When Love goes Berserk...

Love is really the most important and powerful emotion. It is love and its cousin passion which is driving the entire world; both living and non-living. And when love goes crazy some really crazy stuff can be expected. I experienced it first hand......................... as a spectator.

I am a light sleeper. A squeal of a mouse is enough to wake me up. And this quality has increased in me ever since my son was born. Since he wakes up at night and my wife is a sound sleeper so my brain has got tuned to be always in an alert state.
Anyways, that night it was around 1:40 am when I heard a grunt. A distant grunt. And followed by some heavy footsteps.

Arjun Albert, my son, was sleeping peacefully. I looked at his peaceful face. He looked so cute. But when he is awake, he is a complete don. The entire household revolves around him; literally. My string of thoughts was interrupted by another grunt. This time it was pretty near. And it immediately was followed by a series of heavy footsteps, some more grunts, more heavy steps, running......

My first reaction was that the sounds was coming from the next door neighbour's home which was occupied by a newly married couple. I was smiling initially when I was struck by the thought. But now I knew it was a love of different kind at work.

I peeped through the partially open window. In front of me was a dark, massive figure. A bull. And then another one. A small one. Another smaller one. and 5-6 more. Then I saw a COW...... sitting on the road. And all the bulls engaged in fight. No body was shouting. Just grunts. Horns locked. The two most massive ones were engaged in a duel. In the middle of the road, two massive bulls were engaged in a fight for the cow who had no idea why in the middle of night these bulls have got crazy. Anyways it was nightmare for me. See I am a hyperactive person, when it comes to safety. And I knew if this fiight moves sideways and they ram into the wall of our room it will fall like a pack of cards. I have no regards for GDA's construction. They use cement in sand rather than sand in cement.

As I watched the massive ones kept pushing each other forward or backwards. And I was praying vehemently that this fight should not move sideways.And my prayer was hardly over when I heard a loud noise. I rushed to my kitchen to see what had happened as the sound emanated from there. I was shocked to see the two massive figures almost inside our veranda. The newly constructed veranda wall had partially collapsed. I froze in fear. The bulls were not ready to give up. Then they moved on to the road again, much to my relief, and the next thing I saw was the neighbour's car (Maruti 800 old model) being pushed out of our lane. By the time i realized what was happening i heard commotion from the other side of the street, near my bed room. As i reached there and peeped out again I saw that sensing a possible escape route the cow dashed out of the street from the other side followed by 7-9 smaller bulls running after her.

With my street and home now safe and a collapsed wall, which I can only take care of the next day, I decided to sleep.

The next day, the actual picture dawned on us. Two cars, one auto, four walls and a couple of cycles had been extensively damaged in the previous night's fight for love.

The missing link

This real story is about 8 years old. In the August of 2005 I recieved a parcel from my then-best-friend AA. Found a small letter attached with it which said the following.




Dear Shubhu
I am fine here. My studies are going on fine. 
Occasionally I do also get to talk to Vivek over the phone when he calls me at my hostel posing as my cousin brother(ha ha ha !). 
Anyways, his birthday is nearing and I wanted to gift him something. SO I am sending you this parcel. Please hand it over to him. I AM TWO HEARTS OF CLAY.
AA
PS: Parcel khol mat liyo varna tera sar phod dungi.  

\
Now the letter was all fine except the line (which I have highlighted). I didn;t understand what she meant by "I am hearts of clay".

I couldn't figure out the meaning of the sentence. As requested I handed over the parcel to AA's boyfriend Vivek. But the phrase continued to haunt me.

For more than 4 months I kept thinking time and again the meaning of the sentence but couldn't figure out. The sentence didn't seem to make any sense even contextually. It was frustrating.

November end AA returned home and came to meet me. Even before she could greet me I placed the letter in front of her with the sentence underlined. "I am two hearts of clay"???  I asked and explanation. What dos it mean??? And she read it and laughed. The she wrote something and gave the paper back to me.

It read, "I AM SENDING TWO HEARTS OF CLAY".

The packet contained two clay hearts as gifts.

 

My BMI Problem - Part II

In the last post I posted about the problem I am faced with. It has been around three days now and I can see a slight reduction in my weight. From 95 kg it has come down to 92 kg. So In about  4 days I have reduced approximately 2-3 kgs. That is fairly good.

My game plan.
I have understood two reasons for my condition.

1. Extremely Sedentary life style
2. High Calorie food - Carbs.

So I have started to do the following.

1. Contrary to popular concepts starving or too mush reduction of diet will never lead to a permanent reduction of weight. The moment the body understands that it is starving it switches from burning reserve fat to burning muscles. That can be dangerous to both muscles and kidneys. So I decided to eat the same level to keep myself from starving but instead of carbs and fats I have decided to replace them with high fiber and protein food. So wheat (rotis) and rice are nearly out (being born in a BONG family you can never really give up rice) and replaced with oats. The following I have done.

Breakfast - Before (2 + 2 rotis and veg / eggs) Now(skimmed milk + oats and some veg/eggs)

Lunch (Not much change has happened as my wife and mother both are against giving up rice altogether so I have reduced the quantity of rice to half and increased the consumption of dal, veggies, fish and other stuff which are less on carbs.)

Dinner - Before (4/5 rotis and veg/eggs) Now (2 rotis and veg/eggs)

2. Also I have added walking (brisk) to my schedule. So that I may be able to burn off whatever calories I am adding. (Free hand exercise is still not added as the pain is still there)

I hope this will work.

I am not a gym person. Went to gym twice in the last 6 years and ran away from there too. It is not my cup of tea.
Jogging and running is also nearly out of question because of my extremely pathetic stamina as well as laziness.

So I hope my game plan will work. Lets see.

My BMI problem

I don't know about others but I definitely work on the principle of Rocket. Unless my a** is on fire I usually don't move(read work). And this became even more clear with the new trouble that I am faced with.

I am not a typical fat person. No way. But what I do have is a huge pot belly which has become so huge that it literally hangs out nowadays. In fact a good friend of mine once joked, "shubham's belly walks ahead of him."

And I never really took care to reduce it or control my eating habits at all. But as it was to be God has had some other plans for me. Since last to last saturday I was having a bad backache which limited my mobility to the extent that I had to remain confined to the bed for longer periods.

A recent x-ray confirmed my worst fears. The lower spine  Lumbar L5-6 hsa developed a small gap. This is due to the fact that I am massively overweight as well as i have a very sedentary life style.

The following are the stats right now.
Height - 1.7 m
Weight - 95 kg
BMI - >32.5
Age - 31.7 years
Waist - > 44 inches
Body Fat > 29 %

Now that was alarming for me. Doctors said that if this continues for another couple of years then I am looking at the possibility of a slip disc.

So that means I have everything against me right now and I need to address this problem rightaway. So here is the game plan that I am following right now.

My target is to give myself a gift on the birthday. And the gift will be Weight < 80 kg; Waist < 38 inches; and no backaches.

For this to happen I have started to monitor my weight and waist on a daily basis. I will update as often as I can.  And that too on FB. I hope my friends will keep reminding me of the fact that this is very important for me to stay alive, fit and healthy.

Installing Whatsapp on Linux/ UBUNTU Laptop / PC / Computer

Hi there.
Finally I was able to install whatsapp on my laptop. This I had to do because my smartphone broke down and I couldn't help stop using whatsapp. So had to find a way out.
Here I am sharing with you the method to do the same.

I have done this on UBUNTU 12.04 LTS.

To run Whatsapp you need android. So let us first install android emulator. The following steps should be followed as is.  Open up the terminal. Then type in the terminal the following

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre openjdk-6-jdk icedtea6-plugin

Then type the following.

wget http://dl.google.com/android/android-sdk_r20-linux.tgz

Wait for the download to complete. Then type the following.

tar -xvzf android-sdk_r20-linux.tgz

Then type the following

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

Once he download is finished type the following.

cd ~/android-sdk-linux/tools

Followed by

./android

The Android Virtual Device configuration set up will open up.
If the AVD manager doesn't open up then try the following command.

./android avd

Go to “Tools” > “Manage AVDs” on Android SDK Manager’s menu. It will open up AVD Manager.

Click on “Add” button to create a new AVD. An example configuration of a new AVD is shown below.

If an AVD has been successfully created, you will see the following confirmation.

You can check the list of available AVDs as follows.

