Gulmohar

On a Sunny Day...

2011-06-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

The picture is some flowers near to my office :)

Life...goes on...

2011-06-27T14:00:00.000-07:00

The picture is some girl I saw at some cafe here :)
Cheers!

A Dewy Morning

2011-02-08T03:36:00.000-08:00

The Abyss...

2011-01-10T22:38:00.000-08:00

"Oh Rupert, there are people who communicate with the deep abysses of one's mind and these people are frightening."
- Morgan to Rupert in Iris Murdoch's novel A Fairly Honourable Defeat

The picture is sunrise as seen from moi terrace :)

The Silent Thinker...

2010-12-19T22:36:00.000-08:00

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
- Albert Einstein.

I am realizing more and more how true this is. Sad though that the situation has not improved even after half century after having said that.

The picture is one of the many crows that visit our home in search of leftovers from food :)
Cheers!

Heisenberg's Nightmare...

2010-11-09T03:57:00.000-08:00

I am gloomy for weather which is getting more and more uncertain. I am sure that today if Heisenberg were alive, he wouldnt have been very happy to analyse this type of uncertainty.
In India, the agriculture is so much dependent on weather. So is it time when India will run into a major famine or food shortage?
Even though I dont want to answer that question, my mind says we will see a famine within next 10 years. I always had an instinct for weather. Many times on a sunny morning, I would sense something and say,"It will rain today", and it has rained. Almost always. This time I will be happy to be proven wrong for my prediction that a famine would happen.

But you know...deep inside my mind...I want it to happen..I know it sounds morally incorrect but something like this would teach us a lesson and probably we would start taking our environment seriously.

Probably this learning would come at a huge cost to life..but some lessons come at heavy cost..because otherwise, without a heavy punishment, we refuse to learn.

Go Green. Cheers!

Freshhhh.!.!.!

2010-08-02T01:52:00.000-07:00

The picture is leaves of some plant in front of moi house after rains this weekend.
I dont know why but this particular shade of green in the picture reminds me of ad of Cinthol or Liril :) I like smell of both...and also smell of lemon :)

Deep Green...

2010-07-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

Few Green Quotes -
Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites. ~William Ruckelshaus

Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we. ~Michel de Montaigne

It wasn't the Exxon Valdez captain's driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours. ~Greenpeace advertisement

Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible - or even sinful - that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes! ~Paul MacCready, Jr.

They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers. ~James G. Watt

Take nothing but pictures.
Leave nothing but footprints.
Kill nothing but time.
~Motto of the Baltimore Grotto

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition. ~Carl Sagan

If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos. ~Edward O. Wilson

Give a man a fish, and he can eat for a day. But teach a man how to fish, and he'll be dead of mercury poisoning inside of three years. ~Charles Haas

A human being is part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole [of] nature in its beauty. ~Albert Einstein

The picture is drops of rainwater on grass in front of moi house.
Save Green :)
Cheers!

Time...

2010-06-21T01:18:00.000-07:00

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once.
- Albert Einstein

That is an extremely simple and at the same time extremely profound statement. But in order to get complete grasp of this, unfortunately, you need to understand (atleast) special theory of relativity.
This link can help biginners - http://conduit9sr.tripod.com/SR1.html

The watch in the pic is mine :)

String Theory...

2010-06-10T22:06:00.001-07:00

The pic is guitar and its strings :)

Waiting for rain...

2010-05-31T04:50:00.000-07:00

I want those wet days back again...

Desires...

2010-05-26T01:25:00.000-07:00

Most people arent happy in what they are doing. They find mundane work boring or they think that their work is not worth their ability. But if so, I ask people what will make them happy? Then people tell me that they still dont know what exactly they want and they want to know where their true passion lies. They think doing things they are passionate about will make them happy. I dont think its so easy to find what you really want. And what you want might change over a period of time and if you are really passionate about something, it might become mundane if you do it as a profession, you never know.

But its important to search what you want really. And is challenging too.

Most of us dont know what we want but most of us know exactly what we dont want. And I think its important to know that to start with :)

The pic is some shell on my palm...cheers! :)

Burdens from the past...

2010-05-17T05:02:00.000-07:00

The picture is embossed design on glass :)
Dark shadows of ghosts...they still haunt my present!

Schrodinger's Cat...

2010-05-12T01:32:00.000-07:00

If you dont know who Schrondiger was, read about Schrondiger's Cat on Wiki :)

Sadness...

2010-04-20T03:57:00.000-07:00

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The picture is ... some plant ... I dont know which :)

Pythagoras Theorem...

2010-04-11T21:52:00.000-07:00

Few quotes by Pythagoras,
- As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.
- Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression. No man is free who cannot control himself.
- Do not talk a little on many subjects, but much on a few.
- No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself.
- Reason is immortal, all else mortal.
- There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.
- Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body and truth for his soul”
- Some are slaves of ambition or money, but others are interested in understanding life itself. These give themselves the name of philosophers (lovers of wisdom), and they value the contemplation and discovery of nature beyond all other pursuits.

The picture is where wall meets the floor at a slanting angle :)

Sad Cypress...

2010-04-04T23:35:00.000-07:00

Hercule Poirot said, "I don't approve of murder".

- From the novel Sad Cypress by Agatha Christie.

At the core…

2010-03-29T21:36:00.000-07:00

It more and more a realization that even though lifestyle gets more and more complicated, a few, very core things must remain simple.

The pic, a bird on the lookout, for simple things :)

Spider n his web…

2010-03-21T22:49:00.000-07:00

I am a sound sleeper. (No I don’t make sounds while I am sleeping ;) ). I get few dreams, and most of them are quite typical. The dreams are never in the present. I mean, the overall look and feel is pretty old fashioned, not a modern one. I see a particular town, it has few lakes, has old styled buildings that are built in stone. They are huge compared to modern houses. The atmosphere usually is cloudy. Its amazingly peaceful and charming. Lively could be a better word. I am usually in a quite relaxed mood (probably because I am physically sleeping ;)), and everything looks soft and crystal clear.
The point of getting the above details is, I got a dream yesterday. It was little bit different. The theme was that, I have joined a new company. Probably an IT related company. But the office was in this perfect dream town. When I enter the office, it doesnot look like an IT company from any angle. There is real heavy classic wooden furniture. There is no AC but atmosphere is pleasantly warm(as it always is in my dreams). There is dim yellowish lighting. Most of the light is coming from outside, just diffused natural light everywhere. Its wonderful and I love it. I feel like how beautiful it must be to work here!
When I wake up, I compare real life offices with my dream one. How are the real ones? I worked in many offices, and its difficult to say which one was worse. I don’t understand why people first make it dark by blocking continuous warm natural light and then switch on glaring hot lights that flicker on and off at 50Hz. The people that maintain AC need real education in closed loop control. Most of the places, the temperature varies anywhere between 17C to 27C and the variations are just random. Are chairs in our offices really comfortable? I think they are too comfortable. Most people I see, are sitting in front of the monitors and their bodies are sagged down somewhere inside the cubicle and that really does look unhealthy. If you are working in IT, does it really mean you must sit in front of a computer for the whole day? Its almost as bad as making children sit at one place for entire school day. The interiors of most companies looks identical, rows and rows of cubicles. It might be space efficient but I always felt, its better to have less population and huge space than huge population with space effiency. Why cant interior decorators be more creative to make a Victorian styled office?
If only the office in my dream really existed….

