There is no cure for curiosity

Evolution is Stupid!

2011-02-19T18:06:00.011+05:30

Evolution is Stupid! Rather an arrogant claim by minuscule mortal against almighty evolution. I am not saying its silly, it is incredibly sophisticated and powerful. But it is Stupid.

Evolution doesnt have a vision. It doesnt work with end in mind. It is a slave of the Process. It works like a child assembling pieces of puzzle, picking up all pieces which it can get its hands on and putting them together. If it fits, it sticks, if it doesnt, it falls off the puzzle. The child hopes that whatever fits forms a magnificent structure. And in most cases it does. Thats the beauty, but that beauty can be a snake that bites the child. In this context humans are snake and evolution is the child!

Humans or homo sapiens are a uniqueness that evolution has created. A creature whose intelligence is Tera, while a ducks intelligence is quack quack! which brings up the question, why is intelligence so rare! why doesnt evolution favor intelligence? millions of creatures, and only 1 evolved to be considered intelligent (although i have seen people who are serious contenders with ducks!). There is a gigantic difference b/n human intelligence and the next closest in the living kingdom. It is as if Evolution knew that any intelligence can meddle with the holy grail of evolution, The Process, and can essentially kill evolution!

That just is what is happening. The Process follows a simple rule, survival of the fittest. The rule has 2 attributes, which according to evolution is the purpose of life & of existence. Eating and Fucking, i mean survival and reproduction. Infact we can say reproduction is the only purpose, as survival is a necessity for reproduction. Female spider rips off and eats male head after mating. In most insect species males die soon after fertilizing the female. alas, there is no need to survive, as survival is not the purpose of life, reproduction is, that is all evolution cares about. It is as if evolution is doing a lengthy experiment and every generation produced by reproduction is a step forward.

After 3.5 billion years of this puzzle game, evolution gave rise to Intelligence. Intelligence which can understand and control 'The Process'. The rule of survival of fittest breaks down. The new rule is survival of the richest! People dont die when they were supposed to die. Advancement in technology & medical care keeps and nurtures the weak, who for evolution were a disease and their discardal is a necessity as per the rule. Reproduction is not happening between fitter and select few humans as evolution wanted. every loser is fucking (with the evolution!), causing evolution to slow down. Its experiments are coming to a standstill. Intelligence which evolution created turned out to be a trap for itself!

Life extension is no longer a fiction. This science will become a reality in not so distant future. Professor Aubrey de Grey is one of the researchers on the subject and claims he has drawn a roadmap to defeat biological aging. His idea is simple. If you keep replacing the worn out parts of you Cadillac, the car will practically remain new and function forever. Same with the human body.

This can be a problem for evolution if same people live very long. There is limited resource on earth and to cope with that the people who live long reproduce less. Also, same survivors reproduce again and again, severly limiting the variables in evolutions experiment. The experiment stalls and same step repeats, at very slow rate.

Booya.. you did not see that coming, did you evolution? and that is why, evolution is Stupid! Lol.. Maybe not.. there is a new wave of evolution, EvolutionNext, that is debunking all the limitations evolution had. Evolution always focused on individiuals within a species. Humans developed a brain, and it got bigger over generations. whats next in human evolution? will still bigger brain help? apparently it wont! a recent study showed that intelligence maxes out at the brain size not too biger than that of humans. any increase in brain size after that and intelligence dips. Apparently bigger brains will not be fast & efficient enough to transmit neural signals between different parts, and yet act as one coherent creature.

EvolutionNext took the giant step and its focus is not on a individual human, but its treating entire humanity as an organism. Collectively humans are acting as one organism creating

complexities and wonders which traditional evolution could never have achieved. EvolutionNext is using evolutions recipe, the fractal approach, to have simplicity repeated numerous times to create astonishing complexity. The act of 1 phone call between 2 cell phones, is an example where collective intelligence and actions of thousands of individuals lead to something extra ordinary. No single human could create this. This is humanity acting as an organism. There are innumerable examples around - Economy, Stock Market, Scientific advancement and even the internet and computer you are reading on, are all creation of collective intelligence, the fractal recipe of EvolutionNext.

Its been 3.5 years since evolutions experiment started and earth has about 3.5 billion years more of habitable life left. we are right in the middle part of earths life cycle and evolutions experiment. maybe now is the new phase when humanity evolves to move out into other planets as earth dies out.

So, it turns out i was wrong.. evolution is not stupid! Infact it is so clever that it evolved itself into EvolutionNext!!

PS: fractals - complex formations out of repetition of simple structures. eg: lightning, branching of a tree, formations on brocolli, branching of river flow

Inspiration..

2008-01-11T16:22:00.000+05:30

This was the conversation between me and my friend Nithin yesterday on Gmail chat..

6:31 PM hinithin@gmail.com: nan blogs odi comment maDu

me: hey.. nodoide..nin blogs... they r good.. adre full odoke agilla.. will read it..
good job pai..
;-)

hinithin@gmail.com: thanks
6:32 PM nin blogs link kodu nange

me: http://manojmp.blogspot.com

6:50 PM hinithin@gmail.com: Dude.. what inspired you to start writing..?

