The 3 Ds

September 17th, 2008 admin

My father’s maternal uncle, Dr. K. Ramamurthy, whom I call uncle also, responded to my email about “Games Indians Don’t Win” with some of his own words of wisdom, which I believe will be useful to many people; I reproduce them here with his permission. Read and think about it.

“During my management consultancy days, I’d start my classes with “Three Ds”: Discipline, Dedication, and Devotion.

We have to start anything in life, commencing with our earliest education, with the rigor of Discipline: regulated studies in terms of time allocation, understanding of what we study, practicing to become perfect, and humility not to be carried away by early successes (or depressed with early failures). You keep at it in spite of obstacles to reach the goal you set for yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

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Bharat Ek Khoj – Shyam Benegal’s discovery of Nehru’s Discovery of India

September 14th, 2008 admin

My good friend, Rajeev, discovered this treasure trove online – Bharat Ek Khoj, a TV series based on Jawahar Lal Nehru’s book, The Discovery of India. Nehru, the first Prime Minister of free India after the British Rule, wrote most of this book while imprisoned. The effort evokes in me pride, respect and awe. Attempting to capture the essence of the spirit and history of India in a 500-odd paged book, is in itself a courageous attempt. Doing so, while in prison, also shows inspiring determination, discipline, value for time and sense of duty. I cannot comment on the literary and factual quality of the book; I have not read it yet. However, this TV series, which started in 1988, is something I can comment on. Directed by one of the great Indian film directors, Shyam Benegal, and with a cast that clearly is stellar when you look back at those names (Om Puri, Roshan Seth, Ashok Kumar, Anjan Srivastav, Sadashiv Amrapurkar, Neena Gupta, Salim Ghouse, Tom Alter etc.) with a couple of decades of work since then for proof, Bharat Ek Khoj is a gem in history of Indian television. Even though I was quite young when this series was on TV, and even though it was quite serious in tone and not a children’s show, I distinctly remember loving it. It’s catchy, yet philosophical, credits set the tone for the self-discovery that the series embodied. The seriousness of the attempt to discover that spirit of Indianness in each episode, the honest, accurate and non-fantastical version of epics and other historic records, and the wonderfully rich use of Hindi and Urdu languages were all aspects of the show that drew me to it. When I watch it today, I can watch it with the same dedication and curiosity to learn about India. I realized that though nostalgia is a part of discovering any such childhood treasure, that is just a fleeting feeling. I have seen several other old TV hits online, such as Ye jo hai zindagi, Hum Log and Mr. Yogi; however, with those the interest typically dies out after a few episodes because the nostalgia wears out and the paucity of quality hits you, and you wonder, “Well, may be it was good in its day, but it is not really that special”. Bharat Ek Khoj, on the other hand, still seems fresh. With each episode, my interest in wanting another one increases rather than diminishes. After 20 years since the show first appeared, I can still learn from it, and formulate a more complete picture of India. I found that series is available in DVD format for purchase here. It is quite expensive, with 2 episodes costing $30. This would run the total series to over $600. So the decision for now, for me, is that I will read the book.

Posted in Experiences, Friends, Reviews | 6 Comments »

On the role of the media in sports in India

September 13th, 2008 admin

Some things are only visible from the corner of the eye; they vanish when you try to look at them directly. Similarly, I believe, the best approach to religion  is not a headlong dive to grab its elusive essence, but rather, an indirect infusion of those ideas and ideals via a more concrete medium. One such concrete medium, which India seems to have never given much chance to, is sports. My friend, Akshay, sent me an article by Professor V. Raghunathan (author of the book “Games Indians Play: Why we are the way we are”) on why India’s performances in sports in general and Olympics in particular falls way short of what one would expect from a nation of over a billion people. The article is called “Games Indians Don’t Win“. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Experiences, Friends, Information | 2 Comments »

