Custom hardware/software and scale

Though this is a start, I think at scale, the answer to all the problems is that you can not solve high scale issues with consumer level solutions.  So ironically a thing that started with using off the shelf consumer grade hardware and software as a base and built custom solutions on top of it, again needs specialization. Or the other point is that if there is one flaw in this suggested approach, it is the fact that this approach is not universal.

http://highscalability.com/blog/2013/5/13/the-secret-to-10-million-concurrent-connections-the-kernel-i.html?utm_source=feedly&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HighScalability+(High+Scalability)

Most of the technologies in this area of high scalability do use standard software and hard ware at its base and build on top of it.

Every thing including big table,big data and other associated technologies do use the off-the-shelf file system and off-the-shelf operating system on individual nodes. The speed and scalability is achieved by software running on these machines by custom software which most of the times runs in user space as well as is written in high level languages (mostly JAVA).

So even when the suggested approach works, it is definitely needed to first work for the individual machines for existing software stack in consumer space before it gets really prevalent usage.

Hello world!!

My third day at EMC and it has already been a roller coaster experience. There have been a lot of things that are unexpected and hence even more pleasant. Some of the things are shocking and even when such things should be expected are irritating for the short term.
But I am here and I am loving every moment of it. right now I am sitting in a cubicle and this is a change from my earlier job. The buzz is really heartening. Occasional snippet of Kannada tell me how much I liked hearing it in my earlier stint in BLR. The Bangalore variey of the language is really endearing. This time I want to really learn so that I can understand and enjoy it even more .

This is my first post from my laptop. Something which I am able to do after three days of joining this company. I have always heard about companies where people change code,check in and roll out to production on their first day.Such companies exist. But because of the nature of the domain we exist in, as well as size of the org, this definitely does not happen here. Since joining I filled forms, submitted documents, resubmitted them, showed people signatures on different forms from HR and got different things as gifts.  A bunch of people joined with me and the joining process, though tedious, looks pretty stream lined. Nearly hundred people joined in last two weeks, everyone more or less started working almost on their second day. But you just fall out of step with process and then beware of the effects. As it happens with a stream lined process, any thing that does not fit the process takes extra ordinary amount of effort and time. And I have natural talent that such things happen with me.

But first the thing I liked the most: I liked the large number of empty spaces as well as I really dig the facade of the building.

"A very bad photograph of the gorgeous facade of the building"

 Here are some more from a search engine :) : 

"A lot of empty spaces with breath taking views"

Quality of the workspace is better than my earlier org which has really been a pleasant surprise. The coffee is better, cafeteria is better stuffed. 

But as I am lucky enough to draw all the cosmic rays of distrubance. It is a talent I have from a long time and I keep exceeding myself every where I go. The same thing happened this time also. One of the most important person you'd meet is the photo ID printer person. Also known as the key-maker.
(and as importantly hidden as the keymaker from matrix - behind the reception in the basement)
"I am still preparing your ID card"

As the disturbance in the field caused by my presence, he happened to throw away my form without actually printing it. Another interesting thing I found here is the interesting checks and balances. I have to give "form X - 100" signed by "P Q and R" to pick up a thing "Y".
After a lot of concentration I get all the pre-reqs to collect the card just to be confidently questioned on my existence in the company. Finally this got solved as the gentleman found his mistake and retrieved my crumpled form quickly from debris.

This cool, confident and kind smile has been the major companion of my interaction with the non tech staff till now.

Even the emperor at IT,  placed appropriately in the farthest corner on the top floor showed that. With the same kind time he told me "you will get your machine in one month". I was shocked. I ventured: " Did you say one day" - *smile* "One month". "Did you mean a week?" - "One month".

"When I say one month, it is one Month".

But then I talked to the HR and admin and things worked out pretty well after that. Now I have a machine and a team and looking forward to my first interactions with my team and especially looking at the code :).

So with some interesting twists, my rendezvous with EMC is well and truely on its way :)

The problem with activism/criticism in general

As passionately as this is put and the lady also has some very interesting points, it is really interesting to study this from meta point of  view.

