Parle-G

The luscious temptations of the modern world have ravaged all the reservations of our adolescence. Through our reservations we sought a deeper connection before jumping into a superficial closeness. The trouble for us is that in the modern world, those like me who have tried to jump into material superficiality have at first fallen in love with it, but then have stopped believing in everything, even love, after having realized the fakeness of things that were superficial.

We grew up in lack of superficiality and still haven't got used to being around it. In my teens, we all knew what it was to be around beauty and we know what it meant to long for it. But the age of visual excesses that we soon were to witness destroyed that continuity. Suddenly it was just hotness and sex all over and there was nothing else to achieve or dream for. All emotions, love and longing started appearing as an attempt to escape the reality of natural selection.

Having found some pieces of Parle-G in the jaggery nimkins from my last trip to home, I just realized how much more we now spend to get the same pleasure that we had with much less. I also have some nan-khatai, cookies made with flour, sugar and hydrogenated fat. We had our problems in the old world, but we knew hot to cope with them. Suddenly, there seems nothing else except a game of power.

Our only option in the new world is to keep the balance between expenses and income and hope that everything would work out for us in the end. We don't believe that anything else is achievable. If we feel sick, there are medicines and doctors at your service, but there would be no one tell that you're fine. Having consciously got rid of little things in our lives, thinking that they were irrational, we have nothing to love and nothing to fear of losing when we're gone. With no purpose to live, we know we would die in ignominy.

You could of course, just love superficiality and be married to it, but would you love it? People of my kind are still unsure.

internet banking in India

I spent last 3 hours trying to buy a ticket from an Indian website. I had opened an account in India to avoid carrying cash/amex-checks with me while I am there, but I can't use the bank account for anything. Every time I try using the internet banking the password doesn't work. If I ask them for the password, they send me my password through mail (apparently that is much safe than resetting the password). I can't use the card for buying anything either because all merchants require me to login with password (another ridiculous lack of responsibility). I guess the only relief is banking exists in India and if you know the right people and are lucky enough things would work out for you. On paper, India has everything - democracy, freedom and capitalism but in practice, good luck if any of that works out for you.

personality type

1.

1. Extrovert/Introvert
2. Sensitive/INtuitive
3. Thinking/Feeling
4. Judging/Perceiving


I should be an INTP but I somewhat lean towards ISTP as well. I think intuitively and then try to approach with rational/details. I am not a complete INTP and cannot live in my own workd. I rely on popular opinion but only to see how applicable my approaches are (makes sense to me, if I am an ISTP).

The ISTP personality type is likely to be analyst (which I am). I should be doing something that an INTP can do. The following link summarizes my problem:

http://personalityjunkie.com/2009/12/28/intp-personality-type-jobs-careers-interests-and-majors/

2. Another concept is that of Holland Code. My Holland Code seems to be IAC (Investigative, Artistic, Conventional). As I said, it is not easy being artistic and conventional. Wikipedia describes the following letters in the Holland Code :

• Realistic - practical, physical, hands-on, tool-oriented
• Investigative - analytical, intellectual, scientific, explorative
• Artistic - creative, original, independent, chaotic
• Social - cooperative, supporting, helping, healing/nurturing
• Enterprising - competitive environments, leadership, persuading
• Conventional - detail-oriented, organizing, clerical

what do you love

It is only recently, I think, when Google started playing with the idea of monopoly. It owns tons of data, more than facebook, more than IMF or WHO or anyone who has their business model based on data. Having been at the helm of user-data for years now, it shouldn't be surprising if Google spawns a range of products that finally put this massive user-specific data to use.

So far, the results have been disappointing. Google buzz went nowhere. Google trends is practically unusable. Google new is still in its infancy (customizing news couldn't be that hard). Google+ probably has some capability to compete with facebook, but it still can't be the same. Facebook captures the spirit of college life and in a lot of ways keeps you tied to the college behavior - wild partying, exhibitionism, social gossip and spirited volunteerism. Google would have a tough time tapping into that market. People might like voice and video and wide range of selections Google servers fetch for you in fraction of a second, but a "Like" button is not something computer scientists can come up by themselves.

I am curious what happens next but I am somewhat disappointed that Google is more interested in providing more content than actually improving the content itself. The what do you love feature, seems another attempt to provide a new "product" based on data. Absolutely nothing seems to have changed for the search content itself. In first tests, I don't see any intelligence that is being used.

1.1.45 आद्यन्तो टकितौ

A serious man

Recently watched Joel Coen's A Serious Man - a very interesting movie. I got to see those early elements of Coen's bright, almost tinted cinematography.

It was difficult movie to understand, not purely because of the Yiddish words that I had never heard - Dybbuk, Mishna, Hashem, Goys, (to sit) shiva. - but also because of the ever-shifting focus of the story - about the failed marriage, responsibility of an unemployed brother, desire to cheat. It was almost as if the director was consciously trying not to give any closure to the viewers.

