QOTD #4

I have just realised that, regardless of the fact I love my job or not, I would always love quitting it.

- Zero, as on Nov 21, 2005.

Cigarettes

The Prologue
Statutory Warning: Reading this post is injurious to health. Before you think I cracked an abysmally insipid joke, I suggest you to get going with the post and figure out at the end how much good sense this "statutory warning" makes in the larger context, apart from being a lame joke.

Chapter 1: Cigarettes
Here at 3 in the afternoon, with one of those weekly team meetings just over, I move back to my spot and stare blankly, for quite a while, at the monitor before deciding to write this piece.
Another guy whose participation in the meeting was as bland as mine - thus letting him be in the same empty state as me - doesn't do the same. He drags one of his chums off to the terrace, pulls a stick from his pocket and lights it up. He does it. So does every smoker, thus evading those empty moments, that arise after one laughs at his manager's jokes, by doing something; unconditionally. Habits, my dear reader, habits! Habits make a Man.
No emotions, no discussions, no contemplation; just a few fleeting moments of unreasonably (here some smokers may raise an objection; but that was a compliment) pleasing act, as perhaps Hitckcock would have put it.
Before the reader presses Alt-F4 irritated at getting to hear such a preposterous "reasoning" *for* smoking, I would like to emphasize that my reasoning in itself is senseless. But, that's exactly where I am hitting at. Without being senseless at times, life wouldn't be what it is.

The Epilogue
Some stare blank. Some smoke. Some write. Some read what others wrote.

Stupid QOTD #3

Its fine to have opinions on gobi manchurian; but not on people who have opinions on gobi manchurian; at least, not when it's to do with a 'gobi manchurian'. :)

Lovelution

How poetry ever got written -- that never struck me!
- Richard P. Feynman

The Prologue:
I agree to the above statement to various degrees at different times. But never did it strike as completely false to me. And in a peculiarly similary way, it applies for love too in my life.

