running away from obstacles

Even the people who don't want to do anything must remove themselves from the path of those who want to do something in life. This country seems to have too many of the former because most of the latter want to get out of here to a place where there are fewer and fewer obstacles in their way.

If I could, I surely would

So recently I have had the opportunity to 'work from home' or what is now called telecommuting and I kinda enjoyed it. I don't understand how some organizations cannot fathom the immense job satisfaction one gets from working while wearing one's PJ's.

Even though I wasn't sitting at my home, but it was someone's home alright (the Angrez's to be precise) and it wasn't exactly a working day (yes, I am dumb like that), at least in the office I work from usually (Eid being a holiday in some offices and not in some regional offices and some jazz like that) but i still felt a sense of satisfaction when after about half a day's work and calls, I finally went to have a bath - for the first time in the day. The real achievement came when I successfully thwarted all the Angrez's efforts to catch a quick catnap. I'm not used to siestas but if I were to work from home, I would definitely like an occasional catnap.

But apart from the sadistic pleasure I derive from not letting friends sleep, work from home is an awesome way to work. It is particularly helpful when more than half the people in your office are bores and the stupid IT help people are no help at all and ban all research supportive websites (Read social networking websites. More than half of research work in think tanks like my employer are based on proved and unproved hypotheses and opinions of other researchers, which the organization has to pay for, while it continuously blocks the great repository of opinions that twitter and FB are and the amazingly informative content on youtube. You never know, I could be following the greatest minds on this planet).

Work from home is also a boon for people like me who are in constant danger of being delegated extra work on Fridays that needs to be completed over the weekend because 'we're in a crisis situation'. (and what exactly was the PI up to in the last 3 months?!)
You know, out of sight=out of mind.
You get to drink tea and coffee that is actually potable, work on machines that you know are reliable and listen to music if you feel like it or shut it off if it distracts you (as compared to the building wide music played in the office DJ-ed by a music committee, which can only inspire you to commit suicide or get married - same same, but different).

But on the flip side, people addicted to working on e-waste like desktops may feel frustrated working from home and some may also miss the privilege of being able to access company intranets, desktop mail clients and other such electronic paraphernalia (NOT!). Some might also be in the constant danger of being sent out on errands because 'all you do is sit in your shorts and stare at your laptop, go get 1/2 kg of besan or you wont get food!'

All in all, I'd like to work from home once in a while. If I could, I surely would.

TMI

The tragedy of studying in a graduate school in this century is that we are forced to write analytical papers about things that are either obvious or known to a lot of people or have already been written about in a way that was a good enough way to write them. I have no problem with research in nascent issues but I infrequently come across such articles or papers.
The scheme of things in which plagiarism has been made a taboo, it is becoming difficult to churn out literature for audiences that are relatively unaware of any of the much contested topics.
Even though I consider myself as having good knowledge of the English language, I find it difficult to write essays that describe an already well described agenda. There is a limit to which active voice can be converted to passive voice and vice versa to fill in those pages and turn in those essays. In fact most of us are running out of perspectives to show and show them uniquely because somebody somewhere has already done this research and written this article in a way that is quite adequate to explain the phenomenon.
For each essay, when I start asking the question, 'what am I adding to the debate?', I find myself completely clueless.

...on turning a year older

2011...the year I turned 25 :P

i dont really have a sense of achievement as I am constantly reminded that it is possible I have lived the best years of my life and all thats left now is drudgery.

it does not help that i am constantly reminded that
-I am now nearing the wrong side of 24 (the right side of 30 u might want to say)
-I am entering my quarter life/pre term crisis (though i prefer to call it mid life crisis according to my personal life expectancy data)
-I am now not as young I always thought I am.
....and several more reasons that I dont want to think of right now.

All in all in sucks to be older :P

instead of looking forward to the rest of my life i am looking back to all the things i thought were disasters but were not- had a long discussion with the Angrez on this who by the way thinks she is still the same as she was 5 years ago.

But if i think about it i'm not very different from 5 years ago or 3 years ago.
I am studying...finishing up a course. i have no clue of the future. i am anxious about getting a job, where i will be, what i will do, will it make a difference and all that jazz that i was going through in 2006 and in 2008.

so if i am the same as i was then (hopefully a little wiser) it is possible that i have something similar in store for me in the coming years.....more things to learn, more awesome people to meet, more work to do, more places to go and i intend to enjoy every moment as I have these past few years. :)

looking forward to more of the madness!

end of week 13

I have spent at least three months of my life sitting in a graduate class for development policy in south east asia. while it is very difficult to articulate what i learnt from the class or what i gained from it; i want to make some clarifications that come to mind after going through nearly 40 hours of discussion that have been nothing but inconclusive. since i am not an expert on development policy or on south east asia, none of my thoughts wander in those study areas.

i would like to present my understanding of my own country and my outlook towards its 'development'. i am not qualified to do an academic analysis of the situation in the country. the only authorization i have to talk about this outlook is that i have spent at least 22 years of my life in that country- though you should count only 5-6 effective years when i actively interacted with people or lets say opened my eyes to things other than myself.

