PC Shenanigans!!

My tryst with computers began in 1993, when I was in the VIII grade at MV Herwadkar English School. We were taught to operate on the then all new improved Disk Operating System. Computers was a never a part of curriculum at school, it was just a voluntary-paid-value added extra class, each day before the regular school began. The first 8 to 15 days, we were bombarded with PC terminology – the CPU, ALU, HDD, FDD, RAM, ROM etc and back then as boys we were bamboozled by the number of acronyms that were forced upon us. The only refreshing factor of the computer classes was that alternate days, we were asked to operate the computer in our practical classes (2 students per computer). Initially me and one of my close friends thought of doing the practicals together but 2 sessions down the line, we thought it would be better off if we can change our partners for the better, because both of us wanted to so many things on the computer, that either the time or the computer gave up and both of us left with an unsatisfied mind. We strategically chose our partners amongst those who were still coping up with this new wonder called computer. This meant that 2 PCs were controlled by me and my friend with each having an associate who by their choice or force had to resort to watching what we were doing. After the practical’s, me and my friend discussed each of our accomplishments (read pranks and mischiefs). It was fun at that age, to type our names and try different fonts (limited @ that particular time) in different shades of grey (no color monitors available) or green (monochrome monitors). There were times, when we played some games, drew some pictures and sometimes printed our work on that old workhorse printer who made more noise than the actual print (of course without informing the computer lab teacher).
Years flew by, but I never got a chance to flaunt my PC skills, until my engineering days, when PC became a part and parcel of our syllabus. The first year we had Programming with FORTRAN – the first computer language that we learnt. It was fun to apply logic and complete those different sets of programs using arrays, procedures, functions etc. However, I still recall that dreadful morning of our first semester exams in FORTRAN programming. It was an early morning start @ 8:00 am and we were told to pull out a sheet of paper among many where in different problem statements that was to be programmed, was written. My luck deserted me when I pulled out a paper which had the toughest program of the lot (I got to know this, because only 2 of us out of the overall 50 managed to complete this). I split my hair apart, banged my head, refurbished my grey cells, yet until 10:30 am, I had no clue, how I would complete that program. I had started accepting doom, when suddenly I made my changes in the program that I had written and the program worked. I called the exam invigilator and he with a wicked smile, started verifying my program by pulling out a set of numbers that were supposed to be the worst set for the program to crash. He put in the numbers and to both our surprise, the program worked @ exactly 10:57 am. I still cannot forget the astonishment on his face. The marks in the exam did astonish me because not every practical exam would you score 96.
The finishing years of the last century coincided with the initial growth phase of the internet (at least in India). Internet – mailbox and chatting was the buzz of every town. We as budding tech-savvy engineers, then were much attracted to the e-world that we drove 6 kms and literally paid @ 120 Rs an hour to explore what is emailing and chatting. We each had email addresses which were not given to anybody else and was just used to send a hi, for a friend who was not with us at that particular moment of time. Slowly upgraded ourselves to chatting – since we had limited contact with friends out of town, we naturally resorted to mass-chatting centers. We quickly got acquainted with ASL code and also the fact that there existed an allergy among various chatters with the 19/M/India. Well, not much option was left when u hv paid 120 Rs and browsed all the websites that you know, but to resort to some pranks