The Human race is assumed to be distinct and socially and economically well placed above the other organisms and animals. We proudly say, we are the only organism where the parents, are separated from their offspring only by the eternal destroyer. The love, anxiety and care given to the future generation by its parents see no bounds and is undoubtedly sincere.

My parents are the reason for everything good in me. Its their continuous hard work and motivation that brought me unto this. All of my readers would agree to this at least conditionally. Before I get into the topic, let me pay a tribute to all the parents in the world who are anxious about their children’s well being.

Dear Parents,

There is not a kid in this world who is born with the skill to crawl, walk or speak. So was I. I never knew to crawl, nor speak as I was born. You very well knew the fact that I would kiss the ground and feel the moment I set foot on the ground. But you gladly allowed me to set foot on the ground and happily saw my first fall in the life. You believed, that after a number of falls, I would be groomed to a confident strollers as you are. And, its amazing, I am one today. I walk as confident as you are today.

I was never a speaker, and you knew it very well that I would blab nonsense if I open my mouth. But still you allowed me opening the mouth and inspired and encouraged to keep bulling out the nonsense, believing one day, I would speak confidently as you did. Its amazing, if you had not believed me in that day, I would not be speaking as I do today.

You very well knew, the comfortable place for me is home. It was the utmost secure and safe place on the earth. And, I never liked foregoing or staying away from there. But, against my comfort and cosiness, you persuaded, me to go to a school of high standards. You very well knew it is not a comfortable place for me. But you where somehow sure, it will allow me to keep in pace with my life and allow me to face the world. And, again I never turned you down. After, umpteen number of failures, I made you happy and made your wait and toil worth while. I still remember that very smile you had on the day I passed my school certification.

I was expecting you to put me on rest now, to lead a peaceful life, with the basic education I have, which is a previlege to many of my brothers in this country. But, you wanted me to be very ambitious and studious. You wanted me to be someone who would take up challenges, whose spirits would not break up. Who would want risks. So identified an ideal profession and the best college available at your capability and reach. You deprived yourself of  all the comforts to pay my education. You almost tore down the financial assets to avail my education. And again amazing, that your expectation was kept high. Now, both of us, you and I know that, there are a lot of things, that I know and you do not. Similarly, the other way round. Now, I love to take up risks on my own. Now, you made me greedy of knowledge. You made me very ambitious. YES!!! I thank you a hundred times for that. No, several thousand times for that.

But, now, suddenly you want to see me settled… You are not confident in me when I take up risks. You ask me for guarantee. You can’t bear seeing me fail. You forget, its you who had allowed me to take me first failure. And, now failures…. I am not afraid. Disasters of any kind… I gladly manage them. Now I am capable of taking decisions and doing things I love the most. You made me into such a person, When I wished to be on bed, you pulled me to ground, when I wanted to be at home you pushed me into the world of competition, when I wanted to settle down, you made me ambitious….

Now, what disturbs me, is your lack of confidence in me, despite me keeping up your expectations. Its your anxiety in me that makes me restless. Your love that turns into agony, when I wish to sacrifice my life for a better enjoyment is what is fearful to me.

Dear Parents,

If you really love your Children, Please Please give them that chance, every time they take a decision in the life. Yes. The very chance you gave to set foot on the ground when you where very sure of them falling don and getting hurt. They would turn out into more beautiful legends than they are now. Let, them serve the society. I know, your age and sacrifices you had done is not at all replaceable. But, the children, they have a life of their own. Let them live and serve the Humanity. They will surely love you for that.

There would be none in this world who would like to have a tensed situation around. Harmony, peace, security and fraternity are words we speak out and boast off. Its the dream of every human to live peacefully, to work in harmony, to love and be loved by all his fellow beings. Unfortunately we get to see, the world is not a smooth place to achieve this. Almost every place you get to be, there would be both foes and friends waiting for you.

To every wretched person on this earth, there is a period of innocence. The time when he enjoyed the warmth of his mother’s breast. When he was the source of her joy and happiness, when people raced to caress him, to cuddle him. This period I would call, it to be the period of TRUTH.  What is it so much in this world that makes us lose innocence? What is it so much the world has in here that you need to forge a smile to deceive your opponent and talk on his backs? 

