The Art of Language

The recent acquaintance with the German language made me ponder about a basic human skill – Languages. While our close relatives, the chimpanzee can only make sounds, use sign language and facial impressions but cannot talk, it is amazing how we, the Homo sapiens one single species can talk in thousands of languages.

In India alone there are 200 registered dialects and 18 official languages. Infact it is the first country to ever do a linguistic study with Astadhyayi written for Sanskrit in 5 BC and Tolkappiyam written for Tamil around 2 BC. The Europeans started it a few centuries later.

I also noticed that the sounds among languages are shared, but not necessarily the meaning. For example in German there is this sound “au” where
                                  - “a” is pronounced as ‘a’ in apostrophe
                                  - “u” is pronounced as ‘u’ in noun

A similar sound is in Hindi and Tamil and a most of other Indian languages.

- In Tamil it is the 12th consonant

- In Hindi it is the 11th consonant

A similar sounding word in different languages would refer to different things. That essentially means in the same human mind at different location/ages/time the same sound reminded of different things. I guess it would be fun to learn linguistics for people who are intrigued by languages. With all that said, if any of you are interested in learning one of the oldest and alive languages Tamil here are a few links, you can even get a degree online :)

 http://pm.tamil.net/pub/pm0100/tolkap.pdf
 http://www.tamilvu.org/coresite/html/cwhomepg.htm

Our Medicine for Their Well Being

This is not a saying but the reality that is happening in India. All of us have been reading about the H1N1 flu virus and the rate at which it is spreading. The WHO has made predictions that a much worse strain of this virus would come back and can cause huge problems in a short while. In US it is still summer and flu generally spreads here in fall-winter seasons, so they are stocking up the vaccines for this virus. The Indian company Baxter has already produced its first batch of vaccines, that should be a happy news right? Well it is not! Here is the twist. These vaccines are going to be shipped to US and UK who already have contracts signed with this company and other Indian pharma companies. Indian government has not done anything about this yet. They have not even placed the orders for vaccines yet.
Somehow I am not able to assimilate this fact. The vaccines are produced in India, by Indians, with Indian resources but not for Indian use? Wonder what was this company thinking, may be their workers and family are immune to this virus or is it just the money or is it business as usual. This sounds like a suicide mission to me. Someone should stop this! For more info check this out http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/H1N1-vaccine-ready-India-napping/articleshow/4946865.cms

Happy Independence Day!

Yes it is another Independence Day holiday or celebration I would say, time for flag hoisting, patriotism and chocolates. Today I sent out wishes to all my Indian friends, colleagues and acquaintances at work, following that at lunch with my close buddies had a heated discussion on India. As always it was all talk and nothing productive happened to India because of that. Then I was casually browsing the News websites of India and found some interesting blogs regarding the Independence Day and India. Check this out if you like http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

You can even put in your comments for some of them. Interesting though how varied and different the thoughts of these people are. Reading all these I was thinking why not take a resolution you know like New Year's resolution how about Independence Day resolution. Nothing major, but we should be determined to follow it, so take practical ones. Like I wont spit on the roads, I will not throw any garbage on the road which includes the used bus ticket and the chocolate wrappers :), being courteous to old people, controlling my anger towards unknown people, being polite in public.. The list can go on but try making atleast one and see if you can stick to it. It can be even something no one would notice. There is a long way to get India into a good shape, but come on we need to start somewhere there is no use just talking about it.

So you must be wondering what mine is :) Since I am currently not in my country I decided to put out proudly the fact that I am from India and make sure to change the notion of anyone who comes and tells me, "I heard India is a poor country. The traffic is bad and people are mean" to "India is a prosperous country with great cultural heritage with strong family values where people strive for a better future."

After a long time I had a strong urge to write this blog today. I have a new determination to do atleast one post per month per blog of mine.

Over Protective and Concerned Moms

I was sitting at my desk and doing my usual coding stuff and heard the lady in the next cubicle talking pretty loud. I did not have my head phones so ended up hearing the conversation. I do get annoyed when people pick up personal calls at work, but this time it was not about that. Do you remember how protective your mom's had been, incase you had forgotten here is a few.
- Making sure you have breakfast before going to school.
- If you are late sometimes she would have run till the bus with you making
sure the driver stops for you.
- If needed pick up a fight with your teacher incase the teacher hurts you.
- Protect you from your angry Dad who is trying to hit you because of your
poor marks or simply because you talked back to him.
- Making sure you put Burnol (Antiseptic) on the wounds you got either from
playing or fighting with your sibling or from a fight at school.

