MAD-HE-MAD-ICS...

04/100 and 03/100 was my score in the first, second terminal examination(ripleys believe it or not!). Mesmerized? as a child who is seeing the magic but for the first time? yes this was my score in mathematics when I was in eighth standard (irony (breaking news): today I am an IT Engineer). Even Aryabhatta would have repented why he invented zero seeing the score of his indigenous student to be equivalent to it. Mathsophobia...more than seventy percent of greenhorn toddlers in India gets intimidated by the numeral system and being my inclination towards true patriot I was not left behind in-fact belonging to crème-de-la-crème of the seventy percent.

My aversion towards MAD-HE MAD-ICS began as an amateur when I was besieged to learn the multiplication tables and division juxtaposed to my woes. I contemplated, had there been only addition and subtraction, my stack of score could have been overflowed. My memory processing unit used to melt down whenever instruction like ÷,×,≥,≤,<,> came for opcode fetch. The memory read and memory write operations used to play game of swapping amongst in the neuron (yeah I really enjoyed learning 8085 microprocessor this semester :-)…. The huge Sridhar Acharaya formula still haunts me. How can any Indian with such spiritual name do this to another Indian?
At the eleventh hour of my exams I used to implore and adulate cohort for some illegal help.
My weary soul was searching for a lighthouse and I was like a floating ship without rudders.OMG! How I wish Taare Zameen Par was released at that time, I would have considered myself as “Lord’s Special child” .

I was deluded by people saying maths is as docile as a lamb. An inner racket woke my dormant mad-he-mad-ics talent. As vying got tougher (gratitude to my big ego…) it kindled my inner fire that was lurking for years. Consolidating my fragmented aplomb, I began to plan my maths innings. My first endeavor was to mug up the problems and guess what I was lucky enough… (Defacto : “something is better than doing nothing”) following the trend of Bengali egalitarian of mugging up everything. My sheer diligence fostered my score to move northward and abhorrence towards maths to move southward. My confidence grew more robust, mates independent and secure (java is too high on my priority list…)
As my adeptness pampered, the door of comprehending the problems got ajar and rest is history.

“Feed the faith fear will starve to death”

P S: Grammatical errors are intuitive to me and Chetan Bhagat..:-)

USA...The Root of Terrorism

As you sow so shall you reap…This adage became the de facto for the US of A when they were annihilated by the(shoes..sorry Bush but as the adage goes..:-) metallic kites in the worst terrorist attack ever on 9/11.The Presidential elect Barrack Obama is on record high advocating the escalation of military in Afghanistan. But history has something subtle to say . In the late 70’s the military of Afghanistan invited the People’s Democratic Party(PDP) to form a coalition government with the Marxist under the leadership of Noor Mohammed Taraki, a poet and novelist. Under his regime Afghanistan began to prosper as never before and Kabul became a cosmopolitan city. Girls education became compulsory, legalization of labor unions, women held top post in the government . People looked this as kaleidoscope of hopes. But the elitists poked their long nose because of the egalitarian and economic policies of the Taraki governance.

Almost immediately after the PDP coalition came to power, the CIA(Central Intelligence Agency of US), assisted by Saudi and Pakistani military(ISI), launched a large scale intervention into Afghanistan on the side of the ousted feudal lords, reactionary tribal chieftains, mullahs, and opium traffickers. The then Carter administration was providing huge sums to Muslim extremists to subvert the reformist government. Part of that effort involved brutal attacks by the CIA-backed mujahideen (Islamic guerrilla fighters) against schools and teachers in rural areas.. In 1979 Taraki was executed.

The seriously besieged PDP government asked soviet union to send a contingent of troops to help ward off the mujahideen and foreign mercenaries, all recruited, financed, and well-armed by the CIA. The CIA recruited almost 1 million radical Muslims from forty countries including Pakistan, Algeria, Iran and termed as holy war i.e the notorious Jihad. Ruling the country gangster-style and looking for lucrative sources of income, the tribes ordered farmers to plant opium poppy. The Pakistani ISI, a close junior partner to the CIA, set up hundreds of heroin laboratories across Afghanistan.


By 1995 an extremist strain of Sunni Islam called the Taliban---heavily funded and advised by the ISI and the CIA and with the support of Islamic political parties in Pakistan---fought its way to power, taking over most of the country, luring many tribal chiefs into its fold with threats and bribes. Suspected murderers and spies were executed monthly in the sports stadium, and those accused of thievery had the offending hand sliced off. The Taliban condemned forms of “immorality” that included premarital sex, adultery, and homosexuality. They also outlawed all music, theater, libraries, literature, secular education, and much scientific research. All men were required to wear untrimmed beards and women had to wear the burqa which covered them from head to toe, including their faces.


Upon taking over Afghanistan, the mujahideen fell to fighting among themselves. Several fled to home and others went to Pakistan and India to foster terror in the name of holy war and this way it spread to whole world. The US was paid back in its own coin. And now in the face of all this Obama’s call for “change” rings hollow.

Its all about Money

Do you think you know a lot about money? Maybe you do. Maybe you don't. But let's see if any of the following facts are in any way surprising to you:

1. More of our fantasies are about money... than sex.

2. If we could have any luxury in the world (and money didn't matter) more of us would choose to spend money on a butler and a maid than anything else.

3. 90% of Americans who own pets buy them Christmas gifts.

4. Money is the leading cause of disagreements in marriages.

5. 65% of Americans would live on a deserted island all by themselves for an entire year for $1,000,000.

