Subhendu's thoughts

Buddha

2012-02-03T09:26:00.000-08:00

Today I stumbled upon an amazing idea. All our life we try to optimize the resources of life. We try to save money, health, social reputation, energy, even the planet earth (such audacity). All these rules stems from our instinct to survive. God has programmed us to survive as long as possible and procreate as much as possible. But God has also made us thinking entity. So what if we just wipe off this one rule. Suddenly everything changes. We are no longer obligated to play by the rules of the nature. Instead of creating life, we can destroy it; instead of preserving nature we can waste it. Instead of finding beauty, we can make things ugly. It’s an amazingly liberating experience. I just felt it momentarily.

Of course you cannot fake it. You really have to eliminate your desire to survive. I think I kind of know now, what goes inside the brain of a suicide bomber.

Quit

2011-12-07T06:12:00.000-08:00

First step taken. Let's see how it goes.

ChildhoodRestored

2011-11-04T08:48:00.000-07:00

I would have given up my right hand for these books when I was a child! We had a half hour class break in our high school. Before this break we would line up in front of the library gate. As soon as the library opens, we will jump on the books and try to read as much as we can during that half an hour break. When we were promoted to class VIII, once every month we were allowed to take a book home. I still vividly remember the joy and pleassure I used to get reading the books "Tarzan the fearless", "Tarzan in wonderland" on those rare occations when I was allowed to take them home. It feels surreal that now I can have them all! Thanks a lot "Dev Sahitya Kutir (P) Ltd." or Kuts as Ranjita and I call them :) for giving me the opportunity to relive my childhood all over again.

I think thank-you and IOU is also due to Sanjib, who shared his PustakVandar of "anubad series", "sharadias" with me. I cannot explain how much I loved those books then and how much I love them now.

Update on 11 November 2011:

I re-read 4-5 stories from the detective series. They are pretty good compared to the contemporary detective stories (Mitin, Arjun etc.) So apart from nostalgic values, they have their own place even in today.

Online Bangla Boi

2011-10-22T23:59:00.000-07:00

http://pathagar.net/

http://boirboi.blogspot.com/2011_03_01_archive.html

Muammar Qaddafi

2011-10-20T08:36:00.000-07:00

I do not know Muammar Qaddafi was good or bad, his rule was brutal or benign. People of Libya are a better judge for that. From what I gather it is a mixed a reaction. He did rule well in the beginning but became corrupt with power at the end. Usual story of old revolutionaries.

But this thing I do know for certain, the western imperialist who are calling him a “mad dog” and a brutal dictator are far worse than him for the people of Libya. They don’t give a shit for the people or Libya, freedom, democracy etc. etc. They want OIL FOR THEIR CORPORATIONS and now they have got it. They are hand in glove with far more brutal dictators all across the Arab world and the rest of the world. What I do know that this guy stood against the loot of the natural resources of Libya by the imperialist oil companies at least at the beginning of his career and gave the wealth back to his people. And they never forgave him for that. They could not carry on with their loot as long as he was alive. So he had to go.

This is a very familiar tactic. Any ruler that has natural resources and is unwilling to part that to the western companies, the western media starts maligning him first. Then they call a few goons to Europe, give them money, woman whatever and ask them to start a fake revolution. It does not matter how many people revolt. Then they send their planes and tanks to protect the people from “massacre” by massacring the very same people. They justify it by showing fabricated story of mass killing, unmarked graves etc etc. Finally the remove the obstacle, install a puppet regime and take full control of the oil. The people of that country are totally fucked. But amazingly it works. I hardly read any article protesting what is going on in Libya. Everyone has taken for granted that that’s how the world will work. Not even one protest march anywhere in the world.

I am just wondering who is next. Is it Iran or Venezuela?

Posted in Economist

Our Baby

2011-10-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

We SAW our baby today. It is BIG. Around 5cm to be precise. It is jumping. It seems that it is bored of sitting there. It wants to come out and have fun.

We also HEARD its heart beating.

Tere Bin Laden

2011-10-12T08:51:00.001-07:00

Last night I saw the movie Tere Bin Laden and I loved it! Here is why.

1) It was short, only 95 minutes. I don't racall seeing such a short hindi movie before.
2) It was damn funny :) Not that Jonny Lever/Govinda/Akshay Kumar crap. It was real fun. The spoofs were creative, spot on, the character were well chosen, particularly the communist guy! Real good stuff.
3) It did not degenerate, perhaps because the director knew when to end it. Thanks alot! Just because I paid money, does not mean that you have to entertain(read torture) me for 3 hours.
4) There was no sentimental crap anywhere in the movie as is typical in hindi moview.
5) They did not try to portrey Pakistan in bad light, as is typical in hindi movies. Neither were they sentimental India-Pakistan bhai-bhai type. They showed what seemed real and funny.
7) The dialogs were smart and convicing.

Spirituality, Halo or Hoax ------- A Speech By Javed Akhtar

2011-10-08T09:32:00.000-07:00

I got this from Soham (Again!). I think this should be preserved for posterity.

http://ravigadiblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/spirituality-halo-or-hoax-speech-by.html

I am quite sure ladies and gentlemen, that in this august assembly nobody would envy my position at this moment. Speaking after such a charismatic and formidable personality like Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is like coming out of the pavilion to play after Tendulkar has made a sparkling century. But in some weak moment I had committed myself.

There are certain things that I would like to make very clear at the very outset. Don’t get carried away by my name – Javed Akhtar. I am not revealing a secret, I am saying something that I have said many times, in writing or on TV, in public…I am an atheist, I have no religious beliefs. And obviously I don’t believe in spirituality of some kind. Some kind.
Another thing. I am not standing here to criticize, analyze, or attack this gentleman who is sitting here. We have a very pleasant, civilized relation. I have always found him to be an extremely courteous person.

One is talking about an idea, an attitude, a mindset. Not any individual.
I must tell you that when Rajeev opened this session, for a moment I felt that I have come to the wrong place. Because, if we are discussing the philosophy of Krishan and Gautam and Kabir, Vivekanand, then I have nothing to say. I can sit down right now. I am not here to discuss a glorious past of which I suppose every Indian is proud, and rightly so. I am here to discuss a dubious present.

