yet another goof up in the name of religion

all rite, this is too much, the indian politicians raising a hue and cry in the name of religion. i m so glad i m agnostic. for the uninitiated the story goes this way. the ship route from the west of india to the east of the country rite now is negotiated using a labourious route, using the territorial waters of its neighbour sri lanka. the reason: the portion of sea that cud have connected the west to the east is a narrow strait (the palk strait) between india and sri lanka. but thats not really the problem. the problem is that rite through this strait, there is a stretch of solid ground joining the two countries together!!! the land is mainly rock and coral reef. now the catch is that the religious texts in india claim that this in reality is a bridge built by ape deity hanuman for yet another deity ram to cross over from india to sri lanka. they call it the Ram Setu (Ram's Bridge).
the central govt wants to raze down some of this land formation so that ships can pass this length of water. a lot of fuel, money and shipping time can b saved as a result. but as usual religious sentiments win over the practicality and pragmatism of the modern world and its applications. a huge hue and cry has been raised by the fanatically religious political parties, opposing the clearing of land as a blasphemous act.
now come on ppl, hearing stories in childhood abt ape men braving the harsh seas to build a bridge is a very gud thing for a bed time story, but actually believing tripe like that and using it as a basis for impeding progress is nonsensical.

On independence and freedom

its independence day today in india. every1 is rejoicing 60 years of independence for the country from the shackles of the british tyranny that lasted upto this very date in 1947. every1 is happy about the landmark of 6 decades of independence and looking forward to the next phase of the indian era. every1 is so happy, every1 other than me. yup, i m not so happy, all i have in my mind is utmost respect for india's freedom fighters, thats it, and a pang of pity too. i m not, and have never been a patriot really, a feeling thats been in my mind since i was 7, since i was in third grade. a feeling i cud never express publicly, for it wud bring me public disdain, sthg that i was cautious not to invoke. i knew that even at that age. instead of patriotism, all my mind cud think was, "why, really, why on earth, all this regionalism and territorialism, and why cant people say, 'I belong to this beautiful universe'?". why does it have to be, "i m proud of india", and stuff like that. i cud never have realized in the wildest of my 7-year old imagination that even though common man -- at least a common man like me -- wants a global footprint, there r some fat ambitious men sitting up there on corrupted thrones who want power in their hands, power which restricts people, which dictates them, power which may not b encroached upon by fellow-ambitious fatties. these r the dirty people who started the funda of regionalism, the funda of kingdoms, empires, countries and such divisions of land, the borders of which cannot b crossed by people who do not 'belong' there and if they wish to cross over, they can only do so with 'special permission' from the already corrupted higher order. in these modern days, we call these permissions 'visa's. note that i did not mention divisions like states, provinces, districts or constituencies and such, bcoz we always need those for easing local administration. these r healthy partitions which do not restrict people from transcending borders freely. the above-mentioned evil desire for power caused another evil which was to descend upon the peace-loving and weaker sections of people who wanted nothing more that to live on this earth and co-exist with fellow-men. and that second evil is colonialism. a result of the fat ambitious people's unquenched thirst for uncontrollable power over fellow-men. this evil desire was largely a result of the ancient european powers, started by romans and greeks. then continued on by the likes of dutch, portuguese, french and british. gosh, how i hate to say classifying words like 'dutch', 'british', and so on instead of saying humans. anyway, they robbed people of any sort of fundamental power in their colonies. one by one, the colonized nations produced eminent heroes who won freedom for their respective countries. i respect such people with all my humility, however i pity them, coz they had to waste a gud part of their lives on very basic things like ensuring basic fundamental rights for people. now really think about it, was all that crap necessary at all. what an eminent barrister gandhi wud have been had he not had to waste his life on struggle for freedom. and we know bhagat singh and sukhdev, et al, by sorry words like martyrs. none of this wud have happened if people simply led their lives as citizens of the universe and learnt to share it with all other creatures. we say india has been independent for 60 years when actually it is one of the oldest inhabited terrains on earth.
according to me, at least now, people shud drop all categorizing words like india, pakistan, muslim land, africa and stuff like that. now at least people shud start saying, lets make the universe a better place, lets all co-exist. we must not make projects for only one 'country' or one class of people. let me put it this way, our martyr freedom-fighters didnt just want to see an independent and united india, but a unified world. i dont remember gandhiji ever denouncing britain in general, he only targetted specific ambitious persons. he never wanted india and britain to be at odds with each other, he wanted both to be gud friends of each other, instead of a master-slave relationship.
if there is no ambition or ego for power over one another, we will always stay independent of any other person or class of people. and people will never want to say, this is my motherland or i m a patriot. these words r completely at odds with the modern world, where globalization brings things that r better in one part of the earth to another part of the earth. but due to things like countries, there is a cost, stuff like duties, restictions, trade zones, etc. but thats another story.
talking of globalization, now india is losing independence in another walk of life. technologically -- in information technology at least -- it is heavily dependent on a country like USA. main reason -- microsoft. india has chosen windows as its number 1 operating system, thus causing its IT setup to b slaves to the whims of this one superpower. microsoft rules business india, like british once ruled the country itself. open source and free software must b looked upon as an option really urgently, b4 microsoft does sthg to screw up the entire business setup of india, with some silly technical or business decision. i have already thrown them out, i m using linux for a couple of years now. i m using opensuse on my laptop though and if the microsoft-novell does sthg nasty, then its time for me to switch to kubuntu.

