August 12, 2010

"Ah! what a gloomy day? Cesar (My 3 year old German Shepherd) did you have to wake me up to torrential rains? Come, lets go for a walk before it pours". Cesar and I took a long walk enjoying the clean fresh air with moisture hinting a great downpour. Once back, it was time for my daily coffee. I settled in my recliner and I was feeling particularly nostalgic about the years gone by.

Rover, my pet robot - named after the brat of my second dog, served me my coffee. Yes, we have robots in our homes these days. A stark difference from the days where I used to wake up and make my own coffee. Rover takes care of the daily chores around the house and recharges itself at the end of the day. That is one thing which hasn't changed from the years that has gone by. Batteries still holds charge and helps in powering many devices. Rover remembers the temperature of the milk I prefer, the amount of sugar and coffee. Rover also comes with a 20ZB (1 Zeta Byte = 1,000,000 TB) and doubles up as a media player whenever I need entertainment. Life without Rover is unimaginable these days just as how internet was in the 1990s and early 20th century.

'Beep Beep' goes the alert in my ear. The alerts reminds me to call my friend Sriram. How things have changed since we met in BITS, Pilani. Those were the days when we didn't have the mobile phones of the next generation. I vividly remember how we used to run along the corridors to attend phone calls and how un-attached we were to technology. "Ah good times", I thought. Thereafter I went into a vortex of how things changed from the time I was growing up.

In 1996, I remember India touring England for a test series. Being a virile 14 year old interested in sports, I was crazy about cricket. I wanted to be like my idol Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Watching the test match was of utmost importance to me. Unfortunately, I had to go to a wedding reception which took away most of the second and third sessions of play. I sat desolately in the wedding thinking of watching cricket. A brilliant idea struck me that night. I thought, "Why not equip our wrist watches with an antenna receiver and decode the signal into picture?". I did not bother about it too much because I was ready to open the sports page of 'The Hindu' in the morning next day. I was hoping for a good day for the Indians but it was just plain hope. We had a pathetic team with Vikram Rathour opening the innings.

With the advancement in technology and smaller gate lengths on the transistors, everything could be miniaturized and eventually arrived the watch-tv and what I had just hoped for became a reality. This was in the first decade of 2000s. During this time came the Apple iPhone. They were an innovation and showed the world a smartphone like never before. They opened up the eyes of other cell-phone manufacturers and we had a flood of iPhone look alikes in the market.

What happened in the span of 2 years after 2010 was unprecedented. With earthquakes, volcanoes, floods and droughts in abundance, the Apocalypse predicted by the Mayan calendar seemed to be a distinct possibility. Then came about the brilliance that mankind exhibited after a long time. With earth-mapping from space, it was determined that the axis tilt of the earth had increased a little bit to 23.9 degrees. Hence started the building of a giant magnet in the ISS - International Space Station. The direction of the magnetic field was placed in such a way that it would attract the earth back to its original axis tilt of 23.44 degrees. It was determined that the change in the climatic conditions was caused due to the change in the axis tilt of the earth. Once the re-tilt was completed, the earth had it climatic seasons back to normal and there was no melting of the ice-caps.

Then on, it opened a plethora of innovations which has made robots like Rover a necessity in every household. But a major stepping stone was the decline in dependence on fossil fuels. In the 2010s, electric cars were very popular. People could drive 100 miles before running out of charge in the batteries. Sometime in 2020s a new type of fuel, leptro, was discovered. It required no refineries and gave 100% combustion without leaving any residues. The engines needed a slight modification but it made the best alternative to the fossil fuels with a higher efficiency rate. Leptro, could be manufactured cleanly in everybody's homes. This caused a huge economic downturn because there were no wars for oil and the middle-east themselves lost a lot of money because the petro-cash became redundant. Slowly, but surely, the middle-east came to grips with such a turn in events and became a manufacturing hub.

'Beep Beep' went the alarm again. Time to call Sriram. Before I go to call him, I need to tell you about the other major innovation in the field of communication. We started of with memorizing a few important phone numbers and writing down not-so-important phone numbers. As years rolled by, we started storing phone numbers on our phones and cell-phones. With the advent of iPhone everything was on the phone. Calendar, maps, calories eaten, address book - anything you can think of. Then someone came up with an outrageous idea of inserting a memory chip in the human-body. The electrical pulses sent by the brain to other parts of the body was also used to power-up an SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) chip inside the brain. Then we, humans, came up with another idea of integrating the chip with a full-duplex transceiver module complete with a microphone and magnets to decode the signal into noise (in simple terms speakers) so that it can be interpreted by the brain. All this in the human body!! We even made our eyes into projectors. With a great brain-mapping software, the images thought out in the human brain are decoded and projected through the eyes. As an illustration, I want to call Sriram. I do not remember his phone number. So what my brain does is send a signal to access the SRAM cell to retrieve Sriram's phone number. Then I imagine a keypad in my brain. My eyes projects the keypad on to anything and I dial the number or simply touch on Sriram's entry in my phone book. The transceiver module establishes the connection with a similar chip inside Sriram and we talk with our hands free.

