rAnDom PoSts bY a rANdoM ThInKeR

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