Deja vu?

And here we go again. After the frantic and desperate attempt to salvage whatever pride is remaining in the organizations in charge of internal security, we start the process of forgetting all over again. Of course we have taken a hit, and we have repeatedly shown that we are capable of taking some. And we are good at forgetting everything, and moving on, almost mocking the lives lost and the mourning families. Except, in this case, one would expect ruffled feathers as the "elite" have been hit. All of a sudden, it has become "a war on India" and not just Mumbai, or Delhi, or Bangalore,and so on. Agreed that this was more of an in-your-face attack, but still, it shouldn't diminish the seriousness of the previous acts of terrorism. Sarcasm aside, I feel sad that we have become so immune to violence and bloodshed that it takes such an act of barbaric proportions to shake us off our insouciance, assuming that it has. I, like many other citizens of India, am just angry at the whole sequence of events that have taken place over the past 4 days. Two things strike me immediately: firstly, there is no doubt that these antisocial elements have local support, either out of fear or out of brethren propaganda. Either way, it is unacceptable, and calls for better protection laws. Even after suspecting something fishy with the men alighting boats with big bags, the local fisherman did not immediately inform the local security. It is a whole different question as to whether the security personnel would have taken any action, but one has to do his duty before assuming the other person will not. There is also the angle of poor fishermen not wanting to mess with suspicious activities of powerful people, and thats exactly why there is a need for better protection laws for eyewitnesses/ citizens.  

Secondly, what on earth were the ATS head/ ACP doing: 1) being in the hospital without proper protection 2) being in the line of fire in the first place? Didn't their experience teach them that their minds were more valuable than their bodies? I am not implying that they were not brave or their martyrdom has been of no consequence, but they could have done much more by standing back and directing operations. This happened so early in the fight that, everything that followed looked ill-planned and disorganized. I still feel that the NSG did a fantastic job when called upon, and the Israeli intelligence agency's remark about them was uneducated. Even then, the handling of this counter operation begs two important questions: 1) why did it take so long for the NSG to be called for? Was it ignorance on the part of Maharashtra govt. about the gravity of the situation? 2) Doesn't the state govt have a special branch/squad of its own to tackle such situations? Swifter action could have surprised the terrorists and they could not have carried out the operation for so long. Of course, all this is hindsight, and just shows that we repeatedly fail to learn our lesson.  

What was more saddening was the defeatist attitude of citizens of Mumbai being misinterpreted as their resilience. From what I could gather by watching debates on CNN-IBN was that Mumbaikars get on with their lives because they don't have any hopes of the government doing anything about anything. This probably is the biggest threat to our democracy and a victory for terrorists. If we loose faith in our own government, in the people we choose to represent us, then the concept of we as a nation is a total failure. It is the citizen's foremost duty to point out any inadequacies in the government. We need to instill a sense of fear in our elected representatives that, we , the people of India, reserve the right to take away the power that we ourselves have bestowed upon them. The common man needs to get out of his/her subservient mentality and show his disapproval of the governmental policies. I am not suggesting that we resort to violence, as has been the norm nowadays, but to utilize more peaceful, yet more powerful means of expression. On the other hand, we, as citizens of India, have the responsibility to not fall prey to the appeasement policies, vote bank politics that the parties resort to. After this incident, we owe it to ourselves to vote for a particular person for the right reasons. 

Another thing that riles me is that we take solace in blaming one community/ country for such incidents. It becomes of prime importance to establish the nationality/religion of the person responsible for such attacks. I don't know if it helps in the investigation or the postmortem, but it is seen as an achievement by the investigating agencies to ascertain and declare the nationalities of the terrorists. Why can't we accept the fact that some people, both within and without the country, are finding ways to create havoc and look for measures to stop them. Cant we have a more robust/global (like Homeland security) internal security system setup, which can be called upon irrespective of the form of violence faced in a situation? I concede that monitoring each and every individual is impossible in India, but can't we monitor people crossing our borders? It is just plain ridiculous that we let people enter the country illegally through our borders, no matter how trained they are for such jobs. 

