Why I will never let my Son become a School Teacher ....

I followed my heart.
I became what I wanted to.
But today it seems it is the biggest mistake of my life.

I am a school teacher and teaching had always been my passion. This is what I can do the best. And that is precisely what I have been doing all these years. And the repercussions have been so bad till now that there are times I wonder why I became a teacher at the first place. And this is what has forced me to make up my mind that I will indoctrinate my son from an early age against becoming a teacher. At least a school teacher. And here are my reasons.

1. Society and Family.
2. Salary
3. Administration
4. Students
5. Parents

SOCIETY and FAMILY

The people who remain close to you always is your family. But what happens when they are the ones who term you a failure simply because you followed your dream to be a teacher?
When I talk to people i find I am taken for granted, and people actually make fun of me. For people en-mass a teacher is a person who is a failure in everything that he has done and hence a teacher. And I don't disagree with them completely because now a days mostly (99%) of those people become teachers who have either tried and failed or simply didn't want to do anything else.

People think teaching is like taking a walk in a park... except that it is a Jurrasic park....

SALARY

How much does an average PRT/TGT or PGT makes?

Peanuts. Yup peanuts. I am presently In a school that somewhat adheres to Central Pay Scales. So I am still kind of better of than my not so lucky counterparts.

Digest this. The teachers who taught me get 25K less than what I get as a teacher. My experience about 10  years. Theirs is about 25 to 30 years or more.
One of the least paid jobs is that of a teacher. In an average school a teacher gets paid way less than whhat a peon of a government job gets.

 ADMINISTRATION
Thats the real pain in ass. School admin which includes school owners, Principals and Admin people look down at teachers as if we are donkeys to be used as beast of burden. Principals tend to forget that at one point of time they were teachers too. The funniest part is You ask for a raise and they will point out all kinds of mistakes that we have ever made. And the moment you ask for a leave you become the most important person in the entire school as if the school will come to a standstill without you.

STUDENTS

I have come to the conclusion that never trust two kinds of people in school. The school administration and the students. They will say one thing in front of you and the exact opposite behind you. Though not universally applicable  it is a recurrent phenomenon. Students don't listen... and you cannot punish them. One particular case I came across has the guts to literally blast and challenge the principal ... i will do what i want to... what can you do?. So understand what we teachers are in front of such students.

PARENTS
We can handle everyone but the parents. There was a time when a poor grade by a students will incur wrath of parents on the students. Now we are forced to give good grades to students even if they perform badly. Else parents will say "we pay you. why cant our kids get good marks".
My reaction... go to hell. 

I will never let my son be a school teacher. Nopes. No way. he can be a peon if he wants to or anything else but a school teacher. 

Happy New Year - 2017

My friends have played a vital role in my life. They pulled me out of ignorance. Some real stupid, idiotic, form of ignorance. Today let me describe one.

The year was 2000. I was into my 18th revolution around the sun. And was doing ok in physics, bad in math and pathetically in chemistry in my school. Had to give up biology in favor of computer science. But still was going ok.

I always searched for explanations to anything and everything that i saw around me. One such thing was HOW ARE BABIES BORN? Now I knew they initially reside inside MOTHER'S BELLIES. And probably they were taken out after cutting open the mother's bellies. (Well I was only somewhat correct about it. Not completely). But the biggest question that bothered me was HOW DID THE BABIES END UP INSIDE THE MOTHER"S BELLIES IN THE FIRST PLACE?

As a scientist that I was in those days I had my own theories and they were backed up by solid evidence that i could gather from TV shows and Movies.

Man and Woman get married and almost a year later they have a baby. See the hypothesis stand proven. What was my hypothesis?

WHEN A MAN MARRIES A WOMAN AND THEY TAKE ROUND OF THE YAGYA FIRE GOD PLACES THE BABY IN THE BELLY OF THE WOMAN. 

Bingo. It always was the case as I saw in TV.

Then one fine day my hypothesisi shook a bit.

