was talking about that thing of life

with bro ...why are the most unattainable things the most coveted ?

memories

Nima: Who was she ?

Yeshe: ......Some memories are like bubbles... better leave them untouched.

Random day dreams...

"So you look familiar ...have we met earlier ?"

Imaginary answer: "No we haven't met. Not in the past. But may be you don't know me from the past... you know me from the future. Maybe we would meet again and again in a way that would make this familiarity of today justifiable...maybe we would fall in love - the real eternal kind...
.. Or maybe we would never meet in the future and instead spend random moments of our lives wondering why we found ourselves familiar today or ...again...
...maybe we have never met in the past and we will never meet in the future and no thought of eachother will ever cross our mind and then that would make this moment of our interaction so potent that it would require contemplation of all our past and future lives.........hmmmm.....or maybe we are not meeting even now...and it is just my dream..."


Real answer: "No"




-Arati

AD giri

Quote by one of my friends (who has subscribed to this blog):
"I dont think a single person joined WWI because they dreamed of one day
becoming an AD, or that they would get one day get to stick thermocol
balls on Shreyas Talpade."

To Yeshe

Yeshe when everything will be gone, what is it that you will hold on to?

Memories

Cocktails, Fast cars, High heels.
Orange cone, White softy ...

Faint Smile.

First look of my movie

What do you think of the design - Zenish Mehta did it for us!

india shopping

Now that i am in india - the onus of india shopping rests solely on my bro's shoulders. And this time apart from giving him a list of cereals and health foods i asked im to et anything interesting for me. And i think after a week's contemplation he answered:


i am not getting anything for u apart from wat u asked
i dont understand women's section
instead of stuff for u
i got another thing for saurabh - a nice tie
now u ask him to buy stuff for u


I could surely sense the frustration.

Direction and writing

After doing a course in direction and having struggled to create my unique moments/scripts I have realized that direction or conceiving shots is not that difficult- working with actors too - I mean it is difficult and requires efforts - sometimes a lot of efforts but it is not torturous to your soul. One can carry that out provided one doesnt complicate things. What is difficult and torturous is writing - writing uniquely. And I am experiencing it now.

Rain in Mumbai

And music in car.

Indo chinese

In the era and place where I grew up (nagpur in the 90s) there was just chinese. Only when I - years later - went to US and visited a real chinese restaurant - named Chengdu (not really an appetizing name on the first thought but it is named after a chinese city told my mandarian friends), there on having lots nad lots of steamed vegetables alongside pigs ears and chicken feat (not kidding really - i saw them), I realized that the chinese we eat is a improvised version to suite the spicy, oily indian palatte.Infact there was no manchurian there.
I remember two years later an Indian opened an Indo chinese restaurant - Inchin's we would call it and even on a snowy weekday Desi would be queued up to eat it.

Infact it is the BCCI near town side in mumbai where a chef improvised on chinese and made it more appetizing to Indian tastes. The recipes he made are actually displayed there. Maybe next time I should click the pictures.

What I love about the improvisation, apart from the great taste is though they improvised and made it spicy, they never added the indian spices like bay leaves or haldi or dhaniya powders. So though the chef improvised he had some basic moral code of conduct of not massacring it totally. That is the part I like :). Somehow.

..

"I almost wish - I hadn't
gone down the rabbit hole
-and yet - and yet
it is rather curious - you know
this sort of life!"

-Alice

Mail I sent to my bro- something around 6-7 years ago

World is basicaly interconnection of people. They are the ones who create the dynamics around you, influence you, get influenced by you.
I know by very nature you are very sesitive. I however want you to be strong , get least bothered by people who affect you in negative ways, without feeling the need to bash them up or give them some ulta jawaab. Remember being quiet is the best answer sometimes you can give to people. Also God always gives you chance to even the scores.
Having said this, I want you to say that never compromise on your ambitions, principles, ability to judge right and wrong. If you feel that by not doing or havingn xyz you are being uncool thoguh doing it wont give you ny significant pleasure then remember that that's how only college kids evaluate themselves and people. Be proud for being what you are. And you are really wonderful with that great sense of humour. Keep your yourself intact and just evolve from there.

