What's worse - Extremism or Justice?

It was a typical day, business as usual at work. The usual bug ridden software we work with, taking head-on the fast approaching go-live dates and one long hard look at what's the worst that can happen as a result of this dangerous concoction will surely send chills up anyone's spine. The party line however is "we're having fun"! So much fun that I get tired and am ready for a break. Yes, that's exactly what I did. Took a break, for lunch. I like to have my lunch with friends or colleagues, so I don't still think about stuff that makes me nervous.

Had our lunch with a few laughs and some rare insights from our "Indian Jew" (I call him that because this mallu can show you the best deal regardless of what you are set out to buy) into how to buy the cheapest possible SDHC card, 4gb for 5 bucks. Can you beat that? Well now you understand the nick name. Anyway, on my way back to desk I was distracted by the laptop speaker volume of a colleague and discovered that the terrorists hijacked some Hotels in Mumbai and some incidents happened at the train station and a hospital. We started reading about what happened and then realized the scale of the damage and the message that is being sent. No anonymity anymore, no secrecy... everything out in the open.

"Animals! Savages!!, god forbid them... what do they get taking innocent lives", we were all saying to ourselves and each other. There is a lot of anger in these terrorists, anger from hatred, anger from oppression, a very important emotion heavily misguided toward bad things. 2 days passed, indian forces have taken control of the situation. Damage has been done. A Country's pride is hurt, time and again, but never as bas as this time.

But it makes one wonder, what does it take to sacrifice his\her own life for a cause. How much of commitment it needs, but what's worse is, what does it take to murder 200 people indiscriminately, men women and children alike. Good thing they don't have to go to bed with that anymore, or I bet that would be hell.

Days passed and I am still recovering from the shock, digesting the facts and the after math. On my way to work, hearing NPR (b.t.w. it's National Public Radio, for the FM challenged out there) tuning in for more information on Mumbai attacks. There was an article being broadcasted on a slightly different subject. That is the process of death penalty and how another death sentence is coming up shortly for actioning in the state of Washington, walla walla state prison.

In washington state, if a person is sentenced to death - that person has two options to choose how he/she wants to die. Hang until death, or Lethal injection. This person apparently chose a Lethal injection. The radio announcer went on to describe how that works. There are 3 drug injections that will be administered. First one is a barbiturate, puts the inmate to sleep. It is an anaesthetic. Second, a paralyzing agent to paralyze all muscular functions including breathing. Third, the Toxic agent that interrupts electric signals essential to heart's functioning and therefore will lead to a cardiac arrest. Sounds fun so far? It turned my stomach as she was describing the steps.

They say, in some cases, when they analyzed blood of the inmate post-martum, they detect awareness levels well after administering the Paralyzing agent. What that means is that, the inmate can potentially feel what is being done to him, but cannot breath or signal anybody what he is feeling and how he wants to be helped, not that anyone wants to listen to him, but he just couldn't communicate anything if he wanted to. Unlike the victims of the terrorism, who had a chance for a split second, for a blink of an eye, that infinitely long moment that lasts between the terrorist aiming his gun at the victim and the bullets taking the life of the victim - to protect themselves, take chances and try to survive. But think of the fate of the inmate being "put" to death. No chance in hell, they can escape the worst. The worst part is everyone present on the scene know it. There are no chances, no excuses, no change of hearts in the last minute. Inmate shall be put to death and that he will be.

Assuming I established my point of how gruesome this is, let me stepback a moment and think about this. A regular guy commits a crime, may be a really heinous one, one that should be punished severely. He is sentenced to death by the judiciary system. But I fail to understand WHAT THE HELL GIVES US THE RIGHT to take a man's life. A society full of people get together and shamelessly admit it is ok to take a person's life because of what he did - and suddenly that is RIGHT, ETHICAL and JUSTICE. So really what we saying here is that killing is called a "murder" if the majority doesn't agree with the reasons, but the same act will be called "justice" if people can be convinced to lean the other way. Am I the only one getting the feeling that something of the size of pacific is seriously amiss here. It doesn't add up. This subject of Right and Wrong just doesn't settle in my mind - ever! I could never make peace with any explanation ever given for defining Right from Wrong.

How can we live in a society, wearing a smile and thinking everything is fine when the rest of them can decide whether you should live or not and that would be considered perfectly legal.

There are several people involved in carrying out a death sentence. One takes him into the room, One straps the hands, the other straps the legs down. There will be different people for administering the injections. The point being, the process is shared between many people, so that no one person feel guilty for killing a person on their own, even though they are just doing their job. I wonder why feel guilty if theybelieve in the system and believe in the judgement. The fact that the process is created this way, speaks a little bit about how much the lawmakers themselves believe in the "ethical correctness" of the concept of death sentence.

I mean most butchers will not feel bad about their jobs because they are taking life of animals everyday. So why feel bad if it is your job to execute criminals, unless there is a part of you that says this is not correct.

We boast a lot of knowledge of human psychology and give weird names to various mental conditions people have. Every criminal would probably be suffering with some mental disease and instead of trying to cure the disease, how is it fair to take a person's life?

I could never comprehend this. Can you?

-Sridhar

Hierarchy is B.S.!!

