Real story...

A Conversation between a passenger and Software Engineer in Shatabdi Train.

Vivek Pradhan was not a happy man.. Even the plush comfort of the Air-conditioned compartment of the Shatabdi express could not cool his frayed nerves. He was the Project Manager and was still not entitled to Air travel. It was not the prestige he sought, he had tried to reason with the admin person, it was the savings in time. As PM, he had so many things to do!!

He opened his case and took out the laptop, determined to put the time to some good use.

'Are you from the software industry sir,' the man beside him was

Staring appreciatively at the laptop. Vivek glanced briefly and

mumbled in affirmation, handling the laptop now with exaggerated care and importance as if it were an expensive car.

'You people have brought so much advancement to the country, Sir. Today everything is getting computerized. '

'Thanks,' smiled Vivek, turning around to give the man a look. He always found it difficult to resist appreciation. The man was young and stockily built like a sportsman... .. He looked simple and strangely out of place in that little lap of luxury like a small town boy in a prep school. He probably was a railway sportsman making the most of his free traveling pass.

'You people always amaze me,' the man continued, 'You sit in an office and write something on a computer and it does so many big things outside.'

Vivek smiled deprecatingly. Naiveness demanded reasoning not anger. 'It is not as simple as that my friend. It is not just a question of writing a few lines. There is a lot of process that goes behind it.'

For a moment, he was tempted to explain the entire Software Development Lifecycle but restrained himself to a single statement. 'It is complex, very complex.'

'It has to be. No wonder you people are so highly paid,' came the reply.

This was not turning out as Vivek had thought. A hint of belligerence crept into his so far affable, persuasive tone.

'Everyone just sees the money. No one sees the amount of hard work we have to put in. Indians have such a narrow concept of hard work. Just because we sit in an air-conditioned office, does not mean our brows do not sweat. You exercise the muscle; we exercise the mind and believe me that is no less taxing.'

He could see, he had the man where he wanted, and it was time to drive home the point. 'Let me give you an example. Take this train. The entire railway reservation system is computerized. You can book a train ticket between any two stations from any of the hundreds of computerized booking centers across the country. Thousands of transactions accessing a single database, at a time concurrently; data integrity, locking, data security. Do you Understand the complexity in designing and coding such a system?'

The man was awestruck; quite like a child at a planetarium. This was something big and beyond his imagination. 'You design and code such things.'

'I used to,' Vivek paused for effect, 'but now I am the Project Manager.'

'Oh!' sighed the man, as if the storm had passed over, 'so your life is easy now.'

This was like the last straw for Vivek. He retorted, 'Oh come on, does life ever get easy as you go up the ladder. Responsibility only brings more work. Design and coding! That is the easier part. Now I do not do it, but I am responsible for it and believe me, that is far more stressful. My job is to get the work done in time and with the highest quality'.

He continued, 'To tell you about the pressures, there is the customer at one end, always changing his requirements, the user at the other wanting something else, and your boss, always expecting you to have finished it yesterday.'

Vivek paused in his diatribe, his belligerence fading with

Self-realization. What he had said, was not merely the outburst of a wronged man, it was the truth. And one need not get angry while defending the truth.

My friend,' he concluded triumphantly, 'you don't know what it is to be in the Line of Fire'.

The man sat back in his chair, his eyes closed as if in realization.

When he spoke after sometime, it was with a calm certainty that Surprised Vivek.

'I know sir,..... I know what it is to be in the Line of Fire......'

He was staring blankly, as if no passenger, no train existed, just a vast expanse of time.

'There were 30 of us when we were ordered to capture Point 4875 in the cover of the night. The enemy was firing from the top. There was no knowing where the next bullet was going to come from and for whom. In the morning when we finally hoisted the tri-colour at the top only 4 of us were alive.'

'You are a...?'

'I am Subedar Sushant from the 13 J&K Rifles on duty at Peak 4875 in Kargil. They tell me I have completed my term and can opt for a soft assignment. But, tell me sir, can one give up duty just because it makes life easier.On the dawn of that capture, one of my colleagues lay injured in the snow, open to enemy fire while we were hiding behind a bunker. It was my job to go and fetch that soldier to safety. But my captain sahib refused me permission and went ahead himself.

He said that the first pledge he had taken as a Gentleman Cadet was to put the safety and welfare of the nation foremost followed by the safety and welfare of the men he commanded... ....his own personal safety came last, always and every time.'

