Remembering Gandhiji

Linking yet another great post on punyatithi of Mahatma Gandhi.

Happy Republic Day

I had seriously thought of writing something on my blog on this day, but after reading this great post, I feel complete. And this is not a mere excuse for not writing anything, but go through the post and you will know.

India v/s Pakistan

India-Pakistan series is supposed to be high-electric series, but if you look at India-Pak 2006 series, I bet you won't agree. Batsmen get to make all the merry and bowlers waste their energy on flat and dead pitches. Make last session of 5th day an exception to this.

5th Day was full of farce at Faisalabad. Pakistan unwilling to try some challenging and dynamic game, continued their batting, probably Younis Khan's sake, who missed his double century ... ⟨forrest_gump⟩ again ⟨/forrest_gump⟩. And in all these farce, there was definitely some entertainment as an Indian bowler conceded 13 runs, a toffee if you guess that bowler.... MS Dhoni :O Last few overs were no less than one of the biggest tumble of Test History.Here are last few overs (W are supposed to be wicket)

| W 1 1 . . W | . . . . . W | W . . W

Zaheer Khan paid finally for some good bowling on the dead pitch and ended up with 4 wickets. So Pakistan is like 488-3 and then 490 all out!

As if this was not enough Lo!!! Shahid Afridi and Younis Khan opens the bowling with new ball !!! How I really wish Zaheer Khan and Harbhajan would have opened Indian innings. Younis Khan fights a bit and wants to continue. Height of frustration !!!!! Finally match ends in a draw. Wow!! atlast some interesting moments at end of the final day of the match :)

Look who's talking...

Almost when I am about to leave the office I read this story and can undoubtedly classify as story of the month. McGrath calls for better behaviour. ROTFL. If ever I make an International Sledging - XI, more than half of the spots would be occupied by Aussies and McGrath would undoubtedly be the skipper and man calls for good behaviour. Bold step I'd say ;-)

PS:- Brett Lee too joins the band

The day we won the cup

June 25. 1983.

Greatest day since independence. You bet.

India won the Prudential World Cup by beating the mighty West Indies.

For all you newbies, this Australia team has got nothing on the West Indies of 83. No other team in the modern era had a bowling attack like they did---sure other teams, at various times, had Waqar & Wasim, McGrath & Gillespie & Warne, Pollock & Donald.

But the West Indies firm of Roberts & Holding & Marshall & Garner was something else--- four of the most accurate, fearsome gentlemen ever to have walked the cricket field. And all of them did it together on that day in mid summer, June 25 1983.

The batting was not too bad either. Three of the greatest one day batsmen ever were in the West Indies team that day---------Greenidge, Haynes and Viv Richards. Backed up by the mighty hitting Clive Lloyd, the steady Larry Gomes and the artistic
and athletic keeper Dujon who was the best keeper-batsman before Gilchrist.

And yet they lost the biggest game of their collective lives.

They lost to India.

India, which then looked about as threatening as Bangladesh does today. Kapil was the only world class one day player in the side. Gavaskar was a liability in ODIs, the bowling attack of Binny, Madan and Sandhu would give no opponents sleepless nights and the other players---well not much could be expected from them. Or so we thought.

When the World Cup began, there was no excitement in the country. We did not care about it and you could not blame us for that.... in 2 previous editions we
had beaten only East Africa (even lost to Sri Lanka before they got Test status). I remember buying the pre-World cup "Sportsweek" (now defunct) and asking my
father what chances we had. (I was 7 then) My dad nodded mournfully "Winning the cricket World cup is as much a pipedream as winning the football one."

This time however things were a bit different. My dad did not notice it then and neither did many people----but in retrospect it is evident now.

Just before the World Cup, India toured the West Indies. Needless to say, they were plastered. But it was not in vain. A 3 month tour playing against the world's best opposition was exactly the right kind of preparation going into the cup.

In addition, two significant things happened on that tour. Mohinder Amarnath rose from the ashes to become India's leading batsman. Amarnath used to be known as
a pathetic player of the short ball whose career was in jeopardy after he got hit on the head by Rodney Hogg. After a layoff, he came back a changed man. He had stood tall among the ruins in the Pakistan series (where Imran and Safraz razed our batting) and then attained legendary status on this tour to West Indies.