6:57 PM me: its a secret mean.. but the inspiration was strong ;-) anyways gotta go now.. catch u later bye

I said bye to him, went and sat in the company shuttle to go back home. His question had made me think.. what was my inspiration to write? or did i not have any inspiration? or is my purpose[as i mentioned in earlier blog] my inspiration? No, inspiration is different, it can come from anywhere,anyone,anything.. Yes,There was a inspiration behind every blog that i wrote. Wach inspiration came from a different source, sometime it was a festival,a movie, a girl, a newspaper article, and now it is a friend - Nithin pai, who is the inspiration for this blog.

Surprisingly, source of inspiration can be totally irrelevant to the content of the blog!!! . For example, my inspiration for Writing the blog "How impressive is First impression" came from newspaper.

Inspiration for writing the blog has also come out of other dependent factors like Competition, Pride and Jealousy!!!!

Strange but true.. I have to dig more into this Rabbit Hole of Inspiration, i have to look back as to what were my actual inspirations for writing each of the blogs... Will surely do that.. Now its time to go Catch the shuttle back home, and on the way find out what was and is my INSPIRATION.

Will update soon...

Time Travel

2007-12-21T14:38:00.000+05:30

I have always been fascinated with the concept of time travel. Right from the days when i first heard about theory of relativity and time being relative, i have been excited to know more about it.But thought that this is just a fantasy and could not happen in reality. Although initially i could understand a very little about it eventually i could grasp few of the concepts.I came to know that time travel,infact, could be possible. Oh boy was i excited. i was literally jumping around. A book by Stephen Hawking - 'The Brief History Of Time', was one of my favourite reads.
If 100 years ago someone told you that u can fly in air at the speed of sound, and you can talk to anybody in the other part of the world by using a hand held device, you would literally laugh till u suffocate. But what has happened now. We never know what is in store for us.. Every time in the history people have thought that what they have is the limit of exploration, everything there is has been discovered and nothing more could be discovered. But changes, new discoveries, have continued to shock the world. Who knows, in our lives we may see time travel as a technology as common as a telephone is right now.

I found some of the interesting videos about these concepts. So, thought of putting them in my blog.

Paradox of Time travel.. Part 1..

Paradox of Time travel .. Part 2...

Time Travel(Discovery video).. Part1

Time Travel(Discovery video).. Part2

a missed out part of the above video with interesting physical details

An Example of Theory of relativity

Newton Vs Einstein

More to come ... :-)

Love - when seen through biological lens.

2007-07-09T15:30:00.000+05:30

In my previous post i wrote about love. That was a psychological perspective of Love. There is a more interesting way in which we can look at love - Biologically.

Love is a feeling, an emotion aroused inside a person. Each emotion in human is associated with a particular enzyme. If we speak in the words of Bio-chemistry, enzyme is a chemical. So, our emotions are controlled by chemicals. For example, higher levels of 'homocysteine', a chemical in blood is known to cause anger in individual.
The feelings of attraction and love are associated with few chemicals called Phenyl-Ethyl-Amine(PEA), norepinephrine and Dopamaine. When researchers use a functional magnetic resonance imaging to see the brain of people in love, the scan shows increased blood flow in areas of the brain with high concentrations of above mentioned chemicals.

Well here is a tricky situation, U go walking along the street, when u see a beautiful girl go straight across to her and inject PEA and dopamaine to her, what do u think is gonna happen?? Believe it or not she will be attracted to you, she will have the feelings of love towards you.. This concept has been doing rounds since centuries, in an encapsulated way. Well, you cant go inject the PEA to the person u like but if u can initiate PEA secretion in that person's brain, your job is half done, that person will be attracted to you. How to do it? dont ask me....But certain fragnance and aromas are known to cause secretion of PEA and related chemicals in humans.. That is why u are advised to go to a romantic evening with a good perfume on and with fresh flowers.. Well which perfume in the market is the best for that? again, dont ask me.. But a scent found in human sweat is known to make one attractive to opposite sex. Chemical components called pheromones which are present in sweat are responsible for this attraction. So i would say, next time you go to meet ur love, wear that sweaty T-shirt u wore for the work out the other day.

Dopamine, norepinephrine and phenyl-ethyl-amine is responsible for that giddiness,racing heartbeat, flushed skin and sweaty palms, which happens when u are attracted to someone and when first falling in love(can i call it infatuation?). .Also, people in love have lower levels of serotonin, a finding in people with obsessive behavior disorders, which also explains why those in love tend to be “obsessed about their partner.” Neural circuits associated with the way you assess others during this time are suppressed too, so you become less critical of those you love. Suppression of these neural circuits makes one lose his ability to think rationally—at least when it comes to the object of his attraction. The old saying “love is blind” is very accurate in this stage. We become oblivious to any flaws our partner might have. We idealize them and can’t get them off our minds. This overwhelming preoccupation and drive is part of our biology.

