Learning sentences without learning alphabets!!

Breaking my temporary break from blogging, I thought of writing a blog. Well there were lots of topics in my mind; some of them could be reservation, medico’s strike. But then I was caught unaware and in fact shocked by an article of TOI that India has now surpassed South Africa in terms of HIV infected population. It was shocking to learn that India now houses 5.7 million infected people and only 7% of these are receiving ARTs.

Well shocked I was definitely to learn that although with effort of WHO and UNAIDS to open 25 free ART distribution centers across India. (Which till date I deemed as considerable) this disease could not be held in check. Then when I gave thought to probable reasons I came up with some usual ones like expensive medicines (which still cost 1200-2500 per dose), social stigma attached, difficulty in educating the people about it et al. Coming to control on price of ARTs, its difficult to control the price given the expensive medicine and patent protection regime gearing up in India making it difficult to “copy” the same medicine here in India, the govt. should ensure that they do a better job with controlling the other aspects since many people do not come up because of the social stigma attached. The govt. was doing a fine job with educating with posters in mumbai reading Will Balbir Pasha get AIDS, running ads on TV depicting mother dropping hints to their children by knowingly holding object with AIDS awareness message on it, opening hotlines, messages in magazines, billboards, through awareness campaigns signing up celebrities and whats and what nots. And it was working for Mumbai

The govt. was doing a fine job until this happened. Reportedly in WB, govt. has sought to redesign the communication campaign by alleging that use of words like condom, sangam (intercourse), jingles from movies like hum tum ek kamre mein band hon claiming that these are “offending”. Well I leave it to you to ascertain the meaning and impact of these offending words and would wonder in such times when the communication should be more open considering the stage that India has entered owing to poor communication (enough was done but as we now find it…sad but true. ..that it was not enough). It’s like when one’s boat is getting drowned the govt. is saying that life guards shouldn’t use get the child wet because she will feel cold!!

I have always been a staunch supporter of sex education in India right at an appropriate school level because given the ignorance in such matters the atmosphere at home too doesn’t help much to make up for the same. With such kind of knowledge about basics of gender differences its not surprising if the volunteers have had tough time explaining things to younger and if I am not wrong the most vulnerable group leave apart the difficulty in opening them up.

Still wondering what the new campaign would read like without the use of basic words like sex and condom…any ideas?????

AFTER THE GAME...

For past sometime I have heard this Old Italian quote doing the rounds, After the game the king and the pawn go into the same box. Well for those who still couldn’t get around the meaning of the quote may well be advised to listen to the Linkin Park song, “I tried so hard, I got so far but in the end it doesn’t even matter”

Well I came across it first while searching for a topic which I can throw across to an audience to speak on in a toastmaster meeting. Till then it was unheard of but it gave a chance to the people to speak their own idea about how life should be conducted. No body sought to speak on this topic. Anyways later I watched it being heard in the Bollywood movie, Being Cyrus. Then people started writing that no one should be worried of worldly possessions just because….

So as the quote says its all about Kings, pawns and boxes….or rather its only box, we all meet the same endings and it doesn’t matter who’s the king and who’s the pawn. So that’s it all about!! But wait, isn’t there one more thing which we are forgetting about. Isn’t this about GAME as well, isn’t it about closing your fist when you checkmate and isn’t it about flaring your nose, abusing yourself when you are checkmated. What if kings and pawns don’t play the game thinking they have to end in the same box? At any rate you are known by the measure of skill you show at playing the game and in one sense the game is larger than any king, any pawn. People are remembered for that, for playing it in a way that helped others play the game better. For that matter any box as well; kings and pawn may come and go, the box may always be there to receive you but you will be known by how much you give to the game. And going forward on that are all games about Kings and Pawns and not about others as well like queens, bishops and knights? And finally look at your aspirations, everyone wants to be king and no one wants to be a pawn, but everyone does want to have a stint at playing a game.

Give it a thought … and then may be you’ll say “Before going into the box king, queen, bishop, rook and pawn play the game and they give their best.”

HUM LOG

Last night when I logged into yahoo messenger through GPRS I read the offliner of my junior who is currently finishing his MS at California. He forwarded the link to an ET article. Being really bored to go to the link late in the night I deleted it but was thinking what could be that article about India which caught his interest and he though may catch my interest. Well I think I should have guessed. While randomly walking through blogs I chanced to read Varun’s blog. Well let me quote first paragraph of this article.

“Quota Raj: Half of IIT, IIM seats may be reserved

These institutions already provide reservations for Scheduled Castes (15%) and Scheduled Tribes (7.5%), as mandated by the Constitution…”

Well so I thought I should also add some value to my blog by atleast something. Well a careful reading of the news might suggest that keeping a tag on central institutes such as Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, IITs and IIMs can be done only by a central body and not by a state body and final word is still awited.