Another thing that is funny is the clear politicizing of the issue. It is so obvious that politicians are trying to get some political brownie points by giving sound bytes, that it becomes mildly amusing. From a security point of view, it was totally ill-advised for them to even come to Mumbai, let alone visit the injured. I think the chief of Police should have shown some spine and forbidden any politician to come to Mumbai. As if this was not enough to anger Mumbaikars, they come out with ridiculous confessions that they knew this was going to happen, but just didn't know when and where! And another saying that such "small" incidents happen in big cities! Words fail me when I think of these remarks, I don't know whether to inappropriately laugh or be enraged by it. I was actually happy when the ATS chief's family refused money from one of the politicians. Another interesting remark I read in an IBN blog (Darain Shahidi): Where was Raj Thackeray and his MNS when Mumbai was burning? Were the commandos in NSG Marathi/Bihari/North Indian? I would like to hear somebody put this question to him and his response to it. 

I know that none of this solves or helps to solve or even help to address the problems that we as a country face in light of recent events. Also, I am sure many people in far greater capacities than myself are asking similar and more thought out questions. I just hope that these questions fall on the right ears, not through any blog or any video, but by self realization. And I am optimistic that this time, the reaction will be different.  

Here are some pics to chill you to the bones ...

http://boston.com/bigpicture/2008/11/mumbai_under_attack.html

Of beauty, child actors and strippers.

Yes, it is that time of the year again. The winter has started, and true to Navin's expectation of me, time to blog! 

Let me just start off by saying that the long break was sort of a writer's block, possibly my first step towards world-wide recognition [:P]. And in true literary fashion, I am writing this in my office, looking out of the window, with a mug of hot chocolate to give me excellent company. It is snowing outside, and from where I sit, it is looking absolutely gorgeous. I have a feeling, I have outgrown the morbidity of the winter, and have actually started liking it. Or, since it is just the beginning, I am just going through a phase. Only time will tell. 

But here is the setting, looking out of the window, I can see the glittering, Marriott, and the Broad institute. The trees along the Main street which runs besides the two buildings, have turned red and purple. And as my servility to beauty of various forms goes, I just can't stop looking out! Hence this outlet for procrastination. 

Went through a couple of interesting articles today, as part of my diurnal cursory browsing of NYTimes. One is the relocation of the child actors in Kite Runner, to UAE, before the film releases in Afghanistan. Apparently, Paramount has taken up the whole financial burden of their relocation to a safer place.  This is very nice of Paramount, but, I guess it smells of a sequel in the making. In any case, they did a fantastic job in the movie, and probably deserve more than the censure they would be dished out in Afghanistan for the "culturally inflammatory rape scene". 

But the more interesting article was that about one Ms Cody, the writer of the screenplay of the movie "Juno". Her story is that she did something crazy, wrote a blog and some producer noticed it, and now she is making millions. If you want to fill in the unimportant details, you can read the article. But the moral of her story is, as Manas put it, it is never too late to become a stripper.  

Damn, it has stopped snowing now. I wonder if this is some sort of a wicked ploy of my advisor to make me start working. I better stop then, maybe I am being watched. 

Oh, yes, for the perverse minded, I am sorry if you have been disappointed after being drawn into reading the article.   

Life in 15''

Weekdays-

vi FixedOmegaGCMult.cpp :syn on
make chaintweak
chaintweak --parameters.xml
segmentation fault.
*sigh* same shit different day, what the fuck! will have to debug it later, let me first check out whats happening in the real world.

www.bbc.co.uk/football (read each and every article religiously)
www.soccernet.com
in.rediff.com
indiatimes.com

repeat all.
lunch.
repeat all.
tea/coffee.

www.musicindiaonline.com/hindi/bollywood
pretend u need music to help u concentrate on ur work. headphones and all.....
go home.

www.orkut.com
www.bastardly.com
www.bollyclips.com

chat with people on jabber/ichat..or call (really?).
dinner.
keep refreshing all tabs/ especially orkut.
sleep.

Weekends- (starting Friday Night)

Movie? ok.

JD with coke and Strawberries (Thank you lord!), vodka with 7up, wine or Corona with lime (again, Thank you! )
sleep happily!
get up feeling miserable.

saregamapashow.com , without getting out of bed (couldn't thank the lord enough for this show!)

restart, log onto windows, sopcast, watch the soccer (EPL) game, still in bed.

call home- talk about SRGMP for most of the call.

Oh crap, its 1 already! get up, have a shower, have lunch.

Tennis? naah, it is too sunny, I should sleep some more.

get up, make yourself one cup of Brooke Bond Red Label (Highest point of the day!).

make a mental note of going to lab on the weekends too, starting next weekend.

grocery shopping!

sunday? what sunday? where the fuck did sunday go?

sunday night 10 pm, Oh shit! I have so much work to do!


