Resuming from where I left, found another link- Gopal Godse's interview to the TIME magazine in circa 2000 I guess. He expresses no remorse in what he and his elder brother did years ago. But one statement of his begs attention. His take on how Gandhi was able to fool the whole country into believing blindly in his principles. His mannerisms , his supposedly "populist" actions...well not many would have thought deeply through all this as the Godse's had done then. And if I look at it from a very neutral perspective well sheer reasoning says I just can't condone the arguments they have provided. It seems the immediate cause for that heinous act was the Hindu Muslim riots that took place during partition which lead to mass killings of thousands of hindus. (Though Muslims too suffered in commensurate measure is something we cannot deny.) So who was right?? Well I guess life doesn't play out that way. There are grey shades and hence I refrain from taking a strong stand here. after all none of us can deny that Gandhi did bring about a "revolution" in India, something which transformed India in more ways than one.
Here's the link to the interview......
http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/2000/0214/india.godse.html
Monday, October 13, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Nathuram Godse
Nathuram Godse's personality has always intrigued me. I have never been an ardent follower of Gandhi's principles;but am not a Gandhi hater. either. My feelings towards Gandhi have been quite ambivalent.I have been reading about Godse for quite some time now. Got to know certain trivia (I can't help it ;it runs in my blood;the tendency to remember such useless information!!) about him which adds a new dimension to his personality.
Not many people know that he was brought up in a devout god fearing Maharashtrian family; and was a follower of Gandhism since his childhood. He is said to have saved the life of a Harijan boy by diving into a well when everyone else stood around without offering help as they feared geting ostracized from their community.He was a school dropout but still a very well read man who is said to have had deep knowledge about Indian scriptures. He worked tirelessly to abolish untouchability; freely mingling with people of the lower castes much to the chagrin of his brethren. He had his own local vernacular newspaper called "Hindu Rashtra" the front page of which was left blank as a mark of protest against partition on 15th August 1947. what made such a person take the extreme step of assasinating the "Father of the nation"?I guess this link will provide us useful insights towards answering that question. It makes interesting reading . And sharpens the debate between the right wing "fanatics" and the pacifists even further.
http://ngodse.tripod.com/defense.htm.
Not many people know that he was brought up in a devout god fearing Maharashtrian family; and was a follower of Gandhism since his childhood. He is said to have saved the life of a Harijan boy by diving into a well when everyone else stood around without offering help as they feared geting ostracized from their community.He was a school dropout but still a very well read man who is said to have had deep knowledge about Indian scriptures. He worked tirelessly to abolish untouchability; freely mingling with people of the lower castes much to the chagrin of his brethren. He had his own local vernacular newspaper called "Hindu Rashtra" the front page of which was left blank as a mark of protest against partition on 15th August 1947. what made such a person take the extreme step of assasinating the "Father of the nation"?I guess this link will provide us useful insights towards answering that question. It makes interesting reading . And sharpens the debate between the right wing "fanatics" and the pacifists even further.
http://ngodse.tripod.com/defense.htm.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
CAT-An afterthought
Phew!!Its finally over.......I am not going to comment on how I fared in CAT and blah blah......I am going to write about my experience while preparing for the exam........To start - as one of my close friends recently put it-CAT is the MOAE...(Mother of all exams)....Now this is something I can't completely agree with.But yes there is no doubting the fact that CAT is a fundoo exam nonetheless. But I somehow feel that it is slightly skewed towards a certain section of population. After all CAT is an exam for entry to the IIM's.....and as is widely believed IIM's are but the best refuge for people from the middle and upper middle class background; those who have had privileged education especially in good English schools ....It does not test your raw intelligence in any way.....IIT-JEE does that......I know comparing two exams of completely different " genres" might be termed a crime still I just can't hold myself back...I have had this bad habit of comparing things and thereby evaluating their worth and it somehow shows here...:-)....Anyways I still feel that the exam is a fundoo one...why?? Well for that section of the society which belongs to the class I have just mentioned above CAT holds promise. Its their ticket to a better life at least am sure lakhs of students who appear for the exam every year feel so. The exam is always well devised...though its never free from errors!!....The questions asked are generally not the typical "run of the mill" kind questions....though this year I was disappointed with the questions...but for the last 2 years the questions that appeared in the Quant and DI sections were novel and required just about adequate amount of thinking discretion and prudence to crack within the stipulated period of time...This time the questions were pretty straight forward, questions which you could easily find in any preparatory material provided you have practiced extensively....only reason why I feel I did decently well in Maths this time was because of this...(not that it helped greatly...am not getting calls this time anyways!!!)......To be contd...back to work now!!!!
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Tensed!!!
