Windows 7

Been using Windows 7 for a couple of weeks now, and I must say this is MS' best effort yet. Very smooth and fast. Boot up and shut down times are down to less than a minute even with AV and sundry programs and all or almost all software that I am wont to use run perfectly on it, even some of Win XP vintage. Haven't used the libraries much yet but the search functionality is well implemented and it gives you more features than previous iterations. The Aeropeek and similar addons to the GUI are thoughtful and work really well. I find myself using them all the time since I have multiple windows open quite frequently. The floating gadgets are also a much better option than Vista's sidebar. But the one thing that I always marvel at is the speed of the system. Having gotten used to yawn inducing boot-up times from the XP days, I love the fact that I switch on my desktop as soon as I reach home and it's up and running by the time I take my boots off. In contrast my laptop running Vista takes almost 4 minutes to bootup. Of course it's an aging machine so there's no comparison but still it pleases me!

Compatibility issues are also handled more efficiently now and you have to option to go online to search for drivers/solutions. UAC is less obtrusive, thankfully! All in all, it's a nice bit of software and works quite well.

I've read that Win7 is what Vista was meant to be. Many features that you find in Win7 were originally planned for Vista but time constraints and an ever-increasing gap since WinXP came out caused its premature release. Maybe that's true and if so, it speaks volumes for MS' unconcern for its customers, saddling their customers with a half-baked product and forcing them to upgrade further within a couple of years. But I never really found Vista hamstrung in any way. People have complained to me day in and day out about how it's not smooth, that there are compatibility issues and it's not stable and what not. Mostly I hear that it's just not good enough. Of course when I have asked for what specific problems these people have faced with Vista I get non-committal grunts, and half explanations about how they've heard bad things about Vista. The one problem I did find was Vista's incompatibility with SQL server and many commercial apps (not too sure which, but those were the only concrete answers I got, from IT people in various sectors). But for the average homeuser, I don't know what the brouhaha is all about. It was a fine piece of software and worked well. Of course, Win7 works better but Vista was an improvement over XP too. So it is with every new version of any software. Vista was just a victim of bad publicity more than anything else in my view.

Not that I am a fan of MS in any sense of the word. I have read what they/ve donein the past with Netscape and what they tried to do with other SW manufacturers with XPs launch (I remember they weren't allowing any non MS service icon on the desktop) and how they've coerced PC makers to exclude various software programs from their OEM set. But with all the calumny poured upon them and rightly so, they still had come out with a good piece of programming with Vista and they still got pasted!

Justice indeed

18 months is all he got. For molesting a poor defenceless girl, for getting her expelled from school for complaining, for making her life so miserable that she committed suicide, for falsely accusing and imprisoning her brother and humiliating him, for threatening her father and friend and anyone who dared stand up to support her. For all these crimes he got 18 months in prison; which I'm sure he'll pass in relative luxury as befits one who has 'contacts' at the highest level in the police and politics.

If ever there was a case in recent memory that exposed the rotting mould of corruption eating away at our country's very foundations, it was this. Time after time it was shown how every politician and every policeman supported this man in his heinous crime and shielded him from any and all repercussions while commending him for his 'services'. No matter who was in power, this man was safe. It was bastardy of the vilest sort. This man could subvert the whole system and direct it at one helpless girl who had dared to stand up against him. And in the end he got away with it, with barely a rap on the knuckles.

As a teenager, when I felt I knew pretty much everything there was to know in the world, I thought I had grown quite cynical and jaded with the world. I wrote poems about it, talked about it with friends over drinks and generally behaved in the most blasé fashion possible. I had, of course no idea what an education in cynicism and callousness the world had prepared for me! Now, ten years removed from college and five years since I left the hostel, I find myself realising what cynicism truly means. How it feels to look at everything with mistrust and to question each and every action. To doubt every person you come in contact with, even people I am here to cure and heal, what to talk about colleagues! I used to think that it was the vagaries of life that had made me sad and had smothered the happy soul inside me. now I realise that I am not so much sad as devoid of happiness. The unadulterated joys of youth I now experience through a thick sheen of tiredness and bitterness. I look further, I look deeper; not for the hidden comforts in tragedies, but for the phantoms of sorrow in pleasures. And find them I do, for I am a skilled searcher. I see a pristine pond in front of me and I muddy the waters, I see the rainbow in the sky and I put on my sunglasses, I see arms spread wide in welcome and dream up hidden daggers in the sleeves……

Blank Diaries..

I wrote once ages ago, when I used to write a diary, a proper paper one, that there is no more empty feeling than sitting in front of a blank piece of paper. I don't lay claim to be the originator of this quote, I'm sure someone said it before me. But the meaning I meant to convey then still rings true even though the UHVPN diary has been replaced by this laptop and my trusty Reynolds 045 by this touch type keyboard.