We make it to India in 2008

September 12th, 2008 admin

Amidst the tussle between technology flattening the world and fuel prices beating it back to being rotund again – one making the world seem smaller and the other promptly stretching it back out – we planned a trip to India. Rising price of fuel had sent the ticket prices soaring, and at $1860 round-trip per head, the trip took on the shape of a mystical vacation, something to be enjoyed to the fullest – something to be planned to perfection while at the same time left open for surprises worth recounting. Traveling alone is usually a bland affair for me. Traveling with Kavita makes it a an order of magnitude more enjoyable. This time it was special also because this was Kavita’s first trip to India after our marriage three years ago. She was bound to enjoy and react to every little detail of the trip – shopping for tickets, the anticipation of meeting people back home, figuring out what all she wants to get from India, the actual flight and all its associated procedures, train travel, actually meeting people, taking in the changes since she last saw the country, and so on – and I was bound to enjoy her enjoyment. Of course, I had been to India only six months earlier, in December 2007. So this was mostly a trip for Kavita. Read the rest of this entry »

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On Choice

September 11th, 2008 admin

My friend, Sandeep, sent me a link to a very interesting talk given by Dr. Barry Shwartz, a sociologist, who observes and persuasively argues that excessive choice is bad.

I agree with this observation. More generally, this observation applies to any kind of decision making. We make many decisions in life – in everyday life and in the grander scale of life. In everyday life, we decide on things like which vacuum cleaner to buy, or, which hair conditioner to buy, both of which were decisions I had to make last week. In the grander scale of life we need to make decisions such as who to marry, or, which profession to work towards. Read the rest of this entry »

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The purpose of life …

August 31st, 2008 admin

Kavita is driving her Pontiac Vibe south towards Charlotte, North Carolina, and eventually Atlanta, Georgia; it is still the beginning of this Labor Day weekend. I am settled is the passenger seat with the laptop in my lap and Louis Armstrong’s Greatest Hits enveloping us.  The sun is setting to my left, lining the edges of the blue-gray clouds in brilliant yellow-orange.My thoughts drift in and out of a notion I stumbled upon a couple of weeks ago. It came unannounced and in a spark of realization. However, it has stayed with me for quite some time. And I now think that it deserves some more inspection and hence this write-up. The notion, the thought, was with respect to a question all of us ask ourselves, and wonder about, at some point in our life. Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Are we simply on nature’s rollercoaster, evolving forever to be able to survive, as the conditions allow it? Is life just purposeless meandering of helpless beings? Is purpose something we concoct and associate with life to try to give it some shape and meaning? Are we just telling ourselves stories to make passing our time here a little easier? Are these stories about the purpose of life, and we know there are many versions, with many names, just the grandest of the entertaining illusions created for us and by us, entertainment-seekers? Read the rest of this entry »

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Notes on Memory Consistency and Cache Coherence

June 27th, 2008 admin

Here are some of my notes on the topic of memory consistency and cache coherence, and how uniprocessor and multiprocessor cores have to be built to support the consistency models. Most of this was written up when I was preparing for my Qualifying Exam at NC State University last semester. This is a relatively complicated topic to understand well, and there might still be several mistakes in how I understood the ideas. Also, this might only make sense, and be interesting, to people familiar with these areas of computer architecture. Here’s the pdf file: Notes on Memory Consistency and Cache Coherence

Posted in Information, Tutorials | 1 Comment »

