Stony Silence

Doesn't the Stone - Karma affair (no, Karma is not a man and Sharon Stone is not having an affair with him) make you wish that she, and others like her, maintain a stony silence?

It is said that it is better to keep your mouth shut and let others wonder if you are an idiot than open it and leave no doubts.

Perhaps no one told Stone about it.

Are you wondering if it would have been better, for me, if I myself had taken heed of that adage and not written this post?

25 May 2008

The Tendulkar

I posted a tribute to Vijay Tendulkar in Peripatetica, instead of here, by mistake.

Decided to provide a link here.

http://peripatetix.blogspot.com/2008/05/tendulkar.html

RC

RC meant Resistor-Capacitor, for a long time. RC coupled amp kind of thing.

Later some spirited friends who did not know any electronics were talking about RC and I found that it stood for Rum and Cola.

In recent times it has been Bangalore RC. Royal Challengers. (The self styled defenders of all things Karnataka and Kannda and Kannadigas do not seem to have realised that it is not Bengaluru Royal Challengers! Too caught up gaping at the over hyped, under clad cheerleaders I suppose?)

It is another matter that they looked Royally Challenged and did pathetically in IPL.

Is it time to think of other names to follow Bangalore or Bengaluru?

When I see drivers and riders take a right turn on the roads of Bangalore, I feel that they are drifting. Not taking a turn at all. Will Bangalore drifters be a good alternative.

The most common sound that you hear on the roads of Bangalore is toot toot. The most common sound pattern for honking. Reminds me of the Road Runner cartoons. Could Bangalore Road Runners be a good name?

Or, should that be Bangalore Popeyes. Popeye's pipe also seems to make a similar sound but sounds more like a sounds made foghorns of ships.

Heard in Passing

A Kannada newspaper has published today a photograph of Mallikarjun Kharge drinking water. The caption said that he was campaigning constantly, it was hot, he was thirsty and he was drinking water.

An old man, reading the paper commented in the local patois, "What kind of reporting is this? Do you call this news? One of these days they will publish a photograph and say that this man was campaigning continuously. He did not have the time to have a bath. On the fourth day it started itching all over. He is scratching himself."

No. I have not bowdlerised the comment. He did not mention unmentionable body parts.

Are the news paper men listening?

Einstein and Religion III

After I wrote Einsten and Religion I wrote Einstein and Religion II. Recently there was a report on the auctioning of Einstein's letter to Gutkind in which he expresses more clearly what he felt about the subject. Here is an abridged version of the letter.

Einstein has expressed himself far more unambiguously here.

People on both sides of the religious fence seem to cite Einstein's apparently contradictory expressions in support of their arguments.

Both seem to be saying 'the great Einstein himself has said...' .

It is a fundamental tenet of scientific method that who has supported a certain theory has no bearing on the 'correctness' or otherwise of it. Applying this principle, what Einstein has said about religion or god is no conclusive evidence.

Einstein famously said, "god does not play dice". Niels Bohr is supposed to have retorted that Einstein should not tell god what he should or should not do. In the end, it turned out that god indeed played dice at least in the context of Quantum Mechanics. So much for Einstein's opinion on the subject.

A Land Where Women are Worshipped?

In the queue to buy some lunch. A news channel near the counter. Interview with people. Their opinion about introduction of sex education in schools.

Opinions: This is against our culture. This is a country where women are worshipped. Blah Blah.

Arrrrrrrrrgh, Puhleeeez, spare me the blushes.

Yes! This is a country where women are worshipped. That is why some 50,000 Nepali women migrate to India every year so that they can get worshipped in the brothels of India?

Perhaps a larger number of our own women are enslaved in brothels for the same reason?

Is that why we still have 'bettale seve' (nude worship) where women parade naked around some temples?

Is that why we still have devadasis?

Is that why we have honour killings? If a woman falls from the pedestal we claim to have placed her on, she is worth killing to save the non-existent honour of the so called family?

Is that why we have the second highest incidence of female foeticide in the world?

Is rape a form of worship too? Because all that rape raises nowadays are the headlines in papers and nothing more?

Is that why, when we curse a man, we call his mother names?

Is that why we do not want to even allow the introduction of womens' bill? Parliament is for humans and not for worship-worthy god(desse)s?

Do You Happen to Know Her?

Select Book House is a landmark in Bangalore in its own right. To describe it is like trying to describe something. It can never match the real experience. If you like books, your next pilgrimage destination is made.

The owner, Mr. Murthy, has a phenomenal memory about books and the people connected with each.

I once went to Select and asked for Leopald Infeld's autobiographical work - 'Quest'.

Mr. Murthy's face lit up. In his slow, clearly pronounced and well strung words, he said, "This is interesting. A few months ago a lady came here and asked for the same book, specifically. She is a lecturer of Physics in abc college. Her name is xyz. Do you happen to know her, by any chance?"

I said that I indeed knew her.

"Oh, how interesting. How do you know her?"

She is my sister.

Electrical Anecdotes

I added a new link to the links list on my Blog. Electrical Anecdotes. It is not (only) because I have contributed to that Blog.

It is a very interesting moderated Blog that needs to grow but does not grow fast enough.

Here is an invitation to all ye who can contribute.

I had even cajoled a few friends who have shared their interesting stories with me. They promised to write too but have not.

I am tempted to write on their behalf but I am sure I will miss some interesting detail that only they know.

I hope that this small note adds at least a few more to that Blog.

Poor Humorists

Art Buchwald was once asked if it was not difficult being a humorist. He said “Not at all. Not when the whole government is working for you.”

I am certain that he would have found it difficult in America during the last decade. You can’t caricature cartoons, can you?

What do you say when Bush says that the rise in food prices (I was about to type it as price Rice…) is because Indians have started eating better and the rise in petrol prices is because the Chinese and Indians have started driving cars? Even Art would have become tongue-tied at this brilliance, don’t you think?

How insensitive of those slit eyes and we brown skins! Can’t we have just one meal a day and walk or ride bicycles as we are expected to? Damn nuisances, these bloody natives. No?

It is the God given right of the British to waste food worth £10 billion a year.

It is the God given right of the Yanks to grow the fattest backsides in the world (If you do not believe me, just listen to Jay Leno talk expansively about the subject) on junk food.

