Diwali: Reflections from the 4th of July Celebrations in USA

Yesterday was the 4th of July, the Independence Day of America. Those who have lived in the USA know that the day is celebrated with a lot of fireworks (among other things). People burst crackers at home, but even the local cities throughout the country organize huge fireworks shows on this day. People gather around large open spaces, such as parks or playgrounds to enjoy these public fireworks events. This year, my city of Fort Wayne postponed its official fireworks show for a later date because of safety reasons related to the COVID-19 outbreak, but individuals happily burst away crackers from their homes. All the (double glass) windows of my apartment were closed, and the air-conditioner on, but still, I could hear the non-stop barrage of firecrackers from outside late into the night.

It may seem like I am complaining, but I am not. People got to celebrate their culture and traditions, as long as those traditions don’t hurt other people or animals. Now, I stopped lighting firecrackers a long time ago because of its environmental impact, but the damage from firecrackers can be considered relatively minimal and temporary. Thus, such traditions could be allowed to continue, when they occur only once a year and if people are taught to celebrate the occasions responsibly.

In India, this once-a-year time of bursting crackers comes during Diwali. Although the original tradition was to light only diyas (lamps made from clay that have a cotton wick that is dipped in ghee or some vegetable oil), once Indians had access to gunpowder (estimated to be somewhere around 1400 AD), people also started using fireworks to celebrate Diwali. Over the last few decades, with increased incomes, the use of fireworks during Diwali has skyrocketed. This obviously has also had a negative impact on the air quality, albeit only in the short term. This has given many self-proclaimed “environmentally-conscious” celebrities a reason to ask for bans on fireworks during Diwali.

For a long time, I sided with these celebrities, but in recent years their hypocrisies have been too stark to ignore. For example, they celebrate weddings in their families with a huge amount of fireworks but preach others about how the same fireworks during Diwali scare dogs (and other animals) and damage the environment.

I see no American celebrities trending on social media speaking against the use of fireworks during the 4th of July celebrations. Then, why do so many Indian celebrities deride Diwali? Why doesn't Priyanka Chopra, who now lives in America, not say anything about the 4th of July firecrackers but speaks so derisively about Diwali’s fireworks?

As I have already mentioned, I personally don't burst crackers (because of the noise and air pollution) they cause, but personal choices apart, the systematic campaign against firecrackers every year during Diwali seems to be nothing else but campaigns against all Hindu traditions and festivals. This year some Indian celebrities even ran campaigns against the celebration of Holi because it caused “wastage of water”.  All this while they themselves waste thousands of gallons of in their bathtubs and personal swimming pools. And I don’t even need to mention that these animal- and environment-loving celebrities never speak up against the horrible traditions of certain other religions that kill millions of animals every year and waste millions of gallons of water to clean up the mess created by it.

So, what is the way forward? It is certainly important to point out the hypocrisy and Hinduphobic biases of our celebrities and Indian governments and courts that initiate and implement bans against Hindu traditions. But we need to do more. First, we need to take pride in our animal- and environment-friendly traditions. It is beyond the scope of this post to list all these traditions, but I can say with confidence that there is no other tradition in this world that is more compassionate and environmentally conscious as the traditions that emerged from the Indian sub-continent. And we need to take this forward. In context of firecrackers, we should campaign for the manufacture and sale of only those varieties that are made from environment-friendly materials. All the Chinese junk that gets sold and purchased during these festivals must stop.

Firecrackers made from environment-friendly materials in India

While growing up as a kid in Odisha, we only used Tala Phootka (firecracker made of dried palm leaf) during Diwali. And there are many other such options, made from clay pots, jute strings, and bamboo twigs [see collage above for examples]. We should call for a ban on all other forms of firecrackers that use non-biodegradable materials. Coming to Holi, all chemical-based colors should be banned, and its use be made punishable. The traditional colors used in Holi were all made from plant-based materials that were actually good for our skin.

The Islamic and European rulers who ruled over India for centuries instituted systems in place that progressively undermined the pride we had in our traditions. And the assault continues today in name of "secularism". The flaws that have seeped into our practices (e.g., the use of firecrackers made out of plastic or the use of chemical colors during Holi) are not the fault of Hinduism but our shameless embrace of cheap materialism. We need to educate ourselves about the philosophy and history of our festivals. We need to celebrate our traditions unapologetically and do it by actively adopting and campaigning for the environment-friendly ways of celebrating our festivals. This way, we can also be an example for the rest of the world, as we were for millennia. If you have doubts, watch the video below.