I saw a christian marriage and a muslim nikah. In both cases there was no fire. So i was pretty perplexed.  

Another point which I was not sure was why some of my friends used to talk about using the device during sex. My idea of sex was limited to kissing.

So I had a double problem. WHAT HAPPENS DURING SEX? HOW BABIES END UP IN THE MOTHER"S BELLIES? 

I knew by my own logic that take-a-round-of-fire-to-get-baby-in-belly was not on solid ground and something was amiss.  
 
It looks like yesterday only that for the first time I went to Satyam iWay (a chain of cyber cafes in the early 2000s) and for the first time I opened up a website with my friend.... let us call him P for the sake of hiding his identity. The first ever site I opened or rather I was introduced to was worldsex.com. I was aghast, baffled, ecstatic, infuriated, curious and ... well every emotion you name and I had on that day in front of the system. With a whopping Rs. 60 per hour in 2001 it was a very costly one hour but we were enlightened. Specially me.

At the age of 18 for the first time in my life I now knew what to do with my device. I mean i came to know what exactly is it used for. Till that day I was pretty much unsure as to what happens exactly with the device of mine.

So one of my questions was solved. What happens during sex? 

But the question that was bothering me was about the babies.

So one fine day, near about 1st or 2nd January I called up by best friend AA and asked her the question straight away.

She laughed and blasted me at the same time. I told her she being a female should be able to answer it better.

The best part was that I had studied in Biology chapter on Reproduction that when Male Sperm and Female Eggs meet a zygote is formed and then foetus and then baby. But in my infinite wisdom I totally didnt connect the dots.

So on that day AA gave me a step by step GYAN of what happens.

COmbined with my newly acquired knowledge from the enlightening site worldsex.com and the explanation from AA I now knew what happens.

I felt stupid. I mean I cannot explain in any better term how foolish I felt.

In fact in many movies the touching of two flowers also made me think was the reason of child birth.

SO while P gave me the BRAHMA GYAAN of the use of device..... AA gave me the gyaan of what happens thereafter.


That was 17 years back. Now when I look back I feel so stupid of myself.

But then i think i was better off a kid than a grown up person. As we grow up our minds corrupt.

Wish I could remain a child always.

Anyways Happy New Year folks..... May you too come out of ignorance.... whatever it may be...

Let Us Go Digital

In the wake of Modi government's decision to ban the usage of 500 and 1000 rupee notes a severe liquidity problem has got created. Here I am not going to discuss whether the decision was right or wrong. rather I will try to tell you guys how to free ourselves from currency note related problem. How we can do a lot of work without currency notes.

Like millions of people in India I was too hit hard and with money in bank but nothing in hand I was at my wits end as I didnt know what to do. But then the solution hit me.

India is the country with second most number of smartphones. Number of smartphones that we have is almost the same as the number of households in India and much more. So let us see how to get over the current problem using tis device.

Rice, wheat and similar essential commodities ran out in my home. So what I do?

I downloaded GROFERS APP and ordered all materials online. I paid using my debit card and viola in 4 hours I  had the materials delivered at my door step.

Tomorrow there is a puja in our home. We were desperate as we didnt know how to buy fruits. And then I got the answer. SPAR hypermarket in Gaur central mall sells vegetables and fruits. So I went there and bought all that we needed and paid using my debit card.

Medicine was  the next problem. There are plenty of online stores and some pharmacies which accept money through PAYTM. I downloaded the PAYTM app and put money in it. Then went to a store that had PAYTM acceptance. I bought medicines from there.

Similarly travel was a problem. So I bought petrol using my DEBIT CARD. While I used OLA and UBER app to book cars for my family and paid online.

With Jan Dhan yojana most households have atleast one account with a debit card. Why not use it?

Guys it is high time that we become less reliant on cash and move towards becoming online.

This can be done by anyone and everyone who has a BANK ACCOUNT/DEBIT CARD and a SMARTPHONE.

