Note of thanks

Friends,

          It’s been a week since my heart cried, while my eyes stood still watching my friends cry. If I can simply explain my college life through Roger Penrose’s words, it’d be something like this. “Nothing can escape the pull of gravity of the EVENT HORIZON in the BLACK HOLES. All the MATTER and even LIGHT is crushed down, gets attracted and becomes so dense at a particular point in its centre. This is called the POINT OF SINGULARITY”. Till today I can’t find a way out of your intense pull of kindness, respect and love. So I got attracted through your event horizon of friendship and at last we all became ONE. This is keeping us united…today…tomorrow…and forever.

          Where do you expect me to start? I can start from individual, but it’ll never end. It just like counting the number of galaxies in the VIRGO SUPERCLUSTERS. The individual count goes on. I’d never thought that I would possibly make through these four years. Almost every night I thought of terminating my Engineering and had an opinion of pursuing Charted Accountant.  Everyone around me were disappointed for choosing this college initially, because they felt that this college can’t fulfil my potential. Books, newspapers and football were my only companions. After 12 wonderful years at school, college was something similar to talking about quantum mechanics to a kinder garden kid. Everything was against me and I still can’t find right words to detail those nightmares. Simply saying, I was like a righted handed bear (usually bears are left handed). But Charles Darwin was quite right in his “Evolution of the species”, in which he stated about “Survival of the fittest.” But what makes someone fit to survive? In my case it was YOU. Without you I would’ve ceased long back.

          At this stage I would like to share a small story. About the “THEORY OF EVOLUTION.” Today in polar bears are white in colour. But research says there was a time when Brown polar bears existed. But what happened to them now? They are extinct. But why? The answer is simple. Because Ice is white in colour. Stupid enough? Nah! The answer involves a stroke of genius. Bears has to feed on its preys to survive. White bear attacks its prey, catches and eats it. But you can argue brown bear can do the same. But it actually can’t. The prey can easily identify the brown bear in the midst of the white ice while it is difficult for the prey to spot the white bear in the midst of the ice. The prey could easily escape from the brown bears while it’s difficult to escape from the claws of white. As eons passed the survival probability of brown bears deceased. The white bears took its place. A simple white colour decided the survival of the whole goddamn species. Yeah! This is what called the “Survival of the Fittest.”

          Still can’t complete the circle? In the above story the white bear is me and the brown bear is my fear of failure. And YOU are the ice. YOU made me survive. You killed the brown bear and made it possible for me to sustain. Though the story is different after four years as lot of things changed, the change needed a Catalysts. The mental reaction which involved the transformation from oneself to another needs catalyst in form of friends, particularly in a new environment.

          My college life was nowhere near to those portrayed in movies and I thank GOD for that. If it’d been the same, I would never have got a chance to enjoy the other side. I think it’s time for English language to adapt words from other languages as it has failed me provide me with right words to explain OUR pristine relationship.

          Those encouragements and praises whenever I appear on stage and rebukes if it turns a failure, to those days when we sat at canteen to execrate our staffs while writing their respective assignments. Days before exams. Internal tests = Mr.Bean. Days when invigilators maintain close radius not knowing that we’ve “Already done the job”. NO-DUES. Most importantly the Staffs of almost every department, in the event of hearing our comments, would have increased the probability of suicidal commitments.

          I had wished for a college life, as enjoyable as my school days. But I was wrong. Instead it followed an ARITHMETIC PROGRESSION on a positive scale and the “COMMON DIFFERENCE” here was YOU again.

          Amongst you, I would’ve spent only few seconds, others few minutes, others few hours, others few days and my closest have spent years, while others with just a simple elegant smile. Still you made it possible for me. You’ve indirectly lived for me even without your knowledge. I can’t end this precious draft saying THANK YOU because it has become too formal unlike our relationship.

With tears,

Prasanna Jinku

INSPIRATION

          “Who’s your inspiration?” I asked. Krishna, who just turned eight yesterday coldly replied “Stephen Hawking”.

          The answer would be ordinary to those who are normal, but not for a person like me. The first question which blazed my mind was “So! You do like Black Holes?” and the answer from Krishna thwarted me completely. “No! I hate mouse”. No one seemed to understand the joke, but I did. The Black Hole Krishna was talking about was completely different from the black hole I was talking about. Come on! They are just separated by few million light years, I told myself. I should’ve stopped there, but my tongue was bit quicker than my thoughts. “But who told you about Stephen Hawking?” I asked. “My teacher! Last week she told everyone to consider Stephan Hawking and Isaac Newton as their inspiration and answer the same to those who asks such question”. All I could do was turn back and walk towards my home.

