The Beginning of an End

I am blogg-ing after a long long time. I was so-called busy writing my PhD thesis, trying to get a job in a situation where the market is at its lower best because of recession. There were a couple of other things which kept me busy but primarily its the thesis. Completing the thesis is not a big task according to me, if one has done his part of technical work and documentation properly. The only effort being that one has to do a survey which in more scientific terms is called literature survey, which by no means is interesting and eats up a lot of time and energy. I do not know what to say about the time I took to complete my PhD. It is because of many other constructively distractive works that led to the delay. I have been involved with two startup activities in which I had to put considerable amount of effort and time. And I liked taking up challenging projects ranging from automated Analog placement and routing, behavioral modeling of AMS to Mobile applications, data mining and data security. These were by no means correlated to my thesis which was on "Simulation Based Verification of Pipelined Processors". It was a wonderful experience walking down the road of research with so much of breadth in terms of experience. I liked it a lot. Anyway, now that I am out of the wonderful years of academic researcher life, I have to face the world. I need to work hard and stay focussed now. I can feel, its an even arena. Its the beginning of a new phase and the end of of a much loved phase in my life. This is the synopsis of how I completed PhD, gave my synopsis seminar and joined Synopsys India at Bangalore. Looking forward to the late but extremely new beginning in my life. Will keep you guys posted.

The Art of doing a PhD - Part I

It has been a really long time since I last blogged. Life has been pretty busy these last few days/months. I have been trying to finish my long-pending PhD. To update my thesis work is over, it is writing which is taking time. I need some more time to finish the writing part. Well as I am nearing the end of my PhD life, I thought I should jot down a few valuable points of learning before moving ahead from here. There are 3 basic laws of PhD which I would adapt/rediscover. As it is said, research is inspired so are my laws from Newton the great scientist:

1. PhD follows a sine curve, there are ups and there are downs. Both of these states require external force which comes from two very important components of PhD: The Guide and The Student. PhD will remain in the downs until the guide pulls the student out of the down to up, and the student will move down with his force of distractions as and when possible.
2. The time period (T) required to finish a PhD is depend on 'p' - The problem taken up for solving and  'i' The interest the student and the guide have in the problem. "p" has multifareous objectives and definitions which is beyond the scope of this blog( a typical term used in technical papers),  but " i" has two components which follow the law of vector addition: is and ig, the interest of the student and the interest of the guide in the problem respectively.
3. For each and every work that you do, you shall publish or you shall perish.

I will explain these laws in Part II which will be a continuation of the current subject we have undertaken for the purpose of subjective research.

Knowledge and Realization

I woke one fine morning and found that the way I perceive events have changed. Life has taken a new turn all of a sudden and every event, thing or whatever it is, is understood from the minutest of details possible. The world no longer seems to be a jumble or a puzzle. The missing links have been found and the various events in space and time can be easily correlated. Perhaps, this what I would feel when I realize. There is a subtle difference between Knowledge and Realization. Knowledge is the stage which involves 'Knowing' the facts involved, where as Realization is the art of 'Becoming'. From a computer science perspective, Knowledge of an algorithm signifies knowing the steps of the algorithm, where as Realization signifies understanding the intuition behind the algorithm or rather becoming the algorithm. I can say from my experience that a realized master can teach better than a knowledgeable master. Although both may have equal expressive power, the one who can inculcate in the students the intuitive nature of the subject is definitely a better teacher. This is however knowledge and Realization is yet to come. Some day I will.

What is FEAR?

