What a great guy. Was diagonosed with pancreatic cancer two years back and his almost perfectly poised life changed in literally a second. A happy family with a loving wife and three lovely kids. An awesome job as a full professor of computer science in one of the best technical schools in the country carnegie mellon. And suddenly one day his life changed upside down. Well atleast it should have! For most it would have, but it takes extraordinary resilience to not only resist the negative changes but infact find positive light in all this. And this is one extraordinary guy.
Carnegie Mellon has this fascinating last lecture series where the speaker is suppose to imagine that this is going to his/her hypothetical last lecture before emminent death. Taking this oppurtinity they are supposed to talk about their views on their philosophy of life and death and work adn family adn existence and science and anything adn everything under the sun that inspires them adn keeps them going. Brillian idea actually. But this time it was Randy givign the lecture and instead of the hypothetical going to die soon part, he actually was going to die soon. As he so aptly said, "hes never nailed the venue like this before"! I heard his last lecture yeaterday and was complelled to read the transcript. In fact they have come out with a book about this lecture of his which I plan to read and recommend to everyone.
But this post is about what he said in his lecture. And the most imp thing he said was that "dont give up on your childhood dreams and follow them". Now i know that this sounds excrutiatingly cliched, but somehow it felt different coming from him. For follow your childhood dreams was just a metaphor for "dont lose you child like wonder". And that is so true. Not to loose your innocence come what may. How does one achieve that? By following your dreams ! Irrespective of anything. I kind of like this philosophy. I concurr that you shouldnt loose you innocence, but how? It is difficult and there indeed is the thick brick wall. But as randy said, "it is put there on purpose to keep the "others" out"!
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
mom and dad
Why do I miss my parents so much today? I don't know. Its like I am coming to realize how much I love them. I've been away from home for too long. Five years now. Never did I miss them so much. Why today? I cried. Is that bad? I think I am lucky I can cry. Not many people can. I couldn't for a long time myself. I love my parents.
Thursday, December 04, 2008
I like to think of myself as a “libertarian conservative” in the American sense of words. There are some things I like about conventional libertarian and conservative ideas. And I don’t think I am morally relative either, even though I like to derive my morality from different places altogether. I think it’s rather good than bad to derive your own justice system from all possible schools of thought that you can possibly know. I don’t like abortion but am not against it either, in fact it is very important. I think gay marriage and adoption is fine unless they are not able to provide for a better life to the child. I am for property rights but I am also for social security at some micro level than what it is now. I am not against the death penalty but I do think that it should be used in the rarest of rare cases with proven medical insanity not as punishment but riddance. I like some things and I don’t like some things, and many people will like me and hate me for that. But something happened last week that made retrospect what I really feel.
Last week my city was taken siege by terrorists who mercilessly killed around 190 people and injured 300. Places where I hung out for a good part of my life and have great memories of were attacked. Civilians were killed and monuments destroyed. And all this done by some 20-25 year olds who had a very different sense of morality and retribution than me. Mumbai, the place of my birth and the city which I will never stop loving, was terrorized by some misguided souls who though killing innocent civilians for whatever cause can bring justice for whom they are fighting for and show light on their cause. It is not the case that Mumbai has never been the object of terrorism before. In fact it has been for too long and too often. But there was something different about this. It was as if the for the first time the terrorists had control of the situation. Although businesses started operating within hours, the situation wasn’t under control for almost 58 hours. These people were highly trained and knew exactly what they were doing. They used cocaine and amphetamines to stay awake for 3 days without getting any food or sleep. They carried Kalashnikovs and grenades and sophisticated equipment like GPS systems, satellite radios, switchable sim cards and other stuff. So they knew what they were doing. They just didn’t indiscriminately blow up a building and run away or die in the process. They had a plan to get away after this and in case they were caught they had had training in interrogation techniques. I was simply astonished just comprehending the thought and logistics that would have gone into planning this attack on my beloved city and its patrons. And then the reports started to come in that it was the work of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a terrorist outfit initially created and sheltered by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the premier external intelligence agency of Pakistan.