Education by its goal is meant to wear off these modes from the society. But what should one infer when the hypocrisy and pseudo-characters show up with the hymn of the educators.

Who is responsible for the transition from the TRUTHFUL baby to the corrupt human we are today?

There are clerics who talk day and night about repentance and washing of sins!! But, if the very  same clerics had point out this very fact that the trampling upon of TRUTH is what triggers sin, earth would not have been a bitter place as it is now!! These are some conclusions I came upon while conversing with a pundit on the matter today morning.

1. The greatest offence you do to a society is when you cease to realize and perform your duty and blame others for its consequences. In most cases, I have seen beginning of every row and unrest to be failure of duty accomplishment at its various hierarchy. And I feel it to be harmless if I call upon such a person “A being of Falsehood”. 
2. It is a level of falsehood, when you fail to realize the plight and situation of your fellow being and you start to trouble him/her whilst he/she expects you to leave him/her in peace. Denial of a helping hand is a very serious offensive denial of truth towards the society. Not to say when the gesture of help was also a duty entrusted upon you.
3. The denial of truth, in its other form is what happens when one fails to realize the less privileged and abide his / her existence. This often triggers a hatred between the privileged and the deprived. The root cause of racism, fanaticism, communal ism can be approximated to  the disunity among the privileged and the deprived.
4. It is the denial of truth when one fails to realize that every female on this earth is either a daughter, a sister, a mother, an aunt of some other being and thus being his brother, is responsible for any discomfort to them. Thus no Truthful person can harass or molest any female on the face of the earth.
5. Defying of Truth occurs when one fails to acknowledge the love and care of his fellow beings given unto him and fails to realize their expectations.
6. Utmost defying of truth occurs when one fails to realize his / her uniqueness, the purpose of existence. 

The moment one or more of the above enter into the character of the innocent lad, his / her presence would make the place bitter to the fellow mates. But what I still doubt is, Will it be ever be possible to identify the moments when this occur?

To teach in the college which has brought you up and be among the teachers you love and respect; is a great honor and gift. Not everyone is lucky enough to attain it. As all other things in my life, this bounty had come up totally unexpected and unasked. It seems that destiny calls me to take the experience of being on the other side of the community in the college. Now that I am on the verge of leaving my first ever commitment as a professional I would like to share whatever I had learnt from this short period of three months.

I had always considered myself as less mature to be a teacher. In fact my concept of a teacher is a noble figure of perfection and idealism, which of course is nearly impossible to find (though I can list out a few). When I was asked to handle a class I was nearly in a shock and panic. Well, out of the dead inactivity I committed to it, promising myself to do justice to it as far as I can. (I still doubt if I could keep to that) In fact that was a turning point of my life. The aggressive, domineering, pessimistic me had to be converted to a humble, extremely optimistic person. A transformation which cost me a lot of my evil ego and emotions. I was now the amidst the expectation of a part of the nation. The budding citizens of the nation, that is thirsty for a change. I am sure that the past three months, may not have brought up something great in changing the lot, but it was too constructive as it had changed ME!!!

I’ve had quite a good experience during these days. Both good and bad. From all these what I could summarize is:

1. Students – A group of young greedy batch of humans, who can be tuned in to a variety if we work hard. Teaching has to be designed and modeled, rather than to be done conventionally. 
2. Teachers – A serious community (ought to be highly mature) in which the students seek a role model and expects a lot from them. Sad is that the system of the day have contaminated the view of a student to his teachers, but it can’t be changed except by the teacher by (him/her)-self.

The most effective way out would be to push in yourself to lower end of the student community. Being one among them and guiding them is the most easy way to change them. But it costs a lot of your ego, patience and hard work. Lessons from the great Swami Vivekananda teaches us: To correct your student, you should make sure if the mistake ever exists in your self and if so is it correctable for you.

