A Historic Day

Today was a historic day, indeed ! Most of the LTRC men got together at 6'0 clock in the morning to start playing cricket . The desire that was dormant within everyone came true today . 

We played one 12 over match and it was great fun . On one side were Prashanth, Samar, Karthik, Suman, Prashanth Mathur, Siva Reddy, Sambhav ... and on the opposite side were Avinesh, Me, Jagadeesh, GowriDev, Arafat, Abhilash, Manish ... Was it  MT vs Parsing ? Hmm, not really :). We have the great parsing guy, Jagadeesh, on our side while Karthik and Prashanth Mathur were on the opposite team. Semantics guys contributed to both the teams :D

Amazingly, everyone displayed great cricketing skills and made their contributions to their team in their own way. 

Some of the highlights of the match were,

1. Jagadeesh bowled 3 overs on record, but in reality bowled around 6 overs. You know what I mean ! His delieveries had the pace to scare any batsman, but they never really got that close . Hmm, one delievery did get very close :).

2. Prashanth's sixes !! Yeah, he hit quite a few of them. And, his bowling pace and Abhilash's swings also ensured that the ball flew past the boundary line. He also bowled out some of the dangerous batsman in our team, Jaggu and Gowri .

 3. I was definately the fielder of the day. Despite my valient efforts, the ball never stuck in my hands. A couple of missed catches and a couple of boundaries are enough to explain my record !

4.  Suman bowled amazing well, and was definately bowler of the day in the right sense. His ultra-accurate delieveries caused quite a few  problems to the batsmen.

5. Samar's stylish display of batting got runs pretty quickly for the opposite team. 

6.  GowriDev showed nice all-round skills, hitting useful runs with the bat and some accurate bowling with the ball.

7.  Avinesh only seemed to speak the language of sixes. Batting in the slog overs, every ball bowled to him resulted in the maximum  amounts of runs. 

8.  Prashanth Mathur, Sambhav, Me, Karthik and Siva did useful bits with the bowl for our respective teams, while Arfy and Manish did well with the bat.

Here were the final scores,

Our  Team (MT?)                :  97 all out in 11.4 overs

Opposite Team (Parsing?)  :  98 in 10.3 overs

Well, the results did not really reflect the on-ground performances of the teams ;) !!! The next match is tomorrow. Hope that this fun keeps going !

Kudos, Abhinav !!!

An really inspiring interview with Abhinav Bindra, the gold medalist at the Olympics this year. I was amazed with the poise which which he answered the interviewers questions. I now see him not only as a great sportsman but a great human being too, who can indeed be an excellent role-model . One of the things that he mentions when asked about why he didn't express his happiness overtly when he won the medal. This is what he said

Like I said, I went to the Olympics this time with no expectations and I went for my job. All my focus for the last four years was on performance. I didn't care that I have to win or lose. I had no fear and fortunately for me, it was my day.

And I won and I was happy. But I'm not a drama person. I'm not a Bollywood actor or something. I'm not the type to jump up and down. I was calm and composed because I realise that there is very little difference between winning and losing and I appreciate the fact that others also work hard and I respect that.

Also, he opined that there is not as much thrill in achieving a goal as much as the bliss in the process. He loved the journey more than the destination, is the point that he drove home. Here are some of it in his words (http://www.rediff.com/sports/2008/aug/30inter.htm).

Now you win the gold medal. It's like climbing a mountain. You struggle so much and you reach there but what is there?

There's really nothing there. Next is that you climb the mountain down again and try and climb the next mountain. So it's hard. It's a fact-- you climb a mountain and then there's nothing there .

