Explorations ho !

Exploring Mumbai continued…. The intrepid traveler - Me :p - went to Mani Bhavan (Gandhiji's home in Mumbai) this weekend. It’s a dilapidated structure (under renovation) at Chowpatty (for the MBA guys who've done their summers in Mumbai, its close to the Wilson College). A memorial to the Mahatma, it chronicles his life though pictures, writings, quotations, puppetry and a display of his belongings. The only visitors to the place when I went were foreigners - a French lady and a German couple - we Indians I guess, no longer find time to visit such places :|. Interestingly too, no shopkeeper or taxi-walla in the area knew where the place was (except the one through whom I finally found the place). I do hope the renovation improves the state of the place… its presently in a sorry shape. An interesting quote I read there:

"The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. Only then, and not until then, will he have a glimpse of the truth"

Then went to the Iskon temple nearby… quite a nice place - people chanting 'Hare Rama Hare Krishna' with moving devotion and melody.

The Babulnath temple (to Lord Shiva) is located closeby. Situated on a hillock, the temple was completely crowded in the evening, when I went. Decorated with flowers and filled with chants, the temple has a colorful atmosphere.

Iqbal

Nice movie. Some really great acting, beautiful music and nice humor. And of course, Naseeruddin Shah at his classic best.

Splogging

Splogging (a.ka. spam-blogging) seems to be becoming such a painful issue. Had to enable word verification to stop the crap. Thanks to Rashmi Bansal for pointing it out - I was really puzzled by the phenomenon.

Splog Reporter: A site to report and monitor splogs.

The future of computer science grads

The need for a multi-disciplinary focus for computing grads - An article from the NyTimes: A Techie, Absolutely, and More. A potent indication of the way the field of computer science is likely to head in India too.

My Web 2.0

Social Search !! If they can pull this off, it would become the next generation of recommender systems. The research challenges, though, are phenomenal. If they can get a significant community on-board and get a decent enough implementation in place, Yahoo! would surely have pulled off a big one.