The pic…some spider :)

NextGen…

2010-03-14T22:00:00.000-07:00

I watched “Jaane Tu Yaa Jaane Naa” the other day. Honestly I couldn’t comprehend why so many people liked the movie. If I don’t like a movie, I usually locate the reasons, lets say ‘poor acting’ or ‘cheap story’. But here the most vicious thing was, I found it difficult to figure out why I didn’t like the movie. I couldn’t simply comprehend what was going on. I am a kind of person who externalizes reasons, a person who looks for external reasons. But here I couldn’t find any, so I started looking inside. Then I found a pattern. I noticed that, I find now a days difficult to understand more and more, things about people called NextGen aka todays young generation. I cant comprehend things like why do they talk on cell phone for unusually long times? What probably can a person communicate with so many SMSs? What makes people go on shopping spree? Why people like calling themselves ‘random and unpredictable’?...
I am beginning to feel that there is nothing (much) wrong with the movie neither anything with myself. I think this is what is called “generation gap”. Probably since the movie is about NextGen, I am beginning to feel it out of my time. Now a days I am beginning to get inkling that I will have to face more and more of this “gap of perception” (or do they call “gap of attitude”?) in future. Now, how much time gap is generation gap? Traditional definition puts gap between say father and son. When talking of todays fast changing society, shouldn’t the definition be revised? Now when I try comparing myself with NextGen, difference in age of 8 years is almost equivalent to generation gap. Probably india is going through cultural makeover too fast and after a decade or so, there is going to be an interesting variety of people in our good old country.
Looking back, NextGen evolution in india started in 1990s, when after fall of USSR, india started globalizing. I was (fortunately) born in 1980 and I have seen socialist india for quite sometime to understand how capitalism or socialism morphs people to quite different mindsets. This jinx is quite interesting (and entertaining too) for a person who likes to study people.
On a selfish side, what I like the most about NextGen is that they make really good consumers. That’s what happens if you live in a capitalist society for sometime. You can create needs for them and sell them almost anything under that pretext, starting from mobile phone plans to spirituality. I was not surprised reading orkut profile of someone the other day, a girl of 23, who said, “I just cant live without teddy bears!!!”.

The pic, sunrise :)

Breathtaking…

2010-03-07T20:45:00.000-08:00

I was listening to some song from a new movie the other day. I like fewer and fewer songs from new movies and while listening to the song, I started feeling, atleast here comes a slow, catchy song. I try to hum along with it. After some time, I find that, what I felt slow, is indeed too fast to follow it through.
Another incident. Our evening cab. A new girl, just out of college, is on the front seat, with three of us in the back. “Do you want me to pull the seat forward, so that it would be more comfortable to you?”, asked the girl on the front seat and three of us were stunned. It was obviously not what she asked that made us stunned. It was the breathtaking speed with which she uttered that sentense did. For us, it took few seconds to slowly recall and comprehend the meaning of that sentense.
Is this why they say that the new generation is faster? And more importantly, is faster the better?
No, I am not going to comment negatively on the next generation as most elders do, one reason being, I don’t know which generation I belong to. Statistics says, generation by generation, we are getting faster. We speak more number of words per minute than our previous generations did. That probably applies to content of conversations as well. Parents now find difficult to follow flow of conversation with their children. Proud parents call their faster talking children as “smart”. I don’t know if stunning someone with too much information is being smart.
My mind, usually, is quiet clear. Compared to people around, its pretty quiet and focused. But still, I am beginning to get an inkling that maybe slow or fast is relative and I am not myself that slow really. I have few classical vocal songs of 1980, and I find them too slow to follow. I find hard to keep correct focus, if a part of song lingers for longer periods of time. This maybe because, even my mind has got accostomed to faster speeds. But is this is a positive thing in me? I don’t think so. Some things are better appreciated when one is not in a hurry. I think its definitely good to be able to go fast, but shouldnt we also be able to slow down when we want to?
The pic...a hawk ofcourse :)

No Show...

2010-03-02T07:11:00.000-08:00

Lately, I am not able to give much attention to moi dear blog and as an effect, on the overall, me thinks, moi dear blog has started looking grim. I had some lightening enlightenments in the past few days and I think I need to start spending more time on the blog. With this inspiration within, I hope this should become possible.
Seeya around!
Cheers!

A Visual Symphony...

2010-02-22T04:16:00.000-08:00

Wait 'n Watch...

2010-02-15T20:15:00.000-08:00

Prisoner's Dilemma...

2010-02-08T00:51:00.001-08:00

...but for the one who observes carefully, both keys are identical :)

Island of memoirs...

2010-02-01T00:57:00.000-08:00

The pic is very old..ulsoor lake in bangalore :)

Steel...

2010-01-24T20:55:00.000-08:00

...my metal :)

The pic is back cover of moi old watch.

Shadows of light...

2010-01-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

Lazy warm afternoons...(~sigh~)..:)

I quit…

2010-01-09T00:54:00.001-08:00

There is noise in the media that, there has been sudden increase in cases of suicide. Discussions have started on ‘who is to blame?’ (movies?, parents?,competitive stress?), blah blah. Following are some of my thoughts.
1. Its good to discuss this in media, but media guys, please don’t generate a feeling that there is a ‘wave of suicides’. People that are under pathological depression are really suggestible to negative news and creating an atmosphere of suicides might drive some of them towards the edge. I remember reading a news few years back when I was in bangalore. It said, the number of people that comitted suicide in that year in bangalore district was close to few hundreds. Shocking, but these are the normal numbers. So lets not twist numbers to 'make news’.
2. On ‘what The Government should do for this?’, my answer would be, do nothing directly. They should probably fund NGOs that provide helplines. The Government handles most sensitive things with extreme apathy, hope they do something sensible here. Probably they wont do anything much since this is not a politically useful issue, unlike suicides of farmers. Helplines are an absolute need. Most suicides happen in the mornings and there are pathological drives when the person does an attempt. Helplines are useful here. In general, getting psychological help in india is not so easy as it appears. Most people that seek professional help are students and part of educated upper class. As with all systems, it will take time to morph these systems to suit needs of indian people.
3. Schools and parents have been going through TZP effect for past few years and numerous movies are coming that comment on our education system. Creating awareness is welcome, and necessory. But lets not make our schools psychology labs. And lets not depend on wikipedia knowledge when it comes to raising our own children. Most ‘intellectual’ parents around me talk about terms like ‘child abuse’, ‘repression’ and techniques on how best to improve emotional makeup of their children. Yes, childhood is a sensitive period, but not all children that go through child abuse get psychological problems and not all psychopaths have had child abuse. Psychology is better left to professionals and lets not bring it home to be discussed over lunch table. Most of our abilities, (including mental resilience) develop with resistance, and its better to leave children to themselves and let nature take care of things, instead of doing experiments & overprotecting them.
4. Its extremely incorrect to call people who attempt suicide ‘cowards’. I have seen a person read newspaper about a guy who comitted suicide and call him a ‘coward’ because he chose to end his life because of some family problems. Suicides are done for reasons that the person thinks are severe enough to end life and usually there are more deeper problems that drive a person to suicide than ‘failure in exams’ mentioned in the newspapers. Suicide is extremely personal thing and I think its really very immature to comment on a person without even knowing him.
5. Do I believe in right to end one’s life? I think its ‘yes’. Cronically ill patients for example, should have the option instead of spending life in pain and misery. It is a personal choice really. There should be legal and medical approval system of course. Adopting indian legal system to accommodate this is out of question for another 50 years.

