Category: Personal

  • Spring Cleaning

    Crazy February had a major victim – me. So, I set myself the target of balancing and re-hashing all my priorities in time for the Summer Solstice this month. I am happy to report that I have achieved that goal. You can now also see the content uploaded on the main webpages of my website, which have gone live – well ahead of the scheduled September 26, 2009 release. 

    With the new system updated successfully and everything working perfectly, I can now come back into the blogosphere. Thanks for hanging around.

  • Games children play

    This content originally appeared on https://pradx.org/blog. Recovered using the WayBack Machine from here.

    [These are random posts that I write, occassionally to please myself and occassionally to please others]

    This was inspired by the way kids collect on the play ground and what they play today compared to the games that I played in my child hood.

    Collecting the kids to play the game is as important as playing itself. It is a place where a group of kids build their social networks with a friend’s family. It is also a place where kids first face prejudice, understand to accept differences in stature or wealth and also gain a wealth of experience in team building and management.

    As a kid, I remember walking around the colony straining our vocal chords and calling mates, interacting with parents who make excuses, learn to negotiate your play times, learn a few things about saving money.

    Your resourcefulness is tested in the way you organise the games – according to number of kids, weather conditions, apparatus available, availability of grounds etc.

    The games itself were physically stimulating and mentally challenging.

    Today kids call each other over the phone, play with much more severe limitations like coaching classes, extra curricular activities etc. They are physically exhausted at the end of play time and it almost turns into a chore rather than being a time of conscious relaxation and sub-conscious learning.

  • An Opportunity to spread Renewable Energy

    Today, students in the state of Maharashtra go in for their HSC exams. This is the higher secondary examination whose percentage along with the Common Entrance Test which plays a contribution to a student’s admission into a college of their choice. Newspapers reported that many of the students would have to face trouble because the examination centres at many of the places reportedly don’t have electricity because of the deficit that the state of Maharashtra faced.

    While it is easy to sit down and criticise the Government for the lack of planning and implementation of its energy programme, it’s the case of no use of crying over spilt milk. It is now essential to look at stop gap solutions in the interim so that students don’t face trouble and do not curse everyone for their failed future.

    I see a possible role for new and renewable energy sources here – one that will also have a long term impact on the next generation of Indians that would probably take India faster on the Renewable Energy track. With a little bit of initiative, schools could have easily collaborated with government agencies like IREDA or MEDA and corporates like Suzlon to install on campus solar or wind energy systems which deliver sufficient power to run fans in school compounds. Better school design would have assured proper ventilation and natural light for writing purposes. Even if that is not possible, meeting the lighting and cooling requirements of a school could easily have been met by a small renewable energy plant. 

    This not only would fix the problem for students but would also be a problem that the Government can solve with a longer term solution than with short term fixes. Corporate houses can easily benefit in terms of CSR as well as recognition among students who can spread the word on their work much faster than any ad or PR agency. This will also spread word on programmes and financing made available by IREDA and MEDA.  Also, just think about how dedicated students will be towards renewable energy which helped them write their exam like any other centre in the State. Since this is a win/win for all concerned, I do not understand why this hasn’t been implemented in schools and colleges. Hopefully it will be – next year if not this year!

  • Purpose of life

    This blog post was originally posted on https://pradx.org/blog and was retrieved from the Wayback Machine here.

    The purpose of my life is to harmonise Man and Nature.

    Well, said like that it sounds pretty lame, eh? But, believe me or not, that statement took 5.5 years to put together. This is a pretty long post and if you want to miss it, feel free to. You would not be missing anything huge. Just some personal stuff.

    I think writing this without a full fledged 5.5 year explanation would be leaving it in the air for the reader. So, here it is. Have a pitcher of water by all means. Settle down and start reading.