India Today has invited me and I have come here to talk of spirituality today. Let’s not be confused by this word spirituality, you can find two people with the same name and they can be totally different people. Ram Charit Manas was written by Tulsidas. And the television film has been made by Ramanand Sagar. Ramayan is common but I don’t think it would be very wise to club Tulsidas with Ramanand Sagar. I remember, when he had written Ramcharit Manas, he had faced a kind of a social boycott. How could he write a holy book in such a language like Avadhi? Sometimes I wonder fundamentalists of all hues and all colors, religions and communities…how similar they are. In 1798, a gentleman called Shah Abdul Qadir, in this very city, for the first time translated Quran in Urdu, and all the ulemas of that time gave fatwa against him that how could he translate this holy book in such a heathen language.

When Tulsi wrote Ramcharit Manas and he was boycotted, I remember a chowpai that he had written.

“Dhut kaho abdhut kaho rajput kaho ki julawa kohu
Kohu ki beti se beta na biahab, kohu ki jaat bigaar na chahu
Mang ke khaibo, mehjid ma raihbo, lebe ka ek na debe ka dohu”

Ramanand Sagar, when he made his television serial, he made millions. I am not undermining him, but obviously he is much lower in the rung.
I will give you another example. Perhaps it would be more direct and more appropriate. Gautam came out of a palace and went into wilderness to find the truth. But nowadays we see, the modern age gurus, come out of the wilderness and wind up in the palaces. They are moving in the opposite direction. We can’t talk of them in the same breath. So let us not hide behind names which are dear and respectable for every Indian.

When I was invited to give this talk, I felt that yes, I am an atheist, try to be a rationalist in any given situation, Maybe that’s why I have been called. But suddenly I have realized that there is another quality that I share with Modern Age gurus. I work in films. We have lot in common. Both of us, sell dreams, both of us create illusions, both of us create icons, but with a difference. After three hours we put a placard – the end. Go back to reality. They don’t.

So ladies and gentlemen, let me make it very clear that I have come to talk of this spirituality that has a supermarket in the world. Arms, drugs and spirituality – these are the three big businesses in the world. But in arms and drugs you really have to do something, give something. That’s the difference. Here you don’t have to give anything.

In this supermarket you get instant Nirvana, Moksha by mail, a crash course in self realization, cosmic consciousness in four easy lessons. This supermarket has its chain all over the world, where the restless elite buy spiritual fast food. I am talking about this spirituality.

Plato in his dialogues has said many a wise thing, and one of them is – before starting any discussion decide on the meanings of words. Let us try to decide on the meaning of this word spirituality. Does it mean love for mankind that transcends all religion, caste, creed, race? Is that so? Then I have no problem. Except that I call it humanity. Does it mean love of plants, trees, mountains, oceans, rivers, animals? The non-human world? If that is so, again I have no problem at all. Except that I call it environmental consciousness. Does spirituality mean heartfelt regard for social institutions like marriage, parenthood, fine arts, judiciary, freedom of expression. I have no problem again sir, how can I disagree here? I call it civil responsibility. Does spirituality mean going into your own world trying to understand the meaning of your own life? Who can object on that? I call it self-introspection, self assessment. Does spirituality mean Yoga? Thanks to Patanjali, who has given us the details of Yoga, Yam, Yatam, aasan, pranayam…We may do it under any name, but if we are doing pranayam, wonderful. I call it healthcare. Physical fitness.

Now is it a matter of only semantics. If all this is spirituality, then what is the discussion. All these words that I have used are extremely respectable and totally acceptable words. There is nothing abstract or intangible about them. So why stick to this word spirituality? What is there in spirituality that has not been covered by all these words? Is there something? If that is so then what is that?

Somebody in return can ask me what is my problem with this word. I am asking to change it, leave it, drop it, make it obsolete but why so? I will tell you what is my reservation. If spirituality means all this then there is no discussion. But there is something else which makes me uneasy. In a dictionary, the meaning of spirituality is rooted in a word called “spirit”. When mankind didn’t know whether this earth is round or flat, he had decided that human beings are actually the combination of two things. Body and spirit. Body is temporary, it dies. But the spirit is, shall I say, non-biodegradable. In your body you have a liver and heart and intestines and the brain, but since the brain is a part of the body, and mind lies within the brain, it is inferior because ultimately the brain too shall die with the body, but don’t worry, you are not going to die, because you are your spirit, and the spirit has the supreme consciousness that will remain, and whatever problem you have is because you listen to your mind. Stop listening to your mind. Listen to your spirit - the supreme consciousness that knows the cosmic truth. All right. It’s not surprising that in Pune there is an ashram and I used to go there. I loved the oratory. On the gate of the lecture hall there was a placard. Leave your shoes and minds here. There are other gurus who don’t mind if you carry your shoes. But minds?…sorry.
Now, if you leave your mind what do you do? You need the Guru to find the next station of consciousness. That hides somewhere in the spirit. He has reached the supreme consciousness, he knows the supreme truth. But can he tell you. No sir, he cannot tell you. So can you find out on your own? No sir, you need the guru for that. You need him but he cannot guarantee that you will know the ultimate truth… and what is that ultimate truth? What is the cosmic truth? Relating to cosmos? I have really not been able to understand that. The moment we step out of the solar system the first star is Alpha.Centueri It is just four light years away. How do I relate to that!! What do I do!!

So the emperor is wearing robes that only the wise can see. And the emperor is becoming bigger and bigger. And there are more and more wise people who are appreciating the robe.

I used to think that actually spirituality is the second line of defence for the religious people. When they get embarrassed about traditional religion, when it starts looking too down-market, they hide behind this smokescreen of cosmos and super consciousness. But that is not the complete truth. Because the clientele of traditional religion and spirituality is different. You take the map of the world, you start marking places which are extremely religious, within India or outside India, Asia, Latin America, Europe…wherever. You will find that wherever there is lot of religion there is lack of human rights. There is repression. Anywhere. Our Marxist friends used to say that religion is the opium of poor masses, the sigh of the oppressed. I don’t want to get into that discussion. But spirituality nowadays is definitely the tranquilizer of the rich.

