Start of the journey

Moved on to wordpress

2006-03-06T20:58:00.000+05:30

http://madhukar.wordpress.com

Cinderella Man

2005-10-24T16:29:00.000+05:30

We went to this movie yesterday. Before watching this movie, i never dreamt of it to have boxing in it.

But even though, this movie had lots of boxing in it, its not just a boxing movie..rather it is the story of a middle-aged boxer with three kids at home and a wife he forever loved, and his struggle through tough financial conditions in a society that had played hard on him. It is the story of his struggle for his family.
It is the story of a husband who in order to sustain his family worked furiously on a dock without even caring for his broken hand.
It is the story of a father who had to sacrifice all his pride and beg for just 20 dollors to bring back his kids back his home.

Unbelievable..but its true ..
Ya..It is the story of Jimmy Braddock...the very famous Jimmy Braddock a heavy weight champion of yester years.

Before watchin this movie, i had no idea who this Jimmy Braddock was and the only boxing movie which i enjoyed till now was ROCKY and the only boxer i knew was Mohd. Ali. And after watchin this movie, I can safely say that CINDERELLA MAN had easily knocked ROCKY out in the first round itself.

Performance wise, Russel Crowe as Braddock was fabulous as ever..he seemed completely into the character of Jimmy Braddock.

I clearly remember, in the begining of the movie when his licence to box was taken away and when he returned home,he didnot utter even a single word but his silence spelled all his plights...his disappointments that he couldnot do for his family.

The scene where Crowe as Braddock with hat in hand and tears in his eyes, was begging for twenty dollars so that he could get his children back into his home, was the one which can make even the strongest heart on this earth melt.

The acting of braddock's wife and his coach were also awesome.

The direction was ultimate.

My Rating : *****/*****

Team Outing@Mount Opera

2005-10-23T13:52:00.000+05:30

Our Entire Development Team

Breakfast @Mount Opera

Out executive manager in a different role

Natural Beauty seen from the heights of Mount Opera

Threat given to us before the fun starts..but we were not to stop

Gaurav in the air;)

is it me ?

water water everywhere

Fun Fun and Only Fun

watch Gaurav carefully .. is he repenting on his sins ? :)

Trying to mimic hyderabad's traffic

Save Me From the wraths of Pranav

In order to kill the frustration of our daily,routined and boring corporate life,the Kid in all of us came out very strongly that day ; )

There are lot more snaps..but i m bored of uploading them on flickr.
Also kunal told me that if u get bored in the midst of post, just write
TBC..ie to be continued.

So TBC (will be continued ..when..i myself dont know ;) )

'You've got to find what you love'

2005-10-23T12:05:00.000+05:30

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

For PERL Lovers : FROM THE ARCHIVES OF CPAN

2005-10-19T13:03:00.000+05:30

No...It's not that I found some perl modules at CPAN.

Quite surprisingly I found out a poem at CPAN;)

From: Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>
Subject: In Mountain View did Larry Wall
Date: 26 Jun 1999 16:45:41 -0700

In Mountain View did Larry Wall
Sedately launch a quiet plea:
That DOS, the ancient system, shall
On boxes pleasureless to all
Run Perl though lack they C.

His acolytes he gathered round
    And led where tools were never found
Save but for those made dear by Bill's
    Unkind--nay, cruel!--per-user fee
And visual glitz chock full of frills;
    They barely worked, and were not free.

But now foul wretched pain was fast supplanted
With bright new Perl-wrought tools at last to cover
That savage place of which we long had ranted
Though some beneath a waning moon had chanted
To summon forth their sendmail-demon lover!

And in this place, long fleeced by Redmond's scheming
    As if the hackers' gods were lost in dreaming
An honored program, great and open-sourced,
    Which Unix hackers had long ago endorsed
Cruel schackles shattered, freeing from the jail
    Where prisoners chafed beneath the Windows' flail.

Despite these joys, we paused and looked to see
    Lone Larry muttering low but plaintively
He raised his arms to calm the frenzied motion
    Of heartless hackers cursing systems small
That ran these boxes pleasureless to all
    For struck was Larry with another notion:
'Twas not enough to bring Perl to this shore
    His quiet voice he raised to ask for MORE!

This land was lacking still the pleasure
    That comes from using simple glue
To join together native treasure,
    And integrate COM objects, too.
Then came a miracle of rare device,
    An Active Perl to lend its flair and spice
To friends trapped far from Paradise.

In a vision once I saw:
    It was a Wisconsinian maid,
And with Perl Power Tools she played
    Stringing puissant pipes together
Deftly weaving webs of power
    Fingers dancing like a feather
Till in me deep delight did flower.

For her my time I'd sacrifice:
    I built myself a tool so fair
'Twould run on Bill's or Steve's device,
    That she might know me if I dare.
My friends cry out: Beware! Beware!
    Her singeing sighs, her stinging stare!
She knows me not, mistrusting vice.
    My words of Unix bring her dread,
But I shall sooth her fears instead
    And drink the milk of Paradise.

-- Just don't compare it with a real language, or you'll be unhappy... :-)
--Larry Wall in < 1992May12.190238.5667@netlabs.com>

Lesson to Learn

2005-07-02T08:33:00.000+05:30

I got this message from a spam but i believe this carries cent percent essence in our real life too. Often we are so engrossed in planning for our future that we forget to live our present.

WHAT YOU ARE IS GODS GIFT TO YOU, WHAT YOU WILL BE IS YOUR GIFT TO GOD

First I was dying to finish my school and start college. And then i was dying to finish my college and start working. And then i was dying to marry and have kids.And then I was dying for my kids to grow old enough so i could go back to work. But then I was dying to retire. And now i am dying.
And suddenly I realised I forgot to live

Please dont let this happen to you. Appreciate your current situation and enjoy each day.

Coincidence ++ ; Who was SHE ?

2005-04-12T01:13:00.000+05:30

Today at around 3:00 pm when i was standing near Needs, I dont know why but I got an intution that some one was staring at me. I looked around and i found a girl was staring at me. Hmm..that was quite unusual..because it never happend to me before. At first I thought, she might be looking at someone behind me but no..there was noone behind me. Wild fragments of thoughts started whirling around me. I thought if being a girl she can stare at me, why couldn't I ? So i also started looking at her. yeah..believe me i was staring at her. She was good looking but she looked familiar too. Have i seen her before ? I don't know because i was not able to recall. All of a sudden, she started moving towards me. Now that was horrifying. I thought probably she minded my staring at her and i was going to be kicked in the middle of the road. I turned my back to her. But what is it ? I heard a girl's voice,"Excuse me, are you Pankaj from KV Baileyroad Patna ?."
I was shocked. Who the hell is she ? I looked at her again. She again looked very familiar but i cud not recall who she was ? I tried hard to explore each and every parts of my memory cell to find a name to map the image of her face, but all in vain. She told, " Dekha hum doston ko nahin bhulate..pehchaan liya na tumhein..itne saalon ke baad bhi ?. You havent changed much."
"But you have change a lot ", I broke out , "You have changed so much that in the first sight no one can identify you ?".
"Well , yeah, you know i have operated my eye by laser and i got rid of specs but wait, are you trying to say that you couldnot recognise me ?", she yelled.
"hmm..no..i mean..yeah", came out of my mug. And that was the most embarassing moment for me. Now i begged sorry and told her that actually her face looked familiar to me but i couldnot recall her name. "Were you also from KV Baileroad ?", I asked. Now for a moment she got a bit annoyed but then she smiled and said, "Well .. You find out who i am and then ring me at this number. I am in hyderabad till this month. And even if you are not able to find out who i am till this week call me at this number i will re-introduce myself to a bhulakkar." She wrote her number in a piece of paper and gave that to me. "Aur haan ab call karna mat bhul jaana.", she iterated. After that she took an auto and left and i as a dumb fool couldnot utter anything.
Now the worst part was yet to come. While returning to institute i took a bus, kept the tickets in my pocket and in the mean time a storm was goin on in my brain to mine the name of that girl. By the time i reached mehdipatnam, i was totally frustrated and i thought i would simply call her at the weekends and ask her name. And thinking that i tore out and threw the tickets of the bus by which we came to mehdipatnam and i took an auto for tolichowki. Now there to give the autowala some change i put my hands in my pocket, i felt as if some Rupee is there in my pocket. I took that out. It was the ticket of the bus. But as far as i remembered i had torn out the ticket. Oh my god, I checked in my other pocket. It was actually the paper, in which she gave me her number, i had torn out by mistake. Now I dont know who she was and i dont have her number to inquire about her and i was such a dumb fool that i even didnt tell her my mobile number.
Now I just know that she was a girl from patna ( most probably as she knew me and my school too ) and she once used to wear specs ( which she confessed ). But who the hell was she ?

Gandhi - 'Mahatma' or Flawed Genius? National Leader or Manipulative Politician?

2005-04-06T15:42:00.000+05:30

When i was in class 6th ( as far as i remember ), I read an article (editorial) in a newspaper (probably Navbharat times) where the author tried to figure out the human aspect of Gandhi jee. The author mentioned that Gandhi's legacy was being presented as something larger than the life and he begged to disagree on those. That article had several points on which author praised gandhi but there were many instances where gandhi jee was heavily criticized for his actions. Those were the times when my quest for the biography of gandhi jee and several other leaders of India namely bhagat singh, sardar vallabh bhai patel started. I started reading lots of books and articles on them. Though the books and articles i got was really awesome but at some point of time i felt that i was wasting my time as digging past was of no use. So i left. Then all of a sudden probably couple of years back, i saw a movie "The Legend of Bhagat Singh" and it again stirred me from my core. Basically this movie had also touched most of the points regarding gandhi which was in that article. Then recently i read two posts on blogspot, one by utkarsh's friend archana and other by none other than jayaram. Now these two posts again reminded me of the sentence of the article (which i mentioned earlier) that in the ppl's frame of mind even now the legacy of mahatma gandhi is still more than anything. They consider him as equivalent to god. I dont know, but what i feel is Gandhi Jee was no doubt a great HUMAN BEING but like humans , he also erred at many points.

Today while surfing on the net i found an article ( a very long article ) which critically figures out some aspects of Gandhi jee's thoughts,his ideologies and his life.So here goes the article..

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was born in 1869 in a stately and handsome three-storied home in Porbandar, grandson of the chief administrator of the small Princely State in coastal Gujarat. Acknowledging that he was born into a family of politicians, always involved in secret alliances and mutual promotions, in one letter, he wrote: "I knew then, and know better now, that much of my father's time was taken up in mere intrigue." In another letter to his nephew, Chaganlal, he acknowledged the notoriety of his political family: "...that is, we are known to belong to a band of robbers". It is to Gandhi's credit that he saw his family for what it was, and attempted to transcend it's narrow Modh Bania outlook; but often, subconsciously learned behavior dies hard. The tendency towards backroom wheeling and dealing did not entirely escape Gandhi himself as he rose to become the Indian National Congress's most influential political leader. (See Collected Works, vol. 24, p.170, vol. 12, p.381)

Although most biographies of Gandhi focus on Gandhi's political career after he returned from England in early 1915, and begin with his involvement in the Civil Disobedience Movement from the early 1920s, it is important to note that Gandhi arrived on the National Scene rather late, and in the first half of his political life was considerably beholden to the Raj. At a time when literacy in British India was barely 8%, Gandhi enjoyed the rare option of studying in Britain and spent the years 1888-1893 in London before taking employment in South Africa. Although Gandhi became politically active in South Africa, and led 'Satyagrahas' against unjust laws, Gandhi was hardly yet an anti-imperialist radical or revolutionary. In fact, in 1914, he was still very much in awe of the British empire, and Martin Green in his biography of Gandhi describes his state of mind as follows: "When Gandhi left South Africa, he still believed in the British empire. though tentatively. "Though Empires have gone and fallen, this empire may perhaps be an exception....it is an empire not founded on material but on spiritual foundations....the British constitution. Tear away those ideals and you tear away my loyalty to the British constitution; keep those ideals and I am ever a bondsman"." (See Martin Green, Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolutionary, p. 208)

It is especially notable that at the age of 45, Gandhi saw in the British empire a "spiritual foundation" - a sentiment many in the Indian Freedom Movement would have found astounding, even nauseating. As early as 1884, the most advanced Indian intellectuals were already quite clear that British rule in India was built on a foundation of economic pillage and plunder - and was devoid of any high social or moral purpose. "Nadir Shah looted the country only once. But the British loot us every day. Every year wealth to the tune of 4.5 million dollar is being drained out, sucking our very blood. Britain should immediately quit India.'' So wrote the Sindh Times on May 20, 1884, a year before the Indian National Congress was born and 58 years before the ''Quit India'' movement of 1942 was launched.

