Doodles of a crazy man!

I always find it amusing to imagine Shankaracharya, Madhvacharya and Ramanujacharya standing forming a triangle inside a circular ground. Ennio Morricone score in the background. Slow long shots of each one, followed by close up of each of their eyes. Then, Ramanujacharya mutters to Madhvacharya - "Seems like you are one entity short" (followed by guffaws from Ramanujacharya's followers in the background) Silence for 30 secs. And Shankaracharya slowly tells Ramanujacharya - "Looks like you got two too many" (followed by eerie silence and then heavy duty music from Morricone) So here it is, the last one in the series...

A colleague of mine used to ask other colleagues whether they are "smart" or "mad". In case you have not guessed, it was her short form for Smartas and Madhvas! Okay, Madhvas need not feel bad. Smartas have a bigger problem. Anyone returning from abroad with a fake accent will ask them "Are you smartas?" and it is an interesting way to stop people from acting oversmart ;) So presenting the next one in the series: Dvaita...

I admit that my knowledge of UML as well as Hindu philosophy is very basic. So any discrepancy in terms of UML or philosophical concepts will not be totally unexpected. I am planning to do this series for different schools, here I am starting off with Advaita first.

I am amazed by the display of naivete by people, their naivete so deeply conditioned that it ceases to be artificial. These people are very well aware of the reality, but when you show them some proof to confirm that, they are aghast and shocked. What the hell am I ranting about? I am talking about "The curious case of N D Tiwari"! To be honest, when I heard about it, I laughed out loud. Not because there was something funny in his achievements, but the way people reacted to it. So I am trying to understand what exactly bothered them? A Governor was doing 'it' ? ('It' upsets more people than lets say, if he was taking a bribe of crores of rupees from those 3 women) A Governor was doing 'it'? (Come on seriously, are we not taught in schools that politicians work for people and poverty is dropping like Walmart prices?) A Governor was caught doing it? (What is revealed is always only the tip of the iceberg. Just imagine the uncaught! Is it the "env...

You know the most breaking news and the first headline item in every news channel on the counting day? The "exclusive" predictions from the exit polls of their channel turned out to be true. Every goddamn channel had this news, errr story. Now, are people really interested in other news items? ****** Whats the difference between CPI-CPM before the elections and after the elections? Before they were "Left", now they are left way behind! ****** Even when the trends were coming up, every party was putting up a brave face and telling that these were just trends and things will definitely change when the actual results are out. So confident are all these parties that if some party which had contested in less than 100 seats across the country made a statement that they are sure to form a government on their own, I would have been least surprised. ****** During the half way of counting, Rajdeep Sardesai asked a BJP spokesperson if they are willing to concede defeat at the ...

What happens after a man dies? Is there a God waiting to settle things? Is there another world? An afterlife? Does Chitragupta use the latest version of Tally for his accounting purposes? Or do dead people get bored to death waiting in never ending queues for their turns to come up as he flips through the pages of his dusty old books? Would St.Peter's job be outsourced to some other Indian saint from a tier 2 city? Will the Indian saint have lost it to a mexican or a philipino by the time you reach there? Do the jehadis get their share of 72 virgins? Or will they be given a raw deal citing the dwindling male-to-female ratio as the reason? No, these are not the exact questions I am having. I am thinking more on the lines of what happens to the online world of a person after he dies. Have you ever wondered what will happen to the email account of a person once he dies? What happens to their blog? Their flickr account? Their adsense? I have no clue why, but this question h...

You know when the supposed-to-be-motivating team dinners and unavoidable lunches with acquaintances become much more painful to me than they usually are? When the topic happens to be on food habits. Here is a sample: "You dont drink?", asks the team mate in a friendly tone. "No" "You dont smoke?", unable to hide his surprise. "No" "You dont even eat chicken?", the italics for "even" would barely convey the utter shock he would experience. "No" "Man, you are amazing. Do you at least eat eggs?", the shock has now turned to pity and the look in his eyes tells that he cannot survive another "no" for an answer. "I eat eggs. In fact, I love them", would be my biggest sentence in the whole conversation. "Thank God, you at least eat eggs", he exclaims, a mighty relieved now - and in his book my existence is not as useless as it would have been if by any chance I did not eat eggs. I e...

Tring Tring. Tring Tring. Tring Tring. Tring. "You have reached the automated voice messaging system of so-and-so. Please leave a message after the tone" Can you talk to the voice messaging system the same way as you would talk to its owner? If you can, I envy you. If you cant, do you know if there is a name for this disability? :) Just like anyone else, I talk to different people in different ways - the way of addressing, the tone, the language changes with each individual. Its like a protocol set between two people. The response of the person on the other side of the conversation is very important to that protocol. If its a voice messaging system, which is nothing but a dumb recorder - I cannot talk to it like I talk to its owner. I have tried it too hard, but it does not work! I try to sound as normal as possible, but I sound too weird! My recorded-voice-o-phobia is not limited to voicemails. I also hate calling customer support centers - it makes me very uncomfortable. If...

