Heartbroken

It is one thing if you can’t answer because you didnt know it. It doesn’t hurt that much. But when you know it by heart yet massacre it, you only want to ………. I don’t know. Feeling so down. Felt at first it was the right way to do the problem, yet, skeptical, skipped it ….. and it WAS the right way. In another, did the right answer, changed it to the wrong un, again changed it to right, again wrong, again right, and finally kept the wrong. Shit. And the ‘minus’-in-place-of-’plus’ childhood nemesis still going strong on me. And all this in an easy ( so-called ) paper like Statistics. The paper was, …… how I’d have wished it on my day. Yes. It had nothing wrong. Everything wrong was going on inside my mind.

I am still not quite ready for the sems; I mean, my psychology still not fully oriented, …… thinking too much about the holidays that are to come …… I MUST PULL MYSELF TOGETHER. I must. Else the holidays will also taste bitter and undeserved.

I deserve a better performance from myself. This is far from the best Me.

Kick-off! and …… Om Shanti Om

The sem exams, at last, underway. Comp sc. exam, OK, above average at least. At last have to bid good bye ( at least for marks-getting purposes ) to one of my favorite pastimes ( and headaches ) ……. C programming.

Saw that hyped film,- OSO. The ardent SRK-hater that I am, sat to watch it with a lot of frown and most EXPECTEDLY, found it to be a typical SRK-centered mumbo-jumbo. ……. Larger-than-life characters, damn predictable storyline. The first half is boring and childish. Farah Khan has almost made a spoof while trying to ‘pay tribute’ to the 70’s age of Bollywood ! Even Govinda is parodied. The second half gets a bit interesting, and the ending is good, but that’s it. As usual, Shahrukh oozes with that sickly ’see-i-am-a-superstar’ image. Deepika is bland, to say the least. Shreyas and Rampal impress.  ……. And that ‘khiladi’ scene of Akshay Kumar, er……. nothing to say.

What I am surprised about is so cliche’d the hindi film scenarios are.  Whenever a lead character has to return as such, and that would be consequential in the course of the film, surely they are always the heros,…… be it Rajesh Khanna in ‘Aradhana’, Rishi Kapoor in ‘Karz’, Hrithik in ‘Kaho naa pyar hai’ or ‘Krrish’ or here, srk in OSO. The heroines just, ….. either live along, or die in grief, or (as here) only with the shape, later her ‘aatma’ gives tit-for-tat! Fact is, we still want glorious heroes, not a principle female character. Heroines are just polished supporting actors. A long-drawn stubborn stereotype of focusing on the males-are-dominant idea.

Interpretation is everything

J. D. Watson, the father of the Double Helix, now said genetic research shows that Africans are ‘innately less intelligent’ than other races. Please, Dr. Watson, a little correction. It should be like this,- there is more-than-par probability in African population that a person will be less intelligent. It does NOT mean that all Africans are less intelligent than other races on average.

What Watson said obviously can be misinterpreted in a racial overtone. He rightly apologized later, but those with their own age-old crap prejudices about hollow ‘racial superiority’ now have ‘science’ to validate and ‘manifest’ their fully invalid racist claims.

One such thought comes from Abe Lincoln’s land,- “ Let’s say the genetic data says we’ll have to spend two times as much for every black child to close the achievement gap”…… then the society would need to consider “ how they can be given educational and occupational opportunities that work best for their unique talents and limitations.”- so says some Jason Malloy. …………… A perfect example of a racist in disguise of a thinker. First, he wrongly generalizes in one place, and wrongly specializes in another place. The fact is that among three gene sequences that are found to influence intelligence, two are found to be less frequent in Africans than others. That does not necessarily mean Mr. Malloy’s policy should be applied to all black children. The main plus-point of every policy should be flexibility, that is, it must not hang when dealing with the case of outliers i.e. special cases. And another thing, of course, this ‘opportunities-as-per-abilities’ policy is good, but it should not ever be biased, and must take into account all such cases where scientific validation is possible.

Actually, we tend to discriminate between ‘we’ and ‘they’. ‘They’ are always lesser mortals than ‘us’, even maybe ‘less human’, ‘less Homo sapiens’! Ridiculous. And we are predisposed about this, subconsciously taking the baton from the previos generation, our minds being moulded by their subtle acts and gestures. It is time for our generation to fix the anomaly.

Knowledge is good, but one must know and realize to the fullest, not learning in bits and pieces and fill up the gaps with whatever thoughts.

 

We are richer

This has a little bit of background. …… After getting out in the prelims of the inter-college quiz contest organized by our ISI pretty badly, I vowed to know about the things I don’t know anything about, like English songs, old foreign movies, blah blah ……. and very much on a roll downloaded some Beatles, Norah Jones, Aguilera, Furtado etc etc. But I have a problem now, er … I just can’t listen to them, can’t tolerate the sound of this type of music. Only Akon is a real discovery, all others are, just … CRAP. Almost no effort goes into these songs, everyone can sing them, same type of music, and very less emphasis on lyrics. Especially quality seems to go down by time, before Venga or Boyzone ( accidentally) churned out some good songs, but now, …. sigh.

In contrast, our own music industry is doing wonderfully. After the melodious classical-type era of the 50’s-70’s, it survived the dark middle ages of 80’s ( the ‘disco-dancer’ type croonings of Bappi Lahiri ), and now it is constantly growing on variety. We have takers of all types of music, and new efforts are being appreciated. It survives on variety, co-existence and innovation, and nearly each new film or album of this variety-type is bringing out one or two new hits.

And see, there are many a ‘rock bands’ mushrooming, but all dying prematurely. That’s because they are monotonous, and you get tired listening to them after a certain time.