You see that the clientele is well heeled, it is the affluent class. Alright, so the guru gets power, high self esteem, status, wealth…(which is not that important), power…and lot of wealth too. What does the disciple get? When I looked at them carefully I realized that there are categories and categories of these disciples. It’s not a monolith. There are different kinds of followers. Different kinds of disciples. One, who is rich, successful, doing extremely well in his life, making money, gaining property. Now, since he has everything he wants absolution too. So guru tells him - whatever you are doing, is “niskaam karma” – you are playing a role, this is all “Maya”, the money that you are making everyday and the property that you are acquiring, you are not emotionally involved with it. You are just playing a role. You come to me because you are in search of eternal truth. Maybe your hands are dirty, but your spirit and soul are pure. And this man, he starts feeling wonderful about himself. For seven days he is exploiting the world, and at the end of the seven days when he goes and sits at the feet of the guru, he feels – I am a sensitive person.

There is another category. That too comes from the affluent class. But he is not the winner like the first one. You know winning or losing that is also relative. A rickshaw-wallah if he is gambling on the pavement and wins hundred rupees will feel victorious, and if a corporate man makes only 300 million dollars, while his brother is a billionaire, he will feel like a failure. Now, what does this rich failure do? He needs a guru to tell him – who says that you have failed? You have other worlds, you have another vision, you have other sensibility that your brother doesn’t have. He thinks that he is successful…wrong. The world is very cruel, you know. The world tells you honestly, no sir, you have got three out of ten. The other person has seven out of ten. Fair. They will treat you that way and they will meet you that way. There he gets compassion. There he plays another game.

Another category. And I will talk about this category not with contempt or with any sense of superiority, not any bitterness, but all the compassion available one that is a very big client of this modern day guru and today’s spirituality, is the unhappy rich wife.

Here is a person who put all her individuality, aspirations and dreams, and her being at the altar of marriage and in return she got an indifferent husband. Who at the most gave her a couple of children. Who is rather busy with his work, or busy with other women. This woman needs a shoulder. She knows that she is an existential failure. There is nothing to look forward to. She has a vacuous, empty, comfortable yet purposeless life. It’s sad, but it is true.

Then there are other people. Who are suddenly traumatized. They lose a child. The wife dies. The husband dies. Or they lose the property, they lose their business. Something happens that shocks them and they ask – why me? So who do they ask? They go to the Guru. And the guru tells him that this is Karma. But there is another world if you follow me. Where there is no pain. Where there is no death. Where there is immortality. Where there is only bliss. He tells all these unhappy souls – follow me and I will take you to the heaven, to the paradise, where there is no pain. I am sorry sir, it is disappointing but true that there is no such paradise. Life will always have a certain quota of pain, of hurts, a possibility of defeats. But they do get some satisfaction.

Somebody may ask me if they are feeling better, if they are getting peace then what is your problem. It reminds me of a story that I have read. It’s an old Indian story told by a sage, that a hungry dog finds a dry bone and tries to eat it and in the process bites its own tongue. And the tongue is bleeding and the dog feels that he is getting nourishment from the bone.
I feel sad. I don’t want them, these adults, to behave like this because I respect them. Drugs and alcohol are also supposed to give mental peace and serenity, but is that kind of piece or serenity desirable or advisable? The answer is no. Any mental peace that is not anchored in rational thoughts is nothing but self-deception. Any serenity that takes you away from truth is just an illusion – a mirage. I know that there is a kind of a security in this which is like the security of a tri-cycle. If you are riding a tri-cycle you can’t fall. But adults do not ride tricycles. They ride bi-cycles. They can even fall. It is a part of life.

There is one more kind. Like everybody who is the member of the golf club is not fond of golf. In the same way everybody who is seen in an ashram is not a spiritual person. A film producer who is an ardent follower of a guru, whose ashram is about two hours from Delhi once told me that you must go to my Guru. You will see the who’s who of Delhi there. Let me tell you my Guruji is another Chandraswami in the making. Now this is a contact point for networking.

I have great respect for people who are spiritual, or religious, and in spite of this they are good people. And I have a reason. I believe that like every emotion or feeling, you have a limitation.
I am feeling slightly pressurized about time, can I get another five six minutes please…may I sir… Rajiv Mehrotra

“yes you can”

You can see upto a point. And you can’t see further. You can hear upto a point, but beyond that you won’t be able to register sounds. You can mourn upto a point and then you will get over your mourning. You will feel happy upto a point and then you will be through with your happiness. Same way, I am sure that you have a certain capacity for nobility also. You can be as noble and no more. Now suppose if we count this capacity for nobility in the average man as ten units, now anybody who goes to pray in a mosque five times is consuming his five units, there anybody who goes to the temple or sits in the feet of the Guru, he is consuming his quota of nobility there. And in a totally non-productive manner. I don’t go to pray. I don’t pray. If I don’t go to any guru, or mosque or temple or church, what do I do with my quota of nobility. I will have to help somebody, feed somebody, give shelter to somebody. People who use their quota in worshipping, praying, adoring religious figures and spiritual figures, in spite of that, if they are left with some nobility, hats off to them.

You may ask me, that if I have this kind of ideas about religious people, why should I show such reverence for Krishan and Kabir and Gautam? You can ask me. I’ll tell you why I respect them. These were the great contributors in the human civilization. They were born in different points of time in history, in different situations. But one thing is common in them. They stood up against injustice. They fought for the downtrodden. Whether it was Ravana, or Kansha or the pharaoh or the high priests or the British Samrajya in front of Gandhi – or the communal empire of Firoze Tughlaq in the times of Kabir, they stood against that.

And what surprises me, and confirms my worst feelings, that today, the enlightened people who know the cosmic truth, none of them stand up against the powers that be. None of them raises his voice against the ruling classes and the privileged classes. Charity, yes, when it is approved and cleared by the establishment and the powers that be. But I want to know which was that guru which took the dalits to those temples which are still closed to them. I want to know which was that guru who stood for the rights of the Adivasis against the thekedaars and contractors. I want to know which was that guru who spoke about the victims of Gujarat and went to their relief camps. They are human beings.

Sir…It is not enough to teach the rich how to breathe. It is the rich mans recreation. It is the hypocrites’ pretension. It is a mischievous deception. And you know that in the oxford dictionary, mischievous deception is a term that is used for a word, and that word is…HOAX.

Thank you.

Heartbeat

2011-09-16T05:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I saw our unborn baby's heart beating using USG. It was an electrifying feeling. It is a seven week old foetus of roughly one centimeter. But still it is life, created. I cannot describe the feeling. It was something I never felt before.