The Post:
Recently, I read Bharath's write-up on this thing called love (though I felt it was more about loss of one's love), and started musing what it meant in my senselessly stupid life. I talking about love is like camels talking about bungee-jumping. Even as I type this, I realise that I have given a rather nice form to love (bungee-jumping), here. Sometimes, I end up comparing it to several unsavory things (toilets, for example).
Not that love was/is impossible for me. Its only that I don't seem to have actually felt considerable amount of love for anybody till now. If you want to get a fairly accurate depiction, think Rajesh from Gautam's Minnale (I don't quote examples from inane movies or those which I don't admire; but the characterization, with the right amount of ineptness, never got closer than this). Hold on. Before you think I was roaming around bullying people around wearing thick black jerkins and bunch of fancy chains around my neck, the comparison was strictly meant for the level of interaction with girls and the directions it took during the few times I did interact (which is mostly when we are pulling the legs of some poor guy linking him unsavourily to some quiet/enthusiastic girl in the class).
The general (and hence senseless too) perception is that, in the social setup in which I spent my time as a teenager, for a guy to fall in love with a girl (or at least run/crawl after skirts in general), he had to be this hip guy (another inept description; but the material seems to deserve it) or the mushy-mushy "you-are-what-I-live-for" love. Unfortunately, yours truly was neither and (hence?) belonged to the rest {a real fat percentage at that, who never actually fall in love until some day they get married} theorizing love among friends (not quite similar to Vivek in those several "college-romance" flicks, but in the same ballpark; note the innumerous inane references in Tamil films throughout in this post).
Honestly looking back (and pointlessly theorizing why I was the way I was), I never grew up from being the boy who fiercely competed with fellow female classmates in acads and local quizzes during my school life to become the prototype adolescent who flirts in a real dumb way with the fairer sex. By the time I grew up and started appreciating the finer aspects of the female species (like Psmith would have put it), I was far off from being the dude whom I would describe henceforth (for the sake of discussion) as the "I-need-girlfriends" type (another phrase conceived by Pa. Vijay for Boys; need I repeat that it is another reference to an inane movie?). I admit I had crushes; in fact, lots of them. But, none of them turned out to have even 1/10th of the mush quotient (no disrespect here; to reduce the mock-factor, let me make it 'emotional quotient') required to be actually called love or to deliberately introduce some familiarity with the girl concerned. The result was this total absence/stray occurrences of interaction with females. And like the true boy-next-door-in-a-town-in-Tamilnadu {unfairly neglected in the representation of youth in Kollywood cinema considering the sheer numbers in which they are bred in real life; except for those rare cases like Sethu}, I was better off being one who laughs his ass off when a guy mumbles/explains/cries about his true love for some femme fatale.
This post does ring a bell with my "love life".
Yes, I did sit in last bench for most part of college life. I use profanity of all kinds in all languages. I did sometimes think (perhaps, quite stupidly) my sense of humour (take it with a pinch of salt, now ;)) is alien/didn't match with many of the females I had known (at least from what I had heard about things they *choose* to giggle at). I yak a lot of bullshit in any topic but can't really say if I can/can't "start a topic with a member of the oppoisite sex", because I never deliberately did it (loads of ego, perhaps). I am not anywhere close to being a fan of rock music too (though my close friends worship it). Yes, all thru my college life, I belonged to this boys gang in which nobody had a girlfriend. {On the flip side, I hate Gaana songs and I really hate Deva. I am a guy with two left feet. I watch all kinds of movies. eat any food; somehow I maintain this vegetarian thing which might jolly well go for a toss any day.}
But the key difference is {I learn from here that it is called post hoc ergo propter hoc} that while that dude is explaining "why we never get them" (thus giving a cause-effect relationship), I never seemed to have even tried hard to get them (thus thinking of this as a correlation). To sum it up, I never indulged myself into love and took some immense stupid pride in it.
When in a relatively saner state, we (I and my friends) have tried to reason (for discussion's sake) why we are what we are, and came up with different reasons which ranged from frequency mismatch (assumption of intellect), too emotional for the pieces of wood that we are, multi-layered futility {which, I realise, is the most important factor - this observation updated much later; on Feb 6, 2:15 p.m.} etc. Sometimes we were even told that it will happen to us one day when we get "matured".
I don't question why things are the way they are. Well I do - actually way too often - but, only for the sake of a discussion. When it comes to deeds, I just float like a piece of wood (a rather dull description of a rather joie de vivre life ;)). Hence, as much as I don't question the existence of love, I also don't question the inevitability of a marriage (an arranged marriage at that). Interestingly(?), in Minnale, Rajesh eventually meets his kind of girl. Every man has an opinion of his kind of girl (even as I type this, I feel this definitive urge not to write it; call it a big fat ego not to reveal your need for something to anybody or plain shyness). Mine is some girl who is very similar to me - who can yak about bullshit (preferably with a vocabulary with rich profanity that challenges mine :); am not an expert, btw) for hours, which will make me feel at home. In short, she should be able to comprehend this senseless/worthless/stupid ramble and its undercurrents :).

Epilogue:
I guess, I kinda understand the need/desire for a female company in the life of any man. But I seem to ask, "well.. what's the hurry?". Yeah, I am like Jeff, the Dude, in Big Lebowski.

How not to have yourself arrested 101

The Prologue a.k.a The regular ramble
This blog that is half-dormant wakes up when I seriously try to reiterate the obvious; or quite unusually, when I really have something to say. Or do both these things mean the same? It certainly appears so.

The post
Another day. Another thing. Suhasini has joined hands with Kushboo after apologising to her on behalf of tamilians and has received brickbats from all quarters ranging from the Nadigar Sangam to what not (and a new case is also being filed). I don't feel the slightest of the responsibility to apologise on behalf of the rambunctious bunch who raised this as an issue at first place, though. Apparently, Suhasini did and is in the loop now.
More importantly, I wonder if a non-bailable warrant can be issued against somebody who didn't turn out to attend the court hearing on a case which is worth contending for the stupidest of the cases ever filed. Isn't there any validation before calling for a court session? Or, was that the Mettur Judge actually felt Kushboo did something which is worth a hearing?
One of my acquaintances pondered over this:- What would have been the reaction from this wild bunch (sorry, Peckinpah) if it was, umm, a man - and a born tamilian at that - said the same thing? Now, that reveals quite many dimensions of this issue. There are still people out there believing that they actually have let Kushboo live in T.N. and she better dance to their tunes (which apparently she did in the past :p).