 ~/android-sdk/android list avds   

 Available Android Virtual Devices:  
   Name: my_avd  
   Path: /home/xmodulo/.android/avd/my_avd.avd  
  Target: Android 4.2 (API level 17)  
    ABI: armeabi-v7a  
   Skin: 800x1280  
  Sdcard: 1G  

To launch Android emulator with the AVD that you have created, highlight the AVD on AVD Manager, and click on “Start” button on the right sidebar.

Alternatively, you can start Android emulator directly from command line as follows. In this case, specify “@[your_avd_name]” as an argument to the emulator.

 emulator @my_avd   

Booting up Android emulator may be slow (even taking minutes) depending on your hardware. Once Android emulator is successfully launched, you will see an running instance of Android device.

- See more at: http://linuxicle.blogspot.com/2013/06/how-to-run-android-emulator-on-ubuntu.html#sthash.tGRleQ1e.dpuf

 In the "tools" under "Manage AVDs" set up a new AVD. Then start up the avd and wait for the emulator to open up. Once done you will have your android up and running. Thereafter visit the play store through your emulated android and download and install whatsapp as you will do on your smartphone. And enjoy!!!

Go to “Tools” > “Manage AVDs” on Android SDK Manager’s menu. It will open up AVD Manager. Click on “Add” button to create a new AVD. An example configuration of a new AVD is shown below. - See more at: http://linuxicle.blogspot.com/2013/06/how-to-run-android-emulator-on-ubuntu.html#sthash.tGRleQ1e.dpuf

Go to “Tools” > “Manage AVDs” on Android SDK Manager’s menu. It will open up AVD Manager.

Click on “Add” button to create a new AVD. An example configuration of a new AVD is shown below.

If an AVD has been successfully created, you will see the following confirmation.

You can check the list of available AVDs as follows.

 ~/android-sdk/android list avds   

 Available Android Virtual Devices:  
   Name: my_avd  
   Path: /home/xmodulo/.android/avd/my_avd.avd  
  Target: Android 4.2 (API level 17)  
    ABI: armeabi-v7a  
   Skin: 800x1280  
  Sdcard: 1G  

To launch Android emulator with the AVD that you have created, highlight the AVD on AVD Manager, and click on “Start” button on the right sidebar.

Alternatively, you can start Android emulator directly from command line as follows. In this case, specify “@[your_avd_name]” as an argument to the emulator.

 emulator @my_avd   

Booting up Android emulator may be slow (even taking minutes) depending on your hardware. Once Android emulator is successfully launched, you will see an running instance of Android device.

- See more at: http://linuxicle.blogspot.com/2013/06/how-to-run-android-emulator-on-ubuntu.html#sthash.tGRleQ1e.dpuf

Go to “Tools” > “Manage AVDs” on Android SDK Manager’s menu. It will open up AVD Manager.

Click on “Add” button to create a new AVD. An example configuration of a new AVD is shown below.

If an AVD has been successfully created, you will see the following confirmation.

You can check the list of available AVDs as follows.

 ~/android-sdk/android list avds   

 Available Android Virtual Devices:  
   Name: my_avd  
   Path: /home/xmodulo/.android/avd/my_avd.avd  
  Target: Android 4.2 (API level 17)  
    ABI: armeabi-v7a  
   Skin: 800x1280  
  Sdcard: 1G  

To launch Android emulator with the AVD that you have created, highlight the AVD on AVD Manager, and click on “Start” button on the right sidebar.

Alternatively, you can start Android emulator directly from command line as follows. In this case, specify “@[your_avd_name]” as an argument to the emulator.

 emulator @my_avd   

Booting up Android emulator may be slow (even taking minutes) depending on your hardware. Once Android emulator is successfully launched, you will see an running instance of Android device.

- See more at: http://linuxicle.blogspot.com/2013/06/how-to-run-android-emulator-on-ubuntu.html#sthash.tGRleQ1e.dpuf

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk

Understanding Husbands - A Rare Species

"Understanding husbands", that rarest of rare species which is supposed to listen to his wife and wife's paternal family, and also listen to his own parents and still balance both with elan. Why is it that most husbands fall in two major categories: (a) inclined towards wife or (b) inclined towards parents?
Why the middle category of Understanding Husbands is a rarest of rare category?

Here is the reason.
It is much easier to take sides than be neutral. Let us take a simple (seemingly hypothetical) case study.

It is 02nd of October, Saturday. Husband has a holiday. Next day is Sunday. So two back to back holidays.
Wife: Let us go to my parent's place as my parents have planned a trip to Haridwar.
Mother (of Husband): Let us go to Agra togethar. We have never visited that place together.

Now how would husbands react? The easy path is taken by two types of husbands.

The husbands inclined to wives would go with wife and neglect the parent's diktat. It is obviously easier to quell fight at one place than both.

The husbands inclined to parents would simply say a no to wife's proposal. Again it is easier to quell the wife's voice.

99% of husbands fall in the above two categories, at least till his parents are alive.

it is the 1% husbands who stand out for being neutral. And the problem is he can't decide what to do? He can neither upset his wife nor his parents because they both are valid at their points. So now what? A stalemate condition. It is this situation which is the most difficult thing to handle. And that is why most husbands choose sides rather than remaining neutral.

There can be quite a few possibilities that the neutral husbands can take. Either he decides against going in either of places. Justice done to both sides. Problem is he will be battered by both sides. Wife and Mother both will batter him.

Other possibility is to postpone one trip to next week but then he will be battered again as egos tend to flare up when in-laws are concerned. So that creates further problems.

The above is a simple example that I have quoted. there are much more complex situations where te neutral husbands are always at the receiveing ends from both sides. hence husbands donot like being neutral coz that is too much to ask for. Hence they take sides and therefore UNDERSTANDING HUSBANDS hardly exist. 

A Case of Chinese Whisper !!!

Once upon a time, there was a king who one fine morning went to toilet. There while doing his job, he found a beautiful feather of a bird which he didn't recognize. So he brought it along with him. At his home he told his wife, "See I got this feather. I found it where I was doing my job. But I couldn't figure out which bird it belonged to. So i brought it here. Can you shed any light on it? But ya please don't tell it to anyone." 

After a few days the queen told her friend. "See I am going to tell you something that you must promise you will not tell anyone. That day my husband, the king, shitted out a feather of a bird. I was shocked to see it."

That friend after a few days told one of her friends "See what i am going to tell you you must not tell anyone. The kings shitted out a bird the other day."

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
This went on some time and finally the king heard that "one fine day the king went to shit and hundreds of birds flocked in and out of his crack. Since then this has been a recurrent happening".

The king fainted. 

I am BACK

ITS been AGES that I was GONE
but NOW i AM back FOR good.
DEAR all YOU will HEAR stories FROM me. LOTS of THEM.

Vacations Over

Come 06-Jan-2014 and our schools open after the winter vacations. These vacations have been really hard for me specially because of my health issues. But anyways I had been waiting for the vacations to get over. I generally can't do much work sitting at home. For me constant work environment is the only way to do some work. Any vacation or holiday and I am as good as dead for that period of time.

Did nothing in this vacations except for getting Physiotherapy done on my lower back which was troubling me for some time. No other productive work whatsoever.

Sometimes I feel like shouting my heart out--- I HATE VACATIONS. But then I dare not for I love them too as they give me a break from the stupid routine. So I am kinda messed up as of now trying to decide for myself, whether I love vacations or hate them.

God knows.

Happy New Year 2014 -- A To-DO list

Happy New Year 2014 to you all.

2013 had been in general a good year. 2014 will be better.

Hope to keep writing all through the year.

 

The Year That Was - 2013

Every year I write down about the previous year and how it was for me. This year will be no different. Though another 48 hours are left for 2013 to be finally over but for all of us it is practically over, unless of course something earth shattering happens, the chances of which seem to be remote as of now.

Starting from the beginning, this is the first year in my career(which started in 2006) when I didn't change any job. WOW!!! What a change, I take it up as a positive change. Else a disgruntled, sociopath, eccentric and an impossible man like me staying in the same job for more than a year is too much to ask for. And ya hats off to Amity for withstanding my eccentricities and giving me th required help to create my innovations.

As for people are concerned I found out quite a few things.

