11 is the new 13

9/11 followed by 11/26 has blemished the once very charming number eleven. Eleven has always been an auspicious number, there are eleven players in the game of cricket, there are one less than eleven commandments, there is heaven on 2 less than eleventh number clound, etc. Unfortunately, the modern form of terror has not left the mortals with any choice but to include 11 in the ever expanding list of superstitions.

The cowardly acts of terrorists have, so far, not affected the morale of the people. Although there have been changes in the national security system, the immigration laws are stricter, airport security has been beefed up, etc. But people have not stopped living life, they still celebrate festivals with as much fervor as earlier, they still want to travel the world and know more about other cultures and traditions, and they still enjoy sports. There are a few fundamental aspects of human nature that naturally live through any calamity.

The humans around the world neither can postpone everything to devote themselves to fighting terror, nor will they board the Noah's ark and sail away from the terrorists. Sadly, the frequent terror strikes have forced people to accept these attacks as a way of life now. It seems that even the terrorists have forgotten their initial objectives and now what is left is just a chaotic random acts of killing and bloodshed. It is not a fight for freedom, it is not a fight against any injustice, it is not a fight against any ferocious conqueror, but just murder in cold blood for no apparent reason. The fight can no longer continue in the name of any religion because with every passing day the lines between cultures as well as religions are blurring.

All we can do is dream on for a better tomorrow.

Will India ever win over itself ?

Can 'hope' be ever misplaced ? After all it is only 'hope'.

Cinematic Brilliance or Failure ?

It is not everyday that a boy meets a girl at a deserted small railway station in the hills. It is not everyday that the boy musters enough courage to talk to the girl in their first ever meeting, and also bring a smile to her face. It is not everyday that the a girl requests a stranger ; who has offered to bring stars, moon, etc and win forts in her honour ; to bring a cup of tea for her. It is not everyday that a love story ends with this, and a remarkable cinema begins.

Mani Ratnam's bollywood disaster was the first Indian movie to burn the British box office charts. It is often that a commercial disaster goes on to earn a lot of critical acclaim (Jaane Bhi Do yaaron is one of the best examples to the rule) and Dil Se met with the same fate. It's stupendous cinematography, strong performances, titillating music and Chhaiyyan Chhaiyyan was the talk of the country, but not enough to bring the masses to the cinema.

Masses or no masses, I loved the movie so much that i have so far watched it more than a couple of dozen times, sometimes barely able to open my eyes from the early morning laziness or the latenight sleep. It has always energised me, inspired me to strive for excellence in my work.

I would like to mention a few arguments as to why the movie did not appeal to the majority of the Indians. First, it was not a movie with happy ending, that of course may not be a valid reason, as there have been a plenty of sad movies that went on to become popular with the audience. Second reason could be geographical and regional dis/non/un-placement of characters, meaning audience were not able to place the story in the correct city. The audience seem to have been unsure if the story is about Nepal, Assam, Leh-Ladhak or Delhi. The editing of the movie has been blamed by some of the popular critics, though i beg to differ and like to think that it was superbly edited.

The reason that i can think of is that, the movie neither had moments where the audience could stand on their feet and clap, nor were there any moments where one needed a hankerchief to wipe ones tears. It was a subtle movie, i guess in 1998 it was about time we watched one.

It had lots of subtle moments like when Amar and Meghna talk about the three things they like and three they dislike, under the moonlit-cold night. And the disappearance of Meghna the next morning with some words dropped on the sand, "Kuchh Log, ret pe likhe naamon ki tarahan hote hain, Hawah ka jhonka Jinhe Urwa deta hai". (Not the) Best possible translation, " Some people are like names written in the sand, who are blown away by the wind".

These are aesthetically appealing shots, that need some amount of patience and a taste for slow cinema, to appreciated. Imagine an on-your-feet-applauding-cheering audience watching Orson Welles' "The Trial", I bet they would be disappointed by the entire twists and turns, and the arguments.