Well these chemicals cause feelings of attraction, love and lust in the initial stages of a relationship. Lets get deeper now. What do u mean when u say " I love you"?. Well we can answer it taking a simple example. when i say " I love chocolates", i simply mean i enjoy the taste of chocolate. Similarly when i say "I Love you", it means "I enjoy touching your body,” or “I enjoy believing that i am secure & protected when with you,” or “I enjoy having sex with you.” In love, one looks for satisfaction in all the various titillating parts of the body. But there is more, "I love you" means i have a sense of absolute belonging and acceptance with you.

PEA and dopamine act in initial stages of love causing raising heart beats, sweaty palms etc.. But as the relationship progresses this feelings of lust will not be there. A relationship becomes more practical,it faces unforeseen problems and distractions. During this stage vasopressin and Oxytocin predominates. These are hormones associated with the formation of long-term, monogamous relationships. These two chemicals explain why passionate love fades as attachment grows.

"I Love you" is not as simple as" I love chocolates", It means more. Real love is a love beyond “making love;” it is a love that exists beyond lack and limitation. A love that involves a sort of ecstasy of being matter of the soul and not of the body.

Courtesy: Dr. Grace Carole; Few biological and chemical details taken from Dr. Grace Carole's articles and publications.

What is Love??

2007-07-06T17:00:00.000+05:30

I get this question quite often in my mind.. I try to answer myself, wander around some ideas and give up without coming to any conclusion.
This question again stuck me when i was watching the movie 'Awarapan' few days back. The guy there is totally lost. In some parts of the movie you can actually feel the emptiness that he has in his life. As the movie started i was like 'comeon how can someone be so much obsessed about a girl when she is already dead'. But belive me it happens. Love is such a strong emotion.
Is it an Obsession? is it exaggeration of emotion?Or is it a decision?
Many say that It becomes impossible to stop thinking about someone. even if they try to forget, they cant.. They dont stay in touch, they dont speak to each other for months, years.. but still that feeling of Love will be so strong. Does it mean that u dont have to be in contact with the person to love that person? this is what is happening to Emran hashmi in Awarapan, he is so in love with her even though the girl is no more...

Then it means that love is a feeling associated with oneself.. People create an ideal personality of a person in their mind and love that personality. they dont actually love the person, they are loving the personification of the person in their mind. Yes, when someone says that i want to stop loving her, that is why i have stopped being in touch with her these days, then, they are not addressing the problem. The problem is in their mind.. If they really want to, they have to take off that 'Person' that they have in their mind....

Love is a decision. A subconsious decision that one makes that he cant deny even if he wants to. To Unlove is also a decision. A decision which should override all the emotions and resistances one may face to Unlove someone. In most cases when people say 'i cant stop thinking about her, i cant stop loving her', it does not mean they cant, it means they dont want to.. Even if the person says he wants to forget someone, the subconsious will not let him because that subconsious doesn't want to lose the beautiful feeling of love. It ultimately leads to pain to that person. Pain of love. But is it actually Pain?? One of my kannada masters used to say, 'There is satisfaction in Pain, Once pain becomes a habit, the person is actually satisfied by taking pain'. To quote the exact phrase - " Bhoga dante vyasanavu ondu hambala devi.."- phrase from a drama- Yayathi.

Ok this is what exactly i was telling you before, whenever there comes a keeda in my mind, i try to figure out things and as always end up nowhere. This time the keeda was the movie 'Awarapan'. I was thinking what is wrong with this guy.Ya he loved her, but now she is no more and its illogical to keep thinking about her, why cant he move on. But the truth is that Love is illogical, he is not moving on in life because he doesnt want to, he cant stop thinking about her because he doesnt want to. Do you call it the madness, do u think that guy is freakish crazy. Yes he is.. thats why the name - Awarapan. In the movie he says "What am i doing, why am i doing all the things i am doing, Why am i running from people, where will i hide, I have always been hiding, whereever i go i cant hide and escape from the fact that i Love her, i cant hide myself from my feelings towards her, No its impossible"..

Uff pretty confusing isnt it.. If i continue to think i will screw up my logic. Actually Psychology is fun and interesting but too much Psychology can screw up your life and make you a real psycho. Trying to figure out logic behind every action and every thought is what psychology does. In this endeavour psychology can lead to an endless loop with no way out making a real Bheja Fry out of a person..

U know how we turn to god to seek help and answers for our unsolved mysterious questions.. Well these days Google is my god because i try to seek answers through google. I know the answer is out somewhere, but the difficult part is to find and reach that answer..

So, i tried googling about psychology of love and got few interesting insights...

Compassionate vs. Passionate Love

According to psychologist Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues, there are two basic types of love: compassionate love and passionate love. Compassionate love is characterized by mutual respect, attachment, affection, and trust. Compassionate love usually develops out of feelings of mutual understanding and shared respect for each other.
Passionate love is characterized by intense emotions, sexual attraction, anxiety, and affection. When these intense emotions are reciprocated, people feel elated and fulfilled. Unreciprocated love leads to feelings of despondence and despair. Hatfield suggests that passionate love is transitory, usually lasting between 6 and 30 months. According to Hatfield, passionate love arises when cultural expectations encourage falling in love, when the person meets your preconceived ideas of an ideal lover, and when you experience heightened physiological arousal in the presence of the other person. Ideally passionate love then leads to compassionate love, which is far more enduring. While most people desire relationships that combine the security and stability of compassionate with the intensity of passionate love, Hatfield suggests that this is rare.

