Note

From now on, I will mostly be writing on http://www.onkarbhardwaj.wordpress.com

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Emotional blackmail?

Yesterday we at RPI had planned to come together for candle-light march. It was later changed to discussion session when Anna Hazare ended his fast. It was nice to see 20+ people in such a small Indian community coming together to discuss things.

Some people raised the issue if the method used was tantamount to emotional blackmail. Well, I would say yes. Personally I feel that every method has its appropriate time of use. The times at which such emotional blackmail would work are -
1. To address the issue nothing has been done since ages or there are no chances of something being done in near future. It means that unless you kick the executing body, it won't move.
2. There is 100% public support. The hunger strike worked for corruption issue because everyone supported the cause. It may not work if some group went on hunger strike demanding jobs or reservations.
3. The people going on hunger strike should be of highest integrity. Otherwise general public or government won't listen to them.

It's not that any of the above conditions should hold but all of them (and possibly some more) should hold true if the hunger strike is to have some chances of getting success. In such situations, I do not really care if it amounts to emotional blackmail.

Not a single solution

A funny thing I noticed while reading the comments on various forums about Anna Hazare's movement. According to different comments -
1. The actual solution was to change voter mentality
2. The actual solution was that good people should enter politics
3. The actual solution was to enact the laws to prevent corruption
maybe some more of these types. Somehow people seem to think that there is just one real solution to such problems. In reality however you need a combination of solutions. Just like effective treatment for a patient needs good environment, healthy food and effective medicines.

We need all the above solutions for tackling corruption, no matter in what order they get done.

Frame of Reference

When Tendulkar will retire, our childhood will end.

The childhood of my entire generation has been synonymous with Tendulkar. We lunched with him, studied with him, talked with him, played with him, laughed with him, cried with him. We literally grew up on the images of his magical game. His game virtually got woven into our DNA.

When we watch him play, the grown-up person in us goes in the backdrop and a child enters in our eyes. That excitement returns, blithely unaware of the crude realities. The concept of age completely vanishes, to pick up and savor the last few remains of innocent joy.

Tomorrow the childhood of my entire generation will be dying to watch its hero seeking the glory. And it will refuse to leave us until the hero takes his final bow.

Perhaps for the first time, I feel good about Europe/US intervening in some country. The typical arguments I have read against the intervention in Libya are of following types:

1. The fairness argument:
Why not intervene in Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, Algeria, Morocco?
- You cannot do the right thing everywhere, but that does not mean you should not do it anywhere. It may be too huge an area for military operations. You have to have priorities. Oil in Libya may put it on top of priority list, and also because of the momentum the Libyan movement has gathered.

2. The conspiracy argument:
Egypt may have been revolution by people but it was US & co who incited people in Libya for their oil. They are there only for the oil and nothing else.
- US cannot incite people to capture majority of the country. Libyan rebels had captured in majority of the country. Inciting people to such a scale without knowledge of the rulers is impossible task. *Forty-two* years of tyranny is much more plausible reason for the uprising.
And even if they intervene in Libya for oil, its acceptable. If the oil from Libya stops flowing, the rates of oil will go sky-high and break the spine of world economy. Also, trade can benefit both the parties but if not intervened, Libyans suffer alone in massacre. Gaddafi had already promised that he will hunt people going house to house.

3. The peace argument:
War is never right. Peace is the way.
- Too idealistic. War should be used as the last resort when possibilities for peace are none. No further comments.

4. The leave-them-alone argument:
Rebels requested intervention to stop massacre. Gaddafi warned against it. Who will you listen to? If your neighbor starts shooting his family, will you not complain or will you put earplugs and pretend you don't care? The world is connected, you are not isolated. When something reaches tipping point and starts affecting you directly/indirectly, you have to pay some attention to it.

Of course, my opinion is based on assumptions and subjective. My opinion doesn't count too. (That does not mean I should not give it a voice). Also, it may be possible that reality is entirely different. What is real has always been an interesting question troubling proletariat like us.

There are no democracy, freedom.
There are no Obamas, Blairs, Gaddafis, Mubaraks.
There are only oil wells, economics, guns, bullets and survival.
And there is also you, who still believes that the truth is better than this.