I never wanted to have a baby. I considered it not only an unnecessary trouble, but a huge risky emotional investment. So when we came to know that Ranjita was pregnant, I did not have any special feeling. Of course I liked the fact that she was happy, but my feelings did not go beyond that.

But that stoicism was swept aside yesterday. Now I am waiting for more excitement!

Update on 12 October:

Now I lost that excitement. I am back to zero feeling again. Not even thinking about it. I am back to my drinks/movies/books combo. I love my life.

The Second Freedom Struggle

2011-08-16T10:58:00.001-07:00

For last several weeks top three headlines and the front page photo on most newspapers are about Anna Hazare. I hardly read the newspaper these days and do not watch national English channels. But even then I am getting really bored by this circus. My personal problem with Anna Hazare is he is very ugly. He is almost as ugly as Narasimha Rao. So he occupying the news paper front page day after day is esthetically wrong and bad for your eyes :)

But jokes apart, what is going on here? Typical Indian response to an eternal problem. This man sees an opportunity by correctly guessing the middle class anger against corruption. I will give him that credit. Even though I think he himself was pleasantly surprised to see a slightly higher level of intensity. Media grabs the scoop offered to them. Guilt ridden middle class people, who feel they are left out of the great Indian loot (not quite, they are getting their share), lashes out against the establishment, there by feeling good that they are finally doing something for their country, not just sitting there and talking. So start the second freedom struggle. Freedom from who/what? Corruption of all the problems. In this country millions of children die because of malnutrition/disease. Half of the people live for less than a dollar a day, cannot read, do not have access to healthcare, food, justice, clean drinking water, a loo. There are hardly any road, there are three policemen for every one lakh citizens (not sure about this number. But sure that it is pathetically low). Half of the country is on the verge of revolution because of endemic poverty and systematic dispossession. They don’t become issues. If any channel dares show any of these news once in a while even for a few seconds, people just switch out of them. But corruption IS an issue, after all the loot is so BIG, thousands of crores. These numbers appeal to middle class and the media. In my opinion the best social sector investment ever done in India was the NREGA. But it failed because of the massive corruption. Where was our “anti corruption crusader” then? Where was the “civil society”? No way. It’s not glamorous man. Who cares about few hundred rupees stolen from millions of poor people? No channel showed any report on this. Now suddenly they discovered corruption.

I am not supporting corruption. What I am trying to say is that corruption is eternal. And this is not the burning issue. The burning issues are poverty and lack of development. Corruption does not impede development. If anything, it accelerates it. Generally corrupt people are ambitious and ambitious people are key to development. Even with a higher rate of corruption, China lifted 600 million people out of poverty in less than two generations. But to do so, you need to work hard. You need to plan. We don’t do that. We see a few problems and charge emotionally and start a “second freedom struggle” without any agenda, without any plan and above all without an adversary (I hope the people of this country is not initiation a freedom struggle against Congress whom they have voted to power less than three years back!) At the best, Anna Hazare is plain lazy that he cannot start a party, get elected and raise a voice against corruption in the parliament. There he will get all the immunity he wants against arrest and detention. At the worst, he is so arrogant that he believes that only he is right and the voters of this country are all wrong.

I believe that Dr. Manmohan Sing’s government has failed miserably on corruption. At the very least the PM has tolerated corruption in his government to save his “gaddi”. I believe he should go. I believe he should have gone long back. For corruption and more (much more) importantly for his complete failure to check price rise, for his lack of vision to move the country forward. For his inability to lead. But I think this is not entirely right to say that Congress has done nothing against corruption? Mind it, for the first time in the country’s history, three MPs (I think two of them were ministers) are in jail. Another cabinet minister is fired. One high court judge is fired, one top officer and one chief minister is also fired. Are they enough? No. But it’s NOT “done nothing”. I think credit for all this goes for Mrs. Gandhi. And the sooner she recovers and returns back to public service, the better it is for the country. I doubt, at present, anyone else in the Congress has the ability to lead. And man, we desperately need a LEADER. And my personal request, someone good looking :)

PC 5150

2011-08-12T02:43:00.000-07:00

IBM PC 5150 was launched on 12 August 1981. A little over 30 years ago. In thirty years it has "changed the world". Now "changed the world" is such a cliche. Everything changed the world from automobile to telephone to condoms. So in that sense it really did NOT change the world. We are still stupid, insignificant, mortal human beings visiting planet earth for a roughly average 65 years. Nothing changed on that front. But on the other hand, the impact of PC on our daily lives is far more than the convenience of paying bills and buying train tickets from our desk. It DID change our lives in more profound way.

I think the most profound impact of computers in our lives is the way we think. People who uses computers thinks more objectively that people who don't. While phrases like "do it in your free cycle", "I have no bandwidth left" may sound geeky and mere phrases, I think they are not mere phrases anymore. They have invaded our thought process. We do tend to think the way computer thinks rather than the way humans used to think. Life is now a sequence of instructions to be processed rather than a sequence of experiences to be felt and enjoyed/endured. Improving things is like optimizing a program than making life better. A phone call from my father when I am in a party seems like a NMI while doing an important subroutine. I think I have now less feeling and more computing than I used to be when I did not know computers.

Now that can as well be just because I have grown old. But I have a suspicion computer did play a role here.

I first saw a PC (A little better than the one in the above picture) in 1989 in our Jadavpur University, Computer Science lab, in August! We had one that was exactly same as the above picture in a different lab. It is amazing that guy from a backward region of such an impoverished country and from a quite poor background will work on the most advanced machine within eight years after it was built. We also had a CDC Cyber 180 and a Norsk Data ND-500 machine in our labs. Both of these machines were less than 10 years old and I think used to cost thousands of dollars.

Our tuition fee for undergraduate studies in 1989 was IIRC Rs 20/month. When I was thinking about this last night I felt real gratitude for my country and the people on my country whose contribution made it possible.

Cantor's theorem

2011-04-17T08:46:00.000-07:00

Today I read and understood Cantor's theorem.Thanks to Wikipedia.

