Hussain Fakhruddin, India Weblog

I am not just sad but ashamed of the fact that in a country which gives secularism as a fundamental right to its citizen, incidents of ‘Honour Killing’ still occur, and in numbers.

So what is ‘Honour Killing’? Taken from wikipedia: :”Honour Killing is the homicide of a member of a family or social group by other members, due to the belief of the perpetrators that the victim has brought dishonor upon the family or community. Honor killings are directed mostly against women and girls, but have been extended to men”

Its only recently that these incidents have come to limelight, but I am sure that A Romeo & Juliet story repeats every month(in the news of course, 100s go unnoticed) with a tragic ending.

Let the view points of family disagreements be taken in consideration;
Let the view points of the couple-in-love be taken in consideration;

Who’s to blame, who’s right or wrong? Who’s to judge?

A impulsive decision taken by the the couple flames anger among family and the heat reaches the couple. Its really obvious that the couple’s blood is warmer than their parents, resulting in a bigger flame. No matter what, the end is always tragic.

Most of today’s youth don’t care for their parents. But the is the reverse also not true?

All parents want their children to stand first in class, but there is one and only one first position. Who is to be blamed? Generation Gap? Communication Gap or Society’s pressure?

No matter what, the end is always tragic.

I just fail to believe that the one who bears the child for nine month inside her could one day kill the same just because they chose a life partner without their consent? I also fail to believe that some youngsters chose extravagant life partners which parents are bound to deny. I have also come across parents who think children as their own property. I have come across children who take parents as a liability. Nevertheless, it all boils down to some tragic moments which this age (both oldies and youngsters included) fail to understand.

So what’s the solution?

Talk.

Talking helps a lot. Talking leads to sharing of ideas, sharing of emotions, sharing of feelings. This leads to understanding which leads to a bonding. Most of the parent-children relation today involves least amount of talking and mostly assumption. Assumption, Miscommunication and EGO are the most satanic effects on any relationship. It dilutes the blood. Blood becomes less thicker than water.

So talk your problems! Take it out of the system. Speak, but listen too because the other also want to be heard.

In today’s mean world, society acts as a catalyst in fuming reactions. Many a times it has been observed that parents might not be opposed to the Child’s dream but the society would pressurize the entire family. I have heard several parents killing their own will when it comes to ‘showing face’ in the society. Do not let society bother you. Remember, society suffers from Amnesia. They will soon forget what they said or did.

Lastly, I humbly request parents and youngsters of my age – Be reasonable. Do not be stubborn. Sometimes its better to lose a battle to win others’ love. Both of you are important for the future generation to come. If you fight among yourselves, who will take care of the all so cool coming soon “NextGen” ?!

Google hasn’t officially released its new search by image API so I thought of researching and writing a small article on how one can use this searching technique in their custom web, desktop and mobile apps.

Here’s a quick analysis first. Basically you replicate what the browser does for you and scrape the response.

Search Location: http://www.google.co.in/searchbyimage/upload

Request Headers:
Host: www.google.co.in
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0.2
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Connection: keep-alive
Referer: http://www.google.co.in/imghp?hl=en&tab=ii
Cookie: PREF=ID=1d7bc4ff2a5d8bc6:U=1d37ba5a518b9be1:FF=4:LD=en:TM=1300950025:LM=1302071720:S=rkk0IbbhxUIgpTyA; NID=51=uNq6mZ385WlV1UTfXsiWkSgnsa6PdjH4l9ph-vSQRszBHRcKW3VRJclZLd2XUEdZtxiCtl5hpbJiS3SpEV7670w_x738h75akcO6Viw47MUlpCZfy4KZ2vLT4tcleeiW; SID=DQAAAMEAAACoYm-3B2aiLKf0cRU8spJuiNjiXEQRyxsUZqKf8UXZXS55movrnTmfEcM6FYn-gALmyMPNRIwLDBojINzkv8doX69rUQ9-

You can ignore most of the above and use standard HTTP headers of a normal browser or CURL it.

What’s important is the multipart form data which gets posted to the Search Location Above:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The HTML form below posts everything for you, results of which you could scrap and use it for your app.

