[These are my 10 reasons and I insist that you don't consider them as generalizations]
… insti re-opening is a pain
1. I have to wake up at 8.00 A.M. in the morning and walk to the department to attend my classes.
2. I have to look at around 500 different faces and decide whom I should greet with a smile, whom I should greet orally and whom I can slap on the back and say “Vaada en goyyale”.
3. The couches in CCD will be full till 1 in the night even on weekdays.
4. I can’t walk from my hostel to Tifanys without seeing atleast 5 couples on the way at varying degrees of intimacy.
5. There’ll actually be a queue in Tifanys when I go there for a coffee at 10.30 in the night.
6. Pongal will be depleted by 9.00 A.M. in Tifanys.
7. There will be 3 knocks on my door per day for reasons varying from LitSoc contributions to Freshie fundaes.
8. It’s almost impossible for me to use my bike inside campus.
9. I can’t answer my classmate’s phone call at 12 in the night and tell him I’m working in a lab without him giving me an odd look for the next 3 days (or worse, ask me not to “RG” whatever the hell he means by that).
10. I will be constantly harassed by those who want me to put them in some mess or get some website-related stuff done or get something done on the Students’ portal (for heaven’s sake, I’m no longer the Core).
… I look forward to it
1. Repeat point 4 from above here.
2. Repeat point 3 from above here with a rider that establishes the sex of the couch-occupants.
3. Shaastra (which has faithfully been my primary source of income for 2 years).
4. I can look forward to a treat every weekend.
5. Gossip.
— UNEXPECTED EOF —
[No seriously, just 5 reasons why I'll be looking forward to it. Can't think of any more.]
“Say a pallbearer accidentally blows off at your best friend’s partner’s funeral, and your impulse to laugh collides with your basic human decency, so you wind up holding it in, locked in a long, slow grapple with yourself, desperately trying to prevent your body from quaking, until eventually something snaps and a strangled laugh kicks its way out of your throat, ripping your liver in two as it exits. The initial, instigating fart wouldn’t seem half as funny while you were bleeding to death on the ground (although the single-paragraph tabloid reports explaining how and why you died would, admittedly, be an absolute riot).”
Quoted from guardian.co.uk. Full article here.
I came across this article today while reading the news. Later, checking my twitter for updates, I found this photo of Amir Javadi who died of Meningitis due to untreated injuries received at Evin prison.
Immediately, my first reaction was to despair that there is too much hatred in this world. I’ve always believed that politics is a dirty business. I’m afraid it will remain that way. You cannot have too much authority without too much arrogance. Power has a hugely pejorative impact on the humaneness of man.
I’m not an ardent follower of politics. I don’t read the news everyday and hence I’m not aware of the political situation in Iran. But be what it may, there is no rationale for this tragedy. Amir was the son of an eminent scientist. He was arrested at a demonstration.
It makes me wonder how all our progress in science and technology has had such little impact on forces such as hatred and war. As far as I know, examples where technology has assisted war are more numerous. Science has both stated, demonstrated and followed the philosophy of chaos from order and negativity of entropy. Compared to philosophy, arts and other fields, science is more popular because it is lucrative. This suggests the unspoken truth that materialists are the sole benefactors of science.
There is nothing wrong in being curious about astral movements and alien life. But not when deaths like Amir’s are happening. Science needs to focus on making our lives better – human lives. I have been a little desultory in this post but I’m talking of science and technology mainly because that is the path I see in front of me. Like others, I’m interested in knowing what I can do to stop an update like this recurring on my public time-line.
From my twelve years of schooling, I can barely recollect the formulas and equations from my Math textbook or the reactions from my Science textbook or the vivid descriptions of kingdoms and governments from my History textbook. But there was one small paragraph on the first page of all my textbooks which I always loved to read:
“I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man [woman] whom you may have seen, and ask yourself, if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him [her]. Will he [she] gain anything by it? Will it restore him [her] to a control over his [her] own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj [freedom] for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?
Then you will find your doubts and your self melt away.”
Gandhiji’s talisman speaks of that which was the need of the hour in his times. But this philosophy is eternally valid. If all our deeds are collectively directed towards a single global need, life becomes beautiful and meaningful.
Sometimes it’s annoying when this song you heard somewhere keeps running in your mind and you just can’t make it stop. Especially when I’m coding and particularly stuck, this really fast song with jumbled lyrics and a tune like a sinusoid convoluted with white Gaussian noise with a really high frequency keeps singing in my mind. I’ve decided to list some songs here that have inundated my mind thus. With each song I associate a certain mood. I post this here for no particular reason. Note that my taste is highly biased by my bloated fascination for Tamil movies and really “kuntry” songs.
1. The Motivation Song(s) : “Shakthi Kodu” from Baba (except the gibberish parts where Rajinikanth’s views on politics creeps in), “Veerapandi Kottaiyile” from Thiruda Thiruda, (particularly enjoyed the Saarang LM version standing right below the speakers), “Hey Ram” from Hey Ram (might have something to do with my name)
2. The Lonely Song : “I Walk a Lonely Road” by Green Day (listen to this at night and go for a walk alone; a delightful misery that sinks in to give way to deeply introspective thoughts)
3. The Happy Song : “We Like to Party” by Venga Boys
4. The Victory Song (when I’m particularly jubilant about an achievement) : “Arjunaru Villu” from Ghilli (some pedestrians were aghast when N.G.Srinivas, riding his cycle at 30 km/h and I, sitting behind him were singing this song loudly and hooting just after our Shaastra victories).
Spotted this while reading a paper on “Experimental study of free and mixed convection in horizontal porous layers locally heated from below” by F.C.Lai and F.A.Kulacki (Int. J. Heat Mass Transfer, 34, 525-541):
“… The experimental results are also compared to those predicted by earlier numerical analysis [13, 18, 19] so as to validate the observed phenomena.”
