Why linux is liberating …
Tux
There was a time not very long ago when, the first thing I did after buying a computer was to stuff the latest Windows on it. But now, and for some time before now – I have been totally enthralled by linux. It was never a sudden fascination. No one can be fascinated by the command line ! It grew on me till I could appreciate what the linux movement really implied. Therefore, as a little advice and as an exercise in reminiscence – I will reiterate why linux changed me in more than ways than one.
At heart we are all creative. Yes ! You , your aunt , your mom, dad , sister, friend, girlfriend – everyone is built to be creative. Our language skills develop because we continuously improvise with it. Our physical self develops because we push ourselves in various ways to do many different things. We are alive and in the position to rule this planet because of one very important reason – we were creative enough to understand, adapt and then control the multitude of situations that time has thrown at us. For our long term survival, it is this trait that will be our guiding light.
Linux gives you the freedom to be unique ! It liberates you from the necessity to pay for running code on your hardware to create your unique ideas. Because this freedom comes right from the level of the operating system in your computer – it permeates all that you load and run on it (well almost !). Linux is not a product or a device or an algorithm. It is a confluence of ideas of many unique individuals, ideas built to empower the new computer user to create more unique ideas.
But not everyone wants you to be unique and creative. For the business of selling software, you are a better customer if your needs are predictable and your usage of your hardware is in the “standard” range of customer behavior. So it makes great sense for a software selling company to drive consumer behavior to an average line on their demographic map. The line that leads to the pile of money ! And so you are “encouraged” to buy the “propriety” software so that you can be the “power user”. If only you knew what that really means, you would think twice about being a “power user” !
Propriety and paid for software encourages talents no doubt. The money they can generate can fuel the aspirations of vast numbers of capable humans. There are many brilliant people in Adobe making the “best” photo-editing software. There are many talented folk at Microsoft making the next Windows ! But they are all driven to the same goals, their unique ideas snubbed by the same market forces that are providing their living. Amazingly this money flow generates conformist behavior at both ends !
Linux made me realize the joy of being in a position to exercise the full worth my ideas. From a harmless user who could make photos look cool on a screen, I can now write and deliver code that will do any number manipulations real time on any number of photos and serve them from an Internet domain name ! From a lame one trick pony listening to mp3′s and playing games, I have been transformed to a game maker – creating unique playing fields with sights and sounds which draw interested stares from other human beings ! I have been given the freedom to be unique.
There was a time when linux was that thing you put on your computer and typed endlessly on a black screen with white and yellow characters. Linux used to be for the nerds ! Mainly because it was made by some rebellious nerds. The average Joe cannot be expected to make an operating system can he ? But he can be expected to be unique and creative. And that was what made the average Joe the usability expert in the linux community ! To direct the tide toward a more user friendly and beautiful interface. There was KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, OpenBox, ICEwm and many more gui interfaces for your favorite desktop. These were the reflections of many unique individuals and groups who strove to make the most “suitable” window manager for your system. Some were nerds, some graphic artists, some usability experts and some plain old grannies and granpas who used it and gave the most valuable thing – feedback. They cared to give feedback because they felt empowered by the system !
Today linux is a powerhouse of variety, usability, security and stability. There is a version for everyone. For those who have 20:20 vision to those who can barely see at all ! For those who want to play 3d games on their home PC to those who want to simulate hundreds of molecules interacting in 3d in virtual reality ! For those who want to write remote procedure calls on far away servers to those who just want to use Internet telephony to talk to their children studying in distant countries ! Linux has put many a helpless man back in the driving seat of his survival story.
If evolution can teach us one important lesson it is this – those who can adapt will survive. Linux enables us to be adaptive – to be what the situation demands and not what the software seller wants you to be. To be your own unique self – so that you can add to the creative pool of human endeavor. Linux is what will redeem us in the end from the monotonous zombie like existence that all of us fall prey to. Linux will liberate you not because linux wants to, but because you will never feel comfortable in those software chains again !
