Belief and Self-Belief : Lessons from the Indian Epics

Two different incidents from the great Indian epics - Ramayana and Mahabharata, strike me about the importance of belief and self-belief. Though I had talked about belief in my earlier posts, I would like to take it a step further with examples / incidents drawn from the above two epics.

First, the belief - In Ramayana, there comes an instance, when Hanuman, the great devotee of Lord Ram, had to disobey the orders of the latter, due to a promise given by Hanuman's mother to save some king from Lord Ram. Hanuman under these circumstances decide to stand by his mother's promise, and protects the king. Lord Ram with no options left, aims to attack Hanuman, and Hanuman simply keeps chanting and praying Lord Rama in full faith, and the powerful arrows from the bow of Lord Ram could not cause any harm to Hanuman. Ram upon frustration, aims to use even more powerful arrows, but of no use, as none of them could do anything to Hanuman. Later, ofcourse Gods intervene and stop it, and it is revealed that whoever has strong unshakable faith on Lord Rama, they cannot be attacked even by the powerful Lord Ram himself.

The point to be noted is the strong belief - which is highlighted in several ways throughout Hinduism. This is one of the traits that make Hinduism accept different ways and methods of worship - simply put, if you have full faith on anything and believe in it completely (absolute surrender), God (or powers that may be) manifests through it to make your beliefs come true.

Second the self-belief - In Mahabharatha, there comes an instance when Duroyadhana seeks the help of Sahadeva (Remember that Sahadeva is one of the Pandavas, whom Duroyadhana will be fighting against in the war), for telling him a suitable day to perform the sacrifice to Goddess Durga before the start of the Kurukshetra war. Sahadeva being righteous and virtuous tells him that the up coming new moon day is the auspicious day for doing the sacrifice, and it is widely believed that whoever does the sacrifice first, will be the winner of the war. Krishna on his pursuit to make the Pandavas win the war, plays a game to make the Sun and Moon (depicted as devas) meet, a day before (or probably hours before) and ask the Pandavas to immediately perform the sacrifice.  (Technically new moon day happens when Sun and Moon are in straight line and their angular degree is Zero). Duroyadhana on knowing this, becomes angry and argues with Sahadeva & Krishna regarding the correct new moon day, and though Sahadeva says that whatever he said was right, Krishna simply answers saying that Yudhistra believed him, and you (Duroyodhana) believed Sahadeva, and whoever has strong belief will win. Later when Pandavas question Krishna, he goes on to say that, to win a war, self-belief is more important than anything else, emphasizing all other rituals are only secondary to self-belief.

May be more and better examples could be extracted from these two great epics, but these two strike me the most!

P.S: An interesting link that I discovered about 15 people (or characters) common between Ramayan and Mahabharatha was: https://wiralfeed.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/ramayana-to-mahabharata/

Baahubali Movie and Just a thought on Historical Inspiration

Being a History fan, I was smitten by the movie Baahubali: The Beginning  and watched it last year. The movie was excellent with great picturization (as per Indian Standards) and a historical fictional story being told in a superb style, and ofcourse as evident it had drawn inspirations from the great Indian epic Mahabharata.  

After coming out of the theater, a question was lingering on my mind, why the Kalakeya kingdom (portrayed by Prabhakar and others) was characterized as dark people and the most cruel fighters? Has the director, Shri SS Rajamouli,  had just done it to give a sense of 'fear' to the audience or is their a history behind it ? 

When we look at the History in general, it is filled with wars and the associated cruelties committed by people, who primarily belong to the fairer skin color!  A couple of days or months later, Shri SS Rajamouli was present in a Rediff Chat - and I posted this question, but it went unanswered. 

Had he got inspired by the Asuras from the many Indian epics including Ramayana ? or from any pre-British-era wars that were fought in the Southern side of India or was it a casual depiction ?  Also has the movie got any connections with the Bahubali - the first teacher of Jainism, as speculated in these article. We don't know. Anyways, will look forward to the second and concluding part of the movie (yet to be released) to see if the director has given any clues and of course to enjoy the movie !

