A representative from India began: ‘Before beginning my talk I want to tell you something about Rishi Kashyap of Kashmir, after whom Kashmir is named.

When Rishi Kashyap struck a rock and it brought forth water, he thought, ‘What a good opportunity to have a bath.’

He removed his clothes, put them aside on the rock and entered the water.

When he got out and wanted to dress, his clothes had vanished. A Pakistani had stolen them.

The Pakistani representative jumped up furiously and in support of Pakistan , he shouted, ‘What are you talking about? The Pakistanis weren’t there then.‘

The Indian representative smiled and said, ‘And now that we have made that clear, I will begin my speech.’

Suppose a stranger starts beating you with a stick for no reason other than his own entertainment. He’s got you cornered, and no one is around to help. Luckily for you, he loses his grip on the stick, and drops it. You grab his stick, and without it the stranger can’t stop you from escaping.

Are you evil for ruining his fun and stealing his stick for your own selfish happiness?

It seems like a stupid question, but based on the comments to yesterday’s blog, many of you think the stick stealer is evil and has oppressed the assailant who was minding his own business beating you to death.

For example, several people said cigarette smokers are being oppressed by non-smokers, presumably for banning smoking in public places, and that this oppression qualifies as evil. Clearly the non-smokers are taking away rights from smokers, for their own selfish purposes, just like the guy who stole the stick. But is protecting your health evil?

For the complete post, click here http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/01/define-evil.html

I know, I know. Now you would expect me to say that Coral was one of the jails built during the British era. Not that I am ruling out the possibilty, but I am simply trying to make a different point. That even today the fate of people who leave all their fun behind and fight is not very different. I will summarise my life at Coral here.

One look at this building and you will guess the standard of the Civil Engg. dept. here. Have you ever seen a 100x40x20 m^3 box. That is exactly the kind of thing we are talking about. 4 people in one tiny room fighting for space as if they were part of an experiment to prove Darwin’s “survival of the fittest”. 2 chirkut windows make you have to fight for wind too. Not to mention a toilet per student ratio of less than 1:10, with most of the flushes not working. Now add the followig to the already delicious recipe and what have you:

a wing where 75% people are happy and gay to be…….oops!

a joker and a penguin for roommates.

a senti and a mental as frequent visitors, forever debating about hindi vs. english entertainment.

4 days water cut in summer.

All I can say in the end is, just as for our freedom fighters, it does help that others are suffering with you for the same cause. Thanks to all those guys who made it bearable.

And did I mention there being no net or lan? Oh, chuck it. This post has the potential to be endless.

Right. Now, I honestly believe Johny Bravo stands in a league of his own (you deserve it, DUDE).He’s just the guy you need to see when you’re depressed. One look at his face and you think “I must be happier than him”. He’s probably the only guy in the world who could behave in any 1 of the following ways, forget all:

burst with joy on getting a girl’s number, and show it.

call a round table conference of all friends and discuss what to type in “that first message”.

neglect all advices and send her a message asking “how was your test” and end it with “if you don’t like it, i will never message you again”.

beg your friends to send her a rose on V-day in your name. later get cold feet and shout “it was all his plan”.

carry her on your head and then complain “who do you think you are to sit here?” send her an sms regarding the same.

reject her orkut friend request on the above grounds. change your orkut name to “wasted 16 days for s”

waste 2 hours of your friends’ time to justify that you did it all to improve your communication skills.

send her a friend requst yourself……………………….tell her you didn’t mean any of it!

Maybe Will Smith will choose him as a co-star in case there is a sequel to Hitch. Meanwhile, Johny’s had more milestone experiences looking for a partner.

There’s a lot more about this guy, like his Super Ex-Orkut Profile. To summarise:

about me: I want to be cool but now I realise that I am ok as such.

passions: I want to be a teacher in Bansal classes.

movies: all the movies of srk.

idea of a perfect date: to share each others views (as if you had any) with a cup of tea (sasta aur tikao).

from my past relationships I have learnt that: tis better to have loved and lost

                                                                        than to never have loved at all.

A few of these samples can still be found on his profile.

He can also be “threatening” at times which is shown by the following scrap he sent me:

tune bongo babu ki friend ko chura liya, main tujhe chhodunga nahi kutte.

