The grass was greener

It is insightful, to note that the amount of generated this year will be equivalent to the amount of data generated over the last two years which was equivalent to the amount of data generated over the last ten. Big data, therefore, now follows an almost exponential curve, and will continue to do so for the next couple of years at least.

The question that I would put to you(not that you'd be interested much) is where would it stop? And lets take the Wikipedia as an example. Yes, articles measuring the size of Wikipedia abound, and indeed, if the whole of the pedia were to be printed and put in a library(and yes, no one would do this), it would not only occupy the whole library but probably spill out onto the streets as well.  The key thing here is to remember that it's not the growth in absolute terms that's important, but the rate of growth, and if you'd look at the nicely shaped graph alongside, you would know that the rate of growth has decreased over the past few years. Yes you could differentiate the damn thing over x, take tangents and do a belly rub on your snoring Persian cat. But the truth of the matter is, there's only so much knowledge that we can encompass. And only so much knowledge that we would be able to convert into data.

So, is the amount of user generated content going to dwindle in the next couple of years. Yes, and no. Now while the explosion is probably soon going to be behind us, it is the amount of storage space which is going to increase. And as it does, it is going to become cheaper and easier to access that storage. You see, once the storage space increases(nanotech, newer ways to store data, removal of limitations regarding magnetic devices) it would be a catalyst to greater file size. The same amount of information would then be packed into a much larger area, and thus while the amount of user generated content might hold steady for the next few years after the boom, the size of the same would surely go on increasing. And increasing. And yes, some more.

What this means is that we should see the golden age of the hardware and networking giants soon, as well as the user generated content aggregation apps of this world. If I had the money, I'd probably open up a huge datacenter somewhere in a country like ours, mostly a deserted location with plenty of electricity available. And then charge people by the hour to use it. Strangely enough, it wouldn't be of much use to me very soon, as all of the storage devices we currently use would be obsoleted in a couple of years anyhow. The easy thing is prediction and the tough part is the ability to act on that prediction.

So its probably not the datacenters you should bet on, but the people providing the infrastructure for that data center. Technology keeps changing, but the demand for storage can only keep rising. The grass will always be greener on the other side of the great technology divide.

Motivated Bloggers.. and mostly just a T shirt

And on an extremely slow day,  what better thing to do than blog your troubles away?  A million different things if you're interested, but you're pretty much stuck with me and my drivel. Oh well, batck to the old parenthetically interrupted, neatly collated list of things that could have been or should have been. But the whole point of that is, you guessed it, to blog.

Which brings us to that most puerile of questions. Why do people blog? If this was a Chlormint ad, I would be getting slapped silly, I'm sure. Unfortunately, it isn't. Aur ab dobara mat poochna...

The reasons why people blog might not be as obfuscate as why other people(in considerably greater numbers) read blogs. However they are infinitely more entertaining. For you see, most people, like you dear reader, are bored, or slightly mental. In the head, no less.

Strangely enough, blogs come in a rather large multitude of variety, a fact which will form the crux of another post. (Yes the key to any successful blogger is to leave his audience expecting more). So there would inevitably be a bunch of different types of blog writers, and a whole smorgasbord of differently oriented readers. So, anyway, here goes. Why do people blog? answered in five easy steps.

<1>  They're bored. Or so full of themselves they're bored all of the time. The key to this is to find readers for your blog, which would comprise usually, of people who are more bored than you are. A tough task for anyone.

<2> They have a really important message to get out to the world. Like global warming, or the annual mass suicide of lemmings being delayed by a few days due to solar winds. This is the sort of topic which is usually greeted by a stony indifference, and apart from the usual social media activist finds very few takers.

<3> They are conspiracy theorists/ anarchist bloggers. Now these guys are surprisingly popular. More so because the whole culture of blogging is somewhat cliqued in nature. This sort of blog not only has a large number of participants, but arguably and most enviably the largest group of motivated re share bloggers in the whole world.

<4> They like their beauty products. And here we have an exclusive group of female bloggers catering to an exclusive(oh wait.. ALL) females in the world. Whoever thought that religion or conspiracies inspired cults you only have to venture into the makeup and haircare segments to discover the biggest cult of them all... women. Now you know how they pass the time.. eh?

<5> The mavens.. those smart guys who know what they're doing and want to share it with the world. Most of us haven't heard of their blogs, have no idea what it is they write about, and wouldn't know what hit us in case we actually took the rather drastic step of reading their blog,but follow it anyway. These are the sort of bloggers who created blogs, who write about the most important things in their blogs, and whose blogs are the most brilliant of any sort. Or prepare us for competitive exams. Whatever.

And I know the list is fairly limitless, I mean you have travel blogs and review blogs and blogs about the colour of the mole on Aishwarya Rai's uhmm..hmm... But hey, that's really of no concern to the people who write them. In the end, most motivated bloggers should in fact find themselves writing just because, well, they have to write.

A Song of Ice and Fire

In the age of such quality cinema as Himmatwala I present to you another... non- movie related post. Fortunately this post would also not cover the (almost)eponymous television series, or even the eponymous series of books. Then, dear reader, you would ask me in a sudden bout of ennui, what is this post related to. And I find myself typing in methane hydrate. And what, you ask?

Methane hydrate.

For the scientific ones among you, this would probably be a bit baffling, after all, methane, a thick foul smelling gas is not something you would expect to find in hydrated form. And yet, a complete family of hydrocarbons exists in a hydrated, solid form. So you could fully expect to find ethane hydrate and propane hydrate if you decided to go on a full fledged survey of the Earth's crust. Methane hydrate just happens to be the most common one, and this is in no small reason due to the comparative size of its molecule. Now methane is pretty much the smallest hydrocarbon you could think of, and any mineral formed by a eutectic reaction at high pressure would in fact involve some amount of diffusion into a lattice. So with the water lattice, and yes it does form a lattice thanks to crystallization at high pressures, methane would try to diffuse as far as possible into interstitial spaces. Think of this as trying to force mercury into a sponge. And ice of course has quite a few, especially as there isn't anything much to keep the ice together, unlike water which has a bunch of inter molecular hydrogen bonds going for it. This is also why ice floats on water(not the methane part... the mindless chatter after).

This means that a lot of methane would in fact diffuse into water which would then solidify under pressure to form something like ice, but something that burns. And you would respond with a so what? I do that with my camphor everyday.

So everything. Consider the fact that the reserves of carbon in methane clathrates(a fancier sounding name cooked up by bald men in aprons) is about twice the reserves of carbon in ALL fossil fuels. Also consider that this burns with almost no residue(there isn't much to it when you burn ice) and is also easier to transport than LPG and you have an energy phenomenon on your hands. This is energy that, if exploited properly could put an end to all our energy woes.

And if you're thinking that's too good to be true it probably is. It is tough to extract methane hydrate and the risks involved are considerable. Forget the environmental impact of fracking for shale gas, or exploiting the Alberta tar sands, this would be right up there as an ecological disaster if it were to go wrong. You see, methane is far more potent, global warming wise than almost anything. All the cars in the world do not contribute as much to global warming as the methane in the farts of livestock. Methane is the single most important reason for global warming periods in the past. And this would not be by a comfy 2 degrees on average, but by much more. Of course, methane is found in higher concentrations in ice beds, which means that as it gets hotter, more and more will be released as the ice melts, which would cause more ice to melt. And so on and so forth.