The Year 2015 - for me

As usual every year, I am starting my blog post this year with a recap of events I encountered in the previous year. So, here it goes.

Pleasant Learning:

• Pleased with the smooth operations of  a critical infrastructure that I struggled and established few years ago.
• Glad to note that one of the difficult activity of promoting digital signatures to various Government staffs across the nation progressed smoothly in the later part of the year.
• Had an opportunity to give a vent for my creative thinking - Wrote the script and narrative for an animation movie - to teach the concepts of Public Key Infrastructure - and the movie can be found here.
• Creating and Fostering Virtual Communities of Learning: Started a YouTube Channel on my (current) favourite subject - Public Key Infrastructure and slowly built up the community.
• Started to build another Indian technical community - this time focusing on Internet Protocols and Standards - Details can be found here, here, and here .
• Had an opportunity to perform a review of the academic activities of the computer science branch of a prestigious institution
• Knowledge Consolidation - Over the years, I have diversified myself  into many technical areas: Applied AI, Community Informatics, Content Delivery, Contextual Intelligence, Network Security, Usability, Information Security etc..  However this year, I was able to anchor myself under the umbrella of Cryptographic Applications - though I worked on PKI, Internet Standards, and DNS Security
• Personally - bought (more) than a decade old flat !  -  have come a long way from my thinking against the flat system (in my young days) and now realizing the benefits of community living
• Travel (Many places, this year): Mangalore (Visited many temples), Varanasi (Ganga and many temples), Visakhapatnam, Meghalaya (Shillong, Cherapunji), Delhi, Noida, Trichy, Srirangam,Alagar Koil (Madurai), Chandigarh, Arani, Vellore Golden Temple, Tiruvanamalai Temple. 

Tough Learning:

• Discovered how tough to restore a tape backup, when it really matters!
• Realized that how easily you can be taken for a ride, when managing enterprise level systems and infrastructure.
• A Proposal on an effort that started in 2013 is still dragging and no light visible even this year too,with so many back and forth happening and eating my time and efforts
• Patiently waited another whole year for the recognition from the office, which did not come as usual. Expressed them in formal ways, but of no avail.
• Realized what a big folly is to buy a washing machine like Bosch in India. Will blog about it soon.
• Health of my parents was a big concern, and especially my mother had to undergo a surgery. Tough times during that period, but we overcame, thanks to almighty.

Chennai Floods and Probable Techno Solutions

Chennai Floods and the damages it had caused to life and lifeless things are enormous. Hope the people rebuilt it with zeal to make it a better place, withstanding any natural and man-made disasters in the future.

This post tries to dream or fantasize, how much could be done to minimize the pain and suffering of the people who were badly affected, by using the upcoming and future technologies.

1. Electrical Power 

The most fundamental element - as lots and lots of our equipment and devices, food and even water are dependent on electricity. So, we badly need a way to generate it with little manual power in case of emergency situations. A recent innovation unveiled by Manoj Bhargava that uses pedaling power to produce electricity is a good place to start with. A detailed article can be found here. Probably a leaner, efficient and compact machine for individual homes, if becomes available in future will be grabbed by many! 

2. Water 

People need clean and pure drinking water.In today's environment, the water is pumped up to the overhead tanks through electrically powered motors. So, electricity is required, and of course regular water supply is also required. With these two constraints in getting the drinking water, it's going to be tougher in these situations. Even if we manage to get, purification will be another problem, unless people use the traditional LPG stove and boil the water for 20+ minutes. Low-energy water purification systems that may come into play in future can be found here. 

3. Communication and Home Delivery 

With energy being available, communication would eventually be available. Proposals to use balloons, and drones by Google and Facebook respectively aim to use the Stratosphere for providing Internet Connectivity. Whether they will be able to come out of red-tape and be able to offer these services remains, but probably will be allowed to function under emergency situations.  Also, Amazon's idea of using drones for delivery of items such as medicines will come in handy in these kind of natural calamity. 

