Friday Quote

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
— T.H. White (The Once and Future King)

Poetry

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

- Byron

An Atheist in a foxhole

Christopher Hitchens, the author of God is not great and the recent Hitch-22 has been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. He has written eloquently about his 'battling with cancer' - http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/hitchens-201009.

"To the dumb question 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?"

In an Interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper, Hitchens stated that: the only way there will be a deathbed conversion is if he's rendered irrational and babbling with pain, and concedes that the person who dies could very well be someone very different from the living Hitch. But while he's lucid, he's adamant: he doesn't believe in gods at all. (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/)

Omar Khayyam

I had heard of Omar Khayyam and knew him only as a poet, as someone who wrote a lot about wine and women. I was intrigued by this verse years back.

Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire!
Would not we shatter it to bits-and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

Recently I rediscovered Omar and found him fascinating. He was a polymath - oh what a beautiful word. Wikipedia says : A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. Leonardo Da Vinci, Rabindranath Tagore and Benjamin Franklin come to mind, thinking of polymaths.

Omar Khayyam was a mathematician, philosopher, astronomer and poet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayyám What an interesting life he would have led, dabbling in such diverse areas. Reading the literal meaning of his quatrains and the translations by Fitzgerald I was struck by how it occurred to the translator to interpret the verses in such manner. Of course, any literary work would shine through only if read in original. Bengali, Urdu, Spanish ........Forget it, to read Kurunthogai and Kamba Ramayanam is in itself an herculean task - you need the help of Tamil Agarathi to make sense of literary Tamil.

The Giving Pledge

Forty billionaires of the USA have signed The Giving Pledge (http://givingpledge.org/#enter) thereby resolving to give atleast half their wealth to charity. The initiative was taken by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffet. The familiar names in the list apart from the above were Ted Turner, George Lucas, Michael Bloomberg and David Rockefeller.

The work done by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in developing countries is phenomenal tackling health and education issues. In India, among other things, the foundation concentrates on preventing HIV infections and reducing infant mortality.

Fantastic amounts of money are being donated by these rich people and I hope others would follow suit including those in India.

Warren Buffet once said, "I want to give my kids just enough so that they would feel that they could do anything, but not so much that they would feel like doing nothing." Wise words, indeed.

Message to Graduates

I do not remember who presided over my Graduation Ceremony nor what he or she spoke. Obviously the speech was not much to remember - nothing too inspirational. Not that a motivational speech would change the lives of all those who listen. But it is a tradition that as the students leave the portals of their college and move on to higher studies or to take up a job, a few tips from an experienced achiever would kind of illuminate their way. Maybe the charged up nature of the atmosphere would increase the impact of such a motivating speech.

Happened to listen to the Commencement Speech of Marissa Mayer, VP of Google, given at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2009. Though she claims to be a shy person towards the end of the speech, the advice she delivers is powerful and timeless. Being from Google, the search engine, the central point of her speech was 'Find.'

A gist of her speech as in http://graduationwisdom.com/speeches/topten.htm)

1. Find something that you are really passionate about.

2. Find the smartest people you can and surround yourself with them.

3. Find allies rather than adorers.

4. Find the courage to do things you are not ready to do.

5. Find places where you're comfortable with.

6. You can help others find things. Be an information fountain.

I hope our College going children would use the Internet to listen to such speeches, learn about inspiring people and acquire knowledge from the vast ocean of material available in the websites of Universities of MIT, Stanford etc.,. Our own IIT professors have recorded several lectures and posted them in Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Dq8blTmSA.

I really wish youngsters would stop playing Farmville and Mafia wars in Facebook and use the World wide web for acquiring knowledge. Do I sound like an old hag?

Getting our priorities right

That seems to be the need of the hour.

We as a nation seem to excel in practicing mediocrity and take it to sublime levels. Being mediocre is good enough in most spheres of our lives.

Take the tamasha that is the Commonwealth Games. Why did we even have to offer to host it when so many of our countrymen still go without food? What relevance does "Commonwealth" have in the present global scenario? Do we really delude ourselves into thinking that our nation's pride will go a notch higher after we host the CWG? In whose eyes? And is it worth the Rs.11,000 crores that is said to have been spent?

Allegations of corruption and shoddy work are heard day after day. Will the structures put up stay stable after the Games are over? And I wonder whether our sportsmen and women will be allowed to use these facilities for their training. We have a wonderful Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Chennai here and we use it for many purposes other than sports - including television dance shows like Maan Aada Mayil Aada. What is the point?

I can think of so many ways the money could have been utilised effectively and efficiently to benefit the people of India. The least that could have been done is to identify budding sportsmen and train them and help them participate in games held world wide. Not to speak about using all the mindboggling amount of money to alleviate hunger or educate the poor children in a better manner.

And I do not subscribe to the view that infrastructure improves when such International Games are held. Where? In Delhi? Why not hold them in Bihar and Chattisgarh?

We need to gather our act together if we truly want our nation to be promoted to the category of 'developed country' instead of continuing to wallow under the title 'developing country' which is what we have been for the past 60 years or so. Otherwise our skewed up development with high rise buildings at one side and unimaginable poverty on the other side would be nothing other than a ticking time bomb and it will not be long before it explodes in our face.