The West Indian speed merchants peppered us with the short stuff. Gavaskar ducked. Gaekwad took it on his body. Amarnath hooked. The West Indians had never seen
Indians hooking bouncers. The faster they came at Amarnath, the more vicious he hooked it and such was his dominance on that tour that both Imran and Marshall accepted that he was the best player of pace in the world.

The second significant event was that we actually won a ODI off the Windies. It was the last one---rather insignificant in terms of the series, but of great significance for what was to follow. At Berbice, Gavaskar finally got into the groove of one day
cricket (forgetting his 36 over 60 overs) and Kapil blasted the West Indies bowling attack. A mere blip on Windies' radar-----------but at least we knew we could
beat them.

Well not only was it possible to beat the West Indies, India made it two in two defeating them in the first match of the World Cup. And then, after a few wins and
losses, it all came down to the match against Zimbabwe.

My dad had a small radio. When I turned it on, India were 15 for 4. Soon they were 17 for 5. I was deliberating whether to skip drawing school but this did it. I trooped off with my paint brush and was ensconced on the cold floor along with scores of
others, drawing "still life." My mind however was anything but still.

There was the unmistakable drone of transistors coming from outside. That means people were still listening in. Soon the drone increased. More transistors/radios
had come on. What could that mean ? Was India still "in the game"?

It was hot inside the room. And I desperately wanted to leave. But I had to wait to get picked up by Baba. And then the first sound of "chakka" (sixer) from
someone next door. Soon others followed. My heart was pounding, threatening to jump out of its socket into the paint bowl.

Baba where are you? I want to go home.

Baba came. A big smile on his face. Kapil was smashing Zimbabwe all over the place----he was in a marauding mood. Going home, I caught the end of India's batting
on the radio. India wrapped up the game in style with the commentators describing the fielding as brilliant. India had made the turn--------cricket would henceforth be India's national sport.

Semi final. I knew India would lose. I was sanguine. I also thought that if I thought India was going to win, God might punish me for my hubris and defeat us. And
by God, did we need godly intervention to win against England.

India bowled first. The fielding was exceptional. The runs were choked and England made their mistakes. Alan Lamb was run out by an exceptional bit of fielding, Gatting was bowled by a gem from Amarnath and Botham was castled by a brute of a delivery from Kirti Azad. Then India came into bat. Also went out the lights---power cut ! Or what we used to call "load shedding".

I have this problem. Whenever I get tense, I start shivering. So here in the month of June, on a hot Kolkata night with all power off, I was shaking. With tension. You see I had maneuvered myself into a lose-lose situation. Long before Azhar and Jadeja, I had bet against my own team. I had a running bet with an uncle---if India makes it to the finals, I will treat him to a "Rajbhoga". Which cost Re 1 in those days.
Something I was not willing to give up since it constituted about 20% of my "personal stash". I wanted India to win. Desperately. And I also wanted to avoid losing my Re 1.

Yashpal Sharma flicks Bob Willis for a six. Sandeep Patil hammers Allot. The power comes back on for us to see Yashpal Sharma getting dismissed. But no further
hiccups and Kapil races back to the pavilion after the winning run as he is engulfed by the teeming population. I lose my Re 1. Which, I refuse to pay when uncle asks for it.

Then June 25 dawns. No more bets. No more debts. India vs West Indies.

Sunil Gavaskar. 5 feet and a few. Joel Garner. 7 feet and a few. Garner hustles in and hurls them from sky high and Sunny is all at sea. He is soon taken out of
his misery. So are we. Srikkanth, on the other hand, looks cool and composed.
Well as cool and composed as he can look. Roberts is hooked over fine leg for six and then Sri gets on one knee and creams him through cover. Shot of the match. Twitches his nose, walks towards square leg. And then gets beaten by a beauty from Marshall and is trapped in front.

Amarnath has dropped anchor. Runs are difficult to come by. Holding goes wide of the crease, angles one in. Amarnath plays down the wrong line and his stumps go cartwheeling. My heart sinks.

With runs not coming, Yashpal Sharma loses the plot and gifts his wicket to the innocuous off spin of Larry Gomes. Kapil also holes out to deep square leg
attempting a mighty heave. Then Doordarshan loses feed. Damn.

Back to the radio. Azad and Binny are blown away. India's tail fights back. But my heart has turned to cinder. I knew India was going to lose but at least a
fight was expected. This was abject surrender. Everything is going according to their script. Their script. I almost feel like crying.

