A game of tennis and a swim in the lake Geneva

After a long gap (over six months or so),  I finally played some tennis again. Much to my surprise, I wasn’t all that rusty in spite of the long layoff from any major sporting (barring some recent treks and once in a while cricket) activities during this period. After a few hits, my serves started holding and I slowly felt the rhythm. I started enjoying this beautiful game once again! In the Swiss heat, it was almost unbearable at times to absorb the hot air from the synthetic surface. On Friday and Saturday’s I played for two hours each until late evening. Yesterday, after the game we took dip in the Lake Geneva near the UNIL sports center arena at St.Sulpice. I never felt a better swim than this before. Such was the feeling of taking a clean water swimming after a good game of sports. It was getting darker and a swim between 2100 to 2200 on the fading summer light in the foothills of the Alps was simply amazing. I just cant compare a place to this amazing Lake Geneva region. Quite a place this is. After the swimming I seemed to have regained all vigour to play a few more games. Had there been floodlights, we were on for a few more perhaps! They say winning is an elixir for eternal youthfulness, but did I feel that swimming in lake Geneva comes close to that?

While, standing in the lake  with chest level water and overlooking the Alps mountains,  it reminded me of the photos of saints in olden days taking a morning yama’s in the Ganges overlooking the Himalayas. I’ve never been to Ganges, but for once I could perhaps feel a sense of their state of mind. I felt like singing one of those Yesudas classical songs, standing with half immersed body. I don’t quite remember whether I did one. I was in a state of fulfilment sort to say!

Conversations with Kenzaburo Oe

I just finished listening/watching a very nice conversation between Harry Kreisler and Kenzaburo Oe.  I remember how much I had enjoyed his very touching style of story telling and how soon I had become a fan of Oe after reading his remarkable book  ”A personal matter”. Oe’s “A personal matter”  depicted an amazing journey of a father through the cultutal walls, creativity, honesty and responsibility. Since then, I have almost forgotten about him (and my reading has come down drastically, after I started working in industry). I  think he is one of the finest writers of this century, perhaps not known outside Japan as much as he should be. I really enjoyed this conversation. It is quite touching, the way, he and his wife learned to react to his brain damaged child converse with them, for the firstime when their son was five years old or something. Incredibly human!

Sad demise of Rajiv Motwani

Shocked to hear about Rajiv Motwani’s sudden demise. I couldn’t believe it. So tragic and sudden end to one of the smartest computer science guy we ever had. So sad.  Apparently, he met with an accident in  swimming pool at home.  The world lost such a terrific talent and entrepreneur. May his soul rest in piece.

Remembering The happy prince

…High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince.

Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Happy prince‘ is one of the many stories that I have read during early school days. Remarkably, this is one of the few I still remember! I was barely able to read difficult English literature per se then, but still the story of Happy prince was within my grab. I don’t recollect whether I had understood all the words of Wilde, back then. This was at a time, when I was happily enjoying my schooling and life in my mother tongue Malayalam. Malayalam literature had its penchant style and aura, which is difficult to explain to non-Malayalam readers.  I was ‘at-home‘ when it came to reading the Malayalam literary works. Yet, I had thrived to learn English stories, albeit at a reduced speed. That whenever, I got a chance to read. Oscar Wilde was one of the rare English writers whose work, somewhat accidentally came to my reading list.  I was surrounded and enthralled by the works of great south American and Russian writers, otherwise. Partly, thanks to the communist influence in Kerala society, the translations of great Russian and south American books were far more available at ease  and at cheap rate (In fact I don’t remember buying anything, but all borrowed from various small local libraries around). 

Coming back to the Happy prince, the story had indeed put a stamp in my memory as a child.  I may have been 10 years or so when I was ‘introduced to’ the ‘Happy prince’.  The subdued request of the prince to the little swallow was by heart to me. When the prince says ” Swallow, swallow little swallow…”, my heart seemed to have resonated at a lower pace.  As a child, I had never seen an European city, for that matter any great city including the ones in India, let alone city across the Atlantic. It was all in my mind, that I’d imagined a mythical model of such a city, a city of the happy prince!  I used to visualise the position of the Happy prince statue standing tall in the middle of a city. Did I ever imagine the enormity of a city as big as this? As a child it is difficult to fathom and relate the seriousness of people’s struggle, a statue could see.  For sure, I was touched and moved by his sorrows and pain.

