C a p i t a l P u n i s h m e n t

The one who cannot give life cannot take it away !

It appeared in today's news that our soon to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court intends to abolish death penalty. This could be reduced to life imprisonment.

This would be a brave move for India. It shows our respect for the human mind and its ability to learn, to repent and to understand.

I have read recently on Wikipedia that there are two types of societies - the ones which value honor and the ones which value law. As India gets culturally rejuvenated and its populace get educated, we will be moving into the second type of society. It is indeed a welcome move.

But I do not think life imprisonment is a substitute. My views are heavily influenced by Richard Dawkins and his amazing book.

The basic aim of life is to reproduce - to replicate its genes. This explains several phenomenon in nature - including why death in old age is common where as pre-mature death is uncommon. The genes which try to kill the individual before she reproduces will not survive through evolution.

The entire multitude of human emotions can be traced to the principle of replication of genes - to the sexual and parental urges. Some of these emotions are valuable and help produce culture and scientific advancement. Where as, some of these emotions are destructive.

I will narrate you one ignoble incidant that happened in the heart of Andhra Pradesh, the state where I live. It was about an extremely pretty girl who was also a gifted student. She attended a science college in Vijayawada. Unfortunately, one of her classmates who was an insecure loser, was smitten by her beauty. She politely refused his advances. But he continued to pester her and even started to threaten her family. Frightened, she requested for police protection. But this did not help. For in the next day, he walked into the classroom and hacked her with a kitchen knife. He slashed her neck repeatedly, murdering her instantly. This happened in the presence of the entire class and the lecturer. He then walked away and escaped to Tamil Nadu. But ultimately, he was captured by the police.

He was initially given death penalty. But his punishment was later reduced to life imprisonment.

Now consider, what has happened to the girl. She lost her life. Had she lived, she could have discovered several things, possibly contributed to the society and to the advancement of science and culture. How should we punish somebody guilty of murdering her ? Death seems to be the right punishment. But I think it is wrong. Human mind has an amazing ability to learn and to repent. We cannot rule out the possibility that after his service in the prison, he emerges as a good citizen.

But this argument does not tell entirely about the loss that happened to the girl. She not only lost her life but also lost her genes. She had a premature death before she could give birth to children and raise them. She had been denied of the most basic urge of life !

Now if we consider the punishment that was awarded to the murderer, it appears that this basic right of life is still left within him. He can still have sex, bear children and propagate his genes. Do you call this justice ?

I do not believe in the culture of honor - an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But in this scenario, I think it calls for an amendment in the law. The right punishment, I believe, is to turn him impotent and then imprison him for life.

Doing this, we will be setting the right incentives. Anybody who intends to commit rape and murder on women will have to think about these consequences. The primeval sexual urges that motivate the murderer to commit his crime will be immediately conditioned by his thinking about the consequences. This will prevent violence in a better way than done by death penalty.

K n o w F e a r

It is a question as old as time itself.

What do I know ?

It is futile to search for the answer. But the one who finds the answer is the one who finds enlightenment - the one who knows what he knows and what he does not know.

This question is the root of all wisdom. So the humble always remember that they do not know. Humility is the key to knowledge. But it is not the path to wisdom.

The path lies here. Know fear.

The one who knows fear is the one who knows what he knows.

B e s t O f G D I T 9 9

It is inevitable, perhaps.

Old friends fail to keep in touch.

They don't find anything worth talking about. That's what has happened in our batch. But nevertheleses, it is very sad.

We have formed a mailing list on Yahoo Groups (group by the way, is a word which gives it too much credit) Nothing seems to happen on the list. Technically, a mailing list is for people who have a common agenda and who want to keep update with the latest trends of something. For example, a software library or an event or a research area. But this cannot serve the purpose of keeping old friends in touch !! (See my previous post.)

I have got the idea from a website that has been built by Ravikiran. The website was an archive of bakra emails. We have to have something similar to this, but something which is alive. So I have started Best of GDIT 99. Something which functions as a nostalgia diary. Anytime a person is hit by nostalgia, he can visit this blog, rejoice, and may be even inspired to contribute.

What do old friends have - except for fond memories ? If they cannot remember them, the friendship is as good as dead !