    I was 18 when I started what can be called “The Pradx Project” with the aim of making me an athletic scholar. The name was inspired by the “Blair Witch Project”. The aim here was not to hunt down the Blair Witch, but to hunt down my inner most self and making it to do something – help me become an athletic scholar. 5.5 years down, I’m still fat and pretty a poor front benching student. 5.5 years down the line, one thing is pretty simple – The Pradx Project isn’t successful. There was one part of the project that worked pretty well – reading and writing. The writing section spewed many of the blog posts you read here (now you know why it’s pradx). The reading section was also a great trip starting out with Wodehouse and ending up with some pretty strong stuff.

    Take a sip, relax.

    Basically, Pradx Project was a self improvement project started by a simple half witted 18 year old. It did some cool things to me that I’m still committed to – reading, writing, SEDS, environment and education. But it ended up doing everything except improving me. The reason for this came to me like it always does during exams in December, 2008 – procrastination. In February 2009, I still have not gotten rid of that demon – procrastination. But, I’ve got lots of stuff in my brain (material) that I can now use in a variety of ways to help me and that way I think the 5.5 years is well spent.

    I’m giving you some hope now. Relax. Want to take a sip?

    Mom started me on this first. Push. Without starting there is nothing to work on. So, I started to get some very little work done from a sense of total procrastination. If you understand mechanical engineering, this was friction to the motion of the car of procrastination. The breaks have not been applied yet – the foot is going there towards the pedal. Reading and writing were the first agents that provided this friction from a sense of total procrastination. And perhaps, college. So, things look pretty gloomy right now, yeah? Well, its pretty hard to increase this friction without taking the foot and applying the brakes on procrastination and getting to work. This happened in a simple Tweet that Kirk sent me – (to paraphrase) no system would teach you discipline.

    Now, drink a long gulp, the next paragraph is going to get long…

    Discipline is a sore thumb for me. Krishnamurti and Osho got me worked up on how discipline was wreaking havoc on life. That thought process got on far enough to make me believe that discipline was a bad guy. But, then slowly I began to look at discipline that was being talked about in these lines and realised that they made more sense on external discipline – applied by some external agent (parents, peers, systems, God etc) and not a sense of internal discipline and planning that comes from within. Look at that internal discipline which gets automatically applied in any situation that helps you think it out, relax etc and you see that discipline was not such a bad nut you made him out to be after all. In fact, this ounce of discipline if applied at the beginning of the 5.5 years would have probably changed the 5.5 years entirely. Wow, cool discovery. Nudge it a little more and I found that this system (as spoken of in Zen etc) was already existent in me and I only had to be more aware of it and it automatically adjusted and worked for me. As Ray Bradbury puts it, you only have to get out of the way. Everyone was getting along really well until the I came in between.

    Phew. Now, with all of that out of the way let’s get back to the Purpose of Life statement. Yeah, its only starting now.

    This whole decade has been one of slowly rising environmental awareness. We’re looking at Nature and acknowledging that we’re not being fair on the Man-Nature relationships. We ought to give more to Nature than we’re taking from it. On the other hand, we’re also constantly improving Man to make him more biologically strong to work on the scarce environment. Hence, we’re working on both Man and Nature and the relationship is created by Engineering. If you have a trouble with that statement, sorry I’m not ready to debate it cause I already spent nearly five years on it and I’m moving on. Spend 5 years and think about it.

    The harmonisation of Man-Nature relationship helps me to be fit, to be athletic, to be studious, to be funny, to be a good parent (I’m not yet married – darn I don’t even have a girlfriend yet – applications invitedfor the post of girlfriend), to be a scientist, to be a researcher or even to be a sportsperson. Again, think about it for 5 hours before commenting – I took 5.5 years. The idea is to optimise both Man and Nature as much as possible and when it reaches its optimum to jump to the next planet.

    Outer Space provides this huge laboratory to check out Nature which you can look at through a microscope or through a telescope. Since, I really can’t stand up to long names, I prefer to look through telescopes than microscopes. Does that explain my interest in astronomy. A new love is radio astronomy where I hear the heartbeat of the Universe (a whole new world!). So, that’s how I’m checking out Nature.

    Energy is a simple and temporary hack for minimising the use of resources created for us by Nature. Think about it.

