Mera Bharat Mahaan*

*(conditions apply)

Today's The Hindu had a great Op-Ed article about a retiree who spent a few months in the US with his son and found that country to be 'dull, lifeless and robotic'. The article proceeds to do a line by line comparison between India and the US, extolling the virtues of India and her spiritual, gregarious society. Despite the corny ending with the line 'Mera Bharat Mahaan', the article was a clear winner for the place of a lazy Sunday afternoon read.

But I felt that the article was lacking on two key fronts. Firstly, it bracketed the most raging problems of India within half a sentence; concerns such as overflowing filth, slums, lack of sanitation, congested roads, poverty and so on. I understand that the point of the article was to focus on India's open and vibrant society, but still I cannot fathom how we can compensate for lack of basic human rights with a vibrant festival calender. It is ironic that in the next few pages, there was an article on how Indian festivals put a deathly strain on the poor to overspend and keep up their image in tightly-linked societies.
Secondly, I think that the point of view of the article is a severely biased one. It was from the POV of a septuagenarian living in the conservative, traditional city of Chennai. Being no stranger to Chennaite septuagenarians myself, I can frankly say that that demographic do not adapt well. They come from very orthodox backgrounds and their comfort space is heavily defined by their surroundings. They are yet to come to grips with even basic technologies, so expecting them to be unbiased commentators on the American lifestyle is unfair and flawed.
Lastly i would like to make it clear that I love India for its vibrancy. I have gone abroad on a few occasions and have spent a significant amount of time abroad but i am sure that i will never be able to live abroad for long stretches. I am hard wired Indian. (Chennaite in particular) But even then i recognize that India needs to change. it needs to embrace the best of western cities and societies if it is to proceed on this track of growth. Issues such as open sewers must become the center of attention and not remain by the bys. Clapping ourselves on our backs for having vibrant society and disregarding the chronic ills of our country is myopic and potentially disastrous. While it is good to see the glass as half full, sometimes we must look at the empty half for the sake of future generations.

Western societies have, on occasions, given up traditions for the sake of modernization. But having endured for 10000 years, Indian traditions will put up a harder fight. The challenge, the unique challenge in fact, that India faces is rapidly embracing modernity while holding on to its vibrant traditionalism. That is not a bad challenge to face, if you ask me. 

It's raining, time to shut down.

Bangalore is going through a pretty wet patch of weather right now, thanks to Cyclone Nilam. Having grown up in Calcutta, I am no stranger to all day rains, water-clogged roads and overflowing gutters, but I have to admit Bangalore rains are quite different. It is not like Chennai rains, which always seem to be in a hurry. As if it were ashamed to be there, pouring over a town which is almost a desert. It starts and gets over before you know it. Whereas Calcutta rains are more like a seasoned wrestler. It takes its time. Having come punctually for hundreds of years, it knows the terrain. It splits its workload and systematically floods every part of the city. And you can actually feel it savoring every bit of it.

Bangalore over the last two days has been neither this nor that. It has rained continuously but not a downpour, it was rather like a steady fast drizzle. Accompanied by rib-stirring winds, the rains painted the city in a layer of mist and grey. Having devoured many English authors, i wonder if this is how London appears on most days of the year?
Some might find rainy weather to be quite depressing, but not me. I find the rains to be a very spiritual and personal experience. When your outside world is cloaked in water, you have little choice but to look inside.

Today we live in an age of consumerism. Information overload is no longer a possibility but rather the norm. With so much commotion outside, we dont get much time or energy to look within and explore the inner tracts of our own mind. As a kid, i remember watching the Calcutta rains. They would always be preceded by chronic power cuts. So without any power, there was no TV, radio or computer. so i would just look out at the window and watch the birds flying home or leaves floating on the rain water. its funny that after so many years, my memories of Calcutta are not about the grand Durga Puja Pandals i visited or the great tourist sites i saw a million times, but rather about these tiny rain-induced excursions into the mundane. I think the rains do that to you. They block out the noise and let you contemplate on the simplest of things with amazing clarity. I dont know if my time spent watching the rains led to any great ideas but i would like to think that they did.

In 2012, rains in India no longer mean chronic power-cuts in most places (thankfully, claim school kids studying hard for mid terms) so even when its pouring outside, we still have every gadget alive and kicking, ergo no stop to the rain of information. But i urge everybody to switch them off. Consider the rains to be the alarm from above to stop looking outside and to start looking inside. God knows, it does not rain often nowadays, so you wont have to do this e-exile very often. switch off everything, sit in the balcony and watch the rains pour. Relax with a cup of coffee and a good book, preferably a classic. Take in the smell of the water and the mud. In a city, we dont get many chances of experiencing nature, so consider the rains to be your tour guide to a more simpler time!  

a tweet a day...