Nehru

2011-03-10T17:30:00.000-08:00

I was reading Glimpses of World History last night and I was thinking what a life Mr. Nehru lived. Often time I try to thing if someone asks me to write a "the man you admire most" or "Your favorite hero" type essay, who shall I write about? Of course there are many people whose work I admire like Einstein or Russel? But I do not know what kind of life they lived (I have a plan to read Russel's autobiography). Also, they were philosophers and thinkers and not leaders or heroes. I like Mandela. But I think Nehru comes closest to the man I can write the above essays about. He has all the stuffs that I like in a human being, atheist, left leaning, fiercely democratic, secular, intellectual. The only flaw I can think in him is that he followed Gandhi even when they were poles apart in their thinking. Gandhi was a pure Indian, deeply religious, capitalist. Nehru was almost alien to India. He was true atheist, secular, socialist. These are very un-Indian traits. I wonder how he was so successful in Indian politics. But being so different intellectually, how could he follow Gandhi? How come he did not have a fight with Gandhi like Subhas Bose. I guess he had no other option. At that point of time if you want to serve India politically, you could not fight with Gandhi.

Going back to the point, I just admire and envy the life that he lived, His childhood, his education, his English, socialist, intellectual upbringing, his sense of satisfaction from the work that he did as a politician and as a statesman. All these things (barring the last one), I would have loved to do. The thing I like most in him is his passion for history. No one tells history so interestingly and impartially as he does. Just too good.

I could not find my Discovery of India last night. I will try this tonight. If I cannot find it, I will buy one tomorrow.

Udupi

2010-12-21T10:23:00.000-08:00

So what if there are aliens

2010-12-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

I was reading a BBC article about why we have not made any contact with aliens yet and what would it mean to us if we did. "It's probably the most important question there is," says Dr Frank Drake, who was a pioneer of radio astronomy and is considered the father of Seti - the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence.

Then I started thinking at a personal level what exactly would it mean to me. Like everyone else, I am fascinated with the topic. And I am sure I will be very exited if we actually find someone. But will it have so profound an effect on me personally. Assume that I read in tomorrow's newspaper that they actually found something concrete. Would it shatter my world. I don't think so. I will just finish my tea, get dressed and come to work. I will surely discuss this with people at work, shout a lot and then go back to find an alternate design for the problem at hand.

Of course the level of excitement will depend on what they actually find. It will have a much more dramatic effect if the aliens actually land on earth on a spaceship like ET. But even then, at a personal level, what effect will it have. Will it change the meaning of life to me, will it change my value system, will it force me to rethink my priorities in life? Will it change me noticeably as a human being? Not sure. But I doubt it will have any profound, everlasting effect on me personally.

What if they find that there are aliens out there at a very distant part of the universe (say one trillion light years away), so far that we can never make physical contact with them? What effect will that have on me personally. Even if we find that they are almost same as us? What if one of them is named "Subhendu" :)

Another possibility is that they find someones nearby, who are technically at our level or even better, but emotionally like a worm? How will that effect my thoughts.

Interesting. I will explore these questions in next few days.

My idea of heaven

2010-10-09T00:03:00.000-07:00

Ranjita and I went to Goa in April 2006. Goa was almost empty by that time. Most tourists were gone. Only a few die hard fans of Goa like us were there. The coco huts were dismantled.

We spend around 4 days in Agonda. The sun and the sea was overwhelming. Ranjita was such an amazing company. We had fun with each other. I never had a better time in my life.

Here are a few photos and sounds of that trip.

Flat 2011

2010-09-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

I had enough of my tummy. Every time I look at it I feel depressed. How in the whole world did I collect it in the first place? I used to have a concave stomach. Now I carry a pillow with me! Shit man. This is disgusting.

Now it's time to get rid of it. Come what may, 1 January 2011 I will look like the attached photo :)

Imagine

2010-07-03T05:21:00.001-07:00

This morning on my way to work, I was listening to Lenon’s Imagine. I have listened to this song more than 20 times before. I enjoyed the music, appreciated the lyrics, but never actually paid attention. Never actually tried to “Imagine”. Today I did! It was fascinating.

To be honest, I find the lyrics quite pretentious. All these “A brotherhood of man” and “Living life in peace” sounds BS to me. IMHO, we are violent animals. We will keep fighting even without country and religions, in fact we do. Lenon makes this BS palatable by his incredible music, but it remains bull. May be in another 20000 years our genes will change and we will become peaceful. Until then we will fight, no matter what.

But I did try to imagine a world without boarders and religion and I found this idea fascinating. It will be such a beautiful world. For example, I hate the Chinese. I don’t hate the Chinese people. If fact I am deeply intrigued by the people and their culture. But I hate the country. If there were no countries, I would love the Chinese people and would like to go there, eat their food, share their thoughts, and see the places. It would be fun. Same with Bangladesh. I love their language, their warm hospitality, their food. But I hate when they persecute the Hindu’s there, because of religion. It’s such a shame.

Thank you Lenon for this nice idea, albeit with a ton of bull.

By the way, half of this idea was there in Rabindranath’s “Where the mind is without fear”. But that was even bigger load of bull.

Today, I quit

2009-10-02T04:27:00.000-07:00

I quit drinking today. I started in 31 December 1989, during new year celebration at JU main hostel room number 10. My buddies were KushalDa, Lakshmi Kanta Ghorai and another guy from Andaman from Civil Engineering, whose name I don't remember any more.

20 years passed. During this time the longest I stayed from alcohol was during my marriage. I think for some two months or less. If I take on an average I drank twice a week, that makes it some 2000 nights (20x52x2) I lost to alcohol. That is 6 years of my most productive time!

Why did I quit?

1) I want to sleep well. I want to get a good night's sleep and wake up early and fresh.

2) I want to spend weekends more productively. Not feel sleepy and groggy. I want to go for long drives.

3) Instead of drinking and watching the same movies again and again every weekend, I want to read, play chess, star gaze etc.

4) I was promising this to Ranjita for long time. It's time to deliver.

5) Drinking is not much fun anyway.

So how much did I drink? Let me do a rough calculation.

2000 drinking sessions, 250 ml on an average = 500 liters!

Assuming half of it in the US and half of it in India.

250 liters in US/Canada at $15 per liter -> $3750 = 1.9 lakh
250 liters in India average Rs 500 per liter -> 1.25 lakh

Over Rs 3 lakh. If we take interest into account, then about 10 lakh. Not an astronomical sum, but not little either.

Post script:

Saturday morning 1 AM, long weekend, Subhendu drinking a large glass of milk :)

And you know what, I am enjoying it!

My father

2009-08-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

Right now my thoughts are jumbled up. I will sort them out later. Now I will just note down the points.

