Wounds of Love

Wounds of love are like a sexually transmitted disease (STD). They hurt our heart and soul deeply. Our hurting selves pass on the pain to the next person who has the misfortune to love us. Often, we pass it on with a carelessness and recklessness, that is similar to a diseased person passing on the STD virus. Like the virus, the hurt spreads from lover to lover, to their lovers and partners, and even to the kids who are born of such unions, in an ever widening circle which spans coast to coast, continent to continent, generation to generation.

It is tragic! So often, the victims to whom we pass on the hurt come to us simply because they love us and trust us. We embrace them with both arms, taking them close to our diseased heart, drawing sustenance from their pure love, and in return giving them a gift of pain, wounding their pure hearts and sending them on... Much like how we were wounded a long time ago, by people who were victims themselves.

Escaping from this cycle of getting hurt and passing on the hurt, is as tough as getting out of the cycle of birth and death, as elusive as Nirvana itself! I am not asking to escape. Right now, I will settle for simply not hurting anybody, anybody at all.

Londonstani - Book Review

Just finished reading Londonstani by Gautam Malkani. It is a novel, giving fascinating glimpses into the NRI (non-resident Indian) community in London, UK. Although it is a novel, I hope to god the author is not too off the mark in his portrayal of the NRI community because we, the general readers, can't help thinking of novels such as these as the real windows into a community of people.

I am more familiar with the NRI community in the US, particularly the young immigrants (not so affectionaly called FOBs, fresh off the boat), being one myself. So, I found it really interesting to read about the Indian community in the UK, the young kids and adult Indians who were born there, and their immigrant parents. The similarities and differences between the Indians in India, the UK and the US was indeed fascinating. I will not try to list here the similarities and differences I noticed, because that is not the point of this blog post. Moreover, your own list might vary significantly from mine. Nevertheless, I always like to read about contemporary Indians, wherever they are.

The main protagonist of Londonstani is Jas, who narrates the story in first person, using what is supposed to be London's desi slang, as his preferred language. The story is of Jas and his three friends, who are all somewhere close to 20 years of age. None of them are doing well in their studies, and just seem to be drifting along in life. They have a small cell-phone operation, which is not exactly legal. However, their small caper leads them into something unexpectedly big-time, before ending in a somewhat lame climax. En route, we get to witness immigrant life in London: the attitudes of the younger generation versus their parents, the relationship dynamics within families, the dynamics between the youth, influenced by their religion and gender, assimilation issues, identity and young manhood issues, etc. The story includes all the typical elements of an Indian movie: youthful mischief, budding romance, marriage, death, funeral, family fights, actual physical fights between guys and even a suave, intelligent villain who is as bad and manipulative as any movie villain. Despite all that, it is not really a typical Indian movie story.

I felt that the novel was a little slow in clearly establishing the identities and personalities of three of the four main characters. Hardjit, the Punjabi body-builder and wrestler, is the only character who gets assertively delineated early on. Even the main protagonist, Jas himself, takes some to come out of the fuzzy vision. May be that was deliberate and is in line with the personalities of the characters.

The writing is funny and witty, especially in its observation of the many unique characteristics and quirks of Indians, their attitudes, beliefs, their lives. However, there were many occasions when I was reading the book and I thought, "This is supposed to be funny, I should really be laughing hard at this, but why am I not?" I still don't know why I was not laughing hard, although I did chuckle and smile quite frequently. The description and explanations in the desi-ghetto slang, that too from a youthful perspective, was supposed to be half the fun. But may be it was this very slang which prevented me from fully empathizing with the narration and laughing hard, or may be it was something else. May be other readers might have indeed laughed harder. Nevertheless, I did get the feeling sometimes that the author was trying too hard to be funny or to make a point or to describe something.

In at least two chapters, the author uses a mixed-timeline narrative style. In the dance club chapter, the narration skips back and forth over events which take place on two consecutives evenings. Towards the end of that chapter, the back and forth switch between the two evenings is more rapid, until at the very end, they actually seem to blend together. (SPOILER WARNING: Rest of this paragraph!) In the funeral chapter, you think you are reading about events that took place at one point of time, but when you reach the end of the chapter, the author displays a sleight of hand, and you realize that you are actually reading about events which happened at least a couple of weeks later.

