What resolution is your life?

I have been fortunate enough to live through a period of world history in which technology has gone from a child's play to science fiction level. I have seen the time when mobile phones didn't use to exist and to now when there is one in everyone's pocket. Every year there there are many new models and they fight over features like dogs over a bone. One feature that is usually hotly contested is the camera. Let's forget about the point what is a camera doing in something called a phone and just talk about the state of the art. 

The most popular part of the camera and its improved features is resolution. A quick sidebar to explain - every digital photo is made up of tiny dots which are called pixels. Resolution is just the notation to show how many of these pixels are there in a photo taken by a particular digital camera (phone camera or DSLR). For example 1920x1080 which is lovingly called Full HD or 1080p means that the photo has 1920 dots widthwise and 1080 dots along the height. The more pixels there are the smoother and "higher definition" the photo will be. 

While this is the most publicised metric in a camera, people argue that that's not the best or only measure of quality. There is camera sensor size, image processing software, the glass (a fancy way of saying lens) and a few other things that contribute to the quality of a photo. But I want to ask what is the "quality" of a photo? 

Exhibit A: look at this photo below. 

This photo was taken in the 1990s before google was a verb and youtube was not even in its mother's womb. The "three moustacheers" in the photo are Harry, Fazil and yours truly. This was a time in our life when we had finished high school (we went to the same school) and were doing college. We were trying to find our place in the world and searching for our guiding star. From this search we used to take time, maybe once or twice a week, to go on an evening walk to this park about 2 miles from our homes. 

Obviously, you can see how "bad" the photo is. It was taken on a film camera, degraded over time and then scanned into the computer. [Kudos to my nephew Sagar for preserving and emailing it to me.] 

Exhibit B: This is a picture from a Matheran trip (a 'hill' station in Maharashtra, India) with Bhuwnesh and his family. Bhuwnesh and I became friends in US out of necessity because we were the new people there and all the other Indian colleagues were already settled in their lives. Plus, we got along well despite being very different in personality. That's the reason we stayed in touch no matter how many times he or I changed cities and countries. 

This photo was taken in 2006 from an Olympus camera which was 1.3mega pixels. Don't laugh, that's the best I had then.  

I also have a lot of photos which are taken with good cameras in high resolution but don't mean half as much to me. 

Let's take an exception, exhibit C, taken in 2020: 

This is a high resolution photo taken with a proper DSLR last year. Given the condition the world was in when my nephew Sagar married his girlfriend Harsha, I had no chance to go to attend their wedding in Canada. Had it not been for the technology I could not have watched their wedding ceremony on a  video call and I would not have been able to see their smiling faces in the lovely photos. 

My point is not that "Old is always good". My point is that it's not the resolution in the camera that matters, it's the resolution of your life that matters. Surround yourself with people who enrich your life, guide your mind to thoughts that add meaning to your life and make sure that your actions and words enrich other people's life. That's the resolution that matters the most. 

Dil mein ek lehar si..

With apologies to other languages I will have to say that when the heart is heavy, when the head is muddled up with a million conflicting thoughts or when you don't know what really ails you..there's nothing like Urdu poetry to comfort the heart and soothe the soul.

Here is a ghazal for that kind of mood.

दिल में एक लहर से उठी है अभी
कोई ताज़ा हवा चली है अभी

भरी दुनिया में जी नहीं लगता
जाने किस चीज़ की कमी है अभी (Favourite)

कुछ तो नाज़ुक मिजाज़ हैं हम भी
और ये चोट भी नयी है अभी

शोर बरपा है खाना-ए-दिल में
कोई दीवार सी गिरी है अभी

तू शरीके-सुखन नहीं है तो क्या
हम सुखं तेरी ख़ामोशी है अभी

याद के बेनिशाँ जज़ीरों से
तेरी आवाज़ आ रही है अभी

वक़्त अच्छा भी आएगा 'नासिर'
ग़म न कर ज़िन्दगी पड़ी है अभी


Here is a Youtube link for this ghazal in ustad Ghulam Ali's voice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoAlBP16mG8

Grow a MO -Save a Bro

This is how it happened. I was in the kitchen in our office and the drinks machine wasn't working. So, I ended up standing there and listening to one colleague telling the other what he could or could not do with his moustache. That was weird and me being the curious creature I am, I asked what they were going on about! Turns out that there is this charity, called Movember, which organises a campaign around men's moustaches every November.

The basic idea is that you grow your moustache for 30 days and raise funds for the charity. Both my colleagues were growing their 'tashes for that and I decide that that was the kind of thing I should try too. I used to have a moustache long time ago. Had it for about a decade or so and then one day shaved it off. After the initial ridicule died, my friends admitted that the look suited me and made me look younger.

I still have an old US driving licence that has my old photo with that hideous moustache. I show that to people only to scare them or make them laugh. To be honest, I am quite proud of my current look sans the unseemly growth. So, you see, growing a moustache again is something that's slightly out of my comfort zone. But I am always looking to shake things up and increase my comfort zone.

So that's story in brief. The charity is about increasing awareness about prostate cancer in men. Here's my pitch from my Movember page.
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Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men.
Each year in the UK about 36,000 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer.
It accounts for 25% of all newly diagnosed cases of cancer in men.
Approximately 10,000 men die from prostate cancer every year in the UK.

I have decided to donate my upper lip in order to raise awareness about prostate cancer. In simple words, I am pariticipating in the Movember UK campaign and as part of the campaign, I would be growing my moustache for the month of November.

To make this campaign interesting I will be keeping a regular log of my growing moustache with a daily picture. And before you say anything, I do know that my face doesn't look good with a moustache, that's the reason I had shaved it off in the first place, but that's my sacrifice for the cause.

What can you do? I don't want to be one of those whiney, needy friends who are always asking you to please, please, please do something for them. But take a look at the page and if the spirit moves you and you want to make a donation, you can use the link on the page or talk to me about making other arrangements. And of course, any amount, no matter how small, is welcome. It's not really the money but the thought that counts!

I will also post a moustache related fact, joke, anecdote, image or video every day.
Here's the link: http://mobro.co/sunnygoswami

Whether you feel like donating or not, I hope you check back daily for the fun facts and enjoy the campaign with me!

Cheers!
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Here's my starting photo - Day 1

If you are interested in helping in other ways or joining the campaign yourself as a Mo Bro or Mo Sista, you can also use the same link to join my team. I hope you do! Let's make this fun!

Another clue

NOW can you guess where I am... :D

Geek King

Recently, I checked what I look like. This is the result. :-)