24

After Prison Break the other series that got me hooked to it, is 24. Initially I was absolutely fascinated by the concept of one entire season happening in 24 hours with each of the 24 episodes covering every consecutive hour of the day. But then after watching more seasons, the time of the incidents didn't seem to matter and after a point I stopped keeping track of the time. Cos any incident may happen at any time of the day, but it's just that they are happening continuously over a span of 24 hours.

However, there must be a willing suspension of disbelief when it comes to questions like "How the hell are the characters staying awake for so long???", "When do they eat, or even attend nature's call for that matter??" But the entire series will be an edge-of-the-seat thriller if we are willing to accept one basic fundamental law of 24: JACK BAUER CANNOT DIE!!

Here are a few of the funniest Jack Bauer Jokes that I found on the net:

It takes you 24 weeks just to watch what Jack Bauer does in a single day.

When a convicted terrorist was sentenced to face Jack Bauer, he appealed to have the sentence reduced to death.

Jack Bauer quit for just five minutes, and a nuclear bomb went off.

If everyone on "24" followed Jack Bauer's instructions, it would be called "12".

Jack Bauer always tests positive for steroids. Not that he uses steroids. It's because steroids are made from Jack Bauer.

Jack Bauer once forgot where he put his keys. He then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he gave up the location of the keys.

If Jack Bauer was in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and Nina Meyers, and he had a gun with 2 bullets, he'd shoot Nina twice.

1.6 billion Chinese are angry with Jack Bauer. Sounds like a fair fight.

Jack Bauer forced Mother Theresa to confess to several crimes.

Jack Bauer once ate an entire bottle of sleeping pills. They made him blink.

When Google can't find something, it asks Jack Bauer for help.

In kindergarten, Jack Bauer killed a terrorist for Show and Tell.

Jack Bauer has been to Mars. That’s why there’s no life on Mars.

While undercover, Jack Bauer once killed 100 babies to prove his loyalty to a terrorist organization, then killed all the terrorists with a pencil and two rolls of Scotch tape.

Once again a loong delay!

One of the best thing I like about blogging is that even if I come after a zillion days it still stays as it is. And no one is forcing me to keep writing stuff unless I really feel like it. So I don't think there's a reason to feel sorry for it. And for the simple reason that its always there for me whenever I need it, I love blogging!!! :-)

Prison Break

One of those series that I had reserved to watch during the holidays. For when my brother introduced me to Heroes during the middle of the semester, I got so hooked into it that I couldn't concentrate on anything else. Watching these series makes you wonder why they don't make such series in India. They've shamelessly copied all the reality shows from the West, but when it comes to fiction, they stop with the soppy saas-bahus and mega-serials. But you can't blame them for the absence of creative story-tellers, for if there were good ones, first the movies here would be far better.

I've just finished watching season 1 of Prison Break and I can't wait till this weekend to get the next season from my friend. What I like more about Prison Break than Heroes was that the characters were normal without any extra-ordinary powers. When I saw heroes, I though that it should require some grandiose imaginations like these to make a thriller of a series. But Prison Break proved that it was possible to make a better thriller with just human characters. Making an intelligent storyline not only ensures an interesting watch but also fills the viewers with self-pride when they realize that the director has not underestimated their tastes.

Michael Scofield's character is inspirational and the way he comes up with his ingenius ideas to get things done makes you wonder if anyone can actually be that intelligent. But Paul Scheuring who has come up with the entire thing has to be. Having the entire plot in hand before starting to narrate is the most important quality of a good story-teller. This is something our story-writers have to learn from the Westerners if they want to produce great thrillers.

I had a vague idea of the story before i set out to watch it. But I wondered how breaking out of a prison could be made into a 22 episode series and then into more seasons that would also be entertaining to watch throughout. If you have the same doubt watch it and you will not regret it.

Dea(r)th of Good Movies

And finally holidays... two months of sleeping eating and sleeping once again... one of the main things that keeps a college student alive during his holidays is movies. But sadly what struck me hard as soon as the holidays started was the absence of "one" good movie that would give you the feeling "I'm waiting to watch this movie on the day of the last exam." Looking at the list of Tamil movies that have released so far this summer, fills me with nothing but nausea. But here's a list of those movies that I've survived through these twenty days of holidays. Kudos to myself...