The Epilogue
I believe staunchly that all living beings (and their beliefs) are equally stupid. And, time and again, there's somebody out there who comes dangerously close to dash this theory off.

If debugging is the process of removing bugs, isn't coding the process of introducing them?

Remembered reading this quote somewhere. Can apply this ditto to life!

The right to be Stupid

I don't want to have opinions, though I have been accused quite many times to have many many opinions. At least after long years of mindless arguments (though I continue to have them :)) I am pretty sure that one should not have opinions if he wishes to wade through this life like he would sip his morning coffee - quite mindlessly and nonchalantly, yet with an actually undeserving happy feel. But, thats hardly the case in real life. We all tend to have opinions and there is no real line which we can draw as the limit.
First thing in the morning, thanks to my addiction to blogs, I hear of this thing (from a very likely source for me, George).
And here, I find myself having hardly an opinion on it. Nothing seemed to strike me. Not Freedom of speech, not Bloggers' rights. Nothing. Sure, I am shook myself to know that a guy had actually quit his job for standing with his opinions about some goddamn institute. Gaurav may be one of the very few to do such a thing. But, the blank reaction comes when one asks what is my opinion on this? That one should fight for his rights? What kinda rights? I had found many people stupid. Yet, if I keep ranting on, say, an Abdul Kalam (thanks to his talks on future, dreams and success), I will sure receive brickbats from many quarters and I guess there is even some provision in constitution to put me behind the bars. So, what is the point? Is it that IIPM doesn't deserve to react when somebody points out some glaring stupidity in their claims as the President could afford to?
Well, I am not making any point here. Its an explanation to myself as to why I am shook by this incident and yet not having any opinion on it.
One might say that the moral of the story is: "If you play with matches, you get burned".
Someone else might say the words need to be chosen more carefully with enough vitriol, like this: "If you introduce yourself to pigs, you might end up in deep shit".
Comparing IIPM to matches (and this whole story to the quoted proverb) is hardly the thing I would like to do. Nor am I going to say the latter fits the bill. But, both of them mean the same. Don't they?

Which came first? - II

Again, Which of these came first? and which one followed?

a. Atheism,
b. Theism, or
c. Agnosticism

Answers?

Which came first? - I

Of all the thoughts that really fascinate me, backtracking through man's history (or a more generic form of life) to guess how man discovered various entities in life/nature/world/universe from scratch is one of my favourites. Or, to be more precise, my most favourite topic! So, here it goes....

Which of these ideas struck man first? and which one followed?

a. God,
b. Luck, or
c. Murphy's law (in its spirit, of course)

If clarifications required, read about God, Luck, and Murphy's law.

Now, Answers?

S. Anand (a.k.a.) My first post without references to Zero, Infinity and Kurosawa

I wonder if S. Anand ever wrote his opinions/thoughts; Or, is it that he is paid to write some rambunctious rebellious [no compliment, that one] articles [preferrably involving some caste] on/about Tamilnadu. How else would you explain this [Link via here]? And after writing this and this recently.
Read the whole lots.

P.S.:- Though I generally refrain from personal rant on the contents of these articles (paying my homage to the movie, you-know-which!), most of his articles revolving around religion/casteism (to a pseudo-level, u know) triggered this piece of rant.

QOTD #2

I am feeling really bored and and it seems to be as unreasonable as my birth was.

The zero-circle connection

Ever wondered why 0's figurative representation was a circle? Add to this that they are the most cannily natural in the world/universe [The likes of e and pi being the uncanny ones]. Assuming that Arya Bhatta decided its shape, I wonder if he wondered about why he chose that shape, as much as I do/did. For me, its a stroke of genius!
But, many a times, I arrive at this particular simple reasoning which anyone would give when posed with this question.
A primary-school physics theory goes like this - Suppose a man starts from a particular point and comes back to the same point. By theory of physics, he has travelled a distance of 0 units.
This very well could have been the reason for that shape [If you see, counting and representation of numerals were invented from mundane real-life experiences rather than trysts with surreal genius]. Such a simple explanation and I find myriad philosophical interpretations of it.

