Durga Puja

For a Bengali the most awaited event of the year is surely the Durga Pujas. Its always what we look forward to. It’s the time when not only Maa Durga comes home to her fathers place, but we want to go home to the place we belong. Every year it’s the same and every year its special.

This year too Puja came and Puja went. Maa came and Maa left. One of the most memorable if sad pujas for me. I literally struggled to go home this time and after much hardships I did manage to go home. There the time I spent was special. Met up with friends, family, cousins whom I now meet only once a year. All in all a good time.

But this time when Maa was leaving, I had tears in my eyes, just wanted to stop Maa and tell her to stay back, no to go so soon. Yes this time it was too soon. Before the childhood like excitement could build up it was all over and Maa was on her way back. In our locality she even decided to not show her face but just leave. Never did I feel this bad. She left giving us a sense of emptiness that will take some time to fill.

Now that I am back to work, I wish, like I always do, for the next Puja, for the next season for excitement, fun, frolic.

Maa we are waiting

The Bet

This weekend has really been just “passing moments”. Life suddenly decided to play a prank on me and bang!! Surprise me!! And did I get surprised? Well, it really isn’t a million dollar question, I did. These days (as is quite evident in my blogs), I am into an introspection mood. Whenever, I sit to write for this space, I just love thinking “differently”. So today too, I am just going to do that.

When I school, I read a short story named “The Bet” by Anton Chekhov. The story was so brilliant that even today after so many years, I remember it distinctly. The story was about a silly bet between a banker and a young lawyer. While on an argument about the morality of life imprisonment and capital punishment, the lawyer says that he would choose life imprisonment over the other as to “live anyhow is better than not at all." This leads to a bet among the two wherein the lawyer stakes his freedom and the banker two million for a period of 15 years. What happens is how at the end of the term, the lawyer through his solitary confinement learns the real lessons of life and foregoes the money to proof to the banker what he learnt. The story talks about what imprisonment is all about and how people see it.

It may seem strange to be narrating this story but I couldn’t help but recollect it this weekend. The term “imprisonment” can bring horrors in one’s mind (it surely does to mine). I mean today living in an independent country (I’ll not get into the controversy of the statement) I enjoy many things which the history books tell me my ancestors probably didn’t. I live in a global village, in a unique blend of cultural roots and modernization. Even the rules that are set for me are okay by general standards and most of it is acceptable. But still there are many instances when I feel someone has breached into my independence and all is so wrong. The rules seem to be bad, authoritative and I just don’t want to abide with them. But hello! Ultimately I listen to those rules and abide by them too. There are very few of us who has the courage to stand up and tell that something displeases us.

I am alas not one of those who can stand up and say what displeases me. I hate many things around me and wish to change a lot of them but look at me. I am sitting here and penning my thoughts. Well, I don’t think doing this is just that bad; it has become my window to the world. I love doing this and love the fact that atleast somehow I vent out my feelings. Every time I blog, I say a silent thanks to the people of thought of this wonderful medium. Just love doing this.

Life is beautiful

Born and brought up in a town, a town that grew as I grew. A town that slowly turned into a city, a town that now is becoming a major place for trade and commerce….a town that is slowly opening up to the world. Just when militancy and violence was becoming the order of the day, things started changing in a “Scotland of the East”. Peace and solidarity among the people became common. And in this place I grew.

Coming out of this dreamland, I realized what life really is. Today while attending a lecture on development, I got a glimpse of the “real” world around me. Rather the “real” India. We so often talk about “real” India, “real” people but till today I never really understood this “real” thing. But today I did. For me, people towns and cities constitute “real” people (I can’t be hypocrite, I know I am being a snobbish fool). Village was and is still a place far removed from who I am. I have never been to a village, the backbone of our country. I have never seen agriculture or farming. I have never seen a farmer toiling a hard day in the farms (except the glimpses from trains). I have only read about it. So these “real” people have been very “unreal” for me.

In school geography taught me the bare details of agricultural practices, how new variety of crops are grown, etc. From newspapers and the mass media I got to know about the terrible conditions of the farmers; the increasing number of suicides among them, the droughts, the famine. But I was never affected by them. How could I be, I never felt the scarcity of food, never had to work as hard as they do. It’s true that I had a certain amount of sympathy for them but never empathy for them. I never understood them. And I guess I never needed to. Even today I don’t need to. I am working towards my goal that is far away from these villages, these farmers.