No exception handling method in C? Hah!!!

quite a few times, i get noob programmers declaring that C is just plain hard, it sucks and stuff like that. well, i pity them for not njoying the best programming language ever made. even more laughable is when they say that C is buggy, coz it doesnt have exception handling. now i have my sides splitting. whoever gave them that slanderous thought. to start with, core C library functions, almost every one of them, at least each and every ANSI C and POSIX.1 extensions have exception handling. u dont see them as the try..catch blocks that u typically expect to see in say C++ or Java, u see simpler things like return values. negative returns, null values returned by functions MUST be used to check if it is okay to proceed further in the program. this wonderful concept was completely destroyed by the advent of void functions. as long as C stuck to ANSI standards, a minimum of int return value was mandatory, but the acceptance of void return type by the POSIX standard completely annihilated the concept of return value checking if it is safe to proceed further. instead they now use some kind of crappy referee kinda thing called exception class, which is created and raised every time the program reaches an unsafe state. languages now use try..catch and then keep holding their hands out in the air to catch possible faults and deal with them. this hypocrisy makes it look like the language really cares for programmers, but mates, what abt the overhead to create an exception, raise it, pass it onto a catch block in case faults occur. and what do u do if catch block catches u cold with some buggy code itself. and also it makes it harder to isolate the line which caused the bug. in C, u just execute a command and check return. if return is an error, u kill things right then and there, that line is the bug, job done. but in a catch block, in order to know the line that caused the error, u have to do fancy things like stack tracing causing more overhead. u think subclassing exceptions is cool, so that u get different categories, rite? oh bull shit, in C u dont need objects and sub-objects / hierarchy, nothing. just make the function return different values for different errors, make an enum that makes it convenient to call those error numbers by friendly names and just go ahead compare the return value with the values in the enum to see what went wrong. in fact, that enum is not even needed, just that it makes code pretty readable and modular. so friends, steer clear of exceptions and consider return values seriously.

For God's sake, somebody please shut off that venomous beast!!!