Anyways, the question i began with remains unanswered, in the interest of (my) time i will end it by saying that, The Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Watch it, if you can !!

Defn.

God's a poor man and earth is his begging bowl.

What now ?

This is a question that I have been asked so many times that if i start counting, i would spend as many days as there are in a week (that's still a lot). The first time i asked this question to myself was, when i had beaten the record of the top guy of my batch in primary school in all subjects. The answer i gave to myself was "Keep Going".

I kept up with my own stupid idea and "kept going", until others started asking me, "My boy! What now ?". I said, "Medicine", I wanted to keep up the family tradition of hydrogen peroxide, antibiotics, cough syrups, hot water fermentation, fight against homeopathy and raising the allopathy flag. By 1990's somehow i developed an antipathy towards medicine, the number of years in study, and the mindless rote method of studying and delivering the knowledge fueled my (insensible) antipathy.

At the next given opportunity i said, "IAS." These are the three letters far superior than 'ILU' in the large expanse of our country. If God ever takes the form of human, he would be a civil servant (paradoxical !). Their power is unmatched, their stature is unparalleled and their general knowledge is sweared by. One could probably collect a handful of civil servants and run them in a GK race, this might generate a lot of money. But then regretfully dawned the era of political subordination of the civil servants and it seems what remained of them was just the latter word.

By now i was at a stage where the seriousness of "What now ?" increased hundred-fold and my seriousness had taken a flight of its own. With the world domination by Walmart and Pepsi and other multi multinationals, I had decided to join the bandwagon and ride the wave. It was "MBA", "IIT" and consequences. Two years of toil and sweat, going through the books because they were being published. But of course my seriousness and ambition had just begun its flight and so i managed to chip in a lot of fun and weekends off during the two years, with life saving results.

"What now ?" St. Stephen's came to my rescue and said to me, " Son, no need to rush through anything, just take it easy and take your time to decide what now. " So i went on with a whole list of "What nows ?", "Film Making", "Writing", "Journalism", "Advertising" and other trivialities.

And so I took my time and his time, and here I am in my last year of PhD. The only thing that kept me going through these years was Mathematics. This was one true friend i had and the only reason i could keep up with "What nows ?".

"Anyways, seriously arjun, What now ?!! "

Run Arjun Run !!

Long car rides on a bright sunny day through the numerous villages and open fields scattered on the banks of national highway 24 seem to ever-fascinate me. On more than one occasion have I dreamily entertained the thought of just getting out of the car and run through the fields for no simple rhyme or reason.
I can always make up a reason for this thought, say to touch the horizon, but giving such a reason is worse than revealing none. The spirit of free man in me always takes over my dreams (or day dreams) and pushes me to think and act as if the world has no limitations.
Now of course running through the open fields without any reason, do not indicate crossing any trifling limitation.
In symbol, the above paragraph indicates all the wishes i have, all my likes and dislikes that i want to pursue, which so far have been neglected. I spend everyday contemplating their[my imminent wishes] necessity, my laziness and my incompetence. Is it possible for me to just run to them ? I wish.
Not very insightful ? Well who said it would be.

Eat like a Mathematician

Lately i have been eating like a student of a business school. They admire the fastness of the fast food, the economies of scale and the consequential affordability. They eat keeping their retirement plan in mind and healthily-ever-after-attitude. Whatever be the goal, healthy eating is the way to success of mind, body and soul.
Mathemaiticians, whenever they eat, eat the best. Their diet, naturally, comprises of fresh fruits (especially apples), juices, salads, cold sandwiches, white meat and loads of coffee (ouch!). It is just not the menu but also the time of their meals which leads to their sharp minds.
Juicy hamburgers (fozen stuff always leaves some water), grilled chicken and french fries is the worst invention (or discovery) of mankind. And i have rediscovered it so many times myself, without learning an important lesson. That i, as a Mathematician have no retirement plan, and so i should train my body for the long journey and not look for the short term gains. Anyways the fried stuff is disturbing my study habits, sleeping schedule and giving me a paunch. So i can bypass the philosophy and cut the crap from my diet.

