Connecting the dots..

I love the commencement address of Steve Jobs at Stanford University. In my view, it was a re-affirmation of the "Hind sight is 20-20 rule" that most of us know. In retrospect, everything makes sense but as you are rambling through life and inevitably having a mixed set of experiences , it is hard to "connect the dots".

That is why I have always maintained that successful people are successful in retrospect. Everything that they have blundered through appears carefully planned in hindsight. So one of the keys to having a satisfying journey is to accept the fact that we cannot connect the dots as we wade through them.

Which harks back to " ignorance is bliss" kind of an attitude. I don't want to make sense out of things that are destined to never make any sense. The only problem with this kind of philosophy is that it tends to become fatalistic. Since I can't make sense out of anything - why aspire for anything? But if you don't aspire for anything where are you headed? Quite clearly, we do want to have aspirations. But it is important that we also know to accept the short term setbacks without allowing them to bog us down from achieving our long term goals.

Admittedly, many (or pesimistically speaking most of us) may not achieve those long term goals but at least we are trying and enjoying the ride. And that I think is the most important. Enjoy the ride and the destination becomes incidental. I think that would be my takeaway from Steve Jobs's speech which he himself summarized laconically as "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish" - An Amen to that..

Keeping up with the Online Joneses

Ok.. I have acquired my Facebook account, wrote a few reviews in Amazon, set up another one at Twitter, started answering questions on Linkedin, am maintaining my blogs and posting my pictures. But will all this industry on my part ensure that my name would be googled by "all and sundry" and their siblings?

I was reading some articles recently that mention that I need to post to my blog at least once a week and ensure that my twits happen on a more frequent basis. And pray tell me why? Because my prospective employer is looking for me in twitter. My family is checking me out. My work force is looking for that constant stream of pearls of wisdom emanating from my keyboard. They all are probing deep into cyber space to see what I am upto every minute of the day.

This to me sounds like too much pressure - in fact bordering on paranoia. Looks like we cannot ruminate about anything without feeling the need to analyze whether it can fetch me a couple of more morsels of online fame. And in the process add to the surfeit of junk that has already made it into cyberspace. As I key these words in, I am aware of their poignant irony. I am criticising the need for constant expression online while expressing these very thoughts online! Such is life I guess. Sigh! At least this completes this week's article. I will think of some more trash to dispense next week...

Song Meanings

Of late I have been going to a website called songmeanings.net to check out what people think about some of the songs we keep listening. Many of us who have heard Hotel California or Stairway to Heaven might have wondered about the hidden metaphors that are contained in the songs.

This site seeks to explain them albeit through the comments.

For instance, check out this song. I have always been captivated by the music in this song but this is the first time I heard someone trying to make sense of its lyrics. Check it out and more importantly listen to the song itself. It is really nice!

On Asymmetry and Morality

Having been brought up in a conservative society,I have never suffered from a dearth of restrictions. I resisted many of them as usual-swore that I would never abide by them - and now having reached man's estate so to speak, I eke out my livelihood exacting vengeance by imposing the very same restrictions on the younger generation!

What I am trying to say is that we all recognize the value of various injunctions that our parents have imposed on us as we grow up. Most of them have to do with the upholding of morality. Stealing is bad so "thou shalt not steal". Taking a step back, we recognize that this morality is needed for preserving order in society. Without morality, the society would deteriorate to some version of chaos da da da bla bla bla.. So morality tells me what is good and what is bad. But who gets to decide on what is right and wrong? It is a good coincidence that for the most part, the world seems to be in concurrence with their views about what constitutes morality - notwithstanding the fact that morality is still geographical and governed by various demographic factors which accounts for most of the conflicts in the world.

But the interesting thing for me here is to observe the polarizing effect morality has on the world. It divides the whole world into the protagonists and the dissidents. Into the right and the wrong. Into good and bad people. Hence morality seems to become the bedrock on which all our notion of asymmetry of human beings rests. And if we go back to the fact that morality is very much based on perception, it is a relief that we all think alike for the most part! So agreement about what constitutes morality seems to be one place where commonality is good and uniqueness bad. Interesting huh?

Knowledge Explosion & Internet fatigue

It is nice that the internet and the search technology is bringing us access to a fantastic amount of information. I was just pondering over the effects this seeming explosion of knowledge had - on me and a few people around me. Here are a few random observations in no specific order:

The internet puts us in touch with the cognoscenti in extremely narrow fields of specialization. As Anderson argues in his book "The Long Tail", there is tons of stuff in the fringes of knowledge and human understanding, that has suddenly become part of mainstream culture. We are no longer pursuing popular fads but are instead trying to identify the specific categories/sub-categories that align with our personality.

