Rollo meets Babykutty

'Well, what has become of Rollo? You seem to have mislaid him. Did you break off the engagement?' [asked Eve Halliday.]

'Well, it - sort of broke itself off. I mean, you see, I went and married Mike.... I'm awfully ashamed about that, Eve. I suppose I treated Rollo awfully badly.'

'Never mind. A man with a name like that was made for suffering.'

- P. G. Wodehouse (Leave it to Psmith)

[Link via India Uncut.]

Now try this.

The final call

I was fortunate to have studied in a wonderful school in Madras called PSBB. Though it liked to pride itself on the academic performances, our school also freely encouraged extra-curricular activities. We had one of the best music choirs in the country, a lot of good quizzers, chess players, a consistent cricket team. And, most importantly, great teachers.

I have fond memories of a lot of them - friendly, encouraging, and caring. One such being Mrs Rani Chandran, who taught me Shakespeare (Julius Caesar and Macbeth). And was she good! She kept us spell-bound and made us look forward to what we all had till then a uniform distate for. The idealistic Brutus (who would murder his closest friend for public good), the shrewd Cassius (if his suggestion, that Mark Antony be finished along with Caesar, had been heeded, the Conspirators would have never had to flee and later die), the mob whose passion could be easily swayed (now applauding Brutus -- the ironical "let him be Caesar" -- and now baying for his blood) and the clever Mark Antony ("Yea, they were all honourable men"), Mrs Chandran brought them all alive.

But competence in teaching was not all. She knew when to be stern, when sympathetic. As a senior member of the staff, she commanded the respect of all students, including those she had never taught. She was also a sharp wit, and would regale us with a quick-fire exchange of repartee with whoever dared. She would spot and encourage talent, especially in English, and draft them into the editorial board or the content team of the school's newsletter.

Some years later, I came to know that Mrs Chandran had left our school. Some said she had moved on to head another institution, some said she had moved to the US. None of my friends knew for sure.

A few months back, I did it -- I tracked her down to a school in Cupertino, CA, thanks to the Internet and Google. I got the email address from the site and sent a message trying to find out if it was indeed my old teacher. I had also given my phone number in case she was not comfortable typing on a keyboard. There was no reply for a month; I came to the conclusion that it was probably a namesake.

Then suddenly on the eve of my graduation she called. We had a long chat and I updated myself on her story. She had come down with a major illness and then needing a lot of rest, had quit my school. Bored being idle, she came to the US to spend some time with her son. While here, on her son's suggestion, she applied for a masters programme at Stanford. She gave the GRE and the TOEFL and was soon in. She described how she enjoyed her time, spending hours in the wonderful library working on things of her interest. After her masters, she joined the Cupertino school as a teacher.

I passed on her email address to all my classmates, and she must have been flooded with mails. Before I left for India, I was planning to visit my relatives in California, and now I looked forward to meeting her as well.

On the morning of Friday, 24th June, 2005, my friend studying in Detroit called me up. He called me up to deliver the shocking news that Mrs Chandran was no more - killed in a gruesome road accident, along with her mother as well as son.

Post-script: Mrs Chandran's son Vikram has created a blog for people who knew her to post their thoughts. Please do!

India's junk yards?

Every state in the US has a nickname - e.g., Pennsylvania is called the Keystone State, California the Golden State. Likewise some states in India have such names too. Andhra is referred to as the Rice Bowl of India.

And Tamilnadu (my home-state) is called, appropriately, the Land of Temples. In fact, the official emblem of the state is a gopuram, the temple gateway tower. One can find temples of varying size, antiquity, denomination and popularity in every village, town and city. Like any other family in Tamilnadu, most of our family's travels were actually pilgrimages, most of the weddings took place close to an ancient temple, and every festival was marked by a visit to the neighbourhood shrines.

Temples are not merely places of "idol worship," but (especially the ancient ones) have deeper spiritual significance as well. They are also the sites of social gathering of the community - Marriages, musical performances, discourses, etc. And performing the customary 3 pradakshinas around the sprawling temples is as good an exercise as any treadmill workout.