The above paragraph is not copyrighted, so please feel free to share the above view with friends and family and encourage them to eat healthy. And my business school friends: Eat busy.

A colourful life

A common view

Papa enjoying the drive to Rajasthan.

Solitary man

Boxed In

Shammi Kebabs at Triveni

Art or Therapy ?

Is art a therapy ? Well if you ask professional artists be it painters, musicians, singers, actors and others that i may have missed, would differ with me in considering art to be a much needed therapy for the human mind. For them art will be passion, a source of livelihood and a talent that they may have nurtured over the years.
But for someone like me whose primary indulgance is not art, gets these occasional urges to satisfy the artisitic desires and recharge myself. Art always seems to be a different territory for me, not necessarily an enemy's territory.
The greatness of the great debate on the great divide between art and science is that it is greatly skewed; and yet it goes on and on.
Why is it skewed? Because none of the two genres of human activities is just limited to itself. There is so much art in science and so much science in art that the lines are fuzzy.
The therapeutic effect seems to be more because of the change of activities. As they say variety is the spice of life.

Mathematical Horizons

Mathematics has been pushed to its limits and it is emulating decision making skills in humans. Few decades from now mathematics will run in the blood and there are going to be (r)evolutionary effects evident in the portion of the brain that solves mathematics problems.

Forecasting (rather guessing) has been a major motivation to induce mathematics in fields as diverse as biology (and numerous sub fields), geology, economics and finance.

Gibbs sampling is a major probabilistics tool that allows one to model large systems of "particles". It derives its inspiration from physical systems of magnetic interaction and perhaps other areas which resemble interacting particle system. The ubiquitous Ising models where one models the interacting particles and determine the typical polarity or spins of each particle in the large system, is an example of application of Gibbs sampling technique.

Consider a very large arbitrary set of outcomes such that there occurrence is governed by a stable energy function. Let me try and make the idea clearer, we should start with , say , a lattice where the particle interactions determine the energy level of the system. Once we have an energy function identified we model the system by saying that it likes to be in a state of lower energy. But the state at any point of time is random, in that case the most natural (once you have done enough math) thing to do is use exponential to define a probability distribution on the set of outcomes (or states) that assigns lower probability to high energy states and vice-versa. This distribution is what is called the Gibbs Distribution.
So now we have a probability (a value between 0%-100%) attached with every possible state of the system. A physical system may be dependent on some parameters or external conditions, take for instance temperature (T). The temperature may affect the outcome of the system and hence we need to gauge its effect on the Gibbs probability disribution.
To make the notion more clear consider two systems which are under two different temperatures. The system which exists in the region of higher temperature will have a lower probability to end up being in a lower energy state as compared to the system in the region of lower temperature.
It is clear that temperature is analogus to volatility (variance) in probability distribution. If the variance is low then the mode (most probable outcome) which is the least energy state is more likely to appear.
One very interesting idea is to apply the technique of Gibbs sampling to minimize complex functions. If one samples from the Gibbs distribution identified by taking the function that needs to be minimized as the energy function, then the lower energy states since they have a higher probablity would be sampled from this distribution and the "lowest" energy state is the point of minima.
Other applications include image segmentation and data clustering. These application of mathemtics hover at the boundaries of Mathematics, one wrong step can take us in the other territory and may lead to ridicule. And that is why one needs to keep an open mind and be cautious at the same time.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