1. People can be and are very unreasonable specially when it comes to accepting their own faults.
2. Women in general (Hey I am not antifeminist. This is just the naked truth) are always ready to bitch against others. Wow.... I have a huge fan following in my own school who would chop my head off my shoulders given a chance. But I must also say that there are quite a few good female friends of mine who stand by me always. Thanks a lot to them and anyone reading this would know in which category they belong to.
3. I have strongly come to believe in the following statement,, "IF TWO EX-LOVERS ARE STILL IN CONTACT THEN EITHER THEY ARE STILL IN LOVE, OR THEY NEVER WERE". God knows which is true.

Many life changing events also took place and they are given below.

1. I became a dad of a boy whom we named SRIJAN. 
2. I became a teacher trainer, courtesy my wife.
3.  I have received more medals as a teacher in the last one year than I ever received in my entire school time spanning 15 years. (Actually as a school student I never won anything!!!)
4. My projects have again reached national level at various science competitions. 
5. I finally completed BEd.
6. Finally my home loan was approved and right now I am paying EMIs. Really I am so happy to pay the EMIs. 
7. Became a co-owner of a company. 

From health point of view this was an average year and could have been a better one had this last minute problem not occurred which has forced me to become bed ridden for the past 4 days.

From relationship point of view things went on pretty smoothly. My ex-girlfriend  contacted me in September "to touch base with me" which means probably to talk to me for some time (hey don't laugh..... can't I have an ex-girlfriend?) and then kicked me again in October. Sala samajh nahi aaya ki contact hi kyun kiya tha jab fir se laath maarni thi. 

 Financially everything was  more or less smooth.

What am I looking for the next year?? More innovations, and enrollment into another study program and become a better teacher. And anything else that God will give me.

सैलाब

Before I begin, let me tell you the background of the story.
I have always been a foodie of sorts. Always loved to eat; whatever, wherever and without limits. And this always led to a series of stomach upsets. After years of torture finally my stomach decided, enough is enough and got back at me. It started to fire at wrong times; in the middle of a winter night when the world is curled up inside a quilt in deep sleep, I used to be shivering on the top of a western style seat of what-you-know-very-well !!! And that was not all. Just when I was about to leave my home for college, my stomach would start churning and blasting at high decibels. So this is the background to the events that transpired that day.

All I remember was it was day sometime in September. The weather was cool. I as usual got ready for college and waited for my stomach to start its daily routine, but it didn't. Overjoyed I started for the gruelling 3 hour journey. I went on foot for 1.5 kilometers to ALT Center to catch the 6:30 am DTC bus to Shivaji Stadium. As I entered the bus and took the seat the first sign of trouble emerged. A nimble footed air leaked from the insides and I felt a bit awkward. None the less I continued. By the time I got down at ITO the nimble footed air leaks had turned into high decibel explosions which, howsoever I tried to suppress, would leak out with disastrous effects which I would not like to share here.

I got into bus no 425 from ITO to Deshbandhu college. I reached around 8:20 am. As I entered the college premises I realised the need to reach where-you-know-very-well as urgently as possible. So  I entered the loo of Physics Department. My urgency was overcome by the terror that was hanging in front of me. Actually not terror, but nearly 11-12 eight legged terrors were hanging from their webs. Being extremely courageous (!!!!) I came out and started to look for alternatives. Bio department was no better; Chemistry department was locked; English department, New Block, Old Block Admin Block and where not (except probably the principal office) I had peeped into every one of the loos and the eight legged freaks were all there to welcome me. My fear of spiders was greater than the fear of being seen in a YELLOW trouser.

I realised that a couple of kilometers from there, Nehru Place, had 3 public toilets which were operated by Sulabh International and were neat and clean. So I immediately made my mind to go there. I had to walk these 2 kilometers as I could not rick getting a bad jerk to my already delicate stomach and nearby areas due to bus or auto movements. To my utter horror all the three toilets were closed. As I was so sure that I will find atleast one of them open, I had momentarily lowered my guard only to realise immediately that I was in a great trouble.

"Marta kya nahi karta" and "Where there is a will, there is a way" combined together and told me to go to ITO, 14 kilometers from there.

Auto and its jerks were out of question. I boarded a bus, 425. The bus was empty, and I was standing. The conductors politely asked me to sit down when I told him, "Bhaiya, baith gaya to fir uthna mushkil ho jayega. Abhi filhaal situation thoda sangeen hai".

The bus stopped near the Old fort crossing and I could see that the bus may reach late and I might need a faster means of transport.

I got down and hired an auto for Rs. 40. The situation was so desperate that I had to take the jerk risk. The auto reached the ITO crossing where there used to be a Public Toilet. I handed over a Rs. 100 note to the auto driver who told me he had no change but if I waited he could get it for me. I just asked him to give me some coins that he had and he gave me Rs. 11 worth of coins. I rushed away telling him to keep the rest. I could look at the disbelief in his eyes, but he might not have known that I was in a greater danger of creating more disbelief around me.

I hurtled into the toilet. Threw my bag into the lap of the attnedent; pushed a waiting man outside the toilet door, and entered it. I bolted the door from inside even as the man standing before me started to hurl curses and abuses at me.

it was Indian styled one and I just managed to sit down properly when the flood gates finally gave away. Five minutes of landslide and I felt relieved finally.

Ten minutes later I was sitting in the ALT - Shivaji bus returning home.

Till date that was the most frustrating and hilarious moment of my life.

Freedom...

Are we really free??

The question is broad in sense because that forces us to ask another question, FREE FROM WHAT??

That brings up a plethora of issues starting from freedom in our own nation to freedom of expression to freedom of one's privacy, and the issues are never ending. But the answer to all of this is one small word with huge implications, a resounding NO.

Someone might claim that I have gone insane or might say I am being too pessimistic. But I will only smile and say, "wait and watch".

Let us for example look at the following scenarios.
1. India became so called Independent in 1947 and our constitution became enforced in 1950. Now that was a cool six decades back. And yet backward people have become more backward. People have become more and more divided on the lines of communities and castes. Vote bank politics rules the roost. Reservations on the line of caste has more priority than merit. Are we free from caste-ism yet???!!!

2. Today an IAS officer is being shunted out unceremoniously for doing his/her duties. The political parties are joining hands not to take the country forward but to thwart the citizens of the nation from accessing their privy deals. Are we free to voice our concerns???!!!

3. According to Government an urban individual can survive at Rs. 27 per day and hence cannot be considered to be BELOW POVERTY LINE !!! Are these guys joking??? Then who can be called to be below poverty line, "those that are dead due to hunger ???". And we are free !!!!

4. China and Pakistan have staked claims to vast amount of our territory; Pakistan has been inflicting wounds one after the other and we shamelessly extend the olive branch to them knowing well how adept they are in backstabbing and we say we are free!!

5.From getting a simple work done such as a driver's license to a more complex one such as a house registration, one cannot get through the hurdle of BABUS without being fleeced. And we are free!!!

6. A person cannot really practice his choice of religion for the fear of being murdered by the religious fanatics. And we are free!!

7. A girl and a boy were mercilessly butchered to death in the name of FAMILY HONOUR because they made the mistake to fall in love. And numerous such incidents happen almost on a daily basis. And we are free!!

I really wonder was this the freedom that our freedom fighters envisaged for us?

Friends, are we really free?? For if this is freedom then I am not sure about the meaning of archaism and anarchy... Probably we were better under the British Rule for atleast we could have pointed fingers at others rather at ourselves which is far more painful.

The Miserable Life !!

Life so miserable, I can hardly open my eyes
It seems it will pass in a jiffy, while I watch it pass
In front of my eyes, moist and reluctant to let go of the past.

I could have, should have, may be are all dead
I thought I will but I failed
In this failure today I try to find solace

How, when and where did it all go wrong
I know and yet I can do nothing
For the time has fleeting sense and I cannot go back.

At times I feel angry, but I can't shout
I feel betrayed, but I can't punish
For it is me and only me who has done it all.

Till I die I will live with this
That I could have but I didn't
That I should have, but I couldn't

Wish the time comes back
Or gives me one more chance
So I may redeem myself.

And... You call this Entertainment !!??