However, as I wrote in one of the articles, my visits to most temple towns generally end up only distressing me. The squalour of the mada streets. The bazaars that mar the tranquility of the shrine. Stampedes during major festivities. The granite majesty lost under layers of garish paint that make me wince. The discrimination between pilgrims ("General darshan," "special darshan," "VIP darshan"). Indiscriminate modifications to the original structure. The walls of the sanctum sanctorum covered by bathroom tiles.

The result being totally ungodly.

However, there are thankfully some exceptions. I have noticed that most of the ASI-maintained temples are in a relatively better condition than the government-owned ones. And of the three temples I visited in Kerala, the Vadakkunnatha temple (Thrissur), the Guruvayur temple and the nearby Mammiyur temple, all were preserved close to their original grandeur, unlike the numerous ones in Tamilnadu.

But such heartening situations are few and far between. Shekhar Gupta is right - temples are indeed India's junk yards.

Post-script:
The Indian Express has a series of articles on India's heritage monuments, most of whom are in a sorry state: Hampi (the capital of the Vijayanagara kingdom), the Konark sun temple, the Qutub Minar, the Elephanta caves, and more. They all paint a distressing picture.

The Upanishadic Commencement Speech

The MIT commencement ceremony, held on June 10, resonated with Sanskrit prayers. A swami then offered an invocation in Sanskrit.

This brought to my mind the Sīkshā chapter of the Taittirīya Upanishad, which contains an address by the teacher as the student departs from the gurukula. It begins thus:

satyam vada (Speak the truth.)
dharmam chara (Follow dharma.)
svādhyāyānmā pramadaḥ (Do not neglect studies.)

And contains the well-known

matr devo bhava (Treat your mother as a god.)
pitr devo bhava (father)
acharya devo bhava (teacher)
atithi devo bhava (guest)

Hooked to the Bookah

"Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, and I suppose that this is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I."

Thus spake Somerset Maugham (in The Book Bag, short story) echoing my own thoughts.

My book reading began with, what else, Amar Chitra Katha, the treasure-house of Indian mythology. I have throughout lived with my grandparents, but they are not the story-telling kind; and these great comics compensated this loss to a considerable measure. My parents would get me a couple of them from the neighbourhood library on their daily walk, and that would account for my enjoyment for the evening.

The Number of Books I Own: Very few. I am a bibliophile all right, but I belong to that sub-class of the specie, called the librari-bibliophile. Most books I read were all borrowed from libraries. I can count on my fingers the books I personally bought. Which may not be surprising, given that I am yet to earn a single rupee. Things may change once I get a job of my own. Which may be soon, if things go well.

Fortunately, I have always had access to decent libraries. There was the Murugan Lending Library (a 10 minute walk from home), the source of my childhood readings. Our school had, not one, but three libraries! One each for Primary, Middle and Secondary Schools. (The latter had in its possession the complete set of the Collected Writings of Gandhi in 15 volumes or something - I am sure it must be the only school library in the whole country that does. Wonder if anybody even touched them.)

The US is verily a book-lover's paradise with its great public library system. The Mountain View Public Library (which I used to haunt) was well-stocked in all departments - fiction, nonfiction, comics, music and videos. Besides just the variety and excellent condition of the books, I loved the entire system - the self-checkout, the email reminders... It (if I may use the expression) rocked.

Needless to talk about the US university libraries. And the inter-library loan. The book which I could not track down in any Madras library, I found at last in the University of Pennsylvania - The Rajaji Story by Rajmohan Gandhi.

Last Book I Bought: Conceptual Blockbusting by James L Adams. (Got it for $1 from a second-hand book vendor at CMU.)

Last Book I Read: The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham (volumes 1 and 2). Maugham's stories are a wonderful study in human emotions. And great for restroom reading! Most stories are of just the right length for one session; and some, two.

Books That Mean a Lot to Me:

Classified by author.

• Rabindranath Tagore: My first Tagore novel was Farewell, My Friend, a romantic novel peppered with wit, and with a beautiful ending. Gora, portrayal of a society in transition, and hence still very relevant in today's India. And who cannot be but touched on reading Cabuliwallah?

• P G Wodehouse: I am, dash it, an avowed Plum fan. Jeeves is well known, but do read Psmith Journalist. Is there anything else? Very good, sir.

• Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird. Atticus is a rishi in his wisdom. A poignant story, seen through a child's eyes.

• James Herriot: Delightful stories set in rural Yorkshire, on men and other animals. Get all of them!

• Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs and Steel (non-fiction). An effort to find out why the human civilisation is as it is.

Books I didn't Complete: Mainly because they were intellectually too demanding to read on working days. Hope to pursue them at leisure.

• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig
• Godel, Escher and Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter.
  
  

A book tag has been doing the rounds on blogs. No-one has passed on the meme to me yet, but I have accepted Yazad Jal's open invitation ("All are welcome") and hence this post.

The custom is for me to tag some bloggers of my own. OK, let's see...

Girish, the ustad
Gocool, Microserf
Ramprasad (will he respond?)

[And, wait, should I mail them about the tag? Or should they come to know on their own? I am new to this game...]

I would like to invite all the readers of this post to do their own versions. Please do. And tell me when you are done!

The Desi Spell

The results of the National Scripps Spelling Bee that took place in Washington are out. The winner (after 19 rounds of competition) is Anurag Kashyap. Tied for the second place are Samir Patel and Aliya Deri.

A test of English spelling, held in a country of native English speakers, is won by students of Indian origin! However, this is hardly a surprise.

Stereotypes really?

The Girl in the Hat wrote:

Is it true, she asked,
That you
Wash your clothes in rivers
Sleep on nails
Climb up ropes...
Levitate
Burn your widows
Alive...

Hmm. Looks like we do.

The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Sometime back, on the urging of my friend PM (an ardent Matrix fan), I watched the first part of the trilogy. At the scene where Morpheus tells Neo, "Free your mind!" and jumps from the top of one building to another, I asked PM, "Have you read Richard Bach's Illusions?"

On becoming a Master

I received my master's degree from Carnegie Mellon today. The Commencement ceremony (as the Convocation is called in the US) was marked by tradition, colour, and meticulous planning. It was wonderful being a part of it!

Some notes on the occasion:

The academic dress worn on the graduation day is derived from the clerical attire of the monks who taught at the medieval European universities. While all graduates wear the gown and the mortarboard (the flat square hat) with tassel (that hangs down from the hat), it is only the masters who wear the hood.

The hood (originally used to cover the head to protect it from cold) is usually left hanging down at the back, and thus resembles a pouch. Since the monks were sworn to poverty, they could not earn their living. So when they went on procession (explained my professor) the laity dropped offerings into the hanging hood.

* * *

Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate and founder of our university, was born in Scotland and was proud of his roots. Carnegie Mellon shares this pride. The checked pattern that make up a Scottish clan's insignia (called a Tartan) is ubiquitous in the campus, lends its name to the university newspaper and makes up the lining of the hood as well.

The other major Scottish symbol is the bagpipe. Like the nadaswaram, this wind instrument occupies the pride of place on all important occasions, including the Commencement. Just as the nadaswaram weaves an atmosphere of sanctity and auspiciousness for the deity that follows, the band of bagpipes (the "Kiltie Band") lends an air of majesty and dignity when leading the procession of university heads and professors.

[And the School of Computer Science diploma award function was inaugarated by a tune from the bagpipe playing robot, McBlare!]

* * *

The Americans are predominantly an outdoor people. On weekends, they love to go hiking, camping in the jungle, biking long distances. Hence their idea of a perfect weather is sun shining brightly, with no showers. However, Nature takes a particular relish in playing spoilsport to their plans: It has been statistically observed that most rain or snow occurs during the weekend. This phenomenon is called Weekend Weather. There is even a joke: "If there is a clear sky after two days of rain, it is probably a Monday."

Thankfully, it was a perfect day for my Commencement, despite it being a Sunday. Probably it is a knack I bring from Madras.

Thy neighbour is a good man

At Carnegie Mellon, there is what is known as the Reasonable Person Principle (RPP). Put simply, it says, "Expect people to act reasonably." Hence students are not burdened with zillions of rules, and in return are expected not to find technical loopholes that violate the clear intent of these guidelines.