By Arjun Beri

A day in life of a jobless youth can solve the riddle of life or death, laughter or terror, and black or white. This is a story of one such boy who has given up on life, or so it seems on the morning of a dark cloudy day in Mumbai where he wakes up to the thud of the daily newspaper thrown into his room through the only window there is. The torn curtain, fluttering to the perpetual breeze of Mumbai which blows with such sameness that it can sometimes be depressing, is barely giving privacy to him.
He wakes up to shove his head into this daily ritual of surfing the news hoping to find something different than the day before. But alas except the date nothing changes, the news as usual is about terrorist attacks, increasing oil prices, stock prices nose diving, job cuts, earthquakes, drought, strikes, murder, rape and kidnapping (in order of significance). Death is the reality that everyone around the world wakes to every morning and yet goes on with life. It is worse for him, he has nothing to do, no office to attend, no deadlines to meet, nothing to be elated for and nothing to be sad for. The newspaper, he believes, is his best friend as it talks to him, tells him about the world and what day of the week it is.
He walks up to his window and stares at the road under his room on the first floor of a chaul in Mumbai. As he looks at the people walking on the road his eyes move to a trail of ants on the window of his room. His eyes move back and forth from road to the window from people to the trail of ants and he is bewildered at the similarities with which both forms of life look from a distance. The people seem to be walking in the same manner as the ants walked colliding with each other, giving way to some and blocking others. Suddenly the words his mother used to tell him are ringing clearly in his ears “Work hard if you want to walk ahead of the herd”.
He walks to the kitchenette in his room and looks for food. He checks all boxes, jars but fails to find any. At last he does find a piece of Parle G, a cookie that has kept all the jobless people alive. But he does not want to snatch it away from a bunch of ants that are so happily biting it off. He walks around his room that has a dirty rickety bed and a chair. He pulls out a trunk from under his bed and opens it. He sees his college degree but pushes it aside and from under his clothes he pulls out two halves of a picture and stares at them. That is the picture of his beloved and her words ring in his mind “Don’t forget me after going to the big city”.
A sudden heavy knock on his door on this dreary morning startles and pulls him out of his day dreaming. It takes a moment for him to realize that he is supposed to open the door for this visitor. He dresses up himself and walks to the door. He opens the door and looks around but doesn’t find anyone, just an empty flight of stairs down to the courtyard. A bit confused he shuts the door, gets back to his chair and looks at the picture holding the two pieces together. Before he can get too comfortable, there comes a second attack on his door. This time the knock is so loud that it makes him jump in his seat and he walks to the door, a little irritably. On opening the door the scene is the same except there is a black kitten running off the stairs and a pigeon woken up from its slumber. He steps out of his room looking around for his guests but still finds no cause for the knock.
He is completely taken aback by this strange incident and can think of no reason for it. He shuts the door behind his back and walks around the room like a feather off a flying bird. He can not think of who it could be and while his brain scanned his memory his eyes fall upon the obituaries section in the paper. He knows he is over reacting but he still picks it up and reads about a dead old man whose address has the room number next to his. He fears he may be going crazy and throws the paper on the floor. The door is knocked at again and it is so loud that even the dead man would have turned in his grave. A little nervous, a little scared with beads of sweat down his temple he walks towards the door. As he opens the door after a seemingly long walk to it, he again sees nobody. Determined to solve the mystery he steps out and walks down the stairs. All he sees is a busy street with a lot of hustle and bustle but not a single familiar face. He decides to wait there for his visitor.
After few minutes when no one comes to him he walks back. Climbing the stairs reluctantly and looking behind every now and then he reaches his door. He pushes it to go inside but it does not budge. He runs through his pockets to see if he locked it but to his astonishment it’s not even latched from outside. He frantically pushes at the door again and knocks at it. There is no response, the door has been mysteriously locked from inside. He steps to the next chaul and through its open window he sees a familiar face on a garlanded frame hung on the wall. As his eyes adjust to the light he realizes that it is the same old man whose obituary he had just read. This sends a shiver down his spine. He staggers to his door and not knowing what to do next he walks down around the courtyard to the rear of his chaul only to find his window locked with the torn curtain still fluttering to the breeze.
Desperate to get help he looks around but has no energy to stop the strangers walking in a hurry. He walks back to his chaul frightened and knocks softly on the door. It gently opens and abracadabra he sees his mother standing with open arms. She lovingly says,” so my boy have you forgotten your mother after coming to Mumbai. Don’t you want to have anything to do with your little town now that you are a busy man”? As if this surprise is not enough his father walks out of the dark room and hugs. And then pop out the balloons with his niece and nephew as the lights are switched on and the whole mystery comes to light. From one corner walks his elder brother with his wife and from the other side his little sister. They are all beaming with joy singing the birthday song for him.
Heavy dose of sudden joy clouds his eyes and there are tears rolling down his cheeks. He has no control over his actions and just drifts with the birthday celebrations. He cuts the cake to the cheers of the kids bursting balloons and drowns himself in the moment. His eyes gleam like a school boy as his mother puts a piece of cake into his mouth and tells him that it is time he took a vacation and came back home.
The raindrops on his roof and the flutter of the curtain on his window are music to his ears now.
A glass is half full or half empty-the choice is ours. Life is indeed a riddle.

