Indian writing in English

I was chatting with a friend couple days ago.

Somewhere in conversation, context was set up, and it became necessary to use the word whorehouse.

It wasn't.

My friend preferred "house of illness in reputation."

I couldn't help smiling. The more obvious reason was the need to use a euphemism, and the cleverness of it. Indian sensitivities...

The not so obvious reason was the realization that this is uniquely characteristic of contemporary Indian writing. The kind that we rave about.


PS: I personally don't care for Indian fiction. So I might be wrong to generalize... Please give me license :) Oh, I'm currently reading Dune, by Frank Herbert. I think it is bloody brilliant.

Of Al Gore and the IPCC

I quite enjoyed watching "An Inconvenient Truth!" I will say that it was well made, with some Hollywood lines thrown in for good measure... like the opening line, for example... "I am Al Gore. I used to be the next president of the United States!"

The following comment from a news article is thought provoking though...

Piers Forster from the School of Earth and Environment at England's University of Leeds said in a statement: "It's every scientist's dream to win a Nobel Prize, so this is great for myself and the hundreds that worked on their reports over the years. It's perhaps a little deflating though — that one man and his PowerPoint show has as much influence as the decades of dedicated work by so many scientists."

The Beach House...

This past weekend...

A wooden house on the edge of a cliff, the sound of crashing waves, thick fog, wood in the fireplace, crackling flames, the gang and a baby, birthday cake, poker through the night, silly conversation.

Idyllic. Isolated. Desolated.

The closest gas station was thirty miles away. The closest grocery store... sixteen.

The only thing missing was a killer on the loose :P

Awesome fun!

Beginner's Luck

"It's called the principle of favorability. When you play cards the first time, you are almost sure to win. Beginner's luck. Why is that? Because there is a force that wants you to realize your destiny; it whets your appetite with a taste of success."

- Paulo Coelho

Ok, I'm not one of those people who believe blindly in the power of "The Alchemist." I do think, however, that the above mentioned is a lovely quote, and possibly very close to reality.

Travel Companions...

Its amazing how our cine heroes always get to chat up these pretty young things, traveling.

I think back to all those times I've had to endure those super long journeys.

That wise looking Asian gentleman, who made me teach him Sudoku. And was amazed by the fact that I could actually finish one in under fifty minutes... (yeah, fifty! Any friend of mine who reads this must note that I was drugged, jet lagged, sleepy, *and* afraid that there were terrorists on board.)

And then there was this Indian uncle... an extremely jolly man, I thought. Till he jumped into his AMWAY spiel.

That middle aged Caucasian businesswoman, who couldn't believe that I chose Stanford for MIT. Trade sunny CA for chilly Boston, I ask? Obviously, she seemed to think.

That uncle and aunty from Hyderabad... who were quite worried about my state of nourishment. You should meet up with my son Ramakrishna Reddy in San Jose, they said. Our daughter in law makes yummy Lamb curry. Aunty seemed disappointed when she found out that I was vegetarian. She cheered up somewhat when she found out that I was a big fan of muddapappu and avakaya.

I remember filling up immigration forms for the elderly Panjabi couple who were headed over to meet their grandchildren. We don't speak a common language. But we communicate.

And all those kids. God! Entertaining for the first half hour or so... extremely extremely annoying after that. Playing peek-a-boo 14 hours straight can get tiring... however cute the sister :P

Hmmm...

There was this one pretty chick from Bombay, on one my of my trips back home...

Young, smart, cute, ambitious... she seemed to have it all. Amazing amazing conversation!!! The Pacific seemed smaller still...

As we were about to touch down, she introduced into the conversation, the subject of a husband...

Anyways... that was that.

The Economics of Everyday things

I had the most interesting dinner conversation with a friend today. The discussion centered around issues that have always fascinated me... These are topics that I've always wanted to spend considerable amounts of time on. And hopefully will... after I hand in my dissertation, six weeks from now. :)

Pet projects for the next part of my life (in no particular order)

*) Socio-politico-economic philosophies: Capitalism, communism and socialism.
*) Styles of government: Democracies, dictatorships, communism.
*) The role of government (vs. the market)
*) The everyday economics associated with these social structures. Possible mathematical analyses for when it make sense to have one over another.
*) The sustainability of a utopian society. (Open source software?)
*) The economic sense (or the lack, thereof) of the Bhagavad Gita's core philosophy.

These are questions economists keep asking time and again. Some questions don't really have clear answers. And as the old joke goes... you can put twenty economists in the same room, and no two of them will share the same opinion on anything!

The study is fun, nonetheless.

If you think you can point me in the direction of some useful resources, do write me a note. If you're also interested in similar areas, and are looking for starting points, try:

*) Economics, Samuelson and Nordhaus
*) The Argumentative Indian, Amartya Sen
*) India Unbound, Gurcharan Das
*) The Constitution of India
*) The Constitution of the United States of America.

And I missed the Gita discussion session today!

So much for being regular, but there was much else to do and only one of me.

Here's what the Hitchhiker's guide has to say about the existence of God though...

(quote)
Now it is such a bizarrely impossible coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The arguement goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," say Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promply vanishes in a puff of logic.
(end quote)

While we are on the subject of faith, here's Stephen Colbert on truthiness, his word of the year last year. Hilarious :)