I was reading the news paper(TOI) yesterday, when I gazed through one of the statements in the Speaking Tree section. It was written by " Swami Sukhabodhananda". The statement was very wonderful, "It's not wrong to have expectations, but our happiness should not depend on them ." This made me think a bit deeper into myself and I landed upon a very subtle aspect of human existence, FEAR. There has been a lot of discussion on what is FEAR and where does it come from. I need to correlate Expectations and Fear, or else this assimilation of words would appear incoherent. Expectation is the root cause of FEAR. We expect things to happen, people to behave in a certain way, events to happen in a certain way. Now, FEAR comes from the fact that expected things may not happen, people do not behave in an expected way. Sometimes it is the fear of losing something or somebody, which we never expect to loose in life. As Swamiji says, Its not wrong to expect, one's happiness should not depend on them, I totally agree to it. Even though we expect things to happen in a certain way, if our happiness is not dependent on the expectation, our state of mind, our very existence will never be deterred by the things, events or people not meeting upto our expectation. Well in our lingo..its called the " Chalega" attitude and its the fun loving guy attitude or rather a happy-go-lucky attitude. Once our mind is not deterred by such nuances, FEAR no longer has an existence. Expectations do remain but their perception changes and the attitude with which one co-exists with his/her expectations is transformed from one of dependence to that of independence. FEAR cannot blemish the mind any further. And once FEAR goes away..where is the question of one not being HAPPY at any state. We need to seek this state of HAPPI-ness and FEAR-less-ness.

Thoughts on THOUGHT

It has been a really long time since I have discussed anything about thoughts. The "MIND" as we can understand is a bundle of thoughts. The MIND ceases to exist when there are no thoughts. Thoughts and mind are inter-related and depend on each other for their co-existence. On a subtle note, actually Thought and Mind are not two different things but the one and the same. Imagine no thoughts coming out from the vast sea of consciousness that we all live in. Well consciousness we will take up later in detail, but as of now, consciousness in brief is the knowledge or sense that I exist. This however is a very crude definition of Consciousness. If you observe the human mind, to be more exact, if you observe your own mind, you will see a chain of thoughts in a split second. The pictures of the thoughts are vivid if you just want to see them as they come. If there are no thoughts landing on the flexible wall of the mind, the mind is simply blank. It is the mind that gives form to the thoughts, or rather makes the visual play of the thoughts possible. So if we analyze things at more depth, the thoughts and the mind work in tandem and make the whole visualization process or the manifestation of the thought possible. One cannot work without the other. If the mind is absent, the thought cannot be manifested or visualized vividly and if the thoughts are absent, then mind has nothing to focus on and is idle. If the mind is IDLE it is as good as annihilation of the mind. Since both these entities are inter-related and cannot exist without the other counterpart, they are but one and the same entity, only thing is we are able to view them separately. One cannot distinctly say as to which is the cause and which is the effect because they are both inter linked and work together, giving rise to effects for every cause that is perceived as a cause by the mind or descends down as a thought in the form of cause. Well I need to seek more to understand things in a better way!!!

Minekey - "Renaissance of Web Personlization"

A lot of people have mentioned a lot about Minekey in the blogosphere. I would like to express my views. First of all being a KGPian I am really really proud of this indigenous product made by a group comprising of Alumnus, Professors and Students. This is one of the startups incubated under TIETS. This is an effort by SRIC, IIT Kharagpur under the supervision of the present Dean, Prof. P. P. Chakrabarti. Before I start giving details about Minekey, let me just give some details about Incubation program. The incubation prgram is in-line with the entrepreunership efforts encouraged at IIT Delhi and IIT Powai. The process involves presenting your idea before a panel of judges, from Industry and academia, who judge the viability of the idea. It is this committee that decides whether a particular project is worthy enough to be incubated. Incubation process involves providign resources, seed capital and a mentor for the project. IIT in return would like a very small percentage(3-4%) of the shares of the company. There are funding agencies which are currently getting associated with SRIC to fund startups associated with the incubation program. There have been success stories and Minekey is definitely one of them. IIT KGP has played a very important role in Minekey right from its inception. Delip Andre, who is the founder of Minekey is an IIT KGP Alumni, Prof. Sudeshna Sarkar, a KGPian and currently associated with CSE department of IIT KGP and a whole bunch of students BTech, Duals, PhDs and Mtechs. So Minekey is inherently KGPian. Minekey the name has been rightly coined, its purpose is to give you the key to the information you are looking for in the countably infinite mine of data present in the web today. The concept is very beautiful in the sense that, the end user does not have be aware of anything except for putting up the minekey widget and clicking links he is interested in. You are presented with links of your choice as the system understands your sense of clicking links better. The results get better and better as we make the system aware of our choices. Human behavior is temporally predictable and so is the nature of his mouse clicks while browsing through the internet. It is this aspect that has been very well observed and utilized in the development of this technology. Moreover, you will not be presented with links you have visited earlier, so you need not worry about getting to read new articles. The systems presents you with new links everytime you visit a listed link and referesh the webpage. So in a way it goes one step ahead of search. The system understands you and tries to present you with results you might have looked for. Minekey marks a new era of intelligence, a landmark in web personalization. For now, this is what minekey is about, will write more on its performance when I learn about how it fares, until then adios amigos!!!