How we exploit this will probably be driven by the forces of economics than by any real scientific thought or common sense. Which is pretty scary considering the fact that the forces of economics are pseudo forces that would make Newton turn in his grave and mumble incoherently. As the price of oil continues to rise and the supply of natural gas continues to be so readily available as to be economically unsound the world will look for a middle path. A sort of compromise, if you will, between easy availability and difficulty of extraction. And we'd probably die in a big flood if the heat doesn't get us first.

Make sure you burn your fair share of ice first.

Special

One question that gets thrown up a lot is can Bollywood hope to compete with its infinitely more illustrious bigger brother Hollywood n its own terms. Yes not by making movies with budgets to rival the GDPs of some African nations, or by making dramas on boxing an ballet, but by making the same sort of masala fare that we have been dished out since the turn of the century(and last century as well). Can we create movies that are brilliant, and yet, uniquely Indian.

This would appear to be a moot question to many. Most would readily point out that we have in fact spent most of our lives seeing our fledgling movie industry copying its plots from some lesser known(and sometimes even better known) movies abroad. And the buck doesn't stop there, of course, not content with merely copying the storyline, some directors would even copy scenes and dialogues from the original. But hey, we don't complain. As a self critical antagonist in the (surprisingly) hit movie Gangs of Wasseypur remarked...Jab Tak Bollywood rahega...tab tak log chutiye bante rahenge (or reasonably audacious equivalent). Bollywood has always based itself of the smoke and mirrors stuff. Designed to sell movies, not make cinema.

Which is why there are many proclaiming that we are now entering the new age of Indian cinema. The sort of age where even a no holds barred gangland epic like Gangs of Wasseypur can open to a packed house and receive rave reviews. Original Indian cinema, which was previously relegated to the sidelines of mainstream public consciousness, has now emerged to grab the spotlight for itself. We now have the likes of a Dev D, a creative modern day interpretation of an extant classic garnering profits. We now have the likes of a biopic of a track and field specialist recouping its budget. Things look good for Indian cinema.

Except that those movies aren't really Indian cinema. The sort of production value  they have is still dwarfed by some of the more mindless films that sell blatantly due to star casts, and the sort of audience they enthrall is still limited to the urban working class. And the only reason why there is now a market for these movies is not because the movies are being made better or grander, but because the audience for such movies is growing at a rapid rate. As the bulk of India moves from being a bucolic farming class of people to an erudite technocratic service provider, the entertainment it consumes would naturally reflect in its shift.

Which is why Special 26 deserves a special mention. The movie seems to be typical Bollywood caper fare at first. Staid dialogues delivered in steadfast monotone, a pretty decent star cast, a sharp storyline punctuated by a song or two, a beautiful heroine in distress and so on. The only difference is, its not. Not staid, and yet, make no mistake this sort of movie is the bastion of Indian mainstream cinema. The difference is that Special 26 is not only based on real events, it aspires to lend a very intelligent plot to those real events. You see, Special 26 aspires to be the Ocean's Eleven of Bollywood. And yet, not quite. All the trappings of a traditional movie, with a sucker-punch thrown right at the end. A film that can be compared to its Hollywood counterpart not based on its storyline or even its cast, but on the sort of heights it aims to reach.

Movies like Gangs.. would always be made by rebels or by creatives. It is only now that mainstream is responding in kind, by evolving.

Free Energy..for Everyone!

"In any isolated system, one cannot create new energy"
-First Law of Thermodynamics, Universally Renowned as being quite Legit

Now the concept of Perpetual Motion machines have persisted in the putative imagination of so many millions of us that college textbooks seem to have taken a singular dislike to the very concept, seeking to eradicate it through pointed proofs and demonstrable physical theorems. These college textbooks, (we had one by an author called P.K Nag) are apparently not taken very seriously. As a species, human beings are a particularly imaginative lot, and the(very bored college) guy who coined the phrase Necessity is the mother of Invention will probably attest to this fact. Yet amongst our species there have persisted seriously hardy and possibly meretricious fallacies called ideas. And seemingly resistant parasites that these ideas are, we tend to persist with them even after the most ignominious proofs to the contrary have been presented to us. These ideas tend to be rather sine qua non in their nature, and have often known to be spontaneously combustible as well.

Which is why a possibly fraudulent inventor seeking the Holy Grail of all Physics Scams should start off by ringing alarm bells in your head. The Perpetual Motion Machine(of types 1 and 2, creatively monogrammed as PMM1/2) has been conclusively disproved by Thermodynamics in general, and the experience of scammed theoretical physicians in particular. Yet Muammer Yildiz continues to persist with the idea, now having invented a motor which runs on neodymium magnets alone. He has submitted his claim to the world now to dissect, and the world has responded quite readily, by fragmenting his machine, and running over it with a fine tooth comb. They found nothing amiss, but keep in mind that in most scams of this nature nothing is found to be amiss until the proverbial shit hits the fan. Think the Pilmington man.

For those whose memories need to be refreshed.. a long Reader's Digest article on the Pilmington man was what clued me in. And this was over a decade ago, so I'm guessing the scam was even before then. The Pilmington man was long considered to be the missing link between man and monkey..led to a new genus of humankind..and in general some mindless euphoria. That's before the Man was in fact discovered to be a monkey, carefully merged with a human skull.

Proof enough that the scientific establishment is as gullible to false advertising as we are. The claims need only be too good to be true, and the premise larger than life for investors to throw money at it. We now live in a world wherre venture capital is easier to hunt down than your neighbours missing cat, and while this has given rise to some truly breathtaking ventures, it has also resulted in some of the most harebrained schemes raising enough money for the erstwhile proprietor of those schemes to take a trip to the moon and back.

Strangely enough, this theme has attracted more loonies to it than moths to a candle. It all started with the Charles Redheffer scam in 1813, and has continued to this century. This in itself is probably why Muammer Yildiz is probably onto something. As a scam this is essentially a dead rubber, with no investor with any basic knowledge of physics(and I'm told its compulsory education these days) would dare to invest in. Recent demonstrations in Turkey have led to his contraption being disassembled into ever decreasing pieces, and kept running for ever increasing times. However, the acid test iwill take place over the course of next month, when the motor will be kept running for over 30 days, under constant observation by a team of renowed professors.

We could all hope to flush the Laws of Thermodynamics(and those fat college textbooks) down the toilet now, couldn't we?  But if this magnetic motor were in fact to become reality all sorts of possibilities could come into effect, cars that dont need petrol to run, fans that dont need electricity, you name it, the energy conundrum would be cracked wide open.

Is it a scam? We will know 30 days from now. Part of me fervently hopes not. Muammer Yildiz and his enduring reputation would also fervently hope not. The whole world would also hope not. But we can only wait and watch now.

