The Best Day of My Life

The day didn't start like any other day. I awoke at half past six in the morning, about four hours earlier than my usual wake up time. I had to meet Prof. Navjyoti Singh and we were to go to a temple nearby. To me he looks a lot like a wide-eyed Albert Einstein. We had to meet and go to a place nearby called Nanakramguda. We met at the mess, we being Prof. Navjyoti, two of my colleagues, a wise man who was visiting us- Ravindra Sharma (affectionately known as guruji) and myself. We set off after breakfast.

Prof. Navjyoti and guruji went together on my colleague's bike and me and my two colleagues were to get there, the three of us on my bike, Thumpy. Thumpy is more than capable of carrying three people but the problem was that all 3 of us were fairly big built so I had to make two trips to take both of them there. Once all of us were there, we proceeded to enter the temple. I usually do not enter temples, this time I don't know why I felt compelled to enter. And we had a chat with the head priest. He told us that the temple we were standing in now was the new one, they had to change it cos the old one had gone into disrepair. And the new structure was approximately 400 years old. We got blessings and we put on our footwear and walked into the temple garden adjacent to the well. There we sat, lit up and talked about society and the caste system and the problem of untouchability.

The place was serene, and full of greenery. Here and there through the trees we could see the glass and chrome of these really tall buildings that housed multi-national corporations- software companies. The contrast was bordering on irony. Here we had this sanctuary of serenity, spirituality and sanity amid this hustle and bustle of “modernity”. This was the first time I had been to a temple that my family was not connected to. Even the famous Tirupati temple had on its board of trustees a member of my extended family. All these factors, my being an outsider to this temple, it being more than 400 years old, my being there with two men of great wisdom and the contrast between this temple and its surroundings, made it feel really surreal to me.

When the clock struck 10, we decided we had to leave as Prof. Navjyoti had a class to take and I had a class to prepare for. At half past eleven, I headed off for my class. A friend of mine, Devansh was to make a presentation on Searle's Chinese Room Experiment, an experiment in artificial intelligence. The presentation was under the auspices of my professor and research guide Prof. Bipin Indurkhya.

The night before, I had a conversation with Devansh about the presentation and suggested a minor change that would enable him to get his point across slightly more lucidly. That did help to a certain extent, but a point after that again let the class descend into a non-terminating loop of question and answers, to me the questions that prevented the loop from terminating seemed naïve. For some reason I glanced back from my position in the front row of the class and I saw that the director of our university Prof. Rajeev Sangal had also come to listen to what Devansh had to say. I would like to think I had a premonition of what was to come.

Seeing that the class had entered a non-terminating loop, Prof. Bipin came forward and pointed out a few lacunae in our arguments and our understanding of certain things. He split the class into two groups- the Dualists (those who believe that the mind and body are two separate things , and some of them believe that the mind can never be understood), and the Monists (those who believe that the mind and body are indistinguishable and inseparable from each other, I belonged to this group). During his talk, Prof. Rajeev said he wanted to bring a point up, he took Prof. Bipin's place at the chalkboard and started speaking about the gap that sometimes exists between theory and observation.

We observe phenomena, and based on our observations, we formulate a theory. But if we ever encounter an observation that does not fit into our theory, he said that if we choose to ignore the observation for the sake of maintaining our theory we would be acting unscientifically. To elucidate, Prof. Sangal talked about seeing the external world and understanding it and that external data comes from our senses and that data is used to observe the world. At this point, Prof. Bipin countered by saying that there is no seeing and that there is not external world, it is all a representation within our own minds, furthermore it is not the sense organs that perceive the world but it is our brain that does all the perceiving.

This argument sparked of a scientific-philosophical debate of a magnitude that dwarfed my premonition like a planet dwarfs a person. I was watching two philosophies collide. Prof. Bipin is a monist, and Prof. Rajeev's talk was leaning towards dualism. I had become unaware of every other person in that class. Even their attire, Prof. Rajeev in a traditional kurta and trousers and Prof. Bipin in his usual shirt and shorts had an effect on my perception of this debate

Prof. Rajeev then talked about a hypothetical robot that can feel pain. And then he asked that when the robot's limb was pricked or subjected to some other stimulus, and the robot felt pain, which part of the robot felt it? This added a whole new dimension to the philosophical argument.For some reason, I felt that this was in invalid question.