So, instead of saying something like:

"The student together with the delegates, officers, agents, servants, and employees of the Department and the Administrative Bureau, shall be, and hereby are, enjoined, during the pendency of this complaint (including any appeals and/or remands) and until entry of final judgment..."

a lot of handbooks (such as the one for the computing facilities) call upon this principle, or often simply say,

"Follow common sense and RPP."

Mostly the RPP is not even explicitly invoked. A sign on a coffee-maker in the Computer Science lounge reads, "Making coffee is not free. Please drop 20 cents in the bowl for every cup you make."

Even outside CMU, a lot of things assume the law-abiding nature and reasonableness of people.

• At the public library in Mountain View (in California, where I stayed before coming to Pittsburgh), people check out ("issue" in Indian terminology) books they want themselves. There is no librarian with a specific duty to issue books and no security guard at the exit to inspect them. Similarly books are not "returned" to a librarian, but simply put into a box. Furthermore, if fine accrues on a book out of late return, members are not barred from borrowing till they pay the dues -- fines are paid voluntarily.
  
  
• In the case of wrongly parked cars, the police simply place a ticket on windshield beneath the wiper. The owner is expected to go to a court on a specified day and pay up the fine.
  
  
• But this really takes the cake, merely because the involved parties were all Indians: I visited the Pittsburgh Venkateswara temple this week with friends and we bought tokens for 2 prasadam packets which we had to exchange at a counter. There was no one at the counter (on which all packets were neatly stacked). When we called out, a person from within a room answered, "Please put the tokens in the box and take the prasadam." We dutifully dropped in the tokens; and two packets were all we took!
  

Another true incident to conclude. A classmate lost her purse, containing college ID and debit cards. Someone had picked it up and tried using the cards (she learnt this later from the bank). On being unable to use it, he put the cards and ID in a cover and placed it on a post-box. It was returned to her by a postman a couple of days later.

I have written a new article

I was today at a Hindustani concert by Padma Talwalkar organised by Spicmacay at the University of Pittsburgh. Seeing the accompanying harmonium unable to keep up with the fluid voice of the singer made me wonder How the Harmonium Came on the Hindustani Stage.

Look forward to your comments!

A new kind of pollution

Everyone of us, at some point in our schooling, would have written an essay on "Pollution." So we are well-educated about the evils of air, water, soil and noise pollution. And wait, even light: In major cities which are lit up brightly even in nights, there is never ever sufficient darkness, causing discomfort to all creatures, large and small.

Let me introduce to you a recent member of this gang, window pollution. How many of us surfing the web have not had useless windows popping up all over the place? Annoying. They are a scourge.

One of the worst perpetrators is... (guess who?) the prestigious Indian daily: the Times of India. Dear Editor, it is time you start showing some basic courtesy to your visitors, instead of throwing noisome pop-ups on their faces.

Thank God It's Friday!

The American likes to celebrate the arrival of the weekend with as much glee as the Indian farmer welcomes the arrival of the monsoon.

Last Friday week, we all gathered (courtesy of the student organisation) to munch french fries with ketchup, sour cream and lemonade. A couple of weeks back we had cake, cookies and soda. Today's fare was fruits, chips and juice.

And it's all gratis: TGIF!

20 bucks for KISS

Long long ago in Europe, when Leonardo Da Vinci's great-grandfather was not yet born and long beards were the raging fashion on the streets of London, walked young William home from his Sunday school on a misty day. Billy, if we may so call him, knew the scriptures to the letter and all numbers unto 90,000 (infinity was unknown then) were his best friends. His intellect was so sharp, listen ye, so sharp that on his approach his teachers in the seminary would whisper in each others' ears, "Oh, here comes the Razor." Which morphed over the course of time to "Ockham's Razor."

Just kidding! William of Ockham, a 14th century English friar, stated that "Of two equivalent theories or explanations, all other things being equal, the simpler one is to be preferred." Seth, a CMU philosophy student has created a site that attempts to explain this principle, called Ockham's Razor, in a friendly manner. To see if it was friendly enough, Seth entreated all brave and sporting denizens to rally forth and try out the site in exchange for a score of dollars. I was game and toiled for 90 minutes and was duly showered with riches.

