What the hell?

What the hell is NDTV thinking it is doing? By asking for withdrawals for having opinions against the media's actions, NDTV has gained the wrath of a hundred others. And, isn't this against the so-called freedom-of-speech that Ms.Dutt and NDTV stand by? Or is there a separate Constitution of India that states that media and general public are to have different degrees of freedom of speech?
Can anyone clarify it for me, please?

Theft in Times?

I missed out a call from Sudipta to blog about plagiarism committed by leading dailies against bloggers due to my hibernation. However, its better late than never and so here goes. I have personally not had such an experience but that doesn't stop the fact that such a trend should be admonished.

Blogging is one of the few activities that came up with the growth of internet, and true to the spirit of internet, it has been one of the mediums where people can express their thoughts without restraints. This led to the development of some really good writers and bloggers amongst us. However, using the talents of these writers to earn money and not giving them credit for their hard work would take away the freedom to write and express thoughts because we are not sure as to how our work would be used. Further, the shocking thing is that such acts are done by leading dailies and reputed firms. This leads to a question of ethics. Don't these dailies and firms have people on their payroll to write well? Or if they find something interesting enough to be published, don't they have the courtesy to ask for permission first?

The internet has opened up a plethora of businesses and social mediums where people communicate. With it, there arises new problems. But since internet was in its infancy, there were no ways to deal with it. As with any evolving society, the problems are followed by solutions and we have certain solutions like Creative Commons copyrights(you would find it on my site too! So, before you publish something from my post, ask for permission!!). However, these are not taken seriously enough and that has led to all the woe. The top management of these dailies and firms should make sure that such plagiarism doesn't happen for that would affect the long time growth of the company. If I knew that the content of Times can be obtained by reading some blogs(available for free), would I as a consumer want to go and pay for it??? This question, when given to masses, would seriously affect the bottom line of the company. So, before you flick off material from the net, think..... for you may be erasing the bottom line of your company with the simple Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V that you might do.

Is abortion personal or public?

This post is inspired from an article arguing against abortion in my college newspaper followed by a discussion I had with one of my labmates and friends, KC. I’m not pro-abortion or anti-abortion, but merely feel that the decision should be left to the concerned parties and not be interfered by the State and National Governments, other organizations and people.

Abortion is a very strong act, an act to the future, an act by the present. A life, that is as yet unborn, is killed for the sake of the present life that is born. Which life is more important and why?

There are a number of takes on abortion in every part of the world and in every culture. Over the years, it has been one of the most controversial topics to be discussed again and again by politicians, religious leaders, social activists and who not. I feel that abortion should be a private decision, taken only by the parents of the child to be born (with the mother having more say in the matter because it is she who has to go through the process after all is said and done). A number of people, with well known leaders among them, say that abortion should be abolished (no pun intended!) for a variety of reasons. Here are my reasons for why it should be left for the parents to decide the future of their own child.

The parents know what’s best for the kid to be born. No one in the world can love a child more than his/her own parents and so the parents, in most cases, have the right to decide how the child should be and what is best for the child in the long run. Sometimes the parents may decide that the child is better off not being born in this world rather than being born and having to suffer. One great example is the case of Nikita and Harsh Mehta who wanted to abort their child because they knew that the kid would be born with serious heart defects and has very less chances of surviving. Then, is it any wonder that the parents did not want the kid to face all misery that was awaiting it once it entered the world? Don’t they have a right to decide if their kid should face sorrow or not? I’m sure my mother would do anything to protect me from a life of known abject misery and sorrow if she can help it. And it is true for all the parents who really love their kid. Knowingly letting your kid suffer something for the good of no one is akin to not loving your kid at all. There were a number of organizations that offered to provide monetary support to the Mehta family. However, the emotional trauma has to be undergone only by the parents and the child, isn't it? Would anyone be able to share and reduce that? These are difficult questions and the answers are not light, either!

Second, imagine the pain that the parents would have undergone to come to this decision. No one would want to kill off their own offspring without strong reasons. So, if the parents are rational, they should be allowed to decide what to do in such cases.

