ಆರ್ಥ ಅಥವಾ ಅನುವಾದ (Understand or Translate)

To put a disclaimer at the very beginning, this line of thinking did not come to me till recent past. Also, this blog post is more exploratory than any conclusion I may have reached.

Growing up in India with language of instruction being English, we all were by default bi-lingual. When it came to academics parents and teachers always told us don’t just learn things by-heart or mug-up but understand and read it. That’s a great idea and wonderful concept but what did they really mean?. 

So, what does it mean to understand some concept? at the time when I was studying if I can explain what I am reading in Kannada (my mother tongue) then I have understood. But that only meant translating doesn’t it?.

I remember reading a quote from Dr. Richard Feynman that “if you cannot explain to the person sitting next to you in a bar as to what you do for living, then you do not know what you are doing for living”. That’s wonderful, if I can claim I understood it, I would say “I should be able to explain to a random person with no background in my field as to what I do for a living” .

Another school of thought that came from my daughters school is from her school Principal, her quote “I want my students to explain what they are doing and why they are doing it in their own words, if that is done then the teachers work is done”. This is wonderful too.    

One can argue that concept of understanding differs from subject to subject, for example mathematics at the basic level of addition, subtractions and multiplications is all about repetition and more repetition at higher level with fractions and all one can get some chance of explaining what they are trying to accomplish. Social studies in my extensive thought, one can only learn by by-heart for the level of understanding of the implications of whatever we study will change as we grow older, so at a young age by-heart so that when you get older you can recall and amuse yourself or deepen your understanding. 

Science is probably the only one which one can even make an attempt to understand and digest what we read and/or studied. One can understand the studied concept by setting up simple experiments, may be at home or collectively at school. 

In the end it boils down to, how would you know someone has understood what they have claimed to have studied :).

Tendencies of the mind - II

Back in the days, more than a decade ago when I did my very first Art of Living program, and then repeated multiple times, we were taught quite a few good behavioral aspects aka knowledge points, One of them appears to be circling in my mind for the last few weeks (if not months); It is the knowledge point about "Tendencies of the mind", one important tendency of the mind is to cling to the negative, other important tendency is to either completely in the past or in the future and never in the moment. I am sure the course taught a few more things.

That said, one other thing I realized is the tendency to categorize and label anything and everything (including itself). To elaborate, growing up in India and specially in south of India there were always few tensions between people, one had to do with  language (Kannada vs Tamil) and other with geographic location of your specific city in the Indian subcontinent (north vs south). As some one rightly put it, I became an Indian only after I left India. Living in America for almost 2 decades now, I have realized this place is no different, there are tensions between people but may be for slightly different reasons.

This made me think further and I realized, the human mind cannot and will not rest until it has categorized anything and everything around it. In the early days of civilization it wanted to categorize based on the color of skin, type of attire and then as civilization grew and expanded came  the division on occupation and with trade came the division based on location and later with the more industrial world and “intellectual” world, it became about the belief system (philosopher, intellectual, poet, activist, pacifist, communist, liberal, conservative and so on) then when the mind became even more evolved it started categorizing further and refining it even more, “fiscally conservative’', “religiously conservative”, “animal rights activist”, “women’s rights activist”, “right leaning”, “left leaning”, “extreme right wing”, “extreme left wing” and so on. Needless to say in between some where came the rich vs poor and my other favorite one “religion and culture” (I believe they exist together). I am sure I have missed a few categories and the timeline may not be perfect, but I am hoping the reader got the idea. 

It is fascinating to see the evolution of the human mind, to some extent one can argue that as a collective, human mind is evolving towards finer and finer divisions only to realize nothing exists in the end :). It’s all hollow and empty.  

ps: the game mind plays when combined with Ego is even more fascinating. I will leave it there :)

Kannada and its uniqueness

Few weeks ago I saw a video on Facebook that was meant for promoting usage of Kannada in daily life by telling us Kannada names for vegetables and fruits that we use on a daily basis like Tomato, Beets, Carrot and so on. When I learned from the video that the common Tomato is called Goodhe hannu (ಗೂಧೆ ಹಣ್ಣು) in Kannada, I was super elated, I was proud of the fact that while present day scientists were debating till recently whether to qualify Tomato as a fruit or a vegetable, we kannadigas had already done the classification long long time ago and called it a fruit. 