Santosh Subramaniam - This is Raja's 5213247th remake of a telugu movie, again with his brother Jeyam Ravi (do either of them make movies with others?). The only originality in Raja's movies is the selection of the proper Telugu blockbuster that would become a hit in Tamil too. Otherwise the movie is a scene-by-scene dubbing of the original flick. Genelia's character is mind-numbingly naive and a typical attempt to portray the bubbly Kareena of Jab We Met has taken her way overboard making her appear not just comical but a little irritating. And sadly (for tamil cinema), the usual Telugu movie marked by its lengthy mawkish dialogues in the climax scenes, has come to be accepted even by the Tamil audience. The only thing that has made this movie a hit is the basic story which retains its slight tinge of originality from its Telugu version (after all it was a blockbuster there, it must have had something in it).

Yaaradi Nee Mohini - A comic relief after watching Santosh Subramaniam. But it was just that. Gaining back my senses a few days after watching the two movies and thinking of the scenes in this movie, I can't believe how I was able to digest them in the first place. Raghuvaran-Danush dialogues were highly unrealistic to the point that they could have been avoided. And where can one find a family like Nayan's still living in the villages following ascetic lifestyles as depicted? But scenes like the hero being asked to sing about his friend's fiance and the dumb friend's smile upon seeing the two hugging each other during the song makes you forgive and forget all the other exaggerations in the movie. The climax was not very clear too.

Vellithirai - Feels like I'm still watching this movie. Sooooo loooooooong. But its one of those sensible movies that deserve some critical appreciation. 'Cos otherwise if such movies arent liked by both the critics and the general audience, its movies like YNM and SS that directors will be forced to make, for at least they'll be a commercial success. And surely we don't want that. The last half an hour was refreshingly different and the most intelligent way to end the movie. But the question is if we are prepared to withstand the first two hours for that. A very good performance from Prakash Raj, Prithviraj and Gopika. But Prithvi has to do something about his Tamil accent. Sounds quite funny when he's delivering serious dialogues.

Kuruvi - Statutory Warning: Watching this movie can be injurious to health. Pregnant women, old people and heart patients are strongly recommended not to see.

So eagerly waiting for Dasavatharam and Vaaranam Ayiram to dig out and revive Tamil Cinema from its graves.

PROJECT K WINNER!!!

Kurukshetra was finally over and my only regret was not to have won anything, nor even participated in many, mainly because of organising two on-the-spot events. Except maybe came fourth in K! Sci-Tech Quiz. (Ya there was cash and certificate). But still didnt have the opportunity to win in any event. We were selected as one of the three finalists from around twenty teams, in Project K! and were counting on it to get some prize. The other two teams were equally good and we were nervous if we would be sent empty-handed after all the hard work. We were asked to display the projects during Kurukshetra when they would announce the results. Finally Kurukshetra was over and the result was not announced yet. It took them a week to decide amongst themselves before they came to a wonderful conclusion, which we were more than happy to hear, forgetting all the delays caused. All the three teams were given first place with the total prize money divided amongst us. No losers (well except those who didn't get selected in the previous rounds). After all, when we show our certificate in the future, who's gonna know there were 3 first places!!!


Our project details -

I-Robot -

Interactive robot. A companion in the house, to interact with. A servant to obey commands. Interfaced with the computer database, to store our daily schedule and contacts. Reminds us of our next appointment by sending a message to our mobile. Controlled by the computer, through RF remote circuit connected to the parallel port. Face recognition using SIFT(Scale Invariant Feature Transform), to recognise the face of the user. Fully voice operated. In stealth mode of operation, when the user is not in the house, it scans the room and sends a message to the user's mobile if there is any motion in its field of view. This can be extended to be a companion for a blind person to guide him through the house to predefined locations, a translator for sign language when interacting with a mute person etc.

P.S. We actually built a working model of all that was mentioned above. Hope there was no doubt in that.

Math Modelling

Kurukshetra, Day two -

First round, 3:00 p.m.

I was busy with Alcatraz, so couldn't help much with this on the spot. But I helped with framing some of the questions. The sponsor Hey Math! were a group of fun people , who insisted that the questions must be framed in a humorous way. And the question paper did turn out to be fun as we expected. There was a decent show up. Close to 150-175 teams. Correcting the math modeling papers was a joy compared to Alcatraz, as we just had to take most of the papers from the uncorrected bunch and turn the pages and place it on the corrected bunch. The questions were of a high standard. Maybe many teams found it difficult, but we had to (a) maintain the standard of Kurukshetra and (b) select really good teams for the finalists (also making our job easier). In other words, the teams who got selected for the finals really deserved it. The people from Hey Math! were really overwhelmed by the particiaption and had the opportunity to film the entire event.

