Time to be ....

Sometime back, when I wrote a blog on death of a scientist, it was meant rather a conceptual disease spreading my country. If you are dead in concept you are not a living organism, still it takes time to realise your non-existence physically. I think now, the time has come to realise you are dead.....even physically.....and if whatever bible said is true, then it is the time of your resurrection!

My country is a developing one. Though it is not the best place in the world, I have immense love for it, for it is my own country. And I feel proud, that despite many problems due to cultural and natural diversity, it is progressing ahead. And, because of it has no "set patterns of thinking" like the one where I am right now, it is tough to guess where it will lead.... it is really a transition time..... a blind transition, though.....and it is your job to fix your place in this sandstorm....no one will care for you....no one will have time to care for you......

Two days back, I read this news on rediff. Recently, there has been a few tries to make amendments in the education system here. We being world's democratic country, have the richest political system and everything is settled through (for) politics. And a good politician needs power(s)...either a financial power or man power......So, in short education ministry here is dictated by either the corporate world or by religion (I consider communalism a part of religious feelings, as it is ported these days). And believe me, if you didn't born at the right place (this time no constraint on time), you will have a very tough time, however talented you are.......

Politics rather being a barter system (a give n' take method) it can be taken granted...taking their average educational level into consideration.....chalo thik hain...hota hain, sort of.......but look at my own institute.....it is an institute...a scientific institute...a scientific research institute.......an autonomous scientific research institute...sorry, the premier autonomous scientific research institute in my country....and even after these many medals, it deserved one more......it is a doomed (no typos, OK) institute....

It is true that the quality of research has gone down (I don't know if it was up anytime, but doubtless we are NOT doing our best) and we need a revision of our mentality, perhaps....but, how am I to explain them this simple fact, that Quantity can not substitute the Quality! You seek more and more students at the cost of realisation that the old students are NO good? Then how could you select them at the first place? And with the same selection criteria, how will your new students turn out to be better? And, if there was nothing wrong in the old students, while selecting them, your system for these many years grew them bad? ....or even now they are good, then you are contradicting yourself....

This is really the doomsday conspiracy....even at an autonomous research institute!.....a student in my country is dead......and, I can't blame them....I don't believe in communism, where the same status will be APPOINTED to a tiger and a lamb in the same jungle......left to themselves, tiger has to kill the lamb and lamb has to run to hide.....this is a jungle....and it is upto you, to decide...to decide who you are....a lamb...or a tiger.....

You were a lamb......enough served the tiger....now, it's time for resurrection......time to shape into a tiger......be a man to a man...be a lamb to a lamb...but, remain a tiger to a tiger......

The Seven missing wonders

I was wondering being away from your home what are the things make you nostalgic in the very first appearance of them in your mind. Let me try to list them.

Alfonso Mango April month is ending and I haven't even seen a mango yet....reminds me of my days, when we would visit Konkan and on very first moment of our arrival my grandfather would take me to the maadee (upstairs) where there will be aadi (a method of arranging things of similar shape) of thousands of mangoes "eat, whenever and whatever you feel like" - dadaji.........I have seen people in mumbai buying a dozen of them for hundreds of rupees, with a feel of joy "saste mein mil gayein...ek saath derh dazon le liye!!"

Sarso ka saag aur makai ki roti "hey...you are not panjabi...you are marathi!"...you migh ask....true, I am not punjabi....what the hell with this sarson ka saag... probably, I won't be able to tell properly....abe gadhe but maa to maa hoti hain na.....then what if she makes daal-tandulachi khichadi instead of sarso da saag.........I miss you mom....

The competetitor now, that he is not with me while I am walking on the road, I am sure, if a girls is looking at me, she is looking at me....and he doesn't have to argue that it was him the girl waved or smiled at......yes baba (daddy), I miss you, a realtime friend of mine...... (and tell you the truth, when you are not with me, no girl looks in the same direction :( )

The spices you make my life tasty......interesting.....lively....how can I forget you.....I have long forgotten that going by relation you are my sisters......but have to supersede amma in all respects.....I miss you all......(that doesn't mean now you start meeting me on chat every other day...and bug me.....it was written just for completeness...don't need to take it seriously....now, go and enjoy your holidays)

The Colors if my work is like drawing a picture....I am drawing a black n' white one....because the colors are missing......left them long long way back in my lab......yes idiots...I am talking about you......all the high energetic fadeev-popov ghosts carrying color indices in all the higher order loops of my life......

