Ligten the Lamp, Enlighten the House, Awaken the Life..

"There is a house which is dark; and there is no electricity..and the Ghost with his two sisters used to stay there, crawling around the village sometimes.." I remember my grandma saying this in a shrill voice to all of us - clinging to her and trying to imagine the house. This used to make us silent and further follow her up in the story..and no need to say that the never-ending stories never used to end before we sleep ..or the sleep used to come before the story used to end.

Today, even when I imagine this house, it seems so scary so dark. Living in such a house is out of question. And so we can go there with a matchstick and a candle and illuminate the house..or try to get electricity and make it illuminated.

The house gets its beauty, its light and the visibility inside when the candle is lighted or the bulb glows. The Ghosts will go away and it will be place to live.

Is not the same thing goes with life, with the body and with the mind. Unless one switches on the light, it is so dark. Years together we never make the choice of illuminating the life and so it remains dark, it remains unexplored and not a place where the good thoughts can stay. Darkness swallows the self, the soul inside and we are left in the deep darkness.

Once the new light is searched for, there is connection that gets established between the body, the mind, the soul and the inner self. All of them gets connected, everything becomes so visible, so simple and logically connected. And the darkness is removed, the blind spot gets open, we see ourselves, and ...in the process others also see us and we see others.

Yes...there is a choice that is to be made. The choice of Darkness and Ghosts..or the choice of Lights and Living, beautiful house..The choice has to be made by you, by me, by the self, not by anyone else.

The first realization that there is a light beyond the darkness of life, the connection that exists between the inner self, the mind, the body, the soul and the life; this realization need to be there. Then only the choice can be made. Once the choice is made, the awakening happens, the flaring up, waking up, the soul-searching starts. The Ghosts like fear, insecurity, jealousy, greed, anger, ego, pride, selfishness start running away. The clear image transforms, the clarity evolves out of the fog...

They may call it Nirvana or Awakening or soul searching; but for me; it is just to share with You with Me and connect You with Me..through the invisible thread.

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Manager vs Leader - APJ & Apfel

I had several occasions to meet Dr. A. P. J Abdul Kalam; both before and after he became the President of India, many times at ISRO or at C-DAC. But I remember this event of meeting with him just before he became the president, at IIM, Ahmedabad, in 2003.

APJ (as we dearly call him; beyond his Presidential Persona, is affectionate and great person) had come to IIMA to deliver a lecture. That time he was not the President of India; and rather was known as the Space-Man of India; with his success of launching several satellites etc. IIM had invited him for a guest lecture and courtesy to Prof. Anil K. Gupta, I had a chance to interact with him. I was the National Coordinator of National Innovation Foundation that time and it was a great pleasure to meet him with few grassroots innovators.

After that, in fact on two occasions, I had met him in President's house itself. I was the main organizer for the Second National Award Ceremony of NIF where he had given awards to the Grassroots Innovators and he had invited the innovators and the people involved to President’s house. I will describe the experience of that visit separately. Recently I had met him in the CHEP 06 a TIFR, Mumbai and his speech contained a great deal in the NREN work in which I was involved deeply (http://www.tifr.res.in/~chep06/postconf.php and http://garudaindia.in/chep06_workshop.asp; President’s speech on this occasion is at http://presidentofindia.nic.in/scripts/sllatest1.jsp?id=734 )

Meeting him after being the President was a different experience and I had developed the distance between him and myself; partly due to his position. He generally goes beyond the security cordon to meet common man. Still I am a common citizen and he is the First Citizen and the gap will be there; out of fear, respect and regard. I may not have interacted so closely with him in the recent years than I had done on various occasions before.

But he was so humane, so normal and so affectionate, in the meetings before he became the President. The space-man was a scientist and he used carry the in-depth exploring eyes of the scientist, with inquisitiveness and a deep desire to pass on the knowledge to others used to be there.

At the end of the lecture at IIM Ahamedabad, he asked two students of IIM :-

“ what will you become in life ?”

And as usual the students gave the answers – “ We will become great managers..”

APJ asked again – “ Think and answer now..I am asking again”

The students were silent….

And APJ continued “ You want to be a manager or a leader?”

And he went on “ You know how a leader is different than a manager?”