I am in a state of tension sinxce morning. A feeling which has gripped me aftera real long time. Why??
Many reasons. To put it in a short and precise way...lots of milestones to achieve and have to put in my best effort for each... Time Management is the mantra...need to hone that skill for success
Many reasons. To put it in a short and precise way...lots of milestones to achieve and have to put in my best effort for each... Time Management is the mantra...need to hone that skill for success
Sunday, August 31, 2008
What a line!!!
Read two wonderful lines today...something which appealed to me and in a way inspires my inner self.
1. If there was no angst,sweat or struggle treat your victory as mediocre.
Absolutely true!!!!
2. Pressure is a privilege, not everyone is lucky to have it.
Read one in the newspaper; the other one I read in the profile of an individual who has ben a sort of winner throughout;someone who inspires me greatly; though I have never ever met him in person nor have I interacted with him in any other way. such is the profound impact he has had on me.
1. If there was no angst,sweat or struggle treat your victory as mediocre.
Absolutely true!!!!
2. Pressure is a privilege, not everyone is lucky to have it.
Read one in the newspaper; the other one I read in the profile of an individual who has ben a sort of winner throughout;someone who inspires me greatly; though I have never ever met him in person nor have I interacted with him in any other way. such is the profound impact he has had on me.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Bought a course book after ages!!!! "Programming Microsoft Windows with C#" by Charles Petzold.And no am not going to delve into the intricacies of the contents of the book or write a review on it. Rather I was more interested in writing what inspired me to buy the book.
Ideally you would associate a software engineer from NITK Surathkal to be a geeky kind of a guy; someone who is attracted to new gadgets and thinks in terms of bits and bytes ;0's and 1's. But unlike many of my counterparts I hardly fit into that mould ;or so I thought till probably the final year of my college. Why?? Well I can attribute many reasons some of which are-
Guess your psyche is deeply affected by the people around you;the company you keep; the kind of people you interact with while you spend those 4 crucial formative years of your life in college. And atleast my friends and classmates at large were mostly the kind of people who took to IT purely because they wanted to study in a college of repute in a decent branch; very few of them actually knew what courses were going to be taught whilst in college and whether that would would actually interest them. In college I found two really different classes of people; One class consisted of people who knew all the while what they wanted out of life ;hence opted for streams that interested them and always fared wonderfully well in academics. These guys had their career planned wonderfully and are now gracing some the top US universities and am sure they are faring well there.
I unfortunately (or fortunately) fall in the seconnd category. And hence after a certain point of time studying became a necesity rather than a pleasure; and this finally boiled down to studying for the sake of getting good grades which would accrue into a good GPA; something which we felt was absolutely necessary to land up in a good paying job. And this assumption is far removed from the truth. And yes somewhere down the line a sense of frustration and desperation did set in; what was I doing studying all this; did it actually interest me; was it adding any value to my career? Well these questions did creep in from time to time and I was unfortunately not able to find answers to most of such subjective questions.
One more very important thing which affects you while you are in college is the faculty. I know am stating the obvious here; but still this is something I realised when I was about to leave college. I remember in my final semester I tried my level best to work on a research project; courtesy one hardworking Prof who instilled in us the urge to think and do some genuine research.The only thing worth remembering in my final semester was the discussions we used to have with him. We used to forward improvised half baked ideas to solve a problem and he used to think deeply before successfully pointing out the limitations in our ideas and hence the research we did.. I remember the kind of "high" I felt when he said that we could actually publish a new research paper if we could get appropriate results. (That we weren't able to publish it is an ebntirely different story. I am planning to write on the same later.). But that is besides the point. ... For the first time in 4 years I felt I was doing something interesting; something of value; something which forced me to think ; to analyze;to understand in depth about a particular feature and how one can use it to improve a certain application. I felt I was doing something substantial;not learning some crap by rote to reproduce it verbatim in the exam and get marks. I remember my entire final semester was devoted to working on that project. I had taken three more courses to complete my credits but I hardly knewwhat was being taught in those subjects; my attendance in those subjects was dismal; and all along I knew that I was about get screwed royally.But all those apprehensions were always kept at bay. Also the performance of my peers in other branches and their admits in US universities somehow affected me . Thats what peer influence does. When you see people around you moving ahead;it somehow spurs you on else you start feeling like a big loser. I know that ideally one shouldn't get affected by such feelings but as humans we just can't control ourselves. I guess it is but natural to get swayed away by your emotions. And that precisely the reason why studying in a good environmment helps; a competitive atmosphere always keeps you on your toes preventing complacency to creep in. It gets the best out of you. You start developing the feeling that you should not end up being an also ran. I need to stand out just like few other people in my group have done.
