What is in a name?

My name is Ramaraghavan pronounced रामराघवन. For those who do not speak Hindi try Raamaraaghavan - Raa rhymes with Baa

During my middle school years kids called me Raami. Why?

In high school my friends called me Raamaa but new teachers glancing at the student list frequently assumed I was a girl. They would look for a Miss Ramaaraaghavan. If you speak an Indian language you know the first five letters can be pronounced with the stress on maa making it a girls name as in रमाराघवन.

During undergrad years in Delhi guys called me Raamu (रामू) which is a typical name of a servant in Hindi films.

When I applied for a passport, I found I needed a last name and typical of people from the south I used my father's first name which is Srinivasan. My long name became longer and it became Ramaraghavan Srinivasan.

I found it was a good ice breaker at parties. Most people asked the same standard questions about the length of the name, what it meant, whether it stood for some village etc. To cap it all I would tell them with ghoulish delight how my friend has one of the longest name ever

Punyamurtula Venkata Hanumantha Seeta Ramachandra Swamy.

No Kidding. We all call him Swamy, but his wife calls him Raamu!! It comes as no surprise since he is her servant anyway.

So I shortened my name Raghavan. Even that proved to be difficult. Since I used to work at one of the big three automakers as a contractor, I tried explaining how one could rhyme it with minivan, caravan and they took to addressing me as Ragvan!!

So I gave up on that name too and now I am just simply Raag राग

About a decade ago I rented a truck and gave my name as R. Srinivasan since it would have been difficult spelling both the names. I then passed my driver's license. When I returned the truck, he could not find my rental record since the genius had entered my name as Art Srinivasan!!

A contractor came to our house to give us a quote for a deck. I introduced myself as follows "Hi I am Raag" and when we got the quote it said IRog Srinivasan.

In graduate school, my wife labmates used to call me the Ragman and even sang a song

Yeah he is the Ragman set to the famous Beatles tune. They even wrote two stanzas. Alas I lost the lyrics. Here is a link to the original Beatles song.

Three years ago when we had our second daughter Maalini, (मालिनि), I called up my wife's boss and left a message "Hi, my name is Raag. Jannavi had a daughter last night. Her name is Maalini. etc. etc.". You know what she sent her team?

Subject: welcome baby Maloni Srinivasan
Hi everyone,
Maloni was born last night. She weighed in at 5 lbs 5 oz and 18 inches long. Congratulations to the proud parents, Jannavi and Bob !!

You can call me Bob!!

The Most Beautiful City in India - A Contest

I am not making any assertions here about which city is the most beautiful city in India. Everyone likes their home town and having lived in both New Delhi and Madras, I am partial to both towns. So this is not a post about why either or both cities are beautiful. In fact I know most people would balk at calling Chennai a beautiful city. All I can say is I like it there.

In general what do people notice about India when they first land there? Dirt, trash, and, lack of hygiene everywhere. This is almost universal. People who have marveled at the Taj have also commented at the squalor elsewhere in Agra. All this is not new. Neither is this a diatribe on Indian cities. Let us see if we can make them better. So towards this I came up with this idea.

How about creating a The most beautiful city in India contest?

Naturally since this is an emotional question for most people and hard to deal with objectively, we need to define some set of objective rules to come up with an answer. With that as a setting let me share my thoughts on this. Please share your ideas too.

1. Which cities should be included in this contest? Cities with a population of 1 million and above. If you choose a smaller number the sheer number of cities that would qualify would inundate the system. Additionally the problems that the larger cities face are an order of magnitude more complex than the smaller towns and so the comparison would tend to favor the smaller ones.
2. How often should this contest be run? I feel once every other year is a justifiable interval since it will give the winning city the glory of the title for a reasonable time without the civic administration getting too complacent to rest on their laurels.
3. What is the award? Rather than awarding a trophy at the end of the two years, I think a rotating shield is better with the list of past winners.
4. Is there a cash prize and if so who gets it? I am not sure about this part.
   
5. What are the criteria? To start with cleanliness should be be given the highest priority with aesthetic values given lower weight. I guess most Indians would be thrilled if the streets are not littered with trash and people do not pee in public. As conditions improve the weights can be adjusted. Other factors that could be added as time goes on are pollution, congestion etc.
   
6. How to prevent regression of winning cities (PART-I)? Once a city wins the award it will keep harping about this award twenty years later. Indians are good at it. My cousin told me that everything in mathematics comes from Vedic Math!! The solution is easy. A winning city can advertise the fact for a total of 4 years. Two years when it holds the shield and two more if they do not repeat as winners. There should be some legal teeth to this. How?
   
7. How to prevent regression of winning cities (PART-II)? Part of this contest is also to list the three worst cities!! Cities may not care to win the award but shaming them is a powerful tool since the residents and the media will excoriate the politicians and civic administration. This is similar to the Ig Noble prize.
   
