The digital legacy

If God forbid, an unfortunate incident happens and we end up departing from this world, there is a need to ensure that our digital legacy in terms of our Google / Facebook and various other social / E commerce / Financial etc. services are passed on to our near and dear ones in a seamless manner. For standard financial services, there are nomination mechanisms available. For the online world, there are a few services available. They are easy to setup. I will just give references to them here. If you haven't set them up yet, Now is the right time to set it up. 

Google provides an Inactive account manager service. See details at. https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546?hl=en . 

Facebook provides a digital legacy option. This is available under their General account settings. 

After surviving a near death situation, I am trying to make sure that next time I am better prepared. 

The gunshot

It was May 10, 2017. I had come back from the last wedding reception at my In Law's place in Pantnagar on May 8. Had joined office on May 9. Was so engrossed for all the planning related to my upcoming vacation with my wife in Switzerland [June 18-28].  On May 10, I left office around 830 pm. I recalled that I didn't have milk at home. I thought to catch up on grocery shopping on way to home.

I reached Greater Noida around 910 pm. I stopped at Honey Money Top. It is a good grocery store [at least in my opinion till that fateful day]. There were large number of cars parked on the roadside. Busy day I thought. I kept on driving till I found a vacant spot to park my car. There was one more car after mine. It was a bit away from the market and there was less light on that spot. I walked down to the store. There was a Juice stall before the store. I felt like having a mango shake. I asked the guy if he could make a shake for me. But he was busy serving another customer. So I said, I would come back and went to the grocery store. I bought the necessary stuff. I loaded my PayTM account with necessary cash. I paid by PayTM on the store. I left couple of whatsapp messages. I came down. Went to the Juice stall again. He was free by then. I asked him to prepare a small Mango juice of 30 Rs. It was quite filling. I then started walking towards my car. The area was still quite populated with lots of cars on the road. I noticed two guys standing in front of the last car [The one next to me]. They were talking in themselves. I silently walked towards my car. I have this principled habit of avoiding any kind of small talk or engagement with people I don't know. As I was walking to the trunk of my car, I felt they looked at me. I ignored their attention. I opened the trunk. Put the grocery inside. Locked it. I went to the driving seat. Opened the door by pressing the button on the door handle. The door flung open. I sat down comfortably on the driving seat. The door was still open. And then it happened.

One guy came to me. Held the door. Showed me a gun.  He said, see this, it is a gun. He indicated that he wanted the car. It seemed like a country made pistol. I think it was of black color and small size. I don't know why, but I didn't get afraid at all after seeing the gun. I got massively agitated. I stood up out of the car and pushed him back. I said something of the tone as to how dare he take my car from me.  I am not sure why, but he immediately fired the gun. May be cause I was of larger frame than him and he felt I might overpower him. It could be anything, I would never know.  The gunshot was quite noisy. I guess all the people in the market could hear it. This made them afraid. They just ran away immediately. They didn't get my car. They didn't take my phone (which was still in my hand). They didn't take my wallet which was in a hand bag I was wearing by my neck. They didn't get my laptop which was in the car's trunk. The laptop bag also contained my wife's and my passports along with all the documents for the VISA application. They didn't get anything. They just got afraid and ran away.

And then I realized, I had been shot. The blood was spilling out of my body. I felt like I was realizing one of the gory scenes of series like Game of Thrones. As the blood spilled, my body started weakening and I fell down on the road.  Later, I got to know that the bullet went through my jaws and got stuck in neck. I also learned later that my right ankle also got multiple fractures possibly during the process of falling down. My voice got corrupted immediately [I can now realize it was because my left jaw was shattered]. With whatever voice I had, I started crying for help. I tried to search for my mobile, My body couldn't lift itself. So I was just using my hands around to search for it. I found it. I tried to use the fingers and attempt the fingerprint sensor to unlock the phone. Due to dust, some fingers were not working.

