zenith to nadir?

I had started watching cricket from the 1996 world cup. In the later 90s, India were a generally inconsistent and often incompetent team. They won some ODI matches at home, but in away Tests they were quite useless, and a draw was considered satisfactory. From 1996 to 2000 India lost 1-0 in england and west indies, 2-0 in south africa, 3-0 in australia. They did not do well in home Tests also. Then in late 2000, the corrupt, match-fixing, non-performing seniors were dropped and the relatively young team showed signs of improvement. In 2001 they won a memorable home series against the rampaging Australian side. Then onwards, india started winning test matches (though not series) outside the country. They started small, winning a test in Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and West Indies in 2001-02. After that a good 2-year period came, which saw them drawing 1-1 in england and more remarkably in australia, and 2-1 victory in pakistan (despite losing 0-2 away and drawing 0-0 at home against new zealand). While ODI fortunes rose and fell in two cycles once under Sourav and again under Rahul,  in 2006 under Rahul Dravid and Greg Chappell India won a test series in West Indies, and for the first time won a test match in South Africa, despite conceding the series.

After a debacle in the 2007 world cup a golden run in tests started.  India won 2-0 in bangladesh, and commendably won 1-0 in england. After Anil Kumble took over as captain in late 2007, india won a memorable test match in Australia and another in sri lanka (though both series were lost 2-1), and Kumble signed off with a remarkable 2-0 home victory against australia. Dhoni took over and won series in Bangladesh, New Zealand and West Indies (though at this time they were weak Test sides), but achieved a creditable 1-1 draw in South Africa under hostile conditions, and another 1-1 against Sri Lanka. Meanwhile unrelenting victories at home over every team saw them rise to Number 1 ranking in tests, and held on to that position for 1.5years- longer than most experts expected. While India had won only 13 away tests from 1932 to 2000, they won as many as 22 (and lost only 20) away tests in 2001-2010. India were now a force to reckon with even in alien conditions. These victories (and some respectable draws) were achieved by memorable performances from Sachin Tendulkar (average 81 in away wins), Rahul Dravid (average 69), VVS Laxman (56), Virender Sehwag (51), Sourav Ganguly (50), Anil Kumble (bowling average 21 in away wins), Zaheer Khan (bowling 23), Harbhajan Singh (bowling 25) and other players.

And then.

Come 2011, and an injury-ridden Indian side was wiped out 4-0 in england. They lost the number 1 status in tests. The batting failed in all the tests, despite heroic centuries from Rahul Dravid, now 38 years of age. Eyebrows were raised, but there was no denying that incredibly bad luck like injuries to many key players and poor umpiring decisions had a role to play. But when they arrived in australia in late 2011, hoping to win a series for the first time, they have again been wiped out by an identically humiliating margin of 4-0. And this time no injuries, no umpiring errors, or any other factor that can be attributed to ill luck. Even in the 1990s 4-0 defeats were difficult to believe, and now there were two of them on a trot!! The reputation built over the 2000s has got vandalized at unbelievable speed. What's worse, the current team includes many of the architects of the victories in the 2000s, though 3 of them are nearing 39 years of age now.

When India rose to Number 1 position, experts raised eyebrows because India's bowling attack was not great. They had the world-class but injury-prone pacer Zaheer to lead the attack and the declining but still effective off-spinner Harbhajan, but other bowlers were inconsistent. In these two series, India's bowling did well in patches but could not sustain the good work. In both England and Australia the home sides' bowlers planned a strategy and executed it accurately. But in India, strategies are rarely made and even more rarely executed- Indian cricket is spontaneous. Also it is likely that the defensive tactics of captain Dhoni is partly responsible for the indian bowlers taking a beating several times. Often he set fields to prevent boundaries rather than squeeze the singles and frustrate the batsman. When two batsmen got settled, the team tended to stop aiming for a wicket and just go through the motions. This has happened in South Africa, England and Australia, and India has conceded several 250-300 run partnerships. In such situations the captain needs to keep encouraging and motivating the team, but that is not Dhoni's style of captaincy. He is a quiet tactician. He is tactically very strong in ODIs, but he applies the same tactics in tests, which causes such problems.