Coincidence

A: Hi Kitty¹, heard that you are getting married. Congratulations! Who is the lucky girl?

K: Yes. Thanks. Her name is Radha.

A: I understand why you were searching for a house so desperately! Did you get anything good?

K: Yes, I did, in Gokulam²

A: Where in Gokulam?

K: Do you know that new apartment complex called Dwaraka? A first floor apartment

A: My goodness! What a set of coincidences!!

K: What coincidence?

* * *

1. Diminutive for Krishnamurthy

2. A suburb of Mysore

Ragi mudde

I read this post on raagi mudde and posted a comment too. My thoughts about this subject raced. Among the comments was snippetsnscribbles slurping about raagi mudde with chicken saaru. I decided to write more about this on my own. I hope I have not committed any breach of blog etiquette. If I have, I hope I am excused.

Shruthi's list of things that go well with raagi mudde is fairly limited. Most of our experiences are limited by what Amma makes. What Amma makes depends, among other things, on her tastes, what her Amma made, her caste and class of society she comes from.

A friend of mine, a connoisseur of food (and classical music, not necessarily in the same order) once took me to a special place to savour raagi mudde with matan chaapees (Mutton chops). This is a special place called Jai Bhuvaneswari Hindu Miltry Hotel.

(Many restaurants in Karnataka that serve meat and fish call themselves Miltry - military - hotels. The Hindu part is not that it does not serve food to others. It could either mean that it is run by a Hindu or that the meat is Jhatka and not Halaal. Jhatka is the method of killing an animal, for meat, in which its head is severed in one stroke. Halaal is where the neck is cut and at the end there is a small strip of skin left attaching the head to the rest of the body. This is the recommended method of killing for mulsims)

Coming back to Jai Bhuvaneswari, you can spot it on the road from Bangalore to Mysore. Just before you reach Sriranagapatna there is a bridge. Before reaching the bridge there is a sharp turn to the left. You find JB there, to your left, just before the left turn. (I decry this method of giving directions. If you are traveling on that road for the first time, how do you know when you reach the bridge?. So let me try again.)

While on the way to Mysore, after you have passed Mandya and travelled about 20 kms, you reach a small bridge. As you approach the Bridge, you see a board to your left directing towards Karighatta. (That is a lovely place. You should see it) Pass the bridge and the road takes a right turn. Then you enter Kirangur. There is a row of shops to your left starting with a petrol bunk. After this row of shops, you find a pretty ordinary looking house with Mangalore tiles and a board announcing JB.

This place is famous for raagi mudde with various side dishes. What happened when I was sitting there and enjoying the food is indication of its fame.

A white, chauffeur driven [1] Contessa stopped in front of the place. The chauffeur waved, asking someone from the restaurant to go there. Someone did. The person sitting inside, whom we could not see, gave some "tiffin carriers" and orders for some food. The waiter brought the carriers in and announced what the orders were. It did contain raagi mudde and some side dishes.

Then, one of the owners who was serving us, as we were a rare occurrence - city bred educateds (that is what college educated people are called by many) - proudly told us who the customer in the Contessa was. "Do you know who that is? It is Arundhati Nag, Shankar Nag's wife. He and some friends are staying in Lalit Mahal Palace Hotel. But they want the food from here! Whenever they come to Mysore they come here for food" (Yaar gotta saa adu? Arundti Naagu saa. Sankar naagavrendti. Avrella laltmahal Otlallavre saa. Aadre avrigoota illindle bEku saa. . . ."

Wow. . . .

Indian Culure

When I heard that there were some who were protesting that the cheerleaders' act was against Indian culture, I was sure that the leaders who were protesting have not seen Indian movies.

Shobha De wrote her typically cheeky column on that theme. Enjoy it here.

Rivalry

Bangaloreans take a lot of pleasure out of putting Mysore and Mysoreans down. This incident is from a long time ago.

My cousin was visiting Mysore and he teased me, "You Mysoreans. You have a road called Chamaraja Boulevard Road. Boulevard itself means a tree-lined road. And you call a road a boulevard road."

I: "If I am not mistaken, there is a road called Avenue Road in Bangalore."

Ironical

I found this article in the Metro Plus of the Hindu today - " Where moms are born"

The main section carried this article "A passion project for home births"

Interesting contrast, isn't it?

It is said that truth is the only thing that is reduced when you add to it. Is delivering a baby so too? I wonder.

PS: The first article uses the word birthing. The word "birthing" sounds ugly to me. Does one have deathing at the end of ones life?

Dunlop is Dunlop, Always Ahead

I went to the shop selling tyres. I needed a new tyre for my trusty Bajaj Super. The tyre of the rear wheel was bald. About as bald as I am today, say.

The shop assistant asked, "Shall I give you Dunlop sir?" (DanlapkoTbiDlasaar..? in Kannada).

I said "No, I said I want a tyre for the rear wheel" (illappa, hiMdincakrakke aMthELlilva?))

He was perplexed. He had never heard of any objections to using Dunlop tyres for the rear wheel.

"Why Sir? What is the problem, Sir?", he wanted to know. (yaaksaar? himdincakrak haakidre Enpraablamsaar?)

I said. "Why? Haven't you seen the ads? 'Dunlop is Dunlop - always ahead' I am afraid that I will be in trouble if the rear wheel tries to become the front wheel. (yaakswaami? advartisement nODilva? "Dunlop is Dunlop - always ahead" aMta? hiMdincakra muMdakbanbiTre nangatiyEnu?)

Ultimately, it’s Fun

That was the title of newsreport in a newspaper reporting on the opening ceremony of the IPL T20 that took place in Bengaluru yesterday.

Unbidden, my mind went back to certain other evenings of fun. Perhaps, my mind went back to that because of the reports I had seen about the loads of money that had been in circulation for this whole “cricket” extravaganza to take off.

This post is not a “in the good old days” exercise. Nor do I make any value judgements. I just go down memory lane.

Two of my friends* would come home and we would have tea and some snacks. Then we would walk about three kilometres through the deserted streets of Mysore. The streets would be called deserted now but that would be a fairly normal state for the roads in Mysore then. Our destination? A magical shop called Chandru’s Sound Systems in Sivarampet.