Our tastes and inclinations seem to have become very specific. At one time for instance, I just wanted a bike. Now I know that I need an all terrain bike which has full suspension, bike shoe friendly pedals and shimono speed shifters. This ability to sift through information and identify what exactly we need, gives us an amazing amount of empowerment. It also helps us identify what we want with increased precision. My son would (and should) no longer be content being a "run of the mill" engineer or a doctor. He should identify the exact thing that is interesting him. I see this happening increasingly around me when i talk to the kids around me.

People suddenly find themselves increasingly in touch with the rich and the famous. After all, anyone must be "google"able to even be reckoned as important. No more celebrities in their ivory towers now! Be it Obama, Osama or the Big B - they all beckon to us from across the wires using their blogs, forums, facebook, twitter and the like.

People seem to consider their ability to google (or bing) for information to be directly proportional to their mental faculties. There is no need anymore to analyze the information obtained and dissect the knowledge. Instead, the need of the hour seems to be to just quote it. In fact, if you want to say anything important at all you better put it down on the internet or else you run the risk of being out-googled and out-quoted. In short people have become search engines :P

This is all truly democratic. But sometimes I get tired of all this stuff. I don't want to know anything more. I just want to chill and relax! Maybe fix myself a drink or read a PG Wodehouse. I get tired of being constantly challenged by some pseudo novice who has the insouciance to suppose that he can sabotage my bright idea by being the mouth piece of someone else who might have at some time in the past, refuted, a possibly similar idea somewhere in the dark recesses of the internet! Is this a sign of internet fatigue? Speaking of which let me just try googling for internet fatigue and see what I can come up with.. sigh!

The plate theory of forgetting..

Forgetfulness has become an obsession with me of late. I probably have like two things that I can remember and the rest of them just seem to vaporize away! And this seems to get worse with time. Not that I am anywhere near the nadir of my life and ready to kick the bucket anytime soon. But still this forgetfulness seems to become more chronic of late.

This got me thinking about it a little bit. And as always I sought out an expert for enlightenment. Big Bro Google should surely lead me to the expert. So I typed "Forgetfulness" at the Search field. Promptly, with the speed that we have come to expect from Google, I get an ad on the right hand side asking me "Is it Alzheimer's Disease?". O Boy I thought, I really needed this one now! I am sure there are a ton of search results that would serve to illumine me in this matter but I was not in the exact mood for being scared. So, being the inveterate escapist that I was, I went back to the arm chair and started ruminating over recent events in a quest for the solution. The following is the outcome of this.

Computer savvy folks can relate to this analogy that I came up with. The mind is like a stack of plates. Each thought in it is like a plate. You keep piling one plate on top of the other and very soon you start building a huge stack. But since there is only so much space available, the ones at the bottom just "go away" (don't ask me how and where). The ones on top stay in the stack till they also get pushed down to no man's land. So this is all fine. But that still does not explain why I am getting more forgetful now than before. To answer that, the only thing I could think of is that my stack has got smaller for some reason thereby accommodating fewer plates! Or maybe I am having too many items on my plate of late.. or continuing the analogy further.. too many plates in my stack! I suddenly realized that it is neither of these two reasons. It is just that of late I have been bombarded with unrelated things which by their very nature are hard to keep track of.

So for me to remember all the tasks that I have to accomplish, there should be a certain amount of cogency in the tasks that I have at hand. This realization lead me to look up at the root cause of the problem. In this digital age, we are bombarded with all kinds of information - each quite disjoint from the other. In the absence of prioritization, we would be desultorily trying to process myriads of information and as promptly forgetting each of them! Hence selectiveness is a necessary criterion for picking what we want to process. We should apply the correct filters to appropriately filter out the "noise" and process the information that needs to be processed. Else, we will end up gobbling too much of useless information and forgetting the one that is important.

A part of this endeavor is to keep your "stack of plates" as little as possible by applying the correct filters as to what qualifies to enter the stack. Hence in pursuant to this thought process, I started disciplining my life a little bit. The following are some of the things I did:

Keep your email "inbox" minimal. Let it not be overwhelmed with historical information. Keep historical information pigeon holed into appropriate email folders that you can always go back to without cluttering your senses.

Speaking of clutter, keep the office and home more organized by reducing clutter.

Cutting the noise out by reducing useless interactions with people, reading unnecessary books etc.