Then came the hard hitting realization, in the language of Kannada, no fruit or vegetable has just names in 1 part (barring a few exceptions), they always have 2 part names. The first part is what we in other languages call their names and second part determines status of the fruit of vegetable like its ripeness (ಹಣ್ಣು , ಕಾಯಿ ) or whether it grows above of below ground (ಗೆಡ್ಡೆ , ಗೆಣಸು ) or its status of lentil (ಕಾಳು ) and so on. Examples are numerous to name a few ಬಾಳೆ ಹಣ್ಣು  (banana), ಬದನೆ ಕಾಯಿ (eggplant or brinjal), ಆಲೂ ಗೆಡ್ಡೆ  (potato),    

Why is such a big deal, it is some what because other languages like English or for that matter our own Indian language Hindi doesn’t follow this rule.

Let me demonstrate with an example, take the fruit Banana 

English: banana it usually means a ripe banana 

Hindi: kela, still means a ripe banana 

Kannada: if you want ripe banana you will have to say bale hannu (ಬಾಳೆ ಹಣ್ಣು)

Unripe bale kayi (ಬಾಳೆ ಕಾಯಿ)

Leaf bale yele (ಬಾಳೆ ಎಲೆ)

Simply saying bale (ಬಾಳೆ) doesn’t mean a thing for a true Kannadiga. 

I am sure the closely related languages of Telugu and Tamil probably follow the same rules. Wonder if there are other languages which follow same rules.

Frozen vegetables

A while ago we had a discussion in our friends group on frozen stuff. We all were unanimous on prepared frozen food and the vote was a no. 

The votes divided when it came to frozen vegetables, some of us were all fresh and some others were arguing that if they are properly packed then they contain all the nutrients and hence what is the harm?. The discussion ended with Ayurveda says fresh is good. 

After all the time that has passed, couple of days ago I realized that when a fresh vegetable is frozen it is essentially dead. On the other hand when a fruit, vegetable or a green is plucked from the plant, it still has some life which is evident from the veggies ripening after being plucked or the evident fact that greens are able to fight off bacteria and other microbes for a couple of days after being plucked. 

Now my question or dilemma is, how important is for the plant to have some form of life left in it for our consumption? or rather does it make a difference apart from the taste? 

Printer Cartridge update 2

Remember my post on refilled cartridges back over a year ago, shortly after I published the post the ink went dry and this time in month of August I went ahead and bought new cartridges. 

I am happy to say, they lasted almost 14 months, they went dry couple of days ago. In the end of this experiment, my conclusion is refilling a cartridge is worth while once, twice or max thrice beyond that one is better off buying new cartridges. 

Refilled printer cartridges

For my hp inkjet printer at home, every time the ink dried up I used to buy brand new cartridges and some time along while printing some photos at Costco, I realized they have a service to refill the cartridges.

It was win win for multiple reasons, I hated throwing the cartridges away to a land fill, it was saving me some money and I could only refill the ink that had dried up (instead of buying set of 4 or 5).  As the saying goes first time lucky, first time I did it, it worked like a charm, printer recognized the ink levels and print quality was almost perfect and needless to say I was pretty impressed. 

A few months later  I realized the ink had dried up and I decided to go the same route, this time around the story went slightly differently. After refill the printer refused to show the ink levels and also refused to print anything at all. I tried the color and monochrome but no luck either ways.

I eventually made a trip back to Costco and there I learned a couple of things, first, they can actually measure the cartridge to determine if it has been filled with enough ink. Second, since the cartridge is now a non-standard it is fairly common for printers to show error for the amount of ink present.

Through the weighing process the good friendly Costco lady told me that the black ink for some reason hasn't gone through and she refilled it again. Of course my nightmare was still not over, for after coming back and repopulating the cartridges the printer still had trouble printing (it was printing blank pages or off color).

Then I came across this website inkjet411.com which suggested that I try electronically clean print head (in my printer, it's called clean cartridges) and voila it did the magic and the printer started working properly. One important suggestion the site had was to print a test print once a week to prevent ink from drying up.