When we reached the shop we would either find a few regulars there, perhaps, or we were the first ones to enter the shop. We would settle down on a bench and lean against the white washed wall. On the way to the shop, we would have come to some decisions, making sure that we had 50 paise among the three of us. The time had now come to execute those decisions.

Our decisions would be conveyed to the reticent, almost dour, Chandru. He would ponderously get up and go into the sanctum sanctorum and come back with two EPs**. The two songs that we had told him we wanted to listen to would now be played. Most often these songs were of Geeta Dutt, as both my friends were great fans of hers. Of course, there would be some songs of Asha (Bhosle), Hemant (Kumar), (Mohammed) Rafi and Talat (Mahmood) and others. One fairly common thread in these songs would be O P Nayyar.

By then we would have bought the privilege of listening to the two songs for a grand sum of 5 paise. (three paise if you wanted to listen to only one song). While Chandru was in the sanctum sanctorum fishing these EPs, we would have ordered tea, (at 20 paise per cup and we would have two-by-three) from the shop attached to Chandru’s. We would sip the tea, from greenish coloured glass tumblers with blow holes in them, and listen to the songs with great attention.

We would drink the tea very slowly with the hope that some other connoisseur would walk in and request some other songs that we liked. If no one turned up, we would spend the remaining 5 paise and listen to two more songs. If we were particularly rich that evening, that is, we had more than 50 paise among the three of us, we would loosen our purse strings and even ask for two more songs or have some more tea.

Once our coffers had run dry and no others had come to the shop to request for songs, we would reluctantly leave the place. We would then walk through Sayyaji Rao Road in the Mysore market area, still humming one song or the other we had heard that evening and return home after an evening well spent.

* The two friends are still my friends and are Chini and Suresh (Ramdurgkar)

** EPs are Extended Play gramaphone records with a song on each side of the disc.

Pssssssst: It was a bonanza if someone from the nearby Maharani’s (womens’) College Hostel came at the same time to listen some songs. There were a few, though not many.

Software Bug

The earliest computers contained electromechanical relays for switches. One day a computer started malfunctioning. A lady working on it was asked to troubleshoot. She went behind the huge computer and started to search for the cause. What she found was that some insect had got stuck between the moving and fixed contacts of one of the relays. She removed it and cleaned the contacts and the computer started working again.

When she emerged from the back of the computer, someone asked her what had happened. She said, “I found a bug”

This was how the word bug acquired the meaning of an error in computer hardware or software. Then it also gave rise to words such as debugging, debugger (ouch!), etc.

This is the broad outline of a story and the details I have given may be wrong but the essence remains.

Why this story now? A friend of mine has given a new meaning to the term software bug.

The social behaviour of many ‘software people’ irritates a lot of non-software or 'normal' people. It bugs them. So – “software bug”.

Note: I myself am one among the ‘software people’ as I work in a software company, even though I do not take any part in the software creation process. So, if this post bugs you, I am a software bug!

Busy Keying in Text

Beware of Phishing

I had not seen my mail yesterday. Today, when I saw a mail from a very dear friend, I was happy. I opened it in a hurry to find that he was in some mess and needed money. I hit the reply button to assure him that I would put things in motion immediately to send him the money.

He had gone to an African country as a member of a UN mission and had lost his wallet and cards and needed the money to get out of the place.

As I started typing the reply, all sorts of red lights started going off in my head. If he was on a UN mission, why would he ask me for money? He must be having other team members with him who would help him.

The spellings were all wrong. OK, could that be because he was under pressure?

The mail ID from which the mail had originated was different from the one that the reply screen had.

The give away, however, was that his profuse protestations assuring me that he would return my money as soon as he was back in India. If he needed money, we are too close a pair of friends for him to be so reassuring. We go back more than thirty years.

I slowed down and scrolled up the inbox. I found another mail from him telling me that his ID was hacked and I should ignore the earlier mail.

I called him, half way across India, to be told that he had received a mail purportedly from his mail service provider asking him for his login and password and he had given them!!!

Of course, it was from Nigeria. Phishing and Nigeria are so closely linked that they are almost synonymous. So, beware. Anything out of Nigeria nowadays is suspect.

What a pity that I wrote of my childhood hero from Nigeria in an earlier post and have to write this now!!!

BEWARE!!

Das Leben der Anders - Movie

I was excited to see that a German movie was running in Bangalore - called "The Lives of Others" in English, the original title being "Das Leben der Anders".

I enjoyed the movie thoroughly. Hearing so much German and understanding so much of it, was exciting. Above and beyond all that, the movie is very good. Good acting, very good direction - almost a bare essentials kind of movie.

However the fun part of it was that it was my first movie in a theatre in a mall. I went all the way up to the fourth floor of the mall and was told that the tickets are issued in the basement - car park. Suitably poshly, it was called the box office. Not the 'tikket kountru' as it is known in the local lingo.

I went to the fourth floor again clutching the ticket (poorer by 170 Rs, a huge sum, having grown up seing movies for less than 1.70 Rs) and I was frisked and made to pass through a metal detector. Then I headed for the nearest door and found my seat and stared at the screen in disbelief. A sweaty Rahul Bose leaned against a wall and was having a conversation with an equally sweaty guy next to him. I did tell that guy at the counter, sorry box office, that I wanted to see this German movie! I whispered to the guy sitting next to me and asked him if there were other theatres in the same complex. He said that there were. So I ran out to find out the one I wanted to be in.

Then I studied my ticket and it said Screen 3 somewhere in the corner. Ah, that was some help. A green illuminated Scrn 3 glowed somewhere in the distance. I ran in and took my seat and the right movie started.

I hate government offices since they make me feel like an illiterate. This new fangled multiplex with many screens, is not far off. The only difference was that I did not have to bribe anyone!

All that trouble was worth it since the movie is very good.

Bangalore: The City of Optimism

Pardon me for starting with a self-referential (if that is the word) sentence – I am an optimist and an incurable one. But the optimism of the ‘concerned’ people in Bangalore amazes even me.

Take the road dividers or medians for instance. The concerned put them, quite often in the middle of the road, with the hope that traffic gets better or smoother or whatever. On road after road this is belied. Not that the traffic does not get any better, it actually gets worse. Life of drivers, and more so, that of the riders of two wheelers, gets riskier.

