A Shloka

अश्वं नैव गजं नैव व्याघ्रं नैव च नैव च अजापुत्रं बलिं दद्यात् देवो दुर्बलघातकः

Not a horse, not an elephant, and never a tiger. It is the son of a goat that is sacrificed. Even the Gods are against the weak.

A Shloka I came across on my wanderings. Of course the interpretation of these things is always a subjective issue but I like to look at it as a subtle agnostic snub.

Right now I have no idea which text it is from. Help would be appreciated and acknowledged.

The Unwaba Revelations - A Review

I rarely review books or movies because I am sure that there are other people who do. But in my wanderings on the great www I did not come across a decent review of the "The Unwaba Revelations" therefore this post is born.

Before I start this I must confess that I have not read the first two novels. But I did not think that it mattered because novels even if they are part of trilogy must be enjoyable on their own without resorting to what happened before. I wonder if this was a factor is my actually enjoying the book only half way through it when I had managed to get ravains, vamans, asurs, humans and other myriad life forms that inhabit the book sorted out in my head.

I started reading it with a lot of expectations, considering reviews on the net and all that though I must confess that Samit Basu’s state-mate’s brushes with science fiction one of which produced the Calcutta Chromosome should have made me wary but nevertheless in the quest for fiction that is based in my reality and not Central Park, contemporary London or post WWII Jewish Boston, hope springs eternal from the human breast.

I was hooked from the first page when not only was Aishwarya(Rai?) was compared to a duck but she was also given a species name. (Viduci olwwasysac – Why does she always ask?) My favorite is the Kaos butterflies used by Kol(get it?) to defend itself against enemies, which can create thunderstorms by flapping their wings. (Get it? Get it?) Some other allusions that I came across. - Regal Eagles(?), Streakers in Central Kol Park. (Quite obvious), Free States (USA!) ,Xi’en (China?) [Oook tells me that the Kaos butterflies bit is borrowed from Terry Pratchett.]

Yes "The Umwaba Revelations" is chock full of these weird references. Some of which I am sure I did not get. Though two friends tried to convince me that forest Ekyavan whose leader pretends to sleep but is actually meditating is a reference to Vaijpayee. But in retrospect it might be referring to Area 51 as later in the novel some fancy alien ships are found there.

An interesting new literary device the single paragraphed conversation between two people was original. Sly references to Mumbai in the form of Bolvudis(Get it?), which I applauded. The hero(Kirin) who prefers sex to saving the world and outwits the gods by mere argument I liked.

At some places his language seems strained and sometimes too much of a college cliché especially the conversations between Maya and Kirin. A little cutting and snipping would have made it perfect. Towards the end the complex battle scenes had my head reeling and wondering when it would all end. There are a lot of names common between the people he acknowledges and some characters in the book. I wonder if they are in-jokes. That would be poor taste.

I went in looking for a book that would represent our cultures our inflences in a sartorial way like Terry Pratchett. (the Gods here so speak like Death from Terry Pratchett - ALL IN CAPS.) I was slightly dissapointed but still it is a great effort overall - perhaps I enjoyed it a little bit more because reading of said book was punctuated by the reviewer meeting with the author at a book lauch where he most graciously returned her pen after signing her book (the high moral standards thus displayed had impartial reviewer swooning.) Now if only he wrote a novel about a great city named Mum with meandering roads by the sea where great rains come once a year and a cold wave paralyses the city’s denizens, then I shall deify him.

A cold wind this way blows

Now a days I dread the setting of the sun when the darkness takes over.

It is unusually cold in Mumbai right now. I am told the temperature was 10C yesterday. It is fine if you are well equipped to deal with the cold but Mumbaikars are not. I mean cold weather in Mumbai lasts for two days in a year. And my hostel room has been carefully chosen to be shielded from the sun so that it is the coolest in summer. Problem is it is also the coldest room in winter!!

I have resorted to ad hoc techniques which involve not opening my windows of my room at all and sleeping with three sheets, one sweater and a pair of socks. This has been happening for the past two weeks with hopes that it will get better soon. I hope this goes away, or pretty soon I will have to actually *buy* a blanket.

To add to this some bright peeps (read people from the North who were in their element) came up with the idea of going to Marine Drive yesterday. I acquiesced. There we were hanging out on windy windy Marine Drive in the coldest day in the year for an hour almost. It was when ice-cream at Natural’s was suggested that I drew the line. A cold Mumbaikar is a disgruntled Mumbaikar and that is one thing you would not want to mess with.

On the plus side, after a long time, I have come across Hindi music which I have listed to in a loop (you know when you play the song/song track again and again and again and again and again.......) Ladies and gentlemen, I present Jodha Akbar. Listen to the magic of Rahman!

Coat Uncoat

A quote that deserves more visibility.

"The Universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements: energy, matter and enlightened self-interest."
- G'Kar, Babylon-5

MEI dinners

Assume two people A and B, both of whom are standard MEI students.

A is in the last stages of having his dinner in the famed East Canteen with live entertainment (in the form of scuttling rats) and candle light ambience (on all days but in certain corners only). B joins A. Now A’s dining ritual is tending towards completion yet B in his ignorance, feigned or otherwise, has still joined A.

How long should A, whose dinner is almost done, wait for B in such a situation?

Keen observation and several MEI dinners later, scientists have deciphered the factors that determine the time that A will wait for B.

The time is directly proportional to

• The size of the intersection of their social circles. i.e. the number of mutual friends that they have.
• The days that A has not met B.
• The number of favors that B can do for A. (e.g. exchange of library duty, giving competent cells, helping with assignments etc.)
• The number of favors that B has done for A.
• The number of treks that they have been together on.
• The number of technical terms that B uses frequently and which A understands. E.g. cytokinesis, Euler buckling, Sandpile model, Euclidean space, etc. (Putting it another way whether or not they are from similar fields)
• The number of social causes B espouses.
• The number of books, movies, etc that B owns that A is interested in.
• The number of mood altering substances they have had together.

