Our Story - 2500 A.D.

Imagine year 2500. Global warming is an accepted and apparent phenomenon. Snow peaks have melted, the sea has gulped down major chunks of land masses... but we, the human race, have managed to race on. Some live in cities floating on water, while others have built their own air bubble city within the heart of an ocean. Other avenues of habitat are also being pursued, deep in space. Our space stations already have people settling there, as well as on the Moon. Adaptation was never our weakness. We are truly intelligent, innovative, and technologically advanced.



One fine day, the astronauts on a space cruiser make an alarming discovery. On the far side of a neighboring galaxy, we have found positive signs of life on a remote planet, much like our Earth. Thrilled at this opportunity of finding alternative habitat, our world is united in sending both research scientists and military troops to face the unknown and explore all possibilities.

Innumerable space-pods (spaceships as big as cities) from all over the earth are immediately deployed to orbit this far away planet. The idea is to study them from space and then land there to explore further. In due time our pods cast huge shadows on the face of the new planet we call Xenon. The initial research on the atmosphere confirm 99.999% match with that of Earth some 100 million years ago. So we prepare to land our military troops to scout Xenon for native life forms.



Not sure of what the atmosphere holds for us, we land with extreme caution wearing gas masks with oxygen pipes and body armors. As we land, we are greeted with lush green all around with blue waters and clear sky lit up by Xenon's primary star, the Neosis. We feel ecstatic upon our findings that seem to promise our race a second chance at a new home. As our troops roam the land, they make sudden contact with what is the first sighting of some intelligent life form on Xenon. They look like some form of apes with horse like legs. And they communicate with each other in some native language.

As we approach them, the Xenonians fall back, apprehensive and unsure of our intentions. It was as if without being told they could feel that we were there to claim their home as our own. They seem primitive in terms of our technology and we are not sure as to their level of intelligence. In order to make contact, our troops approach slowly but firmly. However the Xenonians felt threatened and without any warning fall back to their form of defense and start attacking us with their form of weaponry. Startled by the sudden attack from Xenoians, our troops open fire. Our laser guns prove far superior to their poisened needle like arrows and darts. Some of them fall to the ground as others retreat quietly in shadows.

We are not too sure as to what just happened. We carefully approach the fallen Xenonians and investigate their belongings. Amongst many things, we find a fat book made of some leaf like paper with lots of symbols and illustrations. We recover that and a few other things back to our space-pod for further scrutiny and analysis. After feeding the symbols through our super atomic computers, we quickly decipher what story the book has to tell. And here is what it said.




Beware friends. We must always be prepared. There is always the possibility of intelligent life out there besides ourselves. They may be more advanced than we are and they may come in peace or war. There might be races out there who travel from planet to planet, staying there only until they suck all the life and resources out of it. And then they move on, in search of other planets like ours. If the day should come, that we see dark shadows clouding our skies, and strange creatures with tentacles roaming our lands with the club of death in their hands, we can only be sure of one thing: the aliens have invaded.

Playing catch...

I read something on my dear friend Satyaki Basu's
website. I am quoting it out here too.



-Quote-
"If a tree falls in the forest, and there is no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

I thought about the quote all evening. I imagined baseball-shaped molecules moving in compressional waves across an empty forest, never being acknowledged. I debated alone in bed until, finally, understanding dawned... It's not about matter or sound waves or ears or trees. Its a statement about something much more important: Our reality.

Anything that exists may as well not, if there is nothing but that entity acting as witness to the existence.

We're nothing if we're not relating to some one on some level. My thoughts, remaining mine alone, are but smoke; they make their insignificant appearance and then dissipate into nihility.

So, here, is my first attempt at throwing a few baseballs. Hope someone's out there with a mitt...
-Unquote-

I do not wish to add anymore to this and mess with its elegance. I just happened to have a mitt and I caught it.. and then thought of echoing it along...

How much is 6.12 MB ??

Considering the fact that you can get memory cards of the order of few GBs (1 GB = 1024MB) nowadays that are no bigger than a quarter (or say 2 sq. inches) and can cost you somewhere around $50 or less, I would say 6.12 MB is most trivial.



