Potpourri

Recently, I have started bird watching. I am pleasantly surprised to find out that there are so so many different species of birds right here, inside IITB! I have also started a vermi-culture pit and we recycle all the wet garbage in our household. I have started planting trees (so far I only have Tulasi (basil?) and hope to grow veggies enough to be able to serve our daily requirements. That is obviously a long term goal. As a baby step, I am going to plant chilies, curry leaves and coriander. We'll see how it goes from here. So basically, these days I am into all things that bring me close to nature.  At the risk of sounding like a hippie -- I am turning into one, am I not? -- let me confess that I am a full blown nature lover freak now. However, this post isn't about my love for nature or a rant about how all those ignorant fools who don't care for nature should be taught a lesson or two etc. :) But this is about the new beginnings. As I already said, bird watching ...

A friend of mine asked the other day the following question -- 10 years ago did you think you will land up where you have and did you think you will become the person you have? It intrigued me. Did I? Ten years and four months ago I left my parent's home and went to Chennai to pursue graduate studies. I still get goosebumps thinking about the first time I stayed in my hostel room alone. It was a very very new, exciting and a very liberating experience for me. I was nervous, I was scared and I was excited all at the same time. I remember the first time I travelled by an overnight train, alone! I was traveling to Bangalore chasing my secrete adventure without telling my parents. I remember the first time I tried to understand something very cool in complexity theory. It was technically very hard; harder than anything I had ever tried in the past and amazingly beautiful. I remember the time when I went up to Meena (my advisor)'s office to ask her whether she will take me as her...

With cooking comes cleaning. With playing games on the computer comes neck pain. With yummy delicious food come all the calories. With good Hindi movies come boring cacophonous songs. With watching a tennis game on the TV come commercials. With watching commercials come long soaps. With travel comes jet lag. With chocolates and toffees comes tooth ache. With teaching a course come paper corrections!

I used to burst a lot of crackers when I was a kid. The fireworks which make no sounds looked pretty. But when I was a kid, I never burst those. They were way too expensive and made no sound! That seemed rather counter-intuitive. We paid every buck for each decibel. Also, it was a sign of great courage among us kids to be able to burst crackers that made loud sounds. So we burst crackers like atom bomb (so we called it) or box bomb, sutali bomb, Lakshmi bar and Lawangi. We bought crackers a few weeks before Diwali, kept them in the sun. We believed that keeping crackers in the sun dried them and as a result helped them reach their highest noise making potential! On the first day of Diwali, we woke our neighbourhood up at 5:00am by bursting these loud monsters. And this make-loud-sounds-and-consider-that-the-biggest-fun-thing-in-the-world continued all through our Diwali vacation. Back then, we had a whole 20 days school leave for Diwali. What fun, we thought. Anyway, thankfully I ca...

Starting with a few basic sounds and symbols, developing many beautiful languages, literature, poetry and now back to abrupt shortening of long words and emoticons, man seems to have come a full circle!  Recently I came across a very interesting emoticon, called Facepalm. It has been described as follows: The gesture is found in many cultures as a display of frustration, disappointment, embarrassment,   shock, or surprise. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facepalm) Here are some of my epic facepalm-worthy experiences: I treated some of my students to chai and samosas, and finally forgot to pay for it! (Turned out they paid!) *face-palm* Got locked outside my office with both the office keys inside! *face-palm* Called up a friend on her birthday, talked about this that and the other thing but forgot to wish her. Booked wrong air tickets. Realised immediately after making the payment. Forgot my laptop in a local train in Mumbai. Went for a class (to teach) o...

I had been using a microwave primarily to heat stuff. But I am out of LPG for the last two weeks and that has forced me to explore various functionalities of my microwave. Believe it or not, a chai (a strong Indian tea with tea powder and milk) made in a microwave comes out better than the one made on a gas stove. It retains the aroma of tea leaves and cleaning etc is much easier. My simple chai recipe is: add half a cup of water, half a cup of milk in a microwavable container. Place it on the turn table and heat it for 3 minutes. Add tea powder and sugar to this (1 tbs each or as per your requirements)  Add ginger or tea masala along with the tea leaves if you wish. Put a lid. Heat the container again for 2.5 minutes. Keep the lid for another minute. Filter the tea into a serving cup. This morning I was in a mood for a nice hot breakfast. I was bored of eating cereal every morning for the last two weeks! I decided to try to make pohe (flattened rice) in the microwave. To my own...

A few days ago I was listening to a lecture given by Shripad Dharmadhikari. He is an IITB alumnus, he has set up Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, a centre for research in energy and water related issues. He has also been associated with Narmada Bachao Andolan for around twelve years. Through his talk, he highlighted the energy crisis that India is doomed to face in another two decades or so. He mentioned that in another decade or so, no river in India will be flowing freely. That is, there will be dams, often cascaded dams, on every major river in India. Imagine the kids of next generation trying to find wild and wilderness in India! May be his estimates are not accurate, may be there are more than 3-4 decades before India energy crisis. However, his data and his description of the current state of affairs seemed very scary. Just hearing this made me rather depressed. I wondered how he manages to muster enough energy, courage and at the same time positive attitude every morning and keep worki...