Liberation

Liberating oneself from the mundane desires of the human mind is one of the foremost task of a well established intellect leading to the emergence of what is called a disciplined mind. The basic difference can be observed in the way the rays of sun cause and effect under different circumstances. Sun's rays do make us feel hot, they do not burn , unless you go realyl near and get burnt by solar flares. However, if the rays of sun are focussed using a lens then it burns. This is a simple experiment to demonstrate the power of concentration. The term concentration is associated with the mind. We are always told to concentrate, never are we told to get disturbed. This simple observation says that the mind is inherently disturbed, its inherent state is that of disturbance. It needs to be balanced and calmed. It needs to be brought to the concentrated state. Just as the "disturbed" sun's rays were not able to produce any visible effect, whereas the "concentrated"(focussed) rays could produce fire, similarly the concentrated mind is much powerful than its disturbed counterpart. But it is the inherent nature of the mind to go after the object of its desires, inherently getting disturbed. The mind has been referred to as the "Monkey Mind". The mind has to be transformed from a state of dissipation to a state of concentration. It is then that one can realize his/her true potential . One realizing his own potential is what is termed as liberation. Will discuss more on this when I get time.!!

Life Without Water

Devastating, a thirsty throat searching for water, where a drop of water can make you feel the billions and billions of molecules it is composed of. One can feel the taste of Hydrogen and Oxygen in every molecule of water. Well this blog is not about thirst. Speaking of other needs of water, there are certain basic needs which is partially true in case of people from the west. I wont go into the gory details of that. I had a bitter experience today and that has led me to vent out my feelings about it. I usually come to office after a bath without fail until and unless there is some urgent matter which may stop me from bathing. These events are high priority NMI(Non Maskable Interrupts) and they take up the purpose of living till they are asserted. Anyway, its not NMI that led me to this unbathed state but rather the scarcity of water that has led me to this state. I thank GOD and will always be thankful to him to let water trickle down the tap till I finished the other tasks which involve ({Basic needs} - {bathing}). I could not expect water to stop flowing this fast. I was ready for a shower, I had just finished brushing my teeth and washed my face. There were signs of annihilation but I ignored them. The flow rate of water had decreased by then but .... I have never expected it to happen this way. I put on the tap for the shower and lo and ho......there was no water, not even a single drop. You cannot imagine how high your expectations can take you such that drop of water feels like a diamond crystal...Anyway I had to come back disappointed and come back to office unbathed....and unclean...and as always put on a lot of deodorant.