'He was killed as he shielded and brought that injured soldier into the bunker.Every morning thereafter, as we stood guard, I could see him taking all those bullets, which were actually meant for me. I know sir....I know, what it is to be in the Line of Fire.'

Vivek looked at him in disbelief not sure of how to respond. Abruptly, he switched off the laptop. It seemed trivial, even insulting to edit a Word document in the presence of a man for whom valour and duty was a daily part of life; valour and sense of duty which he had so far attributed only to epical heroes.

The train slowed down as it pulled into the station, and Subedar Sushant picked up his bags to alight. 'It was nice meeting you sir.'

Vivek fumbled with the handshake.

This hand... had climbed mountains, pressed the trigger, and hoisted the tri-colour. Suddenly, as if by impulse, he stood up at attention and his right hand went up in an impromptu salute....

It was the least he felt he could do for the country.

PS: The incident he narrated during the capture of Peak 4875 is a true-life incident during the Kargil war. Capt. Batra sacrificed his life while trying to save one of the men he commanded, as victory was within sight. For this and various other acts of bravery, he was awarded the Param Vir Chakra, the nation's highest military award.

Live humbly, there are great people around us, let us learn!

EVERYONE U MEET IS FIGHTING A HARD BATTLE !

Nature vs Nurture (Molyneux's question)

Researchers said Sunday they had solved a conundrum about human perception that has stumped philosophers and scientists alike since it was first articulated 323 years ago by an Irish politician in a letter to John Locke.

Imagine, William Molyneux wrote to the great British thinker, that 

A man blind from birth who has learned to identify objects -- a sphere and a cube, for example -- only through his sense of touch is suddenly able to see.

Whether he Could, by his Sight, and before he touch them, know which is the Globe and which the Cube?"

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Theology (Nyaya, Vedanta) Indian Science (made it clear that) Manas (mind) perceives with the support/ help of senses. Unless the sense is activated, mind cannot perceive.

The process of perception is also depicted as under.

Based on the inputs from the senses acting thru sensory organs, the mind assumes the form of the object to result in the the respective experience. 

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For philosophers of the time in the region, answering "Molyneux's question," as it was known ever after, would resolve a fundamental uncertainty about the human mind.

Empiricists believed that we are born blank slates, and become the sum total of our accumulated experience.

So-called "nativists" countered that our minds are, from the outset, pre-stocked with ideas waiting to be activated by sight, sound and touch.

If a blind man who miraculously recovered his sight could instantly distinguish the cube from the globe it would mean the knowledge was somehow innate, they argued.

More recently, this "nurture vs. nature" debate has found its counterpart in modern neuroscience.

"The beauty of Molyneux's question is that it also relates to how representations are formed in the brain," said Pawan Sinha, a professor at MIT in Boston and the main architect of the study.

"Do the different modalities, or senses, build up a common representation, or are these independent representations that one cannot access even though the other modality has built it?" he asked in a phone interview.

Recent studies have suggested that the mental images we accumulate through sight and touch do, in fact, form a common pool of impressions that can be triggered and retrieved by one sense or the other.

But until now, no one has been able to design a definitive experiment.

The problem was finding subjects. They would have to have been blind at birth and then have had their sight restored, but not until they were old enough to reliably participate in tests.

Most forms of curable congenital blindness, however, are detected and cured in infancy, so such individuals are extremely rare.

More precisely, they are rare in rich countries. So in 2003, Sinha set up a program in India in cooperation with the Shroff Charity Eye Hospital in New Delhi.

Among the many patients he treated, he found five -- four boys and one girl, aged eight to 17 -- who met the criteria for surgery that would almost instantly take them from total blindness to fully seeing.

Once bandages were removed, researchers had to first be sure that the volunteers could see well.

Using objects that looked like Lego building blocks, they tested the ability to discriminate visually between similar shapes. The subjects scored nearly 100 percent.

They scored nearly as well when it came to telling the difference by touch alone, according to the study, published in Nature Neuroscience.

For the critical test, however, in which the children first felt an object and then tried to distinguish visually between that same object and a similar one, the results were barely better than if they had guessed.

"They couldn't form the connection," said Yuri Ostrovsky, also a researcher at MIT and a co-author of the study.

"The conclusion is that there does not seem to be any cross-modal" -- that is, from one sense to the other -- "representation available to perform the task," he said by phone.

The answer to Molyneux's question, then, appears to be "no": the data blind people gather tactically that allows them to identify a cup and a vase, and to tell them apart, is not accessible through vision.