Romantic love is made up of three elements:
Attachment: The need to be cared for and be with the other person.
Caring: Valuing the other persons happiness and needs as much as your own.
Intimacy: Sharing private thoughts, feelings, and desires with the other person.

Every person has an ideal combination of these elements that will make up his 'idea of love'.

Pursuit of Happyness.....

2007-06-20T11:41:00.000+05:30

Few days back i watched a movie, 'The pursuit of happyness' starring Will Smith(as Christopher Gardner) and his real life son Jared Smith. What moved me most while watching this real life story was the persistence, father-son relation and stubborn will of Chris Gardner. The movie is down to earth and dialogues are heartbreakingly real.

The story is about Chris Gardner, who makes a living by selling bone-density scanners. The movie is about struggles when he hits a low point after he and his 5-year-old son are evicted from their San Francisco apartment. Gardner acquires an unpaid internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm where he struggles to keep appearances while forced to carry a suitcase with all his belongings to work. Along with his son, Gardner faces many hardships, including living in a shelter, but continues to strive to carve his place in the firm and to pursue his dream of a prosperous, happy life.

Few of the scenes in the movie are very eye catchy, like the one where Gardner solves the Rubicks cube puzzle in a cab, in front of a person from a stock brokerage firm, where he hopes to get an internship.

In the movie Gardner tries to define his views about happyness.. He realizes what Thomas Jefferson, the third US president wrote in his Declaration of Independence, that all men were endowed with the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Jefferson had specified the pursuit of happiness as a right, not happiness itself. "And I thought about how he knew to put the 'pursuit' in there," says Gardner, "like no one can actually have happiness. We can only pursue it."

Everybody has their own idea of happyness, Gardners wife leaves him to pursue her happyness, her idea of happyness is a good home, food, clothes, money to spend... A crazed man tries to steal Gardner's bone-density scanner, which he thinks is a time machine. That is his way of pursuing his happyness of time travel. Gardner finds happyness in being a stock broker, being a responsible father.. He pursues it by enduring all difficulties.. Some of the scenes in the movie are very moving, for example, Gardner does not keep the phone receiver down between calls so that he can save few seconds, he does not take breaks to drink water, by doing all this, in a day he could save 9 minutes.. wow can u imagine the struggle he puts in.. all to pursue his happyness... Gardner makes his son believe that the toilet room in the train station is a cave and they have to hide from dinosaurs in the cave, and spends a night in the toilet room.. His struggle in the personal life to achive happyness has been beautifully portayed and Will smith has done justice to the role.Gardner pursues happiness and finds it as a father having fun with his son, while watching a match in the stadium, enjoying time on the beach, or spending the night in a luxury hotel although he knows they might soon have to sleep on the street again.

Gardner, who sees his son playing basketball with so much enthusiasm says that "No matter how well u play, some day u will have to leave this and find ways to do job to earn money for living". seeing his son disheartened by his words, Gardner feels guilty.. he says to his son "Listen, dont let anybody tell you that you cant do something, not even me. People cant do it themselves, they say you cant do it.. you've got to dream... And you've got to protect your dream.. you've got to pursue your dream".

The scene where chris explains his son how 'Probably' is different from 'Possibly' is also nicely shot .

Another notable part of the movie is the scene where Gardner comes to the interview for internship in a old shirt with paint spilled all over it. The moment he enters the interview room after seeing the mess and noise in the stockbroking firm he says " Wow, For half an hour i have been sitting outside thinking about the excuse i can give for wearing cloths like this, but now i dont have to." he also says to the panel "I am a kind of person who tells 'I dont know' if i dont know the answer for something, but tell you what, I will find the answer.." Gardners positive ness and sense of humor is nicely portrayed in the scene where the interviever asks him "Mr. Gardner, what would you say if someone comes to an interview without a shirt on him and i give him the job, what would you say Mr. Gardner" and Gardner Replies "He must've had on some really nice pants."

There are hundreds of other scenes that i liked in the movie, but it is best felt when watched. The movie gives a new paradigm of looking at things, with inspiring true life struggles and incedents in Chris Gardners life..

Now i recognize the importance of knowing about peoples life, earlier when somebody used to read biographies and autobiographies i used to think, why should someone waste their time in knowing what happened in someone else's life.. But now i know that life is a school and experience is the best teacher.. Knowing about people is like education, we can learn from their mistakes and put things that worked for them into our lives..

There are very few movies which you remember for years, just because of the way you felt,the way you started to think, the way you involved yourself when you were seeing the movie. This movie is one among those few..

And About Chris Gardner, he later started his own finance-consulting-stock brokerage firm by name 'Gardner Rich'. The company went public in 2005 and Gardner, still holding 75% shares amassed millions... He is a true legendary inspiration...

My hometown - Chikmagalur.

