Smemories

Hii,

I am back home and readjusting to the city life. Being a hosteler for four years has definitely had its toll on me. Here I get scoldings for not sleeping on time, waking up late, skipping breakfast, avoiding a bath, drinking too much coke, chatting online, watching soaps… basically everything I do! Its tough having small talk (something which is NOT about the new version of linux or that scandal at view point) with grandfathers and uncles and aunts at wedding receptions when you have interacted only with your classmates all this while. You have to be careful not to remember people’s mother, sister and family during conversations. You no longer have to buy the cheapest stuff and pick out the most reasonable restaurant when you are dining with family. It takes getting used to.

Today I talk about “the forgotten sense”. How often you smell something and you remember an event related to it years ago. This happens instantly. So many times we ask ourselves “Where have I seen this before?” or “Where have I heard this before?” but we almost never forget something we’ve smelt. Smells serve as index keys into our memories. Smell evokes memory in a way that no other sense can. We rely on our eyes and ears even to the extent of suppressing our awareness of what our nose tells us.

Whenever bleaching powder is used to clean the bathroom, I have this strong urge to go swimming. The pungent smell of chlorine reminds me of the time I used to go swimming with mom, dad and my brother. Me and my brother used to bring the pool to life. We were the (relatively) expert swimmers there. Being the usual attention seeker I am, I used to perform all sorts of acrobatics in the pool - somersaults, flip turns, standing upside-down. One of my favs used to be dives from the springboard. Sadly I didn’t find a springboard at any other pool I went to after that one. We used to have underwater fights 25 feet below at the bottom of the pool! We used to bet on who can hold his breath the longest and he would always cheat to win.

Humans can identify about 10,000 different smells. The process of olfaction is not clearly understood till date. We are not sure how smells are stored. It is believed that they form a chemotopic map in the brain. We don’t even know how or why smell is so intrinsically related to memories. Many people use pictures to remember difficult things like a list of telephone numbers or digits of pi etc. It may be interesting to see if smells can be used in a similar or perhaps a better way! Another interesting thought is that when they show these 4D and 5D movies, they can add another dimension by adding smell related to the scene.

Two amazing facts to end the post :

* Body odours can be used to deterministically identify blood related kin (parents, children and full siblings)!!

* Females can smell many things males cant!!

Cheers,

Rohan

PS : If you got interested by what you just read, you can google for “smound”, “digital nose” and “hyperosmia”.

The IIT Dream

As they say, IIT is every boy’s dream. Here’s the one I had last night.

The Scene :

Its Convocation Day. I will get a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering and end the IITG chapter for good. But wait, the game is not so simple. The Dean has announced that after the students get their degree, they have just a few hours to pack up all their belongings and leave the campus. Failing to catch the last bus to the city, they will be trapped in IITG forever. The campus is a desolate landscape full of cacti and snakes and dragons and other devilish creatures. It is surrounded by an electrified barbed wire fence. The main gates are solid iron with sharp spikes on them. Beyond the campus lies FREEDOM.

The Outcome:

I ran here and there gathering my things from different people. IITG in the dream appeared larger and hillier than ever. Funny things kept happening all the time. Dihing Hostel disappeared for some reason and I took ages trying to find it. I met a million people along the way who caught me up in stories, discussions and goodbyes. Finally, I couldn’t pack up my things and the suitcase wouldn’t close. As you might have guessed, I just missed the last bus by a minute. I ran after it for a mile before I woke up to sweet reality, panting and gasping.

The Implications :

• Its been a harsh journey! It has tested me to the core and brought out the best and worst in me. It has given me lots of stories and discussions to cling on to. It has made me interact with a variety of people, all of whom are very good in their own field.
• A lot of people have borrowed things from me and I have lost track of those.
• I am a lousy packer.
• The Dean and his rules have messed up our heads big time!!
• Even though I want to escape it, a part of me will remain trapped in IITG for an eternity

Yours Truly,

Rohan

Near The End Of An Era

I write again after a long time. Its not because there was nothing worth writing about but because there were too many things. Life really took off in the last few months. One update after another. And now as the last exams of my college life approach, I found the time to write I always thought that my last semester would be very uneventful. That is the way I had wanted it to be.

