Not uttering the word salt at night

At many places, there is a custom that, one should not utter the word salt at night. They use words like, that one, the one that is there in that box/packet etc.

The original reason is, one should not use too much of salt. So, the ancestors might have said, never use salt at night time. But, still, people in their house might wanted to use that, and since, they may be fear of the head of the family, if they say salt at night. So, they would have started using words like, that one, the one which is there in that box etc. Gradually, their children and grand children might have continued using those words without knowing the original reason.

Eventhough, the original purpose was to reduce the usage of salt, without reducing that, we have just reduced the uttering the word salt.

Clement Atlee's Response on Gandhi's Role in Independence

It was British prime minister Clement Atlee who, when granting independence to India, said that Gandhi’s non-violence movement had next to zero effect on the British. In corroboration, Chief Justice P.B. Chakrabarty of the Kolkata High Court, who had earlier served as acting governor of West Bengal, disclosed the following in a letter addressed to the publisher of Ramesh Chandra Majumdar’s book A History of Bengal:

You have fulfilled a noble task by persuading Dr. Majumdar to write this history of Bengal and publishing it … In the preface of the book Dr. Majumdar has written that he could not accept the thesis that Indian independence was brought about solely, or predominantly by the non-violent civil disobedience movement of Gandhi. When I was the acting Governor, Lord Atlee, who had given us independence by withdrawing the British rule from India, spent two days in the Governor’s palace at Calcutta during his tour of India. At that time I had a prolonged discussion with him regarding the real factors that had led the British to quit India. My direct question to him was that since Gandhi’s “Quit India” movement had tapered off quite some time ago and in 1947 no such new compelling situation had arisen that would necessitate a hasty British departure, why did they have to leave? In his reply Atlee cited several reasons, the principal among them being the erosion of loyalty to the British Crown among the Indian army and navy personnel as a result of the military activities of Netaji [Subhash Chandra Bose]. Toward the end of our discussion I asked Atlee what was the extent of Gandhi’s influence upon the British decision to quit India. Hearing this question, Atlee's lips became twisted in a sarcastic smile as he slowly chewed out the word, “m-i-n-i-m-a-l!”

Source:

Majumdar, Ramesh Chandra, Three Phases of India’s Struggle for Freedom, Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, India, 1967, pp. 58-59.

Ranjan Borra, “Subhas Chandra Bose, The Indian National Army, and The War of India’s Liberation,” Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 20 (2001), No. 1, reference 46.

Hitler, NOT Gandhi, Should Be Given Credit for the Independence of India in 1947

Vijetha and Sikhara Darsanam - Biographies of Chiranjeevi

The books Vijetha and Sikhara Darsanam are biographies of famous telugu hero Chiranjeevi. One line summary of these books is, I am yet to see a more useless biography than these for any famous person.

Compare these books with any biography in cinema field including N.T.Rama Rao, Akkineni Nageswara Rao, S.P.Bala Subrahmanyam, Rajinikanth, Gollapudi Maruthi Rao, Sobhanbabu, Kantha Rao, Savithri, Ghantasala or Ram Gopal Varma etc. No. Simply, you cannot compare.

After reading these books, I realized that, I should not write any book. Because, if I write any, it would be like these.

The author C.Sreekanth Kumar is very active in the Chiranjeevi fans association, Chiranjeevi eye & Blood Banks. He received Santhosham Film Award for the book Vijetha, for the best book based on movies in 2004. If this book has received the award, then what awards should the authors of the other biographies get?

If We Are Uncomfortable With Someone

If we are uncomfortable with someone, most of the time, we would like to get rid of them, so that, they won't trouble us again. While doing that, many people wish for bad things to happen to them, and most of the time, they wish for severe bad things than they deserve for the uncomfortableness they caused. Sometimes, the other person may not be wrong at all. But, because of the situation, we may be uncomfortable with them. In that case, we should not wish for any bad thing happen to them.

What should we wish for them?