Folks let us not create further havoc and panic by lining up near banks and use our brains to solve problems.

As for daily wage labours are concerned they are the ones bearing the burnt of this historic decision but things will smoothen out in 7 to 10  days. Let us not  whine about what is happening and rather let us take a decision to change our pattern of buying things.

Hope this helps.

Newton's Third Law and the mess that people have created.

I, being a student and teacher of Physics, keep studying everything over and over again. And this habit of mine though seems stupid to many has actually given me rich rewards by giving me deeper insights into many a laws and theories of Physics.


It so happened that a couple of days back I was studying Newton's laws again just following my habit. And there I came to a rather bizzare conclusion. The books and authors who have written the definition of Newton's third law have got it all wrong or atleast translated it wrongly and the third law doesn't make sense.


To make my point let me tell you how it all fared.


I simply out of curiosity went on to look at the original way in which Newton had written the laws in LATIN.

Here is the original words of Newton Third law.


 Actioni contrariam semper et æqualem esse reactionem: sive corporum duorum actiones in se mutuo semper esse æquales et in partes contrarias dirigi.

  Now I pasted it in Google Translate and this is what I got.


To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction: or the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts .This kinda rattled me. What we study and what I have been studying and teaching all my life is something like this.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Now for the first time in my life it didn't make sense. I mean the above statement.


What sense does it mean, " ..... equal and opposite reaction..." .
 Its a meaningless statement. Someone made a historical mistake of trying to shorten the law and ended up making it meaningless.

Let us analyze the two horrendous mistakes.

1.  There is absolutely no mention of the direction. It is left to the assumption of the reader the opposite means direction is opposite.

2. It is also left to the imagination of the reader that equal means equal in magnitude and that equal doesn't mean same direction. So a beautifully crafted statement by Sir Issac Newton was horrendously translated and then shortened into something that is meaningless and grossly wrong.

So here is what Newton tried to convey which I feel should replace the prevalent definition.

To every action there is a reaction; which is equal in magnitude and opposite in direction, and takes place on two different bodies. What do you say???  

God.... Creator or Destroyer ???

I was sitting beside the window today and was enjoying the cool breeze and the spray of rain water on my face. The world look infinitely more beautiful than it looks on an average day. And I thanked GOD. Almost immediately I was filled with the following thought. Had no other option bbut to sit and enjoy yhe day while thinking about the following.

This is the most potent weapon of all time.

A weapon of mass destruction.

A weapon so powerful that Nuclear Bombs look puny in front of it.

A weapon which has killed millions or may be billions over the course of human history.

A weapon mightier than any mythological weapon ever mentioned in any mythological texts found across the length and breadth of human race.

A weapon which has nothing to stop it except complete annihilation of human race. Complete OBLITERATION.

The weapon is GOD.

I don't know if GOD created the world and the human race, but I am damn sure it will one day destroy us.
Think over it......

The Maggi controversy. Truth or Hysteria...

The Maggi row is raging on. People are dumping it as if it's a bundle of cyanide about to kill you.

That's another thing I find it pretty amusing. Specially the reaction of the common people.

This reminds me of a story.

One day Naren (Swami Vivekananda in his childhood days) and his friends were playing as usual near the banyan tree. The kids used to climb up the tree and vault back.

To stop the children from doing this the old man of the home one day told them that a ghost resides in that tree and whoever climbs on it is killed by the ghost.

Hearing this all the children immediately stopped climbing the tree except Naren.

The children asked Naren not to climb else the ghost will kill him. Naren climbed the tree and told them "What an ass are you all. If there really were a ghost in the tree it would have killed us all long before the old man told us the story. "

Same here. We have grown up eating Maggi.  Every Sunday the breakfast was of Maggi.  Every alternate evening Maggi soup style was the favourite snack. And yet we are as intelligent as an average indian is. An entire generation has grown up eating Maggi and nothing happened and all of a sudden people are burning Maggi just coz some tom duck n harry has found lead and msg content higher than permissible limit. Oh please. Give me as break. 

