Way to go Paapi !

On 'moments'

Scene 1 :Everyday to myself :

I want to get out college as quickly as possible.

Why?

Because if I go into the world outside, seems like I will have a better life.

Scene 2: Today, again to myself:

I am free. Got nothing to do. Have some work tomorrow. I am listening to U2 .

Wait,I don't really feel like running away from this place. This place isnt so bad.


Corollary - [:P]

Moments like the latter for me are few and far spaced. But I have come to realize these are the very few moments I live life , not spent in dream-designing it.

Yeah the future is all lit up and shiny , but you will have your share of blows wherever you go. Only that from a distance it all seems bright and attractive. In this frantic run towards that glowing dot in the dark somewhere far away called 'bright future' , the journey always seems painful, because it is keeping you away from that dream world.

Took me 20 years to know that the so called 'destiny' is an only an illusion and the closer we move the farther it seems to go. Ultimately living life boils down to the tedious journey through this forest called hope in search of this so called 'bright future'.

And today, amidst the usual ruckus in my mind, for a moment in this redundancy , I stopped, looked around and felt content. I thought , well I think things are okay as they are now. This I think is a moment to cherish. The moment. When the journey, not the destination, the journey itself seems worth cherishing.

Whatever bright future means, try having a bright present.

On why Arun is stud

Because he doesnt advertise his studness by writing blogs on the excuse of 'enlightening people'.

On why I like Dhoni

Because he doesnt care about you or me or this bullshit called blog. Precisely.

The Saarang that was

I was sitting by the side of the stage at the Open Air Theatre [OAT] with the audience swaying and Karthik on a roll. A security volunteer comes up to me and asks if could understand Hindi. I said yes. He asked me 'how come you are sitting still when Karthik is singing 'Baar baar dekho' just a few metres away, on 50,000 watt sound?' It was then that I realized I was too happy to move. But then what I was really thinking about was a guy named 'Infinity', a facilities volunteer, who desperately wanted to watch the show, but was sitting somewhere else, lonely and proud.

I really felt guilty about having to send him away and the moment I asked him to go stand guard for some equipment outside OAT, he obeyed with such military precision that it only doubled my guilt. So there I was sitting on the well near the stage thinking of all the guys like 'Infinity' who for the sake of the bigger cause were doing things which could have been avoided by proper planning of coordinators, who knew this fact, but still worked drawing enthusiasm from the thin Saarang air. Suddenly all the things we [coordinators] did, all the things we sacrificed looked very miniature in the light of this guy whose effort was so pure, unbiased and colossal in magnitude. I asked that particular security volunteer who was keeping guard at the VIP gate to join the crowd and that I would substitute him at the gate. He looked interested at the possibility but promptly said no and resumed duties.

People were ecstatic. Sounds were blaring. Coordinators had light in their eyes. Core members were hysteric. And I was too happy to move.

All through my IIT life, I always heard about people talking about something called 'The Spirit of Saarang' . On that particular day somewhere in the series of events I felt it. The spirit of Saarang. It was more deeply rooted and more strongly felt than anything I came across ever in my life.

Saarang, we salute you.

Jeremy Spoke in class today

Extract from Wiki article

"Jeremy" is the third single from Pearl Jam's debut album, Ten.The song especially gained notoriety by the way of its music video (directed by Mark Pellington and released in 1992), which was put into heavy rotation by MTV and became a huge hit. In 1993, the "Jeremy" video was awarded four MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Video of the Year.

The song takes its main inspiration from a newspaper article about a 15-year-old boy named Jeremy Wade Delle, born February 10, 1975, from Richardson, Texas who shot himself in front of his English class in Richardson High School on the morning of January 8, 1991 at about 9:45 am. Delle was described by schoolmates as "real quiet" and known for "acting sad." After coming in to class late that morning, Delle was told to get an admittance slip from the school office. He left the classroom, and returned with a .357 Magnum revolver. Delle walked to the front of the classroom, announced "Miss, I got what I really went for", put the barrel of the firearm in his mouth, and pulled the trigger before his teacher or classmates could react. A girl named Lisa Moore knew Jeremy from the in-school suspension program: "He and I would pass notes back and forth and he would talk about life and stuff," she said. "He signed all of his notes, 'Write back.' But on Monday he wrote, 'Later days.' I didn't know what to make of it. But I never thought this would happen."

When asked about the song, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder explained:

It came from a small paragraph in a paper which means you kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. Sixty-three degrees and cloudy in a suburban neighborhood. That's the beginning of the video and that's the same thing is that in the end, it does nothing … nothing changes. The world goes on and you're gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. Be stronger than those people. And then you can come back.

After "Jeremy", Pearl Jam backed away from making music videos. The band did not release another video until 1998's "Do the Evolution", which was entirely animated.