I would say it did help me out. So the plate theory has gone beyond the realm of tectonics and is actually applicable elsewhere too. That is definitely changing the plate quite a bit !

En vazhi thaneee vazhi...(My way is unique)

Rajnikanth would have had a great future as a comedian even if he had not become a super star in tamil cinema.

His so called stunts are totally humorous.
Check this really hilarious ad out.

The Power of Pre Conceived Notions

As anyone who works in a Silicon Valley company (or a company with similar outlook) would endorse, there comes a time in an individual's career when she has to choose between an Individual Contributor(IC) role or a managerial role. ICs in general, are viewed as anti-social nerds with technical brilliance. They would be a square peg in the round managerial hole. On the other hand, the managers have the ability to lead teams, solve administrative problems, provide strategy and vision etc.

This model of strict demarcation works great in many cases. But as with anything, attempts to "strait jacket" these would usually be extremely counter productive. I have been in situations where there is a firm division between what they call the managerial growth path and the technology growth path and never the twain shall meet.

Consider my example for instance. I have always been technically strong which in silicon valley parlance means I understand code and programming well. But I want to grow beyond technical ability and want to handle tasks that are more organizational, strategic and visionary. I had been thwarted in these attempts by some of my ex bosses who had fixed perceptions about the managerial role. Some of them think that I would become a bad manager and also lose out on my technical abilities if I choose what they call the "managerial growth path". This myopic view is the most prominent reason for the abundance of "dunce" managers with very limited vision and a general inability to guide people.

This was in line with a discussion that I was having with a colleague of mine recently. We tend to be seen by people according to their pre-conceived notions. If you are viewed as a geek, then you cannot be a manager. So no matter what you do everything will reinforce the geeky thing and negate the managerial ability.

And if such a person who has pigeon holed you, happens to be your boss, then God save you! He is going to create situations that would make you perform sub-optimally in places, that he with his infinite wisdom deems, are beyond your ken. This kind of attitude is extremely detrimental to personal growth. Makes you really want to scream out sometimes.

This made me remember a poem that I had read when I was a kid. It is about a hypochondriac king who refused to believe he was hale and hearty.
Read the poem for yourself - "The Enchanted Shirt" by John Hay.

Sequels and the current financial crisis.

We seem to be living in a world that does not know when to call it quits. For instance, if a good movie is created it has to have its sequels. Exorcist was quickly followed by Exorcist II and so on till the whole world knew about the entire family tree of exorcists. Chicken soup for the (generic) soul got succeeded by a spasm of chicken soups for every species of soul extant in the universe. So you had one for the Pet Lover's soul, father and son soul, adopted soul,mother's soul, preteen soul,ocean lover's soul etc.- Irreverently speaking, there is one for every a$$hole (no offence meant.. just could not resist this diabolical urge to use the pun) And what if a pre teen mother loves visiting acquariums and keeps a rabbit? She has to read like four books now!

This "keep a good thing going" spirit has infiltrated almost every walk of life. That was how most of these sagas were born be it in the comics (Mickey Mouse etc.), children's books (Harry Potter etc.) or even good old Jeeves of Mr. P G Wodehouse. What makes this complex is the fact that each saga branched out into a million other "child" sagas. Look for instance at every good tv sitcom. There are follow up sitcoms by the various people who acted in the original sitcom. Cheers and Fraser for instance.

The sequels originate because of many reasons in my opinion:

• The original author deems that the last word has not been said on a particular topic.


• The author thinks that he should get specialized to attend to the needs of a particular sub topic in more detail. Ex: The Chicken soup series.


• Plagiarizers want to ride the wave of the original topic's popularity


• Others just want to milk the cow dry!

Anyways, what has all this to do with the current financial crisis? In my opinion, this trend of spawning sequels got extended recklessly into the financial domain,thereby proliferating a slew of products. Consider the situation for yourself. The US was having the biggest boom in the housing industry due to favorable interest rates coupled with escalating house costs due to the disparity between supply and demand. The direct beneficiaries of this unprecedented demand, besides the housing industry itself, were the mortgage banks.

But there mushroomed multiple markets that got set up to milk this "housing cow dry". The good ole housing loan got repackaged with exotic, tongue twisting gobbeldygook such as "High Grade Structured Credit Enhanced Leverage Fund", CDOs (Collateral Debt Obligations), Structured Investment Vehicles etc. which were sold to people all over the world. Not only that, these products were insured by other products such as Credit Default Swaps. Are you impressed by all this knowledge from me?? Dont be.. Just read this rather enlightening article.