and so we tried a new ASL code 18/F/India and sent a buzz to my mate sitting in the adjoining cubicle and he was confused, perplexed, mystified, bewildered, excited, animated, overwhelmed and what not to get a rare request. He quickly called me into his cubicle to see what he had got (in fact he was the one who had pleaded for a separate cubicle himself, when I was insisting on a single comp, regardless of the money factor, since he wanted privacy and solace for himself – He thought finally the efforts were worth it). Chatting continued between 2 of us sitting in adjoining cubicles – Can’t recall how he got it, but he smartly caught the source of mischief. We quickly teamed up to fox a common friend with the same trick – 10 years down the lane, this smart chap still believes that the so called virtual Rakhee Deshmukh exists and she is settled in US with her hubby and a kiddo. Six of us (read Rakhee), share a common ID – write update mails to this guy, chat with him occasionally (the frequency has reduced considerably after he got married), he discusses his problems with us (read her) and believe it or not even sent him photographs!! (He also sends lot of his photos to her – In fact she is in the mailing group as us) The pinnacle of the prank was reached when he expressed his desire to meet Rakhee when he would be in Bangalore for an official work. Poor chap was left stranded waiting in a hang out place on Brigade Road (Alas, only me missed out to enjoy that scene!!)
Not too long ago, (If you are one of those who believe that a decade is a long time – ignore the header!!) 3.5” floppies ruled the show and were one of the biggest revolutions in IT industry considering that their predecessors – 5.25” & 8” floppies never fitted in a shirt pocket, plus the fact that the small disk stored more bytes. But the floppies contained only 1.44 MB, not even 1/4th of the memory space required to store a MP3 song. One of my friend desperately needed songs from the film ‘Taal’ and ‘Refugee’ on his PC and back then there were no music portals. Luckily we managed to find them stored in one of our computer labs, now how the mission was how to take the songs to his computer. Various options including zipping the file, buying a CD writer for our college lab, bringing his hard disk and taking the college hard disk homes were discussed – Luckily sanity prevailed. We managed to search out software on the web which could split the large size file into smaller files and an executable file to join them later. The paradox was that the same software set up file was split up into 3 parts and then transferred to our home PC’s with the help of 3 floppies. Now this file splitter software and floppies were used to transfer about 12 songs from our college lab – It required 10 floppies and 15 days of dedicated effort to complete this mission.
After the introduction of CD’s they became the flavor of the season and how can we not leave our stamp on CDs. Once, our professor was struggling to read contents from a CD since the CD had many scratches over it. We took this opportunity to impress upon our professor by giving him a helping hand. One of my friend brought a container of water, took the CD from my professor’s hand and just touched the shiny surface of the CD on the surface of the water. Our prof’s BP may have reached sky high when he saw my friend immersed his important CD in water. My friend confidently wiped the water traces from the CD surface with a soft cloth and inserted the CD in the drive. The PC read the contents on the CD and our professor was left stranded with his tongue in between his lips.
Our computer lab consisted of about 35 computers where in the 2 of them were relatively new than the rest of the others. We were assigned the computers in each semester and unfortunately we were not able to get the new comps. So what we did, took the help of the Microsoft Office AutoCorrect Option (Tools>AutoCorrect Options> Replace With) and replaced ‘a’ with ‘Anand’, ‘b’ with ‘Benaam’, ‘c’ with ‘Chota Chetan’, ‘d’ with ‘Dharmatma’ etc.. So every time the user typed an alphabet, these different movie names would appear on the screen. The user complained it to the lab instructor, who after scratching his head would offer a new PC to the user. The 2 new PC’s were now without any user. The next practical’s we asked the lab instructor if we could use the new PC, he said that the PC was malfunctioning and then we said we would try using it. Without letting others know, we removed the auto correct options and then started using the new PC. We actually started breeding un-harmful virus on these PC’s so that no other user would use the PC – Infact, when we passed out, we had left about 170 virus dwelling in that PC.
