Just found this on my e-diary while clearing/cleaning up some old files. Its a musing from some two years ago (written on 2 September 2010 at 11:07 to be precise), I don’t recall what prompted me to jot these lines down then, but when I saw these this morning, I thought I might have written these last week or the week before. If you follow the news and happenings from the sub-continent then you’d know why!
When I was growing up in a traditional, yet fairly liberal Bramhin household, I might have looked like a God-fearing child growing up to to be a God-fearing adult. By high-school, most of the religious beliefs instilled in me had washed away. By the time I went to study intermediate in science, and came out of it, I was probably not an atheist, but certainly an agnostic. By the time I finished my undergraduate, I was an atheist too, and have been since. When I think of growing up, hearing about Krishna’s Leela, his misdemeanours since childhood, be it stealing, harassing girls, or later being polygamous, causing war between brothers and what not, it was rather strange to see people worshipping him as a God, a role model. Thankfully I didn’t take that literally, imagine where I would be now if I had! The question that boggles my mind is this: why do we still revere mythical characters like Krishna? What does it say about our own cultural mindset? That it is OK to engage in misdemeanours as long as you also do some good? Although I fail to find what good that mythical character Krishna really did! The most popular caricature of the character still revolves around stealing butter and chasing young pretty girls. So what was the real message his story gave to our societies. That it’s OK to hang out in every gallis and chowks and tease young girls passing by? That minor theft is not to be taken seriously and that its part of growing up?
I was searching for a contact on my gmail archive earlier today, someone I knew some 10 years ago, and my hope was that I had forwarded the email from that person to my gmail account as I left the university after my undergrad degree in 2002. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the person or the email I was hoping to find, although it was not important at all. I just wanted to see if I had an email address, I might have fired a “hello” email if I had found the address, thats all. The reason was that I just happen to think about this person suddenly today while I was having a conversation with a colleague about mental conditions/stress. This person I knew had a serious mental breakdown while working towards a masters degree, and even though wanted to pursue a doctorate programme, couldn’t even complete the masters degree properly I think. Anyway, what I ended up finding was something completely different, a piece of poem-of-sorts that I wrote as a reply to a friend who had sent me a supposedly well-known/popular poem. So here is a challenge for you all: below is the piece I had written in reply to my friend, now try to find the original poem related, which is supposed to be popular on the internet, might even be a song now, but I’m not sure. My dear friend who sent me that poem in the first place, you know who you are so you can only be an observer here 
can’t decide whether you are complaining
or giving me the compliment undeserved
clinging onto the old days old ways
a trait i had in me always
i thought you knew me too well
to complain about my stubbornness though
i don’t believe it’s silly, but it is true
i don’t need autumn and the falling leaves…
to think of you
I have to memorise a poem for my pedagogy course next week, and when I was thinking of which one to choose (cannot be a children’s poem, and had to be more than 10 lines), I couldn’t think of any better than this sonnet by Simon Armitage, not a children’s poem, obviously more than 10 lines, and most importantly easy to memorise! And I couldn’t help sharing it here:
“Poem”
And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
he took a spade and tossed it to one side.
And always tucked his daughter up at night.
And slippered her the one time that she lied.
And every week he tipped up half his wage.
And what he didn’t spend each week he saved.
And praised his wife for every meal she made.
And once, for laughing, punched her in the face.
And for his mum he hired a private nurse.
And every Sunday taxied her to church.
And he blubbed when she went from bad to worse.
And twice he lifted ten quid from her purse.
Here’s how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.
From Simon Armitage’s poetry collection Kid (1992)
Screenshot of extended menubar in Mac OS X Lion using SecondBar (click for larger image)
Its been a while I have written anything on technology, or should I say haven’t written anything at all. Anyway, I have been looking for a way to extend menubar on my Mac as soon as I got a second monitor almost two years ago. I had been using utility-apps like DejaMenu or MenuPop to get access to menu items on the second monitor, however, not having an actual menubar on the second monitor was quite inconvenient. Just a couple of weeks ago, while searching for ways to extend menubar to the second monitor, I came across SecondBar , although it is still a beta-app, it works great. My second monitor finally looks like it’s a part of an extended display, a part of my mac desktop! Occasionally, SecondBar has problem showing all the menu items from an application but it is rectified by relaunching the app. Its certainly a great app for its purpose, and I still wonder why there aren’t any app to extend menubar with full functionality on Mac as so many of us actually extend our display with a second or even a third monitor these days. Definitely worth a try!
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