The swallow represented a role model so to speak  when it comes to helping others. Subconsciously, the little swallow literally drenched my cheeks by living through that difficult winter.  Back then, I had never seen what it is to be a snowy winter, still, could feel the chill of that season, when the shivering swallow wholeheartedly fulfilled the Prince’s wishes. Years later, the words ”…Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow. Stay with me one night longer” still linger my ears. Tears still beckons! Perhaps that story have had a deep influence to me since childhood, to an extend that I’ve never imagined. As a child, I wished if only the swallow could go to Egypt, but alas!

Now, I have accidentally come across that very same story in video form in youtube. That brought in a rewinding of years! I feel the same chill now, as a 10 year old that I had felt years ago. I had told this story to Nivedita a few times. I could see her expression when I uttered the prince’s humble request ”…Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow. Stay with me one night longer“ .. The impact of Oscar Wilde’s powerful writing tells a story in itself. Don’t they?

…High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince.

The prince and the swallow still stays on.. in my memory…I really want to tell this story to many kids! The youtube video is commendable too.

Inclusion exclusion principle

A few years ago, during undergrad days, myself and  friend Ramani during our lazy 75 paise mini canteen tea outing, were discussing a small riddle. It was motivated from a real world experience from our computer center in NIT Calicut (REC Calicut). In REC those days, we students almost exclusively used rubber slippers (Yes, those Paraqon brand which used to cost 20 rupees or so), usually called by the name ‘chappels’. With that, we were not only comfortable while walking and running around, but we’re equally at ease playing cricket and badminton with the very same foot support; and many other things too, including jogging. Those thin hard rubber slippers used to last an year or more without giving much trouble, other than perhaps an occasional tearing of the rubber tie. In all, we were at peace with that.

But there was an issue, not exclusively for this brand, but for chappals in general (shoes were a luxury of sort in the campus;atleast it wasnt very common). Not for everyone though! If and only if you were fancied of visiting the computer center! Well, computer center wasn’t all that fanciful then, since we were provided with only graphics less Unix terminals (no colour monitors!). You might wonder, huh! what age am I talking about? Besides, Internet and Emails were only taking shape then. Chats and browsing were not quite there yet;Unless you felt a touch inferior to the computer wizkid around, that was not a compelling centre de visite. As, ‘would be‘ electronics and communication engineers we had that occasional inferiority complex!. Computer center was air conditioned and was strictly slippers free. We were expected to keep our valuable slippers outside (no clock room luxury! well that was not a necessity either) before entering to that cooler room, filled with monochromatic terminals. Since most of the chappals dropped outside were alike (in size and also sometimes color) there was a good chance that at the time return, we ended up with a different pair of slippers (Some folks found happy for themselves by a visit to the computer center, just for a pair change, often to an improved lot!).  Sometimes, we ended up having differently colored ones, say left foot white and right foot blue. That wasn’t a problem socially either, as long as you stayed within the campus. It was socially accepted within the walls!

Anyway, coming back to the riddle we were busy conjecturing on. We wanted to automate a clock room. The idea then would be to just deposit the chappals there at random. The clock room work automatically. Upon asking (at the time of return, say) it will select a pair at random and give it to you. Sorry, you cant have a choice. Just accept and hope for the best. We asked the questions:

1) What is the probability that everyone gets their own chappals

2) What is the probability that none of them get their submitted pairs

Assume number of  people (and hence pairs). We can assume that, a pair is a single entity (say both left and right slippers are tied and submitted as one) . This simplified the problem to people slipper scenario. A simplistic model assumeed that all people submit their slippers at the same time. We wanted to build that great randomized clocker machine! And we wanted that to work for any , which means, the algorithm had to be implementable and to work well in expectation!

We had thought and pondered about it for a while, then. In the end, we had found that the first one is easy, but the second one a little harder to generalize for beyond or something.  As busy undergrads, we left the problem after an hour of discussion, probably until we had finished sipping the tea. Aside, we were busy with many other extra curricular activities including a 3 hour daily cricket match at the lush green international hostel ground. The megadeth team, as we proudly grouped ourselves, the electronics and communication batch hardly missed those cricket matches. We were electronics engineers and had taken pride in ourselves by not really bothered to ask any fellow discrete math or combinatorics folks! That perhaps helped in some sense.  Ramani found management more interesting than those technical details of counting. I am sure he took the right career. Anyway…too much digressing already!

Now, it turns out that, the very same problem is akin to a well known problem in combinatorics. It is called the Hatcheck lady problem. It is fairly easy to solve it using the inclusion exclusion principle. The proof outline is shown below. As I type, memory fetches that discussion,  sitting leg-folded on the cement bench at the REC mini-canteen, perhaps an occasional cool breeze around too. 

