Ideas are Immortal

“I don’t subscribe to coincidence. I believe that no matter how random  things might appear there still is a plan“

An interesting line from a recent movie I was watching. Interesting because it almost converges with my perception of random occurrences of events. Although, it talks about a plan, and somewhere unintentionally intending to invoke the famous concept of ‘fate’, I do not subscribe to the idea of fate, for, it is simply futile.

I believe that even when events are happening in random order, we possess the ability to either put them in a frame of already occurred,correlated events and call it a plan ( Like a Jigsaw puzzle) , or, we can transcend from the current events, leading into further related events by proactive effort ( Like a falling Dominos pack); both the cases are possible, only if we believe that We are above the ‘events’, and that the events are a consequence of our actions, without giving too much reverence to the events or the consequences themselves…..

By such a perception, it is easier to tackle the repercussions; be it positive or negative, in a more personally responsible manner. For, there is nothing of more import than the possibilities emanating from the self…

Firstly, I feel it strongly necessary to admonish myself for being this naive, and it embarrasses me; After being born and brought up in Bengaluru, I haven’t visited numerous  places which are worth visiting. And, one such important place is the Food Street in VV Puram.

With the latest tagging of “Foodie” to my profile,I had to visit it and I did stumble there in an unprepared manner ( after dinner!). There was so much, but so little I could eat. I promised myself that I’d avenge this act of cowardice by me, by throwing full assault on this place ASAP.

For those of you who have been as shamelessly ignorant as me, the Food Street is operational from 6 in the evening to just after 11 in the night( given the cops’ issue)… Another important point is, you do not get anything non-vegetarian! But, even if you are as a voracious non-vegetarian like me, you’re appetite will certainly shoot up and you might end up putting a pound or more in a single visit 🙂 !

Authentic Kannada cuisine ( benne dose, chiroti, …)  to North Indian( dabeli, pav bhaji, basundi…), each item available is a delicacy and has a legacy of it’s own.

Heavy on calories, but light on pockets, Sublime taste with bees like people buzzing around, aroma of mixed cuisines going olfactorily offensive against you, flooding saliva down your oesophagus, and a festival to your taste buds; This is the default experience for anyone who loves food at Namma Fooood Sttrreeeet 🙂

In Kannada, the regional language of Karnataka, we say ” Moorthi Chikkadaadaroo, keerthi Doddadu”, which is a proverb. It means, although an entity is physically timid, the reputation and fame of it are sky high!

This is the most appropriate attribution to STUDSAT: India’s first “Pico Satellite”. A satellite, which is miniature in size, but as complex as its bigger counterparts. Now, that you are all also aware that it is an undergraduate student project, it might culminate to the point as to why it is so very special to the Indian Space and Student communities.

After, more than two years since it’s conception, it has been brought into reality.

I would not digress too much into how we reached this point, for it is all over our site http://www.teamstudsat.com/. I would like to reveal the assimilation of skills each one of us has had throughout this process.

This being a Space Project and because we were literally dealing with “The Rocket Science”, we have learnt innumerable concepts, technologies and sciences. This was a continuous process, wherein, we would pick up skills on demand basis, and execute the task, and then switch over to the next. At the end of the day, as residue we have retained precious layers of technical skills, which, wouldn’t have been possible if we weren’t members of such a team.

Given that we had to get our technical skills honed, there were other crucial tasks which each of us inculcated. From developing good managers, to good marketing persons, to excellent diplomats, to outstanding orators, to creative geniuses; we’ve seen all of these emanate from within the technical core of team mates.

We have grown to have a rapport which manifests the ideal interactions between team mates to get a project done.Not to forget the fun trips we’ve had and relentless night-outs in the clean room, R&D centre and the ground station.

With so much pressure now with the launch, and the media, we still feel unchanged except that we’ve grown a lot better, We’ve all given parts of ourselves to the First Indian Pico Satellite, and at this proud instant of time we feel humbled and over joyed…

Jai Hind !

While I am composing this 300th post for my blog, I am involuntarily thinking as to what has been my inspiration to have blogged 299 posts. I feel it necessary, to envelope the important sources of inspiration, which have made me disperse out my thoughts, ideas, reminiscence, imagination and manifestations to the readers like you, in a seemingly effortless and non-compulsive manner.

