Saint Rantic

I find myself lost in the sea. Though this was expected of my journey, what was not expected was the pace at which things hit me. I am thinking now:”Am i worth it?”. This question is strange, because it asks u everything in just four words. For a dichotomous answer I would say No. For a more detailed answer it would be: Am i worth it? Not yet, but stay tuned!

There is one thing that I have noticed in people of great minds and great achievements. They manage their time. You have 24 hours in a day, 8 of which go for sleeping, 4 of which go for the housekeeping activities of your body. The remaining 12 hours are what we have in our hands. These are the hours that make the great people what they are and the average man what he is. Time is definitely a precious commodity.

The main ingredient of success is not of having talent that can beat anybody elses, but it is the whole of the mind and the body to be tuned into whatever you wanna do in your life.

Every beautiful achievement is like a consciously planted tree. You carefully choose a place to plant it. Then plant the seeds of change. Put water and take good care of it. You also enrich it with fertilizers and supplements. Some or even all parts of your life will be almost spent in thinking about the tree, when and how it grows up etc etc.

Any great achievement can be thought of in the same way. The seeds of change sown by the conciousness. The decision to work hard to make it possible no matter what, and a single minded dedication to succeed. Ultimately the consciously taken decision to fight and then the hard work of fighting it through.

I am losing it on two grounds. I am not working hard and I am not utilizing my time. Everyone who knows me would note that I have been successful enough to be called successful, but it is never even close to the kind of success that I expect to get. Not even close to where I expect to see myself in sometime. I know that this is a long journey and I am biding some time to cleanse myself of my idiosyncracies. Nevertheless, i feel that I have wasted too much time biding and relaxing, and that makes me unhappy.

Philosophically speaking, Satisfaction and Hapiness is objective i.e. derived from ones own actions and in an ideal case should not depend on others or their actions. This means that they dont come for free and that you would have to work for them. I am not working hard enough. I am not searching hard enough for opportunities. I am making myself weak and feeble for the monster called time to eat me off. I am not giving my dreams the run of my life. My adrenaline no longer rises when I dream of something that no one has yet seen. It looks like a part of me has died and it does not sound good at all.

I am planning some changes, and I shall note them here and also note how much of it I achieved. Everytime I change in some positive direction I notice that there is something that destroys it. I have come to see a pattern. It does not show anything superhuman, it shows that I dont have the will power to do what I have to at any cost. In such a case how will I ever attain what I have set to achieve.

Another aspect is a bit funny and emotional. I have always dreamt that I would be madly in love with someone. It is both a physical and an emotional need. A Ying-Yang thing. It is somehow disturbing me that I have not yet come accross a woman whom I shall say “I love you” and mean it for all what I am worth. Or maybe, the problem is in being worth. “Am I worth the kind of woman that I want to fall in love with”, The answer : No. The detailed answer : Not right now, but tommorow for sure. Then wait for tommorow, build yoursslf up and you shall be just fine.

Waiting! And the wait is killing me. It is difficult to see yourself change. Emotions are like muscles. The more you put yourself into something the more emotional you become in that aspect. The more time you devote the more strong you become. It maybe a healthy growth OR it maybe an obsession. My emotional muscles are slack now. I have a weak emotional muscle for achievement. In other words, I am emotionally obese. Like the fat kid who lives around the corner doing nothing but eating chocolate and watching TV. Waiting! Suddenly one comes to realize that there are no miracles, you have to build the miracle with your own hands.

And henceforth starts the new chapter of my journey. A quest to rejuvenate, by doing something that holds meaning. Will post more, as soon as time permits.

I have decided to join the Band Wagon of people talking about the movie Rang De Basanti (RDB). I think its a great movie and here is my justification for it.
(This was originally posted here as a comment. I previewed it and thought it would look better as a post on my blog and as a DC post later.)
1) This movie has lit up the spirit of atleast 50% of the ppl i know who have seen the movie. It proves (to me atleast) that how many ppl are desperate enough to see something positive. It shows the EDUCATED, LITERATE and LEARNED India is desperate for a change. All we miss among such a group is a set of Individual who DO something rather than crib and comment (like me ). This movie shows it happening.