Best weekend and best movie

Best weekend code:
while (1)
(
;
}


This weekend I and saurabh were at home and literally did nothing. Ofcourse we did goto gym, a small dinner outing tonight, and cooked at home etc but primarily we just did nothing watched movies. talked read books. And this weekend was better than any vacation anywhere else in the world.

----------------------
Last week I saw the movie "The science of sleep" and am still not over it. I identify so much with the main guy. Loved the movie - loved everything about it. One of the best movies I have ever seen! Check the trailer out:

Short film ideas - my analysis

Related Post on list of good short films available on net: http://aratikadav123.blogspot.com/2010/11/some-of-good-short-films-available-on.html

----

Brilliant(and not emotional) short film ideas - contrary to popular belief - are not a flash of brilliance. They are infact two flashes of brilliance. The first flash comes to you - that is the setting - the set up. For the second flash which is the payoff or the end part - you have to torture yourself to death, fight with everyone, yourself, spend days looking at the fan, walk around your house, almost become a lunatic, give up, contemplate suicide and then it comes to you (but there is no guarantee, you might actually end up committing suicide). The pay off that you have come up is then something that only you could come up with and no one in the world while watching the film can predict.

Anyways the above statement is keeping in mind that you are an average human being. And you don't smoke weed. Not super intelligent or eccentric or anything. And that there would be people in audience who could be super intelligent or eccentric and you wish to keep them engaged till the last frame of your movie.

The satisfaction of film making is directly proportional to the torture at the scripting stage. And the learning too.

The truth is unless you have tried you wouldn't know what you are made of.

wisdom

everybody has moments they are ashamed of... :)

what a day :(

Came up with 3 cool ideas for my next short film for ww and saurabh rejected them midway during narration :(.

Too many plans

Spoils Saurabh's weekend. My kid editor who is not feeling well is still staying with us till monday I guess. Then Swati - my sweetest friend from iit - who now works in intel and whose hubby now has joining P&G in mumbai is coming to have dinner at my place. Since I with my sprained ankle couldn't handle all this I called my mother too. Well, Swarna - my school and engg friend is visiting from Nagpur so she is also coming. Also my two cousins who are both doctor are in mumbai so they will come on sunday.

Saurabh who was shocked at the sudden development of weekend has left for bangalore for some work - he will come back tonight nonetheless. So much so for his plans of lying on the couch and watching friends and reading Richard Dawkins :(.

3 D photography link central data base

Actually I read lots of stuff about 3 D but these two are simplest to begin with.

Basic: http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/uc/oransen/uc_stereo.htm,
http://www.thinkdigit.com/Digital-Cameras/How-to--Make-anaglyphic-photographs_2861.html

I will share my notes as I work more.

Also the software that I use is
http://www.stereoeye.jp/software/index_e.html I thought it was simple and the best software on the net. Ah! How I love japanese food and software. I am friends with this guy on facebook now. Really cool japanese dude.



The above links were for photographs. For me the biggest struggle was to know how to place the two cameras and all mathematics and everything aside to determine the distance and angle between the two cameras, I felt that simple common sense worked best. Basically try to notice how you see. If I look at an object at the centre of my forehead, my left eye is looking towards right and right eye is looking a little towards left to concentrate on the object in between. So place your cameras accordingly. If I am looking at a far ahead object, my eyes are parallel to each other. I use my own common sense to determine the distance. Few things require practice and self-inference - i need to try to formulate them.

Well now I think I should move on to some videos as well. Maybe begin with a stop motion claymation. Also some prior research on how to shoot movies in 3D. It is a little more complicated esp when the objects move towards and away from the frame and am still trying to grasp it:

http://www.the3drevolution.com/3dscreen.html
http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-shoot-edit-3d-movie-271382/

how to upload youtube videos on 3D: http://informationmadness.com/cms/technology/tech-tips/1582-how-to-shoot-3d-video-using-two-cameras.html

A 3 min video - http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-shoot-edit-3d-movie-271382/

Still trying to fathom this.

Side effects of 3D experiments

Found on a website - also now i know it is true:

Warning: If you look at anaglyphs(3D pics) for too long, everything will appear in 3D (even a flat blank sheet of paper) when removing the bicoloured glasses from your nose. It is scary but not dangerous. Colour vision comes back to normal after a while.

