Copycatting the Personal Experience Pathway

After many years of spending time writing (rather, rewriting) papers, presentations and of late, proposals for everything from a 100$ travel award to a 1000$ raise to a 10000$ grant to buy time and some peace to present the next best thing after sliced bread, it is not often that one has the time or the liberty to look back at where and how it all started.

It started without definition or form or goal and in all vagueness that research can be and often is, without any fanfare, remarkableness or preciseness, without any agendas except learning (sadly, a thing of the past now), and definitely without any indication to the odds against than for. It led to knocking on the doors of many a "friend" to ship papers and books, even an email to a someone in California (who later turned out to be an extended relative via marriage) to ship me papers from his days of yore, to pestering the Xerox staff in the Himalayan mess of a clutterbox called the fourth floor of the Old Library building right past Gajendra Circle to get me copies of papers as soon as possible (translated as by the end of the day or two), to running to other Universities (and how they made me feel like IITM was a relative cornucopia in terms of library infrastructure and books) and exploiting the Inter-Library Loan system to the hilt, to exasperating at seeing papers from old journal collections torn by lazy neanderthals who could nt get a photocopy of the paper and had to resort to the meanest and vilest form of abuse in research, and more. Cute little matrix manipulations saw me cycle my way fast and furious to meet my B.Tech advisor one fine day at 8 P.M. after the mess of a mess food only to find his door locked. One thing led to another and the next few days will witness the 11th anniversary of my B.Tech thesis defense -- a borderline open defiance of a post-adolescent presentation to the Committee (some of who know me now by name, some by allusion and hearsay, and some who have not heard at all) with the a priori information and personal conviction that I had slogged and aced through the ordeal in the ocean of undergraduate research. Unlike many in my batch of 90 odd electrical engineering degree-holders, I took the final year project more as a thesis and less as a project even if I did not put in the effort to learn LaTeX to type out the report then. The results were remarkable at least in a personal capacity, even if not revolutionary or even remotely useful in a technological sense and definitely not timely in terms of contributions to that area (it has been cited a good four times since then -- a pass for a first paper I would reckon with the experience I have now).

And more than the running around in the goal of learning and the cute little matrix manipulations that I did when the word matrix did nt mean much more than just a stack of numbers, the process of converting the B.Tech thesis to a published paper in the IEEE Trans. on Sig. Proc. was indeed a bigger ordeal. It saw accusations of "plagiarism" with suggestions to look at similar research published by a star (and his student) in the field just a year before I even knew how a FFT algorithm was implemented on a DSP. While I can laugh it off now, being called out as a plagiarist on your first work when you did nt know that IEEE Xplore existed and did nt have access to it as a B.Tech student lowest on the totem-pole, and when you did nt get the latest editions of the journal without a good six month delay was indeed a catastrophe that "psyches" you out for a while. But if I did shrug off the accusation and write a rebuttal that led to the subsequent publication of the paper (minus what I thought was indeed my cute little trick even if someone else claims it today officially), much of it is owed to where I came from, how I grew up, and what I saw on the way.

I come from a remarkably unremarkable lower middle-class background with no special or extraordinary fondness for education that the Brahmins are expected/believed to have. My mother was a school teacher who later became a Headmistress but this had essentially no deep bearing on me. It did take an extraordinary amount of effort to pay the high-school fees which kept climbing just as my whiskers kept growing showing me in real terms what an exponential function really was. We were happy to have three square meals a day and a ~400 sq. feet roof to live under, and in hindsight I am happy for just that. I did nt know what the JEE was till a few days before the 11th standard began but jumped on it like a mad dog without any rhyme or reason when I learned about it from friends who had been preparing for it at least a year before that, if not more. It would be untrue to explain away the madness to some "merit vs reservations" issue, but perhaps the fact that one would nt need to mug things up may be swayed me a little. Note that I was definitely good at mugging things up if I wanted to: you just have to ask me to repeat the Periodic Table and even today I will not make a mistake in either the Lanthanide or the Actinide series (I did remember the names of elements 92 to 108 or whatever too, the IUPAC changed them way too often for my comfort and I have lost track), nor have a mistake in the gorgeous Kannagi's dialogue to the Sundara Panidyan in Silappadikaaram, nor make a mistake in what conditions a semi-group or a semi-norm need to satisfy.

That aside, I attended coaching classes in 11th standard from people who were labeled as remarkable stars at coaching aspiring minds to success in the JEE. Sadly, I was not up to the mark for their high standards nor belonged to the peer class of elite-men nor was deeply enchanted by the religious worship of these stars nor could afford the Rs. 1000 x 3 (a princely Rs. 200 per course hike from the 11th standard fees) that had to be paid for continuing their classes in the 12th standard. Nor could I afford the newly minted books for JEE coaching and had to live on hand-me-downs of B.Sc. first year books in Chemistry, a 1990 edition of the O.P. Agarwal, and even older versions of the S.L. Loney's for which I am extremely thankful. I did beg and borrow books, tutorial sheets and class notes from many friends who were extremely generous even if irritated by my obnoxious nature of borrowing stuff with no sense or sensibility or rationale. This was the number one lesson in doing good research: beg, borrow, bleat or steal, but get the infrastructure needed to get good results. Lesson two: and be grateful and thankful when it is all said and done and give back. Hoarding knowledge makes no sense when people have stood on the shoulder of giants to see the giant's feet. Tilak's words of "Repression is repression, if it is legal, it must be resisted peacefully. If it is illegal, it must be illegally met" is even more apt for the hoarding knowledge economy that hides behind the cloak and dagger of copyrights, private datasets, intellectual property, etc.

