Energy for all

The Guzzly bear American way of life.

2007-10-30T03:04:00.000-05:00

I was doing some market research to survey the Recreational Vehicle (RV) industry today. I came across some stunning results which seem oblivious to the oil crisis. My idea about RV's were that these huge motor homes (much like the one Shah Rukh Khan drives in Swades) were common place only among select households who could afford large houses in suburbia (discounting people who actually live in trailers).

According to the University of Michigan's 2006 market survey quoted in this consulting web page 225,000 R.V's were shipped in the first half of 2006. This was more than in any other similar period in the last 33 years. Plus U Mich reported that currently 1 out every 12 vehicle-owning households also own a RV. That is a cool 7.9 million Guzzly bears. A little math tells me that number is a little more than the total 2006 sales of Toyota, Ford, and Chevy.

The 2010 projections are that 1 out of 8 households will own a personal Guzzly bear - Generation X'ers continuing to be the prime movers of this bearish trend. With RV fuel averages at 7 to 14 mpg, do you think this is a trend worth celebrating?

And the elevator is yours, starting... now.

2007-10-26T00:32:00.000-05:00

Come this November the 14th, twenty teams in Madison, Wisconsin will live the toughest 90 seconds of their life. 4 people strong, each team will taste the same intensity that their MIT colleagues did exactly a month ago. Only the MIT team had it worse. They had to get away in 60 seconds.

No, it's not a Houdini contest. Not a sports car caper either. It's the Elevator Pitch Olympics. Venture capitalists and angels will be standing by eagerly to grab the team that could sell themselves in 90 seconds. Teresa Esser recently reminded me the story of Christopher Columbus back in 1485, when corporate elevators did not exist.

Columbus had a well thought out plan of reaching the Indies through the Atlantic Ocean instead of the treacherous land routes. In 1485, he visited John II, King of Portugal, and laid out his proposal. He also made a few funny demands. He demanded to be made "Great Admiral of the ocean", and also the governor of any lands he discovered, and also be given a tenth of all revenue from the discovered land. The King summarily rejected him on grounds that:

His calculations of the proposed route were way shorter than what could actually be. This meant that he could have oversimplified certain routes, and also made some assumptions.
He had not taken safety measures in case his calculations were indeed wrong. No ship that existed then could carry enough supplies to last a longer journey. The sailors accompanying him would die of thirst or starvation.

Columbus's elevator pitch had clearly not taken off ground floor. He pitched John II again three years later, but to no avail. Clearly the investor was not interested.

Not the kind to be bogged down, Columbus secured an appointment with Queen Isabella I of Castille, Spain. On May 1, 1486, he pitched the same plan to the Queen. After much time, the Queen and her committee dismissed his case on the same grounds as King John of Portugal. However they did want to keep their options open and not lose his idea. Thus it was decided that Columbus would be given an annual stipend of 12000 maravedis, and free food and lodging.

Persistence finally paid off for Columbus in the famed year 1492, when the Spanish empire decided to back him up. They also met with his other demands. Columbus set sail. He might have made some mistakes for sure, but he did set sail.

Immortalized in stone: Columbus' elevator pitch to Queen Isabella

Columbus teaches us, the elevator generation; that it's not a trivial matter to be able to impress an investor by the time he exits at the 60th floor. It is not just a matter of articulation, but is the ability to do your distance calculations accurately enough.

Know what your assumptions are, and be able to speak them out.
Do not make outrageous demands, unless you know how good you are.
Arrange for exit strategies and alternatives for the worst cases.
Lastly if all else fails, then stick to your guns and persist.

Welcome Prasad

2007-08-17T01:41:00.000-05:00

I welcome my close friend Prasad to add to this space with his creativity and energy.

A few minutes of my life.

2007-07-15T05:40:00.002-05:00

It has been about six months since I blogged. I could say I didn't find time to blog all these days, but I won't. Sitting up in front of my laptop now at 6 a.m., I suddenly realized I had a few minutes free in life to do what ever I wanted.

But how did I know that? Microsoft told me of course. All I did was try to change permissions of an empty local folder.

This blog post is about to be completed, but lucky me! The few spare minutes of my life are still not over. Microsoft will take a.. few more minutes.

Yah.. Let me get some coffee.

Maybe I should consider..

2007-02-20T22:38:00.000-06:00

..renaming this blog as the Weather blog. It's got the winter rants, the fall haze, and even a lightning storm.

The woods beside Lake Mendota

It's Spring's turn now. It's interesting to see how the tough snow gives in to the touch of the Sun's heat. Some of the snow mix up with grime as if to escape a watery death. And then there's the snow which just sits in humongous mountains. Strength in unity. The nastiest ones are the slimy layers of sleet on the sidewalk. In two weeks time I'm going to be loving the familiar feel of concrete against my boots.

On the way to school, I saw this small puddle in the middle of all the whiteness.

Wild cherries thawing

Music Hall clock tower's hundred and twenty seventh winter is over.

Nature cools her heels..(and mine too)

2007-02-03T23:33:00.001-06:00

A lone park bench at Eagle Heights awaits a visitor.. this will be a long wait.

It's freakishly cold nowadays. I never said a word while Nature was showing us the low 10's....not even when it snowed for a whole day. Nature did it when she turned it down below 0 F. Before you go away and fire Google up to convert that...that's -17 C.

It's -22F now.

I don't even have the courage to convert. Like when I stopped converting dollars. But now everything looks a bit different. Life feels different. There's a certain urgency to your every movement. You don't want to get to that bus stop too early and God forbid certainly not a second late. You make sure that your appointment is still on. You double check if your gloves are in your jacket pocket where you last left it. You triple check. Now there's a new purpose to life, one that's so primitive and yet so fervent. To get to your desk with blood still intact in the liquid realm. To be able to savor the generous embrace of artificial heat; yet another child of survival instinct. To be able to go through your entire day in the safe arms of concrete and wood, knowing too well, that you will have to soon give yourself up to the killer outside.

