Classical musicians and Engineers

I was in India for Diwali. Its our family tradition to tune to 5:00 AM kirtan (praise of god) and after that head to Classical Indian music concert. When you live in city like Pune, the opportunities are ample. This year we attended music concert by Kaushiki Chakrabarty. I did not know much about her but dad had told us to get those tickets. I am not music connoisseur (would love to be some day) but what I really liked in her singing the way she connects with the audience. Somebody who does not know anything about Raga will know everything by the end of it. Her boltana (where one mixes up the song and taans) are amazing. She has developed that style from her father and teacher Pt. Ajoy Chakrabarty and also Pt. Jnan Prakash Ghosh. She sang Miyan ki Todi and Ahir Bhairav. I wished we could have recorded, it was an awesome concert. She sang a bhajan "Ab aa jaana bhagwan" (O God, please appear now) - brought tears to my eyes. We all have heard classical music from so many musicians but this artist performs some kind of magic. No wonder, all I hear in my car these days is "Raag Madhuvanti - Kaahe Maan Karo" by Kaushiki.

When we came home from the concert I was talking with my dad about her music and how did he know that she is so good. He pulled my legs by telling me that he has magical powers but then on my incessant insisting he told me that he had read the review. She had sung in Sawai Gandharva music festival in 2007 and of course the reviewer could not stop praising her. He was talking passionately how all these artists connect with the super power called as god with their music. It started a thought in my mind, does music really have that magical power that let a human being connect with the almighty? I may never find that out in this life time but then I guess its because these artist devote themselves fully to music. The connection is a result of ultimate devotion in anything that we do. Their music soothes so many peoples mind. It gives the endless joy to a common human being.

I am thinking, do I feel that connection being an engineer? Am I that devoted? Very few times I had felt it but I had :) It was when I forgot where I was when I was solving algebra problems or when I wrote Unix Operating Systems paper in Engineering or when I left office feeling that "my god, I can't believe that I could participate in that big project and do some work". My work do not give endless joy to others but I think, it gives endless joy to me at least that day. We engineers are thirsty people, we crave for more and more and many times nothing is satisfactory. May be that's the essence of this profession - bettering ourselves and hope that this journey give us that devotional feeling every day!

Birthday thoughts

Whenever my birthday comes, I am always dubious about what will happen this time. When I was a little girl, I used to wonder "is mom making fruit salad this year too?", "how will the birthday party go". In college it was so much fun celebrating particularly in girls hostel. One of my friend used to remember the birthday and used to give me a beautiful greeting card every year. It was more meaningful because she used to be blunt other days but that day she used to make me feel special. I felt it so many times. The other time, one of my best friend just wrote a nice poem about our friendship and made me realize that I hold one end of the friendship. It was just wonderful when she wrote me that poem. We have maintained our friendship even after several rifts and 8000 miles distance.

Now I stay away from my family and all these wonderful friends. I have made new friends here but they just seem to evade as time passes by. Somebody who celebrated my birthday with utmost enthusiasm last year, do not even call this time. It hurts, but then one cannot fathom the complexity of human mind and how it take decisions and sometimes the mind cannot find any logical reason too. May be just realize that we need to move on.

Yesterday when I left office I did not know what will happen that evening. We usually celebrate birthdays at 12:00 in the night, banging on the door, waking up birthday girl/boy from sleep and decorate their faces with cake. Will that happen this year too? May be not, most of my friends are back in India, so may be no one will celebrate. I was also missing the family so much because I just came back from India. I left office wrapped in all these thoughts.

I saw clear moon and thought it was specially bright for me :) While driving, I noticed christmas lights all over in Omaha downtown. This was one beautiful site. My doubts was gone. I was happier than usual. Truly just the presence of light enlightens our hearts so much. Even though nobody banged my door at 12:00 in the night, I got calls from family and friends in India. In the morning, there were emails and greeting cards in my inbox. Its just wonderful how small things like sending a greeting card can cheer up somebody's mood. There were celebrations in the office, at a friends place. The day was really really great. 

It just made me realize that there are people somewhere who are happy for me being a part of their life and thats what make my life more livable, so happy birthday to me!!!