I have always been fascinated by curse words or abusive words. Though I am quite familiar with abusive words in other languages, I will give more examples from Kannada, as those were part of my growing up. Let me start by analyzing how cursing works. The main intention of abuse is to insult and also hurt the other person. Thats the key. If you have a set of vocabulary that your recipient does not understand or does not consider derogatory, sorry sir, its a waste! Kids begin their cursing using simple words like "stupid" , "idiot" , "fool" etc. And it does not take too much time for them to realize that these qualities are so common and acceptable, they cease to be curse words in the long run. And as kids, our abuses were mainly restricted to the animal names. A typical kid fight when we were young would go like this: Kid 1: "Kaththe" (Donkey, not ass ;) ) Kid 2: "Kothi" (Monkey) Kid 1: "Naayi" (Dog) Kid 2: "Goobe...

I had been to "Chak De India" on Sunday. The movie was into its third week, yet the crowd was substantial considering a rainy afternoon. A group of "commenting" spectators were sitting a few rows behind us. As soon as Shahrukh took the hockey stick in the opening scene, the "commentators" yelled " Goal missed, guru "! Yes, they were right! During the players registration scene, when Nethra tells " Nethra Reddy from Andhra Pradesh ", one of them yelled again " Yaake Karnataka avru yaaroo ilwa? " (Why nobody from Karnataka?) This smart comment was received well by his friends, who cheered him with loud laughter, that would have put the movie villains of the seventies to shame. Even in the noisiest of scenes (when spectators in the stadium were cheering for the players) the group never missed an opportunity to comment. And loud enough to be heard across the hall. After the movie ended, we saw that this group had no more than 5 pe...

Janani Janmabhoomischa Swargaadapi Gareeyasi I read this adage in some blog yesterday, I remembered hearing this during my school days. What I did not know was that Rama told this to his brother Lakshmana, when they saw Lanka full of gold. This quote had definitely seemed very "inspirational" when I was a kid, but now that I question a lot of things, this sentence no longer holds the same impact for me. The good thing about "Janani" is that its not abstract :) But what was Rama referring to when he said "Janmabhoomi"? Was he referring to the city of Ayodhya? Or the entire Kosala kingdom? Does his "Janmabhoomi" change with conquering and relinquishing certain portions of the land? Tough to answer! I somehow cannot admit that the very earlier freedom fighters were actually the "freedom fighters of India". No, I am not questioning their commitment - but its just that most of them fought for "their kingdom". I am not sure how many...

There are two theories about how to win an argument with a woman. Neither one works. Now, what was your first reaction when you read that quote? You found it funny and a smile crossed your lips? Or did you frown, started screaming that its a stereotypical statement that is offensive to women? If you belong to the first group, cool! If you belong to the second group, cool down, here is a statement that might please you. What is the difference between men and pigs? Pigs dont turn into men when they are drunk! No no, this post was not to trigger a venus-mars supremacy fight. I was just thinking how difficult it is to be humorous without offending anyone. And the second quote might upset not just the oversensitive men, but also the oversensitive drinkers! Just to give a few more examples. A conversation that happened at the lunch table. "Did you meet the new manager, he is sick" "He is sikh (sounding as sick)? I thought he was hindu" (we all laugh) Do you ...

Well, as they say, movie is a religion in India (by the way, who the hell are "they"? ;)) I think its very hard to find a person who is completely uninterested or ignorant about movies. I was just thinking about how my movie journey has been. As a kid, it was just the occasional movie we were taken to during some sundays. I dont remember feeling any movie as "bad" at that time. Typically a movie would have a hero and a heroine. All we needed was a "hero" who could fight. And we used to come back home and replay that fight with my granny's soft pillow, visualizing a villain in that. Then came television, and the sunday movie got added to our basket. During our pre-teens, our movie watching was pretty much restricted to Sterling and Skyline. These theatres used to screen only English movies then. Apart from an occasional Ten Commandments or a Mackenna's Gold, our syllabus consisted mainly of action movies. Our movie world was full of Arnold Schwarzen...

Whats an year? - The time taken by the earth to complete its orbit around the sun. Whats a month? - The time sun spends in one constellation. Whats a day? - Time taken for earth to revolve once on its own axis. Whats a fortnight? - Time taken for the moon to go from new moon state to full moon (and vice versa) Well, whats a week? I dont know! I have no clue as to how this time slice is arrived at. I have asked this question to lot of people and all I have got is sheepish smiles (and sometimes "dont-bother-me" stares) Some are creative enough to answer that 2 weeks make a fortnight. But I am not convinced. If you want to split up a fortnight, why 2 weeks and why not 7 "2-dayers"? You have any idea as to whats the rationale for defining the time slice called "week"? Even if you dont know the exact answer, any thoughts on this are absolutely welcome. And wrong answers carry no negative marks!

