Saint Rantic

My friend happened to forward me this Tam Rap song:

As a confession (from someone who knows tamil a bit and someone who enjoys hip-hop) I must say I like this song and I dont mind hearing to it even if we judge them to be wannabes.

Rap in the US evolved in many ways in the US, with various versions such as Gansta Rap and Gansta-Funk (G-Funk) [Source:Wikipedia]. Rap has an important cultural side and its intricately linked with the life and linguistic style of African Americans. This fact is difficult to appreciate unless one interacts with them and tries to understand these intricacies. The language, the style, the dress, the culture basically comes right out of someone who lives in a ghetto. This is the reason why most of the Hip-Hop artists came right out of the ghettos.
Rap began its small begin as a natural outcome of the Afro-American lifestyle. The affluence and the fame of the successful HipHop artist help promote the more recent developments of the disco-graphy of the albums and also to a large extent the Ghetto lifestyle began to evolve into a hip-hop style sophistication, such as a “bling-bling” culture[source:Wikipedia]. Hip-hop thus had a market of its own, and hence a life of its own. It became something like a fad, a “fad” which people like my dad believed wont last long, but it did and it spread around the world. Local artists emerged as a result of the popularity of American rap, giving the same “rap” tunes but in thier own cultural style.

I listen to french rap as well. The group Bisso Na Bisso and the Congo Hip-hop artist Passi are some of my favourites. Here is another gem from Cheb Mami(of the “Desert Rose fame” and who, by the way, is one of the best “Rai” singers) and K-Mel which is one of my favourite songs (I dont understand a single word, but the tunes are just amazing):

Here is the LINK for the video in case you are not able to see it.
During my stay in Los Angeles and my interactions with a few young hip-hop singers here, I did notice that they were culturally very attached. They had a strong identity, which probably will never go away. Its the same with most “Rap” artist from any other culture.

This cultural attachment is what I want to bring about. Check out the Cheb Mami Video for example. Its good hip-hop and yet they dont have that “bling-bling” nature, the dress is mordern yet its NOT ghetto style. Contrast this with our Tam Rap video, and one just has to say that our brothers are just wannabes. The music is good. The lyrics are strong. But man, why do you have to throw away your cultural background and act as someone who you do not even understand! Even if one throws away his culture and dresses “casually”, its fine. But trying to be something that you are not and CANNOT be is something extremely stupid.

Why are we desis like this? Why are we wannabes in everything? Cant we define anything of our own. One need not have to be culturally bound to be creative, nor do we need to be a wannabe to be creative. Creativity is something inherent and it rings well with the concept of originality. If these people were singing that Hip-hop song in a desi dress, like a lungi and jubba/shirt I would have appreciated them more. I would have appreciated them even more if they did not show any cultural biases.

To all the talented young men and women out there: Please dont be wannabes, be yourself.

What to do if you are looking at a code which is like a 20 day mega soap opera going on in your mind, and also there is absolutely NO support from any other person……..

thats right!!!!! CODE BLOCK!!!!!!!!

To all my dedicated readers! I am still alive and kicking ass now. I would want to post a few things and they would be up here very soon.

Sorry about the delay

[youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=_dIya1aJJKA]

Ideally economics does not need culture, it only needs the average human behaviour to be constant in the period of application of the economic laws. Human evolution has made sure that the average does remain the same, any measure of behaviour (such as economic growth) cancels out the irrationalities and converges to the average.

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Hello Guys,

welcome to my new home in the web world.

My previous home was here. I shall try to mirror this blog at blogspot, but i dont know how long that is going to take.

The name of my site may sound a lil bit odd.. well, i kept it that way..

This marks a serious change in my direction, due to many events in recent times.

I shall post more on this soon.

Enough of ranting about failure and success…………. I have been a mediocrite till now…. have to pick myself up… have to pick myself up……………………………………..

I know what i am…. I have to reach the skies…………….have to build my dream… have to build my dream!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Totally frustrated will write something more soon…. till then, good morning , good afternoon and good night!!!!

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reason: I am not an IITian, nor an IIM guy nor anything….. that is how success is measured in India!!!!!

If I ever reach a commanding position, i shall make sure that i will never EVER discriminate one candidate to another based on where they are coming from, what is their race, color, ethinicity, insititution etc etc.

Enough of this academic hypocricy, which measures individuals by one sample of exam data…. I can rant on and on… and u can argue to prove me wrong.. i dont really care…because its not what we say that matters, its what we do!

I got the second publication of my life (and maybe the last one) in Speech Signal Processing in a European Conference (the first was on Fiber Optics) . It feels great and all… I am happy at all of our efforts especially pills.. for all the intense coding and not to mention the intense bike riding he did. And to S ChandraSekhar, our all knowing SigProc Guru. Without these people I would have literally have no academic credibility, other than the courses that i have taken. Thanks Pills and Chandra!

though the fruits have come in very late, when it is more or less irrelevant to me. This was my hardest try….. with all my sincerity… and yet… it did not work out when it should have…all my life i lost out because something did not click.. something was out of phase… something became irrelevant… cannot help but crib that i may be just a mediocrite.. a low IQ guy fit to do plumbing work somewhere. THis is what i feel i am till now, please dont compare with me people who hang out with me, u might conclude the wrong stuff!

