Monday, February 18, 2008
LEAVE ME ALONE!
LEAVE ME ALONE!
NO, Im not talking about the GTA vice city cheat code to keeps the cops off. It's about those juvenile teenage eyes that sparkle with coherence like a hundred stars in the pleides. A cluster of glowing, twinkling, dewy, wet stars amidst a pleasantlty inconvenient face.
"Leave me alone!" it pleads wiht utter helplessness. So utterly helpless, against the mighty yet insanely stupid satanic nuisances that torture its soul, invade its privacy: out of sheer momentery ecstasy, fuelled by grillions of seconds of persistent mental instability, that led to a drastic degradation of the humanly spirit that camouflaged the monster within.
The word "GOOD", being as alien to it as an i-pod is, to a neanderthal. A sort of a force, that conventionally reads the word "LIVE" as it's own palindrome.A force that acts as if in constant inebriation, a force, as content with all the evil in it, as young palestinian kids playing soccer on a wrecked warfront.
Unconscious.
The mere sight of the force; It's mere name describes complete sub-consciousness and extrordinary foolhardy.
It's opponent slowly, steadfastedly gains momentum.
Ignorance, though, IS bliss. After all, the proponents of this hypothesis weren't inexperienced!
The irritation is taken with silence. Fatal silence, it should seldom be referred to as. After all, silence is, they say, golden.
As pleasant, as golden, as those inexplicably - absorbingly - mindboggongly - gorgeous Irish ruralscape that sing about Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.
The bitter struggle lingers on...
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Return of the Carnatic
Midnight.
The time of the day when even the surya bulb sets. The time when gurkhas and Djs and Ten pointers rule the place. The time best suited to listen to some music! On this cold, "Extremely-bone-chilling" vellore christmas night, I shot a glance at one of my passions - Carnatic music.
Ah, That divine south indian soul, singing strange sanskrit verses...God, She ruled the world's carnatic scene with those two initials: Emm and Ess. It was a medieval classic, one of her best High-CD-stereo-quality recordings. The song progressed. Perfect frequencies everywhere. Any mistake would either mean that the recording was faulty, or that the robust semiconductor chip in my cellphone that houses few of the world's best trance compositions (Yes, The world's BEST!) is corrupt, or contains a virus.
The song progressed. I had always envied the African Djembe, but these trditional indian percussions that go along with carnatic music, especially, were so damn perfect, that with a little flange, they could be looped and mixed into any experimental-commercial-trance track! (Slightly conventionist, but yes !)
The song progressed. The vocal modulations came to an end. Now came the part where the three or four different percussions in the concert played a first-percussionist-initialized rhythm, adding their own "glamour and panache" to it.
I had originally been working on trance music production, which, is usually based on the most unique of the effects your creativity can acheive, to give your composition a feeling of "Trance".
Surround sound.
Precisely what the Idol-ically old, silent carnatic song suggested. Each of the instruments in the climax of the song, sounded as though the were being played from a different place, although, it wasn't all that "crystal-clear" for a novice listener to notice.
Whether the effect was accidental or on purpose, I do not know, but this concept of splitting a CARNATIC song into many channels and inducing surround-ity in them, I guess, will provide a better approach to popularising this ancient, stereotype-Indian, endangered (I better not say that!) form of music and also the newly emerging genre - "Carnatic-Trance".
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
April 18, 2007
I had the misfortune of having to pay the month's electricity bill. It was the last day and few hours hence, we had to pay a fine. Ten in the morning, I dressed up and cycled to the counter. The line was already half a kilometer long. It seemed like they were distributing free gold coins. The whole place reminded me of R.K.Narayan's Malgudi. I didn't know that so many people lived in my neighborhood!(Im always hooked up on the computer, tying to compose something...) So I joined the bandwagon. There were two lines, one for men, the other for women and the innumerous kids they brought along.
