Read very interesting thoughts about rift between generations by Douglas Adams. The pithiness of the observations amused me. Quoting them below:
1. Everything that already exists in the world when you are born is just normal
2. Everything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it.
3. Anything that gets invented after you are thirty is against the natural order of things and beginning of the end of civilization, as we know around for last 10 years, when it gradually turns out to be alright really.
This elegantly sums up the possible reason for friction amongst generations. I can recall instances highlighting this generation gap in my life as well. My dad is an aficionado of all the items in perfumeries. He doesn't like to compromise on the "quality" of these. The newly introduced fragrance for one of his favorite soaps was enough to put him off. He thought buying that soap was a complete waste of money and using it was simply impossible. He asked for my opinion also and I, wanting to avoid argument at that time, immediately agreed with him. Later in the evening, I overheard my sister and cousin's discussion. They were enthusiastically chatting about this "new version" of soap and how it was a lot better than the older one. They asked my opinion about it. The same soap..!! This 180-degree alignment in choices of 2 generation completely baffles me. This holds good for everything clothes, perfumes, watches.. Oh yes ! When I bought a new trendy, cool (according to me) fastrack watch and had shown it to my dad, he said, "You are such a fool. The dial doesn't even have any numbers. What a waste of money!” Continuing with list it goes TV programs, Music, movies, Sports, Picnic spots, hairstyles just everything under the sun!
Then the famous "hamare jamane mein..." and all that follows. I am sure with some twenty years of time I will be saying similar things. This thought terrifies me ! It is of course true that our elders having more "experience" at life than us can foresee a lot of things that we are unaware of. My mom has interesting one liner for this in Hindi. It is useful in a way that it can be quoted in appropriate places such as when we don't listen to her .. ;-) It goes like " Jo naa maane badoon ki seekh le katora maange bheekh" :-) :-) she only uses half of this quote. The rest is implied.
I was just thinking, what is time frame defining a generation gap? I mean is there a "global standard" for it? I read somewhere it is 25 years. But sometimes I find this gap between me and my sister with only 6 years difference. Oh wait..it can't be true that I m turning old faster than her...No..!! Help..Please..!!
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
How bizarre ..!!
Pune times continues to regale us with bizarre news articles which often make us wonder whether we are really reading a newspaper. It looks closer to magzines like filmfare/stardust etc (atleast to me). Much of the blogspace has been devoted to TOI bashing and this introduced me to interesting synonyms for TOI. Notable ones being TOI-let paper and pune time-pass ;-)
So I thought even I need to show some "awareness" on the topic as it seems a very "in" thing to do .. :-) :-) :-)
I have read a numerous news atricles worthy of a blog post but this was a gem ! Serena Williams in an interivew says "I want to look feminine" !!??!! I almost gagged there..Come on, how can a woman say I want to look feminine ?? who else is capable of looking feminine then ? Well, I want to make it clear that this is not an attempt to comment on anyone's looks at all. But it was
really difficult for me to comprehend what efforts would a woman take to look "feminine" ? Doesn't it come to her naturally? If this is not true either my views are fundamentally wrong or world is changing in a big way and I am not keeping pace with it.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Faith is blind?? Or??
This is one more question that has intrigued me quite a lot, always. But before I get started, I would like everyone to take note that I m not making even a remotest attempt to turn an atheist in to a theist.
What is faith? And can it be blind?
I remember a story of the son of a rishi. His mother used to give him flour mixed with water for milk. As a child, that was what he had tasted as milk. when he came to taste actual milk he refused to accept that as milk. So we can say he had blind faith on his mother. But then, did it do anything wrong to him???
