Educating Amit Varma

Amit Varma, in this blog-entry links to a ToI photo where the deputy CM of Maharashtra is being weighed against books at a function in Pune.

Well, the picture looks funny with everyone in the best of spirits, specially with Mr.Patil's staff/stooges trying to balance their leader, who is trying to balance books on the other pan. (digressing, does this make Mr. Patil an accountant, since he is balancing his books?)

Amit goes on to say

No, do not ask me what Mr Patil is up to. I don’t know, and never wish to
find out

I shall deliberately ignore the 'never wish to find out' phrase and do my best to educate him -

The act that Mr. Patil is indulging in is called Tulabharam, which translates ino English as weighing by scale. It generally is carried out as an act of charity usually at temples and socio-public functions. There is an interesting story concerning Tulabharam involving Rukmini, Krishna and Satyabhama.

Mr.Patil's reasons behind this Tulabharam may be debatable, but the one important question that needs to be asked is, "Why the heck are books being weighed against Mr.Patil? Is this how the Ministry of Education (hopefully those are books for school kids) "functions" in disbursing books?"

England, stay at home

Yes!!! I'm so happy. England are out of Euro 2008. In my opinion this is something which they needed, something similar to India exiting out of Cricket World Cup 2007.

Both the teams are similar, lots of hype and reputation, but when it comes to actual performance where a fight is expected they are zilch.

The exit turned out to be good for India in terms of the new team being built, certain players having to regain their form, will England go the same way?

It's 0400 hrs but we still follow the Queue

Discipline is the key to success -this might have been drilled into our heads since time immemorial. Why we do certain things and don't do certain things depending on whether there's someone to supervise us or not?

Whatever may be the answer to that question, the following incident should clear one doubt - following a system irrespective of the hour of the day, or the presence of a monitoring person saves a lot of time and effort.

A couple of my friends had to catch an early morning flight, and despite my best assurances regarding their timely reaching at the airport thanks to Bombay's round the clock available transport facility, they wanted to book a cab. Unfortunately, the cab service had all its vehicles booked upto the afternoon. That left us with no option but to rely on the regular autos/taxis.

It was about 4 in the morning when we exited my apartment complex. True to my prediction, there was a queue of autos at the auto stand. But, all the drivers were asleep. Not wanting to disturb them and having observed movement of autos and taxis on the road, we decided to flag one down. All that we got for a good 10 minute wait in the morning chill was a few full autos and a Maruti Esteem which flew over a speed-breaker at about 80-90 kmph.

We then decided to wake the first driver in the queue. He got up without fuss, got ready and before leaving woke the next guy in the line and asked him to take his due place at the head of the queue. He then drove away.

As I went back to my apartment, I saw Driver #2 pushing his vehicle to the head of the queue and then walking back to wake driver #3.

Neat isn't it? I don't think this would happen in any other place in India.

There were also a few questions in my mind:

1. Do I doff my hat to the work culture of this place?

OR

2. Do I doff my hat to the fact that Driver #1 considered it his responsibility to intimate his sleeping colleague that the numero uno position was vacant and had to be occupied?

OR

3. Do I doff my hat to the chain reaction that set in among all the drivers?

OR

4. Do I doff my hat to the fact that no one else would have occupied the vacated spot even if the other drivers had not woken up to push their vehicles?

Nuvvu Nuvvu

This is the video of one of the most romantic and sweetest songs in Telugu.

What do I like about it? Well, Sonali Bendre and the surroundings. Wish I was her partner. Do you wanna partner, Sonali?

Marriage Registration in India

The Supreme Court of India, on 25th October 2007, came out with a landmark judgement that all marriages, irrespective of religion must be registered. The IBN Live report whose text version is on yahoo news, says:

Marriages may be made in heaven but they will have to be registered right
here on earth says the Supreme Court and your religion does not matter.

The court has also asked states to notify the procedure for registration of
marriage as well as appoint an officer to register all marriages in that state.

Lawyer Wasim Qadri says, “There is problem in society that people have
denied their marriages when in litigation.”

This is exactly the problem that can arise if a marriage is not registered. Evidence like photographs, marriage videos, people present at the wedding cannot be airtight proof that the wedding has taken place. If that be the case, every couple married on television had better be declared as husband and wife.

As far as cases related to the 'married couple' moving to a distant place are concerned, there have been/could be instances where the woman (in most of the cases) is harassed, or in worst cases are put through trials and tribulations that Arathi undergoes in the movie Nagarahaavu.

In effect, the registration process just does this - it legally safeguards the union and prevents exploitation. Why do you think property is registered? Why are patents filed - to register an invention isn't it?

But, trust the great-ones to oppose it.

“We think they should not be made compulsory because they are a religious affair
as far as Muslim personal law is concerned and to say that marriages not
registered are null and void is against the very concept of Muslim personal law.
Our appeal to the honorary court to the state and central government the
registration should not be made compulsory.”

