Pedantic Wisdom

“There is no use of reading books and gaining theoretical knowledge because there is no substitute to practical knowledge that comes through experience”

I have been seriously pissed off by this bromide. Amazingly, I have been listening to such remarks quite frequently these days. This belief is nothing but pure ignorance coupled with rationalization for laziness.

First, lets start with what experience you are talking about. “YOUR” experience? Well, let me inform you, as if you don’t already know, that books can provide you with plethora of experiences of other people, who have been through situations – better or worse than you. I am unable to prognosticate any harm that may come by learning through experiences of others.

People don’t want to believe that what took them years of experience to learn can be gained by hours of reading. This sounds like waste of their efforts. Their knowledge is their treasure, something they have toiled for. It is this wrong attitude towards reading that is cause of their troubles. But I would still say that such people may be reformed and made to understand the meaning of reading. There is another group of people who are too lazy to read anything. They feel it is better and more comfortable to disparage those who read. Through their frivolous banter they discourage all kinds of reading experiences.

Most people don’t understand what reading is really about. All their lives they have only read what their parents or teachers have considered necessary, so that they can get good marks and make it through some entrance exams. Let me introduce all such disillusioned to the world of Reading. I categorize reading into two types. First is, what I call, Pleasure reading. This is what people enjoy in their leisure time. Reader may not be interested in gaining any particular knowledge but rather in some titillating story to ease off his/her senses. Then there is this other kind of reading and I call it, chasing the idea. This is actually the most misunderstood kind. A French philosopher once remarked (these are not his exact words though), “When a first foolish or wise idea comes to me, I chase it and let myself be seduced by it until the next one arrives”. Reading books is actually about discovering new ideas. Idea may be a very simple one. In fact a book of thousand pages may provide you with only one simplistic idea, but that idea may change your life forever or the way you look at life. You may ask, why we fail to discover such simplistic ideas on our own? There are many reasons to it but I believe the most important is our ego. We suppress a lot of emotions to satisfy our ego and while doing so we suppress many ideas. Ideas help us build attitude and our attitude towards our goal is what finally determines whether we’ll achieve it or not. This is what I believe. Experience, approach, process are all necessary ingredients of success. But the most important is attitude, which is slowly constructed by metamorphosis of ideas. And there is no better substitute to acquiring ideas than reading books.

Happy Reading!!

Winners & Underdogs

It’s quite amazing to observe nature, especially from a comfortable distance. I am not sure why we provide fig leaf of covering to our true emotions but this is exactly what I realized while watching FIFA world cup matches. There is a strange order. We disparage those who are established winners and rally behind the underdogs.

Every person has his share of failures, weaknesses that he is unable to overcome and many desires that remain unfulfilled. In this sense, we see the underdogs as our alter ego. This is because underdogs generally fail and we do know it. So when they fail, we feel that we are not the only losers around. It makes easy for us to rationalize our failures.

But I think there is more to it. It seems that the underdogs somehow personify Hope. There is “If he can, I can too” kind of feeling.

Every one desires to win even though failures are almost unavoidable. But there are only few who acknowledge their failures. And even fewer actually analyze their failures to understand their weaknesses. Rationalization of failures is definitely an easier task that confronting them head on.

Life – A Twisted Interpretation

What is our purpose in life? When this thought first occurred to me, I wasn't sure how to answer it. May be I have a lot of free time and that’s why I am thinking about such abstract topics. But slowly and unconsciously, I started to solve this puzzle. I have tried to keep influence of external information, which I believe had potential of corrupting my developing thoughts, to bare minimum. Also before reading on, remember that even though I have mentioned God at various places in this article, I am myself an Atheist (or a liberal atheist). The metaphorical God has only been used as a device for storytelling purpose.

Every living organism has just two definite purposes in life. First is to eat and the other to have sex. Said in a more formal way, food and procreation. Both are major and direct purposes of life because they are necessary for holding on to life itself. No one can surely live without food and without power of procreation (ya sex!) entire humanity will be doomed as there will be no one replace the dying generation.