This Space..Reserved

Yes, it is the day of the founding of our glorious Republic today, and for those of you willing or able to count backwards, it is the 64th time that we are celebrating. Our proud nation has thrown of the yoke of oppression, had done so more than half a century ago in fact, and is now well on the road to becoming an economic superpower.. et cetera. In fact our great nation has been on the road to becoming an economic superpower for the better part of a decade, and is projected to surpass other incumbent economic superpowers in a decade(or a century, depending on which news channel you follow). Anyway, the whole point of this being that the government of India, yes that bastion of the republic, under whose aegis our great country thrives has been largely responsible for this maelstrom of progress that has enveloped our country. In doing so, they have enacted many policies which on the face of it, would be sheer genius. These policies have, in a nutshell, accelerated our growth and brought true progress to our nation. Or provided the largest part of a corpus to a certain banking firm in an Alpine country(once again depending on which news channel you follow).

For you see, our country is famous for its oppressed status. We have always been opressed(or so we like to think), for we have been invaded(time and again), our riches looted, our houses burnt and our glorious heritage tarnished by those goddamned infidels who dare to invade our country time and again. The Hindus are oppressed by the Muslims, the Muslims are oppressed by the Hindus, the Christians are oppressed by everyone, the Sikhs aren't oppressed, they really don't get out much..and so on and so forth. The poor in our country are oppressed, the rich in our country are oppressed, the women are oppressed, as are the men. We now, have come to take pride in our singluarly downtrodden and defeated status.

This, in a rather perverse way provides the impetus to many of our government's policies(so THAT's where the first two paragraphs were leading..huh). WE have reserved special seats for those who are the most decrepit amongst us. A bit like those comfortable sofas for the chief guest at the party. For you see we can now stand tall and proclaim ourselves to be Backward, and not just any type of Backward, but Non Creamy backward. This probably means we like our tea black, or our milk skimmed..who knows exactly what it means, the important thing is the assumption that backward must automatically be made forward for the greater glory of our nation. The meek shall inherit the earth( or at least Government Sector jobs).

I wonder if there were some sort of Forward Caste that we could apply to. I for one would be the first to apply. I would probably take some sort of pride in being called forward. Which is not to deprecate any of my Scheduled or Backward brethren, who have obviously made massive efforts to stay as such and should not be derided.

In the sort of convoluted logic usually reserved for writing bucket sort algorithms, we have decided to make arbitrary sets of rules that benefit certain sections of society while regressing others. This category now includes women as well, since they have of course been the most repressed section of society since for ever. And ,of course this is akin to chopping off everybody's legs just because half the population is blind and felt bad that everyone else would be going about their daily business with impunity. The road to equality does not start with handouts, nor has it ever. Women and repressed castes now have the scope, in an egalitarian society, to prove their worth without needing special benefits.

Equality really should not involve one  party having the upper hand over the other. That, by definition, is inequality. You would have thought most of the people in our country would have figured that out by now.

Or maybe we just like being called backward...

Fanning the Flames

This is about the third time that I have written this title on the top of my blogger screen and resentfully thought to myself, is this really going to go all the way? Am I really going to go on and write another superlative masterpiece of nonsensical proportions? Which brings me to the point, rather conveniently of superlative masterpieces. There is one being painted in India this very moment. On a sordid canvas of  political debauchery masking itself as moral rectitude.

You might have had nothing but contempt for the ruling class/politicians/godmen before, but this had, I assume long since been replaced by a sort of steadfast apathy. Otherwise why else would you have allowed yourself to be lulled into a false sense of security. To grin and bear those loudmouthed twats who bemoan the clothing(or lack thereof) of the Indian woman(read Bharatiya Nari) of Delhi. These twats would wonder every now and again, why in fact people complain about the number of rapes in Delhi when the women care to dress as such, and through the astounding prowess of their Machiavellian intellect(and you thought the Bapus of this world were smart) deduce that rape was in fact a laughable matter.

The point is, no one really bothers to ask why a grey cast iron(yes, with appropriate amounts of C and Si) dildo isnt shoved up the unassuming backside of any such man who dares venture outdoors in shorts.

The press are having a field day with this. They know what sells in this country, and they are in the strict business of making a profit, while harbouring information on the side. Every single rape now is covered with ta sort of prurient relish otherwise reserved for Mahesh Bhatt movies. Every single gaffe, every blunder, every faux pas now makes headlines, irrespective of how small the fry that makes the aforementioned faux pas. We must remember that just as rape is NOT an Indian phenomenon alone, neither is the curt dismissal of it. During the run up to the general elections in the US, many members of the Republican Party made some very embarrassing remarks which ultimately cost them the putative vote.

The fact of the matter is that YOU have failed us, dear reader. You have failed to be outraged by these comments, you have failed to take any of this seriously, and you are only interested now because the flames of anger have ripped through the country in a conflagration capable of charring even the most deep rooted malaise. In simple words, with no bullshit packaged in, you shouldn't have waited for a brutal gang rape to ask society to change itself. You, who are a part of the new India, the egalitarian, erudite, enlightened India, should have backed your corner a long time ago.

For you see, there are now TWO Indias. Those who would have their viewpoint imposed on the people they rule, at any cost, and then there are those who question everything. Women are now, more than ever being given opportunities to work, to support themselves, to place themselves on an equal footing with men. Women now realise how important it is to be independent, to have a steady job and a steady life. And this in itself is threatening to most men. There are reasons to this as well, some women can be complete bitches in the workplace, others can be as loyal as doctor fish. Women can also cost you a place in the educational institution of your choice, as reservations become a new revolutionary(read myopic and lopsided) experiment. Women can be the bane of your life, or the greatest influence in it.

Either way, they are people, human beings, in no way inferior to men. They demand respect. Stand up, speak up now, because even if the whole hullabaloo goes down next month it's you dear reader who should not fail us again.

Don't wait for the nation to rise up in protest before you do, injustice does not deserve your tolerance.

Lighting the Torch

It has been almost three weeks now since the horrifying incident of rape on a moving bus jolted a nation out of its stupor. And a normally complacent public has taken to the streets to demand justice, and a normally apathetic government has responded in kind, and a normally slothful judiciary has taken cognizance. The media which normally buried such incidents in between sheaves of cricket controversies and defence scams has now been running this story and allied stories continuously for the past weeks. Not even an India-Pakistan cricket series, that normal bastion of public distraction can console a nation plunged into mourning. For you see, this is one cut that cuts too deep. Protest marches fuelled by anger and disdain have become epidemic across the country, as have shrines and places marked for respect. There is one just a little away from my home, and I assume from yours as well, proof of the fervour that has been ignited across the country.

The usage of the word normal in the above paragraph is not only a marker of my abject vocabulary, but an indicator of past history. This sort of shit happens, is perused by a callous public and relegated to a footnote in the annals of Indian rape history. The annals, are apparently quite lengthy as well, even though one may assume are completely made up of footnotes. Twenty Two thousand reported rapes a year in the latest statistic does not do India justice, we can expect the real number to be orders of magnitude higher. But credit where credit is due, this sordid business has not been relegated to any place other than the headlines. The media have not succumbed to their short term memory loss on this one. This rape victim has been anything but a normal one, and has refused to dissolve into the inky blackness of silence, instead lighting the torch of a movement against the apathy of the law and those who make it.

