Alien(n)ation

Hmm... i see we meet again... by the looks of things, it seems this blog is going to die a slow painful death, i cant find the time to blog, yet I keep pestering myself to update. So with nothing new to talk about, let me describe where i am and what i'm doing. Im doing a one year diploma in bioinformatics in an institute in the international tech park, bangalore (ITPB). The tech park is one of those places in india where most of the IT jobs that go missing abroad turn up, all in the name of outsourcing. So here we are, a small group of biologists, bang in the middle of this massive aggregation of software professionals.
The ITPB, was never designed to bew like anything else we have in India, like most 'modern' ventures being concieved in india, it has been ctrl+c and ctrl+v'd right out of something that upto a few years ago, we would have expected to find only somewhere very far west of india.
But now it is here. It has been a bit of a culture shock for me, coming from grotty school and college buildings into swank centrally airconditioned structures, gone are the dirty (and cheap) roadside stalls and equally filthy cafeterias, here we have food courts.
Looking around, I can see I am not the only one taken aback. My favourite observation is how people use the trash cans here. Where we would normally expect rusted and infrequently emptied bins, there are pairs of green bins, one for recycleable and one for non-recycleable. Every one is confused, and as a result people basically use them based on which one is more convenient at that particular time. However the impressive fact is that they are being used, trash more often than not finds it's way into their gaping mouths' rather than somewhere on the ground in their vicinity.
Now a bit about bioinformatics, it is mainly discipline that involves using computers in biology, particualrly in molecular modelling and in determining structures and stuff like that. Like all this suggests, the subject involves an inordinate amount of mathematics, something I was never comfortable with, which is why I took up biology. Unfortunatley for me, a significant portion of biology is in the process of being reduced to chemistry and physics which rely heavily on math . In college I was never comfortable attempting anything vaguley mathematical without my trusty scientific calculator by my side, honestly this really amounted to cheating because this way I could get along without really understanding how a lot of things worked. Now, I fear this approach is not going to work and I am going to have to atone for neglecting math.
The only thig that compensates for all this is that most of our work is at computers, something I fell in love with a long time ago.
A lot of our classes here (for the time being at least) are on general professional skills, that's where the institute differs from conventional colleges, here they are geared to producing competent professionals who will succeed in a typical workplace as opposed to conventional academically oriented college graduates. I am not sure how well their point of view relates in terms of my own goals, which are still a bit idealistic. I'm still thinking in terms of getting into the research line, I don't know why, maybe it was drilled into me at college, maybe I'm to lazy to work to get a job and then face the pressure or maybe I am just being stupid.
I really dont know, but it's one of things that's embedded into my head, to work on my ideas, to be able to call something my own, rather than slaving away for interests other than my own, for someone elses' profit. I have an aversion to the typical 9-5 work routine that would require me to ignore my own impulses and my own creativity and subvert them to achieving what someone else thought up. I know that a good employee would be able to channel his/her own interests into achieving something that eventually contributes to the greater good. I on the other hand am too stubborn, too fixed in what I like and what I want to do and what I need to do to ever be any good at a job like that.
Crap I'm confused.

