Category: Personal

  • High School Reminiscence

    My Gujarati friend got engaged to a Malayali girl.

    We were sitting in the first row in Math class in school discussing the futility of learning Matrices. Our Math teacher Mrs Thomas did not take kindly to our conversation.

    “Just do your matrices, what is there to talk about? If you have any doubts ask me!”

    We nodded and returned to our conversation. I was defending the need to rationally sort out the problems in one’s life with the use of Matrices.

    “Tell me”, said my Gujarati friend, “how will matrices help you decide who you are going to marry?”

    This was a question put to several math and science lovers in the past. These questions were well debated in the science forums online. I used the most famous argument.

    “There are matters of the heart and matters of the brain. One must choose the correct tool for solving the respective problems.”
    “Bullshit”, replied my Gujarati friend.

    Here the Internet forums failed me with a suitable response. I had come face to face with a formidable Science enemy. But, he was just my friend.

    “How would you do it? Choose whom to marry?” I asked.

    He was thinking, hard. Then the bell rang. The school bell, of course. As everyone packed their books in to rush back home, he smiled.

    “I do not care which country the girl comes from. The only thing I care is that she cooks delicious food that I love.”

    Many years passed and it was yesterday that I got a call from him. He had gone to the US, studied computer science and worked at Google. He had met a Malayali girl there and they had shared rooms. They were engaged and had come to India to get married. I was invited out for lunch at our old haunt, Geeta Bhavan in Chembur.

    He complained about the deteriorating quality of pav bhaji. I asked him whether she passed his cooking test of bride selection. She was amused as we recollected that conversation in Thomas ma’am’s class.

    “Yes”, he said.
    “He fell for me just tasting my vegetarian cooking,” she said. “He hasn’t even tasted my Calicut biriyani or marines I!”
    “I was on the Gmail team. She was working with Google Plus. When integration with Gmail was considered, she was sent to our team. That’s when we met. She was looking for a place to stay and I someone to share my rent with. I asked her if she wanted to stay at my place. She agreed. The paneer masala she cooked on day 1 was so delicious that I offered to not take rent from her if she cooked and taught me to cook.”

    As the conversations continued, I was reminded of our school days and that matrices class. You see very few people who knowingly or unknowingly follow through with their childhood utterances.

  • एक हिंदी लेख

    लिखित हिंदी से मेरा लगाव पाठशाला के दिनों ही समाप्त हो गयी थी । परंतु आज तक मुझे मेरे पाठ्य पुस्तक कि कहानियाँ याद हैं । काश कि मैं उन दिनों कि तरह आज भी काहानि पड़ पाता ।

    कल मैंने एक नया iPhone 4 ख़रीदा । उसमें हिंदी लिखने और पड़ने कि प्रक्रिया इतनी सरल थी कि मैंने हिंदी पड़ने के साथ-साथ इन पन्नों पर लिखने का भी निर्णय लिया । शुरूआत मैं मेरे लेख ़अधुरे लगेंगे पर मेरा इसे सुधारने का सदा प्रयत्न रहेगा ।

  • एक हिंदी लेख

    लिखित हिंदी से मेरा लगाव पाठशाला के दिनों ही समाप्त हो गयी थी । परंतु आज तक मुझे मेरे पाठ्य पुस्तक कि कहानियाँ याद हैं । काश कि मैं उन दिनों कि तरह आज भी काहानि पड़ पाता ।

    कल मैंने एक नया iPhone 4 ख़रीदा । उसमें हिंदी लिखने और पड़ने कि प्रक्रिया इतनी सरल थी कि मैंने हिंदी पड़ने के साथ-साथ इन पन्नों पर लिखने का भी निर्णय लिया । शुरूआत मैं मेरे लेख ़अधुरे लगेंगे पर मेरा इसे सुधारने का सदा प्रयत्न रहेगा ।

  • Never Say Never Again!

    By the title, I did not mean the famous James Bond movie of the same name but something a colleague at work told me was his life philosophy. He described this philosophy to mean that he would never say “I will never…” in a sentence but would only respond in the negative to a given situation. What he means is that in another set of circumstances he might not have responded in the same way.

    I, on the other hand have responded several times to situations by taking extreme stands. I either wholeheartedly agree or wholeheartedly oppose an idea or a course of action I am taking. This is true in situations where I am passionate about the subject. It doesn’t apply to my relationships with other people, though.

    To give you an example, I quit Wikipedia late last year vowing never to return. I had issues with some members with the Indian English Wikipedia community members. I think I believed in the movement passionately enough to think that it would collapse if such individuals made up the movement. However, I soon re-joined Wikipedia realising that the movement was not defined by these few individuals besides how much I enjoyed actually editing it.

