YOU and ME

What is common between Sachin Tendulkar, Brian Lara and Ramakrishna (me) … think …socho ….. didn’t get the answer ? … your English teacher must be the most unhappy person in the world now…. They are all proper nouns!!. Ok this is not about Sachin or Lara but this is about you and me.

How many times have we thought it would have been better to be someone else ? I bet every person in the world would have felt the same at point in his/her life. Finally all that matters is being yourself. Whenever we see someone we know becoming famous there is always a small voice inside which says “why not u? or sometimes why him/her? “. Although most people don’t show it outside it is always there (isn’t it??). why aren’t we outgoing as some others ? These things wouldn’t have mattered much some twenty or thirty years ago, but now in the so called “competitive age” we think it matters much because it gives the other person an unfair (ok, fair) advantage over us. With only 30 odd percentage left (others are already reserved) in every field (except toilets I guess) it puts a lot of pressure on today’s youngsters. One, they cant get over their inherent shy nature to overcome some hurdles added to that is the fear of losing out on the basis of reservation.

So, it is only natural that we feel jealous of our own friends even when we know they are a lot better than us in every field. If you say all these things to a psychiatrist, he would probably say we should feel happy with what we have, infact he will also point out to some homeless people and say “ see how lucky you are! You have nice home, good school education, a degree …blah blah ... Other bullshit follows”

But there is something which we shouldn’t forget, if we try to not be ourselves by being someone else we will end up in doldrums which can be verified from “gamblers ruin”. Gamblers ruin is a theory believed by many mathematicians around the world. Everytime a person gambles there is a equal chance of him either winning or losing. So you would think that in the end one’s loses will equal his gains. But that is not so in reality, let us say that two people play a game of flipping a coin. One person wins a rupee if it is head and the other wins if it’s a tail. At the start of the game one person A has suppose 90Rs and the other person B has Rs10. If suppose they play hundred such games then naturally A has a probability of winning 90% of the games so gaining 90*10 rupees but on the other hand he will also lose 10% i.e 10*90 . But being in a better position the richer person A will gamble more hence increasing his chances of losing. Thereby after a long series of games the richer person is bound to lose. One can ask the question as to how this is related to our topic. So…. if we start mimicking others without equipping ourselves and without being ourselves we will end up in the losing side again. It is always better to equip ourselves.

Since we can’t make others less competitive (there are some ways ..law does not approve them J ) let us try to make ourselves more competitive, there are a lot of ways to express to express yourself now, one sure way is this … .. if I had said all the above crap face-to-face I wouldn’t have a face left tomorrow.

"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience"

ONE-ce upon a time

Once upon a time, there were four friends, really close friends – one, two, three and four. They used to go to school together in their bicycles blocking up the entire road oblivious to the car honking behind. They were in the same batch from class 7 till class 9. After class 9 two moved out of that school to a different school because he couldn’t cope up with the high standard of education at his present school. One, three and four understood his plight and life went on. One and three lost contact with two because he lived far away from their place .After the class 10 board exams three decided to go back to his hometown to complete his studies because he was now living at his uncles place, and his uncles attitude towards him seemed to have changed.

Come class XI, one and four were in the same school, so they continued their tradition of blocking the road. Four was outgoing while one was shy .Both class one and four were good at studies and there was always a healthy competition between them but one always used to outscore four. Time went on, four started coming to one’s house on the eve of exams and used to get some useful tips before the exams. As class XII board exams came nearer the number of visits became more frequent. Both one and four discussed a lot of concepts the day before the exams. The exams got over, both had done well. During the holidays one was confused- why didn’t his friend turn up, for all these five to six years even during the holidays four used to come to his house and they would play together or go someplace. But now, all of a sudden there was no four. He went to four’s house to see if four had gone to his relative’s house for the holidays. No!! there he was, sitting in the couch watching T.V. Anyway since he was there now, both friends played for sometime, chatted till it was late into night. One went to fours house once in a while but four never came to his house now!! . Then one day one met his other classmates, they said that all of them and four had gone to a cinema sometime back. One was now really confused, why didn’t they call him? Had he done something to offend his classmates and his friends? He had no answer. Time went on, now three came back from his hometown and had joined the same college as four while one was in a different college. One felt happy that his other friend had come back, but three never came to meet him! Two had also joined a nearby college now. One used to meet his old classmates from school whenever time permitted. He gave his new phone number to all of them hoping that atleast one of them would call. But the call never came. So, he started calling them but the responses he got drowned his spirits. Years passed one finished his college, his college friends were really helping him out but he hadn’t forgotten his old friends two, three, four and a countless others he had thought were his friends. The one thing which really hurt him was that the rest of them had frequent get-together’s and still maintained contacts while he felt they all ignored him. Time will tell what will happen to one and his friends.