At some point in time, the products were so far removed from the housing industry that people did not even realize that a part of their portfolio was dependent on the home prices in America. For instance, if you bought AIG shares, would you have thought that your fate depended on the prices of American homes? So, when the housing bubble finally burst, people felt like the carpet was dragged from under their feet!

To me, this incident smacks of excess greed. But the laugh is on me since I have also inadvertently allowed myself to get embroiled in this quagmire. Let us hope that the spaghetti would wind itself back to the spindle!

PS: You should check this rather hilarious video that talks about exactly what i talked about.

Laughter Therapy

As a person who has travelled to different parts of the world, I did get a chance to experience massage at different places. But today's experience at an ayurvedic massage center at Hyderabad, has to rank as one of the funniest ones ever.

In case the mention of massage conjures in you a calm, peaceful atmosphere that would facilitate relaxation, then you would do well to refrain from patronizing the place that I alluded to above. For by doing so, you would disillusion yourself from all your preconceived notions about massage and also in the process add to it an element of humor. And when I say that this experience was funny, you better believe it - it was rip-roaringly funny. So let me see if my pen is sufficient to capture the humor in this experience.

I went to this place at Jubilee Hills. It was located in a rented house. The owner bade me to be seated and charged me for the massage upfront. That was kinda strange but I figured that since it was late, the guy just wanted to leave. So he pocketed the loot upfront. Anyways, in a few minutes, two guys (my would be masseurs) came in and motioned me to go in. They did not "look" very professional - whatever the hell it means. Somehow I was not expecting this. Anyways, since the owner had already taken my money I thought I might as well get through with this. Besides, this may turn into an experience that is not so bad. Right? Wrong. So to continue, my masseurs escorted me to an inner room.

This room had a couple of low wattage bulbs and a bright fluorescent tube light. I initially thought that there should be some internal sanctum where these guys would do the deed, but the presence of a large formidable massage table in the typical keralite style right at the center of this brightly lit room, belied my belief. So I go in and was asked to strip right IN FRONT of these two guys who made no attempt to look the other way. In fact, they offered to help me tie the "loin cloth" to cover my crotch. The loin cloth, for the non cognoscenti, is a traditional Indian equivalent of a bikini bottom. I guess, it does its job pretty well. But I was just a tad conscious. Besides, it was not really very comfortable having these two ogling urchins at the back of me and inspecting my every move. But be that as it may, I did what I was expected to do and before I can say "hello" I was all stripped except for the loin cloth which was trying its best to protect me. I felt like a performing artist in a brightly lit auditorium!

In a feeble attempt at protecting my chastity, I did ask the two to at least be gracious enough to give me a towel. They readily acceded to the request and handed me a white handloom towel that was more like a napkin. It was probably all of half a feet long! Anyways, I wound it around my frame and proceeded to the massage table where I was directed to goto. But any relief that I had was short lived since the two seized the towel unceremoniously and cast it aside stating that it would be in the way. Then they proceeded to rub oil on my face and head after which I could not even open my eyes. So, here I was in a brightly lit room, with two guys whom I would hesitate to meet down a dark alley, totally naked save for an inadequate loin cloth, with my eyes blinded by oil (and later tears since I was uproarious with laughter visualizing myself) and lying face up. The humor of the situation was so poignant that all effort at suppressing my mirth was futile. And to add insult to injury, my masseurs also seemed to notice the comedy in the situation. So all the three of us were guffawing in the most crazy manner without any thought about the imminent massage. It did accentuate the imagery of the performing artist in a brightly lit auditorium that I initially had. It looks like I really have an appreciative audience to boot!

But all good things must come to an end. So once my spectators were satisfied that the last drop of humor has been extracted out of the situation, their laughter subsided slowly into intermittent chuckles and finally culminated in their grinning at me (though I could hardly notice their grin with all the tears in my eyes). So, now they started their massage. My wife always is under the impression that I do not have too many ticklish spots on my body. But these two guys managed to prove her wrong in the most outstanding way possible. Either their ministrations have made me extra sensitive or more probably I just about lost it. It looked as if the laughter dam has burst today and all the bottled up laughter started bubbling out with great gusto. There was hardly a single minute when I did not bellow with uncontrollable mirth.

As the massage(sic) wound its way to the end, I was not experiencing any lightening of my pressure points but I did experience a stress relief with all this laughter. So much so that I did generously tip my therapists before leaving the place. It might not have been the therapy I expected but it did do its job!

