Who hasn't heard of Yoga? It's a globally 'realized' means to improve health and attain 'moksha' (liberation from the cycle of birth and death; enlightenment is a stage before this).  Dhyana(Meditation) and Pranayam(breath control) are just the two "post-classical era" principles of Yoga; the others being, Asanas (proper excercise as stated in Yoga Sutras of Patanjali), The Proper Diet(the right food), Shavasana (proper Relaxation).  The goals of Yogic practice are varied for different people; The essence of Yoga really lies in attainment of 'moksha'.

In Hindu epics, like Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and Upanishads, there's a treatise on Yoga. In Chapter 6 of The Bhagavad Gita,  Lord Krishna talks entirely about the practice of Yoga, as to how it is to be performed. The Lord says that he had taught it first to Surya Deva (Sun God) and then over a period of time, the wealth of Yogic knowledge had been lost and that he's preaching that to Prince Arjuna.  The word 'Yoga' has been used by Lord Krishna to attribute it to union of Bhakti, Jnana and Karma in the Gita. There's a reference of different forms of Yoga: Karma Yoga (The practice of doing the 'right' thing, your Karma; sometimes, lying may be the right thing to do; you can attach things like selfless action here), Bhakti Yoga (The practice of devotion to God), Jnana Yoga ('Jnana' means knowledge; Knowledge about the Self, about your very being; 'Jnana' doesn't mean storing lot of info about a subject like Math, Art, or Politics or GK in your brain or being a topper or possessing a high IQ. All those could be means to attain the 'Jnana' which is the knowing of  Kshetra(the field) plus the continuously evolving characteristics exhibited by you affecting the body and the Kshetragna (The owner of the field - The Lord present in you, the purce consciousness) in a very abstract sense - Ref: Chapter 13 of The Bhagavad Gita).

(Courtesy: Chapter 13, Bhagavad Gita)  What is 'true' Knowledge (Jnana)? Translated version below:

"The Mahabhutas (the five great elements - earth, water, fire, air and aakash(ether)), the ego, the discriminating intelligence, the invisible (self), the ten senses (ears, skin, tongue, nose, hands, feet, mouth, anus, and the sexual organs) and the five objects of the senses (sound, taste, touch, smell and the forms). Desire, repulsion, happiness, sorrow, the aggregate, dynamic awareness, decisiveness, all these are briefly the various aspects of the kshetra (body).  Without pride, without pomposity, absence of cruelty, tolerance, straight forwardness, service to Acharya (the spiritual master), cleanliness, stability (of the mind), self-control. Vairagya (absence of any feeling) towards the objects of the senses, absence of egoism, constant reflection of the pain and drawbacks inherent in the birth, death, old age and disease. Disinterested, detached from the son, wife, home and the like, always even minded in both desirable and undesirable conditions. Devoted to Me only without engaging in other yogas (activities) and evil pursuits, living in solitary places, disinterested in seeking the company of people. Always absorbed in self knowledge, engaged in the study of philosophy and spirituality ; all this is declared as 'true' Knowledge and the rest is ignorance."

Back to Yoga experience. Not long ago, I met  Bhanu Prakash, a Yoga Champion (see his advanced yoga postures here) at a party hosted by Mahantesh, a mutual friend of ours. When I saw him, the glow and the tranquility on his face was so evident;  As I engaged in a conversation with him, I could see an extra-ordinary level of synergy between his mind and body(actions, I mean) reflect in his speech. Trust me, he's been practising Yoga for the past 20 years and he's in his early thirties. A bliss, indeed!!!

Personally, as a part of my Sandhya Vandana activity during my school and college days, when I used to be disciplined about it, I used to perform Pranayama and Dhynana (meditation). If it doesn't sound like any self-boasting, let me tell you an incident that happened in school. A Yoga Teacher in school once asked all students to close their eyes and meditate. So did all. After we all opened our eyes, he pointed at me and announced that he could differentiate me and one more guy from a crowd of 500 students (not that I had 'mudras' on my face and I was the only one who had actually closed his eyes and had meditated ;-)), about 100 meters from the podium where he stood inside the auditorium. Such was the glow and tranquility on my face. I can definitely see the changes now when I can't be so disciplined about such a Yogic Practice and there are other factors as well. However, realizing the need of Yogic practice for my lifestyle, of late, I've been regular doing some asanas and pranayama.