Wonder why? Pieces of the median are removed at places where people want to cross the road. So if you are driving with assurance that no one will take a right turn in front of you, some one will. (Sounds like a corollary to Murphy’s Law? Perhaps it is.) Or worse, someone from the right of the road will drive in and join the traffic right in front of you. If you successfully avoid all these, you are likely to involuntarily close your eyes in thanks giving to fate or your favourite god or goddess, and successfully hit someone.

Worse still, all those who used to take a right turn after entering a main road, now median-ed, continue to do so and ride on the right side of the road. They join the mainstream whenever there is a break, planned or unplanned but executed, in the median.

Another hazard is presented by medians that look like fences made of steel pipes. The medians also double as places for putting up advertisement boards. After some time and a few accidents later, many parts of these medians are jutting out where they are not expected. (The best example is the Kasturaba Road. Treacherous!) In increasing levels of ill luck you are likely to lose some clothing, or limb or life, respectively.

Another example for optimism is what I call “Monuments to Bangalore’s Optimism” These are the footbridges across busy roads. Monuments are quite often perfectly useless structures that represent something. In Bangalore too are they perfectly useless and only represent the optimism of the ‘concerned’. I have never seen a soul on these bridges. (Nor have I seen a soul anywhere else, for that matter. So, read that as “I have never seen a body, dead or alive, on these bridges”).

Pardon me. Those monuments do serve some purposes, albeit not the intended ones. They provide great space for advertisement hoardings. They perhaps provide an opportunity for all the concerned ‘concerned’ to make some money. One hardy soul, attached to his mortal body of course, who once came very close to fulfilling the dreams of the concerned by using the foot-bridge, assures me that it serves another purpose, especially on a cold windy day, on which you have been lightly dressed and been trying to fit the description of a man about town…..

The other ‘proof for optimism’ are the white paint wasted on lines painted to separate the lanes on roads. If you are a true Bangalorean, you will ask me, or anyone near you, “Lanes? What the heck (or any other suitable four-letter word which reveals you dictional - to coin a word to rhyme with fictional - preferences) are they. Come, come. Be frank for once. You always thought that they were painted on the road to tell you where the road was, on a wet, dark night, right?

Even if that was the purpose, the concerned would have failed – where are roads in Bangalore on a rainy night, anyway?

Talking of roads, roads are the highways of Bangalore’s optimism. They represent the hope that they will last a monsoon - if you are a user, and that they won’t last a monsoon - if you are road-building contractor. The latter of course is more likely to be met since you know the quality, or the lack of it, in your work.

The roads represent the hope that they are not dug up before the last road-roller has moved away from the freshly laid road, by the electricity supply corporation, the Bangalore Water and Sewerage Supply Board (Oooops, that one slipped out, the original coinage of Murthy, the (alas, late) cartoonist of The Deccan Herald) I mean the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board and the various political parties and the various temples and their annual function organiser and the various wedding halls and their pandal erectors and …. The list is practically endless. The most amazing thing is that in spite of the best efforts of all these people, there are still some roads worth the name in Bangalore. I won’t name them even under duress, lest one among the above list makes a beeline to them to set things right.

Long live Bangalore and along with it Optimism, with a capital O.

Taare Zameen Par

Many friends told me that I should see this movie.

I hate movies that bring tears to my eyes.

This movie brought a flood.

I loved it, the movie, not the tears.

Why I hate movies that make me cry is that I cry even when I know that it is all just sentimental crap. That is where this movie differed. It was sentimental but not crap.

What performances!

The last shot is impressive. The boy runs and is thrown up and he flies. With wings jutting forward, looking like one of Burt Rutan’s creations. Lovely

I have great admiration for Aamir the star/actor and Aamir the public person. I once saw him in a TV interview and I was completely mesmerised by his calm and stillness. He was sitting on something like a bar stool and was asked questions for which the answers were, and had to be, nuanced. He carried it off beautifully. He spoke and his face moved and only enough to produce the sounds required and not much more.

He looked like the Buddha.

Very uncommon.

I haven’t still got over it.

It will take me a long time to get over this movie, not that I want to anyway.

Centurion

Sometime ago I read Shruthi’s post celebrating her 100th post. By the time I read it and wrote a comment on it, she had already moved on to her 250th or so post! That is how good I am at celebrating kilometre stones. (We are after all a metric country, aren’t we?)

At that time, I checked the number of posts I had. It was around 85. I then decided that I would have a special post as my 101st post. When I looked next, I was at 110+. So, let me “celebrate my 100th post” by going down memory lane, a little bit.

A couple of years ago Anu sent me a link to an article with the title “Have you blogged today?”. I could make neither head nor tail of the heading. Even after I had read it, I could not make out what the tale was all about. But for some strange, unknown reason, it remained on my mind. When I mentioned it to Anu later, she did not even remember that she had sent the link to me.

Soon after this, my friend and colleague Usha sent me a link to her blog. I read it with great interest and started a blog of my own soon. But the conditions were not conducive to becoming a regular blogger (or should I say a poster?)

Then came Shruthi into the picture. (Well, she being my dear niece, she has been in the picture for years. What I mean is – she came into the blogging picture). I opened a new blog account in Blogger and I was off. (Some people say that I have always been off [my rocker]. Here, I mean that I was off as a regular blogger.)

So here I am celebrating my 100th post in four different blog heads. (Is that how one says it?)

My grouse as a blogger has been that I do not get many comments on my posts. Shruthi has been instrumental in many others reading my posts. Thanks to her, Shruti has become a regular reader of my output and a friend. (Please note that this is a different Shruti, with an h less!)

Talking of comments, the most tantalising comment came from the daughter of my childhood hero, when I mentioned him in one of my posts. I hoped that I could at last contact him - Olufemi Akande. But I am yet to make contact with him since there was no response to my comment on her comment. However, I got in touch with the chh’s friend and fellow collegian from MMC, as he was looking to make contact with chh too. I even met him when he was holidaying in India.

That was very nice.

I used safetvalve as the link to my posts since I was hoping that it would act as a safe outlet for my anger and frustration with the unjust world. (The world has treated me more than justly. I have no complaints. It is the injustices, even small ones, against others that get my goat. That is another story, or is it another post?) It has more that succeeded even though I have written far less about the injustices than I thought I would.