Why am I rambling about memory size suddenly at 1:30 am in the night? The fact that I had a margarita an hour back has nothing to do with this :) I am in the process of writing my PhD thesis and just now I compiled my first draft in Latex. It came to about 130 pages with lots of tables and figures and text. I was about to mail myself a copy for backup when I saw the size of the entire directory on disk: 6.12 MB !

So asked again: How much is 6.12 MB ??

Its 5 straight years of toiling, learning, struggling, pondering, discipline and the eventual feeling of sweet satisfaction of achieving something that has changed me as a person forever.

And now I shall go to sleep...

Faith

Last 2 months have been literally exhausting. Both physically and emotionally. I was engaged in the task of trying to find a place for myself in the industry after I graduate with my PhD :)

Although at start things seemed pretty difficult, somehow with time they seemed to sort themselves out. Ofcourse I had to keep making my own sincere efforts. Still, it is quite amusing how at times when I could not see forward at all, a path seemed to form just for me out of nowhere.



All this just re-established my faith in life in all its full glory. It also reminded me of the 2 most beautiful expressions of faith I have ever heard:

1. Faith doesnt help you walk around walls. It walks you through them.

2. When you are standing at the edge of a cliff, and you need to put your best foot forward, if you have faith, you will know that only 2 things can happen:

Either you will find ground beneath your feet.

Or, you will learn to fly.

Living a dream

Most of us hope to live and then live to dream. I am not going to comment on its appropriateness, but rather on its effect on our daily lives. Nothing wrong in particular with dreaming, and dreaming big. Unless you dream and have goals you may find it hard to motivate yourself to achieve them in your lives. However, the caveat is to remember to live your life and not the dream itself. Let me explain.

Recently I started reading a very interesting spritual guide Power of Now. I was caught on to nice thing they say in there about our minds. According the author Eckhart Tolle, our mind is an instrument of our "self" that needs the concept of time to survive. Our mind does not grasp the concept of "now", but only dwells in the past or future. Even if its the immediate past or the immediate future. Check it out yourself. Stop reading this post for a minute and try to observe your own thoughts. Unless your mind is complete blank, what else are you thinking about? How you need to do this today and that tommorrow? Or how that thing went good yesterday and how that someone was supposed to call but didnt? Did you in contrast realize that right at this moment, you are sitting infront of a computer reading this blog and if you are not doing anything else, the only thing you could have thought about is the screen you are looking at, or sounds around you at present, or something like that? But our mind likes to wander doesnt it? Its like while you read this you are forcing it to read and interpret what I write, and as soon as you stop reading, it starts chattering away to glory about how things were in the "now" that is gone, or how they might be in the "now" that is to come, but never once pondering upon the "now" that is.



So in effect, our whole concept of our lives sometimes is nothing but what we want to do and where we want to be, and seldom about who we are and where we are at present. And the funny thing is that while we are travelling tired on the road, thinking about how when we get home we are going to have a nice cup of coffee and relax and enjoy, we actually start enjoying this thought of the future by itself. And remarkably when the actual coffee time comes, except for a fleeting feeling of pleasure, our mind might once again be racing us to maybe where we are going out for a nice dinner next and we start enjoying that thought instead. So it seems like we seem to enjoy our thoughts of what will be, much more profoundly and with greater duration than when the things actually happen. The same thing can happen with adverse thoughts and fear. When something goes wrong in our lives, and we are tensed and worried, we spend more time petrified and dreaming about the million ways it may go wrong and dying multiple times over, even before the thing really happens.

So where did our life go? Are we even alive for real or like in the movie Matrix, just living in a constant dream? Our life is built by nothing but this continuous sense of "now". Think. Will you ever be able to do something in the past? or in the future? No. Whatever has been done in the past, you did it in the "now" that was, and in future you will do in the "now" that will be. But this "now" was always with you and will always be.. for you to live your entire life in it and with it.

The author said a nice thing to the effect of: Go ask a plant or a dog.. what time is it? They will say, what do you mean what time is it? Its now ofcourse... what else can it be?

Anti Reservation 2006 - Please sign the Petition

I have just read and signed the online petition:

Anti Reservation, 2006

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think any educated Indian will agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider signing yourself.

Please read and learn more about the Youth for Equality student body.