    Primary Education is a way to work on the Man. It’s the best place to work on the future batch of Man-Nature harmonisers, isn’t it?

  • Midnight Stroll

    After completing the required nocturnal duties at my grandparents’ place I prepared for a 2.3 kms night time stroll around 11 pm. To accompany me was my faithful fully charged mobile phone with music loaded. I started off with “Tum Se Hi” from Jab We Met.

    Chembur at night is a sight to withhold, nothing like its daytime counter part, a time when you really realise how wide the roads are, how shady the trees and perhaps which street lights blink and which don’t. The stretch was spent on speed walking and therefore I didn’t have much time to think about anything. The street lights were covered by wonderful shady trees. The only thing I can remember now about this stretch which lasted about 5 mins was the cool breeze.

    The second section of the walk I slowed down as did the music – “I Hope You Dance” by Lee Ann Womack played into my ears. I guess I felt some kind of hope in efforts I was making to get myself a job (top priority in any Indian family) and thought to myself that I could even perhaps open a space consultancy firm. The only question arising is whom will I consult with. I think I have an idea or two up my sleave besides consulting (I really doubt if multi nationals will consult with a person fresh out of college) which I still need to work on. Shelve that and immediate concerns come up – getting home, worries about grandpa’s health and my brother’s exam tomorrow balanced out with working on my own study schedule. You really get shaped in an all round manner like never before if you want to in those 4 years that you do engineering with Mumbai University (considered one of the toughest and best universities in the country).

    The third section of the walk had me listening to Delhi 6 and the Masakali song. I think it refers to a pigeon. Anyway, there are several interpretations on the meaning of the song, I take it as an adventures of a pigeon song. Kinda fits. After this initial bantering about recent events, I settled down to a steady pace and looked up to the sky for the first time. Reason: No shady trees. That was a breath taking sight to behold. Hardly ever have I seen a sky like this over Mumbai. Thoughts about space naturally creep in. The upcoming SINC 2009, thinking about ideas for activities to do in IYA 2009 and trying to identify constellations (which I’m trying to learn on the sly). Besides Orion (which is perhaps the famous constellation) I also spotted Canis Major. A wonderful sight in all and perhaps a few more stars than you would expect to see here.

    As I closed in, Slumdog Millionaire’s Mausam & Escape provided a breath taking back ground music score for the skies above. They should try it in Planetariums perhaps. I was then distracted by the acrid smell from the burning at the nearby Deonar Dumping Grounds and that pretty much spoiled my mood for anything more and I sat down to one more round of twittering, contrary to the “no-gprs-till-Thursday” plea. Sigh.

    I guess besides everything, this post tries to give you an insight into my thought structure and how some of the songs affected my thinking. I am planning to do this on my morning stroll to the railway station, where my thoughts always seem to be crowded on the day ahead and I could use some de-stressing. Let’s experiment, I don’t plan to share the results publicly, they’ll be in my notebook.

  • What’s the program, 2009

    2008 has been overall not been too good. I’ve become lazy, stupid, careless, angry, unhealthy, addicted to GPRS and more committed to getting a job in ISRO! But, its helped in meeting more wonderful people, providing great insights into myself (during the lazy bouts), better awareness, a maturity and possibly a philosophy that I can call my own. It’s been wonderful to see all of these things melting together to package my life. But, I guess we always strive for better things in life and I think I could do with a little discipline.

    On the agenda for 2009 are a slight weight loss and health gain, less lazy life, addition of interesting information, recapturing old interests and living life to the fullest again. Before today, I’ve never demanded but have always got my things through manipulation and creating under currents. I’ve been a bore because there was nothing working except my brain and you’ve gotta excuse the old bean for not coming up with things that I was doing when I was lazy. :)

    So, let’s get to work on 2009, which is coming up in 4 days (assuming today is over and it’s 27th).