I belong to an era which saw the virtual explosion of many firsts -- Cable TV, Mobiles, Internet, Smart Phones, DTH TV, and many more. Also I belong to an era which saw the rise and fall of many a TV serials which ran into years of telecasts and whose stories would wound so much around the "central theme" that eventually the theme would be lost to what can be called "mediocrity of story lines". Anyways more about them a bit later.
HUM LOG, CIRCUS, NUKKAD and many such serials are a product of bygone era. As a child I saw them, never really understood much about them but still enjoyed. The simplicity of NUKKAD and later NAYA NUKKAD; Mungerilal ke Haseen Sapney, etc., still strikes a chord. Why to go so much back into the future, even serials like Shrimaan Shrimati were so much fun to watch.
How many of you remember "Surabhi" and Turning Point? I remember it vividly. One of my earliest source of knowledge was these two serials. Surabhi and its anchors Siddhartha Kak and Renuka Shahne would mesmerize us for the entire show and take us to places and lands unknown. And who can forget the anchoring of Girish karnad in Turning Point. Scientific knowledge presented in such a beautiful manner.

Fast forward to the years after 2000. With the advent of Cable and now DTH TV the number of channels have simply exploded. From the virtual no choice except DD National and DD Metro now we had well over a 100 channels. Spoilt for choices the number of serials went up exponentially. And from utterly simple serials we are now faced with the new craps known as SAAS BAHU serials.

Every other serial starts with a different theme. Balika Badhu; Kahani Ghar Ghar Ki; Kyuni ... Saas bhi kabhi bahu this; and now the same stories packaged with different names and characters are being presented between 8:00 pm to 12:00 pm... And not just hindi, but even Bangla channels have started to copy the same ideas.

Except for a couple of serials most dwell on almost the same story line. And ya writing a story is so much easy now.
Throw in a mother-in-law from Monster Inc. and add a NANAD (sis-in-law)... throw in a couple of brothers both married; add a daughter in law who is so quite that Manmohan Singh would get blushes; torture, both mental and physical, is endured in the name of parampara; The wierdo in-laws are shown constantly making schemes to malign the daughter in law and whoever they can think of for apparantly unknown reasons; suddenly there is a twist in the tale.
The actor might have demanded higher wages so an accident occurs and the  age old system of AMNESIA + PLASTIC SURGERY is applied and an entire new story line is started parallel to the main line. By the time the new actor with a new face is integrated back to the main story the viewer has essentially forgotten what the main theme of the story was.
Never understood one thing; if plastic surgeries really dole out such fantastic faces then why cant they be applied to the n-number of burn victime scattered all across the globe??? Seems the TV producers have acquired the surgeons from outer space!!!! Hmmm alien contacts.
And Amnesia. God.... its so easy to forget everything and remember it back too after the TRPs have evened out again.

And the effect all this has on the WOMEN of our nation???
My mother feels perpetually that one day I will definitely kick her out of the house after forcing her to sign on the papers !!!! What papers??? God only knows. Or may be the producer of the serial she got inspired from.
My mother and wife fight at times and I watch them rather with a feeling of respect and awe.... both are perfect emulators of the fights I have seen them watch on the Prime Time TV sops. They are becoming experts.

A girl is sitting on a temple stair case; a boy playfully places a garland around her neck; some stupid ritual says the girl now has to marry the boy or she risks being made into a devdasi; the girl manages to push the boy into marrying her; and now when after many twists and turns she is finally settled into the boys family comes the ex-girlfriend of the boy to jeopardize their marriage.

Last two years I am forced to watch this stupid confusion at night and when I switched off the TV when this serial was being telecasted I was shouted at. I simple asked, " Don't you guys get bored watching this shit?". Came the reply, "After the entire day we need to be entertained"...

I always thought that entertainment was to lighten you up. Songs, dances, humour, thrill, adventure etc., seems to qualify as entertaining stuff. But in-laws scheming to throw out the daughter from the house; one girl scheming to throw our another married one out of her marriage; a lady Manmohan Singh enduring the taunts and torture...... and you call this Entertainment???!!!!!

I call it a blatant violation of the  most intricate piece of invention by mother nature..... Human Mind.

What do you say???

Some recent happenings

I wait for the entire year for these 5 days and Lo! it is over in a jiffy. Even before I could start feeling the fervor of the Puja it was over. And now 24 hours after the immersion of Ma Durga's idol, I am feeling kinda sad. Anyways these couple of months had been very eventful. So here are some of those events.
Meeting with an old friend : Caught up with an old friend with whom I had not spoken in quite a few years. And now we have fought over some issue again and we have vowed, 3rd time now, not to talk to each other again. I hope this vow too wont last that long.

Mathamity: Though I was not an official part of MathAmity (inter amity mathematics project competition) I did have three projects directly under my guidance. Two of them won bronze medals while the third and the most sophisticated one did not win anything. I think this loss has more to do with the shortsightedness of the judges than any flaw in the project itself. Anyways our school won the middle school trophy as well as the rolling trophy owing to our tally of 3 Golds and 3 Bronze medals.

New Projects: As usual I am again upto something. My greatest problem is that when I get an idea I am very enthusiastic about it till I can see that it can be realised. The moment I see that it has been completed I lose that excitement. This has more to do with my love for unsolved problems than anything else.

Durga Puja: This Durga Puja, as I mentioned earlier, came and went away in a jiffy. So not much to write about it.

I have stopped counselling girls about which laptop to buy

A few weeks back, a friend of mine called me up, "hey shuv I need to buy a lappy. Which one to take? My budget is upto 40k". I replied back, "what purpose do you need a lappy for?". "I want to read books, listen to music, watch movies and ya do some computer programming stuff too.", she retorted. I said "ok. let me see. i write back to you."

Later that evening I wrote back.
Dear Buddy
The following are the specs you might require for your basic purpose.
A processor Core i3 3rd gen; 1 TB hdd; 2-4 GB ram; you may include a graphics card too but thats optional; web cam; and other ports do come anyways.
I suggested HP, Dell and Lenovo. Also a couple of Samsung products.

The next day she wrote back. "Hey Shuv, thanks for the mail. That was pretty informative but can you specify some models with price. That would be great help."

So I sat down to do some search and suggested her 7 models. Most from HP and Dell as they have good customer service and give good models with fair price.

Then she enquired, "Hey shuv will I be able to connect 3G dongle with all of them?"
I said, "yes why not?"
"Ok. Thanks a lot buddy".

There were no more exchanges after wards for nearly a week. A week later I went to her home and enquired about the lappy she was thinking of buying. She said that she has bought one.

She then showed me the model. A SONY VAIO, PINK COLOURED one.
I was shocked. I asked why she went for it. She just replied. "It was pink and cute".

That day I vowed never to counsell another lady about laptops because at the end of the day it is the colour and cuteness that matters.

India --- The Superpower !!!

We Indians, in general, have this very bad habit of boasting about various things like our IT capabilities and our CULTURE etc. But a serious thought reveals that these two and many other such things are grossly overvalued by us.

Very often I read we Indians are IT Superpower. Well when I first heard of this oxymoronic word I thought that since we are an IT super power we should be having (1) our very own Operating System, (2) our very own APPLICATION SOFTWARES which we will be running in our systems (3) our very own PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES ...... and much more our own things. Unfortunately I couldn't find any worthwhile stuff that can make me proud and say yes we are a super power in IT. When I confronted some of my friends and elders with this I was trounced with logics like the following...... "first ever email service was designed by an indian...."...."without we indians half the silicon valley will fall apart" .... "we indians are the backbone of all great firms like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Open Source Softwares...."........
The truth is rather very harsh for us and our ego doesn't allow us to gulp it. Every building requires one chief engineer. Under him are 10 supervisors. And under each supervisor are 100s of workers, labourers. We Indians are those labourers. Hundreds of thousands of labourers providing services to international firms and working for them. Our IT super prowess is actually our demographic super prowess. The day US, UK and European countries stop outsourcing IT jobs to India, we will fall from being an IT superpower. A harsh truth which we can hardly gulp.

Then we have culture to boast of. What kind of culture are we talking about. A culture in which women are killed before they see the light of the day? A culture where people are discriminated due to their birth and not due to their work? A culture which teaches us to become more self centred than otherwise??

My Friend Asif was having a discussion with me and he was right to point out that in India every man wants to earn as much so that he can leave money for his coming generations. Philanthropy is the last thing on their list, if at all. Look at Warren Buffet. He has willed that his sons will have to make their own money and he will give away everything that he has earned in charity. Can we think of a single Indian here???