'Beep Beep' went the alert again. Oh wait, it isn't an alert it is the damn alarm going off on my iPhone 4 asking me to wake up to go to work. Finally I wake up and there is no Cesar and no Rover. I still have my Honda Accord and Suzuki motorcycle and it is 13th August 2010. Ah! Now I know the reason for the dream - Trying to decode what could be the storyline of Rajnikanth's new film Endhiran!!!

கருவில் பிறந்த எல்லாம் மரிக்கும் அறிவில் பிறந்தது மரிப்பதே இல்லை (All that is from a womb shall perish, but not that from Intelligence) - Endhiran

PS: All characters and the story-line are fictional. Any resemblance to the living or the dead is purely intentional.
PS1: The idea which came to me - 'tv in a watch' in 1996 was real. Necessity is the mother of all inventions!!

A take on History

Long ago, I am not sure when, I heard someone say "History is written by winners". It did not make an impact on me therefore I didn't dwell too much into the legitimacy of such a claim.

Lets see what Merriam-Webster has to say about History. Here it is
1.) tale; history
2.) chronological record of events
3) branch of knowledge that records and explains past events

Any person wanting to know history will want to know the facts not pieces of information strung together by forces (conniving or not) to stamp their authority of how the future generation views past events.

During the course of this week, I watched Gandhi - the brilliant 1983 film by Richard Attenborough and a History channel program on Angels and Demons. Both of the above video presentations made me revisit the claim I mentioned in the first line of this post.

To begin with lets rewind back to the days of Adolf Hitler - that fascist Nazi who thought about the "super race" and exterminated most of Jews. All of us growing up, at some point or the other has read about him and I am sure not one among us think there is nothing wrong with what the dictator did to the world. So far so good. A chronological record of events. Here is my question - Why do the history books not carry the atrocities done by the British Empire when they ruled most of Asia and Africa? Why do we read only about how they plundered the countries they conquered and made slaves of men? How many people did they kill to exert their dominance? Case in point - The Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Why aren't the British demonized like Hitler? One is being made to be a monster and the other is a superpower who cares about the world by following their Big Brother - The USA.

Let us turn our attention to Christianity or The Vatican. When people talk about Christianity most of them talk about the Son of God - Jesus Christ and how He died for all of mankind and took away our sins. That I find fault with the above is material for another post. So, one of Old Testament's (might be the New) claim is that the Earth is in the center of the universe and Sun revolves around it. The other claim is that the Earth is heavenly body supported by structures beneath it and has the Garden of God above it. Agreed the concept of gravity was unheard of when the Old Testament came into effect but to make the common man believe this fallacy is wrong. Torturing anyone who spoke against the Vatican or questioned the beliefs of the Vatican and killing them is tantamount to the same monstrous act committed by Hitler. Why is the Vatican - the mouthpiece for Christianity - made out to be this pious and kind state when all this atrocities were committed by them?

Now to my pet peeve - Gandhi bashing. He did a fantastic job polarizing the nation into following him for gaining independence. All of us know of his heroics in South Africa and his famed Non-violence and non-cooperation theories. In my opinion, he never gave others a chance to contribute towards Independence. I see him as a petulant, power-hungry person who wanted India to gain Independence his way or not gain her Independence at all. This was achieved by his infamous fasts. If someone acted out of his rule book, he would go on fast until the other toed-in-line. In the beginning he felt India wasn't ready for Independence as though he was an authority on when India is ready for independence. There were many revolutionaries who wanted to gain independence through force, because of the indignation suffered through oppression and wanted to grab the evil by the scruff of its neck and ask it to get out. They weren't given a chance to succeed or fail because Gandhi had already deemed them to be a failure. The British already weakened by the World War II and having taken whatever was there to be taken from India saw no point in staying in India any longer. From History we know Gandhi as the Father of the Nation, do we know how he extinguished any chance of others gaining Independence for India? The history books also do not mention any of his celibacy experiments. Reading about them long after I graduated out of high school opened my eyes to a new Gandhi. Would I have had the same respect for him when I was growing up if I knew History in its entirety and not just parts of what had happened?

To conclude, when I grew up I knew only about the popular tales and stories in the History books. The alternate view to the stories were never presented and many of the facts were conveniently left out. In a way I was forced to have the opinion I had. Is History written by winners? Do the losers have a chance to re-count their version of the events? If history is written by winners is it a fact? is it an accurate recounting of past events? or is it just a "blowing my trumpet" version of the events by the winners?

It is always you, stupid...

Not being sure about what to write but yet trying to pen your thoughts in a cohesive manner is a difficult task. Well for me even writing one paragraph about something is an arduous affair. No wonder my grades are the way they were. Sometimes I wonder what am I going to write in my MBA exams. Only time will tell.