Kurukshetra, Day three -

Second Round, 11:00 a.m.

The no.of questions were lesser (four) than the prelims but the same time was given. The questions were interesting. There was one on proving the result of a vedic math method, one on functions etc. But don't know what the reason was, (maybe the teams started thinking too much), except for the winner, no one had tried obvious methods for proofs like induction, binomial expansion etc. While we were correcting the papers, the Head of Chennai, Hey Math!, interacted with the participants about their interests in Math and what they would like to do after college. At the end, after announcing the results and giving mementos to the sponsors, we were asked to say a few words as organisers, on camera. Over-all it was a fun event to organise.

Alcatraz: Great Engineering Challenge

This was one of the events in Kurukshetra in which I was a part of the organizing team. It was an event to find the ultimate engineer - one who was both theoretically and practically set to be an all-round engineer. The event was to have three rounds. In the first round the participants' basic theoretical knowledge in most of the disciplines of engineering had to be tested. The second round was a hands-on round in which the selected ten teams were given items to design or assemble on the spot. To be frank, the first two rounds were just perfunctory ones, to filter out three teams for the final showdown. Our entire event was focussed on the final round.

The participants, three teams of three, would be put in three identical prison-like environments and they must escape within two hours. The prison would have a cot, a table, a chair and some posters on the walls. Nothing more. Of course, the prisons had to be classrooms in Science and Humanities block which limited our choice of devising a dramatic escape route. Hiding the key in the room and making the participants find it would be too cliche. We weren't satisfied with that. First we thought of hiding a screwdriver and making them remove the window grills(which we would have loosened before) to escape. But there would be an obvious opposition from the authorities. To find out what we did, read on...

Kurukshetra, Day one:

First round, 10:00 a.m. -

Two months of sweat and blood. The judgement day had finally arrived. The moment of truth. It was the first event in Kurukshetra and was to be the major crowd-puller. All the rooms in the Science and Humanities block second floor were flooded with the most energetic participants (fresh bloods without the strain of the battle yet). The prelims was for an hour. Written. The 30 questions were of excellent standard as was accepted by all the participants who wrote. There were questions from day-to-day life which we would have never given a second thought to(like why was the sky blue and not violet according to Rayleigh's scattering law, why are the containers in water lorries ellipsoidal instead of cylidrical etc.), questions from basic engineering designs(like designing mechanical equivalent of logic gates, gear trains etc.), questions from physics(on half-life period, relative velocity etc.) and many more, each of which left the participants thinking, "Why have we not thought about this before?" Feedback from one of the teams, "Our paper is full of intelligent questions but stupid answers." Our day was made.

Second round, 2:30 p.m. -

Ten teams were selected from the 400 odd teams that participated in the first round. The second round was design round. There were three problem statements. One, a dismantled alarm clock was given which was to be reassembled from the first gear and screw and made to work. Two, an intact cycle bell had to be opened and its working had to be explained with suggestions on improving its efficiency. Three, a tensegrity tower had to be constructed from sticks and rubber bands. It was interesting to see the teams working on their problem statements. Hope it was as interesting and educative to the teams.

Kurukshetra, Day two:

Third round, 1:00 p.m.

The participants were put in three rooms on the first floor of Science and Humanities block. Identical. When the participants entered the first thing they would notice is the diary of the previous prisoner. The only prisoner to have escaped the Alcatraz - "Where you realise hell is better". I came up with that and wrote the quote on the blackboard of the 3 rooms. So, the escaped prisoner has left some clues for these guys to escape, but wants to ensure that only the deserving, would escape. The teams find out from the diary that the prisoner has a habit of solving sudokus and crosswords in the newspaper everyday. They search for any newspaper in the room and find one under the bedspread. The sudoku has some unsolved numbers circled, with an arrow pointing down or towards the right. After solving those numbers, their corresponding solutions the prisoner has scribbled in the crossword( the number along with down or across) is verified and the words "next step board" is found.