I come from the 1997-2001 IITM batch of electrical engineering, one that was notorious for the repeat JEE after exam papers leaked somewhere in the "North." While many people gave up upon this news and latched on to whatever good engineering programs they could get into, I had no choice but to stick to JEE. This was primarily because I had not paid any attention to TNPCEE and my disdain for it was witnessed by the fact that I started reading Math three hours before the exam with a borrowed book (of course!) that was handed to me at 6 A.M. for the 9:30 A.M. exam. I did my best given that I had no idea how to solve a second-order differential equation (something that the State board syllabus covered, but that was not a part of the JEE). I ended up somewhere in the mid-ranks that fetched me a "free seat" in some no-name college in the outskirts of Madras for which we blew Rs. 6000 (a rather princely sum even in the hope that the financial outlook may be more promising down the line). So back to JEE, it was indeed a blessing in disguise as I had messed up my first take at JEE. My assessment of the leaked JEE was that I would have ended up in Civil Engineering or so and would have climbed eventually to electrical engineering on the back of the first year performance that would have allowed a branch change. It is not often that people get to write two JEEs in a single year and I was not going to clutch at straws when the second opportunity came along. Pepping up by screaming at myself in the bathroom mirror and making myself believe that the world at large can go suck my thumb and what else, I was the essential embodiment of how to channelize all the anger and hatred at the world and "you people" into doing well at the JEE. The twenty minute walk to the Exam hall was done without noticing the face of a single woman (old or young, mediocre or beautiful) and all that overflowing testosterone and adrenaline were focussed on just one task: do well in the Exam(s). While I do not remember much of the Physics (I was chronically too bad in Physics to have done anything but cross the subject cut-off) or the Chemistry exams (just barely moderate given that I did nt get many of the mechanisms right which would have made the exam a spectacular success), I was in a zone of my own in the Math exam. Of the twenty questions, I remember getting 18 definitely right (you just know when you get them right) and at least one partially right. Never ever after have I come close to such a zone in my life and I have had my share of qualifying exams in ECE and Math. Essentially pumped by the Math performance, I did get the AIR of 0316, not too bad for where I started from. Lesson three: do not settle for a pigsty just because you have that available now and here. Never be contented.

I did learn much later that people in my ballpark of the AIR also had very similar overall performances, but nothing as extreme as me where one subject whopped the relative mediocrity of the other two. In some sense, my performance majorized most people's who belonged to approximately the same class. So it was indeed a one point success model that put me at IITM, but I guess I would have stuck back at home and prepared for JEE again given the hopelessness of the no-name college I got admitted into. So in some sense, I was lucky, but I would have manufactured luck anyway if it did nt hit me in 1997. Lesson four: know your strengths very well.

The fact that I sucked really badly at Physics made me feel shameful and I borrowed class notes of JEE from friends at IITM to get to the point of "deserving" to be in an IIT. As one grows old, one realizes that it is easier to pile your plate with things that need to be done, but it is even harder to actually do them and do them all on time. Thus, I am indeed shameful to admit that I still suck at Physics today and I cannot see anything past a free-body diagram of simple mechanical systems even though I am supposed to see and know more, and in fact, feel more. My intuition for Physics is at its infantile best, yet life goes on. I stay away from Physics-related arenas like device physics as much as I can even though the big-picture is more or less clear. Further, I could visualize nothing, so all those Engineering drawing related subjects were bowling me out like what Zak did to Steve Waugh. That essentially decided that I was not getting to be a Circuits man or a Devices fellow, but a Comm nutjob with a growing curiosity for antennas and the like. Lesson five: know your weaknesses even better.

My experiences in IITM are as mundane as anyone else's peppered with fascinating interludes into many esoteric subjects not all of which are describable in words. I have seen my fair share of the smart ones and sadly, I have not been overawed into submission but by two people who were neither AIR 001x's nor doing "research" now. One is an equally lower middle-class rags-to-normalcy story of a non-Madras Tamil Brahmin with no aptitude for slogging in the sciences, but with a remarkable sub-conscious understanding of programming, visualization and basic common sense that will put an AIR 0001 to some shame. Another is a Muslim who comes from the outskirts of Madras with the same socio-economic background and with no formal coaching class training, but with a deep sub-conscious understanding of Physics on an intuitive basis without the need for formulas and high-dimensional logic. Needless to say, I am still in touch with them even though I have lost track of so many of the smart ones. Lesson six: make friends of people you admire and try to learn what makes them tick, even if you are constrained by your own inadequacy.

When folks in my batch were sweating it out to loosen the straitjacket of M.S./Ph.D. that could take five years to a M.S. that could take less than two years and were avoiding a certain Rice U. upon hearsay that a Ph.D. there could take seven years or more, I was one of the first to apply to Rice. And certainly I was disappointed enough to write back to the Graduate Committee Chair (who I know much better now) about how crazy their selection criteria must have been to pick people with lesser CGPA than me and to ignore someone with a stronger enthusiasm level to do research than needed to get in. That pitch did not reverse the decision they made and I am thankful to them for I would nt have seen the wonders of the cheesehead land otherwise. Some say, "come herein and you bleed cardinal and white forever," and that is sadly true for me -- cardinal and white, "Go Red, go!", "Eat shit, F*&! you", green and gold, cant wait to hate the Bears even if I stayed on the wrong side of the Rockford line for three good years, Big Ten madness, waiting for the Pasadena unfolding even if I can see the RB almost everyday, and the closest I have been to a hockey field in live-action in a looong time even if it was with a puck on a rink than with a ball on a field. Lesson seven: screw the free world if it goes one way, pick your way and make the best of what you get and you wont regret it forever even if you can go back to the future. All those years spent butt-freezing in the Lab cranking up the temperature bar would nt have been useful had it not been to just do what I am good at. Lesson eight: know how and when to say "No" to requests that would curtail your freedom to do what had to be done. Lesson nine: and when to say "F!@$# off" when those requests bordered on being illogical.

At the end of the day, if one looks back, if I look back, it was destined that I would nt regret my past. Not because I was some super-human who could do no wrong, but because I learned at IITM from my allies, compatriots, peers and collaborators that a wrong could be corrected by learning from one's mistakes and often from others' mistakes. That hard decisions had to be taken at times and life is essentially a game of chance where the most rational and prepared wins even if the competition is between equally smart people. The key to all this was that most, if not all, of my batchmates were remarkable in being unremarkable, just like me. Most of them came from the same background, some slightly better off than the others, and some poorer than the others. Some more street-smart than others, but with others picking up the essential lessons that makes us who we are today. We learned the techniques, the tool-kits and the tricks from the slightly better off. We made each of us better and equipped to face the vile wide world by just being who we were, we hated each other and in the process we got each other to give it our best shot -- our only shot, we learned to love the things we did and do what we loved even if the process was incomplete, impure and often imbecilish, and we all had a small bridge to cross.

Sadly, the bridge is wide today, and it can only get wider with time.

The IIT Experience is dead, Long Live the IIT Experience...

The medal-winning London-bound Indian Hockey Team

Goal Keepers: Bharat Chettri (Captain), P. R. Sreejesh










Full Backs: V. R. Raghunath, Ignace Tirkey, Sandeep Singh










Mid-fielders: Sardara Singh (Vice-captain), Gurbaj Singh, Birendra Lakra, Manpreet Singh.








































Forwards: S. V. Sunil, Gurwinder Singh Chandi, Shivendra Singh, Danish Mujtaba, Tushar Khandker, Dharamvir Singh, S. K. Uthappa








Standbys: Sarvanjit Singh, Kothajit Singh.





