In 1996, a shooting occurred at Frontier Junior High School in Moses Lake, Washington that left 3 dead and a fourth injured. The shooter, Barry Loukaitis stated that he was influenced by the song.

The song has recurring

Jeremy Spoke in class today
Jeremy Spoke in class today

This soulful song from Pearl Jam remains one of my alltime favourites.
Bow to Pearl Jam

Colours of IITM

Oh yeah, after all that sickness and desperation of waiting for it, it is finally here. Ladies and gentleman we present Saarang '08, the annual cultural festival of IIT Madras.

Tada trip

Eugenics

Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.The goals of various groups advocating eugenics have included the creation of healthier, more intelligent people, to save society's resources, and lessen human suffering, as well as desires to breed for optimal qualities.
Galton, a cousin of Dalton, first sketched out his theory in the 1865 article "Hereditary Talent and Character", then elaborated it further in his 1869 book Hereditary Genius. He began by studying the way in which human intellectual, moral, and personality traits tended to run in families. Galton's basic argument was that "genius" and "talent" were hereditary traits in humans (although neither he nor Darwin yet had a working model of this type of heredity). He concluded that, since one could use artificial selection to exaggerate traits in other animals, one could expect similar results when applying such models to humans. As he wrote in the introduction to Hereditary Genius:

I propose to show in this book that a man's natural abilities are derived by inheritance, under exactly the same limitations as are the form and physical features of the whole organic world. Consequently, as it is easy, notwithstanding those limitations, to obtain by careful selection a permanent breed of dogs or horses gifted with peculiar powers of running, or of doing anything else, so it would be quite practicable to produce a highly-gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations.

Village blues

sunrise

My cam and/or me

Trip

Meeting Mr.Death

After reading this article you might feel that 'This is what happens when internet is provided without discretion. Each fellow vomits his baseless whims on everybody around. Messy internet. Really.'
Anyway, simply put, I have a message to deliver and I am sure that with my limited resources of strength and will , I would not be able to put it across. So, death is the idea. For the same reasons [lack of strength and will], I cannot push myself to such an extreme step.
So, chance. I only have one hope. Chance.
So, Someone strangles me to death. Makes it look like a suicide. And I have a note in my pocket which says ' I hate my DNA'
Thats my perfect idea of death

The ocean will be just as blue
The earth will be just as red
A handful of pills to myself
And the world will be cleaner than what it was

Disclaimer: This article has been conceived by a part of me and has no bearing whatsoever on the rest of myself

The way I am

So.. here goes...
If you cant read the whole thing, I am a 6/10 guy. On a long enough time scale and and wide enough area of concern. I mean avg. guy.You know why it is 6 and not 5.

In detail...

I am basically orthodox. The society I grew up can be held responsible. I just want to live like a sober born-in-a-town guy.
I am extremely reasonable. Kind of only good thing about myself, I feel.
With enough reason you can talk me into anything.
I am not extremely passionate about anything.
I am quite lazy most of the time.
Unconditional love , to me is unreasonable. So, I dont approve of it.
I am egotistic. So its ME always.
I am not good-looking most of the time.
I am not athletic. I dont have a superb build.
I often use people to my advantage.
I have become diplomatic. You will never know you have been cheated.
I have a wierd taste in many things. No, this not to put pseud. By weird,I mean bad.
I am a chauvinist.
Im understanding. But I am not caring.
I am not really the cool 'cho chweet' kind of lovable guy.

All this about me as a person.

Short list of all that I wanted to become in chronological order

Music composer
scientist
Ulti engineer
Bass guitarist
writer
Professional programmer
professor
Film director
Management consultant
Photographer


That should have given you a good idea

I hate

First and foremost MYSELF ,
Girlish boys,
Female pop singers [Britney, madonna etc..]
Societal Restrictions
Unreasonable people

I like

All metal bands
My branch of study
Psychology
My cam
My wingmates
My hostel
Economics
Management
Photography
Imdb toppers







I despise wishes
viz., Happy B'day. Good morning, Best of luck etc.
I have a reason.
These wishes have become a part of formal addressing.
They are no more felt.
How many times have you really meant a birthday wish? I mean think about the wish, really pray for it. Just for a few seconds...
One or two times a year?? I am not even sure of that. But I wish about 100 times a year.
Respect, love or caring words like these should not come as a force of formality.
Since I dont really care about all the people around me, I find it embarrassing to wish them passively.
And I really feel an Archies card is no substitute for a few seconds' prayer.
Next time you buy a card. Spend time. Not money.