Drop here!

What I liked the most of my Europe trip?

It's weekend again, which means it's time for a new weekend post. My previous two posts have been on travel, and today’s post continues that theme.

Writing about travel is not easy. The famous Scottish explorer, David Livingstone wrote in the introduction to his book, Missionary Travels in South Africa (1857), “It is far easier to travel than to write about it.” As I sat to write about my current travel experiences, I too struggled to summarize my rich and varied experiences of three weeks into a short blog post. After some deliberation, I decided to not write about the breathtaking landscapes of Alpine Austria, or the elegance of European medieval architecture, or for that matter even the captivating beauty that the majority of Eastern European women seem to possess. Surely they were all great but they are not what I'm deeply grateful for; they were eye-catching but not necessarily heart touching. In my experience, what really touches the heart is not simply beauty but the generosity of spirit. So below are some of the many experiences I had on my current trip that were very moving and uplifting to me:

• What I appreciated the most on my trip is the warmth and excitement with which I was received by my hosts in Austria. I felt welcomed right from the very moment I approached the exit out of the baggage claim area. I could see my friend, Elisabeth, waiting for me with an eager anticipation in her eyes. When our eyes met, she shouted out my name with an unbridled excitement that could have come only from genuine delight in seeing me or from drinking too much coffee while driving to pick me up from the airport. Whatever the case, I was equally pleased to see my friend, and was touched that she had chosen to wake up early in the morning to drive for over three hours from her hometown in Austria to pick me up from Munich. On our conversation over Skype couple of days before my trip I had offered to take the train to her place, but she had insisted on picking me up from the airport. You may say that this is what friends do for each other. I won’t disagree, but I’m still very grateful to have such wonderful friends in my life.

Let me now move the focus to my friend's mom. We had never met before but the openness and joy with which she welcomed me into her home is indescribable. Also, I continued to receive a lot of warmth and affection from her throughout the 9 days that I stayed at my friend's place. In today's age of Atithi, tum kab jaoge? which means "Dear guest, when are you going to leave?" my hosts insisted that I stayed with them longer. I had the implicit belief that only the sentimental Indians were capable of being caring and hospitable hosts; I was glad to be proven wrong.

• The next experience that I would like to share about happened in Prague. At Prague, I was staying at an economical hostel called The Golden Bridge Hostel. Although very economical, the hostel was clean, offered free breakfast, and was situated in one of those old historical buildings right in the heart of the old town square. It's owned and managed by a really nice guy of Moroccan origin named Redo. We chatted quite a bit in the evenings after I got back from my sightseeing walks around the city. When I returned to the hostel on my second evening in Prague, I found Redo sitting all excited in front of the television to watch the first 2014 soccer world cup match between Brazil and Croatia. Being a soccer fan myself, I joined in. Redo offered me the exotic drink that he was drinking, Becherovka. He said it was a special of Czech Republic. I first declined because I'm not fond of drinking alcohol. Also given how little I was paying for the hostel, I didn't want to take more just because it was being offered free. But then as Redo went on to describe more about the drink (that it is made out of herbs, used as a digestive aid, etc.), I got curious and decided to taste the drink. The drink was truly exquisite, the best alcoholic drink I had ever tasted. However, what moved me was not the spirit per se, but the generosity with which I was offered the spirit. The bigheartedness of Redo was again visible when I was ready to leave Prague. He had a nice little memento for me (picture above). He had earlier asked me if I had bought any mementos from Prague, and I had told him that I found it silly to buy tourist mementos. If I had actually gone and bought tourist mementos, it would have been truly frivolous, but a personal memento like the one I got from this new friend was worthy to be cherished.

I had many other experiences that demonstrates the inherent goodness of heart in people. It would not be feasible to list them out all here, but I'm still grateful for all those experiences. For example, how can you not be grateful to those random strangers who helped you with directions despite their difficulty in expressing themselves in English, or those who didn't know the directions themselves but readily pulled out their smartphones to help you with the directions? One old gentleman who spoke absolutely no English and failed to communicate the directions readily walked me to my destination before going his way. The truth is that you won't experience such beautiful side of humanity if you never venture beyond the major tourist attractions and if you rely more on electronic gadgets than on human beings to find your way. The difference between tourism and travel then is how vulnerable you are ready to make yourself and how much faith you have in humanity to help you with your needs. I by no means claim to be a genuine traveler but I am gradually opening myself to it, and that itself is a journey worth taking.