I wish nothing else but to speak simply
please grant me this privilege
because we have burdened our song with so much music
that it is slowly sinking
and our art has become so ornate
that the makeup has corroded her face
and it is time to say our few simple words
because tomorrow our soul sails away

- Giorgos Seferis (1900-1971)

Appreciation

A stray thought:

Lots of times we appreciate the wonders that others have created. How did he think of this structure! How could she paint such a miracle! How could he see this formula through all this mess! How in the world she could come up with such a crazy idea! And many more expressions appreciating the spark of brilliance.

Sometimes I feel there is another level of appreciation. Most of the times when we appreciate something brilliant, we appreciate it like a "miracle". Our own lack of creativity in the subject matter also plays a hand. For example, a common man praising Taj Mahal. His sense of appreciation is truly different from the way an architect would do it. When a knowledgeable, skillful architect appreciates the Taj, it is one creativity admiring another creativity. Or take Neils Bohr admiring Einstein's work as another example.

I wonder how it would be to feel this kind of appreciation for the "miracles". I hope to experience this feeling at some point in my life!

A new unit

Amid the scams galore, the amount of money vanished is simply mind numbing. You hear the numbers of thousands of crores, lakhs of crores. These numbers do not make any sense. They are simply astronomical and humble human brain is unable to comprehend them.

Here is how we can make sense of these numbers! Lets take 2G scam for example. The cost of 2G scam is estimated to be around 176,000 crore rupees. You don't like the number? Well, lets crunch it down to something we can make sense of:

176,000 crore rupees ~ 38 billion dollars

Now Indian population is 1.2 billion, and lets overestimate our daily food bill a little bit to make it 45 rupees, thats 1 dollar. Thus whole India has 1.2 billion dollars as its food bill per day.

Let's define IFC = India's Food Cost = 1.2 billion dollars
Now the cost of 2G scam = 38/1.2 ~ 30 IFC
Whole India can eat for one month free !!!

By this unit,
Telgi scam = 7 IFC = India could eat free for a week.
CWG scam = 7 IFC = India could eat free for a week.
2G scam = 30 IFC = India could eat free for a month (again to remind)

And they talk of taking care of hunger, poverty blah blah blah!!!

Sheer Idiocy

At RPI, we have an impromptu comedians' club called Sheer Idiocy.
The following is the invite email for one of their shows -
(note Mother's (and Father's) are campus stores)
================================================
Hey Idiot Fans!

Classes are coming to an end this week, and what better way to celebrate than a FREE Improv comedy Show! That's right folks, this Friday, December 10th, at 8PM we will be having one of our world famous comedy shows in Mother's with all of the usual hilarity. So, give your friends the invaluable gift of laughter this holiday season by taking them to the show! Word on the street is we might even have a special guest! Or not! You'll have to come to the show to find out.

For those worried about studying for finals, 9 out of 10* doctors agreed that improv comedy will increase your exam grades by up to 32%. Sounds justified to me.

For those thinking, "That e-mail is too long":
Show on Friday, 8PM, Mothers

-The Idiots
*Doctors heavily bribed. Also not doctors.
==================================================

Perspective

The actual reason why people are happy about WikiLeaks is not the secrets. People are not voyeurs, at least not most of them. The real reason is that the politicians have lost their credibility and people trust leaks more. People no more believe it when the leaders tell them that the information is to be kept secret in the national interests. Credibility is the key to the cloak of secrecy. But the leaders have enjoyed this secrecy thingy for their own interests, as evident from the scams galore. If they had some credibility left, there would be little to worry about the leaks because honest leaders would have peoples' support in any adverse situation. In such a case, people would have said - we do not want the secrets, we fully trust in our leaders when they say that these documents are to be kept confidential.

Same goes about the Arundhati Roy drama. As a democratic society, we must respect her right to speak. We should answer argument only by the means of argument. But is there a single trustworthy person left in the political arena whose arguments people will believe in? This the real reason government worries about Arundhati Roy. Its not only popularity, its about credibility and these two things aren't the same. Perhaps the only person who enjoyed such trust from people was Dr. Kalam. If only there were leaders of such stature who could stand up and tell Ms Roy that she was wrong - then citizens would pay no attention to whatever she says. Sedition charges against her is certainly not the way to go about it.