It more or less looks like the lady has issues with every thing. Nothing that exists is right. Things have been going wrong for centuries together,
and they are still degrading. Generally this is not some thing you would want to pursue. Even when it is not optimum, human beings have been surviving and majority of it is flourishing.
Especially it is post-reform India. She some how comes across as trying to make a point that green revolution was not a success. This in itself is a point of debate. I know that it definitely did have its own disadvantages and side effects. But that has to be a separate piece of activism with good time spent in elaborating the stand and nuances. By not focusing only on seed freedom, she is deteriorating her other wise rather strong position.
This is some thing atheists also fail at. Actually in my opinion, their point should actually just stop at questioning an omnipotent deity/afterlife. They are the m,most successful when they raise doubts and prove religion wrong. Giving an alternative belief system/lack of it and the framework for it is really the next steps.
By just concentrating on the attack on theism, the individual is freed and then starts thinking on his own, which is a great win. But by just trying to focus on even bigger wins, in my opinion even this advantage is lost.

        Then there comes a time when the activists' win their point and the opinion is with them. Now is   the time for the next generation where the solutions and alternate structures are proposed. Most of the times it is done by the next generations or is done by the activist in the next phase.

So from my pulpit, the sermon for the day is: "you should fight your limited battles with full strength, rather than cover the whole spectrum and give complete alternate solution".

Only the liberals love their country ...

Some of the things that are mentioned here are universally relevant.
Actually short cuts and corruption seems like a human tendency. This is basically an agency problem.
This basically means that when ever you delegate some thing to another person or the group of people, they would always have their interests first.
If this involves subverting the original goal, then they would do that as quickly as possible. Running a democracy for the people is one such thing.
Here is one such try to alleviate the agency problem:

This is really interesting to compare this situation with my country, India.
Here things are at the same time better or worse from different angles. One thing is that more and more the separation between the funder and fundee is going away.
This means that the politicians themselves are wealthy enough that they need not think about life after their time in the legislator. In fact politics is a life time and most of the times a family business.
The impact of big businesses and corporations is not as much as it is present in US. Here the politician is inherently strong and in most of the states, both opposition and the ruling party keep switching places. This means that it is a fight between the equals and people get a say at least a few times or just by chance.
But a true republic is still an utopia. It is not achievable so the problem that is mentioned in the above talk is not solvable.
We can only go as near to the ideal state as possible. As this is a continuous process and just a state of mind, only way it can be achieved is by appealing to the emotions.

I completely agree with the goal though.

Country is the best way to get people together and work for their benefit, democracy is the best way they can be governed, a true democracy is always a republic.
And following transparent and small funding is a very important (though a very small) step towards this state !!

(Exeunt stage left, end act3 scene1 ...)

Fri 5 April is going to be my last day at Microsoft. I did have a blast in last 7 years and enjoyed every moment of it.
From this point on, this gets horribly cheesy and sentimental. I do not have any advices to give as well as any confessions to make or even axes to grind.

So the sane would stop here and make and keep peace ;).


Ok, so you were warned:)
So long and thanks for all the fish!!
The time I spent with MS has been one of the most productive part of my career and life thus far. I have worked with incredibly smart people, picked up large number of technical and soft skills..
Spread myself across different teams with small hacks of their own in the culture. Saw release cycles shrink and methodologies change. For example, my first  release was SFU in Vista which was an OS release maybe after a 6 years or more gap and now we are talking about quarterly release of features. Did stay back for nights together, pulled all nighters with "this is the end"(doors) playing in the back ground as well as as well as spent time mindlessly watching youtube videos of best stand up comics to while away time.
It was not all at my desk either, I reached my peaks as a volley ball player :), changed teams, had regular fights disguised as design discussions and always made a point to ensure that every one knows my mental age - all of five years.

Talking about work life balance and astounding feats of efficiency:  I also added ten plus KGs, bought an apartment,my two kids were born during this time.

