1. Lot of travelling : NOIDA, Pune, Mysore, Bandipur, Ooty

2. Shifted to new home : cooler, bigger and closer to the new office (see below).

3. Indian arm of Sarnoff (my employer) is formally spun off by Sarnoff Corp. US. I better not say the new name… but the acronym still remains SITPL. So its a tough road ahead.

4. Shifting to new cheaper office this weekend. But it close to the Lalbagh Garden

5. Rising interests : bodybuilding, money, traveling and sight-seeing. Declining interests : girls. Stable interests : programming and other academic stuff.

Alright, here I am again!! with the stories from the last fortnight. I went to IIIT to see old friends who still are there with their own attempts at glory and for a serious discussion concerning a possible PhD from CVIT (among other things.. that is). And for the Nth time vidit hosted me saving me good money that I would have otherwise spent on stay and food. These guys are simply so nice to me that I manage to throw a small party whenever I go. Alright, now for the news…

Two incredible guys : This bit is about work before the trip. Work has been getting more and more interesting over the past few weeks and as a part of my job I have been meeting some great guys. Bala S Manian is a hotshot (if you read that page, i dont need say why ) whom I happened to meet during one of the meetings. In 20 minutes flat, he explained his latest attempt at building cheaper diagnostic systems using reagents (see reametrix). Not many people have that kind of passion towards things they do.. truly inspirational. The second person is Kishore Arur. He is IIT-Bombay graduate who went on to establish several firms (proteck machinery being one of them) and all operating in India. His presence on the web is limited, so there are no links. But, in the 90 minutes that I talked to him he reminded me of Hank Rearden in Atlas Shrugged. Very rarely do we see IITians who stay here and try to revolutionize things this way.

Bad Show by DC: By the time I actually publish this Deccan Chargers might already be out of the race for semis. Somehow many of their matches seem closely contested and they have won none of such matches. Its too sad that Symmos, the second costliest buy in the entire league, repeatedly failed with the ball. That cost the initial matches which made lot of difference to the morale (I guess). Next time better luck :D. IPL itself seems to be taking too long and I dont understand the need for a knockout phase when each team has been pitted against every other one both at home and away. Guess the big bosses want some scope for gambling even at the very end.

Pathetic Healthcare in Interior AP : After the short stay at IIIT I went home to Varni (a remote village in Nizamabad). A family friend of us visited and he looked very downcast. Upon inquiry, he told me that over the last 6 months he had to shell to out over 2 lakhs to find out what mystic disease had struck his daughter. To go in to the details, he is a small businessman with five daughters and ever since I knew he had been fighting off one financial crisis after the other to give a good life to all of them. The smartest of them was struck with some unknown disease (vomitings and constipation being the syptoms) about 6 months back. Failures of doctors in the village were followed by similar results at the Taluq and District headquarters. Every week a new doctor would be consulted and everytime the little girl was to go through all the tests which made her feel increasingly miserable. ‘Nothing to worry’ the doctors would reply, prescribe some medicine, the symptoms would worsen and towards the end of the week the doctor would expresse his helplessness. More than four months passed this way and not even one doctor even suggested the parents of the girl to consult a hospital with more facilities somewhere else (say in Hyderabad). I was shocked to know this fact that these doctors, apart from being ill-qualified are also so apathetic to the condition of their patients in these areas. Forget professional ethics, basic human traits demand that you be honest under such circumstances. If this is how the district headquarters is, you can imagine the plight of the villages. As I thought about it, it slowly dawned on me why these sucka chose to practice in these remote places. Well, I dont mean to derogate the few good men who actually are doing good things but I feel most of these men seem to be there for money and they dont have to be exceptionally good to do that in these places. Finally, after some visting these docs for over 90 times (and the girl went through all standard medical tests for more than 100 times) some docs at Hyderabad have come to conclusion that it is Gastroenteritis and the girl is now on the path to recovery and is on a steady liquid diet. But the entire episode left me shell-shocked. The absymal healthcare in rural areas is something that needs immediate attention. While the urban citadels of this country are teeming with leeches who are bent on making most of the new rich India, the villages are dying for the minimum required attention. If only something could be done to accelerate efforts towards the realization of tele-medicine, tele-diagnostics.(Vidit, are you listening?)

My niece talks now and enjoys tormenting rabbits: News from home is never complete without the mention of my niece. She is 20 months old now and continues to amuse my folks with her ultra-steep learning curve. Of late, she started shouting back everything that she hears. The day I went, she picked up a book on STL (standard template library of C++) and forced me to read some words for her. Now she shrieks unusual words like ‘ectol‘ (vector), ‘agadheem‘ (algorithm)… they dont amuse my mom but they mightily amuse me. And talking of amusement, she took a liking for cute white rabbits and as result we have a small rabbit family at home now. And in the lush green garden beside my home my niece and I had loads of fun with them. She takes great joy in picking them by their ears and lifting above her head and dropping them. But such is the beauty of innocent children that the rabbits seem more comfortable with her than me : They invariably rush towards her whenever I let them go.

