There is no indispensable man

Sometime when you’re feeling important;
Sometime when your ego’s in bloom
Sometime when you take it for granted
You’re the best qualified in the room,

Sometime when you feel that your going
Would leave an unfillable hole,
Just follow these simple instructions
And see how they humble your soul;

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining
Is a measure of how you’ll be missed.

You can splash all you wish when you enter,
You may stir up the water galore,
But stop and you’ll find that in no time
It looks quite the same as before.

The moral of this quaint example
Is do just the best that you can,
Be proud of yourself but remember,
There’s no indispensable man

Wow!! How true and well-said. May be one more way of doing Introspection………………….

An inspiring interview by Neera Chopra, the mother of Miss India World 2009, Pooja Chopra

This one is a really inspiring interview by Neera Chopra, who is the mother of Miss India World 2009, Pooja Chopra. Please read on:

My husband threw us out: Neera Chopra

Neera Chopra lived through abuse, poverty and some tough choices to make her once-unwanted girl child, Pooja Chopra, the Pantaloons Femina Miss India-World she is today.

I don’t know where to begin... they were terrible times. My husband was well-placed, but the marriage had begun to sink almost as soon as it began. Like most women do, I tried to work against all the odds. My in-laws insisted everything would be alright if I had a son. My first child was a daughter, and that didn’t do me any good... but I couldn’t walk out. I had lost my father, my brother was in a not-so-senior position in Bata. I didn’t want to be a burden on my family and continued to live in my marital home in Kolkata.

I looked after my mother-in-law, who was suffering from cancer, and while bathing her, I would tell myself she would bless me and put things right. I don’t know how I tolerated it all. The least a man can do, if he must philander, is to not flaunt his women in his wife’s face. Then began the manhandling. I still wanted my marriage to survive. I was a pure vegetarian and learnt to cook non-vegetarian delicacies thinking it would please him.

Then, I was pregnant again. When Pooja was eight months in my womb, my husband brought a girl to the house and announced he would marry her. I thought of killing myself. I hung on the slight hope that if the baby was a boy, my marriage could be saved.

When Pooja was born a girl, for three days, nobody came to the hospital. There was a squadron leader’s wife on the opposite bed, who was kind enough to give me baby clothes for Pooja to wear. When she was 20 days old, I had to make a choice.

I left the house with my girls — Pooja and Shubra, who was seven then. I haven’t seen my husband since. I promised myself, even if we had just one roti, we would share it, but together. I began life in Mumbai with the support of my mother, brother, who was by then married. It wasn’t the ideal situation, especially when he had children — space, money, everything was short.

I began work at the Taj Colaba and got my own place. How did I manage? Truth be told, I would put a chatai on the floor, leave two glasses of milk and some food, and bolt the door from outside before going to work. I would leave the key with the neighbours and tell the kids to shout out to them when it was time to leave for school. Their tiny hands would do homework on their own, feed themselves on days that I worked late. My elder daughter Shubhra would make Pooja do her corrections...

This is how they grew up. At a birthday party, Pooja would not eat her piece of cake, but pack it and bring it home to share with her sister. When Shubhra started working, she would skip lunch and pack a chicken sandwich that she would slip in her sister’s lunchbox the next day. I used to pray, “God, punish me for my karma, but not my innocent little kids. Please let me provide them the basics.” I used to struggle for shoes, socks, uniforms.

I was living in Bangur Nagar, Goregaon. Pooja would walk four bus stops down to the St Thomas Academy. Then, too little to cross the road, she would ask a passerby to help her. I had to save the bus money to be able to put some milk in their bodies.

Life began to change when I got a job for Rs 6,000 at the then Goa Penta. Mr Chhabra, the owner, and his wife, were kind enough to provide a loan for me. I sent my daughters to my sister’s house in Pune, with my mother as support. I spent four years working in Goa while I saved to buy a small one-bedroom house in Pune (where the family still lives). I would work 16-18 hours a day, not even taking weekly offs to accumulate leave and visit my daughters three or four times a year.

Once I bought my house and found a job in Pune, life began to settle. I worked in Hotel Blue Diamond for a year and then finally joined Mainland China — which changed my life. The consideration of the team and management brought me the stability to bring them up, despite late hours and the travelling a hotelier must do. Shubhra got a job in Hotel Blue Diamond, being the youngest employee there while still in college, and managed to finish her Masters in commerce and her BBM. Today, she is married to a sweet Catholic boy who is in the Merchant Navy and has a sweet daughter.

