No Dual Citizenship for NRIs/PIOs

India can't have citizens who live here when the time is good & run away when the nation faces difficulties. No to dual citizenship & NRI voting. Indian citizenship is a sacred vow you make to this country. Dual citizenship ends that vow. NRIs are free to come to India and vote. Just as any other Indian citizen who has to travel to his/her home town to vote. This nonsense about NRIs and PIOs being a "special" class of Indians needs to be nipped in the bud. NRIs are Indians. PIOs are not. An American Citizen takes oath (in below image). You want him to be an Indian Citizen too? Where would his loyalties lie? You have to be loyal to the country you have taken a citizenship oath for, not to India. People trying to mix NRIs and PIOs thus do disservice to both. We must treat them as two distinct categories. 

Bhai desh chhod ke aapne desh pe ehsaan nahin kiya hai. Kripya vishesh darje ki ummeed na karein. Desh chhoda aapne apne personal fayde ke liye, is desh ke liye nahi. Sab nafa nuksaan aapko pata thaa tab bhi. Aur rahi baat paisa Bharat mein jamaa karane ki to kya Indian banks vs US banks ke interest rate ki baat ki jaaye? 1990 mein jab India mai ecominic crisis hua tha tab ye paisa kaise gayab hua tha wo bhi yaad hai.

Nothing personal against anyone. Hamare bhi dost hain. But some hard truths had to be said.

ibteda-e-ishq

ibteda-e-ishq hai rota hai kya
aage aage dekhiye hota hai kya

sabz hoti hi nahin ye sar zameen
tukhm-e-khwahish dil me tu bota hai kya

-Meer Taqi Meer

Toh zinda ho tum

Dilon mein tum apni
Betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum

Nazar mein khwabon ki
Bijliyaan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum

Hawa ke jhokon ke jaise
Aazad rehna seekho
Tum ek dariya ke jaise
Lehron mein behna seekho

Har ek lamhe se tum milo
Khole apni baahein
Har ek pal ek naya sama
Dekhen yeh nigahaein
Jo apni aankhon mein
Hairaniyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum

Dilon mein tum apni
Betaabiyan leke chal rahe ho
Toh zinda ho tum

dekhi zamane ki yaari

Kaagaz ke Phool (1959)

Kaifi Azmi stepped in for Kaagaz ke Phool as lyricist after fallout between Sahir Ludhianvi and SD Burman.  He penned some of the most awesome lyrics in Guru Dutt saab's semi auto biographical magnum opus film where protagonist falls on bad times and forsaken by same industry that revered him once, He practically forecasted his suicide in the movie. Dekhi zamane ki yaari is a bitter and cynical look at the short life of fame and relationships in a world that values only what it can get. The whole movie was  so much so that Dr. Rajendra Prasad(then President) walked out midway of the movie and it received negative response across the board. This had a huge impact on Guru Dutt and he never took the director cap after that. The Rafi's voice increases the sense of loss.

Are Dekhi Zamaane Ki Yaari

Matlab Ki Duniya Hai Saari

Bichhade Sabhee, Bichhade Sabhi Baari Baari

Kya le ke milen ab duniya se, Aansu ke siva kuch paas nahi

Ya phul hi phul the daaman men, Ya kaanton ki bhi aas nahi

Matalab Ki Duniya Hai Saari

Bichhade Sabhee, Bichhade Sabhi Baari Baari

Another marvelous song in same movie is waqt nai kiya kya haseen sitam, a philosophical view on lost love.

Cynical songs

I have never been a hopeless romantic guy though i often like love stories sometimes wishful to make one myself. Are there really those candlelights and roses ones ? perhaps there are, perhaps there are others which are equally romantic without roses and candles. I like them but experience have made me more cynical than i ever was.
My friends keep pointing to me that i like too many of cynical songs. Though i find them romantic in a way.  Does that make me a cynical romantic or romantic cynic.

So i thought  i will list my favorites in cynicism.

Cheeno arab hamara.
Sahir Ludhianvi was the face of cynicism. He had a very cynical view of realities of life and of Nehru's idea of socialism. In 1904 in his Tarana a hindi (Saare jahan se achcha) Iqbal had written.

Mazhab nahi sikhata apas mai bair rakhna
Hindi hai hum watan hai Hindostan hamara.    

His trip to europe turned him into Islamic visionary and 6 years later he wrote Tarana a Milli.

Chino-arab hamara, Hindostan hamara,
Muslim hai hum watan hai saara jahaan hamara

Sahir turned this into:

Chino-arab hamara, Hindostan hamara,
rahne ko ghar nahi, saara jahaan hamara.  