A Short (boring) Update

Man it feels like an eternity since I last posted to my blog and although the fact weighs down on me all the time, for some reason I can find very little motivation to actually come online and type out a post. I think mainly this is because there's so much going on here that I find myself compelled to live my life rather than talk about it as I usually do.
I know I said I'd blog once I'd settled into my accomodation and gotten myself comfortable at the institute, unfortunately this doesn't happen easily for me. The place I'm staying at now is a paying guest accomodation organised by the institute itself, we have one rather small, badly lit room that currently holds four people. Although it was originally intended for three, it looks like it was designed for two, so you see why spending time in my room is not my idea of fun.
Since there are between 20 and 25 people staying in the same building all in the same institute, it allows for a lot of interaction between us outside the classroom. This was the main reason i chose to stay there rather than looking for a flat on my own, which would have possibly been a more comfortable proposition.
The institute itself itself is rather impressive, for one I have not been part of any place that emphasises on professionalism as much as they do, although this is more demanding than had they been lax in that department, it's kind of good since I was going to have to learn that sooner or later.
Bangalore itself is a big beautiful contradiction, much like most other large indian cities. Fuelled by all the IT and services industries that have settled here, it has grown into a cosmopolitan city but at the same time, it still has pockets of resistance to change, small villages that refuse to grow up, on the outskirts of town. Case and point is the area where I live, it is a village, although, there are the occasional spurts of modernisation here and there. Yet just a few kilometers from that is the International tech park Bangalore, (where my institute is situated), which looks like it was plucked out of another age and slammed into the middle of almost medieval india and on the roads, airconditioned public buses, compete for space with antiquated tractors.
Although the residents of bangalore would have very legitimate greviances against this uneven development, I find it quaint and it is very much part of my idea of what bangalore is as a city. Of course i have the same complaints against the irregular development of my own city, Delhi and no, I don't think it's quaint in the case of Delhi. In the case of Delhi I'd call it shortsightedness, so maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

I know I'm being boring here and being a bad blogger buit I really cant think of too much else to say, mainly because I dont find myself time to think, which was my main fuel for my blog. Deprived of all privacy, without any time to think I find myself posting mainly about myself, something I didn't actually intend to do in the first place. So when inspiration does strike me, I'll make sure I blog about it.
Now I must go, because someone is insisting on peeking over my shoulder, and reading this (something that irritates me) and I find myself compelled to leave and give him a bit of a lecture on computer etiquette (ha!), anyway, till then, ciao.

I Be Bangalored

Hello all from the garden city, I'm sorry if this post is wholly incoherent but i am stuck in a hot cybercafe with a 100 degree fever, so i think i should be allowed that much!
Aah, there's so much to write out, but first things first.
I made the journey this time by train, partly because the amount of baggage i was going to carry and partly because it was so much cheaper. Even before i got on the train, i knew it was going to be s shitty trip, i could feel a vague tingling and numbness at the back of my throat, I had gon and caught a cold, right before the trip. The prospect of the trip itself was also daunting, for the last three years i had gotten myself used to the 27 hour journey between Delhi and Pune but the almost 40 hour ride to Bangalore is something that nighmares are made off. I got on at 9 at night so the first twelve hours would be ok but another one and a half days of doing nothing is pure torture for the hyperactive twenty on year old that I am.
Once aboard the train, things seemed to look up for a bit, my whole compartment was full of people travelling alone, families and particularly crying babies make me crazy, here at least i could expect some conversation. With me there were eight other people (AC 3), one ITPB guy (Indo-Tebetian Border Police), two south indian guys, a kashmiri, one tamilian woman and a couple of other assorted characters who kept to themselves.
It would have been an interesting trip had I not been under the weather with the damn virus. The first night was positively painful, partly beacuse of my blocked nose which kept me up all night but mostly because of the spine twisting, train berths. Honestly considering the number of passengers the railways carries, one would think they would spare a little thought to improve their services. But no, their berths are not too hard and not to soft, just right, to induce acute spinal discomfort.
I woke up early the next morning, around eight in the morning to find the attendant slamming my breakfast down near my head. Now as far as I am concerned, the Bread-omelette you get on trains is practically an institution, to eat anything else for breakfast would be an act of blasphemy. Some trains like the Rajdhani's (express trains that run from various important cities to Delhi) have customised their bread omelette and may serve you a few soggy chips (as in fish and chips, not wafers) what I got here though was a very basic bread omelette, ie. a two soggy slices of buttered bread, an omelette and a sachet of tomato sauce.
Now when I was young, travelling by train was a source of endless fascination to me, I would alternate between staring intently out of the window, reading/ drawing or bothering my long suffering mother. Now I have adapted to the normal adult mode of travel which basically involves sleeping only to wake for meals, of course I also subscribe to the students philosophy of frequent trips to the outer corridor for a quick smoke.
Now once my breakfast was done, there being nothing more to do, I went back to sleep and thats pretty much how most of my day passed, with the occasional drunk passenger who insisted on kicking up a row serving to relieve the tedium.
I got into Bangalore at about two in the afternoon today, on time, which is incidentally a minor miracle. I got a room in a small but clean hotel room, and had a long overdue bath.
I think I am probably an internet addict because once bathed and ready, my first urge was to get to a cyber cafe. Asking at the reception for the whereabouts of a cyber cafe, I was directed by the receptionist with a quick wave of his palm. Thus armed i found myself on the street. The small street on which the hotel is situated, leads on to a larger road and oh boy what a road.
Now i am a delhiite, I've been to Chandini Chowk, but this was a whole other level of insanity. I don't know if it was the fever or if it was the trepidation of being in new surroundings but i was overwhelmed by the chaos. It was like stepping into a war zone but I braved it.
I walk for about fifteen minutes but there is no cybercafe in sight, finally I ask at a chemist, he directs me across the street, motioning in the direction of a narrow lane. Thats well and good, sending me across the street, but how the hell an i supposed to cross it? Its mayhem with bikes and autos and cows, as a matter of fact this is a lot like pune, I'll fit in here nicely. Anyway i did eventually find the cybercafe, not in the direction I was sent off in but in a lane diametrically opposite. I'm almost done here now, and now I'm worried about finding my way back, but not to worry I am equipped with my famous sense of direction, something that lead me three times around Rashtrapati Bhawan, while looking for C.P. so maybe i should be worried.