The blackboard is searched for the next clue and the writing "dangling spinner y in this room" is found under the rim of the board. The dangling spinner refers to the fans. The fans are ensured to be off. We switched off the power supply. The blades of the fan contained pieces of jigsaw puzzles, which the teams had to get using the chair and table. The pieces of the jigsaw when arranged had a maze with letters. The correct path would have the words "if cities were stars, trace the prisoners escape route on the map." The diary had the cities that the prisoner planned to follow after he escaped. When the cities were joined on the India map on the wall, the shape of Libra constellation was obtained. There was a Zodiac chart stuck on the wall, with an unrelated picture for every sign. The sign of Libra had the picture of the chair. When the chair was searched, inside its hollow leg a sheet of cryptic code was obtained, with the number 1.618.. on the top which denoted fibonacci number. When the letters in the code were decoded by taking fibonacci numbered letter in the table, the words "Second word in schedule" was found. There was a prison schedule stuck on the wall. The first letters of the second words in the schedule spelt "Take times as flags".

Next taking the times as semaphore flags, with the decoding sheet hidden in the back cover of the diary, the words "Morse codes wanted" was obtained. There were wanted posters on the wall with the pictures of the three prisoners (team members). The pictures were stuck on the wall using staplers and bell pins on the ends. The staplers denoted _ and bell pins denoted . of the morse code. Decoding those words using the sheet, they got the words "shout aloud lumos". When they shout "lumos", one of us organisers, who is inside filming the entire event, throws an invisible ink reader to them. Using the reader on the pages of the diary, they find one of the pages has a picture of the top view of the room with a chain a saw and a cross on the door, written in invisible ink. When they search the door, they find that it is actually chained from the outside and can be pushed open from the inside. But the chain would open enough to let them out. Upon searching the top of the door, they find the blade of a saw outside the top grill of the door. They use the saw to break the chain and get out.

All these clues were designed with the idea that they wouldnt seem obvious before they knew what to do. Two teams went through it all and escaped. One team knew that there was something in everything in the room, but couldnt figure out what and gave up. But on the whole all the 3 teams enjoyed the entire event thoroughly and couldnt stop talking about it for some days whenever they saw us. Our only regret is that only the 3 teams and few others knew about it and appreciated it. Had the video of the entire thing been properly edited and displayed as a movie, it would have been the biggest event of Kurukshetra. But on the whole it was an wonderful experience conducting it.

Sorry for the loooong delay!!!

I sound like my blog is one of the most read and the fans have been waiting with bated breath for my next blog...

Actually the sorry was to myself... to my website... that I wasn't able to concentrate on my blogging for the past two months... Well a lot had happened and I didnt have time... good thing is... got lots to write...

Kurukshetra

One of the biggest battlefields of all-time, it is not only a field of war, but also a field of knowledge, for the holy Bhagavad Gita, the purpose of life, the only teachings in which the Guru is the God Almighty himself, was preached at this very place. And here at Anna University, we bring this battlefield back to life. We recreate this epic scenario; where you can fight the biggest battle of minds, at the same time learn the purpose of your life as an engineer. “Why am I an engineer? What are my duties? How can I make this world a better place to live?” Find out the answer to all these questions and more. Come with your troops, for the battleground is open, the horn is blowing and it’s time to prove your might…

Enter the site of the battle.

Om Shanti Om

“I believe you when you beat up ten guys. I believe you when you jump of a building and not die or when you walk on water. So why won’t I believe this?” This one dialogue sums up the entire movie. This is probably the only line in the movie that comes closest to credibility. But what the heck!!! We don’t go to a movie for reality. We go for fun, for laughter or as Om Prakash tells Shantipriya, whenever we are sad, we go to a movie to forget our worries. The mantra of “Om Shanti Om” is ‘you can sell anything to the audience as long as it’s entertaining.’ The most appreciable aspect of the movie is that both Shah Rukh and Farah don’t mind laughing at themselves. Be it the award nominations scene in which Shah Rukh openly accepts his stereotypical roles or the credits in which Farah arrives last, only to find that the fans have left. But does that justify their spoofs of other actors? Farah has not spared anyone; from Manoj Kumar to Bhansali to Suraj Barjhatia. And Abhishek must be appreciated for accepting such a self-humiliating role, which was without doubt the funniest scene in the movie.

