Nice way to start the New Year

Ganesha bedecked with Coins
Originally uploaded by shastrix.

Today's ఉగాది, the Telugu New Year, also celebrated as Yugadi in Karnataka and Gudi Padwa in Maharashtra.

Had been to Swananda where I found that He's been shifted to a very charming location while a new temple is built in the earlier location.

On the way back, generally stop off at this sweet little MahaShakti Ganesha temple.

Was quite zapped by all the coins on Him! That's the best thing about Ganesha. He's one cool customer whatever situation you put Him in. A good lesson on how to live Life.

108 in the Sky with Diamonds

Was checking out some news on the Solar Eclipse today.

A weird thing about solar eclipses is that the Moon covers the Sun more or less exactly during a total solar eclipse. A little bit of math answers this:

The ratio of the Distance from the Earth to the Sun (149,600,000 km) / Diameter of the Sun (1,392,000 km) approx. equals the ratio of the Distance from the Earth to the Moon (384,400 km) / Diameter of the Moon (3,476 km).

Incidentally, the first ratio is ~108, which might explain its usage in religious chants and you start wondering about the incredible design of the Earth and the Solar System.

An infinitesimal speck in the universe

Got a profound one from SLN today:

My Name
~By Mark Strand

One night when the lawn was a golden green and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered what I would become—and where I would find myself—and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard my name as if for the first time, heard it the way one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off as though it belonged not to me but to the silence from which it had come and to which it would go.

Reminded me of one of my favorite quotes:

He was one of those who had the wilderness for a pillow and called a star his brother.
—Dag Hammarskjöld

and, of course ;-), the ad for the Chevy Tahoe:

You are an infinitesimal speck in the universe. Be an infinitesimal speck with more power.

The soxman cometh

The soxman cometh
Originally uploaded by shastrix.

Last evening, I chucked the socks in the bathroom and this is how it ended up.

Spooked me no end.

Déjà vu

Was checking out the links on the rave-party shooter, when I read that the guy's name was Aaron. Due to some reason, that reminded me of Caleb and Aaron from East of Eden.

And, boy, was I spooked when I discovered that Aaron has an identical twin brother called Kane!

Charge of the Leopard

Was unwinding last morning with that wonderful Africa (better than photos) by Kim Donaldson when I saw this amusing (in retrospect, of course) incident.

Walk the High Beam

Walk the High Beam
Originally uploaded by shastrix.

I love specialists. Here're some dudes working on Rohan "No Neighbors" Vasantha in Marathahalli.

Also reminds me of some gritty stuff from In Dubious Battle by Steinbeck:

The old man's tone was chilled with contempt. "I'm top-faller. Listen, punk, if you never been in the woods, that don't mean anything to you. Damn few top-fallers ever get to be my age. I've had punks like you damn near die of heart failure just watchin' me work; and here I'm climbing a lousy apple tree. Me take charity! I done work in my life that took guts. I been ninety foot up a pole and had the butt split and snap my safety-belt. I worked with guys that got swatted to pulp with a limb. Me take charity! They'd say: "Dan, come get your soup", and I'd sop my bread in my soup and suck the soup out of it. By Christ! I'd jump out of an apple tree and break my neck before I'd take charity. I'm a top-faller."

They trudged along between the trees. Jim took off his hat and carried it in his hand. "You didn't get anything out of it", he said. "They just kicked you out when you got too old."

Dan's big hand found Jim's arm just above the elbow, and crushed it until it hurt. "I got things out of it while I was at it", he said. "I'd go up a pole, and I'd know that the boss and the owner of the timber and the president of the company didn't have the guts to do what I was doing. It was me. I'd look down on ever'thing from up there. And ever'thing looked small, and the men were little, but I was up there. I was my own size. I got things out of it, all right."

Untrammeled Trauma in a Tram

While hunting for a Dorothy Parker quote, ran into this with a really amusing one by Rodney Dangerfield:

If it weren't for pickpockets I'd have no sex life at all

That reminded me of something from the Vizag days.