But in 1914 Gandhi was quite far removed from the most radical elements of the Indian Freedom Movement. In 1913, poor emigrant farmers from the Punjab in California launched the Ghadar Party and released their manifesto calling for complete independence from British Rule. Several years earlier, before his internment, Tilak had cogently described the Indian condition under British colonial occupation as being utterly ruinous and degrading. Tilak, Ajit Singh, Chidambaram Pillai and their associates in the National Movement saw few redeeming qualities in the British dispensation, and saw colonial rule as being entirely inimical to India's progress, asserting that the contradictions between the British oppressors and the Indian people were completely irreconcilable.

Although Gandhi was critical of specific aspects of colonial rule, in 1914, his general outlook towards the British was more akin to that of the loyalist Princes than the most advanced of India's national leaders. Particularly onerous was his support of the British during World War I. Even as the Ghadar Party correctly saw in WWI a great opportunity for India to deepen its opposition to the British, and liberate itself from the colonial yoke, Gandhi instead tried to mobilize Indians on behalf of the British war effort. Although many biographers of Gandhi have studiously omitted making any mention of such dishonorable aspects of Gandhi's political life, Martin Green makes a brief reference to Gandhi's attitude towards WWI when he was in England: "To return to London in wartime: Gandhi quickly raised his ambulance corps amongst the Indians in England. As before, he had offered his volunteers for any kind of military duty, but the authorities preferred medical workers". Martin Green also observes: "Many of his friends did not approve the project. Olive Schreiner, who was in London, wrote him that she was struck to the heart with sorrow to hear that he had offered to serve the English government in this evil war - this wicked cause". (See Martin Green, Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolutionary, p. 247)

Gandhi's ideas on non-violence did not then extend to the British Imperial War and upon his return to India in 1915, attempted to recruit Indians for the British War effort. Gandhi's position echoed that of the Maharajas, many of whom (like the Maharaja of Bikaner) played a pivotal role in supporting the British, both in terms of propaganda and providing troops. Gandhi's attitude towards the empire emerges quite clearly from this statement of Martin Green: "Gandhi himself had twice volunteered for service in this war, in France and in Mesopotamia, because he had convinced himself that he owed the empire that sacrifice in return for it's military protection." (See Martin Green, Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolutionary, p. 267)
Gandhi's role in championing the British War effort did not however go unchallenged. At a time when Gandhi was still addressing "War Recruitment Melas'', Dr. Tuljaram Khilnani of Nawabshah publicly campaigned against War Loan Bonds. When Gandhi sought election to the AICC from Bombay PCC, the delegate from Sindh opposed his election in view of his support to the British war effort. The Ghadar Party was especially acerbic in it's criticism of Gandhi and other such political leaders in the Congress who had not yet been able to sever their umbilical chord to the British Raj.
But even as Gandhi was able to justify in his mind support for the imperial war, his attitude towards the revolt of Chauri Chaura (1921) brought about a very different and very harsh assessment. Labeling it a crime, he wrote thus: "God has been abundantly kind to me. He has warned me the third time that there is not yet in India that truthful and non-violent atmosphere which and which alone can justify mass disobedience....which means gentle, truthful, humble, knowing, never criminal and hateful. He warned me in 1919 when the Rowlatt Act agitation was started. Ahmedabad, Viramgam, and Kheda erred. Amritsar and Kasur erred. I retraced my steps, called it a Himalayan miscalculation, humbled myself before God and man, and stopped not merely mass civil disobedience but even my own which I knew to be civil and non-violent" . (See Collected Works, vol. 22, p.415-21)

Gandhi's Chauri Chaura decision created deep consternation in Congress circles. Subhash Chandra Bose wrote: "To sound the order of retreat just when public enthusiasm was reaching the boiling point was nothing short of a national calamity. The principal lieutenants of the Mahatma, Deshbandhu Das, Pandit Motilal Nehru and Lala Lajpat Rai, who were all in prison, shared the popular resentment. I was with the Deshbandu at the time, and I could see that he was beside himself with anger and sorrow." (quoted from The Indian Struggle, p.90)
To describe Gandhi's decision as a "national calamity" was indeed right on the mark. To lay such stress on non-violence - that too only three years after he had been encouraging Indians to enroll in the British Army was not only shocking, it showed little sympathy towards the Indian masses who against all odds had become energized against their alien oppressors.

For Gandhi to demand of the poor downtrodden bitterly exploited Indian masses to first demonstrate their unmistakable commitment to non-violence before their struggle could receive with Gandhi's approval (just a few years after he had unapologetically defended an imperial war) was simply unconscionable. Clearly, Gandhi had one standard for the Indian masses, and quite another for the nation's colonial overlords. But this was not to be the first occasion for Gandhi to engage in such tactical and ideological hypocrisy.

Some critics saw in Gandhi's Chauri Chaura turnaround as indicative of his deep fear and distrust of the Indian masses - that Gandhi feared the spontaneous energy of the poor and the downtrodden more than the injustice of British rule. Certainly, the conservatism of Gandhi's tactics lends credence to such views. As late as 1928, Gandhi resisted Nehru and Bose, and campaigned for the rejection of a resolution calling for complete independence at the session of the Indian National Congress. And unlike other leaders in the freedom struggle, Gandhi often entertained false hopes about the British. In a 1930 letter, Motilal Nehru chided Gandhi for resting his hopes on the Labor Government and the sincerity of the Viceroy.

In much of Motilal Nehru's correspondence with his son, (and with others in the Congress), there are expressions of frustration with Gandhi's tendency towards moderation and compromise with the British authorities, and his reluctance to broaden and accelerate the civil disobedience movement. There are also references in Motilal Nehru's letters to how large contributions from the Birlas were enabling certain political cliques (led by Madan Mohan Malviya - a close confidante of Gandhi) to "capture" the Congress. That Gandhi was close to the Birlas is now widely acknowledged, and it is not unlikely that his conservatism was either encouraged by them, or may have been coincidental, but was compatible with their desire for restrained and moderate resistance to the British.

Motilal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose, both complained of Gandhi's tendency to ignore party resolutions when they went against his wishes, and to work with cliques rather than consult and cooperate with all party members. In a letter dated March 28, 1939, from Manbhum, Bihar - Bose complained bitterly to Nehru of Gandhi's quiet campaign of non-cooperation with him. Bose had just won the Presidency of the Indian National Congress, defeating Gandhi's chosen nominee, Dr Pattabhi. At first, Gandhi had tried to talk Bose out of running for the post, and tried to work out a backroom deal for Dr Pattabhi's ascension (as he had done on many earlier occasions). But Bose was determined to seek the mandate of Congress activists, and won by a handsome margin in an election where the official machinery of the Congress had put all it's weight behind Gandhi's hand-picked nominee.

Bose's historic election signified the mood of the Indian masses, who were becoming increasingly impatient with Gandhi's tepid nationalism. Bose had always strived to accelerate the freedom struggle, and the mass of Congress Party workers appreciated his sincerity and unswerving commitment to the national cause. In many ways, he was the best person to lead the Congress, with intellect and vision that exceeded Gandhi.

One of the most problematical aspects of Gandhi's philosophical disposition was his emphasis on matters religious over practical. In a 1918 speech concerning India's future he espoused a position that truly secular Indians ought to find rather troubling: "I feel that India's mission is different from that of other countries, India is fitted for the religious supremacy of the world....India can conquer all by soul-force". (See Collected Works, vol. 14, p.53)

To this day, Western analysts continue to evaluate India as though it's only contribution to world civilization is in matters of religious exotica and spirituality. And many Indians unquestioningly accept such one-sided formulations. But to pigeon-hole India as this exotic land - full of religious devotion and piety does great injustice not only to India's rich history of secular pursuits, but it also leaves many rational, scientific and technologically-oriented Indians bereft of any philosophical affirmation and intellectual leadership.

On more than one occasion, Gandhi would begin with statements such as "God has warned me", or "...spoken as such.....". Coming from any ordinary person, such claims would normally be viewed with great suspicion and skepticism because they can only be accepted on faith, never independently verified. In fact, any ordinary person who claimed as often to have a 'hotline' to 'God' might even be seen as a lunatic, as someone prone to hallucinations. But from Gandhi, such utterances were quietly tolerated or accepted.

That Gandhi espoused such religious-centric views is not surprising considering the milieu in which he was raised and educated. Most British-educated Indians were kept completely ignorant of India's rich history of rational thought and (pre-industrial) scientific endeavour. So it was inevitable that Indians would seek inspiration from religious texts, Hindus from the Gita, Muslims from the Quran, Sikhs from the Granth Sahib. But unlike Tilak who derived from the Gita, a call to action, a call to rise against injustice, Gandhi found in the Gita an appeal to pacifist idealism. In a world that was rife with violence, Gandhi's insistence on non-violent purity was, in practical terms, an exercise in infantile futility. Not only did it delay the onset of freedom, it led to particularly disastrous consequences during partition, and in Kashmir.

Whereas the Muslim League was armed, the Congress was not and entirely dependant on the British police and military apparatus. When the partition riots first began in West Punjab and East Bengal, the Congress had no means to defend the hapless victims. Being unable to prevent the slaughter and rape, or protect the stream of Hindu and Sikh refugees, it lost the moral authority to prevent a communal backlash in India. A similiar situation prevailed in Kashmir. The Muslim League sent in it's armed hooligans even as Kashmir's most popular political party, the National Conference had decided to throw in it's lot with secular India. In Baluchistan and the Frontier Province, majority sentiment was in favor of unity with India. Had the Congress been armed, it could have at least held out for for a better deal, and at least some of the horrors of partition may have been averted.

There were many other serious incongruities in Gandhi's world view. As one reads through Gandhi's letters and sundry writings, time and time again, he uses the term 'Dharma 'in the context of how Indians should behave vis-a-vis the British, and the term "right" in the context of what the British could do to their Indian subjects. In Gandhi's ethical framework, not only did the conquered have very limited rights, they were burdened with all types of duties under the rubric of 'Dharma '. Conquered Indians were repeatedly lectured on how they must be concerned with the highest morality when dealing with their British oppressors - even as the British conquerors were little restricted by any 'Dharmic' pressures, and enjoyed the ultimate authority to take away the life of Indians they chose to put on trial for 'sedition'.

In all other theories of democratic liberation, ethical and moral codes emanated from one essential principle - which is the fundamental right of enslaved people to be free from alien exploitation. But in Gandhi's moral framework, the need of the Indian masses to liberate themselves from a brutally unjust colonial occupation did not come first, it was subject to all kinds of one-sided conditionalities.

For instance, in the context of Bhagat Singh's hanging, even as Gandhi condemned the British government, he observed: "The government certainly had the right to hang these men. However, there are some rights which do credit to those who possess them only if they are enjoyed in name only." (See Collected Works, vol. 45, p.359-61, in Gujarati)

Whether Gandhi was confusing the term "right" with the term authority or might, or he actually granted the colonial government the "right" to execute Indian freedom fighters is hard to tell. But in general, it appears that Gandhi had not worked out in his mind the true essence of natural human rights, and desirable human duties in a civilized society. Nor had he come to realize that in any democratic dispensation, governments cannot be assigned any inherent rights, for they are only the proxies of the people who elect them, and they only have duties and obligations to ensure the rights of the people, and to prevent the exercise of those individual rights that might violate, restrict or inveigh on the rights of others.

In the context of Bhagat Singh, the British government was under no popular obligation to execute him. On the contrary. His actions had widespread support, and there were fervent appeals for the commutation of his sentence. In such a context, Gandhi could have only spoken of British authority - and that too a stolen and usurped authority to execute Bhagat Singh. Had he been truly moved against Bhagat Singh's death sentence, he would have spoken of how the British were able to execute him only because of their military might - that their action had no ethical or moral sanction.

