My Thoughts

Our emotions are not who we are just as our thoughts are not who we are. How we choose to respond to them or for that matter not to respond to them is closer to who we are. Our thoughts and emotions do represent us and is how others experience us or for that matter how we experience ourselves. They are a cumulative result of all the choices we have ever made. However, as long as we are alive and thus have the power to choose we also have the power to cancel the impact of all that we have come to be.

"Today, DNA testing involves analyzing multiple genes to determine the risk of developing specific diseases or disorders, with the more common diseases consisting of heart disease and cancer. The results of a genetic test can confirm or rule out a suspected genetic condition or help determine a person's chance of developing or passing on a genetic disorder. Many of the risks associated with genetic testing involve the emotional, social, or financial consequences of the test results. People may feel angry, depressed, anxious, or guilty about their results. The possibility of genetic discrimination in employment or insurance is also a concern. Other risks include accidental findings—a discovery of some possible problem found while looking for something else." The critical issue as I see is having to deal with life-long anxiety if one discovers one major illness or another. -source: Wikipedia

The recent Bollywood movie ‘Half Girlfriend’ is elusive in its title. The title and even the trailer made me expect a cheap thrill or at best a moderately well-done drama, given the odd chance of an exceptionally well written movie. The trailer gives nothing away of the message of the movie. On the one hand it walks us through a shift the female identity is experiencing in India; pushing against the weight of traditional social norms and values. On the other hand it presents how two people can care about each other so much they can empower each other to disrupt these norms. The girl who comes from a wealthy dysfunctional family meets a boy from a poor closely-knit home from a village in Bihar. Their encounter takes place at university where he gravitates towards her owing to her prestige and beauty and she to him due to the care he offers and the genuine earnest with which he offers it. A severe rift unfortunately comes between them and she decides to leave. Heart-broken she marr...

In the aftermath of war, in certain cases, entire communities must have been violated. I don’t know of any incidence in particular but I am sure this horror must be a part of human-kind’s history. Where the men of the community were mostly slaughtered and the women married into the victor’s community. Of such marriages, the majority I presume must have never been able to assimilate, even in cases where the host household made an out-of-the-ordinary effort to be kind to them. However, some of these women must have made the effort to reciprocate despite the weight of their traumas. Five years on or so, in some special cases, their status quo may even have started to feel a bit like home. I wonder if the personal struggles of any such woman has ever been narrated? In book or even on cinema?

It's about this lady who falls in love with a man whose heart belongs to someone else. The lady never gives up, not even after he gets married. Anyways, only one other person knows about all this. It just so happens that he loves her. After she sees a lot of devastation owing to the fact that her story is of a time that the civil war is going on in America - she decides to marry this confidant - even though she doesn't give him her heart  Eventually, even after having a daughter with her, he can't win her over. Towards the last moments of the movie she looses everyone she loves: her sister, her children, they all die When she turns to her husband in these moments, his last words to her are 'Frankly, my dear I don't give a damn' and that's when she is left with nothing but terror to deal with and no one to be there for her. That's when she realises that it's all gone - gone with the wind. post note: I later found that it is n...

Awareness is a gift from God. Awareness of your surroundings in the moment that you are in. Awareness of your feelings in the moment that you are in. Awareness of what you would like to do in the moment you are in. Bring yourself back, Back to the awareness of what it is to be you.

The first book I ever read was Black Beauty . I remember that by the time I reached the end, i couldn't recall the first half of the book. Recently, I read The Notebook and by the time I got to the end i couldn't help the tears. I am pleasantly surprised to find that a book can be so stirring. Can any of you recommend something that moved you like this?

The journey is a con when it becomes abstract and an intellectual pursuit. Sometimes a coping strategy and an escape from accepting the pain of a person's current circumstance. The goal of the journey, as I see it now, is for it to deliver us to a point where we can express our feelings openly.

I have had a habit of running from 'disguistingish' emotions. These are the ones that feel ugly; even in the slightist if they make my insides churn - i would rather be somewhere else, than face them. This I am sure has made many experiences inaccessible such as - of this I am sure - movies on real life drama. The key to solving this little mystery has been, for one part: gathering up the strength to face them (i.e. the more palatable of these 'disgusting' emotions) and for the second: the realization that experiencing them (gradually in a safe environment such as by reading books or adventuring to face them in real life when and where they come upon you as opposed to immediately shying away from them...) and also associating meaning or context to them transforms that same experience from a disabling one to an enabling one.

