Death-I

Hi all,

Today I want to write about death. You can see that this is death 1. In this I will give my views and opinions about early death. Note that they may change in future.

Death, like birth, will happen only once in a lifetime and after that life ceases to exist. This is the reason why many are scared of death. But I am not. I believe that death is a way to relieve ourselves of this boring, painful life. I believe in Hindu mythology, where Sri Krishna says that death will never destroy the Atma. The comical explanation He gives to Dhanunjaya can be understood from this conversation:

---

partha: Hey paramatma! I can't kill all my relatives and friends. It is insane. Help me out. please :'(

adipurasha: Ha ha.. Who are you to kill ? Even if you aim your bow on the weakest person and try your best to kill that person, you cannot!

bharatarshabha: Why ? If I try my best, can't I kill a single person ? I am damn confused. JagamElE Paramatma! who else can I ask other than you. Please explain kAro.

madhusudana: Now listen carefully. What you can do is only an attempt, Karma. It is the only thing you can do. You can rise your bow and give your best attempt. But after that what happens is not in your hands. It is my decision. I am the one who delivers you the result. Therefore even if you try your best and I am not satisfied by you, you are gone! Nothing will work for you without my consent.

One more thing you have to note is that even if I allow you to kill that person, you can only kill his body. The atma inside him is indestructible. You think that he is dead, but he is only physically dead. Therefore don't be sad that you are killing your relatives and others. It is me who is doing everything. You are just an actor. And your aim is to follow dharma and kill the bad people. And you have to work in that direction. The result should not affect you. I will give you when I feel like :P

arjuna: Purushottama! I am enlightened! Thanks a lot. Now back to your work. Steer the chariot to the middle of the enemy crowd. I am going to try my best to kill them and you are there to actually kill them :)

---

Now after krishna's explanation, we understand that we should not be scared of death ever. Therefore lets discuss about more scary part, early death.

Simply said, death's purpose is not to die but to accomplish something by dying. Our aim is to follow dharma and in following it if we need to die, we should. We should not die in vain. Take for example my grandmother who died recently. Her aim was to reach heaven and she constantly tried. She prayed daily, helped whomever she could. In an attempt to reach Him, she did whatever she could. Finally one day he graced upon her and she left the world. Her aim was never to die, but to pray, help and teach people like me.

So far I explained that death is not the end and dieing should not be on purpose, but an outcome of following dharma. Classical example from Hindu religion is goddess parvathi. In her previous incarnation, she was named Sati and she immolated herself because of her father. After that she was born as Parvathi, the daughter of Himavanta.

Death of a person is unrelated to age. If you die young or old, the post death activities remain the same - crying and forgetting. Therefore I believe that it doesn't matter when we die but what we achieved by dieing. I end this entry by requesting all my friends not to believe in my existence. Life is like a puzzle and I don't know when the doors of death are going to open. All I know about it is that it is like a travel. We travel from our body to heaven or to another. And there is nothing to worry, just believe in god.

---

Note: Don't ask me why I am writing about these arbit things now.

ls rise lab

Some time back, I decided that I will go back to my room. But then what will I do there ? Watch another movie or some music channel. No no. Already people are complaining that I am watching Television a lot, that too music channels :P. Instead, I decided to write this blog entry, which I wanted to write from a long time. This time I will also be technical. Always philosophical or funny is not good. Sometimes it is good to play with the devil hiding in the details ;)

Now I am going to write about people I know in rise lab. I virtually lived in this lab for more than 2 months. I lived there because:

1. There are many good people there.

2. I can access internet all the time.

3. It is very peaceful in the night and there are nice chairs which are suitable for sleeping.

Don't ask me why I didn't stay in systems lab where all my friends are there. It was a run-away mechanism from somebody. Only Shiny knows the real truth. Even I forgot :P.

Note: My blog, Picasa pics, etc. are all personal to me. I include all my friends and relatives details in them. But that doesn't mean that I am making them public or advertising them. Pics are never made public. They are shared with the right persons. Blog is public, but everybody knows how famous it is :P The main purpose of all these is to capture few memories of happy moments in pics and some worthy thinking in blog. One should remember that the artificial facts like sexy, handsome, etc. can never describe a real person. They are just artificial and they are not a measure of how good their heart is.