You step outside again to behold a blinding world in the nightly calm. Ready to forgive its fugitive and welcome you back. For tomorrow's another day, and you maybe a sure prey.

Eww. Don't even comment on this one. I wrote this because my feet froze in my snow boots today. It took me an hour to thaw.

Santa's gift.

2007-01-07T01:14:00.000-06:00

I normally do not believe in Santa. Of course he might not believe in me too. But this year I do, I do! As luck would have it, my old laptop stopped working completely the week immediately after Thanksgiving. Its timing was derisively perfect. All the $300 laptops in America were now sold out, and I had a brand new paper weight to show off.

Then followed a month of frantically tearing my hair apart, with sleepless nights of toil to get the paper weight to be more useful.... all it said was 'no can do'. I guess it needed the Christmas break too, just like I. So I just let it be, and wished my nights away for a miracle to happen. Christmas was so close. It was not too unreasonable to expect a miracle. After all this country runs on that stuff.

My friend asked me one fine day if I needed a laptop. I thought he was nuts. The look I gave him definitely showed that. He said his roommate was moving, and wanted to throw his laptop away. (More of this species, God!) For the moment I will call the roomie as Santa. So Santa gives me this pretty sturdy Dell Latitude with a Pentium 3 and 256Megs of RAM. Complete with a case and all. Ofcourse it has Windows XP working(!) on it with a blue screen here and there for variety. I stripped it down the very night, and installed DSL, the OS made for my machine.

Ok. enough said. Here you go.

A fresh boot consumes 30 MB of RAM. The GUI comes bundled with Firefox, Acrobat, Spreadsheet, Word processor, and a ton of other goodies, all stuffed in a 50 MB ISO.

Oh.., and thank you Santa :) Merry Christmas, and a Happy new year! Ho ho ho!

Sun race

2006-12-23T13:35:00.000-06:00

It's 6.00 a.m. at Philadelphia International, and I'm headed west to Chicago. Its still pitch dark outside. I think of the prospect of gaining an hour on touching down at O'Hare. It would certainly be a treat if all journeys would gift me an hour of time, if not more.

The plane races off the wet runway, into the overcast darkness. Small showers couldn't dampen the spirit of this steel bird. I settle down comfortably beside my window, carefully chosen so that I can observe my rival clearly, as I cruise above the clouds. This is a race with time itself. I had a head start and am bent on winning.

The bird gains altitude, and pierces on. Its still dark all around. An hour on, I can see a glint of light behind me. The great giant is peeping up from behind the horizon. At Philly he's already a hero. But he still has to catch me. I gain full speed and dodge through the wisps, careful not to slice them up with my wings. They are slowing down my rival after all.

With a final flourish I touch down at O'Hare eager to look back at him, and see how he's faring. I have beaten him by minutes, and he reaches down to shake hands. I smile back. He has to go now. He has a thousand more races to run.

Spinning the wheels... in the city of fortune

2006-11-23T15:19:00.000-06:00

Getting to Atlantic city was fun. Buy a round trip at Greyhound, and you get all your money back as soon as you step into casino land... Hilton was our first victim; or should I say we were Hilton's first victims!

Arriving at the Hilton..

Elegant and luxurious...

Its interesting to note how the casinos cleverly pay you to get there, and shave you off your savings!

Donald Trump's weird makeover of the Taj...

You could light a small city with all this energy..

The blinding extravagance that is the casino hall..

Spinning the wheel at the American roulette.. the extra "00" improves the Casino's chances of a win.

Strong gusts from the Atlantic ocean nearly blow us away..

Full of awe at the Atlantic at 5 am..

Some fish chilling out early morning... wondering if they'd live to see the light of tomorrow..

A distant giant.. the Borgata. A new casino, to suck away old money...

Dawn in a city that makes money...24X7..

Fall for Philly..

2006-10-31T22:55:00.000-06:00

The fall colors are rioting everywhere now. Red and orange are ruling the roost. The squirrels usually curious and friendly, are now busily piling up acorns and nuts for winter.

The days are cool and almost misty despite the bright sun. Strong gusts help the temperature dip steadily. Starting from when I landed here in summer, I have felt Nature showing me the magic she can work in a gentle lady like manner.

Soon I will be out of Fall and all ready to welcome winterrrrr....

Gentle reminders everyday..

2006-09-21T12:38:00.000-05:00

People, its a bit weird but many things around here remind me of my home country. As much as it might come across as being home sick, I am not.

Consider these facts:

My neighbours house has a huge stained glass window with a colourful 'Om' painted on it.. the Sanskrit letter version.

A lady takes a walk every morning wearing bright red and orange salwar kameez. She's African-American.

The 2 nearest buffet restaurants to my place are Sitar, and New Delhi.

Today I saw a scooter parked in the street leading to school. From behind I assumed it must be an Italian vespa (which are pretty common), but still I was not convinced so I looked closer in the front. It was a Bajaj Chetak.

Everytime I enter the library, the security guy..a Black American who checks my ID looks at me and says "toomar naam kayeha?" I smile at him and correct him "Tumhara naam kya he" .. He is learning 'Heendi', cos it's his dream to save enough money and visit India one day. Last week I left him with a sheet of paper, with 2 simple sentences in hindi, and their translation in english.. I told him I'd write a new line everytime i drop by...he was thrilled.