Wait

Eyes
Still trees
Concrete.

Large number of people found murdered

And after a while when the detectives could not find out who the serial killer was they sent a smart detective. The smart detective tried to find out the profile and daily routine of the people who had died. One a music composer, one a ordinary student, one some old teacher. The smart detective noted everything about the dead people and fed it into a computer. The computer was this world's best data mining computer. It processed all the data for 77 hours and found out ONE common thing about all the dead people. They all had seen my unfinished movie without sound and music.

Grrrr!

3 D photography

So I was in a way aimless once the diploma shoot was over. After I spent good amount of time torturing my editor and before pouncing on my sound and music guy I thought it is about time I indulge in something new. So I actually started writing 2 new scripts. But after a day or two, though the script was clear in my head I was mentally and emotionally unprepared to dive into it. After all I hadn't recovered from both my short fiction and diploma writing experience that had really drained me.
So well I thought of indulging into something fun. It began with howto write credit titles for my movie. Since Zenish was kind enough to introduce me to chalkboard animation I thought I could go with that. Since I wanted a good finish (diploma hai bhai) I thought I would ask Zenish himself to do it. And then while discussing the credits with him, I remembered how I initially wanted my diploma to be in 3D and how it never materialized because of lack of time for technical expertise and unavailability of my cinematographer.
And finally last few days I have been researching about 3D. To begin with I wanted to get my fundas straight with anaglyphs. And now that I got it straight, again thanks to zenish from whom i got a spare 3D goggles, I have started trying to atleast have still images with 3D.
After multiple experiments and trials and errors and visiting websites each with a remarkably different theory, I think after 2 days I am getting a little bit hang of it. I am still learning so maybe in next blogpost I will tell how to easily create 3D pics for dummies or something.
Meanwhile with my experiment, my house again transformed into a studio with sketch pen marks on the floors and my camera stand and various inanimate objects as models (something that my maid doesn't approves of :( ). The toughest was to shoot myself as 3D and I havent been succesful and I already made 8 tries. I guess I will do it tomorrow as I got to go and meet someone and help him write his horror script. It is shaping well and I hope he gets to make it soon.

Anyways here is my list of 3D pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/aratikadav/3D#
and here are my fav two 3D pics:




Ok I uploaded 3 but who is complaining.

Not always a good idea

to apply technological solutions to sociological problems.

Thialand Trip June 2010

Unspoken life

Just you and me
And the fleeting moment
known to
Just you and me.

China house

Had lunch at china house and also dessert and masala chai in their(hyatt's) coffee shop later..with saurabh and swarna...yumm food .. for a long time two of them talked about equities and investment banking, while i was busy trying to establish an eye contact with the crab that i thought i was set to eat...saurabh ordered a lamb dish - really spicy gravy but amazing taste..i could see his eyes shine at the sight...good to unwind after a long time and not worry about long lunches..good to see saurabh eyes shine after a long time..even if it is at the sight of a dead lamb.. ..my only worry was the calorie count - the whole world (and i am getting calls from across the globe about it) is telling me that i have gained weight (after seeing my shoot pics or my current avataar)... i know i know - i neglected and i am 29 years old now gosh - you expect me to have a 19 year old's figure or what...anyways - i have now joined gym - 7-8 am in the morning with a trainer who is menacing...at this age you have to work twice as hard to look half as good...

asim says gym is only 20% - food is 80% so now i will try to control my food . asim followed that and reduced 10 kilos in 3-4 months..he looks good now..anyways i have thought of controlling my food also- i decided that in the morning and then we went to this china house to eat lunch- what a bummer..anyways...i am worrying about my weight - means i am now in ground state of my being...

Monogamy, polygamy and various trends

Was discussing the book "The selfish gene" with saurabh and we felt that it is in human nature to try to spread out as much as possible. And we tried to fathom how society became monogamous - contrary to basic human instincts.

So well earlier we were all hunters and life was risky. The more the number of people in the tribe the more powerful it would be and hence everyone was free for all. And the society was polygamous and polyandrous.