But maybe God was not content with giving these direct purposes, or more probably, was afraid that Humans may not find these purposes attractive enough, or may simply refuse to follow and eventually self destruct. Maybe that’s why He invented pleasure. By giving us five powerful senses to experience this pleasure he made sure that we’ll enjoy our quest to fulfill two direct purposes (of food and sex).

But He overlooked two inevitable consequences. One was suicidal nature that this pleasure may develop. The other was the indirect purpose he gave to Humans in this process. That is the purpose to satisfy the five senses. Thus pleasure, which was supposed be an easy path to fulfillment of direct purposes, became a purpose itself. I’ll call all such purposes, to attain pleasure, secondary or indirect purposes of life. The secondary purposes serve quite a useful meaning for a person who remembers what his primary (or direct) purposes are. The desire for secondary purposes, while neglecting primary ones, may lead to dire consequences.
It seems for a long time God was satisfied by the model explained so far, for this level of abilities are found in animals as well. It took Him a while to understand that something had been left out, but when He did realize it, He created Man. And He put an additional ability in men – Ability to Reason.

Necessity of this ability must have been felt in order to strike a balance between primary and secondary purposes. But the error has a habit of creeping even into best of the intentions.


Anyway, continuing with my biblical story, most of the people would agree that it is human mind that mainly differentiates animals from human beings. Mind is the generator or the source of Ability to Reason. It has the power to imagine and discover the hidden incentives that may be unfathomable to simplistic animal brains. To elaborate, it is quite common among animals to have multiple sexual partners. Even though licentiousness is not uncommon among humans, they have the ability to think about a hidden incentive, love. Although love is considered irrational by many, but the underlying philosophy of love is very much rational. Irrational, if I dare say so, is only the process of choosing the right lover.

It may seem probable to a human being that if he can subdue his lubricious nature and loyally befriend a single person, then he stands to gain considerably from such a friendship. Under this circumstance there is an incentive for him to avoid being a philanderer. Furthermore, he may reason, that by choosing a partner of opposite sex he can fulfill his primary (or direct) purpose of life. Thus such a relationship is extremely beneficial as it promises fulfillment of all – direct and indirect – purposes of life.

Thus contrary to Vox Populi, marriage is a result of individual reasoning rather than a cultural necessity.

Reservation-My Views

Sometimes the consequences of human action are so eerily surreal that evanescence of the motive is the only apparent thing. Logic, in such aphotic circumstances, provides a solution, an epiphany, which justifies the consequences that are often unintentional. The issue of reservation illustrates this very fact.

Reservation, at this moment, is considered more of a political rather than social imperative. Most people are not convinced that politicians have shed their venality and are working towards greater good. They believe it is a gimmick and may be it really is.

Reservation has been an experiment in the Indian history, though not a scientific one, because it lacks statistical data. There has been no formal conspectus to prove whether the experiment has benefited anyone and more importantly, to what extent. Isolated rags to riches stories are not of interest to any scientific mind.

I am not writing this to discuss mundane comments and solutions but some interesting stuff that has come to my attention. For instance, a young medical student from Patna was interviewed by a TV channel. In spite of apparent gaucherie, he put forth a relevant point - Isn’t paid seat concept synonymous to quota regime, a kind of rich-class-quota per se? The question made me realize the extent to which our education system needs a makeover, the urgency of such an action and complete lack of political will and wherewithal.

Vox Populi presently is to provide reservation on economic basis rather than caste. But this is not a pragmatic solution. This is evident from the fact that even in the present scenario, where a lot of people belonging to lower caste have primary education, a significant number of seats remain vacant. If the economic basis is considered, those in worst state of destitution should be provided most seats. Result would be exacerbation of present situation because there is even less probability of finding primary educated individuals in most economically backward class.

Though a lot of solutions are being cited by media to tackle the issue, they more or less require complete restructuring of education system. Obviously political class lacks incentive for carrying out any such excruciatingly difficult task. Little out-of-the-box thinking reveals a better alternative. The power of Globalization has long been overlooked by Indian bureaucrats even though astute entrepreneurs have utilized it to their advantage. The answer then is to take the help of global forces i.e. allow foreign universities to set up shops in India. It will serve dual purpose. One, it will increase the total number of seats and second, it will ensure enforcement of quality.