If you are from GDIT99, please become a member of the list. You can contact me, ravikiran, dhol or santhosh (the admins currently) Enjoy the posts ! Also, please post comments. As Rajan says, a blog has limitations in functioning as a medium of conversation. But atleast let's make use of the comments !!

You are also welcome to create new posts. They need not be mind blowing. They can be

• simple memories of funny incidants that happened in the B.Tech days
• funny/bakra emails that you have sent/received
• photographs (I hope that soon there will be a lot of them ! Currently, there are none)
  
• tales of reunions with old friends
• funny incidants that happened to you after you have left IIIT

M a l i s k u

Hi guys
The title is created out of two words - mailing-list and sudoku.

M a l i s k u

Once upon a time, there was a small town with 24 houses where 24 people lived. They were called Alpha, Beta, Gamma, .. Psi, Omega. It was a small town.

They never made any enemies with each other. In fact, they were the best of friends. If anybody had to leave the town on any business, he would get very irritated. He would keep cursing until he got back to the town. He would feel a terrible longing to return to his friends, to party and to rejoice.

They hardly did any work other than partying. They never grew tired out of it - they seemingly had unending appetites for it.

A weird bunch of people, they were. They were totally inseparable. It was hard to talk of anybody without mentioning the entire bunch of 24.

One day, they discovered a new game. It was a pretty fun game. They called it "malisku". They put up a large wall in the centre of the village. Each one of them would then go and paste a paper on the wall - with a sentence written on the paper. They could do it every day. The goal was to make a story on the wall, a story in which each person would contribute.

The tricky part was that they would not meet each other or see each other. They stayed in their houses and stopped seeing anyone else. Life became different, but it was pretty much fun though. They would spend time attending other jobs. Or they would keep thinking about what they would write on the paper. Or they would plainly keep on sleeping.

The people grew accustomed to the wall. They liked it. It was filled up pretty enthusiastically too. An interesting story started to get built up. Sometimes the story had twists and sometimes it had none. But mostly, it went along.

In the paper slips, people soon began to identify the ones written by Epsilon.

They went like this,
"hee hee ha ha haha hahaa",
"heee heee hee hee >:-)",
"ha haha haa hhaa x-)"

One day, somebody pointed out that these messages made no sense. They were not contributing to the story. He said Epsilon should paste meaningful sentences instead. Somebody else said no. He said he liked the messages. These messages added to the humour part of the story, he said. Then life went on as usual with the wall.

But one day, something strange happened.

Delta found a paper slip on the door of his house. He was surprised. It was signed by Gamma. It said "Sigma is dead. I am sure of it. She has not come out of the house for days. I know it is against the rules - but I have been spying on her. She is dead ! "

Then Delta felt sad, he wanted to investigate. But he did not go speak with Gamma. It had been a long time since he did some speaking - he had lost the habit of it. Speaking felt strange. So he posted a paper slip on the house of Gamma. "Let's go find out. Let's tell others too ! "

The next day, there were two paper slips on the houses of Delta and Gamma.

"They were dead ! They were all dead !! I have seen them personally. They are as cold as bones."

"They are dead ! Dont know when they died. I could not move them an inch. They were as dead as stones"

Gamma had found a girl who was sitting on a table, writing something on the paper slip. But she was not a girl, she was a skeleton. The fingers did not move. The body was locked into a stillness when the girl died, when she died trying to write a message.

Delta had found a boy digging into the ground. In fact, the boy had shoveled up 25 feet of the ground. But then he died - standing as cold as a stone, with the shovel in his hand. Delta had found a skeleton holding a shovel.

Gamma had found a boy who was standing in front of a mirror. He had been looking into it continuously, and then he died there. Gamma had found a skeleton looking into the mirror.

But the wall continued to display new messages.

Beta wrote. "They went on a holiday."

Gamma wrote, "They were dead."

Delta wrote, "Yes, They were all dead."

Epsilon wrote, "Hee hee >:-)"

Alpha wrote, "So they moved into a hotel"

Beta wrote, "Was it nice ?"

Alpha wrote, "It was nice"

Epsilon wrote, "Ha ha hahaa"

Gamma wrote,"....."

Delta wrote, "....."

