideas? problems? possibilities?

Playing the Devil's Advocate

2005-02-08T18:39:00.000-08:00

My usual gang here at IIT, we hang out at Nishant's room (H5, #76), be it after dinner, after lunch, just bored, just about anytime. And occasionally, we end up having disagreements. And today was one such. It was the usual Capitalism vs. Socialism debate that's been haunting me for a while now. And this time, I tried playing the devil's advocate and tried defending Capitalism; tried everything I had in my arsenal: globalization, trickle-down effect, jungle-culture, primal-instinct, and myriad other theories. When Amit was here a few weeks back, we had had the same argument through his entire stay in Bombay, and I tried to remember what he had used then, and tried in vain to use it now. But after an hour of heated discussions, I realized that it is incredibly hard to defend something you truly don't believe in.

I salute this aspect of defence lawyers, esp. the ones who know whether their clients are guilty. I wonder how many of them go through conscience turmoils when their professional ethics force them to defend a guilty client and their personal morals abhor the same client.

Speaking of dilemmas, I watched and loved Swades. As Upperstall put it, its one of the few good big movies which has some social message. I will watch it again in a theatre.

Speaking of academics, I am working on the open source search engine, Nutch these days. I don't know whether it will result in any solid contribution to the community, but I do hope that I get the required grades :)). Will get back to that now.....

Bombay

2005-01-31T18:40:00.000-08:00

Bombay is an experience; and esp. after living in a hamlet like Bangalore, Bombay hits me each time I venture out of the campus. And this weekend was especially severe. Two friends (Amit Rathore from ThoughtWorks and Akshay from IIM-Lucknow) were visiting, one for the exclusive purpose of "chilling out" and the other had some official work. But the three of us hit the yuppie circuit here, in full blast. And as Amit said before leaving, it was some severe shit. Restaurants, cafes, bars, beaches, local trains, never ending taxi drives, late late night chilly auto rides, malls, and all the other elements which every urban jungle has. But its sheer scale, and the way things are intertwined here; that is the difference. Amidst all our chaotic travelling and induldence, there was a lot of talk on economics, India, Kannada, Bombay, mis-adventures with women, books and so on. Coffeehouse philosophy at its very best; three geeks, what else can you get?!

Among other things, I got my wallet picked during a local train ride. The irony of it was, this was right after an eye-opening RSS meeting/lunch on Republic Day. Done with blocking all my bank-cards, still have to get new ones, get duplicate identity card, driver's licence, etc. But, more significantly, all my other personal belongings in the wallet are gone now, and all of them are beyond replacement. All of them, beyond replacement.

Bombay is a cauldron. Lot of heat, tons of volume. A single wallet?

Human Equlibrium?

2005-01-25T18:42:00.000-08:00

Are there enough people in this world for all the tasks that are around? I mean, is the load distributed properly? are there enough complexity theorists? enough newsreaders? enough teachers? enough sportsmen? enough truck drivers? enough glassblowers?

Is it balanced? or are we fooling ourselves that things are in equilibrium? Lemme tell you why this equilibrium is floating in my head now. I was pondering about the so called "micro" and "macro" level interests of any person. At least me. At a micro level, I am working on web-search, or in a more general sense, concerned about computer science. At a macro level, I feel for India, Indian politics, socialism, economics, historical injustice, hunger, etc. Though my macro level interests are viable career options, I just dont take them for various reasons. Now, I somewhere, deep down, subconsciously, desperately hope that human equilibrium exists and all those areas of work that I am not involved in, but are important to me, are being taken care of; by professionals, by passionate people, by zealots, by selfless volunteers etc. And my working on search engines will somehow help them do their job better. Some theory guy proving approximation lower bounds for some O.R scheduling problem will save some money in some facotry line up which will be given as bonus. Some IAS officer streamlining infrastructure efforts might get me from KanjurMarg to Mulund in time for a movie.

Anyways, as I am writing this, I feel quite stupid, but the equilibrium thought did come to my mind and was quite futile in convincing me that what I am doing currently is worthwhile...

Ability & Responsibility

2005-01-21T18:43:00.000-08:00

I heard someone say that "If you have the ability to do something (good), its your responsibility to do so."

This put me in a quandary of sorts; I have always known that I have had the ability to do a lot of things, and some of these things could've made the world a better place, maybe in a very limited way. But, I have never taken the responsibility for most of these. Mostly, moments of this sort pass by without us realizing that it is indeed our responsibility to do certain things in life. The irony is that there are also times in life when the responsibility is very clear, but the ability is somewhat questionable. Both situations arise in life, and we give them both a raw deal.

Thats the moral question of the day (for me at least).

