मतदान को दान मत करो| Cast your vote, but dont give it away.
Check candidate profiles for maharashtra at http://myneta.info/mh2009/
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Cleanliness, Energy conservation, Education and what not...
India needs a lot of improvement. India is a great place to be in this 21st century because of many hopeful reasons like democracy, secularity, no racism, and so on. Sure, there have been occassions when it feels like "where is the democracy, I dont see it!" or "Seriously, democracy is not helping at all!" or "where is the secularism, those are just words". Sure it feels that way sometimes, but I feel that its not really true. It feels that way sometimes only because we tend to take our freedom for granted. Once we take for granted the rights that we have, anything that binds us starts seeming like a huge burden. It should be noted that atleast we have a constitution in place which says that we are secular and democratic. Atleast we as a people agree to be anti-racist. Atleast we as a people know that our strength is "Unity in Diversity". And these can prove to be the pillars of India's goodness, small exceptions aside.
If the above paragraph has established that India is a good place to be in, let me proceed to the main subject matter that I wish to address in this post.
Inspite of all the goodness, we still need a lot more if we wish India to progress. And it has been proved time and again that India has ample human talent and resources. Then why is it that we are still not No. 1 in the game? It is because we need more team-work. We need to learn that 2 x 1man-hours is not just 2 man-hours, it can be more than that. We need to recognize this and take advantage of it. If one disadvantage of our country is over-population, then cant we turn it around and use this to our advantage by building bigger teams that can make 100 man-hours be equivalent to 200 man-hours! Is this possible? I believe it could be.
But lets first start small. What about our inherent evils like corruption and bribery? What about people littering the streets without a second thought? How did we get here? We would need to overcome these, before dreaming as big as being able to work productively in a team. And you know why I say this? Because maintaining a clean neighbourhood is probably the first team thing that we need to do. Even as a child, one may know that the same neighbourhood is shared by so many and keeping it clean means a service to all of those people. So if all the neighbourhood/colony dwellers are a team, then cleanliness of the neighbourhood/colony is a team job. All it really needs is a bit of consideration for the others, to stop littering the place.
That consideration for others is really the real deal. If you have consideration for others, and the others respectively have consideration for others (including you in that others), dont you think the entire country could be a better/cleaner place seemingly automatically? Think about it. Most of the garbage lying around in the streets is obviously deposited there by some persons who werent considerate enough. If each of those persons had taken the effort to not deposit their trash there, wont that street have been spotless except for the leaves from the trees probably?
I find this consideration in many people around me, and yet I also see it absent in many. When will this consideration start to become ingrained in us? When will it become a second skin for us?
If the above paragraph has established that India is a good place to be in, let me proceed to the main subject matter that I wish to address in this post.
Inspite of all the goodness, we still need a lot more if we wish India to progress. And it has been proved time and again that India has ample human talent and resources. Then why is it that we are still not No. 1 in the game? It is because we need more team-work. We need to learn that 2 x 1man-hours is not just 2 man-hours, it can be more than that. We need to recognize this and take advantage of it. If one disadvantage of our country is over-population, then cant we turn it around and use this to our advantage by building bigger teams that can make 100 man-hours be equivalent to 200 man-hours! Is this possible? I believe it could be.
But lets first start small. What about our inherent evils like corruption and bribery? What about people littering the streets without a second thought? How did we get here? We would need to overcome these, before dreaming as big as being able to work productively in a team. And you know why I say this? Because maintaining a clean neighbourhood is probably the first team thing that we need to do. Even as a child, one may know that the same neighbourhood is shared by so many and keeping it clean means a service to all of those people. So if all the neighbourhood/colony dwellers are a team, then cleanliness of the neighbourhood/colony is a team job. All it really needs is a bit of consideration for the others, to stop littering the place.
That consideration for others is really the real deal. If you have consideration for others, and the others respectively have consideration for others (including you in that others), dont you think the entire country could be a better/cleaner place seemingly automatically? Think about it. Most of the garbage lying around in the streets is obviously deposited there by some persons who werent considerate enough. If each of those persons had taken the effort to not deposit their trash there, wont that street have been spotless except for the leaves from the trees probably?
I find this consideration in many people around me, and yet I also see it absent in many. When will this consideration start to become ingrained in us? When will it become a second skin for us?
Friday, October 2, 2009
Chess final
Wow! What a game!
I think this is the first time when I have played with an equal opponent and ever won anything in such a close finish. It was all due to that girl of Chem that Maths had to give walk-over in semis inspite of lecture timing class with match clash. It was obvious that they would come later and ask for a match. So it happened that even though we breezed through Chem in the finals and won, we were again called to play with Maths. Apparently it was to satisfy every one involved.. Maths team wanted to play, organizers wanted to get out of the horrible mess they had made, CSE PG nominee wanted a clean slate for the victory, my team-mate felt the same way I guess, she played and already won just as I got there to discuss all this..