Power is back on for the Windies chase. Only good news, Llyod has pulled a hamstring. Fat chance of Lloyd batting though. Richards is enough.183 is nothing. Absolutely nothing.

And then it happens. Pure magic.

Gordon Greenidge, one of the world's most technically correct batsman is at the crease. Sandhu runs in and bowled a seemingly innocuous outswinger. 183 to get...60 overs. Plenty of time. So Greenidge reads the outswinger and shoulders arms to let it go.

Nothing wrong in that. But the ball is charmed---- the collective will of so many Indians makes it change its line. Late.... very late it swings in ever so slightly and clips Greenidge's off stump. Greenidge stands there with his bat raised --incomprehending, incredulous. Sandhu is rushing towards keeper Kirmani clenching his fist. India has drawn blood.

The Man comes in. Chewing gum, twirling bat, utter disdain for the opposition. Madan Lal is dismissed from his presence with a swipe to square leg. Binny (India's version of JLo---if you have seen him you know what I mean) is thrashed through cover. And then Doordarshan loses transmission again.

"A good thing" my mother says. It is torture watching India lose. Now we can all go back to our respective lives. But the radio is on. My dad mutters to himself ---"Richards has got to go".

However it is Haynes who goes, unable to keep a drive down off Madan Lal. The wrong guy....the wrong guy....we need Richards.

The fall of Haynes has no effect on the Man. Richards is no mood to step off the center stage----determined to finish off the match himself and repeat his murderous innings against England in the 1979 World Cup. Runs flow from his bat with precise
inevitability.

" He is out. Gone."

The commentary drowns out amidst the thunderous applause. It's true. Viv IS out and Madan has scalped him. Richard's overconfidence has done him in. He bludgeons Madan Lal uppishly and Kapil Dev, runs back and takes the most significant catch in Indian
cricketing history. Crowd goes silent and then the Indians erupt. But we all saw that later. For now, we are simply jumping up and down with joy. We are in with a chance.

Clive Llyod is not being able to play his normal flowing game and Gomes has gone into a shell. Binny takes out Larry Gomes with a late moving outswinger. And then "Big Cat" Lloyd, strung by a hamstring, plays a nothing shot and is skinned by Kapil at cover.

I run around the room in the unquestioning glee of childhood.we have won, we have won. My father tells me to calm down. Half of the side still remains. But yes, we are in with a chance. Now we are cursing Doordarshan. Doordarshan obliges by restoring live feed. Bacchus is scratchy. Dujon looks solid but watchful.

Srikkanth hits the stumps on a direct throw. The Indians go up in appeal. The umpire does not oblige. Srikkanth runs around like his pants are on fire. My mother opines that it is better luck when there is no live feed. Maybe she wants us to just have our food but there is logic in what she says. As long as I was watching the game on TV, India kept losing wickets. When the feed went off, India's batting fought back.
And now also just after the feed is back on, things have stalemated.

Sandhu comes back in and bowls one wide of off stump. Bacchus is no Richards but tries to be. He swings hard hoping to send the ball screaming to the fence. It
takes the edge and Kirmani dives full tilt to his right and brings off a blinder.

India's problems have always been in getting rid of the tail. How many times has it happened that we get rid of the main players and then the fringe guys come and bite us on our bum?

Marshall, who was a fairly decent bat, digs in. Dujon works the ball away into the gaps. No more of the frenetic, disdainful heave-ho of the top batters------Dujon and Marshall have gone over to Plan B. The Indian fielding is tight, Binny beats Marshall
all ends up. But the edges are not coming.

Kapil is striding like a wounded tiger----the team is pumped up. I am shaking like crazy. Please let us not lose this from this state....please God.

God answers. Mohinder Amarnath is called into bowl. He lopes in, the only bowler in the world who decelerates as he comes to the bowling crease. A loosener, gently
going down off. Dujon takes an exaggerated front foot movement and seeing the line of the ball raises his bat.

And as he raises it, the ball miraculously takes the inside edge of his bat, comes back, bounces once in front of the stumps and hits it !

Dujon slaps the ground in digust and I am airborne with joy. Amarnath is not done. He induces Marshall's edge and Gavaskar clutches onto the ball for dear life.

Kapil brings himself back on. A lot of overs still left. This is a gamble.