2007-06-12T12:06:00.000+05:30

As a child, the moment i stepped out of my house, my eyes would fixate on those beautiful mountain ranges of mullayanagiri and baba budangiri. Backyard of my home offered a elegant view of the 'giris'. The festival seasons, especially deepavali, were still more exciting because the flame lighted a top the hill would be seen as a tiny little bulb glowing in the sky... I had always wanted to go see the beautiful place closely. Mullayanagiri... the highest point of Karnataka... is in my hometown of chikmagalur..The words used to be so thrilling... But actually, not as thrilling as the experience of visiting the place itself. I visited the 'giris' with my team recently. Here are a few snaps from the trip..

This is 'Devirammana betta' one of the three major hills in the range. The Hill is very steep and pointed. Hundreds of devotees climb the hill during first day of Deepavali to get the devi darushana.. More than seeing the god, its the beauty of nature that the people rejoice. This is the reason i think temples are built in places where nature reveals its vastness and beauty.. One can see a small white temple a top the hill..

Have a closer look at the photo you can actually see rainfall in the backdrop of the hill. It was a thrilling experience to see rain pouring down from the clouds at a certain place and other places being cloudy and sunny... This is the view of Devirammana betta from Manikyadhara, Baba budan giri...

This again is a view form Baba budan giri. In the lower half of the snap you can see small dried out plants. These plants are kurinji plants. Kurinji grows at an altitude of 1300 to 2400 metres, and they blossom only once in 12 years . The flower last blossomed in Aug-Sep 2006. I missed out a chance to see this wonder of nature and now i will have to wait till 2018 to see that happen again. The Nilgiris, which literally means the blue mountains, got its name from the purplish blue flowers of Neelakurinji that blossoms gregariously once in 12 years. The flower turns the entire mountain purple and makes the mountains a pleasure to watch. see the picture below to find out how the mountain looks during neelakuringi blossoms..

I got this pic from a website giving info exclusively on kurinjis http://kurinji.in

Anyways, find few of the pics taken from baba budan giri ...

Sitalayyana giri is a hilly place on the way to mullayanagiri. Our team first stopped in sitallayangiri, washed faces in chilling water and decide to have a walk within the mountains...

Then we reached mullayangiri. I stood there for a while looking at the beauty, trying to point where our chikmagalur is..

Just look at the shodow of clowds on the land.. how amazing...

After reaching mullayanagiri we have to climb a little distance by feet to reach the top point where there is a shiva temple.

Magfi and Sasi, my teammates can be seen in the above pic...

What i didn know about mullayanagiri is that there are beautiful caves in the mountain top. The caves run very deep ans skewed. we could not go deep inside because it was very dark, and we were afraid that we may get lost in the cave without finding the proper route back.

The above pic was taken inside one of the caves.The cellphones were not bright enough to illuminate the caves.

Within the cool breeze of wind and the shadow of clouds , we sat and relaxed for a while...

Basu and i went to take few snaps on a projected,pointed pinnacle.

At that point i was on top of the world.. i can say, on top of Karnataka,literally...

On the way to Baba budan giri from mullayan giri there are some eye catching views.

We stopped at a point called Kavigala gandi that gave view of mountains all around..

The day was so amazing. I had been looking at those mountains since my childhood and it took me 20 years to actually go see that place. And i am so happy that i also got an opportunity to take my team mates to my hometown and visit the wonderful place again with them....

The Purpose....

2007-06-08T16:52:00.000+05:30

Everything in this universe has a purpose. Well it is left to us to discover and figure out what is that purpose. This brings to me the question of "The Purpose" of this very particular blog... Why should i write blog? what purpose can i give to me writing blog?
am i writing it so that people will read it ? No, nobody visits this blog, its not even indexed with google, so it will not turn up in google search. Only way to come to this blog is by directly typing the URL. And how many people in the world will be curious enough to come to this URL and know what is written? very few... Then does it mean this blog has a very faint purpose?? No.... This blog gets a purpose because of my choice.. I choose to write. why do i choose?? I choose because when i write blogs i think.. I think about things, i think about rights and wrongs, i think about people, i think about my life, i think about choices i should make, I think about what i like, i think about what i dont like..... My brother-in- law used to say 'you should write down the things in you mind, it will bring clarity of thought'. So, i write because it gives me clarity about things. I write so that i can give opportunity to myself to know what i am, how i feel about things.. the more i write, the more i know about myself. I write because it makes me feel good about myself..

So, the Purpose of this blog is to make me think... to discover myself....

And if someone is reading this.. let me tell you...
You are here because you were sent here by your choice. Your choice to look out for something.. You had a purpose behind that choice... Everybody does something with a purpose, people browse with a purpose looking out for something... and i am here because of the same reason you are here.. "The Purpose".. well for me its ' My Purpose' that i have written about above..

People make choices through out their life, in a way every moment of life is a choice, you can choose how you want to act, how you want to think.. "Choice" is very powerful.

Here I can quote a dialogue from one of my favourite movies,"The Matrix", where Agent Smith tells Neo that he cant win and its pointless to fight, But Neo replies that he fights because he chooses to (His choice can bring in a new purpose to his fight, the victory)....

Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why, why do you do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is, do you even know? Is it freedom or truth, perhaps peace - could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself. Although, only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson, you must know it by now! You can't win, it's pointless to keep fighting! Why, Mr. Anderson, why, why do you persist?

Neo: Because I choose to.

Evolution of a naive mind..

2007-06-06T17:34:00.001+05:30

" Baagilolu kai mugidu olage baa vachakane shileyalla vee gudiyu Jnana degulavu"......
These are the lines writtten on the arch of the Public library in my home town of Chikmagalur.. It means " hey observer, pray before you enter this place, its not a sculpture, its a temple of wisdom".... How true is that...

It usually so happens that we hear people say about wisdom words, their view, their opinions.. Those remain just words until we realize.. When we actually realize those words it actually strikes like a lightning. The spectacular meaning those simple words carry, which when realized shows the vastness of it. The example of library given above is one such thing..

I was just reflecting back on how i have changed in the past years and what triggerd those changes. These are the few things that i think triggers change in a person

Realization of something
People
Books

Let me tell about my experience with these things.

"We have to be happy always".We hear people say it all the time, these are just plain words till a simple realization, that can bring about a new paradigm in which we see and perceive things. One can think about hours together on these words, the more u dig, the more u explore. I felt like i have found a new world when i realized that ultimate purpose of life is to be happy. If u are not happy now u cannot be happy ever, no matter what u have, no matter what u get, u cannot be happy until u want to be happy. This realization happened when i was going throught a tough time personally. And again the words "Difficulties makes u a wiser and humble person" striked. If i had not faced tough times and difficulties i would not be as wise as i am today...I also learnt "Passion, Commitment and consistency are the things which will take one to his goal".... few simple realizatons like these have changed me and my way of looking at the world..

I look back and see how i was in a coocon in my previous days. If only i had met people earlier and realized that those people can change my life, i would have been a better person than i am today. My friend used to say "let it be any person u can learn something from him". That has been happening all along for me. I met this guy whom people hate, i learnt how to handle rejections.. I met this girl whom guys run after, i learnt the 'rules of attraction'. Hundreds of people i have met have made me realize that its not about how many people u meet, its about how they have and can impact your life. A classic example, One of my earler room mates, Santosh. Here comes the point of my earlier blog about first impression. I did not have good impression about him at all when i met him for first few times. But the arrows are pointing otherwise now and i say he is a walking encyclopedia. Talk about anything under the sun, he has information about it and more importantly he has opinion about it. He doesnt feel shy to ask straight away about things he want to know. I think this quality of his has given him so much knowledge about things. I used to sit in front of him and hear him talk for hours, may it be ramayana & mahabaratha, Nature of people in different parts of india, Biology, Linguistic influences, prostitution, america, Business, Cooking, Rivers, Friends(The Series),Kalidasa,Jayalalitha,Lalu etc.. I know its a wierd combination of things to talk about but thats how he was.. After 6 months of staying with him i have realized that there is lot one can learn from being with like minded person. Number of people have influenced me in strong ways, few of my friends, My brother in laws, my sisters, my parents.. I am today a combination of realizations and learnings that i have had from these people...

Othello was one of the first books that i read. I was in high school and at that time i used to read so that i can answer people when they ask what i did during summer holidays.. Obvously i did not get anything out of those books at that age.. But lately i have realized that one single book can change your life. Its not about the number of books we can read, how much can we read anyways, even if i read 1 book a month, in a year i can read 12, in 30 years of my life i can read 360 books. A Small Library in our college itself has 65000 books. So its definitely not about numbers. If one can read 1 book a month consistently for 30 years he will be one of the most knowledgable and wise person on earth. My brother in law used to say, u have to read a lot, ready books, ready any piece of paper you get.. Now, i feel some books have greatly influenced me.. may it be few short read books like " who moved my cheese", " The present" or the real thought provoking books like "7 habits of highly influential people", "Rich dad poor dad", "Cash flow quadrant"," the monk who sold his ferrari" they have all influenced me in some way...

Maybe all these evolution happens in everyone. But today i am glad that i looked back and cared enough to figure out what has influenced me, what has made me to change for better....

How Impressive is First Impression

2006-11-29T19:04:00.000+05:30

The University of Minnesota - family social science professor Paul Rosenblatt explored the art of sleeping with a partner in a new book titled ‘Two in a Bed: The social system of couple bed sharing’. He says,” sharing a bed is a complicated, changing and often a challenging experience and no one has written about it”. ‘uhh disgusting!! What is there to research on 2 people sleeping together?’ I thought. I was reading an article in Bangalore Times on a Monday morning. What a nasty way to start the week.. I started reading BT a year ago. I used to be thrilled reading these surveys and so called studies about less explored things like ‘why looking good is important’, ‘What kind of guys are women attracted to’, ‘Is attraction physical?’, ‘Can money bring happiness?’…But of late I find these kinds of topics less interesting. Maybe because most of the times I don’t buy what is said there. Why is it inappropriate? I think. Maybe because most of the studies and surveys are done by a university professor in Chicago or an organization in Amsterdam, and they don’t fit into our culture, value system and the way we are brought up. Obviously I can’t nod to a survey saying ‘90% of the people have their first sexual experience while in high school’ maybe there, not here, I say.