QOTD/TFTD:
In trying to explain the most complex things, we end up explaining the most obvious ones.

P.S.- The discerning reader would note that the above quote is an example for itself.

Incorrigible optimism & its underlying theory

It's been quite long since I understood I can't have my takes on peace or any other futile but overbearingly optimistic thoughts/processes. May be, I know too much to believe in a better humanity and an all-peace world. But, more I think on those lines [that is, more I actually know it's quite an impossibility for us to improve (and that its not that we exist the way we are destined to. But, it’s that we could have existed in only one path and that’s the path we have taken. Also we will be taking the only path we can take)], the more I think we all fake this theory too much. The thrust for something in life is omnipresent and I will be playing a pseudo-Sanyasi, who finds sex futile for his life (only after copious doses of it, mind you*), but still cannot resist it at times and decides to bust it all off, if I claim otherwise. So, back to square one**!

* - Don't you think I end up rephrasing many clichéd proverbs?
** - I would have personally liked a phrase like 'back to the start point' or something to that effect referring to a circle. Because, talking about squares is so naive!

Drunken Philosophers

Prologue:
Woody Allen muses about life in the prologue (may I reinvent the word in the movie's context?) of the movie "Annie Hall" with a quote about two elder women talking in a restaurant (about how terrible the food is in the restaurant, and at the same time in small portions). Here are some such musings (though this happenned much before I saw Annie Hall) about how contradictory life can be to what we think (at a surface level) it is; and heck, somewhere around, even we seem to be aware of it's irony!


Chapter 1:
"Don't you see?" - Ashok exclaimed, frustrated at Vels, wondering at his inability to see what he is able to see. Add to this the fact that both of them were in their fourth round of booze.
After a split-second pause and then a gulp, "Zero and Infinity are pretty much the same. That’s why I think it's all a big neat circle!"
"Which all?"
"Everything"
"Like?"
"Life!"
"So, now you jumped to life! Huh?" - Vels retorted.
"I was talking about it, all along.. Isn't it?"
There was this unusual silence when the bearer came and placed a jar on the table.
"Look. I agree I am drunk and all that.." - Vels nodded in ack - as Ashok elucidated his theory.
"Haven't you felt this? Taking in more and more of something pulls away the interests you have on it and you effectively don't do much after doing so much."
Vels blankly kept staring at the last round of whisky that’s supposed to heat up his food pipeline and light up his mind’s thought line, and was wondering if Ashok was referring to the whisky they were having. But, if that was the case, Ashok was from being correct. "Lots of whisky, more love towards it", he thought.
"I don't know why every other person I meet has this T-Shirt with 'Why a beer is better than a woman' junk. "One large beats both of them equally good"..
"Yeah.. I too hate beer, man. The mabbu* per unit volume is pathetically low."
Ashok resumed the discussion much to Vels' despair.
"Suppose you start learning something and act according to it. As you dig deep into that something, you slowly are disillusioned. More deep you learn it, more you realise you need not have learnt it at all. There is sense of incompleteness in the quest. Then you slowly stop acting according to what you have learnt. act as in double-quotes, which can mean "following your principle", "doing good to the society" or anything in that league. That means, logically its like you have unlearned everything and you are back again to square one."
"..." - This was Vels' attempt at a retort.
"I know what you are going to ask me", asserted Ashok with a sense of supremacy, which one can afford to have when he is with a guzzler (and only that) like Vels by his side.
"The concept of 'acting according to what one has learned' can mean anything.. As we acquire knowledge of things around this world, we make an interpretation of it - What's good and what's not; what we should we do and what we should not; what we enjoy and what we don't. But, slowly the inevitable disillusionment occurs on everything. For example, you must have, at some point of your life, felt like you want to somehow make a difference - force a change in so many things. So, I would go on to say that 'acting according to what one has learned' could be like doing anything, a so-called-positive-thing, we are doing can be put under this category - to force some change. Then you realise no one can force any change... There is this unchanging phenomenon that you sense. Futility becomes our middle name. But again, we put your mind into something else is an altogether different matter worthy of another day at this same pub. The cliché goes that 'The Universe/World is in the way that it's meant to be'. When my father told me this, I thought he didn't put much thought into it and that he wanted to get away with some answer for my inquisitive questions. But, now I realise how true he was."
Then, Vels came up with something that made Ashok chuckle in delight with intellectual respect for Vels.
"May be even your father was talking the same to a sane idiot like me when he was in his 20's and you will tell pretty much the same to your son as well, when he asks for a fancy bike which his friend, whose father will happen to be a CEO of a MNC, had bought. You will tell him that nothing will make no difference.."

