Speaking of troubles

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"If all the troubles in the world could be laid down in one big heap, and everyone was allowed to choose one trouble, we should end up by picking up our old trouble again."

-from the story, Some Teachings of the Bent-Double Beggar,
in Our Trees Sill Grow in Dehra
by Ruskin Bond

Finance data on India

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Sources:

1. RBI's database: Comprehensive but lacks G-sec yield data
https://reservebank.org.in/cdbmsi/servlet/login/

2. G-sec data:
http://www.debtonnet.com/

3. Historical international stock index and other useful data, Yahoo Finance India
http://in.finance.yahoo.com/

will be updated...

Through your 'lens'

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You know me today, tomorrow I am a stranger.
You love me today, tomorrow you don't know if I may be trusted.

Today you'd give up everything to be with me,
Tomorrow you'd give up the same things to be away.

Today only I comprise your world,
Tomorrow your world has all but me.

Will you change in a day?
Will I change in a day?

How much do you understand me...

I am yours through your 'lens',
It has to come off some day...

If you're interested in Game Theory

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A good link with a lot of downloadable e-books to pick up Game Theory.

http://www.virtualperfection.com/gametheory/index.html

Thanks Snehit :)

My Quote

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"Any appeal to authority - even of the Almighty - indicates a fallacy in the underlying logic."

-Ayan Bhattacharya

Wow, now I've started minting my own quotations :))

Feynman MP3s

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Got a password protected link which has the entire set of Feynman lectures at Caltech recorded in his own voice.
Wow is an understatement. :))

If you've already found your heaven then somebody's sad for you :)

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There was a presentation recently on campus. A group of 3 had flied down for the purpose. A top-notch honcho and his two subordinates. I just wasn't comfortable throughout the session, it felt like the honcho had taken a flight from heaven to our campus...all the condescending remarks he was making about all and sundry. In fact, I didn't last the full session :).

Yet some of the points he made are points that I completely agree with (not the style in which he made it though).
One of the points he emphasised was the fact that if you believe you've found your heaven, well, it's time to commit suicide. Very, very true. If the best is behind you, why burden yourself with living at all.

There are so many circles of which an individual has to become a part as he/she grows up. Some are eternal joys, some are pure disasters. But I find so many people happy to believe that "Those were the best days of my life" :), and so many futile artificial attempts to recreate the settings of that by-gone heaven in the changed present. They're just closed to the opportunities of the present, closetted in the beauty of the past...which will never happen again.

I sometimes sincerely feel sad for them.

Understanding

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Well most old-time friends who get in touch after a long interval, have that familiar question:

*How come you're not yet in the IAS?
*What happened, when did you move away from conflict resolution?
*You're supposed to be working for the society right, so what's this you're doing now?
... and so on.

Right since childhood, when that innocous question, "Son, what do you want to do?" was popped, my answer was almost always IAS. And yes IAS it was going to be till school and even in college (though by then the resolve was weakening).

And then of course conflict resolution. At 19, I was on the Steering Committee of the apex body for conflict resolution in the Asia-Pacific, member of so many other bodies in the field. It could be just-about a perfect launch pad...and maybe it even fitted perfectly with IAS...

But by then a personal realisation had started taking form, something that has gradually taken the shape of a conviction.

The most important change required is in Understanding. Implementation and the other things of course are very important too...without them, how will the world ever feel the change? Yet, understanding the unknown or the imperfectly known...that's the first step. It's almost always the new understanding that sets in motion the revolution...creates the maximum long term impact...and of course is so much fun. :-)

As Einstein famously remarked when rejecting the offer to be president of Israel,
"Equations are more important to me, because politics is for the present, but an equation is something for eternity."
Opinions would differ on this and it's impossible to make a judgement (who's lived to eternity ;-)), yet on the whole, I'd tend to agree with that wise old man's wise saying. :)

I, Robot

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Had read this Asimov classic long, long back.
Watched a movie by the same name yesterday. It's no way even close to that classic collection in Asimov's slim volume. Yet a notch above the banter that passes nowadays as sci-fi movies.
Anyway, the movie got me thinking about that old problem again...