First comes Balvir Kumar. I first met him through my granny (check the note in the end to know about this granny). But then I forgot him. Later when I started living in rise lab, I always sat beside him unknowingly. As usual, I peep through and watch what others are doing :) My intrusive nature :P. So I saw him struggling with some latexpdf thing and immediately took over his computer and fixed it :D. That's all. From next day he started talking to me :) ha ha.. Karthik raghavan explained me a bit about his project. So I inquired about his project. It is very interesting ! He is also very enthusiastic person and always wanted to put fundaes on his project. But I postponed many times due to lack of time. Finally one day before I left insti, I asked him if he can still put fundaes. He said that he'll come to the lab the next day and put fundaes. Awesome ! he'll come to lab just for me and put fundaes. I know his house is near and he has bike :P. But still he is god. His project is very good.

About his project: "Handling Cache Faults by Dynamic Binary Rewriting". Scared by this big title ?. Don't worry, even I copied it from his thesis paper I have now in my hand. Few points regarding his project:

a. It is about virtually indexed caches.

b. Assumption: A cache set can become faulty. Therefore the region mapped by that set in VM is faulty, ie it is not accessible.

c. Solution: don't use that region. How ? if it is data, map it to some other location. If it is code move it some location and execute there.

d. The solution above is simple said, but there are many issues.

e. Data cache faults are handled by segmentation. The faulty region is not mapped and the data in that region is relocated to a new segment. Therefore accessing faulty area will give segfault, which will reroute the data fetch to the new segment. Still there are other issues with boundaries.

f. Instruction cache faults are also handled in similar fashion. The code in the faulty area is moved to new segment and a jmp is put in the code before the faulty area. Now the problem comes with offsets. The jmp/call instructions with fixed offsets are dynamically rewritten for the new locations. But for indirect control transfer like jmp (%eax), it is not possible to rewrite the instruction and execute happily. Instead a int 3 is put in that location and the debug routine will execute the original instruction. If you know Intel arch, a fault will rerun the instruction. All these complications are also handled.

Coming back to non-technical side again, after discussing about the project we talked all arbitrary things. I asked him where he works and about his work. It is also very interesting. He works in defense labs. There they make custom boards and run custom apps without OS on them. So his work is to write those standalone apps on those boards. It is vvv interesting. Just that it is a government job and not paid so highly as corporate ones. His friends are working abroad in firms. During his time, the jobs were not so abundant and he got this job. He liked it very much and he stayed with it. He recently got married too and his wife wants to go home :) . With people like me, nothing stays secret :P. So he is going home this Friday and he is not going to come back soon :'( He is also not coming for convocation. He gave me his Chennai phone number and also Chandigarh one. So I told him that I will come to Chandigarh someday to meet him :D

Similarly other good people who are leaving this time are Girish, Karthik Raghavan (music lover like me :P) and Arun Tejasvi. I can write big stories about Girish and Karthik, but I don't have so much enthu now. I may write later. Again I am mentioning these people because they are leaving this summer and I should not forget them.

There are many other people who are still going to stay in insti like pawan, abhinav and others. I will write about them when they leave ;)

Feeling so tired now. I had one cup of horlicks. But nothing seems to work. Very tired. One last thing. Today I found the reason why my cointerns are calling me garimella. According to north indian style, if we have 3 names like garimella jagannadh kashyap, the middle name will be father's name; the last one is surname and the first one is my name. Similarly sachin ramesh tendulkar, sumit ramesh somani (my cointern from Jaipur).

Note: granny, mentioned in the 6th para, is an adopted granny. She is young secret person, whose details I can never reveal.

First week at Google

Hello,

My life has seen a big transition after leaving my institute and joining google for intern. I have written dairy daily. Today I want to share the experiences, the fun and the painful things. Here it goes.....

Sunday (Day 0):

It was my first flight travel. It was very nice. I really enjoyed it. One trouble I faced was that I didn't know that I have to check-in early. I went in 20 minutes before the start and in 5 more minutes it was going to close. I was very lucky.

Then I got into the plane. I opted for window seat and I got it. I always like the window seat, whether it is train or plane. As it was the first time, I was bit tensed. But I tried to look cool. It started like a tora-tora or giant wheel. I thought that it will be as stable as a stationary one, after reaching the high altitude. But it was not like that. It still moved this way and that way, much like riding a bike.

After I reached hyderabad, there was cab waiting for me. I felt that I am very lucky to get all these services. I reached the guest house and I was really amazed to see a nice ac room allotted to me. I can stay there for 3 months ! There was also a lan cable to connect to laptop but I didn't have laptop.

