Questions from India

One friend of mine already stole this idea from me.

When I call people back at home in India, they always ask the same questions. Here they go, in the reverse order of sensibility.

1. Is it day or night at your place?
2. What is the time? (as if they won't talk to me if it was an odd hour)
3. What did you cook today? ( For Pete's sake, I don't cook. Even if I do, it is not like I know what I cooked.)
4. When would you be visiting India again?

Round figures

I never understand why people associate a lot with round figures...

Why is Sachin Tendulkar's 99 so different from his 100. Why can't people just talk about averages? Why do they talk about number of centuries, number of 5 wicket hauls? It is pretty weird.

I do understand that there should be milestones to chase and celebrate. But, why associate so much to a milestone?

The Village Bride of Beverly Hills

Yeah. I am talking about the book by Kavita Daswani.

My first read in that genre. It was a small book (size does matter, I picked just coz of its size) which talks about the culture tension through a traditionally wed Indian woman's life.

Bottom line: Okay book. Good to read once. Very hard to read the second time.

Do colours bring "colour" to life?

For Americans - Colour = Color

This is the beginning of February. It has been quite sometime (more than 2 months) since it is all white. It was much better when eye could see different colors - green, blue, yellow, red. As if to rub it in, Fall comes just before Winter.

Back at home, winters were also very colourful. And, life is happier too. I do understand there are other aspects which make life more interesting. But, I was just wondering how big a role colour plays. Would West Lafayette be a lot merrier if it was colorful (but equally cold)?

I wish there were a clear answer to this - is research not to find such interesting things? Or, rather, I wish I could find that answer if anyone had found it.

My brain is dying

I look back into my past. I was this amazingly inquisitive, sharp kid. Now, I am such a douche bag. Did I do exceptionally well at deteriorating myself (my brain) or does it happen to everyone?

I feel this amazing laziness in myself. Interest to do nothing. No more of that fighting spirit to achieve stuff and meet deadlines. What contributed to this? I see these options -

• Age (Natural)
• Internet addiction (Easy way to while away time)
• Easy life (no need to fight it out hard to earn the basic needs)
• Alcohol (though I drink only socially, I read somewhere that alcohol kills brain cells and that they are not created again)
• Peer-pressure (learnt from undergrad that the one who doesn't work is the cool dude)

Media, You woke up the leaders of the country!

First up, I am extremely sorry for everyone who suffered from the Mumbai atrocity.

It is interesting to see the political leaders take this issue seriously and trying to press for some quick action against those anti-social elements, who inflict pain on the innocent. Then, I wonder why we did not do the same earlier when other terrorist attacks happened in India. Most of them were blasts which happen just in a flash and what you see is only the aftermath. By the nature of the damage, they are no less compared to the latest attacks. With all due respect to those sincere hard-working authorities, for some reason, the political leaders of India never felt the pressing need, as much as they do now.

The media has taken us through the attacks and everyone felt the pain through the attack. And, I would say that it definitely played a part in this timely action to solve the major issues. Thank you, media.

Though it is sad that it took an attack like this for the authorities to wake up, corrective measures have started and we should all unite and fight it out against these terrorists.

Deer hunt - should it be allowed?

One day, on my way from UIUC to Purdue, I hit a deer at about 60 mph. It was a pretty bad blow to the car. Apparently, there have been a lot of deer hits during that time - the car rental guy and the insurance guy said so.

The reason for the hits is supposed to be that the deer are running around to evade the bullets. It was the hunting season. While some are having fun hunting animals, there are others on the roads suffering brutal accidents.

I would support not allowing hunting and cutting down on such accidents.