We actually did a project on Machine Vision System which actually captured the image of an object and then compared the images stored in the database to find out what this object was. Here the image comparison was done by a number of algorithms and one of the algorithms was finding the edges of the image which was like drawing a sketch of the object that is placed. During one of the interim project reviews, to explain the concept of edge comparison, one of my project mates actually took a jpg image of Aishwarya Rai and found out the edges of the image and the result turned out to be a so-very-real sketch of Aishwarya Rai. This actually spurred us to upload all film-stars’ pictures and come up with sketches. All my classmates wanted their pictures to be converted into sketches (It never occurred to us then, that the same concept can be popularized and marketed until we found the same in all the multiplexes and shopping malls and charged a whopping 150 Rs for the same). In fact, this became so popular with our classmates that they believed with our project was only drawing sketches and they were pleasantly surprised at the end of the project, when we told them that our system could compare and find similar objects.
Another of those practical exams on computers was the FoxPro Lab in the 7the semester. We were asked to do a database application on the FoxPro and this application required us to ask for the option from the user and then perform tasks accordingly. I, in fact completed the database application in 1 hr and 15 minutes which meant that I had 1 hr and 45 minutes for the Viva Voce and therefore started formatting and focusing on the aesthetics of the application. However since the time left was too much, I thought, instead of the regular text menu option “Enter your choice?”, let me try option buttons (radio buttons, this was not a part of the syllabus and was not never taught) for the form and therefore I started designing a form with option buttons on it. I completed it and when the external professor asked me to show what I have accomplished in the last 3 hours, I showed him my application. He explored it and saw all the functionalities were working fine and then asked me which practical exams I had? What a strange question was that – I however calmly answered “FoxPro” and then I saw him calling our internal professor and telling him, why this student is using a different application than FoxPro to complete the database application. Our internal professor also was stunned to hear this and then he sat on my comp and verified the database application that I had prepared and said the program is OK but he asked me “Why did you not use the FoxPro for doing this database application” Listening to this, I quickly grasped what the situation was – both the professors never knew that option buttons did exist in FoxPro. Then I had to convince them that this was indeed programmed in FoxPro, also showed them the code for the program. I in fact opened the Help of the FoxPro application and showed them that option buttons can be used in FoxPro. Ufff!! It was tough explaining the 2 Profs and it was no fun to bring that enlightenment on their faces after I had completed convincing them that it was indeed FoxPro. The 2 Profs then explained me that they did know that the application was made in FoxPro all along and just wanted to pull my leg on going too far and acting too smart. Never knew, if they indeed told a truth or were just covering up their ignorance. Regardless, those 15 minutes did put in a bother. As they say, the law of averages does work and with this instance the hunter in fact almost was hunted in his own territory.