As they say, sometimes things work out for the better. The first surprise came in the form of a phone call. A patent was being filed on my summer internship work. Although it takes 2-3 years to get the approvals (hopefully), it was a super proud moment for me. To be the first one to think of some idea in a world with 7 billion people! The next surprise stared at me from my email inbox. I got my job posting at the Googleplex in California!! Man! I pinched myself like a hundred thousand times!!! Like a cherry on the icing came the next surprise. As of now, I will be joining the Google Search Team. I’m so happy that it feels weird.

The last couple of weeks have been rather dull with reports and assignments to submit. I realized how hard it is to do some substantial research as I wrote my BTP report.

This is the pool of human knowledge. We are born (naked ) at O. And so we start swimming around here and there. Everyone who attends high school and is not a retard goes till A. This is the minimum knowledge required to survive in a society with traffic lights and credit cards. Then we choose our streams and specialize. Point B represents graduation. It is after this point that the going gets tougher. There are few people who can answer your doubts. Information is not available freely like that on wikipedia. Hunting for information alone is a huge task near point C.  It is so easy to lose track, go around in circles and waste your time.

Time is precious. Partly because of our inability to determine how much of it is left. Our goal is to go beyond C, to D. Currently it takes about 28 years of learning to get a Ph.D. The life expectancy of a human is about 69 years. If the pool continues to grow, human knowledge may saturate a few hundred years down the line (unless we find a way to become immortal!!). Just a little something to think about. I am off to study. Must get past B.

- Rohan

PS : I made that pic!!!

Into The Wild

I saw this movie a couple of weeks ago. It is based on a true story. Its about a simple guy who graduates from college with good grades and a corporate job. He soon realizes that this is not the life he wants. He is fed up of the flawed education system, money-and-power hungry world and the fragile relationships surrounding him(doesn’t that sound familiar?! ). He gives it all up. Donates all his savings to charity. Throws away all proof of his identity. Breaks all ties with his friends and family. Takes a bagpack and into the wild he goes….

Living in the wilderness is not easy. Food is hard to come by. You need to be able to hunt animals and forage for fruits and vegetables. Compare that with ordering from a menu at a 5 Star! You have to arrange for clean potable water everyday. Imagine no taps! You have to save up for the lean period. Imagine living in the absence of markets! You need respite from gusty winds, raucous rains, biting cold and the big hard sun. Each time you think you’ve mastered the art, nature has a new trick or two up its sleeve. Even though it appears to be a difficult task, man is just another animal. It is there within each one of us. Survival and resourcefulness are the most ancient of human qualities. How strange is it that most of us spend an entire lifetime without ever experiencing these!!

I view the world a little differently ever since my Bigger Picture post. If you look at the earth like Darwin did, you will realize that we are just actors in the process of natural selection. We are intermediaries who pass on favourable genes to the next generation. Darwin’s theory says ‘Survival of the fittest‘. Terrible things have happened to our planet in the past, like the Ice Age(when polar ice sheets covered much of North America and Eurasia) or the Messinian Salinity Crisis(when the whole of Medditerranean Sea dried up) or the PETM(when global temperatures rose by about 6°C)!! Being alive today means something. We have braved it all. Yeah, many of us want to do incredibly meaningful things with our life and invent new technology and win the Nobel Prize and be remembered forever. And it is equally important that we enable the future generations to do the same. Suddenly I know why Joey is my hero. His favourite things in life are food and sex.

Coming back to the character in the movie, he claims to have experienced “real happiness”. In the wild, he is his own boss. There are no restrictions, no rules, no responsibilities. Throughout his life, he maintains that “We seek happiness only in human relationships but it is scattered in nature all around us“. He lives on merrily for a few years before accidentally eating some poisonous berries. He spends his last days in illness and solitude with nobody to nurse him, nobody to care for him. He thinks how different his life would have been had he not gone away. He closes his eyes and sees his lover, his friends, his family. The last thing he writes down in his journal before dying is

“Happiness only real when shared“.