The inclusion exclusion principle is the following:

                

                

The Hatchek lady problem can be stated with a similar story as the random clocker machine. (From Harris, Mossinghoff, Hirst’s book on Combinatorics and Graph Theory)

A lazy professor gives a quiz to a class of students, then collects the papers, shuffles them, and redistribute them randomly to the class for grading. The professor would prefer that no student receives his or her own paper to grade. What is the probability that this occurs? This indeed is an equivalent statement of the well known Hatcheck lady problem (I guess the exact name come from a hatcheck lady who collects hats and absentmindedly return them)

For Hatcheck lady problem, the probability .

When gets larger and larger it converges asymptotically to a constant!

Athapoovum nulli…

I wonder how this song found itself a way to the drains!  I remember listening to this audio in All India Radio chalachithraganangal program during childhood. It is a little slow but I have enjoyed the  rhythm. Never seen this video before. Now, the video brings more nostalgia about those paddy fields and picturesque Kerala, my home land.  Missing Kerala!

Hope you guys enjoy this music. (For information the music is in malayalam)

Incredible boy Ravi

Firstly, thanks a lot sufiwindsurfing for bringing the story of Ravi, a young boy from the street of Mumbai India. This boy, without any formal education, all by himself learned some very commendable language tricks.  Now he speaks over thirteen languages (albeit few sentences only, but still an incredible achievement) including English, french, Italian, German, Persian, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic.  Amazing! It is quite sad to realize that, the society we live in is so much unaware about the plight of millions of kids like him who are forced to suppress their talents in pursuit of making their ends meet.  In the many streets of India, we may be able to find so many such Ravi’s who are unfortunately pushed to the dark side of the fortune wheel.  I really wish and dream of an era, all the children of this world have equal access to love and education.  It is cruel to leave them alone into the  world of difficulties this early. Forget all religion and fanaticism. Who needs that, when a vast ocean of basic social problems still loom large across the world? It is a known story that, many of the kids begging in the streets of India are abducted and forced into the urban chaos. My heart goes to those parents whose beloved ones are oppressed forever. Every time I see these kids,  my mind goes into that wild scary thought of that beautiful would have been childhood, denied for the millions of underprivileged. Who knows, we may have lost millions of future hopes into the drains of mass urban disaster.  As Betrand Russell said in his beautiful autobiography prologue, “I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot and hence I too suffer“.  As he said, this indeed make a mockery of what human life should be!  We are simply not doing enough! 

and here is Ravi, when he was younger (may be 5 years then?) in 2005 

My favourite Indian ads

Here is a list of some of my favourite Indian commercial ads.  Thanks to youtube, I get to see them again! The adhisive brand “Fevicol”has produced some inredible and funny ads.  Most of their ads stuck on to the viewers mind.  Among the other funny ads, I liked camlin erasurs and marker ones.  I better dont say too much here. As they say, the fun in an ad is best viewed and chilled out! Have a look and enjoy the fun and appreciate the creativity of these fabulous ad makers.

The old Ericsson mobile phone ad (I guess 1996). The concept of a  ”small” phone back in 1996 perhaps is too outdated for today.  All boils down to Moore’s law!

Rimii Sen and Aamir Khan did a nice job here in this Bengali accented conversation.  The coke ad is one of the better ads from the cool drink folks.

Fevicol: Simply superb ad from the popular adhesive brand.

Naukri.com’s famous Hari Sadoo funny ad:

How about this one. To be this is too good an ad from Camlin.

The Peugeot ad used to appear in Channel 4 in UK. It was an incredible ad. I am glad that this is there for viewing in youtube. Superb one.  

Bhopal tragedy: Little changed!

Came across this New york times article on the Bhopal tragedy. It pains to know that the left over of that fateful tragedy still rolls on. Isn’t it still true that, the dreams of poor are never rich enough to be noticed? Their problems are not important enough to be cared?