On the other hand, the time is inversely proportional to

• The time that A had been sitting at the table before B joined.
• The number of people at the table other than A and B.
• The difference in the years of their joining. (e.g. 2002 – 2007=5)
• The number of days B has not taken a shower.
• The number of favors that A could theoretically do for B
• The distance between their respective home towns. (See Addendum below)

A special case is if A and B are of the opposite sex. In such a case, the time thus obtained after these computations is to be doubled. (The time may be quadrupled if B and A are single). The time is also doubled if A and B share the same mother tongue.

Admittedly the actual relationships of all the factors are complex and involve other emotional factors which cannot be quantitated but this is major step in deciphering the complex social dynamics at MEI and will help in understanding that greatest of enigmas - the MEI student.

(*** - Addendum - Consider a line drawn between the two respective hometowns and an imaginary mid point at the exact center of this line. It can now be said that the effect of “distance between hometowns” factor is more complex as its effect in turn increases exponentially as increase in the distance of said imaginary midpoint from Mumbai, location of MEI. A very subtle jibe there if you can get it!)

[Some creative inputs from S.J., P. S. and S.S. MEI here standing for My Esteemed Institute - a place of some repute I am told.]

Eleven things

Eleven things I want to do before I die

1) Read "The Lord of the Rings". All three parts.

2) Visit Paris/Vienna.

3) Bungee jump.

4) Become a size 0.

5) Drink absinthe.

6) Own a Joni Mitchell CD. This one to be precise.

7) Write a short story- in Marathi. Just to prove a point.

8) Direct a film – horror preferably set in my institute. Its long corridors with multiple doors and desolate areas are a perfect setting.

9) Listen to the Berlin Philharmonic perform Carmen live.

10) Meet my high school crush.

11) Put up this poster on the wall on my room.

Someday. Someway.

MEI stories Part Deux (From Satyajit)

Samudrika has taken a break. Some thing about a hangover or thesis writing one of those things. I can never make out the difference. So this week I write 'her little column' as she calls it.

I am Satyajit. A long suffering guy in the biological sciences. Oh you scoff and think that I am the luckiest person in the world to work in a field where the sex ratio is so pleasantly skewed in my favor. Oh you are walking away! But pray, wait a while. Listen to my side of the story too.

I am the average guy. Not too skinny, not too fat. Not too fair not too dark. My teeth are a little irregular but if I keep my mouth shut no one notices. Everyone says that I am a nice person. On that my reputation precedes me and of that I am proud. I play hard, work harder. Yeah, I am the average grad student.

Coming back to sex ratios, there are a lot of Pretty Young Things (PYT’s) in my lab. You think I am lucky. Think of my boss! Yes, my boss has a field day/month/year all right. Imagine having all these nymphets throwing themselves at you with “ I would really like to work with you, sir" for M.Sc/Ph.D./summers/whatever.

And to add oil to the ego massage, they think he is God and will do anything that asks them to do. By anything I mean scientifically - the stupidest experiments, and the silliest things. Stands to reason, that when such PYT’s do come along they all work under his express guidance - reporting to him directly. If a bespectacled acne laden guy comes along he is pushed off to work with me and I have to field his questions, which start from the mundane ("Do you believe in god?") to the profound ("Why is the fly testes bigger than the fly brain?").

I swear my eyes would have popped out of my head when a PYT (Pretty Young Thing) used the word "sexxeeee" to describe data from her experiment that had not worked! And boss smiled and said "Excellent, you are doing a great job.” I was tearing my hair out of my head wondering how to clean up the huge mess she had left behind.

If she makes a mistake, she replies in a sweet simper, “But sir I have just been doing what you told me…..” That melts him completely. He asks her, "Let’s discuss this over a cup of tea. Shall we?” And the discussion is continued in the canteen, until the canteen closes or the sun sets – whichever is later.

On the other hand, my discussions with boss conclude in minutes with “I am sorry but I have to pick up my kid from soccer practice, just do the experiments and then we will sit down again.”

I mean I have no problem with someone else's sensuality. I love a little sensuality especially if it is simmering just below the surface or smoldering in smoky eyes but it is the blatant in your face, chest bursting out of shirt type of sensuality that I have issues with. Especially when the face in question is that of my boss.

He is not used to sensuality. It puts him off balance. As it is, getting intelligible ideas out of him is difficult but after he has had a session with one of these nubile nymphets he goes completely ballistic. His ego reaches for the sky and he actually starts thinking, which is not a good thing. (Under ideal circumstances they have to be carefully conditioned to think that they have thinking and you should actually make them think out "your" ideas. Umm get it?) And when HE starts thinking then I have to do the craziest experiments. One of them involved me going to local abattoir at 5 a.m. to get brains of freshly butchered goats.

All a PYT has to do is go on stage dance a bit during the annual variety show and there she is the most popular person in the institute. I have been here longer than her but with one swish of her sheer dupatta, every one in the institute knows her. While if I want to know how to use ImageJ I have to run to ten people to get answers and here she gets tax advice for free. Who cares if I am the star striker of the volleyball team that wins the hostel tournament every year. Every fracking year damnit.

The icing on the cake comes when they get hitched finally. Not with someone like me. But someone from the First Department. (Which is like First Citizen but only in plural and I don’t belong to it.) Oh yes I am screwed personally. Professionally. Both ways.

I am sure I have managed to convince you that all is not what it seems. Now you must excuse me. I have do a trainee's experiment for her. She had to go out to dinner and she asked me so sweetly I could not refuse.