Life at the edge of chaos

One of the lines I picked up from Michael crichton’s Jurassic park. Michael crichton has done a great job in this book although there are a few glitches here and there, like how the mathematician who was supposed to be dead in Jurassic Park came back alive? I liked the book not because of the story involved but for the introduction given in the book, about the life at KT boundary (K-cretaceous, T- Triassic) and arguments he has put forward on extinction. The environment around us is seldom static, plants evolve as fast as animals do, but we don’t realize it. How would you account for the pitcher plant, the venus fly trap and the sun dew plant? Trees too evolve. To ward off insects trees produced sticky sap which entrap the insects. Some plants use ants to ward off other insects, it is a unique symbiotic relationship where the ants protect the plant from foreign attack while getting nourishing sweet nectar from the plant as food.

A very good example is the acacia tree and the giraffe. Long time ago the giraffes used their long necks to pick off leaves off high braches. The trees evolved by developing sharp thorns, the giraffe responded by growing long tongue to evade the thorns. In the next cycle the tree evolved chemical weapons. They started producing toxins which made the leaves inedible and harmful to the giraffe. They even developed a communication system wherein if a giraffe ate leaves from one tree, it would send a chemical signal to all the trees in the surrounding area, at once all the tree would produce high amounts of the toxin. The giraffes countered this move by moving to the next tree upwind.

One more thing which can be seen is that only small organisms evolve by mutations whereas large organisms like primates evolve by making behavioural changes, this behavioural change requires highly developed brains hence primates have large brains but large brains cannot pass through the small birth canal hence primates are born with small brains, with basic reflexes like grasping, sucking etc. The brain doubles in size in the first year. The primates counter the small brain size at birth by living in a group where members of a group raise the young ones and train them to face the real world. Hence primates haven’t developed for many years now. If there is a change in environment they simply move to another one or change their dieting habits. Only if a behavioural change happens suddenly do complex organisms perish. It is postulated that dinosaurs did not die because of a meteorite falling on earth but because their behavior changed after the meteorite fell on the earth 65 million years ago. Let us suppose large herbivores changed their diet to shrubs and grass instead of leaves on top of trees, then the smaller ones would starve to death leading to the death of predators which depended on the small dinosaurs.

chennai central welcomes u

Built by the British some time back in the last century, the Chennai central is one of the major landmarks in Chennai. In any Indian movie, the first thing which they show in Chennai is the central and then comes the LIC building still the tallest building in Chennai ( that’s because the government is not giving permission for anyone to build a building taller than the LIC ). Anyway back to Chennai central. It is HUGE , there is no doubt about it and no other station comes even near it with respect to the looks, sheer size and the facilities ( whatever little that is there )- the Victoria station in Mumbai maybe- but this is not about any station, this is about the Chennai Central station. Like any other station people by the thousands (sometimes millions) come here everyday. Some maybe traveling, others may have come pick up their dear ones while there are a few, very few like me who go there just to be there (it sounds stupid! I know. Who would go to a station without any work). Whenever I am anyway near the central I hop in and have a look around and enjoy the scene there. It is not a comfortable place to be in the Chennai heat, the heat generated by so many bodies added to the Chennai climate makes it unbearable. Yet, the volume of people from different parts of the country one encounters there is astounding. There is life in a railway station which is not there in an airport. An airport is a dull place with nothing much of interest, one wouldn’t want to be there even when picking up someone, unless of course to escape the heat.

Sometime back the government wanted to paint the Chennai central white but the project was abandoned after some protests by the people. It is now restored back to its original brick red colour. The no of trains which come and go everyday is staggering and this no maybe rivaled only by vijayawada, it being in major station connecting the south central , southern, eastern and western railway. All major trains from cuttack and bhubaneshwar to Hyderabad, Mumbai ,kerala , Bangalore pass through vijayawada making it a busy station but it is small station and cannot match the central’s beauty. The architecture, the crowd, the trains and the just the atmosphere in the central station has made me a great fan of indian railways and Chennai central.

Potter mania

I am not a potter maniac but if maniac is someone who has read a book more than twice then I am one. It all started some two years back when I saw my friend reading a Harry potter book in the bus. I asked him what the story was about. From what he told me I took that it was a well written book for children telling the story of a boy wizard. Since I had no other better work to do, I borrowed a book from him. It was the third part “ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. That day another harry potter fan was born. Since I didn’t know what the previous parts were about I read those shortly. Then came the fourth, fifth and the last one “harry potter and the half blood prince” . But I couldn’t resist reading it all again so I read them again and again and again until finally I couldn’t do more because I knew too much so that I could tell the next lines so left it finally. Then I started watching the movies. The movie doesn’t give you the same excitement as the book does. Anyone who has read the first five books has a lot of doubts to ask. There are a lot of unconnected parts in the plot. All these are made clear in the sixth. The true colours of professor snape is out.

I believed the spell names had a logic behind them but the exact meaning I learnt from a blog one of my friends sent me . http://abhisconfab.blogspot.com/ It is really well written one and almost all the spells are covered in it. One thing which the harry potter series shows is that heroes are not ones who are brilliant in everything. It is clearly evident that harry potter doesn’t even know most of the spells, his friend Hermione does a very good job of teaching him many spells. Infact he is bad at his studies, manages to just scrape through every year. The only thing he is good at is Quiddich – a game played by wizards. The depiction of Hogwarts- the wizard school is brilliant. It requires great imagination to think of such things which at present I cant even dream about, but nonetheless it is worth reading the harry potter series even though they are a bit on the larger size.