Last but not least is that there is a limited number of times that cartridges can be refilled, I don't know that yet and will know soon.

Pumpkin Pumpkin

When my daughters school put out their fall Halloween party wish list, the easiest one I found was a bag of small pumpkins. How hard would it be to find a bag of pumpkins? or that’s what I thought.

Thankfully due to other priorities amongst other distractions, it totally slipped my mind that I was supposed to get the pumpkins till the day it was due on Monday morning. Even then, I am used to such things and I figured I would walk to the nearest HEB and pick up couple of bags or that's what I thought. In the end it took me close to an hour with stops at 3 HEB's, 2 Randall’s and 1 Whole Foods before I could declare victory. Yes I picked up the last 2 bags from that store. In the process I learnt a lot about pumpkin sizes, they are almost like dress sizes XXL, XL,  L, M, S, XS and XXS (my search was for XXS) of which XXL and XXS are hard to find. 

Moral of the story, Halloween and pumpkins especially the small ones go fast and faster so plan ahead.

With age does creativity . . . .

One of those blogs, that I am not sure of the content completely but still feel it is worth posting. This one is coming from my 4 odd years of interaction with Avni.

Off late I have concluded that structured education or molding the brain is to an extent detrimental to creativity. I have examples from my interactions and Avni's side to prove the same. In the end I am not advocating anarchy and a believer of structured education system.

Observing Avni, she doesn’t fret about color combinations, her approach is free spirited, a creative venture of mix and match of colors, in her own words, mixupitis is always fun. One can call it as festival of holi played on the paper. Can you imagine a princess face being painted tri color and still looking pretty.

From my side, an example is children books, specially the ones for the kids in range of 1-3 years old. They have large pictures and barely any texts and as parents we used to spend lots of time creating stories for those pictures and now as she is growing up we have graduated to more verbose books and end up reading what's printed rather than fitting creative stories.

I wonder if this is part of growing up. The free out of the box thinking that we as adults try to ignite in ourselves (every now and then) is already present in us as a child. If you are still not convinced, try convincing a child through logical statements (not arguments). One can argue that those solution are almost always impractical, but that's what being creative is, right?.

Last but not the least, the creative solutions moms come up to either feed their kids or to pacify them is clearly unique to every single mom. 

Future animals rights activist

It was a hot Sunday afternoon, Sandhya was trying to feed Avni. Both were sitting on the floor and as usual our pet Daisy wanted to be near  them and I was holding Daisy’s leash back and asking her to stay back. Suddenly,  Avni who was doing some art work stands up with an angry face and the following happens.

A: Manju, say sorry to daisy
M: why?
A: because you are mean to her
M: no I was not
A: not leaving the pets is mean
M: I was just trying to hold her back
A: not leaving Daisy near amma is mean, say sorry to her
M:sorry Daisy

Avni then comes near me and says “leave the leash now, do what I say”.

Her last statement was,

"Being nice is to let everyone to play"

Good job coach

The last day of the soccer league got rained out but that didn't dampen the spirits of the kangaroo team coach. He made a plan to get us all to Waterloo ice house on a Saturday morning.

We reached around 9:00 and most had reached before us and a few much later. As with kids once they reached a critical mass they ran out to play and we had to drag them back once the breakfast was served. At some point along. our coach wanted to say words to his team and I teased him that he had only 2 minutes and I will be timing him. I admit, I didn't time it and he made a wonderful speech, the best part was he had something unique and positive to say about every single player in the team.

One more thing I admit shamelessly, I have gone to almost all the matches over 8-9 weeks but I didn’t pay attention to the team as much as he had done, in spite of the fact that his own daughter was also playing in the same team (and probably one of the youngest in the team).

Come to think of it, if it hadn't rained out on that last Saturday we wouldn't have gathered for the festive breakfast or got to see the oratory skills of our team’s coach. I wish we could do this more often . 