2) I think the message of the movie was to set a towering example of integrity towards principles. It did succeed in that. I guess if the story really happened then these charectors would be worshipped in India as equals of the Great Bhagat Singh. The only thing that I dont like in the movie was that it set the wrong ideals of revolution and violence. I think India needs reforms and not revolution. Also a revolution is mostly possible in a homongenous country where people are homogenous. We are the exact opposites of homogenity, because of centuries of irrational casteism and 100s of languages(which btw is used to divide and rule by the politicians just like our british masters did) So a revolution is not possible. We have to ACT and not REACT. We have to attack layer by layer. That would take a long path of struggle, and probably would make a long story spanning decades.

3) This movie(especially during the last sections) shows our political masters of today as equal to our british masters of the past. Both are fucked up(pardon me for the language but i have to use it and i MEAN it) and both have fucked up and plundered the country to the state it exists. BUT at ‘pre independence’ the Great Bhagat Singh and the likes decided to do something about the fucked up masters and he did it. He send waves among the people. According to me Bhagat Singh was a very learned man, having a towering integrity. For example check out THIS ARTICLE by Bhagat Singh on why he chose to be an atheist.
What we need right now is to identify that we are still not free. We have the same fate if our fucked up british masters had continued ruling us or our fucked up political masters continue to rule us. I do not blame the political masters or the british masters completely for this. For its Us the people that are TOLERATING this nonsense and we react by refusing to act against nonsense.

Gandhi used Tolerance as a virtue, and now we see it being used against us by our political masters. The more we tolerate here the more we get fucked, period. And we see tolerance everywhere. A govt. officer asks for a bribe, we tolerate and give in and say ‘chalo bhai, 300 ruppaye mein kya hai? De do’. Someone breaks the Red Light Signal, we say ‘chalo bhai, usko koi urgent Kaam Rahega, usse jaane do!!!’. A Politician rapes someone’s child and the news spreads, we say ‘Thank God, Meri Beti nahi hai. Woh politician hai, hum uske against kuch bhi nahi kar sakenge’. The more we show the other chin the more slaps we get. And they will slap us till we are doomed. Which is the state of contemporary India.

Tolerance is an ethical attribute of a philosophy. Tolerance is an action which presupposes a situation and a set of principles to act on. If u have integrity u shall never tolerate something against it. Say for example bribing is against ur principles, U shall never tolerate the offer of a bribe nor shall u tolerate the demand for a bribe. Perpetuating tolerance as a virtue to be held true at all times is suicidal idealism, and it does more harm than good. There can be no perfect example than India.

Bhagat Singh realized this and decided NOT to tolerate. That is what we ought to do. And thats why RDB is a GREAT movie. It contains the message of Intolerance. It contains the message of WHAT to tolerate and WHAT NOT to tolerate.

I am surprised that so many ppl miss out the richness of the movie.
I am also saddened that most ppl need movies like RDB and Swades to think about India. Shows how much we tolerate!!!!

I took some pictures of mine.. and here they are!!! Me just after arriving from work (i work in an online store as an inventory maintainance worker.. apart from my usual job of being a ‘professional student’)

And this is my room over here (KhelNayak would be suprised when he looks at this pic. he he he)

This is the kitchen

And this is my main door

This is the gate (the cars are not mine… wish i had atleast one!!!!)

That is the gate…

Ok i will be back with soon with the pics of the university…

till then all of u bye!!!!!!

Strangely enough i discovered today that there had been immigration to the United States by Indians as early as 1790… thats like ages ago….ofcourse many people were here because they were enslaved. Like for example La China Poblana or Mirrha(indian name) was in Mexico at the 1620 (she was mistaken to be chinese though).