Those of you who aren't aware, Asimov in his classic had created the three laws of robotics which all robots in the world have to obey:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

As robots evolve they begin to realise that there is a conflict of interests between protecting individual human beings and the entire human species. For preserving the human species, individuals might need to be sacrificed, individual aspirations might need to be crushed and so on ... basically sacrifice of the individual in collective interests (reminds me of Ayn Rand...the complete contary view).

Well, isn't this the conflict we're witnessing everywhere around us...this conflict between the the individual and the collective which while it has no existence without him, assumes an independent presence when it comes into being.

Well in a way it boils down to how much of my wierdness I have to sacrifice to be accepted as a part of the "sane" society? ;-)
And I have a very bised opinion on that.
:-))

Identity

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That's all I am right...

A sack of jangling flesh,
A frame of mis-shaped bones,
A nameless, faceless identity,
Humped, beaten, bent and confused,
Struggling in this ocean of inconspicuous...

Yet relentless...

To redeem my identity, in search of it...

Don't I feel your anguish, my friend,
Your pain, your love...
Your struggle is mine, every moment of it,
For in your truth lies my truth; my identity.
By giving you your lost identity, I shall find mine,
My identity, my truth, my face in this ocean...

Greatness in a lost battle

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It was a lost battle from the very start,
Lost before the battle had started,
Lost before he had entered the field,
Lost even before he was aware it was a battle.

Yet the the thought of deserting the field,
Never crossed his naive mind;
He gave in his best, aware of failure,
Aware of ignominy, aware of the fringe,
This battlefield would consign him to.

Yet he achieved what nobody else did:
Respect of the enemy, admiration of friends;
And above all, they realised the reason for his struggle...

And despite all, he remained blissfully naive,
Therein lied his superlative greatness.

Heart rending helotry

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This endless placement hullabaloo on campus (of which I am a part too!) brings forth these thoughts once again...

Isn’t it sometimes heart-rending: these macabre convolutions of a system so completely enslaved to an imperfect end-result…and the tragedy of free human spirit wasted in mindless helotry, in so many cases without even the realisation having set in…

PPTs in Placement Season...grrr :)

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This PPT (Pre-placement talk) business, atleast the way it's handled in Indian B-schools, is funny. The purpose of PPT is fine, the company gets a chance to display its wares and the interested candidates get a chance to know more about the profiles on offer and there's a chance for a two-way interaction.

But what if there are only a handful on campus interested in attending a PPT (maybe you already know about the profile, or you know that the HR guy coming to talk anyway won't know much to be of any use, or maybe you're just not interested since it doesn't match your profile etc. etc.). But the room can't be empty, can it...so starts the system of compulsory attendance of students in PPT norm, and all the concomitant rules. And it's always like, can't you do this for your institute type (backed by other inducements...or threats let's say ;-)), so nobody is willing to risk crossing the line.

I understand the compulsions on both sides...but would the companies really mind if there were a handful of really interested people rather than the artificial hordes shepherded for the purpose. In the end it's only those really interested guys that they'll look forward to anyway.

A system working under compulsion or coercion can only be sub-optimal...freedom (whatever the cost) is a pre-requisite for it to reach its full potential.

The immediate context of this post: I had to get up early in the morning for a PPT in which I wasn't interested and a PPT in which I was interested got cancelled...so my schedule for the entire day is all bungled up grrrrr :).

Just different

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When face to face with an entity with a difference, why do most people adopt one of the following attitudes:
a) reverence (or)
b) attempt to find a fraud in it so as to discount the difference ?

Everybody is wierd in his own way.
The trick is to figure out if your wierdness matches with the other guy's wierdness and if not the points of divergence. If both involved can respect those differences, you have the basis for a long term sustained relationship. Imposition rarely works in friendships struck after reaching maturity, especially if the individuals are headstrong and independent.