The Karnataka Tamasha

H.D. Deve Gowda is probably the most shameless politician I have ever seen. I was in fact shocked when I got a glance of news headlines today which said H.D. Deve Gowda had asked his party legislatures against voting for the BJP government in the confidence vote. He wants BJP to abide by the 12-points formulated by him, what rubbish ! It is clear that Deve Gowda doesn't like BJP but he should have given up when his partymen ditched him when they pulled out of the Congress government and supported the BJP. It is not at all clear why his party legislatures are giving weight to him now, and why all of a sudden his word is being given importance. Also, it is not clear if Kumaraswamy is happy with his dad or is against him. It is definitely the tamasha that I have got vexed with.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/nov/19kgovt.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/nov/19kgovt2.htm

The ever-glowing Deepavali

Diwali is one festival that can never be uninteresting. In the daytime, It was great fun going to relatives house and devouring sweets and other special food, and seeing everyone dressed in their new clothes. Later, we returned home in the evening. The evening celebrations began by giving Aarti to all the gods and godesses in the house and praying for the well-being of all your loved ones. It was such a "cute" experience lighting the deepaalu and placing them all around your house along with my parents.

The best part of diwali is always the crackers. Even though I missed my brother, cousins and friends while bursting crackers on this diwali, I had a really nice time with my parents. I had initially felt I might not enjoy crackers that much this time as I had become too old for it, but maaan, that's so not true. I had an amazing time. This whole episode also had a strong nostalgic feel to it which made the whole experience better. Then, I made calls to all my friends, and caught up with them.

It was an happy ending to diwali as well with the reviews that said Om Shanti Om is good, and even better than Main Hoon Na. As, I liked Main Hoon Na pretty well, i might like this one too. So, would have a nice movie to watch this week ! And, I pity Saawariya for the reviews that it got :).

More on Balamuralikrishna's songs

So, I have started listening a bit more of Balamuralikrishna's
songs. The second song that I heard was amazing. It relaxed
me soo much that I felt really good. Like a medicine that works
in minutes, it has elevated my concentration on my work
greatly.

Song: Thandanana
Artist: Balamuralikrishna
Composer : Annamacharya
Album : Balaji Bhajans

As of now, I have realized that I am liking those songs better
which have lyrics which are tangible, rather than those which
are more 'saa ree gaa maa' based. Also, the songs which repeat
the name of gods (Lord Balaji in the case of the song that I refered)
seem to appeal as of now. I shall update more on the songs that
I like as I listen further.

Visit by Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna to our campus


What makes me feel much more lucky is that I almost didn't go to the distinguished lecture that was organized at our campus. Because of my lack of background in Carnatic music, I had no idea of what I was about to encounter. I had heard about Balamuralikrishna and I had heard and appreciated his music without knowing that they was his compositions or that he had sung them.

Balamuralikrishna entered the seminar hall and with great humility greeted everyone. His greatness radiated from his eyes, and his gentle smile makes you instantly respectful of him. The event began with Prof. PJN introducing Balamuralikrishna, and he almost got emotional while doing so. One of the striking points in Prof. PJN's introduction was that neither Balamuralikrishnan nor his music carry a single identity. Also, in the field where the jealousy is prevalent, he admired his fellow musicians too.

His lecture was on "How to appreciate music". He said that any music anywhere can be appreciated if one goes with a blank mind. Some of the other striking features of his talk were

1. Anyone can appreciate any form of music. All one needs is to listen to a blank mind, and with the sole intention of enjoying the music. A person with some knowledge will start dissecting the song being sung and by them time they analyze it fully, the song would have been over. If a person goes without too much baggage on him and if the singer is good, then the listener is surely going to enjoy it. He gave a humorous example of a concert he gave in Italy where no one knew what kind of music he plays. And, the people there were spell-bound and even started dancing towards the end.
   
2. The responsibility of a song/concert being appreciated lies solely with the musician. The musician should compose or sing something that would touch the audience, and he should definitely not leave the responsibility of appreciation to the audience. He likened good music to sweet. If there is sweet around, the ants would surely flock to it.
   
3. The musician should change according to the times, in order to preserve a particular form of music . For the Indian classical musicians, one way of doing that was composing poetry that made sense in the modern times. He then sang some amazingly humorous songs, which left the audience in splits.
   

I recall only these points from his speech. But what made the session special were some pieces that he sang. There was magic in his voice. Even though, the songs that he had sung in this session were in classical telugu, whose meaning I didn't understand unless he explained the meaning later, they were heart touching. For the songs, whose meaning he explained, one could feel the depth of the words. And, these words were non-philosophical. Instead, they were humorous, contemporary, some of them were full of bhakti, some were satirical. I could see purest form of joy in most of the people sitting around me. Even to me, who is a novice to classical music, this was an experience worth preserving and motivating enough to resume writing my blog !