1) I do not want my father to die. If he dies it will be the end of an era. The collective load of memories will simply crash me.

2) So many things to do so little time.

Bizarre

2009-07-11T10:09:00.000-07:00

I was watching a BBC documentary about time travel. They were explaining that it is OK to travel in the future. We do that every day. Time slows down when we travel fast. That means we can travel into the future. Here is how, you travel fast, your clock slows down. Then when you stop you come back to “present”, which is “future” to you, because your clock was slow for some time.
But there is a paradox about traveling in to the past. Here is how. Suppose I go back in the past and persuade my father not to marry my mother. Then I will never be born. But that’s a problem because I WAS born and caused this. The documentary was explaining how this paradox can be explained using “parallel universes”. This is bizarre. If you see the documentary you will realize how bizarre it sounds.
Then I travelled in the past for some 100-200 years. There was this crazy professor named Ratherford and he was telling us that the book that I was holding in my hand is almost entirely empty. There are some tiny particles named nucleus that accounts for most of the weight of the book and then there are electrons that circle the nucleus whose positions are chancy. I mean how much more bizarre can it get! Then came another crazy professor who was telling people that time travels slower when people travel fast. Of course I did not believe either of these two crazy professors.
You know what happened? Within 40-50 there were two million people dead because of these theories. Those two million corpses were real. Then I learned to take these people seriously, no matter how fantastic they sound.

My worst nightmere

2009-07-10T07:28:00.000-07:00

Imagine this.

1) All my friends are dead.
2) I am sick and old.
3) I am living in the same Van-lee apartment at Van Acken Bulevourd, Cleveland where I was in August, 1996.
4)Someone is playing old nostalgic Kishore Kumar songs such as Kora Kagaz, Zindagi payar ka geet hai.

Recalled to life

2008-04-23T03:06:00.001-07:00

Reclaim your life, Subhendu. Don't let it go waste. You have but only one to live, no backup, no restore.

Now is the time. Act NOW.

More about God

2008-01-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

In the last post I observed that there is a resurgence of faith all over the world. I think I got an explanation for this. The world around us is becoming more insecure and more uncertain. The easy access to technologies has bettered our lives, but at the same time it also made us feel insecure. I take mobile phone as a classic example. It has made communication easy. But also has created a lot of uncertainties. If I forget to take the phone with me, I feel totally lost. If my loved one is going somewhere and she fails to make a phone call as soon as she reaches her destination, I am tensed. Same is true with our jobs. We now have higher paying jobs doing interesting works, but no security. All these uncertainties pushes us to something that is certain, GOD. It does help. At least it gives us comfort through the crisis period. And that explains why it is becoming so popular, because IT HELPS.

There is another reason for this. The more prosperous we become, the more lonely we get. Poor people stick together. Rich people hardly do. So with increasing prosperity, the world is becoming more lonely. Lonely people are more insecure and hence turn to god.

God fights back

2007-07-19T23:28:00.000-07:00

I read this bbc story where a 18 year old young lady says she is willing to die for her belief. More than that, she says she wants to kill others in a suicide bombing. For last few months, papers are all full of stories about terrorist attacks. While there are probably many motives behind these attacks, religion seems to be one of the running themes. And that’s not all, it could be just me, but it seems that more and more young people are turning to religion. Himesh Reshmiya, a popular singer and actor says that his recent success in his new movie has nothing to do with his talents or hard work; it’s all because of God’s good grace. And that seems to be the mood of many young people. It depresses me when I see that the society regresses to something that I find impossible to accept. Because I think that with time, people become more rational and less religious.

But then I thought that there is nothing new to it. Throughout ages of human history it happened many times, resurgence of blind faith and renunciation of rational thoughts. But the reassuring part is, in the end it’s always truth that prevails. God retreats to the dark corner of human ignorance and fear, where only he can live. In fear and in ignorance.

A Note to Individuals Who Thinks that Their Religion is OK

2006-01-28T07:25:00.000-08:00

I got this from Soham. I don't know where he got this from. I thought it should be publiehsed, before I loose it.
=======================================

A Note to Individuals Who Thinks that Their Religion is OK

You are wrong.

Now, I know what you're thinking -- everyone does it, a billion Chinese can’t be wrong, it makes us be humble and care about our neighbor and sure, there are people out there doing shitty things in the name of their religions, but their religions are different from yours, and, it's worth mentioning, worse than yours.

The problem, the one that you may not see, is not what your religion says, in particular -- although most likely, you believe in some pretty horrible things, like stoning adulterers or killing the children of your enemies or hating homosexuals or Jews or not touching menstruating women or having as many babies as possible. And if you don't it's probably only because you've decided which parts of God's word are good enough for you, and which parts aren't to be taken seriously, since they bother you personally, and that they can therefore be considered to have been mistakes on His part.

The problem is not what your religion tells you to believe, but how it tells you to believe -- that is, it tells you that you can -- no – must believe in the absence of the type of evidence that you're used to demanding out of life. In fact, your salvation depends on believing without evidence -- skepticism will actually damn you to hell for all eternity.

You: "Well, it looks like a dog and it barks."
Your Religion: "It's a cat."
You: "Are you sure? I think it's a dog."
Your Religion: "Do you want to burn for all eternity, smarty-pants?"
You: "Oh, right. It's a cat."
Now, let's not get into the fact that this is really, really
Undignified the fact that, if humans are different from, say, squid in any meaningful way (thinking-wise) it's in our capacity to think abstractly enough to perform complicated logical comparison and deductions. But you're going to chuck out what makes you human. That's fine. Whatever.

And let's not get into the fact that all the crappy stuff religion tells you is pretty crappy, or that it's all internally contradictory, or that most people aren't very meek or poor or any of those things, in spite of what their particular Book says.

The point is that you believe it's a cat now. So what? Well, the 'so what' isn't that you're going to look like an idiot trying to make a golden retriever shit in a box, although you are. The 'so what' is that once you decide that it's OK to believe in the absence of evidence (or in the face of contradictory evidence) you've endorsed two related points of view:
No one in society has any responsibility to anyone else with regards to thinking things through. I believe my car's brakes don't need to be checked, even though I don't know for sure. Here, borrow the keys, you'll probably live. In one grand gesture, you've gotten on board with the idea that there is no such thing as negligence. As long as I believe a thing, even if a cursory look at the facts might convince a reasonable person of the opposite, well, hey, that's my right. It's ethical and reasonable. There's no need to look, no need to think. It's 10 pm, do you know where your children are? Nah, but I believe they're upstairs, and I don't have any responsibility as a parent to check.

