Musings on life

Assume you are faced with some unkind situation in life, something unexpected, something dangerous. How would you react to it? We are faced with such situations on a daily basis. Of course what appears to us as dangerous may seem a piece of cake to someone else. But that is not the point to be mused upon here. There are two ways to look at it, I guess.

First of all let us ask the broad question of if there is something called a divine plan or a God for that matter. We can answer it in two ways and both are unverifiable. Case one: there is a higher plan and it all occurs for some greater goal; in which case we do not have to worry. What does not break up will only leave us stronger and more suitable for the greater plan. Case two: there is no big plan and its all the play of chaos. In that case also where is the sense to fret? Relax and enjoy the chaos!

The second thing we may muse upon is how to deal with the "situation" at hand. There are two ways we can deal with it in our mind. We can deal with it using our "psychological" memory or "factual" memory. Factual memory is borne out of facts. For example, when it is too "hot" for me I go and seek a cold drink. And psychological memory is borne out of comparisons and judgements and this will make me to choose a particular brand of cold-drink from a particular shop. If we analyse the problem using our factual memory, then the problem boils down to a series of events and happenings, none of which in itself is "bad" or "good". Then we can deal with it with the best possible "real" action. And here I quote the great Jack Sparrow (!): "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do.". There is no choice, there is no judgement, there is no remorse. But when we start dealing with it using our psychological memory, we fret, we rejoice, we tense and are faced with the menagerie of emotions. I do not say that we should not do it. Let us also enjoy the pleasure and pain of psychological memory, but all the time aware of the cause of them!

Musings on corruption

For sometime corruption has been a major issue in most of the developing world. In this post I will try to put an alternate point of view towards corruption. As the title of my blogs go, this is not to profess anything. Rather this is just to give another point of view.

Many people claim that if there were no corruption (or less of it) the national treasury will have so much of extra money. My first question to this argument is what is the value of money? Does money actually mean anything? Money is just a convention. The value of money is by the productivity of the people nothing more nothing less.

My second argument is that as long as the money does not go out of the region (region here may mean the state or the nation), it is still in the system. Most of the black money end up being invested back in the market so that it can grow. Hence, the diligent and intelligent folks catch this black money and improve their standard of living. In this process the lazy and ungifted does suffer. But that, usually, is the norm.

Corruption is a problem and it should be minimised. But the bigger challenge is to train the manpower so that they can create real wealth and even catch back the black money and make it white. For as one of the Italian proverbs runs "money had no colour"!

Farewell talk for my last lecture to 5th semesterites!

Dear class. I know it's not usual for you guys to expect or to be forced through a farewell speech of this kind. Nor is it typical of me to spend this much time in something that may appear pretty meaningless to most with a myopic vision. I have prepared it after a lot of deliberation. There are several reasons for this farewell talk. First and foremost is the fact that till now I have been acting as a mere mouth-piece for the existing technology and engineering tricks. I have been talking to you as Amit the lecturer; whereas in this speech you will find Amit the lecturer entangled and engulfed by Amit the person. This is my scope to present my perspectives which, even though not scholarly, is just as humane. The second reason for the speech is the fact that engineering alone is not enough in the current era. We are in difficult and, yet, interesting times. And times like now need more than mere dry technical know-hows. 

Soon you guys will be 5/8th engineers. I will strongly urge you to seat back one day or night and relax and ponder upon the meaning and implications of this. Implications of becoming an engineer. As I have thrusted upon you again and again, we engineers are fighters, we are problem solvers and we are the makers of humanity's destiny. Someone aspiring to be all these three can definitely not come from a burgeon training. But, it is a pity that all you have been through till now is but a burgeon set up. However, a burgeon training does not and need not force you to be a mediocre burgeon elite! I have never been anything but a maverick myself. And I am sure I would have spilled off some of that over these months and affected some of you with that uneasy unsettling nausea which is the only way to creation and solution. 

The next thing I will talk to you about is on the skills that I would have tried to train you with. But these are soft skills and can not be framed within the frameworks of the modern education. Yes, I am talking about the art of doing engineering. Given that you are maverick enough to drive head-on to a stubborn problem, how do you solve it? As I would have repeated more than once in the previous lectures,  the simple modus operandi to solve any given problem, how-so-ever complicated and unthinkable, is to start from the beginning, step by step, without getting intimidated till you crack it open. 

We are the wizards of the modern era. We have never been subdued by anything and if anything I will want you to go away with is this simple mantra. Nothing is impossible. And this is not a mere rhetoric dry hypothetical thing I am saying here; this is real; this is a proven thing. Nothing is impossible and no problem is unsolvable. 

May you all continue to solve problems with an insatiable desire to never settle for a boring burgeon life. 

What you can do and can not do!

In the movie Pirates of Caribbean there is a nice quote "The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do". Sounds pretty logical but is so difficult to follow at the same time. What can you do besides what you really can do? Nothing more nothing less. And mind that these decisions are all determined by our past, by the past of the creation. The past completely determines the present. Sorry my friends who believe in "free will", but "free will" is a scientific impossibility.

But the trouble is that we mostly start thinking of theoretical possibilities for each action we take. We start cross linking them to "beings, things and happenings". And finally we end up in a mental situation which we call "pain"! In stead if we think (at each moment) what we can actually do and what we can not, then we will find (surprisingly) that destiny offers us but only one least-effort best-potential path. And it also is the most obvious one.

Now how to make sure that we choose this path of discrimination for each action? That needs practice to see the "beings, things and happenings" the way they actually are (without bringing our prejudices and past-experiences into play). This is best appreciated in the Buddhist texts and I am really surprised at the way Buddhism makes a science of self-actualization.