After these placement funda sessions...

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Don't know, it's just a sinking feeling after these sessions...

But I want to understand the meaning of it all, and through that understanding change the world...work on ideas which will revolutionise the way mankind thinks and works...transform the real to the ideal world...and enjoy the process of doing all this...

Will I get lost in the lanes and by-lanes of the real world, playing to the gallery, ending up like the 'normallest' of the 'normal' that inhabit this place; while all this remains just vague ideas, pipe dreams...the mere content of thoughts, blogs or poems...

Don't laugh at me...these thoughts haunt me night and day even as life goes on as if nothing has happened...
Does something ever happen?
Sorry, I'm just babbling...it's too real a fear for me, I don't know whether you understand... but I must stop...stop...stop.

Bring you back to me

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If only tears could bring you back to me,
Cry all day long, I'm doing that for you,
If only prayers could bring you back to me,
In every shrine I'd beg, however untrue.

If sorrow could bring you back to me,
The depths of grief, I've seen that for you,
If something at all could bring you back to me,
Just tell me...tell me, I'll do that for you.

Walk ahead, I cannot without you,
For purpose what, where do I go?
Just what do I do to bring you back,
Can nothing ever change this flow?

As long as you were there...

-
Countless hours that you were there,
Never knew the need for you,
Just knew your presence there,
Rarely felt the time for you;

Seldom acknowledged your silent greeting,
Never answered your wordless smile,
Yet a propinquity unknown somewhere,
Hardly found probing it worthwhile;

Till the time you had to go,
Till the moment you had to leave,
Then realisation slowly dawned,
The sudden shock...measureless grief.

Won't you ever come back again?
Sit once more in that corner of yours,
I pledge, I promise, I'll give everything way,
For that silent greeting, wordless smile of yours...

His life

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All round him, they strived higher and higher,
Acme the aim, the pinnacle their call;
While he too struggled, higher and higher,
With motive contrary, for the exhilirating fall.

All round him, were go-getting achievers,
Success for sure, whether short or long haul;
While he too succeeded, by standards his own,
Living moment to moment, in search of his call.

By standards his own, with motives contrary,
His life full of zest, stripped of banal;
They called it insane, he found it thrilling,
A different beat...by no means small.

Dance bars, Child labour and a personal experience

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The immediate context of this post is Governor Krishna's decision (in Maharashtra) sending back the ordinance for banning dance bars. I haven't yet thought about the problem in detail but my perception, based on whatever I superficially gathered during my short stay in Mumbai is that if these ladies weren't in the dance bar, given their abject condition, they would be forced to move into flesh trade. True, exploitation is high in these bars and probably there is flesh trade going on behind the scene in certain bars, yet to a certain section it provides the hope of earning a living without complete loss of dignity.

And there is basic flaw in the philosophy behind imposing a ban on dance bars. These bars are not going into the drawing rooms of homes, i.e. they are not a forced choice but just an increase in available choice. If one considers visits to dance bars as wrong, the flaw is with those lecherous men who frequent the dance bars. They should be the target of reform.

Dance bars arose because a need for them existed. That need will remain till people change, whether or not you ban dance bars. It is easier if that need is fulfilled in the legal market because the government has its authority there. Otherwise, it moves to the grey market where things are murky and beyond law. Similar to the betting problem in cricket; the government bans it in the open and it finds a vigorous nurturance in the black market.

The dance bar girls also have a need, the need for a livelihood. Banning the dance bars won't eliminate this need, it will only force them to choose a different route to satisfy that need. The ladies in these bars, by virtue of the close nexus, are very vulnerable to being pushed into flesh trade; the income from the dance bars being their insurance against this degradation. And that would have been taken away with the ban.
Rehabilitation must happen first and a ban must arise as a consequence of this rehabilitation (i.e. no more ladies left to dance in the bars) rather than rehabilitation as a consequence of the ban (and I'm not even sure there's a proper rehab plan and even if there is one, it'll be botched up since botching up is in everybody, except the dance girl's, interest.)