The news might mean distributing laddoos for some people (those who are going to be benefited by it), for some it might mean moving hands on the forehead thinking of a tougher future (those who might have to face a tougher competition) while others (who are not directly affected by it) are going to enter into verbal brawl arguing for or against reservation. There will be a fourth category that will be affected by it comprising of such bodies which although don’t exist physically but are a consortium of such efforts which are vital to a nation’s progress- the colleges. More of them later….

The Reservation was introduced in the constitution of India by Bhimrao Ambedkar with an aim to scrap such a thing within some time span. Now even so many years after the framing does it look any better in the sense that the lesser privileged have caught up with more privileged; this despite giving reservation in premier institutions, govt jobs, parliament, legislative assemblies and latest probably to private sector and Indian army as well?

Not hard to guess the term HUM LOG collectively applies to both the more privileged category and less privileged category. One yardstick to assess the success of such scheme is to check if disparity has reduced or not. The government (or let’s call them VE LOG because VE LOG don’t seem to understand the equations within HUM LOG) probably doesn’t think so which in a way highlights their failure.

The point VE LOG seem to miss in this whole thing is to atleast realize that within the less privileged category there are some mini sections which have advanced to more privileged category and same for some mini section within the more privileged category who have slipped into the former category. All govt. does while framing any policy is refer to Mandal Commission which dates back to 1980. So we still have wards of IAS officers, doctors, ministers, top notch bureaucrats enjoying the same right which a poor brahmin’s son in Orissa is denied. So the least govt. should do to come up with a mechanism so that atleast that mini section of less privileged can be screened out in this lottery scheme. After all that’s the premise of equality.

The government while framing rules should see that even in less privileged category the meritorious gets priority. The present approach seems to be too flawed where in a whole group of people are benefited just based on caste and not the monthly income. So instead govt. should make a fund out of which a person should funded if he’s secured admission to a college and needs funds to continue his education. The whole purpose is foiled if the person secures admission in colleges or gets a job in private sector and is not able to do justice to the education/job and finally end up in the less privileged section again. That’s where VE LOG ensures that the colleges by going back a little in meritocracy are actually contributing to the society.

And again it should be a lottery system wherein you are given one coupon for your lifetime when you can cash the appropriate benefits only once. If you avail of it while education then you will be admitted in that quota. If you avail of it while sitting for a civil service then bars should be lowered for you. After all lifetime offer is given by only Hutch, Airtel and Tata Indicom!

But the interesting part will be to see if at all such a mandate is thrown at central institutions too then will the top IIMs (and this time IITs) too will revolt against the govt. as they had some time back. I don’t think that IITs are still so financially independent that they can carry out the whole functioning themselves!!

Deja Vu

Ever had an eerie feeling on a dinner table when suddenly you look someone/something that you have seen the one/thing before in the perfectly the same setting earlier and then as if in aura of trance, when you turn the head to a side you find the next sequences very logical and consistent with your previous experiences? You somehow find that this sequence couldn’t have been in a dream, from previous experience ‘coz the way a person is holding the spoon and rotating, it just couldn’t be repeated/imitated, ‘coz the way a person is smiling and lifting the finger bowl and passing it on is simply so unique!

Well some of you know that the name for such experiences is Déjà vu. But what most of you may not know is that the correct and closest term for such 'already experienced' or 'already lived through feeling is Déjà vécu.

Déjà vu (French: "already seen", also called paramnesia) describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was given by Emile Boirac.

Types
Déjà vécu- the kind of experiences one-third of the population, mostly highly educated people / frequent travelers, goes through between the age of 15 and 25.
Déjà senti - a feeling of having already ‘felt something’. It’s primarily a mental happening sans precognitive experience, induced by some thought mental/verbalized but in the end only the feeling of feeling remains, the causal thought blurs out.
Déjà visité - an uncanny knowledge of some place, town or landscape. Dreams, reincarnation, out-of-the-body travel and extensive reading of a place have been evoked as reasons.

Myth: déjà vu is an act of "precognition" or "prophecy". Actually it is an anomaly of memory; it is the impression that an experience is "being recalled" which is false. Even you will admit that when experiencing these things, the sense of recollection is strong but a precise knowledge of the previous incident (when, where, how) is uncertain. Likewise later there is little or no recollection of the details of the incident/experience.

Causes:

• Overlap between neurological systems responsible for short term (responsible for present events) and long term memory (responsible for past events).


• Certain disorders such as schizophrenia, anxiety, epilepsy. Another reasons attributed to are improper electrical discharge in the brain resulting in a mild epileptic episode- a jerk, similar to what most people have just before sleep.


• Associated with precognition, clairvoyance but never reproduced in clinical research.


• An extension of dreams/scenes; the ones which are in subconscious mind.

Other Experiences

• Jamais vu: explicitly “not remembering” having seen something before coupled with a rational knowledge of having been in the situation before.


• Presque vu: "almost seen," the expression means almost, but not quite, remembering something. A kind of “on the tip of the tongues” experience.