A possible trade off the government will have to make is not to intervene in functioning of these universities, thereby keeping them fully autonomous. Definitely, a government regulatory organization will be needed to stop fraudulent entry but it will be far easier task. More importantly it can be carried out without affecting status quo, i.e. while grating quotas. Therefore the political motives will not be affected and any possible pernicious consequences will be avoided.

Finally to conclude, contrary to original motives and conspicuous consequences, quota regime may prove beneficial if adequate complementary steps - like one mentioned here – are taken and the scheme is kept less ambitious and time bound.

TRUTH - A REALIZATION

" Believe those who seek the truth
doubt those who find it "

I don't remember who said these these lines but I do remember reading them in a national daily because they sparked some unusual feelings within me. It triggered an unusual yet a complicated debate between my unconscious mind and rational self. Though I doubt I remember the exact contents of this intrinsic conversation, I will try to reframe it here.
"Truth" held a special significance for me and a quest to seek it even greater. It wasn't just the "knowledge" of everything but rather "understanding" of things that I more closely associated with this quest. Science, as I believed, was my vehicle to reach this destination. Science was the most fascinating and promising tool ever at my disposal. There was a time when I firmly believed that science will one day strip naked all secrets of life and universe - the "understanding" I desperately seeked.
The realization that science is not truth but rather a distortion of truth was heartbreaking. The "Betrayal of Science" was the most disheartening thing that has ever happened to me . In some ways it was analogous to losing love of my life.
Soon philosophy became my new fascination. But just like any other "rebound love" I was only looking for "qualities" that science lacked. The result, as one may expect, was another disappointment.
The much awaited enlightenment finally came during my attempts to converge the properties of science and philosophy. I was not the first one to attempt it but when I understood its significance, years of dust cleared in an instant.
The fallacy of my assumption that science can provide an equation for truth was as bad as my premature heart break. The distortion that science provides, is in many ways good than bad. Although this distortion allows to view only a part of the whole picture, it induces practicality. Moreover, the distortion is not a means of inducing errors but rather a method of prioritization. Accepting a particular model is not from perspective of - right or wrong, true or false, good or bad - but rather the goal that it achieves.
It is this single, most powerful realization that has helped me transgress from a scientist and philosopher to - AN ENGINEER.

The song of crab: End of Innocence

The music is dying, so am I,
In dark tunnel, I see no end,
my faith is gone, my love is lost.
Even the feeble hope I ever had,
is flickering, to breathe its final air.
My dream’s broken,
innocence ripped apart,
all I am left with is a broken heart,
and emaciated soul.
The colours are fading,
and memories dying, so am I.

I am no phoenix to rise again,
for my ashes be wet,
with my own tears.
I have no touch of the Midas,
To turn my sorrow into glitters.
But I’ll drink the shadow that I see,
of your face in my red wine.
I know this pain will be my bane,
But in the end set me free.
I faintly see the bats flying,
‘cause time is dying, so am I.

In mild breeze.....

In mild breeze, at the ocean’s feet,
through lighthouse window, towards the creek.
I saw her, my love, sitting on a lonely rock.

And as I walked towards her,
she greeted me with a lovely smile,
I love you – I told her – from my heart and soul,
and will give anything to be with you, even for a while.

But my words, wearied her smile,
and with the angry ocean, spitting its waves,
She said – Its not the destiny for us to pave,
that beautiful road and walk even a mile.

As the night darkened and crabs came out,
I saw in troubled waters, many silhouetted ships.
“Why don’t you love me?” – I wished to shout,
But there were no words,
and only the tears drenched my lips.

Then she started to leave on a journey unknown,
I pleaded – give us a chance,
to be together for a lifelong dance.
But she left, without a care how I feel,
cutting a wound that even time won’t heal.
Now only as a painful memory she remains,
to linger on as the time slowly wanes.