I have heard this couplet hundreds times from my father and it was anthem for disillusioned, educated unemployed youth of the country.

Taking off Saare jahaan se achcha, where the lines were:

Ae aab-e-rud-e-Ganga, voh din yaad hai tujhko
Utra tere kinaare jab kaarwaan hamaara 

Sahir penned:

Kholi bhi cheen gayi hai, benchein bhi cheen gayi hai,
Sadkon pe ghoomta hain ab karwaan hamara

While Iqbal's:

Parbat woh sab se uncha humsaaya aasmaan ka,
Woh santari hamara, woh pasban hamara 

became Sahir's:

Jebein hain apni khaali, kyon deta varna gaali
Vo santari hamara, vo pasban hamara  

 Controversial as the lyrics were, there was talk of the song being banned at one time.

 

its hard

Its hard to let go people.

Its easy to push them away, ignore them, pretend they never crossed path with you ever, ignore them, avoid them, separate out their world from yours. 

but sometimes hard way is the easier, short way goes longer and life is too short to take the long way.

Hallelujah

"...Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I use to live alone before i knew you
I have seen your flag on marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's cold and it's a broken hallelujah..."

~Leonard Cohen 

It's fair

Do I really look like a guy with a plan, Harvey? I don’t have a plan… The mob has plans, the cops have plans. … Maroni has plans. Gordon has plans. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I’m not a schemer, I show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.

It’s the schemers who put you where you are. You were a schemer. You had plans. Look where it got you. … Nobody panics when the expected people get killed. Nobody panics when things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying. If I tell the press that tomorrow a gangbanger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics. Because it’s all part of the plan. But when I say that one little old mayor will die, everybody loses their minds! Introduce a little anarchy, you upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. And you know the thing about chaos, Harvey? … It’s fair.

ये वो सहर तो नहीं

ये दाग दाग उजाला, ये शब्-गज़ीदा सहर
वो इंतज़ार था जिसका, ये वो सहर तो नहीं

this scarred, marred brightness, this bitten by night dawn
the one that was awaited, surely this is not that dawn

Faiz Ahmed Faiz in August 1947. more applicable in current state of India.  

जिन्हें नाज़ है हिन्द पर वो कहाँ है

As the year ends and i look back, i am more disillusioned from the dream Gandhi and Nehru dreamt for us. This is not the country we were promised and i feel so helpless that i cant change a damn thing. So bloody helpless.  

ये कूचे ये नीलाम घर दिल-कशी के

ये लुटते हुए कारवा ज़िन्दगी के 

कहाँ है कहाँ है मुहाफ़िज़ खुदी के

जिन्हें नाज़ है हिन्द पर वो कहा है 

मदद चाहती है ये हव्वा की बेटी 

यशोदा की हम-जींस राधा की बेटी
पयम्बर की उम्मत जुलेखा की बेटी
जिन्हें नाज़ है हिन्द पर वो कहाँ है

जरा मुल्क के रहबरों को बुलाओ
ये कुचे ये गलियां ये मंजर दिखाओ
जिन्हें नाज़ है हिन्द पर उनको बुलाओ
जिन्हें नाज़ है हिन्द पर वो कहाँ है
कहाँ है कहाँ हैं कहाँ हैं ?

I was one of them.

Lets keep fun in computing

“I think that it’s extraordinarily important that we in computer sci- ence keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints se- riously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don’t think we are. I think we’re responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don’t become missionaries. Don’t feel as if you’re Bible sales- men. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don’t feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What’s in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.” —Alan J. Perlis (April 1, 1922 – February 7, 1990) 

haqeeqat-e-ishq

Tum Haqeeqat-e-Ishq ho, ya fareb meri ankhon ka..
Na DiL se nikalte ho, na Zindagi main aate ho .

What the hell am i doing

Lately I’ve been drowning in inability to do things. Somethings happened which put a break on all the cool progress I made in last year and I don’t feel like I’m getting anything done. Numerous conversations with "me", some strange blogpost i have stumbled upon have started to make sense. 

The best i read is this. 

They can’t just decide that they want to start a company and keep it, or to move to the beach and play the keyboard for a meager living because they realize that would totally fulfill them. Instead they drown under a running faucet of infinite caveats and doubts available at a moment’s notice from their abstract thinking. They are stuck in a labyrinth of endless scenarios that never existed and never plausibly will exist, but that inform their decisions and beliefs all the same.    

... 

You will never live the life you want by wandering aimlessly through hypothetical scenarios. I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work. I’ve also tried just doing something. That worked. 

So i'm trying. 