Well the seed that was sown then has sprouted . I have now bought a book on C# to learn that language . I may just end up working on a research project on "Compilers" ; a subject which I hated not very long ago; again for two reasons- I just learnt it because I was supposed to learn; The teaching was so pathetic that whatever little interest you might have had was stifled in its infancy. I know am being very harsh here but am sure most of my classmates will agree on this point. And to think of it I got into the compiler work courtesy the project I did in my final year and beyond.
How my interests have changed over this short peroiod of time. Its now entirely upto me to do some good work and achieve the "creative " satisfaction I have been yearning for since a long time. Its a pretty difficult task. And I just hope am upto it.
Ideally you would associate a software engineer from NITK Surathkal to be a geeky kind of a guy; someone who is attracted to new gadgets and thinks in terms of bits and bytes ;0's and 1's. But unlike many of my counterparts I hardly fit into that mould ;or so I thought till probably the final year of my college. Why?? Well I can attribute many reasons some of which are-
Guess your psyche is deeply affected by the people around you;the company you keep; the kind of people you interact with while you spend those 4 crucial formative years of your life in college. And atleast my friends and classmates at large were mostly the kind of people who took to IT purely because they wanted to study in a college of repute in a decent branch; very few of them actually knew what courses were going to be taught whilst in college and whether that would would actually interest them. In college I found two really different classes of people; One class consisted of people who knew all the while what they wanted out of life ;hence opted for streams that interested them and always fared wonderfully well in academics. These guys had their career planned wonderfully and are now gracing some the top US universities and am sure they are faring well there.
I unfortunately (or fortunately) fall in the seconnd category. And hence after a certain point of time studying became a necesity rather than a pleasure; and this finally boiled down to studying for the sake of getting good grades which would accrue into a good GPA; something which we felt was absolutely necessary to land up in a good paying job. And this assumption is far removed from the truth. And yes somewhere down the line a sense of frustration and desperation did set in; what was I doing studying all this; did it actually interest me; was it adding any value to my career? Well these questions did creep in from time to time and I was unfortunately not able to find answers to most of such subjective questions.
One more very important thing which affects you while you are in college is the faculty. I know am stating the obvious here; but still this is something I realised when I was about to leave college. I remember in my final semester I tried my level best to work on a research project; courtesy one hardworking Prof who instilled in us the urge to think and do some genuine research.The only thing worth remembering in my final semester was the discussions we used to have with him. We used to forward improvised half baked ideas to solve a problem and he used to think deeply before successfully pointing out the limitations in our ideas and hence the research we did.. I remember the kind of "high" I felt when he said that we could actually publish a new research paper if we could get appropriate results. (That we weren't able to publish it is an ebntirely different story. I am planning to write on the same later.). But that is besides the point. ... For the first time in 4 years I felt I was doing something interesting; something of value; something which forced me to think ; to analyze;to understand in depth about a particular feature and how one can use it to improve a certain application. I felt I was doing something substantial;not learning some crap by rote to reproduce it verbatim in the exam and get marks. I remember my entire final semester was devoted to working on that project. I had taken three more courses to complete my credits but I hardly knewwhat was being taught in those subjects; my attendance in those subjects was dismal; and all along I knew that I was about get screwed royally.But all those apprehensions were always kept at bay. Also the performance of my peers in other branches and their admits in US universities somehow affected me . Thats what peer influence does. When you see people around you moving ahead;it somehow spurs you on else you start feeling like a big loser. I know that ideally one shouldn't get affected by such feelings but as humans we just can't control ourselves. I guess it is but natural to get swayed away by your emotions. And that precisely the reason why studying in a good environmment helps; a competitive atmosphere always keeps you on your toes preventing complacency to creep in. It gets the best out of you. You start developing the feeling that you should not end up being an also ran. I need to stand out just like few other people in my group have done.
Well the seed that was sown then has sprouted . I have now bought a book on C# to learn that language . I may just end up working on a research project on "Compilers" ; a subject which I hated not very long ago; again for two reasons- I just learnt it because I was supposed to learn; The teaching was so pathetic that whatever little interest you might have had was stifled in its infancy. I know am being very harsh here but am sure most of my classmates will agree on this point. And to think of it I got into the compiler work courtesy the project I did in my final year and beyond.
How my interests have changed over this short peroiod of time. Its now entirely upto me to do some good work and achieve the "creative " satisfaction I have been yearning for since a long time. Its a pretty difficult task. And I just hope am upto it.
Juszt started again on blogspot!!
Somehow felt I should resume blogging.A lot of ideas and thoughts have been cooking up in my mind and felt a blog would be the best place to give a vent to all that.... and yes will try to be quite regular and active; unlike last time :-)
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