I got down from the bus at Majestic. The cool breeze made the overcrowded platform much tolerable. I was thinking about something else, when I heard somebody yell at me - "Surpass"! What? What did he just say? Was he really talking to me? What does 'surpass' actually mean? May be I am dreaming, I said to myself. No, I heard 4 more people tell the same thing to me within 20 seconds. 5 more persons and 30 more seconds later, I realized what they were asking, when a man in faded jeans and a fake Nike cap asked me again. Now, it was clear. It meant "Sir, pass?". Within a minute, 10 people had asked me if I had a daily bus pass, so that they can get it from me and save some cost! I think it was not too long ago BTS came up with daily passes. It was very useful for people who would take 3-4 buses in a day. And just a couple of weeks back, I had seen a slogan inside a BTS bus that said something like this "Dont share your passes with others. Its a crime. It am...

I had stumbled into a blog yesterday afternoon. There was a post on happiness index and suicide rate country-wise. It had lot of interesting statistics (like China is the only country where women outnumber men in committing suicide etc. etc.). Yesterday past midnight, I randomly picked up a scene to watch, from one of my favorite movies Annie Hall before going to bed. It was a stand up comedy scene where Woody Allen says " I was depressed at that time. I was in analysis. I was suicidal as a matter of fact and would have killed myself, but I was in analysis with a strict Freudian, and, if you kill yourself, they make you pay for the sessions you miss. "! Traveling by cab today morning, I was reading Godfather. It was the chapter where Sonny gets killed. And Lucy Mancini tries to commit suicide by taking an overdose of pills. Its a strange coincidence that the topic "suicide" appeared from 3 different sources in less than 24 hours. I had a quick breakfast in the morn...

"Oh, he/she is so innocent" Have you heard this statement quite often? At least I have. And "so" becomes "soooo" or "choo" depending on the gender of the statement maker. If you know me, you would have very rarely, if ever, heard me making such a statement. I have always had this confusion as to what innocence means. I seriously did not know the exact difference between innocence and ignorance. You always call a child as innocent, and not ignorant. If somebody has not committed a crime or has no knowledge of the crime, he is called innocent. But, if a person does not know about lets say anthropology, he is said to be ignorant about the subject. Definitely not innocent! So, I started this little research on the word "innocence". People mostly use the word "innocence" to define people who are trustworthy, dependable, not cheating and a whole lot of "good" qualities (including, not being aware of bad qualities). Innocen...

Why is it that most people don't keep their mobiles in silent mode, in general and particularly in meetings, movie halls, theaters and concerts? Why is it that people who hate silent mode, don't ever use "Increasing ring" feature? Why do such people use very loud ring tones? Why is it that most people use a very common ring tone and it takes them eternity to pick calls? (Yes, they don't even realize that its their mobile that is ringing!) Why is it that people with the most irritating ring tones are the ones who get calls very regularly? Why is it that most of the ring tones are monotonic? (Don't you think polyphonic ring tones are so less irritating on the ears?) Why is it that people so frequently use the default Nokia monotonic ring tone or a badly played version of Malgudi Days? Why have I never heard a nice polyphonic ring tone of Hotel California or Pulp Fiction theme or something? Why?

Quite recently, I was having this discussion with a cousin of mine. The question that popped out of that discussion was - Why are there no female mimicry artists? I thought about it for sometime and realized that there are very very few "mimickable" women. This is not just restricted to India but its almost an international phenomenon (I have not yet seen a female mimicry artist, so my assumption is that the number is very small if not zero, but please correct me if I am wrong) And "mimickable" people should exist in order to mimic them. Now, let me give a few examples of "mimickable". George Bush is very mimickable. So are Robert De Niro, Amitabh Bachchan, Sharukh Khan, Laloo Prasad Yadav, Vajpayee. Now, Sunil Dutt is not very mimickable. Neither are Bobby Deol, Rahul Bose or George Fernandes. And some people can be "mimickable" by their natural style (like Laloo or Robert De Niro) or may be in a specific performance in a movie (like Samuel L Ja...

Cricket is a huge obsession in India. Movies are an equal craze in this country. India has played 646 ODI matches in 23 years. That would make around 30 ODIs per year. Indian cinema makes about 1200 movies a year, Bollywood alone accounting for 200. Cricketers and cricket establishment make tons of money, with zero professionalism. Movie stars and producers earn billions making pseudo-emotional NRI Indianism garbage. Half of the major brand ambassadors are cricketers. The rest are film stars. Our cricket is rarely world-class. Our movies in general are nothing to write home about. For all you time conscious people, a person watching all the India ODIs in one year spends 30*7=210 hours on cricket. An average man in India watches at least one movie a week (either in cinema halls or television), which comes to 52*3=156 hours a year. India had won the 1983 World Cup. There were a few other achievements like reaching finals of 2003 World Cup, beating Australia in a test series in Australia...