Now to what I wanted to write/ramble/vent about. Why is it always me? Why am I always the bad guy, so to speak? Why should I be the nice guy? After quite some time I took something for granted and it totally bit me in the ass. One may even call it assumptions. Secondly, me expecting things to be a certain way is also wrong. The saying of one person, yours truly, however crazy it is - "Expectation is the mother of all sorrows" - never seem to be off target.

Coming to the solution part of the problem - simple ain't it?

1.) Do not expect

2.) Do not take things for granted or assume them to be the way you want it to be.

They say - Aim for the stars, you'll land on the moon. I say - Expect the worst (or in other words do not expect all) and everything else will surprise you and make you happy.

I have got couple of lines for myself - Life is a bitch. Either handle it the best you can or shut the fuck up!!!

3 Idiots - An Average fare

I watched '3 Idiots' on the first night of 2010. I felt the movie didn't live up to the hype it received from all and sundry. I have my reasons why this movie didn't make the cut for me.

This movie was very similar to Munnabhai MBBS. The same team's first movie together. The first scene in Munna.... where Arshad Warsi chases a business man is very much similar to Madhavan and Sharman Joshi running to meet their friend - Rancho! Reprising his J DOT ASTHANA role, Virus would have been a cakewalk for an actor of Boman Irani's calibre. Whereas in their first movie, Munna irks Asthana to no end, here we have troublesome threesome pushing Virus to his breaking point and I believe "rustication" was used in both Munnabhai as well to threaten the protagonist. We had Munna playing Carrom-board with Rustam's father and making him well, in 3 Idiots we have the ingenious Rancho deliver a baby in this movie.

The so-called comedy track in the movie was so predictable that it killed the laughter. Couple of dialogues including the threatening names of Gujju food was laugh worthy. The movie was too melodramatic at times and of course preachy. The movie in no way touched my nostalgic chord of my college life. The "senior" in movie was irritating to say the least.

I rate the movie average for the message it delivers and an overall feel-good factor. The problem I have with such movies is that the director takes for granted the average movie-goer. This is a complete lack of creativity on their part to dish out another movie on similar lines to the previous two. "Jaadhu ka jappi" and "Gandhigiri" in the first two made way to "aal iz well" in their latest offering. It is like Dan Brown writing most of his novels on a similar theme and the only thing you can take from his books is the wealth of information. Kamalhassan, according to many is a great actor. I agree he is a great actor but most of movies are a complete re-hash of Hollywood movies. He didn't have to think about his role in Tenali, Avvai Shanmughi, Unnaipol Oruvan to name a few. He already had a general sense of how to etch his character when he watched the original which in a way kills creativity both in acting and script-writing.

For all the above reasons, 3 Idiots - average, 2 stars out 5 and not any where in the same ball-park as a 'must watch'.

Indian Mentality

The incidents that have taken place in the last few days have been really troubling to say the least. That it invokes anger would be a mild way to describe the emotions of an Indian living anywhere on this planet.

The post-siege incident which caught my attention was the renewed "Quit India" movement by our fellow inhabitants of Indian soil in Mumbai. I have to say that it’s a great start. Kudos to all of you for being concerned about Mumbai's security. I definitely understand the seething rage all the Mumbaities have against the perpetrators of the heinous crime of such magnitude. I am glad that there is finally an initiative to rid the society of corruption and devil-may-care attitude of the politicians, the red-tapism that exists even to have the basic amenities. Hope all this anger doesn't fade away and there is a sustained call for change from the very bottom to the very top.

As I am happy about the reaction to such atrocities, it makes me sad to find out that people in Mumbai have woken up now because somebody did something bad to them. Where were these people when Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Jaipur and Delhi were bombed in the not too recent past? Even when bombs went off in the suburban trains in Mumbai there was no outcry. Where was their cry for "Quit India" then? Is this how you show you are patriotic? Is this patriotism? I guess not, if you were you would have raised your voice when other cities were bombed. Kashmir has been under relentless terror attack since God knows when. No one, as much as sighed about the atrocities. Are we united? Is this the way to be? If one is patriotic, then crimes against the nation, against citizens of this great nation, anywhere should be questioned and condemned.

There was a killing a few years back, that of a Civil Engineer from Bihar. His mistake was to question the mishandling of funds or something to that effect with regards to the Golden Quadrilateral project. No one would have known he was killed if he hadn't graduated from IIT. The Infosys chairman, Mr.Narayana Murthy, an IIT alum and hordes of other alumni of the institute, condemned the incident. Does this mean that those who get killed have to be from IIT to get noticed? I am sure there were other such incidents, where were the IITians then?

Readers of this post, albeit a very few, will argue that at least something is being done now instead of an indifferent attitude towards such incidents. My question is why is there interest only in isolated cases? Why can't people question every single wrong doing to others? I guess I am just cynical.