Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

Watched the movie ‘Article 370‘, the movie yesterday and I loved it. Each and every Indian should watch this movie as it walks you through a slightly dramatized version of what it took to get Section 370 revoked and which the revocation was required. A lot of people don’t realize how bad the situation in Kashmir was before 370 was revoked and I am glad that the stories of the atrocities over there are now coming out with movies like Article 370 and Kashmir Files.

The acting in the movie is phenomenal and when they show the Article passing in the Rajya Sabha the entire theater burst out in cheers and clapping. Same happened during a lot of the other scenes as well. Its been a while since I have watched a movie that made you think so much and made you proud of the people who work in the shadows, on the frontlines and in the halls of power.

After the movie, me and Ronak were talking and just wondering how much more India could have been if we had Sardar Patel as our PM instead of Nehru. With him in power Pakistan would still be part of India, Kashmir would be a non-issue. We would not have lost land to China and would be taking back our rightful place as one of the leaders of the world. Instead what we are doing now is working on undoing the generational harm done to the spirit and confidence of India.

Imagine if we actually taught people about how advanced and civilized India was in the past. It wasn’t for nothing that India was known as sone ki chidya (Bird of gold/Land of the riches). Folks are taught about how the burning of the Library of Alexandria was so bad but hardly anyone talks about the burning of the Taxila and Nalanda universities. Centuries of records were burnt and all teachers and students killed so that they couldn’t share their knowledge with others.

Our books hardly talk about the achievements of Ancient India but mostly focus on Mugal and British rule. Even though the Chola dynasty ruled for more than 1,500 years, making them one of the longest-ruling families in human history, if not the longest we hardly learnt about them; instead everyone keeps talking about how long the Romans ruled even though their empire lasted only 844 years which is little more than half the time the Chola FAMILY ruled their empire. All this is because we were taught to be ashamed of being Indians by keeping us ignorant of our own history.

The history books keep teaching Nicolaus Copernicus was the first person to come up with the theory that the Earth, along with the other planets, rotated around the Sun in 1543, completely ignoring the fact that the heliocentrism had first been theorized by Yajnavalkya, an Indian philosopher sometime between 9th-7th Century BCE. There are so many examples of how advanced India used to be and how far we fell because people wanted to take advantage and the best way to rule a population is to convince them that they were nothing before the benevolent rulers came and took over for our own benefit.

The interesting trend is that earlier people who knew the actual ancient Indian history tried teaching it via books, articles and seminars etc but most people found them to be very dry and ignored it. Now, we have movie makers taking the stories of the glory of ancient India along with their trials and achievements and creating an engrossing tale that everyone loves. RRR showcased to the world some of the atrocities that were done by the British. Ponniyin Selvan: I (PS: I) showcased the Chola empire to the world and similarly many other movies are now showing our rich heritage to the world. This is bringing the actual history to the masses (with some masala and a lot of special effects added to make them fun to watch)

Well this is all for now. Looking forward to more such movies and India actually becoming sare jahan se achha (Best in the whole world).

– Suramya

Most people don’t realize how much advanced the Indian Banking system is as compared to other countries. Last week EU adopted euro instant payments rules that would allow customers to transfer money within 10 seconds to any account both within the same country and to another EU member state. What is interesting is that this is being portrayed as a major breakthrough advance in Banking technology.

In India we have a service called Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), which is enables instant inter-bank electronic funds transfer in India. Funds transferred using IMPS are credited to the receiver within seconds and the service is available 24×7 throughout the year including bank holidays. This service was launched in 2010, i.e. over 13 years ago.

The UPI (Unified Payments Interface) is built on top of IMPS and that can be used to make payments/transfers to select countries outside India. List of countries where UPI can be used is available here.

I just find it amusing that something we have been using for over a decade is being portrayed as a breakthrough innovation outside India. Although, to be fair for good amount of time in 80’s & early 90’s things/systems which were common outside India were launched in India as an innovation. So I guess life is a cycle.

Source: Reuters: EU adopts euro instant payments rules to take on Visa, Mastercard

There is a unfortunate trend and narrative that keeps repeating the trope that folks who are geeky or not interested in playing outside are somehow not normal. A good example of how that keeps coming up is the screenshot below where someone posted about a kid who started coding at a young age (10 years!) and asked what were you doing at his age and another person responded stating “Being a normal kid and playing outside??”

10 years old boy writing program in python…what were you doing at his age? Being a normal kid and playing outside??”

Why is it that it is considered ‘normal’ to play outside but not normal to create something on a computer or compose music, or write a book or write poetry or any other creative activity? Both require skill but one is considered normal and the other is not.

Media plays a big part in it especially the US shows and movies where the geek is someone who is an outcast and is always picked on by the more popular kids who are usually good looking but otherwise have no redeeming qualities. They are loud, rude and obnoxious and for some reason everyone thinks that this is a good behavior pattern to emulate. The recent push towards becoming ‘manly’ or alpha or whatever they are calling themselves now is another reason smart folks are picked on because these ‘alpha male’ folks want to showcase how tough they are. Due to this push too many people think that being manly means that you need to behave like an ass or put another way they think that:

Being an asshole is all part of my manly essence

Obviously this is not a good approach and unfortunately for them they are usually whiny snowflakes who are threatened by everything. If you read the definition of what it means to be ‘a man’ you will be rolling on the floor laughing or be scared because they think that having literally any emotion other than anger is something that makes you less manly and if you happen to be a smart person it makes you ‘less manly’ because obviously the only thing that matters is physical strength. Here are some gems that have come up in my feed over time and I collected them as I wanted to put them on a blog post. There are a lot more but I decided to just delete them/block when they come up in my feeds.

These folks need therapy, not that they would ever agree to go for it.

– Suramya