Andy Roberts. Shuffling across he is pinned to the crease by a Kapil inswinger. The finger goes up. Kapil is growling now and the Indians are all over the place. Andy Roberts wends his way back accompanied by a fat white man who keeps on lecturing him. It is still a wonder to me why he did not smack the guy then and there. Garner and Holding hold on. They are not scoring runs but they are not getting out either.

Amarnath bowls. Holding launches into a wild swipe. It misses, strikes him a bit high on the pad. Who cares? The umpire's finger is up, Holding looks dejected.
Amarnath has already gotten hold of a stump.

The Indian contingent is rushing onto the ground. The TV flashes " India has won the World Cup". Kapil is smiling from ear to ear.

The Goliath has fallen. David has won the World Cup.

Many years have passed by since then.

I have since become an atheist. I don't know what to believe or trust any more. But there is one thing I do believe in and that is in miracles.

Because I saw one myself. On June 25, 1983.


==

Special thanks to Uday for sharing this article. Original Blog.

CCSL = Contextual Contemporarization of Sacred Lore

I have been away from blogosphere these days, courtesy some heavy but really good work at company. but Today came across this, so-called, CCSL from someone called Aashray. In short, Mahabharata Reinvented. They say it's latest hit in the blogosphere. The Author spoofed stories from Mahabharata in present context. People are praising it like anything. They are not great, but they definitely have their moments. Start from here. I admit this guy definitely has read the Mahabharata and his knowledge is above B.R. Chopra's version. While reading, I also came across Secret Diaries of Cassandra Claire. Laughing like anything since then...

Powered by Google

Recently came across a nice strip. Can't resist to post it here.

Happy Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving is a phenomenon special to North America. Traditionally celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, Thanksgiving is a big time holiday. Americans must be blessing those who decided to have thanksgiving not on a date, but thursday, which results in a four-day weekend.

I have come to understand (thanks to FRIENDS) this is festival is considered to be a sort of family and close friends get-together thing. This is especially relevant in USesque countries where family generally stays in different ends of the country. Turkey somehow is flavour of this season. This festival brings them a chance to be together and express their gratitude for the things whatever they are thankful for, but most thankful this year would be the producers of Harry Potter and Goblet of Fire. Already started with 102 million dollars in first weekend, fourth movie in this fabulous series is expecting to continue its run for the money in thanksgiving weekend and could easily be largest block-buster of the year, surpassing all previous HP movies. Only time will tell. Anyways, Wishing you all HAPPY THANKSGIVING with a couple of nice comic strip (including my favourite PHDcomics :-) ).


Link of the day : The first thanksgiving

Hats-off Manju...

There is no dearth of career opportunities in India if you want to make a career in corruption. And you are in big trouble if you are on the other side.

It was around two years back when I came to know about Satyendra Dubey, whose efforts to stop corruption cost him his life. When his second death anniversary is approaching, I hear a good news and a bad news. Good news is that end of 15-year Laloo-raj is very much in sight and much more bad news is that one more fighter has been sacrificed in his fight.

IOC official seals petrol pump, is killed

This time it's an IIM-L alumni, Manju Nathan, an IOC official who stood up to the corruption and sealed a petrol pump and received same prize which Dubey got. I know you are making a sigh and feel pity for Manju and will forget by next week or next month, if not tomorrow, may be so would I. Is this what they deserve? Is this what they die for? This incidence took place two days ago and I didn't came to know about it through any newsagency, but a blog. They were all busy in Covering NDA win and speculating whether Chennai-ODI will be wahsed-off or not. In few days, some online petition will start and lots of us will sign it and would demand independent inquiry. Is that all we would do? They deserve much more than that. It's not only about filing petitions or give support to the person. It's about living the principles they died for. I grieve his death, but more than that I am proud of his principles and his boldness to stand upto them. Please don't start bashing politicians and start crying about corruptions everywhere and blah-blah. Better would be to strengthen belief in our own principles and live upto them no matter what. That, according to me, would be true obituary. Hats-off to you Manju. May his soul rest in peace.

It's 15th November...

Original plan was to call her up and tell her that she was lucky enough to share b'day with me and she could join me in my b'day celebrations. She could fly-in for a day or two and then get back to whatever she is doing right now, which is NOTHING!! Although overwhelmed, she denied and said she would rather celebrate it with family. ok. Have fun then!!! No points for guessing that it was indeed Sania Mirza.