There was this guy (KS) in our colony (aptly called Sea Sands, as it was overlooking the sea). He used to be crazy about David Gower and Gary Gilmour. Any negative comment about them would result in serious manhandling.

A kid called Shakespeare (who was the son of the AU professor in English) once made the mistake of criticizing Gary Gilmour, when KS pounced on him and, pointing to a freshly-laid heap of buffalo dung, forced the kid to step into it with the warning: Either that or the hiding of his life.

Anyway, KS told us a very amusing thing.

When he went for a while to Indian Statistical Institute at Kolkata, he was traveling in a local tram when the following happened:

One of his fellow passengers, hanging on in the office crowd, suddenly let out the yelp of his life. On investigation, it was revealed that a pickpocket had sliced through his cojones, instead of through his pockets.

Why Sales Guys are Our Souls

The other day, at the Second Anniversary Celebrations, I sort of got cornered by three sales types who started shooting off:

• "We give the tech guys work to do"
• "We sell what the tech guys can create"
• "What will the tech guys do without us?"
• yada, yada
  

I kept my peace, but was later reminded of this: Since the soul is not seen in the body, each part was thinking that it was it.

The brain said: Heck, I am the CEO and head honcho. Without me, nothing works. So, I am it.

The heart said: Nyet, I am the HR and, without my pumping fresh blood to various parts of the organism, nothing happens.

The stomach said: Bollox, without my massaging the "cud", nothing moves. Digesto, ergo sum.

The pancreas said: Nope, despite what Dorothy Parker said, I am the CFO, who ensures that the sugar level is maintained at a constant level in the system.

Blah, blah.

The @sshole tried to "butt" in, but no one was interested in listening to it. So it shut up. Needless to say, there was a big stink and the others had to concede that it was indeed the soul and referred to it as the R Soul from then on, R for rear.

So, the next time you hear BDM types shooting off, relax. Everyone has a role to play in the system.

The perils of non-conformity

Rahul Bose has also become a pro' by doing the ads for Xylys. I was quite amused by this line from one of the articles regarding the launch:

Taking a pot-shot at other Indian celebrities who have been endorsing European watches, Rahul said: "Xylys proves that Indian watches can be good looking too. Earlier we had good only looking brand ambassadors!"

Thankfully, he's selling the watch (nice-looking, I must say) as a non-conformist with the line:

Compromise is Death

The only issue is, as Bill Vaughn says:

If there is anything the nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it's another nonconformist who doesn't conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.

Of ants, aphids, and dragonflies

Surface tension can be fun as Feynman writes so amusingly in his Surely...:

I also had a little hand microscope. It was a toy microscope, and I pulled the magnification piece out of it, and would hold it in my hand like a magnifying glass, even though it was a microscope of forty or fifty power. With care you could hold the focus. So I could go around and look at things right out in the street.

When I was in graduate school at Princeton, I once took it out of my pocket to look at some ants that were crawling around on some ivy. I had to exclaim out loud, I was so excited. What I saw was an ant and an aphid, which ants take care of—they carry them from plant to plant if the plant they're on is dying. In return the ants get partially digested aphid juice, called "honeydew". I knew that; my father had told me about it, but I had never seen it.

So here was this aphid and sure enough, an ant came along, and patted it with its feet—all around the aphid, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat. This was terribly exciting! Then the juice came out of the back of the aphid. And because it was magnified, it looked like a big, beautiful, glistening ball, like a balloon, because of the surface tension. Because the microscope wasn't very good, the drop was colored a little bit from chromatic aberration in the lens—it was a gorgeous thing!

The ant took this ball in its two front feet, lifted it off the aphid, and held it. The world is so different at that scale that you can pick up water and hold it! The ants probably have a fatty or greasy material on their legs that doesn't break the surface tension of the water when they hold it up. Then the ant broke the surface of the drop with its mouth, and the surface tension collapsed the drop right into his gut. It was very interesting to see this whole thing happen!