Reflections on a Busy Life

Life has become really busy now a days. When I think of the time I was a kid, fun and frolic was the key aspect in everyone's life. Elders in the family would be free to go out for a picnic, family outing. Teachers had time to spend with family, socializing with students and a lot more. Life was easy and "cool" in a way or the other. Young kids had time to play, but it has transformed to all work and no play. Mothers keep their students busy with studies either preparing for an entrance examination for some Big School or for some class test or blah blah blah. Conclusion is everyone is getting busy and people from all age groups have been affected. Television and cinema play an important role today portraying our day to day life. Hence the effect of living a BUSY LIFE can be very well observed in typical Bollywood style. Earlier the heroes and heroines used to be free enough to move around trees(TUM DAL DAL HUM PAT PAT), singing songs and do a lot of useless boring job depicting love, this all has been cut short in today's movies. Bollywopd directors stick to basics now. They just start with the cause and without extending it directly come to the effect without wasting time. There is no Rajkumar or Dilip Kumar who used to take an hour to deliver a dialogue of few words with full emotion, where as we have Upen Patel now, whose words are not at all decipherable. Who cares we are all BUSY. Songs also reflect how busy our lyrics writers, actors and everyone else associated is. I would end after this as I am also very very buzzzzy with work as you must have observed by now. Song in the earlier days,"Subah se lekar shaam tak, shaam se lekar raat tak, raat se phir se subah tak, subah se phir shaam tak mujhe pyaar karo....oooooooo". The lover had lots and lots of time for his/her beloved. Compare this to our Serial Kisser's movie MURDER, he is too busy which is well depicted in the song, "Kabhi mere saath koi raat gujar, tujhe subah tak mein karun pyaar." He does not have all time for his beloved as he is busy. Anyway guys will keep you posted when I get time off my Busy schedule!!!!

Thought Power

Ever since I have been thinking, I have tried to discover the process of thinking. It has been as elusive a problem to solve as solving any open problem in the realm of Computer Science or in any particular domain for that purpose. When I think how I think, it is actually the same thinking capability of mine that I am using to discover what it really is. I am trying to define x using x. This is what is called recursion. Either thoughts can exist and are expressed in term of other thoughts or they do not exist at all. Going by the above conclusion, thoughts can either exist or they do not. Viewing from a mental paradigm, either a mind is full of thoughts giving it enough expressive power or there are no thoughts at all. Thoughts form the seeds of expression. Any thought goes through several phases before it is expressed through the various modes of expression. Expression is basically in the form of actions. Actions depict power and strength. Hence transitively thoughts form the basis of actions. The first phase of thought conversion to expression involve visualization. It is this vision of the thought that drives the other phases which I will discuss later.

SML - Stretching my Limits

It has been quite an evening for me though. I swam 50 laps i.e., 1000 metres straight with only a 5-10 seconds break after every 20 metres lap. It was great, I felt as if I was the best swimmer in the world. I never expected though that I will be able to do that. It however proved to be a mind game. Instead of counting till 50 I counted 1 every 2 laps and I had to make it till 25. And there it was I never knew how I strecthed my limit and crossed all mental barriers to complete the above mentioned 50 laps. I got the hint of how winners achieve. It is just a matter of perceptions. Some body has rightly said, Winners do not do different things, they do things differnently. There are various ways of acheiving success and I just took one of the ways and Bull's eye I achieved my target. Life is just about learning and it is just a matter of when you realize your real potential. It is just lessons like (SML) that one should learn and jot it down to be referred to later. So, In essence I am still seeking and I am yet to get what I seek. I do not know what I am going to get or what I seek till I actaully get it. Anyway I will just end it here....just to learn more and seek more...

Scorching Sun and the AC

It is summer time and it is very very hot out here. You would say what is new with that. But there is an emperical observation over here. Remaining seated in the centrally air conditioned laboratory is a luxury, provides a lot of comfort. But going out for lunch or snacks or even a cup of tea is discouraging. It is just that beating the heat has become difficult now a days. May be its the Global warming effect that is the reason behnd this or may be remaining in the AC for so long is doing its job. But whatever the reason may be, I am feeling the scorching sun every iota of a second the moment I step outside of the office. I do not know what I am to conclude about this but I go onto say that, Everything has its merits and demerits. And sometimes the merit counts and sometimes its rather nasty counterpart. Its not just about beating the heat that I am concerned, its about everything I do. But one thing is for sure I shoud not complain, because it is this act of mine that is going to make my life even worse. Adios, Amigos.....See ya later...