8. What happens two decades after this contest is started? Assuming that this works and cities do beautify, it is possible that the worst three are really not bad places to live in anymore. Dream on buddy!! We will cross this bridge when we come to it.
9. Weather should be eliminated from the equation. Shimla, Bangalore, Pune will always beat, Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai!! How does one take weather out of the equation?
10. What is an objective panel of judges? Simple - media is best suited for this job since they have the best resources for this. I think one reporter from every major newspaper in every major city that qualifies for this contest plus national newspapers such as The Hindu and TOI. National magazines such as India Today and Outlook. TV channels. This list is not complete. Media must demonstrate size, minimum of (say) 1 million newspapers sold every day. What should the number be for magazine and TV stations? It is critical that a suitable panel is created. To prevent nepotism, all magazines should list their city affiliation (and be certified). They should not be allowed to vote for their city in any category. Oh, by the way, voting is is not via secret ballot.
    

I will add to this when I get more ideas

To SaaS or Not to SaaS, That is the Question

I visit Joel Spolsky site Joel on Software on a regular basis since I came upon this excellent article on The Law of Leaky Abstraction. He is a very good writer. Not only does he write well but other articles and blogs he refers are an excellent source for further reading.

Recently I was looking at Where There's Muck There's Brass. This talks about the myriad challenges that a developer faces getting software run in diverse environment as a consequence of deploying it at customer sites. He is referring to managing the complexity of disparate OSes, database vendors, web servers, and application server amongst other variables that the product would need to handle.

One of the references include a post by Jason Fried from 37signals on why they would not consider installing software at customer premises. To quote him It would be highly unlikely that we’d sell installable software. His reasons, to list a few, are

1. Hosted solution implies controlled development and deployment environment
2. Keeps them small and agile
3. Avoids backward compatibility headaches
   

On the other hand, Joel states that 4 out of 5 of his customers opt for installing it themselves and hence he now has four times the sales opportunity. Interesting perspective. He also makes a telling point with this comment The one thing that so many of today's cute startups have in common is that all they have is a simple little Ruby-on-Rails Ajax site that has no barriers to entry and doesn't solve any gnarly problems. Bottom line, his point is, people normally pay for solving difficult problems not easy ones.

As always there is no one way!!

If you thinking about your strategy for selling web based software, both these articles provide good reasons why Jason and Joel did what they did. You now can make an educated decision rather than follow the herd one way or the other.

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past 4-5 years and have just now come out of hibernation, here is a good reference for SaaS.

How can one lose ones heart twice in the same night

Quite easy.

Watch the Tamil movie Vanjikottai Valiban that was released in 1958 and I bet so would you lose your heart to the late Padmini and Vyjayanthimala. That is how!! It is hard to chose one over the other. You try

And here I thought my heart was safe with Aishwarya!!

I found a very touching eulogy to Padmini in The Hindu.

The story of Vanjikottai Valiban is a love triangle. Actually it is a little more than that, but the love triangle features predominantly in the end. The two ladies are in love with the hero Gemini Ganesan and their rivalry culminates in a dance duel. This song titled Kannum Kannum is considered to be one of the best dance sequences in Indian Cinema not just in my opinion. View the song in its entirety in Youtube. It helps if one understand the language since as you know the lyrics used to have significant meaning in those days. It is not like a My Ek Disco, Tu Ek Disco, Duniya hai Ek Disco type song!!

This movie came out in 1958 starring Padmini, Vyjayanthimala, and Gemini Ganesan. The story is quite simple. It recounts the adventure of a young man as he seeks retribution for the murder of his sister. The movie has extravagant sets and costumes, really good effects for that time, good dialogues, great song and dance sequences. Naturally it was a super hit. The plot has more than a strong resemblance to The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas in many places.

Here is the complete plot

There is a King with two children; the Princess and Prince. His second wife and her brother plot to assassinate King along with his two children since only they would in time inherit the throne. The king is killed but the loyal minister sacrifices his family in saving the King's children. The three live in hiding biding their time. The minister's wife in the meantime loads her children in a boat which drifts away before she could board and is arrested. The children grow up as orphans and in time come back to the same kingdom where the bad guy is now the general. The bad guy naturally, as all Indian bad guys do, drinks and carouses. He kidnaps the sister who dies in an attempt to escape.

The hero makes a foolish attempt at revenge and is promptly arrested and naturally gets thrown in the same jail as his mother. The forbidding looking prison happen by chance to be the middle of the ocean. Mother and son discover their relationship (she digs a hole in the wall to meet him since she has all the tools necessary. I was surprised she did not have any Power Tools). Mother tells son of their father's heroism, son tells mother the sad story of his sister. They dig hard to escape and as they are about to, the mother dies of a heart attack. She had to die since the hero cannot escape with her. Old women, nay women in general get in the way of the hero. I forgot to mention she told him before her death of the mole that father and son have in the arm to help him identify each other. Very convenient.