So, here I am an avid but irregular blogger. It has made me more of a writer than I ever imagined. I even have an article published in a magazine – in Kannada. So, it goes on.

See you again on my nth post.

Doctors Stumped

My eyes are as weird as I am. Different defects in each eye. A bright dot appears to me as a vertical line with one eye and as a star with the other – astigmatism - and such strange stuff. During my last eye tests, my ophthalmologist finally prescribed glasses that turned out pretty good in the end. When I collected the glasses (‘plastics’, in fact. The lenses of these spectacles are actually made of organic compounds and not inorganic glass) he made me read the normal board again. He was satisfied with his work. So was I.

Then he gave me a card with small print on it. I wondered for a moment if this was a doctor or a lawyer. After all, lawyers are famous, or rather notorious, for things in small print. All the unimportant stuff is in large readable (I did not say understandable, mind you) font size and all the important stuff in the unreadable, un-understandable small print. It turned out that he wanted to see how my new ‘plastics’ performed when I read small type. My job consists of about 99% reading and 1% writing. Thus, this was important. I could read the small print satisfactorily – to both the doctor and I.

Then I assumed an astonished look and exclaimed. “Doctor, your new glasses (after all, they were still his glasses as I had not yet paid them yet) are so good that I can even read Tamizh and Bangali and proceeded to read the first sentences of the small passages in each of those languages. For a moment he looked so taken aback. Soon the surprised look remained but its character had changed. He was now surprised (mildly) that I could read those languages as well.

Years ago I had been to an ENT specialist since I had some problems in my right ear. (All my problems are in that general area - above the neck. sometimes right between the ears) Whenever I spoke, the sound sounded as if it was resounding in my head. (Perhaps, I should have gone to a neurosurgeon to see if there was a larger hollow space inside my head which was causing this revergeration but, at that time I had decided that my ears needed looking into, literally)

As expected, the good doctor inserted an Otoscope into my ear and looked long and hard and from various angles. He then shifted to the left ear and did all the looking-into all over again.

While I was being so inter-viewed I got the image that he was actually trying to see what was there (if anything at all) inside my head.

Finally he got up and stood in front of me, arms akimbo, and said, quite pensively, “There is nothing organic there…” I put on a disappointed look and asked him plaintively, “Not even a cabbage, Doctor?”

The doctor looked at me incredulously and uncomprehendingly for a moment. Then he guffawed uncontrollably. The doctor was a ‘serious type’ and this guffaw brought the receptionist to the door, she peeped in to make sure that he was fine. He was.

The doctor did not charge me anything for this visit. Oh, not because of my joke as is usual in such stories. It was only because he was my cousin’s associate.

Peter Bendrey(?)

I went to Niri's shop one evening, as I often did. I saw a sunburned foreigner, longhaired, wearing trousers, which were more pajamas than trousers, carrying a bulky bag on his shoulders. I was introduced to him. We were an informal lot and I was introduced to him but he was not introduced to me. The introduction was something like "He is Anil. He is the one I told you about. He plays the Veene". Peter, that was his name, picked my left hand and inspected the middle and forefingers. He was looking at the grove that had formed at the tips of the fingers by years of Veene Practice. It was also black with the paste of the lubricant used for playing the Veene and the oxides formed on the frets.

I was impressed that he knew what to look for in a Veene player.

I hardly realised how much more about him was there to be impressed with. I will tell you a few instances of those.

I learnt that the bulky bag he carried contained his music collection. Almost of all of it was Indian classical music – both Hindustani and Carnatic.

Peter is a carpenter. He specialises in restoring old timber houses in England. As I understand it, he lives on the premises to be restored and over a couple of months restores the house. He does this for a couple of years and then takes a trip to some part of the world. He often visited Mysore. He would appear 'out of the blue', stay a month or so, visit various other places in India and return to England.

Once when he was in Mysore he was looking depressed. Niri asked him why he was depressed. He said that it was because John Lennon was killed. It had happened the previous day. Niri was surprised that it had such an effect on him. It was only then that he revealed that he was once on the Beatles team and had worked on setting up their stage for them. This is something he had not revealed to anyone. I came to know about this only from Niri and never asked Peter about this.

Once when he was in Mysore, I invited him to my home, my parents' home for the evening meal. Dinner is too grand a word I am sure. As he came in, he was taking his footwear off at the door, like a normal Indian. He froze and listened to the music that was playing somewhere in the house. He exclaimed "Ah, Doreswamy Iyengar, the one and the only LP" and continued taking his footwear off. Wow, that was some powers of recognition.

He ate his meal with generous helpings of Chatnipudi (Literally means chutney-powder - an all purpose additive in many south Indian homes. It is mixed with rice and eaten with a dash of ghee or oil. It could replace the chutney, sambar or any other side-dish with Rotis, Dosés and Idlis or whatever. It is mixed with curds-rice to spice it up a bit. It is eaten with bread. Only your imagination, or the lack of it, puts a limit on how you can use it) He ate it with such gusto that I started sweating since I like my food bland. But he was alright. Of course, his ears and nose went red and he was sucking in air over his tongue to cool it. But he was undeterred. He later declared that was one of the best things he had eaten for quite some time.

He also declared to me: "Most people make much of French and Chinese and other cooking. But I consider the normal south Indian cooking as the zenith of the cooking arts!" High praise indeed.

On another visit of his, I met him in Niri's shop again. The first thing he asked me was "Is it true that Maharajapuram is dead?" I confirmed with regret that he was. The next exchange really surprised me. "Is it true that he died in a car accident?" True again and I confirmed that it was so. He shook his head with deep regret and murmured, "oh, not the death for a musician. A musician deserves a better death". It sounds so typically Indian and coming from a 'white man' it was incongruous.

He once came home and I was walking with Peter to see him off at the bus stop near my home. We lived in an area called Saraswathipuram. Some one had started a "Wine Shop" there. (As is the case so often in India, it is a shop where you get many types of alcoholic beverages - except wine!) He stopped in front of the shop and looked at the name with horror. "Saraswathi Wine Stores! Oh, My God!" he whined. "What a travesty. A wine shop in the name of the Goddess of learning? Oh no!", was his lament. I was amazed at his sensitivity. I had seen the name too, had regretted it and carried on.

