Yantrakaal

Yesterday was a red letter day in my exploration of Virtual Worlds when I participated in a real company meeting inside SecondLife , an MMORPG that has been featured in BusinessWeek magazine. When the Lotus Notes meeting invite arrived from an unknown US colleague, I had been put off by the unearthly 1:00 AM in the night ? and then I looked closely at the venue and was taken back to read location @SecondLife !!! This was so intriguing and exciting as well that I immediately suspended my self imposed curfew on conferance calls after 9:00 PM and accepted the invitation. Fortunately I had an avatar in SecondLife ... though it was a very rudimentary one. Basic male(!) with bare minimum clothes and through him I entered SecondLife at the appointed hour and teleported myself to the location that my company had set up. And wow ! what a simulation ! Full 3D conferance room with attached lounge. Company posters on the walls, standard powerpoint presentations running on the screen. It was a b...

The millions words of criticism that have been written to condemn the illogical, ineffective and downright detrimental ban that the Government of India sought to place on accessing certain websites ( and associated domains )are HARDLY ENOUGH to assuage the feelings of extreme outrage that has been felt by the internet community in India. Those who are internet-illiterate, and that would include a large percentage of the Indian bureaucracy, cannot ever hope to understand the feeling of helplessness, anguish and despair that those of us, who choose to live in cyberia for a large part of the day, had experienced. It is similar to cutting of both the daily supply of newspaper and access to the local transport system !!! Good thing is that finally public opinion has been strong enough to modify government policy and the blogs are back again ... but what about geocities ? Most of today's bloggers may not be aware of geocities, but those of us who had started builing websites in the seco...

I saw the movie last Friday and the first thing that struck me was the amazing stupidity of the reviews that were penned by the critics at Cannes after the premiere on 19 May. Apparently they found it ridiculous and funny and some of them broke out laughing ... well, we in Bengal have a saying that the fool laughs thrice - once without understanding, once because everyone else is .. and finally when they understand the joke. Unfortunately neither this movie, nor the book that it is based on is a joke .. so now that these idiots have had their last laugh ...it is time for us to move on without paying these jokers @ Cannes any further attention. Having got that piece of venom out of my spleen, let me turn to the movie. It is a very faithful reproduction of the book but you must have read the book well to make sense of the movie. Unfortunately the vast majority of people with whom I shared the movie hall had possibly not read the book ... and so to most of them, it seemed as if they were...

The "Gayatri" Mantra is actually a misnomer. Perhaps it should be called the Savitri Mantra, that is sung, or chanted, in the Gayatri metre. But irrespective of the name that we use to refer to it, it is fact that it is the most significant string of characters that is central to the Hindu way of life. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Kamaksha to Kathiawar, this is one set of words that are universally recognised and held dear by the Hindu population or at least the scholarly and priestly class. It is of course a different matter that this string of characters is almost impossible to translate into English or even any other Indian language. The syntax, the sequence of nouns and verbs, incredibly archaic ... and yet for those who can feel its throb in the echoes of the heart it is quite clear and lucid ... but of course inexpressible in a language other than the native Sanskrit. I found this translation, which is first literal and then allegoric, to be the closest to what it ...

Most of us are familiar with the word agnostic but are slightly unsure of Gnosticism, so let me first explain the genesis of the word. The word gnosis derives from Greek and 'means' knowledge or the act of knowing. However this knowledge is different from rational, logical knowledge -- as is obtained by reading books or listening to a guru -- and instead refers to a form of knowing obtained by experience or perception. In this respect it bears an uncanny resemblance to the revelation or enlightenment that is experienced by Eastern mystics, which is different from the 'bookish' knowledge obtained by reading the Vedas or the Upanishads. The ascent of Kundalini in Tantra and the 'flash' of revelation that it brings to the sadhak is also an example of gnosis. Ramakrishna blessed many of his disciples by stating : Tor Chaitanya Hok - which may be translated as May You Be Aware Of, or, May You Realise (the Truth). In the first century after the appearance of Jesus Chr...

Yesterday began, like any other day in the life of an Indian corporate executive, with me taking a flight back home. It was a midday flight, 9W516 departing Bangalore at around 10 in the morning and reaching Calcutta just after noon. I had been on this flight a number of times and had noticed that it followed a very interesting path. The aircraft goes from Bangalore to Vishakapatnam crosses over to the sea and then follows the Coromandel coast all the way, past Andhra, past Orrissa and then makes landfall at Haldia after which it follows the Hooghly upstream to Calcutta. If you are sitting on the left hand side of the aircraft ( the 'A' seat) and if the weather is clear, you get a brilliant view of the coast, where the deep blue waters of the Bay of Bengal, crash into the gold & brown of the Indian subcontinent through an endless line of white breakers. [ The only better sight that I have seen from the air is the Himalaya's on the flight from Calcutta to Delhi, if you...

Alzhiemers disease is a condition that is becoming evident in a significantly large percentage of the ageing population. It is not a new disease but one about which the medical community and the public at large are becoming increasingly aware of. The award winning movie Black, featuring Rani Mukherjee and Amitabh Bachchan - where Amitabh is shown as suffering from the disease, has brought it to the forefront of the our consciousness. Alzheimers is a strange disease. The patient has no apparent physical disability. He is mobile, dexterous, articulate and suffers from no physical discomfort. However his mind is affected to the extent that he cannot remember even the most basic of things. For example his name, his address, profession .. progressively these fall 'off' from his mind. However from an analysis or 'processing' perspective, the mind is quite active and competent. He can jolly well brush his teeth, if he can find the toothbrush or even remembers to do so. To t...