Well, well, everything western must not necessarily be superior than their ‘native’ counterparts, see ? Take your pick based on the quality. Origin hardly matters.

( No prizes for guessing why the heading of the post is so! )

Peace, at last ………. DON’T JOKE.

 

The west bengal CM, Buddhadeb-babu, now says that peace prevails in Nandigram. And when someone charges him saying that this is the peace that prevails in a ’shamshaan’, he retaliates telling there was no heavenly peace there in last 11 months. Well, a small question, smart fellow. You are the CM, right ? Then it HAS to be considered a failure of yours that you couldn’t contain the people then. And now you hope to just oppress.

This humbug so-called intellectual guy is more of a crap to the state. He is nothing but a paltry party worker of the CPM, a person with a colored vision, with no humanity and no rationale ( supposedly, his acts compel us to think so ).

My glass is half-full,……….

 

 

 

And may it not be empty ever.

This is one of those times when I really look forward to the coming days, and time seems to fly by. A string of over-3-hr sem exams, spanning 2 weeks, starting 26th. And there are two interviews, for a change! One on 20th, another 1st Dec, just a day before the exam that none here dare feel confident about,- Analysis. Specially, the first one is maybe of a bit higher significance,- interview for selection in an undergrads associateship at a research institute. After all, I need SOMETHING to do in the holidays between the sems !

And then, after 7th dec, what to do, how to do, when to do, why to do ! These idle periods should be at most a week long. Instead I get more than 4 weeks. God.

Life is all about ‘karma’. It is the only thing you will leave behind. Life’s precious. We must not waste it.

Who are you fighting with ?

” An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. ”

- Mahatma Gandhi.

Where is the Salim group now who originally proposed to the West Bengal state govt. to establish a SEZ ( Special Economic Zone ) in the Nandigram area ? They have now cancelled the plan, and have long left the scenario. Yet, yet, yet, …….. you foolish people of Nandigram, you have now transformed the debate into a nonsense impromptu battle between two political parties. You should have, at first place should NOT be divided upon the opinion of whether to let a SEZ be established or not, but you chose to hear to your respective political gurus instead, sacrificing apolitical unity in the name of a hollow ‘ideal’ which will land you nowhere. Can’t you understand, the only thing matter to these political parties is power, domination, and vote-bank, NOT YOU. Now a part of you are driving others out of their homes because they dint agree with your demands, and the other, once go back, then after collecting firepower ( thanks to the ruling party ) strike back to massacre those who drove them out. Who are you fighting with? They are your own neighbors, they are those with whom you, till a few months back, have shared your sorrows and joys. Pray, why be so inhuman? You will realize, some day. You have to.

And you, state govt, you CM Buddhadeb, if you are only on power to manifest the vested interests of your own ‘communist’ party, then out with it. You don’t deserve to be in power, and everyone in the state knows it, but ……… well, your days will also be over some day, some way or other. How shameless can you be to let the police be mute spectators amid all the chaos, meekly becoming eyewitness to mindless genocide ? And even when the media is openly showing this to the whole state and country! You have demeaned the image of the lawkeepers, the police, to the whole country. They are now nothing but your party workers, they stand still when needed, and act when they see a peaceful protest by the intellecuals in the state, even though it is in the streets of the capital ! And then they term singing protest songs on street a non-bailable offence ! ……… bordering ( to be polite ) on insanity.

The communist rule in West Bengal in the last 30 years has made the most versatile and productive state in the country a laughing stock to the country. Nothing else, nothing more.

Fill your mind with thoughts, not facts…………..

A weekend totally gone, for yet another scholarship test. Have my hands pretty full at da moment, – the sems approaching, three final assignments due, and one from them is of course the eternally unmanageable linklist program, – inserting and deleting from a linklist. Amid all these, this KVPY ( A science fellowship prog funded by da central gov. ) thing.
Okay, the exam went well. All were multiple choice Q’s, you can choose from phy, chem, math nd bio, and answer. I premeditated not to touch chemistry, mainly because of that beautiful yet lousy ( if u can’t remember them due to lack of practice, that is) Organic section. But at last found my forever loathing for all-things-theoretical-in-physics overwhelm me, couldn’t keep patience and went on to answer 20 marks in chem., altogether leaving out physics. And there were they, ‘gliding’ me ( I hope so) through the exam, one an ISI-an’s bunny in ANY external exam,- maths ……… and the other,biology, that would make every other ISI-an except myself a bunny in ANY external exam!
I have got what I wanted, — company of the dazzling beauty that mathematics is, and of most of the country’s (and of course, among them, a few of the world’s) best brains in this arena. But I still find MY brain lying behind, in the practical world of biology…… It’s fascinating. This is surely one such subject in which common sense rules, and logical thinking is a must.
The point of this sudden string of thoughts is maybe a bit trivial. There was a Q in da test that if blood sodium conc. increases, why does BP increase. There were 4 options, and thoughts went on something like this– …….the ans may be ‘because more sodium ions make blood thicker’, obvios reasons, but then, another option was – ‘ water retention in kidney increases, so heart has to pump more blood’ . Wait, there is a hormone, the only one secreted by heart, ANF ( Atrial Natriuretic Factor ) ; and…. Atrial ….HEART, Natri….SODIUM, uretic…..KIDNEY, and….voila ! Two plus two equals four, and this has to be the correct answer.
This is the power of effective thought-process. It makes the small differences. It makes never-before breakthroughs. You cannot possibly know everything in a certain matter, to some extent you’ve gotta fill up the gaps, that is da essence of learning, I suppose.