Enlightened ... There are no special effects.

This is an often repeated topic by the Nityanandas, Jaggi Vasudevs and JKs. Still, there is nothing wrong in I, being a common man like you, repeat it. The context of this topic came up during a once-a-year meeting I have with my brother. The meetings usually span about three days when we cover topics ranging from music (his favorite subject) to films and literature. He being a fan of www.itwofs.com , had problems in appreciating music that he knows is copied. To him, good music is one that is original (as far as his knowledge goes). I see this as two different activities - one is the listener's experience of the song, two being the problem of plagiarism. By knowing that a certain music is copied shouldn't come in the way of experiencing the music. Rahman's rendering of "What are you waiting for (Album: Vandemataram)" and "போறாளே பொன்னுத்தாயீ" (Album: Karuththamma), were expressive of the respective moods. I happen to hear a fast paced party song ...

Friend Nag responded to my earlier blog on being free . His comments were: 1. Brain will never give up its superiority (functioning) until it cease to exist or the functioning is stopped. Let us assume, the brain evolves to attain freedom, by then it would've realised to stop procreation to ensure freedom. I'm unable to foresee such a evolution process. Well, if it turns out to be true, that will be the end of man kind, as procreation will stop. As for any creature, expanding itself, is so primal, I really doubt that can happen. If it were to happen, then freedom comes with human extinction. 2. The way I see freedom is, when everything becomes an abstract and you don't see the cause and relationship and not affected by what is happening around. That could be the state of bliss. This state of bliss, could be attained by a few percentage of the human race and not by all. Still freedom will be achieved by all, in their own definition and not in a common parlance. Nag has g...

On India's Independence day, here is my attempt write about real freedom and to demystify the philosophy on Maya, self etc. Imagine the brain as a computer (crude, but simple to explain) with all its CPU and buses; the sensory organs being the peripherals. One important difference is, there is an experiencer - that is you. When inputs come from the senses, the brain processes the inputs and there is an experience. Now add the complexity of memory. Memory evolved with humans and it has been a pretty useful one, just like the computer's memory. It is able to remember more, information gathered over generations is stored better resulting in more complex ideas and innovations. With its evolution, the memory managed to get a higher priority over the inputs from the senses. In computer terminology, we can say that the bus between the memory and the CPU has higher capacity than the other buses. The experiencer explained in the first paragraph is more and more dependent on the memory. ...

I asked my 11 year old son on where he lost his geography notebook. He was clueless. It wasn't new for him to lose things and look lost in front of me. Last month it was geography book, another day it was another book and so on. In the first year of school, he used to lose pencils and erasers so frequently that we always bought boxes of them. Like most dumb parents I too tried telling him on how I used to take care of my possessions. It just struck me that I didn't have too many things to care for. Until 3rd grade, all I need to carry was one notebook for Mathematics, 3 or 4 books and a slate. That's all. The number increased gradually, but some kind of laziness prevented me from carrying more than 10 items to school until the 12th grade. And now, I stumbled upon the 50 year old psychology theory on the limited capacity of memory. And how did I arrive at this information to blog about? I was reading on a technology blog, that talked about interviews, linked to M...