Horsing Around

So I’m waiting at a red light, on my way home from the bank when something nudges my helmet from the back. I turn around to find I am staring a horse in the face, something wasn’t really expecting, even on a Delhi road. It was one of those white mares used at weddings. Now it’s not everyday that I come in such intimate contact with a horse so she looked petty huge especially when she drew up to my side. When the light turned green, she began to take the turn; this was pretty scary, being boxed in, with a bus on one side and a horse on the other. I don’t know if her shoes were slipping on the road or if horses naturally take wide turns the way she did. She took the turn not by following the curve but by maintaining a tangent to it. To do this she half ran/ half jumped her way through the turn, now I’m not by any means an expert on horses but this looked unnatural. Normally I don’t enjoy letting people cut me off while taking turns, but those are cars, horses I don’t know how to deal with, so I made sure I kept a good distance while following her into the turn, the moment I got a chance, I cut across a truck and wedged myself between two buses, anything to get away from that horse.
------

Yesterday brought with it another load of bhasad, driving down a long empty road, I suddenly lost tyre pressure at my rear wheel and it took me half an hour to find a guy to patch it up. When he removed the tyre he found a nail half an inch long embedded in the rubber, a simple 10 buck repair job, had not been for the fact that the valve on the tube had ripped off. I had been on my way to meet a friend an not only did I arrive an hour late but 200 bucks poorer.
------

Earlier I had commented on how google was sending a lot of po*n searches to my blog but now AOL, Yahoo and Netscape too have joined in the act. From the keywords that people follow to my blog, it seems that my blog is rated highly on the topic of ‘south Indian aun**es’, this reflects in the fact that nearly half of all the hits I get are search responses, most of which are for keywords that are variations of the same theme.
I did a trial search in google for my most recent hit ‘free movies of malyali fu**ing’ and this is what I got, a mention of my blog in the top ten results.


Two thing confuse me here, first, why are people looking for fat/ bathing south Indian aun**es, whats wrong with young and nubile south indian girls? And second, if you actually take a look at the description of my blog in the search results, does it look anything like a po*n site? Does it? Sheesh.
(I’m asterisking the relevant words because every time I mention it on my blog, increases the chances of getting a search hit for it.)
------

This will be my last post for a while and definitely be my last post from Delhi for the next six months. I hope to be up and blogging in Bangalore soon but you never know. I have a lot of work to deal with over there, most importantly arranging my accommodation. Additionally I’ve been vela in Delhi for the last six months, hence the blogging to relieve the tedium of a purposeless existence. I’m not sure yet how much time I’m going to have once classes start. However if this place is anything like my college I’m going to have more free time than ever. So on this happy thought I bid you adieu and hope to be back soon from down south.