– Rohan

Life in 2011

Hi,

Here I am. Writing for the first time in 2011! A very happy new year to all of you. I’m afraid my new year hasn’t started off all that well. Things have been bumpy lately with the car accident, the missed flight, the failed ATM transaction where I didnt get the money but the amount got deducted from my account!!! Well yeah, I have had quite the experience when it comes to recovering missing credit or spending lonely nights at the airport. Also good health hasnt been my friend for some time now. I wonder how I always get the rarest of diseases like a stye or median rhomboid glossitis (WTF)!!

It’s really funny when you realize what an important part LUCK has been playing in your life. I mean not getting hit by a bus or not forgetting to breathe for 20 odd consecutive years is a huge achievement!!! I recommend Just My Luck for further details. It feels so scary when LUCK leaves you. Perhaps Murphy or whoever came up with those laws is a genious. I sooo wish there was a Luck Potion in real life (like the one in Harry Potter books)!! Anyways, whenever you have been taken down, dont be the guy who sits in the dark, waiting for the light to find him. Wear that ear to ear grin of yours, get up and rock (courtesy : TT Secy and stupid morning sessions )! \m/

Now moving on to a rather philosophical question. You see, there’s this “journey“. And then there’s this “destination“. You have two options. Either enjoy the journey, make friends, have fun and risk not reaching the destination at all OR stay focussed, work hard and march along in the right direction with a hope that plenty of merriment awaits you at the destination(in case you do get there). So with some uncertainties involved everywhere, what do you value more – the “journey” or the “destination“??? You don’t want any regrets later on…

A few more thoughts on my mind before I call it a day…

- Being good seldom fetches rewards!!!

- For those of you who are on Facebook : Admit that you are a self obsessed attention seeker or else you are just a hypocrite!

- Mila Kunis is hotness personified!!! ♥ ♥ ♥

- Sometimes its better to be yourself… instead of the awesome person the world thinks you are!

Cheers,
Rohan

The Irreversible

So I did the irreversible today
Several times had I been spared
The calm before the storm had warned me
I was too proud to be scared.

From awesome to minus awesome
in a matter of seconds.
No invisibility cloak to hide yourself
when reality beckons.

Million ways in which this could have been avoided
A cage of negative thoughts gropes your confidence
Milllion people who could be blamed for the mishap
Denial. Anger. Bargain. Depression. Acceptance.

Some stains cannot be washed
Some wounds forever pain
Some dents will always be dents
Crumpled paper will never be plain again.

The past will continue to haunt
The future will see me banned
All the perfumes of Arabia
will not sweeten this little hand.

In moments of despair, I cry for a time machine
To undo this permanent scar
Before you get any wrong ideas
I wrecked my first car!

– <sad, depressed and lucky to be alive> ‘k’

The Bigger Picture

Once I saw the railway tracks. Straight and parallel till the end of the world. I thought for a moment and came to a consensus. From there on my world was one dimensional. Then I went to the beach and observed the mighty ocean. It was like a blue bedsheet streching till the end of the world. I thought for a moment and realized that I had been wrong all this while. From there on my world was two dimensional. Time and again we believe what we see. Time and again we realize that our opinion was flawed. Time and again we add new dimensions to our lives. The picture keeps getting bigger and bigger. The last few weeks have been a major eye opener for me on this learning curve of life.