Third, talking from the child’s perspective, imagine if you were born and knew that your parents, of all people, didn’t want you in the world? It is much better to have not been born at all. This would lead to a lot more complications related to trust and security within the child.

Finally, we talking of a woman’s life here. She has the right to decide what she wants to do, with her life and body. If she decides not to have a baby, then her decision should be respected. For she knows what is best for her body to survive. If there was a case where having the baby would endanger the mother’s life, would you jeopardize a living life to a yet unborn one? That brings us back to the fundamental question of who is more important, the living present or the yet unborn future?

In all, I feel that decision should be taken by the people concerned and not by anyone else for the far reaching consequences of the decision (for or against) are felt only by those people and not others who venture to give their opinions in this matter. Again, I’m not pro or anti abortion and feel that it is a very difficult choice that people make in circumstances. It is one of the worst circumstances that a parent faces: to kill the child you love to protect it from known misery in the name of love or because you love it and want to see it in flesh and blood and give it a chance to fight life, you let the kid be born into known and certain misery and pain. My heart goes out to all parents who make this difficult decision. But at the same time, let no other person or organization or authority decide it for them for they are alone in their misery and none of the above bodies can share it. Do share your views on it(pro or anti or middle ground or indifferent) and do tell us your reasons behind it as well.

Sondha Mannil.... (In the native land!)

I received this poem through a friend of mine. I usually read the poems and either store them in my mailbox(if they are really good) or trash them(if else). But this one struck a chord somewhere and so reached my blog. Here, it is:


I tried translating it to english for my nonTamil readers, but the beauty just gets lost. Kudos to the original author whoever they are. It just portrayed what every person who knows what a happy and carefree childhood is and who is now into the grips of technology(in this grip willingly, so can't complain much! But the heart yearns for those simpler days!) feels at heart. Its worse when you are away from your family because the pangs are harder and take more time and effort to be quelled. Do you guys feel the same way too?

Vegan or Not?

Do we have a choice to decide our food habits fifty years down the lane? Or, more importantly, would our children have the same food choices as we have right now? I remember my parents talking about Raagi and Kambu and Cholam(varieties of corn) being more popular when they were kids and rice and wheat being less popular. But now, these grains have become almost non-existent(the last time I ate Raagi dosai(a speciality from Raagi) was about seven years ago). So, do we get to make a choice as to what we eat or would all of us be forcibly changed to being vegans(not even vegetarian or eggetarian is possible according to this article)? If so, what is the point in having the luxuries of life when you don't have the freedom to choose what you want to eat and how? Are we moving towards a truly free world? or is the world getting into more and more mess that we can't come out of? Well, time will tell! But it might be too late by then. Shoot your thoughts!

Email Addicts

I know I'm going to draw lot of flak for this topic. But, hey, its the truth. The frequency with which we check mails HAS increased over the years. I agree, I do hear voices that say that it is because of change in career (we have moved from being school kids to college students to professionals), way we communicate (there were days when my grandmom used to wait for a letter from her daughter in Delhi for days, now all my mom need to do is to log on to her mail id to check for her daughter's mails), way we plan things out (how many times parties and events and trips have been decided between friends through email? I still remember a bday party where there were 54 mails within an hour :D) and the way we live. I'm all for these changes as they help a person a lot in communication (if not for my bank emails and credit card emails, I would totally forget the finance stuff and would have to run to the bank every time I want to do some transaction!! Life is infinitely simpler now!) but I've also seen people who check mails every five minutes! Mind you, its not as if they are expecting some important mail... its more out of habit. And in this country and age, where wireless devices are becoming more the norm rather than an addition, I find people checking mails in malls, theatres, parks, beaches (for heavens sake! They come to the beach to get away from it all and they check their mails there!!! One of my friends' husband is a compulsive email addict. The first thing he asked in the Florida beach resort where they stayed was how good the internet connection would be on the beach. Apparently he is not the only one who has asked this question. The resort employees told him about the facilities they had and his joy knew no bounds. Though he had fun with his wife and friends, my friend always says that she does not get her husband for herself for a full day. He is always connected and always checking mails and replying to them. She has learned to live with it but its sad that it has to be like this)!!