The pic is some bird. Innocent little things dont really have a choice, they must always live, isnt it?
Cheers!!!

Drops of life...

2009-12-31T02:50:00.000-08:00

Nothing lasts forever. Might it be 2009 or might it be recession. For me it is stagnation. Finally there are signs of beginning of change. Lets hope its for better.
The pic was taken sometime during the rains this year, I dont remember much :)
Cheers!!!

Remembering good times...

2009-12-22T03:10:00.000-08:00

Relax n smile :)

2009-12-15T00:16:00.000-08:00

Orwellism-2

2009-12-08T02:48:00.000-08:00

Few quotes by George Orwell (Part-II)
- Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
- Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.
- The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.
- The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.
- The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
- To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.
- War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.
- We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

The pic is some unknown flowers. Cheers!

Orwellism...

2009-11-30T04:01:00.000-08:00

I am reading “Down and Out in Paris & London” by George Orwell and its fantastic. I knew Orwell as an author of “Animal farm” and “1984”, but this book is entirely different. Its more of an autobiography, about his days spent in poverty in these high cities. This is not about the upper class life that we read in many novels, but its more the opposite, its real and its honest. Here you don’t look at poor people with pity as is done in most movies and literature. But you see them as real human beings. And you see their life, not with prejudice of misery, filth and charity but you see it more subjectively, through the eyes of an author who has himself been through it. It comments about difference between how people like us perceive poverty and the real hand to mouth poverty. More than this, you see Orwell as a person (instead of a novelist) and you perceive people through eyes of Orwell. After reading this, I am beginning to feel that I am understanding Orwell better, understanding what could be motives behind style of “Animal Farm" and “1984”.
I believe, I somehow relate to ‘world view’ of Orwell, atleast as far as people are concerned. Though it is not same as ‘moral dreamworld’ view that most people today seem to be believing in, but its more close to reality and its wonderful nonethless.
All this talk of poverty and inequality reminds me of a dialogue from the movie "Enemy at the Gates", it goes - "We tried so hard to create a society that was equal, where there'd be nothing to envy your neighbor. But there's always something to envy. A smile. A friendship. Something you don't have and want to appropriate. In this world-even a Soviet one- there will always be rich and poor. Rich in gifts...poor in gifts. Rich in love...poor in love."
Hmmm...the picture is flower of some weed :)
Cheers!

Samayeechyaa Shubhrakalyaa...

2009-11-22T21:05:00.000-08:00

Few quotes by George Orwell (Part-I)

- A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

- All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

- Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

- Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

- Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

- Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

- Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

- Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Hmm...the flowers in the pic remind me of an age old marathi song Samayeechyaa Shubhrakalyaa. I am not sure many people have heard this. You can find one version that was sung by Arya online.

Cheers~!

1984...

2009-11-16T21:02:00.000-08:00

Those who control the past, control the future. And those who control the present, control the past.
- quote from 1984 by George Orwell.

Animal Farm

2009-11-10T05:48:00.000-08:00

That is a stray dog, inside some sort of sewage pipe. As I later found out, it is injured. Hope it gets well soon.
Cheers!!!

All thorns have a purpose

2009-11-02T03:08:00.000-08:00

Tender...

2009-10-27T03:09:00.000-07:00

I have nothing important to write :)
Cheers!!!

Happy Diwali !!!

2009-10-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

...and wish you all a prosperous new year ahead :)

And yes the pic is with 4 seconds exposure. I was worried of camera not being steady since I have no tripod, but somehow managed without that. Surprisingly (I mean with my shaky hands) I could take many more pics with long exposure but me too tired to crop resize and post them all. Maybe I will keep them for next diwali.

Cheers!!!

Ssshhhh...!!!

2009-10-13T03:01:00.000-07:00

Remains of the last rain

2009-10-05T01:27:00.000-07:00

Dasara...

2009-09-28T08:05:00.000-07:00

Its dasara today and the flowers you see in the pic are 'zendu'(I dont know english name for these). Dasara time, and you see loads of these in the market.
This plant is naturally growing near my house and I am wondering about botanical question of 'how did this propagate here?'
But I like them like this better, on the plant, than prunning them, making garlands and tying them somewhere on the door and putting them in dustbin the next day.
There is also a tree nearby, leaves of this tree are exchanged as 'gold' on dasara and sometime back I saw that the tree was looking leafless and barren as it was robbed of its leaves for dasara.
I agree people cant exchange real gold on dasara owing to sky high price of gold but if you spoil trees like this, then probably you are also poor in some other sense.
I am not criticising dasara tradition, but isnt letting things grow naturally, a still older tradition?
Anyways, be it garlands, be it flowers, these are mere symbols, and meanings behind symbols are more important than the symbols themselves. Those who understand that, are the really ones who celebrate. Others are like sardarjees in that joke, you point them to something important, and all they keep looking at, is the finger!

Happy Dasara again!!! Cheers!!! :)

Introspecting...

2009-09-21T22:51:00.000-07:00

Evening...

2009-09-15T02:20:00.000-07:00

Durogh i musluhut amez
Bih uz rastee bu fitna ungez.

"An untruth that preserves peace is better than truth that stirs up troubles."
- An ancient saying (from Travels into Bokhara by Alexander Burnes)

Past

2009-09-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

We've got a throwaway culture. People, plastic, pop bottles, principles.
Everything's disposable. The nation's suffering from memory disorder.
Two hundered years ago? Impossible to imagine.
A hundred years ago? Too hard to think about.
Fifty years ago? Ancient history.
A movie made ten years ago is considered old.
A TV series made five years ago is a classic.
Most books have three months shelf life.
Sports organizations no sooner build stadiums than they blow them up so they can replace them with newer, uglier ones.
The grade school I went to was torn down and replaced by a strip mall.
Our culture's so obsessed with what's new, we distroy the past and pretend it never happened.
I want to write an essay that convinces people that the past is important.
I want my readers feel it and smell it and appreciate it.
- Creepers (David Morrel)

Unlocked...

