Gandhi's ink pen was made in Rajahmundry

Exposition:
I am not comfortable writing with anything that is transparent or even remotely translucent. Ever since I have been allowed to write with a pen (class 4), I have been writing with a fountain pen and hence I consider myself an expert in judging fountain pens, the only qualification for expertise being the inability to write comfortably with a ball point pen. I gladly attribute my good handwriting^{[citation needed]} to the smooth flowing fountain pens.

Rising Action:
Very recently, while I was doing my usual research, (clicking random links and reading whatever I click) I ran into a news article (dated 1st October, 2009) in which the luxury pen maker Mont Blanc has announced a “limited-series” gold and rhodium Mahatma Gandhi special edition pen to commemorate the 1930 Dandi March. The pen costs about fourteen lakh rupees (Rs 14,00,000) and they are selling 241 pens to mark the 241 mile march.

Isn’t it ironic that the man who stood for the poorest of poor is exploited as a brand to sell pens to the richest of rich? If anyone really wants to commemorate Mahatma Gandhi, they should buy Ratnam Pens.

Flashback:
Mr. K. V. Ratnam was from a family of goldsmiths who were also involved in making lithographic blocks. He met Gandhiji during the swadeshi movement in 1921. Gandhiji advised him to make something that could be useful to the common man and that was inexpensive. That was when they started making pens. In 1932, the first pen was ordered by Nyapati Subba Rao Pantulu, one of the founders of The Hindu. It was made of silver.

Ratnam then made a pen from ebonite material and sent it as a gift to Mahatma Gandhi who wrote back to him commending it (scanned copy of the original letter that is displayed in the store, click for a bigger version). The pens retained their status and popularity even after independence and boasts of clients like Indira Gandhi, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, Shankar Dayal Sharma, S Kasturiranga Iyengar (founder of The Hindu) and Ramnath Goenka (founder of the Indian Express Group) and Jayanth Tadinada (pro blogger, gtoosphere) among thousands of others.

In the late 1950s, K. V. Narasimhacharyulu, the son of Ratnam went to Germany and on his return started a ballpoint pen manufacturing unit for the first time in India in Rajahmundry. Ratnam’s two sons continue to run the pen business to this day from Rajahmundry.

Epilogue:
* Ratnam Sons have an extensive catalogue with ebonite fountain pens starting from Rs. 55 and the custom made Gold and Silver pens can go up to Rs. 30,000.

* They make really awesome customized gifts which can be ordered by phone and are shipped within a week.

* I recently bought yet another Ratnam pen and absolutely love it. (It is way better than the Chinese ‘Hero’ pens)

* My handwriting used to be very good but has declined after coming to IIT because I don’t take notes and use the computer for everything (may some of my school friends or family members can give a citation)

* This post is getting way too long to maintain the reader’s attention.

Leadership by Ineptitude

Chapter 1: Birth of a new idea
Circa 1998 AD

Mom tells little g2 that he is not a little boy anymore, so he has to take responsibility for his stuff and that also includes ironing his school uniform. Now little g2 as we know, hates ironing (he hates any form of work). So this is what he did- he started the ironing and did it so bad that mom was worried that he might burn his uniforms. Soon she realized that doing the work herself is much easier (both emotionally and economically) than making him work.

Chapter 2: The idea reaches puberty
Circa 2002 AD

g2 and his bunch of friends have just screwed up things real bad. They cooked and pillow-fought at his friend’s place and the whole house is a mess. They have less than 40 minutes to get the house back into shape lest all hell breaks loose. The girl at (whose place they made a mess) was paranoid. Everyone hurried; everyone was scared, everyone except g2. He took initiative and coolly started rearranging the furniture (intentionally) at places they didn’t belong. The others saw what was happening and quickly asked him to step aside and they cleaned up the mess in record time.

Chapter 3: The idea is bald
Present day

g2 is sure that his idea, with all its counter intuitiveness has the potential to be the next big management fad. He calls it Leadership by Ineptitude. It basically comprises of three simple, reciprocatable (g2 is not quite sure if this is a word) and highly scalable processes. They are as follows.

1. Take initiative with an air of arrogance giving out the message that no one else can do a “better job” than you.
2. Do it so bad that others should feel like they can do a better job and are motivated to do a “better job” just to prove a point.
3. Let them do the “better job” and you take credit for taking initiative and motivating them.

This is beneficial for the company in two ways. Firstly, the most useless people are moved up into the senior management- a place where they can do least damage to the company. And two: they make place for more efficient people. Think about it. (Edit: May be this is how governments function)

A collage of some psychedelic photography using only LEDs for lighting (thanks to Prady and Apoorv):

Sense of Humor

Part I: Monkey in the lab part II

I was there getting into an international flight for the first time. My luggage was like 5 or 6 kilos over the limit and my dad waiting outside, kind of worried if they would allow it or not. After checking in my baggage, I wasted time loitering around in the airport without going to the immigration (to be honest I did not even know I was supposed to go to immigration, I thought it was for losers coming into the country ;)...) And soon I realized it is for losers leaving :( So I slipped my phone into the pocket of my new cargo pants and zipped the pocket(no idea why I zipped it... may be because its there).