I dont have many original thoughts. Or even if i do, they flash in and then get auto-erased. probably the reason why the blog has been inactive for so long! considering how miserable my experiences were with blogging, i did not fancy another disaster, so i decided to give twitter, the online micro-blog, a safe skip.
plus the fact that almost everyone i knew were on facebook, made my decision that much easier.

another reason i gave myself was that i had shitty internet connections in college which really did not merit me being updated 'in real time'.

but after joining work, with a super fast internet connection at home and office (and ample free time at hand!) I decided to give twitter a shot.

the beauty of twitter is that it is deceptively simple. it gives you 140 characters to say anything you want to say. so you type it and press the tiny bird icon to 'tweet' it to the world. voila.

but what they dont tell you is how incredibly hard it is to figure out what to say in those 140 characters!

Like any noob to twitter, i began with following the standard 'big-guns', Sub Swamy, Suhel Seth, R Sardesai etc etc and soon their tweets started pouring. For almost a week i just kept reading their posts without tweeting anything back, and it was fascinating!

only after spending hours scanning through tweets did i realize that twitter is giving us a telescopic view into that person's thought process. by cutting out the verbose prose, the advts, the intro and the conclusion, each tweet is like a nugget of pure information. whether it is useful to you or not is a different case altogether!

another fancy concept in twitter is that of 'following', you get to follow anyone who interests you and that way you will be assured of glimpses into what they are thinking through the day. vice versa, you can be followed by people who find you interesting. an elegant way of connecting people or rather their thoughts.

Two symbols which form a major part of tweets are '@' and '#'. The '@' is used to address any twitter member as a sort of a public conversation, while '#' is used to index the content of your tweet to a certain topic.

THese two things - following and the special symbols - are responsible, in my opinion, for the revolutionary effect of twitter in our lives. by such simple instruments twitter enables an actual real time conversation with people across the world. you may not know their names, their faces or their likes or dislikes, but for that #topic, you know their minds. by opening up the conversation to the whole world, twitter has scored where facebook and other social networks have failed. facebook is built upon the framework of a friend. and if you are not someone's friend, the conversation is a no starter. agreed, facebook was not created with the intention of being a multi-node conversation enabler, but that just makes twitter all the more special!

finally, anyone following the new HBO series, The Newsroom, would have got an idea about how much and how fast twitter is changing the way people report the news. one of the first experiments i did on twitter was comparing the time to report the news between news websites and twitter and for each big story including today's Kasab verdict, twitter scored big time! if you follow the right people on twitter, you could be one of the first persons in the world to know that piece of information and also you can retweet it and actually BE a part of the news process. something that makes tweeting, not just a fun pastime, but a social responsibility! :)

as a last word, i really regret not having taken to twitter before and i wish more of my friends join the bandwagon, but as they say, there is a time and place for everything. i am happy to finally be a part of the twitterverse and i dont think i want to leave any time soon! 

Love,
AV

My first experience with Linux

I was introduced to the world of computers through Windows Millennium edition. Being a 'dont question if its working fine' kinda guy, I did not even know that there existed operating systems apart from Windows. Even when I entered a premier technical school, windows gave me everything I needed. Even the much hated Vista did not seem so bad to me. It was only in my pre-final year that I was introduced to linux by a few friends. I started with Ubuntu 10.10 and since then, I have not even thought about going back to windows. If you are a noob at computing, then here's 10 things you may want to know.

1. Its different! Even with all its cool features and eye-catching backgrounds, windows does get a little stale at times. Predictability makes the whole computing experience extremely insipid. Linux on the other hand is new, fresh and makes for a intriguing new experience!
2. U don need to be a programmer to enjoy linux! Even though the concept of linux is that everyone contributes towards making it better, you need not ACTUALLY be a programmer. I am not a programmer. I just have a passing knowledge of coding and am not interested in it either. But despite using linux for almost two years now, I have not had to write a single line of code for it! Even non-programmers can contribute to the Open Source Movement by creating documentation or just giving your wish list for the future editions of the OS. By providing feedback, the programmers can make linux better for you!
3. Change is the name of the game! Another wonderful aspect of open source computing is the option for change at any point of time. Starting from the very Operating System to intricate Icon Designs, everything can be customised or changed to one's taste. In the last two years, I have changed from Ubuntu to Fedora to Linux Mint. Even though I am very happy with Mint, I intend of trying out the other distros as well. (distro stands for linux distribution such as Ubuntu and Fedora) each distro has its own philosophy and provides a different taste while computing.
4. Use Linux for what its meant ! Linux is free and developed by people like you and me. So it is not fair to expect a linux distribution to play Call of Duty any time soon, however what it does give you is a hassle-free environment for your standard computing needs. Browsing, office work, photo editing, video editing, multimedia etc can be performed seamlessly once you have ur OS set up. Dont waste your time in trying to make Windows applications work through special software like Wine. Its not worth the time and effort. Understand the limitations of Linux and your abilities in modifying it and you should not run into difficulties whatsoever.
5. Great learning experience! Windows is a great OS. But it unfortunately assumes that all its users are dumb. Hence over time, Windows makes u heavily dependant on it. Even engineers and scientists often do not know the basic concepts of an OS or a computer. If you are one of those who refuses to be dumbed down for anything then Linux is the choice for u.It will constantly makes u learn new things about computing and operating systems. Unlike windows, it wont make u dumb.

