This blog has been shifted to Serendipity

I finally made him confess few things about me, which under normal circumstances he would never have.

“Aside from that, he’s a nice person, very dynamic, sharp and intelligent, sensitive, quite knowledgeable on many things, with a nice sense of humor and has a penchant for gadgets and electronics. He’s very concerned about those who he cares about and is a true friend to them.”

I had to adopt a crooked way though but still

I was named ‘Shariq’ by my grandmother (who along with my mother are the 2 most respected women in my life). She claimed to have heard a divine voice regarding my name!! So my family didn’t object. I was the first child in my family and perhaps brought happiness on everyone’s face after years of suffering and hardships. I was pampered by my father and uncles. I had this name till class 9th. Then my mom did some numerology on my name and added ‘ue’ to it so it was ‘Sharique’ and still remains so. But people while pronouncing my name don’t stress on ‘a’ and i hate being called that way. So i have now an extra ‘a’ in my name. Hotmail,gmail,rediff,blogger you name it..its all shaarique. btw my ebay id is shaariquee

THAT’S ME

class photo

Part of the dramatics team in school (ADLS sunshine, Jamshedpur)

School night dramatics

People talk at length and many flaunt about the prospects of research in IIT. Outsiders often wonder the level of research and the kind of equipments available in an IIT, the premier institute of engineering in the country. I have talked to people and they often express their awe at the facilities available in the labs here. Well the truth of matter is IITs exist because of JEE and not because of the research. IIT is ranked 5th in the world when it comes to Btech but that rank touches 3 figure when it comes to post graduate education. The reasons, well there are many and the most prominent among them is lack of funds. I understand India is still a developing country and to be at par with the world class institutes you need much more than brain power. No doubt Indians have out-performed their counterparts in US universities but with foreign facilities right?

My previous guide left his job in California to teach here in IIT Madras. But he soon realised that things are a lot different as they appear from outside. He resigned within 1 year and is now back to where he came from. Facilites are pathetic and so are the bureaucrat procedures to get a job done. Just to buy a book he had to wait for months!! Considering the fact that it is Madras, where are people are more educated compared to other parts of the country and it is expected of them to realise the value of time. Corruption is a lot lesser as compared to the place where i come from. (Bihar to be precise )

I had to take few print outs today. When i asked the person responsible, he denied me saying this is for the final copy ones so use the other one. Well this ‘other one’ was a wipro printer (perhaps the first one to be come on the scene!!). I was wondering how do u feed papers in it? Finally i left because i had no mood to experiment.

Update- I am sweating but still can’t switch on the fan! the reason; i am suffering from severe cold and would be comfortable if my fan runs at speed level 3. But the regulator doesn’t work! damn we pay 13,900 per semester to the hostel office which includes 3,500 as hostel maintenance charges and look what facility. If i lodge a complaint tomorrow then it would take weeks before someone is sent. Where does the money go? in the pockets of concerned officials! I have heard there has been lot of politics regarding allocation of mess contract and lot of exchanges below the table (unconfirmed reports say that there are a slew of court cases pending against the authority). Well so why is IIT ‘the’ institute in this country because you see its all relative!!