Surface tension can also be a killer as a juvenile dragonfly (jDF) found out in our Pond117 last afternoon. It got its wings wet, and was struggling to get out. I have the greatest admiration for dragonflies as they remind me of a little bit of the age of the Old Mother. They have been around for the last 70 million years and still going strong. They are only one of two insects that can't fold their wings (the other is the hawk moth), but that has not stopped them from being the lords of the air.

So I dipped my foot in the water and let the jDF clamber on to the big toe, which I then rested on the grass. The jDF, suddenly energized by its newly-found freedom, broke off into a chopper-like maneuver towards my head, buzzed a noisy Thank You into my ear, and flew off.

MaarsIndia Turns Two

MaarsIndia Turns Two
Originally uploaded by shastrix.

MaarsIndia, where I work, turned two last Friday (17.MAR).

This was the celebration cake with the Second Anniversary Celebrations (SAC) banner in the background.

Loved the rich mellow light that was provided by the New Shanthi Sagar guys. Tried shooting the photos with the Flash OFF, but that blurred some of them as the shutter was kept open longer. Unfortunately, the few shots that I took with the Flash ON had no character whatsoever :-(

Guess Stanley Kubrick would have done justice to it. If you had seen Barry Lyndon and the pure magic that the right camera lens can create, you'd know what I am talking about :-)

Mohan at the SAC
Originally uploaded by shastrix.

Anyway, Mohan was very happy with the enthusiasm that the SAC created in candidates and customers. Have been working with him since mid-OCT.2004 and have learned some interesting things as he practices them much.

You got to spend money to make money

Most Indians are quite chary about doing this. But not Mohan. Most of the time, he would be deep in conversation with candidates. Calls to the US would last for a minimum of 20 minutes, giving two hoots to the bill.

His pet funda is that if your profit margin is more than 25%, you are cutting corners ;-)

This was very much evident, when in late 2004, staring down the barrel, he still went ahead and hired me for doing the tech bit at MI.

Rotate the strike

Mohan once gave me the interesting analogy of rotating the strike in cricket. In cricket, this puts more runs on the board. In business, it puts more on the bottom-line. It also lets the striker catch his breath and creates a sense of worth for all participants. As Ray Kroc said:

None of us is as good as all of us

A feeling of abundance

Dr. Wayne Dyer once pointed out:

A feeling of abundance is not something you acquire, it's something you tune into

Certainly, this is the most valuable thing about Mohan. The cash flow might be creating a crunch in doing business, but that's not going to stop him from doing the best possible thing in the circumstances. For instance, the SAC party had to be organized just the right way. The fact that MI's completing just two years had no bearing on the venue chosen.

He's already talking of hosting the Third Anniversary Celebrations at The Leela :-)

South Side Story

While driving back home yesterday (Holi), I was wondering why the North Indians celebrate the arrival of spring one day after the Full Moon (15.MAR.2006), while down South we celebrate it as ఉగాది the day after the New Moon (30.MAR.2006).

This reminded me of an interesting snippet from the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. When Ravana was hustling Sita in captivity, she says:

Ravana, you are the full moon while my Ramachandra is the moon of the second day (of the waxing period).

Ravana did not get the implication of this (litotes?) gem and so was very happy. What Sita meant, of course, was that Ravana had reached his zenith and was on the way down, while Lord Ram could only get brighter day by day.

Guess that's what's happening on the biz front in India as well. Someone was telling me the other day that if South India were to be treated as a separate country, its GDP would be so much more.

South India also adds up to 37, one of the great #s in numerology, boasting stalwarts such as:

• Michael Caine
• Michael Dell
• Sunil Gavaskar

in its ranks.

iPods of March

Heard some awesome news: All 14,000 employees of Cognizant have been given a Video 30GB iPod on it cracking the USD 1 billion barrier.