Then they finally turned on me and told me that this game I should play for my own satisfaction.. that would I be really satisfied if I had only played against a mediocre team to get the gold medal.. that the real team had not even played against me..I knew they were trying to emotionally blackmail me, but once I spoke to my team-mate, she also said that being CSE, let us be generous. Let us play this and watever happens, happens.
Well, then I felt that even I had been looking forward to playing with the girl from Maths dept. So I thought why not play and see what happens. Btw, in the meantime, one of the organizers had already asked me to go for inter-iit chess and I thought that if I am so afraid to play this girl, how would I play inter IIT, so I finally thought yes.
First game I was white, but these days I am always finding my queen blocked behind the knight by the opponent's bishop. I felt it again today like a block in my throat literally. It was somehow frustrating and then I made a wrong move. I pushed a pawn thinking I have both knight and queen to support it, little realizing at that time that I couldnt move the knight at all due to my queen being pinned. So when she took the pawn, it suddenly dawned on me that it had gone free unlike what I had imagined. And ofcourse, I also realized that I would have lost my queen for sure if I had played like I had thought I would. And that realization beat the living daylights out of me. (Yeah it was night already but still the daylights were beaten out of me). And I began taking more and more time, my clock was running out of time.
Another wrong thing I did was I pushed the middle pawn in front of the castle in an attempt to push away her knight. She did withdraw the knight, but it just opened up the castling and that proved to be my downfall in the first game. She lined up her queen and white bishop for a mate-in-two, and I saw no way out. So I resigned. I do not understand why everyone was so shocked that I resigned, coz I was sure that she was good enough to have planned it and execute it perfectly. In fact it was a mate in one-move except that I could do somethign to push it to two, thats all. There was no other way to save my king with my rooks, queen & bishop. So I resigned and asked to begin the next game.
She was very relieved that she had won the game, and asked me whether I was sure that I wanted to play the second game. She said there was no pressure, and that we didnt have to play if I didnt want to. Ofcourse I wanted to play the second game! I wanted to beat her. I knew I could if I were just a little bit more careful. So began the second game with again 20 minutes on the clock and a fresh board.
This time I got black. And my heart sank at first. But then there was no turning back, and all I had to do was play. She also played the normal opening, nothing fancy. But even the normal opening did out pan out the same way as "normal". She kind of juggled a couple of moves, but eventually we seemed to hit the same kind of position as normal. And once again I found my knight pinned in front of my queen. If I move my queen, she ll take my knight and I have to take it with my king-side castle pawn. That will open up my castle and give her queen free reign to march in. Ahh, it was so frustrating. So I thought I ll do the same to her what she is trying to do to me. So I also pinned her knight the same way.
Later in the game I was so desperate to break her castle that I tried every trick possible. Btw, I should mention that somewhere along the way I became 2 pieces up! Yup! Even I cant believe it now! And another thing I realized was that even near end-game, all my 8 pawns were intact. Then that started to become suffocating, coz my rooks were practically useless when all files were blocked. And my time was still running out, I was thinking much much more than her. When I had 6-7 minutes remaining, she stil had 12-15! I dont remember exactly but it was a lot..
Meanwhile, her knight had rode up on the right hand side of my board, and poised ready to put infinite number of forks wherever I moved. I can not imagine now how I saw all of those chances
and avoided them successfully, but I have to just say a big "thank you" to God for it. There was a particular instance where any move I would do with either of my rooks or my queen, in an
apparent attempt to protect my king and the castling would have resulted in a fork from her knight! It was so frustrating, and that too with time running out like that. I literally squirmed in my seat, as if I wanted to lay down and get away from this game or something :-D There was an attack on my queen and I had to move it some place safe, usually I would have moved it right into the face of the fork but somehow I saw it, and moved much farther away from it.
When finally my castle seemed secure with my bishop sitting in front guarding it, I finally breathed a little. But I also realized that having all 8 pawns blocking all ranks, was causing trouble. So I pushed the center pawn. If she had let me go til the end, I would have made a queen and atleast got a piece of hers in exchange for the new queen. So I just kept pushing it and beating the clock to save time. At that time, finally she panicked and she began losing time too. And to prevent the pawn from becoming queen, she cut it in mid-way and finally my rank was open! Out came my right-hand rook and attacked the queen. Behind the queen was her rook (right in line) and my queen was right adjacent to her rook, ready to strike. As soon as her queen moved to save herself, my rook ploughed right ahead and took out her rook - Check! She had to use her other rook to exchange. I took that one using my queen and said Check again. So now she had a Queen and bishop remaining. While I had queen, rook and both bishops remaining. That was a fantastic situation to win.
