Month: May 2007

  • Somewhere in Kerala

    post dated post.

    I am in Kerala till 17th June 2007.

  • Failure (Part 2)

    Although, academically, I approached many people for help, where I really needed help was at the personal level. I tried to get that but failed. This happened, I theorized because of the difference in the way people viewed things.

    My way of thinking is not really shared by many people. I viewed this failiure as a result of a string of internal failiures. Others viewed it as one failiure – academic.

    So, I basically needed to introspect. And I discovered this fact about Bombay. You can’t go on these long introspective walks that you see in the movies. You do that in croweded places like local trains, public toilets and BEST buses.

    Luckily for me, I was not thrown out of my house and I had the emptiness of my balcony to shut myself up in. I took Krishnamurti’s Commentaries on Living and the notebook that I later burned and wrote, copied and talked to myself.

    The result was a change in my life without much external changes. I thought seeing sudden changes may lead my parents to believe that I am mentally disturbed.

    But my father not having released his anger physically, began to quip on my uselessness and my inability of becoming an engineer. I would have preferred a few beatings. Physical strain is infinitely better than mental strain. Maybe, in his wisdom, he prefferred to give me that punishment.

    I am sorry to say though that all this failiure did was replace one set of qualities with another. There was really no total revolution. enough for today. More later.

  • Discovering hidden Google Stuff

    Found this and this via Google Operating System blog. I am reading through some of it.

  • Voters ID

    Got my voters id card today. Which in reality has no other significance other than the fact that I now have to carry and take care of another card.

    I was registered to vote two years ago! Ah! the hassles of growing up!!

  • Math or Maths?

    People in the US use math. People in India use Maths. Why and what’s the difference?

  • Failure (Part 1)

    I feel that now is the right time to put on record my experience in the past one year at home.It is something that I am still recovering from but now is the right time.

    I had not expected such a failiure to take place. So first, I believe, I was shocked to hear it over the telephone. I stayed in that state till I saw the results in person. India makes you pay dearly for your lack of academic excellence.

    So, two things were certain. I had failed and had lost a year. Consequently many people have asked me about that performance. It is best described as a collective failiure. Since I destroyed all the stuff I wrote at that time, there is really no way to remember. Several small events triggered that avalanche.

    This is perhaps the most difficult part. Informing your friends and family. I even contemplated suicide at this point but today I thank the crowded local trains of Mumbai. My long travel by train gave me time to think and I now even laugh at myself for having contemplated suicide.

    No one really can explain the barrage of feelings, anger and frustration that you experience. You alone will experience it and there will be no support for you. Just more anger from your parents, friends etc. As they say, this is what they don’t teach at Harvard. No one will understand your experience.

    I felt sorry for the people who were trying to be sympathetic. Sympathy is really not something that helps you in your hour of sorrow. I smiled to shield my real emotions which I penned down in a book, took it to a ground and burnt it.

    No vegetarian diet, no meditation and no self-help books help. Only one question – what next? The way you answer that question largely determines where you end up.

    Lessons
    1. When someone is in sorrow, leave them alone. He will come to you if he needs your help. Else you’re just meddling in his business.
    2. Nobody but you can help yourself.
    3. Find a way to regularily release your anger – like an overhaul.

    Lots to write. So, I’ll write this in parts.

  • Laurie Baker and COSTFORD

    It’s very sad that peope are recognised only after their death.

    Just for reading when I am free:
    1. http://in.geocities.com/c_ncr/costford/architecture.html

  • Quality: Something to Look at Later

    From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:


    “He’d been speculating about the relationship of Quality to mind and matter and had identified quality as the parent of mind and matter. This Copernican inversion of the relationship of quality to the objective world could sound mysterious if not carefully explained, but he didn’t mean it to be mysterious. He simply meant that at the cutting edge of time, before an object can be distinguished there must be a kind of non-intellectual awareness, which he called awareness of quality. You can’t be aware that you’ve seen the tree and between the instant of vision and between the instant of awareness there must be a time lag. We sometimes think of the time lag as unimportant. But there’s no justification foor thinking that the time lag is unimportant – none whatsoever.

    The past exists only in our memories, the future only in our plans. The present is our only reality. The time lag, is always in the past and therefore unreal. Any intellectually conceived object is always in the past and is therefore unreal. Reality is always the moment of vision before the intellectual initialization takes place. There is no other reality. This preintellectual reality is what Phaedrus felt he had properly identified as Quality. Since all intellectually identifiable things must emerge from this pre-intellectual reality, Quality is the parent, the source of all subjects and objects.”

    Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is, in the words of the author himself, not much on Zen nor much on Motorcycle Maintenance. It is this middle ground that explores quality that seeks to merge these two seemingly distant fields – Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance. The reference to Phaedrus is to the author himself before he was admitted to a mental institution.

    Robert Pirsig enjoys a sort of cult status in the United States.

    The reference to the Copernican inversion in this passage comes from an earlier part of the book, where he says:

    ” “The sun of quality,” he wrote,”does not revolve around the subjects and objects of our existence. It does not just passively illuminate them. It is not sub-ordinate to them in any way. It has created them. They are sub-ordinate to it.”

    After reading the whole book, I personally felt that this was the crux of the whole book. But, have to think about how the transition happens sometime soon.

  • A Nice Mixture

    I always like stuff in a nice mixture. Other than my hatred for day-to-daay publications I usually love reading stuff like JAM, JLT, Tehelka and Frontline.

    Frontline brings the mixture of serious stuff. A sample can be taken from the May 4, 2007 issue of Frontline.

    The Assembly elections at UP is this times cover story. Not something I like to read about too much but the first page in the article gives me one more reason for why politicians are despised in this country. Their arrival at any place leads to that place coming to a stand still. In the picture, Mulayam Singh Yadav is said to be arriving in a helicopter.

    Then an interview with Avinash Chander, Director of the Advanced Systems Labarotary, the people behind the construction of the 3000 km range Agni III. Agni III was a beauty to watch. He also talks about their next mission: developing a missile with the 5000 kms range. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) which is developing these systems has been blamed several times for not meeting project timeline etc. But everyone’s happy when they deliver the goods, I guess.

    Then a pleothara of issues ranging from the SEZ controversy, the police reorganisation debate, the problem of begging and an article on GM cotton all find place.

    Next we come to the section that I particularily love. The spotlight on Kerala and the special on the occassion of BARC’s 50 year milestone. A paragraph from the text:
    “The BARC campus, spread over 2800 acres and ringed by the Arabian Sea and Trombay Hills. houses the 600 metre long Modular Laboratories and several critical facilities – the New Super Computer Centre, Dhruva, CIRUS and Apsara research reactors, a crystal technology labarotary, a desalination complex, central workshops, a 40 metre tall integral test loop for conducting safety experiments connected with the Advanced Heavy Water Reactor and a robotics complex and so on. A workforce of 13000, including 4200 engineers and scientists, is engaged in a bewildering variety of activities, nuclear and non-nuclear”

    BARC – Bhaba Atomic Research Centre has its roots in TIFR (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) which began on June 1, 1945 on the campuses of the Indian Institute of Science. This was then relocated to Bombay in September, 1949. BARC was formerly called the Atomic Energy Establishment, Trombay. It was renamed BARC in 1967 in the memory of Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhaba.

    The story on Kerala revolves around the commercial exploitation of elephants in Kerala. Almost every festival in Kerala revolves around elephants. Initially they used to be brought out only for certain festivals. This has led to commercial exploitation of these animals.

    All in all, this issue of Frontline is worth a read. You might find these articles online on their website.

  • The Internet & Me

    Everytime around exam time I face this block as to what to do with the internet. That block is partly the reason for absence of any posting in the past few days.

    I tried to check whether I am addicted to the Internet. I could stay away from it for one day. I will check for two days over this weekend. This will prove that I can stay away from the Internet when I want to and hence the fact that I am not addicted to it.

    It is also a fact though that not getting any information outside the prescribed syllabi is something I hate. I also hate the kind of articles that I see on television or read in the newspapers. These facts come together to kind of get me online.

    I have therefore decided to blog when I can but mostly read lots and lots. A sample of what I liked while reading can be seen through my link blog. You can also click there by seeing the sample of posts on the sidebar under the title “My link blog”.

    I am also limiting the work on my space weblog to the Frozen Sun blog and to selecting the payload for the SEDSAT 2 mission. Over the next few days I plan to integrate the section on futuristic Indian Mythology to the Images section, where I plan to add a few more images.I will keep you updated. No major changes for now. You can also see my new tagline. I have never had a tagline till date on any of my blogs. Things change, I guess.