“ The difference being to lead rather than follow, being entrepreneurial rather than being a task-master. Lead the organization, lead the nation, lead creative ideas, and lead innovation and invention”

Recently, Prof. Apfel asked the same question for his class on Public Management and Leadership at School of Public Policy, University of Maryland. “Do you expect to be a manager in the near future? What are your hopes, concerns and expectations about being a manager?”

I remembered APJ and the discussions at IIM in 2003. Three years, not a long time, but the same question, two instances and two places, geographically apart, but so much in relevance; from two great leaders in each country.

Professor Kenneth S. Apfel (http://www.publicpolicy.umd.edu/facstaff/%0bfaculty/Apfel.htm) , is a preacher and practitioner of management principles. He is my favourite for bringing the inside of oneself out in the class. He has served as the Sid Richardson Chair in Public Affairs at the University of Texas, LBJ School of Public Affairs. Prior to that, he served as Commissioner of the Social Security Administration from 1997 until his term ended in January 2001. He was the first Senate-confirmed Commissioner of Social Security after SSA became an independent agency and the new Cabinet-level position was authorized by Congress. Previously, he had served as Associate Director for Human Resources at the Office of Management and Budget, and as Assistant Secretary for Management and Budget at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

I had answered “Rather than a manager, I would like to be a leader – the difference being to lead rather than follow, being entrepreneurial rather than being a task-master.”- I felt APJ saying through my voice….

I am not sure what I will be at this instant. But I am proud of myself that at least the inspirations are alive in me through the thick and thin of work, profession and career.

Saying this, I see a transition in the near future for the mankind involving variety of issues and technology in the fore-front. The technology domain has smoothly transformed to today’s era of Internet and widespread use of wireless mobile. Next generation Technologies such as optical-fibre based high speed networks, distribution computing based Grid Computing providing collaboration tools and problem solving environments offer unmatched opportunities to academic, research, science and engineering community to lead progress in these areas ahead of commercial use. Worldwide this is happening and each and every country or society has to take advantage of this transformation through the rich endowment of human resources, scale up its infrastructural situation and research in these areas at scales comparable to those prevailing worldwide. In his latest book, ‘The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century’, Thomas L. Friedman describes the unplanned cascade of technological and social shifts that effectively leveled the economic world, and “accidentally made Beijing, Bangalore and Bethesda next-door neighbors.” I agree no less with him, and he continues that today individuals and small groups of every color of the rainbow will be able to plug and play. I see myself a tiny-individual-plane in the Flat World, but the creation of this plane was essential to make the World. The promise of this plane therefore, is the complete fulfillment of the perceived role. The road ahead has to be contemplated with better promise to achieve this role towards society.

The concerns are more self-oriented; to keep pace with the changes of the world, technology and the world that emerges. Moving ahead with intactness of human values, culture, ethics and moral insight has to go together with the hope and ambition in the future.

May be I will again hear the same question after some years…and this time I have two great persons to remember….

Music Mania and WWW.....

I do not think I need to write much on this. I have forgotten the radio, audio cassttes and also the CDs. Talk about listening to a song and with the innumerable mp3 download sites avaliable on the net, it is just matter of clicking the right site.



It seems that all the songs and music videos we always wanted are available on our fingertips but more often than not the process of hunting down the desired mp3 turns out to be a treachorous task and we end up getting nothing but frustration. There are many sites and even few are providing online streaming..Great..!! Life was never better than this.



Few sites which I like are :

http://www.mag4you.com/music/musichome.asp



http://www.papuyaar.com/music.php

http://www.apnaymp3.com/ h

http://freedownloadsongs.blogspot.com/www.okesite.com

http://www.indiamp3.com/ here you can find all sort of indian music ranging from hindi movie mp3s to pop, remix, punjabi, ghazals and much more.



http://www.bollyexpress.com/ it offers all the latest mp3s for Indian movies, Pop and remix albums, Pakistani pop, Gazals and a also has a very interesting legends collection http://www.desiweb.net/Music/default.htm another good site

http://www.indianmelody.com/



And yes not to forget www.bollwoodonline.com and www.raaga.com - has been my frequent visted ones recently.



All these for MP3s...But my connection to the Music+WEB has been since 1995 - 96 when Anurag Shankar (from Indiana University; and I met him recently, wonderfull person really)..has created the itrans based hindi movie lyrics song site. (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~navin/india/songs/). Anurag says that was a good time and good effort in that era; and it was unique. But now a days with jtrans (java based) many have taken over; with replication of course. This idea cannot be patented, but who knows what it means, Anurag is worthy getting an award (Best Innovator or such kind) for his work. Even though he may not get an award, but as he says people when meet him with the "Oh..!! You are that Anurag!!" is a real life - touching question. Long Live Dear Friend and Long Live your Intelligence....