On the way to the largest ice caves in the world

Zell am See -- A popular tourist destination in Austria

Zell am See, Austria

  

Zell am See, Austria

In Salzburg with Elisabeth

Some beautiful windows in Salzburg

The city of Salzburg

Woods where I got lost on my first day of solo hiking

Beautiful wild flowers: On the way to one of the mountains in Austria

A beautiful log cabin on my hike up a mountain

There were no visible trails towards the top of the mountain, but it was exhilarating when I finally found my way to the top

Another view from the top

For part of this hike, it rained heavily soaking me wet (my jacket with hoody was only water resistant, not water proof). But once the clouds cleared up I was treated with this beautiful rainbow

Not everything was beautiful. I was upset to see massive deforestation in some places. I only hope that they are replenishing the forests

Wild flowers amid grass: Aren't they so much more beautiful than mowed and "weed" ridden lawns?

Eating Kaesepressknoedel, a traditional Austrian dish.
Ate many other delicious, vegetarian Austrian dishes. Some notable ones are Kaiserschmarrn, Apfelstrudel, Erdeermuas, Gemuesesuppe and Karfiolsuppe. The Apfelstrudel was definitely the best, but try it at a good restaurant if you don't get to taste a homemade one.

Egg salad prepared by Elisabeth
I had quit eating eggs but couldn't resist these delicious eggs from well cared, home raised hens

On the way to the Krimmler Wasserfaelle, Austria

The Krimmler Wasserfaelle in the background

View from my hostel's window in Prague

In the middle of old town square in Prague

Note: The cities of Salzburg, Vienna, Munich and Prague were all very beautiful, but I'm personally biased towards nature than architecture. That's the reason I have mostly posted nature photographs here.

Farcebook

Please do not get me wrong

I still love Facebook

But the bond's now weak

That was once pretty strong.

I loved the good friends

That I made through her

But then she began to refer

Updates from friends' friends.

And now it's a lot of noise

Of Likes, updates, and photos

From people I didn't chose.

That's why Facebook annoys.

FB, you need to understand

That I have a life outside

Which I cannot set aside

Because you want to expand.

The noise is much less now

After unsubcribing to your sham

But I'll quit, and be gone

If you treat me like a cash cow.

Facebook and Envy

A lot has been written about Facebook—the most popular social networking site in the world (currently, that is). There is also some research that has been published on the nature of status updates posted on Facebook, and how they affect people. Although I haven’t read the original research articles myself (I know of these studies from newspaper and magazine reports only), there seems to be some finding with respect to status updates making people more envious and depressed, especially among teens. This supposedly happens because Facebook gives an impression that your friends are having a perfect life.

I can imagine how Facebook can skew the perception of our world. Most of us share positive incidents from our life on Facebook. So, if a person is spending a lot of time on Facebook, s/he may come to believe that everyone else but him/her is having a great time in life. The tendency of few individuals to post photoshopped images of themselves can further give the impression that others are perfect.

I don’t mean to give the impression that Facebook causes envy and depression, although that’s what many popular press articles tend to allude to. Facebook is merely a platform on which social comparisons are made possible. Social comparisons happen in real life as well. However, it’s definitely possible that Facebook is a platform that skews social comparisons in one particular direction. On Facebook, we typically don’t get to find out about the struggles of others or about their humdrum existence. Only thing that we get to know about is typically the positive side: how wonderful somebody’s vacation was, how amazing somebody’s spouse is, and so on so forth.

To be continued ...

Post 1.0

Every New Year people resolve to change some aspect of their lives. Most of them fail dismally. Research shows that people make the same resolutions year after year, on average, for about 10 times. Of course, not all fail. But the success statistics aren't exactly encouraging. Among those who succeed, successful change happens only after attempting the same resolution for 6 times, on average.

I don't know about you, but these statistics appear pretty depressing to me, especially, because the figures are not from the yellow press. These are figures from top-tier peer reviewed journals in psychology. So, is personal change that difficult? Do we fool ourselves when we vow to start a new life? If we make the same resolutions for about 10 times, on what basis do we harbor hopes for successful change when our previous attempts had been hopeless failures? As the optimists say, may be, I should see the positive side. May be the fact that we keep trying despite failures is a sign of our persistence and resilience, and not a sign of our ludicrous naiveté that  lets us regale in our false hopes.