story continued

Story of a young boy

This is a picture of a young boy sitting idle, while his mother sells handmade toys and jewellery to the tourists at Gateway of India.
This is the India Shining.

Pictures seem to speak so much more than words, and yet they are silent !!

Journey to...

Frozen

On the musical horizon !!

Best Friends

White: Krzysztof Kieslowski

The cover has this line on it : "There is nothing sweeter than revenge".
Well not if it is inflicted on the woman one loves more than anybody else. Not if it is directed at the person that you wish to be with most. Perhaps it is sweet if it brings you closer to your love. The film is liberating, this is my favorite word to describe a feeling of lightness that some movies pour into me. The movie is woven around this one character who is divorced by his lady because of his inability to fulfil his role as a "man". This was also a subject in one of the movies in Decalogue by Kieslowski, where this inability breeds infidelilty in the lady.
In this film it leads to divorce, but the male protagonist's undoubted love leads him to the riches of the world and finally to his lady. The path from separation to getting back together is a long winding road and that is what makes the story ingeniuos. Watch it ! ***1/2

Taare Zameen Par

Taare zameen par, if i say was a very honest film I wouldn't be adding anything new to the already existing compliments. It was indeed an honest film , the story was such that one can not portray it with anything but a full dose of the h word.
Now as an audience why am i not guilty of spending the amount of money i shelled out (which has increased 10 times since my kidhood) for it ? Well because it gave me a peep into my very own childhood, I wasn't a dyslexic. But then the movie is not about it. It is about the conflicts of a child, dyslexic or not dyslexic. It is about pursuing your hearts' desire and the consequences if you fail do so because of the pressures from all kinds of sources.
At the cost of sounding ignorant i would say that there is a little bit of dyslexia in everyone. And if one goes by the resilience of the protagonist and the confidence of his art teacher, dyslexia seems to have been brought into fashion. On a lighter note the movie wins heart in all of the departments be it music, dialogues, lyrics, story and performances. I believe the child actor should be pitted against other male actors in awarding the best male actor award with age being NO bar.
Amir Khan has proven yet again that his infrequent appearances on the 70mm screen atleast guarantees a blockbuster status for the few films that he does. And also that he is India's hope to achieve an Oscar nomination yet again. This film deserves ****1/2. Half point deducted to make it look realistic.