With December came the dreaded placement season. I was sitting pretty with my pre-placement offer. For the entire 7th sem I had been like the James Bond of IITG – Licensed to chill Tension was looming large over the masses. Big companies with big CTC (cost to company) packages were coming to the campus to handpick the chosen ones! It would be wrong to say that I saw the placements. I witnessed the phenomenon called placements!! A display of emotions like I had never before seen at this otherwise serene and ‘so not happening’ place. Careers were made and ruined in moments. Lucky few making it to the next round of interviews. Dejected souls making the long walk back to the hostels. Ecstatic punching of the air. The “I got screwed” look. The crossed fingers. Marathon interview sessions. One written test after another. Facebook status messages saying “Finally… “. The nervousness even got to me. Its like watching a last over finish Indo-Pak cricket match or a FIFA world cup penalty shootout! I remember not being able to sleep till the first round of results were declared. But for me the best thing I saw during placements is the offstage friendship. People who had hardly ever talked in the last 3 years were helping each other out. Congratulations, consolation, tips and words of encouragement were flying around all over the place. I have never seen IITG this united before. I have seen isolated fragments of IIT and I have seen the bigger picture. Saying which one I like more would be stating the obvious.

Next it was time for me to goto IIT Delhi for Inter IIT Sports Meet 2010. Forget everything else, just concentrate on “Delhi” . It was my second time in the capital of India. This place is just amazing!! I was particularly impressed by two things. First of all the metro service. Life in the metro feels like you just went underground and left the poor and hungry image of India behind you. It is simply state of the art! The second highlight in Delhi is the Delhi University or DU. DU rocks… for reasons which I cannot proudly admit in public. But DU rocks!!! If you are a student and not at DU, your life is a total waste Another thing which strikes you is the cosmopolitan nature of the crowd. All kinds of people coexist. From the rich, to the richer, to the richest. Nobody is too big for Delhi. There are businessmen, there are scientists, there are ministers. Even if you are the President of India, there is always Rajnikanth

Sooner or later you realize that life is like a perfect fractal. There is always a bigger picture, no matter who you are or where you are. You just have to look beyond yourself. It is not wrong to stick to your perspective but it is always better to broaden your vista and take that extra dimension into consideration. Everybody has their own limitations but competition with yourself is the kind you really need to win. FYI, this is the advice I gave to a friend. He insisted that I put it in the blog. Follow at your own risk.  :)

Yours Truly,
Rohan

Appreciating The Appreciable

Hiii,

So I follow the tradition of appending a post to my blog during every exam week. I also follow the tradition of screwing up at least one paper during every exam week. This time it happens to be “Random Processes”. As you might have guessed, the exam was just another random process. I made my random walk out of the exam hall fairly quickly.

This time around, I am absolutely enthuless as far as exams are concerned. Relax! I won’t crib about the useless curriculum and ridiculous course structure at IIT. Throughout the semester I have been doing only those things which genuinely interest me. I have always kept an eye open for things that make me want to say phrases like “gawwwdness”, “amazzzzzing”, “sab khatam kar diya bhaaaaiiii”, “total phodaaaps”… I keep innovating.

The feeling of appreciation comes so naturally to me when I come across people who do things that I can’t do, haven’t tried  to do, didn’t even think of trying to do, thought of as impossible. Its wonderful. Its like being in love (wonder what that’s like ). My heart skips a beat when Sachin continues to score more and more centuries, when Slash plays the Godfather Theme,  when Barack Obama stuns Eric Schmidt by answering this question, when this girl catches the base ball!!! Sometimes there are no words!!!

Appreciable things can be academic in nature as well. I have watched some documentaries countless number of times and I’m still in awe, like the one on Andrew Wiles who gave the proof for a 350 year old (simple looking) mathematical problem called Fermat’s Last Theorem. Did you know that there’s an unbelievable polynomial, all of whose positive values are prime numbers!!! There are innumerable problems in mathematics which are yet to be solved. There is a set of problems called the Millenium problems. Solving any one will fetch you 1 Million US Dollars!!! It has been my dream to solve a certain P versus NP problem ever since I came to know about it. Its getting too mathematical in here. Topic change. For the records, I love Maths.

It doesn’t always have to be a big thing. It can be as easy as a witty comment on facebook, a beautiful simple poem in a blog, a new Rajnikanth joke(!!!), a double meaning sentence, anything but the expected. Flash of brilliance. Words of wisdom. An act of genius. Skills that I don’t possess. Be two steps ahead of the others and I will be your fan forever.