Inspiration doesn’t work like that. Once Arsenal legend Dennis Bergkamp told, “You don’t love a football club for its trophies or for its player, or for the history, or for your friends. You support it because you find yourself as a part of it: found a place where you belong”. The same applies to one’s inspiration. You just can’t choose a random figure and tell everyone going on road that he or she is your inspiration. It’s something connected to our inner conscience, deep in our sub-conscious mind such that in each of your idol’s activity you find yourself (I find myself in Jose Mourinho). People today select their respective Idol just because he/she has an excellent physical appearance, incredible skin tone and best body language and as a result Bollywood and Kollywood stars have become their role model (mind blowing!). It’s not like select a job and work toward it rather it’s like get a salary for what you’ve worked for. It’s an aftermath problem occurring in the middle of our journey of life. Inspiration can be anyone. My father consider “NATURE” as his inspiration. Inspiration can also be a coincidence. If you people have noticed my very first line the name “Krishna” and number “8” had a perfect coincidence, as Krishna was the eight child of Devaki and Vasudeva.

          Everything depends on our interests and our goal. I prefer the former as the most influential tool for this scenario. Interests are just like a drug-addict and the only difference is that you don’t have a centre for curing your INTERESTS as we’ve one for the drug addicts. Once you get into it you just can’t pull yourself out. It goes deep. A specific type of Bamboo in Africa, takes five years to grow three feet but after that the growth is significant. But what was it doing all this time in its first five years? Scientists later found out that it is actually the time taken for its roots to penetrate deeper into the ground to support its stem in the future. Similar are our interests. All humans have interests when they are young. It is nourished and matured as time passes. But due to various circumstances these interests might turn into so called “Hobby”. Once it becomes hobby, then crisis arrives. The crisis is not immediately felt. It’s felt when we show our HOBBIIES to our grandchildren sitting in our lap. Though our hands skim through our hobbies our heart will be saying, I should’ve never turned it to become a hobby. I should’ve stayed and continued with my interests. But that’s too late. You’ve missed a lot. Hell-a-lot…

Our interests leads us to our real inspirational figure. If our interests become our carrier then someday our inspirations can be our rivals. But this is not the same in everyone’s life today. They choose their carrier for money and beauty. The inspiration considered by them at this stage is fake. It’s just like Krishna in the above case. You’re forced and not free.

Today we can learn from others failures but only successful people can be our Idol. This is because you’ll learn how not to do from the failures but the real deal of doing it comes the successful.

Let’s travel a bit. A few ten thousand years ago. Where our first men were trying to walk. They know nothing about success and we all know what a knowledge of a cave man possessed. Fast-forward today we find at least billion successful people and we’ve a wide variety of people from which one becomes our idol according to our mind-set. This drastic change makes me wonder. The most intriguing question is what this is supposed to do with inspiration? The answer is “Everything”. Now it’s time to take back my words in the previous paragraph. For early men, failure must’ve been their activity which is completely opposite to the success we’re dealing with today. Those men must’ve taken the bravery from the failures of their predecessors and consider them idol. They eliminated their predecessor’s failure and slowly increased their success probability. His followers increased it further. There came a stage where men learned to do success as their activity and now was the time successful people were considered their inspirations and now here we are…

One day, we’ll accidentally notice our idol’s face on a crushed paper on a road side amongst the traffic. Our legs, even without our knowledge twists its direction and we find ourselves running for it, turning deaf ears to the traffic constable on one side and even to our parents on the pathway. Though we know that we’re going to get screwed later that day, we continue our run. Finally we pick it up and read it. We’ve our parents on our right shouting at their peak and the traffic police on our left adding fuel to the fire at his best, still we act like nothing has happened and carry on with that piece of paper. Only after we are done, we come back from the elevated state to the normal state. And that my friends is the real inspirational person in your life. Simply saying, we’re not normal when we see “THEM”.

    BY

K.PRASANNAVENKATESH

Sher"locked" in You!

(inspired from various readings and tv series)

 If you are reading this perhaps it is because you have read some of the exploits of Sherlock Holmes, or just watched an episode of Sherlock or Elementary and thought to yourself ‘well that seems easy enough but how to start’. The first thing that must be understood is that most of the deductions made in the Sherlock Holmes universe are only made because they are scripted. that is not to say that to make such insinuations is not possible but rather that it was created by somebody stewing over a manuscript for many days or weeks. Meanwhile you only have a window of a few seconds before you receive an exasperated glance from a third party for staring at them for too long. Furthermore, when you make a deduction you must tailor your observations to that person, while key areas on the body may give you clues about the person (hair, hands, shoes et cetera) your customized observations will reveal infinitely more. I think the best part about deductions is that your ‘victim’ does not even need to be in the room, a person’s work area, there utensils and even their writing can be a window into that persons lives. A person’s body language is also a handy tool at our disposal, not only the kinds of things such as: covering mouth= shocked, but rather eyebrows raised = wants to talk. With the mastering of all tools at our disposal comes a more frequent (and more importantly) more accurate deductions. observing small details, a understanding of graphology, a broad knowledge of everything (but only the things that are important) and a grasp on body language will aid you in your quest      

