Thursday, February 5, 2009

In loving memory of,Professor Raghavan

There are very few people in this world who touch heart of every person they meet. He was one of them. Prof. Veera was very knowlegeable , passionate person .He had a lot of insight about the society , its socio-cultural background . Very punctual , humble person .He was one of those whom you can speak your true heart out and he will relate to you.
He will make you feel good about things, bring out points which u wont notice usually (even though i m a good observer).
He is one of the few professor who cared for students , not just for their academic life but also about other concerns and advise them to do the right thing , if not the best thing. He is the kind of person who can motivate you , inspire you and really make you a better person on any day .
He helped me in understanding society in a better way and gave me , and was very understanding , and used to reply cheerfully even when i was virtually ready to fight it out . I don't find people whom i can talk so frankly about , but he was really one of the best person i met.
There was nothing like a disability in him , like he was blind , but i guess he had more powers than ordinary being . He can make out how you are feeling .
He had real sensitive ears... I know cuz i tried to sneak in once , and he got me ! .Prof. RKK told me today , that he was very helpful and one of RKKs story goes like ,.. He and Veera taught english to one of IIT M's b.tech batch and Veera used to be instrumental in making students learn the subject and everyone appreciated there efforts together. One of the courses RKK loved to have taught.
I guess it was Cancer to be the cause of his mournful demise . I don't want to count how meritorious he was( which is so useless) , but the person he was , because at this time , its all that matters .

I had a feeling at the start of the semester to meet him , but just got carried away with the usual work, and now i wish ... had i met him :( .
For IIT M, it has lost one of its best professors .
Today , i am sad .
May his soul rest in peace .

Monday, February 2, 2009

Women ,women and Nandita das

There was en EML today by Nandita Das about "How Cinema effects Society" blah , on which she dint speak much but rather her experiences and the social activist she is.I felt about many things the way she does , or rather more strongly than her at places( but i am not an activist) .
She aptly said , that we fall back to be proud of things as " i m a Brahmin" , " i am a Marathi" , " I am a Bengali" etc , which we have not even control of ! . Its just lack of self esteem that people do it and divide society on wrong note .
One of the part which i can appreciate about is her stand as a women of substance rather as an "object of Affection/Lust" . She said she has an issue with " fair & lovely " kind of stuffs and she doesnt use them at all ( wonder she does for films atleast !).
I also think that women are not just for looking good and skinny , glowy etc , physical interpretation of XX genes with all their attributes but something more.Truly , girls who look around in mirror all time isn't a bravo.Actually, should be more dimensions to women than just appearance , after which world is going crazy about.These are society driven thoughts and concepts . Having shooted for "fair & lovely " kind of stuffs and she doesnt use them at all ( wonder she does for films atleast !).
I also think that women are not just for looking good and skinny , glowy etc , physical interpretation of XX genes with all their attributes but something more.Truly , girls who look around in mirror all time isn't a bravo.Actually, should be more dimensions to women than just appearance , after which world is going crazy about.These are society driven thoughts and concepts . Having substance is more important than just looks.
It reminds of the shift in status of women in history of India over the ages ,which is strongly depicted in the epics of the times like Mahabharat and Ramayan .
In one the women in society as lowly and rather helpless , while in the other she is more dynamic , speaks her voice
I wonder what todays women prototype them as ?
I think Nandita was as Rocking in Rockford(!) as she was today ... and thats more like it .
That said , to be part of social change , i should be doing more than writing a blog post ! Society has mutated a lot in the last decade than in last 50 years together , so i should ketchuptance is more important than just looks.
It reminds of the shift in status of women in history of India over the ages ,which is strongly depicted in the epics of the times like Mahabharata and Ramayana .
In one the women in society as lowly and rather helpless , while in the other she is more dynamic , speaks her voice
I wonder what todays women prototype them as ?
I think Nandita was as Rocking in Rockford(!) as she was today ... and thats more like it .
That said , to be part of social change , i should be doing more than writing a blog post ! Society has mutated a lot in the last decade than in last 50 years together , so i should ketchup

Sunday, February 1, 2009

You got Language Problem !

Many a times , we talk about what is a better approach to teach concurrent programming and a group of people say , lets just start teaching concurrent programming from the start and forget about sequential programming and it will help make students better programmers as they will think differently . Similarly , about the question that should C really be thought first or we start with python as its easy and later when students are comfortable with understanding constructs , teach them C and let them do memory management carefully by themselves .
For the first part of the question ... i was just reading about linear vector spaces for Quantum Mechanics and it struck me that , how about we start teaching kinderGarden kids , complex numbers as they are the super-set of Real numbers and then teach them real numbers. It will be a whole new approach for them to understand this world (much like teaching concurrent programming from the initial start !). So is it an absurd answers from me ? you can argue better .
Though there are universities in the world going ahead with teaching students concurrent programming before they even know how to write the Gawd program of "Hello World " in C . Lets see the results ! I mean when u dont know how one thread works exactly , how are you going to deal with a pool of them ? may be you can ? may be not !
And about the beginners language , i personally feel C is the one to be taught in the initial sems , though there is a lot of buzz of Java , but then one can't understand the subtle issues in programmng when you hava garbage collector to do work for you and you might be stuck in a prototype O-O Prgramming paradigm . I guess the conventional approach is best . To add , once Prof. RKK also agrred that C is a must, than Java . Well as far as i know , IIT-K , IIT-B professors have gone ahead with Java and IIT-M is still stuck with C. To be very precise , we are not in IIT , to learn the most exciting language , but understand the underlying science behind it , for which C is best suited .
I wanted to write about it as Prof. has brought it up in lectures quite a number of time and students had a varied opinion from it , i thought i should be also clear in black and white about this debatable topic