We look at foreigners with disdain. We say they have no culture. if killing females, discriminating against people, and being racist against own people is our culture then its good not to have one. From a hair pin to ocean liners every stuff we can think of has been invented outside India. And we are proud of our culture and science. We keep on harping what we knew ten thousand years back. We harp about PUSHPAK VIMANA as the first aeroplane. We harp about AYURVEDA. And yet when we get gangarin on our body or cancer, we don't go to ayurveda. We rush to allopathy, the foreign medicine concept. Are we being ignorant or outright hypocrits?

On one hand we use the stuff invented by foreigners and on the other hand we despise them. We Indians are Superpowers in only one thing- Being Hypocrites.

A Teacher's Apology

This apology was long overdue.

All those teachers who are teachers "by choice" and not "by default" will understand and appreciate what I am about to apologize about, but I don't expect the same from the "by default" teachers. So that means only about 2% of all the teachers who will be reading this apology will appreciate and understand the apology and very frankly I can live with that number.

For sometime now I have been reading in newspapers, magazines and listening to debates and discussions on TV channels regarding the degradation of the education system of our nation and how students are shying away from pure and basic sciences and even higher regions of technical education in favour of money minting careers. Surprisingly I have found that the very people who are debating over this topic, for example Principals of various schools, expert teachers and panel members and concerned parents, are the ones responsible for this degradation. And unfortunately they are now trying to pull me into their ranks.

I would today tender a humble apology to my students, student's parents, school administrators and other related or unrelated people regarding what I am trying to do.

All my life I have striven to make my students understand physics and implement it. Day in and day out I have been trying to help my students understand the fun of physics and at the same time I have been designing questions that would help me judge their mettle. I believe in trial-by-fire method when it comes to examinations. My students are forever scared about my question papers for they know very well I will force them to think. And today I would say I am really sorry for that. I am sorry to have forced you to think. I am sorry to have forced you to get rid of rote-learning. I am sorry to have asked questions in exams which seem to be out of syllabus but very well a part of the topic and you got trapped in my trap. I am sorry folks. I am sorry for testing your knowledge and application abilities. I am sorry that because of me and my questions you guys are not able to score brilliantly. And I am sorry to have put you through the trial by fire.

All my life I have tried to tell the parents of students the necessity of exercising one's brains and have time and again requested them to stop looking at marks for once and concentrate on concepts and their application instead. And I am sorry for have failed you miserably. I failed to make you understand the need of self learning; the need of scientific exploration; the need of thinking out of the box; and the need to apply concepts. I have failed you and I am extremely sorry for that. I failed to give set questions to your children beforehand so that I may later make question paper from the same set of questions thereby giving your child a shot at fame. I am sorry. Extremely sorry to have asked questions to your children which seem to be out of topic but are very much based on the same principles that I have taught them. I am sorry.

Finally I am sorry to the various administrators I have worked under. I failed to comply to your diktats. I failed to teach students the way you wanted. I failed to keep both students (your "customers") and their parents (your "clients") happy by teaching them only what is given in NCERT and nothing more. I went beyond NCERT. I tried to pull my students up to a standard. I tried to make them think and reason out everything and in the process I told them to write their own answers; I told them to think beyond the obvious; I told them not to believe in what everyone believes unless you have necessary proofs; I set questions so hard that your customers failed miserably. I am sorry to the admin to have made such blunders.

Finally I would apologize to the entire fraternity of teachers (specially the 98% default teachers) whom I have often landed in trouble for my histrionics. I tried out different methods and ways and topics to teach and you guys had to emulate it. I landed you in trouble. I am sorry for that. I am sorry for trying to teach beyond the normal topics. I am sorry for not listening to you when you told me, "Sir, work only as much as you are paid". I am sorry.

But I would also like to say sorry to you all for the future to come.
I am sorry as I am going to make life tough for my students.
I am sorry for I am going to ask questions related to the concepts that I will teach but will not be explicitly given in the book.
I am sorry as I am going to push my students into a trial by fire; I will make their lives miserable by giving them small but challenging homeworks and projects to do.
I am sorry as I will not let my students get into the habit of rote learning.
I am sorry for i will not stick to NCERT.
I am sorry for I will not let any other teacher or admin guy interfere in my way of teaching.
Guys I am going to be sorry for many more things. I hope I will get more chances to apologize to you all.
Thanks

Honesty is not always the best policy ......

Honesty is almost always the best policy, unless of course if you are an exceptional liar ....

I have read it in my school days that Honesty is the best policy. Strangely whenever I have been honest in my life I have been kicked hard on my face. Every time I have been honest I have been at the receiving end. When I was a teacher of DPSGV and I wanted to leave I told the principal before hand as I didn;t want the students to suffer because of me. I ended up paying 42000 rupees to get out of the school. I was threatened with legal tangles and made to pay. Being inexperienced and naive I paid up.

When I was at Sultan Chand and my grandpa died I told the MD that it was urgent and I will be back in less than a week but I was told to quit. I did.

When I was in DPS Rajnagar when finally I understood that I cannot be honest always I tried the path of lies and deceit to leave the school and it worked.

Now today I tried the path of being honest and I was robbed of a wonderful opportunity that very few people can have in life. And all because I thought that I must tell my school authorities about it.

I was invited by Vigyan Prasar to be a master resource person for a workshop at GGSIP University. And I told of this thing to my school authorities. The Principal gave me the permission but the chairperson cited some absurd rule to stop me from going. Sometime I feel its better I work for myself rather than for these people. Wish I could.

It was a very dejecting day for me. really.
I almost cried.

And I learnt that the Management is never there for you when it matters the most. Its better to be selfish as far as school management is concerned.

I have learned my lessons well.

This is how people learn to lie and cheat and be dishonest. Nobody is a born liar; people and circumstances make them so.

Discrimination

Discrimination is a part of life in India.
Discrimination on the grounds of Gender, Religion, Caste, Creed, Profession and what not. Give one point of comparison and we will show you how to discriminate. And frankly I hate it. But recently I found out something which shook me to the core. And left me wondering whether we will ever be able to be "human" again.
Our two flats are getting whitewashed. Three people have been employed. Since whitewashing is not a full time job hence to supplement their earning they tend to do odd menial jobs as well.
Yesterday we found out that for lunch these guys had eaten chapattis with green chillies. So today we told them to eat lunch at our home.
A curry of potato, chappatis and pickle was to be served.
On my enquiry I found out that they will not be given food in the plates that we use for eating. Rather thermocol plates were bought from market for the purpose.
I was left wondering if my family members were correct in any way. I couldn't understand why we can't use the plates again once they have used eat for eaten.
I figured out that these guy's profession came in the way. They are being shunned for what they do to  survive.
I felt pity- for myself.
I wanted to protest but i knew it was useless. There was too much VETO power at home.
I am left wondering about what happened today.

First Day, First Show.....

The theatrical trailers were amazing. The special effects seemed mind boggling and the actor was my favourite. Abhishekh Bachchan.
Me and my brother could hardly wait for its release and the day it released we went to the nearest theatre- Movie World. We took the first day, first show tickets and that too the costliest of the places to seat. We took the snacks worth 400 bucks and the tickets cost another 350. So we sat down to watch the movie- DRONA.
The first ten minutes set the tone of the movie. It was slow, very slow. Very very slow. The plot barely moved.
It seemed it had been taken from Harry Potter's initial parts and combined with a couple of other movies like The Lightning Thief etc, the story seemed obvious.
Finally the movie picked some speed, but so did the stupidity. The villain was more of a buffoon. The plot was shambles. And we were a wreck.
The initial euphoria about the movie was long gone and I wanted to run away. But the 750 bucks I spent held me back.
Plot after plot revealed stupidities.
Raazpur was supposed to be a place in the movie which was so terrible where nobody could ever come back from. And raazpur turned out to be one such place except that it was a complete joke. People, i figured out, could not come back because they would die laughing at the so called disasters.
And finally I could not gulp the fact that drona reached Jodhpur from Amsterdam on a horse in less than an hour and that too landed on a train in the middle of the desert for no apparent reason.

The movie ended and we came out vowing that we will never watch another movie first day first show.