Madurai Discussion on Neeya Naana and my thoughts

A month ago, there was a debate about Madurai in the popular Neeya Naana program in Star Vijay Television Channel.  Though it was a general debate without any sides to it, I, being from Madurai (I was born there, and lived there for 8+ years) have my share of views. Here they are: 

1. The basic amenities like water and electricity should be available to all in their convenience of their houses and should be reliable - Well, I know that it does not happen in most parts of our country - but that does not mean, it should not happen here too.
2. Madurai is a place of historical importance, and for more details check out my other blog post. So, when we say that, we need to benchmark against cities like London, Melbourne etc.. and see what is lacking. What all these cities have in common is a river flowing through them, and Madurai has the Vaigai river flowing through it, but when you see it, you get a sense of despair. What needs to be done is to clean it up, and do whatever it takes to keep the water flowing through and if possible establish waterways - which will not only attract tourists but also provide income generation for the people there. 
3. Vehicle movement has been stopped around Madurai Meenakshi Temple, for few years now. How about having battery operated vehicles that can ply pilgrims and citizens for a nominal fee (or even free) around the temple. They are clean, and pollution free. 
   
4. Regulating the Autos (they simply charge as per their wish - current rate stands at minimum of Rs.30/- for a km) and improving the public transport, increasing the public toilet amenities, and of course maintaining the cleanliness all will go in a long way to improve not only the look and feel of the city, but will also in improving the economy and prosperity of the City and people living here. 

Is timely arrival to office important ?

What is important ? Reaching office on time or being productive? Of course, if you can achieve both it will be good. Also on the positive side, this inculcates a sense of discipline both to the person and organization.

But is it really required? especially in organizations, where productivity is not measured in terms of quantity, but rather in terms of quality - and wherein timely delivery of results are important - which also demands discipline from the person as well as the organization.

Now coming to the arguments against timely arrival goes like this:

• Can you achieve timely arrival day-in and day-out in a congested, polluted, unreliable public transport system and in a highly unpredictable traffic conditions? 
• Can you assure the time it takes to reach point A to point B, through common modes of transport (in any populous city, wherein citizens commute for their work, education etc..) ?
• If you answered yes for the above, can you assure it atleast 95 out of 100 times ?  If you still answered yes, then skip to the next point
• Though reaching on time is a very good thing, do you agree that leaving on time, also is a good thing?  If you answered yes, continue, else exit (as it gets into the unfair zone!)

Timing is critical in a factory setup, or in a service setup, or wherever quantity is more important and where work is routine and in situations wherein employees have to be present before the customer arrives! Isn't it ?, but can the same be said for places where planning, designing, programming and such creative elements are required ?

Think!

P.S: The above points  and situations are purely imaginary! and any resemblance to a person or an organization in real life is purely a coincidence!!  :)  

Identity

Identity has a profound effect in every human life. It is almost impossible to live without it, and almost all of us crave for it. By identity, I not only mean creating an individual identity, but creating or shaping a collective identity.

In this part of the world, there was a period in time, when a person is said to have spiritually progressed, only if he had lost the sense of individual Identity and realizes himself or herself as part of the identity of God. 'Bhagavad Gita' tells the same. Precisely this means losing the identity of  " I ", and being identity-less.

However, for many of us, it is difficult to come out of an identity that has either been created by us consciously or unconsciously or by others on behalf of us. We enjoy the feeling of identity, and the comfort of it, and we are afraid to give it up, even in case of failure. We may give up an identity, only to subscribe to another identity, but never want to be without an identity. But we also need to remember that identity comes with a cost, though not necessarily economical. History tells us that almost every leader aspired to put their identity alive in one form or other, even after they passed away from this earth. 

People (in general) who did not create an individual identity by themselves subscribe to a collective identity, and start believing the collective identity as their own individual identity. Sometimes, they get trapped into the web of this transient collective identity, that they get pushed themselves to the extremes to defend their (collective) identity by taking it up against other's identity. In these individuals, the feeling of "I" gets merged totally with "We", and always looked from the perspective of against "others". Religions and Nationalism all fall in the category of collective identity!