Among other things, this January has seen a deluge of holidays for us. A lot of 3-day weekends, some in-between holidays. And so, on January 26th, I will be at Shivaji Park in Dadar meeting up with the RSS relative of mine during the RSS Republic Day function. I am really surprised (also happy) that he actually took time out of his busy schedule and asked me to join him for some talk that day. Maybe this time, it might be some implementation of some ideal/ideas. I might get to see some logistical aspects of what really goes on at that level. Watch this space for the Republic Day update.

Sudeep wins; (almost) flawless victory

2005-01-20T18:50:00.000-08:00

2/3rd of the average of five numbers I got was 26. Sudeep's answer was 27. So, heres to the winner of a fabulous gift from my side. There is much more to this than just random number generation. I am reading a text on game theory currently, and will update more stuff related to it soon.

For the record, here were the numbers I got: 55, 54, 20, 39 & 27. A few people whom I expected to participate didn't and maybe that did affect the strategies of those who did participate.

I posted the same thread in our dept. newsgroup and got eight responses, and the 2/3 of the average was 30.38 and the closest number to that was 35.

More normal postings in the next post.

Introduction to Game Theory

2005-01-16T18:51:00.000-08:00

Mail a number between 0 and 100 (inclusive) to me at tejaswi(at)it.iitb.ac.in before 2359 hours, Wednesday, 19th January. The person who comes up with the number which is closest to 2/3-rd the average of all the responses will get a personal gift from me.

We will continue with actual game theory in my subsequent posts, but this will give you an insight into how complex a simple problem will get if there are competing rational agents in a system who can anticipate and double guess others, and normally do. We will also see how this can be formally and thoroughly studied. Please do participate. And don't mail anonymously :)

It will help if the subject of the mail is "game theory". Also, I will consider the last email I get from each of you as your response. So, feel free to change your response; but not too many times :)

Finance and Friends

2005-01-13T18:44:00.000-08:00

Samba makes it into Yale for a (tentative) $100K+ MBA. Gotta see whether he takes it or not, and if he does, how he is going to do it, and whether he makes it or not; in the long run I mean.

Speaking of finance, Amit Rathore has started his finance blog, after his general blog, theory of everything blog and the somewhat ambitious entrepreneurial blog. But still, his "spirit for a concept" is commendable. He is probably the most prolific of all the bloggers I know in person.

I am crediting the Applied Economics course this semseter, and lets see if economics is indeed as interesting as I think it is. Somewhere, I see the analytical and the social aspects of human thought merging in Economics. Even if it ain't that interesting by itself, Joel Spolsky advices that one ought to learn microeconomics before graduating out of college just to ensure a balance at work.

Suzanna

2005-01-11T18:45:00.000-08:00

Got into a music mood today, was talking to a friend here on messenger and we were listening to a few of my favorite songs, and digged up this old song which I used to hear during my second year PU days: Suzanna - Art Company. This is an awesome self-deprecating humor song, with loser-moments that makes me smile at how it used to be back then. Whoa, things have changed so much since second year PU. Almost 10 years now. Shucks, oh Shucks, those were the days of the angsts of the sweetest types. I miss those days right now, I seem to be someone else.

Listening to some of my other favorite songs, Against All Odds - Phil Collins, Cats in the Cradle - Ugly Kid Joe, NIB - Ozzy, Jeremy - Pearl Jam, Drops of Jupiter - Train, Stranger in Moscow - Michael Jackson and so on.......gotta figure out what makes music so sublime. I mean, its truly sublime, it can get into me (whatever "me" is), and change the way I feel, catalyse my moods, take me elsewhere, time-travel and memory-refreshes take over, there is something about music that transcends reason and rationality, it just cannot be discrete notes of tones strung together in some order, it just cannot be.

Schrodinger's Cat

2005-01-07T18:46:00.000-08:00

I got this ultra-cool t-shirt as a gift from my sister; take a look.

And now, there is a sudden interest in pop-quantum mechanics in my lab and around. Not bad for a t-shirt. A t-shirt with an attitude reminds me of how Brad Pitt comments "You are a fuckin T-shirt" to John Doe in the movie Se7en. Anyways, I got two other ThinkGeek shirts which are superb too. And also some book on paradoxes and reasoning. All in all, a great birthday/ new year gift from my sister.

Inagurated my return to IIT with more movies: Incredibles, Anna and the King, Se7en, etc. Life is getting back to normal with 4 courses and 1 lab; I have decided to take applied economics.

Sudeep's post brings back great memories. Richie's post just re-affirms his bias.

Swimming & Flying

2005-01-05T18:47:00.000-08:00

Visited the pool today. Its a pretty good pool, very good quality, water, lifeguards, showerstalls and all. It is around half the size of the Basavanagudi pool, but has the same depth range (3ft - 16ft). I plan to stick to the 1845-1930 batch. Had to get a medical test done to ensure that I am low-risk. As for the actual swimming, I now realize that I am out of shape, and out of form, and out of energy. Plan to work on each of them with swimming, cycling and a controlled diet. Lets see whether it works. Will test it on innocent Bangalore folks when I visit in May 2005.

