Hare Krishna!

My temple visits in the US have become what beach visits in Goa used to be - the default choice when we want to do something different. Temples are a great place to take Addu. He can freely exhaust his athletic and vocal capacities. We usually find other toddlers up to similar antics and I can hide among their parents when elders or authorities throw us disapproving glances.

The Hindu temple closest to our house happens to be a Hare Krishna temple. Our American handyman is a Hare Krishna follower. He sang praises of the local temple, drew us a map, brought us tasty prasad and called my mother-in-law "mataji". Now we had to go. I successfully diverted our piety to other, more distant venues for months, but finally gave in.

I had never been to a Hare Krishna temple before but experiences and reading combined to make me file Hare Krishna followers in roughly the same corner of my mind as I place Amway folks and telemarketeers. My first encounter with a Hare Krishna follower was many years ago. He was cordial, extroverted and in every way the sort of person I'd want to hang out with. The only gotcha was my name (yes, again). All the words in my name - Jagannath Gopal Krishnan - are Krishna's names. The follower decided this was adequate proof of my devoutness and perhaps that bringing me into the fold was his divine duty. I enjoyed our subsequent exchanges about as much as visits from Jehovah's witnesses. Why don't the proselytizers of the world believe in freedom of choice? I would love to learn about a religion or sect if I'm told, "Hey, here's this wonderful thing that I want to share with you. Yakity yak... Ok that's all - let me know if you ever want to know more".

Then there's the dancing. Back in India, my most vivid memory of Hare Krishna followers is that of foreigners with their heads shaven and wearing ochre robes, dancing in large groups with an energy and abandon that I've only been able to envy, not emulate. It's hard for me to picture dancing in a place of worship; I'm just not used to it.

I was thus less than enthusiastic when Charu decreed that we'd go to the Hare Krishna temple last weekend. I hadn't even practiced my dance moves yet (none of them go with a large paunch anyway).

I was mistaken about the temple. It buzzed with activity, people were friendly and the place was welcoming. It was like any other Hindu temple - we were left alone and could choose how we wanted to participate. There was dancing during the Aarti, but it wasn't, as I imagined, a reckless expression of joy on beholding the lord. That would be hard to match. Or feign. The dancing was coordinated and rhythmic. Most people swayed or moved gently. It had the pull of a dance or party where the music is good, you see a bunch of people dancing and pretty soon you can't keep yourself from moving to the beat too. It was similar to the garba and even that seemed boisterous in comparison.

If my Amway radar picks up even the slightest bit of solicitation, I am transformed into an unsocial, unfriendly person. Even the anticipation of such an interaction is enough to make me assume such a defensive stance. I therefore regarded any overtures of friendship with some suspicion but overall the evening went well. I spent most of my time in the outer hall preventing Addu from pulling down two giant curtains that extended all the way from the high ceiling to the floor.

The visit was thus thankfully uneventful. Addu didn't do any major damage other than occasionally screaming his lungs out in glee. Charu added to our mirth by walking up to the follower who manned the prasad table and shocking him in all innocence by asking - "Is this all vegetarian?"

Email search tools

I have long struggled with the deluge of email at work. In my crusade, I have tried everything from no organization (death by a thousand emails!) to having a million folders. I have now settled down to just letting it all accumulate whereever and searching for what I need. When Gmail was first introduced, I wasn't among its fans. Searching for email? Sounded like another nail had been created for the Google search hammer. I see the beauty of Gmail now. Even at work, where I use Outlook, my folders have boiled down to the single 'archive' folder that Gmail offers.

Lightening fast search is your friend if you get a lot of email. I used Lookout to search my emails in Outlook but eventually replaced it with Google Desktop. The latter's many gadgets and brand probably conned me into this shameful act. Google Desktop is fast, but is integration with Outlook is clearly not a priority for its makers. Every now and then I need to fish out some old email and attach it to another email that I'm composing. With Google Desktop I can quickly find that old email but there's no way to just drag it from the search window and drop it on to the email I'm composing. Instead, I have to manually find the older email in my Inbox and then attach it. This means sorting my Inbox first, or changing its view to include older emails - not fun with a massive mailbox.

So I bid Google Desktop a tearful adieu and installed Outlook 2007 and Windows Search since I heard the latter was fast. I've never been a fan of mindless Microsoft bashing, but this software makes me want to scream in agony every time I use it. It takes well over 30 seconds to search for any email. What's worse, Outlook often freezes while this is happening and you're pretty much blocked.

What's 30 seconds, you ask. I'm not being cantankerous; 30 seconds by themselves may not matter, but the distraction can be deadly. Before you know it you're looking at a bug report, thinking of some other to-do or your mind has wandered and the squandered seconds start stacking up. Concentration is such a hard-won trophy, why suffer a tool that impedes you?

For now, I'm back to Lookout. Lookout is fast and well integrated with Outlook. It's no longer supported since Microsoft bought it a few years ago and had the team work on Windows search instead. It works with older versions of Outlook and you can tweak it to work on Outlook 2007.

What's in a name?

Finally created my own blog. I guess a "Hullo, world!" is in order. I hope my blog gets more of my attention than my web page.

When registering for this blog, I had to pick a name for it. Needing to name something is still one of my guaranteed time sinks. Back in college, we organized "hops" - all night dances for students. This hop had an elaborate theme based on symbols from Rome and figures from Asterix comics, all of which were put together almost single handedly by Dilip Menezes. Everyone was working hard decorating the dance hall. My task? To name the hop! A couple of friends and I were up in the wee hours of the night dishing out one unattractive name after another. We finally settled on Roman Rumble (I think), a contribution I can't take any credit for.

Names and I have always had this hate-hate relationship. Growing up, I was never too fond of my own name. To add insult to injury, a number of aunts and grandmas claimed credit for naming me. My wife, Charu, and I sometimes wonder - have we done our son in too? I like "Advait", but will he? Very few people seem to be able to pronounce it correctly, even in India! But we weren't optimizing for ease of pronunciation, I tell myself. For what then? Meaning? Maybe. It takes some effort to assign a profound and yet sensible meaning to Advait. I guess we've fallen prey to the prevailing trend among Indian parents to pick culturally significant names based on old Sanskrit words. I hope Addu (as we call Advait) won't feel like Gogol Ganguly from the Namesake when he grows up. We'll see. If he retains his current enthusiasm, it doesn't look like he'll be fazed by much.

Charu and I agonized over names for months before Advait was born. We grew up in different parts of India, and are used to different names. I preferred simple names like Mohan or Tamil names like Kadiravan, which sound magical to me. Charu felt these were very common in the south and impart as much distinction to their bearer as Raju, Pappu or Bunty. Instead, she preferred names like Narhari or Dhurandhar Bhatawdekar. Ok, I'm making those examples up, but some of her choices had the same ring to them.

I tell myself I'm older and wiser now and that names don't really matter. Shakespeare and I are in violent agreement.