Real

Neo: "This --- This isn't real?"

Morpheus: "What is real? How do you define real? If you are talking about what you feel, taste, smell or see then real is simply the electrical signals interpreted by your brain."

(Morpheus shows a picture of John Lennon's world in Imagine)
Morpheus: "This is the world that you know. The world which never was there. It exists only in your mind, a projection on your mind created by media."

Morpheus: "This is the world as it exists today."
(Morpheus shows slides of war, oil field politics, financial scams, nuclear arsenal smuggling, biological weapons, mafias of religion)

Morpheus: "As you watch the pics of fashion shows in Paris, the nations are fighting for every single drop of the oil. As you see the hero kissing the heroin, most frightening bio-weapons have already been created. While you are kept busy reading about sex, the land is being given to worthless kith and kin at throwaway prices. They give you Pamela Anderson on Big Boss and keep mum about the most gigantic 2G scam in the history."

Morpheus: "Control of the thoughts, Neo, thats the ultimate power. Orwell saw it. Now you in India believe that Arunachal Pradesh has always been yours. Chinese children from their childhood are taught that it is theirs. Once you infiltrate the thoughts in childhood, not even God can change them. You see, they groom you since your childhood, in the most intangible way. Neo, there is an obvious way to hide the truth - to teach lies as truth.... And Neo, this is the world as it exists today. The desert of the real. For a long time, I did not believe it. Then I saw the telegrams, listened to the tapes and came to realize the obviousness of the truth. The media is the matrix."

Morpheus: "What is matrix Neo? Control. The matrix of media is a digitally generated dreamworld built to keep us in control in order to change a human being into this -"
(Morpheus shows a puppet controlled by strings)

Neo: "No!!! I don't believe it. It's not possible."

Morpheus: "I didn't say that it would be easy, Neo. I just said that it would be the truth."

Neo: "Stop! Let me out! I want out!"
(Falls on the floor and wakes up in front of TV. TV is showing the latest wardrobe malfunction of Yana Gupta. Sometimes it is so difficult to differentiate between the dream and the real, he says to himself. The show goes on.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Note: I did not plan it at all, just wrote it. So, technically
it might be as unsound as it gets.

Indian Classical Music

There are few friends with whom even if you don't speak for months, the next time you chat with them, it feels as if it was only yesterday you last chatted with them. You pick up threads immediately. As if you and these friends are just one soul. It happens same with classical music and me. I sometimes stay away from it for months, forgetting it in the mundane daily life. Then one fine morning I open the classical music folder from my machine and play it for whole day, feeling one with it. (And mind you, I have never really learned classical music.)

I do listen to numbers from all the other kinds of music - Rock, Pop, Folk, Jazz (and even rap sometimes). But what really gets me hooked is the classical music. Often I find people frowning at the name of classical music. Perhaps because of peer pressure, or they don't try to understand it, or because it "ain't cool". To those people, sometimes I feel like saying that Indian Classical Music is like mathematics/logic - very few people like it the first time. But no matter what you do, you can't avoid it. Its because what it provides is sets of rules, like mathematics, to apply to a particular problem you are facing. And then you apply the rules to solve the problem, or create the kind of music that you want to create.

Ragas are indeed like set of rules. You have been given few notes and then you are free to create whatever permutations and combinations you want to create. (Some LISP programmers may find it analogous to LISP environment. They may find C language too boring for the same reason a classical music person would find too much rock music boring for. There is no scope for creating true music in either of those, they will say.) You want to solve a particular problem or sing at a particular hour then select a suitable set of tools - algebra, probability, analysis (or a combination) or select a particular raga or a combination of ragas and solve the problem. While solving real problems, sometimes you need to deviate a little from pure mathematical assumptions or you need to deviate a little from the notes of raga to welcome other notes for a moment for the song of your soul. The way you have the undercurrent of mathematics with some compromises running below all the real world wonders, you have abstract classical music with some deviation running under all the music you see.