Alpha wrote, "And they moved out of the hotel"

Later that, Gamma and Delta never wrote on the wall. But Alpha and Beta kept on writing. And Epsilon kept on writing too.

But there was something in the town that happened.
They were all dead !

S w o r d S w a l l o w e r s

Telugu people can get some guilty pride from this. Sword swallowing originated in Andhra Pradesh. And yes, these guys really swallow swords !

Would anybody in a really sane mind do it ??? Yes, so it seems, for the sake of entertaining the audience. (IMHO, the answer is NO. You got to be totally insane to do something like this !!)

Here is a huge treasure-chest of information about sword swallowers. Got the link via Régine Debatty - my personal cyber goddess and news agent.

Apart from swallowing swords, Andhrites were reported to perform several freaky-acts. Such as hanging the spinal cord to an iron hook and making repeated dips into the river Krishna (to please Durga in Vijayawada - not more than 150 years ago). Gives me creeps that I was born in this very region !!

F a n g O f a W o l f

That is what my nickname means ! Did you guys know that ? Neither did I. Kiba is Japanese for exactly that.



More surprises await. There exists a popular Japanese anime which goes by the name Wolf's Rain.

Kiba is the hero of the story - he is a wolf who takes a human form and who finally finds paradise :-))

So you guys take note of that !!

P o s t S o v i e t M a r x i s m

An essay with a carefully built logical argument has the same effect on the brain as does a delicious cup of coffee. America is not a hamburger is one such article. After feasting on several of her delicious essays, I have grown to respect Naomi Klein. It is nice to see the critics of the capitalist theory find their new voices in the uni-polar world of today.

Here is a simple maxim that my father has told me when I was a kid - When you are unsure in deciding between two opposing theories, always side with the one which encourages criticism and argument. In the current scenario, the pundits of free-trade keep harping on the point that "Communism was a failed ideology. Soviet Union was dead. So were the pre-historic policies of China and India". They would not welcome any argument or criticism. On the other hand, the left-wing has found several brilliant orators such as Arundhati Roy and Noam Chomsky who have been very vocal in their criticism. Their arguments would have made Bertrand Russel proud ! But I still have to read Amartya Sen, and I suspect that will improve my outlook.

Previously, the focus in the criticism of Capitalist theory used to be on the accumulation of capital and on the control of production-engines by a limited few. Currently, I think the focus has shifted to the freedom of expression and to the decentralization of authority. This has a huge relevance for the information age that we have stepped into.

Marxist theory had been developed to explain the industrial age. I agree that it has become dated. But unfortunately, it still continues to the best criticism on capitalist ideology. I hope to see a worthy successor to Marxism which will eventually explain the information age.

I believe we can take help from the big brother and the little brother (previous article) in discovering alternative ways of decentralizing the jobs of administration. For instance, take a look at this speculation about the society of secret journalists that I have stirred.

A g e O f T h e L i t t l e B r o t h e r

When George Orwell wrote his novel 1984, he was talking about how political systems (specifically totalitarian regimes) could bring about a disaster in the human values and human relationships in a society. But uncannily, this novel has an import to our modern times and how technology is shaping our modern society.

I have discovered this nasty joke about two years ago, while I was chit-chatting with Gokce, a friend of mine.

"So have you decided what you want to work on ? "
"I don't know. I think I'll work in computer vision."
"So you will be working for the big brother.. ;-) ?"
"eh !!?"
"The big brother as in the novel 1984. You will be helping him."

Then I understood; Computer Vision deals with pattern analysis in visual imagery. In other words, the development of tools for monitoring and surveillance of people. Till then, I haven't looked at this research as helping big brother. But it is true.

As I thought about it, I had come to notice that everything in Computer Science can be divided into either big brother research or little brother research. But this is inevitable and this is the future of our science.

My first story in this blog : Shashka's Town was inspired from this futuristic world of technological slavery.

I have written the following article for my college magazine, about three semesters ago. And the magazine has not come out since then !!! The Mag Team is busy snoring and lest I forget about this article completely, I will post it in this blog. The article reads a little like doomsday-news, but please bear with it ! I wanted my debutant article to be a bit on the sensational side :-)

A g e O f T h e L i t t l e B r o t h e r

Few people realize the absurdity of times that we are moving into. The society in which we grew up is rapidly disappearing. After another ten years, we will be battling a completely different kind of life. This will be the time when our generation takes up the mantle of social and familial obligations, and we will be totally unprepared.

