How much strenuous and concerted effort we put in our lives to make ourselves known, to make ourselves heard, to make ourselves followed, to make ourselves immortal, on pages of history, essentially carved on sand dunes. We pay attention to the minutest detail of the cost-benefit of every action of our life except their sum total. Amazing!
Tuesday 1 November 2011
Saturday 22 October 2011
Grandkids!
Suddenly I find myself with grandkids springing up everywhere. I don't know whether I am prepared for this phenomenon or not. I am not yet done with my own kids. Despite their obvious high stations in this world, they are still small to me. I love them too much to put them away for even a moment out of my mind. I still am constantly thinking of how to make them even more of superkids than they already are, and of course how to help them become better human beings. Now to see them having kids of their own makes me a little confused. How do I go about this knotty situation? Do I tend to the grandkids even as I continue to care for my own kids by combining the two, or do I abandon one group for the other, or do I tend to the elder group in a way that vicariously takes care of the younger group, or what? Sheer confusion. At times, I have been told by people, though discreetly, that I am making a mess of the lives of my own kids by continuing to treat them as kids and refusing to believe they have grown up and indeed have a mind of their own. Hmm, I am sure they have one (that's what the doc said when they were born), and I am happy for them, but I must admit I always worry for them, and I always think they should still take a little more care in crossing the roads, and filling up application forms, and tying the shoelaces. The truth is, and let it be out before I sign off, I constantly thought what would happen when these kids, who appear to me to be perfectly capable of dozing off at the airport gates and missing the flights, would have kids of their own? And how would they cope with that?
But the time of hypothesizing is over. The grandkids have arrived, and in a grand style too. And may be it is time for me to grow up too. Not to worry too much about either my kids or their kids. I know, I know, it's my parental ego that is central to all this. You really don't have to tell me that. I figured it out myself. I promise I will try and change myself and really be friends to all of them rather than oversee them. I love all of them too much to do otherwise. After all, they are my kids and my grandkids.
(Oops! Can't really get rid of my pestering ego!)
But the time of hypothesizing is over. The grandkids have arrived, and in a grand style too. And may be it is time for me to grow up too. Not to worry too much about either my kids or their kids. I know, I know, it's my parental ego that is central to all this. You really don't have to tell me that. I figured it out myself. I promise I will try and change myself and really be friends to all of them rather than oversee them. I love all of them too much to do otherwise. After all, they are my kids and my grandkids.
(Oops! Can't really get rid of my pestering ego!)
Friday 7 October 2011
Adieu!
Steve Jobs died. Eight years of fighting cancer and finally getting defeated. A great guy he was. A complete loner. Never believed in competing, never believed in excellence. Because to compete or to excel at something, you need someone else to compete with, or some existing standard to surpass, to be able to say I excelled at this or that. He created his own standards. He would later not like them. Then he created some other standards. He believed in innovation, in ideating, in sheer imagination. Never wasted his time on others' ideas. Used to quote Stewart Brand, "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
There is a difference between selling and getting bought. He never sold his products. People bought from him.He created the PC. In due course of time, posthumously, he will be credited with the honor of being the destroyer of the PC. He has already ensured that. Some day, not far off, we will not go to a computer owned by us to use it. The computer device (not the PC form) will move around with us. The laptop did that. Then the notebook. Now the iPad. But the villain is still the Windows. It still chains us to so many things at a time. Jobs was moving towards breaking that bind.
When you need to write with a pencil, you just pick up a pencil, not the whole penholder which may have a dozen pencils and a dozen pens and a dozen markers. When you need to correct your eyesight, you just wear your glasses, not wear a device which has attached to it glasses, and binoculars and magnifying glasses all together. When you need to eat with a spoon, you just hold a spoon, not the whole cutlery store. So when you simply want to email, you would have a small device which just helps you send email and nothing more. For now, you have it in a smartphone that is a mobilephone. When you want to look up a website, you would simply want to have a website that quickly allows you to surf through to that website, and nothing more. Remember that Casio calculator which still survives? Only with inflation, the eight digit device has become 12 digit. Like the proverbial cockroach, it has still survived over years. Because it has a specific function and it fulfills well and you can afford to have one in your office, one in your home, one in your briefcase and one in your car. It's always there where you are. It's there because you don't want to remember what 12 into 27 is. There is a calculator in your computer and a smartphone, but you will still reach for that Casio calc on your desk. Someday when the Windows hegemony is broken, we will have about a fifty or hundred of small software which will help us write, categorize, analyze, listen to music, look up websites, purchase and sell things, communicate, and of course, compute, but all separately, all independently. The software will be unitised, the device will be adaptively unitised. And then there will be enough number of such devices lying all around, so wherever we go there will be a device to use, not go to a device to use it. Jobs was relentlessly working towards this.
He broke the software umbrella but he had yet to break the single device dependence or freedom from the hardware. Jobs was a great downsizer. From the ancient IBM room-filling machines, he made a PC, and from there he came down to iPhone. He was still looking for that freedom of doing one thing at a time, even though apparently it looked he was cramming many things into a single device. If cancer had not blown him away, Jobs may have finally made a hundred devices with specific functions. He created new ideas, he destroyed old ones. He could see with his eyes closed. He could hear with his ears plugged. Walking on the Times Square, he could touch the Eiffel Tower. He was one of a kind.
55 is no age to die. Cancer is so cruel. It does not distinguish between being a Jobs or someone else. It does not even tell you why Jobs died.
Adieu!