A true revolutionary - (such as Bhagat Singh) would not have granted the exploitative colonial regime any "rights" whatsoever. In fact, it would have been the right of the Indian revolutionary to resist colonial rule by any means necessary. If Indians obeyed British orders, it was only out of practical necessity, out of an instinct to survive. But if some were prepared to risk their lives in confronting the British military occupation, it was their inalienable right to do so. Indians had duties and obligations towards each other, but none to the British occupiers and exploiters. From a revolutionary, moral, ethical, or national perspective, there was no necessity to grant the British colonial authorities any rights whatsoever, because their very presence was illegal and obtained without the democratic consent of the Indian masses. Indians, therefore, had no moral duty, or 'Dharma', obliging them towards obeying their orders, or respecting the lives of the Britishers who had occupied Indian territory by force.

But Gandhi was never completely able to overcome a deeply ingrained tendency towards tolerating or accepting the "rights" he saw intrinsically bound with authority figures. In the feudal order that Gandhi was born in, the masses had no inherent rights, only duties towards the sovereign. And Gandhi was never able to completely reject this iniquitous paradigm. He was never fully able to complete the transition to a democratic order in which citizens enjoyed inalienable rights in addition to bearing duties towards each other. He did not fathom that in a democratic society, the role of the state was to ensure the rights of the people, not to exercise any arbitrary hegemony over them. Moreover, in a democratic state, the masses could not be burdened with unnecessary duties, only those that obliged them to respect the rights of others, and required them to provide services in exchange for what they received from the state, or others in society.

While many of the qualities Gandhi sought to elicit from the masses were commendable and desirable qualities to strive for - one could not make such qualities conditions for grant.

courtsey :South Asian Voice

Hindi Poems

2005-03-27T00:18:00.000+05:30

I AM A WARRIOR ( I didn't know that )

2005-03-24T18:44:00.000+05:30

!!! My Inner Hero - Warrior !!!

I'm courageous, straightforward, and charismatic. I'm a born leader, but I'm also not afraid to face danger on my own. Nothing stands between me and victory... nothing that lives to tell the tale, anyway. If you need someone to charge into battle for you, call on me.

How about you? Click here to find your own inner hero.

Soldier's Hope

2005-03-24T02:50:00.000+05:30

“Conley! Damnit man! Run!”
Explosions rocked the landscape as bullets came from all directions. The retreat had been called, and with the lines falling there was no turning back to face the enemy now.
Suddenly a bullet passed inches before the young man’s face, and he heard the loud “thud”, a sound he knew all too well now. He turned his head to see his best friend wounded severely in the chest. As his friend dropped to his knees, he looked up into Conley’s eyes, the light in his own fading fast.
Another explosion shook him to his bones to his right, causing such a cataclysmic movement of the ground beneath him that he too fell to his hands and knees to keep from falling face first into the mud and thick grass.
Picking his friend’s lifeless body up in his arms and in the same movement rising to his own feet, he looked ahead of him. In the distance he could see the helicopters on the bloody horizon. Always had he enjoyed the sunsets that turned the skies all shades of red and gold, but not today. Today it was only a symbol of the end.
Hearing the loud crash of yet another explosive to his right detonate, he began to run, snapped back into reality more in body than mind.
It is all a dream. He kept trying to tell himself. Nothing like this can be real, it has to be a dream…
Another explosion, this time so near he could feel the heat, the intense heat searing his face. He heard more than seen shrapnel fly all around him, yet he did not feel a wound. He began to wonder, in the unreality of it all, if he could feel anything anymore but the pounding in his heart and the numbing voice in his mind telling him to run.
Bullets flew past him; hit the ground around him. He heard the death cries of many men; young men, old men, it did not matter. In death, they were men all the same; neither rank nor color nor race nor creed could have saved them. He could hear the tanks. Rolling on and on, machines built to perform one action; kill without mercy or discrimination to the target.
Yet he had stopped hearing the explosions, the bone shattering, earth moving, and hope crushing explosions.
He could not look at his friend’s face, he could not fathom that his friend had died there in his arms while he ran. He could not believe in this unreality…
He was deafened, blinded, and knocked forward several yards by a titanic explosion behind him. The world was dark for a few moments, total silence followed, and then…
The sounds of battle once again raged about him. He looked around helplessly for his friend, his friend’s blood, his body, anything. Seeing it, crawled over and stood up on his knees. Then he tried to stand on his legs, and fell. Growling, roaring his pain. The shrapnel had hit him, he did not know where, but it hurt too much to stand, it hurt even to breathe, he realized.
This is the end. He thought. I am going to die here right beside my friend, thousands of miles away from home... The world went dark as he heard another explosive and he buried his face in the ground, covering his head. All in vain. He thought. All in vain…
Suddenly he could not feel anything, then he began to see something which seemed as though a memory, but he was sure he had never lived it…

His vision was dark, but he could see something in the darkness, as if the darkness itself moved.
You are not to die here, Friend, you are not done here yet. A voice spoke, old, young, and timeless.
“I cannot move; all this fighting was in vain. What is freedom, when we must be slaves to make war for it?” he replied. “You tell me what there is to live for now! My family is gone because of this damn war, killed and burned before my eyes. This battle is lost, and soon more will be. They overwhelm us ten to one. My best friend lies here, in my arms, dead. I have nothing else to live for!” He nearly screamed.
Suddenly out of the swirling shadows extended a giant talon, then a arm, and then the head of mighty Dragon. He froze, unable to be afraid for the awe he felt. The talon extended and lifting him in the Dragon’s palm, and he gazed then and there into the eyes of the Dragon.
A man with nothing to live for is a man with everything to fight for. The Dragon spoke the words calmly, but the meaning hit him like a bullet…

Suddenly the battle raged around him again. But this time, the cries of the dead and dying did not scare him. This time, the explosions did not come to his ears. This time, the pain only proved to be fuel to a newly burning fire.
Roaring a battle cry which seemed above even the loudest of explosions, he came to his knees, picking up his friend. Then, with another mighty yell, he came to his feet.
“Follow me! Follow me! Retreat to the choppers! Don't stop now!”
The solders around him did not question.
Running, as he never had before, the explosions seemed to come so near, only to fly away from him. The bullets seemed to bounce off of him. Once, twice, three times he was shot while running, and he never noticed. Shrapnel tore at and into his skin like a thousand knives, but his mad dash of pure hope, of pure life and pride and power raged on.
Explosions sent others to their knees, but seeing him at the lead of the retreat gave them heart to stand and go on. Onward he led them, past the burning landscape, over the fallen enemy and allied corpses alike. On he lead them, past the blood stained field they had fought on not hours ago. Soon, the helicopters were in sight. And more importantly, they were landing.
His mad dash ended as he nearly threw his friend’s body into one of the helicopters. The world spun as he tried in vain to regain his breath. The pilot was yelling something to him he could not hear. Then, the world was black again.
Waking seconds later, he found himself being pulled into the helicopter, it lifting off. He could not breathe, and his vision was stained red. The man above him was pressing something to his sides. He realized there were two of them, both yelling and trying to stop his bleeding.
His bleeding.
He finally realized where exactly he was, what was going on. He knew he was cold, and the world was getting darker. He was fading fast, and he knew it. He did not want to ask if he was a good solider, that was not for him to decide or if he was not for them to lie to him about in death.
Reaching up with his final strength, he pulled the man over him down to him so he could hear.
“Tell the men to fight, tell them to fight till they cannot draw another breath, for such is the honorable death for anyone...” His voice fadded into quietness.
The man looked down and picked up the dog tags around his neck. His eyes widened at the sight of the name on the tag.

His hand let go of the man’s shirt, falling lifeless to the floor, his world fading to black…

Courtsey : Writing.com

How NOT to write in the Exam

2005-03-20T16:58:00.000+05:30

I got these pics in a mail from Utkarsh which catechizes us as how not to write in the exam ;).

KV Rox

2005-03-19T02:35:00.000+05:30

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1056229.cms

It is not just elite business schools and IITs which are flooded with requests for offshore campuses. The humble Kendriya Vidyalaya has also found more takers abroad.

The KV - which has already gone international with schools in Tehran, Moscow and Kathmandu - has now got a request from the Mauritian government for an Indian-style school.

It is not just good academic performance by KV students that has floored the Mauritian government. It realises an Indian school in Mauritius can provide good grounding to about 400-500 students, mostly of Indian origin, coming to India for university education every year.

This is a reason why the HRD ministry is also not averse to setting up a school there. The Mauritian government's request was promptly conveyed to KV authorities, who in turn have written to the Indian High Commission in Port Louis.

The HRD ministry is ready to oblige, but only after it is convinced about the project's viability. The KV authorities have written to the Indian High Commission in Mauritius, asking for details like source of funding and number of students likely to join the school.

"We have to see how is the demand, how many local students want to attend the school and whether this will be self-financing or government-funded," said a senior KV official. Besides KVs that follow the CBSE pattern, there are also several Indian schools in the Gulf countries. But most of them are privately-owned.

On Tuesday, Mauritius' IT and telecom minister Pradeep Jeeha asked HRD minister Arjun Singh for a KV. "He had heard good things about KV and wanted to have an Indian school on a similar pattern. He even asked for university-level tie-ups, exchange programmes and Indian technical institutes like IITs in his country," a ministry official said.

The ministry is however, non-committal on university-level tie-ups. "It is for the varsities to decide. Mauritius is keen to take expertise from JNU and DU. We will let the respective vice chancellors decide," said the official.

Why I Am An Atheist : By Bhagat Singh

2005-03-18T02:36:00.000+05:30

(A powerful and thought provoking work and filled with a striking spiritual and ethical purity. Also it is the last essay written by Bhagat Singh )

A new question has cropped up. Is it due to vanity that I do not believe in the existence of an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient God? I had never imagined that I would ever have to confront such a question. But conversation with some friends has given me, a hint that certain of my friends, if I am not claiming too much in thinking them to be so-are inclined to conclude from the brief contact they have had with me, that it was too much on my part to deny the existence of God and that there was a certain amount of vanity that actuated my disbelief. Well, the problem is a serious one. I do not boast to be quite above these human traits. I am a man and nothing more. None can claim to be more. I also have this weakness in me. Vanity does form a part of my nature. Amongst my comrades I was called an autocrat. Even my friend Mr. B.K. Dutt sometimes called me so. On certain occasions I was decried as a despot. Some friends do complain and very seriously too that I involuntarily thrust my opinions upon others and get my proposals accepted. That this is true up to a certain extent, I do not deny. This may amount to egotism. There is vanity in me in as much as our cult as opposed to other popular creeds is concerned. But that is not personal. It may be, it is only legitimate pride in our cult and does not amount to vanity. Vanity or to be more precise "Ahankar" is the excess of undue pride in one's self. Whether it is such an undue pride that has led me to atheism or whether it is after very careful study of the subject and after much consideration that I have come to disbelieve in God, is a question that I, intend to discuss here. Let me first make it clear that egotism and vanity are two different things.

In the first place, I have altogether failed to comprehend as to how undue pride or vaingloriousness could ever stand in the way of a man in believing in God. I can refuse to recognize the greatness of a really great man provided I have also achieved a certain amount of popularity without deserving it or without having possessed the qualities really essential or indispensible for the same purpose. That much is conceivable. But in what way can a man believing in God cease believing due to his personal vanity? There are only two Ways. The man should either begin to think himself a rival of God or he may begin to believe himself to be God. In neither case can he become a genuine atheist. In the first case he does not even deny the existence of his rival. In the second case as well he admits the existence of a conscious being behind the screen guiding all the movements of nature. It is of no importance to us whether he thinks himself to be that supreme being or whether he thinks the supreme conscious being to be somebody apart from himself. The fundamental is there. His belief is there. He is by no means an atheist. Well, here I am I neither belong to the first category nor to the second. I deny the very existence of that Almighty Supreme being. Why I deny it shall be dealt with later on. Here I want to clear one thing, that it is not vanity that has actuated me to adopt the doctrines of atheism. I am neither a rival nor an incarnation nor the Supreme Being Himself. One point is decided, that it is not vanity that has led me to this mode of thinking. Let me examine the facts to disprove this allegation. According to these friends of mine I have grown vainglorious perhaps due to the undue popularity gained during the trials-both Delhi Bomb and Lahore conspiracy cases. Well, let us see if their premises are correct. My atheism is not of so recent origin. I had stopped believing in God when I was an obscure young man, of whose existence my above mentioned friends were not even aware. At least a college student cannot cherish any short of undue pride which may lead him to atheism. Though a favourite with some professors and disliked by certain others, I was never an industrious or a studious boy. I could not get any chance of indulging in such feelings as vanity. I was rather a boy with a very shy nature, who had certain pessimistic dispositions about the future career' And in those days, I was not a perfect atheist. My
grand-father under whose influence I was brought up is an orthodox Arya Samajist. An Arya Samajist is anything but an atheist. After finishing my primary education I joined the D.A.V. School of Lahore and stayed in its Boarding House for full one year. There, apart from morning and evening prayers, I used to recite "Gayatri Mantra" for hours and hours. I was a perfect devotee in those days. Later on I began to live with my father. He is a liberal in as much as the orthodoxy of religions is concerned. It was through his teachings that I aspired to devote my life to the cause of freedom. But he is not an atheist. He is a firm believer. He used to encourage me for offering prayers daily. So, this is how I was brought up. In the Non-Co-operation days I joined the National College. it was there that I began to think liberally and discuss and criticise all the religious problems, even about God. But still I was a devout believer. By that time I had begun to preserve the unshorn and unclipped long hair but I could never believe in the mythology and doctrines of Sikhism or, any other religion. But I had a firm faith in God's existence.