    Late last week I announced that I would be quitting Twitter. I observed how my brother was caught up on his phone and how little attention he paid when my parents or I spoke to him. Sometimes, he did not even realise that we were talking to him. I envisioned myself as something even worse than that when I do this.

    However, when I announce my intention of quitting, it is half hoping that announcing it will help me stick to the resolution of quitting a platform. The situation changes and makes it even more difficult for me to return because of the thought of my announcement of quitting a platform and how I would appear to people. It would seem to people that I am the sort of a person who makes decisions and does not stick to it.  Not everybody might think like this but my perception of this being a thought process is so strong.

    Which brings me back to why the philosophy of never say never again. I will try and not announce that I am quitting the platform. So, with that huge post, I am happy to report that I am back on Twitter!

  • Stock Taking Stop

    This post on this blog is a stock taking stop.

    I was writing on my own personal blog, pradx.me until recently. That platform was hacked by Bangladeshi hackers (or rather crackers). This made me feel uncertain of doing a self hosted blog. I need to learn more about backing up my spread out blog posts over several platforms onto a single one. I chose blogger.

    Over the past few days, I moved all of my posts from various platforms onto Blogger. I continue to make this move till date. I want to eventually move all of my posts onto pradx.me. But, not before making sure that I can do all the things needed to secure my blog posts from being lost to posterity. Till then, I will continue to post here.

  • Motorcycles

    Unlike many others in my generation I learnt to drive a car much before I could drive a motorbike. I perhaps a missed a vital stage of growth because of this. There is a culture and a group of friends that I couldn’t become part of because I did not ride or own a motorbike when many of them did. I drowned out any disappointment I felt of not belonging by taking up my astronomy and space activities up a notch.

    I yearned for a motorbike again only when I read Robert M Pirsig in his book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, said thus:

    You see things vacationing on a motorcycle in a way that is completely different from any other. In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

    On a cycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it any more, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. That concrete whizzing by five inches below your foot is the real thing, the same stuff you walk on, it’s right there, so blurred you can’t focus on it, yet you can put your foot down and touch it any time, and the whole thing, the whole experience, is never removed from immediate consciousness.

    We recently got a motorcycle in my name – the Bajaj Discover 100 cc. It was purchased with the idea of intracity commute. It also partly fulfilled the purpose of certain reimbursements I would get from the bank.

    I know how to switch gears and ride the motorcycle in a straight line. I can also take the straightforward turns that present themselves on the road. The trouble arises once I stop and have to start again. Knowing the traffic conditions in Mumbai, you would understand that this is not a good situation to be in, at peak hour traffic. No matter how much I try this impediment has not passed yet. I am still working on it.

    One of the first places that I want to go to on a motor cycle is the Yusuf Meherally Center on the Mumbai-Goa highway. After that, I don’t really have any other place to go. But, this is a good thing to motivate myself to learn to drive a motorcycle.

  • Holi

    Today, the whole nation celebrated the festival of Holi. I didn’t. It’s not like I was taken in by these initiatives that called for a water free holi this time keeping with the record drought situation prevailing in many parts of Maharashtra right now. It’s just that I have never played/participated in Holi. I find the idea of colouring others faces and throwing balloons at each other rather odd and crazy.

    I have never played Holi. As a kid, I used to remain holed up asking my parents to make up excuses for not having to go out and play. I have escaped Holi’s persecution with colours thus far. I hope to stay away from it as far as possible.

    In the meanwhile, conserve water on other days as well.

  • How do you do?

    There are three ways to do something. You either try things out youselves. Experiment or play around with it. It strangely comes to you. You are never sure that that is the correct method. However, you can keep doing it functionally. The second is to be taught by someone else. This is mostly how trade practices are passed on from one generation to the next. The last is that you refer to a guidebook on the subject.

    Like many people I have experienced the first two methods to learn to do things. I am just not the type of person to sit and read a guidebook about how to do things before I set about doing things. I am trying to inculcate this habit now. Might be useful.

  • Hello World!

    The last revision of this blog was lost to an episode of hacking. Poor security and lack of backups mean that I pretty much lost all my blog posts in the interim period other than their existence on Google’s cache. So, this continues from my previous blog here.

    Just to bring you upto speed on my offline events. I quit my job in Bharuch and moved back to Mumbai. I work in a bank here.

    I spend most of my time working online and offline on Wikipedia related stuff. I am the GLAM SIG for the Wikimedia India Chapter.

  • I’ve Moved!

    I’ve moved to my own domain. You can find it here.