We should wish for very good things to happen to them, so that they won't trouble us again.

If our colleague is causing trouble, and if he/she gets a very good job with very good pay in his/her favorite company and leaves this company, then our problems would be solved, and also he/she would be happy.

If a girl is uncomfortable because of a guy proposing her, and if she wishes that, he gets a more suitable girl than her, then both would be happy.

If anybody is troubling us because of some problem that he/she has, instead of wishing anything bad happen to that person, if we wish for that person's problem to be solved, that would be good for both.

There is only one reality. That is Code. Everything Else is Illusion

There is only one reality. That is Code. Everything else (design and documentation etc.) is illusion.

Once I worked in a team, where the managers expected detailed design for everything. When, I say, we will have a single library for validation and data storage etc., they won't accept it. They expect the application to be modularized, and have many components. If somebody proposes multiple libraries, with each library doing one small work, they would be very happy about it.

I am very bad at presenting these things, and coming up with big architecture for very small problems. There was a person in my team, who is very good in these things. He came up with a design, in which, there are multiple libraries. One library for business logic and one for data storage etc.

There will be one business logic library, which does all the validations and processing of the data and the conversions from UI to DB and vice versa. The DB layer handles all the save and retrieval of data, and it is not burdened with any processing of the data or business logic. The entire business logic would be in the business logic library. In future, if the business logic grows, we can split into multiple libraries based on the functionality. Since, it is the first version, we can start with one library and see in the next release whether to split this library.

At the end, most of the methods in the business logic library are like this.

public BIObject GetBIObject(Parameters)
{
    return dbHandler.GetBIObject(Parameters)
}

public BIObject SaveBIObject(Parameters)
{
    return dbHandler.SaveBIObject(Parameters)
}

[For those who did not understand the above, the entire functionality (validation, storage and everything else) was developed in the data library. The business logic is just a wrapper with one line of code for each method.]

Everybody was happy by this method.

The managers were happy, because, the design is good, where there are multiple components, and it is modularized. The other developer was happy, because, the managers were impressed with his design. I was happy, because, the code was exactly the way, I wanted it to be. And, also, I was relieved from the burden of designing (which I never used anyway) and presenting it to the managers.


Related Links:
What does it take to convince a Manager?
Developing Libraries - Give Minimum Privileges

Gandhi - His Attitude on Power

It is very easy to say, "I don't care about money", while having nice dinner at a seven star hotel.

If we go by what is known to the majority of the people, Gandhi is very simple and he did not have any interest on power etc. Except at the very beginning, he did not show any interest in becoming the president of Congress, and after getting the Independence, he did not take any post in the government.

In the later part of Gandhi's life, he had full power. Whatever he asked, it was done. He had Nehru, who has done everything that he asked (till the Independence). So, Gandhi never needed to take the power officially.

In 1939, Subash Chandra Bose contested for the Congress President elections. Gandhi had put Pattabi Seetharamayya as his candidate. Pattabi Seetharamayya lost in the elections, and Subhash Chandra Bose became the president of the Congress.

Gandhi did not like that. He publicly said, that the defeat of Sitaramayya was his own defeat. He asked many people to resign from their posts and have given zero co-operation to Subash Chandra Bose. Gandhi did not even attend the meetings of Congress. Bose got frustrated with the things happened in Congress because of Gandhi, and left Congress.

In 1946, India was on the way to Independence. Congress was supposed to elect the first Prime Minister of India. 16 states supported Sardar Vallabai Patel and only one state supported Nehru. But, Gandhi asked Patel to withdraw, and asked him to give the way to Nehru. Patel accepted it and Nehru became the first Prime Minister of India.

Gandhi never wanted to take power. But, he always wanted people, who listens to him in everything, to take power. Eventhough, Gandhi did not hold any official posts most of the time, he had full powers most of the time. He had people who listened to him for everything. When he was having full power, it is very easy to say that, he does not care about power. The real picture would come out only, when the people who have power do not listen to him.