My Beautiful Laundrette

Deeply moving. Strongly recommended. Brave performances. Stupifying and thought provoking. ***

V-O-L-A-T-I-L-I-T-Y

Volatility has been associated with deviation of a stochastic process from the mean value. In simpler words it is the measure of tendency of a phenomenon to not result in the expected or result in the expected.
It all seems to have been started by George Brown who noticed the motion of microscopic particles suspended in water. It was a factual behavior of particles in water until Albert Einstein described it mathematically and snowballed a whole new area in mathematics which has been contributed to by the 'n' (still counting) generations after him.
Again in describing the historical development of the concept of volatility i have cheated or rather failed to think deeper because of my specialist approach. I have narrowed my mind to thinking of volatility only in the context of oscillations at microscopic level and been impatient in describing it completely. I am trying to get to Brownian motion and its applications to physics and finance, where volatility has played an important role.
Consider the sport of archery, when a well practiced archer shoots the arrow his volatility (given the objective is to hit bulls eye) would be lower as compared to the not so trained one. Not every thing can be trained for instance, the stock prices may not be trained to go up or go down; or it could not be even trained to reveal where will it move next: up or down, unlike an archer who can get better with practice.
The greatest fallacy of man in the current age is his belief that he can control/predict all processes, man made or natural. What we know of volatility is only the volatility of the process in time and not in possibilities at a given point in time. We do not know what has not happened but only what has happened and looking back one can know what has been deviation over time. Now if one assumes that the different scenarios that have unfolded in past are the only possibilities then the quantified deviation from the average is an estimate of volatility and a pretty bad one.
What is a good estimate of volatility then ? Depends !

Buck in the muck !!

Corruption breeds poverty, inequalities, low productivity and in some cases where the municipal corporation is concerned it even breeds mosquitoes. Yet it lives on and feeds on the innocent (if there are any) common man. I shall talk in particular about India and it may be correct to project the scenario onto other developing countries; and some developed nations, if this distinction still holds.
India has suffered from various evils for a long time and yet the outlook that is portrayed (in the media) is one of utmost optimism and, at times, of nauseating preparedness. Preparedness to face the consequences of whatever ill is taking place in the nation. Hope is necessary but it may not be sufficient, turning a blind eye to machinery that doesn't work may not rectify it even if one keeps high hopes.
How can we curb corruption in the society ? How is it different in the developed nations than India ? Let us identify the points in the social chain where corruption is present. Well all of it - Education, Business, Politics and all probable concoctions of these. If i could borrow from an old proverb and form my own : To be corrupt is human and to be mute spectators to it is evil.
Let us take politics for instance, to reduce corruption we may have to revamp the bureaucracy, make politicians accountable of their actions, bring transparency in the official processes and juggle a lot of pins. Did I say "we" have to do this ? Who is "we"? We are the government , we are the politicians and we are the ones corrupt, why would we not want the extra bucks. The solution here is the problem, we are the problem. The change and rectification has to start from us. Let us keep up the hope. If we are hungry , hope will keep us alive...

Postcard

The Art and Science of expression

Films, Newspaper, Recitations, Theatre, Television, SMS, Emails, Chats, Blogs, Novels, Paintings, Comic books, forms of Dances, Music and the good old snail mails. These are some of the ways a man expresses himself and understands his fellow beings.
Why is there a need to express oneself ? Why is freedom of expression so sacred ? Is the necessity of expression connected to the physical health ? Is it as basic as a good night sleep ? What is the significance of sound in the letters ? What do the letters with a particular sound signify ? What is the future of expression ? What is the evolution pattern in the modes of expression ? What has technology contributed to expression ? Which is the most effective form of expression, one that cuts through all cultural, racial and linguistic barriers ? What is distance one travels in going from "sant" to "saint" ?

LOLITA : Stanley Kubrick

A movie based on the 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov. It is a peek into the lives of people, people like us with longings, fears, love, anxiety and deceit -deliberate or accidental. The director seems to have fixed a window for the audience that just followed the characters through their everyday lives. The performances are very natural without any hint of exaggeration at all, which could have been one possible style of narration given the controversial story.
Sue Lyon as Lolita was bewitchingly beautiful and came out with a tremendous performance in her first film.