But through all this, I always knew that this will end at some point in time.but I knew that my stint was MS was always supposed to end. The days flew  by and the time to make a decision has come. The reason more or less being this: :)

Some lines from one of my most fav Hindi film also explains:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCWonHf6SvI&feature=youtu.be&t=45s

But I never thought it will be this sudden and will get over so soon. It looks just yesterday when i got down at Hyderabad airport and the heat burnt me n the face (BTW this is some thing that I won't be missing. Do enjoy your time in the sun ppl ...). But the call of the wild beckons, my clock has run its time and it is time to force reboot my machine again as it is running slower and slower.  The building and furniture being younger than you is a definite sign and I am responding to it :)
Though this looks relatively simple thing to do, this is dicey and destabilizing enough move for me to hear the ringing in the ears on and off, and I need all the good wishes as I can get.
So fair maidens and stout hearted codermen of MS, fare thee well ;) See you again in the after life. It will be an honor to cross paths with you worthy folks again. It has indeed been a privilege. 

Agile design and development in large orgs - some practical fallacies

Traditionally the agile story says that the pigs make all the decision (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicken_and_the_Pig). But this step is really hard, especially for the organizations where hierarchy exists.

Apart from this fallacy, one more thing that is left unsaid is the thing where we decide when to stop or when to make decisions. It is really an art to close on some thing or let some thing remain open. I think the addition to the eight fold path(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path) has to be right timing.

The real deal is when the decisions are made by committee and by hierarchy. but the worst of it are decisions made by hierarchy and enforced by committee.

This is the place where sunshine never reaches and middle management thrives. The places where decisions needs to be made are pushed to the top. Which gives the top execs some sense of ownership and control. Also such decisions are easy to force on to the teams which are actually executing it. where as the control remains with the middle management. Who are most of the times just chicken (all the puns intended )

I think the  problem is systemic and all middle to large orgs can not run a truly agile project. This is because the definition of agile and large are almost opposite to each other.

Are there any stories which prove me wrong? The caveat is that being agile is not equivalent to being successful, neither is true the opposite way. So is the case with being quick. you can be quick and still not be actually agile - follow all the points mentioned here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_Manifesto#Agile_Manifesto

NOSQL and ACID : NoSQL == Not(only) SQL

Freedom for the tyranny of schemas!!!

As mentioned earlier, my main reason for venturing in to the data was the (preceived)democratization of the field because of the terms NoSQL. Which basically means that I need not have to learn a completely new language, technology as well as methodology to understand this. In a span of a week, I am already proving myself wrong again on this one: but I will explain a bit more in another post !! 

But still it makes sense to actually understand the things as well as the two parties before taking sides .

When the noSQL proponents mention SQL, it is actually a strict RDBMS they are referring to. One of the things that these systems follow is ACID properties http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACID. NOSQL thinks it is not necessary to make the data store follow all these properties. in fact adherence to these properties actually makes their solutions difficult to implement and maintain and scale. So they selectively choose some of the features of the data, depending on the properties that are important semantically for the data.

Having data completely separate from the implementation looks like a great idea from a high altitude. But this has just ended up in making database development as a completely different and an independent branch of software engineering. with the DB having its own tiers and the development team being split in two far early in the development cycle. This compartmentalization is definitely not acceptable where agility and cost are major considerations i.e. with the startups. in my not-so-educated opinion that is the reason for emergence of NOSQL.

It is definitely attractive if all the code looks almost similar for every thing instead of having a different partition and technology for maintaining the database. The ACID properties at least are used as and when they are actually necessary.

There are definite technical differences and advantages but in my opinion that is not the major reason for the emergence of nosql. The reason also has cultural and economy related shades.
This really means that there can not be a single solution that works for any context but there will be implementation dependent behavior of the data store. This really helps the edges and fringes where these things really matter because of multiple reasons. The usage where economy and speed matter most – the startups - is in my opinion one of the biggest validators of practicalities of this approach.
here are some of the reasons that I cam think of. (caveat: As I am still a novice, definitely I am either misinterpreting some of these or missing a lot more)

1. Exceptionally large size of data where the concept of a normal relational data base break.
2. Monochromatic behavior of data(remember I coined this word here ) : meaning the unique way data is generated, stored and its relevance calculated. These can be: data which comes only in append mode, data which comes from real-time streams,data where age changes the relevance etc
3. Geographic location where data is stored as well as the speed and method the computing nodes use to reach it.