True, the middle men like the dance bar owners need to be vigorously disciplined, in many cases they are the perpetrators of horrible exploitation. But that can be done if the government is really determined (nexuses are broken), and only if the entire business is in the open, the middle men are under the strict ambit of law.

There is a lot more that I have to say on the issue but will post all that after a thorough analysis, whenever I get time for that.

Though not directly related, many of the issues and challenges involved in eliminating child labour are similar. An abiding memory of my stay in Mumbai is this incident...

I had to catch an early morning train from Victoria Terminus and was travelling from Mumbai to Kharagpur. The local trains don't run from around 2:00 am to 5:00 am and I was staying in far away Andheri, so I decided to come to the station the previous night itself.
On a bench opposite to the platform where I was waiting, there was this kid around 10-11 years of age sitting alone, all my himself. As the night grew, the station started emptying till by around two to two-thirty all platforms were deserted (or had people fast asleep on the benches). And the kid was still there sitting on the bench but now he was sobbing. That's when I started conversation with him and called him over. He told me that he was the child of quarry labourers at the station in Nagpur and that his mother had put him to sleep in a train not realising that the train was to leave soon.The kid awoke to find himself in this station two days back and there he was sitting on that bench for the last two days without any food. And he had no contact details of anybody, no phone number, no address, nothing.

First bought him food (Mumbai hotels are open throughout the night) and then decided to take him to the police station to file a case, but the kid was distinctly uncomfortable with this. Yet I persisted.

Well, at the police station, it was again a shock. The officer wouldn't register a case saying that that there were thousands of kids who got lost in Mumbai everyday and it was impossible to trace everybody's home. They wouldn't file an FIR as that would mean a written record. I was told that the kid would surely be a small time crook and since I looked decent, it was in my interest to leave him alone otherwise I would be swindled and then I couldn't blame the officer that I had not been warned. And the kid too was too scared to provide his assent. All arguments were of no use, I was only a middle link where both the ends were uninterested.

Nagpur comes on the way to Kharagpur (when one is travelling from Mumbai on that train, and the last station on that route is Kolkata) and the only available course then was to get this kid onto my train. The stop at Nagpur was for about half-an-hour, and the kid had said that they lived in a shanty by the station. The idea was to leave him at his home within the half hour and re-board, or otherwise break my journey at Nagpur.

What happened at Nagpur was another shock. I was all ready with my luggage to get down but the kid wouldn't budge. Surprise after surprise.Then he told me...Nagpur wasn't his home...he wasn't a quarry worker's kid...he was not lost in VT...he had been Mumbai for the last 5-6 years...his parents were labourers in Kolkata...he had been sent to Mumbai to earn money...two days back his Seth had misbehaved with him and had thrown him out...and he was trying to get back to Kolkata somehow...

Don't think I can forget that moment... it was a feeling of pure helplessness...I was lost...

I didn't even know whether to trust him...
Well, the train was upto Kolkata anyway, I got down at Kharagpur after making sure that he would get to Kolkata. Tried explaining to him that I would have helped him anyway, even if he had told me the truth. But his explanation was that if he had said the truth in Mumbai, I might have sent him back to the Seth. Tried to extract a promise from him that he wouldn't lie in the future...I doubt whether he kept it...

And the funny thing was the reaction from my relatives on reaching my destination (I never hide anything from them) . I was called a fool, a naive...god knows what else. I could have got swindled...I could have got killed...Mumbai is known for such incidents...that kid could be part of a big gang...naives like me would always land up in trouble. It was difficult...they were speaking in my interest... for what they believed was my good, but it wasn't convincing....there were earnest attempts made to help me realise that I was a man in the 'real', bad world and had to behave accordingly.

Well, I've seen it and tried to fight it first hand, not once, but many times in my own small ways.
Before feeling those sudden pangs for the underprivileged and before formulating those policies in air-conditioned rooms, one needs to see, feel and understand the 'real' world; only then can one make any 'real' difference.

