Udaipur

I belong to a place called Udaipur. Quite famous as a tourist attraction and also popularly know as City of Lake. This year I was fortunately enough to spend time and travel in around a dozen metros. Finally after so much trill, I decided to walk to my hometown and just rest for a while. It's December of 2010.

To my surprises, before my eyes Udaipur seemed to have substantially changed. Yes, it was nice to find lakes full. From north to south, filled till brim. I wonder it was 5 years back lakes were this noisy. On my way home, companion to my railway compartment was a young couple (tourist) heading to explore my hometown. They planed to crawl around from FS to Nathdwara. I always wish to find some foreigners near my seat, but was unlucky this time.

Here in Udaipur, roads are good. Quite shorter are distances. Used to Mumbai traffic, I appreciate rarely crowded streets of Udaipur. But sooner I smell this place is gonna become hell. Traffic rules seldom followed. Not a single Halmet head can be found. School kids fly at all speeds. They fear neither of death nor pain. Parents supply best of best bikes. Wow !

Sky had no spark of constellations. Generally filled with noise crackers and worst chorus of Baraats. Roads filled with crazy people dancing surrounded by small kids holding heavy lanterns. I don't know what has happened to people here, but I see nothing lesser then madness of ancient wars among various dynasties. I see completely stupid picture of Indian Wedding custom, now followed. This is too much. This is Sick.

My friends go and enjoy free dinners 10 times in a month. Perhaps, you can always find a lighted garden just around a kilometer range. Buy nice formals and 1 rupee blank envelope before you jump in for free dinners. Just some patience is needed to get hot Dosa and cold Icecream, small hungry mosquitoes will always wave their plates in madness and torchure the chef. Don't forget Coffee - Its winter time now. From town Hall Pava Wala to Hotel Nataraj, all have small kids to wash utensils.

Also, worst is to see small kids slaved to work in houses. I am sorry, but was even shocked to see one at my relatives place and one at some nearby neighour. Newspapers are only busy with Give up news.

"I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness. I feel the sufferings of millions and yet when I look up the sky I somehow feel that everything will change for the better." - Anne Frank

This time home was a bit different experience. V-mart, Bigbazar, narrow market streets, Anand plaza, Kitchen kraft, Berger Paints, Sanitary shop, Electrical wala, Lala Misthan Bhandar, A-one School, Madhushree Saare, Labour Market, Nehru Garden, Gulla Baagh Zoo, Cement Wala, Tiles Wala aur kya kya. Its nice to interact with a wide spectrum of people. Shopping Culture seemed quite well. May be staff at Bigbazar, Vmart etc needs a better training. Thela Wala's seems very professional.

I went to this Town Hall Market; wanted to buy a jacket. How much ? Rs 600, Sir. I said 400. Those shopkeepers will never tell you No. Sir, this jacket is brand class and worth its value. I said - I don't want to pay 600, give me a deal. Okay, I am packing for 400. I wonder how much market is overpriced.

City seems still very peaceful. Unlike Mumbai, Local people do care here for each other.

Gaurav

Trip to Nowhere ! This Diwali

It seem... am completely cutoff from outside world. Life here in campus is so different. No TV, No Radio, No newspaper. I wonder what all is happening to people outside. Hear of small ups and down only via some facebook shared links by friends. Its about Diwali and I merely even realised small tint of the same. There is completely different world over here and thats way different from world outside.

Instead of reading newspaper, I browse newsfeed (FB) of my friends. Listening to music via earphone .. I didn't even realised it rained today ( I rare occurrence here in Mumbai in Nov)

Life is really cool and I wonder how will I adjust once I am kicked out of institute (hopefully 1.5 years from now) !

Trip to Vihigaon !

This was written for some different purpose, but let me share it over here !