Later on I joined the revolutionary party. The first leader with whom I came in contact, though not convinced, could not dare to deny the existence of God. On my persistent inquiries about God, he used to say, "Pray whenever you want to". Now this is atheism less courage required for the adoption of that creed. The second leader with whom I came in contact was a firm believer. Let me mention his name-respected comrade Sachindra Nath Sanyal, now undergoing life transportation in connexion with the Karachi conspiracy case. From the every first page of his famous and only book, "Bandi Jivan" (or Incarcerated Life), the Glory of God is sung vehemently. In the last
page of the second part of that beautiful book his mystic-because of vedantism - praises showered upon God form a very conspicuous part of his thoughts. "The Revolutionary leaflet" distributed- throughout India on January 28th 1925, was according to the prosecution story the result of his
intellectual labour, Now, as is inevitable in the secret work the prominent leader expresses his own views-which are very dear to his person and the rest of the workers have to acquiesce in them-in spite of differences, which they might have. In that leaflet one full paragraph was devoted to praise the Almighty and His rejoicings and doing. That is all mysticism. What I
wanted to point out was that the idea of disbelief had not even germinated in the revolutionary party. The famous Kakori martyrs-all four of them-passed their last day in prayers. Ram Prasad Bismil was an orthodox Arya Samajist. Despite his wide studies in the field of Socialism and
Communism, Rajen Labiri could not suppress his desire, of reciting hymns of the Upanishads and the Gita. I saw only one man amongst them, who never prayed and used to say, "Philosophy is the outcome of human weakness or limitation of knowledge". He is also undergoing a sentence of transportation for life. But he also never dared to deny the existence of God.

UP to that period I was only a romantic idealist revolutionary. Uptil then we were to follow. Now came the time to shoulder the whole responsibility. Due to the inevitable reaction for some time the very existence of the Party seemed impossible. Enthusiastic comrades-nay leaders-began to jeer at us. For some time I was afraid that some day I also might not be convinced of the futility of our own programme. That was a turning point in my revolutionary career. "Study" was the cry that reverberated in the corridors of my mind. Study to enable yourself to face the arguments advanced by opposition. Study to arm yourself with arguments in favour of your cult. I
began to study. My previous faith and convictions underwent a remarkable modification. The Romance of the violent methods alone which was so prominent amongst our predecessors, was replaced by serious ideas. No more mysticism, no more blind faith. Realism became our cult. Use of force justifiable when resorted to as a matter of terrible necessity: non-violence
as policy indispensable for all mass movements. So much about methods. The most important thing was the clear conception of the ideal for which we were to fight, As there were no important activities in the field of action I got ample opportunity to study various ideals of the world revolution. I studied Bakunin, the Anarchist leader, something of Marx the father of Communism and much of Lenin, Trotsky and others the men who had successfully carried out a revolution in their country. They were all atheists. Bakunin's "God and State", though only fragmentary, is an interesting study of the subject. Later still I came across a book entitled 'Common Sense' by Nirlamba Swami. It was only a sort of mystic atheism. This subject became of utmost interest
to me. By the end of 1926 I had been convinced as to the baselessness of the theory of existence of an almighty supreme being who created, guided and controled the universe. I had given out this disbelief of mine. I began discussion on the subjects with my friends. I had become a pronounced
atheist. But, what it meant will presently be discussed.

In May 1927 I was arrested at Lahore. The arrest was a surprise. I was quite unaware of (he fact that the police wanted me. All of a sudden while passing through a garden I found myself surrounded by police. To my own surprise, I was very calm at that time. I did not feel any sensation, neither did I experience any excitement. I was taken into police custody. Next day I was taken to the Railway Police lock-up where I was to pass full one month. After many day's conversation with the Police officials I guessed that they had some information regarding my connexion with the Kakori Party and my other activities in connexion with the revolutionary movement. They told me that I had been to Lucknow while the trial was going on there, that I had
negotiated a certain scheme about their rescue, that after obtaining their approval, we had procured some bombs, that by way of test one of the bombs was thrown in the crowd on the occasion of Dussehra 1926. They further informed me, in my interest, that if I could give any statement throwing some light on the activities of the revolutionary party, I was not to be imprisoned but on the contrary set free and rewarded even without being produced as an approver in the Court. I laughed at the proposal. It was all humbug. People holding ideas like ours do not throw bombs on their own innocent people. One fine morning Mr. New man, the then Senior Superintendent of C.I.D., came to me. And after much sympathetic talk with me imparted-to him-the extremely sad news that if I did not give any statement as demanded by them, they would be forced to send me up for trial for conspiracy to wage war in connexion with Kakori Case and for brutal
murders in connexion with Dussehra Bomb outrage. And he further informed me that they had evidence enough to get me convicted and hanged. In those days I believed-though I was quite innocent-the police could do it if they desired. That very day certain police officials began to persuade me to offer my prayers to God regularly both the times. Now I-was an atheist. I
wanted to settle for myself whether it was in the days of peace and enjoyment alone that I could boast of being an atheist or whether during such hard times as well I could stick to those principles of mine. After great consideration I decided that I could not lead myself to believe in and pray to God. No, I never did. That was the real test and I came, out
successful. Never for a moment did I desire to save my neck at the cost of certain other things. So I was a staunch disbeliever : and have ever since been. It was not an easy job to stand that test. 'Belief' softens the hardships, even can make them pleasant. In God man can find very strong consolation and support. Without Him, I man has to depend upon himself. To stand upon one's own legs amid storms and hurricanes is not a child's play. At such testing moments, vanity-if any-evaporates, and man cannot dare to defy the general beliefs, if he does, then we must conclude that he has got certain other strength than mere vanity. This is exactly the situation now. Judgment is already too well known. Within a week it is to be pronounced.
What is the consolation with the exception of the idea that I am going to sacrifice my life for a cause ? A God-believing Hindu might be expecting to be reborn as a king, a Muslim or a Christian might dream of the luxuries to be- enjoyed in paradise and the reward he is to get for his sufferings and sacrifices. But what am I to expect? I know the moment the rope is fitted
round my neck and rafters removed, from under my feet. that will be the final moment-that will be the last moment. I, or to be more precise, my soul, as interpreted in the metaphysical terminology, shall all be finished there. Nothing further. A short life of struggle with no such magnificent end, shall in itself be the reward if I have the courage to take it in that light. That is all. With no selfish motive, or desire to be awarded here or hereafter, quite disinterestedly have I devoted my life to the cause of independence, because I could not do otherwise. The day we find a great number of men and women with this psychology who cannot devote themselves to anything else than the service of mankind and emancipation of the suffering humanity; that day shall inaugurate the era of liberty. Not to become a
king, nor to gain any other rewards here, or in the next birth or after death in paradise, shall they be inspired to challenge the oppressors, exploiters, and tyrants, but to cast off the yoke of serfdom from the neck of humanity and to establish liberty and peace shall they tread this-to
their individual selves perilous and to their noble selves the only glorious imaginable-path. Is the pride in their noble cause to be - misinterpreted as vanity? Who dares to utter such an abominable epithet? To him, I say either he is a fool or a knave. Let us forgive him for he can not realize the depth, the emotion, the sentiment and the noble feelings that surge in that
heart. His heart is dead as a mere lump of flesh, his eyes are-weak, the evils of other interests having been cast over them. Self-reliance is always liable to be interpreted as vanity. It is sad and miserable but there is no help.

You go and oppose the prevailing faith, you go and criticise a hero, a great man, who is generally believed to be above criticism because he is thought to be infallible, the strength of your argument shall force the multitude to decry you as vainglorious. This is due to the mental stagnation, Criticism and independent thinking are the two indispensable qualities of a
revolutionary. Because Mahatamaji is great, therefore none should criticise him. Because he has risen above, therefore everything he says-may be in the field of Politics or Religion, Economics or Ethics-is right. Whether you are convinced or not you must say, "Yes, that's true". This mentality does not lead towards progress. It is rather too obviously, reactionary.

Because our forefathers had set up a faith in some supreme, being-the Al mighty God- therefore any man who dares to challenge the validity of that faith, or the very existence of that supreme being, he shall have to be called an apostate, a renegade. If his arguments are too sound to be refuted by counter-arguments and spirit too strong to be cowed down by the threat of misfortunes that may befall him by the wrath of the Almighty-he shall be decried as vainglorious, his spirit to be denominated as vanity. Then why to waste time in this vain discussion? Why try to argue out the whole thing? This question is coming before the public for the first time, and is being
handled in this matter of fact way for the first time, hence this lengthy discussion.

As for the first question, I think I have cleared that it is not vanity that has led me to atheism. My way of argument has proved to be convincing or not, that is to be judged by my readers, not me. I know in the present, circumstances my faith in God would have made my life easier, my burden lighter and my disbelief in Him has turned all the circumstances too dry and
the situation may assume too harsh a shape. A little bit of mysticism can make it poetical. But I, do not want the help of any intoxication to meet my fate. I am a realist. I have been trying to overpower the instinct in me by the help of reason. I have not always been successful in achieving this end. But man's duty is to try and endeavour, success depends upon chance and
environments.

As for the second question that if it was not vanity, then there ought to be some reason to disbelieve the old and still prevailing faith of the existence of God. Yes; I come to that now Reason there is. According to. me, any man who has got some reasoning power at his command always tries to reason out his environments. Where direct proofs are lacking philosophy
occupies the important place. As I have already stated, a certain revolutionary friend used to say that Philosophy is the outcome of human weakness. When our ancestors had leisure enough to try to solve out the mystery of this world, its past, present and the future, its whys and
wherefores, they having been terribly short of direct proofs, everybody tried to solve the problem in his own way. Hence we find the wide dufferences in the fundamentals of various religious creeds, which some times assume very antagonistic and conflicting shapes. Not only the Oriental and Occidental philosophies differ, there are differences even amongst
various schools of thoughts in each hemisphere. Amongst Oriental religions, the Moslem faith is not at all compatible with Hindu faith. In India alone Buddhism and Jainism are sometimes quite separate from Brahmanism, in which there are again conflicting faiths as Arya Samaj and Sanatan Dharma. Charwak is still another independent thinker of the past ages. He challenged the
authority of God in the old times. All these creeds differ from each other on the fundamental question., and everybody considers himself to be on the right. There lies the misfortune. Instead of using the experiments and expressions of the ancient Savants and thinkers as a basis for our future struggle against ignorance and to try to find out a solution to this mysterious problem, we lethargical as we have proved to be raise the hue and cry of faith, unflinching and unwavering faith to their versions and thus are guilty of stagnation in human progress.

Any man who stands for progress has to criticise, disbelieve and challenge every item of the old faith. Item by item he has to reason out every nook and corner of the prevailing faith. If after considerable reasoning one is led to believe in any theory or philosphy, his faith is welcomed. His reasoning can be mistaken, wrong, misled and sometimes fallacious. But he is liable to correction because reason is the guiding star of his life. But mere faith and blind faith is dangerous: it dulls the brain, and makes a man reactionary. A man who claims to be a realist has to challenge the whole of the ancient faith. If it does not stand the onslaught of reason it crumbles down. Then the first thing for him is to shatter the whole down and clear a space for the erection of a new philosophy. This is the negative side. After it begins the positive work in which sometimes some material of the old faith may be used for the purpose of reconstruction. As far as I am concerned, let me admit at the very outset that I have not been able to study much on this point. I had a great desire to study the Oriental Philosophy but I could not get any chance or opportunity to do the same. But so far as the negative study is under discussion, I think I am convinced to the extent of questioning the soundness of the old faith. I have been
convinced as to non-existence of a conscious supreme being who is guiding and directing the movements of nature. We believe in nature and the whole progressive movement aims at the domination of man over nature for his service. There is no conscious power behind it to direct. This is what our philosophy is.