I know people will blast me for this post but then just think if passive smoking .... polluted water.... polluted air.... carbide grown fruits.... And chemicalised vegetable doesn't kill us.... Maggi surely won't. ...

Give it a thought.

Will the ghost kill us now after the story has been told?? Think  !!!

Whatsapp on your PC

Bluestacks..... Virtual Drives and what not.
Here comes whatsapp with a neat trick.

Here is what you need to do.

Step 1. Go to any browser on your PC/Laptop/Tablet and type web.whatsapp.com

Step 2. A QR Code will be seen on the screen.

Step 3. Open your whatsapp on your mobile. Hit the right lower button on the mobile to reach the status/profile menu. There you will find WHATSAPP WEB.

Step 4. Click on whatsapp web and scan the QR Code on your PC Screen.

Step 5. Your mobile whatsapp has been synced with your PC.

Now you can keep your mobile away and enjoy whatsapping while working on your PC.

NOTE: You need to keep your mobile data connection active else the sync will be lost.

Forgive and Forget

Hi there.
I am a typical human being with all human failings. I have made an ass out of myself several times in the past as I keep doing now too.

Many a times I have hurt people by my actions, and sometimes by the lack of it. But almost everytime that I have hurt someone it was not because I lied to them, but because I spoke the truth. And I have come to the conclusion that speaking truth might not be such a good thing after all because most people don't have the guts to digest the truth; they would rather be prepared to live with a lie all their life.

On the other hand I have always been prepared to know the truth and, though with great difficulty, I have always been able to digest the truth and come out unscathed. But there is one particular trait of mine which I am yet to find in another person from all those whom I have met till now. FORGIVENESS.

In this 33 years of my life I have been hurt several times. Most of the times by my close friends, buddies, relatives and other very close ones. And every time I have been able to forgive them. Though I remember everyone of them and their mischief but that is primarily because forgetting is a difficult thing specially if your brain doesn't want to forget. But forgiveness is something that comes from within. And the best part is that I have been able to not only forgive them but also become as usual as before the incident(s) happened.

To my dismay I have rarely, and probably never, been forgiven for my mistakes. Strange as it my sound my friends against whom I made the mistake I have always asked for forgiveness but to no avail. And I am yet to figure out why.

I have been told, "I can never forgive you for what you did. but i thought its better to move on. but we can never be the same again. what is lost is lost. "

Strange. From my side it is usually, "Chal chord na baba. galti har koi karta hai. ab har cheez dil pe le lunga to jee liya main. (Leave it buddy. Everyone makes mistakes. But if I start cringing to every mistake then it will be difficult for me to live.)

I wish to get hold of a friend who would just be like the way I am. 

Flipkart is surely fooling us all or making a fool of themselves.

Look at the pic given below. And decide for yourself.

How to increase sensitivity of s pen on galaxy note 3 and note 3 neo

I recently purchased a Galaxy Note 3 Neo and though I am yet to explore it completely I am completely floored by it.
But one thing that depressed me was that the stylus or the famous s pen was not as sensitive as it is on note 2. So I decided to tweak the pen myself.
The following is what you need to do.
1. Take the stylus out.
2. Pry open the small button just above the tip.
3. You will find two circular potentiometers there. The one towards the tip needs to be rotated anti clockwise to increase sensitivity and vice versa.

 Above is a pic of the things I required to make this work.

But in fact all you need is a sharp and extremely small screw driver.

 

4. Once you are done with it you will have a much increased/decreased sensitive s-pen.

Enjoy. 

Plague Inc.

I just now played the game PLAGUE Inc. The most nefarious game I ever played. It is about designing and spreading a disease so as to destroy the entire human race. Couldn't kill everyone at the first go. But will try to make better diseases and try to kill more n more people.
It was though fun.

Out of FB n Whatsapp n into twitter...