May be we all are intuitively skeptic about our ability to change, but we still try because that seems to be the right thing to do. Long ago, when I was in the first year of my undergrad, in a long-delayed welcome ceremony for freshmen, my seniors asked me to share my New Year's resolutions. As an earnest young man always eager to im-prove himself, I am sure I had made at least a couple of resolutions that year as well. However, I didn't want to share my resolutions publicly with everyone. So, I gave a tongue-in-cheek reply, "My New Year's resolution is that I won't make New Year's resolutions anymore... they fail anyway." My seniors seemed to like my response, because I got a lot of clapping and cheers.

My reply may have pleased my seniors, or at least amused them, but the earnest man in me has diligently continued his attempts at self-improvement. And I can confidently say that I have improved at least in some spheres of life. I guess that makes me an "improved" man, if not "new and improved." The latter title has traditionally been the reserve of soaps and toothpastes only, though now everyone has become very ambitious. Cellphones, web browsers, tablets, and computers, all become more attractive when the "new and improved" version comes with numerical suffixes of 2.0, 3.0... Some even stall their purchases by a year, because they want nothing less than the "new and improved" version. Of course, these people are much better than those who discard their 2.0 the moment 3.0 hits the market, because our obsession with "new and improved" products can continue indefinitely only if we get an Earth 2.0.

To be continued ...

For the love of reading

My new tea mug

My friends, Rama and her husband gifted me the above mug this holiday season. I love it! Of course, I love Schulz's Peanuts, but I also identify myself with the specific quote on the mug. It so aptly describes the current state of my mind! Although I have spent a large portion of my 36+ years of life studying (or may be because of it), I feel like I know so little. The statement might sound a little cliched, but it's true. In any case, I feel fortunate that the realization that I am ignorant despite years of study has not demotivated me from studying more. In fact, I love reading more than ever. That said, the journey hasn't been without problems. The biggest hurdle has come from the distractions of technology. Today, the distractions of TV, internet, and smart phones have severely hindered the development and maintenance of good reading habits. Sure, there's also a lot of valuable information on the TV and internet, but how many of us spend more time on the History Channel and Wikipedia than we do watching junk on television and following Facebook? In addition, can television ever stimulate our critical thinking and creative faculties the way books do? Groucho Marx, in his characteristic style of humor, once said, "I find television to be very educating.  Every time somebody turns on the set, I go in the other room and read a book." But where do you go when you yourselves turn on the television? And  where do you escape if you have the distractions of smartphones and iPods constantly glued onto you? I'm not saying that these instruments do not have their utilities. Of course, they do. In fact, I don't own a television or a smartphone, but I do use a laptop, which is the instrument of my work. Unfortunately, it is also the instrument of my entertainment, and that creates distractions for work, reading, and other creative pursuits. So, I am starting this new year with a 30-day challenge of turning off all my gadgets (and that includes my work laptop as well) for at least an hour after dinner everyday to uninterruptedly explore the pleasures of reading.

John Milton's quote at the entrance to the Main Reading Room of the New York Public Library.

Deliciously Sustainable

It happened about a month ago. As I do on most evenings, I walked over to my friend Rama's place to hang out, and play with her dog Maggie. Usually my friend's house is very clean, but on that particular day strands of hay were strewn all over her living room. She and her husband had just moved in a bale of hay from Lowe's. My friend was sitting on the floor hunching over a wicker basket, twisting small bunches of hay, and placing them inside the basket. As I entered the room, she turned towards me and gave me an excited smile, the kind of smile that you rarely see in adults. It was the kind of radiant smile that you see in young kids when they are engaged in some kind of creative play, like building a castle out of dirt, for instance. It was obvious that my creative friend was again up to something, but what? She asked if I could guess what she was making. I first thought may be it was some kind of shelter for Maggie to keep her warm in the winter, but then the basket seemed too small for her. Or may be it was some new art idea that she had come up with, but what exactly was she making? I could not think of anything. I gave up. Keeping me under suspense, she said I better wait and watch then. So I waited, saw the product taking shape in front of my eyes, and finally tasted the absolutely delicious rice that she prepared with it.