The last century witnessed prolific writing in science fiction, and some trends for the later 50 to 100 years have been brilliantly predicted. But today, the pace of scientific change is so rapid that the moment you utter something, it already throws itself onto your face. In this article, I want to talk about the convergence of virtual reality and communication engineering. This will potentially change every aspect of life as we know it. I am not sure whether that will be for the better or for the worse.

"The big brother is watching you !!". Admirers of George Orwell will remember this scary line from the 1984, his celebrated novel about the ramifications of a totalitarian regime (brought in by a communist revolution). But needless of a mismanaged social revolution, that world is becoming a reality for all of us, thanks to the technological revolution.

Today is the day of cheap hard discs and small cameras. Tomorrow will be the day of much cheaper hard discs and much smaller cameras. What this means is that any moment you move or say something, you might be recorded - possibly without your notice, possibly from multiple cameras. And quite possibly telecasted to several Peeping Toms sitting leisurely at remote corners of the world. Not to mention the insecure Peeping Toms leering at you in the neighborhood. The people with maximum insecurity always happen to sit in the seat of the government, and they will be watching you as well.

This itself is scary for privacy advocates (and girls !). But there is a catch, there will be humongous amounts of data amongst the video footage captured from the cameras. The sheer size of the video makes the task of detecting interesting activity (whatever interesting might mean) impractical. Now enter the fields of pattern recognition, data mining and object recognition.

Is it any strange that the people who do research in these areas are the blue-eyed boys of Defence and FBI ? I am not exaggerating when I say that all the funds towards this research are generated from Defence budget, for applications such as monitoring passengers in railway trains or observing transcripts in chat rooms. In the post 9-11 world, every government is demanding this license to observe people in public places, sometimes even in private places. So I want to throw a word of caution to all the young researchers of these fields. Watch yourself or you might be helping the big brother.

Now let me quickly announce that the researchers working in the rest of the areas in computer science are spared no less. They are unconsciously heping in creating a bigger evil - the little brother, who is also currently known by the name of cell phone. Soon this instrument will mature into an omni-communicator and omni-computer. The omniphone (let's call it little-brother from now on) will help you watch unlimited movies, browse the entire world wide web (or semantic-web in the future) and do video-chat for ridiculously low prices. The address book in the little brother will no longer resemble the address-book of the cell phones, but will be in the likes of a GPS-enabled Friendster or a GPS-enabled Orkut. In addition to voice and pictures, the little brother shall relay the remaining 3 senses - smell, touch and taste. Research towards telepresence in these areas is being undertaken in a huge way by several research labs in Japan. In this age of the little brother, people will have to rethink about the basic definitions of ethics, psychology and economics.

Would you rejoice at the birth of the little brother ? As for me, well, I am pretty scared. Even by today, I spot 30% of human beings glued to their cell-phones instead of talking with people physically next to them. Just watch around you and check for the validity of the 30% law yourself. Give another 10 years, and I fear 90% of all communication shall be mediated through the little brother. People might find it unnecessary to physically attend universities or work in offices. Most of the people will not excercise and find themselves turning into vegetables. Even intimate relationships such as those between a mother and a child and those between a wife and a husband will be mediated through the little brother. I am not talking about communication as in speaking, but even as in touch and smell !!!

Gone shall be the days when there was an excitement in coming across and meeting new people. All the people that you shall meet in in your life-time will be in the database of the little brother, and this database can be looked up at any time. Gone shall be the days when there was fun in visiting new places. Clicking through a destination in the virtual world will be much cheaper and much more rewarding. Gone shall be the days when there was a lot of variety in culture. In the world of tomorrow, the Americans will be no different from the Chinese and the Indians will be no different from the Germans. Everyone will speak the same language, access the same pool of entertainment, and who knows, might even eat the same food ! Everyone will become the same unidentifiable vegetable. And gone shall be the days when there was a sense of adventure in lives.