Chapter 2:

Ashok and Vels continue musing over the world, life and themselves. Only that, this time they ramble in equal parts.

V - "This life is a double-edged sword. Isn't it?"

A - "In my honest opinion, it's not even a sword! Life can't be described by any word, but itself. I am generalizing the quote from 'Citizen Kane' here. That's why we have the word 'Life'. Isn't it?"

V - "Okay. but if it was a sword, it wud be double-edged. isnt it?"

A - "...."

V - "Let me state myself clearly.. coz I am not here to prove to u the premises I assume. Everybody has got his own. I just want to verify the inference with you..."

A - "So what if I don't agree with the assumption itself.. because if you want me to agree with the inference only as against the assumption, how wud you call it 'verified' by me?? Isn't premise yet another inference made from some other premise which in turn wud be another inference?"

V - "err.. What about axioms??"

A - "there are no axioms in this world! But then u would ask me, how could something be made out of nothing. then I wud use the theory of maaya to explain. But that would again make you correct as well.. besides me and others, of course!"

V - "but then tell me.. Whats the truth you believe in?"

A - "In searching the truth, we fail!"

V - "did you?"

A - "what?"

V - "Did you fail searching for truth?"

A - "I didn't search for it."

V - "So, you didn't you fail?"

A - "I did.."

V - "Then, what's the point?"

A - "Nothing. Why do you look for points?"

V - "Why don't you? Doesn't not doing something involves the same amount of mental work as doing it?? Don't you believe in something? For example, I staunchly believe in truth.. Something like that.. huh?"

A - "Yeah.. I am staunch believer of bullshit.. thts a truth I see myself in.. But this too will pass on."

Epilogue:
I don't need no shit and nothing makes no difference.


* - The colloquial word in Tamil for 'drunken effect' (there's not straight translatory word, u see)

Long Time.. No Post..

Now, lemme admit. I am a movie freak. If at all, I am shedding off my cynical (and my pet theory is: cynical ain't pessimistic) look at life, its for cinema. That is why, this blog has been the step-child for me since I started; The straight-child (in want of a better word) being this. New posts are getting rarer and rarer (as if there were many already!). Existing posts are some random ramblings (which I intended this blog for). But the ramblings must come at a brisk pace.

Of late, What have I been thinking, of late??? will come back once I got what it was/is. If you are wondering WTH is going on, this post will be in writing-stage for quite long time. So, "I will" actually means "I had", when you are reading the post.

Just ditch the experiment in the narrative in the last paragraph.

Update: Apr 11, 7:07 p.m.
That i might get fired soon keeps me in check from going on and on browsing the net.

Update: May 9, 03:36 p.m.
I hate this whole <b>caste-match-thing for 2 ppl to marry</b>. It mite be really stupid to say this hackneyed lament and put it in ur blog as well. But currently this goddamn thing (in reluctamnce to use the F word) is the shit, I feel I should get out of.

And, I also want to close this long-time-in-drafting stage post with this. Time: 3:46 p.m. May 9.

every bug has its own time..

Every bug has got a lifetime for itself. This is going to be my proposition tonight. Not that I felt it today or right now. I ve felt it quite a many number of times and wanted to write on it (and this concept of writing being spontaneously felt works only for those who had all the time for that).
I got the time now (May be... nay.. always, every germ-thought-for-a-write-up also has its own lifetime!) and so am putting my thoughts as words. We somehow try to fix some really headache bugs thinking day and night on that (this attributes to ur fresher-to-the-industry too as I ve observed) and it does get fixed. But, not when you wanted it to. Later, sometimes much later, that it starts sounding trivial to you as you might not have done much to catch it. Here, I would like to tell what extent of generalization I ve applied on the word "bug". This could be an issue the solution to which you need to find (not exactly a fix to a wrong solution, I mean). A reforming of your code to make it work clean etc. anything. not essentially a wrong-to-right jump!
Thats when you feel, you being the coder still are not able to find what's wrong in your code as it grows in size. Your helplessness is sometimes perplexing. But thats only for a moment. The experience-storage facility implemented up in our brain, then on, tells u in future that "hey buddy! you r of course helpless!". And, thats when you get such a magnitude of complacency, loss of reasoning and lawlessness that would very much result in a very similar essay as this one.
Consider this. You are the God and the program you write is a simpleton who seems to go the way God shows to him. Thats when the bug thing comes up in its mind and screws up the whole process of goody-goody codes and equivalent results.

