Half Century!

Blogger informs me that this is my Fiftieth post! So I can raise my bat... and perhaps think about retiring...

Gotcha! No, I'm not going to throw away my third biggest pastime until I find something better to do. One and two are Reading and Playing Bridge respectively, by the way.

At this time, I want to thank Jorge Cham for creating PHD Comics: Piled Higher and Deeper, which has been a source of infinite amusement for me and is a sure cure for Grad Depression. I think it's a sad state of affairs that there are so few things in the world that I find truly funny... is that a sign of growing cynicism? But at least... my inordinate and permanent geekiness ordains that there is one class of jokes that I will always find funny!



It's nice to know that I'm not the only person in the world confronted with some fundamental questions about my choice of lifestyle...



... not to mention, I have a crush on Cecilia...



Cheers,
Prashanth

War is declared!

Whenever we do something different, it feels like a struggle... and to come out on top, we practically need to declare war and throw all our resources at it. Usually it is in our work or studies; but even in mundane matters, it is no less difficult or dangerous!

When I got a stain on my favourite shirt, it refused to go away even after washing. So I did the unthinkable - I sought a solution through *shudder* shopping. I browsed the shelves and bought a stain "eraser" and washed it again - now it is almost gone.

In a land where every floor is carpeted, an unseen enemy lurks everywhere. Lint. Never did I know before coming here that taking care of one's clothes could be so difficult. All my clothes have strands of lint sticking onto them that will not go away just by washing. In fact, washing makes them harder to remove. So, I had to do battle again. I donned the mantle of the Super Duper Master Shopper and bought a hi-tech electrostatic lint remover at the Magic Housekeeper Mart. Well... actually I can't afford such stuff so I bought one of those dime-a-dozen adhesive based lint rollers off a Weiss Mart shelf. Super Duper? More like Super Pauper. But I shouldn't call myself a Master Shopper, because I keep reminding people here that I got my Masters even before coming here for Ph.D. So I'm a Master-Almost-Doctor Shopper. Splendid.

Cooking is another war by itself, the toughest part being remembering Mom's instructions on nutrition. So when I make fried rice or noodles, I add egg and lots of vegetables. I drink milk and fruit juices everyday and even eat apples on occasion. My Mom's an expert nutritionist, so I guess some of her concern and a bit of her knowledge has rubbed off on me.

So, here I am.
Super Pauper, Master-Almost-Doctor Shopper, Expert Nutritionist.

In short,
SP, MAD Shopper, Ex Nut.

Cheers,
Prashanth.

P.S. Lots of work this week so will not be present on blogworld much till next weekend.

Symphony

One of my favourite "figments of imagination": things described in fantasy novels, is a people called the Aiel, in the Wheel of Time novels written by Robert Jordan. They are a peace-loving people keeping to a strict policy of non-violence; until circumstances force some of them to pick up spears in self-defence. Then they sunder into two groups: those who fight when they must, and those who keep to their true faith, the "Way of the Leaf". The latter group roam around the world repairing things for people in exchange for things they need; and looking for a song.

Looking for a song? What kind of song? What is about? They shake their heads and say they don't know, but they will know the song when they hear it.

How quaintly insane! Yet, in my eyes, no more insane than any of us who have a strong, if inexplicable, faith in something.

But of course, I'm not here to praise Jordan's creativity. The truth is that I, too, am looking for a song, but one that I know I am to find only within myself.

I speak of my desire to write a song rather than a poem; for what could be better than a union of melodious music and symphonic words? Yet I think I am incapable of composing music. Hence I am incapable of composing a song.

People have their talents and their limitations. Music and poetry are subjective; but I can at least make the words flow in harmony, in a way that I, myself, can appreciate, if not others. I have never been able to make music flow.

I know that people know that I have a poetry blog, but I also know that few have read all of my poems; mainly because my poems are recorded in a random order, and most of them are quite boring to the average reader. But I would like at least some of you to read the ones I think turned out well, so I am providing below links to a few of my favourites. It is unlike me to talk about my own work, leave alone ask others to read it; but consider this an earnest desire to share with my friends some things that I personally hold precious. I rarely re-read anything I write on this blog, but I do re-read my poems often.