The first person, who came within a minute [probably the owner of the car next to me], asked what happened. I explained, but he left with his car. After that nobody was noticing me for next few minutes.I started losing hope as well as consciousness. My cries for help stopped as I felt there is no point. I started feeling, it is the end of the world for me. I started thinking of all the plans I had for future and how they were all coming to end just at that time and that place in front of my eyes. I wondered, that I hadn't given all the details of my savings and other investments to my near and dear ones. They would have difficult time in locating all of them. I was still conscious though my senses were getting dimmer.

Fortunately, an angel came after a few minutes. He talked to me, understood the situation, brought in some more people, picked me up, got me placed in my car and drove me to the nearest hospital. He managed to access my phone and call my friend and my wife. They started immediately from Noida and Gurgaon. They brought along all the help. My brother in law came along. My wife's uncle joined.  Some of her friends came along My Managing Director was informed. He came before midnight. I had started feeling I would get saved. I was still conscious and was talking. Police came along within half an hour I guess to the Yatharth hospital, Greater Noida. Since I was still talking, they took my statement. The hospital staff carefully took all my belongings and got them submitted at reception in order to save it from getting into Police custody unnecessarily. But Police did take the car along with them (including all the grocery and my laptop bag which was in the back of the car).

From there I was transferred to the bigger Yatharth hospital in Noida. My wife joined there. I was so so relieved to see her by my side at that time. At the same time, I was crying from inside so much after seeing her as I had ended up messing up all our plans so early in our marriage. She handled the situation that night with so much courage and conviction, and without any panic, that made all the difference on that fateful night. Dr Kapil Tyagi, MD of the hospital, personally took over the case. He called all the surgeons around and managed to get an army of six surgeons in place by midnight. I went through multiple X Rays and CT scans. I vividly remember passing through them. I had to wait a while before getting moved to OT. I was patiently waiting and talking little bit to the nursing staff present around me. Finally, they moved me to OT. I felt the anesthesia being administered to me. I guess a few minutes after that, I passed out.

A six hour surgery was conducted overnight. I got back into senses in the morning. I realized I was in ICU. It was not much pain at that time [I think I was on an overdose of pain killers], but my body was pretty much crippled. My right leg had a raw plaster. My neck had multiple stitches. My face was massively swelled. My neck couldn't move. I couldn't sit down. I couldn't turn around my body. I felt that I could move my left leg and my both hands. That was comforting.

Later the doctors came around 9 am. They explained to me how I was quite lucky to have survived a gunshot wound in face without any significant injury. The bullet had stayed just a few millimeters away from critical nerves. It would take months but I would recover.

As my family and friends started trickling in, I kept crying to see each face. I guess in last 10 years, I have never really shed tears by myself. On May 11, on seeing every face, my tears kept rolling down non stop.


I guess, this is long enough post already. Rest later.

A curious incident from online shopping experience

A friend of mine ordered a mi3 redmi note from FlipKart.   This is what he got!



Here is the more complicated part.  He (Let's call him A) stays in Noida. The delivery was possible only in Delhi. So he asked another friend of his (say person B) to order the phone (coz B has account in FlipKart and B had got the deal offer) with the product to be delivered to person C (who lives in Delhi). So C got the delivery, brought it to office. A opened it in office, saw the beautiful surprise that was waiting for him inside the box, and started wondering what next to do. When A called FlipKart support, he had to explain that the order was placed by B and delivered to C and received by him.We are still wondering, whether FlipKart will own up the mistake or not.

So, the topic of lunch discussion was, what should we do to have strong proof of misplaced product.The only viable idea was: when the product is delivered, open the product case at the same time in front of the delivery person, check it and then accept it. But, this is fraught with many issues. I for myself, stay alone. So, I am mostly absent from home. Therefore, I schedule deliveries at my office address. Even in that, I am mostly busy in meetings during office time, or it is weekend. So, I prefer the delivery guy to deliver the products at office security. I pick it up at the end of the day. For me, it's pretty difficult to spend time with the delivery guy for opening the product  and verifying it. Moreover, the packing is usually so sophisticated, that it would easily take 5 to 10 minutes to unpack it. And if it is a big product, unpacking it would be highly inconvenient, as I have to drive back 35 kilometers later.Moreover, the delivery guy himself won't be willing to wait that long.