It also showed me a new place for breakfast tacos other than rudy's bbq.

ps: In my previous post I had said our team lost all matches, I was corrected apparently we had won one match 

Who discovered America? – satire

They say Christopher Columbus discovered America, I disagree, I think it must be a Kannadiga who first discovered America and Columbus re-invented the same. Here is my argument :)

There is a proverb in Kannada “ಪಾಪಿ ಸಮುದ್ರಕ್ಕೆ ಹೋದರು ಮೊಣಕಾಲು ಉದ್ದ ನೀರು”, loosely translated a sinner cannot commit suicide even when he goes to the ocean for the ocean level never rises beyond the ankles. The ankle may be a oversight and they probably meant the knee.  They say proverbs have deeper meanings as they arise from people’s experiences. So, if you think about it at some point in time some “sinner” must have tried to commit suicide by drowning in an ocean or sea and unable to do so for the water never became deep enough. Can you think of 1 sea where it is possible, Gulf of Mexico where you can keep walking from the beach and rarely see a dip in sea floor level :).

So, Kannadigas knew Gulf of Mexico and hence knew America :)  

Coca-Cola and car battery

My trusty/beloved VW is touchy about the battery, I think I have replaced the battery more times than the tires themselves in the last 12 years.

Other day over the long weekend it refused to start and no amount of pumping gas pedal would help and I presumed a dead or almost dead battery. So, I had to bring out my trusty jump starter (btw, a good investment than cables) and jump started the car. While doing this I noticed that the presumed dead battery was reading the right voltage (slightly less than optimum) and there was some white salty substance on battery lead. I figured the battery is slowly dying and it will last a few more months.

The weekend passed with me pumping gas pedal every time to start the car and figured this would be the way going forward till the battery completely dies.

One thing that kept bugging was the white salt like substance on the battery leads, I remembered in one of my previous life times someone had told me to pour a can of coca-cola to clean the battery leads. I had never practically done it till yesterday. On the way back from work I picked up a can of ice-cold coca-cola from the vending machine and once I reached home opened the hood and poured the entire can on the battery lead. I was surprised to the see the white thing dissolve away and the battery lead has a slight shine to it now. The biggest bang was when the car started without me touching the gas pedal.

ps: There is no significance for ice-cold and I am sure a room temperature coca-cola would have done the trick too but that would have meant I buy a 6 pack or a 12-pack.

pps: If interested in trying please make sure the car is turned off and ignition key out :)     

Men eat 33% more than women

Shocked by the title, its not my statement but a statement by a reputed restaurant called Rajdhani in Bangalore. Don’t believe me, I have the proof below.

During our recent Bangalore visit our good friend took us for a lunch at this Rajasthani restaurant called Rajdhani. The food was wonderful and the service was nice too. In our state of extreme contentment we didn’t look at the bill and paid it off. But my curiosity made me look at the bill once for sake of it and I must say I was slightly surprised to see that I have been charged 33% more than the other 3 persons having lunch with me.

The location of Rajdhani that we went to was UB city mall, the construction of the mall made me understand why kingfisher airlines has gone bankrupt.

Not fair, I fight for equality :).

Quality improved due to dependence on machines

Today morning while heading to office, I noticed the garbage truck in front of my house machine handling the recycle bin. It is a fairly sophisticated piece of machine which has sort of 2 claws which picks up big bin and dumps it into the truck storage bin without almost anything outside the truck. The way the machine handled the bin made me realize, that the bin must be made of some high grade plastics.

Then the thought further extrapolated into the daily house hold items like kitchen utensils and clothes. We need the kitchen utensils to be good quality to survive a few years of loading into the  dish washer, we need clothes to be colorfast and strong to sustain the abuse in the washer/dryer. Granted the machines have something called a delicate cycle and can be used for delicate clothes and dishes but in a typical house hold who does not employ any domestic help at all the delicate cycles are usually a rarity. In my personal experience if a daily utility stuff cannot sustain the dishwasher, we tend to shelve it away or try not to buy the same brand next time.   

So, my conclusion the quality of the daily utility stuff is among other factors driven by our dependence on machines over humans for cleaning and sanitizing them. 

Precious moments

I have no remembrance of what I was thinking and no idea whatsoever about what is going on inside Avni’s brain. But together this made a pic to remember. Many thanks to Sandhya for capturing this moment.