Officials: Michael Nobbs (Chief Coach), Mohammed Riaz (Coach), Clarence Lobo (Coach), David John (Manager), Shrikant Iyengar (Physiotherapist), Bibhu Kalyan Nayak (Physiotherapist -- as a part of the IOA contingent), Hari Shankar Narayanan (Video Analyst).


Team Statistics:
1) Bharat Kumar Chettri -- 130 caps, DoB: Dec 15, 1981, Place of birth: Kalimpong (Darjeeling district -- West Bengal)
2) Parattu Raveendran Sreejesh -- 51 caps, DoB: May 8, 1988, Place of birth: Kizhakambalam/Pallikara (30 kms from Kochi -- Kerala)

3) Vokkaliga Ramachandra Raghunath -- 110 caps, DoB: Nov 11, 1988, Place of birth: Coorg (Karnataka)
4) Ignacious (Ignace) Tirkey -- 246 caps, DoB: May 10, 1981, Place of birth: Lulkidihi/Navapara (Sundergarh district -- Orissa) -- Belongs to the Oroan tribe of Chhota Nagpur
5) Sandeep Singh -- 168 caps, DoB: Feb 27, 1986, Place of birth: Shahabad (Kurukshetra district -- Haryana)

6) Sardara Singh -- 136 caps, DoB: July 15, 1986, Place of birth: Sant Nagar (Sirsa district -- Haryana)/Chandigarh
7) Gurbaj Singh -- 148 caps, DoB: Aug 9, 1988, Place of birth: Zira (Ferozepur district -- Punjab)
8) Birendra Lakra -- 26 caps, DoB: Feb 3, 1990, Place of birth: Nangade (Simdega district -- Jharkhand)
9) Manpreet Singh -- 35 caps, DoB: 1993, Place of birth: Jalandhar (Punjab)

10) Sowmarpet Vitalacharya Sunil Acharya -- 93 caps, DoB: May 6, 1989, Place of birth: Coorg (Karnataka)
11) Gurwinder Singh Chandi -- 75 caps, DoB: Oct 20, 1989, Place of birth: Jalandhar (Punjab)
12) Shivendra Singh Chauhan -- 148 caps, DoB: June 9, 1983, Place of birth: Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh)
13) Danish Mujtaba -- 78 caps, DoB: Dec 20, 1988, Place of birth: Allahabad (Uttar Pradesh)
14) Tushar Khandker -- 219 caps, DoB: Apr 5, 1985, Place of birth: Jhansi (Uttar Pradesh)
15) Dharamvir Singh -- 19 caps, DoB: Aug 5, 1990, Place of birth: Ropar (Punjab)
16) Sannuvanda Kushalappa Uthappa -- 21 caps, DoB: Dec 2, 1993, Place of birth: Coorg (Karnataka)

17) Sarwanjit Singh -- 123 caps, DoB: July 3, 1988, Place of birth: Batala (Punjab)
18) Kothajit Singh Khadangbam -- 18 caps, DoB: 1993, Place of birth: Leirik Yengbam Maning Leikai/Basihkhong, Imphal (Manipur)

19) Michael Jack Nobbs
20) David Ian John
21) Mohammed Riaz Nabi
22) Clarence Lobo

Claims to Extraordinary Exceptionalism

On a more esoteric realm, a famous writer (Rajiv Malhotra of "Breaking India" fame) writes the following on his yahoo-group:

If a drunkard walks on to a busy road and gets run over by a bus, he is reaping the effect of his actions. No one, even Aamir Khan, would disagree with this. No one will flinch in explaining how the momentum of the bus transferred to the drunkard in a very short moment caused the harm to the drunkard. It is, after all, an impartial, non-judgmental, universal, natural law. No one can blame the bus driver for drunkard's foolish and unfortunate behavior.

No one needs to be angry and upset with the drunkard's thoughtless behavior. As a witness to this event, would Aamir Khan say "Drunkard is reaping the fruit of his stupidity. I will therefore be a callous and indifferent person." Of course, Aamir would not. Aamir Khan, as the humanist, would step up and try to do the best to help him. Nothing changes the fact that the drunkard might sustain irreversible damages.

What does Karma theory say? Drunkard had choices for his actions. He made a choice, did his actions (karma), and should expect to reap the rewards of his actions.
...
An atheist would explain it as random chance. Dharmic traditions have no issue with this explanation.

A Muslim or Christian will tell you that God does things for reasons that we cannot understand and that God is not bound by morality. A rational mind cannot accept a loving, compassionate, omnipotent God leading to this outcome. Dharmic traditions do not accept this explanation.

While the author claims such superlatives that make Karma an impartial, non-judgmental, universal and natural law, one really believes that such a law (presumably exceptional!) would allow itself to be put under a microscope and be examined in its various dimensions. For one, extending the mundane drunkard example to the level of sophistication in terms of the grandness of the infinite past (not in its mere hypothetical existence, but in its impact on the current) a) is fundamentally unverifiable, b) is not seen in almost all reasonable physical sub-systems even under arbitrarily infinitesimal measurement accuracy since most sub-systems are of finite memory, c) can be and has often been easily prostituted to explain away/justify/make peace with human conditions.

c) The prostituted part is of immediate importance to me in understanding (subject to caveats below) conflicts that arise from a "kindling of the consciousness": how does one reconcile a philosophy where time (that matters) stretches all the way to minus infinity with rationalism that is so immediate, often instantaneous, and fits the Occam's Razor better.
b) But more incredulously, the possibilities that:

1) Not all things that happen around us need explanations;
2) Not all things that need to be explained have to be explained;
3) Not all things that need to be explained can be explained by an observer who is also a part of the system;
4) Not all things that can be explained by an observer who is a part of the system can be explained correctly, etc.,

do not seem to have made much of an impact on the postulate. In some sense, Karma is the Theory of Everything that physicists have been hunting for.
a) Fortunately, a candidate for the ToE can be put under test. Without any verification, Karma being the universal dictum falls strictly under the realm of belonging to the fervent imagination of the individual(s) concerned just as many other hypotheses of the religious kind belong. In other words, faith in the hypothesis that Karma is universal is an integral part of the postulate. In this sense, a rhetoric of your theory vs. my theory can be expected and thus it may appear that the claims to extraordinary exceptionalism on the part of either theory fails. However, the distinct possibility that either (or even both) theory(ies) could be wrong is best reconciled by a philosophy that is adaptive and grows with information and time, rather than a stasis of fear-mongering, remembrances of the past that only one party in a two-way conversation can see, and claims to extraordinary exceptionalism that should be self-invoking and self-referential rather than explicit and in-your-face.

