Completely offline for another fifty days or so. Till then, dear readers of this wonderful wonderful blog, dig the archives. Surprisingly, shockingly, astonishingly, unexpectedly (for the rest, please refer the thesaurus), you might find something illuminating! Be warned, if you don't dig deep into the archives, I'll never come back, (which in any case should be a major relief!)
Have you ever thought what happens to your internet presence after your death? Will your emails be gone forever? Who will update the status of your Twitter, Facebook or Orkut accounts ("I'm dead!")? And who will post articles on your blog? And what will happen to your domain, will it be lost forever and many such questions.
Of course, not many would have thought about this situation considering the fact that not many would not want to die or even think about dying. But that thing being inevitable, one cannot avoid such a situation. There are two options to deal with internet presence after death- either don't worry about that since it will not affect you in any way! Or make sure that you have a system in place so that your near ones step in and does whatever you wished to be done.
TIME has an interesting article on this issue.
As people spend more time at keyboards, there's less being stored away in dusty attics for family and friends to hang on to. Letters have become e‑mails. Diaries have morphed into blogs. Photo albums have turned virtual. The pieces of our lives that we put online can feel as eternal as the Internet itself, but what happens to our virtual identity after we die? It's a thorny question, and for now, the answer depends on which sites you use. Privacy is a major issue. So are company policies to delete inactive accounts.I had thought about this situation long back and made the required arrangements for the well being of my online presence. The method is nearly foolproof- I have let known the password of my mobile-without which it is difficult to obtain any information from it- to two persons and the device contains all the required passwords of my various accounts. The message to them is very clear; just let others know that I'm dead. After that, I don't care what they do with my accounts. Anyway, I would be long dead!
For those who are not aware of the chess scene of Mysore a decade ago, this might come as a surprise, because for chess to die, now, there is no existence at all. But this wasn't the case around ten years back.
There were at least three active organisations, Mysore District Chess Association (MDCA), another chess association run by Ganga Prasad and Mysore Chess Club by Jayaprakash, because of the presence three organisations, tournaments were conducted by either of them all throughout the year. Once, MDCA even contemplated banning players who participated in Ganga Prasad's chess club, which eventually led to the downfall of both the clubs, first Ganga Prasad’s and later, MDCA. Jayaprakash’s Republic Day and Independence Day chess tourneys for junior category are the only tournaments which are being conducted till date without fail.
Around a decade ago, Mysore was the best place for state level chess tournaments, where one could get the best accommodation in the form of Youth Hostel. Some of the major chess players of Karnataka, at that time, were from Mysore; K N Chetan, N Sanjay,K Upendra, M S Thej Kumar, K N Harshavardhan, P R Rekha and P R Rashmi (sisters), H T Kiran, Pradeep. S Ram, S M Raviprakash, K Ramesh, K Somanath, S Suresh, T R Dhireendranath and T R Dwarakanath (brothers), T R Sathish, Shivkumar, S B Sindhu, Gladis Lalitha, M M Turabhi, Ravishankar, P Rohit, M Kavyashree and M Kavana (sisters), Chinmayee, Y G Vijeyendra and many others.
A classic chess tournament would have normally had at least 100 participants resulting in good collection of entry fees plus the sponsorship which would make the prize amount a huge attraction. The fierce rivalry for the top position was, earlier, between Chetan and Sanjay and later on between Sanjay and Thej Kumar. In spite of his old age, Turabhi was one of the good chess players and though not old in the strictest sense, Upendra, Somanath, Ramesh, who are brothers, along with Raviprakash, Gladis and Suresh proved to be a formidable force among the senior lot. Incidentally, most of the younger players were once coached by Upendra himself.
With most of the above mentioned younger players graduating and moving out of Mysore, the line of strong players gradually dwindled! Among the above mentioned names, only two players still play active chess. Some have left Mysore and some chess.
Friend and fellow player, Thej Kumar is one of the two who continues to play active chess and who is now an International Master (IM), the first and the only person from Mysore. In the last decade or so, though Mysore was out of the chess map of Karnataka, it did produce one of the strongest junior chess players, Girish Koushik, the world champion in under 10 age category. ( Girish had to struggle a lot to even participate in the tourney due to lack of sponsorships)
Earlier, there would be at least one major tournament in a month and players were, usually, never out of touch. But now, hardly one or two tournaments are organised in a year which is of no use for serious players intending to get a good match practice. After the gradual erosion of the above mentioned players, unfortunately, the next generation of players never arrived on the scene. From average 100 entries during the peak of chess, Mysore has come to a point where, now it is considered as a good number even if there are just 25 entries.