Though one whole week of instructions is still to go before the end-sem exams begin, two out of three of my teaching days next week are holidays. (I am not complaining!) On Monday, which is the only day of my teaching schedule left in this semester, I plan to conduct a tutorial. So teaching is indeed over for this semester. As research now comes to the foreground, I thought I should mention something interesting I read. Recently I saw a Lemma by Eberfeld, Jakoby and Tantau which proves that given any graph of tree-width at most k, a O(log n) depth tree-decomposition of it witnessing width slightly more than k, say 4k, can be found in polytime (in fact in logspace). It is a nice result! I expect it to find some applications. It probably should be thought of as a depth reduction result. If the input graph is a tree of depth D, it is easy to find a depth D (which could be O(n)), width 1 tree-decomposition for it. What this Lemma says is that, we can find a depth O(log n) and width 8 de...

All you need to do is say something absolutely obnoxious about someone famous on your blog, or start comparing north indians and south indians on an e-news paper (paper, it seems!), sing a song with "luvvu luvvu" words in them, or make some movies about invisible people and put it up on YouTube. The next thing you know, you are world famous! Back in the day, it was not all this easy!! You had to be either the president, or the prime minister, a movie star or a cricketer to be seen on the TV. You had to, at the very least, be a 10 year old kid gone missing for more than a week or so to make a brief appearance on the TV screen. Ah those pre-internet, pre-FaceBook, pre-Twitter, pre-YouTube days! But then there was a time when there was no TV. Yes, kids! Believe me when I say that there were no TVs even in the cities. Back then, India had to win the world cup for cricket to be heard on radios! You had to be the likes of Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosale, Kishor Kumar no less, to be h...

is here! Yes, in fact about 1/6-th of the year is already over. How time passes! The last semester was exceptionally hectic. Teaching a class of 90 was no joke. Also, teaching one hour classes as opposed to one and a half hour classes was very tricky. By the time the previous class ends you are 5-7 minutes into the lecture. By the time students come and you get started, you have lost about 10 minutes. And by the time it is 45 minutes into the lecture you have to start thinking about wrapping up. With the clock ticking so fast for you and the same clock ticking very slowly for your students (yes, when I attended classes, they always seemed slow!!), it is hard to find a balance between giving maximum you can in a class and giving just the right amount that can be assimilated by brains which have already processed a couple of lectures and are yet to digest a few more. The work for the course did not stop with teaching. Coming up with good exercises, tutorials, correcting answer sheets et...

January to April. I taught a full fledged course at IITB for the first time . It was a PG elective. I taught Complexity Theory. There are many many aspects of my teaching experience that I will like to talk about. But before I start on that, let me say that I was extremely lucky to get some very motivated and hard-working students the first time I taught. I was asking them to regularly scribe notes and they have done a great job. I am yet to make a pass on many of these scribe notes. I'll put up the notes as soon as I make at least one pass. Teaching was very very time consuming. The experienced people told me that this will be so for the first few years. (Years? Really?) In the beginning I took almost 8-9 hours to prepare one lecture. Also, first 15-16 lectures were basic complexity. Here I knew the material, but I spent most of my time preparing how I should present the material. While for the last 7-8 lectures I taught a few things I had never explained to anyone before. Here,...

As the year 2011 is already knocking on our doors, I thought it will be good to do a "the year that was" kind of post. Owing to my poor memory I am sure I am going to forget all the important events but let me try anyway. This year, unlike the year 2009 which was marked with losses of all kinds at all levels (yes, I know everybody remembers my lost laptop and plans to tell the story of a girl who lost her laptop to their grandchildren. Worry not. Thanks to my well wishes I am sure you will drop dead well before that!!), has been a year in which I haven't lost much. On the contrary, in fact. Chikku came to Bombay in February. Max gain as the generation next calls it. That clearly was the major highlight of the year. But there is more. I became a doctor on the first of this year. Technically on the last day of 2009. But that evening is more like a haze for me. So the day I realised that I can call myself a doctor, it was already 2010! The discovery of Mrs Grace Rao , the ...

It took a complete stranger to tell me that I really don't know how to put my foot down. And he meant it literally. I have been trying to run and increase my running capacity for more than a year now. But all in vain. In IIT ground, I was running in my own funny way when a complete stranger stopped me and told me that the way I was running was totally wrong. I being a flat footed person had a habit of first resting my heel and then the toe on the ground. He told me this is not normal. Not normal? NOT NORMAL!!!! I was taken aback! How could it not be normal? I have been running like this since I remember. I somehow tried to keep a bold front in spite of having been rudely corrected. I asked him to show me what he thought was correct, if this was wrong. And he asked me to look at any other random person. He said your toe must touch the ground and then the rest of foot. I thought, "my foot"! I decided to try it anyway. I tried to run that way in the house and then the next t...