Alright, thats news for now. I am getting more lethargic than ever and its been long time since I hit the gym. Hoping to turn the tide this week.

I am quick in returning to blog this time and the stimulant is not my own enthu about it but a few things that taught me that all is not smooth with life. Well, well I didnt hit a speeding truck or something.. but these are things that you dont have control over and yet matter to you enough to make you feel bad for days and weeks.

Lost a Friend : A childhood mate of mine with whom I shared a very strong bond expired. Its a super-shock to me. We went to the same school (in a town about 10 miles from my village. He belonged to the town and was the son of one of our teachers). During the seven years we were together I grew up enjoying the generous benefits of his friendship.. from reading kids magazines like twinkle, champak at his home (which my family could not afford in the wildest dreams) to riding his MTB bicycle in the lane adjacent our shool. I still can remember the days we used to hunt crabs together in the lakes, play cricket in the Govt. Jr. College ground and wonder when we are going to be big enough to date girls. Even our names were similar (Ranjeeth and Sujeeth) and teachers wondered if we were brothers. After seven years we took different roads and I havent seen him for eight more years. Only recently did I speak to him and dearly wanted to see him. And then the next thing i hear after that is that he is gone. Being far far away from that town now.. I never saw him again. The cruelest aspect of life.. mortality and the irreversibility of it have hit me strongly for the first time. I will never be able to tell him what he means to me… never!! This came after the feelings about apologizing (last post). I cant feel more helpless and stupid. My mom had the best advice : ‘Pray for him’ .. It made me feel light… makes me wonder how wise folks get as they age!!

The Toll of Passion : And added to this a good colleague is quitting this week becaue he wanted to pursue his true passion and I dunno if I should feel bad about it or be happy that he is following his heart in this matter. I cant control these events nor can I be indifferent to them. And the third one : Another friend whom I considered a very very bright dude during BTech. He was super enthusiastic about research and was passionate about doing high quality work. A couple of rejections at some top confs led him to beleive that he is not good enough and he might now leave the path that he seemed to be tailor-made for. I felt so sad about it because I didnt imagine in my wildest dreams that he would have a problem with research.. he was that good. And again.. I cant control it and I cant watch it silently. Life is really a very nasty.. the happy times are just those moments when it played your way.

Welcome back!! long time since I blogged. A month gone and finally I got time to ramble upon the major time-killers during this period..

Research on world wars : The thing that killed most of the time was my readings on both the world wars [sparked off by watching The Pianist]. I kept digging through articles on wikipedia and history of all the involved european countries and their motives as if I was reading some fiction novel, sometimes drawing parallels to LOTR. The largest chunk of time was spent on reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf [@project-gutenberg, if you prefer reading from pdf here is one copy]. It is [at least the initial part] is a good read. The second chapter which describes the life of daily-wage workers in Vienna immediately reminded me of life in and around our own cities (my own family having faced such extreme conditions several times). As I read through the initial part the author appeared [to me] a rational person with strong nationlistic ideals. I didnt finish the book yet.. so the later pages might reveal what led people to beleive that he is the monster he is picturized to be. But anyway, if you enjoy history then this is good read. But dont buy all the theories in it. It might harm!!

Ways to Apologize?? : Somewhere during the middle of march I had a strange dream. It featured a couple of old (and very good) pals with whom I subsequently broke ties [cheifly because of the jerk inside me :(]. I woke up and wondered if I am ever going to tell these guys how I feel about it now. Then came the sudden urge to apologize to all these folks.. I sat down and recollected all the instances I had been rude to all these likeable people and wanted to send mails rightaway tellling them that I didnt mean it and all that stuff. But heck, the size of that list was daunting (I recollected all the sins ever I stepped in to IIIT-H.. that mighty 6+ years). I still need to figure out a way to apologize to all these really really nice people and make them feel that I mean it. How??

Brown Bradman : Virender Sehwag is not just a flat-bed bully… he is a very very baaaaaaad big flat-bed bully [no offence intended there, I respect him a lot.. and of course no offence to the Don too. Viru matches only in that triple hundred thingy]. How can anybody smash new ball attacks like that?. He simply massacres them. With some luck he would have been captain by now. Guess the ‘most prolific opener’ title will have to do [for now, at least].

Overqualified for playing : After pounding my colleagues for several weeks at AOC, the tough times have started for me. No.. they didnt get good enough to beat me, but they are kicking me out of games saying that I am overqualified to play with them :(.

