Obsolete

The project that I work on at my workplace, it is possible to obsolete a delivery if there are some serious issues with it. This set me wondering, how nice it would be if we could all have this feature in our lives. I would obsolete so many things, few memories from my school days and many right after it. I could also use it to undo few utterances for which I regretted later. I could undo my habits to make my body much leaner. I could also undo many mistakes that I made while writing code.

But that is not apparently possible. It seems the function: y = f(x) { where x is time, and y is event in life at the time x} is a distinct value function. It cannot have 2 values, such that if, y1 = f(x) and y2 = f(x), then y1 = y2 has to hold true always. Of course, all this holds true in the domain that we are present. It is said in quantum physics that there are infinite states of the universe, so there could be another Niranjan somewhere in some other universe who could be what I want to be. But would he want to be what he is? Because Nida has said, "Kabhi kisi ko muqammal jahan nahin milta"

He he... confused? But seriously I would like to explore this angle of philosophy if and when I get time in my life.

Easy Life

This monsoon season, a thought time and again surfaces on my mind. How nice and peaceful life it would be if my wife and I could stay in a small town, with almost all the basic necessities. We would have a little house, and I would have no work to go to.

Our garden would be covered with plush green grass, freshly grown this season. The trees would all be covered with greenery. We would take a walk in the city during the day, enjoying the slight drizzle and watching people by the road.

A simple life, no malls to visit, no driving cars in water-logged roads, no cursing the people causing traffic hold ups due to protests against corruption. No talking to people for the sake of talking.

Ah! I think I am old now.

Firefox Fired!

Well I suddenly realized that after purchasing the new laptop, I've yet to install Firefox on this machine. However, I don't think I will be installing it anyways. I am of course using Chrome as my default browser and not the one supplied by Redmond.

I will be playing a little with HTML 5 this weekend. Let us see, it should be fun!

Boredom and Work

Seven years and some months, it seems that I am still doing the same sort of work that I did when I had started. It is not that there were not times when I have had opportunity to work on interesting things, but in majority it has been the same boring stuff, 'fixing broken things' (named various things in service companies).

This routine work is probably a result because I have yet not worked with a product based organisation. I enjoyed a short stint working with our client, when we developed a nice product. 'Enhancements' are the nearest I have worked on in services company. 'Deliveries' are the next boring things I have faced. When, how and why they are planned still remains a mystery to me.

By the way, there have been some new services introduced in Google App Engine. Will be exploring them in due course of time.

Tich! Tich!, have office tomorrow :)

Spot rain and a ghazal symphony

It is suddenly raining with thunderstorm here in Delhi. It was predicted by our MET department. Satellite images are made available on their website, with periodic updates. It is a welcome respite from the rising heat, though surprisingly, it has still not got that warm here till now.

JS is going to perform a first ever "Ghazal Symphony" of some sort in Gurgaon, today. I am not attending of course, as I have resolved not to attend any of his concerts in the NCR region. Concerts here are mostly a platform for JS propaganda. JS only performs from his selected list of ghazals, which frankly look stale now. His real worth is when he picks classic Urdu poetry and renders them in perfect style, capturing the true poetic mood.

Anyways, here is a near full page add of one of the leading dailies today about that concert.

Same beher same tune

There are many instances, when I have noticed that Jagjit Singh used the same tune for the ghazals with same beher. During one of his (rare) workshops in Bengaluru he demonstrated to the audience how he goes about composing ghazals. In that, he chose a Mirza Ghalib ghazal and one another ghazal and demonstrated how ghazals with same beher can almost always be composed on a same tune. It is because of this reason, he is able to spring surprises in his concerts singing a ghazal in the tune of another ghazal, when audience demands him to sing both the ghazals!

I have remarked on this blog a number of times, JS has a fantastic ability to understand the meter of poetry. He knows exactly, how to split the misra into his tune and can thus render ghazals with same meters in those tunes.

An example below,

इश्क की दास्तान है प्यारे,

अपनी अपनी जुबान है प्यारे.

and

उसकी बातें बहार की बातें,

वादी-ए-लालाचार की बातें.

Both the ghazals are on the same beher: Khafif Mussadas Makhbun Mahzuf (2122/1212/22). They also are sung in the same tune :)

Ekta mein bal vs Managing the ekta

For a few days, an old public message that used to be aired on "Doordarshan", keeps floating in front of my eyes. It showed that a single stick by itself was easy to break, but when tied together with a piece of rope, they were impossible to break. That is, "Ekta mein bal".

Now, I have been thinking that this philosophy has an intrinsic overhead. When the number of sticks are massive, then tying the string properly to ensure the "ekta" over weighs the power provided by it. For example, consider a team of professionals. When there are few people in the team, it is so easy to manage it and the real power of "ekta" (or team work) is realised. Now consider a huge team (read as sticks), then we intend to go for multiple managers (read as strings) and managing the managers and sticks causes a massive overhead to the project, that impacts the output of the team right away.

Similarly consider the fact that as a nation we have been trying to stay united, from the time of our independence. Have our political system, politicians and administrative systems been capable enough to tie us all together?