Reservation and Brahmins ??

Heres a post on a , hmm, shall we say, 'intriguing' subject by some passionate bloke on the above captioned subject

http://srivatsanmurali.blogspot.com/2005/12/reservation-and-brahmins-updated.html

while, i tend to agree that this quota system is preventing quite a few brahmin guys from getting seats, jobs and so on : some people (especially the commenting junta) were asking for abolishment of quota altogether or even worse - TAMBRAS was asking for some 15% (not sure of the number) reservation for canditates classified FC (thats all wrong dude)

One thing is undeniable here. In a place like India (say TamilNadu to be specific) the divide between the blogging cosmopolitan dudes and the poor aam aadhmi in a village is HUGE. I dunno if any of those guys who commented on that post are even thinking of this. A thing such as a quota can be literally life changing for any of these poor guys.

Trust me, i know this from experience : i went to a government college (having to fight it out on Open quota and having the extra pressure with a rural quota in place). But I strongly believe that a few guys were really worth the quota. I could see their lives change with my own eyes. Absence of reservation will seriously hamper their chances of coming up in life or even worse, be detrimental to long term improvement amongst the less previleged.

I can think of a bunch of things:

1. Change the method of classification. FC/OC/ST whatever is based on Birth. I know quite a few guys from well 0ff families, who went to convent schools who are classified MBC (most backward class) and Scheduled tribes. ( Backward, my foot ! ) Instead you could adopt a method which can classify by income streams / school classification / or something (I know it is almost impossible to implement though)

2. In the short term implement tough conditions on junta who use these quotas. Today, you hardly find a doctor who went to MMC on a ST quota, whos going back to his native village and helping to bring his community up or an Engineer who'll donate part of his earnings to uplift fellow members of his old circle (if at all he was from a genuinely backward group).

You could say: Hey if you use quota to claim a seat then, you'll have to sign a bond to serve for 3 years in a village of your choice or something.

So it can be say, 60% open and 40% quota (classified as suggested above, with conditions in place)

As for Brahmins trying to start political parties, i think i'll let that one go down as a joke.

More...

The previous post will stand testimony to my ability to pack in so much of Bullshit in 10 minutes onto a screenful of blogger.

"Am I livin it righ (aaah aaah) ht ? Am I livin it righ (aaah aaah aaah ) ht ?
Why, Georgia Why ? "

Blog traffic !??

Hmm

Interesting bunch of days at work. Ben pretty occupied lately. Have also made a decision which possibly will have major implications in my life's course for the next few years. Its all classified of course :)

Good News is I have started playing daily and have not missed/skipped a single day for the last 10 days.

Have got myself a few new books to read, hence the fewer number of posts here. Also, i have been looking at a few other blogs by chance.

Guess whos blogging:

King kong (not Peter jackson's Hero, this ones his closely related cousin who lives around here. Went thru a couple of his posts and puked. Yuck! hes one irritating idiot)

Tim Berners Lee (you know who). If you want to read his blog do a search for 'timbl's blog'. The last time I checked, his first post registered some 900 odd comments. :))

I believe that from my own experience in the last 1 year or so, the number of blog accounts mustav like tripled or something. Dunno what the big draw is -- maybe junta like a few people to know a bit about the real 'person' whos burning a lot of Bandwidth, time and effort.

Thats not the reason I blog, i have had like 5 comments in 1 year (3 of them were bots offering me links to some crappy website).

I really like looking back at what i wrote 6 months before, when i was in college or the last month when i was home going thru a boring patch in life. Heres what iam going to blog about in my next few posts:

1. A book review of "How we got here"
2. A review of Ken Follett's books
3. Maybe even discuss my own stock analysis method, which il first post at the usual forum n then invite slaps from the regulars on the forum - then write here

mm, was tempted to join "tanushree dutta" group on Orkut - may do so later on.

Thanks to my daily 'workouts' and 'excercise' (all euphemisms of course ;) ) I sleep at 10 and wake up at 6 daily (have done for about 10 days, so thats justified)

Boxing day football on Monday:

ManU 3 - West Brom 0 (Rio ferdinand got his first goal for Utd, Scholes and Ruud got the other two).