PS: I expect the question: "why such an esoteric title for your blog when nothing is exceptional about anything?" Good question, I wish I knew the answer other than a blase "its my dharma that I peddle, not something I peddle as a virtue for anyone." For the more earthly, please see: Linky.

No place for political cartoon in Text Books

Image courtesy: The Hindu

If you are impatient, just go to the last few paragraphs of this blog. And I promise I won't hate you for that.

NCERT has landed into trouble yet again over another cartoon. The above cartoon has riled up some political parties from Tamil Nadu. Knowing the tendencies of the political parties - especially the Dravidian ones, it is quite valid to pause and ponder - 'Are these parties, just using this opportunity to pander to their constituents?'. And, an emphatic answer 'Yes' to the question should not surprise anyone. However, in a democracy such acts of protests and opportunistic anger brings attention to the historical issue and the current generation has the opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of such an agitation, the disadvantages and advantages of actions and inaction, and the ideology and opportunism of various political parties and leaders.

However, the cartoon is nuanced and draws the attention of mature audience to the plight of the foot soldiers of that agitation. And of course it is political in nature. As a matter of generalization, all agitations require two classes of people - the intellectuals driven by ideology and the foot soldiers who are either convinced of the ideology/propaganda of the intellectuals or emotionally impressionable to act at the bid of the charismatic leaders.

Let me take a brief comical diversion. In the late 80s, I was studying in a college in Tamil Nadu (that is the only specifics you are going to get from me - remember the movie 'You Got Mail' ? No specifics). Okay I do need to stress that the college was run by a minority community - who originally hail from the North-West parts of India, though a migrant community in the tamil regions - they talked tamil outside their homes but talked in their mother-tongue at homes, family settings and with community friends. One day, out of blue, some blokes decided to have a strike. Reason? Anti-imposition of Hindi agitation. So the crowd a mixture of tamilians and non-tamilians went to Doordarshan campus and protested against imposition of Hindi. And with me there was  a Bengali, a Maharastrian and a pukka Hindi-wala. It was fun, we followed the leaders meekly, did a bunch of shouting, then went on to eat lunch and watch Englipeechu movies.

Sorry for that interruption - R.K.Laxman - the cartoonist, did have a good pulse of the protesters. They did not know much of English or Hindi. Are they to blame for that, absolutely not. Like I said earlier, they either (a) agreed with the ideology of their leaders (b) emotionally swayed by their leaders. Whatever be it, one does not need to know English in order to protest anti-imposition of another language - in this case Hindi.

Should cartoons be analyzed this much? Yes, isn't that the reason cartoons are drawn? To make us think. Thinking leads to more discussions - going back and forth on issues, no?

I am convinced, so should you be, that some protesters are easily swayed and get rather highly emotional than others. And in a mob setting, the mob psychology kicks in. The mob pelts stones, burns buses and in some cases even there are cases of self-immolation. In Tamil Nadu, some people can easily be riled by partisan politics. Again a very small diversion. Long, long ago, I was traveling in a bus in Tamil Nadu. Like all buses, in those days, the bus stopped at a bus stop. Lo, there was some kind of flash mob or something, a part-man from one party suddenly snuck under the front tires of our bus - lying down on the road, he challenged the bus driver to drive the bus over his body. The other party-men egged their comrade in arms. I cannot remember which party he belonged to - it must have been DMK or AIDMK.

So now you must be convinced the elites truly ignite the passions among the lay people and make them lose rational behavior and behave like a sheep - even the parties that tout the rationality in their leaders - EVR, Karunanidhi etc. All parties resort to gimmicks and emotional blackmails, just not the Dravidian parties.

However, the agitation was an important one in the annals of our history. The agitation was not against Hindi but against the imposition of Hindi. The Dravdian parties had a history of being anti-brahmins, on close inspection one would see what started out was the anger against brahmins and other forward castes for their behavior and conduct. Prosperity and power cannot be held by a small community, while the bulk of the population merely watches. Common sense would easily lead us to believe that not all brahmins and forward castes were well off; but definitely among the most successful in the late 19th century one would find brahmins and other forward castes. And the elites from the ranks of other castes rose, including some opportunistic from forward castes, who fought against the tyranny of caste oppression in the Southern India. One ramification was the evolution of hatred towards brahmins in the tamil regions. So what started as a clamor for prosperity and power, slowly morphed into anti-brahmin attitude in some communities and political parties. So is the case of the anti-imposition of Hindi agitation; some people hated Hindi because it was imposed on them. Is it right? It does not really matter if it is right or wrong, that is how the ideas shaped and evolved. Is it right for the river to burst its banks and flood the villages? Don't bother answering.

Children are very smart, yet they can act very cruel. We all are conditioned to conform to the society's rules. Though, I know several adults who require disciplining, it is the children who clearly need more disciplining and guidance. Why? Because the teenage brains are not the same as the adult brains. Really? Yes. Read.

The teen brain is really a work in progress.

While 95 percent of the human brain has developed by the age of six, scientists tell FRONTLINE that the greatest spurts of growth after infancy occur just around adolescence.

Lot of stereotyping forms early in our life: in our school settings, inside our homes, with friends and family. While a teenager might be quick to grasp Schrodinger's equations, I believe certain topics have to be discussed very carefully. No topic is taboo. However, a good analysis is required - just like the time when one sits with friends to talk about religion and philosophy over beer, whiskey and snacks :-)

Like I said, Children are very smart and given the appropriate setting they have the knack to ask tough questions, intelligent questions, silly questions, right questions, wrong questions - but questions that they will ask. They will debate endless and love arguments. They will rebel against establishment - teachers and parents.

Knowing the Indian education system, I do not give any benefit of doubt, to the system. Such cartoons will continue to strongly stereotype the anti-imposition agitators and tamilians. Granted, some of the protesters did not know what they were doing, granted the political parties in the past and present are using to further their chances in the elections, granted it is stupid to hate any language, granted ....., granted some of the political leaders are really morons and are not fit to lead any party - they are a disgrace to the humanity. Yet......

Such cartoons have no place in a 12th class text book. The best places for them are in newspapers, magazines and leaflets - that will stimulate cerebral discussions.  The same goes for the Ambedkar cartoons. I smell something foul in the air w.r.t to all these cartoons. Lampooning people in cartoons is fine, and a free society should have the liberty to mock, insult or ridicule communities - however, within limits bestowed by common sense. Maybe the cartoons would be good material for some Master level courses - definitely not for 12th standard.