My friend is a great cook, but never before had her rice tasted so good. It was the best tasting rice I had had in a very long time, and its texture was perfect. The rice tasted so good, I felt like I could eat a lot of it even without the help of any side dish. In some strange way, the hay box had transformed regular rice into a delicacy. My friend had prepared a cooker out of hay and the wicker basket. I could not believe that a cooker which seemed so rural and primitive could prepare such tasty rice. And then I remembered the sheer delicacies which my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother prepared using the so called "primitive" methods of cooking. I realized nothing beats the old, slow methods of cooking. And here was a technology which allowed slow cooking without the extra-energy demands that usually involve slow cooking.

The principle was very simple. To cook the rice my friend brought rice to a boiling point on a regular stove. Then she turned off the stove and moved the hot vessel containing the boiling rice into the wicker basket that was lined with a thick layer of hay on all sides. She covered the vessel with its lid, and then placed on top of it another lid made out of hay. Basically the vessel was covered on all sides with hay. Hay being an excellent insulator trapped the heat that was there in the vessel, and made the rice cook in its own heat within 40 minutes.

My friend got her idea about the hay cooker from a video she watched on AID's (Association for India's Development) website. Many of my friends in Bloomington volunteer for AID. Surely, many AID members in US must have seen the video, but no one ever thought of preparing a hay cooker here in US. Because the hay cooker was being promoted in a rural village in India, it must have seemed like a rural thing that was not applicable in the context of a developed country like the USA. But my friend saw beyond the context, and with support of her husband had just succeeded in her experimentation with the hay cooker. The proof of the brilliant success of the cooker was of course the yummy rice on our plates.

Now my friend regularly cooks in her hay cooker, and not just rice but a wide variety of dishes. I have attached a few pictures of some of the delicious dishes she has prepared in her hay cooker. Because of the initiative taken by her, a lot of people in Bloomington have now got excited about the hay cooker. You too can try it in your own home!!

Benefits of the Hay Cooker:

1. It saves energy. Stove time is reduced by approximately 60-70%. That makes it very environment friendly.
2. Save money. Because you save energy, you automatically save on electricity/cooking gas bill.
3. Cooks tasty and nutritious food. There is very minimal loss of nutrients in the hay cooker. Contrast this to the traditional cooking where a lot of nutrients get lost in steam. The slow cooking of the hay cooker prevents loss of the natural nutrients in food. This is probably what makes the food cooked in hay cooker so tasty.
4. Serves hot food anytime. This is one of the best benefits of the hay cooker. If you leave the hot food vessel inside the hay cooker, it will keep the food hot for about 6-8 hours. All this without additional electricity. In other words, you can eat hot fresh food anytime without having to put your food in the refrigerator and then microwaving it.
5. No burning or overcooking. You can burn your food in the traditional cooking method if you forget to turn off your stove on time, but it is impossible to burn your food while using the hay cooker.

For more pictures, follow this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/ramacousik/HayCooker?feat=directlink

Is net surfing bad for you?

This is going to be a short post, and is basically a response to my friends' comments on my last Twit: "Surfing the net is like window shopping—you lose track of time, get nothing, and end up mentally exhausted and wasted." I first thought I will just write a one-line response, but then I realized that I had a little more to say than just a line or two. So, I thought I will use the blogging platform to write up my response. That said, I will still keep my response very short, because I have to get back to my research papers—the deadline for the Academy of Management conference is just four day away.

Before I write my response, I would first like to thank my friends for their comments. Irrespective of whether they agree or disagree with me, I always value their comments. When they agree, they encourage, and when they disagree, they make me think about the matter more deeply; you need good dozes of both in your life. Needless to say, some of my Facebook friends agreed with my statement and some did not. My friend, Ram commented that surfing the net is the "same as surfing TV channels.. choice of sites/channels matters." While I agree with my friend that choice of sites matters, "surfing the net" often ends being a purposeless and mindless activity for me. I do not mean to deny the excellent value that is in the internet. I myself use it extensively in my research. But I am still not very convinced about the benefits of "net surfing"—at least the way I (and I presume, most people) do it.