So now i am fed up.. with economics.. with the demand supply chain of education, girls, perfect match, perfect house, perfect family….

will rant more on the demand supply scenario of girls… that would be a nice thing to write about!

LADAKH………………. AKA Heaven…

Place: Pangong Lake
Source:Wikipedia on Ladakh

What makes a successful family?

This question has been in and around my mind for a long time. Everyone in India would look and comment at our commendably low divorce rates… however has anyone cared to check the rates at which they are going up? U may say that it is because of the westernization of the society. To me it is a sign that people are using and enjoying their freedom. It is a sign that if they make a mistake they try to correct it. Increasing divorce rates therefore partly indicate a healthy society. It also indicates the estimate of the number of people who make mistakes, thus shows the number of people who made mistakes marrying.

I believe that every culture has a divorce equillibrium. If our culture remained the same always, I have strong reason to believe that the divorce rate would fluctuate along a mean with small variance (i.e. no high devations). But culture changes slowly, as it is the product of complex social thought processes. So u can model it in a stable society with a small trend (up or down) and a random variable(zero mean gaussian maybe ) added to it.

It may be seen from the UK and Australian divorce statistics that the divorce rate fluctuate around a small upward trend. This means that they are more or less stable for a long time to come. The US has stopped collecting statistics on data (STRANGE!!), for some reason. So we can see that my theory in the above paragraph can be substanciated.

What is happening in India?

http://www.divorcereform.org/stats.html

The above is a good place to start looking for all round estimates of divorce and one can see that the divorces are in India are going to hit the sky sometime. There is a huge upward trend i guess( i dont have the statistics, and i believe no one does.. coz there has not been an effective census measuring this). Assuming this upward trend exists, it shows us that there is some big change in our culture, it is a cultural indicator. It shows how many mistakes are made, and it shows that more and more people are realizing that they have made a mistake.

Another interesting aspect for me to note would be the number of couples divorcing after having an arranged marriage and a love marriage.

I despise arranged marriage. For Love is the first pact that holds the four walls of a home, marriage is just a social recognition of the same. So love should come first, logically, and then , when the couple are suitably comfortable with each other, should marriage be coming. In India we have the opposite going on, an inverted logic, to say the least. Where marriage comes first and then maybe love happens.

I have seen couples, having grown up kids, living a zombie life just because the society demands that them be not divorced. There is clearly no love in the family. Everything is just official. The dad wakes up and says an official good-morning to the son. The mom makes official Tea in the morning. Then there is an official breakfast. Well, nothing un-official about it, we are just playing our roles here. I have a question in this case: Does marriage hold any meaning here? No, I guess. They should be divorced. Happiness is otherwise impossible.

Why don’t they divorce?
One reason which people give are the kids, which is plain bullshit. Most of them do not do it because the name of the family goes down the drain, if they ever divorce (Our business is smelling the shit of our neighbour and not caring about ours). And because of our motherfucking Indian man’s pea sized brain a divorced lady mostly would not find another man in her life (exceptions can be found, though). So our culture coercively prevents divorce.

So a person getting himself/herself into an arranged marriage is willing to subject his/her will to the whims and stupidity of the society. S/he does not care about whether s/he loves someone or not, all s/he worries is that the ‘name of her family’ should not go to the drain. Or maybe s/he wants to subject herself/himself to the emotional blackmail of her parents, because they somehow magically get hurt if their son/daughter marry someone whom their social status cannot accept.

When some desi dude/gal tells me the s/he will do what her/his parents say in the case of marriage, I go to some corner and breath in and out slowly in order to cool down. When they say that it affects my mind. It shows me that another dumbass does not mind losing her freedom. It drives me really angry, and that usually is a block in our friendship later because there is no emotional richness in such a friendship.

So the sky high divorce rates makes me a bit happy, more than anything it is a sign of arranged marriages breaking up(U might say that the same is true for ‘love’ marriages, but what i am talking about is the rate of increase in the divorce rate… it IS sky high and because of the very very few number of love marriages, i believe that the divorce rates are largely indicative of the arranged marriages breaking up! Atleast that is what my 2 semester of core statistics courses say). Although I feel really sorry for the kids who have their childhood torn apart from because of this, I should say that it is a sign that our culture is opening its eyes and listening to freedom.

The best way to deal with the kids who are affected by divorce is to start some organization which makes their lives smoother, like some counselling centers. Instead of making a hue and cry over the higher divorce rates let us rather let it go its own way and focuss on making less mistakes and also care for the children of the divorced. This will make sure that we kill this issue at the nip of the bud.