Imagine watching a tennis match between Roger Federer and Bjorn Borg (the two greatest tennis players in my opinion). Only they were not human sized, they were super giants of astronomical size with unlimited reserves of energy and stamina, and instead of a ball, they were hitting at each other the 10 dimensional multi-verse. That was what this debate was like.

It was a clash between what seemed to be the sum of the classical theories in AI and the radical new theories championed by Cognitive Science. The class started at half past 11 and was to end at 1 but it overshot that time by half an hour and only that much because the professors said that the time is up. We wanted it to continue. We were hungry, some of us were tired, but we wanted to continue listening to this debate.

Were were talking about robots and computers, programs and circuits, but the real issue on the table was whether it is possible to understand what it means to be human. Whether it is possible to understand the human condition. Whether we are justified in approximating the function of the human brain to that of a highly complex computer. This was a debate on whether it was possible to understand the nature of the ultimate truth about ourselves.

I left the class shell-shocked. I had just been witness to a once in a lifetime event and I was reeling from the effect. I headed to lunch, where I met Prof. Navjyoti. I told him that he should have been part of the debate, as he is a professor of philosophy. The next class, after lunch was creative writing, I usually enjoy this class but today, because of the magnitude of the events that I had been through, was unable to involve myself in the class.

In the evening I only remember taking bath because my mind was wandering. I had had only 2.5 hours of sleep the previous night, I was not fatigued but I was totally mentally preoccupied. I was completely unaware of what I did till dinner time. This was the first time I had a lapse in memory without having to take marijuana.

After dinner, there was yet another meeting with guruji, I was waiting for 2030 when the meeting would begin. The first people there were Prof. Rajeev and his daughter Sapna, a good friend of mine. While I was trying to recount to her the events that transpired in the class today, Prof. Rajeev asked me what I liked about the class. I remember saying that I liked the philosophical nature of the debate and also that it showed us how people argue in academic circles regarding theories and philosophies.

Prof. Navjyoti, Prof. Sangal, guruji, two other professors, and five or six of us research scholars were part of the discussion that evening. It was mostly about society and how modernization is not always good and how traditionalism is not always bad. We talked about a few cases where certain tribal societies had been ruined because of modernization and how how traditionalism had helped keep the society intact, safe and vibrant. And how certain traditions are in place only to make sure that all members of a society have a sense of belonging and involvement.

An evening spent in the company of wise learned men, in conversation about the matters affecting today's society and life in general. We also talked a little about how the resources afforded us by modernity (technology, knowledge, etc.) could be used to make a better society.

The conversation on sociology, and the philosophical debate earlier that day and the visit to the temple at the start of the day, all three of those events are sure to leave lasting events in my mind. Each of these events enabled me to understand each other event in a way I have never seen them before.

The meeting began at 2030 and ended close to 2300. However towards the end of the meeting my sleep deprivation caught up with me and I dozed off for a while. But all in all that day the 28th of October, 2009, yesterday, was the best day of my life so far.

I will die in...

I will die in peace in the mountains
While riding along their slopes
I don't want any perfumed fountains
Don't want to live with false hopes
I will die doing what I love most
Wandering far and wide
I will not be denied
That which I want most
Dearly
Just me, the road, my bike
A divine menage-a-trois
An orgasmic, long ride
And in my repertoire
The skills for every road
Every street that runs beneath
The wheels of my metal steed
And as part of my last rites
I want not lamenting cries
For I died at my chosen time
In my own chosen style
A metallic riotous fest
Should celebrate my death
Akin to Wacken Open Air
No weeping is needed there
For I have finally gone
To the place where I belong
And I finally am
At peace.

Truth?

The science of cognition. Cognition, as far as my analysis of the word goes, shares its root word with the words recognition and precognition. Following this line of reasoning and analysis, I have defined cognition for myself as: “the act of realizing that the observed object (it could be tangible or intangible), and the model in my mind, are the same thing”. This observed object could be something that can be touched and felt like a chair or a computer or a person, or it could be intangible like an idea or a thought or a concept or a spoken word.

I wouldn't use the word “know” to describe cognition, since I feel that it is an overloaded and ill-defined word and I am not comfortable using it to define something else.