But you already know all this.

Which brings us onto the measures that a jilted society can now take to reform itself. As with most things of any import, these measure may follow one of two paths. To either lock up women in the confines of nascent safety laws, or to promote a freer and more open society. This is a debate that can broadly be classed as intuitive and counter-intuitive, and there are a few issues that have followed such lines. One of them is economics.

You see, when faced with the rampant dissolution of monarchies, the establishment of republics and democracies everywhere, and an increasing emphasis on trade and economic policy to feed and clothe a rapidly growing population, the powers that were in charge of their respective people had two paths to follow. One was to side with the poor(the intuitive path). The poor were the most needy, hence needed the most protection, the maximum amount of handouts and the maximum number of assurances. The idea was that we placed our trust in the poor to lift themselves out of poverty leveraging the benefits we gave them. The other was to side with rich(the counter intuitive path). To provide benefits to the richest people hoping that some of them would wish to grow their wealth, and thus provide employment to the poor. To hope that the richest of the rich would indulge themselves in philanthropy rather than philandering their wealth away.

These measures are otherwise known as socialism and capitalism, and while the one was an eminent failure, the other has helped countries like ours to grow, prosper and create a new middle class.

The same middle class that responded with such animosity to the barbaric treatment meted to one of its own. There have been worse cases in the poorer villages of India that no one knows anything about as the media is unwilling to cover anything that doesn't benefit itself. The rape of a middle class girl may have triggered an outrage, but it is an incident that will sell papers more likely than not. This middle class needs to recognize that protest marches and candlelight vigils will not have any effect on those of the criminal mentality who commit these crimes. Nor will it bring about any empathy in the people who struggle for their daily bread. The sort of people we tend to overlook as human beings are the ones most susceptible to moral and criminal turpitude.

The conversion of society as a whole to a more law abiding one presents many currently insurmountable challenges, but for now we must be content merely with stricter laws and policing. And treating those who behave like animals as such. No mercy should be shown to those who have shown none. Hang the bastards.

Vox Populi

This is so typical it almost make me wonder about the shade of blue the sky reflects today. No, this isn't some sort of quasi metereological blog, although the meteor shower witnessed the day before yesterday in India was quite interesting, or so I'm told. This blog is about democracy, and as most blogs about democracy usually are, is quite disparaging. Now, almost all naysayers of democracy would have you believe it wasnt a great idea in the first place. I mean, look at the sort of uselessness prevalent in such democratic countries as the US of A(that great beacon of immorality and diplomatic skulduggery) and the European Union(that great beacon of financial mismanagement and general avarice). These crackpots would have you believe that the way to go is the China way. That would be before you tell them there isn't any porn in China.

NO porn! My, that is such a travesty, but the only possible route to development I presume. And the widespread censorship of free opinion is only a side effect, maybe. But, seriously..no porn...

The key thing is, no matter how flawed the basic idea of democracy may be , it is still the only one that works. You merely have to look at Muammar Gadhafi or Hosni Mubarak , or even closer to home Pervez Musharraf to see why dictatorship isn't really the best answer. Thermodynamically speaking, nature does abhor a vacuum, and if power becomes too concentrated it will try its best to spread itself as thin as possible. Dictatorships then, cannot be condoned and neither can the sort of politburo politics that would create an oligarchy of politicians and suppress dissent. A democracy works, and we have countless examples to back that up.

But it doesn't do very well in our country, and you may really blame the politicians for it, but they aren't really at fault. We are still in ruler mentality, we refuse to give politics the amount of disrespect it deserves. Our rulers are the best dressed, richest, most venal people in the land. They should be the exact opposite. You see, our rulers should be the worst dressed, poorest and most straightforward people in the land. We refuse to acknowledge this because we still want some sort of rajah, we dream of the sort of benevolence we read about in our schoolbooks, of Ashoka, the sort of egalitarian justice practised by Harishchandra. We have glorified and immortalised these historical figures, and we expect our new masters to have the same characteristics as these wise people of our history.

But perhaps the worst culprit of it all is our own self centredness. We only glorify such rulers because they unify us through our collective adulation. Without such a polarising figure we would be completely incapable of any collective action. Rational beings that we are, most of us act only in our own self interest. And of that there is no shortage in our country. We are pulled in a million different directions mainly because we have a million different agendas and most of us are content to reduce the agenda of public good to a sideshow, because our chai is getting cold. While we support the idea of a free and transparent government, that we should be didactic in our support, particularly to the dichotomy of having people committed to eradicating corruption doing so for their own political gain, is completely egregious. In our own awkward arguments, we would weaken the arguments of those who would seek to fight for us.

The truth of the matter is the world revolves by dint of self interest, it is set into motion by the sort of people who believe that it would stop if they left the room. There is no action without profit in our world, we just have to make sure to see the larger picture.

Sometimes it pays to align your opinion to the world of greater good. To analyse intent without judging motives. Sometimes the objective is bigger than the people working towards it.

Popular Posts..and alliteration as an atrocious aside

"You don't argue with popularity..but if you did..you'd be wrong..." -Robbie Williams

This is not just another social networking blog, this is another social networking blog with recommendations, which makes it doubly pernicious to you, the bored reader. But there is no real need to get vituperative with the invective right now, because (unlike the Indian cricket team) things can only get better from here. The point now is that popularity, as a contest can now be judged in the purest way possible, through numbers and raw data(yes Google have been at it again)... and well, if you are observant enough, you would observe rather flippantly that my blog is close to the lower end of the popularity spectrum. When I say close, I mean inhabits.

And while there are a quite a number of remedial measures to take in order to mitigate this particular situation, I won't just list them to you in the space of a boring old recourse or two(seriously, where is the fun in THAT?) I will bring back my old system of blogging(I can almost hear the deafening applause), that of writing long and seemingly unending lists of things that are ultimately..pointless. Honourable mentions to items that did not make the cut are of course.. putting up a banner ad on Wikipedia, considering that Jimmy Wales refused multi million dollar offers, if this is not to be believed, and skywriting for advertising purposes, which just seemed a little bit over the top, although many say is the weapon of choice for jilted lovers and real estate agents. Anyway, here goes..

1. Aggressively promote your blog/mouthpiece/newspaper/article on facebook(yes that's why they have the Promote button on there anyway) or twitter or linkedin or your mum's recipe blog(if she has one you probably shouldn't be reading this)

2. Agressively promote your blog offline. This includes the use of knives/pistols/brass knuckles/lampshades in achieving your desired objective. Remember to leave the target (audience) wanting more(or at least able to read).

3. Aggressively promote your blog(ahh..you see there's a pattern developing here) to people who would aggressively promote your blog. It helps if your blog is about the art of living or about actual issues related to living.

4. Write about sports that you know nothing about but others would have an especially strong opinion on for no apparent reason. The EPL is a good topic if you study or have ever studied in a snotty private college with epithets like dude forming breakfast fodder.