Their 'Love'

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He said he adored her sense of independence,
But actually, from her dependence he got his;
He said he admired her strength,
But actually, from her weakening he derived his;
He said he revered her freedom,
But actually, in her blind devotion he felt his;

She said she cherished her own independence,
But she wanted his backbone, to depend on;
She said she relied on her own strength,
But she wanted his support, for her weakness;
She said her nourishment was her own freedom,
But she wanted his will, to surrender hers completely;

And they were said to be in love,
Gazing into each other's eyes...
And I did not know whether to admonish him, or her...

Or probably myself, for not being able to understand...

Getting the right seat

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In some classes I come a little early so that I get a seat in the last row.
In other classes I come a little early so that I get to sit in the first few rows.
(Yep, classes are just full.)
Well, I anyway end up coming to class a little early :-).
And the reason is simple, I want the 'freedom to choose'.
(Of course, I partially give up my freedom in arrival time in the bargain, but again that's 'my' choice in this trade-off.)

Freedom and writing poetry

-
Tried the experiment again and it just won't work out...

Almost all the poems posted on the blog I have written spontaneously sitting before the computer and only once in the older blog did I post a poem written earlier. And there is a pre-condition before I can start writing - freedom; mentally atleast complete freedom even if the poem is about constraints.

There is more than an hour left for class and under normal conditions quite enough time for me to write two or more poems, but with this constraint it won't come. (Of course, typing something which I've written out earlier is no problem).

Spontaneity requires freedom, atleast for me.

Baba promised that he would get a book of poems of mine published if I could give him 100 poems by the 4th Year... that book never got published...

Do I sound completely crazy? :-)

Socratic method, immediate reactions

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Some immediate random reactions to a session of Socratic teaching (before hindsight reasoning or rationalisation sets in)

To Socrates:
1. Accept the don't knows
2. Don't reduce it to a mechanical interrogation. No questions must be asked to just rankle the learner. Lower the rope a little when the learner is falling short, keep it a discussion among fallible individuals trying to discover something together.
3. Conclude each individual question-thread. A bouquet conclusion in the end is not enough.

Such sessions are interesting if the learner is interested provided both the learner and Socrates keep their ego away.

Will post something more well thought out later...just came out of a Socratic session and have to grab lunch before I attend what I expect to be another session of Socratic teaching.

How do you find Socratic methods?

Precision of perfection

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The perfection of precision,
Sublime joy of just-the-required,
Refined harmony of the razor of Occam;

Simple but not simpler,
No more, no less, no waste;

For Humans or Gods...?

------
Modified an earlier post.

Logic in a sequence

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Vicious cycles are always fascinating. Understanding the detailed logic and figuring out the right point of attack for breaking a loop is always a joy. Till you get a hang of the logic, the sequence is like a decimal representation of an irrational number (non-periodic, non-terminating); equipped with the logic you see one form of the decimal representation of a rational number (periodic, non-terminating) and there's a certain thrill in that.

One loop which I've been trying to figure out on-and-off for the past few days is my disc-man's random-play option which I'm sure is not random. For the kind of chip it uses, perfect random-play is impossible. I read the algorithms for generation of random numbers in old russian computers when fiddling with monte carlo simulation from Sobol and have a rough idea of how the random generation works in the memory, and I'm sure my disc-man hasn't any of that complexity.
The current status is that I have a few sequences; for instance for my test CD, for any of the first few songs, I can give you the entire sequence of songs that's going to play (given a starting song, I can tell you the interval after which a certain sequence will repeat). Yet I haven't yet been been able to figure out the generalised functions ... :-(

Digressing a little form the main theme, in the current status, I'm in a position to evoke the awe of a visitor to my room after a small demo, especially when I add a 'mumbo-jumbo' function during the demo. This status is like the status of many of our rituals; they yield the results, but with loss of understanding of the logic over the years, they appear random to its 'current advocates' who only see the sequence and have to take recourse in the power of authority or superstition or superficial-and-fallacious to ensure adherence.
Nah, don't worry, I don't intend joining that 'current advocates' pack and won't trick you with that demo :-).