How do I know all these? I was once a national level chess player who represented Karnataka twice in the nationals and played for Mysore University for three years during my graduation. By not at all being modest, I will say that I was part of that strong chess line-up which Mysore once boasted.
(More on Chess 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 )
Rediff.com reports,
T.V.Mohandas Pai, Infosys' head of HR and administration, says: “We have looked at balancing the best infrastructure against the right training vision. GEC-II is the largest building to be built in India in the classical Roman style. The main foyer of the building is modelled on the Parthenon in Athens, only the floor area is bigger.”The Rediff.com report is about the newly inaugurated Global Development Center of Infosys, here in Mysore. After reading that, I could not but think of a dialogue between Howard Roark and his dean in Ayn Rand's book, The Fountainhead.
The report further says, “The magnitude of the plexiglass, marbonite, landscaping, greenery and the all the stylized concrete is grand enough. But most Breathtaking is the Renaissance -style library lined with pew shaped, reading tables, baluustrades and wood-panelled floors.”
Roark: Shall I tell you what's rotten about it?Infosys had an excellent chance to build a building better than Parthenon, but they floundered it by copying it. Of course, it is their money and their place, they can build whatever they want to. But I feel, they lost a chance to let others copy their building style (not that I approve of it either, but still!) and say, “The main foyer of the building is based on Infosys model, but only the floor area is bigger.”
Dean: It's Parthenon!
Roark: Yes, god damn it, the Parthenon! Look, the famous flutings on the famous columns--what are they there for? To hide the joints in wood--when columns were made of wood, only these aren't, they're marble. The triglyphs, what are they? Wood. Wooden beams, the way they had to be laid when people began to build wooden shacks. Your Greeks took marble and they made copies of their wooden structures out of it, because others had done it that way. Then your masters of the Renaissance came along and made copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Now here we are, making copies in steel and concrete of copies in plaster of copies in marble of copies in wood. Why?
Once in a while, to come out of the boring routine of reading the left leaning articles of my favourite newspaper, I read the “classifieds” section. It satisfies my hunger for little entertainment without fail- courtesy: “brides and bridegrooms wanted” section!
I never used to read it until few years back, when a chance reading of the same turned out to be a good exercise for my funny bone. There is nothing which I despise more than this in the category of advertisements, but it serves me by providing fodder to make fun of it.
If you have never read this section of any newspaper as such, I suggest you to take it up as an exercise, for it is very much useful in improving your vocabulary and sense of humour. According to a survey, of course, my own, these are the most common words used in the said section- Issueless, Beautiful, Fair, Figure (!), Good looking, Well-educated, Homely, Decent , etc. The figure is not actually the figure which you are thinking, it is the salary (most of the times, 6 figure) quoted in the ads. I wonder, if these are the attributes of the prospective brides and bridegrooms, is there really a need to advertise it.
According to the same survey, the following are the words which are not so common- Innocent, Broad Minded, Clean Habits, Good Mannered, etc. Remove the vital information, and all you have is nothing but adjectives! I’m not sure if the advertisers themselves would recognize all these as their qualities without their vital info.
But there are few who are very creative in describing themselves, like for example, “only child of a reputable & affluent parents”, “Innocent issueless divorcee”, this is a gem, just three words and you have the complete picture of the person. Is he issueless because he is innocent and hence divorcee!? And this one, the best in its choice of words, “Seeks beautiful bride from Upper/Middle/Lower class family of any subset”, if it so, why mention all the class of families, just “any” would have been sufficient! Last one, posted only because of last two words, “unconsummated divorcee seeks unmarried girl upto 35 no expectation”!
I’m sure; I have missed many unknown literary pieces. But this should be sufficient for you to either evince interest or hatred for this. To me, it continues to provide immense entertainment!
One of the strongest memories of my childhood is the story telling session by my paternal grandmother, whose story telling quality is unmatched in our family. Only thing required to start the session was the presence of any two of her several grandchildren. Invariably, the story would revolve either around Mahabharata or Ramayana. Usually, the former. At around the same time, DoorDarshan started airing Ramanand Sagar's take on Mahabharata. For us, it was like hearing the story and then seeing the same on television and sometimes vice versa.
The programme completed it's run when I was still a kid and as years passed by, I had more or less forgotten the story and whenever I chanced upon anything on Mahabharata, I would go back to my grandmother for further clarifications and clarity of the story. Of late, I have troubled her little less. I chanced upon another source few months back, which I found to be equally engaging- well known journalist Prem Panicker's take on Mahabharatha, “Bhimsen”. That is the epic re-told in first person narrative form from Bhima's point of view.