Academically, the course merry-go-round is going on, with everyone frantically trying to optimize their courses in terms of load, final year projects, grades, weekly timings etc. I am still debating whether to take Combinatorics or Applied Economics. Other than that, I will be sticking to Hypertext Mining, Data Mining and Approximation Algorithms this semester, coupled with one dud lab, making it a very heavy course indeed. I might also be working with a startup here on some cooL stuff. Will update as things take shape.

Now, for the best part of my post. My flight from Bangalore to Bombay. For a long time now, I had had these expectations, awe, and a feeling of anticipation for flying. It lived upto every bit of my thought and more. Flying is probably as commonplace as driving to many, but for me, it was a new thing, and I haven't felt many new things for sometime now. I loved the initial acceleration, the first few moments of flight, the view of the city fading as we climb, the oh-so-fantastic clouds - in all their myriad shapes and sizes, the tilting of wings, and as we landed, I could recognize a few buildings in Bombay, and we flew so close to a slum, that I could actually make out urchins playing on the gullys, and the feeling of floating as we get close to landing and the sudden feeling of speed as we hit the ground.......overall, a great experience, and I am glad I took the flight this time.

2005

2005-01-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

Heres wishing you all a very happy new year.....and years to come.

Anyways, it also happens to be my last evening in Bangalore for a while to come. I am leaving for Bombay tomorrow (Monday, Jan 3rd 2005) by the 1445 Jet Airways flight. Will get back to regular blog updates when I reach IIT and am in front of my machine more regularly than here. It was a great month spent at home. Tons of great filter coffee, home made food, comfortable bed with warm blanket, and a feeling of being at home, teriffic times spent with friends; and now, the vacation ends. .

In retrospect, 2004 was an interesting year. I realized quite a few things about myself; mostly the not-so-good. But knowing the not-so-good things about me gives me a chance to improve, rather than feel cushy about how I am; I hope. And 2005, will also be my full year in Bombay, my first fill year out of home. It's gonna rock!

Mood-I

2004-12-28T18:48:00.000-08:00

The usual. Its been this "usual" mood for a few years now. What happened to other moods, I wonder. Looks like its time for the next level of introspection, coupled with some retrospection.

Today for the first time, I got bored at a Bookshop (Landmark). I went around a mall (Forum) and the boredom got worse. McDonald's was crowded like crazy, and so were other places, with a urbane, boisterous, "family" crowd and all were going through the motions of shopping, eating, drinking, hoping, loafing, and whatever else people do in malls. While writing this, I am now thinking about what I was doing there...will that be the last time I go to malls? I don't think so. I am changing; and I don't like this change.

Mourning for all those who took the brunt of nature on sunday. And sighing at the thought of all those who are talking about how Tamil Nadu is now paying the price for its mistreatment of the Shankaracharya

RSS

2004-12-26T18:49:00.000-08:00

I mean, RSS - Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, not RSS - RDF Site Summary (feed). On my way back from Soraba, I met a very interesting relative of mine who works full-time with RSS and has the somewhat lengthy title of "Akila Bharata Saha Boudhika Pramukh", which translates to "Head: RSS Think-Tank". As we had a couple of hours to kill on the bus till we reached Shimoga, it was talk-time for the idealogically confused Tejaswi Nadahalli and the passionate RSS leader/idealogue Dattatreya HosabaLe. We covered some organizational behavior, leadership, Indic-culture, (Neo-)Colonialism, India, Indian-ness, Nehru, Partition, and a whole load of other similar topics. For the very first time in my life, I met a true leader of people; someone who knows the complications of implementing policies, logistics, people, Indian History, is very well read, ideologically driven, unmarried, devoted, and a lot more. Very impressive person, eye-opening conversation....I even checked out the RSS website and a few columns there. Vitriolic as usual, and also extreme in places; but still, after pondering for a while, I am not sure I am as liberal as I think I am.

I will end this with a few quotes that he used, that I still remember.

"If you are below 25 and not a communist, you dont have a heart; If you are over 35 and still a communist, you dont have a brain"

"Gandhi chose the wrong man; and so did God" - (think Nehru and Patel)

Bangalore #3

2004-12-20T19:13:00.000-08:00

I am off to my village for 3 days starting tomorrow. Some people to catch up with, a wedding to attend, and a few more sleepless nights are in the pipeline...

Visited IISc today to catch up with both the Dattas, and two others, one from TW, and one from Yahoo!, things are going good at IISc...Christos Papadimitriou is in Bangalore these days at HIPC2004 I heard...thats academics for now....

Will get back to you folks after 3 days......till then, adios.....