But, you do know that God (here, I mean the actual God, if he exists) is not able to control the way world moves with its bunch of simpletons! (you, me and the rest of a**holes!)

Don't you see the analogy? (look back.. those words.. 'god', 'simpleton', 'goody-goody', 'bug', 'screws up', 'equivalent results' etc.)
Thats a lot of noir stuff, in disguise! huh? ;)

Sometimes you are the crow and sometimes the statue! Sigh!

what is genius?

We (I and my friends) got into an argument one fine day as to what 'actual' genius is (I warn you, the erudite guys we are, we never try to arrive at a solution/explanation). My friend was peeved at the level of physics, as a subject, that was taught to us in school-time (essentially Newtonian) which essentially was quite "disproved" in this century by Einstein and likes. He said - "We were all fooled man. go and read recent research in quantum physics anywhere. U ll know physics is 'actually' nothing of what Newton said or even Einstein for that case.." That Newton/Einstein fooled us (or rather himself). what he said then is not 'remembered' exactly here. but the point was not 'fooling' but being wrong. The earlier theories were many times intuitively guessed, he ridiculed. That he has fairly good amound of physics up his head should be easily inferred from the fact that he is aware of the latest happennings of disproving of what Einstein said during his times. But what he seemed to miss was, according to me, "everybody will be disproved in physics" (put in real crude fashion!).
Anyway getting back... The earlier theories were many times intuitively guessed, he ridiculed.
Thats when I actually got hooked in after thought-wise-loitering around the fringes of the "topic" (we used to fondly call our discussions so), thanks to my poor knowledge in physics.
"In fact, Intuition (that whether I meant 'correct' intuition is not answerable now without references to Rashomon!) is Genius", I asserted. Anything gotten out of pure theory already laid out or derived out of existing theory is 'ordinary' (compared to the intuitive kinds!)
I seriously felt so. That I myself found it an intuitive thing was not able to give any formal proof. But to prove anything, I go to maths (which i find so closely resembles life). Talking about proofs and intuitions, one person who comes to my mind is Srinivasa Ramanujan. He was so used to 'finding' (yeah, finding!) mathematical relations that, he actually could not offer proofs to most of his theorems. Some he felt was very obvious that the proof went without thinking.(something like 'goes without saying' for mundane people like us). And some he could not even if he tried to go to lower level debug trace of his mind. It was his friend/associate who took the burden of proving some of his theorems. He found the genius in Ramanujan (thats another level of intellect, u know? identifying genius, like what i am yapping about now). Ramanujan was a genius. Not because, many of his yesteryear number theory theorems are being used currently and are actually rite. Even if some of the mathematical theorems/figures/relations (what he did was not essentially some useful things, u know?. he suddenly thinks of whats the sum of factors of n! which had no reason to be thought upon but for pure pleasure of maths!) were wrong or will be proved wrong. That he conceived all of them in his mind is what makes genius. If the idea conceived is wrong, perhaps, thats flawed genius; But Genius, nevertheless!

do i write at all?

If anybody looks at the timestamp of the prev post, the question i posed in the title (to myself) seems inevitable!

heck! i dont seem to write at all...

P.S.: I didn't know that George Orwell had a similar write-up (titled "Why I write?") in his book "Such, Such Were the Joys". and was overjoyed to read it here. So hope I am going Orwell's way... ;)) His childhood uncannily resembles mine too! :))

why do i write?

why do i feel the necessity to write?

indulgence?
interest?
express myself?
kill time?

suddenly i feel all the above mean the same shit!

i ll talk later!