Water What-err?

Painting: Precious Water, I Kiss You !! by Parkpoom Poompana, River of Words

There was gung-ho all around the news channels about the traces of water found on Moon and with the Indian connection in the form of Chandrayaan, the Indian news channels went overboard showed interviews after interviews with each of the scientists pointing out that this is a very, very important finding...because of the possibility that it will help find any trace of life on moon or it may be a big step in setting up a colony on Moon. This feat will see more money being invested in moon missions both manned and unmanned. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) did play a part in the discovery and rightfully so, NASA acknowledged the credit. This certainly has to be a big achievement for the scientists who have put in their efforts on the maiden moon mission called Chandrayaan-1 and that suffix means that this is not the only one. What was ironical was that the same media was criticizing ISRO for the failure of the sensor and therefore the loss of all contacts from the station not even 2 weeks ago – However this change of stance is very much to be expected from the Indian media.
Well, don’t be too fooled by the amount of excitement that the media is putting on this news, the satellite pictures have shown that the moon’s water is located within two millimeters of the surface, but the moon is still quite dry, with about a liter of water for every ton of soil. Even the driest deserts in the Earth have more water than are at the poles of the moon and there is still no confirmation about the water availability in the middle portion of the moon. Don’t misunderstand me, I am not at all disregarding a bit about the significance of the achievement and I am sure that this is a small step towards the final mission. But the excitement about this news was certainly overbound and when we consider this news in the context of another revelation, ironically again from NASA.
There was this small news that featured a fortnight back in the Times of India on a different NASA mission that revealed that Punjab and Haryana have lost 109 cubic kilometers of ground water in six years. This is a bad news for what we call as India’s bread basket. In fact this bad news is not restricted to only these states but Delhi, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Daman and Diu, Andhra and Tamil Nadu. To anyone anywhere in the world, this would have set off loud alarm bells, but nothing of that sort like that would happen in India. The so called, mature media is sleeping over this news. This is certainly not news because many of the NGOs and other organizations had predicted this anyway. No, this is not a result of the low monsoon rainfall this year, but the report is from a study made in the previous few years when there was no rainfall shortage.
The report suggests that the decline is due to the increasing population and changing lifestyles which necessarily means excessive pumping of the ground water. Intense competition among users — agriculture, industry, and domestic sectors — is driving the groundwater table lower since the extraction of groundwater is at much a higher rate that often recharge is not sufficient. The quality of groundwater is also getting severely affected because of the widespread pollution of surface water from discharge of untreated waste water and unscientific disposal of solid wastes. Water sources like lakes and tanks have been encroached upon to build colonies and apartments and the past wells have either closed or have been now functioning as dumping garbage bins. The situation is not at all under control, when people despite being warned about the consequences very rarely change their lifestyles. Why shouldn’t I wash my car with liters of water every day? Why shouldn’t I water my lawn with a hose pipe even when it’s raining? Why should I bother about the leakages in my bath room pipe, anyways the water is running down the drain line. Basically, if I have the money to buy the tankers, why should I care, is the credo most believe in. But what would happen when even the areas that the tankers get their water from go dry? From whatever little I know, this water too comes from clandestinely dug bore-wells. Unfortunately, no amount of distillation processes of sea-water will be able to replace fresh water resources.
I was having a discussion with a relative of a close friend who owns about 2 acres of land within the city limits and he was expressing that he never intended to stop flower farming (his sole source of income) on his land but was forced to stop it anyways because of the lack of ground water, due to the uncontrolled number of bore wells on all the four sides of the land. Now that his income source has suddenly blocked for the last 2 years, he is now thinking of disposing off his treasured land – a temptation that he had resisted only 4 years back when all his siblings had disposed off their share of the land. Well, he would be certainly richer than his siblings because of the appreciation of land prices in the last 4 years, but his story reveals the fact that despite his honest efforts to continue with farming, he is forced to resort to selling off his land bowing to the urbanization pressure.
Well certainly with the way things are going, it requires no Jyotish or Pundit to predict that water is going to be the Oil of the next era. Well one more griming fact is that you could somehow avoid the usage of oil, but how could you stop using water? Water wars are already not unimaginable. We have had states fighting for water from inter-state rivers. It is only a matter of time that this goes international. If measures are not taken soon to ensure sustainable groundwater usage, the consequences ... may include a reduction of agricultural output and shortages of potable water, leading to extensive socio-economic stresses.
Well what needs to be done then? The effective answer to the freshwater crisis is to integrate conservation and development activities – from water extraction to water management – at the local level; making communities aware and involving them fully is therefore critical for success. Rainwater harvesting schemes have to be been taken up and to be made mandatory in all cities, as the pilot cities have found these schemes to be pretty effective. However for rain water harvesting, you need rains, which means you need to have more trees and mountains and therefore serious measures have to be taken in order to conserve forests and mountains, so as to increase the rainfall. Renovation of forest lakes, tanks and other water sources will have a significant impact in ground water conservation. Both rural and urban wetlands are to be protected to avoid the rainwater flowing into rivers and then back into oceans. All these will contribute to a rise in the groundwater level and a reduction of salt water ingress. No single action would alleviate the crisis on hand, but all these cumulative efforts will ultimately pave the way for combining conservation of the environment with the basic needs of people. And as they say “blowing with the wind is easy, against it tougher, stopping it yet tougher and reversing it the toughest” We all need to collectively reverse the flow of the wind.

Peace with Inches

Yeh Hi Right Choice Baby !!