Google and The Story of Search

"The Search" is a book by John Battelle. It talks about Google and its rivals and their supremacy in the internet era. With my trace of megalomania the first thing this story did is of course to spark a tad of envy in me. Why not me? I had written some interesting things in my lifetime but never attained mainstream status etc. But then I digress.

I have found that there are a lot of things about Google that I like. One of the first things I like about them is that there is a lot of "Good Karma" about the company. And by this, I dont mean their somewhat bombastic "Don't be Evil" motto. What I mean is that Larry and Sergey went about building their search engine with no trace of profit motive to begin with. They did not even heed the "Build it and they will come" dictum. (or maybe they did). But their motive was to build the thing for the sake of doing it. And we all thronged to google.com. They benefitted a ton of people by directing valuable traffic to their websites.

All this happened BEFORE they evolved their adWords model (which the book says is based out of the Overture.com business model) I think it was quite natural and inevitable that they succeeded.

The other thing I like about google is their emphasis on technical leadership. This is one topic that I have firm opinions about. I have seen many a startup succumb to the pressure of VCs and Wall Street and delegate its leadership to more "finance savvy" CEOs who may or may not be in line with the founders' mission. The founders think of building a bird and suddenly end up with a dinosaur! Google still emphasizes technical leadership. I would say that is a great trait indeed.

Like many high growth companies, Google has its share of problems. But I can't think of any that is unsolvable.

I also think that the book is written in a very compelling, story telling kind of fashion. This makes it extremely readable and at the same time very informative. Five stars both to the book and to Google as a company!

Beautiful Earth and its people

Did you guys check out this video?



It is one of the most beautiful things that you can ever see. Bad dancing at its best. The guy goes all over the world, encourages everyone to dance with him, has a good time, shoots a video in the process, does a great edit on the video and here it is right there posted on the internet!!

The beautiful lilting song of Tagore's ( makes me want to go and grab his Geetanjali and read it) and the nicely choreographed indian dance from Gurgaon add some unique touches to this shoot. We need more of these world unification videos. Makes us all understand that we are in effect one happy family inhabiting this wonderful planet.

Entering fatherhood

Several things have happened in my life over the past few months that merited their entry into this blog. But I havent been able to put myself into a frame of mind to bring these blogging thoughts onto a computer. So guys, brace yourself for the worst, I gotta announce to you that those thoughts have vanished and are lost for posterity. But let me pull a few of those thoughts from the embers and publish them in this entry.

Rahul has now come into Akila's life and mine as well - her life moreso for the time being than mine. He is of course the expected bundle of joy. The entire family is busy arguing as to who he resembles more and we left it for them to fight it out between themselves - with the express stipulation that they don't say that he resembles the postman or the milkman.

Things have been hectic over the past few months. I have changed jobs, relocated to Hyderabad ( a city in South India for the India ignorant), remodelled our flat etc. But behind this excess blur of activity, things have remained placid. I am still getting sweepstake winning notifications from non existent lotteries, getting spammed in my blog periodically (tho less so now than formerly - see my entry about this in my other blog) and still eating my three meals a day and havent lost a wink of sleep thanks to Akila and my inlaws. And yes I put on some weight in sympathy with Akila who quickly lost her weight gain after pregnancy.

But more importantly, there is this almost obsessive thought that I have become a dad of a little adorable child who trusts in me implicitly. It is almost a repeat feeling to the one that I had after marriage when I realized that there is this girl (my wife of course) who has plighted her troth with me. I think that is the greatest benefit of fatherhood.

And when you see your child sleeping peacefully, I am reminded of the Hangman at home poem that we used to be taught at school. It is almost impossible to resist the picture of a little baby sleeping and if the moon decides to shine on the baby's cheek and make the baby more adorable.. more power to the moon..

Unstated Truths and HR Jurisprudence

I think it is tacitly agreed that HR (Human Resources group) in any company should refrain from using any kind of language or do anything that can even be mildly construed as amounting to a special treatment of an individual. Because, a view that an individual is getting special attention might lead to all kinds of complications. Others might get offended and sue the company for preferential treatment on any number of charges ranging from sexual harassment to racial, religious, gender or any other type of discrimination.

Now this is all good but robs the "personal touch" from the company. One of the greatest promoters of loyalty is to feel wanted by the company. This kind of impersonal tone creates an undefinable wall between the company (as represented by HR) and the individual.