The idea was rather simple but explained in a rather deliberate mysterious fashion - One doesn't always understand the hashem. We can try making sense of the world and just try our best, but after a certain point, we need to accept the mystery. This is not the kind of existentialist comedy that Woody Allen would write, but one that is somewhat darker and strange in a lot of ways. I would certainly remember the movie for its humor.

local Hindi

I do speak Hindi, especially at home or when I am with friends from UP. But I generally prefer to stick to English when talking to anyone else. Hindi may be what a lot of my friends think it to be - the "national" language, but for me, it has been a very local language and every time I am in India, it seems to be getting more and more localized. I see a very compelling reason to speak Hindi only to people from UP. There is a certain flavor to Hindi of UP, that only people from the region can appreciate. A lot of times, the vocabulary uses so much of Urdu or Sanskrit, that it is practically a language different from that of Bombay or Delhi. Hindi in UP is not just the language of city-talk, but it also has been the language of law and business. Yet is the other "mainstream" form of Hindi - the variety that relies on English for sophistication but keeps the only "local" aspects for Hindi expression - that has been welcomed and accepted. Much as I like to distinguish this form of Hindi from the one I speak, there is a certain music and nonchalance to this city-hindi that I find amusing. The Mumbai-Hindi is really the best example; it is spoken in a city inhabited by everyone from around India - the bhaiyas, the madrasis, the ghatis and the bongs. They are all there and they use the mishmash of Hindi and English to go by. The nonchalant "masti" of the life in the city- whether it be impoverished or elite - is expressed very well in the form of Hindi that has evolved in the city. Hindi of Mumbai might have the same syntax as that from UP but it derives a lot of words from Marathi and other local languages, apart from, its Mumbaiya character.

Delhi has its own form of Hindi - yet again - influenced by neighboring states. The Punjabi and Hindustani are so close in syntax and mood, that for me it has always been difficult to distinguish Delhi Hindi from Punjabi. If I were to speak the Hindi of Delhi I would rather choose Punjabi because I think there would be a lot more justice served that way - both to Hindi and to Punjabi. It is hard not to acknowledge the role that a common syntax and general appreciation of poetry that Urdu has provided to the whole of North India. If there is one language - with its variants loosely similar to each other - through North India, then it is mostly because of influence of Urdu. However, the influence of Urdu as well as the usability of a common Indian language has declined over last century to the extent that Hindi is only a shallow reminder of the past. Hindi is not used for any purpose except admittance of unyielding local ways. An average North Indian speaks Hindi only as long as he or she is describing his "local" feelings. The moment there is need to be assertive or to say something pithy - the language unconsciously switches to English. the only exceptions are those who have accepted English completely and never choose Hindi to communicate with anyone. If you don't believe that, do a very easy experiment. Just start disagreeing with a Hindi speaker and tell him that he is wrong about everything he is saying. Most likely the Hindi speaker would re-tell you everything in English - only expecting you to find it all more authentic, reliable and convincing. Such is the Hindi that has flourished in the cities of India. Despite its charm and amusement, there is really little that it has to offer. It would not be incorrect to say that the Hindi of big cities is really a local flavor of English, rather than that of Hindi.

a crisis of beauty

There is that essential charm in theology - the story of Christianity. The effect of religion is at least as deep rooted as is human history - partly because religion itself is a record of history.

There is this beauty in religion that it can explain everything - even things that science cannot. Nothing comforts more than when all nature is explained through a simple story. It is really the story that makes religion so graspable and far reaching.

There are many other things woven into religion but primarily it is the the human story that forms most of its appeal. Religion stands time, the future - and our being outside of the realms of time is pondered over and is explained convincingly by religion. Nothing else nearly achieves that.

The feelings of love, family and other values can be easily irreversibly tied together with this story. The story only provides beauty and its only the beauty itself that religion is tied to. Unfortunately we tend to claim more than beauty from assertions of our religion. That is where the beauty of religion fails to converge with the nature of its appeal. This is the crisis that we deal with.

being capitalist or socialist

Reading a book on history of conservatism in America, I feel that the reason for someone to agree with Socialism or it's opposite- Capitalism is purely circumstantial. If one sees Socialism in his past, then he tries to revolt and put personal freedom in front. On the other hand, when one is withered with the power-driven society, then the way to revolution is mostly about forming communities and sharing the benefits. In our times, of course there is a sort of convergence between the two tendencies, even though is not uncommon to see either of the extremes in media. I think all civilizations have had a dualism of some kind ; the particular case of capitalism and socialism is indeed the most remarkable of them all. The causes of two world wars in last century might seem to be rooted in racial strife or manic dictators, but they probably have had more to do with the conflict between these two economic philosophies.

I recently learned about the book "Road to Serfdom" by Hayek, an Austrian economist, who along with others in the Austrian academia who have had limited freedom during the war years, equated socialism with totalitarianism and claimed that authoritarianism is inherent in socialist ideals. In the back-drop of failing socialist policies in Europe and later due to the failure of Stalinism in USSR, the works of Hayek influenced many neo-liberals in America.