-Ah! I just love this life of mine.



PS:cannot waste time in writing complete sentences. Time is precious for me.

Saregamapa

It was the evening of June 15th 2006, when I broke my leg while playing soccer. Life has never been the same again, in more ways than one. I am not going to talk about how the incident made me a better person, because there are serious doubts about that. So after being crutches-ridden for the better part of 3 months, my days were spent in front of the idiot boxes-the pc and the TV, trying to take my mind off the relentless frustrating scratch in my leg. Of particular interest were the shows, Saregamapa and Rockstar SuperNova (see the connection?). Saregamapa, because my Mom and Sis loved it to death and wouldnt let me watch anything else then. It was like the contestants had developed special relationships with my Mom and Sis, they used to discuss them like family! And not just the live telecasts, we used to watch even the many reruns during the week, just to observe different aspects of the contestants each time. Then sadly, the plaster came off, and I had other apparently "more interesting" things to do, one of which was to come here for my graduate studies. One year has passed, and I have re-discovered the lost voices [:P].

One friend gave me the link to all the Saregamapa episodes online, and, the past two days have been the most exciting of my past year. I realize that this sadly doesn't say much about my personal life, but, its just that I never knew I loved the show so much! For the past two days, I have done nothing but sit and watch all the episodes, one after another, and sometimes more than once. There is something about watching contests on TV, with all the emotional roller-coaster being enacted to perfection, that it becomes impossible resist. And they appeal to the very basic human nature of judging and criticizing other people. Since this a contest, we have the right or rather are obliged to critique on the basis of anything we choose to, and not feel guilty about it. But once you get past the initial pleasure of criticizing everybody, you start to appreciate the talent on display. The comments of the judges are deliberately controversial and stir up the crowd. The program is made even more palatable by airing some behind-the-scenes footage and off-stage lives of the contestants. Of course, the infighting between the judges adds some spice, and some of their passion penetrates the screen. But, the killer has to be that the public gets to decide who is eliminated and
who goes into the next round. So we get the impression that our opinion is of some value. Added to the fact that there's a latent performer in all of us, its very easy to imagine oneself in the contestants place, and just enjoy the two second fame. Unashamedly, I just enjoy thoroughly those two seconds in my fantasy. It is this mixture of fantasy, reality and competition that has made the show such a huge success. To put it in the Gurus' words "Mindblowing, excellent, 100..." . The show has another goal, to popularize Bollywood music in the world, which I think is a worthwhile endeavor. I have rediscovered my passion for Bollywood music because of this show, and hope everybody who watches the show does the same.

Coming to the judges, Vishal-Shekhar (Hit-It Squad) is my favorite gharaana. I have been a fan of Pentagram (Vishal's Band) ever since they performed at Mood I, really love their energy. And they manage to give the same energy to the songs they compose. They have some amazing singers in their gharaana as well. Raja Hassan has been, by far the best so far. His renditions of Naina Thag Lenge (part III), Mahiya (part VIII), are simply mind-boggling. Of the female singers, Mauli is hot, watch her performance of Maiya (part IV) and No Entry (part V). But the best singer is probably Sumedha (part VI). But who knows who will win, till then it is entertainment at its best!

"Yeh nasha kya nasha, hain yeh kaisa nasha, jispe saara jahaan dil haar gaya." :D

From the Maiden, Floyd days to the present Vishal-Shekhar ones, its been a very long journey indeed! HIT-IT!

And, current favorite is the soundtrack of Cash, V-S rock!
`

Modeling life.

DISCLAIMER: The following article is intended for nerds. Any sane person reading this will probably experience headache and/or depression after reading it.
Prerequisites: Thermodynamics 101 and 201, Optimization 101, Knowledge/Experience in real life should be minimal, Loser preferred.


To model life as a complex energy landscape in a multidimensional space is, to say the obvious, geeky. The fact that you are trying to relate academic knowledge to real life situation is esoteric but at the same time, unfortunately, sad. But here I am, trying to put some sense into life.

