Perpetually Perplexed

Dystopia - is a community or society that is undesirable or frightening. It is antonym of "Utopia" - which is ideal society. We Indians use a term for ideal society - Ramarajya - Rama is the hero of the epic Ramayana. His kingdom was supposedly very good. People were honest. Rulers were kind etc. But again I wonder about Sita who was deserted by King Rama just because of some gossip. Anyways, so Ramarajya. We also have read in our history lessons that Vijayanagar empire was very very good. People never closed their front doors. So there were no thieves or robbers. Gold, pearls and diamonds were sold on streets. So I remember vaguely. It could have been part of book by one of their courtiers - so there might be some exaggerations. At least now, we all feel we are in the middle of dystopia. Rulers do not care about citizens. Citizens are petty minded and money minded. People kill each other over trivial issues. But some times I wonder. Were people better than this an...

Instead we do this  and saddening of all,  this image from: psychcentral blogs Some of us do another thing - searching images for blogging :) :) :)

Morning, I tried continuing the binary tree deletion program. I wrote some code and gcc-ed it and executed it. To get segmentation fault. I got up and went straight to kitchen, telling myself "I do not have time for segmentation faults now". Of course, I do not have time for segmentation faults, but I have time for googling for funny quotes to be set as my whatsapp dp. I have time to watch "Friends" millionth time. And I have time to sit and ruminate past, present and future bad scenarios. And my spouse will be wishing me more segmentation faults so that I will spend some time in the kitchen. On a relevant topic, segmentation fault is renamed as null pointer exception in Java. And we get these a lot. So much so that, after I make any small changes to my android program and I run it, and I do not get null pointer exception, I start searching on my desk. Where did NPE go? I relish these errors. I savor them. Because, unlike in C, where program crashes wi...

We used to hear this quite often "Share your happiness to double it. Share your difficulties to halve it".  But of late, experience has shown me that difficulties or problems rarely get halved when you share them. So you start telling your sob story to someone. The one who is listening is too human, inundated in his/her own problems, having his own belief systems, perceptions, prejudices. He can not empathize with you. So he may not agree with what you say. If he expresses his disagreement, you will feel let down. If he stays neutral, you see that he is not supporting you and suspect that he is not on your side. Remember the one who is listening is not your mother, to unconditionally support you. My own experience has been, each time I share my difficulties, I feel let down. I feel that nobody understands me. Not surprisingly, I feel angry towards the universe, in general. So, you have problems in your life (who does not?), start a blog, like me. Throw up each and ever...

ಕಳ್ಳ ಬಂದಾನೆಂದು ಗೋಡೆಗಳ ಕಟ್ಟಿ ಗಾಳಿ ಬೆಳಕು ಬರಲೆಂದು ಕಿಡಕಿಗಳನಿಟ್ಟು ನೆರೆ ಹೊರೆ ನೋಡದಿರಲೆಂದು  ಪರದೆಯ ಬಿಟ್ಟು ಮತ್ತೆ ಕಂಡಿಯಲಿ ಇಣುಕಿ ನೋಡುವವ ಯಾಕಿಷ್ಟು ಕ್ಲಿಷ್ಟ ಮಾಡಿದೆ ನಿನ್ನ ಜೀವನವ

Five Current Buns in the Baker's shop Big and Round with a Cherry on the Top Along came little Jack with a penny one day Bought a current bun and took it away. Four Current Buns in the Baker's shop ----- Three Current Buns in the Baker's shop ------ Two ------ One ---- No current Buns in the Baker's shop Big and round with a Cherry on the top Along came little UKG children with a penny one day Sorry said the Baker, No more current buns today. My 3 year old son would sing this rhyme with all enthusiasm. What I found interesting was in all the rhymes, UKG - upper kinder garten students were bad, did not get current buns etc. Why? Children, most of them have an enemy - normally one entire class as an entity. May be their senior class, may be other section, may be non-English medium class. This enemy is bad, and will be hated with the spirit only children can muster. So this principle of enmity for unity, is this developed in childhood? And it is compl...