Wow, I'm preaching...I can start writing a best-seller on relationships, can't I? :-D... a jazzy title for the book is all I need ;-).

Lucknow Darshan

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Finally managed to go on a "Lucknow darshan" yesterday (yeah, after one and a half years in this place :-)) .

Well, Pooja, Shruti and I took the 10:30 hrs bus from campus and we returned only by 18:30 hrs, so it was about 8 hrs of feasting on Lucknow of the Nawabs and British...would've wandered for longer if Pooja didn't have her audition.

Given my current mood of impatience, can't write too much, just a few anecdotes :)

Places visited:
1. Bara Imambara (bhoolbhulaiya, bouli and the rest of the monuments in the complex)
For an hour, we weren't getting lost in the bhoolbhulaiya and I lost my patience and started calling localites to ask them how to get lost (network was bad) ... and then finally we got lost while descending and guess what, we were stuck for about 2 hrs till we asked a guide.
Had a gala time singing "Gumnaam hai koi..." but I guess it didn't scare the ladies, they're so brave nowadays :-(.

Issues we couldn't resolve: The technical efficacy of the sloping design of the ventilators!
Ahh, and too many suicide points :D.
And am still not sure about the need for a hamam or bouli (common bathing complexes) in an imambara.

Overall, a must see if you're in Lucknow.

2. The Clock Tower

3. Chhota Imambra and all the complexes within
Well the half-kilometre walk from the bara to the chhota imambara I guess hasn't changed much in the 300 or so years except that the hoardings of a hundred "useless" politicians. What do they do anyway...no development, probably the best way to "maintain" places of historical importance, eh?
The monument: delicate and exquisite, worth visiting.

Hmm by the way, we got guavas outside the bara imambara for 8 rs (half kilo) and well the same guavas were selling for Rs 4 a hal-kilo outside the chhota imambara...well even the prices had contracted, huh :).

Ahh, and the pursual by guides, well that's part of the experience.

4. Picture-gallery
Again ill-maintained, some good potraits though...don't believe the glib guides ;-) (we pursued a guided group at a safe-distance, so we know the guided stories :D)

4. Shahid Minar
Nice view of the Gomati (or whatever remains of its once-pristine beauty) from this point.

5. Residency
A funny feeling when visiting that 33-acre complex where the British lived in the time of the Nawabs of Avadh...the Britishers have erected memorial to celebrate acts of valour of their fellow men killed during the 1857 war of independence while "Indian" additions celebrate the mutineers who tried killing those Britishers.

Same act, completely different views depending on which side of the fence you look from!

Something we couldn't figure out: Why no structure in the Residency has a roof remaining.
Ahh, and that "spacious" banquet hall (according to the board outside) is smaller than our badminton court, how did couples dance!

Well, the trip back wasn't eventless either, "aapki jo marzi de dena" of the rickshaw driver being the bone of contention. He wasn't happy with our marzi, but what the hell, he had agreed to agree to our marzi!

And in case I forget to tell you...I was the only one with a working camera, and so all the pics are with me...so I have a sustainable competitive advantage, hu hu ha ha ha :-D

Am I getting over my impatience? ;-)

A Year

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Tic-toc, tic-toc, tic-toc ... a year gone by, a year awaited,
A year closer to death, a year closer to fulfillment of the purpose of life.

A free fall into wilderness,
A focussed march to goals;

Of two steps taken on the road of pursuit,
Road to where...Do you know the way?

A year of friends and friendships,
So many that far-removed isolation in midst of friends;

A year of change, metamorphosis,
So tremendous...Am I lost?

Yet a thrill in environs unknown,
A joy at being adrift,
Freedom to start yet again,

Turmoil within, turmoil without,
Turmoil, the seed of creation...

A year gone by, a year awaited,
As I embrace this life, as life slips away,

And this curious mind wonders as it wanders...