In the past 3-4 years, in spite of the bowling not being the strongest, or uninspiring captaincy during bowling, India has made a great record in tests because of their batting being phenomenally strong. With Sachin Tendulkar leading the pack, there have been outstanding contributions from VVS Laxman, Rahul Dravid, Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir. The first 3 of them were born around 1973, and because of their age experts had started talking about phasing them out since 2008. However, it did not happen, and with good reason. In 2009 and 2010, Tendulkar averaged over 78, and Rahul and Laxman too were near 60. But now, at 38-39, age has finally gotten to them, and unfortunately for India it has happened simultaneously and abruptly, giving no time to plan a phase-out. To make things even more unfortunate, the middle-aged batsmen Sehwag, Gambhir and Dhoni, 30-33 years, have also gone into a serious prolonged form slump at the same time. While the latter 3 may find form after spending some time in domestic cricket/county, there is no such possibility for the 3 legends, whom India will have to do without.

But in the defeats in Australia, what looked worst is the lack of application showed by the side. There were no attempt to change the batting order, let alone try new players. The only time a change was made in the team was in Perth when Ashwin was replaced by Vinay Kumar- an inexplicable decision given that Ashwin was the lone specialist spinner and was also scoring some runs. While Australia maintained run-rates of around 4, India could not manage even 3 in most of their innings. Their general air of surrender was symbolized by Zaheer Khan's shows with the bat. He is very far from being a rabbit, and has played several crucial roles with the bat- twice in South Africa in winning causes, and an incredible match-saving half-century in Bangalore against Australia. However, in this series, he simply backed away to the leg-side and whacked at every ball regardless of the situation, often throwing away his wicket.

During the late 2000s, Indian victory had become the norm. It happened gradually, and nobody may have noticed it happening, but it had happened as an outcome of years of hard work by the players, and particularly the flair and talent of the Big 3- Tendulkar, Laxman and Dravid. But blinded by current success, India had forgotten the weak links- the ageing of these 3, the decline of Sehwag, off-form of Gambhir and Dhoni, absense of a regular no.6 batsman and inability to sustain pressure on opposition when a partnership built. The negligence has backfired rudely, and in no time India has plummeted from zenith to nadir, and a recovery does not seem easy.

The Yahoo Internship 2011 (Part 3)

From the second week of July, I started working on the second part of our project. I started with testing out some basic existing algorithms on the data. This involved coding in Matlab. The algorithms were simple but had issues regarding tuning of parameters. Once the baselines were ready, we started on our own algorithm. I suggested one algorithm and Dhruv suggested another. I implemented the first one and soon had good results. Dhruv was quite delighted, and declared that we had "publishable" results. But over the weekend I discovered a strange behavior of the algorithm and after a lot of brainstorming finally understood the problem. I explained the issue to Dhruv, but none of us could find a convincing way to get around it, and so I started implementing the second algorithm. This was much slower, but did not have any other issue. We could convincingly beat the baselines. Buoyed by the success, we tried out a large number of variants throughout July. Dhruv sometimes sat with me and we coded together. Soon I got his habit of saying "Fight kya hai saale ka?" on getting unexpected results or mysterious errors. I now knew that the internship had been fairly successful- a departure from the endless string of failures i had had over the previous year.

In the middle of July, there was a presentation "Intern Showcase", where the interns had to give a 15-minute presentation on their work. During this i got to see many of the interns for the first time, and what they worked on. It was soon after this that Rajeev decided that a large-scale implementation of the project was in order. Charu, a research engineer, was put in charge of this. The last two weeks of my internship often involved myself explaining my work to her. I taught her the basics of topic models and explore-exploit algorithms, and then ran her through our framework and explained my code in detail. I developed a good working relation with her. We always spoke in Hindi, thus making the relation feel more comfortable and informal. It was decided that I would continue to come to the Yahoo! office about once a week over August and early September to help her with her coding, and if possible try something myself in IISc.