A case in point is the HR manager of one of the companies that I worked for. Whenever she does a favor to me, she goes out of the way to make it clear that this favor was extended to me not because i am special in any way but because i happen to be an employee of the company. No doubt, she was heeding the clearly laid out injunctions of her supervisors. Though I do appreciate her honesty, it would be nice if I can think that people are viewing me specially because of either some skills that I am bringing to the table or due to the position that I am in or due to the goodness of my heart or what have you.

It may be a honest truth that my HR Manager is stating. But it is far nicer if she just did not state it. She does not have to lie and state that she is doing me a favor. But not stating a truth should not be confused with suppression of truth. Every truth in the world does not have to be stated. Let us say I am walking on a street and see a stranger. It is true that since this person is a stranger to me, I won't probably trust him with a $100 note or love him as much as I love my family. But this truth is better left unstated. Going out of my way to actually state it is in my opinion totally unwarranted, irksome and offensive.. What say?

Unconditional Love

As a would be father I am obviously ecstatically waiting for my little one.

Indian retrograde laws that prohibit revealing the sex of the baby,( aimed at nitwits who don't appreciate feminine progeny) have made sure that I am kept in suspense as to the sex of the baby. (By the way, I got to tell you that these kind of laws, though they vary in content from country to country, are still universal. But that is another topic for another day). Despite all this, I am thrilled thinking about the state of my little one in my wife's womb. I know this is fairly symptomatic of the state of mind of expecting fathers and mothers.

This got me thinking about the entire mechanics of love. Viewed objectively, it is odd that I should develop so much fondness for a child whom I know so little about. I don't know whether the baby would think the same way as I would want him or her to think. How will the baby look like? Everything is in suspense. But I still have this real overwhelming love waiting for the little one to come into this world. Isn't it inexplicable? How can you love someone without knowing anything about them? I guess this is the kind of love that falls under the banner of "Unconditional Love". The only other place where I see such love is in Indian movies where the idiotic hero falls head over heels in love with a gal whom he had just seen in passing.

Anyways, I wonder if this is the kind of love that would be required, to make any relationship work. Do I love my wife just because she happens to be my wife? Or do I impose pre-conditions for my love? I love her because she cooked dinner for me. I love her because she is so well read. Or because she is so pretty? I think at some point in time we need to ask ourselves this question about most people around us.

One of my theories is that I love someone unconditionally if they are not around me. After all like someone said "Distance is a great promoter of admiration". This is especially true for relatives. You love them when they are not around you. The moment you see them, you want them to leave! So from all this, I am jumping to the possibly precipitate conclusion that we love anything unconditional if it stays conceptual. I love my brother since he is my brother. The moment I see him, I want him to alter all kinds of behavior. (Won't you stop chomping your food etc.)

Now I know why God does not show himself (or herself) to us. We love God so long as they are conceptual as the benevolent father (or mother) of the Universe. The moment they show up, we are busy judging them. Do you really have to don that kind of apparel, God? Can't you speak colloquial language like the rest of us? ...

I think I understand the world a little bit better now.

Monkey Business

The recent Indo-Australian cricket series 2008 had a series of incidents. Apart from bad umpiring decisions and aggressive posturing by the Aussies there was the the Harbhajan debacle. Harbhajan Singh was accused of calling Symmonds the Aussie cricketer a monkey which was allegedly due to his racist leanings based on the Australian's aboriginal origins. I am not sure as to what happened. As it turned out in fact the ICC judge exonerated Harbhajan from the charges since they could not be sufficiently corroborated.

But what was interesting is if calling someone a monkey indeed constitutes racism. There were all kinds of theories from our ever fertile minds. Some people said that since Hanuman the monkey God is worshiped in Hinduism, it is not a bad thing to call someone a monkey. To me that is the worst argument that can ever be used in favor of Harbhajan or Bhajji as he is sometimes called.   It is like saying that calling someone a "sheep" is not bad since Jesus the Shepherd is worshiped in Christianity.  People mock us for these ridiculous arguments and many times with good reason.

There were others who felt that Indians were always racist. Someone came up with the example of the Indian buffalo. He said that the majority of Indians drink buffalo milk (as opposed to cow milk). Yet we worship the cow and not the buffalo because the buffalo is black. Now it is true that "white" is a preferred color with a lot of Indians. People like to be fair skinned rather than dark skinned. But I have seldom seen an Indian being discriminated on the basis of his being black. On the other hand, most Hindu gods are black. Krishna literally means "the dark one". So a preference to a certain color would not necessarily translate to racism. Americans do like blonde people. That does not necessarily translate to "hair color racism". Or maybe it does...