What exactly I am thankful for?

Sometimes the festivals come at most unfortunate times. Here in US, almost everybody is getting prepared to celebrate Thanksgiving. I will celebrate too but I am deeply saddened when I think what exactly I am thankful for. I was all excited to celebrate but yesterday afternoon I heard about Mumbai bomb blast and spent all day finding out if the situation has improved. Mumbai is an identity for India. Its free spirit, infinite opportunities have lured people from all over the country. This act wants to dampen that spirit, even though Mumbaikar will not allow that, but only Mumbaikar need not brave all the time and suffer.

It is a difficult time for all humanity, because we are dealing with senseless people who are strongly motivated. This is high time that we as country take some action because we have to help ourselves now. There is a saying "God help those, who help themservles". We need better intelligence network, better communication from common man to police authority, and their action. India is a big country with huge population. Its foolish to expect government authorities to take care of its citizen simply because it cannot have that big of infrastructure. We as citizens need to be a little braver and need to put some trust in our police system. In democracy, one had to bear the responsibility first then has the right. It also means that government need to come up with some plan. I still like to believe that we have excellent people in government who are motivated to secure the country and they can do it.

Even though there is feeling of helplessness in my heart, simply because of being 8000 miles from my country, but I have not given up. I am going to donate money to help families who suffered trauma but I am also going to raise voice being a responsible citizen. I am thankful for being an Indian citizen and strong democratic values imbibed in me!

Voice and Video inside gmail

Finally, it works for mac too...

http://www.google.com/mail/help/videochat/learnmore.html

The pursuit of happyness

Just finished watching movie The pursuit of happyness. It is based on the early days of life of Chris Gardener. never imagined a life like that... so terrible. The struggle that was shown,  so unfortunate, could not hold my tears.

Thank god, the movie ends well. All is not lost... We get to see that the honest, hard working man is finally successful. Thank god!!!!!! Thank god.......

Do not need to write more than this.........

Subroto Bagchi - defining success

I just came across one beautiful article by Subroto Bagchi, Chief Operating Officer, MindTree Consulting. He delivered this speech on July 2nd 2004, the Class of 2004-2006 at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore on defining success . Here is the link 

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Welcome_Address_by_Subroto_Bagchi_at_IIMB

The essence of this talk is, 

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives!!

I hope you will also love the article...

Projects and babies

Every time a developer finishes a project and hands it over, it happens to be the difficult period for a him/her. Why? Anxiety about your work? Is this project going to be successful? yeah. Will there be a need of modification? Will the modification too drastic so the design invalidates and I do not have face to show :( . Yeah that happens too. But the reason is more emotional than software engineering.  Yes we can argue whether software engineering is an art or science. Being an engineer, I always think that it is an art (Yes you always take opposite side just to check if you can defend it :D)

I am still in the phase that every project I do, I am emotionally attached to it. It just happens that that project becomes passion. You are thinking over it night and day. How to write the better code so that it will not break anytime. Doesn't it happen that you don't want to leave the work? Mostly because you yourself are so excited to see the project getting up to a certain stage. You are working extra hours without you yourself realizing that.  It becomes fun to work at 12:00 in the night and finish one part at least, so that you are ready to solve next puzzle in the project.  I have observed that when I am deep in the project, I am not too worried about what I am eating, driving or planning for weekend.  I do not need to listen to music to concentrate. I am not concerned if people are chatting around. I am in my own world. Gallup's concept of engagement is very well defined. I am most engaged when I understand what needs to be done, how to do because I have the capability to do it the best :) 

It just happened that every project I have worked for all these years, I have learned something new. Most of my projects at my office required me to experiment. With experiment, there is always an uncertainty. Many times, all requirements are not clear upfront, we take a shot in the dark but eventually every thing works out well and yes the project completes!!!!

Even though I am not a mother, but I think babies are also like this. Most of the mothers must not even realize how the times flies when they are around their babies.  They are thinking about well being of the baby all the time. Now I can understand what mothers feel when babies grow old and leave the house to start their own lives!!! 

But "The only constant thing in this world, is change", so we finally bid good bye and move on! Not always for the greener pasture but to something new.....