Life is complicated!

One plus two first experiences

I have  migrated to one plus  two  from  an older  Samsung  Galaxy  grand Quatro. Overall  I am enjoying  the new phone.  But I did  find  some issues.

It doesn't  ship with  a headset. For now I am using  the headset  of my previous  phone.

It doesn't  have  fm.  I used to use my earlier  phone  to listen to fm while  driving.  I don't  have  this capability  anymore.

When I connected  the phone  to laptop  today  it didn't  start  charging. Towards  the end of the day  I looked at the battery  details page to realize that it is not charging. Disconnecting and reconnecting  the  cable didn't  help. Finally  I restarted  the device. Then it started  charging. I could  not  figure  out  why this happened. Probably  it is a software  bug which  will get fixed later.

The phone  comes  with  a single  cable.  Thus one has to keep carrying  it around.  My earlier  phone  came with  two cables. One with  a wall socket  adapter  and other for pc connection. Having  two  cables I think  is useful.  This  seems to be a cost cutting  exercise. However official USB type c cables  from one plus are out of stock on amazon.  So getting  an official  spare isn't  easy at this  time.

Btw the phone is really  fast and worth  the money.

On the mirage of one rank one pension

Not sure how many people know about the so called apex scale in Indian bureaucracy. This is the highest scale at which bureaucrats in India can retire. Some years back, they introduced One Rank One Pension for (only) those bureaucrats who reach this level before retirement. In some sense, this is a preferential treatment given by the top bureaucrats to themselves. I believe this should be abolished. The idea of one rank one pension is indeed flawed. It causes unnecessary load on the exchequer. And if it is awarded to military persons, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be awarded to other government servants also. After-all, teachers also serve the nation! The only thing worthwhile is some sort of compensation to military people in pay commissions since they retire much earlier. This I believe is done in form of dearness allowances so far. In general, the focus should be on ensuring that during the military career, or just after it, people get trained enough so that they can easily get good jobs in civilian life and can continue to earn their living for doing real work and contributing to the growth of the nation. Living off pensions for able bodied persons is not a great way of living in my view. I don't have the statistics but my guess is that most of the military veterans do get absorbed in decent civilian roles post retirement. I would also mention that armed forces have different provisions for martyrs and people who get physically disabled while on duty.

Hope for best or work for best?

As I have been talking with my friends and colleagues about the change in government, a typical response has been "Let us hope for the best". In fact many a times I also gave the same response. And just now, it struck me that this is nothing but passive thinking. After giving the mandate to the new Modi government, we just want to sit back and "Hope for the Best".

What if we just replace "Hope" with "Work" and start thinking "Let us Work for the Best".  A simple change in word has a major impact in our approach to governance.  Rather than being a passive observer to the charade of governance, we become an active participant in the governance process.

There are many ways, we can keep ourselves involved with the governance process. The least we can do is to use the social media to provide constructive criticism towards the actions the government is taking or not taking. If something is not working, raise it. If government decisions are improper, cry hell. If the government is doing something right, appreciate it. If the government needs our support in making some decisions, help them. If you have new ideas to solve a problem, share it.  If any member of BJP or affiliated organizations is trying to abuse his power or reach, make it known. But don't indulge in unnecessary rants. Don't complain about imaginary problems or apprehensions without any factual basis.  Use twitter, facebook, whatsapp and other social media to the best of the ability. Know that people in this government do react to simmering anger in social media and take corrective actions quickly. An example is when Pramod Muthalik was inducted in BJP during the campaign, an aggressive twitter lashing led to he being thrown out of the party the same day. Know that Modi wants to be here for a long term and he will not do anything which would lead to erosion of his support base.