But the biggest take away for me from all this is really this:
NoSQL is a loosely coupled way of thinking about your data. There are techniques which you use along with the strictly relational ACID data. That’s why most of the high scale data startups use both the approaches, depending on need. Any further advocacy of one way over other is just fanboism  
 

Seven

This is an apt picture to depict the feelings (thanks bing !!). This is deeper than just pointing seven, as it also means that stop at two kids .
There is a joke/reality/anecdote which goes like this:
In the first year of marriage, the husband speaks and the wife listens.
In the second year of marriage, the wife speaks and the husband listens.
From the third year, both of the them speak and the neighbors listen.

We are celebrating successful completion of five such years of depriving our neighbors of this particular pleasure.
We are firmly in to the zone where things are completely natural. it seems the time without each other in lives is some distant forgotten dream sequence that happened to some one else.
As Kelly puts really well in  “What technology Wants”, an all pervasive technology makes itself invisible. (e.g. how many electric motors are there in your house). We are almost there where we are so integral to each other that we are almost invisible to each other.
We can sit together for hours with out speaking, each one doing his/her own stuff and still feel this to be the best conversation in the day. Mere presence lending comfort, joy, support and criticism as and when required in the required dosages.
Like every thing interesting there is also a duality. The picture in that case some times looks like this( thankoo bing):


Only debate currently is who is Freeman ( we both have a claim there)

Even if the sum total of our time together is this, we would have exceeded our expectations:

But we definitely have much more than these to show for last seven years.



So, you are not the person who makes life worth while, you *are* life.
Why would I thank you? it will be like thanking the mirror .


But in this fit of PDA, I can definitely say one thing:

I love you .
 

Data, Data here I come :)

 

I have been trained only for being a software engineer. Though my branch in my graduation is called computer science and engineering, it was mainly geared towards the engineering part by design and also by practice. That really suited me well. I have always worked on different areas and have enjoyed solving problems in these areas.  Though I have worked on very interesting problems and I am proud of a lot of them and I think solving day to day problems and working with great people and friends is the thing that drives me most. But it is also true that I have definitely skimmed the surface as far as theory of computer science goes. But it is one of things that I want to do and I think I will enjoy it.

Also mainly my work has always been related to the code and algorithms part. Frequently I have worked with bunch of protocols but definitely I have been away from the data part almost always. The interesting stuff in public domain till that time was always related to relational data model which being ACID never really appealed me much. Actually it was the case that I had active dislike for the area. 

The cloud has changed things quiet a bit. We have actually used the concept to solve significant issues and provide definite value. This was done at very less cost. Even having incremental improvements inside the box would definitely have taken more skill and definitely more time. A separate blog post for this in the pipe line definitely .

I think the same thing is happening with data currently. Where once you have a good deal of data, it is really easy to work on it. The flexibility and scale that is afforded by the approaches definitely put me squarely in the NOSQL camp.

But I am truly a novice here.

This is the first post in the explorations of the field that I am going to start. I am planning to start a weekly post series where I am planning to dive deep in to the field and have a post for your perusal .

I am currently starting at a novice level so at some angle this can also be a fiasco to happen publicly. I have tried multiple approaches where I can maintain a sustained flow of studies and have failed. I want to try out public commitment and public shame this time. At the best it can be a measure of my internal drive as well as talent which prove how much time/energy I can afford here and how much of expertise I can show respectively. At its worst, it won’t damage much, hopefully.

New ring road

This is almost a sequel to my earlier post. it mainly tells two things, I am a sucker for the route to work if it is scenic. another is that I am an sentimental lotus eater who suddenly can find any thing romantic.

This is the way I take to work, when I am riding my bike. My bike is a Bajaj Avenger and I upgraded from my earlier scootie to it. it also has a good(!) story behind how I jumped from a scootie which could barely pull my weight to the hunk of a machine, but it is material for a completely different post.

Also I have found that I have turned less verbose (compared to earlier. But unanimous feedback is that this is for the greater good). So saying a lot of things with photographs and hiding my poor sukhangiri behind these.

