It's not me ! It's We

There's been quite a turbulence in the political scenario of the nation these days ! It's truly said the power corrupts people may it be anyone ( of course there may be few exceptions). In the recently held Goven meeting , the president of a national political party Mr.RajyaSingh , crowned Mr.Inder to be the party's chief for the electoion campaign , which however didn't go well with the party's top brass Mr.Adviceani , since his advice was not taken seriously and apparently he went lal ( red) with anger.

What followed, was a political melodrama, where Mr.Adviceani resigns and his resignation is rejected and finally reconciled! However , I , wish Mr. Inder had read this joke before he could accept Mr.Rajyasingh declaring Mr.Inder as the chief of the election campaign committee.

A farmer  rears  25 young hens and one old cock 

As he feels that the old cock could no longer handle his job efficiently, the farmer bought one young cock from the market 

Old cock to Young cock 

Old cock: Welcome to join me, we will work together towards productivity...

Young cock: What do you mean? As far as I know, you are old & should be retired.

Old cock : Young boy, there are 25 hens here, can't I help you with some?

Young cock: No!! Not even one, all of them will be mine.

Old cock: In this case, I shall challenge you to a competition & if I win you shall allow me to have one hen & if I lose you will have

all.

Young cock:  OKKK..

What kind of competition?

Old cock: 50 meters run. From here to that tree. But due to my age, I hope you allow me to start off the first 10 meters.

Young cock: No problem ! We will compete tomorrow morning.

In the morning the Young cock allows the Old cock to start off 

 & when the Old cock crosses the 10 meters mark the Young cock chases him with all his might.

Soon enough, he was behind the Old cock's back in a matter of seconds.

Suddenly..."BANG" !!!

Before he could overtake the old cock, he was shot dead by the farmer ..

who cursed,

Farmer: "Hell"

This is the 5th GAY cock I've bought this week." ??

Moral of the story - Respect your seniors !

     OK back from the joke now. It's not about Me , Me , Me in politics ( am talking about good politicians , the endangered species )  , it's all about We ! It's about the ideals of the party as a whole. 

       The whole point is not about how good your party's manifesto is , it is all about how many of those are converted to policies and are implemented.  I might be a little over ambitious here , but let me take that liberty here. 

       In a democracy like ours , converting the manifesto into policy is very very difficult ( given the present political and economic conditions) , but that doesn't stop anyone from bringing the reforms. Oh gosh , I guess am deviating from the topic. 

      Let's come back to the track. So this is what's  gonna happen when you try to run ahead of everyone , not  only seniors for that matter , whether it's a team or a party you need understand the team dynamics. NO matter one may be great in one area but when it comes to a team unless you are not in sync with the dynamics , the whole team is gonna fail.

Note: This article expresses the views , of the author and has no intention to disrespect any leader / party or comment on the individuals orientation towards gender.

Who forked you ?

         Chicken first or the egg first ? A very famous question (guys you remember we asking this to each other ?) How far can one go back into the history and find out the source of our existence? 6 billion people on the face of the earth are just surviving each day in their own ways. Seldom does anyone would care for the other.  I find it apt  to quote from The Shawshank Redemption “ get busy living or get busy dying”.  If it’s true that big bang has ever happened then , we all must be connected , YES I mean it.  So let me talk about this from the perspective of a fork() system call in UNIX  (OS).

      Whenever you want to create a process , you need to fork a process. init , in UNIX is mother of all processes. This process forks itself to create all other processes. Though the address space if the child process is different from the parent process they are connected to each other from the perspective of the init.

     Similarly we all are connected to each other though we may be staying in different address space(different geographical locations analogous to the different addresses on the physical memory). We all , have been forked by the one supreme soul , just as the parent and the child processes share the code / text segment , we too share the same code segment , the code of ethics , the code of humanity. We have the copy of the stack , and data segment too , we have the same soul as that , we have the same consciousness

  

As is the human body, so is the cosmic body

As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.

As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.

As is the atom, so is the universe.

-    The Upanishads.

To be Continued ...