We can argue that “to know” implies a notion of truth, and that it is not really possible to know truth. This sounds to me like another version of Meno's paradox in which Meno asks Socrates how he can know when he has arrived at the truth when he does not already know what the truth is? (Courtesy Wikipedia) In other words, in order to know anything, one must know everything.

I find that I can neither agree nor disagree with this stand. One one hand, I can see the logic and rationale behind that statement, whereas on the other hand, I can also see that no one ever tries to know everything. It is more like a progression. Our method of cognition is more like a progressive series of theories. When we don't know much, we observe the world around us and formulate a theory or a belief set T₁, then we observe something or discover something that contradicts something within this belief set and we incorporate that new knowledge into T₂: a new theory, world view, belief set, call it what you like. Carrying on like this, we continue to form a long series of theories: T₁, T₂, T₃... and it is our hope that this series will converge one fine day somewhere in the future onto the truth (if such a thing exists).

The funny thing about this process is, an intermediate theory T{T₁, T₂, T₃...} satisfies all the requirements of the believers in that epoch. They are able to interact meaningfully with the relevant environment (whatever subset of the environment their life depends on). For example, at our current belief state, we are able to do everything that our autopoietic instinct commands. Our theories about the far reaches of space may be grossly incorrect, but those reaches of space and our theories about it have little effect on our lives.

Among the various phenomena discussed in class were the interesting cutaneous rabbit illusion , the blinking dots thing, the phantom arm thing and things of this sort. I have not learned enough about them to make any comment other than that to me they are mysteries pertaining to the way our brain processes information. My best guess right now is that those phenomena are the result of the brain's mechanism of compensation for the faultiness of our sense organs. The brain knows that our senses are imperfect and prone to missing out information, hence tries to figure out what was missed even when there was nothing missed out.

As far as the concept of consciousness goes, I have an emergentistic or holistic view of the concept. I do not believe there is a consciousness center in the brain or heart or spleen or any other organ. I believe it emerges out of the various interactions that various parts of our body have with each other. No doubt, the brain is the main information processing organ in the body, but I do not believe that it alone is responsible for consciousness, it is partly responsible in the sense that it has a certain degree of control or governing ability over the interactions of our body parts with each other.

I believe that thought experiments do work, but they will work if and only if the conceptual model we have (of whatever we are contemplating) is precise or as close to precise as humanly possible. Only then will we be able to predict the outcomes of our contemplated actions with a certain degree of accuracy. But when there is a situation which we know precious little about, thought experiments will most likely fail. The best thing about thought experiments is that when conducted in tandem with physical experiments, they can lead to a much better understanding of the world.

Hope

When the systems of yore have been purged
Whern all pathways have been broken
When into chaos we've all been merged
Something there is that still enables us
To stand
To land
Softly
Sans damage
Through carnage
Escape
Unscathed
Or fight
With the might
Of infinite heroes
Or die
With Heads
Held high
When all the lands seem infertile
And we see no avenues along our path
When the oceans of isolation surround the isle
Something enables us till the very last
To hang on
To the last
Tether
To pray
To hope
When all hope seems
Lost
Distraught
Distressed
With the last drop of blood
Fuelling the heart
Enabling us
To go on
Even while facing
A sure fall
In the face of failure
We strive on
Push forward
Bash on regardless
Hope to steal a win
From te jaws of
Defeat
Hope to stand tall
In the face of a fall
When the bastions of our ideals have been overrun
We still look forward to our day in the sun
And as long as we trust in the view of our minds eye
We stand a decent chance of making it through the night

NAUGHT

What know'th the man that know'th not loss
What know'th the man that know'th not naught
Why doth he cry when he doth not know
How life was when life was naught

How doth one love when one loves not
How doth one cry when one cries not
Why does the sky seem so near
When the sky is not, the sky is naught

In a sea of mirth one is submerged
In the river of sorrow doth one bathe
The sky of rage teaches one wrath
But does it, or does it not, all come to naught

When is naught not naught
But is naught not, naught but naught
Then how does one, that once was
Come from naught, return to naught

As one goes from naught to naught
One leaves behind marks on the path
Those are seen by those who follow
And one does not end up as naught

Life?

This is one of those things that every living entity on this planet has in common. Yet we seem to be at a loss when confronted with the question, “What is life?”. I mean, it is not like a non-living entity would walk up to one of us ask with a tap on the shoulder, “Er... excuse me, but I couldn't help but notice that you have life, and I was wondering if you could enlighten me as to what life is”.