Anyways I just changed the punch line of my blog to the statement by one of the immigrant who was a victim of the rampant racism here in the 1920s. I just cannot help but agree to that statement. here it is:

You must never be limited by external authority, whether it be vested in a church, man, or book. It is your right to question, challenge, and investigate. — Bhagat Singh Thind

This guy worked his way thru lumber mills in Oregon and paid for his education at University of California Berkeley. Check out the story and more here.

This stuff is amazing!!!!!!

This is a sad sad story….

I just cannot imagine the parent’s mental situation!!!!!!!

What is the remedy for such a situation when a student goes a little cranky and like this case brings a toy gun in the school and then starts threatening to ’shoot’ people?

Over the glass of whiskey that I am having now I ponder of time when i was frustrated with school(and life too). I dont really know whether I was cranky enough to have attempted such a prank.. but i dont find my past teenage self much different from this guy out here….only that he is dead now.

Sounds like a kid doing the wrong thing at a wrong time.

And after seeing this, this and this and also reading this article from Still Figuring Out.. i have finally almost convinced myself, contrary to my earlier stand, that people should be given the right to abort…. i do not have the courage to hear such stories.. nor does any human have to be treated like this!!!!!

When there are so many couples out there who are ready to love their kids and who cannot have one… Why O’ Why do such sickening tales occur……..

Here is another one, though not related to abuse by parents..

just have to intoxicate myself… till i don’t feel anything anymore!!!!

Love begins with those words….. they contain the escence of love. And i am happy that i got the answer that i was searching for so desperately for the question : What is love?

I am talking about love from a man’s point of view… i dont think it would be much different from a woman’s point of view. So this speaks for women as well.

I got this idea from a place where I dont think many people would find such a thing from. From the film ‘King Kong’ (i did not like the movie though). Another film which i would like to mention is ‘Million Dollar Baby’ adapted from F.X Toole’s wonderful work on the art and science of Boxing known as ‘Rope Burns’ (a must read for all the would be sports coaches out there). Another movie which really influenced me in this matter is the movie “Forrest Gump”, especially one specific dialogue in that particular movie.

Love’s deal is simple…… and i can see now why it just takes seconds to forge a bond that lasts a lifetime.

So here we go: What happens when u really fall in love with someone? The first words that come into almost everyone is the word share…. i never used to believe in that version but it surprised me when I started reasoning in the same angle.

‘To Share’ is the feeling that I recognized in King Kong when he takes the beautiful Ann Darrow on to his home and shares his beautiful view of the world from that place, and through that gesture he shares his part of the world with her.

‘To share’ is the feeling that i recognized in the dialogue that Forrest Gump has with the love of his life, Jenny Curran. Even though she never cared a bit about sharing her life with Forrest, Forrest always used to remember her….. and he tried to share with her every beautiful dream and thought that he had come to. Forrest Gump was a wonderful love story in that sense…. here is the dialogue in which Forrest shares his experiences and dreams.

Jenny Curran: Were you scared in Vietnam?
Forrest Gump: Yes. Well, I-I don’t know. Sometimes it would stop raining long enough for the stars to come out… and then it was nice. It was like just before the sun goes to bed down on the bayou. There was always a million sparkles on the water… like that mountain lake. It was so clear, Jenny, it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other. And then in the desert, when the sun comes up, I couldn’t tell where heaven stopped and the earth began. It’s so beautiful.
Jenny Curran: I wish I could’ve been there with you.
Forrest Gump: You were.

The question here is the issue of sharing. Unfortunately many people now take sharing for giving and receiving gifts… I think love takes the pride in a woman who shows off the latest gift from her boy-friend and also happiness of a guy showing off his new wrist watch gift from his girl-friend. Most guys would be happy if their girl-friends would be kind enough to let them show off the girl herself to his friends. Or there is a different kind of sharing that goes on… an exchange system… the guy gives the gal love to get sex in return… and the gal gives the guy sex to get loved in return. All this is fine even though it fails the test of rationality and thus obviously collapses in the long run… creating a lot of emotionally unstable people who search for ‘True Love’.