This unexpected sleight of hand by the author is again evident at the very end of the story, a surprising twist in almost the penultimate page. The climax is kind of lame, but the twist which follows, tilts the whole story a bit. I finished reading the novel late last night and the twist has still not fully sunk into my mind this afternoon. In many good novels which have a final twist in the tale, that last surprise causes the main piece or many pieces of the puzzle to fall in place, explains many things, and neatly ties up the story for us. The final twist in Londonstani is probably supposed to do that, but it has quite not done that for me. I don't know why that twist was necessary.

Despite the ending, Londonstani was an entertaining novel to read.

Did Apple patent MY 'Buddy' idea?

About 11 months ago, I had described a futuristic multi-functional device called a Buddy, on this very blog.

And today, I hear that Apple files a Multi-functional hand-held device patent application!

I am not arrogant enough to presume that Apple read my blog and then filed this patent. These days, it is not a big deal for anyone to dream up a multi-functional device. Convergence is the name of the game in consumer gadgets and technologies, and countless people all over the world are dreaming about it.

This takes us back to the patents debate, which is becoming increasingly loud and passionate in tech circles, especially among proponents of the open-source philosophy. When gadget-freaks all over the world are fantasizing about multi-functional devices, does Apple's patent of a generic idea of a multi-functional device make sense?

I confess that I have not perused Apple's actual patent filing. I have only gone through the above link which summarizes the patent. And I see nothing, nothing at all that is a specific patent-worthy idea. It sounds like Apple took a dream which millions across the world are having, and patented it as its own.

Granted that for millions of people across the world, it is just a pipe-dream. They don't have Apple's capabilities and resources to actually made such a device a reality. But is it fair to patent a dream, an idea which really belongs to thousands?

The most absurd thing about this patent? Fig 18 on the above page lists the multiple functionality of this newly patented device: PDA, cell, music, video, game, gps, remote, camera, handtop, other. Excuse me, but don't existing single devices already have most of the same functionality built into them? Can Apple simply take an existing device, add a couple more functionality to it and patent it as it's own? Can I take Apple's device, add an antenna-cum-fork-cum-toothbrush to it, and patent it as a brand new idea of my own?

What does this patent mean? Does this mean that none of the other thousands of dreamers will be allowed to build such a device because it will infringe on Apple's patent? If I had patented by Buddy idea, could I have prevented Apple from building such a device or sued them or licensed my idea out to them for millions of dollars?

I wish the US Patent & Trademark Office office were more diligent and used a little more common sense when rewarding patents. This is almost as absurd as patenting basmati rice.

What we like in women...

Following are the characters which make a woman (or even men) attractive:

1. Healthy.
2. Happy.
3. Active, spirited, enthusiastic (in other words, yes, feisty).
4. Usually organized and collected (as opposed to being scattered).
5. Talk straight, true and simple (as opposed to convoluted, fake and complex).
6. Passionate about something nice (arts, music, cuisine, sex, environment, sports, literature).
7. Articulate and erudite.
8. Classy (includes having good taste, not talking too much or too loud, not getting into cheap stuff - including cheap articles, cheap people, cheap discussions, being understated).

Stuff like beauty and intelligence come MUCH later, down the line... although, it takes a certain degree of intelligence to satisfy criteria 1 through 8.

Vegetarian Logic

No. of Pizza Lunch meeting attendees: 11
No. of Indians (assume non-pepperoni eaters): 4
No. of others: 6 White Americans + 1 Oriental Type
No. of people who did not eat anything: 1 Indian + 2 White Americans = 3
No. of people who did eat: 8
No. of confirmed non-vegetarians: At least 4 (including 2 Indians), probably more.
No. of confirmed vegetarians: At least 1 (Myself)
No. of pizzas ordered: 2 Pepperoni, 1 Chicken, 1 Veg
No. of pizzas left at the end of the meeting: 1 pepperoni, 80% of chicken
No. of tummies with a hollow space where there should have been food: At least 1.

No. of conclusions: 3
1. Ratio of vegetarian to non-vegetarian food consumed is ALWAYS GREATER than the ratio of vegetarians to non-vegetarians. (Unless your non-vegetarian guests are all cats and your vegetarian guests are all horses!)
2. Vegetarians eat vegetarian food only. Non-vegetarians eat both vegetarian AND non-vegetarian food.
3. At least 50% of a non-vegetarian's lunch or dinner is made of vegetarian items. This number could be even higher if all your non-vegetarian guests are Indians.

No. of lessons: 1
When ordering food for a group, order enough non-vegetarian food for the non-vegetarians. Then, order enough vegetarian food for 100% of the vegetarians PLUS at least 50% of the non-vegetarians.

Background (with prediction!):
Vegetarians get the stepmotherly treatment again!