Morning Ragas

My grandfather noticing my late nights and late mornings had once come to me with a note with a very wise proverb " Early to bed ... ,wealthy and wise". I must have been 11 or 12 years old, thinking it was an invitation to his morning prayers, walks and exercises; I made a promise to myself to wake up early from the very next day onwards.
There i was walking around in the garden with him leading the way in the wee hours of the morning. I couldn't really tell if it was morning or still night, my mornings started when there was bright sunshine. Why should one wake up when the sun is still snoring ? Anyways i went on with him trying to copy his exercises, breathing in and out, stretching and walking briskly.
All this while he paid no attention to my antics and carried on with his routine. He went to his prayers with me following him to the sasang hall, i sat down behind him in meditation.
It was only half an hour later that i regained my consciousness, when he nudged my shoulder to wake me up from my "meditation".
I was rewarded with warm buttered toasts and tea and stories from the past. The horse carriages, the british collectors, our grand aunt, my grand uncles, my fathers childhood, the list of topics went on and on.
It has been six years since he passed away and in these years i have tried to practice his teachings with 100 percent sincerety but not with 100 percent success.
But even now if i follow his very simple-to-understand rule of waking up early, it has always proven to be a rule that ought to be followed.

Chloe in the afternoon : Eric Rohmer

Another french movie with a climax that makes the movie linger on for a long time after "FIN". The protagonist's mind is in a conflict between true love and true passion. His obsession with women other than his wife and his need to be free from the clutches of marriage and commitment is amusing. The eventual realization of his fallacy following the almost successful seduction makes him run away from Chloe, a girl from his past. There is some sympathy that erupts for Chloe but only till the time he gets back home and confides in his wife, speaks out his heart expressing his deep love for her. He experiences the freedom that he so longed for, nowhere else but in his relationship with his wife.
The film's feel is comically seductive without "all that jazz" and ends on a very serious note with a deep moral lesson. I give this movie **** (this is not a curse word but my rating for the movie on a GPA of 5 *'s)

A StiffOnion !

Are you a stiffONION ? An onion which if poked, pinched or cut into two squirts back real hard and brings tears in the eyes of the beholder. More to come...Never mind the content of this post.

I thought of writing another clog for january. Here it is:

Early to bed, Early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Easier to preach than practice.

My first Clog

I am congratulating myself for finally making it to pages on the world wide web. I will, now ,be able to boast of one more page to my name's Google search.
Blogging seems to be tougher than it seems when reading other people's pages. One is always thinking of how he/she would have written it better and been more articulate (in writing).
I will try to pour over the following few topics:

Nothing:
What does one do when there is nothing to work on ? Make a blog (a clog in my case). It ain't easy to write about nothing. It is easier to write nothing , like nothing or -------------------------.I am looking forward to finish writing about nothing and start writing about something. So let there be words that stick together for some meaning...

Something:
Idea ! Let me describe in my words how it was to be in Pushkar, the holy village of Rajasthan, India. A village that can give a big city a good run for its money. This is a small village settled around a lake; the lake was formed when Lord Brahma threw a lotus from the heaven which created a crater (after all Lord Brahma is the Creator). Pushkar seemed to be a very popular destination for tourists from around the world (especially Europe and Israel).
It was unlike any other pilgrimage that i have been on in India, where else in India do you get to eat authentic Italian and Lebanese food (in a village setting). Let me not undermine the spiritual upliftment that one experiences visiting 1000 big and small temples in the village, the Brahma temple being the high point (USP or lets say the selling point). This is the only temple devoted to Lord Brahma (creator among the Trimurti/Trinity) in the whole world and i guess half the battle for the tourism in the village is won right there. The tales that are told while one performs puja at the ghat (bank of the lake) leaves you with a strange feeling. You do want to believe in everything but then there is some part of the brain that nudges and questions the belief. Well ! I guess belief is better not questioned. There is only one way to test the belief, hold it for as long as possible and look for concrete counter examples. It is time to write about everything.

Everything:
Good Night !