So, life is a journey through a complex landscape, where the global minimum is a very narrow, very steep, a very dark well called death. Once you get into it, its impossible to get out of it. Things like 'after life', 'rebirth', etc are complex valued solutions to the problem and are beyond the scope of the present article. So like a good optimization procedure, in order to lead a 'good' life, one shouldn't get stuck in a local minimum for too long. You need to overcome those barriers in order to sample over a larger range of the multidimensional space. Then again, life is not about the destination (the inevitable global minimum), but about the journey. So its also a calculus of variations problem, wherein, you want to find the best path to your death. What happens if you get stuck in a local minimum, one might be tempted to ask? The answer is obvious, you will tunnel through to the global minimum, with almost all of your path spent in an imaginary complex space. And that may not be the 'best' way to die. :)

The success of stochastic optimization methods like Simulated Annealing/Monte Carlo over the conventional gradient based methods (like steepest descent, conjugate gradient, etc) has an interesting implication on the problem at hand. They suggest that a planned and methodical approach may not be the best way to lead life. The problem being, it is too easy to get stuck in a local minimum and subsequently, lack the energy to overcome the barriers. We need to shake things up a bit or take some random decisions which will help us go uphill and hence overcome the energy barriers to allow us to sample a larger space. The role played by 'Temperature' in these methods can be very easily extended to the present problem.

Now, if you spend most of your time away from the local minimas, then equilibrium thermodynamics may not be the best way to go about things. It would be wise to use non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Assuming linear regime of operation, the fluxes are directly proportional to the driving forces. Fluxes being related to your motion in the multidimensional space. The driving forces are pretty obvious. But the irony of the matter is that these driving forces all try to take you towards the local minimum, which you so desperately want to avoid. Herein lies the efficacy of your optimization methods, you need to overcome the driving forces which pull you towards the local minimum.

All the above stuff puts a lot of burden on the person concerned to find the optimal solution. Which is not a good thing for slackers/trivializers like myself. But, once again, science comes to our rescue. Basic postulate of irreversible thermodynamics states that the evolution of a system takes place such that the rate of entropy generation is always positive and the path followed is one of maximum rate of entropy generation. Which basically means that, no matter what you do, the chaos and disorder in your life will always increase. So, chill and enjoy life. :)

Boys 2 Men

It was the end of another semester, Angad's birthday and also probably the last time the Boston boys would hang out together in Boston. So this called for a triple-header celebration. Also I wanted to forget all about the exam in the morning on that day, where I stared blankly at the paper for half of the scheduled time. The plan was made, and I, having been quite sarcastically termed as the 'classy one', suggested we go to a nice, 'classy', wine and dinner place. So we ended up at this place called Troquet, a french restaurant. The moment we entered, we knew we were at the wrong place, with the wrong dress-code. But we thought it would be interesting and fun.

Waitress: Yes sirs (looking at us disapprovingly), can I help you?
Navin: Yeah (trying to be as 'american' as possible), we need a table for three.
Waitress: Ohh! sure, and would you want to sit in the main dining room upstairs?
Navin: Yeah, we would love that, thanks.

So we sit at a table, and there is a huge power meeting going on in the room, with people in suits and ties discussing about wines and vineyards in Europe! The waiter then gives us a menu card, which is just a single page! We are staring at the menu for some time before the waiter, maybe out of sympathy, walks to us and asks us if we have any questions about their menu. We were embarrassed and finally order our wines by the number on the menu card (we had no idea how to pronounce those french names.) Angad and I ordered a red Italian wine ( Milan was in the finals of the UCL :)), but Navin ordered a white classy wine. We then asked the waiter to bring us the food menu, and to our bourgeois amusement, we found out that the food was in the same menu. We just couldn't tell the difference between the wine names and the entree names. So swallowing our pride, whatever little was left of it, we ordered some exotic dishes. I ordered the Ricotta Cavatelli and these guys ordered a lobster dish which I don't exactly remember. My dish was looking good, but Navin and Angad had ordered something truly extraordinary, you couldn't tell what was supposed to be eaten and what was not. But trust Navin to finish everything off in a jiffy. We then ordered a coffee because we thought that was what people (French?) did after having wine and dinner. We then left a hefty tip, just to convince ourselves that they wouldn't laugh at us once we left the restaurant. We then went to a really neat place called Four Seasons for desserts. After having desserts, Navin and I suggested that we go back, we were feeling too lazy to go pubbing. But Angad insisted that we go for bowling, so we took a cab to Jillians. It wasn't very crowded as it was a Thursday night, but we still had to wait 45 minutes for our bowling turn.

As there was a lot of time for our bowling turn, Angad and Navin went outside to call their respective girlfriends, and I was left alone :(. I was feeling super lazy and was watching the game on the big screen when a super hot girl sits on the couch next to me.

