ZVM’s Indian Undercurrent

The natural law rules here!

San Jose Mercury News covers this in more detail, reported here earlier.

PLEASANTON - The mother of a boy who was assaulted at the Stoneridge Mall last weekend said she remains concerned that no one helped her son when he was in trouble.

A man punched Sumita Tripathy’s 16-year-old son, after he asked the boy a series of questions trying to establish if the two knew one another. Her son fell after the punch, but managed to get up and run toward a department store entrance. Before the boy made it, however, the man jumped on him from behind, police said.

“Some people saw it but no one called 911,” Tripathy said.

The boy went inside the department store and asked for help. Security was called, police said, but the bleeding boy was told he couldn’t wait inside the store for help.

The whole time, Tripathy was in another part of the mall, but had no idea her son was in trouble until she got a call from the hospital.

“It’s unheard of,” Tripathy said. “I never thought something like this would happen.”

BTW - what the mainstream media always ignores - JC Penny is the department store.

A late night show yesterday of Inside Man started surprisingly with A.R.’s “Chaiyya Chaiyya” - first seen in Mani Rathnam’s “Dil Se”.

The original soundtrack was filmed to be on top of a train (Link to YouTube video) and the genius of AR was to take natural sounds, such as the sounds made from the rocking movement of a train and incorporate that into song… there is no train here so I thought that a bit out of context. In any case judging by the reaction on Amazon, folks not aware of AR’s work are rushing to buy the soundtrack(click on the ‘Inside Man’ logo); discovering fusion music in the finest sense of the original geniuses of India - Mr. AR Rahman.

My wife and I are interested in exposing our kid to unstructured games, i.e. ones that have multiple solutions and permutations rather than just one solution that kids memorize and get bored in a second. The River Crossing Puzzle game is one of them. For about $15, kids over 5 years have an engaging game without batteries that’s loads of fun! Try it out.

Legendary Kannada actor Rajkumar dead, originally uploaded by MangaloreCity.com.

Wonder what “St.Peters” is all about?

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Here’s a great podcast by Smitha Radhakrishnan that is a must hear.

Dr. Rajkumar, the Kannada legend died recently, a natural death. Folks in Bangalore reacted violently to this - causing riots, and as the picture below shows, general unrest. Illogical? yes. Unexpected? No.

Schools, shops, cinema halls were shut for the day and few buses were running.

Leading IT companies — including Wipro, iGATE and Infosys, India’s second-largest software company, along with multinationals Microsoft, Dell Inc and IBM — said they would stay closed for the rest of Thursday.

“Most companies are forced to close. Nobody wants to take a chance,” an official at a multinational firm told Reuters on the condition that that the person and company not be named. “Offices that are open get stoned. This is bad for Bangalore’s international image.”

Update: BoingBoing covers this here, and erroneously states RajKumar as a Bollywood star. Not sure if you guys care, but he’s not.

or is it?

The stark contrast for anyone who is a first gen immigrant (FIGIM) when in the US is the anti-role models - India used to have a cool factor going for geeks, not for jocks. IF you scored straight A’s, you were equally likely to have groupies, and from a parental standpoint you’d have more leverage to have things your way as compared to say, a super cricket player.

That was the main reason why I never got into serious sports. When you’re growing up, it’s kinda hard to fight the tide of familial opinion.

Physics on the other hand was always available and encouraged. Richard P Feynman was one of my favorites growing up. Here’s a Feynman Video where he talks about the evolution of natural physical laws by observance and repitition - kinda like looking at a chess game in progress and figuring out the rules - rather than the rules being handed to you first.

Same as real life.

A kid (of Indian descent) was apparently attacked last weekend in front of the Stoneridge mall (as reported by FOAF- friend of a friend). He suffered multiple injuries, including a collar bone fracture. When he tired to run into the neighboring JC Penny, the manager of the store refused to open the door, and get this, did not call the cops!

The attack was by a “Neo-nazi” group per the cops who are cautioning the public to keep a watch out and be careful about such characters.

JC Penny has fired the store manager per unverified sources.

This is the second time I’ve heard about violence in P-town. Sad. Thoughts and prayers to the poor kid, hope you feel better soon.