One Moment in Time
Mirror of the Self
A Hint of a Tear
Every Single Day
Promises
Drown me with Words
Altruistic
Into your Eyes
What Matters?
Starry Starry Night


Cheers,
Prashanth.

The Prince and the Pauper

Back in IIT, my friends used to call me "The Prince of Chennai", mocking my pampered nature. My standard of living "rough" is very different from that of my friends; I've never done any hard physical work to speak of; I can count on the fingers of my hands the number of times I've used the city bus service; and I've always had two servants and a cook at home to do any mundane work.

I've also never had to worry about money. Don't take me wrong, I'm not from a rich family, and my Dad is pretty tightfisted when it comes to spending. But we're reasonably well off and I rarely have the occasion to spend money anyway, being content with my strange mix of home and hostel life and going out only once a week on an average. So on the occasions that I do go out, I don't mind going to restaurants where we spend two hundred rupees or more per person; on the occasions that I do buy something for myself, such as clothes, my tastes are such that some people may construe as expensive.

I also don't believe in worrying about sums of money smaller than 10 rupees, unless I feel I am doing something ethically wrong. This has resulted in some funny situations in the past. For example, I would be travelling with my friends by auto-rickshaw, and one of my pals would argue with the driver for five minutes just to bring down the price by five rupees. We would reach the destination, and then the chap would plead that it was slightly farther than we'd led him to believe, and that we ought to give him that extra five rupees. My friend would say firmly that a deal is a deal, but I would say "Sure," and hand him the extra five rupees.

My friends would then have long arguments on what would be the best way to torture and kill me, though I would just say that the five rupees was well spent; after all, we made one guy in the world happier. There is nothing wrong in it as he's earning his living, rather than begging or stealing. In fact, we could have saved five minutes of our valuable time and a lot of effort by not wrangling for that small sum in the first place.

One day I had a serious conversation with one of my friends from Raipur on the subject of money, and tried to understand why five rupees is so important when I spend a thousand rupees on a pair of jeans and two hundred rupees on dinner when I go out. He explained that he was used to spending not more than one hundred and fifty for a dinner for four, and perhaps two hundred for a pair of jeans. He thought Chennai city is attrociously expensive, and every rupee saved is valuable. Of course, there is also the matter that he is from a middle class family; I would classify myself as upper middle class I guess.

I guess money has never really been an issue for me. My wants are few; so when I do want something, I buy it regardless of price, as to me it would be worth it.

And then, of course, I left India and came to the US.

What a huge difference! Money earned in rupees is not meant to be spent in dollars. The conversions make my head giddy. I have long since stopped converting. I now measure distance in miles, weight in pounds, and money in dollars. But I know that I am being unfair to my parents if I continue to spend their hard earned money the same way that I used to back home, because the scale is now much higher. It is tantamount to waste, which is something I detest.

So I eat at fast food joints instead of restaurants, if I am forced to eat out. I look at prices when I shop, which is not something I normally do, and choose things that give me the best value for my money. I spend only on necessities and not on anything for my pleasure.

And, of course, I am no longer a Prince whose every need is taken care of. I now take care of myself. If you knew me from when I was young you would know truly what a huge step that is for me.

I feel like a Pauper in more than one sense of the word. Money. Care. Affection. The friends and family I love are not here. That one fact alone makes me feel poorer than everything else put together.

Consider this excerpt from the serial Friends a desperate attempt to lift my mood:

Ross: Well... I just never really thought of money as an issue..

Rachel: That's because you have it.

Cheers,
Prashanth.