There are other avenues also for engaging with the modi government. At his website http://www.narendramodi.in/ you can directly write to him, or join him in his "Serve the Nation" campaign.  I am sure many more initiatives will be launched by the government in upcoming months to have a greater involvement of young and capable people in the governance process.

Even if you don't like BJP ideology, or something that has happened in the past, the government is here to stay. So better engage with them rather than just saying "Hope for the best".

Handling illegal migration from Bangladesh

Illegal migration from Bangladesh into India turned up as an important electoral issue while campaigning in West Bengal. While BJP didn't give a specific solution to it, it did show its tough stand that illegal migration is not acceptable.  In this post, I suggest a WIN-WIN solution which can be helpful to both India and Bangladesh.

A fundamental issue to understand is why migration happens. Essentially there are two reasons for migration: economics and politics. If people don't find job opportunities or other income sources in their native place, they tend to go to other more prosperous places in order to find jobs. The prosperous places are always in need for more blue collar workers or even general labor. So there is an economic benefit associated with them to allow illegal migration to happen.

The second reason is political. There are two sides of this. When a small group of people is harassed in one locality, it attempts to run away and find refuse in some other more friendly place.  On the other hand, politicians sometimes allow illegal migration as long as they can cultivate their vote bank.

Of the two, majority of migration happens due to economical reasons and vote bank politics is just incidental to it. Thus, if the core reasons for migration due to economic reasons can be taken care of, then migration will automatically come down. Not many people really want to leave her home place and wander in foreign lands.

In order to solve this problem, it makes sense for India to help Bangladesh develop into an economically prosperous nation. If India can help develop infrastructure in the country, build ports, roads, and help grow labor intensive industries, then most of the Bangladeshis who have left the country, will naturally be motivated to go back to their home land and stay there. Further, with right kind of partnership between India and Bangladesh, this will also help India develop its north-east region much more effectively. As the roads through Bangladesh will help connect the north-east to the Bay of Bengal and excellent ports on the coastal line will help increase international trade, India will automatically benefit a lot. Such an excellent India-Bangladesh partnership will help solve so many problems in one go.

Now, it doesn't mean that the illegal immigrants problem will be solved completely through this master stroke.  The political refugee problem will still remain and will have to be addressed differently. But, its good to solve the 80% of the problem first and then come out with more challenging approaches to solve more tricky problems.

The Safe Bool Idiom

The Safe Bool Idiom Learn how to validate objects in a boolean context without the usual harmful side effects in C++.

Why English is good for us as a technical language

So if you have read about HTML, you know that a tag can have child tags and a parent tag. Children of children are descendants (recursively). Parent of parent is an ancestor (recursively again). A tag also has sibling tags. The children of the sibling of parent tag can at best be called a cousin.

Now think if you were going to be taught the same thing in Hindi.

HTML me tag hote hain. Har tag ka ek pita hota hai (Maata nahi hoti). Ek tag ke 0 ya 0 se adhik bachche tags ho sakte hain. Unhe ham putra tag kahenge (putri kyon nahi?). Ek tag ka sirf ek hi pita ho sakta hai. HTML tag ka koi pita nahi hota, isliye woh sarvochh poorvaj kahlata hai. Pita ka pita, yani pitamah tag bhi ho sakta hai. Agar pita ke pita ki shrinkhala banayi jaye to woh sab tag poorvaj kahlayenge. Usi tarah putra ke putra (pautra tag) aur agar unki shrinkala banayi jaaye to we sab vanshaj kahlayenge. Har tag ke bhai tag bhi hote hain (bahnein nahi hoti). Bhaiyon me kuch agraj honge (coming before) aur kuch anuj (coming later).

I think that all the books on HTML would become so funny if we had to read stuff like this.