The truth is that I too was in search of ‘True Love’ for sometime and that too i was desperately searching for it. I went through all the versions i mentioned above…. until i was deep in thought about why is there a ‘True Love’ when i assumed that love is one of the most sanest and the most rational things that one should be doing. Everything was confusing…. and that made it all the more interesting. I was searching for some meaning in whatever i remembered of my relationship with my ex-girlfriend.

Then I saw the Movie ‘King Kong’ in San Diego. It was filled with monsters and its a big mess of a movie. But it had that element of ‘True Love’ which i was desperately searching for, and more than graphics it was that human element of Love that captured my imagination.
It got me thinking.
if i were to love a woman what would be the most rational thing to share, What would be the most valuble gift to present her? The rational answer is this: I would gift her the work of my life. I would give her an opportunity to be with me when I see some of the most beautiful sights in my life.

The most beautiful sights obviously are not the ones that everyone can see if they go to say Himalayas or Switzerland.The most beautiful gift that i can give to a woman is not gonna be some Jewellery or a car or a house. It is going to be the work of my life. It would present her an opportunity to be a part of my struggle and my journey towards my destination. It would present her a view of a dream that only i have seen and no one else has seen. So love is going to be sharing my dream, my vision. Its not sacrifice as shown in the countless trite movies out there.. Its not about giving up your dreams for the sake of love… its about living ur dreams and then share them with your woman. Love is not about chains that hold u to a woman. It is the one that frees u from the irrationalities of the world. Love does not give u a shoulder to lay your head and cry. Love gives u an opportunity to hold someones hand and give her the best of what u can give anyone. Love is not about taking your time off your work and going out to shop or to a movie.. love is about sharing the fruits of your the work of your life by giving your work all the time that it requires. Love is not about saying :” I would do anything for u my love!!”. Its about saying “Let me show you something, my love; The work of my life, The best of what i can give u”. Love is not chains… its freedom.

Once you find such a person to share your dreams with. Will you ever think of leaving her. Once you find such a person will you ever cheat on her, will u ever disrespect her. This is the only kind of love that i recognize. There is no other love and no other emotion qualifies to be called as ‘True Love’. Infact there is no other love. So there is no ‘True Love’. It means that most people out there ‘Love’ are not in Love and when they screw up they go in search of ‘True Love’ or unconditional love(this also means that many people think that there is something called ‘False Love’ too!!).

I think the most beautiful woman is the one who can understand what I live for. Who can understand what I am offering her, who can appreciate the ’sanctity’ of the offer to share my life rather than the one who expects me to give her some random gift like some Jewellery. Love is about understanding the reason of each others existence and then undersatanding that each offers the best of what they can.

So the next time you see someone who can understand what u live for, and you feel like sharing everything with her… start with the words :-” Let me show you something!!!!!! The work of my life!!!!!”

http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/shit-happens.html

Sow the seeds of change today.

Fight with perseverence, smartness and patience

Tommorow, you will find yourself standing at the roots of a revolution!!!!!!

This is in response to the comments I got for the previous post. The comments are very legitimate and the arguments are strong. The point of difference however is in the core of the message that I was trying to drive home. The points of assumptions in those arguments were totally different from what i was trying to portray. So here is the exact(and mathematcial) message of what I wanted to give.
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Assume that you have some very limited amount of rice(You are poor that is). Assume that you are hungry and assume that you have a BIG field. Assume that the field can be fertile randomly(it can be infertile too).

My question is: Given that you are poor/average, how much will you EAT and how much will you SOW?

The answer is : Eat only as much is neccessary to keep you alive, and sow as much as you can.

In other words when u are poor and u have limited amount of money do not invest in luxury…. invest in growth and invest as much in neccessities to keep u alive. That is the sure shot strategy to get rich later.
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A more mathematical discussion is provided below

Its simple :–>

assume that you have some capital. Given the conditions of your organization how would you allocate it ?
This is the stuff that CEO’s are payed for.

