Carthik Sharma

I don’t know if the people that used to read my blog read it anymore. There were many that I turned away by not writing regularly (or at all for a while), and by switching the URL for my feed. All capital sins.

So if you do read this blog, and think that you are one of the people I think read this blog, leave me a comment.

Or better still, take a look at this iBook for sale. If you need an iBook G4 that works, this is the one for you. It works, flawlessly and has been lovingly taken care of by someone who loves me.

I have been fascinated with names, and how different societies follow different conventions. When it comes to a unique descriptor for a person, it is hard to beat a name, and so I am always interested in knowing more about how someone was named, what it means, what its components are, the right way of pronouncing it, etc. I have a very good memory for how exactly to spell and pronounce someone’s name too. The pronunciation might suffer due to my Indian/Malayali/Tamil exposure etc, but I love remembering the spellings of names.

I read this wonderful article on naming conventions around the world from the perspective of a software designer who designs forms that have to be internationalized, and am already feeling really happy for having read it. Read it, and become a little more sensitive to the different folks you’d be working with.

A similar article can be written about how folks are named in different parts of India. Also about how imposing local customs by force of law can make things all the weirder. The state of Maharashtra required people to have three parts to their name – “Family name” “Father’s name” and “Given Name”, if I remember correctly. That is just so insensitive to those from outside Maharashtra who have to get a birth certificate for their kids, or register their kids in a school there. Bombay, or Mumbai is in Maharashtra.

I find it very strange to have two “given name”s in my name – “Carthik” and “Anand” – neither of which are my father’s name, or my family name. I also find it strange that in our family, we use two family names, or “surnames” – Iyer and Sharma. Most of the cousins on my father’s side are “Iyers”, while I am a “Sharma”. My sister was an “Iyer” before she got married. None of my relatives know me as Carthik. They all know me as Anand, or call me Nandu. I sometimes wonder if, “Carthik”, “Anand” and “Nandu” have different personalities – whether when someone who only knows one of these meets someone only who knows another, they’d be totally surprised to learn about the other side of me.

“sharma” is surname number 4669 in the USA

When I was a little boy, I used to get frequent stomach aches. Almost everytime, my grand mother used to heat a dosa kallu (a flat, heavy non-non-stick frying pan). Then she’d roll up a long piece of cotton cloth, make a puff out of it and heat it on the kallu and transfer the heat to my tummy – it was a very good feeling. The pain would gradually subside, and after 15-20 minutes, get reduced to a minor irritation.

Turns out, scientists at the University College at London just verified the fact that heat helps combat stomach pain. They didn’t need to have done the research to have known that, really – all they had to do was be a little boy, and go to my grandmother complaining of a stomach ache.

And to think that I used to think that it was the magic in her hands that took the pain away…

Now don’t you wish you could say, like I can, that you are a Smartist (Smarta to be precise), or that you are a follower of Smartism?

I guess my claim to be a follower of Smartism is valid. I was reading up the article on Wikipedia following up on a lead that Aldous Huxley was a Hindu. I have often wondered, since there is no space for proselytization and conversion in Hinduism, as to how someone could become a Hindu if they wanted. The last I thought about it, if one beleives in some fundamental precepts and lays claim to being Hindu – then that is the end of it.

I wish I could say, now, that I am a practising Smarta, which I am not, right now.

Getting the most out of knowledge workers will be the key to business success for the next quarter century. Here’s how we do it at google.

Me read that as “The company with the most employees without an inkling of what’s going on (out-of-knowledge) will be successful.

(From this newsweek article…)

Also, I started debating whether it should be “key to business success FOR the next quarter century” or “key to business success IN the next quarter century”. Also note that the “g” in google is not capitalized.

Time to sleep, I suppose.

I am the black kettle calling the pot black, I know, being not so careful with my grammar and spelling up here, but yet, I miss the days when finding a spelling mistake, or incorrect grammatical constructions in the daily newspaper (The Hindu) used to make my day.

And no, The Hindu is not in “Hindu”. I have had no less that 3 people ask me, “So you’re from India, eh, do you speak Hindu?”

Quick Quiz – which is the fourth most-spoken language in the world? No searching in Wikipedia, or elsewhere – only top-of-the-mind answers allowed.

I was with a friend when I saw a pretty girl, and I said, “Oh no, she’s just a kid – she must be 18 or 19.” My friend agreed.

“So 18 is ‘too young’ now, eh, Carthik?”, said me to myself, “You must be growing old, then.”

All my computers are quitting on me. First it was the desktop and now it is the faithful old laptop. I woke up this morning to the sound of a grinder. My hard drive, apparently, thinks it is one now. I hope that replacing the hard drive will fix it. I had almost all of it backed up except for the photos from the most recent India trip. Trying to recover data will be fun, hopefully.

This is the day I got a metal tooth for keeps.
No, it is not made of gold.

Will the metal detectors at airports always go “beep” now?
Can I still put my head in the microwave oven?
Is the metal magnetic? (Can I get a ring stuck on my cheek, without the painful piercing?)

It feels so smooth to the tongue… irresistibly smooooth. Almost good enough to make me want to get all my teeth capped.

Update: If you are a friend/foe staying in Bangalore, and would like to talk, or meet, mail me your phone number at mail you-know-what-goes-here carthik.net and I will call you.

It’s been a week since I landed in India now. My plans for taking lots of photographs fell flat on it’s face since the battery charger does not work on 220 V/50 Hz. So the camera is out of power for now. I will fix this soon.

So I arrived in a terribly silent Bombay airport at 3 AM on the 3rd of July. I said “thank you” to the customs clerk, who stared at me for one terribly long second. That screamed “Welcome home” more than anything else. No “thank you”s or “sorry”s in my land. The shuttle that took me from the international airport to the domestic airport travelled under the nose of the plane I just landed in, through the runways – very exciting.

I had a long 9 hour wait at the airport, so me an my friend headed out. I decided to risk it all and had a dosa and a tea at a dinghy looking restaurant. My tummy is not the same as it was in the US, but I am up and about and everything is fine. The dust, smoke and pollution affects my nose, but then again, I am okay, so everything’s good.

I attended my friend’s wedding, and then another, and had two heavy meals after what seems like an eternity. Grandma, my father and everyone else are fine. It is amazing to see how the old change, and so fast, while the young – folks my age – do not change. I would have expected it to be the other way round.

I left with my father for Guruvayoor, Trichur, and now I am in Bangalore, alone, at my sister’s place. My nephew is active, and lively, and talkative, and quite a trip. The candies and GI Joes survived the long trip from Walmart to Bangalore remarkably well.

Yesterday I met Siddharth after three years. He was once my roommate and is a good friend. He looks a little thinner, and is quite the same.

I browse in fits and starts at browsing centers. Thankfully, due to the dollar – rupee conversion rate, I don’t feel the pinch here, though things are a lot more expensive.

All my friends and relatives go to work during the day, so I have nowhere to go right now, and dial up internet is too slow.

Lots of time for introspection, and speculation.