Randy Pausch and his legacy

I am quite saddened to hear about the demise of Professor Randy Pausch. The 47 year old CMU professor who was diagnosed with terminal cancer finally succumbed to death. It is unbelievable that, he showed courage to confront life when you know that there is nothing positive to look forward to. I have gone through his famous last lecture over and over and many a time wondered how can someone be so positive when the odds are so much against you to lean forward. Simply heroic. He showed us the value of life and the way to look forward to. I couldn’t agree more when he coined what “experience” mean,

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted

Randy, may you rest in peace. Your life has changed many lives for good. You must be proud. You have truly left and enduring legacy. Our thoughts are with your family.

Randy Pausch giving the last lecture at CMU

His last lecture video is a must watch, if you have not done yet. Here is the video link:

Nostalgic about all those days

Growing up in Kerala is an experience one cannot describe in few words. One must live through it to really feel it. It is different! This video

brings back a whole lot of those memories of childhood. I may be heavily biased here to say so much uniqueness about the social life in Kerala, but to me they simply remain so. The greeneries and the beautiful countryside, the many little ponds, rivers, streams, lakes, paddy fields, the list goes on. The days of Onam and Vishu are more than festivals for the people of Kerala. The expectations and excitement build around these festivals on children’s mind and the fun of playing so many little games: playing in rain, then invariably fall sick, all that in spite of being truly aware of the consequences. August-September time frame also had the monsoon settles when all the ponds and lakes are filled with water. As kids, those were special days to spend near full days swimming and play the various games by staying in water. Beautiful! Now, all those little games like Kuttikol, Pulikkali, lathi and the countless many games all must have disappeared and perhaps paved the ways for cricket or computer. I wish to believe that it is not!

Looking back, it is amazing that people of Kerala unanimously enjoyed the festivals like Onam, Vishu and Christmas irrespective of religious beliefs. The excitement of a festival was much more than religion, even though there is mythological trace to each of them.

Coming back to this video, it instantly took me to the days of Onam when we all kids (my siblings, cousins and neighbourhood friends) took pride in displaying new dresses, (more traditional it used to be) and group ourselves to play the whole day, with intermittent breaks for lunch feast etc and the pleasure of eating a sweet or two from the neighborhood house and to feel it tastier than the one at home.

And how can I have enough of those Kani konna pookkal (Cassia fistula), a seasonal flower seen all around during vishu summer days! (Courtesy, this beautiful image of kani konna is taken from http://www.ulujain.org/album/casino/casinoflowers/cassia1.jpg)

kanikonna poothappol

Terror callousness spreading to Bangalore

Until the recent past, south India was freed of all these callous folks who gets thrill by killing innocent people. Now, they are sneaking in and creating havoc everywhere. Inhuman activities happening anywhere hurts and the people who are affected only knows how bad they are. The sad trend is that, these are spreading across boundaries. Yesterday’s serial blasts in Bangalore is an example where the cancer is eating all sides of society. No matter who these stupid people/groups behind these and what their motives are, it is simple attrocious and pity to hear that such insane gangs exist. I fail to understand their doctrine of deriving sadistic pleassure by killing and terrorising common people who struggle to move a life on the side lane. Koramangala was a relatively quite area (but well, outskirts of them are heard to be a little notorious for the few religious gangs, but it was a hearsay I wished to not believe, but now truth must be properly investigated), but these inhuman activities are spreading everywhere.

To my innocence, I began to think that, there is support, directly or indirectly to these callousness. If the entire mass vehemently isolate the doctrine of killing innocent people these things simply cant continue. One random blast somewhere can be considered as the work of some streaky individual or group, but a series of such things ought to be coming from more planned inhuman groups. I really wish everyone think above these pity factions, whether it is religion or silly politics or any other doctrine. If you cant respect humanity and that too helpless armless poor people then your God cannot care you either.