Enough of sillyness!! but when it comes to birthdays, I am still like a 10 year old, who expects lots of gifts, lots of wishes, lots of phonecalls(otherwise how would you justify buying a prepaid in so hurry and sending out numbers all around) and lots of mails (well, that's all I get these days). Birthday bash started with Kicking & Screaming. To be specific, Madhav and Bharat were kicking and I was screaming. That's not fair. As soon as it struck 12, I started getting calls from multiple directions. Not only mine, but Uday's and Madhav's mobile also started ringing. I had to do multiplexing all the time, and between all these I got bumps, GPLs while I was still talking on the phone. The callers must be sympathized with me by my screaming, but our neighbour didn't. They started screaming even louder than I was. "shouting at midnight..","you are grown-ups, don't have enough sense not to shout so loud at night..","people are sleeping at this time of night.". I thought of replying, you are making more noise then we did, but was not in position to say that. Apologies did the job, but it helped me in a way and brought Bharat and Maddi to Sudden Death ;-) To my pleasure whole day phone kept ringing, messages kept pouring in. Happy enough!!

In the evening, went for dinner and then had ice-cream, but I still miss that IITKesque b'day celebrations with a big bunch of people, cake cutting-eating-decorating, CC snacks and all of it, but it was fun overall. Waiting for November 15, 2006 :-)

Link of the day : Birthday Paradox

Dilbert picks IIT.. again!!

I have been away from the blogging for quite sometime. Last week was quite busy with family due to Diwali and it was wonderful Diwali. (That would be next thing on the blog :-) )

I decided to start again with some light and heartwarming. IITs are back to Dilbert once again. Last time it made Big news when Scott Adams had all praise for IITs, with a character called Asok who is IIT graduate. Here is the latest one, which appeared on 31st October :

The Thesis

Today was getting bored,and was surfing and saw the link of PhD comics on Puneet's blog. Had heard of it but didn't read it much, so thought of giving a shot and started reading from the start and man.. it rocks!!! well, I am not a PhD but atleast was a masters' student and can relate very much to it. Here is just an example through movie. Which one did you ask? What else can it be apart from THE ONE.Go through it...

Movin'

It's official now. I am leaving Symantec Software and would be joining Read-Ink Technologies, Bangalore by the end of next week.

Tomorrow will be my last day here at company. Moving too fast eh? I joined just two months back and already packing my bags. When I was finally done with my thesis work at IITK, I didn't have much time to think about as to what I want to do with my career, and just to be on safe side, I opted for Veritas Software (now Symantec). Two months over here gave me some time to think and finally became firm in my plans for PhD and so decided to move to Read-ink, experience of which can help me in apping. Read-Ink basically works in Handwriting Recognition technology, which is very much related to my field of interest (Machine Learning, Image Processing). It took me a bit long to consolidate my faith in myself and my vision, but finally I did it. In the words of Neo,I've made my choice. :-) so that probably would explain my early shift.

Two months here at Pune was fun. Pune is really a good city and makes me feel like home especially after living at Kanpur for two years. Not only city, but around the city there are lots of places to just roam about. Experience was enriched by friends over here Gopal, Somu, Shaji, Shweta, Dolly, my cousin Romil (and his room mates, those kids are fun to be with) and for short time Naishadh too. At Veritas too, these two months were full of fun and Frolic. Sunil's support made me comfortable. My team mates Madan, Nitin, Naval were fun to be with. How can I not mention my cabin-mate Suresh, whose interest made me too move into Stock Market :-) Abhay, Pooja, Girish, Bhaskar, Sachin, Sameer, Peeyush, Shubhangi, Ishwar to mention few more whom I befriended in so little time. Although I wished to work more for Frolic and be a large part of it, I couldn't. Still it was fun to be with Frolic members Yogesh, Suchitra, Rolly, Nitin, Nikhil, Nikita, Amol. During training period at Veritas somebody had mentioned to me Your first job is like your first girlfriend. In future, you may get better, but you'd never forget the first one. So true!!

Was that just a weekend?

Sometimes you do so many things together that you forget that you did it in small time of two days? That was precisely the case with this weekend.