Please note that all this happens in our own lifetimes.

Is this the end of Homo Sapiens as a species ?

IMO, I would mark the end at that point in time when virtual cyber sex becomes more cost effective and more enjoyable than real sex.

P e r m i s s i o n T o D i e

Hi friends
This is my first novel. It will be called Permission To Die. It is not exactly a novel, because it is not very big. You can call it a novella. It contains 8 chapters. And I have finally penned down the 1st chapter. I intend to create another blog for completing this novel, but it won't be public. If you liked this chapter, please email me or post a comment. I will add you as a member of the group for that blog.

N o t e s O n L o t u s P e t a l s

How can one resist a morning when one had left the night untouched ? Shiva did not resist the morning. For in the night, he had been busy. He had been busy feeling the vacuum that had been forming inside him. He had been busy writing a few letters into the vacuum. And busy watching them disappear into the void by a quick faded succession. He had been busy trying to keep his eyes open. Trying to keep his eyes open for the want of looking into nothingness, for the want of feeling more vacuum.

He had felt his blood seep through his heart. The white lotus petals that walled his heart had not resisted. As the blood trickled away, he had felt his own heartbeat sound like a whisper. The blood had coalesced into small droplets on the outer walls and then slowly evaporated into space. It had left frail smudges of redness as it evaporated, turning the white lotus petals of the walls into red.

The night had slowly undressed before him. But she had not been noticed, nor had been her lovely bosom. Shiva had been busy feeling the vacuum inside the red lotus. Too busy to smell the darkness. Too busy to submit himself to it.

And when the morning appeared, Shiva welcomed her with the same open eyes. She tip-toed into his eyes and tried to feel them. But the night was still alive and the weather was cold. The morning wanted to feel the warmth from the tiny lights of his eyes. But as she kept her hands onto them, she found them cold, like crystal. There was no light dancing in his eyes. There were just two very tiny droplets of water - one in each eye. The morning tried to rekindle the fire and blew a slow breeze into his eyes. Shiva could feel the wind as it softly circled in his eyes and then blew over his ears. The tiny water droplets in his eyes fluttered in the breeze and then slowly disappeared into a thin film.

Every morning has its own special song. The preparations for the song start as early as in the dark night when the dew falls. The dew crystallizes onto little drops on the flowers, on the bushes, and on the grass. Each droplet of water has its own shape, texture and position in the world. When the sun rises up, he reads each drop of water as a separate sheet of music. The most lovely pieces of music will crystallize onto the petals of lotus flowers. Hence, the sun always shares a special fondness for the lotus. He reads out all the pieces of music and waves to his orchestra to play in symphony. Then each stone, each leaf and each strand of hair vibrates and produces flutters of breeze - joining in the grand symphony.

This happens each morning and each morning has its own special song. Many people miss listening to this because their ears would be sleeping by the time. Most often, the ears keep on sleeping as the sun disappears in the evening. Sometimes, they keep sleeping for months together.

Shiva observed a faint golden glow in a remote corner of the sky. The morning kept blowing tiny gushes of wind into his eyes. And they slowly sparkled into a tiny flare. At this very instant, Shiva heard an ancient boom in his ears.

A million conch shells and a million flutes sounded together and they flew in a million notes around his ears, exploring every shade of pitch and every shade of timbre. At the same moment, the sun quickly rose up into an enormous sphere of redness and illuminated the east side of the sky in an orange glow. The whole world vibrated in unision.

Shiva reeled in a shock. He faintly reached out for his father's shehnai which laid hidden in a dark corner. He bit into the reed and closed his eyes. He drew air into his lungs and tried to reciprocate the music which was cascading into his ears. He played a few notes but could not produce the music. As he felt helpless, he put the shehnai down. His legs walked over the thin film of air above the ground and he floated over onto the outside.

Colors emanated at a milion objects from every corner of his sight. As the colors flew in, he shut his eyes in fatigue. He opened them slowly. With a lot of effort, he kept his gaze his gaze steady. And he sighted a sparrow. An early morning sparrow, which was picking among the twigs on the hedge.

It had an earthy brown color and beady eyes which resembled chickpeas. The eyes moved around in a watchful fashion. Shiva noticed the eyes moving around. And then, he trembled !

