An Open Letter to Haldiram's

To,
The Customer Care Cell,
Haldiram Manufacturing Co. Pvt. Ltd,
Delhi-Jaipur Highway,
Village Kherki-Daula
Gurgaon - 122 001 (Haryana)

Sub: Haldiram Chips Paprika Flavour - A Human Rights, Economical, and Environmental Perspective

Dear Sir/Ma'am,

I would like to bring to your notice that I bought and consumed a Haldiram's Chips packet which claimed to be of the Paprika flavour. I would also like to bring to your kind notice that shortly before buying the Chips packet I had written a 1500 word end semester examination for the course SOC486 entitled "Human Rights Theory and Practice." I would also like to bring to your kind notice the extreme form of Human Rights Violation (HRV*) both these activities caused to me.

But before I delve into that aspect, I believe it is my constitutional right to bicker about the price of the packet of chips. By back of the packet calculations (literally), charging Rs 15 for 36 grams of chips means that they have costed me Rs 416 per kg. Now this is a serious violation of the rights of the Nuts and Dry Fruits Association of India (NDFAI). As the official spokesperson I would like to remind you that the NDFAI holds Patent No. 34124568 which grants it the exclusive right "To charge more than what it's worth" (TM). Infact, not only are you overcharging your customers, you are also violating international patent law and in principle are using our trademarked slogan. As all the redressal forums in India, including but not limited to, the civil courts, the criminal courts, and the conusmer court, are ineffective; for this grave violation of the law I curse you that may your soul go to hell!

Coming back to the Human Rights perspective, I claim a compensation of US $4,32,45,109 for HRV under Art. 13 and Art. 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

Article 13: Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
This infact is a pre-emptive claim, much like the pre-emptive strikes the world powers are indulging in nowadays. I am sure, and infact certain, that by consuming the aforementioned Paprika Chips I will suffer from gastronomical disorders which shall severly limit my freedom of movement. And as a double blow to my Human Rights, my state of mind shall be forcefully transformed from mildly erratic to that of the state of duress, thus violating my right to residence within the borders of each state.

Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression...
By consuming the Paprika Chips I feel my right to freedom if opinion & expression has been severly violated. All I can think of, opine about, and express is that horrible taste in my mouth and the sheer amount of money I had to spend to buy that wretched packet of chips. I am neither able to hold any particular opinion about or express my thoughts about the things that are of dear interest to me (which almost always is the opposite sex, but that is a different matter altogether).

Also, as a (much absent) student of Environmenal Engineering and Psychology, I claim that by forcefully packaging an utterly brainless "game" of Free Rumble Tumble with the chips made out of non-biodegradeable plastic you are

(i) Causing a widespread lowering of IQs of the youth of the nation. This has now assumed almost epidemic proportions, with other chips manufacturing companies being hit by similar diseases (albeit with different strains of mindless games).
(ii) Causing unnecessary environmental damage by releasing toxic plastics into the environment. As a free first counsel, I would suggest a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA) of you product to lessen this adverse environmental impact. Contact me at 555-4523 for further consultancy (I usually charge $3000 an hour).

Having said all that, I am now truly convinced that your product Haldirams Chips Paprika flavour is not merely a Fast Moving Consumed Good. It is an extremely well camouflaged WMD with far reaching effects on HRV, economies of various nations, psychological and environmental impact.

Hence, I would request Mr. George W. Bush to please "Smoke 'em Out" (TM). Each one of them, Bloody Haldirams Chips Paprika Flavour! FREEDOM AND GLORY TO ALL! LONG LIVE THE LAND OF THE FREE! HAIL AMERICA!!

Thank you,

Sincerely yours,

Saurabh Nanda.

Post #2 for the day :-)

To Open Source Or Not

Started off with a new team blog called SharpBang - hoping to see some good techno-legal discussions there.

Masculinity v/s Feminity

I got this thought during our departmental (Civil Engineering) farewell. After the regulars - mimicry of professors, distribution of mementos and awarding of titles, there was something really very unique. We had an actual, live mujraa!! Yes, and don't just think it was any other ordinary mujraa - it was performed by a boy! (Ed: This is your cue for a hysterical WHAT?!!!!)

Yes, an actual guy, second year Civil Engineering student, performed a mujraa on the stage (in front of all the professors) in full mujraa attire. He had a nude coloured lehenga and
choli, with his midriff showing :-p Y'know it's not a good sight - the thick line of coarse hair between the waistline and the navel - Yecch! And his face covered with a chunni. It was some song from the movie Umraao Jaan.

Anyways, apart from being rather amusing and funny, it made me think - why exactly is this amusing and funny? If a girl would've performed a mujraa we would've been worse than dogs salivating for a chewy bone. Well, in case we were not the IITian breed we would've apreciated the art form.

A sensous dance by a woman, is perceived to be feminine. A woman can express her feminity with a dance, with the way she walks, by crying, by being sensitive, by motherhood, by N number of ways.

How can a man express his masculinity? What's the first thing that comes to your mind? Big muscles? Agression? Fist fights? Is that masculinity? Can there be anything a man does which causes people to say "He's so masculine"?

A woman being feminine suddenly conjures up the image of a delicate female in your mind (atleast in my mind :-) - but what about a masculine man? Atleast my mind goes blank.