Rakshabandhan : Missing a Sister

Its not something new, but almost every year this feeling comes back to hurt me. In my clan my father are four brothers (obviously my dad included). And barring my elder uncle (my tau ji) everyone has sons. That makes it 6 boys and 1 girl in our clan's present generation.
But for some reason there has always been a great divide between our elder uncle and the rest of the clan due to which we brothers never practically had any sister at all though my cousin sister is almost 6 years older than me.
On many occassions such as raksha bandhan and bhai douj I used to tie rakhi to my younger brother and he would do the same to me.
The absence of a sister is felt in my life, I cannot say about my brothers but I do feel the absence.
I really envy all those guys who have a sister. Guys you must value her as the most precious person in your life.

Infinite Probability Theorem and a Python experiment

Let us understand the infinite probability theorem. In analogous terms it can be stated as

If a monkey is allowed to sit in front of a computer or typewriter and allowed to hit the keys randomly then there is a infinitesimally small but non-zero probability that it may be able to compose an entire sentence in English. 

Let us not see too much about the monkey but in mathematical terms it states that  given enough time (which may exceed the life time of the universe) a purely meaningful event is possible out of random happenings.

Now to test this I have created a small python script. Here it is.

Infinite-Probability Test Python Script

For the last 20 minutes my computer is trying to solve the problem at hand. The word entered is BANANA.
The probability of getting this word is 1 in 3.23E-9.

Lets see how long it takes to get that word.

The most remarkable day of my llife

Today I can safely claim to be one of the most remarkable days of my life. Probably The most remarkable day. 

When I was 13 years old I got my specs with an eye power of -3.0 in both eyes. Ever since my specs had been my companion. Around 4-5 years back my eye sight slowly worsened to -5.5 in both eyes. This was till last night.

Generally on week days I read newspapers in the evening as I don't get time to read them in the morning. On weekends and holidays I read the paper in the morning. Last evening I put on my specs (of power -5.5) and read the newspaper.

Today morning when I sat down to read the news paper with my specs on I found to my horror that I was unable to read the paper. When I looked around my vision was hazy and I was not able to figure out objects.

Frustrated I removed the specs and viola!!!! I could read the newspaper from a distance which was impossible. I was astonished. What was happening was just impossible and yet it seemed my eye sight had improved.

I went to Dr. PK Jain, who happens to be a famous eye surgeon here, and he confirmed my doubt. But even he was astonished to see that my eye sight had improved drastically from -5.5 to -2.5. This was something remarkable. The most astonishing part was that it all happened in a span of 12 hours. Last evening my eyesight was -5.5 and 12 hours later it was at -2.5.

I am really overjoyed. Whatever the reason I know that my eye sight has really improved and this is a really remarkable event of my life.

A fight within

Recently I was diagnosed with extremely high blood sugar levels with my fasting at 422, PP at 585 and Random at 316. To top it I have high Tri-glyceride levels of around 516.

For years now I have been told by all and sundry that I should take care of my growing belly. In fact my ex-colleague Monica says,"shubham's belly walks independently of shubham".
I used to laugh it off.

Many of my friends, relatives, colleagues, teachers, students and who not have told me time and again to stop the intake of junk food, cold drinks or flavored soda etc., but I never really took things seriously.

My wife had been poking me for the last 4 years to reduce my waist size and I ignored it or by passed it.

Then 15 days back it all started.

From urinating 3-5 times a day it shot up to 30 times a day. My throat was perpetually dry. 10-15 litres of water I drank to no avail. My body started getting lazy and blood pressure shot up.  My eye sight got weakened.

And then I was diagnosed with extremely high sugar.

I am desperately trying to do what I have been suggested all these years. Eating Oats in breakfast, salad and sprouts in the day time, veggies and a couple of chapattis in lunch, cinnamon tea in evening, veggies or fish at night, walking after dinner, walking in the morning and what not .....

Life has its unique ways of letting you know how vulnerable human life is.



I hope to succeed for life has suddenly taken a new meaning for me. I used to live to eat. Now I eat to live. I want to see my son grow up. I want to do a number of things that I have in my mind. i want to visit various places in India and if possible, the world.  

Its now a fight I alone need to fight out with myself. Its a fight within. Its a fight to survive.

 

Being Dad

There was a time, not too far in the recent past, when I used to literally scream at my dad for being over protective. I used to make fun of my dad and used to crack jokes on him at his back.

• When I used to go out for some time I would know that dad would call the moment he would think I am getting late. 

• When I went out for excursions or trips dad would ask me what my name was; my father's name; my address etc. etc. just to make sure that I knew the details. This happened as recent as 2010 when I went to Hyderabad. 

• When I would travel with him, it would be an out right embarrassment for me. He would be traveling with me on a rickshaw and his hands would be literally guiding the traffic around the rickshaw out of the fear that something might hit the rickshaw and eventually me.

• When I would sneeze or cough I would get an emotional speech about how I am neglecting my health and how I am important for him. 

• When I would injure my self he would be the one to blast me and take me to the doctor.

• Going to the doctor was another embarrassment. He would surely come into the chamber and talk to the doctor as if I were an infant.

• Even till date he gave my age to the railway ticket booker as 19. For him I am yet to grow up.

For all the above he always got scoldings from me; shouts and sometimes I really screamed for being so protective and I would tell him it was really embarrassing. I would throw tantrums and let him know that all this was unnecessary and he would just smile and say one thing, "YOU DON'T KNOW THAT ANXIETY OF BEING A DAD. THE DAY YOU BECOME ONE, YOU WOULD REALIZE".

Today, I am the father of a 4 month old boy. And I am slowly realizing what my dad once told me after I blasted him for being too protective and interfering in my life when he suggested and literally pushed me to the doctor for repeatedly sneezing. He said, "The day you become a dad, will you understand the thoughts and anxieties that a dad can suffer from. Only a dad can understand the true love and affection hidden behind such behaviors. become a dad first."

All I can say to my dad today is, "YES DAD I NOW KNOW WHAT YOU USED TO FEEL". 

I am really feeling how it feels BEING DAD....

The darkness of Indian Education System

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but the refusal to acquire it.

Day 1:: 2/7/13
The exam center is Kanya Mahavidyalaya Kharkhoda.
A government run college. We were greeted by dust laden desks and cob webbed chairs. As I settled down a lady came in and told us to keep our materials outside. We obliged. Then we were strictly told not to indulge in any wrong doings which can lead to our paper being cancelled.
Ten minutes into the exam came the first shocker. The same invigilator who had warned us a few minutes back came in and said the following.
I HATE NOISE. SO KINDLY CHEAT WITHOUT MAKING ANY NOISE.
I mean had my jaws been like a Looney toon they would have dropped on the floor. But that was just the beginning. Except me, the guy in front of me and a girl on my right hand side row everyone else brought out slips. Some hand written and some photocopied. They came out from all kinds of location. Inside shoes, socks, collars, folded cuffs, blouses of ladies, from inside the chains of the jeans guys were wearing, and where not.
At times an invigilator would come in and confiscate the papers she could catch. I was a bit impressed by her apparent honesty till the time she came in again and handed back the chits to those she had a previous understanding with. I have never seen such a thing.
Sitting at the last bench God gave me the opportunity to see first hand the mental and moral degradation of our so called educators and educational institutions. I wondered if this is happening at a government institution what might be happening in private colleges!!! Anybody's guess.

Day 2:: 3/7/13

Today came a different type of shocker. Today our seats were changed to room number 5. There the invigilator crossed all limits and helped the guys to cheat. By god it was ridiculous.
Except me there was no one in the class who wasn't carrying a bunch of resource papers for cheating as usual hidden inside awesome places . The flying squad wasn't useful too.
But the paper was simple and yet rampant cheating was on.

Day 3:: 04/07/13

Today I had two back to back exams. And I was prepared enough. As usual reached the center and was seated in room number 10. Todays papers were of 1.5 hours each so didn't have much time to look around. As usual the invigilators turned a blind eye to the on going stuff. Suddenly the invigilator said " flying squad is coming. Hide your chits."
There was a commotion in the class. Crumbled chits were flying towards the last bench and the guy there was busy throwing them out of the window. Desperate to get rid of chits some of them ran towards the windows to throw the chits.
It was an experience in which I felt ashamed of myself.

The second exam started at 4.15 and was going on as usual when again the flying squad came and this time a girl was caught. Her paper was cancelled and Unfair Means was invoked against her.
Later when I came out of exam hall I found the same girl surrounded by many other guys and some invigilators who were criticising the flying squad and the college people for not taking care of the students.

I was flabbergasted.

Ek to chori aur upar se seena zori.