Karmic Concepts
Karmic Wheel
On a recent trip, I found myself in the audience of an “informed” astrologer. He was doling stories on the reasons of the events of the Mahabharata. A recurring concept in his themes was past life “karma”. To a question from one of the five strong audience – he replied that the hardship in this life is due to the bad karma of the previous lives. In fact he classified karma into two types – once which accumulates over lifetimes, and the other which expires with every life. Interesting thought…
Karma as a positive behavior reinforcing concept is excellent. Its a sturdy fabric to build our society with. Without this – we are liable to just annihilate ourselves in random fashion from time to time to random acts of greed and excess. Social evolution (with the implication that non-karma oriented societies failed in the long run) has made this such a strong concept (even in other religions apart from Hinduism & Buddhism) that by the time we are adults – we seriously believe that doing “bad” will get you “bad” and vice a versa. In fact it is such a strong idea that indeed after doing a “wrong” thing – one might expect to self destruct – further proving the concept. And also perfectly serving the purpose of keeping a healthy society.
However to be perfectly logical – this concept by itself is not true. There are people in this world with enormous amounts of “bad karma”, who never see the raw end of the deal. Vice a versa their are many “good karma” guys who never see a great life till their ends.
To accept such exceptions we start reasoning with the previous and next birth concept. It gives us satisfaction to know that “bad things will happen” in the next life of a “bad karma” person. It is at this point that although we are actually seeing the fallacy – we yet do not want to reconcile the contradiction, covering it instead with conjecture.
To sum up – we need to understand that the concept of karma is not a passive/reactionary “God-mediated” service. We ourselves have to enforce the concept. To that end some of us may fail and become greedy and obnoxious. Again it is for the rest of us to diligently enforce the concept. Sitting back and harping about the “next birth” will only make sure that this concept will eventually fail ….
In this country (India) there are millions waiting with hunger in their guts and a desire for a better life in their minds. They can, if they wanted to, come together and enforce the “karma” concept on those that suppress them and serve to impoverish them. And yet the imagined next life and its implications are injecting a lethargy into the system. We have made the karma concept and it up to us to make the magic happen. We are indeed our own Gods !
The Antidote to a Vuvuzela
News just in – Mick Jagger was pissed off with Leonardo DiCaprio because of the vuvuzela he was blowing behind him ! Having though about this, i figured the market was ripe for an antidote. FIFA World Cup 2010 has seen enough vuvuzela holding retards. As the finals roll in the time has come to clean up the mess.
So if you are really bugged by the vuvuzela behind you – do not worry help is at hand ! Introducing the effuzela – the mother of all antidotes. Will make the idiot behind you run for his life and sanity ! Guaranteed to make his like miserable !
The antidote for a vuvuzela
The Top Three Absolutely Essential Plugins For Firefox
Over many years of using various browsers to surf the internet – I have realized that there are certain essential things that make my browsing experience pleasant and productive. Various plugins built in Firefox help achieve this functionality. Here is an outline of the first plugins you should be installing on a fresh Firefox install. Please remember that this is from a active browsing perspective – and not about how to prevent certain things from happening.(For example – having a plugin to block ads etc)
Gmarks firefox plugin
The first important ingredient of a good browsing session is continuity! Yes – you have to have some continuity with your previous experiences. Otherwise each browsing session becomes independent of each other and hence non-productive compared to what you could have achieved if you remembered what you were looking at last! But that is what bookmarks are for, right? Yes of course – you have the bookmarks, but what if you are using two computers? Or even worse – you have arrived at a university and sitting at your new computer you wonder how to lug your bookmarks into this machine! The plugin to do all this and more is Gmarks. It helps you use the Google bookmarking service to have a central online repository of all your bookmarks! The Gmarks plugin taps into this resource and presents an alternative bookmarking menu at top in Firefox. The advantage of using Gmarks is that all you have to do on a new computer is load Gmarks and login to your Google account. That is it! All your bookmarks are back! Better than syncing or trying other kinds of roundabout means to get your bookmarks back. Also each new bookmark that you add under Gmarks will be stored forever online! No chance of losing them again!