2009-08-31T04:15:00.000-07:00

Some windows are better kept open :)

Sacred...

2009-08-24T23:57:00.000-07:00

Things that are sacred, are better placed somewhere in the corner, away from disturbance. You dont notice them often, but you always know they are there.
The pic, some small flower...I placed purposefully in the corner :)

Subtle Senses

2009-08-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, I remember the times when life was perfect.
The pic is a creeper on the wall :)

Unknown...

2009-08-10T06:37:00.000-07:00

Few quotes by Oppenheimer:-
- Any man whose errors take ten years to correct is quite a man.
- In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.
- There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
- When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.

The pic...i dont remember what exactly it is hehe :)

Physical realism

2009-08-02T23:31:00.000-07:00

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
- John Adams

Reflections...

2009-07-28T22:38:00.000-07:00

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
- Confucius

The pic is some neem leaves :)

Deep Blue

2009-07-20T04:50:00.000-07:00

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, Rejoice, for your soul is alive.
- Eleanora Duse
So, is your soul alive?

Anyway, the pic is a blue flower, some stray plant growing near my house after rains :)

Drop-ped...

2009-07-14T03:49:00.000-07:00

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.
- Abraham Lincoln
Hmmm...the pic is first few drops of rain :)

Thirsty...

2009-07-06T02:34:00.000-07:00

If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society, he would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.
- Zig Ziglar

Now a days there is a lot of noise in media on freedom and rights of so called 'classes of people', the kind of people who want freedom to exert their 'personal choices'. Is this the same 'freedom' we faught the british for? I dont know. Does democracy mean allowing people to do anything even though they want to do stupid things? I really wonder whether people are making rational demands or this is just what is called 'individualism' in a capitalist democratic society. Maybe we are streaching the word 'freedom' too much.

The pic, some kind of bird you find here. Looks like its thirsty, isnt it?
There is shortage of water in pune and the old lady who stays two blocks away has her overhead tank overflowing at 3 o clock at night. Now since I am working in high tech, the question that comes to my mind is, "Are these the people for whom we are developing better technology? People who just know how to consume and how to waste?"

Shaded...

2009-06-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Selected quotes by Warren Buffet :-
-Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
-Derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction.
-Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars.
-A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought.
-I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.
-Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
-Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.
-If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians.
-Wall Street is the only place that people ride to in a Rolls Royce to get advice from those who take the subway.
-Someone's sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

Yea, the pic is the tree in front of my house. Dont know who planted it though ;)

Shadows and Gloom...

2009-06-22T21:11:00.000-07:00

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
- Michelangelo

Hmm..anyway, the pic is quite old, taken in bangalore :)

Waiting for rain...

2009-06-15T20:40:00.000-07:00

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Coming back...

2009-06-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

One believes that if nothing happens, one disappears. That is not true.
- Isabelle Adjani
Yea..the picture is of some unknown plant growing after first rains here. I didnt see any of these during long months of summer but after first showers of rain, they suddenly appear out of nowhere. Yes, if nothing happens, doesnt really mean one has disappeared, isnt it? I especially like the shape of leaves, wide and all encompassing :)

A Messenger...

2009-06-03T02:47:00.001-07:00

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.
- Anne Frank
Yes, the pic is 'umber' fruit :D

Snailed...

2009-05-26T02:09:00.000-07:00

Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.
- Anonymous
Now, that pic is a snail shell :D

Quietly...

2009-05-18T06:59:00.000-07:00

Sit quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.
- A Zen saying.

Yes, thats an old pic, a butterfly :D

True beauty...

2009-05-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
- Albert Einstein

The pic is grown up plant of 'Mirchee' :)

New-ton...

2009-05-04T04:13:00.000-07:00

Few quotes by Issac Newton -
- Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.
- I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.
- We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
- If I saw further than other men, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.

Yea, the pic is too old to remember except that it was rainy season. I miss rains!

Small Wonders...

2009-04-27T20:43:00.000-07:00

Do i need to say anything more?
- Cheers!!!

Serious joke...

2009-04-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

World War-II, one of the most horrific wars, shaped the face of the world. When the war was in progress, the big-three(Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin) met in 1943 at Tehran. The following incident that happened during this conference, is taken from Winston Churchill's "World War-II Vol-5".
The big three, the most powerful men at the time were having diner togather. The matter of discussion was what should be done to Germany after the war.
The German General staff, he(Stalin) said, must be liquidated. The whole force of Hitler's mighty armies depended upon about fifty thousand officers and technicians. If these were rounded up and shot at the end of war German military strength will be exterpated. On this I (Churchill) thought it right to say, "The British Parliament will never tolerate mass executions. Even if in war passion they allowed them to begin they would turn violently against those responsible after the first butchery had taken place. The Soviets must be under no delusion on this point."
Stalin however, perhaps only in mischief, persued the subject. "Fifty thousand," he said ,"must be shot". I was deeply angered. "I would rather", I said ,"be taken out into the garden here and now and be shot myself than sully my own and my country's honour by such infamy".
At this point the President(Roosevelt) intervened. He had a compromise to propose. Not fifty thousand should be shot, but only fourty-nine thousand. By this he hoped, no doubt, to reduce the whole matter to ridicule. Eden(one of the staff) also made signs and gestures intended to ressure me that it was all a joke. But now Elliot(Roosevelt's son) rose in his place at the end of the table and made a speech, saying how cordially he agreed with Marshall Stallin's plan and how sure he was that United States army would support it. At this intrusion I got up and left the table, walking off into the next room, which was in semi-darkness.
I had not been there a minute before hands were clapped on my back from behind, and there was Stalin, with Molotov on his side, both grinning broadly, and eagerly declaring that they were only playing, and that nothing of a serious character had entered their heads. Stalin has a very captivating manner when he chooses to use it, and I never saw him do so to such an extent as at this moment. Although I was not then, and am not now, fully convinced that all was chaff and there was no serious intent lurking behind, I consented to return, and rest of the evening passed pleasantly.
Hmmm...anyway..:) the tiny plant that you see in the pic is mirchee :)

Built-in knowledge...

2009-04-12T20:55:00.000-07:00

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.
- Benjamin Spock
Yea, the book in the pic is Winston Churchill's World War-2 vol. 5 (Closing the Ring) :D

Footprints of man...

2009-04-05T22:13:00.000-07:00

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!
- Alexander Pope

Yea the ruler in picture i used to use during my engineering years hehe :)

Surviving beauty...

2009-03-31T05:09:00.000-07:00

Thats some wild plant grown in rubble near my house. Nature thrives even in the extremes, isnt it?

Yin and yang...

2009-03-23T23:40:00.000-07:00

Complementary opposites. Created together in a single moment, bound together as parts of a mutual whole.

Sometimes, one plus one is really greater than two. Isnt it?

Yea the pic is shells you find in sand.
Cheers! :D!!

Still life...

2009-03-18T03:46:00.000-07:00

Still life...so calm, smooth and so peaceful!

