Quote Unquote - III

• The 20s are designed for failure, so fail all your can. Because in 30s there is no room for making mistakes -- Dustin Hoffman
• Animals do smart things with their pea-sized brains, and humans do animal things with their smart-sized brain -- Gaurav Patil
• Jumping off of a 200-foot cliff is a lot of fun for 199 feet, That final 12 inches is a bitch -- Sam Davidson
• Flowers are the sweetest things God ever made, and forgot to put a soul into -- Henry Beecher
• Chocolate is cheaper than therapy and you do not need an appointment -- Catherine Aitken
• There is always room at the top, but there is no lift -- Jaswant Singh
• Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness -- Mark Twain
• I believe that parents also want their kids to chase their dreams, but they know from their own life experiences how hard it is know which dream to chase. -- Amit Singh
• The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments. -- Adam Smith
• The road to positivity is strewn with the abandoned vehicles of the faint-hearted. -- Anand Jadhav
  

My Invented Proverbs - Part V

• People are too lazy to specialize, hence they generalize. They hence do not work on facts, obtained through specialization, but rather on perceptions, obtained through generalization.
• Xenophobia is selective Mis-Anthropy.
• Your popularity is directly proportional to the ratio of your twitter-followers-count to your twitter-followings-count.
• GOD is a placebo for Human fallibility.
• 90% of people within any group, resent the fact that they are not 100%
• History may be written by victors, but Archaelogy is not.
• I am not an atheist, I am just GOD with retrograde amnesia.
• I am not on bench, I am suffering from a "Programmers block".
• There is a whole range of gray shades between pride and shame.
• If we cannot have consensus on current affairs, why do we expect different people to have a consistent view of history, for today's current affairs are tomorrow's history.
  

Logical Grouping of Devanaagari Baaraakhadi

Came across this interesting realisation about the arrangements of the Baaraakhadi in Devanaagari.

This is about how you use your tongue and mouth cavity to articulate a particular sound.
There is a sort of logical grouping and progression about the arrangements.

क, ख, ग, घ, and ङ sounds are all articulated by the tounge against the back of the ceiling of the mouth cavity
For च, छ, ज, झ, and ञ sounds, we move forward and use tounge against the centre of the mouth cavity's ceiling
ट, ठ, ड, ढ, and ण are produced more forward behind the gums of incisors
त, थ, द, ध, and न are produced with the tounge against the teeth
and प, फ, ब, भ, and म are produced by the lips alone.

Considering the expertise on grammar that stands 2.5 millenia, this phonetic formalism is not a surprise.

The curious case of the missing Bania

Disclaimer : Academic post, not meant to be normative, the word "Bania" is used bona-fide.

One of the undeniable realities of Indian history has been the caste system. A little thought on the same(induced by formal history reading) would lead one to conclude, that this social stratification had not been uniform throughout the country. The caste divisions as seen in Uttar Pradesh are different from those in Tamil Nadu.

One of the more peculiar things regarding this that I realised in hindsight was the absense of the trading stratum within the Maharashtrian caste heirarchy. There are Brahmans, there are Kshatriyas and Shudras and there is a "warrior+peasentry" mix in the Marathas, there are Dalits, but no Vanika. Such an absense of the Vanika is not seen starkly in any other place, which have their fair share. I think I can safely argue that on an average, having business sense(or business shrewdness) has never been the common man Maharashtrian's strength. This is also shown by the absense of any big Maharashtria names in the field of business, (specifically as business owners).

I think that one of the outcomes of this was that trading people from other places, came in and filled this vacancy. As much as different strata of the society have a varying degree of influence on the society in general, it can be argued that the "having" of economic clout goes a long way in determining the political (and other) clouts. Consequentially there is absence of Marathi clout specifically on the economic front in Mumbai. The popularity of people like MNS and SS could be attributed to this resentment.

Having said all this, it is possible that my observation may be incomplete and hence flawed.

Quote Unquote - II

• When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber -- Winston Churchill
• Stone age didn’t end because we ran out of stones -- Ahmed Zaki Yamani
• The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing -- Edmund Burke
• A country is known by the proverbs it keeps -- Anonymous
• I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go -- Abraham Lincoln
• Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them -- Mark Twain
• The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself -- Mark Twain
• Man's greatest blunder has been in trying to make peace with the skies instead of making peace with his neighbors -- Elbert Hubbard
• Most people have no knowledge of their history. They only live it. -- Bhishm Sahani
• A person's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child, at play. -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Well Done Major Khan (55-word Fiction)

1965

"Well Done Major Khan, that was a brave show", said Brigadier Singh, "But you look upset".
"Nothing, Sir".
"One of the enemy soldiers killed was his cousin", explained Colonel Khanna.
"Uncle had migrated during 1947, father chose not to".
"Oh".
"Jai Hind, Sir".
"Jai Hind, Dismissed".

आंखे

बोहोत कुछ युं ही केह जाती है आंखे लेकिन,
निभाई दिल से दोस्ती तुम्हारी आंखों ने ।
मै सोचता हूं तुम्हारी सीरत के बारे में,
नेकी इतनी दिखा दि तुम्हारी आंखों ने ।
एक हसीन चीज खुशी होती है जिंदगी भर की,
क्यूं कहा जाता है, जताया तुम्हारी आंखों ने ।
- खलील सावंत

Eyes generally say a lot about a person,
Not to betray your heart, your eyes though, chose.
I think about your good character,
Goodness, so much your eyes have shown.
A thing oof beauty is a joy forever,
Why it is said, your eyes have made me realise.
- Khalil Sawant