The Vending Machine insert the coins and get things on demand...is that the motto...is that how you work?...nah...definitely not....how can I forget the quality we keep cripping about....aur fir vending machines jhagadaa bhi to nahi karte....quality kitni hi achchhi kyon na ho?.......I miss you Rajni Aunteee (miss your special tea with extra milk and no tea leaves, to be frank....aur fir woh jalaa hua maggi kahan milega yahan....)


The seventh wonder...last but not the least....woh humse baat bhi nahi karti......yeh bhi koi baat hui.....I mean, koi baat nahi hui... no no, aap sumjhe nahi.....aap se koi baat nahi hui...yeh bhi koi baat hui.....am I answering myself...or is it my answer questioning me?....Uff, I am confused...should stop scribbling....

(by the way, I am missing you too, all my blog-mates...along with all your comments)

Breathing Logic or Logically Breathing?

Logic is something, I always praised in my whole career so far. Most of our research endeavors sums in stitching different ends of the fabric called knowledge with the thread of logic. It will be really debatable issue whether it was mathematics which comes first or logic. Any way, the main point is even if you have a bad memory, you have no clue of general knowledge of the subject and also, when you feel shy using jargons in your talk, but have a good logical reasoning power, you are saved in most of the cases. Logic will save your career! No...the better statement would be Logic will save your life. Don't want to believe me....how about this statement, which was a part of a mail my friend forwarded to me:

"You can't kill yourself holding your breath"

Consider you are trying hard to die holding your own breath. You will die unless something comes to your help...to save you...to save your life.....and what is that?.......of course, breath.......you will need to breath....but you are holding it.....so it can't save you.....is there anything else...to your help?.....ummmmm....ohh yes....it is the Logic.....

You are holding your breath...why? ...to kill yourself.....so to do that, you need to lose control of your body....a dead body doesn't have control on itself!....so, you are not dead until you lose control...and once you lose control.....you can't hold your breath anymore....your lungs will start pumping the necessary food......and you will recover after some time....

so keep logical......and it will take care of your breathing ceremony....

Usne Kaha Tha - 2

The time was approaching him every second by second. He was running fast to hold his breath from missing. He did know, he won't escape...he will have to surrender.....but still something deep inside him was poking him all the time...making him run...fast...faster..and faster....to save himself from the ultimate catch of time....the death!

He was bed-ridden for a long time now. And this was the end of the story...end of his life....he was dying....nothing he wanted...nothing more he expected from his life....why should he?....he was one of the prominent personalities of the nation....more than enough, he had enjoyed the fame....to be special.....to be distinct......he was a successful man...a bright career, wealthy ambiance, healthy life and a lovely family......he was happy...he was satisfied....still the inner sense of his being was pulling him away from the time...the death.....

....he wanted just a few moments more...a little more time...a little time to live up....a little time to say.....to say "sorry" to his wife.....he always hated her for her superiority.....a deep jealousy always kept him reserved....he had plenty of time for her and nothing to say throughout his life...and now, he had plenty of emotions to share and no time...he was dying....

.....and the images around blurred...the breath trapped....black...dark black...deep dark blackness crouched him....the last thing what he could save to this life, was a tear rolling over the chin of his wife....

....a scene inspired by the one presented in part 1 of Usne Kahan Tha......thanks to Majid majidi

Usne Kaha Tha

And finally, the wheels crackled on the muddy road. As the cart departed farther and farther away, catching more and more speed, the melody of the drops bumping on the roof merged into the constant background of the rainy music. Her face blurred into the haze of humidity leaving him standing alone in the street. The moment was gone, which he had failed to hold from happening....A lengthy moment, when only breaths were talking and eyes responding.....words were meaningless and dry, even in this heavy rain......He waited there till the black spot on the waterfront disappeared gradually into nothing....