As I have said in the previous post, throughout May, June and early July life had been monotonous. It was all work and no play. But in the middle of July, there came a paradigm shift. Uma, who used to sit in our cubicle, had temporarily left Yahoo for a company-sponsored PhD in IIT Bombay. In her place came Isha, a new intern from BITS Pilani. In a matter of a few days we became good friends. She was part of a huge group who joined Yahoo from BITS Pilani- most as interns and some in permanent positions. At lunchtime, Isha's friends like Monika and Priyanka came to call her, and she called me to come with them. I was too happy to dump my original group of lunchmates. Lunchtimes became a lot happier in a company of my own age group. To make things better, one day the Labs team arranged a lunch in the Pyramid restaurant for the interns and their mentors, where most of the interns came to know each other. There were quite a few interns from the IITs who were in BTech or MTech Dual Degree. There were 4 more PhD interns like me, but all were studying outside India- UCSD, ASU UT-Austin etc. Among the BITS-Pilani girls, only Isha was in the Labs team. The following day, all the Labs people (except a lazy few) were taken to Leela Palace for bowling and lunch. Now most of the interns knew each other finally, though most were to leave in a couple of weeks. Most of the younger interns and the BITS Pilani people became friends. Every day a new friendship was made. Next week was Priyanka's birthday, and all of us went over to Pyramid restaurant again. Later the same day, Isha pulled me to a movie being screened in the Cafetaria - "How to train your Dragon". I never had a taste for this kind of movies, but thoroughly liked it (perhaps because of the company). As if all this was not enough, Dhruv went on holiday for a few days and I had lots of fun with Isha and co. The last part of the internship was nothing short of a blast. I decided that even in undergraduate days I never had had so much fun!

(Over)

The Yahoo Internship 2011- part 2

From the second week, the work began in full flow. We had a discussion on the initial model to be tried, and I had to derive the inference equations and then code it up. I was given a Java implementation of LDA written by a Lab member called Prithviraj, and I had to first understand it and then modify it to our model. Also a fair amount of text processing was involved. For two very hectic weeks I was busy with all this, and even had to work full time on weekends, albeit from home. The code was long, and I was always afraid that there will be some bug. There was no concrete way to understand if there is a bug or not.  Throughout the coding phase I tested on small parts of the data. My mentor was often not satisfied with the result and insisted that there was a bug somewhere, and made me look for it. Sometimes a bug was located, and sometimes not, and we had to conclude that the model had limitations. When the code was ready I started to run it on the full data. The results were moderate, but my mentor was not satisfied. However, my advisor in IISc also wanted me to do some work for an approaching deadline. The fourth week of May was very hectic as after returning to the campus in the evening I again had to run to the lab to do this work. Finally in the final week of May my adviser arranged a 1-week break in the internship so that I could do the work in IISc. The leave was granted, but the IISc project did not work out, and I rejoined internship on 1 June.

After the initial results with topic models in May, we decided to try other approaches. This involved designing of features. Throughout June, we tried a wide variety of features, some inspired by other papers and some based on our understanding of the data. I spent quite some time just going through the data to get a feel of what could be good features. We consulted different people, including the Signal Processing stalwart Malcomn Slaney, who had come to India to give a talk at a summer school jointly organized by Yahoo and IISc. Nothing, however gave really promising results. Dhruv once observed that Rajeev's voice was gradually rising, and was worried that a bashing may be coming up soon. Finally, by the last week of June we decided to freeze the issue of features, and go back to modelling. Most of the Java coding was done by me, while Dhruv wrote a few Matlab scripts.  After a fair amount of hard work for a week, Dhruv was satisfied with the results, and decided to move over to the next phase- Explore-Exploit Algorithms. I was satisfied with the hard work and the learning experience, but often rued the lack of freedom and a scope to try my own ideas.