But then we became agriculture based. In early days - the size of land was not a constraint but the number of people working for it was. So the religion in those times expected woman to rear children. So women would start having kids since the age of 15. And they got dedicated to one man and settled with him - rearing his children. The polyandry bit was dropped and society became polygamous. However increasingly the agriculture income was not sufficient enough to support multiple wives and her kids so some religions like hinduism and christianity started having monogamous family. Though majority of religions still endorsed polygamy. But however, till our parents and our gen we have became monogamous.

Well now again both men and women are economically independent and need not really rear children. This is another extreme of from where we started. But the need to not having children or being loyal (for the sake of economic needs) is turning the society back to polygamous and polyandrous - a little unofficially.

so

why do i have to die everytime before i produce the script!!!

And the most acceptable thing in the world

which i find really outrageous is to see real soldiers - real people with real families - die for an abstract concept called nation.

Genetically modified food

I don't wanna eat genetically modified food :(.

Life etc

Our own judgment of what is good for us and what is not is mostly flawed.

Wiped out in 3 years

So I always believed I was fairly popular in my engg college days. What will all that enthusiasm of IEEE comittees, Student Development Forum, DAnce competition and personality contests!

I met my brother's friend who was 3 years junior to me. When he was in first year, I was in final year. And I was too happy to meet a junior. I didn't know him but you are really not supposed to know someone so junior. But the first thing he asked on seeing me was:"So which college did you study in?"
We existed in same space and were part of the same committees and he had no idea who I was. I was so completely wiped out of memory of my college. That too in just 3 years :(.

remembering a roadside salesman of delhi

salesman: "madam peticoat ka nada chahiye?"
me : "nahee"
salesman: "madam dekh to lijiye"
me : "nahee"
salesman: "madam A1 quality ka hai"
me : "arre bhaiyya nahee chahiye"

salesman: "mmmm... accha to phir pendrive chahiye???"

Best Friends

When I was in school around 4th std, my father moved to another town. There in the new class everybody had a best friend. I did not. A girl walked to me and said I don't have a best friend. Lets be best friends. I was happy and exclaimed "Yes". In the next few years of school, we hardly spoke to each other. i don't even remember her name now.

-----
I have my friend vaidehi whom I know since 10th. We have done so many activities together, bought similar looking bags and chappals and what not. She holds more secrets about me than this blog. When I went to US, she and kamra flew down to help me get settled and are the first ones to make me smoke and taste wine. Later, I moved back to India. Last year she had a baby. I hardly spoke to her. just scrapped on orkut/facebook.

She is visiting India and she called me. I knew it was her number coz she had scrapped that to me on facebook and I had it stored. I was watching Avatar movie then. It was the interval time. The conversation (after 3-4 years)
Vaidehi: Hi Arati kya kar rahee hai (Hi Arati Wassup)
I recognized the voice immediately. It brought a smile to my face.
Arati: Arre Vaidehi, mein picture mein hun abhi (I am in the movie)
Vaidehi: Achcha phir tu khatam kar phir baat kartein hai (Ok call me once its done)
Arati: Theek hai chal (Ok then)
Vaidehi: Bye

I felt a sense of compression of time. As if like back in college days when we spoke 3-4 times a day and then she had called for the 4th time. She was so fresh in my mind. Not lost, not forgotten. Somewhere we were still in touch.

Bhopal gas tragedy

Indi today mourns 25 years of bhopal gas tragedy - a pesticide plant shifted to India coz it was deemed too risky for american citizens. Total toll - 20,000 people killed (a painful death) around 5.67 lakhs still affected. The people behind it still free,the people affected by it still not compensated. Most of them homeless jobless in the absence of compensation and ability to work. They still drink the contaminated groundwater.

But I don't remember their plight everyday. I only remember the Top ten news of the day and this happens to be the headlines.

I will forget this tomorrow.

Popularity contest

Who are the most popular people. What are the most popular entities ? How do they become popular.
I am a huge believer of democracy - the majority opinion - the popular opinion- still am - it is self-corrective - though slow but steady - because anything radical would mean dictatorship. i was reading a sufi book - the sufi parables are quite like zen buddhist philosophies - which I have quite enjoyed as the eastern philosophies goes beyond thought rather than restricting itself to it.
The book revolts against popular opinion by citing the following parable:
A man died and a coffin was created. He was laid and he woke up. Seeing the entire procession he fainted again. He was proclaimed dead and taken for burial. He woke up again and said "I am alive - let me go". A man said - "But the doctor said that you are dead". He said "No I am alive". The other man asked everybody at the burial "Do you think he is dead or alive?". Everybody said "He is dead". "So you are dead". And they buried the man.