Gym and C1002


There is a gym in our apartment which was once very lonely. There were no regular visitors to the Gym and it lay there with atleast a couple of its parts broken. Then, one day everything changed in its life, someone had decided to give it a regular company. Yes, Vikranth had decided to be a regular visitor to the Gym.

For Vikranth, it all started when he went to the bodyworlds exhibition here in Philadelphia. This exhibition displays the anatomy of real human bodies (http://www.bodyworlds.com/). As he was looking at the amazing exhibits there, his attention specifically fell on a particular group of exhibits. These sections highlighted the exhibits which showed the contrast between the bodies which excercised and the bodies which did not. Vikranth observed that muscles of bodies which did not excercise seemed to grow randomly while the bodies which exercised had this definate and pleasing shape. For Vikranth, as he is, it was not hard to resolve that he would not let his muscles grow randomly.

From that day on, he started going to Gym daily. At that point, he would be the only regular visitor to the Gym. By the time the rest of the house woke up, he would have returned from the Gym. And, he would have left the house even before any of us really came to our senses. The energetic Vikranth had suddenly become overly energetic, the "kid" with a load full of strength. He would pay even more care about what actually went down his food pipe. He would also work late into the night and come back home by taking the last city bus. I guess the bus driver recognizes him as the only guy in the city of Philadelphia who takes his bus at that time. Most of his pants were beginning to become lose and all this definately gave an impression that things were working out wonderfully well for him. So inspiring was the routine of Vikranth now that even I decided to try out going regularly to the Gym.
















Now, I was a person who would most certainly need company to do any activity for a long period of time. At IIIT, i had tried to be a regular at Gym but it would generally mean a maximum of 6 days and then a break of 1-2 years :). Well, now was my chance to actually make it happen, by tagging along with unfailing Vikranth . I resolved to start going as soon as i got a little free from my work. So, as soon as i was free, it had started for me too.

Everyday, i would wake up at 7:00 and go to Gym with Vikranth. We would come back in 40 minutes and then go to school. I started becoming unbelievably regular with my daily routine. No longer would i wake up at 8:00 and think whether my presence in my office was really needed that day :). Vikranth and I would be discussing various workout routines and for some reason, everything that we talked during my first few days at Gym revolved around the concept of a healthy life, Ufff !

















So, Gym had become an integral part of the lives of people at C1002. Santi has also started coming to Gym ""quite"" regularly. Shravan is more into Yoga and Outdoor sports, so doesn't
think going to gym is a great idea. He is also probably the most fit guy around. He compares going daily to Gym to the 'daily wage labour' :)). Raja isn't much interested. He believes Vikranth, me and Santi are trying to build ours like his :). Well, nobody can definately deny that.


Getting inspired by Vikranth's energy, Sandhya and Yashwanth have also started coming. So, it nows looks as if the Indian (specifically gult) gang has occupied the Gym. Well, so it is mostly us during the mornings baring a few guest visitors. Thanks to Yashwanth's cell, we now also have telugu songs playing out loud.

















(to be edited and continued)

Well, now after 3 months. Things are back to square one. Gym is back to the way it was before. Atleast, it has had a few really good months !

India and the world

Here is a mail i posted to my BTech friends after
a couple of months since i landed in US (March 14th,
2004).

--------------

Hi Guys,

Congrats to Sri and CSK for the IIM calls. All the best !

Am back with another small mail. I stay with some non-Indians in a shared house. So, I have been learning a lot from them about their way of looking at things. Also, I have been propogating the Indian way of looking at things. It was good to know that most of them like India and they respect Indians a lot.

Here are some of the happenings, thoughts, experiences.

Table of Contents (for you to be prepared if u have decided to read it :))
----------------

1. My name is 'rAm'
2. 'Cricket' in USA
3. Is 'Over-Population' the biggest problem facing India ?
4. Proud of my Indian 'RACE'
5. Show some 'Bollywood' to Americans.
6. 'Gandhi' rules even in America.