What comes to yours?

PS: We eventually made that guy take of the chunni and give his introduction. And yes, the mujraa was truly amazing - probably better than what a girl could've done!

Of Projects, Report and Presentations!

After three consecutive nightouts, interspersed with a few hours of sleep and 81 pages of typing and formatting, I have finally concluded with concrete evidence that Reports (with the capital R) are an utter waste of time, energy and resources.

This particular Report in question was of the BTP variety. Which, for the uninitiated are truly very important. There won't be many reports one writes where the title page says "A Project Report Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Technology by..." :-)

Anyways, so I was talking about the uselessness of reports. I mean 80 freaking pages - even we (my BTP partner and me) did not proof read it a second time! How can I expect anyone else to read it! I think they should just stick to presentations and a short writeup on the project limited to a maximum of 5 pages.

I think is a big conspiracy orchestrated by the honchos in the paper industry. They've probably got the Directors & HODs of all the reputed institutions on their boards. All of them force the students to submit lengthy reports for "Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements" of their degrees! And the lesser known institutes just follow suit. So there you have it - this entire thing about the paper consumption of this world. It's a conspiracy by the paper companies to create larger and larger markets. Why else would we have to submit three hard copies?! I mean one hard copy and a soft copy! No one reads it anyway!

Bah - forget it!

Accidently, we did the right thing while writing the report in MS Word (yes, I had to use an M$ product!). And that right thing saved us a helluva lot of trouble while creating the Table of Contents, List of Figures and List of Tables. I checked out those features in Openoffice.org and voila - they were there! I was planning to write a tutorial on that with lots of screen shots but couldn't find a good free image hosting service (Bloggerbot/Hello/Picasa works only for Windows :-( ). So the tutorial has been postponed till anyone can tell me a good free image hosting service

Ragging

I came across this article tonight and it got me thinking of my days of ragging at IITK.

It was a rather smooth sailing for me. Most of the time I was merrily enjoying ragging and grinning away whenever I was made to do anything stupid. I bet I must've been the guy who had utaaroed muski the maximum number of times. It was a rather amusing ritual of swiping your hand off your lips (supposedly wiping off the smile with it) and putting it in your rear end so that it comes out from the front with some cool sound effects!! And this whole act made me go into splits, with the seniors making me repeat the whole exercise all over again!

Ragging at IITK was nothing but fun for me. The seniors couldn't touch you. After the first few hours you realized this fact when all you heard was words and no actions. It was worse at Mayo College (Ajmer) where the seniors could thrash you with hockey sticks and give you PDs (Punishment Drills). Compared to Mayo ragging was fun at IITK.

Simply put, at IITK, ragging is all about building mental pressure on the junior so that he feels cornered or scared. Most of the seniors try their very best to prove to some high ranking fresher that he was not fit to be in IIT - that he had defeated the system somehow and that he was a "fraud" Supposedly, this was to break the ego of the freshers, it was to make them realize that they were among people who had cleared the same exam as themselves and were equally good, or even better!!

Mayo was a different ballgame altogether. I wouldn't call it ragging there - it was more of bullying. How would one differentiate? (a) Ragging is prevalent for a week, two weeks, a month but after the freshers' party is over WHEREAS bullying continues the entire year (b) Ragging is about making the fresher do stupid things, like wearing a belt on his/her head, pretending to fuck a tree, etc WHEREAS bullying is about physical and mental subjugation - making the junior do menial jobs, taking away belongings (called "jacking" in Mayo) and beating/punishment drills if the junior fails to comply.

After being subjected to such a harsh form of bullying in Mayo, IIT was really a nice experience for me. And I just couldn't realize what the fuck were my room mates afraid of? Standing atop a chair and shouting Sholay's dialogues? Or, flying imaginary kites, playing imaginary cricket/badminton/whatever? Or probably they were afraid of the stupid questions that seniors would ask to prove that they were "frauds"? What's the Moment of Inertia of a breast? Hah - trick question moment of inertia can be computed of a rigid body only!

I mean I was probably the only fresher who used to go to the canteen and sit their to be ragged!! It was bloody fun! I got to talk to pretty girls cuz I was being ragged :-) Most of my batchmates would shy away from this!

I don't know whether ragging gave me a special bond with the seniors who ragged me or not - but at least it gave me some acquaintances. After a senior had ragged you for quite some time and you had made him "happy" he was supposed to give you his "intro" and then he was technically forbidden to rag you.

I think ragging up to certain limits should be permissible. You learn to laugh at yourself of all things! Plus under the aegis of ragging you can do so many unimaginable things which a sane person wouldn't dare!

When it was my turn to rag (in my 2nd, 3rd and 4th year), I started off with all the fanfare. Y'know the kind of feeling that it's now one's moral responsibility to rag the juniors and probably to take some form of "revenge" as well. After one or two hour of ragging and one or two juniors down, I realized this whole concept was plain and simple stupid. At least from the perpetrator's point of view. As the raggee its fun but as the ragger you start feeling like a complete idiot trying to seemingly enjoy a bunch of first yearites giving their introduction in chaste Hindi, or wearing their underwears outside their pants, or whatever!!

It's a brainless affair when you're the ragger but a whole lot more enjoyable when you're the raggee!