<html>
<body>
<form action = “http://www.google.co.in/searchbyimage/upload” METHOD=”POST” enctype=”multipart/form-data”>
<input type =”file” name = “encoded_image”>
<input type=”Submit” name = “Search” value = “Search”>
<input type = “hidden” name = “h1″ value =”en”>
<input type = “hidden” name = “safe” value =”off”>
<input type = “hidden” name = “bih” value =”800″>
<input type = “hidden” name = “biw” value =”1280″>
<input type = “hidden” name = “image_content” value =””>
<input type = “hidden” name = “filename” value =””>
</form>
</body>
</html>

Today, an unexpected lady turned up for an interview. Probably a mismatch from the consulting firm we were working with. She was around 45 years old. Looked quite like a typical ‘aunt’. She had just passed class 10. She spoke exceptional English and always smiled.

From the conversation I had with her, she was quite disturbed currently with her job; Her current employer was mistreating her. She was working for a Marwadi group (Bhaijis as I’d call such people) and being a Christian was her mistake. She had been working in the firm as a front office executive for almost 5 years now and each year the Bhaijis gave her increments of Rs 200-300. I know this is not new with Bhaijis, but I was really shocked. Trust me, these Bhaijis increase 200-300 for their maid servants every year..

Shocked to witness as to how some employers take advantage of the people’s need. Just because the lady didn’t have any qualifications she couldn’t get a job elsewhere. This fact was very well understood by the Bhaijis and as a result exploited the employee. Earning millions and paying peanuts is not going to increase your status. You’ll still have people abusing you behind your back.

This is why people quit their job. She was very satisfied with her work, but highly unsatisfied with the caste/creed/gender biased bosses.

Another incident happened with a friend who works in the Hospitality domain. She happens to be at the managerial position. The moment she announced she was expecting a child, the entire attitude of her bosses changed from the very next day. They kept frustrating her with silly things which wouldn’t matter. Because they (the bosses) know quite well that they will have to provide all benefits to her as per company policies which they indirectly didn’t want and I’m sure they would keep on frustrating her until she quits.

And so as a result, people never care for their employers anymore. And then even employers don’t. Tit for tat. Both the employee and employers have become ‘professional’ and money minded. Its not uncommon that you’d read your friend’s status about they quick and funny comment expressing displeasure at work and bosses.

Employees have started jumping from company to company like a monkey. In another interview I took, I asked the lady, why did she want to leave her current job. She said she was quite satisfied with Job/Environment/Salary and practically everything else , but was looking for a better opportunity. I told her, “One day if you get married and have everything in life, will you still look for another husband?”. She never understood what I tried to convey.

As an Employer myself, Day by day, I lose interest in employing people. Giving opportunity to the needy first is what I believe in but it has always turned out that ‘the needy person’ back stabbed you without your knowledge forgetting every human relation. Not their fault, but the system has become like this where treating an employee as a Family member is like yourself being a vegetarian and expecting the Tiger to dine with you!

I have seen people who work for almost 10-15 years of their life in a company without even thinking to move to another company until they either have a problem or they are shifting to another location. Where are those people now? According to a survey, Indian salary class is the most mobile workforce in the whole world. I interviewed another candidate who had 3 years experienced but in 4 companies. He didn’t have work ex, but rather experience in how to shift companies!

Employers are cunning, lets face this. They don’t hire to create jobs. Trust me. They hire because they want to make money and expand business. And Employees reciprocate. Employees are big time opportunists. It has become a world of professionalism where employers stuff money into employees every growing mouths to keep them quiet.

On the other hand, among all this mean world out there.. We have an office peon from whom I have a great respect. He never says NO. ‘No’ or ‘not doable’ is not in his dictionary. He would do any work. From cleaning the office, to handling heavy bank and cash transactions. I must say that we’re blessed to have him and Its really hard to find such people. People who have respect for Employers gain back the respect they deserve. It is these kind of people who make me still believe that employees should be treated as part of the family.

A Child’s life is truly simple. Far away from the daily mysteries and bothering. A child doesn’t know what’s rich and what’s poor. A child’s definition of tension or stress is the exam or homework next day. Or to score better than his own best friend. All parents want their children to be on number 1. Foolish parents don’t realize that there is only one number one.

As I watch my niece brushing and polishing her shoes for next days school with her heavy bag lying on the other side of the room. I get reminded of my childhood days. Days when life was too simple when most decision were made for you. Life was simple and that’s why it passed by so quickly.