Her intolerable anguish

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Flaws she could clearly discern,
yet ideal solution she did not know;
Gaps only she could see,
yet the filled mosaic she could not conceive;
Blemishes only she could feel,
yet the perfection she could not conjure;

She suffered the agony of knowing,
the torment of not knowing;

Her anguish was intolerable...

Praise She couldn't suffer

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He tore her apart through praise,
not an uttered word was not praise,
Yet she felt the lacerations,
as encomiums continued unabated;
Till the wounds consumed her;

The accolade at its crescendo,
and then she could suffer it no longer.

For he praised her for what she had not,
for what she craved, yet could not possess,
Every praise was a deprecation for her,
while the fool was lost in his panegyric reverie;

The pang of each peaean,
till it was beyond feeling;

While all she wanted from him was just the truth of understanding.

Grains of sand

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The sand-clock on the mantelpiece,
Constantly flowing grains of sand;
Another second lost to my past,
A vicarious decision for me by that grain,
One more moment beyond my control,
Grain in the bank of memory,
A silent witness I,
As my grains flow;
Hoping for grains yet to flow,
Struggling with the grains already flowed,
Suffocated by grains,
While the grains flow uninterrupted of their own accord...

Messenger...lost

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Opened Yahoo messenger after so many months...so many old messages, so many new contacts (all my summer training and old and new B'lore friends and many more) and the computer at the CC hung as soon as I opened messenger; archiving is not on since I use computers at CC and cafes...everything lost, no fault of mine yet can't stop thinking and re-thinking and blaming myself about it.

It was a random event and that's the entire point...random events can wreck you and there is no learning to be incorporated from them...they're random by nature...yet they might leave lasting impressions (for instance the entire QAM3 episode :-))...

How do you deal with random events...accept it as fate...nah...there must be better alternatives...

Contradiction

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The acquiring of 'real' knowledge requires that you completely discount the background/status of the imparter of knowledge, and judge only on the basis of knowledge imparted.

But many institutions of society like the family, classroom, friendships, religion, patriotism etc. very often and to varying degrees depend for their survival on just the opposite i.e. discounting of the quality of knowledge imparted in favour of background/status of the imparter.
('respect' as a result of 'extraneous' factors even when the flaws in the quality of knowledge are apparent to you)
How long can these institutions survive with this contradiction....

Have you ever felt this tension, this inherent inconsistency?

Mobile covers and economic theory!

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About a year and a half back, bought a cover for my mobile from one of those ubiquitous small shops in Mumbai; it's a very hardy 'unstylish' cover and will probably last many more years. Every few days, the cover gets very dirty and I have to clean it.
It appeared very dirty today and had to clean it before dinner, that set me thinking...

The mobile is still almost in the brand new condition. Yet the cover gets dirty very often and that means for me, the mobile is dirty very often...and I'm sure one fine morning I'll find the mobile has stopped working...so in trying to keep it clean, I'll end up having used a dirty mobile throughout its working life, though it will die a clean death :-).

Irrespective of what Economics says about "savings-postponement of consumption-consumption" for 'rational' human beings, I haven't found a model which works for an 'irrational' ,'real' being like me.

Do you know of any?

Trust my follies! (Update: Not this time!)

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OK, I won't remove the post but I wasn't careless, the entire initial communication from their side mentioned only the August 30th deadline, the 28th April thing was expected maybe but never mentioned in their communication till the end, and that communication happened only after I probed.
I wasn't at fault this time though the original post might make you think otherwise.
- June 19, 2005


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Sometimes my carelessness amazes me :-), especially when contrasted with how I usually am.