Throughout June and the early part of july I was thus preoccupied with the work. I hardly had any leisure time when in office, and though there were some more interns i never got any chance to make friendship with them. The lunchtimes were monotonous, as already described in the previous post. In the cab also there was no one of my age group except Pavan (1 year senior), but he rarely came, and even if he did come he was busy with his laptop throughout the journey. However, i have the ability to enjoy solitude, and I had a nice time observing the route and the other passengers. I soon picked up the route and with the help of Google Maps, developed an fair idea about the geography of some of the areas we covered during the journey. The most interesting part of the journeys was the Kannada film songs which played on Radio City FM radio. Although I did not follow the lyrics I found the tunes quite amusing. Memories of those tough days are abound with the tunes of "Ore Pinkuu..", "Don't worry Padmavathi", "Sanju mattu Geetha" and "Thara Thara Hidisire".

Another interesting part was in observing the copassengers. In the original schedule I was the first pick-up, but later Sarvanan superceded me. He was an elderly and glum person, who sat quietly on a seat throughout the journey. Shortly after my boarding came Inayat Shareef, the accounts officer in his 40s, with whom I developed an unlikely acquaintance despite the massive age difference. Next were Preethi and Pavan, both of whom were always late by around 5 minutes, introducing a delay of nearly 10 minutes. They boarded near Mathikere bus stop, after which we drove to MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, where on some days the bulky S. Balakrishnan boarded and promptly started reading something on a Kindle Reader. Down the same road was the quiet and ever-punctual Vipin, followed by Shiva and Ravi near MS Ramaiah Hospital. Next was Nethra in Sanjay Nagar, who also kept us waiting regularly at the door of her house, till she returned from the market on a scooter and handed over the vegetables to her maid. After this the bus drove a long way to Kaveri Cinema where the gorgeous Deepika boarded, usually on time.

The bus usually reached the office around 8:30AM, after which I had breakfast in the Cafetaria. There was a wide variety of food, but my menu revolved around veg/onion-cheese-grilled sandwich, masala dosa and idly-vada. Usually the breakfast was taken alone, though sometimes Amit (Swagato's friend) also joined. During the work hours, when I needed to relax the brain and eyes, I strolled around the building. It was 6-storeyed, and we occupied the 3rd floor. Each floor had a "theme", and all the glass-doored conference rooms in that floor were named according to that theme. In our floor, the theme was "Cars", and so the different rooms were named as "Toyota", "Nissan", "Ford" etc. Each floor had a few "Breakout Areas", some of which were for beverages/snacks and some for foosball and TT. Throughout the building, the restrooms were hilariously named "Go-pee" (men's) and "Go-pee-ka" (women's) :-o

(To be continued)

The Yahoo Internship 2011- part 1

2011 was a year full of many experiences, and in contrast to the previous 4 years (except 2009), there were more good/interesting experiences than bad ones. Most of these experiences were acquired during my internship at Yahoo! Labs, Bangalore.

The offer for internship came around February. The timing was good- it served as a morale-booster at a time when my morale was in the lowest possible ebb. A journal paper had been rejected recently, but even worse, i had no direction to work on. So I was rather pleased to get the offer. After consultation with my advisor, i fixed the period of the internship from 2nd May to 29th July. I had been told who would be my mentor, but not what my project would be. At any rate, I had been assured that it would be on Machine Learning. I knew that here was a chance for me to resurrect my failing PhD, and I must make the most of it.

