Karthik's Summer

Period : Summer Vacations.

Ever since his vacations began, 9 year old Karthik was waiting eagerly for the arrival of his friend. His neighbour - Preethi akka* . He had sorely missed her , since she had gone away to study at a hostel in a college. He secretly pitied her. From what he had heard, he had formed an impression that hostels were better only to central jails. He wondered why she ever went so far away to study.

His neighbours were exceptionally good people. Since his mother had to go to work, she would often ask the aunty to take care of him, in spite of his protests. Not that he resented. The aunty's fridge was home to lots of sweets, chocolates and juices, and he marveled at Preethi akka's abstinence from such nice things. He usually went to play at their house. Akka had always been helpful- she had taught him the basics of Hindi, she used to narrate to him marvelous stories of Harry Potter. Harry Potter forced him to accept that stories other than comics could be interesting too. She was his official translator, whenever they watched Hindi/ English movies on the TV.

All this 2 years ago. Last year, she had been increasingly busy, going to coaching classes for about 4-5 "entrance tests", right from 5 am in the morning. It would be around 10 pm when she came home. He had overheard aunty pouring out her worries to his mother as to how Preethi would fare in the board exams. "Board Exams? Do they write questions on the Black-board?", he wondered. It meant a hectic schedule for akka, who was quite remarkable in taking up the challenge. This was not the first time he had heard about the Boards. Come April-May, all the news channels would carry the interviews of the toppers. It was quite another matter that all of them stated the same thing. To him, they appeared quite supernatural, being interviewed by the same people who usually interviewed the President or Rajni Kanth. It was an achievement in itself.

Akka soon completed her exams and was free as ever and their ramblings continued. She, just like him, had no friends of her age in the neighbourhood. Soon, her results were announced and to Karthik's greatest joy, she had stood first, not only in her school, but also in the entire district, scoring a staggering 97 point something percentage. Their locality was a flurry of activity. She was interviewed, her photos flashed across the TV channels. Suddenly, he felt insignificant. He had never expected her to be so brilliant. After all, shd did everything that he did. But then, he thought that you could never judge people on their face value. He added this to his list of random Philosophical Principles that he made from time to time.

Akka did not feel the same way though. She continued playing with him and telling him the movie stories. His first ambition was fulfilled. He had not only met one person whom they interviewed on the TV, he was also her friend.

She went to the college shortly after, a college in Goa, and was returning only that day. His wait soon came to an end as Akka arrived at home. The first few days were spent in an usual routine. He gathered various insights about college life. He learnt that hostels weren't like jails after all and that you could wear any dress you liked to the class. This thought excited him.

There was one thing though that depressed him. Her big fat books. He could not see how he would ever lift those books, leave aside studying them. They had a use though. They would often double up as hard pillows whenever he was at their place and was too tired after watching TV. Akka graciously allowed this. Sometimes, her friends used to call her on her new mobile phone, and she would go on talking for at least half an hour. He did notice that her way of speech had certainly changed. Her talks were now punctuated by "Cho Chweet", that it almost became a distraction.

Akka's college was one of the best in India, his parents had told him. He wondered if he would ever get an admission anywhere. He had thought that he would become a Bus-conductor or a traffic policeman, after all they held the power to scold people, and none would ever retort. He had considered being a teacher, but found that he would have to force children to do homework and cane them if necessary, and this was against his conscience. So he dropped that idea.

Recently, he had added software engineer to the list too. He had been to Chandru Anna's company the previous week and to his amazement saw almost everyone there playing Minesweeper in the AC room. But he knew that there were the frightening Board Exams, that he had to face if he wanted to make any of his dreams a reality. He grew worried for some time.

Soon he came out of his depression as he remembered Preethi Akka telling him something from a Harry Potter book- " What would come, would come and he would definitely have to meet it when it did." He only hoped that he would well at that point.

* Akka - A common term used in south india to address one's elder sister.

Karthik's World

It was a pleasant morning. Karthik was riding his brand new BSA bicycle through the woods, singing merrily all the way. There were trees with barks of chocolates, with rasagullas and game CDs hanging from the trees... Cool, fresh morning breeze whipped across his face, rejuvenating it, keeping the tiredness at bay." Enthralling", he thought, "when nature and men lived in harmony". Suddenly, he heard a voice of someone familiar. "Karthik... KAAARTHHHIK....".... He halted the cycle in style, and as he was alighting in Sivaji Rajini style, he fell... headfront into the pile of lush grass, too soft to get hurt.