But you know what, I had only 3-4 minutes remaining. And her queen and bishop lined up to take out my king. I realized that it was not at all possible to bring out my other rook, and achieve any back-rank mate. So when her king moved up from the corner of his castle, I gave a check with my queen right under the nose of her queen, offering an exchange - you take me or I ll take you. Either way it was only an exchange. She didnt take it, so I did and then breathed again. Atleast now, no matter what she does, she cant check-mate me coz she just had a bishop and few pawns scattered here and there. Whereas I had 2 bishops and rook. So now if I lose, it would be only on time. So I just went crazy. I just brought out my rook and gave check, cut pawns, moved with no aim, just playing and banging the clock to make it stop and not run out of time. People surrounding us were afraid that we were gonna break the clock, and I was kind of sorry for that too. But I had no time to think of the clock's health right then. I just didnt care for a win anymore. I was willing to settle for a draw even. She panicked too, and played couple of illegal moves. And I didnt even see them!
In fact, she became mate 3 times! And I was so busy giving check and making moves and banging the clock that I didnt even realize!!!! After 3rd illegal move, my dept. PG sports nominee (thankfully) shouted, "3 illegal moves, 3 illegal moves". And I was like wat, wat. My eyes were still on the clock thinking I m losing time even during this argument! And she said, but she didnt claim any of those illegal moves, so they dont count. Originally rule is that if I claim 3 illegal moves, then she loses. And since I didnt claim yet, it doesnt count. Thats when I really opened my eyes and saw that indeed she was already check-mate! She had been check-mate 5-6 moves ago, and still we had been continuing. If my flag had fallen before hers (which it was inching towards) without me realizing that she was already check-mate, I would have lost nevertheless! But thankfully, I awoke from my trance in time to see that I had actually won..
Wow what a nail biting finish! Actually nail-biting for everyone else except me, coz I didnt have time even to bite my nails :D
I think this is the first time when I have played with an equal opponent and ever won anything in such a close finish. It was all due to that girl of Chem that Maths had to give walk-over in semis inspite of lecture timing class with match clash. It was obvious that they would come later and ask for a match. So it happened that even though we breezed through Chem in the finals and won, we were again called to play with Maths. Apparently it was to satisfy every one involved.. Maths team wanted to play, organizers wanted to get out of the horrible mess they had made, CSE PG nominee wanted a clean slate for the victory, my team-mate felt the same way I guess, she played and already won just as I got there to discuss all this..
Then they finally turned on me and told me that this game I should play for my own satisfaction.. that would I be really satisfied if I had only played against a mediocre team to get the gold medal.. that the real team had not even played against me..I knew they were trying to emotionally blackmail me, but once I spoke to my team-mate, she also said that being CSE, let us be generous. Let us play this and watever happens, happens.
Well, then I felt that even I had been looking forward to playing with the girl from Maths dept. So I thought why not play and see what happens. Btw, in the meantime, one of the organizers had already asked me to go for inter-iit chess and I thought that if I am so afraid to play this girl, how would I play inter IIT, so I finally thought yes.
First game I was white, but these days I am always finding my queen blocked behind the knight by the opponent's bishop. I felt it again today like a block in my throat literally. It was somehow frustrating and then I made a wrong move. I pushed a pawn thinking I have both knight and queen to support it, little realizing at that time that I couldnt move the knight at all due to my queen being pinned. So when she took the pawn, it suddenly dawned on me that it had gone free unlike what I had imagined. And ofcourse, I also realized that I would have lost my queen for sure if I had played like I had thought I would. And that realization beat the living daylights out of me. (Yeah it was night already but still the daylights were beaten out of me). And I began taking more and more time, my clock was running out of time.
Another wrong thing I did was I pushed the middle pawn in front of the castle in an attempt to push away her knight. She did withdraw the knight, but it just opened up the castling and that proved to be my downfall in the first game. She lined up her queen and white bishop for a mate-in-two, and I saw no way out. So I resigned. I do not understand why everyone was so shocked that I resigned, coz I was sure that she was good enough to have planned it and execute it perfectly. In fact it was a mate in one-move except that I could do somethign to push it to two, thats all. There was no other way to save my king with my rooks, queen & bishop. So I resigned and asked to begin the next game.