Beautiful Omaha

There are couple of things in life which tell us the life is worth living. I have been living in Omaha for a year now and I have seen some of the best scenery in the natural setting. 

1) When we come down on 144 Street, from Military Street towards Dodge, there is Standing Bear Lake. One night after having dinner at friends place around 11:00 PM, I was driving down and it was a full moon night. I was at a corner, when I saw milky moon, whose shadow was reflected in the lake with all the green surrounding. That was one amazing view. In fact I stopped my car and did not feel like moving from that site at all.

2) One time I was on my way to Walmart on 99th Street in Northern Omaha. Somehow I decided not to take interstate that day and went by Military Rd. It was around 7:30 in June/ July and I could see orange colored sun going down hill. It was probably the best sunset I had ever seen.

3) In the night, when you drive on Dodge Street go from 72nd street towards downtown, you start the descend around 60th street, you see the street lights forming fancy M shape. Its a very pretty site. 

Sometimes unexpectedly you find these pretty sites and all the mundaneness of the life goes away.   All these great times, you feel like thanking god that you have eyes to appreciate how beautiful nature can be. 

The Pragmatic Programmer

When you get a reward certificate to be used on Amazon, you have millions of options to spend it. I was kinda confused whether I should buy a book named as "The Pragmatic Programmer" or get my favorite movie DVD  "Home Alone"? 

Hmmmm, very interesting. Is there really a book out there which tells me apart from theory how to do my job best? By my virtue of being the perfectionist at my job, I don't like the situations when people tell me that I wrote bad code, did not think of edge case. Nor that it has happened any time, but why not better myself so that it will never occur? After all its just a start of professional life :) 

Ok, I am not ready to read 800 page book on best practices where reading one page takes 20 minutes and understanding what I read takes 2 days :( After spending 10-12 hours in the office working with all new technologies everyday, do we need more reading?) 

I had heard about this book and this review helped me to make my choice ;)  

“If I’m putting together a project, it’s the authors of this book that I want. . . . And failing that I’d settle for people who’ve read their book.”

         —Ward Cunningham

It surely seems the book actually lives up to the promise. Lets review some of the first few topics that I have read.  One thing, the title of each topics are completely mind boggling! Following the tradition of "Head First" books.

1) The cat ate my source code:  

"Provide options, don't make lame excuses". 

Yes things go wrong, with all worst combination of various mishaps and downtime occurs. Monday morning is not meant to explain what I was thinking 6 months ago when I was working on the project. Hmmm.. So lets be practical. Just think what caused all this, do the analysis and do what can be done to avoid the situation in the future. 

Makes 100% sense!!!!

2) Software Entropy: 

However meticulous software engineers are, projects do not always have the best of the design and code. There is always some broken window left in the project and broken window gives the feeling that nobody really cares for the project. 

"Don't live with broken windows". Tells us to fix broken windows as soon as you find it. If you cannot fix, at least leave the comment, message to tell that you are working on it. 

I can go on and on with these handy tips of this book. 

Just amazing book! If you are a software programmer, find the meaning of word Kaizen and then your next hit is going to be www.amazon.com to buy the book :)

 I am sure you feel the same excitement  as me!!  

Book overview of "Aahe Manohar Tari"

I was always interested in reading. I am getting more time to read these days - may be cold winter of Nebraska and "read something other than Java" is driving me back to reading again. I recently read one Marathi book called as "Aahe Manohar Tari" by Sunita Deshpande. She is wife of famous Marathi author P. L. Deshpande. This book gave me great insight about her life, her experiences. This book of 239 pages is an amazing read. I wanted to read it since I was 10-11 year old. Sometimes you get the opportunity just kinda little late. God offers you that chance though :)

Who am I to review the book? No one!! I am just going to write down the stuff I liked in this book. Sometimes due to language constraint we cannot enjoy the literature, this will be my attempt to express the content of this book in English.