Indo-Israeli Workshop on Computer Vision : Was at good old IIIT-H during the first week of February for this workshop. Definitely a good one as the talks were carefully culled. I was representing Sarnoff Corporation for the first time at a conference.The talks were all great and the big point I took note of was the abscence of talks on Geometric Vision which is indicative of the new wave : appearance and image based methods. Meeting great researchers is always quite exciting and the informal nature of the workshop made the experience even better (more than 7 hours of the two-day conference were dedicated to informal interaction). Among the talks, my picks (obviously I wont go in to the detials, check the workshop and the homepages of speakers for details) : Jitendra Malik gave an excellent review of what was and what is and insights in to future of object recognition. He never needed equations to give an overview of his works like shape context matching and deformable templates. Shree Nayar and Manik Verma both presented work with sound theoretical basis and excellent results. I am now a big fan of both :). Lihi Zelnik and Lior Wolf both presented work with simple theory (more like common-sense, in fact) which had really really cool results. Overall, it was great attending the workshop and definitely CVIT is moving towards great heights. Hoping to see many more such workshops for the benefit of researchers in India.

We are Sorry!! : Australia apologized for the years of ill-treatment of aborigines yesterday. While it takes courage to ask for forgivenness and as appreciable as the gesture is, I wonder if saying sorry is the best way to reconciliation. Firstly, after reading many australian blogs and blog-comments following the Sydney cricket match, I seriously doubt if this sorry symbolizes a change at the heart. Second, while modern Australia eventually recognized and honored its aboriginal heros such as Cathy Freeman, too many of them must have been lost during the bad days. It must be most humiliating to be treated as a second rate citizen in one’s home land (God Bless India :)). For a sample see this. If only a sorry could set all the wrongs right…sigh!! However, evolving and getting better is the hallmark of our species… hope that this will mark the beginning of a new era for them (Good Luck Land of Oz).

Arundathi Roy on Genocide : here is the lecture given by her at Istanbul. Leave aside the intellectual debate on genocides but the facts and statistics sampled therein alone shook me. I spent all morning wondering what makes men capable of being so cruel to their fellowmen. And then she presents the Indian story pointing out what is not-so-obvious in Brave New India’s success story. My optimism concerning ‘India Shining‘ took a severe beating after I read this article, nevertheless it is a must read for fervent optimists who are often oblivious to the costs of our Progress ( a clan which I was a member of till today). Her point of view on famous India Poised campaign (starring AB) and Sangh clear many of our perceptions. Worth the time you spend reading it.

What a match!! : Joe-Wilfred Tsonga looks like a medieval warrior and Novak Djokovic like a victorian theatre artist. Together, they enacted nearly 3 hours of absolute nerve-jangling drama. you have to see beleive it. Although I am a fan of all the three Serbian *vics I could not stop admiring the Mohammad Ali look-alike (sheer brilliance and power you see!!). But for a 20 year old, from a country like Serbia, to win a slam title is no (D)joke. The reactions of their families were quite moving. NOLE’s mom’s reactions to each point won and lost speaks volumes of the struggle he must have undergone. His two brothers were thumping their chests when he won good points. Likewise, Tsonga’s parents were never on their seats. Novak’s line to the crowd ‘Dont worry.. I still love you guys’ (he was not the crowd favourite) was absolutely awesome. What a champion and what a runner-up!!.

Already 15 days gone. 2007 was a slow-motion movie.. 2k8 seems to be running :). I started to write a big list of resolutions on Jan 1st and just wrote the second one.. :D. To summarize the events and the major time-killers.

Watched TZP : watched it over and over. Initially Darsheel Safary’s performance overshadowed everything else. Then, as is my habit, watched it many times over trying to appreciate it. But alas.. somethings could have been done better. Ishan and his Dad rocked on the acting front. But I didnt understand why the discovery of Dyslexia had to be pushed so far in time. And, as is customary in hindi movies, the boy’s struggle against it is shown in a single song, stealing all the grace. But heck.. I need to quit being a jerk!! There cant be any complaints against this movie. Rocks absolutely.

Monkey v Bastard : Screwed up lot of time by reading every tom-dick-harry’s views on this. Jumbo chose the words of Bill Woodfull to express his feelings. Famously, the same dude asked his teammates (when the bodyline orginator Douglas Jardine complained of the use of the word ‘Bastard’) ‘Righto! Which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?’. Jardine, reportedly, got the point and left it there. What better way to tell the Oz what monkey stands for us than replacing bastard with monkey in that line. And I as I write this, Rauf screwed up another Sachin century. Makes you wonder what pressure these umpires are taking on them.

Bodybuilding : I was crunching news and landed on bodybuilding.com for the second time. Superbly improved in content, this site now provides tons of useful information if you are fitness freak. Good find. My workouts are becoming irregular however :(.

