Bangalore Metblogs » bglr_bhaskar

The Geek Factor…

bglr_bhaskar — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 03:10:21 +0000

Bangalore witnessed one of the propitious gatherings of the year as youthful and innovative minds from all over the nation came down to India’s Silicon valley for the national finals of Imagine Cup and the national exhibition for Microsoft Student Academic Project Program. The barometer hit the ceiling as the competition got tougher among the best of the nation. Projects spanned over innumerable domains of research and application including medicine, health, information retrieval, machine learning, speech recognition and machine translation to name a few.

Microsoft’s interest in Indian students has become quite evident over the last year or so specifically with the hosting of events such as the Imagine Cup and Code4Bill. I cherish having qualified for the national finals for MSAPP (The Horde Project) and for the zonal finals for Code4Bill.

Monsoon wedding

bglr_bhaskar — Sun, 16 Apr 2006 05:54:39 +0000

After weeks of scorching heat and days of scorching controversies Bangalore was hit by pleasant downpour all evening. Though the matrimonial hunting season may not be that close the commemorative change in weather paraded blissful greetings into the not-so-perfect marriage of thousands of daily office goers and the Bangalore summer.

And in the midst of it all I managed to get completely drenched on my way home. How I felt like a naughty kid whose mom wasn’t looking!

The day after tomorrow

bglr_bhaskar — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 16:34:51 +0000

The transformation from rioting rampages to just another day in the lives of Bangalore’s software professionals is probably no less inexplicable as was the break out of mob violence yesterday. The city residents woke up on this Saturday as if from a bad dream with no more than vague recollections of what took place less than 12 hours ago. BMTC buses and autos are back on the streets and so is every single working citizen. The happening of yesterday seems to have left no more of an impression than any other action flicks on the big screen. It hardly seems any administrative authority is going to lose their hair over this matter, at least not until there is a sure possibility of yet another such incident.

Is Bangalore going to move on like nothing ever happened? Has the price of six innocent lives come down so far down the ladder of Indian economy? Or have the keyboard bashing software professionals of this city been numbed solely into the world of the Internet where physical emotions and losses no longer hold any real worth?

May the following videos (Source: CNN IBN Live @ http://www.ibnlive.com/) stay as subtle reminders of something that should neither be forgotten nor forgiven.

Mob violence overtakes the Garden City

Hospitals flooded in bangalore

One Death stalls Six million Lives!

bglr_bhaskar — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 07:40:47 +0000

Today’s afternoon in Bangalore was met by the heartrending news of the demise of the acting legend of Kannada film industry (Sandalwood), Mutturaju Singanalluru Puttaswamayya, popularly known among his fans as Dr. Rajkumar. Yet in this moment of grief what rose above all was the mind-boggling manner in which the news was met by 6 million Bangaloreans.

As the news pervaded into every single home over the wire through television sets and over FM Radio, Bangalore strangely found itself choking in an atmosphere permeated with smoke from burning tires and nightmarish visions of road side vandalisms. The city dressed itself in charred remains of burnt tires and glass pieces as it got ready to bid its very last farewell to the acting legend. To a person resident in this city only for the last 4 years this was not only beyond comprehension but outright criminal. Petrol pumps were set on fire and public transports stoned to stagnancy. All stores shuttered down and people ran home “shit-scared” in the middle of the afternoon. I saw no remorse in most of the participants who seemingly had found just another excuse for open drunken revelry on the streets to feed their ever ravenous hunger for sadistic destruction of public property. Auto drivers refused to turn the meters in reverence to the great man but agreed to 4 times the fare for any tad of service. Honest remorse was as rare among the contributors as was evidently any signs of culture or civilization.

The day is closing in dismal silence and I am still to understand what inspired such out burst among people but then again I might be ignorant of some key piece of Karnataka’s history or the political picture. Yet, having hailed from the city of Kolkata where I have witnessed tragic but civilized farewell being bid to multiple persona in the rank of Nobel Laureate Mother Teresa and Satyajit Ray, winner of the Oscar for Lifetime Achievement, I would still stand in disgrace of the ridiculously vulgar demonstration of the day. The day would probably stand as one rare black mark in the otherwise bravura that was the life of Dr. Rajkumar. As the sun rises again Bangalore shall awake to realize the real loss of not only a great man but also that of Bangalore’s administrative infrastructure and most importantly the face of the tech Hub of the nation in front of the rest of the world. Bangalore, what were you thinking?

The following snaps were taken around 100 Ft Ring Rd., Bangalore.

Breeding grounds

bglr_bhaskar — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 12:32:29 +0000

Every year Bangalore is getting more accustomed to the in pour of thousands of students and professionals nurturing technical aspirations making the silicon valley of the south the largest breeding ground for technical ambitions in India. Yet the question remains on whether this massive stream is finding the right course. Will Bangalore be the Messiah to lead the nation to the crest of the Future Technology Nations or is it training a nation to become the provider for others who will tomorrow take the cherry?

A closer look reveals a more dismal image of what is one of the world’s largest repositories of software talents. More students every day are taught to be concerned about employment possibilities with partial or total disregard to cultivation of research mentalities and entrepreneurship. It is pressing that the educational boards of Karnataka (Bangalore University, Visvesvaraya Technological University and the likes) make immediate realization of the fact that though the stereotype system of education has worked well till date in building the technology backbone of the nation, the need of the present is a system that fosters and tests for the right skill set beyond the syllabus. I for one will love to see more of Silicon Valley’s famous garage culture than a conformist bunch of software professionals.