Then there was something to cheer him up. On either side of the door of the shop there were advertisements for "Soma Beer". They caught his eyes and he smiled and commented, "Ah, that is a little more appropriate!

This is the story of a "foreigner" who was more Indian in many ways. Here was a "hippie" (as many would classify him at sight, those days) who was aghast that MTV was coming to India and declared that it was a "travesty of Indian culture". He was the guy who made the profound observation, "Have you noticed, Anil? The technology for music recording and reproduction is making so much progress and is becoming so much more affordable and at the same time, the common man's taste in music is going further and further down?"

I have not seen him in quite some years and have no means of contacting him. I hope he is fine. I knew him mostly as Peter and remembered him once telling me that his name was Peter Bendrey. When I looked for him on the net, all I found was a production assistant to Yoko Ono! Could it be him?

Films Anyone?

I remembered this – “We remember her saying some years ago how it embarrasses her to be recognised more than her artist father (Jatin Das), writer mother (Varsha Das) and their contemporaries, not because of better or greater achievements, but simply because of her screen roles” when I was writing the previous post. This was said by Nandita Das in an interview in The Hindu.

Why I remembered this was: I wanted to create a link to Dr. N Ratna in that post and found none worth the while. What I did find was The New York Times films site in which it is mentioned that Dr. Ratna acted in the Kannada movie Kaadu!

There is no mention on the net that he was one of the earliest (perhaps the first?) directors of the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing in Mysore and is considered to be – according to the single line in Wikipedia that mentions him – “the father of Speech and hearing in India”

There is something wrong somewhere. Right?

I am sure my question will be answered in the affirmative by the tens of thousands of speech and hearing impaired who have benefited from the institute in Mysore.

PS: Searching for Dr N Rathna provided better results. However, it does not take away the basic premise of my post.

Those Who Can - Do, Those Who Can’t – Teach

I heard this, years ago, as the opening lines of an impromptu speech by a famous and dedicated teacher - Dr. N. Ratna, who is considered to be the father of Speech and Hearing in India. I was terribly amused by this quote and how he used it to elaborate the point he wanted to make.

I came home and told this to my father who too is a dedicated teacher. (When he was asked to work on the English – Kannada dictionary project of the University of Mysore, he agreed on the condition that he would be allowed to teach two hours per week in the college he was then teaching in.)

He was not offended by this quote and continued to discuss the subject in a calm and collected way.

I remembered all this, when I read an article by Ms. Veni Sukumar in The Hindu. She seems genuinely offended by the quote and has defended her chosen profession. Good. She has gone on to modify the quote, some of which are really good. For example - “Those who can – achieve, those who are blessed – teach!” Sure.

I want to add a simple twist to the original. “Those who can, teach. Those who can’t – achieve!”

Teaching is a vocation that quite often is also an avocation. Teaching is a state of mind, not a skill. Skills can be taught. These could even improve an already good teacher. But, training one in these skills alone will not a good teacher make.

Unlike most Indians who want to give the final stamp of approval to their arguments, she has not quoted something in Sanskrit.

Indian tradition has it right -“aachArya dEvOBava” आचार्य देवोबव

Please note: I am NOT a teacher. Having had the good fortune of coming across some great teachers, I have great respect for teachers in general and enormous respect for good ones.

Celebrating Vasanta in Bengaluru

End of winter heralded by the trees bursting out with flowers.

Dry air, chapped lips, scaly skin. . . .

Suddenly feeling more human because there is moisture in the air.

Celebrating the arrival of Vasanta with pictures from Jayanagar 1st and 4th blocks.

Einstein and Religion - II

Sometime ago I wrote Einstein and Religion.

I then said, the English version is coming....

Here it is!

On Womens Day. . .

In my continuing efforts to improve my German language compreshension, I keep reading articles from Der Spiegel, on line. Some times, I print them so that I can mull over it with a dictionary.

When I printed this article a week ago or so, I had forgotten about the significance of today. Today, I thought that it was appropriate to write something on the article is about.

The title of the article is "A conscious cliche".

It goes on to say that more the scientists and researchers dig to find out the mental and intellectual differences between the sexes, more do the differences fade and the similarities show up.

One scientist found that there were differences between men and women in a fifth of the 124 activities researched. Most of those differences stemmed from physical differences (Larger muscle mass among males) rather than cerebral or mental or intellectual differences.

It goes on to explain that most of the perceived differences are due to social expectations and upbringing and such things. Many of the social expectations turn out to be self fulfilling prophecies.

This, hopefully, will be widespread knowledge soon and help women all over the world and over all strata realise their true potential.

I also read an article that said that India has one of the most powerful womens movements in the world. This must make the Indian wome proud and invigorate them.

It is good to end this small piece with a joke.

If women want equality with men, they are not ambitious enough.

Murphy's Law - Corollary

Murphy's Law, as applied to blogging:

However carefully you edit your post, you detect an error as soon as you post it.

Miracle

I received an SMS. ‘It’ asked me to recite a couple of lines softly that stated that I believed in a certain saint. Further it asked me to forward that SMS to eleven others. If I did so, I would see a miracle by night. For a change it did not threaten with dire consequences if I did not forward it.

Since the sender is a dear friend of mine, I called him up and told him that I was not sending the SMS further. He being what he is, a dear old friend, understood.

Then I told him that if all the recipients of the original forwarded it and the subsequent eleven also further down without a break, the only miracles that would be seen were at the cash registers of the mobile telephone operators and that I was not interested in creating miracles for them. I did not want to send them “laughing all the way to the bank.”

The reason for not naming the saint in this post is that I have a lot of respect for him as a man. Humane. If the SMS had said that if I did not forward it, something unspeakable would happen, it would not have made sense. I am glad. The saint was the farthest a man could be from malevolence.

The Mystery of Palmistry

I was a very thin teenager. Perhaps, “painfully thin”.

I had gone to Bangalore to attend a wedding. After the wedding I visited an aunt of mine. Her husband dabbled in palmistry. He casually ordered me (he was that type of a man) to show him my hand and I meekly thrust my hand out. He brought a powerful lens and studied my hand.