Tree-Style Tabs Firefox Plugin
The second most important ingredient of a good browsing experience is – organisation. If your tabs are all over the place you will be spending more time hovering your mouse at the top, trying to figure out your own trains of thought! Not only will you be confused, but you will also be unable to do multi-tasking. To your rescue is TreeStyle Tabs plugin for Firefox. This plugin does two simple things – takes your tabs to the left of your main browsing section (especially handy in widescreen monitors) and organizes them in the hierarchy that they were opened. This means that if you click on “open in a new tab” after right-clicking on a link, the new tab appears indented further than the parent tab and directly under it. This sets up a system more like your files and directories. You know which tab opened up which new tab. Also if you are doing two or three tasks in parallel, this makes it possible to visually isolate the different tasks.
Session Manager Firefox Extension
The third most important aspect of a good browsing experience is sessions. You arrive at a point where all the information is in front of you. And yet you do not have enough time to go through all of it just then. Instead of going on a bookmarking marathon – save the session – use the Session Manager plugin for Firefox. Session Manager stores all the tabs open – in a file, called a session file. Later you can reload the session file to get back all your tabs. In an instant you can have all the information that you researched yesterday!
This session functionality can be extended in conjunction with the Gmarks plugin and some free hosting. For example I store my saved sessions in a free online storage account (ex. Idrive, Mozy etc) and bookmark the link in my Gmarks. So all I have to do is load the two plugins – go to the sessions download page from Gmarks and get back all my sessions anytime – anywhere!
So there you have it – the three most important plugins to augment your browsing experience. The Chrome Browser (from Google) which has just entered the market has managed to get sessions and Gmarks – thanks to plugins developed by enthusiasts. It is yet to get the tree style functionality for its tabs. Till that happens Firefox is still on top! Opera loses out in not having a Gmark setup as yet. In a later article we will explore the usefulness of the next five most important plugins.
Maxtox – predicting toxicity online ! Part 1
The famous skull and bones ...
What is toxicity ? This question has been asked by a newbie to biology, as well as the forty year old drug research scientist. The newbie wants to know the meaning of this word, while the scientist wants to know why is it being used to shelve the drug that he had researched for the last decade ! Indeed this word brings doom to a new drug, it can wipe out companies and research worth many million dollars can come to naught.
The thrust therefore now (and for a long time now) has been to understand this term in the clearest way possible before beginning the long and winding road to drug discovery. There are tomes of books and research materials trying to help in this direction, but when it comes to the practicalities – toxicity is a really difficult concept to understand and measure. There are a variety of “standard” experiments and there are a multitude of competing definitions. Today, the new drug discoverer could not be in a more turbulent cauldron of information, definitions and experiments. Even the experiments themselves are long drawn out affairs consisting of many steps and a lot of resource investments.
In recent times a part of this problem has been solved by software tools. These run on HPCs (High Performance Clusters) and serve a variety of purposes in the aid of drug discovery. A few purposes that these tools serve are
- Help in understanding the structure and 3d spatial orientation of the new molecule.
- Help in understanding the activity of the molecule towards a target protein etc.
- Determine the toxicity of the molecule by comparing it to various standards and formulas ( and other molecules)
However a couple of limitations of these tools has always been the processor intensive nature of the calculations as well as the cost if installing the software and the hardware required for running these systems. The build up to the actual predictive numbers was a major hurdle for most fledgling drug companies. Enter Opentox.
So what is Opentox ? Briefly its a worldwide project (funded under FP7 of EU Commission) to get predictive technologies onto the web, where they can be easily accessed by scientists and interested individuals. A part of this project which is being implemented by me is called MaxTox. Maxtox is a predictive algorithm which tries to answer the important question – how toxic is this new molecule ?
Before running into what Maxtox does, lets first understand a little more about this word – toxicity. There a few common definitions abounding on the internet. Here are a few important ones :
- TD50 : Chronic dose rate (expressed in milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight per day) which would induce tumors in half of the number of test animals at the end of the standard lifespan for the specie.
- LD50 : The LD50 is the dose that kills half (50%) of the animals tested (LD = “lethal dose”). The animals are usually rats or mice, although rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, and so on are sometimes used.
Mouse for testing !
As we can see there a few important things in these definitions. The first one is the dose rate – expressed in milligrams per kilogram of bodyweight per day. The second is the endpoint – the target species or the organ of a target species. For example the liver of a rat. There could be a series of experiments done on the liver of live rats to quantify the toxicity of a chemical.