Also, people have a number of accounts. Yours truly, herself has four accounts, one for work, one for personal stuff, one for groups and one for junk(I still have no idea as to when I started this one or why I maintain this one... but its better to get all the junk in one of them. I can just log in one day and clean it all up rather than having the junk mail mess up my work or personal one. This id is given when I'm testing a site and I want some service but don't really want them or their partners to mail me). My roommate is tired of logging on to a number of her accounts and just redirects it all to one id and uses one email client. Another of my friends does it too. But, for people like her, the problem in closing down unwanted accounts is that they don't know to whom they've given which id. What if the id they close is given to someone important by chance? (A, I know you face this problem!).

It's good that Google or Windows Live or Yahoo doesn't let you open two accounts in the same Firefox browser (I've stopped using IE long back! So, not sure how it is in IE's tabs). Otherwise, people would open two accounts at the same time and use them simultaneously. Though it doesn't stop the problem, it atleast reduces it a lot. Ok, getting back to the topic, what is it that makes people check for mail every few minutes? If you are a hot shot executive or team leader or editor or anyone on earth who gets mail every few minutes, it makes sense to keep checking. But, strangely, it is these people who check their mails at set times of the day and don't give in to compulsive mail checking. They rather check their mails once, work on them and try to finish them off as soon as possible. One of the executives whom I've worked with in the past says that it channelizes his time and energy and lets him concentrate on his work thereby increasing his efficiency (ok! I might have a 'paper' effect in this post (aka) writing a sentence of ten words in twenty words so that the high brow conferences and professors accept it. I've been writing papers (sadly all for my courses) all through the week and here I am, with traces of that effect still in me). I've felt it too.... the days (or rather, hours) when I'm not on gtalk (I love Google for this idea... introducing gtalk within gmail. Its awesome for a person like me. I can do both at the same time... and it was a savior when we were in college and all the chat applications were blocked. But the lab admins could do nothing about gtalk and we had a whale of a time! But, adhu oru kanaakaalam!), I work more and I'm more efficient... but with gmail or gtalk on, I tend to check mail as soon as I see Gmail - Inbox(1) on the title bar. One of my friends is even worser. He keeps doing his work and keeps checking every five minutes for mail. So, we all do know that efficiency suffers big time with this email addiction. Then what is it that still makes people do it and worse yet, make it a habit?

I can guess only two reasons. First, people want to connect with others all the time. Even if they say that they are introverts and don't connect easily, man is a social animal (did I learn this in fourth standard? Good job, Alpine! You still remember fourth standard lessons ;)) and email doesn't require you to actually talk to a person real time on the face(though IMs also help in this regard, nothing is more convenient than email where you can think for hours to give back a reply which when said to in public, you won't have enough time to do so... even IMs require that you reply within seconds or minutes). It's the need to connect that drives people to do crazy things, even checking email on the beach!

Second reason is a bit wacky (based on how you take it). People want to share their time with more people. They feel that they share the same time(say an hour) with more people(friends, coworkers, spouse, etc) when they check mail along with something else that they are doing (otherwise, why would a guy want to check mails while he is having TV time with his family? He gets to spend time with his kids, share a joke with his wife and also check up with his coworker! Disclaimer: though I've used male gender here, both genders are becoming equally bad at this as the age group reduces. God save our kids!! When our generation women become mothers, we would be singing lullaby in one hand and checking mails in the other! LOL!!).