World today is a panorama of multiple realities. There are the glories of human progress and then there is the pervading ubiquity of human miseries. The two extremes ironically, have for long coexisted and continue to do so. The contrast sometimes makes us wonder and raises intriguing questions. The answers might elude us but it lends us an important insight. The poor are incapacitated and not incapable. If we create similar opportunities for them, their potential can indeed be manifested. NSS IIT Bombay aspires to be a contributor to such an endeavor and to this end we hold “knowledge” as our beacon. We, the team of this organisation believe that small contributions can help make big strides towards that cherished goal of mankind.

As said,Necessity is the mother of Invention. We shall know what is to be done only if we actually see the problems being faced by the poor and needy. Few years back,at a village named Ranshet on a hill near Pen, Maharashtra,NSS students helped the villagers in accessing water using a motor that pulls water from a lake at the foot of the hill. We, at NSS believe Field trips are a good means to expose the so-called best brains in India to few of those rural communities living far from technology,development and minimum facilities.These trips are organised as part of course for first year undergraduates,but then anyone with zeal to make a difference is a priority.

In order to get some exposure of rural village life, this semester we explored two neighboring villages, Vihigaon and Tara. Tara, near Panvel on Saturday 23rd October and Vihigaon near Kasara on Sunday the 24th October.

Vihigaon, is a small adivasi village having 12 padas, situated at about 15 km from Kasara, in Shahapur taluka, Dist. Thane in Maharashtra.We were a group of 90 who left for the trip on 24th October .We started at around 7 AM and it took us 4 long hours to reach the place. Prof. Prasanna Gandhi from mechanical engineering department accompanyed us.

After reaching Vihigaon, we tried to explore the village. We divided in small groups and distributed in entire area. Every group visited and surveyed 3-4 families and tried to informally interact with them. Groups documented the current conditions of families in regard to their earning capacity, education level, and their position in connection with basic necessities of food, water and shelter. Major occupation is Agriculture. Few of them own land while the rest work as labour. During off season, they work in nearby town and on railway tracks. It is a good to see that few of them send their children to kasara for higher education. The adults were grossly illiterate.

Most of villagers could not even afford to pay electricity bills and have no access to electricity since last 6 years.Over here in campus even a 6 min power breakdown would be so chaotic. Imagine what 6 years of darkness would mean! Some houses had some small solar panel to light up their home. Solar Technology can be a very good alternative in many villages of India. We strongly recommend innovation and research in solar technology could be of great significance.

Inspite all such difficulties, the villagers were happy and cherished every moment of his/her life. That village had one school upto 7th grade. Villagers responded negatively in regard to any government help.There have been a few women working in groups, making papads and pickles,though .Someone from sarpunch’s place mentioned of ration and free books at local school.

This village had a small dam and few wells. The place had no water problems as such, but we were told it is really difficult during summer. Villagers were generally cutoff from rest of India. We found our cells did not catch any cellular network. This trip was really heart-touching; it gave us an opportunity to understand problems faced by rural people.

There is a social organisation “Vivekananda Seva Mandal” working in this village for the uplift of the villagers.Since 1994, members of the group visit there every weekend.They educated the villagers, innovative ways of organic farming, Primary medical facility and also other advanced technologies.They have been providing business orders to the cooperative groups in the village as well.

Although, one day is too short a time to bring any major impact and change in their lives.But we hope that this unique experience might have twinkled and motivated few IITians to wonder more about the problems rural India is facing today.

It’s sad to see kids working in farms and not attending school, to see people living in so pathetic conditions, to find unemployed youth wandering around, to hear business of illegal wine production in village, to find some families earning only Rs 60 per day, to see houses without even a bulb to light up. There were a few cases of malnutrition and deaths due to lack of medical facilities on time .

May be, we IITians can still spend lakhs a single night and enjoy porcupine tree or party all the night. May be we can bunk all our lectures and disrespect the so called best educational facility of country. May be we still can waste as much electricity as we want. May be we can even light up all our labs, rooms, mess and SAC ground ,double the requirement. May be still we can enjoy glory of playing football or basketball on the darkest of nights. May be, you are a champion, no one can beat you. You can hear rock music on best speakers and single handedly waste as much electricity as that can light up an entire village.