As a consequence of summer and ongoing construction work we have no garden so i will be posting more and more still life photos and less of nature photos. Please bear my 'experimental photography' for sometime.

Cheers!
:D!!

Newton's dilemma...

2009-03-08T21:03:00.000-07:00

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
-Albert Einstein

Yea...those are stones you find in sand. The composition too you must have seen at a number of places, I guess its very natural for humans to put stones on top of each other. :)

Soft, radiant and alive

2009-03-01T19:53:00.000-08:00

Pictures express so much more than words can, aint it?
Yea, now thats a bunch of wildflowers, these plants tend to grow almost anywhere and some are so rare that i have seen them only a few times. Dont know how they propagate and survive.
Cheers! :D

Mundane 2...

2009-02-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator.
- Mahatma Gandhi
Yes thats a sunset from our terrace! since we are building another floor up, I hope I will be able to get still better sunset pic than this :D

On other thoughts, ironically(ironically because i have quoted Gandhiji), SM got 8 oscars, and i wonder,"Poverty in India still sells?". By the way, if people are celebrating in the name of acceptance of indian cinema on international scale, then, have they themselves accepted the movie? I used to hear lot of protests till the very last week. Really...people forget so soon!

Trapped in an Ice Cube...

2009-02-15T21:29:00.000-08:00

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
-George Bernard Shaw

Token of good times...

2009-02-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense

-Rosten Leo

The laughing philosopher...

2009-02-02T03:02:00.000-08:00

Ask a philosopher 'what is philosophy?' or a historian 'what is history?' and they will have no difficulty in giving an answer. Neither of them can really persue his own descipline without knowing what he is searching for. But ask a mathematician 'what is mathematics?' and he may justifiably reply that he does not know the answer but this does not stop him from doing mathematics
-Francois Lasserre
Logic is invincible because in order to combat logic it is necessory to use logic
-Pierre Boutroux
An intellectual is a man who doesnt know how to park a bike
-Spiro Agnew
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unresonable man.
-George Bernard Shaw
All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher
-Ambrose Bierce
Lecturing is transfer of information from notes of lecturer to notes of students without anything passing through the minds of either.
-Unknown
And...yes..the plant is really strange one we have, the parent had lot of hair like leaves but the one you see in the pic has something similar to rose leaves hehe :D

Invaded...

2009-01-26T20:40:00.000-08:00

Just for a few moments, put aside your thoughts and just imagine...there is an alien invasion (and these invaders are god-like aliens not the terrible ones shown in american movies) and these friendly aliens sign a friendship pact with humans. The aliens have hyperadvanced technology and they have their own different style of (near ideal) civilization and they are ready to share all this information with us. Now, a revolution happens on earth. Suddenly there is an end to terrorism, global warming is made nil, no recession, no countries instead a single identity called earth(hence no wars), all politicians are scrapped(instead we have just administrators)and, all cities are rearranged so no traffic jams, no housing problems, no water and food shortages. So...there is an end to all the problems!
Now; what will happen to you?
Yes, you will be happy, of course a dream has come true after all. (As time passes, maybe you will realize that you have nothing much to do, life might get boring but anyway, thats not the point). What i am driving at is, you might face with something like a loss of identity. We always keep some part of our identity as a reaction to something that is outside and exactly this is what you will lose. For example, if you are a religious person, you will no longer need some aspects of religion. Most people say, they believe in god, but very few people believe in god out of pure love and most of them do because they ‘need’ faith. They need faith to fight uncertainties of life. Their faith exists as a reaction to fear. Now, its no longer needed. Also, you dont need moral code that religion gives, as it is built into your style of (alien)civilization, hence now you can no longer call yourself a ‘good person’. We call ourselves as 'good people' because 'bad people' exist. If everyone gets included into 'good people', we can no longer have sense of being a 'good person', rather you will 'just be' and i dont know how many of us like 'just being'. Most of us will lose lot of 'content' in their life and their life will become sort of 'empty'. Now, why will you have this 'empty' feeling? because till now, the locus of your life were not 'yourself' but it was something else, it was the world outside.
When we are children, we are mentally free but as we grow up, our focus shifts to education, career, needs and survival. For most people, their thinking becomes centered around these things and slowly, over a period of time, these things become the main locus of their life and people start defining everything based on this locus. We even define what we want in our relationships based on this. For example, (this is what I hear from most people about friendship)"we 'need' friends to share our 'burdens'", is defining friendship in a negative way instead of saying that "I want to make someone a friend because I like him and because I want to". Maybe that’s why there is a difference between friendships made during childhood and friendships we make when we grow up, because we have defined the relatiohship half-heartedly. If we are thinking about everything in this fashion, then maybe we are putting forward an excuse 'the world is not a good place' for not being better ourselves.
I am not saying that there is anything wrong with working for survival but just that maybe we are overdoing something. Someone has said that there is nothing wrong in losing but its definitely wrong to become a ‘loser’, so on the same lines i will say, there is nothing wrong with struggling but its definitely wrong to become a 'struggler'.
Yeps; the pic is some leaf, but i dont remember which tree, lol, :D

Fressshh...