    Let’s begin from health gain. I’ve never exercised in my life and therefore I’ve managed to grow in several directions and have had a great time being lazy. But, I guess from 2009 for about 30 more years, I’ll be working my ass off to satisfy myself and enjoy life to fullest before retiring and going lazy again! On the works are a spiritual and physical self-training program like no other. The program could have the side benefit of teaching me how to fix my own cycle, which is good in case I go out of a job with the continuing recession and all! It could also make me a master Yoga expert teaching 40 kids how to do Yoga to relieve stress from the work they do. Although, I don’t want to do either, but it’s cool no? This also involves an extension on the ban on fast food to everything. Personally, fast food aids me to lose all my pains. I almost use it like drugs. There’s nothing 2 samosas and a bottle of Coke won’t do for me. But, I’ll try and be off them even if it pains me.

    Academics are a painful reality and I’m more than happy to be out of college in 2009. If there’s anything trying to stop me, I’m pretty sure it will not succeed. There’s nothing that will stop me from not graduating this year unless of course I die or if I battle deadly diseases never seen before by mankind or if a beautiful girl elopes with me (hopefully, that girl has enough money for both of us to survive cause I don’t) or perhaps all those other little things which rarely happen.

    I almost hate everything that I have to study, so I’ll be taking up some notes that my friend Kirk has uploaded online along with a few books on mathematics, radio astronomy and computers. These will be a self-learning program along with learning many points in law. I think my friend, Raghunandan can help me with some law points. And last but not the least, I plan to do multiplication tables again!

    From all the drab world we go to the world of the Internet. 2009 will see more of my life streams going online. My new cell phone enables me to upload videos and photos. If I can I also plan to participate in the 365 Days of Astronomy Programme. Let’s see how that goes. Keep watching this space here. Talking about this space, I have gone back to my old domain – http://www.pradx.org. Don’t have to move there now, I’ll only be moving in September 2009 when the furniture there will be ready for all of you and you’ll can come visit.

    I plan to work in 3 projects overall. 1 is my final year undergrad project at Air India. The second is the Telescopes of India tour project. The last one is a bit of a secret for now, but I will reveal it at the appropriate time.

  • The Autorickshaw Trouble

    There is an acute problem of autorickshaw shortage in the place where I stay. To try and understand why an autorickshaw does not ply to my colony, I did try talking to them but they have mostly been offensive or silence, about discussing the logic behind their plying. These are trade secrets, I guess.

    Being a mode of public transport, they are expected to ply to any place that a passenger wants to go. This is not happening and the number of times this is not happening is increasing to alarming rates. As a result, although the place is swarming with autorickshaws, you have people standing on the edge of the road trying to hail one.

    There were some media reports about how to send it to RTO and they will act on it, but I am darned if I can note the number of the autorickshaw in the middle of commotion of catching one. The worst affected are senior citizens and women with children, who are present in their swarming many in my colony.

    There is no autorickshaw plying from my place to Chembur (W). This is because, as per their explanation, they can’t get back to Chembur (E) because of the high congestion on the bridge on the East bound traffic.
    They aren’t even too rosy about plying to my area. The reason generally stated is that it is difficult to get a return fare.

    I have been trying to rack my brain about how this problem could be solved and decided that more brains can work on this problem, more easily can they solve it.

    One of the solutions is avoiding rickshaws altogether. Car pool, walk and cycle. But, that requires a community effort and kicking the rickshaw riding habit is pretty hard. In the meanwhile, I’m planning my walk to station. It’s good exercise and fun, if you have friends around you.

  • imagiLOGUES – Day 2

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on October 1, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    It’s been a long day. I was walking around in the market place when I saw the amazing innovation that this country could produce. Small motorized water boats that run around in a bowl of water, many pocketed transparent purses, innovative ways of arranging fruits and vegetables. And still, people believe that we are not progressing.

    I talked to a Rajesh Dora who runs a school for blind children. He told me about how people come there, look at the boys and girls studying there with pity, talk to them about their suffering and they go away happy that they have done their part. I tell him that I can’t promise more than that, myself. For some reason he remains quiet. The Government supports the venture generously and he gets enough donations to run the school properly. I get his email address and offer him the link to my blog.

