• Losing my religion

    Part 1 – Templates

    a few days back, someone excitedly brought his laptop over to me, and showed me a mail.it was a series of basic mathematic addition questions,which had to be answered as quickly as possible, but the last question was to name a color and a tool – i said ‘red hammer’… he scrolled down and the mail said “red hammer”. he had said red hammer too, we tried it on some more people, and around 90% said ‘red hammer’, which figured, coz the mail said around 90% inthe world would say ‘red hammer’.
    consider this- you go for a movie -second show. during the break, you go to the loo, in the next cubicle u see a friend and 90% of us would say “what are you doing here?”
    countless situations where we thought ‘i was about to say that’….the same music we like, the same tv shows, the same content in blogs, the feeling of deja vu in numerous situations… all what we call coincidences…
    and so, the hypothesis – templates, many in number, but yes, all of us templates nevertheless, programmed to respond in a certain way in a certain sitiuation… which is why there are only so many responses to any sitiuations, which is why inventions and discoveries arent exactly common…you think matrix, predictable :), so far maybe, but here’s where the hypothesis deviates because we are not having any ‘machine conspiracy’ around..
    lets deviate a little anyway, when you get back home today, try thinking about what you did for the last hour, not the easy response of a generic answer “i was travelling back from work”, but a minute by minute recall…you would find that most of the actions were on auto pilot, like changing gears in a car…and therefore you wouldnt remember…
    another lil experiment for you, on a regular working day,can you go without saying ‘hi’?.. you would perhaps remember not to say it for an hour, then ‘auto pilot’ would take over…back to the hypothesis, all of us have an auto pilot, all of us also have a higher being inside us, a being constantly ignored in favour of the easier ‘auto pilot’, but extremely important, nevertheless..why? that is for later parts.
    until next time, be unpredictable 🙂

  • Mission Mars

    Since this is a long weekend, and I am already in clutches of one of my most fave emotions – laziness, I came to the early conclusion that I couldn’t get myself to write an original post.Wokay, now that that is done with, let me present you an adapted version of a cool forward I got a few days back. Bangalore readers will identify with it promptly, and as for readers from others places, well, india may be a land of diversity in a lot of things, but as far as quality of roads go, we share a common pride..hehe..so here goes
    Bangalore 2.a.m.
    a time of the night when loneliness is the only companion, shadows the only followers, and beer, the only fuel. He was bouncing away merrily on his bike, when some bright lights stopped him. Yippee, movie shooting, he thought, will get to see some stars tonight. But, wait..uh oh!! I’m going to be kidnapped and they are going to do experiments on me, but wait again, this is no alien landing either.
    He saw a well-clad man of foreign origin, and started walking towards him.
    “Shhh”, cautioned the man.
    Softly he asked ” What’s happening brother?”.
    “NASA…”the man whispered, “I am Dr. Morgan from the Mission Mars programme”.
    A thought crossed his mind, “i am not the only one who’s had beer”
    But, on watching a few men in spacesuits bumping around, he realised the man was speaking the truth. He got talking to Dr.Morgan and was informed that NASA had been trying to create surroundings that would resemble the rocky, crater filled Southern Hemisphere of Mars and had failed miserably.This led to a desperate search for test sites on planet earth.
    Very few places on earth qualified, only Iraq (exploded Oil Wells), Sri Lanka, and Bangalore’s own Bannerghatta Road.
    With Iraq ruled out as a high-risk venture, and no shooting possible in Sri Lanka because of the prevailing cease fire (bush handled this personally?!!), India was the only feasible option. Plus the costs were rock bottom. And although a few questions were posed on yet another outsourcing to bangalore, they were quickly resolved, because of the unparalleled surface that Bannerghatta road offered.
    The Mars rover and Endeavour were bouncing away too, on the rugged surface.
    Suddenly, he spotted the CM standing quietly in the distance. He walked up to him and smiled. The CM nodded, smiling softly.
    He looked at the CM enquiringly and asked “Was this your idea”?
    “Yes” the CM said almost humbly, too modest to acknowledge the enormity of his effort.
    “So, what’s in it for us?” he probed.
    “Millions of dollars, that’s what they have promised, and once this gets approved as a broken earth site it will be used regularly, for other missions too. I also have plans of breaking up the other roads, which are happening under the guise of flyovers” the CM confided.
    He shuddered at the enormity of the attempt. How all of us puny Bangaloreans cribbed, raved and ranted every time we came across a broken road. How blind we have all been, eyes shut, we refused to view the big picture. Every bad road is a million-dollar opportunity. He silently bade farewells to Dr. Morgan and the CM and rode away.
    As he reached the BTM flyover, he got a flat tyre, he looked down at the guilty protruding rockfragment, and uncharacteristically smiled. Pushing the bike slowly, he thought to himself “the martians must be green with envy”

    until next time, enjoy the ride

  • Am I Doing Something – about it…..?

