Race is a segregation of individuals belonging to the same species depending upon certain characteristics (of a group  within the species) based on skin colour, physical structure, languages etc. I’ve no idea who made such a segregation nor why such means were adopted in the first place. There have been a lot of wars waged, blood shed and lives torn because people wanted to “purify” their race.

Lets face it. Whether you’re an Atheist or a Theist, you just have to conclude we’re all the same species. It doesn’t matter whose whatever colour they are. No one has the choice to pick the skin colour you want while being concieved. Then why bother what colour anyone else is? Neither does one have a choice to pick a language that can be spoken. Then don’t bother about who speaks whatever language they do because its just a means of communication/expression. There can be no Aryan or Dravidian if all accept themselves to be human. Then all boundaries dissapear.

Caste on the other hand is something that i’ve  not quite understood till recently. There has been much debate as to when it actually began(segregation on the basis of caste). Caste is actually segregation of people in a society on the basis of their socio-economic status. According to the Hindu social order there are many sub-groups under a paarticular caste called Jatis. Traditionally there are four major Castes: Brahmins(Scholars,Teachers,etc),Kshatriyas(The warrior class), Vaishyas(Traders and Merchants) and the Shudras(Artisans,Service Providers, Helpers).

There has been a lot of debate on the usefulness of the Caste system and i decided to propose some modern “adjustments” to this highly structured system of socio-economic debasement of the human race. It has been said that the caste system was designed to be a medieval Division of Labour, i have made certain proposals based on this general perspective and since the Caste system has pretty much survived the onslought of ‘modern’ thought, i wish to create a ‘Post Modern’ Division of Labour using the same Medieval terms.

The most important caste within the four major ones in that of the Brahman. They were Scholars and Teachers, Gurus to the other folks and so i decided that this title should be given to Teachers, Scholars, Doctors and those involved in either of these professions. The second are the Kshatriyas, those involved in warfare ie., the Army, Police and so on. Third are the Vaishyas, the Buisness folk and other Entrepreneurs owning and managing business. Finally, the Shudras, those who make the lives of all other classes easier and better. They work to keep cities clean, make sure that all manner of services are rendered to the other folks in finese(it actually depends how motivated they are).

So what is my take on such a ‘Caste System’ the caste of a person would change continuously as one changes his/her job profile. For example, if one joins a firm as a Customer support executive then he becomes a Shudra, as he goes on working in the firm he* becomes a Manager or the CEO/Member of the Company Board, he then moves into the realm of the Vaishyas and so on. If he becomes a Researcher then perhaps the profile of a Brahmin would be given him. A Musician who has his own Band would be a hybrid caste maybe a Shudra-Vaishya.  I still have doubts whether the Political class would fit the role of a Shudra or a Kshatriya because i think that they’re elected with the general feeling of ’serving’ the masses but end up ruling the state. Maybe they should be given the title of a Shudra and those running the Government be accepted as Kshtriyas along with those serving in the Defence forces. I propose that a persons caste be determined by what he does rather than by who he’s born to. Caste must be dynamically attached to the person’s profession rather than his lineage.

This is what i think of the Caste system. i thinks its time to call the bluff.

*i’m just plain lazy to type “/she/her”

In the past i’d been thinking a lot about joining IIT and preparing for GATE
again. But last week K, a good friend of mine, joined a training institute (and is
currently under training in Embedded Systems and VLSI) in Hyderabad. This had a profound
impact on my perspective of education,especially formal education. He sent me a synopsis of
the course that he is undertaking(i had asked for it) and when i saw it i was amazed. Yes
Amased if not Astounded. There was C, C++, RTOS, UNIX,Shell Programming, Embedded Systems
Design, RDBMS (and i’m really not talking about basic stuff). All in SIX months!!

During our last conversation W made a statement which left me confused it was this: Any knowledge acquired in
a time bound manner is never complete. So,since we don’t have infinite time then all knowledge, we can posses is still finite.
The Domino Effect continued and i am now sure, in the words of Will(of ‘Good Will Hunting’),
that my “$150 Grand education is just worth $1.50 at the Public Library.” And so is the case with all formal education.
The price is the effort put into acquiring knowledge.
Now if i already have the knowledge that i’d get if i do,say, an M.Tech, what do i gain?
Just a Degree?? So now the question is: Do i spend time(for all Corporate guys: use the time = money principle, that’ll help you understand i hope)
, all 13152(1.5 years)-3288(6 hours of sleep) = 9864hours of my time in learning much of the stuff i already know, just to get a Degree? What’s more: Do i spend so much time as i do now to prepare for competitive exams that would then help me to use up 9864 hours of my life in gaining pretty much nothing but a degree? Those are serious questions for me if you look at the opening statement of this post.

If we are,then, in a position where we are learning as much(if not more) than what we’d learn
during a formal degree course, do you think it would be prudent for anyone to go back and
join a PG course where you pretty much learn the stuff that you learnt while your UG and the
only thing new that you do learn would be in the last few months of the course? Then you’d
have to show your skills doing a project or a Thesis which would use much of the skills you
already had while doing your UG (and usually primary school) because the time required to master
the stuff during a PG is not sufficient enough to be of any use.. at the end of it all we have a Degree.
And TIME is completely wasted because we wanted a Degree and did not want to spend any effort in
learning something we would have learnt for much less time with a “$1.50″ admission to a library.

So what are my plans for the future? Do i keep pursuing my hope to get into IIT or Spend some time learning something new,
doing more with the knowledge i posess, keep on increasing it as well as the skills i now have (and shall continue to acquire)?
I guess, the answer is Self-evident. But does that mean that there is no need of for a formal higher education? Apparently, the answer is yes. Yes its of no use(if that helps it sink in)! At least in a country like india where formal education is just another means of getting a job. Then the house. Then the car. Its the world’s demand that rules formal education. Its just to fulfil that demand that we join the rat-race. If i,perchance, were to join for a formal higher education it would be to get exposed to minds greater and deeper than mine…

W: Music is Finite!!

me: Hmmmm… Is that a question or a Statement

W: There are just 12 keys and Music is just a permutation of those keys!!

L(a medical student): So you’re telling that after a certain number of melodies or songs they’ll be repeated

W: exactly my point!! My whole gang at work got annoyed when i told them that there are only finite number of songs or melodies that people can produce.

This was part of an interesting conversation of which i only made the opening statement, The rest of the canversation is

extremely stupid where W goes on to explain the following three points to L:

One, Music is made up of notes which are finite. Two, These finite notes when combined together produce sounds which comprise the music we hear.

Three, since there can be only a finite set of combinations of these notes there can be only a finite set of melodies that one can produce.

I was not involved in the rest of the conversation because i actually fell for it. But yesterday, when i was travelling back home from my workplace

(due to the excess delay in the bus) this thought came to me.

There will be finite set of notes that can be played in a finite set of time. ie., if i were playing a song lasting 120 discrete seconds i can play only a finite set of notes/Chords and this is true.

what i mean is i’d be allowed to play only on discerte instants of time lasting 120 seconds. If i played a note at the nth second it would be accepted but a note between n and (n+1)th second would be classified noise and and attributed to the n+1th instant(the process is called quantization)

But time in the realworld is continuous and not discrete. So within the n and n+1th second there are infinite values that time can take. So within these infinite instants of time there can be infinite change of notes.

The previous case was for a finite length of time but time is infinte in length too(theoretically speaking) so you can play a song for an infinite duration even if you consider discrete instants of time and you’ll have infinite number of permutations for a finite set of tones by virtue of time being infinite.