Son escapes and becomes a slave to Vyjayanthimala. I mean a real slave, not the metaphorical one as when a guy tells the girl that he loves her and he is her slave. Naturally she falls for his looks and literally throws herself at him in a very beautiful song Raja Magal, Roja Malar, but he is all throbbing for revenge and has no time for romance. He then proceeds to tells her his sob story. So she lets him go after eliciting a promise to come back and quench the fire in her heart or somewhere else (I kid you not, I did not make up those words). She also sends with him a boat load (literally) of precious jewelery to help him attain his goal.

The hero then disguises himself (the clever audience can see through the beard, but not the villain who can scheme and overthrow a king!!) as a merchant selling exotic jewelery and proceeds to the villain's castle and worms his way into the queen's heart with his charm and wit and in case that proved inadequate, with gifts of gold and diamonds.

Meanwhile he meets the princess who is Padmini and rescues her from the villain's henchmen since their hideout is revealed. In the process the father and a few of his people are arrested. The hero now asks the princess to dance for the villain with hopes of getting him drunk. When the villain is incapacitated he then proceed to the prison and helps his father escape. In the meantime Vyjayanthimala also comes to this country and see the hero and Padmini together and jumps to the conclusion that there is an understanding between the two. So she challenges Padmini to the dance duel which leads to the famous song Kannum Kannum.

Anyway the villain finds out the hero is not his friend from Vyjayanthimala and arrests everyone, but there are other loyal people who rouse the citizenry into attacking the castle. There is a general free for all at this point and Vyjayanthimala regrets her decision and dies in saving the hero. The villain dies in the fight and then

as my little one would say everyone lives happily ever after.

I am not Funny

It is useless. I am definitely not funny. I concede. After reading this my wife, J took it all personal and came to my defense saying

1. How much I have improved.
2. How she did not like all this self-deprecating humour.
3. How no one else has changed so much in 15 years or shown such capacity for change.

You see from J's point of view she is a success. I am any wife's dream husband. I do not mean in the Brad Pitt style although I am not entirely devoid of looks. I mean I am the one they hope to mould to their needs. Most women give up trying after a while. My wife persevered through various trials and tribulations and succeeded and here I am making jokes about myself.

My daughter read that blog and said, it sucks. She actually believed that I no longer consider Pria a friend. She is a pre-teen. No sense of humor.

The only comment my mom made was "Why do you write such personal stuff?". My mom is interesting. Getting compliments from her is akin to getting teeth pulled. Very hard. Let us say it is next to impossible. You could get a 99/100 in Math and she would grill you for an hour about the 1 you missed.

My friend Krishna gave me a compliment ... I think. He said ... That was a good read Raghavan. May be I should read your blogs when I am waiting to board a plane :-) just seems more interesting. Krishna Sent from my iPhone ...

Three points can be inferred from this comment.

First, Krishna is on a business trip. We know this since his wife is back home fending for herself and the children.

Second Krishna in his own subtle way of showing off his iPhone. He takes more pride in it than Jobs himself. Jobs will directly tell you how everyone, yes everyone, hated their phones before he made iPhones for the benefit of mankind. Krishna as I said is not so direct. In a crowd he will casually take his iPhone and call someone usually regarding work, or pretend to read emails, again ostensibly work email.

Third, I am sure there is a compliment there somewhere. I will tell you what it is when I find it.

In closing J take a chill pill. Please do not believe exerything I write. Just because I say I am needy in a blog does not mean I am. I was merely trying to be funny.

I Had a Friend

I like the title. It sounds so Martin Luther King-ish. I had a dream. In fact I wrote a blog about that too. My dreams, I mean.

I have a friend named Pria.

She said she preferred my wife's blog.

That is OK. That is not a crime. I can handle that. I guess after 15 years of marriage, I have gotten used to the fact that everyone who knows us both like her more. Do you notice I did not say almost everyone? Yup, sadly without an exception no one likes me even a smidgen more than her, not even I myself. If they can like her more they can like her writing more too.

See it is like this, I was not always this nice or generous, I used to be needy, really needy. I don't mean the ordinary garden variety needy like needing affection, attention, or reassurance. It was not enough that people liked me, they had to like me more than my wife. But as you know we do not always get what we want.

The more I wanted people to like me more than my wife, the more they liked her more.

Say what!! Let me repeat that slowly.

The more I wanted people to like me more than my wife, the more they liked her more.

Kinda convoluted huh.