Man, now that's some celeb.

We were wondering how much that would set them back by. My take was USD 140 per piece, rounding it off to a total of USD 2 million. What's yours? This Froogle link might give a range.

I'ds of March

Just the day for this one by Talitha Botsford:

I'd like the wind to sweep a snowless path,
I'd like the rain to soothe the winter's wrath,
I'd like the sun to warm the barren earth,
I'd like spring to have an early birth

Hypothecated to God?

Saw a weird message on the back of an Indica City Taxi, the ones that run amok on our streets.

The "hypothicated" sort of killed me. Too bad I didn't have my DigiCam with me.

Writely: VSS on the Net?

Man, had a great piece of luck today. Google took over Writely and I had an account already, thanks to this article.

Didn't pay much attention to this tool earlier, but the more one explores it, the more amazing it appears to be.

All this while, had been merging all my various to-do lists in a single WiP file and it was a pain. Also, since I don't like using laptops, had to remember to cart this file home on my JetFlash.

Writely spares me all these blushes; quickly created files under various categories. Found this along the way:

• It's ideal for a keyboard guy like me :-)
  
• All the standard hot-keys (Ctrl+S, Ctrl+K, etc.) work as expected. While some hot-keys are trapped by Firefox itself, only Ctrl+Shift+L (to start a bulleted list) doesn't seem to be working.

The best part, of course, is that files can be edited by more than one person at a time, with the author having the right to accept/reject revisions done by other collaborators.

PS: Incidentally, stopped using WinWord in 1997, when I started using FrontPage 9x in conjunction with VSS. With this, hope that one doesn't have to see the bloated face of WinWord ever!

The Full Monty

I am getting so many sensible-sounding VerWords that I thought a new blog was in order. Check out VerWord Watch.

The amusing thing was the VerWord that was presented for creating this blog itself. It appeared quite like the phrase that the Chambers Dictionary defines as:

Ask someone to go away

Predilexions of a Numerologist

Had blocked Predilexions of a Numerologist a long time back, but got around to posting Setting a Cat among the Doves only today.

Wadi Rum

Was cleansing some data in our database when I ran into an unusual address: Wadi Kabir, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman.

That reminded me of Wadi Rum in Lawrence of Arabia and the absolutely rousing score by Maurice Jarre when Anthony "Auda Abu Tayi" Quinn invites the others to his "humble" abode.

The discussion that night between Lawrence and Abu Tayi is one of the finest I have seen:

Auda abu Tayi: I am Auda abu Tayi! Does Auda serve?
Howeitat tribesmen: NO!
Auda abu Tayi: Does Auda abu Tayi serve?
Howeitat tribesmen: NO!
Auda abu Tayi: [to Lawrence] I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because *I* am a river to my people!

---

T.E. Lawrence: My friends, we have been foolish. Auda will not come to Aqaba. Not for money...
Auda abu Tayi: No.
T.E. Lawrence: ...for Feisal...
Auda abu Tayi: No!
T.E. Lawrence: ...nor to drive away the Turks. He will come... because it is his pleasure.
[pause]
Auda abu Tayi: Thy mother mated with a scorpion.

Before the shooting, believe that AQ was checking out some Bedouin robes when David Lean spotted him and said: "Screw Anthony Quinn; let's use this guy for Auda Abu Tayi"!

Sri Sri takes darshan of Swami

The Prashanti Diary (20.JAN-18.FEB of 2006) has an interesting photo of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar coming for a darshan of Swami. The article says:

As most of you know the Art of Living Foundation was celebrating their silver jubilee in the Garden City on February 17th, 18th and the 19th. Swami gave an audience to Sri Sri Sri Ravishankar later in the interview room.

Some unusual physical traits of Sri Ramakrishna

Do you notice anything unusual about this photo of Shyam Saran in Saturday's ToI? I was zapped by the length of his hand. When laid against the body, it might as well reach the knee.