The sparrow took flight and landed onto a hibiscus tree.

A lone flower adorned the tree. In its brilliant redness, the flower was reflecting the sun. Shiva stared at the petals of the hibiscus and softly tasted its redness, He pointed his hand towards the flower. Then a wonderful thing happened. The red color from the petals leaped into the air and formed a tiny red cloud. The cloud fluttered in the air and then slowly settled down on his palm. Shiva put the red cloud into his pocket.

Then, he saw a tiny pebble on the ground. As he looked closer, the pebble subdivided into millions of crystalline surfaces. Shiva peered closer and closer, and he saw more and more. He felt suffocated in the fractalline geometry of the pebble. Then he shifted his gaze, and saw a thousand more grains of sand and stones. Each one of them started subdividing into manifold surfaces. His senses were overcome by fatigue and in that serene moment of peace, he drew his hand toward the stones. For a moment, the world stood still. Then, millions of textures leaped into the air from every stone, forming a shale of tiny clouds of colors, which slowly settled onto his palm. He put the clouds into his pocket.

Shiva noticed thousands of wonderful colors and carefully picked the loveliest ones amongst them. He picked the blue color from the nape of a parrot. He picked a shade of golden yellow from a ripe fruit hanging on a tree. He picked the greens from the early morning grass. He picked shades of violet from the bunches of wild lillies. He picked the blacks from the tails of ravens. He picked several flashes of light from the running waters of a stream.

His pocket grew heavy with the colors and overflowed. Shiva looked at a small ridge by the side of the road which formed a tiny peak at the top. As he scaled the little mountain, the sun saluted him with a warm beam of light.

Then Shiva took each color out of his pocket and started painting the sky. He painted a golden yellow around the sun, along with some splashes of green and blue. He painted a lot of blues in the west and in the south. He then painted a few black clouds in very curious shapes. In between, he added the flashes of light that he picked up from the eddies in the water. He painted several clouds in bright orange and in red, and then outlined their boundaries in silver.

With this done, he proceeded to do his other job - that of a clerk in the postal office.

S c r e a m i n g I n d o n e s i a n W o m e n

So I am using the pretext of writing my travel stories in order to escape this tedium of non-output in my blog. Yes, I am shameless. :)

S c r e a m i n g I n d o n e s i a n W o m e n

On the 29th of July, I was there waiting in the Hyderabad airport on an early morning, for the flight to Singapore. I would later take a connecting flight to Los Angeles. It was 5'o clock in the morning when I checked in. The flight was expected at 7. But suddenly, an announcement flashed that the flight (which was supposed to arrive from Mumbai) had not taken off and would be getting delayed by 6 hours.

I was on a tight schedule to attend a conference and hence, this news was decidedly unpalatable to me. The other passengers sighed and left the airport in the manner of ducks running away from a rain. My parents were present to see me off, and they decided to stick with me a little longer. We visited Ragz, a close friend of mine who was also living close by. It was there that we observed the news on the television, reporting about the mess that had happened in the Mumbai airport. It was raining miserably in Mumbai for some time then, and apparently, the gravel near the runway on the airport had turned into a soup. An aeroplane had skidded and got stuck into the mud while trying to take off. Interestingly, it did not blow itself up and nobody had died ! But consequently, the entire airport had been shut down until further notice. Cursing my gargantuan ill luck, I telephoned the airport authorities in Hyderabad.

They asked me to come back, but after I had arrived, would coolly report to me that the flight would not arrive before dusk. This was just the begining of a cat-and-mouse game that Air India would play with us for one whole long day. As a matter of fact, the airport in Mumbai had been cleared by that time. But this particular bird had not been not given the green signal and would not be given for another 12 hours. Limited in our capacities as humans to foresee future, we passengers were engaged in a silly game with the airline authorities - with them reporting that the flight would arrive in the next 2 hours and then us waiting, and then us resigned to listen to more announcements. To cut a long story short, I boarded this majestic bird at 2'o clock past midnight. My parents waited until late evening before they saw me off with a deep sigh.