But in reality, people love real world wonders but seldom care to see what created the wonder. They love their i-phones but don't really care to know the maths that made it possible. They love the film music but don't love the classical music, seldom realizing the pitfall of irony they are falling into. And then they miss upon an infinite treasure of the classical music while the classical music fans can't get enough of it!

Across the Himalayas

Today when I was speaking with a Chinese friend of mine, in the course of conversation I asked him if Chinese people knew a thing or two about India. He answered negative and said that when he thinks about India, he does see three images -
1. Jampacked local trains with people hanging from door bars
2. An Indian businessman who is astronomically richer than common people
3. An Indian woman in a saree with a bindi on her forehead.

And that was quite interesting I thought!

He told me few things about China. It seems that they have their own different internet - a different facebook site, a different search engine called baidu. The whole internet world is totally different and the government controls what you can search and what you can't search. Thousands of sites are deemed illegal and thousands of words are deemed sensitive - like "government", "Dalai Lama", "Party" and so on. Youtube, blogspot, facebook, picasa are blocked. All this is a part of "Golden Shield project", nicknamed as "Great firewall of China".

He told me that it all started with the concept of "harmony". It seems that the leaders announced few years back that the society needs to be "harmonious" and later introduced internet censorship and other controls. When people started writing about it online, the word "harmonious" itself was blocked. So now whenever something gets censored, people say it has been "harmonized". Doesn't this usage ring a bell somewhere if you know what I mean?

I asked him whether people like it and he said that they get used to it. Some people find some tricks out of it but those tricks become useless after some time. According to what he said, there was no concept of multi-party in China. Since centuries, people are divided into two classes - a power class small in number and common people. If people oppose and fight, they fight for an entry into the power class by displacing others. Then they start controlling it themselves.
There were no multiple dynasties co-existing in history, since ages the concept of multiple power classes has been absent. The government is omnipotent. The people who face the wrath of government simply disappear and you cannot search their names online. You cannot discuss the "sensitive" things in public.

There is a Chinese proverb - a paper cannot hold the fire. He remarked jokingly that in China, the government papers have managed to hold the fire and will continue to do so because since ages people have liked to follow a strong leader. That's the way it has been and it won't change.

Then I asked him a personal question - how do you feel in U.S.? He said that he doesn't find it better or worse in any way. Though the freedom to discuss sensitive things and going against the government is absent in China, you can do everything else in the world. And while saying all this, nowhere I felt a hatred towards his motherland. A sense of mild dismay was there but time and again he remarked that China was and is a powerful country.

Sigh! The whole thing was totally new and different. Himalayas are indeed very tall.

P.S.
He asked me that if we Indians do not have a common language or culture then what makes us stand as a single nation.
And I said "I don't know!" because I too can't really figure that out. You might say that we have some unifying thread underneath but these days its really difficult to see it.

Haiku-ish

Early Morning
A sketch on the last page
The class goes on

Nothing to do
An attempt to write a haiku
Random and worthless

Divine
Is the beauty sitting on right
Caught yawning

The speaker
Words floating in the air
Nobody catches'em

The eternity
Experienced in finite time
Its all relative

An Amazing Quote

"It is not to be forgotten that what we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts."
- Thomas Huxley

One more..

One more group of friends
One more philosophical discussion
One more feeling of nothingness
One more lonely walk to home
One more cup of tea
One more sleepless night
Tomorrow is another day.

- Onkar

P.S. Last sentence is how "Gone with the wind" ends. That line flashed across my mind for last sentence of the poem and it just got stuck there so much that I could not think of any other way to end this poem.

A thought experiment

Last night we had a debate after dinner. Before telling anything about debate let me tell the thought experiment Adarsh proposed -
Suppose you have been to fifty houses occupied by bachelors. Let us say that in all of these houses you have been offered a glass of water and you have found the glass dirty in all those houses. The next time when you will go to a bachelor's house and will be offered a glass of water, will you not be tempted to be careful?

The debate was about this - will you treat your experience with each individual as separate or will you connect dots and try to infer something from it? Let me clarify it further.