Chelsea 3 - Fulham 2 (Tightly contested. Crespo's stunning goal from Joe Cole's cross was the winner).

Arsenal 1 - Newcastle 0 (heh heh, fuck the gunners). That said, iam suddenly happy .


Before i go, heres a seriously gud quote (plagiarized from RD)

" Love is overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of Chocolate "

blah blah blah ;)

Of late, i have somehow been sleeping really well - effectively cutting back on my emailing, blogging and watching TV.

Rather too well, iam afraid - Like 10pm to 8am sometimes. Iam still very sure that I have some kind of, um, somnipathy (aka sleep disorder) which is possibly affecting my 'normal mental and emotional functions' - according to one of brother's textbooks.

Staying with him - heres what he does to pass his pathology practicals -

STEP 1 Bribe the attendant.
STEP 2 Sneak into the lab with the attendant's help on the day before the exams with a camera phone.
STEP 3 Snap pictures of the list of slides that will be kept tomorrow.
STEP 4 Get back home with the gang, stay up all night and make a pretence of studying for tomorrow's exam. Study for only those slides on the list
STEP 5 Go to exam sans bathing, sans shaving with crumpled clothes making a pretence of intense prep for fooling the girls in class
STEP 6 Of course, pass the exam.

Heres evidence of his handiwork:

Pretty neat ! My heart swells with pride whenever i encounter such people who can make such brilliant use of technology. I still remember that we used mobiles for crap like cricket scores, giving gaali, playing pranks in class and worst of all (bah) to make phone calls :))

mmm, between the last post and this one i have travelled to chennai, delhi, agra and come back. i wud go mad if i even attempt to blog the trip.

also went to mathura near delhi-agra. The 'jhanmabhumi' of krishna as it is called. The temple for krishna was built by someone in 100BC. It was destroyed by Mohammed Ghaznavi in the 1600s, rebuilt again by some hindu king - destroyed again by sikandar lodhi in the late 1600s - rebuilt again by another hindu king - only to be destroyed again by Aurangazeb.

It was finally rebuilt by a few rajput kings and some local hindu guy - while aurangazeb got busy building a mosque on the site (like ayodhya's babri masjit). It is today gleaming with pink and white marble in the inside and barbed wire, AK47s, barracks on the outside.

Aurangazeb's mosque is right on the site even today - its like this - the temple's main column (like a brass,um, pole) is exactly in alignment with the mosque's main citadel's um,column. It looks pretty striking.There is only one wall of bricks between the temple's main shrine and the mosque's main chamber (or whatever you call it). It is pretty amazing.

LK advani and his ilk still claim that the mosque is on holy ground and must be razen to the ground (like it was in ayodhya). he even proposed to take his air conditioned rath yatra to mathura to stir up trouble. The point here is that - such an issue can awake such HUGE sentiments and emotions that people like him and the likes use it as an issue to unite mass support.

I never realizd how big this is until i actually saw it, felt it in the cool december air that day.

Lest, i end on a,um,morbid note heres a recollection of yesterday's main events on TV.

1. saw 'sarkar' on sahara one. (movie for 7 mins, ad break for 10 minutes every single time) But not a bad movie. Katrina kaif looked yum.

2. chelsea vs arsenal. (the gunners went away with their scrawny guns wrapped around their runts) chelsea 2 - arsenl 0. although arsenal were unlucky - i still derived a lot of satisfaction watching the match.

3. Saw a trailer for Disney's new movie "chicken little". Cute character names like "Fish", "Runt of the litter - (a pig), "Abby, the ugly duckling" (little's love interest). i wish i cud see it someday.

Now, id better go before my somnipathy swings back to its old ways.

Oracle Speak

QUOTE---

If there's one thing that you leave here with today, it should be this: And I'll start with a question to get to my point. If you could pick 10% of one person in this room to own or 'go long' for the next 30 years, who would it be?

It wouldn't be the person with the highest IQ; it wouldn't be the star athlete; you would look for certain other qualities…

And if you had to pick one person to 'short' for the next 30 years, who would it be?

