AAP's unique position

I feel AAP is in a very unique position in terms of numbers. They can be supported by both Congress even though they have 8 seats and BJP who have 30+.

The bootstrap seem to be done by the Congress. AAP cannot be brought down for next six month. AAP appoints Lokpal and they are referred to corruption done by previous Delhi congress govt. This will bring out lot of scams. If congress decides to withdraw support at the end of six months, then BJP has to support AAP because of the scams against Congress.

Also, it would be prudent for BJP to support AAP as Kejriwal and others would be kept busy ruling Delhi and doing all the work to bring down Congress which is important for the BJP's Loksabha ambitions. If they do not support and AAP government comes down it is to BJP's own peril.

AAP thus seem to be in a unique position where they can be supported by both Congress and BJP at any point in time, provided they make the right moves.

why google does not show all the matches?

I typed 'google' in google search and it said

About 2,750,000,000 results (0.20 seconds) 

Then in page 2

Page 2 of about 2,750,000,000 results (0.23 seconds). 

 

Further I clicked and clicked and clicked to reach 

Page 41 where it all ended. 

 

Page 41 of about 401 results (0.51 seconds) 

 

What about the rest of the billion pages it said it had matches?

 

Its the same when I searched for IBM...it went up to 160 matches or so - 16 pages..though in 

the beginning it matched a humongous number of documents

 

Is this the expected behavior?

 

Can some one explain this? 

 

Why do startups?

I happened to read this post recently
http://blog.pieratt.com/post/64881538909/work-versus-life-greatness-versus-family

It was sounding similar to what I had written long ago
http://arbidobservations.blogspot.in/2012/01/cmon-quit-your-job-guys.html

in terms of the goal of doing a start up, but I felt the reason to do that as given by Ben in the blog above is more appealing. He essentially says that 'the world we are in now' is built by your fore-fathers, their sacrifices. So, do not take the assembly line mentality. Instead, pursue something more meaningful which will justify the effort your grandpa/ma, father/mother would have put in.

What is meaningful rests with you to figure it out.

In my opinion starting up something new, fresh, creative and which can bring value to people definitely brings more smiles...

Life - what is it?

I was watching the video of Jaggi Vasudev talk about what happens after death to Shekar Kapoor. The link is here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2tL4pgY-b8.

It was not very different from what you would have heard if you are born in a Hindu family. Though it was told by Jaggi with lot of conviction as if he knew them all (Note - I am in no way saying here that he does not know) unlike the elders in your family who would have not told with that much of a conviction or it would have been hazy. Jaggi was quite clear.

If I have understood him correctly, I can summarize that 'Life and Body are two different things'.
What this means is, you have this body and after you die, the life in the body is no longer there. This can be interpreted in two different ways. One, your body had something called a life in it when you were alive. When you died, that life thingy left. What I mean here is the life itself is something that is independent of your body. If I go back to Jaggi, this body is a gross body and the body in which life resides is a subtle body which may or may not appear for your eyes or some people would be able to see such subtle bodies. The subtle body leaves the gross body when you die. The subtle body also enters a womb sometimes within 48 hours if it had a very gradual and death by ageing (normal death). Such people who die naturally , peacefully may get a womb to enter immediately to get rid of their karmic desires if any remaining. While a person who had an unnatural death goes through a state of limbo for even centuries as the death is violent and the subtle body is probably not in a steady state. The subtle body itself has tendencies (which I understood as desires to accomplish this or that) only. It does not have any discerning mind to differentiate good vs. bad or control itself. It is in a uncontrollable state. Pain or pleasure, it is amplified 1000s of times than it would have otherwise happened when the subtle body was a life form in a gross body. As in a gross body it has the discerning mind to control itself. Thus if the person was not in a state of peace or calmness at the time of dying, it take a while for the subtle body to find a womb. At the same time irrespective of whether a subtle body finds a womb or not immediately, it has to be born again to fulfil its karma. Thus a person with a calm state has a better chance of cycling back again than a person with lots of disturbance even in the gross body and this means when he dies his subtle body goes through HELL truly until probably some good deeds show its way to take birth again.

There is probably not much difference above in what you would have heard if you are a hindu where I have seen personally people doing rituals at homes after death for 10 days and the whole year every month and then every year once to the passed away soul. There is also cases where if there are unnatural deaths, they do variety of homams (rituals) to probably show way to the soul in limbo to calm it down and probably guide it to take birth.

While I have also been a reader of science, big bang etc. If you go by that we are a evolution from the star dust. Our body is a product of nature and thus it goes back to nature when you die. There is nothing like a Life independent of body. When a body lives it has life. When it dies, the life in the cells of the body also perished. There is no separate subtle body hanging around after you die to find a womb. You come to life with the cells fusing - the sperm and egg. The characteristics are in the DNA carried over generations. Some are OFF and some are ON. That explains the different behaviours we exhibit. Also during this life some characteristics get imbibed in you for new situations that you encounter. You are a life form made of cells, DNA and the molecular fabric. And nothing else. Period. You die, You die. Nothing more. The cells decay over time and you die.