----------------

1) My name is 'rAm'

I used to introduce myself as 'Sriram'. They would not get it at first. I would repeat it a couple more times and then they would succeed in knowing what it is. If they still fail (which is rare), I would say 'S for Song, R for Rachel, I for India' and then it would work out for sure. But, there is still a problem, they would start practicing the pronunciation. I would finally feel sorry for them and say 'You can call me rAm'.

Now, it happened so many times that I have started introducing myself as 'I am rAm, SrirAm' (like Bond,James Bond). Now, it's their choice.

2) 'Cricket' in USA.

It was in the local news on the TV here. I didn't really like the way the news was told, but I felt good that it was being told to the American people that India was playing Pakistan.

"The nuclear rivals are trying to reduce some enmity between themselves by playing the game of Cricket, a game left behind by the British. When British left India, they divided the country into two, India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan were almost on the brink of a war couple of years ago. There is so much security arrangements that the players move in Bullet proof buses ..... Here in Pakistan, people are crazy about this game. You could see people playing Cricket everywhere. And it is the same across the border." (reporting from Pak).

The news was good but not entirely feel-good. I told people sitting besides me that I wished that the dispute would die in the near future. The division of the country was one of the worst things that happened. And that, Kashmir is one of the beautiful places on earth and hoped that it would becomes a excellent and unfeared tourist spot in the future.

The general feeling among people here about Cricket is not good. How can people play a single game for several days ? Annd, It wud generally make me speechless except that I would tell them that there is a shorter version of the game too. Here, Indians play cricket every weekend. I would join them from next week (most probably). It should be fun !


3) Is 'Over-Population' the biggest problem facing India ?

I was talking to my Chinese friend the other day. He asked me how many Siblings I had ? I said 'one brother'. And then ignorantly I asked him 'What about u ?'. He said 'In China, We are not allowed to have more than a single child'. I knew it, and I had a good impression about this rule that was enforced by the Chinese communists. I hoped that a similar rule would be imposed in India. I told him 'It is not possible to impose a similar rule in India'. And then both of us said at the same time 'It's a DEMOCRACY'. He realised that I was concerned about the problem of Over-population, and said 'Do the people in general realise that over-population is the problem'. I told him 'We do'.

It made me thinking if over-population was the biggest problem facing our country. Would the things improve if a strict rule is imposed. Or would the improving literacy percentage of our dear country would solve the problem by itself in the future ???

4) Proud of my Indian 'RACE'

My Landlady is an Austrian whose family moved to Germany when Austria was occupied by Russia during the second world war. Later she moved to America with her Husband. She often narrates the stories of her teenage when she was in Europe. About how people suffered because of the starvation and how horrible it was at that time in Europe & lots of her adventures.

She also feels that 'Hitler' was not as much a 'Mad man' as was told in United states. She opined that he did what he thought was good for the german people. Education and Technology peaked in Germany during his rule. According to her, the Jews in Germany occupied the top positions in Germany and exploited the ordinary people before Hitler came. I argued against her saying whatever it is, the way Hitler treated the Jews was horrendous and there was no justification for it. And that, he was over-agressive about the whole thing.

Well, to me, the moral of this story and several other interactions with my Landlady and another retired Professor of Columbia University (Studies on Medieval Europe) was that I felt more good about the Indian 'RACE' and felt proud of being an Indian. Throughout History, we guys have been soo tolerant, kind and Intelligent. All we need is a strong leader and a little more motivation among us. Personally, I would like someone like 'Indira Gandhi' (except for emergency), Vajpayee is a good leader too. But, Why does 'Sonia Gandhi' come into picture ?

5) Show some 'Bollywood' to Americans.

I was planning to show a Hindi-movie to my house-mates. Just to make them aware of the 'Indian thing'. I was in dilemma about which movie to show them. Movies that are in my mind in the order of pref are 'Roja', 'Lagaan', 'Devdas' or 'Dil Se'. (with lot of fast-fwding and
lots of explanation, ofcourse).

