Dont Panic!

Death and Beyond

2009-07-06T23:23:00.001-07:00

As I look above,

I see a vast Black hole,

When I look down I see,

My body without my soul.

Who am I?

I seem to have lost my identity,

Me, myself but not quite me,

I have stopped being an entity.

Bah! Who cares if I’m a specter,

I think I still exist.

I’ve seen enough Ramsay movies to know that,

Khooni Pretatma & Bhoot being few to list.

I don’t know what will happen now.

Although being a ghost could be quite fun,

I’d spend my ‘life’ haunting others

Or will I transition to the next emanation.

As I move through the Black hole,

I see no one, no man no ghost.

I thought I’d be with my own kind

Probably have Einstein for a host.

Maybe I’ll enter the Pearly Gates,

And St.Peter I might see,

I’ll have my whole life judged

Although an angel I’ve never tried to be.

I feel some strange aura, some energy,

It is me I now realize,

I think I’m making a transition

As I begin to vaporize.

I now realize what death is,

And what beyond holds,

It is the death of faith, belief and religion,

And everything a man moulds.

I start as an atom,

A miniscule entity of divine power,

When I die I just dissipate,

And energy is all you can recover.

Strategic Decision Making for superheroes

2009-06-29T02:29:00.000-07:00

I never mildly suspected that most superheroes were intelligent. And in fact if any of them merely were so, it is normally touted as their super power. Superheroes don't need strategic thinking and business sense, that's the job of super villains. Superheroes have values which help in decision through the everyday normal crisis like alien attacks and evil twin brothers.

Here are some of the pointers on how to make decisions when life is threatened on your home planet, your evil clone has sought to destroy you, your love life is jeopardized by the constant distress signals and your nemesis is standing for the elections. (Any relation to foreign policies of Big powerful nuclear weapon wielding countries is purely co-incidental)

Rule#1 Never trust your nemesis: Sure he has had bad childhood and unfair tryst with justice or maybe he is bad for the heck of it. But just when you think the bad guy would have reformed his ways, he might just be back with the EVIL DEATH ray machine to destroy everything and inparticularly you.

Rule#2 My enemy's enemy is my friend: Ok this is a very simple policy which can be explained through an example. Evil clones from other dimension threaten Superman. Even Lex Luthor hasn't taken a fancy for them. Superman teams up with Lex luthor to defeat them.

Pros: The simple theory of comparative advantage. I have the brains, you have the brawn or vice versa. You also get to make sure your human nemesis is indebted to you (see if he cares).

Cons: Remember Rule#1

Rule #3 Eliminate cultural differences: As often seen when interacting with alien cultures, NOT every alien thinks Elvis was the last best thing that happened on earth. So at times it is imperative to understand that there can be cultural difference. But as a superhero in your own right and might, you can eliminate them. Say your way or the highway.

Rule # 4 Mentor other superheros, coz if you don't, your nemesis just might: There are always new superpowers born every corner (Well if u do live in the world where u are perfectly sure beyond reasonable doubt that u are a superhero, hell why not?) And the evil bad guys are always fast at bringing an army of darkness of their own. You better not be late at that, as in late Superhero. So mentor these superheros and teach them how to be a true hero. For help in mentoring, start from Rule #1

Of the selfless and the spineless

2008-11-30T03:35:00.000-08:00

Over one week, everybody in India has witnesses a rollercoaster overhaul of emotions. I am one of those many Mumbaikars who did check up on each and everyone of my friends and made sure they are safe. And to say I had been to all those places just 2 days before terror struck. But as I watch the crisis unfold in magnitude over the past few days, I can only feel helpless at the vulnerability a law abiding peaceful citizen of India has to dying a unnecessary death.

A terrorist has been captured, they say. There is a guy, must be younger than me weilding a gun and ready to kill anything that moves. Would he have grown up like me wondering the same things: is there life on other planets, can we ever travel through time, how is a rainbow formed...
I dont know but I dont think so. Here I see a programmed mind with no escape clause sent as a killing machine. A dispensible commodity to serve destruction. I would like to know what goes in that mind to be capable of killing a person. To do things so unnecessary. I would like to know.

As I watch the heritage of Mumbai go up in flames, I hope that this is a day that people; Indians and Pakistanis; remember this forever. I hope this is not just another politicised issue and forgotten with the next change of government with the justice never served for the people who suffered. I just hope....

Unheard

2008-11-04T13:10:00.000-08:00

Today in a conversation I managed to hear,

" The story of Bihar : 6 months flood, 6 months drought. Its a life of misery. What can you do in a state like that?"

Agruments flooded,

"But its the governments responsibility to support these people. It is supposed to give security , give employment, optimise resources. "

"If the floods happen every year and these people end up dying if not evacuated. Shouldn't these people be relocated?"

" Why not build a dam?"