On 2nd May I had been asked to report to Yahoo's Embassy Golf Link office at 9AM. A week before, I had travelled to the place and located the office. On D-Day i woke up at 5:30AM, shaved, bathed and dressed in formals, nibbled a few biscuits and around 7AM, left IISc. I boarded a bus, and after changing at Majestic, getting down at Domlur, walking for 15 minutes and waiting 10 minutes to cross the Intermediate Ring Road, reached the office around 8:30AM. There was a huge, plush building with glass door and a fancy reception hall. It was Monday, and every Monday Yahoo takes in a group of new recruits. I was asked to wait in the reception hall, along with the new joinees. I spent time watching the televisions which were flashing news about the killing of Osama on the previous night. Around 10AM, we were hearded off to a medium-sized lecture hall. A HR member called Vineeta Varkey conducted the orientation of the group, introduced us to the different facilities in Yahoo and made us fill up lots of forms. She also divided us into random groups of 6, and conducted a short GD on why Yahoo is special. There were about 45 people joining on that day, of which only I seemed to be in a technical position. Most of the people were older than me, and came from other companies. By the end of the particularly boring day, I had my laptop and accessories, but the cubicle which had been assigned to me turned out to be already occupied by someone else! But it was already nearing 5PM, and at 5:30 the vehicles leave. So i had to pack up for the day without even meeting my mentor and manager, though I did find out their cubicle numbers from Vineeta. I had to speak to the transport officer Mr. Venky and he assigned me to a cab (Yahoo has a fleet of 50 cabs in addition to shuttle services and late-night cabs). I boarded the cab-a Tavera- and returned home after a long journey through heavy rains and heavy traffic jams.

Next day I again had to come to office by myself, and this time after breakfast went straight to the cube of my mentor Dhruv. He was in his position, and helped me get a seat in his cubicle. It was a cubicle with 4 desks. I would sit diagonally opposite my mentor, and the other two positions were occupied by Subhajit and Uma. Soon after I had established myself at the position, that I was called for a meeting with Rajeev, my manager, along with Dhruv. The problem was defined and I was given a set of papers to read. I was somewhat disappointed that it was related to text and not vision. The major components of the project were Topic Models which I knew in theory but had never worked with in practice, and Explore-Exploit Algorithms, about which I had no damn clue. So the first week was devoted to reading the papers sent to me, and getting a working knowledge of the subject. Throughout this week I got acquainted with the different people who worked in the Labs, and often we went for lunch together in the Yahoo Cafetaria. This lunch group had, except myself and Dhruv, Sundar (IISc alumnus), Vinod, Vidit, Sachin, Ajesh and sometimes Pankaj and Charu. Dhruv, Vidit, Vinod and Sundar were Research Scientists and the rest Research Engineers. Unfortunately most of them were quite older, and discussed matters over lunch which were of no interest to me. So i stayed quiet and simply listened to them.

The first week was marred by transportation problem. While returning there was no problem, and the 1.5hr journey was made entertaining by Shijo and Sharmila who kept fighting and pulling each other' legs all through. I also got acquainted with Keerthi, Srikanth and Inayat. But in the mornings i could never catch the cab. The cab driver spoke only Kannada, and though other passengers helped us negotiate a pick-up point, the cab either did not come to that point or it was full by the time it came. So every day i had to wait till about 8AM for the cab, and then take a bus, jostle through the crowd, and reach office around 9:30, which is an hour late. This issue was fixed the following week, when i was assigned to a new cab- a Tempo Traveller- with more seats, a more convenient pick-up point and a driver who could speak a language which was an acceptable approximation of Hindi.

(To be Continued)

Sustainable Human Development in India: Some thoughts

India is the 7th-largest country in the world in terms of area, but the 2nd-largest in terms of population. Recently, the population crossed a staggerring 1.2 billion. This means that roughly 16 per cent of the world's population lives in India. The question is, what is their standard of living? Unfortunately, the answer is "very unsatisfactory". In terms of Human Development Index, which is supposed to reflect an average person's access to what is considered as basic amenties-food, water, sanitation and education (and others), India ranks much worse than many African countries.