I continue to finish my day job and come home and take tuitions, as I have done for all these years. I also do all my household chores myself. Through the years, Shubhra has been my anchor and Pooja, the rock. Pooja’s tiny hands have wiped away my tears when I broke down. She has stood up for me, when I couldn’t speak for myself. Academically brilliant, she participated in all extra-curricular activities. When she needed high heels to model in, she did odd shows and bought them for herself.

When I saw Pooja give her speech on TV, I knew it came from her heart. I could see the twinkle in her eye. And I thought to myself as she won “My God, this is my little girl.” God was trying to tell me something.

Today, I’ve no regrets. I believe every cloud has a silver lining. As a mother, I’ve done nothing great.

‘I won due to my mother’s karma’

Pantaloons Femina Miss India Pooja Chopra’s mother promised ‘One day, this girl will make me proud’. Pooja speaks on fulfilling that promise... When I was 20 days old, my mother was asked to make a choice. It was either me — a girl child, or her husband. She chose me. As she walked out she turned around and told her husband, ‘One day, this girl will make me proud’. That day has come. Her husband went on to marry a woman who gave him two sons. Today, as I stand here a Miss India, I don’t even know if my father knows that it is me, his daughter, who has set out to conquer the world, a crown on my head. Our lives have not been easy, least so for my mother. Financially, emotionally, she struggled to stay afloat, to keep her job and yet allow us to be the best that we could be. I was given only one condition when I started modelling — my grades wouldn’t drop.

All the girls in the pageant worked hard, but my edge was my mother’s sacrifice, her karma. Today, when people call to congratulate me, it’s not me they pay tribute to, but to her life and her struggle. She’s the true Woman of Substance. She is my light, my mentor, my driving force. My win was merely God’s way of compensating her.

Nails in the fence

There once was a little boy who had a bad temper. His Father gave him a bag of nails and told him that every time he lost his temper, he must hammer a nail into the back of the fence.

The first day the boy had driven 37 nails into the fence. Over the next few weeks, as he learned to control his anger, the number of nails hammered daily gradually dwindled down. He discovered it was easier to hold his temper than to drive those nails into the fence. Finally the day came when the boy didn’t lose his temper at all.

He told his father about it and the father suggested that the boy now pull out one nail for each day that he was able to hold his temper.

The days passed and the young boy was finally able to tell his father that all the nails were gone.

The father took his son by the hand and led him to the fence. He said, ‘You have done well, my son, but look at the holes in the fence. The fence will never be the same. When you say things in anger, they leave a scar just like this one. You can put a knife in a man and draw it out. But It won’t matter how many times you say I’m sorry, the wound will still be there. A verbal wound is as bad as a physical one.

Remember that friends are very rare jewels, indeed. They make you smile and encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear, they share words of praise and they always want to open their hearts to us.’

N.B. This post again was not penned by me but I find it beautiful none the less.

What is better for little girls: All-girls School vs. Co-educational School

Another favourite discussion on a forum about Pre-schoolers of which I happen to be a member, where parents are concerned, is what kind of school is better for little girls – All-girls Schools or Co-educational Schools? It is believed that sending the child to an all-girls school may mar her personality as there could be a mental block for opposite sex. I personally feel that the difference is marginal provided the schools are good reputed ones with good visions, healthy environments, and focus on good education and holistic development of the child.

I myself am a product of an all-girls school where I have studied for 14 long years along with most other girls in my family and extended family. All of us are well-placed in careers ranging from CA, B.Tech, MBBS, MBA and fine arts. I have personally never felt any kind of blockage towards opposite sex in myself and my sisters/cousins. But my personal viewpoint is that a lot of it depends on the upbringing and how liberal your family is. I have also seen cases where girls from Co-ed are actually more shy and submissive. My close friend did her entire education from a very well-known Co-ed school and although is very hip otherwise but is not at all confident in front of the opposite sex. She happens to be a housewife right now because her family (Parental as well as in-laws) don’t like the girls in their family working. So the point is that how the personality of the girls shape up depends more on the family background than on the fact whether the school is Co-ed or not. If at all that matters, it is reflected in the mannerisms. The girls in Co-eds actually carry themselves off beautifully and gracefully because they are always aware that the opposite sex is watching them. Often the girls from girl’s school turn out to be tomboyish especially if there are no boys in the family. But then, one can always see after a few years how the girls are turning out to be and decide to change when she is in 8th or 9th standard.