Soon he donned the role of "Malgudi's talkative man". He gave a pellucid account of his wonderful days in office. I heard that he worked in some company which imported things for other countries and did something else with them …He wasn't clear, you know…… On the day he had finished working for 3 months, His boss had complimented on his intelligence. He was soon promoted to a higher post. Along with his promotion, he said, came his arrogance. Soon, he was shouting at people, I mean the tender guys or whatever they call them. He had to visit Rajasthan for some major issue. The old man had protested, but finally was forced to go to a commissioner in Rajasthan on an official visit. He swore at his boss. Everyone turned around.
I looked at the line. I had crossed two pit stops or two pillars and 9 people were ahead of me. I was the tenth guy. The Line was moving slower than a snail but faster than India's Fast RTC buses. I felt like writing a suicide note and giving it to that man. But I held on.
The old man was now speaking of a security guard in Rajasthan. He described him. I felt the sudden urge to urge him to write a novel, which, I was sure would win a Man booker. He would probably be christened as a writer/activist. The guard, he said, was so persistent in not allowing him to meet the commissioner. He was dismissed saying, "Sir is having lunch" and sometimes saying, "Sir is having tea" or "sir is with some clients" et al. The old man waited. Two and a half hours and he hadn't spoken a word to the guard. Now, he lost his patience. He went to the guard for one last time demanded permit. Then, it seems, he yelled at the guard. The whole place shook as he repeated the very words he had spoken, eons ago, to some incredible guard in far-off Rajasthan. The nasty, Hindi sentence he uttered was more an eye turner than the advertisers promise their bikes to be. He broke open the door and spoke to the commissioner. Said he to the commissioner – "I have been waiting far two ouvers. Why is youver guard not allowing me? Does he want tip? If he want tip, I will give tip, But why all this?" Then began a saga of how he discussed the matter with some higher official.
Two persons to go. There was the sudden overcrowding of people at the counter.
He had written about 'The Issue' to the defense minister- No, Home minister- or maybe both of them (who knows??). He paused. He slid before me to the counter. I didn't protest. If I did, He would probably compose another raucous parody on me. The lady in the counter had suddenly moved on to the ladies. A precious gift of time for him to continue. He spoke about how he gave the order to some German firm and got some time saved. God! Pity the Germans! He paid his bill. It looked like Homer, Shakespeare, Vyasa and Valmiki and Kalidasa had just completed reciting all their complete works. He took the receipt and began to read it right away. I managed to spill the words 'excuse me' out of my mouth. He turned around, viewed me frantically and moved over to the side muttering something.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Oersted, Busted !!

It was actually an Italian jurist, Gian Domenico Romagnosi, who had observed this phenomenon in 1802 AD and published his observations in a local newspaper. This, however, went unnoticed by the scientific community. And now, the credit goes to Hans Christian Oersted.
In 2007 AD, I first learnt that a straight current carrying conductor produces a magnetic field around its axis in a circular way. So, when we place iron filings on a cardboard shelf and allow current through a conductor placed perpendicular to it, BINGO! You have a crudely arranged circular pattern.
I decided to give it a try : After all it is a silly experiment, the result being obvious. I was only too interested in seeing if it is really going to work… So, I met my college’s lab instructor after working hours.
“Sir….”, I stammered. “I was thinking if I could perform an experiment….. It is not in syllabus anyway”. He viewed me frantically, thought for a moment and made a promising face. I was fortunate, he felicitated the idea. So, I told him about the experiment.
Soon, I had the equipment arranged on an optical bench (sounds cool, doesn’t it?). The apparatus included a Rheostat, a battery with variable voltages, few Manganin wires (because he couldn’t find insulated copper ones).
A circuit was soon ready. We didn’t have iron filings. So, a compass was brought (fortunately), because it deflects even for slight current amplitudes. I pecked a hole on a cardboard sheet torn off from they Physics Lab Manual, A compilation of foolish questions usually asked for the Viva-Voce. It wasn’t needed at that time, because any student picked up at random from the class could furnish you with every word from the book except for things as intricate as the ISBN Code (Wonder if it has one…).