There is a Russian looking couple near campus. They both wear pagree's and silk robes and the guy even sports a Sardar beard. Wonder if they visited India recently and decided to convert.

Tomorrow (23rd) is the Great Festival of India in Philly.. many rathas of Jagannath, Baladeva, and Subhadra will be paraded on streets along with dancing and food.....see this http://www.festivalofindia.org/index.html

BTW, here are some pictures of Philly.. in and around home.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/92918840@N00/

A weekend at NYC

2006-09-05T22:32:00.000-05:00

It does seem that a certain post is missing in between. This of course is how I got to Philly and my first experiences. But then I feel like putting up pictures of my long weekend at NJ and NYC.

hmm... i already seem to have lost interest... so just let me be.

Made in India

2006-07-29T23:53:00.000-05:00

It always puzzled me when people went out of India. They never seemed to go away. Initially there would be the endless contacting of other Indians 'abroad'. Information collection goes to such heights, I know people who know a lot about a hundred countries without as much as a single stamp in their passport. Traveling without leaving home.

Now sadly, and somewhat self-reassuringly, I find myself in the same spot. Leaving the country. But am I going away? No! I have a piece of everything only we can know and understand.

Such as this,

and this..

or maybe this.

Sometimes, I think where would be the time to use all this Indian-ness. But who cares? As long as the scene around speaks even a mustard grain's worth (there I go again) of homeliness...a thousand miles away is so far and yet may feel so near.

My friend's mother told me last week "Do you know Togree bELe (Tur gram) is going out of stock in the US!". This news could not have been more reliable even if the US Agri Department had personally phoned to tell me. But there it was. I had to do something. So I ask what I needed to do.

"Simple, take 20 kilos with you. Three of our neighbours left last week and did the same. You would not want to drive 25 miles, stand in a 3 hour queue and manage to buy only 3 kilos of Tur there would you!?"

Ok, now I am really wondering how many tons of Togree, rice, jeera and methi, strainers and shaavige presses are being carried by a Boeing 777 leaving Bangalore at this moment.

Are we grateful enough to the chaps at Homeland Security at the 'Foreign' country for letting us whisk through our entire existences hidden in 50 kilos of jam packed trolleys? Maybe we should all get the customs officers a bottle of Hogplum pickle the next time we go. Maybe even a kilo of Togree.

The Eagles must have had India in mind when they crooned:
"You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave..."!

I'm off now; for my kaapi is waiting..

Internet God?

2006-05-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

Undoubdtedly, thousands have pondered this after the Internet age started booming. Could the Internet be a metaphor for God? A computer, like a human, is capable of a thousand things; and when hooked onto the Internet, sees a tremendous gain in collective intelligence, wisdom and experience. Much like I do when I connect to my eternal higher self during times of absolute silence and calm (I'm pretending not to have hinted at any morning ritual if you just imagined one).

So before I end up sounding like the likes of Thomas Friedman, here's an un-spiritual, un-holy, matter-of-fact collection of the Internet's biography.

http://www.livinginternet.com/

Titanic: Two the surface

2006-05-18T14:26:00.000-05:00

Watch the preview of the sequel to Titanic.

Titanic: Two the surface
Made by Derek Johnson

(I'll let you do all the Googling, so you can appreciate it at your own pace).
Hahaha. This video just made my day.

If the embed doesnt play, see this link.

A hot night with thunderbolt madness.

2006-05-17T02:23:00.001-05:00

Phew.. the summer is raging here in Bengalooru, and the showers are showing mercy every once in a couple of days. The temperature has been hovering around the 35 degree mark, and it's very very humid. Monday night was so hot, I was sitting half naked in my room with the fan running at the maximum speed the motor could manage, the windows and doors were open, but I was dripping buckets.

Yesternight was something different though. The air cooled down at around 8pm, and much expected showers burst down. By 9 the winds were packing a mean punch, flinging windows shut, and reportedly "knocked down several trees in Bangalore".
The dark sky showed unusually persistent lightning, with high frequency in some areas, and brilliant episodes at others.

I managed to capture a few streaks with a Finepix E550. Manual settings with aperture at F2.8 (biggest available on this), and shutter speed at half a second. I chose continuous shoot mode with last 4 pictures to be saved.

A lone streak

Some intense action

The leader of this bolt is the last place you would want to be.

Today's paper reported that a tree in Rajajinagar (nearby) broke into fire after a solid strike.. hehe Amma Nature sure knows how to balance hot and cool!

Nothing but political wind; this.

2006-04-22T10:53:00.000-05:00

There are fanatics, and there are more fanatics. Some actually make sense, the others badly want to make some sense even when they know its non-sense. Environment activists have long been sensible and whole hearted supporters of renewable energy practices like wind farms and other biofuels. The logic behind this being that the overall pollution caused by constructing wind farms is sizeably lesser than when opting wholly for conventional sources.

Wind turbines at the Department of Energy's labs in Texas.

A new breed of 'environ-friends' are cropping up trying to mow down the efforts of stalwarts in this field like those of Denmark who have shown the world what a breeze can do. These self-empowered anti wind groups (like Stop Ill Wind) have had a well established history in their efforts to stop other non-conventional power sources like nuclear power plants from proliferating, and have successfully lynched the chances of setting up of stations which supply liquid natural gas. Agreed that the nuclear plants had a ominous shade to it all due to the 'nuke' in it, but havent the last 2 decades shown the productive wonders that a responsible use of fissile can do?

Now the anti-winders have worked hard in the eastern North America and joined hands with real estate developers and activists to bring the axe to new wind projects. The pains they take to bring out why wind could be dangerous are simply awe-inspiring. Blades killing bats? Sound pollution by rotor hum? Give me a break, more bats are probably killed by cell phone tower emission, and why not try stopping metal concerts altogether?? That would make the world more bearable!