No belief can be judged against any other. You believe that God tells you to love, I believe He tells me to fly a hot air balloon around the world. You'd like to tell me that I'm wrong, but you can't, because argument is about verifiable facts, or chains of facts, deduced logically from one another or derived directly from experience. By getting on board with faith, you've rejected argument as a meaningful activity, and rejected thinking critically altogether. You can no longer critically consider or compare ideas, since you believe that it's OK to have faith in spite of critical evidence. Got an argument against genital mutilation? Who cares -- you've already come out on the side of belief in the face of contradictory evidence. I agree. Where's my knife? Everything's OK with you, once you decide that you don't need to believe your eyes or your brain.

So there it is. I don't care if God tells you to suffer the little children, or feed the poor. If that's the only reason you've got for doing those things, you're a shitty person, and your beliefs do more harm than good. Your existence and your attitude demean you, and, much worse, help weaken two of the most important quantities in any society: our ability to trust that other people are telling us the truth and being responsible in their statements and thoughts, and our capacity as a society to look for answers using our brains and our capacities to reason from evidence. Those are all we've got, and once they're gone, society isn't doing anyone any good, since you can't trust its members to be responsible, and you can't rely on reason to dictate your course of actions.

And you, by tolerating religion, have taken a big fat dump on both of these commodities.

That said, every religion is fundamentalism.

It's worth pointing out at this point that a lot of what you hear about how the problem is 'fundamentalism' is bullshit. When people say this, they seem to be talking about something like XXXXTreeeeeme religion, that says completely crazy things.

The problem, as I've mentioned above, is that once you accept religion, in the sense that you've decided to tolerate (or even embrace) beliefs in the absence of justifying evidence, you've no longer got any rational or ethical basis for judging one doctrine against another. You've decided to take part in an occasionally comforting dance in which reason and evidence can't be used to judge ideas, and once you've done that, you've got no ground on which to judge anything to be 'fundamentalism', and even if you did, you'd have no grounds to judge that it was a bad idea, and even if you could say that it was a bad idea, you'd have no grounds on which to say that it can't be tolerated, since you've already decided that a rational case against an idea should not prevent you from believing it.

Here's how the discussion goes:

Me: "My book says that women who learn to read should be stoned to death."

You: "That's barbaric! It's bad for women, who have natural rights guaranteed by my constitution! It's unfair! It's cruel! Think about it!"

Me: "So what? You believe that Moses talked to an invisible man in space through a burning bush, and you're telling me that I can't believe what
I want because it doesn't make sense? Who are you to tell me I'm nuts?
Go to hell, infidel."

The only thing fundamentalist about fundamentalism is that what these people (whoever you decide is a fundamentalist) believe requires that they ignore the evidence of their senses and suspend their ability to reason -- it's not double-think, it's willful ignorance. And if you're a religious person, any religion at all that requires faith in the absence of evidence, you do this too. You have everything that's important in common with every other religious person in the world -- you believe what you want in spite of evidence for or against your case.

You are a fundamentalist.

To sum up.

To paraphrase someone who thinks about these things for a living, your immediate reaction to the assertion that your faith is unethical is something along the lines of, "No it's not. Some people's are, because they make you mean, but mine's about being nice." Your religion doesn't tell these maniacs what to believe. In the end, however, that doesn't matter, because your religion, like all others, does tell maniacs how to believe. It tells them -- you tell them, every time you do it, every time you tolerate it -- that it's OK to ignore evidence, it's OK not to exercise your capacity for logical deduction.

So the next time someone blows up a building, or shoots an abortion doctor, or prevents young girls from learning to read, in the name of
God, I hope that you won't get too self-righteous about it. In fact, you and they are peas in a pod. You enable this person to do what they do.
You promote in society a tolerance and understanding for this behavior.
Your failure is their failure. Your willing ignorance is their excuse.
Your desecration of society's respect for the truth, for our responsibility to be intellectually diligent, for judging what might be true against what we can discern with our senses to be true, your faith is the exact same thing that makes what they do OK. Your guilty pleasure, your insistence on ignoring what your senses and your intellect tell you removes you and helps remove society from any position in which it is sensible to pass moral judgment on anyone else for believing in the absence of evidence, and then acting on these beliefs, however loony, because you do precisely the same thing they do.

Your religion is everyone's religion, because you've rejected the validity of rationally judging ideas on the basis of our senses and minds. You do it. You OK it. You bring it on. Thanks a lot.

Intelligent design

2005-11-29T06:25:00.000-08:00

Times of India news:

Dover School Board votes to include intelligent design into school curriculum.

I do not know much about the theory of intelligent design , neither did I waste any time trying to learn about it. I never read about theory of evolution after school. At that time I felt that this theory is quite sketchy at least the way it was taught to in those horrible books by even more horrible teachers in our rural school (One day our biology teacher told us that plants don’t need oxygen to breathe, they breathe corbon-di-oxide! I disagreed and so he threw me out of his class and told me that I can attend his class again if I can prove what I said. I did that the next day and was able to hear his invaluable lectures again. I asked another science teacher what is the substance in ashes. He said it is carbon. I asked then why doesn’t it get burned like the rest of it. No answer). I want to read about I sometime in the future. But right now my knowledge is very limited. Then why am I opening my big mouth about this controversy about which so many PhD’s have given their opinion? I have a few points to make.

Dover school board members, who voted intelligent design into the school curriculum, said that they are not trying to promote religion. They want to promote free inquiry into an alternate theory. Fair enough. That is exactly what scientists want to do. They are also not claiming that the intelligent designer is God. According to their own testimony, all of them are deeply religious. So it can be safely assumed that they believe in the existence of God. So that leaves us with a creator and an intelligent designer for this universe. Being an IT slave, it seems me like a designer and a coder (God!). What a fantastic idea. It only lacks the analyst and the tester.

It is so obvious that the members are lying that we don’t even need to prove it, especially since this blog is a not a court of law. That leads me to my second point. The intelligent designer, who designed these school board members, wanted them to lie to spread this theory! I ask these board members do you really want to promote your God by lying, is your God so powerless. And if he has so little power is it worth worshipping him?