One of the thesis, lets call it "Thesis A", was this -
Don't conclude that generally the glasses in bachelors' houses are dirty. Keep the dirtiness of glass and bachelor status separate, don't connect them. Treat every individual separately and don't connect your experiences of different individuals.
"Thesis B", was this -
Be careful a priori about the glass of water when you enter 51st bachelors' house. This would involve a little bias. If you find the glass clean, weaken your thesis and reduce your bias to some extent.

In fact the debate actually revolves around two questions -
1. Should you connect the dirty-glass experiences?
2. Should you relate it to the bachelor quality of occupants?

As argued, pros and cons of Thesis A were -
Pro) It doesn't limit your actions when meeting an individual for the first time.
Con) Absence of bias increases chances of getting surprised (or hurt). If the person had acted according to your expectations, it would have less surprised or hurt you.

Pros and Cons of Thesis B were -
Pro) It reduces your chances of getting surprised or hurt. It will take time for you to make correct inferences about a person but eventually you might reach there without getting hurt.
Con) It will limit your choice of actions with that individual. You will be slow in reaching inference or sometimes may not even reach there because you are limiting your exploring.

As with most debates, it ended with stating everyone's personal preference.

Whatever my personal preference is, if I go by my instincts, I would be careful with the glass of water in 51st bachelors' house I visit. I think that might be the instinct of most people. (I am not necessarily saying that its the correct thing, but just commenting about my instinct.)

- Onkar

(Damn, this post has become too heavy. I would have left writing it midway had I not been listening to "Tere bina jiya jaye na", the old hindi song from movie Ghar) !

Journey to the battlefield

My grad school is situated at TROY. And I refuse to believe that the name is a mere coincidence. The future designs of the creator are difficult to decipher, and if there is no creator, its even more difficult.

But the journey to the battlefield was totally different than expected. No signs of impending battle.

1. I was well-fed in flight to Amsterdam and then to Boston. In fact, the food was too good compared to the horrible stories I had heard from people. Unfortunately I caught cold in the strong AC in the flight to Amsterdam so couldn't watch movies on the videoscreen provided in front of each seat. I missed a golden chance of watching Sherlock Holmes, The Hurt Locker and Alice in Wonderland in a single night. The plane from Boston to Troy looked more like a plane in Talespin cartoon series and was the only cause of worry.
2. A young lady tried to decipher the phone calling system for me at the Boston airport. When she couldn't do it, she made the phone call from her own cellphone. (She was real pretty and charming! You see a lot of pretty girls on airports but she did belong to a different class altogether.)
3. The security guards and the shopkeepers not only told the directions clearly but at times came along for some distance to guide to the destination.
4. At Mumbai airport, I could not immediately see public phones after I did complete security check. I wanted to see if I could make a phone call after checking in at Boston. The following exchange then took place at Boston airport -
Myself - Can I make a phone call after security check-in or should I do it before?
Security - (With a chuckle) That depends on how you like it, before or after.
5. At Boston airport, after making the famous call in point no. 1, I suddenly came across my friend at IISc - Nishanth Nair. To call it pleasant surprise would be an understatement, it was a shock. Killing four hours at Boston was a non-issue then.

The final flight kept both my bags at Boston. And my close friend Nikhil, who received it at Schenectedy is going to take all the pains to deliver those bags to me driving some 60 miles in total. Fortunately I had kept a spare set of clothes in my hand-bag. In fact, here it is possible to survive on only two sets of clothes for few days - the driers here dry out the clothes completely. It was known to me, but to actually experience it with only two sets of clothes available is more than a relief !

The details of the battlefield itself will be in the next post. At present, the graduate student's forum at RPI, Troy has provided a week of free accommodation near RPI. So the coming week will be spent battling for finding out accommodation. Oh while writing the last sentence, the hourly church bell sound echoed through the environment. The sound feels real good in this environment.

As my scheduled flight to US is only 48 hours away, though its difficult to admit, I am feeling very much homesick. Though I was away for two years at Bangalore (managing only 3 trips to home in two years) and at Pune for two more years, I never really got that kinda feeling.

Home is where heart is!