Transition to Mac

With the increasing popularity of MAC, more and more people are considering a switch to MAC but are still bewildered as to what this would entail. I wanted to share my own experiences in this regard.

First of all, most current hardware works with MAC with very few exceptions.


Also, most software products have their mac counterparts. The first thing to do is to get used to the MAC counterparts for the software that we use in windows. Here are some which I found very useful:

The iCal and Contacts applications in MAC are perfect for their intended needs. The ability of iCal to obtain different calendars even from the internet is awesome. I view my normal calendar with all my appointments along with a calendar of all US Holidays, another calendar that has my wife's engagements etc. all in iCal. When I look at the entries they are color coded differently so that I know which entry came from which calendar.

Many users of ipods are already used to itunes and hence it should not be a big deal to start using iTunes. However to play wmv files i have installed flip4Mac as a plugin to the Quicktime movie player.

Of course the command line tool is different for Mac. The Terminal which ships with MAC is pretty good especially since it is all bash!!! Woohoo! Love the UNIX command line environment. You can also download iTerm(free) for a better terminal. It supports multiple tabs and can be made more transparent. Cool!

Here is a list of software that works in windows and has its mac counterpart:

Yahoo messenger(free download) - which is almost identical to its windows counterpart except for the fact that it does not support yahoo chat

Microsoft Office for MAC (purchased software)- This was essential for me since most of us have standardized on excel, word, powerpoint and Microsoft outlook for documents.

Safari is good for browsing for the most part but you might want to go ahead and grab Firefox for MAC (free software) so that you can have a more "standard" browser. But there are certain websites that work better with Safari for me. Besides, Safari is a much more lightweight browser.

Google Picasa web album uploader (free download) is very useful to upload your pictures into picasaweb. I use it extensively.

Skype has a mac version.

Finally, there are some things that are exclusively in mac and are way toooo cool.

Download pixen(free) for a free picture editor. iPhoto(shipped with MAC) also has a very decent editor but pixen has some cool features like allowing you to work with layers. Picturesque(free download) allows you to decorate your photos with some cool effects such as adding a reflective pool below the picture etc. Very pleasing effect indeed.

The MAC dashboard is an awesome thing. It allows various widgets to be added to accomplish various activities. The widgets shipped with MAC are great. Check out their clock, stickies, calendar etc. One of the coolest dashboard free widget available is the one available at widget-foundry.com. This one allows you to download the album art for any song that is currently being highlighted in iTunes. It fetches the album art from amazon.com and allows the user to set the found album art to the selected song(s). Check it out. I think it is very cool.

Marsedit (purchased separately) is a great software to upload your blogs to various blog sites. Most of my blogs (including this one) are written using Marsedit.

Cyberduck is an awesome FTP tool to do en masse uploads into my website.

TextWrangler is a great text editor. The best feature of it is that it can edit a remote text file (from an FTP server) and save it when the COmmand + S button is pressed as if you are saving it locally.

Growl(free software) is great for notifications. It hooks with most softwares (iTerm, yahoo messenger, cyberduck etc.) to pop up tiny windows when significant events happen. For instance, growl gives you a notification when a user from your yahoo messenger buddy list comes online. It also notifies you when you have uploaded a file successfully into an ftp site using cyberduck.

There are more tools besides these. Will add them as I learn more.

Stock Market in India

The stock market has started captivating my interest of late. It all started when I went to ICICIDirect (one of the worst stock market sites there ever is by the way) and got myself a demat + savings + trading accounts. I then pumped in a little bit of money and started scouting for stocks that would generate returns.

I inevitably hit on www.moneycontrol.com which by the way is a fabulous site. It offers a great portfolio tracking tool with support for computing taxes, tracking profits/losses and of course the ability to update your portfolio with the CMP (Current Market Price - See I am already learning the lingo) of the stocks that you own. With the help of the great boarders there I picked a few stocks. I started trading in them and got hooked!! So as is my wont, I started to ruminate about the reasons why a person would love stock markets.

The first reason is obvious- this is a way for my money to make more money. So my money is working at least as hard as I am to create more wealth.

The second reason I thought is the fact that humanity loves trading by instinct. We love buying and selling stuff. When I lived in the USA, my instinct got satisfied by buying myself various cool gadgets. I took great pride in being called a "gadget guy" and surrounding myself with these things. I still do that even now. But the stock market has channelized my gadget-buying instinct into a money making endeavor. With this I found that not only my instinct to buy is satisfied, but I am able to make money in the process.

So I would advocate to those women who are busy purchasing jewelery and expensive clothes and the men who are off purchasing cool gadgets to channelize these instincts towards the stock market instead! It is really cool to make money and realize it works for you.