After I perform Surya Namaskar (which I've been regularly doing of late :)), I can feel how revitalized I'll be. I can feel that in my mind and body. This is a good article on benefits of Surya Namaskar.

Bhanu Prakash Yoga Practice:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCDWcDhMViI&feature=relmfu]

Yogathan Surya namaskar Video for Beginners:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sauUqM8Y5LA&feature=share]

I become a poet...

When someone wakes up a poet in me! I wrote this below poem in Hindi on the occasion of birthday of Renuka Kiran, my colleague-friend...

Aap hain Renuka Kiran
Naar paraayi hain aap, to bani
Meri ,Saurabh ki, Anand ki aur sabki bahan, maan ya bhabhi
Jahir hai, bulathe hain log aapko akka, amma, chinni, putti...

Har roop mein hain aap pehle ek acchi stree
Kabhi kabhi pesh aati hain badi sharmili
Magar baatein aapki hamesha raskili
Sang aap ho to na mahasoos hoti hai kami
Ek acchi cubicle-mate-cum-dost ki

Aap ka sang hamesha mile ya na mile
Jug jug jiyo aap yun hi,
karathe hamein sair haseen duniya ka
Email, chat ya phone se

© Copyright: Sanjeev Kulkarni.

Graduated with Masters in Software Systems

MS Final Semester Dissertation results have been announced. I got a 'fair' FAIR grade. So, my MS CGPA stands at 7.38/10.0.

And, I graduate :) 

Why you should blog?

I seem to have forgotten that I've a blog! While I was updating my LinkedIn Profile, I was reminded of this.

Well, I recently happened to read an interesting blog post by Nathan Marz, a Stanford CS Graduate. Nathan writes, "You should blog even if you don't have any readers". One of the reasons, he cites, is, Writing reveals holes in your thinking. Read more on this here.

Dissertation Semester

An update:

I secured a CGPA of 7.38/10.0 in my penultimate semester. :)

For my final "Dissertation" semester, I've decided to carry out my dissertation on "Text Clustering in a Call Center Application using Data Mining". As a part of my work, I'll be using Java, JDM 2.0, Clustering algorithms like k-means, scatter/gather etc. The goal is to come up with a report on comparative analysis of clusters of call notes in Call Centre application in CRM space.

My mind is on a heavy dose of "tech" data mining stuff these days. I look forward to post that stuff in my tech blog here

Bye for now.

Busy Life

Exams, Project deadline, Chess tournament are some of the notables in the list that kept me too busy over the last few months to publish a new post.

I recently finished my MS second semester and my current CGPA puts me into a 'First Class' category. With two more semesters to go, of which, one will entirely be dedicated to dissertation work and another, to the usual theory courses, I'm becoming more and more determined to make sense of what I study and use it to my advantage in my CS career. It's been a fantastic journey of learning so far.

Project deadlines. Hmmm, I don't intend to talk much here although I heaved a huge sigh of relief realizing that I didn't have to work on something that I was stuck in for a long time, anymore. The word 'Engineering' had been abused more in the project than in any other prior projects I'd worked on. In fact, the scene is common in most places. The word is being abused in IT industry more frequently than ever. I can go on, on this. But, let me try and post my thoughts in my tech blog here(New!) some time.

The last weekend saw an array of blissful events occur at KSCA, Chinnaswamy Stadium here in Bangalore. World Chess Champion GM Vishwanathan Anand visited the stadium to simultaneously play against top 20 players from the NIIT Coporate Chess Tournament held at the same venue, to interact with chess players and to give a talk in the end on life and chess in the wake of promoting game of chess at corporate level, more precisely.