Believe me - folllwoing a old song with the lyrics from this site and singing along with the singer is the best realxation I get. Try it out....

C-DAC - An Organisation Par Excellence - I

There are few organisations in India which has faced the pluralistics pressures and yet have come out with a great missions and achievements throughout. I may be biased being a member of C-DAC to say this. But my impartial public-policy and technology research view point gives a clear A plus to the success of C-DAC.

There is a lot to say about this organisation. A lot can be found at www.cdac.in. What cannot be found is the culture and the stream of achievement motive as lifeblood of the organisation. Started by Dr. Vijay P Bhatkar and the follwed by Mr. R. K. Arora and recently in the hands of Mr. S. Ramakrishnan as the Director General, C-DAC has gone through a lot of transformation. The main being the merger of other socities into it; the rules and regulations, the governement interventions, widening of activities and spread of research area. The beauty is still the mission oriented culture prevails in C-DAC.

At the corporate headquarters of C-DAC, one will find still young people in the night hours working or learning the extra niche in the technology; with a cup of coffee.

C-DAC has emerged as the premier R&D organization in ICET (Information, Communication and Electronics Technologies) in the country working on strengthening national technological capabilities. In that process, C-DAC represents a unique facet working in close junction with Department of Information Technology, Governemtn of India to realize nation’s policy and programatic interventions and initiatives in Information Technology. As an institution for high-end Research and Development (R&D), C-DAC has been at the forefront of the Information Technology (IT) revolution, constantly building capacities in emerging/enabling technologies and innovating and leveraging its expertise, caliber, skill sets to develop and deploy IT products and solutions for different sectors of the economy, as per the mandate of its parent, the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India and other stakeholders including funding agencies, collaborators, users and the market-place.

C-DAC Core competency and intellectual property developed across its various centres and groups have been broadly classified into the following seven areas:

· High Performance and GRID Computing
· Multilingual Computing
· VLSI Design and Embedded Systems
· Software Technologies
· Health Informatics
· Cyber Security
· Ubiquitous Computing

C-DAC is a multi-locational organization having 11 centres in various parts of the conuntry.
I will continue this series of blogs with various small and big incidents of my life with C-DAC and the cultural wave inside the organisation. Idea is to bring out the essence of a achievement, a mission and a strong vibrant organisation for other organiastions to follow and learn.

Frost and Nehru Connection

I was going through the posts of Janani Gopalakrishnan (http://gjanani.blogspot.com/) a freelance writer at Chennai, Tamilnadu, India. Her blogs are filled with Frost's poems.

Robert Frost http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frost and his poems had been one of my inspiratios in and towards life. Here is a piece of my thinking towards his and Nehru's connection towards this.

My first introduction to Frost was through Nehru. sounds like personally...NO ..At the age of around 9/10, I had read a biography of Nehru from the 'Sishusahitya Series' and had came across that this poem was there on his table during his last days..This had made me to appreciate Nehru and his work later on - I had finisehd the whole series of his writings like History of India, Discovery of India etc...The legacy of connections goes on in the Nehru family. Just after being the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi had written to Rajiv - perhaps he was in London or Italy ..quoting Robert Frost, " How hard it is to keep from being king when it is in you and the situation"...

Here is the Poem which I have talked above;

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know,
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

-----------------------------------------Robert Frost

There are several explanations and coonnotations in terms of meaning to the above poem. My teacher has connected it to his (Frost's) own life and death; during his last years, he has written and giving explanation that there is his little horse as his own life..

The dilemma was whether he is talking about physical miles, or emotional and spiritual miles. However, the last four lines are the best I like and provocative and makes one think to do his work; beyond the expectations, beyond results and fulfilling the journey; riding the miles ..

"Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachan
Ma karmaphalhetubhurma te sakhshoshtavkarmani"

"The secret of my life is to create, take action, without any expectation of results. That is the best reward. I am allowed to practice my skills in the open fields of life. That is the greatest of all rewards".

-- Frost was born in Califronia, America and Lived in Boston. I am yet to follow his life trail here and one of the wishlist is to visit his place of birth and living. Not for anything, but to know the then sorroundings that inspired his creativity to write such poems.