that’s my hostel

	NOT ONE but two women have created a storm of protest by claiming that they have entered the shrine of Sabarimala. The Sabarimala shrine, where women between the ages of 10 and 55 are strictly prohibited, is a shrine to male celibacy. Lord Ayappan is said to be the god of the brahmachari. If women are allowed into Sabarimala, says the thantri or priest, the entire edifice of the temple will collapse and the very reason for the arduous pilgrimage will be nullified.An ancient monastic pilgrimage will be demolished for the sake of contemporary notions of gender justice. A sanctified tradition that exists precisely because of its transcendental distance from the 21st century will be brought into the dull ambit of everyday political correctness. Are the voices calling for the entry of women into Sabarimala guilty of forcing a lumpen modernism into the stern austere place where the god’s traditions have been kept alive for hundreds of years? According to Sanal Edamaruku of the India Rationalist Association, Sabarimala might originally have been a Buddhist site, where men came as monks to a monastery. So while Sabarimala’s restrictions on women may not be consonant with modern notions of gender equality, its traditions are Buddhist and monastic, where celibacy is the philosophical undertow. Rahul Easwar, the long-haired, English-speaking grandson of the thantri, says Sabarimala is about a certain ‘psychological space’, the space for the brahmachari ideal. If that ideal is lost, an important distinctive cult will be ironed into the uniformity of ‘modern acceptability’. To call for Sabarimala to be open for women is like saying that women should be allowed to enter monasteries, or men should be allowed inside nunneries. It’s like saying that the orders of the Jesuits and the Benedictines should admit women, or that the Loreto order of nuns should admit men. A deeper question arises from the Sabarimala controversy. Are religions hostile to women? The writer Polly Toynbee believes many of them are. Eve, forever the reason for Adam’s lust, must always be subjugated. Sex pollutes god and sex invariably means women. Thus religion is pure and women are dirty. Women must, therefore, be shaved, bathed, purified, placed in a convent or isolated behind purdah, and unclean menstruating woman must be kept out of holy rituals. The perverted hatred of a woman’s body, Toynbee believes, places religions on a collision course with modernity, and unless religions reform them selves, societies will never change. The Catholic Church’s ban on abortion and contraception has long placed it in opposition to feminists worldwide. Many have suggested that the reason why Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code is so successful is that it revives an old heresy within the Catholic Church, the heresy of a female apostle. After all, if Mary Magdalene was so close to Jesus, is it not possible that she too could have been one of the carriers of the word of God, just like Luke, John and Peter? By contrast, women in Hinduism seem nowhere near as subjugated as they appear in the Catholic tradition. The mother goddess, the Shakti cults, the naked, rampaging Kali, the avenging Durga, and the hundreds of little traditions of Lakshmi, Saraswati, Parvati and Santoshi Mata are all evidence of a plethora of female goddesses. On the face of it, there are no strictures against birth control; women participate in worship as equally as men, pilgrimages are undertaken as couples, and whether it’s a ganga snan, an evening arti, temple entry or Amarnath yatra, men and women are relatively equal in the holy realm. But gaze a little closer at the practice of Hinduism today and you’ll find that women, for whatever reason (because of the dominance of the Brahmin male or because women have perhaps never needed to assert themselves in a tradition that is seemingly open), have not played as vital a role as they could have given the role models in the form of goddesses. Every student of history learns about the debate between Yajnavalkya and Gargi in the Brihadarnyaka Upanishad. Gargi Vachaknavi was the ancient Upanishadic scholar, who was seen to challenge the men of an elite Brahmin academy when she asked Yajnavalkya, the leading scholar of the time, to participate in a debate with her. But all Gargi did, we learn to our disappointment, was simply ask two questions of Yajnavalkya about space, at the end of which he shut her up with the firm retort: “Do not question beyond this. You may go crazy.” So much for Gargi. The ladies of the Hindu epics are truly feisty dames. Yet, at the same time, none of them seems to ever leave the wife/mother trap and play roles that show her acquiring any sort of direct relationship with divinity. Kunti refused to play adoring mother. Instead she floated her son down a river and had five other sons from five other fathers. But Kunti’s chief identity seems to be frozen as the errant mother of Karna, rather than as a woman with a complex relationship with divinity, as represented perhaps by the ‘Sun’, the ‘Wind’ or any of the ‘fathers’ of her sons. Aditi, according to a captivating play I had the privilege of seeing, was so determined to win the battle of egos with her sons that she buried one of them under the earth with an elephant for company! But in the end her son triumphed over her too. Savitri stared down Yamaraj himself but only to rescue her husband Satyavan from untimely death. And Draupadi, bless her soul, was not only married to five husbands, but according to some accounts, even had Krishna for a lover. But again, the former fact remained her main identity. The sexuality of the Hindu woman is neither apologetic nor hidden, yet the Hindu woman’s path to God seems to always be through her family, her husband, her children or her lovers. In a universe teeming with female goddesses, there are still very few women priests or religious scholars today. Most godwomen exist outside the ambit of formal religion. Tulsidas’s notorious phrase, Dhol, ganwar, shudra, pashu, nari, yeh sab taadan ke adhikari (lower castes, animals and women should be thrown away), is still recited. One of the few goddesses of the big league, a woman who seems to have broken the cosmic glass ceiling, is Durga, who rules supreme in her corner of Bharat. But again Durga’s is hardly a mainstream Vedic cult and is located primarily in the folk traditions of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. In north India, Karva Chauth and Raksha Bandhan are festivals centred around appeasing a male relative. As for Manu, the doughty lawgiver, didn’t he roundly declare that a woman must be protected by her father, husband and son at different stages of life, as she is never fit for independence? Many Hindu traditions seem to clothe their exclusion of women under a shimmering veil of superficial freedom. So Sabarimala may be a brahmachari shrine where women should not enter. Yet for all Hindu women who meekly accept their religion’s rituals and pieties, the Sabarimala shrine is also a symbol of a need to question why their ancestral faith tries to exclude them. The writer is Features Editor, CNN-IBN sagarika.ghose@gmail.com

Today I got late for the second time in a row. The last time i got late..here is the story
My entry (exhausted because of running…was late by 15 mins) “He is going to rape me today…no chance…May i come in Sir?”
Sir: “Sorry Sharique, I got late”
me: “No problem sir”
Actually he also got late and assumed that i was on time….luck seems to favour me on rare occasions.

The reason, there monkeys in the wing! some were loitering and some searching for food in the dustbin. They then go for releaving themselves in the bogs and then finally drink water from the tap. There are monkeys every where!! infact there is rat beneath my bed, monkey in the wing, cat in the mess and aliens everywhere.

Muslim World Cup Players Promote Image

By Ahmad Atta, IOL Correspondent

“They can help clear misconceptions about Islam and prove that the Muslim faith is a way of life,” Tikriti said. CAIRO — Superstar Muslim footballers leading several high-profile European teams in Germany 2006 FIFA World Cup are contributing to a paradigm shift, showing a face of Islam some have not seen and many others have claimed never existed. “Muslim players in European soccer teams are a proof that their faith and cultures are not stumbling blocks hindering contribution to the development of their societies in all domains,” Anas al-Tikriti, former chairman of the Muslim Association of Britain, told IslamOnline.net. “They can help clear misconceptions about Islam and prove that the Muslim faith is a way of life,” he added.