And so, I held the cardboard and the compass, parallel to the bench. My instructor held the naked wire, turned the voltage knob to a whopping 12 Volts and toggled the switch. More voltage, more current, we thought. I was checking for deflections. when my instructor withdrew his hand suddenly. The wire he held had got heated up. He had burnt his fingers.This , as we hypothesised, was due the manganin wire we used.So, soon, a new circuit was prepared with copper wires. We checked for deflections again, desperately. This time too, it was a failure. We were cracking our head as to what had gone wrong.We had forgotten to closed the switch.
Soon , there was a burning aroma.It was first presumed that someone was cooking in the adjacent apartment. Checking the circuit, I turned the Rheostat topsy-turvy only to find a Red-Hot wire! Current, was switched off, chaos was arrested.We couldn't grok where the experiment had gone wrong.We even tried changing the circuit here and there,but it made No significant yield. When all our hopes were jettisoned, we abandoned the experiment there.
The deflections were accidentally discovered, almost 205 years before, in an era where only the spelling of electricity and magnetism were firmly established. I even wonder if they had commercially made Rheostats and batteries and insulated wire.
In fact, Michael Faraday wrapped pieces of his wife’s petticoats around copper wires to insulate them because amenities such as insulated cables were not available them. But here, even with such decently good equipments, we are at a loss, even to detect current, let along trace the magnetic field lines around them. Either the text quoting that the discovery was ‘Accidental’ is controversial or physics labs in certain colleges, (where the practical examiner is taken out of the hall for break-fast and the students are provided with sheets torn off from the manual to copy) need better equipment. I wonder If Oersted's discovery , in a college demonstration, was really 'Accidental'.Guess , It needs to be changed...
Monday, February 12, 2007
GENOCIDE ?!!

The survivors’ legs are amputated. They are then left to their own fate. When they groan in pain, the only thing I could say was: “YOU DESERVE THIS”. No mercy for enemies. The Mahabharata suggests that two people necessarily with the same rank in the Army only could fight against each other. Of course, they were no match for me, but a sport as it is, for me, amuses me.
When the left is amputated (Sorry, No anesthesia), the leg twitches for a couple of seconds. The Amputee doesn’t shout immediately. After a couple of minutes, spins around, makes a groove : A perfect Disco Gesture : Then they manage to remain pathetic for sometime, making an insane buzz, folding their legs like the foetus in the womb, as though hibernating. I guess this gives them strength.
When the genocide-savvy tormentor is off for a coffee-break, they wriggle themselves to freedom, escape Osiris’s Clutches. When His Majesty returns, the unlucky ones are hunted down, this time their heads smashed to the floor. The carcasses are sometimes strewn across the mortuary, sometimes fed to the lizards. When the obese lizards have completed their meal and Burp! Yuck! Insanity!!!!!
S Harshavardhan
The Tormentor-in-Chief
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
A SICK SIKH ON HL6
There was the Sardar, Standing in a corner of the Railway Station, mumbling something to the ticket collector. No, it did'nt tickle me to laughter. Instead, I was mentally distracted; both of us had a similar problem. I was waiting for a train, the now famous MMTS local, which was scheduled to arrive forty three minutes later. I was being massacred by boredom, patiently watching the sky go furious as rain water like bullets out from a Kalashnikov fired themselves onto everything, living and non-living. With my hand-kerchief perennially guarding my running nose, I looked at the Sardar, with curiosity, sans feline notions.
The Sardar was draped in a wet translucent white kaddhar shirt, supported by a black pant. His shirt revealed the contents within, a railway ticket, few currency notes and an antique looking cell phone. The best part of this sikh’s attire was undoubtedly the magnificent carbon black turban he wore. His eyes were pitch yellow. It seemed, a very small tinge of greenness would make him ‘Sony Ericsson’.