     The main reason I am writing this is due to my growing aggravation towards the other ‘crash course on deduction’ blogs and how-to websites. They consist of one of the two: “This is how you learn how to master the art of deduction, first you need to look at small things or something, next you need to know everything, a study of body language will be of help, knowing how to do handwriting analysis might do something. After you do all that stuff you like guess about stuff and you will get it right magically” (now granted I did just say the same thing in the former paragraph but with a lot more elocution, but never fear i shall be expanding on my topics in others posts). Then there is the blog that says: [must be read in the most omnipotent voice you can muster] “I am amazing, and can look at a piece of paper with a different language on it, then look at another one with one word missing and I can tell you what word……. Oh yea and deductions. [you may now resume regular reading voice] Now there are many good blogs out there, but you sometimes need to sift through all the gay fan fiction in order to get the real meat and potatoes of the idea. so I created this blog as a simple guide to the art of deduction. (if you have any questions or comments I would like to hear them, if you have any concerns or negative feedback you can scream them into your pillow). Lemme give you ten simple steps to mirror your duductionist locked inside you!

Step 1:

Develop your intellect. While Sherlock Holmes is a lot of things, he is nothing without his mind (the rest is merely appendix). If you are going to be Sherlock Holmes, you're going to need an IQ roughly over twice your height in inches, and you're going to need to know how to use this intellect. It's all well and fair to be smart, but being intelligent (that is, the ability to process information, not just random factoids you've kept around for no reason) is key. But don't worry, you can build this up... it simply takes practice. The brain is a muscle: exercise it.

Step 2:

Develop keen observational skills. The other half of Holmes' utter genius (apart from actually being a genius) is his ability to pick up details, and then transpose fact into conjecture, using the science of deduction. Learn to spot these details which become facts, and use intellect to narrow down possible causes until you've extrapolated something about that person which you didn't previously know.

Step 3:

Learn people. Being a genius and highly skilled is only half the fun. The most important part, and what really makes Holmes, well, Holmes, is the fact that he knows just how to go about showing it. It's not what a man has done, but a man can make you think he has done, that truly matters. Learn the art of showing what you know... without making it obvious that you are insecure about yourself and are showing off to gain approval from others. This is key.

Step 4:

Be anti-social. The other side of learning people, is that moment in time when you realize you understand people so well you'd rather talk to a skull (well, I say friend...). Part of Holmes' charm is that he has none, and frankly, the only way you can get your work done is if you stop going to parties every weekend. You will need to learn to spend hours, days on your own. Hey, it can be fun! Right, Yorick?

Step 5:

Move to London, UK (if you're not already there.) While you're at it, you should probably acquire a middle or upper class British accent if you don't already have that, either. It's really rather important.

Step 6:

Acquire some chemistry lab supplies, or access, and of course some knowledge of chemistry. Chemistry is utterly important to Holmes, and now especially in this day and age when chemistry can be used to analyze blood, soil, pollen, et cetera, it is imperative to have an excellent grasp of all things chemical, to aid in you in crime solving

Step 7:

Delete your hard drive, and empty your attic... metaphorically, of course. Your mind is your storage device. Normal people fill their attic with all sorts of useless junk that gets in the way of the useful things. Streamline; you need only know anything related to your profession, everything else is extraneous and thus useless. It doesn't matter if the Earth goes around the Sun, or the Sun goes around the Earth, or 'round and 'round the garden like a little teddy bear... it's not IMPORTANT, Holmes!

Step 8:

Learn to play the violin. This will simultaneously aid you in thinking, and provide a fun way to torture anyone around you (if it's three in the morning). Also, plucking diminished chords can cause flies to fly counterclockwise, once you've caught them all and put them in a large glass bottle.

Step 9:

Break up with your significant other. Holmes really considers himself married to his work... and you, as Holmes, obviously must share this view. You are only allowed one tentative yearning relationship with a criminal who outsmarts you on multiple occasions.

Step 10:

Find a sidekick, and then get him to move in with you. A doctor would be best, or at least someone who's been around some action (and you should be moving into an apartment... I mean flat.) It shouldn't be too hard to find an army doctor recently in Afghanistan, these days. Your sidekick will be used for bouncing ideas off of, and saving you, should the case ever arise.

By

K.Prasanna Venkatesh