Finally(this is not a reason but still a tentative thought), people want to know more all the time in everything. That is why you watch a movie or do some work and still keep checking mails on the side so that you just CANNOT stop hearing the office gossip or the friends' gang gossip that comes in through email. I can come up with a bunch of more reasons ranging from getting a mail inflates your ego because someone thinks you are important enough to send a mail (nammalayum mathichu oruthan mail anuppi irukaanyaa!! (read in Solomon Paapaiyaa's style :D)) to you being plain bored and are either tired of networking sites/games or don't know about them. But, readers, what is your opinion about it? Also do share your experiences about it (I'm sure the tech people would have loads to tell about it). And, any ways you've seen/heard/done to break this addiction!!

Confused!!

Warning:: This is a slightly heavy post(see how confused I am. I can't even make out if this is a heavy post or not!). So, readers beware, and get a cup of coffee before you even start.

Let me tell you the reasons for my confusion.
Basically every person has some balance in life, in their physical life, mental life, emotional life, spiritual life and all other lives that you want to categorize normal life into. I too had the same normal "balanced" life at the beginning of last before week. Little did I know that I would be changed forever in these three weeks(come to think of it, all of us change irrevocibly all the time, but these three weeks made me realize them more so). Last monday, my mental life did a take off because I fed it information... no, its knowledge that I fed it(a rare thing.. because, a human usually feeds in information and by continual thinking, it becomes knowledge). Knowledge, by itself, is very potent and taken without careful consideration, is dangerous to handle. There has been only a few other times when I've fed knowledge directly to my brain and in lesser quantities. But last before monday, I fed it a large dose and it was reeling with that effect for a few days. So much for the mental balance being affected!

Then came my emotional balance. I am, usually, a stable person(amen!). I try to analyze things a bit before flying off the handle. But there were quite a few incidents that made me fume and my roommate bore the brunt of it(thanks P! for being there :)). She toned it down and was my sounding board for a few days(a thankless job! but these cases are rare and I don't let someone do it for me unless 1)they are clear about things 2) I know that they can handle and process complex scenarios and emotions 3) I find a certain sense of bonding with them). Also there were a few cases where I was ecstatic and happy. To confound the issue, all this happened in the past two weeks.

Onto my spiritual balance. I had some soul searching talks with a kindred spirit and got a totally new perspective about life. I also read a few books that changed my way of thinking about life in general and my future, in particular. The main gain from it all was that I could easily remove the wheat from the chaff, the good from the useless and the needed info against the trash. But my spiritual contour took a brow beating and now its in a completely different shape.

Finally my physical balance. I had two weeks of assignments and projects and work that I had to do everyday lacking sleep. Thanks to all my friends(esp, SG! I've lost count of the times I've pinged you with my doubts! The explanation about threads, processes and processors was amazing!!), I somehow managed to move away from it all. But my body didn't take kindly to it at all. I was in a daze through these two weeks and this weekend helped me start my recovery journey.

Now, onto this weekend. I had an amazing time after a really long time. Though it didn't go as I had planned earlier, it was fun all the same. I had really good time, felt very independent and got time and money to spend with my friends without feeling guilty. And I got to drive a really stylish car!! The Pontiac G6 GT Coupe!! I just loved it! This weekend was my gift to myself for going through one of the most difficult times of this semester. I've heard one of my married friends say that the best vacations are the ones taken where your mind can completely relax and you can have most fun, not the ones where you need a vacation to recoup from the after effects of this one. I had such a break this weekend. All my balances seem to have been restored after this break :) More on that in the next post!