Though that situation may never arise, it would do us well to attempt an answer. It would do us well as it would enable us to see life from a new perspective. Maybe we could notice something that had remained unnoticed before. Then there would be many fundamentally different explanations and theories, we could debate them, these theories could grow in magnitude and become religions and we could go to war over the matter of “Which one of us is right?”.

On a more serious note, the answer to “What is life?” or the method of arriving at a suitable answer to it would enable us to analyze life in detail and answer many personal questions. For example, I have always asked myself why it is that we consider our kind of life the only kind of life there is (you know, carbon based, oxygen breathing organisms). Apparently the oxygen breathing part is not a sufficient condition for life as is evident thanks to the many anaerobic bacteria that have been found. So is reproduction.

No one would consider a eunuch to be a non living entity. It is no secret that eunuchs are incapable of reproduction; yet we count them under the living. Ergo reproduction too seems to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for life. So what are the sufficient conditions for life? What condition or group of conditions, which when present guarantee the presence of life?

From my currently limited perspective, I can see one thing. Living things are born, they lead a “life” and then they die; they have a life cycle. They are self sustaining; either they consume certain resources from their surroundings to ensure their own existence or they have all the resources they need for existence within themselves and they die when the resources within themselves are depleted. A partial example for the latter would be insects in the pupa state, hibernating animals, etc.

Life cycles have been ascribed for seemingly inanimate objects too. Stars seem to have a life cycle. They are said to be “born” in a nebula. They live out their lives by running nuclear fusion reactors, first by fusing hydrogen into helium, helium into carbon, carbon into neon, neon into silicon, and finally silicon into Iron. Finally they reach the stage where their core is made up of Iron or some other heavy metal, which they cannot fuse into something heavier profitably, they collapse on themselves and their “life”ends. Their “death” results in either a white dwarf or a neutron star or a black hole (depending on the size of the original star subject to the Chandrasekhar Limit).

If we think of birth as simply a kind of creation and death as simply a kind of destruction, everything around us seems to have its own cycle of creation and destruction. Therefore it does not seem too big a stretch to try and ascribe life to everything. Even man-made objects; tables for example. Tables are created (birth), they serve their purpose which is to say that they support many things on their surfaces, they get damaged and we repair them(life), they eventually fall into disrepair and we discard them, then they are taken apart. Their useful parts are recycled, their combustible parts are incinerated and the rest are discarded as waste (death). This does not seem too big a stretch.

Many living things appear inanimate when observed for just an instant. Sure when observed for prolonged periods of time we can see evidence that suggests growth, self repair and so on. My point being this: what gives us the right to classify anything other than ourselves as living or non living? There are so many things we do not know. The extent of our knowledge of the universe is grossly limited. We do not even know everything about ourselves. We still do not completely understand the workings of our own brain. We still do not know why each and every single strand of DNA on earth is a left handed helix. Well as far as we know there is no physical, structural, functional or chemical explanation for why there do not exist any right handed DNA helices. The only conclusion I can draw from that is that there seems to be some way in which right handed helices are deficient, but we do not know enough to ascertain for ourselves what that is.

When there are such serious lacunae in our knowledge; why do we consider our definition of “life” so true? It is but an assumption. An assumption that we have made based on our limited knowledge which is based on our limited view of the universe. For all you know, some time in the future, what we consider to be nonliving may very well turn out to be a living entity.

IIIT

I am living on the IIIT campus in Hyderabad. This campus is situated near a part of Hyderabad known as the “HITEC City”; where all the offices and office campuses of major software MNCs are situated. The IIIT campus is not large, spanning just about 62 acres. These 62 acres are the closest I have come to finding a haven for researchers and aspiring researchers (like myself) in the chaotic city of Hyderabad.

Do not misunderstand me, I love Hyderabad; its the city I was born and brought up in. I love the culture of the place. But lately it has become extremely chaotic. Those who are on the road have no respect for the rule of the road (if indeed they know what the rule of the road is). Other than that there is the usual chaos that is associated with life in any city, town, village or settlement ie national politics, local politics, the politics of sharing basic amenities (water, electricity), th chaos associated with someone getting married/ deceased/ engaged in your locality, etc. Hyderabad is full of it, more so for Hyderabad has the distinction of being the capital of Andhra Pradesh. But the IIIT, offers a campus where you are sequestered from this chaos.

