The nuclear deal.

Kudos to Dr Manmohan Singh in closing a nuclear deal with America which at-once has put India on the nuclear map without sacrificing any of its interests.The idea was to give US an inch but not to let it get away with the mile and India has succeded. India's gains are threefold

1. By agreeing to US demand of seperation of civialian and strategic nuclear programs India has opened the civilian section to international safeguards and also for the first time opened its doors for international trade in nuclear material, equipment and technologies for meeting its growing energy needs.
2. Without having to sign the GNEP and the NPT it has established itself as a nuclear power and ended the regime of technology denial on since 1974
3.It has achieved the above two without having to give up its fast breed reactor program or it reprocessing and enrichment facilities.

From what I understand, this is great step towards India becoming a key player in the nuclear world. I am not sure why there is so much doubt and dissatisfaction and drama in the opposition parties and in the congress itself? !!!

MatchPoint

Last weekend I went to see the movie MatchPoint starring Jonathan Rhys-Meyers and Scarlett Johansson and directed by Woody Allen. Overall a good movie watching experience. Scarlett Johansson is at her seductive best and Woody Allen's direction keeps the audience guessing and tensed at the same time throughout the two hours.

The main theme of the movie revolves around the lives of four people, two with lots of money and two with the desire to get a lot of money. The plot intertwines the lives of these four in a web of sex, love, desire, ambition and obsession. (If you plan to see the movie please read at your own risk)

An ambitious Jonathan Rhys-Meyers rises up the rungs of the social ladder by wooing and marrying the daughter of a rich businessman. Everything seems to be going well for him till he meets the sexy Scarlett Johansson. They start having a secret affair. Scarlett Johansson gets pregnant and threatens to come out in the open. In the end the hero Jonathan Rhys-Meyers meticulously plans and executes the cold-blooded murder of his lover.

The confusion and fear of committing a murder out of desperation and greed, though, very grippingly portrayed in the second half of the movie, I thought it is kind of an old concept. However, what makes this movie stand out among the rest of the murder mystery thrillers are the many underlying philosophical issues addressed by Allen. One of them being the idea of luck and the strange ways it influences ones life. The movie begins with a tennis ball hitting the net and hovering in the air deciding which side to fall. If you have hit the shot you would want the ball to fall over to the other side and make you win. But what if it doesn’t, what if the ball falls on your court. Is it all that bad! What looks like bad luck in the beginning might win you the match in the long run, like it did for the hero who finally gets away with the murder. The role that luck plays in our lives is unfathomable and I really liked the way this is portrayed in the movie.

What's in a name

My family does not have the tradition of keeping a 'family name' per se. Instead the children add the fathers name to their own name, and shorten it to form the initial. For example my fathers name was Srinivasan Subramanian or S. Subramanian to represent Subramanian(my father) son of Srinivasan (my grandfather). My name thus became Subramanian Shyamala or S. Shyamala, that is to say Shyamala daughter of Subramanian.
A few decades ago, especially in the villages of south India, people also added the name of the village shortened to an initial, right in the beginning. For example my mothers maiden name is Trirupatur (village from where her family hails) Vishwanathan(fathers name) Jayalakshmi (her name)or T.V.Jayalakshmi. Thus if someone knows the name of the person he effectively also know the persons village and fathers name and can easily trace the family tree if needed. Easy and efficient way to keep track of people.
In many parts of India family names are common: the more famous ones being the Tata's , Birla's, Ambanis and ofcourse Bannerjees, Chatterjees Khans D'Souza etc. Also in some parts of India people use their last names to represent their caste such as 'Iyer','Singh', 'Jat','Iyengar', 'Nair', 'Naidu', 'Reddy', 'Gowda', 'Jain'to name a few. Occupation also sometimes influenced the family names such as Batliwala (family whose ancestors sold bottles) Gandhi (grocerers).

Avul Pakir Jainulabhudin Adbul Kalam -- Name of current President of India
Pilavullakandi Thekkeparambil Usha -- Indian athlete and star of the 1984 Asian games
Sripathi Panditharadhyal Balasubramanyam -- Known as SPB, a very popular playback singer in Indian Film Music; also singer of formal South-Indian music
Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata: Founder of the Tata group
Rasipuram Krishnaswami Ayyar Naranayanaswami : Of the Malgudi fame


These naming traditions no longer exist and people have adapted names to suit the First name, middle name, last name format. The transition has however been painful for some people like me.
When my parents wanted to get me admitted to a Christian convent school the administration refused to take an initial for either the first name or last. So the initial was expanded to become the first name Subramanian and last name remained Shyamala. This was how it was passed on to college where forever the professor would call out Subramanian and look up expecting a guy to stand-up. I would slowly raise my hand and they would look at me puzzled. How can Subramanian be a girl and I had to explain it all. You see Subrmanian is not my name but by fathers and it is written first. My first name is Shyamala and if you look carefully at the list it is written in the end. They would shake their heads understandingly but then the whole routine would be repeated again the next morning. This is how I lived through 4 years of college, a girl call Subramanian. Thank god for coming to the USA, when I finally got the chance to set the order right.