I got this jnonodaya. No I was not sitting below "bodhi" tree. And no, I did not find a method to bring world peace or any such grandiose thing. I think the reason behind the increased violence in our country or else-where is the statement " I could have been that". I could have been driving that beautiful sports car. I could have had that huge bungalow. I could have married that beauty. And so on. Unlike good old days, the division between rich and poor has vanished. Today even a sweeper can be the proud father of an IAS officer. Or today's newspaper boy can be an IIT graduate tomorrow. So poor can also have grand dreams and aspire to become rich and famous. But very few - poor or rich - have the capacity and inclination to work hard and smartness to achieve these dreams. The rest are unhappy. They see successful people around them, the people with whom they studied and played.  And they feel let down and deceived. By the society, by the system, by their...

I saw a nice poster which said If the path is all clear, you are on some one else's path. So true. But many a times, we are the ones who complicate things than what is necessary. So If you struggle a lot with many, too many complicates solutions, none of which work, there is a really simple solution which you have overlooked.

I don't want to offend anyone here. I just want to share my opinions and experiences here.  In our town there was a little girl hardly 4 years old, who was given pencillin injection by a doctor without a test dose. The girl became mentally retarded.  And there was another instance where pencillin injection (she had severe abdominal pain due to monthly periods) caused the my friend to lose consciousness. But luckily nothing serious happened after that. Recently my son had tonsil infection. The doctor here in silicon city Bangalore, did not give anti biotic for 3 days. So the fever and pain took one week to heal instead of 4 days and my son had to miss college for a week. I am not saying that people in other professions are always perfect. But a doctor needs to be better because our lives depend on him/her. And we know very little about their procedures so we completely believe them.  Regarding the medicine, how many doctors tell us what could be the side effects...

We have people who do not know what to do with their times and hence with their lives. We also have people who do not even have time to breathe properly. 3 rich girls so bored with their lives go in search of fantasy lives and land up with 3 equally rich and equally spoilt brats. Only to be murdered brutally and their scalp cut by these boys. A middle aged University professor has lost his wife and his direction and is begging to join their club. Why do such intelligent people fall for such traps? And he pays the price with his life.  OK, the story happened in US of A not our Bharat. And also it is part of "Fury" novel by Salman Rushdie. That does not stop you from feeling for all these people. What is wrong with their and ours also, society which drives our youth to the path of horrid crimes? How does one orient their energy and intelligence in the right direction? And who does this almost impossible task? How can media play a role in it? So one wants become prasidha ...

I am again doing multi-tasking or shall I say multi-reading? Knowing too well that multi tasking is less efficient and I am NOT a multi-tasker. So I am reading "Calcutta chromosome", "Eat pray and love" and "ಯಾರದಿ  ಕಾಡು "  And happy to say that none of these books are of the type - I have to read this book :( and at the same time they are not trivial either. " ಯಾರದಿ  ಕಾಡು " is by Mahashwetadevi. No I did not learn Bengali overnight. I am reading the kannada version which was re-translated by telugu version. And the book is good so far. More about it in a later post. And "Eat pray love" was the book I thought is something like a chicklit or some kind of romance. But Elizabeth Gilbert's book is about the journey of a woman around world in search of meaning in life. Again, so far I like the book. Calcutta chromosome is thriller by Amitav Ghosh. I picked the book because I am supposed to read 12 more books by Indian readers by ye...

We stay-at-home-moms (rot at home) are hanging by a thread. Quite a big thread actually. And this thread is called telephone wire.

What is your reaction when you read a newspaper article about an auto driver returning bag full of money left back in his auto to its owner? Yeah, even I thought ' too good to be true'. But I experienced a similar situation yesterday. I was wearing a gold bracelet with a small dangling pendant. Was soaking the clothes for the maid, dumping all the dirty vessels in a bowl and giving it to maid and so on. I did not realize when that dangling pendant fell and where. Me with long sight and very careless ways would not have realized it missing for months together. Maid who was washing the clothes called me and showed the pendant, saying it had fallen from the bucket to ground. I was dumb stuck at her honesty. She knows about my carelessness and she could have really pocketed it herself and I would have never guessed it. We keep saying and thinking that people have become very selfish and money-minded or out right bad.  And we expect the lower income group people to be disho...

