Emotions engineered

When two engineers talk about emotions, it can't get worse than the above! Finally when they conclude that anything on the left hand side can pair up with anything on the right hand side, you actually start checking if it really makes sense.

I picked what I thought was an improbable pair - dislike and love. How can you dislike something that you love? I was surprised to find an example. As I was learning to ride my bike, I liked it. Slowly I started loving it. But over these years, the dust, the sun, etc. have made me develop a dislike towards it. But I still absolutely love it. I scratched my head in disbelief only to find that this's true with people too.

But can you really hate something that you'd loved because now your contempt surpasses your adoration? Isn't love such a wonderful feeling that unless you decide to renounce, you will continue to love? I don't know, may be the love that comes from like cannot transform itself into hatred? Even if it does, I feel that's a little lesser-mortalish!

Ok, now the next pair - can you hate something and still like it?

People know what's right and what's not

Viewing an imperfection as a responsibility to fix something has been a trait that I am not sure how I developed. Blame it on Gandhi for "It must be the friend and not the mistake that we support" or Oscar Wilde for "A true friend stabs in the front", I started to believe that friendship or for that matter any relationship should encourage the right thing and discourage the wrong thing.

But then you run into problems doing that. You become the bad guy when you point fingers at people who don't have any compulsion to listen to you, because they don't understand your intentions. You become worse when you misconceive a perfection as an imperfection, because you then are self-righteous. You become even worse when you repeat yourself because you then are not able to accept people as they're. Most people get defensive at this point because they think this is intrusion. Even people who go back and evaluate themselves later appear defensive at that moment, this includes me.

Sometimes the most perfect way might not be the happiest way. Watching cricket had given me so much pleasance some time ago. Now I've stopped watching but I've surely not found a substitute so far that can glue me to eight hours of delight. Sometimes our own maturity level inhibits us from doing the perfect thing. I think it was in class 5, I still remember the exact scene when I stood up for not doing the homework and lied that I had a bad head ache. I was thrilled at that moment but I repent for it even today. Sometimes there's a genuine reason for us to not do the perfect thing. During the final months of my class 12, I'd vowed to myself not to play the guitar till the exams. When I refused to play during the school farewell, I surely made some of my friends angry and I still feel bad about it.

But as I recollect such incidents, I feel people should be allowed to do what makes them happy, because perfection in real life is both a relative and a subjective term, and not an absolute term as a dictionary would suggest. With this assurance of self-happiness, I want to be able to grow myself to say yes when I like and no when I don't, to stand for things I believe in and against those that I don't, or to sum up to be myself. I have a long way to go, but I am convinced that people know what's right and what's not for them.

Oohlalala

Remember we had won the Oohlalala competition on Sun TV two years back? The Oohlalala album with one song each from the six bands that had won was released by AR Rahman on Aug 7, 2009.

In the photo -
Top: TPK, Me, Swami, Vicky, Harish, Shiva, GNR (the band Agam)
Bottom: Andrea, Saregama MD, Rahman, Gautam Menon, Shruti Hassan



Our performance in the first round (2:50 to 5:50):

First step towards reservationless India?

I'm not sure how historic the Right to Education Bill is going to be, but it is definitely a step towards an India that might not need reservations in higher education at least in some distant future, closer than it seemed before this bill.

I was just reading through the news article - Free and compulsory education till the age of 14, fully equipped schools, properly qualified teachers - I'm not sure how much of these are going to come into practice, how wonderful will it be if they do! But I was really surprised to see this - 25% reservation in private schools for disadvantaged children from socially and educationally backward sections. How much I wished to see this for many years now!

I'm sure no one can argue that admission into primary schools is based on merit; it is actually everything except merit that goes into a primary school admission and it will be ridiculous anyways to be talking about academic merit for such tender age. So I assume people cannot stigmatize this reservation as talent pool dilution. However, I would have been even happier if I saw the bill also say something along the lines of either "refusing higher education quota for students who got reservation in primary school" or "reducing reservation percentages in higher education decade-over-decade". The minister says that this proposal has become a bill after 16 years, so may be it might take another 16 years for something like the above in italics to become a bill? Nevertheless, this is a non-trivial attempt towards building an India that all of us are dreaming of. I hope this exponentially improves education standards among the unfortunate children of our society. It's time we lived up to our childhood pledge of "All Indians are my brothers and sisters".

If you started to follow my blog only recently, please note that I am not against reservations, at the same time, I am not for reservations in it's current format. However I try not to blindly oppose anything and everything that does not benefit me nor blindly support anything and everything that benefits me.