When I plodded myself further on this, I thought that while obtaining every bit knowledge that I have till now (assuming safely and conveniently that I've obtained it in the first place :-) I have always relied on someone else's knowledge, as has everyone. Lets consider example of say Law of gravitation (this is not out of liking for physics, but that’s the only formula I recall right now) then... It says that gravitational force of attraction between two bodies is
F = G *( m1m2 )/ r2
Where:
m1,m2= masses of the 2 bodies
r =distance between them
G=Universal gravitation constant
Did we (or rather could we) bother to ensure that what the equation says is right? We simply accepted because Newton (God in physics) said that. Now you all don’t start shouting that he is a scientist and he has proven the law. All that I m saying is just that WE never verified it ourselves, just accepted it (read: showed blind faith in it, at least at that time) So now, this abominable "blind faith" has sneaked in to the most sacred things i.e. of learning science which historically has been considered a enemy of faith. Any kind of learning begins with a faith in knowledge that rests with your Teacher (this can be your mother, friend or a book etc) Hence rightly so; the Bhagwad Geeta says "shraddhavaan labhate dnyaanam". So it’s not possible for anyone to learn anything without having faith. Thus faith is central to our being. Even the atheist has faith in atheism. This too however, is blind as no atheist will ever be able to prove by any experiment that there is no God. Remember the principle in software engineering that not encountering bugs during testing does not prove their absence. If such is the case of human-made software (sigh!), we shouldn't be audacious enough and venture out to prove absence of GOD.
What all I have said above applies to common man and not some rocket scientist.(Did anyone notice? I've used this to sound fashionable. Ugh..how corny!! Never mind..) or for that matter any kind of scientist. So if you are THAT and you happen to read this post, please excuse me. I strongly believe that the people who proclaim to be belonging to the "andha-shradhha nirmoolan samiti" belong to the former category. They are the people who never waste any opportunity in making a big fuss of how Indians are stricken with blind faith and that this is sole cause of all the problems. Pray, which country claims to have never practiced any "blind-faith"?? Don’t we know enough about how Brits abhor the innocuous number 13?? Some high funda logic goes behind it...Huh??
So I ask, who gets to decide that someone's faith is blind? In my not-so-humble opinion it would be only that person who knows all the truth of this entire universe. And I haven’t come across many (?! actually none.) people who are of that stature. Some dim-witted jokers primarily do it for publicity. But then who cares???World is full of fools, we never have to search for them. On a more serious note to end with ;-) the world surely would have been a better place if the fools were not so sure of themselves.
P.S: Don’t blame me; I have always been a bit queer in the way I think.
What is faith? And can it be blind?
I remember a story of the son of a rishi. His mother used to give him flour mixed with water for milk. As a child, that was what he had tasted as milk. when he came to taste actual milk he refused to accept that as milk. So we can say he had blind faith on his mother. But then, did it do anything wrong to him???
When I plodded myself further on this, I thought that while obtaining every bit knowledge that I have till now (assuming safely and conveniently that I've obtained it in the first place :-) I have always relied on someone else's knowledge, as has everyone. Lets consider example of say Law of gravitation (this is not out of liking for physics, but that’s the only formula I recall right now) then... It says that gravitational force of attraction between two bodies is
F = G *( m1m2 )/ r2
Where:
m1,m2= masses of the 2 bodies
r =distance between them
G=Universal gravitation constant
Did we (or rather could we) bother to ensure that what the equation says is right? We simply accepted because Newton (God in physics) said that. Now you all don’t start shouting that he is a scientist and he has proven the law. All that I m saying is just that WE never verified it ourselves, just accepted it (read: showed blind faith in it, at least at that time) So now, this abominable "blind faith" has sneaked in to the most sacred things i.e. of learning science which historically has been considered a enemy of faith. Any kind of learning begins with a faith in knowledge that rests with your Teacher (this can be your mother, friend or a book etc) Hence rightly so; the Bhagwad Geeta says "shraddhavaan labhate dnyaanam". So it’s not possible for anyone to learn anything without having faith. Thus faith is central to our being. Even the atheist has faith in atheism. This too however, is blind as no atheist will ever be able to prove by any experiment that there is no God. Remember the principle in software engineering that not encountering bugs during testing does not prove their absence. If such is the case of human-made software (sigh!), we shouldn't be audacious enough and venture out to prove absence of GOD.