I am startled at this introspective analysis.

I started blogging, mostly for making myself more complex, as in, to add another facet to my personality, and to quench my thirst of sudden impulses of words and random thoughts. As you can see, my initial posts were mostly amateurish written by a pretensive megalomaniac! (That’s what I feel about them)

As I started putting some conscious efforts about the content in my posts, it seemed to get a dimension – A character of its own; An Identity. This identity mostly converged to an ‘enhanced’ version of my perceptions, and ME.

I call them enhanced, because I believe that the strings of words, and play of ideas I have expressed on my blog are instantaneous; By which I mean,they have occurred sequentially, and have been expressed over a long period of time. But when a reader tries to contemplate me to be a collective sum of the individual posts in my blog, they would be definitely misled.

The precise relation of me and my blog would be, to see it as a measure of the change I have undergone, right in front of all of you, with tangible proof exposed all over my blog. It is not to be misinterpreted as a tedious and elaborate chronicling of the different facets of the simple me.

With running time, the sources of inspiration now have grown and the next major influence would be the society – Mainly the negativity in it! I feel compelled to express my views about it,and it is mainly with a motive of involving more of you into the debate.

There are also posts about numerous special people I know, and all those posts were intended to show how special they are to me.

Sometimes I feel, I give exaggerated importance to my blog ( appending to the complaints from many of you), but then, I realize,
If i give my blog that amount of importance, then it must deserve it,for,

Ideas are Immortal!

After a really long time, had an excellent brainstorming session, which happened to be with one of the less expected persons. I was pleasantly surprised with rustic, innovative, naive and genuine ideas he confided to me, pertaining to the most essential aspects of an individual’s life, career and his social roles.

The gelling of these ideas with the pragmatic approach which was put forth, with that amount of passion from him, and the way I was drawn deep into it was just remarkable. A perfect brainstorm!

There will be time, when I will go on to share these ideas, but for now, I am glad that this has been a meeting which has introduced me to a great associate, who has been a close team mate for this long!

The NO Argument

A day of lethargy, ultimately, this is what a Bandh day turns out to be, to most of the common people. Added to this is the stagnancy of business, at all strata- Starting from the monopolies, to the lay man working for day wage… Disruption in normal activities, to protest against something which wouldn’t even be corrected by this act of ‘protest’. Also, if observed well, it is again being manipulated by the politicians as a political gimmick.

How many of us really care about the Bandh and it’s significance, if it has any? Don’t most of us greet it as a day of respite; a sudden sober holiday;Isn’t this the way most of us contemplate a bandh? So, with such a mindset of people around, does calling a nation-wide bandh do anything?

What is the purpose of calling a bandh?
It is supposed to unite all the affected people, and take up their causes to tell their government what is right and, what is wrong… But, unfortunately the ones who really care about this are few,most others use it to their advantage, while the rest stay numb! So, do we need a nation-wide bandh?!

The YES Argument

Government is an embodiment of the collective decisions made by people, to serve the people’s interests.  Ideally, the actions of the Government must be under the vigil and control of its entities: People; But, in today’s system the Governmemt has grown bigger than the it’s entities and has obtained a supreme image, instead of being reachable to its people. When it has grown so big, and is trying to push policies which are anti-people, there is little that the masses can do to express their disconent. They need their appeals to be heard, if not more such atrocities will be pushed down their throats.

If voting once in five years is the only chance of opinion for the people, then what about the duration of the term of Government and its wrongdoings against its people during the term. People can’t wait for five years to show their discontent against the government. If the term of the government is not prone to ‘performance based sustenance’, then people need a channel to show their united opinions on the policies served to them. If such a platform is not provided, a bandh is what people would opt for, although reluctantly,for, it affects their day’s life and it is about their day’s survival. People risk a day’s wage to express their anguish, hoping for some empathetic retraction of the policies.

To be effective, Bandhs or protests must be organized by people, and shouldn’t be called by opposition parties, because if given a chance, the opposition would also do the same, unless they are empathetic about the people at a principle level.

If people have to make their voices heard to the government, by stalling their lives, and consequently the country, then SO BE IT! The governemnt should have it’s people and their interests as its prime concern for all policies and rules it frames, as that by definition is what they are there for….