We should be grateful that we have a foreign language in which we read all the technical stuff :D

Western double standards

Sri Lankan president had to cancel his UK trip since he may face arrest in UK as under the principle of universal jurisdiction, war crimes and crimes against humanity can be prosecuted in UK even if they were not committed in the country. The foreign minister of Sri Lanka has been advised by their British counter part that the current Sri Lankan government must demonstrate its unconditional commitment to democracy. I do not understand what right they have to judge other countries for their commitment to democracy. I wonder if the British will offer a similar treatment to a visiting current or former US president for war crimes committed in places like Iraq or Afghanistan.

Rights vs. Entitlements

Freedom of speech is a right. Freedom of choosing one's religion is a right. Information is a right. Freedom to pursue happiness is a right. Freedom to own property is a right. Food is an entitlement. Education is an entitlement. Work is an entitlement.

So what is the difference? Rights are freedoms from oppression by the state or by the society. Rights are based on the premise that all humans are born equal and the society and government cannot restrict the freedom of a person or discriminate between them based on race, gender, or religion. Entitlements are welfare measures entailing government handouts and are naturally constrained by budget. Rights are universal, entitlements are not.

Rights don't cost government a penny in principle. But government is responsible for protecting the rights of a citizen if any one else or any part of government machinery is infringing on it. This is part of the policing function of government. All citizens have same rights.

Entitlements however cost money. Government has to plan for welfare within its budgetary constraints. Welfare is mostly targeted towards the poor of the country. A rich person doesn't need government support for food or the education of his children. Its the poor of the people who cannot afford such things on their own who need government support for the same. Nevertheless food, education, work and infrastructure are important basic requirements for well being and successful living of the citizens of a state. Hence they are also called secondary rights. Still they should be planned very carefully. Too much of it can make people become complacent as well as lead to the bankruptcy of state. Communist states gave priority to entitlement over rights. This was a road to the servitude to the state and led to massive unrest in the society. Today very few of the communist states are left in the world. Democratic countries like Greece which prided too much on socialist entitlement to its people; are finding it very difficult to take care of their public debt now.

We should appreciate the difference between fundamental rights and secondary rights or entitlements. This will help us plan much better for the future of our country.

Reference:

Swaminomics, Times of India, August 29, 2010, Lets not confuse entitlements with rights

I disown CWG 2010

Sheila Dikshit says that if the rain doesn't stop then she will pray and she will ask the whole country to pray. I want to be clear that I am not going to pray for the gigantic mismanagement and the loot carried out by CWG 2010. I disown CWG 2010. I will not watch it either in TV or in person. I will not read about it in news papers. And I will not care if its failure leads to a so called severe blow to the pride of India. It is probably the biggest organized loot ever in India since its independence. It has destroyed CP and created a havoc all around Delhi. Nobody cares about actually meeting deadlines. It has put enormous tax burden on citizens of the country. I do not wish to have a sense of guilt for the failure of a set of people who have no sense of responsibility and who only care about filling their personal coffers.

Stockholm syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stockholm syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raavan movie is a depiction of Stockholm syndrome.

Corporal Punishment in Schools

The article on Wikipedia describes the current situation on application of corporal punishments in schools (caning or striking a student a given number of times) across the world.

Interestingly Russia and China banned it for decades since it is against the communist philosophy. Several studies have shown that corporal punishment is not as effective as other positive means of managing student behavior. At the moment a number of countries across the world have banned it.

Much of it was originated by the British in 19th and 20th century. They have themselves abolished corporal punishment in schools now; but a lot of developing countries in the English speaking world including our very own India are still stuck in a time warp. When a Soviet school principal visited a British school in 1960's, he was shocked to see the instances of caning. He said, caning is degrading to the student and even more to the staff administering it to the student.

I would say that caning is pretty much a form of violence. And I would quote Isaac Asimov here "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

I can now correlate why there is never a caning instance in all the Harry Potter novels. At most you see students being called for detention which is much more effective technique though it consumes extra time from both the student and the teacher. I am ignoring the methods used by Dolores Umbrige who was more of a vamp anyway.