For the following reasons I feel America is as close as it gets to a successful model of society: No one can play God. It is a fair society with a non-corrupt legal system. One of the biggest implications of this is that if a Muslim business does very well and the powerful Jewish community competes with them, the Jewish community cannot damage the business of the Muslim group using unfair means. Owing to a fair legal system the Muslim business, like Muslim people and just any and everybody can fight for their rights and get them. Everything is systematic, and therefore reliable. In my work I have to sometimes re-use open source software components from various technologies to build a new software. This is possible for me because I can rely on open source software components to do their part, without having to tamper with them or modify their internal working. Each module is for me a black box that I can reuse as is. In America this is the case with corporate services of e...

The more you want something, the less power you have over it. If you possess a great car or job for example that draws in your attention and makes you think about it a lot, it will do you harm to the degree that you think about it. In fact the more you think about it the more power it has over you and it is to that degree that it possess you! The first step to gaining back control is to first build an awareness of the set of things that have control over you. The second step is to create a distance from those things. The less you think about them and the less significance you assign to them, will with the passage of time help you regain control. Interestingly, this method is valid not just for tangible objects to which you attach yourself but also for intangible objects such as knowledge and social status. Here too, the more distance you create between yourself and the object of attachment the more you will reclaim your power. On a concluding note I would like to elaborate on...

Linux is structured and modular. Owing to its modular nature it is extensible. It can be extended using open source software (OSS) that supports Linux. There are a number of OSS technologies available that cover nearly every domain of Information Technology. These can be integrated to create a bigger solution that use available OSS as building blocks. Recently I have joined a university where we have deployed their IT infrastructure following the OSS paradigm. You can read about some of the technologies we have deployed there on this link .

The way writers can make you zone in to their story and take you through an emotional journey is such a powerful ability that they have. Put that together with the magic of movie making and you get a very fulfilling experience. On that note I was browsing and I found a list of top TV serials: http://www.tv.com/shows/ Two serials I think I am going to like are: http://www.tv.com/shows/arrow/ http://www.tv.com/shows/person-of-interest-2011/

A computer is an exceptional machine. Fundamentally it performs a single operation. This  computational machine takes in data, processes it and in response generates new processed data. The language that a computer speaks can generally be referred to as “code” written in some “programming language”. Using a programming language humans can tell the computer to do operations as simple as the computation of “1 plus 1” or extremely complex forms of computation such as would enable it to continuously scan the sky to collect data, process it, and send out an alarm (processed data) that would tell an operator when an aircraft enters air space that the computer was scanning. The diagram below describes this. Using “code” a person can bring life to these sort of systems such as radar systems, Math calculation systems and many other types of systems. At the heart of each system are a bunch of concepts that when translated into “code” and downloaded into a computer can bring li...

Information technology is my domain of work. It is something that was the stuff of imagination (I suppose just a few decades back) and is now a domain that has found a place everywhere ~ homes, offices ~ and in developed countries in their very national infrastructure. As a kid I used to like thinking about puzzles, analysing them to solve them. I was fascinated by terms such as logic, and loved to indulge in what I thought were interesting logical arguments. It is a blessing that I am earning a living in a field of work that matches so closely with these childhood interests. IT relates closely to logic, to analysing puzzles, and solving problems. It is easy to grasp since it is concrete and yet wonderful in that it accommodates a significant degree of abstraction. It is concrete because it is structured and has to do with systems. Yet abstract at the same time, in that the more complex a system one drives to architect, the more abstraction one has to deal with. Something chique ...

The discipline of engineering makes an incredible use of ideas, concepts and thought to construct physically real objects. In the making of an aeroplane for example, engineers play both with nuts & bolts, and with theories of how best to put them to use. So while the nuts & bolts are an integral ingredient, the theoretical art of putting them together is the more crucial ingredient, without which the nuts & bolts would never take the shape nor flight of that essential aeroplane. Thought interestingly can make its way to how we feel, both in good ways and bad. The good side of it is the affect of fables or epic tales of heros - how making us feel good - they energise us. The bad side of it is how misunderstandings or out of proportion expectations for example that we may hold onto can deplete that same energy.

I understand poetry to be a tool to find a way to your heart, to be connected to it so as to speak - poetry - right from your deep inner being.

"Cynism, it kills the heart..., and that is much worse than stagnation, whereas idealism does not do that, and to say it does not accept reality as it is, is actually a stagnation in the observer’s (of idealism) perception, insisting on the correctness of his reading of reality as harsh and merciless, while it is the idealist, who transcends his own perception of the harshness of the reality he finds himself in, thereby accepting and submitting to the higher Reality that the Creation of Allah does not have any flaws..." SMHR To add to this: the idealist himself transcends his own perception almost by brute force...when by insisting on the stance he takes and by observing a repetition of his own experience, he is left with no option but to alter himself.

"when you doubt that we live in the most incredible magical beautiful place spend 2 min & watch this"