Tayzwi

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.

Labels: computer science, life, startups

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.

Labels: life, writing

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.

Labels: life, theater

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.

Labels: life

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?

Labels: life

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).

Labels: life, movies, pulp fiction

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.'

Labels: books, life, movies

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.

Labels: life

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.

Labels: friends, life

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

Labels: life, movies

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.

Labels: life

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.

Labels: life

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.

Labels: life

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.

Labels: life

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....

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

Labels: life

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....

Labels: life

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.

Labels: friends, life

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
----------------------------

Labels: life

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.....

Labels: life

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.

Labels: life