• Déjà éprouvé: "already attempted or tried"

Trivia

• It is supposed to originate in temporal lobe behind the head.


• Experiments have been conducted to reproduce the feeling of Deja visite and related feelings of unconscious familiarity.

My Observations

• The research has been mainly done on the visual part. It is silent on the other aspects of sensory perception such as smell, touch, sound etc.


• The argument of little recollection of details incident/experience doesn’t hold true in many cases. People may remember them


• The first cause of such experiences might explain the reason for slight state of trance.


• I used to have those feelings when I was still a student, preferred not to come out of the house and definitely was no scholar at all.


• I am not special and won’t ever know what future has in for me or anybody else.

IF holiday.fun>= (Holi Day).fun THEN holiday=TRUE!!

I think I needn’t explain what the blog is about. If you still can’t guess take a hard lood at the inequality and you will know the subtle idea. Well it was another day to cherish after all hardly I get to celebrate my festivals here in Mysore with as enthu as I used to back at college or as a child at home. So there I was, had planned for a holi excursion with some of the friends, my room-mate being the anchor. It was a day full of fun and some adventure too, less on my part more on the others part. Well to describe the whole experience now would be a cliché since my friends Sid and Amrut have already blogged about it in good detail.

The Best of Me

There were some misfires on this day which might have escaped the attention of others:
Earlier

1. I thought of going to Heritage Shelter’s @ 200 bucks but at the end of holi I felt better saving the 200 bucks and going on this thing instead. The day started with gulals when we bumped into an anonymous group of Infoscions. The good part about this day is you play holi with anyone you wish to even if you are not familiar with the one.
2. We reached for breakfast @ Surya when I spotted this girl with whom I had attended a one day workshop held in my campus. I didn’t think twice before muttering hi and wishing Happy Holi and extending my hands to shake hands. It was only when I saw expression on her face did I realize that she was slightly uncomfortable in recognizing my existence (especially with my face smeared all over with gulals perceptibly with the fear of ending in a similar way). I tried to make amends by asking if she doesn’t play holi and then parted with valedictory cool-down remark of no problem (or something like that). My friends teased me compliments of large contacts but I don’t think I will be plagiarizing if I say we are (may be) just friends!
3. Well I learnt that Bullet is a very stable bike. I took a round trip on bullet to and from Balmuri. And imagine the rider doing all sorts of acrobats on the bullet (leaving both the hands, putting both the legs on the handle, standing straight on the footrest fixing the handle on the forelegs) and me sitting on the back clutching my hands at the back to grab hold of something that wasn’t!! But no sir, the bullet won’t budge. On a down slope the bullet cruised down coolly without any problem. But cynic I am when it comes to driving, don’t believe the rider!
   



The Rider, The Fighter, The Bullet

4. When I was a child and I used to see people riding bikes on a high speed I used to say to myself,”look at these mawalis”. It was something that came to me when I returned from Balmuri (reservoir for KRS dam in Mysore) in half torn sturdy t-shirt that I thought no body can tear apart and shouting happy holi to passers by in the loudest voice possible.
5. My skill level at swimming is decent but I can’t stay afloat on water (cycling I mean). Balmuri is a reservoir around 700-800 feet deep with the banks around 5 feet deep. In the swimming pool @ my college as a security precaution I used to swim in the deeper section near the wall only. But this time when I saw my friends churning deeper waters I against my initial fears, went a little ahead in deep water. But different from a swimming pool it feels scarier there. Sid plunged in deep waters on our coaxing and was troublesome to control when he stopped short of a stone. Amit too slipped off the bank and had locked my legs with both of his just like a small scared kid does. It will be a waste to mention the end since the blog is dated post-holi.
6. There was a small t-shirt faado session @ Balmuri, which left everyone’s clothes in tatters. Sid’s kurta was already torn in the shape of a queen’s dress, short shirt from the front and superman’s red accessory from behind; the remains of it adorning our foreheads or wrists. Then everyone took turns in picking one at a time and tearing the t-shirt. I was fortunate enough to have escaped with minimum loss. But I didn’t expect this since the cloth was too sturdy.



The Way We Were Earlier




The Way Some of Us Were Later


7. Previous bhaang experiences were not as pleasant as this time. I had consumed the remains of the bhaang which was obviously more bhaang less milk. So in them mid when Jitu started laughing, Amrut broke into a hysterical laughter, Sid was having slight problem controlling it; I joined the party, laughing at anything to everything. Towards the evening lethargy had stepped in the spirits while the body was more floating.
8. The very next day did I get to know that bhang is a variant of Marijuana and as such should be illegal.
9. I had never imagined the day would end up this funny and pleasant.

   
   The day ended with a quite dinner @ TopStuff but I think ate more or it was bhaang’s effect my tummy was so distended the next day that I had to skip brunch.
   
   P.S. Do see the other blogs by Sid, Amrut to see more pics and experiences.