Worse, not only did people like my wife more, pretty soon they only liked her. I mean, they did not like me less. They did not like me. PERIOD

Now imagine how that made a needy person like me feel. Sad; and I did not like that.

Trust me it is no fun going to parties and having and people hissing behind your back. At times I have seen people move away casually on seeing me approach. You know, I am sorry I did not see you casually. Other times promising conversations would come to a halt when I joined it. Initially I thought I had some personal problem such as Bromhydrosis or Halitosis. After acquainting myself with suitable hygiene products it became clear it was just me they did not like. So I was forced to reform. I stopped being a really, really, needy person and just became mildly insecure. I have now improved. I am a better person. In fact people now tolerate me for the sake of my wife.

Coming back to Pria; she said she liked my wife's blog and like I said that is OK. I mean it hurts a little bit. How I wish she had stopped there. As I told you earlier, I am a better person. I do not mind if people like my wife's blog.

She said my style was ... I can't say it. OK, take a deep breath. Get a grip. She said my style was Pedantic.

I looked up the meaning and then came the double whammy. You know what the dictionary says?

... marked by a narrow, often tiresome focus on or display of learning and especially its trivial aspects; an academic insistence on precision; a bookish vocabulary;...

That hurts. Call my blog

1. Ununderstandable - Some of the earlier subjects were a bit dry. (This, that, and the other)
   
2. Not original - I can accept this. In fact I myself bemoan this fact here and here. Sadly how can a blog titled Cliched Thoughts ever be original.
   
3. Not funny - All I can say is; I try.

Anything but pedantic.

So in summary, after what she said about my style of writing, it is more like

I had a friend named Pria

PS: Please do not correct me that MLK said, I have a dream. I know.

I am an atheist ...

and I have been one for over 15 years. At one time I would have even described myself as an evangelical atheist, since I argued a lot and tried proselytizing others to atheism!!

So what is new? Why am I broadcasting this fact publicly now?

Simple, no one reads my blog. I could say I see men in underwear dancing at night and no one would think I am crazy. For the record it is women I see (suitably scantily clad or mostly not clad). Not that there is anything wrong in seeing men in underwear.

The problem all started with this book. It always does, first you read a book; then you get ideas and everyone knows ideas are dangerous. Pretty soon you get arrested for setting the flag on fire as a protest!!

To confess, I read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and guess what - I got religion!!

That's bad, real bad. Read any book but a book by Dawkins. Everyone knows he is going to hell. In fact he is so bad I heard he has an E-ZPass to hell.

About the book. It is great. If you wish to keep his company in hell (and mine) read it.

Now this post changes tone from being casual and almost but not quite funny to being mildly serious.

During the middle part of this decade, I had lost my passion for atheism. My wife and I were in our own pain and things looked really dark. We were in search of I_do_not_know_what. I guess we wanted anguish free life. We did not want to be unhappy. We wanted to be able to smile again. In those dark moments it seemed logical that people would pray. I used to wish I could pray. So I lost that militancy that made me a pain in the certain place of great heat. I guess I still am one but I hope less so than before.

I also felt that it is an innocent belief and that if I could escape from the clutches of religion and belief in god so could others. I felt that it was more often a matter of personal choice or decision.

Finally in raising a child you never know whether it is correct to deny ones child all that religion and belief in God brings; Culture and Tradition which really is about your identity. So I used to earlier avoid this topic considering it a little dangerous to tell my daughter that I really did not believe in Rama as a god and that Ramayana was just a story, albeit in the form of a great epic.

Although after reading this book I still did not feel the same passion as earlier, I no longer have any hang-up either. I am very comfortable with my atheism to a point where it no longer feel unnatural to bring up this topic in any conversation with my daughter.

One last thing; since I was born in India, I have always known that I would never be the President of USA. Since the greatest prize is being denied to me I want to make sure that I could not run for political office of any sort, setting aside the fact that no one wants me to run for any political office. How is being an atheist relevant? See results from this survey.


Ignoring the fact that the survey refers to "Well Qualified" candidates, I wanted to be sure that 20 years in the future when my wife forces me to run for a minor post in my HOA my opponents can dig this up and dish it out.

The beauty of this is that I could always re-discover God if the urge to enter politics resurfaces. It is well known that it is hard to resist the temptation of Satan. I could always blame him for my delusion and claim that I am now Born Again. Everyone knows you will go to hell for your sins but my mistakes naturally are between me and my maker and you sir have no right to judge!!

Look at the number of right-wing politicians who somehow have maintained their reputation through various scandals although they excoriated Clinton for his peccadillo's. Gingrich one of the central figures in that drama it turns out was himself having an affair at about that time he was impeaching Clinton for having one (or more)!!

PS: I thought I was the first person to coin the phrase evangelical atheist, turns out I was wrong. So much for me ever coming up with an original thought!!