It is utmost appalling the way we embrace the concept of Leadership and Management. The human society since the oldest of the times shows extensive employ of this concept. Everything is hierarchical, however much you try to stay away from it. People always have bosses, as if that is the only way to ‘get things done’. Higher salaries, employment perks and special parking spots to name a few, are nothing but the most rudimentary proofs, that all the progress human beings claim to have made, about equality, anti-discriminatory laws and all of that is a big bucket full of B.S. It is an insult to the sub-ordinate’s intellect to call him a sub-ordinate. It’s not like a CEO can do a programmer’s or floor-worker’s job as effectively, then why the sudden hype and the inevitable ‘big deal’? People will do what they are best at doing. Their intellects cannot be compared, because there is no reliable “conversion factor” or a universal scale to measure these different dimensions of acumen.


I was hearing a sermon from a popular rabbi recently. Not that I am Jewish or that I have any specific interest in any one religion, but it was one of those can’t-look-away-after-you-heard-the-first-line speeches. The Rabbi had a real knack for capturing listener's attention. One thing I noticed that is relevant to this topic is that, religion tells you to not judge anyone before you put yourself in their shoes. Then how can we call one person greater than the other, and seek comfort in a web of misapprehensions. What's worse is to aspire to climb the ladder and become someone one day who looks down on his nose at a bunch of dimwitted "believers".


I say, "You got something to say, say it! I will think over it and let you know. Don’t tell me you are greater than me because you are the CEO of my company or the owner of Microsoft…". Why is it important to me, if you can do your job well? and how do you know that I cannot do mine better than you can do yours? I can most certainly run faster than Gandhiji and probably lift more weights than Einstein. So I suppose I am greater than Gandhiji and Einstein in some aspects. I say in any specific example, it really depends on what we are comparing? It gives me the creeps when someone pulls a rank and makes that a way of life, a way to get by, because nobody gives a crap if it isn't for the rank.


People seek safety, leaders promise safety (or an idea of safety) in many different shapes. You follow a leader because you think he\she is going to lead you to a place that is better for you. Once you admit that this is it for you, that you cannot think for your own and might as well follow someone who makes an attempt to, following a leader is not an absolutely bad thing. But almost always, human nature's ass end will make an appearance sooner or later. Just because people follow you or respect you, you will start taking things for granted. Other people's feelings will bear less and less importance for you.


Please don't mistake me for venting, but this is a plague, an epidemic that is affecting the entire corporate world. Bureaucracy is a thing of the past. Red tapism should be punishable by law. This is a major cause for loss of morale.

-Sridhar Nallani

Fear!!

Fear - in the process of human evolution, until today, the Man's most primal emotion, it's the most basic instinct, isn't it? There are basic necessities like food, water and clothes etc, but when it comes to emotions, I think Fear is the most basic.

There are other important emotions like Anger, Joy, Sadness etc but I think each one of those things can be expressed in terms of Fear. I think:

Anger: The 'Fear' of things not happening that way you want them to

Joy: Lack of 'Fear'. See happiness is different from Joy - Joy is a state of no emotion, but I 'd like to think of it as state of having no fear. This needs another blog to explain, so I'll let it be.

Sadness: The 'Fear' of facing life or society because of something that happened (mostly in the recent past). How does the Sadness fade? I think it is because you learn to overcome the 'Fear' of dealing with that mishap that made you sad

I find that it is a very interesting theory as I expore it more and more. I mean, think about all the ways in which it can affect your life...

I went to my doctor for a regular checkup recently and one of the things he checked was my Blood Pressure. It shows higher than it should for my age. He has been noticing it for a while and then he asked me to make changes to my lifestyle (yeah right! like that ever happens, right?) and eventually he had to face the fact of the issue - put me on medication. 1 pill daily after dinner. I am fine with it. It's just like a desert - except this one stinks, but that's no problem.

He said it was because of the stress my body is taking. I was going, wait a minute, am I working in the 32 degree cold weather out in the rain somewhere? Am I digging mines for a living? I mean what is it exactly that is stressful about my job. Drive a car for 45 mins on the road listening to my favorite tunes, go sit in a comfy leather chair with about 4 different controls for my personal comfort, lean back, slide up\down, tilt forward\backward.... and then comes the real hardwork - slide the mouse on my desk and keep clicking everywhere. Type a lot of emails, hit the keyboard keys and then the occasional "coffee-breaks" :p.... ok ok I know by now you know where I am going with this. That does not exactly qualify for hardwork.

Then what is stressing me out?

I'll tell you what is stressing me out. It is the 'Fear' of me coming under a 100 ton semi truck carrying raw meterial to Boeing assembly plant, all the while I am driving (which is about One and a half hours a day). It is the 'Fear' of not knowing when all hell will break loose at work because my deliverable has too many bugs or has not gone out in time, it is the 'Fear' of the grumpy old lady co-workers snapping at you for no reason at all, and then ofcourse the ultimate 'Fear' of losing your Job for any reason.

I think these days, not even coming under the Semi truck is as scary as losing a job and having to pay mortgage on a huge house, put the kids through school. The worst thing is that this 'Fear' is with us all day all night. Could there be any better results, if not Hypertense, it will be the Diabetes or Cholesterol or something else WILL get you.

I now understand that our bodies are not really biologically evolved to take food 4-5 times day at regular intervals - they are evolved to eat like there is no tomorrow when you get the chance and then live without food for another couple of weeks. We are over nourishing it and then running to the doctors with the resulting problems.

Well, it's 12:00 in the night now... gotta follow my doctor's advice and get some sleep!

- Sridhar