He had waved his hand towards the piece of her face piercing out from the small outlet of the cloth on the back....his eyes were asking her to come back....come back again...I am waiting for you...ever...forever....and her eyes would flicker....to say she won't.....she won't be coming back....and her face had dimmed into infinity...and he did know, she won't come...she will never come back....never for him.....

He made a move...a deceptive move....he was running...running behind the cart.......his tears melting into the rain around....who cared for them, any way....he ran...fast...faster....and faster......to jump into the nothing left behind her.....

..........the climax scene from the movie baran by Majid majidi, one of my favorite directors.....what I enjoyed in this scene, is the implicit feelings....in the whole scene there was not even a single dialogue.....only expressions....(ok! the rain may be my own imagination, a personal touch)....I like such scenes.....even Satyajit Ray's movies have this flavor.....this is why, language is no bar......worth watching once....(of course, after Children of Heaven)

Knocking the right time

It is always the case, that I am at the wrong place at the right time. Or I just knock at the wrong time, this time the right door. As a total, you are in the research field and with this fate, and you know what you got to pay for it!

It is not even a month, I started working on this problem. The code is just near its optimum look and not even a week passed after the latest presentation in the recent meeting, a similar work appears on the archive database. The first thing your mind does is auditing over the amount of effort you put in this work, the sleepless nights, the gloomy bicycle rides, the constant hide n' seek with your own thoughts and the glorious moments of hitting the idea.... All gone for nothing! And you are back to square one.

It depresses you in first impression...but, I love this scenario....this is why I am here for.....it keeps you alive....it keeps the challenges up!....to be at the right place at right time!....it is research...and every morning must show me a new sun with new air to breath....and a new show to begin.....the show must go on...but not the same, a different flavor...a different mood and a different nikhil, each time!

Better luck next time to me!

The highest paid job

He was reading a crap magazine, 90% material of which was a soup of Japanese Katakanas, Hiraganas and kanjis. As usual, he had nothing but to look through the pseudo-lingual calligraphy to pass his time, till it would be eight in the night when he would start preparing for his dinner. And suddenly he caught a few english lines. The news was really catchy! It was a result of some statistical analysis, based on a 10 hours per day, 6 days a week job pay-scale consideration in Canada. The newsline from the Canadian HRD was Mothers should be paid the highest of all the existing professions......."it should be" he muttered turning to the next page.

The next day of him was eaten up mostly by his coding jobs and improving results for the upcoming talk. Nothing great to happen, any way! The other day, he was implementing some neural network techniques in his code.....

........It is really tough to guess how it works if we accept that there are atleast a thousand million neurons in an average human brain and each active neuron is connected to every other active neuron directly or indirectly (in the sense of whether it is fired or not). In the language of computers, making one neuron active implies making around a million synaptic (electronically) connections and hence doubling all the storage capacity evrytime! Incredible it appears, but simply it works. And simple it appears, but impossibly tough it is to design a real neural network.

So, basically all practical NNs have a finite number of perceptrons (which represent a simple neural node) interwoven in a feed-forward mesh, with a few hidden layers all together....conceptually far far away from the real brain....

And, with a simple circuitry, one expects a very specific job: pattern recognition, or what is called the feature extraction.....No, no...the actual job starts here...educating the network...believe me, it is THE toughest job ever faced by a programmer...and even today (after about 40 years of active research), there is practically no algorithm which can teach with even 90% efficiency.....

......and he started daydreaming: if he could develop such an algo, if he could teach a NN effectively, with all his patience till his NN starts expelling fantastic results.....and suppose he could develop...whom will he approach first....how well should he advertise his success....what will be his pay-scale....will it be 70k? or more?......if he patents this idea.....they will have to pay him whatever he demands...and then he will be the highest paid human on the earth...highest paid....

And then he returned to the ground....should he be paid the highest?.....why not....if there is no one superior to him, he should be....if there is no one....but, is there no one superior to him.....No...that's not true...there is someone superior to him...who has been doing the same job for a long time now....on quite involved systems...teaching/developing brain...a real brain....and not a small meager NN......and unfortunately for no payment at all.......who is it?....

It is his mother......who taught him the most basic things...who taught him the first word he spoke...who taught him the meaning of touch.....meaning of love...meaning of everything...

Yes, Mothers should be paid the highest.....this time he meant it!