An accident back home ...

Came to know today that parents had a fall from their two wheeler a couple of days ago and luckily nothing happened. Also that a small boy ran in front of my father's scooter some other time, and got injured as he got confused and fell. Both unfortunate incidents.. the first left mother shaken up at the state of roads, and the second read to harrassment by the boy's family .. first his uncle, then mother and finally father showing up and trying to get money out of my father.

This has left me quite disturbed, not that i've not seen such things. It's the usual case of people putting the motorist at fault by default, and definitely so if the injured is a woman or child. Luckily the constable who was brought with by the family realised that they were trying to pull a cheap one and set them straight. This didn't stop the boy's father talking rudely to my mother in the guise of enquiring about father ... Another case of people taking lone woman of the house for granted. Sad to see this done to people who went out of their way to help a neighbouring lady facing domestic abuse by her grown up son & family and on the verge of being driven out of the only shelter he had.. Feel sad that indian women lose all status and protection once they lose the husband. I wonder if this is the case in other societies as well.

To add to all this, the news was kept from me as i'm far away and couldn't really help much in the situation. Feeling quite sad about the turn of events last week ... Also about what kind of security we offer to grown ups. Feels like i'm in a different world full of young people in a comfortable and secure environment. Lot of admiration for my dad in taking all these things in his stride. Though i'm sure it has left my mother shaken up...

The LEGO RCX and Lejos java programming environment

Tuesday, at home today. Have been trying the LEGO RCX robot working for my teaching assistantship course. It's quite fun. I've been exploring java for it using the LEJOS http://lejos.sourceforge.net/rcx-downloads.php JVM and programming SDK. It's amazing how much effort people put in things they are interested and make them available for others. Really nice and inspiring, I hope at the end of this TAship i'll also make good information available for people who want to program on the RCX.

on logmein .. a remote desktop software

  Has made administering the computer at our home in Belgaum, karnataka really simple as i can see it through a web browser and make changes and updates in real time https://secure.logmein.com/home.asp?lang=en. Yesterday, spent close to an hour with mother viewing some recent photos she had taken around the house. I miss my parents and it's nice to have such tools that make connectivity easier. The first round of ice-breaking was done with skype, yahoo messenger video earlier. Now it's other connectivity tools.  I could see the photos she was browsing and showing me without having to wait and download them here. Very simple installation too and we did that talking over phone earlier with mom installing the client at the home computer and i installing one in singapore. From then on it's been really easy to administer the home PC over the internet.

Happy valentine's day

Valentine's this year was interesting for me, simple but beautiful. Lady-in-my-life and me both working in the department till late and spending time together in between.  We'd agreed mutually that since we are hard pressed with time, we'll skip the niceties and gifts this time around. Much obliged to her for being a different sort of girl. Saint valentine could have hardly imagined what his name would be associated with in centuries to come :) Apperently the original festival had nothing to do with love and couples. There was news of a crazy politician Mutalik back home in belgaum, India who decided that he'll marry couples together on the spot if he sees them on valentines day.. another extreme right-wing hindutva politician. Agreed that valentine's has just become a reason for all sorts of companies to cash in and make money, but who gives the license to these self-styled messiaha's to tell people how to live ?

    Some progress in work and time spent reading an article on china on the move and different aspects of the hurtling development in the country going at 9% GDP. Countries of similar size, very different cultures, ideologies, progress paths. Have to see how things go with India and China assuming bigger roles in world economics and politics.

harish

The world seems to be such a different place than what i thought it to be sometimes

       On watching http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/ , another documentary about china on the rise from a western point of view. Takes a lot to discount for western bias ... but still has some points to ponder. Huge gap between urban and rural areas, which is growing.  Tiananmen square, whose memory the governmetn wants to forget, cheap labour which the world wants to use, government cleaning the slate of history in young people's minds. State is not able to support education & healthcare, which is hitting the rural areas. The last problem is common to india as is the availability of cheap labour.

"from ashwin, who sent the link: It sounds similar, but the scene in China is quite different. They were a Communist egalitarian society  which is now moving towards a pseudo-Communist capitalist one, whereas India is moving from a democratic socialist nation to a democratic capitalist one. Both these shifts are huge (due to the size and pace of change) and is sure to bring forth a lot of class struggles in the coming years. India's problems are of course compounded due to religious/caste/state divisions.

"

         Yes, there will be class struggle in India and i'm sure there is already mass migration happening from village-> town and town to tier-two cities, tier-two to metro. I hope the genetic & cultural diversity, religion and democracy in india help in taking in this mass change more gracefully. I hope the evils within the caste system is done away with in a couple of generations in this process too, though that's a tough one. 

      I also wonder if there can ever be an egalitarian state, as humans will be humans, some more capable than others. Has there been one which could sustain gracefully and leave a good legacy ? The roman and greek city states come to my mind, but they were so small. 

     I also doubt if wiping away memories of bad things in a nations history is a good policy, when in germany too i was warned not to talk about Nazism and related events, I doubt if current germans know much about it. On the other hand we hold on and talk about our Noakhali, partition, punjab riots, bombay riots, emergency, godhra and debating and discussing about it. Many times its breast beating and useless, but better than denying i suppose. Government tries to censure in india too, but not effective as people know what happened most of the time. Won't the chinese people have a sense of confusion, guilt and betrayal when they know about the cost of the revolutions and the current surge. There is the great revolution, cultural revolution, economic revolution. All of them involved questioning and revolting against one thing or another including family system, religion, societal structures, education. 

the world seems to be such a different place than what i thought it to be sometimes,

harish