The melting....

We are back to normalcy, weather-wise at least. I heard airline schedules have jumped back on track as well. Overpasses are safer. I can see the grass now. The ice is melting. It is chilly outside but not depressing. Sort of what triggers nostalgia. I was listening to an old time favorite song of mine I found on YouTube. It is from a Telugu movie called Geetanjali made and released around the time I was in 10th standard back home (circa 1989). I believe the movie won some popular awards for all-round entertainment. The feel of the movie is very romantic/nostalgic/dreamy sprinkled with hard-hitting tragedies. It was remade in Hindi later as Yaad Rakhegi Duniya starring Aditya Pancholi (Panscholi??) and Rukhsar. Don't know if it captured the magic of Mani Ratnam's original. The BGM and songs in Geetanjali were phenomenal. One technician Mani stopped working with soon after that was ace cinematographer P.C. Sreeram, who along with former started the effect of glistening faces in dimly lit foreground and bright backgrounds in movies. Went really well with the hardly-open-mouth dialogues in Mani Ratnam's movies - anyone remember all the whispering and throaty dialogue deliveries in Roja and Dil Se?:) Anyways, check out scenes/songs from Mouna Ragam, Agni Nakshtram, Nayakan to see what I mean. Today is a designated living-in-the-past day....

Brrrrr...

Its crazy cold here today. Some office campuses are closed. My office had about 25% attendance today morning; I expect it to get thinner by afternoon. I don't know what happened to the MLK walks and marches scheduled around town.

Today is Makar Sankranti in many parts of India. It is also Pongal, a harvest festival, for the Tamils. Pongal literally means "boil over", figuratively means "overflow"; and the hope is that a good harvest will result in abundance all year round. The days around Pongal (both before and after) have special significances that I only wish I knew. Usually in times of doubt, I resort to two of my good friends - Google and Wikipedia. Here is the Pongal page on the latter. Helps when we know so little about our numerous traditions and festivals. In Maharashtra, where I grew up, we greet each other with "tilguL kha aNi god (pronounced 'goad') god bol". tilguL - sweet sesame balls, kha - eat, aNi - and, god - sweet, bol - say. Needless to say, tilguL are a rage this time of the year in Maharashtra. Someday, internet and time willing, I hope to understand the variety of language and traditions present to this day, much of which I follow without, at all, understanding the background and basis.

It is amazing how much information one has on his/her fingertips today. Plus there are perspectives and opinions to learn from as well. I always find good opinions on Slashdot. Folks, by and large, give intelligent comments. But it would be unfair to mention only that. It is amazing how there are a ton of opinions and a zillion ways of expressing these. Each opinion has a unique flavor that encourages an equally individual way of thought. This is especially good (works for me) for a person conditioned by experiences to think in a couple of different ways only, and therefore effect a restricted look at everything around; sort of like a horse with blinkers. Sometimes, at work, during meetings, we go around the table discussing the merits/demerits of a certain project, and I notice how the same opinion I have is effectively delivered by someone else by careful choice of words and convincing sentence constructions. Those in turn trigger a better, more intelligent discussion with wider ranging corollaries. If you have seen/experienced this before don't forget to leave a comment. Too cold and grey outdoors for me to continue....later folks.

Shubhaarambh!!!

I received a mail from Sushil today prodding me to blog. We had talked sometime back about elevating group thinking to the next level while providing a forum to share knowledge. Inertia is an immense force to battle. Plus, talk is cheaper. There were other apprehensions. When you write you suddenly become conscious of being judged for your intelligence, where as when you talk informally in a group, you can make up with emotion, hand gestures and voice modulation what you lack in depth of material. So, for me, blogging is going to be, among other things, an exercise to convey through the written word not only what I know, but also how I feel about something.

I hope to post (and discuss) on pretty much any topic of interest. Suggestions are most welcome. There are some areas closer to my heart than others, and I may be able to give better perspective on those. That I hope will not stifle my dabbling in other topics - those that I have relatively no knowledge, but want to learn more about.

The stars have aligned, the time is right!

So here's my first post. Check out the radio programme on Indian Mathematics by BBC. Not the best (I will define "best" as I continue blogging) in my opinion, but certainly a decent discussion
and an introduction to the interested one to "Google" away the terms and keywords.