What all I have said above applies to common man and not some rocket scientist.(Did anyone notice? I've used this to sound fashionable. Ugh..how corny!! Never mind..) or for that matter any kind of scientist. So if you are THAT and you happen to read this post, please excuse me. I strongly believe that the people who proclaim to be belonging to the "andha-shradhha nirmoolan samiti" belong to the former category. They are the people who never waste any opportunity in making a big fuss of how Indians are stricken with blind faith and that this is sole cause of all the problems. Pray, which country claims to have never practiced any "blind-faith"?? Don’t we know enough about how Brits abhor the innocuous number 13?? Some high funda logic goes behind it...Huh??
So I ask, who gets to decide that someone's faith is blind? In my not-so-humble opinion it would be only that person who knows all the truth of this entire universe. And I haven’t come across many (?! actually none.) people who are of that stature. Some dim-witted jokers primarily do it for publicity. But then who cares???World is full of fools, we never have to search for them. On a more serious note to end with ;-) the world surely would have been a better place if the fools were not so sure of themselves.
P.S: Don’t blame me; I have always been a bit queer in the way I think.
Monday, February 25, 2008
What makes us happy?
Now,the title is sure cliche beyond doubt,but thats the question that keeps me haunting a lot of times.Once someone had told me that I m a sad soul ...I really dont know why I remember such good-for-nothing statements for so long..!! But it surely set me on do some soul searching , to find out why I appear sad to many people. As I dont seem to get the answer to this question directly, I'll try the indirect way. So here it goes - What makes people happy ?I ve observed there people are happy because they got new clothes,did some shopping,saw new movies,got new bike etc and what not..And now I m coming to the point all the above mentioned dont make me so much happy.So when all the people relish in the happiness of such things which are achievable without much effort, I keep sulking about things I did not get and things I couldnt do.
So , If someone tells me to recall happy moments in my life I would say
i) When I was delightfully surprised with my SSC result
ii) When I got a scholarship which I never remotely hoped to get.
ii)When I got my first job
and so on....
Having said all this, I would ask myself, for how long could this events keep me happy? I must admit,although to my chagrin ; not long enough. I mean you are probably happy for a day or a week or a month at the most.So,the things that should make me feel good about myself didn't last for more than a month while the ones I sulk about last for years together..!! How apalling is that..!!
So bad things happening to me have a immense power of keeping me sad and depressed ,but at the same time the happy moments that have the power to conquer them are not allowed to remain for long by none other than me.I guess now I m coming close to the answer,but will stop here itself before things get messy and complicated..!! :-)
P.S :Sorry..!! two posts on the same day..coz wont be getting time to publish regularly .. :-)
Hello World..!!
They say that this was what the first C program said..:-) As I m completely drowned in C these days , it suddenly clicked to me as an apt title. So,this is my first Blog post. I m gonna make an attemp at writing a Blog.Lets see how it goes...As of now, I m lovin it..!!
All my friends say that I ask a lot of Questions..So I thought "In the quest of answers" may be a befitting title.I wanna see If there's anyone equally crazy on this planet as I am. One who comes across so many Questions..!! :-)
And..Of course my name "Hermione"...This is a character from the famous "Harry potter". I 've always liked that character, so adopting her name.. But dont confuse me with her...I m not the one who's hand shoots up in air as any professor asks a question..:-) I m not as confident as her..May be I will be, someday..!!
All my friends say that I ask a lot of Questions..So I thought "In the quest of answers" may be a befitting title.I wanna see If there's anyone equally crazy on this planet as I am. One who comes across so many Questions..!! :-)
And..Of course my name "Hermione"...This is a character from the famous "Harry potter". I 've always liked that character, so adopting her name.. But dont confuse me with her...I m not the one who's hand shoots up in air as any professor asks a question..:-) I m not as confident as her..May be I will be, someday..!!
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