rAnDom PoSts bY a rANdoM ThInKeR

At the onset let me make it clear that this is not one of those post which people write when they have screwed up an exam or a test. Surprisingly, i am doing well in the papers. But a very strange thing happened to me in the Probability and Statistics paper at IIM a few days ago. I hadn't studied much both because of me being me and the paper being open book. So, I was searching for a solution in the gigantic1020 page book thinking all the time about ctrl F. Suddenly I stumbled upon a title reading Decision making and decision analysis. It held me by my enthusiasm and pulled me. I started reading it without even realising that i was digressing and that the time was running. I had to search for how to go about a two tail test, which i had heard a lot about in the past few days but just could not make myself to read it, not even in the exam. Anyways, the article continued for five minutes and i learned that it wasn't as interesting as i thought it would be. Now I suddenly becam

Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries from Langara College on Vimeo .

If If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies, Or, being hated, don't give way to hating, And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise; If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools; If you can make on

The feeling is amazingly overwhelming. You think how its gonna be from tomorrow without these people around you. And hardly have you thought enough when you want to withdraw from the thought because it is painful. But you know you must think about it today or tomorrow. You try to remember how it was when you said bye the last time. You suddenly remember that how you did not feel anything till after a week when the feeling sank in and then you felt asphyxiated by it. You had then wished that why did this feeling not come when i was around those who I wished adieu without feelings. As they say "be careful what you wish for, for you might just be granted your wish". This time the feeling sinks in when you are about to part. You realise the part each and everyone plays in your life , suddenly. You know that you are going to remember the people when you hear songs that are automatically associated to each of them individually by your unconsciousness. Then you won't be

एक फकीर ने ज़िन्दगी की कुछ इस तरह मिसाल दी ....मुट्ठी में धूल लेकर हवा में उछाल दी !!

I had a unique day today: a portion spent in a 5-star hotel, another in sadar bazar. Both in Delhi just 15 rupees apart. I reached Jaypee Siddharth Hotel at 7:30 in the morning,which was too soon, for IIM Kozikode's interview (will write a separate post on it soon). The entry to the hotel was very fancy, with security checks and unnecessary lighting. I was hungry as hell and the 90-minutes wait before our GD and essay was killing me. My body was showing signs like it shows on days when I don't take lunch, miss the dinner, don't wake up for breakfast and am engaged in some task causing the next lunch to get delayed. The Air conditioner made me forget, that after the interview I will be thrown out into the torturous sun , rendered more so because of the AC. Also the pleasant temperature somehow made me more hungry! I knew I had no option but to eat in the 5star restaurant today. I went to the ATM withdrew 500 rupees hoping to eat something, anything. I entered the restaurant

14th March 2010, IIFT Delhi Morning 8:45 exactly around 28 call getters were divided into 4 panels .Then we were called in for writing our essays. In ten minutes we were supposed to write an essay on "Is banning politicians with criminal records from contesting election violation of their rights?". At first I felt it was a bouncer, so I only had two choices, either duck down and give up or hook. I could not have played a defensive shot. It was a bouncer because I had to be sure that I don't mention any random political proper nouns in the essay which i could be questioned upon later in the interview. so very carefully i put forward two points, in a fairly structured way. Firstly, that in india politicians are looked upon as leaders, and there is a need of immaculate integrity at the top.Secondly, if thousands of citizens' rights are at stake, we can forgo a chance of violating one politician's rights and if he is a true servant, he won't mind it. I thoug

Given time...things evolve, become better, problems solve themselves (or reach a point where they become irrelevant). All this at a holistic view, obviously. This makes me wonder, isn't it a proof that the final state , is that of balance and stability. Though its proven that entropy is increasing, can't we see it in a way that system is reaching a state of homogenization. Let me write an example or two: when a container of a gas (say oxygen cylinder) is opened, we see that gas rushes out and spreads everywhere and we say that overall entropy of the universe has increased. But isn't it also a valid perspective , that the ultimate stable state of the universe is complete homogenization, not sharp categorization , but homogenization which the gas is trying to achieve by spreading. If we let all such gases let loose, we will have each and every gas present everywhere. there would be no way to identify one space in the universe from another. Isn't that the ideal state of a

“ I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. ”

““The thing about performance is, even if it’s only an illusion, it’s the celebration of the fact that we do contain within ourselves infinite possibilities.”” - Daniel Day Lewis

"Freezing Cold" is a hyperbole, but not at -12 degrees Celsius. Not when you are sitting besides fire and you see water inside a bisleri bottle freeze. For 11 of us "Freezing cold" would never mean the same as it did before our Doditaal trip. We, namely Jatin, Ranka, Piyush, Kanki, Maddu, Shweta, MM, Amrit, Rishav, Bose and me, went through Rishikesh, Uttarkashi, Nachiketa taal, Agoda ,Bebra, Maanjhi, Doditaal, Darwa pass and back on a trip of a lifetime in the last week of the year 2009, the year when we got our first jobs! We achieved many a milestones during this trip. We trekked 65kms in 5 days. We survived on mere bread jam, maggi and rice. We crossed 4000 mtrs. mark and reached upto 4200. We made rendezvous with a frozen lake. We survived a temperature of -12 and the movie "Zabardast". We returned safely. While we were on the trip, however, there were two questions which needed to be answered. Firstly, What all do we carry in our backpacks? We knew

“How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.” Jostein Garder, The Solitaire Mystery

You have to find something in everything, because you can't find everything in something!