"The Hindu" link above has the following:

Novelist and former Tamil professor of Delhi University, Indira Parthasarathy, said those who prepared the text books had no business to use cartoons that make a political statement. “A cartoon could have been drawn in the different context in the past and it could convey a different meaning in a changed context. You cannot expect a student to keep in mind the earlier context and view the cartoon,” he said.

Mr. Parthasarathy said though it was a matter a debate whether one should sacrifice one's life for a protest like the anti-Hindi agitation, the person's commitment to the cause should be respected.

Repeating like a parrot, children are very smart yet they need to be guided on sensitive and mature subjects. And religion, sex and politics are such topics. It is better to error on the side of caution - Withdraw the cartoons.

ISEET or Is It? and Other Mumblings

This one has been cooking for too long, better to get it out half-broken than not.

1) India has a steadily growing middle-class which means a growing aspirational status for many people than can be accommodated by the limited educational resources currently available. Thus, there has been a continuing big problem where the marginally advantaged have been steadily pushing aside the marginally/heavily disadvantaged from the mainstream in terms of education. This is particularly true in the case of urban vs. rural divide, first-tier vs. second-tier cities, South and West vs. North and East, among different caste groupings, across religions, and even between different strata of the middle-class.
2) While in some sense, this is just a mirror of what happened in the historical past where one segment took to certain forms of "education" better than other segments and thus derived socio-economic clout that soon spread to the bandaged political scene disproportionate to their numerical preponderance, and thereby leading to a circle of social conflicts marked by violence from one extreme of verbal/rhetorical to the other of real/symbolic acts, in a time and age of identity politics, social assertion, number-game, etc., this is just asking for too-much trouble from all the parties involved as well as certain extraneous ones.
3) On the part of the MHRD and GoI and the Education Ministries in the various states, while there has been a realization of the enormity of the problem, there has been an incommensurate effort at adding resources. While the MHRD tries to infuse the Foreign Universities Bill, the Opposition has stalemated any further progress in this arena and as is usual, the GoI/MHRD has decided that inaction/back-door action is better than an open combat/debate in the Parliament. On the other hand, adding resources requires infrastructural investment -- an ill that plagues not only education but also every other sphere. Without Quality Control/Assurance in investment, adding resources comes at a grave cost of quality -- an argument that is often anathema to the ears of the disadvantaged who care only about the current and the now than for the overall state of the system. Shri E. Sreedharan puts the conundrum in much better language than I can (Linky):

We have enough engineering colleges, producing about two million engineers per annum. But the best out of the IITs and RECs make a beeline for universities abroad. The next best go for management and prefer to sell soaps and oil rather than doing engineering. The next lot goes to the IT sector, which is very lucrative. There are still large numbers left who, unfortunately, are not of the required quality. That means the level of education, particularly in private colleges, is not up to the required standard. There are a few good private colleges. The remaining are all ‘business’ colleges, which take capitation money and high fees, take students through three to four years and give them a degree. Unfortunately, many of them are deemed universities. This is most unfortunate, and a shame to the nation. We have been so liberal in giving them university status without controlling quality.

4) TN is a good case in point for the quality vs. quantity conundrum (See Linky). While TN produces a huge number of engineering graduates (both from in-state and from out-of-state), < 10% of its graduates are "employable" in the IT Services sector (Fig. 9), < 1% in the IT Product sector (Fig. 11), and a comparable fraction is employable in KPO/BPO/Hardware Networking sectors. In fact, Madras ranks the lowest among the studied Tier-1 metros in terms of employable engineering graduates in the IT arena (Fig. 14). This is not an affirmation of Delhi's (ranked 1) educational capabilities, but just a reflection of the sad fact that there are fewer engineering seats available in the North, which in turn forces people to migrate down South where the engineering seats are aplenty. What else should one expect when only 3.39% of the college teachers in TN can clear the NET/SET? (Linky). Even granted that the Aspiring Minds report concerns the IT sector and not core engineering, and segment-by-segment statistics are unavailable which makes extrapolation of known facts a risky proposition, and the NET/SET are just another bunch of examinations, one broad trend is that quantity degrades quality in the long-run.
5) Even within the highly selective IITs, degradation in student quality are obvious to the faculty and alumni (which has to be suitably weighted for perception bias). If a core benchmark for student quality is the percentage of retaineeship of students in core engineering areas, the number has been steadily going down over the last two decades. While this in itself is just a reflection of the growth of opportunities in non-core engineering disciplines in India and for Indian students abroad, the health of an institution cannot be sustained by watching such a huge percentage eject itself out of core engineering jobs so quickly.
6) There have been many attempts at figuring out the "root-causes" for such a woe. The easily identified one is the system of coaching classes that aid in preparation for JEE which themselves are in business only because the JEE has become so advanced that studying from a First Year B.Sc text is essential to get the extra "edge" over other candidates. While blaming the coaching classes is a cop-out on many levels, the one thing that can be attributed to them is that they induce, incubate and inculcate a stupor of "follow-the-herd" peer culture (much earlier than was possible with the old system of non-coaching classes). While this again has to be called out as a sociological problem of the current generation and the enormous parental pressures that lead to a make-or-break attitude, rather than as a problem of the coaching class system, the very fact that the JEE cannot be dumbed down beyond a certain level means that the vestige of the coaching classes have to be broken. The stupor of coaching classes (conveniently called "coasting") leads to a lethargy of the student population in the campuses that lead to poor learning skills and backlogs that have a cyclic effect when the student reaches the B.Tech Project stage, where poor knowledge and background coupled with a poor work habit spell doom for many a "bright" student who was on the "top of the world", not so-long back.
7) The statistically brilliant faculty analyzing the "root-causes" of this woe have identified a strong correlation between performance in the Board Examinations (High School Leaving Certificate Exams of the various tripes) and performance in the first year or so in IITs. Thus, there has been a clamor call for introducing a metric that identifies the performance in the Board Examinations and at the same time breaking the backbone of the coaching class system.

