SG OwnBlog

The Partition of India was a terrible catastrophe. There is no doubt about that. Millions were killed, displaced, thousands were raped, orphaned etc. All this was done in a space of a few months. Mobs frantically killed each other for life, religion, property, identity, revenge and any other reason they could then think of. Even since the call for Direct Action, there was no doubt about a serious religious conflict. What followed was an eventual ethnic cleansing of parts of India of non Muslims and Muslims. How it happened, what happened, how trains full of dead bodies piled up on each side of new borders is well known. Hundreds of books have been written, research over decades have been published. We know all that. The basic idea of it all was simple - Jinnah believed Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations and the latter should have a distinct political entity for themselves, based on Islam, their faith. To identify this they had to prove one thing. That the All India Muslim L...

There are things that keep happening to us. It does not matter if we end up liking or disliking them in any way. In any case, now my life has gotten kind of slower. In fact this is the story for the whole nation as well. The de-monetization thing is over and there are no major hartals and bandhs disrupting lives (as usual). In my academic life as well, nothing much is going on, except that my MTP is proceeding at a slow pace. I am trying to write a paper on Big Data including census data and some statistics. I ain't all that good in the latter but there are people here who I think will be able to help me out. Over the past couple of months I have been able to gain a really terrible habit of sleeping really late, almost into the morning. That is very Hitlerish, and that is one reason I hate it much. I must get back to a more sensible timetable. And this post is more of a pledge to myself than anything else. Putting myself, on my own effort, to a constructive lifestyle is easier...

So yeah, this year pretty much flew away. I barely noticed the time the past twelve months. It was really engaging. Even though I can remember that I did not make the best use of the time I had available to me. I need to do some good time management. Anyway, there are a few plans that I have been thinking about. YouTube sounds promising and rather interesting. My voice sounds pretty good online for some reason. And this is not just me speaking but a number of my viewers as well. Apparently it has got a certain bass to it that sounds good on speakers and headphones. That's good I guess. I started a new channel - The Light Indian Gamer where I play these casual games - nothing fancy, just the regular stuff that anybody can play on pretty much any computer. I don't have a dedicated graphics solution. So that makes me limited to a few choices - but that is perfectly okay in this category. Graphics intensive games are in any case out of my league. They are not 'casual' e...

Challenging times are back. And this time I have got a few options. Not sure that this is a good thing or not. I am honestly in a fix and at times fewer options may be better. Not that I am actually complaining much. This was something that I predicted back in the day as well. In fact I worked to have these options open for myself. But now that they are here, I am hoping that I figure out what I want. One option is simple - go for the placements, sit for all the tests. Hopefully I will get through one of the interviews. Then I get a decent job and that's about it. The other option is to look for higher studies. There are opportunities that are there. I have offers from Japan and some really chances in Israel. I can also sit for the tests like GRE and qualify for admission into some of the top US or European Universities. However, I am not entirely sure that I want that. I do like the feeling of being a research scholar abroad, but at the same time, I feel bad to think about...

Life is strange. Always has been. And that is what should be. Life is not supposed to be a bed of roses. It would have been plain boring had it been so. You may whine a lot and say out loud that you wished your life was easier but you know how it feels when you absolutely have nothing going on. I mean, yes, there are times when you shut yourself down, but that is deliberate. When Life imposes quiet on you, you always feel uneasy. You think either this is the calm before the storm or worse, you feel you will never have nothing to do or stuff like that. It is depressing. After leaving my job ( a pretty lucrative one) and going for my Masters, I am rapidly arriving at yet another crossroads. I need to make new decisions again. I like taking decisions. Makes me feel in control. Though I ain't a control freak, but the ability to think for oneself with a certain amount of authority makes one feel pretty good. I am no exception. But it is unsettling. It is true that the Institute is qu...

I stayed for 3 years in Bangalore. There were places I loved in the city, places that I liked and a few places that I hated. There were also places about which I cannot make up any opinion at all. Among them was the Jumma Masjid on the Dispensary road. This is not to be confused with the more famous Trust by the same name that is close by. The area around is always busy and the commercial street is also close. The markets were always full of customers, shopkeepers sold exotic items. Just a few hundred meters and you could also visit the markets selling lots of stolen goods, though the shopkeepers often deny that and then wink to show that they were bluffing. It is a fun place for a man to be in, a bit scary for many women, except in a crowd. Anyway, I always found the place inviting in a peculiar way, the nearby Salafi mosque preaching the evils of other religions, the stench of the urinals, the cheap stolen goods in the market, the prostitutes on the road, the hustle and bustle...

In this Information age, the opinions of people are shaped by the discourse that happens in the media – the newspapers, the internet forums, the videos that are shot, the letters, open letters and counter letters. A vast majority of them are full of half-truths and that is not surprising as every side has skeletons to hide. The problem arises when a gullible population (read Indians) digest these printed words both offline and on as the ultimate Truth without question. Secondary sources and even imaginary accounts becomes Gospels to be used to shut anyone who dares to oppose the mainstream discourse. The Quint has recently published an open letter by a veteran soldier of the Indian Army named Major Gaurav. They apparently waited for a counter to that which was furnished by a Wasim Khan, a ‘Kashmiri’ who now is settled in Mumbai and runs a successful media agency (not surprising). So before we go into braindead blaming attempts, let’s analyze the two pieces one by one and check ...