I was understandably in melancholic spirits as I stepped onto the plane. I would inevitably miss the first day of my conference and this feeling did not sink into me like a spoonful of euphoria. And then I noticed where I would be seated. My seat was tucked into a sea full of female fish ! A sea full of black female fish, to be more apt, as all these fish were dressed in black - the black robes of chastity expected of devout Muslim women. And they were screaming at each other in an alien tongue-twister language.

The long day had already taken its toll off me - my head badly needing a dash of pure caffaine to get rid of that swimming-sinking feeling. But, no sir, it instead received several mbps of audio in Bahasa Indonesia. No doubt, an Indonesian sailor returning home after a long honeymoon at sea, would not find anything more welcome than a bevy of female Indonesians clucking in his native tongue. But sadly, I was not an Indonesian sailor returning after a long honeymoon. And the clucking of all these birds rose deep feelings of paranoia, terror and trauma inside the left side of my chest.

As soon as I put my earplugs on, the girl sitting next to me (let's call her Pepper, her given name was very pretty and starts off with a P.. something) made her presence felt by immediately changing the station of my radio. She made it so as to match with her own station so that she would not get disturbed by the noises that would come from my phones ! We Indians pride ourselves in our social skills, but this incidant blew the pride off me. I looked at the face of this wonder and mentally saluted the social abilities of the Indonesian folk. Pepper had a fair teenager's face and extremely mischeivous eyes, and a tired demeanour suggestive of a long journey. My immediate reaction was vaguely protective and that of compliance, though I absolutely desisted the bollywood and the indi-pop-dhamaaka music that the radio station was playing.

I smiled at her and introduced myself, "Hi, I am Kiran"
She gave me a dumbfounded and startled look. And nothing else.

I thought I had not made myself heard.
So I said again, "Hi, what is your name ?"
She said, "Eh"
I said, "Your name, your naam.. Aapka naam kya hai ?"
(Foolishly encouraged by her preference to the Indipop music, I blurted something out in Hindi as well)
She said, "blahthk..blahngthk... blahnwh.. angreis.. blahngwfhthk .. blahpthk"
(Which I put together as "I dont speak Angreis")

The defeat was final and decissive. I was already in sinking spirits and being put down by an attractive girl because of lingual problems was not exactly a cure for this. I turned around and tried to establish a conversation with an elderly woman (from the same group, I concluded, from the manner of her attire) Again, distress followed. I screamed out, "Is there no one that understands English !!?"

All the female fish in the vicinity stared at me, smiled and shook their heads.

Then, through a language consisting entirely of proper-nouns, I gathered this information. That all these women had been coming from Delhi. And that, before Delhi, they had been to Bahrain and to Jedda. That they were on their way back home to Jakarta. That there was not a single male member in this entire group. "All women ?" "Yes, all women".

Was it some Muslim nunnery or something !? How many were they ? (It looked as if these fish could fill up a whole ocean !) Were they on a piligrimage, returning from the Haj ? Were they going out to see the city of Singapore ? I wouldn'tt know. Our conversation did not proceed any further, though we had tried miserably hard.

Like a porcupine, I pulled myself into a spherical ball and tried to snuggle under the blankets. But then I was shaken by a feeble hand which was waving a couple of papers and a pen at me. It was an elderly Indonesian woman waving her port-of-entry forms at me. These people had been given a similar bunch of papers in Delhi. Now this woman was asking me to copy the data from these forms for Singapore. I picked up the pen and filled in the details. Some details were missing, but I could not communicate to her about them. But finally, she gave me a warm smile and whispered "Thank you". That was the first English word that I heard in the plane, and interestingly, would be the only English word that I would hear.

Then I noticed that Pepper was filling a form too. I took a sneak peek at her forms, trying to see what her name was. I noticed it (some P... something.. a very pretty name.. How did I manage to forget it !) and to my surprise, also noted that the girl was a few months elder to me in age. But not before she gave me a terrible look and hid the forms away in a corner. But I gave her a huge smile and kept on looking at her.

"P... Is that your name ?", I said.
"Noor" she said.
"P..."
She shook her head and said "Noor".
Then I noticed that this was what the other girls were calling her. Noor was probably her nickname. She pointed her finger at me and said "Kiran". I smiled back and said "Yes".