To those who want to undermine science and promote faith, I want to make an appeal. Think what science has done for you. Next time you turn on your light or make a phone call, imagine that these things were made possible because people refused to surrender to faith and dared to ask questions. They faced torture, they were killed, they burnt alive by people like you, but they refused to give up. They did not want money, women (most of them were men!), earthly pleasure; they wanted to conquer ignorance and fear. Most of them were did not want people to recognize them, but they did want people to recognize their goal, to know the truth and to dispel fear. Science does not promote hatred, it does not incite violence, and it does not provoke war. Science promotes freedom (freedom from fear, freedom from hunger, freedom from whims of the natures), it promotes justice, it promotes equality and it promotes happiness. Even after knowing all these simple things people choose to promote faith instead of science, I don’t know what to say to their designer or their coder. May be science should work a little harder to create tools that will make them understand this simple fact.

My correspondence with Paul Davies

2005-11-10T22:42:00.000-08:00

The attached paper by me deals with precisely this issue. It was recently published in the journal Complexity.

PD

>>> 05/11/05 9:51 PM >>>
I am not a scientist or a scholar, just an inquisitive man who likes to ask questions and know new things. I enjoy reading your books because they seem to answer my unasked questions, at least try to answer. I have a question. Please do not hesitate to ignore this email if you are busy doing something important. My question can wait.

From your book "The Mind of God" it seems to me that you subscribe to the idea that our mathematical model describing the universe works the way it works because the physical world allows it to work that way. I do not know why (probably influenced by your book), but I also like to think that way. It seems wired to me that mathematics should have an independent existence. After all it is only in our brain where mathematics works and our brain is very much dependent on the physical world.

So it seems to me, as you suggested in your book, that our counting system works because we have discrete countable objects to begin with. A natural consequence of our counting theory is the process of exponentiation and this particular mathematical tool works so well with many things that we do. But it does lead us to absurd numbers with no physical significance. For example a number like 9 to the power 9 to the power 9 to the power 9 can hardly have any physical significance, yet they look perfectly normal, even innocuous to us. Is there a contradiction here? If so, where can I find more material that deal with this issue in greater detail, accessible to a man with limited knowledge of physics and mathematics?

Regards,

Subhendu

Pleasure

2005-11-10T21:31:00.000-08:00

I was travelling through the Sahyadri Mountain and I was awestruck by the beauty of the mountains. I was thinking what makes a thing beautiful. Sometimes symmetry makes something beautiful. For example, the geometric design of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London makes it beautiful. But in case of mountain that is not true. It is also not true that just because it is different from my everyday sights, I tend to like it. Because on my way I saw many places that are different from my everyday places. I did not find them beautiful.

If we take it a step forward, we may ask the question what is pleasure. Why certain things like listening to music or having an orgasm are so pleasurable. What electro-chemical reactions take place inside our brain so that we feel pleasure? If we can precisely find what which reactions are pleasurable, we may be able to recreate those reactions in our brain artificially and hence can have those pleasures without actually doing the activities. That way we can get rid of most of the human sufferings. For example, I assume Hitler used to get a lot of pleasure by killing the Jews. But that was not funny for the Jews. If we could artificially simulate that pleasure in Hitler’s brain, then he did not have to kill the Jews! Now science has already found ways to have children without committing the ‘original sin’. Then we can even get the pleasure of orgasm without doing the ‘sin thing’. That way we can all go to heaven and have two fathers together, earthly and heavenly.

About time

2005-11-10T07:20:00.000-08:00

Of all the measurable quantities, time is probably the most abstract. Yet it is one of the fundamental quantities, like space and mass. The measurment of time would not be possible without periodic events. We measure time as a mapping from a set of periodic events to integers. As for example in Gregorian calendar, we map the event "sunrise on the day Jesus Christ was born on a particular longitude" to the integer 0, and each next sunrise at the same longitude as the successive integer. We then extrapolate this to the prior events as negative integers. Two interesting points are to be noted here. First, we take the biggest set of periodic events which repeat at the same rate and measure time according to their intervals. For example if we have 20 clocks, of them 15 are running at the same rate, then we assume that their intervals are even and the other clocks are "slow" or "fast". But we could as well choose the other 5 clocks as "good" and the rest 15 as "bad" without affecting any measurement.

Another interesting point to be noted is, initially time was mapped from discrete events to integers. Then we started to break them down to "fraction of an event", for example half a day, thereby mapping them to rational numbers. Then we extrapolated in to the extreme, to real number. In physics, when we think of time as a variable, we think of it as a continuos variable of a real number.

A thought from 21 July, 2001

2005-11-10T07:03:00.000-08:00

Last night I was watching a Playboy Playmate profile featuring a gorgeous twin from Peru. Man they were beautiful! They drove me crazy. Then came their mom for an interview. She was saying how proud she was for her daughters. I was thinking she can't be serious. Who will be proud of her daughter who takes off her clothes for money? Then I thought why not? If her daughters were singers or chess players, she would definitely feel proud of them. But that's exactly the same thing. Using your god given talent to entertain others. May be a singer or a chess player hones his talent a little. For some like Mozart, even that was not necessary. But so did these two girls. They kept their bodies trim and their beauty intact. So what's wrong in showing something so beautiful? It is our social stigma against sex which makes us think differently. In my opinion that stigma originated because we feel guilty to get so much of pleasure.

Opening remarks

2005-11-10T02:56:00.000-08:00

So finally I opened an account! The main purpose of this blog is to record the flash ideas that I get from time to time. The other purpose is to express my outrage against irrationalism and pretentiousness. Yet another reason for this page is to post questions that keep vexing me, hoping that someone will answer them. So let me start with the last one first. Here is a question that is bothering me for last few weeks. If you know the answer, please let me know.

There are two iron platforms A and B. B is moving to the right along A with velocity v. Two events happen on two different places of the platforms that leave permanent marks on both platforms and send sound signals along the iron platforms. The marks on platform A are X and Y and marks on platform B are P and Q. Observers L on platform A and M on platform B monitor the events. L finds that he is exactly at the midpoint between X and Y. Also L received the sound signals from X and Y simultaneously. M finds that he is exactly at the mid point between P and Q. My questions are as follows.
Why shouldn’t M find the events at P and Q simultaneous, since the speed of sound is constant through iron and since M is stationary with respect to the iron media carrying on the sound signal?