For the past two months or so I have been staying in IIT Bombay campus which is situated in Powai . But what's really worth mentioning is that I am not staying in Colaba any more. Alas!!! Ah how I miss Colaba now. Is this a normal human nature of is it just me? I miss the place I leave!! I remember writing a long post about Chennai. And here I am just about managing to stop myself from writing a long article about Colaba . Let me just say that I miss it enormously and spare you the trouble of listening to how I miss some very specific things such as walks on the TIFR beach, the view from the West canteen, the rising moon just behind a huge tree near the entrance of the TIFR office building, the Colaba Causeway window shopping, the most amazing pastry shop called Theobrama , Beri Pulow in Brittania , coffee in Cafe Royal, evenings well spent in Coffee Bean and Tea Leaves, beer giraffe in Cafe Universal.... my office mates ( Gugan , Rakesh , Saswata , Smarajit )...., my fr...

I really liked this tune and the lyrics are wonderful. Song title: Mr. President (Have pity on the working man) We've taken all you've given But it's gettin' hard to make a livin' Mr. President have pity on the working man We're not asking you to love us You may place yourself high above us Mr. President have pity on the working man I know it may sound funny But people ev'ry where are runnin' out of money We just can't make it by ourself It is cold and the wind is blowing We need something to keep us gong Mr. President have pity on the working man Maybe you've cheated Maybe you've lied Maybe you have lost your mind Maybe you're only thinking 'bout yourself Too late to run. Too late to cry now The time has come for us to say good-bye now Mr. President have pity on the working man Mr. President have pity on the working man Find the song here before it is out. http://coverlaydown....

your taxi driver spitting out of the front window a car splashing water on you while you are walking on a foot path water running out of the cooler every time you try to fill a bottle someone playing music on a loud speaker of his/her mobile phone in the train compartment... also carrying an expression which conveys "you are welcome!" the washing machine restarting its cycle after having washed the clothes once.... being greeted with wet toilet seats. watching a movie called Housefull.... also paying 300 rs for it.... people speaking on the phone in the movie hall. people talking in lifts while Vodafone displaying "no ntwork coverage" on my handset. terrible Vodafone connection dying on me every time I am in the middle of an interesting conversation.... But the most painful pain in the neck of them all is indeed a pain in the neck! Damn, when will you leave me? Go away!

This isn't something that happens once in the blue moon. This is the story of India's cracked head, Kashmir. http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2010/06/02/of-kashmirs-staged-killings-and-south-asian-peace-process/

Its been so so long since I have seen a good horror/thriller movie. There are so few good horror movies being made these days. There are some thrillers once in a while which are worth watching. Of course The silence of the lamb, The sixth sense etc are classics. If you haven't seen Johny gaddar, I highly recommend it. The plot is really cool and the narration will surely keep you at the egde of the seat from the beginning till the end. After Johny Gaddar, I really haven't seen a good thriller. I plan to watch this movie called The thing soon. I read the reviews on IMDb and lots of reviews seem to suggest that the movie is really good. But does anyone have a recommendation for a good horror movie? Something really scary! Like The ring, or even scarier. What do you think about The paranormal activity. I heard some people saying that it was scary. Any other suggestions??

Did you know that if you call Vodafone customer care 5-6 times in a day, they block your number temporarily from reaching their "customer care executives"? Well, I learnt it the hard way. My number is apparently temporarily blocked. A service provider blocking its user!! Can you believe that??!! Any way, I will wait for them to unblock me and try the stunt again to see whether they block me again. Probably they also have an upper limit on the number of temporary blocks after which they block you for good and even after that if you dial the magic 3 letter number 111, they come home and kill you. If I am found dead in a road accident please make sure it is me before you start celebrating, because I have lost my license and it may be someone else using my license illegally. But if you are sure its me, treat or blame Vodafone depending on how you feel about the whole thing.

Movie review time, dearers, oops readers! 3-Idiots: The famous Aamir Khan movie which has made Aamir very amir . (Forgive me for the poor humour. But it is best to start with the worst possible joke. One doesn't build hopes.) A movie with a message, like the past many movies of Aamir have been. Only I am not sure what the message was! Yes, our education system needs to be changed. True! But after seeing the education system in the movie, one wonders -- why again? The system shown in the movie is such that: if one is deeply interested in science and engineering that person scores the highest! (In some sense exams make sure this happens.) And those who are not interested or are there just to mug up stuff don't come even close to getting good marks. A system as flawless as this needs to be changed, really? I am amazed! The system shown in the movie is far from reality. In fact, for that matter, anything else shown in the movie is far from reality! Yes yes, that is not the point...