Things Ravi Pratap Is Up To

So, it’s finally over. George W. Bush is President of the United States and although my opinion in all this doesn’t count (I am not an American citizen), I have to admit that I felt quite a bit of anxiety about the results on election night. I stopped to think why this matters to me. [...]

There’s something a little troublesome about telling someone where you live when you happen to be somebody like me, a resident of the tri-state area [In the US, when one says "the tri-state area," they are usually referring to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut]. But it isn’t quite as simple as that, see. The [...]

There’s always something strangely satisfying about going back and visiting a place that is dear to you – a place that you call “home.” Take, for instance, the city of Hyderabad (AP, India) (and Secunderabad – they are twin cities), where I grew up. I spent 11 of the most formative years of my life [...]

There hasn’t been one day that passed without me lamenting the lack of a quality Indian newspaper with a decent online edition. Dailies like the Times Of India (which really should be called the ‘Tabloid of India’) are not only among the worst websites, they also happen to excel at publishing what can only be [...]

If you know me well enough and in particular are quite familiar with all the computer hardware that I have used, I wouldn’t blame you for being startled for a moment at the title of this post. As unlikely as it sounds, the Dell Dimension 8400 desktop that I took out of its packaging and [...]

An interesting article appeared in the New York Times yesterday: Indians Go Home, but Don’t Leave U.S. Behind Having always been rather vocal on the subject, I found that it shed new light on a recent phenomenon in India. I am unsure still if this is something that is common or just among some isolated [...]

The blogging world has no doubt been greatly disappointed with the sudden disappearance of yours truly what with no blog entries for something like 6 or 7 weeks now. I have only the world’s most famous cliche for you, “Fret not my friends, I am back!” I am still very much alive in New York [...]

There was a time in my life when I read a lot. I read everything I could lay my hands on – newspapers, magazines, comics, detective novels and so on. I remember my favourite books as a kid used to be the Hardy Boys mysteries. I enjoyed them thoroughly and I remember regularly borrowing a [...]

“Oh, so you are Ravi Pratap! It’s nice to meet you in person!” “It’s nice to meet you too, Manjula. I remember reading some of your posts on the Ximian Mono list.” I was in Boston on a fine Saturday afternoon. It was just the previous night that I had taken the Chinatown bus from [...]

Sometimes the most innocuous little thing can stir you into action. The most inconspicuous little thing has the capacity to stir memories from the good old days of your life in the four walls of a secluded campus in Madras. Sometimes the most harmless little thing makes you laugh like nothing else, reminds you of [...]