The curious case of Sanjay Dutt

The esteemed film actor who has had multiple life’s in movies and one of the few actors who can claim to have hits in Indian cinema in almost every decade since the 80s.

The recent supreme court verdict that said he has to spend about 3 and half years in jail has let some media and people uproar. There are people on both sides of the story with his cine friends and fans saying he should be pardoned while the other intellectual community saying, he deserves more tougher punishment and should suffer the same as others involved in the case.

When the verdict came out, I was on the side of the intellectuals and was thinking he deserved more but reading this lengthy article on Tehelka made me re-remember the 80s and the 90s one more time. It was the time when our cine stars like Anil Kapoor used to watch cricket match with Dawood Ibrahim, it was the time when the underworld used to finance most of the Hindi movies, it was the time when our A-class cine actresses used to perform shows for the underworld dons in Dubai and other places. It was time before the economy was opened up. It was a time when it was fashionable to pose with underworld dons and share drinks with them. In short, the nexus between Bollywood and underworld was real tight. Needless to say most of these came about right after the blasts of 1993 and before that it was all hunky-dory.

What I said above is the history, now to the facts. Sunil Dutt (Sanjay’s father) was hated for doing relief work for the Muslim community (we know who they were). If the Tehelka article is to be believed Sunil Dutt’s own party members distanced him.  The family was getting threatening calls. Now the choice came about, should the junior Dutt have trusted the Indian police to protect himself an the family against a mob attack or try and do something on his own. He went the other way on his own. His possession of assault rifles and grenades made me think he is off to a war or something but that is a useful way to protect against a mob attack (assuming he knew how to use it).

Another problem is the case has run for nearly 20 years and as the saying goes “justice delayed is justice denied”. It is kind of weird to impose a sentence on a crime like this (charge of possessing and destroying an assault rifle, never fired or killed anybody) that was committed 20 years ago, they could have let all the people off with fines and community services. Another problem with this long gap is it removes an entire generation that lived the times and understood what it was like and adds a generation that has no understanding of the whole issue in hand.

All the above said, I am not advocating that anybody should be above the law. My points of view are only for this case.

Delhi case–my thoughts

A heinous act was committed in New Delhi, capital of India on the night of December 16th. It managed to create an outrage in many parts of the country and now the wave seems to be shifting towards Pakistan crossing the LOC (The politicians must be saying, thanks Pakistan). Some questions have been bothering me for a while now.

• I am wondering if the outrage is against the act itself or the heinous nature of the act had everything to do with the outrage. I would go with the nature of the act.
• If the victim hadn’t been that severely wounded and succumbed to her injuries, would the police had acted as swiftly as they did and would the government had pretended to act as they did by setting up swift courts and all.
• If by chance the victim were not a medical student working at a call center to fund her education but were in questionable employment, would we have had the same reaction? or would we have said, she got what she deserved? 
• If there is a supreme court order that prevents any bus with tinted windows and curtains to be operated on Delhi roads. Why was this bus never stopped for almost 2-2.5hrs of its drive time. All it would have taken was 1 police constable to stop the illegal bus. It was not middle of the night, it was between 8:30/9:00PM to lets say 11:30PM.
• In the light of the above comment, why did I not hear a bunch of suspensions in the Delhi Police pay roll?
• The male victims account of the events is also questionable, after being beaten badly (it appears he appeared on a wheel chair for the interview) where did he find strength to pull the woman victim from being mowed down. The bus did not go for a second try in mowing them? I believe they were robbed of everything, so where did he time the 45mins of the police discussions.
• The comments from the spiritual leaders like Asram Bapu and our so called political leaders including the son of our present president is sending chills down my spine. Not because of their comments but because nobody managed to throw a shoe at their face (Yeah, yeah it is a democracy and people have the right to speak).
• In terms of the lawyers representing the case, I think they have picked the case just be in the lime light. I don’t even want to talk about the comment made by one the defense lawyers.
• Regarding the so called minor accused in the case, assuming he did most of the carnage as has been reported why not just try him as an adult and hang the damn thing.
• That day will be sad when the accused are awarded lighter sentences because of the so-called torture they endured during the police custody.