The answer : In such a way that long term growth is ensured.

Given that u have are poor and u have a very limited capital; where would u invest it in order to grow?

The answer to this can be multi-leveled. I will give u a simple one. One that makes concrete logical sense (and one that i am comfortable handling from the financial engineering sessions i have been attending in USC).

One of the most fundamental questions in economics AND the CRUX of an MBA program is the question above.

Put in other words : Would you invest in a potential liability or would you invest in a potential growth asset, given that you are poor? (or in some rare cases; given that u have truck loads of money, but thats not what we are talking about here) .

Here are some fun facts:
Any asset(not a liability) which makes a profit of say ‘D’ with a growth rate of ‘g’ would be priced as of today as D(1+g)/(r-g). This is a simple form of a concept called Rational Asset Pricing (which infact is used to determine the value of stocks of a company for example). Where ‘r’ is the risk free interest rate.

All this stems from the most important mathematical equation known to mankind :-

S = p(1 + R)^n –> The compound interest equation (applies to a liability too in such a case put p as the present value of the liability and r as negative); ‘S’ is the value after ‘n’ years.

If the interest is compounded every second the equation turns into an exponential one.

S = p*exp(Rn) –> where exp is the exponential function. note that if ‘R’ is negative ‘S’ becomes ZERO in NO TIME.

Another fun fact is that the same things have been used to infer two things about markets

• Markets are effecient almost always
• (Stock) Markets vibrate randomly by a phenomenon called brownian motion(which got Einstien a Nobel prize in Physics and Scholes a Nobel Prize in Economics).

Coming back to our issue let us say we buy a potential liability: say a car which has a depreciation rate each year and hence a negative growth rate. Its easy to show that with a fixed linearly increasing income this car would be eat into the regular income of an individual. Where in the money he could have invested in growth somewhere would be instead going into the maintainence of the car.

Its easy to prove (using the central limit theorem, by the assumption that each individuals economics is an independent identically distributed random variable) that on an average this would result in a LOSS in the income of an individual thereby pulling down the growth rate of the market. The result is an economic disaster –> it could be seen as one of the reason for the existence of a HUGE underperforming middle class in India. Because we have built ourselves as consumers who tend to spend ourselves more on potential liabilities than on growth assets.

Thus we see that we have incurred a factor of negative growth with a liability which has a negative growth value. We also see that because of ‘care free’ investment strategies the middle class ‘on an average’ of India REMAINS middle class and stagnates in income.

Lets compare it with a growth engine or in economic terms a growth asset whose value grows over the years. The argument is exactly the same as that of the one i gave above. The best example would be a tractor.

Even though a cheap tractor is a liability its easy to see that it increases the productivity of the farmer on an average and hence it has a positive rate of growth. Since the tractor is cheap, even people below poverty line can afford it. Now since i am sure that the tractor is a positive growth engine for a farmer i would be more than happy to give a loan to him. This would mean that I am increasing the growth asset of the farmer as well as mine too.

Now consider the class of poor farmers who can afford the tractor. Their growth asset value will increase(in other words –> they will grow rich) hence according to the Central Limit Theorem the poor man will be more and more richer. And since on an average the poor man grows richer we have national wealth being created because on an average the whole population gains wealth. This is the alchemist’s secret –> To create gold from nothing.

I am not arguing for OR against anything here. My point is to state that instead of making liabilities cheaper so that every one will afford the luxury and make themselves poorer by the day, we have to make growth assets cheaper so that everyone can grow rich and hence they can afford to spend on whatever they want.

This is just one example. Of course there are other factors which we have to comsider which i have not done.

The essence is this. You have an infinite field (the market potential) where u can sow whatever u want. You have a limited amount of rice. The question is how much will u sow and how much will u consume.

The crux of my argument was that we should focus on sowing the rice as much as we can and consume only as much as we require, so that tommorow we grow into the worlds strongest power.