There is more. The point is I was thinking this is the nature of Indian Mothers and to an extent Asian mothers. But this lady today shattered my idea. A simple issue of her daughter going for the volley ball practice. Looks like her daughter wants the same slot as her friend's. So this mom calls up the coach to find out the issue and that slot is fully booked, so she finds out if anything else is available. She is told that a slot during the month end is available. Now she asks him if the friend of her daughter's can move to that slot instead of the one she is currently in. The coach says that should be fine. Now she calls up her daughter, gets her friend's number and calls up that friend. It goes to voice message. She leaves a beautiful detailed simple message explaining it all! She makes sure that, the friend understands the fact that she needs to move to a new time slot to help her daughter. It was awesome seeing it happen from outside.

Of course the daughter would be embarrassed of the fact that her mother is talking to her friend, who cares, she gets to go to the practice now with her friend :). Well I am not judging here but thinking aloud a natural, instinct driven human approach. Be it in India or US or anywhere from this incident I now changed my idea to "All moms are over protective and concerned in their own ways!"

Looking Outside My Window

"Sky is set for a dark ride today, with boisterous roars, and cries flooding the floors. The clouds are looking menacingly at the pitiful earth determined in a fierce battle, swords clashing with blinding flashes, Winds have gone haywire blowing all over. Sun and Moon have gone undercover, No sign of the stars either, they must be hiding under their blankets"

Not a pitiful attempt to write a poem, but that is exactly how I felt when I looked over my shoulder outside the window today at the picturesque image of the CT skies. My client manager was wondering if we are in Seattle. Its been raining since the start of summer, yet to see a bright summer day :)

Stop the ADs your Sales will Grow

Yesterday while watching this AD on Yoplait I was really wondering what is with the United States Advertisement Industry. Some of the old time college ADZAPs were really good compared to the best ones here. They have the latest equipments and all kinds of gadgets for movie making, well I guess those do not come out of the Hollywood doors! I know what you are thinking, Should they not review their Ads atleast a couple of times? Ofcourse they do. The problem is they do not realise what is wrong with it. Most of these ADs are boring or reiterating what we already know about the product or teaching us a big theory as if we signed up for a tv-class. Not to mention the medical ADs, either they think it is funny or they think we have all gone to the medical school, but a layman would panic and throw away all the medicines he has ever bought.

Media has evolved and has given us umpty of options that we are used to flipping channels as soon as the AD starts, only few times out of utter laziness to pick up the remote that is few meters away or not able to find the remote or best we are simply browsing and the TV is running as a background music, we leave it to run. Nevertheless even in these few times some of the ADs are so horrible that we take pains to switch the channel. With such Ads everyday what was so different about this AD? This is supposed to be an AD about yoplait being a waist reducer, if it is that good then someone cannot look at a person eating it for a while and say I will loosen your clothes for better fit. No No that is not out of the Box it is Out of the Common Sense thinking. I would say it is the heights of American Ads.

Natural Selection - Inspired by Darwin

Nature always interests me because it is full of unknown principles and concepts.
I was wondering one beautiful Spring morning on the way to work why there are wars on earth among human beings. Is it part of the big plan of evolution? If so, what are we evolving into? In the Jurassic period Dinosaurs were all over the planet and were the most powerful and most evolved of the beasts that existed then. But soon after they became their own enemy and started killing each other and ofcourse nature played its part too leading to the extinction of it.
Coming back to us, are we in the pinnacle of our evolution or is there more? I believe there is more. Nowadays kids are so intelligent and that is because we no longer need physiological evolution but brain evolution. The environment around us is polluted and more diseases are coming up everyday that is because the Bacteria and Virus are evolving and becoming resistant to our drugs. So now we need to evolve into better brained beings to take up this challenge and to merely survive, otherwise a simple outbreak can tear us down and make us extinct, in addition to our own wars. This is natural instinct built in our genes. Isn't that amazing! I wont be surprised if Einstein's become common among our species. Infact it might even become one of our traits.
What triggered these thoughts? Well, I was reading the "Origin of Species" by Darwin - An eye opener for the intelligent species known till today in this universe, Man.