The train soon arrived. It was packed with vagabonds, who had made the compartment their home. The Sardar wriggled himself through and settled down in a seat along the aisle. Meanwhile, I had now positioned myself at a safe distance from him about a couple of blocks away.
The Sardar was impatient. He seemed to have an appointment with someone. He was busy, thinking furiously, fiddling with his long, grey beard. He had given it a thorough massage. Then his cell phone rang. He attended to the call, which , however, lasted just for 49 exact seconds. The cell phone was restored to its original place. Now, he had reached his peak of boredom. He got up, walked about the mundane compartment, occasionally shouting at the petite kids near the foot board. He was soon bored and sank back in his seat.
A few minutes passed and he was idling himself, looking up at the lights and the fans and at the graffiti on the walls outside. He was about to fall asleep when his cell phone gave a monotonous beep. Getting up from the seat and approaching the entrance of the compartment he unsheathed his cell phone, as if it was his ‘Kirpan’. He fiddled with its keys for sometime, shot furtive looks at it and he was soon chewing the phone’s antenna.
It was still raining. The train had picked up speed. I put on my hood. I looked like a Militant of the ku-klux-klan. This was the very first time that he had noticed me. Just then, some thing burst above the train. The Sardar looked outside. It was a cracker. Someone had thrown it from the over-bridge. Cursing him, he retreated from the foot board.
He then settled down for a short siesta ,until the train reached its destination...
to be continued.
Physics of Philosophy
The soul, they say, is a part of our body. In fact, the most necessary part of the lively human body. The flesh and bones merely remain calcium, carbon and hydrogen, without the necessary interpretation of the soul. The soul in fact, produces the perfect ever brew of all the raw elements coordinating the brain which sub-coordinates all the internal organs. It is like a fire. Some sort of a fire we can’t visualize. People were philosophized by the ancient Indians, that the soul was one hundredth part of the tip of the hair. The term hundred probably came into existence because they were familiar with using this number (‘Shatham’); may be it was a part of an idiom in Sanskrit.
No one had so far ‘measured’ or even bothered about the ubiquitous soul, as far as our knowledge is concerned, except for a group of Russians, who had conducted an experiment. The group of Russians enclosed a dying old man’s body with a glass dome. The glass was made of pyrex or some other bullet proof material. They waited for the man to die. As the clock ticked, the man stopped twitching and at last when he had kicked the bucket, there as a drama. The refulgent soul, (as they thought it was), escaped as a ray of light, breaking open even the bullet proof case. This phenomenon disturbed the Russians and the matter was left unperturbed.
This is where science suffices philosophy. There is a relative approach to the soul, according to what was proposed by none other than Albert Einstein. According to his laws of relativity, light travels fastest in the universe, with a speed of 299792458 metres per second. This, in fact, is applicable to all forms of energy. Hence, the soul, if treated as energy should move with the velocity, ‘c’ as it is represented as.
A small experiment should help us obtain a value for the energy content of the soul.
The mass of the dying person is noted before his death using a sensitive device. After he expires, the mass of the person is measured again. The difference in the masses is noted (given as ∂m , as I believe, only a very small amount of mass is lost).
From Einstein’s popular expression, we have E = ∂mc2
Where ∂m is the change in mass of the person and c, the speed of light in vacuum. It should be noted that matter and energy are inter-convertible and it is a part of the person’s mass that should escape as the ‘SOUL’
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
At the officeroom...
I couldn’t help noticing large banners that announced of the top ranks someone had achieved, of hard work and sheer dedication in mugging up a couple of mercilessly un-rememberable formulae ,sitting round the clock in a prison. I pitied them. Then I pitied myself. However, there was no time for such trivial things as pity. I moved on. I held on to the aluminium lining that adorned the place. I waited.
