Voltaire's Wit

I was reading "The Story of Philosophy" by Will Durant. The author mentions an anecdote from Voltaire's life that made me smile. I hope you will enjoy it as well.

A visitor from Albrecht von Haller's place meets Voltaire for the first time. Voltaire begins the conversation by praising Haller.

"He is a great man, a great poet, a great naturalist, a great philosopher, almost a universal genius."

The visitor is surprised, "What you say, sir, is the most admirable, as Mr. Haller does not do you the same justice."

"Ah, perhaps we are both mistaken." Voltaire quips back.

Tumi (Bengali Poem)

Bhebechilam tumi amai poth dekhabe raate,

Kanna-hashi, dukhho-sukhe roibe amar sathe.

Jokhon kono bijon kone katbe somoy shunno mone,

Tokhon tumi asbe jano oporuper alo-

Ghuchbe sokol kalo.



Onekta poth hete eseo paini tomar dekha,

Hoyto aro onekta poth cholte hobe eka.

Hoyto acho sobar majhe, hoyto tumi nei,

Ami kebol thakbo jeno amar ami-tei.

Different Identities

Every person is associated with multiple identities. I was tagged as a Bengali, an Indian, and a Hindu from the first day of my life; nobody asked me what I thought of Bengali as a language, India as a country or Hinduism as a religion. Still these identities play a significant role in the way we view ourselves, and the way people view us.

Born a Hindu, I have grown up to become an atheist. I feel the early prophets of all religions were remarkable men of their time. Jesus and Mohammed were great men, but so were Socrates and Plato. The trouble with any organized religion is it lays a down a set of rules in a holy book thousands of years old, and dogmatically claims that people should follow these rules and the same way of life even in twenty-first century. Plato supported the institution of slavery in his Republic. Today if a person comes to me and says a civilized nation cannot do without slaves, I will call her a racist. However, this does not mean I am discrediting Plato; the society and its value system were completely different in his time. Similarly there are obnoxious passages in religious scriptures, but the followers of the concerned religion will never admit their Prophet could say something wrong. If a person is trying to lead her life according to the dictates of an organized religion, she is in a sense trying to fly an airplane by reading a manual for wheel-cart.

While I have repudiated all religions, I am extremely fond of my nationality and mother-tongue. But I am not jingoistic enough to be a proud Indian or a proud Bengali, due to a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I was born with these identities, and did not do anything to achieve them.

Secondly, quoting Jawaharlal Nehru, "India is home to all that is truly noble and truly disgusting in the human experience". Perhaps the same statement applies to Bengal as well!

I identify with the destiny of this country, regardless of whether or not it is the greatest nation in the world; and I feel extremely fortunate for being able to read Rabindranath Tagore in his native language.

There are people with markedly different attitudes towards the same identities. Some immigrants to the US are devoted to their religion, but feel no compunction while applying for US citizenships and giving up their native passports. Are they doing the right thing? Have I done the right thing? Perhaps these are not the right questions to ask, and one should not to be judgmental about these issues.

Jane Austen and Indian Middle Class

A girl is getting married. She holds a masters degree and is unemployed.

A girl, still in college, is in a relationship with an accomplished software engineer. She plans to get married as soon as she finishes her undergrad.

A young man is looking for prospective grooms for his sister. He is even prepared to accede to demands for dowry.

A girl joins a software company after graduating with a B.E. degree. Immediately she starts a groom-hunt with active encouragement from her parents. Come what may, she has to tie the knot before reaching a certain age.

I mentioned a few incidents from the lives of my personal acquaintances. It is patently obvious that these are not isolated events. Instead, they represent a typical mindset of Indian middle class; and I see an uncanny similarity between the plight of modern Indian women and her counterparts in early nineteenth century England, as depicted in wonderful novels by Jane Austen. A girl is given proper education. She goes to colleges and universities, but ends up being treated like a mortgage loan that must be disposed of before the retirement of her father. It is even more tragic to see the prejudices being reinforced by conscious participation of the victims. The girls themselves consider groom-hunting to be of much more importance than job-hunting, and as if to substantiate the point, no girl wants to marry a man who earns less money than herself. Undoubtedly there are exceptions to the above statement, but I am afraid they are too small in numbers to make any difference to the prevailing situation.

Bengali Poem

emono somoy giyeche jokhon kedechi apon mone,

nirobe shongopone.

jibone prothom na paoar bathaa chole gache more chere,

bondho duarete kora nere.

se duar khule, badha bhoy bhule,

rastai pa feli.

jibone prothom na paoar pore prothom noyon meli.

dekhi koto loke dhulo makha pothe choleche nijer moto;

futeche hashi karur mukhe,

karur buke khoto.

ami taderi keu hoii.

bishal ei bishho majhe ami ekok noii.

To be or not to be anonymous

I have added a link to this blog in my webpage. Though it is rather comforting to remain anonymous, I decided against it due to a couple of reasons.

1) Since most of my friends and family members are already aware of this site, the blog was not actually anonymous after all.

2) Anonymity is sometime essential to protect freedom of expression. However, it can also be used as a cover to slander another person, and I am deliberately trying to rule out that option. As a consequence, the future posts will perhaps be on more impersonal topics.

Plan B

I am happy to be a student of Computer Science specializing in design and analysis of algorithms. But the question remains whether there is some other profession where I would have fared reasonably well. Had destiny wanted me not to grow up as a nerdy scientist, what would have been my Plan B?

One should possess a couple of qualities in order to succeed in any job: passion and caliber. The situation is quite similar to winning a girl's heart. I may have a passion for Sania Mirza, unfortunately though, she is way beyond my reach. On the other hand, I don't have a passion for Rakhi Sawant, and fortunately enough, I am way beyond her reach.

Just like millions of Indians growing up in the nineties, Cricket was my first love. Unless distracted by unimportant, mundane events such as going to school, I watched every game of team India. I attended each and every match at Eden Gardens. Further, at the cost of being immodest, let me say I had a reasonable amount of cricketing sense. But I lacked the physical stamina and eyesight to become a cricketer. Someone jokingly said, "Sayan bats like an Anil Kumble, bowls like a Rahul Dravid, and fields like a Sourav Ganguly". Can you imagine anyone else simultaneously being compared to three greats of all time!

I am extremely fond of listening to music, and a huge fan of Kishore Kumar. Once I took a serious attempt at learning how to sing. What transpired next was not much different from this clip.




So I tried my hand at painting. It took a couple of lessons and one slap from my teacher (I was only six years old at that time) to induce me to drop both my ambition to become a painter and my name from the class.

Finally, I stumbled upon something I could do well and was really passionate about, namely, reading books. It has remained a passion since early childhood. What a pity that I cannot take it up as a profession, nobody pays you for reading short stories, novels and history.