With his calm demour, the protagonist continued with his rationale,

"The government failed, agreed, so it is upto the people to save themselves. The dams cant be built because it a plain. As for relocating, thats exactly what they are doing when they migrate to Maharashtra. In Ladakh admist the treachery of bitter coldness as well as the dangerous terrain, labourers from Bihar are building a road. One may argue why arent the natives of Ladakh given a preference for this job. The truth is nobody in their sane minds want to do this job, but then the sense of desperation is so much that poor labourers from Bihar will risk everything for their livelihood. Its a triumph of survival inspite of the miseries of nature and apathy of authorities. And this is the issue that people need to know and think about. Protesting against migrants, killing people, sensationalising regionalism or any other media antics be it from either side is infact taking the light away from the real issue. Its indeed sad to see that nobody cares about these people. I dont know when or who will do it, but people have to start thinking."

A sudden state of silence gripped the listeners. The group dispersed as the professor came into the class. But they were still thinking.

Of Science and Sitcoms

2008-08-24T02:55:00.000-07:00

It has been so long since i had my regular dose of sitcoms. Every now and then i do manage to catch up on prison break, IT Crowd and Coupling and of course zillionth reruns of Friends. But it has been so long since I watched anything as passionately as I used to watch back when i was a kid. I remember...

Star Trek

I was always an avid Trekkie, with the ability to even recount the names of all episodes of Star Trek: TOS and Star Trek Voyager, a skill rather surprisingly unrewarded in the corporate world. Not only was Captain Kirk adept in wooing almost every alien hottie in the universe , he was truly representative of an ideal Leader. Jokes apart, there are so many instances where Kirk has shown that sheer grit, integrity, intelligence can get one of out of any situation, be it making a radio on a remote planet or being faced with the dilemma of having to kill his own student.

Spock was always "fascinating" for his cool attitude, which is also by the way because of inability of Vulcans to show emotions, but hell... who cares. Always "Mr. StatetheObvious", Spock justified that with logical reasoning, there is a solution to every problem...mostly.

Each of the important crew members had their own distinct personality, sometimes bordering on insanity. But the most important lesson of all is to always have your first name spelt out, because in case it is not you would be the first nameless ensign who would be zapped out of existence by the aliens and possibly never get any girl.

Going ahead I guess I would be reflecting on many other sitcoms which have been instrumental in enriching my thinking, or simply added better one liners to my vocabulary.

Think tank

2008-08-22T23:53:00.000-07:00

Am sitting in my room near the window with a perfect view of a small pond in my campus. From up here, it looks like a crystal carpet, glittering with pride with every drop of rain that falls into it. There are random turbulences created sending out concentric waves which lose their identity as they move away....
Beautiful, picture perfect you would think. But then in my head, i am sitting and trying to firgure out the probability density function of the occurance of water drops. I am thinking of the fractal patterns, the growing concentric circles and their intersection with other circles.
I sometimes feel that i have lost the ability to appreciate beauty for its essence. I wouldnt really care for the beauty of nature since it always there around. Again I would say, it has become a hygience factor as stated in Herzbergs theory of motivation.
But then today, I can actually feel a sense of satisfaction, of peace with the rythm of the rain.
Life has become such a routine, waking up and reading the newspaper to get the daily bout of sadness, madness and myopia the world displays, having felt this extreme sense of helplessness that you cant do anything to make people see the right picture. Over time this feeling of helplessness has grown into acceptance slowly bordering on indifference. I am becoming like million others, who i have grown up blaming for everything that goes wrong. I dont want to change.....
The waves are still growing...

Sweet Confusion

2008-02-29T23:46:00.000-08:00

I am not trying to be very profound, but confusion seems to be the eternal state of most minds. It at least is mine, and i don't want to be known for being the only one in the world for something like this. Every decision creates new forks in the path of life. It also closes down all the other paths which were not chosen. And then when you look back.....

It was a lecture of the first module, Engineering economics. I have always been a maths and science girl and I like getting down to raw numbers. I got my dose of adrenaline as i juggled through the trough and trenches of cash flows. And i learnt more than i expected...

Opportunity cost: Opportunity cost if the cost of selecting one course of action in terms of the opportunities which are given up to carry out that course. It is the benefit lost by rejecting the best alternative to the one chosen.

Sunk cost: It refers to all past costs which were unavoidable and which have already been incurred and whose amounts cant be changed now.

Quite technical they might sound as you encounter them through engineering economics but understanding them can help through so many miseries in life. What most people fail to do is to differentiate between the two types of costs. A sunk cost is not something worth bothering about anymore. Thinking about all the other what-ifs might only increase your sweet state of confusion but will not help you in future decisions. The best philosophy is to simply move on. I realise that every decision I make changes my future and I can only look ahead and consider all opportunity costs while planning so that i don't miss out on the best alternative.

Life, the Universe and Everything

2008-01-18T22:46:00.000-08:00

So fine I am a Douglas Adams fan, and i don't mind stating the obvious. Everything seems to have been said and heard already but then there is always a new perspective to everything done before.
So it was fine rainy day in the mid of June when i arrived on the Land of Titans. No, people weren't too tall here, no they definitely were not; but they had all done big deeds which mostly seemed unachievable by a mere meek human being. So i arrived to study in NITIE, i came to study PGDIE. As i stepped into the campus i could see that i was teleported to a green tranquil state of existence interspersed with random government buildings cropping up within the greenery. I am used to staying in serene green surroundings and also with all the other creatures which prefer to do so too. This felt like home!