In the IIIT, you have the option of not being bothered by all these chaoses. Here they are not “in your face” therefore you can choose to ignore them and concentrate on your work, your calling, your passion- your research. Of course, if you choose to be bothered by these chaoses, there are television sets that are accessible and the whole campus is plugged in to the Internet. I choose not to be bothered by these chaoses. And whenever the climate permits, I like to take a walk through the campus on the wonderfully paved roads. There is a certain electricity you sense here. As I said in one of my pensive and poetic moments:

“on the lonely campus roads, if one is sensitive enough, one can just about sense the beginnings of something truly great.”

You get the sense that great minds are at work here. Busy solving various conundrums. Busy trying to make life a better place to be for their fellow human beings. Or just trying to understand the world around them and working to expand the boundaries of knowledge, and the universe.

The bottom line is, this place seriously is a strictly no-bullshit place. If you have the passion for research and the required skills, a place for you here will be created and those in charge will make sure to do everything in their power to see that you are able to reach your target.

This place is ideal for thinkers to dream up great things and endeavor to realize those dreams. One gets the sensation of swimming in the vast ocean of knowledge

We need more places like this in India where young innovators and aspiring researchers are encouraged and motivated to achieve their goals and help expand the boundaries of knowledge.

Brain Jacking

I read an interesting article today, in the “Scientific American” magazine (November 2008, Page. #34). It was about something called “Brain Jacking” or plugging into the brain. What this basically means is creating an interface between machines and the human brain such that we can control them by the means of thought alone. This concept is not entirely futuristic. There are bionic ears (cochlear implants) available which enable the completely deaf or those extremely hard of hearing hear normally. This is achieved by implanting a device into the cochlea that stimulates the auditory nerve.

The author (Gary Stix) explored this concept a little further. Researchers in the University of Pittsburgh have been doing many experiments with controlling machines with the power of thought alone. They (the researchers) trained a monkey to use its thought to manipulate a robotic arm to grab a morsel of food. Though this is far from the science fiction tales of storing many megabytes of data in one’s memory (a la Johnny Mnemonic), it is real enough to be experienced by anyone who wants to experience it.

The next level of this would be to reverse the flow of information, i.e. from machines into our minds. Much like our eyes, ears, tongue, and skin do. Such technology could help us develop things like night vision and help us enhance the power of our sensory perception. But this requires technology we do not have at our disposal today. This requires something that has yet to be invented or discovered. Now, let’s say that we did have all the requisite technology. We would still be unable to send information into our brains unless we figure out exactly how it is that the different neurons that make up our brains communicate with each other. In other words, we have to learn the language of the brain something known as “neural code”.

Unravelling the neural code is one of the most imposing challenges in neuroscience. There are many theories as to how neural codes work, one of them is that the code corresponds to the rate of firing of the voltage spikes generated by a neuron. More recent work has focused on the precise timing between each spike (temporal codes) and the constantly changing patterns of how neurons fire together (population codes).

A collaboration between the University of Southern California and the Wake Forest University has worked to fashion a replacement for a part of the brain known as the hippocampus which is responsible for forming new memories. The hippocampus is the part of the brain which sustains damage in stroke or Alzheimer’s. This project is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 

They hope that this research work may pave the way to a stage where a person can be taught how to fly an F-15 fighter jet just by downloading the requisite literature into their brains.

They have successfully created an artificial hippocampus for consolidating a rat’s memory of pressing a lever to get a drop of water. Normally the hippocampus emits signals that are relayed to the cortical areas responsible for storing long term memories of an experience. For the experiment, a chemical temporarily incapacitated the rat’s hippocampus. When the rat pressed the bar, electrical inputs from the sensory and other areas of the cortex were channeled through a microchip, which, the scientists say dispatched the same signals the hippocampus would have sent. A demonstration that an artificial device mimicked the hippocampal (sic) output would mark a step towa4rd deducing the underlying code that could be used to create a memory in the motor cortex.

Though these are giant leaps in their own right, they are small steps towards our ultimate goal of understanding how the brain works. Would the neural code for the sentence “see spot run” mean the same to an English speaker as it would to a, say, native Tamil speaker?