This weekend went out to a picnic courtesy Veritas. umm.. Where to start? Let's start where we started. It was not so hard to convince Gopal, who was enjoying his well-earned weekend sleep, to drop me at Parihar Chowk for the bus. Left Pune at 8. Things were going on as boring as this post on my blog is right now. Inspite of nice Pune-Mumbai express highway we were travelling on City roads as driver hadn't filled up the fuel tank and worst part of it is Pune Roads. It's talk of the town these days. Potholes everywhere and add to it traffic. and I was like Oh God! Why am I here? It would have been much better if I had been to Ahmedabad to bid adieu to my dear friend Jay, but things changed once we entered the express highway. When you are on way from Mumbai to Pune or the other way, travelling itself is a great pleasure. Throughout the highway, it's like you are in altogether a different world, especially in monsoon, where you are surrounded by green mountains and clouds and add to glory it was raining too when we were on our away and my agony?? just like that.. it's gone, nobody has ever seen since then :-)

We reached Rishi Garden Resort which is around 100 km from Pune. And we were ready to rock!! Swimming Pools, Water resorts have some magical effect on me :-) It was long back at IITK when I used to plunge swimming pool, but adrenaline started pumping when I saw water rides and swimming pool and wasted no time before diving. It was total fun and frolic to enjoy after such a long time, albeit I had one regret that couldn't dance long in rain dancing as had to move for lunch and then to Alibag, a nearby beach. In the afternoon we were ready to move to Alibag.

The best thing about Pune is that there are lots of places to roam around in vicinity. While going to Alibag, we were moving along through different mountains and just after some time we were at beach!! That was pretty cool ;-) Alibag is not glamorous beach as Juhu or Nariman Point is, but that's the good thing actually. Not many people come here and thus no pollution, no crowd. It was wonderful evening. We had a walk, played football. Someone said that A man becomes philosopher when he goes to sea. True! Atleast for me, many-a-times, I just feel like sitting on the beach and keep thinking. I start putting facts in balance sheet of my life. Anyways, it didn't end there, we had been told that the fort of Shivaji (visible at the horizon of the sea in pic) can be reached just on the foot at the time of low tide. It didn't look probable as it was more than a kilometer away from shore, but again god helps those who help themselves :-) so four brave men started their journey and believe me although it looked very far water never raised above our waist. And we celebrated our triumph to the fort. Soon many other followed. We visited canons and temples over there and not to forget all our stupid Mangal Pandey acts over there.

The night and next day morning was all-filled up with games. Housie, Ad Mad Show, Treasure hunts and what not... BTW, no luck for me as I didn't win in any game until next day morning Naval's Ballon blowing, my puzzle solving did the trick and we won the first prize in the team event.. yeah!!! and won a nightlamp enabled clock with alarm ;-)

We had planned a trek in early morning to the fort (visible in the pic) and Karnala bird Sanctuary , but we were advised not to move early because of very dense forest and high probability of snakes. so we moved after lunch, but only 6 of us as rest of us decided to stay and resort only. It was yet another joyful patch of our trip, although we couldn't make it to the top of the mountain due to time constraints, but atleast we moved up quite a lot and guess what!! we also got full mobile coverage over there, which was not at resort ;-) and came back. Yet another daring act by few brave men (and yes a woman :-) ). back to base and a photograph session courtesy our photographer Nitin.

During this trip I had some strokes. Strokes of dance. Unsufficient time for rain dance, DJ arranged by another group during first night, and garba arranged by Gujarati group who arrived there Sunday afternoon, all added to my desire to dance and that was finally fulfilled when we started disc in the bus itself, this time courtesy Girish. Dumb charades and Antakshari followed soon. Speaking in 7th standard student way, masti masti mein Pune kab aa gaya pata hi nahi chala!!! Yeh trip mein zindagi bhar nahi bhuloonga. It was indeed a memorable trip! During trip I couldn't carry camera as I didn't have one. Some memories are best kept in hearts than in photographs (or probably that's other way to say Damn!! I should've taken a cam with me.)

PS:- "someone" might notice that there is no solo photograph of mine this one. Don't ask me who that is. He knows I am pointing at him.

The tech commandments

BTW, 11th one was "Thou Shalt not check your email every 5 minutes" :P

Ganpati Bappa Moriya

The best thing about staying in different part of country is that you gotta see the best of all. Well, Kanpur is an exception, because there is no such thing as "best thing in Kanpur" ;-) Anyway, after coming here I got to see best of two places.

Last month, I had been to Mumbai and luckily landed up there at Janmashtami itself. Who doesn't know about towering matkis at this Govinda festival in Mumbai and I got chance to see that too. On the road just opposite to our house, they had placed a matki and it was so much fun to see they finally broke the matki. They did it in first shot!!! Dadar area is said to have highest matki which takes 7-8 layers of human pyramid to reach, but couldn't be there.

