Perpetually Perplexed

If you are stuck with windows 8 machine like me, you better start learning how to live with it. Start desktop after login First problem I faced was after logging in,  app screen  was displayed instead of desktop. There is a solution to that. 1) Right click on the task bar . Task bar is bottom bar on your desktop. 2) Select properties 3) Go to Navigation tab and check next to show desktop when I login or close all applications Your task is done. Next time you login, you can be happily on the desktop. Run command Windows 8 does not even have run to run your commands. Start icon on task bar just takes you to store apps. And I know how frustrating it is to go to charms bar (at right edge) and click on search and type command and wait for the result. Here is what you do. Click start button (Button with four squares)  on keyboard simultaneously with key r . You will see run dialog. Now type in your command like "cmd" for command prompt, "mspaint...

Better late than never. I have some ideas for essay competitions of tomorrow's "Sadbhavana diwas". Sorry it is not "Sadbhavana divas", but "good governance day". What do you call it in Hindi? Anyways here are some interesting topics suitable for the occasion. 1) We are better than everyone. Because... 2) Only we are legitimate.  3) If you don't agree, migrate to neighboring country 4) She should learn to dress decently 5) We are letting you stay here. So be grateful

Two positive news today 1) NRIs might be able to vote in Indian elections without having to come here. The solutions being considered are proxy voting where they can authorize someone to vote for them or keeping ballot boxes in Indian embassies abroad where NRIs can go and vote. It is very good thing because NRIs tend to be more patriotic than us residents. Just like we feel nostalgic about an object forgetting how it caused all kinds of problems :).  And more importantly these Indians contribute a lot to India - monitoryly. They keep sending money every month to India. 2) Govt has banned pharmaceutical companies from giving free gifts, holidays, samples etc. to doctors. This may help the common man because after being in "runa" (debt?) of these companies, the doctors are bound to prescribe their products to us. So they will be serving the best interest of pharma companies, not us the patients. Next let us come to really exciting news. Nasa scientists have emaile...

I have been reading "Pickles from Home" by Sugatha Srinivasaraju. I felt nostalgic. Funny. Feeling nostalgic about home, while staying in home land for the past 15 years. We the readers of English newspapers, and viewers of Hindi and English TV channels do not hear most of the events of our "Kannada nadu." Many articles -  be it about A pontiff writing about how it is wrong for "maths" to appoint children as swamis or about the communalization of coastal districts or even the controversy surrounding the 300 Ramayanas by AK Ramanujan are sparsely heard in namma Bengaluru - and more so to English reading populace.  Do we live in the same state? We don't read Kannada papers saying they don't go beyond our state. We don't watch Kannada channels saying they are substandard. So it is more our fault. Not the fault of English papers who concentrate on more important issues - around the world. Coming back to the book Pickles from home - an Eng...

Among all freedoms to humans, freedom from fear is very important. Because most of our actions and inaction are controlled by this fear. We see injustice, but we dare not protest it. Because we are afraid of antagonizing people or authorities. We, most of Indian women wrap ourselves in 4,5 layers of clothing. Lest men feel attracted by us and try to harm us or pass lewd comments. And we are afraid, these comments some how reflect on us, not on them. Family members of some of us go even further and ask us to cover our faces too with a burqa or a ghoonghat We see our boss fire a co-worker for trivial matter, and we feel angry. But we do not protest. We have to protect our own a###es. Some of us - men and women sometimes do muster enough courage and protest injustice. But inevitably we will be punished - get scolded or beaten, or get arrested on some false charges. What ever happened to the dream of our forefathers who said? "Where the mind is without fear And the hea...

Installing Ubuntu Ubuntu knows the mindset of new generation. It gives you an option of try-before-you-buy or rather try before you install option. You just insert the cd and try ubuntu, use it and if and only if you like it, install it. And while installing, it keeps on informing you, what files it is copying, what packages it is installing etc. all the while showing you colorful banners with features of ubuntu. So things appear to be transparent. And you will love it because you know what  installer is doing. Installing Windows Try-before-you-buy? You are joking right? Microsoft will not dare to do so because - once some one tries it they will certainly not want to buy it. And when you are installing windows, you will be lucky if you see what percentage work is completed. And  installer  says files are being copied. What files? Why? It can not say. Because most of these files are unneeded . So you keep wondering whether you should physically hand over so...

The Sadhvi is from village, she is new. She does not know how to talk. So does it mean villages are not cultured at all? Let me just give you an example of how villagers handle things. We have been hearing all these stories about Bangalore garbage handling fiasco. How about villagers? What do they do with their garbage? My example is from our village in interior Karnataka. I am sure many of the villages would follow similar approaches. All the kitchen waste is fed to the cattle including water used to wash rice and vegetable skins, left over butter milk etc. The left over food is put in the "gobbara gundi" - a pit where leaves and cow dung and other things are put to produce bio fertilizers to be used in the fields. What about plastic? How do they dispose plastic? They do not. First of all, their only time-pass is not shopping, as they hardly get any time from their work (and I am talking about women here). So they do not collect so many plastic bags. What ever pla...

Why is many  holy men and women in this country are in news for all wrong reasons? The latest to the list is Sadhvi Niranjan Jyothi who asked the people whether they would like to vote for Ramzade or Haramzade. Great! What a language? Considering the said holy woman Sadhvi is also a union minister. What an invitation to communal harmony! It is not a parliamentarian language. And it is certainly not the type of language to be used by a some one who has left all the bindings and all raaga-dvesha of this world. Any ways, let us remind these people that our religion tells to love everyone, not just Ramzade. 

Ek chutki sindhoor ka keemat tum kya jaane Ramesh Babu, This Sindhoor makes a girl servant to the entire family. It makes her dumb robot who will only work without answering back. It makes her the machine who produces babies and cares for them until one day these little ones start bossing her around. It makes her more forgiving than the earth itself. It makes her forget all about her abilities, her talent, her dream. It metamorphoses her dreams to only be a good wife and good mother. This sindhoor makes the woman a person whose  eulogy might be she was a very good wife and mother to the people who were not very kind to her.

Two young girls from Haryana have shown us the way. They have shown us we fairer sex are not weaker sex. And hence we should not wait for some one else to help us - not other people, not the police. We should try to teach the molesters, eve teasers a lesson ourselves. We are all proud of you, Pooja and Aarti

In Kannada a person is said to be susankrita if he/she is cultured. Opposite word is asanskrita. I am not debating who is susankrita here. But the current fight going on about German v/s Sanskrit brought back the old memories of my school days. Those days 35 years back, a school child - in fact high school child could either study full course sanskrit or half course sanskrit. In full course, you had to study more of Sanskrit grammarr, and you had to write all answers in Sanskrit. We were half course Sanskrit students and we studied first language as 100 marks Kannada and 50 marks Sanskrit. We wrote most of our Sanskrit paper answers in Kannada. So even today my knowledge of this ancient language is half (baked). Did I say half? Only thing I remember is गच्छति गच्छतः गच्छन्ति There were also students who opted for Hindi or Kannada instead of Sanskrit. But the main attraction of Sanskrit was marks. We could score in the range of 90s here. I don't know the status today. But...