The Indian cities have been witnessing phenomenal growth in population. This is mostly due to migration of people from smaller towns and villages, in search of jobs. Some of these migrants are educated youngsters who come to work in the companies (Bangalore, the IT and engineering hub of India attracts educated youngsters including myself from all over the country), and many others come in search of lesser-paying jobs like drivers, labourers,  carpenters etc. Many others travel each day to the cities from suburbs as daily wage earners. The first category are paid lucrative salaries by the MNCs-there are reports of college freshers being offered 40lakhs per annum-with which they start living luxurious lives. The second category often earn as little as 40K per annum, despite severely demanding nature of their jobs. Apart from this disparity of income, the profligate lifestyles of the rich citizens tend to hamper the living conditions of the cities. Bangalore suffers the problem of traffic congestions as it has far more private cars it can handle. Added to this is the problem of pollution. I will advocate a law that no citizen should be allowed to posseess more than 1 car or two-wheeler. Moreover, private cars and taxis should be allowed to travel only if they carry some least number of passengers (perhaps 3). While this may be looked upon by some as encroachment on personal freedom, such a step may be necessary for sustainability of the system given that it is under enormous stress. On the other hand, the government has to improve the public transport system. This will not only reduce the need for personal transport, but also provide employment.

Housing is another issue in big cities. While the rich people often practically own several flats-far more than what they need-the poor people are forced to stay in slums or congested settlements, in poor conditions. We can do with a law that will allow a person to own only one flat in a city, and that too if his wife/her husband and his/her parents do not own a flat. If a family is too big to be accomodated in a single flat then additional flat can be owned, but only after a verification by a commitee.  There should be a dedicated municipal body in each city to control housing. Once the rich people consume less space, the extra space can be used to provide better living conditions for dwellers of slums and shanties.

Two of the deepest problems in India are corruption and population explosion. For corruption control there are laws which are usually ineffective, as the enforcers are themselves corrupt. For population control the government has tried out different measures over the years-from forced sterilization to awareness programs. Yet there is no let-up in population growth. I wonder if the government can observe every alternate year as "Birth-Free Year"s, in which no new birth will be allowed. Of course, it will have to be made known well in advance so that families can plan accordingly. Any birth reported in such years would be considered as an offence, and will be dealt with accordingly. The government had coined a slogan "Hum Do, Hamare Do" over a decade ago, urging couples to have at most two children. It can be turned into a law.

It may not be nice to have such restrictions on people in a democratic country. But India has serious problems with her economy, population and living conditions of the people. Unfortunate but true, Indians still consider cars and houses as status symbols, and are driven by the desire to possess more of them without caring about the larger picture of sustainable growth of the country. That is why I find it important to have such laws, even at the cost of some personal freedom.

A train journey (a completely random post)

It was a warm and sunny day in Bangalore. Around 12 noon, I put my bag on my shoulders, double-locked my hostel room, called home that i am departing and set off. I bought some snacks from the shop opposite Kabini, and went out through the main gate. After waiting a few miniutes, a Majestic-bound bus came and I boarded it. Around noon on a saturday the roads were clear, and in about 20 minutes i was outside the huge building with "Bangalore City" written on top in 3 languages. I texted mom and entered the station building.

Like any major railway station in India, it was very crowded inside. After moving about arbitrarily for a few minutes I finally found the electronic display for arrivals and departure. My train, Vrindavan Express, had been scheduled on Platform 1. So, no overbridges. I reached the platform and found it vacant. I sat on a bench and waited. The platform was clean and relatively empty. Soon i got bored and started walking up and down, looking at the various charts put up along the walls. Before long i heard a whistle and turned back. The Up train was coming from Chennai, led by a red WAP4 loco. The same rake will return to Chennai. The train stopped, the passengers got down, the railway staff locked the doors from inside for maintainance. Finally around 2PM they were opened for the Chennai-bound passengers. I pulled out my e-ticket printout and checked my coach and seat number. It was AC Chair Car, and I had booked a window seat. I was only the third passenger to board my car, and quickly found my seat and occupied it. 

Ever since childhood, i have had a deep passion for train journeys. Even at the age of 25, nothing attracts me more than train journeys. I really find it weird when i see people sleeping on the upper berth all through the day in a train. On a train I never need a companion, or even a book, and sit glued to the window all day. The ever-changing landscape, the stations, tracks, other trains and locomotives fascinate me. 