A Small Tribute

I met a kindly chap at the State College Bridge Club who offered to pick me up and drop me back once a week for the game. Curious about my new friend, who has a keen mind and is no doubt an excellent bridge player, I asked him a few questions about himself. Apparently, he worked in the area of Scanning Electron Microscopy, but has been retired for nearly 15 years. His wife died about 4 years ago. As he said those words, the profound sadness in his voice - and his eyes - were tangible to me.

The building where the tournaments take place 4 times a week is strangely named "SEM ECON. BRIDGE STUDIO". I asked him what that meant... he laughed, a pleasant, warm laugh, and with a far away look explained that his wife always bantered about his work being "cheap", and a politically correct way of saying "cheap" is "economical"; hence, S.E.M. Econ. !!

The main hall is quaint, with the restrooms labelled with the cards, the Queen of Hearts and the King of Clubs respectively; a very nice library of bridge books; an ancient PC with a dot matrix printer in one corner for tracking the scores; tables, chairs and bidding boxes; and scoresheets and paintings vying for space on the walls. I walked around admiring the 20-odd paintings on the wall, undoubtedly created by the same artist; the style was unmistakable.

And I came to know that week that the paintings were made by none other than my friend's wife, who, on her death bed, expressed her wish that the world should see them. They arranged an exhibition, the venue being none other than the aforementioned bridge studio, where they had spent many a happy moment with good friends over the years. One month later, she died.

They never did take down the paintings.

The whole building, managed by my friend, seems to me like a shrine to a wife he loved very much. I've known this man for just two weeks, but I find myself deeply moved.

"Do you live alone now?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Must be boring," I quipped, a rather weak attempt at humour.
"Well... it's different... I've been married to one person all my life... but now..." he shrugged, and let the words hang. "I don't do much other than play bridge these days," he concluded after a pause.

For a moment I wanted to scream in rage at the injustice of it all. But I thought about it long and hard, and I think it was better for his wife to go the way she did, with the man she loved by her side, taking care of her while she was sick. I know she must have died with a smile on her lips, and her soul at peace. Better that than the lonely, grim, empty existence that my friend was living out.

Most of us, at this age, have not known true grief at the magnitude that death alone can bring. Of all of life's injustices, the biggest one is the simple fact that death is inevitable. Let us offer a prayer, then, for the departed. Every one of them. As a mark of respect, I am disabling comments on this post, and I request my readers to not comment on this topic anywhere else on this blog. And I sincerely hope that there is no need for me to bring up the topic of death ever again on my blog.

Cheers,
Prashanth.

Fan, not fanatic

Most of the world doesn't understand how I can devour so many Science Fiction and Fantasy novels so fast - and movies as well. If one of my friends read a book or saw a movie belonging to one of those genres, and he (girls are usually not interested in scifi or fantasy) didn't like it, he would surely turn toward me and say, "But I'll bet you loved it."

How is a guy supposed to respond when judgement has been passed on him without hearing him speak or seeing him act? I find myself amused by the injustice of it. Just because I read every fantasy novel I can lay my hands on, it doesn't mean I love every one of them. In fact, I consider myself a bit of a connoisseur, in that having read so many, I have a keenly refined taste of which ones are really good and which ones are nice, but not great, and which ones are plain horrid.

If I find any listeners, I try to explain how vast these genres are, and how different the styles, objectives and paths of the authors are. But people have a tendency to stereotype genres, and to many people, all science fiction is nonsense. I think of ranting and raving at them, but then I bite my tongue. After all, how many times have I not tried out a particular movie, book, song, anything just because I don't like that particular genre? It's no crime. Or maybe it is all criminal, and I am guilty as well. The notion is very unsettling. If everyone around you goes and jumps off a cliff, you should still ask why, I said in my last post.

The last few good Sci-Fi movies I've seen are War of the Worlds; I, Robot; and Minority Report. The last few good Sci-Fi books I've read are Contact; The Dispossessed; and Timeline. I've written a review of Contact, find the link here.