We move on to Sleeping Beauty, who must be losing sleep nowadays in order to slap his juniors enough, I suppose. I wish he applied his trademark “ichcha nahi ho rahi” here too, but then, MP ki unity aur parampara nibhane ke liye kya nahi karna padta. After all, its for their own good, nahi to sir ko Google mein jaate dekhte reh jaoge. Place hona hain ki nahi?  We could actually use your ragging style as a tourist attraction, you know, like a man sitting on a bed of nails. This is actually tougher. You’ve got to tell them “mazaa aa gaya, sir!”.

The techniques used by this great son of Mother India (and his forefathers) were derived by taking the core principle of every martyr. baap makes betas run a race, slaps the winner and then teaches him the importance of unity, so that everybody runs together in the next race. That takes care of Gandhiji’s soul. And the perseverance you show in getting in those slaps should make Bhagat Singh proud of today’s youth. So if TOI comes out with something like (B)eat India, you should know better than to take part, for the eventual winners are surely these guys.

So that’s it for now. Next blog: My Super Ex-Hostel.

Now, the place where I am studying is located in one of the remotest villages of India, which happens to be the birthplace of one of the famous Birlas. And so, as soon as I came here I was greeted by all the species of insects named in the Encyclopedia Brittanica with more enthusiasm than that shown by Manmohan Singh for pushing the nuclear deal.

And finally, for the second time in my life, I had some “positive” interaction with my seniors, better known by a word that begins with r. It wasn’t much, though. In fact, it was lesser than that at NIT Trichy, which is surprising for an institute in north India.

So here I am, fighting insects, handling surprise quizzes consisting of Irodov like problems, actually eating chappatis (not jeans) in the mess and listening to some decent english from my lecturers, unlike the ” i demo cutting, you real cutting” I was getting used to. Here I am, in BITS-Pilani, and it sure is rocking.

I would not disagree with him. My observations have also been similar, especially in the field of football. Most people are Brazil fans because it wins. Next on the list are Italy and France. Brazil, I can understand, but frankly, Italy does not play with a quarter of that style and beauty and I find it pretty sick that any non Italian should support this team.

I know it is pretty useless to debate on this but the attitude of the masses is worth noting. Contrast this with cricket where we are constantly looking forward to Australia’s loss. What makes us fan the winners in one game and boo them in the other?

One of the deciding factors might be the fact that India occasionally faces the winners in cricket and gets beaten frequently, which generates a desire to see the Aussies lose, no matter against who. This being impossible in football (at least presently), the loyalties, I suppose, are decided by victory or defeat. I, personally, am an Arsenal fan because it was a great team when I started watching EPL. Although I do not know why the Liverpool fans became so, whether the loyalty of Man U fans stays even when it starts losing, time will tell.

There was a widely held belief in ancient India (it still is believed by some) that one moment in heaven is equal to many earth years. Although this surprised me as a child, I now know that this is quite possible.

As wonderful as the possibility of this fact is the fact that this was known to ancient Indians. But since there is no ancient Indian text containing the theory of relativity, it is extremely likely that our ancestors did not understand the phenomena, but merely knew it. Now the belief is most likely based on the legend of an Indian emperor who left for heaven while he was still alive to help the Gods in a celestial battle against the devils and returned only to find that more than a century had passed on earth. This can mean two things, as I have reasoned below.

The dilation could have been caused courtesy his speed and the (apparently) large distance between heaven and earth. Something similar to what happens in the twin’s paradox. This would imply that heaven is just an ordinary planet like the earth.

An alternative explanation is that the dilation occurred mainly due to a specialty of heaven rather than the travel. The specialty is, of course, that the gravity in heaven is very large, either due to its own parameters (mass, radius) or due to its proximity to a high gravity celestial body, e.g., a black hole, a neutron star.

The second explanation makes our ancestral belief true but the first, which, personally, I consider more probable, indicates that our ancestors were not so smart after all. They were just lucky to know a fact that would take millenniums to be proved. In that case, how the emperor managed to make the trip is a different story altogether.

@dharmaj again – i came across this music video recently. try it out.

Perhaps India is the only country in the world which has so many institutes sharing the same name. 10 IITs, 10 IIMs, 18 NITs. All of them designed to meet the needs India had in the 70s. If nothing is done to stem this rot, 20 years from now, private institutions will own all the space in the hearts of aspiring engineers. IITs might then get a new full form – Institutes of Infinite Tension.