Well, when I was wondering what I write today, when I realized a chat with a friend last week. This friend of mine, sorry that I cannot reveal the name nor provide you with a hint since he/she (remember told u no hint!!) has asked me a promise not to reveal anything about what we spoke, but this blog would touch the essence of what we spoke. OK, with too much of justification, let me move on to the subject now – Integrity. There are many definitions to Integrity – you would get realms of literature on the web, in the books, Granths and the Shastras. Each of the corporates would have Integrity as one of its core values in some form or another and each would have loads of explanations as to what it is to follow Integrity. The corporates spend loads of money to transpire their take on integrity. So what is integrity? The words that come to mind are honest, truthful, conscientious, and the like. They all explain integrity and yet do not capture the essence of integrity.

Apart from many other trainings, we were imparted the ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ based on Stephen Covey’s book as a part to develop as individuals and one of the many concepts that essenced out in the book was integrity. As those young and idealistic engineers who were trying to question every thing in life – we started questioning Stephen Covey’s 7 habits with respect to their relevance in the Indian context. We were of the opinion that every Indian kid would have been imparted these values as a part of the legacy through their parents and their guardians and that the Indian epics provide us with such voluminous examples that we hardly have to look beyond them for reference and we firmly believed that books like 7 habits were not meant for us Indians. We were of the opinion, that the values have to be institutionalized into the kids’ genes by the parents. As I read somewhere, the author said the key is to leave a legacy, so that the successors do better than you: They sit on your shoulders, and they make greater contributions than you have made. That’s the concept of institutionalizing.
But over the last 8 years, I have softened my stand but not toned down it completely – yes you may be right in concluding that I am not all that young any more ;-). But over the years, I have experienced that integrity is such a hazy matter that can be easily understood but many find it difficult to live it when the push comes to the shove. Difficult may be a wrong term here, its just that its RPN (risk priority number) is high with high probability of occurrence, low detection and a high severity rate – sorry that I got into FMEA, but that is one of our professional hazards (or a expertise – am not sure), getting into technical terms to confuse the other person because we believe if we cannot convince, confuse them ;-). In simple terms, we got to be extra careful in our ways because there are plenty of opportunities where we can go wrong and the ability to falter is very much the human tendency. To overcome this, we have to keep sharpening our saw and such books help you to an extent. However, I am still firm that Indian kids fare much better than their other counterparts, in their assimilation of the values and that the Indian epics are a better alternative than such books. (It’s sad that youth today would flaunt a, 7 habits spinning lots of cash over it and would rather not touch the epics which are biting the dust in their own cupboard shelves!!)
Back to the core subject now, for me, one definition that has struck a chord ‘Do the right thing and not what is convenient’. This is such a simple statement, yet it covers all aspects of what is all integrity about. Most of the integrity dilemmas in everyday life – corporate and personal would be solved by just asking this question. I say most of the problems because I have found that there are a very few dilemmas which cannot be solved and this is where the subjectivity and haziness as to what Integrity is all about. What if you think that both the options are right? – There are many problems where we might encounter this. Even Yudhisthir faced such a dilemma many a times – yet I want to bring the case where he faltered – the Ashwatama episode – When Dronacharya was not sure if