You can never ask your students to respect or honor if you cannot respect and honor the existence and privileges of others. You can never ever speak of truth to the community if you yourself do not know the meaning of it. Often truth is mixed up with TRUE which is the converse of false. But truth even has a higher dimension and that Truth is what bought us independence. And I am sure it is that truth that has allowed me live 23 years of my life happily, that solves my problems that rise up like Himalayas and later melt down as the snows melt into Ganges and Yamuna.

Venomous emotions like vengeance and hatred is the instinct that rises in every human being. But a successful teacher well knows how to control these instincts. How to smile at the person who dishonored you. How to apologize to him for causing him to dishonor you. In fact that new character I had developed could win a whole bunch of hearts, those of which I am sure, if I would’ve tried for years and on would not be successful in doing so.

I believe the plain of academics and personal relations are truly independent and incidents on one shouldn’t affect the other. This is something every student and teacher have to be careful of. Human relations are expensive whilst the rest are considerably cheap to the latter.

The plight of this society burdened by falsehood, treachery and corruption makes it call us for the rescue. Yes, it is only future generation that can save us. Quality of imparting knowledge have to be strictly administered, not by agencies like ISO, AICET, neither by the higher authorities and management… but by ones own conscience and the personality. Deceive your conscience; it will never forgive you.

What I sincerely have learnt these days are to forgive people… and forgive does not mean to refrain from correcting them. But correcting them whilst erasing out the prejudice and hatred that would have been generated in your mind by their act.

Every day in class have been a fresh one for me. No student out of the 41 lot have even behaved the same in two consecutive hours, forget about days. Thus I can very seriously overrule the stereotyping of a person as good or bad by character. It is their attitude that matters and yes, I believe, in these days, with the explosion of knowledge in paper, print and internet, the teachers are still hired just to bring in the change of attitude. That is exactly what my teachers did successfully in me. I fear if I could do that in my students. If yes I was successful, else I fear if I had been inefficient and incapable.

The last and very important lesson I had was a little painful though. Expectations and beliefs about people often hurts you. Smiles on faces bring happiness and joy if they are genuinely cast. Else it is much painful than a dagger in your chest. Its easy to say never expect something from someone, but at least I do not know how to lead such a life. Well, all we can do is to suffer the pain praying such would be really rare in life.

Love, compassion, self-respect, dignity and fraternity is what runs the world. Life is not a race track where you run against your opponents, but a convoy where you run with your mates. Genuineness is one quality that have to be looked at learnt from the alleged evolutionary ancestors of mankind.

My heart is heavy that this noble profession is about to end in another few days. It has gained me lot of experiences and relations that makes my life even worthier. I would like to thank all those who played a reason to avail me this rarest of chances in my life. Please do forgive me if I was not capable of paying justice to your expectations.

Thanking you for your patience and awaiting your responses.

I had attended the Alan Turing centenary celebration by the RSC and Planetarium, Calicut where I just learned how a genius Turing was. The basic instinct in this short lived man was the guts and courage to take up questions and answer them. Of which the infamous one is “Can Machines Think?” which I believe is answerable to some extend today.

But what amazed me the most was this Mathematician getting into Morphology with his concept of “Art, Pattern and Complexity” and I would like to thank Dr. Gopakumar G,  Department of Computer Science. NIT Calicut for his enlightening into this topic . Its nearly impossible for a mathematician or a technology student to get into the morphological sciences when we claim to be at the heights of inventions and advancements.

I guess we all should be at least be aware of the type of questions he tried answering. Those are the easiest ones to ask. But the most difficult ones to answer.

“What is life?” How did life originate?” “Can we create life?” “What is the secret of life?” And while trying to answer this question in the paper The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis he had put forth a very reasonable argument of the Activator and Inhibitors that work together antagonistically to produce some sort of a standing wave. That stabilizes the morphology of an organism. Another strong argument is the breakdown of Symmetry and Homogeinity.

He states “An embryo in its spherical blastula stage has spherical symmetry, or if there are any deviations from perfect symmetry, they cannot be regarded as of any particular importance, for the deviations vary greatly from embryo to embryo within a species, though the organisms developed from them are barely distinguishable. One may take it therefore that there is perfect spherical symmetry. But a system which has spherical symmetry, and whose state is changing because of chemical reactions and diffusion, will remain spherically symmetrical for ever. (The same would hold true if the state were changing according to the laws of electricity and magnetism, or of quantum mechanics.) It certainly cannot result in an organism such as a horse, which is not spherically symmetrical.