As for the negative side. we ask a few questions from the 'believers'.

(1) If, as you believe, there is an almighty, omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent God-who created the earth or world, please let me know why did he creat it ? This world of woes and miseries, a veritable, eternal combination of number less tragedies: Not a single soul being perfectly satisfied.
Pray, don't say that it is His Law: If he is bound by any law, he is not omnipotent. He is another slave like ourselves. Please don't say that it is his enjoyment. Nero burnt one Rome. He killed a very limited number of people. He created very few tragedies, all to his perfect enjoyment. And what is his place in History ? By what names do the historians mention him?
All the venomous epithets are showered upon him. Pages are blackened with invective diatribes condemning Nero, the tyrant, the heartless, the wicked. One Changezkhan sacrificed a few thousand lives to seek pleasure in it and we hate the very name. Then how are you going to justify your almighty, eternal Nero, who has been, and is still causing numberless tragedies every day, every hour and every minute ? How do you think to support his misdoings which surpass those of Changez every single moment? I say why did he create this world-a veritable hell, a place of constant and bitter unrest ? Why did the Almighty create man when he had the power not to do it ? What is the
justification for all this ? Do you say to award the innocent sufferers hereafter and to punish the wrong-doers as well? Well, well: How far shall you justify a man who may dare to inflict wounds upon your body to apply a very soft and soothing liniment upon it afterwards? How far the supporters and organisers of the Gladiator Institution were justified in throwing men before the half starved furious lions to be cared for and well looked after if they could survive and could manage to escape death by the wild beasts? That is why I ask, 'Why did the conscious supreme being created this world and man in it? To seek pleasure? Where then is the difference between him and Nero'?

You Mohammadens and Christians : Hindu Philosophy shall still linger on to offer another argument. I ask you what is your answer to the above-mentioned question ? You don't believe in previous birth. Like Hindus you cannot advance the argument of previous misdoings of the apparently quite innocent sufrerers? I ask you why did the omnipotent labour for six days to create the world through word and each day to say that all was well. Call him today. Show him the past history. Make him study the present situation. Let us see if he dares to say, "All is well",

From the dungeons of prisons, from the stores of starvation consuming millions upon millions of human beings in slums and huts, from the exploited labourers, patiently or say apathetically watching the procedure of their blood being sucked by the Capitalist vampires, and the wastage of human energy that will make a man with the least common sense shiver with horror, and from the preference of throwing the surplus of production in oceans rather than to distribute amongst the needy producers-to the palaces of kings built upon the foundation laid with human bones.... let him see all this and let him say "All is well". Why and wherefore ? That is my question. You are silent. All right then, I proceed. Well, you Hindus, you say all the present sufferers belong to the class of sinners of the previous births. Good. You say the present oppressors were saintly people in their previous births, hence they enjoy power. Let me admit that your ancestors were very shrewed people, they tried to find out theories strong enough to hammer down all the efforts of reason and disbelief. But let us analyse how far this argument can really stand.

From the point of view of the most famous jurists punishment can be justified only from three or four ends to meet which it is inflicted upon the wrongdoer. They are retributive, reformative and deterrent. The retributive theory is now being condemned by all the advanced thinkers.
Deterrent theory is also following the same fate. Reformative theory is the only one which is essential, and indispensable for human progress. It aims at returning the offender as a most competent and a peace-loving citizen to the society. But what is the nature of punishment inflicted by God upon men even if we suppose them to be offenders. You say he sends them to be born as a cow, a cat, a tree, a herb or a best. You enumerate these punishments to be 84 lakhs. I ask you what is its reformative effect upon man ? How many men have met you who say that they were born as a donkey in previous birth for having committed any sin ? None. Don't quote your Puranas. I have no scope to touch your mythologies. Moreover do you know that the greatest sin
in this world is to be poor. Poverty is a sin, it is a punishment. I ask you how far would you appreciate a criminologist, a jurist or a legislator who proposes such measures of punishment which shall inevitably force man to commit more offences ? Had not your God thought of this or he also had to learn these things by experience, but at the cost of untold sufferings to be borne by. humanity ? What do you think shall be the fate of a man who has been born in a poor and illiterate family of say a chamar or a sweeper. He is poor, hence he cannot study. He is hated and shunned by his fellow human beings who think themselves to be his superiors having been born in say a higher caste. His ignorance, his poverty and the treatment meted out to him shall harden his heart towards society. Suppose he commits a sin, who shall bear the consequences? God, he or the learned ones of, the society ? What about the punishment of those people who were deliberately kept ignorant by the haughty and egotist Brahmans and who had to pay the penalty by bearing the stream of being led (not lead) in their ears for having heard a few
sentences of your Sacred Books of learning-the Vedas ? If they committed any offence-who was to be responsible for them and who was to bear the brunt? My dear friends: These theories are the inventions of the privileged ones: They justify their usurped power, riches and superiority by the help of these theories. Yes: It was perhaps Upton Sinclair, that wrote at some place, that
just make a man a believer in immortality and then rob him of all his riches, and possessions. He shall help you even in that ungrudgingly. The coalition amongst the religious preachers and possessors of power brought forth jails, gallows, knouts and these theories.

I ask why your omnipotent God, does not stop every man when he is committing any sin or offence ? He can do it quite easily. Why did he not kill war lords or kill the fury of war in them and thus avoid the catastrophe hurled down on the head of humanity by the Great War? Why does he not just produce a certain sentiment in the mind of the British people to liberate India? Why
does he not infuse the althuistic enthusiasm in the hearts of all capitalists to forgo their rights of personal possessions of means of production and thus redeem the whole labouring community-nay the whole human society from the bondage of Capitalism. You want to reason out the
practicability of socialist theory, I leave it for your almighty to enforce it. People recognize the merits of socialism in as much as the general welfare is concerned. They oppose it under the pretext of its being impracticable. Let the Almighty step in and arrange everything in an orderly
fashion. Now don't try to advance round about arguments, they are out of order. Let me tell you, British rule is here not because God wills it but because they possess power and we do not dare to oppose them. Not that it is with the help of God that they are keeping us under their subjection but it is with the help of guns and rifles, bomb and bullets, police and millitia
and our apathy that they are successfully committing the most deplorable sin against society- the outrageous exploitation of one nation by another. Where is God ? What is he doing ? Is he enjoying all I these woes of human race ? A Nero; A change (changez): Down with him :

Do you ask me how I explain the origin of this world and origion of man ? Alright I tell you. Charles Darwin has tried to throw some light on the subject. Study him. Read Soham Swam's "Commonsense". It shall answer your question to some extent. This is a phenomenon of nature. The accidental mixture of different substances in the shape of nebulace produced this
earth. When ? Consult history. The same process produced animals and in the long run man. Read Darwin's 'Origin of Species'. And all the later progress is due to man's constant conflict with nature and his efforts to override it. This is the briefest possible explanation of this phenomenon.

Your other argument may be just to ask why a child is born blind or lame if not due to his deeds committed in the previous birth ? This problem has been explained away by biologists as a more biological phenomenon. According to them the whole burden rests upon the shoulders of the parents who may be conscious or ignorant of their own deeds led to mutilation of the child
previous to its birth.

Naturally you may ask another question-though it is quite childish in essence. If no God existed, how did the people come to believe in him? My answer is clear and brief. As they came to believe in ghosts, and evil spirits; the only difference is that belief in God is almost universal and
the philosophy well developed. Unlike certain of the radicals I would not attribute its origin to the ingenuity of the exploiters who wanted to keep the people under their subjection by preaching the existence of a supreme being and then claiming an authority and sanction from him for their
privileged positions. Though I do not differ with them on the essential point that all faiths, religions, creeds and such other institutions became in turn the mere supporters of the tyrannical and exploiting institutions, men and classes. Rebellion against king is always a sin according to every religion.

As regards the origin of God my own idea is that having realized the limitations of man, his weaknesses and shortcoming having been taken into consideration, God was brought into imaginary existence to encourage man to face boldly all the trying circumstances, to meet all dangers manfully and to check and restrain his outbursts in prosperity and affluence. God both
with his private laws and parental generosity was imagined and painted in greater details. He was to serve as a deterrent factor when his fury and private laws were discussed so that man may not become a danger to society. He was to serve as a father, mother, sister and brother, friend and helpers when his parental qualifications were to be explained. So that when man be
in great distress having been betrayed and deserted by all friends he may find consolation in the idea that an ever true friend was still there to help him, to support him and that He was almighty and could do anything. Really that was useful to the society in the primitive age. The idea of God is helpful to man in distress.

Society has to fight out this belief as well as was fought the idol worship and the narrow conception of religon. Similarly, when man tries to stand on his own legs, and become a realist he shall have to throw the faith aside, and to face manfully all the distress, trouble, in which the circumstances may throw him. That is exactly my state of affairs. It is not my vanity, my
friends. It is my mode of thinking that has made me an atheist. I don't know whether in my case belief in God and offering of daily prayers which I consider to be most selfish and degraded act on the part of man, whether these prayers can prove to be helpful or they shall make my case worse still. I have read of atheists facing all troubles quite boldly, so am I trying to stand like a man with an erect head to the last; even on the gallows.

Let us see how I carry on : one friend asked me to pray. When informed of my atheism, he said, "During your last days you will begin to believe". I said, No, dear Sir, it shall not be. I will think that to be an act of degradation and demoralization on my part. For selfish motives I am not going to pray. Readers and friends, "Is this vanity"? If it is, I stand for it.

R&D Showcase

2005-03-14T05:01:00.000+05:30

This year's R&D showcase was not as iridescent as was last year's. The number of phrenic audiences were very less this time. Mostly the crowd consisted of second or third year students from various engineering colleges. Only a few representatives from the industry showed the interest this time.

Initially i didn't want to put my projects for the showcase as i was not sure whether i will be able to complete the project or not. But somehow we were able to complete the things well in time.

During the showcase, when kamal sir came to see our project, i became damn nervous. I didnt know what i was saying. Kamal sir was asking me something and i was replying some other thing. But the good point was that kamal sir understood what we had done and he also shared his views about stream mining with us. His cogent comments on our project was really inspiring. Satya and ravi also shared what they felt about our project. It was really a great feeling when they appreciated our efforts and motivated us.

In CDE, Projects like Reckless, Indic,Robosoccer, arimaa, robosoccer rescue, indian movie recommendation system or agrids were not new for me as i was aware of the work going on in these. But the project which i liked the most was Rishi's new algorithm for classification 'ACME'. It was not an entirely new approach but an improvement or polishing over apriori which transmogrified the '2^n' complex problem to the order of 'n'.

FYP sux

2005-03-09T15:12:00.000+05:30

Long time no posts.

Reason: FYP

We have to submit the final demo and report till 14th of this month. Hardly 5 days are left and lots of works are still pending. And with the passage of every new day, I am growing more and more frustrated.
Right now it is 1:42 AM. My somnolent pallid eyes are yelling at me but my pompous mind doesn’t listen to it.

The gist of the untold story is FYP sux

Wanna Laugh ??

2005-02-27T05:06:00.000+05:30

Joke of the day

2005-02-25T13:55:00.000+05:30

Sardarji and an American are seated next to each other on a flight
from New Delhi to New York.

The American asks if he would like to play a fun game. The Sardarji, tired, just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The American persists and explains that the game is easy and a lot of
fun. He says, "I ask you a question, and if you don't know the answer you pay me five dollars, and vice versa."

Again, he declines and tries to get some sleep.

The American, now agitated, says, "Okay, if you don't know the answer, you pay me $5,and if I don't know the answer, I will pay you $500."

This catches the Sardarji's attention and, figuring there will be no
end to this torment, agrees to the game. The American asks the first question: "What's the distance from the earth to the moon?" The Sardarji doesn't say a word, reaches into his wallet,pulls out a $ 5.00 bill, and hands it to the American.
"Okay," says the American, "your turn".

