INDI  ‘B’ENDANCE  DAYS …….

Come another Independence Day. I do not know if there is much to go gung ho about the arrival. Far from it, probably.

स्वतंत्रता

दिवस

Much water has flown under the bridge since that historic mid night saga, 67 years ago. But don’t you think we simply refuse to budge out of square one? At least that is what the impression one gets seeing the utterances of some of the politicians - ‘secularism’, pseudo secularism, majorities, minorities, hidutwa, minority appeasement, majority neglect, my god! People are trying to bend these outbursts or happenings around, to suit their convenience, if you look at the debates in most of the TV channels. Suddenly, we are waking up on the issues of communalism, violence, sampradayikta (hit the link below to know what the word means), etc

http://shaishav.wordpress.com/2009/10/09/communalism/

Velankanni of Elliots Beach     

And this happens every time the elections are round the corner. People unnecessarily waste their time and energy to analyse what some one remarks. The same people maintain a stoic silence when innocent people are crushed by terrorist elements, public properties damaged, people are forcefully converted. Because you do not want to alienate some particular section in the population - you don't want to lose votes.

Aadi days are here...

We are in the 67th year of breaking the shackles of British Raj. We claim to enjoy life in free, independent India. Today, I have this uncomfortable feeling that we stand exactly where we started. Very unfortunate. We are fit to be only watching those stupid sitcoms on TV channels, and shed tears....... People had some faint hope on Anna and his men. But the team first disintegrated to a new set up, and today, AAP seems to go through the inevitable process of disintegrating itself.... 

Though we say we are Indians first and all such lofty talks, in the heart of hearts, we are hindus, muslims, christians, sikhs, punjabis, gujratis, mallus, bengalis - every thing but indians.

CATCHING THEM YOUNG

PREPARATIONS AT RAJAJI BHAVAN

ദീപസ്തംഭം മഹാശ്ചര്യം 

നമുക്കും കിട്ടണം പണം  

LONG   LIVE   INDEPENDENCE 

Enjoy......................

     

FELICITATION (by de’fault’)

FELICITATION (by de’fault’)

There was this 3–day festival organized by Prajapita ‘BRAHMAKUMARIS’ at the Besant Nagar Community Hall on 27,28, & 29th of June. You surely know about the movement spread over several cities of India and abroad. I really appreciate the dedicated works being done by them for the past so many years. This three-day program was aimed at self-realisation, acquiring better perception of God, so also, creating awareness of noble deeds, feeling their effects etc., according to the organizers. The target audience were women, members belonging to the Art fraternity, inmates of old age homes, destitutes, students, police personnel etc. This blog is not intended to propagate the movement, anyway.

I attended on the first day, primarily to listen to Gayatri Girish singing. I never had any idea about what was in store for me that evening. At the entrance were a few ladies offering rose flower, applying ‘tilak’ on your forehead, etc. Typical. One of the organizers was verifying a big list of ‘special invitees’, and wanted me to identify my name there. Politely I told her that I was a very ordinary person and there was nothing special about me; and that she was not likely to find my name in the list…. After passing thro’ the various stalls they had put up, mainly on spiritual material (which, incidentally was Latin and Hebrew to me), I settled on a comfortable chair close to the pedestal fan. The evening was sultry, alright. I could see several music maestros among the crowd, belonging to older as well as younger generation. Some faces were very familiar, but I could not readily recollect the names. They were from all over Tamil Nadu.

The concert by GG, though for a brief 45 minutes, was a treat. Then the function proper began. Owing to paucity of space on the dais, only the likes of the Dhananjayans, Bombay sisters, Dr. Sirkazhi Sivachidambaram, and the chief of BK’s Adyar wing could be accommodated on the stage. After the speeches, the main artistes were ‘felicitated’ with mementos, ‘ponnadai’ and a sandal garland. Thereafter, the BK volunteers went round the audience and started offering ponnadais of different colours, and the garland. The lady seated next to me, asked me to go the front row and receive the ponnadai. May be she had recognized the ‘artistic’ glow on my face. But I told her, ‘Thank you Madam’ (I too was a ‘performer’ anyway, though that can at best be categorized in the ‘Thenga Moodi’ genre – I am referring to the concerts (?) I had given at our Pillayar temple on the occasion of the Pillayar Chathurthi, for two years.) For the benefit of non-believers, you may search on the You Tube for ‘harshan47’ and can have the pleasure or pain of watching the three videos I had uploaded years back.