Also, shall take my house-mates to an Indian restaurant. Hey, I've noticed that lots of Americans like the Indian Food. The restaurant near our university is crowded most of the time, and almost half of the people inside are non-Indians. We always have to wait for half-an-hour to get in on Sundays. In a weekly 'lunch talk' on Mondays, we are served 'Chinese, Italian, Indian' food, one per week. A month ago, when Indian food was served, it got over and they had to order Pizzas.

6) 'Gandhi' rules even in America.

Gandhi is very respected a lot even in America. My house-mate Jeff is reading a 'Gandhi Reader' and he tells me that if Gandhi had started a religion, then he would have been a follower of that religion :)).

-----------

Guess I should stop now. I dedicate this mail to Prashanth and Sesh and Santhosh :)), they know why!! :). Atleast I wish they read till this point ;).


bYe,
Sriram

Trip to Pittsburg (January 2004)

Here is a mail i had written to my friends as soon
as I landed in US for the first time in January 2004.

--------------

Hi,

Have been hearing from all of you and it has been great getting lots of mails in the groups.

So, I have landed here in US. Right now, I am in Vamshi's room and am mailing you from his laptop. It was great to see some of you at the airport before I left & some of you who called me up.

To contribute to our list, I have sent some junk about my trip to Pittsburg, read it at ur leisure.

My journey was cool and I had fun travelling. My itinary demanded landing at three places and I loved all the three places. My first flight was to Dubai by Indian Airlines. I was served Biryani :), just when I thought that I was going to miss it . Air hostesses were kind enough to serve something or the other at regular intervals . So , drinking and eating was a major time-pass during this flight. Also, I was very excited, this being my first flight after soo many years. Dubai was awesome from the top , City looked very rich and planned .

I thought that I was dreaming at the Dubai Airport. It's awesome. It was so neat, posh and beautiful . Whatever I write would be less, you got to be there to experience it. It was like a large luxurious palace . There was a huge duty-free shopping area and I had two hours to do lots of window-shopping. Cars like Porshe and Benz were put for sale :) . At the airport, we spent a large time trying out various perfumes .

The next flight was till Amsterdam by Royal Dutch Airlines. Compared to IA plane, this plane was huge . I was asleep in short time on board listening to some sweet music coming out of the ear-phones. I woke up amidst a sequence of dialogues touching my ears. A movie was being played . I cudn't recognise any actors on screen and in a short while again, I was asleep. I woke up again to the call for breakfast. We were served lots of things , nothing familiar . A particular item looked very wierd and I was so curious that I asked the air-hostess what it was . I was embarrassed when she smiled back and replied "I agree with you sir. It doesn't look like one but it is an omlette". I said to myself "Ofcourse, it is, idiot". There was another item, some grass-like spinach which was served. This time, I didn't dare to ask what it was. The breakfast was indeed very heavy and it took me an hour to analyse and eat it. It was unfortunate not to get a windows seat on this aircraft, I cud not seee Amsterdam from above . I had huge expectations from the amsterdam airport and what i saw was more than that. The airport is huge. We kept on walking giving a glance at all the shops , but it never seemed to end. We got a map of the airport and we were shocked to see that we hadn't visited even one-fifth of the entire airport. We spent 3 and hours that we had to see as much as we could . The best thing that we saw was a casino. It was the same as I had seen in the films. A beatiful girl was drawing the cards and taking the bets, and on the other side of the table were two middle-aged ppl and an old man. the middle-aged people looked exactly like cow-boys and were puffing cigarettes in a typical english filmy ishtyle. The old man was having a drink and he seemed to be playing it with all his wits. I watched a game and then moved forward.

We boarded the Northwest airlines at Amsterdam and it was bigger than both the earlier airlines. And also, we had an individudal interactive TVs with every seat. Spent time browsing thru the list of movies and songs and maps (showed the current position of aircraft on the map along with altitude and temp. information). I managed to see a couple of movies and listened to some music. I was served something called meatless cas*** pasta, It was good. Later, we were served Pizza and lots of rounds of drinks. Surprising, this time there was also an air-host. We finally reached Detroit after a loong journey. At Detroit, it didn't matter if you were in a windows seat or not, everything was covered with snow. Snow was something that i had never experienced before and it felt great to see it. Airport is not as big as Amsterdam airport but is very sober and beautiful. To go from one end of the airport to ther other, we took an unmanned tram and that was a great experience. We roamed around for a couple of hours and then boarded the domestic plane to Pittsburg. The plane had difficulty in taking off because of the snow storm but it did and I was finally at Pittsburg.