However, there are a few questions that I have after these three weeks:
1) Why are people not clear as to what they want? I understand that not knowing one's needs is possible, but not knowing one's wants stumps me.
2) N,D,P were there and I was so confused because of them. Though I thank life and God for giving me the choice, I was scared to take the decision because I know that the decision that I take now would affect my life in a much bigger way compared to all other decisions that I have taken so far. Why was I scared when I knew I had the knowledge and intelligence to use that knowledge wisely? Was it because of uncertain future? Or is it because I'm still not a fully grown up person? I've seen people take life changing decisions effortlessly, but I've never been able to do so. This is one thing that I have to work on.
3) Does my indecision stem from the fact that I have not been worldly wise, didn't have a mentor(all my mentors that were there so far have diverged and I'm left standing on a lonely path that I have to cut with my sickle, I can't see a mentor for miles around me and that is scary! or am I of the stage where mentors are no more possible? Now that is another question!), was too playful and forgot to consider all the choices seriously as a grown up person should?
4) Does not my education and the qualities that I developed so far count to anything or is it this that finally pushed me to make a decision?
5) The world seems to have lots of people with contrasting behaviors. I know I have to answer some of the serious issues of life soon. But till then, I have time to mold myself to be better equipped to face the questions. Where do I start and what do I do?
6) How come jealousy cuts through all, even love, friendship and life?
7) Why is unrequited desire so dangerous? yet people covet it? Can't they see that they can't handle it and would do a bad job of it, hurting everyone, especially themselves? Is the desire for power, position and money that strong?

I know, all these questions are difficult to answer. But I'd love to know the opinions of you all, my dear readers! Because, sometimes, a single word or a single comment can throw light on a totally different perspective, the perspective that I'm searching for and have truly missed so far!

PS: This post might sound like an account of my life in the past few weeks for some of you. If that is so, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it more. But if you found the connection behind them all and the questions that I have raised, then welcome! You have lots to say on this post then! I'm certainly looking forward to your comments. And regarding the information that I have said in the post, if you already know of it, that's good... you can make a better analysis of the post! But if you don't, then please don't ask as it is on a strictly need-to-know basis and if I have not told you already, then you don't need to know of it. And I hope this explains my disappearance from the blogosphere for the past three weeks, V! :)

The Truth???

I was reading an article on India becoming a super power where lots of statistics were given as to how we can finally join the elusive club, right now the special pride of a few nations. I was so proud about the fact and went to the next article which was just the opposite – it denounced all the hype being given about India being a superpower and gave an equal number of statistics as to why we are going the opposite way actually. That set me thinking! Which is the truth?

On one side, we have the Ambanis and Tatas and Birlas doing large acquisitions all over the world (not to mention Indian-origin Mittals), Bollywood movies being released all over the world, all companies opening offices in India, India becoming a nuclear power, Indian authors and artists winning wide acclaim at foreign shores and much much more. Generally, the style of living of the medium class has gone up (atleast one person in a family has a cell phone, we can afford better clothes, more travel and better education and sanitation). However, on the other side, we have an alarming increase in the number of people dying due to poor sanitation and diseases like AIDS, decrease in the number of kids going to school, decrease in the number of jobs for ordinary people (due to various reasons like newer technology making the job obsolete, automation, people not developing the necessary skills and so on), lack of needed infrastructure, rampant corruption and a complacent attitude amongst people at various levels and lots more. Now, how can a country go to two extremes at the same time?

If India is really going on to become a super power( I’d be really happy if that was the case), then why do I see so much of poverty, hunger, death and so many other problems in providing people with basic amenities like food, clean water, air, shelter, clothing and education? But, if India is really sinking down, then how do I see so many companies setting up shop here drawn by our immense talent pool in all fields, so many people being able to afford better and costlier life styles compared to a decade ago, so many men and women becoming financially independent (can you imagine so many youngsters earning so much to support themselves and even their families just a score years???), so many new buildings and construction of facilities, so many different but sure signs of growth everywhere? Which is the truth?

I’m sure the answer must lie somewhere amongst this seemingly confusing jumble. Does it mean that while a certain section of India is becoming rich, another section is becoming poorer? And, does it become imperative which section we are in for our own lives to be a success or failure? If this is the case, then when will everyone in the country start having a decent living? Doesn’t the brand name “super power” take all this into account? Is it being awarded just on the numbers that are generated every year in the balance sheets? For me, a country in which all the people have good food, clean water, air, shelter, clothing and proper education is a better candidate for super powerdom than a country that has the longest road or biggest nuclear bomb or maximum percent of foreign investments (though these are good things to have). I see that this post(and the previous one :)) has lots of questions(though of different types). I see only questions, where are the answers? Now, that is another question!!