chaotic order

Jottings - Slice of life - 107 ( "Technology evangelist" and not a technical Instructor) As a teacher, the only consolation and joy at the end of the day is to have inspired, modified and enhanced the levels of understanding of your students. Nothing more!! This week was an extraordinary adventure. In the class were fifteen senior participants, six in the class, and the other six attending online from different parts of the world. They work for one of the biggest payment solutions business in the Western hemisphere, and for more than two decades all their data is stored and managed on standard relational databases. We are talking in the magnitude of hundreds of terabytes every two days. Each one of them in the class have solid background in Databases, back to the days when Fox-pro ruled the roost and before, and from there moved to become DBA’s ( Database Administrators) for large scale data storage solutions for transactional processing. The challenge is now to move

Jottings - slice of life - 106 ( “The innocents” - an Anne Fontaine film) “Faith is twenty four hours of doubt and one minute of illuminating hope..” - Wise Sister Maria explains to the young French red cross Doctor Mathilde Beaulieu, as she attempts to convince the Sister of the need to look beyond religious beliefs and vows to God. The history of sacred faith hinges around this pivotal point. Can one forsake deeply inculcated beliefs around God, heaven and sin to yield to matters of flesh? Can we abandon convictions of Hope, comfort and security in an afterlife to the ravages of the daily living and its horrors? Can we reconcile what happens to us now to what we have been given to believe for ages? Can we live for that one minute of clarifying hope while enduring every hour of unceasing doubt and apprehension? These are questions this beautiful film raises in our hearts and minds. Much has been written, said and discussed on the horrors of second world war, and the moral depriv

On June the 12th 1994, in a posh, upscale locality of Los Angeles, in the wee hours of morning, a middle aged man taking his dog on a stroll found the bodies of a young male and female lying beside each other battered, stabbed and decimated near the front gate of an elegant home. The policemen who arrived immediately at the scene were taken aback. Such brutality with blood stains all over the place seemed out of context in a neighborhood such as this. When they started looking around, they identified the female to be Nicole Simpson brown, the ex-wife of the legendary footballer O J Simpson and the young man to be Nicole’s friend Ron Goldman. For strange reasons inexplicable ( which defense lawyers would later use to their advantage) the puzzled detectives drove over to OJ’s house to ensure he was alright. But when they got there, their probing instincts quickly pointed out suspicious blood marks, an oddly parked white Bronco with few stains on it, and an used glove. Within a day, vis

Jottings - Slice of life - 98 ( Anatomy of fame..) I recently finished reading a book by Journalist, film and art critic Leo Braudy titled “ The frenzy of renown”. Braudy wrote it in 1986 and is a voluminous book running into over 700 pages in small print, and quite a deep read. Its subject is the notion and understanding what “fame” means, and changes in its meaning and manifestation over time from early Greeks to Modern day stars and performers. It is a fascinating study of history and human activity from an angle never conceived before. Almost everything man does has an undertone of fame substantiating its execution. It could for fame within ones family, or circle of friends, society, professional, national, global, inner, outer - any possible category - but it is an undeniable fact that it is our innermost desire to have our existence, our acts, our thoughts immortalized in some way or the other. We fervently wish to leave behind a “legacy”. Even those who conspicuously shun

It was one of those extraordinary moments in sport, when the Patriots came in from virtually nowhere to beat the Falcons last Sunday. It definitely left plenty of broken hearts here in Atlanta, but I guess, this is exactly the strange and mysterious lure any game has on its followers. Its unpredictability, to spin up the unexpected in the most normal of times. Some may attribute the victory to the genius of one Man, but in all fairness, Falcon’s couldn't finish the game they started so well. It is possible the pressure, the stage and their incredible closeness to victory paralyzed their free flow of sporting energy. And in that frail moment of weakness and indecision, the Patriots swooped in, stole the cup from under their very noses. The game fascinated me, no doubt, but what fascinated me even more was the brief 15 minute performance by Lady Gaga ( born as Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta). As I watched her float down the stadium , decked in her florescent garment, mike in

Jottings : Slice of life - 90 ( “Pink” is just another color not a gender-connotation) The sexual objectification of women, looking upon them as unequals not capable of walking shoulder to shoulder with Men has a very long biological and social history - pretty much extending to beginnings of Human species. Anthropologically, female sex was only a child bearing and domesticated member of the human group, and it has continued in various forms, shapes, ideologies and subtleties throughout the march of human civilization. It is surprising when you come to think of it that only 125 years have passed since women got the power to vote, to stand on equal terms “politically” alongside men. New Zealand was the first to adopt woman suffrage in 1893, followed by New south wales, then Finland followed by USA and Great Britain and rest. Saudi Arabia granted suffrage only few years ago ( 2011). It is still an evolving process in some remote corners of the globe. Democracy is great experiment of

Jottings - slice of life - 89 ( Gandhi behind the charka , and Modi’s identity) It is dangerous to tamper with deep rooted symbols, especially , if those symbols are emblematic of man's attachment and veneration of an ideal beyond himself. More so ,if millions look up to that symbol as an expression of something deep and transformatory, or is reminder of an historical event that forever changed the way they lived. Why is the cross so very special to Christians, or the linga to the Hindus, or the swastika was to the germans?. Those are portent symbols which evoked powerful responses from people. Swami Vivekananda was once asked by a king why he encouraged idol worship when he was a committed advaitin ( non- duality) himself. Vivekananda looked at him with his beautiful lotus shaped eyes and took the king by his hand to a huge portrait of the king’s father hanging in his lavish hall. Pointing his finger towards it he asked “ Who is this on the wall ?”. The king said “ My fa