Protect your platinum – catalytic converter theft

June 25th, 2008 admin

Someone neatly sawed off and removed the catalytic converter from under Kavita’s Pontiac Vibe yesterday while it was parked in the Friday Center park-n-ride lot in the UNC, Chapel Hill, campus. When Kavita started up the car, it started up with a loud, complaining roar rather than the usual hum. Clueless about why the car was so loud, she stopped the car and started to look under the hood to see if she could spot any obvious problem, when someone shouted from across the lot, “Looks like your catalytic converter was stolen as well.” He was another of the many victims of such theft yesterday. He called campus police, which was good because Kavita was not sure what she should do next. She tried reaching me, but I was in the gym, away from my cell phone. So she called Anant in California, got my gym’s number and had the lady at the front desk in the gym call for me over the PA system. I came home from the gym, got Kavita added as an associate on my AAA account and ordered a tow-truck to get the car to our mechanic at Wasp Automotive. Meanwhile, the campus police officer, a lady, stayed with Kavita until I reached there. This was nice of her. With typical wait times of 60 minutes for the region, we were expecting a long wait at the lot for the tow truck. However, he showed up a few minutes after I reached the Friday center in my car. He noticed that Kavita’s license plate had expired and the tow-truck guy could not, therefore, tow the car as part of AAA’s services. He was a nice guy though. He had a huge lump of tobacco pushed against the inside of his left cheek wall, and in between spitting, he informed us that in the very same lot, last Wednesday, there were nearly 40 cases of the exact same incident. He had himself towed many a cat-less car that day. He said, “If you want me to tow this to Wasp, I can do it, but you can save yourself a hundreded and twenty five dollars by just driving it yourself. It will be loud, but fine.” He wanted us to file a complaint with the campus police since they had not provided any protection to the lot in spite of the sudden spate of these thefts since last week. We thanked him showing up at such short notice, and for not charging us a penny for his time and effort. His trip must have cost him at least a few bucks of gas. He did inform us that the state will slap a $250 fine on us because of the expired license plate. I drove the car with the emergency blinkers on to Wasp and left it there with a note that the insurance people want to take a look at it before we start off any repairs. So with the $250 fine, the insurance deductible (assuming they pay for it), this misadventure will cost us upwards of a thousand dollars. With our trip to India planned for this Sunday, I am not even sure if the repairs/insurance claims etc will be done before we leave.

In any case, the point of this whole entry is that catalytic converters are a relatively easy part of your car to steal. They contain precious metals like platinum, palladium etc. and when mined for the metals can fetch $50 to $100. Replacing them, of course, costs more than a thousand dollars usually. There is nothing you can do to avoid such theft except avoiding parking in desolate lots. When parking in public areas make sure you park at a location that is visible to pedestrian or vehicular traffic. Such visibility maybe a deterrent. Park close to mall entrances if malls do not have police cars driving around the lot or surveillance cameras. Comprehensive insurance is a good idea, as long as the deductible is low enough that you don’t end up paying the whole amount. Park inside a garage where possible. If you have any other ideas about how to reduce the chances of such theft, let me know.

Posted in Experiences | 2 Comments »

Niagara Falls, Niagara Uplifts

June 7th, 2008 admin

Last weekend, Kavita and I visited our friends, Vishal and Nimisha in Rochester, New York state. We met Vishal’s father too, who is currently visiting them. The highlight of the trip was the trip to Niagara Falls, an hour and a half’s drive away from Rochester. Niagara Falls consist of three main falls – The American Falls, the Bridal Veil Falls and the gigantic, Horseshoe Falls -and these three can be seen in this order in this picture from Wikipedia’s article about Niagara. Comprehending the immensity of this behemoth is hard once you are in the waters below engulfed by The Horseshoe Falls on three sides, especially if it is raining hard at the same time, as it was for us. There was only one escape with the rain pelting from above, swelling waters below, and the unstoppable din from the freefalling 50-meter walls of milky whiteness closing in on three sides – turn around and head to safety. And, thankfully, that is what the boat we were on, eventually, did.

Here are some pictures from the trip.

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A Sunday afternoon stroll

May 26th, 2008 admin

Kavita and I walked around Lake Raleigh in the NCSU campus. Here Kavita discovered a treasure of mulberry trees lining the lake. She was so excited, she started to eat the mulberry fruit within 3 seconds of the discovery, without giving me a chance to think through the implications of eating some wild berry off of a wild tree. She enjoyed them so thoroughly that I was tempted to try it out, and it was, indeed, sweet. Later, we went to the DH Hill library (the main NCSU library). I wanted to show Kavita the Digital Medial Lab at the NCSU library. We also tried the long-distance wireless talking device on the lawns outside the library. This is a pair of pink stone (or cement) blocks with a concave piece gouged out of each and made to fact each other, with about a 100 feet between them.

I came back home and double-checked to make sure that we had not ingested something crazy and found out that what we ate was, most likely, morus rubra (red mulberry). Here is the wikipedia link to mulberry.

Click on the picture to go to the rest of the album.

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