You feel so desolate when the white page stares back at you unstained, as if rebuking and mocking you for not having a word to write. When I had begun writing that old diary way back in '93, it was a Herculean task. I'd start every entry with, "I don't know what to write". Then later I got into the habit and filled in pages after pages. Of course, most of what I penned down was what I recollected of my school days. Small incidents, fights, games, the fun we had, everything I could remember. I felt a great sadness at leaving school. On the one hand was the excitement of going to college and not having to wear uniforms and being able to bunk classes, but on the other hand there were the pangs of sorrow at separating from so many of my close friends. Having been in the same school from kindergarten to matriculation, I had put down roots, as it were, there. I had had the same teachers, the same friends, the same everything for over 10 years, and 10 of the formative years of my life. So I knew I was going to miss it all. So I wanted to remember all of it, and I set about penning down what I fancifully called my 'memoirs' every day. At the time I had thought it was just an excuse for me to have something to write everyday. Looking back at it though, I am so thankful I did! So many little instances and events, things I'd never have remembered if I hadn't put them down bring so much joy to me as I read through them again.

Of course as time passed and I grew both older and into the habit of writing a diary, my entries grew more personal and introspective. Rather than just mentioning what had happened, I would talk about what I felt and why I thought I felt it. Then when I was going through a very rough patch in '97, my writing was cathartic to me. All the self doubts that plagued me came out of my pen to taint the pages in front of me and I felt somewhat cleansed. My diary, as an extension of my own self, became the friend and counsellor I desperately needed at that time in my life.

Once I was out of the hostel though, things took a different shape and circumstances got way out of my hand. I tried to regain in the habit during MS, but couldn't. A few entries here and there were the most I could manage. Now it's been ages since I wrote my diary and I wonder if I have a lost a big part of me with it.

Had planned to write my third and final instalment on 'The Argumentative Indian", but reading has taken a back-seat to driving to work, as it were. I had thought of a lot to say about Sen's views on the Indian N-bomb, but I've forgotten most of it and will have to go through that chapter again.

Read a few blogs the other day. Neha politely informed me that the way to get people reading my blog was to read and follow other's posts. Saw that Jyoti had a blog and went through it. She hasn't been quite active on it lately, though I'm one to say! Went through Lisa Ray's entries too and read about her struggle with Multiple Myeloma. How her marrow transplant felt like and how she fought to maintain a positive outlook towards life. In one of her latest entries from Rishikesh, she talks about how she longs to live and enjoy life longer! Now that's a sentence I get to hear from so many people, but it's so poignant when I hear it from a person about to die, who's sure to die. I saw it in my brother-in-law as he was diagnosed with a particularly malignant tumour and tried to combat it briefly, before it took his life this March. Even though my wife and I never told him just how bad the situation was (and it was bad, with brain metastasis and multiple lesions in the lung), and for a brief period when he was responding to the chemotherapy and radiotherapy he believed us, he knew his end was near. It was pitiful to see him wishing for a few more years of life so he could better provide for his wife and son who he was leaving destitute, or almost so. I knew that he had scant months to live. That every day was a miracle, the way the tumour was pressing on the vital centres of the brain. It was sad to see him begging for life and knowing that there was nothing that could be done for him. We weren't very close so it wasn't a specific response but a more general one but I could see how very unfortunate it was.

I wonder how it would be to die young. When I look at the future, I think of all I have planned for it, a house, another car, a den for myself which would be my personal retreat, growing older and retiring, and finally enjoying the life I have worked hard to achieve. What if I were to die tomorrow? Or if I got to know that I had an incurable disease and would die soon? How would I react? A part of me, the tired, jaded part of me says I would take the news resignedly. What have I to live for anyway? I'm not doing anything so momentous that my dying would take away something from a great deal of people. Then I start wondering what that last moment would be like. Lying on my death bed, waiting for the last breath to leave my body, wondering how my consciousness would fade… would my hearing go first or my vision? Would I be blind and deaf, or would I hallucinate about events long past? Would I feel the pain of leaving behind my loved ones or would my brain be too out of order to do that? What would my last thought be and how would it fade? Slowly merging into oblivion or suddenly ceasing in mid-flow?