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

Indian media: Too much of sensationalism

I don’t get to watch Indian television daily, but I still keep an eye on them once in a while by visiting their websites. The two sites I visit so are CNN-IBN and NDTV. These are sort of the two large English visual media in India. For the last one month or so, one issue (other than perhaps the left Congress party fiasco over the proposed nuclear deal with the united states) widely flashed is a murder of a young teenage girl Arushi in Noida, a suburb of Delhi. The unfortunate girl apparently had to pay an innocent life to the cruel world of cunning and sheer callousness. The callousness of the cruel people leave the society to a state of shock and uneasiness. A sense of fear is invited all around. But my point is none of these.
I am appalled by the way the Indian media went about sensationalizing this news. I can understand the many soap Indian yellow news channels (most of the Hindi news channels are just that) going this way. The two celebrated Indian news channels NDTV and CNN-IBN are just no better. Day in and out their journalists competed to present a set of tabloid style news with the quest to attract the greedy readers and audience. I say this with utter disappointment. Here is a girl, the only child to their parents and she is lost. There is investigation on going. It is a basic courtesy not to write stories about the victim’s family without having enough substance to what they talk about. News readers and media can talk senselessly on any topic and feel happy for it. Their flash news are spread across the country like tabloids. There must be some integrity and social responsibility before they venture into such silly acts. I dont have a problem when they expose any irregularities in the investigation or any cover up. But they should not air their verdict as if they are the supreme, even before doing a proper evidence collection. After saying nonstop incorrect stories about the family, now they can simply accuse the police and CBI for all what happened. Look at the family. They lost her daughter, they are portrayed as villain to the public, they lost their social reputation and health. Man this is agonizing. Police and CBI can be questioned, later on for all wrong doing. They can still be brought to justice, for any harm they created, but who can question or challenge the media? They offer all kind of accusations, but they are the one who enjoy the freedom to tarnish anyone of their choice. This is not a good going for the channels which claim to have reputed journalists. Pity!

Nandu’s wedding and a quick visit to Kerala

Nandu (Nandakishore Santhi) married to Kavita on 27th December 2006 at Cherpulasseri, Palghat (Palakkad), Kerala. I went with my friend Soni PM (in the photo, Soni is at right hand side of Nandu and yours truly is seen to the left side of of Kavitha) to this beautiful part of Gods own country!

Paghat is a beautiful place, known for its natural setup aside the western ghats. The green paddy fields are a scene worth many a click. You could see many fields all around (all over Kerala for that matter, but Palghat has little more to its credit, historically). Music is one another thing you would associate Paghat to. The Tamil Brahmin’s population in this area (this place is also in the close proximity to the city, Coimbatore) credits to a rich history of music (Carnatic music).

Sukesh Pai’s wedding

Monday, 2006 December 18
Mangalore

On 18, December 2006, I could attend wedding of my good old friend Sukesh Pai. Sukesh and I are known to each other from my higher secondary school days at Kanhangad Nehru arts and science college (those days..early 1990s we used to have a two year pre degree course, in place of the 10+2). Sukesh married to Archana on 18th December at Mangalore.

On 17th December night, I set out for an overnight trip to Mangalore, along with Narayana Pai. Maya and Nivedita couldn’t join since they were caught under the weather. Even though, I wasnt feeling all that well with the viral fever, I somehow wanted to make it to this occasion. In fact my hometown is very close to this port city (Nileshwar in Kerala’s Kasargod district is less than 60 miles from Mangalore). With Pai (Narayana Pai is known as Pai in the friends’ circle) it is always fun, because he has this huge ability to make you feel very comfortable, anytime, with the worldly discussions on any topic. No matter, where we start, with Pai, it will never get completed without discussing about cars and automobiles (and not to forget the Cisco goodies, they give it to employees with a certain regularity!). As one would expect, we also talked about cars. We talked about the new BMW cars being launched in India and to the torque adjustment mechanism of the latest Mercedes S series. Travel can never be boring with Pai and it was no different this time. I enjoyed every moment of this Volvo trip to Mangalore. The Bangalore-Mangalore highway was so messed up after the monsoon, that buses these days go via Mysore-Madikeri route.

Anyway, we had a comfortable journey (barring the condition of the road itself; I for one, didn’t feel it to any extend, thanks to the sound sleep on the journey). We reached Mangalore Jyoti circle at 6am . Mangalore as you would expect was relatively warm (even in winter it is quite not chilly there) compared to Bangalore.

Sukesh looked gorgeous in his wedding dress. The wedding was reminiscent of typical Konkani GSB Brahmin’s function. The pooja’s and other rituals would start from the previous day and would continue till the next day. It was quite a pleasant, and well organized sort of function. Both Sukesh and Archana looked very happy and it was indeed a pleasant sign. With Sukesh, you would always find a pleasant smile, the very sign of it could make anyone happy. Sukesh’s parents are known to myself and my wife Maya for a long time (may be longer with my wife because she is also a Konkani). They must be very proud (and a little relieved) that he found his very suitable better half.

I am very happy and feel proud of him. He is one guy, to whom I have tremendous respect as a good friend, as a simple human being who cared for his family and friends, and also a role model for any youngster with the sheer dedication and hard work he put in. I wish him all the very best for a continued, happier times in life.

happy married life Sukesh and Archana