“Complex information like the contents of a book weould requite the interaction os a veru large number of brain cells over a veru large area of the nervous system,” observes neuroscientist John Donoghue, of the Brown University. “Therefore you couldn’t address all of themgetting them to store in their connections the correct kind of information. So, I would say based on current knowledge, it’s not possible”

Therefore we can take it for granted we are light years behind what they showed in “The Matrix” when Trinity downloaded the manual for flying a helicopter into her mind through her cell phone. But what if that were possible? What if it were possible to download information directly into our brains? That would change everything from the way we learn to the way we look at the world.

The optimist in me imagines a world where less time is wasted in learning things and the time saved is utilized in gaining practical experience by applying what is learnt in the real world. People could just download the required information into their brains.  Scientist working together can collaborate even more by sharing their thoughts and intuitions with each other. This would also give rise to new forms of art.

The purpose of art is to convey one’s feelings, sensations and emotions through a medium. Now an artist would be able to do just that. A painter could encode in his painting certain devices that would convey to the observer exactly what he was feeling while painting that. An author or poet could encode his feelings and emotions into the words that (s)he writes to convey them to the reader. And then maybe an entirely new form of art could be born out of this. Eventually, instead of writing on a medium, an author or a poet could directly record his feelings and emotions as a package combined with his imagined imagery. Anyone who downloads that package could feel what the author or poet felt.

Cyber-sex would also become a wholly new and greatly enhanced experience. And telepathy would become the basis for a new form of global communications network.

On the darker side, hackers would now be able to induce a variety of disorders in people through downloads. A hacker could induce Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s or any other disorder. One could induce dementia, depression, insanity or other psychological disorders in people by hacking into their brains.

Even without wrongdoers, the proliferation of telepathy could render physical contact obsolete. We would become a race of beings who seldom come into physical contact with each other.

But, all this is at best in the distant future, we have more important things to worry about. For example there is this quandary of whether or not to be able to jack into the human brain it is required to implant the device surgically into the human skull.

Once this is done, the next step I guess would be to modify the human genome such that we are born with these devices in us.

**All Scientific Data and direct quotes courtesy Scientific American Magazine**

The Greatest Duet Ever Sung

For the first time, I feel compelled to write about a single song. Not about an album or an artiste but a song. I consider this song the greatest duet ever sung. Its so great that I don't think that even the original artistes (if the guy was alive) could repeat the performance. And that is a huge thing to say considering that the original singers are the legendary Kishore Kumar and Asha Bhosle. These two have sung some of the best duets in Hindi cinema. But none of them comes close to their best: “Jaan'e Jaan Dhoondtaa Phir Raha”.

To begin with this song as multifaceted as a diamond. The way the two singers' voices dance with each other creates an ethereal feel. When one singer sings the song, the other singer provides a melody with his/her voice. And they cease being two separate voices. This is a love song. And I must say that this song successfully captures ever aspect, every nuance of every emotion and feeling between two people when they are in love, be it the intoxication that both feel when they are in each other's company, or the lust that they feel for each other.

This song effectively conveys the feeling of the togetherness people feel when they are in love. The feeling that the two lovers are no longer two separate entities but have coalesced into one single entity. The ecstasy that one feels when one is in the same general are as one's lover. The sudden feeling of helplessness and vulnerability one feels when one looses sight of one's lover even for a brief moment. This song even entails the orgasm from a sexual union that does not feel sinful because it is between two people who are deeply in love with each other.

Back in the days when this song was sung, the tune and the lyrics usually did match up with each other but in this case t he match is perfect. The words, everyone knows what the words mean. But the tune is yet another deal. The tune is pure ecstasy, it is bliss. It gives you the feeling of floating in mid-air and everything is right, you have not a single concern in the world for your beloved is by your side and you are basking in the warmth of your lover's affection.

Its a dream like state that is so real you have no clue whether it is real or a dream. It feels too good to be true but it cannot be anything but true.

It depicts the state where the satisfying of one's desires entail the satisfying of the other's desires and one derives pleasure from satisfying the other's desire.

This song successfully and superbly encapsulates the feeling of blissful intoxication and the absolute ecstasy that comes over a couple in love.

A book could be written to describe how superlative this song is, and even that would come nowhere near sufficing as a description of the excellence of this song.

Not Flogging India

They have made a new movie. Slumdog Millionaire. It has won a couple of Golden Globe awards and has been nominated for a cartload of Academy awards. It has been hailed as one of the very best Indian movies. I am not going to watch it. I will explain why, and no this post is not about me bashing this movie.