If one were to visit the website of this organisation, the introduction section provides an insight behind the raison d'être for such opposition -

All India Muslim Personal Law Board was established at a time when then
Government of India was trying to subvert Shariah law applicable to Indian
Muslims through parallel legislation.Adoption Bill had been tabled in the
Parliament. Mr. H.R.Gokhle, then Union Law Minister had termed this Bill as the
first step towards Uniform Civil Code. Ulema, leaders and various Muslim
organisations successfully convinced the Indian Muslim community that the risk
of losing applicability of Shariah laws was real and concerted move by the
community was needed to defeat the conspiracy.

Their aims and objects (sic) section also rants about the primary aim being the promotion of Muslim personal law.

Fine, as an individual, every Muslim everyone has a right to the fundamental rights enshrined in the Indian Constitution, the right to follow Islamic customs, marry as per the customs prevalent in Islam etc.

But, one must remember that rights are always accompanied by duties. And one such duty is to obey the rule of the land. In addition, the law is not infringing on the rights of the Muslims at all. All that it asks for is to comply with a national ruling for the betterment of society. And may I remind the members of the AIMPLB that Muslims too are part of Indian society?

So, kindly stop such nakra-naatak-baazi and please start promoting the concept of marriage registrations.

India:Australia::Pallavas:Chalukyas?

The Chalukyas of Vatapi (Badami) and the Pallavas were two of some 'N' dynasties to rule the Indian sub-continent upto say, 1857; which I consider to be the period of the beginning of single-entity rule in India.

The Chalukyan king Pulikesi II, during my school days, was a sort of hated figure for me, for the simple reason that he stopped Harshavardhana's (whose name sounds infinitely sexier than Pulikesi) advance on the banks of the Narmada. But Immadi Pulikeshi by himself is the greatest ruler of the Chalukyan empire. Imagine, fighting a civil war to regain the throne, annexing territories, building up a vast army, laying siege to the city of Kanchipuram and at the end of it all having an empire stretching from the Narmada to the Kaveri is no mean achievement.

The Pallavas too had their heroes. King Mahendra Varman, his son Mamallan (of the Mahabalipuram fame) and of course their star commander Paranjothi.

The see saw cross generation battles between the two dynasties have been very well documented. Supposedly, the best literature in this area can be found in Kalki Krishnamurthi's Sivakamiyin Sapatham. Of course, the book is in Tamil, but you can find a partial English translation here. And just to clarify, the book is written from the Pallavan point of view. There is no doubting who the villains of the novel are - the Chalukyas. I would love to find a book written from the Chalukyan point of view.

Is there any parallel to this rivalry? I think so: the Indo-Australian battle for cricket supremacy is one such. Let me trace a chronology -

1. Allan Border led Australia kick Azhar led India's a*%& during the 1992 tour of Australia.

2. Sachin Tendulkar led India beat Mark Taylor led Australia in a one off test and knock them out of the Titan Cup.

3. Mohammad Azharuddin led India beat Mark Taylor led Australia in a 1997-98 3 test series in India

4. Steve Waugh led Australia blank Sachin Tendulkar led India in the 1999 down-under series

5. Saurav Ganguly led India stop the Steve Waugh led Australian juggernaut in the 'VVS Laxman-Matthew Hayden-Harbhajan Singh' series in 2001

6. Ganguly led India draw a hard fought series against Steve Waugh's Australia - in Australia.

7. Gilchrist-Ponting led Australia win back the Border Gavaskar trophy against a Ganguly-Dravid led India.

8. Ponting led Australia demolish Mahendra Dhoni led India 4-2 in a one day series.

The next series is India's tour of Australia in December. Is this the time for Dhoni to don the mantle of a Narasimha Pallavan?

Hopefully he should. But I feel for Dravid, he has never got a complete series against the Australians. Time to reconsider resignation from the test captaincy?

Paradigm shift anyone?

I'm currently reading this book called "The Tyranny of Numbers" by David Boyle. This book is a delight for a qualitative person like me who doesn't like the way numbers are being abused. Collecting data, furiously searching for patterns in them, drawing conclusions from the data are exercises which I generally take up when there is no other option to put my word across.

I am more of someone who argues based on emotions, abstracts, gut feeling, sixth sense etc. It may sound out of place in this world, but data is what I do not like, give me date anytime over that!!! :-)

Mr.Quantitative, will surely disagree with me on this!! Check this, this, this and this.

I also do understand the limitations of my approach with the growing size of organisations, parameters, inputs, viewpoints etc. Hence numbers are a way of life; no escape. Period.

Anyway, the book had a couple of superb points which I am just scribbling over here.

1.

The best recruitment policy focuses on the individual job and the individual
applicant and the best educational policy focuses on the individual student.

My view: Yes. But as the size of the organisation grows is there enough time and enough patience to run through things qualitatively? How would for instance a company like TCS with such a large workforce try to see if every individual fits in with their system? They certainly are justified in sticking to their policy of looking at a particular set of people rather than how each individual in that set should be.

2. This is a lovely statement because there has been an incident wherein the mechanisms of my class election were supposed to work in the manner described below. Let me clarify very clearly that what is said about John Vasconcellos DOES NOT REFLECT ON THE GUYS INVOLVED IN THE COLLEGE INCIDENT. Both are good friends of mine and are great chaps in their own right. Clarification provided, see the statement.

"In fact, he had such low self-esteem, that he lost the first election he ever
fought, for eighth grade president, by one vote. His own"

Touché.....................