Increasing prices…Rocketting inflation… Stagnant wages… Growing disparity…  Seems like a perfect recipe for a fiasco.

This is the condition of India, not in the past, but now, at this moment and if uncurtailed will grow worse in future.

We keep talking about “India Shining” and other political slogans,but, are these propagandists at least looking into the ground reality?

Keeping in mind the most of us, who wouldn’t be aware of the exact figures of the calamity, I jotted down some numbers from a wiki page on “Poverty in India“.

• According to a 2005 World Bank estimate, 42% of India falls below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day (in nominal terms Rs. 21.6 a day in urban areas and Rs 14.3 in rural areas): This implies that almost every alternate person, if we were mixed together wouldn’t be able to satisfy his/her most fundamental needs;Even feeding onelself adequately for one time a day in today’s inflated market would be impossible…

• 27.5% of the population was living below the poverty line in 2004–2005(government-specified poverty threshold of 12 rupees per day) : Note the Govt. specified poverty threshold: Rs.12 per day… Imagine about 330 million people in this condition, given that we are the infamous 1.2 Billion people, and still counting….

• Income inequality in India (Gini coefficient: 32.5 in year 1999- 2000), and 36.8 in 2004 : And, I have no doubts that, this disparity index would have further widened with the IT boom in India.

• The worldwide recession in 2009 have plunged 100 million more Indians into poverty than there were in 2004 increasing the effective poverty rate from 27.5% to 37.2%, i.e., the previous number of 330 million has increased to 450 million people. And, we say India was most resilient to the recession… When there are already 330 million people below poverty line, an additon of 150 millions doesn’t seem to influence the reputation!

So what have the governments,which have governed us all these years done, and doing about it?
Hmmm….Pretty much nothing…

Okay,let me be not this harsh on them: Yes, they were, and are doing lots…

Lots to safegaurd the interests of the creamy layer who own and run the country. So, why blame the government? They are right in their policy perspective…

Even while it’s people are suffering, shelling out unscrupulously, their hard earned money on high prices for the commonest of the commodities, with it’s farmers commiting suicides regularly, and an overall deteriorating lifestyle, the main purpose of  the Governments has been taken care of, i.e.,to keep the balance sheets of the rich patriot businessmen in tact. Kudos!!!

If you support the cause of the common man, raise your voice against this atrocity.
To start with, sign this online petition against the unreasonable hike in fuel prices and deregulation of the same.

http://www.petitiononline.com/petrohi/

Critics: That one genre of people, who go on to live in a delusion of being the Omniscients (all knowing!), within their domains of scrutiny (sometimes beyond their own).

The advantage for critics is the acknowledgement they receive from the audience, or i might well concur this alone to be their talent: To make people believe in their highfalutin hypocrisy.

Let us try to analyze the purpose and credibility of Criticism. Yet again, I would project my perception of this betterment tool.

As I mentioned, Criticism is a betterment tool. There is no criticism which can be categorized as positive or negative. I haven’t been able to fathom the concept of “Positive Criticism” till date. Let us not digress into this debate, as yet.

Coming to another essential aspect, the source of criticism is the point of most import.

A person who hasn’t tread the path has NO right, whatsoever, to speculate of its terrains!

Simple,and this is what I believe in,with respect to criticism.

When a person is criticizing my actions, or my efforts, or my creations, the first and foremost requirement, for me to give heed to those words is: Only if that person has at least tried and failed in the context of scrutiny. If not, that would be treated as ambient noise, and filtered off my mind.

But, at the same time, when someone who has had experience in the matter of discussion, is criticizing me, I would not mind taking even harsh reviews. Nevertheless,the levels of incorporation of these views into myself is a function of my perception of the source.And, this alone must be the standard for tackling Criticism and Critics.

Any softhead, with a hollow mind, a false ego and a bucket full of vocabulary can chew out creative commentaries on – An act of creation – A mind’s product – A lifetime’s efforts; But, to even give heed to such ridiculousness, brings down the authority of the creator.

Unfortunate though is, in today’s media frenzy world, people appreciate a megalomaniac critic,instead of the humble geniuses within the creators.