I guess i need to end this with the customary cautioning about mutual fund and stock market investments being subject to market risk.

Western Objectivity for Indians

Indians take great pride in assimilating with the locals - wherever they are. That is of course a great trait. It has proven to be extremely successful in establishing Indians as very successful across the globe. But the problem arises when this cultural adaptation morphs into a denial of your own greatness.

This "cultural grooming" sometimes metamorphoses into an acknowledgment of the superiority of the people that the Indians are adapting to. A simple examination of "American born desi kids" testifies to the veracity of this statement. Most kids of Indian origin in America take great pride in not knowing any other language except English. To add insult to injury, some of them great pride in learning "foreign" languages such as Spanish, French or German all the while oblivious to the glories of their own Indian mother tongue.

Nothing turns me off more than to see an America-settled Indian family with the kids coming in with their curt hellos, their insufferable loose Cargo shorts or Jeans that expose more body than they conceal. Many of them "tolerate" me pretty well but make no secret of their superiority. This is a typical western trait too. I was talking to a colleague at work in America the other day while we were traveling. She was quiet for a while. Then she got into a conversational mode and started inquiring whether I originally am from the middle east or India. She said that she likes different cultures because it improves her outlook. She is forced to become more global in today's outsourcing world. Of course without the outsourcing compulsion, there is no need to know about anyone else because she already has the best in her own country or probably even in her own gubernatorial neighborhood - she did not say those exact words but the implication was obvious. Why was it obvious? Because she kept using words such as quaint, "kinda cool and different", and euphemisms of that sort to cloak her feeling that it was all weird and not worth knowing but it is good to get that perspective so she can deal with her Indian cliente and understand their weird perceptions. The funny thing is that quite the opposite is true - Indians are the ones who understand Americans and are right at home with the American points of view even if they dissent from them. Anyways, I was wanting to tell this woman that her tolerance was more obnoxious than her ignorance would probably be.

But I guess that we have been trained well by our Feudal masters. Our history has been taught to us by the British. We learnt the ways of our forefathers from the Europeans. I goto a book shop and I see in the spiritual section all the great translations of Indian spiritual literature by Max Mueller. Max Mueller has been acknowledged as one of the greatest contributors to Indian spiritual tradition. But it has been forgotten that he was the one who said that “The Vedas are just a mixture of jumble-mumble”. Hence even our knowledge of ourselves has been taught to us by Westeners!! We learn their habits, ape them and feel superior as a consequence to our more native counterparts. This acknowledgment of Western objectivity as superior to the more Brahmanical spiriturality has thus been ingrained in us for a few generations now and it is hard to shake it.

The few people who questioned it such as the Great Aurobindo Ghosh have been relegated to the sidelights. It is more mainstream to negate our ancients and acknowledge the usurpers. I am definitely not a fanatic nor do I advocate violence for past deeds but I do believe that India can only raise and shine if she understands her own glory and takes pride in it.

We will talk about more in other articles.

On being mac'd

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever" said John Keats.

There is no better validation of this statement than an apple product nor is there a better illustration of a fusion between technology and beauty. Technology is the anti thesis for beauty bemoans Mr.Pirsig. (Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance) Apple comes close to proving his arguments exaggerated.

Anybody can create something functional. In this consumer dominated market most products stay afloat by providing the most needed features. However,it is reserved for a select few to provide them with grace, styling, beauty and technical brilliance. An apple product definitely aspires to be one of the select few.

And to be sure, I am far from being one of those MAC fanatics and a windows basher. I do use Windows quite a lot and like the thought that has been put in to some of their products. If we don't switch out of windows, it is due to the ready compatibility that it aspires to provide for different kinds of hardware and devices.

But a MAC blows you away. With its seductive looks which are even apparent in the packaging, it beckons you to free it from its confines and take a look at the treasures hidden inside. As you peel away the covering, you are smitten by the beauty of the machine.

I got a Macbook Pro and am still dazed at the detail that has gone into its making. From the nicely positioned Camera to the light sensing monitor and the skillfully hidden dvd drive it is pure joy to behold.

And the fun just begins. Even the fonts and normally drab looking web pages look better in the mac. It is as if there is some kind of filter that seamlessly ornaments everything in a mac and makes them exude a different aura. Think of a dirty looking car which has come out of the other side of a car wash .. perfect !!

And now with Macs becoming affordable and most important running on the UNIX operating system there is nothing to stop them.. You go mac!