his son had really died, he thought let me ask Yudhisthir to confirm the news, because he believed that only Yudhisthir cannot tell a lie. Yudhisthir, influenced by the ‘Chalu’ Krishna did tell him a truth that Ashwatama had indeed died, referring to the elephant Ashwatama which had lost its life in the battle. Dronacharya was broken and this news had achieved its objective to make him vulnerable. It’s said that once this had happened, the chariot of Yudhisthir, which was always 6 inches above the ground, fell down and rested on the ground from that point indicating that even the Dharamraj Yudhisthir had made a mistake and after all, he was a human being. Now that I am faltering my way, let me get back – examples where there are 2 rights to be chosen. I remember this friend (not the one above) who was doing a cost reduction project and he was faced with such a dilemma. He started with Value Engineering of the part and found that there was plenty of scope for it, yet these changes required plenty of tests which he completed with a supplier A, who supported him through out for the resources required for testing and proved that the changes can be implemented. Now my friend found that the variant he had made from the existing part can be supplied by another supplier, Supplier B at a much lesser cost. What to do? – Does he have to buy the part from Supplier A, who supported him for the changes Or Does he have buy the part from Supplier B, which would give his company a great cost saving. When he asked me about this dilemma, I suggested him an approach to deal with this problem which might or might not solve the integrity dilemma – I am not a purchasing guy and therefore I am not sure if this is a ‘textbook’ approach. I asked him what would be his gut feeling to solve the problem – He told me that he would not disclose that the Supplier B ever gave a quotation for this part and this would save him from the fact that he did not ditch the Supplier A, who helped him in the project. I told him that this is not a right approach and asked him to talk directly to Supplier A that Supplier B is giving him the part at a much lesser cost and how much less he would be able to accommodate? The supplier A agreed for a discount which was much less than the difference between the 2 suppliers. I then asked him to talk to Supplier A and asked him if he can further bring down the cost by changing the process or bringing new technology and if the answer was in negation for that too, ask him, how much purchasing commitment time would he require for the efforts and money he spent on the testing? Check out with some expert, if indeed his expectation is true, go ahead and apprise the top management that we have committed to Supplier A until this period and then switching over to Supplier B after that. It’s better to be transparent to all the stakeholders when we deal with such issues!!
This was just one of the many such instances where we come across with official issues and yet many of us sail though them exceedingly well. It’s really not the same with personal issues. Personal issues might be even hazier and with all those emotions attached, the choices seem really incoherent. There may be many issues, where the notion of the perfect whole, the ultimate solution in which all good things coexist seems unobtainable. We are doomed to choose, and every choice that we make may entail an irreparable loss.
And as they say,
Eager or not, earnest or gay,
Lively or dull through out the day,
It’s you, who must say,
And make your own way!!
Well, I have just found that during the course of drafting this, either I have lost my way in dealing with this topic or made a new ground for myself, whatever it is, it is too late in the night to continue with this. I would like to end with a Adolf Hitler quote – yes I know, it’s strange to quote Hitler in a blog focusing on integrity, yet it goes like “If you win, you need not have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain!". This means that no one would ask you to explain your moves if you make the right choice and even if you falter in your choice, you don’t have to justify it or regret it anyways, kyon ki, the choice that you made always remains to be “yeh hi hain right choice, baby”