She tells us that this book is not a autobiography but just a free journey through the memories. She has written this book in the span of years, so there is no continuation like a story but I think the author has done a very good job. There were times when I started reading for few minutes but continued for hours :)

She starts the book with the death of her dad. Both her dad and mom died at older age. She definitely had their company for at least 50 years. She seems to be disturbed about her parents death. I think she is proud of them, she can think of good and bad things but her parents who possesed some of the amazing qualities. It surely seems to be the most troublesome time for her even though author is very independent lady. She talks about her hard working nature. She thinks that she inherited from both of her parents. In the married life when one person is hard working and other is lazy, it becomes bothersome. There are two things that happen hard working person gets haughty and also continues serving. I thinks its 100% true. As long as there is a equal contribution to the marriage, it works happily.

She tells us there is no thought or logic behind generosity. To give somebody something without expectation has clear happiness. When you start getting happiness through the giving it becomes indivisible part of your personality. Her mom had this generosity. Even when they faces poverty, her mom still continued her generous behavior.

The time frame she describes is around 1942-47. She is freedom fighter, an avid reader, poetess. She is surely different than most of the girls at that time. Her fierce nature, extreme self reliance is something to look upto. She describes how she managed with small amount of money and still continued to be a freedom fighter. This time definitely instilled almost hatred for the collection of money and fame in her.

She was brought up in beautiful area of Konkan. Her love for nature has sprang from that. She loved reading poems. I think good surrounding when children are growing up helps them to see good in everything. This actually accompanied all her life.

She fondly describes the courting period of her and P.L. Deshpande. One funny incidence she tells that he used to write her long love letters and she used write a reply of one line, "Karmanyeva Dhikaraste ma Faleshu Kadachan" meaning that one should continue doing his/ her duties without thinking about outcome. Author surely had advanced thoughts about the whole marriage thing. She opposed to the idea of getting married. I think it wonders me that she did it, but our author is independent and has her own thought process. She finally agreed to get married. She tells us that her husband's nature which is like a child- dependent and her opposite nature of hardworking and nurturing mother helped them to be together. One of the great asset her husband had was 'adjustment'.

She talks about the book "War and Peace" By Leo Tolstoy in which he says that when we look at the history, we look through the consequences of that incidence. We never see the history considering just the facts. She also looks at her life but does not take a firm stand what happened.

One time she simply talks about the difference between man and woman. She tells that in young age, they get attracted to each other just because of the difference but when they stabilize in the relationship, the thing that matters is how "forgiving" you are.

Her involvement as assistant, adviser with her husband is memorable to her too. She managed his finance, drove is car, acted with him in the plays and movies, read proofs of his articles. I think, she played a major role in shaping his career. She explains two different aspects of her husband's personality. One is creative artist and other one is helpless child. Of course usually people always see the great artist in him but then she tells that after such a long married life, she cannot picture his colorful personality. Its black and white. Black signifying helpless and white signifying creative person. Many a times she had accepted that people don't like her presence, they just want to be with her husband - chatting with him or listening to him. She had accepted that gracefully but continued her lifetime support for her husband's career. His mature personality is visible to outsiders but she has sustained his childlike behavior. I don't know whether we remember the supporters like her!

She explains, sometimes a simple thing like home is not up to the expectation. She tells that she lived in hundreds of place but never found anything that attracted her but once in Konkan, she saw something that she wanted. It was situated in small island quite far from sea shore. She was watching that from the top of mountain. The house was red colored with slanted roof. This was something she wanted to have all her life. She was watching the sunset, sunlight, rainbow with hemisphere shape and that house situated on the horizon of the sea. She recounts it must be the good deed of last life that she witnessed this moment. Now she says that she will never ever go to that place as she will never really see it the same way she saw first time. She just wants to keep all that in her memory!!

She describes her 50+ years of married life. Her husband and she had some same interests like poems, nature but fundamentally they were different people. They stayed together. I think it cannot be attributed to single person. She recounts that she had fulfilling moments and she attributes to her husband's compromising nature.

After reading the whole book, you get the idea of her life in which she has experience the loneliness even after being in the group of her husband's fan. When we read any of articles written by P. L. Deshpande, we feel that he had a great fulfilling life. He experienced all different people and loved being with them, entertaining them. After reading this book, all we see that the other side of his life was lonely even he being there with her!!!


Note: This is my personal overview of the book. I do not intend ridicule.