Today’s life is complicated and I am going to highlight on one of the reasons why it is – It is the Options that one get. Option not to be confused with opportunity but rather a path one takes in the journey of life while standing at a cross road.

Today more options give us more confusion. I visited a restaurant yesterday and found only 3 items for soup, 4 items for starters, 4 times for main course and another 4-5 more other items. I really understood the philosophy behind it. They wanted to cut out the options part from them. These days the confusion is about the number of options we get. More options are not to simplify your choice but to only make it more confusing so that you stop to decide. It murders your ability to decide. It kills your opinion about something.

Marriage is another example. Arranged marriage people on an average wait almost a year to be finally fixed with someone and take a look at an average of 6-7 to be spouses until a perfect match is found. Why? Well, its the ultimate question of a getting a suitable life partner! What if one makes the wrong choice ?

On the other hand, Out of the marriages that don’t last long, most of them have a reason behind it as an availability of another choice. Don’t like someone? Don’t care about the society? Splitting is the answer. You can always find someone else to have an affair with!

Options make life more miserable. Ever gone for shopping? Why do we always pull a friend or comrade to go along. Because one is always confused and tends to a friend / comrade for assistance and buys their choice.

Its an irony that some generations back, when a particular option was forced on to you, you always objected it. And now, you very nicely pick up someone else’s choice and proudly announce claim it as FREEDOM!

Life is not about the amount of options you get. It shouldn’t matter what option you choose. But has your choice benefitted all?

Do you also feel that more opinions makes it more difficult to come to the right choice ? Do share your thoughts in the comments!

Very few people in the world have the priviledge of spending time with their grandparents. I have never seen my grandfather but have seen him through the eyes of my grandmother whose talks reflect him and how she misses him. My grandfather died almost 30-35 years ago and I can just understand the pain my grandmother might have taken without him.

I adore my grandmother a lot. She is no doubt smarter than anyone of her 90+ age. Everytime I visit her I learn something new. A new angle to one of her stories. A new approach of telling things. Her memories, her pain, her happiness.. The stories never fall short. Time may run out but not the endless tales of her life. Its just amazing that she remembers so much so well.

I visit my grandmother every Sunday who lives with my uncle and his family. She waits for me and I wait for the day to visit her. I am glad that I am having this special bond with her. I am amazed every time with her sharp memory. She knows if I was early or late for the visit compared to last Sunday’s visit..She notices if I had come walking or on my bike. She notices what color are my clothes. She doesn’t like black and asks me to avoid it. She notices if I have shaved or not or if I have put on weight since last week. She knows everything and all this at her 90+ age! I am blessed. I wish I could stay with her for more.. I wish I could take care of her more..

Even with her 90+ age, she can write well. She knows many English words of daily use. She says ‘Fijja’ for Pizza and ‘Lijer’ for Geyser. But she knows how to communicate and does that well indeed. She understands everything right on the first explanation itself, there is no need to explain again. She remembers all her medicines and when they would be finished. Everything is well planned.

Her thoughts are surprisingly modern,  Even than my mother. Completely un-conservative. A very strong lady who has seen ups and downs of life from all angles throughout her life. Many a times she expresses grief of how the world treated her in the past. Of how ungrateful people have been to her. But she is never angry or discontent now, In fact all she wants now is a peaceful and satisfying death. A much noble want than most of our worldly desires.

With such modern thoughts, I have never met anyone else who would be so religious. She remembers almost 1/10 of the Holy Quran in her mind and her speed for recital can give a clergy an inferiority complex. Every 10 days she finishes reciting the whole Quran. Some people cannot finish this over a month even! The only grief she has is that from last two years she has not been able to keep her month long Ramadan fasts due to her health. She would have still kept the fasts even with her old age and health problems if the elders of the family had not refused !

Some years ago, I remember spending the 10th of Moharram with her. We are supposed to fast the entire day as its a day of sadness. My grandmother broke the fast at sunset but never ate there after. Most people of our age would conclude it as the end of the day and event of sadness. But she continued. She kept saying “My lord has died and how can I eat, I just don’t feel like”. This was really touching. There are many more tiny memories of her which cannot be expressed in words rather just to be enjoyed;

My Grandmother is one of the perfect grandmothers one can have. I regret the fact that I want to do more for her and the time I we didn’t spend together which I am slowly trying to make up… I love you, dadima! [grandmother]