2009-01-18T20:19:00.000-08:00

When i was in school, they(here "they" means teachers, children's bookwriters, elders etc aka 'the authority') used to tell us stories. The story used to begin with something like- "Once upon a time, living in some village, there were two neighbours. First one was a kind, noble, hardworking man. Second one was exactly opposite. He was a lazy, cruel, and unhelpful man...." and such stories used to end with- "So what is the morale of the story? Good always wins over the evil". I believe even now the children are being told such stories, maybe with some modifications like the two neighbours living in a city instead of a village, but i guess the core remains the same. The point is, why we teach children what is just not true? why not tell them that the fittest is the one who survives and its the law of (dear and beautiful) nature? Will it not prepare them to face hard facts of reality instead of ultimately learning them by first experience? There are two institutions which i feel are very similar, and i doubt were invented by the same person, one is school and another one? ofcourse jail :D. Yes, what can be more inhuman way of taming a (enthusiastic, bubbling with energy) child than to make it sit for 8 hours a day at one place feeding all information into its tiny brain? By the way, how many of you remember clauses of Treaty of Versoy? if you dont remember,and it didnt make any difference in your life then why did we all learn it? I learnt many things long after i graduated, things that really matter to lead a normal life but we dont even get a scent of it in the whole two decades of education.(On the lines of Treaty of Versalles, did you know that during the second world war, when Hitler successfully occupied France, he made French people sign the decree of surrender(aka Second armistice) in the same train bogie in which germany was made to sign decree of surrender during the first world war? but no, we want children to become obidient citizens and not pride individuals who fight for their rights, aint it? And in education when a person is named evil, for him, pride translate to ego and it becomes something evil.(By the way, didnt our own gandhiji say that a person is not evil but its the tendancy that is evil and we should be against the tendancy and not the person?)
Now a days i heard that there is some innovation happening in schools, especially in field of blooming creativity in children, (shall we call this PZT effect? (a deliberate mistake in the name PZT hehe i dont want to get sued :D) u know the movie, a child who is highly creative but keeps failing in exams? and then there comes AK the superteacher? anyways..:p) and now all parents want to unravel hidden(?) talents in their children. Folks watch the movie and what parents remember after coming out of theater is the shining face of a 'bright smart child' and what they promptly forget is that the movie was related to autism and doesnt apply as it is, to all children. But I guess its not fault of the parents, as every child has 'learning disability' to some extent isnt it? Okay i am being a bit sceptical here, and children really do have potential, but still, if everyone gets creative, shall we be able to call it creativity? And on the other hand, imagine, how this creativity thing gets implemented in school. There are lectures(lectures!) dedicated(fixed dedicated one hour for doing art exercises after learning "Structure of indian parliament" for one hour!) where the teacher(not superteacher AK this time but some middle class lady who does teaching just because she has a BEd (and she has BEd because she couldnt get admission to any other better course) and who has come to school today after having quarrel with her husband on grocery bills) keeps telling 'be creative.. be creative..Rohan if you arent creative enough in this term, you will lose the grade!'. And also, on the top, the "creativity homework"(aka, another headache for parents who are already doomed uncreative owing to their grown up age!). Anyways, my own schooling was highly uncreative by todays standards but(i dont like blowing my own horn but still :d) when i learnt photography, it didnt get me into any trouble. I agree that some things are best taught at a certain age but declaring all children having creative instincts is a bit overdoing it. (instincts-means something vague and fuzzy, which cannot be described in words, which cannot be accepted and cannot be denied on solid grounds, you remember the monster who cant be killed during the day, during the night....?). I believe i was fortunate that my parents let me be myself and have a natural childhood and didnt try to unravel any (hidden?) talent in myself. Now, when children have so much burden of studies, why to add another subject to increase the already excessive academic competition?
Hmmm....yea, the pic shows fruits on some nearby tree, they give a very beautiful sweetish fragrance when they are fresh!
cheers!:D!!

Musicology

2009-01-12T04:02:00.000-08:00

Now there is a wave of reality shows(not again!), and singing competitions happen to be on the top. Now, most of the judges here are renowned(meaning whoever is popular but idle) folks giving suggestions(now that can vary depending on the judge and the episode) to "tomorrow's singers" as they are called. But even though there is so much hype, i have seen that so many of these singers came and went and now we just dont see them anywhere ("Tomorrow never dies" for "Tomorrow's singers"?). Anyway, the point is, no one, i mean no one, says anything against classical music. If there is a singer who has not learnt classical, then he is promptly adviced to learn it, creating an atmosphere like 'your career is doomed if you dont learn it!'. Now i am not against classical or something but i do happen to feel sometimes that, are we overrating importance of classical music? Yes, i agree its age old good indian school of music(and it works beautifully given that we have an amazing variety of songs in india). But again, if you see example of Kishore Kumar and since there can be a marvellous singer like him without learning classical, then maybe classical is not the only option to learn singing. Ofcourse its a matter of opinion and opinions vary from person to person but yes, i do tend to hold the opinion that, the amount of patience required in learning classical might be tiring out many people who want to learn singing and who think that singing is exceedingly difficult to learn as classical happens to be difficult and that it seems to be the only starting point if you want to learn music. I believe there can be many ways of learning and we need to put aside the religion of classical music to which we have so much stuck to, if we want to atleast explore (or lay foundation for)different schools of learning music. That might ("might" :D) help in creating new music and also in making learning more accessible to the common folk(that includes me :D)
Now, the pic is Ganesha :D (this was on the door of our guesthouse in bangalore), lord of all auspicious and sacred things. Since i have started learning music myself, let me say, lord Ganesha, Please guide me!!! :D!!

'Soap' Opera

2009-01-05T22:23:00.000-08:00

I switched on the information feeding machine(aka TV) on sunday and everywhere i could find only reality shows. I kept flipping channels and finally got tired and settled down on one of the numbers. Now there is this particular show(name of the show not mentioned because i dont want folks pelting stones on my house!)in which a host(lets call him AB) goes round to folks' houses and chats with the family(with neighbours peeking in from doors and windows(aka-'the great indian bystanders')). Now here is a slight variation from normal 'Saas-bahu' serials, in that this is a 'reality' show, even though we have saas & bahu here as well. Now, AB is quite sober-looking-intelligent(read-cunning)fellow who could do really well in journalism. He asks something like-(this is for the mother-in-law),'Do you feel bad if your daughter-in-law doesnt listen to you?'. Now tell me is there a single mother-in-law in india who can keep quiet after being asked this question?. So the show goes on with these question-answers and whirling on tiresome household topics with AB going round to number of houses(after maybe he himself cant take it any more!).
If you watch this regularly(if you are a housewife or a monk yourself) you will find that AB always goes to only indian middle class houses('flats' they are called in general and 'blocks' in mumbai, and i am really curious to know how these two words got invented). I never saw him in slum areas(counting UN statistics about indian poverty, there is a good chance of going there) or even the super rich ones(this may agree with UN statistics as india is a 'poor-turned-developing country'). There may be reasons for not going there(mainly TRP, because indian-middle-class population is more than combined population of US and Europe), but if we are not showing reality, why call it a reality show?
Now, a few days back there was a contest in this show. Contest of finding a 'super-home-maker'. Here,the plan is, many indian (middle class) home-makers come togather and they take part in games and quizzes ultimately to find the super-home-maker. In the episode that i watched, there were two ladies, with napkins over their eyes so that they cant see anything and their aim was to walk 10 meters straight and then put one vessel on top of another! now, someone will ask, what on earth has this got to do with being super-home-maker? maybe they want to prove that if the super-home-maker goes blind someday, still she can do household chores? (remember Neo, the Matrix superhero, who fights even after going blind?). But fortunately, those who watch these shows dont ask such questions and those who ask questions dont watch these shows.
One alarming observation i had here was that on an average, housewives in india are thin. I dont really know why this is the case(unless AB deliberately chose thinner ones for the contest :D) and another is that when asked,'are you happy?' all of them say,'yes', but strangely, none of them really looks happy. Now if this is the reason we are quite high in the 'happiness index', then maybe we are not happy really but rather we have tailored down our expections.
Anyway, i hope no one from WHO watches this show otherwise there will be another report on malnutrition in india(because when it comes to WHO, the word "thin" translates differently depending upon the region. If its USA, "thin" translates to "fit" and in india "thin" might mean "undernourished").
One good thing about indian media is that most of the channels are not being used for political propaganda. If it were communist russia, then i am sure they could have used it so effectively!( Imagine a saas-bahu serial, there is a noble-minded-bahu and evil-bahu, the noble-minded-bahu makes her husband join communist party, the evil one makes her husband join democrats...and...well...we all know what happens ultimately). There are few channels i know that are being used for political reasons but most of the channels are currently focusing on advertising(and they are damn good at it, if you see that, beauty and health products are selling like soaps now a days!(yes that quote used to be,"selling like soaps" earlier and later on some american authors made it,"selling like pancakes". Anyway, i guess soap is more suitable, being another beauty product :D))
Anyway...the pic is a butterfly on some weed-flower :D, n yep, Happy New Year!!

