Death and Violence
Posted by Guhan | Filed under thoughts
The end of 2009 saw the passing of one of Kannada movie’s favorite stars, Vishnuvaradhan. A close friend of mine, Vijay (Twitter Vijay) has brilliantly expressed the sentiments of a true fan of his blog post. Having been one of the most versatile, talented, stylish and popular actors in the Kannada film industry, he also acted in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films also.
Vishnuvardhan was born in Mysore and he also breathed his last in Mysore. His body was shifted to National College grounds for the people to pay their last respects. The final cremation was done in Abhimaan Studio located on Mysore Road. The actor was given a grand state funeral attended by his family members, film personalities political leaders and thousands of his fans.
Earlier, another popular kannada film actor and an icon in Karnataka, Dr. RajKumar passed away. Dr. Raj was titled “Natasarvabhouma” meaning “emperor of acting” or lovingly called Annavaru meaning Elder brother.
It sure was a loss to the film fraternity but the other thing common in their deaths was the riots and mob violence that followed. It is just sad that despite both of these legends being well known for their peace loving nature and respect for calm, their so called fans choose to show their grief through mindless violence and damage to property. It is hard to comprehend the rationale behind such acts. News channels covering the events showed mobs in thousands throwing stones, laughing and having a stupidly good time. Dr. Raj’s death had precipitated a city-wide reaction. Following the news of his death, there was major unrest in the city of Bangalore. The then Chief Minister, H.D.Kumaraswamy, later claimed that the violence was instigated by vested political interests. And as always the opposition blamed it on lack of timely arrangements by responsible organizations. Even an unofficial bandh was announced. More than 100 vehicles were burnt and many people killed in mob attacks and police firing.
The last rites for both of them was marred by large scale violence and protests by unruly mobs. Family members pleaded in vain in both occasions. It was very sad to see how Dr. Raj’s sons literally begging for the mobs to calm down. Vishnuvardhan’s wife kept saying how much Vishnu loved peace and would have wished to have a quiet non violent passing. But all this fell on deaf years on both occasions.
For many, I think its just a reason to vent their frustrations. Mob mentality takes over and one stupid act cascades into a full scale riot, loss of property and closing of business. Hapless police trying to control the crowds are targeted. There is absolutely no reason for the riots, its almost assumed that nothing will function in any such event. Every one in the city stay home in fear of violence. Family fear the return of their loved ones. Such state of fear for one persons death is not justified and is the sad reality we all have been forced to tolerate. Icons are remembered for their charm, mass appeal and personality. But circumstances forces us to relate violence and discomfort to the passing of such icons. May their soul rest in peace.
Yahoo! University Hack day gets Bangalored!
Posted by Guhan | Filed under thoughts
This was my 3rd University hack day, this time in my home town, Bangalore. Earlier this year I was at IIT Delhi and IIT Mumbai for the other 2 Hack U’s
Its amazing how much the students think Hacking is a negative thing. In every college we first had to establish the difference between Hacking and cracking.
Bangalore has always been a place where you expect students to be technically savy and modern, and sure that was the case in IIIT Bangalore. They have an amazing campus and it was a good thing that they offered only computer science and Information science courses. Their education system is more industry driven and being in electronic city, close to Infosys, the equipment and infrastructure in the college was very good. They had every thing from well organized projectors in class rooms to smart boards and comfortable seating.
The Hack U in Bangalore in terms of student response was much greater than the other 2 IITs. Enthusiastic students turned out in large numbers for our initial kick off sessions and the DJ night. This was not the case in IITs where the Rock night had a very poor response. But again, its expected from a Bangalore crowd :-)
More details about the event on my YDN blog post.
I spoke about YQL, Pipes, YUI and how every resource in the internet can be considered a Data source. My presentation can be found on slideshare, and is titled Get me my data!
Over all for Yahoo! it was a successful event. The hack demos were not as great as we wanted it to be, but there were some bright students who had crazy ideas. Guess given little more opportunity, some even greater ideas will come up. There was one idea which particularly caught my attention. Couple of students wanted to pull video data from cameras on the street and identify patterns in vehicle movement and crimes if any. Their idea was to gather information about a vehicle in one camera and then to see if the same vehicle shows up in a different camera. Using this information, they wanted to predict traffic flow, congestion etc. Interesting idea I thought
Next year have a couple more Hack U’s, first in IIIT Hyderabad .