"how to get to Annanagar?"

Autorickshaw, known as the auto or the riksha or the tempo, depending on the part of India you are from, is a motorize 3-wheeled means of public transport, common used in South Asia. It very popular because it is cheap, fast and abundantly available giving the traveller lots of flexibility. Because of the 3 wheeled assymtrical shape it is able to weave in and out of traffic jams easily and smoothly as compared to bigger 4-wheeled vechicles. It has a semi-open structure, it is covered only on top , while the sides remain permenantly open allowing the rider to enjoy the sights of city and some fresh air while travelling.
While I was in India last month, I frequently travelled in these autos. One evening around 6pm I was on the way home on an auto. The sun was slowing going down and the city lights were coming up all around making a normal city day look festive and colorful. The rush of people trying to get home from work was increasing by the minute. Sitting in the back seat of the auto all I could see was a flood of traffic and people.Like the the traffic, composed of one,two,three,four,six wheelers and two,three,four legged creatures; the people were also a motley bunch. A mixture of both the elderly adorned in rich sarees and dhotis and the young people in business suits and pants. In the midst of all this my auto-driver was making his way skillfully through the cars and cycles and pedestrians,heading to a relatively free fly-over just ahead.
On reaching the flyover the traffic thinned down a bit as the driver speeded up to get ahead. I was seated behind enjoying the elavated view of chennai, when suddenly a car zooms in from the back and starts moving parallel to the auto trying to maintain the same speed as us. I look around wondering whats wrong. The car window comes down and a mans head pops out. He leans over and shouts across the roaring traffic in Tamil " Do you know the way to Annanagar". I am taken aback. We are both moving at relatively high speeds, in a relatively busy area with traffic zooming all around us and here is a man asking me directions across a moving car.
Instantly, for some reason, the car chase sequence from the movie Speed flashes across my mind with Keanu Reeves hanging out of a car trying to talk to the bus driver and I am now all excited. But unfortunately I dont know the way to Annanagar. So I lean across the side of the auto, give the "I have no clue" shrug and shout out "dont know sorry".
Well the getleman was not about to give in so easily, especially with more than half of the flyover still left to go. So he nudges his driver in front, who then leans out of the car and asks the auto driver for the diections. The auto driver happily obliges and for the next 2 minutes the two drivers driving side by side hold an animated conversaton as to the different possible routes to Annanagar and which ones will have the least traffic at this time of the day, while at the same time manipulating their respective vehicles over the flyover. As the flyover ends and we enter the mainstream traffic the two vechicles diverge. I reach home and while paying off the auto driver, I cant help wondering if the car made it to Annanagar afterall.
I am sure this is a day-to-day experience for many people but for me this was different. Having started my driving career in USA I could not help but rememeber the many times when I was in a big city, sitting in the car, lost, stuck in traffic not knowing which exit to take and not knowing whom to ask. Well looks like there is a slim possiblility of that happeneing in India. Beacause here all I have to do is roll down my window, lean across and shout!

Sounds of India:

I am just back from a trip to India. It has been more than 2 years since I visited India, so the last 3 weeks have been an eye-opener for me. Lots of things have changed, more sky-scrapers, more cell-phone, more cars, more fly-overs, a booming economy etc etc. But some things still remain the same. And it is these small everyday constant occurrences, particular to India and life in India, that helped me feel at home and at ease in spite of all the changes that have taken place. I will try to blog these constants in the following weeks.

Lata Mangeshkar, Zakir Hussein, A R Rehman, Carnatic music are some of the things that come to mind when one reads the title "Sounds of India". True, these are what represents India on a global level but what I mean is something less glamorous. It is the basic everyday day sounds or noises heard on a typical day in India that I would like to talk about.

On a typical day as I wake up at around 7am in the morning the first sound that floats to my ear is the loud cawing of a crow sitting on my balcony. It has a nest on a tree nearby and my house balcony is its frequent halt. Not only crows but birds of all shapes and sizes drop by through the day, some making pleasant noises and other cawing loud enough to give a headache.

As I get out of bed I hear devotional music, the morning raga, coming from a temple two streets away. They use very huge loud speakers to play different songs according to the time of the day and deity of worship and so it is constantly heard in the background throughout the day. Hearing the mantras and slogas are considered good and pious, so nobody has any complains about the decibel level.