There is another kind of excitement that i feel when i first board a train. Who will be my co-passengers? Will there be a family, a group of college students returning home, servicemen travelling alone? Most importantly (though least likely) will there be a nice girl of my age, travelling alone to the same destination? I sat in my seat for several minutes, in optimistic excitement. Soon my copassengers arrived. A sikh family of 4 members- husband,wife, child and another male. The adults were in their early 30s. The sardarji sat next to me, and his wife on the corridor seat. It was time for departure. Soon there was a long whistle and the train moved. I texted mom again and looked out. The journey had begun!

The train rolled slowly, over the elevated tracks. We were travelling next to the busy main roads of bangalore. The train was crawling slowly, and the vehicles on the road were overtaking. I hate this stuff. I don't understand why the vehicles appear next to the train only when it is crawling- why can't they come when it is running at full speed? On long journeya, very occasionally when the tracks come next to a highway and I see my train overtaking the trucks, buses and cars, I feel really excited! After several minutes of rolling, the train reached Bangalore Cantonment station. Many people boarded my car. The TTE appeared soon. I gave him my e-ticket printout. He checked the name, ticked it and returned it to me without nothering to check the identity card. Sardarji got his ticket checked, and looked at me. He asked in Hindi if I was travelling alone. I replied in the affirmative. Then he asked me whether I lived in Bangalore, and then which school I studied in. I have got used to being asked this in trains. I replied that I study in a college. He looked genuinely surprised. This is the one moment I hate on trains. I would generally love to talk to copassengers- but as a 25-year-old matured person, not as a 14-year-old boy which they usually consider me (not without reason). On further questioning by Sardarji I just said that I study engineering, and was going home in Kolkata. This is what i usually reply when asked on trains what i am studying- I really hate it when people stare at me, obviously wondering how this 14-year-old boy is doing PhD....has India finally got a new child prodigy?

To avoid further questions I concentrated on the window. To be polite I kept looking into the compartment from time to time, so that Sardarji did not think i was avoiding conversation or something. When he asked nothing more for the next 15 minutes, I pulled out my earphones and plugged them into the ears, and started enjoyong the journey. The train had now crossed the city limits of Bangalore, and was moving at a good speed towards Bangarapet. There is a curious feature next to the track- a hillock with extremely large round rocks on it. As it passed, I thought of photographing it with my mobile camera but decided against. I tried to estimate the speed of the train by looking at the mileposts and measuring the time. We were taking 33 seconds to cover a kilometer- more than 100kph. I was satisfied.

The train reached Jolarpettai bang on time, and departed. I sent yet another text home, and again concentrated on the window. It was a bright sunny afternoon over the fields and meadows. The train was rushing at over 100kph again. I loved it all- the weather, the scenary, the speed, the fact that i was going home, the song playing in my earphone, and the very fact that i am on a train. The speed reduced after some time, and soon we came to an unscheduled halt in the middle of a field. Obviously the train was waiting for signal. 15 minutes passed. I was feeling disturbed. The journey resumed finally, and we reached Katpadi behind time. The sikh family got down, and two other people boarded the train and took the seats next to me. This time, the person sitting next to me was actually a girl. As soon as she took her seat she pulled out a phone and started speaking over it in Tamil. I took out my lunchbox and ate the snacks i had bought in iisc. It was getting dark. There was not much to look outside. This was a problem with AC coaches- nothing can be seen at night as the glasses reflect the interior of the car. I abandoned the window and looked into the car. The girl had an e-ticket, and had kept it ready for the TTE. At one point i gave a short glance out of curiousity- Meenakshi, 28 years, Katpadi to Chennai.