And if they are worried about wind towers marring the scenery, in my opinion, Las Vegas looked much better as an empty desert in the 1900's than it does now with unsightly towers and glitzy water fountains. They would be doing a greater good if they worked on the 'wind people's side, pooled in their criticism and suggestions, and thereby help standardise and improve the whole practise of building wind farms.

It's very clear that guided political motives want to ensure constant demands for oil and coal. Today alternative energy is 4% of the total supply, and they aim to see to it that it doesnt improve, lest it pose a threat to the world's No.1 business - Power. Let's see what they have to say when Sweden hits its target of becoming the world's first oil-free economy within 2020.

Acrobatics on a rocky mountain. (No safety nets attached)

2006-04-20T15:13:00.000-05:00

They say lots can happen over coffee. But over chitra anna and curd rice?? This was Sandeep’s mom’s picnic gift to us, as we set out on last Sunday morning to Saavan durga. We knew it was just about an hour’s journey, so we set out well after sunrise. We had on board one doc, 4 IT professionals, and an unemployed youth all set out to kick away the weekend inertia.

Some history:

Saavan durga near Maagadi (around 40 km west of BengaLooru) is one of the historic hill forts of Karnataka. There are many such stone marvels at Nandi hills, Chitradurga, Madhugiri, PaavagaDa of Tumkur, Kavaledurga of Shivamogga.

The Cholas had ruled Maagadi during the 10^th and 11^th centuries C.E., and had built a town there called Thirumalai in 1139 C.E. In fact the Ranganatha temple there was hailed as the Paschima Thirupathi (Thirupathi of the West).

After the Hoysalas succeeded the Cholas, they added Magadi to the Vijayanagara Empire, and much later Immadi Kempe Gowda (Kempe Gowda the Second) expanded this place by building a palace, the Someshwara temple and of course the hill fortress on the top of the monolith mountain in 1627 C.E. It’s believed that his status of being a Saamanta raaya (tributary chief) of that province gave the name Saamantaraayana Durga to his fortress. Centuries of mispronunciation have rendered it Saavana Durga today.

Back to the future:

Vishwas the doc, Hoba, Nats, Ramp, Sandy and I squished our bags into the car, much the same way we squished ourselves into it too. If you have been counting the heads, it should be quite clear how we all managed it, the car being Sandy’s Santro. It’s best left to your vivid imagination!We took the Magadi highway, cruised beside the TippagonDana haLLi tank (from where Bengalooru used to get most of its drinking water before Cauvery came in). The road at places felt like we were on camel back, but we could ignore it thanks to our Bangalore upbringing. You can get to see some cool spots after T.G. Halli where the traffic is minimal and the narrow road is all yours for the jaywalk.

We parked for breakfast and this is where the chitra anna kicked in. Post breakfast-cum-glucose-shot, we were all geared up for the big climb. Parking in front of the Sri Lakshmi Narasimha dEvasthaana was a good thing, as we could get a peek at the guDi before the uphill task. Coming to think of it in retrospect, it's very strategically placed near the foothills of the mountain, and in that way, as per someone's dark humour, was a boon for unfortunate people who fell off the cliff at one particularly slippery point. Their last rites could be effortlessly completed.

At the beginning, the rock just stood in our faces, with a sharp 60^o inclination. I wasnt pretty sure whether this was the right way, but Sandy was leading, and he had done this twice. Ramp and Nats had a mind of their own and decided to take a slightly devious route, and didnt find it any easier! You must have seen that in trailer.

Soon the situation was taken care of as we found arrow marks painted on rocks indicating the 'right' trail. Now try this fact, ImmaDi Kempe Gowda used to take this well worn route to get to his fortress, on horseback! I have to give it to that gutsy animal which had gallop up and (worse) downhill carrying a well built man. Considering that even this trail had some decent - hold your horses- 80^o inclinations (our minds were reeling angles!), imagining how the tougher routes could be. The men of history had even carved out small horse shoe shaped niches in the rock, for the stallion's foothold. But it was sheer thrill holding on to ledges, and heaving ourselves across building sized rocks. Small water breaks at every stage were a treat.

The view around the hills just got better and better. We found the fort in the final leg, obviously in a decrepit and unmaintained condition. Atop the peak was an imposing statue of the Basava bull, staring stoicly into the kingdom below. I could imagine ghost riders galloping up the ledges, as if they were riding plain ground; soldiers watching over the fortress with greased and ready archers hidden behind the brick walls; and daring climbers hanging on to their dear chamelons and dear lives.

It was all a walk back into the past, and as I look back, and wonder how much the city of Magadi treasured their city, as the citizens and soldiers fought against the British attack in the late 18th Century. The bloodshed and gore that the mountain witnessed is evident in the the grave sobriquet it earned; Saavina Durga.

Tirupati of the West: The rocking place.

2006-04-17T08:30:00.000-05:00

What's in a monolithic mountain if you can't climb it on all fours?
What's in the great Kempe Gowda's 1200 mt high granite fort, if you arent guts enough to parasail off the peak?
What's in Saamantharaayana durga, if you never even heard of this Magadi Hill which was the Tirumalai of the West?

Coming soon more on Samantharaayana Durga (Spoiler alert: Also Saavana durga)
Watch the trailer here...