Now this week I am at Pune at the time of Ganesh Chaturthi. It's said that Maharastra has best Ganpati festival in India and Pune has best Ganpati festival in Maharastra. In our gully itself we have 6 ganpatis !!!!! Mind well, it's just a gully with not more than 150-200 metres. Concept of Sarvajanik Ganpati was given by Lokmanya Tilak until then people used to celebrate Ganpati in their household only, which people still do. but Sarvajanik Ganpati has taken a big leap since then. Yesterday we decided to go to have darshan of Dagdu Sheth Ganpati, which is quite famous all over Pune and Maharastra. Due to our foolishness and ignorance about the area, we walked a lot but that was all worth it. Pune indeed is Ganpati Capital of India. :-) I remembered my good old days when I as a child used to go to have darshan of all sorts of Ganpatis at Baroda. A friend with me was getting bored initially and was giving all sort of philosophy (such as ganpati is ganpati, ek ke darshan karo yaa dus ke bas shraddha honi chahiye types), but I was not in mood to listen and thoroughly enjoyed my visit. Ganpati Bappa... Moriya...

Why I love Linux

It's been a month since I am here and for a month I have been working on Win2K at my office. Haven't seen Linux in loooong time. Missing it, especially today.

Today I needed to do some scripting in Windows, for some personal work. Due to inefficiency in finding some advanced features for wget and in the presence any good download manager, I needed to shift towards this scripting. Oh God, What an unfortunate soul. Need to work in windows and that too with scripting. After coming to real world (read industry) I started loving linux more, you know why? because here you can't use pirated softwares any more and this is not IITK, where you just switch on your DC++ and download any bloody software within seconds. Thought, Let's take a dive and at unfortunate moment started scripting.

Now, I needed to make a FOR loop. After trying out different keywords found out following command

FOR %%e IN (1 2 3 4 5 6) DO ...

Now why would you need to type two '%' to mark a variable?? Anyways, this command will run for six time take value from 1 to 6. Now what would you do if you need to run loop for say 100 times are you going to write (1 2 3 ... 100). Well, you have to, I couldn't find any other technique. So thought let's try some another technique, something similar to while loop, implement using notorious GOTO. Now the question was how to set a variable and use it. tried out various combination

i=100
%i=100
%%i=100
...

Neither worked and suddenly remembered good old days where somehow I studied AUTOEXEC.BAT and they used something like SET for setting a variable. %$@@#$%%@$#. What the hell? why to type something extra as SET, I bet even Bill Gates won't be able to tell you that. Don't lose the spirit, go ahead. I thought. Now, came the next ultimate question, how to increment a variable? again combinations...

i=%i+1
i=%%i+1
%%i=%i%+1
...

Again, no luck. There exists something like INCR in dos, but for some reason that won't work in Win2K, so here is where I am stuck up. No clue to get out of this. Don't think I didn't Google for any of this stuff. After hard work on Google, I am pouring out my frustration here. Should get back to search now I guess. God bless me!!

Recent breakthrough : Finally managed to find out the way to increment a variable. it goes

SET /A i += 1

Now don't ask me why to put extra /A for doing so, in one other achievement, I found out that IF syntax would be like

IF NOT "i"="100"

but I am still unaware about use of < or > in IF, because if I use those, it says unexpected end of statement or something like that. Let it be whatsoever it is, I am done with my job. After I was done with my download thing, I am enjoying the geeky strips I downloaded and sharing one which is very pertinent with this one.

Google Talk

Big G has struck again and this time it's Instant Messenger Service. After rounds of rumours and denials, it's finally there and it's called, Google Talk. Agent Kujan was right. "Rumour is not a rumour that doesn't die" :-)

As Google's trademark, it's just beta as of now. Official google client is available only for windows, but as it supports jabber protocol you can use iChat for MAC and Gaim for linux. As of now, it doesn't have many features. Only basic text chatting and voice chatting, not even emoticons and no audibles, nicknames... NOTHING. Owing to which client is very light and easy to use. It has raised lots of criticism for Google, because when Google launches something, people expect it to be out-of-the-box thing. Take for example, Gmail, which forced email market leaders like Yahoo! and hotmail to increase the mailbox size. Similarly, Google Earth. Where in the case of GTalk, there is nothing new, infact much less than state-of-the-art IM services.