After some time, he asked me, “Do you suffer from constipation?” I was impressed. I did suffer from it frequently. I nodded apologetically. As if it was my fault.

He growled, I will teach you an exercise and if you do them regularly, (the heavy emphasis was on the ‘if’, mind you) “it” will go. He taught me sit-ups.

I surprised myself. I did do them regularly.

I was very bookish. I was so bookish that my father had to drive me out of the house, in the evenings. (Oh, I am ever so grateful to him). Now, I developed some interest in my own body and learnt a few more exercises. Push-ups, pull-ups and many other free hand stuff. As coincidence would have it, “Science Today” published an article called the “daily dozen” which taught a dozen exercises to keep one reasonably fit. I started doing them all except the one with the bar bells. I did not have one.

After a few months I went to my tailor to get some new shirts stitched. He enquired, “The last measurements?” I said, “No! New ones!”, proudly. I can imagine him suppressing a smirk as he took out his measuring tape. He took the chest measurement and gawped. He checked his tape to see if he was holding it right. He was. He rummaged through his drawer of his cutting table, fished out his note book and located my earlier measurements. There was a 4 inch difference, in the chest measurements. (Tailors did use inches in Metric India then)

“Ye kyaa baa! Kyaa hogaya there ko” he started off in his “chaste” Mysore Urdu, forgetting that I did not speak or understand that language. I could still divine the gist of it. The wonder in his eyes spoke for him. I had a semblance of a masculine figure now in comparison to my, perhaps, 28-24-30 figure earlier.

Well, a little later I went to Bangalore again and my uncle promptly accosted me and asked me, “how are you and how is your constipation?”. It was then that I realised that I had not had an incident of that in the intervening year or so. I was amazed. (We do tend to take our good health or fortune for granted and crib when we lose it) I told him that I had not had it for a year. He looked me head to toe with a satisfied smile. He was genuinely happy and proud. He was in deed fond of me.

I have often wondered how he knew I was prone to constipation. Was he so ‘good’ a palmist?

I do not think so. He was, in fact, a body builder in his younger days. My father had actually seen him pull a car with a rope as exercise! I had seen him bend fairly formidable looking iron rods with his hands in his workshop. His understanding of the human body must have told him of my state as soon as he saw my palms. It used to be clammy, pale and had red spots.

Then on, I have never suffered that particular ailment again.

After all, it was my fault that I had constipation. I was not taking care of my own self!

So much for the power of palmistry . . .

Sphice of Life

There was this hoarding of Spice Jet Airlines, at the junction of Residency Road and M G Road near Mayo Hall. Perhaps, driven by the fear of incurring the wrath of the self-styled defenders of Kannada the hoarding had the name in Kannada too. It was as shown in the lower line in the picture above. Transliterated, it would be Sphice or Sfice. The line at the top shows the correct way of writing it.

I wrote to the marketing department of the company pointing out the error. I also asked them if the advertising agency's bills had been paid. I also wondered if the bill would have been paid if the same mistake had been made in the English version. I received no answer.

The self-styled defenders of Kannada blacken boards and hoardings in English but never boards which have bad or wrong Kannada. What a pity.

With no Comments

Karma and DNA

I read the obituary of Maharshi Mahesh Yogi with great interest. I too learnt TM popularised by him, in the seventies. I have practiced TM, off and on, and have benefited from it. That would be grist for the mill for another post.

What is of interest at the moment is the report that says "as told to Anubha Sawhney Joshi" by Deepak Chopra, about the passing away of the Maharshi.

It describes the incident of Deepak Chopra giving his blood to the Maharshi. Very interesting! The Maharshi at first refused to accept blood from Deepak Chopra because he did not want Chopra's Karma to flow into him. When Deepak Chopra convinced him that red blood corpuscles do not carry DNA, the Maharshi acceepted the blood.

So we carry our Karma in our DNA! That is news to me and am sure so is it to the thousands of people who work in the field of genetics.

What a load of rubbish!

Pranab and his Award

Padma Vibhushan Pranab Mukherjee said that there should be no room for controversy about is getting that award.

He is absolutley right. No room for controversy. It is WRONG that he was given the award.

To see the contrast, see the conduct of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad here.

Another similar story is that of the First Bharat Ratna awardee Sir M Vishweshwarayya. When the cabinet decided to honour him with that award, no one wanted to inform him! Because of his reputation as a man who did not mince words.

Prime Minister Nehru himself wrote to him and requested him to accept the award. True to form Sir M V wrote back sayaing that he did not want to accept that award if it curtailed his freedom in anyway to criticise Nehru's government if the need arose. Nehru, equally gracefully wrote back that it was for such upstanding ways of his that he was being given that award. It was only then that Sir. M V accepted the award.

Alas, unbelievable, in these days of "moral pygmies"

Measles?

I saw hoardings all over Bangalore proclaiming as above. It says Amma in Bangalore.

When I saw it the first time, I could see just the top part of the hoarding. My immediate reaction was one of consternation. Was there an epidemic of smallpox in Bangalore? Or was it chickenpox or measles? There is already gastroeneritis - cholera. Now this?

Then the bottom part of the hoarding became visible. It was announcing the presence a religious/spiritual person, popularly known as Amma.

Even though amma means mother and I call my mother amma, seen as a banner headline, it could mean what I first thought!

Uffff...

Einstein and Religion

Einstein is once supposed to have said something like, "Religion without science is blind, science without religion is lame". This is often quoted to say something like "See? Even Einstein said that religion is important. Most do not realise that Einstein had his own definition of religion, which was quite different from what most people usually take it to be.

Here is the original article: "Religion and Science" - New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930

Here is an article in Kannada on the subject by my father, J R Lakshmana Rao, published in the January 25, 2008 edition of Prajavani.

The same article English, is coming soon. . . Here it is!

For your reading pleasure. . . .

Bombay?

There was this Englishman friend of mine, Peter, who visited Mysore frequently. He had fun by going to an autorickshaw and asking the driver "Bombay?". The drivers would melt, fidget and grin. Then he would pat the driver on the shoulder and tell him where he really wanted to go.

One day he met his match.

There was this autowallah, sitting in the drivers seat, with his legs crossed, reading a news paper. Peter goes and asks him: "Bombay?"