Super Hot Girl: Hi, I am Gr@#$ (no idea what she said), who are you here with?
Raghu (Shocked): (wtf is such a hot girl doing talking to me?) Hi, I am here with a couple of friends, they are on the telephone outside.
Super Hot Girl: What is your name?
Raghu: (fuck, I can hear my own heartbeat) Raghu (why the fuck am i sweating so much) (smile)

Then she introduces me to her friends, "This is Raghu".
Raghu: (wtf is going on?) Hi, nice to meet you..(smile)

Then a friend of hers takes out a camera and this girl really cuddles upto me and says "smile". I barely manage an indifferent smile as I am sweating my ass off, still able to hear my own heartbeat. She clicks a couple of pictures, and then she goes back to her place on the couch in front of us. Then there is the awkward silence between me and the super hot girl. She is still sitting adjacent to me, sipping on her drink. I have no idea what to say to her, and she was waiting for me to say something or ask something. So I dig deep into my brain and come up with "Sorry, i didn't get your name". At this, she looks at me and smiles and says "Now you have offended me, I'll have to join my friends then." She then gets up, and walks to her friends and sits on the couch opposite to mine, still smiling at me. I have no clue whats going on. Just then Angad comes back, and I say to him "Dude, I think I have been pleasantly abused". I have no idea what the girl was trying to do, maybe she had a bet with her friends or something. But it just shows why I am still single :P.

Anyways, our bowling turn came, and I beat the crap out of Navin and Angad in the first game. In the second game, I got drunk and let Angad win, as it was his birthday. :P. We left the place around 2 and walked back to our houses, me still wondering, why the fuck I am the way I am.

Finally.....

Going by the rate at which I was blogging, this hiatus seems like eternity. Part of the reason being, my desperate search for funding for the summer and beyond. Now that it has been secured, I can legitimately waste time doing this. But the uncertainty about the future was good, made me think a lot about what I really wanted to do.

One of the comments I received was that my writing was effeminate. Now, I didn't know whether to take it as a compliment or a criticism. My iota of male-chauvinism doesn't allow me to take it as a complement and I don't want to believe that the hours I spend on Bastardly haven't influenced me in anyway. What amused me the most was that we all want to believe in a stereotypic image of the world. We are comfortable in compartmentalizing things, makes us feel in control. Even science works that way, maybe because its a mortal creation after all. We could go on and on about this, but the philosophical insights under alcohol will eventually be sorely missed. Its a pity internet cannot serve us alcohol, as it serves the other so-called vices. So will have to get back to lesser interesting things.

Recently I finished "Love in the time of cholera" by Marquez. Its like a bible for die-hard romantics. At the end of it, I didn't know whether to cry for the protagonist's search for unrequited love or feel happy at the compensatory poetic justice in the end. As usual, the tragedy has an effect of exalting the passion of the lovers. It becomes a bit painful to read good fiction books especially by very good writers. One, my vocabulary is peanuts compared to their everyday conversations, so end up using the dictionary, a lot in the beginning and then finally, just guessing the meanings out of laziness. Two, and more importantly, they make you realize the banality of our lives, concerns and pursuits. I guess good films too have the same effect, but books last much longer. But then there is the pseud quotient of having read a Nobel laureate [:P].

On another note, have never loved summer so much. I have no idea if its the winter or the short skirts that is causing this sudden liking for the sun. Mini skirts and ankle length skirts are no doubt very sexy, but the knee length ones are the biggest tease. Its as if they have a sinister mind of their own, mocking you to beg for more [:)].

On another random digression, Chomu and Dada had come to Boston over the long weekend in mid April. Met Dada after two years, Chomu after one. Talked a lot of things over a big bottle of JD. Chomu was his usual pessimistic, dont-expect-too-much-out-of-life self, but sometimes made a lot of sense with a Marlboro between his fingers :). I had a midterm, so Chomu had to roam about Boston for two days on his own, the only contact with him being through exchange of emails on his pseud investment-bankerly blackberry. I feel guilty for letting him do that, but will make it up to him when he comes to Chapel-Hill. At least, thats what I have promised him! Dada has changed a lot, with his uber-cool Gucci-ish glasses. But his love for classical music is still intact, and he managed to impart some of that to me. So, am on a relentless dose of Bhimsen Joshi and Amjad Ali Khan. And by the look of things, this will go on for quite some time. So the next blog would quite likely be on Darbari or yaman kalyan or brindabani saarang [:P].

Here's to a summer full of sunshine! Cheers!