There is a fallacy in this argument. I t was assumed that the deviations from spherical symmetry in the blastula could be ignored because it makes no particular difference what form of asymmetry there is. It is, however, important that there are some deviations, for the system may reach a state of instability in which these irregularities, or certain components of them, tend to grow. If this happens a new and stable equilibrium is usually reached, with the symmetry entirely gone. The variety of such new equilibria will normally not be so great as the variety of irregularities giving rise to them.”

I believe that there would be none who would disagree with the above argument. In any case you would need the validation please go through the paper I had stated earlier.

Now my intuition tells me that anything in this universe one can think of can be reduced to this model. Even the achievements and whatever we call as success and failure. There is a certain degree of homogeneity and symmetry in this world. One has to put in the random disturbances which is the essence of change and development. When I refer to the change I refer to both the positive and negative. But in any case a change is always welcomed over a situation to follow the symmetry. Just think if morphogenesis occured in the single pattern which is the spherical embryo… We just would have spherical balls in this world… Instead of Cactus, Camels, Humans, Pigs and Dogs.

Pray some day that we get another mathematician to look into this through this aspect. But all what I fear is that all the gift he would receive from this symmetrical world would be to succumb to negative morphogenesis just as Alan Turing. Philosophically the world made Alan Turing to destabilize the equilibrium of his body by taking the morphogen Cyanide that led to his end.

The world has become so fearfully affectionate towards symmetry and pattern that it will try to eliminate and discard any forces that try to bring in random disturbances . . . What I doubt next is that will the world ever try to destabilize my body equilibrium too… If I ever intend to look into the secrets and mystery of the symmetry.

Teaching, a once noble profession, have become a last resort for easy money… I mean pay cheque. I mean, all the teachers. But specially those who teach in Engineering colleges. If any of the teachers feel this post speaks about them, I truly intend that. There is no offence intended, but some food for rethinking.

“What do I benefit?…” “Its your future”… “Go to hell…” …. The curse list goes on and on when the word teacher comes into mind. In fact I was shocked to hear these dialogues from a nursery student in my family. That is exactly why I am writing this post. On hearing from him, and learning that he was a student of a nursery that was run by a very respectable society meant for upbringing the educational status of a community, I went aghast. I was compelled to go to his teacher on which she stated “How are you going to expecting me to look into every 30 kids personally?” “Do I have to come to your home and teach your kid?”

I was astonished to hear the same dialogues that I presumed to be prevailing in the professional colleges, which may sound reasonable, though its not. YES!! If you enter into this very noble profession of teaching, you are expected by the community to look into every student, each and every one of them personally. Irrespective of the socio-economic status you are in, irrespective of the trade, qualification you may be running into. There is no doubt that the teachers of the day build up the citizens of tomorrow. If ever you get time to speak to your parents who may have lived in the 1940-70s as a student, just ask them :What was teaching? Who were teachers?….

You will get splendid answers and those “TEACHERS” are major reasons for the Boom we see today. The day has gone when students were loved irrespective of their grades. Most of the Keralites are familiar of a great “Trainer” who talks in terms of great philosophical lines, with a tinge of Divinity. But most prominent of his teaching is , “The once sitting beside you is your enemy. Do not share knowledge with him” What good would a doctor / engineer who would come out of such a training do for the society? 

When I get into the professional colleges situations are even worse. Institutions think they sell commodities here and busy attaining quality certifications. They have set parameters to discriminate a good teacher from a bad one. Those with a PhD best, M. Phil better, Masters fine, Bachelors last resort…

There are incidents were very efficient staffs are ridden away just for the sake of qualification. Not to say of situations where core subjects are taught by people who either have no idea of it or have no interest in teaching!! Its a shame for the society that only the lower strata of the intellects go for this piece of cake. In professional jobs, teaching is a ramp up period for their own job hunt or other personal issues. No wonder many of the lot do not know even one third of the students’ name they interact.