Amidst the chaos, I stood. I stood like an innocent Jew in one of Hitler’s concentration camps. I waited for the poisonous gases to be released. Alas! My college couldn’t afford any poisonous gas. I realized that it could afford someone else. I was sent into another aluminium enclosure. I saw two grim looking specimens sitting like a simulacrum of a guard who guarded the Buckingham palace. Not an ounce of happiness was to be seen in their faces. Each of them minded their own business, lost in their own solitary work.
They were moving about the place on the cushioned blue chairs, never caring to look at what the other was doing. One of them was scrutinizing a large sheet of paper with such an enthusiasm, that it looked like he was sure of snatching the Nobel Prize for it. I peeped in. There were a couple of people, waiting for their trial. I went inside. He broke his penance. He looked up. He strangely enquired as to why we were there (I didn’t know why I was there) .And some people answered. That was the last thing I cared to listen.
Then began a series of seemingly perpetual lectures, pity, there wasn’t a scribe to jot ’em down, he could live in as much comfort as an oil-rich Arab for a forty days. He was philosophizing us; I looked at how beautiful the office was.
A series of popular cell-phone ring tones added to the melancholy strain, a mélange of them, cacophonically ringing until their owners caressed it with utmost precision. Then they spoke. They spoke on till the other person could afford, It was ridiculous and I changed the sight.
My class –in-charge was summoned. He shot a meek look at some person there and obeyed him like a four and a half year old child. I looked on. He was ordered to call up our homes and reveal our marks (I don’t what marks, they happened to be) , and advice our parents to shout at us when we had reached home.
I stood there like a silly goose…and thus, composed this freaking embellishment for my blog. So, the next time you are summoned up to meet some workless person, try not listening to them…ha!
Thursday, October 05, 2006
THE SCARY DREAM
To and fro, I go, reading Arthur Hailey.
However, my journey’s seldom good,
I keep dreaming things I never should.
Whenever I near that station,
I get nervous, A cry of accusation
I feel I’m entering a desert,
A lifeless place, I assert.
A black curtain draws itself in
Before me, my heart stops within.
The woman mumbles about the next station,
I wake up at this occasion.
The curtain melts, revealing an omen:
I watch, as tens of Burkha-clad women
Enter the dilapidated compartment.
I visualize Satan signing the parchment.
The train still waits; the place is so green,
With the moon and stars around, yet is ne’er clean.
The cry of the chicken haunts me all night,
Till dusk I think about it, until I get a fright,
I rise, I brush my teeth and I go to sleep again,
The same dream haunts me, till I go insane!!!
Insects
A break to see how it feels
like , to kill a mosquito , (so stupid).
But , there was a transformation so rapid.
I trapped it , I plucked its wings,
Never bothering about the bad luck it brings.
The mosquito twitched,
And I switched
Back the mosquito its meals.
Then came along , a Bee, with a mere
Wish to get into my right ear
My earlobe shook with fury ,
as the Bee buzzed with glory.
It’s Panache gave me an explanation
That the fly in possession ,
would attract it’s whole band .
And thus , I moved my hand .
And the fly sank back in fear.
A long , green dragonfly,
then came passing by..
Although I’d no intension to disturb it ,
On my square chest , it did hit.
It didn’t bother me much :
There was no pain as such.
I was busy doing math ,
The fly was least inviting my wrath .
What’s e + i ? pi ?
Then came an ant , all alone ,
As if I’d smeared myself with pheromone.
It bit my finger and continued it’s journey ,
I didn’t feel anything : ain’t this irony ?
Alas! My reaction time was doubled
And anger , through me bubbled.
It had gone under my pant,
when I pressed the poor ant .
It died , and I continued relishing my Ice-cream cone.
Treble-Trouble

I was surfing through the television one day, attempting to listen to some good, enlivening music, the presence of which eases the hecticity in my fierce schedule. I was continually rummaging the remote control, toggling the channel button to and fro. It seemed to be gossip, food and fashion everywhere. Suddenly, I stumbled upon a treasure. One channel was magnanimously streaming really good songs.