Now ask yourself why you have made those selections.

If you've considered these questions properly, the person you've gone long is probably someone who is honest, courageous, and dependable;

the person you've shorted is probably someone who is egotistical and likes to take the credit.

The point is that success is mostly dependent upon elective qualities, not anything with which you are born. You can choose to be dependable or not. And it's not easy to change, so choose correctly now.

Bertrand Russell once said, "The chains of habit are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken." So ask yourself, "Who do I want to be?" At the end of this process you should determine that the person you want to buy is yourself. You all are holding winning tickets.

-- UNQUOTE

Now, who said this? :) Who else, Mr.Buffett himself.

@#$%, you simply cant stop adoring the guy

Mon nom est Abhilash !

Mon nom est Abhilash. That in french is supposed to be saying 'My name is Abhilash'

Well, to get to the issue without beating around too much, i have always hated my name.

i still quarrel with my uncle who thought up this name (he and my mom(his sister) being half malloo and his wife being fully so must have heavily weighed on him when he made this sorry, spur of the moment blunder - which i'l live to regret, well, all my life :) )

he went on to redeem himself an year later when he named my brother "abhishek", and subsequently named his own son a few years later on as "harish" - cool names both.

back in school, by the watchmen, drivers and the shop keepers, i was always asked if i was musalmaan. i was told that my name is very muslim sounding. (not that i worry about what iam)

the more sophisticated of them used to ask me about which part of kerala i come from, to make matters worse in malayalam - my reply all the time was " gyaan malayalam ariyilla" - i dont know malayalam

adding to this identity crisis, i always been put down as Roll No:1 wherever i went.This is a BIG TIME pain in the a@#. i was 20012201 at college, 2001001 at the hostel, Roll No: 1 at school. Proxy attendance and coming late to college was extra hard for me, and wudav suffered a great deal more if not for the service rendered by some of my good friends there (ol pandi, chetan deserve special mention)

cant help but feel jealous when i hear names like raj, ravi, mahesh, ajay or amit. they do seem very nice.

maybe i'll follow gogol ganguli's footsteps and call myself "Nikhil" or something.

(Heh heh, personally i think Nikhil is one name which will sound as phoney as hell, especially on me)

p.s - i dont think any1s reading my blog at all, not that i shud be bothered. but complacency can lead to excessive spillage of beans, with obvious implications :)

Simplifly !?

Day: 3 December 2005, Saturday - Hyderabad

There has been a lot of ink and print wasted on how India is growing and how infrastructure growth must keep up with things - i never had too much of a direct experience of how this is impacting things. (I travel 40ks on pot holed bullock cart tracks that barely pass as roads :) almost daily. But that somehow failed to capture my imagination until this incident)

While Captain Gopinath motto of taking flying to the masses is a noble ideal - so far he has been successful only to an extent - a lot of things need improvement.

On this particular day, we were scheduled on a 9 pm flight to chennai. Coincidentally, there were about 7 flights (3 deccans, 2 saharas, 1 jet and 1 IA) including our scheculed for the same boarding gate (incidentally Hyderabad has only 4 gates, of which 2 remained closed). Now, amongst the 7 schduled, there was one for Mumbai which was supposed to be at 6:40, which already had to be delayed by 2 hours because of some problem or the other.

At around 9:30, with 5 of the flights yet to leave we were asked to board the chennai flight, while the mumbai crowd were still kept waiting. Now, this triggered a major outburst from a bunch of old guys who cornered a deccan employee and made him weep.

Things got so hot that at one point the bakra's and subsequently captain Gopinath's parentage were questioned. The poor deccan guy got so worked up that he hit a passenger who called Capt. Gopinath a ha#$%i m#$@$#d. Security was called in to diffuse the situation and subsequently a bunch of passengers demanded that their money back, while we boarded the chennai flight thanking our stars.

Now, while Capt.Gopi and his gang have made air travel hugely more affordable for all of us, it is the Government who shud play along and provide these guys with the support in terms of sops and infrastructure support.

The next time i see some left spokesman crib when the airport privatization issue comes up, the nearest reporter must shove his mike up the guy's #$%.