Bharat Ratna

Early last week , I saw a news report that states that Abhinav Bindra( remember Beijing Olympics?) has been recommended for Bharat Ratna. Bharat Ratna (Jewel of India)  is the Republic of India's highest civilian award, for performance of highest order in any field of human endeavour. A (maiden) Gold Medal in the Olympics is undoubtedly a very great achievement, as he had to compete with as many as 51 shooters from across many countries. 

Also the criteria for conferring the award has been amended , and now everyone whose performance is of highest order in any human endeavour is eligible.  If by winning gold medal once in lifetime , one becomes eligible (i doubt this) or gets recommended (note this) for a Bharat Ratna then , why is no one recommending Viswanathan Anand who has been world champion many times in chess? Even this feat is unparalleled.

There are many people who say few cricketers deserves Bharat Ratna.  Just take a look at how many countries participate in cricket ? 8 or 9 or 10 you can literally count on your fingers!

What I feel is that Bharat Ratna should be given to only those personalities whose contribution to nation matters a lot. Whose contribution is towards the development of the nation. When someone scores a huge score or wins a cup what happens ? How is each individual of the nation benefitted from that? Can someone come and say only because someone scored so much in a match or someone got a gold medal our country is recognized ? I bet no one would come up to say that. I don’t mean any disrespect to the persons whose name has been mentioned or belittle their achievements , but just think about this; don’t you think Khel Ratna is sufficient for the sporting legends? 

There are many other people who deserve this prestigious award. No wonder if someone recommends movie stars for Bharat Ratna in the coming years. What I want to point out here is , irrespective of their profession if someone has really contributed for the development of the nation , they surely deserve the Bharat Ratna.  Don’t you think you are comparing the people with a gold medal and few thousand runs with stalwarts like Dr. Kalam, Sir M. Visvesvaraya, Dr.  S. Radhakrishnan etc.. ? 

Ping Yourself !

    I had ordered a black t-shirt couple of months with this statement “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1” printed on it , thinking that it looks cool and until I realized that it’s not just cool , its profound.  It actually hints at the universal truth. Read on to know why...

                    

I bet everyone might have seen this statement almost everywhere from the geeks blog page to the t-shirt. As usual before I start off with why I intend to write something on this , let me tell you what is 127.0.0.1.

127.0.0.1 is the loopback Internet protocol (IP) address also referred to as the “localhost.” The address is used to establish an IP connection to the same machine or computer being used by the end-user. The loopback construct gives a computer or device capable of networking the capability to validate or establish the IP stack on the machine. So in a way , this statement means , pointing to oneself (computer in this case).

We all try to explore so many things in this Universe form the smallest of the things like atoms to the biggest of the things like galaxies and black hole and what not? We ( read as mankind ) are so much interested to know if water is present on mars (if so thank GOD these guys will somehow fetch it and i guess we won't have any drought issue unless some politicians fight on how much water is needed to supply)?  Or may be how does our universe look like ? is it flat , round ,spherical , or flat at top ?  Or how much oxygen is there on this planet “xyz”?

How many of us do really think about exploring ourselves ? How much one really knows about oneself? Who are you ? How much you mean to this universe?  Or the true nature of yourselves ?

                                                   

I would say that this statement “ There’s no place like 127.0.0.1” is very profound in a way that, it hints at self-realization. We always seek happiness in all the worldly things, some in Work , some in love , trekking , writing , singing ,dancing and the list goes on.. Above all , at some point of time in life we all feel to confide ourselves in someone whom we love , viz. mother , father ,brother , sister ,friend, girl / boy friend, wife , husband , son , daughter etc. One may feel that he / she finds solace in him / her. But how about the greatest creation of God (or say nature? ) ? YOU ! oh I mean ME ! myselves!

    Even Yajur Veda says “ yatha pinde tatha brahmande” - “so are you , as is the universe” , man is really the epitome of this universe.  We all go to the farthest place on the face of the earth to find out the truth. We all .more often than not look outside for happiness, look outside for help (spiritual ), not realizing that all this exists in ourselves.

    Also most importantly , this statement hints at the fundamental nature of the universe , that is “ singularity ”.  Just as the vedas describe -

As is the human body, so is the cosmic body

As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.

As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.

As is the atom, so is the universe.   

 

-    The Upanishads.