In the toxicity definition, you should be able to notice another important thing – although only in a implied form. Its the number of animals that have to be put to death to get these values. This however is the bitter truth about drug discovery – you have to test it in a multitude of animals before it is considered safe for humans. However Maxtox can help alleviate this problem to a great extent.
Ok so lets find out more about Maxtox. Here are a few things that would define this algorithm.
- Maxtox predicts the toxicity of a chemical against a particular end point (like rat liver TD50).
- Maxtox requires existing data of toxicity against the predicted endpoint – preferably a large set of molecule already tested.
- Maxtox compares the new molecules structure to the tested molecules to find similarities.
- Maxtox uses these similarities in structure to make a statistical model – which predicts the toxicity.
Heres a link to try out the service : http://opentox2.informatik.uni-freiburg.de:8080/MaxtoxTest/. Right now there is one model in place so you can get a prediction of only one type of toxicity. Later the intended direction is to have a multitude of models.
In later articles we I will discuss advantages of this algorithm and the internal logic.
Batista got himself fixed ! Here’s how ….
Batista required a desi remedy !
Saw this on the roadside at Palam area near the Dwarka – Delhi flyover. I was surprised to see that Batista has a big situation in his life – the day he got beat up by the Great Khali. What was a even bigger surprise was to see that he got himself the remedy at Palam in Delhi. Long live desi medicine ! This photo is proof that big bad ass men can be fixed with the desi style medicine !
Research in India ! …. Part 3
So here I am again lambasting the way research is done in India. If you haven’t seen part 1 and 2 please find the links below. I assure you, you will be totally on the floor laughing at how amazing research is done in exceptional India !
The following anecdote, although not experienced first hand, totally blew my mind away and left me in titters. It is about a deemed faculty from a prominent German University. The person in question is actually Indian born (Benaras) and spent the better part of his life doing protein related research in Germany. Thus he arrived in our deemed Indian university to give a lecture on how they had discovered a novel software method to make predictions of protein functions etc. An email had been circulating for the week leading up to the lecture – so I was kind of waiting to hear the guy.
Unfortunately on D-Day, one of my friends came over and we decided to do nothing and just chill around. I met him at the university and had a few cups of coffee, spending the bright sunny winter afternoon in a park. In the course of our “doing nothing” I decided I should just snick in and give my ear to the deemed German faculty. So both of us headed back to the department and entered a small conference room – the venue for the lecture. We sat there for about fifteen minutes, trying to understand the guy – but failed. Having gotten totally bored we quietly excused ourselves and left for the park.
A few days later I met one of my research colleagues on the lawn and the topic veered towards the aforementioned lecture. He was the one who had been assigned to “help out the gentleman from Germany” and proceeded to tell me the whole story. From here on is his account, with him referred to as P and the visiting faculty as Prof G.
When the honorable Prof G came to our university, the first thing he asked for in chaste English, was a Prof R of our university. Since R was unavailable, he then wanted to meet one of R’s students. However even that was not possible – so he, a little irritatedly, asked to be shown to conference room.
The conference room is a small affair with a heavily virus infected PC connected to a projector. Prof G had his own laptop so he went ahead and started connecting it. P stood looking, trying to look as dumb as possible – so that he wouldn’t have to break his brains over the projector setup. After connecting his laptop and switching on “everything”, there was still no “light”. So Prof G looked at P and said “Is this thing working?”.
P replied “I think so … ” and kept quite. For the next few minutes Prof G and P fought with the projector and got it working. After this Prof G asked for some water, and P came back with about a glass full of water. His language had changed from English to native Hindi by now. Since we are having a “water problem” in the department, Prof G was told that this was about as much he would get in the next few hours. After drinking the water Prof G wanted to go the toilet.
P let him to the toilet and again reminded him that we have a “water problem”. So Prof G asked for an alternative in a belligerent tone – using “tum” to address P. “Tum” which is pronounced as toom, was the familiar way of addressing people in Hindi. P told him about the locations of the various other toilets in the department and left him to decide his next course of action. After which Prof G for the next few minutes tried the other three toilets, but his luck had run out and so had the water.
