Bhiksha naivacha naivacha

My father taught me this when I was a kid: never ever beg.

I was watching Feynman's interview on youtube.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

The video is here: a must watch.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=0XgmrMZ0h54

He says his father new the difference between knowing something and knowing the name of it. When asked about a rolling ball in a truck his father said, nobody knows why, things that are not moving tend not to move and moving things keep moving. They call it inertia. But nobody knows why? The last sentence is the key. We have a word for the phenomenon but we do not know why that happens. We often confuse between the name and the reason (or meaning). This needs to be tought.

The point is , the dgree of maturity of foundations of social transaction and thinking, we have developed is determintal to understanding and our capability. Family, ethnicity, and other similar factors influence our ability. My father had taught me many things. In retrospection, it is important to notice what I did not learn.

I want to mention a thing that my father taught me. There are a few words from some wise individuals:
If you have lot of money do business
If you have little money go farm
If you do not have any money labour or work for others.
But never ever beg.

Now to make sure I know the difference between begging and borrowing he would ask me to go to our neighbours and borrow money for him.

We confuse between seriousness and maturity, information junkie and a scholar, truth and halftruth. One such thing is knowing the name (never ever beg) and knowing its meaning.

Feynman also says he once got to know that his father's ability was also limited upon discussing calculus. He says "I realised that I had learnt more in some sense than he". How many of us get to say that?

I can say that I know more about many things than my father does. Do I really? What I am sure is, cleverness that lets my father succeed in everything he tries is based on his ability to generalise lessons to an unimaginable level. He learns more everytime he learns because he can generealise lessons beyond the context of the lesson. He can derive rules for actions that can be applied elsewhere and he quickly comes up with other related rules. More than everything else he is conscious about these rules and practices them perfectly.

I can not do that. It is said leaders forsee risks and get ready to manage them; they succed. Shouldn't we beg for this ability if someone or somethng can give it to us?

Burn IT Burn Bengalooru

Burn IT Burn Bengalooru said CNR Rao, a world renowned chemist from Bengalooru. He is shocked that IT has created intellectual grabage. "A coffee and a masala dosa in Vidyarthi Bhavan" kept him and Bengaloorians happy. Look who is talking - a real Bangalorian.

I respect CNR Rao. I respect all the scientists and research assistants working there toiling to make break through. Many of us in IT industry do. We infact feel guilty that we could ot contribute, but that is compulsion. When my friend, a PhD student in physics dropped out and joined IT, I was shocked as well. Before we talk about this brain drain to IT, let us talk about Bengaloorians.

Most of the real Bengaloorians do not know fluent Kannada. A survey indicated that around 90% [as read in a newspaper survey in 1998, on my first visit to Bengalooru] either can not read write or speak in Kannada. So much for the real Bengaloorians whose scholarship we are to respect. Can somebody name a real Bengaloorian Kannada poet? Why should rest of the state care for such Bengalooru? Being the capital of the state, Bengalooru does not care about the heritage of the mother language, which even the Greeks felt comfortable using in their dramas[1], why should rest of the people in Karnataka respect Bengaloor's heritage? These same Bengalooru's kids use the word "Yak" to refer to kids from villages and slums. CNR Rao says there was more music in Bengalooru before. I do not think so. Cultural programmes have increased over the years. It depends on which you choose to concentrate: Bengalooru Habba that let us hear amazing classical music or the pop ones in palace grounds. All these real Bengaloorians are the people whoes parents or grandparents migrated mostly from villages in Karnataka, Andhra and Tamil Nadu. The children of these migrants are real Bengaloorians and recent migrants are fake Bengaloorians?

"A coffee and a masala dosa in Vidyarthi Bhavan"? There are people out there who do not have enough money to pay the bills of Vidhyarthi Bhavan. Should we stop at respecting scholarship and intellect of real Bengaloorians or do something to those starving kids. Now we have these real Bengaloorians Barking when the starving have started to make fortunes. They have to because they too wanted to eat masala dosa in Vidyarthi Bhavan.

IT companies pay taxes. Every IT guy pays about 30% of his earning. Why are real Bengaloorians not cautious about civic responsibilities? Why should the roads be built asks CNR Rao. May be because 20 billion$ export business also pays taxes to get services from the government.

Brain drain to profitable business is a universal problem. Such problems need to be addressed at different levels and CNR Rao`s comments are welcome as it will initiate a debate and put the process in motion. Even the Software Engineers have this problem. When I worked for a Bengalooru based firm my manager commented, "call centres are paying such huge salaries how are we to keep our business going?". Service sector in engineering draws more people as it pays more. Firms in intellectual property based business and high technology business have problem retaining smart engineers. There is nothing new here. What is new is Bengalooru’s exposure to such problems. It is true that the problem is acute.

However if people who shout are those could not score well in competitive exams, and/or those who could not get into engineering, or those missed the train by being ignorant, this is no more than garbage. I would appreciate if they suggest a solution that is more sensible than burning IT or Bengalooru.

Are real Bengaloorians claiming that there was no slum in Bengalooru when there was no IT boom? What did they do about it? Was that not part of the heritage of Bengalooru? Those who talk of peace and serenity should also speak for all the classes. Elitism comes easily. Social conservatism comes from the elite who could afford good education and those who could enjoy the serenity. What about those who could not pay fees to enter institutes like IISc? Are such institutes open to scholarship? NO. IISc displays a board at the entrance "Trespassers will be prosecuted". So much for the premier science institute in India. I will give my own example here. Those who talk about sholorship do not care about science. I wrote an article in 1999: "Paradoxes in Special Theory of relativity" (Resonance - Indian Academy of Sciences). I was in second year engineering then; a 19 year old in a remote engineering college was trying to do some work reading journals and books, in the college library . It received a 3 line review comment. Is it not the responsibility of the people who talk about science and scholarship to give an encouraging and critical review that will help improve writing? Elite of Bengalooru care about their status. They do not care about scholarship. It is from these butts that we see fuming gasses coming out. The elite of Bengalooru neither understand nor willing to think about the hardship that people in other part of the state face. For example, because of all administrative headquarters in Bengalooru a person from Belagaavi (Belgaum) has to travel 600 odd kms to get a work done? Are these elite who are worried about the heritage aware how much money these poor people have to shell out to keep the "heritage" of Bengalooru intact?

I am for taxing people like me to fund research in basic science. That will help pay good remunerations to competent scientists. I do not mind loosing 5% of my salary for such a cause. May be 5% more cess on NRIs.

By the way, I am not going to Vidhyarthi Bhavan next time I go to Bengalooru. It is costly and suppliers do not even look at you. I am happy eating Chitranna at those road side camps and a glass of kabbina haalu.

~rAGU

References
[1] Dr. Hultzsch, E. (1904), "Remarks on a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1904: 399-405.