The other women seated behind us screamed in the Malay tongue and were laughing at us. Noor turned very red. They kept on screaming, sniggering, giggling and screaming, that I was also embarassed.I turned back and tried to give a smile at all the people. But then, the screaming and giggling only increased. I tucked myself back into my seat and tried to look like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.

I was almost dozing off when I woke with a start - I heard a huge collective scream. There was an incessant chatter in Malay as every woman screamed at every other woman. (Pepper, though, was undisturbed and kept the same bored look) Then it hit me - the horrible and extremely disgusting stink ! Without a thought, I attributed the stink to the Indonesian milieu and cursed my predicament. But then I found the cause for the stink. It was a guy who puked after too much alcohol, and he was on the opposite end of the same row as mine, and to my utter disgust, he was an Indian ! I was deeply ashamed for some reason that I did not know. The Indonesian women thrust their pillows over their nostrills and tried to breath into them. I gave the bell for the air hostess and explained the situation to her. She gave me an "Oh My God !" and gave the bugger a throw-up bag lest he throws up more. And then she left, doing nothing else to redeem the place from the stink, and leaving us to ourselves.

It is not too often that you find yourself in a thoroughly rotten situation all due to one single person or group. But there I found myself boiling in agony, all thanks to Air India. I realized that my time had been so rotten that I was afraid what worse could be still in coming.

It was then that I decided that I had had enough of everything and opened up my laptop (Not actually mine, but borrowed from my friend Sriram, for giving my presentation at the conference. My laptop, incidantally, went phatoook sometime back.) and put on my headphones (My friend oskie's headphones, rather - smuggled for the same reason). I made a playlist of some nice Telugu melodies from a movie called "Ninne Pelladutha". It was a feel-good movie starring the Telugu actor Nagarjuna, which came about some 10 years ago. And the soundtrack of the movie was especially good. A soft melody broke out in the head phones "Kannullo Nee Roopame... " and I found myself putting on a smile again.

But half way through the song, I noticed that something was scratching against my hair and I turned. Pepper was rubbing her ears against my phones trying to catch in the music, and together with her was another girl who was seated behind us. I gave them a smile and offered them my phones. The girls screamed a delighted "Thank You" at me and accepted them. And thus, I became their personal DJ for the evening. I put together the best of the Telugu film music that I could find on my computer, and we stayed huddled close to each other, smiling at all the music that was coming in from the head phones.

"Kannullo Nee Roopame.." was instantly liked by the girls and we listened to it repeatedly.

Pepper asked me "Hindi ?"
I said, "No. Telugu".
I tried telling her that Telugu was another language in India and that it was my native speak. Ofcourse, I was not sure if she understood half of that.

But she understood the language of music, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I played them several songs from films such as "Premadesam", "Roja" and so on. We lost ourselves in this fun, and did not notice that the whole group of female fishes were watching at us. And that the entire cabin was stinking of alcoholic vomit.

We were lost. We were lost in the land of music. A single pair of headphones playing music to three eager people - cheek to cheek.

But then, we were about to reach Singapore. The air hostess asked us to open the shutters for the windows. And then we saw the marvellous sight of early morning sun sending its soft orangey light over the clouds. It was an amazingsight and we kept looking at it for a long time with open eyes.

I pointed at her and said, "Noor", then pointed at myself and said "Kiran". And then showed the sunlight over the window and said "both mean light".

She gave me a deeply puzzled and embarassed look, and then I realized that I could be gesturing like a romantic. And that she could have attributed a totally different meaning to the whole thing. I tried doing it again, trying to tell her that "Both Noor and Kiran mean light". She became very pink and giggled at the other girl. I was confused myself, but by then, the plane had started its descent and we were prepared to get down.

She waved me a "Bye" and I gave her a "Bye" in return. Then we departed in the airport. I was in a rush to catch the connecting flight to Los Angeles. But there to the side, I caught sight of the actor Nagarjuna himself, with his lovely wife Amala, both seated on a bench ! We passengers shouted them a "Hii" and waved our hands in the fashion of stars waving at their fans ! Nagarjuna and Amala gave us a hearty laugh and waved back at us.

I whispered under my breath, "Thanks Nagarjuna, for that lovely music. One good thing you have done :-) "