Simple...

2008-12-29T00:15:00.000-08:00

Few quotes by Iris Murdoch :)

-Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.
-Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
-I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
-In philosophy if you aren't moving at a snail's pace you aren't moving at all.
-Anything that consoles is fake.
-Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.
-Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
-Human affairs are not serious, but they have to be taken seriously.
-I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.
-Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
-One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.
-Philosophy! Empty thinking by ignorant conceited men who think they can digest without eating!
-The cry of equality pulls everyone down.
-We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.
-We defend ourself with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing

Yea...the pic is a wildflower. Its some sort of propagative grass-like plant. The leaves and flowers look so simple, like from a child's painting! aint it? :D

Animal Farm...

2008-12-24T00:25:00.000-08:00

When i used to belong to the "indian youth"(yes now a days the folk with wierd hairstyles wearing T-shirt and jeans who marches on roads with candles after every 'tragic incidence' in india(and does ONLY that)), i had tremendous interest in politics. I am still young, not that i have grown 'old' :D but rather i will say over a period of time, i have grown 'up'. And while growing up, i lost interest in indian politics (I have seen lot of people dont grow up ever and growing old doesnt necessorily mean growing up :D). I still have academic interest in politics, especially international politics but i find politics in india 'boring'. I dont have any political opinions or inclinations, so if someone wants to say that i am lazy uninterested indian and 'because of such people india is not progressing' then say so, i dont mind. Now a days it has become a fashion to show that 'we are intellectuals' and also a (mis)conception that intellectuals should have opinions about everything. As most fashions are based on "show",there is a belief that it is necessory to 'show' intelligence than actually 'be' intelligent. I find so many of this class in IT. These folk are not only boring but worse, they are irritating. If you are working in Information Technology and you are being paid N-lakhs salary, does it mean that you can comment on anything and everything done by others on the face of the earth? i dont know. In this age of media, everyone around us thinks that they can run the government better than the people who actually run it and if this empty talk at tea time gives them satisfaction of 'participating in democracy(does democracy still sound 'by the people for the people?':D)' then so much the better for them.

Anyway, why i started saying all this is, i recently read Animal Farm by George Orwell. Its a short story in which animals living on a farm decide to become free. They overthrow and oust the human owners of the farm, setting it up as a commune in which, at first, all animals are independent and free. They write commandments like "All animals are equal". However, class and status disparities soon emerge between the different animal species. The story describes how a society's ideologies can be manipulated and twisted by those in positions of social and political power. Soon the commanments start evolving and "All animals are equal" becomes "All animals are equal but some are more equal than others" and so on. This book was originally written to reflect on Stalinist russia and we need to understand that we live in a society that believes 'everything under communism is bad', but my advice, dont read the book from this point of view. Read the book as a story and you will find that it gives interesting thoughts on human society and classes in general(including india where people say we have unity in diversity).

On Orwell's lines, i will say that when india became independent we had started with a commandment "all indians are free" but now, maybe , it makes more sense to say "all indians are free but some indians have more freedom than others" :D.

Yea, that pic is some flower from a bunch dad got in a ceremony :D!!

Sunset...

2008-12-15T03:36:00.000-08:00

I read a line in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand that "Men develop brains when they have failed at everything else", Interesting huh? (actually... i dont agree to some of the opinions of Rand hehe). Anyway, that pic is sunset from our terrace. The tower that you see belongs to All India Radio :D)

Mundane life

2008-12-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

This picture was taken during my last few days of stay in bangalore. There was this tiny old fashioned house with some empty space in front and lots of trees. I believe it is important to have a calm, safe and ordered routine life. Just to be yourself, without any pretense, without any obligations.

Spidermania...

2008-12-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

Yes, that is a spider! It is a different kind I guess, I have never seen it before here. One day I went to our terrace in the morning and saw the fellow there! There was a huge net, the kind they show on national geographic. If you see carefully, the net is reinforced with small white zigzag fibres. The fellow did not find any pray for a whole day, obviously due to wrong choice of place, (aka our terrace :D)and when I checked the next morning, it was gone!
Anyways, I am in a bit low mood(blame it on terror attacks, recession, global warming, population explosion, pollution etc etc...) and want to go into years of 1980s(or still further?1970s..60s..), to enjoy relaxed afternoons in parsi cafes, to watch movies of Amol Palekar, to hear simple melodious songs of Lata(freshly done),to play carrom boards with chalky fingers, to eat Ice-golas with wet hands, to play hide and seek, games of marbles(with my childhood friends of course!), to play cards with my cousins(with worn out suits of playing cards for getting easy 'clues') and Banker, to watch Jungle book, Moglee and Ducktails, Bharat ek khoj, Baje sargam, Des raag on doordarshan(while sitting on the floor on sunday morning parallely eating samosas).

Maiden over...

2008-11-24T00:31:00.000-08:00

Photo by - Endevourme
Every morning somewhere at around 9 o clock the doorbell rings. When I open the door I find her standing outside. 'She' is our maid.
I call out loud 'bai has come', and suddenly the house is on alert. All roomies are woken up. Beds are rolled up, newspapers are picked up and it feels like the day has really started. She washes clothes, wipes the floor and does some miscellaneous things (for which she charges 'extra'). Maids are necessary and here good maids are rare. So sometimes I wonder wheather she is for us or its the other way round.
When the first time she tried to talk to us she gave options,'kannada...? telugu...? tamil...?'and we kept nodding "no...no...no...", when we asked "hindi...?", it was her turn to say "no"! So we talk very less. She knows few words like 'paisa', which she happens to utter every month. Whenever soap is finished, she tells us with gestures that she is out of soap and then one of us has to run to gocery shop. We normally give sturdy clothes to her for washing cause she is a bit rough. Delicate clothes go to laundry. She also wipes the floor, then she puts ON the fan and the floor becomes clean and cool.
Being bachelors, all of us are tuned to universal vibes of confusion. So on some days there are no clothes to wash and some days there are too many. So she too has to adjust to this disordered nature of ours, which she does uncomplainingly. There are times when our maid becomes too sincere. We understand that it is time for increment.
She is the only feminine element in our house. Instinctively, this element brings tidiness and order. When outside, we see her many times, a small girl, her daughter walking along by her side. As per the protocol, we never smile. Her daughter looks more like a reduced xerox copy of hers. Now, when everyone is talking of young India, I am not sure what will happen to the little girl. Or she too will become what her mother is. Another maid and another maiden over for India.