And Frost says :-

A Question :
A voice said, Look me in the stars
And tell me truly, men of earth,
If all the soul-and-body scars
Were not too much to pay for birth

NRENs and the World

I am working on the NRENs and the related area of research.

Therefore I thought it will be a good idea to publish some of the stuff I know and have been working now. This will enable me also to think through my own work and research as an insight
A National Research & Education Network (NREN) is a specialised Internet Service Provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country.
NRENs provide services to Research and education organizations located within geographical areas of different sizes: a city, a region, a country, or a continent. Most RENs have the national size and these are therefore called National Research and Education Networks (NRENs).

To support the demanding needs of scientific researchers and academics, National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) are defining the cutting edge of scalable, high performance networks. The open, dynamic nature of collaboration requires that these networks be standards-based and manageable, assure data integrity and privacy, quickly mitigate emergent threats, and provide high application availability . Research and Education Network (NREN) focuses on the development and early deployment of high-performance networking technologies to provide exciting new capabilities for education, science and engineering.

National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) are now more than an operational platform for communications. They are the engines driving the pace of collaboration, innovation and discovery amongst scientists. The role of a National Research and Educational Network is critical to the achievement of stated national education and research goals.
It's usually distinguished by support for a high-speed backbone, often offering dedicated channels for individual research projects. To satisfy the need of users, new protocols are introduced before being considered stable enough for deployment within the internet. Two examples of these protocols are IPv6 and IP multicast.

NRENs of various countries
Internet2: http://www.internet2.edu/ GEANT: http://www.geant.net/ DANTE: http://alice.dante.net/ REDClara: http://www.redclara.net/ ACOnet http://www.aco.net/aconetus.htm BELNET: http://www.belnet.be/en/ Hangarnet http://www.hungarnet.hu/ or http://www.niif.hu/ HEAnet http://www.heanet.ie/ SURFNet http://www.surfnet.nl/ Janet http://www.ja.net/ CERNET http://www.cernet.edu.cn/, SINGAREN http://www.singaren.net.sg

TERENA (the Trans-European Research and Education Networking Association) is an association of organisations that are involved with the provision and use of computer network infrastructure and services for research and education in Europe. TERENA's principal members are the National Research and Education Networking organisations (NRENs) of a large number of countries in and around Europe. TERENA’s activities include fostering activities towards collaboration and development of NRENs. Since 2001, the TERENA compendium provides information about the development of NRENs in key areas such as legal form, users, network and traffic and budget and staffing in and around Europe and other countries as well. http://www.terena.nl/

Near death experience and Superconcsiousness...

Mellen-Thomas Benedict is an artist who survived a near-death experience in 1982. His experience is at : http://www.weboflove.org/neardeathexperience

Somewhere; it is said that these experiences are common to people who leave the aspiraiton of life towards the end; try ot see the world in a different way and are ready to face death. Research has a different point all together. Realistic views of life deny this factor all together.
The saints and sadhus of India or Hinduism has many such mention of experiences. Specially if one goes to Varanasi or Allahabad, there are many Sadhus who will always mention this aspect of life and tell the stories of nearness to God and Death many a times. However, not to mention that, some of them are good are in meditation for long hours.

Some of the stories of Manoj Das (http://www.loc.gov/acq/ovop/delhi/salrp/manojdas.html) also mentions this view. he says such experiences may be spiritual; but there may be some truth in it. He himself has gone to the way of searhing soul and has dedicated to the service at the Aurobindo Ashram. Prof. Das Says " Today's man is so preoccupied with his present that the future remains behind the curtain of his vision. He is not ready to ponder over the future because he feels it is very uncertain, and even a little inward thought digs out memories of a past burdened with agonies and woes." http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/masters/sri-aurobindo/manoj-das.asp

Whatever it may be, these stories mention the presence of the wider life beyond the human. It makes the linkage with the spiritual world. There is a control somewhere, there is a dynamic world beyond life and what science has found till now. Hopefully as we explore further, there will be more and more findings.

Question is - which path of exploration should one adopt? Is it the way Scientists and Psychologists try to explore? Is it the way The Near to death researchers try to explore? Or is it the way he has suggested in the book The Monk who sold his ferrari??

- Question perhpas will come when one is ready to explore..!!!!! In waiting for that day .....