8) This is where the ISEET (which the IITs call the JEE Main/JEE Advanced) proposal fits in. The ISEET was proposed by the T. Ramasami Committee and was seen as a replacement for the original JEE and has since then been pushed back a bit by the "autonomy"-minded IITs (Linky). In short, the ISEET is a single-point break system so poorly engineered that no real system constructed with such a design could be provably fail-safe and guaranteed to inch along year by year only till an utterly massive disaster calls for a sweeping disbanding of everything ISEET-related.
9) Specifically, the JEE Main (which is nothing but a glorification of the Board Examinations normalized on a percentile score to make them all appear equal) and the JEE Advanced (which is the current JEE) will share 50% equal weightage in ranking students for seats in the IIT. Any sensible watcher of education matters will realize that "equalizing" across different Boards in India is a thoughtless exercise because different Boards have very different standards/syllabi/assessment/statistics and even sociological agenda (as is the case in TN). Further, the middle-ranks of the JEE are all separated by very slim margins and tie-breaks are broken using the hardest exam (usually Physics/Math) in that order. When the JEE Main corrupts this tie-break, it is the branch of engineering that one could possibly enrol in that is at stake. While it can be reasonably argued that what is the big difference between slim pickings, it is indeed an important factor in a collegial system such as IITs where tiering of students becomes immensely easy. Needless to say, such divisions are not needed for the health of the system. To top it all, to try to make it an all-India standard for entry into not only the NITs, but also IISER and other institutions calls for another one of those comments on one-point failure mode relevant.
10) One can safely conclude that given the grave problems facing engineering output in India today, the solutions engineered are even more brain-dead than the current crop of graduates that the envisioned solutions intend to fix. Neither are we going to see less brain-dead graduates nor are we going to see less brain-dead solutions. We will see more rhetorical flourishes and grand-standing that obviates, obfuscates and ignores the presence of gargantuan problems such as the convenient divorcing of rural India from the educational mainstream, quality vs. quantity, democracy vs. elitism, inter-connecting the STEM library facilities in the top-notch educational institutions, incubating quality in newly laid-out institutions, etc.

Onwards!

Comment on Pakistan hockey

Shazia Hasan writes the following on the state of Pakistani hockey (Linky). Unfortunately, I cannot agree with her more, the London episode is going to be a disaster unless of course the young Pakistani team is going to use that as the precise excuse to push above the bar, which has happened often in the past. But then this is not a long-term solution, sooner than later the "above the bar" adrenaline will cool down. I want people such as Shakeel Abbasi, Imran Warsi, Rehan Butt and Zeeshan Ashraf to play in the Olympics.

For one, the Hockey India apparatus has been toothless in fighting the FIH menace and there is no better candidate in today's world politics to thumb a nose at useless world bodies such as the UN or the NATO or Geneva Convention than Pakistan. At least such a behavior from PHF (under the express order of the ISI-D/Army) will make the spineless HI apparatus to follow the lead (hopefully!) and start hitting with the belt of being a billion+ person country.

For two, lo and behold, India and Pakistan meet each other, I dont want it to be a dud contest where one team comes up with a B-team and punches above the bar to make a vain attempt at winning the contest. For many, the Rome spectacle may have healed, but not for me. So sorry, but thats how life is. There is no camaraderie on the field, its a war, Total WAR. And thats the only thing I agree with the Johan Cryuff school of thought.

For three, there is no equal competition to the European toilet-sized nations, but the AHF. Unfortunately, this clique is a three-way split between India, Pakistan and Malaysia with the Koreans picking the jars at random. Datu S. Alagendra has his own axe to grind and its a zero-sum game in that sense, and it need not be so. While I dont love the Ordos ACT experience or the 4th place finish in the 2010 Asian Games or the locus standi of Qatar hosting the next Asia Cup, initiatives for events such as the World Cup, the Champions Trophy, etc., have come from Asia (sorry, could nt misappropriate the South Asian bug that is so common in Guardian-speak, if you get it!).

For four, it is mightily unfair to penalize Shakeel Abbasi or Imran Warsi (who did play for the team I will always rally behind, of course) for a crime of the PHF/FIH making. I just dont like the Cheetahs name, of course, its more like Madras Superstars or Madras Raakit-rajas, thats more in tune with the ethos of Madras.

For five, good subcontinental hockey is a dying (some say, dead) tradition and as much as I would like to see/hear about the likes of Rashid Mehmood, that should not be at the cost of people who are now suspended.

For six, this is most likely Sohail Abbas' last major event before his impending retirement, and noone wants to ruin it. The only equally-comparable event is to see Dilip Tirkey's fourth Olympics appearance get ruined at Santiago, followed by more ruinations at the Punjab Gold Cup, WC and the CWG.

PS: And the Indian media can learn a thing or two from the Pakistani media coverage of hockey, someone had to say it first. Pakistani media is more well-versed with the global machinations and the rulebook of different events than the Indian media has shown it to be from many past exhibits that I have noted. Unfortunate for a b+ country.

What has been left unsaid -- Hockey update (June 3, 2012)

Way too many things to say and too little time to manufacture a coherent piece, so in any case, here we go! Winning the bronze at Azlan was fine, and not a great reflection of what the current team is capable of. Some observations connecting the various dots:

1) As I pointed out earlier, New Zealand is the new England of the 2008 Olympic Games. They have peaked in time for the London Games much aided by their practice on the blue turf, the exposure to top events and teams courtesy of FIH's shenanigans that saw the CT shifted to NZ, and by importing Australian trainers, physios and nutritionists. The mauling we received in the first game against the Kiwis was the double impact of our standard issue first game behavior in any serious event, only to be topped by the administrators' own shenanigans. The last Azlan saw a 7-1 mauling against the same rivals and the practice game before the London test event (VISA international) saw a 12-1 defeat against the Australians.

2) Pointing out the precise reason(s) for this woe (of why the Indian team comes up predictably too short in the opening game) will take us into polemics and whine profiles on a different plane. Suffice it to say that, the team always ends up jaded after a long and often circuitous trip that has to be taken on the national carrier for refund purposes (Note to MSYA and Shri Maken, not like they will notice it anyway). Such constraints are true with American refunding efforts too -- albeit with many choices of carriers around, but not so for the Australian, Kiwi or British players where the cheapest airfare/shortest time rule is common in most scientific/government refund efforts (I know!!). For example, a trip from anywhere in India to Kuala Lumpur that should take no more than 5-6 hours was a 22 hour jamboree on the national carrier from Pune for the national team (Linky). Instead of the three days of pre-event practice originally envisioned, the team could eke out no more than two and most of this was spent getting used to the turf and the hot-humid Ipoh weather, for which Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium would have provided the best trailer, not to mention the huge number of MAA-KL flights. In the same vein, the Black sticks team arrived in Ipoh on May 18, a good 6 days before the event and had practice games against both the Malaysian and English teams (Linky). The Pakistani team left on May 18 too (Linky) and it showed in the way they handed the Argentinians their first defeat even though the Pakistanis had never practiced on the blue turf before. In matches where the differences in quality between the two sides are small, all that takes for a disaster to visit one team are these small differences.