P met Prof G again a few minutes later – quite worked up and desperately needing to go to the loo. Now he was frantically asking P questions, starting them with “aap” which was the formal and respectful way of addressing people in India. P told him another option – “There is a toilet in the hostel which always has water, but it is a fifteen minute walk” . Prof G tried to follow him to the hostel but about twenty meters from starting point decided that he would not make it !
- Heavy Unloading !
By this time the situation was really bad. At this point the gardener came and started watering the rose bushes in the lawn. P had an idea. He told Prof G that if he did not mind “gardening water’ he could use a bucket in the toilet to help himself. At this point Prof G was desperate enough to try “anything”, so he rushed to the toilet got the bucket and filled it with water from the gardening hose. He was back in the toilet in no time and stayed there for the next half hour !
Afterwards P met Prof G at the conference room looking quite relieved. He continued with his lecture – of which I had managed to witness fifteen boring minutes.
After P told this amazing tale of the Prof G’s woes – I wondered. I wondered if there was one good reason why any Indian born faculty would like to come back here to teach in our universities. Probably the next time Prof G came he would bring a water tanker in tow !
How to BEAT the damn traffic …. in India
Stuck forever !
India is a multicultural land where the laws are notional and ground reality operates on principles more in tune with the Amazonian Rain Forests. Traffic in India is one of the best manifestations of the preceding statement. Foreigners hate it, some Indians enjoy it and the rest just tolerate it.
Among those that enjoy it, are three groups. The first group believes in “enjoying” while driving – implying they will usually drink, pass lewd comments, break the lights and honk a horn so loud that even your dead ancestors will wake up and come running to you. They are usually illiterate, driving taxis for a living – getting payed by the hour.
The second group consist of the “insulated”. This group is usually travelling in cars, with AC and a driver. They read a paper while the driver tries to justify his bread and butter. Often cars of this group of people stop suddenly in the middle of the road while the “sahab” squints at some consumer good on the roadside shop front. Or maybe the “memsahab’ wants to get off right there to meet an acquaintance !
A very small percentage of people form the third group. However this group is the most promising in terms of abilities. The demographic is a Young Upwardly Mobile person, who is reasonably good at driving and takes special joy in getting ahead of the traffic by various means. These means may border on the illegal, but the activities are usually not as discomforting as those of the first group of “enjoyers”. Lights are broken – usually only when the cops are gone and traffic is sparse. Horns are blared – but at opportune times and for maximum effect. This group enjoys the fact that – others on the road don’t know the “tricks”.
Although I used to tolerate the traffic before – I have slowly learnt to believe in group no. three and strive to be in that category. The following advice is for those who want to be in this category and more specifically drive a car. For bikers I will publish more advice later. Please remember and clearly note, that the following is not advisable to be done regularly as it takes considerable mental alertness and effort. Also there are risks that should be evaluated before undertaking such driving. There may be “bad” repercussions in case of a misfire. However, sometimes one has to really be “there” by “this time” and these methods may come in handy at such junctures. Always be careful and alert … you cannot let yourself be distracted when doing the following.
1. Timing : The first technique is to master half-clutch driving. I can hear some of the die hard motorists criticizing, to them I have to say “shut up and go to the US”. Your mechanic may complain and your driving instructor will get appalled – but if you cannot drive on half clutch you will be forever at the “end of the long line”. The reason is one word – TIMING. Driving to beat the traffic involves a lot of correct timing. If you are too fast you will hit the car ahead, if you are too slow the auto-rickshaw on your left will come in front of you. Also some times when you are going fast you may have to go over a bump. At this time a little break and a bit of half-clutch driving will minimize the impact to bearable levels. The idea is to brake hard just before the bump, shift to second (or maybe first ?) gear and drive half-clutch over the bump controlling the speed to adjust to height of the bump. Just as your rear tyre starts going over – leave the clutch and start accelerating. If you time it right you will accelerate as the rear wheels are going “down the bump” and will get an extra impetus.