It was just the last fifty minutes of the song I heard to. I was engrossed in it. It seemed as though I had just detangled myself from Einstein’s space-time. I listened and listened and listened. The song was a brilliant brew of carefully selected notes, blending to form marijuana for my brain. I hummed the song whole day, all night. It looked as though I was married to the last fifty minutes of the song. I kept humming the song, soon playing it on my guitar. The visceral tonic seemed to keep things, temporarily out of my head; the seraphic tones of the song, clashing with my brain like a pick and a fret. I waited.
I badly needed to listen to the whole song, but I seemed to have lost the song’s name.
I used my jigsaw skills to figure out a part of the song’s name and soon built it. I soon reconstructed the full title, from the very less resources I had.
My exams were approaching: it was my board exams. I seemed to take the thing very lightly, casually humming the song, while studying, even while eating!
I got up on the day of my math exam, four at dawn, quickly rushing to the computer, hoping to download the song. My hormones rushed up as I plugged in the internet connection. Then, everything was spic.
I googled the term Treble+ramaganana=download.I searched desperately for a result.
I looked in vain any concerning results to appear. My eyes glowed with sheer turpitude, as some descent results began to appear. Looked onto the screen, ready to feast upon a mammoth prey, I had predated.
There it was, before my ears, the dream song I’d waited to listen to. The intricate samba beats coupled with feminine ferocity; the freaking dialect invented by the juvenile triarchy. I listened to the band of Netherlanders rock to the core. I listened to my heart’s fill, reluctant to miss even a nanosecond of the song. Finally, it was time to put the cigar back in its case.
The exam? Yes, I’d never ruined any exam like I’d ruined that one!
MUSIK AND PHYSICS
My study place is evidently equipped with more techy junk than books .One among them, is a table fan, a 100 watt one. Its rotation produces a buzz, quite pleasant to hear. But, there’s a fix. The motion is confined to a certain pitch, somewhere between C# and D.
Because of my cursed ear, it is difficult for me to analyze the right frequency of the song-
There are a number of technicalities. The Music, in fact, sounds more of a cacophony. This Hotchpotch of atonal sounds makes me breathe fire out of my ears (the earwax melts, giving out an odd concoction of burnt hair and a chocolate-like liquid).
Accidents do happen: Eventually, I discovered one song- ‘Let it out’ (by Hoobastank), whose pitch matches that of the table fan. However, on scrutiny, I soon discovered that the pitches differed by a seemingly differential amount. In fact, the two sound waves, superposed each other, forming beats, a phenomenon that occurs when there are two sound waves of slightly different frequencies.This increased the song’s bass, increasing its sound significantly.
This may be one reason that prevents me from hearing the mosquitone perfectly, of course, I can hear the normal and the super mosquitone, but I get a nauseatic sensation, when I listen to it. My math lecturer, a highly techy individual , claims that his dog runs to this ‘laboratory’ , when he puts on the mosquitone ,to check if he can hear it ...of course , that is another face of the coin .
However, this was good only until the power supply was good enough. When there was a low voltage, the fan’s pitch decreased. According to ohm’s law, potential difference across a circuit is proportional to the current flowing through it, and correspondingly, by Fleming and Faraday’s theories, the fan’s angular velocity and hence, its pitch, decreased.
My joy seemed to be short lived, but I’m still looking for an efficacious cure for this pitch trouble. I can’t use a sound forge or a wave lab to set things right: I may well be an amateur musician, but when pitch comes to play, the ball is far from my court.
At one point of time, I thought listening to music was infectious to my studies.
So , I gave up thinking!!!
Trintro
A neophyte at this strange site ,with my idiosyncratic blogs..
I dunno why : everything I write seems humourous......it's too ridikulus!!well , try reading the following entry.......