    So , now tell me are we any different from the very universe we exist in?

Whosoever has said it ,  has said it damn right ! “ There’s no place like 127.0.0.1 ”

                                                    PEACE !

The NFA called Life !!

By the way this new TataSky add caught my attention. While two friends having a conversation a guy asks his friend if its ok to take his sister out for dinner. To his astonishment the gals brother agrees. Poonchke to dekho poonchne main kya jaata hain? You never know what's gonna happen ! But if one would carefully analyze there are two scenarios : one , that the girls' brother would say yes ; second , that moment would have been the end of friendship and they would have fought.

So whats so special about this ad. Superficially this may seem to be any other event whose probability of occurrance would be very low.Its not the event as a whole that caught my attention, but for the tagline poonche main kya jaata hain? This emphasizes on the uncertainity in life. Many people lose many opportunities just because they didnt ask for that! We always weigh our actions on this very uncertainity. You never know whether this is gonna happen or that is gonna happen. But which one ? No one knows. 

During a leisure I got a little nostalgic and went back to the time when I was studying finite atutomata theory. I reiterated through the concept of NFA (Nondeterministic Finite Automata). Let me tell you in the simplest terms what automata is. Attomata is stydy of abstract objects. Lets say a switch. A switch can be any switch very abstract. But the finite thing that we know of switch is that either it can be on or off. This on and off are the states of this automata.

Automata can be wither deterministic finite automata i.e You know the action for a particular input. Eg If switch is on and if you press it it can go only to off state and vice versa. The other category is non-deterministic finite automata (NFA). In case of an NFA you never know to what state the automata can go on a particular input / action. 

                          

Life is very similar to an NFA , nondeterministic yet finite. Once can analyse this at a macro level level of the materialistic life. Materialistic life starts at birth and ends at death of this physical body. One thinks if I do this I can be that , I can go there , I can reach there and blah blah blah ... Life always accepts those actions that lead to the final state (just as a NFA) of the materialistic life (Death).No matter which peak a man's success scales or how low a man's moral can go, or no matter what a man can achieve or what he has as his prized possession, in the end when he says I wish I would .... have / haven't done that, it really signifies something. This something is infact very significant for a man thinks that the decisions/ actions which he wished he would have done or not; would change the course of his life.

Life (materialistic one ) is highly non-deterministic , yet finite , starts with birth and ends with death and that's precisely the final state of this non-deterministic finite automata called life. However , from the spiritual perspective , it may not be the final state but may I know how many of us think beyond death ?  

                                                 To Be Continued...

 

That guy called God !

I see here and I see there,

I can't find him anywhere.

I see here and I see there,

I don't think he's anywhere.

One says he is himself,

The other says he is the elf.

One say he ain't there,

The other says he's everywhere.

One says even a form he sans,

The other, everywhere he spans,

One says he's just a feel,

Of life's ship , he's the keel.

One says he's everything,

The other, he's nothing.

I feel I can't jot down anymore about this. I think a lot of Ink has been spilled and lot of gigabytes or perhaps terabytes has been used up in defining God ! Of course I am no authority to say something conclusive about God (of course am adding few more kilobytes  perhaps megabytes to it) but am just trying to present my thoughts (as with anyone else) about it here. 

Even before I can enter this question let me digress. Have you wondered how do you what is called what? What enables you to understand and recognize things in this (materialistic) world? It's language ! One can never underestimate the power of language. No language is great or small. There is no point in fighting over the heritage associated with the language , that's what I feel. Language and it's literature and the heritage associated with it is highly debatable and cannot abate , so let's not get any deeper into this for now. 

The very first words that a human being learns, is in a language that has no name , no documentation available and only understood by the mother. E.g especially the words like aabu , jijji for water etc. there is no name for this language , it's not documented  , just it is passed on generations to generations by mothers.Everything that we learn and understand is backed by a language. From Sanskrit to French to English to Chinese etc. Even computers use a language for communications 0's and 1's or signals. That is the power and importance of language. What is important here is, not the name of language or word or language itself , it is to know the fact that rational abilities helps us understand the world. 