5. Hyperlink. i really cannot stress this enough. This is because most web crawlers have a system of backtracking on links, and image links generate extra hits of search engines. But hey, even if you think SEO has something to do with SETI, it wouldn't hurt to put up a youporn/porntube/tubeporn/pornyou/anyporn/wtf..porn link on your site anyhow.

And there you have it. Between classes, the blog with genuine tried and tested advice on how to do well in life and beyond, the sort of practical tools you need for your life. Carry on then, create your own blog, and before long, you would be mouthing off your own little tidbits of nonsense to an eager and mostly disingenuous crowd of supporters. Good luck.. and happy reading!

Face-palmed

And this is where things get interesting. The reason why Facebook doesn't put out ads, unlike that pesky Google+(yes a blue bar asking you to join is an ad, contrary to what those marketing geniuses believe) would be because they really have no need to. Pick up anything these days.. yes and that means ANYTHING.. chances are it would have a facebook logo on it, asking you to either like a page, or comment on it, and encouraging you to pretty much go berserk on THE social network of choice posting about what a great time you have had and so on. Most often the facebook logo is so big, it almost obscures the product logo, and the link assumes that you would of course sit down and type the whole thing. Now there have been significant scientific advances in the sector of viral marketing. I kid you not, there have been papers published on the average human being's propensity to type certain lengths of characters at a stretch. Unfortunately the human race as a whole did not do too well, bloggers and database programmers were, of course exempt from such inanity.

The whole point of viral marketing now, is to get as many people hooked in as little time as possible. That, of course, you might argue was the hook earlier as well, for ALL kinds of marketing. But that's not necessarily so, while television and print ads used to target groups of people, or sectors if you will.. viral marketing has a more.. proletarian approach. The idea is to make a product universal, where all categories of people would be able to purchase it, and enjoy it. The Nintendo Wii did superbly on that count, trading console power and the traditional crazy adolescent market, for good old fashioned exercise and some geriatrics. The hook these days, is where the marketing people would have it placed. And it appears to be placed right on the scruff of the neck of the facebook user. Anyone, young or old can put up something that everyone can view and share. While placement used to be one of the 4 Ps of marketing(where do they come up with this anyhow), it now seems to have changed to profit. Marketers want to spend as little money as possible ,with as excellent results as possible.

Well, here's a revolutionary idea. Make a product so good, everyone would want to be talking about it. Make a product so cool, everyone would post pictures up of it on Instagram. Failing all of which, make an ad so brilliant, it could rival gangnam style(nonsense) music videos in terms of absurdity and popularity. Concentrate on QUALITY, rather than the mass push of the ad. Yes, it is true that is seems almost retarded to depend on the fecundity of marketers these days, hence leading to the sort of snide comments about marketing being too important to be left to the marketers. Maybe it is, and we'd never know.

Either way, the point is that we'd really like to talk about the sort of things that interest us.. Like the next Justin Bieber concert or the goings on of our respective colleges and what not. We'd love to talk about what you're marketing, but get off our backs about collective euphoria and try to engage our attention with the sort of creative chutzpah that I assume you are paid for. There isn't any need to advertise facebook pages, because it kinda defeats the purpose of social media anyway. 

Product first. Advertise second.

Of Mangoes and Men

These days the only times I am prompted to blog anything of any sort is when I have a headache. That, some experts have concluded, with knowing glances and revealing smirks, is the symptom of a busy life, and an extremely atrophied mind. However, and I contrive to bring value to my readers as well, of course, this blog will aim to transcend petty everyday matters and delve into the realms of the unknown. Yes, as stated before in my rather lengthy, convoluted and extremely pointless mission statement, I shall not blog about girls(comparing them to the sun or to the homeless stray next door as per the vicissitudes of life), or about socks or about girls and socks(sorry to disappoint you kinks out there). What this blog(it sounds kinda funny when you say it out loud too...blawwg) is meant to be about is not tedious parenthetical interruptions(contrary to appearances, damn it I did it again!!).

This is then, about the sort of blogs and articles that would make you cringe, including the ones that use italics for no good reason. There are millions of them coming up on Rahul Gandhi all of a sudden. The whole of the opposition seems divided on every damn issue, including whom to fire and whom to promote. And out of nowhere a third front seems to have emerged, almost like an apparition to haunt the hell out of our conscience and our elections. First things first, though, the Gandhi scion, so often derided for being..well a Gandhi scion, is not young. Yes he looks young, and girls find him attractive, but that still does not magically transport his biology to the past. Then again books that would make him out to be a great CEO, but not such a great politician would obviously gain traction with a public hungry for any sort of information on this one man who was supposedly born to lead the country.

We are a country of a billion people and change, and as far as the law of averages goes, a billion people would have to be as confused as hens in a coop. So we got smart, and we decided to appoint local leaders, assuming that while a billion people acting in their own respective interests concomitantly would bring chaos, a few elected representatives would bring order. And living in the era of information as it were, we assumed that we would be apprised of their everyday movements, and any conflicts of interest that might arise between our leaders and our wellbeing.

There isn't any conflict of interest of course, among our leaders, there's just...interest. Theirs, not ours. You see, these people might like to call themselves leaders, and that's brilliant because it gives them the swagger of a rockstar with the power of a monarch to boot. I have a different title for our representatives though, and that would be servant. You can bet your behind no one would sign up for that post, Servant of the Democracy....or Elected Servant to the Legislative Assembly. But, in short, that's what their job is anyhow...to SERVE. US.

These are the ideals espoused by one brave man, and his decision to form a party for the common people of India is undoubtedly a laudatory one. His idea is putative as well, and as far as most of us on the internet are concerned we are all sold on his promise to deliver a corruption free government to us, for us by us..and all that. We, the mango men of the country, are to be held solely responsible for the actions that affect our daily lives. And this is such a brilliant concept. So much better than a lady looking to ally with a former rival to bare her political teeth and ambition, so much better than news channels selectively filtering news, so much better than girls being jailed for expressing their opinion, and so much better, of course, than the circus of corruption that passes off for politics every day. This awe inspiring mango man brings to us a HOPE...for a better tomorrow, for his fellow mangoes.

Except... for who the mango men are in this nation. It's not us. It's not the sort of people who can read this blog and go..hmm..this idiot should be arrested and tried for sedition. It's not the sort of people either, who would write such blogs. The mango man of this country can't read this, and doesn't earn the sort of money to be able to afford a computer to be able to read this either. The mango men of this country don't give a damn about what corruption is, or how it works, or why it should be eradicated. This is why such a brilliant concept must also become street smart.

Give something to the mangoes, Mr. Kejriwal. To gain power, you must play the game first, and the only way changes can be made is through the requisite channels of power. There is no point in being short sighted or idealistic.

The mangoes are ripe enough for the taking, but you have to scale the tree first.