Though I was treated very nicely, I felt caged. I reached the room at 5:30 and I am left alone there. My room had TV too. But alone I can't stay. So I waited for dinner time. And when the clock struck 7:30 I ran to the dining hall. You can guess why. To meet people :D

First I met ashish. He was from iit kanpur and his native is also kanpur. He got a full time job in swe. We watched cricket for some time. Then one woman came. In the start we didn't know that she is so great. Later she told us that she came from US. She worked for MS in Redmond and then changed to Google NY and then came to Hyd for some reason. She talked about MS and Google. It seems that in MS the product development cycle is large as releases don't happen often. It is opposite in Google. Also she talked about the evaluation system in Google. It is all peer based. The manager is just for namesake and doesn't even have the power to promote. Peers are the main evaluating people. After that she farted about apartments (ashish wanted to know about apartments), then about bedsheets (she bought a bedsheets worth 8k the day before). All these were interesting and I spent two and half hours in dining room :) After that I met my peers in my floor. Most of them are from IITB. I thought that I will talk to them later and went back to my room.

Later, in the night, I didn't get sleep. I watched quantum of solace. Like many films, the sexy villain becomes the heroine :P Same old fart. The movie was over and I felt sleepy. Then I switched to some channel and it was playing the song Masakalli. In that sleepy state the song made me feel like a hero. Just that the heroine was missing :P. May be I was dreaming. I don't believe in dreams. Movies and songs are no way close to reality. I like the song because of their acting. The two are so happy all through the song. And the birds, the gullies, I like them all. May be that's why that song caught my attention all of sudden.

Then my thoughts scattered. I became very very sleepy. One side I thought that I should rock in Google. On the other, last semester's griefs crept in. As they say, only in the end all your sins appear to you. Like that I thought and thought of the old things and at some point I crashed :P The Tv was still playing something.

Day 1:

Ek Ladkhi ko dekha to kaisa laga...

The day ended with this beautiful song, in which the hero has no job other than following the heroine. And she too doesn't have any job. Guess nobody would have seen a love story like the 1942 love story. Too old to fit this tech age.

With just one day my track changed from good old ram ji's songs to "womanizer" :D. One day of work changed everything :P. In the morning, every half an hour a cab comes to transport people from guest house to office. Even in the cab, the AC will be on. And obviously the office is a big 5 floor building with centralized AC.

Google treats its employees very nicely. I worked on the first day too. I was completely taken away by the awesome facilities in the office. And food is everywhere ! Don't know how many cokes I drank, how many chocos I ate. The only thing which rescued me from food is work. I know that I should not eat so much. But I excused myself by saying that it was just the first day :)

I got so used to work that even my mentor got pained :P He requested me twice to go home as it was the first day. Don't know why, but I was hating enjoyment. May be I was badly affected by that before and decided that I won't enjoy anymore. Or may be I inherited this nature from some friends whom I work with. But I keep changing. Work and fun, both are important. I can't leave either but have to maintain balance. I know people who gave up study for enjoyment and vice versa. Both are wrong and I should learn how to balance both. Even if we are pinned down on time, we can allocate at least half an hour to play a game or watch a cartoon. Things like these cannot be taught and we should learn on our own. If we try to teach somebody because you care about that person, you may fail. Instead you may hurt them even. It is not so easy to teach people. And only great people can do that :)

In this great play of god, the only way to understand him is by understanding others.

Day 2:

meri sapno ki rani kab ayegi tu ..

Aah ! I was watching the old film "Karan Arjun". Putting peace in life. Amresh Puri and his big eyes :P. Again the story was a fairy tale.

So what was the special ? Nothing much. I played fooz ball. Learning it bit by bit. I tried to control the food intake. But not possible. I ate a lot in the afternoon. I had to read up a lot and start coding. Imagine I would be working on Google's code !

Still I was not used to fun. May be I needed some more time. That's all for this day. I can't write about Google's technologies.

Day 3:

Jijoo is one of the members in testing team and his birthday was on this day. Happiness everywhere but just not in me. Something is wrong :P I went completely out of control. I ate whatever I saw :) I know that I should not eat so much and drink so much coke. I have to control myself.

I said "sorry, later" to all those who asked me to play. I invited loneliness. Only work was in my mind. Don't know what happened to me on this day. I shouted at people at home. Too much work made me tired and irritated. Should somebody come and save me, I thought.

Again who can save me other than myself :P I left the one who can save me. I sent him to an important friend for some reason. He is the great Jagadanandakara. Without him, it is tough for me to be happy. But wherever he is, he will be cheering me. And I just hoped that the next day will be good and slept happily.

Day 4:

Singh is king..

Kashyap is king :P

As I prayed, happiness embraced me this day. Don't know if god really exists but just the belief in him will do everything.