The Pillow. The voice? His mother's. Screaming at the top of her voice from the kitchen. "ARE YOU GETTING UP OR SHALL I CALL MISS AND TELL HE IS ABSENT??" Karthik heard. He hated. After 2 months of blisfull solitude called summer, back was the blackmailing. He strongly felt that he must finish college soon, work and retire by another 2 years and then sleep without any botheration. This thought proved to be a tonic of inspiration to break his inertia as he groggily woke up and demanded the brush. " 9 years old and i have to put the paste on his brush", mumbled his mother. "Its all the result of your spoon-feeding", remarked his father, eyeing him casually over the newspaper. This unwarranted remark enraged him. He stuff the brush into his mouth. You just needed to stand there for 3 minutes and come out and declare the teeth were brushed.

As he stood, he remembered the newspaper. He had often wondered what it contained to hold the attention of his father for two hours. He even tried sneaking into it, when he was seen by his father and surprisingly got a pat on his back. His father urged him to continue reading. Inspired, he started sifting through the pages. There was nothing. Not even pictures of animals. At most, there were pictures of "conferences" being held and men in suits. He liked wearing the suits. He had asked his mother what "conference" meant. She had replied that it was a meeting where a group of people attended, somebody talked and the others responded to that. This revelation angered him. The thing conference sounded exactly like a classroom, and still the newspaper maker had never bothered to interview him. This thought turned him against the newspaper-maker . Holding it was itself so painful to him. He spread it out on the floor and sat on one of its edges.Still, it invariably flew everywhere in the room, inviting mother's scoldings. All this convinced him not to touch the paper again.

Three minutes up. He went to the kitchen and wanted to demand coffee. But he was careful. Mornings 5:45 to 7:15 was the tension-time for mother, and you tended to get castigated for the smallest of errors.

He was cautious and slipped with his coffee into the Hall. As he sipped it, making sure that father wasn't looking that way ( sipping was told to be wrong ) , he wondered how soon his holidays had ended. What had he done during the holidays? Nothing worthwhile he recalled. His English miss had asked them to read newspapers. Well, he had at least attempted. Still he was restless. He mentally ticked a check-list of the To-Dos. He was facing a problem though. He did not remember the list. He gave up, thinking it was the 5th standard that made him feel that way.

He had attended the marriage of his cousin sister. He had very good opinion about marriages. They usually meant nice food, and protection from direct scoldings from your parents. You could always depend upon relatives to shield you. Moreover, there were too many distractions for mother to keep a close eye on his mischiefs. And then there was this presumption by the adults that they were smarter, which he encouraged , since it gave him license to mischief. But there was one irritating thing about marriages he hated. Whosoever you see, tended to ask," Do you remember me?". He often wondered how they could expect a 9-year old to remember so many names and where he had last met them. The most frustrating thing was they never seemed to remember him at all. Each person would come, tap his cheek and ask his name, school and class. And he distinctly remembered telling his aunt last year his class with section number and there she had asked again.

His reverie was interrupted by his mother, who ordered him not to play with the sugar in the coffee tumbler and go to bath. Bath! Another thing he had never understood. They said it would clean the body. He wondered how come the sand was still there even after it rained. He came out and reluctantly put on his uniform. He searched for his socks. He had always had a doubt as to which one of the pair was for which foot. He assured himself that since no-one could see, it wouldn't matter. He made out for the door, wished his mother good-bye. The feel of shoes after 2 months made him feel tall. He stood at the stop waiting for his bus to arrive.

Standing there, he couldnt help blaming himself for not having enjoyed his rare holidays ( after all they came just 70 times in a whole year) completely. Especially on Sundays, when his father spent all his time watching news, swapping news channels. For one thing, he couldn't watch Shaktiman and Captain Vyom.

The sight of the school-bus depressed him. He had prayed sincerely for rain that day. This was just the second time he had made such a sincere request to God.( the first was when he got his new raincoat !) . No answer. God must be busy or the water cycle would have been "punctured", he justified to himself.

Suddenly, he felt as if he missed his homework. Since 2 years, he had been doing his own homework. This was no great moral decision. In his second standard, he had raised a havoc and forced his father to do his homework. The next day, the maths miss immediately detected it. He later found out that there had been a question "What is the answer when 35 is divided by 3?" His father, doing the work, in the breaks between the news, had answered 11.666667. It was perfect, the only catch was that they were not taught decimals till Std 4. The answer was supposed to be Q = 11 , R = 2 . Thinking about that gave him shudders till this day.

But suddenly he stopped himself. Why should he think? "This was the first day. There would be no worries of homework or tests at least for a week to come.", he reassured himself, as he stepped into the bus - into a new year with new hopes. His friends welcomed him with a smile. As the engine of the bus roared to life, he swallowed the lump in his throat. The bus moved. Standard V beckoned him.