Read this in the childhood days. Saw its practical example. 

Day 4:: 05/07/13

This day was no different from the previous days except that more skeletons stumbled out of the closet. The flying squad is also hand in gloves though they need to like catch at least one culprit but rest are being let off and they go back to the same cheating again. Till now I was very angry but now I am pityful about the state of our nation's education as the educators are themselves nothing more than cheats. 

Atmanah Pratikulani Paresham na Samacharet: The Ultimate Downfall

Atmanah pratikulani paresham na samacharet (Mahabharata 5.15.17) is a very famous conclusive sentence of the Mahabharata, which is supposed to be the essence of the canon of dharma or virtue: What is not good for me cannot be meted out by me to others. What is not good for me would not be good for others also, because others are like me in every respect.

There is a very important factor that we miss in our attitude towards other people, and it is that subconsciously, or even unconsciously, we are apt to feel that we are superior to other people. Logically and philosophically, we may not be able to argue this because it is an absurd feeling. But not all feelings are logical. Many of them are illogical, and they would not stand reason or ratiocinative investigation. The essence of feeling is illogicality; sometimes it is super-logicality, but it is not logical because it will supersede all logic, and put down all logic by a kick which is more forceful than our understanding. This feeling creeps into us in many ways: “I am, somehow or other, more important than other people.” We cannot openly say this or openly declare this, or even openly justify it in any way; nevertheless, we can feel it privately and put on an attitude which is in consonance with this illogical feeling.

And this is what leads to the downfall; not of just one man but of an entire civilization breeding men who think this way. Our present society is full of such people, which unfortunately include me too, who believe, for some unknown non existent reason, that they are ahead of others in the society or are superior.

This led to the downfall in Mahabharata and will lead to the downfall of the present society as well.

The vacations of 2013

With only one more day to go before my summer vacations come to an end, I thought it would be good if I write down the things that I did in these summer vacations.
Of all the vacations that have taken place till date this was the most productive I believe.
Did quite a few things and yet I am feeling that these vacations were a waste.

• Edited and developed many books for various publishers. 
• Helped create a couple of  functional websites (www.connectingdu.in and www.shop4du.in).
• Still creating one more for myself and my students.
• Learned a lot of Python Programming and tried to (ya let me make it right I TRIED TO but DIDN'T SUCCEED) teach my students the fun of python.
• Performed various experiments which are still underway to develop some new products. (3 in all)
• Developed worksheets and other plans to make my teaching as interesting as possible.
• Studied for my BEd final examinations. etc. etc 

And yet I feel I have not really done anything. I hope to  do much more than what I did.
This strange feeling within needs to calm down. I hope I will be able to calm it down.

The day I became a HOUSE WIFE !!!

For a long time I had maintained that being a house wife is no simple job. It is the most difficult and thankless job in the world. And then I got the chance to experience it first hand.

Last night my mom called me and told me she was not well. She was running fever and had severe body ache. I gave her medicines and then went back to my room.
Today morning when I woke up at 06:00 am I realised that my mom has not come downstairs which meant that she was not well.
So I decided to experience how it feels like doing the house hold chores all by yourself.

I first filled up our over head tank with the supply water. Then went into the kitchen to see that the sink had a lot of utensils waiting to be cleaned. So I decided to clean them myself. This is something I have never done at home. It was actually fun to do so. But I seriously got tired.

Then I swept the floor with a broom and then mopped it. In the mean time my brother woke up and I sent him upstairs to clean the rooms.

Downstairs I filled up the filter with water and the bottles with filtered water and placed them in the fridge. Then found clothes waiting to be washed. So filled water in the washing machine and washed the clothes.

In the mean time my mother came downstairs and went straight to the kitchen as my dad and uncle were to go to office and breakfast was to be made for them.

So I and my brother decided to make it. I cut the potatoes and tomatoes and my brother cooked a simple potato dish. Then came the real challenge. Cooking chapattis. Neither of us had ever done it before. The dough was already prepared so my brother started to make the chapattis and I baked them. Well not a single became circular in nature but we enjoyed making them. 

Then I gave breakfast to all and eventually brother went upstairs.

Now mom asked about the lunch and I decided to make it myself.

So here I was who had never really cooked any food and I was determined to make it this time.
First I made the easiest of them all. DAAL.
Then the next easy stuff, RICE.
Then I baked PAPADs. In fact I burned them. Out of the five I baked four caught fire at various places and some were reduced to ash at places which I had to separate to make the rest edible.
Finally the toughest of them all. FISH CURRY.
Of course I couldn't have made them without my mom's guidance. She told me exactly what to do and I went about doing it. The potatoes were sliced in such shapes that amoeba would be put to shame. The sequence of components that was supposed to go into making the curry went horribly wrong. I was to put the potatoes first and then the spices and I did exactly the opposite which my mom figured out sitting at a distance of over 20 ft and that too without seeing. She just smelt it. Anyways the final outcome was , EATABLE. But now I know if ever I am abandoned by my mom and wife, I would not die eating maggi (that was the only thing I could make till today).

Over all the day was fun filled and exhausting. The dinner is being made by my mom as she says she is better now and doesn't want me to mess up the entire kitchen again.

A few minutes back I went to the kitchen only to hear my mom grumble about the misplaced spices and mustard oil in the jar meant for refined oil. (In the morning I filled up the jar without noticing that it contained some refined oil. Probably thats why the daal had a strange smell which everyone felt but no one complained about).

A few things I know now.
1. I can challenge any god damned MAN to become a house wife for a couple of days before saying that being a house wife is an easy job. Trust me fellas, it is not easy at all.

2. I can cook. Atleast enough to survive.

3. Congratulations to my wife; I can cook atleast  a couple of things. !!!

4. I had a great learning experience.

My Brush with death --- Part 1

Well in this series I will tell you some real life incidents that happened with me when I had a brush with death; and I lived to tell the story.
This thing happened when I was around 10 years old.
My village is situated in south 24 parganas, West Bengal. Its nearest railway station is Champahati at a distance of 16 kms and Sonarpur at around 20 kms. The two mode of transports are Autos and occasional busses.
That day I was going to Kolkata with my dad, mom, uncle, aunty, pishi(bua) and a couple of other people who I have forgotten. We were supposed to catch a local train to Kolkata from Sonarpur station. The Sonarpur railway station has a unique location. The platforms can be accessed from the roads that approach the station and the roads open into two markets on the opposite sides. Sonarpur is one of the busiest local junctions and hence sees dozens of trains crossing every hour.
As we got down from the bus we saw a number of vehicles ahead of us. The railway crossing gates were closed which meant a train was approaching. We decided to cross on foot so as not to get late. As we meandered through the traffic we came across the crossing which was closed by a metallic boom barrier. My uncle went ahead and crossed over on to the rail lines and looked at both sides. There was no train visible, though we knew one was approaching. Then my dad, bua ji  crossed. Then I holding my mom's hands started to cross.
If you ever cross a railway crossing you will find that instead of one pair of track there are actually two with one supporting track within 5-10 cm of the main tracks. These are supporting tracks. As I was crossing somehow my left leg slipped into the gap between the main track and the supporting track. I stopped and tried to pull my leg out but couldn't. I tried to pull it, slip it and even tried to open up my shoe inside but to no avail. It was stuck and so was I.
My relatives came back and frantically tried to pull out my leg. Just then I heard the roar of death. As luck would have it the train was coming on the same track on which I was trapped. It must have been around 200 meters or so when we all spotted it. My dad, uncle and a few other people who were watching us ran towards the train. While my mom and bua and aunty stayed back to try and pull my leg out. The problem was that my body's orientation was such that even if I wanted to sacrifice a leg and save my self, I couldn't. I was stuck bang in the middle of the track.
My dad, uncle and other people who ran towards the train could make the train brake. I could hear the screeching sound of the brakes but I was not sure it would stop before it ran over me. My dad, uncle and other people were standing near the track as the train sped by them and hurtled towards me. My bua ji pulled my mom away and my aunty stood nearby, everyone crying and me, at that age, ice cold due to fear.
That I am telling you the story means that I survived. The train stopped around 3-5 meters from me. And the moment it stopped people converged at me. And strangely I was able to pull out my leg as smoothly as it went inside.
I stood there for sometime before my parents whisked me away.

That was the first time I came so close to death.
Today as I reflect back I feel blessed that I was saved.
 