There is some new idea on which you've thought in great detail, your new paper is almost ready, you've checked the paper submission deadline long ago, it's Aug. 30th so you think you're tucked snugly...for once you're beating deadlines...and then before printing the final thing, you check the deadlines once again just to make sure... and there it is... proof of your 'master' folly, there's an entry form submission deadline without which you can't send the final paper and the deadline for that is 28th April (1 month+18 days earlier)...and then, then your folly hits you :-((.

Didn't somebody say, no learning goes waste;
let's hope for my sake no thought/idea goes waste.

Surviving the questions on day-1

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The first few days are always the most difficult when you're meeting a large number of friends after a 2 month hiatus.
The same set of questions repeat again and again and again till you are beyond bored. It starts off at the airport itself because given the few alternative flights available, you end up with a few friends on the flight itself...but at that time those questions are still interesting. Then once you're on campus, a few more friends and the same questions...by then you're already reeling things out of memory. By the time you're getting up the hostel stairs, you're literally scared of boring yourself to death by repeating the same raam-katha, so consciously/sub-consciously new details have become conspicuous. Then as you proceed towards the mess, you're preparing an elaborate offensive to wreck the next friend who'll ask you the same questions.
By the time you're at the registration counter you're ready with the perfect foil; if there is any possibility of a conversation going beyond 'hi-bye' (and you try to prevent this with all your might using various ruses, for instance looking somewhere else when the other person is looking at you) , you're ready to garner the entire first-mover advantage by hurtling "the same questions" before the other guy can even open his mouth, but there's the accompanying smirk on your face for the guy on the other side to latch on...if he's intelligent enough the guy immediately realises the reason for this attack with the MOABs, afterall he's been suffering the same thing...there's a good laugh and at last the two of you are talking 'substance'... beyond those formal questions.

Sometimes formalities and rituals get ridiculous; it's even more ridiculous when people, despite seeing the ridiculousness, stick to it.

Life, much beyond

I have this habit of neatly stacking into files and boxes every relevant piece of paper. The entire afternoon has been devoted to filling up the Term-III and Summer Internship boxes.
-
In myriad hue boxes,
moments of life lay captured.
From instant to instant,
from box to box,
from memory to memory,
the ebb and flow of a life.
What thread runs through the boxes many?
What holds a life together?
Life, a succession of moments;
yet much beyond those moments capture,
much beyond those boxes store,
much beyond...much beyond...

All the world's a stage!

-
It is a little surprising to see people blend in so well into their roles.
For example the boss becoming a subordinate when the boss' boss is around or the subordinate becoming the boss when the subordinate's subordinate is around.

We're all playing our roles to perfection...but how much of the "individual" remains as we hop from role to role on this stage called life.

By the way, talking about bosses and subordinates :-), if given a choice would you prefer being a big shark in a small pond or an ok-sized shark in a big pond
or like me, you just enjoy the swimming and care little about little else :-).

A Child; my Failure and our Success

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Don't get wild ideas after reading the title :-); have some time left before the taxi comes to pick us up from IIM-B, probably my last post from the CC here.
----

True, a child in many ways represents hope for our species. Most people, if asked about what they feel is closest to God, would reply, "the innocent child". The child binds us as a species and is the repository of mankind's accumulated knowledge upto its generation. (I'll refer to the child in the neutral) .The child is the hope that whatever little experience the individual gains, whatever little 'better' understanding that one accrues in a life-time will not be lost completely on death. "It" is also the hope that as a species, as a collective entity, we might succeed...

But "it" represents beyond that. A child also represents my failure as an individual entity, hence the appeal to the next generation. "It" might represent hope for collective success but is a sign of individual defeat...I haven't been to conclude the game with myself- rather I've lost- hence I introduce a new player in the hope of a vicarious success. "It" is also a symbol of my selfishness - I'm throwing "it" into a rebus which has trounced me, eaten me up, for a distant doubtful surrogate victory. "It" is a symbol of surrender to pre-ordained rules of a game over which we have little control...

O! Child, you never cease to amaze me!