However, on perspective, I don’t seem to fit in the hotch-potch of a metro as well. A month there sometime ago and I suffocated. As the days pass by, I sit here and think, where am I heading towards? Who are we, these middle-class-aiming-to-be-rich people?

Adding to our senses

Even in this day of high technological advancement, we human beings still rely on our five senses for perceiving any information. Technocrats have often wondered if a device could be developed that could take place of the abstract concept of the sixth sense. The Media Lab of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) under Pattie Maes, has come up with an unique device which is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use the natural hand gestures to interact with that information. This is the “Sixth Sense” deviced by Pranav Mistry, a research scholar in the Media Lab of MIT.

According to the developers of the Sixth Sense, in today’s increasing consumerism, the internet has become our constant companion to get added information about things and people. We also use our mobiles to connect to the internet and get any information about anything we want. But the point here is, “whenever we want the information, we search for it”. The information does not come automatically. Sixth Sense will help in getting any information (like the quality of the product, the current rating of the product on the internet, the significance of the product etc) about products and purchases automatically when we are choosing something. Basically the device will help us to make the correct purchasing decision about any product. Further, if seeing a scenery, we want to take a photograph, we will no longer need to take out our mobile cameras to do so. Just the standard hand gesture of framing a picture will take the scene and store it in the mobile computer. There are many other things that can be done with the Sixth Sense.

The prototype implements many applications that demonstrate flexibility, viability and usefulness of the system. Other interesting applications are the map application which lets the user navigate a map displayed on a nearby surface using hand gestures allowing us to zoom in, zoom out, resize and even pan the movement. In another application, we can draw on any surface. This will again be done by the device tracking our hand movement on the air. If we want a watch to see the time, just making a circle on the wrist will display the clock on the hand and when we have seen the time a simple erasing gesture will remove it. If a person comes infront of us, all information about him available on him over the internet will get displayed on the person’s body. If we want to log into our e-mail, the gesture of tracking the “@” sign will display our e-mail.

The Sixth Sense prototype is comprised of a pocket projector, a mirror and a camera. The hardware components are coupled in a pendant like mobile wearable device. Both the projector and the camera are connected to the mobile computing device in the user’s pocket. The projector projects visual information enabling surfaces, walls and physical objects around us to be used as interfaces; while the camera recognizes and tracks user's hand gestures and physical objects using computer-vision based techniques. The software program processes the video stream data captured by the camera and tracks the locations of the colored markers (visual tracking fiducials) at the tip of the user’s fingers using simple computer-vision techniques. The movements and arrangements of these fiducials are interpreted into gestures that act as interaction instructions for the projected application interfaces. The maximum number of tracked fingers is only constrained by the number of unique fiducials, thus Sixth Sense also supports multi-touch and multi-user interaction.

Sixth Sense is still in the labs and has not been launched for the general public. But even in this stage, it has cost just $350. If any easy calculation is made, when it will go more mass production, the value will come down further. Its creator, Pranav Mistry has already got the “Best Innovation Award, 2009” for this product. It is surely an innovation to look forward to. This has the potential for bringing the internet and added information all the more closer to us. There are certain points in the device that can be abused more than used, for example, the application of clicking a photograph without any visible device. The application which gives added information about a person is also controversial. It will take the product to be launched for the mass to see what its impact will be on our lifestyle.

Being productive ….

Sitting idle, browsing through the various sites is what will describe my life right now. Passing moments it indeed is. I have missed blogging and actually haven’t posted anything for quite sometime. I am very lazy…lazy to the point where I become inactive. Everyday I come up with many ideas and think I need to tell my opinion about it through this blog. But the events pass, they became stale and no one will even want to know my opinion on it from me (ok…not many read my blog, I know) and I continue to pass my days saying “kuch nahi hoga”.

When I am in a criticizing mood, I ask myself, how can anything happen when people like me exist in India. We just love complaining. Sometimes, I believe that we can live without food but not without complaining. Life’s that pathetic for us. Right now sitting here, I can come up with ten problems I am supoosedly facing, when I should be looking at the brighter side and see that I am getting the time to blog. I know what this beautiful medium is all about. I atleast know I have a platform to tell people what I feel and I don’t just need to sit and complain. I can get pro-active if only I want to. But no, I like most Indians love sitting and idly passing the days. Everyday there are so many things that happen around us, so many things that directly or indirectly affect us. We need to form opinions and also share them with the world, specially when we are getting the chance and the platform to share it. I know and realize that I can share things and be a part of the process but no I love being complacent and satisfied.

Just another passing phase…..let this pass.