2. Prediction : The second most important technique is something I learnt in driving school. But in a different context. In driving school they told us to drive “defensively”, and one of the tricks was to see ahead and see the big picture. The idea was that you would be able to avoid a potentially dangerous situation. But the same trick can be used to good effect in “offensive” driving. Once you see the big picture you will have an idea about the traffic in your vicinity. It pays to be able to estimate which driver is timid and which driver is over-aggressive. So when you approach their vehicles you will be correctly predicting their reactions. This is an invaluable art – and if you can master it, half your problems on the road will be gone !
Work on the left !
3. Geometry : Yes, you need to understand geometry well to beat the traffic. On the road, there are wide and long buses, short and slim autos, cycles, thelas, bikers and people who don’t have a ride at all ! In this mixed chaos its important to understand angles and spaces. If you can place your vehicle in an advantageous position – you will be able to overtake even the most aggressive of the drivers. Almost everyone can overtake cars on the highway at cruise speeds. But overtaking vehicles travelling inches apart at 10km/hr is quite a different ball game !
For example : One thing one should always try to do with the car is to block the bikes trying to get past you from the left. They will usually go ahead and come in your way – so keep them behind you. To do this you have to travel in the left most lane making sure that space between your car and the pavement on the left is less than the width of a bike ! Geometry ! To extend the example : You detect a space on the left of the bus ahead, just enough to pass your car through – or maybe not. Theres the catch – if you know the width of your car well you can take the risk and slip through. If not – by the time you have “estimated” – space will be clogged with cycles and bikers. If you estimated early that you cannot pass – the next best thing to do is to “block the hole”. Get behind the bus and almost touch the rear of the bus while minimizing the gap on the left of your car. You have to careful here – as this can be dangerous on inclines – the buses will come back a few inches when the driver leaves the clutch. Once you have blocked a hole – you can later take another shot at slipping through.
4. Traffic Lights : If they work – the advice is to follow the lights. You will not get much benefit by breaking a light, and the risk of getting caught by a cop on the other side may be high, especially during the day. At night certain liberties can be taken – but usually the benefit availed is of less than a minute. However as most other things in India – the traffic lights may not work. There are various stages of malfunction. The light may be totally not working – no red/yellow/green lights. Or they may be partially broken – red or green may be off. Or they may seem like strobes in a disco – blinking randomly. The important thing is know what do in such uncertain circumstances.
Risky Business !
The first rule is that if the lights are malfunctioning and there is no cop on the road in the middle handling things, you can safely assume that law is unavailable at that junction. You can probably shoot a guy on the crossing and no one will bother. No cops + No lights = Jungle rules. At this point you may safely break the rules (you, anyway cannot make out the light – so there are no rules !). But the trick is in how you break the rules. The fools go charging in and more often than not there is another such fool on the other side ! Result – a JAM. But you know this so you keep to sparse areas – as far as possible from the center of action. The idea is to circumvent the problem in novel ways. Say you want to take a right on a crossing where the lights are kaput. Stick to the left and follow the vehicles going straight ahead. As you are almost past the crossing brake sharply and put on your right blinker. This usually scares people behind you and if you can judge the reactions times you will have turned before the car on your right can block you ! Sometimes even this may fail as the center of the JAM is large enough to cover all of the crossing ! Your next best bet is to check the traffic on the left of the road on the other side. If the oncoming traffic has a clear left lane – go ahead to the next cut, take a u-turn and then take the left when you come back to the crossing. This technique has helped me often in cases where my right turn was totally blocked !
If you know a traffic light is broken before hand (they stay broken for a month or more before they are fixed !) you can avoid it at peak times. At off peak times, if you want to pass through fast without getting hit by other brave people on the road – there is a special trick. As you approach the crossing (at high speed) – blink your headlights (especially at night) , honk loudly but not continuously and then break hard till you can hear the tyre screech ! That usually scares other drivers in earshot – and you can then go past the crossing at a higher speed !
5. Left Lane Policy : On the highway the right lane goes fastest (we follow the English driving ethic). However in JAMS use the american system. Stay on the left, overtake from the left, abuse from the left and generally do what ever you have to do, ON THE LEFT. The left is usually occupied by large buses and trucks which have more “scare value” in jams. Which means they usually get ahead faster by scaring the smaller vehicles. Also travelling on the left gives you the occasional opportunity of a clearing on the left- where you can overtake the bus you have been following for some time now !