I have always thought of humans as programmed devices i.e. advanced computers. Instead of studying for the paper yesterday, we wasted a considerable amount of time on debating if humans follow the Markovian assumption (and I regret it ). In fact the whole human genome project is set out to prove precisely the same thing. They (bio technologists) try to make living things more like machines and we (computer scientists) try to make computers more like living things. One fine day our paths may meet. I firmly believe that they will but a part of me doesn’t want them to. I like it if people do different things. I like it if people do things differently. I like it if someone acts unexpectedly. I like different. I feel happy to see the change even if I can’t be the change.

Cheers,
k

PS: Just as an afterthought, its way too easy to impress me these days!!

Still Striving for Excellence

Go traveller go, keep going through the melancholy rain.
Go against the gusty wind, keep going in the searing heat.
Keep going until the road ceases to exist.
Keep going until your heart ceases to beat.

There’ll be times when you’ll want to take a sip of water,
wish it was all over, sit down and rest for an instant.
But soon you will be up and away, you never really had a choice.
You are only Human and for you change is the only constant.

You were not meant to make peace with what you have.
All the creator wanted is for you to keep forever going.
Your ancestors were destined to invent the wheel.
Even if you don’t know why, you are destined to keep it rolling.

Along the way you will meet angels.
Along the way you will meet demons.
They will lure you, bribe you, seduce you,
blindfold you, spin you around and let go.
You will feel alone and lost and helpless.
But thou shalt toil and toil hard
to come back on track and regain your foothold.
And it wont matter if you did it
for the want of success or for the fear of failure.

Regret not the things that happenned in the past.
Regret not the time when a fork in the road did come.
Whichever path you chose then is the golden one.
Because as they say, All roads lead to Rome.

In this convoluted continuum of time and space,
one day we will have found our worthy place.
Our journey will come to an abrupt end
and there will be no further progress.
But till then we have sworn to settle
for true perfection and nothing less.

Ladies and gentlemen. Boys and girls. Such is this journey of life.

Yours Truly,
k

Quotable Quotes!

Hi,

I have the habit of saving a good status message when I see one. Have been doing this for a long time. Just sharing a bit  of my collection with you here.

1. When u want what u’ve never had…u must do what u’ve never done …!!

2. Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart.

3. Why didn’t Heisenberg have a child? When he had the momentum, he couldn’t find the position and when he found the position, he didn’t have the momentum.

4. Monday is a bad way to spend 1/7th of your life.

5. A man can love million girls but only a TRUE man can love one girl in a million ways…

6. Every year starts with a hangover and ends with the booze !!!

7. When ppl talk behind ur back…..it simply means tht u r two steps ahead of them!!!

8. There are three kinds of people in the world: those that can count, and those that can’t.

9. The trouble with being punctual is there is no one to appreciate it.

10. This is wat happens when an unstopable force meets an immovable object. Looks like we are destined to do this forever…

11. He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man!

12. The problem with barter system is that hungry weavers have to search for naked farmers and vice versa.

13. Only two things are infinite : the universe and human stupidity. I am not so sure about the former.

14. Something I still can’t find on Google – The true meaning of life!

15. Never keep ur heart as strong as iron .. coz u may never know whose heart turns out to be a magnet.

16. Where life has no value, sometimes death has its price…

17. Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.

18. Believe me, all this is a cruel joke. When it ends, i’ll be free and u’ll be me.

19. Never ASSUME as it makes an ASS of U and ME.

20. When The Winds Of Change Blow… Some People Build Walls And Others Windmills !!!

21. There are no pacts between lions and men.

22. Without competition we’d still be single celled organisms!

23. If women ruled the world, there’d be no Wars!!!. Only a bunch of jealous countries not talkin to each other!!!!!!!

24. The biggest difference between the two sexes is : Women think that men will change, and men think that women will never change.

25. Life was much easier when apple and blackberry were just fruits.

– Rohan