Cheers,

About Principles

Alice shows some code to Bob. Something about it catches Bob’s eye; he tells her that this mechanism is a bad idea and she should find another approach. She asks why.

Bob, despite being correct, can’t answer.

Or maybe he can, but is worse off nonetheless: for every pitfall or potential consequence he dreams up, Alice fires back with how she’ll compensate or why it doesn’t apply in this case. Eventually Bob runs out of ideas, and Alice carries on with what she’s doing, now feeling more happy about it—she’s fought for her work and won, after all.

Bob is arguing from principle, and Alice is scoffing at the idea of principle for its own sake. Principles are for academics; out here in the real world, whatever gets the job done is good enough.

Right?

Google Search and My world

Everyone lives in their own world. They live with the only things they know, and have known all their lives. Unless you experience all that is in this world you can never understand it. You must know pain, sadness, joy and love. Fear and safety. Love and hate.You may have been a hero. And must experience being an outcast. Until you’ve felt all that’s in this world, you can never understand it.

Now this is more true with Google tweaking its results to include my G+ activities. This might mean i will never discover a new world. I might never come to understand the other world. Although it was inevitable that G+ will make its way into search results but i find it little too early. Lets wait and see what Google algorithms has in store for us.   

The Joys of the Craft : Why Programming is fun ?

What delights may its practitioner expect as his reward?

First is the sheer joy of making things. As the child delights in his mud pie, so the adult enjoys building things, especially things of his own design. I think this delight must be an image of God's delight in making things, a delight shown in the distinctiveness of each leaf and each snowflake.

Second is the pleasure of making things that are useful to other people.Deep within, we want others to use our work and to find it helpful. In this respect the programming system is not essentially different from the child's first clay pencil holder "for Daddy's office."

Third is the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles, playing out the consequences of principles built in from the beginning. The programmed computer has all the fascination of the pinball machine or the jukebox mechanism, carried to the ultimate.

Fourth is the joy of always learning, which springs from the non-repeating nature of the task. In one way or another the problem is ever new, and its solver learns something: sometimes practical, sometimes theoretical, and sometimes both.

Finally, there is the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. Few media of creation are so flexible, so easy to polish and rework, so readily capable of realizing grand conceptual structures. (...) Yet the program construct, unlike the poet's words, is real in the sense that it moves and works, producing visible outputs separately from the construct itself. It prints results, draws pictures, produces sounds, moves arms. The magic of myth and legend has come true in our time. One types the correct incantation on a keyboard, and a display screen comes to life, showing things that never were nor could be.

Programming then is fun because it gratifies creative longings built deep within us and delights sensibilities we have in common with all men.

Note : This excerpts are from classic The Mythical Man Month Anniversary edition a must read for every software developer.  

Eclipse-ing fast !!

I recently switched back eclipse and voila i don't remember a single shortcut now. Its very painful to keep searching for right shortcut. Here are few points to help you find yours way on eclipse.  

1. Shift+Ctrl+L (Shift+Command+L on mac) : This opens the list of shortcuts available. Very helpful in remembering the shortcuts.

  

Now just scroll and remember some very helpful shortcuts.

2. Ctrl+3 (Command+3) : Sometimes you need to access functionality which does not binds to any command (aka key shortcut) than this is very helpful shortcut. Just press Ctrl+3 and start typing the name of the functionality you are looking for. For example if you wants to find the formatter. take the following route : 

As you can see it display every single functionality which contains work "code style" now just select the one you wants to use.

Remember these shortcuts when next time you need help in eclipse. 

Note: Used gmail-embedded image which got lost in transmission. screw google, will fix it tomorrow 

Happy hacking!! 

The Assignment

"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life."
— John Lennon

Gmail Attach file helper

This is real cool. Not a big thing to do but very helpful for scatterbeans like me who often forgets to attach file. Now If Gmail finds I have attached, Find Attached, Attached File etc and no file as attached than it pops a confirmation dialog to make sure you have not forgotten to attach something !! yay !!

Facebook can do a lot more

Building a fun place for 500 million people to share pics and play silly games is *NOT* that cool. I believe what more cool is to enable technology for freedom of expression and not to chicken out something which facebook is doing in the case of egypt crisis. They are okay to let their 5 million egyptian members down because they don't want to make angry egypt govt. and other countries under dictatorship. And expecially China where they are banned but want a pie of 420 million people using internet. If Facebook wants to remain a place where people hang out with their friends they certainly have to do more .

More on this:
* Facebook's China interest
* Why Facebook Should Do More to Help Egypt's Protesters
* Facebook treads carefully after its vital role in Egypt's anti-Mubarak protests