25 degrees celsius, only 25 degrees celsius is the peak day time temperature of mumbai amidst the really rainy august first week. and yet, the nerds @ the office just dont avoid doing what is one of the most heinous crimes from my point of view. no, no, they dont kill people, instead they r plotting to kill people of the future. they switch on the AC. and they want the temperature @ a bone chilling 22-23, when i and two of my closest in-touch friends, nikhil and joshua, want the AC switched off to make it warm and cozy, and windows opened just a wee bit if cooling is needed. natural cooling. wind is too gud @ 6th floor office. but u know these city slickers, they r so used to these artificial gadgets. no care in the world as to what the consequences can b. they wont listen to us village people. they r so used to AC. but let me tell u that apart from guzzling out power in an already power-crisis affected maharashtra, ACs r deadly weapons, weapons to kill future generations. they release CFC or freon which is the chief nemesis of ozone which in turn is the guardian against sun's scorching UV rays. in my view, ACs r venomous beasts, more venomous than the deadliest king cobra. a king cobra kills one person with one strike, but no one can fathom how many we r gonna kill with one flick of the AC switch and one beep of the AC remote. its a vicious circle, installing an AC will make u dependent on AC and u will start needing it everywhere. it makes the planet hotter and people buy stronger ACs and make things even hotter. thankfully, i m out of the trapping circle. my village is in a really chilled out place, where u dont need ACs. the natural camouflage of trees is really gud. i m brought up as a typical town boy who appreciates city's superb points in terms of opportunities and the village / town's lifestyle. in short, i m absolutely satisfied to b able to go to the best part of the city for work and return to the tranquil of the town by evening.

Cant get Le Tour de France off my head as yet

two weeks is a long time, long enough to forget details of events, not long enough to forget the broader picture though. but i can still vividly remember the minute-by-minute minute events of the wonderfully rocking Le Tour de France. what a sporting event, gruelling, continuous, fast, entertaining, captivating, just when will Indians learn to appreciate sports for sports, and not for glamour. cricket is so stupid when compared with a true sport like tour de france. i mean to call cricket a 'sport' after watching le tour is like saying that laloo prasad yadav will b as successful a prime minister as Pt Jawaharlal Nehru. there is no way for me to accept cricket as a sport and the hype behind it is beyond my power to comprehend. mayb i m missing some key nerve in my brain, bcoz a billion people find cricket interesting and a billion cannot b wrong. and this thing about ICC v ICL is way outta my league.
Back to le tour, i can still remember young contador's face when he donned the yellow jersey. such a gud accomplishment for a man who is exactly as old as i am. also, appreciable was the young baby-faced txurruka. also my pooh-pooh for the riders who used drugs, failed to test, lied about location and the like. and my respects to the le tour staff who allowed no sort of cheating and took immediate action even it was the yellow jersey guy or an overnight stage winner.
The best part is the diversity, ride in cities, ride in different countries, ride on mountains, ride by the seaside, on harbours, ride by the hamlets, all at an average speed of 40 kmph, now thats quick!!!

Trecherously rainy Mumbai Day, but Mumbai is normal

another august day, another heavily overcast, rainy day, a day when the rain simply refused to stop! Relentless, merciless downpour, but Mumbai has learnt from its mistakes. Mumbai moves on. apart from a few trains picking maximum of 15 minute delays, no cancellations, no stoppages, no water-logged tracks. suprising, considering the rain today. i caught the usual local train, @ its scheduled time, and reached home as scheduled, 7:30 as usual.
7:30. how wonderful to reach home @ this time, how so lovely. considering that i live @ shahad, 60 km from mumbai, considering that only half of the local trains of central railway go there, considering that only four months ago my regular time of return to home was a late, late 11:30 pm !!! i have got my life back. i m in control, total control. and aah, its so wonderfully refreshing to catch local trains early in the morning, as early as 6:24 am. there is so much more space, so much more freedom of movement. why, oh why, just why was i so stupid upto four months ago. i have moved on, i have learnt my lesson.

Yaaaaay, i m a blogger now!!!

finally, i m gonna start blogging and see how this blogging thingy reveals me, the person that is Hari. People have seen me in the various forms that i assume, professional, fun-lover, keen bike rider, fitness freak and lotta things, but they have just scratched the surface. blogger is gonna show me, the person that is thinking all time, like an FM radio goin on all day. so i m gonna get started and try to get bloggin' every night and even @ times, when i think i have done sthg worth blogging.