Showing Emotions

Hiding your feelings is passe. Now it's cool to be emotional.

- Trend spotting by The Times of India (7 Jan '07)

I think blogging is reinforcing this trend. I, however, remain old-fashioned in this regard.

Lest You Forget

What tools people use to preserve personal memories? Off hand I can think of the following:

• Photographs
• Personal writings (for example, journal, blogs, e-mails, letters, etc)
• Mementos

They also use scrapbooks in the West.
Am I missing out something?

You know the question about what you would grab if you could if your house went on fire? What do you normally answer? I think that one of the things that I have always held dear is my collection of photographs.

- From a blog

One of the reasons why people hold on to memories so tight is because memories are the only thing that don't change when everyone else does.

- Anonymous

When does an 'event' become a 'memory'?

When does 'memory' become 'trivia'?

I agree and hope there are a lot of memories that are not trivia! I am more perturbed by those memories that should not be 'trivia' but end up becoming so...

- From another blog

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

- Gabriel García Márquez

Separated in Childhood

I am so excited at finding two long-lost friends – Pravir Chand and Sanjay Dokania – on the Internet (even while not being able to find several others). I haven’t seen them for years...er, decades. Pravir was my classmate and closest friend in primary school – Shishu Niketan. I knew that he studied engineering at BIT Sindri, but had no clue about his whereabouts afterward.

Sanjay Dokania was my junior in Patna. He went to IIT Mumbai from there. I lost track of him after that.

I am excited to find them also because they have hardly any footprints on the Internet. Google could find just one page each carrying their names. They have obviously played no role in creating these pages, and most probably are not even aware of these pages. The solitary link for Sanjay is in fact broken; I could view it thanks to Google’s cache. :)

Christina's Online Interview on National Identity

I responded to an online interview by Christina Daniels on her blog. Christina is an ex-colleague and friend from my IBM days. She is doing this interview for a book she is writing on the theme of national identity.

Christina’s questions and my answers

1. Going back to the time when we had only one channel in India, how would you say that Doordarshan affected your concept of what it means to be Indian?
   Before the advent of cable television, Doordarshan was the only audio-visual medium (apart from the occasional movies), and it naturally exercised a powerful influence on my perceptions and thoughts. Doordarshan projected the image of India as a country that embodied ‘unity in diversity’, that had a glorious history, rich culture and great leaders, that had a secular, socialist and welfare state, and that, though presently impoverished and underdeveloped, was poised to develop into a great nation before long. Being an Indian was being a citizen of such a country.
   
2. In the days, when Doordarshan was the only television broadcasting body in India, which are some of the programmes that stand out in your memory?
   Quiz Time, Chitrahaar, Hum Log, Buniyaad, Ramayan, Mahabharat, Nukkad, Janvani
   
3. Did you perceive Doordarshan as attempting to create an ‘Indian’ identity? And if so, was this identity accurate?
   Doordarshan, being a government channel, did try to overlook the darker side of our lives – the hierarchical and feudal character of the Indian society, the corrupt and pseudo-democratic nature of the Indian polity, and the highly inegalitarian and monopolistic nature of the Indian economy – and projected only the brighter side. Thus the Indian identity created by Doordarshan was partly real and partly false.
   
4. Has your concept of being Indian changed since then, or does it remain the same?
   My concept of the Indian identity has definitely undergone a change, as I have access to a variety of media now.
   
5. Since the time that cable television has been introduced, what are some of the programmes that stand out on TV?
   News programs with on-the-spot, live footage; reality shows on singing competitions
   
6. Do you think that cable television has in any way changed your concept of what it means to be Indian?
   Cable TV channels are different from Doordarshan in that they exist to earn profits from advertisements. They therefore cater to those sections of the society that have purchasing power. So their programs are mostly for and about the high-class, Westernized, urban section of the Indian society. This naturally colours my perception of the Indian identity.
   
7. Moving on to the coming of the Internet, how do you use the Net?
   This question is not clear to me, yet I will give it a try. I use the Net for several hours every day, and I use it at both office and home. Does that answer the question?
   
8. Which are some of the sites that you most often frequent?
   Gmail, Google, Wikipedia, Linkedin, Orkut
   
9. Has the Internet in any way affected your perception of yourself as Indian?
   Since Indian engineers have played a big role in the IT revolution, Indians in general have a significant presence on the Net, for example, in online groups, discussion boards, blogs, etc. This makes one more confident and more proud of one’s Indian identity.
   
10. Does the Internet make you feel part of a larger global community, as against an Indian community?
    Yes, the Internet has made me much more of a global citizen. National identities are definitely blurring.

Term-dropping

New terms are hitting me so frequently these days that I am almost suffering from a terms-overload. Intrapreneurs... crowdsourcing... cloud computing... it's an unabated downpour.

I think it's high time I also coined a term and unleashed it into the webosphere :)