Few days ago I came across one of these Tips on ‘how to make good first impression’. “Important, very important, you never get a second chance to make that first impression” these were my first thoughts. I read along.. There were tips like, wearing neat and clean clothes, a smile on the face, a firm hand shake, words to use while greeting etc.. Ok, so that’s it?? So anybody can learn to make a good first impression? Yes, the article was saying. Except for the most natural things which are not in ones control, most of the soft skill part of it can be inculcated. Ironically, the things which are not in ones control, like ones color, height etc influences significantly in forming first impression.

Interesting!! I had started to think…

Whenever I meet someone I can choose to act in 3 ways. I can choose to make good impression on them by projecting myself rightly. I can choose to make bad impression, but there is no reason why one would do that except in specific cases or I can choose not to bother about it and let the situation free, out of my control. In the last case, since I don’t try to control and mend the situation as I need it may turn out to fall anywhere between the good-bad gradient. Impressions are not a specific cutout between good and bad, it’s a fine gradient line with good and bad in the two extremes. Can I choose not to make any impression? say I don’t want to make any impression. No, it’s not possible since building impression happens in other peoples mind and I can’t control that, can I?

So, what opinion do we make in first impressions? Do we make an opinion about ones personality? Then, what is personality? Is it the totality of what kind of person I am? Than how do I know what kind of person I am? A simple explanation could be ‘I am what I repeatedly do’. If I take a pista flavored ice-cream once, that does not say much, but if I take pista flavor all the times I take ice-cream then that means I am a person who likes pista flavor. This simple thing also determines the personality of a person, only that we can call ‘doing things repeatedly’ as habit. So, our habits determine our personality. This means if I want to have certain kind of personality, I can develop habits which would ultimately help me develop that personality. This means I can mould my personality as I want.

Making good first Impression and having charming personality becomes important in business relations and in short encounters with people. But when it comes to personal relationships there is a missing a piece of puzzle to fit in -‘Character’. Considering the people whom I have close relationship now, In 70% of the cases the first impression I had on them has not remained. Then how impressive is first impression? This is when the ‘Character’ has played its trick. So what is character? Character is the collection of logically interrelated values. So what are Values? Values are beliefs, trust or faith that a person has in something. For example one person’s value system may say “life is very precious, one should struggle, work hard and mend it to suit his ways” and the other person’s value system may say “Life is short, enjoy it, don’t try to control it and take it as it comes”. None of these is good or bad, it’s a question of choice.

People with similar values happen to get along well and be close to each other. But not all people who are close have similar value system. That’s the beauty of relationships. When you love a person, you don love him/her for a reason. You need not like the way the person has reacted or behaved in a situation, maybe your opinion about things differ. Whatever the differences be, you don’t form an opinion about that person, because you love that person. Same is true with me, good or bad , I tell everything to my sister because I know she loves me and will not form an opinion about me on what I said. Besides opinion doesn’t last long as the values are ever changing and people change along with them forcing one to rethink about the opinion they made.

So what does my opinion about people say? Does it say what kind of persons they are? No, it says what kind of person I am. If I say “Sania should not do any ads, she should respect her religion and refrain from public appearances in such revealing clothes”, then it says about my values and helps form an opinion about me not her.With so much emphasis being given to ‘Values’, it can be seen that some of these values are general community values. We can see how differently Indians and people of USA view certain things, may it be teenage sex, divorce, dating, parent children relationships, even music, that’s the community value. With exposure to different value systems people find one more appropriate than the other and that’s how we see Cultural Revolution happening.

At last we can say, Impressions are impressive if the encounters are professional or short lived but in a personal relationship Impressions itself become short lived and Character takes the center stage.

Umm that’s quite a realization. But sometimes I ask myself “I have realized all this, but do I make good first impression on people?” Ya may be sometimes, but not always. Why not always? I know how important it is but still I don’t try to develop those skills and habits. Am I lazy? Is there something wrong with me? eeev, I better not open that window now..

G for God.., Q for Questions!!

2006-08-30T19:40:00.000+05:30

As a kid I would look up at the blue sky and wonder, how can they walk there? don’t they fall down? I believed in the tales and stories about god, watched movies about them and I really believed that they are there, in the sky, and would come down to grant '3' wishes if one prays[ 3 is a very funny number by the way, carries greater importance and has extensive usage in ones life]. I would go to temple with my parents and do all the procedural tasks of pradakshine, taking mangalarathi, taking teertha.. I enjoyed it. But I didn know what was praying, so i did as it appeared, just closing eyes and joining hands.

Sometime later I had moved to my next level of praying, I was asking god what I wanted. I never bothered to check if he was giving what ever I had asked, but continued to ask things whenever I prayed. I was told if you ask god with pure devotion he will give you things which you had wished for. I also wondered; can we bribe god!! I had seen people praying “ If u can make this wish of mine come true then I will give you golden ring, or mastakabisheka or even money say 101 or 1001 Rs/- as kanike!!”. However all these were fine with me because at that age most of the things were mystery, and this was one of them.