Traveling by air is not at all fun. Even the little excitement about the trip is killed in the airports. At least for me it did. Standing in a stupid security checkup for an hour was boring to say the least. And just when my turn was about to come, my phone started to ring. It was my dad, I knew it from the ring tone. I wanted to answer it but the zip got stuck. The phone was ringing and vibrating, the security guy asks me to hurry up, I had two pieces of hand baggage in my hands, the flight leaves in 20 minutes, the passengers behind me in the queue were getting impatient and the zipper was stuck! Something's gotta give!

I let the person behind me go and tried to open it, it was stuck in the awfullest of ways in the cruelest of times. I tried to break it open but LEE happens to make some really strong pockets! I asked someone else for help. He was holding the zip and pulling out as hard as possible while I was struggling with my balance! No luck either. Then I asked another woman with a baby in the next line if she had some kind of a sharp object that could cut through jeans and she looked at me like I was some kind of an idiot. (Of course she would... who carries sharp objects that can cut through jeans to the security check in an airport!)

So I went ahead with the security check with the phone still inside the pocket (ringing)...

Security guy: What is this?
Me: It's a phone
Security guy: You are supposed to keep it in the tub there.
Me: I know... but the zip of the pocket got stuck and I am not able to take the phone out...
Security guy: Look please, there is a lot of queue, don't waste time.
Me: stepped aside and gave place to someone else. Tried to tear open the zip but no luck
Security guy: Now... make it fast.
Me: I'm trying but am not able to.
Security guy: ignores
Me <in the nicest voice possible>: Do you have a knife or something. I want to cut this open.
Security guy <Serious stare>: No knife, only gun!

My future home address

Now that we are likely to have congress again forming a govt. we can expect the more public roads and buildings named after the Gandhi’s. I pray that someone has the sense to pass some kind of a law which prevents parties (read congress) from using the govt. money to build a brand name for the party and the family. It reminds me of one of Hitler’s quotes which when translated sounds something like, “tell the same lie for a hundred times and you can’t differentiate it from the truth any longer.”

It scares me to think about the future generations, they find almost every other building named after Rajiv Gandhi or Sanjay Gandhi, they’ll be fooled into think that the Gandhi’s were remarkable people who did remarkable things. May be if the congress rules India for 10 more years, directions to my home would sound something like this.

Get down at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, take the P. V. Narasimha Rao flyover. From Sanjay Gandhi Park, go straight and take the first left after Indira Gandhi statue. Take the road to Gandhi Nagar, cross the Indira Gandhi Bridge to reach Rajiv Gandhi Municipal School, next to the Rajiv Gandhi Municipal School is a transformer (yet to be named after a Gandhi!) The plush bungalow next to the transformer is my future home.

Euro Trip Part 1: Monkey in the lab

Getting into an international flight for the first time at the Mumbai international airport is not an easy task. At least I found it a little difficult and the late night flights have a huge queue for security check. I got a window seat (as requested) but it was probably the second worst window seat one can possibly get (the first being the one right above the wing). It was just before the wing, so I could look directly into the engine and also a good amount of the ground. I was trying to figure out how to use the various gadgets available there and that is the first time I felt like a monkey in the lab, a feeling I have experienced quite often over the next couple of days. It is like someone is playing a cruel experiment- try this button and then if you do it right, you get a small incentive like turning off the light, getting the table (or the plank whatever you call it).

Taps! Why are there so many kinds of taps? I have gone through 4 or 5 airports till now and none of the air ports have the same kind of taps for their wash basins! Not even the same mechanism. You have to pull some, you have to push some. Some you have to turn clockwise while the others, anticlockwise and the rest automatically spill water on your shirt! Why can’t there be international standards for taps too??? I think a fancy restroom is the best money-in-the-lab moment for me and I am assuming for a lot of other people too, unless you choose to wait till someone else comes and uses the tap.
The next, probably the biggest monkey-in-the-lab moment I had was in the kitchen. I did not know how to open the kitchen door. It was locked all the time and there was a notice (in French) which I misinterpreted. So it took me one full day to figure out that the same key that opens my room opens the kitchen also! Once I am in the kitchen it took me one more day to find out the on button of the electric stove and to figure out how to use it! I still do not know anything about housekeeping and laundry so more-monkey-in-the-lab moments in store for me.

Es'sense' of humor

Ever wondered how all those funny guys come up with all the funny stuff? I did... in fact I have been doing research on that for one month now. Now most people I know laugh when I use the words "research" and "me" in the same sentence (even before I finish the sentence). May be it has got to do with my rather offbeat research techniques. For instance my research in humor goes like this. I try to figure out how I come up with funny stuff and then generalize the results on how all the funny people come up with all the funny ideas. "A rather controversial method" you might say. The surprising thing is that this is nothing new. Sigmund Freud did this all his life and he is now considered the father of psychology!