She was very relieved that she had won the game, and asked me whether I was sure that I wanted to play the second game. She said there was no pressure, and that we didnt have to play if I didnt want to. Ofcourse I wanted to play the second game! I wanted to beat her. I knew I could if I were just a little bit more careful. So began the second game with again 20 minutes on the clock and a fresh board.
This time I got black. And my heart sank at first. But then there was no turning back, and all I had to do was play. She also played the normal opening, nothing fancy. But even the normal opening did out pan out the same way as "normal". She kind of juggled a couple of moves, but eventually we seemed to hit the same kind of position as normal. And once again I found my knight pinned in front of my queen. If I move my queen, she ll take my knight and I have to take it with my king-side castle pawn. That will open up my castle and give her queen free reign to march in. Ahh, it was so frustrating. So I thought I ll do the same to her what she is trying to do to me. So I also pinned her knight the same way.
Later in the game I was so desperate to break her castle that I tried every trick possible. Btw, I should mention that somewhere along the way I became 2 pieces up! Yup! Even I cant believe it now! And another thing I realized was that even near end-game, all my 8 pawns were intact. Then that started to become suffocating, coz my rooks were practically useless when all files were blocked. And my time was still running out, I was thinking much much more than her. When I had 6-7 minutes remaining, she stil had 12-15! I dont remember exactly but it was a lot..
Meanwhile, her knight had rode up on the right hand side of my board, and poised ready to put infinite number of forks wherever I moved. I can not imagine now how I saw all of those chances
and avoided them successfully, but I have to just say a big "thank you" to God for it. There was a particular instance where any move I would do with either of my rooks or my queen, in an
apparent attempt to protect my king and the castling would have resulted in a fork from her knight! It was so frustrating, and that too with time running out like that. I literally squirmed in my seat, as if I wanted to lay down and get away from this game or something :-D There was an attack on my queen and I had to move it some place safe, usually I would have moved it right into the face of the fork but somehow I saw it, and moved much farther away from it.
When finally my castle seemed secure with my bishop sitting in front guarding it, I finally breathed a little. But I also realized that having all 8 pawns blocking all ranks, was causing trouble. So I pushed the center pawn. If she had let me go til the end, I would have made a queen and atleast got a piece of hers in exchange for the new queen. So I just kept pushing it and beating the clock to save time. At that time, finally she panicked and she began losing time too. And to prevent the pawn from becoming queen, she cut it in mid-way and finally my rank was open! Out came my right-hand rook and attacked the queen. Behind the queen was her rook (right in line) and my queen was right adjacent to her rook, ready to strike. As soon as her queen moved to save herself, my rook ploughed right ahead and took out her rook - Check! She had to use her other rook to exchange. I took that one using my queen and said Check again. So now she had a Queen and bishop remaining. While I had queen, rook and both bishops remaining. That was a fantastic situation to win.
But you know what, I had only 3-4 minutes remaining. And her queen and bishop lined up to take out my king. I realized that it was not at all possible to bring out my other rook, and achieve any back-rank mate. So when her king moved up from the corner of his castle, I gave a check with my queen right under the nose of her queen, offering an exchange - you take me or I ll take you. Either way it was only an exchange. She didnt take it, so I did and then breathed again. Atleast now, no matter what she does, she cant check-mate me coz she just had a bishop and few pawns scattered here and there. Whereas I had 2 bishops and rook. So now if I lose, it would be only on time. So I just went crazy. I just brought out my rook and gave check, cut pawns, moved with no aim, just playing and banging the clock to make it stop and not run out of time. People surrounding us were afraid that we were gonna break the clock, and I was kind of sorry for that too. But I had no time to think of the clock's health right then. I just didnt care for a win anymore. I was willing to settle for a draw even. She panicked too, and played couple of illegal moves. And I didnt even see them!
In fact, she became mate 3 times! And I was so busy giving check and making moves and banging the clock that I didnt even realize!!!! After 3rd illegal move, my dept. PG sports nominee (thankfully) shouted, "3 illegal moves, 3 illegal moves". And I was like wat, wat. My eyes were still on the clock thinking I m losing time even during this argument! And she said, but she didnt claim any of those illegal moves, so they dont count. Originally rule is that if I claim 3 illegal moves, then she loses. And since I didnt claim yet, it doesnt count. Thats when I really opened my eyes and saw that indeed she was already check-mate! She had been check-mate 5-6 moves ago, and still we had been continuing. If my flag had fallen before hers (which it was inching towards) without me realizing that she was already check-mate, I would have lost nevertheless! But thankfully, I awoke from my trance in time to see that I had actually won..
Wow what a nail biting finish! Actually nail-biting for everyone else except me, coz I didnt have time even to bite my nails :D
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