6. Follow Talent : If you find an aggressive bus driver – just shut your brain to everything else – and keep the gap between your bonnet and the bus’s ass to less than a feet. Thats all you will need to get past the “slow coaches”. Same for an aggressive and talented taxi driver. Also if you happen to be following someone who is a regular on that road (and you are new) – you will come to know the “tricks”. The small by by lanes and gaps which are waiting for the intelligent opportunist. However if you are not up to the talent levels of the preceding vehicle – then you may get stuck in a stupid situation while the guy ahead just slips through. So follow with a pinch of salt. If you are a regular as well – don’t be afraid to overtake the “talented ones”. The best of us are prone to mistakes – traffic is such a game that its difficult to predict correctly, and you may just have the extra observation that gets you ahead !
7. Examine New Roads : If you are travelling regularly on a particular route, take some time once in a while to examine the “inner roads”. You may turn up in a blind alley occasionally but more often than not you will find an alternate route – a very handy thing to know during peak hours ! If you are a map type – you can buy an Eicher map (they are the best printed maps in India, and have the most detail – right down to house numbers). Or you may invest in a GPS navigator. But don’t depend on either for salvation – most inner roads are often blocked by police barricades – so your “special route” may just be a dud. There is nothing like examining for your self – so after you detect a new route on the map – go check it out ! Keep a watch out for barricades on the road side. They are usually deployed in “sensitive” times and may block your alternate route.
If you are not the map type or have difficulty understanding maps – then just do some wishful driving once in a while – the only requisite being COUNT THE TURNS. If you hit a nice route by chance just note the route in your mind (if you have an elephantine memory) or on a piece of paper or on the phone/pda. You can usually just note the counts like so … third left – second right – fourth left ….etc. Remember to note the staring and the ending point. If you know the end point on an alternate route opens up on a jammed crossing, then you can avoid the route in peak hours.
8. Horn Please : The honk is your ranged weapon so use it intelligently. If you honk continuously – it is not only a nuisance to every one else – it gives you a headache as well. Needless to say – such honking is usually counter productive, for it may make the others around you aware of your intentions ! Yes ! Your intentions are yours. Don’t give away the game before it starts. Approach a vehicle silently from behind – measure the driver and overtake him when he is distracted with something else !
The honk is very useful at certain important junctures. If you have approached silently and the driver ahead doesn’t know about your existence – then you can scare him if tries to block the gap on the left ! The timing has to be right – if you honk early you give away your position. If you honk too late he is already blocking you ! Just when he is about to make his “move” give a loud burst and shut up. He will pause and may try again – repeat the dose. If he is hesitant again – you are in luck ! He is a timid type – rub his nose to the ground ! Overtake and while you are abreast honk when your bonnet is nearest to his ear. The extra dose will bottle him up enough to prevent him from making counter moves from behind you afterwards !
Concluding thoughts : There are many more tricks of the trade which I have not mentioned here. They often come naturally after a while and cannot be taught ! However this basic set will help you a long way if you happen to be a hapless foreigner in the middle of the sea of chaos – called Indian Traffic (Expatriate Commonwealth Games personnel – please note) . Please remember that this is not for the faint hearted or the timid. If you really and desperately want to fuck the traffic and get ahead – these rules and techniques will come in handy. Once you are doing these often – you will start enjoying the effect you have on traffic around you.
That auto-walla may shout – but you have blocked him !
The bus driver may honk – but he cannot pass through the gap on your right !
The biker may be aggressive – but thanks to the small gap on your left he will fall into the storm drain !
The “thela” (cycle cart) may be blocking your way, but cannot match the sudden acceleration when the traffic opens up !
The taxi walla is trying to intimidate you – distract him with counter abuses, and then overtake him. Block him and pause your car – let him shout till he is hoarse. Go ahead and pause again near a traffic constable – now he cannot abuse you even when he is overtaking you !
The key is to have fun while keeping a cool head. Be aggressive and ruthless within the bounds of law and decency. Enjoy the “repercussions” of your driving and while you are at it – you will be “there” in no time !
Kolkata Diaries – Part 1
Roadside ablutions !