I have not traveled extensively in India, but i can say I have seen the general facade of life as it goes in some urban and rural areas of the country with fair representation of developed cities, second tier towns, villages and mostly uninhabited deserts and mountains.

the most striking thing about India is that it is as diverse as a political entity could get. so first and foremost, any sweeping statement about the country is useless, misleading, deceptive, and groundless.

it is also a very dynamic entity where governments can topple within a matter of days and simple judgements can take years to pass.

you probably need to specify location and date (time of the day if you can) of the geography that you want to discuss and follow it up with the source of your perspective- not in the footnote/endnote style, but more like describing the situation you were in when you came to this conclusion.

(it is probably this desire for such clarifications that makes us so talkative and argumentative because many of us want to be understood in the right context; the rest of us just love to hear our own voices)

so whenever somebody says, 'for instance in India' or 'if you see the example of India' and does not provide specific information; has heard it from somebody who heard someone say that they had read it somewhere (most probably on someone's status message or tweet that was apparently a clip from one of the thousand news programs on TV and web sites). viral marketing at its best!

I hereby suggest that you pay no attention to such comments as they will never prove a point and are meant only to fill uncomfortable silences or self-sound checks.

having said that India is very diverse it is but natural that we have numerous arguments within ourselves for each activity/policy and so it takes a really long time to take decisions. it is impossible to please everyone with whatever any one decides to do.

every game effectively becomes a zero sum game.

I dont know how data is collected in other parts of the world, but I personally don't trust any statistics about India especially those that have been based on government sources.

In my opinion, all such statistics should have a much higher error margin and used only if necessary. sadly, nearly every policy in the country is based on this kind of quantitative data.

Averages are a good thing, but for India, weighted average are a necessity. unless you take into consideration the heterogeneity of the country, anything you do at any level is only going to cause more harm than good.

so the next time u look at GDP per capita figures, look for stats on percentile basis rather than the average- though i'm not sure where u can get authentic data for this.

I have written these thoughts at the end of my semester when i became indifferent to discussions. if i had made this attempt throughout the semester, i might have had more points to add.

the month that went by...

My my! hasnt it been long since i visited this page! time to dust off the ol blog coz its monsoon time! yaaaay :)
and keeping with tradition i am home to experience the wonderful monsoons in Rajasthan. well i know I should'nt hv stayed this long and i should've spent more time working and less time looking at the rain or at the TV or at novels (which btw i meant to read since ages. 5 books in a month...its a personal high! ;)
but i keep telling myself that it was just not possible to work at home, even though its not true.
so what have i done after 5th June when i left Singapore....
lets see...i spent a couple of days at Bangy and Coorg with friends...needed that....deserved that rather! after the BORING month at Singy :P
spent 10 days at home preparing for a trip...hectic! lots of work...made everyone think i was a very hard worker!!
spent the next 12 days in Bhutan...meetings lots of people...asking the same questions and writing stuff down furiously!!!! seriously lots of serious work!
the next 10 days....compiling a document which should've taken me 3 days at the most....this is where i started wearing out really.... :P
and frankly havent done any thing to talk about in the last two weeks :P :P :P
wow have i wasted time!
but really? have i wasted time?
i read 2 books in these weeks and am saving the other 2 so that i have something to read on the train.....saw numerous movies on TV...caught up on a sitcom i like these days....spent some time with the gramps....should've done more though....and i GYM-ed! YES I DID! :P
and that too with a regime! (take that!)
i slept (meh! not much of an achievement)
hmmmm...so what else should've i done?
oh yes! written the paper for the internship research and the big fat PAE!!! When am i going to do that?! :(
get started on the next field visit contacts! this....week.....or I'm dead! :( :(
compile the pics and data from the last week!! OOPS! should've done that long back! :( :( :(

but! its raining right now and I'm going to stop thinking about these silly things and listen to the pitter patter (more like 100 tap dancers :P)...and waste some more time!

sigh..!

On God, cows, dogs and goats in Bhutan

This is a story I heard from a co-passenger on my flight from Paro, Bhutan to New Delhi. I had met her the day before on my feeble attempt at the trek to Taktsang Monastry, which is amazing by the way. She heard the story from somebody else's guide in Bhutan and here I try to recreate the story as i remember it.

In Bhutan, you will come across many cows sitting on the roads, dogs walking along the roads-crossing them better than humans can and rarely will you see any goats around roads. God of course is omnipresent. This too like nearly everything else in Bhutan, has a story behind it.

Once upon a time, there was a bus going from some place to some place and there were three passengers on it- God, a cow and a dog. The goat did'nt have any money to get on the bus, so it was left at that some place.

The bus conductor asked all three passengers for money for their tickets. God said, "I will pay you when I get to the destination." The dog paid the exact fare, the cow paid more than the fare and was told to wait for change because God paid nothing and the dog paid the exact fare.

When the destination arrived, God simply vanished into thin air, the dog got off and the cow was still left without the due change. And so in Bhutan, God never pays His fare, dogs travel carefree as they pay the exact fare and cows are always waiting for their change.