Sardarji asks,"What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four legs?" The American, puzzled, takes out his laptop computer & searches all his preferences........no answer. He taps into the air phone with his modem and searches the Internet and the Library of Congress... no answer. Frustrated, he sends e-mails to all his friends and coworkers but to no avail.

After an hour, he wakes the Sardarji and hands him $500. The Sardarji thanks him and turns back to get some more sleep. The American, who is more than a little miffed, stirs the Sardarji and asks, "Well, what's the answer?"

Without a word, the Sardarji reaches into his purse,hands the American $5, and goes back to sleep.

The Mayonnaise Jar + 2 Cups of Coffee

2005-02-24T21:41:00.001+05:30

Once again a borrowed article ;)

When things in your life seem almost too much
to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough,
remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee.

A professor stood before his philosophy class
and had some items in front of him.
When the class began, he wordlessly picked up
a very large and empty mayonnaise jar
and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.
He then asked the students if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles
and poured them into the jar.
He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into
the open areas between the golf balls.
He then asked the students again if the jar was full.
They agreed that it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand
and poured it into the jar. Of course,
the sand filled up everything else.
He asked once more if the jar was full.
The students responded with a unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee
from under the table and poured the entire contents
into the jar effectively filling the empty space
between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided,
"I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.
The golf balls are the important things
-- God, your family, your children, your health,
your friends and your favorite passions
-- and if everything else was lost and only they
remained, your life would still be full.
The pebbles are the other things that matter
like your job, your house and your car.
The sand is everything else
-- the small stuff."

"If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued,
"there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls.
The same goes for life!
If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff
you will never have room for the things
that are important to you.
"Pay attention to the things that are critical
to your happiness.
Play with your children.
Take time to get medical checkups.
Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18.
There will always be time to clean the house
and fix the disposal.
Take care of the golf balls first
-- the things that really matter.
Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired
what the coffee represented.
The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.
It just goes to show you that no matter
how full your life may seem,
there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee
with a friend.

Lady villains

2005-02-24T17:52:00.000+05:30

Really a cool article found on chandramouli sir's blog. (For those who doesnt know him he was our super super senior)

Lady villains

Women are the root of all trouble and this is by nature's design..
Here's how:

Malaria is caused by - female anopheles mosquito
Filaria is caused by - female culex mosquito
Cholera is caused by - female house fly ( check this.. but I am sure it would be a female there also )

I know a childhood friend of mine who wanted to visit North India during his summer vacation.. He made mega plans to visit Delhi, Agra and the hillstations in simla. But alas, he got stuck by malaria and couldn't continue his plans.. His heart was broken and he was sad for many days before he was back to normal. The heart breaker ofcourse was - the female anopheles mosquito!

Even among bees, the queen bee is the ruthless dictator.. Once the men are used for their reproductive capabilities .. they are captivated and even murdered by the female bees... utter violation of bee rights !

Similar story with snakes.. we always hear of the female snakes - 'naagini's taking revenge on innocent humans who might have killed the male snakes for their self - defence. The female race is full of vengeance, jealousy, greed.

And .. when it comes to human beings.. I prefer remaining silent.. you can imagine if the females of such low intelligent species as bees, ants, snakes could do achieve so much.. what the human females are capable of. Extrapolate it yourself..

21st CENTURY LIFELESSNESS..!!

2005-02-24T15:57:00.000+05:30

Our communication - Wireless

Our telephone - Cordless

Our cooking - Fireless

Our youth - Jobless

Our religion - Creedless

Our food - Fatless

Our faith - Godless

Our labour - Effortless

Our conduct - Worthless

Our relation - Loveless

Our attitude - Careless

Our feelings - Heartless

Our politics - Shameless

Our education - Valueless

Our follies - Countless

Our arguments - Baseless

Our bosses - hopeless

Finally . . . . . . . . . . . .

Our Salary - Very less

RMS and Gates

2005-02-23T19:53:00.000+05:30

Here is an interesting article written by RMS whose link I found on slashdot.org.

Bill Gates and other communists

When CNET News.com asked Bill Gates about software patents, he shifted the subject to "intellectual property," blurring the issue with various other laws.
Then he said anyone who won't give blanket support to all these laws is a communist. Since I'm not a communist but I have criticized software patents, I got to thinking this might be aimed at me.
When someone uses the term "intellectual property," typically he's either confused himself, or trying to confuse you. The term is used to lump together copyright law, patent law and various other laws, whose requirements and effects are entirely different. Why is Mr. Gates lumping these issues together? Let's study the differences he has chosen to obscure.
Software developers are not up in arms against copyright law, because the developer of a program holds the copyright on the program; as long as the programmers wrote the code themselves, no one else has a copyright on their code. There is no danger that strangers could have a valid case of copyright infringement against them.
Patents are a different story. Software patents don't cover programs or code; they cover ideas (methods, techniques, features, algorithms, etc.). Developing a large program entails combining thousands of ideas, and even if a few of them are new, the rest needs must have come from other software the developer has seen. If each of these ideas could be patented by someone, every large program would likely infringe hundreds of patents. Developing a large program means laying oneself open to hundreds of potential lawsuits. Software patents are menaces to software developers, and to the users, who can also be sued.
A few fortunate software developers avoid most of the danger. These are the megacorporations, which typically have thousands of patents each, and cross-license with each other. This gives them an advantage over smaller rivals not in a position to do likewise. That's why it is generally the megacorporations that lobby for software patents.
Today's Microsoft is a megacorporation with thousands of patents. Microsoft said in court that the main competition for MS Windows is "Linux," meaning the free software GNU/Linux operating system. Leaked internal documents say that Microsoft aims to use software patents to stop the development of GNU/Linux.
When Mr. Gates started hyping his solution to the problem of spam, I suspected this was a plan to use patents to grab control of the Net. Sure enough, in 2004 Microsoft asked the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) to approve a mail protocol that Microsoft was trying to patent. The license policy for the protocol was designed to forbid free software entirely. No program supporting this mail protocol could be released as free software--not under the GNU GPL (General Public License), or the MPL (Mozilla Public License), or the Apache license, or either of the BSD licenses, or any other.
The IETF rejected Microsoft's protocol, but Microsoft said it would try to convince major ISPs to use it anyway. Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism; it was set up by that famous communist agent, the U.S. Department of Defense.
With Microsoft's market clout, it can impose its choice of programming system as a de-facto standard. Microsoft has already patented some .Net implementation methods, raising the concern that millions of users have been shifted to a government-issue Microsoft monopoly.
But capitalism means monopoly; at least, Gates-style capitalism does. People who think that everyone should be free to program, free to write complex software, they are communists, says Mr. Gates. But these communists have infiltrated even the Microsoft boardroom. Here's what Bill Gates told Microsoft employees in 1991:
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today...A future start-up with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose."
Mr. Gates' secret is out now--he too was a "communist;" he, too, recognized that software patents were harmful--until Microsoft became one of these giants. Now Microsoft aims to use software patents to impose whatever price it chooses on you and me. And if we object, Mr. Gates will call us "communists."
If you're not afraid of name-calling, visit ffii.org (the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure), and join the fight against software patents in Europe. We persuaded the European Parliament once--even right-wing MEPs are "communists," it seems--and with your help we will do it again.

My Sassy girl

2005-02-22T23:57:00.000+05:30

An awesome romantic comedy.

Before watching this movie I read its review which goes on as follows:

If empty calories are clogging your movie-going arteries, MY SASSY GIRL will zap you with the defibrillator, scrape the plaque out of your aorta, and send you on your way with a big, fat, grin plastered across your ever-loving mug..

After reading it, my reaction was that the reviewer is having a marvelous vocabulary. I never thought that the movie could also be better. But after watching the movie i wanted to say that even the reviewer's vast vocabulary fails to describe the romantic ambience created by this movie. This movie is really different. It will stir you from the bottom of your heart. It's the kind of movie where "Wanna die?" means, "I love you."

This movie is all about a young, charming but single college guy Gyeon-woo and his sassy girl who for the entire first half looks to be a nuclear mix of creepiness, good looks but unusual manners.She seems to be a hard-drinking chick who can only express herself through physically assaulting strangers, slinging insults and passing out.But this guy feels that somewhere down the corner in the heart of this beautiful young lady is hidden a lots of pain and sorrow. He wants to cure her pain. He doesnt know what grief she is having but still he wants to steal all her tears from her. So he starts doing whatever she likes him to do. He starts drinking coffee inspite of coke whenever he is with her, he accepts her dominance and succumbs to all her demands, if she hits him, he tries to show as if it hurts and if it hurts he tries to show it doesnt. When her feet hurts, he exchanges shoes with her and wears her heel. On their 100th day , he gives her a rose in front of her entire class. He goes to prison couple of times also for her's sake. He reads her scripts which she calls her synopses and tries to encourage her. In a nutshell,he starts loving her.
As i mentioned earlier, for the entire first half the girl is shown as a tough soul but the mystery behind her toughness starts unrolling during the last part of the movie.I am not going to disclose them here but yeah !! I certainly want to quote some of the best scenes of the movie. For example:

when the Gyeon told ten things about the girl to the person with whom she was having blind date
or
when the girl sent Gyeon to the top of the hill and confesses that she thought she was different but she was just another HELPLESS girl
or
When she was told by the old man that the tree which she felt as if preserving the secrets of her love, died one year before and the new but exactly similar tree was being planted by none other than her lover because she might feel sad about the demise of what (that tree) she felt as if having an important place in her life.
or
All the coincidences which showed them being so near to each other but still unable to locate each other.

In the end I will reiterate that if you believe in love it is a movie which you will definitely appreciate.

And ya !! how can i forget to mention the last line of the movie "Fate is building a bridge of chance for your love"..if you want to understand what it means, then go and watch the movie.

Benaam sa ye dard thahar kyun nahin jaata

2005-02-18T14:31:00.000+05:30

A beautiful but touching song which tries to depict the state of a father who lost his son in a battle for the country.

This song is from a movie ( "Dhoop") based on a real life incident, A heart touching story of a struggle of parents of a kargil martyr against the existing corrupt system.

hey !! I am not writing the review as i know i am the least good in it. So the song is as follows :

Benaam sa yeh dard
thahar kyon nahi jaata

jo beet gaya hai vo
guzar kyon nahi jaata
benaam sa yeh ...

Sab kuch to hai kya dhoondti
rahti hain nigaahein

Kya baat hai main
waqt pe ghar kyoon nahi jaata

jo beet gaya hai vo
guzar kyoon nahi jaata

Vo ek hi chahra to
nahi saare jahan main

Jo door hai vo dil se
utar kyon nahi jata

Jo beet gaya hai vo
guzar kyoon nahi jata
benaam sa yeh....

Main apni hi uljhi hui
raahon ka tamasha

Jaate hai jidhar sab
main udhar kyoon nahi jata

Jo beet gaya hai vo
guzar kyoon nahi jata

Vo naam jo barson se
na chehra hai na badan hai

vo khwab agar hai to
bikhar kyoon nahi jata

Jo beet gaya hai vo
guzar kyoon nahi jata

benaam sa yeh....

Black : THE Movie

2005-02-13T18:28:00.000+05:30

Day before yesterday I saw Black. Ever since i saw this movie i could not stop my self from thinking about its story. It was really "THE" movie i have ever seen. Kudos to Sanjay Leela bhansali for giving us this awesome movie.

Now something about the movie.

I think each and every moments of the movie was dipped with a new philosophy of life. A philosophy which even words cannot adore. I dont know whether saying it a philosophy would be correct or not because the passion of Mr sahay to teach her pupil and make her earn a respectable place in the society, the innocent desire of miss Mitchell to graduate inspite of all the physical liablities owned, the immense love of mitchell's parents especially her mother for her..all these are vague enough to go beyond the boundaries of philosophy but yet they are close to heart. You cannot understand them but definitely you can feel them.You can feel happiness, sorrow but cannot explain similarly you can feel the darkness inside and around all of us.

Darkness !! yeah Darkness but what is this darkness ? Does it really exist or is it not even real ?? I pondered and then answer came to me instantaneously.Lack of everything is this darkness..it is a void..a sense of emptiness...calling it BLACK can be sensible as BLACK is also the lack of all the colors. This movie shows us that the real meaning of life is not to be afraid of this darkness but to explore it to find the rays of light which can enlighten our life.Life ..sometimes i think..what is this life without light ? without words ? How helpless a man is without "words" ? And then i thank god for giving me all the senses.