The Incident that changed my life: Forever

Trust can be a very dangerous word. Specially when your life and career depends on it. This one incident literally altered my life once and for ever. I have always wanted to become an astrophysicist or an astronomer. I still have a Newtonian Telescope but it is lying almost useless. But back in those days I was so enthusiastic that I spent every penny in my pocket (and also took help from Akshay bhaiya) to bu a telescope.
My BSc hons. Physics was nearing the end and I was preparing to get into Delhi University. I have never been a conventionally good student as far as scoring marks is concerned. My BSc marks stood at 59% and I knew that to enter DU I need to clear my entrance exam for MSc.
The entrance exam went ok and I was disappointed at my performance, yet had a bleak possibility. I diverted my attention to Jamia university.
What happened was that my Jamia results were out much before the DU results and I cleared the Jamia entrance. So I was running around to get my admission process done. But I was faced with a strange problem. I had submitted my second year marksheet to DU for revision of marks. And they had not given me my marksheet back. Jamia was insisting on it. So I was kinda stuck. During the same time the results of DU were also declared.
I asked my two friends Vishesh and Ram (both names changed) to go and check my result of DU entrance. Till I die I will rue that one decision. Why I asked them to go???
They came back and told me that my rank was nearly 470 and being a general candidate I had no chance to get into MSc at DU. So I concentrated on my admission to Jamia. My dream to be an astronomer got a severe jolt.
Anyways, I got admission at Jamia and started to attend classes. Nearly a month later another guy started to attend classes at Jamia and that guy happened to be my senior at Deshbandhu college where I studied. The moment he saw me there he asked me, "why are you here? didn't you take admission in DU?" I told him that my rank was so poor that I couldn't have got admission. He amazingly told me, "You got a rank of nearly 24 in DU and you say that you had no chance?"
I was flummoxed. i decided to check. I went to DU Department of Physics and asked them about the process of admission which was over by more than a week. There they showed me, on a lot of insistence, my rank. Shubham Chakraborty S/o Gautam Chakraborty, GEN, Male, 24(Rank).
I couldn't believe my luck, my stupidity and my friend's betrayal.
I went back home and couldn't eat for quite some days. I went into severe depression. I was angry and upset. More on myself than anyone else. Just because Vishesh and Ram couldn't get admission to DU they didn't want my admission too. I simply asked them once about this and they couldn't talk to me ever again.
But my chance of being an astronomer was gone.
It totally changed my life and its course.

Raggging: My First day in College

I can never forget the first day in college .... Deshbandhu College ......
I had heard about ragging and was pretty scared ....
I reached college pretty early, around 08:00 am and found a few guys standing, roaming and chatting. The guard stood at the main gate and I showed him my payment slip (I-cards were not issued till the end of october). As I strolled inside I was expecting to be caught by seniors any moment and was mentally preparing myself. But instead another guy came up to me and asked me, "1st Year" ? I nodded. With a smile of relief on his face he introduced himself, "Hi I am Vivek. 1st year BSc Physics Honors". I was thrilled as I was also enrolled in the same course. Now I was a bit at ease and talked to him about why I enrolled and other stuff. Then we came across another guy who introduced himself as "Vijay" and amazingly from our course only. We caught hold of Vijay near the Physics faculty room. (Me and Vivek are still good friends. I am not sure what is Vijay doing. Hadn't heard of him after 2004).
Now we were three "freshers" who were simply waiting to be ragged. Well that didn't happen though we could see that many "freshers" were holed up with seniors around them and some were dancing and singing while one was converted into a statue. And then there was a kid who was standing slightly bent was with his right palm rounded around an invisible object near his lower abdomen was pushing his hand back and forth and shouting, "Billi mera saara doodh pi gayi .." ("The cat has drank all the my milk .."). The seniors were having a laugh while it took me some time to figure out what exactly was that guy being made to do. We fled the scene. As we moved through the door of the admin block we came out into a small stretch with walls on both sides and it opened into a stretch with garden on both sides. The walls were used to put on marks list and time table etc. We three saw a crowd there and we assumed that they must be noting down the time table. We also went there and started searching for our time table. And in a few minutes we found ours. As I started to dictate Vivek started to note it down. And then we saw a guy emerge out of the main gate and what he said sent chiills down our spines. He said, "Hey guys lets go the freshers have started to pour in. Let us get hold of some and have fun.." All guys around us cheered. We three were standing right inside a huge crowd of seniors who for some reason didn't figure out that we three were freshers. We looked at each other and went out with the seniors. We reached the college gate and went out. With a huge sigh of relief we went straight to the bus stop to catch a bus.
Then something hit me. "This was not god. I mean come on we are freshers and we have not been ragged. This is so unlike the stories we have heard and .... no lets go back", I said.
Vivek gave it a thought and concurred. Vijay too came along and we headed right back into the college. This time though  we were not that lucky. We were immediately caught by a bunch of seniors. They took us to the huge space in front of our library. Many many seniors were there.
I was asked to introduce myself, purely in hindi. Well that was tricky.
"Mere naam Shubham Chakraborty hai. Main Zilla Ghaziabad ka rehne wala hoon aur yahan par ....."
I stopped. I had no idea what "BACHELOR OF SCIENCE " was called in hindi. So I translated word to word. "Main yahan Bhautik Shastra (Physics) me Kunwara (Bachelor) hone aaya hoon"..... Well this Bachelor (Kuwanra) means un-married. All seniors burst out into laughter as I was left embarrassed. 
But this was just the beginning.
Vijay was asked to become a Peacock and fly around the campus and he was doing exactly that. I saw Vivek doing Bharatnatyam in front of the Library.
I was asked to stand on a concrete slab around 3 ft high and I was asked to shout " meri biwi bhaag gayi hai, mujhe Deshbandhu me biwi dilao" (My wife has run away, get me a wife at Deshbandhu). I shouted 10 to 12 times.
Suddenly I felt someone clutching my legs. As I looked down I saw Vivek holding me leg and saying,"Swami mujhe sweekar kijiye " (Dear Lord please accept me as your wife).
Then we two were taken to the open area near the library where one of the seniors became a pandit and rest all family members and married me to Vivek.
That was hilarious.
Then me, Vivek and Vijay (who had by them completed a couple of rounds of college) were lined up and asked to behave like chickens. So we hopped and skipped and said, "kukroo koo" ..... and went till the main college entrance. There the seniors clapped for us and told us that it was over for us. They sent out a diktat that no one else was supposed to rag us again. We were given a copy of syllabus and time table etc.
Thus our introduction to college was really something which atleast I will never forget.

Disillusioned

The other day I was reading somewhere that India's literacy rates has gone up a couple of notches in the last few years. But then is it really so? Is just being able to read and write alphabets and a few sentences makes you literate? Recently i came across a guy from Darbhanga, Bihar who has done his graduation and was pursuing his BEd. This guy has never ever seen a computer let alone use it. He was totally baffled as he was supposed to make a project on Information and Communication Technology.
I was flabbergasted. How is it possible that a guy in this era who has completed his graduation has never really touched a computer let alone use it?
But I believe this is the situation in our country. And somehow for obvious reasons our rotting education system has got stuck or rather become regressive.
CBSE is the best example of this situation. In order to pass every tom dick and harry we are creating an entire generation of degree holders who know nothing and will eventually become useless when it comes to job market.
This years CBSE results have shown that class 10 students are scoring perfect 10s in huge numbers. Have these students suddenly become intelligent or are we faking it all? It is anybody's guess.
And  then we have our professional colleges which are production houses of engineers and MBAs. Again let me emphasize that our country's vast population actually needs more professional colleges but the problem is not the number but the quality.
A BTech passout gets a job of teaching in the same college immediately after his course. Now how much does a BTech passout would know to teach the students? Anybody's guess. And then when he teaches and creates other engineers they are bound to be substandard. So it creates a viscious cycle.
In one of the colleges where I have taught, the college didnot have an Electrical Engineering Lab and another one didnot have a Workshop fo First year students. Now engineering is supposed to be a Practical field where Labs and Workshops are very important and when students don't know anything about workshops and machines what type of engineers will they be.
I happened to be an "external" examiner for the students of my college's third year students and I went to take their electrical engineering lab viva. I was appalled to see that our future engineers could not differentiate between a resistor, diode and pico-farad capacitor.
Now that is engineering for us.