For the time being, I don't have the time to write a detailed post on this topic. My only intention is to point out a very good piece of writing written in the form of episodes and also the bonus in the form of comments on each episode. There are 72 episodes in all and now he is done with it. It was very naive of me to expect the series to continue like my grandmother's repeated re-telling. Now, it is not easy to digest the fact that henceforth, there will not be any fresh episode. If you are interested in epics or stories in general and particularly like Mahabharata, you should read his take. I found it interesting and tremendously engaging in spite of it being slightly different from what I had heard all these years.
I wanted to know all the facts relating to a certain Kannada book which was at the center of various controversies when it was first published. Since the book was published two years back, all I could rely on was internet. But that proved to be a failure. I was very much wrong when I assumed that there would be wealth of information on the book- in English- as it had generated unbelievable controversy and also the fact that the book had seen several reprints. There was very little information which was available on the net and whatever was available, was mostly biased and not in the nature of information. Contrast this with the any book of English language, on which, several pages would have been written.
I'm not inclined to buy the argument that the English users far outnumber other languages. It is not dependent on the number of users of any language. There are roughly 4 crore Kannada speaking people. Even if one liberally assumes that there are at least 50 lakh Kannada speaking people who are net active, then that is a huge number. In my opinion, even one tenth of it is. Problem lies in the extra effort one needs to put to document the thoughts online. I believe, a small but dedicated group of people can do a lot. I have decided that, henceforth, whenever I read any Kannada book or come across anything noteworthy regarding Kannada, I'll blog about it, mainly for the sake of posterity. That should be sufficient for the time being! Though very small in number-I'm sure that there are people who are already doing this, I'm only joining them.
Note: Don't expect any articles on the above until the end of November, i.e, till I'm done with my exams. But you can start doing it right now!
All set to return to Mysore tomorrow morning. My books, which weighed around 15 kgs, have already reached home. Few years back, I lived in Mylapore, Chennai for a good five months. When I left that place and came back to Mysore, I actually missed it for quite sometime. Perhaps because I thought Mylapore was the best area in the world, which more or less was like living in Mysore, plus the extra facilities and not to forget the Mylapore bakery run by a Kannadiga. I can just go on and on about Chennai. Not that I dislike Bangalore, but the same cannot be said true about this city. Of course, I will miss my aunt and uncle and the classes here.
Today, when I took bath it was around 3pm and did not even eat the lunch. From morning ten, when I had come back from classes, I did nothing but stare at a website till the dreaded hour, 12 noon. The website continuously displayed the same message in spite of me refreshing it every ten seconds. This is the picture it presented. And waiting for the results, which is just minutes and seconds away is something, which I definitely do not relish doing.
It was raining very heavily in the night, may be at around nine thirty. I was on my way home and stopped at a nearby medical store to buy some medicines for my grandmother. I gave the prescription to the shop keeper and was waiting to receive my order. At about the same time, a tall man came there and stood on the opposite side. He asked for something, which I could not hear. Not that I was interested, but since there was a heavy downpour, the whole area was deserted and normally, I should have clearly heard what he had said. Even the shop owner wasn’t able to hear him properly. By gesturing, he asked “What?” The tall man said, “One pack Kohi….r” He was so shy that never for once, during his presence in the medical store, did he lift his eyes. At the same time, the shopkeeper was as normal as he was dealing with me. When that fellow had asked for just one pack of condoms, the shop guy, very casually, offered him two and that fellow was totally embarrassed and left the shop after taking just one. I only hope he did not regret his decision later on!
Is it really that difficult to buy a pack of condoms? Now, don’t ask the same thing to me! I know what is brewing in your mind. I’m not going to tell you whether I’m experienced in these kinds of transactions or not, either way it is going to be trouble! Moreover, there are few things, which are best kept away from the public domain. In case you are very stubborn, please do write to me to know more about me. Coming back to that incident, this was not the first time I saw this happen. One of my close friends was, once, in a same situation. I had to coax him a lot to do this. He was living in a different city and since he was feeling very shy to ask for a pack, I offered to talk to the shop keeper over phone. Imagine, my friend going to the shop and instead of asking for anything, thrusting the phone to the shop keeper and I, over phone, asking for a pack of condoms on behalf of my friend! We did think of this idea seriously for a while! Finally, better sense prevailed and we dropped the plan.