Along with this story, it provides another story - in other end of the book but it is interesting how the solution to above problem is cited in the other story.

A man landed in "The land of Fools". He saw that everyone was scared of a water melon and thought it to be a monster. He went near the melon and everybody said that - "he is daring". He went and smashed it and started eating it. Everybody said - "he is a monster too and they killed him".
Another man landed in the same world. He saw everybody was scared of the water melon. He knew it was just a melon. But he pretended to be scared of it. He tip toed near the melon like every body. He led them, himself acting scared near the melon and then he managed to touch it and made everyone touch it. He then managed to cut and everybody ate the melon too. He was made the king of the land.

I think it is quite an insightful story as to how things operate in our group.

The things that make Saurabh

PS - This is probably one of my highly personal post and is time sensitive - it will take me 3-4 days to realize that it is too personal to be in public and I might then make it private.

So now that I am married for 2 years, I have discovered properties of Saurabh that I didn't know existed. Here is a list:

1) Making 4 cups of tea every morning and drinking only half a cup.

2) Buying a container of curd and eating it all away alone and then claiming "Oh my God! We finish off one dubba of curd everyday".

3) Invariably, atleast once a week finding a unique place of losing his specs/wallet/discharged phone/ ipod and frantically searching for it and in the process opening every drawer of the house. Finally almost sherlock homes type theorizing where it could be found - "Last I saw the phone was when i was having dinner then I went to bed, but it is neither on the bed nor on the side table which means that it has fallen behind the immovable side table." And lo and behold - that's where it is found.

4) On weekends after lunch, he claims "You feed me rice! I will goto gym now". He dresses up for gym and while I sit in one room assuming that he has left for gym after 30 minutes, I find him lying on the guest bedroom reading a book and then he looks at me with question mark on his face.

5) He is still shy of beautiful girls. Prefers to walk down 14th floors rather than share a lift with a beautiful lady alone.

6) "Come pick me from office. I am waiting." You rush to his office and he never comes out of his office atleast for 30 minutes. But in the morning when he has to leave at 7:30. He rushes out at 7:25.

7)"I will arrange my cupboard. Don't let the maid touch it. Don't let the maid touch it. Don't let the maid touch it" - he says. Not knowing that after Priya had arranged it once, I secretly arrange his casuals every week and he believes his clean cupboard is totally his doing.

8) Gets up at 6 am even on Sundays (to make his tea and sit on his computer). Whenever I check the computer (apart from stratfor) the youtube video with movie "99"-part 6 is open. Neither gmail nor facebook is open.

9) There is a sexy band playing outside the house and food festival that we can see from the bedroom window (bandrafest). Saurabh still prefers to sit at home read his book watch one of the three movies: 99 or departed or hangover.

10) Even if it is not a non-stick, his omelettes don't break.

11) Regardless of number of guests in the house, at 10 pm he manages to sneak into one of the beds and fall asleep. He has been found asleep with a book, on the laptop and on the sofa.

12) On seeing this list he would say "kya bakwaas hai".

Cognitive Science, genetic engineering, iWife and 2012

Recently was discussing with my brother - what is the next big thing in the world of technology and we felt it was cognitive science. Earlier it was Internet and Computer Science - a wave that our parent's generations witnessed, next someone speculated genetic engineering - the progress there is slow and steady and once we make one big breakthrough then there will be no looking back. It can be used to solve lots of diseases and will revolutionize medical sciences, change our life spans. Also as my uncle says - we might start having genetically engineered children - which will initially face lots of moral opposition but over generations would gain acceptance much like (and much faster than) we started accepting gays.