Statements of Purpose

2004-12-15T19:14:00.000-08:00

I have read many SOPs, esp during the days when I was applying to those PhD programmes in the US, and rarely have I seen anything like Samba's SOP. Mail him and ask for your own copy to read a pretty well done SOP with the right amount of calculated arrogance, cheeky humor, judicious amount of self confidence, and of course, a great flow of thought. I liked his SOP. After working for a year after writing my first SOP, and after going back to academia, my ideas have kinda changed and now, I find that I dont like my old SOP at all. WhoTF cares about SOPs now eh? lets get to more interesting stuff.

I have postponed my Bombay journey to the afternoon of 3rd Jan 2005. I will be taking a Jet Airways flight out of Bangalore at 1400 hrs, landing in Bombay at around 1530 hrs. Three cheers for my first flight.

Kumara? when is the Tyagarajanagar Oota?

Bangalore #2

2004-12-13T19:15:00.000-08:00

Am already into my second week right now. And the first week has been hectic, very hectic. Am done with most of my to-do stuff. Minor Major, Vidyarthi, BCB; have paid first visits to most friends; am having filter coffee everyday; having mosranna and other normal food at home; catching up with relatives and cousins.....and other usual after 6 months kinda stuff. Nothing out of ordinary.

Now that I am back for a week, things seem normal; people are the same, Sudeep still gives disclaimers, Sumanth hasn't lost his staccato accent, Kumar looks the same, Sainath is as geeky as ever, More of my software engineer friends have bought digital cameras, adding to the YASETP count of Bangalore (Yet Another Software Engineer Turned Photographer). Saw power cuts, corporation dog-squads, cable TV failures, traffic jams, roadside masale puri, churmuri, auto rickshaws, radio city 91FM, Gandhi Bazaar tarkari market and all the usual stuff that makes regular life here. It was great fun back then, it still is. Love this place.

Will be visiting Yahoo! and ThoughtWorks this week. Am gonna be at Dhimant's play this weekend. And a host of relatives to visit. Will be out of town next week for a wedding, and the last week in Bangalore - will be on call.

And check this out; I am spending my new years eve at Dharmavaram Junction in Andra Padesh, thats right, my ticket to Bombay is at 1800 Hrs, Dec 31st. Thats crazy, but true. Hope to find someone on the train to party into the morning that night :D

Bangalore #1

2004-12-08T19:15:00.000-08:00

me is back home, and it looks a trifle different; mostly due to changed interiors at home, different bed, new tables, cupboards, sheets etc.; but maybe some changed perspective as well, from my side; dont know for sure. hmmmm. cant pinpoint the exact feeling and thought, but just not feeling the same: thats the abstract part of the whole come-back-home experience.

bikes good; so, cruising all over the place. Su Depp is doing fantastic, all exciting about nothing and everything at the same time. Me has a mild bout of fever, so, not really venturing out beyond HosakereHalli on one end and Nagendra Block on the other. Will get out into the thick of things starting this weekend.

My professor has given me some work to finish by this week; so, maybe the next couple of days will be on that. Its been a while since I studied at home, maybe time to call Kumar home and start on with some serious study (tea, Britannia milk bikies etc), can get some quality kathe also; what say Richie Rich? UGH, I have become insanely nerdy; sucks!!

Need to get well quick, cuz lotsa people to visit on the other side of town; Yahoo!, TW, Samba, Dhimant, and quite a few others; people keep telling me that Bangalore traffic has worsened, need to check that side of the story too. And of course, gotta visit Vidyarthi, Brahmin's, UD, dont know if I can make it Janapadaloka, but lets see, gotta whole month to plan.

Random Thoughts

2004-12-02T19:16:00.000-08:00

I want to change a few of my traits.
I want to change that thought too.
I hate recursion.
I am beginning to suspect that there is a big gap between what I want, and what I am willing to do to get there;
I am an unclean fellow, my lab-desk is the messiest in the entire IIT; with zillions of papers, a water jug, couple of bags, three to four used handkerchiefs, a fully chewed/bitten tshirt (that can never be worn again), a ton of books, 40-50 one/two rupee coins stewn around, handiplast covers, tablet covers, medicine covers, unopened bank statements, a pair of shoes, chits, an uncountable number of computer cords, used teabags in a plastic cover, and so on......
I am making a few serious mistakes in life.
Its been a long time since I introspected about some of my core theories.
I have lost the craving for good food.
I seem to subsist in vacuum.
Very few things seem to interest me these days.
Very few things seem to move me these days.
My telephone manners have improved.
My general reading has taken a big beating.
I haven't held a TV remote control in 5 months.
I wonder where I will be this time 2 years from now.
The cynic in me is getting a very big share of my actions.
Life is still beautiful, interesting and fun....