Do AC schools make kids delicate little angels and sturdy enough?

I am part of a few forums and in one of these an interesting discussion was taking place. This particular forum caters to parents focussed on the schooling and upbringing of their kids. One member invited views from fellow members by posing a question: “Do you take that AC schools make kids a delicate little angel and not sturdy rough tough?” I would like to reproduce my and one of my fellow member’s views on the same over here.

Although all replies were in the positive with parents agreeing that AC school culture does make a child dependent on these luxuries (nowadays termed as necessities). One good answer came from a member called Anita* who commented:

“I agree with Vinod* when he says that if we provide these facilities they would become necessity and not luxury. Moreover, luxury should be earned by oneself rather than enjoyed at the expense of another, and then only one can understand the value of that 'luxury'.

If we don't expose our child to the harsh realities, be it weather or practical world, but cocooned in the protective environ, then I am sure they will grow up with the fear of not living without them rather than take challenge and risk in life to achieve greater heights.

I second Sushant* that we should better utilize our resources on giving wide and varying knowledge and experience to our children instead of fruitless luxury.”

My reply to the issue was as follows:

I second Anita but I also believe that the same applies to home. We have homes where kids sit all day with ACs switched on, they do nothing except watching TVs, playing on computers and playstations. If our kids go to schools, markets or anywhere else, they travel in cars with their ACs switched on. Working parents holding guilt in their hearts for not being able to spend time with the kids, wash off their guilt by pampering their kids and fulfilling all their whims and fancies so much so that the kids don't even learn to take a "NO" for an answer. School kids these days have flashy laptops and mobiles. Teenagers spend lavishly on pubs, nightclubs and discos.

Gone are the days when kids were encouraged to go to the market and buy small things on their own (although some parents chose to watch them from a distance, like mine), walk to the tuitions/friends' homes. The summer vacations used to be full of kids with their bicycles, badminton rackets, cricket bats scattered over every by-lane in the city. TV was restricted to 3-4 hours in a day (and surprisingly no child-locks in the TV were necessitated). Books used to be our best friends and authors like Enid Blyton, Ruskin Bond and Edward Stratemeyer (remember Nancy Drew) were household names, and unlike JK Rowling, they did not discuss teenage romance, first crushes and first kisses in their books.

I myself belong to a family where we were encouraged to take up these activities despite a lack of formal sports education in school. Even otherwise, my school (St. Thomas' School) believed that all human beings are equal no matter what work they do and they tried to inculcate the philosophy in the kids in a no. of ways. So even though there were fourth class staff aplenty in school, the kids had to dust and sweep their classrooms themselves turn-by-turn.

I think with AC schools mushrooming everywhere and parents having a "luxury turning to comforts turning to necessity" approach in their lives we are losing touch with our base/roots where we have grown up as individuals fit enough to face the fierce competitive world ahead.

Then again someone asked me whether it’s not necessary to change with changing times to which I replied:

I agree that we have to change with changing times but it is also essential that we retain the positive points from the era gone by. Comforts should be taken as comforts and should not be mitigated for necessities.

The activities that we have taken up during our childhood like cycling, badminton, reading books have made us active and socially aware persons that we are today. And I would like to see my daughter excel over me. If Noddy cartoons are substituting for Noddy books, my purpose is defeated.

Technology should be embraced, globalisation acknowledged and accepted but all said and done, the kids need to be self-confident and independent when they grow up. These qualities are inculcated in childhood from minor things like encouraging the kids to go buy small items from shops and talk to the shopkeeper themselves, buying metro/movie tickets themselves, etc. By encouraging the kids to walk to the market you make them capable of handling emergency situations where god forbid maybe no mode of conveyance is available. If he/she is self-confident, he/she can manage to get a public conveyance, find a way home even. Of course, I am not referring to the infants, but the process has to start right from the beginning itself. When they are older, they may venture out of homes for further education/careers where they have to live in hostels and/or PG arrangements. How does one ensure that these comforts will always be available to them. My sister is doing MBBS and lives in a hostel without airconditioners/coolers and refrigerators. I myself am a professional who have to visit clients and am totally aware that these comforts cannot be provided in all companies where we may have to work. If they are there, good, if not, it doesn't matter. And we are thankful to our parents that they have taught us to deal with such situations.