...and you feel an intruder

2008-11-16T04:57:00.000-08:00

Photo by - Endevourme

Egypt, the country of pyramids and sphinx. 4th November 1922, was the day which saw the most magnificent find in the history of Egyptian archaeology: discovery of mummy of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter.
Carter arrived in Egypt in the year 1891 and he and Mr Carnorvon, the financer, spent some 16 years in search of Tutankhamun's tomb, finally with success. But there is a legend that the tomb was cursed and Carnorvon died within few days of discovery. Eventually, there were many disputes, legal and political, putting the people involved in excavation in not so good position.
Legends apart, the discovery itself carries tremendous value because most of the other tombs were already looted by tomb-robbers and Tutankhamun's tomb was the only one surviving more than three thousand years, untouched.
So much happened in the world during three thousand years and yet the place of the dead was undisturbed, as it was intended to be. An archeologist's job is to excavate and it tells us about ancient history of mankind, but still, do we have a right to break open grave of someone? I wonder. These are feelings of Howard Carter from his own diary about the day when the tomb was opened-
"...Three thousand, four thousand years maybe, have passed and gone since human feet last trod the floor on which you stand, and yet, as you note the signs of recent life around you - the half-filled bowl of mortar for the door, the blackened lamp, the finger mark upon the freshly painted surface, the farewell garland dropped upon the threshold - you feel it might have been yesterday...Time is anhilated by little intimate details such as these, and you feel an intruder..."

Harmony...

2008-11-10T05:16:00.000-08:00

Photo by - Endevourme
Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
-Leo Tolstoy

Baawraa Mann...

2008-11-03T06:58:00.000-08:00

Photo by - Endevourme

Baawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna...
Baawre se mann ki dekho
Baawri hain baatein
Baawri si dhadkanein hain
Baawri hain saansein
Baawri si karvaton se nindiya tu bhaage
Baawre se nain chaahein
Baawre jharokhon se
Baawre nazaaron ko takna

Baawre se is jahaan mein
Baawra ek saath ho
Is sayaani bheed mein
Bas haathon mein tera haath ho
Baawri si dhun ho koi
Baawra ek raag ho
Ho baawri si dhun ho koi
Baawra ek raag ho
Baawre se pair chaahein
Baawre taraanon ke
Baawre se bol pe thirakna

Baawra sa ho andhera
Baawri khaamoshiyaan
Thartharaati lau ho maddham
Baawri madhoshiyaan
Baawra ek ghungta chaahe
Haule haule bin bataaye
Baawre se mukhde se sarakna

Baawra mann dekhne chala ek sapna...
Lyrics - Baawra mann from Hazaron Khwahishein Aisi

Happy Diwali!!!

2008-10-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

All photos - Endevourme
I wish all my blogger friends a very very happy Diwali and a prosperous new year :D!!

All for nothing?

2008-10-20T07:12:00.000-07:00

Photo by - Endevourme
A few selected quotes of Karl Marx-
-The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
-Religion is the opium of the masses.
-History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.
-The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain.
-Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

Naturally diplomatic...

2008-10-13T05:23:00.000-07:00

Photo by - Endevourme
Few selected quotes of Winston Churchill-
-A joke is a very serious thing.
-A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.
-A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
-All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
-Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.
-Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities... because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
-Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.
-Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
-Eating words has never given me indigestion.
-History is written by the victors.
-However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
-I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.
-It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
-It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right.
-Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
-Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.
-The power of man has grown in every sphere, except over himself.
-There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
-Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.
-Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Summer-soaked...

2008-10-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

Photo by - Endevourme
The paragraph is from Agatha Christie's, "The ABC murders". Elizabeth Barnard, a young girl has been murdered. Poirot, the detective, is enquiring her sister Megan about the dead girl.

"Death, mademoiselle, unfortunately creates a prejudice. A prejudice in the favour of the deceased. I heard what you just now said to my friend Hastings,"A nice bright girl with no men friends". You said that in mockery of newspapers. And it is very true- when a young girl is dead, that is the kind of thing that is said. "She was bright", "She was happy", "She was sweet-tempered", "She had not a care in the world", "She had no undesirable acquaintances". There is a great charity always to the dead. Do you know what I should like this minute? I should like to find someone who knew Elizabeth Barnard and who does not know she is dead! Then perhaps, I should hear what is useful to me - the truth"

An Unofficial Rose-2

2008-09-30T06:58:00.000-07:00

Photo by - Endevourme

...continued from earlier post,"An Unofficial Rose", this is a paragraph from a novel by the same name authored by Iris Murdoch. Randall, the horticulturist, once a creator of exquisite hybrid roses, wants to quit.
...He told himself that he was tired of it all anyway: tired of the endless feverish race to market new floribundas and new hybrid roses, the endless tormenting of nature to produce new forms and colours far inferior to the old and having to recommend them only the brief charm of novelty. What was it all for? the expulsion of the red, the expulsion of the blue, the pursuit of the lurid, the metallic, the startling and the new? It was after all a vulgar persuit. The true rose, the miracle of Nature, owed nothing to the hand of man...

Shrug, Smile & Forget it!

2008-09-23T05:53:00.000-07:00

Photo by - Endevourme
Its not that I dont suffer, its that I know the unimportance of suffering. I know that pain is to be fought and thrown aside, not to be accepted as a part of one's soul and as a permanent scar across one's view of existance.
-John Galt-a character from Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"

Refracted reality...

2008-09-15T05:45:00.000-07:00

Photo by - Endevourme

...reality, at times, can be so much deceptive!
You think that you have found it, but then as you dig deeper, you realize how deep the rabbithole goes...

Silent witness...

2008-09-09T06:12:00.000-07:00

Photo by - Endevourme

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.
-Albert Einstein
And when you start living a really happy life, you realize that there are so few things that really count! (when i say really happy, i mean it, no lying to oneself for being happy). And I am the most grateful to the power that makes everything exist. Life is so beautiful, isnt it?

Washed with light...

2008-09-01T06:33:00.000-07:00

Photo by - Endevourme

"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way... things I had no words for."
-Georgia O'Keeffe

An Unofficial Rose...

2008-08-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

Photo by - Endevourme
The paragraph is from Iris Murdoch's "The Unofficial Rose". Randall, a character in this novel, cultivates roses in the countryside. He is leaving his farm for good and is standing on his farm,among the roses, for the last time before departing.

"...The old roses were at the height of their season, and Randall stood still among them, completely absorbed into a heaven of vision. There were moments when he knew that he loved nothing in the world so much as he loved these roses; and that he loved them with a love of such transcendent purity that they made him,for a moment, like to themselves. He could have knelt before these flowers, wept before them, knowing them to be not only the most beautiful things in existance but the most beautiful things concievable. God in his dreams did not see anything lovelier. Indeed the roses were God and Randall worshipped.
Moving slightly in the breeze the intense little heads surrounded him and drowned him in their odour. Lifting a few towards them he looked with his ever new amazement at the close packed patterns of petals, these formulae that Nature never forgot, those forms that were the most desirable of all things and so exquisite that it was impossible to carry them in belief and memory through the winter; so that every year one saw them as if for the first time and as they must have looked like in the Garden of Eden when in a felicitous moment God said: let there be roses..."