More over most of these photographs are also not mine but just flicked from the net. But the feeling are genuine (hopefully )

So here is the the route I take it to work

 

Stepping stone to heaven. This stretch looks like it is ending up in the sky. For time and again I have forgotten that I am riding at all. I have definitely forgotten the speed I am going. Either I go too fast where the wind in the eyes drags me back to reality or I am going too slow and the gears scream and scrunch (N.B.  I will be the niche customer for a powerful but gearless bike )

And we all love it. But do not like when we stop to take photographs instead of speeding on the empty road

 

It has almost every thing:  it has the stone arrangements Hyderabad is (was) famous for. It has fantastic view of course and greenery: as much as is possible in hot and dry place like Hyderabad. it has roads almost going no where like the famous roads of Inca.

 

I especially like the cold evening/late night rides through it. The orbs of light exists together with all pervasive darkness. Both make each other soft and dreamy. People are in their own shell riding their own orbs. I am on my own lightening goblet, the road streaks beneath. Every thing exists without a reason: independent, irrelevant, disconnected, agamya, anaadee.

 

But of course, the best view is when it rains. and mostly when in rains in Hyderabad, it is rarely completely dark. There is beautiful hide and seek happening behind the bright blue of the clouds and stray rays of sunlight streaking through the gaps shine and make uninteresting objects like even a bulldozer resplendent with eternal glory.

Some deviations also take us to interesting places where we made some really interesting friends.

The city ensures that its beauty queen gets new curves every often. One such virgin stretch.

We some times found not frequented parts of the road and rolled down the slope (note: father does not need wheels )

And the destination (photograph from my office looking back)

.

O Mario

 

The last year have been of different influences in life withering away before father time. It is surprising that so many people who you have never met can have so much influence on your lives. Today I am going to talk about one of the quietest influences.

As the article here points out, Mario impacted me before I know what cartoon is and what Mario's distinct style means. These influences stick and life is better for not even knowing that. I always love that when I get to see and enjoy works of the genius and then I am introduced to the person behind it rather than the other way where I know the person first and then his work.

His style was pretty simple, humour most of the times wry but never deprecating. He always looked for good in people and situations and pointed out the ironies and idiosyncrasies along the way. Most of the times his punch line is pretty simple and straight forward.

But he would have filled so many nuggets in the spread that I would spend time looking to each individual characters and locating prototypes in the crowd. He is the one who would draw a cartoon with hundred people and  each of those will have unique characteristics.

One of the eulogy says: Goa have him to the world and he gave Goa to the world. This is a definite truth. He also represented the unique Govanize culture. a link between the Catholic colony of a fledging European power and a tourist hub sandwiched between and representing people from both powerful Indian states: Maharashtra and Karnataka.
A state in search of an icon and identity of its own.

And it was provided by Mario and how.
Here are some of the works of Mario. It is the time to words to seize space to the visual glory. Do enjoy these.

 

[All images from google image search …. Hope I am not breaking any laws ]

Review : Lahiri Resorts

 

Verdict: 3.5 out of 5. Staff could have been more friendly though we had no complaints. A little bit overpriced though in sync with all other such resorts. Selling point is reach-ability from the city and the swimming pools. food is alright. Good kids' play area.

Lahiri is one of the very few resorts which is very reachable (at least from my side of the time). The ring roads and the radial roads (all curiously named after the same person - Jawahar Lal Nehru by some co incidence which is helped by continuous congress rule in this state) make sure that even if the distance is increased, it is very pleasant to drive. Our designated driver (which takes on the role of wife and mother when she is not driving) was so happy to cross the three digit barrier, that too near shouting distance from the city. She maneuvered our old rickety chariot very well and ensured that we hit the desired location within fifty minutes of confirmation of the booking. Our main criterion was that this should be the high light of kids' one week vacation. Because of this the target was ( as always, though because of some solid reason this time) kids' having fun. And with that perspective it went pretty well, though not completely according to plan, you will know as you read on. After the heavenly ride on the outer ring road and some non entirely unlike Holmes investigation about the directions after we got off the ring road, we reached the desired location. with all the diversions because of our decision to not ask for directions and to take the most risky roads, it measured nearly fifty kilometres. First activity was the room selection. As usual we request them to give us a royal tour of all the possible accommodations.