On Doubts

I have always had doubts, doubts on myself, doubts on facts, doubts on what others tell me, doubts on whether I had correctly heard others, correctly interpreted their thoughts, on what people would think if I told what I thought.... Doubts always gave an inferior feeling, especially when your neighbors do not ask them. For a long time, I thought that certainty was the way of the world, the firm rule that governs the existence in a perfect manner.

But as Voltaire once put forth, "Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one." , it is indeed Doubt and uncertainty that have driven the world over the years. A simple argument would prove this. If there were no doubts, we would have never progressed beyond the fences of prejudices and wild belief into the domains of logical reasoning and science.

Necessity, we say is the mother of invention. What is necessity? A feeling of discomfort that forces the dissatisfied mind to seek something new, something proper. "Dissatisfied and Discomfort " are the keys here, that fire up the inert human will and spurs it to great heights. Every great invention in human history, without exception has in its roots some kind of Dissatisfaction and discomfort. On close observation, we find these very emotions ( rather States of mind ) produced by "doubts" too. This, seems to me, the most evident and an common-place proof that human mind is still evolving, and for the better.

I am 21, and I have neither the experience nor the knowledge to speak on philosophy and human intelligence, but one singular pattern that I have noticed in myself and others around me is the inverse correlation of the No. of Doubts asked with age. For some reason, I think we ( including me) tend to correlate knowledge with age, and feel awkward to expose our ignorance. This tendency increases with age and sadly it results in the decrease of our learning capability.

Have you ever observed a child? Almost 90% of its waking time is spent in observation, assimilation, classification, hypothesis building ( through imagination) and its verification ( through doubts) and correction. It is no wonder then that a child is the best learner and the best scientist. We were all great scientists at birth, and all through our childhood, without ever having to see the principles of Science written on the back page of the textbooks. It fills me with a strange pride and awe, to think how I ever managed to learn the English and the Hindi alphabet. Strange symbols, associated with something totally unfamiliar(like X for Xylophone, Y for Yatch and Z for Zebra .. i haven't seen the last 2 till date )... Maybe our brain is molded so, but then its also possible that our conscious mind, with its growing influence with age and experience, does play an important part in suppressing our doubts, and effectively preventing ( or at best, reducing the pace of) our learning, creativity and questioning prowess.

One might argue that age is a condition of the mind. Very true. Those who have preserved the child within, from the wild temptations of distractions, peer pressure and social status, have often, seemingly miraculously succeeded in finding something of greatest value. Cliched though, a few examples could demonstrate this: "What was great in a falling apple?" , "Why should one risk one's life telling that the sun was the center of the solar system?", "Why should anybody bother with a thing called search when the domain is not fixed, and ever-changing?", "How did a person ever expect a thing called Wikipedia work, based on philanthropic( remember "Time is money") contributions, whilst Economic theory teaches us that the self-interest guides all activity?" Each instance demonstrates a child-like dream, initially full of uncertainty, but powered by determination and backed by the will of someone who was too stubborn to be defeated.

I was once reprimanded severely ( by one of my favorite Profs) at college for taking the words of the books for granted. I guess I understand his point now. Instead of ignoring OR feeling uneasy about our doubts, all we need to do is to respect and cherish them, for they will be the seeds which will give birth to a higher, more advanced ( and hopefully better) level of ignorance. After all, Steve Jobs had a point when he exclaimed , " Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish ".


PS: I am not an avid blogger... and the above just represents my flow of thoughts, sometimes random, sometimes irrelevant. I'll be glad to receive any feedback to improve.

The Zen is to be present in the present !!!

Hi,

I don't have any concrete matter to post, this being my first blog. However, I shall redirect you to one piece of advice that is concise, simple yet powerful and enigmatic. It is so important that the creators of Python wanted it to be always guiding a hackers thought and design.

Without much ado, here's the collection by Tim Peters:

The Zen of Python, by Tim Peters

Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is better than complicated.
Flat is better than nested.
Sparse is better than dense.
Readability counts.
Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules.
Although practicality beats purity.
Errors should never pass silently.
Unless explicitly silenced.
In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess.
There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.
Now is better than never.
Although never is often better than *right* now.
If the implementation is hard to explain, it's a bad idea.
If the implementation is easy to explain, it may be a good idea.
Namespaces are one honking great idea -- let's do more of those!

Keeping an open mind whilst reading this will present a spectrum of interpretations, from domains ranging from Philosophy to management to programming...