Although my daughter goes to an AC playschool, the fact that the school was an AC was not the basis for my selection. I selected it for the sole reason that I found the environment and course curriculum better than other playschools in my area. Then again, I make sure that my daughter does not switch on the AC at home during the day. It is allowed only at bedtime. This is to ensure that comfort remains a comfort.

* names changed.

Technical Errors in the Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

Reading books is one of my favourite activities and although I stick to Fiction in general, I like to read Thrillers in particular. After reading Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, I was almost a Dan Brown fan until I read Angels and Demons, Deception Point and Digital Fortress, in that order, and I liked them in the same order too. When it comes to Digital Fortress, it did not spring up as many twists and turns as compared to the Da Vinci Dode or say, Angels and Demons and the password that the seemingly brilliant female protagonist with an IQ of 170 took so long to guess had already been guessed by me about 40 pages before her.

Anyway, I was just browsing through some articles on the internet when I stumbled upon this article which very plausibly describes the technical errors in the Digital Fortress. It kind of made me feel that my dislike for the book is not without reason and there may be quite a few people who share my view. Read on and you may like this too.

Technical Errors in the Digital Fortress by Dan Brown

Although the book's website cites reviews lauding Digital Fortress for being extremely realistic, the book contains a number of technical errors and misunderstandings in computers, math, technology, and language.

• Brown mentions a Hungarian mathematician, Josef Harne, who in 1987 proposed an encryption algorithm that, in addition to encrypting, shifted decrypted cleartext over a time variant. However, neither Harne nor the concept of rotating-cleartext ever existed.
• Brown also inaccurately portrays the leadership of the NSA. As part of the Department of Defense, the NSA director - by law - must be a three-star Lieutenant General or Vice Admiral.
• Brown confuses bits with bytes, describing a 64bit string as containing 64 alphanumeric characters. In fact it would be just 8 assuming the most basic 8bit character encoding, each character being a byte or 8 bits.
• Brown suggests that TRANSLTR, a machine capable of breaking a 64bit key in 10 minutes would take just an hour to break a 10,000 bit key. This is a gross misunderstanding of the relationship between key lengths and the time required to brute force them. Such a machine would take over 80,000 years to break a 96-bit key and over 350,000 billion years (nearly 30,000 times the current age of the universe) to break a 128-bit key. The number of years it would take to break a 10,000 bit key isn't even practical to write down - it has 2,987 digits.
• Brown repeatedly confuses storage or processing of data with execution. For example, TRANSLTR is threatened because it has tried to crack Digital Fortress, which is actually a virus, and the database is similarly threatened because Digital Fortress is sent to it by TRANSLTR. Databases and password crackers do not execute the information presented to them, so it wouldn't matter that Digital Fortress contains harmful instructions.
• Characters who are supposedly experts in cryptography seem to think there is no such thing as an unbreakable encryption scheme.
• Brown talks about characters being encoded "Mandarin", or "the Kanji language". Mandarin is a spoken dialect of Chinese, and kanji are part of the Japanese writing system that typically cannot be sensically read alone "out of sequence". In neither case would it be possible to translate character-by-character out of context, due to both Chinese and Japanese having many characters that are used in compounds or have multiple meanings.
  

For the inaccuracies in Da Vinci Code please refer the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inaccuracies_in_The_Da_Vinci_Code which makes an equally interesting read. However, the inaccuracies reported in this article are not technical and indisputable like those in the Digital Fortress.

Long Time No See

Hi there!!

It’s been a while since I posted something on the blog. It’s not as though I didn’t have much to say about anything but that I just have been really busy and couldn’t pull out time to pour it out on paper (or should I say MS Word). I have been wanting to speak out on a number of issues though, the Mangalore attacks and Pink Chaddhi Campaign being one among them as also the Satyam scam and Lead India / Jaagore campaigns.