It was one of those indolent afternoons where you had so many deadlines to meet and yet your inner soul is reluctant to even think of those assignments, leave aside completing them, unperturbed by the consequences – A lazy afternoon was not new for yours truly, However this was a much pleasant afternoon, because of the pitter patter drip drop sound caused by the rain (yes the inspiration is a nursery rhyme!! These rhymes however hard I felt to recollect them as a kid, they tend to help me at the apt moment – was struggling to find out the right adjective). And as I slide the window panes, the scene that beckons me – the hillock covered by the green foliage and the sparkling silver dew on the moist ferns was a toast for my eyes and I said “wow, this is beautiful!!”
When, I saw the movie MATRIX Reloaded about 4 years back, there were only a few dialogues that I could assimilate as we had not seen the first part of MATRIX (It turned up really different, that the MATRIX trilogy became one of favorite movie series, after I saw the first part!!) and yet the ones that we could assimilate are still fresh in my memory and one of the favorites being “You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth. Causality, Action, Reaction - Cause and effect. If something is an effect, it requires a cause.” Well, it may turn out to be a professional peril if I forgot the essence of the dialogue.
Anyways, I don’t want to continue with neither the professional peril nor with the MATRIX, but suddenly as I was gazing out of the window and appreciating the beautiful scene, my grey cells in the left side of my brain were working overtime wondering, as to what makes me to call something or somebody beautiful. Is the beauty an effect or a cause? I could very well overhear the grey cells on my right side of the brain instructing my left side to mind their own business and not to get involved in analyzing something which is intuitive and subjective territory – deciding what is beautiful!! (No idea if this is true, but heard that the brain has 2 sides; the right side is intuitive and subjective while the left is analytical and logical). But as they say, an idle mind is devil’s workshop. I was always inquisitive about who is the devil and what does the workshop produce, until I wrote this manuscript - which itself is a product of an idle mind!! (Wow!! – This evolving theory is much more interesting than the topic itself – Need to evolve it further, so that I can patent it before it falls down on some Newton’s head)
Coming back to the beautiful (mind), when we look at the things around us in life, we are instinctively attracted to beautiful things - we love beautiful people, beautiful works of art, beautiful cars, beautiful houses, beautiful nature etc, that’s because we have a natural understanding that something, is beautiful. Now the question arises where does that natural understanding emerge from. Does beauty arise from the fact that something which is symmetric, proportional, and consistent or it has a certain harmony of colors or is it a template that we learn and that evolves during our life and is influenced due to various life experiences or is it just very crude, hazy and very personal!! (As they say, Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder). Long back, I read an article where in they had concluded – beauty (people) was just a function of a certain ratio of some face characteristics and the article talked about taking measurements of 100’s of people before concluding this. (We can safely assume that this must have been a work of a certain Black Belt who was stretching hard to find some conclusive results and once he was sure he cannot get them, resorted to this hypothesis!!) Well the above thesis doesn’t explain the fact that if it is based on a ratio, then why would people find different people beautiful and if there is a different theory that there is a personal template that evolves – Why would there be both commonality and diversity in our choices of deciding which is beautiful? As I ponder over this, I think of another viewpoint – Is beauty really pertaining to some visual insights or is it just something else – how could you explain the fact that some of us use “beautiful heart” (how many of us have seen hearts) and “beauty in words” (are we really appreciating the calligraphy!!) and what about “beautiful idea”? It’s strange, that sometimes when we attempt to make something’s simple, it turns out to be really complicated. There are so many unanswered questions that have emerged when we attempted to demystify the mystery behind beauty. Without taking this further (at least let me enjoy the beautiful rain and also save you from further torture), I would try and summarize what I did really assimilate about beauty today – Beauty is a subconscious drive (chemical reaction?) that overwhelms both logic and reason and yet signals the onset of an emotion – a feeling of admiration. Friends, I had given you enough hints that this blog is a product of an idle mind and if you have managed to read until now, I can surely categorize you to be either confused or an intellectual (I ain’t sure of who I am either and since you are here I would rather treat you as somebody like me!!) and either or, you would have some thoughts about beauty that I expect you to pen down as comments to this blog.
Having bored you so much on the theory of beauty, I would rather you present you with a practical test!! Shown below are some ladies that I believe fit into my “Template of Beauty” or have helped me “Evolve the understanding of what is Beauty” and I have failed to find any common link between each one amongst them and I would be glad if you are able to find that for me? (Well, actually the practical test is just a showoff, I actually got a notification from BlogSpot officials yesterday that there have been no viewers for this blog and therefore they would withdraw it, unless the viewership increases – This is just an attempt to add the glamour element to boost up the viewership!!)