Petty tips for film-making

Now,I take my position as a normal cine-goer. A not-so-regular one at that. I tried to do some little analysis of films myself. of late, I conscioulsy started observing myself on how i responded to the sequence of events of a cinema . Here are excerpts.
Appreciation of any kind of art stems from the viewers' ability to interpret a seemingly complicated piece of art, which inturn gives him appreciation of his own genius . Then he thinks of the artist's genius on how the artist could come up with such a thing. And then comes appreciation to the artist. This concerns arts like painting, photography, handi-craft etc. where your primary goal is to communicate with the viewer( you point your view of life and how beautifu things look to you). And how interesting you make it for the viewer give a measure of merit in the piece of art.

Now to cinema. Golden rule for mediocre commercial films. Never disappoint the viewer. In the sense, do not show radical things to orthodox viewers who are immune to change. Depict a society which the viewer wants to see. And then play around with the story.
For other mainstream films, I have found that these things add. One of the strongest emotions that can be so easily created is nostalgia. And the cumilative effect of that is what the viewer has when he leaves the cinema. Associate the viewer with the characters. Make them identifiable. Generate familiarity with a few particular locations or background tunes. Like what Roobaroo and the fort do at the very end of RDB.
Let the film be informative. Let it have the same old story on strong new grounds. Okkadunnadu, Aithe are examples as such . Stress on societal values and unexpressed love between companions(Like how each person in a family has a soft corner for another even though they dont express it). As I have already said , make the plot open , obscure and complicated.Let the viewer decide the angle in which he wants to view the film. Let the viewer have something to understand even after the film is up. Now, when he gets over the unexplained things , he is convinced about his own genius and then he thinks of how beautifully the director has shown the essentials of the movie without compromising on anything that he wished to convey. The bottomline is that, you have something to say, and you dont want to spoon-feed it to the viewer. Just give him only quintessential things and let him develop the rest. Like what Fight-club , Matrix and other movies did. It is easy to tell the story just the way you conceived, but it is really difficult to complicate it, and still convey the message.

The next time you go to a film,notice the different kinds of emotions you go through and just see what in the story drove the emotion, and you will be clear on what basic grounds each scene in the story stands . I shall keep updating this column as and when I have new things to say. Thank-you for bearing with me.

Wonderful story

Well, even if you are very busy, this should qualify as a Must Read.
Sir Ernest Rutherford, President of the Royal Academy, and recipient of the
Nobel
Prize in Physics, related the following story:
Some time ago I received a call from a colleague. He was about to give a
student a zero for his
answer to a physics question, while the student claimed a perfect score. The
instructor and the
student agreed to an impartial arbiter, and I was selected. I read the
examination question: "Show
how it is possible to determine the height of a tall building with the aid
of a barometer." The
student had answered: "Take the barometer to the top of the building, attach
a long rope to it,
lower it to the street, and then bring it up, measuring the length of the
rope. The length of the rope
is the height of the building." The student really had a strong case for
full credit since he had
really answered the question completely and correctly! On the other hand, if
full credit were given,
it could well contribute to a high grade in his physics course and certify
competence in physics,
but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have
another try.
I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that
the answer should
show some knowledge of physics. At the end of five minutes, he hadn't
written anything. I asked if
he wished to give up, but he said he had many answers to this problem; he
was just thinking of
the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please
go on. In the next
minute, he dashed off his answer, which read: "Take the barometer to the top
of the building and
lean over the edge of the roof. Drop the barometer, timing its fall with a
stopwatch. Then, using
the formula x=0.5*a*t^2, calculate the height of the building."
At this point, I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and
gave the student almost
full credit. While leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the
student had said that he had
other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. Well, "said the
student, "there are
many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a
barometer. For example, you
could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the
barometer, the length
of its shadow, and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use
of simple proportion,
determine the height of the building.""Fine," I said, "and others?"
"Yes," said the student, "there is a very basic measurement method you will
like. In this method,
you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the
stairs, you mark off the
length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks,
and this will give you
the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method." "Of
course. If you want a
more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string,
swing it as a
pendulum, and determine the value of g [gravity] at the street level and at
the top of the building.
From the difference between the two values of g, the height of the building,
in principle, can be
calculated. On this same tack, you could take the barometer to the top of
the building, attach a
long rope to it, lower it to just above the street, and then swing it as a
pendulum. You could then
calculate the height of the building by the period of the precession".
"Finally," he concluded,
"there are many other ways of solving the problem. Probably the best," he
said, "is to take the
barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the
superintendent
answers, you speak to him as follows: 'Mr. Superintendent, here is a fine
barometer. If you will tell
me the height of the building, I will give you this barometer."
At this point, I asked the student if he really did not know the
conventional answer to this
question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high
school and college
instructors trying to teach him how to think.
The name of the student was Niels Bohr." (1885-1962) Danish Physicist; Nobel

Prize 1922; best

known for proposing the first 'model' of the atom with protons & neutrons,
and various energy
states of the surrounding electrons - the familiar icon of the small nucleus
circled by three
elliptical orbits ... but more significantly, an innovator in Quantum
Theory.