A journey from freedom to liberation: Mukta

2006-04-09T03:46:00.001-05:00

T. N. Seetharam's much followed teleserial Mukta's title song Mukta.

ಮುಕ್ತ
ದೂರದಿಂದಲೆ ಜೀವ ಹಿಂಡುತಿದೆ ಕಾಣದೊಂದು ಹಸ್ತ
ಆದೇವೆ ಬಂಧ ಮುಕ್ತ |
ದೂರದಿಂದಲೆ ಜೀವ ಹಿಂಡುತಿದೆ ಕಾಣದೊಂದು ಹಸ್ತ
ಆದೇವೆ ಬಂಧ ಮುಕ್ತ ||

ಕಾರು ಮೋಡ ಮಳೆಯಾಗಿ ಸುರಿದಾಗ ಕಣ್ಣ ಹನಿಗೆ ಮುಕ್ತಿ..

ಮರದ ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಮರಿ ರೆಕ್ಕೆ ಬೀಸಿದರೆ, ಅದರ ಗರಿಗೆ ಮುಕ್ತಿ |
ಎದೆಯ ನೋವು ಹಾಡಾಗಿ ಹೊಮ್ಮಿದರೆ, ಭಾವಕ್ಕೆ ಬಂದ ಮುಕ್ತಿ...
ಎಂದು ಆದೇವು ನಾವು ಮುಕ್ತ ಮುಕ್ತ ಮುಕ್ತ ||

ಏರು ನದಿಗೆ ಇದಿರಾಗಿ ಈಜಿ ದಡ ಸೇರಬಹುದೆ ಜೀವ?
ದಾಟಿ ಈ ಪ್ರವಾಹ? |
ತಾನು ಬೆಂದು ತಿಳಿ ಬೆಳಕ ಬೀರುತಿದೆ ಒಂದು ಇರುಳ ದೀಪ,
ನಿಶ್ಚಯದ ಮೂರ್ತ ರೂಪ..||

ಮೊಗ್ಗಿನಿಂದ ಸೆರೆ ಒಡೆದ ಗಂಧ ಹೂವಿಂದ ದೂರ ದೂರ,
ಎಲ್ಲುಂಟು ಆಚೆ ತೀರ
ಮೊಗ್ಗಿನಿಂದ ಸೆರೆ ಒಡೆದ ಗಂಧ ಹೂವಿಂದ ದೂರ ದೂರ,
ಎಲ್ಲುಂಟು ಆಚೆ ತೀರ

ಕಾರುಮೋಡ ಮಳೆಯಾಗಿ ಸುರಿದಾಗ ಕಣ್ಣ ಹನಿಗೆ ಮುಕ್ತಿ...
ಮರದ ಹಕ್ಕಿ ಮರಿ ರೆಕ್ಕೆ ಬೀಸಿದರೆ, ಅದರ ಗರಿಗೆ ಮುಕ್ತಿ...|
ಎದೆಯ ನೋವು ಹಾಡಾಗಿ ಹೊಮ್ಮಿದರೆ, ಭಾವಕ್ಕೆ ಬಂದ ಮುಕ್ತಿ...
ಎಂದು ಆದೇವು ನಾವು ಮುಕ್ತ ಮುಕ್ತ ಮುಕ್ತ....||

You can download this beautiful song at Pratap's page

Too much is too bad.

2006-04-04T05:51:00.000-05:00

Well c'mon people, but this is getting just too much. There were the newspapers, and then TV, then satellite, and there's Google now. I mean, isnt there an end to how much information you can have at your finger tips?

The day is not going to be far when people are going to search for the meaning of their lives on the Information giant that Google is. "I am feeling lucky?" is not going to help them!

Fortunately there is a way to escape from all this Information Overload.
See The Cure for Information Overload.

The crown jewel of BengaLooru.

2006-03-27T06:51:00.000-06:00

It had never crossed our minds to go in there, but now that we were so close, it would be ridiculous to pass it by. So we sat down inside the winding tunnel. The fans were running at full throttle, but nothing could clear the room of the smells. It will not be hard for the average Bangalorean to imagine this setting immediately after I give away the spoiler; beNNe masaale?

Vidyaarthi Bhavan might have made news lately with it's 2 minute flashes on BBC and Udaya, but it goes back in time to 1938.

Our waiter eased his way in the narrow aisle between the tables. All the while I was counting the plates he was carrying. Considering he was already a quarter way through the aisle of neatly stacked 4 seaters, he must have started out from the kitchen with atleast 20 plates balancing on his left hand. This must be a good assumption, as most people come there only for the beNNe masaale dOse, and rarely have enough tummy space to try anything else after a couple of dOses.

A crisp dOse was placed beside me, and immediately followed by a generous dollop of kaai chutney serving. The beNNe on my dOse was already melting. My restraint was melting too. Yet another story can be written about the mashed potato masaale inside, and the freshly spiced chutney.. but I deem it in my welfare to stop, and let you go and have a taste yourself..

No. 32, Gandhi Bazaar, Bangalore. Bon appétit.

Pronunciation tips for the uninitiated:

beNNe
bεNNε. Fresh butter.

masaale
mŭsälε. Boiled and mashed potatoes seasoned with spice mixture.

dOse.
thōsε. The crowning glory of South Indian breakfast. Simply indescribable!

kaai.
käĭ. Grated and seasoned coconut used for chutney.

The Corrupt: Worse than the world's oldest professionals. Are you one?

2006-03-11T10:27:00.000-06:00

The bloody scenes of Rang De Basanti have still not been fully cleared off our memories. The students on national television werent made to scream "The fire you have ignited will burn in our hearts" just for a different climax. It's not for a whim or fancy that such a supreme effort has been made.

The Post Graduate Entrance Test, Karnataka (PGET2006) recently conducted by the health university, has shown the kind of totally unwholesome and sick levels of immorality that both officials and students have lowered themselves to. The glaring fraud is evident from a simple glance at the top 100 rankers themselves.