On Pandavas and Kauravas

I wonder why there were 5 Pandavas. 2 of them were pretty useless and added pretty much no value to the story! As a matter of fact, out of the 99 brothers Duryodhana had, only 2 or 3 had any real contribution to the story. For the rest of them I guess the whole purpose of existence was to be slayed in the Mahabharata war by Bheema. Oh yeah, the other purpose was to demonstrate that Maharshi Ved Vyasa knew of so powerful test-tube baby generation techniques which are not even possible in our current times.

How astrology helps

The parents of a friend of mine recently discovered that there is Shani in his Kundali and will stay around so for another year. They had been worried about his marriage all along, and now they have understood the real reason why its not happening. They are both relieved as well as worried.

Astrology was really successful in providing them with a false sense of relief as to why the marriage hasn't happened so far. The subject is especially good in finding out reasons where none exist.

I don't mean that astrology is all crap. I do have a deep respect for it. But astrology is not something which can provide real explanation to each and every problem in your life. Its an enormous guidance system which was designed based extensive studies of lives of a whole lot of people over centuries. The system consists of a huge set of rules which when applied after thorough study can at best describe general trends in one's life. It helps you in identifying risk areas and potential directions of success in your life. And it requires years of deep study to become proficient in the art of astrology. But in the end, its a rule based deterministic system and man's will is powerful enough to change anything in the world if he so wishes. Man is as bound by the rules of nature as he allows himself to be and as free of the rules as he wants to be.

Moreover a system like astrology is a heuristics oriented system based on studies of real life experiences. Hence it needs a constant re-invention and updates based on new observations as they keep happening all around in the world. This is something we have forgotten in this age and time and have ended up having a system which is pretty much stale and lifeless.

At the moment my friend is worried since his parents have started taking astrology too seriously.

How our navratna companies assist in marriages

Our young man was from a well-to-do agricultural family. There was not much emphasis on education in his family. More-over since there was not much issue related to money, hence nobody would pressure him to work hard for a good job too.

In general he was quite confused about what to do in his life. He was intelligent but not focused. He would try different kinds of businesses though not being much successful in any of these.

One day, the question of his marriage arose. In our part of the world, a good job helps a lot in getting good marriage proposals. Time was to find one. Naturally one of our Navratna PSUs was ready to help. After spending some money, he obtained the job smoothly. He didn't even have to attend office on daily basis and his salary would come on regular basis without any issues. Marriage proposals flowed in quickly and he was a settled man very soon.

The core objective of being on board in the PSU being completed, it was time to get back the initial money he invested in getting the job in first place. It turned out that this was not difficult either. He had some fight at his office, resigned from his job, and after working through his contacts, got part of his original investment back.

At the moment, he is happily married with a kid and has opened a school in his village. And the PSU is a long forgotten dream.

The plight of PL

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Sales gaali deve, Customer gaali dewe,
Office hai genda phool

Manager hain vyapari, rahte hain pardes
sooratiyaan na dikhe, jiyara bhaari howe
Office hai genda phool

chhhora developer ka role, samhaala team ko,
support chher dewe, QA chutki lewe
Office hai genda phool

friday bug aaye, monday deadline howe
weekend ko AC na chale, akele kaam howe
office hai genda phool
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(written by Shailesh, a once in a while pseudo-poet in a reflective mood at 4 o'clock in the morning of some weird Monday while working with a language called Python which has exceptional introspective and reflective capabilities and sometimes is able to ignite your deep hidden creative capabilities)


Disclaimer: Poets have a right to exaggerate each and everything that exists or that doesn't exist to a level unimaginable by mere mortal beings. Ideas and opinions expressed in this belong to the poetic part of the poet only

PS: PL stands for Project Leader. Those who have seen the movie Delhi-6 would be able to relate to the song easily.

Hesitation

Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Analog vs Digital

Analog systems always exhibit graceful degradation.
Implementing graceful degradation in digital systems is HARD.
A single part failure in a digital system may lead to a catastrophic failure. Thats the nature of binary logic. A single inversion of value can lead to complete failure of system.