At least not at first.

"From a neuro-scientific point of view, the most interesting finding is the rapidity with which this inability was compensated," said Richard Held, an emeritus professor at MIT and lead author of the study.

"Within about a week, it's done -- and that is very fast. We were surprised," he said by phone.

The overall results suggest that the human brain is more "plastic," or malleable, longer into childhood that previously thought, the researchers said.

"This challenges the dogma of 'critical periods,' the idea that if a child has been deprived of vision for the first three or four years of life, he or she will be unable to acquire any visual proficiency," Sinha said.

Budha - Mercury; First Impressions from the Probe

• Budha Graha is known as Mercury in the west. Its location and surface are receiving some attention from the Probe Satellite Messenger.
• Puraana (Mythology) refers to the battle of Guru and Chandra over the jurisdiction. (In poetic effect, it is compared to an issue chastity, as Taara (Star) was seen in the vicinity of Jupiter and Moon.
• It is further discussed that the effect of the communion of a Moon with Star, supposedly closer/ related to Jupiter has caused the creation of this planet - Mercury.
• In that sense, a battle (Friction) between Chandra and Guru are also narrated. 

Now the first pictures from the Mercury probe mission of NASA - makes us think about these astonomical phenomenon.

1. Mercury's name sake Element on our planet is volatile and too quick; but stable to denote temperatures. High capacity to withstand cold and heat, is the primary reason for its usage in thermametre utilities.
2. The name Budha, suggests that same. Budha is a an accomplished personality, who can maintain his equilibrium in the face of adversity and success. The story of Budha further described the quiteness and resolve to maintain his penance, in spite of severe frictions causing his birth.
3. The appearance is also described as Dark Green.

• प्रियंगु कलिका श्यामं रूपेणाप्रतिमं बुधम्। 

सौम्यं सौम्यगुणोपेतं तं बुधं प्रणमाम्यहम्।।  (Graha Stuti)

Now the first impressions from the Mercury mission of NASA, indicate the scars, craters (Similar to Battle scars on the Human Body); farther greater than the Moon and the colour of the planet.

Similarities of Puraana Story and these pictorial suggestions are strking. Read on the details of the latest repor ....

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New photos from the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury show the tiny inner planet has far more impressive battle scars from regular high-speed peltings by space rocks.

NASA's Messenger spacecraft, which began orbiting the planet less than two weeks ago, reveals a pock-marked planet full of craters from pieces of asteroids and comets.

"Mercury has had an exposed surface for at least 3.5 to 4 billion years and some of those surfaces are extremely cratered to the point where there are so many craters they start to obscure one another," said mission chief scientist Sean Solomon.

He said it was surprising how many secondary craters there are. Those are craters created by the falling soil kicked up from space rock collisions.

Those initial space rock crashes "throw out a lot of material in the explosive process," Solomon said.

One area of the far north of Mercury had never been seen by previous spacecraft on mere fly-bys. The new images show scatterings of secondary craters, almost like a loaded pizza, but not the primary crater that was first carved out. The region is also so far north that the sun barely gets above the horizon and casts long shadows. 

"It's heavily cratered," Solomon said on Wednesday. "It may have happened on a particularly bad day."

The secondary craters usually are six miles wide but can be as much as 15 miles wide, much larger than secondary craters on the moon, Solomon said.

He said that could be because the chunks of asteroids and comets are moving faster as they get closer to the gravitational pull of the sun so they smack Mercury harder, causing the soil to bounce higher and make bigger secondary craters. The fact that Mercury, unlike the moon, is shrinking and has a magnetic field could be another factor.

Mercury is also darker and appears more weather-beaten than the moon, because of "the constant bombardment of the surface by dust particles and small meteoroids," Solomon said.

Messenger has been circling Mercury only since March 17. In its first day of photo transmission, the space probe sent back 224 pictures, Solomon said. By the end of this week, NASA will have received more than 15,000 pictures from the $446 million spacecraft.

The first imaged offered a glimpse of the planet's dark, frigid south pole, where scientists think there may be ice. But the photo isn't close enough to tell if radar images from Earth that hint at ice are correct, Solomon said. 

Photos of the poles are scheduled for later in the mission.

Messenger will spend at least a year circling Mercury and start mapping the planet on Monday, eventually crashing into the planet when the mission is over.

Mercury and Messenger are about 66 million miles from Earth.