I had been to a cousin's place yesterday, in up-market Bandra, and met my cousin's daughter who is in seventh standard. She studies in the best school, carries a 6610, knows more about Yahoo! messenger than I do. With all this and more, she came out of her room, wished me a very good evening and vanished. After a lot of talk with my cousin regarding how young students in up-market Bombay are getting into smoking, drinking, drugs, casual sex (I have also seen the DPS RK-puram video, and was almost disgusted by it), peer-pressure among early teens, and I ended up feeling like I was talking to some American suburbian mom. Bombay is so damn polarized, the cultures are so different from slums to plush apartments, that it is taken to both extremes. Anyways, I went to check the girl's room and found some very interesting books like Richard Feynman's essays, unabridged versions of some classics, and so forth.......and also a few Mills & Boons (Kummi, ask Richie what these are), and so, to make it a good day for our friendship, and to also encourage her to read the kinda books I read, I presented her a good book that I had purchased earlier that day (for myself, called The Brief History of Everything - Bill Bryson)........ the girl lives in a world thats somewhat different from ours........and very different from her mom's.......

life.

Google ain't cool everywhere

2004-11-30T19:17:00.000-08:00

All these days, I was under the impression that Google was THE place to work in, they were doing the coolest stuff around, coming up with geeky ads in Bangalore newspapers etc etc. And so when I heard that there was a talk by Krishna Bharat at the CSI2004 conference today, I registered myself and went for the talk....... In a packed audience of 250.....after the (quite heavy) talk, there were two questions from the audience, and guess who it was; yep, yours truly; thats about it; no other questions; nothing.....as one of my "miss"es would've said in middle school - pin-drop silence.

This was mid-afternoon. Later today, from 1900-2200, there was a Google openhouse, where they were supposed to talk about their Bangalore R&D centre, their work culture, research problems, get to know us better etc; guess how many turned up. I was there, there were 2 fresh-teachers from Punjab University. There were more waiters and maitre'Ds than technical people there. I was bowled. Ain't Google cool? Aren't people interested in knowing what they are looking for?

Couple of thoughts come to mind. The conference was CSI2004 - a historically old-school society; where they highlight topics like "use of technologry to serve rural India better", and other systems areas like DB and OS. Maybe the audience were those types. An interesting observation (confirming this) was that in the morning session on Middleware Technolgies (most of which I attended), there was NOISE, it was chaotic, with tons of questions; the presenter was screwed by a very interested and keen audience.

Does this mean the Indian software companies are still only services driven? excited by J2EE etc.? I mean, it was a proper conference in a 5 star hotel, all the works, not some IT-fair-glitz thing. The delegates here represent a good sample of folks who actually make up our industry and academia. Further, I asked Google how their hiring was going on, and they replied that it was quite frustrating that most Bangalore software people do not know what computer science means and are out applying in droves.

Anyways, I had a few things to talk about with them, but no freebies :((((.....good food, pastres, fruit punch, and back to the campus......

My first time out to Bombay-West......and "MG's", "Brigades", and "Kormangas" of Bangalore are no match for the kinda .........er......... pretty young things I saw on a DVG-road like street in Bandra. Dileep Kumar, Sunil Dutt, Shahrukh Khan, Priety Zinta, Rajesh Khanna, Rishi Kapoor, Aamir Khan...saw all their homes. Remembered the nostalgic days of VLSI2001 (you with me till here GD? :)))) )........

Exam pit swallows me

2004-11-27T19:18:00.000-08:00

Its been the worst possible exams of my life, ever......ever ever ever.

Just finished my formal methods paper. 75 marks, 2 hours. The professor was very generous, I could make out that it was an easy paper; I had studied that much. The professor even extended the time so that we had 4 hours. Now, there was me, trying to answer questions. Knowing that a paper is easy, and still not being able to get any answer right makes you feel like a .......... loser beyond compare.

So, overall, I attempted for 10+15+20+7.5 out of which I know that the 40 are pure hogwash. That leaves me with a valid 12 marks, out of which I might get around 8 or 10, making it a grand 8 out of 75....would've failed had I been in Bangalore University. (who knows what will happen here).....

So, right now, my expectations are getting so low, and so bad.....that, shucks, leave it....adar bagge maatadi prayojana illa.........bandu koodale....preeti indale....kanya serege....nanna shata teriyo.......rajaa raajaaa......jai Ravi Mama and Hamsa...

iga, web-search, PageRank seminar mugisbeku...........will this ever end......have never seen anything like grad school first semester...........and it gets incredibly worse if you have a mascochistic bent of mind and take crazy theory subjects and do your projects and seminars under hard taskmasters of professors......whew.......bye

Pit widens...