See this:

Student x gets a rank in the top 10 (inspite of 5 answer keys found wrong)
RGUHS re-publishes answer key, and re-arranges ranks.
Student x's rank slips to within top 20. (note here that new answer key has 15 wrong keys)
RGUHS re-re-publishes answer key and re-re-arranges ranks.
Student x's rank remains within top 20.
Punchline: x never was a topper or high scorer in the course or degree exams.

Does it need Einstein to scream humbug at this 'doctored' arithmetic?
It does not take the wisdom of a doctor, or the calculative ability of an engineer to smell out all these x's???

It's amusing to say this, but I am reminded of KCET that I took in 2000. That year too, we saw many 'toppers' never losing their position even when the wrong answer keys were withdrawn and correctly re-published.

The root of the evil lies in the students who are readily forking out lakhs to get their hands on answer keys. It's a shame on the schools that made such monsters who don't mind spending their parents' money to get a coveted PG seat.

If you personally know someone who has done this I challenge you to turn them in. Better still turn in the person who took the money. You owe it to this country.

Blackouts: An experience in Time dilation.

2006-01-05T03:01:00.000-06:00

Everything went black at 6:30 p.m. yesterday evening.

The Sun was still hanging on to the last few clouds. The unexpected blackout found us scurrying around for the candle and the kerosene lamp. The lamp had existed since the time my grandfather was still earning; and my father a student. It had seen a half dozen students thrash out their exam woes and come out in superb colours. So we had decided not to replace it with the new fangled 'Backup flash lamps'. That would completely beat the purpose of a blackout.

Ajji settled down comfortably on the floor mat with a bucket full of avarekaaLu pods to peel. This let her sit down for while, keep herself occupied, chat, and in the meanwhile get some useful work done. My aunt realised that her favourite Kannada soap had started, in all the television sets of the world except the dark one that sat in the corner. That explained her fidgeting with the newspaper, pretending to read a full page in few seconds. I was on the bed beside reading a section of my current book Electron: Physics for everyone. At that time, the electrons were deciding whether to team up as super couples and coast along the lattice, or just carry on their usual lone battles with the oscillating bully moleclues blocking their way out to the most attractive terminal.

Ajji brought up her favourite topic. Thatha, her husband. She loved telling stories of how as a revenue inspector, he would ride around on his bicycle from village to village checking out if even the smallest farmer had made sure his patch of green was blooming, and he had paid the government his dues, and if all was well everywhere. She would even recount her son's pranks of filling in water in his father's lunch boxes, and packing them off on a hot summer day. His father's fury that noon was something we still have a good laugh at.

Many stories and smiles later, it was time for dinner. Steaming rice with piping hot saaru never turned anyone away. The kerosene lamp was attracting a new kind of attention. We simply had to capture it for posterity. So came out the camera, and the dozen designer clicks.

The surreal mood suddenly burst like a balloon. Power had been restored. Instinct turned us towards the wall clock. In those adventures, those black and white tales of honour, and moments of pride, we had slowly gained many hours in time.

The time was 8:00 p.m.

I just love seeing this page again and again!!

2005-12-17T13:14:00.000-06:00

Personal computers worth more than a lakh are now here!

Sun lover

2005-11-24T12:22:00.000-06:00

It has been a not unusually overcast month. Yesterday and the day before it has been drizzling fine mist. Somewhat like a giant water sprinkler in heaven let loose onto magical November. As the Sun played peek-a-boo behind the clouds, this November Crysanthemum in my garden wakes up to greet him.

Experiencing the Mysore Dasara

2005-10-15T12:06:00.000-05:00

The word Dasara had always triggered off faint memories of when I had seen it last. I was about 7. Having to look up at the whole world is a very funny feeling. It's somewhat like being a fish inside a pond, and people peer down at you, smiling at your innocent questions.

"Who is that man in all that colorful gear?. Is he going to eat me?"
"Why are there so many people here? Are we expecting a circus?"
"Why is this palace so bright? Can we meet the king inside?"

The memories of the smells and sounds though fleeting, were certainly indelible. This time around Dasara was something I had to re-visit. I had to get to my past, and capture what all I had really seen.

Sharan, my cousin and I left for Mysore left with just 30 minutes of planning. Armed with a camera and camcorder, we tucked into the Chamundi Express. The 6 am air stinged our nostrils.
Mysore has traditionally been the host for Karnataka's cultural extravaganza Dasara. Dubbed the State Festival or NaaDa Habba, the Dasara showcases the plethora of cultural talents that Karnataka has been so well known for. Dance forms, fine art, theatre, and music had filled the atmosphere for the past ten days.

This day, the 13th of October was the grand finale,the Vijayadashami, literally signifying the 10th victorious day of good over evil.

The Grand procession had started at 12:30 from the Mysore Palace in the heart of the city. Leading the 4 kilometre march upto Banni Mantap were the hundreds of troupes of dancers and performers showing off their unique showmanship.

The favourite dance form of the masses, the Dollu Kunita, kept the people on their feet. The booming drums, the blaring whistles all coaxed even the most shy people into shaking a leg. Vividly decorated tableaus followed each other down the wide Sayyaji Rao Road. Each tableaux had a different story to tell. While one wooed the adults not to fall prey to the lures of drinking and child employment, many others sought to highlight the progress the state had made in education, and infrastructure. The best is always at the last. The State guardsmen, in all their livery rode the finest horses, ushering the elephants. 6 caparisoned elephants bejeweled with stunning palace gold made way for the final tusker, the Balarama.

He had had the prestige of carrying the solid gold palanquin with the idol of Goddess Chamundi riding proudly in it. The very promise of the sight of the idol was what had driven the whole city into a 10 day frenzy.

