Voices

Motorcycles were one of the things that fascinated me a lot during my childhood. I used to ride one with dad or someone else for many years (7-8 probably) each day to my school and back. All this time and I never could clearly make out what the other person said in the howling wind. Still I enjoyed those rides immensely with the howling wind, fast moving vistas and the exhilaration of moving so fast under the open sky. I clearly remember my joy when one of my uncles first bought a bike and he took me for the first ride on it, barley 100 meters it was :) I was so small that I could sit on the tank and my legs wouldn't reach even near the starter. I also remember dad coming home riding the brand new Kinetic Honda that we had purchased. I used to stand in the front space (they had fitted a special bar for me to hold on :D ) of that while mom sat at the back and we used to go on amazing journeys through meandering village roads with a trickle of traffic, open fields and occasional...

Help is one of the most crazy-paradoxical things in life. I had been thinking about help since I read 'Ender's Game'. In 'Ender's Game' from the very beginning to the end it is plain to all the readers that Ender is a child, however extraordinary he might be. The motto all the people who taught him before the final battle was that it should be obvious to Ender that no one else would help in anything, however unfair or dangerous the fights he fight may become. What he was to expect was to be manipulated by others into doing what they wanted, from the very beginning of Battle School to the talk with Valentine and battles with Mazer which he was tricked into thinking was training. True he did what he had to, he did save earth (well sort of !) and all the people close to him but he was cheated, betrayed by a lot of people he trusted and manipulated into doing what they thought was right. How would he feel at the end ? To have done something of unimaginable magn...

I heard about Django first from one of my close friends who breathed movies and watched at least two a day unless he was busy chasing some TV series in his dimly lit room. After that many people followed and told me it was a great movie but warned me about the violence. For that reason I put off watching it again and again and finally after a long wait I watched it this weekend. Brilliant movie with lots and lots of realistic violence in short :) The way it was shot, the acting, plot, screenplay, in short almost everything was brilliant. The movie gives a very vivid and shocking picture of the suffering of the black people and pulls it down to a much more personal level, perhaps sharing it a bit with us. You can't but hate and still be intrigued by equally charming and cruel boy king Calvin Candie played brilliantly by DiCaprio and love kind but again sometimes ruthless bounty hunter Dr. Schultz. Django Freeman simple on surface but surprisingly intelligent and  resolute under, ...

A question that has been bothering me a hell lot for a long time was the question of purpose or aim of life, my life in particular. I'm not talking about purpose as in destiny or 'we're here on earth for a purpose' kind of thing. As an atheist I don't believe in that. I'm talking about the purpose/aim we set for ourselves in life. I've seen some people who work towards their one particular dream/goal in life with a lot of energy like designing a car, becoming an electronic engineer or computer scientist or chemist, building a particular thing and so on. There are some other people who want to have a bit of money, an easy going job and to have a fun. That's not bad either. I've also seen people who want to help other people and work towards making the world a better place to live. Now, what had bothered me was that I did not fall into any of these categories. I didn't want to do anything big like them. My dreams were quite small. Underst...

Searching for that lost inspiration, I stumbled onto a question that has been with me for a long time; a question that perhaps chases all of us : why ? I got to the question in a very unusual way. I saw a TED Talk, about 20 mins long given by a guy about productivity while I was looking at interesting titles. He talked about something he defines to be the 'golden circle' What ? How ? and Why ? with why ? at the center and the rest following the order to the periphery. He argued that most of us went from What ? to How ? and on to Why ? and mostly never made it to Why? because we stuck with what we know, what ? While great communicators start with why ? and proceed outwards. This resonated with people of similar values and motives and brought all of them together. I don't know how true this paradigm is, but its sure worth giving a bit of thought to. So this stayed at the back of my mind. Meanwhile I had been the group leader of something and it was going pretty bad with ...