Route 5E- Vadapalani to Besant Nagar

It is one of the many bus routes in Chennai which takes you through the past, the present and the future of Chennai, where you go through areas where the rich , the poor and the middle class of Chennai lives. Chennai is a big city though not as big as Mumbai or Kolkata but it is definitely bigger than Bangalore. Keeping that in mind, you can expect any journey through the whole of any route to take atleast one hour, but during peak hours 5E takes one and a half hours. The bus starts at Vadapalani –known for its Shiva and Murugan temple (the name itself vadapalani means palani in the north … the other palani is near madurai ) after a long wait at the traffic junction at the 100ft road the bus then moves in to K.K.Nagar (Kalaignar karunanidhi nagar after the politician Mr.Karunanidhi). By this time itself, hardly just two stops in to the journey the bus is crowded. Still, the brave hearted people of madras board the bus without the slightest of hesitation as this is the only bus through K.K.Nagar to the Adyar and Besant Nagar areas.

The hot Chennai climate takes its toll on the poor passengers, smell of sweat mixed with coconut oil is all around, sometimes it gets to a nauseating level. The bus stops at major points in K.K.Nagar viz – PSBB, Pondicchery guest house, MGR Nagar (Ironically, an area inside KKNagar is called MGR nagar after Mr.Karunanidhi’s political rival)

The bus then moves onto the famous Ashok Pillar and Udhayam theatre where more people try to board the bus. By this time the poor conductor has had enough and he starts shouting at people not to board the bus as it is too crowded, but people ignore him and board the bus. The plight of college students is horrible, even thought they enjoy it seeing them hanging on the footboard give you a jolt. You cant blame them, the only space left on the bus is the footboards where 10-15 teenagers evade all laws of physics and hang on to their lives. The bus then moves through Jafferkhanpet and into saidapet where some of the crowd gets downs and some more board the bus. Next the bus moves into Guindy where the Guindy Nationala Park, Anna University and the IIT (Chennai) are situated on either side of the road. This is where the future of Chennai and India studies (the anna university and IIT that is not the national park). Then the bus gets stuck at the infamous Madhya kailash junction. Half the crowd gets down at anna university or at the IIT. The bus is now mostly empty with only three stops left. The final stop is near Besant Nagar beach where a large no of college students hang out wasting precious hours in their lives.

Besant Nagar is a posh area in Chennai as is Anna nagar and it too boast of a famous temple – The AshtaLakshmi Temple honouring Lakshmi- the goddess of wealth.

DAPPAN KUTHU

Dappan kuthu , Gaana pattu , kutthu song and whatever name they are called in other south Indian languages have now become so common that every film has one irrespective of the context of the film. Even a high-fi movie has one. Why are these songs so famous? We will never know. It has the same beats as a “mariamman koil thiruvila” song has or the beats played by drummer at somebody’s death –“saavu molam “ … either way it is the same kind of beats ….. these used to be the songs which mostly would be heard in slums .. these were the poor man’s songs, now they are heard every where. Is it because we unknowingly get an urge to dance to the beats which one wouldn’t get if he/she was listening to a melody or because the young generation wants to look cool and doesn’t want to listen to the “old fashion songs” … But every year if one has a look at the national filmfare awards it is always the melodies which bag all the prizes not the dappan kutthu … So, even though these songs are far more popular the “other songs” these donot bag the coveted prize. One can argue that the panels for selecting the songs are old rags but even if teenagers were put as panels they would still select the melodies. Why did these songs come in the first place? Is it because someone wanted to remove the influence carnatic music had over film songs or because some music director could do only dappan kutthu songs. If you take for example one music director from Tamil Nadhu he is more famous for his dappan kutthu songs than for his other songs

Tamil or Thamizh

I am by no means a tamil fanatic, but I have lived in three states and visited all the south indian states. One thing I have noticed is that in all the states except Tamilnadu, the local language is a compulsory language in school other than Hindi which is our national language. One may raise an eyebrow and put forward the question as to why this is the case. We have to go back many years and look at the various protests the political parties in Tamilnadu have made to stop hindi being made a compulsory language in schools and they were successful in their attempts. The government gave a choice of language studied at school. The idea was that given a choice people would make their wards take up tamil and all would live happily ever after, but what did happen? Now we are in a state were 75% of the 12^th passouts know only Tamil and English. It is not a problem if he/she stays in tamilnadu throughout his entire life.

IF these people move out of tamilnadu they are stuck with a new problem, neither do they know the local language of the state nor they are hindi literate which atleast the local people will know because their government had no issues with making hindi a compulsory language.

The other thing which is happening is the since many people have started realizing the above fact or because of some other reason, we now also have a large population of people who cannot read tamil (count me in ) which is bad the language which is known to be one of the oldest along with Sanskrit. This blog is not going make any effect on the current education system in Tamil Nadu but at least it point out some facts to the people about Tamil Nadu.