The first theory seem to drive a purpose. It has a goal to explain things like desires etc. that happen within you. Everything in the universe is pre-determined and it goes by that. Or in another way, if you do good things, you are at peace with yourself and so you end up not being in a limbo when you die. Your desires are something that happens when you are in the gross body and it can be accomplished only with the help of this body and the mind. So, being born is a important thing and you should be trying to get rid of desires and go into a state of non-doing/no-desire. That is probably the point where you are not born again, the subtle body probably goes into a more superior state. Or probably a next higher level state of Godliness. Thus this theory of life has a broader purpose, a goal to fulfil for the birth you take. Until you understand that goal, get it done, you wont escape from the cycle of birth and death.

The other theory of 'you are a matter with a life energy in all your cells' does not advocate any purpose to this life. It is aimless. Irrespective of you have a purpose or not, you die and when you die, there is nothing that follows. You procreate without any reason and it just happens because you had desires. A offspring is born with the sperm and egg which carry the DNA imprint and nothing more. You do not have anything to fulfil here in this world unless you decide to do so. And why you procreate, probably because of some urge or tendency part of your DNA that makes you not to break the replication or recycling...Even that behaviour is in the DNA. So, you or the so called conscience etc. do not find any place in this. It all happened without any purpose. Big bang happened without any reason. And you are here because Big bang happened. And you don't have any purpose here because there is no YOU. It is just a bunch of cells screaming here and there with some life.

Which is correct ? I feel if you take this life as is without questioning or trying to understand the mysteries of it, you are just left with living and nothing else. It simplifies the problem to a great extent. You can focus on your life. You can look whether you are breathing or not, whether you are seeing or not. Your mind is not mired by the Goodness and sins that are professed by pundits. It is clean, simple and you can raise your kids , family , be happy with your wife, friends, enjoy a good meal, watch a good movie etc. Or even write a article like this. Essentially do what gives you joy. Whichever of the above theories are right, it will at least not come in your way when you live. Ultimately by the same theory if you had lived a fulfilled life, you will escape the cycle of birth and death :-) 

Peace of mind

Peace of mind is not something that is dependent on a place or a people. But we have come to associate this with surroundings to a large extent. We attribute it to certain places because it could be due to the fact that your self disappears in those places. You associate it being with some people because your self disappears in their presence.

For example, you feel at peace when you are inside a temple. There can be several scientific reasons attributed to this like the sound vibrations and all that. They may or may not be true. But over and beyond that it is something about your self finding its place there. It is a place where there is no conflicts or confrontation or even the thought of survival.  There is no other person who is there to challenge you or fight with you. The place is guaranteed to be free of conflicts. It has been designed only to be silent with yourself and no challenges are offered whatsoever. Thus you immediately attribute it to the place.

Now contrast it with your house where you are in a constant state of bickering with some one there. This may also be true with your office where you have certain difference of opinion with your colleagues. All of this makes it not so good to feel when you are in those places, specifically with those people.

Place and people thus matters a lot in finding peace with oneself.

But does it mean you should always be finding the right place and people? What if the place turns into a misery over time? For example, the same temple could become a haven for illegal things and once you get more intimate knowledge of it, a conflict arises, doubts arise and your eyes are now clouded enough to see the wrong things and people.

So, where is this peace of mind ?

We saw above that peace of mind is not in the things outside of you. It is something that you have to realize within you. It is always inside you. If you decide to stay calm irrespective of the surroundings,  If you decide to not confront or conflict all the time in your head about others or the things around you, you will have peace of mind. If you allow life to flow and not resist, you will be left with peace. If you interact with others with the idea that you have to leave them in peace at the end of your conversation then you will be happy. If you have the punishing mentality, if you are on a fault finding mission with everything you deal with, then you will not be at peace with yourself.

Many a time you may not know that you are one such person who finds the wrong bunch of things with others. You may always think you are right and everyone around you are wrong and trying to conjure up evil designs. If you shed this and stop looking at others or bothering to think what they will and let them live in their way, it becomes easy for you. Then you are only left with you and no one else to deal with. In fact when you do this, the YOU also will not be there as it is a mythical thing called EGO created in your head which is mostly about reflections of others thoughts as conjured up by your mind within you, about you and so on. Its a complex unidentifiable thing that sits within you and directs all your decisions as if it were You. Since it is within you and not a thing like your small intestine that can be x-rayed, it is hard to believe one such thing exists. But it does. It could be a subtle layer of your brain. And because it is hard to find, you start thinking that that is YOU. When others disappear, world disappears, YOU also disappear.