That was one of the unusual physical traits of Sri Ramakrishna, his extraordinarily long hands. My Dad is fond of saying that such a person is called an Ajanubahu.

Another unusual thing were his ears that were so far below the line of the eyes, as can be seen in this painting by Dvorak:

The mind is a hindrance

Met Venky after a long time. It's fun being with him and you can see the effect of Art of Living on a person when you meet him. We had the following conversation, with Rajan around:

SS: Might interest you that Sri Sri Ravi Shankar = Art of Living = 41, in numerology.
Venky: Is that so? What about Palm Meadows?
SS: That adds up to 46, the number that bucks the trend and comes up with something marvelous. Hasn't Palm Meadows done that to the housing scene in Bangalore? In fact, I bet my money on this (numerology factoid) when I paid my first 100K to Adarsh Developers in 1999, on Rajan's birthday.
Rajan: (quite flabbergasted) You remember that also?
SS: That's nothing, boss, really. Anyway, as they say, happiness is good health and a bad memory.
Venky: Exactly; actually, one doesn't need the mind to live in this world. It actually comes in the way.

I was quite intrigued by that last statement of Venky and was "muleing" it over while wrapping up some work in the evening. I opened a kitchen drawer and noticed that the knife was upright! Not this way or the other, but upright, with the serrated edge ready to cut an unsuspecting finger.

Of course, that was the Upanishad quote at the start of Maugham's liberating The Razor's Edge:

The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over;
Thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard

Sri Ramakrishna goes further:

When one merges one’s Buddhi in Bodha (Consciousness),
then one attains the knowledge of Brahman.

Jiddu is quite categorical about it in his stunning speech at the Dissolution of the Star:

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organise it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallised; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

This is what everyone throughout the world is attempting to do. Truth is narrowed down and made a plaything for those who are weak, for those who are only momentarily discontented. Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountain-top to the valley….

The tougher thing appears to be merging the mind in buddhi :-)

But I was very soothed to read the following by Eckhart Tolle in an interview:

When I'm with people, I'm a spiritual teacher. That's the function, but it's not my identity. The moment I'm alone, my deepest joy is to be nobody, to relinquish the function of a teacher. It's a temporary function. Let's say I'm seeing a group of people. The moment they leave me, I'm no longer a spiritual teacher. There's no longer any sense of external identity. I simply go into the stillness more deeply. The place that I love most is the stillness. It's not that the stillness is lost when I talk or when I teach because the words arise out of the stillness. But when people leave me, there is only the stillness left. And I love that so much.

Snafus Galore

Started off a new blog (Snafus Galore) with Bengali Pallet.

Who's Chewing Whom?*

Last evening, I forgot to save the save the chewing gum wrapper and when the time came to slam-dunk it, it wouldn't let go of my hand and was soon all over.

Had to run it under water to wash it off, but it reminded me of that really funny story by Steinbeck. A little-known gem called The Affair at 7 Rue de M—, in which Steinbeck writes:

...when to my astonishment and chagrin I heard the unmistakable soft plopping sound of a bursting balloon of bubble gum. I looked sternly at my offspring and saw him chewing away. His cheeks were colored with embarrassment and the muscles of his jaws stood rigidly out.

"You know the rule", I said coldly.

To my amazement tears came into his eyes and while his jaws continued to masticate hugely, his blubbery voice forced its way past the huge lump of bubble gum in his mouth.

"I didn't do it", he cried.

"What do you mean, you didn't do it?" I demanded in a rage. "I distinctly heard and now I distinctly see."

"Oh sir!" he moaned, "I really didn't. I'm not chewing it, sir. It's chewing me."

The best part of that recollection was that I got the second wind at the end of a long tiring day.

* Any comments on the title, Suds?

The Texan and the Vixen

Was quite amused by the photos* on the front page of ToI today. Both of them have to do with the art of kissing ass...nicely.

* Snaffled from the e-paper.