BUT, look at it from this point of view. Google is just trying to add a dimension to its Google Universe. It's a universe. A universe where user can avail all the facilities and don't have to switch between providers. (Much more coming up, rumours say that Google is also coming up with Paypal like system) Everything in just one login and one account, so this is just another dimension, which doesn't deny the scope of lots of development before official release. Imagine the future (I bet it won't be too far) where in all you need to do is just say few words and Google will do rest of the job for you. One point I noticed especially is the voice chat GTalk provides. Quality of voice is really good and is almost real time. First day feedback has been satisfactory as per my survey goes (Launched before less than 24 hours could be the reason, which results in lesser initial traffic as compared to Y! or MSN, but just wait-and-watch). The buzz is also that Google may extend voice chat to phone lines. Yes, you would be actually able to make a call to landline phones through GTalk. BTW, it's official announcement has not been done yet on Google Blog, which may solve lots of puzzles and may reveal some of the Google's plan for improvement in GTalk. Hold your breaths till then...

Quote of the day :- A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.

Link of the day :- So who cares about pennies huh?

Jugaad

I learned this word during my stay at Kanpur, only to realize that I was Jugaading all along my life although I didn't know the word ;-) Jugaad is formally defined as follows:

Jugaad n. An improvised or jury-rigged solution; inventiveness, ingenuity, cleverness.

well, this formal definition is too small to define the actualy depth and greatness of the word. It'd be impossible to visualize anything running smoothly without this powerful Jugaad. Starting from the national government to Laxman's common man won't survivie in India without this Jugaad. Mind you, Jugaad is not to be taken in the negative sense. Jugaad is an essential part of every thing which needs to run on time. Today read an interesting article about (link) fabulous Mumbai suburban railway network, lifeline of mumbai. Scheduling and management of suburban railway can be best exercise in contraint satisfaction for hardcore mathematician and practially it really has been nightmare to theoretically come up with the solution, where a train arrives every 3 minutes on all the stations between Churchgate and Virar, the tracks run for 60 kilometres. Over 3.1 million people use 1,007 services on this network every day to get to their places of work and back home. That translates to 50,000 people for every kilometre, making it the densest suburban rail network anywhere in the world. But since 80 years (1925-2005) this is running perfect without glitches, owing to omnipotent JUGAAD. Here is Google's tribute to Jugaad :

• Definition : Jugaad
  
• Management by Jugaad
  
• Jugaad... the new buzz word
  

Parineeta

Bollywood these days is experimenting with all sorts of techniques. One of them is trying to recreate magic of old work. After success of Devdas with Grand sets and wonderful music, now it's Parineeta. No this is not going to be another review of movie, but what made me come here is the music of the movie. Managed to watch movie last month and must say I liked and it was treated well with maintaining proper backdrop of '60s.

I heard this album first time when I was working on my thesis report at 3 am and it really moved me. I could feel the music deep within my soul. Only few albums/tracks have managed this. Again, today I am sitting in my office and it's 8-15 in the evening and it's time to leave, but after long time I have managed headphones and can't hold myself back from completing this whole sound track second time before I leave for home. (Anyway, I haven't got anything to do when I reach home ;-) )

Album starts with Piyu Bole by Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal. I feel this song is dear to more after I watched the movie, because the chemistry between Saif and Vidya Balan is very well depicted in the video and song seems natural and not forced in the movie. Kasto Mazza includes superb use of the sound of a chugging locomotive like some '60-'70 movie.

Soona Mann Ka Aangan is the paragon of the album. Sonu Nigam manages to fetch millions accolades from me for this one. He managed to put in all the dard required and wonderfully accompanied by my favourite new age singer Shreya Ghoshal.

Kaisi Paheli Zindgani by Sunidhi is on the lines of dil ko hazaar baar of Murder, but once again consistent with backdrop of the movie. Raat hamari toh is melodious solo by Chitra. Dhinak Dhinak Dha is nasty song and typical wedding song. OK types.

Album ends with title track, Sonu Nigam-Shreya Ghoshal duet Hui Main Parineeta. A romantic and sensual song to fit wedding of Shekhar and Lolita. Both Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal are going up and up in my favourite singers. Cheers for both of them.

PS:- You can listen songs on Raaga.com Here is the link.