To start with the Mangalore attacks, I felt really angry and frustrated to see the video clips on the slew of news channels showing a group of hooligans brutally attack the poor decent looking girls caught unawares. Those girls looked as just normal girls like me and to classify them as loose, fast and characterless just because they were partying in pub is the most atrocious idea ever. And to add insult to injury, they are actually insisting that all girls who dare to live an independent lifestyle are immoral and are going against our culture. Who are these hooligans to become our moral police? Besides does our culture allow men to become monsters and go women bashing whatever be the reason? Then, sorry to say, there is not much difference between the Shri Ram Sene and the Taliban. Watching the Shri Ram Sene ‘activists’ in action wasn’t much different from watching numerous YouTube.com videos of Talibanis thrashing women in public. These hooligans too are Male Chauvinist Pigs having the same ideas of keeping the women “under control”. Watching their leaders speak how women going to pubs is like watching the popular YouTube.com video of the Talibani Maulana speaking of “The right Islamic way to beat your wife”. It’s horrific and insulting.

That brings me to the Pink Chaddhi Campaign. I am actually all support for the ‘Consortium of Loose, forward and Pub-going Women’ though I have not officially joined the group. I would like to clarify why I support them. I am not too fond of Pubs, Nightclubs, Discos, etc. In fact, I have never been to one till date. I don’t drink alcohol, don’t smoke and am actually totally unlike the women who formed this group. BUT, that is so out of CHOICE. I don’t do all that stuff because I don’t want to, because I choose not to, and not because I am not allowed to. I come from a family which is relatively liberal in mindset and propagates dislike with respect to smoking and drinking because of health hazards. Then, if you don’t smoke or drink, you have much less initiative to go to the pubs, nightclubs, etc. Besides, I am more of a morning person than an evening person. But the point is that I don’t do all such activities out of choice and every woman should be allowed that right of making a choice irrespective of what she chooses. That is her right as a human being to be able to choose what she wants in her life. If men can make choices, so can women.

Then there was the Satyam Scam which, to be honest, bowled me over. I have not been able to follow the story as much as I want to but I know the basics. For a fraud to take place at the level it has, there has to be an involvement of a whole bunch of people from top to bottom in the company along with quite a few third parties. It is easy to say that Raju was responsible for all that happened solely by himself but common sense would make you think otherwise. First thing first, as an auditor, the easiest thing to check is cash and bank. Apart from a cash count, and bank confirmations in the year end, the auditors do check Bank Reconciliations, Cheques in Hand, Stale Cheques and bulk cheques reversal and it is impertinent to state that the auditors relied on Management Representations for the same. I shouldn’t really be making judgements on the case because I am not aware of all the facts but it is not easy to gulp the fact that auditors were not hand in gloves with the defrauding management. Then again, there has to be reasons for the audit fees increasing manifolds (I think, eight times) in a mere span of four years. But no revelation takes the cake other than the fact that Satyam had about 3,000-5,000 fake employees. That seems to be the limit to having the intention to defraud.

I also want to share my views on the Lead India and Jaagore campaigns. They are actually really good initiatives especially since they can and they have led to a rise in the number of people coming out to vote. It was basically the educated classes that have been losing interest in selecting the leadership for the country and the youth were just as disillusioned with the sole belief that no matter what, the leadership is not likely to change. It has to be the same corrupt and illiterate chap at the helm. But yes now more and more people are accepting that every single vote counts, thanks to these campaigns. However, I feel these campaigns should also generate more awareness regarding the Rule 49-O of the Conduct of Elections Rules, 1961. (Refer http://lawmin.nic.in/ld/subord/cer1.htm). The Rule states, “49-O. Elector deciding not to vote.- If an elector, after his electoral roll number has been duly entered in the register of voters in Form-17A and has put his signature or thumb impression thereon as required under sub-rule (1) of rule 49L, decided not to record his vote, a remark to this effect shall be made against the said entry in Form 17A by the presiding officer and the signature or thumb impression of the elector shall be obtained against such remark.” Rule 49 (O) of the Conduct of Election Rules 1961 gives the voter the right to register at the polling booth, get his/her index finger inked, but cast a “protest vote” i.e. refrain from casting the vote in favour of any candidate. The electoral officer is bound to make an entry under the rule in this regard. Although there are many interpretations of the repercussions of majority voters opting to exercise this right (i.e. protest votes being in excess of the votes in favour of the candidate with the most votes), the most obvious and popular solution is where a re-election is ordered, but the candidature of all the candidates who previously contested from that constituency be removed and they cannot contest the re-polling, since people had already expressed their decision against them. Besides, a side effect of casting this vote is that nobody can fraudulently cast a vote on your behalf because your vote has already been registered.