If you want to find this out, sit tight in a corner left with yourself initially. You will find your mind is filled with thoughts of others and their thoughts about you and your reactions to that and so on. This is like a complex web. The more you sit quite and still, the catharsis happens and you become more and more clear. You get released from the EGO Maya better and better. You have to do this , practice this until a point all of those things disappear and the REAL you is what is left.

You will realize that by yourselves.

Cooking and Coding

Recently I have been doing a lot of coding. At times I feel its a drudgery one goes through. But at times I do feel good about getting some output which I wanted for a while. When I deeply tried to understand  the drudgery part, I found that it is the mindless mistakes I do and later try to debug and fix them while testing that is causing this effect within me.

Coding requires a lot of discipline to get something going the first time itself. One should not be disturbed by external noises around you. Silence outer and most importantly inner is the key. Have a good swim or a jog before sitting for coding which helps a lot to focus.

Yes, a lot of focus is needed as it requires all your attention to stare at the monitor, work through the logic and steer it in the way you want the output. When your mind slips, you make errors and then go through the pain of debugging and testing.

When your attention is not there for a moment, you end up mindlessly copy pasting some other code which may look similar and that is what you need in the current portion you are doing without thinking the modifications it may need to fit in this one. Then a lot of errors and debugging ensues.

Do things slowly and with full attention. Do little, but understand what you are doing fully and then place the lines. I assure this way you will make less mistakes and programming becomes less tiring.

I mentioned cooking in my title. So you must be waiting to hear the comparison. And here I go. The drudgery in cooking is not cooking itself. Like coding something to see an output cooking for a great smelling dish is a delight.

The pain is in cleaning the dishes and doing all the housekeeping chores that makes it difficult. How much ever you try writing a error free code first time it ends up with bugs. Similarly doing cooking without dirtying the place is difficult.

Of course since code is not a 'matter', it does not perish while cooking perishes unconsumed if a bad job is done. Cooking smells while coding is non smelly.

Now you may wonder where the heck is this blog going? I join you. I thought there is something in common between the two. Ah! one thing that is probably common is in coding as well as cooking you have this art of delegation. In office, you have these supervisory souls (or roles) that does not wet their hand but get a lot done from lesser mortals. Same happens at homes where those very same sup. souls end up delegating the cooking to ladies and end up relaxing with a newspaper or pretending to work and browse the web instead.

KamalHassan - my thoughts about this man

I don't exactly remember when I started watching KamalHasan's movies. Probably Nayagan was the first movie when I started to suddenly observe this man. Further I never missed any of his movies. There was always something in it that I can simply go to watch him without bothering about stories or others. Now after more than two decades since Nayagan released, I have followed this person on every news item, have been worried for him when he could not release his latest film Vishwaroopam and later was elated when he could and even more jubilant when I saw he made more than 100 crores as if I made that money.

Interestingly I have not even met this guy. And I don't know even if such a man exists really other than what I see of him in the media. In fact, I don't know if I will be thrilled to even see him in real. All of this makes me think that I have grown a certain mental space for this guy liking some aspects of him. I have allowed this growth to happen. I probably like to hold this image and keep going with it. Don't know for what. It could be because I like this man for his sheer madness on what he does and the kind of effort he puts in and of course the intelligence and the sheer talent he embodies.

When some one has worked hard for 50 years in a space, and still going , still crossing mountains, and crossing his own heights he achieved, it is a wonder. This man seem to have been so adamant in going on and on like this with newer things coming out of his hat every day. This requires a lot of discipline , intellect and application as I see. I have always looked up to some one like Steve Jobs or a Kernighan Ritchie who is directly in my profession and have always impressed me. But I feel this man fulfills the art side of me I believe. I don't like art movies much though. Also, the fact that he is one of the prompt tax payers and lauded by IT department makes me feel he is one of those few guys who is not there to mindlessly accumulate wealth. I have seen that he does movies for others primarily to get some money quickly and put it back into movies , the ones he and me likes.

Such a dedication to what he does, passion even to the extent of pledging all his property to do a movie he wanted is something I would call as being 'religious'. So, I would say KamalHasan is more religious than anyone even though we all think he is not, going by the anti-God (by the way, what is it?) dialogues in his movies. This man has constantly professed love for fellow beings and no wonder Gandhi was his favourite. I do like Gandhi, but I still have not been a fan of him. I don't want to force myself on the thing of love for fellow humans. Let it happen naturally. I do agree that it would be nice if I am able to love the broader public other than just my family. At present, I just am living and going on without thinking much what is good for me or even who am I.

I somehow like the other part of KamalHassan which is all about doing something interesting with all the passion you have in what you do and live life just by keeping away from whatever will end up entangling you, including God.