Here it involved following options:

Deluxe room (like any other hotel room), queen's room - which is almost the same size of the deluxe room with a sit out thrown in.

King's room - this has an independent and private entrance and a balcony stout overlooking the lazy river(my guess is that the size is same as the queen's room)

Emperor's room: This we did not get a chance to see. As we as well as the staff figured out that it will be completely off the budget and did not explore further.

One of the most interesting thing that happened was that the elder one ( also known for his aversion from water more than a water-jug deep) suddenly took to water. This resort also was the most ideal place for it. I mean if it could have happened any where near Hyderabad, this would be the place for it. And that brings me to the best selling point of this resort. The piece de resistance if you would of this resort is its swimming pool. This is basically according the me and my family and what fit us best. You may have your views :).

They have a fantastic pool with trees bending over clean blue waters. The pool is shaped so that it gets some aesthetic elegance, at least from my point of view. Kids have their shallow pool connected to the main pool, apart from that there is also a gentle slope where you can watch your kids and let them take the learning part of swimming on. As this was the first time both my kids were in the water and the elder one was just getting used to it whereas the younger one is too young to understand swimming, we took it slow and never left the kids' pool. The elder one tried a dive and took in good dose of water. According to the way I was taught swimming, this is the real start of any learning.

Once you are in and out of water twice, gulping good quantity in the process, you really know what water is. You understand it as well as respect it. You know the joys as well as the dangers that lurk. I do not think he got it all ,but hopefully it would have registered some where in his sub conscious for sure. We spend most of our time there swimming, either in the water slides or in the pool. The other attractions of the resort contain a good kids' playing area, a treetop (more or less so) restaurant still under construction and spacious artificial river where we can use some pedal boats and a hanging bridge on top of this river.

We had a small trouble with the room service where the water was not hot during rush hours. but I think after staying for so much time in water, the last thing you want is another bath :). Though this irked missus cum driver a lot as she did not swim at all. In the end, it was a wonderful getaway which I think is enough to put a good punctuation mark to kids's Ugadi holidays :)

One flew over the cuckoo’s nest

Vintery, mintery, cutery, corn,
Apple seed and apple thorn,
Wire, briar, limber lock
Three geese in a flock
One flew East
One flew West
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest

This is how I felt while writing this. So beware

    

This is a queer book that has got me thinking and really has got my goat. This breaks all the stereotypes. The success lies in the fact that it bares all the facts of life in plain black and white. It also shows the real nature of success and taboos that the society builds around it.
It is in fact a stark book, a tragedy where the hero is killed by the narrator before the narrator runs away from the asylum. But the writing is so powerful that you keep on agreeing that that's how it should have ended.
This is a very well put allegory where the writer never ever comes out and explains his points. But it really hits the centre of the soul. It is an effort the portray the struggle between the independent spirit of a man and the decadent ever present system that are fighting. Man is just a conduit for the spirit to rage its battle. This particular man has given his spirit on to a number of other inmates and now what is left of him is just an imitation. A man is alive by what he has done and what he could do. McMurphy is killed because in his vegetable stage, he can not be used as a victory symbol by the system.

Let me start where it all begins, the story is told by a Red Indian who is son of a very powerful Indian chief. The Adobe Indians are made to lose their way of life. They live their live by spear fishing on the falls from rickety scaffoldings. But the government wants to build a dam and pays them handsomely. But the question is how much is the cost of a man, of his way of life. The chief denies all this but then he is brow bitten by the whole system in to accepting this deal. The money ensures that the Indians have stopped being the men they were. The narrator feels the person growing in size when ever he sees the spirit living with in him. This makes more sense than the actual feeling. In fact I was feeling pretty nutty myself when I was reading this :)

So all his life the narrator has been looked at as an outsider and ignored. This is when he grows depressed and acts as a dumb and deaf, starts hallucinating. The ward is full of other social rejects and most of the cases they are there not because they have some serious psychiatric problem but they are there because they were week and were defeated by the society and were forced to accept their defeat and still exist.
The society is represented by the strict nurse who lords it over every one, including the doctor. She is very good and ensuring that every one complies and she rules her kingdom ruthlessly. The problem is that her kingdom is based on fear and compliance. The depressed patients are further pushed in to more depression and need the therapy more and more. She ensures that people are more and more dependant on her rather than on each other. Even the group therapy sessions are turned in to a game of self loathing and finger pointing.