What was Shah Rukh trying to prove with the six-pack? That he could not only make the audience laugh or cry but also puke instantaneously? The screen was full of it and there was nowhere else to look. It was artificial to the extent that it looked like the work of Sabu Cyril, the art director. And he has done an excellent job in the movie. Kirron Kher’s stunning performance as the over-acting ‘filmy maa’ sadly loses its importance in the second half. And I don’t want to talk about Dee(slurp)pika, because that would exceed my blog limit (Ya, I know it’s unlimited). Thankfully the second Deepika was just a look-alike and not another re-incarnation. Because you see… we will believe one re-incarnation but not two! Shreyas does a remarkable job. And incidentally, he gets the most appropriate dialogue in the movie “Agar thujhe hero bannna hain tho there nam ke peeche Kapoor ya Khanna hona chahiye.” And although the scene where he sticks a mole on his face and says no one will recognize him mocks the 70’s movies, sadly the movies these days are no better, where a grey dye is enough to make the villain look thirty years older. Arjun Rampal has also come up with a commendable performance. Where the movie loses out is in the fact that the young hero tries to take revenge on a 60 year old villain who has nothing more to prove in life, for a crime he committed thirty years ago. I mean… what’s the point yaar? And that wouldn’t have been the biggest mistake he would have done in his life for sure, for him to even remember it leave alone repent for it. In the last few scenes where the movie is being shot I was not sure whether they were trying out a comedy track or serious bits, because they were absolutely non-sensical. Like the story resembling the villain’s life would go unnoticed by him till he sees Shanti’s face on screen or the hero singing the entire story was still not enough. And had Om taken the entire unit into confidence? Because otherwise all those would not have been possible. All of Farah’s mockery of other films loses meaning in the way she has taken her own movie to the end. The climax could have been better. Was it enough for the villain to die? Shouldn’t he be brought to trial? Isn’t that what Om wanted? I was definitely misled by SRK’s punch line and was under the impression ki “Picture abhi bhi baki hain.”

Youngest CEO in the India!!!

Hey everybody... Check out these links... I'm really proud to say that that's my little brother Ashwin... Studying 12th...

YOUNGEST CEO IN INDIA

BUSINESS BYTES INTERVIEW PART 1

BUSINESS BYTES INTERVIEW PART 2

BUSINESS BYTES INTERVIEW PART 3

I'm astounded and inspired by his skills, his drive and the amount of hard work he's put in at such a young age. All the best Ashwin for all your future endeavors.

Remembering our roots

When the tablets of Crete were discovered, they contained symbols, whose pronunciation, let alone the meaning, could not be guessed. Pure logical reasoning and ingenious assumptions helped unravel the mysteries of the language, now called Linear B, used five hundred years even before the Greek civilization was supposed to have begun. Linear B is a script that was used for writing Mycenaean, an early form of Greek and it seems to have died out with the fall of Mycenaean civilization, around 1100 B.C. Hieroglyphics, the ancient language of the Egyptians, also seems to have died around 400 A.D. after the Roman emperor Theodosius I, who ruled Egypt at the time, forced all non-Christian temples to be closed. The list of languages lost in the sands of time is endless and many more are on the verge of extinction. One such language that was developed around 1700 B.C., before civilizations around the world had even started to develop, but is now on the verge of extinction, is Sanskrit. With Sanskrit being offered as a third language to higher secondary students and many students taking it up with interest, one might wonder why it is being referred to as “verge of extinction” but the 1991 Indian census reported just 49,736 fluent speakers of Sanskrit. Although it is a wonder that it has survived so many millennia, which goes on to prove its strength as well as simplicity, it has not come this close to dying in its 3700 years of existence.

In the past three decades, much time and money has been spent on trying to find an unambiguous method of representation of natural languages to make them accessible to computer processing. It is accepted widely that natural languages are unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical rigor. But a report produced by the NASA scientist Rick Briggs, on Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence, states that this dichotomy is a false one. He says that there is in fact a language, Sanskrit, that had been the spoken language for more than 1000 years, whose grammar has all the requisites of an artificial language. To summarize his report, the semantic network of Sanskrit is a context-free one. For e.g. the English sentence “Rama kills Ravana”, can be written in Sanskrit as “Ramah Ravanam Vadathi” or “Ravanam Ramah Vadathi” or “Vadathi Ramah Ravanam” or in any other way the sentence could be formed. This is because a noun’s property of being a subject or object does not depend on its position in the sentence as in most other languages, but in the form of the noun itself. Thus even if the verb appears before the noun, since the subject and object are clear, the sentence has no way of being misinterpreted. This makes instructions in Sanskrit unequivocal. Understandably, this feature gives poets a very high degree of freedom. This is one of the reasons why Sanskrit is sometimes referred to as the most poetic language. The Ramayana consisted of 24,000 verses and the Mahabharata with more than 74,000 verses, long prose passages, and about 1.8 million words in total, is one of the longest epic poems in the world. The poetic freedom given by Sanskrit is what has made epics of such magnitude to be written as poems, instead of direct prose.