Ockham's Razor can be shortly put as "The simplest explanation is the best." Or shorter still, "Keep It Simple, Stupid" (KISS). Hence the blog's title.

Got your attention, dintcha?

Virus, License and... RMS

From my rambling reading of various blogs, I always had an impression that open source software, free software, Unix, Linux (sometimes even Mac) users all make up a monolithic camp, united by their common antagonism towards Microsoft. So when I learnt this morning about a seminar on open source licensing, I went to attend just out of curiosity - to know more about the inner workings of the camp.

Before I get into the details of the seminar, let me share with you what a software license is. It is an agreement between the creator and user of the software, generally dealing with copyright. The common "Do you accept the terms?" screen that one sees when installing software is an example of a proprietary license (known as EULA - End User License Agreement). With this hotch-potch introduction, let us get on with the story...

"Infectious" Open Source Software: Spreading Incentives or Promoting Resistance, was the full title. Greg R. Vetter of the University of Houston Law School explained the differences between the Apache (BSD-style) license, the Open Source license and the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL is the oldest of the open/free licenses; it requires that the code be public and royalty-free and that any GPL software derivative must also be released under GPL. It is the latter provision that Vetter referred to as "infectious." If even a small part of the software I am developing is made of GPL code, my entire software (now, don't cry) should be given under GPL too -- The GPL "virus" spreads to non-GPL code. This was all new to me and I was drinking it in pretty happily, along with the caffeine-free coke that came with the free lunch (pizza!).

After all the questions were asked and answered, the audience began to disperse... when a short, bearded gentleman (with a pot-belly to boot) stood up from a corner and said, "Is there no one here who will say something in support of GPL?" [Long silence.] He continued, "My name is Richard Stallman. I wrote the GPL."

(What happened next? Read on here.)

Playing guinea pig

Various CMU departments invite students to participate in experiments to collect data for research. I volunteered to take part in an experiment at the School of Psychology for half-an-hour. And yes, I would be paid $5 to compensate for my time...

I would have to interact with another person for ten minutes, by asking each other questions from a list we were given. Before this started,, Ed Lemay, the researcher, said he would give some fictitious details about me to the other person "to gauge the importance of first impressions." I nodded smiling.

The interaction (with Mae, a psychology junior) consisted of questions like "What will you do after graduating," "what was the most frightening experience of your childhood," etc. that we would alternately ask and answer.

When I was alone after the interaction, Ed said calmly that he had told Mae I was a sensitive person who would easily take offence and feel rejected at the slightest unpleasantness! Then he gave me a questionnaire to fill up about my impressions, such as "Do you think the other person was honest with you?" and "Do you think the other person likes to start a friendship with you?" etc.

I answered the questions as truthfully as I could, with most answers neutral tending to positive. For there isn't much you can infer in a brief regulated conversation with a stranger, who was there mainly for the dough too (why else would anyone waste a wonderful evening?)...

As I handed in the form, Ed informs me nonchalantly that Mae was not another volunteer but an accomplice from the same department. No, she was not told anything "about" me in the beginning either. The aim of the experiment was to see how that kind of information would colour my feelings about the person. Pretty neat, eh?

Anti-Indian put-down

A post on Slashdot, lately very hostile to India because of the outsourcing of jobs, referred to Srinivasa Ramanujan as "the Indian math guy." Hmm...

Books from Google

Google returns link to scanned copies of books. I googled "P G Wodehouse" & "R K Narayan," and found Introducing Jeeves & Financial Expert respectively.

While this is no match for the sheer volume of Project Gutenberg, it gives the feel of reading from paper, since we get scanned images.

"One dollar! Pie the Professor! One Dollar!"

American universities celebrate today as π Day. (Guess why?) The CMU Math Club organised (what seemed to me a trifle barbaric) event called "Pie the Professor," with an entry fee of $1. Curious why I called it barbaric? Hint: Pie is used here as a verb. Still don't get it? Watch the video! (1.92MB)

(Click on the thumb-nail picture to view the video.)

Enna, soundu vidare?

Madras Tamil, that lingo of auto drivers and college students of the south Indian metropolis, has been sighted in Wikipedia! Tuckeraa keedhu ma...

Thanks, PM for the link.