Although I couldn't break into the Top 20, I could see Vishy make chess moves and talk to chess players around, including Yours truly. Vishy comes across as one of the most polite persons and when I saw him, I felt he's at peace with himself now. Courtesy a new found friend of mine, I was able to capture a snap with Anand. I took his autograph too. It was indeed a great privilege to see someone of his stature live and take a snap with him. For someone like me who started playing chess at the age of 9, with something to cherish for, throughout my life-time, a dream was fulfilled; A part of me felt happy. Some old chess players whom I played in a couple of rounds said, "Considering that it's your first ever tournament at a high level, your performance is good. You need to practise more and more with the clock!". Those chess veterans passed on some chess wisdom too.

Check out my snap with Anand here:

A Must Read For All CS Professionals!

Something that I’ve been reading frequently of late…

This is the summary of speech Given by Alex Stepenov (Principal Scientist, Adobe Systems) at Adobe India on 30 Nov 2004.

1. Study , Study and Study

- Never ever think that you have acquired all or most of the knowledge which exists in the world. Almost everybody in US at age of 14 and everybody in India at age of 24 starts thinking that he has acquired all the wisdom and knowledge that he needs. This should be strictly avoided.

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- You should be habituated to studies…exactly in the same way as you are habituated to brushing teeth and taking bath every morning. The habit of study must become a ‘part of your blood’. And the study should be from both the areas: CS, since it is your profession, and something from non-CS…Something which doesnot relate to your work. This would expand your knowledge in other field too. A regular study, everyday, is extremely essential. It doesnot matter whether you study of 20 minutes of 2 hours, but consistency is a must.

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- You should always study basics and fundamentals. There is no point in going for advanced topics. When I was at the age of 24, I wanted to do PhD in program verification, though I was not able to understand anything from that. The basic reason was that my fundamental concepts were not clear. Studying ‘Algebraic Geometry’ is useless if you donot understand basics in Algebra and Geometry. Also, you should always go back and re-read and re-iterate over the fundamental concepts.

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What is the exact definition of ‘fundamental’? The stuff which is around for a while and which forms basic part of the concepts can be regarded as more fundamental. Of course, everybody understands what a fundamental means.

2. Learn Professional Ethics

- As a CS Professional, you are morally obliged to do a good job. What this means is that you are supposed to do your job not for your manager but for yourself. This is already told in Bhagwatgeeta : Doing duties of your life.

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- The direct implication of this is: never ever write a bad code. You don’t need to be fastest and run after shipping dates; rather you need to write quality code. Never write junk code. Rewrite it till it is good. Thoroughly test every piece of code that you write. Donot write codes which are “sort of allright”. You might not achieve perfection, but atleast your code should be of good quality.

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- Let me quote my own example in this context. You might have heard about STL, The Standard Template Library that ships in with C++ compilers. I wrote it 10 years ago, in 1994. While implementing one of the routines in the STL, namely the “search routine”, I was a bit lazy and instead of writing a good linear order implementation of KMP which was

difficult to code, I wrote a best quadratic implementation. I knew that I could make the search faster by writing a linear-order implementation, but I was lazy and I did not do that. And, after 10 years of my writing STL, exactly the same implementation is still used inside STL and STL ships with an inefficient quadratic implementation of search routine even today!! You might ask me: why can’t you rewrite that? Well…I cannot, because that code is no more my property!! Further, nobody today will be interested in a standalone efficient STL …people would prefer one which automatically ships out with the compiler itself.

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4. Follow your culture [MUST READ]

I have seen the tradition that whatever junk is created in US, it rapidly spreads up in the rest of the world, and India is not an exception for this.This cultural change creates a very strong impact on everybody’s life.

Habits of watching spicy Bollywood or Hollywood movies and listening to pop songs and all such stupid stuff gets very easily cultivated in people of your age…but believe me, there is nothing great in that. This all just makes you run away from your culture.

And there is no wisdom in running away from your culture. Indian culture, which has great Vedas and stories like Mahabharata and Bhagwatgeeta is really great and even Donald Knuth enjoys reading that.

You should understand that fundamental things in Indian culture teach you a lot and you should never forget them.

Finally, I would like to conclude by saying that it’s your life…do not waste it on stupid things…develop your tests, and start the fight.

Cheers!