Suresh Chandrasekaran's Blog, page 13

Smelling roses

"Roses stink!" said my friend.There was a gasp of surprise from the assembled lot of friends at this blasphemy. Me, I nodded knowingly.You see, you get this advice in life about taking time to smell the roses. You understand, you pine for the time to be able to smell the roses, but with your nose so firmly to the grindstone that it cannot even smell shit. On those brief times when you can

What is reality?

Ever since the advent of social media, especially everyone's favorite alma mater - WhatsApp university, I have been forced to wonder about the nature of reality. This has built into a near obsession after the recent spate of improvements, if one may call them that, in Artificial Intelligence.One does understand that, with the growing paucity of the natural version, there is a felt need for

Smash thine enemy?

It is sort of normal for me to see people exalting Tamil in Tamil movie posters but that exaltation very seldom carries over to actually excerpting anything from Tamil literature in the posters. So, it was a bit of a surprise to see an excerpt...but, yeah, if there would at all be an excerpt it would be from good old Tiru's work.Uyirrpa ularallar mandra seyirppavar semmai sidhaikkalaa Thaar -

Austerities lead to wealth?

Ilar Palar aagiya kaaranam norpaar silar palar nolaadhavar - TirukkuralMany are poor and few rich because the few do austerities and the many do not - Loose TranslationIt's a ticklish thing when it comes to translating words in Tamil (or Sanskrit, as I have had reason to bemoan when I wrote 'Maya-Is it all Illusion') into English. This word - austerities - for example. Or, even, these words 'poor

The sharpest weapon?

When anyone talks of ancient wisdom, you automatically assume that the chap is going to spout off about how 'Love conquers all' and how money is the root cause of all evil and so on. The said man could well be on a lecture tour, being paid a hefty sum of money so that he can tell you about how money is the enemy of happiness, but still...It's a pleasant surprise, therefore, to see Tiru actually

Who needs reality?

There is this scene in one of the Matrix movies where a character bites into a hamburger and says something like "I know this is not real. But who cares? It tastes damned good." Just the way I would feel, I suppose, and I think most of the world would feel like that.I mean, come on, what you experience of the world is mostly through your five senses. It is all fine to be telling me that machines

Replaced by bots?

There was this sudden flurry of people putting up poetry (mostly what poets would dismissively call 'rhymes') and essays and whatnot, leading me to wonder about whether there was a new virus infecting people with the urge to write. Reading the fine print, I realized that there was this experimental bot sort of thing called ChatGPT which was actually doing all this writing with my FB friends

Squeeze the juice

My earliest memories of this juice-squeezing were of home made lemon juice. Back then (oh, yeah, were you not expecting this phrase to pop up sooner or later?), almost all the cool drinks available to us were either home made or the fresh made ones (though of questionable hygiene) by the pushcart vendors. And sugar being a relatively expensive commodity back then, juices were a treat.The only fly

Post-Opinion Psyche

"Remember you wrote something about the various uses of 'My'? You know - My hand, My house, My city, yada yada?"..."Why are you looking like a moronic sheep? You do not remember?"Uh! I mean, yeah, OF COURSE I remember. I wasn't trying to imitate a moronic sheep, I was just wonder-struck that someone even knew that I had written something like that, leave alone remembering it himself!"Yeah! I do!"

Becoming a groupie

I recently came across someone using what amounts to an archaeological artifact. What, for want of a better word, is called a dumb phone. Surprised as I was to see a phone that can only be used for raising or receiving calls and messages, I could not help a twinge of nostalgia.I, too, belonged to the recalcitrant few who refused to switch to the smarter versions of the phone. Yes, yes, it WAS