3) The fact that Pune in itself was the destination for the training camp was an accident waiting to happen. The blue turf at the SAI facility in Bangalore was so poor that the coaching staff feared serious injuries and shifted the practice to Pune, which has no blue turf. With the team practice limited to weights and fitness regimes and hypoxia training, Pune was a much better bet than Bangalore could have been. The turf at Ludhiana which was ready just in time before the Azlan trip could serve as the alternate training destination, but the mountain of bureaucracy has to move to ensure the shift from the Balewadi Sports Complex. This is seriously not how a team prepares its journey to the biggest test in hockey every four years. All this said, the farce across the border in Pakistan will make the Indian administrators look like statesmen.

4) The Pakistani team has no blue turf to practice, and the saga of laying a blue turf in Pakistan is a traumatic one (Linky 1, Linky 2, Linky 3). The Azlan was the first event where the Pakistanis practiced on the blue turf. And to top that, the players who took part in the WSH event were kicked out with the PHF trying to milk money from these players in the form of fines (Linky). For being the joint top scorer at WSH for which he gained < INR 50 lakhs, Imran Warsi will have to pay the PHF a fine of Pak Rs 2.5 crore. The fine amounts make no sense as some of the players like Imran did not even have contractual obligations with PHF that they broke. In fact, quite the opposite, Zeeshan Ashraf could not get a permanent job even after winning the gold medal at the 2010 Asian games (Linky).

Further, with the Dutch coach Michel van den Heuvel kicked out (Linky) and with a new coach in the form of Akhtar Rasool, the PHF President Qasim Zia has pulled a new rabbit out of his magic hat to wear the thorny hat in the aftermath of what shall be labeled as the London disaster. While noone needs to empathize with the Pakistani team, at least to the administrators' pragmatism, the team shall depart to England to train on one of the blue turfs after Azlan (Linky). Here are two cents of unsolicited advise to the Pakistanis: Quit the European style of running Total hockey and get back to the subcontinental version of zonal play. Kalimullah, Hassan Sardar, Samiullah, etc., played crystal clear subcontenintal hockey, go figure. And like I have a cookie jar where I keep dropping in an occasional 100 Rupee note to drop off at the Kapaleeswarar temple when the current Indian administrative apparatus (both HI and IHF) vanishes from Planet earth, please start one to send off the likes of Qasim Zia and Asif Bajwa.

5) That said, India beat England for the first time in four attempts. A 4-2 and a 2-1 loss at the London test event followed by a 3-2 loss in the preliminary stage only affirms what Coach Mike Nobbs has been saying all along: "we need to work it out with higher ranked teams to get better." Yes, that is the precise strategy used by the English in their lead-up to the 2008 Santiago climb and what has been practiced by the Kiwis in the current spurt in activity. There are a few other core essentials needed to climb the ladder though like a stable core of team-mates over the years. Both the Kiwi and the English teams have been having a core around which a team has been formed, but the Indian team has been a ring-a-ring-a roses only beaten in this category by the Pakistanis (Linky). Whoever fits the fancy AND is in the good books of the HI apparatus finds his way into the team while the others get shunted out. Prabhjot Singh, Rajpal Singh, Arjun Halappa, Diwakar Ram, Dhananjay Mahadhik, Baljeet Singh -- these are names of stars and heroes from the bygone era, not to mention the whole-scale up-turn in the Junior ranks where the WSH star, Gurjinder Singh, Dewinder Walmiki and many many others were thrown out to make way for a new junior team with a brand new junior coach (Baljeet Singh over Mukesh Kumar). Thus, while India have regularly beaten the NZ bunch (2 won, 2 drawn in the 2009 tour to NZ, did not face each other in either the Commonwealth or World Cup events, a win at Rockingham and a massive loss at Azlan in 2011, etc.), NZ has inched past India with their CT background and regular facing of the European teams.

6) Just to give an opposite perspective on the ring-a-ring-a roses, quite remarkable has been the climb of Malaysia's Faisal Saari. Only a month back, he was donning the Junior team to the title at the Asian junior event (Linky). And now, he has been named to the Azlan All Star XI (Linky). Every team has fast-tracked their juniors to the senior team except ...., and Malaysia has been no exception. The Pakistani junior team at KL had six players who came back to Ipoh. In the 2008 Azlan, a schoolboy named Nick Wilson made his way to the Black Sticks team (Linky 1, Linky 2) and as of now, he is a veteran of 100+ games and all of 21 years old. How many from the third-ranked Junior Indian team could make it to the main team, but for one Amit Rohidas as a standby? All this begs the question, why are we like this onlee?! Well, if I had an answer, I would nt be posing the question.

7) Very soon, the Olympics bound team travels to Santander, Spain to practice on the blue turf (hopefully!) and one hopes that unlike the trip made under Jose Brasa's tenure, this is not another 100 hour trip. One also hopes that the blue turf at the Pirthipal Hockey Stadium at the Punjab Agricultural University campus is up to the mark and brings back the trip down memory lane when the Ajitpal Singh led Indian team practiced in Punjab before the WC triumph at KL in 1975. Well, a bronze is not too far off and thats been the clarion call from here. In that regard, the first match is against the Dutch, and all the matches are in the afternoon to evening time-frame unlike the Australians who have three early morning (8:30 AM) starts. One hopes that the Indian team does nt bring its B game to the mucho fireworks first game and noting that the first game means little (WCH 2010, hint hint) in the overall standings, it still shall make it easier on the heart to get to the semis with a draw or better. That said, the win over England could make Jason Lee (the Coach of the English team) -- who was "amused" by the London cold weather which the Indians suffered last month -- eat some humble pie, but that pie is not served cold till India makes the semis at the Games.

8) The choice of Yuvraj Walmiki over Gurvinder Singh Chandi seemed to have been a risky move and I am nonetheless wiser on whether Yuvraj has actually recovered from his repeated ankle injuries. Sandeep and Sardara have not been hitting in pairs with either losing "form" and Birendra Lakra has shared the defense dais with Sardara. If Rupinder Pal Singh strikes form, then the mishaps of Sandeep can be looked aside with enough backup. As much as the defeats from draws (England and Argentina) were, so were the wins from draws (Pakistan and S. Korea). The trend of India not throwing away bronze medal contests is good to note.

9) In terms of analysis and simple number crunching, Indian media either is terrible in terms of hockey or could nt care less (more the latter, I believe). Before the last regular day of games when India had no matches left, all the newspapers blared that "India is out of contention from the finals." Quite the contrary, a simple reading of the Azlan Shah Cup rules and regulations would have showed that a head-to-head does nt matter and only the GF-GA difference does. Thus, a 2-0 loss for the Argentine team at the hands of Malaysians, and a simple win for the Pakistanis against the English would have seen an India-NZ final clash because India would have ended up no. 2 on the points tally after a GF-GA tie-breaker. All those enormous statistical talent in the form of V. Jayadevan is wasted in India in micro-analyzing endless cricket matches that noone has the energy to even add 2 and 2 on hockey matters. Lame for a country of a billion and rising, even if not counting!