முத்துக்குமரனை கப்பலின் மேல் தளத்தில், ஒரு பலகையில் நிறுத்தி சுட்டு விட்டார்கள். சனிக்கிழமை வந்த குமுதத்தில் வந்தது செய்தி. செவ்வாய்க்கிழமை, சுஜாதா தில்லைநகர் மகளிர் மன்றத்தில் பேசப்போகிறார். ஒன்பதாம் வகுப்பு படித்துக்கொண்டிருந்த எங்களுக்கு ஆர்வம் தாங்கவில்லை. ஆனந்த குமார், ஸ்ரீகாந்த், பரத்வாஜ், சுஜாதாவை சந்திக்க முடிவு செய்து விட்டார்கள். Agenda: முத்துக்குமரனுக்கு என்ன ஆயிற்று என்று தெரிந்துகொள்வது. முதலில் எனக்கு போக ஆசையாகத்தான் இருந்தது. ஐந்து நிமிட சந்திப்பு சுவாரஸ்யத்தை விட மிக அதிகமான சுவாரஸ்யம் படிக்கும் போது இருப்பதாலோ என்னவோ நான் அவரை சந்திக்கப் போகவில்லை. குறையொன்றுமில்லை. ஆனால் இப்போது, சுஜாதா இல்லை என்று நினைக்கும்போது, மிகப்பெரிதாக என்னவோ குறைகிறது. எத்தனை பேருக்கு inspiration? அறிவியலுக்கும் உணர்வுக்கும் இடையே நடுவில் வாழ்ந்தவர். உணர்வுகளை சரியாகப்புரிந்துகொண்டு ஒரு பார்முலாவைக்கண்டுபிடித்து கதைகளும், திரைக்கதையும் வசனமும் எழுதியவர். தான் special என்று உணர்ந்தும், எல்லோரும் சமம் என்று நடந்து கொண்டவர். பல நாயகர்களைப்போல இவரையும் சமூகம் மறந்து விடக்கூடும். மறந்து விடுவோ...

Yesterday I watched the movie 'Taare Zameen Par'. A good movie, very different from the 95% run-of-the-mill movies churned out by ?ollywood. A good attempt to bring to light some of the ignorance on learning. So, it would be unfair to focus details on where are the storyline slumped. I have observed a lot of kids go through the state of lack of fine motor skill at various points in time. Adults also go through this problem temporarily due to lack of sleep or some medication. I have seen a cousin, a very smart kid, often misspelling words when she was about 7-8 years old. Her parents and teachers were intelligent enough to see the actual problem and didn't fret over the "silly mistakes". Over a period of time, she was fine. My son wasn't comfortable buttoning his shirt or tying the shoe-lace until he was about 9 years old. I tried teaching him to button his shirt when he was five and both left the training frustrated. He would always prefer shirts w...

I have been waiting at La Guardia for the same amount of time, it took my travel from Detroit to La Guardia. I approached the ground transportation help desk to see if I have any options if the shuttle I booked doesn't show up. The previous day, it took me a few hours to research on the transportation options from New York La Guardia Airport to Raritan in New Jersey. I won't have much time as the flight's scheduled arrival is at 8:15 AM and I am supposed to meet my business contact by 10 AM. I have less than two hours to cover some 65 miles that includes New York traffic. Considering how bad a driver I am and my difficulty in switching near vision to far vision to keep track of maps and road signs, I chose to take a taxi or a shuttle. I searched for limo services, taxi rates etc and finally booked a shuttle. I wouldn't say my decision to go with that shuttle service can be backed up by good research, but at some point I just booked it without delaying further....

Compared what Microsoft offered through www.bhashaindia.com, Google's transliteration application much better. Considering the IME runs on the client, it could have been a lot better in detecting Tamil (though the IME is available for many Indic languages, Tamil happens to be a bit difficult one). For example, to get ன, you have to type the letter n followed by _ (underscore) within a second or so. With a small rule set and /or a dictionary, it could have detected the letter based on the context as Google does. Google does even better. To differentiate between kuril and nedil, most IME expected the users to use upper case. It has been a fair expectation. But it is also the users' common practice to begin a sentence in English with upper case. On transliteration, this caused a needless error and correction. With Google, typing 'Oru' or 'oru' results in a transliteration to 'ஒரு', which is a common word. Google also shows a context menu with oth...

I haven't been associated with any association for most part of my life. I had no option but to take active role in the association of the residents of my building. Reasons: I was the first one to move in and so had more contexts and an office 5 minutes away from home. So, I became an obvious choice to be one of the office bearers. The association is more of an administrative one to handle receipts from residents and payments to service providers like water supply, security etc., It is no more than a clerical job for the office bearers. Most importantly, the association would never involve in activities like petition to various government bodies or demonstrations or some such things associations are usually known for. I stayed away from any other associations as I do not believe in collective bargaining. We have so many caste based associations; religion based ones, political party affiliations and social networks to choose from. My strong opinion about such groups...