This movie is all about a girl Miss michell and her teacher Debaraj sahai.Miss michelle was a girl who was blind and deaf. But she COULD speak. But how could she speak as she never heard someone speaking. Then came Mr Sahay, a teacher who changed her life. Mr sahay brought meaning to her life. Before him, she was just an entity.. without any meaning of her existence. She had feelings but she couldnot explain them. She feels the difference between spoon and napkin but cannot point it. Mr sahay made her point this difference. Mr sahay made her speak the first word "MAMA" and "PAPA" out of her vocal cord which was nothing less than a miracle.
I thought how would it feel to pronounce a word which you cannot hear,a word which to me has no significance as i dont know whether i am speaking right or wrong or even my efforts of speaking results some output in terms of voice or not.
This was just the beginning. Then Mr sahay became an integral part of the life of Mitchell and her family. Mr sahay had a dream .. a dream to see mitchell be in the black graduation robe. It took 20 long years for her to achieve this dream. But by then a lots of things have changed. Her teacher had left him in the middle of her journey of life because Mr sahay himself had forgotten the meaning of his existence.
He fell prey to the Alzheimer's disease which erased all his memories . Now mitchell has a dream .. a dream to bring back her teacher to the world in which her teacher brought her long time back.

At the end of this movie my hands automatically start clapping.I dont know how many tears i shed off while watching the movie but yeah !! i wanna say that if you are sensible, you cannot dislike this movie. This movie is really "Dil se".

Regarding acting, I think amitabh is really a god. Saying anything about him would be as if showing candles to the sun. Rani mukherjee was also awesome. She once again proved that she is the best among the contemprory actresses in the industry.But the real surprise was the kid mitchell. The girl (Ayesha) was mindblowing. She seemed as if she was born for this role. I think she did the best job.

The Legend of Avik Banerjee

2005-01-30T18:05:00.000+05:30

Today morning when i saw sunil's blog, i was shocked after reading his latest blog about "The Legend of Avik Banerjee".

How can a person be so cheap ?
I think even the word cheap is also not sufficent to describe him.

There was a comment also written there which i want to quote because i share the same feeling when i read the blog.

"Why is he only removed from the post of speaker of the parliament..he should be kicked out of the institute also and believe me after reading it i feel like kicking his ass. What a cheap bastard he is !! "

Nerd Test

2005-01-29T03:14:00.000+05:30

While browsing through Rakesh's blog, I came to see it.
On the basis of his marks in the test Rakesh says he is becoming a geek.
If he is ..then me too.. as my marks are exactly same as his.

My First Republic Day Celebration @ college

2005-01-29T03:10:00.000+05:30

Ya !! This is my last year in the college and i havent attended even a single republic day celebration in my last 3 years of stay @ college.
Unbelievable !! isn't it ?
Anyways !! my personal plan was to skip this years celebration also but just one night before someone sent a mail stating that we shud attend this years celebration for the sake of our batch and stuff like that. Really speaking i hate such kind of emotional stuffs..I have the deepest regards for my batch and batchmates and i dont need any get together sort of things to prove my feelings. Aneways i went there just because tintin did a lot of hardwork to wake me up. So i didnt want to make him feel that his hardwork went in vain ;).
Ok !! i was eagerly waiting for the programs. But while watching the programs i really felt that it was the worst ever program i have ever seen in my life. Even in our school where we, students of 9,10,+1 and +2 organise these things, they used to be much much better than this. The speech seemed like someone TRYING to give extempore and struggling with the words.Then again a speech was presented which tried to deal with the significance of Republic Day.I really dont want to comment on that because that speech itself didnt bear any significance.The choice of song could have been much better.But the worst part was yet to come..The significance of national anthem. That was really disgusting. These guyz really didnot have the sense as what to speak and when to speak.
I know that it is always easier to find fault with something and we should appreciate the participants. No doubt they are worthy of getting praise for presenting at least something but to me it seems that nothing presented would have been far better than whatever was being presented.
I was also hoping that at least GovindRajulu sir will speak something to stir the very feeling of patriotism ( do u all have it ;) ) inside us but his speech was also a dull one. Really when govindrajulu sir speaks, a grandfather's touch is being reflected and i love that feeling.
Aneways, i became so much frustu after the program that i went to hostel and played non-stop age so that i can atleast forget whatever i have seen.

P4 RUNS

2005-01-29T03:09:00.000+05:30

On 26th jan , while sitting in front of my computer, suddenly an idea popped up in my mind that why shouldnt we have a group blog. Utkarsh, rakesh and puspendra was there and they all agreed to the idea. The impetus was to have a common blog where we all can share whatever things are related to us. Then a blog login is created. Then the problem was what name should we chose for the URL. Parivesh suggested, " why not take the initials of all of us ?" I told there are 4 p's so it becomes P4. Then all of a sudden utkarsh suggests, "It becomes P4 RUNS !!"
Wow !! good name.
And this way our group blog was created, solely dedicated to Rakesh,Utkarsh,Puspendra,parivesh,pankaj,sunil and nirnimesh.
To see the blog, click here

Shimla Phase 5 : Bye Bye Shimla

2005-01-29T03:06:00.000+05:30

i will post it later ;)

shimla Phase 4: Embracing Darauti

2005-01-29T03:03:00.000+05:30

i will post it later ;)

Shimla Phase 3 : shimla conquered

2005-01-28T22:22:00.000+05:30

something about shimla
Sillhouted against the dark green ranges in the shivalik hills, about 8,000 ft above the sea level, rests the queen of hills SHIMLA.It boasts of its scenic variety which ranges from the solemn forests of deodar and towering pines to green meadows of hyacinth.It is a city for the fun lovers, for the ardent admirers of nature.

17th evening
We reach shimla in the evening. The weather is cold. We book the hotel and after refreshing ourselves we again set out with sunil and sashi who introduce us with their city.We visit Mall road,scandal point, wood market etc. About Mall road, even spitting on the road is prohibited there. Utkarsh and rakesh buys locket there. And we decide to present some gifts to uncle and aunty (sunil's dad and mom).When the time comes for chosing ane gifts, i am always in fix. There also when parivesh asks me what should we present to uncle and aunty, my mind goes in complete black out. Then all of a sudden , the shopkeeper shows us an idol of Lord ganesha. The moment we see it, we decide to take it for the present. The idol is really beautiful and the speciality of this is that it glows in the dark. After all these roamings about we go for dinner. I donot feel like eating but others say that the food is awesome.
After taking dinner we go for watching the movie "Swadesh". The road to the theater is really amazing as it seems we are boarding of from stairs. I havent counted but probably we have crossed thousands. Parivesh sleeps in the theater while watching movie. I donot know what others feel but to me the movie was awesome. Though the movie harps on the feeling for the motherland, it avoids preaching slogans and echoing cliches.The film focuses on rural India that is under developed and struggling even to get basic amenities. This gloom scenario is depicted in the backdrop of rapid urban development, technological leaps, and the IT boom. This movie gives patriotism a new and pragmatic identity in the era of globalization.Anything about this movie will be incomplete if i dont name, serenely beautiful Gayatri Joshi. She is mindblowing in this movie. A perfect wife material ;).
Anyways after the movie we go to the hotel and go for sleep.

18th morning

We are ready for visiting other places in the shimla.

Jakhu temple:
This temple is dedicated to the Lord Hanuman, whose form is much in evidence here. Actually as soon as we reach here, a strange things happen to us. A monkey comes from nowhere and all of a sudden snatches the specs of paresh.Paresh is not able to recollect how it happens but the only thing he desperately wants is his specs back. Some person in the premise of the temple says that if we give prasad to them then the monkey will return the specs. we do the same and to our surprise as soon as we throw prasad towards the monkey, the monkey throw the specs back to us. Paresh is relieved now. Then we take the blessings of lord hanuman. From here, one can have a glorious spectacle of the sunrising over the eternal snows and a panoramic view of Shimla spread eagled below.

Then we move towards Indian Institute of Advanced studies.

Indian Institute of Advanced studies
How can we forget this place where Rakesh finds his 116 year old love for which he has been pining for years , unknown to even him. Once upon a time this multi-storeyed building was the seat of power in the politics of the country and shimla. The style of the architecture is of English renaissance as told by the guide.The woodwork is beautiful.Seeing this building kunal says that it seems similar to the Hogwart Schools of Witchcraft in the Harry potter. It was here the fates of the nations was decided, or where parties were hosted and state balls were held.

After that we move towards Kufri.

Kufri
The air here is crisp and invigorating. I see yak here for the first time in my life. Kunal, aditya, google and manjeet goes for yak riding.We donot explore this place as we have to go for ranta's house before it is too late.

After Kufri, we set out towards the ranta's house. It is already dark and night is spreading its darkness all around. But for us, we are rocking. We start playing all sorts of games like Antakshari and dumb charades. Really if shimla team is put on one side, we are invincible in this game of dumbs ;).

The story after reaching sunil's house will be in the next blog.

Shimla Phase 2 : Mission shimla starts

2005-01-11T15:05:00.001+05:30

16th december:

We reach delhi. Outside the station everybody is wating for us to move on towards one of the most ( though it is my first with my friends ) memorable journeys of our college life. Everybody there is wishing that it would have been real fun if popy and darbari were here.
Anyways we start our journey. Mission shimla starts now .Withing half an hour we are nearly out of delhi towards chandigarh. On the car in which i was sitting we have apart from me, parivesh, manjeet, amal, ketan, google and chandu. Google suggests to have an antakshari session. Why not ... says parivesh. Amal suggests myself, parivesh and manjeet to be in one team and rest in other. Wow !! that's what i want..I whisper to myself..parivesh sings melodiously and like parivesh manjeet also knows lots and lots of songs. Antakshari is going really very nice and each of us are playing in a mood to do lots of masti and not with a spirit of defeating someone or things like that.
We stop at a place somewhere near the border of haryana to have our lunch. So much of greeneries are around that place. Charpayee is laying there as if inviting us to take rest. That place really reminds me of my village. Naustalgic feelings start popping up in my head. Really it is a long time back when i visited my village last. It is almost 12 years now when i last visited my village. Pankaj .. come out of past and enjoy the present..my brain vociferated.yeah..if so much fun is there why to sneak into past..After lunch we have some photo sessions and then we take rest for some time on the charpayee there.
Then we again move onto our next destination ie chandigarh where we have to pick up sushil (sunil's brother). We reach chandigarh sector 17 c in the evening. About this place it is called that it is the face of chandigarh. So we also start looking at the face of chandigarh. Everybody was enjoying ( watching the girls of course ) at the Mall of this sector 17-c. I really think that at this place girls come to only show off and boys come to see the girls. Really I cannot find even a single girl who has innocence on her face.
Everybody seems enjoying the place a lot. Google buys a camera here. Parivesh buys a mouth organ. And I buy a novel "The Dragon Fire" . Its really a very good novel about which i came to know when i was in 1st year. Ever since then i thought of buying it but couldnot buy it for some or other reasons. So as soon as i see this novel in "capital book depot" there, I decide to buy it. After buying the book, when i return, i see a young guy standing near sunil. Face looks similar to sunil..but seems elder to sunil..is he sunil's younger brother ?? strugling with such questions as soon as i reach there sunil introduces him..meet my younger brother sushil. Then parry asks, " Isn't he smarter than sunil." Yeah definitely i promptly reply. Then sunil and sushil books a hotel and after roaming little more we go to the hotel and take rests. Next morning we have to start early.

17th morning:

we are ready to go to shimla. After coming out of chandigarh, we are now seeing the glimpse of hills. The ridges seems calling us to embrace it. We stop at a place..i really dont remember the name..probably timberlake..is the place near solan..
There is a ropeway there for going from one peak to the other. In the middle, there is very deep ditch. And the trolley,to go there, takes the pathway which seems steeper than the steep.Utkarsh seems nervous but i think he too is enjoying the whole stuffs.When we are on the trolley, we see downwards.
Wow !! what a look ..beautiful scenaries..really i am short of words to describe the beauty whose treasure is lying there.There we have som fun..we play some shots of lawn tennis also..and then we move towards Nauni ..to meet sunil's beloved..ours to be Bhabhi ie Upasana. Parivesh is not feeling very well during the journey probably because of motion sickness. When we reach her college, i was sleeping in the car.when i board off from the car, what i see is sunil standing with upasana..really they together are looking very cute , I say to myself.
Bhagwan kare unki jodi salamat rahe.
Then we go to a dhaba outside her college to have lunch. Upasana has some exam at 2'O clock. So she has to leave. We bid her good bye and enjoy the lunch a lot.
Actually i like the mushroom a lot. Then after taking team , we move towards shimla. Now what happens in shimla is in the next blog.