9 more months

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Less than two weeks left for our reporting date.
And although I'm going back of my own free will to complete the remaining nine months of the course, I'm not 'really' looking forward to it.

There's a basic incompatibility betweeen the way in which the course is administered and the way in which I like learning. They use deadlines, threats, punishments and rewards, coercion, compulsions and simulated competition as the means to bring out what they think is the best in students.

The necessary prerequisite for my learning is freedom. I'm learning because I enjoy learning, and will learn the stuff that I enjoy. I do not need those external stimulants to induce me to learn, they only serve to restrict the freedom. I get my kick out of learning itself, not the marks they might fetch me in the exams or the placement they might get me nine months hence. In a constrained environment, the aim is to carve out as much time as possible for my own pursuits, surrendering minimal time and effort to the prescribed courses to just ensure that I stay afloat (or above the hygiene level). And this happens even if the pursuit matches the prescribed course; more often than not there is little co-relation between the half-baked, exam-focussed babbling in classes and my own unconstrained attempts at grasping the beauty. Had felt a similar distate in Ramaiah, got out of that place in less than 5 months and didn't much care after that; that precipitated so many other things...

And few custodians inspire confidence. I dug a little deep during the Term 3 fracas, found it murky.

It's not that I didn't enjoy the last year, but most of it was outside the official prescriptions. Over the years I've learned to find my happiness irrespective of what's going on around. And one thing is certain, the garden there is definitely beautiful, only the official way of exposing you to its beauty isn't.
And it always helps if the environment around aids, rather than bars the process.

---
Don't know how much I'll be able to post in the coming few days. And once I get to Lucknow the frequency of posts will anyway decrease in the absence of a computer in my room.

Take care, dear friend!

'You' from 'your circumstance'

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How much of you is inherently you and how much of you is a result of your circumstance?

I frankly don't know how.

But I increasingly get the feeling that many of the things that I'm doing, I would invariably do whatever my circumstance. These two months stay at Bangalore has served to heighten that feeling...

A short swaralipi composition in raag bihaag

Teen taal ; l = lower, h=higher

sthayi

ga - sa - - ga - ma pa ni - pa - ga - ma

ni(l) ni(l) pa(l) sa - - ga - ma - ga - sa - - -

antara

pa ma ga ma pa ni - sa(h) ma(h) - ga(h) - sa(h) - - -

ni sa(h) ga(h) ma(h) pa(h) ga(h) - ma(h) ga(h) - sa(h) - ni ni pa sa(h)

- - - - ga - ma - pa ma ga ma ga - sa -

Reasoned Unreasonableness

-
I reason reason all the time,
In reason lies true delight,
But has reason reason all the time,
Made me blind to real flight?

The joys of loony irrationality,
Whimsical action without hindsight,
Leaps of faith of an unconstrained mind,
Unyoked actions free from fright...

Yet being inane is just part of me,
Flights of fantasy a perpetual excite,
Reason reason just makes me aware,
It doesn't confine my sight.

For reason is the only yardstick I've got,
Its many many flaws despite,
It does not constrain unreasonable pleasures of life,
Just makes me aware of my plight.

----------------
Like now, when reason tells me that I should be tucked comfortably in bed, but here I am in my cabin...
If you've somehow gotten the notion that I have lots of free time here, just check the timings of the posts, they're always written in some break when I'm short-circuiting a lunch or snack or in most cases in the dead of night, when I'm pulling the plug off my sleep. And my 'dear friend Reason' tells me that it's bad for my health, but it's more fun when you're doing something unreasonable and are aware of it :-).
( If you didn't get it, check this space again later, I'll elaborate my funda behind the previous statement in a subsequent post :-))

'x' and 'y'

-
Well, I have in my posession 'x' and frankly 'x' is enough to keep most beings happy.
But I somehow manage to scent a 'y'. And irrespective of whether 'y' is positive or negative, I end up fiddling with 'y' to have 'x+y'...
Call it my comedy or tragedy or whatever you may like... I need to find the 'y's at regular intervals.