    He makes a request asking if I could guide the kids around the space museum. I oblige. I spend about 3 hours there looking through the books that they used to feel and talking to them about what they want to be.

    Blind children in Helix are supported by the Government since three hundred years. It’s one of the rear gifts of the Dora dynasty who had a vast wealth which they invested in social causes through a series of foundations and committees. Even our national space programme is funded partly by one such foundation.

    The Foundation does great work to publish books on space science for students interested in becoming a part of the space organisation. There is even a plan that the Sohrab Foundation has proposed to send a blind man in a space mission. Last I knew they were talking about it with the Human Space Complex.

    After this, I go into the outskirts of Sohrab on a municipal bus. They’re using a positioning system on board to trace their route and enabling passengers to recognise their stops. There is even a voice system on board to tell the stop in the local language and English.

    After a twenty minute ride, I get to the Horsborg Centre for Development Studies. I am scheduled to meet young Anjali Dora. She’s Rajesh’s wife and is heading the centre here which also comes under the Dora Foundation. The books that I saw in Rajesh’s office are from here. The centre is unique in that it has undertaken the project of voicing over and making visuals of the several historic documents. I’m here to review how our long distance education module is working. We take a hot cup of coffee and some buiscuits in her office.

    She’s the one who gave me the idea of this road trip. We met before through this blog and I offered her the chance of setting up a distance education institute on campus through the Centre I work in to enable her to transmit her videos to schools which require special courses without local expertise being available. She jumped at the idea and after our first meeting talked about a road trip she had taken along with Rajesh through all the Dora foundation centres. I’m not doing the same. Although, these two stops have been Dora Foundation centres.

    I reviewed the progress of the module, sent emails back to office with several requests and got back on the road. As I upload this via satellite link, I’m travelling north to Louisville, my second stop.

    (IMAGILOGUES – these are imaginary travelogues. People, places, mentioned are all imaginary. IF you happen to be from the same place or have the same name, let me assure that I didn’t mean to use it and that it was purely co-incidental.) 

  • Got it!

    The postman dropped in my passport today. The timing is perfect, though I’d have preferred it a lot earlier. 

    well, better late than never.

  • imagiLOGUES – Day 1

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://pradx.wordpress.com. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on September 22, 2008 as per the permalink. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    As per the plan, I have reached Horsborg. This was where in the 23rd century BC, William of Horsborg had the dream of a united Helix.

    I downloaded several historical references and have the benefit of opposing in views and theories of Horsborg. It is only while going to Horsborg and I am going this prejudiced for a town.

    I gave a talk on various special kinds of propulsion engines at the local engineering college today. They also have seem to have inaugurated the Rocketry Club today. It’s lovely to see the enthusiasm for rocketry and space sciences in the country today. After advancing them on some points of law, I went to the Helix Archives. Helix Archives is really the home in which William’s grandfather lived. They moved out of this house in the year of William’s rise to Presidency.

    William was an intelligent man. I loved some of the ideas that he tried to implement in his twenty three year old rule stint as President. He conquered nearly 106 kingdoms – showed each of these Kings that in unity there was strength and reinforced this belief with his rule. Helix functioned as an alliance more than as a republic.

    My motel is an old fort that was converted in 1643 to a hotel to hold meetings etc. Technically, it was on the southern border of the Kingdom of Horsborg. Till 1640, it was used by military captains to practice their campaigns and train new troops. From 1704, it has been housing several statesman, scientists, engineers etc. To walk through the same corridor has been a cool experience.

    Before drafting this post I just read that Helix has just launched Horsborg-7. All the best to Dr. Kumar and his team. This was also done in collaboration with Sohrab’s School of Engineering at which I and Dr. Kumar were classmates. Great going! This is the second education and space industry collaboration in the country. I hope to see more.

    (imagiLOGUES are a bunch of imaginary travelogues that I am writing while traveling across my imaginary nation of Helix.)