2004-11-25T19:18:00.000-08:00

got screwed in probability and statistics too.....but thats not all

I have my Bangalore ticket booked for December 1st night. My seminar dates haven't been decided yet, my seminar report isnt ready yet (it still a long way to go there), my formal methods exam is on Sunday, and I have a term paper to submit there, before the exam itself....

so, the next two days will see my doing this.....working hard to finish my seminar report (which will have me re-reading some more papers, cuz I dont make notes after reading them the first time, and sadly, I haven't learnt from my mistakes), working like mad on my formal methods term paper, I wont concentrate too much on this, cuz its just 20% of 6 credits. The seminar is way more important cuz that decides whether I get to do my final year project with a good professor. And of course study for the formal methods exam itself.....which makes it insanely hard, cuz there are no text-books; no online tutorials, no introductory articles.....nothing!!! have to make sense of some of my illegible notes......so, thats whats coming up......the only good part is Algorithms and Probability are done......

The best part is....... I watched Mysore Mallige after a long time today......hahaha..... quite nostalgic.....to hear some Kannada amidst the usual noises that come out of such videos....esp the way she says "ri"....... couldn't make out whether she actually says "yenu andre".....

Algorithms Pit

2004-11-23T19:22:00.000-08:00

got so badly screwed in the algorithms final exam that i will be lucky if I make a BC.....for the uninitiated, the grading system goes like this.....

AA - the absolute top, the very best....contributes a 10 to your CPI (cumulative point index)
AB - up there, but not quite.......contributes 9 to CPI
BB - you aint too bad......contributes 8 to CPI
BC - you know the course's workings.....contributes 7 to the CPI
CC - you must have thought twice before taking this course.....contributes 6 to the CPI
CD - you suck....contributes 5 to the CPI
DD - rockbottom....contributes 4 to CPI
FF - gotta repeat the subject next sem....contributes 3 to CPI
FR - gotta repeat the subject next sem....contributes nothing.

Each subject has a credit value attached to it. And your overall CPI will be the sum of your credit-weighted grade-value of that semester. For example, if i get a AB in my 10-credit foundations lab, a BC in the 6-credit algorithms, a BC in the 6-credit probability course, a BB in the 6 credit formal methods course, and an AA in the the 4 credit seminar, my CPI will be proportional to 9*10 + (7+7+8)*6 + 10*4 = 262 out of 320, which gives me a grand CPI of 8.1.

Now, 8.1 is roughly the same as our 75%.....surprise surprise.....I haven't changed much.....most companies keep a campus interview cutoff of around 7.5-8.....(average CPI over 2 semesters). Microsoft keeps 9. Google might keep 9.5, and IIT throws you out if you go below 6......I dont hope to leave this place before the end of 2 years......

Thats all the answer please.....

Pathos

2004-11-21T19:23:00.000-08:00

melancholy, depression, unhappiness-due-to-unfathomable-reasons, morose-ness, "feeling", ivelladakku ondu pada koDi: (rasa prashne)

Uttara - My mood.

Bhale, team Tejaswi avarige 10 ankagaLu. Iga mundina prashne: Lifealli yenu maadona anta iddira yellaru?

Uttara - Gotilla.

Bhale, team Tejaswi avarige 10 anka matte koDi. Iga mundina prashne.........

Birthday Blues

2004-11-18T19:24:00.000-08:00

Thanks makla....... Missing you folks too.....

Birthday blues was at its peak this time. Bored the hell out of an international call from GD with all my depressive stories. That something is missing, something is wrong, happiness seems to be elusive etc. etc. After that, was working on some term paper that is due tonight. The guys were going over to the all night canteen and pulled the reluctant but hungry me along. And as we went downstairs to get our cycles, the four of them presented me with bottle of fine red wine!!!....

We ditched the canteen, went behind the department to a lonely bench. My swiss knife coming to the rescue, with the cork. And then.......Jahan chaar yaar.....jahan chaar yaar miljaye, wahi raat ho guzaaar....jahan chaar yaar. One of these guys is a big fan of Sharaabi and all its shayri-lyrics-songs. We had a round of wine drinking coupled with songs. And then, the mood settled in, and some happiness started to trickle from nowhere......As I was the one supposed to get drunk, I did..........singing the song.......

"agar nasha sharaaab mein hota......toh naachti bottle....."
"maikade jhoomte paimaano.....mein hoti hulchul....."

(if the high was due to the drink, the bottle would dance, bars would glow, and wineglasses would be restless)

We ended the session on "suroor" (this urdu word gets it all into great perspective).....

A birthday to remember......for motley reasons, as are all birthdays.......

Infosys is second.......and guess who is first?

2004-11-17T19:25:00.000-08:00

Sasken !!!

http://in.rediff.com/money/2004/nov/18best.htm

Su Depp moves from Infy to SAS and lo! and behold......

Cutting

2004-11-13T19:26:00.000-08:00

I am talking a lot about Bombay, and its culture on this blog; though it seems somewhat uncalled for, it still strikes me odd each time I see something different here because I am still in India, and Bombay seems like an island here in India. With its own unique culture. Good culture.