The other big area where we see lots of work happening is cognitive science (cognition means "to know", common used form is recognition) where millions of dollars are being spend on making machine intelligent like humans. A very interesting quote I read somewhere that "An average general intelligence is much difficult to program than programming chess expert". It referred to the computer program that defeated the Chess champion Gary Kaspurov and having dabbled in machine learning myself, I can vouch for that statement. When I was in IIT doing my masters, in the second semester, majority of my courses were around machine learning - 3 out of 4 in the second semester- we had knowledge discovery and machine learning and computation brain. The small projects we did - like programming neural nets and genetic algorithms were very alluring and lots of fun. I still remember my favorite code being "Game of Kalah" that I did way back in my engg. days for a software competition where the computer could play smarter than me even though I wrote that code, the computer could beat me, the creator of the code.

I think in the area of cognitive science we have whetted our appetite enough and there are lots of people very very keen to know how much artificial intelligence will evolve in our lifetime. This is again something that will revolutionize our lives.

My short fiction(http://anandpai.blogspot.com/) had a concept of iWife - customized wife coming from this fascination. And a number of people asked me - shouldn't there be iHusbands too :).

So on one hand we will have genetic engineering which will have customized human beings and on other hand we will have development in cognitive sciences where machines will be more free-spirited and human like.

It will be interesting to see who will end where. I hope we survive 2012 to witness this ;).

Bonus of the day

Saurabh can cook. He made bhurji for me (with garlic???) but it came out well.


---
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."- Anais Nin( courtesy Sumit's status message)

I was advised bed rest but I still went to college. Going to college was a bad decision considering the amount of fever I have gotten upon myself. But I read about dengue and it talks about phase 2 where one gets fever after a day of feeling normal. So maybe it is my phase 2 and it just co-incided with my going to college.

"war and peace" by Leo Tolstoy

best part of dengue fever is being able to read this classic with minimum intervention from the outside world...

Mahatma Gandhi's contribution to India's freedom struggle

A movie was released in Bollywood called Bhagat Singh which was largely anti-Gandhi Many of my friends who saw it said they have no reverence left for Gandhi as he didn't really do anything for freedom struggle.

I recently read two books - one on Essays on History of India by Bhishm and After Tamerlane by John Darwin (both considerably fat history books), and I started understanding and appreciating Gandhi's genius and strategy.

Before we talk about that we need to talk about why Britishers came to India. They/ East India company came basically for trade - spices, salt (there were no fridges then and they used this for preserving meat) and most ofcourse cotton (we and china used to clothe most of the world). Earlier they just wanted to trade with India and it was lucrative enough for them. It so happened that during the revolt of 1857 (which lots of people don't know that 200 british woman and children were killed) after which the Britishers became aggressive in colonizing India. Also britishers wanted to capture China and they had competition from both japan and russia, so India seemed a good base to keep an eye on china. Colonizing India was a huge resource drain on them as they had to bring large troops to India (Swiss canal being under Sweden meant that they had to go all around Africa to come to India). Also India was under several rulers Mughals, Marathas, the Bengal guy. One needed to have force everywhere to control India. So they started building the railways to mobilize the forces and the british army.
Congress that came in earlier didn't really want freedom as that seemed far fetched. They instead wanted an arrangement - something like Canada. Where Britishers rule but the congress governs locally. The congress that time consisted of elite north indian scholars who were mostly hindu. Muslims were not part of them. Gandhi wrote on Hinduism and muslims and his theories had won the hearts of both muslims and hindus especially harijans. At the same time Ottoman empire crashed and lots of muslims in India didn't have a leader to look up to (the muslims were united under the turkey's ruler for a long time - he was their spiritual leader - quite like the Pope). So they started seeing Gandhi as their well-wisher. (A guess of Gandhi that worked and made him extremely valuable to congress).
Well now Gandhiji rejected the idea of British columbia-like setting for India. He wanted full freedom. At the same time spinning wheel was invented in the west and it could produce cloth 200 times faster than the indian craftsmen and britishers didn't want cotton from India anymore. So to even out the expenses of having India as colony they started levying huge taxes (remember Lagaan movie). They also started exerting cultural supremacy where there was stress on Indians wearing the clothes made in their factories.
Gandhiji felt that it is difficult to beat them by force but very easy to beat them by making India non-lucrative for them. So he started his non-cooperation movement. He resisted the concept of India and withheld Panchayati raaj, he encouraged charkha to protect the local industry and created ressitance against the foreign clothes that britishers wanted to sell to india. He held the dandi march for salt.
At the same time WW-II happened and US in exchange for help asked britisher for all colonies in asia. Britishers gave every colony except india. One of the biggest fears of nehru around that time was that India shouldn't goto America because though america will not colonize it (Roosevolt had taken a moral stand that we will not colonize any country but will control it - a stand that US takes even today), America will take control over trading in India - something that would affect India economically. Anyways, Britishers having lost heavily during war and now, because Gandhiji involved the mass (the other thing that Gandhi was right in formulating was that the masses will bring about the changes and not a handful of people and involved masses using non-violence) and there was non-co-operation to large extent that it became increasingly expensive to sustain india as a colony. Hence britishers left India (ofcourse after a very unfortunate partition whose story i will tell later). So when folks say that without gandhiji we would have gotten freedom. The answer is yes - in 1990s but not so early in 1947. We owe him atleast 50 years of fresh air!