Farewell dear friends

Dear Dr. Rao and Ambica

I am feeling sad to know that you will be leaving Austin soon. I have known both you guys for close to a decade now and knowing you guys was one of the best things that happened in my life.

You are one of my best buddies and the ones whom I knew I could count on under any circumstance. I remember that one time I had called upon Dr. Rao on a weekday to pick me up from my car dealer in Georgetown,TX and drop me back home in south Austin, he didn’t hesitate for a single moment and showed up to help me out. You guys were my support and behind the scene folks for most of our apartment relocations. For all the  events we have hosted, we always call upon you guys for food pickup and you have always obliged our requests.

There is one thing in specific that I am grateful to Ambica is for making me stick with the Art of Living foundation, there was a time when I was dejected with the behavior of some of the members of the foundation, talking to her brought back the sanity in me and I decided to hang in there. I am glad that I did.

The few trips we have done together have been really wonderful and memorable. I wish we had done a few more.  

I have learnt a lot by observing and interacting with you guys. I am a big fan of your down to earth nature and simplicity. I will definitely miss the ever smiling faces, the logical arguments of Dr. Rao, the patented dance moves, the endless jokes and conversations, the list goes on.

Many do not know, there is a poet hidden in Dr. Rao and I was one of the lucky ones to witness the same.            

It is a small world we live in and Bangalore happens to be my home town, will definitely meet you guys whenever we visit India. You sure will be missed here in Austin. 

Love

Manju

Another random post

I walk into restaurants like Which Wich or Subway or other non Indian ones, I see a bunch of high school looking kids managing the show. I rarely see anybody old and matured with the owner type looks being there.

Now compare that to any Indian owned and operated. I bet you will see the owner operating the cash register and a bunch of illegal immigrant like looking people who can barely understand English working as bus boys and waiters/waitress or helping around the stores. 

One argument is that the Indian folks are protecting their investment and maximizing their profits. But on the other hand those who have put money to own the franchise like subway or which wich aren't the highest order philanthropists.

Another argument we can make is that Indian operated stores cater to a specific customer base and hence good to have an ethnically familiar face at the head, I can buy that argument to an extent but not completely. It could also be a trust issue that comes with the culture, we do not trust others specially young kids when it comes to money.

I think the sensible argument is that these stores start off as family owned and operated business and tend to continue the same way. Very rarely do they grow to the extent of opening multiple branches across multiple cities and states. I am not stereotyping anything but noting a general trend I have observed across multiple cities across multiple states in the USA.      

Come to think of it, this is the story of most ethnic family owned restaurants. Whether it is Chinese or Mexican or Vietnamese or Indian. 

Naanu nanna kanasu

Naanu nanna kanasu (translated Me and my dream) a movie in Kannada by Prakash Rai. I had avoided the movie till last week when my wife forced me to watch the movie with her. I believed I had good reasons to avoid for I believed that the movie is a depressing and sad movie. Boy! was I totally wrong, and I am thankful to Sandhya for making me watch it.

The story is simple and I can positively say it is the story  of every parent. It is the life story of a girl from her birth till the day she gets married, told from the point of view of her loving, caring and devoted father. What captures the attention is the narration and the acting by the lead stars. One can relate to a lot of events described in the movie.  It has its tender moments and laughing scenes but doesn’t have much of forced comedy. Couple of scenes are worth mentioning, the scene of parents preparing for an interview to get their kid to the school and the way dad reacts when he finds out that mom knew about daughter’s love matter before him.

If I remember right, it has couple of songs which were ok, not worth mentioning, but at the same time weren’t bad enough that I couldn’t sit through. I was so sold on the depressing story line of the movie that through out the movie I was waiting for the mother to die, thankfully nobody died in the movie.  In the end it turned out to be a comedy than a depressing and sad movie. 

As with any movie, this has its sets of exaggerations, specially the story line of the son-in-law or the altruistic nature of the girl or the way that the family friends doesn’t age at all. Most of it can be ignored for the movie is really well done.

Definitely worth a watch once. If interested one can see it legally on YouTube. Sorry guys, no subtitles.

One word of caution, the movie as expected is dominated by Prakash Rai and there is not a single scene without him.