ROADS....from sandy roads all the way again to sandy roads!!

Man cleared the bushes and paved a path to walk along safely. He evolved and when he invented the wheel and wheel carts, he made the path a little wider; this was circa 4 century BC. Slowly over the course of 2200 years wheels evolved in various facets when it met the engine technology and automobiles were created. This journey still continues and we have got n-lane roads made out of asphalt, concrete and recently plastics!

A step ahead we will be having roads that have photovoltaic underneath them and produce energy out of the sun all the day along. This is still in very pre-mature stage and prototypes are being carried out (http://solarroadways.com/). These roads are expected to have displays that would send our emergency information to the road users. More information on their construction is shared in their web-site.

Imagine such roads with loads of silicon circuitry underneath them...all sending out signals with a programmed purpose.

Learn it in your native tongue... in your own way !!

Four years from now we will see engineers with more concrete basics who had opted for studying in Tamil medium. Had there been no Tamil in the engineering entrance question paper side-by-side to English, I swear I would have score 2-3 marks less. Reading it in my native tongue increased my comprehending speed and avoided any ambiguous situation. I had then dreamed of studying engineering in Tamil, and now it is a reality. Yes, from this year onwards selected colleges will offer Civil and Mechanical streams in Tamil.

Some might argue that Tamil-engineers cannot cope up with the current industry which is services based. But at the end of the day what matters is how much of an engineer you are rather than how much of a communicator you express. It all depends on what people consider as success...Being an engineer or being a fluent English speaker. We can study the degree in Tamil and still learn to communicate in English, but not the other way round. When the whole world is embracing web2.0, Let's embrace this next step with pride.

A dangerous face lurking in the dark...

These days almost every other person you meet has a mail-id. Some people muse that internet gave addresses to millions who do not have a proper snail-mail address. Most of the mail-id owners these days have a networking site profile that says something about themselves, their hobbies, their likes and many more. The idea behind these personalized profiles is to help like minded people network. These profiles also aid in knowing more about the individual/owner but behold: there is always a dangerous face (an ugly face perhaps) that lurks behind these profiles.

Sakshi was pursuing her masters in industrial relations when she got a marriage proposal from a well known family. The guy held a masters degree in engineering and was working for a small firmware company abroad. Sakshi had a fine liking to arts and was adept in painting and playing the keyboard. She saw the guy’s profile and gathered that he played the flute and many more. While meeting in person, he too accepted that he played flute occasionally. Few months after marriage what Sakshi experienced was hell; I mean she experienced the truth. The guy actually had an opportunity to attend flute classes for three weeks when he was ten years old! Sakshi also found that each line item in his profile was wrong. His real face was ugly than what his profile conveyed. His hobby included reading, but he had never read a whole novel in his life. The ugly face posed a more dangerous face, a threatening one perhaps when she had to politely apply for divorce and put an end to the relation. But will the Indian society accept?

The incident happened a few years ago and this intrigued me to probe into profiles of few people whom I have met in office or elsewhere and found that an alarming number of profiles contain information that do not match with the real face of them. The irony is that almost 95% percent of Indians do not have a hobby or a past-time activity and their ego forces them to fill one in the profile. The one filled is probably the activity that their parents thrust upon them in their childhood.

(Name are obviously changed, but the incident mentioned is real)

Not only on web-profiles, many fake their real identity as well...

Last Sunday I met Mr.Vel at a fair in Chennai. I had known this person earlier through a web group. Slowly the talk went into hobbies and he exclaimed that he was a great fan of Tamil language and his pastime was to update his blog. I commented back saying that his blog was last updated way back in 2008. He paused for a moment and weaved a story that all his writings were in paper and before I could ask further questions, he said he had lost all papers while shifting his house and left the place for a moment.

This reminded me of Sri, who joined with me in my previous company on the same day. He claimed that he was an expert in net technology, business, art, and many more. He also started bullying other guys in net-tech group and had a pleasure making him feel greater at the expense of others feelings.

(Name are obviously changed, but the incident mentioned is real)

A different experience @ Auroville marathon 2010

It was a different experience running the Auroville marathon. Eerie silence of the forest trail made the falling dew drops to sound like falling stones. The marathon was more than a physical run…I ran through the forest , ran deep into my self and ran to the beat of my heart (the running bib mentioned this aptly as ‘run easy, run to the beat of your heart’!). As a bonus pack, my eyes spotted the red vented bulbul and a monitor lizard during the run. I felt refreshed completing the Auroville marathon.

I completed the half marathon in 3 hrs, 16 mins... eight minutes late than my previous timing. It is time to change my shoes and step up my practice as well :)

I hold the camera, I am wrapped by joy and a paradox...

I have been playing and experimenting with my camera for quite sometime, more precisely a little over two years. Viewing the world through the lenses for the first time was a different experience, I started clicking on frames just because I was enthralled by the way nature has composed itself so mathematically organized. Nature's quality is innate, the only change is the way I am experiencing it. Some more experimentation drove me mad to shoot macros (close-up shots). Be it flowers, beetles, jewelery or be it whatever, I started seeing the miniature world in them.

The same camera lenses evoked the paradox in me when I shot a portrait of a girl whom I then knew for more than six months. With whatever lighting was at hand, I shot my first portrait and I learned that each and everyone of us express intricate gestures that go unnoticed amidst our other businesses. I also experienced that a concentrated eye behind those camera lenses will never miss those intricacies. I started exhibiting the prophecy of a stock broker as to what will be her gesture next and I fell in love for her expressions noticed behind the lenses. Did I love her? Certainly not...but I loved her expressions behind the lenses.

The way I entertain myself watching a cinema has also changed in the past two years. Sitting in the theater hall, I carefully observe the lighting, costumes, colors and the background music. I would say that camera taught me to adore nature. It also taught me the fact that people are so varied in themselves. Now whenever I hold the camera in my hand, I am wrapped with joy...so immense that can be only felt.