Some words of wisdom from my brother

He is a PhD student at Wisconsin. I loved the third statement for its sheer profoundness.


1) If you've never missed the bus, you are wasting too much time at the bus stop.

2) If you've never missed a paper deadline, then you are doing too much evaluation.

3) If you've never regretted what you said, you are not speaking what you wanna say enough.

my new pink laptop

Money is abstract

Amongst various this, Diwali is day of Goddess of Laxmi. The day really celebrated in India. "It is Indian Christmas" - I would tell in US to my friends. And on explaining the significance of the day one of the friends had pointed out that very few of the religions give money that much importance do celebrate it's presence. Most other religions try to stay spiritual and never try to be material.

And I remembered Borges. Borges in one of his stories mentions that there can be nothing less material than money. Money is one of the most abstract entities. Since any money represents multiple future possibilities. Money is future time. Money can be multiple things - it can be a quiet long drive, it can be going underwater in hawaii, showing USA to parents, eating in favorite sushi, it can be watching leonard cohen's concert live, it can be a warm bed on a cold rainy night, it can be higher education for somebody's son abroad, it can be somebody's treatment for cancer or a promise of 24 hours water supply. It can be just a warm cup of chai.

There is lot of disdain for money, mostly made publicly to show off ones virtue. "money can't buy everything". Agreed. But it does buy a lot of things. Lot of things we take for granted but would be highly disoriented in their absence.

God and me - Temporary Fundas

I call it temporary because my attempts of rationalizing this infinite and irrational phenomenon of believing in God never cease and though in the process I never discover anything about God I discover something about me.
So why do we pray? Why do I pray? As a kid I used to pray before my exams before the results ? Sometimes before leaving for a journey my mother would pray to God. Also it has been that in relationship issues we pray to God (it may sound cheesy and TV serial like but it is true). And there are few who pray to God for the sheer pleasure in the process - they feel more aligned to the world around them.
So what does God - an abstract entity - represent ? And my theory for today is that it represents the Universe. My initial thoughts were that it represented the set (Universe - I) but now I think it is the entire universe. And most often than not we pray to make sure that the universe is aligned to work in favour of I.

Why do I say so?
If infinite powers were vested on me by some random accident, I would want to have certain things in my favour. I could orchestrate the world in such a way that the flood in Assam didn't happen or that I came first in my tenth exams or that Matt Daemon(he he you didn't know) came searching for me with some cindrella shoes. Or also that my parents lived for ever without any illness and also my tooth stopped aching (which as a matter of fact currently is). Same are the things that I pray for. And there is a faith that my prayers will be answered and that the Universe would listen to me.
As I was thinking about it, I thought what should I as a finite mortal with finite capabilities do so as to do away with the concept of God. And then I realized that necessarily there might be things that are not in my control but there are things that are in my control by virtue of my ability to work and then I realized that the only way I can assist/replace my need for God is by doing my work hard. I can work hard to come first in my 10th exams and may be talk about global warming to reduce the chances of floods (I guess I myself cannot help myself in Matt Daemon case but maybe in one of the traffic jams I can sit and dream about it and fulfill that dream mentally). And then suddenly I feel that work is far superior way to orchestrate the world in my favor then just praying to the abstract God. So well one way or the other you cannot control the entire universe but when you work you feel more deserving to be controlling it rather than otherwise. And I wonder if the priests and religious heads or people who renounce everything to attain God ever romanticized with the idea of achieving God by virtue of their work?