Now how accurate was the information, I don’t know. The Indian intelligence agencies said they have enough proof to nail the link between the terrorists and the ISI. They found the boat the terrorists supposedly came in enroute Karachi. They said they found sim cards which could be linked to elements in Pakistan. The singular terrorist that was captured confirmed that he had received training on Pakistani soil for 3 or more months, training which can only be equaled to the rigorousness of the American Ranger course. The specific targeting of American, British and Israeli tourists points to involvement of the extremist religious fringe, as LeT primararily receives its funding from Saudi Arabia. No word on the ammo as yet, maybe too sensitive for the press. The Americans said they had even more proof than the Indian intelligence from their satellite imagery.
But this is not what concerned me. I couldn’t care less for the politics or the morality of the terrorists behind these gruesome attacks. It was obviously flawed although worth studying. What I found interesting was what happened to me. Initially I was angry and appalled and feeling overwhelmingly impotent about the whole situation. I felt like they should bomb those bloody terrorist training camps in Pakistan. Kill them all those Islamic extremists. Wipe them off the face of this planet. And punish the bourgeoisie moderate Muslims that cannot come out in the open and condemn the attacks. It’s after all for the supposed sorry state of their brothers and sisters that these terrorists deem necessary to give their lives and take other peoples lives, not just in India but all over the world.
It was an instinctive reaction to the situation and I soon realized the foolishness of it. But something needed to be done and nobody seemed to know how or what except the extremists on the other side!
Last week my city was taken siege by terrorists who mercilessly killed around 190 people and injured 300. Places where I hung out for a good part of my life and have great memories of were attacked. Civilians were killed and monuments destroyed. And all this done by some 20-25 year olds who had a very different sense of morality and retribution than me. Mumbai, the place of my birth and the city which I will never stop loving, was terrorized by some misguided souls who though killing innocent civilians for whatever cause can bring justice for whom they are fighting for and show light on their cause. It is not the case that Mumbai has never been the object of terrorism before. In fact it has been for too long and too often. But there was something different about this. It was as if the for the first time the terrorists had control of the situation. Although businesses started operating within hours, the situation wasn’t under control for almost 58 hours. These people were highly trained and knew exactly what they were doing. They used cocaine and amphetamines to stay awake for 3 days without getting any food or sleep. They carried Kalashnikovs and grenades and sophisticated equipment like GPS systems, satellite radios, switchable sim cards and other stuff. So they knew what they were doing. They just didn’t indiscriminately blow up a building and run away or die in the process. They had a plan to get away after this and in case they were caught they had had training in interrogation techniques. I was simply astonished just comprehending the thought and logistics that would have gone into planning this attack on my beloved city and its patrons. And then the reports started to come in that it was the work of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a terrorist outfit initially created and sheltered by the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), the premier external intelligence agency of Pakistan.
Now how accurate was the information, I don’t know. The Indian intelligence agencies said they have enough proof to nail the link between the terrorists and the ISI. They found the boat the terrorists supposedly came in enroute Karachi. They said they found sim cards which could be linked to elements in Pakistan. The singular terrorist that was captured confirmed that he had received training on Pakistani soil for 3 or more months, training which can only be equaled to the rigorousness of the American Ranger course. The specific targeting of American, British and Israeli tourists points to involvement of the extremist religious fringe, as LeT primararily receives its funding from Saudi Arabia. No word on the ammo as yet, maybe too sensitive for the press. The Americans said they had even more proof than the Indian intelligence from their satellite imagery.
But this is not what concerned me. I couldn’t care less for the politics or the morality of the terrorists behind these gruesome attacks. It was obviously flawed although worth studying. What I found interesting was what happened to me. Initially I was angry and appalled and feeling overwhelmingly impotent about the whole situation. I felt like they should bomb those bloody terrorist training camps in Pakistan. Kill them all those Islamic extremists. Wipe them off the face of this planet. And punish the bourgeoisie moderate Muslims that cannot come out in the open and condemn the attacks. It’s after all for the supposed sorry state of their brothers and sisters that these terrorists deem necessary to give their lives and take other peoples lives, not just in India but all over the world.
It was an instinctive reaction to the situation and I soon realized the foolishness of it. But something needed to be done and nobody seemed to know how or what except the extremists on the other side!
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