Things should change. We must change!! Yes, we can decide when told to teach something we are truly bad at: Either take it up looking for the pay and make the shit out of tomorrows citizens or guide them by striving oneself and learning oneself. That is when it comes to the quantitative part of teaching.

I happened to attend a course by a very eminent professor who had a craze for object oriented programming. She one day said: For me the students in here are just objects and I just use them to organize my program. Neither am I interested who they are, nor I do bother do they know me!!” Though told as an example for a problem, it is a fact at least some of the teachers in the country follow this principle. Without the social connection and the principle of respect and affection for the students and from the students, the learning process never goes on. When I say learning its a lot more than grades, scores and a highly paid job. Its more of making of a human. A responsible citizen beneficial for the society which caters his needs.

I  thank all of my teachers who had given me such a wonderful moulding that makes me who I am today. Year after year the number of such teachers reduce, and the time is not far when our society would be filled with the OOP type teachers. Thus begins the disaster and destruction of the society as a whole.

I am sure many of the readers of this post may not like what they are about to read. But my nature is to blurt out the truth in its very form. Truth is most of its time unpleasant. But that does not mean you should mask it to please others.

I decided to write this as I had a conversation with one of my friend who got a placement in a respectable company (IT), to which I too have a placement offer. As any circuit engineering student she did not like the IT programming jobs for a living. She had plans at heart. She had a passion for higher studies. But keeping all her thoughts and likes behind she took a daring (foolish) decision to join the company.

It is agreed by all that IT industry does no good for its employees except mechanically training them into a production machine that would easily be handled by their manager just like a puppet. The proof for it is evident as they recruit anyone with a GPA they specify irrespective of their branches. No other field has ever faced this ridiculous situation. A civil engineer sitting at his cubicle preparing a code for an insurance policy….

We all know the umpteen number of reasons why we are being recruited for these mechanical monotonous jobs in bulk. I kept thinking even after knowing all these why do some of the very talented ones go and chain themselves to these giants. I had gone through the same situation for a couple of days. I realize three basic reasons to this fact. I would enlist them down.

1. Fear : Many of us do have our own dreams and passions. We do want to achieve it at the depth of our heart. But FEAR stops us from it. We have been brought up in a way to think that failure is a sign of disgrace. That is exactly why we look forth for a sense of security in everything we do. We are thus being mislead by a virtual sense of Job Security. The suspense in life and the randomness that actually makes our life more enjoyable is defined to be the reason for failure.  Let me tell you if all the other members of our species succumbed to this terrible emotion we would still be living in the dark age. What we fear is in fact of the unknown feature. We are not ready to trust the probability of nature that always lead us to the perfection through randomness.
2. Laziness : This is another profound reason why we end up doing things against our passion.  To follow our passion it requires us to work hard. the truth is the passion ones we follow it makes our work enjoyable and brings in happiness. That is exactly we find free lancers, though they for 18 – 19 hours a day they are full of energy the next day compared to an IT professional in any triplet lettered companies where the work hours fall below 8 hours. I had several of my friends stating : ” No man: I can’t go any further” ” I need to settle” Settling is another mythical concept in life. To me its a second word for laziness and idleness
3. Financial Security: Those who do not fall in any of the above category could be having this to be a major reason. We all speak against these companies; their atrocities etc. but once they put up their annual package our mouths go wide. Money is a valuable resource. I do agree. But, is it so valuable that we should live all our life to earn? Or is it that we should earn to live? There are people who plan to suffer for a period to “earn” maximum so as to “live” their coming years. As though they are so certain of their death date. I believe life and passion is what values most. that which no money can ever buy.

I am not speaking to any of you who had a dream for this opportunity and who say their sole aim is to be an IT professional. I am only addressing who think “Should I miss this opportunity just because it is not of my passion”. Those who seriously believe IT industry is not what they had learnt all these years. Those who believe they are not pretty good negotiators. Those who believe in the need for quality in life over quantity.