There is a difference between selling and getting bought. He never sold his products. People bought from him.He created the PC. In due course of time, posthumously, he will be credited with the honor of being the destroyer of the PC. He has already ensured that. Some day, not far off, we will not go to a computer owned by us to use it. The computer device (not the PC form) will move around with us. The laptop did that. Then the notebook. Now the iPad. But the villain is still the Windows. It still chains us to so many things at a time. Jobs was moving towards breaking that bind.
When you need to write with a pencil, you just pick up a pencil, not the whole penholder which may have a dozen pencils and a dozen pens and a dozen markers. When you need to correct your eyesight, you just wear your glasses, not wear a device which has attached to it glasses, and binoculars and magnifying glasses all together. When you need to eat with a spoon, you just hold a spoon, not the whole cutlery store. So when you simply want to email, you would have a small device which just helps you send email and nothing more. For now, you have it in a smartphone that is a mobilephone. When you want to look up a website, you would simply want to have a website that quickly allows you to surf through to that website, and nothing more. Remember that Casio calculator which still survives? Only with inflation, the eight digit device has become 12 digit. Like the proverbial cockroach, it has still survived over years. Because it has a specific function and it fulfills well and you can afford to have one in your office, one in your home, one in your briefcase and one in your car. It's always there where you are. It's there because you don't want to remember what 12 into 27 is. There is a calculator in your computer and a smartphone, but you will still reach for that Casio calc on your desk. Someday when the Windows hegemony is broken, we will have about a fifty or hundred of small software which will help us write, categorize, analyze, listen to music, look up websites, purchase and sell things, communicate, and of course, compute, but all separately, all independently. The software will be unitised, the device will be adaptively unitised. And then there will be enough number of such devices lying all around, so wherever we go there will be a device to use, not go to a device to use it. Jobs was relentlessly working towards this.
He broke the software umbrella but he had yet to break the single device dependence or freedom from the hardware. Jobs was a great downsizer. From the ancient IBM room-filling machines, he made a PC, and from there he came down to iPhone. He was still looking for that freedom of doing one thing at a time, even though apparently it looked he was cramming many things into a single device. If cancer had not blown him away, Jobs may have finally made a hundred devices with specific functions. He created new ideas, he destroyed old ones. He could see with his eyes closed. He could hear with his ears plugged. Walking on the Times Square, he could touch the Eiffel Tower. He was one of a kind.
55 is no age to die. Cancer is so cruel. It does not distinguish between being a Jobs or someone else. It does not even tell you why Jobs died.
Adieu!
Wednesday 24 August 2011
Aug 2011 - India at crossroads........
"When a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves, and fit for a master, it is of little consequence from what quarter he comes."
GEORGE WASHINGTON, letter to the Marquis de Lafayette, Apr. 28, 1788
Tuesday 24 May 2011
Logjam
Nature created man and installed him on earth. Man created God and placed Him in heaven. Now there is a logjam......
Saturday 7 May 2011
Wednesday 27 April 2011
My annual date with wonderment!
It’s my birthday today and as usual, I have been wondering. Why do we call it a birthday? Then may be those who were born in the night would call it a birthnight, and by the red underline that springs up under this word birthnight, thanks to the spellchecker, I guess it’s not even a recognized word in the Random House Dictionary. And then what do those guys like me would say who were born at 7-15 in the evening, which time is not exactly either a day or night but falls in between? Happy Birthevening? And since we call it a birthday and celebrate it every year when that date arrives, shouldn’t we call it a birthdate, that is something like Happy Birthdate to you, since in my specious reckoning the birthday is only once in your lifetime, that is the day when your Excellency was born, and all the similar divine dates on which it annually visits you, would be birthdates. This is not nit-picking, please. Far from it.
Not surprisingly, nobody likes his or her name to be spelled or pronounced wrongly by others. This is a universal observation and largely to do with preserving your identity in an otherwise generally averaging world. Similarly, when the annual celebration of the event of your birth takes place, you would certainly want to, at least I do, describe the time as precisely as possible. If you are holding out the day on which you were born, as auspicious as it might seem to you and would like others to believe so, then you might as well horofically (not horrifically, or heroically, or horoscopically, the word horofically is correct, don’t doubt it! You may though not find it in any existing dictionary.) announce the time as precisely as possible. In which case, I discover, it would be called Happy Birthhour!
This is neither here nor there. And it’s getting me nowhere, year after year. Prisoner of words that I am, and a worshipper of semantics that I have made myself a die-hard into! What did I say? Die-hard? Hmm, something on that, some other time. You might as well heave a sigh of relief because I am pausing.
Not surprisingly, nobody likes his or her name to be spelled or pronounced wrongly by others. This is a universal observation and largely to do with preserving your identity in an otherwise generally averaging world. Similarly, when the annual celebration of the event of your birth takes place, you would certainly want to, at least I do, describe the time as precisely as possible. If you are holding out the day on which you were born, as auspicious as it might seem to you and would like others to believe so, then you might as well horofically (not horrifically, or heroically, or horoscopically, the word horofically is correct, don’t doubt it! You may though not find it in any existing dictionary.) announce the time as precisely as possible. In which case, I discover, it would be called Happy Birthhour!
This is neither here nor there. And it’s getting me nowhere, year after year. Prisoner of words that I am, and a worshipper of semantics that I have made myself a die-hard into! What did I say? Die-hard? Hmm, something on that, some other time. You might as well heave a sigh of relief because I am pausing.
Saturday 9 April 2011
Blank stare
Standing on the sinking sands, time is running out. For me, for others, for all. The search for the purpose persists. Drawing a blank.
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