I have come to view surfing as a very passive activity, where we idly browse through pages on the internet hoping to find something of interest. Merriam-Webster Dictionary's definition of surfing is not very different; according to it "to surf" means to scan the offerings of (television or the Internet) for something of interest. In other words, surfing the net is more like what you do on the website http://www.stumbleupon.com/. Surfing is not the same as a specific web search that we may do on Google for a particular topic of our interest. Thus, when we are surfing the internet, we are not looking for anything particular, and are basically browsing through several uninteresting pages before stumbling on something interesting. Because we were not looking for anything specific, the "interesting" page holds our attention only for a few minutes, but then our mind prompts us to scan for something more interesting, and the surfing continues. I think this is the reason that surfing is often very addicting—as my friend, Anupama pointed out. The process is not very different from gambling, where gamblers tolerate series of losses before they stumble on a win; the win is appealing but then they think that a bigger win may be in store somewhere round the corner, and the gamble continues—exactly the same way as surfing continues for something more interesting. In the end, we rarely find anything interesting enough, and we end up feeling tired and exhausted—the same way as gamblers end up being broke. So, in the year 2010, my resolution is to avoid surfing the net, and get more involved in the time tested ways of relieving boredom: reading books, writing, running, hiking, singing, swimming, and some movie watching.

Blog versus Twitter

Over the past couple of months I have been twittering quite a lot. My Twitter account has been in existence for over a year, but I never really used it until recently. Now that I use it, I like twittering a lot. Expressing oneself coherently within 140 characters is definitely restrictive, but sometimes artificially imposed restrictions can also fuel creativity. Poetry, for example, is an outcome of such restrictions; the restrictions with respect to rhyming, number of syllables, and verse length help produce a beauty that no prose can match. But don't get me wrong—I am not equating twittering with writing poetry. My point is just that rules and restrictions can sometimes provide the ideal stage for creative expression. I believe the restriction of 140 characters in a Tweet has helped me creatively express some of my thoughts more parsimoniously. As a kid, I was very fond of collecting quotes, but now I have a few pithy ones of my own—thanks to twittering. The best part of twittering is that tweets need much less time investment than blogs—both for the writer as well as the reader. And because tweets make for extremely quick reads, they typically have a much larger audience than blogs. The RSS feeds which allow tweets to show up as status updates on Facebook further increase the reach of tweets. Many of the quotes that I wrote for Twitter/Facebook have been appreciated by my friends. I certainly feel happy about it. Having an audience that appreciates and acknowledges your words can give a person a lot of satisfaction.

Since the updated status messages on Twitter/Facebook almost always have an audience, one does not have to deal with what Virginia Woolf called "the world's notorious indifference." In her book A Room of One's Own, Woolf writes, "[The world] does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them. It does not care whether Flaubert finds the right word or whether Carlyle scrupulously verifies this or that fact. Naturally, it will not pay for what it does not want. And so the writer, Keats, Flaubert, Carlyle, suffers, especially in the creative years of youth, every form of distraction and discouragement." If the world does not care about Keats, Flaubert, and Carlyle, it sure does not care about Paresh Mishra's blog. In contrast to a hundred who may be reading my Facebook updates, probably just about a handful of people read my blog posts. The stat counter on my blog may show that I have several visitors visiting it daily, but I know that most spend just a few seconds on the page. So, does it make sense to invest time on blogging when the world is indifferent towards it? A few of my friends who used to blog pretty frequently have actually stopped doing so, and are more into twittering and facebooking now. Is it time to embrace twittering and say goodbye to blogging? I think NO.

I use Twitter mostly to express some of my thoughts within a sentence or two. Sometimes a single line can influence people much more than a whole book will ever do. A catchy quote easily attract people's attention, and stays in their mind. But it is not a substitute for an essay where arguments and evidence are discussed in detail—exactly the same way as poetry cannot take the place of prose. Each have their place in this world.

I agree that the world is and will always be indifferent to most of the blog posts that are created—mine included. I would certainly be happy when my blog posts are read by a wider group of people, but more than writing for people, I write for myself. Writing helps me put things in perspective. When I draw a cartoon, I again do it for myself—it's my need for expression. Attention is gratifying, but at least for me, the needs for self-reflection and expression are much stronger than my need for attention. So, "the world's notorious indifference" does not disappoint me much. That said, I also want to make a difference to this world. I would like to inspire people to live a holistic life where they are not consumed by the obsession for greater material success. I would like to inspire people to adopt sustainable lifestyles, and take care of mother earth. I would like to change the world, but I will still be happy if I succeed in transforming at least one person. And I know there is one person who is getting transformed by my writing—that's me. That is the power of writing—if not anybody else, it transforms the writer.

760's Photographs

I have posted drawings on this blog, but never any photographs. So, I thought, "Why not some photographs?"