Bhasad

Another classy new word I have learnt, bhasad translates roughly to ‘fuck up’ but I’m not too sure about the exact meaning, a friend of mine who works with Microsoft in technical support taught it to me. The reason I mention where he works is just to illustrate in what situation it would be used. Everyone who has ever use windows, has at one time or the other come across a situation which could be summed up as ‘bhasad ho gaya”.

Yesterday was bhasad, everything that could go wrong went wrong. For those who have read my previous posts you can guess where all the problems started, with my bike. My grandparents live in Gurgaon, Delhi’s fastest growing suburb, (read Mr Nose & Mr truck for more details) and I try visit the at least once a week. Yesterday as I was leaving for Gurgaon, I noticed that the chain of my bike was rattling against the chain guard; I would have ignored it as I was running a bit late but as fate would have it, the chain got stuck. When I removed the cover I found the chain had gotten stuck on the cover twisting it out of shape. Since I hadn’t much time, I took the cover off and left it at home, planning to fix it when I got home. Running the bike without the chain cover isn’t much of an issue, particularly since I didn’t intend to keep it uncovered for long. Considering the issue resolved, I set off for Gurgaon.

The road to Gurgaon runs through some rather dusty stretches, also, the roads aren’t always in the best state of repair and there a lot of stones lying on the road. I have been hit in the face by these stones often enough to force me to drive with my visor permanently down. Since my visor is pretty badly scratched today I had the bright idea of wearing my glasses while driving, unfortunately since I cant put the helmet on while wearing my glasses, I put them into my pocket and promptly forgot about them. I only remembered about them, five minutes into the trip, reaching for them, I found to my dismay that my pocket was empty. Stopping, I searched through my pockets, bag and anywhere else I may have put them to no avail, bugger, they were bloody expensive. Somewhere along the route I must have lost them, probably over some speed bump (which I have a tendency to tackle with much enthusiasm). Depressed I continued, I love driving and I soon forgot about the loss and enjoyed the drive as I always do.

Thanks some random whim of the Haryana police, in order to get to my grandparents place, I actually have to drive a kilometre past their house, take a U-turn and drive back. I like this U-turn; mainly because on my bike I can take it easier than people in cars and generally rip out of the turn, while cars that started the turn with me must carefully navigate around the median and watch for oncoming traffic. Taking the turn as usual, a wrung the throttle hard and my bike leapt forward, I might have released the clutch a bit too fast for my front wheel left the ground briefly. This only made me happier, thus lost in contemplations of how wonderful my bike was, I didn’t notice something was going wrong. I was brought out of my reveries by a loud ‘growl’ from the rear half of my bike, accompanied by a sudden loss of power. Thinking I had hit a false neutral while shifting, I desperately tried to shift into gear, tapping up, tapping down, even sideways; nothing happened. An Innova was coming up my left, fast, shit scared, I frantically signalled with my left hand to get him to slow down, seeing he had, I guided my bike left, across the road to the pavement. Stopping to look, I could see the sprocket on my rear wheel, empty. I was a bit confused, where was the chain? Putting my bike up on the main stand, I moved the wheel back and forth hoping to find the chain. It took a while for me to realise the chain must have broken. Walking back to the intersection, I was just in time to find a rag-picker retrieving the chain from the middle of the road and putting it into his rickshaw, luckily, he gave it back to me.

Greasy chain wrapped around my hand, helmet hung off my wrist and heavy bag across my shoulders, I had to drag my bike more than a kilometre in the sun till I found a garage where I could get the chain fixed. Correction it wasn’t a garage, it was just a guy with a box of tools and a sign that said ‘puntchur repair’, it took him about 15 minutes to put the chain back on, during which one guy offered me a stolen Nokia N-series and another guy offered me his sister. Though both were tempting, I had but enough for the work being done on my bike.