Take the "cutting", I can give you a thousand guesses, but its hard to come up with the real meaning for this piece of popular local slang - A cutting is half a glass of tea. Just had a cutting outside the campus, in a roadside dhaba which also serves jalebi, vada-paav, and other assorted food. Another thing I found strange here is the way they prepare tender coconut to drink. Its not chopped like its done in Bangalore and other places I have seen. They actually cut it with a knife, a proper kitchen knife. I am surprised that a knife goes through the think hyde. But it does. So on and so forth.

Here's wishing Nair on his 25th birthday. Will look up his id and mail him. Did someone call up Maiyya, or mail him yesterday? I don't have his id, will have to look up the newsgroup. Need to go to Sanjay Dhaba sometime soon. It's been too long.

Richie, boli magane.....How was the exam? did you kick ass? was there enough graph theory to make you bang the desk (with your hand)? Isn't it surprisingly and pleasantly different from GATE? Anyway, do write about it. And try not to stick to your style of writing.

Me has to work on some surveys. Will get going now. Before I go, as always, the latest in movies: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly is done. It's an experience. After having been in awe of the music for ages and ages now, to actually see it in action, to see the music pulse through the scenes, to see Eli Wallach as the resourceful Ugly, its a great movie. It's all about the Ugly character. He is the hero. And that was followed by American History X. This movie is bound to make you a bigger fan of Edward Norton than you already are.....its a moving film. Has a good dose of social consicence and idealism with some cut throat reality and action. A must watch.

Hiccccc

2004-11-11T19:26:00.000-08:00

Nothing like celebrating Diwali with Long Island Iced Tea......followed by some Ole King Cole, followed by Vodka Martini, and then, topping all of that with the classic - Old Monk.....

Am fully done right now......

Happy DeepawaLi everyone.....have fun.....Richie, all the very best for the AGRE.....you are gonna kick ass, I am sure.......nothing less than 95 percentile.....I am sure......me betting everything on you......

Sudeepa, grow a friggin frenchie........how long are you gonna do with Tom and Tex....you know what I mean...... hic hic......... :)))

Missing Naga........terribly.......

-Tayzwi.....

Rainman

2004-11-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

A movie posting after a long time. Saw Rain Man again!!! And unbelievably, went through most of the movie without skipping any bit. I like this one. Have to get a DVD when I come to Bangalore.

Booked my Bangalore ticket right now on irctc. December 2nd Night, I will be there in Girinagar. So, December 3rd, Kumar, Richie, lets hit the pool.

As for current academics, I have got an extenstion on my seminar report submission deadline from Prof. Soumen. Gotta use it well, and extract some wisdom from a collection of papers that he has asked me to read. Extract wisdom???? I am not able to extract basic contents. Lets see where that will leave me.....Other than end-sem exams, I have just two survey reports to write before next week. Almost single-tasking, a very welcome change.

Spoke to Chakku and Samba after a long time......Kumar seems to be missing college days, but is not responding on YIM. GD seems to have faded into the sands of Phoenix. Richie, well, I dont really mind it either ways :))).....

Pills

2004-11-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

maDDu mess

2004-11-04T19:28:00.000-08:00

its a Da with a Da "vattu"....maDDu mess....

This is a small eating joint that opens at around 4 every morning here, just outside the campus. Getting into the place is an adventure in itself. You gotta go through dingy stinking alleys, past cowsheds, open drains, -Satya (the movie) style....and sit in a mosquito infested dungeon where a really old lady makes eeruLLi dose, moTTe-eeruLLi dose (a novelty I came across here), plain dose, idli, vaDe, amboDe (which they call Daal Vada), and the best part.....really tasty thick chutney, with steaming hot sambar......all very south Indian, very tasty, and very very economical........a mammoth gorging session cost me around Rs 30/-......

This place is like this cult thing here......the setting is very rustic, but the talk is very urbane, people discussing linux, MIT, Berkeley, philosophy, and devoring onion-anDa, daal vaDa etc etc......its a must visit......combines the ethos of IIT and Bombay in equal parts and great measure......and of course, good food is a good thing......anywhere.....

just got back from there....was sitting outside my lab.......talking to the inimitable Su Depp.....and reminiscing old days at BCB, and wondering what one needs to do etc etc.....heard some shocking news about our very own Jeevan Prakash.......and was left with more wondering to do......hahah.....

let the games begin........

Kannada

2004-11-01T19:29:00.000-08:00

Read this attention-holding blog entry by some dude on Kannada: http://msanjay.htmlplanet.com/blog/lchasm.htm

Right now, I am typing from an I-Mac in the hostel comp. room. Its different, and its really different....right from the keyboard down to the display and the usage etc etc.....I dont know whether it was designed to be so different from the IBM-clones, but it is.......