10) With India slowly catching up to the standard-fare Poligras pitches, after three decades of sleeping and ambling away due to the high costs, this blue and pink turf makes no sense in terms of egalitarianizing the rich European and South Pacific nations with the subcontinent in terms of hockey infrastructure. If the television viewer is of such importance that the hockey players have to suffer for them, may be an informal survey/poll (Gallup anyone!) has to be done to back this move by asking the viewer what he/she thinks of green-turf Poligras hockey vs. blue and pink turf Poligras Olympia hockey? Needless to say, the FIH with its massive voting power from the European bloc of nations that are no wider than my toilet has been bulldozing its fiat on the poorer nations while all along pipsqueaking about Bob Davidzon's Project Indian Hockey and what not. While ATP will have a review of the blue turf that has hogged all the limelite at the Madrid Open, will FIH do the same for the blue Poligras in the aftermath of the Olympics Games? If they come up with a revamp further down the line, who foots the bill? Each turf costs upward of 4 crore INR not to mention the maintenance and upkeep costs, which are unique to each turf. A 108 questions and noone has answers, so why not have a pure grass outfield for hockey like the good old days? Because it is inconvenient, and no shame on you, FIH. If one man/woman one vote is the democratic ideal that the Europeans tom-tom at the drop of a hat whenever the FTA negotiations come through, it cannot be one vote for a toilet-sized nation and one vote for a billion person country, can it? I would bet my bottom dollar that the FIH will parry away such a debate and therefore one more of my $ for Kapali-Karpagambal in another cookie jar to see the European nations that control FIH bite the economic doom and go further down into a bottomless pit.

Elsewhere,
1) On Anand's win, a rapid-based tie-breaker only seems to be the most logical course once the classical matches remained under stalemate. After all, if a tie-breaker is ok in the football WC (Brazil 94, Italy 06, anyone?!), hockey WC (1973 Indian loss that preceded the 75 win that people may not remember) and even in T-20 cricket, why not in chess?! In any case, both Gelfand and Anand had signed the dotted line and a rapid tie-breaker would nt have sounded any better lo and behold had Gelfand had won, would it? In contrast, it would have immediately led to all kinds of catcalls on how Gelfand truly does nt deserve to be a world champion by the Russian chess mafia and the Euro-led chessbase, which has conveniently closed down all the oo-hing and aah-ing that would have been the normative course had a Carlsen or an Aronian or a Russkie been anywhere close to winning any event. As they say in some circles:

Anand is still a Hindu and Gelfand a Jew,
Aronian an Armenian and chucky from Planet Ivanchuk.

There you go, I explained neatly in one loong line the agenda behind chessbase and the Russkie mafia :). Mazel tov, my friend.

2) There has been a buzz about bestowing Bharat Ratna to Vishy Anand following his title defense at Moscow. Well, if four world titles did nt deserve a BR, a fifth does nt too. In that regard, some claim that Sachin and Anand need to be bestowed a Ratna with a pre-stamped version for Dhyan Chand. I believe a Bharat Ratna will make more sense to be bestowed to an educationist or a scientist given that sportsmen/women only bring in emotional/economic (primarily indirect even if arguable either way) pleasures to Indians at large. On the other hand, scientific advances can improve the quality of life of people and set stage for a cycle of innovations. Its been a long time since someone like M. Viswesariah or C. V. Raman got the award, and somehow the last few renditions have been solely bagged by custodians of Indian culture such as musicians, playwrights, novelists and film makers -- as if being a Bharat Ratna is somehow the sole custodian-ship of these professions.

3) It was singularly expected that if the Government of Tamil Nadu did honor Anand on his triumph, that had to come under the aegis of the ADMK regime. The DMK regime of the bygone era has been singularly anti-sport and has only risen to the occasion to defend Santhi Soundararajan or extract a cut from India Cements for owning CSK. On the other hand, JJ has been a bastion of support for sporting events with the GoTN initially offering to host this current battle with Gelfand -- only losing out to Moscow in the process. Thankfully, the event was not held in Madras or anywhere in India as the Sanghi Nagar meltdown is still ripe in a knowledgeable chess watcher's head.

4) On the other hand, it was a good match to lose by CSK to KKR. As much as people hate Shahrukh Khan for owning a majority stake in KKR -- for their own good reasons (one hopes!), its been a long time since a city has derived massive pride in winning the IPL. Even the repeat triumphs of CSK failed to ignite the popularity charts in Madras beyond a certain level (Nakka Mukka does nt cut, bro!) and one more win would have made it more monotonous for everyone at stake, not to mention the Madras pettai rap-pists of course. Another good thing that was not noticed much was that all the top four teams were led by Indians, which out-shadowed the singular whine profile of lack of much Indian depth that was showcased in the event. One can safely claim that no new talents were unearthed and new talents would have been nothing more than short-term impresarios (so sorry for you, Bisla).

5) On this count, Calcutta's standard whine profile of Netaji Bose, JC Bose, Satyendranath Bose, Gopal Bose (Linky) has been somewhat overcome with the Sourav Ganguly era, the KKR win may heal a bit more of the deep rift in Bengal, one hopes. One has only got to recall that 1911 saw two major events: the laying of the foundation stone for Lutyens' Delhi that became the new capital following the Delhi Durbar and the eruption in Calcutta over Mohun Bagan's win in the IFA Shield finals over the Yorkshire Regiment. While the Calcutta Derby fails to remind one of the 1911 IFA Shield, the KKR win can hopefully fill in this gap.

6) A lot has been written on Sachin's Rajya Sabha membership, but Dileep Tirkey did take his oath of office a month back and not much has been said on that. For all the secular and nationalist-veer-Hindu credentials of the ruling and the Opposition combine, it was a Biju Janata Dal that sent a hockey sportsperson to the Rajya Sabha. And it was the same party that was at the forefront of supporting P. A. Sangma for President. While Naveen Patnaik has his own battle for the minds in the Munda-Gond-Oraon belt of Orissa with the Santhals staying away from the maoists, it is indeed amusing to have to hear the chorus of nationalist-secularist clique again and again. Another two cents: go home, and have a kitkat.

PS: The post on the Tamil problem has opened up a can of worms. To make sense of many of the dimensions that make up this problem, I will have to take time. So happy waiting.