1. Madhu Bala - The Eternal Beauty!!

2. Gabriela Sabatini - My First Crush !!

3. Sonali Kulkarni - Cheerful!!

4. Chitrangadha Singh - Bold by her Graciousness!!

5. Konkana Sen Sharma - Blown by her Energy!!

6. Nidhi Razdan - Modern Ethnic Beauty

7. Nandita Das - Admire her Screen Presence!!

8. Halle Berry - Mesmerized by Her Radiance!!

9. Marion Jones - Beauty, even in tears!!

10 - Bhavana - Truly Exquisite !!

(Picture not available)

11 - Chloe - Effervesence Personified !!

(Picture not available)

THE PARADOX!!

Almost after a fanatic search operation which lasted for more than 26 hours, the search operation forces were able to finally declare that the copter carrying the Andhra chief minister, YS Rajashekar Reddy had crashed into a hill and 5 bodies including YSR’s were recovered from the crash site. The search was helped by an unlikely clue – a delivered SMS (after the contacts on the copter were lost) to one of the cell phones on the copter, yes a cell phone the only thing on board which survived the attack. Tracing the mobile towers from where the SMS was delivered, the search was limited to a 4 sq km area, a much smaller area compared to the 750 sq km which was earlier funneled by the calculations by the copter’s last contact point. YSR was certainly the man of the masses and he dedicated his life to the betterment of the farmers – Cut the crap, I am not paying homage to the late chief minister. Instead from the time, I have been bombarded with the news of YSR missing, I am wondering, what would be Vijayalakshmi’s reaction?
For those of who are new to Vijayalakshmi, here is an extract from one of my earlier blogs on the Indian Obama dated May 17, 2009.
“I met VijayaLakshmi, during one of my rare visits to a temple in Tirupati (that makes it even rarer). We were awaiting our turn to visit the holy almighty in one of the waiting halls. This wait was for about 6 hours from 4 pm to 10 pm and this gave a rare opportunity to interact with VijayaLakshmi and also a chance to recall some episodes of Ramanand Sagar’s RAMAYAN (The waiting halls have TVs where in Ramayan was aired). There was nothing common between me and VijayaLakshmi and the only common language that we knew was sign language and she could interpret some broken Hindi words and this aspect made our communication very interesting and challenging. Very seldom were we able to get what she was telling us in her first three attempts and I took even more to convey what I intended. VijayaLakshmi hailed from a village near Rajmundhry and was certainly not my age. She had a son who was atleast 5 years elder to me and had married only 2 days ago. They were visiting Tirupati to seek blessings for the newly married couple. The groom actually ran a cycle puncture shop in their village and his mother went to work in somebody else farm to earn about 30 Rs per day. The groom was busy with his wife but the mother-in-law was in full Josh and together we discussed a lot of issues including Andhra food, their culture, the difference between their marriage rituals and ours etc. However when short of topics to discuss, I thought of opening up Andhra politics to her. I asked her what she thought of YSR - YS RajShekhar Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. Little did I know that I was on the right path, but entered a wrong way. I say that because she was very much into active politics but was a die hard fan of Chandra Babu Naidu. She was a active member and was occupying a position in the TDP’s village level organization. She had participated in cycle rallies for the campaign of Chandrababu Naidu in the last election. I asked her why she preferred Naidu over Reddy when Reddy offers her so many goodies like subsidized supply of rice and other grains, free electricity etc. She did try her best to explain some of the reasons for preferring Naidu, but I was not able to assimilate very less of what she intended to convey. The only take away that hit me from this discussion, she was so fond of Naidu that she had not availed the facility of the monthly rice quota of 10 kg at a rate of 3 Rs per kg even once, just because it was offered by Naidu’s rival. Such is the level of dedication and loyalty to a political leader. Surprisingly the same leader is always projected by the Indian media as one of those who was pro-urban and anti-rural in his stint as CM. Such a contrast picture from what is the ground reality. The Prannoy Roys, the Barkhas and the Rajdeeps however hard they try would not be able to project the entire Indian perspective. VijayaLakshmi is just one of the billions who happened to meet me in Luck by Chance visit. At the end of my encounter, I just had to salute her and the Great Indian Voter who has just taken democracy to a next level for sure. This encounter is still freshly etched in my memory even though it is almost 36 months since I met VijayaLakshmi.”
Once she hears this piece of news – Would she be elated to hear that her leader’s main rival is no more? Would her wrath tone down just because YSR is no more? Would she resort to availing the facility of the popular schemes since Naidu yesterday announced that YSR was a great administrator? Would her loyalty towards Naidu grow up or wither down just because he praised his rival? – So many queries that only VijayLakshmi can answer? Sometimes in life, there are personalities who would leave their mark with a lone glance that you only need a reason to evoke their thoughts and yet on the other hand, there are so many near and dear ones who almost walk with you the entire life and yet we hardly bother to cherish them.