During the latter half of November, I had the chance to take a good look at Kolkata while on a brief sojourn. I had imagined that my fifteen day holiday would be a long lazy one, but as always it turned out to be shorter than expected. There is just something about holidays which makes me want a “bonus day” on the last day of the holiday !
The occasion was my son’s “anna-prashan” which roughly translates to a ceremony to mark the first consumption of rice by a new born. The theory is that up until that day the baby is supposed to be only fed the liquids. During the ceremony the usual rigamrole ensues, whereby a suitable learned looking “pandit” doles out passages from a dog-eared tome. The sound of the sanskrit language exerts a strange allure on the masses – although almost 90% percent in recent times neither know or understand it.
So there I was in Kolkata for a few days contemplating my holiday routine and trying to figure out a comfortable way to pass the time. The weather was just right and the scenery around my dad’s pad is pretty green – with a lake thrown in for good measure. In this scenic setting I started wondering about Kolkata and what defines this city. The most compelling reason for this activity of mine was one word – pollution !
Ah yes the pollution ! My reveries in Kolkata were totally annihilated whenever I tried to venture out on the city roads. The noxious fumes were so disgusting that by the end of the third outing I had almost decided that the next trip would be the one to the airport when I am flying out. The air there is more than polluted – it was poisonous. A deadly gas which would have been a favorite with the Nazis at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
I realized that there were a multitude of reasons working in tandom to achieve this abominal end result. The most important, I felt, was the fact that the people of Kolkata seem to accept anything from mother nature and nothing from upper management ! Since the polluted air was more mother nature than upper management – its was totally acceptable. However stringent laws to control pollution seemed to be more of an upper-management dicktat – so it met with heavy resistance whenever any attempt at its implementation were made.
The auto-rikshaws as usual were the greatest offenders. They use something called “kata tel” or “modified petrol”. The modification in this case was the dilution of the petrol with kerosene. This causes a decrease in running costs (because of the subsidized nature of kerosene in India) and a ten fold increase in air pollution from the exhaust. To give an idea of the situation – everytime I followed such an auto-rikshaw (in my car) I felt like someone had stuck an exhaust pipe up my nose.
Get a wiff !
The auto-rickshaws are followed by the buses in the polluting top three. The third spot is of course held by the archaic and totally ramshackle set of Taxis ! The age old diesel buses and taxis have engines which are probably older than the oldest driver. They should have all been scrapped by now – except that in Kolkata “poor people” can get away with anything ! Since the poor bus-wallas and auto-rickshaw-wallas are amongst the “poor people” there illegal actions are pardonable.
Which brings me to the second reason for this end result. Vote bank politics. Kolkata has been ruled for a long time now by the CPIM – a communist party which has managed to hold the reins for nearly forty years ! Communism has always been a favorite concept with the enlightened bengali “bhadrolok”, read – gentleman. However in forty years of power, the CPIM party has managed to make a mockery of the concept – and use it to squeeze the last drops of life from this ailing old city.
In their diary of forty years the CPIM have prominently etched a number of amazing achievements. One of the more famous ones is the exit of the Tatas from Singur. The Indian dream car – called the nano was supposed to have been launched from Bengal. But in the end the cheap politcs and the Kolkata mentality for limiting progress – prevailed ! The sterling project was reduced to a political farce. Many loud slogans and party meetings later – the Tatas got completely frustrated and left the place, swearing never to come back with another project. In fact in a recent conference the chairman of the Tata & Sons group, was reported to have remarked that it was all for the best – as he was almost a hundred percent sure that they (political parties) would not have allowed them to function with any efficiency even if they had managed to create the factory !
Kolkata inspite of all its past history of high education and learned achievemnt, has managed to become an immense slum of sorts. Everywhere you look you can find a ton of rotting garbage and plastic bags. The roads are some of the worst in India (even within the heart of the city). The air is polluted and the population is predominantly old – as the young have left for greener pastures. It was really sad to see the city on its knees gasping in suffocation. It will not be long before the situation goes beyond control and the only option left will be to leave the place to rot in isolation. Maybe they will create barricades around the city – to prevent the filth and the shit from spilling over to the relatively cleaner rural suburbs !