The day progresses and a multitude of noises come my way; the school van downstairs honking; the crying of a kid upstairs who does not want to go to school ; the rolling of bells in a far away temple; the sound of prayer from a nearby mosque and of course the intermittent honking of vehicles as they make the blind turn on the road in front on my house. In the absence of stop signs, honking is must for safe driving in India.

Then there is the vegetable monger screaming all the names of all the fresh produce he is carrying, as he pushed his cart on the street. Also can be heard the screams of the cobbler, the knife-sharpner, the beggar, the fruit vendor, the tinkler to name the few. The door to door salepeople have mastered the art of shouting things so loudly and coherently that you just cannot miss them whichever part of the house you are in.

In the middle of all this I hear the voice of my mother calling me for lunch. As I sit down to eat, the door bell rings. This the first of the many people who ring the doorbell everyday. It is amazing how many times it rings in India . First there is the milkman then the servant maid then the salesman the postman the neighbor etc etc. The count is endless and it actually feels odd if the doorbell is silent for a few hours and my mother starts wondering if it is broken or something:).

By mid afternoon the construction work across the street is going on full fledged and the noise of the hammering drilling and sawing can be clearly heard. Also heard is the barking of the street dogs and the mooing of cows which are out on the street looking for their mid-day meal. Occasionally you can hear the loud TV or music from the neighbor’s house also. By evening one can hear the children playing cricket in a nearby park. The traffic on the main road also gets very busy and the screeching of tiers, the angry honking of cars, the beeping of the motorcycles increase to an incredible level. As night falls the traffic decreases and children go home and animals and birds go to bed and India seems to have finally fallen silent. But not quite so because as I make my way to bed I hear a truck hit the pothole cover in front of my house making a loud clank followed by a horn as it makes the blind turn.As I drift to sleep I feel happy and at home with all these sounds of India.

I am back at Penn State now and the silence is really defeaning.!!!

Apartment search:

Some things are best done in the last minute. Well, I would say almost 99% of all tasks. This way you have just a minute to worry about the infinite things that can go wrong which will go wrong anyways whether you worry about it or not.
I am now faced with the challenge of looking for an apartment and a roommate for Fall06. Yes I know it is only Feb now and Fall of 2006 is almost 8 months away, what is the big hurry now? I dont know. I am just this innocent procrastinator who has been swept into this sudden whirlpool of leases that's going around the town and so here I am writing this blog and looking for an apartment.
I am perplexed and resistant to the whole process mainly beacuse so far things have been easy for me.House/apartments/roommates seemed to have just happened to me and I have no complains. I spent the first 18 years with my parents, no choice there what so ever. Then I went to a hostel where a room and a roomie was pre-assigned to be on a purely random basis. When I came to PSU I had a roommate and apartment packaged from India. So now after some 25 odd years I am forced to have to make a choice as to where to live and with whom. And I swear this is a decision that's giving me nightmares.
I wish this was August and I was to be kicked out of the present house, then, I would be forced to sign the first lease that came my way and get done with the whole business. But now with so much time in hand I have to make the very difficult 'intelligent decision'. All the nitty-gritty of finding the right apartment and the perfect roomate are daunting. Live alone or with roommate? One bedroom or two or infinite bedrooms?Whats the rent, will I go bankrupt? How many miles exactly from campus? How many inches of closet space? What all are included in the rent, parking, heat, electricity,gas? roommate, eh,ouch,god help me????
Well I guess another 8 months and I will come to know my fate for next year but as of now I am in my own perfect dreamland where I see a house (townhouse??) my own big room (is that a walk-in closet I see?), my car (parked in a closed garage away form the snow), my TV (wow! is that HBO on a wide-screen) and a roommate (what is she doing, cooking, vacuuming??) and the most vivid part of it all, a newspaper clipping "Penn State University takes pity of poor graduate students: additional $$$$$ for monthly housing and food expenditure".

It all started one boring Wednesday evening. I was on the phone with good old pal Yathi talking about all the usual things 3rd year PhD student like us droll on and on about, the apartment the department the advisor, the budweiser etc etc..
Yathi, also know as the mahatma of one liners , comes up with "I am bored of all this, let do something different man". At first, I thought it was just one of his usual opening lines for the list of things wrong with his life, but this time he meant different. So we went on to talk of all the things new and different we could perhaps start doing. We were past that age to collect stamps or coins as a hobby, so perhaps we could learn to play a instrument, or learn a language or go trekking to the white mountains or grand canyon. All this sounded good but unfortunately one of is totally out of shape and the other was not born with an ear for music. So we decided why not try writing something everyday, a blog perhaps, about nothing in particular but just for killing the time we have. We have written infinite reports , technical gibberish and emails before, why not try this?
So here we start a new year, a new hobby, a new blog and two old buddies for company.
photo:Yathi and me, summer '04.