The driver unhurriedly uncrosses his legs as he folds his paper, with his eyes still on the job of folding the paper and says calmly, "Yes, Five Thousand Rupees". You should have seen Peter's face!

He recovered, guffawed and shook the driver by the hand and said, "OK, OK, for now, Saraswathipuram will do"!

Auto Wisdom

Autorickshaws in Bangalore are painted on their backs with names of the owners' children, names of movies, "Hi - somebody-or-the-other" and sometime some aphorism. Some of them gross, some are hilarious, some are even wise.

I love looking for them. Here is a gem that I saw today. For those who can not read the Kannada script, here is the transliteration as per the Baraha translitration aplication:

aaDu muTTad soppilla . .
aaTo nuggada galliyilla

It declares with pride that "there is no leaf that a goat does not eat (a famous proverb in Kannada) . . There is no alley that an auto does not elbow its way into!"

That is definitely pride in his work I admire it.

Note on "The Sensation"

My story The Sensation elicited many responses, in person.

In the years gone by, many self styled astrologers and palmists have tried to tell me my future. The common things that they said were that I would never step out of India and that my "Education" was complete and that I would never even acquire another certificate, let alone a degree.

I have been abroad several times and did get an M Tech (Reliability Engineering) from IIT Kharagpur.

So much for the power of these "arts"

Sign of the Times

The most irritating aspect of traffic in India is the incessant honking. I have a host of sticker ideas about it, which I have never executed, though.

I saw a great one the other day on the rear mudguard of a bike: "Honk, If you are an idiot"

I want to put up, "Honk away, I am deaf anyway!"

Dyspixia

At work, I belong to a group of people who read and analyse patent documents. Whenever I see a patent on the screen, the first thing I notice is the drawing on the first page. I identify the document from the picture. Quite often, if I come across the same document at a later date, I recognize it from its picture.

I found at least one colleague to whom the picture does not make any sense. She reads only the words - the title, abstract - on the first page. She says that she does not even register the picture. What a difference! I asked a few other colleagues and they confirmed that they too look at the picture first.

To describe her state or method or inability to "read" a picture, I invented a word - dyspixia - similar to dyslexia.

Before writing this post I put the word into Google and found one site! You put any gobbledygook and you find a hit?

God and the Gregorian calendar

I was listening to a charlatan on a popular Kannada TV Channel this morning. He was telling his audience that the dates of 8, 17 and 28 of the months, whose digits add up to 8 are inauspicious.


What Bunkum, I thought, when he claimed that “all natural disaster or calamities” occur on those days. He even said that the break up of the Reliance Industries was because it was incorporated on the 26th of some month. He also said that unhappy marriages, divorces are the results of weddings that took place on those days.


I did a small test. I looked for a list of natural disasters on Google. I opened the first one that came up and found that out of the ten listed, the numbers of only one added up to 8 – the Chernobyl disaster. The REMANING NINE DID NOT. Of course, this was a listing based on some yardstick chosen by the compiler of the list. But still it should have at least had more than one, don’t you think?


I looked for other lists and MOST of them did not meet this specification.


I wondered:


Why does god/fate follow the Gregorian calendar? Why not any of the innumerable other calendars available and followed for religious purposes? For example: the lunar calendar of some Hindus, the solar calendars of other Hindus, or the Islamic or Jewish or Chinese calendars? Does it mean that the Judeo-Christian god is the true god, perhaps?


Which was a bad day in the days before the Gregorian calendar came to be accepted as the universal calendar? The number of days was changed sometime in the calendars history. What happened to in those days. If disasters then too occurred on such days, did god /fate change to the new calendar along with humans?

When it is 26th here, elsewhere on the globe, it is still 25th or it is already 27th in some other places. Which is the correct date then?


India became a republic on 26, January. Does it qualify as a natural disaster or a political disaster or what?


India lost the Boxing Day test (starting on 26 Dec, 2007). National disaster? But Australia won. What?

Gut Feeling

Some researchers used an unusual (and controversial) method of predicting the impact of human activities on the environment. What he did was to interview scores of scientists in the concerned field, and out of it, for their predictions. The overwhelming opinion was that the impact is visible and unless contained will be disastrous in future.
However, one scientist gave a very guarded answer based on what he already knew and refused to go any further. The interviewer asked him what his ‘gut feeling’ (Bauchgefühl) was.
The scientist’s answer must be carved in stone and displayed in a prominent place, in all academic institutions.
His answer was:
All my life, I have trained myself to think with my head, based on facts. I refuse to start thinking with my guts now.
I have to admit that this is a free translation of what I read in German and that my German is not all that great. Still the message was unmistakable in its clarity and definiteness.
Kudos!

Drink, Don’t drive?

"Make love, not war” was the slogan of the flower power generation.

Now Bangalore seems to have a similar slogan. Drink, Don’t drive. At least that is what many hoardings in Kannada seem to do. They exhort you, “Madya pAna mADi, vAhana chalAyisabeDi”

Or, is my punctuation all wrong?

The Eigth Note

There was an article in The Hindu based on an interview with Ustad Amjad Ali Khan. It has a reference to a discussion on science, technology and music. The Ustad goes on to say that “It [science] simply lacks the human touch. Despite the innovations and mechanisation, science has not been able to push the envelope and discover new musical note,” Very true, did you say? Big deal, nor has Philosophy for instance. Nor has Sociology.

For that matter, even music itself has not created a new note!!!

Let alone a new note, compared to the already existing ragas, hardly any new ragas have been created. You talk about that to a musician and he is likely to say, “A life time is not enough to explore the possibilities of a handful of Ragas. Where is the need for new ones?” Ditto notes. See the Ustad’s own opinion on the subject.

The point is that some people feel threatened by science or technology. They want to take pot shots at science and/or technology without any provocation. This seems to be such a case. Those taken unawares, do believe the Ustad’s statement, I am sure, without asking further questions. This is akin to a hunter shooting a sleeping tiger. Even in that despicable so-called-sport there is are traditions and conventions that govern what is honourable!

Make no mistake. I am a great lover of music – all music. If it makes any difference, I have even played the Tambura (Tanpura) for the Ustad, for his concert in the Mysore Palace a couple of decades ago.