One of the people involved with the production of this movie said with quite a bit of pride, “there has been a general trend to glorify India or sanitize India, in Slumdog, we have done neither”. Whether showing India's stark and filthy reality is a matter of pride or not, I am not going to discuss. (And to the patriotic ones who are going to mail me about “India's stark and filthy reality”, the garbage strewn back alleys of Mumbai and the heaps of urban refuse can hardly be called anything other than filthy).

I wrote this post to focus on an aspect of India that has been pushed to the sidelines thanks to our infatuation with crime, grime, corruption, destitution, failure and everything else that is negative. Yes our politicians are corrupt slobs, yes almost all the governmental systems are saturated with corrupt cockroaches. And thanks to a certain Mr. Raju from Andhra Pradesh, we have come to “realize” that the corporate world isn't all that clean either.

But look around you, we are progressing; and not by a small margin but by leaps and bounds. This country of so many contradictions of so many different kinds of diversities is not only managing to stick together as a coherent entity, we are actually working together. To paraphrase a dialog from a movie called “Namastey London” or something to that effect “India is the only country in the world where a Catholic lady stepped aside to let a Sikh gentleman take the oath of office of Prime Minister from a Muslim President in a Hindu majority nation.” Come to think of it, which country can boast of such acceptance of diversity?

The USA immediately comes to mind, but the point to be noted here and the question to be asked is this, would Mr. Barack Hussain Obama have been elected to the office of the President of the USA if he had not converted to Christianity? Would the people of the USA have elected a Muslim president?

Yes we have had pogroms in our country, the most recent being the Gujarat carnage, orchestrated by Narendra Modi, in which a tragic number of Muslims were killed, some of them brutally, I will spare you the details which are a mere Google search away. The point to be noted here is that the carnage, though tragic, remained confined to the state of Gujarat (certain parts of Gujarat if memory serves me right). It was not like the whole nation of India got divided among communal lines and erupted into civil strife.

Wherever there are differences, there are bound to be conflicts, they may be communal in nature or ideological or something else. The point is, that so many years after independence, we are still together as one single nation, even though we have been through events that should have torn this country apart.

Lets change the subject. Communal togetherness is not the only feather in our cap. We have several others. The space program for one is a huge asset. Sure, we haven't sent anyone to the moon or anything to Mars (yet), but there is one thing we can boast of that no other country or conglomerate can boast of. Our maiden voyage to the moon, the first time we ever tried sending anything that far away from terra firma, succeeded.

No country other than India, no space agency other than ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) can boast of succeeding at their first ever moon mission. How is that for a feather in our cap?

Let us talk about the military. It is no secret that we are not the most powerful nation on the planet. But ours is one of the largest armies. And if memory serves me right, ours is one of the most successful armies. The only time one army enforced a complete and unconditional surrender on another army was in the war of 1971 when the army of Pakistan (under Gen. Niazi) surrendered to the Indian National Army (under Gen. Sam Manekshaw) in Bangladesh (East Pakistan back then).

Anti terror and anti insurgent forces around the world are seeking the expertise of the corresponding commands of the Indian National Army in terms of training. Thanks to Pakistan our defense forces have become experts in matters of combating terrorism. Many would hold the 26-11 Mumbai attacks to mean the contrary, but on close examination reveal that the cause of the carnage was negligence on part of the civilian authorities as they disregarded the Intelligence reports provided by the RAW and IB (our intelligence agencies).

I am not denying the fact that its not all hunky dory in India, but there is an awful lot of good that is going on as well. Instead of concentrating on the bad news, working up a temper and coming down with blood pressure and other tension related disorders, we should concentrate on the good news. We should take pride in whatever successes our country can boast of, and use that pride to fuel our progress, while keeping the bad news in mind so that we do not repeat our own mistakes.

I take pride in being an Indian, and I know most (if not all) of you do, ergo its time to show it by working for the betterment of our country, after all, the government is not solely responsible for national development, we all are, whether we like it or not, so why not start liking it?

I am not going to watch Slumdog Millionaire because I do not want the image of gargantuan garbage dumps and back alley slums thrust in my face. Yes they are a reality and I will do my part in bettering that aspect of India. But I do not want to have the bleakness and precariousness of that society thrust into my face.