The older form of Sanskrit utilized in epic literature—namely the Ramayana and Mahabharata—was slightly less strict in its grammatical codification. The form of Sanskrit which has been used for the last 2500 years is known today as classical Sanskrit. That Sanskrit is a language of the Hindus alone is a misconception for it is also the liturgical language of Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Further, it must be considered only as a language, just as English is considered only a language and not the language of Christians. The Sanskrit literature is not only rich in drama, art and poetry but also in scientific, religious and philosophical texts. It is a sad state for the language that these texts are unable to be read now by a majority of the people. Since the 1990s, efforts to revive spoken Sanskrit have been increasing. Organizations like the Samskrta Bharati are conducting Speak Sanskrit workshops to popularize the language. We as Indians must actively try and restore the language, for knowledge which has been our nation’s greatest wealth, found its first words in Sanskrit.

"Ram Sethu" or just Adam's Bridge?

"Contents of the Valmiki Ramayana, the Ramcharita Manas by Tulsidas and other mythological texts cannot be said to be historical record to incontrovertibly prove the existence of the characters, or the occurrence of the events, depicted therein.''


Does this mean that all the beliefs held by Hindus about their gods and temples and rituals hold no meaning? So a temple can be demolished to build a highway because there is no written piece of record to prove that the place has an importance to Hindus and their religion. It's just an eyesore to the "developing" nation.

Can anyone dare to make such a statement about any other religion? When Jyllands-Posten the Danish newspaper depicted controversial cartoons, it led to protests across the Muslim world, some of which escalated into violence (more than 100 deaths, altogether), including setting fire to the Norwegian and Danish Embassies in Syria, and the storming of European buildings and desecration of the Danish and the German flags in Gaza City. Either we are too naive or too lazy to protect ourselves. Are there any written records of the miracles performed by Jesus? Even if there is, is a piece of writing enough to prove them? Are there any videos of the deeds? Religion is a set of belief that extends beyond proof. In the words of Douglas Adams "proof denies faith and without faith God is nothing." Expecting to prove a set of beliefs is not only absurd to the level of trying to find the end of the universe but also hurts the group of people who believe them. Can any government make a statement on this issue and get away with it? Is our government so insensitive to the feelings of a section of people? Why don't the politicians ever try to put their hands into other beehives? It is a fact that only the revenues of the "Hindu temples" go to government and not the donations given to Mosques or Churches. This is one of the primary reasons why many temples are poorly maintained and some are in dilapidated conditions. Why such a pathetic treatment to the so-called "majority" in a "secular" nation?

There is a big debate going on about whether sainthood should be given to Mother Teresa.Since Mother Teresa's death in 1997, six people have come forward to say prayers to her have led to miraculous cures.At least one miracle must be proved to a medical committee before she can be beatified. A second miracle must be proved before she can become a saint. The miracle that will most likely be attempted to be proved involves a Bengali woman who says her life-threatening tumour disappeared within days of her prayers to Mother Teresa. In a rare interview in 1986, Mother Teresa told CBS News she had a calling, based on unquestioned faith. "They are all children of God, loved and created by the same heart of God," she said. Shortly after beginning work in Calcutta's slums, the spirit left Mother Teresa. "Where is my faith?" she wrote. "Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me." Eight years later, she was still looking to reclaim her lost faith. "Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal," she said. This comment of Mother Teresa has sparked a huge controversy about whether sainthood should be conferred to a person who had no belief in God. When a Christian with a saintly character and even the so required "miracles" in her account, is denied sainthood just because of her once disbelief in God, what punishment must be given to those trying to find evidence of God's existence in our religion and even daring to bring it into scientific inquiry?

The point is not about whether Rama actually built the bridge or not but about respecting the sentiments of people. And mere removal of a paragraph from the affidavit will not suffice. The action must be stopped. Of course, those raising voices against the issue may just be trying to take political advantage of the situation, but it is good that at least some are raising their voices.

The other controversial aspect to this issue is whether the project itself is sensible. There have been numerous articles in reputed dailies and news channels condemning this move and proving with calculations that the project will turn out to be a huge loss to the government. What is the strong motivation for the government to continue the project after all this, remains to be the million dollar question.