    A topic i had wanted to write on since i saw ‘phir milenge’..(when i saw ‘philadelphia’, i wasnt blogging)….
    for a long time, i had maintained that awareness kills fear..the child’s fear of the dark, for example – once it realises that there is nothing in the dark that causes harm, it loses the fear.although there are a lot of things which dont fall under this categorisation, those, i believe,are things that we dont have complete info about..
    AIDS – a phenomenon that is perhaps mankind’s greatest threat ever, because even awareness isnot moving people away from its most usual modes of transmission, and it can strike you by no fault of yours – blood transfusion, infected syringes, certain organ transplants etc. but, it definitely cannot be transmitted by borrowing clothes from an HIV person, sharing of utensils, drinking from the same glass with the person with HIV/AIDS, shaking of hands, embracing,or even kissing an infected person…. yes, i know all of this, all of us who are aware of the disease know this…
    but inspite of this awareness, i am not sure if i could bring myself to share clothes with an HIV infected person, to hug him, to maybe even sit close to him ..
    it is certainly not lack of awareness thats causing this fear.. is it because i am also aware ofmy mortality but unaware of what lies ahead of me after death? will it take that awareness to get over a fear of something i know about? i, for one,hope not, and the day i get over this fear, i will be a happy man….

  • Senses and Sensibleness

    No, i am not about to do a Gurinder Chadha on “sense and sensibility”.this is in a totally different context.
    ever since the dawn of the internet era, the term ‘virtual’ has come to be used in a whole lot of diverse fields. i, for one, am looking forward to a lot of stuff that can be done with virtual reality, in the gaming context 😉
    things are happening, and will continue to happen in this field, and judging by the way more and more people are getting e-literate, all these things will get transferred to more and more people, in the days to come.
    now, there are five senses that we humans are familiar with (lets forget about ESP and manoj shyamalan for now) – sight, sound, touch,taste and smell. of these, we have managed to bring sight and sound online. i still dont know if we have managed to bring any of the other stuff online, my limited knowledge says no! even with two senses, the amount of cyber crime based on these two are of alarming proportions, and affecting people of all age, gender, geography etc. net etiquette is something a limited few practise.
    with the current rate of technological growth, it is not going to be long before some smart one finds a way to get the other three senses also to find their way online. i might get to try out a shirt on fabmart, buy a burger from mcdonalds after having a bite of it, or buy a perfume after getting a whiff of it, all online.
    we will undoubtedly become smart enough to get all senses online, but whether we have the sensibility to handle it is a totally different ball game.
    so until next time, be sensible…..

  • Before Baazigar

    a couple of days back, there were some VIPs in office, and all of us were asked to be on our best behaviour, and loud noises were met with cold glares that said ‘dont you know they are here?’…..
    it took me to a whole long time back , to a school which used to have school inspectors, who, like the mythological king mahabali (for whose visit we celebrate onam..grrr, i am digressing) used to come once a year to monitor the school’s standards.he used to visit all the classes, and sometimes, if he actually took his job seriously, visit some classes twice. now, all teachers had their ‘poster boys’ who were chosen to answer the questions posed by the inspector. (it reminds me of the first scene in troy, where, to avoid the losses of battle, the two kings let their best fighters take on each other, oh, but i am digressing again).
    once, the inspector refused to let the teacher choose, and insisted he would leave the question open,but little did he know that the wily teacher had anticipated this possibility too, and had forbidden anyone else but the chosen one to raise their hand. but the inspector was adamant, he posed the question to the girl next to the chosen one.
    a little history, the job of the chosen one wasnt as easy as it looks on the monitor. you should remember that he was the flagbearer of the entire class, and carried the expectations of the teacher and perhaps the school itself. it was not confidence that killed the butterflies in his stomach, it was ambivalent feelings – if he got the answer right, he would continue to recieve adulation as the chosen one, if he got it wrong, well, the wretched job would be taken off his shoulders.. and for the few butterflies that did remain, you can blame the ego…
    back to the story now, the girl didnt know the answer, she looked pleadingly at the chosen one,but with the inspector staring at him, he chickened and stared straight ahead….
    for the girl, the poster boy had transformed into the first anti hero of our generation.. it certainly wasn’t SRK !!
    and since we are on the subject, here are a couple of toons..um, not exactly for children, but..

    until next time, know your role….