Given the god awful mess that goes by the name of Education Sector this is just wishful thinking. But then parenting isn't messed up. Yet. And, hence there may be some hope in thinking about these. I wish that the schools, colleges, universities and the parents put some thought towards ensuring that they encourage and influence the following aspects of personality:

• a fearlessness in asking questions. Being curious hasn't killed kittens or cats yet. And, the inability to will oneself to be curious about anything and everything, to be fearless in asking questions and seeking answers is going to extract a heavy social price when we look in retrospective and wonder about what could have been. The schizophrenic quandry of emerging-vs-emerged economy aside, to be able to progress as a society one requires curious minds - and, an encouragement to adopt that attitude begins very early.
• a work ethic that is based around honest, diligent and pure old fashioned 'hard work'. I've seen far too many young ones bend at the slightest hindrance or, whisper of an obstacle without applying the proverbial blood-n-brawn to the issue. A work ethic that is cultivated and nurtured from a young age and includes appreciation of hard work would go a long way in ensuring a generation of wonderful citizens
• a self discipline that motivates oneself to work hard. And by hard I mean gruellingly hard in a never-stop-till-goal-is-reached kind of hard way. Nothing less should be acceptable and, that should come from within. 

The environment that encourages these aspects is probably the only primary way we can build up a framework that unleashes the potential. Here's a quote/paragraph that perhaps puts into perspective very clearly what I am talking about.

“We had four million people here in 1790,” he tells Vanity Fair. “We’re not more intelligent than people in China, which then had 290 million people, or Europe, which had 50 million. We didn’t work harder, we didn’t have a better climate, and we didn’t have better resources. But we definitely had a system that unleashes potential. This system works. Since then, we’ve been through at least 15 recessions, a civil war, a Great Depression…. All of these things happen. But this country has optimized human potential, and it’s not over yet. It’s like what’s written on the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren: If you seek his monument, look around you.”

My workhorse 'smartphone' - the Nokia e71 decided to act up during the recent trip to Kolkata. A trip to a care center stunned me. The projected bill was around 7000 INR with 5000 INR being the Bill of Materials. The surprising part of course was that when the cost was put across, the itemized list which constitutes the Bill of Materials wasn't. 

Is this an accepted practice ?

Couple of books I read in 2010 that I'd probably end up reading again pretty soon. In no particular order they are as:

• The Finkler Question
• Room
• Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
• Promise Me
• Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town

For reasons arising out of pure laziness all the books are hyperlinked to Amazon.com :) And, my bookshelf is at the usual place.

I noticed today that Suchitra Mitra was a trending topic on twitter. And that is fairly interesting for me. In earlier days, the passing away of an exponent in the classical arts would have been accompanied with the obligatory quotes in newspapers (for fun, read the order of the quotes here - in other times the CM would have had priority in the article) along with a sudden serious tone of the voice which would be used to read that piece of news on television (especially Doordarshan). Now it is much more easy and convenient to indulge in conversational ice-breakers on social mediums and, see/read others talking along similar or even dissimilar lines. It was a fascinating experience reading the timeline about folks pulling out her albums and listening to her voice. Surreal wasn't the ideal term for that. For a moment it felt as if one was inside an auditorium with a couple of jukeboxes and folks were selecting their favorites and playing them. A very interesting social experience.

She wasn't one of my favorite singers though. As in, I wouldn't usually pick out one of her vinyls or, cassettes or, CDs to listen to when in the mood (barring her singing this - I had heard it earlier at a function and was hooked on to her rendition from that day on). And, even though Rabitirtha would need to pull off a feat of strength to come out of the stereotypical rendition of Rabindrasangeet, it would be of course pointless to deny the fact that Suchitra Mitra, along with her peers defined for a whole generation the strong and robust serenity of certain of Tagore's poems/songs.

A greater percentage of the recent generation of singers who also sing Rabindrasangeet are a bit uninspiring for me. Perhaps the diverse nature of their area of music and, the freewheeling experimentation that they undertake (at a different age, Viswa Bharati had a fiat on how the songs could be sung and, the accompanying instruments). Or perhaps, the ability to read and appreciate Tagore is somewhat diminishing because he isn't being read or, discussed as frequently as before. It isn't going to happen that his permanence would be impacted. His relevance has surely been.

While making a feeble attempt to unclutter my Twitter timeline I realized that there's a need for an application (client or, web etc) that provides a scrolling list (on the left side say) of all the handles one follows and, the remaining columns would be the various lists that one has created. Thereafter just drag and drop the accounts/handles into the respective lists and, voila ! 

Sadly, there isn't an app yet.

In an incredible display of maturity the usual suspect news channels did not pick up on the 1.1.11 story ie. the numerical and numerological aspects and it does look like a promising start :)

And, I need to get used to writing 2011 as the year - the muscle memory seems stuck in 2010 !