I know decisions are really painful. Especially when your social commitment comes into the picture. When your dignity and credibility might be questioned. But the brave and bold decisions realizing that “Your Life is Your own” shall never be regretted. I had a very crucial moment in my life where I had to make such a decision. Just after my graduation this year I was lucky enough to get enrolled in a premier institution of this country for PG. There were enough hands to congratulate me, to encourage me… But in a short point of time it turned out that the program was totally against what I am looking for, I immediately stopped and returned. Many of the congratulating hands were accusing me… But I have no regrets. I always believe the need for a set of backward stride to get a greater impact. 

It is you who drive your life and create factors. Not these factors drive you. You live only once. A day passed never comes back. Enjoy your passion, feel it and live a regret less, remorseless happy life. We Indians really know the price of Freedom and Independence. that is something our forefathers lived for. That is something all we once cared for. Never ever belay it to someone even for a second in your life.

Let me open up this post for your sound criticism.

I write this after a week of the grand event Debian Utsavam 2012 a two day event at MES College of Engineering to where I belong as a student. Thanks to the initiatives from Praveen, Nakul E,Aneez, and all others. Not to forget our mentor and sole support Sajith sir. Till the last week I was just a Free – (which requires no money) Software user. I never knew what was the necessity for one to know about the existence of the philosophy behind anything that come across me in my life. And as we engineers, software is something one can never avoid in the daily life. Before I begin let me request the readers to make sure you correct me wherever you feel I go wrong as its the first time I blog on my views and understanding.

Though I had attended lots of FOSS – FSUG events, this was an eye opener with talks from Labeeb, Sadique, Harris etc. I have never been triggered to think of philosophical part so much before. People used to ask me the distinction between using an open software and a pirated one to which all I could answer was to fight piracy. This would satisfy a very little of my pals. But when the motivation behind the proprietary giants are exposed, when the loop holes in their privacy and security conditions are thrown out I am sure those people would not feel the same easiness they have today.

Understanding the philosophy of anything what you learn or come across is essential so as to prevent its unnecessary abuse. Let me quote a very small example I came across a random blog. Ruby – A well known programming language says in its underlying philosophy that it is meant for programming to be fun. So it is with unusually readable syntax. But if my concern is high speed of execution then my selection of Ruby for my work would be out of context where I would waste my time and effort just to know that it con’t be accomplished. A simple understanding of the philosophy would’ve saved my time and toil.

Another sheer example of misuse is that of the Ubuntu Operating System.  Ubuntu is very popular, and its original philosophy was to be the “best desktop linux distribution.” However, you see many people choosing to run it as their production web servers!!!!

So now that’s said I feel I can get an understanding why there are brilliant students dropping out of colleges. Recently I was shocked to hear one of my close friend with sheer unusual brilliance, decided to drop off. When I asked him of the reason, it was whatever he learnt made no sense to him!!

When I thought of it I too could find… I never knew the purpose of the thoeries and formulations I had swallowed. Nor do I have any idea of the situations that led Nyquist to even think of the Great Great Sampling Theorem (Sorry… As my background is from ECE… metaphors and similes might be from there

But I am sure just before I even complete saying Gravitational force, the entire picture of Newton sitting under an apple tree and THE Apple bumping his head would have flashed your minds. If any of the educationists read acoss this I would request them to involve the philosophies (at least in short) in the syllabus, lectures etc. so that the students would at least be aware such a thing exists on what they lear.

I do think the negligence of the Philosophy of what they had learnt, is what makes a Mechanical or Civil graduate to to toil the six months in an outsourcing BPO center to gulp down the jargons of JAVA, C, etc. Further more in the scenario of FOSS what philosophy had given me is it bridged the gap between technology and humanity. I quote this from an open essay which came in Human Readable:

 I fully agree to what has been said above. I believe it is not the number of volunteers that would take the Libre foundation to the skies. But, the spirit of the philosophy that is built in it. The redefinition of Software from “As a mere Product” to  ”A Knowledge based Product”.\

Today I realize it is the toil of people who believe in this philosophy that I can Wikipedia and the like sources with the enormous bank of knowledge it carry.