AOC : Yeah… the old addiction is back. Spent lot of toying with colleagues at this game. None were as good as folks at college :).

10 days into the new year and it struck me that I didnt count my blessings in 2007. So here is my list.. roughly reverse chronological

i) Learnt how to ride a bike (fell only once ) . I bought a Hero Honda Glamour for my Dad and making me learn was the first on his agenda. Bicycle at 12.. Bike at 24. Hoping to avoid Car at 36.

ii) Taught my niece to say ‘Maama’ and to do Bicep curls. She is an absolute darling and at 16 months, knows how to workout :).

iii) Became more spiritual. Spent both xmas and newyear in a church.

*) Defended my thesis. A miraculous achievement for me (hence marked by the *). Thanks to all the folks at IIIT who helped me in this. The updated homepage give more details.

iv) Became a fitness freak. Freak muscles and hose-like veins are a long way but I look pretty strong now :).

v) Visited Tirumala for the first time.

vi) Travelled a lot. Took several self-funded flights :). Visited an IIT for the first time (IIT-K).

vii) The number of girls on the friends list took a big boost. A result of lessened chauvinism and perhaps working out.

ix) Found that working in a corporate can rock and suck simultaneously.

x) [I cant find more...... I really suck at counting my blessings.]

Now for the negatives :

*) Lost student status. Will miss IIIT-H and all the folks.

no point in mentioning the rest… they are too trivial. Life rocks.

Last week was an eventful one for me. Although I submitted my thesis about month back the date of defense was held uncertain for long and then all of a sudden it was decided that things will have to be done in the next 30 hours. I somehow managed to defend my work successfully. It was an incredibly long journey that took about 2.5 years. Many youngsters were asking me if doing MS at IIIT was a good idea. Although I do not deem myself a very successful student, I strongly felt that I should let them know some things which I learned the hard way. But first, they must read this advice that Dr. PJN gave to my batchmates when they were entering masters program. That is the best set of guidelines for research students.

…To be continued

For the last six days, I spent most of my time at good old IIIT-H. Struck by a mild fever and my advisor insisting that I should get a degree in my name, I had few options. But ah!!.. college is always wonderful. Particularly because of the old friends who are still there. The best part, so far, has come today. The 8th lecture in the Distinguished Lecture series, delivered by none other than the finest of carnatic musicians, Dr. Mangalampalli Balamuralikrishna. He needs no introduction and yet ,I am tempted to give a list : Sangeeta Kalanidhi, Padma Shree, Padma Vibhushan, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres … the list goes on. By fame alone, he pulled the largest crowd I have ever seen at CR 119 (old library.. as the old timers call it). The talk was on ‘How to Appreciate Music’… and although he did not stick to the topic, it was delightful to listen to him even when he is not singing.

It seems he never went to school after failing in 5th standard and yet he spoke comfortably in english.. narrating to us the events of his life from which he learnt many things. And how he surprised me from the beginning? I expected him to be an orthodox musician hell bent on the notion of formal correctness and all.. but he broke that with the first sentence : ‘How to appreciate music.. this I think should be first taught to musicians and not audience.’…. ‘It is the responsibility of the singer and not the one who listens’. Such humility!! and from a once-in-a-generation musician. He brought, along with him, his student Muralikrishna who is blind.. and the way MBK led him on to stage with utmost care showed the compassion and respect for his talent.

He talked candidly about his own life, his poor academic background (and how teachers used to let him get away with it after making him sing for them), his inclination towards music that is closer to the hearts of people (and not to the arcane theories), his despisal of press, his devotion to and criticism of God, his views of Indian and western life.. and each time he delved on to a new topic, he stressed his point with a beautiful song and the entire hall went spellbound. His sense of humour is something that I rarely saw in musicians of his generation.

And of course, I would be missing the core point if I dont write of his main advice : ‘If you want to appreciate music, dont try to judge (in the theoretical sense) it. For, if you try to judge the correctness there is no time to enjoy it. If you happen to have already learnt the theory.. just listen with an open mind. Do not try to look at the details.’ Such advice from the greatest carnatic musician of his times shows how great a visionary he is. I have steroetyped carnatic musicians as arrogant, albeit with lot of talent, hell-bent on precision, orthodox and lacking sense of humour. MBK simply tore down each of those perceptions. It was a previlege to listen to him and experience his warmth.

This distinguished lecture was refreshingly diffrent from others, which were mostly on technology. Also, it was announced that MBK will be associated with the newly established Center for Exact Humanities at IIIT-H. Good News!! and hopefully I will get to spend many pleasant hours listening to the maestro. For once, I took pride in my telugu origins because of this great vaaggeyakaara.