This is something none other than me would completely understand, because they don't know the context. So I will give you a little context. I am writing a story and in it there is drop in the river who is encouraged by other drops to keep flowing when he stops to think. The encouraging (rather threatening) poem by a drop named 'thought killer' goes like this Flow away fellow flow, flow not for friend or foe No one's never known to nay, The Nature's impeccable number Would(/Won't) you want to wander where, World's water's way's a wonder! fellow flow: is how they greet each other in the water world Nature' snumber : time Now one day the drop decides to give up his boring routine and set of for a course that is opposite to his regular flow.He encounters the same thought killer and the same poem from his mouth. But this time he feels that the poem is encouraging him to leave the routine. The same poem doing exactly opposite things. His belief that &#

This is my fourth speech at toastmasters. I could not post it before because it was a complete sponti speech. No preparation whatsoever. "God does not play dice", said Einstein and it is obviously the most famous thing he ever said. Ironically, it is one of the few things he said which are proved wrong. Fellow toastmasters, I believe in the power of simple words and today, I am going to tell you his other thoughts which were his best. In a more flowery physicist language they are called "The Theory of Relativity". The thoughts are so complex that in Einstein's own time only 14 people on earth actually understood the whole thought. But using simple words, I hope to put them across. To start with Einstein had two firm foundations to start with: two firm feet of belief to stand on. First one, the left foot was simple. He proposed that if Physics is a good science then if its rules are true for this chair , they should also be true for that chair. If they are true

Prof. S.D.Joshi would not appear to you as the stereotypical professor of IIT Delhi shown in "3 idiots" (Bala Sir may..but then that is a different post altogether). He won't appear to you as any stereotypical teacher, if you meet him outside. He is simple, sober, smiling and intelligent. He appeared exactly that way when he came to our hostel for the STIC-D(Students Teachers Interaction Council Dinner) last year. Till that day we all regarded him as a chill prof, who knows his subject through and through and who is modest enough not to intimidate others by his knowledge.Now the respect has increased manifolds. That day he told us one of the most amazing first person account you can ever here. Its genuineness and the genius was evident just like that. I will try to tell it in first person, almost verbatim, though it is difficult because it happened one year back I started working on my PhD thesis in IIT, I was lucky to be able to work in a field I liked. But all my work w

While we were tired and descending the gigantic mountains of Garhwal, near Uttarkashi, Amrit made me stop at this place and told me to pose. I saw a dry tree trunk coming out of the edge onthe path and chose to pose using it. It was a better than average photo (escpecially because MM being in it too and not posing or anything, made it look like just-another-photo). Then one day when I was editing the photos, I used almost all the options available in Picasa on this particular photo. That included removing MM from the pic, adding colour to black and white gradient and some basic fixes. And just like that this amazing picture was born. I did think of a little aesthetics here and there, but now when I look at the picture there are a thousand interpretations (poetic,aesthetic, general) that I think of which I did not think about while making it. So I don't believe it was made by me, it was made through me (like in Gita) is more apt. I just can't have enough of this photo :)

This is the 5th speech at toastmasters that i am planning to give. Content is completely inspired from Devdutt Patnaik's blog post . The way of telling is mine :) Though the name suggests Reintroduction, no I am not going to give my Ice breaker again. I am not going to reintroduce myself. But I am going to reintroduce four gentlemen who came to be, hundreds of years ago, and have been living with us ever since. We have stopped recognizing them lately, and even if we remember them, we get all confused with which one is which. Fellow toastmasters, allow me to call between us these fine gentlemen, aptly named Raja Bhoj, Gangu Teli, Gobarganesh and Shekhchilli . I know for most of us the last three are synonymous with morons. But it was not so when they were born in the folktales of India. So without further ado, let me reintroduce to you Mr. Shekhchilli. He is a man with dreams and desires. He has the capacity to look into options no one even ventures into. Let me share with you

The first response to "What is westernisation?" in India is invariably burgers and jeans.But like always these first responses are only the apparent, observable effects and not the cause. Primarily I think there are two causes that make us do stuff like drink cola, eat chewing gum, wear revealing or skin tight dresses, be indifferent to far relatives; sometimes farness reaching as close as parents, etc. (Note I have not put speaking English in there) The first cause is fairly visible and obvious. I think it is a lack of confidence in our own culture and better selling by the west. As Shashi Tharoor said in his TED Talk "each nation has a good story, what matters is who tells a better story". We are too impressed to see the greener grass on the other side to actually feel the warmth and the softness beneath. The second cause which I am really worried about is which i think is also a cause fueling the above mentioned lack of confidence. It is a new mentality among the

After two months of vishraam I was finally able to give my third Toastmaster's speech.I was lucky enough to have had an amazing trip with my friends in those two months, so that formed the topic of the speech. I was also lucky that Ranka came to hear that speech, and also wrote a blog post on that speech. So interested junta please read it here