Re-surrection

Everything needs a change sometime or the other. I have been seeking in the External for quite sometime, I had been away for quite some time now to seek the Internal. As every single human being will agree, no sort of extremism ever helps, there is always a hybrid or moderate mode for most of the things that we do. Everything that we do/have/, if observed carefully has two facets, to name them an external and an internal. For example, taking a simple example of a rose flower, its beauty and smell are its external manifestation and the kind of happiness or appreciation that it evokes in us, by virtue of it external properties(being a Computer Science Engineer, I take the freedom to specify properties of Systems :-) ) contributes to its internal manifestations. These two manifestations although are wide apart, but there seems to be an invisible thread of bonding which binds both of the above. The bonding which ties both these extremes is a layer, which corresponds to the path of moderation, which has been referred to above. We are unconsciously or sub-consciously conscious of it but we are not aware of it that we are conscious of this particular aspect. This middle path is what I would like to call "Eternal" a hybrid of external and internal. I can write volumes on this but wrods fail to express what I intend to express. I will continue seeking to express the Internal aspects to the External aspects taking the help of the Eternal to bridge the gap between the two, being consciously aware of it.

Events

Given any event, can it be proved that it happened for a common good. Another elusive question. But the adage, which continues to bang my eardrums at supposedly bad times, over-pouring from our friend's and well wisher's mouth, "whatever happens, happens for good." This statement haunts me at both good and bad times. Sometimes I am convinced that it is true and the other I am really sure otherwise. There is an inclination however on the positive side of it. I think I have a formal proof of this thing, but I fear that I will be really considered insane, if I put it down here, but prehaps in due time I will put it up. A cause of an event and the event are never separable. An cause for sake of its completeness needs to actuate an event or rather an effect which I am using synonymously for events. On those lines the above can be prooved. This is a lemma for the master theorem which I will put up in a later phase. For the moment let us SEEK....

Thought

Thought, by definition, according to me, is a mental vibration. It by itself is neutral. It does not affect one anyway. Its only when the individual tries to identify with a thought, that they get qualified as good or bad. Now If I think of the origin of thought, it stands as a elusive question. Thinking of the origin of thought, I sometime doubt, will I ever be able to fathom where this vibratory energy or thought force is coming from. Because, I am using the limited faculties of the thought force, I have my own doubts whether I will ever be able to explore the unexplored domain of thought origin. Whatever limitations I may have, but yes I do know I have a mind, which in general everyone of us will agree, and this is where I acknowledge thoughts. Since the cognition of thought is enabled by the so-called Mind, I would like to pose a question to myself as well as everyone else who comes across this blog, Is the existence of mind subject to the presence of thoughts. Or may be if I put it this way things will be better, Is mind just a flow of thoughts? Or is it something else. The definition of body I do have because I can see it in physical form. Mind, as such does not have a physical form but it makes it presence felt by the varying mental states on is in. So, if one has to fathom where thoughts come from or what are thoughts made of, does one have to go beyond thoughts, going beyond thoughts, one no longer has to acknowledge thoughts and this ultimately means does one have to go beyond the concept of Mind as well. Let me just SEEK for now. May be time will tell.

The Unshakeable is Shaken

Life is a dream. What on earth am I doing here? This is a question I pose to myself quite a few times. The search of this has made me a seeker. I am seeking the answer and my job on earth is not over till the day I find this out. Its a unsolved puzzle a mystery for me which demands considerable attention without production of results which leads to emancipation of the soul or not even close enough to it. Well to add to my first sentence I would say its a dream come true for everybody. I, you and everybody else for that matter do what pleases us. Its the sense of pleasure that drives the very momentum of expression of an action which could have been a wild thought, a desire or may be a dream in its initial phase. The very expression of thought which is the very basis of human existence, animals cannot think(intelligently), is what I have been trying to fathom. Where and what and how is it? It remains to be solved...to be answered...more appropriately. Because answering this question related to thoughts with my own thinking faculty..I do not see how this is possible.

Rendezvous

My first Blog. I am kind of tense..My third attempt to publish a post..Hopefully will be succesful this time. The last two attempts were just half hearted in-sincere attempts to get things going. Will keep you guys posted pretty soon. Just to introduce myself, I am a seeker who is sincere not distracted by multiplicity of expressions but rather a focussed one, whose only mode of expression is SEEK and SEEK.....