I was watching with keen interest the many artists being grabbed and garbed with the silk shawl. Then, suddenly just like a bolt from the blue, the unexpected happened. One of the organizer ladies thrust a shawl (ponnadai) on me, and another, the sandal garland. Before I could say, ‘yeh kyaa ho rahaa hai’ it was all over. The ladies  had disappeared with mission completed. “Third time lucky”– I told myself.

“Yaar Anand bhai, tu tho bade bhagyavaan ho… shayad tere chehre pe likhaa hai kee tu sach much ek mash hoor ‘kalaakar’ ho–abhee nahee tho, pichle janam mein…! Lagthaa hai, tere liye vaakeyee acha din aa hee gayaa….”

Probably, my ‘shakal’ matched with someone who was to be felicitated that day…. They say there are 7 lookalikes in the world – may be two of them happen to be in Adyar area.  

So, I silently put on the salve, and garland, as instructed by the compeer. But what followed next was something which I had never bargained for. About 100 artists lined up before the stage to receive the memento from the chief guest. So far, so good. But every time an artiste entered the stage, the compeer would call out his / her name and announce their qualification, like “Kalai Maamani”, “Aasthana Vidwan / Vidushi at such and such place, etc. etc., Everyone had some title or other to their credit.

‘Well, It is going to be now or never… Think fast, bhaiyaa, think fast’, I told myself. And it was then, it was at that precise moment, that I decided that it’s time I should take a break – not a short one but something long. And I sneaked out, wading thro’ the crowd, acknowledging the wavings of ‘rasikas’, murmuring something like “ I am already late for today’s kutchery, or something to that effect……”

And here I am, just a ‘nobody’ who was suddenly elevated to the status of ‘Somebody’. ‘Anybody’ could have raised an objection, but ‘Nobody’ did (or didn’t want to?). If Somebody from the organizers saw me fleeing, he or she would have wondered why Nobody realized the mistaken identity. Anybody could have corrected the mistake, but Nobody did.          

(Courtesy: Story of 4 persons in an organization (or, in any organization, for that matter). ‘Somebody’, the boss entrusts ‘Everybody’ with an important urgent assignment, a quote or something. ‘Anybody’ could have done it, but ‘Nobody’ does it. The job is not done, and the company loses a plump order from a prestigious oversees client. ‘Somebody’ is furious, because it is ‘Everybody’s job, but ‘Nobody’ does it under some excuse or other. Finally, it ends up with Everybody blaming Somebody, whereas actually Nobody takes any action against Anybody…)

அன்னையின் அருள் ஆடி பெருக்கு போல் ஓடி வருக .........

No ‘tail piece this time. But the next blog itself will be, well, on a ‘Tale’. You have heard about the ‘Tale of two cities’, right? I have this story about the ‘Tale of two toilets’ – I assure you, it won’t stink……

​​

​​

​​

Enjoy......................

​​

​​

“ACCHE DIN AA GAYE…..” OR ‘converse’ OF MURPHY’S LAW

“ACCHE DIN AA GAYE…..”  OR  ‘converse’ OF MURPHY’S LAW

Have you ever experienced “on” days and “off” days? Well, I have – on several occasions, more ‘off’ than ‘on’. Many of you would have experienced whatever you do on a particular day turn out real good. You locate something which you had been searching for a long time, you get a long-awaited phone call, one of your old chum turns up unexpectedly after a gap of many years, you get a refund cheque from IT department for a few thousand rupees etc., etc.

On an ‘off’ day, you will see that everything goes wrong – the cooking gas breathes its last much before the normal due date, the micro wave conks off, the milk fellow / newspaper boy does not turn up, ‘Chennai Super Kings’ pathetically loses the semis, and you pick up an argument with your spouse for no apparent reason, and before you could count one, two, three, things get totally out of control, you discover that the fuel tank is empty in your car, and you miss the company car, and then you are late for the office and the boss fires you for coming late every other day……

On my ‘off’ days, I was in much more pathetic situations. But today, however, was a wonderfully ‘on’ day for me. Ask me how…. But before that, I must tell you, why I have captioned this blog “converse” of Murphy’s Law. As for ‘Acche din ……’, we all know what it is all about, thanks to our dear Modi Saab.

Those who had been following / reading / ever read my earlier blogs, will know that two topics which are close to my heart are ‘Murphy’s Law’, and ‘Elliots Beach’. Murphy’s Law, as you may know simply states “ IF ANY THING CAN GO WRONG, IT WILL". Now, what is converse of the law, or what is meant by ‘converse’ in the first place? Those of you who get goose bumps thinking of ‘Mathematics’ or those who used get agonizing and weird dreams on the nights prior to Maths exams, please take a looooooooong breath.