Learn

"Everyone has so much to say they talk talk talk their lives away...don't even hesitate"
-Slow Cheetah, Red Hot Chili Peppers

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a fine place to start your study on philosophy, if at all you would want to start such a study(I can think of no reason other than anaemia or a concussion why you would). Anyway, ever since the days of their magnificently shambolic performances as Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem and the unforgettable Cocks in Socks tour, the Peppers have been something of a bastion of morality, spirituality and the Talmud of how to let your hair down and get groovy. But then again so have most post modernist psychedelic punk funk bands of the era. Their whimsical lyrics followed up by their utter disregard to the rather banal putative interpretation of music allowed them to transcend barriers and lift us up into the realms of the unknown. Music wise of course, although you could argue that cocks in socks were pretty radical, even for the eighties.

Well back to reality, and if you would believe the naysayers, or was it the soothsayers? My Shakespeare clearly has not withstood the test of time, it is the rapture. Or the Ragnarok, or whatever you would like to believe heralds the End of Days. It is 2012, of course, and of course a certain Barack Obama has made himself rather popular on Twitter by dint of winning a second consecutive term as the most powerful man on Earth. He just about edged out Justin Beiber, who we must now believe is the second most powerful man(person) on Earth. Although he had help, Obama, not Beiber, in achieving his position because of a certain shapeshifter individual, who somehow managed to espouse the exact same ideals that were on the news channels that very morning. And being an (extremely) casual observer has its advantages...you can see politics for all it's worth, smoke and mirrors and the lot.

But this pretty much reflects the way we have evolved as a society. From have designated roles and an efficient method of operation in teams viz. hunting, gathering, we have evolved through the ages into less clearly defined roles where we can subsist by pulling a hood over the other guy's head. The best, and richest people on this planet can now survive merely by pretending to be better than everybody else, and the key thing there is if two people believe that they are, their whole family, acquaintances and all would definitely be on board with it all. Because we are in such desperate need of leadership, we would be willing to accept anyone who said they were better than us merely because they said so. And because we really don't know better.

The thing is, to listen more. Because when you listen, the world seems to open up and you get to see people for who they truly are, rather than what they are trying to be. And even though you can't really change anything by listening, you can do a lot better. You can try and figure out the stuff that's worth changing, and the stuff that's best left alone. Because even though our society is now being subjected to the sort of dry rot we find in week old mushrooms, what is significant is the number of people who are willing to stand up and fight for themselves. And if you listen hard enough and wait long enough, you would hear the winds of change rustling through the land, almost  as silent as a tiger on the prowl, and just as deadly effective.

When the Chili Peppers sing there's a reason for the 21st century, they're damn right there is.

The Power of Equality

It's been quite a long time... I must say. I seem to have suffered the sort of haemorrhage in creativity  that seems to be a rather common affliction among the salaried middle class today. But, as they say(and just to be clear, I have no idea who 'they' is either) there isn't any rest for the wicked, or some such suitably epiphanous epithet. Not to waste your time, dear reader, not that I have bucketloads of it to spare these days either, I will get straight to the point. Man is born equal, some men are born more equal than others, and most men tend to live their lives in the pursuit of equality. Indeed, someone like Robert Vadra, whose name appears in such exalted(and generic) company as the Prime Minister and President of India when it comes to airport authorities would only argue that it was his right to be exempt from frisking, in the name of equality and all that was held holy by the constitution of the country. And not the black and white kind either, but the sort of higher echelon we attribute to the state of moral steadfastness.

Indeed, our law minister would have even more of a fan following among the good natured secular citizens of our country. As his website so proudly proclaims:

"If their (muslims') forefathers decided they wanted to stay with 80 percent Hindus rather than 100 percent Muslims, go to Pakistan -- if they decided to stay here, it means they're liberal, it means they want a secular country, they want a country that isn't dominated by religion" -Khurshid

Of course, no one said that quotes had to make any sense. Most of 'their' forefathers didn't in fact decide to stay here, or this whole odious question of going to Pakistan wouldn't have arisen in the first place. And the whole point seems to be assumed here. We assume that because people like to live in secular countries, they aren't extremist. And conversely, any Muslims who live in single religion countries are bound to be extremist. But who the hell heard of a terrorist blowing up a bomb in the mountains of Afghanistan anyway..don't they have their own problems? Secular countries have more extremists, for monotheists there wouldn't be enough parochialism to justify the body count.

The point here is, that our bright, burning, righteous sense of justice... our eternal quest for equality is as hopelessly misguided as the prime minister of this country. Reservations in educational institutions, in government office, benefits for women in the workforce and almost every step taken to enforce equality are counter productive and egregious. You see, man isn't born equal, neither does he die equal. Most men strive towards being equal to whatever high or low standards they set for themselves. You give equality to man, and you strip him of any reason to continue to live. And you give equality to man and the only thing he would want to do is to be better than you.

The next time anyone tells you about equality, in the workplace, in our centers of learning or pretty much anywhere, remind him that human nature abhors equality. Most people just want to earn more money than their neighbours. And most people aren't wrong.

Ponderous Pandering: And why the world stands at the brink of total collapse

We, as a race of human beings,(as opposed to Bonobo monkeys, who are much friendlier) have a nasty irritating habit of placing bear traps in our own path. A bit like the sort of creative hara-kiri you would expect of lemmings and the Japanese, only much more incredulous. In a few sad months for the impressive ideals of free speech and capitalism we have managed to subvert the patent system, persecute(rather than prosecute, or even prostitute) Julian Assange, and close down some rather useless file sharing sites. All the while, Tim Cook, or some other parvenu left swimming in his own desultory money bin, would be contemplating the paraboloid nature of karma. Or why, when a boomerang is left to its own devices, inevitably tends to return to its thrower.

What we have achieved, is scary to the point of being completely ignored by most of the human populace. The logic goes, hey..if you cant stop it..don't worry about it..ooh look, a bonobo!! After the closing down of Megaupload.com, and the purported extradition of Kim Schmidt, that brought with it a raft of other closures, the founder of The Pirate Bay has been arrested in Cambodia, FileSonic.com has decided to down its shutters, and well, the world is pretty much going to hell even without Wikileaks to provide running commentary.

The idea is to prevent that most cataclysmically pernicious of all human evils...piracy. Because piracy stops the author getting his legitimate due, the executives who write up the author getting their legitimate cut, the distributors who do such a hard job distributing from getting their cut, and the fat cats who spot the author's talent from getting their cut. In short, pirates probably cause half of the world's poverty, and record company moguls probably routinely have to send their kids to bed hungry because of depraved lechers like you downloading stuff free off the internet. Yes you!! dont pretend to be innocent, you've done it too.

It's shameful. In a world of "Occupy...." and "The Protester" , to enact laws that prevent the free and easy sharing of entertainment, to people who can't afford it, or probably do not have easy access to it. It is also shameful to restrict the sale of products and restrict competition based on a couple of ridiculous arguments. Frivolity is probably the buzzword in America's courtrooms today, with lawsuits probably being filed now on who invented the shoelace, and on who Santa Claus really is. It is shameful also to assert that piracy causes people to lost their jobs, or restricts talent, or that it is tantamount to theft.