In school I got to know about our solar system, planets, the earth, the moon… this was my favorite topic during schooldays. With this knowledge, lots of questions aroused. Ok, if there is no sky-world of gods, then where are they? So, there is no god? I did not ask anyone about this, I was afraid. I was afraid and stopped asking that to myself, after all, I never wanted to get fried in a large vessel full of hot and burning oil for asking that question!!

Lately, I realized that I have got answers for most of the so called ‘mysteries’, if not completely but to a major extent. One of the exceptions was ‘GOD’. My understanding about god was very little. By then I knew that god is not there in sky, there is no such thing called sky, it’s an illusion. We are seeing what is not there!! . There were times when I completely disbelieved in god. Standing aside and believing that majority of the population is wrong and I am right was thrilling. But then i would look around successful people, industrialists performing yagna poojas in their factories and altering their houses according to vastu. I would get confused again, why do they belive in god? I would reassure myself in the words I read somewhere, ‘people who have been lucky and have risen to heights which they had not even dreamt of are highly spiritual. And also people who invest loads of money in business get reassurance and feel secure by having faith in god. That’s why they do so....’ But when I was exposed to different ways in which people seek god, I was forced to change my mind. Maybe they had an explanation, may be they had maturity to understand god.

People go to temples, churches, mosques, they prey, they try to connect with god, they try to find him in themselves!! So is god ones integrity, Ones beliefs, Ones values? And do people find god by being true to themselves? I have seen great thinkers and spiritualists saying “God guides me to live every minute of my life synchronous with my values and beliefs. I will never be guilty of doing something wrong because god is always there, guiding me to the right path, giving meaning to my life. This is how I try to seek god in myself.” These words give new definition to god, rather a true definition which most of us may not quite comprehend. I have not understood this way of looking at god, maybe it takes great level of maturity and knowledge which I don’t possess.

From thousands of years, people have understood god in a more meaningful way. Then why did they come up with human form of god? God with arms and legs like us, Family like us? And stories involving gods and humans!!? One explanation I could think of is that, in earlier days, the concept of god was required for stable, peaceful, and happy society and social life. It was necessary to induce in people right values like truthfulness, honesty, integrity, discipline etc.. These values were associated with god. Tales and stories about god was the best way of educating people, by making god as their icon thus making people follow his values. This worked amazingly, people believed in god, in his values. So, now can we say- the person who wrote those stories created god for human wellbeing? Well its not one person who did that, if we look at the literature we get hundreds of versions of these stories, all preaching the values which are ‘right’ at that point of civilization, using god as an actor.

Different religions have their own values and their own way of preaching it. Hindus preach by seeing god as a family man, as a husband, wife, children, relative etc.. Christians see God as superpower and Jesus as son of god. They don’t want to associate family and wife with Jesus; maybe it’s their way of preaching. However differently the religions may preach however different their values may be but their ultimate goal is to bring order in community. Without religions and their concept of god, earth would have been a total Chaos.

We also see god in one more dimension, The Nature. If we go on questioning, where did man come from? Who designed our cells to be so? Who designed the complicated process of one sperm competing with millions of them to fertilize an egg, and how can that zygote divide into specific number of cells, each cell forming a part of our body and each of our body cells designed to be divided specific number of times before they die? This complicated process happens in millions of humans with astounding perfection. And this is just the process in humans that we saw; there are billions of varieties of plants, animals, insects which have specific anatomy and life processes. So who designed it to be this way? Many of the things have been explained as science; after all we have had great scientists who could prove that ‘if we can bend space, we can bend time! And time moves slowly near earth and quickens as we move away because time is relative!!’ Even with all these explanations there remains unexplained ordered or random behavior which the scientists call as Natural or nature. We call it ‘God’.

Good never exists alone, if it does we cannot classify it as good; it is the ‘bad’ which gives ‘good’ its value. So with god power, there exists a concept of evil power, associated with bad things, which try to hurt humans. One such concept is ghosts. Interestingly, many people claim to have seen ghosts, but I have never heard of anyone claiming to have seen god!. And also if these ghosts truly exist, what is their purpose? Is it to harm humans? Why do they want to harm us? So is there a lifer cycle of rebirth?

Questions come up infinitely as we dig in. I don’t know how deep the hole goes and I am also not sure if what is being offered as explanation is the truth. At the end of the day, I am back there at the beginning with loads of questions. I ask myself, ‘do u think there is god?’ I don’t know, ‘do u think there are ghosts?’ I don’t know. I keep oscillating between options. Recently I saw a documentary aired in discovery channel about ghosts, then I say, why not, its possible that ghosts may be a reality.

Some things go beyond logical explanation and cannot be reasoned using our limited knowledge. There comes the anomaly of choice, the choice of believing or disbelieving something. Both are equally good and equally bad. Ultimately its about believing in our choice that helps us make peace with these questions.