Critical Issue -- Please spread the word for YFE

I am posting on behalf of my friend's mother:


Picture from the Mid-Day website

2 months back 'Rang de Basanti' started a fire – a fire which has enabled people to stand up for themselves and be heard. The current fire setting the country ablaze if of reservations and the media is having a field time covering it day in and day out for the past couple of days. However, there is yet much which remains uncovered by media.

It invariably so happens that most of us 'educated well-meaning' people feel strongly for/against an issue but never actually get down to doing anything about it, which enables our great politicians to play their filthy games and have their way by playing mind games on the unthinking gullible ones. The reservation policy is, quite
evidently, a perfect example of the same. I dont think i need to emphasise how unnecessary it is to have reservations at post-graduate levels...or for that matter even at graduate levels. As a professor, i can see the adverse effects of such a policy in the field of education (reservations for teachers).

Youth for Equality is group of students all over the country who have taken it upon themselves to fight for this cause. The stand that these brave kids have taken is well justified. They are not against the so-called backward castes at all. If only the government would take some time and actually LISTEN to what they have to say, it would become obvious that they have a valid point. Reservations should be brought in at primary level if true upliftment of the society is desired. By bringing in 50% reservations at PG level right before election time, the govt is seeing nothing but vote banks in the people.

The only problem with Rang de Basanti was its end. Though it seemed right on screen, in reality it is not feasible. Dharnas, morachas and even hunger strikes are resorted to by almost everyone now – but does it have any effect? I dont kno what the solution of this situation is, but i do kno that now is the time for all of us who have an opinion to stand up, get out and support these kids in their endeavour. Please spread the word and do all possible in your capacity.

Myths about Astrology - Part Deux

True, everywhere you look, all the big blockbusters are coming out with newer and newer sequels... Basic Instinct, Superman, Mission Impossible... just to name a few. The harbingers of Summer :) So I thought to myself... why not make "Part 2" of the very first Blog I ever wrote? The very reason I had started this voyage at one point of time. But I must confess :) It also had the added support of some fresh point of view on the topic.

In recent times, a particular sage named Guru Ramdev with his
Yoga related fitenss programme is rapidly gaining popularity with the masses in India. He is telecasting live shows on spiritual TV channels such as Aastha, Sanskar, Sadhana, God and Q TV. He is also in the process of setting up Yoga Camps in many places, and intends to build and operate out of a new institution called Patanjali Yogapith in Haryana. His yogic principles are founded on Patanjali Yoga.



Now, neither this post, nor my previous one, has anything to do directly with Guru Ramdev or his yogic teachings. It does however deal with some comments he made about "Janma Kundali" (natal charts) that shed new light on the topic of my previous post. My father happened to catch these comments on TV and was responsible for bringing my attention to them.

According to Guru Ramdev, the "applicablity" of Janma Kundali is questionable even if the main concept is not, just because of the uncertainty in one of the concept's fundamental assumption. Typically a Janma Kundali, or Natal Chart is designed based on the Time and Place of Birth. It then elaborates on the position of the planetary bodies at that Time and their gravitational effect on that Place, which is seen as a primary influence on the life-long circumstances of a person. Even if one does not argue the science behind this theory, the fact still remains that you assume complete knowledge about Time and Place of Birth, the founding pillars of this Chart design. Although Place of Birth is seldom disputed, the Time of Birth is highly debatable. Not only is it highly likely to make an error in timing the "apparent" birth of a person for reasons such as clocks showing incorrect time, medical complications at the time causing distractions in noting the time, etc, the main question still remains: "when do you think you were actually born?"



According to Guru Ramdev, "prana" (soul) takes birth in the mother's womb. As such, our "birth" occurs with our independent "sattwa" (existence). Even biologically, we take full form and shape within the womb before we are brought out in the open. And what we end up timing is that "moment of liberation". So going by the science of natal charts, one must consider the time of "actual" birth, from which time it is possible for the individual to be affected by the planets, and not merely bank it on the time of delivery. And I hope I need not mention anything special to indicate the complexity of determining this "actual" Time of Birth.

Thus, people who believe strongly in the applications of the science of astrology shall forever run the risk of interpreting someone incorrectly based on his/her natal charts that in all possibility may be founded on incorrect information. And these interpretations often lead to unfortunate decisions followed by similar actions. Here lies the gravest consequence of one of the biggest myths of our times.