You might be wondering, "What's special about these photographs?" Well, two things. First, they all show different parts of the beautiful campus of Indiana University, Bloomington. Second, these pictures have all been taken on a cellphone—my new Sony W760a—and not on a regular digital camera. I never thought one could get such good quality pictures from a cellphone's camera. The resolution of the camera is not much—only 3.2 mega pixels—which would be considered too low by today's digital cameras' standards. But the above pictures show that the megapixel argument is nothing more than a myth and marketing gimick; if you click on the pictures, you can see them in their full resolution. Of course, my cellphone camera doesn't have image stabilization, flash, and fast shutter speed—features that are very important while taking pictures in poor lighting or of moving objects. Yet, for regular still pictures it works great.

Chrome's Not Enough: Need More Browsers

Who needs another browser? I certainly thought I did not - but that was before I started using Google Chrome. I downloaded Chrome almost immediately after I came to know about its launch earlier this month. It was not that I was dissatisfied with my current browsers, but I was curious. I thought, "Google is such an innovative company - so there must be something interesting and useful in Chrome." Frankly, I wasn't disappointed: installation was quick, and Chrome transferred all the bookmarks from my default browser. I also particularly liked the minimalist approach of Google - the toolbar was not overcrowded. The option of having the most visited websites in thumbnails when opening a new tab also seemed very user friendly. Finally, Chrome is supposed to be more secure and stable than other browsers. Overall, I was happy with what Chrome offered.

In the last couple of weeks, with more usage, however, I have noticed a few small problems. News videos from cnn-ibn and New York Times for example, didn't work several times on Chrome; the problem seemed to be with Chrome, because the same videos were working fine on Firefox - my default browser. Couple of days back, I also had problems publishing on my blog while using Chrome; this was strange because my blog is on Blogger.com which belongs to Google (and yes, the problems immediately disappeared when I switched to Firefox). Anyway, this article is not to highlight problems with Chrome. Chrome is currently on a beta-version - so, some kinks are expected, and I am sure they would be straightened soon. In fact, the two problems that I just described, seem to be on their way out - my blog publishing seems to be working fine on Chrome now, and so do the videos at least from CNN-IBN. Nevertheless, I think more browsers is what we need today. Why do I say that? No, it's not that Chrome has increased my appetite, and thus, I want browsers to offer more. In fact, I would like to have more browsers in the market - each offering less. Currently, the browsers try to do everything; if the browsers themselves cannot do everything, they support several add-ons that make them extremely versatile. Most people see versatility to be a virtue; afterall, who wants to open separate browers for different kinds of work? While versatility reduces the need for having to open several browsers at the same time, it can also be a hinderance.

Today, when the whole internet is at the tip of fingers, people get easily distracted. Hence, versatile browsers that can do everything is not necessarily a good thing. Companies that want their employees to be less distracted would like to install browsers that allow the least amount of distraction for their employees. Similarly, there would be parents who would prefer browers that just support text only, and (say) no videos. Several graduate students and researchers would be happy to have browers that have specific features that are unique to their needs; they may not like to have all encompassing browsers that allows a person to do everything. Let me give a more concrete example: In some ways, it would have been better if Google never rectified the problem of watching news videos on Chrome - that way, I would have had to switch browsers in order to watch news; the extra steps of minimizing one browser window, and opening another to watch videos can actually be a boon, if you prefer lesser distractions. Similarly, having shortcuts to all entertainment websites on the toolbar can be a huge distraction, because you get easily distracted from your work, and start wasting time on useless browsing. It is very tempting to have browsers that give all functionality, but convergence of functionalities can itself become a nuissance when it distracts people from what they aspire to do.

It is very difficult to think of "less" in an age where companies constantly compete on providing more to their customers. Cellphone, for example, are not just a phone anymore, and doubles up as a music player, email checker, internet browser, GPS system, camera, stopwatch, flash light, and more. People usually like to have gadgets that have multiple functionalities, but I think there is also a big population who would like to have only those functionalities that they really need. With respect to browsers, I wish we have more browsers in the market that have very limited functionalities; browsers that do not allow add-ons to increase functionalities; browsers that do not allow bookmarks - or allow only upto (say) three bookmarks; browsers that do not support videos. My wish list should be easy to achieve, because it gives a list of what "not to have" - so it is all about gaining market share by deleting functionalities and reducing clutter. For the customer, bare-minimum browsers would mean lesser distraction, and thus the benefit of being able to spend more time on what one would have liked to do.