Vamshi was waiting for me here. We came home by bus and now I am here doing nothing but playing with his laptop and reading something. He is there in the CMU campus to attend the classes. I am scared to roam around alone because of the heavy snowfall here. For Lunch today, Vamshi made a very delicious curry. So, that was a good Lunch. Dinner might be outside, would finally walk on the snow.

These couple of days experience was overwhelming. Loved every moment of the new things that i cud experience some of which i cud narrate to you.

k, bYe

Sriram

Sesh, me and the Ameerpet Traffic

The Hyderabad traffic has been a pain in the neck in the recent times. My frustration towards it reached a boiling point in one of the mis-adventures in recent times.

Sesh and I set out at dusk for a party to the city. We started from our college and the destination was Begumpet (Hotel Haveli). Instead of taking the longer but relatively free road, we choose to take the Ameerpet road unaware of the battlefront that lie ahead. The ride was smooth till some distance as we passed by the posh and beautiful jubilee hills houses. Slowly, the density and randomness of the traffic began to increase as we approached Ameerpet. Finally, our vehicle came to a halt as we saw the red light some 200 metres ahead of us and there lay a long stretch of vehicles aligned in all possible directions in between. It was 10 minutes before we crossed the signals but it seemed like eternity. During these minutes, we experienced the following things

• Six toggles between the red and green signals.
• Inhaled quite a bit of the poisonous gas that was all around.
• A bus sprayed its gaseous residue on our faces.
• We analysed each and every advertisement hoarding around. We also voted the best among them.
• Almost bathed in sweat.
• The flawless manoeuvering of the bike by Sesh through the tiniest gaps.
• The depressed faces of people around. Especially, the crowd in the suffocating bus.
  

So, we finally reached our destination in the happiest of moods :).

Traffic in Hyderabad is definately going out of control. The traffic rules are non-existant as one sees on the roads of Hyderabad. It is close to random with only a little order, thanks to the existence of traffic lights and few fly-overs.

With the boom in IT industry in Hyderabad, one has seen a huge development of buildings. Large number of companies are setting up their offices. One can see high rise buildings having a tiny narrow road in front of it. What makes it worst is that most of these buildings do not have a proper parking space. It is difficult to widen old roads. I hope the road widening campaign goes on well to take care of traffic situation now and later.

The MMTS has been useful but not as much as a rising city like Hyderabad needs. One should be able to take the train from the busiest places like Ameerpet, Koti, Punjagutta etc but there is no such train near such location. The stations are far and also one has to reach the stations in time to catch the train. In my opinion, a metro rail is a must for Hyderabad. I admit i don't know the practical and monetary problem but it is needed for the city to develop. Imagine if one could take a metro from Punjagutta and go to Airport in 10 minutes, or if one could take a train from necklace road and reach Charminar in 15 minutes. I think there would definately be a large percentage of population who would avail this opportunity. For most people of Hyderabad currently, the travel by bus/car/bike to the workplace is more stressful than the work itself which is unfortunate. I hope the metro rail/mono rail project is properly planned keeping the developments of the next few years in mind.

Blogging rocks !!

This is an introductory blog. I am sure blogging is fun
and I hope I keep doing it regularly. I was going around
quite a few blogs of my friends and wow, the thoughts
they have are amazing. It was a great journey through the
creative ocean all around ( poor me, i didn't know it
existed ). Anyway, here i am to try a little bit of blogging
myself.

Someone also told me that if you leave the link to your
homepage here, it will show up higher in google. So, here
are the links :)
http://shakti.iiit.net/~sriram/cgi-bin/index.cgi
http://research.iiit.net/~sriram/
http://students.iiit.net/~sriram/

See you around.