Reference:                                                   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#p-search

In mathematics, the Pythagorean theorem – or Pythagoras’ therem – is a relation in Euclidean geometry among the three sides of a right triangle. It states that the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

The theorem can be written as an equation relating the lengths of the sides a, b and c, often called the Pythagorean equation

a square + b square    =   c square

where c represents the length of the hypotenuse, and a and b represent the lengths of the other two sides.

The Pythagorean theorem is named after the Greek mathematician Pythagoras (ca. 570 BC—ca. 495 BC), who by tradition is credited with its proof,^[2][3] although it is often argued that knowledge of the theorem predates him. There is evidence that Babylonian mathematicians understood the formula, although there is no evidence that they used it in a mathematical framework.^[4][5]  Mesopotamian, Indian / Chinese mathematicians have all been known for independently discovering the result, some even providing proofs of special cases.

The theorem has numerous proofs, possibly the most of any mathematical theorem. These are very diverse, including both geometric proofs and algebraic proofs, with some dating back thousands of years. The theorem can be generalized in various ways, including higher-dimensional spaces, to spaces that are not Euclidean, to objects that are not right triangles, and indeed, to objects that are not triangles at all, but n-dimensional solids. The Pythagorean theorem has attracted interest outside mathematics as a symbol of mathematical abstruseness, mystique, or intellectual power; popular references in literature, plays, musicals, songs, stamps and cartoons abound.

For more pictorial representations, pl. go the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem#mediaviewer/File:Trig_Functions.PNG

Coming to the ‘converse’ part,

Pythagorean Theorem converse:

 If the square of one side of a triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, then the triangle is a right triangle.

Suffice to say that every theorem or law has a converse. Now you know where I am coming to – yes, the converse of Murphy’s Law, as I discovered this morning is

“ IF ANY THING WILL GO RIGHT, IT CAN “

Having said that, and having sufficiently confused you, I will now get back to the blog story, and in the end, you will understand how for a change, converse of ML was proved right.

For that, I must take you back to several months, when one of my Dubai friends gifted me a ‘BlackBerry’ mobile phone. Mind you, that was when the so called ‘smart’ phones were yet to enter Indian market, and touch screen technology was in its nascent stage. 

This ‘friend’ never missed an opportunity to announce to the world that he gifted this lovely piece to me, and every time I would shrink by an inch in the company of other friends present, to be told about the great favour the guy did me. However, before long, I discovered to my dismay that the piece did not have the identification number ! Since this was a Korean / Chinese piece, the authorized BB service centre will not entertain the work. I got it done by a local service guy who charged me 900/- to ‘install’ some soft ware etc., (to assign the unique ID), and another 270/- for the battery…. And I started using it as a basic mobile phone without any apps, since the spurious thing wouldn’t support any web application…. Thus, it actually turned out to be more of a Black(mail)Berry than otherwise.

About a fortnight back, the mobile was found ‘dead’. All my sincere efforts of resuscitation through cardiac / cardiopulmonary / mouth to mouth etc., etc. had no effect at bringing back life to the instrument. What bothered me more than anything else was the loss of contact numbers (I had stored ALL numbers in this stupid piece). As one who would never say die, I took the piece to two local service guys who toiled for many minutes to infuse life to the piece, but gave up the fight, thoroughly exhausted. The authorized service center guy said it’s a Korean piece and their service engineers won’t even touch it ….. (seems original BlackBerry never comes with dual sim).

In the meantime, I did a little bit of ‘due diligence’ on the various mobile phones offered in the market, like the operating system, processor specs, capacities of ram, internal / expandable storage, resolution, PPI, Camera pixels etc., etc. and zeroed in on a model which was within my budget.

However, as luck would have it, I was fiddling with the mobile today morning, and in a fit of anger & frustration, held it on my left palm, and struck hard with my right palm, as if breaking a lijjat papad. Believe it or not, there was that familiar music and the welcome sign appeared on the screen !! And the damn thing is working as good as before. Today is surely going to be my ‘on’ day, I thought, and it WAS, going by what all happened during the course of the day. One resolution I have made, however, is that I will never ever switch off the mobile. Who knows, when I try to switch it on next time, I might find out that it has “attained acharyan thiru adi – in sleep” 

No way……

​​

​​

Enjoy......................

​​

​