As a demotivaitonal poster once put it..think of it as your car getting stolen, but its still there the next day, piracy isn't theft,it's just..piracy. Piracy helps talented people get inspiration, helps talented people get the tools to harness that inspiration and  create quality without requiring startup capital. Most importantly, piracy makes things better, because you know you've got to go that extra mile to get people off their asses and buy your product. Piracy helps promote your product to areas with little knowledge, but a fast internet connection, going viral(anyone?), and piracy helps cultivate free speech and the ideals of democracy that we have so long cherished.

If  your product is good enough, then people who form an emotional attachment to it will surely support you. Hell or hard weather, fans are fans, and the right way to do things is by creating something that people need and that people would be enriched by. Rather than spending those billions on marketing.

But no one really gets that. The whole of human kind now seems to be one large cattle market, at the mercy of our overlords. The only question is how fat we would be allowed to get before we're slaughtered.

A History of Violence

The last time I went to Assam it was unseasonably hot and humid. The roads were in bad shape, and there seemed to be little to indicate that the state was in a steady state of progress. The people seemd reasonably content with their fortune, but ominously, they had seen very little of the progress that the rest of India had made. Now this is a region of the country that is connected to it by a 20 km odd wide umbilical cord of land. The mainland seems to have very little influence here. I went there a couple of years ago, and even then the atmosphere seemed quietened into a lull that could only bode a storm.

Things have gone steadily downhill since then. A mix of despondency and apathy has beset the Seven Sisters, and Assam, as the largest, and the putative spokesperson of the group is probably the most obvious bellwether of the climate of unrest that has gripped them. Many people tend to classify the unrest as communal, or societal, but that would, in effect be too simplistic a definition. You see, we as a country have been communal ever since our inception. We were never meant to be united as one nation, for most periods in our history we have never been as such. When we have, however, our unity has been cemented by comparatively long periods of productivity and prosperity, and by a strong charismatic leader with the will power to hold us together. Neither seems to be available today.

Communalism has always been a disitnct part of the state. You need only to indulge people in casual conversation in order to confirm their deep rooted xenophobia against Muslims. But then again,this had to be  an issue in a state which is so close to Bangladesh. We are not the first country to have problems with illegal immigration. Most European countries and the US have had much worse. The immigration that Assam has witnessed is in keeping with the sort to be expected when your neighbour is unable to enocurage the sort of growth that your country takes for granted.

Coming back then, to the great leadership, adn the issue of productivity and prosperity. The government at the centre is a farce, now, and by extension, so is the government at the state level. However, the average man on the street has little to do with the government at the center or at the state levels. He is happy as long as he has some money in his pocket, and enough work to keep him busy until the end of the day as a means to earn it. This is something of a concern here, not because the state does not generate enough work opportunity, but because the people in the state are simply not skilled enough to match up to them. The chief minister had even admitted as such in a recent interview, and vowed to rectify the situation.

The idle hands, presumably would be taken care of, but then, what about the empty pockets. And this is where some of the most telling revelations take place. The Indian per capita income has been bandied about a lot in some of the more skeptical publications abroad as being a measly Rs. 33,793. This is a paltry sum when compared even to some of the African nations. However in Assam, an average worker can expect to earn only Rs. 20,500 odd. This is a sharp difference, and is probably the reason why most youths would choose to look for work elsewhere, thus leading to an exodus to more  lucrative climes.

Poverty in this country has long been the subject of academic and political debate, however, almost everyone would agree that nothing has been done in the short term to effectively ameliorate the situation. Reasons range from the very endemic nature of poverty to the fact that the government has its hands tied on absolutely any issue by the opposition. Whatever the reason may be, idle minds and empty pockets are surely fecund breeding grounds for the devil. Unemployment and monetary woes are the real devils here, not communalism or immigration.

The only effective solution is to fill people's pockets rather than prick their conscience. But then again, money has this anachronous way of getting lost in transit somehow, and it does certainly seem easier to fill people with hatred rather than put food on their plate.

Gangs of Gotham

Aside from the obvious asininity of the title, what might strike you is the rather cunning portmanteau of the two movies that have been solely responsible for the Indian public's remarkable attention deficit disorder being elevated to almost Promethean proportions. Not to critique Prometheus, a movie that was directed to smithereens by one of the most talented, and hence most obdurate directors in Hollywood. Nope, we as a civilization have now moved on to bigger and better things. Let's see now, these two genre bending, mind blasting, and all round snazzy movies are about a small mining town in the hinterland of Bihar, in the far out country of India, and about a considerably larger, albeit vague town in the hinterland of God Knows Where, in a country that can only be assumed to be America by the amount of dubiously bad English, and weird accents spoken throughout.

Language, probably, is one of the last reasons why you would go to watch either movie, but Gangs of wasseypur is more than just a delightful romp through a land of sex, drugs and guns, it is in fact quite educational. Linguistically, it does for the national language(I'm assuming it's Hindi) what the Boston strangler did for door to door salesmen.Judging by the staggeringly large number of families present in the theatre with me when I watched it, they considered it to be quite educational too, and would have little trouble homeschooling their kids in the subtleties of transcendental profanity.

In short, akin to this blog post, Gangs of Wasseypur is an unapologetic, untrammeled, unbridled, no holds barred epic of nonsense. The story is useless, the lyrics of the songs are strange to say the least, the invective is catchy, but unnecessary. It is the longest film about absolute bloody nonsense that you would ever dare to watch. And it is probably the longest film about absolute bloody nonsense that you would pay some more money, and go and watch again. It is probably the longest movie that you would have on infinite loop over a lazy Sunday afternoon, over a couple of months. It's that brilliant. In terms of nonsense, there is qualitative, there is epicurean, and then there is pretentious. In no place would you find this movie aiming to over reach, to present iteslf as something other than plain old self-styled nonsense.

Now, the Dark Knight Rises(and this is the basis for this strangely titled comparative post) is something completely different(I would have written kettle of fish, but that really doesn't seem to do it justice). It is a movie so wrapped up in itself it barely seems to be able to wake up and smell the snow. I have no idea what Bane does in his spare time, but I think most of it would revolve around adjusting his face mask and pumping some iron while preening in front of a mirror. In trying to create an intelligent villain and a flawed hero, Nolan has managed to create convoluted nonsense. Most of the plans, the twists, the deviously cunning schemes of the inordinately nefarious villains are nothing more than qualitative legerdemain at best, and confusing at worst. But it pretends to be so much more. Like the title, it aims to rise beyond its limited plot and average performances to become the successful conclusion of a brilliant trilogy.

It used to be, at one point of time, the greatest putative compliment payable to Bollywood to compare its movies to those of its western cousin. That point of time, seemingly, is long past. While more people were queuing up to watch TDKR(as it is affectionately known) versus GOW, it is a completely different story for the return show.

So many people consider TDKR money well spent, its almost laughable to consider that GOW2 would be available at half the price, and twice the fun.

Reclaim your life

Now the banks have been coming in for a lot of stick lately. And most of it is their fault. Some rather puerile traders at Barclays of course, thought the key exchange rates to be their own personal playthings, and showed a scary tendency towards that most inimitable of Indian talents, jugaad. Now to put things simply, banking is not a laughing matter. In fact, banking is what put us in the sort of shit that we are in right now, today. You see, these days if you find yourself having to turn out your wallet to buy a couple of onions don't blame the Congress(opposite of progress if the posters are to be believed) blame the banks. Banks were never really meant to facilitate anything other than their own self interest, and have never done anyhting else.