6. The power of the internet! I was never TAUGHT how to use linux. I had no idea how to install it, how to play my audio, how to install the applications I wanted, nothing. I was blank. But with a working internet connection and google, I was able to get everything set up in no time. The great thing about linux is that there are so many people out there who have faced the same challenge as you. So all you have to do is Ctrl+C=>Ctrl+V your problem on google and you should find a hit that solves your problem.
7. Dont get scared about the Terminal! Since there are so many distros of linux, people often find it convenient to perform tasks through the terminal. It is like the MS-DOS but way cooler. It is an extremely elegant way to do whatever you want. You can download, install, delete, organize ur folders etc by using the right commands. However, everyone is not required to be an expert at the terminal. Latest editions of distros like Ubuntu and Mint have in-built 'Software Centre' applications, through which one can get any software in a jiffy through a pleasing GUI.
8. No virus problems! Since linux distributions are constantly updated, it does not have any virus issues. It is a big relief to not constantly worry about virus-scanning everything!
9. Multi-OS computing! While linux gives you a lot, once in a while you do come across a cumbersome application that works only on windows. So it is always advisable to install windows as well. Earlier creating a seperate partition for a different OS used to be a tough job. There was a chance of destroying all data on the HD. It is a pity that fear for data loss serves as a deterrent for people against linux. Today, installing linux on your system is VERY safe and VERY easy. Unless you are intoxicated or have the IQ level of a troll, ur data should be unaffected.
10. Crashes! Since linux is all about hands-on learning, once in a while you may crash or freeze ur system. In which case, use Ctrl+SysRq+R+E+I+S+U+B to perform a clean restart of ur system. Do not do a hardware reboot as that may affect ur system boot files and THEN u are screwed.

The following are sites I found useful while learning the ropes of linux.

www.ida.liu.se/~TDDI05/labs/LXB%20-%20Linux%20Basics.pdf

www.open-of-course.org/courses/course/view.php?id=23

www.instructables.com/id/Linux-Terminal-Basics/

you may try out the following distributions first

ubuntu – www.ubuntu.com

linux mint - http://www.linuxmint.com/

once you are comfortable with these, you may try

fedora - http://fedoraproject.org/

please add your linux experiences/difficulties!

ECONOMICS 101

engineers, or rather engineering students are forced to cram the most mind-numbingly bizarre, useless, worthless, shittiest, senseless things ever written. in fact we spend so much time on such nonsense that we all forget to stay updated on the things that matter, such as, how to fill up govt institutions forms, how to write a withdrawal slip, how does a country make money?

i was shocked the other day when arun, wanted me to explain the concept of minting coins and printing notes. but thanks to the countless stupid things engineering students are forced to do, i could not find time for it. so here it goes.. economics 101 for arun kk.

in any economy we have something called the central bank which often operates parallel to the jurisdiction of the government. this institution is responsible for the monetary policy of the country, things like how much money to print, how to keep prices down, how to protect domestic markets from cheap foreign goods etc.

now money is an object that is universally accepted as payment for some other object. now the important point to remember here is that cash notes by themselves are worthless. (remember the Zimbabwe dollar of last year and the Deutsch mark after WW II). money has value only when it can be exchanged for something else. hence the real barometer of one s wealth is the amount of assets one has, and not the amount of money in the locker.

how does the central bank print money?

every currency has a value, that is set relative to some standard. Most countries set their currency value in relation to the amount of assets they hold. (some countries like china f*ck around with their currency value to boost their exports)

the assets could be land, government bonds, gold etc. if they have x amount of a particular asset, they can print a proportional amount of money and put it into the market. the more assets the central bank buys, the more money it can put into the market. likewise, when it sells assets, it has to take back money from circulation.

now till 1970s there was a system called the gold standard. it means that the currency of a country was directly correlated with the value of gold it held. this was a widely used system because of the following reasons :

1. it ensured that there will not be volatile changes in the value of the currency as the price of gold to a large extent is not erratic.

2. it induced deflation which generally goes down better with the public than inflation( though it can affect an economy very bad)

let us see if we can reason out why gold standard would cause deflation.

the economy is growing, more goods are being produced. but as the value of gold does not rise as steeply as the economy the amount of currency in the market is not enough for this growth. so manufacturers lower prices. this leads to deflation.

but in the 1970s this system was completely scrapped because the US felt that it made prevention of depressions and recessions difficult. you see, one way to prevent a depression is for the govt to pump in money into the economy. at such times central banks should have a longer rein to pump in money based on assets 'they hope to acquire'. while this makes depressions more difficult to occur, it literally means that the central banks today can print as much money as they want. (of course they are smart enough to do the right thing, usually) this is the reason why we see the rupee vs dollar standing at 35 two years back and 48 today. its a very volatile period for the currency market.

of course there are many many other factors which affect the monetary policy, but this is the bare sketch of it,

its been a very long blog. but i hope u learnt a thing or two. :P