india

Of Independence & Truth

The end of secondary schooling of a stereotypical Indian student's life also means the end of history classes, vande mataram (national song) and jana gana mana (national anthem). I've been both unfortunate and fortunate to experience different schools. The first school I attended was run by a part-time priest in a village temple. All the children, irrespective of their grade, sat together and the sole school master went in turns to teach us. The last school I attended, in huge contrast, was apparently the best school of that time in my state (in terms of competition). Between those, I have also been to a couple of Christian missionary schools. As far as I remember, Independence day has been more or less a religious festival where we worshipped few idols placed infront of the flag-post raised in the school's playground. Though in this case, the idols are of not gods, but humans.

Not-so-obvious things about being in Europe

Though I come from a coastal village of Andhra Pradesh, I cannot but help naming Hyderabad my home. Ofcourse my village has several things that I miss being anywhere else. Owing to the 8 years of my life's crucial time spent in Hyderabad, everything about me is now deeply rooted in that city. Ask something about me, and I hardly see myself answer without 'Hyderabad' in reply to it. The city has been successful in absorbing me, or rather I have been able to dissolve myself in it. But I clearly see that is not the case with Barcelona. As with anything that is linked to people's behavior, I cannot identify bullet points as to what makes a person feel at home, but what I can do is talk about how it affected me.

Notes from a conversation

"I heard that there is a river where the dead people's ashes are taken to?"
"It is not necessarily one river, any river will do. But true, people's ashes are taken to a nearby river. And there is one river which is very popular destination for this, called Ganga. Now it has become very dirty since it is being used for several purposes which pollute it."
 
"The eldest son gets the head shaved if any of the parents die?"
"He is also usually the one who lights the pyre."
 
"..."
I wanted to avoid these scattered questions as they would not leave a fair impression of such practices, so I tried to steer the conversation the other way round. I said, "I hear, and actually see in person, that not many people claim religion in here."
 

తిరుపతి

ఎప్పుడో చిన్నప్పుడు చుట్టాలందరం కలిసి ఒకసారి వెళ్లినట్టు గుర్తు అంతే. మళ్ళీ దాని ముఖమెరిగింది లేదు. అప్పుడప్పుడు టీవీలో జనం పెరిగారు, తగ్గారు అని వినడమే. ఇదిగో ఇన్నాళ్ళకి ఇప్పుడు ఇంట్లో అందరికీ కుదిరి మొన్న శుక్రవారం 29న వెళ్ళాం. శనివారం పొద్దున్నే రైలు దిగ్గానే మా చెల్లి, నేను మెట్ల దారిలోనూ, అమ్మ, నాన్న, మావయ్య బస్సులోనూ తిరుమలకి చేరుకున్నాం. దాదాపు 3500 ఉన్నాయేమో మెట్లు, ఎక్కడానికి సుమారు 4 గంటలు పట్టింది, మెల్లగా ఫోటోలు తీస్కుంటూ ఎక్కితే. తెలిసినవాళ్ళు ఉండబట్టి రూం దొరికింది. మామూలుగానైతే ఏ ఎమ్మార్వోనో, ఎమ్మెల్యేనో, ఎంపీనో సిఫార్సు చేస్తేనేగాని ఓ పట్టాన దొరకవంట అంత తొందరగా!

Multiculturalism: Europe & India

It was altogether a different experience in my life. For the first time ever, I was out of India in 2009. I spent three months in Toulouse, a beautiful and pleasant city of France. It was, and is a city of students. I rarely found a street void of groups of young students & couples. The night life, as opposed to noisy urban activities, is mostly filled with people relaxing and chit-chatting by the banks of the canal, by the edge of the river, watching the musical light show.

India and it's national language

Does India need a National language? or does it have one? Being a fanatic Telugu language lover, I'm often busted with arguments from few patriotic(?) ignorants, mercilessly pointing out to my impatience with local people speaking (inclusive of those ignorants) a National language, called Hindi. I sigh, and explain them the difference between National and Official Statuses for a language.
First of all, recognize the fact that India has only two official languages - English(subsidiary) & Hindi. It has NO National language.
 

How to write a padma conversion file?

What is Padma?

Simply put, it’s a text transformation utility, which comes as firefox extension. It transforms a custom font encoded text(text written using a custom proprietary font such as eenadu which doesn’t adhere to standards) to Unicode(A standard employed to support all the scripts in this world), provided it is given the mapping file required. There are already around 70 such conversion/mapping files associated with Padma. What that means is, it can transform a text encoded in 70 different ways to Unicode.

This tutorial gets you up with all that is required to kick start writing a new conversion/mapping file in Padma.

Deepavali!

Update : There is a nice proposal by Prateek here in the comments section. Those who are interested reply there and we'll make it a success!

Somewhere a faintest voice seems to be screaming something, amidst the already begun dhoom-dhaam celebrations of most vibrant festival of India, Deepavali! I sure love watching kids treading around holding as many sparklers as they could! I enjoy watching that vibrant hue in the sky! But it's when I hear that faintest voice in uttermost silence, that I start loosing the interest. You already knew what it says, I don't want to repeat that. Ofcourse, for me there are other reasons why I'm not an active part of traditional celebrations of this great festival(dust, especially smoke irritates me a lot; for my eyes, they mean as much as poison!). So people, here is what one could do without having to tamper with the celebrations.

Is India left with no options?

Now it's known to everyone.. Tibet and China issue. Briefly the issue can be summarised as follows. China thinks, Tibet has been a part of China since a long time and it adds that it will continue to be so. There would not have been much problem if Tibetians are seen as their own citizens or atleast friendly neighbourhood. But, Tibetians, with the kind of treatment offered by Chinese govt, are offended. They say that their culture and values are not at all given any importance. For example, pubs and nude dances are not a part of Tibetian monks. But they happen there, day in and day out. Things like this accumulated and finally they broke out! This is not the first time that Tibetians revolted. There were many such incidents in the past. China with some kind of 'we'll-help-you-develop' reason, suppressed the revolutions. These days china has blocked over 160 or so websites saying they are threat to national integrity and security!