People bowed with both arms clasped together to their favourite Goddess, and prayed for everyone's welfare.

Towards night fall, we hurried towards the Palace again to catch its other face. The luminous one.

At exactly 7:00 p.m., the entire panorama around the palace grounds lit up in one go. 50,000 light bulbs carved out the magnificient structure against the dark blue sky.

The grounds were packed with families who had got more than they had expected from this annual celebration of victory, joy, and life itself.

Animal Stories

2005-07-21T12:11:00.000-05:00

I was aimlessly surfing channels last night, when i stopped at a channel. A lady was screaming at the top of her lungs. The man was trying desparately to open the padlock, and free her from the transparent coffin like box. Then I saw the green lumps under her. All wet, energetic, green frogs. A glance at the corner of the screen proved my doubt right. It had to be AXN. And this was definitely Fear Factor.

The lady was now wriggling out of the green mess, and they both waded across a dimly lit pond. Don't even ask; the lake was full of jumping frogs much to their delightful scorn. Barely had the couple made it to safe ground, and the 'host' of the show ushered them to the table with 2 jars full of a gooey paste much like peanut butter...I would have let you hazard what that could have been.., but the host clearly was in no mood to hide the details..

"Contestants, what you have in front of you is freshly blended toad!!".

How yummy could that get. The contestants didnt even have time to wince. They had an ordeal to get through first. So they gulped down the seemingly unthorough blend of toads; evident from the blobs here and there, and an occasional webbed foot slipping out of the lady's mouth.

All this had taken just about 20 seconds, and I was more than glad to skip channels..to oh wow Animal Planet. Atleast somebody respects animals. Here the frogs would still remain the focus, but under a powerful nocturnal videocamera. Friendlier than a blender.

Animal planet's naturalist mercenaries were touring the mystic Land of India, where snake charmers were the 'regular scenery', and people still got around on elephants. The adventurer had chosen to highlight cruel practices in India, where some gypsies were using a defanged cobra to entertain passers-by. The guileless spectators would stare at the show with open mouths, finally toss a coin and move on. Business by the tune. Yet another creative gypsy had snatched a monkey's baby away from her, and promised to give it back only in return for a trick. The monkey promptly performed a full somersault. All this had apparently grieved the adventurer .

"Such inhuman acts of cruelty just for a few cheap pennies! This is really really shameful." he averred.

Almost as if warning us, he said "If you see something like this happening in your town, dont stop and watch the cruelty, dont give money. Either walk away, or save the monkey by buying it for a huge sum, like I just did."

What's the point, you ask? Animal Planet has clearly no idea about AXN. Hope they see Fear Factor. They might just end up saving a few hundred toads from the blender.

An evening in Chennai

2005-07-11T01:48:00.000-05:00

It was an overcast and breezy noon. I was in Chennai. Rain droplets smattered my face even as I tried to reassure myself that this was indeed reality. The Chennai Sun had decided to take a break, and I was there to reap the fruits of the newfound clemency.

Walking along MGR Salai, I noticed nothing much had been disturbed since the time I had been here last- two years ago. Hotel Palm Grove stood staidly against the azure sky. The rickshaw queue at the corner seemed to have been transfixed since then.

The American Embassy hid behind the Mount Road flyovers apparently enjoying its well-deserved weekend break after the grind of meeting a thousand visa-seekers.

"How do I get to Marina Beach?" I asked the young man walking just ahead.

He mumbled some directions so inaudibly; I almost thought he was miming. Then he must have decided it was better to lead me since he was heading that way anyway. We took the subway crossing.

"What do you do?” I offered.
"I study BCA", came the measured reply.
"I work at Bangalore."

He was very silent. Maybe Bangalore didn’t interest him. Chennai was feeling so fine anyway. He led me to the bus stop and walked away.

The Chennai bus is a phenomenon. Midsize, oddly coloured (and some uncoloured) 6 wheelers hurtling down narrow by lanes with unimaginable agility. A slight shade apart from the usually soporific rides in Bangalore buses. Jumping into the front door I asked the man on the foot board in my best Tamil.

"Conductor enge?"

He gave me a perplexed look. I was in a fix. Had I said something wrong? Maybe it was my peculiar accent? Something told me I had just made a consummate fool of myself. I squeezed my way to the rear end of the bus to find the conductor comfortable in his pre-assigned chair next to the rear door. Deja vu all over again. I had known this from the last visit to Chennai.

"Marina Beach?" I cautiously asked.
He nodded. Thrilled, I continued.
"Yevalou?"
"MooNN".

I was pleased. All those elementary Tamil lessons had paid off. I sat down with a smug look wondering how far 3 rupees could take me.

Contrary to what most people had warned me, Chennai was maintaining a cool composure today. Despite this, I seemed to stick out sorely as the only perspiring face around. I took a secret glance in all directions. Not a single one of those blissful faces had even a trickle of perspiration. Even the lady returning home - apparently from a shopping spree; evident from a handful of coloured plastic bags - seemed as fresh as I was earlier that day when had I walked out of the air conditioned Chennai airport.
About half an hour and many colourful market streets later, the bus stalled. I had arrived at Marina.

Marina always evoked a sense of awe in me. All the 3 times I had been there before, it had always known how to silence me with its gentle gurgle, much like a gurgling baby would magically silence its spectators.

The beach portrayed a gamut of creatures in different stages of life. Toddlers were clutching wet sand and smacking it on each other. Some older kids were chasing each other on the hillock. A pre-teen trying to fly a kite without a tail, a few silent couples here and there trying to steal a private moment amidst the sunbathing crowd, a nomad eking out a living by entertaining people with her painted monkey.