The chain has held though, I managed the trip back today without incident, though I did have to drive slowly, ignoring all temptations to do otherwise.

In Pursuit of Justice?

I have been neglecting my blog for quite some time now, I haven’t posted on any of the beautiful things that are going on in this beautiful world of ours so to clear the backlog, here’s a brief summary of everything that has been bothering me.

Priydarshini Mattoo, Jessica Lall and Nitish Kataria, three high profile cases that have featured prominently on our newspaper front pages for a long time. For those who don’t know, all three are murders allegedly committed by the kin of influential people. All three of the cases have dragged on in Indian courts for ever so long; the Delhi police scuttled the investigations in all three of the cases and through their (deliberate) mismanagement ended up in court with no evidence against the prime accused. Witnesses in all of the cases have (under pressure) turned hostile and all seemed lost till the media and public stepped in. A massive wave of public opinion and media pressure reopened these cases and the courts too were swift in delivering justice. The accused in the Priydarshini Mattoo case was recently awarded the death penalty and Manu Sharma, accused in the Jessica Lall case looks like he is headed towards a similar end. Delhi and the nation seem satisfied. It is a common problem in India, anyone with a little influence or money can get away with murder. It is a simple three-step process,

a. Pressure the victim or victim’s family into withdrawing the case

b. Bribe the cops, something easily accomplished.

c. Pressure witnesses to turn hostile, either by paying them off or by getting cops on your payroll to pressure them into withdrawing their statements.

All three cases followed this pattern, fortunately through public pressure and extensive media coverage all three cases appear as though they will be resolved. What bothers me about all this is that it sets a dangerous precedent, of public opinion affecting the judicial process. Though all three cases seem straightforward, it is plausible that we, the public have it all wrong and have been grossly misinformed by the media who will obviously follow the more interesting angle of a story, even at the cost of having to make it up as the go. I don’t want to comment on these cases in particular but consider another hypothetical case that is similar to these, where the accused is innocent, yet the weight of public opinion eventually leads to an unfair conviction, how do we prevent this?

You may argue that judges, particularly those of the Supreme Court are not swayed by public opinion, that their judgements are based on objective facts. However, the Jessica Lall case, a case, which had been dismissed by the courts, an accused that had been acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence, is being re-tried based on public pressure. The public had already passed their verdict and now sought a legal declaration in their favour. Although I have little doubt that Manu Sharma is indeed guilty, what do I base my opinions on? Primarily what I see discussed in the media, this leaves the media much room to manipulate me and millions like me.

Though I do feel a sense of pride at the awakening of the Indian public, I am uncomfortable for sometimes I see it as the masses uniting against injustice and raising their voices against the abuse of influence and against the rampant corruption in the Indian police an at other times all I see are mobs thirsting for blood, seeking their next victim.

Today, Saddam was declared guilty and sentenced to death for killing a couple of hundred Iraqis, funny something like 47,000 have died since the US lead invasion. Oh yeah and the elections are right around the corner right? Hmm...

Light a Damn Candle

"...An Interpol database contains more than 10,000 images of child victims, but less than 350 of them have been found, the report warned..."

"...Most child pornography is exchanged for free online, but it has also generated an underground business worth billions of dollars that circulates millions of images of child abuse, the report said..."
(Source: DNA India, Technology outpaces law to stop child pornography )

Light a million candles, hopes to light a million candles by the end of this year in order to pressure governments to step up to eradicate the industry of child pornography. There's a permanent link to the site through the sidebar on the left. Please light a candle, light two or light a dozen, they don't want money, they don't want anything else, all they need you to do is to light a simple candle online.

"...This petition will be used to encourage governments, politicians, financial institutions, payment organisations, Internet service providers, technology companies and law enforcement agencies to eradicate the commercial viability of online child pornography...."