I played gully cricket for 2 hours. I watched Naruto. It was so funny and exciting. In this episode, Kakashi died after a fierce battle with Pain. I watched Terminator 2 in the night. Also the testing team went for a treat as few of them got promoted. So I didn't have much work.

Though I didn't talk much with my co-interns in the start, slowly I made friendship with them. Never did I have all gult teammates or many gult friends. Shiny is a good example. She is non-gult and my great sister.

A small problem with google hyd is that everybody talks in hindi and I am poor in hindi. So I tell them that I can understand hindi and they can talk in hindi but I will speak in English :P. A bit tough to understand their jokes, but slowly I will understand them :)

Today (Day 5):

Kaise bataye kyun tujhko chahe yaara batana paye

Well, this song is one of my favorite. It looked fitting for me today. No idea why :)

Today's more fun. I got lot of fundaes from my mentor regarding my project. I will be working seriously from Monday. Today too I played gully cricket. I talked to my mom for long time. I am writing this blog entry :) So today is totally fun. Tomorrow I will go to my aunt's house, which is nearby. Otherwise I will be bored in the guest house. Alone, what will I do ?

One for good and one for bad

Dear reader,

Today two great people left me. One for good and one for bad. The one left for my good will come back to me with more love and friendship. And I am ready to greet her and hug her. She taught me so many things in life like independence and friendship. She is my dear sister. And everybody knows her.

Coincidentally another great person left for my bad. I will never reveal his identity as he doesn't like it. This is the person whom I used to revere a lot and take pride in. But slowly stupidity crept in and I craved for his friendship. Worse, I wanted to talk to him and be with the person. And when I found that these things are just dreams, I turned bad. I sent harsh mails and letters. Instead of finding a position in the person's heart, I broke his heart. The person never understood me and finally decided to leave me.

In the end, I had tears only for the one who left me with her warm wishes, the one who cared for me and supported me all the time. All I wanted are these warm wishes and if the other person could have understood it, the person would have never left me. But as great people said, we should help others and never expect anything from them. I utterly failed in following this rule. I always like to help others but sometimes I expect something, like I expected friendship from the second person. This is a great mistake and I shall not do this again.

I learned a great lesson today. I shall not be sad or happy as once Vivekananda said, these two are chains, one made of iron and another made of gold.

Thank you,
Kashyap Garimella Jagannadh

Raghuvamsa sudhambudhichandra

I have been writing about all boring and stupid things. To change track, I am going to write about a beautiful song called "Raghuvamsa sudha...".

raghuvaṃśa sudhāmbudhi candra śrīrāma rāma rājarājēśwara raghuvaṃśa sudhā-ambudhi candra śrīrāma rāma rājarājēśwara

రఘువంశ సుధాంబుధి చంద్ర శ్రీ రామ రాజ రాజేశ్వర

Split:
raghuvamsa - belonging to raghu dynasty; sudha+ambudhi = sudha means honey or amruta & ambudhi is ocean; chandra = moon; sri rama = ram ji; rajarajeshwara = (sanskrit samasa - rajayoho rajeshwara) king of kings;
Meaning:
O moon to the nectar-ocean of the Raghu lineage!
Sri Rama, lord of emperors!

agha-mēgha māruta śrī-kara

asurēśa mṛgēndra vara jagannātha

అఘ మేఘ మారుత శ్రీకర అసురేశ మ్రుగేంద్ర వర జగన్నాథ

Split:
agha=sin; megha=cloud; maruta=wind; srikara= sri + kara=doer of good;
asuresa=rakshasas or demons (:P); mruga+indra=king of animals (lion); vara jagannatha=Lord of the world (and ones who give lot of boons)
Meaning:
O wind that drives away the sin ! O doer of good !
O lion terrifying the asuras ! O vara jagannadha ! (vara is a token given to those who give lot of boons like "vara venkatasatyannarayana")

jamadagnija garva khaṇḍana
jayarudrādi vismita bhaṇḍana

జమదగ్నిజ గర్వ ఖండన జయ రుద్రాది విస్మిత భందన

Split:
jamadagnija=born out of sage jamadagni; garva=conceit; khandana=destroyer;
jaya=praise; rudra+adi=shiva and others; vismita=surprise/astonish; bhandana=bound/arrest;
Meaning:
O destroyer of Parasurama's conceit !
All praise the lord who surprised even Shivaji !

kamala-āpta anvaya maṇḍana
agaṇita adbhuta śaurya, śrī vēṅkaṭēśa

కమలాప్తాన్వయ మందన అగణిత అద్బుత శౌర్య శ్రీ వేంకటేశ్వర

Split:
kamala+apta(lotus+friend)=friend of lotus; anvaya=family/dynasty; mandana=decoration;
aganita=innumerable; adbhuta=wonder; saurya=bravery/person with bravery; sri venkatesa=lord venkatesha
Meaning:
O king who is the ornament to the dynasty of lotus loving people :P
O doer of innumerable wonders ! O vEnktesa !