The crows were aplenty, all contending to snap up even the smallest bits of roasted corn-on-the-cob. The sea gushed onto the waiting sands, as though trying to cleanse the beach from the fallout of a burgeoning human civilisation. An hour later, contented from this experience, I decided to return.

I stopped the hefty policeman on Beach Road, and asked him the way to Nungambukam. He pointed to the bus stop at the far end of the road, and nudged me toward the subway entrance at this end.

I observed that this was the fourth subway I had seen since morning. Every big roundabout seemed to have one. Surprisingly, no hawkers, no beggars inside. They were built to be subways, and that's just what they were.

In keeping with the trend of the day, the journey back to Mount Road was also eventful. The journey cost only 2 rupees. And I had thought 3 rupees were fantastic. All the buses seemed to be consistently quaint, multicoloured, agile and pocket friendly.

I was so lost in the thoughts of myriad flyovers, subways and buses that I had forgotten to ask the conductor about my stop. Suddenly the conductor walked up to me.

"You should have gotten off 3 stops ago. Why are you still here? Get down here."

Great. Now I was lost in the great city of sand and silicon. A passerby made a long face when I said Nungambukam. He told me to retrace my path for at least 3 kilometers.
I decided it was time to hitch a hike at last. I didn’t have a towel on my shoulder, but that didn’t worry me much. I flagged down a passing biker. When he said he knew the place, I hopped on. I learnt that he was a corporate working in Chennai, and that he had visited Bangalore a few times. The recent drizzles in Chennai it seems were feeling lovely.

Getting off near the Embassy, I trudged back to my hotel room, mulling over all that had happened in less than 3 hours. Chennai had taken me out for a lovely evening, and the pleasure was all mine.

Power lines : Our lifeline.

2005-06-29T13:22:00.000-05:00

Getting Physical

2005-06-06T12:28:00.000-05:00

It was a great day. I had taken the day off from work, and was glued to my monitor as usual. After 6 thrilling hours of endless googling into the sites of NASA, UCLA, UCSD and NCSA, I had read and wondered about an year's worth of information on our galaxy, the revered Milky Way, it's neighbours: the Magellenic Clouds, and the Andromeda, and how they all happily churn their way around in our local super cluster of galaxies. My father fondly refers to this as "our cosmic uppiTTu", to denote the boiling plasmic structure of space with a billion swirling pools of stars and galaxies. A truly south Indian analogy to match the older Raisin Bread comparison.

Also was on the cards today, was the need to know what exact work had gone into the research for finding out what lies in the centre of our galaxy. Until the 70's there had only been a speculation that the galaxy was centred on a super massive black hole.

Evidence collected in the recent years has indeed revealed a small cluster of stars found to be orbiting a super massive black hole called the Sagittarius A* ("Sag A star"). Studies of radio emission from this dense and compact point radio source, has shown that it measures just around 150 million kilometres in size, much smaller than our solar system, yet has the material of mass worth 2.6 million Suns. More recent observations of nearby galaxies have shown that they too contain similar dark super masses in their centres.

2005 is the World Year of Physics. It coincides with the first centennial of Albert Einstein's "Miraculous Year". 1905 saw an anonymous 26-year-old class 3 clerk at the Swiss Patent office literally rewriting the laws of Physics. Within a span of 7 months, he published 5 seminal works on topics like the Photoelectric Effect, Brownian motion and Special Relativity. It took decades for most of his works to be completely fathomed, and his equations demystified. But back then, a few scientists delved into his fresh findings, and came out with more shocking theories.

Karl Swartzchild, a German astrophysicist computed the gravitational fields of stars, using Einstein's new field equation, and ended up discovering a possibility of regions in space having an infinite space-time curvature, which got termed as the "Swartzchild Singularity". Much later in the 60's, John Wheeler (Richard Feynman's supervisor), termed this singularity as the "Black Hole".

The theories of 1905 had revolutionised Physics and Cosmology, and had forever changed the way people thought about space-time, matter and energy. 11 years later, in 1916, Einstein established another landmark through his General Theory of Relativity by proving that matter could curve space. Curved space could curve light too. Thus it had been proved that light could bend if the gravitational force of a body was sufficiently strong.

This leads to a funny (sorry for the trivialisation of the otherwise serious implication!) effect. Pretend that you were standing on Earth now, and looking at a star in your Northern sky. The actual existence of the star could be totally elsewhere, say in the eastern sky. As ludicrous as it may sound, it is possible if the light from the star went AROUND a huge black hole in your Northeast, and then struck you from the North, thus giving you a false direction to extrapolate its presence.

If you reapply this theory, then the light from a star could have sashayed around half a dozen black holes, and could have reached you in the sky in front of you, when the star was actually behind you. If you further stretch the assumptions, you can think of several images of a single star running loose in space, and the obvious delays in time could result in the images reaching you at different times, from different places in the sky.

Ok, so that means we might not be seeing this stellar mammoth, where exactly it is now. To add to this conundrum, let’s imagine our star to be probably a thousand light years away from us. So the light we DO see now was what the star pulsed out a thousand years ago. If the star had burned itself out exactly a thousand years ago, or had exploded as a grand Super Nova, we'd get the bad news a millennium late. Plus, a few later generations on earth could see the SAME explosion in a different place in space. As they say “History repeats itself.” Now history can repeat its replications.

It would be really hilarious if the image of me sitting on a small terrace (looking out at those notorious stars), went out of this solar system, bounced around our local downtown black hole, and took a complete U-turn (believe me, this is possible), and fell onto Earth 60000 years later (we are around 30000 light years from the Sag A*.) My great great grandson would have the pleasure of seeing a funny be-spectacled humanoid sitting on a blue planet peering curiously into the deep dark sky.

Can space really be believed??