2 in one laptop

Earlier I and Saubhy had two laptops in our home. And most of the times I would find each of us absorbed in our own laptops. And in protest I made saubhy give away his Mac to his sister (I had a thinkpad which I - from my CS bg - feel is way more robust than a whiny Macbook). So now between two of us there is one laptop - and our interest neatly co-exists in one - my final draft is always open and his MS excel and ft-alphaville is always open. We are careful never to close the other person's application.
Yest after lots of deliberation, I started writing my diploma script. However today when I got back to it, the final draft was open but the script was erased (I had only written two lines but then I have a point to fight so its okay) and instead of the script lines I found this written:

"BPTP project parklands
This is good man"


My territory is tresspassed - grrrrrr!

The 148th Street

Everybody has there childhood lane where they remember playing hide and seek, going to grocery holding their mom's hands, there is the atta chakki and there is the vegetable vendor who would be expensive as compared to the veggie market but then good enough for emergencies.

The street I am gonna talk about is the memory of my youth. I don't want to sound cynical but I know I will never be able to have friends of the kind I had in Seattle. Friends who cared for me like my family. Friends whom i care for even today like my family. Part of my formative years- part of my life when i was financially independent and single. The friends who gave me my bachelorette party and to whom I gave theirs.
3 years i lived in Adagio apartments in Seattle. After looking 4-5 apartments, I had instantly loved this one - for having a walk-in closet and most importantly a french window in the dining room and wall made up of glass to let the sunlight in during the morning in the living room. I loved my apartment. It was 5 mins drive and 25 mins walk from my work place. That the weather didnt permit me to walk was another story. Little did I know that the best feature of the apartment I was gonna discover later. It was on 148th street. a street studded with apartment homes - The lakes (which had a nalla and extremely noisy swans and they called it lakes) and Hampton Green (a total disappointment if you have seen the New York's Hampton's neighbourhood) and one more (I can't believe I forgot the name). It so happened that all the folks I eventually befriended (the gang) ended up living in one of these apartments - 2 mins drive or 15 mins walk. And hence started the beautiful country lifestyle of ours - the proclub (our gym which btw is also the biggest gym of US) was in that lane too. End of the road had both Safeway and Fred meyers for grocery. 15 mins away was Mayuri - Indian video and snack shop whom we would hate for poor quality but would go nonetheless. And that's how all of us started living - like a small desi community (relishing sambhars and pakodas) within a community of Americans. Life was simple - going for long walks - arbitrarily dropping at someone's place for tea (without calling or taking appointments), raiding houses for dinner. I even remember getting up one Sun morning and going to Dami's place for morning tea and coming back in the eve at 4 pm to get ready - all the while lying on his huge sofa watching TV (I didn't have cable connection). We were actually one big family with the best set up - we had our lives and privacy but we had eachother too.
Now all of us have moved away - people in Seattle have either bought or will buy big houses in other suburbs - some of us have moved out. i wonder if anyone of us still stays on that street.

What remains for me on that 148th street is the ghost - ghost of our 3 years! And I miss it. Miss it badly.

Reflections - the movie

Hey Friends,
Check out the details of my movie - trailer pics and teaser blog entries by the lead characters...

http://anandpai.blogspot.com/

-arati

About life and geysers

There are things that a married woman has to deal with when she is living with a guy. One was that my husband saurabh would not turn off the hot water geyser on so many occasions after taking his bath. And on top of that he would harp about the soaring electricity bills. I got into this habit of checking the geyser switch everyday and on more occasions than one it would be on.
I always told him - "you didn't switch it off" and he would refuse to admit.
This last week he has been away to London and I have been home alone. Actually not exactly as I was busy with my edits and was leaving home at 8:30 am coming back home by 11 pm everyday. Whenever I come back home, first thing I do is wash my face. The water there is supposed to be cold. It is hot only if the geyser has been kept on for a long time.

Well all these five days, whenever i washed my face, I consistently found the water to be hot.