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Lasting dreams (continued)

I could not stop writing another post to explain my real dreams and reply to the comments for the previous post.

First comment by kirti:
"Deep. PhD,cool job and writer - all pretty feasible.
Get a "stud" PhD based on your work here at IITM, that will lead you to a job at NASA and then write a book about your achievements and experiences at NASA."

By her personality of being a great dreamer and with her infinite positivism, she came up with a plan to make my dream come true :) Thank you baby. But dreams are very tough to come true. [She is still a baby, stubborn and confident. I envy her for the number of care-takers she has. My rank would be some hundreds, in the list of her care-takers]

Ramya said:
Interesting, thoughtful and feasible too!
15-20 years from now:
Dr. Garimella Kashyap, the PHD Singer Writer NASA Scientist with his wife, mom and kids :)

You are like describing the last scene in a movie :P Thanks for the comment :)

Vinu wrote:
i am pretty sure u can acheive all ur above mentioned dreams except the last one :D

Don't care about me :) You are anyways putting peace in life.

My real dreams or aims are quite simple:

I want to work hard in anything good I do.
I like to help everybody. Make my friends happy, etc.
I want to change somebody, which is infeasible, as many say.
---
Song kanukontini ( http://thyagaraja-vaibhavam.blogspot.com/2008/06/thyagaraja-kriti-kanukontini-raga.html )

Lasting dreams

Hi all ! It is long time since I wrote my last post. Reasons are many. Most obvious ones are my laziness and my tight acad schedule. I want to do my best in acads, without caring about anything. Hence a chaotic schedule and in the middle of it I want to write about my lasting dreams. Dreams which I always wanted to come true. Most of them are common to everybody. It is always nice to pull some time to write about things like what you dream to become, what kind of person you like to be, etc. It gives you a break from acads and also a chance to dream :) [ I rarely get dreams during the night ].

Here goes the list of my great grand dreams, very few of which I endeavour now:

PHD: When I was young, I use to tell everybody that I would become a scientist. Poor boy Kashyap didn't even know who a scientist is and how difficult it is to become one. But now I know how tough it is to achieve any scholarly position like PHD or scientist. Unluckily the sullen weather casts down heavily on this poor little boy's dream.

Singer: I do not think that I can become a great singer. But I love to sing all the time. Any song which is good. My all time favourites include carnatic music, old telugu/hindi songs. Coincidentally carnatic means "old", which means that I sing and listen to only old songs :)

Cool Job: Let the dream job be just a dream. Very difficult to get. What can it be other than an "Engineer in JPL, NASA" :D ... I like the real time stuff. A small extension to this dream is to work for them on internet and live in a village in India, doing farming on other side.

Writer: May be I am sarcastic with myself.
me:"Kashyap ! With your poor english, how can you dream of being a writer ?"
me:"That's why it is a dream :P."

With so many languages, we are gradually changing to monlingual system, forgetting our mother tongue.

Gift for my mom: I am the gift for my mom :) I will take care of her more than anybody, when I start earning. This is a very feasible dream.

Make lot of good friends: Though I have lot of general friends, I do not have many good friends. I classify my good friends into:

i. Babies: They are more like babies, knowing nothing about this world. I like babies very much. I love to see them grow, learn and stand on their own. I help them in achieving these. But sadly I have to leave them after they grow :'(

ii. Great people and committed people: They are very knowledgeable people . I like to stay with them and learn from them. They are like brothers and sisters, always helping and guiding. They do not leave you, even if you are far away.

iii. Once-in-a-while friends: They talk sweetly once in a while and run away.

I like to make more friends from any of the above categories.

Love a girl: I love so many people. But as we are humans, we always like to live with somebody. One can't go to the city centre and find one to live with. I think that a person is in love with another, if he/she can't live happily without the other. We can see how painful it is to fall in love :P (you can't live without your lover). Given my level of dumbness, I simply pave way for others. I abhor competitions in this field and I simply quit if I am a distractor. This dream is of least priority now.

--
Sorry for the arbit statements in the end, as I am very sleepy. And morning 5 am is a bad time to make general statements.

Songs:
Led Zeppelin - Stairway To Heaven (Courtesy: Manjunath)
Dil Hum Hum Kare - Rudaali (Courtesy: Kirti)