Check out shubham chakraborty (@chakrabortyshuv): https://twitter.com/chakrabortyshuv?s=09

Hell in Distress

A simple story.
Once there was a library. There were many magazines which were subscribed and readers could read them.
One day a reader got hold of PLAYBOY magazine and he protested and said that this magazine should not be there in the library.
So the librarian decided to remove ALL TYPES OF MAGAZINES from the library.
No Science Reporter,  No Youth Today, No India Today not Business Weekly nothing.
All magazines were removed.
Do you think the librarian did the correct thing by removing all magazines when only the required one was to be restricted????

Something similar happened this year at Ghaziabad Kali Bari where the GKB Samitee members took a decision of not allowing GIRLS ABOVE 12 years age from PARTICIPATING / PERFORMING ON-STAGE because some Tom DIck or Harry objected to the DANCE performance of ABOVE 12 YEARS GIRLS during Saraswati Puja day earlier this year.

In the month of August me and five friends of mine from Sanjay nagar Ghaziabad, decided to do a small play which we wanted to perform on stage during Durga Puja celebrations at Kali Bari Mandir at Sanjay Nagar, Ghaziabad.

Unfortunately after we had taken requisite permission and time slot of ten minutes on Saptami, we were suddenly told that we can't do this as we had two GIRLS in the play over the age of 12 years.

Now someone in the commitee took a rather regressive and anti feministic step of restricting dance performance of girls to an age of below 12 years.

First of all I am always against such steps as they are regressive and anti women. Anyways we went on to argue that our play was just about 10 minutes in length and there was no songs or dance involved. But to no avail. Who ever in his infinite wisdom took this decision was way too adamant and probably lost his common sense for good.

But the funniest and most frustrating part was that this infinitely stupid rule applies only to GIRLS OF SANJAY NAGAR and not everyone else. So all the performers being called from outside were exempted from this rule. Good for them.

Someone, whoever is the infinitely wise being, who took the decision about not allowing girls from taking part forgot that he was to define it as DANCE and not PERFORMANCE.

I couldn't believe my ears that PERFORMANCE and DANCE are synonymous.
Ahhhhh.....

Anyways, my brother had written the script and directed it. We performed it in Debashri's home and videoed it. But by the end we had grown so frustrated that we decided not to even show it on projector as someone said from the committee that even projection may not be allowed as it had a girl in it.

I am just wondering if people like them ever were to come to power in centre India will be Talibanised without the need of Talibans setting their feet on our nation.

Here is the video. Watch it and decide for yourself what was so wrong in this. We have performed it without proper costumes. So the stuff is stripped down.

Thanks for watching and reading.

One of the most disappointing days of my life.....Godrej U Sonic ....

In the year 2006 I worked on a project in which I created a machine which used extremely low amount of detergent to clean clothes. The machine worked on Ultrasonic Waves. Later Prof JV Rao of NITRA (Where I was doing this project) told me to discontinue this project as he could not see much scope of the work. So he asked me to submit a project report.

I was naive and hence I did as told.

Later I found out that many people have done their research on that machine after I left working on it. And they were doing their PhD under JV Rao only.
Next I found out that he was trying to sell the technology to a few washing machine companies.

And now 8 years later I saw an advertisement GODREJ U SONIC.
Exactly the same thing that I made in 2006.

I can't describe to you my disappointment, my anger, frustration......

I am feeling defeated. Lost.

Village

There was a time when i used to die to come to my village. My friends and relatives were all here. My grand parents and others were my favs.
Today as i am writing this blog i am doing so because i am not habitual of crying and the heavy heart is required to be opened up to someone.
No one is here.
My grand parents are long gone.
So are my friends. Some married off some left the village. Some have vanished into thin air.

I stood at the center of my village n found a creepy feeling creep up to me. So much has changed. Walls have come up where trees used to be there. The pond has shrunk to half its size. The age old tree giving shade to the shiva idol has been cut down to be sold in the market.

The field where we used to play hardly resembles its own self now.

This is not the village i knew and loved.

Not my village any more.

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.