But we still believe there is hope, we, a group of few passionate people working with Prof. Gandhi continue to organize such trips and wish that this endeavour will impact hearts and minds of future batches. We wish IITians will respect facilities and fantastic opportunity given to them in this wonderland and be responsible citizens. May be the students will take their role more seriously and carry the same henceforth to make this institution proud.

The trips were memorable. We came across the village lifestyle and enjoyed it very much. We learned a lot from this trip; we do have a lot more to learn from the villagers. Being brought up in cities, we don't realize what are we doing to our environment. We need to use eco-friendly technologies as much as we can and use our resources efficiently to be in harmony with Mother Nature and leave a clean and beautiful planet for posterity.

We all thank villagers for their generous hospitality. We also welcome your feedback and suggestions, so that we can contribute better and strive for development of Indian Villages.

(Gaurav Khamesra is a fourth year student of the Mechanical Department and Phani Padmasri is a third year student of the Energy Systems Engineering. They can be contacted at gauravkhamesra@iitb.ac.in and phani_padmasri@iitb.ac.in)

Freedom of the people, by the people and for the people!

This post is not related to any democratic issue. It’s debate of some different sort of freedom, different class of rights, different kind of thoughts.. where there is nothing exactly right or exactly wrong. Perhaps some issues often ignored, often uncared, often overlooked.

So here it goes.

What all rights do you have on this lovely planet? You can play, you can dance, you can read, you can write, you can travel every continent, and you can touch the sky! You are very lucky, aren’t you?

What all rights you don’t have? Yeah, there are some negative rights too. Let me touch upon those in this blog.

Released is latest version of windows, best sound tracks of some cool music, and breathless stunts of Rajinikanth. All you need to do is click, click, click and enjoy for nothing. Downloading music illegally from internet and playing in latest gadgets.

Perhaps law says - downloading any material illegally is considered infringement and may lead to min 3 years of Jail and fine as high as 50K INR.

How many songs of your computer or music players are actually purchased by you? Perhaps none! Then, aren’t you a law breaking citizen. How many movies you have in your gigabytes hard disk? How many did you purchase Sir? How many software’s did you actually purchased in life.

There are some awesome people in this world. Those are crazy ones. They create stuff for human community. Say music, movies, books, operating system, softwares etc. These stuff really makes life easy and comfortable. Books educate us, music refreshes us, movies entertain us, and operating systems adds so nice an experience. Nothing is for free and but we are salaryless (Full employment ~ No Salary) students. Shouldn’t we enjoy freedom to learn and enjoy the huge present quantum of knowledge and experience without any constraints?

But, there are some copyright laws, design rights, trademark stuff and patent power that do exists in present law system. They talk of whole bundle of laws (Economic rights, Reproduction and distribution, Adaption, Communication to public, Abridgement, Commercial rental, Translations, Moral rights).These rights are a headache for most of us. They mean – listen only music you purchase, use softwares you pay for, only books you have bought. If this is the case, all our learning will be locked.

On one side these laws protect interests of actual author and on other side they lock our present knowledge. Whether to protect interest of Public or of Publishers, creativity or economic interest. Law vs Justice ! (Law may make wrong assumptions.)

You copy-paste and prepare your project report. You use best of your creativity to merge many articles and prepare your master piece, incredibly impressive report. You break rules and party all the night.

Law allows us to use only that e-material you pay for. You have to pay and use the book. People in India are poor. If you don’t have money, then please don’t read and write – there are many illiterates in India, you will only add one more to that number. If you are not rich, you don’t have freedom to learn. Isn’t this a stop to learning ability of people? Would there be possibly any Newton and Einstein, if we had locked all then knowledge under some copyrights and patent rules. Knowledge should be transparent and available to all without any constraints. Without music, I can’t even think of a day.