Shimla Trip : Phase 1 ( Zor ka jhataka Bahut Zor se laga)

2005-01-11T13:12:00.000+05:30

Shimla trip Plan : We have to break our journey to kanpur where many of our friends along with our guide and host for shimla ie sunil will join us and then from there we will go to delhi. After that we will hire two quallis. Then we will go to chandigarh where we will take sunil's yonger brother sushil who studies there. Then we will set out to shimla..the queen of hills.

Now i will start my story

13th Dec : Night

We all are very excited. Yahoo !! Tomorrow we are going on a journey to shimla. Also our tickets got confirmed (Thanks to Imran). But the night seems longer than ever.( kambakht raat khatm hi nahin ho rahi thi ). With hearts pumping with joy and eyes blinking with so many dreams, i go to sleep.

14th Dec : Early in the morning

Knock Knock
Ketan is on the door, yelling it's already 6:00.
O My god, i havent even packed my luggage. I tell him ...just 10 min i will be ready. Fast pankaj...Fast.., i say to myself and start packing my cloths in haphazard manner.Within the next 5 min, I am ready (though i didnt take bath but still i was extra-ordinarily fast). The auto arrives. Everybody outta there (Manoj, darbari and others )waves us and wishes for our happy journey. We set out for the station.
As soon as we reach the station, we hear an anouncement and then...then....then..dont ask. It seems as if someone has hammered our small soft beautiful ( dont remember much adjectives ) dream.
Really zor ka jhataka bahut Zor se laga. The train is late by 18 HOURS.
O My god !!! what to do next ? Now I start cursing the railway department a lot.

Plan changed:

Now we wont go to kanpur we will go to delhi directly by AP express.
Utkarsh and Aditya goes for taking the tickets for AP express for tomorros.
Then with heavy hearts we again come back to IIIT , where everybody is laughing on our luck..whoever meets us asks ..

arrey tu shimla nahin gaya kya ?? Achchha Achchha train late thi kya ??
Hamare dil mein aag lagi thi aur log usmein ghee daal rahe the..par kya karein hamari kismat hi thi kharab.

Anyways after we come, utkarsh ask me what will i do ? i say i will play age ..will you ??yeah..create says utkarsh. I create age server and utkarsh joins. ( The best example of a "Shishya" ie me playing with his "Guru" ie utkarsh..utkarsh taught me to play age in my 3rd year).But I know that utkarsh is out of practice so it is easy for me to post a good challenge. Actually it is my strategy that offence is the best defence..so i start attacking him with archers, pikes and onagers. I makes a lots of archers and pikes and utkarsh has initially knights but he switches to lots and lots of pikes and skirms.Then he builds two castles at home. I cannot do anething now. So i go for imperial.He also goes for imperial. Then he comes up with 4 trebs and start destroying my castle and military buildings near his house.I am afraid now and fear that i will loose the game.His skirms only are sufficient to kill my both the units ie archers and pikes. I come back from his area and build lots of barracks and produce lots of champs and through back door sends it to utkarsh's home..and that is the turning point of the game..utkarsh flees away from there and the game now is in my hand..i creates more and more champs..All of a sudden i saw some arblasts of utkarsh..i was afraid as i have champs only now and he has arblasts..but i move my champs towards his arblasts and to my surprise utkarsh hasnt done any research and i kills all arblasts and he resigns.

yeah !! at least one sign of relief..what happens if luck cheated me in my real life ( by making my train late) , i win a game against utkarsh..thats a satisfaction.

In the evening we go for some marketting where i buy a jacket and some woolen cloths. Parivesh and Google goes for cancelling the tickets of the train which was late.
Next morning we set out for delhi on AP Express ( Thank god it was on time ).

The unexpected guest

2005-01-04T11:56:00.000+05:30

A sensational murder mystery.

Raincoat

2005-01-04T03:22:00.000+05:30

A classic movie ... that's what i can say about the Rituparno ghosh's latest movie "Raincoat".

Some films attempt to showcase a series of wonderful moments and tend to go overboard. Raincoat captures just one poignant moment and tells it as simply it can, leaving you with a 'wow!'

The music of the movie is also very sweet. Especially the opening track Mathura Nagarpati sounds the sweetest.

Review Raincoat

2005-01-04T02:42:00.000+05:30

Raincoat is a intense drama set in one rainy afternoon when two lover estranged by fate meet under strange circumstances.

It has been raining ceaselessly all day. The atmosphere wears a sultry, albeit worn, look, in hues of blue and grey. A roomful of antique furniture carelessly lying around, the shadowy aura hiding quite a few secrets. A single candle spreads its warmth around the two inhabitants of its room.

The crowded nature of their surroundings reflects the messy state of affairs. There is an occasional slip for wallowing in regret and 'only ifs,' but, for the most part of this meeting, the two players indulge in a game of 'Everybody says I am fine.'

A resident of Bhagalpur, Manoj (Ajay Devgan) is out of work owing to a lock-out in the jute mill he worked for.

Low on luck and resources, he comes to Kolkata and embarrassedly approaches a few of his former college mates to lend him some money to start a business. Now that he is in the City of Joy, Manoj is keen on seeing his village sweetheart Neeru (Aishwarya Rai) as well. Their love story ended on an unrequited note, when Neeru agreed to bow down to social pressures and marry a wealthy bloke as opposed to the jobless Manoj.

Cut to present day rainy Kolkata. Wearing a borrowed raincoat, Manoj arrives to meet Neeru.
The carefree days of youth are long over. The harshness of day-to-day reality and responsibility have besieged into the duo's disposition.

The once seductively playful Neeru has lost her will to charm. There is an obvious disinterest in the way she carries herself. She is least bothered about her awkwardly worn sari or her untidy mane. Her voice sounds weighed down for untold reasons. Even her unkempt appearance, however, makes for an enigmatic picture.

Uncomfortable, inquisitive, withdrawn and puzzled at different times of the conversation, Manoj drawls back and forth in his chair, restlessly smoking cigarettes, as if he is really making an effort to believe Neeru's tall proclamations.

And then?the raincoat does its bit. The truth comes out. And so do their intense feelings for each other. Told poetically and uncompromisingly by author and director Rituparno Ghosh, Raincoat is a simple tale of two beautiful gestures in one afternoon. Inspired from O Henry's classic short story The Gift of Magi and Radha-Krishna's unrequited romance, Raincoat relies heavily on the simmering chemistry of Manoj and Neeru and the spiritual compositions of Debojyoti Mishra that linger in the background.

Indranil Ghosh's cluttered art design and Aveek Mukherjee's muted photography contribute to the essence of Raincoat's narrative.

For someone heralded as the most beautiful woman in the world, Aishwarya Rai looks terrifyingly depressing in the film. Her Neeru looks cynical to the point of suicide. And that's a compliment. Her body language is a strange mix of a passive housewife and a passionate girlfriend. Though the effort to sound rustic shows, the restraint in her dialogue delivery and performance is commendable.

Hesitation, desperation, humiliation -- Ajay Devgan conveys them eloquently. His Manoj is no cool dude, but just another lower middle-class guy in misery, with whom none would like to switch place.

He particularly stands out in the scenes where he cries in the bathroom, or begs Neeru not to marry someone else.

This Review is taken from:

http://www.nrilinks.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/BW1115.asp

Who says coincidence doesnot occur in life ?

2005-01-03T02:59:00.000+05:30

Who says coincidence doesnot occur in life ?
It happend to me and that also on the 1st day ( evening to be more precise ) of the new year.
I rang Bhaskar to wish him happy new year. There he asked me to guess the name of the person he coincidentally found out in kolkata.I thought for a while and asked "Is it sutapa ?". (Sutapa dandi was a girl who studied with us at k.V.Baileyroad patna till 10th. After that she left the school).
Then after talking to bhaskar as soon as i switched the phone off..what i saw was "Sutapa" was infront of me.
Wow !! it was really a pleasant surprise ;).

Chokher bali ( A Must See )

2004-12-01T04:41:00.000+05:30

Really classic..ultimate movie

Chokher Bali .. A Passion Play seeks to portray the role of a woman in a male jingoistic society. It is the story of a woman who is not ready to accept the dictates of brutal destiny as she aspires to make statements of her individuality in a man-dominated society.

Social dogmas do not cut much ice with Binodini, the film's protagonist.
She is fallibly human, not infallibly divine. She loves, but betrays. She errs, then rectifies. She is pious, but has natural sexual desires. She was born like a virgin as all were, but she refuses to die as one.

And I personally like the endings very much..the last letter of binodini ..it was really marvelous..i donot have words to describe it..
Really it was an awesome movie.

Ritupurno Ghosh..Thank you for giving us such a beautiful movie

Played age after a long time

2004-11-02T13:00:00.000+05:30

Ya !! I played age after a long time yesterday night..me vs 3 hard..though initially i was thinkin whether i will win or not as i was playin after a long gap..i was franks..and the hards were teutons, britons and huns..i fought hard..after 1 hrs and 20 min i defeated them..it was a good feeling ...Now when exams are over the rule of the day is ..FYP sucks..aoc rocks

Biology Exam Tomorrow

2004-11-01T12:56:00.000+05:30

Tomorrow i have a biology exam :((
have to study 1400 slides..
ohh god help me

The last tutorial

2004-10-28T02:21:00.000+05:30

Today was the last tutorial class (for 1st years) which i took.
Really i think that i learnt a lots of things while teaching.
I hope that they (first year guyz) also would have learnt from
whatever i taught them.
My first and last aim was to make them learn how
to learn.

Me..three years back and now

2004-10-27T23:12:00.000+05:30

Really when i look myself three years back from now, i feel surprised !!How was i able to manage so much sincerity those days ?

I used to get up at 4'o clock in the morning. I used to attend all the classes..I didnot bunk even any tutorials in the first semester.

Really I was very sincere those days.

And now there is a new pankaj here confessing in his own blog about the drastic change happend to his ways of living or leading life. These days i am doing nothing..really nothing..
Its not that i have nothing to do..classes , FYP, courses, Tutorials , my own projects etc A lots and lots of things to do .. but what am i doing ?
Nothing..:((

Bunking classes, listening to radio (vividh bharti), doin a lots and lots of bc with friends,watching movies have become the rule of the day.
Really i have changed a lot.
It is said that change is the law of nature but change like this..nay

I dont say that there should not be masti in life but at the cost
of studies ..never..also i am not in favour of becoming a bookworm
To me there should be a balance between masti and studies..

surprise of the day

2004-10-27T22:07:00.000+05:30

I woke up today at 6 in the morning.
After getting fresh , i checked my mail and was looking for some
good tutorials on Fast wavelet transform ( FYP stuff :(( ).
Then someone knocked on the door..it was utkarsh..
Really I was surprised..how come utkarsh woke up now at
around 7:00. I thought that there must be smthing wrong with
him..My surprise went to heights when he asked me for
breakfasts..utkarsh and breakfast..the two extremes
how can it be possible..

There was a time when utkarsh was rarely seen in the mess..
his dinner lunch and breakfast ..all was just a packet of
lays or haldiram's chips

I am alone

2004-10-27T18:30:00.000+05:30

I am alone
as always
sitting still
peering out
into the open sky
pondering at life itself.

I am alone
when I'm hurt
or filled with anger.
I am just here
in this life
as one insignificant being.
Why am I here?
I am alone.

I also have it now

2004-10-21T02:23:00.000+05:30

I bought mobile today.
The inbuilt FM radio there makes me naustalgic because
in my preparation days only radio was my best friend.
After coming to IIIT i really missed a lot, radio programs
like chhaya geet , hello farmayish, bioscope ki baatein,
aapke anurodh pe, natya tarang , pitaara etc.

start of the journey

2004-10-06T09:28:00.000+05:30

Today I saw the blog of utkarsh. I really liked it.
And i also got inspired to have my own blog at which
i can also post whatever i desire and whatever i wanna
throw out of my heart.
The result is this blog...