The rules that impact our lives the most today therefore, are also the most arbitrary. Strangely enough, the all pervasive law of gravity is as meaningless to us as a crow lying upside down on a deserted street(I'm assuming none of us are Buddhists). The sort of people who manage to make it big these days are not the mundane theoretical physicists, but those who have discovered n even more fundamental law of the universe, How to turn a PROFIT. For these days that's all that matters. Now to most bankeres, creating a profit is almost like making money out of thin air. Even for you, the end user, it might seem so, after all, it goes against the very law of conservation of mass, (and the far subtler) law of conservation of sanity in order to create something out of absolutely nothing. Yet this is the sort of skullduggery that allows our banks, and indeed, the whole global order to flourish.

So, what is it that allows a system this arbitrary and reactionary to exist, might be a question that all but the most apathetic would only be too ready with. It is our nature, as human beings, to disagree on almost everything. For dichotomous as most issues are to us, there is very little that unites man quite like money. And since we have absolutely no idea of how to work together, money is used as a substitute for teamgeist. Make no mistake, almost all of the world's problems could be solved if currency were abolished. But to do so would mean to descend into chaos, because none of us could possibly imagine how to deal with goods and services in an era of the absence of anything to pay for them.

This post is then, not a call to reclaim your life from the materialistic money hounds that seem to have chased it down and ripped it apart. For without money, your life would have been as meaningless as the lunar cycle to the coelacanth. This post is also not about the post apocalyptic nonsense that seems to have taken hold of fantasy writers' imaginations, in which in a not too distant future there will be no money, and people would manage to fend for themselves by producing power, food and water along with disposable nappies and dinner table spoons. This post is about that age old truism that happens to be more relevant today than ever before.

Money is a good servant, but a bad master.

And banks, are probably, given these economic conditions, the worst guardians of your money imaginable.

Boom..Like that

In a city where donuts seem to be the de rigeur a la carte filler food, and the entire female population seems to get its haircuts done from the same place, it is more than a little enchanting to find a bit of humanity in every nook and cranny. Whether it is a polite food server or a desperately honest auto driver, this is a city of great potential, and very little hubris. Hyderabad, it is then, seems to be the Shangri-la that Mark Knopfler seemed to sing about.

The not least impressive thing here is the startling number of couples who manage to turn up at every late night show there is for any movie there might be. It is also not very unimpressive to note the number of BMWs driving around with apparently cavalier disregard for their status, or the state of the roads for that matter. It's amazing how everyone here seems to have a little more money to spend than for their own good, and about how IT seems to be a catchword for half of the working population(the other half seem to be shopkeepers). And as a friend of mine seemed to point out, the girls here get prettier after 12 (with absolutely no reference to the lighting of course).

So this isn't Bangalore's poor cousin is it... I seem to be asked every now and again. I would like to say no. You see, this is a city with very little ego. While Bangalore seems so full of itself it can barely stand up and walk out of the room, Hyderabad is a city filled with humility, almost as great as its heritage. It is not a city that has been handed everything on a platter. It is a city that has been built upon great sacrifice and is still faced with great struggles for its daily bread and butter. Strangely then, while it has been relegated to the ignominy of playing second fiddle to what has been unequivocally proclaimed the godliest of godly cities in this country(and no I don't mean Varanasi) it is quite different from Bangalore.

As with any city, the point is not the brick and mortar structures or the magnificent edifices that may confront you on your way to work every day. The point is made by the people who live and work here. The people are what make up the heart and soul of any city. And while the people here seem to have only two rules, namely take off your shoes while entering someone's house, and watch every movie that releases..period, there is something that the people here are not prone to. There is a scary lack of perversion here. No voyeurs, no masochists, and very little sadism.

And while this lengthy rambling post seems to have left you with very little dear reader, there is a reason why I feel it necessary to extol the virtues of this city. It is my new home, and a very pleasant home at that. While I might have had several apprehensions about this place, it seems to be..fairly...alright.

No really...it's great!!!

Irritating Imbalances and a post for the rest of us...

I hate beginning posts like this..but hey, what the hell?! A good friend once wrote on his Facebook wall, the easiest way to get people's attention is by saying Jobs on an admissions guidance forum. This good friend possessed an insight not normally possessed by people, but then again, that's why he is presumably a good friend. Now, everyone knows there are in fact two ways to get any average college-goer's attention. The first involves shouting "X Lakhs per annum" at a random spot inside the college(replace X with a suitable double digit number), the second involves taking your bra off.

Since I do not own a bra, and would find it highly reprehensible(not to mention morally questionable) to be found in possession of one, I must take the former route.

70 lakhs per annum, is a sum of money that most of us would find a little incomprehensible to digest(or spend). I mean not all of us are MLAs or drug dealers or Facebook programmers. The whole point with the salary explosion now faced by the average Computer Science student is that it is so bloody unsustainable it makes me want to throw somebody into a fire(preferably someone from Goldman Sachs). While salaries for those in CS have climbed up to nearly unscalable heights, salaries for the remaining few of us have stayed near about the same or have actually worsened. It can't be considered a surprise either, we are hardly facing the best time in our economic growth story.

The question now is, have these recent big shot recruiters found some topical analgesic for the world's economic woes? Can they afford to go to far flung countries and recruit the best brains in the world and throw insane amounts of money at them for no apparent reason? The answer is, obviously not, and that we are sitting on probably the worst bubble in internet history since the 2000 dotcom bust. But that still doesn't solve the problem. You see the problem with these bigshot recuiters and India's screwed up foreign exchange situation is that they have artificially widened the divide between CS and non CS into the bloody Grand Canyon. If you have heard the question,"Beta, X branch me scope hai?", you may now reply confidently enough, "Nahi uncle, bas CS me scope hai..baaki sab branches toh timepass ke liye khol rakha hai".

This skewered system is not only bad for the mindset of students in the country, it is downright reprehensible. This is like giving the mechanic a middle finger and a sad chuckle, and giving your house to the guy who puts a TV screen in your car. There is no easy solution for this, except to be pragmatic, and remember that the industries that actually USE computers do not actually employ computer engineers. Computer engineering, and more particularly the creation of software is kinda like putting together a big jigsaw puzzle. It's tough, its mentally demanding, and it just wouldn't be possible without the idiots who made jigsaws, or the idiots who made the room you're putting it together in, or those other idiots who keep the fans running. You really cannot have software engineers, without the other sort of engineers, the boring kind, that wear hard hats, and black shoes and shirts with collars.

While currently all that those particular engineers have to go on are a sense of pride and a passion for the job, it is important to note that the bigger picture needs to be taken into account. The monetization of social media, and the boom that has been piggybacked with it, is essentially nonexistent. That while the imbalance between some particular breed of CS students may seem large right now, it is much better, and much safer, to do what the smart people have always done.

Stick to what you're good at. You won't have to do it for free(unless you want to of course).