Second thoughts on The Argumentative Indian

I had thought that I would find much to dissect, discuss and disagree with in the remaining part of the book. No such luck. The rest of the book is a meandering look at whatever seems to catch Mr. Sen's fancy. His love for Tagore and Ray are obvious and explicitly stated. Nest he goes into an analysis of what's wrong with India, with particular regard to its inequalities, whether related to gender, caste or class. I do agree with most of what he says there, but then he doesn't say anything path-breaking either. Nothing I didn't already know or suspect. How class inequalities impact every other cause of social, economic, and political inequity is something, however, I had not considered before. It makes sense, of course, as he points out when discussing communal riots across India in the last half century and more. He makes the very valid and I'm sure, underappreciated point that while most victims belonged to quite different communities, they belonged to the same class, the underprivileged and deprived. His talk on gender inequalities did not reveal anything new to me. I've always held that female empowerment has to go way beyond the freedom to get gainful employment outside the home. Education and exposure to the world to open up her mind to the possibilities there are out there are vital to make the woman an effective agent of change in the family and society. One thing I didn't know was that South-east Asian countries and China follow the same demographic trends as India with regards to preference for male progeny and the resulting skewing of the sex ratio and other indices of female health and well-being. I had assumed that with increased industrialization and a higher standard of living, those societies would have followed the Western trends towards a higher proportion of females at all age points. It seems that social ideas and practices that plague India are the same that affect these countries too. Makes you wonder then, why this male preference arises in Asian countries in the first place. As my wife pointed out, dowry as a modern institution prevails mostly in India and as far as we know, not in SE Asia. But I think, the malaise goes deeper than simple financial outlay. Asian countries are still preponderantly patriarchal. Male domination leads to the desire for male offspring. In the West, for a number of reasons (not least the dire shortage of males in the workforce post the two World Wars), females have gained a better foothold in the workplace and the society at large. Of course, the stress on education in the west over the last couple of centuries has helped to no small extent. When the opportunity arose in the 1910s, there were a lot of educated, willing women joining the workforce in various capacities. The trend got strengthened in the Second World War, and women's lib has never looked back since. I feel that in India and other Asian countries, this necessity never arose and most Indians still look upon the idea of women working as a matter of economic necessity rather than an essential part of their life experience and personality. As a result maybe, the ideas of women empowerment that arose with education and employment have not yet taken root here. Of course, Sen does not go into the depth of this question, and rightly so, because this would be a book in itself.

I still have some 50 odd pages to go, but I don't think I shall be really impressed by anything in the pages to come. I had kept my expectations deliberately low while buying this book because I have only too often endured the disappointment of dashed hopes, and I am thankful to say that I have not been misplaced in my assumption this time. By no means unreadable, but by the same measure, not a masterpiece either.

The Argumentative Indian

Have started reading Amartya Sen's 'The Argumentative Indian'. Although I've only just begun the book and have only read 50 odd pages, I have come across passages where I felt the need to annotate the margins with my own thoughts about the point being raised by the author. I have done that, infrequently, in the past but always felt like I was in some way vandalizing the book. At other times there wasn't enough space in the margins and I wonder if they could print such books with ample space for you to jot down your own thoughts on the page. In this case since I am reading the book during my daily commute, penning on the margins isn't advisable. I remember as a young teenager when I took my diary along with me on my trip to Shimla with friends. I tried writing my thoughts on the bus and didn't get down more than a few lines. It was so shaky and uncomfortable that I gave up the idea immediately. So with this book I plan to put my thoughts about what Sen has written not on paper but on my laptop instead. Waiting till I finish the book would entail a very long wait and I would forget half of what I had thought of saying by then.

The first two chapters I found somewhat enlightening though not particularly noteworthy. He talks about how we have a long history of dialogue, discussion and toleration of dissent in India, even when it comes to religion. Most of it I knew already, but the story of the sage Javali and how he rebukes Rama for his actions was new.

I found myself disagreeing with parts of his third chapter, where he talks about the BJP and Hindutva. The book was written before the last general elections of course, at a time when the Congress had just regained power after defeating the BJP. In one sentence he seems to imply that the parties allied to the BJP, the 'secular' ones like the AIADMK, the Trinamool, and the TDP fared badly because of their association with the BJP. he doesn't follow it up but just mentions it and walks away. "The voters seem to have been particularly harsh on most of the secular collaborators of the BJP." to quote him. I think this is a misinterpretation of voting trends. Tamil Nadu typically votes overwhelmingly for one party in an election only to shift entirely to the opposite end the next time round. The DMK and the AIADMK have both been alternately swept into power and swept aside in an equally convincing manner. This happened before anyone allied with the BJP and will happen again. The TDP lost because, by popular consesus, Chandrababu Naidu was seen as having focussed all his energies on the Andhra capital and broadly ignoring the vast hinterland, especially the Telangana region (which includes Hyderabad). Agriculture was hit very badly and farmer suicides were in all the news. The Trinamool I won't hazard a guess about since I don't know that much about it but the party has come into prominence only lately following the Singur agitation and other such events. Only after gaining mileage from these has it built itself as a credible alternative capable of defeating the left parties who've held sway in Bengal for over three decades now. So what I want to say is that looking at all this I don't think it was association with the BJP that cot these 'secular' parties their vote share or their seats. In fact, the BJP in power was a much milder version of the virulent ultra-right party that we see now. They were on their 'best boy' behaviour in a manner of speaking. Of course, I might have simply misinterpreted what Sen wrote and maybe he didn't mean it this way; it does seem unlikely I did though, given his left leanings.