While browsing through someone‘s website, I came across this thought provoking take on nostalgia – “I’ve always viewed nostalgia as a heresy, but it becomes increasingly harder to fight it off as one grows older. Perhaps it is part of the mechanism we use to cope with regret: when enough patina accumulates, mistakes can be viewed as formative experiences, and switch from being sources of regret to being key moments that contributed to the development of one’s present self. Viewed in that light, nostalgia is a form of self-deception, which doesn’t make it any easier to accept.” ...

I check around 4-5 different blogs a day, and all of them are on blogspot. But, I get kind of irritated each day because I have to remember all 5 of them, type in their URLs on the browser and check whether they have updated their blogs. I am wondering if blogspot has some feature similar to livejournal, where you can add people as your friends and read all their blog updates on a single page. If you want to know what I mean, visit http://www.livejournal.com/users/tejaswi/friends/ . Anyone knows? ...

Here is my interpretation of one of Samba’s various bursts of inspiration. An abstract idea whose viability, logistics, implementation etc. need to be worked out. We know that a lot of effort goes into the preparation for these competitive exams; out of which only the top 2% or so make it in to IITs, IIMs etc. Out of say every 100 candidates that takes each exam, 2 of them actually make it in, and so, in some sense, their efforts are not wasted. And I will assume that around 40 of them just took it up as a part of their regular path, and weren’t really serious about them. These numbers can be inaccurate; but bear with me. ...

My usual gang here at IIT, we hang out at Nishant’s room (H5, #76), be it after dinner, after lunch, just bored, just about anytime. And occasionally, we end up having disagreements. And today was one such. It was the usual Capitalism vs. Socialism debate that’s been haunting me for a while now. And this time, I tried playing the devil’s advocate and tried defending Capitalism; tried everything I had in my arsenal: globalization, trickle-down effect, jungle-culture, primal-instinct, and myriad other theories. When Amit was here a few weeks back, we had had the same argument through his entire stay in Bombay, and I tried to remember what he had used then, and tried in vain to use it now. But after an hour of heated discussions, I realized that it is incredibly hard to defend something you truly don’t believe in. ...

Bombay is an experience; and esp. after living in a hamlet like Bangalore, Bombay hits me each time I venture out of the campus. And this weekend was especially severe. Two friends (Amit Rathore from ThoughtWorks and Akshay from IIM-Lucknow) were visiting, one for the exclusive purpose of “chilling out” and the other had some official work. But the three of us hit the yuppie circuit here, in full blast. And as Amit said before leaving, it was some severe shit. Restaurants, cafes, bars, beaches, local trains, never ending taxi drives, late late night chilly auto rides, malls, and all the other elements which every urban jungle has. But its sheer scale, and the way things are intertwined here; that is the difference. Amidst all our chaotic travelling and induldence, there was a lot of talk on economics, India, Kannada, Bombay, mis-adventures with women, books and so on. Coffeehouse philosophy at its very best; three geeks, what else can you get?! ...

Are there enough people in this world for all the tasks that are around? I mean, is the load distributed properly? are there enough complexity theorists? enough newsreaders? enough teachers? enough sportsmen? enough truck drivers? enough glassblowers? Is it balanced? or are we fooling ourselves that things are in equilibrium? Lemme tell you why this equilibrium is floating in my head now. I was pondering about the so called “micro” and “macro” level interests of any person. At least me. At a micro level, I am working on web-search, or in a more general sense, concerned about computer science. At a macro level, I feel for India, Indian politics, socialism, economics, historical injustice, hunger, etc. Though my macro level interests are viable career options, I just dont take them for various reasons. Now, I somewhere, deep down, subconsciously, desperately hope that human equilibrium exists and all those areas of work that I am not involved in, but are important to me, are being taken care of; by professionals, by passionate people, by zealots, by selfless volunteers etc. And my working on search engines will somehow help them do their job better. Some theory guy proving approximation lower bounds for some O.R scheduling problem will save some money in some facotry line up which will be given as bonus. Some IAS officer streamlining infrastructure efforts might get me from KanjurMarg to Mulund in time for a movie. ...

I heard someone say that “If you have the ability to do something (good), its your responsibility to do so.” This put me in a quandary of sorts; I have always known that I have had the ability to do a lot of things, and some of these things could’ve made the world a better place, maybe in a very limited way. But, I have never taken the responsibility for most of these. Mostly, moments of this sort pass by without us realizing that it is indeed our responsibility to do certain things in life. The irony is that there are also times in life when the responsibility is very clear, but the ability is somewhat questionable. Both situations arise in life, and we give them both a raw deal. ...

I mean, RSS – Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, not RSS – RDF Site Summary (feed). On my way back from Soraba, I met a very interesting relative of mine who works full-time with RSS and has the somewhat lengthy title of “Akila Bharata Saha Boudhika Pramukh”, which translates to “Head: RSS Think-Tank”. As we had a couple of hours to kill on the bus till we reached Shimoga, it was talk-time for the idealogically confused Tejaswi Nadahalli and the passionate RSS leader/idealogue Dattatreya HosabaLe. We covered some organizational behavior, leadership, Indic-culture, (Neo-)Colonialism, India, Indian-ness, Nehru, Partition, and a whole load of other similar topics. For the very first time in my life, I met a true leader of people; someone who knows the complications of implementing policies, logistics, people, Indian History, is very well read, ideologically driven, unmarried, devoted, and a lot more. Very impressive person, eye-opening conversation….I even checked out the RSS website and a few columns there. Vitriolic as usual, and also extreme in places; but still, after pondering for a while, I am not sure I am as liberal as I think I am. ...