A couple of hours passed. I was getting bored inside the car, and kept peeping through the window occasionally but nothing could be seen outside. Only i could feel the train moving. To entertain, I kept following the music in my earphones. At length, lights became visible outside. We were entering into an urban area- possibly chennai. We were soon travelling next to roads, buildings and shops. Finally the train entered Chennai Central. The delay had been more than made up-we were 15 minutes before time. The passengers got down, and from the platform i gave a call home. Then i hurried to find the electronic displays- i had to find the Chennai-Howrah Mail now.

The Vegeterianism Issue

One issue that is frequently discussed and debated in India, and with much lower but increasing frequency across the world, is that of vegeterianism/veganism. Lots of arguments are put forth by a small but extremely vocal group of people who advocate shunning of meat/animal products. A large fraction of them are Hindus from India, who have been born in vegeterian families to start with. Also in developed Western countries, where non-vegeterian foods from a large number of animals form a very large proportion of the diet, some people are voluntarily taking up vegeterianism, and some of them are also vociforously campaigning for the cause. As is the norm in my blog, I will analyze the major arguments one by one, and finally express my personal opinion.

1) Philosophical/Religious argument: Killing is unethical/a sin. Some recent philosophers say that killing "sentient beings" (beings that are aware of their surroundings) is unethical. But immediately we are faced with the question- What about plants? Why is killing them NOT unethical/a sin? Just because we think plants are insentient, do we have the right to kill them? And why at all should sentience be the criteria in this regard? Why not any other criteria- either more restrictive or less?

2) Cruelty argument: This is PETA's main argument. Lots of videos are available showing the pathetic conditions in which animals are reared in the large-scale, mechanized meat industry, particularly in US. Many animals are so much overfed that their legs break under the weight of their bodies, and in some cases animals are skinned alive. These are facts, but not sound arguments for vegeterianism. Their demand should be to make the rearing houses and slaughterhouses more sensitive to the livestock.

3) Emotional argument: "How can u eat such sweet little creatures?" or "Don't u feel that these are sons/daughters of someone else?" - Well of course these can appeal to some people, but once again it is not a sound argument. Nonvegeterians will quickly point out that there are many carnivorous animals as well, and food chain is a natural phenomena. Claims like "human beings are naturally vegeterians- they take meat only out of greed" are baseless- human beings learned to hunt long before agriculture, and many tribals, who are the most "natural" human beings are non-vegeterians.

4) Health arguments: Both types of diet have their benifits and drawbacks. Studies do not show any marked difference between health standards of vegeterians and non-vegeterians.

5) Environmental arguments: At least in the US, where animals are reared for meat on a very large scale, a lot of land is taken up by this large-scale meat industry. Slaughterhouses emit large amounts of Carbon Dioxide and other harmful gases. Rearing animals requires utilization of water several times higher than that required for cultivation. Moreover, to feed the livestock and make them fleshy, lots of foodgrains are required, which could have been consumed by human beings themselves- hunger and poverty still exist in shocking degrees in developing countries including india. It is too fantastic to expect that if all or most of the meat industry closed down, the foodgrains would be distributed among the poor- that is a different issue altogether. But this environmental argument does carry a lot of merit. However there is a rider: if the animals being reared for food were released, and the industry closed, these animals will continue to exist freely, and graze, eat and drink..... what will be the environmental impact of that? Has it been studied? Unless it is, the argument will not be complete.

Although I have systematically contradicted the arguments for vegeterianism, I am myself vegeterian. Not by religion, but by choice. I had made the choice in early 2010 mainly because I felt guilty somewhere inside that beings are killed for my food, but soon I got confused when the "plant angle" (discussed in point 1) came t mind. Still I continued the vegeterian diet as a personal choice, without appealing to others to follow suit. There are many arguments for vegeterianism- though often unsatisfactory as shown above, but there is no satisfactory argument for non-vegeterianism either!! And the Point 5 as above seems to tilt the scale towards vegeterianism. So I am continuing to be on vegeterian diet. But i am critical of the self-righteous and often effusively sentimental views of the veggie activists- as individuals they are free to do whatever they believe, but they can't expect others to follow unless they have valid, universally acceptable reasons.