You t hink that I am a nobody. But do you know that I have joined the elite group to which Pranab da - the respected president, Arun Jaitley leader of opposition party etc. belong to. Yes, I belong to this group. Because I think our phone is tapped. By now, everyone thinks I am a paranoid bordering lunatic, who thinks people spoil  my computer, they stop me from accessing certain files etc. And I was on the verge of believing it too. See, I am a nobody, with absolute non-existance and no importance. Who will get anything from hacking into my laptop. But real strange things would happen. My android projects would suddenly stop executing in the middle. No, not because of bugs, I am not as dumb as you think. Then certain websites which I visit frequently would not open in my lap top. And then the crashing of OSs. If I disable guest user, who can login without a password, the screen would not come up. If I remove a user with name as 'nobody' there will be problem with the syst...

.... barbadi ki taraf aisa moda ek bhale atheist ko hypocrite bana ke choda ...

I happened to see a scene from the film "Angels and Demons". A priest was telling a scientist "I know son. Religion is flawed. Religion is flawed because we are flawed". But I beg to differ with his view point here. There are so many other reasons - almost infinite reasons, why religion is flawed. But you don't want my reasons. Because you know that more than an atheist, I am an anti religious person. Almost. My opinion is, religion, politics, science, technology, books all these are tools we have invented ourselves for our convenience. They are supposed to help us, help us along with other things in making us more intelligent, more understanding, more compassionate and better human beings. If they are not doing it, throw them away. Do I hear many sacred (?) books, TVs, LCD, LED, TVs, ipads, ipods , smart(?) phones, laptops crashing to million pieces? Wishful thinking!!

When your child was little and did not know what is right or wrong,  you taught him/her many things. You introduced him to his/her sibling and told that this child is part of our family. and he/she will share what ever toys/sweets and other things which are brought to this home. So you have every right to kick him, hit him and scold him or even send him out of the house. You did not do that? Nor did I. Nor did any other mother. Instead we told "Look child, this is your brother/sister. You should love him/her. You should protect her. You should share everything with her. " When his uncle came visiting we did not tell him " See this uncle of yours, looks cunning. He is not to be trusted. Never ever play with his children. Hate him and his children. He may overtake our house and our belongings." It sounds so ridiculous. Isn't it? Instead we told "See he is your uncle. He and his children are part of our family. We should welcome them and entertain them in o...

I am living on a staple diet of TV, sleep and more TV. I watch the some serials twice during the day. When there is nothing I like on TV, I just keep searching till I get something to watch.  My maid tried to help by applying for fifteen days sick leave. But my inner voice asked - are you willing to change your lifestyle for a maid, or some silly chores? Obviously my answer was NO. With this as background, my brain, is not in its best shape. So instead of writing a post about one topic - I can only write some points - unrelated points  blog worthy. I like the way this is going. If swamiJI A exposes swamiJI B, exposes swamiJI C, exposes ...... , we can all hope that at some point in the near future, all the swamiJIs will be exposed. And we can all heave a sigh of relief. Because then people will understand that these Godmen are more men than God, and not even good men. And people will understand that the term Godman itself is an oxymoron. Instead people have to do with...

I am an unconfirmed atheist. I am not sure like so many other things, whether do I believe in God. Most of us belong to this category, don't we? But I religiously (?) keep shouting Sanskrit shlokas most of the days in the morning. (I can let my readers know about my atheism, but not my neighbors) Well, I try to follow one principle my dad has taught me - ಹೋದ್ರೆ  ಕಲ್ಲು ಹೋಯ್ತು . ಬಂದ್ರೆ  ಮಾವಿನಕಾಯಿ ಬಂತು. You throw a stone to a mango. If by luck, the mango does fall down, you do get a mango. If it does not, you have lost just a stone.