Wait, but what if you are producer of some cool movie. You spend million bucks and don’t get even a penny in return. You spend your half a dozen years writing some fantastic book and don’t even get half a dozen dollars. You code up entire operating system only to see happy faces of crackers and hackers. You compose some awesome song only to become a beggar. Shouldn’t you feel these poor guys need to have special rights to protect their intellectual work? So come’s the existence of these so called copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade dress etc.

Well I wonder, I really wonder about existence of these laws. I used to believe this planet is superbly awesome place, where I enjoy all freedoms. Anyway, I am not an expert to comment any further on this topic. But really this field is some outcome of conflicting ideas!

Across the globe there are many cultures and so are different laws.

India - We hear of so many pending cases in India courts and amount of time it takes to solve some issue. But Law here are weak, rather that helps so large a population to excess intellectual freedom without much constraints. Our law allows us to use intellectual stuff for educational purpose with the motto of fair dealing. You can play any song in your marriage without any permission from artist. You can screen any movie inside your educational institute with some motto of education; you don’t need any special permission from producer of movie. That’s beauty of Indian Law.

Rest of World: Things are quite different elsewhere. Remember, if you land up in US, you can’t play any music in your marriage without artist’s permission. You don’t enjoy much freedom. You need to quote any sentence you copy from any document. Rules are strict, yeah indeed they are strict.

These concepts of negative rights are quite flexible and also dangerous. You can’t assume anything if you land up in some unknown country. Different cultures give different interpretations. Some countries are very sensitive in connection with copyrights, others may not be.

Abhi ke liye itna hi …. Hope I get some tym to add more to this !

Thanks for reading.

If you have come so far ..why not drop your views about Intellectual Property rights here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are strictly personal. No representation is made that it is timely, accurate or complete.

Equations !

Ziplining

Ziplining at Whister (around 2-3 hours from Vancouver)

The feeling that I can't describe. One of so different experience I had in last 20 years of my existence on this planet.

When I was just about to go - All I felt was fear !

Once you are in air - All you feel is freedom !

Those wonderful seconds of life were precious.

Going in air at 80km/hr and about 20 stories height.Risk is your life ! May be it was moment I saw life so closely.

Feeling was too much !

Life is adventure. I guess this was once in lifetime experience. I even paid a lot for this trill ~ may be almost equivalent sum to fly from kashmir to kanyakumari, but was happy because the money was even raised for some social cause. Our guide to this brave new adventure was some English Lady. She talked of sustainability of environment. One point she told me was that powerful and touching to me that I can't even forget today - months later. " We should talk of sustainability, but that should not lead poor to hunger" Clearly, message she meant was we should take care of future generation ..but first we need to better help present generation (millions even can't afford food to eat). The Ecotour part of the tour was informative and interesting and also inspirational.

Anyway, Ziplining was an amazing experience. I would recommend for everyone. Given a chance I wanna have this ride again. Gliding miles in sky from platform to platform; with scenic beauty so amazing and few suspension bridges in between. It was fun, we had seasons in the sun.

Canada Day

Canada Day is like a sort of Independence Day for Canada.

1 July is more like Happy Birthday of Canada.

On this wonderful day, we roamed on the streets of Vancouver. The best time to learn more about Canadian culture. Canadians are really passionate for celebrating this day. I feel an average Canadians is more proud of his/her nation. The zeal and passion in the eyes of locals is fantastic.

Free Flags !

Parade was not like routine formal parades, but really full of energy and passion. These people are really crazy ! Local Buses or Countries heads ... Punjabi people to Chinese stuff ... Policeman to Businessmen...were dancing on this occasion. Streets were that crowded ..like entire Vancouver has came together and gone part of celebration. Street magicians to Night Fireworks !
I don't have much words to express, but the attached clip will give you some Idea.