Let's come back to the track ! So many people from the greats like Sri Shankaracharya to Ramakrishna Paramahamsa ,to Swami Vivekananda to Sri Ramana Maharshi. Everyone has tried to explain what is God or Who is God. This indeed is very great service to mankind , because they have tried to explain the very force behind every event happening in the universe ; right from it's inception to all the events that are happening as of my writing and which will keep happening.

Knowing God or seeing God is an experience in itself , rather a life changing experience , which not only makes you feel powerful but also a feel of being cleansed. It's very difficult to accept the fact that we all have a highly materialistic approach towards life so much so that we even tend to have a rational approach and then we add some logic to the very existence of the entity , that we call God , for the lack of any other word. 

Though all these greats have explained about God , yet no one understands completely or precisely. Why? Not because these greats have not explained clearly, or not because they haven't seen God or they have never known God.To explain about such a divine experience of having seen the God, to a mere normal human being , they cant find the words.Because it gives a rational and logical essence to their explanation  To understand God , what one needs is not rational or a genius mind ,it's the cognitive abilities that is required. It helps us perceive rather than just see things. It helps us distinguish the materialistic world and the spiritual world rather than understand.

THE HIGH FIVE !!

       Imagine you gotta kill someone , What would you do ? What weapon would you be using ? Knife , an Iron Rod , Hockey Stick etc etc .. . Now what if you  gotta kill a group of people ? May be some guns ? (Just can't go shooting people with like Max Payne ). Now imagine you gotta kill the whole country ! What would you do ? 

From time immemorial right from Mahabharata to the one in Afghanistan people have been fighting for power. So many battles have been fought , so many people have been killed. Although it took a while, people understood that nothing can be gained that way.Greed is the driving force behind all these ; greed of Duryodhana to the greed of wealth that lead to war of Constantinople to the greed of the nations that colonized others , it's always been greed.

With the recent advances in technology and other industries like manufacturing and telecom and name it whatever you want and the changes in the economic policies of almost nations , the interdependence of one nation over the other has increased. No one nation can say to hell with you to other unless they are dang sure that they are self sufficient though this being a distant dream to any country today.All this is true but the greed still exists , it has increased evermore. 

Given the prevailing geo-political and the economic conditions, the best way to bring down a nation no matter how big or small is to target its economy. Trust me economy today is as good as a religion (see my previous post on this). Once you destroy this religion (read as economy) , that's it !

Just imagine you badly need some money so that you can come out of the mess and when the guy who you think can bail you out gives you money on a condition that you gotta spend the money just as the guy says then what is the use of such a loan or bailout? 

This is what the IMF and WB precisely doing with the countries that have recently joined the Industrial revolution or got freedom recently. How long do they need to dance to the tunes of the so called GOD (read as IMF / WB) ? Enough is enough and thats what the BRIC now BRICS has though and come up with an agenda. BRICS (Brazil , Russia , India , China , Southafrica) though have almost nothing in common at all expect from having a sense of being ostracized from the International economic framework. This agenda is the establishment of a New Development Bank.

The funds of these 5 countries makeup for almost 25% of world's GDP! To establish such a Bank is surely an Herculean task given their problems in dealing with it's own group members.China shares territorial borders with India and Russia. We all know that in the recent past they have been engaged in a war also! Also China is opposing India's nuclear plans of late. Recently there has been a trade gap between China and India.  Russia has its own internals problems in dealing with the US friendly neighbors. On the other hand Brazil is very vigilant when its comes to Argentina. Despite these unfavorable circumstances , these nations have come together for a common goal, the development of the developing economies !

       However there are few important questions for which they need to find the answers. Here are a few of them:

1. Can they come out of US hegemony ?

2. Are they sure that this new Bank is not going to repeat what IMF and WB did?

3. How can they ensure that the regional politics and regional issues not going to impact on the function of the Bank?

4. You think this is going to nail the GOD's coffin?

5. How efficiently they can challenge the Western Liberal Democracies (so called) ?

Despite all these BRICS indeed is a force that is going to drive the developing economies to excel and come out of the mess.

Disclaimer : The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely the view of the author. The author doesn't intend to accuse any financial institution  or nation. Also the author does not hurt the religious or regional sentiments of the people of any geographical region.