I've been reading 4 fantasy novels a week for the past 3 weeks, and I've stocked up on 4 more for this week, so I don't want to comment on the fantasy genre now for I don't have the time to do justice to it. But surely, the Public Libraries here are a treasure trove. I could never find the books I wanted, back in India. Here, even if the library doesn't have a copy, they will buy it or get an inter-library loan for my sake, free of cost. Talk about paradise!

Cheers,
Prashanth,

Do you believe in Evolution?

Last weekend was a series of coincidences. I was talking to a friend about people who are agnostic or atheist but still go to temples, and we ended up talking about God, Life, the Universe, Evolution, and everything. The same evening, we went to a "discussion" at the Vedic Society meeting on "God Exists? - from a scientific perspective". Truth be told, I only went because I would get an opportunity to meet new people, eat Indian food, and bash a few heads, and not necessarily in that order. But it ended up as a heavily moderated and steered discussion aimed at converting, not just atheists into theists, but into Hindus.

Of course I was inwardly indignant that the objective of those people was rather to proselytize than to hold an intellectual and objective conference, but it was that much harder because of the narrow-mindedness I encountered in some people there. I don't want to go into the details of the evening because it's not worth your time, so I'll cut to the chase.

The slide in question depicted some neolithic hand tools, and how we accept that they were, indeed, tools made by Man rather than natural rock formations happening by chance. And then it showed the biological complexity of a DNA strand, and asked how we can accept that it happened by "chance" - as evolution, by Darwinian description, is the survival of the fittest derived by random mutation and natural selection over thousands of generations. In other words, the Hand of God behind the creation of the blueprints of life is inescapably conspicuous.

I furrowed my brow and pointed out that the complex DNA structure didn't happen overnight but over millions, perhaps billions of years of Evolution. The DNA structure of various organisms were not created by God but rather, can be explained by Evolution; the question, then, is how do you explain Evolution itself?

With that I surprised myself - here I was, questioning the fact that natural selection is the hand behind evolution, after all those biology classes and years of scientific training. I was so stunned at myself that I was speechless for a moment.

And then I was rendered doubly speechless by the moderator, who promptly questioned the occurence of evolution itself, and asked how I knew that Life originated by chance from a primal soup of semi-organic matter and developed by itself over millions of years into something as complicated as Man. Did I know how many holes in the theory have been conveniently swept under the rug by scientists? How do I know for sure that God did not create humans, but they were rather evolved from apes?

Don't get me wrong, I was not silent from the force of his argument but rather by its stupidity. How could there possibly be a guy who did not believe in Evolution? What kind of a moron thinks that God put in Man on the planet as-is, rather than evolve from apes? The paleontological evidence for Evolution is overwhelming, and the evolution of many species can be traced quite far back!

While I bemoaned the fact that religion can blind us to obvious conclusions of science, I was soon hit by yet another coincidence. I was reading Contact by Carl Sagan, and in the book, Ellie has several conversations with priests who believe that the transmission from outer space was from God (or the Devil!) rather than an alien civilization. And yet again, they end up discussing the origin of Life and the Universe and all that. And - get this - the priests believe 100% in the Bible and that God created Adam and Eve from scratch. And apparently so do 75% of USA's population.

Then it struck me. It's true. Most of the Christians believe that God created Man directly. Which means they do not believe in Evolution. The same goes for several other religions, though I'm quite sure that Hinduism makes no such claims - even though a significant percentage of Hindus are of the same belief.

That single fact alone reinforces my belief that people, in general, are idiots. And that of all solutions for making the world a better place, education is the best. Only then, if every one around you goes and jumps off a cliff, you will stop to ask, "Why should I also do it?"

I will postpone judgement on our good pal Darwin because I am unqualified to draw conclusions on the question of whether chance mutation and natural selection together constitute the driving force behind evolution, or whether there is some deeper issue to unravel. I'm confident that hundreds of years of research by qualified scientists is more likely to be correct than some sudden gnaw of doubt in my mind brought out by the religious maniacs, but I can't help but feel that in some measure, they've achieved thier objective even on one as well-informed and scientific-tempered as I.

Cheers,
Prashanth.