In such a situation comes in McMurphy will full of independent spirit and going forward he wins the hearts of the people by openly rebelling against the rule of the nurse. The nurse tries to get him to tow the line.
McMurphy tries different things to get the people understand the meaning of freedom and laughter and pleasure. He gets them on a fishing expedition, gets to change the television timings,gets the restrictions on cigarettes revoked. Gets in to fist fights with the ward boys, breaks the glass of the watch station and ensures that it remains broken.
But the nurse keeps coming back. He tries to get her humanness and fallibility out in the open. He is given repeated shock treatment and is made to suffer physically. But he rises to challenge again and again.
It all goes out of hand when he brings some whores to the dorm and they spend the whole night revelling. At the end, the nurse catches them and tries her old formula of attacking a man's self esteem. She manages to trouble on of the weaklings so much that he commits suicide. McMurphy assaults her and show that he can make her human by showing her fear.
From this point onward, the establishment has a winning streak. Though the spirit is kindled in the folks and a good number of them move out of the hospital, unafraid of the real world.
They perform lobotomy and McMurphy and turn him into a vegetable state. The Indian denies the system the final victory though by killing him by suffocating him with a pillow. He then runs away, wild again in the open in the element his people so revered.
He plans to visit the place where the Adobe Indians are again building the scaffolding around the wall of the dam, trying to fight the system, trying to live their live the way they want to, despite all odds. Even if it may look mindless to others, this is what they want to do, as this is their way of life!!!

Next steps. If you are not impressed enough about the book, I urge you to watch the movie (same name as the book). Though the book is more haunting, the movie with Jack Nicholson is fantastic.

If you are more interested in the actual facts: here they are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Flew_Over_the_Cuckoo%27s_Nest_(film)

The world bids adieu to anon …

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/fy6yz/51_hours_left_to_live/

Continuing with the somehow uncomfortable subject of death, here is another.

This person, after undergoing all the pains and indignities of suffering from an incurable cancer, decides to go for a well deserved death with dignity.

From the exchanges, looks like he’s lost almost everything while fighting for survival. The medicines and procedures have bought nothing but pain.

He takes his chances going public and the internet responds. They take him in his fold and brighten his end. The most moving part is where across the globe they explain the surroundings and make him travel the whole globe.

Here is a man, who does not have money,health or even time to do any of these things, but he bids farewell to a bunch of strangers who give him more than his own life has given him.

Talk about being a global village, this is actually a global family !!

Eulogy to a stranger

 

Dear stranger,

we have never talked before. Neither do I know your name. I did see you but you would definitely have not seen me. I saw your perfectly clean shiny bike, your perfectly ironed shirt neatly tucked in to your trousers. Even the death throes did not hide the fact that you did most of the things very well and perfectly. Even the way the accident opened your head was almost clinical. The newly laid black tar road spotless under you.

 

The city bus parked half-hazardly just a few feet from your body made it clear whose fault it really was.

 

You must have been a caring son, a loving father and an understanding husband, a trusted friend and a smiling stranger. All that brought to the end by one mistake. I do not want to say that the end was unnecessary and tragic. It is just Karma and it happened because it was supposed to happen this way.

What else is life but a dewdrop within a dewdrop, a dream within a dream? And you might have dreamt well. At least my religious belief says that death is not a full stop. It is merely a reset and you get a chance to do every thing all over again and again. What did yours say?

I definitely imagine your near ones’ uncontrollable grief. No words can describe or comfort them, at least I do not have those words. so you are the only one I can address. Because you would have already gone to the next step in your life and all this would not matter much to you. Does it?

I think there is only one way to know, and I will know when I will know. There is still time for that. There is still time I dream this dream within dream.

My unseen, unmet friend. Adieu. Well lived and all the best for the next turn. Let’s hope we meet in these cycles again. Would we remember then?

Who knows?