Anyways, I am (as-always) amused to see Su Depp in one of his oh-so-su-depp moments....cant wait for this month to get over....and cant wait to see you dudes again.......undecidability or not..... bhel puri or not....... stupid Su Depp disclaimers on everything or not.....me is gonna be there, and me is gonna eat everyone's head......and also swim away to glory in the NCB pool......

right now, I have gotten over some of my recent mammoth spells of procrastination - only cuz deadlines have finally caught up with me.......Right now, I have enough workload to piss off even Buddha....or some such idiom.......

Listening to Fanaa Fanaa from Yuva.....and yeah, marvelling at Rahman's talents....But these days I am beginning to respect the likes of Anu Malik and Anand-Milind, cuz of the sheer genius in their dingchak songs......of course, the credit is equally shared by folks like Anjaan and Sameer for those immortal lyrics with quintessential words like "jiya", "baahon mein", "jaan", "dil", "pyaar", "deewana", "seene", "goriya", "chura", "jiya" and of course......."bechain"..

Have listened to the dingchak hall of fame here........and surprisingly, I have a few other fans of extreme hindi dingchak here......who take great pleasure in listening to the essential 90's dingchak that had classics like Husn Hai Suhana.....Tamma Tamma Loge......and some of those classic Mithun numbers which I cant get enough of these days...... :)))))

Ok, gotta go to the lab now and work on my lab project which is due tomorrow midnight......

Updates

2004-10-29T20:29:00.000-07:00

status check:

Academics:
Getting screwed in Linear Programming/Algebra.
Lagging behind in my Web-Search seminar. Will be really badly screwed for this. Maybe my worst procrastinating session ever.
Haven't understood basic probability and am supposed to know all about distributions. No clue on this.
Have to decide on my formal verifications term paper, haven't even searched the net for it yet. Imagine.
Am lagging behing badly in my web-search results clustering. Have 3 days to wind up the project, submit report, demonstrate it in front of a dis-interested class/sadistic TAs.
Procrastinating, lazing, lack of energy, sleep, lack of focus....all happening at the same time.....

Good stuff: I am finding formal verifications really interesting...... I am considering changing my primary focus here from Data Mining to Verifications. Dont know for sure. But its on the cards.....depends on how my verifications term paper goes vs. my data mining seminar. Am having a good time reading up on Linear Algebra, Algorithms, and some other basic stuff.

Other stuff:

Bad: Am wearing my last clean shirt. Don't have any shirt for tomorrow; Might go out and buy some clothes. The hostel washing machine is under repair, and my room is full of dirty clothes, and its getting worse. I have tons of mouth ulcers and my toe-thumbs, both of them are screwed with "ugur-suttus"s.

Good: I am feeling great........ain't that great? Done with some crappy Communications Skills exam today. Just one more month of first semester left. One way or the other, it will get over. Discovered a great new coffee place inside the campus. My Rs 700/- electric kettle is now being wasted here on my lab desk ;-)))....laff all you want..........
Still reading Lolita, and savoring every sentence, and am figuring out slowly that there is some other plot going on that is beyond me. Have to buy the "Annotated Lolita" which has notes for each page for the fan, and for the clueless; both of which I am right now.....

What else..... Nothing much.....keep posting.......

Kumar????

2004-10-27T20:30:00.000-07:00

That was such an unlikely post by Kumaranna. I sense that those walks with Sumanth are not doing any good to our own Raajkumar.....

(Yawn)

Me too; looking forward to the SLV katte. Bored of North Indian food, and desperately looking forward to Vidyarthi, SLV, BCB, UD-coffee, Ashoka-Pillar, Anand-Juice, Dwarka and of course, Benne Gulkhan :P

Sudeepan room miss aagatte....Need Kathe, on some KaTTe.....

Seeyu
-Dadiya

Granite business

2004-10-25T20:31:00.000-07:00

Finally I know what "Granite Business" means. Had been to an all night canteen here, and its run by some Manohar dude from Tumkur and he used to be in this business before. I heard stories of Puneet Raaj. The Dr Raaj-Veerappan episode, some illegal money laundering, Karnataka politicians and their "keeps," and had a good session of verbal Hi Bangalore.....

In Bombay, Hi Bangalore seems to be a good thing.....

I am trying to read up on Infinite Automata, and there seems to be a wealth of theory on it, written in the same vein as U&H. If I make some progress, will put up some more stuff here, its really cooL.....that ends my technical escapades of sometime now....

Listening to some good ol' Kannada songs.......

speaking of songs, try Coolie #1's Husn Hai Suhana for some extreme filmi dingchak ......and Company's Pyar Pyar Pyar Mein for some superb Bollywood music parody by Sandeep Chowta...... :)))))