6. For $10,000,000 most of us would do almost ANYTHING! Including abandoning our family and friends and our church. A very high percentage of us would, for that same amount of money, change our race or sex. And, 1 in every 14, would even murder someone for ten million bucks.

What's really strange about this is, the statistics remain the same whether it's ten million dollars all the way down to three million. For three million bucks, most of us would do the same horrible things we would do for ten million. But, guess what? Few of us would do these things for a "measly" two million.

7. 92% of us would rather be rich than find the love of our lives.

8. Here's a weighty one: Money (or the lack thereof) is the biggest stress inducer in the lives of Americans. We worry more about money than our marriages, our health, or even who's going to win the Superbowl Game or come out on top in the latest Survivor TV show.

9. If you get your money out of a Hitachi ATM machine in Japan, it will be laundered. The way they do it is, they briefly press the bills between rollers at high enough temperatures to kill most bacteria.

10. Women have very fixed ideas on how much they are willing to spend on a bra. 38.3% of women won't spend $30 for a bra. 28.4% won't spend $50. 10% would pay as much as $75. And, only 3.5% would shell out $100. But, you know what? Almost 20% of women say they would pay almost anything for a bra. This is because they consider (and I guess so do a few men) that the contents of what those bras are encasing is of extremely high-value.

11. Nearly half of the people who sell their houses with furniture included will take all the light bulbs out of all the lamps when they vacate the premises.

12. Most people won't bend over to pick up money lying on the sidewalk unless it's at least a dollar.

13. Most Americans think pennies are a pain in the ass and the U.S. Mint should stop making them.

14. There is about 405 billion dollars in circulation. Only 32 million of that amount is counterfeit. That means, the percentage of counterfeit money in America is .0079%. And, $20 bills are more often counterfeited than $100 bills.

15. Do people care if their bills are crisp? Indeed, they do. Fresh, crisp, clean bills are considered much more valuable than those which are old, wrinkled and dirty.

I once sent a 'dollar bill thank you' letter to a guy who sent a sincere letter back to me [no swearing please]ing the free $1 bill I sent him was wrinkled instead of crisp as I had described in the letter.

16. Let's flip a coin and try to guess whether it will come up heads or tails. Three times as many people guess 'heads' than 'tails'.

17. Here's one I personally think really [naughty word removed]s: One out of every four Americans believe their best chance of getting rich is by playing the lottery.

18. How about this one for a shocking fact: 5% of lottery ticket buyers buy 51% of all tickets sold. (Trust me, none of these people belong to the "Einsteins of America Society".)

19. A staggering 74% of us are influenced by how much we can win in a lottery as opposed to the odds of us winning.

20. That's a good thing for the Government because the odds of winning a lottery jackpot are about 10 million to 1.

21. A person who drives 10 miles to buy a lottery ticket is 3 times more likely to be killed in a car accident while driving to buy the ticket... than... he is to win the jackpot.

22. Sunday newspaper coupon inserts are the second-most read section of the paper, after the front page.

23. Few people know it but, you can buy single-disease insurance.

24. Only 6% of people in America regularly buy clothes tailor made just for them.

25. Here's one that's really important: 63% of us decide NOT to buy a product advertised on the Internet... because... we think the shipping and handling charges add too much to the order.

26. Eight times as many Americans would rather use an ATM than deal with a real live teller.

27. This one's going to blow your mind: 83% of Americans still pay with checks instead of credit cards!

28. Almost 30% of us say we would need 3 million smackaroos to feel rich. This ties in with the fact most of us would do anything for as little as $3 million... but... not nearly as many of us would do those identical things for a measly $2 million. (Hey, here's your chance to take advantage of that situation. If you only want to pay $2 million to have something done, ask me if I'll do it. The chances are, believe it or not, I WILL DO IT.)

29. Here's another fact which is really, really important: 80% of Americans say giving personal information (especially their credit card information) over the Internet scares the living [no swearing please] out of them.

30. Two-thirds of Americans say they wouldn't let their spouse spend the night and have sex with another person for a million dollars. Many of these people are liars. There's a big difference being asked if they would do it for a million dollars... as opposed to... handing them a paper sack containing the million fungolas and simply saying, "Here, you can have this if you'll let me sleep with your sweetie tonight."

31. The average wedding in America costs a staggering $20,000.00.

32. More than one-third of American women consider money more important than good sex to the success of a marriage.

33. According to Employee Benefits Research Institute 96% of all people who have jobs right now won't be eligible for their full Social Security benefits when they reach age 65.

34. When it comes to houses, more than anything else, people want a state-of-the-art kitchen.

35. When people shop for a car, what they want more than anything else is reliability for the best possible price.

36. One of the best ways to raise money for a charity is to have a free dinner for a lot of people and have an empty envelope tucked under their plate... for the express purpose... of making whatever size donation they want.

37. People tip more on sunny days than they do on dreary days.

38. More than 80,000,000 people call the I.R.S. Information Hotline phone number every year. One-third of those calls go unanswered. And, according to the Treasury Department itself, 47% of the answers the 'get-through' callers receive are incorrect.

39. Almost two out of three people have modified their financial behavior because of their fears.

40. Almost three times as many people who live in the South worry about losing their jobs as compared to people who live in the Midwest.

41. Which would you rather do: Shop till you drop... or... have great sex?

For men, this is a no-brainer.

However, more women would actually rather have an unlimited shopping spree than spend a weekend with a fabulous lover. In fact, the #1 favorite fantasy of women is to have a blank check to shop at their favorite store.

The favorite fantasy of men (at least in my opinion) is what we would like to DO to the sales girl... rather than... what we would like to buy from her