Sense of humor is an interesting paradox. It has no funny definition! Also, the notion of sense of humor changes with the gender. A guy is said to have a good sense of humor if he has the ability to make people laugh. A girl is said to have a good sense of humor if she laughs at whatever the guy-with-good-sense-of-humor says. I know it is unfair but yes, it is pretty easy for the girls, all they have to do is laugh!

Speaking of research, some topics are easier to do research on than others.



I'll illustrate most of my research findings in simple sketches because sketching gives me a lot of pleasure:


Here are some of my research findings illustrated:

Sometimes, giving pep talk to depressed bald people can get quite tricky. Even humor might not help.

Grace

Well I was looking at some gallery dedicated to Bapu( http://www.bapubomma.com/biography.htm ) , a legendary telugu artist, painter, movie director and a lot more and felt like drawing a traditional graceful South Indian woman. Moments later I was just browsing and found some fellow blogger( r.kamal) whose sketch I used as a reference. I started drawing it directly with a ball pen so I couldn't correct those minor mistakes that inevitably creep in. Not really sure if I managed to bring out the grace element :(



P.S: for people who can read telugu only :p

కొంటె బొమ్మల బాపు
కొన్ని తరముల సేపు
గుండె ఊయలలూపు
ఓ కూనలమ్మ

spiders make good pets

Almost a couple of weeks back I was in my room doing my own things when KD knocked my door and with his usual devilish smile showed me a box that had this…

A huge spider, almost 4 or 5 inches of leg span; long slender legs- 8 in all curved gracefully to support a big yellow body having just enough space for its big tummy and 8 tiny eyes only two of which I could clearly see, tiny black spots and sharp hair all over. It was definitely one of the most fascinating things I have seen from that close a distance. It’s complicated movement with all the slender legs dangling and moving in a seemingly haphazard fashion, like the ropes in the back stage of a puppet show; and yet with all the randomness there is an element of eloquence which only made me painfully perspicacious of my inability to cohere the random swings with the svelte movement. I am not even trying to describe the way it hunts because that I believe, like all other uncanny creations of nature, beyond the vocabulary of the greatest of poets and the imagination of the greatest of painters (may be pixar can do something about it!).

Almost immediately I decided that I am going to adopt it, have it in my room and observe more fascinating things… we made a temporary accommodation in a transparent plastic box, bored holes put some moist cotton, some mud and slipped it in and the first night it was restless, trying to read the conditions and searching for a route to escape from what is going to be a happy home for it… that was when I started suspecting the credibility of my decision to have it as a pet. So I decided to ask for opinion of people around me. The opinions can be broadly categorized into two: Wow! and Eww! A lot of people expressed concern that I am restricting the freedom of a highly 3-dimensional unsuspecting arachnid that just came to grace the warmth of Swaroop’s CPU. So I researched... the more I learnt about spiders, the more convinced I was that it is ok to have a spider in a terrarium which is now officially 'The Spigloo’.

Having a spider in a terrarium is no different from having an aquarium with goldfish in it. In fact it is better. I feed my spider live insects which it hunts and eats if it likes them otherwise just kills them and leaves them to rot unlike those poor little fish which are forced to survive on those artificial food pellets which I am sure tastes like fish crap when compared to a live worm. Ask any fish and it would definitely agree with me on that account. Fishes are social animals and move around in schools and colonies and having just two or three of them in a small tank, there is a chance that the fish might feel lonely but spiders unlike fishes are not at all social. They eat just about anything as long as it is alive and smaller than itself. Even other spiders of the same species! The average male spider is smaller than the female and often runs the risk of being mistaken as prey and eaten when it approaches a female during the mating season!. So I am actually doing my spider a favor by keeping it away from those evil female spiders! (I am assuming mine’s male)

Spiders are very clean (unlike fishes) and noiseless (unlike a lot other pets) animals. They need no pampering, no socializing and more than happy to stay alone as long as an odd insect keeps flying in its web. They don’t need much attention either, a few hundred million years of natural selection has done a lot of good to them. Have a busy week ahead with exams, deadlines and submissions? It’s ok; just leave the spider alone because they can go without food for a couple of weeks (though I make it a point to feed it every alternate day... I don’t want to risk starving it). And feeding it is real easy and cheap too… All I have to do is catch a few bugs and insects that come to my room everyday and drop them in the spigloo and then enjoy watching spiders do what they are best at- hunting. I have also designed the least yucky mechanism that doesn’t involve me actually touching any of those insects with my hands (though I am comfortable touching insects and stuff). And the best part is that they can make real men jump around like silly little girls. :D

This is my spider in its spigloo… I hope you guys like it too…

Zeroing in on a large house spider, look at the difference in size!

P.S: I have to give my spider a name, I know they never respond to names but still people always name their fish and teddy bears! So I have zeroed in on Octavius. I think it is an obvious name… eight legs, eight eyes and I found it in the eight month of the year and we can go on giving instances of 8 like numerologists do! If you have any suggestions for a better name... Please comment